#I. can relate. I have lived that. I explicitly know where she’s coming from re: feeling like an outsider in her own culture.

[vounoura]

I’ve been thinking abt this for a bit

If you can get past all the very explicit and shameless anti-indigenous racism and narrative (like it’s. actually extremely offensive and has otherwise ruined my ability to replay it which is a shame), Pillars of Eternity is good. I don’t think it’s absolutely amazing (it is VERY clunky, and the writing is…well, it was written by people who like to describe things in the longest ways possible) or anything, but if you go in with the context that Pillars 1 was made for people who are REALLY nostalgic abt the OG Baldur’s Gate’s then it’s a fairly enjoyable experience.

Deadfire’s writing isn’t as good as the first’s (and tbh, I wasn’t inclined to trust Obsidian’s take on a narrative abt the horrors of colonialism after the unmitigated disaster that was the Glanfathans) imo but if the gameplay of the first is an issue for it try skipping to Deadfire, it’s massively improved and way less clunky.

[lonepower]

ok outlaws/kd5 girlies(gender-neutral), what are the postgame thoughts? I have Ideas™ for things I think would be fun, but nothing concrete or connected enough to turn into an actual story yet, and I'm curious how the other people who've been in the fandom longer than I have see the Trailblazer crew continuing on from here!

(own musings under the cut-)

There's a lot of potential in Jet Kordo and the Miyuki Trade League imo. If I do end up writing any sort of plot-focused fic, it'll almost definitely involve them. I think Kay would be a good fit for them - they're clearly not strictly above-board, but they seem to operate independent of the syndicates and have their own practices & codes of ethics, which I think would suit her. And I think she would be interested in catching up with Kordo, if for no other reason than to meet the man behind all the messages. (Also, more importantly, they're an invention of this game, which means I don't have to worry about contradicting 5 million years of convoluted and already-contradictory lore.)

I think they would suit ND as well, actually. He's left a lot of his Separatist programming behind, but not all of it, and he's no fan of the Jedi or the Republic. I can see him slotting the trade league in as a surrogate/successor for the trade federation (which, if it weren't for Dooku meddling in it, sounds like it wouldn't really have been that bad... (<- hasn't watched the clone wars and doesn't plan to)) 

Related, I'm really curious on where we all stand re: what ND actually likes and wants. The game leaves a lot of it up for interpretation; his whole arc is about regaining agency and coming to terms with the fact that he's not just "a tool to be used," (😫😭) but that's... sort of where it ends? He knows what he isn't, now, but I'm not sure he has any more idea of what he is or what "freedom" means than Kay does. He says he enjoys having a purpose, but... what would that be? Lots of potential. Much to ponder.

I do think he genuinely enjoys traveling the galaxy. All of the comms dialogues where he sounds the most interested are about locations, land features, the people therein (for all that he professes to prefer solitude - he doesn't like interacting with people, but he seems interested in observing them). It's another reason I think he'd actually be happy continuing as a smuggler or trader. But people are complex, that can't be his only source of fulfillment. For some reason I got it into my head that he'd be a surprisingly good artist, but I'm curious what others envision for him (◡_◡)

Kay says that having the Trailblazer isn't enough to be really free, but as mentioned it's a recurring theme that she has no idea what being free actually entails (and Qira certainly isn't helping. go pull that cryptic shit on someone else). I think once the death mark is off her shoulders, she'd start to realize that maybe she can just live as she has been, and maybe Nix and ND and the Trailblazer and all the new friends she's made are enough, at least for the foreseeable future.

Speaking of: in-game the death mark is sort of left as a case of No Ontological Inertia, but there's a drabble/plot bunny somewhere in there where it's explicitly Vail who calls it off. Just imagine how that would go. Imagine how smug ND would be. It would be so funny. please

After the wild cards dlc, one of her more Kay-like goals is "get rich enough that I can enter the competition legitimately". ND is actually in the audience this time. Along with Nix, to prove a point, because I'm still salty a) that ND was surprised by my being good at sabacc, and b) I won that goddamn game without framing anyone. I freaking HAD THEM when that bomb went off, I am so mad-

It's a bit of a stretch, but I also really want Kay to be the one who smuggles R2 and 3PO up to Jabba's back door in the beginning of ROTJ. (Lando knows her! Presumably he knows she broke in & out of the palace once already! It could be plausible!) This is mainly because I want to inflict R2 (chaos incarnate even among astromechs) on ND (vocally hates astromechs). Also Kay would be super weirded out by Luke even without knowing the Jedi thing and it would be fun to make them interact.

They still would do their best to avoid the rebels. When the Empire falls 6ish months later, how do they react? How much would life even change for them as smugglers (who would presumably find themselves at odds with any sort of organized government, even an ideal/democratic one)? Does the sudden power vacuum mess them up, or does it make life even more profitable as people struggle to function without structure in a transitional period?

I don't have actual full-fledged fic premises for any of these points and I really do want to know what (if anything) the other handful of people in this fandom have come up with, so if you have additions/objections/other ideas, this is your cue. pls come yell i'm brainrot about this game........

[dasyr0se-blog]

Not related to anything but I just woke up and been going through some acotar post and...

What other path is there, in the future, other than Villain Rhysand actually wanting the high king position and actively manipulating feyre's mind to behave and think like he wants her to?

Because that has been happening since, maybe, the end of the third main book. Becoming more and more explicit in acofas and acosf.

There are do many discrepancies from Feyre's true personality (hating being seen as only a baby maker, some trophy wife that has to be protective at all times, fierce and protective of her family despite their problems, uncontrollable) to what she is now, the contrary of everything I've mentioned.

Saw a post where someone said that you can see explicitly when sjm breeding kink developed and, like... fr is absolutely clear.

If it was something feyre had always wanted I wouldn't be even saying anything but it's weird in this case. She's 21, all she had wanted was a bit of peace, a life where she didn't have to actively take care of anyone anymore.

Feyre despised seeing injustice and negligence by authorative figure (hence her clear disagreement with the way Tamlin handled the Tithe and the water wraiths) but suddenly she sees no problem in Rhysand ignoring a whole Court (CoN) and barely managing another (Illyria) in favor of one specific city?

Honestly I have so many other things to say I have half a mind to go back and re-read all the book just to point out just where feyre started loosing herself blindly in her love for her mate and new family.

The way sjm writes is odd. Cassian and Nesta had an amazing potential and she ruined it. Azriel had an amazing character potential but she turned him into another fuckboy who will only be interested in someone if their his potential mate?

Also the weird thing with sjm and her writing of the relationship between Mor and Cassian- like, that man loves, adores and would be willing to fuck the woman he sees as a sister.

Wtf??

Also Armen's assh*le existence in general and her goals for Rhysand High King.

Just wrong.

Let me not even get started with the way she writes the other characters to see Rhysand as the utmost good despite his LITERAL WAR CRIMES.

She wrote he murdered children before she changed her fucking mind and didn't make him a villain after all.

Tf.

I bet she, subconsciously still sees him as villain. Because that is not a gray character.

You know who is gray? Eris, Tamlin and he'll even Beron if you see it from a certain point (very difficult, the man should still suffer and die).

But High Lord Rhysand is just complete bad guy major a-hole who should have died in the war with Hybern. I wonder how many changes Feyre would have done if he hadn't come back and brought Armen with him.

"Oh but we are the Court of Dreamers!" Bitch please you all are a true Nightmare brought out from Pandora's Box (ignoring the frue connotations from PB in Greek Mythology) with the objective of ruining people's lives just because.

Fuck that!!

Still not done raging! Will write a villain Rhysand story! I'm mad now! Will give characters justice (I see you Nesta)!

[disabled-tolkien]

@stripedroseandsketchpads I absolutely love everything you've said here, especially the bit about Maedhros' disability arc and your last paragraph.

I do think that a number of disabled fans see the treatment of ex-prisoners, including Maedhros, as related to ableism. I personally think that's not necessarily the case (I'll explain what I mean in a couple of paragraphs) but I can see the basis of the argument and I do think that a case can be very reasonably made for it. I also think that the elven attitudes towards dwarves, particularly in naming them Naugrim aka the stunted ones, has strong implications of ableism. I find what was said above about Maedhros' will to survive a really interesting thought that I hadn't heard before.

But I want to gently push back against some of the assumptions and implications made at various points in this thread. Specifically, the implication that disability was new to the Quendi or only found among ex-thralls, and the assumption that elves are societally ableist.

I've written before about how the idea that there were no disabled elves in Valinor isn't actually canon, it's a fanon that developed because people heard "perfect and flawless" and said "ah, not disabled then."

Obviously everyone can have their own interpretations. Maybe the first elves were made off a set 'template' or something similar, creating a fairly homogenous species with a specific (abled) body structure and neurotype. But even if that was true, we know that both the elves in Valinor and the elves in Beleriand have faced mass-disabling events.

Life in Cuivienen. The Great Journey. Thousands of years of Calaquendi living in Beleriand, facing both natural dangers and battles against orcs. Crossing the Ice. How could there possibily not be multitudes of disabled elves on both sides of the sea?

I'm not aware of any hard evidence that elves are systemically prejudiced against disabled elves. I understand where the other replies are coming from when they suggest that the elven (particularly Noldorin) emphasis on beauty, perfection and flawlessness could lead to ableism. It definitely could. It's a very justifiable idea and an interesting concept. But it's not a given, because beautiful, perfect and flawless aren't antonyms of disabled.

Like stripedroseandsketchpads said, it feels like the base assumption is always that ableism is the default of all societies. That is not true and the assumption has wider implications for disability rights & justice. Ableism is not an inbuilt part of human nature. It is created.

There are also a couple of things that I mildly disagree with from a textual standpoint re: thralls and Maeglin. I'd argue that much of the ill-treatment and prejudice that ex-thralls face is about their proximity to Morgoth and the "Dark" rather than about disability or trauma. The turning away of ex-thralls is stated to be because of a real, verifiable danger. There's nothing suggesting that it's because they're traumatized or their appearance has changed, it's explicitly because some ex-thralls really are agents of Morgoth and you can't tell them apart. That doesn't make it okay, but it's a different form of discrimination than ableism imo.

The only source I can find on Idril believing that there's a shadow on Maeglin is a sentence saying that she believes that his desire for her results from the "shadow of the curse of Mandos". It's not really about him specifically.

Again, none of this is criticism of the people above, it's just my perspective as a disabled activist.

Okay something something Maedhros being seen as a monster by other elves not just because he was a Kinslayer but bc he was disfigured and disabled something something ableism something something

[hartofhearts]

Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis

Alternate title: ��What really happened in the Lifestream”

Of course the Lifestream scene has been discussed to death within the fandom. While some consider it one of the greatest triumphs of the Cloud/Tifa relationship and the game in general, others are quick to diminish its events and Tifa’s role. “Oh, any other childhood friend character who knew Cloud could do the job.” “Oh, Cloud only needed Tifa as moral support, he could have figured everything out himself.” “Oh, Aerith (maybe +Zack) could have done it by accessing her Cetra/time machine/empath/Planet powers.”

The Lifestream sequence is extraordinarily dense with many subtle visual cues, so there’s a lot to untangle and interpret. But no matter how you slice it, any take which downplays or eliminates Tifa is fundamentally missing the point of this scene, both for the plot and for Cloud’s character arc.

A lot of the confusion stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually needs to happen in the Lifestream and why. Thus, using specific details from the sequence, I’d like to present my take on the following:

Part 1: What Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream to advance the plot

Part 2: Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis, where we will discuss fun things such as:

Why Tifa is the the focus of his greatest flaw

What Tifa’s presence in the Lifestream accomplishes

Part 3: Why those “Tifa-less” fan theories just can’t work

This is a very long ride so let’s get to it!

Part 1: What Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream to advance the plot

Many fans think that all Cloud needs to accomplish in the Lifestream is prove to himself that he existed before the Nibelheim incident. This seems to make sense, as Cloud’s mental break at Northern Crater was due him losing faith that he was truly Cloud Strife of Nibelheim, right?

But that isn’t the only thing that needs to happen. Consider this: Ex-SOLDIER Cloud does believe that he is Cloud Strife of Nibelheim for almost the entirety of the game’s first half. However, Ex-SOLDIER Cloud couldn’t correctly remember the Nibelheim incident back at Kalm, and he occasionally exhibits alarming behavior (his headaches, his attempts on Aerith’s life). So the goal of the Lifestream sequence is not to restore Cloud to this previous flawed state, but... to accomplish something more. Accomplish something that will resolve the aforementioned issues by strengthening him against Jenova’s influence.

There are two ways to strengthen Cloud against the influence of the Jenova hivemind:

Rebuild Cloud’s sense of self by identifying and accepting his personal weakness -- without writing a whole other post, individuals injected with Jenova cells are susceptible to influence by the Jenova hivemind if they have a weak sense of self and weak will; thus, Cloud needs to fully understand and accept who he truly is, weaknesses and all, in order to withstand further Jenova tampering

Establish the truth of the Nibelheim incident -- until then, silver-tongued Sephiroth/Jenova will always be able to cast doubt on Cloud’s existence using the discrepancies between Cloud’s and Tifa’s memories

And wouldn’t you know it, but the Lifestream sequence does end up accomplishing all three of these things. It:

Proves that Cloud Strife of Nibelheim existed before the Nibelheim incident

Rebuilds Cloud’s sense of self by identifying and accepting his personal weakness

Establishes the truth of the Nibelheim incident

Something to note re: #3 - Establishes the truth of the Nibelheim incident: this is actually extremely challenging to do, as the truth lies solely within Cloud, but is blocked due to his own mental weakness. This is why the Lifestream sequence begins with Cloud trying and failing to correctly remember the Nibelheim incident: while he superficially does want to understand the truth of the incident, deep down he does not want to acknowledge his personal failings that are on full display in the true memory. It is only after Cloud accepts his personal weakness that he is able to face the full truth, failings and all.

So really, #2 - Rebuild Cloud’s sense of self by accepting his personal weakness is the most pivotal portion of the Lifestream sequence, as this empowers Cloud on a personal level and also allows him to remember the Nibelheim incident correctly. And as it happens, this is the portion that only Tifa can help with.

Part 2: Why Tifa is the only person, living or dead, who can resolve Cloud’s crisis

We’ve just discussed how rebuilding Cloud’s sense of self by helping him accept his personal weakness is one of the most important goals of the Lifestream sequence--and now I’d like to explain how this can only be accomplished with Tifa’s help and no one else’s.

>> Tifa is the focus of Cloud’s greatest weakness

I think that every fan, including non-shippers and anti-Tifa fans, will agree that Cloud is insecure and has a desperate need for acceptance. But because he needs to resolve and accept this greatest weakness, his shame, the real question is... when did it become pathological? What is it focused on, and what makes it his tragic flaw? The answers will give us a hint as to what Cloud needs to come to terms with his true self.

This is shown to us in the Mt. Nibel memory--the day Tifa’s mother died. And it is actually explicitly told to us by a very important entity...

...A blacked out, silhouetted version of Cloud that casually climbs out of his slack adult form. This silhouetted version of Cloud represents the deep dark secrets about himself that Cloud has hidden away for so long, and it tells us what exactly is on its mind. 

Let’s review everything Deep Dark (DD) Cloud says:

Young Cloud: I began to think I was different... That I was different from those immature kids. That then... maybe... DD: Just maybe, they would invite me in. I thought that might happen, so I hung around...

...

DD: That night I called Tifa out to the well... I thought to myself Tifa would never come... that she hated me.

...

YC: This was the day... DD: Tifa's mother... T: The day Mom died...

...

DD: I don't remember the path I walked. Tifa missed her step. I ran to her... but didn't make it in time. Both of us fell off the cliff. Back then, I only scarred my knees but...

