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applestorms · 1 year ago

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morality in the world of good omens

so i wrote another (admittedly very messy) essay on good omens not long ago right after watching season 2 but after finishing that, rewatching all of both seasons multiple times, and reading through the book, i have a couple more distinct ideas to get out...somewhere...if only for my own sanity. this is me throwing my thoughts into the internet before i pop, if you will. just 3 sections, below the cut.

1. environment, characters, & transformative fandom creations

to start this post off a bit more broadly, i've been thinking a lot recently about transformative fandom and the reasons why we write fanfiction/create semi-original works in the first place, as well as why certain aspects of fandom (writing, art, analysis, etc.) will be more appealing to me for certain shows/series than others. correct me if you have a totally different view of this, but in my experience i've found that i tend to naturally gravitate towards different parts of fandom depending on what the original medium of the story was- podcasts tend to lead to some of the most interesting art trends, for example, since there's more room for interpretation and character design tends to be more of an ongoing community project than something set in stone like for a tv show with live human actors.

in my own observation, i've noticed that a lot of the really big & excitable fandoms, the ones that generate tons & tons of fanworks more naturally (a.k.a. just because of the story itself & not other factors like a pre-existing franchise or hype about new great gay representation, etc.) tend to surround stories that fall into a kind of "sweet spot" that makes the creation of fanworks really appealing. if you've ever wondered why there are so many ravenous artists bending over backwards to draw gorgeous fanart for stuff like homestuck or south park or even minecraft youtubers, it's likely because those stories all fall into a sweet spot for drawing, with character designs that are recognizable at a glance and yet still simple enough that there is plenty of room for personal creative touches. (think also, if you're familiar with such kinds of homestuck terms: hyperflexible mythologies, A4:1524, and/or this archive link cause the official thing is down now for some reason)

the conclusion i've come to is thus that even something as basic as the original medium of a story can dictate a lot about what kinds of fan activities are more common or popular within said story's fandom.

so, back to good omens- for me, this all relates back because of a question i've been messing with in my head recently, about why i've been less interested in fanfiction for good omens than i have been for the last few fandoms i've been, almost all of which have basically broken my ao3 bookmarks.

this question has been fucking with me for a while now, largely because i'm not entirely sure what's motivating it. a lot of times i can figure out pretty easily why i might personally not be interested in some parts of fandom, but that's not really the case here. from what i've seen this fandom seems to be pretty mixed in terms of age, & the writing that i have read is certainly no worse than i've seen elsewhere, perhaps even better in some places- and yet, i can't seem to get entirely into it, even getting frustrated as i can't find something to my tastes for an ao3 bedtime story as i've grown so accustomed. what caught me off guard is that this was an issue that i ran into while watching season 1 as well, back when the series was still quite popular but not blowing up like it is right now.

a lot of this may seem like (and likely is, at least in part) basic overthinking, but i mentioned it all here because the answer i eventually came to is reminiscent of my previous reflections above on the nature of fandom & how/why fanworks are created.

a couple paragraphs above, i used the example of art as an example of how fandoms that generate a lot of original artwork will often do the most when the original story falls into a sweet spot of character design, but notably i think that this sentiment applies to a lot more than just art. if you've ever seen the copious amounts of kpop & hockey rpf fanfiction that lives on ao3, it should be clear that this applies to writing too.

i wrote this essay a while back responding to an observation about the lack of a more extensive symbolic language in fanfiction & i've toyed around with the idea more since, particularly in considering the question of why a lot of what we see as the staples of fanfiction exist in the first place. in that post, my response largely revolved around an argument of why we create fanfiction- namely, that fanfiction is created as in tandem with deeper analysis of the original story/series, as a way of trying to practically apply character analysis to a new context.

the key part of that last sentence to me is how a lot of this revolves around character analysis (and shipping, but really it's the characters that motivate the shipping in most cases so. same difference).

i tend to instinctively separate fanfiction into two separate categories: fanfiction that is based out of the original world/canon of the story (including but not limited to fix-its, deeper analysis fics that take a scene & extrapolate from it, continuations, etc.) and fanfiction that takes the characters from the original story & plops them in an alternate universe/AU. while i separate these out as two distinct categories of fanfiction, i should also clarify that i don't think these two groups are necessarily equal in terms of number of fics- rather, the vast majority of fanfiction tends to be AUs, keeping the original characters & changing any & all aspects of the world around them. again, this may vary depending on the story & Vibe of the fandom at the time, stories like game of thrones or harry potter or homestuck might have a lot more in the canon category by nature of any major dissatisfactions the fandom has with how the original story was told, but in most cases AUs are more popular. this was a lot of the basis behind my argument that fanfiction is created as character analysis in fact, since the characters are the most important part that carries over from original story to fanwork, as well as can end up being one of the most debated/scorned parts when it comes to fandom drift (i.e. "that's out of character"/"he wouldn't do that"/and all other such arguments about fanon vs. canon characterization).

basically, my conclusion in this case was that i was a lot less interested in gomens fic largely because i have a really hard time separating the characters from the world in the case of this particular story. aziraphale & crowley being an angel & a demon and dealing with all of the bullshit of their world when it comes to heaven & hell are such integral parts of their characters in my mind that i have a much harder time getting behind AU fanfiction that plops them in a totally different context. it's just a much harder sell for keeping the characters in character for me. (i also tend to not like s2 fix-its just cause, idk they're just not my style, which is where a lot of the recent blast of energy has led us.) to clarify, this is not a judgement, just a matter of personal preference and a reflection of why, even if a lot of fandoms will look the same from the outside/involve the same things like art, fic, etc., an individual's mileage can vary wildly when it comes to how they interact with different things online.

*additional note, also for clarification: i do want to acknowledge that a lot of this depends on pure popularity as well, popular fandoms will often end up with basically everything in terms of fanworks just by nature of how many people are interacting with & thinking deeply about the story. my point here is more along the lines of the fact that even within the more well-populated fandoms, certain types of fanwork will often Stick Out more to me than others, or even be visibly much more common than in other fandoms, due largely to the original medium/structure of how the story.

so, speaking of aziraphale & crowley in more depth now- why does the world of good omens feel like such an integral part of their personalities when it comes to characterization? up next, let's talk about morality within the context of good omens' perhaps surprisingly secular take on heaven & hell.

2. the amorality of heaven & hell (ft. the crowley quote apples you know the one)

(warning in advance that this section may be a bit limited since i'm not going to get super far (or very far at all, really) into the whole religious-analysis aspect of good omens.)

i've been binge-reading the original pterry & gaiman book for good omens over the last few days and it's been very fun seeing all the slight changes between the tv show & the original. you can really see the hand of the original creators in how the tv show was translated, even just by looking at which parts made it and which parts were deemed worth cutting out. i suppose having one of the original creators right there helping build everything really helps make a book -> show translation work, since the ASOUE tv series was also pretty well received- something about knowing what's the core of the series & truly important to keep in, and having more time to tell the story itself?

anyways, i have a short list of notes that i've been taking as i read, conversations that stand out to me or footnotes that particularly amused me, but i keep coming back to one line that stood out to me quite early on. in context, this line comes from crowley during the conversation where he is first attempting to fully convince aziraphale about stopping armageddon, specifically when they're talking about exerting equal forces on warlock to make him normal:

"You're saying the child isn't evil of itself?" [Aziraphale] said slowly. "Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped," said Crowley. He shrugged. "Anyway, why're we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that."

(pg. 67)

"They're just names for sides." if i had to pick one line to sum up the view on religious morality of this series, this would likely be it.

on the one hand, i tend to interpret a lot gomens' take on heaven & hell within the context of its political stance, something that is particularly obvious through a line from gabriel in s2e2 where he tries to clarify to aziraphale that heaven isn't trying to hurt job directly, but instead is just not stopping hell from doing horrible things to him. while there may be some additional nuance to add to this take within the context of british politics that i don't really know well enough to add about, i'm inclined to see this from the side of my own familiar american politics, which might hold some weight considering how long mr. gaiman's lived around here. point is, my current interpretation of that line is that it helps in more clearly establishing the analogy of heaven & hell as the story moves forward into newer seasons and thus more contemporary politics, equating heaven with mainstream liberal politics & politicians and hell with conservatives.

this stance seems to be emphasized even more in the tv show than the book which makes sense considering its been coming out more recently, and especially in season 2 which is still quite caught up in a lot of quarantine-based reflection. (the tv show puts a lot more emphasis on heaven & hell in general, actually, perhaps initially a byproduct of actually being able to see those environments in their entirety and all the angels & demons that populate them- but we'll get to that.)

the book takes a slightly different stance that, fittingly, seems more reflective of the time it came out. in particular, i was struck a lot more when reading the book by adam's rise (fall?) to power, and how much of it was motivated by a burgeoning nervousness/pessimism about climate change and the anxieties of younger generations that comes with inheriting an earth that feels so fucked up. honestly if anything it's only gotten more relevant in that respect, what with the current vibe on the internet & the hopelessness of the doomer gen z gang, but it also has a distinctly different flavor to me from the tv show, which i think is largely because it's less connected to Formal politics since again we see a whole lot less of heaven & hell as such distinct, bureaucratic entities.

