#I kinda see this as an explanation

[lovingdabeessss]

“Why is Yang lying about raven??? That’s so out of character she’s so against lying ” is a BROKE take

she’s NOT lying about raven as a betrayal to her group no one there really cares about raven!!! Except obviously qrow but not for maiden reasons so whatever

She’s lying as PART OF HER DEAL WITH RAVEN!!! The deal was that raven didn’t want the danger that came with having the relic or with being the maiden so Yang convinced her that she could have that target on her back instead this is a pivotal moment for them cause it shows raven would rather let Yang be in danger then her and Yang accepting this and using it

She traded safety for the relic

And she stuck to that deal

And Yang lying about about the maiden thing (really just not actively bringing it up she only really lied the one time) shows that she still cares about raven and is in character because her problem isn’t lying in general it’s the betrayal of it

Like she’s not going around leading them on failed pretenses that someone else is the maiden or anything

Ozpin had been leading them to do something that he was told by like the GOD OF WISDOM was not possible and NEVER TOLD THEM

Their friend DIED for this cause

SUMMER died for this cause

That SOOO messed up

Also snitches get stitches

Happy eclipse!!!

[timethehobo]

Here, take this.

[marlenacantswim]

so is the sbpd's two-way-mirror setup just kinda shit and no one's realized, or can shawn spencer actually just. perceive things through two-way-mirrors? is the implication that his knowledge of lassiter's behavior is so complete, he's just able to predict his precise position and actions with perfect timing? this is never explained.

[littiaye]

they're so cringe

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Alternative form of 'Hitting Wangxian with a Catboyification beam'

[beaulesbian]

how it feels playing da4 tbh

[fumifooms]

Helki compilation

Helki is a prisoner-turned-servant. He’s a criminal canary and was implicitly one of Milsiril’s charges, and now that she’s retired he’s become her servant.

He must have gotten into Milsiril’s good graces, wether through attachment or convenience, which is a feat considering Milsiril’s a socially anxious recluse. Interesting since it’s not like he seems like the agreeable type, shifty upbeat delinquent style… We really don’t know much about him, not even what crimes he did, so there’s a lot of space for speculation on all grounds.

Edit: Shanghai QnA with Kui gave us a new juicy morsel of info!

Interesting… The original answer in japanese is: パッタドルと同じような杖を使っていました。今も同じものを支給されているのですが、すぐになくすのでもはや携帯していないようです。 That it’s written in japanese seems to say that there isn’t the same double translation issue there was last QnA, so if someone wants to look at the original phrasing and word choices it can be done. Perhaps Helki-Milsiril has a more protégé dynamic undertone than previously thought… "For various reasons", meaning circumstances that made it so the squad had to choose between saving him and saving their own skin, or like, "man this guy’s personality sucks we don’t really like him"? Likely to be a mix of several things, since ‘for various reasons’ implies the situation was either complex or they had multiple reasonings. In either case, the phrasing is very much that Milsiril couldn’t abandon him herself, and so a relationship sprung out of that. Another instance of outcasts seeking out and sticking with other outcasts in Dungeon Meshi. This could mean that it’s a bit less out of personal attachment and more out of a sense of duty on Milsiril’s side as well though.

Still edit: So then maybe him staying with Rin in that comic isn’t that much because of work ethics or that he cares for kids (or maybe he does because he feels kinship to them, alone and mistreated), but because he didn’t want to join the other canaries in that room chatting and laughing… Maybe the isolation was exacerbated because he became Milsiril’s favorite, teacher’s pet style, but I’d also be careful about assuming the others disproportionately dislike him, it could be that they just don’t really care for him. Why? Could be because of his personality, because he’s seen as shifty or unreliable or annoying, if an event, who knows who knows, but I like to think because of the Rin comic that he generally just tends to be a loner, that he’s "weird" in a neurodivergent vibe, he doesn’t conform to proper social behavior which in elven society seems especially alienating. He’s the only one with Rin to think of her sake, not only worth observing/caring for but also asks her to eat, but he does this with an offputting stare, not really emoting, and then well, the infamous alone with her staring munching covered in blood panel. He stands out. I’m a fan of the theory that it was a "Helki? Not that I dislike the guy but I’m not risking my skin for him" situation… Ok end edit back to older observations.

