#I'm now very invested in these characters

[aihoshiino]

chapter 166 thoughts

As of chapter 166, Oshi no Ko has finished a roughly four-and-a-half year run started back in 2020. While there's some speculation about an epilogue or some extra content in volume 16 when it drops, this is where the main story ends. And you know what that means!!!

OSHI NO KO HAS OFFICIALLY ENDED WITHOUT ADDRESSING OR ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT RUBY KISSED HER BROTHER IN CHAPTER 143

please understand that this is FUCKING BOGUS

I'll probably do a longer post on this subject specifically, but my main critique of 143 when the chapter dropped was that while I liked the individual beats in it and I was really glad to see Akasaka finally addressing this tension bubbling underneath Aqua and Ruby's relationship, the immediate swerve away from showing us the aftermath of that kiss felt to me like an admission that the story was going to needlessly draw this out even more. Now that the story has ended and we can see that moment had literally no impact on the plot or even the character dynamics, I'd like to revise that statement - it feels like an admission of compromise. It feels like crumbs thrown to AquRuby fans to tempt them to keep reading and to stir up the waters of the ship wars, so people would keep reading and stay invested in the manga right to the very end. But most of all, it feels deeply disrespectful to both Aqua and Ruby as characters. Rather than exploring their feelings and giving both of them interiority and complexity in relation to incest or even just fucking acknowledging that the kiss had happened and letting their dynamic evolve, the series just memory holes the entire event and asks that you do too. Rather than letting Ruby have any development whatsoever as pertains to that relationship or, god forbid, let a female character move on romantically from the male lead, the series ends with her feelings so up in the air that I literally could not tell you what she thinks of Aqua by the time he dies.

ANYWAY… FINAL CHAPTER. BREATHES OUT VERY HARD.

I really can't believe it's taken us until the final chapter to actually deal with Ruby's grief over Aqua lol. We got a snippet of it last chapter but it was so brief that it really just felt like a tease. I also just think it's kind of bizarre that we're spending this little time on Ruby having feelings about Aqua's death to the extent that I have no idea how or when she found out about it.

It's also kind of hard to feel particularly strongly about Ruby's grief when the chapter doesn't really bother to explore it all that much. It's just a montage of Ruby quite literally Screaming, Crying and Throwing Up while Akane dispassionately narrates it all. The art also doesn't really help in terms of connecting with the emotions at play - I usually really like Mengo's expression work and the way she depicts extreme emotions but this all just felt like of… I don't know how else to put it. Goofy??? Is that an insane thing to say about Ruby grieving her brother???

Idk, something about both the panelling and just the extreme on-the-noseness of Ruby, again, literally Screaming, Crying Throwing Up while she's wearing a Burning cosplay Just In Case You, The Audience, Didn't Get It only for her to abruptly be done crying with no exploration or insight as to what's going on in her head that allows her to move forward.

Honestly, this is kind of the issue with everyone in the cast. The resolution is just sort of "Aqua died and we were sad about it but then we stopped being sad". I know what the story is trying to go for here - it's trying to express that even when you're in pain, life goes on and so you have to find a way to go on with it. But the result is that we spend all this time oogling at their pain without spending equivalent or even meaningful time on their recovery process.

It feels both excessive and undercooked at the same time and I'm left with the same icky, voyeuristic feeling I got from Aqua's funeral last chapter. This should be the point in the story at which we empathize with Ruby the most, but she remains a frustratingly distant figure right to the final pages. Part of this is an unfortunate consequence of Akane's narration directing these final chapters meaning that we're hearing about Ruby from an outsider's perspective and thus don't really see what's going on in her head… but if I can be frank, this has been an issue of Aka's with Ruby in particular basically nonstop since chapter 123.

