#all the moral greyness you can imagine

[clockworkcheetah]

anti[character] posts are already insufferable especially when the person decides to fucking tag it, but when its that kinda post combined with 'this character bad. but this character good' are even more annoying because its a double whammy of the worst character takes youve ever seen

[rnelodyy]

"why are bells hells still arguing about what to do they should make a decision already" no!!!!!!! this is the "fly by the seat of your pants" party. this is the "we panicked and made porn" party. this is the "concussion theatre" party. i want them to not make any choice until they are At the fucking controls, hem and haw and argue for an hour and then panic and do something insane.

they are faced with an impossible choice that will affect the lives of the entire world. there's eight people in their party, all of whom have different opinions and perspectives, and they are on a MASSIVE time crunch. their options are risk the world to chase off the gods or go back to the status quo, and there's no way orym would agree to the former, and there's no way dorian and/or ashton would agree to the latter. this kind of debate is what you can make a career out of arguing about and they had to figure this shit out in like a month. Just yesterday they got another option they hadn't previously considered and they're having to talk about it in the middle of All The Other Shit they have to do, but if they pause to debate it NOW the decision will be made FOR them.

^^^^^ that is literally the juiciest fucking character drama imaginable. and you want it to stop??? you want them to just agree on a course of action and stick with it??????

look this is just what a morally grey narrative does to a mf. the mighty nein and vox machina didn't argue like this bc they didnt HAVE to, their villains (while absolutely deep and complex characters) had all the moral greyness of a saturday morning cartoon, so the only options they had were "stop them or dont and if you dont you're fucked". i fucking love VM and especially the M9 but istg im going to personally add five more minutes of God Arguments to the next episode for every person i see complaining that BH doesn't have the simple solution to the complex problem yet.

[arviyya]

bcj and ANY number you want to yap about <3

Barty Crouch Jr.

I was going to say it don't think you know what you've done but you absolutely know exactly what you've done hehe. Literally, you do not have to read this cause I'm going to yapppp.

cracks knuckles, cracks neck, here we go

tws: sexual trauma mentioned

1. what i most like about them

Barty. What do I like most about Barty. I love his brilliance, chaos, and his ambiguous intentions. I love the way his intellect balances the chaos of his personality, like he might be doing some wild shit, but he's going to be smart about it. And his ambitious intentions mixed in makes him so interesting. I love when characters complicate motive vs intent vs impact. For example, canon Barty's intent was to murder his father, and his motive was probably all the ways his father abandoned him and treated him horribly. The intent is bad, but the motive makes him more complex. Moral greyness also happens to be my favorite, and Barty really embodies that sometimes. Like in SOS and ITA Barty has very ambiguous and sometimes questionable motives, and actions.

2. what i hate about them

What do I hate about Barty. Hmm. This is honestly a tough one for me but I always try to come up with things I don't like about the characters I write to give them more depth. So for Barty, I think I hate the way he can be really selfish sometimes - like he forgets to think about other people, just considers his own wants and needs above others (keyword, sometimes hehe). I also hate the way he has such a big mouth, always saying things without thinking. And lastly, (I dont really hate this but I think it can be a huge character flaw) his anger issues (at least in the version I write) he's such a hot head, like a snake waiting to strike and when he does it's with barred teeth and venom.

3. my fancast of that character

So my fancast is literally a random tiktoker/Instagramer lol @ uonlad. I just seee it.

4. fav fic w them in it

Honestly, my favorite Barty is the little bits we see of him in Chew Me Up by youuu lol I just LOVE the way he is with Regulus and their friendship and all the love that's there and the warmth between him and Evan, it's just so fucking cute. I also love every version written by @dracure @incandescentwarmth and @horrorosier

5. a headcanon i have

I headcanon that Barty is super hot----but it doesn't end there. I headcanon that Barty is super hot and because of this and his sex appeal he uses sex as a way to validate himself and his insecurities. Also, in almost every fic I write, Barty also has sexual trauma, and deals with it in different ways depending on the fic. In Taste of Sin he completely disassociates, in Song of Serpents he tries hard to ignore it and deals with ptsd as a result, and in Into The Abyss he deals with intense anger issues. It's really interesting to explore, especially when his approach to sex is oppositional to his reaction to it.

10. would i date them?

Unfortunately, probably. But what can I say, I've always fallen for toxic men.

12. how i think their childhood was like

Oh boy. Well, I think Barty is brilliant to begin with but his good marks are probably a result from at-home pressure---specifically from his dad. I imagine his dad was probably very strict, very specific, and unwilling to bend. Like his father was that kind of dad who spoiled him and handed him a popsicle anytime he asked, but would smack him if it so much as dripped on the floor. Barty wasn't allowed to be himself, he wasn't allowed to be a child. Everything had to be perfect at home so that his father could impress his cohorts. Barty couldn't have so much as have a stray lock of hair. I think he would have been very lonely, and probably lacked any real love in his home. And as a result, he became an intense people pleaser at school (hence the good marks), and did evrything he could to live up to his father's vision until he cracked.

14. my fav au for them

I still don't fully understand this one but my favorite types of stories are the ones where Barty is traumatized but also very soft; ones where he just really wants to be GoodTM but doesn't know how because of TraumaTM. As for setting, a Hunger Games au with Barty would be so fucking fun.

16. what song i think they'd like/ 17. I'll make them a playlist

I'm literally about to do this by era... the urge to do it by genre too rip

60s: Paint it Black - The Rolling Stones; White Rabbit - The Jefferson Airplanes; Fortunate Son - CCR (you can't tell me Barty wouldn't have loved CCR)

70s: Son - Jethro Tull; Black Dog - Led Zeppelin; War Pigs - Black Sabbath

80s: For Whom The Bell Tolls - Metallica; Boyz-N-The-Hood - N.W.A; The Trooper - Iron Maiden;

90s: I can't help but split this one and the next by genre, it is what it is.

Grunge: In Bloom - Nirvana; Killing in the Name - RATM; Basket Case - Green Day; Come As You Are - Nirvana; Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

Rap: (the way i saw straight outta compton on a 90s playlist - uncultured swine) No Vaseline - Ice Cube; Nuthin But A G Thang - Snoop and Dre; My Name Is - Eminem; I'm Back - Eminem; Still Dre - Dre and Snoop; (you can't tell me that he wouldn't have LOVED Eminem)

2000s:

Alternative rock: Your Gonna Go Far Kid - The Offspring; American Idiot - Green Day; I write sins not tragedies - Panic! At The Disco; Teenagers - My Chemical Romance; Self Esteem - The Offspring,

Rap/hip hop: Ms Jackson - Outkast; Without Me - Eminem (some murph lore - i can recite this whole song, and im convinced that Barty would be able to as well and he'd do it all the time and everyone around him would just groannn); Concrete Streets - Nate Dogg; Hip Hop Is Dead - Nas; Day N Nite - Kid Cudi; - I did not realize I had so many thoughts on Barty's rap choices, but he totally would have heard one beat of mumble rap and would have been like "the fuck is this garbage". He also would have HATED Drake and Kanye. I won't be elaborating. When they went down hill he would have been like SEE. Also ALSO let's be real, he would have secretly LOVED tech n9ne lol like please, he would have absolutely devoured Everready and Evan would be like bro just admit it and Barty just would NOT

Modern (since 2015):

Rock/Indie: Orgasm of Death - The Growlers; Daddy Issues - The Neighborhood; Deathrow Honeymoon - Smrtdeath; Dead Inside - Younger Hunger; Sex With A Ghost - Teddy Hyde

Rap/Hip Hop: Dead Body - Lil Simz; That Dont Mean - TrueMendous (Special mention for a lyric I think Barty would be obsessed with "Even though you know the devil's here, also no, so is god:); Venom - Lil Simz; Jailbreak the Tesla - Injury Reserve; Fruits - The Sillouettes Project;

Special mention; Bang Bang Bang Bang by Sohodolls

18. gender/sexuality headcanons

So my headcanon for Barty is that he's gay as fuck. Like not a single straight bone in his body.

As for gender, I love Barty who is very very comfortable in his masculinity. He fully goes by he/him but he's not afraid to gender bend, especially when it comes to clothing. He will wear dresses, skirts, fem lingerie, he has no fears and no cares. He's just himself and does what he likes. I also really love an any/all pronoun Barty.

Also, also, also, I definitely think trans Barty is sleptttt on. There's so much potential.

9. i'll make them a moodboard

*rubs hands together cause I love moodboards*

Send me a number from this post and a marauders character and I'll yap

[yvqip]

Another rant abt gojo bc yeah except this time its of the moral greyness of his character

‼️slight spoiler warning‼️for ppl who haven’t read the manga

In my last post abt gojo i was talking about his parallels to jesus but ONLY in the aspect of having to suffer for others as a sort of ‘duty’ and their relations to divinity. While yes, gojo did care for his students, riko, suguru, and his friends/coworkers and wanted to protect them, protecting others wasn’t why he was a sorcerer- he even said it himself multiple times that protecting the weak was tiring and that you can only save those ready to be saved- like in the Shibuya arc where he doesn’t hesitate to kill all those mutilated humans whereas someone like Yuuji would’ve struggled to decide what to do in that situation. I always characterized him as some sort of ‘hero’ because of the way he took in yuta, yuuji, and megumi and cared for the rest of his students which isn’t exactly wrong but it’s not completely right. The reason he did all of it was so he could help the next generation become as strong as him or as close as possible so that 1. He wouldn’t be alone at the top 2. To transform the world of Jujutsu and 3. So that the kids’ youth isn’t taken away from them (obv trauma comes with the job but it’s more about preventing unnecessary tragedies like the higher ups sending weaker sorcerers to handle curses that they aren’t ready for). His morals are more self centered as he uses Jujutsu more for self gratification than protecting the weak. Idk if ppl would agree w me on this but it’s been confirmed in the manga panel where he’s speaking with suguru and nanami in the afterlife ->

while gojo’s goals/intentions weren’t inherently selfish they weren’t for a heroic cause, his morals were based on his own emotions and self interests unlike geto whose morals were based on the institutional belief that sorcerers should protect the weak because they’re the strong but unfortunately his morals were founded in his faith within jujutsu society hence the reason why his morals weakened in correspondence to his faith in the institution. Although that’s why I think gojo is a good example of one of the most apparent philosophies in jjk which is, ‘do what has to be done’. This doesn’t mean i dont love when ppl characterize him as sweet and silly and clingy tho!! I adore it and think it really is a part of who he is just buried under the trauma and pressure, i imagine he’d be a lot more like that in another world where jujutsu sorcery didn’t exist! he deserves sm better </3

