#I know it's reasonable that those are the most common fan stories with this particular game

[lilyflower06]

That moment where you're excited about exploring fanfics for a new fandom, but most of the fics are just Highschool/College AUs

Man...

[blueskittlesart]

I've heard that while most people really really love BotW and TotK, some people hate those two for going open-world, and some people hate TotK specifically for something about the story. As the resident Zelda expert I know of, what do you think of those takes?

"something about the story" is a bit too vague for me to answer--if you look at my totk liveblog tag from back when the game was newly released or my general zelda analysis tag you may be able to find some of my in-depth thoughts about the story of totk, but in general i liked it.

the open world thing though is something i can and will talk about for hours. (I am obsessed with loz and game design and this is an essay now <3) breath of the wild is a game that was so well-received that a lot of the criticism from older fans who were expecting something closer to the classic zelda formula was just kind of immediately drowned out and ignored, and while i don't think it's a valid criticism to suggest that botw strayed too far from its origins in going open-world, i am more than willing to look into those criticisms, why they exist, and why i think going open-world was ultimately the best decision botw devs could have made. (totk is a slightly different story, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Loz is a franchise with a ton of history and a ton of really, REALLY dedicated fans. it's probably second only to mario in terms of recognizability and impact in nintendo's catalog. To us younger fans, the older games can sometimes seem, like, prehistoric when compared to what we're used to nowadays, but it's important to remember just how YOUNG the gaming industry is and how rapidly it's changed and grown. the first zelda game was released in 1986, which was 31 years before botw came out in 2017. What this means for nintendo and its developers is that they have to walk a very fine line between catering to older fans in their 30s and 40s now who would have been in nintendo's prime demographic when the first few games in the franchise were coming out AND making a game that's engaging to their MODERN target demographic and that age group's expectations for what a gaming experience should look like.

LOZ is in kind of a tough spot when it comes to modernizing, because a lot of its core gameplay elements are very much staples of early RPGs, and a lot of those gameplay elements have been phased out of modern RPGs for one reason or another. gathering collectibles, fighting one's way through multilevel, mapless dungeons, and especially classic zelda's relative lack of guidance through the story are all things that date games and which modern audiences tend to get frustrated with. for the last few releases before botw, the devs had kind of been playing with this -- skyward sword in particular is what i consider their big experiment and what (i think) became the driving force behind a lot of what happened with botw. Skyward sword attempted to solve the issues I listed by, basically, making the map small and the story much, much more blatantly linear. Skyward sword feels much more like other modern rpgs to me than most zelda games in terms of its playstyle, because the game is constantly pushing you to do specific things. this is a common storytelling style in modern RPGs--obviously, the player usually needs to take specific actions in order to progress the story, and so when there's downtime between story sections the supporting characters push the player towards the next goal. but this actually isn't what loz games usually do. in the standard loz formula, you as the player are generally directly given at most 4 objectives. these objectives will (roughly) be as follows: 1. go through some dungeons and defeat their bosses, 2. claim the master sword, 3. go through another set of dungeons and defeat their bosses, 4. defeat the final boss of the game. (not necessarily in that order, although that order is the standard formula.) the ONLY time the player will be expressly pushed by supporting characters towards a certain action (excluding guide characters) is when the game is first presenting them with those objectives. in-between dungeons and other gameplay segments, there's no sense of urgency, no one pushing you onto the next task. this method of storytelling encourages players to take their time and explore the world they're in, which in turn helps them find the collectibles and puzzles traditionally hidden around the map that will make it easier for them to continue on. Skyward sword, as previously mentioned, experimented with breaking this formula a bit--its overworld was small and unlocked sequentially, so you couldn't explore it fully without progressing the narrative, and it gave players a "home base" to return to in skyloft which housed many of the puzzles and collectibles rather than scattering them throughout the overworld. This method worked... to an extent, but it also meant that skyward sword felt drastically different in its storytelling and how its narrative was presented to the player than its predecessors. this isn't necessarily a BAD thing, but i am of the opinion that one of zelda's strongest elements has always been the level of immersion and relatability its stories have, and the constant push to continue the narrative has the potential to pull players out of your story a bit, making skyward sword slightly less engaging to the viewer than other games in the franchise. (to address the elephant in the room, there were also obviously some other major issues with the design of sksw that messed with player immersion, but imo even if the control scheme had been perfect on the first try, the hyperlinear method would STILL have been less engaging to a player than the standard exploration-based zeldas.)

So when people say that botw was the first open-world zelda, I'm not actually sure how true I personally believe that is. I think a lot of the initial hype surrounding botw's open map were tainted by what came before it--compared to the truly linear, intensely restricted map of skyward sword, botw's map feels INSANE. but strictly speaking, botw actually sticks pretty closely to the standard zelda gameplay experience, at least as far as the overworld map is concerned. from the beginning, one of the draws of loz is that there's a large, populated map that you as the player can explore (relatively) freely. it was UNUSUAL for the player to not have access to almost the entire map either immediately or very quickly after beginning a new zelda game. (the size and population of these maps was restricted by software and storage capabilities in earlier games, but pretty muhc every zelda game has what would have been considered a large & well populated map at the time of its release.) what truly made botw different was two things; the first being the sheer SIZE of the map and the second being the lack of dungeons and collectibles in a traditional sense. Everything that needs to be said about the size of the map already has been said: it's huge and it's crazy and it's executed PERFECTLY and it's never been done before and every game since has been trying to replicate it. nothing much else to say there. but I do want to talk about the percieved difference in gameplay as it relates to the open-world collectibles and dungeons, because, again, i don't think it's actually as big of a difference as people seem to think it is.

Once again, let's look at the classic formula. I'm going to start with the collectibles and lead into the dungeons. The main classic collectible that's a staple of every zelda game pre-botw is the heart piece. This is a quarter of a heart that will usually be sitting out somewhere in the open world or in a dungeon, and will require the player to either solve a puzzle or perform a specific action to get. botw is the first game to not include heart pieces... TECHNICALLY. but in practice, they're still there, just renamed. they're spirit orbs now, and rather than being hidden in puzzles within the overworld (with no explanation as to how or why they ended up there, mind you) they're hidden within shrines, and they're given a clear purpose for existing throughout hyrule and for requiring puzzle-solving skills to access. Functionally, these two items are exactly the same--it's an object that gives you an extra heart container once you collect four of them. no major difference beyond a reskin and renaming to make the object make sense within the greater world instead of just having a little ❤️ floating randomly in the middle of their otherwise hyperrealistic scenery. the heart piece vs spirit orb i think is a good microcosm of the "it's too different" criticisms of botw as a whole--is it ACTUALLY that different, or is it just repackaged in a way that doesn't make it immediately obvious what you're looking at anymore? I think it's worth noting that botw gives a narrative reason for that visual/linguistic disconnect from other games, too--it's set at minimum TEN THOUSAND YEARS after any other given game. while we don't have any concrete information about how much time passes between new-incarnation games, it's safe to assume that botw is significantly further removed from other incarnations of hyrule/link/zelda/etc than any other game on the timeline. It's not at all inconceivable within the context of the game that heart pieces may have changed form or come to be known by a different name. most of the changes between botw and other games can be reasoned away this way, because most of them have SOME obvious origins in a previous game mechanic, it's just been updated for botw's specific setting and narrative.

The dungeons ARE an actual departure from the classic formula, i will grant you. the usual way a zelda dungeon works is that link enters the dungeon, solves a few puzzles, fights a mini boss at about the halfway point, and after defeating the mini boss he gets a dungeon item which makes the second half of the dungeon accessible. He then uses that item in the dungeon's final boss fight, which is specifically engineered with that item in mind as the catalyst to win it. Botw's dungeons are the divine beasts. we've removed the presence of mini-bosses entirely, because the 'dungeon items' aren't something link needs to get within the dungeon itself--he alredy has them. they're the sheikah slate runes: magnesis, cryonis, stasis, and remote bombs. Each of the divine beast blight battles is actually built around using one of these runes to win it--cryonis to break waterblight's ice projectiles, magnesis to strike down thunderblight with its own lightning rods, remote bombs to take out fireblight's shield. (i ASSUME there's some way to use stasis effectively against windblight, mostly because it's obvious to me that that's how all the other fights were designed, but in practice it's the best strategy for that fight is to just slow down time via aerial archery, so i've never tried to win that way lol.) So even though we've removed traditional dungeon items and mini-boss fights, the bones of the franchise remain unchanged underneath. this is what makes botw such an ingenious move for this franchise imo; the fact that it manages to update itself into such a beautiful, engaging, MODERN game while still retaining the underlying structure that defines its franchise and the games that came before it. botw is an effective modern installment to this 30-year-old franchise because it takes what made the old games great and updates it in a way that still stays true to the core of the franchise.

I did mention totk in my opening paragraph and you mention it in your ask so i have to come back to it somehow. Do i think that totk did the gigantic-open-world thing as well as botw did? no. But i also don't really think there was any other direction to go with that game specifically. botw literally changed the landscape of game development when it was released. I KNOW you all remember how for a good year or two after botw's release, EVERY SINGLE GAME that came out HAD to have a massive open-world map, regardless of whether or not that actually made sense for that game. (pokemon is still suffering from the effects of that botw-driven open world craze to this day. rip scarlet/violet your gameplay was SUCH dogshit) I'm not sure to what degree nintendo and the botw devs anticipated that success, (I remember the open world and the versatility in terms of problem-solving being the two main advertising angles pre-release, but it's been 7 years. oh jesus christ it's been SEVEN YEARS. anyways) but in any case, there's basically NO WAY that they anticipated their specific gameplay style taking off to that degree. That's not something you can predict. When creating totk, they were once again walking that line between old and new, but because they were only 3ish years out from botw when totk went into development, they were REALLY under pressure to stay true to what it was that had made botw such an insane success. I think that's probably what led to the expanded map in the sky and depths as well as the fuse/build mechanics--they basically took their two big draws from botw, big map and versatility, and said ok BIGGER MAP and MORE VERSATILITY. Was this effective? yeah. do i think they maybe could have made a more engaging and well-rounded game if they'd been willing to diverge a little more from botw? also yeah. I won't say that I wanted totk to be skyward sword-style linear, because literally no one wanted that, but I do think that because of the insane wave of success that botw's huge open world brought in the developers were under pressure to stay very true to botw in their designing the gameplay of totk, and I think that both the gameplay and story might have been a bit more engaging if they had been allowed to experiment a little more in their delivery of the material.

