#So similar both in stories‚ influences‚ relations and personality in some ways. So similar in movements in the end

[artist-extraordinaire28]

OMG I DIDNT KNOW THOSE ONES

I knew more little things like:

1) The irony in making gawin Knuckles since both are related to some green thing, Gawain and the Green Knight and Knuckles with his green master emerald

2) In the opening clip of Satbk, at the end of it, you see ravens, which is hilarious considering the actual legend of: if the ravens leave the tower, the kingdom will fall(not exactly arthurian legned related but still cool)

3) Amy being Nimue is a stroke of genius considering that in Sa2, it was ultimately what Amy said that made Shadow save the world and, in some stories, the Lady of the Lake raised Lancelot. So, in a way, she influenced him in both cases.

4) Galahad being Silver is a good fit cuz, in some stories, he's Lancelot's son. So, Galahad's technically a character that comes in the future......and Silvers from the future.

5) Blaze being Percival's a good idea, cuz yeah she was originally the person who went for the Holy Grail, but when they replaced it with Galahad, Percival was still a close companion of his on that quest and Blaze is a close companion of Silver.

6) just smthn i noticed(not arthurian legend related), Caliburn upside down looks like eggman. I dunno whether they did that on purpose but its funny.

7) Sonic pulling out Caliburn and not excalibur from the stone is actually accurate because King arthur first took out a different sword from the stone to become king, then when that sword broke, the Lady of the Lake gave him Excalibur and in the game, it was only after Caliburn broke that Sonic was able to summon Excalibur.

8) Before it was Gawain and Lancelot whose rift caused the fall of Camelot, it was Arthur and Lancelot, which is hilarious since they are Sonic and Shadow.

9) The design for Merlina in the final boss fight is kinda ironic since, in the beginning, in some myths, Merlin was shown to be some kind of devil or demon since he was this all knowing magical being. That may also be why they gave her elf ears and stuff. In the beginning, the myths found unique ways to show that Merlin wasn't human.

10) the part when Gawain tries to chop his own head off after failing in defeat Sonic is similar to the story of Gawain and the Green Knight in which he was set to get his head chopped off but wasn't because he was so chivalrous. In Sonic, his chivalry made him try to chop his own head off.

Wow, this became long

Sorry for the rambling, BUT SERIOUSLY

THIS 👏 GAME 👏 ROCKS 👏

My current sonic hyperfixation 🤝 my obsession with aruthurian legends

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No joke tho i always found it so funny that everyone's treating my guy like some total rookie when it comes to knightly stuff when he has saved the world more times than they can count

Also

SATBK DID SUCH A GOOD JOB AT INTEGRATING ARTHURIAN LEGENDS INTO THE STORY

Like OMG

Since im obsessed with the myths, I was like screaming at every moment when they referenced smthn

[galpalaven]

Felassan - Inquisition Companion + Romance Option

I blacked out after work and wrote this in a daze. Enjoy?

Felassan presents himself as a Dalish dreamer mage and friend of Solas, joining up with Solas from the very beginning after the Conclave. 

He is romanceable by any gender or race, unlike Solas who is still race-locked (but bisexual — because the main gripe between the two is the topic of modern elves and anyone else being “real”). I think it would be interesting to also have specific dialogue if you try to romance both at once — Felassan would urge Lavellan to be careful with Solas either way, though it turns more clearly yearning and sad if the player has also triggered the beginnings of his romance.

Since Felassan’s addition to the group would be an extra mage, I think to balance all that out Cullen should be able to be taken at least on some outings, and we could have an extra rogue as well (Harding would fit here, I think).

more under the cut

Personality

As a friend of Solas and his direct counter, it’s immediately noticeable that Felassan is much more friendly and playful. Notably, he enjoys chatting up a Dalish inquisitor about being Dalish, and answers questions companions have about the elves with far more enthusiasm than Solas. If the two are in the party together, he will actively tell people not to listen to Solas and poke fun at him for being rude. 

He gets along well with all of the other companions. Some who get along less well with Solas will comment on how they don’t know how he’s still friends with him when they are not in the party together. He gets along especially well with Sera, showing interest in her upbringing without making her feel condescended to the way Solas does. He particularly enjoys hearing about the Red Jennies and her efforts at helping to even the playing field for the underprivileged.

He gets along with Vivienne as well — I think it would be interesting for Vivienne to be vaguely familiar with him after he had been friends with Briala. I think it’s not a terrible idea for him to have still been involved there, too, as it could come in handy during Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts.

Story Influence

The main differences with Felassan’s presence would likely come into play mostly with things to do with the elves.

Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts

Felassan is one of the most useful companions in this quest. Knowing Briala personally makes it easier for the Inquisitor to convince Briala to either:

Get back together with Celene

Become the puppet behind Gaspard

Felassan knows his way partially around the palace and is able to direct the party slightly when looking for things needed to advance the quest. He is also friends with some of the servants, allowing them access to some of the servants’ tunnels in a pinch.

He makes cheeky, sarcastic comments about the nobility when asked. He’s better at not speaking about his past, so he doesn’t get shifty during the quest like Solas does. He’s happy to dance with the Inquisitor, enjoying the scandal it will cause, with maybe a special line with a Dalish Inquisitor. Rather than single them out and make them “special” compared to other Inquisitors, it’s mostly just on principle of relating to them as another elf, similar to dialogue that can be triggered with Bull about being Qunari (or Tal-Vashoth, in that case).

What Pride Had Wrought

Welcome Felassan as the 3rd option for the Well of Sorrows!

This is where he becomes a real player on the table. He will argue with Morrigan about the Dalish, correcting her outright in places. They never gave the Dalish Inquisitor a real chance to argue with her about things, or explain things themselves, so he has snarky commentary either correcting her or being surprised when she gets things somewhat right. There are also scenes where he will take up the explanation entirely.

Felassan being present also will give the player the correct answer to the rituals. He knows them, explains offhandedly that he’s been here before as an excuse, and makes it far easier for the player to ally with the Sentinels rather than fight them.

By the time they reach the Well, things are tense. 

Solas still fights with Morrigan and the Inquisitor both. If the Inquisitor brought him and Felassan both, he will immediately reject the idea when Felassan offers himself as an option. 

Romanced!Felassan wants to do this for you — he knows what will happen, he knows the weight of this decision, and he doesn’t want this for you. He will elaborate if asked that drinking from this well will bind you, not only to the memories within, but the will of Mythal. The Inquisitor can, at this point, shrug this off if they don’t believe in Mythal or that she is still alive to control them. If the Inquisitor still chooses to drink themself, he accepts this, but tells them that he will help them with any… side effects, should they arise.

Unromanced + High Approval!Felassan will say something similar — you are his friend and he wishes to keep you safe. He will elaborate similarly if asked with high approval.

Low Approval!Felassan offers himself as a Dalish authority, perhaps derisively suggesting that he is older and wiser than a Dalish inquisitor, and that this is his responsibility, not theirs.

Either way, Solas is NOT happy, but will ultimately accept the final decision.

Trespasser

We come upon the eve of the Betrayal of Felassan.

At low approval, Felassan will have left some time in between the end of the main story and Trespasser, seeking to follow in Solas’s footsteps and find him. Despite not having high approval, Felassan is still fundamentally opposed to Solas’s decision, and will be trying to track him down alone to stop him — something Solas has been running to avoid at every turn. He does not want to see Felassan — he does not want to kill his best friend.

High approval and/or romanced Felassan is present and there to help the whole way through. 

Romanced Felassan particularly will have a scene where he will quietly pull his love aside and ask if they trust him. If they say yes (or “You’re scaring me.”), he will tell them that this will sound crazy, but ask them to listen until the end before saying anything else. He will explain the story of the Dread Wolf as he knows it — the rebellion, the Evanuris, the vallaslin, all of it — and then, at the end, explain that he knows this because he lived it. He tells the story of the slow arrow and the Dread Wolf (a Dalish inquisitor can recognize it midway and will interrupt with surprise) and explains that he was there. That he has known Solas for thousands of years, that he has walked this land for thousands of years.

He will also explain that he knows what Solas wants and that he must stop him — that they must stop him. Solas wants to fix what he thinks he broke, but the people alive today do not deserve the fate he would have of them.

And Felassan is willing to do whatever it takes to stop him.

High approval Felassan will explain in much less detail via commentary while discovering the murals in the Crossroads, leading up to eventually finding Solas.

Once Solas has been found, Felassan runs ahead of the group, disregarding calls for him to stop. The Inquisitor is left one man down as they chase after him until, finally, they reach the place where Solas waits — and they find Felassan in Solas’s arms, a knife through his ribs.

Felassan will be stabbed by Solas regardless of Felassan’s approval with the Inquisitor. However, depending on choices made during either Solas or Felassans personal quests, and maybe Solas’s level of approval with the Inquisitor, Felassan can die.

The Inquisitor who loves him or is his friend will rush forward as Solas stumbles back, catching Felassan and holding their hand over the wound, careful not to move the dagger. Between the blood and the Inquisitor’s mark consuming their other arm, they are a sad sight.

Solas apologizes, but states that it was necessary. He would only get in the way. The questioning continues as normal here, up to Solas taking the Anchor.

Romance

I’m not entirely sure how this would go yet. I think he’s playful and flirtatious if the Inquisitor starts it. He will throw out Dalish phrases sometimes “for privacy,” with a Dalish inquisitor, which comes with a very obvious, if not always visible, wink. 

His quests do focus around his identity as an elf, and around preserving elven history, whether the Inquisitor is Dalish or not. While this kind of happens with Solas, a lot of his dialogue is about how wrong the Dalish are — Felassan provides a different, more loving perspective on the modern elves compared to the ancients.

I think a love triangle route between him and Solas would be SO juicy. He wants his friend to be happy, but he knows that Solas does not believe that the elves are full people, and is concerned for the Inquisitor because of this. I think even if the Inquisitor locks in Solas, if the flirts were triggered with Felassan, you CAN actually come back to his romance after Solas dumps you (which, especially if they let him remove the tattoos, can hurt both you and him). I think it unlocking a special scene where he says that yes, he knew what they were and yes, he chose to keep his because he wanted them, would be sweet (and relatable if you chose to kEEP the vallaslin).

Overall, I think his romance would be sweet and fun. A direct counter to Solas and Sera, two elves who hate other elves. Felassan is proud of being an elf, he is proud of the resiliency of both the Dalish and city elves. He’s interested in every part of the world, including the dwarves, Qunari, and humans.

It's been a very long time since I played DAI so please forgive any inconsistencies. I just needed to write something down after work lol. tagging people who showed interest earlier! @lammstrellicon @swoleas @isayashai @witchofthewakingsea @ash-soka

[fragmentedblade]

It's as if they're saying... "Why... why did you and Imbibitor Lunae commit such an unforgivable sin?"

I know that you have no interest in my answer.

...which is why I asked the question as you looked me straight in the eye. I've asked myself that same question infinite times... but was never able to find the answer...

Why... why is it that only the abominations can return time and time again...?

Why does someone like her have to be buried, burned to ash, and eventually forgotten...? Why!?

This play on questions that await no answer, yet are in their way a response to what was asked, is so good

[wszczebrzyszynie]

i’ve been reading through the space miner au posts and the rancher essay just sent me over the moon (haha). i MUST know more about imp and skizz when you have the time thank you <3

Unseparable since childhood, they know each other better than anyone. Both went into space mining (which is how they met Tango) very early in their life, probably as teenagers, which would make them basically veterans now, and therefore very experienced in all things mining related. After their last mine and base collapsed, leaving Impulse without an arm, they both left and settled for something different; not entirely sure what they do now, other than harboring a wanted terrorist every now and then, but its something radio and communication related. Quite a jump from their last job, but after the collapse space mining left them with less than positive feelings

(More more or less related things to explain some things below, so that it wont be a giant wall of text on the dash. Fixed because tumblr ruined formatting)

i feel like this is a good moment to mention a bit more about what space mining even is, other than being just... mining in space. there are a few different layers to space mining as a profession, depending on the ore and place (its stability, temperature and everything else needed to be taken into account with human workers); it doesnt really target asteroids (which is why i dont call it asteroid mining), only planets and moons. Despite being assumed to be a more presigious job, it really isnt, at least most of the time; Jimmys experience, for example, is very much comparable to mining on earth, and payed as such. Impulse and Skizz, on the other hand, got to do the cool sci fi idea of space mining, much more dangerous (in places that arent in any way friendly to humans that the miners cant really leave easily before the end of their work season, i guess. not sure how to call it), but also more fun, as it includes the use of mobile suits. This is how sculk is mined, as it tends to exist in places humans shouldve never been in.

(Jimmy also has a mobile suit license, as it just... comes with doing that job, but never had to use one on any of the mining sites. When i talk mobile suits think less Eva and more... chunky and grey. something like the demi series from gwitch. I wanted to include mechs because i like mechs 👍 and i think using giant robots for mining is really cool)

the idea itself is not based on any real-ish possibilities or whatever of asteroid mining; i would much rather it be read in a way youd read a space sci fi from the space race era. specifically from the side of the eastern bloc... its where the retro part of retrofuturistic comes in this au. If i had to introduce the world more, id say that space colonisation started more than century and a half ago (for the time of the au, that is) and durning space race itself. Even though the cold war has been over way before all characters were even born, there still is a clear space divide influenced by it; not all places are avilable for everyone with a spaceship, but it slowly starts opening up and mixing with itself. It very much goes into alternative history but its not the focus of the au so ill just leave it at that. Bit of a worldbuilding thing. I say all that because i find the idea of what esentially is space juma (travelling to germany from poland specifically to steal and traffic small high value items and also cars durning the 80s and 90s and still today sometimes) and all things similar stupidly fun. Thats why Tango has to hotwire his spaceship. Theres a chance im the only person who likes this kind of story atmosphere and its ok its my au. Sorry for going off topic from the ask it just kind of happened. Bless

[zahri-melitor]

So I've read the opening story of Tim Drake: Robin.