...

DD: Tifa was in a coma for seven days. We all thought she wouldn't make it. If only I could've saved her... I was so angry... Angry at myself for my weakness. Ever since then, I felt Tifa blamed me... I got out of control... I'd get into fights not even caring who it was.

(fade to black)

DD: That was the first time I heard about Sephiroth. If I got strong like Sephiroth, then everyone might...

(return to the nexus/Cloud’s mind)

DD: If I could just get stronger... Then even Tifa would have to notice me...

Many fans fixate on DD Cloud’s very first line (”just maybe, they would invite me in”), and I understand why--not only is the first satisfying eureka moment in the Lifestream, but it’s also deeply relatable. Who hasn’t felt like an outsider and wanted acceptance and approval? These same players then attribute all of Cloud’s motivations to this relatable feeling. “Cloud had a deep inferiority complex and wanted to prove himself to the world and that’s why he pretends to be the super coolest SOLDIER ever.”

But that interpretation completely ignores the other 90% of what DD Cloud says. The other 90% of Cloud’s shame is wrapped up in Tifa. “Tifa��s mom died... I tried to save Tifa, but I got off relatively unscathed while she suffered terrible injuries... Tifa must have hated me... I thought Tifa wouldn’t come to the well because she hated me... I wanted to be like Sephiroth so Tifa would notice me...” Even if a little bit of Cloud’s motivations are attributable to the contempt of the townspeople, the vast majority of it is focused on Tifa--would she always hate him? Would she ever notice him? Could he ever be worthy of her? DD Cloud’s dialogue reveals that Cloud’s shame and tragic flaw is completely centered on his need for Tifa’s approval. Perhaps only his pedestaled perception of Tifa, but Tifa all the same.

The "Cloud wants to impress all the kids” interpretation also ignores what the cinematography of this scene is telling us. The “big takeaway” of the Nibelheim memory and DD Cloud’s reveal is the single sentence that DD Cloud speaks after the memory is over and lights turn back on and they’re back at the nexus--the sentence that he “took away” from the previous scene. And look! It’s this one!

DD: If I could just get stronger... Then even Tifa would have to notice me...

THIS. THIS IS IT. This is the root of Cloud’s shame and explains his pathological need to misremember himself as a SOLDIER and thus misremember the Nibelheim incident at all costs: he was ashamed at his inability to rescue Tifa and Mt. Nibel, so he swore to himself that he would get stronger to earn her notice. Cloud needs to be strong so Tifa will notice him; thus, Cloud creates an illusionary world where he misremembers his own identity and the Nibelheim incident in a way that makes him a strong man that is finally worthy of her. 

This is the personal weakness that Cloud needs to resolve in the Lifestream with Tifa’s help: he needs to learn that it is okay to not be the strong man, because Tifa will accept him regardless.

(And, sidebar, Cloud’s need for Tifa’s approval is not just some fleeting childhood dream in the distant past--even in present day, Ex-SOLDIER Cloud can’t bear to remember how he failed to be a stronger man for Tifa, because even in the present day, Tifa’s opinion of him is all that counts.)

>> What Tifa’s presence in the Lifestream accomplishes

While the above proves how Cloud’s personal weakness (his tragic flaw) revolves around Tifa and his feelings for her... we now need to answer, why does Cloud need Tifa to be in the Lifestream with him to work through these feelings? And this, I believe, comes down to two, very subtle, shown-not-told points:

Cloud’s honesty depends on Tifa’s presence, as Cloud’s need for Tifa to understand his feelings is greater than his need to hide his painful weaknesses from himself

Cloud draws strength from “his important person” (no matter how you want to define her: his main motivation, the person he’s been in love with forever...) accepting him and providing moral support

Let’s work through these in order.

REASON #1 -  Cloud’s honesty depends on Tifa’s presence, as Cloud’s need for Tifa to understand his feelings is greater than his need to hide his painful weaknesses from himself

This one is very easy to miss, but is illustrated in two key ways. First, did you know that DD Cloud speaks early on in the Lifestream, even before the Mt. Nibel memory? His two lines are:

T: Now that you mention it, why did you want to join SOLDIER in the first place? I always thought it was a sudden decision you made... DD: ...I was devastated. ...I wanted to be noticed. Adult Cloud: ...I was devastated. ...I wanted to be noticed. I thought if I got stronger I could get someone to notice... T: Someone to notice you...? ...who? DD: Who...? ...You know who! ...You, that's who. AC: You... T: ...Me? Why!? YC: Tifa... did you forget... about those days?

Those two lines are definitely DD Cloud’s; in the earlier photos, we see that DD Cloud’s speech bubbles don’t have a background box. These new two lines are similarly background box-less. Moreover, these lines cannot be attributed to Adult Cloud or Young Cloud. See the below comparison photos:

DD vs. Adult Cloud’s vs. Young Cloud’s speech bubbles:

What’s very interesting is the tone of the second line (”Who...? ...You know who! ...You, that's who”); this is the only exclamation that Cloud uses in the entire sequence until all the revelations of the Nibelheim Incident re-memory. DD Cloud is startled into indignance that Tifa has no idea that he’s been trying to impress her all along. (DD Cloud is like, “Tifa, the past 12 years of my life were entirely motivated by you, are you telling me that literally none of this has gotten through to you!!?”) Even if DD Cloud were dormant and hidden this entire time, the ignominy of Tifa not understanding the effort he made for her for 12 years is just too much for him to suffer through silently. 

The significance of this moment is actually incredible: the Deep Dark Secret that Cloud has been hiding from this entire time, the Deep Dark Secret that Cloud would rather die/go comatose than acknowledge... this Deep Dark Secret indignantly reveals itself just because Tifa apparently doesn’t know about it! Cloud’s need for Tifa to understand his Deep Dark Secret is even greater than Cloud’s need to be honest with himself to prevent his clone coma. 

And this becomes a trend that continues up to the Mt. Nibel memory--Cloud is reluctant to revisit these memories, and only does so because he wants Tifa to understand his feelings. Almost every other line we see Cloud’s reluctance, his disbelief at Tifa’s cluelessness, and him forcing himself to open up so Tifa can know what he’s been obsessing over for 12 years. See the dialogue yourself (my notes in square brackets):

YC: Tifa...... did you forget...... about those days? [Cloud’s disbelief that Tifa doesn’t know]

...

YC:  It's important to me... I hate to say it but... It's a very important memory... [Cloud’s reluctance to revisit the memory]  Do you want to see it? Come on, hurry. [Cloud’s need for Tifa to see]

...

AC: ...a sealed up secret... wish... Tender memories... no one can ever know... [Cloud’s reluctance to revisit the memory]

YC: Do you know where this window goes to, Tifa? [Cloud’s disbelief that Tifa doesn’t know]  Fine... I'll go. [Cloud’s need for Tifa to see]

Again, this is a tremendous moment. Cloud is only motivated to honesty for Tifa’s benefit, and takes each reluctant step towards the truth because Tifa is right next to him with all her cluelessness. In his desire to be honest for Tifa, Cloud ends up being honest for himself as well... Tifa’s presence is the only reason why Cloud can be honest to himself in the Lifestream. If not for her, Cloud never would have broached those painful memories and never would have resolved his crisis.

One last thing I want to highlight is that Cloud wouldn’t open up like this for anyone. Reread this line: “Tender memories... no one can ever know.”  If anyone else was in the Lifestream with Cloud--or if it was just Cloud by himself--DD Cloud would never have felt the need to express himself. He would have stayed hidden, preferring for Cloud and the others to forever perceive him as the super cool SOLDIER instead of a “weak man” who couldn’t even save the girl he loved back on Mt. Nibel or fulfill his promise to her.

REASON #2 - Cloud draws strength from Tifa (the object of his shame/his fellow Nibelheim survivor/the person he’s been trying to win the attention of forever/the person he’s loved for 12 years) accepting him and providing moral support

This one is the most subtle as it’s mostly shown and the dialogue is not explicit, but the scene simply does not work without it. It is thanks to Tifa’s support that Cloud is brave enough to correctly remember the Nibelheim incident. 

After DD Cloud says his final line in the nexus, he looks away from Tifa. 

Can’t even make eye contact with her, even though he was able to back in the Mt. Nibel memory. He must think that now that all the cards are on the table, Tifa will reject him in some way. Maybe she will heap on the blame for failing to save her at Mt. Nibel, or be disgusted that he dared try to win her notice, but whatever it is, he expects some kind of rejection. But... that’s not what happens. Instead, Tifa implicitly absolves him of any guilt or shame by apologizing to him instead.

DD: If I could just get stronger... Then even Tifa would have to notice me...

T: So that was it... Sorry, Cloud. If I had only remembered more clearly what happened, I could have done something sooner...

...

So not only does Tifa fail to reject Cloud, but she also implies that Cloud is completely faultless, as she would have corrected the townspeople’s misconceptions about Cloud if she’d only known. Tifa plainly supports Cloud and does not blame him for Mt. Nibel.

Moreover, she continues to encourage Cloud after this moment. Soon after, Tifa exclaims:

T: Hang in there Cloud! Just a little longer! You've almost found the real you!

It’s only after Tifa’s words of encouragement that both Adult Cloud and DD Cloud merge into one another. This is a powerful moment; it shows that Adult Cloud hasn’t lost those deep, sealed away feelings, but has finally made peace with them. Cloud’s deep dark feelings are still a part of him but no longer hold him back; he no longer needs to misremember himself as a strong man for Tifa because Tifa accepts him as he is.

The game then explicitly shows Tifa and Cloud behaving with a togetherness that we haven’t seen the entire game--these two have finally overcome the distance between them and are able to tackle the world as a team. Cloud can finally be brave because he knows Tifa won’t leave his side.

And the game shows us this. First, Tifa, Adult Cloud, and DD Cloud all resolutely hold their fists up in unison (so ‘90s shounen anime, I love it):

Then they run into the Nibelheim memory together, side by side, literally in lockstep--look how every foot step is in sync:

This is different from previous memories, where one is always following the other or doing different things. What it shows us is that after Cloud comes clean about his shame and Tifa accepts him as he is, the two are closer together than ever before. Cloud feels brave enough to properly remember the Nibelheim incident when he has Tifa with him. 

And it’s telling that the very first moment Cloud tries to remember is...

...the memory of Tifa being injured. Not the memories of him stabbing Sephiroth (or being stabbed by him), not the memories of Zack being injured, not the memory of Cloud putting on his helmet to hide his shame. If he were still afraid of Tifa’s disappointment, Cloud would not choose to relive this as his very first memory. Yet Cloud picks a painful moment that includes Tifa, trusting that they can work through it as a team. I know I keep on saying it, but it’s the truth: Cloud is empowered to fully face his deepest shame and weakness because he knows that the real Tifa accepts him as he is and will stay by his side.

Part 3: So what does this mean for those “alternate fan theories?”

Phew! That was a lot. Let’s recheck our notes on what the Lifestream scene needs to accomplish:

Prove that Cloud Strife of Nibelheim existed before the Nibelheim incident

Rebuild Cloud’s sense of self by identifying and accepting his personal weakness

Establish the truth of the Nibelheim incident

Given what we just discussed, any substitute for Tifa would accomplish some, but not all of the above three points.

So for those fans who say...

>> “Cloud could have done it all by himself” - did... did you miss the giant floating confused Cloud?? He was trying and failing to figure it out by himself because he couldn’t bear to be honest, even for his own sake. What ultimately turns the tide is Cloud’s need to express his true feelings to Tifa, and how it outweighs his need to hide his weakness from himself; thus, without Tifa’s presence, Cloud cannot be honest with himself and cannot resolve his identity crisis. 

And PS, when Tifa says, “Cloud found himself on his own,” she’s referring to Cloud’s choice to reveal his weakness to her, and Cloud’s bravery at confronting the Nibelheim incident afterwards. She’s not saying “oh I didn’t need to be there at all and Cloud really just needed a couple extra minutes and I was basically scenery lol.” She’s complimenting Cloud for the radical honesty/personal strength that allowed him to finally express his true thoughts to her and thus to himself. 

Verdict: Cloud gets half points for #2 (accept personal weakness) and #3 (remember Nibelheim) because ultimately he’s the one who decides to reveal the truth of those moments. Cloud gets 0 points for #1 (prove his existence) because he still needed to double-check with someone who knew him as a child.

>> “any childhood friend could have helped Cloud” - sure, that childhood friend could help accomplish #1 (prove his existence), but as we previously discussed, Cloud is only motivated to be honest with himself when he realizes that Tifa doesn’t know the extent of his feelings for her. If he never that Tifa was clueless, then Cloud would have kept the Mt. Nibel memory locked away from himself and everyone else. 

Verdict: A Nibelheim rando would be able to accomplish #1 (prove his existence) but would fail to accomplish #2 (accept personal weakness) or #3 (remember Nibelheim)--Tifa is needed for DD Cloud to come clean, and Tifa’s unique role allows her to support Cloud while he works to remember the truth of the Nibelheim incident.

>> “Aerith (+Zack) could have taken care of it” - sure, Aerith (+Zack) could have shown Cloud the truth of #1 (prove his existence) and #3 (remember Nibelheim), because they both could observe the truth of those events.

But how could they help Cloud with #2 (accept personal weakness), when Cloud has been trying to hide his weakness all along and would probably feel even worse in comparison to these two shining beacons of excellence? And there’s some proof to this line of thinking; in CC, Cloud explicitly does not want to share his feelings for Tifa with Zack; and in OG, Cloud arguably tries to preserve the hero fantasy of being the Coolest SOLDIER Ever for Aerith. I can’t imagine Cloud wanting to share these “tender feelings that no one can ever know”/his love-induced weakness with anyone except for the object of those tender feelings. So #2 is still allllll Tifa, baby.

Verdict: Aerith (+Zack) could take care of #1 and #3, but they could never get Cloud to open up about #2--and even if they did, they were not the “victims” of “Cloud’s failure,” so their forgiveness/acceptance would mean nothing to Cloud and would not help him accept his own weakness.

Final thoughts:

>> Fun theory, but Cloti isn’t essential for it... the sequence still works even if Cloud’s tragic flaw is a raging inferiority complex.

There’s a difference between something technically working vs. what the game actually shows us. Yes, it could work if Cloud has a generic inferiority complex that has nothing to do with Tifa... but the game’s explanation of Cloud’s psyche (DD Cloud’s dialogue) spends >90% of its wordcount on Tifa. This argument essentially works if you throw out >90% of what the game was trying to tell you. Cloud’s entire inner world revolves around Tifa and stuffing your fingers in your ears and loudly saying lalalala does not change that.

>> But didn’t Cloud choose to hide his face because he wanted to hide his failure from everyone in town, not just Tifa, which would prove it was just a generic inferiority complex?

Sure, Cloud says:

C: I... never made it as a member of SOLDIER. I even left my hometown telling everyone I was going to join, but... I was so embarrassed. I didn't want to see anyone.

Off that line alone, one would think that he is ashamed to show his face to anyone in his hometown.

But the game shows us that Cloud specifically decided to hide when he saw Tifa.

Look how this baby is prepared to stroll into town with his Chocobo head free in that Nibelheim breeze. Not what you’d expect someone to do if they’re trying to hide from everyone, right?

But as soon as Cloud notices Tifa, he runs offscreen and puts his helmet back on while Zack can only shrug a “you do you” in reply.

It’s Tifa that Cloud couldn’t bear to disappoint. Not the rest of the town.

>> That final “resolution” moment after the Mt. Nibel incident is a little weak, isn’t it? There’s nothing explicitly saying that Tifa accepted Cloud and that’s why he’s able to shake off his shame and remember the Nibelheim incident properly.