instead, there is a very distinctly amoral aspect to heaven & hell that we get through lines like the one above and especially from characters like crowley. this is why i argue that good omens, despite having so many religious elements, is such a deeply secular take, especially when it comes to its ethics & morality- Good and Evil, notably with the capital letters in this case, has very little to do with actual actions and much more to do with the name that you stamp on top of said actions. heaven & hell and the angels & demons that we see directing and watching and generally fucking with aziraphale & crowley throughout the story are distinctly separate from humanity, and as we see even more as the story progresses, distinctly unaware about what it even means to be a human, in both a deeper philosophical & very basic and literal sense. Good and Evil is simply another name for the sides- and thus the true ethics is something separate, and based in a deeply human experience.

in my opinion this is also why aziraphale & crowley, lovers of humanity and also to some degree spokespersons of it from how much they've "gone native," tend to be so deeply at odds with both heaven & hell and always end up agreeing with each other over their own supposed sides. what makes aziraphale & crowley so distinctly different is that they ascribe to the same ethics & morality that humanity does, or at the very least are trying to figure out ethics & morality & How to Be a Good Person in the same horribly messy way that humans do, separating them from the black & white "this side Good & this side Bad," logic that the rest of heaven & hell instinctively ascribe to.

there's a lot of nuance here, which is also why i think there is such an emphasis on moral ambiguity (and love, but we'll get to that) throughout season 2. the story of job, grave robbing, & questionable attempts at matchmaking- aziraphale is working through a lot of Shit right now when it comes to trying to figure out what the Good thing actually fucking is, and i think it's key that a lot of that is motivated by crowley himself. crowley might'e been cast out of heaven for asking too many questions, but aziraphale is there & listening to them & giving them the serious thought they deserve, and that can't be overlooked.

sidenote: i couldn't figure out a place to shove this in, but i also wanna point out that a lot of this is tied to the idea of growing over time too. on the same page as the quote transcribed above is another line from crowley leading up to aziraphale's question that puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that warlock is going to be a product of nurture, not nature. again, this is an argument against basic black & white assigned-at-birth morality for the ability of humans to grow & change over time and be influenced by the people around them.

it's notable that despite adam's supposed origin as a Son of Satan, what really gets him to stop the apocalypse in the end is the fact that he doesn't really give a shit about all this big plans but instead just wants to hang around his friends. there's a lot of emphasis in the book placed on how beautiful & nice tadfield is as a place for a young kid to grow up, how well loved & fiercely protected it as as something beloved to adam. while he might be overwhelmed when faced with the full picture of how horrible the world can be, ultimately what he cares about is loving & taking care of the people & places that he grew up learning were precious, and the only way to do that is to keep growing & changing yourself within that world and trying to help it also grow into something better, not throw it all away just for the slightest chance that you could restart. a message worth taking the time to think about, at the absolute very least.

3. finding morality w/in humanity: crowley & aziraphale and speculation for s3

i have complicated feelings about both aziraphale & crowley throughout a lot of the show and especially in season 2. i think a lot of people, myself included, are inclined to see crowley as the voice of reason in this season, and for good reason- as i mentioned before, a lot of aziraphale's deeper questioning of the status quo and goodness (Goodness) as a whole is motivated by questions from crowley.

i kiiind of mentioned this in my previous essay, but to state it more clearly, my take on crowley is that he's arriving at the right answer for the wrong reasons, and, conversely, aziraphale is arriving at the wrong answer for... kind of also the wrong reasons but also slightly for the right reasons. let me explain.

crowley is clearly much more aware of the flaws in both heaven & hell than aziraphale is, which seems to be the basis behind a lot of his motivation in asking aziraphale so many questions in the first place. he's also, as maggie & nina point out in s2e6, deeply lonely, often running away or getting ready to fight literally anyone that isn't aziraphale (or humans, but that's a little more complicated). from his reaction to beelz & gabriel getting together, i think it's pretty clear that he still hasn't entirely given up on the whole alpha centauri idea, and it makes sense- as i said in that last essay, crowley basically won the argument at the end of the previous season when it comes to aziraphale & crowley, "making [their] own side," so he doesn't have much reason to face any of his personal fears until maggie & nina basically point out that they exist directly to his face. once they do point it out, however, he's very motivated to act & does so almost immediately, even after hearing what aziraphale has to tell him and being pretty thoroughly devastated by it.

my point here is that crowley is correct in seeing the toxicity of both heaven & hell, he's just flawed and largely motivated by fear (up for debate if that's all it is, but i certainly think it's a big part of it) in his desire to run away from it all. it's not quite armageddon, again he's going more flight > fight here, but he's still ultimately giving up and that's not a great conclusion.

on the other hand, as some others on this site have pointed out, aziraphale is certainly showing a lot of strength in his willingness to keep fighting & try to change things for the better, but it's not hard to see how that belief has been twisted. one of aziraphale's biggest flaw in motivation at this point imo is that he doesn't just believe in goodness but Goodness, the kind that's tied to heaven always being right & all actions being morally Good so long as they're done under the name of heaven, and that clearly also isn't great.

thus what i think the both of these two really need ultimately is that deeper connection to humanity, and the ethics born from humans interacting with humans. we can already see how strong these two are when they collaborate, even when they're doing their absolute best to be as subtle as possible, but what i think they need is to once again be grounded by humanity, not to get so caught up in the bullshittery of heaven & hell and Good & Evil, but once again find a goodness defined by the world that they mutually love so much and stick with it.

i keep tossing a question around in my head about whether or not aziraphale & crowley are going to end up human by the end of this series. it feels natural that they would, they're already so at home and in love with earth & around humanity, but i'm also not entirely sure if that would be a happy ending for them considering how long they've watched & loved the world as it's changed. perhaps taking this post into account is another push towards humanity as a happy ending, not running away to a cottage to get away from the world (i just can't see running away to a cottage to be together as as happy ending, sorry- it might work for beelz & gabriel but not for aziraphale & crowley), but choosing to settle down within that world that is so dear.

#'just three sections' LAFFS. YEAH #astronaut rambles #good omens #gomens #no but i like this one a lot better than the last attempt at a gomens essay #this one feels a lot cleaner. more focused?#got a bit sappy at the end but i don't mind humanity is always worth loving #also off topic but i read this really interesting paper at work the other day #about pratchett’s writing in discworld & zizek & religion #forget what it’s called now but it was an interesting take on how fiction/fantasy can allow for deeper insights/reflection of reality #got some discworld books today so looking forward to reading those once i slurp up the last hundred or so pages of good omens #also thanks to my dad for having some interesting commentary on the job interpretation in s2e2 today #i all but literally slept through sunday school so i think a lot of the more noteworthy religion takes in this show go over my head =3=‘’#man i am so very much looking forward to how season 3 continues this story #i feel like a lot of the big conclusions there are really gonna be important for the direction of the story’s main message #season 2 is just. such a transition season it’s hard to get super distinct conclusions sometimes #like it’s still going somewhere there’s shit developing #it’s not like sherlock where it just teases deeper meaning forever but gives you nothing #but. it’s just so obviously Not Over Yet and I Need More #anyways much love i need to go to bed now arghfjdkd lots of shit to do in the future but all i wanna do is keep writing gomens essays. sigh #brainrot central #oh yay my phone’s at 69% now ☺️ wheeee #good omens meta

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archduchessofnowhere · 2 years ago

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Why do you hate Versailles so much? I haven't seen it, but from the point-of-view of someone who knows fuck all about the plot, it looks fine - at the very least, nothing to inspire the kind of violent hatred I have for Maria Theresia. I even considered watching it at one point, but there was always something better on TV or Netflix, so I never got to it. So I guess I just want to be forewarned before possibly throwing myself into it?

Speaking about bad period drama - have you seen that Maria Theresia show that premiered on RTL in 2017? Because for me, it's what Versailles is for you. Except I don't know how much you like Louis XIV., but for all her flaws Maria Theresia is an icon of the former Habsburg monarchy, so I kinda took this show personally.

Hi! Well, that's the thing: Versailles looks fine. I like watching period dramas in general so I had it on my radar, and since I had mostly seen positive reviews of it I went into it with the impression that it was a good historical series. Not good as in "is trashy but in a fun, good way!", not good as in "inaccurate but in a self aware, entertaining good way!". But in an actually good way. So I was almost shocked when I watched the pilot because it is legit one of the worst pilots I've ever seen, like I cannot believe they actually green-lighted the series after that. I kept watching because many series I love have mediocre to bad first episodes so I didn't want it to judge it solely on that, and since it did got better (not hard to achieve, since they touched rock-bottom with that pilot) I ended up watching the whole season. Which in defense of the series, was ok. But season 2 wasn't ok, and I had to force myself to finish season 3 (which I regret, I should've just dropped it).

