#I will give a tag for my theories and analysis!! it gets harder to find them...

[yuseirra]

ONK SPOILERS UP TO CHAPTER 158:

I think there's a god that's actively trying to make Hikaru (who's forgotten he's a god) fall into despair and ruin his life in order to corrupt him. That must be the "star" that's mentioned in Fatal:

致命的な欠落をくれたね

身勝手な巨星、狂わされた生

You have given me a fatal flaw

Selfish giant star, ruined lives

I don't think it's the same "star" Ai has or Ai is if she's one, it must be the black one that's been trying to cause the

"灼かれた眼、もがれた羽根、創造的堕天"

Burnt eyes, stripped feathers, creative fall from heaven

These sets of lyrics seem to indicate it's not only Ai that's special, but that he's some sort of special being that's been "flawed" and stripped of some sort of grand powers under the influence of some being with powers.

What Ai's done is so far from trying to harm him. She protects him and is very concerned over what happens to him, she wants to bring him back if "he's lost".

I think it is "the god who loves absurdity and unreasonableness" that's doing this to his life because the stuff that's been happening's been really absurd!! People around him seem to turn crazy and act out and do things Hikaru's never wanted to happen...

The thing is, Hikaru STILL is capable of believing in people and gives them chances to redeem themselves after everything he's been through, despite the ugly things he's faced and the mess he's been in. He's still not entirely corrupt!! You see Aqua suffering and being pretty unstable when his eyes turn black, he's still kind inside but he can use people and become pretty cold, right? But this guy has been under the influence of the black star since.. he was at least 14? That makes him having endured for 20 years and he's STILL trying to give Nino a chance and stuff, this guy.. I think he IS originally someone who's really sweet. And he was like that the way he was depicted in the movie arc. But so many terrible things keep happening to him in ways he can't predict and he falls back into despair whenever he has something good and has some light in his life. It's unfortunate and miserable, to the state it becomes ridiculous, when you see it, when he shares happy moments with Ai, the next scenes we see him being tormented and abused, we see him believing he's going to be okay as long as Ai's with him and then Ai leaves him claiming she can't love him. It's such a weird cycle he has. He seems cursed!!! I don't think he'd have found it entirely despairful when Ai's reached out to him to come see their kids. It wasn't a bad thing that's happened to him- well, when that happens to him, SHE DIES. Nothing good happens to this guy. It gets reaped away before he can fully enjoy it. and he still manages to be so tender; it's kind of incredible how he can still be like this actually. Do we ever see him lashing out to people? Not at all. He tends to them with a smile and is still polite... I wouldn't be surprised if he grew insane after all this but he doesn't seem like a maniac. He just seems to be really depressed and hurt (yup but he could have still killed Yura o<-< let's see how the truth about that will be uncovered)

He really does seem like some type of benevolent god in nature. It's a strong part of him that doesn't seem to shift so easily. Him and Ai, they never gave up on love or tried to love people. They still treat other people pretty kindly;; And seeing how the story went, Ai really wanted to pull him out of his miseries. She probably WAS his friend or his partner or even his wife when they were both gods, if they were one.

EHHH?? and I just looked it up, Amaterasu(related to Ruby) and Sarutahiko(husband of the god of entertainment and the god of "bright lights") and Ame-no-Uzume(the goddess of entertainment) all seem to be interlinked one way?? Huh??

Here's what I found in the page I just linked:

"SARUTAHIKO-NO-O-KAMI who is in charge of all things on the Earth (everything inside the atmosphere) as the ancestor Kami of all Earthly Kami and carries the great mission to teach mankind and lead/guide us into balance with Divine Nature.

SARUTAHIKO-NO-O-KAMI cannot produce anything by himself. Equally important is the Divine Female Power of AMENOUZUME-NO-MIKOTO in all things we need the balance of IN/YO (yin/yang, uchiki/sotoki).

The plan for all things in Nature (including human beings) was made by AMATERASU OMIKAMI (Kami of Sun, Taiyo-source of life, leader of Ten-no-Kami [Heavenly Kami]), but the mission to supply the actual guidance is entrusted to SARUTAHIKO-NO-O-KAMI."

All three of these gods that I believe are related to these three characters do something regarding the balance of nature.

So if there's SOMETHING that's been trying to get at him, and make every part of his life miserable to resort in something that'd corrupt him (and you see, doing so to HIM alone wasn't enough to make him take aggressive action. It had to take the death of his lover to make Hikaru do things that'd make him be so.) It'd disrupt the balance of the world. That's some serious stuff that'd make the gods themselves to act, right? Tsukuyomi says in 144 that there's the god who's created the world. They must be the most powerful god of all, right? In any case, they'd definitely NOT want this to happen.

The hoshino twins have some sort of mission assigned from the gods, no?(ch 75?) They are born with destinies? (ch3)

I have a feeling the reason they are reincarnated have to do with their parents. The fact that they are specifically chosen as Ai and Hikaru's children should be important, and their mission doesn't seem to have been completed yet.

Their dad is in danger. For a while now too. Their mom wants them to help him. Well, he's probably turned a new leaf and he decided to turn himself in, but is this really everything there is? Is this going to be it?? When there are CLEARLY gods that are involved in the story watching the twins and guiding their fate?? So yeah.

If Ai is the god "who loves people", then she's probably not in good terms with the third god that's mentioned, "the god who loves absurdity and unreasonableness", that one is actively hurting her husband and it's ruined her peaceful life with her kids too. I think it's that god that's going out of line, and it must be stopped from causing even further harm. I think "the god who loves people" blesses people with white stars and gives people the power to thrive in the entertainment industry(Ame-no-uzume is the entertainment god) I'm not sure what god would be the third one, is there a Japanese god with that sort of nature? Well, that one must be the one responsible for the black star. That one's probably the real mastermind behind everything, and why Tsukuyomi's come to the human world. Probably under the creator god's orders. She'll need Amaterasu(Ruby) and Maybe Susanoo(Aqua), her sibling gods, to help her bring order and restore balance.

I feel that's why gods are mentioned and are brought up time to time in this story, they must be important... it must have to do with Aqua and Ruby's destiny... It works with the songs too.. and how Ai wants to save her boyfriend...

so let me throw this out there!! I think this can be it!!!

+ ADDING ON:

Do you think this might actually be true? I’m being serious; the more I look into mythology, the more I see similarities between the relationship of Amaterasu and Ame-no-Uzume and the relationship between Ruby and Ai.

Ame-no-Uzume is a goddess who has a husband and is often mentioned together with him. Her husband happens to be the god of bright lights. When I looked up more about him, I found out that he’s a god who leads beings with goodness. This kind of explains Hikaru’s personality in many ways. His character is incredibly kind, almost to a strange degree. Even though there's some ambiguity in his actions and we still don't know enough about him, it makes sense to believe his personality remains consistent with how he was depicted in the past from his recent actions.

The god of light or earth gods are usually associated with order. In Norse mythology, for example, Balder (or Baldur), who is the god of light, was the most righteous god and had never told a lie, making him a noble god. When he died, it triggered a great chaos in the world, marking the beginning of Ragnarok. In myths, "light" is usually associated with order/rules, which is the complete opposite of "absurdity and unreasonableness."

I just found out today that the couple Ame-no-Uzume and Sarutahiko were assigned by Amaterasu to maintain the balance of the world. What if the god of absurdity and unreasonableness, who corresponds to the black star, saw these two who had become human and thought, “This is my chance,” and tried to completely ruin their lives? Ai ends up dying, Hikaru falls into despair. If he fully falls into that god’s grasp and becomes corrupt, it would disrupt the balance of the world as planned by that god. That’s why Tsukuyomi was dispatched by the creator god to stop this. Tsukuyomi then calls upon the divine powers of her sibling gods, Susanoo and Amaterasu, and grants those powers and destinies to the two souls she cherished and wanted to give another chance at life. Since they’re people who loved Ai, it would also be a good connection for Ai, the god who loves people. In this sense, Tsukuyomi is really looking out for them. Aqua and Ruby might be resenting this god, but to them, she’s actually their benefactor. Remember when she asked, “Why do you hate me so much?” She's actually really helping them a LOT.

If the story unfolds like this, it means Kamiki has been enduring these absurd events without fully understanding why for at least 20 years (and it seems his family situation was a mess even when he was much younger so that makes it his entire life having lived as human), all while maintaining some level of goodness. He hasn’t fully fallen into corruption yet. That’s why there’s still a chance for him. The fact that his character seems almost ridiculously kind when he appears, if it’s like this, it actually makes sense.

I think Ai, who is really a god who loves people, caused Hikaru into the human world after she hopped in in eagerness. That’s why Ai subconsciously felt drawn to Hikaru, worrying about him and caring for him so much, to the point where they almost became married... because they were originally a married god couple. I think the story would work well if it develops in this direction!!

If this kind of theory were completely far-fetched and nonsensical, there shouldn’t be any mention of gods at all. But instead, they keep being referenced, even in the later parts of the story. Honestly, I hope there’s something to this. Otherwise, why did Tsukuyomi even appear? Why are gods being mentioned at all? The protagonists are said to have a mission, but we don’t know what it is!!!

Looking at Ai’s traits, she represents the "love of the star", right? She definitely seems like "the god who loves people". And there’s this idea that there are gods who don’t know they’re gods. Ame-no-Uzume must be Ai, and because that goddess has a husband god, it'd mean Hikaru is a god too. If you look at the songs, there are hints about this!! And there’s a being that’s trying to corrupt him. That being likely caused Ai’s death, manipulating him into taking extreme actions with the intent of seeing her again. That must be the black star.

Ai managed to defend her man against that. Impressive.

I think this makes for a pretty good narrative! That would mean Aqua and Ruby have saved the universe!! They’ve protected the balance of the world!! XD Since making the movie was something beneficial to Tsukuyomi as well, she ended up helping them, and through the movie, they managed to turn Hikaru’s heart around. Tsukuyomi is probably Ai’s friend. She could be an acquaintance of both Ai and Hikaru. So she probably wanted Ai’s love to be properly conveyed to the people Ai loved, while also trying to save her fellow god who had gone astray. That’s why she’s involved. Doesn’t that make sense?

Now that Hikaru hasn’t fully fallen into corruption, maybe the god behind the black star will finally step forward? Isn’t that god the final boss?? Is this getting too fantasy-like? But... if so, then they shouldn’t have included fantasy elements in the first place...

Doesn’t this story make more sense this way? Explain why things turned out like this?

Yes, that’s right! I’m throwing this idea out there! I don’t think there’s absolutely nothing to it!! There’s definitely something here. Something related to the gods.

[michainabox]

Okay so I’m revisiting Undertale after a long time and I just have to say this. This is a very very long post.

I don’t know if I should tag this? But uh. I guess I go a little in depth with Flowey and the major spoilers of Undertale, have a brush of a spoiler for In Stars and Time, and just major ramblings.

Flowey somewhat unsettles me.

And I don’t mean fear or scary enough that it distresses me, I mean truly unsettles me in an uncomfortable sense where I have to take a step back to analyze.

Like. Yes that’s the point, he is suppose to be an unsettling character. But my thing is, it is hard to unsettle me. You can ask my partner and anyone I know, I consume a lot of horror media. It is hard to unsettle me, or make me uncomfortable with certain things. And with games? Even harder. There has only been a couple of times where media has unsettled me that I can count only three instances of this.

The book Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White (had to unpack a lot of my religious trauma with that book. Good read though.)

Act 5 of In Stars and Time because I related a bit to much to Siff’s breakdown and the fact that you can’t stop it no matter how much you wanted too. You were powerless to do anything. You just have to sit and watch and follow.

And then of course. Flowey. The character himself.

What spurred this ramble Micha? Well. I’ll tell you.

