#And that both sides of the interaction were understandable given the contexts

[yamujiburo]

Why I Love Hanamusa

I get this question very frequently but have never given a really in depth, definitive answer. All just kinda implied through my comics and spread out asks. So here's this I guess! Long post ahead:

First, as a Pokémon fan in her mid 20s, I love seeing a ship where the characters are both in their mid/late 20s. Already, they’re much more relatable to me and my current experiences. Most Pokémon ships are between preteens, which can be cute but ultimately don’t interest me as much as they used to when I was a kid myself. Not enough to get super invested in and draw a lot of fanart for anyways haha.

I’ll also start by saying that canon doesn’t always influence whether or not I’ll ship something. I’m much more drawn to potential. Could the characters work together? Do their personalities work together in a nice way? I feel like this so much of fanon is anyways. Especially with queer relationships because they’re rarely depicted in the first place. A lot of the context for these ships is usually up to the fans to piece together or make up in general. And that’s the fun part to me!

Jessie and Delia have only met in the anime a handful of times. Any interaction they’ve had has either been pleasant, or just a typical Team Rocket interaction, with Delia dismissing them/not seeing them as a threat. Already a great jumping off point for me since, truly, they don’t have any actual beef or true, ill feelings towards each other. It’s not TOO out of the realm of possibility for them to potentially fall for each other. “But Jessie chased Delia’s son around trying to steal his Pokémon!” That’s where that dismissive and aloof attitude that Delia has comes into play. I’ll go more into Delia’s whole deal a bit later but I do think this aspect of her personality is a large reason why this ship can work. It’s not that she doesn’t care that Jessie has a bad past, but she can tell that, on the inside, Jessie’s a good person. And, in a scenario where Jessie is trying to become a better person, is forgiving enough to give her a shot. I feel like this is such a solid foundation for a ship. A character who has done wrong but is trying to be better and another character who is willing to help them be better. A classic dynamic!

It’s not just one-sided though; where Jessie is the only one benefitting and learning from the relationship. I believe Delia could get a lot out of being with someone like Jessie. To understand why, I think it’s important to know these characters’ respective backstories.

Jessie is an orphan/foster child who grew up in poverty. Her mother Miyamoto (from The Birth of Mewtwo) was a Team Rocket operative herself, who went on a mission to find Mew. In order to do this, she had to leave Jessie when she was just a toddler. Unfortunately, Miyamoto went MIA on her mission leaving Jessie to more or less fend for herself. Jessie went through life with zero stability, evident by her MANY different careers and constant moving around. It’s implied in the show that she went from foster home to foster home, and later in life tried being an idol, weather girl, florist, wine connoisseur, actress, most notably a nurse and finally a Team Rocket field agent. And even while in Team Rocket, she, James and Meowth were always doing odd jobs to get by. We see that Jessie used to be a sweet kid, and even adult, but the world and her circumstances repeatedly did her dirty, leading her to become the character we know today. Hot tempered, mean, selfish, etc. But despite this, her soft side does still shine through for the people and Pokémon she cares about. She is incredibly loyal.

Delia, unbeknownst to a lot of fans, also had a rough past (see Pocket Monsters: The Animation). Like Jessie, she had a lot of dreams and aspirations like wanting to be a model and even a trainer. But when she was 10, her mother didn’t let her, telling her that she had to stay home and learn to run the family restaurant (she’s an only child). Delia’s father left her and her mother to be a trainer, and never returned. When she was 18, she married Ash’s father and became pregnant shortly after. But right after Ash was born, he also set off to be a Pokémon trainer. And soon after that, her mother passed away, leaving Delia with just the restaurant and baby Ash. This gives so much context to Delia’s attitude in the show. We see that Delia is pained whenever Ash leaves on a journey, but she never shows that pain to anyone. ESPECIALLY Ash. She’s very quick to shoo him off when he shows any sign of wanting to go on another journey and even when he returns home, she acts more excited to see Pikachu than him almost every time. Without all this backstory, it’s easy to just read this as a funny gag, BUT with context, I think it really shows how quickly Delia shuts down and detaches in order to not confront her own feelings. She’s afraid of losing people and getting hurt again.

All that said, I think Jessie and Delia provide each other with EXACTLY what the other needs. 

Aside from becoming rich and famous, Jessie’s biggest aspiration is to get married. In my opinion, this is more so an underlying want for love and stability. There is no one more stable in the show than Delia. Delia’s lived in Pallet her whole life, she’s worked at the same restaurant since she was young and she is always there when Ash comes back home. She has all the love, patience and stability Jessie needs and craves. While forgiving, Delia’s not stupid and can keep Jessie in check. Delia’s also just an angel, which I feel, would make Jessie want to be better. And on top of all this, on more of a surface level, Delia’s a chef and excellent cook. She shows love through cooking and Jessie, who grew up poor, regularly starving and eating snow, happily receives that love. Jessie’s able to live a happy and healthy life with someone like Delia.

Delia, as stated, is very stable. Likely pretty monotonous and solitary, especially living in such a small town like Pallet. This isn’t a bad thing but it’s a little sad when you consider that Delia also had dreams of traveling, being a model and a trainer. She had to give up so many dreams in order to fulfill her duties as a restaurant owner and mother. And even now, when Ash is off on his journey, she feels the need to always be home and be that stable pillar, leaving behind any ambitions she had, thinking it’s too late for her (she’s only 29 btw). But then along comes Jessie, dangerous, passionate, an absolute firecracker. Someone who’s whole life has been about chasing dreams and either, never giving up on them or finding a new dream to chase. Upon learning about Delia’s past aspirations, I could see Jessie pushing her towards them, letting her know that life’s too short and she has nothing to lose from trying. On top of this, Jessie’s also loyal. She, James and Meowth are depicted as doing anything for anyone who gives them food or shows them kindness. Delia does both so there’s no way Jessie would leave her. This fulfills an essential need for Delia, who is afraid of the people in her life leaving her.

There’s so much potential for mutual growth and learning between these two and I adore that. They compliment each other, they help each other and they bring out the best qualities in one another.

I’m not really sure how to end this and I could truly talk about them even more but I don’t want this to be tooooo long haha. OH I could end it with maybe the most funny aspect of this ship that I've brushed over and also what drew me to it in the first place. Jessie. As Ash’s stepmom. THE END.

[emblemxeno]

The thing that I think Fates does so incredibly well, enough so that it's probably my favorite in the series in this regard, is how much it frames context and rewards players for being willing to interact with the characters and the world.

You're given a very specific image on characters just from their first impressions as a whole, and the more you ultimately look past that, the more you unearth the whole context behind the setting. The conflict is a great example of this; it seems like one of the many typical "good vs. evil" conflicts in the setting, and the problem with that is the more you interact with the characters and the more you actually interconnect details and known concepts, the more it quickly becomes different from that. The Nohrian siblings are abuse survivors, their father warped beyond recognition into a puppet for an insane god who seeks to burn the entire world to the ground and everyone just treating this day-to-day insanity as somehow normal or justifiable, while Hoshido only has any kind of knowledge in regards to Nohr based on the Faceless attacks that Garon sends through the barrier; this leads to a lot of demonization of the Nohrians that are just not something they're even aware of, with a major part of the parallels they have in a route shows they need each other much more to coexist than they do to be enemies. Nohr was starving, driven by meritocracy and ultimately was still recovering from a country-devastating civil war, while Hoshido was plentiful, had all of its servants determined by the elite, and knew very little when it came to peace. The implication and fact that both were conquering empires and Mikoto's reign was an anomaly, the warped nature of Garon being a sign something was very wrong as a whole, and both factions just assuming the status quo was as it was and that it was just to be accepted that these two factions were meant to clash with each other in ways that completely justified the other.

What Fates does so well that stands out to me is how much of the narrative ends up being expanded upon and given depth by communication. There is such obstruction on much of the characters motivations and you only get the full story from outright seeking out these perspectives, but what it fully intertwines and exposes is that both sides are full of human beings worth protecting and that's clearly something that matters. And it's hard to think of a route that illustrates that more than Conquest, which takes an entire sledgehammer to the idea that the invasion and conquest of a nation full of innocent people wasn't anything but avoidable and that you weren't the hero for it; you did it because you had to with how much obstruction the politics in Nohr led and how you barely had any options to challenge the system that wasn't deliberately breaking it, but it ultimately showcases how much of the conflict is still the choices within the characters. Chapter 24 confirms what Hinoka says in Endgame with Corrin becoming a pariah for his choice (and understandably so), with his final confrontation with Takumi having him understand what he had to do and not trying to twist it or justify it, but how much of it that it actually was his doing and how he needed to take responsibility for that. Which is precisely what he did at the end of Conquest and ultimately talked with Takumi and allowed the two to communicate how they wanted to feel.

And that's ultimately the core of Fates; how much communication reveals the humanity of the other side and how they're not just tragic victims for you to roll over against, how it's important to understand when somebody needs to be talked to and when somebody is speaking in bad faith. Even Kaze defects because Corrin actually communicates his plan to Kaze in Chapter 11 and because he didn't have any real alternative in this regard, but it makes for such a fascinating narrative as a whole because it's deliberately rewarding to those who seek out this kind of knowledge. It doesn't withhold any information for those seeking to find it; even the Ancient Texts reveal the entirety of the cosmology of Fates for those interested enough to dig into it, and it reveals a perspective that I think is just fascinating.

And I think that's the thing that gets me, because Conquest is just especially relevant IMHO in today's day and age. As an American where it feels like apathy and complacency led to tyranny and oppression, it's important to remember that people are complicated and nuanced, that suffering does not need to happen and that all nations ultimately have humanity to them at the end of the day. Xander and Ryoma try to speak for the longest time how this war and their victory was a tragic inevitability and needed to happen. Corrin, who was shielded from most of the outside world, knew this wasn't the case and that, no, it didn't need to happen. Because we take for granted how much it is communication needs to happen, because we aren't meant to be alone and I think anything that tries to prevent you from communicating to the other side or lies to you to prevent you from seeing the full picture is one that ultimately doesn't want to lose its credence to the audience. This is why I don't like 3H; Fates is entirely consistent with what it believes if you actually communicate properly, while 3H remarks on how "tragic" it is characters like Edelgard are being revanchists who side with Those Who Slithers and doesn't want you to actually question what it says versus the actions of these characters. Fates, meanwhile, leaves it up to you to have these actions be in any way consistent, because the whole point of Fates is how we're ultimately in control of our actions and that allowing us to be dictated by circumstances as it's "just so" is precisely how the characters got into the mess to begin with. Quote Corrin at the end of Conquest:

Anankos? What are you talking about?! Your god has nothing to do with this! We all make our own decisions. You are responsible for all of this, monster! You destroyed the heart of a good man for your own selfish gain. But even you could have chosen a different path. No matter the circumstances we are born into, or the blood in our veins… We are all the masters of our own fate! That is why I am not like you, nor could I ever be. I chose the path I believe in, the path of peace. And that conviction, that strength… I will use that power to defeat you!

Fates I think is truly special, and part of why I get so emotional about it and the lack of respect it gets and people just dismissing it has no depth is that I can clearly see what's being said, and I think it's absolutely wonderful and needs to be preached to the core more. Fates is the kind of story that I think is amazing when you actually construct the full picture and truly unforgettable, not just for how internally consistent it is, but how much it ties into FE's core themes as a series and how much of it we just take for granted concepts like tyranny and cruelty and realize the best way to defeat this is to take responsibility for our actions and actually communicate than dismiss the instance as an inevitability. Almost all failures comes down to excuses, and the way Fates is a sledgehammer and jeremiad to the concept of moral complacency and how interwoven it all is just makes the game so special to me and my heart.

YES YES YES, THIS IS THAT *GOOD* SHIT

What I really appreciate about Fates, like you said, is that it really walks the walk when it comes to communication, humanity and grasping with the weight of people's lives.

It's true that it's cathartic to have characters like Hector or Ike be really gung-ho about removing the problems directly in their way, and taking no shit from their enemies.

But in a broader sense, what speaks to me is Corrin, painted as naive and childish, is correct in the philosophical statement being made.