It’s true that so much of this is implicit (the absence of Tifa berating Cloud, Tifa wishing she could have helped Cloud more back then), or shown-not-told (Tifa and Cloud raising their fists in unison, Tifa and Cloud running in unison). The OG script also jumps right to Tifa’s exclamation that the Mt. Nibel memory proves Cloud is a real person, not really lingering on Tifa accepting Cloud or anything. To be honest, the biggest reason why I even put together this theory is because 1 + 1 ≠ 4, but somehow that’s what happens in the Lifestream if we remove this shame/acceptance aspect. Also... how unsatisfying and uncharacteristic is it for Cloud to just feel ashamed that he failed to save Tifa, then for that shame to be resolved during the Nibelheim incident re-memory with a “oh it’s not that bad, at least you saved her during the Nibelheim incident so that mitigates it”? Or for it to not be resolved at all?

If Cloud was so deeply ashamed that he’d prefer to become a potato instead of face these memories, then I can’t imagine that facing the memories with zero support from Tifa would help him feel confident enough to tackle the Nibelheim re-memory. I highly suspect that this scene will be expanded upon in the Remake to explicitly highlight Tifa’s acceptance, resulting in Cloud’s readiness to expose his true memories to Tifa and himself.

[wedreamedlove]

Xu Mo vs. Mo Yi [Character Study]

I can never get over the aesthetic of these two pictures placed side by side LOL. But, anyway, the point of this post is to nip any undue comparisons in the bud and claims of copying organize my thoughts and compare these two characters to highlight their similarities, differences, and further explore each character through these contrasts.

Q) If you like Xu Mo, would you like Mo Yi?

Honestly, I think this depends on what you like most about Xu Mo. I already knew beforehand that I gravitate towards characters who think 5 steps ahead, are predominantly logical, and scholars/gentlemen, so it’s not surprising I bias both Xu Mo and Mo Yi.

However, as I got to know Mo Yi further (Themis is around 6 months old now), I find that he’s distinctively different from Xu Mo on three crucial points that’ll determine whether people from either camp will like the other character.

1) Stance on Others

In a post for Xu Mo, “Into Your World”, I argued that Xu Mo is an alienated genius who had troubles getting along with others, until he mastered the social game as an adult. However, you can still see glimpses of this as he tries to understand MC’s world and shares his own.

To be fair, Mo Yi’s past is still under wraps but I feel confident in saying that, while he was probably highly intelligent compared to his peers [SR Sculpted Heart], his isolation doesn’t seem to come from his innate nature but rather his social position (there’s heavy implications that he’s like some sort of noble or something) [SR Snowy Pine Fairytale].

IMO, these backgrounds really shaped the way these two men interact with the world.

Xu Mo has a detached and indifferent view towards other people. They simply exist and don’t bring anything positive or negative to him. His ambition to ensure the survival of humanity reflects this too because it’s pure utilitarianism; everyone (apart from MC) can be sacrificed equally for the greater good. If anything, he probably finds other people to be interesting subjects to study, no matter what kind of person they are. IIRC the only time he expressed dislike to people, or a group of people, was when he told Hades he enjoyed killing thieves LOL.

Meanwhile, Mo Yi has an elitist streak to the point where he and his MC actually clashed opinions and debated each other [SR Warm Fingertips]. It’s incredibly ironic because he’s a psychiatrist who treats his patients without judgment, but at the same time he looks down on so many things and people (PUAs, people who betray love, hypocrites who only seek power and fame) [Ch2; Personal Story Ch1-3; SSR Moonlit Ball].

One of the things I noticed early on is that Xu Mo draws from the Eastern scholar archetype, “Xu Mo Character Study”, while Mo Yi actually draws more from the Western gentleman archetype.

So, just to summarize this section, Xu Mo is detached from the world naturally and likes to observe people and try to blend in. Mo Yi deliberately draws a line between him and others and, at times, has the casual cruelty of someone born as nobility (arrogance is carved into his bones, even if he tends to keep it low-key because he generally has a “gentle and polite” attitude).

2) Stance on Love

Xu Mo didn’t understand love, or really even emotions. Love is grown between him and his MC (there’s multiple analogies throughout the game about how their love is like a seed). I think [Ch25] pretty much sums it up for Xu Mo, where he goes through that emotional rollercoaster and muses about how, at the end of human evolution, emotions should be discarded. He also admits that MC taught him the “fear” of a normal person, because now he has someone he cannot give up no matter what, which goes against his previous utilitarian beliefs.

Compared to this, Mo Yi fell in love at first sight. Yes, you read that right. The “scientist and logical” archetype fell in love at first sight LOL. Not only does he acknowledge it right off the bat, but he fully embraces it too and believes that real love makes people better versions of themselves [Personal Story]. Mo Yi is a through and through psychiatrist in that he never underestimates how primal emotions (and love) can be.

Heck, not only is this central to his personal story, but we also have hints that one of Mo Yi’s parents fell in love at first sight with the other person (and he inherited their predisposition for that). Unfortunately, their love had a tragic end and Mo Yi seems to have a huge grudge against his father for whatever happened to his mother (again, Mihoyo is keeping this a mystery LOL), but Mo Yi explicitly confirms that even if his love leads to a tragic end he will still walk down this road and attempt to change it [SR Cool Summer].

IMO one other difference between them re: love is this exchange that lives rent free in my head which I saw in a Xu Mo/Reader/Mo Yi fanfiction LOL. Bear with me here.

Mo Yi: Wearing a mask for a long time will tire you.

Xu Mo: It’s enough just to wear one in front of the necessary person.

Xu Mo and his MC make great efforts to understand each other’s worlds, but this understanding comes from the doors he chooses to open to her. He reveals himself as much as possible, but I think he’s an inherently private person (and there’s all that Ares stuff) so there are times where he hides things so that he doesn’t worry his MC. I think this is enough to count as a “mask”. Sometimes he pretends he’s okay when he’s not.

On the other hand, while I think Mo Yi shares the sentiment in not wanting his MC to worry unduly, he tries to reveal himself as much as possible. There’s an amazingly relatable conflict in him here where he wants her to know every side of him, but he’s also terrified of how she’ll react if he shows her his ugliest sides and imperfect sides (he has some sort of phobia or fear about imperfection, but Mihoyo has been keeping mum on the exact details of this so far) [Personal Story; SR Sculpted Heart].

It’s pretty ironic that Mo Yi wants to be perfect, but he realizes that the more perfect he is the more of a sense of distance there’ll be between him and his MC because of the subconscious pressure someone “perfect” brings LOL [SSR Border of Light and Darkness].

3) Stance on Growth

If you haven’t realized that one of Xu Mo’s greatest themes is the phrase “Take your time in growing”, then what have you been reading? Jkjk, but seriously this gets repeated in multiple places, although my brain always goes back to [Blossom Date] for this.

Even if he and his MC start off with fundamental differences (she believes all people have inherent worth and can’t be involuntarily sacrificed), he wants to personally watch the journey of her maturation. He also subtly guides and teaches her. Unfortunately, due to circumstances of the main story, he doesn’t get his wish and she grows up a lot out of his eyes, but their relationship still revolves around him wanting her to have as much time as possible to grow.

He’s, for a lack of better word, extremely gentle about this (setting aside as much of the Ares and story parts as we can, because LovePro’s story is tragedy on tragedy LOL). I think [Autumn Blaze Date] shows a good analogy for this, because he holds the bicycle steady for MC until she can get going on her own, and he also catches her the first time.

Meanwhile, Mo Yi... ha ha ha. I just came out of chapter 3 for his [Personal Story] and let’s just say his philosophy is tough love. It’s ironic because, in many of his other dates, he wrestles with an internal conflict to protect his MC but also to let her experience all sorts of things to both test and temper her.

This is going to touch on the previous topic about love for a moment, but a part of Mo Yi’s love at first sight experience is also “testing” the other person through all sorts of situations and, after seeing all their different sides, he can determine whether his love at first sight is one that’ll last for the rest of his life or if it’s just a fleeting moment of beauty and emotion.

He also extremely respects his MC’s sense of justice and pursuit of the truth in the world, no matter what she encounters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what drew him to her in the first place. But MC’s occupation and beliefs will make her confront a lot of dark and dangerous things and so, whenever possible, Mo Yi lets her confront these in “controlled” situations to train her. If I had to make an analogy, IMO, he’d let his MC ride the bicycle and pick her up only after she falls, or when she’s like 0.1cm away from the ground LOL.

Mo Yi is (perhaps rightfully) called out on this by another character, who believes Mo Yi is too arrogant in believing everything is under his control and he can prevent MC from getting hurt whenever he lets her get into dangerous situations, and I’m interested to see if Mihoyo will let him experience failures with his philosophy so he can grow more, like the things Xu Mo went through re: his personal beliefs [Ch24].

Overall

I don’t know how well I explained myself, especially for people who don’t know anything about Mo Yi, and each section goes back and forth between the two characters LOL so here’s another section that attempts to describe their overall atmosphere.

If, like I said in my Headcanon Notes, Xu Mo makes me immediately think of all the words for soft, gentle, light, still, water, etc etc., then the words I constantly think about for Mo Yi is messily human. He’s like a bundle of contradictions, but coherent because it’s being intentionally done.

Mo Yi doesn’t discriminate against his patients, yet he can be elitist and looks down on others. He wants to let MC have dangerous experiences, but also wants to protect her. He wants to be perfect, but he also wants to reveal himself entirely to his MC because that’s real love.

In contrast, Xu Mo has a very clean and orderly personality LOL. You can draw clear cause and effect lines from his personality to his actions.

So, anyway, these are two interesting characters who start off with similar archetypes as scientific logical men of scholar/gentleman dispositions, but yet they’re also on opposite ends for a lot of things such as their approach to emotions and the world.

Oh wait, lastly, because I don’t have a good place to put this—but I think it’s funny—is that both characters are pretty possessive and greedy, but while Xu Mo does things in a sneaky, cunning and fox-like way Mo Yi gets ridiculously open about his jealousy and it’s hilariously cute but also almost childish? I often forget Mo Yi is older than Xu Mo by a year, because Xu Mo honestly feels a bit more mature than him LOL. If we count them actually aging by when their game came out though, then Mo Yi is 28 and Xu Mo is 29 now.

[watayaaratamblr]

Why fans can still hope for Chiharata:

1) Chap 165 was the peak of "Chihaya doesn't see Arata because she is full of Taichi" trope yet that wasn't enough to sink the other ship, we got back to strongly expect an Arachiha end be it Arachiha shippers or even so many non-arachiha shippers which says a lot about how this trope wasn't enough vs what Arachiha has. This can be also said about when Chihaya chose to go watch & cheer for Taichi over watching Arata's match vs Shinobu. Fans back then thought that it was a clear indication of who was truly in Chihaya's heart but few chapters later Chihaya rejected Taichi & while thinking of Arata too. 2) Arata was the reason Chihaya stopped worshiping Chitose. Chitose will come & see her & he will be there playing in the same time as her. Chitose was told by Taichi that he was rejected & she didn't tell him to have hope as Chihaya is stupid & might realize her feelings like Kana said before. What she told him instead is to stop wasting his time because Chihaya's strongest desire lies within karuta & we all know that Taichi is not as invested in the sport as her. 3) Arata being written till now to give up Chiha (vs blunderer & Shinobu, Chihaya even witnessed that & was worried) & to avoid thinking about her when he is in his grandpa mode - Now Arata is being developed into a person different than Wataya hajime, a person who wants to fight for his seat & desires. to stop being "selfless" & to become Taichi's serious rival who takes action for what he really wants. (& we learned that he really wants to hug Chihaya & before that to become someone she deserves to be hugged by) 4) Arata "wanting to be himself" which was linked to "i'm not my grandpa" & "love love love" out of the blue (which is not out of the blue if we think about it carefully), we saw how he defied his grandpa's illusion for Chihaya's sake for example in 226. 5) "Chiha" that both Arata & Chihaya keep losing (while Taichi won it), Chiha "hating" both (coz both lost their initial passion i'd say). Is it not natural to think that winning it will be after fixing something probably shared by both? 6) Again Chiha being there when Chihaya said "I will always love Arata & karuta" (which I believe isn't a forgotten/meaningless confession" + being there in Arata's confession (practically being the starting point of the confession while it was absent in Taichi's confession.) 7) Chihaya saying that Tare is Taichi's card for her & Tare being NOT a love poem but a poem about the friend who knows what's in her heart which is the perfect description for Taichi in Chihaya's heart & journey. 8) Arata's unanswered confession left for the end where Chihaya did NOT ask for time to be more experienced and stuff like that which can suggest asking for years, but she asked him to wait until she defeats the queen + Chihaya's feelings about not being able to love & be loved until it's someone she can sit across in karuta + her wanting to return the passion she got from Arata + how would Suetsugu write Arata's rejection at the end of the manga, bc if he wins the title, that'd crush his happiness with his win, & if he loses the title, that'd be even worse. How many chapters are still left to write him getting over it? 9) Also Arata coming to tokyo that was explicitly linked to being "near Chihaya", he said that to her twice, in his confession & when she asked him to wait. He wouldn't come to become a 3rd wheel in Taichi's & Chihaya's relationship would he? Arata is already written as a guy who would keep his distance from Chihaya not to interfere between her & her boyfriend (when he though she was dating Taichi). 10) Taichi's rejection being given plenty of time, now he seems to have accepted it better (I believe he still has feelings for her but he can live with it healthily now unlike few months ago & it's easier to write him getting over it bit by bit that, all this, Arata won't get.) 11) Arata's place in Chihaya's life after he no longer is a love interest. Taichi is well set as the closest friend. Arata WAS written as a childhood friend, a love interest, an admired karuta

figure & a rival. Now the rival seat is fully taken by Shinobu chan, the childhood friend doesn't have much effect for a main character after Chihaya got closer friends who are constantly pushing her back now; the admired karuta figure is also gone after she defeated him (or maybe even clearer after she witnessed him losing to her final rival: Shinobu). If Arata is no longer a love interest, what then? He would be better off the title of a main character which Suetsugu is not giving up. She will balance the trio somehow & Arata will be given an important place in Chihaya's world as important as Taichi's & I can't think of anything without "romance" at least not in the short remaining time of the manga. 12) Poem6, is also still telling an incomplete story of two lovers who can't meet without the bridge of magpies. 13) Arata's attachment to card 77 "Se o hayami" which is clearly between only him & Chihaya (for him), this is another story I believe is incomplete and it is related to only the bond between Chihaya & Arata. 14) The rematch that will most likely be in the Oe Cup. while it can be an ordinary re match, it can also be one to end the manga by going back to it's very end which is the subject of Chihaya transforming from an empty fan girl to someone with overwhelming PASSION and that, she got it from Arata. Also the 1st volume has lot about what changed in Chihaya's feelings that was brought not by having Taichi around but by meeting Arata, him not going easy on her, him taking her seriously & being straightforward with her & him being a source of passion too. Suetsugu said that she will link the end with this volume. (This makes me expect a good closure between Taichi & his mother too).

[wickwrites]

Burning as a Motif for Humanity in Violet Evergarden

I think, when watching Violet Evergarden, most of us picked up on fire as a motif for Violet’s trauma – the violence and destruction she witnessed in the war, and the violence and destruction she engendered with her own hands. I’m not going to go into this too much because it’s all pretty self-explanatory, if not trite, but here are some quick examples of fire as a motif for her trauma just to lay the groundwork for the rest of the essay:

In frame 1 (episode 8), Violet draws first blood on the battlefield, and the once contained fire from the felled soldiers’ lanterns spread quickly through the forest, a symbol for how one small act of violence can cascade into large scale destruction. In frame 2, Gilbert stares at the carnage in front of him, horrified. In frame 3, the major is shot, and all we get to see is a screen of flames. In frame 4 (episode 12), Merkulov stares into a fire as he schemes about re-kindling the war.