We find out that before Frisk had fallen, Flowey had enough determination in that stupid little flower body to reset the timelines himself. Without the souls, he still had the powers of a god, but it was limited much like Frisk. He has reset hundreds, if not thousands of times. He says that he has tried anything and everything to change the variables. Maybe doing little things like planting ideas into monsters heads, or bigger things. (After all if anything goes wrong he can always reset.)

But nothing could change.

No matter what he did, it never mattered.

It never worked.

It would drive people insane.

And then Frisk shows up. And Flowey doesn’t have the power to reset anymore. Instead, this little kid with a red soul (and the same fashion sense of his dead sibling) shows up and destroys everything. And if you go with the pacifist route. Doesn’t head the lesson of kill or be killed.

And it start to work out for Frisk. It also works in Flowey’s favor too. We can imagine that Frisk is the first ever child to face Asgore for the first time since he started to collect human souls, and Frisk has the power to come back, Frisk even reminds Asgore how many times he has killed them. And Flowey watches as Frisk can either spare or kill Asgore in the final moments. But the players choice doesn’t matter.

Because Flowey was waiting for this opportunity. With the souls unguarded, he can use them. And of course, he can practically torture Frisk until he is ready to claim their soul. And even after all of that, you can choose to kill Flowey or grant him mercy. And he doesn’t understand if you do give him mercy. Because for him, it really is killed or be killed.

(I also have my own theory or analysis for the phone call and where Frisk went after the neutral ending, but that’s another post if anyone is interested in my thoughts.)

Anyways. After the phone call he pops up again, and here is where the unsettling part comes in.

He plants the idea in the Frisk/Player’s head that there is another way. That they didn’t truly save their friends, they didn’t truly save themselves.

And Flowey knows Frisk would try anything to get that happy ending.

Because we would want to find out what that happy ending looks like. Because it’s human nature to be curious and want something better.

He preys upon that and uses it to only serve as his own stepping stone. He isn’t even sure it will work. But he does that anyways. Because if your playing pacifist he sees the fact that Frisk took the time to befriend and spare all the monsters.

Flowey isn’t unsettling because he can change his face, wants to kill Frisk, and even attempted and succeeded multiple times.

It’s the fact that while he says he is soulless, that he can’t understand why he is being spared, he learned just enough to prey on that human nature to get what he ultimately wants.

That’s what ultimately unsettles me about him.

(If anyone has any questions about my thoughts or other theories just ask. I love rambling)

(Note. I edited it slightly to fit in more with the games because of some issues I had with misremembering events)

[aspoonofsugar]

hey! Good day :) here to ask a question!! I was wondering about your process for analysis, character analysis, theme analysis- do you just write or are there specific things you look for? I suppose I’m curious if you have an idea/general gist of what you’re doing or steps you take to do your breakdowns. I’m trying to do something similar out of interest and your works are simply fascinating to read. I look up to your writing a lot!

hello!! Can I ask how you started analysing shows, how you went about it? I’m learning literary analysis and trying to do the same for hunter x hunter but I find it infinitely harder to analyse shows. Especially since I most notably consider diction in literary analysis lol

Hi!

Thank you for your nice words anon(s) and yay! I love meta-asks <3<3<3

So, it depends on the meta. In general, I try to focus on a specific topic, which can be:

a character (arc + foiling between characters)

a theme

the use of a specific motif, when it comes to a character or a theme

These are my three favourite kinds of analyses, but there are other types, as well. For example, some people are really into plot theories/predictions. Others prefer to focus on characters from a psychological viewpoint. Some other writers like to use philosophical lens or to compare different works. It really depends on your preference.

My preference is mostly for thematic analyses. This means that my character metas too tend to use a thematic lens. So...

WHAT IS THE THEME?

In short, the theme of a story is both:

the topic the story is exploring

the moral of the story, aka a phrase which summarizes its message

Stories explores topics through characters and plot, while the way the conflict is solved tells us the moral.

Some examples:

RWBY's main topic is humanity in both its weakness and strength and its moral is that victory is in a simple soul

Madoka's main topic is wishes and its moral is that it is worth to want things and to fight for them, even if it is painful

HXH is strange structurally, but its main topic is self-search, with its moral being that a person should not focus on the goal, but enjoy the journey

All of these messages and ideas aren't just things stated in dialogues (even if someone saying the theme helps). They emerge from the story itself.

RWBY's main conflict is about a destroyed world (remnant) surviving the anger of an evil witch (Salem). If humans let hate divide them, they lose. If they unite, they win. The main thematic question is then... can humans make the right choice? And the answer is that they can, as long as they remain simple souls (Ruby, but also Pyrrha at Beacon, Blake in Managerie, Yang in Mistral, Weiss with her family, JNR when they tag along and Penny in Atlas). The main message is that several people making the right choice leads to change. And that is humanity. This is why the characters keep being asked to give up their idealism and to embrace a more utilitarian way of doing things. And this is why every time they refuse and stick to their idealism. The conflict itself keeps testing their resolution.

Madoka's power system works through wishes, so the girls' powers and their backstories are all defined by their wishes and by how they relate to them. Madoka doesn't know what she wants. Homura's wish turns into an obsession. Mami makes a wish too early and thinks only about herself. Kyouko and Sayaka make a wish for someone else and have opposite reactions to their wishes ending poorly. Finally, it is revealed the girls' wishes are literally the force that keeps the world at balance. So, the plot, character arcs, conflict and worldbuilding are all about wishes.

HXH is made up of several arcs and each arc has its own theme. That said, the overall structure conveys the main theme. Gon's objective is to find Ging, but he keeps taking detours and getting engulfed in unrelated conflicts. However, the moment he meets Ging he realizes it is not his father who defines him, but rather it is all the people he met in his journey and his own experiences. Basically, HXH's strange structure conveys the main theme.

So, the theme (both topic and moral) should emerge by the characters, the worldbuilding, the conflict and sometimes even by the structure itself. In order to find it, one should start with the topic and ask themselves "What does the story really talk about?". The answer to this question will let you understand the theme as topic. The second step is to see how the story explores it.

DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW ON THE TOPIC

There are different ways a story can explore a topic. Still, the best stories have different perspectives clash with each other. Very often these different points of view are embodied by different characters.

Here are some examples, with some linked metas that explore the respective stories more in depth.

Madoka (topic= wishes):

Homura is determined to fulfill her wish no matter what

Kyubey is her opposite, as they are unable to wish since they lack feelings. This is why they need to recruit girls into creating energy through wishes

Madoka is in the middle, as she wants to wish for something, but doesn't know what

Mami, Kyouko and Sayaka all explore negative effects linked to wishes, which are connected to other secondary themes. Specifically, Mami explores the consequences of an immature wish, while Sayaka and Kyouko explore the selfishness/selflessness inherent in wishes

The conflict is solved through Madoka learning about the price of wishes, but still choosing to make a wish and to sacrifice her whole self for it. This ending conveys a specific moral: despite the pain and sacrifice that comes with them, wishes are still beautiful and worth it all. If Madoka had chosen to give up being a magical girl and had ended up the series without making a wish, the moral would have been the opposite: that a normal life is better than grandiose and dangerous dreams.

Monster (topic = the value of life)

Tenma believes that all lives are equal, which is why he chooses to save Johan as a child, despite being ordered to operate a far more influential patient.

Eva and Nina believe that not all lives are equal. In particular, Eva thinks that social status and importance in society influence the value of one's life. Nina instead believes that people who commit crime should be punished and lose their lives.

Johan believes no-life has value, including his own. In his words, the only thing all humans are equal in is death.

Here, the moral is conveyed through the Tenma/Nina vs Johan's conflict. Tenma is tested in his beliefs, but ultimately does not abandon them and ends the story by saving Johan. Nina instead is asked to change her mind, as she ends the story embracing Tenma's point of view.

RWBY - The Atlas Arc (topic = trust)

Ozpin lacks trust, as he is unable to trust others, no matter how loyal or dedicated to his cause they are

Ruby wants to "trust safely". She wants others, like Ironwood, to prove themselves to her before disclosing the truth to them

Ironwood is initially on Ruby's same page, but he spirals and comes to embody the "enemy of trust" aka control. He doesn't trust others, but wants to control them.

Oscar embodies trust, as he wants to trust Ironwood since the beginning. Even later on, he keeps on trusting people like Hazel and Emerald who are his enemies.

Cinder embodies another "enemy of trust", aka manipulation. She doesn't need to trust others to work with them, as she can use their feelings and wishes against them.

Penny embodies faith, which is a more extreme form of trust. She sacrifices herself and leaves the maiden power to Winter. She has no proof Winter will be able to save Weiss, Jaune or the relic, but she entrusts the future to her.

All these characters struggle with trust and its dangers. Some, like Ozpin, Ironwood and Cinder decide that trusting is too dangerous. Others, like Ruby, Penny and Oscar realize that to trust is the only way to move forward. Moreover, they learn there is not way to trust safely. As a matter of fact the moral of the arc is that "trust is a risk" and risks mean that things can end up badly. Still, not to take risk means to give up hope.

Hazbin Hotel - You didn't know song (topic= knowledge)

This song explores the idea of knowlege. The characters are after all in the middle of a questioning, which leads to several secrets coming out. Moreover, throughout it all the characters either admit or realize how ignorant they all are. The way they deal with this lack of knowledge establishes different thematic stances.

Charlie and Emily are both naive and ignore the darkest sides of their loved ones. Charlie doesn't know Vaggie used to be an exorcist and Emily has no idea Sera ordered the exterminations. Still, their answer to ignorance is to keep on questioning. They have no idea why only certain souls are admitted in heaven. Still, they think it is important to investigate the phenomenon and use it as evidence that there might be hope for the spirits in hell.

Lute and Adam don't know why some spirits end up in hell and others in heaven. Still, they do not bother to question it. So, Adam is caught by surprise by Charlie's question and has to improvise an answer. Not only that, but even later on the duo insist that Angel not being in Heaven proves he is unholy. And that's it.

Sera does know about the extermination, as she knows the system is unfair. Still, she refuses to question it and forbids others to do the same. She is the only one whose sin isn't ignornace, but knowledge.

There is no a clear thematic resolution to the question posed by the song. This is because the series is not over yet. However, the scene sets up the theme and the way characters will deal with it in later seasons will give us the moral.

As you can see, not only whole stories (like Madoka, or Monster) have themes, but also arcs (RWBY) and even episodes or scenes (Hazbin Hotel). That said, the way to go at it is always the same. Pintpoint the main topic and start investigate how the characters or the worldbuilding deal with it. You are gonna get several stances. The one which emeges victorious is the moral.

Let's highlight that the moral is not always embodied by the protagonist. For example, in the Madoka and RWBY's examples, Madoka and Ruby are initially at a loss and come to learn the moral by the end of the story (for Madoka) and arc (for Ruby). Similarly, Tenma initially does believe the moral, but doubts it throughout the story, only to be reminded and helped by other characters (like Nina).

In any case, the way the protagonist and characters in general relate to the main theme and to secondary themes is key for their arcs.

CHARACTERS AND THEME

When it comes to theme a character can either:

Believe the moral since the beginning

Not believe the moral since the beginning

In the first case, the character either stops believing the moral by the end (negative arc) or keeps believing the moral until the end (positive arc). In the second case, the character either learns the moral (positive arc) or doesn't learn the moral (negative arc).

In short, the story keeps challenging the character on their beliefs and they must either stick to their point of view or change it, depending if they believe in the moral since the beginning or not.

Exhibit A:

Charlie's belief that sinners can be redeemed is right. Still, in the beginning nobody else agrees with her, so she is challenged by the world around her. Her objective is not to lose faith in the Hazbin Hotel and to inspire others to change their mind too. Throughout her journey, she is bound to grow too. She starts as sheltered and naive with a simplistic idea of what redemption is. By the end, she will gain a deeper understanding of redempion and will grow as a result.

