#OBERON. arc i

[randomstranger27]

I think I’m starting to understand why everyone wants to wife him.

[faereun]

THE FEYWILD. ( arc. i, pre - baldur's gate )

you're still a young'un when your mother becomes cold. she stays locked up in her temple for days at a time, drowning herself in worship and prayer. your father is oft away at war, but he still is more present than she. he visits you and your sister whenever he can, ruffling your spring - soft hair and kissing your forehead, bringing you all manner of toys and trinkets. you and your elder sister find solace in one another; she comforts you when your mother leaves her temple to find you playing house instead of studying scripture, her cold hands   a  cruel  sting   across the pink of your summer - warm cheeks. you take the blame for her when your mother finds tomes of worship for a goddess other than her own, that which she believes to be the only true god. heretic, she cries, when you can take the fall for your sister no longer. heretic and dissenter, she calls your most beloved friend, as her hand cracks down like thunder 'pon her trembling visage. she's your older sister, but in the wake of your mother's booming rage and unkind hands, she's never looked smaller. if the nightsinger is the path to your salvation, you wonder, why is it the moonmaiden's magic that salves the stinging wounds left by your mother's rings?

still, you are nothing if not a diligent child. you keep your head down, lest provoked otherwise  —  you find that you cannot keep quiet when your mother's fury is directed at your sister, your dearest efru; your protector and closest companion. you practice your archery, ready yourself to heed   the  nightsinger's  call   should it ever come. should your mother ever call upon you to   spill blood   in her lady's name. your sister and you grow distant, for a time, though not of your own volition. efru buries herself in her studies, surviving off of scraps of selunite scripture and tomes their mother thought had been lost to time, buried within the recesses of their estate's library. she only wishes for your safety  —  every time she sees you suffering at your mother's hand in place of her, another scar is carved into her soul. she cannot exist with you as her   living  voodoo  doll   any longer. especially not when her rebellion has grown tenfold; mother ripping up the floorboards of her quarters to find tome upon tome, scroll upon scroll of selunite worship. she confiscates most everything, but it's pointless, anyways. she's nearly memorized everything she's ever read, and that which she hasn't is copied down in her journals thrice over.

still. as hard as things are at home, things are … okay. your father comes home to visit more often these days, off fighting whatever stupid war your mother seems to be raging in the depths of the feywild  —  spilling blood merely for the sake of spilling blood, you're sure. his smile is warm and worn, the skin around his eyes crinkling up like crows' feet when he sees you and your sister. for an archfey, he looks so old. too old. it would seem that the feywild agrees, for one day, when he comes home  —  well, perhaps it is that he doesn't come home at all. not really. you're with your sister, head in her lap as she murmurs hymns to you under her breath, when you both hear the solemn thundering of marching boots and a moaning, melancholy tune :    a  funeral  march   . you scramble to your feet, racing through the halls and down to the dining hall, where you know you'll find what you fear most; you're sure of it, a sick, sinking feeling that eats away at your stomach. your father, laid bare before your mother, with only the barest breath of life still on his lips. she does not weep. tears are already gathering in the corners of your eyes, dropping to your knees as the truth sinks in. the air is acrid with the stench of blood , a trail of it already drying brown against the white of the marble floors. 

your father is going to die. and there is nothing you'll be able to do about it. except  —  efru pulls out her staff, the mutterings of an incantation humming to life with ancient, glowing magic. she's a naturally gifted cleric, always has been, and a sigh of relief catches in your throat when your mother hisses a counterspell under her breath, flinging efru's staff from her hands, where it clatters against stone; it is a hollow, thudding sound. you feel your heart crack like glass.   'please. mother, this is ridiculous, i can save him—'   she begs, but to no avail. your mother spits at her, gathering your father up in her arms.   'silence. your craven, tainted magic will not touch him. not so long as i live and breath, and am the sole lady of this house,'   she hisses, every word dripping with venom. like efru is nothing but a gnat to be swatted from her line of sight, a spider to be crushed underneath the heel of her boot. efru moves to reach for her staff, hands trembling with desperation, but a booming wave of thunder knocks her prone, the carved willow rolling well out of reach. you feel it in the marrow of your bones when his heart stops beating. a gut - wrenching cry tears through your chest, ripping out from your throat and past bleeding lips, ones you'd been gnawing at so fervently you hadn't even noticed when you'd broken skin. 

slowly, verdant green curls are awash with an aching azure storm, streaks of white tickling the nape of your neck where sage flesh has gone death - blue, the freckles adorning your cheeks like speckles of moss suddenly blindingly white, like specks of snow across the bridge of your nose. it feels as though your heart has frozen over, succumbed to the harshest feywild winter you've ever known. you don't think you'll ever smile again.

[minsarasarahair]

I kinda get it now why Ashiya Douman is hated by FGO players. He's an annoying boss. The stack of debuff he keep giving you is extremely irritating. I used one leyline stone because I don't want to fight him again lol Take note I don't have Caster Artoria so I'm just using my friend's to survive.

[kotaerukoto]

Just a few of the April Fools artwork!

[qqchurch]

farming hands with arcuied only to remember that i’m still koyanskaya-less ✊😔

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Merle Oberon (Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Pimpernel)—She was mixed race (born in India and her mother was Sri Lankan) and still managed to make it in the British and American film industries (by passing) despite a rough start in life and industry racism. She was the first Asian person to be nominated for any Academy Award (best actress in 1935)! She also survived a car accident in 1937 and kept on acting until 1973, despite potentially career-ending facial scars. Also, she met her third husband while they were filming a movie together in 1973 (her last movie and she still looks great!). They fell in love and got married in 1975 when she was 62 and he was 36. She died 4 years later in 1979. Iconic.

Jean Seberg (Breathless, Saint Joan)— Some of us watched À bout de souffle as a lil French undergrad and had the trajectory of our lives changed by Jean Seberg. She IS French new wave!! She is the moment!! She sadly had to work with a lot of shitty directors in her career but even so, she has this magnetic energy whenever she’s on screen. In her personal life, she was also very supportive of civil rights causes, and was even targeted/harassed by the FBI for financially supporting the Black Panther Party.

This is round 3 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Merle Oberon:

Beautiful. Talented. Biracial. Also please refer to the following promo from the aforementioned A Night To Remember, in which she plays the writer George Sand:

Her performances always give off this perfect blend of of being composed, refined, and aloof while still being deeply passionate and I eat it up every time.

Linked gifset

A rare example of a WOC working in lead roles in this era (mostly because she worked very hard to pass as white and had to hide her south asian heritage sadly). She has this very regal vibe but also a simmering intensity—even holding her own as Cathy opposite Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff.

I need all the gothic fans to STAND UP for our cathy!!

