#I only cause another problem for them and they can tell me how immature I am and I need to take more responsibility

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Original Sin: The Failure of the Dancestors

Establishing an Eden-like paradise from which there is some departure through sin is sort of the boilerplate basis for religious lore. [...] The failed players from peaceful Alternia made a classic "deal with the devil" move by causing the scratch after being given a choice by the mother of all monsters. (Echidna. Hey, she's a big snake!) By doing so they brought Scratch into their universe, and therefore all the things you'd expect that comes with summoning the devil.

Andrew Hussie, Formspring, Aug. 12, 2011.

Warnings for: Mostly? I'm going to be really mean to the dancestors, so if you aren't here for a thorough (and I mean thorough) dancestor takedown, please do not read this. Ableism, questionable consent and outright non-consent, horrific interpersonal relationships, and Cronus ahead.

Overview

I hesitated to write this because I know there will be some really controversial interpretations in here. Many of the circumstances I bring up as failures on the Dancestors' part are interpreted by the fandom as positive things. A common one I've run into before is Latula x Mituna, where I maintain it's bad, but the fandom often sees them as cute. I'll also be condemning things like Horuss's plurality, or Cronus's kinning, not because I have any beef towards this stuff IRL, but because they're framed as failings on the characters' part within the context of the comic, and I'm analyzing the characters within the context of the comic. I'm not asking anyone to agree with me, but I am asking that you approach this essay with an open mind, and not send death threats over a silly webcomic from the early 2010's. I would not be asking for this if it hadn't already happened, which was embarrassing for all of us TBH.

The Dancestors, as made clear from the Hussie quote, are the story's original sin - the initial failure point from which all the comic's problems stem. Their role in the story is antagonistic - with very little exception, the Dancestors are not meant to be sympathetic, and/or their flaws outweigh their sympathetic qualities. Every single one of them succumbed to some major failure (some their own fault, some brought on by others on the team), and practically only Porrim showed any improvement after death.

There's another really important thematic shadow hanging over them: if Homestuck is a coming-of-age, then the Dancestors represent a prior generation that reached physical maturity, but failed to grow up.

[The dancestors' choices] resulted not only turning Alternia into a planet full of violent murderers, but it only technically granted them what they wanted with a huge caveat, as is the case with such ill-advised bargains. The players were strong enough to win, but made a terminal universe, were barred from entry, hunted by a demon, and then started killing each other.

They're an older generation defined by how entitled and immature they are, who invited terrible forces into society and allowed the perpetuation of cruelty to continue after them. In other words, theyre boomers. It's important to note that they literally had the choice, before their Scratch, to prevent the birth of LE by simply choosing to let their species die with them - but they made the selfish choice of what was, functionally, having kids:

The heroes could either accept their defeat along with the extinction of their race, and put no others at risk. Or, [Echidna] could show them a path to a second chance, to a reality in which the chosen heroes of their race would be strong enough to succeed with ease, and claim the reward.

For more on Homestuck's coming-of-age, anti-fascist, and feminist themes, please see my essay on the Alpha Timeline. Note that I have an updated opinion: the ending was, in fact, bad on purpose, because it was a continuation of the theme of narration needing to be refuted - "who's telling the story, and why are we listening to them?" You can read more about that here. Sorry to have to link two long essays at the beginning of a really long essay, but these are the backing arguments to many of the claims I'm about to make.

I also want to refute a common fandom belief. A take I commonly see is "the dancestors are one-dimensional assholes as a snub to the fandom" - this is not true, at least to any extent moreso than the Alternian trolls.

Yes, the dancestors are riffs of Common Fandom Types of Guy, especially Types of Guy on Tumblr while the comic was being written. However, the beta trolls/kids are ALSO Internet Types of Guy - the reason the trolls are named "trolls" is because part of their original conception was that they each represented a common type of forum troll. The dancestors aren't making fun of the audience any more than the Alternian trolls are, since Hussie got his start on fora.

Moreover, they aren't actually one-dimensional, or at least not in a way meant to be a snub to people. In fact, I find the entire attitude people have that they're somehow owed the dancestors being "good" or "likable" weird. The dancestors, as I said before, are antagonistic - if not at times outright villainous. They're the story's cautionary tale, a look at what happens when a session fails and the kids in it don't grow up.

On the whole, they simply don't need a bigger role in the story than just existing, as their past actions are what spurred the plot into action, and their narrative utility now is as a window into those. Moreover, if you read between the lines and analyze them a little beyond the surface, there's actually a lot going on, which I hope to uncover in this essay.

On the Topic of Kid-Kissing

It needs to be addressed now and needs to be addressed early. The dancestors are physically 19, and the beta/alpha kids are 16 at the oldest and 13 at the youngest. Lots of the dancestors are uncomfortably okay with pursuing romantic relationships or performing romantic acts with these actual children. Cronus gets the most flak for it, but the list includes:

Cronus, who asks Eridan on a date,

Meenah, who has a "manic obsession" with Karkat, and later dates Vriska,

Meulin, who eagerly offers to ship Meenah with Karkat in red, and gets really excited about shipping the children in general, calling them her "gay babies",

Aranea, who's willing to smooch Jake in a sexy way as part of healing his brain because she thinks he's attracted to her.

Now, as gross as this all is, I do think it serves a narrative purpose. One can debate whether that narrative purpose was worth its inclusion at all, but I'm personally going to bypass this discussion since this damn essay is long enough. At least I'll clarify what I believe the narrative purpose is:

It was an extant trope at the time of the comic's writing (which has thankfully fallen out of favor) that an adult character would date a highschooler in order to show how immature, and not suited for adulthood, the adult was. One of the most famous examples of this is Scott Pilgrim's relationship with a high schooler in Scott Pilgrim, something other characters call him out on constantly.

Given that basically none of these dancestor/child relationships are intended to be read as comfortable, pleasant, or even good (I'll get more into this later), I fully believe that this is the reason for their inclusion in the story: a demonstration of the dancestors' immaturity and failure to grow up, such to the point that they see actual children as viable dating partners.

Finally, while most of the dancestors have very limited screentime, one thing we DO have is all their classpects. I'll be using my definitions, which you can find here. Please note that, while that essay does not have any textual evidence (as it was already 10k words long without any), I'm willing to back up every claim in there with textual evidence upon request.

The TL;DR is that class is correlated with character arc and starting circumstances, while aspect is correlated with base personality traits, and what qualities would make the character a successful (and unsuccessful) hero of said aspect.

I firmly believe that, given what's in the comic, it's entirely possible to deduce what each class and aspect actually do, so being provided with every Dancestor's classpect means that we have a very powerful vector by which we can understand how their tragedy unfurled.

So please join me as we turn over this big rock and take a peek at all the skeletons living in the dancestors' closets. There are a lot of them, and they are rancid, but the complex ways they interlock are endlessly fascinating, and I hope you walk away from this with some new insight, or at least a new perspective.

Establishing a Baseline

First and foremost, let's factually review the events leading up to the dancestors' Scratch, organized in the way that makes the most sense to me. Many of these events don't have any set timelines, and aren't even described in relation to each other, but by going over them in general, we can get a big picture overview of the tragedies, and it helps to make sense of the interlocking nature of their failure.

Pre-Game

The dancestors grow up in a version of troll society as designed by Feferi Peixes, where the main difference between the two is that "culling" means "coddling excessively" rather than killing. Therefore, casteism still exists, but usually does not have as life-threatening effects. Characters who would've been culled on Alternia are likewise targets for culling on Beforus - this is most relevant to Mituna and Kankri.

Meenah finds the idea of becoming the next empress so distasteful that she flees to the pink moon, where she finds and transcribes the code for SGRUB and bothers her friends into playing it with her, in large part because it promises an escape from her responsibilities.

Cronus believes he's a chosen one destined to defeat an evil wizard, who tried to kill him when he was a wiggler. The story is one part Harry Potter and Voldemort, and one part Definitely About Lord English.

Kurloz and Meulin are probably dating in red, and Kurloz and Mituna are probably dating in pale.

Latula suffers an injury that leaves her unable to smell, something she remains insecure about for the rest of her existence. Communing with her lusus à la Terezi teaches her "new ways to smell".

Damara and Rufioh are dating in red.

Kankri was likely culled on sight, while Mituna was destined for one of the highest/"cushiest'" degrees of culling possible, echoing Karkat's and Sollux's relationships with culling.

Porrim is being trained for the breeding caverns as a jade-blood, and is not happy about it. It's likely that jades are the caste with the least privileges and freedoms, given the culling system (yes, I know culling is still a form of oppression, but it's still a cushy position to be in, compared to jades being forced to work breeding duties by birth).

During the Game

All of this happens over the course of six years.

Mituna spends the whole game attempting to warn his team to stop being such assholes or else something really bad is going to happen to them, using the prophetic insight he has as a Doom player.

Meenah starts cruelly bullying Damara, under the supposed motivation of "trying to galvanize the team into action".

Porrim outright ignores frog breeding, opting instead to go on a bra-burning rampage across her session.

Meulin is shipping her friends. Due to her Mage powers and predilections, not only do these ships come true, but they're really unhealthy and toxic as a rule.

Horuss begins an affair with Rufioh.

Kankri argues with himself nonstop, rendering most memos pointless.

Kurloz has a terrible nightmare and accidentally deafens Meulin, an act he finds so shameful that he stitches his own mouth shut. The two break up, but are still "very close friends"/in a situationship.

Someone talks Cronus out of his wizard beliefs, likely Kankri, and Cronus completely loses faith in magic, as well as a sense of identity. This is really bad, given what Hope does.

Meenah finds out about Rufioh and Horuss's affair and uses it as bullying fodder.

Damara snaps, kills Meenah, renders Rufioh a quadruplegic, and begins to perform acts of "timeline sabotage," which are even more impactful given her Witch class. It's heavily implied that Damara is the cause of the dancestors not performing their own ectobiology, the glitch that rendered their game unwinnable and serves as a "calling card" for LE.

Mituna tries to divert a terrible tragedy, something "only Kurloz was witness to". Said tragedy is implied to be Kurloz's Prince meltdown, and Mituna fails, rendering him brain damaged to the extent that he can no longer think or speak coherently. The team does NOT heal him or even reference TRYING to heal him, as it's implied they're more comfortable with him like this than they were with him telling them they were all doomed assholes.

Kurloz fully commits to his doomsday clown religion and begins using Meulin and Mituna as hynopuppets/conduits to bring about the end. It's likely that they rope Damara into their religion at this time.

Latula and Mituna start dating in red. For various reasons I'll get into later, this relationship seems to have started AFTER Mituna's injury.

Meenah bakes a cake. Isn't that nice.

It's never made very clear how long it took for all of this to go down, but the way it's framed is that everything major happened fairly early on, before the Reckoning, and they spent the rest of their session faffing around. While the beta kids have a nonstandard-ly short session, the beta trolls have what seems to be a more standard timeframe of about 612 hours, or several weeks. Again... SIX YEARS elapse. The dancestors reach the age of physical adulthood within the game.

Finally, seeing no way out, Aranea goes to Echidna for her quills in order to initiate the Scratch. The Choice that she's given is to immediately stymie the harm the dancestors' actions will bring (LE) by letting their species die with them, or to try again by passing the buck onto the next generation of heroes. The pick is obvious.

Damara, who's been uncooperative since she snapped, chooses to help out with the Scratch, muttering that everyone will "get what they deserve".

Meenah uses a tumor-like bomb to kill them all just before the Scratch goes off, in the window where god tier immortality pauses before bringing them back. This allows them to exist in the afterlife with memories fully intact. It's not fully clear how many of them achieved god tier before dying.

Afterlife

Meenah stays in her castle, echoing the way she fled responsibility to the pink moon, for the millenia that her friends have been mingling in the afterlife. Her descent from her castle after LE starts popping bubbles is the first time she's interacted with her team since she died.

Porrim is the ONLY dancestor that shows improvement or reflection, coming to view her frog breeding duties as something she probably should have paid more attention to, and toning down her feminism to thoughtful, reasonable critiques. This still doesn't excuse her total bystander nature while everything else was happening, which continues into the afterlife, but it's nice to see that she's doing better, since that's so rare in this team.

Kurloz starts readying for Lord English's birth, building labyrinths in the afterlife and using Meulin and Mituna as mind-controlled helpers (and possibly Damara as well).

Meulin and Horuss start dating in pale after Horuss is inspired by the meowrails. Despite Horuss's internal anguish and anger, he's been told by Meulin to cover it up with forced positivity no matter what.

Cronus is kinning a 1950's human greaser, an act which he himself admits is probably just a cry for attention, and a greater symptom of his struggles with personal identity in the wake of losing interest in magic and wizardry.

Rufioh wants to break up with Horuss, but doesn't have the backbone to to get pushy with these requests. Horuss has difficulty hearing what he doesn't want to hear, so Rufioh winds up wilting and agreeing to continue dating him every time he tries breaking up with him.

Aranea... does all that, spurred on by a desire to be important.

Meenah decides to encourage Vriska to shirk responsibility, running off with her and starting a romantic relationship with her.

Woof, that's a lot! So, now that we've established an overview of what went wrong, something I should probably note:

It's not JUST that Damara caused the timeline glitch that retroactively summoned LE, or JUST that Meenah bullied her. When I say that the dancestors' failure is multivalent and interlocking, I mean it - especially once you get into the implications of their classpects. Cronus being a Bard of Hope - Hope being the aspect of making fake things real - losing faith in his own destiny of defeating an evil wizard likely had some karmic contribution to the first half of that destiny - the existence of the evil wizard in the first place - coming true. So on and so on. So the rest of this essay will be a deeper look into each individual dancestor, and the contributions they made towards the ultimate blowout.

Porrim Maryam: The Ultimate Bystander

Porrim's drama is the least connected to the various conflicts suffered by everyone else, though it's one of the most consequential.

The Maid of Space was of course our all-important Space player and Stoker of the Forge, 8ut as you know, we never made much progress on the frog 8reeding front, or really any aspect of the game 8efore the reckoning. [...] She challenged these roles wherever they existed in 8eforan society, as well as where she found them woven into our session, in kingdoms, class assignments, consort culture and the like.

While she is pretty much the only dancestor that reflected on her failures - having come to a realization after her game's Reckoning that she probably should've paid attention to frog breeding - the fact remains that she totally ignored this duty in favor of going on a feminist rampage.

I do actually believe there is merit to her viewpoint, something Hussie appears to agree with:

HUSSIE: Porrim is better at social justice than Kankri because she isn't a boring asshole. [...] Porrim wants there to be equality for ladies. Not everybody cares about that though, which makes it hard for people like Porrim. That's the way it is in the real world. CHALLENGES.

Note that while Hussie is a deeply unreliable narrator (he describes his own self-insert as "oafish" and "buffoonish" in the book commentary, and his narration being biased and full of holes is a very deliberate choice), there is still meaning to be gleaned from his words, especially once you identify what biases he's performing. In this case, I think he's being genuine, as Homestuck has a deeply feminist and anti-patriarchy message overall, which I touch on in my essay about the Alpha Timeline.

However, Porrim's failure is that, as correctly as she identified sexism as being an issue, she became tunnel-visioned on it to the point that she failed to do anything useful at all. Frog breeding, AKA creating a new universe, is practically the entire point of SGRUB, and though her energies could've been focused on creating a new world free of sexism, she prioritized nitpicking it in session constructs.

Her other big failure is that of being a total bystander. In her conversations with Latula and Meenah, Porrim doesn't make any references at all to the bullying Meenah perpetrated, and otherwise seems surprised at the Redglare/Mindfang situation. She's also known as promiscuous, willing to sleep around with nearly anyone, tacitly approving of her teams' actions. Much of her feminist rhetoric is undercut by the fact that she has no comment to make on the way Meenah - the team's rich fuchsia - was primarily targetting a rustblood immigrant. It's implied her constant bickering with Kankri was in part due to her complete lack of intersectionality (with the other, more major part being Kankri's misogyny, but we'll get to that).

Interestingly enough, these three failures - poor prioritization, tunnel vision, and bystanderism - are failures of Space. There are two ways for an aspect (which is associated with base personality) to fail - the first is a toxic overabundance of the aspect's natural worst traits, and the second is a dearth of its positive qualities, to the point of resembling its counterpart. Space is associated with cycles and interconnectivity, patience and passivity. Its players are distractible and frivolous, but kind and permissive. However, it's easy for Space players to become so distracted that they lose sight of the bigger picture - we see this in Porrim's poor prioritization, and the tunnel vision she incurs in pursuit. It's also easy for them to become so passive that bad actors take advantage, and this, too, is present in Porrim's complete failure to grasp her team's cruelties.

Maids, meanwhile, are victims of oppression, and start the game under some form of control. Jane's been bombarded with hypnotic subliminals her entire life, and is ultimately directly controlled hy the Condesce; Aradia is killed so as to be Doc Scratch's servant via the Handmaid, and Hussie even outright calls her a slave in his book commentary. Porrim is not an exception to this:

On 8eforus, well 8efore her drinker a8ilities had awakened, she grew up in the caste almost solely devoted to tending to the mother gru8, hatching the young and proliferating the 8rood. The jade 8loods were also an almost exclusively female caste, and she 8egan to resent the roles she was hatched into, designated for 8oth her class and gender.

Ultimately, Maids can't shake off their oppressors alone, and outside intervention is needed to rid them of their shackles. Nobody on Porrim's team seemed to give a shit about what she had to say, however, nor did they attempt to relieve her of frog breeding or attempt to alleviate her workload - leaving her ultimately shackled to frog breeding, which, aside from the final frog (usually implied to be long in the Space player's past), did not HAVE to be conducted by her. In fact, Echidna being Aranea's denizen, when she's normally associated with the frog-breeding Space player, further implies that it didn't necessarily need to be up to Porrim - perhaps the team could've come together to take up frog breeding, splitting the duties equally, freeing Porrim from oppression.

But that didn't happen, and thus, our Maid of Space is disconnected from everything but the breeding duties that bound her so.

Kankri Vantas: The Hemocaste's Number One Fan

Kankri is a casteist, ableist, slut-shaming misogynistic bootlicker.

I'm going to go a bit lighter on the citations, because he uses a hundred words where ten will do, but if you actually bother to read his diatribes, he's all-in on perpetuating oppression. Here's a quick rundown of some of the awful shit he's said:

He tells Mituna that Mituna is bad representation for disabled people, and basically tells him to his face that he wishes everything about him was different, likely as displaced jealousy that Mituna is dating Latula. This shows that his rhetoric is actually just a mask, a tool he uses to disguise his actual intentions.

He complains about how burgundies have to "check their privilege" because they don't know how good they have it compared to off-spectrums, showing that he resents it when others attempt to address their oppression.

He tells Porrim that he thinks misogyny isn't real, and then slut shames her by insinuating that she's even willing to go for the Mayor. Once more, a display of how he resents when others challenge his points, or try to take away attention from his causes.

He calls Horuss and Cronus's beliefs fake even as he's defending their right to believe in them, revealing that it's not about justice for him, but about whatever puts him in a position of power over the situation, as the quote-unquote "spiritual leader".

Kankri was very likely culled on sight for his mutant blood color, mirroring how Karkat would've been. He clearly has complicated feelings about this, as he reacts very poorly to Porrim's mothering, but it's also the source of his deep-seated casteism, and the favor he shows towards the two sea dwellers on the team. While it IS a form of oppression, those culled on Beforus ARE provided extremely comfortable lifestyles, and Kankri would've been subjected to an intense amount of pampering, being a mutant.

In other words, he's been taught his whole life that he's a very special little boy, and he both feels entitled to the emotional energies of others, and gets upset when he isn't the center of attention. In contrast to Porrim, who had valid points but prioritized poorly, for Kankri, "social justice" is just a smokescreen he uses as he verbally browbeats his team into falling into line. Any valid points he makes are twisted to suit his personal agenda of being the loudest voice in the room, and he hides behind them so nobody can properly challenge his position. The actual oppression he did face, and a genuine desire buried deep down to make the world a better place (which I do believe exists), are ultimately undercut by his willingness to play victim in order to sate his own desire for attention and control.

Kankri himself didn't contribute as directly to the team's failure, but he was, overall, a binding force of stasis - perpetuating societal prejudices, fixing them in place. It should be no surprise that the two who find Kankri the most tolerable - Horuss and Cronus - are the two biggest casteists on the team.

Blood is about bonds - familial, platonic, romantic, and societal. It governs oaths, promises, compatability, and all interpersonal relationships. Its players, in contrast to Breath's free-spirited youthfulness, tend to be neurotic and controlling. At their best, they're mature, empathetic, and responsible, and indeed Karkat is one of the most level-headed and generally correct members of his team when he's not flying off the handle, but at toxic overabundance, they become iron-fisted dictators, "my way or the highway" types - to the point of shirking their innate sense of empathy and natural compulsion to be helpful to others.

Seers, meanwhile, struggle with blindness - either by hubris and ego, or else by shame-induced self-infliction. Rose's ego prevented her from bonding with her mother, and her need to be the smartest person in the room let Doc Scratch manipulate her; she later copes with her grief by drinking herself stupid, opposite Light's association with knowledge and insight. Terezi boldly painted herself into a corner where the only option left was killing Vriska, and coped with the guilt by throwing herself into a toxic relationship with Gamzee, a Gamzee victory that triumphed over Mind's sense of justice and karma.

Kankri is so moved by ego - his selfish desires for a society that works best for him personally, and his confidence that he knows better than the rest of his team - that he's blind to how harmful his rhetoric is. He damages their ability to move forward by chaining them in place, an ultimate failure of Blood.

Moreover, he's also inflicted a "blindness" upon himself - due to his staunch celibacy, he doesn't seem to notice that he has clear red feelings for Latula and pale feelings for Cronus - and this is to disastrous effect. The motivator behind his cruelty to Mituna appears to be jealousy, and he interrupts a conversation Cronus is having with Meenah, where she's about to make him reflect on choices that are harming him, just in time to prevent Cronus from reaching his epiphany. In fact, it's implied that Kankri is the one who talked Cronus out of his wizard faith in the first place, which we'll get into later (this is the most direct contribution Kankri made to the dancestor's failure).

As such, our Seer of Blood is sightless, and through blindness both based in ego and self-inflicted, he can't see the damage he's dealing.

Cronus Ampora: Hopeless - And That's Everyone's Problem Now

Cronus is a nasty casteist fuckboy who's greatly disliked by his team, and also everyone else, for good reason. He's mostly irrelevant to everyone and failed to do anything of worth. The problem is, he's a Bard of Hope, and thus, was one of the greatest contributors to the creation of LE.

Cronus as we see him is easy to explain. He's fundamentally a directionless, shitty rich kid, who's never had real problems before, and thus, never had the kinds of formative experiences that would've built him a personal identity. In an effort to find something to give his directionless (after)life some meaning, he's decided that he's humankin, specifically a 1950's greaser. He's also trying to get laid for similar reasons. What else is there to do when you don't feel like you have a real personality, and thus, don't really know how to open up to others or connect on a deeper level, but still crave an intimate relationship of some sort?