Exhibit B:

Eren's journey is about realizing what freedom (the main topic) is about. The problem is that he fixates himself on the idea that freedom means no boundaries, either natural nor humans. This leads him to embrace destruction and nihilism and to lose himself. In the end, the character who realizes what freedom truly is is Mikasa. She doesn't discard her bond with Eren, but is still able to make independent choices and to live as herself. In short, Eren doesn't learn the moral, hence why he spirals instead of growing.

Charlie is a protagonist who knows the moral and will grow with it in a positive arc. Eren is a protagonist who doesn't know the moral and never learns it. This is why he has a tragic negative arc.

These are just two examples, but there can be different combinations. By interrogating yourself on how characters relate to a theme, you get better a better understanding of their role in the story and of their overall arcs.

Still, how to find themes in a story? Luckily, each text is full of hints that are there for us to interpret them.

MOTIFS

Motifs are repetitive details within a story, which are used to communicate themes.

Anything can be a motif: a line, a musical tune, a specific imagery, an object. By repeating them in key moments throughout a narrative, they become symbols, which means they can lead to bigger metaphors and convey specific meanings.

In the song More Than Anything, dream is one of the main topics. We realize it because the characters keep mentioning it. At the same time, light keeps popping up. Lucifer summons light and throws it away, Charlie rememebrs a light show Lucifer imrpovised for her. Lucifer and Charlie start the song in the shadow and they end it in the light. This means that "light" is a motif throughout the song and by seeing how it is used we better understand the theme and the relationship between the two characters. We understand that light is a metaphor for dreams. Lucifer gives up on it, Charlie is inspired by it and eventually Lucifer summons it back as he has decided to believe in Charlie's dream. By looking at the way light is used, we can see that Charlie teaches Lucifer the moral that it is worth it to fight for dreams and not to give up on them.

In the CAA of HXH, gungi is a motif that comments both the topic of humanity and Meruem and Komugi's relationship. Their matches become a metaphor of monstrosity vs humanity, as humanity slowly conquers Meruem to the point he himself chooses to live and die as a human, rather than the King of the Ants. Similarly, Kokoriko symbolically becomes Komugi and Meruem's child, in the sense they give birth to this move and evolve the game.

Sometimes, their meaning is unique to the story. For example, gungi is a motif that makes sense within HxH and can't be brought outside of the series, as it is not a real world game. It only exists in that universe. Some other times, a motif can tie to bigger sets of symbols. For example, light and shadow are universal symbols that bring with them several additional meanings:

Good and Evil

The Jungian persona shadow

In the Hazbin Hotel song the first dychotomy doesn't fit, while the second one does. Initially both Lucifer and Charlie hide things from each other (shadow), whereas by the end they show who they are (light).

In short, to analyze a story, you should find its key motifs. They are hints to better understand the theme and the characters. Different stories will use different motifs and tie them to different wider sets of symbols. To find the right ones can help a lot in better understanding a story, as a whole.

Some examples:

RWBY uses fairy tales and alchemy as its main motif, so these two sets of symbols are the most useful to analyze the series

HxH is a shonen and uses its powers and fights to convey character arcs and themes, so to analyze one's nen abilities helps a lot

Hazbin Hotel is a musical series that takes inspiration from religion and mythology. So, it is probable that the best understanding of it will come from analyzing its songs and from looking into its religion inspiration

Of course this doesn't mean you should only use one motif to analyze a story. For example, you can use RWBY's semblances to look into the characters, as well. And there are some fairy tale allusions in Hazbin too. In the end, it is about using what best helps you understand a story as a whole.

What is more, there are general sets of symbols that can be useful in most stories, such as jungian archetypes. Finally, you might want to start from other aspects of the story itself, rather than theme or characters or plot. For example, you might be drawn to the world-building and realize it is used in a special way to explore the theme. Or you might be curious about character designs and see that they have their own symbolism (for example, I believe RWBY ones do and probably Hazbin Hotel ones, as well).

SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE

I have linked in the title of each paragraph, but this last one an article by @septembercfawkes. Her posts are great to better understand narrative structure and I found them enlightening.

I think the best thing you can do is to start with focused metas. Choose a scene, a character, a motif that intrigues you and start exploring it. It is better to start small and to narrow your focus, it would be easier to organize your article.

I usually outline the contents of the meta before starting to write it. Still, it sometimes changes as I keep writing.

It can be useful to write at the beginning of your analysis what you are gonna do. It will help you remember what the point of the meta is. For example, in my RWBY allusion meta or HxH nen meta, I always start with the motif I am analyzing. I summarize the fairy tale (even if many people know it already) and I explain what the character's ability is about. It helps organizing the flow and the contents.

The more you analyze the better you become at it, so it is just a matter of starting :)

Thank you for the asks, I hope this was helpful and not too much confusing!

Have a nice day!

[gilmesc1]

Sacrificing my remaining braincells to the void

Ok friends, you requested it, you awaited it, I’ve cleaned out my ears to remove the melted remains of my brain, here we go, we’re doing this, tell my partner I love them. It’s time...for syscourse analysis.

So this is a very bare bones run through of syscourse, it’s as basic as it gets and if need be I’ll focus on components of it after I recover.

So, syscourse is literally the words system+discourse. Bet you guys never saw that coming. 20 seconds into this fucking mess and we already have a major plot twist. And I know what you guys are thinking. A bunch of traumatized people not getting along? Another plot twist!

Jesus I better tone down the sarcasm.

Anyways, what the fuck even has to happen to have syscourse, apparently two types of systems. Yes friends, two types of systems, and I’m not talking DID and OSDD (which are really quite similar).

Our players are traumagenic systems and endogenic systems. Traumagenic systems are systems that formed out of trauma, like DID and OSDD systems. Naturally this plunks me down in the traumagenic catagory, thanks to my big fucking mess of trauma. So we got that down, moving on to endogenic.

So an endogenic system is a system that supposedly split without trauma. No idea where the word endo comes from. Or like, what the fuck endo even means as a word like trauma. (Maybe I want to endo myself after reading a bunch of syscourse? Ok, ok that was bad.)

The biggest issue once you get down to it is who is the Real System tm, and do other systems belong in each other’s tags. This is the part where I’d smoothly bring you all to a good starting point, but *insert deity here* help me, there isn’t one.

Syscourse seems to be older than mankind itself mongrels, because I cannot find where it started and who the tags belonged to first. So for those of you who like to visualize, picture two dogs chasing each other’s tails, running in a circle, and that is syscourse.

So let’s break it down more. I, and I’m sure many others, flocked to tumblr to find others who experience what I do, that being traumagenic system stuff. Again, we have trauma that results in our system’s creation. And that’s all fine and good, sure not everyone gets along with each other but for the most part all us systems are vibing and sharing memes and posts.

Now like I said, to be an endogenic system you are a system without trauma, and to me this is a little confusing. Brains aren’t made to be multiple and I’m the clusterfuck I am because of trauma, but to just magically thanos snap a system into existence? That I have a harder time wrapping my mind around.

There are a lot of examples of endo systems, but the ones I’ll be looking at today are tulpas. What is a tulpa? Well at first I thought it was a ghost thingy that you get by thinking about it, (supernatural anyone?) but now that I look into it, it’s apparently a Tibetan religious practice.

So we have science vs spirituality. This spells disaster already for syscourse.

So to get a better idea of tulpas than I could give you, I’d recommend looking at tumblr posts on tulpas because I’m in sarcasm mode and not really in a position to educate about those. Long story short it’s a thought process where you can essentially create a second being that is similar to an alter, as it exists in a headspace and can switch in.

Now I said headspace and switch in on purpose, because that is where the issue lies. Endos and traumagenics fight about words like that, and who they belonged to first. Can an endo use the words system, fronting, ect when they are scientific words specifically for DID or OSDD, or can traumagenics use the word multiplicity when it supposedly came from tulpamancy?

Side note: Guys do not lecture me on words, I’m trying to give examples, sorry but I don’t have my words for traumagenics dictionary on me rn, that’s in my other hoodie.

The majority of day to day syscourse is endos and traumagenics “infiltrating” each other’s tags and safe spaces, and ruining everyone’s day. From what I have seen, many traumagenics do not want endos to interact with them, and personally I see a few good reasons for this.

1, mental illness is not a trend and DID and OSDD are very very rough to live with. With there currently being a lack of scientific evidence on the existence of tulpas, I understand how it can seem that some are cashing in on the “DID hype” and giving off this romanticized view of being a system.

2. People with DID might be looking for specific DID info, and having to strain through irrelevant topics to them might be heavily stressful.

3. We’re traumatized and random things can set us off. This is the internet and I think everyone is at least a little toxic, and both sides have said shit to each other, but when people get triggered its easy to lose control. Not an excuse, tis merely a fact.

I’ve seen endos post things like “all systems are valid” and it’s a nice sentiment, in my heart of hearts behind my black toxic drama loving one, I’d like it if systems could just get along, but on a topic as complex as mental illness I don’t think that’ll happen.

I’ve seen both sides say things that were really uncalled for, and there’s no right or wrong answer overall in a fight like this. Naturally I’m team traumagenic but as for whether or not I feel like endos are valid or not, jury’s still out on that.

Hear me out, I have heard the theory that endo systems can help deal with trauma despite not being formed by trauma, and I’ve met a few people irl and seen things that confused me. Maybe they were traumagenic systems who didn’t know their trauma, idk.

I really don’t want drama. I’m sure systems on both sides are good people but like I said, the internet is toxic. (btw I love you mutuals, you are all good people)

In my humble opinion syscourse is stupid. I think there definitely should be a discussion about endos and traumagenics, but like can we talk like adults and not be like “WE’RE ALL VALID UWUUUU” with a string of toxicity behind it.

That level of back and forth is dizzying and irritating, and quite honestly I don’t want to deal with it. This is me trying to be neutral and give an overview, but that’s hard as I am traumagenic myself, and I don’t really understand the other side.

That’s why I’m not going to say I reject endos. I need to figure out more for myself and since this does leak into my personal life i want to do it carefully. I’m open to polite discussions, but I really want to keep out of syscourse drama.

Another side note: Something I think that is especially stupid is the amount of outrage over users saying they dni with endos. It’s a choice for that person and it should be respected. Like how I have personal reasons for keeping discussion open, others have personal reason for closing it. That should be respected and not ranted about. There are thousands of tumblrs, find one that isn’t dni and leave those people alone.

Additionally, if any endos do want to talk I’d prefer if you dm me, as I want to keep my blog traumagenic focused, both for my followers and for me, out of respect for those who don’t want any endogenic content and for me so i don’t wear out my three brain cells (I’m accepting name ideas for them)

To end this, I don’t want drama, nothing makes it easier for me to cave to my vices then drama, and syscourse is so freaking tiring that it would be like rolling around like sandpaper to get involved.

So there it is, my useless, sarcastic post on syscourse. Let’s see how many followers I lose, and if need be I can look into more stuff about syscourse since this is an overview.

Again this was supposed to be neutral and not necessarily all of my views, I’ll get more personal on it later maybe, but tbh I’m too fucking tired for that rn. Chronic illness, hell yeah.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed, I’m impressed I wrote it all, have a good day guys, I have to go to a party while feeling like my body is leading a rebellion.

I don’t even like people, why am I going XD

But hey shout out to social distancing, I’m using my personal space bubble and NO ONE can stop me.

Ok, time to give the braincells a rest. See you guys

[verobatto]

Harper's Love Letter as a guide to decipher what Dean is gonna say in his pray to Cas

Parallel between 14x06 and 15x10 plus an analysis of 11/05/19' quote of the day.

Okay, first of all, I want you to read my meta from episode Optimism 14x06, the link is here...

With that meta in mind, I want to describe to you the following points...

14x06 gave us the idea of the Destiel Break up.

It also gave us Harper, a Dean mirror.

It talked about how Dean had to choose between John Winchester (his past) and Cas and family (his present ) in episode 14x13.

It gave us Harper's realization about his feelings, while she was writing her love letter to Jack.