She has such a unique face when it comes to old hollywood actresses - a lot of them start to melt together in my brain - but Merle has always stood out to me<3

Jean Seberg:

anyone who plays Joan of Arc is kind of hot by default tbh

she's gorgeous, she's cool, she has the original blond pixie cut

She donated a lot of her money to civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the black panther party as well as Native American school groups, as a result of this the fbi ran a smear campaign against her and a surveillance campaign which is thought to have led to her suicide tragically.

idk if this is propaganda but the COINTELPRO and the FBI are widely blamed for her death. If the FBI was after her for supporting the Black Panther Party you know she was good

[linkspooky]

Ciel-Noel post

Revenge is bad, actually. Simple revenge in stories is boring and uninteresting and Kill Bill is a bad movie.

I dislike the idea of punitive justice in stories to begin with, at least in stories that don't look critically at it. However, I also think people often get punitive justice (a branch of moral philosophy) with the idea of narrative punishment (actions have consequences in stories). I'm not against narrative punishment at all, well-written stories should have direct consequences for all the important characters actions. If a character is a noble gas and no one reacts to their actions, then they are stagnant and unchanging. A character who is constantly reacting to other people, and provoking reactions in return, is a dynamic character.

Now that I've thoroughly buried the lead six feet under, let's get to the main event. Ciel and Noel is a tightly written tragedy in the horror genre. If you've ever watched a slasher movie before, horror operates on like, an extreme kind of narrative punishment. People always joke that if you have sex, or do drugs, or drink alcohol in a horror movie the slasher will kill you and yeah, that's basically it. Horror movies are relenting and unforgiving, you basically take one step out of line and get stabbed in the back for it. So, it's not at all surprising that in the same story where Ciel experiences a change of heart and goes from seeing Shiki not as a victim but another vampire to kill, to being willing to sacrifice everything to save him, Noel does not get saved. Doesn't that make Ciel a huge hypocrite going the extra mile to save her boyfriend, but putting a bullet in the head of the partner she's known for years to put her out of her misery? Why, yes. Yes it is. That's also the point.

Ciel (and Noel's) route in the Tsukihime remake are about two girls who are the victims of the same tragedy. One gets saved, one does not. One finds a person who will do anything to reach and redeem their humanity, the other does not. They both get worse and worse, but one is given a helping hand at their lowest point, and the other gets a bullet between the eyes. This is unfair, and cruel, and again the point. Nasu in the remake turned one of the routes with the happier ending into a bitter tragedy no matter which of the two endings you pick and it's great.

Nasu is a writer who understands the tools of storytelling and with Ciel and Noel, wrote a tightly constructed tragedy where both characters face a narrative punishment. Once again, narrative punishment means for every action the character takes in the story, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Characters don't get away scott free with anything. They reap what they sew. This gives the characters actions meaning, and feels like they are building towards an arc because there is an underlying point that the author is trying to make to us, by framing these characters actions in a certain light.

Nasu employs narrative punishment, sometimes even incredibly harsh narrative punishment (read every wrong choice in FSN where Shirou gets horribly maimed or just Shirou's life in general). However, Nasu does not believe in punitive justice. I mean, I made a joke about Oberon up above but like, Nasu literally wrote an entire FGO Lostbelt chapter showing how chaotic evil the fairies were, and then he still underlined it's wrong to punish people without a chance for redemption or atonement by making Oberon the final boss. Even Castoria who is an ultimate victim of the fairies who was locked in a barn and treated like an animal, and didn't even want to save them was still like "This is wrong, we should have given them some chance to redeem themselves."

That belief that punishment without the chance of redemption is wrong, is written into the core of Ciel and Noel's tragedy.

So anyway, let's get to the part where I start recapping the story with analysis so you guys have some frame of reference for what I'm talking about. Noel is a previous victim of Roa, a vampire that continually reincarnates by hijacking bodies. A victim of ROA slowly becomes possessed until the two personalities effectively merge, at which point Roa goes on a killing spree. This happened to Ciel in her french village, Ciel noticed intrusive thoughts of a voice in her head telling her to kill her family, kill her family, kill her family, and did her best to ignore and suppress them until she couldn't. She then tore out her parent's throats, and then went on a rampage only to be killed by arcueid a short while after. Not before killing basically everyone in the town except for Noel.

Ciel and Noel are the lone survivors of ROA's massacre, and both victims of ROA himself. Ciel and Noel are also the same person, so like, write that down. Are you taking notes? This is gonna be a long post you better be writing down bullet points. Big bullet point number one, Ciel and Noel are the same person this is going to be on the test later.

Is the massacre, and all the deaths that occurred Ciel's fault?

No, you'd think logically being possessed by someone else and only having your agency taking away from you would clear you from responsibility.

However, Ciel was taken in by the catholic church afterwards and they weren't having any of that forgiveness shit. Ciel after miraculously recovering from her death at Arcueid, no longer under Roa's possession, is killed repeatedly by the church, only to find she's immortal now. No matter how many times they try to torture her, or execute her to give her justice for the victims of the massacre it doesn't work. So, instead they eventually just recruit her to be a vampire hunter. Bla bla bla, metaphor for how punitive justice doesn't actually accomplish anything, bla bla bla, metaphor for how Ciel's way of redeeming herself by hunting down and punishing other vampires (which is also just revenge) doesn't work because there's no end to it, there's no forgiveness or absolution, it's just eternal suffering. Would a loving god who created the world and preaches about forgiveness really make a hell where all the really bad people get sent to, and never get any chance of redemption?

“A God who could make good children as easily a bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave is angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell--mouths mercy, and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!” ― Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

So, already we're touching on both justice, and also the hypocrisies of certain western religions, by Nasu demonstrating that justice without forgiveness accomplishes nothing. Ciel trying to redeem herself in the eyes of the church is truly the sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill of redemption arcs, because there's no forgiveness, only hard labor for her sins. Ciel will just keep killing vampires to atone until she dies, but she can't die, so that boulder will keep rolling up that hill.

This is the underlying point of Ciel's entire arc, Ciel does not save anybody. She kills vampires. By killing vampires she hypothetically stops them from killing future victims, but that's not saving them. One of the most poignant things I've ever read from Nasu was from UBW where Shirou says more or less if there's a bank robber holding up a bank, and a cop comes in and shoots the robber through the chest, that might save all the hostages but the bank robber didn't get saved. You might say, well obviously, you can't save everyone. It makes sense that you'd save the innocent victims first. At which point I would say yes, I know, I have in fact consulted the ancient texts, UBW is my most replayed route.

However, Ciel and Noel's conflict gets that same point across because there are no innocent victims between the two of them. Ciel and Noel are both victimized, robbed of their agency, and go on to do terrible things, but one of them is saved and one is not. Noel isn't the bank robber in that metaphor, she's the hostage who was cooperating with the bank robber because the robber had a gun to her head, who the swat team decided to snipe through the window.