The thing is, Cronus wasn't always this way, and in fact, started out his game quite different:

[H]e once had a deeply a8iding faith in magic, and dedicated himself to 8ecoming a great wizard. He 8ecame convinced he was hatched to defeat an extraordinarily evil magician, one he swore the angels foretold of. Though when pressed for the name of the man, he would not say it, claiming it was too dangerous to even enunciate. Part of his self-aggrandizing mythos was that this magician once somehow from afar tried to strike him down at a young age, so he would never have to face him. 8ut the evil spell was deflected, sealing the magician's spirit away in a series of unassuming vessels until he could find some other cunning way to enter our universe. The attack supposedly left him with his distinctive scar, which he was not reluctant to point out when trying to hit on me.

Now, while this is definitely Harry Potter, it's also worded so as to resemble Lord English, and this is not a coincidence. You see, Hope is a power that makes fake things real.

Believing in things reduces their fakeness attribute. It's the force that shapes your reality, used to snatch personal meaning from the jaws of a cynical and nihilistic environment. Could this be why Hope is framed as the most fundamentally powerful aspect?

Ultimately, it didn't matter if Cronus's stupid wizard faith (and it is framed as a faith, a religious belief - put a pin in this) was real or not. In fact, the more credible journey for a Hope player would be if his personal mythos were fake - because Hope would've made it real.

However...

8ut at some point he 8ecame disillusioned with magic. [...] Perhaps someone talked him out of his 8eliefs. May8e a friend close to him. Or, if one is to 8elieve his fantasy held any water, perhaps someone who was in league with the evil magician.

As all Bards do, he suffered a crisis of faith, and he was never able to recover. Now, the identity of the person who talked him out of his religion is never made explicit, but I'm firmly convinced it was Kankri. First of all, who else on the team would qualify as a "friend close to him"? While "someone in league with the evil magician" might refer to Kurloz, Meulin, or Damara, Cronus seems wholly unrelated to the latter two, never mentioning them once, and while he's "scared" by Kurloz, it's not enough to not hit on him.

However, "in league with the evil magician" can also be interpreted metaphorically - someone who represents the same values as Lord English does, especially those of misogyny, fascism, and oppression. Which, again, points to Kankri. In fact, the main interaction Cronus has with Kankri illustrates the harm Kankri is doing to him: right as Cronus is about to have a personal epiphany that his humankin schtick is doing him more harm than good, Kankri jumps in to guilt-trip him until he continues with the act.

CRONUS: to be honest, she might be right. sometimes i think i might only be saying im a human to get attention. maybe i should givwe it up. KANKRI: I'd 6e extremely disapp9inted t9 hear that, if it were true. That w9uld 6e such a slap in the face t9 all th9se wh9 kn9w themselves t9 6e an alien while trapped in the pedestrian 69dy 9f their 9wn race. It w9uld 6e unspeaka6ly invalidating 9f their struggles and massively triggering t9 their em9ti9ns.  #TW #invalidated struggles #triggered em9ti9ns KANKRI: 6ut f9rtunately, I kn9w y9u w9uld never st99p as l9w as that. Y9u understanda6ly have d9u6ts a69ut y9ur feelings and pr96a6ly d9wnplay them as a defense mechanism, since s9 few are prepared t9 rec9gnize the legitimacy 9f y9ur plight. 6ut I am, and I just wanted y9u t9 kn9w that I'm here f9r y9u, and am prepared t9 lecture t9 y9u extensively, I mean, listen t9 y9u extensively, a69ut y9ur ultra-imp9rtant pr96lem.

Fucking Kankri! He doesn't even believe in Cronus's act himself (calling it a "fantasy versi9n 9f [him]self"), but Cronus's conversation with Meenah is pale-coded, with Cronus being the only person on the team able to make Meenah have doubts about how awesome the Condesce (and by extension, her own worst qualities) are, with her able to pierce through Cronus's bullshit and make him rethink his choices. But Kankri has a palecrush on Cronus, so he cannot abide by Cronus having a pale interaction with anyone else.

KANKRI: Listen, I was d9ing y9u a fav9r. Y9u d9n't need t9 6e dating any9ne wh9 can't appreciate y9u f9r wh9 y9u really are[.]

But his interruption of Cronus's character development, and also his breaking of Cronus's faith, aren't just disastrous for Cronus's ability to self-actualize - remember, Cronus is a Bard of Hope.

UU: while the more passive bard coUld be seen as "one who allows x to be destroyed, or invites destrUction throUgh x," as if by the will of the aspect. TT: I'm obviously no expert, but that sounds like a pretty odd thing for a Bard to do. UU: maybe! it's a qUirky class. UU: somewhat like a wildcard role for a hero. very Unpredictable. UU: they are typically known for their spontaneoUs and dramatic story-altering inflUence on the fate of a party. UU: some of the more remarkable tales involve sUch parties, where the bard is single handedly responsible for their spectacUlar downfall or improbable victory. or both!

Bards act as a conduit by which their Aspect dramatically alters fate, for better or for worse, and Hope is a power that makes fake things real. Cronus had a Bard crisis of faith, never recovered, and, in his failure to do so, began to exhibit his aspect at its nadir - where Hope players should be idealists, dreaming up better futures with a naive and shameless sincerity, Cronus has become self-conscious, frustrated with himself and magic, and utterly materialistic, seeking only immediate physical gratification. Hope, at its worst, picks out such bleak possibilities to invest its incredible, reality-altering power into, that it actually serves to close possibilities and ruin everything - mirroring Rage's ability to tear down false truths.

It is, therefore, incredibly likely that the direct manifestation of his Bard of Hope abilities is the materialization of the first half of Cronus's faith - the existence of the evil wizard - and not the second - that he would become a wizard to defeat him. This is one of the single greatest karmic contributions to LE's improbable existence. Perhaps this is the source of Kurloz's pivotal nightmare, which would've sprung out of nowhere, given LE doesn't exist until after the Scratch? We can only speculate, but this seems to me the most likely source of Lord English worship within the dancestors - Hope made him real.

And so, our Bard of Hope is faithless, and by extension, hopeless - in such a way that he breathes active calamity into existence.

Mituna Captor: Tried to Warn Them, but Nobody Wanted to Listen

I'm going to preface this section with a small list of what we will NOT be discussing, not because the conversations aren't important to have, but because they are not relevant to his essay. First of all, I will not be litigating the issue of whether or not Mituna's portrayal of TBIs/neurodivergence/etc. is problematic. I will also not be discussing the greater conversation surrounding those with such conditions to consent romantically or sexually. These are important topics to talk about, but they're just not in the scope of this essay (it's long enough as it is!).

As a break from form, I'm going to discuss his classpect first. This is because the implications of his classpect provide vital context for how we are meant to interpret and understand Mituna's arc.

Doom is the aspect presiding death, sleep, the future, and endings. It sits opposite Life, as Life's equal-and-opposite, which helps shed some light on Doom-specific qualities, as we have little exploration into Doom itself. Most notably, our three Life players are stubborn optimists, and our two Doom players are mutable pessimists. Sollux is literally introduced by changing his mind about being introduced, before changing his mind a second time, while Cronus notes that Mituna has a long-running schtick of being wildly offensive, and then pathetically contrite. Mituna is stated to have visions of the future even without being one of the two future-sighted classes (Mage and Seer), making some degree of prophetic insight a part of Doom.

I'm also firmly convinced that it's Doom, and not being a Captor, that makes both Sollux and Mituna dual-dreamers. Most non-Seer/non-Mage players' main interaction with prophecy will be the clouds of Skaia or the whispers of the Horrorterrors while they're asleep, and being a dual-dreamer gives Doom access to both, as well as an extra "death" to spare - which Sollux makes great use of, as he arrives to his session dead. Moreover, being a dual dreamer allowed Sollux to be "half-dead" in the afterlife, granting him the special ability to leave - and navigate - the dream bubbles. This influence over the realm of the dead is notable, so please put a pin in it.

Heirs, meanwhile, bear a character arc of defecting from decadence. They're born into positions of wealth and comfort relative to their societies - John enjoys an upper-middle class lifestyle, with a supportive and loving father, and Equius enjoys being high enough nobility not to worry about culling, but low enough not to bear any pressing responsibilities, and has a supportive and loving lusus. Mituna, similarly, was born to a supportive and caring bicyclopsdad (as opposed to Sollux's, who was a big terrible idiot), with an eventual fate of being culled for his powerful psionic brain.

Before anyone protests that culling on Beforus is still a form of oppression - it's "a position of wealth and comfort relative to their society." Ultimately, being a stuffy capitalist isn't exactly a great destiny, and being a noble on Alternia still means being subject to a horrific system of murdering and being murdered. In a similar vein, Mituna's inheritance is a wolf in sheep's clothing. In fact, this exact wolf-in-sheep's-clothing nature of inheritance factors into the Heir's arc.

Heirs are on a ticking clock. Their aspects are powerful, but they struggle to control them. After all, they're a passive class:

He is the Heir of Breath after all. It's a passive class, and he's a passive guy. An heir, literally speaking, is one who inherits stuff.

And passive classes work best when they're allowing their aspect to be used for others:

UU: the +/- distinction can mean many things, bUt coUld be qUite roUghly sUmmed Up in this way: active classes exploit their aspect to benefit themselves, while passive classes allow their aspect to benefit others.

We see this with John, who gains the incredible power to retcon the story, unsticking it from the alpha timeline, but doesn't know how to effect useful change without guidance from others. Even Equius's first chronological expression of Void is his mere presence providing a shield for Vriska from Doc Scratch's omniscience.

But because of their privileged upbringings, it's difficult for them to know how to help others, or even that they should. John is goofy and friendly, but doesn't seem to notice that Dave is being constantly abused, and doesn't question the horrific violence of troll culture when Vriska tells him about it (something which Hussie chastises him for in the book commentary), while Equius's blind spots are even more glaring, given his casteism and complete obliviousness regarding his own fetishes.

Thus, like wealthy inheritors in real life, an Heir that fails to interrogate the systemic injustices of the system they were born into becomes swallowed up by their inheritance, another brick in the wall, rendering their aspect out of reach. John's retcon powers, before he gains control over them, nearly take him out of the story entirely (Breath and its associations with freedom and independence), while Equius succumbs to his fetish for submission and allows Gamzee to strangle him to death (Void and its associations with vice and sexual pleasure - Hussie notes on multiple fronts that Equius could've escaped at any point just by flexing his neck muscles, but chose not to because horny).

While we don't have very much information about Mituna before his injury, the dancestors' failure is a foregone conclusion; therefore, we can conclude that Mituna's current state is a reflection of his failure as an Heir, and subsequently being "swallowing up" by Doom. Mituna's injury is, within the context of the story, therefore a bad thing that happened to him, and thus, it reflects poorly on every other player who not only didn't heal him, but never mentions ever trying to.

It's here that I want to point out something odd about the dancestors as a group. Isn't it strange that they retained many of their injuries even into death?

Injuries don't need to carry into the afterlife - here Tavros is with his legs fully intact. Even if you assume that characters who consider their injury to be part of their identity, like Terezi and her blindness, therefore get to keep their body in that state after death, Latula clearly has insecurities about her sense of smell, Meulin was so disheartened by her deafness that she broke up with Kurloz over it, and there's no way that Mituna is happy about the fact that he can hardly string together a coherent thought anymore.

But remember, Heirs are experts at leveraging their aspects on others' behalf, and Doom has influence and sway over death and the dead. And so, on that note, let's actually begin analyzing Mituna himself.

The primary description we have of Mituna before his injury is this:

The Heir of Doom was once a powerful psionic. He was gifted with vision twofold, and had strong prophetic insights wherever a 8leak future was concerned. He had much to say when it came to warning us a8out the path of doom and destruction we were all headed for, 8ut no one took him very seriously. 8ut one day he lost all those a8ilities when he 8adly overexerted himself. It's hard to get any specifics from him, 8ut indications are that he applied every last 8it of energy he had toward some great act of heroism, saving us all from some looming threat. Not only did his exertion permanently 8urn out his psychic a8ilities, 8ut it left him somewhat... er. Incoherent.

Doom players tend to stagnate and stay in place. Their mutability, ironically, means they have a tendency to go nowhere. However, their pessimism can cause them to become fixated on these nowheres - to become so certain of an unhappy ending that they can become energized by the notion, steamrolling over others, which can resemble Life's stubborn optimism. It seems this may have been what happened with Mituna - though it appears to be far and away aggravated by his injury, there's an implication when he's talking with Meenah and Cronus that he was already prone to being wildly offensive and aggressive even before it:

CRONUS: your vwhole bifurcated demeanor is such an act. half the time you are noxious and incomprehensible, and the other half you are mild and contrite? sure, "PAL." CRONUS: as if im not SO on to you. you only pretend to say youre sorry to get girls to like you more. sure seems like pyropes a sucker for the ruse. like im not familiar vwith THOSE tactics. vwho do you think vwrote the book on that??

MITUNA: 817H1CH WH4Y D0N7 Y0U 5H00V3 M0Y R4D 1NJURJY P4N3L 1N7H0 URR N457H7Y 53XXXU4L3 PR1V457 P4R7H 0RF P3R3RF3R3R4NC3 MEENAH: thank fuck you were never a major playa at least from my personal vantage over the course a this ridicu huge narrative  #way minor character yo MEENAH: probably woulda offed my shellf even schooner if i had to hear you talk much  #really too bad since you got the bestest fishiest name of anyone #38( MITUNA: ..,.,..,,...,..,.,. MITUNA: 50RRY

What's worse, remember how I said earlier that it's implied that all the major problems occurred before their reckoning (which was likely on a timeframe of weeks or months), and then they spent six years faffing around in their session besides? This means that Mituna was left injured for six years, and not a single time does anyone mention even attempting to heal him. Even if you subscribe to the idea that their Life player's class precluded her from healing people (and it doesn't; the Helmsman's lifespan is explicitly extended by the Condesce's powers), Aranea's powerset is explicitly geared toward healing injuries of the mind:

ARANEA: I can see every fault and fissure in your mind. My vision 8-fold sheds light on every injury you have ever suffered, whether emotional or physical. ARANEA: I can repair it all for you, Jake. JAKE: (Oh no...) ARANEA: I can heal your mind. JAKE: (Oh n-n-n-) ARANEA: I can heal your soul. JAKE: N-n-n-n-n-n-n-nooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

... So why doesn't she? Why doesn't anyone? Well, the implication is... that he was annoying! He was the only member of the team who was trying to tell them to stop being such assholes, or else they would be hurtling themselves face-first into a catastrophe, and this was such a bummer and so unpleasant to hear (likely not helped by his aggressive and offensive way of wording things) that his team actually prefers him injured. At least this way, he isn't constantly calling them out for the horrible shit that they do to each other on a regular basis. Doom players are commiserators, not a healers, and their power lies in their ability to empathize and relate, opposite Life's tendency to charge forward, not caring who they trample on the way. Mituna was never able to tap into these powers of empathy enough to get people to listen to him, and he paid for this with his injury - the version of him his teammates prefer, because now they can take advantage of him.

Cronus does so most obviously, with his unwanted advances that Mituna sits there and takes because he can't reason well enough to escape of his own volition, but I posit - and will stand by this claim - that Latula and Kurloz, his two romantic partners, are taking advantage of him, too. Kurloz is implied to be directly puppeting him the way he puppets Meulin, the source of the "rumor" Cronus heard that Mituna is "lucid" when he's around Kurloz - in fact, it's implied that Mituna's injury was directly caused by Kurloz, as part of his Prince meltdown, something we'll get into more when we discuss Kurloz. I believe this is why several of the dancestors retain major injuries into the afterlife - in a dark reflection of how an Heir is supposed to operate, Kurloz is using Mituna as a conduit to exert influence over the afterlife, rendering Doom and death an oppressive force rather than peaceful resting place. I think there's a reason that Meenah questions the fact that some people have stayed injured when talking to Mituna. It should be his area of expertise, after all!

Now, while we are sidestepping the greater discussion overall of the consent of those with TBIs, I want to state that Mituna specifically, post-injury, cannot be considered fully consenting.

Cronus says the quiet part out loud:

CRONUS: i really feel like youre one of the only people i can open up to about my feelings. i guess it really does help to confide in someone vwho basically lacks the ability to repeat vwhat you say vwith any clarity or coherence, or evwen understand vwhat you said in the first place.

And unfortunately, this is pretty true: Mituna is impaired to the point where he:

Can't answer yes or no to whether he's god tier, because he doesn't know/can't remember/doesn't fully seem to understand the question.

Can't seem to understand that Meenah's asking him to strip because she's trying to check if he has god tier wings, instead enthusiastically assuming that she's asking to have sex with him.

Forgets how to take his own shirt off.

Doesn't understand that Cronus is touching him as a prelude to sexual intentions, just that he doesn't like it.

As is often the case with TBIs, he does have glimpses of clarity, but - whether this portrayal is offensive or not - the clear indication to me is that, within the context of the comic, we should come away with the understanding that Mituna can barely register what's going on, can barely understand what others are trying to communicate to him, and can barely voice what few thoughts he is able to string together. And I think it would also be one thing if he was simply born this way, but again, this is the result of an injury that is portrayed as a terrible thing that happened to him, and his injured state is not a reflection of who he was, and what decisions he would've made, before it happened.

[EDIT (March 02): This keeps being a contentious opinion that overshadows the entire rest of Mituna's section of the essay, so let me clarify.

The through-line of Mituna's entire character is that people are taking advantage of him. Whether or not he is, in fact, fully capable of consent (and this is dubious since it's dubious whether or not he's even fully capable of understanding what's going on around him - please note again that I am NOT saying people with TBIs/neurodivergence IN GENERAL can't consent, I am saying that IN MITUNA'S SPECIFIC CASE it's DUBIOUS), people are still using whatever impairment he has to take advantage of him.

I am also going to state again that whether or not it is depicted well, the comic has also chosen to portray Mituna's injury as one of genuine cognitive impairment. Sollux feeds his lusus mind honey in order to "[help] him not be such a complete idiot all the time. Merely most of the time, instead." The clear implication of Mituna begging for mind honey from his lusus is that it helps him think clearer and more lucidly, because his injury has left him cognitively impaired. Not only that, but this is a healable injury, given that Aranea stresses so strongly that she's capable of literally healing minds (not to mention alternate methods of healing available, such as Life powers or killing/god tiering him). There's a reason that Kurloz is capable of using Mituna as a hypnopuppet after the injury, but doesn't ever have seemed to before.

Because his condition is cognitive impairment that could be considered temporary, and because every single person pursuing him romantically is taking advantage of him, and because the team as a whole appears to have left him deliberately unhealed so that they can take advantage of him, and that's the POINT OF THE CHARACTER - to illustrate how shitty his team is by showing how many of them are willing to take advantage of him - I personally find it more thematically coherent if he cannot, in fact, be considered fully consenting, or at the very least for it to be intentionally uncomfortable that so many people in his team have romantic interest in him only now that he's cognitively impaired, because he's easier to take advantage of like this. It completely tracks with how many of them are also perfectly content to pursue literal children romantically.

Feel free to disagree on this specific issue, but please don't let that disagreement overshadow the greater point that I'm making, which is that Mituna is being taken advantage of. Whether or not he's capable of consent, his party is exploiting his injury-induced impairments - which could have been healed - for their own comfort and benefit. That's the point I'm trying to make here.]

And thus the Heir of Doom has inherited Doom in the worst way, becoming Doom as a force of oppression, bereft of empathy, understanding, or peace.

Latula Pyrope: Insecure Poser, Derelict Duty

Latula is a rad gamer girl... not! This is an act, and she even admits that it's an act.

PORRIM: I just think yo+u sho+uld be yo+urself mo+re o+ften. We already kno+w yo+u are stro+ng and go+o+d at games and all that. Yo+u have no+thing to+ pro+ve. LATULA: y34h. your3 prob4bly r1ght. LATULA: 1ts k1nd of str3ssful som3t1m3s, k33p1ng 1t up! som3t1m3s 1 forg3t to put z33s on th3 3nd of words, 4nd 1 r34lly str3ss out 4bout 1t.  #sp3c14lly wh3n 1m off my m3ds

So what's Latula's actual deal? Well, we get a really good glimpse of it here:

LATULA: for most of th3 t1m3 w3 kn3w 34ch oth3r, 1 w4s 4ll l1k3, WHY SHOULD TH3R3 B3 TWO B4D4SS, 1N-YOUR-F4C3 GRLZ 1N TH3 GROUP??? LATULA: sort of ov3rk1ll, r1ght? MEENAH: mehhh  #u searious? LATULA: 1 w4s k1nd of v13w1ng you 4s 4 comp3t1tor, 1n l1k3 4 two grl RAD-OFF. 1 w4s w1nn1ng 1n my m1nd, of cours3. but s33, 1 h4d 1t 4ll wrong!!!! MEENAH: did you LATULA: Y3AH! s33, 1m th3 t34mz R4D GRL, wh3r34s YOUR3 th3 t34mz B4D GRL!!!! 1t 4ll m4k3s p3rf3ct s3ns3! do3snt th4t m4k3 SO MUCH S3NS3??? MEENAH: that MEENAH: is the stupidest glubbin thing to require any sorta rationalization i ever heard  #p lame tules LATULA: s33 p4ych3ck? 1 kn3w 1 could count on you to b3 just1f14bly cyn1c4l 4bout my n3urot1c bullsh1t. you RUL3!!!

Latula is another character we get little direct development of, so I'll head into classpect analysis early, as she's much easier to understand once we have the context of Knights and Mind players.

Mind governs logic, rationality, justice, karma, behaviors, and consequences. The justice and karma associations are explained as a Mindy Thing by Latula herself:

PORRIM: Did yo+u no+t kno+w that?  #Mindfang gave yo+u five #Then left yo+u hanging LATULA: n3v3r r34lly thought 4bout 1t. but now th4t you m3nt1on 1t, th4t outcom3 m4k3s 4ll sorts of s3ns3 to m3. PORRIM: It do+es? Ho+w? LATULA: just do3s, b4b3z. PORRIM: I do+n't really understand karma. LATULA: th4ts c4us3 your3 not 4 m1nd pl4y3r.

Mind players tend to be cunning and manipulative. As the aspect presiding over the "effect" of cause-and-effect, they're finely attuned to the various webs of actions and consequences, but not so much to the inner workings of emotions and identity, which are Heart's domain, Mind's equal-and-opposite. As such, Mind players have a tendency to deemphasize their own emotions, substituting systems of karma, justice, societal attitudes, etc. to make decisions instead. We see this in Terezi's primary character struggle, the way she painted herself into a corner where the only viable outcome was killing Vriska, which happened because she consistently prioritized what Vriska karmically deserved over her own desire to maintain their friendship. In the worst case, their own identity and sense of self can become so confused that they seek out unhealthy relationships with others, in an attempt to supplement their poor sense of personal identity with some sort of external validation - you can see this in Terezi's toxic relationship with Gamzee, or, indeed, with Latula's relationship with Mituna (more on this later).