And I put that in red because is very very important, because is our guide to follow the steps to this story... And is a possible parallel to Dean's future prayer to CAS, and will tell us if Dean is gonna confess his true feelings... The so awaited I LOVE YOU to Cas... Let's check that letter...

"Jack, I'm already writing. Isn't that crazy? I'm not crazy. But our love is so vivid. I can't wait to find you. You are the first man to ever get me to leave McCook. Now I'm in the world. I'm sorry I have to kill you for what you did to Vance but then I can bring you back so that we can be together again.

It's gonna be perfect. See you soon. Love, Harper"

Okay, a lot of things right here. This is a love letter, a realization she has, she's accepting she is in love with Jack and she wants to find him and be together.

Splendid... But what this has to do with Dean future prayer? Everything...

Our love is so vivid. Dean could be mentioning his feelings for Castiel, Jensen choose the word CONFESSION. To describe what Dean will say in that prayer. People confess what is hidden in their hearts, things that maybe could be bad things or shameful things. Maybe... "The love cloaked in shadows" as Qareen said in season 11 while she was describing Dean's feelings and darkest desire.

This love for Castiel will maybe be confessed by Dean in his prayers...

You're the first man to ever get me to leave McCook

In my meta I said McCook was representing John Winchester, the Righteous Man, bc he was a General, a soldier, a righteous man too. And if you readed the meta, Jack leave that book (the McCook biography) on the fence, and they ran together holding hands. And I said DEAN WILL CHOOSE CASTIEL. Because CAS is the first person who get him leave that hard idea about being the macho Man righteous man, and perfect soldier and protector John Winchester had left in his mind. He's now a man in love with a male angel. So maybe Dean will say thanks to CAS for everything he had done for him, and how Castiel had changed him.

I'm sorry I have to kill you for what you did to Vance

This is accurate to describe when Dean pushed Cas away, and the excuse was Mary's death, but not really the real excuse, we all know Dean was mad, angry, because he believes his love isn't real. So maybe Dean will ask for forgiveness, in his prayers. Revealing his fears about his feelings not being real. Knowing now his feelings for Castiel are real as Cas said.

I can bring you back so we can be together again.

Maybe Dean will ask Cas to come back or maybe... And this is the spoiler my friend @agusvedder and I have...

Maybe in mid season 15x09, Jack is back from death, Dean confess Castiel his feelings for him, Cas will feel finally happy, and the Empty will take him giving us the cliffhanger of mid season finale.

And maybe, just maybe, the spec I wrote in this meta related to episode 14x16 will become truth, and Dean will rescue Castiel from the Empty. Using the same spell Nick used to communicate with Lucifer and he even was able to see Lucifer's true form and woke him up... And because I described in one of my METAS that was a Dark Destiel mirror, we could dream Dean will be able to open the Empty gate, find Castiel and see his true form. Damn... I wish that...

Okay, I will talk about the quote the Supernatural crew wrote for episode 15x10...

The first part of this quote is related to Dean... It talks about someone describing himself as fire, and people who this person love, becoming ashes because of him...

Remember people in the town calling Harper BAD LUCK, BECAUSE EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHED DIED?

And remember Crowley in season 9 saying Dean was like that too, everyone who get involved with him ended dead?

That's Dean, my friends ... And I want to say, I never related a quote of the day with Destiel, but this one, for the first time, this is DESTIEL.

Okay, second part... Talks about that person meeting a phoenix who was born to love flames... This is Castiel. No doubt of it, Castiel was always by his side, no matter what...

Even if Dean would burn the world, Castiel would be by his side...

But Phoenix people, I had this theory I wrote last year... About Supernatural's characters and something I called THE PHOENIX COMPLEX. You can read the metas here and here.

Last year they used Phoenix's quotes related to Jack... But this year... Is Castiel. Each TFW's member is a Phoenix.

Okay... Do you see Destiel all over that quote? Bc it is... And is episode 10, so... Maybe Cas is already in the Empty, according to the spec i said before... And because Dean had his REALIZATION WHEN HE WAS SATING OUT LOUD HE LOVES CASTIEL IN HIS PRAYERS, now he won't stop till get Castiel back.

You know when you are explaining something or confessing something out loud, sometimes you learn from yourself, you are listening to your own words, and is like RIGHT! IS LIKE THIS! OF COURSE!! And is like a crazy realization? Okay, that's what I think will happen to Dean, he will be praying out loud, listening to himself, and he will have this realization. And also, not having Castiel in front of him, will help him to use his own words, without any kind of sabotage from his own mouth. Is harder to talk about feelings when you have your crush in front of you...

Okay, that's all my friends, I just wanted to write this down and share it with all of you!

Kisses and love!

Tagging @metafest @gneisscastiel @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @agusvedder @weirddorkylittlediana @michyribeiro @whyjm @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @savannadarkbaby @angelneedshunter @trickster-archangel @dea-stiel @mybonsai1976 @anarchiana @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @destielshipper221b @mishtho @dancingtuesdaymorning @feathered-castiel @bre95611 @zoerayne2426 @justmeand-myinsight @proccastinate

Buenos Aires November 6th 2019 4:24 PM

[aqualianbird]

So, I am having a relatively stressful episode at work, I have enough alcohol in my blood to make me feel chatty, and there isn’t nearly as much Saint Seiya talk on my dash as I’d need so here it goes :

Let’s talk about ... well, Seiya

It’s dificult for me to comprehend exactly how many fans of Pegasus Seiya there are around. Often it seems like he is the most hated and the most loved character in the fandom simultaneously. No, seriously, I don’t think even characters that were designed to be hated like Tatsumi or Kasa got as much (and for the latter even Shun said the dude was going way too far)

For my part I plead guilty to the first one; my sympathy for the Pegasus knight only lasted a dozen of episodes. I often joked to my sister how the reason I never watched the anime a second time (despite a habbit of feeding on re-runs of favourite shows instead of new ones) was entirely because I couldn’t stand the idea of watching so many frames of Seiya again.

Nevertheless, I always made it a point never to completely exclude completely him for any headcanoning or writing I made around the universe, especially if it touched Athena and the 5 main bronzes - few are the sound reasons to exclude him from the universe that was nammed after him.

I never say much or write much about him because, despite my irritation with the character, I never wanted to reduce him to being The Clown, or make him the bottom of all sorts of jokes.I may be wierd but even if he is a fictional character I wasn’t going to treat him unfairly ... In general we could say I could never picture him in a way that would make him more appealing to my eyes, as a writer or a fan.

So here in this saturday midnight let me first speak ill of Seiya, and then speak way less ill of him (and if you survive to the end you will find out it really is related to my work, that’s what got me thinking)

The many facettes of Pegasus Seiya and how they made me grow as a writer

(Since this is getting long I figured it needed a title)

If I want to speak ill of Seiya first it is because I am a big fan of riddles. In general I just like to understand the logical connections between everything (you have no idea how satisfied I was the day I found out the anime colours of the gold saints’ hair were chosen to contrast with the overwhelming yellows of their armours. Really it’s just like watching those videos were everything fits perfectly into everything). And I think I did figure out why the “Seiya hate”.

Furthermore, with the exemple of Seiya I started understanding many advice given to beginers about character-building and protagonists. I also hope this first part will illustrate how I always tried to “see the good” in Seiya.

I always thought he was a admirable character - in theory. I believe this is a shared feeling, nobody would dare say Seiya is a poor character absolutely useless to the dynamics of the series.  

(Ok I’m idealising a little. but the least one could say is that the content he generates is usually quite neutral)

Everything he does is heoric : he never gives up, he leads, he defeats enemies 300x bigger than himself, he helps those in need ... Seiya is really good, almost perfect in everyway except for his mischievious side, and worthy of all the praise he gets within the universe - in theory.

But oh god how annoying he was in practice

I wonder how many people reading this have never rolled their eyes during one of those typical “Seiya comes to save the day” moments.

So why ? Why is he annoying so many people ? Or, at least, why is he not inspiring as much as other characters of this series do ? I think I found the solution to that riddle (and I know it to be true for at least me and my sibilings)

Personally, I can easily name the moments Seiya irritated me the most. Disrigarding this one scene in a filler where Seiya makes a sexsit comment, it was in the scenes where he appeared at the last moment to save the day and everybody was cheerfully calling him name. Or how he was always the only one to be able to defeat the “big bosses”. All these scenes irritated me in how they were written to make him look as the big hero and protagonist of the show.

Which, you know. He actually is.

The story relates his steps - check

Does heroic stuff : self-sacrifice, never gives up even if the situations look desperate - check

Is indispensable to the plot : he defeats the big bosses, so yes - check

So why ?

Tying to put more words on this, the following sentence formed into my mind : “It is faked protagonism”.

With hindsight I am affraid Seiya’s character suffered a lot from the fillers of the anime in the same way Saori’s roles in fillers left the wrong impression of “damselle in distress” and Shun as “the crybaby always needing his brother to save him”. The fillers repeated ad nauseum the same formula : “enemy attacks - the bronzes go to fight them - Seiya gets hit on the head a lot - Let’s make him hit on the head three times more to show it has nothing to do with the last enemy they fought - He still miraculously avoids head trauma and defeats everyone and is the only one getting carried in triumph”. As a result, his heroic trait was completely banalizing and we were left us thinking “Does he ever do anything new ?”

Talking to my sibilings and seeing the trends on Tumblr the past years, I believe this feeling has been refrazed a lot as “We want to see x characters instead of Seiya”.

This is the point in this analysis where the wannabe writer in me starts putting her two cents. How come even minor characters seem to be more appealing than Seiya ?

I always did get what kind of traits Kuru wanted to give him. In theory. But in practice, they never seem to manage getting past the screen. Leaving out the glamour the Gold Saints’ name offer, if we compare Seiya to the other Bronzes, even taking only manga canon events one could say he suddenly appears quite pale as a character.

For instance, in the course of the series, Shyiru begins undergoing major character developpment from day one; he who had great pride looses his battle against Seiya.

In the later arcs, he sacrifices his eyesight to save his friends in this beautiful scene, which ensues in another character developpment moment where he learns to fight blind, goes to the big 12 temples battle blind. He is the first to kill a Gold Saint -actually he is the only one to have killed 2 gold saints in this battle- and we are very often reminded he is sacrificing a happy life with Shunrei everytime he goes on mission to save the world.

In a similar way, it is easy to be reminded how Ikki is battling his past everyday, how Hyoga is struggling to build a future everyday, and we could all appreciate Shun’s amazing strength in for instance the battle against Pisces or the beautiful scene of his sacrifice in Hades

Next to this, Seiya just seems to be “beaten around”, an idiot who tags along without bringing much into the group aprat from yelling “Saorii-saaaaaan” untill the osts dry up causing him to rise up and defeat the big boss on the cue of pegasus fantasy. And yet, he still receives all the glory in the narative and is at the center of attention.

The general impression me and my sibilings got was “He is the protagonist just because the series is named after him.” The naration and the fillers seem to have built a house of cards around his punch, which is definitively what irritated me and my sibilings and I am theoretising most of the fandom as well.

Now in his defence, his comedic trait and good contact with people does not have much room in end-of-the-world battles against gods that only address to humans talking down to them, and as mentioned the fillers did not do him any favours. The plot of his lost sister is quite forgotten after the first arc, and unlike other characters it does not seems like he picks up any other defining traits during the course of the series. (Personally, the ultimate strie that just made me loose all patience is the shipping with Saori that Toei has going on)

Which is where I realised : this is probably what everybody means when talking of “insuficient of character developpment”

We often see the words “character develeppment” in critiques or writing tips. Everybody stresses how important for your story it is. But it is only recently, paired with the exemple of Seiya that I have truly realised what this means.

I read somewhere that “If your protagonist becomes perfect, if he is not longer evolving, then he stops being a protagonist”. I think with Seiya I could sense the results of keeping a protagonist that is not longer evolving in the story.