Ultimately if I had to boil down my dislikeness to one thing it would be that it's just very badly written series, period. When you're watching it you feel as if the series had over fifty screenwriters who never read each other's writings. There is an incredible disconnection between episodes, so many plotlines are introduced to never be properly explored and eventually abandoned only episodes later. Every season felt like a soft reboot of the previous one (season 1 finishes in a HUGE CLIFHANGER... that is immediately solved five minutes into season 2 and then never mentioned again. This was the moment I realized I was watching truly bad TV), the original characters dragged the story and stole the screentime that the historical characters painfully needed, and SA was used for nothing more than shock value more than once (not to Outlander extremes, but still felt very unnecessary).

It is also very historically inaccurate, and I wouldn't mind it (I've read one book related to Louis XIV in my entire life, I don't care much about him as a historical figure) if it wasn't the worst type of historical inaccurate: the lazy type. Inaccuracies not because we think that the real history is boring and needs to be more bold and sexy *looking at all the recent Sisi adaptations*, but because we were just too lazy to research beyond the very basis and thus we accidentally end up creating dozens of plot-holes. Exemple: Philippe Duke of Orléans (Louis XIV's brother) was married to Henriette of England and they had two daughters. During season 1 the daughters are never EVER mentioned, not even once. Henriette even gets pregnant at one point and everyone acts as if this were her first child. So I thought the daughters had been written out of the series (terrible move if they were planning to reach to the point in history where Louis XIV married off his niece to Carlos II of Spain). BUT THEN in the first episode of season 2 when Philippe's second wife is introduced she says something along the lines of "I brought presents for Marie Louise and Anne Marie", the two daughters who had never been introduced to the audience up to that point!! Which is just a terrible way to revel that the two most important supporting characters of season 1, whose relationship had been a key plotline, had had children all along and was just never brought up. At the end the series did reach to the point Louis XIV arranged his niece's marriage so Marie Louise make an appearance, and it showed that never properly writing her into the series before was a terrible move, because suddenly a sixteen-years-old girl popped out in the middle of season 3 and we just had to accept that we had never seen her until that point because her father didn't remember she existed?? Don't you just love how well researched and written this series is??

Versailles is just personally frustrating to me. I've watched The Spanish Princess, which is probably one of the worse if not the worst period drama ever written, and it doesn't make as angry as Versailles. Because with TSP we all agree that it's bad, but with Versailles I feel that I watched a different series that the one everyone else saw because it cannot be that no one else noticed how goddamn bad it is.

And I haven't watched the Maria Theresia series but I probably will, solely because there's not that much Habsburg related media out there. You spoiled me something about it and I remember I actually said WHAT out loud when I read it because I couldn't believe they would get her SO wrong. I'm glad you told me because if I had gone into the series without knowing it would've punched me in the face lol.

#sorry I ended up rambling!! i just think versailles is a bad series and i'm tired of pretending it isn't #asks

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hopeymchope · 2 years ago

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Kazutaka Kodaka's "DEATH COME TRUE" starts with your character — a small young man in a hoodie named "Makoto" — waking up in confusion, initially unclear on where he is or how he got there.

So. You know. Kind of a familiar start.

For the uninitiated: Kodaka is the guy who created/wrote Danganronpa.

Yeah. Now you're getting it. These opening moments feel like an olive branch to everybody who played and embraced the first DR title.

youtube

Also, if you're a Danganronpa fan? Briefly skim through this trailer for DEATH COME TRUE featuring illustrations of each DCT character as drawn by DR character artist Rui Komatsuzaki in his signature style. SO COOL.

Makoto winds up having amnesia, which is clearly a beloved trope for Kodaka. And if I'm being honest, the whole "protagonist who wakes up with some level of amnesia, leaving them to suss out where they are and why" is a beloved trope for me as well. As I've learned what kinds of stories and media leave me most satisfied and/or engaged over the years, I've come to accept that I am, frankly, a sucker for that well-worn setup.

I'm obviously a sucker for Kodaka as well — his writing has produced BIG FAVES of mine and has yet to disappoint me. I adore and admire his GDC presentation on creating memorable characters, considering it rather inspirational. Though I sadly haven't experienced everything he's done (anybody wanna translate "School of Ragnarok" into English?), I'm obviously In The Tank for this "game."

HOWEVER... ! At the risk of outing myself as a Bad Fan®, I only finally played (er... watched?) DEATH COME TRUE just last night. In goddamn April 2023, almost three friggin' years after its initial release. See... I was aware that this is basically just an interactive movie where you make binary choices on occasion, and I was ALSO aware that it's short enough to be completed in one playthrough. And so, in spite of the writing pedigree behind it, I wound up holding out for a pretty major sale before picking it up. I saw such a sale like one or two weeks ago, so here I (finally) am!

Makoto wakes up in a hotel suite where he IMMEDIATELY sees a news broadcast that identifies him as a wanted serial killer, much to his understandable horror. He then finds a woman laying in the suite's bathtub that's either dead, asleep, or unconscious. While he's still getting his bearings, there's a knock at the suite's door, and you're thrown into making your first of many choices.

I rather doubt it's considered standard practice for the evening news in Japan to put jokey newscasters wearing loud suits in front of pastels to announce warnings about at-large serial killers. But hey, what do I know?

As I'd previously heard and read, you only "control" your character insofar as you select one of two binary choices at various points in a "Choose Your Own Adventure"-type way. This remains true until you're in the home stretch of the story, which is when they finally start bringing in some choices with more than two options... but those choices have less impact than the usual binary ones, so that expansion of the concept comes out as a wash.

This is a mystery story with murder as a major component, as is Kodaka's primary wheelhouse. The main story only takes about 2.5-3 hours to reach whatever is your ultimate ending (and there are really only two legitimate endings that aren't bad endings/deaths). Along the way, Kodaka fans will recognize a number of themes and concepts he's used over the years, but I won't spoil what they are. Some of them are reused in a straightforward fashion, while others are tweaked or mildly subverted from what you might've seen in his various Dangan tales. And if you're unfamiliar with Danganronpa? Then it's surprising and it's a little weird that you're reading this, but it's gonna make the story of this game much more surprising and twisty for you.

One thing you won't see coming: His swag.

That's not to say that a seasoned Kodaka fan like myself wasn't adequately surprised and engaged at plenty of points, though! I was worried that the "live-action choose-your-path movie" format would leave me less invested than visual-novel-style mystery game with more direct control, but in actual practice, I was UTTERLY absorbed. That's right: To the surprise of precisely no one, I strongly liked DEATH COME TRUE. And given that Kodaka was both the writer AND the director of this "movie," I was really pleasantly surprised by his skill behind the camera. (Though I don't talk about it very much on this Tumblr, I've long been a movie/filmmaking fan, so let me put on that hat for a minute.) There are some dramatic camera moves and angles that served to heighten my adrenaline/tension during key moments. And although I can't say for sure how much he 'directed' his actors, the cast is goddamn excellent. EXCELLENT. I found myself rewinding to watch their eyes and subtle movements in various scenes. The performances sucked me into the narrative just as much as the story. I'm a filthy American dork who doesn't consume much Japanese live-action media, so I was only aware of two of the actors in here from their relatively minor roles in American movies. Furthermore, I didn't know the lead actor, Kanata Hongō, from anything at all! But based on his performance here, I want to look up more of his work.

Chihiro Yamamoto is the only actor here who seems to think she's playing a Danganronpa character — for both better AND worse.

Did I feel ANY disappointments during my experience? One obvious one is the brevity of the experience: I would've been happy to spend twice as long with these characters in this world. But for something like $6-$12, it's satisfying enough. My only other two disappointments were: A) The ultimate "culprit" behind everything was too easy to peg. As soon as that character first comes on-screen, they struck me as the obvious culprit behind everything, so it's unfortunate that they wound up being that predictable. And B) There's one character/actor who is just deeply underutilized/unexplored. They provide a bizarre, fascinating presence that barely has any role in the proceedings, and by the time the ending reveals of the story roll around, I can't help but wonder how they fit into this story at all?

Don't take those gripes as anything major, though. DEATH COME TRUE is never gonna have a super strong place in my heart, but I spent those few hours entranced and will fondly remember them. ALSO: You unlock achievements and videos by experiencing as many deaths as possible, so there's actually a benefit to screwing things up! The videos include behind-the-scenes "Making Of" footage as well as the full-length takes of the newscasters who are heard in the background of the opening scene. It's the latter that's especially fun, because the performers clearly knew that they were recording material that would be muffled/obscured, and they have a good time getting weird with it.

It's hard for me to look over my death medal collection without imagining they're accompanied by death metal, because homophones amuse me.