Why is fighting each other endlessly the status quo? Why do you have to kill your enemies at every opportunity? Why is a future where people can respect one another so unbelievable?

And even then, with all of that, the story doesn't let malefactors off the hook. The abusers of that cruelty and irrationality are punished for it. Corrin gives them the chance, but when they're so set in their ways after that? No dice.

The tragedy here, is that sometimes, innocent people who would very much be able to be convinced, are caught in the crossfire. Dying for their lord, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, being too belligerent and forcing someone's hand in order for them to survive, and just plain bad luck. And Fates' story, rightfully, treats this as something to be upset over, because it respects human life. It doesn't treat it just as a tool to make you sypmathize with what a character is going through, or as just a statistical risk in the background; rather, it materializes the effects of your actions.

And isn't that the beauty of FE stories as they are? They are simulated war chronicles, after all.

[nukecommacomrad]

Hallooo everynyan

yee it is my headcanons of the relationships between the characters, the way how i see it (just hear me out, if you can read)(und i fell like shit, so I need to write for a while, and then I'll start drawing again, and also i want you to know who you're contacting when you see this mindset >:))

in general, it is difficult to do this, given that the characters do not interact with each other at all from the word at all, but you can fantasize. And I can even fantasize in this context :)

I consider this as in the approximate canons of the game and generally do not like that everything would be so easy. Everything should start with a little intrigue, so not everyone has a love relationship and stuff at once, yeee...I know it might be boring for you, but accept it from me that I'm nerd 🤓

lmao good luck sorting this out. I went overboard so much, but I hope that everything is roughly clear there ":)

btw, I'll explain the most complicated relationships I have, which I find quite funny, and I haven't noticed anyone else making the same assumptions yet. Therefore, I will say what I cannot keep silent about 😔🗣️if you want, you can ask me questions about this or anything else! I won't mind at all, and I can still take requests!! I need to do something while I can't draw funny drawings.

Glass Joe&Von Kaiser. Glass is not as cute as he seems, although he is a little silly (but everyone there is a little silly, so this is the norm, lmao)

if you know history you will understand 🔽🔽🔽

The relationship between Kaiser and Joe is really similar to that of an elderly married couple, although they themselves are unaware of it. Joe and Kaiser are the oldest there, so it seems to me that they started their boxing careers a long time ago and have known each other for a long time. Joe also has patriotic tendencies like Kaiser (none of the other guys shout about their country as loudly as he does, lol). Therefore, it seems to me that they must have had a conflict on this ground. When they were both in their prime, they started arguing over who could last the longest in boxing. Joe recognizes strength only in spirit, while Kaiser recognizes physical strength and discipline. And maybe it started when they were over 27 (for Joe) or 30 (for Kaiser). And now, these weirdos are still in the ring, refusing to give up on each other. The Frenchman already has problems with his head physically, and the German mentally (how ironic), but these stubborn sheep do not give up. These many years hand in hand have brought them very close and they can be considered best friends, because sometimes they can just peacefully exist side by side. But, nevertheless, taunts and insults jokingly pass between them, i like that dynamic ✺◟(∗❛ัᴗ❛ั∗)◞✺

Besides, it seems to me that these guys obviously knew Doc when he was still in good shape. They probably remember how he defeated them in the ring, and perhaps the legendary "star punch" performed by Mac. Of course, they wouldn't have recognized Doc now, but they would have found out about it after the second round, it would have been a pleasant reunion of old acquaintances. They have respect for him, so they will treat Mac more kindly than as a destroyer of their skulls.

Don Flamenco&Carmen&Super Macho Man. Oh-Ho-ho-hon yeeee-..I like this ༼��=ಠ益ಠ=༽งIn my opinion-..Okay, let's assume that the blonde is Carmen Don was talking about (but there's also a theory that Flamenco didn't have anyone in particular, because in Spanish, Carmen is just the epitome of a femme fatale, but okay, let's imagine that he was referring to the very Carmen). For me, she's also as silly as everyone else, so she's the girl who likes to watch men beat each other in the ring and she likes it and she's pretty good at it, knowing almost all the fighters and watching the TV footage if she couldn't buy a ticket. I think she's in love with Flamenco. She doesn't look Spanish, but she probably has Spanish roots, and she lives in America with relatives who live in Spain. For the sake of Flamenco, to see his fight live, she comes to Spain, where a spark broke out between them😍 (yeeeas slaaaayyyy)

but before they met, she was spotted by a Macho Man. Because I doubt that cool men will spend so much on just one girl out of a thousand, which is clearly a sign of attention on his part. Carmen agreed to chat with him, but she did not find him olfactory, and when he offered to buy her jewelry, she did not expect him to do so and quickly refused, because that heart has long been occupied by someone else...

And, my God, what a drama, two people in love with the same girl. But she loves only one thing, and that's clear, but the Macho man tries not to show that it hurts him, although he visibly hates Don for it. And Don also hates Macho for the fact that he keeps up with her sometimes, although it's clear that there's something between him and Carmen.That's why they're rivals>:) und blonde is sexy chicka who deserves a happiness 😘

Aran Ryan. Yeeaa, surprisingly, not all the arrows on it are black, but that's because it all depends on other people ;) And hey, hey, Little Mac is the main character! The person we're playing from. Of course it's impersonal and a bit wooden! Therefore, we must identify him for ourselves and mold his character based either on our feelings from the game, or just to amuse ourselves. And I imagine Mac as a very patient boy who just has an inner scream of horror in his head from everything that is happening(what happened to me when I saw from his face who he was fighting with and what he was going through, jajajaha).Although he doesn't show it outwardly, deep down he really gloats, laughs, gets mad as hell, and sometimes does cheeky things and says them.

He kicked Aran's ass, and Aran seems quite pleased and seems to be enjoying it. It seems to me that Aran still saw the same hooligan notes in Mac, so he can consider him a good rival and friend. And in general, Aran finds friends in other people only those who can compete with him, because he is a very strong boy and he is bored with others. But he also likes people who put up with his antics and maybe find them funny if he didn't do them out of spite. Popinsky, Disco Kid, and Lil Mac himself belong to this type.

They are rivals with Don, because they literally go toe-to-toe in all parameters. They are the same age, the same height and both are strong, but I am sure that Aran has moved higher only because he cheated, and the Spaniard did not suspect this at all (for which he now hates him deep down) ༼ᕗຈل͜ຈ༽ᕗ

Heheheh I like that Don has a pretty scandalous personality, which perfectly shows his loss to lil Mac ffhgdsdhsshgrf

[fatedroses]

So, how would it be for the Scions to meet Lucius??

I'm going to write young Lucius and break the scions up a bit for this. Lucius is in his late 20's, with knowledge that they are his grandson's friends (and, they all get the bear hug too, Lucius is just more careful because of the size difference). For the sake of context and setting he was chilling in the aetherial sea before being gifted some aether to tackle his grandson and the scions for a little while.

Alphinaud and Alisaie - He adopts them. Without question or argument. He looks at them, and the fact that they fight so boldly at their age, and he thinks fondly of Gaius in that moment. He dotes on them both, and will carry them on his shoulders without hesitation, but will probably get smacked by Alisaie the moment he and Alphinaud start talking about diplomacy and general politics because once those two start they will never shut up.

Y'shtola - She gets a near 9ft tail following her around. Lucius isn't by his own metrics particularly smart, but just like how he used to with Titus, he bombards Y'shtola with questions over her specializations, her magic, and of the 13th. His endless curiosity ends up getting him turned into a frog, not for punishment or enforced rest like it is for Zenos, but purely because he wondered what it would be like.

Urianger - Not too dissimilar to Y'shtola, Lucius tows around behind Urianger, bombarding him with questions about astrology and his magic. He listens dutifully even if he doesn't always understand what he talks about- not because of how Urianger speaks, but rather the depth he goes into. What he does really love from meeting the astrologian is encouraging and joining in his dramatics, as well as watching him train his card throwing skills.

Tataru and Krile - He is so afraid of accidently stepping on them and cannot fathom how Zenos walks so close to either of them without being fazed. He respects them with all his heart but lalafells in the empire were already so rare to see that he has little to no understanding on how to interact with them. This giant is going around crouching all the way down to talk to them, and like the twins will lift them to be eye to eye when they tell him to stop. Krile gets to deal with the weird experience that even given his background Lucius was absurdly optimistic and happy, and there's nothing more terrifying than him playing into Tataru's schemes towards the others and joining her in it. And while he doesn't have too much in common with either of them, they're two he loves helping around with the time he has.

Estinien - Lucius horrifies Estinien. The fact that an over 8ft tall, 500lb man is doing jumps and flinging himself around without a speck of aether. Lucius adores watching Estinien do his thing and asks about his techniques, but Estinien knows that coming in contact with Lucius while either of them is in the air is the equivalent of taking a colossus fist directly- that he is a threat on his own, without his help. There is something terrible in Lucius' eyes when he's in the heat of combat: the primal, monstrous force he sees so often in Zenos. So while most of the others see this sweet, almost dog-like behavior in the former crowned prince, Estinien's trained eyes see the Legatus that once was, and is in part disturbed by the two sides he finds.

Thancred - On a similar boat to Estinien, Thancred would be wary meeting Lucius. Not because of the strength he could clearly see, but because his own ability to notice and recognize how cunning the man actually is, a trait shared by the rest of the Galvus' to various degrees, but no less disconcerting. It's made all the worse when Lucius in turn does the same to him, smiling at him while acknowledging him as the scion's spymaster rather than just a protector. He sees the subtle way Lucius shifts to accommodate those around him, and when he notices him approaching despite his efforts to cloak his presence, he can tell well enough the weapon Lucius once was for the empire, and what he could have been had he survived. That's not to say however that their meeting doesn't involve Lucius trying to win him over regardless, he is certainly kinder than Zenos in regards to offering advice over his combat skills, and in battling without using aether. A lot of Lucius' experience bonding with his old soldiers goes into how he interacts with Thancred.

G'raha - Lucius is... quiet, meeting G'raha. All the boisterous energy is gone, because the way the miqo'te looks at him tells him everything he needed to know about what happened after he died. Rather, he is careful about their interactions, letting him come to him rather than pushing. In return he offers every tidbit of history he has to the man, from the mundane to pieces of history that would shape the world from his own perspective. What they both enjoy the most, however, is him telling G'raha every piece of gossip and embarrassing detail he had of his own father. Because for as sweet as Lucius was, if his final wishes for peace were going to be trampled on, he was at least going to get back in whatever little ways he can.

Meteor - Lucius adores Meteor and wants nothing more than to listen to every tale and experience he is willing to impart. Meteor, on the other hand, is questioning everything as to how he got here because he cannot comprehend how this man is related to any of the other Galvus' he's met. It doesn't help that he can't look at him without thinking of how much he looks like Hades but acts nothing like him. Meteor however gets to enjoy the rare occasion that he sees bits of Lucius in Zenos. Despite having never met before he can see the way they share their laugh and smile. He could only wonder, distantly, how different the way things could have been if the Light of Garlemald hadn't been snuffed out so soon.

[that-left-turn]

Regarding billing and the title of the spinoff, I think it could be true that norman's 3-year contract limited what Melissa could expect. Although some fans believe that Melissa must be okay with the title and billing not being equal, and that she would have known what she was agreeing to when she signed the contract, I think there are some clues that indicate amc know they need to move towards treating melissa better. Although they don't have dual lead status in the opening credits, they do have equal screentime and prominence in their solo title cards. In promotional materials and marketing, both actors were given equal focus (other than individual interviewers asking norman more questions than Melissa when both were together), visually framing them as co-leads. Melissa was submitted for Best Actress category in awards, not supporting. Could these have been stipulations in melissa's contract, or could that have just been amc's decision? And is this likely to continue for season 3?

I understand that the showrunner and amc do have the power to ensure melissa's role is properly recognised, and it was a missed opportunity not to give melissa equal billing in the book of carol. But if, as I think you've suggested before, norman's contract stipulated solo top billing etc., maybe everything else (e.g. equal title card screentime, lead role category for awards submissions, marketing as co-leads) indicates that she received the best possible despite his contract? And maybe that's a good sign for future seasons. What do you think?