One could also argue he is not sacrificing as much as the others. Like sure, he is ready to sacrifice his life every time, but it also never seems that his life is in any real danger - he only ever ends up in the hospital after the big guy is defeated. He never seems to suffer any consquences of his injuries during the battles - has the narative ever implied he could not throw his punches as well as usual because of his injuries ? He mostly attacks, falls down, can’t move for a few minutes and then gets up again. It is more a narrative of “If you don’t succeed, try harder and harder untill you do”.

Which helped me put in practice another writing advice : do not let your main characters excape the consequences of their actions.

It does not mean everything has to be realistic (of course they can loose way more blood that humanly possible and still survive because it visually increases the dramatic effect). I come to realise it means that if you give too much free passes, the stakes will not feel as high, and your plots will bear much less tension than they potentially could.

Going back to Seiya as much as his actions are heroic in theory, they do not feel heroic to most people watching it probably because his "never giving up and keep punching” attitude does not have consequences. They have as much effect as him getting out the trash : it sure is unpleasant, it smells baad, the trash starts leaking, it’s disgusting, you hears noises inside the trash disposal and nobody wants to know what would thrive in this smelly and juicy environement, but in the end it will be over in a second. You just throw away the bag, maybe you got a bit of trash juice on your shoes but it will easily be washed away by water.

Taking the same problem from a different angle offers the opportunity to look into giving traits to your character :

We can all agree that “never give up and keep punching” was intended to be Seiya’s main trait of character. It seems, however, it did not result to be as memorable or as inspiring as planned. Which reminded me of this other piece of advice :

“If you give your character a trait you consider his most defining characteristic, but never challenge it at any point, this trait is going to have as much effect as a mole on their cheek” - it is now loud and clear to me.

With the exemple of Seiya, I would add variety in the challenges is important, because repetition decreses tension, and less tention also means less investment in one’s story (or the story involving one particular character).

And if repeated to much, it becomes annoyance towards one’s character.

Calling myself out - Time to work on liking Seiya

Now this has gotten so much longer and personal than I ever expected, but after speaking so bad of Seiya I really do not want to leave out the part where I speak good of him. Especially when it involves my favourite kind of riddles with Saint Seiya characters : fill the gaps.

As mentioned before, it was always quite clear what traits Kurumada wanted to give the Pegasus Saint. Let’s start with the most obvious ones:

Mischievious side, implying as well that :

Has a sense of humour

Quite good with people or at least with kids

Rebel/independent side (flashback of Saori ridding Jabu, the begining of the anime)

Never gives up

Is a good leader / is capable of bringing people toghether / of rallying people to his cause

The last ones on the list are quite easy to forget about him, because of the “lack of challenge” discussed earlier (nobody would have ever forgotten about his leader skills if let’s say he had prevented Hyoga from turing over completely to Poseidon to stay with Isaak). In that spirit, I recently came across an idea that would make those two traits more “challenging” and give a more human dimention to his character.

Now the fact he was since always a bit of a rebel has an influence on his leader capacities, as being an independent mind he stands out and will not depend much external factors to go in a direction. But this alone does not make such an unchallenged leader as Seiya.

Now this is where my current employment helped this reflexion :  I work customer service, more precisely a position involving processing and solving issues.

The very first advice I was given during training was “Always sound confident. Even if you understand jack about what the customer is talking about, just sound confident. Make believe that you know your shit even if you are just about to google a crash course on the subject. Because if they even think for a second that you don’t know they will eat you“.

And let me tell you how accurate this advice is. I became the favourite of this Italian lady who always had problems with her printer because I read to her in a very confident voice an article I was reading on the spot after punching out her question in google.

It is not easy, and it really pumps your adrenaline, but it is true : if you sound confident people are going to follow your lead and believe in what you say. Even if you yourself have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Now today, I was thinking how this could be the secret behind “The Miracle of Seiya”; maybe this is why Seiya is very good at being a leader, and even more, why he is very good at being a leader in the apocalypse fighter army of Athena.

He reassures everybody and gives them hope by making them believe he has 100% confidence in a given situation and that everything is under control, much like I became a printer and Wifi expert in the eyes of that Italian lady even though I actually dread those motherfuckers.

That would totally explain this bit at the Cancer temple too, this scene we all make a little fun of, where is is all “Don’t say that Shiryu ! We must think that we have still 9 hours to save Saori !” and moments later he seems to be ignoring his own advice saying “that’s not a lot” (Could be also something lost in translation tho)

And with this sort of influence on other people, he finally becomes a crucial character to the story, as he becomes the glue to the team without which it is possible the other bronzes would not have been as solid of a team, maybe even disbanding as the challenges they faced seemed often hopeless.

And with that I think I am ready to write something involving Seiya someday ...

[transientpetersen]

Some answers for the question list prompt.

What’s the most important thing to know about you?

What subjects do you know about most?

What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?

What routines do you have?

How do you decide what to post on tumblr?

What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?

Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?

Who are the people you admire most?

What are the most important concepts for people to know?

What is your favourite characteristic in people?

Which artists do you listen to?

Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?

Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?

What areas would you like to learn more about?

What are your hopes for the future?

What would you like to change about yourself?

What are your main interests?

What are some works which can take us into your mindset?

What’s the most important thing to know about you?

I want you to come away from our interactions feeling better than you arrived. Very seldom am I acting in bad faith.

Also, I will read anything you recommend (more often than is healthy for me).

What subjects do you know about most?

Cooking, cycling, sys admin and programming, and distributed computation.

What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?

How to be disappointed. This is not a joke answer. You'll make plans that won't work out due to external factors and you have to roll through that to the version of you that isn't phased by the setback.

Over communication is better than under communication. This one may be idiosyncratic but perseverance in the face of communication difficulties pays off more often than it hurts.

How to ride a bicycle. This made me functionally independent from a young age and I would give every kid the same freedom if I could. How to be safe on a bicycle.

How to have an opinion on everything. How to refrain from sharing your opinion when its not appropriate. This means you're able to enter any conversation or relationship with something to offer and also means you're not an overbearing ass when you do.

Coordination is hard.

What routines do you have?

Every two months, I break the caffeine dependence.

How do you decide what to post on tumblr?

There are three main categories of post. What I'm reading and some analysis to keep me honest, quality posts that resonate with me, and any post from someone I'm following where I  have a response that seems relevant.

This is generally a place to dump my writing - only slightly better than a journal because some small amount of time it gets a response.

What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?

Most of my knowledge is from recreational reading and some of it from life experience.

When I post, I try to strip identifying information out since I'm of an age to appreciate op-sec in identity on the Internet.

Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?

This could be a very long, very crowded section. I'm going to include the first quality picks in each category that come to mind.

Beksinski, Gregory Crewdson

Rubberbandance, Firebird by Stravinsky

Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Fisher King), Pom Poko

Watership Down, Kim (Kipling)

Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World (Stanovich)

Genesis, Gentle Giant, La Dispute

Bob and Doug MacKenzie

Who are the people you admire most?

I always had this problem when I was young when they asked in school "who is your hero?" because I didn't have an answer. Usually I mentioned my grandfather because he was the kindest and most supportive person that I knew. Honestly, I don't pay much attention to other people.

Of the people who are not in my life, Borges (for thinkers who can make improbable connections), Keanu Reeves and Tony Levin (for people who are kind, who can share), and Galois (for being transcendent).

What are the most important concepts for people to know?

The peak-end rule of experience applies to happiness and pain. An over focus on the average experience will not capture human experience.

Culture is not just food or a preference for certain colors in clothing and does not exist purely along racial/national lines. It would be too easy to break a town apart along fundamental values if the right questions were made a subject of public concern.

Addiction is about the need to escape. You don't break it by removing elements from life, you must supplant it with something worth living for.

How to use a turn signal?

What is your favourite characteristic in people?

Humility - direct honesty about the bounds of your knowledge.

Which artists do you listen to?

Various, I could dip into my records and put together a few primers. Genesis is my favorite group. I'm currently waiting on albums by Dessa, Protomen, and Circa Survive. When I find a song I like, I add it to my collection. When I find a band that performs well, I get their best album. My collection holds days worth of music.

Feel free to hit me up for targeted recommendations if you're bored.

Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?

This is harder to answer than it should be as I've actually been remarkably bad about recording the books that I've read and its hard for me to recall them without some prompting information.

Nonfiction

Amartya Sen

Keith Stanovich

Jorge Luis Borges

Anne Carson

Fiction (not necessarily quality authors but I like them)

Glen Cook

David Gerrold

My favorite author that I haven't finished a work by

Leo Tolstoy

Waiting on their latest work

Patrick Rothfuss

Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?

I would never have chosen to live in the Bay Area for as long as I did.

If I could send one message to my younger self, I'd ask them not to neglect social knowledge. Its valuable when you need to get anything done (push model of action).

If I could send two messages, I'd ask them not to neglect their physical skills - they are not less valuable for not being "on the pathway to immortality".

What areas would you like to learn more about?

My reading list is too long. Here are some of the nonfiction materials on it.

early schools of atheism (The Epistle of Forgiveness by Al-Ma'arri)

history of class (The Making of the English Working Class by Thompson)

crime in London and the formation of the Thames River police (still looking...)

more riding techniques (Sport Riding Techniques by Ienatsch) 

early religious evolution (The Formation of Hell by Bernstein)

distributed algorithm analysis (Distributed Computing by Herlihy)

social dynamics (Distinction by Bourdieu)

city dynamics (Out of the Mountains by Kilcullen)

home medicine (Where There is No Doctor by Werner, Green Pharmacy by Duke)

native american culture (Shooting Back from the Reservation by Hubbard)

chinese history (Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian)

What are your hopes for the future?

To reach a point where my ambitions and logistical skills are matched and I never take on more challenges than I can handle.

What would you like to change about yourself?

Less generalized anxiety would be nice.

To be a quicker writer, optionally a better, more coherent one too. It still takes me forever to put any kind of thought on page and that's a problem when you're an aspiring pseudo-intellectual like me.

What are your main interests?

Distributed coordination, theory and practice. Promoting good outcomes for people.

I wish I could be part of some mutual support organization but am honestly not that good with sustaining enduring relations with others.

What are some works which can take us into your mindset?

Rationality and the Modern World will always get my recommendation for thinking about humans thinking. War and Peace, I still have not finished this book but the deep empathy that Tolstoy displays in the early sections that I've read makes for a good reflection of my beliefs. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (both play and film) would also work.

I’d tag @drethelin, @morteledraco, @injygo, @house-carpenter, @bambamramfan. Feel free to play if you want to.

[thattreason]

When Time Becomes a Loop

Title: When Time Becomes a Loop

Author: That Treason (That_Treason)

Fandom: The Magicians

Rating: General

Words: 3800

Written for the 2017 Welters Challenge (@thewelterschallenge​), week 3 (”the unseen & what you want”)

This is my first fic in a while, so I’m a little nervous, but I couldn’t resist the theme. I’ve always wanted to know more about Jane Chatwin and her time loops. Here’s one take on how they might have worked. Hope you enjoy!