[wordslikesilver]

Playing baldur’s gate 3 with my gf has made it so much more palatable to play an Oath of Vengeance Paladin. Like I do not look at people like auntie Ethel and think to myself oh nooo but what if she could change?? I’m just like no you are unquestionably ontologically evil and I’m going to smite you so hard it removes you from the samsara of life and death, buckle up you son of a bitch. Playing Durge is ESPECIALLY fun for the moral greyness of what am I and how long can I hold back the red tide? Multiclassing into warlock is so fun too, I really feel like I’m playing as a Spirit of Vengeance, this is how I’ve imagined my character so far

I only wish I could be an Aasimar but Tieflings are so wicked cool as well. It’s interesting being in D&D and looking at all these enemies and realizing the world here doesn’t have to feel so paralyzingly grey anymore since it’s a fictional setting where you’re supposed to have fun and feel empowered enough to fight the great evils you face. IRL I firmly believe everyone has a right to live and rehabilitative justice is the only real justice but here, I come face to face with genocidal racists and actual bloodthirsty demons from hell and fuck it! I’m killing all of you! I will sleep all the better for it too! I see the suffering of the weak and I will rise to protect them with my own bare chest as their shield if that’s what it takes, and then I’m coming for Vengeance. There is nothing you can do to stop me. No matter how far or fast you run I will find you and I will kill you and you will learn what the ones you hurt felt when you hunted them.

GOD it’s so fun to let loose and indulge in the righteous fury against monsters and the very worst that come crawling out of the darkness. Fucking LOVE getting to role play as Ghost Rider, this game FUCKS.

[transfemlogan]

idk if you can see asks again yet BUT

i kinda wanna talk abt what that anon was saying with people adding non-side characters into fanworks and how that could be connected to other analyses of the fanbase (i haven’t been here as long as u have though so mb there’s some stuff idk abt)

for me it’s symptomatic of the way this fanbase treats the characters in general- they like. boil them down to one simple trait, one little personality thing that becomes how they’re viewed in fanon. so like patton is just sweet/innocent/stupid, but all other aspects of who he is, what he does, etc are kinda they out the window.

people add characters like picani and sleep even though they’ve had no canon overlap with the sides because their fanon personalities are simple enough to imagine with the sides. this fanbase ignores canon events so often that they can just like. add characters in and it feels the same to them

by making them into these one-note characters, it’s easy to imagine them interacting with one another as if they are from the same series because they’re so one dimensional and shallow in fanon. they can basically be made into whatever you want them to

i just think it kinda says something abt the way this fanbase warps it’s characters beyond recognition tht you can straight up just add these guys in and it doesn’t change the dynamic much, it doesn’t seem super out of place, and they’re just kinda. there

idk if that made any sense, im really tired, but my thoughts on this change all the time so i might look at this later and decide it’s bullshit lol who knows

I do agree that people boil down the sides into one specific trait & dont have any nuance to their character, however every fandom has crossover AUs. Every fandom boils characters down to their characters into one specific trait. I don't feel like there's anything to discuss there, because if I wanted to talk about how fandoms function as a whole, I'd just talk about that. But I don't want to. I want to talk specifically about the SaSi fandom and how it correlates to the series.

There's a difference between

"the series is about morally greyness and how there is no 'good' or 'bad' in the world, but the fanbase completely ignores that to treat the sides one-dimensionally" (and because of the lack of content and large stretches of time)

&

"the fanbase creates crossover AUs, like every other fanbase, and tends to make the characters one dimensional to fit them into the AU"

Every fandom has the same issues, but it's very interesting when it comes to SaSi specifically, because they are actively ignoring the lesson in Sanders Sides. It's the same with the Undertale fandom. People were actively ignoring the point of the story to make a child out to be the villain, because they couldn't comprehend, or want, the idea that it was them/the player who was fault

(also, it's less the one dimensional thing, & more that they are all creations of Thomas. People are adding in shorts characters and cartoon therapy characters because it's all by the same creator. I'm sure it's also because their fanon identities are so shallow it's easy to imagine them interacting, but that's not the main reason why it's done. It's done out of love for the other creations Thomas has.)

[leatherbookmark]

that being said, and i'm sorry for being a cunt, but

it's... very irritating to read mxtx gushing about how utterly likeable wwx is, how cute lwj is when he's got wwx on his brain, how xy is "trash yang" (this is not from the interview but from the chapter comments), or... whatever she said about jgy... is the interview in japanese or chinese? i've seen chinese terms brought up by the translators and i just ???

it's just like. girl? are we all stupid for reading like, moral greyness, unreliable narrators, Layers into your work? her answers can sound so... idk, shallow? at times. the part abt her "feeling bad for jgy, but please go die now" stayed in my mind for obvious reasons, and now the 狡猾, because: no, wait, hold up, why? i want to hear more! you wrote this character, this antagonist who isn't even working against the protagonist, who's similar but different, whose circumstances are tragic and understandable as such, and you just go... cool motive, still villain, go die? like, seriously?

on top of that, i always wince when people describe jgy as cunning, crafty, plotting, treacherous, manipulative great actor etcetc, because it paints him as this... confident grey eminence who's got everything under control, rather than a guy who just... tries to survive... there was a post abt wwx's manipulation -- literally pissing people off into doing what he wants them to do -- but he's never called manipulative. but someone who doesn't know jgy would think his moustache is a thing straight out of uzumaki. it's like boiling xy down to an insane psycho who's so craaaazy and evil! 100% deranged! it's just incorrect. it's not even "well yes, but it's actually deeper than you think", it's just wrong.

...and then i see the author doing the same. AM I INSANE.

similarly, it's kinda strange to read her gushing about wwx and lwj, because while i understand on a technical level that People Are Different, most of the fic writers i know/have read are drawn to characters because they're fucked up, complex, tragic; they're a puzzle, a fascinating mechanism. not a great guy who's so great and amazing, seriously, who wouldn't like him. have i mentioned that he and his boyfriend are in love that's stronger than everything else in the world? like. did you... write wwx being supremely obnoxious as a teen while thinking he's the coolest guy imaginable?

there was a time when i, still in the clutches of cql wgxn, saw a couple of novel excerpts and decided i hated them. wwx was so annoying! lwj was so different and unappealing! i'm not gonna read this book, it's going to ruin the characters for me! and i mean. it kind of did, but also it didn't. and i sort of... feel this way about the word of god. like, yeah, some of that stuff is interesting, although it's not anything i'd consider invaluable or even particularly enlightening -- but mostly. it's just annoying

[autumn-foxfire]

WHOOOO I FIGURED OUT HOW I'M GONNA EXPOSE HAWKS!!! It's supposed to be one of those fics where he gets outed and dropped by the heroes, and that leads to all sorts of chaos, but written by someone who isn't a shipper and doesn't care for Hawks joining the LoV for real lol. So I would say the first of it's kind. It was a lil hard to do because in what universe would the villains cause that sort of trouble for themselves on purpose esp when the PLF already exists at this point in time, and in what universe would the HPSC despite their moral greyness and our personal grievances against them, drop Hawks like a sack of potatoes when they need him OK so they can prevent an all out war? Easy, Dabiiiiiiii~

We've got a few funny layers to the situation. Because what happens is after employing Skeptic's help in finding Tomie, Skeptic here is 👀 about that because JACKPOT and finds the connection to the HPSC cause big ol house, occupant doesn't work, paychecks coming in from somewhere, connection to a villain, to Hawks? He hacks their database, whooo Lady Nagant huh??? But he doesn't get too far, because this is where Dabi comes in like "hey what gives, you were supposed to be the DJ to my dance party in hell" and Skeptic is all "can it wait, I found a really good scoop here" because sure, Dabi's story is good, but it really only worked because society was already uneasy, people wouldn't care enough on it's own + Dabi's main goal was to have all the blame that was bound to result from the war be directed at Endeavor because of it. Originally they wanted someone like Toga or Twice's story, but since PLF also wanted to take down heroes, Dabi's was pretty impactful too especially for taking down "the old" in society, who cling to past ideals Skeptic wants gone, which does include Endeavor and Jeanist from what we were told. So? Targeting the HPSC who are the "head" of the old order? Can we get a "hell yeah" in the chat? *insert a little something for ReDestro's sake and Skeptic never liking the League taking over or being Dabi's new phone girlfriend*

This is something strictly for the MLA's benefit, rather than Dabi's as well. It's targeting the very center of what governs hero society, that makes heroes "lawful" rather than vigilantes, exactly what they need for their "everyone is a hero, and nobody is" agenda. So Skeptic is up editing a video expose of his own, Dabi's will still be used but he's more invested in this currently, but then Dabi is like "delete that shit, it's conflicting with my story" because he was all "lmao look, we all become our fathers huh?" pitying Hawks in his video so he can pity himself "it's really no wonder since his own father was a villain!" looking all solemn and stuff to hammer in the fact "if your No.2 ended up like this because he couldn't escape the violence in his upbringing, can you imagine what that says about Endeavor? poor me, right?" and before someone reading this gets on my ass about it, Dabi is all about self-pity here, he asks Izuku too as well in 293 in response to "you aren't Endeavor!" "lmao yeah duh, but you still gotta pity me right?" so back to the story, the thing Skeptic's making is gonna make Hawks the Wrong Kind Of Victim for Dabi's needs here, it's getting off-topic from the connection he needed to make to Endeavor too. Instead of a guy who hid his name out of wanting to lie to the public about his connection to a villain, "pretending to be a hero," this is becoming "an innocent kid who had his name forcefully taken away." But the MLA love their martyr stories, as they first tried to do with Toga.