I want to follow this (well trodden) opinion up with a more encompassing statement. That is, fire, in Violet Evergarden, is not limited to representing the destructive power of violence and trauma. Instead, it is a motif for humanity itself – an embodiment of the full range of experiences and emotions that make us human.  

To show this, I’m going to start off at the beginning of Violet’s journey, focusing on how her disconnect (from herself as well as others) is illustrated in episode one. For instance, her initial struggle to move her now mechanical arms as she sits in her hospital bed in the opening sequence is an excellent embodiment of her dissociation from her own body and lack of agency. I want to, however, focus on two scenes that are particularly relevant for our discussion:

First, the scene where Violet spills tea on her hand:

And second, the scene where Hodgins insists that Violet is burning:

These scenes are similar: in both, someone asserts that Violet must be in pain, specifically due to burning, and in both, Violet rejects that statement. In the first, however, that burning is physical. And in the second, that burning is emotional. Regardless, Violet is so removed from her own body that she is incapable of feeling either. Her mechanical hand is therefore an embodiment of her inhumanity (ie. her “dollness” or “weapon-ness”). Like her, it is cold, mechanical, insensitive, without life or agency. After all, up until now, all she’s been doing is killing on command, without the ability to think for herself, experience her own pain, or sympathize with her victims’ pain.

When the screen shows that Hodgins is indeed correct, that Violet is literally on fire (frame 1), that fire is depicted with restraint. Flames engulfs Violet’s body, but those flames are from a streetlamp enclosed in glass. It is controlled and distant. This encapsulates Violet’s current state; she is literally on fire, but that fire is so compartmentalized and suppressed, and she is so far removed from her own experience, that she is incapable of feeling it.

In frame 2, we are viewing Violet in a flashback, from Hodgin’s point of view. Although we’re offered a close up shot of her bloodied hands, we see, about two cuts later, that Hodgin is actually observing Violet from afar (frame 2.5). This distance demonstrates that he cannot bring himself to reach out to her, something that Hodgin confesses he feels guilty about literally 5 seconds later. They were, at that point in time, and perhaps even now, unable to connect.

In frames 3 and 4, Hodgin is speaking again. We get this super far shot of Violet’s body. The camera is straight on, objective, and unfeeling. This unsympathetic framing has two functions. First, it distances us from Violet. Our inability to see the details on her face and her relatively neutral body language gives us, the audience, no real way inidication her thoughts. Second, it distances Violet from herself. As someone who experiences dissociative symptoms from PTSD, this is a very poignant way of framing what it feels like to be removed from your own experience. Hodgin’s line, “You’ll understand what I’m saying one day. And, for the first time, you’ll notice all your burn scars,” further drives home the sense that Violet is completely estranged from herself. It almost feels like we are looking at her, from her own detached point of view.

We’re going to move on now, but we’ll get back to these frames later in the analysis, so hold onto them.

Throughout Violet’s journey, fire comes up again and again. Specifically, it shows up in moments of emotional intimacy, connection, and healing. Let’s see what I mean by this:

I have here a collection of moments that all occur at the same narrative point in their respective mini-stories: the moment where one character reaches out to another, sympathizes with them, and literally pulls them of their darkness. For example, frame 1 (episode 3) shows Violet bringing a letter from Luculia to her brother. It expresses Luculia’s gratitude and love for him, and ultimately mends their relationship. In frame 2 (episode 4), Violet and Iris share a moment of emotional intimacy and connection, which is the beginning of Iris’ story’s resolution. In frame 3 (episode 9), Violet’s suicidal despondency is interrupted by the mailman, bringing her a heartwarming letter from all her friends. In frame 4 (episode 11), Violet comforts a dying solder by a fireplace.

It’s not that other modes of lighting do not exist – modern looking lamps show up repeatedly in the show. Even Iris’ rural family has them, so I can reasonably assume that, no, the above moments do not all coincidentally use lamps because that’s all there is in this universe; the usage of fire during moments of catharsis is deliberate, and establishes that fire can also bring hope, kindness, and love.

Now that we’ve explored the dual nature of fire as both destructive/constructive, painful/cathartic, let’s go onto the thesis of my essay. Why do I say that being on fire is to be human? Let’s go back to the scene where Hodgin tells Violet she’s on fire (episode 1, on the left), and compare it to the scene where Violet finally realizes that Hodgin was right and that she is on fire (episode 7, on the right):

In these sequences, there is a notable shift in framing and perspective. In frame 1b, we finally get to see Violet’s blood-stained hands from her point of view, as opposed to from Hodgin’s point of view in 1a. Violet becomes aware of her past as an actual agent choosing to kill, shown through the first-person point of view. Similarly, the medium, straight on shot of Violet looking down at her hands (frame 2a) is replaced with an intimate first-person, close-up view (frame 2b). In shots 3a and 3b, the difference in framing is most pronounced. In 3a, we get this straight on, long shot. In frame 3b, the camera’s detachment is replaced by a claustrophobic closeness. While this framing does an excellent job at conveying the panicked feeling of “everything crashing down all at once”, it also demonstrates Violet’s new-found awareness of herself. While before, the camera was used to alienate, now it is used to create a sense of painful awareness and intimacy.

These series of shots are the first in the entire show, I believe, of Violet's body from her own point of view. Their co-incidence with her awakening self-awareness characterizes the state of “being in one’s body” as a precondition to self-connection, or more specifically, to Violet’s understanding of herself as neither a weapon nor a doll, but as a human. Correspondingly, this pivotal moment serves as a catalyst for her subsequent emotional development. From this episode on towards the finale, we’re launched into a heart wrenching sequence of events: Violet’s desperate grieving for Gilbert’s apparent death, her attempted suicide driven by newfound grief, and most importantly, Violet receiving her first written letter, an act that is strongly representative of genuine human connection. Following these events, Violet’s emotional connection to both herself and others only continues to grow; during her two final jobs of the story, she breaks down crying in response to the suffering of her clients, demonstrating a level of compassion—if not empathy—that she seems to have never been able to tap into before.

At the same time, Violet acquires a new sense of agency, making plot-driving decisions that no longer require other characters’ validations. Most poignantly, in episode 12, she chooses to stay on the train to fight Merkulov, explicitly going against Dietfried’s order for her to leave. Her reason?

She doesn’t want anyone to die anymore.

And it’s this moment, for me, that consolidated her as a character with true agency. Up until now, all her major decisions have been framed in relation to Gilbert: she killed in the war because Gilbert ordered her to, and she became an Auto Memories Doll because she wanted to understand Gilbert’s enigmatic “I love you”. Now, however, her motivation is purely her own—she fights, simply because she doesn’t want anyone else to die. It’s a line implies an intimate knowledge of loss. It’s a sentiment motivated by compassion. It’s a raw and extraordinarily human thing to say.

When Violet embarks on her journey to decipher Gilbert’s love, she is devoid of many traits we consider inherent and possibly even unique to being human—suffering, compassion, altruism, love, agency, and the interplay between them. As an Auto Memories Doll, she learns to live, experiencing all these emotions she had never had the luxury to experience before, and we quickly realize that she cannot know what love is without simultaneously wrestling with her trauma. She learns that yes, sometimes the fire destroys and sometimes it burns, but sometimes it thaws too, and you cannot have one without the other. You cannot choose what the fire does to you; you cannot choose what you want to feel. Thus, to be on fire is to know the anguish of its destruction, but it is also, and more importantly, to know the catharsis of human connection, to be the warm flame that pulls someone else out of the dark, to be pulled out of the dark yourself. To be on fire is to be human.

[mc-doppomine]

Second-in-Commands and Identity (2/6)

Continuing on this series of the second stringers and how they tend to center on their identity and usually the changing of oneself in order to achieve what they want. Part I, is over Jiro and this one will be over Jyuto.

I will give a brief disclaimer with Jyuto as some of his info I actually had to get from other fans and the wiki since his backstory doesn't seem to come up explicitly in his solos nor the MTC drama tracks (I assume it's another guide book thing). So I'm basing off what I was able to pull up. Anywaaaaayyyyyyy.

Jyuto's change we don't see unfold in the present and unlikely to see it change at current. For him, he decided that he NEEDED to become a corrupt cop in order to get what he wanted. It was the action that seemed to get him the most headway towards make a drug-free division. It's given him control over others in his office to stay in line or turn from his own machinations. It's given him contacts that are otherwise unusable for a cop. It's been how he intimidates and coaxes what he needs from others. I can't see it being a change he particularly regrets. But this change had to start from somewhere.

I consider ARB a non-canon way to get canon information (I'm aware it is an alternate timeline but it is still a source for information about these guys). And it seems like Jyuto was not in Yokohama originally when he started his descent (Edit: I had to go back and it said explicitly Yokohama Police Department where he started but even Jyuto remarks how he doesn't really have jurisdiction in another division nor would really be out that way unless it was something related to his Yokohama activity. Sooooo, it is a little flub that I'm not sure how to reconcile at this moment and will continue on as if I didn't see those words for the upcoming stuff below).

He seemed to have started his path...maybe a little before coming to Yokohama. I would think he was originally a patrolman in Shinjuku but some time during his time there, he was already up to his scheming was as in because of him using Doppo to help him catch a pervert (in ARB). But even just going with canon stuff, it can be guessed that he was in Shinjuku since if he's seen Doppo around and/or been the one to interrogate him, he had to have been in that ward for work since Doppo lives and works in Shinjuku. Which would make sense for his inspiration to change. Shinjuku seems to be a dangerous district, mainly because of Kabuki-cho, with illicit activities and yakuza also being there (although it looks like efforts have made to have it change in the real location). Is it really a stretch to think of him having caught wind of some of his fellow officers accepting bribes? Especially when his own mentor had gone under radar as an addict? It just that he didn't get his big break until TDD era because of Samatoki and Ichiro.

Coming back from this very long way as to the how he was able to...Jyuto I would assume to have been a person on the straight and narrow but not having so deep of tunnel-vision to pass up opportunity. From 'Case File of a Corrupt Cop' event, Jyuto shows a strong sense of duty and does genuinely believe that his job is supposed to protect citizens from both threats from others and themselves. And he's not so strict that he would put the law above the welfare of citizens. For him, the ends justify the means.

I would like to think he had a faith in the system to make things right but after seeing how corruption can take even someone he trusted and cared for...was it really just a matter of when or how rather than 'if?' And if it was bound to happen one way or another, Jyuto rather be standing on top.

He has thrown all his chips onto this identity he's crafted for himself. That's how the other characters and we the audience know him: the corrupt cop. It's all he has. And as 'A Dream...For Good or Evil' would point, Jyuto would be damned before he loses that. Although this DRB seems like it may test Jyuto's dedication to who he's become vs his loyalty to the causes he's signed himself to (namely MTC).

Because the one place that Jyuto has consistently fumbled with is when it comes to Chuuoku. He was quick to try to quell Samatoki in the 1st DRB and attempt to smooth things over with Kadenkoji. He hesitated and backed down when Nemu put her authority over him despite Samatoki very much being close to being arrested in 'All in the Same Boat.' And he even could not muster a way out with his charisma nor any sort of deal when he was dismissed because of Chuuoku standing before him.

I wonder if it is a split in his identity of is he corrupt or is he a cop that he seems to be on his way to dealing with. Does it really take the dark side to really push what he wants? (Aka teaming up with Samatoki and Rio). Or does he just have to be good and kowtow the right times to get closer to his goals? (aka just rolling with Chuuoku's orders). If anyone could direct what Honobono had discussed with Jyuto to see if that might further cement that since it sounded like she either was mocking him or propositioning him?

Also I apologize if there was a little bit of jarring switch from me. Somehow...because of my luck...in the course of a few seconds, I had some paragraphs cut and then ones underneath it copied twice? So I had go back and re-sort what I wrote...Which I'm a bit bummed because I feel I'm missing such an importantly worded sentence and can't remember it.

[hmgfanfic]

Saw a reblog of yours from a bit ago but your tags "Fen is obviously sympathetic in theory but I have to *imagine it* rather than *feeling it*" are absolutely it exactly. It haunts me!!!

This is insanely late, I’m so sorry! Here is my belated answer, under the cut because I know Fen can be a sensitive topic, in all directions. Below is generally pro-Fen as a concept, but definitely critical of the writers’ take on her.

It haunts me too!!! The writers sowed the seeds of so many interesting things about Fen and so rarely followed up on them. Which is the TM writing credo, I know, but still. Ugh.

But, like, Fen is a character who’s completely defined by her circumstances in an extreme patriarchal world and she can’t ever really escape it, no matter what she does. Her arc should have been (and I think was intended to be) about her overcoming that within the structures available to her and emerging out the other side at peace and with purpose, if not fully self-actualized. It’s not exactly reinventing the wheel, re: feminist themes, but I think it’s something most people can recognize as sympathetic. And maybe more controversially, I even found it sympathetic that she was heartbroken when the husband who finally came for her—the man she was meant to serve and obey, the one she’d been told is was her sole purpose in life since birth—ended up being completely uninterested in her as a wife and a sexual partner without others being involved (which is true no matter how you view El’s sexuality. ) That’s... honestly devastating.

My issue, of course, comes from the particular way the show explored that devastation. Pretty much everything in S2 made me... only able to sympathize with her in theory. Basically, the sour taste started around the time I realized the show was putting blame on Eliot for not living up to something or not trying hard enough to make the marriage/their “family” a more traditional one. Like eventually the answer to Fen’s question, “Am I not enough for you?” should have been “Of course you are, darling.” Which is certainly... relatable as a queer person! Not in a good way, but it could have been an interesting starting point for conflict and an exploration of how to form a necessary partnership out of polar-opposite needs.

But it wasn’t written that way.

Instead, it was written to heavily suggest the audience was supposed to agree that Eliot was inherently a “shitty husband” and that his indifference to Fen sexually was him being shallow or that his fear of becoming a father was him being a deadbeat, rather than explicitly portraying Eliot as a freaked out, self-sacrificing young queer man who nearly always treated his magically-compulsory wife as kindly and fairly as he could, even when his entire world was nothing but turmoil. In reality, only thing he didn’t do was treat her like a romantic partner, which is because she wasn’t and that’s okay, considering everything. He tried his best in the face of absurdity. Which is—and should have been—equally sympathetic, but it wasn’t to these writers for some reason.*

(*Homophobia.)

And I think the most aggravating thing is, they almost won me over to Fen in S3! Especially the scene where she pragmatically explains to Eliot why she’s sticking around, which is was a squint-and-see-it thread of connection to my other favorite scene of hers, where in S2 she angrily acknowledges Eliot’s lack of attraction to her and refers to herself as a “realist.” I would have loved a Fen whose saccharine sweetness was as much a suit of armor as Margo’s harshness or Eliot’s insouciance. It gave her depth, it took her seriously, and it actually followed from the situation the writers should have been depicting all along, which was that they were two strangers who imperfectly tried to make the best of a terrible situation.

So I’ll never be sad for Fen because Eliot, specifically, wasn’t in love her or didn’t want a family with her; I was sad for Fen because every aspect of her circumstances sucked, from the patriarchal mores of Fillory to the fidelity magic, trapping her to someone who could decide to execute her on a whim. For a little while, it seemed like the show was finally starting to get that, but then it all disintegrated and Fen ended up further Flanderized.

Anyway, she deserved better [writing.]

