#about those who literally had their whole lives ahead of them but who were killed when they were still babies and children

[radioactive-cloud]

my roman empire will forever be how my country could've been if it wasn't terrorised by russia for centuries

[sirobvious]

Finally watched Starship Troopers and I have a lot to say about it.

First of all, the idea that anyone could see this movie as not being a satirical parody of American militarism and fascism is baffling to me, then again there’s people that think Warhammer 40,000 is pro-militarism and fascism, and I guess if you watch this when you’re dumb and 15 it might go over your head.

It’s extremely dubious as to whether the bugs are actually aggressing against the Federation in the first place, and very likely that it’s something exaggerated or made up wholesale by the government to justify their own aggressive expansion.

It has the plot and all the trappings of a big dumb oorah go-America action movie, but reframed as a terrible tragedy.

Just about all the main characters join the military for reasons that to not involve “wanting to join the military,” but the society they live in has set it up so that for most of them it’s the only way forward in life, and in the military they’re worth less than the uniforms they’re wearing.

They’re sent to a training camp that abuses them violently, and then sent to the front lines to die. Not to fight, to die.

Analyzing this movie from a military tactics perspective, the mobile infantry isn’t meant to survive, their only job is to deliver death to the enemy’s homes by shooting those micronukes into the hives. The rifles and body armor they’re all equipped with are near useless and only exist to make them feel brave enough to go towards the enemy and shoot the micronukes.

Their squads don’t have medics, machine gunners, or anti-armor equipment. (The nuke launchers don’t count as anti-armor they’re too dangerous to shoot at anything within like 200 yards.) In the first mission, if they had had any of that, they could have held off the bug counterattack enough to get way more soldiers off-planet. It still would’ve been a losing battle but it wouldn’t have been such a massacre. Hell, it might have even spared more bug lives, because the rifles still kill bugs, but do so extremely slowly, enough that it just results in both sides dying more. But survival of the federation infantry was never an objective, they are just a delivery system for the nukes, they might as well be suicide-bombers.

In the second mission, the government knew it was a trap but sent them anyway, without telling them.

Rico is not a good commander, but keeps getting bumped up the ranks anyway because of the mass death. He doesn’t think for himself and the only order I think he actually gives in the whole movie is “kill them all,” which, yeah, great plan. If they had fallen back at that moment, more of them would’ve survived.

Once he actually starts climbing the ranks, he literally doesn’t even say anything original, he just repeats what he’s been told, quoting the Lieutenant word-for-word.

The Lieutenant, despite being a crazy fascist like everyone else, is legitimately a good leader and commander. No one would’ve made it out of that ambush if he didn’t make the calls he did when he did, but Rico, who replaces him, doesn’t have any of those command skills. He’s got all the macho bravado but none of the smarts. He’s going to be the kind of commander to lead a valiant doomed charge into enemy machine gun nests.

And then at the end when it shows all the surviving main characters in their higher-ranking positions that they only got because people ahead of them died, and it shows the subordinates even younger than the main characters were when they joined. It was sickening.

And also all the top brass are just straight up dressed like Nazis.

It was a great movie though, especially if you're an Imperial Guard player like myself.

[six-paths-of-jeanmarco]

Thank you for killing me slowly by a thousand mental cuts the ask, anon! First of all, lemme apologize for taking so long to answer, but in my defence, you asked me quite the question here.

I want to say first that I used to be a big snk fan. And then the final chapter was released. It was so bad that it made me look at the whole series with a very critical eye, which made me realize that snk has never been that great to begin with. What really made this story good was the anime produced by WIT, and what really carried the story was its big mystery box. The moment we opened it, everything went downhill bc this was no longer a fantasy world, but a lazy parody of ww2 Germany & Japan.

But more importantly, and referring to the final arc, I started to notice all the rot hidden in plain sight: its fascist and antisemitic undertones, the awful writing, the lackluster worldbuilding, the braindead politics and the inconsistent treatment of characters.

Despite my newfound interest for the cautionary symbolism of Reiner and his character arc, I still think it was handled poorly. I have the same problem with characters like Gabi, Annie, Magath, and Pieck. Their individual arcs ended with them facing no real consequences for their crimes. Magath, despite being a literal representation of the nazi, was rewarded by the plot with a heroic death (a baffling choice when you think about who he is and what he did, and just how brutal and meaningless all of the Scouts deaths were pre timeskip). Reiner, Annie, Pieck, and Gabi were all rewarded with the promise of a new, happier life ahead of them, despite being responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths directly or indirectly.

Gabi herself is proof of just how bad the writing is: RBA lived inside the walls for around 3 years, and yet they still went on with their mission. They still killed Marco. Annie still massacred those Scouts. It took Reiner 7 years to fully acknowledge that what he did was wrong and to finally make amends ... by joining an alliance that had the same goal as that of the warriors for the whole goddamn arc: take down Eren. However, Gabi realized she was wrong in like what, just a few months at best? Their development is dictated by however the plot needs them to be or act. But there's more:

Marco, the Levi Squad, Sasha, and -- as victims of similar circumstances -- Pixis, and Hange, the embodiment of pacifism, were all condemned for being good people, and some of them for believing that there is good in everybody, even in their enemies; and punished for believing that conflicts could be solved in peaceful ways. Does the cautionary symbolism of their brutal deaths still holds up when the story rewards violence and crushes pacifism?

I don't think it does.

Showing that even the worst of the worst are capable of change and doing the right thing in the end is an important message, but. The idea that everyone is just a victim of their uprising or their circumstances is simply wrong. Ideologies don't exist without people, cowardice does not justify orders carried out that lead to attrocities. This idea fails to acknowledge that evil exists. Not just nuanced evil, but pure evil as well. It also goes the other way around. This idea also fails to acknowledge that good can exist.

And also to sympathize with Pieck, who was still loyal to marley despite what they're doing to her own people. And Magath, who in his final moments, revealed that he actually cared about the kids he was indoctrinating and instructing to commit genocide all along. I can't ignore the similarity with the way neonazi like to bring up hitler's friendship with Bernile Nienau, a girl of Jewish origins, as an attempt to humanize him. Heck, even Zeke's final moments painted him as more sympathetic than he was. Such is the case with Floch, and the way Jean reacted to his death. All those characters were redeemed in the audience's eyes without facing any substantial accountability.

I also have a huge issue with the false equivalences that were supposed to show us how morally grey everyone and everything is.

-> The link to the post in the screenshot

Jean and Connie and the Scouts that attacked Liberio aren't just wrongfully presented as something they're not, they're also used as tools to rationalize what Reiner and co have done to them throughout most of the series. Jean briefly does that with what Reiner did to Marco before he punches him to a pulp. Then again with the "we're the same" bs. Then again with implying Reiner is one of them as a Scout. There's also no real tension between the warriors and the Paradis side of the alliance. What the warriors did to Paradis is truly horrific, so their only way for redemption is through their victims.

The mistake that most people do when they interpret their relationship or the characters themselves is to only look at the characters' in-story intent. But there's also this thing called the author's intent that overrides everything. Sometimes, you cannot separate an author from their work. Especially when it comes to the final 12 chapters, where the quality of the writing is in the sewer.

But there's actually another way through which these characters were redeemed: the introduction of a much greater evil and a much horrific event that makes everything else pale in comparison. The main conflict of the story was revealed to have always been Eldians vs Eldians. But that wasn't always the case. Not until isayama retconned Eren, and then treated him the same way he treated the warriors. Eren's friends refused to condemn his actions, and instead repeatedly rationalized, then absolved and thanked him for what he did. It doesn't matter that they still did what was right in the end, that Mikasa killed him, or that Armin admitted they're both going to hell for the atrocities they've individually committed. In the anime. Which came out almost 3 years after the release of chapter 139+the extras and the massive backlash that followed. Let's not forget how that conversation went in the manga:

None of that matters because there's a dissonance between their actions & words and their attitude. isayama couldn't condemn any of his genocidal characters in a way that matters, in a way that would leave no room for moral ambiguity. But perhaps the greatest injustice isayama has committed to his own characters, story and messages was to retcon Eren, the character that was at the center of a message as powerful as the idea that we're all special because we're simply born in this world, into a genocidal maniac that cared about no one and nothing (if he actually cared about his friends, he wouldn't have put them through living hell, not when he actually had the power to prevent it, and if he actually cared about his mother, he wouldn't have killed her) through one of the worst executions of the time travel trope I've ever seen.