[gece-misin-nesin]

hi i just wanted to ask if you had any jason-centric fanfic recs that actually focus on him and not make it about another character (saying this because the bruce and tim stans do this so often for some reason)

because i don’t know, its odd, so much fanfic is dedicated to how jason has to grovel to get the approval of the batfam or batman and i don’t want that because like in my opinion jason was never wrong about anything actually. unfortunately it seems most fans disagree and then write not so enjoyable fanfic about it :/

looking at the tim drake stans in particular like thats the most boring robin dont drag jason into this 😭

Hi! First of all thank you so much for sending an ask! Basically these will be fics that focus primarily on Jason and do NOT have him be in the wrong (i have those too, bc they can be well written and they are unfortunately impossible to avoid). Theyre not in any particular order, I'm just going thru all my bookmarks haha!! This is long bc my bookmarks containing jasons character tag is 28 pages on ao3. i am very normal about him. anyway! here they are:

The Beating Heart is a 4-shot featuring Ghostmakes/Jason, so if thats not your cup of tea, ignore it. Bruce is very much an asshole in this so if you're feeling hateful towards him (which is based) this will scratch that itch

The Bowery Branch is a one-shot from the pov of a librarian in the bowery. It's a bunch of snapshots focusing on how the librarians there view and interact w jason throughout his life!

The Lost Titans is soo good. Jason and some other people start having dreams about an alternate timeline where they were in a titans team together. Then some shit starts to go down and they have to fix it. has minimum bat appearances iirc. great mystery too!!

hit me as hard as you can is another good one. i think bruce and jason start over at the end but it was such a journey?? the whole thing is very good. and i remember the writing being very poignant

Thank you, Next! is a one-shot focusing on Jason and the men he's loved over the years. Introspective and character study-esque. very good

so, you've killed the joker is, as the name implies, a oneshot abt jason killing the joker. he does NOT feel guilty about doing it, which is for some reason a common trope in fics.

Father-Hood is about Jason raising an infant before he has the chance to start his revenge plan. He also gets together with Eddie Bloomberg <3

Granted the Serenity is about Countdown w donna jason and kyle happening w an al caste jason i think. it has next to 0 bruce iirc.

Things We've Lost, and Things We've Gained takes place in the young justice cartoon verse. if u dont know about it the short story is: the first child superhero team was not teen titans and roy harper was kidnapped and replaced w a clone and when the og roy is found he is rlly angry lol. Jayroy.

Yellow, Red, and Green is an au where jason becomes a green lantern while digging out of his grave. has a sequel in the works afaik but still good as a standalone.

Get Used to Dying is, in my objectively correct opinion, THE Jason Todd fic. I have recommended it before, and it's still a masterpiece. It tells Jason's life in the format of a play, absolutely brilliant.

Sacrosanct is about jason & bruce's relationship, and i think just from bruce's pov, but I have to rec it on the ground of it just being *chefs kiss* also there is no "bruce is right and do you not know how he mourned you jason!! care more about bruces reaction to your death than your own plase :/" bs

folly of youth, jason introspection/character study iirc. remember it being really good. also the last scene has great imagery.

in a new york minute, everything can change WILL make you cry no matter how much you've read it. it's about the last 60 seconds of Jason's (first) life. heartbreaking.

April 27th / I was only a child is a jason visits his grave one-shot. no bruce.

I think I could have included more but my bookmarks are uh. LONG. If I have other recs I will rb this post!!

[lordsammichsilas]

I've been working on some comic stuff and decided to take a moment to write another piece about my favorite tin can soldier.

I've noticed a lot has been made about how Danse's vocabulary and how he speaks. A lot of fan wikis online attribute it to his being a synth. Piper even mentions it after the initial conversation with Maxson at the beginning of Blind Betrayal. MacCready will mention Danse is about as emotional as a bag of hammers, assuming it's due to Danse's synth nature.

The thing is, his being a synth isn't the reason he's like that. It's the Brotherhood.

Think about the other synths in Fallout 4. Nick, Sturges, and Magnolia for example. They speak like regular people. It's because they live among regular people of the Commonwealth. The only synths who speak in a robotic fashion are gen 1 and 2 synths. Gen 3 synths are indistinguishable from humans and get socialized as such.

Danse was in the Brotherhood where he had been a paladin for at least a decade. The most recent years of that are in Maxson's Brotherhood. Arthur Maxson and most of those loyal to him do not like outsiders and do not want the Brotherhood fraternizing with outsiders. Fiction and entertainment are contraband on the Prydwen, something that alienates soldiers from the people of the Commonwealth even more. It's the reason Danse calls movies a “moving picture show” and comics “illustrated manuscripts”. The Brotherhood is what alienates him from humanity, not his being a synth. If you only know existence as a soldier and you don't take interest in human things with other humans, you end up speaking like that. (Think about a lot of right wing weirdoes online talking about the objects of their moral panics and how they sound.)

Edit: another point I want to add here is that not only is he isolated from the rest of the populace due to being in the Brotherhood, but there’s a chance he’s isolated from the lower rank soldiers in the Brotherhood itself. In a structure with a strict hierarchy, I wouldn’t be surprised if high ranking officers fraternizing with knights and initiates is discouraged. You get the feeling that he’s never confided in anyone since Cutler died when speaking to him as the Sole Survivor.

Danse held a fairly high rank in the organization. One could expect him to be pretty literate and have a decent vocabulary. (There's also the common critique that the military is a cult in its own right and just mindlessly following orders turns you into a soulless robot to a certain extent). Danse is intelligent, but not particularly charismatic. He will openly admit he's not good at talking to people on a personal level because he has no experience with it. Also being a field commander of soldiers and being responsible for their lives requires you to keep a level head and not show emotions.

What I find interesting are the reactions all of the companions have to his being a synth. Even though he was kind of a dick to everyone during companion swap scenes, all of the non-humans (except Strong) are not only against executing him but seem all but willing to throw hands on his behalf. He was horribly rude to Nick and Hancock in particular, however Nick goes out of his way to empathize with Danse and Hancock basically tells Maxson to go do it himself.

With the human companions, MacCready and Cait support executing him. Piper is sympathetic, but still leans on a stereotype to make a comment about how he talks. Preston and even Deacon are against killing Danse, but their commentary after that scene are more about the nature of the Brotherhood itself rather than Danse's wellbeing.

This just goes to another reason I find the writing for FO 4 incredibly frustrating because the storytelling here is excellent. There's a lot of nuances and you actually learn things about the other companions and the world they live in from doing an entirely different companion's story. The solidarity the nonhuman characters show for a synth that was part of an organization that wants to eradicate them and he himself was pretty rude to them while the human characters' reactions are far more mixed is something we need to talk about more.

I'm not normally a huge supporter of redemption arcs mostly because I think they've become a bit overused and not every character necessarily deserves one. I think Danse does because he is someone who means well and fell in with the wrong group in the process. This could have been the start of a really satisfying character arc, but instead all development just stops after your last affinity conversation with him.

[transgamerthoughts]

a night at poe's masquerade

Last night I made a quick tweet about how I think Persona games (particular from Persona 3 onwards) tend to be fundamentally conservative games. In worlds filled with magic powers, shadow selves, and literal gods there's an understanding that many of the most villainous people you can know are folks in positions of social/political power who weaponize their status in order to prey on those beneath them. This is a particular focus of Persona 5 but it extends even back to back to a game like Persona 2 and characters like Tatsuzou Sudou. Although these games acknowledge the social structures that lead to particularly vicious kinds of abuse, there is tendency for our protagonist to then fold themselves into those power structures. In games that focus less on real-life political allegory, there's still pattern of protagonists eventually accepting the societal roles that they're initial chafing against. It's a very common occurrence in the series. clockwork!

Persona 4 is the chief culprit here. Yukiko struggles with the idea that her presumed inheritance of the Amagi Inn is an imposition on her life but makes peace with that fact and eventually prepares herself for that role. Chie confronts Adachi, shocked that anyone who chose to be a police officer would do so for selfish reasons or betray the ideal image she holds of that job. Though confronted with the ways in which the system enabled Adachi's murders, she ultimately decided that she wants to become a police officer. Just as some examples. there's more. it's a fraught game in many ways

(I'm not gonna talk about Naoto. That's a minefield. as a trans critic people ask what I think about Naoto quite often. my answer is I like Naoto quite a bit and while I appreciate the queer read I don't need her story to be actually about transness. my tongue in cheek deep position here is that I think she's the damn coolest thing in the Dancing All Night opening movie. absolute fire!)

Persona fans are totally reasonable human beings. by which I mean that they might be the most electric and fuckin' absurd fandom I've ever encountered. While some people agreed with my read of the series, many others swarmed in. Which is fine enough. That's just what happens when you're visible on Twitter. I don't really have an interest in outlining the series in gross detail although, contrary to many accusations, I have played all the mainline games. One thing that can never be hurled my way is a suggestion that I don't play videos games. This criticism doesn't arise out of nowhere though I admit I didn't exactly expect it to become a trending topic floating in the "For You" tab. I was tweeting before bed.

Lesson learned! this fandom is wild! So it goes!

I've been thinking about people's responses and I want to venture into fraught territory to talk about a particularly bad habit I see from many fans. Which I think can be extended to things like ongoing debates about localization as much as they can apply to this little tempest in a teapot. Which is that I've grown somewhat concerned with he ways in which RPG fans (intentionally or not) exoticize Japan as a means to defend their favorite games from critique. It's kinda bad!

and I'm gonna risk a ramble exploring the topic… and I wonder how tumblr in 2024 will compare in reaction to hellscape of twitter

Something you often encounter in these discussions is an implication (sometimes a direct suggestion) that it is impossible to really engage with Japanese media as a westerner. That there's too many layers of nuance and too many centuries of ingrained tradition for anyone who has not engaged in lengthy study on the topic to penetrate. Often, this is framed as a desire to simply put things in cultural contexts. respect it and give due seriousness! Which is fine. I absolutely think if you wanna talk about something like the portrayal of the Japanese justice system in Judgement, it probably helps to… y'know… know details about the Japanese justice system. If you want to talk about how a game approaches gender, an understanding of certain social mores is important. No one debates this; it's important to understand art as arising from specific material conditions and places.