[yooleestruck]

in which lee rambles about how great writers are

I don’t really know what this is. I don’t know if now is the right time to do this, or a really bad time, or if it makes any sense, but I want to talk about it! I feel like a broken record saying ‘the writing matters most, the writing matters most’ but maybe I need to show what I mean by that? So, here is an attempt. 

I’m sorry not all of these are the same length and not everyone is here, because every time I see that someone is a writer I do try to follow but I don’t always know/remember! Also I am weird about this sort of thing and don’t want to tag people in a monster-long post, so I’m just going to link. I also don’t want to make this a producers vs writers thing, it’s not, it’s just, when I say I notice writer-stuff, an explanation of what, specifically, I mean. 

Writers have a style fingerprint. I’m sure someone with an actual creative writing or English background could describe it all academic-ly, but my ex-chemist ass is just going to call it a fingerprint. 

My first game in Lovestruck was Starship Promise - I love Firefly, I’m a bisexual disaster scientist by education, it fit. But I had been REALLY put off by GIL when it first came out (this was back when they released stories in parts? And the heroine, which I will get to) and though I’d glanced at AFK, I mistrusted it after GIL and Medusa, who was who I was interested in, wasn’t out yet. So I resisted a LONG time.  I finally picked up LS and SP and played it explicitly because a friend said, you need to give this another chance, for a list of specific reasons. 

And when Atlas’s route came out, I read it a stupid number of times. I must have re-read his season 1 & 2 at least eight times apiece (he is still my most read route, despite the fact I have not read his last season because I want to leave the story open-ended)  so when I read Neil Dresner’s route, I recognized the fingerprint. Not only that, when I was reading Jett and the episodes with the paint scene (YOU KNOW THE SCENE) came out, my breath caught with how lovely it was, a particular in-between moment and touch, and even though it wasn’t a phrase I had seen, the style of it, had me re-reading (because it was gorgeous) again and again from the log for like five minutes and I thought, “I bet Melissa wrote this” AND SHE DID. 

Physical touch! (& in-betweens)

Melissa-grey has a particular way of writing about physical touch in very emotional moments that is very real and grounded and ironically the effect is just magical. It creates these so skillful “in between” moments, those little things that aren’t dialogue and aren’t metaphor but SHOW you that this closed off person is cracking for their little ray of sunshine. They are SO subtle and so beautiful, like, the heroine noticing the scent of a pillow, or a softening of an aborted hand movement.  She sets up and executes these moments of physical touch as a conduit for emotional touch with characters who aren’t ready to admit he latter and it’s DELICIOUS. Those little in-betweens are what I live for in story - and it includes all the supporting cast moments, who swell up to make the world feel lived in, and balanced (I loathe love stories where no one else exists! That’s a recipe for disaster, people need networks) I noticed when she stopped writing, and because I missed it, I went and bought the entire Midnight Girl series, as well as Rated (I hope that is flattering and not creepy!) and that style of writing is so unique, that without KNOWING, I picked it up in four separate routes (noticed in Sev’s s1, too!) 

Pacing (& friggen heartache)

Another fingerprint! Ripping your heart out! Arthoure has had me in tears, MULTIPLE TIMES and I get very grouchy about it every time because I am the least sentimental and romantic person that I know (I once MOVED STATES to avoid an ‘I love you’ conversation. I once said ‘yikes’ in response to an ‘I love you’ and I once broke up with someone because I thought he was going to propose. I’m a bitch) but I think it’s because of pacing! I know that producers play a role in that, but that actually makes it more impressive, because making each bit of story feel like it fits precisely the amount of space it needs when you don’t really get a say in how much space that is has got to take a MASSIVE amount of effort. Every little hint, every emotional beat, every character tell, they drop at a consistent build so the emotional payoff is just brutal (in a good, cathartic way?) every time a route makes me cry I wait and see and YEAH ITS ALWAYS ARTHOURE. The sweep and sentiment of Remy’s season 2 is unparalleled. Across Time is gutwrenching, and I actually stopped reading Renzei at one point because I was so emotional over it I had to like, LEGIT TAKE A BREAK to recover. Pacing and heartache. I have to stop and wonder - is it because the routes themselves are so gut-punching? OR is it because she knows how to wring every last emotional drop out of whatever story framework is handed to her? Because, Ezekiel’s villain costume is a bit silly (there I said it, it is) I get the cobra helmet shape in theory but in practice, ooof, but POINT BEING despite being skeptical I’d be able to take his story seriously as a result, I was hiccuping from crying so much (and I am gosh darn adult, in my thirties, with three degrees and a high-stress job at pretty major company. I DON’T CRY EASY)

 Dialogue (& heroines!)

Xekstrin is the gosh damn master of dialogue. Clever, witty banter that doesn’t go where you expect it to, meandering but natural topic changes that are delightful to follow and feel real, and--special shoutout for this, okay--the navigation of viscerally important topics like consent, kink, self-worth, power in relationships, self-sacrifice, and apologies in a way that is not stilted or forced at all (listen, I know Viv & Lyris are the most recent and they are amazing but I remember this first hit me when I was reading Astraeus, and I spent half the route with my jaw on the floor going, oh shit,  oh shit. The communication! The navigation of the complexity of emotion going on, chef’s kiss! Casual isn’t the right word, but, natural, maybe?). I don’t actually take that many screenshots of the app--it’s usually single lines that get me--but when I do, they are almost always conversations from one of her routes, because they’re so damn good, and often so unexpected, and yet always make such perfect sense for the characters involved. Dialogue is SO HARD OKAY. Actually try and transcribe a conversation sometime, it’s nuts how people talk vs how most people write people talking. Xekstrin also writes some of my absolute favorite MCs, and going back to fingerprints, I was reading Lyris s1 and right there in the first tavern scene, as we were following along with the heroine’s thoughts I went, ah, yes, I know who you belong to and I am SO EXCITED. Being able to give the heroine unique thoughts and quirks, to make her genuinely relatable, without overriding the necessary template of the genre dictates, is a skill all of its own. But I love her MCs! There is a beautiful balance of compassion, competence, and dash of bratty, wild, fun mischief. I can actually cheer for them. I can actually get behind them. I WANT the love interest to flop at their feet for who they are, not just because the story says so. And that comes from how the heroine’s thoughts are written, from her phrasing in conversations, how she sees situations, not just a producer saying ‘she is a strong lead who is self conscious about her ears and she’s nervous in the council meeting’ or whatever. I AM REALLY STRUGGLING to articulate this if you can’t tell from how long I have been blathering. Maybe this - the heroine is the same across every route, presumably, yes? Everyone has the same base. I NEVER question, when xekstrin is writing, why the love interest falls in love with her. Side note - I had hard written off GIL after a bad experience with the standalone app. I only read Aurora BECAUSE I learned she wrote it, and I would have SO MISSED OUT otherwise.

A complete aside in which Lee grumbles about heroines and not writers!

(Complete side vent: Often, the heroine is, if not a blank slate, a sort of collection of assigned traits, and she often remains so unless the story demands she become otherwise. Which is fine! I don’t personally, but I know a lot of folks self-insert, and so erring towards that makes sense. Almost all the otome I’ve played were originally written for a Japanese audience. When I played original Voltage games, starting back in 2014, I always had to remind myself - different culture, different culture, different culture, and it was not possible for me to relate to most of the heroines. I still enjoyed the stories, but I rarely cheered for the heroine’s romance, especially in some of the slice of life stories. I understood her, but I rarely wanted her to get with the love interest, I wanted her success to come in other ways! Another game company, Cybird, tried to ‘Americanize’ their heroine to IMO disastrous effect - it was such a stereotype, and made no sense since they didn’t also Americanize the context, so she come across as, frankly, ridiculous. And frankly, Voltage’s GIL heroine REEKED OF THAT. When they first posted her on social media I was legitimately annoyed about it, like could you lean into this more? I think not. So when I talk about being able to relate to and cheer for the heroine, it’s a big deal, because my blatant mistrust of Voltage and their ability to craft a heroine I could tolerate was a BIG factor in how long it took me to give Lovestruck a try. I was willing to tolerate it in translated stories, I was so skeptical of -en only ones.) 

Metaphors (& balance)

literacouture writes beautiful metaphors for connection between humans! I’m really bad at keeping track of who writes what, but I purposefully kept an eye out on tumblr after reading Cal’s route, because there were some lines that were pure poetry, and I wanted to keep an eye out for more. It is HARD to spin metaphors prettily without delving into trite, painful, purple prose cringe territory, and it’s navigated beautifully in Cal’s route. There’s a balance between those spin-out moments and things that are tangible and anchoring and make it feel authentic and unique to the two characters involved, instead of just ‘I am trying to make this sound romantic and this is a romantic phrase so here it is’. That balance is really necessary. You NEED the mundane alongside the metaphor or it doesn’t feel authentic. Also. Trying really hard to write this without throwing any authors or producers under the bus, but...listen. I love Sin with Me. But the world logic (or LACK THEREOF) drives me up a wall. I don’t read Cal because of his character traits or sprite or (sigh) his story. I read him because literacouture writes a beautiful romance.

 So anyway...

There are more! When I am less tired and don’t have meetings, I will try and write them up (Please know there are so many routes I love, and so many things I do recognize across chapters! I don’t even HAVE words for what theivorytowercrumbles accomplished with Helena’s story not to mention how much I adore Cyprin,  SummerLightning’s handling of Onyx’s past relationship was so deftly done when it could have so quickly become ‘milk abuse for plot’ and joidecombat gave Sev a fresh, mischievous energy and navigated the dream/reality line with SUCH skill, and so on and so on.)

I’ve written a lot of reviews. And I try to give nods where I feel they’re due - sometimes, it really is obvious that the whole team’s work came together to makes something great, the world, the plot, the arc, the art, the words, and the music all fit into place in a  well-crafted tour de force. And sometimes one piece or another is lacking, and I’ll admit I’ve left some...less than kind reviews to that end (I try and soften it, because I know there are humans on the other side of everything, but I’ve been harsh more than once with my opinions).  I’ve read routes with plots that made me want to tear my hair out because I DO value consistency and logic to a degree, even if I’m going to accept at face value that, say, space travel is a thing or demons turn to sand when stabbed. 

In the end, these are romance stories. So I will let a lot slide when it comes to plot. What sells a story are the words - not the outline.

And if Voltage doesn’t believe that - just remember that Hamlet existed long, long before Shakespeare wrote it. His was the version that lasted, because the people liked it best. The plot, the world, the characters, they all existed a hundred times over. Even just look at fan translations of manga. Why do people keep translating, even if someone else has? Because the words someone else picked don’t do the story justice. 

I don’t know. I’m talking in circles because I don’t know my own thesis! 

Maybe it’s just - the worlds these stories in are nice. But when I say I’m a fan of something, the premise is like. 10%. The rest is the writing. 

[gayregis]

(Philippa anon again 🦇) Yeah, like you said I don't think AS wrote her gay to demonize lesbians. There is some homophobia from Sabrina but it's not being writen as "Sabrina is right". The only moment i felt :/ was when AS kept repeating sth about smeared lipstick or whatever during one of Lodge fragments but ig that's just how he writes sexually active women, unfortunatelly. I agree with that she's a special villain in this story, compared to Vilgefortz and Bonhart who are there to be one-dimensional, Aen Elle who have some things going on for them but bc it's a story about Ciri they also loose depth when reduced to team no. 3 in the race to get Ciri pregnant, or Emhyr (whom i have a lot to say about, mainly.. what was AS thinking there, i get wanting to have a twist villain and to connect short stories with saga even more but... did it have to be an incest thing.... yikes). On one hand Philippa is playing 5d chess with all that political stuff, staging an assasination (allegedly), then Thanedd coup, founding the Lodge, winning the war (Vilgefortz literally would never!), on the other she's fine with being cruel to Yen and Ciri bc it helps her get what she wants and other flaws you already pointed out. It's easy to focus only on one side but she's really compelling :) i wish we lived in a timeline where twn explored it even more :) :) // ok im not sure if it's readable bc i deleted like half of the message but apparently i have a lot to say ab things, sorry to dump it all on you 🥺

😭😭 omg im sorry there’s a character limit for tumblr ask... (feel free to send multiple if that helps) and yes all of this...

mainly it’s philippa being actually competent (5d chess as you said) but also having goals that explicitly go against the protagonists for me. the fact of the matter being that ciri was going to actually have to go with the lodge’s bidding in the end of lotl until only death came between them and her is really frightening to consider. the lodge actually won, except for the very end in which ciri disappears once her parents die. 

none of the other villains are as competent and actually achieve their goals. vilgefortz and bonhart are intense and frightening as kinds of bogeymans, but are really just steeped in arrogance and sadism (respectively). this isn’t to say i think they’re out of place in the narrative - i think they’re just meant to be the inverse of geralt and ciri (respectively) and that’s really it for their characters, so of course they are defeated in the final book at the “final fight” (was not the literal final fight, but is yet a trope that sapkowski wanted to subvert, i think).

the aen elle throw me for a loop because although they appear in time of contempt as the wild hunt, other than being a cultural reference/adaptation of mythology, i don’t know if they’re ever super relevant or tied to the action. i suppose they relate more to ciri discovering more about her powers and how her powers are used, re: discovering the aen elle’s relationships with humans and with unicorns, so imo they are just really an addendum to everything else that’s going on.

emhyr... i can understand it because i think it is actually a good twist / “i saw it coming” sort of thing, as there are many hints throughout (duny’s backstory being vague beyond “i got cursed into being a were-hedgehog,” the death of the cintrian princess and consort in a manner in which the bodies cannot be salvaged ie it’s not certain that both pavetta and duny died, conversations around emhyr’s search for ciri such as with assire and fringilla discussing the strand of hair from a very young girl and questioning how he got a lock of hair from the princess when she was so young) that connect the two identies of duny and emhyr... i think it’s an interesting betrayal because it adds a layer of horror to the fact that emhyr would send his troops to raze cintra when he had lived there with his mother-in-law calanthe and wife pavetta. i think it’s also maybe the only way to call off emhyr as being an antagonist because were he anyone else, i doubt he would have abandoned the plot once he succeeded in capturing ciri. i think it is horrifying what he meant to do, but since it was actually depicted as horrifying and repugnant and not romanticized, it’s OK in relation to the story. i know some are upset at the deus ex machina sapkowski pulled with emhyr basically calling everything off in the very final book, leaving everyone to ask “so what was all that for?” but i think it works in the context of the story, i think there was just no other way to end emhyr as an antagonist, and it works because it’s the decision he makes and not something like he gets killed randomly, sending the entire nilfgaardian empire and all of its newly conquered territory into a massive power vaccuum.

so yeah tl;dr philippa is the only one is able to achieve her goals and it’s interesting because she’s never really painted as “evil” as vilgefortz is but her means which ‘justify her ends’ are quite similar to his, as ciri points out in lotl’s end

[simul16]

Low Effort in Their Own Way

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

I've been watching a fair amount of D&D content on YouTube of late, for varying reasons, and if I may paraphrase Tolstoy's famous quote above, I've learned that all good D&D channels make high-effort content, while each bad D&D channel makes low-effort content in its own way.