Noel is introduced as an entirely new character in the remake, she is the only other survivor of the massacre. While Ciel has memories of herself committing the crimes and feels guilt for that, Noel watched everyone die and was tortured for days on end by Roa in Ciel's body for their amusement (someone who was so insignificant to them, that Noel refers to herself as just one chip in a bag of chips Roa was snacking on. That's right, Noel is a cheeto in the grand scheme of things). There is one quote I love from John Dies at the End where John talks about how they're not chess pieces, they're not pieces on the board, they're so insigificant that they're just a cheeto sitting on the outside of the board. That's Noel, she's a cheeto.

The thing is Noel seems to be somewhat narratively aware of the fact that in the grand scheme of things she is a cheeto. Noel and Ciel are both victims of the massacre turned vampires, Ciel is a vampire killing machine and Noel sucks at it. Ciel despite being some rando apparently is born with enough magic circuits to make ancient magus families jealous, and on top of that is the only one who ever survived Roa's possession (and got immortality to boot). In every generation there is a chosen one, she alone will stand against the vampires and the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer. So you've got Ciel the Vampire Slayer, and Noel who's just a cheeto. The cosmically ordained protagonist of reality, and just some guy. Noel has to basically beg and scrape to get by, no matter how hard she works she doesn't get stronger, she doesn't get any cool super powers from the night roa burned down her home town she just gets trauma. She also doesn't get a special boyfriend who will do anything to try to give her a normal life. This is illustrated in true tragic irony, by showing that Noel had a crush on a japanese foreign exchange student who's clearly meant to foil Shiki and he was basically the support she leaned on for the entirety of the tragedy, he dragged her away from danger multiple times, only to find out the reason he saved her was to use her as zombie bait so he could make his escape.

Here's where Noel starts to shine because in a typical narrative, Noel would be the more sympathetic character. People like rooting for the underdog. However, Nasu dares to be different by making Noel extremely difficult to empathize with. For one she's extremely predatory in the way she makes constant uncomfortable advances on Shiki the main character. She's also predatory in the sense she enjoys preying on things weaker than her. She says it line for line, weak people have to pick on those weaker than them. Noel goes after small fry vampires for revenge, and to vent her frustrations, however, she doesn't just kill them she rips them to pieces and tortures them in the most inhumane way possible until they're begging for death.

Why would anyone sympathize with the weak, predatory, pathetic noel who only ever makes excuses and blames others to run away from responsibility, over the stoic, strong ciel who is willing to hunt vampires forever to take responsibility for her actions.

Well here's the thing, *gestures for you to come closer, and then whispers in your ear* all the shit that Noel pulls, Ciel does that too. Ciel and Noel are either the same age, or around the same age, so if Noel is a predator for hitting on Shiki than so is Ciel. It's almost like something happened to them in their youths that stopped all their mental development rendering them both like mentally 16. Noel mercilessly slaughters vampires for revenge, and so does Ciel. She just does it offscreen. We don't know if she tortures them or anything, but remember when Ciel hunts Shiki, how she knows that Shiki is a helpless victim in all this and still goes out of her way to twist the knife, hurt him both physically and emotionally in every way possible before making the final blow.

The reason she acted that way during her and Shiki's confrontation isn't because she was stoically forcing herself to kill Shiki because that was the right thing to do, no she was projecting herself and her survivor's guilt for not killing herself before Roa went on his massacre all over Shiki. She was getting her revenge on a helpless victim because projecting on Shiki was a way for her to punish herself. Noel hates herself for being weak, Ciel hates herself for not being strong enough to slit her throat before everything happened (ergo being weak). They both deal with this self hatred by projecting that onto vampires, even vampires who were turned against their will (especially those ones tbh) and slaughtering them. They were both taken in by the church and taught to do that, so the church could get two child soldiers to send to die fighting vampreis. Ciel is Noel, and Noel is Ciel.

Not only does Noel project her past self and her weaknesses onto vampires, she projects herself onto Ciel. In that Noel really wants to be Ciel. Which is understandable, would you rather be, a girl who's only super power is... having an axe, or a girl with like seventeen million cool weapons, has more mana circuits than most mages, and is fucking immortal.

That's just the surface though, Noel is on like fifteen levels of projection with Ciel. Noel's identity is incredibly tied up in her complicated feelings towards Ciel, both because Ciel is the face of the person who committed every atrocity to Noel, but also because they are the two lone survivors of the same tragedy. Noel and Ciel both try to make themselves into tools for killing vampires to cope with their survivor's guilt, and their inability to conceive of themselves having a normal life after what they have been through. They also were both denied any chance at healing, because the church swept in and fashioned them into hunting dogs to sick on the vampires, and fight those vampires until they die. They are also both convinced that the church is right for doing this, and that deep down they either cannot have (Noel) or do not deserve (Ciel) normal lives while they both secretly pine for it anyway. Both of them are denied the chance for recovery, (because revenge does not heal), and Noel takes that one step further by deliberately driving a wedge into Ciel's recovery.

To quote you Comun, even though you're the one that sent this ask:

And Noel is a character inserted in Tsukihime to thwart Ciel's steady recovery. A constant reminder of what she lost and how the blood is in her hands. To cope with the sins Roa used her body for, Ciel chose to be the Holy Church's most professional extermination machine. Noel is the only survivor of her village because Elesia also died that night, being replaced with Ciel, who is fueled not by emotions but by a vampire kill count. And while Noel is a petty bitch at heart, she genuinely believes Ciel's post-trauma life choice and respects her capability to pull it off. There's no sabotage to their partnership not because Noel is afraid to defy someone a million times stronger than her, but because Noel wholeheartedly agrees with Ciel's choice to never recover and to pay blood for blood for the rest of her potentially eternal life. As long as Ciel stays Ciel, Noel's vengefulness is directed solely at Roa. But then Shiki enters Ciel's life bringing with him semblances of normal happiness. The murder machine began to regain emotions. And to Noel, that's a problem.

So part of this is you know, buying church propaganda. Ciel and Noel are both victims of the same church that does not heal or save people, and only doles out punishments on the guilty.

Part of this is an interesting twist that adds complexity to Noel's character, because like she could blame Ciel for the massacre like the church does, and like Ciel does herself, but as you point out Noel clearly wrestles with that. Noel feels a mix of envy for a twisted respect, one could even say love for Ciel's strength. Noel shows a much more nuanced reaction to Roa wearing Ciel's face and killing her entire family and torturing her for days on end, when she could take the church's approach, or even Ciel's approach towards Shiki. Noel even talks about at length how her and Ciel used to bond together by talking at night about how they were going to get revenge for everyone who died that day. Noel can't just see Ciel as the villain who took everything away from her, because they are the only two survivors of the massacre.

As you said there's no sabotage to their partnership, because despite Noel being the most petty bitch ever she never does anything to hurt or betray Ciel. The reason their partnership falls apart is entirely Ciel's fault. Sure, Noel was dancing on the edge of a cliff and not the most stable person to begin with, but it's Ciel's actions that push her off that cliff.