Look: Kodaka has always been clear that this was a very quick project that was rapidly thrown together and executed before he settled in and focused on writing the scenario for Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. It's his baby, but it's also a side gig. With that in mind, the shortness of the experience is more understandable. It also means that you shouldn't expect it to have the depth of his other narratives/games. It's a Kodaka snack, not a meal. But this still a snack with a ton of nutritional value and flavor packed into its small size and minimalist packaging. Take a night to experience it. As long you don't pay full retail, I doubt you'll regret it.

#death come true #danganronpa #kazutaka kodaka #video games #interactive movie #visual novels #.... ?#I mean not really but kind of... ?#game reviews #longreads #Youtube

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nightcrawlerzincorporated · 2 years ago

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I like to think I know my Sunny lore; but I've seen people say that the roller rink ep creates so many plotholes. You're my local most-knowledgeable-seeming tumblr blog so I'm burdening you with this cause a google search does nothing for me:

What are some of the plotholes?

only thing I can think of is Dee being sweet because its confirmed she was also a bitch in high school. I feel like most of the other things can co-exist! Am I missing something?

I'm so glad you see me as knowledgeable about Sunny lore <3 I rewatched Roller Rink before answering this and this is my reading:

Dee's characterization is definitely the part of the episode that people tend to dislike the most. As you said, it feels off that she's consistently described throughout the show has having been awful since high school (making Cricket eat dog poop, acting superior and snippy towards her only female friend, Ingrid, setting her college roommate on fire, just off the top of my head) but then in Roller Rink she's all sunshine and positive energy. I understand it's meant to be meta commentary on how Dee was originally characterized as "the nice one", but even in season 1 she's only marginally kinder and more self-aware than the guys. Exaggeration can be a great tool in comedy, but the exaggeration of Dee's kindness is so over the top in Roller Rink the commentary gets lost. It feels like it's commenting on a version of Dee that never really existed. If they wanted to comment on the sexism that led to the one woman main character initially being written to be nicer than the men, they should have actually had the guys act sexist towards her, imo. Maybe when Mac makes his "Dee's nuts" joke, instead of having Dee respond "I don't like crude humor" and walk away, they could have had her laugh, then had Mac make fun of her for being "unladylike" for laughing, so she shuts down and lies about not liking crude jokes before walking away. I can so easily imagine a version of this episode where Dee is trying so hard to be "the nice one", be the stereotypical girly-girl (maybe as a persona to keep all the new friends she's finally managed to make), but in the end she can't do it and explodes, revealing her true colors as just as much of an asshole as the rest of the gang. Like why does she become mean after hitting her head as if her personality flaws are all caused by a physical brain condition instead of just revealing that it was always a part of her, just a part she used to try and ignore. They could have even still had her smack her head, only instead of turning mean right away, maybe Charlie lets slip that she hurt herself because he loosened her skates and she goes off on him, too angry to keep the persona. The way it's portrayed as the guys being super nice to her before she hits her head also feels so off--as if the sexist way they treat her is her own fault and if she was just nicer to them they'd be nicer to her. Yuck! I understand it's Mac, Dennis, and Charlie telling the story and that they would want to portray themselves as kind, but they could have at least put in a line from Dee when it cuts back to the present about how they were never that nice to her so it isn't so muddled. They could have done the same basic idea while actually making sense with the lore, been more aligned with what actually happened meta-textually, and shown how constantly saying women are inherently kinder and more moral than men is sexist in of itself and forces women into shallow boxes of banality instead of seeing them as human. But it feels like all that the actual episode is saying is, "Isn't it funny that we initially created this character to be nice and now she's mean lol things sure are different now!" It's so toothless and messy. Sorry for the rant, I ended up having a lot of thoughts about Dee while rewatching!

To get back to plotholes, the other big thing I've seen people talk about is the way Dennis acts around Frank. But to me that part makes more sense. Yes, Frank treated Dennis and Dee cruelly in their childhood and was severely neglectful, but that's the exact reason why I think young-Dennis would try so hard to impress him and be kind to him. Dennis wants desperately to have a good relationship with his father, and he sees Frank letting him come work for him as his chance to win his father's love and approval, so he's overcompensating. I think a lot of people take his line, "I'm starting to think my dad's a bad man" very literally and say "How could he have just realized how bad Frank is after a lifetime of mistreatment?" But it's pretty common for abused kids to justify the way their parents treat them as normal, and it makes sense to me that a (probably extremely triggering) event like Frank having sex right in front of Dennis would push Dennis into accepting the harsh truths he's been trying to ignore about how shitty Frank actually is. Him finally allowing himself to accept that Frank is a shitty dad and a bad person because of an extreme event isn't the same as retconning Frank's past abuse and painting it all as this one incident, as I've seen some people argue. I mean, even Mac, who is all about family, is almost immediately like, "Well, you never have to see him again if you don't want to" when Dennis vaguely says something bad happened, which to me makes it seems like the way Frank treats him is something they've talked about before. And the way Dennis instantly agrees that no-contact is a good idea also makes it seem more like a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation than the show trying to say this is the only bad thing Frank has done to Dennis. And I really like the way it ties together Dennis agreeing to buy the bar with him deciding to go no-contact with Frank. He wanted the bar in the first place to be able to gain independence from Frank and move on from his childhood, only to have Frank show up one day in 2006 and buy the bar out from under him anyway. Oof! I do wish they would have involved Dee in some way, since it's implied in season 2 they were both no-contact with Frank by 2006, but I also think Dee is overall more willing to accept how abusive their parents were than Dennis is, so it makes sense she wouldn't need a big final reason like he does.

I don't think people typically have any issues with the Mac and Charlie bits, plothole wise, at least that I've seen. Watching through I didn't notice anything about them that stuck out to me.

I hope that answered your question! If there's anything I missed that people consider a plothole in the episode, let me know! I love discussing sunny episodes in-depth any chance I get and I love hearing other people's thoughts!

#ask #anonymous #the gang buys a roller rink #iasip #⭐️

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alleycat-arcade · 3 years ago

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Game Continue! The Seven Lords: Rashōmon

Anonymous asked: Oh my god, I LOVED how you wrote an MC with Atsushis ability and was wondering if you could do an Akutagawa like MC? Or maybe a Dazai MC as I've always wondered how they'd handle someone like either of them considering there depth as characters and they were my absolute favorites. Aku deserved better-

(I swear I'm just inflating my ego at this point with copy and pasting this prompt, but I wanna give context lololololol)

The Mafia's Hellhound. (Part 2) (Obey Me! Younger Brothers x Akutagawa Ryūnosuke(BSD)-like! Gn! Mc/Reader)

(Part 3 will contain the Now Dateables and Luke(Platonic)!)

Content Warnings: Since this character is from the same series as Atsushi Nakajima, I'm gonna put the same first bit of warning here. Bungou Stray Dogs is a series that contains characters based on real life authors, with each individual character having an ability based on a book by their namesake author. There is also a character in the series who is Sui///cidal and it is somewhat treated more light-hearted than how it is usually treated in media, and though it is explained later as to why I don't recommend anyone who is put off or upset by that type of content to watch it. Akutagawa is not this character, but this character does have a heavy impact on him. To those who are interested in the original concept as a whole, I'd definitely recommend watching up to Episode 3 first since that is the first appearance of Aku in the anime. This will have light spoilers for Seasons 1-3 as well throughout, so if you do end up really liking the anime and don't want the slightest bit of spoilers you should finish it first. The majority of spoilers lie in Aku's overall personality, but if you've seen Bungou Stray Dogs: Wan! it is not too dissimilar. There will be mentions of blood, injury, and general violence, as well as spoilers for Chapter 16-20 of Obey Me. Don't blame me, blame Belphie. And again, there will be angst. Not just because angst is my chicken soup for the soul, but that this character is very angsty.

(Takes place in between the Cannibalism Arc and Kamui Revelation Arc, which I assume Wan! is also set in. I went with this specific version of Aku because it's where the anime has left off at, and I personally believe anime watchers are more widespread than manga readers most of the time. I'll be doing my best not to accidentally water down his personality though, as even at that point in the story Aku still has quite the inferiority complex, violent tendencies, and other such issues.)

(As per usual, the intro is in the first part which you can read here!)

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

Satan:

How peculiar you are for a human... You say you know nothing of magic and yet you possess the ability to create what seems to be a shadow beast of dark matter. An Ability? Hmm... Humans have become quite the intriguing specimens nowadays, such unique adaptations certainly have peaked his interest. Fancy talk and wannabe novelist dialogue from Satan out of the way, the only real interest the Avatar of Wrath takes in you is your ability and its properties. Unless he's busy with his own academic pursuits or setting up pranks to pull on Lucifer, before you form a pact with him it may be in your best interest to avoid him or not be caught alone without one of the brothers you do have a pact with there. 'Lest you become a sort of test subject. Of course you're welcome to fight against this position to your heart's content, but the more you avoid it the more he becomes interested in studying you. Seeing as the demon brothers are much stronger than you and your ability, it leaves you with little choice other than stealthily avoiding certain confrontations or begrudgingly submitting and going along with their plans.