The opening issue is solid, highlighting a lot of Meghan Fitzmartin's skills as a writer. She picked up threads neatly from her earlier stories, showed her hand to the audience, and did do a fair amount of subtle character work. If I'd picked it up with no background knowledge of the fandom conversation about the title, I'd have been very excited for where it was going.

I liked the links back to how part of what prompted Tim to move out was Bruce being fussy over Tim having been shot in the throat in Batman #125. That felt realistic and a nice little link between titles.

As far as a story goes: I didn't mind it. Parts of it were very obvious, especially when you clued into the themes - if I'd actually been reading it as it came out and had a month between issues for things to soak in, I probably would have been tapping my toes over the reveal of who Moriarty was disguised as.

I would like to specifically dunk on both Meghan Fitzmartin and Moriarty for the detective novel writer selections, because...hmm. Kinda misogynistic there. Fitzmartin uses 6 writers for this, and 6 specific stories/franchises:-

Edgar Allen Poe – Murders in the Rue Morgue

Mark Twain – The Stolen White Elephant

Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes

Raymond Chandler - Goldfish

James Gelsey – Scooby Doo

Wilkie Collins – The Moonstone

What do you notice about this list, that I immediately noticed? They're all men. Who is an immediate name that comes to mind, who even had public domain stories as of 2022, who probably should be on a list like that and who also has incredible influence over the direction of the genre? Oh, I don't know, maybe Agatha Christie? (Also Dorothy L. Sayers is also right there and available, but skipping Christie?)

And once she'd built up this "it's all the detective stories" premise, Fitzmartin then went for a book code (cool!) from non-existent books (not cool). If you've just spent all this time glorying in how this is all related to Specific Classic Detective Stories, why not...use a real book code and refer to their actual stories? You've already done it for the plots! Commit to the bit!

Also I spent a good chunk of issue #4 staring at the page going "Carol Donovan? You mean Deb Donovan's judge daughter who recently appeared in Mariko Tamaki's 'Tec run? Tim, how are you missing something this straightforward? Also she's dead?" and then it never came to anything. Maybe do a quick check if anyone else has been using the name you just invented for the story.

"I even tried making a new costume for myself. It doesn't fit." - I did find it interesting that Fitzmartin was once again playing with the "is it time to move on" themes for Tim that were popping up around here in various conversations. Especially given she had Tim and Dick relitigate their conversation from Urban Legends #10 and similar themes in DC:YJ. It does suggest to me that she was working her way around to getting Tim into a new identity, but cancellation has once again left that in the 'not happening' basket.

In terms of the art: Riley Rossmo was the wrong pick for the title, but I do see the thought process that led into him getting the nod for the opening story, given the whole claymation villain set. It was very 2D animation style. I don't mind Rossmo (and interestingly he's developing a whole line up of detective stories he's done art for, given he's also had a Martian Manhunter book and got Wesley Dodds, he did one of the Batman/The Shadow crossovers...) but his highly malleable art style loses a lot of background detail or makes what is there harder to parse.

I did very much appreciate the way Rossmo drew Tim's detective work, though. I liked the technique for highlighting details and clues, and it actually very much reminded me of how some computer games present clues (including how it's done in Gotham Knights, in fact).

I know everyone has said this, but Bernard needs to develop a personality AND to commit to whether or not he knows Tim is Robin. Because sort of hinting that he knows, while Tim worries about hiding things from him, but not actually confirming either way is only really acceptable if you actually do build up to a big reveal moment where the whole drama has been paid off.

I did appreciate that MegFitz had clearly taken feedback and returned one of Bernard's two pre-existing personality traits (conspiracy theorist who thinks the Bats are urban legend cryptids), because one of the weaknesses of using Bernard, a side character with 6 preboot appearances, is that at lot of his existing personality was sketched in. He was a conspiracy theorist, and he desperately wanted to be popular but wasn't, so he presented himself as having a Cool Guy's Personality (see: 'your step-mom is hot'). Now, Meghan Fitzmartin wants us to read into that second trait as a facade that Bernard was putting up to deal with the fact he was gay and hiding it, probably even from himself, at the time. Which, fine, it's a perfectly reasonable reading of Bernard (and to her credit, MegFitz has Bernard spell it out a little on page in TD:R), but the problem is...you've just lost one of the two identifiable traits of 'Bernard' and it hasn't been replaced with anything else. And while 2004 in comics was still trying to hold onto the Urban Legends reading for the Bats to an extent (though it was failing), 2022 comics has so long since abandoned it that Bernard having kooky theories about Batman's connection to Mothman or whatever is very...why?

And because both of these pre-existing personality traits are under strain from the context, it really is sort of necessary to give Bernard something else about him for people to latch onto for his personality. And it doesn't really seem to be there yet (as of #6). It's the same complaint that people have about Jon/Jay and a whole host of other partners for recently out superheros: they're generically pleasant, supportive and bland, with about the depth of a mirror. Give me some of the toxic drama the 30 year old lesbians are allowed. Where is my breakup over custody fights with an ex and one of the two getting seduced by a vampire.

[iftrashcouldsparkle]

Hey does anyone wanna hear my thoughts about how Madarame and Fujieda's routes are essentially the same thing but in a different font????? Huge spoilers for the true route of Slow Damage.

Once I started playing Fujieda's route it struck me how it pretty much followed the same story beats as Madarame's:

Towa is confronted with a relic from his past > Something about it nags at him so he starts poking around > He remembers something from his past > He comes to terms with some aspect of his identity > Confrontation with the Takasato asshole that's been causing issues

But aside from that, both Madarame and Fujieda reflect different aspects of Towa's character. Both of their routes revolve around the idea of meeting someone so similar to you that they might as well be a mirror and the understanding that's born from that. The main difference is what they reflect and the traits they bring out in each other.

Madarame essentially reflects all of the things that Maya made Towa into. When they're together, they reflect and amplify the rougher edges of each of their personalities. Towa's apathy, his recklessness, his impulsivity, and his masochism are the things Madarame considers to be Towa's "true self". They're the parts of Towa that he sees reflected in himself; the parts of them that operate on instinct rather than the norms of society. Madarame loves Towa in his own way, and accepts the "roughest" version of himself, but these aspects of his character are things that Towa became because of Maya's abuse. It ultimately works for them and they find their version of happiness, but the more instinctual Towa that Madarame sought out is a version of Towa who is ruled by his coping mechanisms and survival instincts. To find this happiness (a happiness found in pain and danger), Towa must first be broken and regress back into his trauma. Madarame and Towa reflect each other in a way that enables the worst of their behavior.

Fujieda, on the other hand, reflects everything that Towa is DESPITE Maya's influence. (There is still that aspect of mirroring each other through their trauma and their shared scars is one of the big reasons they begin to connect, but it's more than that.) They reflect each other in their resilience in the way they choose to keep living and their refusal to let their trauma further define them. Both Towa and Fujieda suffer from survivor's guilt and consider suicide, and yet both of them make the difficult choice to keep living to some degree because of the other's influence. They reflect each other in the memory of the girl who gives them both the strength to carry on; someone they loved and lost. They reflect the ugliest and truest parts of themselves, showcased in their negative first interactions early in the game and the literal/metaphorical scars they share. Yet, despite how scared they both are at being confronted with someone so similar, they see the beauty and humanity in each other where they struggle to see it in themselves. Because Fujieda's character mirrors Towa's so closely, he's able to relate deeply to Towa and understand how much of his behavior is an attempt to regain his autonomy and recognizes that he could have very easily ended up the same way. Fujieda loves Towa for who he's managed to become despite Maya's abuse, and it's this mutual understanding that allows them to support each other so thoroughly. Fujieda and Towa reflect each other in a way that ultimately supports a journey to healing and recovery.

Anyway, if you actually read all of that I would love to hear your thoughts because it's been rattling around in my brain for too long!

[cripplecharacters]

Hiya!! I’ve got a couple of stories I’m currently working on and because I also draw a lot, I like making illustrations for the stories. One of my protagonists experiences psychosis, and occasionally suffers with hallucinations. When drawing hallucinations (or expressing other elements of psychosis), is there anything major to avoid doing? For reference, the main reference for how I was going to draw them was similar to how the show Arcane expresses psychosis, since I like the artistic direcrion of the show overall, and I’ve been only positive feedback on how Jinx’s mental health was portrayed.

Hi!

I think it depends on what kind of hallucinations she has. I personally liked the way Arcane did it, and I think it works both for Jinx as a character and the show in the aesthetic sense.

However, I think it could be cool to visually show that for a lot of people, hallucinations aren't “obvious”. They can be incredibly regular things or just be “kinda weird/out of place” rather than clearly impossible to onlookers (in this case, readers)

Someone could also have both - they could hallucinate a person who definitely isn't there (like Jinx seeing [characters who have died]) but also have some that are just... hard to differentiate as an actual hallucination (like seeing a regular dog being outside, appliances being on, sounds that make sense but aren't there, etc.). Arguably, if she has both, the second ones become much harder to spot in comparison.

Another thing is what kind of things she's hallucinating. For Jinx, they were distressing and related to traumatic events, so the whole experience is obviously intense and full of PTSD flashbacks. This makes sense for her as a character. I really liked the tense slow-motion that was used in some earlier scenes of her as a child and the exact opposite used for her older self with the quick cuts and incredibly rapid pace, because it really can be like either of these.

But then again: some people see things so boring that there's no emotional reaction. Sometimes people don't realize they're hallucinating because the hallucination in question is a stranger sitting on a bench you're walking next to in a perfectly normal fashion, or something else that you wouldn't pay attention to, hallucination or not. I know of people who look through their phone/camera lens at things they think might be hallucinations because they don't show up on photos, and they just want to make sure (I've done this with audio recordings before). Would someone like this experience psychosis the same way as Jinx, who is shown surrounded by neon sketches of beasts with giant sharp-teethed mouths barking at her? Possibly! But there's a big chance it's simply not as intense in the visual sense (it can still be incredibly stressful on the inside).

So to kinda answer the question, it depends on the above. What is her relationship with her hallucinations? Some people like theirs, hallucinations can be positive or neutral, even comforting. Is she used to them? Does she know that she's hallucinating? Why is she hallucinating exactly (flashback? stress? under the influence? no reason? fatigued?)? Does she have “regulars”? They don't have to be literally people that show up regularly, but things or just general themes that can be related to the person's life. You might have one set of hallucinations that appear as a result of X, and a different that shows up when Z happens (with Jinx, she hallucinates [dead characters] very realistically when general PTSD flashbacks happen, but much more abstractly when confronted in a stressful, overwhelming situation where she's panicking). Is she only hallucinating impossible things, regular events, something in-between, or all of the above? (As someone in the last category, I'd love to see that.) Are there sounds, tactile feeling, smell, taste? (I guess hard to convey visually on a drawing, but still something I'd love to see, delusional parasitosis is such a classic it has its own name)

It might make perfect sense for your character to experience her hallucinations in the same visual manner as Jinx, but they might also just look like another slice-of-life panel with nothing out of the ordinary, they may be just slightly “off” with the hallucinations sticking out like interactive objects in video games, or maybe the entire hallucination is just the sound of neighbors arguing upstairs. Which again: the latter options can be hard to do visually, but if you establish that place X looks like that and definitely doesn't have that object in there, and house Z definitely doesn't have a second floor, you can clue readers in a more subtle way that I think could also show that sometimes psychosis is easy to miss.

Psychosis is diverse, and I don't feel like I can't say that there are contents of it that “shouldn't be shown”. People absolutely hallucinate demons, ghosts, blood, or other “stereotypical” things; there is a kernel of truth in the “evil hallucinations” trope (though that's where the truth ends to be honest). For every person who tells you to not draw shadowy figures as an example of a hallucination, you will have two people who will tell you that it happened to them last week.

The thing I'd urge you to not do is much less concerned with actual hallucinations, and more with their context in their story and how they are portrayed.

The point is to not demonize it in narrative, and understand that the character isn't their hallucinations - they're not “subconscious desires” or proof of anything, they're not a sign of something supernatural happening, and they're not any kind of indicator of the person's morality or potentially being dangerous. And, I can't stress this enough, they aren't “predicting the future”. Don't use the psychosis as a Chehov's gun or other implication that the delusions are real for the sake of your psychotic readers.

Sorry for the non-answer answer but I hope it helps,

mod Sasza

[beanghostprincess]

Do you ever think about the fact that like, we know NOTHING about buggy? Yes of course we all know the devil fruit thing and how he was on Rogers crew, but the sheer amount we DONT know? Insane.

1 How the frick did he get on rogers crew?? Did roger kidnap the poor the kid? Did buggy just stowaway or something? Roger wouldnt take on anybody so there has to be a reason.

2 No one else looks like buggy except maybe vivi. Is buggy some long forgotten race? Is he actually royalty but their whole race was wiped out? Is it just a genetic mutation? I NEED ANSWERS ODA

3 WHO ARE HIS FAMILY?! Who are his parents or if he has siblings or cousins??? Did they disown him or did he runaway????

4 This is a personal preference but there is NO WAY buggy is as dumb as he plays. You can’t be that stupid and still be a successful captain/businessman/leader/yonko. Whatchu hiding buggy???

5 Where did the circus act come from? When he was on rogers ship there was no circusy makeup or any mention of things related to the circus, the only thing we have about that is that buggy wore bright clothes, but ROGER wore bright clothes. So did he join a circus after he and shanks broke up?? Is there a backstory there??

6 Last one I promise. Does anyone else think it’s a little strange that there are only two people in the series that wear clown makeup and one of them has nothing to do with the circus? Rosinante and buggy have extremely similar makeup, did they know eachother? Rosinante had no reason to wear clown makeup except maybe as a disguise, what the heck was that about???