Knights, meanwhile, struggle with great insecurity. Often provided a significant role by the forces of fate and prophecy, they suffer deeply from imposter syndrome and/or self-loathing, and to help them cope with these feelings, they effect a facade that distances them from their aspect. Karkat, whose aspect presides over bonds and relationships, insists he's a big bad leader who doesn't give a shit about other people, and this breakdown of Blood's bonds culminated in Murderstuck. Dave, whose aspect presides over minutiae, goal-orientedness, and struggle, pretends to be a disaffected cool guy. In the worst case, their insecurity can become so intense that they invest completely into their facades, laying down their weapons and refusing the call entirely. Dave, at the belly of his whale, declares that he won't fight LE, as he "doesn't even think he did anything directly bad to them" - despite Dave literally being haunted by LE for his entire childhood under the guise of Lil' Cal, a detail he'd normally notice, given how often he secretly pays attention (which is a Timey Thing).

Latula struggles greatly with her own personal identity, her anxiety surrounding not having anything unique or standout about her in her friend group. To cope with this, she projects a facade that practically screams its "personality" from the rooftops - she's a dumb but radical "gamer girl". In doing so, she distances herself from her actual aspect - gone are Mind's cunning and intellect, which even Porrim calls her out on:

PORRIM: Yo+u can pretend to+ misunderstand all yo+u want, but we've talked abo+ut this befo+re and I kno+w yo+u're smarter abo+ut this than yo+u let o+n.

But, crucially, it also distances her from Mind's ties with karma and justice. Latula states that, not only does she dislike Aranea, but she can also absolutely understand the chains of karma and destiny that would've led to Mindfang and Redglare having such a contentious relationship that it led to them killing each other.

What else is Latula aware of, that she's completely chosen to ignore, out of desperate fear that it wouldn't suit her image, would make her seem less "r4d"?

Well... let's talk about Mituna. As we've already covered in his section, his ability to consent to this relationship is dubious, and the fact that it's dubious at all is already not a great sign. But I also want to bring up a couple other things. Did you know that, throughout all of Mituna's dialogue - including when he's enthusiastically trying to strip to have sex with Meenah - he doesn't mention dating Latula even one time?

Other characters will bring it up, but Mituna himself doesn't say anything about it. And, again, given that he's enthusiastically ready to get nasty with Meenah... one wonders if he's even lucid enough to know that he and Latula are dating.

MEENAH: look take off your rad shirt deal and lemme see if you got wings MITUNA: 3H3HH3H7H37H37H3 YY35 MITUNA: 7H0NGH7 Y0DU N3V3R 45K MITUNA: 817HCH 4C4M3 4R0UN57 70 MY W1L135 MU7H4FUCK5!  #W1L135 #MUH #FUX MITUNA: W417 H3LUP  #!!!!!!!!!! MITUNA: H3LP H0W D01 74K3 0FF MY CL07H37H 4G41N?  #8( MEENAH: yeah keep your shirt on you made that exchange beyond awful

Hey, maybe he does. He does get sad when Cronus tells him that Latula's only dating him out of pity. But still, the fact that it's in question at all - and also the fact that he's totally up for cheating with Meenah - are bad signs!

But even putting that to the side for a second... what does Latula even see in him? He's constantly saying slurs, he's down to cheat at the first opportunity, he's questionably capable of stringing a coherent thought together... well, good news! It comes up in conversation.

MEENAH: mother glubber MEENAH: seriously didnt think T)(ATD last LATULA: 1dk, th3r3z w4y mor3 to h1m th4n. w3ll, 4ll th3 t3rr1bl3 4nd stup1d sh1t h3 s4ys 4ll th3 t1m3. LATULA: 4nd 1ts 4lw4yz f3lt l1k3 h3 n33ds m3 1f th4t m4k3s s3ns3, 3v3n 4ft3r dy1ng. so th3r3z th4t!!!!

So, let's actually break down what she's saying here.

She feels the need to insult him while she's trying to come up with something nice to say.

She can't actually name anything specific that she likes about him...

Except that he's dependent on her. She likes him because he can't reliably function away from her. Woof.

But I also want to turn your attention to the phrase "way more to him". What does she mean by this, exactly? Does she mean some of the traits he had before his injury? If so, how come it never comes up that Latula wanted to heal him, or tried to heal him? In fact, Aranea - who, again, has a powerset specifically suited for healing minds - comes up in conversation between Porrim and Latula, and Latula doesn't mention ANYTHING about Mituna. She's even on friendly terms with Aranea.

PORRIM: Like, as far as I kno+w, yo+u and Aranea always go+t alo+ng. Didn't yo+u?  #Radglare #Kindfang LATULA: 3h 1 gu3ss. n3v3r sp3nt much t1m3 th1nk1ng 4bout s3rk3t, tbh. LATULA: 4lw4ys thought sh3 w4s 4 s3lf 4bsorb3d snooz3, 1f you r34lly w4nt to know.  #zzzz #not 3v3n th3 r4d k1nd of z33s

The only other possible indication that they might secretly have a good relationship is that she threatens that if Damara touches Mituna, she'll kill Damara. Now, we'll have to save a lot of this for the Damara part of the essay, but I'll note here that Damara is perfectly pleasant and kind to people she doesn't have any personal beef with, with the example being the human kids. However, since the bulk of her team were complicit bystanders (and even Meenah's friends) in her horrific bullying, she obviously has great anger at all of them. However... if there's any exception to the bystander disease that plagued her team, it would've been Mituna, the only one trying to warn them they were headed for a terrible, bleak ending. Wouldn't he, out of everyone on the team, be someone Damara is fond of?

So, there are several options here... but they ALL make Latula look bad to varying degrees.

Damara really IS a threat to Mituna.

This still makes Latula a bystander in Damara's abuse, and a terrible hypocrite, as Kankri says one of the things he likes about her is her egalitarian, non-casteist demeanor, but she totally let a fuchsia bullying a burgundy slide, but I suppose it's the option that makes her look the least bad otherwise. Again, it seems unlikely, given the way Damara operates, but it's technically possible.

Damara is on friendly terms with Mituna, but Latula doesn't know this, and thinks she's protecting him.

This means she's still a bystander, as described above, but ALSO seems unlikely given we know Latula has Mind insight into webs of karma, and is a lot smarter than she lets on, which brings us to:

Damara is on friendly terms with Mituna, and Latula is keeping them apart deliberately.

Unfortunately, it's possible... she's dating Mituna at all, meaning she's already taking advantage of him. Ultimately, we can't say for sure what's going on there, but I don't think it's as fully innocent as it seems, especially when so much of the rest of her and Mituna's relationship is cast in such a worrying light.

Knights are tasked with leadership positions, and their failures to live up to them result in the breakdowns of their teams. Karkat's failure to manage his team's interpersonal relationships blew up into Murderstuck, Dave's refusal to keep working towards their goals means the bad guys win, and Latula's refusal to engage with the lattices of karma within her team, or deal directly with her own insecurities, means that none of these injustices ever get addressed. Even though Latula isn't a casteists, casteists are allowed to continue on being castests; even though Latula has insecurities about her own disability, those who take advantage of disabilities proliferate; even though Latula commands great respect and admiration from her team, she never comes down with the hammer - and passively allowing evil to exist is the same as picking evil's side.

And so our Knight of Mind is too busy pretending to be something she's not, cutting off her intellect, cunning and acumen, rendering justice a non-entity.

Aranea Serket: Enabled Too Close to the Sun

Aranea's another one of those characters that doesn't really directly seem to contribute to the team's problems as much, and ironically, because we have so much more of her available to peruse, there's a lot less that I need to say. It's pretty obvious what happened - she was always secretly pretty selfish and cruel, and ended up desiring the spotlight so hard that she went power-mad, challenged the Condy, and GAME OVER'd herself.

As a result, I'm instead going to do a classpect read on her, so we can better understand what she contributed to her team before her death. Which was mostly nothing good!

Light is, fittingly, one of the most well-explored aspects in the story. Governing the realm of knowledge, fortune, and vision, its players are erudite, learned, and guiding stars. Light players tend to love the spotlight, to be important, to be acknowledged - this is the crux of both Vriska's and Aranea's respective arcs, but Rose also has a flair for the dramatic, and writes her long-winded Gamespot guide as a form of one-upsmanship to the other extant guides. This desire for external validation, however, means that they're always playing to an imaginary crowd, and they don't deal very well with having that attention taken away from them. Light players are volatile and complicated, attention hogs and drama queens, and they deal poorly with embarrassment, shame, and failure.

But we already know about Light. Light players won't shut up about Light. Let's talk about something a bit more enigmatic: Sylphs.

Aranea presents Sylphs as healers and nurturers, but she's hardly an unbiased source. In fact, bias happens to be a common thread linking Sylphs, and their active counterpart, Witches, together. The struggle at the core of being a Sylph is that Sylphs are enablers.

"Enabler" is the single most consistent word Hussie uses to describe Kanaya, and I don't think it's just her Space aspect at play. Even Kanaya herself discusses how one of her major personal problems is a fascination, an attraction, with "dangerous" people. We see this exact tendency mirrored in Aranea, who has a fascination with her team's resident Thief, too.

In fact, one of the most notable things about Aranea's little expositional blurbs is the way she downplays the cruelty of her teammates, especially Meenah. Meenah's bullying was horrific, constant, and had major undertones of racism/casteism, and here's how Aranea describes it:

ARANEA: So you did your 8est to rile up the crew any way you could. Appealing to peoples insecurities, 8uried hostilities, 8rewing rivalries... needling anyone you could into confrontation with others. Your theory was that increasing everyone's state of aggression would make them 8etter equipped to play the game. And you were sort of right a8out that! 8ut the Alternians would prove it. Not our group, sadly. ARANEA: The poor girl who took the 8runt of your 8ullying tactics was Damara Megido. You talked up her matesprit's 8etrayal making her feel even more dreadful, while pushing him further into the arms of her rival, until she simply snapped. She attacked him, paralyzing him from the neck down. You finally got the aggressive confrontation you were looking for. Unfortunately, you unleashed something even you weren't prepared for, and you had to deal with her yourself. After a long 8loody duel, she killed you. And you would have stayed dead if not for me! ARANEA: You never listened to me. You just kept needling and fussing and meddling until eventually you paid the price, and I had to 8ail you out.

Let's notice where Aranea chooses to put the focus: not on the cruelty of the bully's actions, not on the horrific pain and suffering that Damara must've endured, but on how ARANEA had to save poor Meenah.

In fact, this shocking callousness is a constant fixture of Aranea's exposition. It mirrors Kanaya at her worst, as they both pick and choose their favorites in the team to lavish with kindness and attention, and treat others like objects of ridicule - Kanaya mocks Eridan to his face, and Aranea:

Mocks Latula's inability to smell.

ARANEA: She was truly an inspiration, and proved 8eyond a shadow of a dou8t that any handicap can 8e overcome, and doesn't have to stop you from 8eing as rad as you can truly 8e. MEENAH: wuuut MEENAH: serket are you whistlin through my blowhole with his idiotic shit ARANEA: Yes, that last part was a joke. Lighten up, Peixes!

Mocks Cronus's wizard faith (his one redeeming quality).

ARANEA: Whatever the case, it was pro8a8ly for the 8est, since pretty much everyone who had half a think pan thought it was all a 8unch of ridiculous nonsense. MEENAH: serket why do you got to hate on other peoples religions MEENAH: dont you kno they just as much a load of crackpotty bunk as all your spiritual bullfuck ARANEA: 8ut I........ ARANEA: Yes, I guess I was out of line. ARANEA: Sorry, I was just trying to riff with you little on a mutually disliked acquaintance. Is that really so 8ad? Why do you have to take every opportunity to knock my personal 8eliefs? ARANEA: You can really 8e so mean sometimes.

And says this incredibly out-of-pocket thing:

And says this incredibly out-of-pocket thing: ARANEA: It was almost a little eerie how happily she complied with our plan. What did Rufioh say she said? Something a8out how we would all finally get what we deserved... ARANEA: Which at the time, I thought sounded chilling. 8ut there's really two ways of looking at it. One is how the Scratch re8ooted our world into a state of pure chaos, culminating in the annihilation of our universe. 8ut on the other hand, we all got the chance to live out our wildest fantasies as adults on Alternia! ARANEA: At least you and I sure did. And I wouldn't dou8t she feels the same way.

Yeah, it sure was Damara's wildest fantasy to be abused by Doc Scratch to the point of making actual suicide attempts to escape him... and Kankri's wildest fantasy to be troll crucified, and all his friends' wildest fantasies to be hunted down for their association with him and turned into slaves, exiles, or worse... or Porrim's wildest fantasy to be raped by Mindfang.

But apparently that's part of Aranea's wildest fantasies, huh?

We also see from the Terezi situation - where Aranea first frames her abilities as "healing" and "nurturing," and makes an offer to heal Terezi's eyes as an attempt to help her "heal" from her emotional wounds - that Aranea has no idea what healing is at all. Rather, she helps people avoid (Void) what they're hurting from, what they should confront, grapple with, and accept, in order to truly move on. Knowing that Void is associated with sexual pleasure and vice, and that an Aspect often resembles its counterpart when its player is at their worst, what does this say about Actual Rapist Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, or the Jake-kissing Aranea?

Light players have an innate sense of the spotlight, and an understanding that, for it to shine on one person, it must necessarily be taken from another. Aranea enabled the two Thieves in her (after)life until they chummed up so much that they didn't give a shit about her anymore, at which point she decided to enable the one bastard she could count on - herself. And in attempting to hog that spotlight all by herself, she cosigned the entire timeline to obscurity.

And so our Sylph of Light leaves a legacy of cruelty, toxicity, suffering, pain, and oblivion, her light a poison, not a salve.

Kurloz Makara: Gave Up On "Better"

I do want to go through some Kurloz stuff before I launch into the classpect things, most notably that he's really utterly vile by the time we see him. Before his Prince meltdown, which we'll get to, perhaps there was something redeeming about him, but by the time we get to see him in the comic, he's lost any respectable qualities.

Kurloz is an adherent of the same religion as Gamzee, although, somehow, he carries even less hope than Gamzee does. Let's note the basic tenents of their faith:

You belong to a RATHER OBSCURE CULT, which foretells of a BAND OF ROWDY AND CAPRICIOUS MINSTRELS which will rise one day on a MYTHICAL PARADISE PLANET that does not exist yet.

Now, exploring this faith, and the way its interpretation changes throughout the comic, could be an essay of its own, but what's important to note here is that Kurloz will never see its fruition. He's dead, and neither has the ability to revive himself, nor the desire to do so. Thus, it follows that his personal interpretation of their faith must be darker than Gamzee's - Kurloz has so utterly given up on himself and his team that being cosigned to utter oblivion, destined to double-die by their godhead's rainbow breath, seems like a totally great outcome that Kurloz both wants and is working toward. The paradise planet doesn't actually matter to him - the act of betraying his friends, and getting everyone killed (and double-killed), seems reward enough.

KURLOZ: WE SHALL NOW BUST OPEN THESE BITCHIN ELIXIR FORTIES KURLOZ: AND POUR SOME SWEET SWILL OUT FOR THE SOULS WHO SOON WONT BE NO MORE  #:o)

To that end, he's willing to lie to his teammates, and use the two people closest to him - Mituna and Meulin - as literal slaves, furthering LE's goals and pushing for LE's existence, making him one of the most direct forces acting against the dancestors.

But, as I said earlier, he didn't start out this way - so how did he get to this point of utter clowny despair? Well, let's take a look at what it means to be a Prince of Rage.

Princes have a fairly simple arc to discuss, though actually dealing with a Prince is arduous and difficult. Princes are, in a very masculine way, driven by an anxious forward momentum, by feelings of duty, by a masculine need to appear strong and take on burdens. Dirk is the most anxious of his team about their fate to sit around and wait, and Eridan's entire character has been shaped by the duty he had to keep Feferi's lusus placated.

However, these driving forces tend to make Princes controlling, aggressive, volatile, and nasty, and it's difficult to even be near one, let alone help them deal with their emotional problems. Thus are princes on a marching path to self-destruction, overtaxing their engines, burning themselves out. And given that one's "self" is tied inextricably to their aspect, this means that they take their aspect with them.

Thus are Princes on a ticking timer, and left untreated, they'll suffer a spectacular meltdown, which removes from play themselves, their aspect, and whoever is unlucky enough to be in the same room. We see it with Murderstuck, where Eridan goes on a Hope-crushing murder spree, and we see it when Dirk's trickster tirade utterly shatters Jake's self-confidence and self-worth.

But before that meltdown occurs, Princes suffer from an overburdening of their aspect - Eridan is a hipster (Hope and conviction), and burdened by several layers of political beliefs and societally-imposed duties. Dirk is solipsistic (Heart and the self), and is burdened by self-loathing, amplified by all his splinters and Hal staring back at him.

Kurloz's aspect is Rage, one of the most enigmatic, but I'll do my best here. Hope is, after all, fairly well-defined - a transformative force that imposes a new reality onto the old. Rage, its equal and opposite, is similarly a force that defines reality - but it does so by striking things from the record (something both Gamzee and Kurloz are noted to do, the former removing references to himself from recountings of his team's story, the latter creating intricate labyrinths within the bubbles to hide their clowny conspiracy with). Rage encompasses anger, but also the emotions of fear and shame - transformative energies that are the core of great acts of revolution, but also volatile, and prone to great destructiveness. Rage players "tear down false truths" - meaning, they define reality by closing possibilities, crafting meaning from the past by the power of interpretation. Hope is fanfiction, and Rage is literary criticism. Hope pens in something new, and Rage strikes out what it deems unacceptible.

Kurloz, before his turn, is characterized primarily through a single major incident - having a dream so terrifying that he screamed loud enough to deafen his matesprit, and feeling so ashamed of himself (shame being a Rage-associated emotion) that he sewed his own mouth shut in penitance. Given the way Princes are overtaxed by their aspect, it's likely that this isn't the only great shame he was bearing.

He and Damara appear to be on secretly decent terms - she is, after all, a Lord English believer, and who else would she have gotten that religious leaning from? Moreover, Kurloz and Mituna were close, if not actively dating, and Mituna was the one member of the team who seemed to give a shit that they were hurtling themselves towards oblivion.

This means that Kurloz, in all likelihood, was actually on Damara's side, and aware that his team was being shitheads - but he never said anything, later because of his vow of silence, but earlier, because it was himself he was most ashamed of. It's unclear what the inciting incident of his final meltdown was, but given the far-reaching consequences when a Prince does have their meltdown, this is likely the "disaster" that Mituna was attempting to stop - a situation that echoes how Feferi, Eridan's ex-moirail, turning on him to kill him was what finally pushed Eridan over the edge into full-blown murder. Kurloz is likely both the disaster Mituna was trying to avert and the source of Mituna's injury; subsequently, his team was dealing with a post-meltdown Prince and the destruction of Rage.

As I mentioned before, Rage is a revolutionary force, a force of upheaval and change. It's likely that the Mituna injury happened fairly late in the game, concurrent to or shortly following Damara's rampage, because the lack of Rage is starkly present in the six years following the Reckoning, where the dancestors did fuckall. But there's one other place where the dancestors' lack of Rage is present: ever notice how they don't have a single blackrom?

We'll get more into that when we talk about Meulin, but for now, I'll just say that this is directly Kurloz's fault. No blackroms, no conflicts, no change... Kurloz's meltdown was allowed to happen with no one the wiser. Rage, at its nadir, begins to resemble Hope - it gains a steadfast, religious conviction to the belief that nothing matters and everything must be torn down. We see this in Kurloz, whose spiritual belief is, functionally, that all that he and everyone else deserves is utter oblivion.

And so our Prince of Rage can no longer be swayed, a force of religious inertia, directing all beings headlong into oblivion.

Meulin Leijon: Healthy Relationship? IDK Her

Meulin Leijon's ships are all rancid. Unfortunately, they also all come true. This makes Meulin one of the most direct and overwhelming contributors to the dancestors' extant emotional problems, and why every single one of their established romances is a dumpster fire (and, conversely, why none of the healthy ships hinted at - pale Latula/Porrim, for example - are never established).

But to explain that, we have to back up and explain how Mages work. But I'm a bit tired of typing, so I'll just let Terezi and Sollux explain it instead:

TA: 2o yeah. TA: we wiill all diie but mo2t e2peciially me, end of 2tory. GC: BUT GC: DONT T4K3 TH1S TH3 WRONG W4Y BUT HOW C4N YOU B3 TOT4LLY SUR3 4BOUT 4LL TH4T? GC: HOW DO YOU KNOW SOM3 OF TH3 R34L V1S1ONS YOUR3 H4V1NG 4R3NT G3TT1NG K1ND OF T4NGL3D UP W1TH UHHH GC: SORT OF TH3 W4Y YOU 4R3 4BOUT YOURS3LF TA: what do you mean. GC: HOW YOU G3T MOP3Y 4ND YOUR3 4LW4YS TH3 V1CT1M OF SOM3TH1NG 4ND HOW SOM3T1M3S YOU TH1NK YOU SUCK WH3N YOU R34LLY DONT GC: M4YB3 TH4T 1S CLOUD1NG YOUR V1S1ON?

Mages are the active counterpart to Seers, as they're both classes concerned with glimpsing the future. Sollux is most obviously a prophet, gifted with vision twofold and Doom's natural prophetic insight, and at first this doesn't seem to suit Meulin... until you realize that matchmaking is commonly considered a form of divination, and "matchmaker" is Meulin's signature profession.

However, unlike a Seer, who's privy to all the myriad branching paths the future can take, Mages seem to know which of these futures will definitely happen for sure. This seems to be contradictory - how can multiple branching paths and set-in-stone futures coexist, when the comic - and Hussie - explicitly tend to frame even the Alpha Timeline as a result of player choices, and not predestination?

But it makes sense if you turn it around - it's not that Mages are privy to a set-in-stone future... it's that the Mage powerset allows the Mage to set a future in stone. They aren't PREDICTING the future, they're PREDETERMINING it.

This is an incredibly powerful ability, and to balance it out, Mages start out sad, and this sadness and pessimism colors their visions and causes the futures they pick out to be shitty. Terezi directly calls out Sollux's chosen future for being a reflection of his self-loathing and victimization, but wait, isn't Meulin super cheerful?

No. Actually, she's fucking miserable.

HORUSS: 8=D < She's taught me to get in touch with my anger. Through a moderately discernible series of enthusiastic mimes, she has made it clear that it is much healthier to crush all negative emotions beneath a stampede of positivity, and to always be cheerful and upbeat no matter what, even if projecting that facade is at times physically painful. #Such as #All times.

Vriska also later makes mention of how Meulin seems to have a "fascin8tingly dark history", further driving home the point that Meulin's hyperactive, friendly demeanor is a front for some really deep sadness on her part.

Heart is the aspect of the soul and the self. Its players are preoccupied with identity, and naturally talented at sussing out motivations, emotions, intentions, and desires. Nepeta's ships are usually wrong, but she clocks romantic interest correctly - she's able to pick up on Gamzee's palecrush toward Karkat, and Tavros's something-something towards Dave. Dirk, too, has an arc defined by romantic interest, feelings that ultimately don't pan out.