Low-effort content tends to be:

Content that is or can be created quickly; it doesn't require a lot of prep time (and the presentation usually allows this limited prep time to show)

Content that copies current trends; while a certain amount of response to significant events in the gaming world is to be expected, low-effort channels regularly feature content that basically boils down to 'here's my reaction to whatever rumor or scandal is currently being talked about among the community'

Content that does not spark or contribute to a discussion; when such channels go beyond simply recapitulating a recent event, they frequently spend very little time explaining their own reaction and seldom spend any time at all explaining or exploring contrary opinions except to make jokes or elicit emotional reactions from an over-simplified or straw-man version of the contrary opinion

Now let's start off by saying that I'm not knocking low-effort content per se; anybody who knows anything about online marketing can tell you that low-effort content has a role to play in any marketing strategy. Ideally, though, your low-effort content, the stuff that you can get out the door quickly and easily and get in front of your potential customers, exists to guide those customers to your higher-quality content that convinces them to buy your product, order your service, or otherwise become someone who believes that you have something of value to say. Because it's cheap and easy to produce, low-effort content can be cast far and wide to serve as a net to capture many potential viewers and guide them to the gold mine of the really important stuff you have to say. Unfortunately, when your low-effort content is what you have to say, it very much begs the question of what exactly it is people should be coming to your channel for.

Here are a few but by no means an exhaustive list of the YouTube channels that to me seem to feature way too much low-effort content.

The Dungeon Dudes

The Dungeon Dudes are two guys (Kelly McLaughlin and Monty Martin) who mainly do scripted back-and-forth style discussions of D&D-related topics. I've talked about the Dungeon Dudes before, when taking apart one of their recent videos, but they also stream a D&D game they play in on Twitch (and frequently post recordings of those sessions on their channel), do product reviews, and generally do whatever they can to maintain a consistent pace of content output, generally a minimum of twice weekly. They've been around for nearly four years now, and have amassed about 273 thousand subscribers on their channel, with over 44 million views for their content, which seem like decent numbers for a niche content channel. (Contract with CinemaSins, which exists as a viral content manufacturer, and has amassed over 9 million subscribers and over 3.3 billion views. I'm not trying to say the Dungeon Dudes are the CinemaSins of D&D; if they were, their numbers would probably look a lot more like those of CinemaSins.)

The big problem with the Dudes as content creators is that, despite being a niche content channel, they are clearly in it to try to eke out some kind of income or living from the work they put into the channel: they've got a Patreon, they use affiliate links in the descriptions of their product review videos to gain some additional referrer income, and they do sponsored content when they can get a sponsor. They started back in the summer of 2017 with a very 2016-era plan on how to succeed at YouTube: put together a bunch of short (5-10 minutes, occasionally longer, but go over 15 minutes at your peril) videos and release them on an iron-clad schedule to get people used to coming back to your channel and looking over your new content, and to their credit, they've kept up their content production schedule very consistently over the past four years.

They've also learned a few things during that time and have adapted the channel in response: their videos explaining rules and reviewing new products tend to be more popular, so they work those topics in on a more regular basis. They've learned that the YouTube algorithm has subtly changed over the past few years to reward channels that can provide longer 'engagement' (which gives YouTube more opportunities to run ads), and have expanded their video length to an average of about a half-hour, with their re-broadcasts from Twitch being extra-long videos (between two and two-and-a-half hours) which, while drawing fewer total views, probably draw as much or more 'engagement' from the algorithm for the views they have.

But the need to spit out so much content on such a rigid, unforgiving schedule means that they have to aim for quick-creation and easy digestion: putting subclasses into a bog-standard tier ranking, making 'top five' and 'top ten' lists that seem like they're being cribbed from a more thoughtful resource, and generally getting stuff out the door (like their 'Powerful Spell Combos Using Teamwork' video) without spending too much time thinking about how valuable or even accurate their advice happens to be. More to the point, it seems to be taking its toll on the guys who serve as the hosts of the show: Kelly McLaughlin has a fairly dour expression in general, but lately he seems to have the countenance of a man who's about to post a 'very special episode' discussing the dangers of YouTuber burnout.

The Dungeon Dudes feature low-effort content because they have to in order to support the publishing frequency they've chosen; if they were to take the time to put together a truly high-effort piece regarding one of their traditional topics, their Patreon subscribers would likely be asking why their release schedule had slowed down before their work was even half-done.

Dungeon Craft

The Dungeon Craft channel is run by a fellow who refers to himself as 'Professor Dungeon Master'; I have not yet found any reference in his channel or elsewhere that identifies who he actually is, so I'll just refer to him as Prof. Prof has been on YouTube a bit longer than the Dungeon Dudes, having launched his channel in October of 2016, and has put out 185 'episodes' (as of the time of this writing), thus averaging between three and four episodes per month. Prof's own 'trailer' video explicitly states his channel's concept: "Some channels focus on running the game, others on building terrain, others on painting minis. I do it all!" You might think, then, that this would be a place to find quite high-quality content, especially related to terrain and miniatures painting tips, but it seems like the main effect of Prof making his channel be about multiple topics (and there are plenty of topics he discusses that don't fit into any of those three categories above) is that he can't successfully communicate what his channel is actually about, other than about his specific opinions. Maybe that's the reason he's sitting at about 65 thousand subscribers and just under 5 million views.

However, being at a slightly lower 'tier' of content production than the Dungeon Dudes is not itself any kind of crime or even indicative of poor quality -- after all, one of my favorite D&D lore channels on YouTube is RavenloftTravelAgent, and she's got just over a thousand subscribers and only about 50 thousand views on her videos. No, Prof could have a very high-quality, high-content channel with the subscriber numbers and views he has, but he doesn't.

Prof's issue is almost exactly the opposite of that of the Dungeon Dudes: instead of cranking out a rapid-fire, breakneck volume of content to keep up with an arbitrary content production schedule because that's how you make a living producing content for YouTube and you have to keep feeding the hungry algorithm, Prof cranks out content that's very easy for him to write because he's been involved in the game for a long time and already knows that the way he learned to play the game is the best way. Any topic that comes up related to D&D, he's got an opinion and can spit out a script explaining his opinion quickly because it's the same opinion he's held for decades. Classic D&D didn't have skills, so the next edition of D&D shouldn't have them either. Classic D&D had slow advancement, so slow advancement is better than fast advancement. This becomes even more obvious in the videos that have very little or nothing to do with running a D&D game, such as where Prof explains why he thought Avengers: Endgame sucked, or why he thought Season 8 of Game of Thrones was 'nearly perfect'.

Some of the oddest episodes of Dungeon Craft have to do when Prof makes admissions that make him out to be, well, the D&D channel for 'that kind' of old-school gamer: the ones who can make comments to each other that they can't make in front of their wives or significant others because the latter find the comments sexist, the kind of guys you can complain to about not being able to tell a Polack joke at work, the guys who treated D&D in the 1980s and 1990s the way that guys in the 1950s and 1960s treated golf where they could build a wall between the world as it existed and the world as they wanted to believe it was (and, if we're being honest, the way that they believed it should actually be). Nowhere is this more evident than in the video where Prof starts by discussing the hot, rich girlfriend he had once who tried but never got into D&D who he just had to break up with, and which by the 3 minute mark has him "calling bullshit" on the idea that relationships are built on compromise and negotiation. (I mean, you saw this coming, right? Right there at the end of the last paragraph about how the ending of Game of Thrones was so good? You knew that's where this was going, right?)

And, of course, he's not immune to just jumping on the latest bandwagon to contribute his drone to the chorus of voices talking about things just to be talking about things. It shouldn't be surprising that Prof jumped on the bandwagon of the lawsuit brought by Hickman and Weis against Wizards of the Coast over the upcoming Dragonlance trilogy, which turned out to be a nothing-burger. Even weirder is the tag in the description of that video which says "Analysis you can't get anywhere else", even though the video doesn't contain anything that hadn't already been discussed over the three weeks between the lawsuit and Prof's video other than Prof's own opinions about it. My favorite howler that Prof makes in this video is his assertion that, because Hickman and Weis got a lawyer to file a lawsuit, that means there's definitely fire under that smoke, because "big law firms do not accept cases they don't think they can win", which both ignores the existence of SLAPP suits as well as the existence of authors who seem to take perverse glee in suing rival authors just to drive them out of the industry. He's also responded with multiple videos in response to Cody at Taking20s controversial 'illusion of choice' essay, and his response to Ginny Di's essay on making online D&D suck less didn't include any of Ginny's solid advice on making online play more compatible with an in-person mentality (recognizing interruptive behavior, or using text chat to maintain side-conversations that would otherwise not be distracting in person), but instead gave these recommendations to players:

Keep your camera turned on

Mute yourself when not talking

Don't distract yourself with technology during the game

Nothing specific on recognizing how online play differs from tabletop play and suggesting ways to bring those two styles closer together, just commands because he's the DM and he says so. Or, in other words, low-effort, opinion-based content.

Nerd Immersion

Nerd Immersion, a channel by Ted that started in May of 2014 and has amassed over 70 thousand subscribers, starts his "channel trailer" video by leafing through a book, then looking up and saying, "Oh, hello" as if he'd just noticed that there was a camera on pointing at him while he's sitting in his orange-trimmed gaming chair. That, sadly, is roughly the level of thought that goes into the actual content contained on this long-tenured but seemingly still super-niche channel.

The weird thing is that at some point, it was obvious that Ted put some real effort into this channel. There are defined sections of the channel that focus on particular things, avoiding the Dungeon Craft problem of 'what topic is our channel about this week?' On Tuesdays, Ted posts a top-10 list. Ted comes up with an idea for a series, like 'Fixing 5E' or 'Reviewing Unearthed Arcana', posts regular articles until he's said what he means to say, then ends the series. (There hasn't been a new Fixing 5E video in roughly a year, meaning that Ted isn't wasting his own time and that of the viewer continually beating horses he's long since killed.) And he comes up with some great ideas for series, such as his series reviewing products on the DMs Guild; that particular series comes out somewhat irregluarly, but not so irregularly that you think he may have stopped doing the series without telling you.

Nerd Immersion's big problem can be summed up by simply looking at the list of videos on his channel and noticing that when he puts his own face on the thumbnail of the video, the startling frequency with which he's shrugging or has a puzzled face or just seems to be presenting himself as if he's not sure what's happening in his own video. I mean, I get it -- that's his image, the personality he wants to present to his audience. He doesn't have all the answers (a refreshing change from Dungeon Craft, honestly), but has some things to share if you're interested, so go ahead and take a peek. But then you take a look at those different sections we spoke about earlier and see that the 'Fixing' series all have the word Fixing at the top of the screen, the Nerd Immersion logo in the top left, two images underneath the text, one on the right side of the page and one on the left, separated right down the middle, and they all have Fix-It Felix on the far right. The Top 10 videos always have Top 10 at the top of the thumbnail. The Unearthed Arcana reviews all have 'Unearthed Arcana' at the top, then 'Review' in an odd off-set to the right beneath 'Unearthed Arcana'.

In other words, Ted has a formula, and he's damn well going to follow it.

Now it's not a bad thing to have a workflow -- if you're going to be cranking out videos at the volume that Ted does (not to mention the others on this list), you'd better have some kind of process for making the video, getting the thumbnail on it, etc.; otherwise each new video is a horrible nightmare of effort as you re-invent the wheel for every project. Nobody wants to do that, and the results would likely be unwatchable. Having a process is a good thing. But the Dungeon Dudes clearly also have a process -- they've put out at least two videos a week for three and a half years, so they damn well have a process or they wouldn't have been able to get out that much content. Looking at their channel, though, shows you that while they have a brand, and one that's evolving over time to boot, they're not just making the same video over and over again, or at least you wouldn't think that from looking at the thumbnails.

Ted's most interesting videos are where he's interviewing another person or even just having another person in the video, because having another person around clearly takes him at least a bit outside his rigid formulaic comfort zone. The problem is that those videos are few and far between -- the review of the infernal tiefling is about eight months separated from his interview with Celeste Conowitch about her Venture Maidens campaign guide. Also interesting are his unboxing videos, because Ted clearly likes minis and takes some degree of joy in cracking open and looking at new minis. His unboxing videos aren't as irregular as his interview videos, but they are fairly recent, with the first appearing just a few months ago, so it's still not clear if this is going to be a new regular part of the channel, or just another series that goes until he says what he wants to say about minis and then stops.

Most of the stuff on the site, though, is just, well, stuff, cranked out on a formula and thrown out into the digital void with the same soft-spoken volume regardless of whether it's major news or a press release. As an example, while pretty much everybody had an opinion on the Dragonlance lawsuit, Ted covered when the suit was announced, when it was dismissed by Weis and Hickman, when the actual trilogy that was the subject of the novels was announced, and the official release date of the first book in the new trilogy. When it came time to get ready to announce the newest campaign book, Ted was on the job, posting a video preparing for the announcement, another video later the same day when his original prediction of a Feywild adventure book seemed to be contradicted by other rumors that the book would be a Ravenloft book, then posted yet another video when the actual book was leaked on Amazon at 11:24pm later that same day confirming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, posted the video discussing the official announcement of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft the next day, and then the day after that followed up with more details on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft revealed in Dragon+. That's five videos in three days, for a grand total of just over 100 thousand views combined. The intention seems like Ted wants to be the CNN of the D&D news scene, but with those kind of distribution numbers, the result is more like your local home town's shopping circular that occasionally also features stories about the latest project to fix the potholes on Main Street. Just like nobody's doing 24/7 news coverage of your local town council, nobody is (or probably should strive to) doing 24/7 coverage of the gaming industry and Wizards of the Coast. At some point it just becomes running a script, pressing a button to upload the next video, because it's news, and while you don't have to think about news to quite the same degree you have to think about more opinion-based topics, once you stop thinking about the process and what it is you're making, all you have left is executing the formula, over and over again, and both the input and the output becomes repetitive.

Repetitive videos, in repetitive formats, with repetitive text, to keep the monster fed for another day. I can admire the effort that goes into it, but the overwhelming presence of the formula involved in cranking out this content keeps me from feeling that it's worth engaging with. It's low-effort, because the effort has been meticulously removed from the process.

I could go on, but I think I'll stop here. There's not really any constructive criticism I could provide to these channels because, as I hope I've pointed out, it seems like low-effort content is pretty much the only thing these channels have to offer or in truth can offer, and anything that might cause their owners to re-consider their channels to improve their content would almost certainly lead to a very different if not wholly different channel. With things being as they are online, there's no guarantee that any new, higher-effort channel would be any more successful than the old low-effort one (remember the RavenloftTravelAgent channel with absolutely miniscule numbers; effort doesn't automatically equate with success). I can't even claim that being low-effort channels necessarily makes these channels bad (despite what I said in the intro); after all, they all have at least some good ideas, especially Nerd Immersion, and they each have subscribers and a following. I guess this is just my way of putting some small amount of effort into explaining why I don't feel like doing more to help these channels succeed, because I'd rather put my support toward channels making higher-quality, higher-effort content, especially because its not the content itself, but people engaging with that content that really drives a channel's success.

[yvvaine]

ASOIAF hot takes ?

I’m not in the best mood right now as I have been working on an essay on the legality of war crimes all week (which is very uplifting in case you were wondering), but that kinda means I want to take out my frustration on something SO LETS JUMP IN:

1) Not much of a hot take but Dany is going be a villain, loves. Don’t misunderstand me: NOT. CRAZY. Nor will to be a sudden, last-minute twist either, looking at you Dumb & Dumber. She’ll be fully in control of her actions, impulsive with violence like she has a long habit of being, and it will end up having dire consequences that solidify her tyrannical tendencies. She’ll hurt and kill a lot more innocent people (more than she has has already….which is still more than a lot of people are comfortably admitting). And it will only become more apparent as the books continue. As the GRRM approved Meereenese Knot Essays basically stated: the dream sequence in the last novel was ultimately a turning point for Dany toward an even darker path where she embraces the family motto to a draconian degree. 

2) It’s worth saying just for the record that I love Daenerys’ idealism and her crusade for a more just, equitable world (how much you think that crusade is actually for personal gain, survival, and/or ambition under the general guise of righteousness is on you though), but it ended up being pointless and ill-executed.