7 Okok, last one last one. Did Oda say who he based buggy on? We know that almost every character in one piece is based on someone in real life or a myth. But we don’t know who buggy, an OG of the story, is based on. Little strange don’t you think? Oda?? HMMMM?

Mmm, I agree with you in the fact that we actually lack A LOT of information about Buggy's story (and also Shanks', but that's wayyy more plausible to be told in more detail than Buggy's) and I wish we knew more about where he comes from. But I think I can answer some stuff you mentioned!!!

4. Buggy is not playing dumb in any moment. He is directly not dumb at all and he has been shown countless times being of the most strategic characters in the manga. The one thing that holds him back is not being confident in himself because he still keeps the burden of living under Shanks' shadow on his shoulders so he often acts cowardly and seemingly without any goal at all but to survive. After chapter 1082, though, I think we will see wayyy more of him acting like a boss and following his dream and showing his true abilities. It's not that he's playing dumb, it's that he doesn't let himself be brave and now that he's on the same level as Shanks, he can do whatever he wants (if Mihawk and Crocodile let him lmao). And the reason why so many people follow him despite Buggy constantly saying he doesn't want to be seen this way because he sees himself as a loser who keeps pretending to be great, it's just that he's... Great. He just doesn't see it but he has an inherent effect on people when he gets serious. Being a failguy doesn't make you any less of a genius.

5/6. Actually, I believe we won't really get an answer to that. Perhaps we do if we get another flashback but maybe it's just character design and that's pretty much it. There must be something about wearing clown makeup as a mask of their true personality and yadda yadda yadda but that's for another day.

And about Buggy's past and the theory about him being a Nefertari: It's a pretty good theory and I actually really like it, keeping in mind how much influence both Buggy and Vivi's family are having lately in the manga. But I am not really sure about that being true and I am not even sure either if we we'll get any Buggy flashback at all. So I guess we will just have to wait and see what Oda does!!!

[eyeodyssey]

The Post-Futurist Fossils of LITCHI HIKARI CLUB In a somewhat recent research tangent, while considering the possible “genealogy” of the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s themes and aesthetics, I made an interesting personal discovery regarding Litchi Hikari Club. Specifically some distinct thematic parallels that the play shares with the Italian futurist movement, less in relation to the art of the movement itself, but rather the ideologies of the movement’s controversial founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and his relation to the Italian fascist party. This is all of course in the context of understanding Litchi as a transgressive/dystopian horror story. This is less of an absolute statement than it is a sort of open train of thought, so take things with a fair grain of salt. This is more or less just my own personal analysis of all the materials I could gather of the original play. Beyond inspecting the play as a possible allegory for futurism, there's also just a lot of general analysis of the play in relation to Ameya's overall body of work, both with the Tokyo Grand Guignol and also as a performance artist. I rarely put a 'keep reading' tag on these things since I'm an openly shameless product of the early days of blogging, but this one's a doozy (both in the information but also just the gargantuan length). Hopefully others will find it just as interesting. The full essay is below...

The futurist movement itself was nothing short of an oddity. In their time, the futurists were pioneers of avant-garde modernist aesthetics, with their works ranging from deconstructive paintings to reality-bending sculptures and even early pathways to noise music with the creation of the non-conventional Intonarumori instruments of Luigi Russolo. Russolo’s own futurist-adjacent manifesto, The Art of Noises, would go on to influence such artists as John Cage, Pierre Henry, Einstürzende Neubauten and the openly left-wing industrial collective Test Department. When visiting the MOMA in New York City as a child, I was fascinated by Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, a sculpture that appeared to be a spacetime malformation of the human figure encapsulated in a continual state of forward motion while in total stillness. Despite this, the futurists were also a social movement of warmongering misogynists, with their own founding manifesto by Marinetti describing the bloodshed and cruelty of war as being “… the only cure for the world”. Their manifesto would also feature quotes such as “We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice”. They would originally pin anarchism as being their ideological ground in the manifesto, but shortly thereafter Marinetti would pick up an interest in fascism along with the politics of Benito Mussolini, going on to be a coauthor for the Italian fascist manifesto alongside the futurist manifesto. In consideration of how throughout most of World War II, modernist and post-modern works were considered “degenerate” forms of art in contrast with traditionalism, a whole avant-garde movement founded from fascist ideals is paradoxical. But for a period of time, that parallel wasn’t only in existence, but backed by Mussolini himself with there being a brief effort by Marinetti to make futurism the official aesthetic of fascist Italy. One of the draws of futurism for Marinetti was an underlying sense of violence and extremity. According to Marinetti, his initial inspiration for the movement was the sensations he felt in the aftermath of a car accident where he drove into a ditch after nearly running over a band of tricyclists. He conceived his works to be acts of social disruption, intending to put people in states of unrest to cause riots and similar bouts of violence. “Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice”. He sought to destroy history to pave the way for a rapid acceleration to futuristic technological revelation.

“As shown in Edogawa Rampo’s Boy Detectives Club, young men like to hide from a world of girls and adulthood to form their own secret societies.” - June Vol. 27 In Litchi Hikari Club, a group of middle school-aged boys are faced with a crisis on the brink of puberty. At the twilight of their childhoods, they form a secret society known as the Hikari Club (or Light Club), a collective that’s devoted to the active preservation of their shared youth and virginity. The boys naively mimic an authoritarian organization and its hierarchy as they seek a means to preserve their boyhood, which they see as being idyllic in contrast to adulthood, a dreary state of existence that they call old and tired in the Usamaru Furuya manga version of the story. Similarly, in the Litchi Hikari Club-inspired short manga Moon Age 15: Damnation, the boys go on to liken their hideout with the paradisiacal garden of Eden. In said story, Zera would directly name the poem Paradise Lost in reference to the discovery of their hideout by adults (arriving in the form of ground surveyors) and the wide-eyed daughter of a land broker, with their contact to the virgin industrialized land being an ideological tainting of the sacred lair. In their mission, they seek refuge in technological inhumanity by having their penises replaced with mechanized iron penises, symbolic devices of power and violence that can only procreate with other items of technology. Working in absolute secrecy, they collectively manufacture a robot known as Lychee. The purpose of Lychee, previously only known to Zera, isn’t revealed to the other club members until its completion. It’s when they unveil their “cute” robot in a scene that parallels the 1920 German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari that Zera tells the other members of Lychee’s purpose as a machine that would kidnap women for them. The robot's efforts are assisted by the girl capturing device, a strange rice cooker-shaped mask that’s laced with a sleeping drug. When questioned about the fuel source for the robot, Zera explains how it will run off the clean fuel of lychee fruits rather than an unsavory yet plentiful substance like electricity or gasoline as a means to further match the robot’s perceived beauty.

While the club share a general disdain for adulthood, they hold a special hatred to girls and women. Going off the dogmatic repulsion to sexuality that Kyusaku Shimada shows as the teacher in the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s prior play, Mercuro (1984), it could be assumed that the Hikari Club hold a similar dogmatic viewpoint about the vices of sex. In this context, it’s likely that they would’ve perceived women as being parasitic by nature as spreaders of the “old” and “tired” adult human condition through pubescent fixation and procreation. Sexual thoughts are inherent to aging for most people, given the process of discovering and exploring your identity throughout puberty. It’s that exact pubescent experience the club seek to eradicate. Further insight is given to the Hikari Club’s dystopian psyche through their open allusions to nazi ideology. While Zera travels out to gather lychees from a tree he planted, the club get a special visit from a depraved elderly showman known as the Marquis De Maruo, performed by none other than Suehiro Maruo himself in the 1985 Christmas performance. Despite the club’s disposition to adults, they hold an exception for the Marquis for his old-timey showmanship and open pandering to the children’s whims. He always comes with autopsy films to show the young boys, and as they watch the gory videos he hands out candies that he describes as being a personal favorite of the late Adolf Hitler. He was said to also be the one to convince the boys to name their robot after the lychee fruit. It isn’t until Zera returns that the Marquis is removed from the hideout on Zera’s orders. Just before his exiling, he foretells to Zera the prophecy of the black star as both a promise and a warning to the aspiring dictator. It should be noted that there is a fascist occult symbol known as the black sun.

Suehiro Maruo as the Marquis De Maruo. On the right side is a caricature of Maruo as drawn by a contributor to June magazine, excerpted from an editorial cartoon in June Vol. 27 covering Litchi's 1985 Christmas performance. In addition, the Marquis’ role alongside Jaibo’s appearances in the play (which I’ll get to later) show distinct parallels with the presence of the hobo in the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s first play, Mercuro. In Mercuro’s case, the hobo (performed by Norimizu Ameya, who would go on to also act as Jaibo) visits the classroom in secrecy to lecture the students his depraved ideologies. Whilst the hobo in Mercuro was a figure of perversion that existed in contrast to the teacher’s paranoid conservatism, in Litchi both Jaibo and the Marquis are enablers of the club’s fascistic leanings, with the Marquis being a promoter whereas Jaibo is a direct representation of the underlining perversions of fascist violence. Though completely omitted from the Furuya manga, the element of the autopsy films shines a unique light on Zera’s death at the end of the story. In both the play and the manga, Zera is gutted alive by Lychee when the robot undergoes a meltdown after being forced to drown Kanon (Marin in the original play) in a coffin lined with roses. In the manga, Zera appears deeply unsettled when realizing his intestines resemble the internals of an adult. It’s unknown if this aspect is present in the theater version, as the full script remains unreleased to this day. It would fit however knowing not just the club’s repulsion to adulthood, but also how they retreat to technological modification to eradicate the human aspects they associate with adulthood. What is described of Zera’s death in the theater version has its own disquieting qualities as, from what’s mentioned, when confronted with his own mortality he appears to regress to a state of childlike delirium, a demeanor that’s drastically different from his usual calm and orderly presentation. Upon seeing his intestines, one of the responses he is able to muster is “I’m in trouble”. He says this as he questions whether or not he can fit his organs back inside the cavity before eventually telling himself that he’s just tired, that he “need(s) to sleep for a while”.

While never directly stated, it’s heavily implied that the club’s ideologies and technological fetishism ultimately root back to Jaibo, an ambiguously European transfer student who secretly manipulates the club’s actions from behind the scenes. Referred to by Hiroyuki Tsunekawa (Zera’s actor) as the “true dark emperor” of the Hikari Club, he was said to haunt the stage from the sides, closely inspecting the Hikari Club’s activities while keeping a distance. The iron phallus was first introduced by Jaibo through a monologue where he reveals how he fixed one to his own person, carefully describing its inner mechanisms and functionality before demonstrating its inhuman reproductive qualities by using the phallus to have sex with a TV. A television that he affectionately refers to as Psychic TV Chan, in reference to the post-industrial band fronted by Genesis P’Orridge. In the same scene, he promises the other members that they would all eventually get their own iron penises just like his own. In a subsequent scene, he reveals the iron phallus’ use as a weapon when, arriving to the club’s base with a chained-up female schoolteacher who accidentally discovered the sanctuary, he uses the device to brutally kill the teacher through a mocking simulation of sexual intercourse. Just before raping her, he likens her to a landrace, bred for the sole purpose of reproducing and being processed into meat for consumption. He menacingly tells her that he will make her as “cut and dry” as her role in society before carrying out her execution. While there was some confusion on whether or not the iron phallus was a machine or solely a chastity device, it was found in bits of dialogue that the iron phallus at least shares the qualities of a pump with a described set of rubber hinges. The teacher’s death gruesomely reflects the death of Kei Fujiwara’s character in the later film Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), with the iron phallus mangling her insides as blood splatters across the stage. While the club treats adult sexuality as a plague, they manage to find through the iron phallus a way to convert their own states of chastity into a form of violence, stripping all humanity away from the penis and rendering it to a weapon of absolute power through desolate mechanized cruelty.

JAIBO: “Length, 250 mm, with a weight of 2.4 kilograms. Arm diameter, 30mm. Cylindrical thrust, 170mm… With pins, plates and rods of die-cast alloy. And hinges of rubber… the rest is pure iron. It is the iron phallus.” - June Vol. 27 In the same interview, Tsunekawa would go on to recall how the members of the Hikari Club were effectively Jaibo’s guinea pigs. In both the play and the manga, an after-school night of the long knives ensues with the slow collapse of the Hikari Club as Jaibo influences the exiling of certain club members, with Zera left ignorant to the social engineering as a mere extension of Jaibo’s elaborate puppeteering. Left embittered by a chess match where he lost to Zera, Tamiya is easily tricked by Jaibo into burning the lychee field as a way to get vengeance. Upon being caught, Tamiya is castrated of his iron phallus, resulting in his exiling from the club as a traitor while also being mockingly likened to a woman in the process. In another scene, it’s recalled that Jaibo and Zera exchange a conversation about the Hikari Club’s loyalty to Zera as they observe the outside world through their periscopes. By all contemporary recollections, Jaibo was the club’s puppet master. He would’ve been the likely source of the club’s ideologies, the underlining hatred to women and fixation on technological violence, replacing mankind with a race of humanoid weapons. Zera would be a shell without his influence. The presence of futurism could arguably even be rounded down to Lychee’s presence in the story. Beyond his theoretic work, Marinetti was also a playwright. He would be most well known for his futurist drama La donna è mobile, a story riddled with similarly perverse renditions of sexual violence. The play notably featured the presence of humanoid automatons a full decade before the term “robot” would be coined by Czechoslovakian author Karel Čapek in the play R.U.R., with the French version of Marinetti’s script referring to the machines as “puppets” for their visual similarity to humans.