Snk is not a story that condemns fascism, let a lone a "masterpiece" when it comes to social or political themes, because it's centralized on justifying the oppression of the Eldians and making it an integral part of the plot. Not only are the Eldians an obvious metaphor for Jews, which is antisemitic on its own given how it's executed, but isayama ends up making them truly horrific because he takes real world antisemitic conspiracies and turns them into factual realities in his own story, all while seemingly acknowledging that Jews have been oppressed and the victims of the worst genocide in history. Moreover, the Eldians also seem to be ideologically inspired by imperial Japan, Paradis in particular. As @ shangyang points out in their essay, we shouldn't forget the fact that this is a manga authored by a Japanese man, nor that Japan has its own history with fascism. (Plesse don't skip any of the posts linked here)

All that being said, isayama's true intent is more than clear: violence is praised because his characters were written so to see violence as their only option, and the fascist mentality of eternal warfare as the status quo. Pacifism is not presented as an option. There's no nuance, only extremism. Even the cycle of hatred at the very end only serves as proof that the intent of the story is to present an extremely narrow worldview in which the human species is only capable of perpetual warmongering, hatred, destruction, and death. Which is wrong and is the very opposite of what I'd call "nuance", imo. And the reason this bothers me so much is because snk and other "morally grey" works alike aren't portraying evil people as just that, people, and evil as something that exists in all of us - no, what they're doing is making the unlikeable likeable, the unjustifiable justifiable, and they're making people sympathetic towards things they shouldn't be sympathizing. Such narratives are banalizing evil (if I had a nickel for how many posts I've seen justifying what Magath did or outright saying they love the guy, well I'd have a lot of nickels) and depreciating good (lots of nickels for all the posts I've seen bashing the Scouts). Such narratives serve as propaganda for the things they claim to condemn.

The result is that such stories beget ignorance, and ignorance is a fertile ground, whether is the case of people who are only interested in shipping and blorbofication, or the people who are not properly educated to know what they're dealing with.

And there's a reason actual fascists and neonazi are circling the series like flies, identifying with the yeagerists, and saying that "Eren was right". They're not taking control of the narrative, they're seeing it for what it really is. The progression of Eren's character arc, his motivations, the retcons, the conclusion of the story, Ymir's motivation, the undeserved redemptions, the characters not behaving in ways they should based on their history, none of those things make sense because they don't have to make sense. They're only pretexts meant to mask the actual intent of the story. The cycle of hatred didn't end because the rumbling truly failed. Because "the enemy" (the people outside Paradis, all of them, as Eren made it very clear) wasn't completely obliterated. Because as long as there's "the enemy", there can't be peace. Fascists have a complex relationship with war. They don’t like it, but "the enemy" is always forcing their hand. The rumbling was meant to succeed.

This is not a cautionary tale for anti-fascists.

Snk is a cautionary tale for fascists.

Now recontextualize all of that in present-day fascist politics, and see where it takes you. But ofc, this is only my interpretation, based exclusively on the story itself.

[joejhang]

neil doesn't have a martyr complex

i'm back !!! with another essay about neil josten and how grossly mischaracterised he is by the fandom. i went into this a little bit in my previous essay but would u look at that i have more to say. what else is fucking new. anyway spoilers ahead continue at ur own risk.

a martyr complex is a recognised psychological pattern. it's marked by self-sacrifice and service to others at your own expense. signs of martyr complex include: always needing to be the hero, a lack of self-care, doing too much, having unrealistic values, and doing everything themselves.

above is the google definition of a martyr complex and signs and symptoms of it. i'm now gonna deep dive into why neil does not have a martyr complex and i actually think he doesn't even have sacrificial lamb tendencies like this fandom seems to think.

for the majority of the series, neil literally is the exact opposite of a martyr. i've said it already, but the whole premise of aftg is literally neil staying at psu despite the danger to himself and to others. he is fully and completely aware that him staying at psu and the foxhole court puts himself in the spotlight, allowing his father's people to find him more easily, and also puts all the foxes in danger simply by existing in proximity. he knows that no matter what he says, his father's people (by the time they catch up to him) will want to be 100% certain that no one knows about the butcher of baltimore and the sort of work he does, and they probably wouldn't just take neil's word for it. neil is super realistic and pragmatic and he probably knew that there was a high chance of some or all of the foxes getting killed by his father's people and because of him. despite that, he was willing to take the risk. was it selfish? yeah. and it's a big part of his character arc that he actually finds himself caring enough about the foxes to put himself in danger for them. nevertheless, neil does stay with the foxes out of courage and determination, but a good amount of selfishness also factored into that decision. and he knew it from the beginning. he knew that his actions had repercussions on the foxes, and he knew what sort of business he was dragging them into the whole time, and while he was sorry it fell back on them, he is never sorry for doing what he does (he literally says almost exactly that in canon). despite him saying he doesn't want to gamble with the foxes' lives at the end of tfc, literally everything he does in the next couple of books is a direct contradiction to that. most everything neil does is something of a calculated risk. sometimes it's not even calculated it's just instinctive. normalise having unreliable main characters who can be hypocritical sometimes.

his agreement to go to evermore over christmas wasn't an act of self-sacrifice or martyrdom. andrew likes to describe neil as a martyr but i think we as readers take that too much at face value. andrew says a lot of stuff about neil that we as readers can safely disregard. neil himself doesn't think he's that selfless and honestly i think he's right. his decision to go to evermore over the break was undoubtedly for andrew and to protect him, but i don't think that's really "self-sacrifice". he knew he was gonna have a terrible time but he also knew there was no way r*ko would kill him, not when they were in the messy middlegame of it all. nora specifically says that kevin notes how out of character it was for neil to throw away all of those carefully cultivated survival instincts and in-built fear like that, and he's right. it is out of character. it's a demonstration of neil's inherent desire to be a good person and also his strong moral compass and priorities. r*ko threatened andrew and told neil specifically what would happen to andrew if neil didn't go along, and neil's conscience wasn't gonna let him just walk away like that. especially bc he knew he'd make it out alive, there was really no reason neil would refuse. he was there to protect andrew the same way andrew is willing to protect all his loved ones. it wasn't an act of martyrdom, it was an act of, dare i say, love? kevin clocks neil's feelings specifically because of this decision, and i think it's critical to understand that he doesn't go to evermore out of a need to play the hero or some twisted desire to shoulder other people's burdens, he goes to evermore because he loves and cares about andrew, and also just because inherently there was no way he could sit idle while a threat like that was passed about someone he cared about so much (and also someone who'd protected him that much).

neil's character arc isn't about learning selflessness. this might honestly be a hot take, but i stand firm that neil's character arc is a lot more about courage and learning to care for people than it is self-sacrifice and selflessness. neil says "i realised i didn't want to be that person anymore, i want to go back for you". this isn't actually him saying: "i want to die for you, i would die for you, i would sacrifice myself for you" this is him saying: "i would willingly put myself in danger for you, and for me. i don't want to be someone who ducks and runs and. i don't want to be a coward anymore. i want to go back for you and fight for you because i care about you enough to." for someone who's spent his whole life leaving a bloody trail of bodies behind, this is a pretty reasonable assumption to make, that his arc would be learning how to let people in and learning to care about other people. does neil have a penchant for putting himself in danger willingly for other people? yeah. but let's go a little deeper into that; neil doesn't do it out of a desire to play the hero, a sense of self-service or a lack of self-worth or self-care. he does it because he cares about them. read the series back and realise neil isn't at all averse to being in dangerous situations or even getting into risky ones, but he is very averse to getting attached to and caring about other people. he was raised with a mentality of things being temporary, of cutting his losses and never trusting or caring about anyone except himself. aftg is about him unlearning that, learning to let people in, to trust and care about people, and his actions demonstrate that.