Note: Takes place in the time loop just before the one shown on the television show. 

~~~

“Q, it’s Jane.” Julia whispers in Quentin’s ear.

“Jane who?” Quentin blinks for a moment, puzzled. Julia had insisted on meeting in the library at this too early time on a Sunday, and Quentin’s still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Or maybe this is another dream; it’s getting hard to tell. “Jane as in…” he says slowly, “…Jane Chatwin?”

“The Jane Chatwin,” she whispers again, “Fillory Jane Chatwin. “She’s controlling the time loops.”

“Jules…” he starts, brows furrowed, but his voice trails off. Usually Quentin is the one taking Fillory-related leaps of faith, and it throws him off a bit to be on the other side of the conversation.

She rolls her eyes and grabs his hand and drags him off through the entirety of the all-but-abandoned library, not stopping till they reach a dusty nook in the farthest corner, mainly used by couples avoiding roommates. She seats herself on one side of a solid wooden table.

“Look, I know this sounds crazy. I need you listen to me first and then you can tell me I’m crazy all you want, ok?” she asks, content to stare at him till he perches on the chair across the table from her.

“Listen, then crazy – check.”

“Here are the things we know:” Julia begins, with a smile, “We’re stuck in a time loop – we confirmed that yesterday with the spell, right? Time is going around in circles, centered on us and certain events. It doesn’t stretch back over our entire lives and it definitely doesn’t continue through to any natural end. Some event cuts us off and it’s likely that it’s a fight with the Beast.”

“More like the Beast murdering us horribly rather than a real fight,” Quentin mutters, “which is still entirely likely to happen any second now, and regardless of any time loop resetting us it’s still going to hurt.”

Julia holds her hands up, a gesture asking for patience. “We know it’s not a natural phenomenon and it’s not some magical accident. Someone – someone really good with time magic is controlling it.”

Quentin’s fingers trip his hair back behind his ear. “Just because someone is controlling it, that doesn’t necessarily conjure Jane Chatwin out of the books.”

Julia rolls her eyes. “You and I both know that Jane Chatwin is real and is screwing with us right now. I know you’ve had dreams about her, I have too.”

“Bu–”

“And then we also have another mysterious someone who calls herself Eliza–”

“You think Eliz–”

“Q, listen to me, for ten seconds,” Julia snaps. “Eliza is Jane. Jane is Eliza. They’re both prone to cryptic pronouncements that always seem to lead us into trouble. They pop up whenever they feel like it, mess with us, and then disappear.”

“That’s pretty thin, Julia,” he says, apologetic. “I mean, I know that I’m the first one of us to leap on anything that gets me closer to Fillory, but it’s a stretch even for me.”

“That’s why, I didn’t come to you earlier. I needed harder evidence to prove it to you. I had this really strong feeling, like I was trying to remember something that was wiped from my memory. I couldn’t get away from this feeling of dread. And the feeling gets stronger whenever I’m in the same room as Eliza, so…”

“So?” Quention asks.

“So, I followed Eliza around for a while. I wanted to see where she goes when she disappears all the time. I figured, she has to sleep sometime, right? So I tagged her with a Carmichael’s line.”

Quentin squints. “Carmichael’s? That’s for, like, wandering puppies and small children.”

“It worked for what I needed. Low power, doesn’t last long, but it’s not easily detected by anyone but the caster. You have to stay within a certain radius and apply it by touch, but otherwise it works really well for tailing someone, if you follow the tugs from the other end and never try to tug back. I followed her all over campus. For a while I was worried she was going to disappear out through the wards somewhere and I’d lose her–”

“I feel like I should pop some popcorn or something, this is great,” Quentin laughs.

Julia smacks at him across the library table, but her eyes are laughing with him and her mouth is quirked in a smile.

“I thought I was going to lose her,” she continues undeterred, “but then she went into this broom closet.”

“A broom closet, why didn’t I think of that.” He can’t help but sound incredulous.

“It wasn’t a broom closet on the inside, obviously,” she says. “Well, ok, yes, the first two feet or so were definitely a filthy broom closet, but if you pushed through the mops in the corner, you end up in this woodland-apartment-thing.”

“Uh….”

“It was outside,” Julia’s eyes look far away and her voice is wistful, “there were trees that formed a canopy overhead, but there was also furniture – a bed, tables, chairs, bookshelves. The carpet was moss, there were these charms hanging from the branches to mark off the space. It was beautiful.”

“Next to the bed I found this beat up old notebook, it’s her journal, or something. Her lab notebook, maybe. It was full of these extensive records for time loops, thirty-eight of them. These are notes about our time loops.”

“Ouch.”

“And it’s not just notes about what went wrong or who did what – she wrote down all her theories and thoughts – her emotional investment in each of the loops. It’s meticulous and terrifying.”

“So where’s the book, d-d-d-did you just leave it there or what, because we might never be able to–” He’s flustered and scrambling his hands through his hair.

“Of course, I didn’t leave it there.” She reaches down to her feet and into her bag. She pulls a slim black and white composition notebook out and flips it across the table at Quentin. “It’s spelled to contain more pages than it appears to have from the outside.”

He quirks his eyebrows up and motions to the book, asking ‘may I?’ with hands and face. Julia nods and looks away down the stacks.

“I think Jane was friends with us the first time.” Julia voice is just a whisper, barely audible even in the dead quiet of the library.

Quentin looks up from the book to stare at Julia.

“She writes about how we were all on this fantasy quest to kill the Beast and save Fillory and win ourselves these perfect little heroic lives. We thought it would be like in the books – chosen few, duel to the death with evil. The heroes never lose, how could we?”

“We had a plan,” she whispers. “And then right at the last minute, we convinced her to stay behind. Specifically, we – you and I. Apparently, I had these doubts about what we were really getting ourselves into. And the first time, in the first loop, the two of us were joined at the hip, so of course I convinced you. We took it to Jane: we needed a backup plan and she had to be it, with her time magic she could stay behind and reset things. Just in case things didn’t work out.”

Julia reaches across the table to pull the book, still unopened from Quentin’s fingers. She flips it open and searches the pages, eyes scanning along until she finds a certain passage.  

“Listen to this: ‘I am resolved that subsequent attempts will be managed more systematically. I have recorded here every decision, every pitfall and snare. Everything that went wrong.’”

“It doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, Jules, in theory at least,” Quentin says. “It gives us a real chance against insane odds to defeat something way too powerful for us. And we’re not dead – I mean, dead-dead, obviously we were dead back then but we’re alive now, so–”

“Q, I know that. I thought that too, at first. Listen to the rest, ok?” She says it quietly, eyes never leaving the page. “‘Additionally, I have some thoughts on how to tweak the dynamics of our little troop – just a bit – for the sake of cohesion, to highlight strength and suppress weakness. I am confident in my ability to bring this situation to a satisfactory conclusion.’”

“What does she mean ‘tweak the dynamics’?”

Julia holds up a finger, requesting patience. She traces her fingers along the page and flips. “ Her writing for the first loop is really emotional, with only some high-level analysis of the fight. Then the second time loop finishes after another battle with the Beast. Jane watches us all die horribly again. I guess she felt she needed to record more detail about what happened and what went wrong. We died really hideous deaths and she wrote about it in excruciating detail. Like, right here,” Julia jumps a little and points to a section of the text. “the Beast ripped off your arm and then used it to beat Penny to death–”

“Jesus”

“–and she goes on and on about the sound it made. It’s grotesque.”

“That’s a word for it.”

“The whole book goes on just like that. We try, we die, she writes it all down and then resets time again. Makes us do it all again, over and over. By the fifth run – that’s the word she uses in the journal, ‘runs’ like this was some video game – by the fifth run, you can see her start to doubt herself. She talks about how, maybe there is no win scenario for us. Maybe she isn’t smart enough to orchestrate all the details required for a loop that leads to the death of the Beast. Maybe he’s just better than her. But that thinking doesn’t last long - by the sixth loop she’s figured out the real problem is us.”

“Us? What, you and me?”

“No, I mean, not just us,” Julia gestures across the table at him and then back to herself, “the big us, the whole group of us. And that’s when she really starts to meddle in our lives. She decides there’s something fundamentally wrong with all of us collectively and if she can fix it, she can change the whole scenario.”

“We’re not exactly the most capable group of magicians that’s ever existed.” His hair has fallen back into his face, and he tucks it back again. “Or the most responsible people, in general. I can’t blame her for wanting to improve us a bit.”

“Jane starts to reset things more frequently.” Julia shakes her head. “Sometimes we don’t even make it to the fight with the Beast. She just decides that the overall conditions aren’t right, things aren’t going to work out, and poof. We start over again. Like she’s canceling a baseball game because she’s worried about the rain.”

“Around the twelfth loop, she starts to wonder if there are cumulative effects of resetting us so many times. She notices your depression gets just a little worse each time. And Eliot spends just a little bit more time drunk or high. And Margot slowly gets more…Margot-y. She doesn’t stop resetting us, or try to help us – nope, just notes it down in her journal. We’re not even people to her anymore.”

“And then loop thirteen happens. Jane starts to write about how ‘this is war,’ and we’re ‘her weapons to wield.’ She drives us really hard – we learn this amazing battle magic, but life is miserable and eventually…

“Eventually?” Quentin asks.

“Eventually, we decided Jane isn’t much better than the Beast.”

“Oh.”

“’Oh’ is right. At the end of loop thirteen, we’re fighting against Jane, not the Beast. We were ready to die for real if it meant we’d be free of her control.”

“So what happened? Obviously we didn’t win.”

“Obviously. We thought we had a way to neutralize her, we even got the watch she uses to manage the loops away from her, but… things didn’t work out. She used everything she knew about us to turn us against each other.”

“Which means?”

“She got us to kill each other. And in that loop we knew really good battle magic, so the deaths were epic.” 

Quentin snorts. “Hey, a little silver lining in all this, we got to be badass for once.”

“After that loop, Jane’s much more hands off with us. She gets the watch back and resets things again, just like always, but this time she has almost no contact with us. She just watches us to see how things go without any intervention from her. And things go horribly, just like every other loop. So she goes back to meddling, subtle at first, but now it’s all behind the curtain. She gets the Dean involved so she can exert that much more control over us without interacting with us directly. Over a couple more loops she starts to dial in how much she can personally intervene without causing us to go completely off the rails.”

“She messes with everything. Sometimes she keeps us happy, sometimes she thinks anger or sadness work better. She nudges us into all these different relationships – I think maybe she thought there was some configuration that would be optimal.”

“What like, dating?” he snorts. “She wanted us to date each other?”

“She wanted us to care deeply about each other,” she says quietly. She turns her eyes up to look at him. “In the beginning, you and I were together.”

“Together?” His hand snakes his errant hair behind his ear again. “Together-together?”

“Shocking I know,” she smiles at him. “And it lasts through three or four loops before she starts to think that any relationships at all are detrimental. At that point, she was still interacting with us, so she was able to just discourage us directly. After we rebel, she changes her mind, and tries to find a set of relationships that work for the cause instead of against it. She figures if we’re more willing to die for each other…”

“We might be prone to crazier heroics or whatever, yeah I get it, so–”

Julia laughs to herself; she knows what Quentin wants to hear. “There are a lot of combinations, she has charts in here to help her keep track. Most of them last only one loop, but some of them she tries multiple times. You and Eliot end up together a lot, you seem to stabilize each other. Alice is with Margot a few times. I end up with Penny or Kady or Penny and Kady. I could go on.”

“Can I see the ch–” Quentin starts to reach for the book, but Julia pulls it back, and slides it back into her bag. 

“You know that’s not the point, Q. We don’t have time for this right now,” She folds her hands on the table, face gone grim. “I need you to focus and really understand this: no matter what Jane does, we die. We fight the Beast and we die. Over and over and over. And we’re going to keep dying.” Her hands fly into the air and then pound back down onto the table to emphasize her point. Quentin starts a little and looks up at her wild-eyed.

“Jane is pretty sure at this point that the Beast knows something about what’s happening, but she doesn’t know how much. She says he can’t do anything to stop the loops, but he’s aware that time is going around in circles. She says, he knows someone named ‘Quentin Coldwater’ is coming to try and kill him. And we know he’s been in Penny’s head since he was a kid or something. Jane doesn’t have that in the book – so either it’s a new thing, or she doesn’t know about it or she hasn’t written in down or something. I don’t even understand how he’s reaching Penny so far in the past, when Jane can’t reset the loop that far back. Whatever he’s doing, eventually the Beast is going to figure everything out, if he hasn’t already. He’ll kill Jane, get the watch, and then we will all die horribly again, but this time it’ll be permanent.”