All of this plays out over a soundscape that’s dominated by unnatural electronic frequencies and synthesized percussion. The sound design was arguably one of the most important aspects of Ameya’s plays, with Ameya at one point describing the Tokyo Grand Guignol productions as being an ensemble of his favorite sounds. The setting further compliments the atmosphere, made to resemble the internal of a junkyard or factory warehouse where heaps of technical jump decorate the stage around the monochrome cabinet that would eventually birth Lychee. Some of the featured artists in the play’s first act include Test Department, The Residents, 23 Skidoo and Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft. The play’s opening, which depicts the capturing and subsequent torture of a student named Toba through a so-called “baptism of light”, is underscored by the S.P.K. song Culturcide, a grim primordial industrial dirge that paints the image of a dystopia where the genocide of ethnic cultures is likened to the infection of human cells by parasitic pathogens. Instead of being hung with a noose, Toba is suspended by a meathook, left as a decoration amidst the heaps of mechanized excrement. He would eventually be joined by the lifeless bodies of various women the Hikari Club abduct as they’re steadily gathered in a small box at the back of the stage. “Membrane torn apart, scavenging with the nomads. Requiem for the vestiges. Dissected, reproduced. The nucleus is infected with hybrid’s seed. Needles soak up, the weak must destroy. Cells cry out, cells scream out. Culturcide! Culturcide! Culturcide! Culturcide!” - Culturcide (from S.P.K.'s Dekompositiones EP)

“We are now entering an era which history will come to call ANOTHER DARK AGE. But, in kontrast to the original Dark Age, defined by a lack of information, we suffer from an excess of information, which has been reduced to the repetition of media-generated signs. Through this specialization, it is no longer possible for an individual to attain a total view of society. Edukation is struktured to the performance of a limited number of funktions rather than for kreativity.” “Kommunications systems are designed for the passive entertainment of the konsumer rather than the aktive stimulation of the user’s imagination. Through the spread of the western media, all kultures come to stimulate one another. By the end of the millennium, this biological infektion will have penetrated the heart of the most isolated traditions - a total CULTURCIDE.” “Yet in every era, a small number of visionaries rise above the general malaise. Those who will succeed, will resist the pressure to become kommercialized “images”, demanding identifikation and imitation. They will uphold their principles in the face of impossible odds. By remaining anonymous, they will be free to develop their imagination with maximum diversity. For this is the TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS, - the end of the proliferation of the ikons and the advent of a new symbolism.” - From the back cover of S.P.K.’s Dekompositiones EP (released under the moniker SepPuKu) Over the course of the play, the story undergoes a drastic tonal shift as the focus moves from the Hikari Club’s hierarchical order and internal conflicts to the relationship between Lychee and Marin. Marin (performed by synthpop musician Miharu Koshi) was the first girl the Hikari Club successfully kidnap through Lychee after implementing the phrase “I am a human” in Lychee’s coding so it can understand the concept of human beauty. This small implementation causes a full unraveling in Lychee’s personality as it quickly forms a close bond with Marin, convinced that it is also a human like Marin. The soundscape changes alongside the overarching atmosphere, going from cold industrial drones and percussive electronica to ambient tracks. Some of the major scenes play out over moving piano-focused pieces and music box tunes from Haruomi Hosono’s soundtrack for Night on the Galactic Railroad. Originally created a weapon like the iron phalluses and the girl capturing device, Lychee is eventually defined in how he transcends from being a weapon to a conscious being with feelings. In this context, the play can be read as a juxtaposition of human emotion against inhuman futurist brutality.

This split was likely the product of the radically different creative ideologies of Norimizu Ameya (the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s founder and lead director) and pseudonymous author K. Tagane (the playwright for the group from Mercuro to Litchi). Ameya had come into the group with radical intentions, holding Artaudesque aspirations to transgress the literary limits of modern theater to achieve something deeply subconscious. Meanwhile, Tagane was a romantic who was known for their poetic and lyrical screenplays. Ameya purportedly sought out Tagane’s screenplays specifically to find a literary base he would “destroy” in his direction, deconstructing the poeticisms in his own unique style. He describes it briefly in an interview regarding the stage directions of Mercuro, stating how he took elaborate descriptions of a lingering moon and ultimately deconstructed them to the moon solely being an illusion set by a screen projector, mapping out the exact dimensions of the projection to being a 3-meter photograph of the moon rather than a “fantastic moon”. It’s believed by some that the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s formation and ultimately short run were the product of a miraculous balance between Ameya and Tagane’s ideologies. It’s possible that Litchi could’ve been a last straw between the two artists. After Litchi, Tagane left the group, with Ameya having to write the troupe’s final screenplay on his own. LYCHEE: “Marin is always sleeping… all she does is sleep. She doesn’t eat anything. Why does Marin sleep all day?” MARIN: “When you’re asleep, all the sadness of the world passes over you.”

"The second half of Litchi was predominantly driven by the sounds of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono. During a scene that featured a piece from the Galactic Railroad soundtrack, Miharu Koshi sang to Kyusaku Shimada while dancing like a clockwork doll to the sounds of a twisting music box. The scene lasted for a while and was very romantic, the interactions between Lychee and Marin were all very sweet and cute. The second act of Litchi was all a product of Tagane’s making. By the time of the following play, Walpurgis, I was told by a staff member that Ameya had written the screenplay by himself because Tagane had left.” “… While the first half was filled with repeated mantras and the unfolding aesthetics of an aspiring militia, the second half was immersed in the world of shoujo manga. It did appear that through the intermission, much of the junk and rubble around the podium was sorted out.” “… The Tokyo Grand Guignol’s plays were always defined by a strong nocturnal atmosphere. But in Litchi’s second half, it wasn’t a dark night, but a brightly lit one under the moonlight and plentiful stars in the sky shining through an invisible skylight. Marin doesn’t forgive Lychee immediately for his actions, responding to him harshly in a way that would confuse him and make him sulk. It came across as a somewhat bitter reimagining of a French comedy like Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le Métro or Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie, it was different that way in how it wasn’t only Maruo’s inferno.” - From a Twitter thread by user Shoru Toji regarding the 1986 rerun of Litchi Hikari Club Some questionable qualities do exist in the relationship between Lychee and Marin. What should be a peaceful retreat from the dystopian corruption still has a sinister undertone in the disparities between Lychee’s cold masculine features in contrast with Marin’s childlike girly innocence. It doesn’t help that Zazie dans le Métro (one of the mentioned films in the recollection) was directed by Louis Malle, who while known for such films as My Dinner With Andre and Black Moon was also responsible for the infamously discomforting Pretty Baby. Then again, Litchi was the product of a confrontational transgressive subculture, so the sinister undertones could be intentional. Keep in mind the contents of Suehiro Maruo’s prolific adaption of Shōjo Tsubaki and how it unflinchingly depicts abuse and manipulation through the eyes of a confused child. It could be possible that Lychee himself was intended to be childlike in its mannerisms. Throughout the existing descriptions, Lychee was shown as speaking in fragmented sentences while struggling to understand basic concepts. Zera was mentioned to also use certain phrases like “cute” when referring to the robot when it was unveiled. And it’s through Marin that Lychee learns morality like a child. The robot’s masculinity could be passed off as the cast all being adults. Hiroyuki Tsunekawa for instance shows distinctly sculpted features from certain angles when performing Zera.

In his aspirations to become a human, Lychee eventually “dies” like a human. With the burning of Zera’s lychee tree, the robot is left with a finite limit on its remaining energy before it totally loses consciousness. After his rampage, Lychee attempts to reunite with Marin, but he runs out of fuel. Before what should be a moment of resolution, things are cut short as the stage goes black, eventually illuminated to show an unpowered Lychee cradling Marin’s corpse in his arms. Zera reemerges to observe the remnants of Lychee and Marin. He speaks of how Lychee will crumble into nothingness alongside Marin for foolishly giving into human emotion, further implying the club’s views on humanity. After this, recollections of the play’s final lines differentiate somewhat. It was said that in the original Christmas performance, Zera calls out to Jaibo, posing the corpses of Lychee and Marin as being his seasonal gifts to Jaibo. Whereas in most popular recollections, it’s described that after his monologue, Zera shouts “Wohlan! Beginnen!” (German for “Now! Begin!”) before prompting the decorations across the stage to collapse, revealing a set of stepladders from behind that the remaining previously deceased club members stand, all drenched in blood with spotlights illuminating their faces from below. ZERA: “And with that, our tale of a foolish romance between woman and machine reaches its conclusion. It ends before me as I stand here, watching. Lychee, the machine, will rust away into dust. And Marin, a young girl, will rot away leaving behind only her bones, which too will crumble…”

Multiple readings can be deciphered from this conclusion. The most established theory is in relation to the Hikari Club’s aspirations for eternal youth, with the members technically achieving their goal through the stagnation of death. They will remain eternal children since they died as children, unable to ever grow into adulthood. In the context of futurism and mechanized fascism however, it could be read as a bitter observation of a lasting dictatorship. With how the Hikari Club members had rendered themselves less human than their own robot, they survive death to continue their work, seeking to one day eradicate humanity in favor of a race of sentient childlike weapons. “To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?” “… For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists! Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns! The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.” - from the 1909 Futurist Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

I forgot what exactly first caused the parallel to cross my mind. I do recall it being reignited when having a closer look over the poster and flyer for Litchi’s Christmas performance in December 1985. The flyer in particular is really a wonderful thing to look at. Predominantly featuring an art spread by Suehiro Maruo, a suited man with Kyusaku Shimada’s likeness is shown caressing a girl in front of a modernist cityscape with spotlights shining up to a night sky. Other suited men in goggles fly in the air with Da Vinci-reminiscent flying apparatuses between the beams of the metropolis’ spotlights. A student in full gakuran uniform flings himself into the scene from the far left side of the image with a dagger in hand, and a larger hand comes from the viewer’s perspective holding a partially peeled lychee fruit. While not based on any direct scene from the play, it perfectly instills the play’s atmosphere with an air of antiquated modernity, like the numerous illustrations of the early 1900s that show aspirational visions of what a futuristic cityscape might resemble. The bizarre neo-Victorian fashions of the future and its post-modernist formalities. The term futurism came to mind somewhat naively from this train of thought. It was a movement I recalled hearing about, but my memory of it was hazy. It wasn’t until I went in for a basic refresher that I felt the figurative lightbulb go off in my head. That was when the pieces started to come together, but then also strain apart from each other into tangents. Granted, many of these parallels could be read as coincidental. Many of them can even be passed off the play being a work of proto-cyberpunk, knowing how Tetsuo: The Iron Man would subsequently explore similar themes of cybernetics and human sexuality. It should still be noted however that in contrast with many of the Japanese cyberpunk films, Litchi was explicit in its connotations between technological inhumanity and fascism, with the machinery itself being the iconography of a dictatorship rather than a product of it. In addition, with Tetsuo the film has strong gay overtones, with the technology being an extension of the sexual tensions between the salaryman and the metal fetishist. For a period of time, efforts were made to make futurism the official aesthetic of fascist Italy, and modern fascism as we know it is in the same family tree of Italian philosophy as futurism. The Hikari Club are explicit in drawing from German aesthetics rather than Italian however, speaking in intermittent German and predominantly using German technology. The spotlight that they used when torturing Toba in the first act, for example, was a Hustadt Leuchten branded spotlight. And if that isn’t a German name I don’t know what is. It was also said that Jaibo’s outfit in the play was modeled after German school uniforms. Though then again, the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s works were a bit of a cultural slurry. Jaibo’s name for example is Spanish (derived from Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados), while the character is implied to be German.

Similar to the cited origins of futurism, Ameya stated in a 2019 tweet regarding the June 9th, 1985 abridged Mercuro performance on Tokumitsu Kazuo’s TV Forum that in the following August of that year, an airplane accident occurred that led to the conception of Litchi’s screenplay. The exact nature of the accident was never specified, but the affiliates he was communicating with all appeared to be familiar with it and expressed concern when it was brought up. This was however one of an assortment of influences that were cited behind Litchi’s production, with the two more established theories regarding the then-contemporary mystique around lychee fruit in Chinese cuisine along with the play being a loose adaption of Kazuo Umezu’s My Name is Shingo. For what it’s worth, the themes of Litchi, along with the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s other works, were closely tied with certain concepts that Ameya personally cultivated throughout his career. A frequent recurring topic Ameya would bring up in relation to his works was the nature of the human body in relation to foreign matter, need it be biological or unnatural. With Mercuro the students taught by Shimada are made into so-called Mercuroids by having their blood supplies replaced with mercurochrome, a substance that is referred to as the “antithesis of blood” by Shimada while in character. In an interview for the book About Artaud?, Ameya cites an interest in Osamu Tezuka’s manga in how certain stories of Tezuka’s paralleled Ameya’s observations of the body. He directly names Dororo and Black Jack, observing how both Hyakkimaru and Black Jack reconstructed their bodies from pieces of other people, going on to bluntly describe Pinoko as a “mass of organs covered in plastic skin”.

A section from June Vol. 27 highlighting some of the more established performers from Litchi's 1985 Christmas performance. The actors from left to right are Norimizu Ameya as Jaibo, Naomi Hagio as the female school teacher (best known in cult circles for her role as Kazuyo in the 1986 horror film Entrails of a Virgin), Suehiro Maruo out of costume and Miharu Koshi as Marin. During his temporary retirement from theater, Ameya would take up performance art, with some of his performances revolving around acts with his own blood. While my memories of these works are a bit hazy, I remember one action he performed that involved a blood transfusion, with the focus being on the experience of having another person’s blood coursing through your veins. While I didn't have much luck relocating this piece (probably from it not being covered in English), I did find on the Japan Foundation’s page for performing arts an interview where Ameya discusses being in a band with Shimada where Ameya had blood drawn from his body while he played drums. He would also describe an art exhibition where he displayed samples of the blood of a person infected with HIV. “After 1990 he left the field of theatre and began to engage himself with visual arts - still proceeding to work on his major topic - the human body - taking up themes like blood transfusion, artificial fertilization, infectious diseases, selective breeding, chemical food, and sex discrimination, creating works as a member of the collaboration unit Technocrat.” - Performing Arts Network Japan (The Japan Foundation) There are still an assortment of open questions I’m left with in regards to the contents of the original Litchi play. One of the most glaring ones is Niko’s eye. In consideration of Ameya’s interest in the body, the detail would fit perfectly with his ideologies. A club member who, to show his absolute loyalty to the Hikari Club, has his own eyeball procedurally gouged out to be made a part of the Lychee robot. Despite this perfect alignment, none of the contemporary recollections mention this element. While Niko does have an eyepatch in certain production photos, it never seems to come up as a plot point. He isn’t the only one to bear an eyepatch either, with Jacob also being shown with an eyepatch in flyers. More questions range from Jaibo’s motives in causing the dissolution of the Hikari Club to the true nature of Zera’s affiliation to Jaibo. While Tsunekawa has stood his ground in the relationship between Zera and Jaibo being totally sexless, in the cited volume of June the editor playfully refers to Jaibo as being Zera’s “best friend” in quotes.