Not only does Noel drive thwart Ciel's recovery, she also makes Ciel look like a terrible person. Because, Ciel is a terrible person. In the same route where Shiki constantly lovebombs Ciel and constantly talks about all her good traits and what a hero she is, and Ciel gets several very cool action scenes making her look like a cool vampire slayer, we also witness to Noel's soul and heartcrushing downward spiral that is caused in part by Ciel kind of not really giving a shit about Noel's feelings. Noel's downfall could have been stopped at any point by Ciel simply lifting a finger, or just noticing her partner's obvious distres but instead what Ciel does is Noel completely out of the loop (like not telling Noel that she was waiting for Roa to reveal himself before attacking Shiki) .

Like, the scene where Noel turns into a vampire is directly caused by Ciel's actions. Noel reveals to Shiki that he's currently possessed by Roa. Ciel stands up for Shiki, in what we think is Ciel not wanting to believe that Shiki is possessed by Roa. However, what we learn instead is that Ciel only approached Shiki in the first place because she assumed he would be Roa's first target, and has been keeping by his side constantly waiting for Roa to appear so she can murk him.

So, all Ciel needed to do was TELL NOEL that she was playing the long game and ask Noel to wait a little longer before showing their hand, but apparently basic communication with her partner is too much effort for Ciel.

This leads into a scenario where not only does Noel think Ciel has broken their partnership (i mean she kinda has) but Ciel directly injures Noel pretty badly and leaves her alone. When Arach shows up to prey upon Noel, Noel can't even fight back by that point. Arach is the bus that hit Noel, but Ciel sure did throw Noel under that bus for no real reason.

I mean there is a story reason - it shows that Ciel may be an instrument of justice but she doesn't save people, in fact she does not give two figs about whether or not people are saved by her actions. Ciel obsessively hunting vampires, is not really that far off from Noel torturing vampires for her own sense of petty vengeance. However, Ciel hunts vampires offscreen so we as an audience don't see really the way, she treats the vampires she kills, but from the way she both foils Noel and also the sadistic way she draws out killing Shiki possessed by Roa as long as possible you can infer that she's not all too different from Noel. That's good actually, that Ciel seems like a good heroic person, but if you squint at her she's not much better than Noel, because like that's the entire point of her character the good, altruistic senpai never existed in the first place. All of Ciel's words about atonement and forgiveness are empty platitudes, just her regurgitating the words the church fed to her.

So finally to conclude, we have the culmination of the moebius strip, where Noel the apparent opposite of Ciel, slowly morphs into Ciel. Noel's flaws in a narrative sense led to her downfall, but let's be clear Noel had no fucking agency in her transformation into a vampire. She was hysterically begging for Arach not to do it. She was pinned and helpless to escape when it happened. It is Arach and Ciel's fault what happened to her.

Noel does make choices, but her choice amounts to not immediately killing herself the moment she became a vampire. She does take like 500 shots to become an ubervamp, but like, the story clearly states that once people become vampires their moralities and personalities are radically altered. So if that's a choice it's an influenced choice.

Therefore the only choice in that moment Noel is truly responsible for is not killing herself while she was still lucid. Irony upon ironies because that's exactly what she yells at vampires to do, bow down and let their heads be cut off by the executors. However, if Noel is guilty for not immediately offing herself, so is Ciel, so is Shiki. Both of these characters get saved while Noel gets old yeller'd. This is unfair and also, you guessed it, the point. Ciels revenge against vampires accomplishes nothing. Noel giving up her humanity for the shot at revenge against Ciel accomplishes nothing. It's almost like revenge doesn't heal, it just puts more pain and misery into the world. No one is saved by revenge.

Noel is fridged for Ciel's arc, and neither Ciel nor Shiki ultimately save her even though she's not all that responsible for her own downfall. This is not the narrative playing good victim and bad victim. If anything it makes Ciel look way worse as a person. The narrative even goes out of its way to say that both Ciel and Noel have a right to their revenge and in a situation like this the winner wasn't determined by who was right but who's stronger. Ciel has no moral high ground she just happens to be stronger, that's it. She doesn't take the higher road with Noel even after Shiki went to such great length to try to reach her emotionally and tell her she was still human, no Ciel makes no attempt to talk to Noel or take a third route she just murks her.

Noel is my favorite character for this route probably second favoeite overall behind Kohaku and I one hundred percent agree with fridging her, because it makes Ciel's character a hundred times better by giving her consequences for her flaws. It's one thing for Ciel to break down crying about how much she hates herself for being a cold merciless machine. It's another thing to have this demonstrated by Ciel letting her partner fall to the wayside by just not giving a shit about anyone's feelings or anything except for her personal quest against vampires.

Noel is a victim of the cycle of revenge, a pointless and harmful cycle. In a story that's thoroughly anti revenge as evidenced in the true end of hisuis route where Kohaku having achieved absolute perfect revenge and having her plan gone entirely right, takes a knife and gouges out her own heart with it. If that's not on the nose I don't know what is.

Its poignant comun that you told me that Nasu stated there's no good ending to Ciel's routes just a normal and a true because a good ending would have saved Noel. It might look like Ciel got off scott free but if you look at it, by killing Noel and denying Noel the chance at salvation Ciel damns herself too. Ciel has not escaped the cycle in the true ending, she's still hunting vampires at the behest of the church the only real change is she has a boyfriend now. I'd compare it to the ending of UBW vs Heavens Feel. In one Shirou has Rin's support but it's implied he'll eventually leave Rin anyway and become Archer, he just won't regret saving people as Archer did. He has not escaped the self destructive cycle. Whereas in Heaven's Feel, Shiro dies and is reborn and has to you know live as a person from now on.

Ciel did not end the cycle, she perpetuated it by killing Noel. You don't end the cycle of revenge with more revenge. Since Ciel did not end it she's still trapped in the cycle herself, and she still has support in the form of Shiki but the cycle will probably consume her the way it eventually consumed Shirou. She even broke out what was essentially the UBW with black keys when fighting against Vlov. It's just like that one post on Twitter said every few years or so someone reinvent the unlimited blade works!

[messier51]

Regarding your post about solar eclipses on other planets - I know other planets get solar eclipses, too, but do any other planets besides earth get total solar eclipses?

Yep! I mean, that's why I worded that post specifically that way, and included links to the wikipedia articles about solar eclipses on the gas giant planets in our solar system.

So, a total solar eclipse happens on earth because the angular size of the moon as seen from the surface of the earth is (usually) larger than the angular size of the sun, right? (We see an annular eclipse when the moon's angular size is a little smaller than the sun's, depending on the relative distances of each since orbits are elliptical and those aren't constant.)

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all quite a bit farther from the sun, so the angular size of the sun is much smaller, and have fairly large moons. All of Jupiter's galilean moons are large enough and close enough to the planet that they're large enough to fully occult (cover) the sun and therefore produce total eclipses.