Skeptic isn't budging when this can accomplish so many of their goals for a lawless standstill, so they end up tussling for the laptop when Dabi accidentally hits the wrong key and OOP the video gets posted and they both look at each other like "well shit." And the icing on the cake is that Skeptic didn't quite get to finish what he was working on so the HPSC Expose Video only tells HALF the story, that they had Lady Nagant working as an assassin for them, her kill count, and that Hawks was her replacement, what the HPSC trained Hawks for, without the part of "since what age" it all paints him as a cold person as the HPSC's reports are all objective and detached. And Skeptic didn't get to the part where Nagant killed the former Chairman, and that's why "she's in Tartarus for killing a hero" combines with people going "HOL UP so you mean Hawks snapped like his Senpai and that's why he killed Jeanist?!" Wow! How awful! They're so alike! Citizens having a breakdown over the Wrong Kind Of Expose "Wow I Can't Believe How Ruthless Hawks Secretly Was All This Time, We Were Fooled Into Idolizing Him When He's Probably Been Plotting To Kill All Our Favorite Heroes" so they get all angry at the HPSC for Being These Kind Of People, aka "that fic moment where people think Hawks is the face of the HPSC and make him also carry all their crimes" tho it's more of a fandom moment isn't it?

So when Hawks is uh "great news! I found Shigaraki's location!" the HPSC is all *dial tone noises* because they're a lil too busy with the heat of the public, understaffed, and can't come to the phone right now because what's the best way to get Hawks desperate enough to ask the LoV for help in a way that isn't disappointing for a Hawks stan who thinks canon Hawks wouldn't give in that easily? ESPECIALLY considering who the LoV are? Can't exactly waltz up to them like "haha Twice, my man! So the truth is I'm a spy but I really like you guys so please stop killing?" Easy. Cut off his correspondence with the HPSC so he's thinking "well fudge nuggets, now what." He can get all the info the heroes need, but he can't exactly GIVE it to them, nor any other hero, he needs someone to plan the raid, organize the heroes because they'res lots of them and they can't do shit on their own without orders and the police coordinating raids. Being public enemy No.1 makes that tricky + too much info to pass onto Endeavor with another book, but not even Endeavor alone can coordinate that many heroes who are already stingy about working with each other without probable cause, they ain't gonna listen to him when they can be stealing cases off their co-workers to increase their ranking. Big PLF war who? + He can't go investigating WHICH hospital in Kyoto by the mountains here with the cameras on him, that was supposed to be the HPSC's job. So yeah, he really feels like crying right now.

So now if Hawks wants to prevent the essential doom of Japan, he needs to somehow make the villains quit from the inside. That makes him desperate enough to change tactics and this is where I'm gonna try to find a way to appeal to Twice's "gotta save my friends" nature, get some better communication between these two because canon didn't exactly let them sit down and discuss it over a pot of tea, though it's still gonna be subtle because Hawks isn't a leaky faucet with words, he's gonna try and start with worried comments about Tomura and the doctor until we get the LoV off their butts and checking in with what Ujiko is doing re: Toga. I have yet to decide what to do about Dabi lol, but I do want Tomura-Hawks' "creation" parallels to play a major role in this somehow. One thing's for sure, it's gonna be hella messy with Tomura's "I gotta destroy everything, nothing makes me happy" depression being a major rejection risk as well as a "get Hawks dusted from preventing his power-up" risk + sounding like a shifty rat there, and idk HOW Hawks is gonna appeal to him with "backstory reasons" when Hawks is…still sorting things out. But we'll figure it out!! OFA-AFO is also a major gap in intel, and it's not like Tomura isn't aware that AFO was manipulating him, he just stopped caring and thought he could overpower his Sensei's will, so heh talk about a mental exercise to figure out 🤣 the resulting conversation dialogue between them is def gonna be GOLD tho, they're just those kinds of suspenseful characters.

I really, really love this idea nonnie and I'm saying that earnestly. This sounds like a fic I would love to read because the HPSC and their role in all of this was completely shafted by Hori to focused on AFO so it's always a pleasure when fics take the time to focus on them instead and how that affects Hawks and his life.

I love the twist of Skeptic planning to use Hawks "victim" story to have the HPSC discredited (especially because the PLF could then use the "we're sooo sympathetic and stand against the rule of the HPSC and you should too" and that conflicting with Dabi's own plans (as Dabi did paint Hawks as that heartless killer in canon but with less affects because people didn't really care for the life of a villain who was going to kill them all) and that resulting in a half-truth that is posted.

I like the idea of Hawks being isolated from everyone and all of the support he once had, having to earn the trust of people by being himself and that's how he confronts the villains. Going down this route and focusing on the bonds of the LOVs (something that isn't done well in canon sadly) in order to take them down in a kill them with kindness situation is a good idea and would be a good way to demonstrate the themes Hori wants in his manga and for his heroes.

If you've gotten around to writing this, please send me the link! I'm already very intrigued and would love to read more <3 <3 <3

[m1ckeyb3rry]

FHE JUSTIN BIEBER GIF CRYINNGGGGGG LAMAOAOAOAOAO im assuming its the sae oaeu cooking rn

LMAOSOA YOUR POST trust I take all of your ramblings as rewards your brain is fr so big all of these fire ideas >>>>> ok but the pokemon au is so good…extraordinary….exquisite….remarkable (if you’ve watched as much pokemon as i have you’ll probably get this but if not just take it at face value) the Barou sibling angst is actually my fav

LMAOO YOUR MOM AND HER BROTHER THATS SO ACCURATE

ISAGIS HAIR I feel bad for his hair and his hair alone they always weirdly slick it back or comb it up and he looks like a middle aged man

IM CRYING “I cry but because I have to deal with his shit” LMFAOOO yuki fr tweaking atp or repeatedly saying his mantra in his head trying to keep his sanity like “god never gives us more than we can handle god never gives up more than we can handle god never-“

LMAAOA NO IT MAKES SENSE my brain just grouped up the letters that way that I had to double take ok so we’ve had kaneshiro possesses Mira moment and we get canon characterization of kiyora it’s time to freaky Friday reverse you should take over kaneshiro and write bllk i fr wish Karasu actually scored more literally my exact thoughts like “ARE YOU A STRIKER???” Channeling my inner ego…..but agreed glad he still at least has SOME presence and is consistently shown active in game

Bro kurona was so random…like with epinagi and s2 you can see them sneakily trying to add him in the bg cameoing to make him feel relevant but he fr was dropped out of nowhere like wdym the one who ranked fourth in second selection who we’ve never even seen a glimpse of and didn’t do anything in u20 is suddenly good friends with Isagi and others and gets field time HUH his first appearance is quite literally in BM when he’s holding the iPad showing Isagi Kunigami new stats (yk it’s bad when I rmr this info off the top of my head) something about the wording “using religion and blindness” has me laughing so hard LMAOOOO it’s giving that one meme “I’ve got the power of god and anime on my side” except it’s god and optic neuropathy UAHSHSHA ok but on a serious note that fr would go so hard like let’s expand on his character please….id honestly love to see more of him as he was shown in the LN because nel yuki is SO diff than what he actually seems to be based off the LN but anyways…

Kunigami being the main rival makes sm sense tbh when I first read I thought he WAS going to be the main rival but no it’s Kaiser ig….wait the morally greyness of wildcard being discussed would fr be so interesting…..guys….also ness is one of my least fav characters tbh so slander him all you want LMAOO gotta agree w some dudebros he’s fr a Kaiser glazer you’re fr cooking though….we gotta get you in touch with kaneshiro asap

LMAO REAL I also (clearly) enjoy bllk quite a bit but yes many things to be improved…sometimes I think to myself if only I was an Isagi Rin or Kaiser stan I’d be having the time of my life but alas we cannot be MEDIOCRE

Wait the terminally ill route fits his character fr….where he’d be unwilling to tell his family about it because he wants to strive to be the best despite it and won’t settle for a comfy life…I can also see him getting murdered though LOL either way I’m sure it’ll be good (even though he’s dying oops)

Yeah I lowk forgot people who have such audacity exist the Tullia hate kinda insane and just generally when people comment “he’s mine [chafacter] better get away from my man” ICK imagine in the tags you just put every reader pairing possible as a jic disclaimer like “reader and Tullia talk to men so beware!”

I always found the rival characters so funny like why are you jumping me when I’m trying to get to the next city no I don’t wanna battle you rn LMAOO it’s funny in how like every version you end up teaming up and double battling the villain team somehow but the way they come and go was always so funny to me

When you first said may I thought you meant May from pokemon but now I realize…anyways love Tullia sooo glad to have her alive!!