As others & myself have noted, despite the absolutely catastrophic downward spiral Ruby is in at that point, Aqua revealing himself as Gorou basically flips it all off like a switch. There's some mild lipservice paid to the idea that Ruby is just using her dependency on Gorou to prop herself up and it's pointed out that the issues that contributed to her breakdown haven't actually been resolved - but none of these issues are ever even acknowledged again, let alone resolved. So, functionally, that reveal does fix all Ruby's problems in the space of a single chapter and the result is, again, that we spend multiple chapters gourging on depictions of Ruby's absolute rock bottom only for her to ping back to normal like a lightswitch. As such, the depictions of her pain feel less like explorations of Ruby's interiority and more like voyeuristic oogling at Ruby's misery and trauma and the effect is that the resolution to it all is both unsatisfying and a little gross. The result is that it feels like Akasaka is just indulgently mining the imagery of cute girls suffering because it causes simple thoughts neuron activation but doesn't respect these girls enough as characters to build them back up.

It doesn't help that this is basically the in-universe excuse for Ruby's career further skyrocketing. Instead of Ruby becoming a star on her own merits as the story keeps insisting she was supposed to, she's artificially buoyed by the public's morbid fascination with her tragedy. If I was feeling charitable towards the story right now, I would say this is an avenue of intentional critique but… well, I don't feel super charitable about the story right now lol

I WILL say that the one part of this chapter I did just uncomplicatedly like was the beat of Mem trying to suspend activities (presumably in the wake of her grief for Aqua) only for Kana to basically immediately explode into her room and help her get back on her feet. It's a beat that would've been much more effective if we'd, you know, seen it, but I otherwise enjoyed it and I thought it was sweet.

But. pbbbbtttt. I guess I can't talk around it any longer… let's get into the Dome concert.

To start things off on the immediately worst note possible, Akane describes Ruby performing at the Dome as being 'everyone's dream', including Aqua's. I'm reminded once again of the strange turn the story took in insisting that um, actually, performing at the Dome was totes Ai's dream all along (even though she literally didn't give a shit even a week before she was due to perform there herself) so Ruby performing there is fulfilling that dream for her!!! and I can't help but wonder if this abrupt shift in focus is an attempt to make readers forget what Ai's actual dream was - to see her beloved children grow up happy and healthy. Hell, it wasn't even really Aqua's dream, until the story suddenly had to try and convince us that his entire purpose for existence was to kill himself so Ruby could be an idol for slightly longer than she would've otherwise. The only people whose dreams she's textually fulfilling are Ichigo and Miyako and Ruby herself, but…

Honestly, is this really Ruby's dream anymore?

Who is Hoshino Ruby? What does she want? Why does she want it? These should be the very least of what we can concretely say about not only a protagonist but a character who has become a central figure of the entire story as Ruby has, but with the way Oshi no Ko has warped and distorted her, I find myself increasingly unsure of what the story wants her to be or how I should answer those questions.What does Ruby feel about Aqua? Was she still in love with him? Had she moved on, romantically? Was she still waiting for a response to her confession? Did she finally realize it was probably kind of shitty to respond to her brother going "lowkey wanna kms" by sticking her tongue down his throat? I Guess We'll Never Know.

This extends to whatever the fuck Ruby's relationship with idols and being an idol is. Almost the entirety of Ruby's time in the story has been spent reiterating over and over that Ruby cannot just be an idol who imitates Ai and that to truly shine, she needs to step out of her mom's shadow and shine in her own way. Ruby even literally tells Kana in no uncertain terms in 137 - "I'll be a star in my own way. I won't be like Mama."

While this has always been the text of the story, as I've pointed out before, the actual art with which Ruby's idolhood depicts her basically just as Ai 2.0. It relies so heavily on mining the imagery of Ai's charisma and personality as an idol and using them as the measure of Ruby's success as an idol that Ruby essentially has no visual or conceptual identity of her own as an idol. She's just Ai, But Arbitrarily Better, For Reasons The Narrative Fails To Actually Establish But Hopes That You Just Accept Anyway. This was always kind of annoying, but now that friction seems to have been resolved by… just making her Ai 2.0, But Arbitrarily Better (etc, etc) in the text as well. The fact that we're given no further insight as to Ruby's feelings and continue to just have Akane Explain Ruby's Character Arc to the camera also doesn't help.