Similarly on Saturn:

Seven of Saturn's satellites – Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Rhea, Dione and Titan – are large enough and near enough to eclipse or occult the Sun, or in other words to cast an umbra on Saturn. At this distance, the sun covers only about 3 arcminutes in the sky of Saturn. In comparison, the seven major moons of Saturn have angular diameters of 5–10' (Mimas), 5–9' (Enceladus), 10–15' (Tethys), 10–12' (Dione), 8–11' (Rhea), 14–15' (Titan), and 1–2' (Iapetus). Iapetus is Saturn's third largest moon, but is too far away to completely eclipse the Sun. Janus, a very close moon to Saturn, has an angular diameter of about 7', meaning that it can fully cover the Sun.

and Uranus:

Twelve satellites of Uranus—Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon—are large enough and near enough to eclipse the Sun.

and Neptune:

All of Neptune's inner moons and Triton can eclipse the Sun as seen from Neptune. All other satellites of Neptune are too small and/or too distant to produce an umbra. From this distance, the Sun's angular diameter is reduced to one and a quarter arcminutes across. Here are the angular diameters of the moons that are large enough to fully eclipse the Sun: Naiad, 7–13'; Thalassa, 8–14'; Despina, 14–22'; Galatea, 13–18'; Larissa, 10–14'; Proteus, 13–16'; Triton, 26–28'.

and also Pluto, really:

Charon has an angular diameter of 4 degrees of arc as seen from the surface of Pluto; the Sun appears much smaller, only 39 to 65 arcseconds. By comparison, the Moon as viewed from Earth has an angular diameter of only 31 minutes of arc, or just over half a degree of arc. Therefore, Charon would appear to have eight times the diameter, or 25 times the area of the Moon; this is due to Charon's proximity to Pluto rather than size, as despite having just over one-third of a Lunar radius, Earth's Moon is 20 times more distant from Earth's surface as Charon is from Pluto's. This proximity further ensures that a large proportion of Pluto's surface can experience an eclipse. Because Pluto always presents the same face towards Charon due to tidal locking, only the Charon-facing hemisphere experiences solar eclipses by Charon.

So all of these planets (modulo the lack of surfaces/living beings, but like, that's also pretty special to Earth completely separately from eclipses) experience the nighttime-like darkness caused by the umbra (shadow) of the eclipse (occultation).

Now, as a few people have pointed out in the notes, the ring of fire deal IS pretty special, which happens because the angular size of the moon and sun are often SO similar. (Maybe Iapetus is similar enough with the solar angular size sometimes depending where Saturn is in its orbit, but at a few arcminutes instead of half a degree you can imagine the effect being somewhat less amazing. Then again, I bet solar occultations by Saturn's rings are pretty amazing, so I'm not going to hold that against the planet.)

In no way do I think this makes total solar eclipses less awesome, or think that the excitement is misplaced. It's a pretty amazing special event! It's also one that won't even exist for the earth forever, since the moon moves a few centimeters away from us each year. But as an astronomer I think it's cool that there are eclipses (and occultations and transits of the sun by moons with smaller angular sizes!) on other planets too! Though, the post I made was mostly a kneejerk eyeroll complaint about a silly factual error that might just be because the OP of the post I was annoyed by was thinking about some other facet of our solar eclipses as being unique than how it was worded. Since we can't go to any other planet to watch eclipses (that would add a whole extra layer to astrotourism), our eclipses on earth are pretty special. If you ever have the opportunity to see one, I wholly recommend going! It's really amazing.

In conclusion: here's an Io solar eclipse on Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space telescope:

[Image in black and white shows Jupiter's volcanic moon Io passing above the turbulent clouds of the giant planet, on July 24, 1996. There's a large black spot on Jupiter which is Io's shadow. The smallest details visible on Io and Jupiter are about 100 miles across (about 160 kilometres). Bright patches visible on Io are regions of sulfur dioxide frost. Io is roughly the size of Earth's moon, but 2000 times farther away.]

And here's the April 8th eclipse of the sun by the moon on Earth as seen by the GOES satellite:

[A gif of the earth showing the GOES EAST view of North and South America on April 8th over the course of the total solar eclipse. A shadow of the moon passes from the left to the upper right side of the view of the earth.]

[asksythe]

(Cropped and without background art) NSFW illustration for Lies and his Wife Truth.

A scene in the present timeline. One day before the fateful reunion in Norwich.

Yay! The first successful NSFW Com for Lies!

Lies has two planned sex scenes in its draft. One in the past timeline between Oberon and Titania!Ritsuka (milestone of Oberon's character arc an his rebellion from the world, eschewing his mission to destroy the Lostbelt) and one in the present timeline between Oberon and Ritsuka (milestone of Oberon devolving and sliding back into his monstrous origin and descending into Beasthood). This is the present timeline one.

Haaaa... I am so stoked to finally get this. Maybe I shouldn't have posted even this cropped version and spoiled some details of the plot. But the alternate option of sitting mum on this piece until the story progresses to that point might be impossible for me, considering how excited I am (hahaha!). Plus my memories are just horrid these days.

[vaudevilian]

the stage is set... let us welcome... THE VAUDEVILLES !!! a writeblr intro

previously known as mouse, i have rebranded as vaudevilian (from ofgoldenfools) (and lost my previous url 😔). you can now call me seb/astian. still 19, forever african and forever queer. i use he/him pronouns.

im still currently writing a gothic horror novel, titled run rabbit run, and the wip intro for that should be soon floating around on my page. i love writing about grief, family that was once lost, and redemption arcs.

when im not writing, im usually still writing research papers for work (working with frogs atm!! and my love for animals will often pop up in my stories) or for uni (animal behaviour/zoology students rise up!!)

my wips

run rabbit run; draft one gothic horror; wip intro

charlotte oberon has a penchant for lying, and getting herself into trouble. but for once, it's not her fault. her brother lies dead, and stretched thin from holding her family together, she is naturally relieved when oliver oberon comes back from the dead. but all is not as it seems. when strange things start happening, charlie must begin to face the truth, before she drowns in her own lies, alongside those she loves. set in an oppressive autumnal heat, in the hinterlands of queensland, australia, can a family crumbling from inside out ever heal from the grief haunting them?

when siren blood runs; draft two, on hiatus fantasy

tahjuddin youssef doesn't know how to face his family. 5 years ago he ran away, seeking fame and fortune on the red sea. well. he got one of them. luckily, his family welcomes him back with open arms, and as he relearns the motion of life off of the high seas, he begins to enjoy life again. less luckily however, is the fact that there is a bounty placed on his head. and the sirens are ready to have their pound of flesh. when tahjuddin is ordered to stand trial beneath the waves, and enemies are circling, waiting for the first sign of weakness, tahjuddin must learn who his real allies are, and in doing so, heal the wound in his family's heart.

please feel free to follow along if you like what im up to, and also to reblog, so that i check out your works too :)!