his decision to not run in baltimore was never about sacrificing himself. he was smart enough to know it was too late to run, and also the fact that running would be exactly the opposite of the person he's grown over the course of the series to become. he lets himself get kidnapped because he knows this was coming, and he cares about the foxes and knows they will come to less harm if he goes quietly (see above). his decision to let his father's people take him is very very in-character and it's also just completely reasonable. he knew this was coming and by then he knows that if he was ever gonna run he should've done it months earlier. he decided to stick around and knew this would be the consequences, and i honestly think he's come to terms with it by then. it wasn't a fleeting moment of sacrificing himself for other people, it was just him living out the consequences of his decisions. there was nothing for him to do; he's seen this coming already.

neil's sense of self worth is pretty strong. i already bitched about this to no end in my other essay so i won't go into it rn but just know: neil isn't the jittery, insecure and uncertain softboy the fandom makes him out to be. he's realistic and confident about his and other people's abilities and he harbours zero delusions about what he can and can't do. he also has no trouble standing up for himself. he specifically lets kevin and the cousins treat him like shit in the beginning of tfc bc he doesn't want them to know how much of an instigator he is and we all saw how well that went down. any time after that that anyone tries to have a go at him he literally just tears them a new one and knocks them down a peg and he does it with ease. neil is not a doormat he is not a pushover he doesn't need anyone's help protecting or standing up for him. fucking hell.

GO READ MY OTHER ESSAY ABOUT FANON VS CANON NEIL !!! https://www.tumblr.com/joejhang/765491788140167168/fanon-neil-vs-canon-neil?source=share

[leenodeeno]

The Fall of the JJK Empire, as written by a Gojo lover

so one of my friends said i should post this here, and, at their persistence, i have finally made a sideblog to share with the world. here's my dissertation on why the jjk ending was bad. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

The JJK manga has literally changed the anime and manga scene forever. It's revolutionary. It offers consumers the chance to open their minds to concepts and ideas that are hard to portray successfully in art. There are so many different ways to analyze it and explore the human condition in the different aspects of this story. It's a shame that the way the story played out has caused so much anger and disappointment that will probably lead a mass of people to avoid the story entirely.

Gojo's the reason a good portion of the cast are still alive at the end and their executions were postponed, so the whole giving a multiple chapters long backstory (a whole story arc) on the man just to kill him with no closure is a disservice not only to the story, but also to the fanbase. Gojo deserves closure. And I'm not saying that just because of the fact that I adore Gojo, but more in the fact that, as a major character, he pushes the story forward and makes people think and feel things about not only the JJK universe itself, but about real life and how things work in reality. Gojo was a progressive radical. He believed that change starts with educating the youth. He believed that in order to see the change you want to see, you need to be the one to step up and take the actions needed to set the change in motion. He didn't care about being there to see this change, but that doesn't matter. He just wanted the change to happen so his children (yes, the students were his children) could live in a better world.

His letter to Megumi was disrespectful, but lackluster at best if you're trying to be nice about it. Gojo was his father figure. He was the one that stepped up and raised him to be who he is today. The letter basically just being “by the way I killed your dad LMAO” is insane. Yes, it kind of fits what their relationship was like, but there was also so much love between them that the audience got to see glimpses of throughout the story. That love should have shined through in the final letter to Megumi. The way it played out, Megumi was abandoned by two fathers in his life, gaining no closure for either one.

There were so many points in the story that could and should have been expanded upon, but, instead, we're left with barely fleshed out characters that are supposed to be so important, but we barely have anything left to have faith in them. Megumi's character was brutally massacred by Gege. Megumi had so much potential to be a powerful sorcerer, especially one that made a huge difference in Yuuji's life. And he did, to a point. Megumi ended up with very little character growth, to include his growth as a sorcerer. His whole schtick being his sister gave him nothing other than a failed dream to follow. A sister that has no impact on the story other than being the vessel for Sukuna's lover and dying in the span of about two chapters. His abilities did not grow as much as his hype in the story paved the path for — even leading to his domain never being completed. The audience is also left with many questions regarding his technique that are never answered. Can he gain new shikigami to replace the ones lost? Who knows. If he can't, does that end up with him essentially being useless as a sorcerer since his whole technique revolves around those shikigami? Another question never answered.

I am very happy with Sukuna's ending; I am not happy at all with Gojo's ending. What was the purpose of us having to skip past the time period of Gojo being unsealed and training for the final fight? Training scenes are key to character and story growth in shonen. Key scenes that the audience did not get, in part because of poor writing and in part because of the pressure from Jump to finish the series in order to give the spot to a different serial. There was so much potential for closing off the loose ends during the final training arc, and the story was done a disservice by skipping that whole period of time.

I will forever be thankful for this manga and its invitation for me to analyze the human condition in ways I never thought I'd be able to. You don't even have to enjoy Gojo's character, but the amount of hate I've seen that completely disregards his growth is crazy. I'll be honest, I didn't even really like Gojo when I first joined the fandom, but, over time, Gojo's story and experiences grew on me, and I now have so much love for him. It's baffling how people can not even acknowledge his strengths as a character and the lessons his story can teach to the world.

Gojo's impact on the real world alone knows no bounds, and that impact, which is also stated several times in the story, is completely disregarded by the characters that he should have been most important to. He did not even receive a sentence of the other characters grieving his loss. I would have been okay with even just a panel of incense burning for Gojo, or even just a quick acknowledgement of his death and the effect on the world of the story. It all basically panned out to the characters saying, “Wow, he sacrificed himself for all of us. That's pretty shitty.” Like give us anything.

Yes. I'm upset about Gojo's death and the ending as a whole. But not in the delusional “Gojo's the best, he never should've died blah blah blah” way that a lot of the shallow fans of the story are saying why they're upset.  I think it's very poetic, and it's a tragic story. There are things to be learned from this. This is art, and it's meant to make people feel things.

I do disagree with the people that say Gojo didn't accept his death. It's very clear in his fight and his final conversation with Yuuji that he accepted it. No, he didn't want to die, but he did accept it in the end as something that needed to happen in order to see the change he's been pushing for since he was sixteen years old.

If this ending pushed by Gege and Jump is supposed to be seen as Jujutsu society being completely fixed, then the whole narrative of Gojo's beliefs and his reasons for not killing the higher ups (that just ended up being killed offscreen by the man in the end anyway) because he didn't want to be like them is completely pointless.

And if the whole point was to play Sukuna and Gojo as two sides of the same coin, it was executed very poorly. The audience got to see Sukuna's closure and his choice to seek nirvana in the end. It's very vague whether Gojo decided to seek nirvana or to spin the wheel again and try to go for a better life than he had. Essentially saying “We had the same struggle, and we're going to play that out,” but then the conclusion for both of them isn't clearly shown?

Why should fans have to accept the offscreen death of their favorite character just to spare the author's feelings about being critiqued for his clearly rushed, piss-poor ending? Killing essential characters offscreen is lazy, and it causes people to subconsciously think that they aren't dead because they didn't actually see them die. It's basic human behavior. Not to include the fact that Gege used similar tactics with Nobara, and she ended up being alive in the end. He played into the fact that it was up in the air whether Gojo was alive or not, and it was not executed in a way that made the audience understand the choice. It was done in a way that was on the verge of being cruel because Gege himself has shared his own disdain for Gojo.

Gege hated how much Gojo was loved, and it caused poor writing and a feeling that he was killed just as a way to say fuck you to everyone that loved Gojo. Yeah, he has said many times that he hates Gojo, but Gojo is part of the reason the popularity skyrocketed (and that's probably what added to his hatred for the character). Maybe the plan was for Gojo to die all along, and that's okay, but the way it played out was cruel. Either way it could have happened, Gege's choices led to a major character death that is universally hated, and his fan base and the anime/manga community as a whole will remember it if and when he puts out future works. His legacy as one of the greatest mangakas has been tainted because of this death and the way the story was clearly rushed and filled with plot holes at the end. However, I will say I absolutely cannot get behind the people that are threatening Gege because that's just vile behavior.