“Jules–”

“Q, listen to me – this whole thing is insane. I know you love Jane – I know you love the idea of Jane. I know you love the attention, the mystical dreams, the cryptic clues, and as Eliza she seems to be helping you, helping both of us, but we can’t let her keep doing this.”

“B–”

“There’s no way we can ever beat the Beast. We’re students, we’re barely trained. Brakebills doesn’t exactly emphasize how to kill all-powerful god-like magicians in the first-year curriculum. We aren’t heroes! There is nothing special about us! I don’t know why she thinks we can ever win with the skills we learn here in the amount of time we have–”

“Julia–”

“Q, Jane’s a monster just as much as the Beast. He kills us, but she’s the one who sends us to die every time. We need to get that watch and get as far away from both of them as we can, or we’re going to do all of this forever.”

“You know, you’re perfectly correct, Julia.”

Julia takes a breath and moves to speak, but she can’t. She’s frozen, everything is frozen. She can see Quentin across from her, stuck with his eyes lifted up to gaze above and behind her. He’s staring at someone, and from the voice Julia knows it must be Jane, standing right behind her, out of sight.

Jane comes around into Julia’s field of view, dragging a chair behind her. There’s a booming squeal as it scrapes harshly against the floor that echoes through the hushed library, until it’s positioned at the short end of the table. Then silence returns, pressing at their ears.

Julia finds that she can move her eyes to focus on the woman as she sits between Quentin and herself, but the rest of her body is locked tight. She can’t breathe, but it doesn’t seem to matter – there’s none of the panic that comes from suffocation. Mixed blessings. Jane purses her lips and looks at each of them in turn. There’s nothing in her manner to suggest that frozen time is anything out of the ordinary. They might as well be having tea.

“We have such a terribly limited amount of time to train you all before we arrive back at the Beast’s door.” There’s a note of sadness in Jane’s voice and then, an audible sigh. “Maybe the time has finally come to look further afield for how best to prepare you all for the inevitable.”

“It’s probably a bad idea to remove all of you from Brakebills at the same time,” Jane muses. “Perhaps an infusion of street magic is just what we need to shake things up a bit. I’m probably relying too much on Ivy education to do all the work, but maybe we add a bit of adversity into the mix…” She pauses for a moment, lost in thought, completely ignoring the panicked, pleading look in Quentin’s eyes. “You’re obviously the best candidate for a first try, Julia. I’m quite certain you’ll land on your feet. Quentin… Eliot… Penny – I don’t know that they’ll be able to truly blossom amongst the hedges, as you undoubtedly will. And if it doesn’t work, well, you’ll have laid the groundwork for others to join you the next time we try.”

“Besides,” she continues, “your relationship needs a little shaking up I think. You two are far too dependent on each other. ‘Joined at the hip’ indeed. Both of you need some space I think, some time to wander off the garden path a bit. Quentin in particular, you’re much too willing to run straight at your doom, ready to play the hero. Why don’t we see what you can do without Julia there to prop you up, mm?”

Jane stands and pulls at her blouse to straighten it. Brushes imaginary lint or dust from her thick grey pencil skirt. Neatly pushes her chair under the table. Moments seem to stretch to hours as they sit frozen. Julia looks at Quentin, memorizing his face, but his eyes never meet hers. He’s too busy staring at Jane, begging her with his eyes.

She reaches into the slim brown bag at her side and there it is: the watch.

Jane looks down at them, each in turn. “Don’t look so glum, you two. I have every faith in Julia’s ability to work things out. After all, you’ve been smart enough to figure out the time loops three times so far. And the Carmichael’s line was a genius little trick. I knew it was there, of course, almost as soon as you cast it – Carmichael’s leaks like a sieve if you know where to look, and with the way things are, I’m always looking. But still, excellent use of a spell outside it’s intended purpose. I only wish you’d put all that brain power to use getting ready for the real confrontation,” she sighs, and waves a hand through the air. “Doesn’t matter now, I suppose. I thought it best to allow you both some time to discuss, rather than just resetting things straight away. I confess, I was curious to see if you’d have any useful critiques of my techniques, but…” Her eyes fall away from them. “Anyway, enough chitchat, we’ve got a long road ahead of us, and Beasts to slay before we sleep.”

Jane hums quietly to herself as she fiddles with the watch, positioning the dials and gears just so, before setting the timepiece on the table. She takes a deep breath and begins to move through the complex fingering of the spell, hands fluttering like birds above the watch.

“There is one thing you got wrong, Julia. I never send any of you die. I want nothing more than for you all to emerge victorious,” Jane says, face broadening into a smile. First it’s just a quirk of the lips, but it grows into a bright flash of teeth. “The unfortunate truth is, all of you keep mucking everything up. Do try harder this time, won’t you?”

Quentin finally tears his eyes from Jane to meet Julia’s across the table. They watch each other as the world fades to grey.

[foundcarcosa]

cciv.

1. Predict what your life will look like a year from now. >> I doubt there will be much different about my life in August of 2018. Sparrow will undoubtedly have settled into a more permanent place of employment, so our quality of life may have shifted (in the financial sense), hopefully for the better. We’ll probably still be living here, so no major changes to my worldstate are predicted. Anything else, I can’t possibly predict with any confidence.

2. What is the nicest compliment you’ve ever been given? >> All compliments are good compliments.

3. What makes someone a best friend? >> I don’t have an answer for that. It varies from person to person, anyway. I get soulmate and best friend and life partner and the rest of those superlative hierarchical terms all confused, to be honest. --In which case, Can Calah fits all of them by default.

4. Are you young at heart, or an old soul? >> I have always existed in a state of temporal liminality, making all age-related terms erroneous.

5. How is your blog a reflection of yourself? What do you think people assume or know about you by looking at your blog? >> It’s a reflection of myself because I strictly curate things that appeal to me personally. I have dedicated this space to myself, to the expression of the innumerable facets of my being and their intersections, and it has performed ably in that capacity. And it’s funny you should ask that, because about an hour ago someone I know informed me that they tried to give someone they know a description of my blog and this is what they came up with: “I honestly don't fucking know,  they either are God (tm) or wanna fuck God(tm) and probably would foursome The Diety of their choosing, Idris and Matthew Macone-whatever in the Matrix just for the aesthetic and the #thirst tag.” So I imagine that’s largely the impression I give.

6. Make a five song playlist that sums you up as a person. >> Death is the Road to Awe, Clint Mansell (from the soundtrack to The Fountain); Gethsemane, Vanden Plas (a cover of the Jesus Christ Superstar song); Starboy, The Weeknd; Break On Through (To the Other Side), The Doors; Blazing Star, Dethklok. There are a lot of songs that could contribute to a comprehensive profile of me as an [infinite singularity of] individual[s], considering I’ve been looking for myself in songs since I knew how to look, but you asked for five, so.

7. Do you have a Facebook? >> Yes. You’re welcome to add me on it. It’s largely stupid memes and me complaining about the most random shit.

8. What’s the most annoying thing about the person you like? >> Which one? (What kind of ‘like’? Be more specific.)

9. You ordered pizza last night, and have been looking forward to eating the leftovers all day. You go home and the box is still in the fridge, but someone has eaten all of it and it’s empty. What do you do? >> That’s impossible. First of all, Sparrow doesn’t even like the same kind of pizza I do. Second of all, she’s scatterbrained all right, but I am going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she wouldn’t leave an entire empty pizza box in our small-ass fridge. Try again.

10. What’s an inanimate object in your house that holds significance for you, and why do you find it so significant? >> The empty bottle of Baron Samedi Rum that sits on my desk holds significance for me (obviously, seeing as I never keep things that have no clear purpose, like empty liquor bottles). I bought it in New Orleans and it reminds me of O’Dim. It is perfect. (I’ll get rid of it when we finally move. After all, I won’t need these fragile pieces of home once I’m actually there.)

11. How do you look right now? >> Like a snack. (How am I supposed to answer this???)

12. What is one of your bad habits? >> Drinking, I suppose.

13. What were you doing at eleven last night? >> I think I was on tumblr, or some other part of the internet.

14. Are you sure that you were born in the right era? >> Does it matter?

15. You know at least one person named Michael. Tell me about him. >> He’s married to Sparrow’s sister, he studied film, he likes sour beer, and he used to be a skater. I don’t know much about him personally, it’s mostly just factoids that don’t knit together into a full picture very well.

16. You’ve got the TV on, but you’re not really watching. What channel is the TV on? >> I don’t do that. Sparrow is more likely to do that, and it’d probably be some HGTV show on Hulu.

17. What’s an inside joke you share with your friends? >> The first thing that popped into my head was #sunfuckers incorporated, honestly.

18. Name a song that never fails to make you happy. >> No song is 100% successful at that, obviously, but Blood Red Summer by Coheed and Cambria has a strong track record. Very bright, very vibrant, probably about something either horrific or sad (deceptively fun-sounding songs about interstellar war and sundered family dynamics and lost/broken love -- all amindst vague cosmic horror -- is kind of their thing, after all).

19. If you had to diagnose yourself with any mental illness, which would it be? >> ASD is my self-diagnosis.

20. Would you like to reconnect with any friends that you’ve lost contact with? >> I wouldn’t be opposed to it.

21. Name at least three things you could stand to cut out of your life. >> Whatever it is, I probably won’t be cutting it out of my life any time soon, so there’s no point in even pretending otherwise.

22. What is “normal”? Are you normal? >> I assume that the most practical working definition for ‘normal’ is ‘consistently compatible and compliant with the beliefs, morals, and behaviour systems of one’s society’ -- if so, I feign ‘normal’ with varying success. Mostly I am content with being a quiet but adamant outlier.

23. Biggest turn ons? >> Expansive and adaptable consciousness. Abnormally high levels of curiosity and mirth. At least two (2) tentacular appendages.

24. Do you practice what you preach? >> What I preach is usually integral to my being, so I can’t help but practice it. What I parrot is often a different story. (Parroting, I’ve found, is useful in the successful maintenance of a person suit. I don’t parrot much here, so don’t worry. It’s mostly for the benefit of people less fortunate in the cognition and analysis department who unfortunately have the ability to make my outlier life difficult.)

25. Would you prefer to live in a city, the suburbs, the countryside, or the mountains? >> I’d prefer to live in the Garden District of New Orleans.

26. Give me the story of your life in six words. >> It is without beginning or end.

27. Would you rather be alone doing something you enjoy, or doing something you don’t like with your best friends? >> I will always choose to be alone doing something I enjoy. Additionally, anyone who considers themselves a friend of mine would prefer I not do something I don’t enjoy simply for the sake of keeping them company.

28. Tell me something you think would surprise people. >> As a child, I was deathly afraid of thunderstorms. (My theories on this vary. Either way, my fear completely disappeared without fanfare sometime in adolescence; there is a memory I hold of being 13 and watching a summer storm in North Carolina with avid fascination, and suddenly thinking, Wait, aren’t I supposed to be afraid of this?)

29. Is your current hair colour your natural hair colour? >> Yes.

30. Why is your favourite band your favourite? >> My favourites are my favourites because they express things I keenly recognise and often do not have words for.

31. Name something that you miss. >> Her.

32. Share five goals that you want completed in the next thirty days. >> Um... I’d like to finish at least two more Loremaster sub-achievements on WoW, get my Norn up to at least lvl50 on GW2, watch the rest of Queen Sugar, finally nut up and watch Moonlight, and get my end of the Reddit/SyFy Gift Exchange done.

33. What do you do when you can’t sleep? >> Read, usually. Or watch some episodes of an Adult Swim show (or something equally low-commitment).

34. If you were told you were going to have three daughters, what would you want to name them? >> Whatever names come to me when I am holding them, or whatever names Sparrow wants to give them. What I hate is that you have to name them then and there -- I prefer the ritual of naming to be closer to toddlerhood.

35. How do you feel when someone says something mean/disrespectful towards your favourite band/musician? >> I don’t feel anything, usually. Being a Creed fan as a teenager has given me a blessedly thick skin towards that sort of thing, trust me.

36. What’s the funniest film you’ve ever seen? >> I really liked Life (the Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence flick), Caddyshack (it’s so fucking weird in that older-film sort of way but I lost my shit at so many scenes that I have to give it its due), and The Secret Life of Pets (I guess I’m the perfect demographic for that kind of ridiculousness). Oh, and Kung Fu Hustle. I know there are a few others but I forget them now. Comedy movies that really amuse me are almost harder for me to find than horror movies that don’t make me roll my eyes out of my head.