[operationslipperypuppet]

the thing about fig and ankarna, that seems to go unmentioned, is that emily is never going to play straight up and down worship.

fig isn’t concerned with bringing ankarna back - that’s not her bag, it never will be, and emily is so cognizant of wanting stories to feel different (to the point where she didn’t pursue a pc romance in naddpod’s campaign one, even when she knew both in and out of character that her character’s feelings were requited, because a romance story was already being told by the third pc) that she wouldn’t want fig to tell the same story kristen did in fhsy.

i think this lack of worship is best exemplified with how emily’s other pcs deal with and have relationships to gods, but this got incredibly long so the rest is under the cut.

to briefly talk about emily pcs and religion in general, there’s never a straight worship happening. alongside saccharina’s cleric status, emily has played 2 clerics and a paladin in naddpod, as well as a druid with deep religious ties. i’m going to talk about those since i’m the most familiar with them.

i’ll actually start with saccharina, since this arguably a post about dimension 20. her cleric levels aren’t at all about worship, certainly not of the whole of the sweetening path (she was the one who wanted to kill the sugar plum fairy, and would have, but essentially let ruby), they’re about defiance. defiance of the nuns who raised and abused her. defiance of the mother who left her behind. defiance of the father who never came to find her, who never knew she existed, who pushed her mother aside to become king of candia and join the concord. the sweetening path exists as a separate entity and act of defiance to the bulbian church, the thing at the center of the existence of the concord. her use of that magic and those abilities is about controlling and directing her innate magic, embracing the storm within. it’s not about worship of an entity.

the two other clerics were tied to actual gods, the trickster and the elder, but aren’t concerned with worship in the slightest. fia’s ties to the trickster are from being a blade (organization with ties to the god to protect people from undead and solve mysteries regarding fairies and pertaining to the gods), from being saved and partially raised by a blade, from being raised in a place that was essentially a cult of the reaper (the third god, much more concerned with death than the other two) and nearly being a sacrifice to the reaper before being rescued, and from seeing trickster magic in her girlhood friend. the actual power she gets is more about the ties she has to irina, and she actually ends the campaign quite angry at the gods and fixing their mistakes. tarragon is a little different, and the most tied to an actual god of any emily pc i’ve seen. she becomes a cleric to repent for being a soldier who was experimented on and used by people in power, to make up for the killing she did in her youth, the razing she did as a dragon warrior. at the end of her arc, she isn’t as tied to the ideals of repentance and order and peace. she’s devoted herself back to her friends. and realized that she can do these things without involvement in the cult-like following the elder has in town.

the we come to calliope, the paladin. she is not sworn to a god. she’s an oath of redemption paladin of the serpent queen (and a little bit oberon if you think about it). she’s using her power and position to attempt to help redeem her mother’s memory, but also to change the path oberon set for the world. a prophecy is coming true that was set before the world got complicated. she’s less concerned with swearing herself to the powers that be and more concerned with helping the serpents themselves, making sure they are not being used by the wrong people, keeping them from harm. she’s worshipping no one. she’s helping the helpless.

then, finally, moonshine. i could write thousands of words on moonshine cybin, so i’ll stick to one or two things. her ties to melora are important to her. she does, in fact, pray to her god, especially in times when she’s feeling conflicted. but she also gets angry at melora. she hates melora’s neutrality, she yells into the sky at melora on more than one occasion, and she all but loses her faith in shadowfell. but she comes back. and when melora needs her most, she reaches out a hand to heal her, brings melora’s long lost friend in to help, and saves the world by healing the heart. she lets this god be complicated. she recognizes the human nature of her. they’re allowed to be flawed, but she’s also allowed to call it out.

fig as a paladin is no different from all these other examples. if you look closely, you can absolutely feel how fig and moonshine were created by the same person around the same time, and callie’s recentering on her paladin self happened shortly before junior year was filmed, so you can look at those things as connected. fig decided to become a paladin to help kristen, to help cassandra. not because she believes simply in the power and clarity of doubt. (the point made there by porter and zara about that not feeling like fig was fine, but that’s not how they should have said it, especially to a student who just made this choice). she’s doing this to help her friends. she took healing word so they’d go down less. she moved from whispers to lore and made it so she could do more support (counterspell, cutting words, etc). hell, her being a hexblade is so there are more people capable of melee combat.

protecting ankarna’s domain doesn’t change how fig sees herself as a paladin. it isn’t going to make her (or emily) want to move to a straight up “i pray to this god and get my spells”, cut and dry, type of paladin. she’s not going to put herself on the line and be the first follower of ankarna. but she’ll see a hurt entity for what it is, recognize the humanity of that, and do what she feels will acknowledge it.

she’s not removing the restraints placed when this god died. but she’s opening a door 1000 miles from it, for if ankarna is ever ready or able to walk through.

[acronym-chaos]

Phantom (Minecraft) Inspired ID Pack

[PT: Phantom (Minecraft) Inspired ID Pack]

[ID: A purple thin line diivder shaded at the bottom. End ID].

Names

[PT: Names].

Adrian, Aiden, Alaric, Aria, Ash, Asher, Astrid, Aurora, Bram, Calypso, Casper, Celeste, Ciaran, Corvus, Dahlia, Damien, Darius, Dorian, Echo, Eirwen, Elara, Elias, Elysia, Ember, Erebus, Faye, Felix, Fenris, Finn, Gideon, Haze, Hunter, Ingrid, Iris, Jett, Juno, Kai, Kane, Kiera, Lark, Leif, Lila, Lucian, Luna, Lyra, Magnus, Mara, Marlow, Niamh, Nyx, Oberon, Ophelia, Orion, Pandora, Persephone, Phoenix, Raine, Raven, Rook, Rowan, Ryder, Selene, Shade, Skye, Soren, Storm, Sylas, Talon, Thalassa, Thorne,, Veda, Vesper, Willow, Wraith, Xander, Zephyr, Zephyrine, Zora

Pronouns

[PT: Pronouns].

Ae / Air / Airs; Astra / Astral / Astrals; Bat / Bat / Bats; Clo / Cloud / Clouds; Dark / Dark / Darks; Dusk / Dusk / Dusks; Ethe / Ether / Ethers; Gho / Ghost / Ghosts; Gloo / Gloom / Glooms; Hau / Haunt / Haunts; Mist / Mist / Mists; Moon / Moon / Moons; Ni / Night / Nights; Noct / Noct / Nocts; Phan / Phantom / Phantoms; Shade / Shade / Shades; Shade / Shadow / Shadows; Sky / Sky / Skies; Spir / Spirit / Spirits; Star / Star / Stars; Sto / Storm / Storms; Twi / Twilight / Twilights; Veil / Veil / Veils; Wind / Wind / Winds; Wisp / Wisp / Wisps

Titles

[PT: Titles].