LMAOOOO Lowk I had a subconscious thought like galvanthla interesting choice (i personally collected joltiks bc they looked cute LMFAO) Isagi the most basic of basics so an all basic team is perfect for him LOL I mean hey you gotta have an op basic pokemon somewhere right I already consider infernape relatively more niche amongst most popular pokemon too LOL

Otoya using his pokemon as chick magnets is so real LMAOO I wanna analyze the breloom yuki vibe like why does it work so well

Nagi fr got the short end of the stick omg LMAOO ofc it had to be a fire type too for once thank you reo for spoiling him HSHSH

SHSHSBD THATS TOO CUTE I bet chigiri would take sm time grooming and caring for his rapidash too (in line with what we talked about for his hair and skin LOL) sometimes I forget you make money from battling LMAOOO like yeah I just beat your pokemon up now hand me my check

REAL BUT LMAOOO the light blue team never fails for him honestly when in doubt just match the hair color I can definitely see him genuinely having an aurorus and ice types though maybe he’s like (I like them calm and cold unlike my parents) hiori running a fossil pokemon conservation wait id never thought of that that’s also so real….atp this should just be an expanded universe that exists time to world build (on that note imagine Aryu grooms and styles pokemon for coordinators and especially furfrou, I forgot exact which gen you were into pkmn until oops I’ll elaborate if you didn’t get to kalos/xyz)

LMAOOOOO i was already linking up aiku and Brock the moment you brought him in lowk that interaction set up you have is so pkmn verse coded its great

I SECOND THAT if no other inspo comes out lowk pokemon au….guys…..also Noel noa being the actual champion while reos dad just holds the title is actually such an interesting dynamic and would work so well

SHSHS sounds like you’ve got it all down still praying for your safety though all those experiences in one lifetime is crazy

HAHAHA I LOVE THE CHATTER reading the convo responses brings me just as much joy as reading ur actual fics im always down for yap sessions

- Karasu anon

LMAOOO that’s just me irl tbh like i hope that’s what you picture when you think of me 🤩 surprisingly it wasn’t in reference to the oaeu!! someone had just posted that they wished there were more otoya fics because they’ve read all of them already and i was like “just working…working hard to please you” because i am an occasional otoya writer for sure

OMG MR REMARKABLE (i forget if he had an actual name KFNSJSN my brother and i always just called him mr remarkable he’s like that elderly man who has a tv show or smth right??) and HAHA tyyyy 🥹

maybe they do it like that to distinguish him from rin or smth?? idk but it’s specifically only isagi who gets the horrendous hairdos they don’t give ANYONE else that treatment 😭 i fr feel bad for the guy even though idgaf abt him…

bllk karasu’s like “can we switch places” because a universe where otoya’s not as much of a dumbass AND he has the chance to rizz up reader is the universe for him (he def is so pressed that hollyhock karasu never made any moves LMAOOO “wdym you lost her to OTOYA” and hollyhock karasu is like “i never wanted her in the first place 🤔” so bllk karasu is like “WHAT”)

HAHAHA possessed by kaneshiro fr i felt his energy flowing through me in that moment 😭 someone needs to get me on the phone with him like idk much about soccer BUT i can definitely cook in terms of characters and plot!!

I REMEMBER WHEN KURONA FIRST SHOWED UP I HAD TO REREAD THE CHAPTER BECAUSE I THOUGHT I JUST MISSED HIS INTRODUCTION 😭 agreed there’s such a discrepancy between ln/third selection/u20 yukimiya and nel yukimiya!! especially with that rlly cool panel of him in the u20 game where they’re like “his style of soccer is street soccer 😰⁉️” and he looks gorgeous af i was looking forward to more elaboration on that!! like really showing how he plays differently compared to the other players (maybe giving him some special weapon because of that kinda like metavision) it also could’ve been a really cool point of connection between him and kaiser given that both of them kind of learned how to play soccer in unconventional ways…but alas…here we are

NO BECAUSE KUNIGAMI VS ISAGI RIVALRY COULD’VE BEEN SO GOOD it would’ve built up the hype for kuni sm more and him feel much more relevant imo!! honestly along with wanting to know what wc is all about i’ve always wanted to know noel noa’s reaction to it…like his biggest rival from the past has destroyed this child’s body and life and future in order to make a copy of him THAT’S LEGIT INSANE??? kaneshiro could’ve given us such a scrumptious kuni and noa dynamic and then he just didn’t 😭

honestly i think one of the main problems w bllk is that kaneshiro is spreading the cast too thin and making people care about too many characters but it’s impossible to effectively manage such a huge cast given the premise of the story and still have emotional impact when stuff happens to them and that also means that characters aside from the protagonist aren���t given a ton of fleshing out (this is relatively common in shounen sadly…jjk had a similar issue but almost to the next level) where by focusing on lesser characters and just giving them insane depth the story would’ve felt much stronger ☝🏻 like realistically there’s 0 reason for kurona to exist in nel when reo (as per our earlier convos) or yukimiya could’ve easily taken that role and had their characters developed much more!! kiyora could also have been replaced with yukimiya (as much as i love him) and tbh?? get sendou out of ubers and focus more on aryu (how’d he go from number 2 in scoring goals to a defensive player?? flesh him out more instead of sendou literally nobody cares abt him…hot take but only memorable u20 players were aiku sae and shidou the rest did not need to be there), get rid of tokimitsu entirely (show how his nervous personality doesn’t jive with egoism) and give zantetsu + karasu more opportunities to shine in pxg (honestly if they wanted to keep the cutthroat feel of second selection then get rid of nanase too and show how kindness doesn’t cut it in bllk where you need to be insane; that way the cast is still large but these characters aren’t fighting for a main spot they’re more naruhaya-esque) 😰 and another hot take but they should’ve saved all of the other ng11s besides sae until the world cup arc (so no kaiser and lorenzo in nel) to really build the hype and stakes of the wc because rn it’s like…ok the bllkers have already managed to beat lorenzo and the whole kaisagi rivalry is going on so the ng11s don’t feel as threatening?? whereas they could’ve been a really cool obstacle in the wc and would’ve provided a baddie of the week feel and higher stakes without it being boring or random since they’ve been so foreshadowed already with sae

i agree i rlly like the terminally ill aspect it also explains why his pokémon are willing to go along with his possessed body (they’re not able to accept that he’s gone) as well as why isagi knows so much without him being a villain…it’s also just sad to think about like he didn’t want his family to worry about him but he wanted to accomplish his goals so he just pushed forward until he literally couldn’t anymore 😭 also now i’m realizing lowkey kunigami would fit better in barou’s role (given the whole canonical wildcard thing being similar to the possession) however idc because i like barou more

yeahhh unfortunately fandom people can be a little weird to say the least and especially now that i have a decent amt of followers i know there are going to be interesting individuals in my comments so it’s not even worth it to not tag…okay but hear me out i wasn’t even thinking about this when i assigned teams (nagi got his team based on cuddly fluffy vibes and barou got his team as all dark types because of his “villain king” thing and reader was forced to have one of the same pokémon as him for the sibling theme…of barou’s team i liked houndoom the most so that’s what reader got) BUT the parallels between nagi’s starter being arcanine and reader’s being houndoom kinda go crazy?? like they both have huge fiery dogs but as per the pokédex arcanine symbolizes loyalty justice protection etc and houndoom is like death hell horror and whatnot 😭 however as we know nagi’s aura is death and reader’s character’s main theme is love (for barou, for her pokémon, etc) so narratively nagi x reader would be so good…especially if they’re each other’s “rivals” but they’re not really rivals and half of the time are helping each other out…there’s a vision here and it’s cooking imo 🤩 ALSO i’m thinking…hear me out…karasu reminds reader of barou so he becomes like her surrogate older brother while they’re searching for barou and reader is the annoying little sibling karasu never had which makes him respect yayoi more and teaches him responsibility and maturity which in turn makes yayoi finally respect him too 🤔

honestly galvantula is such a random pokémon but realistically in terms of type matchups it’s absolutely CARRYING reader against barou’s team considering dark is weak to bug 😭 honestly it’s such a cool little pokémon i think it’s so fun for her to have it on her team!! and the gyarados plot line is going to be so entertaining (basically she gets scammed into trading a freshly caught pokémon for a magikarp and shenanigans ensue) that i think the basicness is excusable

otoya constantly getting girls via his fairy type pokémon vs reader and tullia being like “ladies STAY AWAY” who wins 😭⁉️ and agreed breloom + yuki goes so hard…tbh i rlly like steelix and yuki too it works surprisingly well

no literally justice for nagi 😭 the way the government did NOT gaf abt him is crazy like they could’ve at least given him a water type (although tbf he’s meant to show how the pokémon training system takes advantage of people so it makes sense) honestly though i love his character in this au he goes through sm development and his slowburn w the reader will be legendary fr

YOU KNOWWWW chigiri’s rapidash is SPARKLING he def takes such meticulous care of all of his pokémon (same w reo) whereas nagi’s just like eh as long as they’re healthy 😄 KFNJSSB so like manshine trio will be chilling and in their downtime reo will be brushing his cinccino and chigiri will be polishing his rapidash’s hooves meanwhile nagi’s arcanine is rolling in a pile of mud somewhere having the time of its life

hiori and ice types just go so well together (even though he only has one on his team I think 😭) and agreed i can see him retiring from battling after his arc w reader and co and following his actual passion of helping endangered pokémon instead of listening to his parents (maybe karasu inspires him because he also stood up to his family [yayoi] and that gives hiori the courage to do the same)

gen six is where i left off!! i played gen seven (namely moon and a bit of ultra moon) but i didn’t like them that much so as far as i and this au are concerned the pokémon verse ended with xy/oras 🤩 omg wait aryu as a pokémon groomer slays…maybe he’s the one yuki takes his pokémon to before contests?? and perhaps the itoshi bros are mentioned in passing as gym leaders in another region…kaiser as noel noa’s apprentice who’s going to be a new e4 member like isagi (but a bitchier one who never knew barou and never directly interacts with reader) and same with bachira + kunigami (kaiser to replace noel noa, bachira to replace lavinho, kunigami to replace chris prince, and isagi to replace snuffy) there’s just so many different roles that characters can play!! the world building would be so fun

LMAOO honestly aiku trying to be the rizzler but getting cock blocked by big bros otoya and karasu is so funny to me 😭 also speaking of brock link ups since we know karasu and reader are like a sibling duo i’m imagining otoya and tullia to have that brock and croagunk dynamic where she just punches him whenever he flirts with girls because he’s so cringe it’s embarrassing 😰 speaking of tullia atm i’m think she’ll likely end up with either chigiri (since he’ll probably pull up quite frequently as a nagi companion so there’s ample time for development), isagi (since he’s a classic tullia pairing and all), or maybe even hiori?? like her and hiori really hit it off and after the main story is over instead of becoming a show/competition breeder like she planned she decides to go back to his nature preserve and help in breeding for species conservation or something 🤔 many many options fr