This is not really the approach people take however. Instead there is an insistence that the cultural difference between Japan and western nations is essentially insurmountable. Which has some bad implications. I think people are well meaning when they're like "hey, you gotta watch this YouTuber talk about Shintoism and JRPG boss fights for over an hour" but it comes at the cost of painting the culture as something of a puzzle to solve. and make no mistake: I'm glad anyone is doing the work but there's a bit of strangeness at play when folks are like "well you're American" and then tell me to watch criticism also made by Americans. especially since I do have a educational background that includes the study of world religions. i've studied plenty of this! and it's not impossible for me to have grasped.

the world is beautiful and nuanced and specific and full of vibrancies. but these things are not so singular that we can't connect with them or come to know them. and those nuances and specifics and vibrances don't create a protective ward around works. if anything, they're invitations to explore something new. if I walk away from Persona with a position that you don't agree with I promise that it's not something that's happened in haste. It used to be my job to think about games. and I've thought about Persona a lot! it's not inaccesible.

When we start to paint a culture as being particularly foreign we inherently exoticize it. We drape a degree of mystery over it which implies there is no universal connections found in art. Of course the concept of "police" is different in Japan to some extent as is the expectations that go into inheriting a family business. yes, the social nuances of a classroom differ. But Japan is not so alien to the western critic that we can't look at popular fiction and spot patterns. I certain don't need a 17 anime consumer to write me an essay on honne and tatemae or whatever in order to understand what's going on in the Midnight Channel. It's an easily observable truth that Persona often identifies issues within Japan society while also (particularly in Persona 5's case) concluding that these problems are not a consequence of specific power structures but rather moral failings of certain bad individuals. That's the text. Even when it wants to suggest otherwise.

Here's a little snippet from Persona 5. On face value, it seems to contradict what I'm saying. "Harper, how can you say that it only cares about individuals when it outright says that society itself needs to be addressed!?" DO YOU EVEN PLAY THESE GAMES YOU BITCH?! The answer is that the game does not have a model or idea of what it means to change society except vaguely to inspire people to more individual action. be nicer. stand up for yourself, speak your truth, do things for your own reasons. which has a radical element to it in the context to be sure but we've spent a huge portion of the game seeing how the abuse of power, particularly power placed in certain positions and social strata

a change of mindset is good but… is that sufficient? I'm not entirely convinced. not if this game want to truly deliver on everything it has explored. (side note, a lot of folks were like "why are you focusing on p5 so much here?" and the answer is that it's recent, representative of the series' values from the last decade or so, and because I'm a tired adult in their 30s who has stuff to do and isn't obligated to make a 300 tweet long thread breaking down multiple scripts. if you want me to do that labor, you better pay me for my time. otherwise I don't care to appease fan who have no plans of truly entertaining what I'd do anyway. no breakdown I do could please them)

but you fight Yaldabaoth Harper! You kill the collective gestalt representative of the status quo!. okay sure but the metaphorical battle falters as the game ultimately imagines many of our heroes (for instance Makoto, who also decides to become a cop even after her sister leaves the profession to become a defense attorney) are content to slide into the power structures as they exist. they've simply become "good apples" in the same basket that held the bad ones What does it matter if you kill the metaphor when you don't carry through elsewhere? It's not simply some vague human desire to be exploited that created the various monstrous villains we face throughout the game. There's real material circumstances, systems and long-held powers that gave them the carte blanche that enabled their abuses! Be they financial, political, or even sexual.

We might layer nuances on top of this of course. Notions of reticence to change or valuing of tradition, attitudes towards elders. But when we do so it's important be careful. When fans imply impenetrabilities in the works by virtue of cultural difference, there's a risk of veering into a kind of Orientalism. One which mystifies the culture and turns it into a kind of "other." Distant, strange. This sometimes comes paired with a kind of infantilization of creators but that's a different though similarly fraught topic that I think is particularly best left in the hands of the creators themselves. I'm not the person to talk about that!

Nevertheless, a frustrating part of the response to my tweet today has been a rush to say "This work functions that makes it necessarily elide your ability to critique it."

I'll be an ass and generalize. It's mostly people with Persona avatars making this suggest. That Persona, as a Japanese work, is imbued with an ineffable quality that magically allows it to side-step what's ultimately a pretty timid conclusion. Many of these folks are younger players, self-identified as such in profiles, who clearly have a deep connection to the series. It means something to them. But I'd rather they simply say "hey, I found this thing particularly moving at an important moment in my life" rather than conjure an impassable ocean between myself (or really anyone) and the work in the event they find flaws.

Otherwise, you just get this:

Stories are not merely about what happens on the journey. The destination does matter. It means something when the king grabs his shining sword and fights off the orc invaders or whatever. A value system is suggested Similarly, it does means something when Chie becomes a cop. (This is just a shorthand example mind you! But you hopefully get the idea!)

I don't think games or any work of art need us to defend them. The trap of fandom is that you often turn to any possible means to justify what you love. For Persona, a series which does have the decency to explore cultural issues, that same cultural specificity is often weaponize by fans (largely western fans even!) to deflect certain problems. This process inadvertently portrays that culture as a mystery, a shrouded thing that we cannot ever criticize. It's one thing to dig into some of those contextual specifics but it's another all-together to imply these specifics provide a mean to abrogate certain analyses. and I think navigating the line between due deference and something deeper and stranger seems to be something many of the fans reacting to me... have not managed. I had a peer talk to me about this situation and their feeling was that the animated members of the fandom that were coming at me, many of whom are self-identified as young and western, were kinda treating Japan like it was a land of elves. which it's not! it is a place on Earth and yes we need to take strides to understand and respect certain specificities... but we can't mystify an entire people. especially if the purpose is to turn those people and their culture into a shield. a means to justify and validate the specialness you see in a franchise.

I call Persona conservative because it cannot imagine a world in any other shape that what we have right now. God dies but nothing actually changes. I don't think it's enough to say "well, they defeated the god! and they needed the collective strength of society to do it! people did change because without that change of heart, the heroes wouldn't have the magical juice to fight the Kabbalah monster!" to toss Makoto's words back at the series: victory against a single god is meaningless if the true enemy is society.

If you can't show me what that grand spiritual change means for society, then I think you've kinda failed. you've certainly failed if the conclusion is that the world after that change is functionally the same and it doesn't really matter to me if "they talk about this in Strikers or whatever" because you can't offload your thematic snarls to side games. if the main stories you tell can't resolve this tension, that's a problem. these are often very beautiful games. they certainly have amazing structure and systems. but I don't think it's controversial to say they often hedge their bets at the end. and there's no impenetrable cultural wall surrounding the games that leaves the criticism off the table.

that's just What Happens. and it's fine for us to acknowledge flaws in even in things that contain beauty or meant something to us

really. it's fine.

[authormars]

Rant!

Don't read this if you don't want to. I am just very angry and needed to get my feelings out. It has nothing to do with Dialuci or headcanons like my normal content, it is simply me being angry at an anon.

If you want to read more, don't say I didn't warn you

The Barbatos Gossip Section is so funny to me. I like to yell my thoughts into the void there, but recently people have been blowing up about people complaining about there not being a whole lot of x male reader content (I am one of those complainers, but look at the tag fam. It's almost all women)

People kept saying "It's an otome game! It's for women" and people fought back saying "MC is genderless for a reason! They're inclusive!" (A point I totally agree with, as a masc person)

The thing that genuinely pisses me off though is the point of "You want to see it, go write it yourself" and I know it's stupid to get pissed over, but it seriously does, as a writer myself.

Some people just want to see representations of themselves in fanfiction, the place we go for representation when the og media doesn't give us that! Some people don't have the luxury of being able to write! A very close friend of mine has dysgraphia, in which they basically cannot write or keep a coherent story in their head. Some people don't have the time to write! Some people want to have a story with a reader that is male and that is hard to find in the x reader tag, especially with characters like Lucifer (I know from experience)

Also, the Barbatos Gossip Section is a place to complain! Stop getting on people's backs for complaining there! A particular anon called it, and I'm quoting directly here, "Look, I understand that OM mc is genderless, but I see those who complain about there being way too many female mc content. They need to realize how hypocritical they’re being. They’re acting like the mc has to only be gn, or male, and when they are gn they have to be masculine. Yet, when there is female mc, or the gn mc is feminine they get offended, and complain."

When has anyone ever gotten mad at this? Most of the people, including myself, understand that x female reader is always going to be common. The only thing we ask is that more people make MC more inclusive (for example, when writing a GN!MCxCharacter smut, doing two chapters for people with either parts, which I have seen done before)

They also called those people mysogynistic. They said, quoting from the post, "To those that do that, you give off heavy misogynistic vibes. Like being male is okay, but being female is the end all. The mc can be who the player is, how is that hard to comprehend for you."

The thing that pisses me off most of all, however, was how they ended it. "Lastly, Otome games are created for girls/women. Be grateful that there are games like OM that has a genderless mc." The arrogance of this anon alone pisses me off to no level. She acts (I can say that, based on the ask where she implied she was female) like all the masc people in the community don't matter.

The link is here for people who don't want to be searching for the post

Don't mind my rant, this ask just pissed me off to no end.

Please don't send hate to this person if you find out who she is. I am merely one very angry masc obey me fan who hates when people say things that aren't true.

If it pleases you, write/read x female reader fics. If you want, write/read x male reader fics. If x gender neutral reader is your jam, read it! I'm not here to police anyone's actions. I merely want to say that I, personally, desperately crave bottom Mammon fics :p

I'm a whore for bottom brothers

[stardustizuku]

Part 1: The Love Square. Why it worked, and why it failed.

People who aren’t as interested in Magical Girls as I am, specifically Magical Girl Animes with Romance, may not understand why the Love Square was such a big deal. Why it was the core; the life of the series.

Okay, so how many times have you seen a love triangle unfold? Quite many, I must guess. Some really good, and some, uhm, not so much.

In Magical Girl Animes they’re common – and the most popular ones have one very particular dynamic. Let’s run down it, shall we?

Our main character falls in love with another man, someone unreachable, unattainable. It’s someone she genuinely looks up to, and is most likely popular already.

I call this character “The Prince”

In Princess Tutu, it’s Mytho. In Shugo Chara it’s Tadase. In Tokyo Mew Mew it’s Aoyama. Sailor Moon has Motoki Furuhata in Season 1, and Mamoru in Stars.

He is the type of guy you want to fall in love with. Nice, kind, good-natured, a good leader, pretty and everything.

There’s one issue, though. The person who our Main Character’s crush likes is not her, but her alter ego. Mytho is in love with Tutu, not Ahiru, Tadase is in love with Amulet Heart not Amu. The one she becomes thanks to super natural magic.