Momentarily he reminds you of your mentor in the days that he does catch you in a position to pull you away for an hour or two. Not exactly for the way he treats you, since he hadn't outright attacked or beat you verbally or physically, but rather in his demands to push your limits for his own interests. Satan is much more preoccupied in analyzing just how strong in offense and defense your Ability is, either not noticing or just not caring when choking coughs rack your lungs and scarlet droplets coat your palm. Prior to a bit before the formation of the pact between you two, the Avatar of Wrath cares very little for you or your wellbeing. So, should you live or die, it didn't use to matter to him. All he desired before then was to satisfy his curiosities.

And now... the same demon who could really care less about you was tightly wrapped around your little finger. Oh well, that just makes for all the more teasing that his brothers can inflict on him when they're feeling particularly rowdy. Worried about them overusing Rashōmon and wearing themselves out, Satan? Didn't you just say last week that you couldn't care less about them and how you would never be so deeply involved with a human like the rest of us? Haha gottem!... Oh shit run run run

Rather than being mostly interested by your ability now, Satan finds a new interest in your life in the Human World instead. Sure, some of the questions do revolve around what you know about other individuals you've worked with or fought against and their own abilities,, but most of them are about your own personal experiences. He listens intently when you're finally comfortable enough with to speak about your childhood with him and your own version of hell that came from growing up in the Slums and becoming a high ranking member of the Port Mafia. You're about halfway through your explanation of your old mentor's effects on you when you notice he's been writing down all of this, hey wait a minute. Why does this paper say "Information Regarding Trauma for Therapist".... where are you running off to now Satan, I thought we were going to talk?

At times Satan has tried to encourage you to branch out a bit more in your fashion style, cause you look a bit too much like Luci, but one comment on his own fashion sense and he's lost the argument. Once you did decide to humor him somewhat and tried on a pair of his clothes, but he didn't exactly get the point you were trying to make an let you keep that set of clothing. He has enough green sweaters, weird belts, black undershirts, and unique blue jackets to share at least one full set with you. At most you might just wear the sweater under your overcoat or the blue jacket over a dress shirt, but he feels a fuzzy feeling whenever he see's you out and about wearing a piece of his clothes. Should one of the brothers see you in his apparel, especially if you're wearing the jacket in the same way Satan does all the time, at the end of the day you'll likely end up with a whole new wardrobe formed completely out of borrowed clothing from the brothers. Thank goodness Rashōmon isn't confined solely to your jacket and can be created out of any clothing item you're wearing.

Something about you that Satan can't help but relate to is your short temper and somewhat hot-headed nature despite being such a serious person. In the beginning your short fits of rage and pessimistic ideals are just a minor inconvenience and annoyance, but now that he's found respect and care for you he has a strong desire to help you manage your issues, similar to how his brothers had helped him control his sin. Satan's help alone isn't truly enough to truly begin to heal the wounds that have been so deeply engraved into your very being, that's what the therapist is for, but you find yourself growing more and more calm as the days go by now. Though you can still get angry or aggressive at times, there is a noticeable reduction in your more violent tendencies. Mammon does get a little grouchy with Satan for this, but it's more in the tsundere way. He's just jealous since Mams had been the one gradually helping you with your anger issues, so don't take his complaints too seriously.

Out of all the brothers, Satan is your best bet in terms of being your tutor. It takes a bit for him to properly adjust the speed of his teaching methods, but once he's gotten into the swing of things it's only up from there. In the beginning he can get a little easily frustrated by your lack of understanding in some subjects, but over time he does grow more patient with you. While you may frustrate him sometimes, he ensures that he doesn't take it out on you and opts instead to take a calming walk before returning back to the subject when it becomes too much for the both of you. Satan can also sense when you're getting upset or angry over time through the pact, so he'll make sure that you get optimal breaks in general and while studying.

When his brothers had proposed their little scheme to get you and Lucifer to bond a little with each other, it was the same day that the two of you were going to go out for dinner and attend a late night show at the Devil Planetarium as a reward for scoring quite high on one of your worst subjects. He had begrudgingly accepted, since the plan would be done soon enough and give you enough time to do everything the two of you had set up prior. Yet, as he and his brothers stumbled upon your body in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs, Satan couldn't help but wish that he had said "no". Though he wanted nothing more to cast a healing spell that would seal up your wounds, one light brush against your frigid skin told him you were beyond saving. A broiling rage slowly began to fill his body upon watching your arm that he had once carefully cradled in his palms drop limply to the floor, one of such a heated intensity that it was about to boil over right before your corpse had suddenly dissipated and a second version of yourself appeared at the top of the stairs. Angry tears stung the corners of his eyes until he wiped them away, a sudden sense of relief dulling the wrath the had infested his brain. Truthfully he had mostly tuned out your speech regarding Lilith, favoring to let you speak your peace and pulling you away for one of your calming walks together. In the garden behind HOL is where he lets his emotions finally come flooding out, hot tears flowing behind the arm he raised to hide them as he apologized for not being there to protect you from harm. He cannot help but meld into your arms when you lift his arm away from his face, nestling himself into the crook of your neck and holding onto you like your body would once again evaporate into thin air should he let go even a little. Your responding sobs only made him hold on tighter.

Though Satan still wants you to feel independent and like you're not being smothered, he's noticeably more touchy-feely than usual, even more so in the presence of Belphie. He loves the youngest of his twin brothers dearly, but he's still somewhat hesitant to leave you alone with him for very long. Satan also starts inviting you to tag along with him whenever he goes out a lot more than he used to, so the two of you can spend more time together in general. Going to go see a movie? Hey Mc, I heard you liked this one so I bought an extra ticket. Going to the library? Mc, there's a few books that I want to recommend to you, so you should tag along. Just going on a normal shopping trip? Mc, I need some help finding the best deals over at Devil's Value, care to tag along?

When it's finally time for you to head back to the Human World, Satan is very torn. As much as he'd like to join team "If Mc goes, so do I", he also recognizes and respects your own abilities. You may not be the strongest out of all the ability users out there, but from what he's seen you're one of the strongest people in the three realms even without factoring your ability. Still, the fact that there is ability users out there in the world that likely could harm you a thousand times more than you had been during the Attic incident set him on edge a little bit.

Asmodeus:

Wow! While Asmodeus had met quite a few magic users and cast a good bit of his own spells, never before had he seen someone create tendrils out of their own clothing that seemed like the could stretch and strike without too much limitations. He's a bit disappointed that he can't charm you into using them for his own ambitions and purposes, but that factor just makes you all the more of an enticing target. Honestly, Asmo would pursue you at least a bit more, if not for a good chunk of his other priorities taking up those spots of time. Brand deals, fan meet-ups, VIP parties; you name it and Asmo's got about 20 or so of each to attend to that month. You'll need a few additional tie ins before you have the Avatar of Lust wrapped around your finger, so for now the most he pursues you is a few flirtatious comments here and there. Perhaps a little bit of teasing touches on your arms or shoulders, unless you should shy away and scramble out of his touch.

Most of your interactions with Asmodeus prior to your pact together boil down to his brief and usually one-sided advances, as previously stated. Once or twice you've been involved in the same discussions with his brothers being the ones to pull you into the conversation somehow, and on the rare occasion he'll chat you up on his own whenever he just so happens to be seated beside you at the dinner table. Though you are aware of his exact intentions and the meanings behind a majority of his words, over time you grow used to it and brush it off fairly easily. Your usual tactic of scaring people off didn't even seem to work on him anyway, and there's only so many times you can listen to Asmo call your offers to curb-stomp him "cute" or "hot" before you just give up.

The pact between the two of you is finally sealed after you first wield Solomon's borrowed powers in a way far stronger than the wizard ever had before. Damn, this Human has a neat ability, is part of some strange ability user filled mafia, AND has incredibly strong untapped magic potential? Step aside Solomon, Asmodeus has a new favorite Master.

Asmodeus will be the second of his brothers to admit to you that he's more interested in you as a person rather than your ability (The title of first goes to Beel). While his brothers overtime outweigh their interest in you or their interest in what you could do, Asmodeus is far more intrigued on going straight for the heart of the operation and getting to know you inside and out(emotionally I mean, you horny fool). In the beginning he's somewhat subtle about asking about your past and your current living circumstances as a member of the mafia, but over time Asmo just starts outright asking you whatever comes to mind once he's gotten a feel for what topics to not bring up in order to avoid making you upset or uncomfortable. With how much effort he puts in to earn your trust overtime, if you haven't already opened up at least some of your heart to one of his brothers, it's likely that Asmodeus will end up being the first to chip away at your chilly exterior. He just goes out of his way to make himself warm and inviting whilst actively caring about your wellbeing, so it's honestly hard not to.