A side-by-side comparison of the cast listings on the back of the flyers for the December 1985 performance of Litchi Hikari Club alongside its 1986 rerun. The 1985 run's lineup is at the top while the 1986 run is at the bottom. Much speculation is naturally involved when looking into the original Litchi Hikari Club since it is in essence a cultural phantom. There’s a reason I used the term genealogy in relation to my research of the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s works. It is an artistic enigma as while its presence lingers in subculture, the original works are now practically unattainable due to the inherent nature of theater. As Ameya himself would acknowledge in another interview, theater is an immediate medium that can only be perceived in its truest form for a very short span of time before eventually disintegrating. So with the Tokyo Grand Guignol’s plays, you are left to scour through the scattered remnants and contemporary recollections alongside the figurative creative descendants of the plays. You analyze the statements of both the original participants and the people they openly dismiss, as even those people were original audience members before reinterpreting the plays to their own unique visions. Despite the apparent differences, I still feel that Furuya’s manga gives a unique perspective to the story when viewed under dissection. That is if you want to see it in strict relation to the play. Outside that, I feel it firmly stands on its own merits. I like the manga no matter what Tsunekawa says, that’s what I’m trying to say. Ameya approved it anyway. It took me a full day to write all this out, and like the first time I went down this train of thought, I’m pooped. During that first excursion, after excitedly spiraling through these potential connections, I noticed in passing mention something about Marinetti’s cooking. You see, later in his life Marinetti aimed to apply futurism not just to art and theater, but cuisine also. As an Italian, Marinetti openly despised pasta, seeing it as being an edible slog that weighs down the spirits of the Italian people. Just further evidence that I would never get along with the man, no matter my liking of the Boccioni sculpture I saw at MOMA all those years ago. Well, outside of him being a fascist and all obviously. I like pasta. Either way, he was on a mission to conceive all-new all-Italian cuisines that would match the vision he had of a new fascist Italy. Nothing could prepare me though for when I saw an image of what would best be described as a towering cock and ball torture meat totem. It is exactly as it sounds, a big phallic tower of cooked meat with a set of gigantic dough-covered balls of chicken flesh on the front and back where you have to stick needles through the thing to hold it together. Words cannot express just how big it is. The thing was damn well near falling apart from how unnatural its shape was, and you’re expected to eat it while it has honey pouring from the tip of the tower. I genuinely winced watching its assembly, I instinctively crossed my legs somewhat when it was pierced by wooden sticks and then cut into sections to reveal the plant-stuffed interiors. As a person with no interest whatsoever in cooking shows, I was on the edge of my seat watching a PBS-funded webisode of someone preparing futurist dishes. Seek it out for yourself, it’s an excessively batshit culinary freakshow. That is more than enough talk about penises for the rest of the week. I’m going to spend the next few days looking at artistic yet selectively vaginal flowers to balance things out, equal opportunity symbology.

[gabeorelse]

Resource: Writing Craft Masterpost

Okay, so one of my favorite things to do when I'm not writing but I want to think about writing is to study the craft. Seriously, I'm a HUGE writing nerd and learning is one of my favorite parts of the process (besides the actual writing lmao). Below is a list of my favorite craft resources that I don't see recommended a ton but which I've found do a great job of identifying and explaining the nitty-gritty rather than just giving blanket advice like 'show don't tell'.

Ellen Brock's Youtube Channel

Ellen Brock, according to her bio, is an editor who has worked both freelance and in the publishing industry. The resource here is on her channel - TONS of free longform videos that break down structure, character arc, anatomy of a scene, dialogue, prose, principles of revision, anything you can imagine.

My favorite video: Character Arc meets Story Structure. An hour long video explaining how character arc and story structure marry within the 3-Act Structure. I made an annotated cheat sheet/study guide just based off this and it literally fixed my WIP lol.

Susan Dennard's Writing Academy - Free Resources

Susan Dennard is a published author who, disclaimer, I have not checked her books out yet (though I've been meaning to!) but I have found her blog post archive invaluable. She writes a ton on writing craft, publishing, revision, etc, and I've coopted a lot of her strategies, particularly in revision, for myself. Highly recommend.

Unfortunately, it looks like my favorite resource (her revision advice) is behind a paywall now (which, fair, she did a LOT of free stuff over the years), but I might put together a frankenstein version of my own revision method one of these days - it's heavily influenced by hers.

ShaelinWrites Youtube Channel

Another writing youtuber who really gets to the nitty-gritty. What I love about them is they are a pantser/discovery writer and they show, both through their advice and success, that you CAN be a discovery writer and not just end up in a mess of unrevised monstrosity, which is what I feel like a lot of people assume. They also do a lot of videos on writing confidence, process, and mindset which have all been very helpful to me.

My favorite video: How to Become a Confident Writer. This video really helped me get back some of my confidence and love for writing when I was struggling. They have similar related videos, and I basically watched ALL of them at various points, but this one really helped me.

LocalScriptMan's Youtube Channel

Okay, here me out. This one is a bit of a departure. I feel like LocalScriptMan kind of takes on this tough love/tough life advice persona, and I don't mind it, but some people might. He's also focused on screenwriting, but a lot of his videos apply to general writing principles, and I feel like, as with the other resources, he really gets to the heart of the craft and breaks down principles in a way I really like.

My favorite video: it's a tie between The Key to Writing Freakishly Good Dialogue and How to Actually Succeed as a Creative. I really liked the latter because I interact a lot with other authors who are querying agents or have one foot in the publishing industry, one foot not quite there (like me), and his attitude toward success changed my mind about how to approach the industry. His advice is something like 'most people keep looking for that big break, but that's very self-focused. If you want to succeed, help others and make yourself a valuable person, not only to get that big break, but because then you can do what you love: creating stories and working on projects, even if they're not your own'. This is a bit more applicable to the screenwriting community, but I do think overall the best part about writing is not just writing, but community, and I think he hits the nail on the head with that one.

Summary: obviously I am not an affiliate (these people 100% do not know who I am lol), but I get frustrated when I'm trying to find answers to my writing problems and all I get are shitty SEO based articles written by the Masterclass website lmao. So over the years I've cultivated my favorites, and wanted to share them. I hope these help anybody who needs them!

[accio-victuuri]

Sugar Rush : November CPNs

What started out as a relatively quiet month after a chaotic October, turned into something else because of a few candies. Especially the whole 11/19 fiasco that surprised us all. LOL. As usual, this is for cpn-loving turtles only. Keep an open mind but still clown responsibly. I can’t believe we only have one month left for this year!

If you wanna recap other years I have archived : 2021 ( one | two ) 2022 ( one | two ) 2023 ( one, july, august, september, october ) 2020 candies and some other sweets before I was doing round up posts may be found on my masterlist.

Let’s review the past month…

• Some side by side / parallel photos of GG ( Tod’s Milan ) and WYB ( Chanel Shenzhen ). They are both photographed with the very beautiful Liu ShiShi. Also the way they are the center of attention. KINGS! 👑

• hoping they play tennis together 🎾 ; there is also a cpn out there about yibo being fully prepared for the game cause he had lacoste shoes and bag then a jacket that he used in wuzhen. people are speculating that XZ bought stuff for him to use cause he is the one who knows more and thought of this brand. this may seem like a stretch but you never know with this fandom when a seemingly insignificant observation becomes a big candy along the way.

• 2021 vs 2023 beach photos similarities + xiamen coincidence and it’s connection to ZZ’s ideal life painting

• LHK ( Liu Haikuan ) giving clues about BJYX? + Part 2 of comments

11/7, GG was announced as Boucheron’s global brand ambassador, then people remembered that one time WYB wore stuff from the brand. So now we have an unintentional couple jewelry incidence😂😂

• the sound of an eagle 🦅

• some similarities in forwarding 119 message, yeah i know celebrities like them are sort of required to bring attention to stuff like this. however, WYB is known to support this cause and even made a VCR specifically for it. if you look at the actual post, theirs is the top 2 in terms of likes and the rest of the celebrities are not the usual ones similar to the boys’ caliber. Another clue that this is WYB’s advocacy of sorts, most, if not all top comments are from his fans. so ZZ joining in on spreading the message seems ( to me and some cpfs ) like influenced by WYB.

Next is they both filmed VCRs for "People in My Heart" - "Classic Characters" series. We just love seeing them support the same projects ^^

• NARS live drawing

• Candies from WYB’s 11/12 douyin post. Mainly the parallel about the same walls and floor.

• XZ fell asleep on WYB during the golden core scene

• Interpreting YBO’s 11/16 weibo caption

• 11/19/23 double update candies

• similar necklace??? ( cough in vain )

• the full story ( so far ) behind 11/19 📝

• Talking about this a bit late considering when the whole CPN started about this GG mural for GG. There are side by side comparisons of the eyes on the mural and Yibo’s. The CPN being they used WYB’s eyes for that mural.

I usually let people have free reign on clowning but this one isn’t for me personally. just because it’s obviously a mural commissioned by GUCCI which a big brand that couldn’t care less about the CP. Maybe it’s a coincidence how similar it is? Because there is a reference photo that should be followed. Also, this is GG’s time to shine. This mural is his & him. I think this is an example for cpfs to learn to separate the boys as individuals, especially for things that are work related and most especially their achievements. While I do believe they influence each other greatly, it’s important to not make every single thing a romantic relation.

• the mystery driver is seen again 👀

• 11/22 Yibo scenery post 🍬

• One night in Beijing Song + 11/23 XZS post

• I don’t really wanna clown with Redmi but the black and white theme from XZS and then the next day it’s Redmi. I was surprised with this cause all the promos were supposed to be related to the scifi themed ad blockbuster!

A coincidence 👀👀👀👀

• small candies form IQIYI scream night 😱

• wyb acknowledging light signs and calls us wangba

• XZ’s 11/27 Airport and Selfie Clues

• there is some talk with BXGs regarding WYB’s redmi appearance, it looks like he was bitten by the mosquito again. lol. I usually just find cpn like this funny cause there is always deniability. also hello to the mosquito who loves to bite the center of his neck.

I’m separating these next entries cause it’s not new. I just found myself revisiting bts content and clowning about it. old candy still tastes good! 💯

WYB signs 520 to GG

WYB’s small steps to GG but robe gets caught

Something is funny and XZ has to tell WYB

Flirting and Fighting? “WYB’s love you”

XZ got hurt and WYB said he is gonna kiss it better?

-END.

[silentcryracha]

❍ ‗ What type of songs Skz would write about you ‗ ❍

Pairings : Stray Kids x reader

Genre/warnings : headcanons, possible use of swear words, mentions of intimacy, mentions of sad feelings and breakups

Summary : What type of songs I think Stray Kids members would write about their relationships

Word count : 1.7k

A/n : these are general headcanons that are described more in a technical way than a fictional one, so yeah

ps: There could be errors. Do NOT repost on other socials. Leave feedback if you feel like it, otherwise enjoy! ♡︎

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Chan ‗ ❍

Holy trinity: agsty, fun, horny

Chan seems like the man who would gain inspiration from strong feelings that he may experience.

The man has range and is talented af so of course he'd be able to write anything, BUT

My idea is that he'd be more inclined to write about angsty feelings ranging from sadness, maybe regret. He wouldn't specifically write about you or describe you as a person or your features, those are for him only to appreciate, or in this case, to miss. I think he'd write down his feelings, whether it's plain sadness and longing, or something stronger like regret, or unspoken things.

But he could also be really inspired by the thrill and 'primal' feeling that comes with the start of a relationship, or even a little earlier when it's the 'chasing' moment before getting together. He'd write about how he's absolutely whipped and stupid in love for you, but in the 'fun' way, not in the 'sad' way.

Both the angst and the fun could (and probably would) be mixed with some horniness, absolutely. He could write about how mad you make him and how fucking desperate he is for a taste of you. Again, this could be applied in a more fun and lighthearted song, like a honeymoon phase, or to a darker more 'toxic' context.

Minho ‗ ❍

A delicate story about romance in all its shades

I feel like Minho would keep the lyrics very vague, but still mainly focus on the other person, more than write about this own feelings. While Chan seems more the type to write a 'letter' type of lyrics, I think Minho would be more of a 'storyteller'.

He'd probably write more chill lyrics, never being raunchy or explicit, but could very well imply intimacy in a more subtle way. In a poetic way, if you will.

I do think that he'd give his best with romantic songs, though. He may not look like it at first glance, but Lee Minho is a romantic and you will not change my mind.

I could see him writing lyrics with a lot of artistic/literature/media influence. Which ties back with the whole 'storyteller' thing. They wouldn't be overly complex as in words choice though, they'll need to be simple and delicate with a perfect melody to accompany them. Maybe some technical or production related tricks (like the 'suspense' at the end of limbo)

The same exact style would apply for more angsty or sad songs. I find him similar to Chan in this aspect in the sense that he'd write about sad, depressing and heart wrenching feelings more than angry or vengeful ones. He'd also probably do it in a 'therapeutic' way, like writing down the last chapter of a story that will be finally be closed and locked away in his memories.