He seemed to be acting out of his own initiative in the Rin comic, he doesn’t look thrilled to be there in many post-canary comics but he also seems content enough. He restrains Milsiril in the Mithrun cleaning comic which is interesting to think of for their relationship.

It’s fun to notice how he’s the only one that didn’t get bored of looking after Rin, and then reports back about her condition… I’d say he was getting used to taking care of kids which would come with the job of serving Milsiril, but then, not enough for him to clean the blood off himself hah. In this way it’s interesting to think about his relationship to the idea of parenthood, he’s probably the closest thing to a father figure/male role model Kabru had growing up, without mentioning the other kids. I feel like he’d consider himself an older brother, cousin or uncle figure sooo much sooner than a father, but even then I do think it’s just his job and he’s not really invested or forming real relationships with any of them much.

It’s curious to note that he’s dressed in canary uniform presumably after having been pardoned and living with Milsiril? Which you can tell by the armor bits (the yellow strips of spider silk). In the Kabru training montage and the Rin comic specifically. It seems very implausible for him to have still been a canary while being a retired Milsiril’s servant and being with her all the time, and the cleaning with Mithrun comic (where he’s not in uniform) happens after Utaya so it could happen after Kabru was taken in but around the time of the Rin comic. So why uniform? It could be one of the best outfits he has, so it’d make sense to wear it around especially if you’re sparring or getting… Blood on you? Could just be because that's how Milsiril wants him to dress. But yeah we don't know when exactly Helki becoming Milsiril’s servant happened. We do see Mithrun’s charge Cithis be tasked with taking care of him, so a charge being given a servant-caretaker role doesn’t seem all that out of the ordinary, sometimes even prior to retiring.

Imo, if he doesn't work for Milsiril he goes back to jail/the canaries/has to try and get a job instead of just tending to her, so Helki is staying with Milsiril because she's the best option for him. He’s her milsiril's personal servant and does mostly dull tasks involved in that. He’s not particularly suited to the role but they’ve gotten used to each other to him so she took him with her, and he does prefer it to canary work so it works out decent for him. I think he’s used to reading her and managing her moods and he’s one of the rare social connection she has.

Under spoiler is stage 2 interpretation stuff, bigger speculation, in a reblog I’ll make soon I’ll go over my thoughts for stage 3 interpretation lol. Helsiril I’m coming for you

Translation of the canary hierachy chart used is by Thatsmimi, here

[struggling-jpg]

Come on, it always irks me when people call Dr. Ratio a Star Rail Al-Haitham or say that they're exactly alike when let's be real, they're quite notably different in specific but major ways. Yes, they're both really smart scholars and yes, they have personalities that make it difficult for others to like or get along with them but

Dr. Ratio considers himself a doctor on a mission to actively help other people become more educated and self-reliant. It's pretty much the reason he couldn't get into The Genius Society—he cares too much for others and doesn't follow the underlying apathy/cruelty to pursue all knowledge by any means with a disregard for others (We have been shown that there are kind/well-meaning people in the group, but there seems to be a very specific aspect that Nous has that Ratio hasn't been able to meet). He cares intensely and has a pretty big ambition.

Al-Haitham, on the other hand, focuses on himself first and foremost. That doesn't mean he doesn't care for others, but he believes that people should look out for themselves because a single person can't save everyone. He usually gets involved only if it affects him, and he adamantly prioritizes living a happy and peaceful life (which is so wholesome when you read his Story stuff). He doesn't get hands-on with helping every single person, he refuses to do so. I want to add that his having lower empathy isn't a bad thing, having lower empathy in general isn't an inherently negative thing. He cares in his own way and doesn't look down on others in the first place, much to contrary belief in-universe and out. He's a pretty laid-back person considering everything, he isn't as ambitious.

If anything, one of their big similarities is that they get generalized as "arrogant smart guys" by others.

[spookberry]

when folks turn danny into ebony darkness dementia ravenway

"No longer did he wear the dorky tshirts and jeans, no hed grown wise to the world and now had the punk goth wardrobe to match. Now he wore ripped black pants and a spiked leather jacket, he had his fingernails painted black and more rings and piercings than you could count. Traded in his converse for well worn black boots. Not to mention his death had began seeping into his human form too and white streaks littered his hair."