Moreover, Heart players are very vulnerable and sincere, and can't really help it. Divesting Dirk from Hal (whom I'm personally convinced is both his own separate entity and not even a Heart player), Dirk is incredibly straightforward. His idea of manipulating Jane is to directly tell her he's manipulating her. Nepeta's sincerity probably doesn't even need to be said.

But the flipside of this sensitivity towards the emotions of others is that Heart players are often doormats. They tend to prioritize the desires of others - Nepeta being bent to Equius's whims, and Dirk's neediness towards Jake manifesting as some embarrasing "forget how I feel, tell me what YOU want" texts. Their vulnerability also makes them easily hurt, and they tend to retreat into themselves out of fear of pain - Dirk outright states that his aloof demeanor hides the feelings his team has been trampling, while Nepeta expresses that she's afraid to engage too much with others because she's scared they'll mock her for being silly and stupid.

Thus, Meulin's situationship with Kurloz is cast into a much more uncomfortable light - and it was already pretty damn uncomfortable. Being deafened clearly hurt her emotionally, to the point she formally broke up with him, but he is still basically dating her, practically holding her hostage between her natural doormat tendencies and the actual mind control he's using on her. Her relationship with Horuss isn't much better, given the breathtakingly awful way he speaks about her:

HORUSS: 8=D < E%actly. Whoof would have thought? If you a%ed me before we all died whether I would consider romantically pairing with a r*d*culous midb100d, let alone Ms. Leijon of all people, I'd probably have died regardless, due to laughter-induced asphy%iation.

Yikes. Yikes all around. Welcome to yikes town.

Thus, Meulin is miserable, and has never been within ten miles of a healthy relationship - is it any surprise, then, that the ships she sets up for all her friends are similarly ill-fated? Let's not forget, the one ship she's actively seen making is Meenah and Karkat - an adult and an actual child.

MEULIN: (=^-ω-^=) < NOW, BEFORE I WORK MY MAGIC, WE SHOULD GET ONE THING CLEAR. IS YOUR YEARNING RED OR BLACK? MEULIN: (=ＴωＴ=) < I AM ONLY ASKING TO BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, BUT METHINKS THERE IS BARELY ANY DOUBT ABOUT IT. SOMMMEONE IS WAXING SCARLET FOR A LOUD, YOUNGER KANKRI, HMMMMMMMMM?

And it's after this that Meenah develops an "increasingly manic obsession" with Karkat.

You got a CLAWSICKLE! You absolutely love this due to its nautical nature. Also, hoarding items such as this will nicely complement your increasingly manic obsession with Karkat.

This is the secret behind Meulin's abilities as a "miracle worker when it comes to match making". As a Mage of Heart, she's directly picking out futures in which certain characters develop feelings for others - and, as a result, every single existing romance within the dancestors is highly suspect.

But what's also suspect is the lack of certain romances, namely the blackroms. What's going on there? Well, as Meulin herself says:

MEULIN: ~(=^‥^)ノ < GENERALLY I STICK TO THE RED MATCHUPS WHILE HE ADVISES ON BLACK. HE'S 33RILY TALENTED AT PICKING BLACKROM PAIRS! PROBABLY EVEN BETTER THAN ME...

Like how he's exerting control over the state of their death by using Mituna as a puppet, Kurloz is exerting control over their relationships via Meulin, killing their rage - their ability to effect change and grow - at the source.

And so our Mage of Heart has had hers trampled over so many times that she's unable to conceive of a future where lovers are supportive and kind, not destructive and cruel.

Horuss Zahhak: Albatross with the Gravitational Pull of a Black Hole

Finally, we're getting to the biggest Mess of all: the Damara situation. Horuss is our starting point here, as he's the eye of the storm - while he's the least directly culpable for Damara's rampage, he's the inciting incident, as Pages often are.

Horuss's flaws are glaringly obvious - he's a virulent casteist, he's an affair partner, he feels no guilt for the harm he caused Damara, he's really only looking to satisfy his own sexual desires, and he's too bullheaded to listen when people tell him things he doesn't want to hear.

He actually spends quite a bit of time talking about his aspect, and the journey he took to "understand" it. That saves me some time.

HORUSS: 8=D < My path was similarly governed by my aspect. For the longest time, I felt as if I was a blank sheet of paper. Like I had to make myself out of nothing. HORUSS: 8=D < And so I began to listen closely to the void within myself and corral the various personal attributes I herd calling to me. [...] HORUSS: 8=D < And in following sweeps I would keep turning my mechanically augmented, acute equine ear back to the abyss within, and continue to discover more about myself. I would learn that I was more complicated than I ever imagined. [...] HORUSS: 8=D < The second is how if you are faced with any crisis of identity whatsoever, it's really important to do your best to manufacture esoteric features of your personality and believe in them very STRONGLY and tell people about those things as frequently as possible.

Again, we aren't going to get into the plurality of real life people, this isn't the essay for that. In the context of the comic, because the failure of the dancestors is a foregone conclusion, and because Horuss is especially vile and clearly not aspirational, what he is describing is, in fact, an abject failure of Void, and a failing of his character.

To get into it, let's break down what a Page of Void is, and what arc they're "supposed" to undertake.

Pages are defined by their limitless potential.

TT: Pages have a lot of untapped potential. TT: That's practically all there is to the class, actually. TT: But when they eventually find it, look out.

AA: y0u picked a t0ugh class tavr0s! AA: n0ne 0f the really useful c0mbat abilities c0me int0 play until y0u reach a very high level AA: but i supp0se it will be rewarding when y0u get there

They're magikarps - very strong at high levels, very weak at low ones. So weak, in fact, that they're defined by a lack of their aspect when they initially start the game. Tavros, the Page of Breath - Breath governing freedom and independence - is wheelchair-bound and under Vriska's thumb. Jake, the Page of Hope - Hope dealing in conviction and belief - is constantly called "wishy-washy," and has absolutely zero standards when it comes to his taste in media (contrast Eridan, who's functioning with too much Hope as per his Prince class, who's a hipster that castigates Kanaya for liking Troll Twilight).

And Void is simplicity - its two other heroes, much more representative of the aspect, embody this well. They are what they are, they like what they like. Roxy loves wizards and, as mom, loves her daughter; Equius loves horses and archery and being STRONG. Void is also associated with sexual pleasure, vice, and taboo, with Roxy's "sauciness" being something characters often comment on and her alcoholism being so foundational to her character, while you can't talk about Equius without talking about his BDSM fetish.

In fact, we can see this interplay between Void's simplicity against Light's penchant for complexity in the introduction of Rose's mother. Rose has concocted in her mind a grand, elaborate narrative where her and her mother are locked in a deady contest of one-upsmanship, that her mother's various gifts and wizards are part of some sort of ironic or passive-aggressive mind game. The truth is, Momlonde just loves wizards and dotes on her daughter. No mind games whatsoever.

So when Horuss talks about how "complicated" he's decided he is, this is a Page's penchant for regression, for aspect deficit. Horuss refuses to be honest with himself, to deal with his actual emotions of frustration, anger, and emptiness, and instead turns to complication to try to explain them. He complexifies everything he gets involved with - his affair with Rufioh is clearly a symptom of some fetish he has for dating down the hemospectrum, but he refuses to admit to it, instead claiming at first that it was simply a "fleeting dalliance" or "exploration," and then claiming it to be true love.

The one Void trait he does seem to have in excess, however, is its tendency to get so caught up in its own personal pleasures and desires that it becomes pushy to others, drowning them out, resembling Light's spotlight hogging. Equius did this to Nepeta, and Roxy would attempt it with Dirk sometimes, aggressively flirting with him despite his homosexuality. Horuss simply talks over Rufioh, not listening to a thing he says.

Also, another point to how interwoven everyone's issues are, Kankri shows up to enable Horuss and tell him to keep being complicated. Also, Kankri doesn't comment AT ALL on Horuss's constant use of slurs and casteist language. So thanks again Kankri. For nothing.

The problem with Pages is that their failures aren't contained to themselves - their weakness becomes like a black hole, an albatross about the party's neck, and they're often right at the center of major catastrophes - maybe not the direct cause, but often an inciting incident. Tavros was ultimately at the center of the Team Charge debacle, and the Jakestakes tore apart his entire team.

HORUSS: 8=D < It was only to be a very private, fleeting dalliance with a BUOY, but the whole thing became so quickly scandalized.  #A spur of the moment affair, really. HORUSS: 8=D < And soon others were whisked into it such as you and the vengeful rust b100d, and... well, imagine my embarrassment. Trust me, the last thing I wanted was for royalty such as yourself to know I was pursuing forbidden b100d. To be caught with my hoof in the chocolate jar, so to nicker.

And so our Page of Void, by dint of the complicated web he's woven about himself, has ensnared others in his orbit of total irrelevance and inability to move forward.

Rufioh Nitram: Desperately Escaping Responsibility

Let me speak for everyone when I say, "Rufioh, you cheating piece of shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Rufioh, too, has his failures on brazen display. He's weak-willed and spineless, has been trying and failing to break up with Horuss for eons, and cheated on his girlfriend, but has the nerve to ask her for romantic advice.

However, what I want to really focus down on is that the specific flavor of his spinelessness is a refusal to take responsibility. He constantly claims that he "doesn't know" why Damara got more and more upset at him:

RUFIOH: and for some reason... st1ll don't know why... damara just started go1ng a l1ttle more nuts every day... gett1ng more and more jealous when she knew we were hang1ng out...

But clearly this isn't true, because he tells her to get over it.

RUFIOH: d*mn... so cold, g1rl. why can't you let the past go?

He also constantly calls her "crazy" and "jealous," framing the story as though she's the one who went totally nuts, and washing his hands of his involvement.

Remember how I mentioned that Blood tends to be overly responsible? All the way up there, when I was talking about Kankri. Well, meet Blood's counterpart. Breath is, at its best, a force of freedom and liberation - look no further than the Summoner, Rufioh's Alternian counterpart. But at its worst, it tends to be callous and immature, youthful but irresponsible. Rufioh does everything he can to avoid having to take responsibility, whether that's wilting from breaking up with Horuss, avoiding culpability for hurting his feelings, or downplaying what he did to Damara.

This youthfulness is the source of their charm, and all three Breath players share it - John loves his dumb cheesy movies well into his teens, Tavros loves Pupa Pan and Fiduspawn, and Rufioh loves kiddie anime. It's not harmful in and of itself that they like childish things, but it often goes hand-in-hand with a refusal to grow up.

Ironically, they can become so avoidant of responsibility that they wind up trapped, like Tavros was with Vriska, or Rufioh is with Horuss. If you never acknowledge that there is a problem, you can never begin to fix it. But where does being a Rogue come in?

Well, Rogues are natural-born rebels. Nepeta is the only Alternian troll to outright say that the hemocaste is stupid and casteism shouldn't exist:

AC: :33 < and i dont know anything about classes or bases or blood color, it doesn't matter! AC: :33 < what does gr33n blood even mean! it doesnt mean anything to me and it shouldnt mean anything to anyone else!

And Roxy is the most motivated in her friend group to stick it to the Batterwitch. The problem is, while they have unrest and rebellion deep in their souls, they're often at a loss as to how to address it, make it more than just a thought. This leads to them rebelling for the sake of rebelling, breaking taboos and defying commands. Nepeta refusing to listen to Equius telling her to hide and stay put directly leads to her death, and even Roxy nearly blew Jane up with a fake SBURB application in a misguided attempt to defy the Condesce.

And Rufioh? Well, Rufioh cheated. Hard as he could. For a long, long time. Started before he entered the session. Spent the whole time gaslighting Damara and calling her crazy and jealous. After all, if he actually came out and said that he wasn't happy with her and wanted out of the relationship, she'd be upset with him, and he'd have to be responsible for that. Can't have that!

And so our Rogue of Breath has been trapped in bondage, having gone willingly in chains, because the alternative - freedom and responsibility - were too difficult for him.

Damara Megido: Babe I'm So Sorry, You Didn't Deserve That

So I'm going to address a pretty common fandom take, by first divulging some personal information. I'm Chinese diaspora; my parents were both immigrants. Obviously, I can't speak for every Chinese person, and especially not every Asian, but at least from my perspective, Damara isn't racist. She's just actual representation.

Yes, Damara plays into several stereotypes, most notably the oversexed Asian schoolgirl - but that's part of the greater point that the comic is trying to make. Hussie has a long habit of putting the reader in the shoes of the characters who are wrong in a situation - for example, having the reader mock Eridan together with Rose, Kanaya, Jade, and Gamzee, or indeed, having the reader sympathize with Meenah Peixes, and hear the story from the point of view of Meenahs' biggest enabler.

Damara's google-translate quirk makes her text difficult to understand, to the point a lot of people won't even bother figuring out what she's saying, and her design makes her seem like a flat stereotype, because this is how her team sees her. And as I have extensively covered in this essay thus far, Damara's team were unbelievable assholes for doing so.

Let's look at her situation objectively for a second, and you'll see what I mean. Damara grew up with the Lost Weeaboos - she was already there when Rufioh ran into her, after he joined up after his wings came in. Yeah, Damara was the original Lost Weeaboo, not him. She was an immigrant from East Beforus, and couldn't speak English, and was seemingly only included in the friend group so long as Rufioh was translating for her - something he doesn't do when he deems it would cause problems (for him).

RUFIOH: 1f people knew some of the sh*t you sa1d... how you say crazy sh*t l1ke you want to serve h1m... f***! RUFIOH: 1t wouldn't be cool... people would fl1p... RUFIOH: h*ll, d1dn't you hear meenah was try1ng to ra1se an army to k1ll h1m? RUFIOH: 1f she could hear some of the th1ngs you told me... sh*t... 1 can't ever let her f1nd out... RUFIOH: 1f she knew, you'd both start f1ght1ng aga1n...  #}:(

Not to mention, she's a burgundy, the bottom of the hemocaste, and implied to be pretty poor, too, given... she was living in the woods with the Lost Weeaboos.

Before the game even starts, Horuss starts visiting Rufioh in the woods, something that starts as an emotional affair, but quickly becomes more than that. Damara catches on pretty quickly, becoming more and more jealous and angry with him as the affair continues, but Rufioh gaslights her and lies to her about it until Meenah discovers the affair and blows it out into the open. Damara breaks up with Rufioh, but Meenah continues to use the affair to mock and degrade her.

ARANEA: The poor girl who took the 8runt of your 8ullying tactics was Damara Megido. You talked up her matesprit's 8etrayal making her feel even more dreadful, while pushing him further into the arms of her rival, until she simply snapped.

Can you even fucking imagine? Damara has nobody else to turn to. Not only are half the people on the team Meenah's friends, not only is Meenah the rich and powerful fuchsia-blooded heiress, while Damara's a poor, immigrant rustblood, but no one on the team besides her ex - who is running around slandering her for being "crazy" and "jealous" - can even be assed to learn her language. She can't defend herself, and even if she tried, nobody would listen. To them, Damara's just a flat stereotype - the meek and docile Asian waifu who speaks engrish and puts chopsticks in her hair.

This is like... actually just what a lot of poor immigrants, not even necessarily Asian ones, have to go through. Damara's struggles are incredibly relevant, and her reaction is very realistic, too. She snaps and decides that she hates everyone and outright wishes for their demise and double-demise. In this context, her hypersexual language is a form of reclaiming power - nobody cared about what she had to say, so now she doesn't care what they have to listen to. It's one of the only petty vengeances left to her, and notably, she doesn't do it towards people she doesn't have beef with - the human kids - and the fact that Rufioh can speak her language at all is why she's still willing to go so far as to call him a friend, even after all the horrible shit he did to her.

RUFIOH: um... you can keep a secret, r1ght? DAMARA: はい、もちろん。私はあなたの友達です。[Yes, of course. I am your friend.]

And death hasn't made anything let up for her. She tells Meenah to go double-fuck herself, and Meenah assumes that they're totally cool now, even though Meenah didn't even so much as say "sorry".

DAMARA: あなたのデュアルフォークを取る。二回自分自身をファック。 [Take your dual fork. Fuck yourself twice.] [...] DAMARA: 私は何も後悔はありません。[I do not regret anything.] MEENAH: apology accepted

Sorry for getting heated, but what happened to Damara - and the fact that the fandom often sides with her bullies in calling her a flat stereotype - is very near and dear to me. The Damara situation casts a pall across the entire rest of the dancestors. Despite how cruel the circumstances were, how objectively unjust they were, how obviously Meenah was the aggressor and Damara was a victim, how clearly delineated good and evil were in her situation, and how big of a problem this became, nobody intervened, nobody tried to stop it, nobody stood up for her. Every single member of the team is an irredeemable asshole by this simple fact alone, except maybe Mituna, and even then, that's a maybe and nothing more. All of them are complicit in abuse, complicit in oppression, and complicit in bullying - if not worse.

Witches are creatures of emotion. They grow up as "outsiders" to society, and as such, are very easy to sway - as they lack societal senses of right and wrong, good or evil, they tend to rely on their own emotions to navigate the world instead. This also means it's very easy to flatter the Witch into believing in something cruel. Feferi loves casteism because being a princess is awesome, and she loves feeling like she's better than other people. Jade constantly allows shitty boys to trample all over her, and the trolls consider her most culpable for Bec Noir's creation because she blindly follows the prophecies of her beloved future-telling clouds, taking direct action to doom them all.

Damara's still friends with Rufioh because he bothers to speak her language at all, even though he does nothing but gaslight her, badmouth her, and use her to his own convenience. She follows the teachings of Lord English because her feelings have been hurt to the point where oblivion sounds like a great idea.

Time is about persistence, goal-orientedness, details, and minutiae. However, its players can often become so tunnel-visioned, so frustrated, that they become destructive forces of anger and rage. In the worst case, this destructive frustration causes them to become overwhelmed with a sense of futility, something that superficially resembles Space's big-picture thinking, or its tendency for passivity. Time has ties to entropy and death, and unfortunately, Damara has come to embody that for her team.

But, most crucially, Witches cause change.

The dancestors' session is victim to a glitch that ultimately renders it unwinnable - they didn't perform their own ectobiology. Such glitches are described as the "calling cards" of Lord English, his way of reserving a universe to destroy. But, as discussed above, LE did not actually exist until the dancestors brought him into their session by scratching it.

It's stated that, after her initial rampage, Damara began performing acts of "timeline sa8otage" up and down their timeline. I believe that it's during this time that she wound up causing the ectobiology glitch - retroactively rendering their system unwinnable, forcing them into the Scratch. After all, Damara knew what would result from the Scratch - Kurloz had inducted her into his religion by that point, and she was heard muttering that the Scratch would deliver them all "what they deserve".

And so, our Witch of Time was tempted by the forces of evil, and ultimately led them down the path of destruction, closing down all options until they had no choice but to Scratch, and - of course - though the dancestors had one last chance to back out, choose the selfless option, and let no more harm come of their actions - they picked the selfish option, and passed their problems onto the next generation.

Meenah Peixes: Ultra-Bitch

Meenah is her team's leader, and she represents the worst aspects of her team - the casual cruelty, the lack of responsibility, the kid-kissing, the failure to grow up. In a way, there's no leader more fitting.

The greatest thing she contributed to her team was her ruthless bullying, which didn't do anything but make everyone feel worse about themselves. Of this bullying, Meenah's favorite target was Damara, but we already covered all that in Damara's section. I want to talk about some of Meenah's other failings here, because I think the comic did such a good job of unreliably narrating her escapades that even many in the fandom seem to think she's a much better person than she is.

In truth, Meenah is a toxic friend, a bad influence, and her "cool"ness serves as a smokescreen to cover the depravity and cruelty of her actions. She is consistently running away from responsibility, consistently taking advantage of weaker-willed individuals, consistently constructing a narrative around herself where her actions were justified and anyone who disagrees with her is just a lame loser. In reality, she's just a rich bitch mean girl. A bog-standard bully. Someone who thinks literal children are pursuable romantic targets. You can't lose sight of this.

MEENAH: i dont verbally torture my cray schemes like all the serket girls MEENAH: and that works ok for me MEENAH: guess i made some mistakes but who really gives a flip [...] MEENAH: i just MEENAH: did shit MEENAH: and the shit i did MEENAH: meant only the things the shit accomplished MEENAH: and if that shit accomplished a dumb thing that sucked MEENAH: then i guess thats what you call a mistake and oh fuckin well

Sure, Meenah. Your deliberate, constant, unrelenting bullying, the active choices you made over, and over, and over again, are completely excusable by just saying "they were some mistakes" and "oh well".

Meenah ran away from responsibility four times over the course of her story: the first time was running off to the moon because she didn't want to be heiress; the second was blowing up her home planet rather than dealing with succession; the third was cooping herself up in her moon palace until a bigger threat presented itself, and the fourth was encouraging Vriska to give up on struggling against Lord English and run away with her and the LE-killing treasure. Not only that, but she tries to convince Karkat to jump off the meteor with her to fight LE - something that's framed in that conversation as a literal act of suicide, as LE is still, as far as Karkat and Meenah know, invincible, immortal, and unbeatable.

Speaking of her conversation with Karkat, let's zoom out for a second and take it in objectively. I think many are tricked by Karkat's softness and vulnerability here into thinking that the conversation they have together is cute or wholesome, but that isn't the case. First of all, let's remember that Meulin has just implied that Meenah's got some romantic feelings for what is - again - an actual child (I think he's literally 14 here). So. Yeah. And then second, let's remember what Karkat's arc is.

Karkat is a mutant, and has lived his life alternately in fear that he'll be killed if anyone ever finds out, and filled with self-loathing, since he knows it means he'll never be accepted by society. Moreover, he's aware of the prophecy that he's supposed to be Troll Jesus's second coming, and he's deeply insecure about it.

MY BLOOD IS NOT FIT TO FLOW THROUGH A SEWER, AND MY SIGN IS A PICTOGRAPHIC SYMBOL THAT LOOSELY TRANSLATES AS "PLEASE HIKE THESE PANTS UP TO THIS GUY'S ARMPITS, CHAIN HIM TO A FLOGGING JUT, AND MAKE A FUCKING EXAMPLE OUT OF THIS SORRY SACK OF SHIT." WHEN I LOOK IN A MIRROR, MY REFLECTION SLOWLY SHAKES HIS HEAD WHILE I WET MYSELF IN SHAME.

The fact that he knows that his ancestor is the Signless puts his initial desire to join the Threshecutioners in a very sad light. As he tells Meenah, he harbored fantasies that he would fight so well that they'd let him join, in spite of his blood color, even knowing objectively that they'd probably just kill him on sight.

KARKAT: THEY WERE LIKE THE DEADLIEST SQUAD OF INTERSTELLAR FIGHTERS UNDER THE COMMAND OF THE EMPRESS. THEY HELPED CONQUER MORE PLANETS THAN ANY OTHER IMPERIAL FORCE. BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO MAKE THE CUT, BECAUSE OF MY BLOOD. SO I USED TO THINK OF ALL THESE ELABORATE SCENARIOS TO HIDE MY BLOOD COLOR. OR IN THE MORE RIDICULOUS FANTASIES, MAYBE I COULD EVEN PROVE MY WORTH AS A SOLDIER? LIKE JUST BE SO AWESOME WITH A SICKLE, THEY WOULD JUST HAVE TO MAKE AN EXCEPTION. MAYBE EVEN BE LIKE A FOLK HERO AND RISE THROUGH THE RANKS TO BECOME THE LEADER. HAHA.