All this combines to make the Dome concert and the final few pages feel exceptionally cold in a way I really don't think was intended by Akasaka. Yes, that splash page was nice and flashy but… I just felt nothing. I have no idea if or why Ruby cares about this. And even though the Dome concert has been hyped up through the entire story as the peak of Ruby's achievements as an idol, I feel no sense of accomplishment in her finally being there - not just because her journey to it was basically sneezed at us across two panels, but because it just feels hollow as a victory lap for Ruby. Again, she feels so distant and abstracted as a character that I can't bring myself to feel very strongly about her good or bad.

I think the perfect encapsulation of this are the final four pages of the story. Ruby's words here are very clearly intended to be a callback to Ai's words to Gorou in chapter one but as @all-of-her-light pointed out in our initial discussions of the chapter, Ruby very much does not have an equivalent to Ai's conclusion that she nevertheless wants and values the opportunity to find personal happiness and fulfillment outside of being an idol. Are we supposed to believe that simply being an idol is all that Ruby needs to achieve a similar degree of happiness and fulfillment? Is there no more to her than that?

I've seen a lot of people interpret this ending as exceptionally bleak and, as usual, gleefully predicting Ruby's immanent suicide because her beloved oniichansensei isn't around but this is indulging in, if you'll allow me to be frank, some pretty transparently ship-motivated flanderization. Despite what certain sections of the fandom would like to believe, Aqua and Ruby's lives, past and current, have never revolved around each other to the exclusion of every other relationship in their life. Ruby has a massive support network of people who love and care for her and actively want her to get back on her feet. I can one hundred percent believe that she does not need Aqua in her life to be happy and content.

The issue is that we don't see enough of Ruby to understand that ourselves. Again, she has become such a distant figure with so little insight into what she's thinking and why that this ending is basically a Rorschach test in which you can interpret basically whatever the hell you want or assume because we have so little canon basis to support or debunk our assumptions.

and yes. don't think i didn't see them. it IS both grimly hilarious and weirdly tonally appropriate for this ending that ruby has a bunch of oshi goods of ai and aqua including their fucking autographs set up to say goodbye to every day.

AND…… WE'RE DONE!!! THAT'S OSHI NO KO, BABY!!!! well, technically, there's going to be a 20 page extra chapter in volume 16 but I don't see it being big or substantive enough to meaningfully change my feelings about the ending so… I guess we're leaving it here. Damn. Feels crazy to be done with it.

I'll probably do a bigger post down the line about my thoughts on the ending as a whole but in terms of just How This Chapter Made Me feel, I guess the word is just… meh! It's definitely not an ending I like and I think the execution is sloppy and rushed but I also just don't really have the energy to feel angry about it. Maybe that's sad in its own way but tbh… I still really love Oshi no Ko! I still find it engaging and I find the characters I enjoy rewarding to talk about. I like the artistry of the anime adaptation. I don't blame anybody else for being so turned off by this ending that they're done with the series but for me, I like what I like about OnK too much that this ending could retroactively ruin it for me. Whatever else happens with the OnK franchise, whatever directions the anime and live-action take, this will always be the series that gave me Ai and the Hoshino family and. look at me. look at what she's done to my brain. could I really ask for anything more than that?

That being said, I'm definitely not done with discussing the series! I have fics to write (including a VERY exciting large scale project lined up with some friends), my Ai analysis post to finish and I also want to do a re-read of the series and finish my anime rewatch. I'll be here to discuss Oshi no Ko as long as I have things to say about it and as long as you guys will have me! Despite how the series ended, I've had a genuinely wonderful experience in the fandom and I really don't want to let go of the little community we've built together just because the series is done. I'm Ai's fan for all eternity!!!

[twistofstory]

Newt and Wolffish, the silly exes! I initially wanted to just draw a picture with them, like I did with Whale and Stargazer, but I had a joke in mind, and... Well, nothing new for me, plus I had fun with this comic, even if it took a while. For me them being together at some point started out as an elaborate joke relating to Newt's plotline - which I forgot at some point... - and now I'm way too invested in these goobers :3 Side note, Wolffish usually doesn't wear his horn prosthetics in the camp, but he did at the start of his and Newt relationship as a confidence boost (he's a trans guy) Also Newt has his winter coat here, that why he's extra fluffy and has ear tufts. (A brief dive into their relationship plus some backstory to both of the characters under the cut)