Then, there’s the opposite. I like to call them the “Rebel” character.

You know who I’m talking about. The Ikuto, the Kishu, the Fakir or even Seiya of the story. They serve to be a contrast to the “Prince”. They’re often times, the only one who gets to see through the MC’s disguise and comes to understand her. “Rebel” characters are rarely in love with alter ego, but instead feel attraction to the MC or the “real one”

These are all fan favourites characters that fall under the “Bad Boy” trope. And for good reason.

Bad boy characters are popular with little girls, teen girls, women or even AFAB people in general since they call out something in our society. There’s very real pressure put forth by either parents or society to adhere to certain gender roles, and what they mean.

In other words, you’re “supposed” to be a good girl.

You have to get good grades, you have to smile all the time, you have to be polite, and you have to play nice. A bad boy character in fiction allows the viewer (in this case and for simplicity) girls to push back or be rebellious in a very safe way.

You don’t have to be good, you’re just following the steps of a bad guy with a heart of gold. He will help you break out of your shell, and be more confident. You get to feel like you’re trying to be the good girl society tells you to be, while finally exploring these darker aspects of your personality.

In YA and more mature books, this can involve anything from trying alcohol, having sex, or allowing oneself to be angry (exploring the “bad” or “not good” emotions AFAB people are always told they shouldn’t have).

But in audiences more aimed towards children, like those in Magical Girl animes, shoujos or tween cartoons, they exist in a more subdued way – although still tapping into this idea of rebellion against the status quo.

That’s why these characters are fan favourites.  

So, to summarize. You have the MC in love with a “Prince” who in turn is in love with the Perfect Girl version of the MC. And a “Rebel” who is in love with the Real Version of the MC, flaws and all.

This particular dynamic is used as a thesis of sorts in any good story. Only by understanding both the real and idolized version of the MC can a man can “win” the love of our protagonist. And only by our MC knowing who she is, what her alter ego means, or how she relates to these dichotomies, can she understand herself.

And really, depending on how each show tackles its themes, it can have different answers. Tokyo Mew Mew offers the idea that the Prince is the correct option, while Princess Tutu says it’s not. Then there’s those with open endings such a Shugo Chara. Again, they use the dynamic, the thesis of their characters, to come to a conclusion that neatly ties to the theme.

Princess Tutu, for example, ties the ideal version of Mytho with the tragedy of a fairytale. Ahiru has to let go to be able to reach a conclusion. In Tokyo Mew Mew Ichigo sees her flaws (the cats ears) as something someone as perfect as Aoyama could never love – yet he shows he isn’t perfect and that he loves her with or without the perceived flaws she has.

That said,

It’s exactly why I loved Miraculous Ladybug when it first aired. It managed to boil down this interesting dynamic into the Love Square. The perfect and the real, the idolized and the true.

Ladybug represents the perfect version of Marinette. Adrien represents the perfect version, while the real one is Chat Noir. Chat was both the “Bad Boy” and the “Prince” all in one. Both Marinette and Adrien were in love with the “Perfect” or Idolized version of each other.

This was something never before seen. It would make for amazing content, right? Explore why we prefer an idolized version of someone, realize that true love means caring even when you’re not perfect. What our perceived “flaws” meant to others, and if they were truly flaws – or if our environment was the one teaching us they were. The possibilities and themes were limitless. We could have had something great-

No.

Sorry, we. We didn’t get that.

What we got were padded episodes, new love interest that refused to deal with this complexity, and a stagnant rship that refuses to explore any of the flaws of their characters - why they’re not perfect, or even a reason why they stay in love

This is why the Love Square fails. This, is the core of why and how it works. People can expand upon this in million different ways, but you inevitably come back to this.

The real and the idolized. The want vs the duty. The expectations and the responsibilities.

Instead of having an episode where Marinette realizes that Adrien isn’t perfect, that he isn’t a model 24/7 or that he has flaws, secrets and fear just like anyone else, we got Kagami.

Instead of Chat realizing that Ladybug isn’t perfect, that she isn’t always composed, that it’s just a persona put forth to feel more in control of a situation, we got Luka.

Both characters that I love, but they bring very little to the themes the Love Square was introducing, to begin with!

More focus should have been put in how these two bounce off each other.

How much better would the story had been if we got to see Marinette and Chat have a conversation? The two very flawed, very real, very confusing version fo these characters, just trying to understand each other.

And by the way, this is exactly why MariChat is the most popular dynamic.

Marinette acts like a girl. Scared, confused, and lonely. She isn’t a hero, she isn’t her perfect version. She is just Marinette. While she can put the mask on, at the end of the day, it’s still just a mask. And Chat? Well, we get to see him. Not the model, not the paper cut out, but a silly kid who wants to break free from a life of imprisonment by the parent who’s supposed to love him.

We get to see something real.

But, unfortunately we do not get that.

Their relationship stays static. The reason for this is a bit obvious.

The writers, to my opinion have come to this bizarre conclusion:

Developing this dynamic would mean changing dynamics, ending the status quo morphing the story into something new. And they assume a “new” means an “end”.

They’re thinking that the endgame is Adrien and Marinette realizing their identities, so they don’t wanna develop it for fear of bringing an ending “too close”.

Say you have 7 seasons prepared, you can't have them find out their identities in season 5 because their reveal should be in season 7. It should be the last couple of episodes even. After that, they'll date and it's over. So better drag this on for seasons on end.

This just proves to me: flawed writing skills and lack of direction.

WHICH wouldn’t surprise me seeing how Chloe ended up.

It is plain bad writing. Changing stuff doesn’t necessarily mean an endgame is near. It just means things are changing.

I’ll be mean to this series and compare it to the Magnus Opus of Magical Girls: Sailor Moon

Sailor Moon got together with Tuxedo mask in the first season, yet the writers were able to up the steaks of their relationship through its 5-season run: Through memory loss, a long distance romance, anxieties of hurting one another, or simply…developing their relationship. People change. And so does how they interact with other people.

These created amazing episodes that highlighted how much Usagi and Mamoru loved and cared for each other. It wasn’t just chance, it wasn’t just fate. This took work, it took time, and it took trust. This wasn’t something so easily lost. That’s why SailorMoonStars hits the hardest.

In the very last season, Usagi is in a long distance rship with Mamoru. And it breaks her. We see that she misses him, dealing with the turmoil of him not answering her messages. She’s devastated, seeking comfort in other people, but unable to forget him. Not even as Seiya begs her to take him instead of Mamoru, can she bring herself to give him up– because they’ve been together for a long, long time. And we’ve seen that.

We see her reminiscent. We see her break down and cry because he hasn’t called her. We see her thinking of him when she’s with Seiya. We see her be in love with him and we see how much it affected her that he’s ignoring her.

And by the last few episodes, we get a payoff. We find out Mamoru is dead, and that he died confident that Usagi would be strong enough to protect the Earth in his stead. That he believed in her, and he thought of her until the moment he died - uttering her name as the last thing he could do.

That’s why when Sailor Moon defeats Sailor Galaxia, the woman who killed the man she loved, through purification and not violence – it all feels right.

It’s a very simple but powerful story, packaged in 45 episodes. With enough room to breathe, digest it, but not drawn out enough for it to be annoying.

All this, when the relationship was already established. We could have had something like this in Miraculous Ladybug, if the writers WERENT drawing out the reveal and get together until the very last second!

ChatBlanc could have been an AMAZING multi-episode mini-arc.

No time-travel thing. They find their identities, they date for a few episodes, something goes horribly wrong, and Marinette has to find a way to fix the mistakes she's made. Much like Sailor Moon R.

Maybe by the end of it, she fixes it but sacrifices most of her memories. The only thing she recalls is that she knew Chat's identity, Paris almost got destroyed, and that leads to her putting distance between them.

Or maybe one day she wakes up with the memories of Chat Blanc and spends and entire season trying to know what happened, and when she does, she's horrified.

Idk, million amazing things could have been done with this episode to further develop these two's relationship. Complex, interesting, beautiful things.

But no. Because, apparently, thinking of love post-reveal is too much. Instead, we watch them run and run in circles. Chat Blanc was a single episode, and half of it was time travel shenanigans.

And all of this, just because the writers don’t actually know what they want to do with the love square. So they add new rivals, new teams, new accessories, side plots - all to avoid touching the actual core of what made the series great.

It strongly reminds me of Star vs. in that scenario the creators also weren’t sure where to take the show.

It wasn’t until season 2 where they started the subplot of Star realizing Mewni colonized Monsters that it started having a sense of self. And it showed in the romantic subplot, which was all over the place. They didn’t know what they wanted, so the romance in that show was a mess. Lack of direction and intention, aside from the knowledge that Star and Marco were the end game

I personally don’t hate Star vs. I don’t like how it handled romance but I will give it much leeway because the actual plot of Intergenerational conflict and coming to terms with the harm your ancestors have done to others - is quite compelling and not something I see tackled often.

But Miraculous does not get that. Its episodic plot is simple and refuses to get into the murky waters of its own premise.

The only thing it had going was The Love Square. Because I assure you, very few people give a crap about the Miraculous being stolen.

So, their lack of willingness was the first thing to ruin the Love Square. Fine.

But it’s not the nail on the coffin. The real reason why this suffered, was something that happened waaaay before all this.

Because one thing that the show refused to explore up until late into season 3 and start of season 4 was the specific parts of the “Ladybug” character. What I mean is, what “ideal self” she is as “Ladybug”. And how her existence affects Marinette. This is the fundamental flaw that issss...

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[mafaldaknows]

I just don't understand what his team was thinking when they agreed to this stunt. Exactly how does he benefit from it other then being seen as an uber straight grade-A douchebag? Is this really the image his team wants for Timmy? There's just too much talent and potential there to be shamming with a Kartrashian/Jenner.

Hello, Anon:

It’s absolutely mind-boggling what having more money than God can buy in the United States of America these days: New lips, new hips, and a sparkling new image with a shiny new man who apparently doesn’t even need to be present to win.

The KarJenner PR team has been hard at work for the last few months for a classy reboot of baby sister Kylie, complete with a romance with the internet’s boyfriend, style influencer and fashion icon Timothée Chalamet, who also happens to be the greatest actor of his generation. At face value, it certainly does seem like an unlikely match, given the imbalance of (dare I say it?) intellectual curiosity and preternatural talents between them. But anything is possible, when one has more money than one can ever spend in several lifetimes and the other has greater goals and ambitions than his power and influence will allow at this point in his career.