NO BECAUSE LISTEN THE TIK TOK AUDIOS ARE BURSTING WITH POTENTIAL FOR THE POKÉMON AU i’m getting soooo many ideas for the story now!! like the entire gyarados arc, the aegislash arc (this one goes crazy because it’s basically “reader and nagi somehow end up in a period drama for an entire arc” yet it makes perfect sense given the pokémon verse and the backstory), EVERYTHING with barou especially the final fight between the cousins (i’ve decided they’ll be cousins but as close as siblings!! so y/n’s mother is barou’s father’s sister and her houndoom is barou’s houndoom’s sister so it’s like three generations of brother/sister-esque bonds making up the story), the random evil team encounters…i’m sure you saw but i put requests on hold for a few reasons: so i can finish the ones i have, work on the oaeu, AND also start this story hopefully!! also i want to deny people from requesting for a bit so the hype is built for my 1k event whenever we reach that milestone FJDJSJSJ

LMAOOO the craziest thing is that’s not even scratching the surface unfortunately i have had many insane experiences with men i’m sure you’ll hear about more whenever they’re relevant to the convo 😭 and YESSS i love chatting w you hehe always a little rush of dopamine when i see the little “anonymous asked you a question” notification on my phone (when tumblr isn’t an OPP and actually gives the me the notifs) 🥹

[zeon-twilight]

Perpetual Exhaustion

It feels as if so many people I know have come under a blanket of exhaustion which brings out the worst in them. I can hardly blame anyone for not being their best selves in a world that is indeed demanding to the point of being overwhelming. I've found that I don't know what to do with that energy anymore. When I'm feeling overwhelmed I tend to transmute that energy into action. Often semi-related action, tangential if you will. If someone is stressed about the environment, I will try to clean it, if they are stressed about money I will try to make some, if someone is worried I might offer advice. Even this blog is an attempt for me to turn nervous mental energy into something else, something outside of me. But I'm not sure what to do when a person is filled with a misery they have no inclination of what to do with. When someone is filled with a frustration which is deeper than the one which they gave voice to. Often it seems it is the turbulence within which eventually is placed into something else as a means of externalizing the feeling. That addressing the externalized source of frustration is ineffective, because if one is struggling with a deeper frustration, the root is still there, and it will simply grow out another weed of frustration and another, each thing complained of also not REALLY what is going on.

Perhaps the scary thing is how many things "REALLY" going on are outside of our control, or even influence. Any given person may find themselves distressed about all manner of struggles both real an imagined. One may work themselves into a frenzy over a problem that another person could resolve within minutes stress free. There's a message in here somewhere about the beauty of the variety of skills which exist and how we should be working to aid each other with the skills we excel at, and working to get past our shortcomings, but it is often lost in the haze of "I'm too tired" The things we know we should do, because they are right, or at least in line with our moral code are often tested by this metric. I suppose morals aren't really morals if you compromise them when they are inconvenient to you, so in this too one can learn a great deal about themselves and others. It's not as if I'm not tired, I'm deeply exhausted myself. Worn out by the world, worn out by disappointments and guilt. Worn out by losing many of the things which were once restorative to me. Worn out by a persistent sense of "Oh god, is this it? Is this all I have to look forward to for the rest of my life?" I try to resist that line of thinking personally. I've found it really doesn't lead anywhere but to more misery, and that my energy is much better spent trying to at least address the superficial grievances of those around me, in the hopes that maybe with time the deeper ones will be visible. I can't help but wonder about a solution to this, as it seems if someone is determined to see the world as a difficult place and all the things which come up that aren't to plan as a problem, there can't be much in the way of joy for them. As I get older, it's harder to endure the joylessness of the world, and I miss the joy that used to be a part of many who I fear have lost sight of it. Perhaps even more I fear losing sight of joy myself, even as I have usually been able to rally and meet the struggles of my life head on, there's a greyness to my emotions which I have been struggling with for some time now. A sense that I am not as present as I once was, and I cannot deny it, but I do try and resist it. Suppose there's not much to be done but to try our best and hope that it gets us through another day, and that perhaps tomorrow will be brighter. In the meantime, I think it's very important to try and find the things which bring you some measure of joy in this world. There's plenty that must been endured, no avoiding it. But we must find that which makes it worth enduring, or spend a great deal of time and energy trying to recover through practices that do not serve us. I hope you find what makes you feel rested, Who/What/When/Where-Ever you are. ZT

[larebiscornue]

AYO??? Heavy season 4 spoilers discussion under the cut

Sooo that blogpost about eva's past mentioning her living as a kid with her mother, father and Cleophée, and then getting sent to train as a sadida bodyguard, with no indications of her and cleo not necessarily having a tough family life.. (and unrelated I think the dad? rode a dragodinde. Sorry I had no clue where to write this vital fact)

Are now effectively obsolete.

I wonder if the rest of blog stories (such as that about az having a lil adventure before even hatching, or getting the closest to a kind of a rough estimate of armand's age (afaik) as he was a teen when amalia was a young kid (also their mother's spirit watched over them thanks to the tree of life I think?. That was so sweet :'( ) are obsolete too.. I don't think they necessarily need to be.

I'm watching the toross episode, and while I am obviously sad the cra sisters had this sad background, part of me is kinda glad cause while happy, the little blog perfect family was a bit underwhelming when compared to.. everybody else's family quirks

It seems all guilde des murmurs members were family but not all were cras (or at least they were rare not bow using cras which would be neat) which does make sense worldbuilding-wise.

HOOO THE SADIDA KING BEING ONE OF THEIR MOST LOYAL CLIENTS THOUGH OGHHHH GASP. I thought he was fully "good" but this adds a new depth and moral greyness to the king, as many krosmoz esp royals do in the franchise which is an exciting addition! Now I'm not saying he's like. Secretly evil, but instead of an always good-presented king, it's heavily implied he hired assassins against his enemies. VERY frequently at that. We don't know if his enemies were truly evil but still this is quite a surprise and layer! IF AMALIA N ARMAND LEARN ABOUT THIS I WILL LOSE IT... Dunno if the queen was a part of this, she was more laissez-faire on royalty stuff. Not that means she was a BAD queen, as far as we know for now she was good and loved, but much as her daughter, she loved to sneak and go on adventures. Maybe the king stopped his merc-hiring thing time ago and repented about it, he changed his ways, but, yeah this adds more depth and a twist.

Did the king always plan having eva as a bodyguard for amalia since he might have guessed she had a great potential as per her kin does? I don't necessarily think so, again, not going on the EEEVIL KING REAL tirade. For now we have no proof. Eva seemed to regard the sheram sharm family well. I wanna think the reason why madagaskane chose the king wasn't fully out of his loyal client or king status, but because he supposed he could be caring.

Of course if you wanna go gritty you can imagine eva getting picked as a bodyguard was deliberate, that the slightly older, talented with the bow kid was a good helping hand for the king's youngest child. Armand probably had his own bodyguard(s). And this could help build loyalty to the princess but... Too cynical for me, really.

Wonder if, going by this though, cleo not getting picked was cause of her less standing talent compared to eva or her being more childish n clashing w amalia. Idk. That's my last addendum.

Also I'm sooo glad they explained why eva and cleo have always had this extraordinary bow talent even for a cra. Don't get me wrong I'm the biggest hater of "oh there was not any hard job only magical talent" situations, but, aside from talent not being equal amongst the sisters, I feel it's a question of hard work. We can see it imo in Evas training ethic with Flopin. She has always tried to teach him hardwork.

So, I believe Eva is quite talented, perhaps even quite talented for a regular guilde des murmurs relative's standards, but she for sure has and keeps quite working on her abilities too

[katyspersonal]

OP, I am very impressed with how keen your understanding of both the way Soulsborne stories work (especially the phrase "And not choosing to get what you want can be as bad as choosing opposite.") and of the way fandom is fucking shit up on regular basis. Dark Souls trilogy fandom is the most safe from this cancer, Bloodborne is quite deep into this trouble by now (with only fans of very messed up characters such as Alfred or Micolash doing the service to the community xd) and Elden Ring is ALL about this.

"This leads to something like Marika fans writing essays on the topic You Can In Fact Deserve Genocide"

This reminded me of a very annoying situation from a couple of months ago where my friend wrote very based post ( x ) about how fandom treats Hornsent as this evil race that is evil just to be evil thus painting Marika as a hero "cleansing" the world from this "filth". And what happened was EXACTLY what you've mentioned! The first reblogger jumped in to not only excuse genocide of Hornsent but also add excusing genocide of Fire Giants for the good measure, the popular artist jumped in to confirm all of that was based when they didn't even read the original post, and then they both continued to gloat in their blog about how ridiculous this "Marika hate" was.

Marika HATE, dude. How. Literally how this fandom always, always, ALWAYS keeps drawing the connection of 'pointing out bad shit character did = hating the character'? Before DLC, the similar problem happened with Mohg! Whoever painted him as sexual offender was viewed as just hater by his fans. Also before DLC, whoever pointed out pettiness of Malenia or Miquella's sinister traits (Bewitching Branch) was seen as just hater. It only got worse after the DLC too! These are just interpretations and analyses! ....And yet, at the same time, there ARE people who hate Marika, hate Miquella and Malenia, and hated sa!Mohg interpretation. And they hate not only the characters, but also their fans. As if these fans just subscribed to condoning any of that shit in real life.

I just think that this endless morality contest is so dumb. Like...

"Oh if you like Godrick/Rykard/Post-DLC Miquella / Seluvis then you’re moral pervert/ lover of Dark."

Like, where are the DOWNsides? xD /j

And seriously, what is the goddamn POINT of engaging with fiction, where any person and any dynamic can be examined within the safety of fantasy, if ALL you're gonna do with this is to just express how you would act in real world? There is a much, MUCH better place to apply opinions and morality as you would in real world. ....IT IS THE REAL WORLD! 🤦‍♂️ Go outside and form correct opinions, and only like good people. This IS what real world is FOR! Fictional world is for doing ANYTHING, and yet you choose to just re-simulate what you already have!!! How little imagination, curiousity, wonder and passion do you have? What is WRONG with you, people!