I don't think I've done a post on billing/credit, so thank you for sending me this ask.

Norman's initial deal was two years (S11 of the flagship show and S1 of DarDix, same as Melissa's) which was then renegotiated for S2-3. Melissa would have had no knowledge of the terms of Norman's deal when she signed on to return to the show and also no reason to suspect that the title would change.

Norman and Melissa don't have equal screentime, nor do their arcs have equal weight. The Book of Carol even implies that Carol's arc would be given precedence during the season. The external plot is about Laurent, so in a season called TBOC, I would've expected Laurent's arc to intersect with Carol's, independent of Daryl. Her impression of and interaction with Messiah Boy (without the context of a moody Daryl) would've added a much needed layer to the plot and S1 had already milked all there was to gain out of the Daryl-Laurent dynamic.

I'm not sure what you mean by "prominence in their solo title cards." The font is the same size? It stays on screen for the same amount of time? (That's true for everyone from Norman to Joel de la Fuente and Romain Levi.) Neither of those things has any bearing on how important the actor is on set or their financial compensation. Credit and call order do. 'And' and 'with' credit is slightly different because it indicates that, after the lead/s, the actor is the biggest name and/or highest paid member of the rest of the cast.

Norman and Melissa weren't given equal focus in promotional materials and marketing. All interviews, blurbs, reviews etc. state that the show is called Daryl Dixon and it's about Norman's titular character. Melissa is mentioned somewhere in the body of the text. The font size of Daryl Dixon is also considerably larger than The Book of Carol, which is only a seasonal subtitle and media outlets quite frequently dropped it in their reporting. The composition of posters and other key art frame Daryl/Norman as larger or the focal point of the piece. Carol turned into the B-side of the poster when fans complained about the uneven presentation of the original.

(I'm not going to bother mentioning hair, makeup and wardrobe because that would add another three paragraphs to this post and your ask was about AMC, billing and promo.)

All the men interrupted Melissa and took over speaking whenever there was a group interview, and questions are often submitted in advance of interviews, so asking Norman more questions was the plan, not a coincidence. It's his show—it says so right there in the big, bold title!—so of course any reporter will ask him the lion's share of the questions.

The actor's reps submit for awards, not the studio and regardless, it would have made for uncomfortable attention for AMC if Melissa had submitted as supporting actor. Anyone old enough to remember the ensuing public discussion when Rob Lowe submitted as lead for The West Wing while the rest of the main cast was in the supporting category? Or when Katherine Heigl didn't submit for Emmy consideration at all and followed that up with saying she didn't feel like the material she'd been given was award worthy? Rocking the boat draws attention and as a woman, you will get punished for it.

So no, Melissa didn't receive the best possible treatment that AMC could manage given the circumstances. If DarDix had been a good show, with a showrunner who could've written a proper grief arc for Carol and if the studio had run an actual promo campaign for it, Melissa could've earned them an Emmy nod. She has the capability to deliver some much needed credibility to the franchise, if AMC would only empower her to do so.

[i-am-creacheur]

okay listen. I get the urge to talk about my favorite life series ship like it's Canon in every season...BUT. THAT HAS NEVER ONCE BEEN THE CASE.

Yes, Jimmy would be upset if Tango canaried (technical scientific term for that). Everyone would be- even I would be, and I've never watched a single one of his videos. Canarying sucks, and it hurts. Of course I would be upset. THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT I THINK JIMMY WOULD BREAK DOWN SOBBING FROM A CHARACTER STAND POINT. They have had only like... THREE on screen interactions. One is Tango murdering a man infront of Jimmy and another is Tango cheerfully burning down something one of Jimmy's teammates worked very hard on. WildLifeChara!Jimmy has more reason to hate or be afraid of WildLifeChara!Tango than to be madly in love with him.

I promise you, if Tango had offered Jimmy a life instead of Ren, people wouldn't shut up about for MONTHS. But, because it's Ren, somehow the interaction isn't NEARLY as homoerotic??? I understand having NOTP's, but the Jimmy/Ren ship doesn't even show up ONCE on ao3. Zero fics. ZE-RO. There's no reason to hate something that doesn't even exist.

This same concept applies for Flower Husbands as well- not just in Wild Life, and Secret Life and Limited Life and Last Life and Real Life though- in Empires.

I have no clue about Empires Season 1, but they barely interacted in Empires Season 2- and yet the amount of ship art I sift through on a weekly basis for my side blog is actually insane. Yeah, the few interactions WERE important, but I think Scott only flirted (in video) with Jimmy maaybbeeee three times. I have no idea what the count of that for streaming is, but I swear it is not enough to keep that number so inflated.

Although, honestly, this problem might just be affecting me because of my personal view on shipping- if it's in a context where it doesn't make sense for the characters to be romantically engaged, I won't read it or write it.

For example, my beloved Solidwood! I mostly get their vibes or read their fics from the following series: Evo, Last Life, New Life, Empires2, Secret Life. That's because those settings make sense! They are active, they are engaged, they have near constant interactions or very close base locations. It makes SENSE for them to be shipped. However, if you showed me art or fic of them in, say, Limited Life, I'd furrow my brow and tilt my head and say "no, that doesn't do anything for me." BECAUSE THEY HAVE ZERO REASON TO BE INVESTED ROMANTICALLY IN ONE ANOTHER THERE, AS A STAND ALONE SETTING.

Most of the major Jimmy ships, though, don't follow this rule. I can understand loving a ship so much you want to see it everywhere- but, I promise you, stepping back and looking at which characters actually have chemistry regarding the new setting and social system will do wonders... you won't have to think of new Au's to insert your favorite ship into a new setting... all ships will be your favorite ship (unless they give you the ick). Join the multishiper hivemind /j

No but honestly it's gotten to the point where I will like or dislike a creator/character of theirs by what ship is their most popular given the context of the setting. Like, Tango in Double Life? Awww the sweetie!! I love him :) and then Tango in Empires2 sets off alarm bells in my brain screaming at me. He is NOT meant to be here bringing that ship here, this is NOT its territory. Same problem for Scott in nearly damn near every SMP both Jimmy and him are in... except Wild Life because he's actually been pretty nice and not condescending or forcing on Jimmy. I guess also power imbalances in how fans view them is a major no-go for me...

Idk if you read this whole thing thanks I guess... for anymore needed context I am a Jimmy rarepair obsessed multishiper.

TLDR; Lots of popular ships are inserted into settings without a thought for what that would mean for the setting and any changes in the established social connections, which gives OP the ick. I'm also not policing ships I'm just begging people to please either understand more ships using in setting context or list their AU details in the summaries of the fics. This goes hand in hand with misinterpreting characters in writing also... the more ships you like the more characters you will get to get good at writing!!!!

[fragmentdecosmos]

Now I'm curious, how would you rank the batfam based on how you'd get along irl??

In a scenario where I know their secret identities, and there’s a professional, almost co-workers-like dynamic, I think it'd varie greatly from one wherein which vigilante roles are completely absent. Among those I'd resonate with most (in the event I was born in their world) are Stephanie Brown, Duke Thomas, and Jason Todd. It's mainly due to shared backgrounds and similar upbringings, I think. Conversely, interactions with Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Damian Wayne might be more difficult for me. Strained, even, due to differences in ethical frameworks, perspectives, class understanding and overall core values. So there's two ratings; one where I'm in their AU and one where they're in mine.

Alfred Pennyworth: 4/10 - He might perceive some of my approaches as unorthodox, but I believe he would grasp the reasoning behind them. Our interactions would be limited primarily to joint missions. We wouldn't be close. | 6/10 In my world about 60% of elderly people seem drawn to recounting their youth to me, perhaps due to my perceived trustworthiness, and I like to think he'd be part of that demographic.

Bruce Wayne: 2/10 - Disagreements on methodology would likely hinder rapport, especially given my skepticism toward billionaires, which might result in minimal interactions outside of vigilante duties. | 1/10. I'd see him as a man-whore.

Dick Grayson: 3/10 - Our interactions would likely be brief and casual, without the potential for friendship. His typical millennial demeanor might clash with my sense of humor. But he reminds me of my older sister, so I can't rate him lower than a 2. The age gap might lead him to treat me like a younger sibling, which I'd find condescending. Certainly not someone I would befriend. | 2/10 My personal envy would breed hostility, resulting in a reciprocal cycle of unkindness between us.

Jason Todd: 8/10 - Especially in a context where we were familiar with each other before his whole "being-adopted-by-Batman" thing. He'd likely resonate with my approach to tasks and comprehend the motivations driving my actions. We're not THAT far apart in age so he'd get my humor, I think. | 4/10 In my world however, because I'd be nervous and there would be a lack of common ground between us without vigilantism.

Cassandra Cain: 2/10 - It would unsettle me to realize she can discern my emotions merely by observing me. While I'm generally transparent, this level of insight would make me uneasy, prompting me to steer clear of her. | 7/10 She shares some personality traits of one of my closest friends. Given my penchant for chatter and her inclination to listen, we'd likely complement each other well and have a harmonious friendship.

Tim Drake: 1/10- He wouldn't understand why I dislike him. And I wouldn't have an explanation. | 0/10. Earth isn't big enough for the both of us (completely one sided beef).

Stephanie Brown: 6/10 - She'd get how I roll, but Tim might have complained to her about me not being nice, so she'd be protective of him. | 10/10 We'd be the kind of girls who were super close in middle school, maybe even a bit too much. We'd drift apart in high school or college but still think about each other now and then, though not enough to reach out and become friends again.

Damian Wayne: 1/10 - Likely would perceive me negatively, interactions would be minimal. | 0/10 I just don't see us getting along.

Duke Thomas: 9/10 - He'd totally get my approach and might even be up for joining in (Bruce would see me as a bad influence). We'd both be game for pursuing each other's not-so-great ideas. Would have tons of fun but also engage in meaningful discussions about race, religion, politics, economics, society, art and allat. | 7/10 I can’t see myself being 100% comfortable around a man despite that, so that's how far it'll get, sue me !

Barbara Gordon: 4/10 - Like Dick, she'd likely see me as a kid, which would irk me because I'd want to be seen as an equal. However, since she's a woman, it'd feels a tad less patronizing and more maternal, so she gets one extra point in my book. | 6/10 She's that nice employee at the bookstore who takes my search for a specific book I don’t remember the name of super seriously. But we would not be friends.

To @voiddaisy who asked me a similar question, this is for you too ! Thanks for the ask !

[ventbloglite]

The thing about this ridiculous 'antiship versus proship' western/English speaking issue is that the basic philosophy of both sides is actually on the same page when it comes to not wanting real children to be harmed by predators.

But whilst one generally has a good grip on how this harm occurs and fictions role in that, if anything - the other does not and instead gives in to illogical reaches guided only by paranoia and ignorance.

The problem therefore comes with antis not understanding what harm is, what causes harm, how predators tend to work, and the role of fiction in all of this. As evidenced by...literally decades of predators existing, being caught, being studied etc.

All communities you belong to, all of them, will have predators in them including predophilic predators. They will label themselves your labels, they will talk your talk and then go against the principles of your group to try and harm/harm minors.

Being a proshipper does not mean liking pedophilic or incest or whatever ships. That's darkshipping. Pro is not short of problematic, just like pro-choice isn't problematic choice. It just means 'for' in this context, the opposite of anti. Proship philosophy at it's core just means being anti-harassment and anti-censorship. But no group is a hivemind, you're going to get bad apples. That doesn't mean the whole group is bad when the above is their group philosophy.

Meanwhile, the philosophy of antishipping isn't all to dissimilar to puritans and other pro-censorship conservatives and involves a vast majority of the community engaging or allowing active harassment, victim shaming, triggering of victims, sharing of inappropriate material to minors, encouraging minors to seek out that material ('to warn others'), suicide baiting, moral policing, dehumanising etc based on personal morals and discomfort.

Which still doesn't mean all antis are bad people! It just means the philosophy is bad and has attracted more people who wish to cause harm in this manner whilst taking the moral high ground.