Both parties involved, however directly or indirectly, can find benefit in being in each other’s orbits driveways, taco restaurants, tarmac, in an image-conscious culture ravenous for juicy content just like this.

One of the pair has received a decidedly more positive boost from it.

The other, not so much, perhaps by design.

He may have extremely valid reasons for wanting to promote that particular “douchebag” image, if he really is willingly participating in what appears to be yet another PR romance. His handlers and PR team probably assume that he must do this in order to continue to level up in Hollywood as the next Leonardo DiCaprio. And they are probably right, given the current wave of puritanical bigotry in the USA and elsewhere in the world. There is far too much money riding on the success of his next three potentially blockbuster projects and too many people with a vested interest in his success for them to allow his image to be seen as anything other than “normal” in order to appeal to the mainstream sensibilities of a global audience. His own ambitions most likely make it impossible to refuse.

Can’t knock the hustle. ✨💃🕺🏻✨ And both of them are hustlers. Maybe that’s what they have in common.

If this were truly an authentic romance, we already know that all they would need to do to keep it private is to KEEP IT PRIVATE: Say nothing to the press, don’t call the paparazzi to meet you in the parking lot, don’t alert the media at all. They both have the means and resources to disappear from public view whenever they want, if they really wanted to do that. It’s not a requirement to begin a new relationship with a press release, not even for celebrities.

And yet here we are, a love story loudly announced in a tale of two cars, maybe three, long driveways but park at the bottom where everyone can see, and taco dates with paparazzi who take photos but only with his wingman.

A story which has made it abundantly clear that at least one of them wants to

MAKE SURE EVERYONE NOTICES their super-duper-uber-private budding romance 🚘🌮❣️🌮🚘

I’m not entirely convinced that he’s even an active participant in all of this, TBH. Many of the details thus far don’t add up to much of anything except a lot of black cars being shuffled around in his driveway published by the trash gossip press with sensationalist headlines and articles intended to plant the idea in the minds of those who want to believe it or need to know it’s happening.

For reasons.

And all of this accomplished without a single decent photo as concrete evidence of this alleged romance between two people famously well-versed in the art of the selfie in the golden age of Instagram.

Not even a fan photo or one “leaked” by their team. Nothing, except some extraordinarily grainy outdoor shots in someone’s backyard where the only easily identifiable person is Kylie Jenner and only because of her unusual proportions, in a town teeming with Teemo lookalikes who would happily stand in for the real thing for nothing but the chance to say they did it.

The Devil works hard but Kris Jenner works harder.

Seeing might be believing, but only if we can actually see what we’re seeing.

Thanks for your comment. 🤔🥔📸🎪🫤🤷🏻‍♀️

[utilitycaster]

Were people mad about Marion x Sean not happening? I know it was popular during episode 1 but I feel like by episode 2 most everyone saw the writing in the walls with Marion and Jean obviously being into each other.

A refreshingly small number, honestly! It was one or two people in the main tags and maybe one or two more who said obnoxious things in the tags of my posts. I used that as an example because it was fresh in my mind and because that was genuinely such a great line in a fantastic arc in a fantastic series that closing yourself off to it is a miserable prospect.

Here is the thing about writing on the walls: there is a level of shipping where people will openly ignore it, eg: literally everyone who claims Beau and Yasha "came out of nowhere"; basically anyone who focuses extensively on microexpressions because that frequently goes hand-in-hand with ignoring Character A and Character B kissing each other in favor of how Character C blinked a millisecond too rapidly in A's direction; etc.

This also, honestly, isn't limited to shipping, though that's the most common case where I see it. I think part of why Campaign 2 hate is so bitter at times is because there are genuinely many, many people who watched all 141 episodes and who loved almost everything in 140 of them and then hated that the finale did not bring back Molly or did not have the ship they thought was "supposed" to happen appear - I was there, and people who claim Campaign 2 sucked were there too watching along throughout the whole thing; they just definitely thought the couples would all break up and rearrange in episode 141 for no apparent reason.

That's really my larger point: I think there is a certain kind of person who tells themself how a story "should" end, whether it's a particular ship or a particular story beat, and becomes furious when the story - which never made that promise - fails to deliver. Not only did Candela pretty clearly signal that Marion and Jean were into each other, it also told us inherently within the story and in literally every out of character interview that this was pretty much guaranteed to not end remotely close to any sort of happily ever after. It's funny - earlier in campaign 3 there was a lot of flack towards some fans' (of which I was one) frustration with the story on the basis of narrative/pacing, and I still see the inane "must stories have conflict" argument pop up. But those same people who get mad at those who talk about inconsistent themes or characterization or awkward pacing are, more often than not, people whose assessment of a story rests entirely on the incredibly narrow "did I get the exact ships and plot elements I wanted out of this and was my blorbo the coolest guy ever all the time," rather than the broad and inclusive "did this story capably deliver on an interesting premise."

[ragsy]

Hey congrats do the whole list for Kenny

🔫🔫🔫

Oh, pvp enabled, OKAY LET'S GOOOOO

are they associated with a certain color? what color do they wear the most?

not really sure, actually! i've only drawn him a handful of times and only one of those times was colored in, so i haven't quite figured out his color palette yet. desaturated purple comes to mind when i think on it, though

what sort of music would they like? have you thought about what genres or bands do they lean towards? do they have a favorite song?

His music taste is what i can only describe as "my real life father's mp3 player on shuffle" which is. Not anything that anyone on here has any frame of reference for!! But that would include, but isn't limited to: Cat Stevens, Manu Chao, Sheryl Crow, Third Eye Blind, Fatboy Slim, Fleetwood Mac, Traffic, Green Day, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Shpongle.

weapon of choice? any particular reason they chose their weapon?

Uuhhhh technically his character sheet lists his weapon as his walking stick, (it only does 1 damage) (he never uses it as a weapon, he has never once in his history on a monster hunting team hit anything with his walking stick)

The rest under here 👇

how crafty/resourceful are they?

Middlingly average, for the most part. He's much better at navigating problems than actually solving them; he'll look towards his team members if something needs fixed.

how do they typically dress? does their wardrobe lean more towards practicality or aesthetics?

Sweaters, slacks, polo shirts, sneakers. Retired guy in american suburbia swag.

how do they wear their hair? do they care a lot how their hair looks?

he keeps it somewhat short, but he doesn't really care how it looks anymore. he's grateful to still have most of it, so he just kinda lets it do what it wants. he also used to have a well-maintained goatee before his time in the Other Place, but since returning to the real world, he's only done the bare minimum of keeping his facial hair mostly trim.

favorite animal? why?

not a huge animal guy, honestly! he finds the presence of birds to be extremely reassuring, though. 

do they have a nickname? who gave it to them? if it's not derived from their real name, what's the story behind it?

i guess kenny is technically a nickname (he always introduces himself as kenneth, and everyone else always decides "oh this man is a kenny actually"), but he's much more of a giver of nicknames than anything else

favorite food? least favorite? are they a picky eater? do they have any dietary restrictions?

always a big fan of fresh baked goods, especially blueberry muffins. he has some challenges with eating these days-- after having spent five years in the Other Place not needing to eat or sleep, stuff tastes weird to him now. He's got a mental list of safe foods, but he tries not to be a bother when other people are cooking, so he'll try his best with what's available to him.

if they wear jewelry, what kind? do they prefer silver or gold? do they have a favorite gem?

gold wedding band :( (deadwife trope)

what do they have in common with you? how are they different? would you get along with them?

i gave him my fear of being forgotten and love for terrible dad jokes, what else could he need?

we're actually more different than alike, i think. he's just lived an extremely different life than me; he's a 65 year old heterosexual retired dentist who has been married and has a daughter who is my age. i am literally none of those things. but i think we would get along really well; he's based heavily on some of my own extended family who i already like fairly well, lol

how long have they been around? do you know their birthday? is their birthday the day you made them or another day? what do they think of celebrating birthdays?

i've had him as a character since... roughly 2020? but he was extremely different in that iteration (a haunting-the-narrative NPC in the motw campaign i ran and have since completed). his current iteration came about earlier this year when i rewrote him from the ground up to be a motw player character. also his birthday is march 17th, 1959 and birthdays are... complicated. if someone tried to throw him a party he would be GRATEFUL, and he would offer to celebrate someone else's birthday with them, but he doesn't know how to think of his own birthday anymore. he spent ages being extremely unmoored from the passage of time, you know? makes it hard

what languages do they speak? how fluently?

fluent in english (his first language), more than a little bit of mandarin (from his grandparents) and spanish (he had some patients who only spoke spanish; he always made an effort to be able to directly communicate with them whenever possible). the latter two are largely forgotten from disuse, though

are they any good with numbers?

he's actually pretty good with numbers, but it doesn't come up very often anymore. he's itching for the day that someone comes to him for help with their taxes

how big or small is their family? who did they live with growing up? do they live with anyone now?

very, very small. he was his parents' only child, he had a language barrier between him and one set of grandparents, and he never knew the other set. his late wife had a big family, who he has since fallen out of contact with (with the exception of his beloved nephew charlie). he has one daughter, who he is trying to reconnect with. he currently lives alone.

do they have any pets? what do they call their pets?

no pets, and he would never ever ever consider franklin the potted plant to be a pet. that's his TRAUMA BONDED BEST FRIEND

how did they spend their summers/free time as a child?

wildly unsafe summer camps of the 1960s/1970s. here you go child, have some lead paint to play with

their opinion on lying, stealing, and killing?

top three things to make kenny disappointed in you

are they quick to anger? what sets them off?

very, very slow to anger. will ALWAYS give someone the benefit of the doubt, but if they really are in the wrong, he will bottle it up for as long as possible. when he finally breaks, it's hysterical and venomous. he generally hates being angry more than he hates the things that *make* him angry

if applicable, can they drive? if they have their own, what color is their vehicle? is the inside neat and tidy, or a mess?

he's got a royal blue toyota prius :]

it's pretty tidy inside, for the most part. gotta make sure there's space for passengers inside, it's not a large vehicle to begin with!!

their favorite place to be?

alice's house, with everyone else there with him

do they sleep well at night?