Like okay, Slay

[aro-enigma]

It's rly annoying seeing people try to describe QPRs in a detailed way that will make sense to everyone. Like, I'll see people explain it as this intense commitment and I'll even see people say that it's prioritized over all other relationships (and that totally may be true for some and that's totally fine!!)

BUT THAT JUST ISN'T TRUE FOR EVERY PERSON'S VIEW OF A QPR. A queer-platonic relationship can be a deeply personal and different thing from individual to individual

As an aromantic with no connection to romantic attraction whatsoever a QPR is just any relationship that is outside of what is considered societally "normal". Ffs, I'd consider a noncommittal friends with benefits relationship to be a qpr for me.

Also, the whole idea of a specific relationship label making that relationship take priority just feels like repackaged amatonormativity. How about we not put relationships on a generic societal pedestal maybe? Each individual will decide for themselves what is most emotionally important to them and I think trying to explain QPRs to people as if they're romance-lite isn't the best way to go about it.

I truly think that pushing "you don't have to understand something to respect it" is soo much more important and useful for our community than making people understand every aspect of an identity

[add1ctedt0you]

What a plot twist you were. [x]

[cryptiduni]

“white mourning.”

[s4ndg3m]

my bg3 character, sepher, who is of course a red dragonborn barbarian berzerker. initially i wanted to romance that vampire twink but instead lae'zel has romanced ME. (very politely adds polyamory mod to game)

[2hoothoots]

Revisiting P2 since the docu epilogue dropped and your AMV (<3) popped up as a sign for me to ask something that hopefully you haven't already spoken about years ago: What did you think of the in-game psych explanation for Maligula, that she's the primitive savage part of the mind? P2 is a weird mix of sketchy Freud/Jung concepts that Tim likes meshed with modern psych, and Maligula's deal seems like something they probably wrote a lot of different versions of but never quite solved elegantly

yeah, i think you totally hit the nail on the head - it's always felt like one of the parts of the story that they couldn't quite give enough polish to before they had to finalize it and move on with development. like - i went to go get my artbook to see if it had any insight into the writing process, and did you know that Nona and Maligula being the same person was apparently added way later in development? that's wild! i didn't know that until literally right now! i may or may not have skipped straight to my favourite characters when my artbook arrived and then put it on my shelf without reading the whole thing

ANYWAY, retrospectively i think it being a twist that was added later actually makes a lot of sense in the context of everything you mentioned. the Maligula problem, to me, is the fact that they're trying to juggle a bunch of different things that she has to be in the story. there's Maligula, the ruthless big bad, and Nona, the beloved grandma, and if you suddenly have to also make them both the same person... well, it ends up being kind of a thorny writing problem to make that work, haha.

here's some art i made so this isn't just a wall of text, rest of the answer under the cut

i think one thing they could have done when they needed to rehabilitate a mass-murderer into a lovable old lady was pull back on either end of the spectrum. make your villain softer and more sympathetic, or give grandma a mean streak like she's one bad day away from a tragedy at the crochet club. and to give the story credit, i'm really glad they didn't. Nona is relentlessly sweet and endearing - and that's great! she needs to be in order to make the audience care about her, otherwise the emotional beats are never going to land. likewise, Maligula is a great villain, she's vicious and ruthless and at the culmination of her arc we see she simply does not give a shit about murdering hundreds of people. i love that for her, honestly, you go girl

but then, like - how do you connect the dots? how do you frame grandma having a violently murderous streak in a way that doesn't make the ending of "but she's over it now" feel kinda weird and hollow? and how do you do that while also being sympathetic to the game's themes around mental health? Maligula's informed by the traumatic things that happened to Lucrecia during the war, but she can't just be a manifestation of trauma, because the moral of the story being that trauma makes you a mass-murderer (until you beat up your trauma and shove it in a giant pit) would feel... really tonally dissonant!

so i think you're totally right that the sprinkling of pop-psych concepts we get ends up feeling a little bit like an awkward band-aid. Maligula's story is about how the horrors of war can shape you into a terrible person, who does terrible things - ...but there's also, like, special circumstances, so it doesn't feel weird that she goes back to being Raz's sweet grandma afterwards. special psychic circumstances! she's not just any war criminal, she's the fight or flight response gone out of control!