2B) On that point, I’m vehemently against those who counter any criticism of her crusade, specifically how she handled the crucifixion of all men wearing togas (which were a symbol of wealth, not just of owning slaves) over the age of 14, as being “pro-slavery” when that’s usually far, far from reality. I’d argue that though she tried to make the situation better, which is again admirable, she eventually becomes a glorified slaver herself, literally. “Mysa is a master”. Think about it, I mean at first she “liberates” cities based upon opportunity, and impulse, and what they can offer her, at that moment. But it’s a short term power/resource grab, and all she ends up doing is creating a bigger mess for the mostly-innocent people that live there, sentencing them to lives in horrid conditions like hunger, death, violence, and poverty. In Meereen she uses the people that she liberates (and its not like these “ex”-slaves had better options other than to follow her, or families elsewhere, etc. … plus to them she’s this albino goddess come out of ashes to save them who has these magical, thought-to-be-extinct dragons; it seems reasonable she’d amass a following on that alone) as her unpaid labor force in various inhumane conditions. Then the city becomes so mismanaged, chaotic, and violent because she is so inept at actually, ya know, ruling, that she allows said people to sell themselves BACK into slavery, SO LONG AS SHE GETS A 10% CUT…. sort of like A SLAVER. I just don’t think the metaphorical America in GRRM’s Afghanistan, considering how anti-war he is in real life, and how disastrous he’s said that that expression of imperialism actually was, is going to end up being the good, ethical guy you want in charge by the end of his novel allegorizing the triumphs and pitfalls of power. His whole point is that good intentions don’t guarantee good actions or good outcomes, however honorable that they might be. Short term decisions are just that; short term. 

3) Sansa is not like Lysa in any way besides their casual connections to Littlefinger (of totally different natures) and their red fucking hair. I see a lot of gifsets or meta —usually by extreme Arya stans (which to be fair: you do you! I’m not about to sit here and tell anyone how much they should or shouldn’t love a particular character; the whole point of literature is that its entirely subjective and based off of emotional connection) — that states to some degree or another Arya = Lyanna and Sansa = Lysa when like….. no. I agree its very apparent that Arya shares a lot of personality and appearance-related attributes with her paternal Aunt, but that does not foil to her sister and other Aunt. If anything Arya has a stronger Lysa-connection with the whole “jealous of the more beautiful and dutiful red-haired older sister” thing. But that’s a silly and superficial parallel at best, just like claiming a connection to Lysa/Sansa because of shared geography and a “Tully look”. Moreover, on the Tully note, there’s nowhere that it says Sansa and Lysa look alike the same way the text explicitly says Arya and Lyanna do. They just both have red hair and blue eyes. That fact alone is not enough to constitute a parallel; in the books their face shape, eye color, physical figures, and other attributes like cheekbones are described totally different. Even the color of their red hair is described in different shades. 

4) People need to stop discounting Sansa’s connections to Lyanna. Yes, they are not alike in looks or personality the way that Arya and Lyanna are, but their stories align very closely in many ways that Arya and Lyanna’s do not. Both were Northern princess with broken betrothals to “Baratheons”. Both were debatably romantically involved with Crown Princes. Both were given tourney roses. Both “kept/imprisoned” in the South. Both’s strengths were underestimated because of their beauty (Porcelain, Ivory, Steal, vs. You saw her beauty, but not the iron underneath). Their siblings went to war for them (and independence too) and their fathers and brothers were executed in the south, on the King’s orders. Both have strong song motifs, rose motifs, etc. And they share a lot of literary quotes besides their famous beauty v. metal parallel (i.e. “like a ghost, dead before her time” is repeated once in regards to Lyanna, and once again by Sansa, no other times). Just…. stop discounting them. 

5) Arya’s story is not one of duty and ladyship, stop trying to fit her into that mold. She doesn’t want to be the wife, mother, or queen. In her own words: “Thats not me, that’s Sansa”. She’s finding herself and trying to survive while being true to who she is at the same —  that’s her journey of personal growth. To accept her rebellious nature, her untamed wildness, her adventurous spirit and know it doesn’t make her a freak or bad at being a woman. While I know a lot of people might hope that the end of her journey is like, “I’ll be a queen of the people sitting at my desk doing paperwork and running a castle and kingdom and all that it involves”, but I would be sorely disappointed if that’s her endgame, the woman they’ve been trying to mold her into since the beginning. I can understand why: she understands the common folk and their needs, wants, and humanity, in ways that no other contender for queen does. Daenerys has always been a degree removed from the people, even when she wast technically supposed to be a part of them re: her marriage to Khal Drogo, and she has become further and further removed from the people she rules over ever since. Margaery doesn’t truly, truly care about them, but rather sees them and their love as a source of popularity/power. Cersei is Cersei. Sansa bought into the role of the “high dignified lady” and the class system that unwittingly upholds the duty she’d been taught to model, and though she is learning that its a load of crap - especially as the “bastard” Alayne - and has always been very, very kind throughout her imprisonment in Kingslanding to dealing Sweetrobin in the Eryie, she still has a long way to go before she is truly a lady of the people, (which i think is the crux of Sansa’s journey).

I think I’ll stop there - thats enough ranting for one day! It did make me feel a little bit better though, I have to say! Thank you for the ask dear

Xx 

[alywats]

My Definitive Ranking of Taylor Swift Albums

Did anyone ask for this? Nope! But here we are anyways. This is my definitive ranking of Taylor Swift’s eight studio albums. I am using the basic album release for each one (not Deluxe or Platinum editions) and I am not including any live albums or special releases, just the basic eight albums. I did do a full re-listen of her discography, in order, and took my notes as I listened. I based my rankings on my personal taste! But I also tried to include enough of an explanation with tangible evidence for each one so that you can understand my thought process, and for some more context I will say this: Taylor Swift holds a lot of nostalgia for me, and thus nostalgia for some of her earlier stuff factors in. My music taste has also evolved a lot since I first listened to and enjoyed Taylor Swift, thus my current tastes play a big role in this ranking. I do not listen to any other country music, and I don’t listen to a whole lot of pop either. But I regard Taylor Swift as an incredible musician and lyricist who has consistently put out very influential and emotional music, which I can definitely appreciate. I also think that almost every single one of her albums has caught me at the exact right time in my life, where I can fully appreciate and be receptive to what she is trying to do. So, without further ado:

1. Red

This album is honestly God tier because it is so emotional and nostalgic and lyrically beautiful. Taylor’s vocals in this album convey just as much emotion as her lyrics, meaning that we get to hear her really go for it with her vocals in a way that we don’t hear in any other album. This was the first album that successfully bridged out of country and into pop, I think, and the direction she went in was bordering on pop rock which I of course love. She goes hard with the heartbreak angst, which was so relatable to every teen who listened to it (ahem, me), and backs it up with ELECTRIC GUITARS which was her best move to date. This album was released in 2012, when she was (feelin) age 22 and Taylor wrote 8 of the 16 songs, she focused on more mature themes than her previous albums, but stayed true to her teen demographic. 

Best song: All Too Well, it is simply the most emotional and cathartic Taylor Swift song to date, and her vocals go so hard on it *chef’s kiss*

2. folklore

I truly think this is her best work as a whole, the only reason Red takes number one is for a few true stand out songs that outshine this album as a whole. The lyrics in this album are so beautiful and poignet, you can tell that she was trying to match the honest and stripped down tone of the instrumentals. She did write almost all of these songs with a co-writer, the song my tears ricochet is the only one she wrote solo, but again this is some of her most lyrically strong work so do what works, girl! There are much more indie pop rock vibes, a departure from her electronic pop style that defined her previous three albums, and this is exactly the direction I wanted Swift to go in. We also have EXPLICIT tags on a few of the songs in this album, a first for Swift. This really highlights the more exposed and, again, honest nature that this album is trying to take.

Best song: the 1, or maybe exile I honestly like a lot of the songs and I haven’t had enough time to choose a definitive best song for this one!

3. 1989

This album was Swift’s first true departure from her country-pop sound into electronic mainstream pop. Released in 2014, 1989 was an album about self discovery that was also showcasing the self discovery sonically. She really starts to allow edgy Taylor Swift to come forward (see: Blank Space).  I think this is such a distinct and cohesive album sound, which means that any song on that album brings me back to my 2014, to the end of high school and my own self discovery. I think that’s why this album ranks so high for me, because like I mentioned it came at me at a time when I was so receptive to an album of self discovery and coming into “a new era” of life. My obvious criticism is that it is very synth heavy which is not really my vibe these days, but it works so well as a pop album as a whole. 

Best song: Wildest Dreams because it is just the right amount of edgy Taylor while still having beautiful lyrics.

4. Speak Now

This is the only album that Swift has written completely herself, and the lyrics really shine. I mean, in kind of a cute teen way, but still it is impressive as she was basically a teen herself when this album was written and released. This album has so much nostalgia for my own innocent days, but my main criticism is that it is so teen, PG, innocent that it’s a little bit hard for it to come with me into adulthood. It does try to tackle a few mature themes which is more than some of the previous albums can claim! The song Better Than Revenge alludes to SEX, for the first time I think? My biggest praise for the album is that she can really write about heartbreak angst, like honestly she could put some emo bands to shame. 

Best song: Back To December as it is the most emotional and lyrically strong song on the album which is what I value most in her writing.

5. Fearless

Taylor Swift’s second album, released in 2008, is still heavily country, but is starting to dabble into mainstream pop. It again has a lot of teen themes, You Belong With Me is a prime example, but as Taylor was 18 when this album was released I think that is to be expected. This album is musically and lyrically better than her debut, but her best is definitely yet to come! 

Best song: Fifteen, as it embodies the “teen theme” but in a way that ages well as you grow up and relisten. Listening back on this song I had a completely different take-away… that fifteen-year-olds don’t know anything! Whereas at fifteen I listened to the song as I was experiencing the things in the song and relating so hard to them.

6. Lover

This album marks Swift’s return from the reputation era, where Taylor was a bad bitch who… rapped? And the return to wholesome pop is WELCOME! It is still very synth and electronic heavy pop, but the lyricism also returns, and in my book that is the biggest win of the album. The album sounds very samey or maybe vague to me, but it is definitely listenable. The biggest flop? That the Panic! at the Disco crossover song was the lamest worst song on the album.. Yikes! 

Best song: Lover, as it is a good solid sappy beautiful love song. But honestly, there weren’t any true standouts and I thought most of the songs were equally mediocre.

7. Taylor Swift

Swift’s first and eponymous album was pure country and pure teen energy. It is hard to listen to it as an adult and not feel big high school innocent vibes, but she was 16 when she wrote it! Nothing is lyrically genius, but there are some solid tunes. There is some good teen angst and emotion in there, but some of the songs are also pretty happy go lucky. It’s just fine. 

Best song: Should’ve Said No which honestly ages well and doesn’t feel explicitly teen. And it goes pretty hard for little 16 year old Taylor.

8. reputation

So that brings us to the bottom of the list, and the only Taylor Swift album I genuinely dislike. The 2017 era of Taylor Swift was the peak of mainstream pop Taylor, with so much hip hop bad bitch energy that any attempt at beautiful lyricism got lost in a rap. She was trying to be so edgy and get away from her innocent and clean public image, but she admits that this character was not authentic, and I think that comes through in the music. This was trying to be the culmination of all the self discovery in 1989, but as it was more a commentary on celebrity and fame, it was not as relatable. 

Best song: New Year’s Day, it is so reminiscent of the Taylor that I love and goes completely against the rest of the album’s rapping and electronic synth vibes. Don’t tell me the old Taylor is dead, girl, she is right here!

[possiblyimbiassed]

What happened to Sherlock? Part VIII - The Sign of the Hetero Norm (1)

Why does Mary Morstan play such a prominent role in BBC Sherlock? 

I’m surely not the only one asking myself this; while she’s barely mentioned in canon after marrying Watson, she’s all over the place from TEH and onwards in Mofftiss’ adaptation. And when I recently read this excellent fic by @discordantwords, a couple of things dawned on me, that I think have been brewing in my mind for quite some time. Which brings me to the long promised continuation of my marathon meta series about what I think we’re actually seeing in this show. Because the entire point of Mary Morstan seems to be to prevent Sherlock and John from getting together in a romantic relationship - a story of hetero norm. This eighth installment will explore the ‘case’ of little Rosie, and the role she and her mother plays in this show. 

This far I’ve published an intro and seven installments, each with corresponding attempts to test my hypotheses:

Introduction - The game is on (explains the method of analysis) Part I - Blog vs TV-show Part II - Re-living memories Part III - Drugs and weirdness Part IV – Heartbreak and coma (1) Part IV – Heartbreak and coma (2) Part V – Bizarre scenarios Part VI - Live and let die (1) Part VI - Live and let die (2)

Part VII - The Importance of Being Earnest (1) 

Part VII - The Importance of Being Earnest (2)

This installment will also be parted in two, and the second half can be found here (X). Many of the screen caps from BBC Sherlock in this meta are from Kissthemgoodbye.net - thanks! And thanks also to Ariane DeVere for the incredibly useful transcripts!

My next hypotheses is, in and off itself, a clear and straightforward prediction that can be explicitly verified or falsified once we finally get to S5, so it will be extra fun to see what happens with it in future: 

Hypothesis #8: John is not the father of Mary’s baby

(Disclaimer: My suspicion here only concerns John’s biological offspring. It would still be possible that John, and perhaps also Sherlock, might father the child - if it exists - by adoption. It does not exclude a metaphorical reading where the baby represents, for example, Sherlock’s and John’s relationship. I also want to stress that this hypothesis is an attempt at logical reasoning based on observations in the show and in ACD canon; it’s not meant to be ‘gossipy’ and has nothing to do with whether I would actually like to see this happen or not - that’s a whole other story. ;) )  

This hypothesis has been brewing in my mind for quite some time now, but I don’t think it’s just a hunch; there are actually a series of reasons that have made me come to this conclusion. 

(Continued under the cut)

But first of all: can we debunk my hypothesis at this stage in the story, by testing it ‘scientifically’? Well, not really, since the show doesn’t provide any reliable evidence that confirms John as Rosie’s biological father. Not even IRL would this have been possible without a DNA-test (or without physical circumstances that would have made any other option impossible). And the only thing that the show tells us about human DNA-tests is that not even this procedure is 100% reliable, as shown in ASIB:

JOHN: You were dead on a slab. It was definitely you. IRENE: DNA-tests are only as good as the records you keep. JOHN: And I bet you know the record-keeper. IRENE: I know what he likes, and I needed to disappear.

DNA is brought up in TGG (Ian Monkford’s blood) and again in TST (the identification of Charlie Wellsborough’s body), but since John’s fatherhood is never questioned in the show, little Rosie is never tested, as far as we know. The remaining evidence that speaks for John being the father is circumstantial: that John and Mary obviously must have been living together at the approximate time of conception. And that they both act as if they’re both Rosie’s parents.

So I guess that in order to get any further with this, I’ll have to start at the other end, analysing the characters and see if I can find evidence that support my hypothesis - on a textual level as well as metaphorically and on the meta level. 

Mary’s function in the story

I think we can safely say that Mary is the most controversial character of BBC Sherlock. Some viewers love her, others hate her, but I can’t recall anyone claiming to feel indifferent towards her. Mofftiss have indeed managed to push forward a character who is hardly even visible in canon, once she’s married to Watson. In BBC Sherlock, however, Mary totally dominates the show from HLV and onwards. Her appearances may have been increasing in numbers and length already from her introduction in TEH. But from the point where John wakes up in HLV, there isn’t a single case where she’s not somehow involved. Up until TFP, everything is about ’Mary’. And even then, once we might have believed we’d got rid of the ghost of this hijacking protagonist, she comes back, only to once again take over the narrative with a weird and basically inexplicable voiceover. She seems like some kind of obsession; a brain ghost stuck on someone’s mind.