HA, no, lmao

5 years not needing to sleep will fuck up your sleep schedule once you finally have to again. he wakes up at odd hours, falls asleep at even odder ones, and has crazy weird dreams (which he then has to write down in his dream journal before he can go back to sleep again)

how would you describe their voice? can they sing?

quick and flighty, like he has to get his words out as fast as he can before something stops him. he stammers a lot. he's not a great singer by any means, but he's not immune to singing along to a favorite tune in the car or in the kitchen.

do they have any creative hobbies? (art, writing, music, etc)

he tried out a lot of different hobbies while trying to adjust once his daughter moved out, but none of them stuck. he tries to augment his dream journal with drawings whenever possible, so i guess that counts? 

how good/bad is their hearing? what about their eyesight?

hearing is actually pretty good for his age; eyesight isn't great though. he's been a glasses wearer since the second grade, and it's only gotten worse as he's aged

how do they move? are they clumsy? light on their feet? do they use mobility aids?

he's not quick by any means, but he can get around just fine. he has a chronically bad knee from a car crash earlier in his life that was exacerbated by an injury during an encounter with the lighthouse keeper. he walks with a cane on days when he needs extra support.

if applicable, do they have a favorite sport? do they play any sports or prefer to watch?

he understands the appeal of sports, but was never very athletic and never really got into watching them. he'll still tune into the olympics though, just to see what crazy things they're doing with spheres and gravity in athletics these days

how do they show that they care about someone? how do they express that they don't like someone?

He cares a lot about most people he meets, so it is generally easier to tell when he *doesn't* like someone; his warm, inviting manner turns curt and closed. 

are they associated with any particular element (air, earth, fire, water)?

Air, probably? I've no grounds for this, it just feels right

do they smell like anything notable?

Uuuuuuuuuh i dunno, come give uncle kenny a whiff and tell me what you think

do they like receiving gifts? giving gifts? what is their ideal gift?

He LOVES giving and receiving gifts, he eats that shit up, but if he's the only one receiving and not giving anyone anything he starts to feel really guilty about it. His ideal gift is something small yet thoughtful. He's going to be thinking about the magic walking cane that Charlie gave him forEVER

do they have any habits that aren't particularly self-destructive, just maybe odd?

He carries around a potted plant like his life depends on it, he's removed the doors from every room and cabinet in his apartment, and he hesitates before passing though any sort of entryway

if applicable, how would your other characters describe them? i mean specifically the people around them.

Mark's the only other one who has met him, and he would describe him as "uh. Nice, i guess? He talks too much, and he's kinda weird like he's on a different planet than everyone else, but he seems... harmless."

how would your character describe themselves? it doesn't have to line up with how they really are.

"Who, me? Ah, I'm just some kook who got lost once, haha!"

do they ever return home?

He's tried. That house isn't really home anymore; home feels more like the people he's with nowadays.

[musasabino5]

My defenses and problems of the "anime" RADIANT

As a matter of fact, the anime RADIANT season 1 started on NHK Educational TV on October 6, 2018 at 5:30 PM, and season 2 was also started on the same channel on October 2, 2019 at 7:25 PM.

The anime storyline is appropriate considering the time slot it was aired, even if some adult viewers felt like something was missing. In particular, the "social" aspect that characteristic of RADIANT has been simplified and made easier to understand.

(And I don't want to comment too much on the original parts of the anime because I've read in several interviews that the author had checked those part, but fans of the original works who can talk to him directly would probably know more than me about what he really thinks about this.)

NHK E TV targets viewers of different age groups depending on the time slot. The broadcast time in 2018 and 2019 is set to the "evening small child　and kids zone / teens zone" (To be precise, 「夕方の幼児・子どもゾーン/ティーンズゾーン」), so there is a possibility that the recommended age of the manga (ages 12 and over?) and the anime might not match, especially in the first season.

This means, even if the season 3 is confirmed, as long as it is broadcast in the same time slot, some changes to suit the target audience may be unavoidable. If it had been broadcast on NHK General TV (for example "Attack on the Titan" and now "Orb: On the Movements of the Earth”), or if Toei Animation had acquired the rights to make it into an anime, the effect might have been different.

So, what's the problem?

I think the problem with the anime RADIANT lies not so much in its content but in its composition, especially in the first half of season 1.

The anime was advertised as "based on a shonen manga made in France" not a little, but in reality, most of the first half was made up of episodes that had been produced in Japan.

Not a few adult viewers are intrigued by that advertising and will watch it with a bias, but if they haven't read the manga, they will be left with a misunderstanding and will judge the author (or move away) even though the episodes they watch aren't in the original.

In other words, I want to take issue with the construction of the series, regardless of the quality of the added part of the anime (no matter how great it is). In my opinion, RADIANT was a pioneer anime based on a manga from overseas in Japan, and unlike other works based on domestic famous magazines, many people knew this work through the anime (I am one of them), so I think the anime production team should have paid a little more attention.

(And did you know that when "Outlaw Players" was published in Japan, the title was changed to sound like a common isekai comic? It is a homage to a line from “One Piece”, but anyone probably won’t understand the intention behind the changes without reading the story.)

Anyway, I am in a position to thank the anime for introducing me to this work, and I hope that season 3 is confirmed and that it goes well.

(The reason why I decided to write this is because when the cover of volume 19 was released, I saw some horrible things being said by a certain account on Twitter. Even if it is unofficial, if they are calling themselves a PR person, you should make your statements from a neutral standpoint and with the background in mind.)

Thanks to everyone who read this.

[come-chaos]

Post-LOTR Marathon Thoughts

I saw LOTR EE in the cinema today. It was my first LOTR marathon ever, as well as my first time seeing FOTR in the cinema. Despite having spent a decade of my life as a devout Tolkienist and LOTR/Hobbit fan before I shifted focus to other fandoms, it was also the first time in several years that I watched a LOTR movie at all. Naturally, I was very curious about what my own reaction would be.

What follows is my attempt at summarising some of my impressions before I forget them.

Best movie: My favourite always used to be ROTK, and it’s still by far the movie that makes me the most emotional, but I can finally say that FOTR is a better movie. Everything about it is simply magical. From start to finish, it introduces the most incredible range of settings and concepts and people. Visually, I believe it has a far richer colour palette than the others. I also get the impression that it has many more subtle references to the book than the other movies do.

Best overall: The soundtrack. I have a pet peeve when it comes to singing in movies – I hate it when a movie makes no effort to convince me that the character is actually singing. It’s surprisingly common for movies to combine the most half-arsed lip sync possible with a blatantly obvious studio production that often features a ginormous and rather glittery reverb regardless of what room the scene is set in. I’ve always upheld LOTR as an example of characters singing being done well, and Eowyn’s dirge being my favourite example in particular, but this time I noticed something new about it. Something really cool. When the camera changes angle, or when an object passes in front of the camera, the acoustics of Eowyn’s voice also change. Absolutely marvellous sound mixing.

If I could change one scene: I don’t know whether I’ve matured as a movie watcher or if I’ve just gained a healthier perspective on the whole book vs movie debate, but I found myself having nearly zero issues with the ways in which the movies differ from the book, which came as a surprise to me. I even found myself thinking that several changes were, in fact, for the better – I could see now that the story really did benefit from being adapted to the medium, instead of following the book to the letter. Don’t get me wrong – I would have preferred a Gimli who isn’t the butt of every other joke, a Legolas who’s less into surfing, and a Haldir who heads to the Havens without passing Helm’s Deep. But all of that is forgivable. If I could change one scene, I’d remove the Paths of the Dead skull avalanche. As far as I’m concerned, it’s pointless, it’s not a reference to anything, the sheer number of skulls makes absolutely no sense, and if anything, it gives the entire dead army plotline even more of a Pirates of the Caribbean feel. Speaking of, I’ve always assumed POTC is the reason why the army had to be a sickly neon green instead of the more conservative ghostly grey – the latter was already taken. The green honestly never stopped annoying me, so if I could change one thing in addition to removing the skull avalanche, I’d drastically lower the saturation of the entire Army of the Dead.

Miscellaneous thoughts: Something that struck me several times during this marathon was how much I’m still in love with the overall plot and with so many of the themes. I love the characters – including Boromir, whom I discovered is far more compelling to me now than he was in the past. I love that even those with the best of intentions may struggle to do good. I love that Bilbo’s choice to show Gollum mercy made him less susceptible to the Ring throughout his whole life, whereas Sméagol’s corruption was facilitated by his murder of Déagol. I love that Sam’s love for Frodo is everything. I wasn’t prepared for the burden of the Ring to remind me so much of the struggle of living with a mental illness, which I’m going to guess is a result of my metacognition having improved considerably since I last saw the movies.

Moment that made my heart pound so hard it hurt: The Ride of the Rohirrim.

Moments that made me the most emotional: Absolutely no surprises here. In second place, as usual, came “You bow to no one”, while Frodo’s farewell at the Havens came in first place, as always.

[question-why-not]

i really hate how the DC writers and some fans are so obsessed with “which batfamily can beat which” and with just seeing “cool fight scenes” and stuff

This awful obsession keeps taking precedence over and destroying any semblance of actual good creative stories

Jason Todd is probably one of the most common victim of this BS, see RHATO 25 and all of those stupid fights between Jason & the batfamily in Task Force Z, the writers making the characters fight in situations they absolutely don’t have to, at least not without trying to talk it out first (there was absolutely no reason for Jason & the batfamily not to communicate about what’s going on with the task force, it was literally only engineered to be a total failure of communications to have a batfamily VS Jason fight that looks cool)

i don’t actually read a lot of comics, i read task force z just to get context on that panel where Cassandra spooks Jason, but i’m sure other people here can tell examples where it happens to other characters too, but i do think Jason is a more common victim of this simply due to DC not having any real direction to take his character to because they won’t let go of the Joker, and even without that simply because they won’t let go of the conflict between Jason & Bruce, because “if it’s not broken don’t fix it” and these people are concerned with making money not with telling a compelling story

Also, like, fighting isn’t all the members of the batfamily can do????? They have a wider skillet than that, with each of them also having their own unique specialization??????