If you're an anti who was targetted by a predator who labelled themselves 'proship/profic' and used inappropriately sexual and specific ship content to groom you - I'm sincerely sorry. But that predator would have existed and found ways to harm you even if they'd identified as anti. I'm really tired of people using their experiences to 'prove' that all proshippers are pedos. Nobody said that 'no proshippers are ever pedos' because that invites harm. All communities have these people in them.

The vast majority of proshippers, especially if they're adults, do not want or encourage minors to interact. They label themselves 18+ and nsfw if they post that content and encourage you to not view such material. It is within their rights to have spaces for adults, and to create whatever fiction they wish. It is not going to normalise it, never has, never will, except for a minority of people who did not have enough of an education of these things before exposure to understand the difference between fiction/reality (and there are so many proshippers willing to teach you not to see this as ok irl).

I'm not saying it's your fault if you were a victim, it is never the victims fault. Somebody should have educated you and given you the tools to avoid harm before you went online, so that you could ship whatever and avoid anyone harmful, but they didn't and someone insidious said what they had to say to get to you. They are the one completely in the wrong there, completely. Because you were innocent and doing what you thought was best and they took advantage of you.

But the same thing happens with adult antis and minors who are antis too. Does that mean all antishippers are pedos? No. Not because they are antishippers, but because most people simply are not predators.

The real issue here is that antishipping censorvative mindsets teach you that it is easy to recognise a predator by a meaningless label they use 'pro-whatever' or 'anti-anti' or 'whatever-ship that's not anti'. In real life however, a predator is clever enough to hide their intents behind any kind of label you trust. If you trust proship they'll use that, if you trust antiship they'll use that.

Without the actual tools to recognise real grooming, you are always going to be vulnerable. So instead of having a moral war because some of us got squicked by someone elses OTP why don't we actually do what we're all yelling about and give minors tools to avoid harm and holding predators in fandom accountable?

[schmedterlingfreud]

I was tagged by @ma-chi1993 thank you so, so much! (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶) 💚​💚​

Three Ships: - GerIta (Hetalia); they are the simple Perfection. Among my Hetalia ships, GerIta will always be my Number One, the Sacred and Untouchable One. Culturally, historically, and romantically speaking… they are absolutely perfect for each other. I love how different and complementary their two personalities are. I love how a rigid and stoic personality like Germany finds comfort and peace in a more soft and sweet and easy-going personality like Italy's, who helps him to mature, to express himself, emotionally speaking. And I love how a fearful character like Italy finds comfort and courage in Germany's bond, in his strength. A unique love -- and not necessarily romantic -- that will always have a special place in my heart. 🍺​🍝 - UsUk (Hetalia); choosing another of my Hetalia ships -- sorry, guys, my world literally revolves around two fandoms (xD) -- is very difficult. I choose UsUk for everything this ship has given me on an emotional level, and because it has allowed me to express myself a lot on a creative level. I love it because I see and experience these two characters in very different ways, depending on the thousand universes in which we can insert them -- and note well: I ship "Alfred and Arthur", not "America and England"! But, regardless of how you see them, I love their conflictual dynamics, I love their differences, I love everything that distances them and, at the same time, brings them closer. I (sadly) find myself having a personality very similar to England's, so I love the sense of comfort and peace that gives me the thought of having close to me an energetic and positive character like America. Very self-indulgent? Yes. But who the F cares, right? (u.u) I also love the more tragic side of their past bond, their family history, and also the romantic side that you can develop in an AU context in which the two boys/men are almost the same age and without family ties. A very magical ship ❤️​💙​ - Luberto (Luca); another perfect representation of "opposites attract". I really appreciate the "growth factor" of Luberto -- I don't know if it makes sense, saying it in this way (xD). I love the innocence from which it starts, I love the strong and indestructible friendship that they develop. And yes, I also love the fact that, seeing Luca and Alberto as young adults/adults, you can also develop a romantic side to their relationship. Just like it was true for Italy and Germany, Luca and Alberto are among the very few characters that I can see perfectly under the true definition of "soulmates". That feeling that makes you say: "You will always be my only true one, until the end of the universe". I also love the fact that they both help each other grow through their mistakes, their mutual closeness, but also their distance. I love the fact that they don't always understand each other, but at the same time they learn how to love their differences. I love the constancy of that underlying friendship that remains solid and perfect even without adding the romantic side. I love the fact that they both always have something to teach and learn from each other. I love the fact that, despite the possibility of being lovers, they will always remain best friends forever. "Growth" is the key word that made me fall in love with this perfect ship. 🐟​🛵

First Ship: - LawLight (Death Note); what do you want me to say? L and Light were the first characters I read fan fiction about, and they were one of the main reasons I actively became part of the ✨fandom world✨. Looking back at them now, with my adult and mature eyes, I see many more shades in them than when I was young, when for me they were simply the couple of: "Yes, I hunt you, I have to kill you, you're my enemy, but deep down I love you". I still see so much potential in L and Light's relationship -- despite the obvious toxicity (xD) -- and I continue to love them and their interactions, always conflicting, always intricate, always complex. Maybe, that's true, to remain IC there should be very little space for real romance between two cold and mental characters like them. And this is why, among the "Death Note" ships, I prefer the MelloxMatt. But L and Light were my "first ones" so they will always be the most special ones. 🍎​

Last Movie: I don't remember the last "new" movie I saw (maybe it was "Inside Out 2", so last summer!), but last night I re-watched "The Corpse Bride" while I was having dinner, just to keep my company.

Last Song: Nazhmi Na Knopku by Chernikovskaya Hata (... my current obsession)

Currently Reading: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Lyman Frank Baum

Currently Watching: Nothing, but sometimes I re-watch random episodes of "Breaking Bad" and "South Park".

Currently Eating: A mug of my beloved instant coffee

Currently Craving: Nothing in particular... maybe another coffee? ☕

Thank you again for the tag (💚), and I'm tagging:

@sigdom @mari--lace @nordic-italian-german

@faunabel @hondakiku @bachint

[snowflakesparklegor]

Path of Ultimate Sin Review Part Two

Part Three

The last and final part to the Path of Ultimate Sin. Personally, my favorite of the three since it ties up the remaining details well being a cinematic finish. Also, yes I did cry at some point well reading Part Three. I think Part Three evokes a heartbreaking tragedy.

When Oboro is disguised as Kurezuki Horori, I do find that aspect interesting because I think Oboro was trying to be someone else to find happiness only to fail. She eventually comes back as herself and embraces the darkness within her and is authentically herself even the worst parts of her.

As for the Beauty cohort, it is as chaotic as the others. It's fun to see their interactions. I don’t especially have an interesting opinion on any of the members other than Sekka but that is because she knew Oboro for years so compared to that I don't have much to say about the cohort members. Other than the fact that I love their designs and what I have seen of them.

Oboro's good action of defending Igruk from Anaise leads to Oboro's final downfall. There were definitely other contributing factors. But if Oboro had never killed Shigeru's grandmother I wonder what may have happened. But it is possible that Nichika would have found something else to get Oboro expelled.

Kumayuki's death, His death happened similarly like his brother. In that they both have something important to say before dying is a tragic cycle even more that Kumayuki trying to avoid the same fate as his brother lead to his death. I didn’t feel as sad about Kumayuki's death as much as Kadoyuki but but that can be because we knew Kadoyuki more so the death had more impact.

Next, Gionji's betrayal. I wanted to write how I don't think the reason behind it fits Gionji. Him having Ophidiophobia and betraying her for that reason. At least not the sole reason. I personally choose to believe that Oboro in the narrative is lying or we are given a biased view of the situation. As this is told by an unreliable narrator, this could be true.

I personally believe that Gionji betrayed Oboro because she showed him a side to herself that disgusted and made him fear for humanity. Because we have to realize this is Oboro telling her side of the story. This isn't told in Gionji's pov. It is biased and told to convince Nishiki to join her so not all of it may be true.

Personally, I believe that Gionji saw the darkness in Oboro when she killed Shigeru's grandmother because we may see the woman in a negative light due to Oboro's pov. But she isn't her husband, she may be scummy but she hasn't wronged Oboro. Oboro killed her out of vengeance because of who she is related to. This is her first act that can be defined as the one that would define her actions in the killing game going forward. To Oboro it wouldn't matter if they are directly involved if they are related to those she wants revenge on she will brutally punish them. This action solidifies and shows what Oboro is capable of. As we see in Part 4 of what she does to Seisuke and Aisa. As well as Seisuke's MoE in her actions against his family. Darkness was always in Oboro, the temptation to act upon those desires was always there. Even in parts of the story there is Oboro holding herself back in parts only for her inner darkness to strike.

Think about this in this light and think about how Gionji may see this. Not out of a hatred and phobia of snakes. But rather someone close to him he may have though of having gone through a lot has shown to be dangerous. Not out of self-defense or to help her mother and her escape of Second Savior Church. But a witness to a vengeful act. I think, Gionji's belief if you consider this is understandable in this context. Which is what I believe is the full context of why he betrayed Oboro. He chose to put her away believing it was right to save humanity and Oboro. Gionji always gave me the impression that he wanted the best in the bigger picture. To protect and do what he believed was right. Also, that Gionji may think this may help Oboro since she has shown a side to herself in that murder of Shigeru's grandmother that this rehabilitation that is said to happen may help her in some way and keep her from harming others. I know, this is defending Gionji but I believe he isn't evil like Byeongwook or good as Kadoyuki. I believe that Gionji is morally grey, a mix of the two. Which is why I view him as an interesting character under this viewpoint. I like Kadoyuki a lot since even though he's a sweet father figure, I find Gionji more interesting on how much you can possibly interpret his actions. I am personally more interested in characters that can be interpreted as morally grey than characters that are solely good. I choose to view him under this lens but you can view him solely as Oboro contexts him or under the belief that there is more to his actions.

Also, I think Gionji would have suffered even if Oboro hadn't killed him. Because he already was punished for his actions with Hagusa's death. The cruelest thing to do to him would be to have made him live with the fact that his actions had made Hagusa take her life involuntary becoming his love's murderer. I don't know if he knew Hagusa died? I am not sure. But either way he would have suffered. So unlike Byeongwook and Takayuki I don't think his death is really karma. He already had suffered for his decision.

In the end, Oboro was consumed by her anger and need for vengeance. The reason why Gionji betrayed her or reason was gone. Since Oboro has already embraced the darkness part of her. Also, have to admit the twist about Gionji being killed and replaced was something I didn't expected.

I believe she left it out and instead pushed or maybe she chose to paint him as entirely evil or does believe his actions are solely based on his Ophidiophobia. Oboro has been burned before so naturally how she views others is going to be under a negative lens. Like how when Nichika shows sympathy she doesn't believe it is sincere. This is why as a reader I believe not all is at face value. This is how I interpreted things after thinking about Part Three for days.

You have to remember how Oboro is betrayed multiple times. Sekka's actions are morally grey in nature as well. Which is another betrayal that deeply hurts as well considering how long Oboro has known her. Also, Aethera was cooking with the dialogue and with Sekka's betrayal that was brutal and heartbreaking. Just I loved the betrayal. I would say that Sekka was one of my favorite characters of the Path of Ultimate Sin because of her being a morally grey character. She's jealous of Oboro and betrays her. Her being a garbage friend but being a deeply layered morally grey character makes her interesting. She's selfish even if she has her reasons for her actions. She does morally questionable things and is part of the catalyst for Oboro downfall. From how as a child she influenced her to their friendship over the years leading to the betrayal. Sekka puts whatever she wants and protects what she deems precious over everything else and herself as well. Since she gets what she wants being from Oboro's shadow and being important and gains money but in the end she sacrifices her friendship with Oboro. I just have to really say how impressed and amazed I was with Aethera's writing with Sekka and Mangyoku especially. Sekka became one of my favorites so I am definitely saying that is due to Aethera's contribution and how well she wrote the betrayal and Sekka's character. The dialogue between characters and the scene between Sekka and Mangyoku was intense. As well as Sekka's betrayal.