There is no surprise that they had a thing. Newt at the time of joining the gang was very lonely and stressed out, and meeting this flirty and handsome guy surely made an impression. I'm sure Wolffish wasn't just flirting out of habit and also thought that the newbie was cute, but for him Newt represented something more - an opportunity to reconnect with his native culture. Like in the old story version, Wolffish grew up in an adoptive family at the coast. One big change - he haven't been able to visit his homeland, as with the start of the war it closed it's borders. The same event that got young Newt locked in the outside world without being able to contact his mom... But that's a talk for later, today I'm talking relationships. Their break up wasn't even dramatic (AU is a whole other thing...). The "honeymoon" phase ended and, after some months of dating, they realised that they simply don't work out as romantic partners. Sure, their romantic endeavor was short lived in the main story, but it brought them closer and, most importantly, let Wolffish, usually acting so self confidently, show his sweet and excitable side. Also Newt in need of recognition and being useful and Wolffish, desperately clutching to his own loyalty to dragons around him, are not so different from each other as it may seem. So now they are friends, and fairly important to the story at that! We'll see where it'll bring them, now enjoy the silly hehe

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[yuseirra]

I'm so????

?????

No but Fatale really must be Kamiki and Aqua's song, I need the full song

There are two singers singing this op, what if that implies that it's the two boys that were the closest to Ai expressing their feelings towards her? Oh boy..; she really IS a fatale. She's got these boys hopelessly(in a literal sense) attached to her. I think there could be a reason why the op is a duet.

[tracle0]

a colourful comic sans intro :)

Been a little while coming now. Hope you enjoy!

[avoidmint]

While scouring the internet I noticed sometimes people like to make the Green Flavor Gadget from the one game cover into his brother? I liked the idea of an older brother for Gadget so I just made him bigger and fluffier. I have named him Sage and he would not approve of his lil bro's future boyfriend probably.

Anyways I immediately killed him off for the drama of Infinite killing Gadget's older brother alongside his friends but y'know-

[cipheredsong]

Don’t Ever Lose It: an essay on threads consistent for Vi throughout Arcane, and what it means to have and lose your place in the world through the loss of loved ones

for the first time in years I've gotten way too excited about a piece of media that isn't from my own head, and how do I engage with it? by writing an essay. academia has changed me irrevocably but I hope that someone else can also enjoy my descent into madness.

if I get the time, I have a paired essay planned for this regarding Caitlyn and grief, which I skimmed over here to remain focused on Vi's arc and character. warning: this post contains SPOILERS for act 1 of Arcane s2, as well as the whole of s1. buckle up kids, this is 3k words of me being one hell of a nerd. I've never posted something this long on tumblr before so let's all hope the formatting survives.

Vi as Her Family’s Protector

There are more than a few words to describe Vi at the beginning of Arcane — sister, leader, fighter, then criminal and ally. Protege and prodigy, who wins against men twice her size in fights where she is outnumbered. At the core of every fight, at the center of who she is, is “protector.” Vi has charged herself with this task, and been charged with it by outside forces as well: Vander, who warns her that her crew looks up to her; Powder, who adores her and follows her all but blindly. It is this central identity as a protector that Vi carries throughout the series, and it is this identity which is stripped from her by force in season two, disrupting her place in the world and the story.

The first time that the audience sees Vi, she is in that role as leader, executing a heist in Piltover with Mylo, Claggor, and Powder. The other three look up to her and follow her, and when the heist goes south and causes issues both at home and above, Vander is sure to remind her of her power.

[25:40 ep. 1 – Arcane s1 act 1]

He warns her that because of their willingness to follow, Vi is the one who bears the weight of responsibility for whatever she leads them into. This warning is filled with good intentions for all of their safety, but also unintentionally serves to instill in Vi a guilt over all that is to come. Vi becomes resolute in her desire to protect her family. She is, in fact, so steadfast in this desire that she nearly turns herself in to the Piltover enforcers when she learns of the trouble that her heist is causing, and the ultimatum that has been given to Vander. She believes that this would protect her family, and her actions also uphold another of Vander’s messages to her: that not every trouble can be solved with fists, because sometimes violence only serves to deepen divides and make situations irreversible. Vi is only stopped from turning herself in by Vander, who, at the last moment, shows up and takes her place.