He could also write some more 'fun' songs but I think that they wouldn't be necessarily about romantic relationships. But who knows?

Changbin ‗ ❍

About you, about me, about us

Changbin is another master in the craft of composing and writing, which means that he'd be able to switch povs pretty easily in whatever story he wanted to tell, or even change the style of the narration itself.

He could write about any topic he wanted to be honest, and his rapping and freestyling abilities are probably a big help in that sense, but let's focus on romance now.

Bin looks like someone who cherishes a lot his personal life and feelings, which is why it would be harder to find lyrics in which he directly puts himself as the narrator. But it does happen sometimes, and it's usually a cry for help. May be a pleading to someone that left him, an apology to someone he hurt.

Usually though I feel like he's more the one to pick a specific feeling/situation and elaborate on it. Might be a specific argument, the way that a breakup happened, the mistakes that led to said breakup. In this case he would write openly, like he wants the person in question to hear him out through his music.

His lyrics wouldn't be adorned with pretty words or poetic comparisons, but only with real and raw feelings that will pull at your heartstrings for how honest they sound.

Hyunjin ‗ ❍

Straight out of a literature piece

Hyunjin *say it with me*, is a romantic. Yes, that's the key to understanding him, pretty much.

He is a lover, through and through. A lover of art, beauty, emotions, memories, of love itself. This is why I think that any lyrics that he may write will be almost like a dance of words, melodies, instruments, and feelings. He wants to put his feelings down because they overwhelm him.

With each of his songs he seems like he wants to curate every aspect to the T, almost as if he was creating his own little work of art. He wants it to be evocative, to make you feel what he does, and will do it with different tools such as poetical lyrics, a particular choice of instruments, and even the tone of his voice.

Ironically, I think that the more he'd have to 'hide', the more complex and embellished the lyrics would be. He could do a song with quite simple but direct lyrics, and sing it in an energetic way, almost desperate way, like he can't wait to shout out to the person he loves. Almost like a movie/book scene in which the love interest finally confesses their love.

The thing with Hyunjin seems to be that he enjoys writing about angsty feelings. Something that could be a problem of communication within the relationship, or confusion by getting mixed signals from someone, or again with a dangerous attraction for someone who isn't right for him but still manages to 'lull' him into this toxic relationship.

In both cases I think that he'd use a lot of artistic or maybe visually eliciting comparisons in his lyrics, playing with words and the emotions that those elicit in people.

Jisung ‗ ❍

Let it out, angsty boy

I really feel like Han writes when he doesn't find any other way out, so whatever it is it's likely to be explosive.

He's gonna write lyrics that scream how much he's wrapped around your finger, how your love is essentially all he needs to live and that you could do whatever you wanted with him because he's yours. Would be very smart in writing a whole story about it, mentioning mundane things and then ranging to use metaphors and abstract comparisons to let his explosive emotions through.

I feel like he could write out of frustration too, which would bring lyrics with a different tone to them. Whatever he feels must and will be reflected in the song. If the sentiment is cold, sharp and toxic, the producing part of the song will reflect that as much as his own intonation. If it was a cry for help, a prayer almost, you'd be able to feel it through the melody and the whole structure of the song, not only the lyrics.

He's another one who desperately wants and needs for his music to be honest and to elicit the same feelings that he felt while producing it in complete detail, similar to Hyunjin.

Felix ‗ ❍

A lot of feelings and honesty

Felix has range in what he writes, but what I noticed mostly in the projects that he's been part of, is that he uses his voice a lot to set the tone of the song.

Whatever are the lyrics, his extremely adaptable voice with automatically make you understand what he was going for 'emotion' wise. This also applies to the choice of the instrumentals.

I feel like he could be writing about more romantic and wholesome feelings, in this case with lyrics that sound really clean, pure and almost dreamy, but still simple.

But he could also be writing about more gloomy feelings, mainly of sadness and 'mourning', and would probably treat the narrative as something that is already in the past but with which he still has to let go completely. His main goal I think is honesty, which is why the lyrics would be quite simple but hurt where they should.

Seungmin ‗ ❍

Dreamy and emotional

I feel like he's truly someone that could make a listener go 'Oh, so he is in love LOVE' while listening to one of his songs.

The things that would inspire Seungmin the most while writing is the feeling of being in love. He'd probably be quite poetic, dreamy and transfer these vibes to the lyrics and music as well. His voice too, which is adaptable and very expressive.

He's also someone who tries to give a 'narrator' vibe to his songs, almost like he was telling a story that had a beginning and and end. He can write about pretty much anything if it has to do with love. Unrequited love, longing for someone, looking back on your shared happy memories with a hint of sadness. He is also someone who is quite honest and wants the song to represent his feelings in an almost 'dreamy' way.

Jeongin ‗ ❍

Delicate, warm and comforting

Jeongin is someone who seems more comfortable writing about delicate feelings, whether they're positive or negative. A delicate love, almost like a first love, or on the other end a sad ending to that same love.

They lyrics would be quite easy, not overly complex and aim to be as honest as they can in eliciting the same feelings that the writer felt as they thought them out. But there would be a factor of comfort and relatability to them that would pull at your heartstrings.

His voice can also be quite expressive and he knows is, which is why the intonation along with the instrumentals would be fundamental, even more than the words themselves maybe.

He'd like to take a specific feeling and make a song about it, it doesn't necessarily need to be a whole story, moral, or context. He just wants to be able to express his feelings as clearly as possible, without necessarily giving it a background. I feel like those actual moments would be very precious to him and would want to keep them private in his memory.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

[kerubimcrepin]

An Afterword: talking about Welsh and Shedar

While we are done with the movie and the show, it cannot be understated, just how much we still have to cover. Both in terms of canon, and things out of the realm of canon.

And this includes interviews, and things that never got made.

[source]

The thing that often bothers me, is that the creator of the franchise that my most favorite cartoon of all time is a part of, probably despises said cartoon.

I can't not think about that, when I see Simone and other Aux Tresors characters reused in Wakfu season 4 as background character assets, or when I think about how every show except Aux Tresors has had an OST released, or how the only Aux Tresors companion in Waven is Lou. Though I know, logically speaking, that it's more likely because it's just not very popular.

Funnily enough, I personally, and rather selfishly, think that Welsh & Shedar's demise is probably the greatest fortune to happen to this franchise. What was one of the worst things to ever happen to Tot was one of my greatest fortunes. (I would not care about Joris as a character, had Kerubim never existed. The cartoon, and their relationship, mean a lot to me, for personal reasons.)

To Tot, the thing that I love the very most has cannibalized one of his life's dreams. Starting with the resources, and ending with character designs themselves. Even the character design of a fucking cat??

As an artist myself, I can't even begin to imagine the horror of that, and yet... I feel nothing but joy. It's quite weird, how life works.

The good news is that Welsh and Shedar has been resurrected by Ankama (watch as it gets a full artbook and an OST release before Aux Tresors, an 11 year show that still doesn't have those, yes I am bitter), so, it is mostly water under the bridge. We will hopefully get to enjoy both, in a couple of years.

[source]

But I feel like it's very likely, that a lot of Aux Tresors and the way Tot may feel about it, was influenced by this disaster, and I couldn't begin this post without addressing that.

So, what was, or could be in the future, Welsh and Shedar?

A plot summary from the youtube trailer's description, just as filled with Tot's overwhelming sadness as everything else relating to W&S's cancellation, man, goes as follows: "Here is the trailer for an animated series project launched in 2012 which has very little chance of arriving on your screens. The story is that of Welsh, a young boy forced to fight for an inheritance he never knew existed: that of the throne of the Kingdom of Bonta. Ankama’s “animation” department has plenty of ideas behind its graphics tablets: series, special episodes, films, our brains are always buzzing! However, not all projects are lucky enough to reach you…"

So basically, it was/is/will be a story about a young man, or boy, who finds out he is the next in line for Bonta's throne, and is taken there by Joris. How all of this happens is rather murky, AKA:

Anyway,

Tot has reported that his idea for this series was quite similar to the anime "Ranking of Kings", which I had sadly not watched. Make of that what you will.

When does Welsh & Shedar take place?

Firstly, I will say that, because of how much Tot loves this series, for years it was in a state of vague canonicity. AKA "it did likely happen, but it has never been produced so we don't know WHAT it is, that happened there. There sure was a guy named Welsh at some point."

What points to this is 1. Khan's old man design still being canon,

And 2. This usage of Welsh & Shedar-era Joris in an official timeline. It says that Joris would have been 60 years old, in this series.

Obviously, this timeline is subject to change, if/when Welsh & Shedar becomes real, and there are a lot of things we don't know!

Some curiosities...

Funnily enough, there exists this image, which was leaked by a French site when Aux Tresors began airing, — mistakenly used as promo for the series.

It could be depicting some other draft of W&S where Joris is a kid. Or, it could be depicting something between Aux Tresors and W&S, from when Ankama had to make something new up to take W&S's place.

It yet again makes me yearn for an Aux Tresors art book. Because seriously. What does this even mean.

Anyway thank you france for killing W&S, making Aux Tresors (the PEAK.... the SLAY.....) real, and now resurrecting W&S. We truly do live in the kindest timeline 🙏

[cienie-isengardu]

[MK1] Bi-Han & Kuai Liang. Good brother? Evil brother? Nah, just different reactions to trauma, part 4

part 1, part 2, part 3

Sources provided a clear difference how brothers felt about their father. For Kuai Liang, the man was a cherished parent AND authority figure he built his life around. For Bi-Han, father (and mimicking him grieving Scorpion) was a source of frustration and limitation he did not agree with. Bi-Han and Tomas definitely had a more complex relationship with their father than Kuai Liang did.

So far, we got only little bits in regard to mother and her influences on brothers and Lin Kuei politics but enough to see how Sub-Zero and Scorpion’s relationship with her differ from how they felt about father.

Before I will dwell on those relationships I would like to point out a small detail noticed during my research: so far there is no direct mention that the mother was in fact a wife of Grandmaster. She is either referred to as a mother or parent - which makes sense, because her importance is related to the brothers, not to their father, so it would be weird if Bi-Han, Tomas or Kuai Liang talked about her as the “wife of Grandmaster”. At the same time, the lack of implication of marriage bond between mother and father[1] and how she is refered feels similar to the obscure reference from original timeline:

Born in America, Sub-Zero was the oldest of three children, which included a brother and sister. Their mother wanted a normal life for her sons, who had already been chosen by the Lin Kuei to become warriors for the clan. She tried in vein to hide them from their father whose own life in America was only a cover for his true identity and purpose. Eventually they were found and their father returned with them to his homeland. Their mother and sister were never seen or heard from again. (x)

Due to this, I decided to not describe her as the wife or supposed wife of Grandmaster and stick just to provided by sources terms of mother, parent and Lin Kuei fighter - so in advance sorry for repetition of those words. At the same time, this specific way of including the mother in Bi-Han, Tomas and Kuai Liang’s story creates a possibility of a more complicated family relationship, both between brothers and their parents or between the mother and father alone. And as a result the whole Lin Kuei inner politics, as we already have a hint of its complexity due to Cyrax and Sektor's loyalty to Sub-Zero threatening Kuai Liang’s birthright to the title of Grandmaster.  Keeping it in mind, here are some of my thoughts and conclusions about the mother and her sons. 

Let’s start with Kuai Liang. There is no doubt he respected and deeply cared for father’s teaching. As I hopefully proved in the previous part, there is a solid reason to think that the loss of a cherished parent affected Scorpion to the point that grief influenced his behavior (mimicking father) and in result, relationship with brothers (barely talking with them if it didn’t involve father or tradition up to Sub-Zero’s betrayal). He expressed a burning anger at Bi-Han for letting their father die.

Kuai Liang doesn’t seem to have the same emotional bond with mother. 

Sindel: Both your parents were excellent fighters. Scorpion: I can only hope to live up to their example.

Like yes, he will acknowledge Sindel’s opinion and hope to be good as his parents but that is like the only one time we hear him saying anything about mother - and even then, she is mentioned alongside the cherished father. 

Mind you, this is solely my impression, but this intro reminds me of film scenes in which a character is told by others about a parent they had never had the chance to meet or know too well. It may be a wrong impression, but there is something about Kuai Liang’s response that makes me wonder how old he was when mother died and if he lost a parent at a young age, did it fuel his deep dedication to father as there was no other authority figure to influence him as a person?

Granted, both Kuai Liang and Bi-Han never bring mother first in their intro dialogues - what A) says a lot about their upbringing and B) differs from some mentions of father. But in Scorpion’s intro there is hardly anything truly personal about his bond with mother, or her personal feelings on Lin Kuei duty, especially when compared to those focused on the previous Grandmaster.

In contrast, we have interaction between Tomas and Bi-Han:

Smoke: If Mother were alive -- Sub-Zero: She would applaud my actions.

Tomas and Bi-Han may have a different idea of how mother would react to their brotherly conflict, but both talk about her in a more personal way. Tomas invokes her the same way he brings father into discussion:

story mode: "Were he here, Father would advise us to wait without protest."

or

Sub-Zero: You were never truly one of us. Smoke: Were Father here, he would disagree.

So we can assume mother had an impact on Tomas as he respected her as an authority figure similar to father. Alternatively, he thinks Bi-Han is more likely to listen about mother than anything he will say about their father. 

The letter part would be an interesting parallel between Tomas and Bi-Han, because Smoke himself is implied to grow up without a father or not being close to his biological parent - when talking about his original family Smoke directly mentioned so far only mother and his twin sister.

Also, the same as happened with father in intro dialogues, Kuai Liang and Tomas do not talk about their Lin Kuei mother. Scorpion claimed that Tomas never mention his biological mother and sister:

Scorpion: You never speak of your mother and sister. Smoke: Their ghosts no longer haunt me, Kuai Liang.

but as the other intro dialogues proved, Tomas does talk about them directly and indirectly with some characters, 

like Kitana,

Smoke: My sister was my twin. Kitana: How it must have hurt to lose her.