If something did bother me there were the major coincidences that happen when Oboro goes to jail.

I do have to say the fact that Norishige just happened to meet Oboro in jail and happened to have the necklace that Sekka stole from Oboro is too much of a coincidence for me personally. I understand it adds dramatic tension maybe the fact that it felt too coincidental for my suspension of disbelief. But I know this may just be something minor that bothered me and it may not have bothered others.

It was interesting seeing the first meeting of Oboro and Tensei. We don't learn too much about Tensei but I imagine we may later.

When it comes to Oboro, I do feel like you understand her and sympathize with her well knowing that she has done awful things. Oboro does get karma at some points, her ending in jail I believe it is karma. A lot of Oboro's actions can be seen under the mortally grey lens or understandable. But I wouldn't call all of them justified. Because when you examine each of them you see that she isn't a perfect person. She's not the perfect victim. Since she does actions that well can be understandable in the environment she was putting into. There is the question of how much is nurture over nature. Since there was probably a mix of both. I feel like how she isn't a perfect victim is what makes her a good character. Since there is complexity in a character like Oboro who has awful things like with coming up with Cohort Elitism and what she did in the killing game. Oboro is consumed with a desire for revenge and a desire to take it out on others. She's flawed and lets her anger and desire for revenge poison her. As shown in the killing game, I think Part Three shows this transition from Oboro's descent wonderfully. As mentioned above, the darkness was always in Oboro from the start it just grew and was controlled and in the end it consumed her. Oboro always had it from the start of Part one. Which I love how it's always there not something that was suddenly there, Oboro having always struggled against her inner demons. As her fighting at times not to give into her instincts are present. She always wanted to be happy but whenever she was it was taken away from her. Eventually, after enough betrayal she welcomes and embraces the inner darkness within. That is the metamorphosis of Oboro from a human into the monster that society and some people had considered her to be. This is why, like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Oboro becomes ‘the monster’, the vile snake that people feared and thought she was. She loses so much one thing over another from being put in jail, Sekka and Gionji's betrayal, and the loss of her mother Hagusa.

Something else I liked was how the main cast connected to Oboro's story. Also, seeing a few characters from DAP like Joshua was nice.

I thought the Royal Court Club part was a lot of fun. It goes on for a while but I think the RCC is interesting enough that despite its focus it is a fun segment to read. Also, I love the cards that Danny made. The ones with the characters especially and the CG art in Part Three. Also, Rokunosuke who is a character from Kouji's fangan Harmonious Discord makes an appearence there isn't too much to say about the character since he doesn't get too much of a focus. But if you want to check out the prologue it is posted on Ao3. I did want to spotlight Kouji's and Aethera's contributions. Since they both worked hard on PTUS and had contributions to the MoE. They both did an incredible job.

We saw more of Mangyoku and learned more about it, which was interesting. Her aura power certainly was a surprise. There was another twist with Mangyoku, and we learned about her family life. But given how there isn't much of VoV and we see Rimu in the MoE. So I don't have much to say about it.

I wanted to talk about the choice of color red used in Path of Ultimate Sin. Because the color red has a lot of meaning. Passion and love. Sacrifice. Danger, anger, violence, and sin. All of this really does make red the perfect color for Oboro's backstory and also makes red Oboro's color. Because a lot of that just fits Oboro perfectly. All of Oboro's designs throughout the years use red in some way even her disguise as Horori uses a red scarf.

I should discuss my thoughts on Oboro and Steven as a couple. It wasn't too much of a focus in the MoE. But here I feel like it gets shown a little bit. There isn't too much of it. Oboro is drawn to him upon meeting him. As she sees what sort of person he is and is attracted to that. There really isn't much for me to talk about their meeting and their attraction to each other. They are a couple in that both of them are people who have sinned and work as a villain couple. There isn't too much of them together, as I mentioned, so I can’t really say much about the pairing as a whole. As there isn't really shown any development or much of them together. Given how long Part Three is, there is no possible way to go into their relationship too much. I think they are fine as a couple. I just didn't find their meeting and interaction that interesting personally. Since I felt like Oboro's platonic bonds and the toxic relationship she forced into with Takayuki were more interesting to see happen since there was much more of a dynamic feel to them and focus. For example, her relationship with Sekka, watching the friendship develop and then be destroyed by Sekka's jealousy and betrayal, was far more interesting. Oboro's relationship with her family I enjoyed more. But I think that is to be expected.

My thoughts on Path of Ultimate Sin as a whole is that I thought of it as the perfect tragedy and metamorphosis of a woman's downfall into sin. I wouldn't call it especially too dark as much as it is a tragedy. As she embraces the darkness that was always in her as every time she finds something that makes her happy it is taken from her that she gives up on conforming to society's standards and gives up on the idea that there can be good in humanity. Which leads to who she is in the killing game as the Twilight werewolf.

[alexandriaisburning]

041: What makes Zeroranger special, anyway?

CANON FIRE is made possible by the generous contributions of readers like you. Support more writing like this on Patreon. Thank you!

Developed over a decade and layered in mysteries, Zeroranger is a shooter that’s received acclaim from both STG* fanatics and first-timers for the ways it bends genres. But for all its talk about the ways it pays homage to the genre, and the insistence that it’s something special, Zeroranger almost never gets talked about in plain terms, out of fear of spoiling the surprises that await first time players. That level of caution from its fans is almost admirable, but it leaves what makes the game special undiscussed, and makes it hard for both curious players wondering what the big deal is, and leaves Zeroranger’s best ideas unappreciated. 

With that in mind I’ll be doing a deep dive into Zeroranger’s design, with no limitations on what I talk about or spoil. 

On a basic level, Zeroranger is a vertically scrolling STG that borrows ideas from a variety of genre classics, paying homage to them through bosses, stage layouts and game mechanics. After each stage you’re given a choice between one of two weapons, each which will become useful in the next stage, but in different ways, with variations between the two playable ships. After the first stage you get a choice between back and side firing weapons, the second unlocks a lock on laser or chargeable shot, and the penultimate boss fight--against Grapefruit, the ship previously thought to be destroyed during the first attack on the enemy--unlocks a mech transformation with a powerful melee weapon that stacks damage and protects you from enemy attacks. 

Each weapon allows varied interactions with the level design, covering different areas of the screen and allowing you to approach enemy patterns in a new way. Since you can’t have both weapons of each tier, you’ll have to choose which weakness you’ll accept, and pair it with other weapons that can cover that weakness. It encourages repeat playthroughs to try different strategies and learn the stage layouts, which is good, because Zeroranger will demand repetition. 

At the core of Zeroranger is the theme of karmic cycles, repackaging long standing genre concepts in a way that ties them to the ongoing narrative. Like Neverawake, Zeroranger plays with the concepts of Loops--second playthroughs that remix the original stages--but here it acts closer to something out of the Nier series. The initial playthrough is only setup, with a repeat playthrough being the de facto second act, with altered context that builds on your original understanding, followed by a third and final act that brings a proper conclusion. 

The karmic themes even affect the meta progression of Zeroranger. Score contributes towards earning the next of nine total continues, used to retry a stage from a checkpoint after death. Continues are represented by the nine orbs that fill out a wheel at the end of the run, which itself resembles the Wheel of Samsara, often used by Buddhists to describe the cycle of existence that mortal beings are subject to. 

By framing each attempt as another cycle or reincarnation, it implies that each death has in fact happened, and the only way to escape the cycle is with enough perseverance and knowledge. It blows up the scale to a cosmic degree, and makes your journey to the end of the game, and the knowledge you build of its world, into a form of mechanical and narrative progression. 

This knowledge of the world becomes integral to the second loop, which introduces major changes to the patterns and layouts of the first loop, but allows you to return with all your weapons. With these previously unavailable weapons you can easily dispatch enemies that were hard to deal with, and details that seemed mysterious on the first loop fall into place. One of my favorite examples of this are the enemies who appear in the background, before flying into the foreground to attack. On the first loop they seem like a cool, decorative detail, but on the second loop, with the lock-on laser available, suddenly they’re targets you can pick off before they get a chance to attack.

The final act begins when you meet the Grapefruit for the second time and reveal your mech form, allowing you to have a proper duel where they’ll whip out several abilities, including more powerful versions of your own weapons, revealing why they were the first choice in dealing with the enemy. 

After defeating Grapefruit you’ll once again face the final boss, but this time instead of the boss rush of the first loop, they’ll give up and offer you another power up. 

Here Zeroranger shifts into its final act, requiring you to solve a series of puzzles before gaining access to the true ending. Grabbing the powerup shows you the “ending” and puts you into a loop where you’ll replay the first stage in Final Boss mode, leaning harder into Zeroranger’s CAVE** influences by changing out your default weapons for a Dodonpachi style barrage of bullets and bombs. Completing the stage and grabbing the powerup puts you into another brief minigame before glitching out and returning you to the title. 

To escape this you’ll need to reject that final powerup, either within the Final Boss stage or before, during the boss room where the boss rush takes place. By rejecting the offering you gain access to Despair, the real final boss hidden beneath the facility, who naturally has several phases to complete. The first phase is a puzzle itself, requiring you to carefully observe the orbs emitting the attacks, and time your own attacks to destroy them close to simultaneously, or otherwise be stuck helpless in yet another looping trap. 

Completing the first phase reveals the true form of the final boss, Despair, a suitably terrifying challenge with a massive suite of attacks whose design could inspire its own essay. Compared to the cerebral challenges preceding it, this final form is more straightforward, but learning the complexities of the patterns often felt as hard as the combined challenge of every obstacle met on the way here. 

Defeating Despair reveals the true final boss challenge--a sequence that reveals the origins of Zeroranger’s world, and connects several unresolved narrative threads. Not only must you complete it completely stripped of your previous arsenal, but you’re given a single chance to do so. 

Not quite understanding the gravity of what the game was implying there, I took on the final challenge after an exhausting struggle with Despair, desperate to finally see the ending--only to have my save deleted after I failed. 

Not only do you need to scale the mountainous challenge of defeating Despair, but you need to complete it with continues to spare, as each continue orb becomes a health point for your final confrontation. In addition, you have to quickly adapt to playing without any of the weapons you’ve built familiarity with during your playtime, and learn the new boss patterns on the fly while unraveling how exactly you can damage the boss. Practice runs are impractical, as you’ll have to complete the whole game at least once before returning, making the minimum time between attempts nearly an hour, if you’ve complete mastery of the rest of the game. 

So I cheated. I downloaded my save from the cloud, backed it up, then went back and completed it on my third try, after restoring my save twice. As I finished the final challenge, Zeroranger left me with the same message it began with:

May you attain enlightenment. 

By circumventing the challenge, by failing to persevere in the face of disaster, I’d arguably failed this goal. I’d given in to my material desires and skipped the suffering necessary to achieve the knowledge needed to break free of the cycle. Fitting then, that Zeroranger’s conclusion is one that’s hopeful, but open ended, implying that this current cycle has been broken, but the events that caused it may one day repeat themselves. 

Then Zeroranger deletes your save. 

Records carry over, and the color palette and story change to reflect your achievement, but progress unlocking stages is once again reset. You’re free of the meta trappings of the story, but are given one more reminder of how temporary progress is, and challenged one more time to complete a run to get the complete credits sequence. 

It’s a novel approach to player progression in a STG that not only reframes common genre ideas with a thematic approach, but slowly pushes players towards goals that the genre diehards naturally shoot for. By visually indicating the progress towards extra lives and continues through its score counter, it alerts players towards the importance of scoring for continued survival as well as the leaderboards, and encourages them to look for opportunities to maximize score. 

The harsh requirements to witness the ending almost guarantee that a player will be forced to start over, and unless they cheat (guilty), forces them to learn the stages and scoring systems to quickly earn back their progress. That process, and the need to hold onto as many continues as possible for the finale, pushes them closer to attempting the 1-credit clear, what most STG players consider the first major milestone in learning a game. Simply put, it’s a run where you complete all the stages in the game without using up a continue, and often denotes mastery. 