This choice on Vander’s part, to, in turn, sacrifice himself for his family, is what leads up to the end of s1 act 1. It is also a choice which is nearly identical to Vi’s. There is a reason that Vi is sometimes seen as Vander’s protege, and it is because they step into similar roles. In the moments before his arrest and then capture by Silco, Vander tells Vi this:

[3:40 ep. 3 – Arcane s1 act 1]

Immediately after, he tells her to “protect the family.” He validates her choices while stepping in to take the fall, confirming for Vi that her choice to take this blow for her family was the right one. Again unintentionally, Vander, through the best of intentions to protect the children he has raised, has given Vi reason to believe that taking blows for others is the right thing to do, and that nothing is more important than family. She is young, and desperate, and in circumstances that feel dire, she has no chance to take in this lesson and parse through it. Instead, she takes it and flings herself into a rescue attempt. In the process of the rescue attempt, as a way to further protect her family, she insists that Powder stay behind.

It is this sequence of events that builds up to Powder’s attempt to intervene on her own, and the deaths of much of Vi’s family. Which is, of course, not to pin all of the blame on Vi, who was still a kid doing her best with what she’d been given — but Vi does eventually take much of the blame on herself for not protecting them, and especially for not protecting Powder, who she turns her back on at the worst possible moment. She spends years in prison thinking that her sister might be dead, and one of the first things she says when they’re reunited is that she tried to come back. She was a scared, grieving child, as was Powder, and the clash and blow between them were a mistake born of Vi’s fear and anger.

[33:55 ep. 6 – Arcane s1 act 2]

There’s a lot of significance to the points of contact in moments with Vi. Here, the way that she reaches out to hold her sister’s head is a parallel to the way that she struck her back in act 1. It’s also similar to how Vander held her face to tell her, in a moment of urgency, that she had a good heart, and how she held Powder’s face in scenes when she was younger. What she wants is her family back — a chance to be her sister’s protector again, because she never meant to give it up. Despite knowing that her sister has changed, she wants another chance for the two of them, because she believes that deep down the two of them have stayed the same, despite outwardly saying that they’ve both had to change. Her refusal to call her sister by “Jinx” is a mark of that. She holds onto that thread of family, and of having a good heart, hoping for her sister to be the same.

The tragedy of things is that while Jinx has changed in ways that have made her more independent, ways which are for the most part internal, Vi’s changes have predominantly been surface-level. Internally, there was little change that she could undergo while in prison, and she remains the hopeful protector, still trying to pick things back up from where she was forced to drop them years ago.

Vi and Caitlyn: Belief in a Good Heart

It’s both fortunate and another tragedy in the making for Vi that someone else is there to believe in her good heart — Caitlyn Kiramman. Caitlyn is a fresh viewpoint, someone with no prior experience with Vi, who nevertheless sees the good in her nearly immediately. By doing this, she both confirms Vi’s good heart for viewers as an outsider of sorts, and confirms it in a narrative sense confined within the bounds of the story: she is an enforcer who challenges Vi’s beliefs about and experiences with them, proving that Vi is willing to open up to those who reach out and overcome her biases. In turn, Caitlyn begins to overcome biases about Zaun’s residents by seeing Vi as more than the criminal that she was made out to be.

After Vi’s fight with Sevika, Caitlyn is there to pick her back up and look for help. Though Vi is hallucinating and exhausted, speaking to a younger Powder who isn’t there, it’s Caitlyn who responds to her, accepting an apology without a second thought, and insisting, just like Vander, on Vi’s good heart. Regardless of Vi’s intentions, Caitlyn is open to not just an alliance with Vi, but to her as a person. Unwittingly, she calls back to multiple people that Vi lost a long time ago, and solidifies herself as a character who plays a major role in Vi’s sense of purpose and sense of herself. She draws on Vi’s grief over what she has lost, but also provides some hope in the form of reassurance that she hasn’t lost what makes her good.