Back on the topic of the mafia, Asmodeus honestly has probably had one or two run in with your weaker, ability-less subordinates in the past. The name Port Mafia isn't something he recognizes off the top of his head, considering how many mafias there are or have been in the Human World on ports and other seaside locations, but eventually he does connect the dots after a few additional details. Most of his memories regarding your subordinates involve them either seeking out power so that their boss would give them a higher ranking position and acknowledge them, or just them looking for a way to wind down and come undone after all the stressful and strenuous duties they had been tasked with. He had once teasingly asked if he could meet this all powerful boss they had spoken of, but seeing your eyes begin to panickily shift and face drain of color was all it took to drop it. Asmo still might visit this "Mori" fellow in the future, not exactly for pleasant reasons but also nothing you'd need to worry about.

Sometimes Asmodeus will indulge himself just a little in his occasional curiosity of your ability, but he doesn't press you if you feel uncomfortable with any of his requests. Most of the time he asks to see what Rashōmon can do in the form of a trade. Like, if you show him how much piercing damage one of your tendrils can do, he'll show off any of his demonic powers that you happen to be interested in. You're aware that he'd likely still show you any of his abilities if you asked anyway, but you too enjoy indulging him in his curiosities from time-to-time. So far what he's found most interesting is just how malleable Rashōmon can be without causing any damage to your clothing, and that Rashōmon can be formed through any clothes on your body. (Does that mean you're defenseless when you're- Yes Asmo, and that is the reason why you have a hefty lock on your bedroom door.) Asmo also picks up very easily when you're starting to feel the negative effects of over using your ability, and is quick to stop you and whisk you away for a pampering session. No matter how many times you explain to him that you can handle a little bit of wear and tear or that it's just a little coughing fit, he'll always insist on not allowing you to overdo it. He may not be able to help you all that much with homework, but he'll be damned(again) if he doesn't get you to practice some self-care routines.

Initially he was a bit nervous to go along with Satan's idea to get you and Lucifer to hit it off, but went along with it anyway. He did trust the both of you quite a bit, and though some of his eldest brother's past interactions with you had made him a bit nervous, ultimately Asmo knew that Lucifer was slowly warming up to you. As it just so happened to turn out, he had no need to worry about Lucifer causing any harm to you, since the one who actually ended up killing you was his younger brother that had been trapped in the Attic up until now. Seeing as he had been near the back of the pack when the brothers had all come scrambling to find the reasoning behind your sudden disappearance and a random cacophony of noise, Asmodeus hadn't seen your body at first. Mammon and Satan had surrounded you before he could catch sight of your familiar pitch black coat-tails, and seeing Belphegor suddenly back in the Devildom was enough of a shock to draw his eyes away momentarily. Only after hearing your voice fall off his brothers' lips in such a sad way did he look back and finally see your corpse. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes as he looked into your own, and the way they seemed so glassy and dull nearly made him fall to his knees and sob. Calling out to his brothers for help only made it harder to hold back, seeing as you were already gone by the time they all had gotten there. None of the brothers were even quite sure how Asmo would've responded had it not been for your sudden revival, but if one were to ask him the only response he'd give would be that it wouldn't have been pretty.

After everything regarding the Attic incident has calmed down and he can comfortably hold you in his arms once more, he suddenly develops a rather strange and very noticeable habit. And what is this habit? Stealing your coat whenever he gets the chance too. Asmodeus doesn't do it maliciously, and most of the time he just does it so he can be comforted by your scent. It's simply an added bonus that the coat he took is the one you wear all the time and you'll more often than not come to him in order to retrieve it. Somedays you do just let him have it for an hour or so, but during the Devildom's winter you don't let him keep it at all, no matter how much he offers to warm you up instead.

Count another one into team "If Mc goes, I'm going". Asmo cares for you to the moon and so much further, and going back to the Human World at this point sounds like you'll be ending up with either a death or prison sentence(or both). He's aware how strong you are to have survived on your own this far, but the thought of you dying again and him not doing anything to stop it AGAIN haunts him. Plus, prison isn't good for his darling Mc's skin! If you do end up staying in the Devildom though, Asmo is overjoyed at the idea of you bringing your younger sister along. Especially after all the stories he's heard about her from you!

Beelzebub:

Oh. Hm. Anyway so when's... Yeah, Beel's not exactly impressed or really interested when he sees you come out of the portal and the fact that you surrounded yourself with this strange cage of tendrils still somehow manages to not really catch his eye. He's got a lot of other priorities Mc, he can't get hung up on why the human he's not allowed to eat has a weird superpower when Beelzebub is far more concerned on if Lucifer is going to punish him when they get home because he ate all the food in the fridge before they left for RAD that morning. The thing he finds most interesting is more so the fact that Mammon was your appointed caretaker, but that moment of curiosity is ever so fleeting. Beel really just wants the Student Council meeting to be over and done with, preferring not to stare at the empty chair beside him.

As expected, you don't really interact with Beelzebub all that much prior to the formation of the pact between the two of you. Unless Mammon or Leviathan need help with something or get him to help you with something, he doesn't find himself in your general area too often. Your somewhat cold and standoffish personality doesn't help on that front too much either, as even with a bit of warming up a-la the Great Mammon and Lord of Shadows, you're still not the easiest person to approach and strike up a conversation with. Occasionally he does ask the brothers you're close to about how they're getting along with you, but it's more for their sake than yours.

After the whole Custard fiasco takes place and you're forced to share a room with him, he starts taking at least a little bit more interest in you. You're still somewhat aloof, but you manage to make a decent amount of small talk with him. What catches his attention the most is when you bring up your younger sister, whom you care for dearly. The first night the topic is brought up the two of you almost stay up all night, trading stories about your respective siblings. You can't help but sympathize with Beel as well, since you know the inner turmoil you'd go through if something were to happen to your sister. Beelzebub can also sympathize with your own current plight of being trapped in the Devildom and away from your only other living family in the Human World. Honestly if he hadn't formed a pact with you after everything that happened in the Underground Tomb, he likely would've done it at some other point.

Unless you can or are willing to use your ability in a way that would help you in working out with him, Beel doesn't often ask you to bring out Rashōmon aside from helping him carry some stuff that didn't fit in his arms. He'd much rather help you train your physical body than watch you wear yourself down by using your ability anyway. Of course the two of you make a workout routine that suits you the best, but Beel can also recognize when you're pushing yourself too far and will stop you and probably just head home for the day after. Most likely you do end up using your ability for other purposes around him at some point, and he's quick to pick up on the effects that over usage has on your body just as fast as he notices you overextending yourself in the gym. Should you be a bit defiant with him and try to keep going despite your current state, Beel with simply pick you up and gently toss you over his shoulder. You're well aware that kicking or screaming won't get you out of this, so you just have to settle for being carried home like a sack of potatoes or at least until he puts you back down.

Bringing up the topic of the Port Mafia with Beel yields somewhat interesting results. He'd rather not hear about some of the more brutish methods they use or a good majority of the schemes they commit, but he is oddly intrigued by the sense of camaraderie that you seem to share with some of your superiors and the leaders of Black Lizard. It reminds him somewhat of the bond he shares with his Fangol teammates, minus the fact that his teammates aren't actively committing crimes as far as he's aware. Rather than subtly convincing you, Beel would much prefer to just outright tell you that he doesn't like that you're a part of such a dangerous side of humanity and urges you to stay in the Devildom with them after the Exchange Program is over. And once everything involving the Attic is over and done with, he's only further cemented in the idea of you making your stay in the Devildom permanent. But of course before we get there, we gotta talk about the Attic incident.

Similar to Asmodeus, he'd been at the rear end of the group when the brothers had been searching for you as well as the source of the noise. But unlike Asmo, Beelzebub's height advantage allowed him to not only see Belphegor somehow standing there cackling, as well as your crumpled body in Mammon's arms. As much as Beel had desperately been awaiting the day of his twin's return and wished to pull him into an embrace, it was incredibly clear that his oh-so beloved twin brother had literally just murdered you in cold blood. He didn't even need to ask the motive either, knowing full well just how much Belphegor had sworn vengeance against humanity ever since the Fall. Yet even so, Beel felt that you didn't deserve this, to take the full front of his brother's wrath just for your species. Unable to make a move towards or away from either of you, he remained rooted in place and just stared, occasionally glancing back at Lucifer for guidance. A sudden gnawing hunger fills his stomach and gradually builds up as the tension in the air grows thicker, the unnatural sort of hunger that only your living presence could truly fill. Thankfully it seemed at least one of his hungers would be solved that day, as you suddenly reappeared at the top of the stairs alive, but slightly bruised and batter. Alongside Lucifer, he held Belphie back to prevent him from attacking you again, letting you get out what needed to be said about Lilith that you had learned from the other timeline's version of Lucifer.