The parade of secrets and homages, alongside the narrative driven recontextualization of game mechanics and premise shifting final acts create  a novel approach for both genre veterans and newcomers, upending expectations with each new twist. Zeroranger’s revelations mark it as equal parts mystery and action game, and asks you to dig deeper, coming to an appreciation of its layered design in the process. 

Personally, as much as I respect the final act’s commitment to delivering on Zeroranger’s themes of struggle, persistence and reincarnation, the harsh penalty of deleting your save was demotivating to a degree that I didn’t feel was worth the tension it imparted. I can only imagine how a less experienced player might feel, struggling for hours to reach that point, and possibly being unsure if they could reach it again. Zeroranger’s patterns and stage design are often less demanding than most of its contemporaries, but they come with harsher penalties for failure. 

Even given that, it’s not hard to see why Zeroranger captured the imagination of so many. Designed intentionally to be approachable, with enough mystery to satisfy the lore hungry theorycrafters, Zeroranger provides many entry points. Paired with its striking two color palette and memorable soundtrack, it paints the picture of a greater world beyond its borders. The drawn out finale demands you engage Zeroranger with your entire attention, and its dramatic set pieces and score bring an emotional climax that the more traditional arcade style titles often can’t spend the runtime on. 

Even after the credits roll, Zeroranger leaves plenty to discover, both within its boundaries and outside. Its themes of karmic cycles and open-ended conclusion invite you to explore it further, and its homages and secrets point to other games and worlds whose influence helped bring it to life. It’s an introduction to the mindset of a genre fanatic, an homage for all those who’ve already journeyed through the genre to arrive here, and an invitation for those who haven’t to share in that same passion. 

--- Zeroranger is availble on PC. Homebrew ports are availble for the Switch and Linux based handhelds via Portmaster.

--- *STG: ShooTing Game, aka SHMUP or Shoot-Em-Up. A community term for the genre of arcade style shooters used to differentiate them from the more common first and third person shooters.

**CAVE: Developer of several major entries in the genre, and credited with popularizing the danmaku (bullet curtain) or bullet hell sub-genre. Their games are often marked by complex enemy bullet patterns, with a powerful player arsenal that can hit many parts of the screen at the same time.

[margridarnauds]

What's your opinion on Mad Sweeney in American Gods TV series?

He seems like a good starting point to many things about Irish mythology and history and its perception and I'd love to know your opinion, if you're willing to share.

Oh, god, so this is going to be complicated (I'm having another rough evening, so I'm finally getting to the backlog.)

First off, let me be honest about this: My standards for medieval Irish lit adaptations are high. Potentially too high. I try to acknowledge what any adaptation is trying to do, whether the execution lives up to the intent, what I think they do that's innovative, and what they do that isn't, but the truth is that I have very, very high standards for this. Especially for Lugh and CMT, because even though Bres is my baby, Lugh is too. I make fun of him, but he's almost as much a part of me at this point as Bres is. I've had over a decade to form a close attachment to him and think about what I'd like to do with him. This is important because...I distinctly remember being a teenager on here, seeing a bunch of adult academics on here act like they were the supreme authorities and objectively right on how to adapt these things, and getting very intimidated about...doing anything with these things. (Also see: The reason why I stopped interacting with Arthuriana and Greek Mythology after I was, like, 20 -- it got very exhausting to make sure that all your headcanons followed other people's headcanons.) And I don't want to do that. I am going to try very hard to not repeat the sins of the past.

Let me be honest with a second thing: In my opinion, it is nigh impossible to adapt medieval Irish lit. Or, rather, to adapt it in a way that's both relatively accurate to the cultural nuances while also being satisfying. Any of the Mythological Cycle, Ulster Cycle, or Fenian Cycle, because there's a whole cultural context to these things that isn't always immediately obvious, and unless you have an intricate understanding of it, you're going to fail. And I'm not just saying it as an elitist academic: I'm saying it as someone who once SWORE I was going to create the Most Accurate Irish Mythology Adaptation...and then ended up getting three degrees and working on a fourth in order to achieve it, STILL not feeling like I can do the source material justice. Medieval Irish texts aren't long, but they are DENSE, and it's very easy to end up tangled in them if you aren't careful. Rick Riordan did an online MA in Celtic Civilisation at UCC and spent time in the Gaeltacht learning the Irish language, got accepted into a PhD program at Harvard before he had to pull out. Like...that's what this material demands. Not requests, demands. All this to say...I wouldn't say it's a value judgement, on a whole, if a given adaptation stumbles.

So, onto the actual question:

Here are the cons, as I'm rewatching his flashback scene. On the record: I don't like it.

Let's go into why I don't like it, so we can see whether this is me being Me or not. First of all: Sweeney/Lugh blames " Mother Church" for turning them into "fairies and saints and dead kings" -- this is a popular misconception, especially if you run around in pagan circles, and it enjoyed a level of popularity in the field itself up until the 1980s. That being said, current research in the field generally focuses on reminding people that literally *all the material we have about the Tuatha Dé from medieval Ireland was written by Christians*. Christians who CARED about reconciling their own traditions with the doctrine that they loved dearly. In other words...Mother Church saved Lugh's ass. Also, the idea that Leprechauns are descended from Lugh, which...no one seriously believes in the field and is kind of embarrassing in there considering how widely debunked it is.

As a side note, it's understandable why they use the modern Irish pronunciation for both "Lugh" and "Tuatha Dé Danann" (never a term I use, btw), but it throws me off.

Then, the voiceover from Thoth.

"You were the god of the sun, of luck, of craft, art, of everything valuable to civilization. 'The Shining One', they called you. You saved your people from their old enemy, the Fomorians. 'Lamfhada' they called you, 'long hand', for your skill with your spear...but the Tuatha Dé Danann were scientists and artists. The Fomorians were madmen. Monstrous beings that came from under the sea, under the ground, under the surface of things. Nightmares. The madness. It came from him. Your father's father. One eyed Balor of the Fomorians...He tried to kill you. He heard prophecy that his grandson would kill him so he rounded up all his grandchildren and drowned them all in the lake but, you survived, like you always do."

Overall...I don't love it. It's a very generic look at Lugh and a very generic look at the Fomoiri, which really focuses on the idea of the Fomoiri as an Evil Race, while the Tuatha Dé are the Ideal Logical Aryans, with the Fomoiri being the one to "infect" the Tuatha Dé with their evil, evil genes which cause everything wrong. It ignores the nuances that actually exist in CMT (Tethra isn't Indech isn't Balor isn't Bres). The reference to Balor killing his grandchildren is in the later folk tradition, not from the medieval text. Most importantly, the notion of Lugh as a "sun god" is something that's not GENERALLY believed, or at least not something that's taken for granted as true anymore. In general, if I was to assign Lugh to a FUNCTION, and this is something that I feel like is a CRUCIAL thing to miss, is that Lugh Is Social Order. He is the barometer that you can use to judge how a given writer views Irish society. He is a savior, he's pragmatic, he's ruthless. He's striking, like a cut diamond that, every single time you look at him, you see a new facet of him, catching the light just so.

All that aside, the flashback is really unfortunately racially coded in a way I really don't like.

The Fomoiri being depicted as dark to the Tuatha Dé being fair skinned is one of my LEAST favorite adaptation decisions, and it's one I see unfortunately frequently. (The one detailed description we get of a Fomorian, in CMT? IS BLOND. AND HOT.) While Lugh is depicted as a stereotypical Celtic warrior, with the red hair (which...there is no depiction of the TDD that is WRONG, but redhaired Lugh bores me), torque and the woad body paint (which is NOT something that we have any record of the Irish doing.) There are some later descriptions of the Fomoiri coming from Africa, but...if we DO make that decision? WHY IS LUGH WHITE? (Also it annoys me that Balor is described as "Lugh's father's father" -- like, it's a petty complaint, but it's erasing Lugh's mother and his heritage from her, especially when the battlefield is all men in the flashback. It's a very macho version of CMT that I don't like and, again, misses that Lugh isn't (just) a Macho Warrior -- he's also society. That includes the part of society that includes women.) (Lugh is not a misogynist...even though he has a bad history with his wives cheating on him...he IS a classist. He hates all poor people equally.)

Anyway:

Here are the pros:

So, I've just said that this depiction was simplistic, racist, and not particularly accurate to the spirit of Lugh from the medieval texts, even if it technically gets the overall details (Lugh Defends TDD From Grandfather) right. What DO I like about it?

...I do like that it actually sheds a spotlight on Lugh. I like seeing my funny little guy around. And, really...as picky as I am...I HAVE to be grateful for what we get, because that IS the state the field's in, even as I resent that we can't ASK for more. Lugh has never become RIDICULOUSLY popular in Ireland, or anywhere else in the world, with the Nationalist movement skipping over him almost entirely, in contrast to figures like Cú Chulainn and Fionn who are recognizable. I think it's good to get people interested in this sort of thing, though I think the issue is that it doesn't really encourage people to do more, since it's...the same old misconceptions as always, the same things I was reading fifteen years ago, the same simplistic binaries, in an era where we have a lot more material that IS publicly available and, frankly, they had the budget to consult an actual Celticist. It feels like, for a series that, overall, was praised for going beyond the stereotypes of these mythical figures, it's kind of a letdown. I think they could have definitely done better tbh.

[pentition]

To be on the safe side... Spoilers:

I feel like the antagonists of this game were always clear to me (personally) just due to the lack of content given to them. Yeah, it was enough for players to determine whether or not they liked a character but in terms of missions and interactions I feel like there's a bare minimum. And because of that, it made it more obvious to me who the antagonists were set up to be.

Mayor Gale in Portia had some neat missions and interactions that made things more personal during your character's residency there. Mayor Trudy doesn't arrive in Sandrock until later, and while I can only recount one side mission I do also recount little interactions and commentary she made. Whereas with Minister Matilda, she only existed in the context of the main story missions for the most part. There was a detachment to become personal which contrasted her friendly demeanor.

I feel like with Matilda, it's a little easier to overlook her compared to the others initially. Minister of the Church means the way she carries herself is kind of to be expected. Especially for those who played Portia and when put beside Miguel - this reserved, friendly enough but still an authority figure demeanor is a given. It always felt strange to me that there wasn't much personalizing going on but it wasn't until Trudy returned to head Sandrock that the vibe I was getting became clearer. The way Matilda behaves towards Trudy is very condescending. Often being friendly and using a friendly voice even when her words aren't matching up. Or even her actions (being the face of Sandrock instead of Trudy).

We see more of a tonal shift of Matilda keeping her control over Sandrock and its citizens. Don't get me wrong, I understand why it can look like it's just people having connected to Matilda in Trudy's absence. They got used to the firm but kind all the same hand. And the mayor, by comparison, is so much gentler and less assertive to regain people's attention immediately.

With Miguel and Pen I just had red flags because people generated a decent amount of interest in them both I feel like, yet each update wasn't really adding much to them. They may not have been as popular as some other candidates, but even before Logan was announced they were still pulling at a decent level for interest from the players. And seeing that we got nothing time and time again it made me think of Portia once more - with Aadit.

Sandrock did a better job integrating these characters into the town, whereas with Aadit he kind of fell into the background and then faded out of even that. Which, for his character, made sense but from a gameplay perspective was a mistake I think. Unfortunately, the feeling betrayed by Miguel and especially Pen for me doesn't really stem too much from their actions. I more feel betrayed Pathea didn't commit more attention to them. If you want that betrayal, more missions and interactions should have been there. More diving into the characters. Hell, even more possible outcomes for them.

They do well in some instances, like with Unsuur, and his crush on the builder. How that comes up in interactions before you accept or reject his interest. Things woven in so nicely to determine the flow of a relationship and what it will be.

It feels like with Miguel, it's especially a missed opportunity. There's a lot in that fella that could be shared or conveyed in interesting ways. Mind you, I did a full restart of my game after the full release so I'm only going off tidbits of info I've seen cropping up on him post the Sandrock takeover. But even before then, in the lead up or during his imprisonment and realization of his actual role for Duvos, I feel like there's a loss of character development. Or... an expansion on what's already there so we can understand him more and see him in a more honest light.