[17:59 ep. 6 – Arcane s1 act 2]

Throughout all of Vi’s grief as she comes to terms with how her sister has changed, destroying what little is left of her family, there is someone there to tell her that she has a good heart in the form of Caitlyn. Though grief is present throughout much of Vi’s life, and holds tremendous weight in all of her decisions, she has time and time again had someone tell her that she is still on some semblance of the right path. If this is the course that Vander set her on, then Caitlyn has told her to stay that course.

This is true again when we reach season two, and Caitlyn has apparently spread the word of Vi’s good heart to the rest of the enforcers. It’s because of this insistence — that she has a good heart, that she’s one of the good ones, that she can do something to help people because of all the good inside of her — that Vi is persuaded to join Caitlyn’s strike team as an enforcer herself. In fact, in this scene with Maddie, Vi once again has it confirmed for her that enforcers don’t always match her expectations. She expects to be subjected to a random search, or escorted off the property after a long night of drinking. Instead, Maddie talks about how Caitlyn has spoken highly of her, and how it’s “nice to know there are still good ones left” after some of the corruption — Marcus, previous Piltover sheriff — in the enforcers came to light.

[19:54 ep. 1 – Arcane s2 act 1]

In these stills, we can see Vi’s trepidation, her reluctance to believe this, and possibly also surprise that Caitlyn would say these things about her after she left the night before when offered a badge. There is an aspect of potential manipulation at play from Caitlyn, as we have no evidence that Vi actually enlisted herself (she did just refuse a badge) — Caitlyn’s grief, and subsequent manipulation and how she herself is manipulated, are a major factor in act one of season two, and cannot be ignored. However, for the purposes of focusing on Vi at the moment, that manipulation must be treated more simply, and the nuances of it left for another essay. It can be left at this: Caitlyn is not currently emotionally stable, nor is she the same person that she was in season one, and this, in turn, has an impact on Vi.

Regardless of her hesitations, Vi joins the strike team. She is ready and willing to fight her sister, even if she hasn’t given up all of her hope — she holds on, still, to that idea of having a good heart and using it to protect others.

Rather than focusing on her own good heart, though, Vi begins to hesitate because she questions Caitlyn’s. Implicit rather than explicit is Caitlyn’s own good heart, shown through her trust in Vi and her questioning of Piltover’s authority and decision making in season one. Vi has previously been given good reason to believe that Caitlyn will act with the general good of people, regardless of their status or citizenship, in mind. Caitlyn has been Vi’s new cornerstone of belief, both in Vi’s good, and in there being good in the world to count on. With the advent of season two, and Caitlyn’s own grief, all of that belief in good is shaken.

In the third episode of season two, we see Vi begging Caitlyn to see reason, and to still maintain her own good heart, though not through such straightforward words. What Vi asks of Caitlyn is for her not to change. It’s just unfortunate that this moment of immense grief makes it impossible not to change. Though some theories suggest that Caitlyn’s sigh is because the ensuing kiss is another manipulation, there’s an equal chance that it is because Caitlyn herself knows that what Vi asks is impossible, whether she might want to give that assurance to her or not. She has already changed, and she cannot stop herself from changing, but knowing how to convey that in such a tense moment is difficult under the best of circumstances, and she has been handed, instead, the worst of them.

Vi herself may already know that Caitlyn is changing — she steps between Caitlyn and Heenot in the previous scene, sensing potential violence, and she knows that Caitlyn before her mother’s death would not have been so aggressive. She has reason to ask Caitlyn to talk to her, and to make this request.

[8:15 ep. 3 – Arcane s2 act 1]

Vi’s face is desperate in this still where she asks Caitlyn to make her this promise. The kiss that they share is desperate, on both sides — see Caitlyn’s hesitation, the moment that lingers between them, the way that Vi so quickly drops her guard to reach out. In some ways, Caitlyn’s response, the way that she could well know the inevitability of her own change, stands in stark contrast to Vi’s arc. Vi is so resistant to becoming something other than the protector that even in the midst of tremendous change for Piltover, Zaun, and everyone within them, she is trying to stay the same. She can’t let go of the things that have changed, and this includes her sister, despite her claims otherwise. She is in her role of protector at this very moment, trying desperately to protect the Caitlyn who convinced her that there were still ways to be good in this world, and simultaneously protecting Jinx: the Caitlyn who Vi first met would not have been so ready to kill her without hesitation.