which - i dunno, i think that line in particular always stood out to me, because that's not really what the fight or flight (or freeze or fawn) response is, right? it's a temporary boost of adrenaline to the system to rev you up for getting out of a dangerous situation. an overactive fight or flight response is called chronic stress and anxiety. i know the games are pop-psych and not actual science, but it always stood out to me as a little awkward.

if it were me in the writer's seat - with the benefit of all the time in the world to workshop it, and no looming deadlines, and the hindsight of having a full completed game in front of me to think about - i might have tried to frame it around connection. i think you could swing the lens to instead focus on how violence, stress, trauma etc., make it harder to understand and empathise with the people around you. the tragedy of Lucrecia's story is that she came home to try and help her countrymen, the people she cared so dearly about. but the more time passed, the less she cared, the less she was able to see them as people. after Marona's death, the Maligula that remains is one who's unable to even care about killing her own sister. the alternative is too raw, too painful - instead, she sheds her last vestiges of remorse, and throws herself into the easy relief of violence. (we see this again, when Nona "awakens" as Maligula - when confronted with the baggage of her past, she chooses to wash it all away with force, unable and unwilling to care about the people she used to call friends.)

and i think shifting the focus like that ties it in thematically, too. a big theme (of both games, but especially the sequel) is how important connection is, how being able to understand and reach out to and rely on other people is a lifeline during hard times. PN2 touches on how there aren't really "good people" and "bad people" - everyone has the capacity to do wonderful or terrible things, and i think Raz's line to Maligula about how "everybody's got something like you" works. Lucrecia was never a monster, no matter how everyone tried to pretend she was. she was just a person, the same as everyone else - and just like everyone else, she could be pushed to extremes under the right circumstances. it just feels kind of odd when the implicit context is "everybody's got a mass-murderer hidden in the primal recesses of their brain", hahaha.

but like, again, that's the privilege of hindsight, right? i've definitely also been on the other side of the creative process, stuck with something i suddenly need to make work in a story and having to come up with a solution that feels like a band-aid. sometimes you just gotta call it good enough, and move on. and i think the game is overall much stronger for having Nona and Maligula be the same person - it plays into the wider themes, it sets up some great emotional beats, and i think it's overall well-executed, even if there are one or two hiccups in the writing.

anyway, great ask! thank you for the invitation to ramble, this is something that stuck out to me on my first playthrough of the game and it was fun to sit down and get my thoughts in order

[akimojo]

So many people hate on ff13 and I'm baffled every time there's mentions of terrible writing and awful characters. I see those complaints parroted very often, yet I genuinely cannot comprehend what goes behind those opinions. It's so frustrating. I mean, everyone says the same thing; I can't help but think that maybe I'm the one that's missing something, that maybe the writing is indeed not good or that the characters aren't great either. I genuinely find the story really well crafted, especially when taking into account the depth that the datalogs hold, and the character arcs and relationships that are devoloped throughout the game are personally some of the best I've seen in gaming. I don't mind if ff13 isn't most people's cup of tea, that's fine. I just wish I could find someone that at the very least could explain their point of view in a respectful way instead of just calling the game trash.

I know right 😭 it's one thing if someone were to dislike the characters/story for how they're actually written, but the vast majority of people who I've seen complain are so insanely off the mark that it makes me wonder if they're deliberately missing the point just to have something to bitch about

Like it genuinely irks me just how much ff13 is shat on TO THIS DAY when so many of the complaints are just plain wrong to anyone who actually payed attention to the game!!! Again, personal opinion is fine and all, but the fact that the western ff fanbase has all but ruined 13's reputation over nothing is beyond frustrating to me

The only explanation I have for it is that the people who whine about 13 to that extent either didn't finish the game or didn't bother to pay attention to how the story developed, but even then I'm lost because why wouldn't they give 13 the same chance as any other ff game? Did they not expect much because of its reputation? Was the linearity really that blasphemous to them? Is it because of how differently it handles female characters compared to earlier games? Is it because the game doesn't spoonfeed information to the player outside of the datalogs? Would be great if someone could actually explain it properly for once lol

[raptureshots]

Atlas n Frank...

theyre best buddies (TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!)

funky lil alt under the cut :-)

i hate these guys so much they're literally all i fucking think abt on a daily basis its horrible /silly

(i could go. on and on abt them in this. au honestly . the whole au IS technically abt them anyways sooo)