He desires, so so so deeply, to be accepted. He hates himself - this is the first thing revealed to us in his introduction.

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS. As was previously mentioned, it is your WRIGGLING DAY, which is barely even worth mentioning. It is an anniversary, if anything, to lament the faults of your existence, of which there are assuredly plenty.

As a result, he's equated societal acceptance with self-worth - tricked himself into believing that if he can gain the approval of society, the approval of the Condesce, then he'll finally be able to feel less like a worthless, kill-on-sight miscreant.

This is the lens we must look through his conversations with Meenah through. These are not soft, tender exchanges where Meenah helps Karkat deal with his emotional issues. This is the young adult version of the Condesce trying to tempt a literal child into suicide, leveraging his desire to be accepted by her in order to stroke her own ego. When he says Alternia was great, that's a bad thing. Alternia sucked, and it sucked to him specifically, but he wants to be accepted by it so badly that he's willing to act like it was awesome. When he says he respects the Condesce, that's terrible. She's an evil monster who directly caused all his and his friend's problems, a monstrous, genocidal dictator who revels in bloodshed and misery. And when he says:

KARKAT: OH, BUT ON ONE CONDITION. AS THE NEW EMPRESS, YOU HAVE TO APPOINT ME AS GRAND THRESHECUTIONER OF YOUR ARMY. DO WE HAVE A DEAL? MEENAH: oh yes yes you got it yessss

This is sad, actually. This is just really sad. Karkat wants to be accepted so, so badly that he's willing to jump off the meteor on a suicide mission. He wants it so bad that he's willing to lie down and let the forces of fascism, oppression, cruelty, and evil win, just for a crumb of validation.

And, yeah, it's romantic to Meenah. Just to be clear with everyone.

MEENAH: i was standin around in shoutkats place when it all dream switched on me outta nowhere [...] MEENAH: and i think MEENAH: we might be goin on a date later?

Hey, remember how she's 19 and he's fourteen fucking years old?

So, yeah, later on, when she starts having little giggly fits with Vriska, rolling around in the fields with her? When she starts grooming Vriska to dress like her, get tattoos with her nautical themes? Yes, I'm going to use the word "grooming". That's what it is.

Vriska is a vulnerable child. She was raised by an abusive, demanding, narcissistic spider, and all her friends just abandoned her because of her resultant nasty personality. And remember how I pointed out that Meenah likes to run away from responsibility?

VRISKA: What if we just........ VRISKA: Gave up on the mission? MEENAH: gave up VRISKA: Yeah. VRISKA: What do you think. MEENAH: um MEENAH: sure VRISKA: Sure? VRISKA: You don't think that would 8e a wussy move? MEENAH: well yeah MEENAH: it would be MEENAH: if a couple of cowards did it MEENAH: but that aint us MEENAH: so we cool to do whatev VRISKA: That's a very good point. MEENAH: nofin wrong with stickin a fork in a shit idea that just makes you miserable MEENAH: hell the best choice i ever made involved givin up MEENAH: one day i said MEENAH: fuck da throne MEENAH: ran off to the moon MEENAH: thats how this whole crazy mess kicked off MEENAH: and if i didnt do that MEENAH: i wouldnt of met you 38) VRISKA: VRISKA: ::::)

I hope this conversation hits a little different.

[EDIT (March 02): I also wanted to add that, in order to make the above conversation even more obviously a case of an adult taking advantage of a vulnerable minor? Directly preceeding the snippet I included in the essay, Vriska outright admits that she no longer trusts her own judgement. So Meenah heard that, and decided to make a move.

Yikes. Yikes all around. Welcome to yikes town.]

Thieves are, as the name suggests, selfish and greedy - they harbor some deep emotional hole that they attempt to fill with "wealth". For Vriska, it was narrative importance, and for Meenah, it was forward motion, as that's what Life's all about. However, they do so at the expense of others, not realizing that harming their own group relations harms their own ability to self-actualize and attain true happiness. The one time something nice happened on Meenah's team, it was when Meenah wasn't taking, taking, taking, but when she baked a cake for everyone.

But Meenah wasn't content with that.

And so, our Thief of Life defeated her own agenda in an effort to move forward, her mistakes culminating in the doom of herself and all her friends, as her misguided grasping toward forward motion ultimately led to the ugly side of a tumor-bomb.

Final Thoughts

I know I've been really negative towards the dancestors for this entire essay. And I do think they deserve it. However, please don't confuse that with me saying I think they were "bad characters," or that I dislike their inclusion in the comic.

On the contrary, I think they're all very, very good characters. Their utilization in the narrative is excellent, and they perform their narrative function incredibly well. I think Hussie's a fantastic writer, and I find the dancestors fascinating - if you couldn't tell from the massive essay.

But they are shitty people - and that's the point. The role they serve to the kids is as evil mentors, bad influences, dark reflections. Maybe they were redeemable before they ruined everything, but they passed the point of no return. At every juncture, they chose the selfish option, the cruel option, the easy option, and in some ways subtle, some ways overt, they encourage their kids to do the same.

But - crucially - the ones to come after them can choose differently. And I believe in the version of Homestuck where they do.

Thanks for reading.

[anne-bsd-bibliophile]

Mirror: The Fiction and Essays of Kōda Aya translated by Ann Sherif

The papers in those days always had some amazing news in them - from the attempted military coup of February the year before to the start of fighting in China just three months later. A ferocious gale had come sweeping through, causing small whirlwinds some days and, at other times, a tremendous commotion that stirred up everything, even the dust in the forgotten corners of the world. I was just a speck of dust in one of the narrowest, most remote niches. - Kōda Aya, "The Medal"

A kimono worn by a woman immature in her emotions can be a powerful thing. Or, to put it another way, clothes have the strength to control one's psyche. To me, the striped outfit was a uniform; it gave me a sense of direction and a feeling of pride in my work. The apron shielded me from all arrows; it acted as a cast to brace me against all blows. It was a metal fire door behind which I could hide the anguish of my heart. - Kōda Aya, "The Medal"

What other child would fail to rise to the occasion when her father was being so honored? He was my only father, and I his only child. Is this any way to behave? I had lost my way at the bottom of a deep abyss. I cast my eyes upward, toward my father, only to see him dimly shrouded by mist. - Kōda Aya, "The Medal"

I know nothing about the breadth of my father's learning, nor do I pretend to understand the scope of his art. I could not tell you what came to him as a matter of luck, what he accomplished through his own talents, nor about his stature among men. Though I may be vastly ignorant, I do have enough sense not to entertain the foolish notion that he is some kind of lion of literature, a king among writers. He was just my father. From my own biased viewpoint, I would say that Father possessed some lionlike qualities, but there were those of a lion who would finish you off or give you the push-off-the-cliff test. - Kōda Aya, "The Medal"

Father was an unusual man. He would point out the beauty of blossoms or clouds in the sky with the very whip he had cracked a moment before. With the same knife he had just used to rive your innards, he would slice up a wedge of some delicacy for you. No one else I knew could perform such feats. There was something solid about him. I felt all at once like a contrite sinner and a puppy dog who is eager to please. I wanted to cut all ties with him, but at the same time I needed him to recognize me as worthy of his love. - Kōda Aya, "The Medal"

Higuchi Ichiyo's nephew Higuchi Etsu once said about [me and my father]: "The parent dons a medal, and the child an apron." I made a show of laughing at his comment, but only because I wanted to hide my weakness. In fact, that apron chafed against my hands and my heart with its unyielding roughness. - Kōda Aya, "The Medal"

One often hears about the magical powers of mirrors. Certainly the mirror's ability to reflect creates this feeling of mystery. The objects around the viewer look so different in the mirror - what was one may multiply into two or even three. Objects that had appeared to be piled up come apart. Something might look real in the mirror, but then when you try to touch it, you can't. It seems to be there but it makes no sound. Is it real or just an illusion? Sometimes you can see through things in a mirror. Some things seem actually to be alive inside the mirror, but once the reflection stops moving, the illusion of life is gone. The mirror's power resides in this ability to confound. - Kōda Aya, "A Friend for Life"

My life was not going smoothly. I could not handle the problems that confronted me and became unbelievably nervous and stubborn. At times, any little thing would set me off in a rage; often I would get upset and break down in tears. I had so many things on my mind. In those days I consoled myself by leaning up against my mirror. To think how proud I had felt of it on my wedding day. Now all I could do was crouch up against it and sigh. In that house it was the only place where I felt calm. The mirror served more as a support for my emotions than as a glass in which I could see my reflection. The sunny location I had chosen for it had been part of my effort to avoid sadness and gloom in my life, but ironically it ended up lodging a darkened, tired soul. I did, in any case, feel most peaceful when I sat by my mirror. - Kōda Aya, "A Friend for Life"

The first time I wiped the glass, I was shocked to discover how dirty a mirror can become. One usually does not notice the dust; a mirror will reflect even when covered with a heavy layer of grime. And once you get used to this, you may end up looking at yourself and trying to make yourself presentable with powder and lipstick, unaware that you are seeing yourself through a haze. But who bothers to dust mirrors? If even smoothly polished glass attracts dust how much more would accumulate on a troubled heart? - Kōda Aya, "A Friend for Life"

Kōda Aya has also been added to the BSD-Bibliophile Online Library!

You can find more information about Kōda Aya-sensei on the following pages:

List of Books in English Quotes and Facts Collection Fun Facts

[pruneunfair]

My feelings on: part 8, Tears on a withered flower: the most annoying fandom to date so far.

I ask if this one was really that great since I've been seeing it all over the place on tiktok and Instagram and reading it myself, I can see why it would garner an audience because it's another "working woman finds a better man after her loser ex cheats on her with a stupid damsel girl" type story. It's kinda good but in my opinion: it's not THAT good but there is only 23 chapters I read so far so I'll let it marinate before I actually start going after it for the plot.

What I really wanna talk about is the fanbase of tears on a withered flower because while the manhwa community does have a problem with internalized misogyny this specific fanbase takes the cake.

I don't like saying the term "glazing" but it's the only way to accurately describe the way they treat the FL Na Haesoo because they are absolutely feral. First off, I've seen them lose their shit over other fans simply saying "I think that this female character has a prettier design then Hae soo." And these stans reply with the most immature and even down right laughable comebacks. I took some screenshot of a tears of the wither flower slide show to give you an idea.

"Hae soon is the main character for a reason."

Who's gonna tell them that protagonists can be written poorly?

Trust me, I'm sure no one's jealous of a fictional character.

Okay the context basically was that Hae soos coworker was just being real with her based on what she knows about Hae soos life and apparently fans took that as her being jealous and when people who actually read the god damn plot and use their critical thinking to point this out, the stans basically go "nuh uh" and continue to scream even louder. Personally when I read that chapter i took it as brutal honesty, from her perspective Tae Ha was hitting on a married woman and the two barely knew eachother. A little harsh but she's not jealous of Hae soo 😭 like we barely know this girl!

I think the most complained about aspect of tears on a withered flower is the anatomy, specifically the anatomy of all the characters your supposed to really like/care about.

I don't mind that Hae Soo is built like that cause while her anatomy definitely is unrealistic it's also a cartoon comic and cartoons have lots of bizarre forms of anatomy that don't always need to be accurate. With that said I don't find it a coincidence that the FL who is the most fleshed out and only grown woman who isn't meant to be disliked or made fun of is a tsunade cup sized babe with big thighs, a tiny waist, a nice butt, and a baby face.

Yeah I'll say it: Hae soo is another example of authors wanting to make a non conventionally attractive woman since she's supposed to be older (like 33) who is also overworked so she doesn't take care of herself but in the end they didn't have the balls to actually go through with it so they not only gave Hae soo an amazing figure and hair but they also gave her a clear face, tiny lips and barely noticeable eye bags which I still can't tell if they're even eye bags or just her eyelashes.

When anyone even dares to point out that Hae Soo's design is weirdly propionate compared to the other female characters you get hid with the "Your just jealous that you can't have a man like Tae Ha!!"

look i don't mind disproportionate anatomy in cartoon comics but if you give me character designs with more accurate proportions, I'm going to choose the latter for prettier looking designs.

Another thing about this manhwa was the dialog. I like it at times because it can be so poetic.. and then they just throw in some comically evil sentences for the villains that most sane people would not make the public aware of in a modern day setting. It's not something that really annoys me I just thought it was fun to laugh at every now and again while reading.

conclusion: I think the best way to describe tears on a withered flowers fanbase is kinda like how Netflix treats Bigmouth. No, TOTWF is definitely no where near levels of uncomfortable as Bigmouth but it's in the way that it really isn't as good as everyone claims, it's okay at first and then it got old and some people started opening up that the thought Bigmouth was garbage only for a bunch of stans to barge in with "You just don't get it!!" People won't let it go, they keep insisting it's the best piece of work to exist and anyone who doesn't like it is a jealous loser.

[9mysterybook6]

I know I said before that the case was closed Rhylie but what she's doing now is something that will cause future problems and bad things.

There's something I need to talk about but first let's see Rhylie's post.

Rhylie you literally proved ZB189's point when he said you're terrible in your own defense

Your first evidence is not evidence

Secondly, you changed the main subject to something that doesn't have a problem at all.

First I didn't say you're ugly I said your meowing cat is ugly You're just saying that to change the subject.

The phrase "barking dogs never bite

I was just like, The phrase "barking dogs never bite"

(which points out that people who regularly threaten others or make a fuss are least likely to take action. It provides the advice not to be intimidated by those who merely make threats without following through)

Have you forgotten YOU was calling people you bullied and harassed by much worse names?

And thirdly, I think you mean yourself

((Have Been Respecting Opinions For You All. But I've Been Trolled By 9mysterybook6 For Her False Rumors, Lies, Harrasments To Turned Against Me And Forcing Me To Respect Decisions For Others And The Worst Part Is She Just Called Me "Ugly", It Triggers Me.))

First, I didn't force you to do anything. I just said to respect other people's opinions.

Another thing is that you are the one who forces people to agree with your ideas and opinions.

You harassed Sergio because he just didn't agree with your opinions and didn't listen to your orders.

You could have simply left him alone, but instead of leaving him alone and respecting his decisions, you started harassing and bullying Sergio and spreading lies about him, all because he didn't listen to your orders or agree with you.

(@lizzietherwbychibifan, this is all of your buisness, your like a sister to me.)

And another thing, this has nothing to do with @lizzietherwbychibifan at all.

You now try yo guilt trip them, beg them, and pressure them.

Leave them alone

You did not answer my question when I asked you why you are still stalking pami

Let me tell you, ignoring or denying this fact only makes your situation more difficult even though you are already in the danger zone because of your actions.

Another thing, no matter how much you change the name of your blog or ask them not to report you, this will not help at all, but rather will raise suspicions about you.

Now to the subject of the president

Someone named @shadowyinvestigator sent me these screenshots.

And this was proving what I said before when I said Rhylie went to random blogs spreading lies about people she hated or harassed or people who exposed her actions.

And this was @shadowyinvestigator's conversation with Rhylie

I'm not sure if this was the right order but you can see what Rhylie said.

Honestly, I didn't know what to say about all this.

Okay let's see what Rhylie says about me.

(But I wish 9mysterybook6 was egotistical)

so you wish me to be egotistical so you have some kind of excuse to use against me

Let me disappoint you, but I'm not that type of person.

Don't make me laugh, do I have to remind you Rhylie, you're the one who was jealous of prometheus2007, ZB189 and Sergio because they have more followers than you

You yourself said they don't deserve followers and you should take their followers

If you read one of my previous posts

((I'm actually modest, but I have more of interests same as everyone else have as well.))

You are everything bad and horrible person except modest

Everyone here agrees that there is nothing modest in you

(I believe 9mysterybook6 belongs to hell and I belong to heaven.)

Again you claim to be a Saint even though you are never innocent

(And I belong to tumblr now, so 9mysterybook6 needs stop exposing lies about me like a immature asshole.)

Now you're the one calling me asshole. Didn't you say it's not good to call someone ugly? Even though I didn't call you that.

And let me remind you, you are literally a 21 year old woman who is acting immature.

And tell me which part of the truth is a lie.

The part where you harass people, bully them, or stalk them

or THAT you still stalking pami by reposts any post about or related to pamithebunterfly2007

((Yep, is it time you need to expose ranta 9mysterybook6? ((Well, you don't have a choice.))

Rhylie did you tell @shadowyinvestigator that they have no choice to refuse your request and just carry out your orders like a black sheep?

This literally proves what I and others said about you when we said that you are a controlling person who does not takes no as an answer

You are the one who forces others to accept your opinions even though they do not agree with you.

You always order any artist to draw your requests and after the drawing is done you start saying oh wow the drawing is beautiful but can you please change some things in it

And when they refuse, you start guilt tripping them, beg them, pressure them.

You just want your drawing done according to your wishes and you don’t care if they take their time just to draw this drawing for you only. You just want them to carry out the request without questions or urging.

((wait Excuse me…? I take offence to that last statement Rhylie))

(You don't have a choice but to make expose rant post about 9mysterybook6?)

Even @shadowyinvestigator felt insulted when someone out of nowhere tell them they have no opinion on the matter and are just carrying out the request

Then Rylie pretends to be stupid by repeating what she did with a question mark.

(That's bitch, can you please teach her a lesson that she shouldn't expose me.)

Learn a lesson about what?, not to tell the truth about corrupt people like you

I was not only defending a friend and another victim, I was also defending myself and your corruption.

((Yep, 9mysterybook6's a hypocritical egotistical not me.))

Rhylie you are literally the biggest double standard hypocrite

And as I said, denying and distorting the truth will never help you.

@shadowyinvestigator Show Rhylie who's boss with this reply

((Your gonna be blocked by me for faking innocence and harassing others. Shadow has provided me enough proof of you being awful to people. So sorry, Rhylie. Toodles~!))

Of course Rhylie didn't like that response from them so she stole their name.

This is one of Rhylie's bad behaviors, which is stealing other people's names when they disagree with her or expose her actions, like what she did to me.

I want to thank @shadowyinvestigator for sharing this and the screenshots with me.

Then Rylie tried again to take some pity on her by pretending to be in a bad mood. AKA guilt tripping

But surprisingly, of course, it was a lie.

(I Have To Come Back Too Early Today In The Morning. Boy, I've Made A Good Decision As Well Taking A Good Break For You All. So...)

You never gave anyone a break from you

You say, "Oh, I'm really stressed out."

You just want attention, you yourself said you would do anything to be the center of attention

First of all this is disgusting

Because she is still acting friends with people whom she has wronged, harassed or abused.

And another thing, she stole some of words from ask

((As good friends, i know my protection are poorly, but I was trying to defend my from anybody who exposes lies and harassing me to leave tumblr.))

Should I mention that you were the one who kicked prometheus2007 off tumblr because of your harassment, bullying and lying about them?

You were trying to get rid of me before and now, but I am not afraid of a harassing woman like you

((You can continue to be friends with her but with helping me with good or clean actions.))

Rhylie your work is neither good nor clean its all dirty and bad

First, harassing, bullying, stalking, and spreading lies about people are bad things, especially threatening them and wishing them dead. ((Because of me, lizzie would pretend to hate me and Faking that she doesn't want me to mention her name ever.

I don't deserve to be hated, because it's wrong to hate me.

Are You All Convinced That You Need Me?))

This is all filthy, controlling talk.

Denying the truth is never healthy.

And now the second important topic

I find Rhylie's situation concerned Especially for the victims and who followers her

You've all seen before how Rhylie asks a follower to attack, insult, or even kill someone on her orders.

Rhylie targets minors because they are easy to manipulate and mess with. She wants minors to listen to her and worship her like a god.

And as I said, she reposts to gain more followers.

Rhylie is a power freak.

And let's not forget that she harasses and guilt trips people because they block her and force them to stay friends with her.

And there is also a possibility that Rhylie pervert with minors

Not only is it a blog full of underage characters with inappropriate drawings,

Because someone told me about Rhylie before.

They were Rhylie ex-friends

Of course I will not mention their names for safety

on How Rhylie Was Writing Inappropriate and Strange And disgusting with Underage Characters in Her FanFic

We've all seen her actions with minor characters, so imagine what Rhylie would do with real minors, what she would say to them, and what she would do to them.

And let me tell you, there's no point in talking to her or hoping she'll change.

Rhylie has proven more than once that she will never change and will continue to torture and abuse others and spread lies about them.

Rhylie's actions are getting worse every day.

I just want to say Rhylie needs to stop now.

She has crossed the line more than once.

And her position is very difficult

No matter how much Rhylie denies or tries to ignore the truth or lie about Her choices and actions led her in this situation,

Rhylie's influence on minors may cause problems in the future, especially when she teaches them bad things like harassing others or attacking anyone who is against Rhylie and wishing someone's death because they are against her.

Rhylie will cause problems in the future if she is not banned from here or what is the solution to this problem

Here is her blog and report her.

I know some of you are tired of this topic.

But better safe than sorry

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

was i the asshole for sending a message?

the message is down below, the premise is a bit long as i wanted to explain what led to it

riley (fake name) was my childhood friend, we grew up together. by high school we ended up being each other's only friend.

riley and i weren't very good friends to each other. we were both mean as hell, often making jabs at each other and being judgy and in general putting the other down. same with other people. riley had jealousy issues and i had anger issues. basically you can guess why we didn't have other friends

this happened a few years ago when we were 16-17. one summer riley started ghosting me out of the blue. i thought something bad had happened but they eventually replied saying they were feeling down and not in the mood to be online. i told them they could talk to me whenever, they told me they would at some point, and we left it at that.

i also DMed them on twitter but they didn't seem thrilled, so i offered them to block me and minded my own business since. aside from that i'd only contact them to send memes. it was very obvious they were ignoring me as they were online everywhere else, but i figured they didn't feel like talking to me.

and they never replied. when we went back to school after summer break they just wouldn't talk to me. i was confused but i didn't want to cause a scene so i texted them and they promised to give me an explanation.

they didn't. instead they blocked me everywhere and still refused to talk to me. i still didn't want to confront them in school as to not cause a scene. i was really frustrated by their avoidance and a month (?) later i went off at them in their twitter DMs:

honestly i don't even know what to say about the way you're acting. how you don't even have the balls to tell me what's your fucking problem.

i won't even comment on the fact you changed my contact name and felt the need to tweet about it, or on you calling me "ex bff", or on the fact you blocked me randomly. because i never expected such immaturity, i never expected this treatment, and i don't know what to fucking think of you anymore.

know that i still want an explanation, and if you continue to ignore me we can talk about it in school. i don't give a fuck if there's people around. you're my best friend and i refuse to leave without an explanation.