This is rather different from ACD canon, where Mary Morstan has extremely few lines as soon as she’s no longer a client, but Watson’s wife. Personally I find it hard to see the lovable aspect of this character in BBC Sherlock, since she constantly shifts appearance, behaviour and motivation; it’s almost impossible to pin down who she actually is. Which makes me convinced that Mary is not meant to be a real, believable character that we can relate to as such - at least not all the time. And maybe that goes for canon as well.

But what then is the purpose of her, what’s Mary’s actual function in the narrative, looking at the subtext? I think there’s basically three of them, and by no means mutually exclusive:

1. Mary is a metaphor for heteronormativity and its power over people when they internalise it

2. Mary is a façade or ‘beard’, where a straight marriage is established to cover up a story of a gay relationship

3. Mary is a mirror for Sherlock; by substituting himself with a female spouse for John, Sherlock can be with John ‘by proxy’, trying to figure out John without having to face his own real problem: reveal his emotions and risk failure.

As soon as Mary firmly puts her foot in the show, it all becomes a spectacle, a demonstration of how to keep up a straight facade at any cost. After TSoT, no-one ever assumes John and Sherlock are a romantic couple; Mary is the ultimate ’proof’ that John is indeed straight. Which is of course illogical, because why would a bi person stop being it because they married someone, no matter of which sex? Mary admits it herself by telling Sherlock that ”neither of us was the first, you know”. And Sherlock complains that John is dancing around Sholto ”like a puppet” even after the wedding ceremony. But in all the episodes after TSoT, John is happily freed from people’s assumptions regarding his sexual orientation. Gone are all the gay jokes, and John Watson is miraculously ‘cured’. 

I think this is perfectly illustrated in the fic by @discordantwords​ that I mentioned above. The plot follows logically on TFP, as things would be if everything we’ve seen from HLV and onwards is actually meant to be ‘true’. Mary is now dead and John lives alone with little Rosie. For a case, in order to get close to the suspects, Sherlock is planning to fake his own wedding with Janine Hawkins, and John is feeling jealous and excluded – especially when he finds out that one of the murders that Sherlock is investigating had involved a wedding of a gay couple:

"Why all of this, then?" he asked. He tipped his head towards the kitchen, where Janine was fiddling with the kettle. "I could have just—wouldn't it have been easier for us to just—?"

"You're not gay," Sherlock said.

"Well," John paused. "No." He cleared his throat, looked back at the wall. "But everyone already thinks we're a couple. Wouldn't be that much of a stretch, really. For a case."

"No one has thought that for quite some time."

This fanfic rings perfectly true to me, considering S4 on the surface level; John and Sherlock appearing as a couple wouldn’t work after John’s own wedding in TSoT. Because gone is now every allusion to John being anything else than straight. Gone is also John’s admiration for Sherlock; from HLV and on, he hardly ever even speaks about Sherlock in a positive way. (Which also makes me wonder: was ‘The Fall’ also about Sherlock feeling he had fallen from John’s pedestal of admiration?). For the rest of the show, it’s only Sherlock whom we see suffering from (presumably) gay pining. It’s only in Sherlock’s Victorian imagination that Moriarty tells them to ’elope’ together, while John in TLD is shown to be exclusively fixed on his dead wife. 

On the surface, Sherlock seems to support John’s relationship with Mary, while I’m sure he is actually suffering deeply. But I think, metaphorically, that Sherlock is acting like some kind of self-sacrificing Christ figure. (Don’t forget Irene’s words from ASiB: “I think you’re damaged, delusional and believe in a higher power. In your case, it’s yourself”). He bears the ‘cross’ of torture by seeing John with someone else, until he can’t stand it any more and trashes himself on drugs. This is what we see at the beginning of TEH, John holding hands with a woman in front of Sherlock’s grave:

Why can’t we see Mary’s face already here? I think it’s because this is from Sherlock’s POV; he’s either seeing or imagining them from behind. She might have a hidden face but a familiar shape because by the time Sherlock is recalling this, he already knows what Mary looks like. But at this point in time, maybe he didn’t? In any case, it must be devastating for Sherlock to see or imagine John with someone else, when he should be there to mourn him, Sherlock. 

Thinking about John with Mary, Sherlock can’t even sleep. He is tortured on a cross and dies for all our ’sins’, doesn’t he? On the meta level Sherlock Holmes sacrifices his life, he extinguishes his true self, in the name of heteronormativity. So that John can have his straight marriage, even if it’s dysfunctional. But our worst ’sin’ as an audience, I believe - our ultimate mistake - is to buy into this narrative without questioning it. That’s literally letting the hetero norm rule.

King David the Adulterer

Mary’s ex-boyfriend David is introduced in TSoT, but after this episode he never shows up again. But this seems very random to me; why is David even there, and why is he depicted as some kind of rival to John? What is his narrative purpose? David is often blurred out in the scenes, but he is definitely present during the whole wedding reception, where his role is to be an usher (showing people their places/seats). David gives the impression to be single, since he attends Mary’s wedding without any partner as company.

Sherlock, who meets David alone at 221B during the wedding planning, deduces that he still seems to have an intimate relationship with Mary. Only recently I discovered this meta from 2014 called The Baby Problem by @abitnotgood​, which brings up pretty much exactly the same suspicions I have had for quite some time now. The main points are the following:

Mary was dating David for 2 of the totally 5 years she had been undercover with the false name Mary.

They’re still close enough friends for David to attend the wedding, which might indicate their breakup was unwanted from one or both parts.

Mary’s reactions during the wedding reception indicates that she still cares for David.

Sherlock finds out that David has “offered to be her shoulder to cry on no less than three occasions.” 

David sits at the same table as most other major characters, which indicates that he’s important.

David doesn’t look particularly happy while toasting for the bride and groom.

To these I could also add that Sherlock gets so suspicious about David that he threatens him with keeping a close eye on his whereabouts with Mary. From a story telling POV, when a character is suspected by the main character who is a genius detective, there should actually be some reason for this - shouldn’t it?

So who is David? Does he appear anywhere in canon? I actually think he does. In ACD’s short story The Crooked Man (CROO), the name David plays a symbolical role. The story is about a (supposed) murder of a middle-aged military officer, colonel James Barclay. It’s a classical Sherlock Holmes mystery with a door locked from the inside and the key missing. The death seems to originate from a domestic quarrel between the colonel and his wife. (Which is particularly interesting considering the Watsons’ ‘domestic’ in HLV). 

Turns out the colonel died of fright when he saw his old rival Henry Wood, whom he had betrayed in the war and deliberately left to be captured by the enemy. Henry was repeatedly tortured and crippled and held prisoner for many years, until he could escape back to London and a coincidence brought his old love interest in his way, who was now married to the colonel. (Hmm... tortured by the enemy. Been away. Love interest married. Does this seem like anyone we know? ;) ). Henry was “the crooked man” of the story, who was bereft of his loved one because of James. 

But the name David was mystically uttered by Colonel Barclay’s wife while quarreling with her husband - why? Holmes claimed it was a biblical reference to the drama of king David, Batsheba and Uriah. King David committed adultery with the beautiful Bathsheba, who was married to his soldier Uriah. Bathsheba got pregnant after sleeping with David, while Uriah was out fighting a war. David tried to cover up that fact by sending Uriah home, but Uriah refused to leave his comrades. Then David betrayed his rival Uriah the same way James betrayed Henry: by deliberately leaving him exposed to the enemy. The only difference was that Uriah died on the battlefield, while Henry was caught and crippled. Which leads us almost inevitably to Captain John Watson - he is a soldier who was crippled by the enemy too, wasn’t he? ;)

What about Rosie?

Although Mary is dominating the show from TEH and forwards, John’s and Mary’s daughter - little Rosie - is subjected to the opposite treatment; she has very little screen time, and we never learn about a single character trait of hers. In ACD canon the Watsons never had a child, as far as I know. And – even in Victorian times – I believe it would have seemed strange with the Doctor spending so much of his free time (besides work) together with Holmes, obviously neglecting his family duties. So since Mofftiss have introduced a totally new ingredient to their adaptation - a time-consuming baby - one would think this has to have a clear purpose, right? I would have expected Rosie to play a part of her own, someone the audience could relate to just like the other characters, if only still a baby. 

But instead, Rosie is seen most of all as an obstacle. Mary is balancing her while discussing a case with Sherlock. Rosie is handed over to John like a sack of potatoes when the family goes on to solve a case with Sherlock; she doesn’t make a sound and we don’t even see her little face. We see John change Rosie’s diaper once (basically to show that he has a toy daisy behind his ear, which is apparently a good flirting device), and then we see Sherlock trying to babysit her at 221B, getting hit in the eye by her toy. We also hear her cry in the background once, and see Molly hold her once. And that’s about it. 

When Sherlock texts them from the London Aquarium at the end of TST, Mary and John debate which of them is going to have to stay with the baby, but finally both of them show up at the Aquarium – without Rosie. And this happens not long after Mary has taken a ‘little trip’ around Eurasia ending up in Morocco and John and Sherlock going after her – little Rosie staying at home. Which means weeks without any of her parents. If S4 were real, I’d feel truly sorry for little Rosie.

In TLD, Rosie is more absent than her dead mother! While Mary haunts the episode, all we hear about the baby is John’s tremendous guilt for neglecting and abandoning her (which he manages to do completely). John does seem to have enough spare time and energy to go on another case with Sherlock, though, in the middle of his therapy session. At the end of TLD, all is supposedly fine again with Rosie (until John gets shot with a tranquiliser), but we never get to see it. But then in TFP John goes on a long journey with Sherlock to a far away island, and not a word about Rosie. She’s not even present when John receives Mary’s DVD at home. At the end she’s suddenly there again, though, without any comment. 

Based on this, it doesn’t seem farfetched to ask if this little character is even supposed to be real. There’s a subtle hint in TLD which could point in this skeptic direction: 

Sherlock: “And, of course, I hadn’t really anticipated that I’d hallucinated meeting his daughter.” “Still a bit troubled by the daughter. Did seem very real, and she gave me information I couldn’t have acquired elsewhere.” 

John: “But she wasn’t ever here?”

An earlier quote from TGG could also question John’s fatherhood: ”Of course he’s not the boy’s father - look at the turnups on his jeans!” (Sherlock while watching telly with John in TGG, right after the fourth ‘pip’).

And - of course - if S4 is all imaginary, only happening in Sherlock’s head, Rosie would probably not even have been born yet. 

There are also some more subtle hints about Rosie’s narrative function: John’s guilt about cheating on Mary in TLD is connected to the baby. John specifically mentions that he was “cheating” on Mary while she was taking care of Rosie: JOHN (to Ghost!Mary): “We texted constantly. You wanna know when? Every time you left the room, that’s when.  When you were feeding our daughter; when you were stopping her from crying – that’s when.” This does make the (otherwise rather exaggerated) texting affair sound a bit more damning for John, doesn’t it? ;)  If this is all taking place inside Sherlock’s head, it might rather reflect one of Sherlock’s (possibly) major excuses to himself for not confessing his true feelings to John; it might (once the baby is born) disrupt a whole family and affect an innocent little child.

John and Mary’s relationship

The other day I took to re-watch this little piece of extra material from S4: statements by Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington about John’s and Mary’s relationship (X). Every time I see this video I’m just laughing so hard. Please don’t miss how Martin is struggling to keep a straight face without smiling, after claiming “they’ve been through stuff already in S3 that would test any couple.” (Yep. Like the discovery that Mary is actually a contract killer who shot his best friend and hasn’t even revealed her real name to John). Or how Amanda avoids looking at the camera when she’s lying talking about Mary’s feelings towards John, closing her eyes and shaking her head. Great acting! :)

I mean, this cannot even be intended to fool anyone; I think this is meant to signal to the audience that the marriage we’re seeing is a dishonest, superficial construction made up of empty words. It’s very similar to the scene in HLV where Sherlock tells John about his ‘relationship’ with Janine. Platitudes like “we’re in a good place” are not only included, but also called out in the very same dialogue. John: “You got that from a book!”  Sherlock: “Everyone got that from a book!”. In the video clip, overly sweet violin music is playing when Martin and Amanda talk about their characters’ supposed deep love for each other, but this is mixed up with sitcom-like scenes where this love is made very hard to believe in, like Mary about to give birth in the car and roaring to her husband to pull over, or John telling Mary that he simply intends to forget about a recent past where she very nearly murdered his best friend.  

John’s marriage actually seems terrible from start; he can’t even keep himself off Sherlock’s blog comments during his own honeymoon. Which I believe is canon consistent; in ACD’s stories Mary Morstan even encourages Watson to never leave Holmes’ side. And the bad marriage is also confirmed in HLV by Wiggins’ and Sherlock’s deductions about John’s cycling to work and keeping his shirts ‘folded and ready to leave’ at any moment.

But what’s Mary’s position in this? Let’s say, as a mental experiment, that she knows from start about John’s feelings for Sherlock. Why would she want to be together with, and even go on to marry, a man who is obviously in love with someone else? Well, while I don’t buy the facade-climbing Ninja!Mary who tries to kill Sherlock in HLV, she could still be dishonest in her approach to John. She could still be on some sort of mission related to Sherlock, where her role simply is to get in between John and Sherlock, while she actually is together with someone else (and even carrying that someone’s child). Her aim could be to hurt Sherlock as much as possible, for a specific reason. 

As far as I see in TEH, Mary seems suspiciously eager to befriend Sherlock. Instead of behaving like one would expect from someone in love who just got their special moment ruined by a rival; with anger or at least annoyance, and of course supporting the beloved - Mary immediately sides with Sherlock.

And she seems to side with him most of all on an intellectual level, taking part in his explanations of how he managed to fake his death.

“Oh, he would have needed a confidant...”

So - what can we deduce about Mary?

If everything we see in the show after TSoT only has happened inside Sherlock’s head (as I’ve tried to make a case for in this meta series), from this follows logically that in Sherlock’s ‘reality’, there is no Assasin!Mary, no SecretAgent!Mary, no Martyr!Mary and - of course - no Ghost!Mary. Because up until the wedding, Mary seemed to be just an ordinary woman. The character’s appearance from HLV and onwards would all be fabrications of Sherlock’s drug-influenced mind, albeit loaded with a lot of metaphorical meaning from his subconscious. 

But Mary still seems to exist on some level, doesn’t she? She is referred to by John on his blog, talked about by other people on the blog (including Sherlock), and she even makes comments on it on no less than ten occasions. On the blog, John is clear about getting married to Mary. And after Sherlock’s final blog post ‘The Sign of Three’, it also gets obvious that Mary is now pregnant. 

And – most importantly – if S4 is all-fake, this also means that in Sherlock’s ‘reality’, Mary’s drama-loaded death in TST never happened. Mary is still alive! So if Mary is a ‘façade’, a ‘beard’ and/or a mirror for Sherlock on a meta- and sub-textual level, who is she on the textual level? Well, I think there are some clues in the show, and also a lot of subtext material in ACD canon to draw from, which might have been developed into actual story line in the show.  

And this will bring us to the second half of this meta, which you can find here (X).

Tagging some people who might be interested: @raggedyblue​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @sarahthecoat​ @gosherlocked​ @loveismyrevolution​ @sagestreet​​ @tjlcisthenewsexy​​ @elldotsee​​ @88thparallel​​ @devoursjohnlock​​ @sherlock-overflow-error​​ @yeah-oh-shit​