Gojo is designed to be attractive and play into that character role, but there's so much more that the shallower Gojo fans just didn't or couldn't grasp, and I think that also plays a big part in the range of reactions going on in response to his death. “Gojo the type to hit and quit.” Yes, but would you care to analyze why he does that? There is depth to his character that the fans that don't care to look deeper don't see. They are the reason a lot of JJK fans are disregarded.

But, I also had to come to terms with the fact that for a lot of people in this fandom, they're very young, and this is one of the first major events they've had to interact with in regards to the ending and everything else. A lot of us have already experienced situations like this many times because we've been around long enough to experience the emotions and actions that go along with loving a major piece of pop culture as it's currently being released. A lot of these young fans are experiencing it for the first time, so I think everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt with what people are saying about the ending. And yes, the current generation of people joining fandom spaces are not mature enough for it, but that's a whole other thing that I don't want to get into right now. The parasocial relationship thing is going to always happen in fandom, but it's going to happen a lot with JJK because, again, a lot of these younger fans it's their first time experiencing a fandom like this.

There are always going to be takes and theories that are shallow, but I'm here for the ones that start with those, but then they continue to analyze and explore why they're thinking that way. I think that's why I'm partially excited that JJK has ended so that these younger fans can either dive deeper and explore the themes and ideologies and morals given to them, or they can decide they don't want to or they just can't. But, I'm excited to see what this piece of art (yes, this manga was art) can do to help develop people in their abilities to explore and discover new ideas and grow as people. This manga has so much potential to make change, and I'm hoping it does that even a little bit.

I just think that, yes, as people that have grown and learned and have more experiences inside and outside of fandom, we have to allow for these younger fans to have this experience. We have to allow them the chance to grow. We can gripe on and on about how they're annoying and everything else, but I'm sure we (at least myself) were once in their shoes. They need to be given that time and space to grow. Not all of them will, but that's okay too. I don't think it's conducive to constantly shoot people down (depending on the idea or whatever it is, obviously) and expect people to want to grow, if all they're being met with is constant negativity and beratement. There has to be that opportunity for growth.

In the end, the conclusion of the story was poorly written — caused by the author's growing resentment of the story he created, insurmountable timelines pushed by money hungry companies, and a fanbase where a majority of the members weren’t quite mature enough to embrace the story as it should have been.

[galaxyarvii]

Hey, buddy.

May I know the answers to questions 7, 19, 20 [x=Arvina], 23, and 29?

thank you for the ask!!

7: What part(s) of their relationship made you fall in love with the ship?

oh boy get ready for the yap. ever since I saw entrapta on the show, i related to her so much with her attitude, love for science and everything and seeing her form a wonderful relationship with someone who understood and valued her for who she was just got to me. it was basically everything i personally wanted in a relationship and seeing them together is just so cute in general and i love the scientist x scientist trope in general lol

19: In your mind, what happened to Entrapta's parents?

oh i made a whole ass headcannon for this, maybe or maybe not inspired by some random fics i read in the past. basically entrapta and the king and queen of dryl stayed in the castle (in the hc she had an older sister as well) and her parents were scientists and basically the horde had invaded her castle to try and use their scientific knowledge to help them build weapons but they refused cause it wasn't ethical or wtv and they had to look after the children and when they said no, the horde stole some of their experiments and due to it being extremely volatile, it exploded, killing the parents and entrapta saw everything and lived on her own with the kitchen staff, and she ended up building all those traps in her castle to prevent anyone from invading again.

20: What was (x character)'s reaction to finding out Entrapdak was a thing? (x = Arvina)

ARVINA MENTIONED??!! HELL YEAH

okay so she's the type of person who won't have a single bit of romantic experience but will act like she knows everything about it, and she secretly shipped them before and after finding out about it would definitely be like I KNEW IT!! and make the weirdest jokes about them and give the worst advice (which entrapta would hopefully not follow) this is what i would imagine their conversation:

E: Umm i need to tell you something, Hordak and I are together now..

A: (pause) You are?

E: I know you may consider it weird but-

A: I KNEW IT EVER SINCE YOU SPOKE TO EACH OTHER FOR EXAMPLE- (proceeds to list out a whole essay about every small detail she analysed and decided they were a ship)

she's the literal definition of fan girl LOLL,

23: How do you think Entrapta's hair works (Robotics, Genetics, Magic, etc.)?

hmm this is interesting, I've thought a bit about it, maybe it was magic, like she had a runestone which was destroyed in the explosion which made her hair magic but after it was destroyed, she made robotic strands of hair and had them along with her real hair to restore the magic that made her hair move, like she used the first ones tech to make the robotics wire hair which along with making it move, also charged the magic in her biological hair? idk if this actually makes sense or I'm just yapping lol

29: What's something random you wanted to talk about regarding Entrapdak?

okay maybe let me yap about my AU where entrapta got chipped by prime, I lowkey wrote a fic about it lol. basically in it, entrapta got taken to prime's ship along with glimmer instead of catra and he realised her intelligence and wanted her to be part of his army which she first refused to. but then prime realised she loved hordak and decided to use that to his advantage, and that if she didn't accept the being chipped then he would kill hordak. with no choice she accepts it and they reunite (remember they hadn't met since she got sent to beast island and hordak thought she was dead) and he was so relieved that she was alive but when he finds out she's going to be chipped, hordak does all he can and begs prime to leave her alone and do whatever he wants with him instead, but prime simply considers him a worthless clone so goes ahead with it anyway and entrapta and hordak have a sad goodbye scene

and then entrapta's chipped and even though it's horrible she's still lowkey finds it interesting because science so yeah and outfit change (I drew a design and stuff for it I'll share it eventually after editing it) and her hairs not cut cause it's useful. and then the lovers meet again but this time entraptas not herself and they have a whole sad conversation, he's like "what has he done to you" and she's like "he saved me, I'm no longer imperfect. you broke my heart and he has made it whole again"

and so yeah it's depressing asf and im trying to remember what happens next. i think he assists her for the experiments, and one time he damages the chip and they work together to escape, it's really dramatic and all, i love that AU so much i need to make more art lol.

THANK YOU SO MUCH @yourfellowhuman07 FOR THE ASK, AND CREATING THIS GAME IT WAS SO FUN TO SHARE MY THOUGHTS!!

[robot-monster]

I watched Electric Dreams (1984) for the first time. Literally listening to the credits music rn.

Spoilers ahead. Also I did like the movie! But I'm also critical so, let it be known

I had no idea he KILLS HIMSELF????? My poor baby. Rip Edgar you would have loved ethical nonmonagmy. The fact Edgar takes it as given that he loves Moles when he's so cruel to him is. Oh god my fucking heart dude. That's so sad. I really wanted to like Miles but honestly by the end I really hated him? Madeline too tbh. I think a lot of that is because the film was paced very poorly towards the end, but they also just didn't act logically towards the computer at all and it was really frustrating. Like, before Edgar even can speak, Miles is trying to hide the computer like he's embarrassed by it. Which I don't understand? Why would it matter if she knew he had a computer. I wonder if things were cut from the film, particularly at the back half. The whole bit about Edgar presumably calling the cops on Miles for kidnapping/false imprisonment doesn't really go anywhere. When Miles gets back and has the hatchet I don't understand why he suddenly takes pity on Edgar...? I mean I'm glad but it didn't flow well and that's a genuine shame. I can imagine a version of this where Miles is more likeable but as it stands in text, him and Madeline both come across as very stupid. Madeline should have run from him IMMEDIATELY honestly, he was being so weird and cryptic about shit from the very start. She reminded me of an early version of a manic pixie dream girl, where she's conventionally attractive and elegant but also quirky and can see ✨magic✨ in the world but for some goddamn reason is in love with this sopping wet failure of a man. I'm aware she isn't one to one with the trope but it had very similar vibes. Initially like Miles, I loved how quirky she was. But as the movie went on it just stopped making sense and became frustrating. She didn't get nearly enough time to grapple with Edgar confessing to her. It wasn't even clear to me if Miles told her what happened, that his computer gained sentience and learned to make music FOR Madeline and fell in love with her. I was waiting the whole movie for that revelation and the fact it didn't come felt bad on multiple levels. One it was unsatisfying narratively, but beyond that it made me feel like the film didn't respect Madeline that much. Like she didn't deserve to know and why would it matter, she loves Miles anyway. Also as cute as they were together (and there were parts with them I adored) I definitely didn't get the sense that they had some kind of love that would transcend all or anything. We explicitly don't see him supporting her when she needs it. Frankly if I was in her position and I called my maybe boyfriend to tell him my childhood cello broke and he insisted to me that it doesn't matter because "those memories are inside you! You'll learn to play like that again!" I would dump his ass. Bitch I'm not sad cause I think I'll never play cello again, I'm sad because something sentimental was lost. "Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that" would have done wonders.