(it's translated from another language. sorry if it's worded awkwardly but i tried to keep it close to the original)

it got me an explanation a few days later. some of it was true and some of it wasn't, but in the end i thought they were justified in wanting to cut me off so i never contacted them again (they had asked me not to bring it up around them or the teachers and to leave them alone)

i couldn't understand why they didn't just tell me as all i had been doing was beg for an explanation but i realized that i was aggressive with that message and i must have scared them. in the moment my anger felt justified but it made me wonder if it was my bad for getting so worked up and not letting them take their time. i still think about it and i wanted to hear someone else's opinion.

AITA for sending that message?

What are these acronyms?

[neeterloveschenford]

Gonna throw my two cents in about 6x01. Many will not agree with me, but it is what it is. We're all allowed our opinions on a bunch of fictional characters. That being said, let's dive in.

I don't have a problem with Lucy or Tim and how they behaved in last night's episode. Was Lucy OTT and a bit irrational? Yes. Let me introduce y'all to anxiety. It's a common reaction to duress. I have often acted in a similar manner over the course of my life. I like to think that I am better at managing my anxiety, but I'm also 20 years older than Lucy. People tell me all the time that I am so confident and have it together. What they don't know is that I am just really good at handling it. But Lucy is still only in her early 30's. She still has a lot of life that she hasn't experienced yet. And I will never understand this mindset that Lucy is ALWAYS super confident and badass. Ummm, are we watching the same show? Yes, in the moment she can be a complete badass. When we first meet her, she takes out and arrests the dude that tried to carjack her. In 2x07 we see her dive right in with the bomber showing Nyla the potential that she has and starting one of the best friendships on the show. In 3x06 she came up with a cover story on the fly to save June. And I could keep going. But all of these are instances where there was not time for her to second guess herself. And this is what I love most about Lucy. She is me and I am her in a lot of instances. I don't want her to be perfect all the time. I love her imperfections. I love the fact that she can sometimes be immature and emotional. This makes her more real. And another thing that I think is often overlooked is the fact that It's only been about 3 years in the timeline. We grow and change over the course of our entire lives. Give her some more time if you want her to be a superhero. I mean Angela and Nyla often struggle with balancing their personal and professional lives. This is a process that never stops. And I want to continue to see her grow and become more confident. But it's a life long process.

Now on to Tim. I keep seeing people say that Tim has sat in a shop with her for 3 or 4 years so he should know how to talk to her and never say the wrong thing. Listen, my mom and stepdad have been married for over 40 years and the man still says the wrong thing all the time. I love how he slipped back into TO Tim and didn't realize that wasn't what Lucy needed. Just like Lucy, it makes him human. I love that he is just as flawed as Lucy, just in different ways. As for the fight, yes it was stupid. But people have stupid fights everyday. And sometimes those stupid fights are the catalyst to being able to move forward and deal with whatever caused the fight in the first place. I am excited to see them finally deal with the underlying issues they obviously have.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I have to go to work. So I will end this here.

[simkjrs]

umineko episode 1: inital notes

info: i've finished episodes 1-4 and am currently rereading the question arcs in order to try and crack the mystery before i get to the answer arcs.

i went back through my umineko notes and found my episode 1 write-up from my first read-through! since i'll be posting my question arc theories shortly, i thought it would be fun to share my first round notes for anyone who wants to compare how my ideas have developed.

my first-round notes included:

character summary/evaluation

themes & motifs

unanswered questions

miscellaneous

so without further ado.... please enjoy!

Character Summary/Evaluation

Battler: Our intrepid protagonist, jokester, and contrarian. 

The story tells us that Battler, like Maria, will be “left out of the loop.” Unlike Maria, though, he is cast out of the know-how because of his lack of belief rather than his belief. 

The story shows us that (unlike Kanon) while he is aware of “roles” he doesn’t exactly “subscribe” to them, as seen when he casually helps Kanon complete his duties despite them being guest and servant. His strength is that he barrels through roles and boundaries like the world’s most tactless elephant, allowing him to move against the flow of things even when all the odds seem stacked against him. His greatest mistakes in the story occur whenever the people around him manage to persuade him to “play along” with “the mood” or the expected “roles.”

In a way, Battler acts kind of like a joker or fool figure in the story. His impudence and lack of regard for the rules occasionally grants him great insight and at other times means his bumbling is excused because of how it amuses the Powers That Be. 

It’s brought up multiple times that he looks grown up but hasn’t changed on the inside at all, which undoubtedly plays into the story’s ideas about time. 

Maria: The most interesting contrast to Battler so far. She shares his stubbornness and gets along with him very well. 

Like Battler, Maria is “left out of the loop,” but this is because of her sincere belief in what can’t be simply seen. As such the story shows and tells us repeatedly that Maria’s narrative role is someone who tells the truth but is never believed, sort of a Cassandra role in a way. Naturally, she is the Witch’s Messenger, and since people don’t believe in the witch they will not believe her either. Notably, during the first twilight, she is the only one who doesn’t “see” the death of someone close to her. 

In contrast to Battler, who looks grown but acts young, Maria is someone who looks young and “acts old” (her “other persona”). 

The most sensitive to what is “here” but cannot be seen. 

Rudolf: Battler’s dad. A bit of a casanova, a prankster. He often says one thing but means another. It’s said that Battler acts a lot like him. 

George: Battler’s cousin, an adult, a businessman, and a good friend. He is concerned with image and pretense, but also with control. From what I can read from the narrative, later in the story, a great lie of his will be unveiled, ultimately breaking others’ trust in him. 

His willingness to “order” Shannon to pursue her feelings for him does not suggest anything good. 

As the most adult of the children, George is on the verge of entering the adults’ world, but also is not fully out of the childrens’ world. The mix of immaturity and confidence that he knows what he’s doing may lead to his downfall later. 

Still trying to figure up what is up with those glasses. What does it mean when we can’t see your eyes George. Go on and tell me. 

Uncle Hideyoshi: Guy who loves and values family deeply. He tries to smooth things over in the family by cracking jokes and changing the subject, things like that, but that is really just dealing with the symptoms rather than addressing the root cause. His ultimate downfall in chapter 1 is simply the fact that he loved Eva enough to join the Ushiromiya family. 

I feel like his problem can be read from the problems with his business: the things he loves are about to be snatched away due to his earnestness and sincerity, and he doesn’t have the ability to prevent it. 

Aunt Eva: George’s mom and Rudolf’s older sister. She seems to want power and acknowledgment, and maybe due to resentment, takes it out on Natsuhi. Her martial artist prowess hasn’t really been a topic of discussion in the story that much yet. 

She regrets dragging Hideyoshi and George into her selfish battles and desires. This is just my suspicion, but if she one day finds her self-worth elsewhere and sacrifices for their sake instead, maybe she will be able to change her story. 

An aggressive person who tries to assert power and/or control by going on the offensive and tearing others down. 

Kyrie: Rudolf’s second wife. She taught Battler a lot about chess. Unfortunately, she’s not one of the “players” in the family. 

Aunt Rosa: Thoughtful, conscientious, and dutiful. She lived well in the Ushiromiya family by not rocking the boat. However, she is frustrated with Maria for not facing reality. The tension between Rosa and Maria is the tension between someone for whom “fantasy” is both necessary and a reality, and someone for whom “fantasy” is a destructive force that shouldn’t be indulged. Noteworthy: Rosa acting on her desire – or perhaps, a “fantasy of possibility” – of cornering Krauss and gaining money also leads to a rather sad fate in chapter 1. 

Jessica: Wants to escape the island but is also determined to carry her burden until she dies. I don’t think you can do both of those at once. Ultimately, she loves her family and doesn’t want to be alone, but her tendency to overreact and speak from emotion means she might damage her relationships in the future… 

Aunt Natsuhi: She loves her family deeply and would move mountains for them. If they made an effort to reach out to her, surely things could be repaired. Jessica had this chance, but who knows if Krauss did. In any case, her love is rarely seen, appreciated, and returned. In chapter 1, her end comes about because she wants to protect her family without allowing weakness, which results in Jessica thinking she decided to leave her behind. I think her story will change when her love is fully seen & returned, and that has to start with letting other people see her weakness and her efforts, which she thinks she must hide. Her fate may be fully turned around once her relationship with Jessica is repaired. 

A few times, she falls into the trap of “isolating herself” in a room – first the night she sleeps with Jessica’s charm on the door knob (a connection that saved her), again when she locked herself and the children bar Maria in Kinzo’s study (which doomed them). She thinks that isolation, walls, and barricades will protect and grant her relief. This is the greatest trick! 

Uncle Krauss: Jessica’s father, Rudolf’s older brother, a bully and a liar. I don’t have a good read on his “story” either. 

Kumasawa Chiyo: Gossipy, rumor-loving, and a jokester. Socially savvy and with her own principles. I haven’t really been able to get a read on her “story.” 

Gohdo: A flashy, showy guy who skirts responsibility and has something of a pride/inferiority complex. Rather like his food, he’s the sort of guy who wants to be consumed well (narratively, literally, whatever). I prescribe him with “guy who wants to curry favor with the power structure rather than climbing it, fighting it, or stepping outside of it.” 

Kanon: He seems to have a good idea of what it means to be a “servant,” so we can kind of look at him as someone who sees through the “pretense” in a way. As such, he is an excellent “observer,” but it also doesn’t save him from being or becoming a “participant.” Being able to see how the story is supposed to go doesn’t mean he has the ability to avert it. 

He acts according to his role because he has a clear understanding of the “roles” around him. However, we also see that without Shannon, he doesn’t see any reason to ascribe to this role. On the other hand, when Shannon is around, he dutifully wants to help her fulfill her role as well as fulfill his own. 

As with Shannon, the one time he steps out of his “role” in the story, he is punished for it (death).  Before this, Shannon reigned him in from trying to step out of his role. 

Kinzo: The family head. I feel like everything I have to say about him is obvious. 

Nanjo Terumasa: The physician who can’t cure anyone. He diagnoses Kinzo but cannot treat him due to Kinzo’s stubbornness. He can’t intervene in the underlying issues of the Ushiromiya family. He can assess the bodies but can’t prevent the deaths. The one time he treats someone in the chapter, Kanon, he fails to save him. Similar to Kanon, he has an “observer’s” role. Kanon accepts the script as it is. Nanjo can see when something is wrong, but he is ultimately powerless to improve the situation. From the chess metaphors, we can also view him as someone who understands the rules of the game but still can’t play it. When Nanjo gains the power to change something in the story, that will be when he also gains power over his own “fate.” 

Genji: Head Servant. I don’t have a good read on his “story” yet.  

Shannon (Sayo): Kanon’s older sister and George’s love interest.

In the story, she receives the blame and consequences for things that she did not do. The picture-perfect innocent bystander, whose only crime is being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with a sincere heart. 

Shannon easily goes along with what she thinks she should do and doesn’t want to think about her autonomy or control over her life. Therefore, unlike Kanon, she acts according to her role not because she believes in or chooses it, but because she hasn’t really thought about what else to do. 

The few times Shannon makes her own choices in the chapter, she is punished for it.

She is kind of like a stalking goat for luring out the feelings of others.

Ushiromiya family overall: This is a family that tries to brush aside or hide everything without addressing the root cause. In other words, appearances > truth. Maybe this is why most of them were so easily taken in by the witch. 

Themes & Motifs

Belief: One of the most key things that Chapter 1 tells us about the story is that believing someone is not just a matter of evidence but also of feeling. For the spiritually sensitive, like Maria, “feeling” is enough to believe without evidence. For normal people, having evidence is enough for them to “feel” the truth. However, for the spiritually insensitive like Battler, “evidence” alone is not enough for them to “feel” the truth.

One can extrapolate that it isn’t the story that needs to change, but the circumstances or atmosphere in which it is told and consumed – just like how, to enjoy Gohda’s dinner, they didn’t just need good food but a good mood. It’s not just the substance that is important, but the presentation and mood and heart. 

Faces: Many of the victims’ faces were destroyed, and to comfort themselves, the survivors said that their loved ones would want to remember them with a complete smile on their face. Kinzo also does drastic things because he wants to see Beatrice’s smile again. In a way, we can see the good and bad sides of ascribing values to our memories of people we’ve lost. 

Gold: The object of desire. If you just had gold, you would be able to do everything you want to do, achieve everything you crave, hold everything you desire, be who you want to be. Beatrice the Golden, who grants wishes. The Golden Land, where you can get back what has been lost. So on and so forth. 

The problem, of course, is what people will do in order to obtain that “gold.” Kinzo would sacrifice his whole family. The siblings would all throw each other under the bus and betray their father. Etc. Etc. 

In the first ???, Bernkastel notes that Beatrice is dangerous because she has nothing in her but zeros; when she rolls the die, she doesn’t desire any specific result, and therefore, Bernkastel can’t do anything against her. In a way, Beatrice will be most in danger when she finally has an outcome she desires (or lets herself want an outcome?) 

Devils: Obviously, Beatrice as the “devil” in “making a deal with the devil.” However, there’s also the theme about the Devil’s Proof. Actually, it’s rather interesting: for other people, creating a situation with a “lack of proof” is enough to prove her existence as a witch. However, Battler has her in a sort of devil’s contract too, because for him, a lack of proof of human ability is not enough to prove “human inability” (and hence, inhuman ability). 

Natsuhi also says she would become the worst devil if she could protect her daughter. George previously argued that you must do terrible things if you want to defend the rights and livelihoods of the people you care about or who depend on you, and Genji claimed Kinzo was in love with Beatrice (devil). So let’s ponder the connection between love and devilry for a little while. I think maybe the lesson here is simply that uneven and unequal love will result in very bad things. 

Games, or, Skill vs. Luck: The narrative draws a couple of big parallels between everyone’s circumstances/lives and games. First is chess and shogi, games of skill. Second is roulettes, bets, etc., which are games of luck. Battler tries to understand the “roulette” with the logic of a “chessboard.” I think this also hearkens back to some of the questions the story has presented us with fate. Did people die the way they did because they were fated to, or because they were unlucky, or because they played unskillfully? Either way, everyone is being forced to use their lives as pieces in the game. I’m expecting that there will be more discussion about “life is a game” vs “this isn’t a game, this is REAL!” or that sort of thing. 

Also noteworthy – Kyrie specifically talks about how game theory and deductions can’t always deduct human emotions or erratic choices. Going back to previous talk about “belief,” in a way, we can kind of see the beginnings of a conflict between games which try to calculate human feeling, and human feelings which aren’t deterministic and won’t always feel the same even if the same thing happens again. 

Witches all seem to be playing games of luck. I’ll take a moment to note the significance of “Zero.” Lambdadelta is powerful because she can approach infinitely close to zero, but she is flawed because she cannot reach it. Bernkastel is undefeatable as long as a probability is not zero, but loses all power as long as the chances are zero. Beatrice is “nothing but zeros” which means that she cannot lose. (Related to the problem of Beatrice’s “desire.”) In the negotiations between siblings, Krauss comes out with the strongest position because he’d turn out well by “doing nothing.” And last of all, I’ll point to Kanon’s last words before he died: he wanted to be the “zero” on the roulette table, which has the power to take away everything that has been bet. On one level, this points to the idea that the winner of the game isn’t who plays the game best but who sets the rules. On another level, it suggests the winner of the game is nothing, or doesn’t exist. The winner is a “zero.” Once you have something, you can’t be a winner anymore. For example, as pointed out by George in the story, when you grow up and start having people depend on you, you can’t be carefree about your approach anymore. Let’s see how the idea develops later! 

Islands/Rooms: Represents isolation, withdrawal, and in a way self-sabotage. Mentioned this for a couple characters. Once, the narration describes the characters all fleeing a room together as if afraid the last one to leave would be left in the room alone. As the game continues, more and more rooms are closed off, shrinking the characters’ worlds into a sort of smaller room as well. The problem of Chapter 1 is the problem of the “room.” (More on that later.) 

Doors: Obvious counterpart imagery to the room. The game itself enters the story or transitions between scenes using the light (or dark) of doors. The most important question of Chapter 1: are doors the only way for one to enter or exit a room? 

Seagulls: So far, they’ve been most important as a symbol that “something is about to begin” or that “something will end.” Given that the rain and stormy weather has been a representation of isolation (or even an entry into “another world”), with the seagulls’ relationship as a harbinger of the storm, we can also view the birds as a warning that you should stick together. Guess we’ll see where it goes from there. 

Roses: These are significant to me mostly because of what it tells me about the characters when they talk about them. For example, I think that Eva longs for the past in some way (“I wish you could have seen them back then”). George says that flowers dying early also lets them appreciate their brightness when they bloom (similar to what is said later on, in order to comfort survivors about the others’ deaths). Also, the roses have to be cultivated carefully and then are gone to waste in the span of a single night’s storm, similar to the Ushiromiya fortune. So roses are kind of a metaphor or stand-in for the lives of people in the game. 

If we take things a little more literally, the wilting rose that Maria spotted can be taken for an analog of Beatrice, who perhaps  just can’t thrive under the Ushiromiya care. 

The wilting rose is the most important rose because it presents us with the biggest theme about belief in the game, which is that something that is “here” can’t always be found or seen or felt. The disconnect between truth and evidence, in a way. I think anything else to be said on the topic of the wilting rose is obvious. 

Time/Maturity: The confusion of time has been a pretty big theme. Multiple characters are described as growing older but still staying the same inside as they were years ago (for example, Battler, Maria, Jessica, I believe Rudolf and Kumasawa also). On one hand it extends the metaphor of things that feel/appear different even though fundamentally they are the same. On the other hand, we can also see this as a sort of “stagnation” or “eternity.” The game also blurs the connection between aging and maturity, such as with George, who is caught between the children’s and adults’ worlds, and Rosa, who expresses that even though she isn’t a child anymore she also doesn’t feel like an adult. A few times, characters express the feeling that they are still caught in the past even though time has clearly moved on, for example: 

And again, characters are caught repeating the actions of the past, even though time has moved to the present:

So, this game will probably need to address the problem of how to “move forward,” which is almost synonymous with its question of how to “mature.” 

The game is extremely conscious about time, as every time there is a meaningful timeskip, it shows the clock moving (and may or may not have a glass shattering sound effect accompanying it). During moments of suspense and contemplation, it plays a soundtrack very similar to the soft sound of a ticking clock. 

Beatrice’s appellation, “The Endless,” also points to something about time. 

Shattering glass: tied in with time. This effect occurs when moving forwards or backwards in time in the story. It also occurs when loading a save or exiting the menu, which can also be a way of moving through “time” in the story. It’s hard to say what else it means at this stage, but since this shattering glass effect literally symbolizes breaking an invisible barrier, I can only assume that later the story may begin shattering invisible barriers that we as a reader take as a given. (For example: the barrier between story and reality, truth and lie.) 

Rain: symbolic of solitude, isolation, loneliness, “the end.” Which is quite funny because it’s the harbinger of Beatrice’s arrival, and Beatrice is “The Endless.” 

Eyes: Not elaborated on much in this chapter, but may become more relevant in later chapters. 

Let’s append the suspicious point about George’s glasses here. If eyes are the expression and window to the soul, then George with his glasses both obscures his own self and also may be shielding himself from looking at others. 

Unanswered Questions

Why did Rudolf say he would probably die that night? How did he know? 

How did Kinzo leave his room with no one noticing? 

How did the first six sacrifices get into the storage shed? 

How did the magic circle on Eva and Hideyoshi’s door appear so quickly? 

How did the letter appear inside Kinzo’s study?

How did Natsuhi shoot herself so perfectly? 

What happened to the missing rose? 

The epitaph in general.

Why was there a “time limit” for the epitaph’s ritual to be carried out? Arguably the time limit is simply “before every sacrifice is claimed” but the significance of the clock and the perfect 24:00 ending would suggest that there is more of a reason to the time limit than just that. 

What did Battler see at the end of the chapter that led his first instinct to be “You can’t be a witch” (denial) rather than “Who the hell are you”?

Who is the person narrating the character entries in the menu? It seems like Maria, but then what would that mean.  

If Kinzo wrote the epitaph, why does Beatrice accept his bet and carry it out? 

Other

Magic: To summarize, magic can bring forth a miracle that is proportional to what you risk or bet. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. However, as briefly touched on in the game, the paradox of magic is a sort of confusion of cause and effect. For example, let’s say you make a million-to-one bet to bring forth a miracle. You win the bet. Did the miracle occur because you won the bet, or did you win the bet because you had a “miracle”? The ambiguity of cause and belief lies at the heart of magic. 

We also know that if just one person fails to believe, the magic will fail. However, there are millions of people in the world who don’t believe, so we can plausibly rephrase this condition as: “if just one person who knows about the magic fails to believe, the magic will fail.” Therefore, the best way to ensure magic will work is to expose it only to people who will believe. But, as we know, the power of a magic is proportional to risk. If you only show magic to those who believe, then it will lose its power. 

In chapter 1, Kinzo exposes his “bet” to all 18/19 people on the island, raising the stakes of the magic – not just because more people might unravel the epitaph, but because there are more people who might fail to believe in the magic. (Bernkastel also mentions that the key to unraveling magic is to unravel the riddle behind it.) In any case, Battler is extremely anti-magic, both in attitude and in property. Exposing magic to Battler is sure to fail because Battler will not believe, even if he sees magic and cannot explain it. However, in the impossible case that you make the man who will never believe in magic finally admit to its existence, you will be able to draw forth the most powerful “miracle.” So in more ways than one, I feel like Battler’s “belief” is the most critical key to casting magic in this story. 

Entry/Exit: I would argue that the core problem of Chapter 1 is the “room” and how to get out of it. I think this might be Beatrice’s core problem too, because she tells us with her very first magic circle that perhaps her deepest desire is to escape the chains of her fate. But can she really do that if she is fulfilling Kinzo’s epitaph to the letter? … 

Reason/Fantasy: The story sets up these two things to be at odds, but Battler gives a very important breakdown of why fantasy/imagination is actually critical to being able to reason. I think Battler should watch The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema as presented by Slavoj Zizek. There would be a lot to say. In summary, though, the video essay argues that fantasy and shared constructions of fantasy are actually the necessary tool by which we engage with reality. When the fantasy is shattered, we lose touch with reality, too. 

I’d also like to submit this quote from Karl Popper: “...we do not seek highly probable theories but explanations; that is to say, powerful and highly improbable theories.” Truth and probability are not always hand in hand. Maybe that’s why the witches draw so much power from a million-to-one bet? 

Overall, though, Umineko is shaping up very obviously to be a story about belief. How people decide to believe and why, or maybe also why they don’t believe. The dignity of one’s strong feelings; the right to believe and feel what you do, despite what others say; the relationship between truth and belief… In essence, I think Umineko is going to be about this quote from The Little Prince: 

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

[foreverisntenough]

https://www.tumblr.com/foreverisntenough/763817621945729024/i-love-them-but-i-hateeee-all-the-rumors-this?source=share

I don't think the friendship is the problem. I think you guys feed into every little rumor too quickly.

They're seen together

You guys: omg he's leaving. Jude's poaching him

Is Trent not 26? Can he not make his own decisions and not be swayed about another guy? Is he not his own man? Why is his friendship with a 21 year old so worrisome?

If you guys didn't kick up a fuss about every rumor and just was matured and ignored it, there wouldn't even be grounds for this rumor to grow as much as it does

Sigh… I really don’t want to do this on my fictional writing blog.