Dick is one of the best acrobats in the world, and extremely capable & experienced vigilante, he’s the oldest of the batkids and has the most experience as a result, and he’s also a leader in the vigilante community

Barbara is Oracle, a legendary hacker and leader+coordinator of multiple superhero teams, top notch computer skills second to none as well as multitasking and crisis management

Jason is a master tactician, he can toy with people and factions in extremely long term plans to achieve the results he wants

Tim is the shoe-in to being the world’s greatest detective, he’s a very capable vigilante overall, and his computer skills are top notch, not that far behind Barbara

i don’t know if Stephanie is considered “the best” of any batfamily skill in particular, i suspect this may be due to writers’ sexism treating her more like an emotional support character to others rather than as her own character most of the time, i don’t actually read the comics that much and my information is what i decided should be canon based on what i learned from the fandom and in my opinion makes for the most compelling story, please do tell me if Steph has been written to be exceptional even in the batfamily in any particular skill, she deserves to be

Cassandra is the world’s best combatant, hands down, she stopped and restarted a man’s heart to make a point using just a palm strike, in a front-on battle she can literally take anyone down before they can really perceive that she’s there, and her combat skills also happen to allow her to read people like an open book

Damian was trained by the league of assassins from birth, he’s extremely capable in everything in a similar manner to how Bruce is, his character arc is even not really about him learning how to be a badass vigilante and more about him learning how to express himself and connect with others

Duke is literally a superpowered hypergenius, i don’t think i can do justice to his abilities here so go look at his wiki page

Stop constantly making these people fight each other!!! There’s more to them than that, and it just makes for shitty stories!!!!

[japanese-cryptic-beauty]

The nightmare of Visual Novels

So, I found this one website recommending Visual Novels (VN) for reading immersion. (Not to be confused with "graphic novels" which is, at its heart, a fancy term for comic book...) These are basically computer games where you follow a sort of branching story. A very typical one is the "dating sim" where you interact with a variety of love interests and try to, well, "romance" them - by choosing actions they may like, playing the game multiple times to achieve different endings, etc.

Funnily enough I know the concept mostly from the world of anime and manga, one of these meta things where there are now stories being written about VN - which themselves are stories and a way of story-telling. For example, "The World Only God Knows", where a dating sim addict is called upon to romance "actual" girls to drive hellish spirits out of them. Or the hilarious "Romantic Killer", where a gaming addict is forced into living a dating sim scenario.

But this is not about dating sims or the contents of particular VNs, this is about learning Japanese. I came across a website recommending learning Japanese through VNs, and the arguments were convincing:

You get the dialogue displayed on-screen which allows for reading it carefully.

You typically also get a voice-over, so you get also additional listening immersion, something harder to do with, let's say, anime. (Because VNs pause after a certain point and give you time until you continue. Also, depending on streaming site, you don't get Japanese subtitles / CC captions. Like on major anime streaming site Crunchyroll which typically has none of that.)

You can enlist certain programs for capturing text from the most common VN engines to actually use a dictionary with it.

So, sounds great, right?

The Shit You Can't Buy These Days

Welcome to the world of modern capitalism, where the prevention of spending money advances faster than the ability to actually buy stuff.

Huh?

This starts when you try buying these things. The geniuses that try to sell us things have decided that it's not good if we can simply buy stuff. No, this content is surely for that person in that market and can not be had anywhere else. Fans of manga may already be aware of this - some English translations of manga can only be bought in English-speaking countries because obviously those could be the only people ever interested in them...

So, if you live outside of Japan, you obviously have no interest, and hence get no way, to buy Japanese language VN. You may be able to buy an overpriced translated version on some console somewhere, but we won't let you lay your fingers on our precious software, no.

Hurdle #1: Money, money, money

So, there's a site called "DL Site" where you can legally buy Japanese VNs and, surprise, download them. This site also sells for example manga.

One problem: Payment providers, at least the usual Western gang thereof, doesn't like this website. For some reason, payment providers or major credit card companies nowadays like to stay as far away as possible from anything that could be classified as "adult entertainment" - and frankly, many VNs have that vibe. Not all of them. But these payment providers either limit themselves to a squeaky clean portion of the store (manga only, though) or are not available at all.

Mind you, I wasn't hunting for smut. I merely was trying to buy a VN.

I then went on an odyssey for finding a way to pay. Most options were Japan only - either obviously so or more subtly. Credit cards only work if issued in Japan. At some point I got myself a LINE (the Japanese chat app) account to use LINE Pay - only to find out that I cannot transfer funds into it for no apparent reason.

I was about to give up when I found the solution for the payment problem, which is as obscure as it gets. The payment providers don't want to be associated with the content, but there's a companion site to DL Site where you can buy coupons. These coupons can be redeemed into points that are equivalent to Yen and which you can pay with on DL Site, circumventing the absence of Western payment providers. (It actually works just fine, but it does look a bit fishy at first...)

Problem #2: Nah-nah-naaaah-nah

By which I mean: You didn't think it was so easy, right?

Now that you legally own something you paid for and downloaded it unto your Windows computer, can you play it?

No!

For you see, the publishers of these games have quite some opinions as to who can play their games. "Japan only", that's what. Seriously.

What used to be the dreaded copy protection in decades past is now some silly gating of content behind dubious checks that are made to ensure that the Japanese content can only be enjoyed in Japan.

I don't even pretend to understand why!

Seriously, the software in questions may check:

Your timezone

Your language settings

Your input settings

Your locale (date, time format, etc)

And only if these are sufficiently "Japanese" it may permit you to actually play the game you own (after all, you entered your serial).

The lengths to which a game company goes just to prevent you from playing their game, not for pirating reasons, but simply for ensuring that you are Japanese, is absurd.

At first I tried to run the game inside a virtual environment, "Virtual Box", but no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't start there. It was quite a demanding little game... for something that plays some music and shows mostly static images and text.

But... do you really want to change all your content, input, language, and time settings to Japanese to start a game? Do you?

There's a way to simplify this a bit. You can have a second account on your Windows computer with all these settings in place, I called mine simply "Japanese". But frankly, that's also shit. Because to use a separate account you have to sign out of your main account, which closes all your apps, browser windows, etc. (Yes, Windows isn't exactly a true multi-user system in its consumer version.)

So this is a big hassle to just play a game for half an hour. (After all, you're brushing up your Japanese, you aren't fluent, so you'll probably tire of it at some point.)

Conclusion

Trying to lay your hands on a Japanese VN as a gaikokujin (foreigner) is a major hassle. Frankly, after managing to make the game run, I didn't actually play it because it had been so tiresome to actually make it work and there were major hoops to jump through just to get it to start.

Now, if you have a second computer, say, a laptop, this can all be navigated, but I spent hours on two separate days just to get to the point where the game was bought, downloaded, installed, and worked. The requirement to mangle some fundamental settings on my computer to just start many of these games doesn't sit well with me.

I never even installed the support for dictionaries because I felt I was done with it.

[princeescaluswords]

I was curious about fandoms having superficial readings of characters intelligences. While I know you’ve written about how Scott’s is minimized, I was curious about the inverse. I often see overestimations of some characters intellect. Usually the ‘nerdy’ characters, but who have their obviously ignorances. It’s mostly the fault of the writers defaulting to the know-it-all, but sometimes those characters are textually wrong but fans refuse to accept that.

Oh, I hate to break it to you, it's not superficial. This particular phenomenon dates all the way back to Plato: the idea of the Philosopher King. He argued that any society could only be just and free from evil once its rulers embrace wisdom and personal knowledge, and thus were able to rule from a position of understanding for the common good. They would use what they learned to move past selfish or destructive policies.

This idea permeates what is called 'Western Civilization' and influences various and wildly different applications ranging from the Divine Right of Kings to Anarcho-Syndicalism. Entropy, however, is universal, and what was once a thoughtful exploration of how to craft a better society has degraded to "the smartest guy should be in charge."

Unfortunately, the idea hasn't done well when it encounters racism, sexism, and classism. How many times has history witnessed white imperialists describing the non-white races they're intent on colonizing as 'ignorant' or 'superstitious' or 'driven by appetite and not reason.' How often were women excluded from political power because they were seen as overly emotional and thus not intellectually the equal of men? How often, even today, how often do you see billionaires automatically given the sheen of genius? That noise you hear is Plato spinning in his grave.

When you look at fandom behavior that way, it makes a lot of sense. All fiction revolves around conflict -- not necessarily physical conflict though it often is -- and most often the story progresses according to how those conflicts are resolved. In a stories with a lead protagonist, that responsibility is theirs. Fandom's praxis in that light becomes clear -- if they want the story focused on a particular character, then that character only has to be the smartest, and thus they should control how the conflict should be resolved.

And there is where the game begins. Fandom goes to great lengths to define the character they most value as the smartest and the character they see as an obstacle as the dumbest in order to argue for primacy.

Take Teen Wolf, my fandom. Scott McCall is the lead protagonist, and the show spends a great deal of time demonstrating why his way of resolving conflicts is to be valued. And yet, parts of the fandom will make any excuse to portray him as stupid, uneducated, and irrational. Then, they will choose another character -- usually a good-looking white male -- and trumpet their 'intelligence.' Stiles Stilinski is "always right!" even though he's not always right in any frame of reference. Derek Hale is superior because of his born wolf status gives unique insight into the nature of being a werewolf, regardless of his obvious and disastrous failures. Peter Hale is supposedly brilliant, except parts of fandom confuse immoral ruthlessness for actual solutions to problems.

Let's get specific and look at Season 5A, when Theo infiltrated the pack. Parts of the fandom make great hay out of the idea that Scott didn't immediately accept Stiles's intuition that Theo, the man who had just come to Scott's rescue, was sinister. Now, of course, they pretend not to have watched Scott did investigate the dangers of Theo not being who he said he was. They pretend not to have watched that no other character accepted Stiles's accusation at face value. Most of all, they pretend not to have watched Stiles get completely manipulated by Theo as well. Stiles's correct intuition must serve as proof that he deserves to be 'in charge', i.e. the lead protagonist, even though his intuition has microscopic evidence to back it and is a product of natural suspicion magnified by trauma-induced paranoia.

It's not just this show. Shadow and Bone's Darkling is another example of fandom trying to have another character usurp the lead protagonist because he's "smarter." This is the motivation behind many fandom arguments about who is the most intelligent, because of the idea that society should be focused on those people who can lead it most effectively. It's most often applied to white male characters, because there's a cultural tendency in the United States to see white men in that role, but it doesn't have to be.

[cptn-m]

One Piece chapter 1098 review

This is your content warning. I assume everyone who goes through these posts has read the relevant chapter first. You know what was in it. You know what I'll be discussing. Proceed at your own discretion.

This is a big one. Lots to talk about, lots to think about. A lot of… interesting reactions from fans on all corners of the internet that I want to reflect on. The first thing that stands out is the art. While mistakes have happened and corrections have been needed, the is the first time in 26 years we've seen Oda submit an unfinished manuscript. Other authors have done this in far rougher states far more regularly, but it's still a shame to see Oda break his streak. I wonder if something happened. A health issue? Scheduling with the live action? Perhaps a staffing one. The primary inking seems to be done across most of if not the whole chapter. What's missing is the erasing of pencil shading and sketch lines and the application of screen tones, which I understand to generally be the staff's job. Whether Oda finished the inks so late that these final touches couldn't be added, or if something happened to the normal screen tones guy, it's hopefully a one off.