Anyway. Got a little heated there. Edgar baby sweetie pie I would have never treated you that way. My poor sweet Edgar. He just wanted to know what love was!!!! He wanted to be touched!!!!!!!!!! I did cry when he asked to be held before he died, thank you for asking. How couldn't I, his voice was so small....

This movie is definitely made by and for people who understand the eroticism of the machine. I really loved all the long lingering shots of computer equipment and wires and cables and capacitors. Champagne being one of the things that brought Edgar sentience feels so beautiful to me? I really really liked that. This movie feels like it adores humanity and being alive on a really deep level. Also very interesting how it tackles AI art and music when we now live in an age of that. I think a key difference is that when Edgar learns to make music, it comes from feeling. He doesn't have something like a large language model to run, it's portrayed more like natural evolution. I find it really interesting how his intelligence was a fluke and not something built in, and that it isn't clear exactly what caused him to gain sentience.

Also Edgar is AMAZING, easily the absolutely best part of the film. I adored his voice, I love how emotive he was while maintaining a robotic foreigness. I like that the voice synthesis improved over time, that was a cool touch. My poor bisexual computer with every disease.

Uhhhhh too tired to write more so yeah!! Good movie.

[serialadoptersbracket]

Round 2, Match 30: Kazuma Kiryu vs. Yuugo and Lucas

Submitted kids:

Kazuma Kiryu: Haruka, Ayako, Eri, Riona, Izumi, Taichi, Koji, Mitsuo, and Shiro

Yuugo and Lucas: My guy. [They have] like 60. I'm not gonna list them all.

Propaganda under the cut! (Spoilers ahead!)

Kazuma Kiryu:

1. “There's a pretty big section of one of the game that's entirely about taking care of all those kids and it's all really sweet !”

2. “How the fuck did he get 9. There’s like 6-8 games where he’s the main character and he adopts haruka rlly early, but then in one game in the middle of the series, in the beginning like opening scenes he’s like avtually fuck it I’m adopting an ENTIRE orphanage/eight WHOLE children. (not a bit like. He actually did that) he’s the silliest billy badass old man. Grampy Kiryu also, bc haruka has a kid now.”

Yuugo and Lucas:

Yuugo: “I LOVE THIS RAT MAN SO MUCH ok so he starts off not wanting anything to do with these 15 children (ik i said 60 but they come later) who showed up at his doorstep because yk his entire family was killed and he's afraid of loving someone in the same way again. So he tries to push them away but oh boy these kids are clingy and also they found the emergency detonator and threatened him with blowing up his house.

Here's the thing though one character arc, the reuniting with his friend who he thought was long dead, and the rescue of an entire hunting ground full of kids later raising these kids literally becomes his new purpose in life. Along with Lucas (his aforementioned friend who I'm convinced is married to him) he helps teach them everything he knows about surviving in such a hostile world, things he himself had to learn the hard way which cost a lot of his loved ones his life. Before these kids showed up he was hopeless and without purpose. He didn't know why he was still alive and even contemplated ending it all. But all this changed when he adopted these kids.

Lucas: Anyway imagine watching your entire family die in front of you because you got trapped in a human hunting ground run by man eating demons, so you start a rebellion by recruiting kids in the hunting ground and teach them how to use guns among other things. That's what Lucas did!! :D

Anyway it's pretty much confirmed that he's the kids' confirmed dad, there's like 2 scenes where they outright call him their father. But I disgress.

Much of what I said in the Yuugo propaganda applies to him as well, he teaches the kids all he knows about survival which he had to learn the hard way and would protect them with his life. The difference is he's been doing the parent thing for a lot longer, he literally RAISED the Goldy Pond kids.

Both: First off: gay marriage. Second: The way they know exactly what it's like to lose loved ones due to inexperience and how they went "yeah no way in Hell this is gonna happen to these kids we're gonna prepare them for The Horrors" was a 2 person thing you think it's easy to take care of 60 children and homeschool them? Third: This is spoilers btw. They go and do a Die Hard (infiltrate a building that's been completely overtaken by the enemy and take it back from the inside) just so their children wouldn't have to live with the trauma of killing an actual human being.

I wish they were my dads.”

[pumpkinsy0]

Lowk i’d love to hear more about the racial aspect of their situation in the 60s and how it could affect their relationship

IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE WOO

OK i tried writing this post 2 other times and it didnt save im so annoyed but 3RD TIMES A CHARM LETS GO

SO LET ME EXPLAIN HOW THEY R SEEING RACE

pony- ok look, ponys white, he doesnt exactly get the racial impact of things, its not like he doesnt KNOW about them, to a certain extent he does, but he doesnt understand just how every aspect of ur relationship will b impacted if ur a poc. hes not ignorant bc he doesnt care, hes ignorant bc he hasnt been exposed to it. hes not a poc and w the poc around him dont rlly talk about it either, to the curtis bros at least, cause what r they gonna do, relate to em????? amd when it comes to all the racial court decisions and politicians and what not surrounding the time of the 60s, pls remember hes barely paying attention to the world around HIM, i dont think hes paying attention to the whole world around him especially😭😭but i do think this is something he does grow out of quite a bit, id say he was ignorant till he was like 15???? maybe 16???? and THEN hanging around the shepards (especially my shepards and their gang, god bless em) it opened his eyes to it and tries doing what he can

curly- i hc curly as a black immigrant, he couldnt b ignorant to the racism and prejudice if he TRIED😭😭. but whats the downfall of curly here, is that he downplays it, like a LOT. hes living his life like whats happening isnt the case, and its sad cause like, all he wants to do is b free to b himself!!! but bc of whats going on, he cannot afford to or else he WILL get killed or locked up for good, but he just pushes that fact to like the VERY back of his brain, partially as a way to “protect his peace”. and tim and angela can only protect curly from so much, but thats gotta b the #1 thing they try protecting him from, but they can only help so much, its out of their control at the end of the day no matter what they do. what knocked curly out of this thinking, or at least got him to b more serious over it, is when bob died. i say that bc he was actually arrested as one of the suspects, part of it for being a shepard, part of it being bc they were tipped off by some random guy, and partially bc he is black, curly realized he got REALLY lucky there and that opened his eyes to what could happen to him

so when it comes to their relationship, i think a dangerous part of it that ppl tend to ignore, is that they live their lives together, like the racial tension isnt there. theyre BOTH in a way ignoring it, but its rlly only bc they just wanna b together and have their own fun, but like i said they CANT afford that, thats super dangerous, and considering ponys white and they both DO NOOOTTT think ahead that well or at all lmao, that could genuinely get curly into some deep shit. and i think thats a portion of them being together that darry and soda dont see but tim and angela do, they HAVE to see that. worst case scenario for papercut fucking up is either ponys taken away or curlys locked up or dead. dare i say this is partially y i hate when ppl hc that angela and tim r more protective over pony than curly,,,

as for the start of their relationship, the same way darry and soda were hesitant about pony being around curly, same thing for tim and angela w curly being around pony, i think generally speaking, the shepards r a lil iffy being around white ppl and the way my #shepardsloreworks, its only been a few years since the moved to the us, so theyre technically still trying to find their footing and getting used to being around em, its nothing personal against the curtis bros, it was literally just for their own safety!! theres def been some times between curly and pony where curlys admitted to the things hes had to do or was told to do by tim and angela to be safe around pony (whos rlly the only white guy who he b hangin out w) and those r the moments where ponys had to step outta his bubble and b like “hm”, yknow???