Yes, but you’re making your point. He’s 26. He’s making a professional career decision. It’s not about what I’ve said on a reblog. I promise. I’m not naive enough to believe a friendship is weighing or swaying his career like that.

I don’t know who the “you guys” you’re referring to but I’ve said it before but I’m a Liverpool fan. I’ve cared about the club and its players long before Trent graced the field. That said, I love Jude, I’m writing a fic about him right now in fact, but you can’t get me to like RM. I won’t. And I’m allowed to like them as separate entities on my blog. It’s all in good humor. It’s cheeky. I’m not villainizing Jude, I’m not babying Trent. It’s banter.

Calling me immature about making a few cheeky comments on tumblr is wild though. Of course, I don’t want one of the star players of my club, favorite players at my club to go to, not only a rival club, but also a club we’ve lost massive games to in the recent past, specifically ones Trent’s played in… but if he goes that’s how it is.

I want the best for him as a player, it’s a career move end of the day and there isn’t much more ‘up’ he can go after a club like Liverpool. Trent Alexander-Arnold’s career is his, not Jude’s.

Also, if you recall all during the World Cup everyone chirped on and on about the friendship, that Trent was swaying Jude to Liverpool. This isn’t uncommon in the world of football especially when international players reconvene together. Asking Konate about Kylian, asking Virg about Cody… yes, this one has been heightened specifically though because of the media’s attention on Jude but also yhe pair together is the perfect storm. I can go into why I believe they are media targets if you’d like…

But I’ll tell you right now though my small tumblr joking is not causing this. Go read the swarms of Madrid articles after Carvajal’s injury. Get on twitter. Go read Trent’s vague interview in the Atlantic. If you pick a side you can infer any direction you want but Trent said he won’t let it play in the media, leaving it open for interpretation. Additionally, Madrid hasn’t just begun to monitor Trent, this has been cooking pre Jude. The boy is arguably one of the best in the world at his position, everyone watches him.

But as a Liverpool fan… the club have not done enough for our big players, not just Trent and it’s concerning but I don’t see Mo giggling about with rival club players but if he did it’d be okay because he’s an adult man just like Trent. I never said Jude and Trent’s friendship wasn’t okay. They’re teammates? BUT this is what football media has become. I didn’t make up the rumors.

Whatever happens will happen. It will be okay. Promise

You don’t need to call me immature. Thanks.

[heartshattering]

/// venting, past SA mention

Stress is wrecking my sleep again, I really wish I could just feel okay but there's always so much spinning around in my mind. The problems I'm going through with my friend are hitting me harder than I thought, like I had all these annoyances bubbling inside of me and it's only now that she's gotten even more irritating that they're finally starting to surface and I'm questioning why we even stay friends. We don't have any common interests anymore, she's rude all the time and says things that are discouraging or flat-out dismissive.

If I open up to her about issues specifically related to one of my disorders, she'll be like "People without ADHD go through that too, it's not your ADHD causing that issue! :)" or "Oh I do the same thing and I don't have BPD! *proceeds to tell me about an incredibly mild form of mirroring she does which isn't nearly as severe as what I literally just described to her*".

It's been years already but I hate that she told the person who SA'd me after rejecting them that maybe I would "change my mind" about them and date them in the future. Told me I should have given them another chance. And didn't stick up for me at all during a conversation with them where they were putting me down and saying things like I was wrong and immature for not forgiving them and that I'm going to be alone forever.

This guy (not her current bf but one she was interested in for a while) used to call me crazy and a liar for being mentally ill and she always sided with him too. And there's been other examples too, the only time she sides with me is when I'm talking about my mom but in pretty much every other instance she takes the other person's side and acts like I'm just mean/crazy/unforgiving or whatever.

She's weird about my ethnicity too like asking me "Why don't you put biracial on forms?" or "Why don't you identify with your dad's background?" when I literally haven't been in my dad's hometown since I was a kid/don't have contact with anyone on that side of the family except him.

She flat-out told me "Your life is never going to get any better" (lol) and tries to pressure me all the time even knowing how difficult my life situation is and how it's unrealistic for me to pull some stupid stunt like running away from home or calling the police on my parents and all the other "advice" she gives me while knowing that would just make things worse and send me into a breakdown/spiral (which has happened before). But everyone loves to see drama break out I suppose so this would just be another "show" for her, it's just like when I was in that shitty support group where this lady tried to get me to check into a homeless shelter as a way to hide from my aunt and my mom.

Honestly I'm just so sick of dealing with her. I feel bad because she's done really kind and thoughtful things for me before, it just feels like the bad things are what are at the forefront of my mind right now. But I feel like I've been way too lenient when it comes to some of her comments and behavior towards me, most recently this new bullshit where she wants to use me for money and keeps saying things like "I'd understand if you were poor but I know you can pay for it" and thinking that just because I did one nice/expensive thing for her, now I have to do similar things all the time.

[rachelbethhines]

60 Years of Doctor Who Anniversary Marathon - McCoy 9th Review

Question Mark Pyjamas - Short Story

The Virgin Decalogs were kind of a precursor to the Short Trips of today. An anthology series that at first focused on Doctor Who, that then went on to feature the Expand Who Universe, and finally focusing on original works with no connection to the series.

This is because Vrigin lost the publishing license for Who after the TV movie. More on that later.

Question Mark Pyjamas is the final story in the second Decalog "Lost Property". The recurring theme of this anthology is all the random properties the Doctor acquires through out his travels... houses, land, condos, boats, hotels... ect.

It's an odd theme, but I haven't read the entire book yet so I can't tell you how well it works as a whole, but I can tell you that said theme is front and center within the short story I'm reviewing today.

A house the Doctor owns is stolen by a alien conman looking to set up a theme park on an asteroid. The Doctor and his companions are held hostage and forced to become a side show attraction for the park. They must quite literally 'play house' and pretend to be a 'normal' earth family for the constantly viewing audience.

I probably make the story sound way cooler than it actually is with that summary.

In reality the narrative has a very slow first half, an awkward middle, and doesn't really come together until the very end.

Part of the problem is that the Tardis crew just kind of stumbles onto the theme park and discovers the stolen house by shear coincidence. They then get captured by the villain when they try to confront him.

Rather than making the very comedic villain an unstoppable force to be reckoned with, it instead just makes our heroes look weak... especially Ace who is supposed to be combat hardened by this point.

Also they aren't forced to preform for a live audience, but are made to 'rehearse' for the villain who never shuts up.

The tension of the story is basically downgraded.

But that's alright, this is intended to be a lighthearted comedy piece.

Except it's not particularly funny.

A lot of the jokes fall flat for me. Mainly cause it only seems to have one joke.

Two foul mouthed, 'modern' women are forced to perform sanitized outdated stereotypes that they hate, and they won't shut up about how much they hate it, but quite literally won't do anything about it with out the Doctor's permission. Hardy, har, har...

Oh and the Doctor makes a weird, out of character, sex joke at some point.

Finally, I just hate how everyone is written through out most of it.

It's like I'm walking into middle of on going argument between a poly group that I have no context for.

Why is everyone in the tardis crew so rude and bitchy to each other at the beginning? What's up with all the awkward innuendoes between them? Why has Ace regressed as a character despite supposedly being older now?

Yeah that's the real disappointment here. I know the NAs had nothing to do with the Professor and Ace audios, but it's still disappointing to go from one story where she shows actual character development to another story where she's even more immature than she was on tv.

Like the character's main conflict in the story is that despite being in her 20s now, Ace is forced to play 'the child' for the attraction. Except she is childish.

She's rude, bratty, calls her own supposed friends names behind their backs, paranoid, self-centered and more concerned with 'having fun' then actually rescuing her friends.

The narrative makes a point to say that she's 'a woman now' and 'old before her time' but then has her behaving like a spoiled 13 year old.

But it's not all bad.

As I said, things pick up as we head towards then end. After Ace decides to remove the stick up her butt and help out, we get several cute scenes.

Ace escaping the house on a motorbike, driving through the amusement park with killer robots chasing after her, laughing all the way, is just unfiltered concentrated Who.

The Doctor and Benny cooking lunch together is adorable, and I love the pay off at the end regarding the roast.

And Benny's pure joy at getting to raid the Doctor's wine cellar full of antique alcohols from around the universe is perhaps the most realized the character has ever been to me.

Like counting this one, I've only read/heard three stories with Benny in total and the character never really clicked for me until this moment. Where she's cradling a wine bottle like a baby and cooing at it, going on and on about how much she's going to enjoy drinking it.

That's hilarious.

Hopefully that humor follows her into the Benny spin-off series which we'll be covering next.

[jaydeemainmansblog]

So let me explain you guys got your appointment for me to go to New York I have a verified your insurance policy for Dallas and and Wichita and of course Pensacola is there anything else your people have to say before I shut it down and until New York their insurance policy will not be accepted on behalf of your people's life their life insurance is I'm just kidding I'm just giving you guys a hard time

Yeah corny isn't the word immature isn't the word what are we in third grade... Oh does that mean I'm leaving your car drivers we have a I have an agenda to to drive as far as away from Dallas and make sure that that none of the car drivers are threatened Dallas watt while I'm there

Anyways you guys did get your appointment I will be heading out tomorrow but most importantly.. I will tell New York no harm no foul again of maybe it's my shower maybe maybe they shut off the satellite.. and again a few cities have done it shut off the salad that the time I was there for like 5 minutes or like 10 minutes or like 30 minutes I'll bring him back here before we turn off the satellite permanently on him was was what happened they were threatening to give me a girl and you guys said bring them here they were threatening to turn off the satellite and stop forcing him to talk versus keeping him talking versus talking to him of them threatening to turn off the satellite of of you know of being cruel it being very mean and hurtful to me

But you don't have to stay true to my to my cause of leaving a paper trail of where I went since I will keep my headlines and I will keep my archives and I am going to change my Tumblr account just to piss off baton rouge of them wanting me to change my number to put them on the map put themselves on the map I'll repeat Oklahoma as many times as you can cancel it says it naturally when he leaves I repeat Wichita as many times to put their cities on the map and again without the assistance is of of your blacks in Houston trying to also put Houston on a map I think I think you know if you guys are not willing to put Houston on the map then then I think you're you're trying to socialize Wichita and and Oklahoma will not work

I know I make moves like that again they're cool moves but most importantly you guys I I saw what you guys wrote again on on this Tumblr on this archive you know I throw him off an airplane so so the black skin transgenders in the cars can hear their voice the the money list black skin transgenders giving me girl advice okay and most importantly trying to use their pickup lines on me I heard everything you had to say driving around mocking Miami and and again thank you for loving Miami and fort Lauderdale in in Orlando and Florida again your black again I could I could obviously tell that they are in love with Florida but again in love that there are few arguments okay there's a few I'll responsibility issues so again our first have been resolved in and again thou shall not use the lord's name invade okay you're talking about my girls and boys in Miami in fort Lauderdale and Orlando can we went around I went around to a few of these places in this country of them are designing that this sort of language for for the boys and girls of Florida and Miami and I told them the only thing they're going to have a problem with is them threatening them with another state and me not being able to intervene of them threatening me with the states and in cities myself of them doing it to me of of how how mean it is and how hard it is offer for the boys and girls and men and women of fort Lauderdale and Miami in Orlando and Florida in Pensacola Florida in Jacksonville if that's your real name

On again whether it's the airport in fort Myers whether it's the airport in Pensacola again whether to see at the airport in Hartford Connecticut wet weather it's the airport in Dallas okay most importantly again for for you guys have the one tier why I didn't want to come back to baton rouge because I know exactly what these people know and how little of their pride in their City versus knowing where I am and again other the the placebo you know every single one of your people and if it is true again there's only a thing that they've had that that witness of the whole time I've been here and been with the people is you know of them pretending not to know one another outside

Right it just seems like everywhere I go this they start walking up to each other and introducing themselves and they know each other forever probably all but f***** each other as an as an example of them you know introducing on one another and making small talk in front of me with one another you know smiling and speaking English most importantly

Yeah so so the sciences of of the only reason that this really really happened besides your transgenders or or your black car drivers what was indeed where are you where are we and again for for me to to come into your cities and you guys have extremely pride and and of the design of a baton rouge and and other the design of of Tallahassee you guys have extremely extreme pride in it... And it is sexy but I I don't I don't declare I don't I don't give

[yuuchanie]

Venus did not forgive Umi but okay. Instead of just apologizing and deleting both one shots and fic Umi only deleted one shots and points fingers at others. Don't you think is kinda fked up that she's trying to shift attention? This is the first time I've seen fandom straight up allowing someone like Umi to continue having her space but whatever. I'm not from this fandom anyway. Just leave RE fandom alone and stop stealing from us.

Hi anon, thanks for coming up to my inbox as I already knew and expected the toxicity or the regardless issues will not stop afterward from Umi's Public Statement. 💜

If author Venus whether or not she forgives Umi, that is okay. It is up to her as a person as she has that control and power to forgive. I know very well she was hurt for this plagiarism situation. I completely sympathize how she felt, I acknowledged this already cause I've been there and done that in her position before. She has every right to express her anger, to hate, to dislike, to block, to shoutout like every person can report and warn her readers about it. She's valid to be upset and I hope her anger won't stick too long due it is so stressful enough to think. I give my best wishes for her to be a successful and noticeable great fanfiction author that she deserves with Zombie as well too. Plagiarism ruins people, and we can't move on from it. However, we can learn from it to do better. The damages is already done.

You also have the right to feel angry, frustrated too as I can tell the aura. But I hope you come to understand that most authors either fanfiction or not in 90% of the time, these authors never took the accountability and took their silenced selfishly. That hurts a lot more than seeing an author like Umi who has bravery enough to speak her accusations and faults here. If you truly believe Umi only made that statement for bringing attentions, then it is okay because that's where you want you to believe and take your stands are. Umi deleted their works because she already stated in her public post that the writing doesn't belong to her, and right away give credits to those OG fanfic authors aka Zombie and Venus. She'd now been tagged as red-flagged, so she accepted that. What more do you want from this Umi author other than taking down the plagiarised work; gave credentials to the rightful owners and tries privately to speak to them; accepted the accountability of wrongdoings; letting the readers know they have the option to remove their username taglist for the next update; learn from now that she won't steal anymore; receive another hateful/death threats nonstop despite her public post posted? Have other fanfic authors also were caught red-handed, make a statement for taking the accountability of their wrongdoings right after too? Not all of them I believe, though most won't be transparent who they are.

It really is fcked up situation to steal other people's work, but you know what's more fcked up? Death threats. Encouraging suicides. Name callings. Tons of Anonymous people in your inbox. All these things don't align to point out the problem. It's a cyberbullying act. That's because someone doesn't like the author's work due for any reasons like mischaracterized the character from the canon, and it was plagiarized. It doesn't mean you have to harassed that author. It is not too hard to send a DM to the author and be mature enough to tell them straight out saying "Hey ____, I realized your work is so similar to the other fanfics I've read in a different fandom. Could you just take it down? It upsets me." Be transparent what you think you've read. Not calling them out in a death sentence. It was an immature act for those kind of people, it doesn't help to solve the problem peacefully.

Regards about the fandoms, anon, every fandom has its own toxicity and each fanbase brings the worst things ever in the community no matter what. Love and Deepspace fandom has been toxic, of course, I'd only been in the game for 6 months. And... I don't understand your last statement to leave your RE fandom alone? What crime did I commit to steal in the RE fandom? I don't get it. Maybe I've read it wrong. I'm not the author to steal someone's work. 🤷‍♀️ I used to be in RE fandom when I was young with my good time friend lol. The RE fandom is amazing and entertaining just as many fandoms are, but each brings the worst toxic stuff so it never surprises me.

At the end of the day, what's done is done. Please don't overstress yourself, anon, time is the only answer to move on. Same goes to everyone who was effected by the situation.

[oat-malk]

i've been trying to articulate why exactly i'm not comfortable conversing with/following minors online, and i think it boils down to:

the kind of things you talk to your friends about doesn't really change with age. when you turn 18, you don't suddenly start talking about Adult Things any more than you would have as a kid. it's the same. your interests might change with age and your priorities in life might reshuffle as you get more responsibilities, but the conversations you have with your friends don't really look any different.

and when you're a young adult, and you're not used to being a Real Adult, you don't get the "wow what a youngster! look at that young baby!" response when you see teenagers going about their day. you don't feel much different at 21 than you do when you're 16. you have to consciously remind yourself that you're not just like them anymore, that at some point in the last few years, you gained Actual Societal Power over the people you're used to seeing as your equals.

it takes a conscious mental effort to remain aware of and careful with that power imbalance. when i was a teenager i could talk to other teenagers about my problems, my love life, school/studies - because we were equals. and suddenly we're not equals anymore and i have to pass everything i say through another filter.

friendship to me is about equality. you listen to each other, help each other out, provide support - as well as obviously hanging out and having fun and joking around. but i don't want emotional support from a teenager. i don't want to complain about my job and my family to a teenager. doing so has the potential to cause real harm; doing emotional labour for someone who you aren't on equal footing with can be traumatic (i know from personal experience). and let's be real, most of the jokes i make with my friends, i also would not want to make around a teenager. i'm just not capable of having a fulfilling friendship with a kid because being a Safe Adult To Be Around requires that i zip my mouth and not talk to them anything like how i talk to my friends.

i can't be friends with a kid, and i don't want to parent/mentor anyone, and i'm much more inclined to spend my social energy on talking to people my age than i am on figuring out how to appropriately reply to some teenager's DM. it's mentally draining at best, and at worst it has the capacity to do measurable damage or get someone in trouble.

additionally, i'm queer + trans + most commonly read as a man, which means that right-wingers already think i'm a groomer. i'm also awkward and autistic and i don't know how to gracefully tell people that i'm not comfortable talking to them without my boundaries coming across as optional. the only way i can effectively enforce my boundaries is to block/softblock/ghost the other person and move on.

i get that it's hurtful when you're a teen and it feels like no adults other than your teachers and family care to talk to you - it's like everyone thinks you're too immature for them. i felt the same frustration when i was a kid and i didn't understand why my age was such a huge issue to the adults i tried to speak to online. but it's really not about you and it's not personal; it's that adults can't relax around you because they have to be in Responsible Mode whenever a kid is nearby.

that's not to say that kids and adults shouldn't share spaces - that's kind of how being in public works, after all. if you're in a communal space, like a park or out on the street, we absolutely *should* be in Responsible Mode because children have as much right to be there as we do. but we also deserve a safe, comfortable, private place where we can unwind and be ourselves and control who we interact with.

i understand that social media isn't completely private, and minors can stumble upon anything i post online. but with features like blocking and muting, i do have some control over who is allowed in my online social circle, and i can flag/censor content so that kids will only see it if they first acknowledge i didn't put it there for them. the internet is not a public place in the same way that the local park is - i can't boot you across the lawn if you approach me in-person, but i can block you if you interact with something nsfw on my blog. i can make my profile an adults-only space and if a kid wanders in then i have the power to remove them to retain my comfort and privacy.

idk. this was a long post. i hope it makes sense. i remember feeling very sad and angry as a kid because it felt like adults never wanted me around and i didn't get why, and i took personal offense to it. i hope if any minor does read this, it helps them to understand. it can be a very stressful argument to have because it's so easily misinterpreted. and i haven't seen very many adults try to explain the reasons why in full detail.

[a-little-nerdy-dude-with-wings]

"Millennials and Gen Z are waiting until their late 20s and early 30s to say “I do.”

I've seen this statement be the headline for many articles over the past 10 years.

However in my case it is the most untrue fact I've ever been told as I've just come across the sixth engagement announcement from someone my age this week.

And it seems that with each announcement, the person in question grew more and more related to me, the last being two of my friends and roomates from university.

This was obviously an engagement I knew would happen one day but I just didn't expect it so soon, especially during a period where everyone I know is either getting engaged, married or having a baby.

This very same week my eldest brother has had his third child and my other elder brother is sorting out the last of his wedding preparations.

Meanwhile what am I doing? Well... I attended comic con dressed as Roman Roy yesterday and bought yet another funko pop? And today I watched and read Bridgerton non-stop. So yeah, I'm doing jusssst great.

I used to consider the headline of this rant a comfort. I used to take the analogy that with me being 24, I'm not even in my "first season of friends" yet and that I have plenty of time. There's no rush!

And yet everyone I know and mostly people younger than me seem to either have a house, a child or a lifelong partner.

Whilst I'm in my room in my parents house, surrounded by my scattered clothes on the floor.

It doesn't help that I've been watching so much Bridgerton, as me being four and twenty and approaching five and twenty has sparked the fear of early spinsterhood amidst this engagement boom that seems to be happening in my social circles.

But it's not like I'm not trying.

I have been dating, it just hasn't been going very well.

I try the dating apps, but usually the guy might be somewhat good looking, but have no personality. Or the guy seems alright but then bombards you non-stop with text messages. And then they ghost you/break things off when they get bored.

One guy asked me how I spent my new years eve three separate times in the same conversation. Wanting my attention all the time and yet not listening to what I'm saying at all. He broke things off the next day.

But things might be looking up, I've started seeing this guy who is honestly the most handsome man I've ever gone on a date with. He's also the best kiss I've ever had.

But he can be a bit forward in his texts and I worry that as I'm not quite like that, he'll get put off or bored. I worry that once I tell him that my string of bad luck with guys and you know, the isolation that covid caused, means that I don't have much experience with intimacy, he'll take off.

I also worry that I'm not attracted to him at all and that my worries over everyone else figuring their lives out and watching way too many romantic dramas, has me being influenced into the idea of love, rather than actually being attracted to someone.

This has been my main problem with dating. They could be the nicest person ever and I think I like them, and then they reciprocate their feelings and suddenly I feel nothing.

For the past 6 years I've felt nothing and it kills me. I've entertained every possibility, am I not attracted to guys? Am I asexual? Demisexual? Is it my autism that affects things? Am I just scared of taking that next step of physical and emotional intimacy? Am I just feeling fomo? Am I emotionally unavailable/immature? Do I only like unattainable people such as fictional characters or actors/actresses? (believe me i've read the master doc and yet i still do not know)

I've felt love before and I'm desperate to feel it again. But I'm scared that with this new guy, who I think I had a nice time with and was so stunned by his beauty that I had to force myself to concentrate on what he was actually saying rather than just stare at his face,

I'm scared that it's just a delayed start to the neverending cycle and that soon enough, I'll be alone again whilst even more people get engaged.

Let's see how this goes.

But in the meantime, can people my age just stop with all the engagements? We've had quite enough in the past few weeks, you don't all need to do it at once.

[wateractually]

"The 'I hate children' crowd is just as bad as the 'oh you'll want children someday' crowd I said what I said"

oh fuck off no it isnt holy shit

theres a very huge enormous space between "saying 'i hate children' within adult spaces" and "being callous or harmful to children [because you hate them]"

I hate children.

I hate them.

They're gross and loud and ask too many fucking questions and get incredibly overstimulating very quickly

BUT guess what?

I treat kids with kindness and understanding anyway. Because they're children and deserve such treatment. I treat them like their own people. I answer their 752 questions without implying they're dumb. I play with them when they're bored. I explain to them in plain terms if I am unable to play with them due to physical disability. I don't get onto them for being loud or gross.