Tanya (priestess warrior) 

Smoke: After losing my family, I lost my faith. Tanya: It's the only thing that can sustain you, Tomas.

and Liu Kang (Fire Lord who may be responsible for their death)

Liu Kang: I cannot bring back your family, Tomas. Smoke: You can't or you won't?

Like I said before, it is impossible to tell for sure about which mother, biological or adoptive, Smoke was speaking, but as he claimed Li Mei resemble him mother

Li Mei: I remind you of your mother? Smoke: No-nonsense and tough as nails, just like her.

I personally assume he meant the adoptive one, as according to Smoke’s ending he lived with the Lin Kuei family for around 15 years. Logically thinking he would have more clear memories of her than about the biological parent he lost in childhood. We of course have no idea when - and how - his Lin Kuei mother died, but if I’m right in my assumption, then Tomas is providing vital insight into what kind of person she was. As Tomas said, a tough and no-nonsense woman and that fits perfectly the image of an excellent Lin Kuei fighter, because frankly, Bi-Han and Kuai Liang easily fit that description too. As presumably, the majority of Lin Kuei warriors. 

Another thing to note, the adoptive mother is not identified by Tomas with kindness, comfort or warmth or anything most people usually associate mothers with. This of course does not mean his adoptive mother didn’t love him or was a bad parent but may give us an idea what it felt to grow up in a clan primarily focused on training warriors. A purpose that definitely affected how people interacted with each other and what was expected from children. 

However the most interesting thing about Tomas considering Li Mei to be similar to adoptive mother is the fact that from all possible female fighters, he identifies mother with a woman forced into and shaped by Umgadi system of servitude but who found her true purpose outside said system. 

Kitana: Resuming your old role is a waste of material. Li Mei: Being First Constable is my first, best destiny.

or

Liu Kang: I hear the Umgadi want you back. Li Mei: I prefer to remain First Constable.

And this finally led me to the eldest brother and Sub-Zero’s statement that mother “would applaud me”.

Bi-Han outright claims mother would be proud of him and logically thinking, supportive of his choices. Which is a drastic contrast to how he perceives father as he did call the man a fool that doomed Lin Kuei.

And here comes an important thing: though sources barely provide us an idea who Bi-Han’s mother was in original timeline - a Lin Kuei herself who knew what lay ahead of her sons already chosen by the clan or just a woman that was unlucky to meet and have three children with an assassin working undercover in America - she was literally the only person that tried to give Bi-Han and Kuai Liang a normal, safe life. This woman, whoever she was, challenged a powerful assassin clan to save her two sons and daughter and was presumably killed alongside the daughter by Bi-Han’s father. This definitely affected Bi-Han’s worldview and interestingly, the sources have never implied Sub-Zero had any strong emotional ties with his father. 

Mythologies Sub-Zero’s backstory mentions only Bi-Han and Kuai Liang being kidnapped against mother’s will, that cryomancy was passed down to Bi-Han from father, that he took his place and mantle when the man died and that is basically all we know about their relationship. 

Between brothers, it is always Kuai Liang to mention other male members of their family with respect, as can be seen with new timeline Scorpion and alternative timeline Kuai Liang:

Sub-Zero: I disown you in every way. Noob Saibot: Then disown my name, 'Sub-Zero'. Sub-Zero: The name was Grandfather's first.

and

Sub-Zero: Grandfather? Sub-Zero: Defeat me to earn my mantle. Sub-Zero: You honor me with your kombat.

despite the possibility that said Grandfather may be the one that kidnapped brothers to enroll them into the Lin Kuei clan, while Bi-Han as a Noob Saibot was the one bringing their mother, even if just to be sarcastic/ironic:

Noob Saibot: You disappoint me. Sub-Zero: The feeling is mutual, brother. Noob Saibot: Mother would be so proud.

and on two separate occasions talked to Jacqui about her mom that passed shortly before MK11’s events:

Noob Saibot: Vera's soul calls you. Jacqui: Keep mama's name out your mouth, Revenant! Noob Saibot: Revenant? I am Wraith!

and

Noob Saibot: Return to your mother's arms. Jacqui: She's dead, asshole. Noob Saibot: And her soul is mine.

and isn’t it a surprisingly similar thing to current timeline Bi-Han talking to Kitana and Mileena about their dead mother?

And yes, Liu Kang’s timeline is a fresh start and a lot of things have changed but some elements seem to repeat themselves, whether the Keeper of Time agrees with it or not. Which is why I think mother - and her fate - again deeply influenced Bi-Han, the same as he was influenced in the original timeline by her desperate attempt to save him and Kuai Liang from Lin Kuei bondage. 

Bi-Han claimed mother would applaud his action, so she may herself feel resentment for Grandmaster’s idea of tradition and duty to Earthrealm and that resentment was passed down to her eldest son. Alternatively, it was her death that made Sub-Zero question both the nature of the relationship between Lin Kuei and Fire Lord and his father’s wisdom.

This leads me to another detail that may not be intentional on NRS’s part but it is repeated through the sources. The same as mother is never said to be the wife of Grandmaster - what admittedly is the most logical assumption for a traditional (patriarchal) clan as a way to secure the line of legal heir from proper marriage  - the decision of adopting Tomas was made solely by Grandmaster. And so we have:

Smoke’s bio: As a boy, Smoke lived to hunt with his family. Their final hunt, however, ended in tragedy. Having accidentally trespassed onto Lin Kuei lands, they were attacked. Smoke was orphaned. Ashamed by his warriors' actions, the Lin Kuei's Grandmaster adopted Smoke. He raised him alongside his sons, Sub-Zero and Scorpion.

and

Kitana: You are Kuai Liang's adopted brother? Smoke: His father's honor demanded that he take me in.

and

Reptile: Lucky for you, Kuai Liang's father took you in. Smoke: It didn't feel that way at the time.

or

Bi-Han, story mode: Mind your place, Tomas. Father may have taken you in, made you one of us… but your blood will never be Lin Kuei.

As I talked before about Bi-Han and Tomas forced brotherhood on different occasion it struck me how the adoption resolved mainly around father’s selfish reasons like saving his honor and erasing the feeling of guilt rather the boy’s safety and emotional health. There is something truly disturbing about forcing a child to be part of clan that murdered his family over a trivial matter. But there is also something disturbing about how the mother had no say in the adoption of Tomas, as there isn’t any hint the man consulted that with her. Now, it is understandable that in a very traditional (patriarchy) clan the father, as the Grandmaster and head of his family, could make decisions without consultation with others, including his own wife or children. But usually people who love or at least mutually respect each other discuss the vital matters before making decisions whose consequences will have such a great impact on their and their children’s life. Adopting a child, so greatly traumatized and from totally foreign culture, is something that should be a joint decision of father and mother if both were supposed to raise said kid alongside their own. In that regard the father comes off badly, not only by how sources made his reasoning selfish (“his honor demanded”, “Ashamed by his warriors' actions”, “father wanted us to be brothers”) but also how uncaring he was toward the mother of his children, especially compared to Sindel and Jerrord. 

We have no idea if Bi-Han’s father and mother were in love or were forced into a relationship by demands of tradition, maybe even through arranged marriage. But we have Sindel that though married Jerrord as a means to ensure peace, 

Sindel's Bio: When Sindel ascended to Outworld's throne, she worried that she was ill-prepared. Adding to her stress: her impending arranged marriage to Jerrod, an Outworld noble. Forced into it to placate a rebellious region, Sindel could only pray that he was worthy. To Sindel’s delight, Jerrod proved an ideal partner. 

she was loved, respected and supported by her husband and the feeling was mutual.

So far there is little suggesting Bi-Han’s mother had any real influence over Lin Kuei’s politics or that Grandmaster sought out her advice. She is not called the wife of Grandmaster, a title suggesting some high social position and so far only Sindel's remark gives us any idea what her role in clan could be. Liu Kang and Scorpion do not bring her dedication to Earthrealm and duty as a counterargument to Bi-Han’s resentment the way they talk about previous Grandmaster’s teaching and wisdom. She is pretty much removed from the picture and only Sindel and Tomas bothered to mention her at all. Sindel by praising Kuai Liang’s both parents as excellent fighters and Tomas by recalling her authority - the only one that Bi-Han seems to agree with, as according to him reclaiming Lin Kuei independence is what would please his mother.

If Tomas and Bi-Han have such a different idea of mother, the first question coming to mind is which brother speaks truth and which one is delusional. However I think that is not right question, because mother could not to speak about her desire to gain independence for Lin Kuei with Tomas - not because she didn’t love or accept the boy as her own, but because the orphan, as not born into clan, could not understand fully the Lin Kuei situation. Especially not when little Tomas was mourning the killed family and not when it became clear he and adoptive father became close. 

Another thing worth to examine is the possibility that Bi-Han, consciously or not, also associates Li Mei with his mother, as 

he clearly respect her, a former Umgadi turned into First Constable, more than Tanya, the current leader of priestess warriors:

Sub-Zero: No one in your order can defeat a Lin Kuei. Tanya: A nescient boast which is easily disproven.

or

Sub-Zero: Mileena sends a bodyguard, not a warrior? Tanya: Underestimate me at your peril, Sub-Zero.

vs

Sub-Zero: I hear your skills are formidable. Li Mei: As are those of all who have been Umgadi.

he encourages Li Mei to stop serve Royal Family and govern themselves

Sub-Zero: Your constables could also govern. Li Mei: We are sworn only to protect and serve.

something he usually does not do, as Sub-Zero has no interest in people outside Lin Kuei.

I’m painfully aware there is not enough source material to have clear conclusions and many of my thoughts are based on guesswork and comparative analysis. That said, I do think that as death of father deeply influenced Kuai Liang, the same happened with Bi-Han when their mother presumably was killed on duty. We have no idea what is the age gap between brothers, however I do think that Kuai Liang, as the younger brother, could not have a chance to know their mother well so all his devotion was focused on the living parent that raised him. If the mother personally wished for or actively supported Lin Kuei independence, she could do so as a way to ensure her children will have a better life than endless servitude, the same way the original timeline incarnation tried to save her sons from servitude to the assassin clan. In that case, Bi-Han was raised with an additional influence that shaped his mindset about his duty to clan above duty to Liu Kang and Earthrealm. If mother’s death was somehow the fault of Grandmaster and/or Fire Lord, as in, they sent her on ill-fated mission, it could be the origin of Bi-Han’s resentment against both men. 

There is much more to say about the conflict between tradition vs independence and I for sure will talk about that soon, but the next part will be focused on POWER.

SIDENOTES:

[1] Alternative timeline seems the closest to presenting Bi-Han and Kuai Liang’s parents as the “normal family” as both look devastated when their children were kidnapped by Lin Kuei.

At the same time, MK11’s intro dialogues of Sub-Zero and Noob suggests their grandfather was once a Sub-Zero himself, with raises a question how much their parents were aware of danger from the assassin clan and if any of them were a Lin Kuei themselves.

[ashtxeman]

I wholeheartedly believe that this entire story was actually a fabricated lie.

I'm sure I'm not the only thinks this too! Personally, I think there is a far deeper story to Hidgens and the workin' boys that he's keeping to himself, and that perhaps his actions in the short film were actually a reflection of the actual story hidden in his past. Him wielding the axe and gun, as well as him killing the workin' girls, are in fact reflections of actions commited against the original workin' boys. I think Hidgens killed them, but he didn't do it on purpose, it was an accident which does add some truth to his story about the lightning.. that the death of the workin' boys wasn't planned. My theory is that a Lord in Black was behind it, mostly due to the appearance of the workin' boys ghosts.

As other people have pointed out, they're shrouded in blue lighting and share a similar appearance to Max Jagerman, who was also a ghost due to forces related to the Lords in Black. The boys ghosts could just be hallucinations conjoured up by Hidgens to justify his later actions, but just as much as that could be the case they could also be visions conjoured up by a Lord in Black, either Pokey or Blinky, in my opinion. Pokey due to the blue-theming and, of course, Hidgens love for musical theatre which he similarly shares, or Blinky due to his previously seen ability to turn people on each other and encourage violent tendencies, like what was done to Bill and Alice in Watcher World. Pokey could have utilised Hidgens passion for musical theare and equal desire for fame to manipulate him, promising just that and eventually turning him on his own six boyfriends as a price, leaving them dead and leaving him alone with none of what he sought after. Equally so, Blinky, loverboy that he is, could have gotten envious of Hidgens workin' boys harem and turned Hidgens on them, leaving him with nobody. Quite similar situations for both Lords really, they might even have shared custody of him.. ragging some insane old man back and forth between themselves, you know? Either way, Hidgens was influenced to kill the workin' boys, and the subsequent realisation of what he'd done was what sent him down a spiral of isolation and instability. Or his lightning story is actual true, in that case RIP and terrible luck on his end.

[princeasimdiya12]

Bucchigiri Utena Parallel-The Depravity of Sad, Strange Little Men

While there have been various comparisons that can be found between Bucchigiri and Revolutionary Girl Utena. From it's parallels with the main protagonist duo, the usage of fairy tales and their influence towards the heroes, to themes of self-stagnation & it's consequences. But for me, something I've had a hard time finding was direct comparisons between it's core cast. While they do have some similarities, not all of it is ideally parallel with the Bucchigiri delinquents having different personalities and arcs compared to the Utena duelists. That said, I was able to find two characters who came close with paralleling each other: in terms of their designated roles, their origins, their stance on gender and what becomes of them afterwards.

Shindo Akutaro and Kyouichi Saionji

Disclaimer: Just as a warning, there will be light spoilers from Revolutionary Girl Utena that will be discussed, though mainly in relation to Saionji's character and less of the series in general. There will also be mentions of domestic and sexual abuse.