With Pen I feel like there was potential whether he turned out to be good (what a twist!) but even also if he (likely) was going to be one of the bad guys. It makes sense for Miguel's perspective to view what they are doing as protecting Sandrock. He believes they are choosing a lesser evil, to some extent. But for Pen, it's interesting, he's the Protector of Sandrock but is also a man who loves violence. It feels like a missed opportunity to not have had him playing that up in missions or in the background more. And in doing so, earned more trust. Whereas him appearing as all talk makes him more suspicious. It calls into question his competence and morality early on. It's not like Pen hides when he doesn't given a shit about something but the comedic poor excuses or blatant disregard makes him look incompetent in the story. Whereas, if you hangout with him and take him on a stroll outside of town, you'll see how quickly he executes monsters. So we know he's not lacking in competence then when it comes to battle, so then it just instills it's a morality thing that he isn't rushing to play hero.

Which, to an extent, is definitely believable. Maybe if he was in the background trying to intercept Logan and we got more insight to that it would make more sense. As it stands, he really is just a lazy cat that gets up only when he wants to. For someone so violent and an outright bully, he doesn't actually do much beyond verbal stuff.

Pen also makes it apparent he isn't one to be ordered around. He humors Miguel and seems to only listen to Matilda on the more serious missions. But even that could be liable to change if he felt like it, I think. It makes me wonder if his loyalty to Duvos is because he can get the most fighting done via being on their side. Or, if the rumors are true and he was an experiment, if his loyalty stems from a soldier mentality. But that has me calling into question how loyal he'll be in the long run when he's so self-centered. Unless Duvos is providing his bloodthirst and other needs well, I could see him not having a reason to leave.

...Except, it would be nice to have that option, wouldn't it? I feel like Sandrock provided the perfect opportunity for it. If not in the main story of the game, then a possible DLC would be interesting. Let him have gained friendship and shoved it aside for loyalty to Duvos. Let him have played it off as no big deal to him when really, in the silence alone and imprisoned, he begins to feel the weight of it.

For the main game story, I could see him sticking to Duvos through the town takeover and even in his boss fight. If we're talking Pathea silliness, what if the mirror jogged his memory on how the builder made him that mirror and then helped free him from it? And how Burgess helped, too and then his epiphany to be kinder to him that he poorly fulfilled. Memories and emotions can work like a chain reaction, especially when instilled into a person who clearly hasn't known genuine friendship. He could have came around in the Matilda fight and space punched her up there, a prime opportunity. Then been taken in for questioning.

We have the builder put into the positioning of giving character statements to others in the game. Maybe the option to have Pen serve his sentence in Sandrock and actually get hands on in making it better after what he did would have been fitting? Portia allowed Tody to stay despite his actions - which, sure, are lesser than a Duvos invasion but were also still very damning.

If we're talking DLC potentials, why not have Pen break out and escape into the desert. Word comes back to Sandrock and the builder is the one to find him.

There is a lot of potential with integrating Miguel and Pen into Sandrock more without it changing Pathea's formula of storytelling and how they do missions and interactions. Also I'd potentially add Matilda to this but she's coasting in space last I recall, lmao. But her backstory interests me enough to want to have a dialogue about it in game.

Anyways, there are so many tidbits in the game that could really pave the way for such developments. I hope maybe future DLC will expand on them because I just like the idea of Miguel having a redemption arc and learning beyond his beliefs. Pen becoming compromised because he's in an environment that isn't Duvos and it's healthier for him. And Matilda, we'll see. Still collecting my thoughts with her.

At the end of the day this is just be airing out thoughts into the void but if you made it this far. Hi!

[infernaltenor]

maybe im just a super salty person bc its 5am and im Still not sleepingn and Still thinking about it but i cant help but feel that qtubbo fans are some of the most hypocritial people ive ever seen. this is like. full of generalizations and just observations ive made as a crow and im. typically defensive and salty so im gonna try to be objective but at the very least im not trying to neg on the characters or the ccs, since im directing this towards the fans. its also like a solid two months of build up .so. oops?

but uh. how to start explaining this. well for one im taking this as a recent fan who is a phil watcher pretty much only. but i tend to chronically read posts about other characters since when im into things i like to be informed on all cases (idk constant instinct i have lol). like i said im gonna focus on qtubbo here, if i go into qphil stuff its purely as a comparison point. i cant speak much on interactions with other fanbases since i simply am Not informed enough but yknow.

for one, i think both tubbo and phil ahve similar things when remembering lore that is Not their own. not a neg on either one, since i dont expect them to remember it, but both have forgotten major stuff recently, ie. fred's kidnapping (phil) and the birdhouse (tubbo). both things happened before purgatoryand the subsequent forgetting happened after so even in character it makes sense (they had more to worry about), but i also think reactions in character tends to fuck with audience perception. ie, tubbos very visceral reaction to the ill timed fred joke phil had made (and it was ill timed, and thats all that i feel was criminal about it. tubbo and phils friendship is very much based on banter and friendly barbs, lots of teasing from either side. phil simply shot back on a smilar level as tubbo had originally, making his joke about "phil and who?". other people have spoken on that so im not gonna rehash about whos comment was worse, since imo they were both just shy of being insensitive, had tubbo not been dealing with freds presumed death at the time. im not gonna talk about the funeral, becasue if i do i'll get mad.). likewise, when tubbo forgot birdhouse phils reaction was much less outwards. he just said a birdhouse wouldnt be slaying- given the imprisionment he had, it makes sense that phil would associate it negatively, especially since it catalzyed all of his future derealization episodes. both of these are simply ooc things imo, from their original standpoint. i dont think either is in the wrong for forgetting. but what annoys me is the fandom perception.

this is a problem im going to link back heavily to purgatory. im not sure if it was present beforehand, as i only really got into qsmp the last two-three weeks in october (bad timing) and had only really been watching vods in order to catch up. that being said, i think the bolas and soulfire rivalry had widened the gap between the fans, which in turn affects negative perception. later weeks in november had full bad faith interpretations of phil because he was critical of tubbos choices or simply didnt understand sunnys character perfectly. and there were. a lot of those. purgatory had happened just a few weeks prior, so i liken it to that. maybe it is just my expierence, but the phrasing of a lot of character crit and analysis between the two has wildly different interpretations of a character (to wildly different results)

you can get qphil fans explaining against a bad faith interpretaiton, and people will (and have) called them excuses to defend against character analysis. i have noticed, however, when qtubbo fans do the same thing (and they have) it seems to be more of a matter of adding context to the conversation. thats.... exactly what qphil fans are doing however? when talking critically about qtubbo not communicating with other parents and friends both his and sunny insecurities, its all that hes younger and in a bad mental state. but you have something about phil not understanding sunnys character perfectly, and hes a cruel stepmother and such; and when an explanation is added to why hes not a bad father nor a good father, just an imperfect one trying his best, its simply a "mindless defense against a crit of his character". are these not the same things? providing context to a percieved bad faith interpretation? idk. i cant tell if its the age or the percieved roles theyre supposed to take, but why is tubbo allowed to be imperfect and doused in outward angst, especially when interacting with other characters (ramon had to take the initiative to communicate with tubbo. and yet. age age age.) phils just as complex and imperfect and unwell. all of qsmp is unwell. it is an explanation, not an excuse.

anyway. i think i was thinking about this because of the flightless bird/ostrich dna joke. ill timed, just like the fred one. but phils reaction speaks volumes doesnt it? if its an age one maybe he'll overdramaticize, but he laughs it off mostly. theres a lot he laughs off. he doesnt. "if your kid wasnt here id kill you". tubbo doesnt know about phils failed flight. he probably wont for a while (i cant help but think qphil is embarassed. he was knocked unconcious from hitting the water too hard. and he knows how to fly? fuck, man). i think its wild, however, that one fred joke gets the entire fanbase ready to deface and mischaracterize the whole character. but one wing joke gets maybe shocked laughter and about two posts complaining? idk. maybe im just complaining about nothing, im tired as fuck.

tldr is that tubbo fans are so wildly hypocritical that they cant see when theyre doing the same thing as everyone else. im sure im being hypocritical in this post, its human. but its annoying as fuck when its everywhere, and i think purgatory made it worse.

[thetangycheesemanwithaplan]

Eddie Diaz (+ Family) speculation

Highlighted is the main points and then i go into more thoughts on each

•One of Eddie's sisters has moved to LA(Maybe even both)

-Eddie said at the beginning of EP 6, that he dropped Christopher off at his cousins. I know this could mean one of Eddie's cousins (which would be second cousins to Chris) But we've never heard of any of Eddie's cousins living in LA. We only know of Tia Pepá currently living there. And although this could still be Tia's children/Eddies cousin's, I find it odd that they're only coming up now. All the years of child care support Eddie has needed ? It would have come up sooner

-We've been told we will meet his sister(s?) and I don't think it's going to be just a passing moment (like his probation ceremony where they were just seen)

-I feel like they're laying some ground work for more Diaz Family stuff and this could play into that. I feel like his sisters will be key to parts of his story line (more on this below)

•Abuela has also moved back to LA

-Look is this partially cause I want more Abuela? Yes . Do I want a spin of show with Tia Pepá and Abuela being gossiping shenanigan queens? Absolutely! But Abuela was at the wedding. No context was given to this she was there, I don't think she's flying in just to be a guest in the wedding and if she had flown in with the rest of Eddie's family it would have been mentioned? (If the whole family was in town Eddie would have maybe said I've dropped him off with my family not at his cousins- it sounded like a more permanent situation with his cousin not a visiting situation)

-She lived in LA prior and moved back to Texas cause of COVID and I can bet your ass she wants to come back (get away from Helena and Ramon) I also see that being a problem to Eddie's parents and they would have brought it up as a concern for her well-being but if Eddie's sister has moved also, you know Abuela is arguing a case to move cause there's even more family to keep an eye on her etc (she packed her bags and went fuck this, I'm out)

-This plays into the groundwork for Diaz Family stuff

•Shannon is back

-We know this based on the photo we've seen and it's going to be interesting to see

-We can almost rule out the reason Eddie sees her as anything medical as they've just been through that with Chim. And I reckon it'll be in ghost form (hence the title) but my question is will it be like the Shannon&Chris scene where she's there but not seen or is it something Eddie sees

-I think there will be an interaction of some sort between them, maybe not directly but there will be an Eddie x Shannon conversation going on. Eddie has just finally been made aware/acknowledged of all his repressed catholic guilt (RCG) and a lot of that is going to tie into his relationship with Shannon and the reasons behind it. His unresolved feelings that he is dealing with have come up now because of this RCG. He may have thought he'd made peace with it but now he's dealing with this its probably brining up a lot for him. He either imagines a what if scenario and we see Shannon if she had lived and they have a conversation or its a ghost version who appears to him when he's thinking about it all

-I like the idea of a ghost version that Eddie interacts with because he's now questioning his entire belief system (RCG) and what better to challenge that system then a mf ghost (Eddie doesnt belive in that kind of stuff. Talking to a grave and them watching over-yes. Shannon the friendly ghost not so much)

•Eddie will reach out to Abuela (and his sister) to talk about the Shannon of it all

-After Eddie see's Shannon, he's got even more on his mind. He goes to Abuela's. His sister also happens to be there (You see al these theories coming together now). He talks about what he's going through and his sister and abuela talk him through some of it. His Abuela offering the supportive parental side that he doesnt always get from his parents and his sister offering an understanding thats on the same level because she was raised the same way, she understands his upbringing better than anyone. And yes there are differences , Eddie was told to be the man and step up,but she was there, she lived through it with him

-Eddie has done so well with therapy that i feel he would want to talk about it but not with his parents so Abuela seems the most likely. I feel like he would want to get an understanding of it before he even dared to confront his parents. This RCG will be an ongoing thing but i think Eddie starts to take steps to figure it out.

•Diaz Family Drama(The Will)

-His parents will be in town for something (maybe an award ceremony/presentation of sorts) and although i don't think Eddie's going to come out and say RCG to them, i feel like some comments will be made towards his parents.