A Ghostly Specter, A Haunting Presence, A Nocturnal Flyer, A Silent Stalker, A Wraith of the Night, The Dark Avenger, The Dusk Dweller, The Ethereal Entity, The Ghostly Menace, The Haunting Phantom, The Moonlit Terror, The Nocturnal Menace, The Shadowy Apparition, The Skybound Haunter, The Spectral Being, The Starry Wraith, The Veil Wanderer, The Wisp of Night, [Pronoun] From the Night, [Pronoun] Who Flies in the Dark, [Pronoun] Who Haunts the Skies, [Pronoun] Who Hunts by Moonlight, [Pronoun] Who Lurks in Shadows

[ID: A purple thin line divider shaded at the bottom. End ID].

Made for @rwuffles' 700 followers event!

Day 2: least favorite video game character (sorry for all Phantom lovers out there, i dont hate it but its definitely bottom tier)

Also tagging @pronoun-arc @id-pack-archive

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

mmmmmmmmmm see I get that people have Opinions About Castoria And Her Weirdness that come from affection but I wish that they’d ease up on the comments about petplay and sex and the like bc like

She’s 16? Her whole story arc revolves around her turning 16? I’m relatively certain artoria Avalon is an adult but most people when they make jokes about wanting her to have crazy cannibal sex or tie someone up are referring to the one that was the companion in lb6, and that castoria. Was 16.

It just feels weird, especially because her reaction to, say, oberon joking about her owning ritsuka was definitely the reaction of someone who was uncomfortable and embarrassed, and not in a ‘discovering she’s into this way,’ because it’s the same expression they pull out for stuff like when she’s about to be forced in front of a bunch of high class fairies she feels like she doesn’t feel like she can stand against.

[elstreem]

(Spoilers for FGO LB6)

Something that has been bouncing around my head for a while now is how interesting it is to compare Bedivere and Oberon's actions and roles in their respective chapters.

...I'm pretty sure I can never put this neatly or concisely enough so ok rambling time!

Which means, this is a warning for a very long post. Seriously.

I have read discussion on similarities between the Faerie Knights and the Knights they were named after, as well as Morgan and Goddess Rhongomyiad, and of course the game itself compares and contrasts Artoria and Castoria. It wasn't until I read that Chapter 6 Habetrot mirrors Bedivere's journey that I realized that our cat-loving fairy is actually Bedi's counterpart in Lostbelt 6 lol, but it is obvious in retrospect (they bond closely with Mash and help her work out her issues, they're both close friends to a queen figure who they now must work against, they're carrying a secret weapon that has to be returned to someone).

So why compare and contrast Bedivere and Oberon? Because I feel like it and also I just think about Bedivere a lot :b A little disclaimer though, I don't actually have Oberon on my account so I might be off base about my understanding of his character...basically, these are just my musings!

But yeah, I think it's interesting they're very alike characters in a lot of ways: they appear to help Ritsuka and co., but secretly had their own agendas waiting to be fulfilled at the end of said chapter. They both even have important bonds to the iteration of Artoria that appeared in their chapters, and interestingly, both of them do mention outright having used Ritsuka for their own purposes and express a sentiment about being fake (Bedivere's wording is "counterfeit" while Oberon is, well, a Pretender).

At the same time, Bedivere and Oberon are very much each others' opposites, too - and I think the key difference here is Bedivere is truly himself, and Oberon...basically can't do that. "Staying true" is an impossibility for Oberon because his very existence is being something he's not.

Going scene by scene, the contrast between the two shows as early as their respective meetings with Ritsuka:

Bedivere tried to keep his distance from the Chaldea crew, even giving a false name and bluntly stating he can be considered an enemy. (key word here being "tried," he sure caved in quickly later on lol) He even says the meeting was just coincidence, and you know, in retrospect it's a crazy stroke of fortune for both Bedivere and Ritsuka to meet like this in Camelot.

By contrast, when Ritsuka finally meets Oberon face to face, he's immediately friendly and personable, even stating he's destined to help them. However, this meeting is definitely not coincidental, as Oberon has been making sure to keep Ritsuka and Castoria on a specific track of actions.

Following the story, Bedivere doesn't actually join Chaldea until he shows himself against Gawain during the night of Selection. And even then, he sort of admits it was an impulsive decision on his part -

And he even confesses to Mash that what happened afterward wasn't totally for Ritsuka's and Mash's sake, he was also just taking advantage of the Chaldea crew.

While he is a genuinely good person, it's true Bedivere had his own personal agenda throughout Chapter 6 which he kept secret until the confrontation with Goddess Rhongomyniad. It just so happened that goal aligned with what our heroes were after, too, so it all works out.

Meanwhile, Oberon does a lot of things to help Ritsuka from the get-go, and he makes plenty of suggestions as to what to do next - but as it turns out, it's all part of his plan to lay the groundwork for him to appear as Vortigern. Castoria even calls him out on this when she confronts Oberon about how he deliberately kept it secret from Ritsuka he knew where Mash was.

Speaking of which, this is another major difference between Bedivere and Oberon -

Part 1 is mostly Mash's story, and as with all of Arc 1's companions, Bedivere mostly guides her.

I know I have terrible BediGuda brainrot hours all day every day lol, but I do admit as far as the actual game goes, Bedivere is shown being very close to Mash. The film switches it up by giving the conversation before the final battle between Fujimaru and Bedivere, but in game, it's Mash who reassures Bedivere there is meaning to his journey, and it's Bedivere who tells Mash how to fully utilize Lord Camelot. Mash even reacts to the news of Bedivere being a summonable Servant by saying she has another Senpai to look up to (which, tbh I'm kinda sad the game never really followed up on, I think it would have been cute to see more of Bedi being Mash's supportive senior at the Round Table).

By contrast, Oberon very much focuses on Ritsuka, and there's a couple of scenes where he talks extensively with Ritsuka about personal matters.

It goes both ways in Lostbelt 6 really, if you think about it, Oberon goes out of his way to have Ritsuka tell him about the Lostbelt and how they've felt so far, but in turn, Ritsuka actually does learn enough about Oberon to be suspicious of him at various story beats. (Although, one thing I'm not completely sure of is, does the Oberon who appear in the Garden of Lost Will the actual Oberon or is it just a representation of Ritsuka's doubts?)

In any case, while they have a different focus in relationships, Bedivere is still clearly shown caring for Ritsuka as Chapter 6 goes on, and at the very end, when he comes clean of everything, he does so with an apology.

So while Bedivere hid a secret all this time, his end goal worked well with Chaldea's goal of eliminating the Singularity, so no harm was ultimately done by his keeping his secret, even if his aberrant action was the root cause for Goddess Rhongomyniad being who she is.

And by contrast, Oberon does address Ritsuka and Castoria's anxieties, and makes sure they are doing what needs to be done, but while doing so he is also making sure he can be Vortigern again. Needless to say, his end goal of destroying the world is something Chaldea needed to stop. Though, my understanding of Oberon is, he does care for Ritsuka and Castoria, but his way of affection and concern is all twisted up because of who he is, so he can't really be honest with them even if he wanted to, because admitting it would turn it into another lie.