Really. Elden Ring fandom's creativity and imagination suffers very badly from the fact that when someone simps for a morally grey character or is just a huge fan, 90% chance that they will wash out all that moral greyness from them and make sure they're pure, innocent, and always in the right. Who cares if the story has to become so one-dimensional and pointless as 'race is evil just to be evil and exterminating them is net-positive for the world', right, Marika and Messmer fans? And when you can't distort the story this way, you can always just declare writers to be incompetent and ruining the character and insist on """pre-DLC portrayal""" as if it was an entirely different character, right, Miquella and Malenia fans?

All could have been way more fun, interesting, deep, developed, and above all, respectful to OTHER fans, had we as a fandom just abandoned the mentality of 'if you like a character that did something bad then YOU are bad, so nullify this bad thing at all cost if you want to prove you are NOT bad'.

I think we really should understand that engaging with fiction is NOT about translating and advertising ourselves as people! No, as PRODUCTS!! Purge that stupid corporative brainrot out of your system with Messmer's Flame!!! Engaging with fiction is about experiment, imagination, curiosity, creativity and extending emotions and wishes without any harm to real people! Well, we should ALSO understand that the more war crimes the character did the hotter they are because again, we ALREADY have real world to target liking the kind, nice people so what is the point of doing the SAME shit here fsdfhds But I digress

Ok about moral greyness in elden ring fandom

I feel like it’s mostly treated as either some kind of badass cosmetics for a GoodGuy (like “my blorbo is cool and good and kind but you know they kill people - bad people, so it’s not bad but it’s not also your Jesus guy which is normal bc who would give their second cheek”) or some kind of euphemism used by bad/problematic/pseudo intellectual people to erase morality

I’m bad problematic pseudo intellectual person so take my opinion with grain of salt, but I think it’s a great misunderstanding or what a morally grey character is in ER especially

It’s usually based on the that understanding of goodness that to be good you just need to do good things and don’t do bad things (which is of course extremely vague and not defined but anyways). It’s seems pretty straightforward and because of that brings a lot of confusion

It’s quite easy for a character to be GoodGood (even with murders but I digress), you can see it in many fix-it fanworks where often every trouble finds its own, well, fixing, and there’s always a way to set things right, maybe just with some sad deaths along the way, but characters often will find this correct way because in these universes there’s always at least one

(It’s not a rant on fanfiction I like it and I like fix-its very VERY much)

And when same logic is applied to the game itself, often arises treatment of characters as GoodGood, MisleadedGood and BadBad ones

But in the stories we see in Elden Ring context is usually such that when a character wants to get something, even something good, like for example make people live forever or cure their own sister, there’s sometimes no way of resolving their trouble without facing some kind of moral choice, even if you’re a literal half-god. You either get what you want with a price, or don’t get it… also with a price. Because fromsoftware stories are build on conflict, tragedy and irony

That’s what makes character grey, the fact there’s no third option or that you don’t have third option just because world is that way and you’re unlucky. And not choosing to get what you want can be as bad as choosing opposite. And that’s what usually makes situation complex and twisted and inherently grey

I don’t want to say that like every person in fandom should treat all the characters as mostly good ones without making some way less sympathetic than others. Making characters twisted and horrible is fun! I’m just tired of the way how people 1) don’t realise there’s often HUGE room for interpretation and make it problem of others 2) hate characters with such a passion as they were real humans who live in your neighbourhood on planet earth 2024 3) sanitise characters into strictly Good and Bad ones etc etc etc

My whole vent on Miquella’s hatebase is in fact divided into two parts, one being me thinking many people just lack understanding of the DLC/base game ideas and plot, but that’s ok we all have different opinions (I’m just the only one who is correct. LIVE WITH THAT.), and second being that vague ??rudeness?? and hatred which accompanies division on Morally Good and Morally Bad, because there’s this subtle idea like. Oh if you like Godrick/Rykard/Post-DLC Miquella / Seluvis then you’re moral pervert/ lover of Dark. Which is rarely true and really annoys me

I also have no trouble with GoodGood characters being GoodGood because, well. it’s comforting and cozy stuff. But often it turns into token of moral superiority, like look I love GoodGood guy because I’m good too and also not stupid. This is also annoying and I wish we had less of this in fandom.

It’s often also a lie to oneself, because even if we approach elden ring from I Can Simp Only Morally Pure ones (which is very boring and butchers the whole thing in my opinion) then we would probably be left with only Boc, Hewg and maybe Roderika. What do you mean you want to simp LITERAL murderers?? What do you mean you want to simp those assholes demigods who think that people are just dolls for their games, who turned the land into land of the dead because they just couldn’t stop war after war after war to decide who will make new order? What do you mean you want to simp the demigod who quit the war to do literally nothing to stop it???? CRINGE

Also GoodGood character headcanon making without self-awareness often results in very weird moral twists of its own, because in this logic character is allowed to make only GoodGood decisions, therefore all the stuff character made in canon MUST be good and morally justified. This leads to something like Marika fans writing essays on the topic You Can In Fact Deserve Genocide

Enough for today have a good day fellow dlc lovers 💪

Upd posted this on main by accident got jumpscared it’s so hard to copy past on mobile for some reason. No edgy on main I promised!!

[balillee]

my unpopular dsmp opinions, some of which genuinely should be popular

c!dream has crossed the moral event horizon and is irredeemable. once you cross that threshold, you're no longer a 'morally grey' character.

pre-recorded, heavily produced lore killed the lore. it was cool, sure, but you completely misunderstand the magic that the smp had when people watched it initially. the story is improv and that's how we like it. we can tell the cc's have lost interest in it, you can admit that to us, we'll understand, just stop lying to me.

c!dream's pov isn't necessary to understand his character or his motivations. if you've watched literally any c!primeboys stream he's basically spelled it out for you.

i don't understand how fans can dislike l'manberg or have claimed to be against it since the beginning. i honestly don't get it. what's so bad about wanting your own spot where you make your own rules and skirt accountability that has been used to technically oppress you before - and, before someone who never saw the earlier streams tries to disagree with this, the og l'manberg crew were imprisoned for shit that everyone else on the server was practically encouraged to do. also, what do you have against fun and happiness?

i think some of you forget that 'hybrids' aren't a thing, discounting c!ranboo. there's no piglin hybrids, c!techno is just a pig. there's no avian hybrids, c!phil is just a man with wings. there's no creeper hybrids, c!sam is just a creeper who's indecently exposed from the hips down. canonically there's no hybrids, and therefore no hybrid discrimination. people ran with that concept too much.

the loss and the fanon rewriting of the early lore up until pogtopia has ruined fandom perception of c!dream and the og l'manberg boys. c!tommy is more morally white than you think he is, and c!dream has always been a villain - he massacres and he kills and he destroys and he schemes and he always has broken his own rules. no wonder the boys wanted their own space after how they were treated.

i think ranboo oftentimes forgets his own lore. he brings stuff up that c!ranboo may have done, such as exploding the community house to frame c!tommy, holding onto Cat, and it goes absolutely nowhere. we've gotten all of these developments in his story but they have never been expanded on, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out his relationship to c!dream and what his other side is and honestly i see no hope that we'll be any closer to knowing even by the end of the year.

your characters don't all have to be morally grey for the story itself to be morally grey. this is fiction - some people can be nothing but evil and others can be nothing but good. being purely good or evil doesn't mean that you're one dimensional, either.

c!dream apologists have ruined c!dream for me. he's not a good person. how about you let me enjoy a villain for who he actually is, rather for than your percieved woobified ragdoll you pass off as c!dream.

the story was better when there was a central writer. it was brilliant back when wilbur wrote it to be that the environment drives the characters and the story, and it was really good in early s2 up until techno's execution day when it was more character driven. since then, the amount of autonomy people have over their characters without any central 'director', as it were, has been a detriment to the story overall. there needs to still be one overarching figure or director or writer.

not everyone is a main character. just because they have a pov, doesn't mean they're a main character. some characters have such little impact on the overall plot and describing everyone as a main character oversaturates the story and makes some characters seem more important than they are.

the egg lore had so much potential up until it didn't. all that built up threat that we were expecting and we still don't even know what the egg wants really other than just controlling people. does it hatch?

genuinely, if there's no major plot developments by the end of the year (and let's be honest, it's a very big possibility at this point), a few of the more prominent members of the server should do a podcast style stream talking about where the story would have gone, because at least then we would have gotten somewhat closer to a conclusion.

c!techno is a villain and an asshole and a bad person. he stops caring for people once their interests don't align with his or if they look at him funny. he makes meta-jokes about his own tyrannical and oppressive nature. stop taking that away from him. he's a bad person. cc!techno does a fabulous job portraying that in a comedic manner and the balancing of him being a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed morals and ideas with his comedically-portrayed stubbornness and lack of willingness to hear out opposing viewpoints is incredible. i want to like characters who are arseholes for the sake of being arseholes, and who refuse to take into account the hurt they've caused either out of self-righteousness or because they don't care, so let me. he's the anti-peacemaker, LET ME HIM ENJOY HIM FOR THAT!!!!

i think tommy and wilbur's way of doing lore is my favourite. relies heavily on improv, voice acting, sprite acting and facial expressions. really shows off the acting props and they pull off the emotional moments well for the insanity of the creative medium.

i'm not a fan of fan-music. i find songs about media i'm into difficult to listen to. coincidentally i'm also not a fan of shit like slam poetry or live music/musicals/pantomimes.

the death of l'manberg killed people's motivation to go on the server casually. i've talked about it more in depth before, but destroying what was a central, driving environment for the story killed momentum and motivation. imagine in an episode of she-ra, the princess alliance just nuke the freight zone and all of the members of the horde just have to deal with it. that would be shit.

until season 3 has some momentum, i'm counting the end of the smp as january 20th. that had a conclusion. season 3 has... whores, technoblade and tommyinnit. that's about it.

i wasn't a fan of the development of c!tubbo joining las nevadas. i preferred snowchester and the walled city conflict. give c!tubbo some backbone and some badassery. also tubbo where's the fucking nuke bro if you're shelving that plotline just tell us on like an alt stream what the plan was i beg

add like 2 or 3 new people to the server so that michael mcchill has someone to talk to and so that there's something always happening on the server. it gives the og's more motivation to return if things are happening in and out of canon and it'll help with momentum, and who knows? maybe they can write their own story/stories.

i really think that c!sam is an underrated character. he's multilayered, extremely interesting, and the dichotomy of his loyalty to his job and how far down the rabbithole that's taken him versus the genuine love he has for his friends that drives him to do what he does out of wanting to do right by them is brilliant. i don't talk about c!sam enough.