Vi Without a Person to Protect

Vi’s continued belief in her sister becomes evident when we see when Vi won’t let Caitlyn take the shot in episode three of season two. Moments before, Caitlyn shoots Jinx’s gun out of the hand of the child protecting Jinx, so clearly her aim isn’t actually in question. Notably, though, Vi had no power over that shot, and may not have even known that Caitlyn was about to fire: her eyes never left what was directly in front of her, and all she sees is this child’s determination to protect Jinx. There can be more than one influence at play: multiple possible influences here could be Vi’s continued hesitance to kill Jinx, her fears of Caitlyn’s change, and what she sees in Isha, as the series credits name the child.

Vi’s feelings toward Jinx have genuinely changed, even if she still holds onto some hope. Vi specifically says that her sister is gone, and she does seem to believe something like that — but all she has ever known is that she was supposed to protect that family. She was protecting Powder from a very young age, even if she wasn’t alone in the task. Now she’s faced with a child, a child who could be just like she or Powder was when they were young. Vi’s protective focus has first and foremost been on that younger version of her sister, and she hasn’t been able to get to know Jinx as she is now. The desperation of a protective child has to be a moment that shakes her, and makes her question what she’s doing now — if she has abandoned who she is, if she has changed just as Caitlyn is changing. Because of both of those things, she has reason to fear that this could go wrong, and that she’s recreating the things that hurt her all over again.

At the time which Vi stops Caitlyn from taking the next shot, Vi, despite herself, must see something of who she and her sister used to be in the child. She still can’t quite let that past go, and odds are that she’s thinking of more than just Isha when she turns to Caitlyn.

[26:35 ep. 3 – Arcane s2 act 1]

Certain aspects of Vi’s protectiveness have transitioned to focus on Caitlyn, which can be seen in just how badly she wants Caitlyn to retain her own good heart, and, in more visibly evident ways, how her first priority when Sevika triggers the setup that Jinx has been working on is to grab Caitlyn. She may be questioning Caitlyn’s decisions, but she has her back, and has no intention of leaving someone alone again. Just as Caitlyn was there for her when she was struggling through her own form of grief, she clearly intends to be there for Caitlyn as best she can. 

[27:31  ep. 3 – Arcane s2 act 1]

And that’s what makes it all the more heartbreaking when the aftermath of the scene finally hits, when Vi and Caitlyn are alone together again, and all chance of taking out Jinx is gone. In that moment, Caitlyn doesn’t see Vi’s good heart anymore, and Vi has just had her view of Caitlyn’s own goodness at the very least altered, if not shattered.

In that moment, Vi is the one who is left alone. Her form of grief and Caitlyn’s form of grief clash in ways which make their differences too difficult to reconcile; things like class differences, which could be overlooked when it was just the two of them together, become much more complicated when Caitlyn holds so much power and is filled with so much anger. Caitlyn hurting Vi is quite possibly a snap impulse, something she will regret when she has more time to think about it — but it also directly parallels, for Vi and for viewers, how Vi hurt her sister and left her behind. And because she was the one to stop Caitlyn from taking the shot, given the way that Vi has responded to events like this before, it seems plausible that there is some part of her which will believe it to be her own fault.

In the intro of the new season, Vi smudges over the tattoo on her cheek, the tattoo which, in a more literal sense, is a part of identifying her — when Maddie finds her in episode one of season two, and Vi asks how she knew who she was, Maddie says it’s “written on [her] face.” The combination of the intro, the focus on Vi’s good heart and how she is identified, and the scene in episode three where Vi is left entirely alone, suggests that Vi’s identity is being changed and blurred, whether she likes it or not. Her ability to protect has been compromised by the fact that in her desperation, she left herself unguarded, thinking that she was safe with the people she had chosen to let in. She has clung to her identity this whole time, finding it at the center of all her relationships. Left alone, she has effectively been robbed of all the impact of the good heart that so many people have insisted is her best trait, and left with those physical capabilities that she uses as a form of protection, which explains why she might turn to the pit fighter arc depicted in trailers for season two.  Now that she is on her own, she will need to find something new, or a way to adapt, but she sets out by doing the only thing she still knows: fighting her way through.