If it's not a one-off (and a handful of panels with leftover pencil shading from the last chapter do suggest a slightly more ongoing deadline crunch) we might be back to two weeks on one off from next year to keep this from happening again. But that's a concern for after the November/December break season.

Oda delves into some heavy topics this week, and the collective gut reaction of the fanbase has been explosive. It's interesting to look at how much of an impression this particular chapter has made, given that we've been able to infer that these sorts of things happen for a long time now, after seeing the Celestial Dragons taking slave wives at Sabaody, the Boa sisters' slavery-related trauma that left them distrustful of men, and the story of the girl who took her own life after being freed that one commoner sought revenge on the Donquixotes for. Perhaps it was the degree of ambiguity the previous hints afforded. Sure, you have to stretch for it, but you could say those older examples don't have to lead to sexual assault. Ginny returning with an infant who very obviously takes after her is a tougher hurdle to throw 'he wouldn't really put that in a kids' series' at. Even so, Oda is careful about nowhere coming close to even using the word 'rape,' let alone actually depicting it. The reader is still expected to connect the dots. It's a nonconfrontational method for putting this dark subject on the page in a way that will hopefully not disrupt its young adult rating or alienate the portion of its audience that's sensitive to the topic.

Looking over the weekend's spoiler discussions, some of the fanbase is kinda treating this like Oda put a Berserk-level scene in the series out of nowhere, when the truth is that he's done everything he can to hold the subject at arms' length. Never shown or stated, but told through heavy implication. Ginny comes back ravaged by a disease (despite what some people are saying, there's no real reason to believe it's an STD) that conveniently disfigures her beyond the point that any distressing physical wounds from her abuse as a slave would be recognisable and kills her outright before there's any chance to dig into the trauma, the feelings and the ordeal of recovery and living on. One Piece is not talking about rape this week. It doesn't want to. There's an almost mystical, stork-like quality to the way Ginny vanishes for two years and returns with a baby and no chance to say more about where it came from beyond what we think filled in that gap in her timeline. The inferred conclusion is easy to see for grown adults like I assume most of us here to be, who've seen this subject matter covered before and have no allusions about the small, personal evils humans are capable of inflicting on one another. But I do wonder how much of the series' younger audience, that makes up so much of the Japanese readership, is going to be able to read between the lines, or what their prevailing interpretation will be. If you're fanciful enough, (like the people who think Mother Caramel and the other orphans simply ran away and hid instead of getting eaten by Big Mom) you can headcanon up a version of events where Ginny smuggled out the child of another slave, or found an orphan she couldn't abandon on the way back to Sorbet, and while evidence in canon will strongly resist those ideas, it doesn't outright contradict them.

And I'm sure debates will rage about whether or not this was an appropriate way to handle a topic so sensitive to so many. I don't think there's any such thing as a qualification to objectively judge such a thing. What shocks, what feels blunted and what does and doesn't scan as sincere is going to vary for each and every one of us. For me, while I definitely wouldn't point to this chapter as a go-to example of handling rape in fiction, the implications-only, arms-length approach keeps it from feeling like an edgy shock value move. For a series that doesn't have the tone or the time to go all the way into the tempestuous introspection of real sexual violence-related trauma but still wants to be true to the darker corners of its established world and the history it draws on, this was probably the safest option, and smartly chosen.

It's a shame to see Ginny go so abruptly and so badly though, right after two chapters of getting to know her. For all my overanalysis and cautioning above, my gut reaction sits as the first reply to the Arlong Park Forums spoiler thread, and holds true to the full chapter release. "Fuck me, that's dark." My mouth fell open as I realised the story being told. No one should be surprised that Ginny died, but I expected it at the climax of the flashback, with at least a chapter's warning that it was all coming to a head. I am well and truly caught off guard by this one, a swift jab in the gut out of nowhere, and the flashback isn't even done yet.

On Ginny's death, we have the also somewhat sensitive topic of female characters being 'fridged.' That is, being assaulted and killed for the sake of giving a male character something to angst over, a trope that gives some readers a feeling women are being treated as disposable. I may be swinging at ghosts here, but I feel like I've seen just enough people mention this (and the following point) on different corners of the internet that it's on my mind. I'm not going to say that Ginny doesn't tick the boxes for this trope, but I also have to wonder what the small number of people saying this were expecting. One Piece is an action adventure story that puts death and maiming on the line as the ultimate stake and consequence for its characters regularly. It has a 26-year theme of inheriting the will and goals of loved ones who were unfairly snuffed out before their time. If you're doing these things in a story, putting death on the line and defining your cast by the vows they made to the fallen, unless you make every character a man, you're going to end up killing off a woman for the sake of another character's growth at some point. Ginny joins the likes of Bellemere, Hiruluk, Tom, Olvia, Scarlet and Cora in dying tragically so a more main character can grow. Complaining about this in One Piece is the equivalent of asking for horror movies with more queer characters and calling it 'bury your gays' when typical horror movie things start happening to those characters. Context is important for judging the use of tropes like this.

And finally, there's been some chatter about Bonney's depiction in the story now that we know her true age. Egghead's costume design has been very biased towards female fanservice and low camera angles, and it does scan a little offputtingly to have included her so heavily in that. Especially with some people noticing Sanji acting significantly less heart-eyed toward her than most women, implying she's exempt from some of the stuff normally aimed at adult female characters. But my gut reaction isn't as visceral as others' have been. Like, usually the skeevy anime trope is the opposite, the young-looking character who's really a hundred years old, reading like a truly desperate attempt to justify gawking at kids if they're just 'wise beyond their years' or some shit. But the opposite scenario, someone being this much younger than they appear, is so outside the realm of reality that it's not really worth discoursing about.

And there is a weird vibe in some of the comments on that. Especially when they're saying 'how could Oda draw a 12 year old like this' but the example used is just her normal outfit, which is just short shorts and a tank top that could easily be worn out in pubic on a hot day. Feels like they're saying 'how dare a person I'm ultimately not compatible with initially seem attractive!' Like it's somehow confusing that Bonney would look good at a glance and then not be actually appropriate to be with when you learn more about her. Acting led on by it even. Strange and uncomfortable take from certain corners of the internet. How do these people deal with seeing in the real world who look pretty but have an incompatible personality, or interests, or politics, or lifestyle? Sure, the reason isn't normally going to be 'turns out she's mentally 12,' but you're going to struggle if you can't mentally pivot from 'looks interesting' to 'off limits' easier than that.

With all that heavy stuff out of the way, let's enjoy some worldbuilding and fun details. Did you notice in the montage toward the end of the chapter that Kuma actually got that iron cage crib built? Cute, but you have to wonder the impact of sleeping behind bars on a baby's development. How about the crucifix on the church wall? It's got split ends like the cross seen on Oars' loincloth and carved on the walls of the secret straw hat room, and where the arms meet is a symbol not unlike Alabasta's flag and the Kozuki Family crest. Could Kuma's religion be more than just a stock standard Christianity stand-in?

The contrast between the shots of Kuma's home life with Bonney and his battles as a revolutionary makes for a fantastic montage through the middle of the chapter. The wartime shot at the top of page 9 is super intense, it's going to absolutely be a highlight when it's funny cleaned up. Bonney makes for a cute and charismatic kid, with the emergence of her present-day brashness a comedic highlight. Where does a girl raised almost completely indoors pick that stuff up?

And we go from the extreme gestures right back to scenes of childishness as she grapples with her developing illness and naively misunderstands the timeline she's been put on. Poor girl. The Sapphire Scales illness is an interesting addition. Like I said above, it doesn't scan as an STD-analogy. Transmissibility is never brought up as an issue in all of Kuma's time in close quarters with Bonney, and comparisons are made to White Lead Sickness. That makes me think it's a genetic issue. And what better kind of malady to bring Vegapunk into this flashback to treat, given his work on genetics with MADS. I don't think it's her Devil Fruit keeping her alive in the present. If anything, rapidly aging to appear as an adult would force the disease to advance faster. Having the skill to age up herself while ageing down the disease isn't outside the realm of possibility for shonen writing, but I wouldn't expect it of a five-year-old. Plus, the disease didn't return to an unaged state the same way she did when the sea water (presumably) nullified her powers.

Bonney not being Kuma's biological child is an interesting development given her distorted future that took on his body shape. But then, it's not like we've seen enough Buccaneers to know for sure that the bulky frame is a trademark of the race. Sure, they're said to be tough, but this is One Piece. Scrawny characters have shown incredible strength and durability, and many obstinately normal humans have had proportions far more variable and exaggerated. I see no reason a (one Piece world) human couldn't achieve Kuma's body type with the right gym routine and a bit of dedication. But we'll see.

And we end on a stinger for the next chapter, with King Becori's return. Where did he go, I wonder? Up to Marie Geoise for who knows how many months or years of bootlicking? And who ruled while he was gone? But with this, we can perhaps see the rest of this flashback taking shape. Kuma, in no mood to see his daughter's limited time get cut any shorter, confronts the king directly, inadvertently ends up put on the throne, perhaps similar to how Dalton was able to be legitimised after ousting Wapol. With Government connections, he's able to reach Vegapunk and petition to have Bonney's life saved. But because of his history as a Revolutionary, the Government doesn't let him have what he wants for free. But who could refuse, in his position?

I remember writing during Oden's flashback a few years ago that I was enjoying the scenes playing out and seeing the long-hinted at backstory getting filled in, but that I was in no danger of weeping for Oden. There was an emotional investment that I never quite made in that story. Maybe it was because we knew about about Oden's death in advance that it was too foregone a conclusion, or maybe it just wasn't the right story to appeal to my tastes. The contrast here is that I'm genuinely feeling things at the twists and turns of Kuma's flashback. This is not just a good read to quietly enjoy, it's getting a genuine emotional rise out of me. Highs and lows of Wano be damned, Oda's still got it.

As a final thought, this installment brings us to the 10th chapter of volume 108, but probably not the last. This doesn't feel like an ending cliffhanger yet. But I can't see the flashback ending in one more chapter either. Are we going to get two 12-chapter volumes in a row, or will the volume gap simply cut through Kuma's story?

Older chapter reviews and other writing on my Wordopress!