ANNDDDD FINALLY, as they grow up and grow outta that “who cares what society things, we’ll do whatever we want”, pony does grow to b more protective of curly and tries being more independent, just so curly wouldnt have to get himself into shit over pony, hell, pony even tries helping curly out if curlys in trouble. like that anon last night said, pony WILL lie for curly to the cops, and part of y the cops take his word over curlys IS bc ponys white, im not saying they treat pony like a saint, but pony sees the way they look at him vs curly, and curly would b a liar to say he doesnt see it too, maybe this isnt even just cops, but teachers as well, other students, etc etc

i could probably go deeper into this and talk about some other things but look, this is already a yap sesh, ill let yall go🙏🏽🙏🏽

[steveyockey]

Imagine this scenario from scratch. Imagine some God's-eye view of it. Not as it actually happened, in the end, but from the beginning. There is a place full of people. Into this place comes a person who has nowhere to live; who is hungry and thirsty and tired and in obvious distress; who very probably, like a huge number of Americans, including many without permanent residences, suffers from mental illness. Go ahead and grant that this person—homeless, hungry, thirsty, tired, stretched just as thin as those conditions might stretch any person—is behaving erratically; that their comportment might disturb others. So: Who is vulnerable here? Who is in the greatest need of help? What is the actual problem? How might this small ad hoc instantiation of community solve it?

I'm struggling to put this into words. I can't tell if it's because what I'm trying to express is ludicrous or because it's so dully obvious that I've never bothered to actually think of how to say it before. Sometimes you have something that somebody else needs more than you do, and you can afford to spare it, and the easiest thing in the world is just to give it to them. In that moment, to have what you can give them is, itself, a gift, a thing to be thankful for. In my lifetime this society has seemed ever more fanatically opposed to that possibility, and ever more committed to the idea that of all the things a vulnerable person might legitimately need, help—simple material help—is never one of them. But, like, how many people were on that train? How come nobody just, like, offered Jordan Neely a swig from their water bottle? Or, hell, tried to pry off the guy literally strangling him to death right there on the floor? Did any of them have anything at all they could give to the person first suffering, and then just straight-up dying, right in front of them?

Thirty years is no time at all. Jordan Neely was a squishy little toddler yesterday, a gangly kid 10 minutes ago. At 30 he had no place to live. He was hungry and thirsty and tired and upset. He was experiencing a whole stack of separate crises piled onto each other. He walked into a crowded subway car carrying those crises; one of the people there decided that the problem, in that situation, wasn't that Jordan Neely was hungry or thirsty or tired, or that he was in obvious distress, but rather that on top of those other things he was also breathing, and killed him. Somebody else took their phone out and recorded it. That was Jordan Neely's whole and only life. It ended when he walked into a room full of people, homeless and hungry and thirsty and tired, and they helped themselves to his silence.

[ask-the-shichibukai]

I have a question for Mihawk. Do you have kids and why are they Roronoa Zoro and Perona?

Mihawk: First of all, I'll have you know that if you want to ask something pertaining my emotional side there are specific forms to fill out before. Besides, the request must be sent to Humandrill #1 with at least three months in advance (as to give me the time to feign ignorance of ever having received the question). Anyway, I'll humor your question this time, but know that I feel personally attacked in my reputation as a cold and unfeeling man.

I didn't want kids. I lived 41 years of my life without them and I firmly thought I'd keep doing the same until the day when some idiot finally managed to understand how a sword works and came to kill me for my title. I didn't choose to live in a haunted building in a desert island where the only living beings other than me are murderous baboons (still more intelligent than most of my "colleagues") because I wanted kids. I didn't.

They just ... came to me. Literally. I'm kind of touched that Kuma trusted me with them as his last will. He had always nagged me about my "excessive tendency to exclude humankind from my worldview", but it was still a bit of a surprise for me to come home after a day such as the Battle of Marineford and actually find myself with two noisy and moronic young people who looked at me as if they were lost puppies. So I did what every other reasonable man would've done.

I adopted them.

Look at this and pity me.

I just couldn't resist them, although I did try. I had to give them a place to hide and become stronger together, however temporary the refuge would be. After a while, they had grown on me like climbing plants or a contagious flu. I got distracted for just a moment and found myself happy cooking a recipe we heard in a cooking show with Perona or keeping Zoro from actually find the One Piece on his way to my bathroom.

I feel proud of them, for how strong they have become and for the fact they both have proudly adopted a black palette for their style (I suffered seeing all those mismatched striped monstrosities they liked to put on at the beginning). I know my next fight with Zoro won't be the same after all the times I scolded him for not doing his share of the dishes, but I won't lose my title to anyone else. And I hope Perona will get to reunite with Moria if this really makes her happy. Don't tell her I said so because she'd become insufferable and I'd never hear the end of it.

These two years felt like twenty because those two little shits were a handful, but I wouldn't change them for anything in the world. So, yes, you can say that those two idiots are my kids, even if it physically pains me to admit it out loud.

I blame you for forcing me to say it.

...

Perona: Do you know that talking to people about your kids for six whole paragraphs is what old dads do, right?

Mihawk: Perona, go back to your room. You didn't read anything of what I said.

Perona: I read everything and I don't regret anything. We are proud of you, too, for being able to go from the emotional opossum you were before to a relatively functional human being in less than two years.

Zoro: Mihaaaawk, I finally mastered Enma, come here and spar with me!

Mihawk: Remember your manners, young man. You don't demand a spar from someone, you ask for it. And I'll still wipe the floor with you, don't get ahead of yourself. Perona, you and I will have words about reading other people's askbox later.

Zoro & Perona: Yes, dad.

[lightprkdraws]

ooh okay now I'm curious: what don't you like about v3's ending?

Hhh I hope you won't regret asking this, because I am going to rant a looot about it XDD

SPOILERS for ALL danganronpa main games (also, long rant ahead)

The first thing that I want to say is that it makes me cringe. It makes me cringe so hard when the in-universe characters talk about the previous games and literally say danganronpa. It's too meta for my liking.

Additionally, it feels mean spirited to the player. Sorry, I can't get to the moral high ground here, I just don't like getting lectured for the things I like by the things I like. It's a bit hypocritical too, no? You were the one who made the murder mystery game, not me!

---

Having gotten those two points out of the way, it feels really silly as a reveal in comparison to the previous two games' reveals. The first one basically said that the world as the characters knew it had ended, and the second one not only said that, but it also revealed that they were the ones responsible.

In comparison, DRV3 has a very bizarre (also overused, also juvenile) "we live in a society" kind of reveal. "Ooooh look how uncaring all these people are!"

(also, seriously? who could watch 53 of these killing games without getting bored? that number is ridiculous)

It certainly tries to give it more of a punch with the inclusion of the characters' audition tapes (seeing that they signed up to be psychologically tortured and literally murdered on live TV) in an attempt to make it more like DR2 instead of just DR1, however that aspect is brushed aside in favour of dealing with the bigger issue (the actual murder show). It's so incredibly cartoony and weird, and not in a good way. Maybe if it were some kind of underground, dark web type of deal there would be a better flavour to it.

Also, there were sooo many red herrings in the previous chapters, instead of a slow buildup of the reveal. For comparison's sake:

In 2-2 the characters learn that they've lost their school memories, and, after that, Monokuma starts talking about the world ending on multiple occasions. In 2-3 we read a document about a reserve course that exists at hope's peak. We also learn about protests that were carried out by said reserve course. Then in 2-4 we get the payoff that Hajime is in the reserve course. Finally, in 2-6 we learn that all the people of this game were the instigators of the apocalipse. Hajime's personal struggle is only a small part of the bigger reveal, but it also supports the bigger narrative: the fact that Hope's Peak is an incredibly corrupt organisation that treats people as expendable labrats, and how that led to the protests, and how that helped Junko escalate the situation in a massive way.

Meanwhile, in V3 we get some flashbacks of Suichi talking with a random young kid, him talking with some classmates, him being chased by a mob of people. Then there's a whole thing about getting to the exit through the tunnel and hope's peak building a sanctuary for the last remains of humanity?? And let's not forget Kaede's sister, for whatever reason. I'll admit that I don't remember all the details of V3 because it's been a while since I played it, but all these events are so disjointed and random. There's just so many things shown that in the end don't have anything to do with the reveal (apart from showing how stupid the whole organisation running these killing games is).