STOP HAVING FUCKING VILLAIN ARCS!!! I'M FUCKIN SICK OF IT!!!! i want to see more characters who see everyone else being absolute selfish, abhorrent cunts and go 'if nobody else is going to be a good person, i fucking will'. GIVE ME SOME MORAL WHITENESS!!! IT'S INTERESTING AND MORALLY GOOD CHARACTERS ARE FUN!!!

let tommyinnit build cobblestone towers. everyone bullied him too much for how ugly they were and the one he built outside of the prison looked genuinely really nice. it gives the boy something to do.

i'm a fan of the revive book and the canon lives system. don't ask me why, but i think it might just be the morbidity of it. it adds to c!dream's god complex persona, and i think the fragility of death itself is a really fun concept. not enough fan cc's have made connections with that and c!mumza, and it could make for cool fanfic.

ranboo your house is fucking ugly. it's an eyesore

c!niki, and to some extent now c!jack and c!fundy, are boring me and ruining my mood. i think c!jack is the closest to being an actually interesting sympathetic villain, mainly because nobody else seems to realise that c!niki is a villain. not a good one imo, but she's a villain. c!jack just has the problem of starting a new project over and over and over and over again and because of the slow in momentum for the primary cast, there hasn't been a lot of recent development for him.

not really a dream smp opinion, but if philza went full geordie accent, i would love it. i want him to, in canon, say shit like 'me n ye' instead of 'me and you' and use geordie dialect. i want him to be physically unintelligible because it's funny.

i don't really know what's up with c!foolish but i think he's a dumbass. he had a while to think about c!q's proposal and then changed his mind about joining the guy to admitted to letting him die just because. moron

i wish there was more c!eret lore. i wish he was an actual king with an actual kingdom and actual subjects and royal advisors. c!eret is far too fucking cool to be the king of nothing and nobody. fatten up the kingdom and the castle with people who work with c!eret, and don't just make it tyrannical and dictator-y to prove the point of the server's 'anarchists'. make it a healthy working environment, please - if you want moral greyness, have 'anarchists' who claim to care about the welfare of the server oppose a kingdom of happy people under a fair and just ruler because their ideologies clash.

the server needs more characters who oppose anarchy in more peaceful ways, or passively wish for systems to be a part of. i think a chaos vs order conflict ending only in mutual understanding where everyone understands that they should just leave each other alone would slot nicely into the story that's been created so far.

you need to have watched all of the previous arcs to understand the story. i've seen people argue that they don't need to know about earlier lore to understand the prison, but that's the equivalent of only watching the final season of pretty little liars and expecting to understand the context of what's going on.

some characters aren't that morally grey. some characters, take c!tommy for example, are definitely on the whiter side for the morality scale, he's just an asshole. he's abrasive and rude and a dickhead but he also doesn't agree with terrorism, he's patriotic, he strives for a better world, he's apologetic, but he's also a fucking BITCH.

you can add onto this if you want, but not if you're a c!dream apologist. nobody likes your opinions

[nexyra]

Okay so This is just a way to let out some frustration so I can put it out there and stop mulling on it bc I'm bad at this sort of stuff - Feel free to ignore it

I'm putting this under Read More; if your fav past-time is to call anyone who likes Ironwood's character or was disappointed by his V8 turn to villainy a stupid bootlicker who "should have seen the signs he was always a tyrant !!" please don't interact with this post. You're ultimately free to think what you want but honestly I see enough of that in the main tag when left alone, I don't need it on my blog it doesn't make me feel good.

Anyone else... well you can read if you're interested but you don't have to either. Feel free to respectfully disagree though, I'm not that bullheaded that I can't partake in a friendly argument =) I'll just be listing some things about Ironwood's reading by the FNDM who get old or draining as someone who doesn't like the V8-characterization they went with

Can people please stop just... copy/pasting real world issues on a world/characters that have nothing to do with them or a completely different context ?

Like,, I genuinely try to educate myself on real-world issues. I know I'm rather privileged so I try to listen and hear out people who speak out about the issues they live through day by day. I know why the "ACAB" moniker exists. I understand the problem that lies within the american police system (and likely other countries as well). I see why the army, on our blue planet, is criticized & its many failings. Etc, the list can go on...

But I'm sorry to say, Remnant isn't OUR Earth. Their Army's primary job is to fight actual evil soulless monsters, not people. The Ace Opps or Huntsmen are not an organization directly inherited from slave-hunting groups. James Ironwood isn't the US army general bombing Middle East. Clover Ebi isn't the racist cop you want in prison. So WHY are they treated as such by so many people ? Stories are not a 1-1 where you can take everything you know and just apply it to a completely different world.

Has Atlas been presented as a country that suffers from racism & classism ? Certainly. Has it be shown this way ? That's already more debatable since the only racist arguments we got were in Mantle (which is the city we're supposed to be rooting for so that's a weird choice but eh it's whatever). Are the characters, as persons, shown to evoke these issues in a way that deserve our scorn ? Not really.

Is Ironwood depicted as particularly racist for example ? I wouldn't say so seeing as one (or more considering Tortuga) of his Ace-Opps are Faunus & it seems perfectly accepted; and he hates Jacques Schnee's guts. So why does he get to shoulder all of our real-world issues as if he was responsible for them, in a context where (pre V8) his army had most likely never killed anything else than Grimm and was shown to elicit very positive reactions from most of the population (V3) ? (In direct contrast to the polarization that the US army might evoke for example.)

You can totally hate Ironwood because of the feelings he evoke, the trope he stems from or the parallels to be made. That doesn't mean however, that he IS truly guilty of every one of OUR world issues (pre-V8)

Just because classism is prevalent in Atlas society does not make Ironwood the figurehead & leader of this issue.

Is classism an issue in Atlas ? Yes. That's been made clear because of Mantle's state as well as Jacques Schnee entire existence & even Cinder's backstory. Does that mean every single one of Ironwood's decisions reeks of classism ? NO

Trust me, as someone who found Ironwood's V8 characterization not... well-executed & too much; there's nothing more annoying than being assaulted by posts about his fall going "it was so obvious !! look at -" only for them to then list reasons in a really biased way or even headcannons based on (again) irl problems. An exemple...

Reasons his turn was good that I see thrown around : "Ironwood left Mantle behind because he only wanted to save the rich. He's a selfish coward & an asshole !"

What we were actually given : "Ironwood suffers from PTSD, and faced with Salem's imminent arrival, he tried to save what he was CERTAIN to be able to protect aka the flying city and all the people on it including Mantle evacuees. There is absolutely no text backing the idea that he wanted to leave with Atlas because it's rich. We could even suppose that he would have left with the 'poor' Mantle if it was the flying city and rich people were hanging safely on the ground. There is indeed an issue with Atlas & Mantle disparity, but Ironwood isn't directly responsible for it."

Does that make his decision to leave Mantle behind a morally right one ? That's of course NOT what I'm saying. The situation is still very ambiguous. But the classism theme has NO place here.

"Ironwood leads Atlas & Mantle. As such, he inherently holds responsability for the issues plaguing it." THIS is an acceptable reading according to me. I would probably argue that even if Ironwood's the only Atlas leader we're shown; he actually only oversees the military & academy (where we haven't ever seen classism issues), so putting Atlas' classism issues on him still doesn't sound fair to me. However the idea & argument is sound.

Acknowledging only how his actions look/the tyrannical surface reading and not the reasonnable justifications or glimpses we were given (pre-V7) of Ironwood being more than his trope

I'll probably stop after this one, but the last thing that is both tiring & annoying after too much of it; is seeing people boil down all of Ironwood's character to the most basic summary, inherently written to paint him in a bad line. And then saying that everything led up to his downfall by using these watered-down versions of the show's events to justify it. Or worse (imo), saying that people who are not satisfied with his V8 characterization that THEY don't understand how good a character he is and don't really appreciate him.... All the while only ever highlighting his characters flaws. Please stop this.

"Ironwood brought an army to the peace Olympics why are you surprised he turned out this way ?" ==> Ironwood brought an army to a country where the civilians visibly have no issue with said-army, to protect a peaceful event that he KNOWS to be targeted by foes. It's definitely overzealous & his conviction that threats should be dealt with by blunt force IS one of his flaws; but pretending that he did it for fun or because he's a tyran is just as misplaced.

"Ironwood said he'd shoot Qrow if he were one of his men why are you surprised he shot Oscar ?" ==> Do I really need to flip through every joke in this show and consider it as absolute truth & proof that the character would enact these words if given the occasion; even when we're shown with certainty that they actually don't mean it ? (IW hugging Qrow to welcome him, refusing to attack Qrow when he's certain Qrow IS attacking him...)