Vi cannot protect everyone, and she has just taken a literal and metaphorical blow from the one person she was still vulnerable with. Throughout the series, there has been an emphasis on her good heart and the way in which she protects people, which, while physically effective, often causes further strife down the line. To the people Vi meets, her good heart is considered valuable, and yet it has only brought her pain. Her identity has been torn away from her in a way that collapses her entire existence, because the one stable thing left to her was her connection with Caitlyn, however new it might be. As of the end of act one of season two, we see Vi cut loose and adrift, and we can only hope that we will see her overcome grief again, and perhaps finally learn to accept her own change in a changing world.

[prettyholic7]

Ok so this may sound kinda random, but

I just got an idea for two Monster High OCs. What if there was a mananggal girl and a teke teke girl, and the teke teke girl just went dragging herself around asking people if they've seen her legs somewhere like she usually does and then she'd come across the manananggal girl who'd be like "Oh, I haven't seen them but you can use mine!" and then she'd just deattach her upper body and the teke teke girl would just stand there (not stand, but I can't remember a better word) looking perplexed and then they'd start hanging out and become besties.

[mymarifae]

wao... the real herta herself? in the flesh and everything. what the fuck

[kageyahma]

watching/reading haikyuu for the first time when it felt like it was the only thing that saved me is a little sad as an indication for how i felt during that period of my life but also it's kinda beautiful ??

[banapricot]

Remember when Gintoki had a nightmare about carrying a dying soldier on his back through a field of corpses and one the corpses voiced all his doubts and self-depricating thoughts about how he never managed to protect anything anyway and it would be easier to just give up after he saw the Harusame take away Shinpachi and Kagura when he left them alone on a job cause he was hungover and in a shit mood (due to the depression)?

[kanerallels]

Listen I absolutely love autumn but the only down side is that every year I absolutely lose my mind over who to be for Halloween

[lulady030]

Lapis doodle, with a shovel and hat for a joke that sounded way funnier in my head.

[quietlyblooms]

honestly speaking, the idea of going back to my dorverold multimuse stresses me out bc i think i would just want to start over? and make rin the main muse like i always should have done, but i dunno. it felt like work trying to get people invested in her before, and i just!! don't particularly want to deal with that again. which is sad to say, but it is what it is. i'm happy enough being able to just incorporate aspects of that lore into chiyo's modern fantasy verses for now. maybe in the future i'll commit to putting in the work for rin and her story.

[dawntheduckrb]

Okay so the last time I posted a wip, it was a draft that really only needed to be cleaned up. Problem is, clean lines and my dominant hand aren't quite getting along at the moment.

Solution?

I mapped the whole thing out in rulers :)

I didn't have to focus on getting lines clean in one stroke, could put down the pen in the middle of lines, aaaaand could adjust any wobbles in lines when they came up. I typically don't like using the control point editor because you know, I need to be working on getting clean lines on my own first (am student). Buuuut this isn't an academic study. It's for fun, and I am in fact having fun, so I think it's alright every now and then :D

Anyway I don't know where to go from here so I will be messing with it a lot I think, may(?) post updates. This isn't the final linework btw, I just thought the rulers against the background looked neat and wanted to share :O (I dodged out of the screen reflection but could not do so for my actual phone, apologies)

[terresdebrume]

There's this thing that authors do sometimes with action sequences where it seems like they forget the action so they can spend time in the characters' head instead

(or maybe they use that as a way to avoid writing the action-y sequence idk)

So it's like. The revolution is here, the characters have supposedly been planning for it for weeks or months or years and the actual resolution of that is like. 10 paragraphs on why the revolution is worth it followed by: "they execute the plan". And then ten more paragraphs about how the characters feel about executing the plan. And then maybe a long description about how things aren't perfect and how the characters feel about that

And like. I know we all like being in the characters' heads and we wish action movies had a little bit more introspection but I feel like this is the opposite extreme, and every time it happens it literally doesn't matter whose head we're in, I just want it to end