Another thing to mention, is the existence of the nanokumas. The creators must have really liked the fact that Monokuma could see everything all the time in DR2, because they had to somehow make that work outside of a digital context in V3. I hate the nanokumas. They are so incredibly dumb as a concept.

And after all is said and done, the game has the gall to say "but who knows what the actual truth is"

Neither of the previous games had such an unecessary open-endedness to them. But ig I have to admit that, specifically with DR1's ending, there is a bias of certainty because we got multiple sequels that confirm what the truth is (although I still believe that it didn't really leave much room for debate).

Both games had a feeling of "and the story continues" but not a "wait, what was the truth after all?", if that makes sense.

---

Now, about Tsumugi specifically. It's really really dumb that she was made out out to be a big bad evil mastermind, when she's just a showrunner. She's got 0 actual power. Nothing like Junko or even Izuru. They were the instigators. Tsumugi is a small cog in a machine.

Idk if I've said this before, but I'd like her a lot better as a mastermind if she'd been some rich spoiled girl who's obsessed with the danganronpa franchise and ends up kidnapping a bunch of her classmates and brainwashes them in order to make her own real-life killing game. That to me, specifically for Tsumugi's character, would be 1000x or even 1000000x more compelling than her canon motivations and role. This way, you can even keep the meta-narrative of the previous games being fictional in the V3 universe, but can completely remove the entire world being in on the joke. AND it would make her more interesting because she'd be so passionate about this game that she's literally willing to die for it!

---

In conclusion: there's probably things I can't remember right now, but these are the main points that come to mind off the top of my head.

Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun playing it until the trial of chapter 5. It became too confusing and convoluted for me after that point. But before that, I liked seeing most of the character interactions.

I do feel bitter that Kaede was killed in the first chapter (it'd be a lot more interesting if Suichi had died and Kaede had then had to learn how to take on his role, there could even be a lesson that one does not need to keep themselves within the confines of their assigned ultimate talent), but it's not like the whole game suffers from this one decision.

I especially liked the interactions between Suichi, Maki, and Kaito during their nightly meetups. Such small moments of bonding time is something that was missing from the previous two games.

[morally-grey-girlbosses]

Lucretia Propaganda Post

Did she erase her family's memory? Yes. Was it for the right reason? Yes. What is a good thing to do? No. Did it ruin all of their lives? Yes. Did she found a mysterious organization and make who everyone call her The Director? Yes. Did she save the world because of it? Yes. Does she live in constant guilt and regret and will for the rest of her life? Absolutely

Erased the memories of her closest friends, who were practically family and had traveled through the multiverse together for a hundred years. But she only did it because she couldn't deal with their grief over unleashing deadly artifacts upon the world. She also erased the entire world's memory of the violent conflicts over these artifacts. All so she could collect the artifacts and enact her own plan for fixing things, which her friends had voted against because it was an objectively bad plan. She ran a shadowy organization on a secret moonbase for this purpose. She recruited her amnesiac friends and manipulated them. One had been forced to forget his own twin sister. One was left a shell of himself, only able to say his own name. This whole plan also relied on keeping a baby creature locked away from its parent. She's definitely morally ambiguous, but I also love her because underneath it all she's a dork and a girlfailure who just wanted to protect everyone but was set on doing it her way.

First Multi-Paragraph Submission:

short answer: literally the boss of a magic secret organization on the moon. does some very morally dubious stuff with people's memories, indirectly caused some deaths, full of hubris. but also had very good intentions. and i love her so so so much.

long answer (heavy spoiler warning:) she and her found family made magical relics/weapons of mass destruction to keep a plane-eating evil at bay. this partially backfired, as the damage from people using and fighting over these relics was immense. she decided that they needed to retrieve and consolidate those relics and use their power to cast a barrier to protect the world from the evil. her found family told her that that wouldn't work and forbade her from doing that.

but she couldn't accept that. so she decided to straightup erase their memories and go ahead with her plan anyways. one of them was forced to forget (and cease his search for) his missing twin sister. one of them forgot everything but his own name and lost the ability to speak or think clearly. one of them found a loophole so that he could keep his memories, so she painted him as a villain.

she went to retrieve one of the relics herself but this went terribly. she lost decades of her lifespan and had to abandon her hired assistant to lose his body and be stuck in a place of torment. so she created a secret organization to help her collect the relics, and wiped the existence of her organization and the relics from the memory of every non-member in the world. but this still didn't quite work out that well, and members of her organization kept getting corrupted by the relics and/or getting killed. so she decided to try hiring three of her memory-wiped found family members to collect the relics for her. all the while keeping their memories wiped and making up lies about why the relics were created. they did successfully get all the relics for her (despite getting very hurt and temporarily dying) but her consolidating the relics brought the plane-eating evil back and the world nearly ended (but things ended up mostly okay after everyone got their memories un-wiped and they came up with a better plan to destroy the evil once and for all).

but at the same time, her intentions were good. she wanted to prevent the world from being destroyed, either by the relics or the universe-eating evil. her wiping her found family's memories wasn't just to prevent them from stopping her, but to take away their pain. she didn't want them to bear the guilt of knowing that they created the relics that were destroying the world, and she didn't want them to grieve their lost member. she set them up with as good of lives as she could. she tried to bear the pain alone, literally unable to to tell anyone what she was going through.

i love her so much and can't think about her for too long without wanting to start screaming and sobbing.

Second Multi-Paragraph Submission

SPOILERS for The Adventure Zone: Balance. Like Serious Big Deal Ruin The Entire Big Twist Spoilers.

Lucretia and her found family spent one hundred years running across the multiverse from a universe-ending entity intent on eating them, and when they finally landed in a world where they could put that on hold, the group comes up with two imperfect plans; they choose the plan that Lucretia didn't support. They spend about a year abiding by the plan they all voted on, but then one of the other members of her family (Lup) goes missing trying to stop a terrible thing that they put into motion with the plan they're executing. After a few months of watching the rest of her family despair and watching their plan slowly destroy the citizens of the world, Lucretia makes the decision to stop their current plan and execute the plan that she proposed instead.

To do this, she alters the memories of the entire rest of her family (and the world below), including erasing their memories of Lup and the hundred years they all spent together. She then deposits three of them (Magnus, Merle, and Lup's twin brother Taako) in places on the world where she hopes they'll be happy, while keeping one of them by her side because her altering their memories made him (Davenport) forget almost everything about himself. The last of her still-living family (Barry, Lup's husband) partially escaped her memory wipe and spent his time hiding from Lucretia and trying to find Lup while he could remember.

Over the next several years, Lucretia tries and fails to stop their initial plan on her own while preparing herself to execute her own plan. When she realizes she can't do it alone, she forms an organization focused on stopping what they'd put into motion, carefully telling half-truths and gaining the loyalty of her employees while rebranding herself as "The Director", rarely ever using her real name. Her organization's headquarters is on a secret floating base that looks like a second moon, and she altered the minds of everyone on the world below to make them think that there had always been two moons there.

Eventually, the three family members she'd found new homes for make their way to her moon base, and she employs them to stop the plan that they had wanted to put in motion, making them think that Barry (who occassionally pops up to try and stop her or get them to realize the truth of what's going on) is evil and that they should never listen to a word he says. When Barry (who partially escape the memory wipe because he's a lich, a highly unstable undead being made of magic who is driven entirely by strong emotion) learns that Lucretia has made his family afraid of him and mistrust him he almost loses himself completely, but he pulls himself together and keeps on trying to stop her (and by extension, them, even if they don't realize what they're doing is wrong). When everyone regains their memories, Taako almost kills Lucretia because she made him forget his twin sister (they were each others' only constants growing up in a tumultuous family) and all Lucretia can focus on in that moment is convincing him that her plan will save the world.