And guess what? Children ADORE me BECAUSE of how much I respect them.

They're young. They should never be subjected to anyone, especially adults, telling them they're bad because they're young. Any disruptive behavior should be addressed to them (in kind terms) AND their caretakers (maybe in less kind terms)

That doesnt mean I don't hate them, though.

I do hate them.

And any child I have a continuing relationship with (my partner's little siblings, for example) I want to be an adult already so they stop being their annoying young self and I CAN get mad at them for being immature or loud or whatever.

Me expressing exclusively to adults that I hate children doesn't harm children in any way.

In stark comparison, the "oh you'll want children some day" crowd is ACTIVELY HURTING both children AND people with uteruses.

Pressuring people to want/have children they don't want hurts the adult and the children involved. It hurts the adult because carrying, birthing, and taking care of children is a mountainous task, even when the child is wanted. The extra emotional distress of having a child they didn't even want to care for only makes it worse.

The children of those adults are harmed by it as well. They'll find out one way or another that their parent didn't want them, and that causes emotional distress. Their parent may have had other reasons for not wanting a child, such as financial problems or disabilities, which now the child is subject to as well.

The "people with uteruses should always have kids, and WILL come to want them later in life so they should have them young anyway" hurt ALL parties involved.

The only people hurt by me saying "I hate kids" are people who think thoughts are the same as actions. And frankly, I don't care what they think.

[rubykgrant]

(Here is my fantasy-adventure love story I have been working on! I'm just sharing the beginning right now, but I may post more later. I started writing this by accident, not expecting to at all, and somehow managed to make something that was surprisingly descriptive, and I even had fun creating it~ This involves a character getting an injury, nothing too gory, but there is a small wound and mentions of blood without being graphic. Just a heads-up! Fairly long, so be ready for that. I hope anybody who reads enjoys it~)

When I was still very little, and feeling especially unhappy, I left my home without telling my family.

I had no destination in mind, mostly because everybody knew my usual hiding places, and I didn’t want to be found. Not right away. I wanted to be alone for a while. Really alone, not just surrounded by people who were ignoring me. By myself somewhere quiet, able to think my own thoughts, enjoy my own company, and not cringe each time I heard somebody shout. All the shouting was giving me a headache that didn’t really end, it would just lessen then intensify, throughout the day.

I wanted to hide, but not stuck in some dark and cramped little corner, and that meant leaving home and going somewhere else.

I also wanted to make my family come look for me, to actually worry about me. That was selfish, I know, but I was young and upset. I was also filled up with another feeling, one I couldn’t find the words to describe at that age. I was somehow bored and hopeless, tired from all the constant fighting. Everybody in my family had their own problems, but took out their frustrations on each other, then sulked without finding a resolution. Nobody was trying to actually talk or fix anything.

Being the youngest, my problems didn’t seem as important to my parents and older siblings. I was pushed aside, sometimes literally, and had no way to properly voice what was wrong. It was like something in my heart or in my head felt broken. This was depression, I know that word now. Yes, even young children can be depressed. That feeling doesn’t care how old you are, it happens when it happens. I don’t think my family would have believed me if I tried to explain it to them back then, and even without knowing that word, I knew that I had asked for help before, asked for a little more kindness, and it was refused. I had also asked why my parents and my siblings were fighting so much, a true explanation for what seemed to be causing all this anger and anxiety, but I was not important enough to be answered.

To be clear, my family didn’t hate me. That’s the worst part, I know they loved me, and I loved them, but the love didn’t do anything to stop all the hurt. It would have been easier if they just hated me, but even then, I probably would still love them when I was little. You can’t help that, when you’re young.

Because of the painful feelings and the love that didn’t help, I reached a breaking point. When you are as young as me at that time, every decision feels like a very important life choice. Something that will change you forever. Obviously, as we grow older, we usually get some perspective. The decision I made to leave home that day was just the immature action of a child who wanted some breathing room, and later some attention. It still wound up changing me forever. I suppose that proves life is unpredictable.

While I was still oblivious to the things that were out there, waiting to happen, I thought my only options were throwing a loud tantrum or leaving.

So I left, and went farther away than I ever had before. I decided to try and go in a mostly straight line, so I could find my way back if nobody came looking before dark. I thought myself very smart for this.

I left behind all the familiar sights near my home, and at first, it was fun to feel like I was exploring a new area. I was on an adventure, which distracted me from my unhappiness. I intentionally broke several rules about wandering into places that were off-limits. I found a hill, one that rose up and turned into high cliffs. Normally, I wasn’t allowed to even think about going up that high. So naturally, I did. I should have stopped when I could no longer even recognize the shapes of rocks and mountains around me, but I was excited, and determined, and enjoying this sense of rebellious freedom.

I still could have gotten home alright, eventually. Then I got hurt.

I felt something sharp snag my arm as I moved around a cluster of rocks. For a short moment, I thought perhaps a small creature had stung or bit me, but that wasn’t it. There was something sharp and metal hidden in all the plant growth here, and it had caught my arm, above the elbow. It wasn’t very painful at first, but as I turned to see what happened, the sharp little metal thing twisted, dug in deeper, and suddenly my arm was on fire with pain.

I panicked, tried to jerk away, and that made it worse. The metal thing was, in fact, a barbed hook. Longer than the first finger of my hand, curved in a way that intentionally made it perfect for not letting go of anything it snagged. It also had a tangle of more metal connected to it, but these bits were thin and interlocked, like a chain that acted as a wire. This all snagged me as well, pinching and cutting me everywhere.

I didn’t know what this was. I had never seen a trap or a snare like this before. I just knew that it hurt, horribly. I also knew that it was making me bleed, and that turned the panic into terror. My stomach felt like a tight, cold knot. I finally figured out that I should stop struggling, or it would just get worse. I wasn’t able to rest in any position that was comfortable, no matter what I tried there would always be some part of me that pulled against the metal. After crying and then catching my breath, a new fear hit me.

A predator could smell my blood. I was so far from all my safe places, who knows what might be lurking out here. It started to get dark, and I did the only thing I could think of.

I started crying out for help. I screamed so loud it made my throat ache. Even if my family couldn’t hear me, there had to be somebody, somewhere. I hoped.

As it got darker, I panicked again, now knowing that I was too far from where anybody lived. I also realized that nobody lived here because it was unsafe, and it was unsafe because of things like the hook in my arm. Suddenly I was very aware of how small I was, and what a vast world I was in. I felt surrounded by emptiness… but it was a deceitful emptiness, because dangerous things were hiding everywhere. So much was unseen and unknown.

It’s a pretty humiliating feeling when life just seems to prove every thought you ever had wrong. I thought I could take care of myself for a few hours alone, I thought I could leave my home and easily find my way back, and I thought it would serve my family right to finally be concerned about me. Life had literally added insult to injury. The hook in my arm hurt, and even though nobody else was there, I was mildly embarrassed underneath all the fear. Insult to injury.

In my childish imagination, I pictured my family coming along, seeing me like this, and telling me it was my own fault, this was what I deserved for going off on my own, exploring unsafe places. I deserved to be hurt and trapped, shame on me.

In truth, they would be mad for making them worry, but they would have helped me, taken me home, and tended to me. Kindness didn’t come easy to my family lately, but the love was there. They weren’t coming, though. I was too far away, too high up. They must be worried about me by now, and probably looking in all the wrong places. Why would they even imagine I would ever come here?

Eventually it was completely dark, true night, and I started to think I would be extremely lucky to see tomorrow. I wouldn’t be able to sleep or relax while I was here. A big predator could eat me. Small predators could start picking me apart, and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. I might just keep bleeding until I died. Even if none of that happened, if I wasn’t able to get free, I would starve. My whole body hurt, I was terrified, and hungry.

The depression I couldn’t name seemed like a beautiful dream compared to this.

In the darkness, I reached out, feeling my way to the other end of the wire so I could try and detach it from the rocks and plants. Even if the hook was still stuck, I might be able to go home and bring the mean little thing along, if the wire wasn’t holding me back. It was agony to move, and my fingers were almost numb from pain and cold. When I finally found the other end, I realized the wire was connected to something large and round. Like a boulder, but perfectly smooth, it was made to be this way, and made to connect to the wire with the hook. It was also metal, and much heavier than me. Bigger than me, too. I couldn’t lift it, or get the wire loose, or free myself from the hook.

At some point, early that miserable night, a miracle occurred. I had no other way to think of it at the time. Later, I still consider it a miraculous event, even with all I’ve learned.

Somewhere up above me in the darkness, I got the sense that something was moving. Shortly after, it wasn’t entirely dark anymore. There was a strange source of light. At first it was a soft and distant glow, but different than anything I had seen before. It got brighter and bigger, before seeming to burst, shooting in all directions. The burst of light made a sound, and I heard it echo, sharp and powerful. The light was part of something, some shape I could see against the furious shine the light turned into. I heard a deep rumble from that shape, and then a crashing noise. A short distance away, something was moving downward, hitting other mountains, crushing the rocks. I couldn’t see it properly, but from that sound, I knew it was huge. The lights didn’t follow it down here. The thing groaned as it fell into the rocks, almost like a wounded animal, but it didn’t act like anything that had ever been alive. Just a big, heavy thing, like the metal ball, but it was falling apart.

I could feel the force of that thing falling slowly pass over me, aftershocks coming in waves, and with it a smell drifted over. I couldn’t recognize it, but it was unpleasant. It left a bad taste in my mouth. As the huge thing settled in the rubble it made, the glowing lights above changed. They seemed to quiver and flicker. As I looked up in wonder and shock, I saw a new shape moving. This thing was most definitely alive.

I had heard stories about strange things that live somewhere in another world, high above. They can sometimes look similar to us, but are completely different creatures. They are mysterious, and often very dangerous. They can abduct us, steal us away from our homes, never to be seen again.

The stories are mostly told to frighten little children like me into behaving, so we don’t wander far from home, or follow the towering cliffs too high up. I had done all that, just to get away from my family. Now that this was happening around me, I also remembered stories about these creatures making cruel weapons to kill us. Things like metal hooks and wires.

I was so high up on the rocks, the lights were shining down on me. Whatever was up there could easily see me if it cared to look.

After a moment, it did. The creature paused, hovering up there in place, and seemed to dip lower, rising back up, and pausing again. It was watching me. It was curious. I froze.

Another loud noise, another burst of light, another large object falling down, a little farther away. More rocks rumbling in the dark. The creature moved on, maybe deciding I wasn’t worth the trouble.

Then it returned, rushing down toward me. It moved with an intense purpose, as if it suddenly decided it had to hurry. I had no idea what to do, and even if I thought of something, it was impossible to actually do anything. I was still trapped. I was hungry and tired, no chance to escape or defend myself. I could only watch this creature get closer.

Soon, it was right in front of my face, and I was struck with an intense sense of familiarity that I never expected. The creature truly was similar to me, at least from the waist up. A head with a face, eyes, nose, and mouth. Arms with hands, and fingers. Still, very different. Clearly not meant to live in the same world as myself. The creature also seemed to be just as shocked to see me as I was to see it. Eyes wide and uncertain, but also amazed. Surely, this familiar appearance was a trick to lure in victims. Why else would something so alien almost mirror myself?

After a few moments of looking at me with disbelief, it moved away, rising upward again. I barely had time to wonder if it would move on, when it returned, even more urgent than before, and this time reached out to touch my wounded arm. I flinched, but couldn’t really do more. I felt the fingers, warm and gentle. Not directly doing anything yet. I realized, it wanted me to know it was trying to help. The eyes were pleading, no cruelty at all in the expression. In fact, it was worried more about my reaction. It didn’t want me to struggle and fight, making the wound worse. I held my arm up a bit, and braced myself.

It dug out the hook, able to maneuver the barb in a way I wouldn’t have thought of. It hurt, but then the pain eased, and I was so relieved I cried again. Then it helped unwind the wire from my body, doing some kind of trick by bringing the little links close together, moving them so they fell loosely away. This particular creature might not have set this trap, but it knew what it was and how it worked. Once I was free, the creature shot itself upward, pushing off the rock where the metal ball still sat. I thought about trying to find my way home in the dark, but with everything that had happened, the large objects that were now in my way, I wasn’t sure it would be possible. My “go in a straight line” plan wasn’t an option anymore.

I was also curious. You’d think I would have learned my lesson about exploring the unknown, but I had just experienced something that was utterly unusual and fantastic. It was impossible to resist trying to find out more. I didn’t think I would ever have another chance like this. The fact that the creature had just saved my life also intrigued me. It wasn’t an evil monster at all.

I followed it.

I caught up quickly, despite its head-start, and also despite my own injuries. I was built for swimming, after all.

Some of my fins were a little torn, but not in danger of getting shredded as I moved through the water. The wire had scrapped my skin and my scales, but thankfully none had been ripped off. The worst was the cut on my arm from the hook, but I covered it with my other hand, and could swim just fine without moving my arms. I wasn’t as big and strong as my older siblings, but I was a powerful swimmer for my age. Now that nothing had me trapped, I could work my shoulders, arch my back, and roll all that movement down through my tail, building momentum. Up, and up, and up…

We both broke through the surface of the water at the same time, and I heard the creature let out a high-pitched noise. It couldn’t breathe in the ocean, like me. That’s why it had been hesitant to dive down, and in such a rush to get me free. These beings didn’t just live in the surface world because it was their territory, it was the only place they could survive. I could breathe air, I knew that almost as an instinct, but also from experience.

When we weren’t out swimming through the ocean, we lived in caves with air pockets under the water. The ones that became out main homes were all naturally formed, but long ago our ancestors carved them out to make tunnels that helped the water flow through different caverns. Somewhere from the cracks in the ceiling, air from the surface would rush down. Somewhere below, from cracks in the floor, bubble filtered up. There was always air and water in our caves… but some tunnels didn’t wave the flows for water. Occasionally, me and my siblings would pull ourselves up to crawl across the rocks, trying to see who could go the farthest into these tunnels as a dare.

Nobody had ever gone very far, and we never knew if these tunnels lead anywhere. Partially because we would all eventually lose our nerve, but also because our parents would catch us, then scold us. If we wandered too far away from our pools and paths, and got stuck somewhere with no water, we might die. That wasn’t just an over exaggeration to frighten us into behaving. Being too dry never felt good… it was also an instinct, understanding that without access to the water, we would die.

Without air, this creature would die.

I remembered some of the old stories, about how our kind would have to pull these creatures from the world above deep in the water. Down so far that they would never be able to swim back to the surface, even if they got free. In the stories, this was called “drowning”. It was the only way to stop them from pulling us up, where we would meet all forms of terrible torture and evenual death, like being denied water until we became dried husks. At this description, I always imagined left behind shells when certain creatures molted, but shaped like one of us.

This creature had risked it’s life to swim down and save me. Now, instead of pulling me up, I had come willingly. I wondered again if this might be a devious trick somehow.

The creature turned to look at me, the sounds it made grew quieter, more even. Catching its breath. I hadn’t been sure before, because even though the creature was small, size doesn’t always matter. Now I thought for certain, this must be another child. Perhaps my age. I looked back, my face resting closer to the waves. My nose was still below the water, but the creature kept its chin up. With the urgency gone, I could tell it was was amazed to see that I had followed.

I watched as the creature moved their arms around to stay in place, and also… I wasn’t sure what to call it. The creature didn’t have a tail, like me. Instead, two limbs below the waist, and these limbs bent almost like the arms. It had another set of hands on the ends, but they were longer, and the fingers were stubby. This was how it moved through the water, using these two limbs. I wished somebody else was here, to see the creature. Somebody who would be better at understanding how it looked, how it worked.

The creature turned, looking around, and then swam toward the top of a cluster of mountains. Above the water, I could finally see what they turned into. It was a little like some areas of seafloor where I played, with small hills, and plants growing around. These plants were much different than what I was used to. It all looked more sturdy, somehow. Nothing flowed continuously up here. The air moved, though. Not quite like the water, but I was surprised to feel it moving at all. The air pockets in my home never felt like this. Those were contained. Up here, it was like the whole world was breathing.

As the creature swam toward a hill that rose out of the sea, I continued to follow, and we both wound up sitting in the sand, side by side. Waves rolled up around us, then went away, then came back. I had never seen water do this in my life. I had always been within it, feeling it around me completely. Even in our caves with the air pockets. The times I’d been able to see a clear view of the waves above me, at a distance, it had been in open water. Nothing for them to crash into or wash over.

It had a rhythm, a pattern, but occasionally it shifted and changed, the water pulling away for a longer stretch of time, and a rather big wave following, then finding the rhythm again. Bubbles turned into foam at the edges of it. Seeing the way the ocean, my whole entire world, moved up here was fascinating.

Out across the water, I saw the flickering lights. They were dying out now, whatever they were. I could see clouds rising from each one. The smell I noticed below the water was up here as well, and even worse. We had sources of heat in my world, and this smell was like when something touched that heat for too long. Burning.

I looked at the creature again, and found they had been looking at me as well. We looked at each other for a long time. Still getting used to the fact that we both existed, and also resting. We were very tired.

They were better at sitting up out of the water than I was, but that made sense. I noticed the creature had a scratch on one side of their head, above the left eye. They were hurt, too. The creature was almost entirely covered in some kind of clothing. We have clothes too, usually just worn for special events, or simply because we like them. Having clothes all the time gets heavy and slows us down when we swim. It must not be a problem for creatures up here, except right now, because those clothes were wet.

As we sat there and looked at each other, the moon began to rise in the sky. I knew the moon, even from a distance deep below the water. It was also connected to some instinct. The moon was part of the water, part of me, part of everything that lived in the sea. Tonight, the moon was round, bright, and pale. As if it wanted us to get to know each other better, the moonlight shined down on us.    

Now I could see more details and differences between me and the creature. They had a slightly slender face, while mine was a little more round, but my chin came to a tiny point, and theirs ended in a small squared jaw. The features they had were defined, but not harsh. Graceful is the word I would have used, if I’d known it. Their hair was very long, made of thick curls. My hair fell around my neck, barely touching my shoulders, just a bit wavy.

This creature might not be at home in the water, but I could tell they had strong muscles in their arms. This strength seemed somehow fragile, though. Maybe that was because I could see another child there beside me, and sensed that no matter how strong a child is, it is terribly easy for us to be broken.

Eventually, the creature reached out a hand, and I touched it again. The fingers were still gentle. Nails shorter than mine, but more little rough areas of callous on the palms. Their face had a reassuring expression. They didn’t want to frighten me, even now, and I greatly appreciated that. They looked at my arm, not bleeding as much anymore. The creature carefully pushed the torn parts of my flesh together, attempting to close the wound. I didn’t know how to explain that wouldn’t work, as soon as they let go it would open again, but then I heard a ripping noise.

With their free hand, the creature was pulling off a shred of clothing. They already seemed to be torn and tattered in a few places. Once they had a section they considered to be the right size, the creature wrapped the fabric around my arm, tying it in a way that kept the wound closed, but still loose enough that it wasn’t uncomfortable. My other scratches weren’t as severe, thankfully. The creature still wanted to check me over, just in case. I have to admit, I was no longer worried about this creature trying to trick me in some way.

As they fussed over me, I was suddenly filled with a funny feeling of delight. I had been saved by a being from another world! They had gone to great trouble to help me, and were still concerned with my safety. Just as I didn’t have the words to describe depression, I didn’t have the words for how I felt right there. Many years later, I would learn the word “enchanting”. I had gone from feeling neglected, to desperate and forlorn, to incredibly lucky all within a single day.

What made me so special, to find myself in this moment? Still no answer for that, but maybe that’s alright. You never know when something special will happen. It doesn’t matter how old you are, either. Life does whatever it wants.

I was also falling in love with this creature, just a little bit. Perhaps not seriously, considering I was very young, and we had only just met, after all. Still, it was a very big feeling, and I had never felt anything quite like it before. They had rescued me, and were now caring for me with genuine kindness. How could I not fall in love?

When the creature was satisfied I was alright, they settled down again, sitting closer this time. As I watched them look out across the water, a new expression of utter despair filled their face. It occurred to me that the creature was alone, just like I was. Had they also left their home, and now couldn’t return? I thought about the objects that sunk into the sea. I’ve never been that close to anything like it before, but I’ve seen strange things made of metal and other material come down from the surface before. Some are very old, but others more recent. Stories told the creatures from this upper world make large structures for themselves that float on water. Some of them have loud, dangerous blades that slice through anything that touches them. That must have been what sunk before.

Now the creature had no way to move through the water without trying to swim, which wasn’t an easy task for them. We were also pretty far away from other cliffs and hills that reached above the ocean, so I doubted their home was nearby. The creature might have also lost their entire family when those objects sunk. Everything went down, deep into the water. They drowned. I was safe, but what about this creature? Who would find them? Who would help them?

I wished I could. I wanted to.

I tried to say that, telling them “I don’t know who you are, or what happened to you, but you saved me. Thank you for that. Do you know where your home is? Please, tell me how to help you,”

The creature’s attention was back on me, curious and confused. They made new noises, and it was clear we had different languages. We couldn’t understand each other with words, but… I thought about how they had communicated wanting to help me with their face and movements. I tried to do that.

I clasped one of their hands with my own, and brought it over to touch my injured arm, then pressed the hand to my chest, while smiling.

You helped me. Thank you.

They smiled back, and seeing the joy in that smile, I fell a little more in love. Yes, foolish and childish, but forgive me. I was foolish and a child.

I moved our hands toward the creature, until it touched their chest. My other hand, with the arm that had been bandaged, reached out to touch the same spot on their arm, above the elbow. They had no injury there, but I hoped I was clear.

I want to help you now.

The creature made a sound, almost like when they burst through the water earlier. Their head bent forward a little, and I saw their shoulders shake. They were crying. I had done the same, many times in my life. I knew how it looked, and how it felt. They leaned forward, just a bit, and the creature let me hold them in an embrace. We were different beings from different worlds, but we were also two children that were hurt, and lost, and alone. So, we understood enough to try and comfort each other. They might have just lost their whole family. Even though mine made me sad and angry, I would not want to lose any of them.

Thinking of my family made me wish I could communicate how I felt with them like this. I wished we could all comfort each other, find a way to understand each other. Two different creatures who had only known each other for an hour and didn’t speak the same language were figuring it out. Maybe there was hope with my family.

Soon, the creature took a deep breath, calming down. They briefly squeezed their arms around me, just a bit tighter, before moving away. It was a physical sign of gratitude. Now they looked like they were trying to think of what to do next.

The creature could see the area better thanks to the moon, and they motioned to me that they needed to find a safe place to rest. I watched in awe as they rose upward, using the two lower limbs to move. Now it was plain to see why the ends of those limbs were shaped differently than the hands. It was for balance, and the creature was much better at using the limbs out of the water. It moved along the sandy hill, and I followed from the shallows of the waves. Things had also washed up in the sand, objects that must have come from the same structure as… I felt bad, thinking of the one who saved me as a “creature”. We didn’t know each other well yet, but I decided to call this individual my friend. At least, to myself. We could try to find shared words to call ourselves later.