Beelzebub hangs back for quite a bit after your revival, allowing his brothers to hug and hold onto you as they tell you how happy they are you're alive before approaching you. Mostly he just wanted to allow his brothers to get your full attention before he asked for any, but a small part of him felt that he didn't deserve to embrace you in such a way after failing to protect you like he had promised. By the end of the night he still does embrace you, but not too long afterwards is when the guilt-ridden nightmares set in. Not only does he now dream of failing to protect Lilith, but your death now plagues his mind as well. After the first set of sleepless nights caused by these new nightmares, Beelzebub asks if he can sleep in your room for the night. Following then you often find yourself sleeping with Beel, as your presence seems to ward off nightmares like a sort of dreamcatcher.

Yet another member of team "If Mc goes, I go" for very obvious reasons. He's your sworn protector and if you're going back to a part of the Human World where you're incredibly likely to end up getting yourself killed, he's coming along with you. Also he really wants to meet your younger sister!

Belphegor:

Woe is him! Such a poor, unfortunate human locked up in the Attic of the treacherous demon brothers! What ever shall he do, trapped up here until his bones begin to crumble and skin turns to dust? Fellow human, won't you listen to his plea? Won't you help him escape the confines set in place by the wicked Avatar of Pride, Lucifer himself? "No"? What do you mean "no"?! Hey! HEY! Where the fuck are you going?! And did you just shrug and call him weak as you walked off???!!! Get back here!

Yeaahh, unfortunately for Belphie he's gonna have to wait until you get annoyed by his constant complaining in the dead of night or warm up to Beel and learn about him before you come back. At the point in time that you had made your way up the stairs to discover the mysterious voice that had been calling out to you, you certainly were not in a state that you would've jumped to save this random "human" from their imprisonment at the hands of Lucifer. Once you do finally return you're somewhat upset that Belphegor had attempted to lie to you about his origins, but you set aside those reservations in favor of focusing on how to get him back with Beelzebub. You couldn't deny that if you had been in his position, you might've lied in order to get back to your younger sister yourself.

Luckily for Belphie, besides his initial lie of being a human, you don't pick up on any of his other manipulated truths and forced words of kindness. Outside of the occasional update whenever you would get a new pact with one of the brothers or just going up and making sure he's still healthy, the two of you don't interact much during his stay in the Attic. Near the end of his time up there you did start coming up more frequently, under the guise of making sure he was eating and drinking properly. You may have tried to be as subtle as possible about your true motives, but he had begun to pick up on how much his brothers had worn down that harsh outer shell of yours that he'd seen in your first meeting. He'd even caught you smiling at one point when you had thought he wasn't looking, and act that made him scowl and growl to himself about after you had left for the night. He hated putting on that fake smiley attitude with you to gain your trust, but what he hated even more was that you yourself had begun to make him feel strangely warm and tingly inside. Just how was he supposed to go about his plans of killing you if he's getting distracted by these sudden complex feelings? With no clear alternative answer, Belphie settled for just pushing them deep down inside instead.

As with any other day sent in the Attic, he had been sleeping during his brothers' plans to get you and Lucifer to bond closer together. Most of the time he just slept until you rhythmically tapped on the bars of the door, so he didn't budge at all when the door had suddenly opened at your touch and you stepped inside. The feeling of someone's hand on his shoulder shaking him was enough to snap him awake, locking eyes with you as you now stood beside him in what had been his own personal prison for months now. Still going along with his plan, Belphegor is quick to express his deepest "graditudes" and holds his arms out to you for a hug. Hesitantly, you slowly ease into his embrace, making it clear that physical affections weren't you strong suit. With how much you had hesitated in the beginning, Belphie almost felt bad for what he was about to do to you. Almost. His hands suddenly wrapped around your throat, squeezing tighter and tighter with a gleeful expression on his face as you violently thrash and struggle. Rashōmon attacks blindly in his direction in an attempt to protect you, but the most you manage to get out of it is a momentary distraction to wriggle out of his grasp before he's attacking you once again. It is at this point Lilith's spirit whisks you away, trading you with the alternate timeline version of yourself and saying her peace to you.

The alternate timeline version of you puts up just as much of a fight as you would have, but ultimately falls by the hands of the Avatar of Sloth. Most of the damage you deal against Belphie is minor cuts and bruising, but that's still more then any other weaker creature that had gone against him had done. If he had to admit one thing, it would be that he was somewhat surprised by your tenacity. He would have enjoyed it far more if he could've beaten you into submission and watched you slowly pass on, but you continued to put up a fight until your dying breath. By the time his brothers had arrived onto the scene, your past self's body was already growing cold and your blood had begun to dye the white spots of the rug a deep red. The betrayal in the air was thick, yet he still cackled and mocked not only the human he had just killed but his brothers as well, for caring so much for such a weak being. He had honestly expected at least one of them to turn against him and go after him, but any of those thoughts were quickly silenced by the disappearance of your body and re-emergence at the top of the stairwell.

Coping with the fact that Lilith had been reincarnated as a human and lived a happy life with her lover was far easier the what he was now coming to terms with. Not only had he killed you for what he perceived as the wrong-doings of your entire species, but he had betrayed your trust that he had spent months building up. You still didn't even fully trust him at the time of his release either, too nervous to hug him right away when he'd offered. Somehow though, you eventually found it in yourself to slowly forgive him and begin building up trust in him again. It was a slow and steady process with a few set backs along the way, but as his pact mark now lay emblazed upon your skin Belphie could sleep comfortably on your lap.

Seeing as you didn't have much of a reason to show him your ability before, Belphie had only really seen you use it when you were trying to fight for your life against him. Since he'd rather not have that in mind when thinking about your ability, he started to occasionally request that you show it off for him whenever you feel like it. Mostly he enjoys just watching the tendrils perform mundane tasks like carrying groceries or folding laundry, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't secretly scheming some pranks with Satan that you would be a big help in. But his favorite use of Rashōmon is when you pick him up after he's fallen asleep and carry him to a more comfortable location. Rashōmon's tendrils are somewhat prickly, but Belphie has thick enough clothing that if you grab onto the right parts you can use your ability to lift and pull him about with ease. Secretly, he's often awake whenever you do end up carrying him somewhere, but he just enjoys being along for the ride. The second you start coughing or showing any negative side effects though, he's strangely and suddenly woken up and is sleepily asking to be put down, which usually just ends with him pulling you down with him to the floor for an impromptu nap.

During his stay in the Attic Belphie had helped you a little with your subjects at RAD, but now that he's out and has a massive backlog or homework and assignments to get through you'll actually end up helping him more than he helps you. Belphegor isn't stupid by any means and does finish up everything within a month and a half, but it's nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of and study with. Once he's all caught up though, he's more than happy to help you with your own classwork, even if he does tease you every time you ask for his help.

Yeah so, team "If Mc goes, I go" is honestly all of the brothers beside Satan and Lucifer. It's not that they aren't confident in your own abilities, it's just that they're all incredibly aware just how fragile even the strongest of humans are. And no one is more aware of that than Belphegor. Not to mention they're quite literally sending you back to hell on earth, where your superiors are very likely to be pissed off about your sudden and very long absence. Plus, either way he'll get to spend more time with you and probably meet your younger sister. Hopefully someone steps in for or against you Mc, otherwise you better hope that your salary can account for all of these brand new roommates you and Gin just received.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

(*drinks my "I love making Chapter 16 more angsty and emotional than it canonically is" juice* Drifted a bit outta canon for this one, as a treat. Also if y'all have noticed, I did have to nerf Aku!Mc a bit so the demon brothers are an actual threat. I don't believe Mc would be too scared of the demon brothers if they didn't at least have some resistance to Rashomon's incredible consumption of matter and space.

After all of that mixed angst and gen hc's, here's a cute gif of Aku from BSD: Wan! I love every time he just looks like (◎ ◎) I hope y'all look forward to the next part with the Now Dateables+Luke!)

#obey me fic #obey me x gn!reader #obey me x reader #obey me headcanons #obey me x gn!mc #aku!mc #akutagawa!mc #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me asmodeus #obey me beel #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me belphie #haaahaaa less gooooo #aku from bsd wan is my blorbo right after chuuya. the blorbo from one of my shows

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maxknightley · 3 years ago

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It might just be me as a trans woman reading this in a trans way, but when Henry Day-Eastman talked about how every mirror he saw he was a guy and unhappy and alone. Big trans vibes. Am I reading too much of my own experience into that or was that intended? Love our vampire boy!

This is going to be... a somewhat complicated question to answer, and it'll deal with some spoilers for Eidolon Playtest Season 2, so I'm going to post my thoughts under a readmore.

For those who don't know: Eidolon Playtest is an actual play podcast I'm on where we're testing out a game a couple of my friends wrote. It's very good, you'll like it a lot if you enjoy things like "psychic battles against the President of the United States," "accidentally unionizing a demonic underclass" and "arguing about whether Adam Sandler's Click is a masterpiece in this universe or not." Also I made the soundtrack and people say that it whips ass so who am I to say otherwise?

I think you should listen to it, ideally before reading the rest of this post, because the post is going to make things sound a lot more confusing and unhinged than they actually are. I promise that all this shit makes sense if you're caught up.