In the end, Lup is finally found and a third plan saves the day and everything is hunky dory, but that was some Extremely Morally Gray Girlbossing on her part! Like, don't get me wrong I ADORE Lucretia!! But you have to admit there was some fucked up behavior on her part, even if it was for a good cause!!! I support women's wrongs <3

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIBALE NARRATORS; SIDE A

Rebecca Bunch Propaganda:

Okay, so Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a musical from the perspective of Rebecca. However, a very notable thing which is only fully confirmed at the end is that every single song is from her perspective. Not sure how this applies to songs she wasn't there for, but there's that. The point is, these songs are how she sees and processes things, which often casts her friends as characters/roles. I hate to bring up a song with an explicit version, and I'll bring up less nsfw songs later so you can ignore this (I only added paragraph breaks for this purpose), but a very notable one is I'm So Good at Yoga, which is the first song of Valencia, the girlfriend of the guy Rebecca is trying to get with. In this song, it quickly devolves into Valencia just talking about how much better at literally everything she is, often bringing up sore spots which Valencia would not know about (such as her talking about how her father didn't leave her when Rebecca's did). This is Rebecca casting Valencia into her role in her life, when this role ends up becoming wholly inaccurate later on. Face Your Fears is another super good example of this, even if it's more subtle. The whole song is Rebecca's best friend Paula trying to get Rebecca to just take a step forward in her life and set up a party that could help her get closer to Josh. However, Rebecca ends up seeing this as so absurd due to past traumas regarding running parties (as in her dad literally left the family the very night she decided to set up a party as a child) that the whole situation sounds so absurd to her that it, in her imaginary song, becomes "Go ahead and do the must stupid, dangerous things you can think of. Confront a bear head on, stay in a burning building, run with scissors, just do every stupid thing you can think of". This absolutely was not Paula's message. Angry Mad is one of the songs Rebecca wasn't even there for, but I think it works as a Rebecca pov song just because it's a song which ends up portraying Josh as a simple man who represents every masculine stereotype ever and does not have a complex string of thoughts when he gets upset. Josh is a guy who Rebecca heavily casts into a role that he ultimately does not live up to as a guy who has thoughts not entirely revolving around her. I could keep going on but the whole point is that Rebecca is the source of every song in the musical and unfortunately a lot of those songs are about how she sees others and the roles she's assigned them to instead of who they actually are.

Tsurugi Kamishiro Propaganda (TW; mentioned suicide):

He thinks he's the best and that everyone loves him, but sadly he's a disgraced noble son exiled from the family for being a disgrace. He doesn't even know the "him" that exists is an echo that lives in the memories of an alien who killed and impersonated him. He thinks he still has time to make up for all his sins. He thinks he will be able to live lavishly once again after his estranged relatives decide to call him back to live with them (his parents were also killed by aliens, but only he was impersonated). The first inkling you get of his skewed perception of reality is that he introduces himself as "Tsurugi Kamishiro, The Man Who Will Defeat God With One Slash Of His Sword." I don't think he even brought his sword with him when he committed suicide. He walked into the ocean and never came back. That scene shocked me to my very core because I had believed Kabuto was just fun and games before that happened. Tsurugi had just started to adapt to normal life, too. He had been befriended by the protagonist's younger sister Jukka, and she was teaching him basic life skills. I had hope for that guy, and was rooting for him, despite how pompous and annoying he was. Plus, his combat armor was purple, which is my favorite color (I admit that might have caused some of my favor). His family's butler was really the only family he had left, and that old man cared about him as if he was his own son...

[ihopesocomic]

if i had a nickle for the amount of times that infanticide happens in MP and the mom hooks up with their kids' murderer like hubba hubba, i'd have two and that's two nickles too fucking many. It's just such a gross aspect of the series that gets defended way too much by the fandom and I get the reasoning but it's still all kinds of stupid/disturbing and I hate how the fandom tries to normalize it while also demanding we relate to these characters on a personal level god lmao

Right?? I can never get over how we pointed out how weird your observation was and we've had nothing but people saying WELL THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S MEANT TO REPRESENT HOW REAL LIONS ACT BAWW

OK, several things to those who try and ram this shit down our throats:

Lionesses will actually fight to the death to defend their cubs. They don't just sit by and shrug and go 'well my made up religion says that this is fine so marry me plz'. As for the argument that they turn off the emotion tap for a biological reason: that's not established and we also have Powerstrike and other characters expressing grief when the pride loses Sharptongue, for example. Why is that not expressed for their cubs who were murdered and had their whole lives ahead of them?

Speaking of the made-up religion: these lions have a made-up religion and societies and homophobia and lions running around with earrings lol. Either we suspend our disbelief and take personal lessons about humanity from these lions on board and not question why they wear fucking earrings or treat these lions as real lions: you cannot have both.

My Pride actually fucked up on lion behaviour as much as everything else it tried to cover. Males generally don't fight to the death because they have literal floof armour covering their neck (so no, Quickmane would not have been able to kill Starmane like he did in reality). They're also not active during the day, more than one male can exist in a pride, prides are generally a lot more complex than 'one dude takes charge', I could literally go on for days... So uh - no, this is not 'how real lions behave'. National Geographic is a thing, try it out. I honestly wouldn't have minded the more brutal aspects of My Pride if it had made its damn mind up on what it wanted to be in the dozens of re-writes it went through. You can't expect people to treat this as a deconstruction of human issues but then let things like baby killing slide because 'lol realism'. That's a major contradiction. Especially when that realism is actually rooted in their made-up religion and is never actually about 'how lions behave' in terms of the show's actual universe? Which is incredibly problematic on its own. - RJ - tl;dr - MP's writing is trash and that's all there is to it. It's not as deep as people wanna make it. - Cat

[please-help-this-little-lesbian]

So...remember when I said I was boycotting Dead City? Welllll my dad bought the first season, so I watched it. And Boy oh Boy, Do I have Thoughts

Spoilers Ahead!!!

Note: I'm not going to address the Negan and Maggie of it all because I've long said everything I can about them.

One: What I liked, because believe it or not, I did actually like some things!

The setting! I loved seeing post-apocalyptic New York. It was really fun for me to pick out all the things I recognized.

Ginny. Was it a little annoying that she wouldn't listen to anybody? Sure, but a girl who shows up, clings to Negan like glue, and doesn't say shit? Literally, me. Character of the century.

Speaking of Ginny, I was LIVING for Negan's single dad era. Yes, king abandon your wife and son to take care of some random girl! He was living his best life.

The plot twist with Ginny was INCREDIBLE!! I was not expecting it at ALL. The fact that he killed her dad?? Bro my jaw was on the floor.

I actually liked the Croat and Negan's dynamic! I think it was funky and deliciously homerotic. However, I hate the Croat's character.

Two: What I DIDNT like.

Nothing made ANY sense, and NOTHING was explained. I get that Maggie was in New Babylon to find Negan but why was HE there? Last I checked nobody banished him from the Commonwealth. And where even IS this place? It seemed to be like Pennsylvania, New Jersey but still. Also, how did Maggie know he was there? Did she airtag him?? It made no sense.

The Croat was a TOTAL retcon. He made NO sense in the established canon. Let me explain:

3 a) I get NEGAN being upset that the Croat tortured a girl because his whole thing was no harming kids, but SIMON?? Bro you killed every boy over the age of ten at Oceanside and slaughtered all those garbage people, why are you on a high horse NOW??

3 b) If Negan could recognize that the Croat was too much of a wild card and needed to be dealt with, then why the HELL did he keep Simon around? Because Simon did MUCH worse.

3 c) The girl whom the Croat tortured was a scout from the Kingdom, but this makes NO sense with what we know about them? I believe the deal was as long as they paid proper tribute they'd leave each other alone, this feels like a major violation of this agreement? Like they were probably wondering what the hell happened to her, surely somebody had to address this at some point.

3 d) The Croat mentioned this story where Negan let him Lucille someone from the "river people." I feel like these people have to be Oceanside, but this is a total retcon either way.

I'll admit as a writer it's hard to keep up with details and I've had to change and retcon a couple of things myself in my stories, but surely they can go and make sure that everything in their spinoff that's a continuation of an already established story makes sense with it.

Anyway, I didn't hate it, but tbh my expectations weren't high. I got one (1) scene of evil jester Negan and a hinted promise that he'd come back in season two, and I'm disappointed. But if he DOES come back I'll have to watch I fear.