Part 1: The Starter Villain

One of the first similarities that both Saionji and Akutaro share is that they both start out as the first official antagonists in their respective series. The way they're presented in the series makes them come off as genuinely dangerous men who intentionally cause harm for others.

Saionji's first scene is him slapping Anthy over an unheard conversation which is made worse when it's established that she's "betrothed" to him. He "justifies" the abuse because of the engagement which he treats as being in a relationship with him as the domineering boyfriend and Anthy as his loyal girlfriend. But what drives Utena to confront him is when he (supposedly) posted Wakaba's love letter in a public space for everyone to mock. Utena and the audience are meant to find him despicable for his behavior and want to see him be taken down ASA-NOW.

Akutaro also serves as a despisable human being who is presented as the first major threat in the series. He's portrayed as the most bloodthirsty and cruelest of the Big Three Banchos introduced in the story. While Marito rivals him in bloodthirstiness and sadism (and was technically the first adversary Arajin was forced to confront), he is shown to have some redeemable traits such as his friendship with Outa and his genuine respect towards Kenichirou. The same cannot be said for Akutaro who has no redeeming attributes. He frequently mistreats his NG Boys with threats and violence viewing them as inferior to him, forces them to steal from non-gang affiliated students, and is preparing an elaborate plot to force the rival gangs to destroy each other so he can take over.

It's also worth mentioning that his role as the first villain was even foreshadowed in the opening song. Whereas Marito and Kenichirou only looked big and scary in front of Arajin, they never actually grab him and look as though they want Arajin to face them. Akutaro is the only one who interacts with Arajin by binding him with his whips, stripping him to his boxers and tossing him down a dark hole.

The audience recognizes Akutaro as the least likable but most dangerous of the bancho leaders and are hoping to see him be taken down before his wicked plots can take effect.

But despite being presented as major villains, they didn't actually start out that way. They were once regular kids who ended up falling into the dark side because of a falling out between them and a man they once looked up to.

Part 2: Now You'll Respect Me, Because I'm a Threat

As explained in Episode 5, Akutaro actually started out as a humble nerd who was an easy target for delinquents to pick on. But that all changed when he was rescued by Kenichirou and was given the opportunity to join Minato Kai alongside him. Akutaro accepted and trained himself into becoming a man worthy of Kenichirou's respect. But that all changed when Akutaro brought a weapon to the fighting ring, something that was strongly discouraged in MK which lead to his banishment.

And in Saoinji's case, he once had a close friendship with Touga Kiryuu, the Student Council President and future antagonist following his defeat. Both boys started out caring for one another and saw each other as equals. But that all changed when they came across a young girl in a coffin who just lost her parents and wanted to join them. The next day, the girl disappeared and Touga's attitude about the mystery girl causes Saionji to think that he showed her something eternal to help her leave the coffin.

Both boys started out as genuine and harmless friends to someone they once admired. But after a conflict involving ideals, the friendship became strained. Akutaro swore vengeance against Kenichirou for tossing him aside and vowed to destroy him while Saionji, despite still being friends with Touga in the present, would develop intense levels of jealousy and and inferiority complex.

But whereas Saionji was driven by envy because of Touga's manipulations and desire to stand out on top between the two of them, Akutaro was the one who broke his friendship by refusing to accept Kenichirou's ideals and how he was in the wrong to use weapons in a true fight.

Each of them had different reasons for their falling out, but they shared the same dream of becoming stronger then their former friends in the hopes of surpassing them. And surprisingly, both boys are successful when it comes to building themselves up as men worthy of respect and power.

Saionji would grow up to be the captain of the school's Kendo Team, amassing horde of fangirls who were swayed by his bewitching good looks and is also an official member of the Student Council. It's also implied that he was a worthy duelist as he started out with Anthy in his possession before Utena became involved, meaning that he bested the other duelists (minus Touga) beforehand.

And in only a few years time, Akutaro managed to create a delinquent gang that's on the same level of credibility as MK and SS who've lasted for several decades. The NG Boys have a large number of followers, several bases for meetings and weapons manufacturing and even having territorial rights in certain locations in Honki City. Though it isn't specified on how much of the NG Boys' creation and success was due to Akutaro's own merits or if Ichiya was involved in it's genesis, but it stands that he succeeded in making a fearsome group to command with many of the other rival gang members acknowledging them as a threat that shouldn't be messed with on a whim.

Part 3: Gender Politics in My Anime?

To maintain their power and assert their authority over others, both Akutaro and Saionji rely on traditional gender norms to maintain their respective identities and influences. The problem being is that the norms they rely on fall heavily on toxic masculinity.

In RGU, Saionji's toxic masculinity is shown towards his mistreatment of Anthy and his resentment of Touga. And while the other men in Utena are also guilty of engaging in toxic masculinity and strict gender norms, Saionji's practices stand out as being the most noticeable and easy to identify.

He views Anthy as an ideal girlfriend who should obey and follow along with his will regardless of what she thinks. Any opposition is met with slapping her and scolding her for thinking differently. His views towards Touga is someone who challenges his status as the superior man. He's constantly in conflict with him when it comes to kendo competitions or how they should go about the dueling tournaments. And in each instance, Touga always comes out on top which fuels Saionji's insecurity which leads to anger and violently lashing out at anyone or anything to cross his path.

It's also mentioned that he makes several misogynistic comments about the roles men and women play which would contribute to his ongoing hatred of Utena. A girl who refuses to play her role and stands between him and his supposed Rose Bride. Although it isn't outright stated, it's also implied that Saionji did come from an abusive family which would explain how he obtained his callous mistreatment of women, his ideas on gender roles along with his casual usage of violence.

Akutaro also shares similar beliefs when it comes to power and respect. His use of weapons and lack of an honor code when fighting contribute to his belief that a great man is one who will do anything to win. Even if it means being violent, cruel, sadistic and merciless, it all will be worth it as he stands above everyone. The Emperor for the World to see. He even forces these ideals to his NG Boys just before the big war by encouraging them to embrace the ideal of kill or be killed. As in they kill the other gang members or they'll be killed by his own hand for failing to meet his expectations.

As for how he views and mistreats women... Before we can go into that, I'd like to take a quick detour and bring up how Minato Kai and Siguma Squad engage with gender norms.

Bucchigiri doesn't exactly go into detail with gender politics due to it's significant lack of girl characters and how the main boys rarely mention their own beliefs about girls in general. (With the exception of Arajin who only shows interests in girls by seeing them as potential girlfriends and tools used to lose his virginity and the narrative is more than willing to punish him for his beliefs). Not to mention it is rather questionable why there haven't been any girl members to be part of either Minato Kai or Siguma Squad, especially since there isn't a rule saying girls aren't allowed. Despite this, it is worth bringing up how the two clubs are rather lenient when it comes to how the boys defy traditional gender norms.

In Minato Kai, Matakara is presented as the most sensitive, friendly and warm-hearted boy of the group. He's always shown as easy to warm up to and welcoming of other people provided you aren't a threat. None of the MK boys have any issue with his sensitivity and how he boasts on how Arajin is better than him in terms of strength. It even comes as a shock for everyone when he turns to the dark side and begins his quest of fighting everyone for the sake of getting stronger. In a traditional shonen show, a man engaging in this behavior while closing his heart would be applauded since that's what's commonly expected. Whereas in Bucchigiri, it's portrayed as a tragedy that Matakara would go against his beliefs.

Other examples include Komao who dresses in a feminine manner but is never subject to mockery or being made fun of by his peers or the show. Zabu is also able to express emotional honesty towards Matakara regarding him being the reason the war started which is made better as Matakara accepts his apology and still treats him as a friend. Not to mention that he does make beautiful paper decorations and takes pride in it.

Siguma Squad also follow a similar acceptance of emotional vulnerability among it's core members. This is most evident in Episode 10 during Jabishiri and Hagure's confrontation with Corrupted!Matakara. Following the brutal defeat, Jabishiri who's presented as the most aggressive, moody and masculine of the duo expresses genuine disappointment in front of Hagure and comes close to crying. And in the following episode, when he tries to hunt Matakara despite his injuries, Hagure slaps him and cries his heart out while calling him out for his thick-headenness. In any shonen series, the masculine one would snipe at their friend for acting like a sissy and not like a real man. But Jabishiri lets him and realizes that he's right. And even Outa, who can be interpreted as a traditionally masculine man, never chastises the duo for their behavior or how they're not acting like real men. He instead acknowlegeds their emotions and promises them that they'll still keep Siguma Squad alive.

So both gangs are shown to be accepting of emotional vulnerability amongst their groups and are pretty okay with their members expressing gender-non-conforming actions without fear.

As for the NG Boys, that vulnerability is nonexistent as the Emperor uses a brutal and heartless manner of keeping his underlings in check. The boys can only discuss in secret with each other over their own feelings on the matter out of fear of being victimized by the Emperor. Mixed with the lack of individualization of the NG Boys, they exist in a space controlled by Akutaro where only his voice and beliefs, belonging to the greatest man, can be acknowledged and obeyed.

And that is in relation to how the boys in the three groups are able to relate to each other. But there is one component of the NG Boys that neither their rival gangs have but also gives an understanding of Akutaro's toxic masculinity.

The NG Girls.

The existence of the girls highlights how it is possible for girls to be affiliated with any of the gangs. But how curious that instead of fighting alongside the NG Boys as potential fighters and delinquents, they instead only work as flashy showgirls. Wearing cute outfits, performing elaborate dance choreography and acting flirty with anyone that their boss sets in their sights. And given that Akutaro is the boss and prime founder of the NG Boys, it's within reason to believe that he came up with the idea of NG Girls and their roles in his gang.

So sad to say, their existence and jobs falls into gender stereotyping with what is expect of boys and girls. Boys are expected to be tough fighters who show no fear, cannot confide in each other and will hurt others without restraint. Girls are expected look cute, be desirable and attend to the needs of the boys they come across. It's also implied that they work as prostitutes based on Akutaro promising Arajin to "pop his cherry" using the girls mixed with their seductive actions during the dance scene.

And of course there's the whole scene with Akutaro proposing on turning Mahoro into a trophy girl aka sex slave once he takes down Marito. He sees her as a prize to be claimed after defeating her older brother and would consider sexually exploit her for the sake of dragging Siguma Squad's reputation into the ground. So it is rather concerning that he views girls as objects to be claimed and toyed with as a spoil of war. Something a power-hungry man would enjoy having.

Thankfully, both boys are clearly presented as being in the wrong for their beliefs and practices of toxic masculinity which makes their defeat at the hands of the heroes very satisfying.

Part 4: How the Mighty Have Fallen

Once the antagonists are defeated by their respective protagonists, they end up falling into two roles as the story continues: pawns for the fairy tale villains and comic relief.

As mentioned before, Saionji's friendship with Touga is presented as a constant power struggled fueled by jealousy and insecurity. Touga actually knows of Saionji's feelings and purposefully exploits them for his own gain. First in Season 1 by tricking him with a fake letter as part of his grand scheme of making himself look good in front of Utena and later in Season 3 when he starts to collaborate with End of the World.

For Akutaro, following his defeat and exposure at the Gang War Arc, he's tricked into helping Ichiya reach Matakara with the promise of revenge. But as soon as Ichiya makes official contact, he abandons Akutaro leaving him powerless and resentful.

And during the time they're used, they essentially fade into the background as the protagonists turn their attention to other pressing matters regarding the plot and their relationships with their friends. The starter villain that once posed as a significant threat is casually ignored or brushed off without a care. And given what heartless monsters they were since the beginning, who wouldn't want to ignore them or give them a death glare to shut them up?

Because of Saionji's brutish behavior, Utena and friends rarely pay him attention, even when he has "important" things to say, and instead focus on other events in their daily lives. It's even more apparent when he's temporarily expelled from Otori Academy and loses his influence among the student body. Thus forcing him into becoming a nobody.

And with having lost the great war, his former NG Boys have no reason to continue following him and beat him up as retribution for his past transgressions. They along with the NG Girls openly laugh at what a loser he is and promise each other not to let someone like him boss them around anymore. And with no influence or status, all Akutaro can do is watch from the sidelines hoping that fate will be kind enough to defeat his enemies for him.

Though a major difference when it comes to both boys in regards to their pathetic states is that Saionji continues to have relevance in the story while Akutaro remains a bystander. Despite losing a fourth time to Utena in Season 3, he still sticks around as a Student Council Member and even works alongside Touga when he decides to stop Utena. He even brings up how questionable it is to follow the End of the World's ideals when he and the other council members don't know his true motivations. And although Akutaro does warn Arajin of the Honki People's true agenda and the danger they're in, he doesn't actively do anything afterwards. He mainly stays on the side watching the final battles play out. And it's more than likely he won't be able to do much when Matakara has his ultimate battle with Arajin.

Conclusion

Both Akutaro and Saionji start out as the first villains of the story that the audience is meant to dislike because of their cruel and power-hungry behaviors. The reason they transformed into dangerous men was because of a falling out they had with men they once admired in the past. As a result, they would work hard into becoming men with great authority all in the hopes of vanquishing the ones that wronged them and to prove how much better they are then them. The two are also shown to have practiced toxic masculinity given their horrid views of how women should be treated, their ideals on "might makes right" and how they refuse to engage in emotional vulnerability. And once they're defeated, they're brushed off to the side as comic relief while spectating the new battles that the heroes engage in.

And those are my thoughts on the similarities between these two jerks. I never imagined I would make this type of analysis post since I personally hate Saionji. I respect his role in RGU and understand his character in the long term, but men who hurt women while calling it love is something I will never forgive. Either way, I saw the similarities so I decided to put up with him for this analysis So what do you think of these thoughts and the roles of the two villains? If you agree or disagree with anything I’ve written, please feel free to reblog and/or comment with your own ideas. Thank you and may you have a great day/night!