37. What’s your favourite children’s TV show/movie? >> My favourite children’s movies are The Pagemaster and The Prince of Egypt. The Neverending Story gets honourable mention just for being so damn iconic. My favourite children’s programming is The Amazing World of Gumball, Steven Universe, and some stuff I’m probably forgetting but trying to dig around in the pile of countless forms of media I’ve consumed over time in order to answer these questions is really not how I want to spend my night.

38. What do you do when you can’t sleep and you don’t have your phone? >> Why wouldn’t I have my phone, though...? I guess I’d get up and do something else. 

39. What is your purpose in life? >> Whatever it is, I assume I’m fulfilling it.

40. What’s one thing you cannot live without? >> Aside from the “duh” answers, I will say mental stimulation and variety. I couldn’t live in solitary confinement with absolutely nothing to do, I’d probably lose it faster than the average (if I don’t figure out a way to kill myself).

41. Put the seven deadly sins in order of the one you commit the most to the least. >> Superbia, Acedia, Gula, Avaritia, Luxuria, Ira, Invidia.

42. What’s something that’s on your bucket list?  >> Skydiving. Natch.

43. Have you ever been told you look like a famous person? If so, who? >> The only two famous people I’ve ever been compared to (to my face) are Grace Jones and Harold Perrineau.

44. Can you cook? If so, what are your favourite dishes to make? >> I can cook well enough not to starve. I haven’t gotten to a point where I enjoy cooking, though. Maybe one day.

45. What was the last decision you regretted making? >> Meh.

46. Whose opinion of yourself do you value the most? >> Can Calah’s. Sparrow’s, as far as corporeal human beings are concerned.

47. Anything that makes you angry? >> There is nothing that is consistently guaranteed to make me angry. I usually experience anger as a cumulative “last straw” kind of thing. Which can make it seem “out of the blue” to others, I realise. But at least it’s infrequent.

48. Age you get mistaken for? >> Anything from late teens to early twenties, appearance-wise. Online, anything from late teens to... mid thirties, I think.

49. When was the last time you paid for music? >> I think the last album I bought was The Buttress’ Behind Every Great Man.

50. Night or day? >> Both, please. And the spaces in between.

[thelittlepalmtree]

Can we please stop calling Ships we don’t like abusive?

I so very often see this argument against ships that people dislike and I find it not only harmful but a bit ridiculous. This is going to be a very long meta about a lot of ships that I don’t personally ship. I’ll tag only the ones that I speak positively of. 

So, let’s talk about why it’s bad to call a ship abusive that’s not abusive. First of all, there are people in this world that are in abusive relationships. This may seem like an obvious statement but I think a lot of fans forget that. If you have ever been in an abusive relationship you know how difficult it is. There are essentially three kinds of abuse. Physical, emotional, and sexual. If we’re talking  romantic relationships the last is the one that might be a little difficult for people to identify, however usually an informed party outside the relationship can help clarify it for anyone who feels they might be sexually abused in a sexual relationship. It’s bad to call relationships that are moderately healthy or just mildly dysfunctional abusive because it sort of creates a one level system where everything is black and white and guess what, friends, that’s not the real world. Many young people are a part of a fandom. Imagine being sixteen or seventeen having never dated anyone and being told that if your partner asks you to give anything to the relationship they’re abusing you. Do you think it will be easy to distinguish actual abuse from fandom bullshit? I doubt it. 

Now let’s talk about what abuse actually is. I should mention that I have never been in a relationship, however I have witnessed many abusive relationships and have an emotionally abusive parent I still live with. I’m also studying education and have learned extensively what the effects of abuse are on development and growth of a child. It’s that working knowledge I’m going with but you can also go here for some better information. But when it comes to fandom I want to talk about my idea of abuse. Now, listen, I get that we are living in a post structuralist world and we’re all bound to have our own personal beliefs on abuse and whatnot. However, to be quite honest I feel like my elaborate definition of abuse is the best one. It is also at the crux of my argument so if you don’t like what you’re reading just click out please. 

Alright. So to me abuse is essentially about one thing, the desire to control another person. As a human being without Jean Gray-esque superpowers you cannot control another being’s actions or decisions directly. However, some people did not learn this or do not want to learn this. They use the indirect means of emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse to exert indirect control over another person. That intent to control (whether conscious or unconscious) is key to this problem. It is normal, for example, to have arguments in a relationship. However when one party feels that they must agree with the other because a) argument would be futile or b) there will be severe consequences if they don’t then that crosses a line. For example, let’s say two people are going to Lowes to pick out paint for their living room. A healthy couple might have an argument about the paint color that results in either compromise or someone getting their way. An unhealthy couple will likely not argue or if they do it will be clear that the abused party never had a chance of getting the color they wanted. The argument is not the problem, it’s the dynamics of the argument. Not every bystander will be able to see this either, it’s built on a long history between these two people. What may look like an unhealthy relationship could be perfectly healthy. What may look like a healthy relationship could be very unhealthy. 

Another aspect of abuse is neglect. Personally I don’t know why someone would choose to be in a relationship with someone they don’t like, but apparently it happens. Now, remember what’s important is that power dynamic. So, when I was in high school a lot of my friends dated each other but didn’t like each other and would break up in a few weeks but do the same thing later. That would not be classified as abuse to me because neither partner felt obligated to stay in the relationship. Neglect often comes in when one person doesn’t have the same feelings as the other person does but still wants to keep the relationship perhaps due to conveniences. 

The third part of this is that abuse is cyclical. Abusive partners are not all bad all the time or more people would leave. Typically an abusive partner will be fine most days or do those little things that chip away at your soul (Backhanded compliments, unfair expectations, “teasing” or bullying) then they will have an episode in which they become totally irrational. That will usually be followed by a grand apology (my dad often offered us money to forgive him). Once you forgive them they will be better than usual and then slowly progress back to stage one. One of my friends who I believe was in an emotionally abusive relationship told me recently that she remembered the “good times” because sometimes her partner would be horrible and shout at her for hours and other times he would be there for her and incredibly supportive. A lot of people think that this is a ploy of some sort to keep your partner, but I personally believe that abusers feel genuinely guilty for being so cruel. That makes it much easier to believe and forgive them and much harder to say no to them. 

So now that we got all that out of the way let’s talk about some ships. Let’s start with Jarley because I think this is a ship that is very different between the movies and the comics. In the comics this ship is hands down abusive. Harley is actually something of a distasteful caricature of an abused wife. She goes back to a partner who can’t stand her until she’s useful to him and inconveniently just won’t die. However throughout the comics she’s evolved into a wonderfully flawed, growing person who is dealing with the effects of such an abusive relationship. What’s interesting about this ship in the movies: they took out the majority of the actual abuse. Now I know there was a scene where the Joker slaps Harley, but given that that scene did not make it into the movie and also that we do not have context for that scene I am not going to treat it as canon. 

There are still problematic aspects, the Joker and his men torture Harley (though she does provide enthusiastic consent to the torture), and the joker throws her into a vat of bleach (again with her enthusiastic consent). You may think that this is inherently abusive because the actions here harm Harley. I see the side of that argument, but let’s just examine it further. The thing is, Harley abused the Joker first. She took advantage of her position as his therapist. And I think that is really important to note. As a counsellor you cannot develop feelings for your patients. Developing those feelings means you need to send them to a different counselor instead. This is because counsellors have a lot of power over their patients. In Suicide Squad we saw shots of the Joker in a straight Jacket. Harley presumably had control over his daily schedule and medications as well as access to any personal information on file or that she divulged from him. She could recommend treatments as well. It’s unclear whether she exercised this control, however the very fact that she had it constitutes an unhealthy power dynamic already. On that theory, you could argue that the initial violence the Joker and his gang perpetrated towards her was payback, or a way to make the relationship even. He had resented her former abuse of power and therefore tried to hurt her, but developed feelings for her at some point and then saw her as an equal. IN THE MOVIE itself, after Harley becomes Harley as we know her (after their weird dance in the toxic vats) there does not seem to be a lot of abusive behavior on the part of either of them. Any analysis of the ship that doesn’t take that turning point into account is part of this “I don’t like it so it’s abuse” problem. We need to look at all facets of the relationship. 

Let’s talk about another relationship that people tend to call abusive. Brucetasha. I should point out that I do NOT ship this at all. However, it is just not an abusive ship. First of all, the two were never canonically in a relationship. They talked about being in a relationship, they considered being in a relationship, but they were not in a relationship. In fact most of their interactions are about how they can’t be together. Now, there’s a lot about how Natasha called herself a monster because she couldn’t have kids. Yes this is terrible, but considering that Bruce did not say this to her, it could not be considered abuse. You may also say that she violated his trust by turning him into the Hulk. Yes, she did do that. However her aim was not to exert control over him, but to save people’s lives. It was a “gun to your head what would you do” situation or a train problem situation. Think about couples who must violate each others’ trust due to issues of security clearance or because they have high-end jobs in competing companies. These may be forgivable offenses or they may not be, that does not make a couple abusive. 

And thirdly, let’s talk about Karamel. I know, I know, everyone (me included) wants Lena and Kara to get married and have a horde of Kryptonian babies. However, the ridiculousness of arguing that Kara and Man-El were in an abusive relationship is honestly why I began this post. First of all, Man-El is not a bad person just because he’s a man. He grew up in a sexist culture and made great great strides to overcome his cultural training. It is incredibly unfair to expect people to be one hundred percent politically correct one hundred percent of the time. People need to learn and grow and I honestly felt the show did a good job of showing that. Kara didn’t just roll over and let him have his way every time, or even most of the time. She pushed back whenever he was jealous or controlling and she took her time entering the relationship. I would also like to point out that Man-El did not pursue her, in fact, she had to drag it out of him that he even had feelings for her. He did everything he could not to pressure her into a relationship until he found out that Kara felt the same way and only then did he try to make it work. Man-El very rarely tried to control Kara except when he was concerned for her physical safety. Think about relationships in which one person is a police officer, is it unreasonable for a cop’s partner to sometimes feel frustrated with the risks they take on their job? I think it’s reasonable to expect your partner to take time to get used to you constantly being at risk, the same goes for superheroes. I’ve also seen the argument that if Man-El was really a good person he would have gone with his parents and made Daxom a better society. I think it was made clear that his mother was abusive (I mean she killed his father for disagreeing with her and tried to force him into a marriage). In such a relationship you do not have any control. I doubt very much that he would have had any real chance to change Daxom’s culture while his mother was in charge. Beyond that, it takes centuries to change a culture, just look at America, we’re still trying to figure out Slavery. Is it reasonable to assume that he would have been able to turn Daxom into a benevolent nation overnight? I don’t think so. I really fail to see how any aspect of this relationship was abusive. Would I date Mon-El (if I were straight)? No. Chances are you wouldn’t either. Was he the right person for Kara? I personally don’t think so. Was he an amazing 100% fantastically PC person all the time? No. People are not like that. I’m not asking you to date someone like Man-El or who makes you uncomfortable. I am asking you to realize that not everyone is perfect, and a Journey like Man-El’s is so important to show. He went from being exactly the kind of person that most people find to be the pillars that hold up the patriarchy to being a fairly enlightened partner. I hope young girls see this to know that boys are not walking monsters, but that you can get through to people with education and patience. 

I hope you’ll be more responsible when throwing the word abuse around.