Their relationships to the Artoria they knew are also interesting to look at, because both Bedivere and Oberon in part made them who they are. Bedivere meant well when he didn't return the sword, only to find it led to Artoria turning into the Lion King, and he sought her for a long time to fix his mistake. Even then, when they met again, she didn't recognize him until he could reveal Excalibur for what it really was. And before that, Bedivere knew Artoria as a king to be looked up to - he loved her and served under her, so while there are strong emotions of respect and concern, it's still a formal sort of relationship, the king and the knight. Meanwhile, Oberon practically raised Castoria while he could. The way they interact is very much devoid of formalities, since they argue and fight a lot, but deep down they understood each other for what they were.

There's probably also something to be said about how both characters did find closure at the end of their journeys, but while Bedivere got it after fulfilling his goal despite all the hardship, Oberon got it even after he was thwarted at the very end.

I think I can put a few more comparisons in but I'm gonna be repeating my points and just stating what's already in the dialogues.

So to sum them up - one is a horrible liar and the other is a natural liar :b

Sorry, I just had to put in how terrible Bedi is at lying, it's pretty funny.

Gosh, I don't even know how to tl;dr this, it's so scattered and long. I think it took me over two hours to write this and this probably still reads more like ramblings...and man, I hate having to look for screenshots only to find I'm missing the one I'm thinking of and I don't want to be bothered to re-check the game :')

But yeah. Anyway. Bug boy got them issues, while Bedi resolved most of his (good for him).

[xxcrossroadsxx]

Hi it's me again, the Spriggan fangirl™️ ! Do you happen to know if he has made any recent appearances in the manga so far and where can I possibly read it? 👀

Hello! If I'm not mistaken, he hasn't appeared in the new arc yet (didn't see him with Titania and Oberon in ch. 98), but he consistently appears in the afterword of the volumes, in Silky's Diary.

Since the fan translator stepped down due the simulpub, we only have the english translation by the new publisher Comic Growl, but the chapters have a time limit. However, if you miss them, a member of the TAMB subreddit is archiving the new chapters. You can check it here.

On the other hand, you can read the official english version by Seven Seas Entertainment on Bato.to. It's up to Volume 19, so you can read the extra stuff there. SSE version of Vol. 20 will be released on March 11th, so we will have to wait a bit for it to be uploaded.

[teapartypenguin]

Luna's deck sucks, here's how to fix it

So I've got a lot to say about Ruka/Luna and her role in the story, mostly how I think it could have been better. But I'll start with the first way that the writers fail Luna: her deck.

If you play the TCG, you may already know that Luna is one of the few main cast duelists that never got an archetype associated with her. By this point in the franchise, every character has their own archetype or two associated with them, yet Luna doesn't use any archetype specific cards (unless you count Kuribon). She has a loose fairy forest type theme that is a mix of plants, fairies, and beasts. This isn't too out of the ordinary for characters, Akiza also had no real archetype during the series (just a lot of plant/rose themed cards), but she and most others in that state got some sort of archetype retroactively made around their deck (in Akiza's case, the Rose Dragons). Luna has not received any support.

Luna's ace monster is Ancient Fairy Dragon, who in the series, she had a strong connection to. And despite being the weakest attack wise of the Signer dragons, AFD's effect gave her the strongest counter against the Earthbound Gods in the first arc (which is why she had to get written out for most of it). In fact, this effect would be so strong that AFD would get banned irl for several years until the card got an errata. And possibly because of this, AFD is still the ONLY Signer dragon to never get an upgraded form.

Now let's talk about Luna's duel against Professor Frank. This is Luna's first showing as a duelist especially after being hyped up as a former dueling prodigy. Even with the very loose deck, there is a bit of a strategy there. Luna use Ancient Forest to attempt to lock her opponent out of attacking, then uses life point gain and loss effects to slowly burn her opponent. Eventually the duel ends in a draw with Luna using Oberon's Prank in combo with Kuribon's LP gain effect. And that is the end of the ONLY solo duel Luna gets in the series.

Looking back on this duel after having finally played Yugioh, I had the sudden realization that Oberon's Prank was an anime only card with an awful effect made just so Luna could force a draw. Oberon's Prank is a trap card that makes it so that any LP gain effects used on your opponent are negated, and both players take damage equal to the LP that would have been gained. The closest equivalent to Oberon's Prank irl is Bad Reaction to Simochi, which only inflicts damage to the opponent. Simochi was also used by Luna in the World Championship games and is probably the intended way to use Kuribon's LP gain effect. So the only reason I can think for why they would write the duel in this way would be because they really wanted Luna to tie/lose. In a narrative sense, I get wanting to show that Luna is kind and would rather force a draw than let her opponent get eaten by a dragon. But also, she wasn't going to win the duel at that point, let her run Simochi and get a win. Or make it look like there was a choice in the matter.

(IMO, if the dragon wants to eat the creepy psychologist, soup's on.)

So if I were to fix Luna's deck, the first thing is giving her a Naturia/Vernusylph deck.

Naturia is a Synchro and Fusion focused deck that is composed of Earth attribute monsters with the goal of controlling the opponent's movements. A couple of the Naturia cards would have already been made by the time of 5Ds. Naturia works for Luna for a couple reasons; the control style is a good contrast to Leo's combo focused deck, they're a bunch of cute critters that fit the fairy forest theme Luna was going for, and the archetype's story itself is also related to the Naturia protecting their home forest (as Luna does for the card spirit world).

Their boss monster is also named Leo and I just think that's funny.

Maybe the writers did consider Naturia and decided against it for whatever reasons (didn't want another majority plant player after Akiza, knew Luna would be too much of a menace with Naturia Beast, wanted to save the cards for the Duel Terminal arcade game, etc.).

Supporting the deck further would be the Vernusylph archetype, which are a small archetype of Earth fairy monsters that offer support to other Earth monsters. They're a relatively new archetype so some effects may be a little strong for 5Ds era (especially Vera). But they fit into Naturia well and would have really solidified the fairy forest theme. Also them being Earth support in general means that they can support Powertool Dragon and many of Leo's Morphtronics in tag duels (also a couple of Team 5Ds use Earth monsters so it would make Luna fit well into a lot of tag duels). And despite being a Light attribute, AFD fits into the deck.

And another monster I think would fit would be Circle of the Fairies (also a relatively new card). This one throws off the Earth attribute focus a bit, but offers support for plants and insect types. Also more burn and LP gain effects for Luna. And it and the other Circular monsters keep up the fae theme being based around fairy circles.

That's my opinion on what Luna should play. It's not too late for Luna to get an associated archetype, there's a couple of characters who get different archetypes in later games, like Tea playing Witchcrafter in Duel Links and Blair getting Lightsworn in Tag Force. Or Ishizu who's deck retrains created one of the most powerful decks in history. AFD is also long overdue for an upgrade/support after being off the banlist for a couple years now. And so Konami should make Luna's deck absolutely broken as an apology.