"Ironwood has his military all over Mantle, there's a curfew, all of this is tyrannical why are you surprised he's also down for genocide" ==> Damn, it sure is criminal to have Mantle defended from the litteral monsters roaming inside & out, and to make sure with a curfew that the people are not at risk during the night. I wonder if any recent events could make us reconsider our stance on how evil a enforced curfew is. Mhmmm maybe a pandemic ? Nah I must be imagining things. For real though, at what point did Tyrian's framing/lies (IW has his soldiers all over Mantle because of politics/he's a tyran who refuses opposition) became the truth of the situation for the FDNM too ? Again Mantle's situations SUCK, and that's a problem in itself. Making up problematic reasoning for the situation is dishonest though.

To end this, I'll just make clear. I do not condone any of Ironwood's actions post-V7. I don't think he had to be the big hero of the Atlas arc. Nor that he was without faults. I merely think that he'd have been a better antagonist than villain. And that it'd have been nice to keep the ambiguity/morally greyness that surrounds him; the knowledge that he's TRYING hard to do what's best for everyone; that he has good intentions. That he cares about individuals too to a lesser degree, and that he had people who cared about him as a person.

For short... Ironwood as an antagonist with understandable issues, flaws & failures; making questionable choices but with good intentions ? Hell yeah. Ironwood as a villain, more irredeemable than Hazel, willing to kill people for NO reason or even wipe out a city ? I'm not convinced.

[mercutiotakethewheel]

Halp! I read Crooked Kingdom and Spinning Silver in the same week. Is there any point in reading any other book ever again?!?!?!?!?!?!!!?!!! (Genuinely open to recommendations.) I am bereft at having finished them, and wondering how soon is too soon to reread Spinning Silver...

lmao god that’s a mood. I mean those are very much my two of my favorites, but of course I have recommendations.

Spinning Silver has a “mirror” novel called Uprooted that explores Naomi Novik’s polish roots and fairytale; it’s a twist on the classic girl gets sacrificed to be locked in a tower by a “dragon” but with wizards and a sick wood.

As for the grishaverse, I don’t know if you’ve already read the grisha trilogy or the Nikolai duology, but I certainly recommend King of Scars at the very least. Nina’s in it and Nikolai and Zoya are two of the best grisha trilogy characters (along with Genya, Tolya, and Tamar who are all also here). I haven’t about to read Rule of Wolves but I haven’t yet. Now the grisha trilogy is disappointing in general, but especially in comparison to Crooked Kingdom, Bardugo’s best novel, in my opinion. However, it’s also not quite as bad as everyone says. The worldbuilding established here is pretty cool, the politics in seige and storm are really fun, and there are really cool characters in it, even if the main protagonist… well. Alina’s not actually a boring or awful of a protagonist, or at least she has the opportunity not to be. She’s incredibly selfish to the point of moral ambiguity, and she’s terribly funny and combative. However, and this is my main issue with these books, she is very much punished by the narrative anytime she seeks agency or power or really does anything interesting, which leaves us with our magical girl chosen one just sort of passively shoved around the board.

Bardugo also wrote Ninth house, which I highly recommend. It’s an adult novel, so the violence -and there is a lot of it- tends to be described and gory and there’s a lot of talk about drug abuse so keep that in mind (plus the main character being abused and her best friend being killed/raped/drugged) so keep that in mind. The main protagonist is really interesting, and features Bardugo’s usual moral greyness. She’s angry, she can see ghosts, she’s traumatised, she has a terrible secret, and she does all of her fighting for abused women. The book has a lot of commentary on classism and elitism, as one should expect from a book about an impoverished women attending an ivy league with dangerous, poorly run, magical societies in it. The worldbuilding is a treat, but expect a lot of ghosts and a lot of rituals.

If you’re looking for more fantasy novels with fairytale vibes/retellings and strong female characters, that’s one of my favorite genres, so I have a few. I’m terribly fond of A Creature of Moonlight, which features a moving wood, a dragon’s daughter, royal court politics, and an uberindependent protagonist. The Cruel Prince is the only faerie book that counts along with the rest of Holly Black’s works, and if you’re looking for more enemies to lovers, you are in luck. The main reasons to read this book, though, is the political intrigue and the murder happy main character. The Once and Future Witches is a take on the suffragette period and witch fairytales. It’s not necessarily my favourite nor do I think it has the makings to be anyone’s favorite, really, but I do recommend it if only for the fairytale retellings and historical elements. Howl’s Moving Castle is an absolute delight, with lots of fun, bickering, main characters, and a very fairytale take on the magic system. I need to read Deathless so bad, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I hear only great things about the retelling of the Russian fairytale, though, so I’ll go ahead and recommend it.

Revenge stories are also a favourite of mine, so if you want more of those, my main recommendations are The Count of Monte Cristo and Vicious. The Count of Monte Cristo features our antihero being wrongfully imprisoned due to the machinations of three people. After escaping and getting rich beyond his wildest imagination, Edmound seeks to utterly ruin all three of them, destroying a lot of innocent lives in the process, rethinking the ethics of his revenge plan a lot, and a lot of claiming he’s sold his soul to become Providence. The main drawback is that the novel deals handedly in Orientalism( though I have a lot to say about why discussion of Orientalism is important to understanding Edmound’s character and why he is percieved the way he is by the other characters) and that it features an enslaved woman falling in love with her captor, who is also our protagonist. So yeah, grain of salt. It was written in 1844. Vicious tells us the backstory and the mainstory side by side throughout the novel, featuring two ex-best friends who experimented with killing themselves in order to gain superhero powers. When one of them lands the other one in prison and devotes his time to killing other ExtraOrdinaries, what our superheroes/more-like-supervillains-usually are called, because he likes to play god, our protagonist, the imprisoned friend, escapes for a revenge quest. Along the way he forms an incredibly clunky, adorable found family. I love this novel so much.

If you’re looking for more historical fantasy, I have some recommendations here as well. Diviners is an occult murder mystery set in the 1920s, that really really spends time putting you in the 1920s. It features a fun ensemble cast that grows with each installation, though the main main character of the first book does take a while to grow on you and there’s a boring ass love triangle. Read it for the 1920s and the ensemble cast that really takes off in the second book. The Poppy War is based on the Second Sino-Japanese War with a very enthralling magic system, and a main character who takes moral greyness to whole new heights. It has a laundry list of trigger warnings you need to read before you pick up the book, but the two most important things to understand before getting into it is that there’s a section based on the Rape of Nanjing, which does not pull its punches and the first book ends with our protagonist committing magical genocide on an entire country. In general, this book absolutely refuses to pull its punches and that’s my number one reason for recommending it. London Calling is an exploration of fatherhood with themes on family and catholicism that features time traveling to the London blitz. It’s barely fantasy, and it’s again not a favorite nor will it become yours, but it’s very moving.

Also, this is more of a general recommendation, but I highly recommend Gideon the Ninth. “Necromancer Lesbians explore a haunted gothic castle in space.” What more do you need to hear? Our main character is a snarky butch swordswoman in the first book and the second book is her goth depressed over-achiever enemy turned sort of girlfriend turned mind pal. The fun villain behavior is off the chart, the worldbuilding is immaculate (there’s an in-universe essay in the back that finishes with someone’s snarky graffiti), and it’s funny as hell. The book is about necromancers so the gory descriptions of dead bodies is very much not for the faint of heart. Keep that in mind.

[takamakisu]

MAN I really wish that P5 delved more into the moral greyness of what Joker and friends are doing and that the plot didn't push them so hard as being in the right. Everybody who's against them is either scum (Palace Rulers with the exception of Futaba and Takuto), written as an antagonist and you're nudged to not like them due to their attitude (Akechi) or so extreme that their viewpoint literally just doesn't make any sense (Kasumi).

Morally speaking, Akechi is right. Changing hearts is arguably just as bad as killing targets, perhaps even worse because it's literally brainwashing. The cognition is essentially rewritten. So when Ann tells him that they're not murders, and he replies "so what?!" he's actually got a valid point. But because he's super fake and saccharine during the story, the player is inclined to be annoyed with him because the characters are too. It's like he's right, but he's kinda uppity about it and nobody wants to listen to that. And that's honestly a disservice to both sides. Akechi kills because of his ultimate goal to exact justice to Shido, the PT change hearts to protect victims of corruption. Both act on their own moral compass and their actions bleed together into shades of grey rather than black and white. Which is worse; killing for the sake of revenge, or forcibly altering cognition in the name of justice? It's not really an easy answer.

I think it would've been much better if the PT acknowledged the darker side of what they do. Like "Yeah, what we're doing is questionable. It's against the law, and it is not morally right. But we are doing what must be done in order to exact what WE believe is justice. We are doing what the law cannot, and will not do, to keep people safe. And we don't need your approval." That would've been so much better than 'well they're the good guys so everybody against them is just wrong and you shouldn't like them' or the lame defense "We're not killers." I mean yeah you're not killers but..that doesn't mean what you're doing is necessarily right. Acknowledging Akechi's criticisms would make a better story because by acknowledging ALL sides and setting up validity of all sides we can then sympathize with the protagonists because we WANT to and understand all angles, not because we are being PUSHED to agree. See the difference there?

I wish that they questioned themselves more too. Like after the Okumura arc maybe more people other than Morgana leave for a while because they're shaken up about whether what they're doing is really right and if they're in it for the right reasons. Hell, maybe some of them don't come back at all.

Kasumi is basically on the other side of the fence. Her side is "I think the PT are doing a good thing, but I don't like them because the only one who can change your situation is yourself" (and iirc when she and joker and akechi are at that crepe place she also brings up her concerns on the public being too codependent). And a better way to go about this might've been like.. she just disapproves of the methods full stop instead of feeling like people have 100% agency (because surprise surprise, they don't!) Imagine she and Joker are friends but interpersonal tension occurs when she finds out his vigilante life and his steadfastness to it. She cares about him but she does not approve of what he does and he doesn't care that she doesn't approve: because he's doing this based on what HE thinks is right.

Hell give me a Joker who goes all the way and DOES kill some of his targets, blurring the line between him and Akechi even further; with the argument that he is killing to protect the innocent. Maybe he felt they didn't deserve to live, who knows the reasons.

Just...actually grey plot P5.