-I believe these comments will be about The Will. It'll come out that Buck becomes Chris' legal guardian if anything were to happen to him and this causes outrage and Eddie explains that he wants Chris raised a certain way and Buck understands this(aka not the way Eddie was raised-RCG). Also that Buck is the closest thing to another parent Chris has and therefore it makes the most sense as a person in Chris's life.

-Bonus of if this is when Chris also finds out and despite Helena and Ramon's protests Chris just says 'Buck is like a dad to me'

Shoutout to @whollyjoly and @buck-up-buck as always for listening to me ramble about this like last week! I'm only now putting it in writing

[ladyintree]

tai wore my fave wilderness shirt this episode so everyone cheer

tai's adapting. just like she always has out here. she can take a look at their situation and understand how they need to work to be prepared for what's to come. she still has hope to go home, still believes she can still accomplish her goals, but right now, they're here. so they adapt. they fix their hut in preparation for winter, they have fur, they have food, they have shelter. the positivity from her is refreshing but it also makes me feel like that's really going to be taken away from her quickly. but since she's the one who led them all in building the huts, she gets to be proud that they have shelters because of that, and she's holding onto that for now.

tai actually talking about shauna's jackie obsession puts some new context on previous seasons and interactions between tai/shauna and tai/jackie to me. they obviously have seen how much shauna clung to jackie after her death, in ways that were entirely unhealthy that tai was always the first to speak on, but i do think there's more to it than that and i like the idea of tai clocking something well before getting closer to shauna in the wilderness. she resented jackie beforehand for getting the captain position when she felt she deserved it, and she straight up just didn't like shauna, so. i'm going to lean into her having questions about their dynamic well before the wilderness and her making her own assumptions throughout the reveals in the show as she got closer to shauna.

some people are complaining about the lack of shauna + tai this season but personally i am so obsessed with the silent way that tai cares for her. because shauna really hasn't been in a place where they can just talk the way they used to. i say it every week but shauna beating lottie was a breaking point for tai; she spent that entire episode trying to reach out to shauna and be there for her the way she always was, and when she didn't accept it, and it ended with what happened with lottie, it was her way of realizing she had to take a different approach with her. she couldn't smother her by being right by her side all the time. she had to start waiting for shauna to come to her. but that never meant she stopped caring or worrying about her. she's always paying attention to shauna, always speaking to people around shauna to help her (like urging nat to do something about the shauna/mari situation, and now here with van).

"be nice. we both agree it's, you know, weird, but they're not hurting anyone. i don't know. shauna seems..." [happy? yeah, hardly.] "she seems better. seems better."

she understands shauna in such a specific way and "better" for shauna doesn't mean the same as "better" would mean for other people. she's specific about it because no shauna's not happy, when is shauna happy? but she's better. lighter. and she's being hopeful. she's not close with melissa but she's close with shauna so she tells van to be nice and she tries to be nice herself because if she's making shauna better, even if tai doesn't understand it, who cares? and it's very obviously different than what she and van have and she knows and accepts that. she's not expecting shauna to have that with melissa. tai also probably doesn't expect that to be what shauna wants or can handle at this point. but tai is taking any crumb of hope for shauna she can get and she's trying to encourage it. i think that'll backfire on her later on given the way their dynamic goes this episode and given the way the cast has hinted at their tension this season.

tai would do anything but bring ben food. she can't ever look him in the eye again. the last time she did was when she was pointing a gun at him and she's forever going to see him like that, forever wonder if that would've been better for him than the months of suffering that followed instead. maybe she and van had a conversation about it, maybe van would've shouldered the weight of it for her when it came to force feed ben - but she could not go in that pen and do that. she could not be there, close to him. i don't think she was ever prepared to see what they made him into after that trial just as she wasn't really prepared to end his life that day.

it's pretty clear that she's getting exhausted of entertaining the idea of ben being the bridge. it's been months and they've come up with nothing concrete. tai's never been one to put any faith in visions anyway, it was only when she started experiencing something for herself that she started to at least try. akilah's the one who helped her put faith in the wilderness but she is brushing these visions off as bullshit, or rather, just memories. dreams rather than prophecies or omens. akilah explains her visions and lottie takes it as hope for home vs. tai saying it's stuff from before, not the future. she's tired of this.

and mari challenges her asking what she's saying, tai says she's trying to figure it out (in her very taissa way of 'i have more to say because this is bullshit but i'm biting my tongue') and lottie hits her back with "maybe you shouldn't." kind of obsessed with every interaction lottie and tai have had this season because they keep challenging each other and they're kind of circling around their history. it's interesting because in season 2, lottie was putting her faith in tai being a wilderness guide and tai didn't know how to be, now it's akilah who is seeing stuff she can't make sense of, but they have such different responses to is. feels like lottie knows that tai isn't willing to entertain the possibility of these visions actually meaning anything and that's why she tells her she shouldn't try to figure it out - because tai wants to work with logic and facts not visions and omens.

scene of everyone finding out what nat did is so good for taissa. to me. she would disagree. but she turns around so quickly when gen pushes nat to the ground, she looks at van so stressed when she starts yelling at nat, and shauna is correct. nat already said she was guilty. tai knows that. tai knows how it's going to go but she also is aware that it's at least a fighting chance for her (kind of exactly like nat did for ben). tai knows that they're going to want nat dead for this just like they wanted ben dead. so when shauna says "i think it's obvious what happens now," tai immediately steps up to her. not just to challenge shauna, but she's putting herself in front of nat to stop shauna from getting at her. tai protecting nat is something so special to me - we see as an adult she's still trying to protect her and care about her and i just love the change from the pilot, from nat and tai butting heads the way they do / tai always knowing that maybe nat is a better person than her but she can't let people know that so she's the first one to knock her down for the "shitty" things she does. but there is so much love here. she has a very specific intimacy with shauna but she will not let her hurt nat. she will defend her against shauna, of all people, even.

i say this all the time i think but the difference between teen tai and adult tai is that teen tai's search for power usually comes from a place of genuinely wanting to do the right thing. she does think she's owed it because she thinks she's the right person for the job, she does believe she's the most level-headed of them all (she is not! but she's always believed it anyway. she needs to believe it.) when lottie declared nat leader in season 2, there is a moment where tai expects it to be her. it's not. all season so far, we've seen her pick apart nat's leadership in a different way than shauna has. tai genuinely does want to believe in nat, but she still thinks she can do better. and she sees where nat has failed / hasn't done enough and she uses that to her advantage but does she actually have better solutions? not usually. she just thinks she'd do it right. that's what makes her team up with shauna during the trial more fascinating - they both want the same thing but they're going about it in different ways, for different reasons, and they bounce off each other anyway. but here they butt heads because as much as tai loves and cares for shauna, she does not trust her motivations lately, and if she becomes leader, they don't come back from that. she knows that.

and she is so tired of lottie just appointing leaders who tai believes aren't correct. in this very scene tai is trying to prove herself as the right person to follow / to look to and she immediately gets the rug pulled out from under her. and when shauna starts talking about being a "team" and "honoring" them - tai immediately covers her face because she knows that shauna is full of shit and this is about to get so much worse. also think it's fun to watch her reaction here because of their conversation last year - about tai telling shauna there's one fucking team and they're all on it, but shauna disagreeing.

we're really about to see the shauna tai beef that the cast has been teasing and i am so intrigued by how much tai is going to be on nat's side or. just her own. i think about adult tai telling shauna "don't you think about it? we wouldn't be here if it weren't for her" and shauna rolling her eyes at tai, like she's tired of her taking nat's side despite what they have together.

her face when the birders show up is so interesting to me and i can't help but think about some of the clips we haven't seen yet. tai telling van, excitedly, that they survived the first winter - tai telling everyone that what they do out here will follow them for the rest of their lives. the latter seems to be directly related to what's about to happen with the birders, possibly as they debate how to handle them... just can't decide if she is worried about doing something to them because that will follow them or if she's worried about making sure they don't live so that what they've seen doesn't follow them. either way i am Seated.

okay. adult stuff.

again because this is so very other tai i don't have a lot of introspective on what tai is actually going through but there are some interesting details. like her defense for why she's not dealing with the death of lottie or shauna's crisis (our tai likely wouldn't let her grief show but she would want to help shauna, or at least not entirely write her off).

[VAN: Lottie’s dead. And Shauna is melting down. And you don’t seem to give a shit about anything but self-care.] You’re right. I feel like everything is falling apart, Van. I lost my family, my career. Lottie, Nat. Oh, yeah. The love of my life is battling cancer. And I have tried, but I can’t fix any of it! So maybe for now, I just want to feel good. If only to feel something. 

this scene feels eerily similar yet so very different from tai's crashout in episode 2x05, when she says, "i killed my fucking dog, van. my wife is in the hospital. i'm losing my fucking mind, and i'm terrified. like all the way. like i haven't been since..." but she doesn't have the same infliction in her voice and she doesn't seem as genuine here. it's like other tai is using that speech specifically to try to learn from and replicate in some way to convince van that she's telling the truth. other tai learns how to function via tai's most genuine moments and she twists them into something that feels real but also doesn't.

and other tai thinks she's better at handling things than our tai anyway. so she thinks she's giving the performance of a lifetime. and tai and van being disconnected for so long gives other tai the ability to take risks she likely couldn't around people who have been around her. tai's a vegetarian, but other tai is taking this opportunity to order as much meat as possible, the thing that kept taissa alive in the woods (rare steak, even). in the wilderness tai needed food, she needed van, she needed power (but in a much different way than adult tai wants + needs it). other tai wants all these things now, thinks that's going to be exactly what tai needs.

our tai has spent her entire life since rescue trying to still reach every one of her goals, as she was always supposed to, and she does it by never reaching for anything that would genuinely make her happy. she loved and cared for simone, but she wasn't in love with her, she knew she never would be. she knew that wasn't an option for her. she loves and cares for sammy but she likely never wanted kids. she crafted this perfect family portrait and it got her places, but it left her feeling empty. she repressed so much of who she was / what she's experienced because she thought it was the only way to have all of this. and she thought it was working, so she got greedy, she reached for more power, and everything immediately fell apart.

and i'm still thinking about teen tai relying on other tai as a protective shield vs. adult tai using her as a means to gain something. we're starting to see tai actively learn how to use other tai and she maybe not yet has realized that other tai is still a part of her, just a repressed part. she tries to maintain this perfection at the forefront but she will inevitably always crack and other tai is kind of born from that.

but i feel like we are finally really getting somewhere here because of this idea that our tai is still trapped in there somewhere and trying to free herself. ironically it's only when she's asleep that our tai is awake, trying to come back out, but other tai is the one burying her now. i might still be frustrated with how quickly we moved on from her family / her career / into this relationship with van, but it makes sense, other tai taking over and immediately dealing with those things so she can get tai where she wants her to be: back to the things that she decides matter most, like van, and this other "freedom" she has now.

there's a clip in some promo somewhere of taissa in a blank purple room with the phone that van answered, i now assume this is where we'll see our tai on the other end of that call trying to get out. and potentially, this is where we're going to see tawny "acting with herself" as she teased before. yay <3

maybe i am just used to watching murder mysteries and slashers etc but the early pointing towards tai as a suspect of lottie's death is making me feel like she is the red herring. there is so much beef between tai and lottie when they were teenagers and so much resentment tai has for lottie (both for her nonexistence democracy that tai believes keeps screwing her over + the constant fear of how they're more alike than tai ever wanted to be) but.... lottie is also the one who has always encouraged other tai. she told her last season in the teen timeline that she's not gone and that's a good thing, then in the adult timeline that she doesn't want to be suppressed (and tai hasn't suppressed her since). i still can't really see a motivation for other tai to kill lottie if lottie is the one who helped tai understand other tai a little more. but we also don't know much about lottie's death yet at all so who really knows. other tai killing lottie is at least a more plausible theory than other tai setting the cabin on fire BUT I DIGRESS.

tai canonically being a proper texter btw i love that for me <3

also. most obvious clue that this is not our tai in the driver's seat is that she did not immediately drop one of her infamous "ew"s after shauna mentions jeff's sleeping boxers.