So to get into Henry Day-Eastman and Harvey Stoker, I first want to touch on Harvey Godlove.

Originally, I didn't think very much about Harvey Godlove's gender or orientation very much. He started out as a very simple, straightforward character and sort of accumulated more meaningful character traits as time went on. Around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through season 1, I decided he was bisexual because of dynamics on the show.

1. Harvey Godlove is a trans man, a decision I made in part because I saw a few people in the Discord chat who interpreted him that way, + a close transmasc friend of mine felt like it was a good fit. At first, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to make that Explicitly Canon or not, but as we got into season two, I came to the conclusion that it made a lot of sense, and that it dovetailed well with the other plot beats I wanted to hit for Henry/Harvey's character arc.

2. So, Henry Day-Eastman was created from parts of Harvey Godlove's soul and parts of Dracula's soul; the remaining parts were combined to form Harvey Faustus Stoker.

The Neighborhood works in such a way that their shared universe was created based on both Henry and Stoker's desires and beliefs. You could easily say that this implies Henry is cis; he has the body he "wants," the social role he "wants," other people see him as he "wants to be seen," etc.

But, of course, the whole point of Season Two is that the Neighborhood houses are false utopias. Henry isn't really happy with his life; he's just comfortable enough not to question it, even when he feels like trash.

3. Lisa Fratelli, an alternate version of Harvey created from his friend Christina's mental image of him, is transmasc - or maybe it's more accurate to say she "will be transmasc once she figures shit out?" It's something I don't think I've said explicitly on any of the episodes that have gone live, but I've definitely dropped some Very Heavy Hints. There's a reason she talks about hating the roles her parents pressured her into, there's a reason her Eidolon - the manifestation of her psyche - looks like a man, there's a reason she gets fixated on thoughts like "there's a version of me named Harvey" or "what if I became a cowboy."

The mirror conversation takes place between Henry and Lisa, so there's definitely transgender vibes, if that makes sense. The monologue as I conceived it was "about" a more general sense of depression, purposelessness, and being alone in the world - but like, at the end of the day, I'm a trans woman writing a conversation between two different "reflections" of a trans man. I think a transgender reading of that scene makes sense.

4. Henry ultimately decides to become a part of Harvey Godlove again, but at the end of the day, he still lived a different life. His desires were derived from Harvey's, but they weren't the same as Harvey's. Because of this, I think there's a few different ways you could read Henry!

You could read him as a cisgender man, or as "a trans person's fantasy of being cis," living out an idealized life in which his AGAB matches up with his lived experience - and yet, this life feels emptier than the one in which he transitioned, with all the challenges that entails.

You could read him as a trans man, whose obsession with "normalcy" is partly related to a desire to pass, for nobody to question who or what he is. If he doesn't stick out too much, maybe people will fucking Be Cool about it.

Or you could read him as a trans woman, someone whose desires are at once aligned with and opposed to the desires of the person he "was." Someone trapped in a role that, on paper, provides him with a lot of benefits and security, but in practice just makes him miserable.

TL;DR - I didn't necessarily intend for Henry's mirror vision to carry trans vibes, but I think it makes sense to read it as such. I'm a trans woman, Harvey's a trans man (as are all other versions of him seen in S2), that kind of subtext is going to crop up.

I hope that makes sense and I'm sorry for being so long-winded, lol. This is something I put a lot of thought into and I like to think it shows.

(P.S. Either way, Count Dracula was definitely cisgender, so Harvey still gets to make dumb jokes about how he's technically genderfluid because "sometimes he's a trans man and sometimes he's a cis man")

#ask #anon #eidolon playtest

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organic-guacamole · 3 years ago

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I've got a lot of thoughts on this finale.

starting with the length.

27 minutes? really?

I'm not asking for a 2 hour episode but cmon, at least give us something closer to 40 minutes.

next, the characters

the characters just didn't feel like themselves, especially portwell.

all season long we saw how much potential they had, how well communicated they were, how good they were at being a proper, healthy couple, and now they just can't talk to each other?

it doesn't feel like them.

portwell had arguably the best set up of all the other ships, they showed us how good they had the potential to be only to throw in a cheap plot to wrap it up? I would understand that they want some angst to make the ending all the more satisfying, but this was pathetic.

there I said it.

of all the ways to add drama in a ship, don't use the one that completely contradicts their entire development.

paired with the length of the episode, it seemed even more poorly written.

here I made a lovely, handy dandy homemade graph to represent how I see portwell's storyline:

as i said before, we saw the build up being nearly perfect. they peaked during episodes 9-11 because they just had the chemistry, the communication, and the most potential to be the endgame couple.

they just got eachother.

then we get Jamie popping in for 10 seconds and erasing a lot of that, only for mediator Ashlyn to jump in and solve their problems.

then there's the "kiss".

I know that Sofia is underage and that even if she/her legal guardians consent to the kiss, the writers can still decide not to show it, but still. In my opinion, if you're not going to show the kiss, then don't bother.

there are other ways to establish a relationship that would work better in this situation. Of course if they get together they'll have to kiss sometime, but one way they could postpone it is by having Gina be a bit more reluctant to give away her first kiss like that. it could also show how accomodating EJ is.

I like to think that Gina is very meticulous when making decisions so she'll probably want to be very sure of the relationship before giving him her first kiss. perhaps she'd stick to cheek kisses until she's ready, and then she kisses him and he's surprised.

that would've been, in my opinion, a sufficient way to hold off the kiss while still wrapping up portwell until season 3 when Sofia would be 18 (assuming they get picked up for S3 this summer then start filming fall-winter. Sofia will be 18 in January).

as my friend @rtcosley (idk why it's not letting me tag them, so their page is linked) said,

"They created like 10 plots

And instead of wrapping it up

They added 4 more"

there's just so much more they could've done...it's the season finale for crying out loud.

I get that seblos already had (what I assume is) their storyline for the season, the fight and resolution. Ignoring the fact that that only lasted for 2 episodes and didn't have anything to do with what we were expecting, (i.e.the financial differences between their families, as mentioned in episode 1, the fact that everyone treats seb like he's stupid, this being carlos' first show and the drama that the stress of that caused, etc.), seblos had to purpose this episode than to stand next to eachother and be gay.

I get that they're not part of the core four or anything, but the poster for season 2 has all of them, as opposed to season 1 just being the core four.

They deserved better, just like redlyn and kowie.

redlyn's arc was pretty early in the season compared to the other ships. they had Ashlyn confessing her insecurities in episode 3, antoine stirring the pot of confusion and causing a bit of distance between them briefly, and then big red confessing his goals and plans for the future in episode 8 and for the rest of it, we just see them getting closer and more comfortable with each other and caring about each other more and more.

they had a good arc together.

but that's just it. I wanted to see them have their own arcs. but then again, this show can't seem to balance multiple storylines. I think it is possible, but not when they keep adding new characters that don't contribute anything much to the story(more on that later).

kowie's storyline is... confusing.

I really like their dynamic, how carefree and happy Kourtney gets around him, how she's remaining true to herself and managing a million and one things, plus a relationship in her own without losing herself to it all.

but the main issue I have is that the entire development was never shown.

we went from strangers, to coworkers, to friends that flirt, to lovers that text constantly and went on numerous dates (and Howie met her mother at some point). but all of that, was off screen.

it's like the writers made every episode with them in it kind of thrown in at a new stage of relationship progression and said "here, accept this, no questions asked because we don't have answers"

I just wish we could've seen more of howie trying to get in her good side again after episode 7 because it seems like that's when a lot of it happened.

I appreciate the Rini scene in this episode, seems to be the very end of them, for good this time.

i'm happy about that.

Ricky especially deserves to be free for a while to focus on his development, and Nini has the chance now to really shine through her talents and make a name for herself.

The Rini storyline is the only one I'm fully satisfied with.

now, that being said;

what the heck are they trying to pull with Lily and Ricky rn???

just like that.

after lily being the villain this whole season, they're just gonna not redeem her and then have her confess her feelings to Ricky, a guy she barely knows and only talked to to harass and intimidate, and for him to reject her publicly then call her afterwards?

please I hope it's just to say "you dropped something, here it is and never contact me again, thanks." /hj

speaking of the villains, this season was promoted as the season of rivalry between North and East High right? so why did that plot idea only progress in about 3 out if 12 episodes?

we got Zackey Roy in there for a few episodes then he disappeared, Lily just caused Gina to stay true to her friends in episode 2 and 7 and then basically did nothing else?

this is what I mean by the new characters providing nothing to the show.

the writers can't manage having so many characters and plots at once so they start so many promising arcs, only to kick them aside later on.

we already know that the first half of the season felt like filler episodes, so I think they could've cut those down to leave room for the more important plots to take root, rather than have them pop up and get rushed at the end of the season.

all that, and they just add 4 more plots at the end of the season.

this post sounds very negative looking back...but if I'm being honest with myself, I'm just very very disappointed.

I love this show so much and I really expected better for the season finale, especially if they don't know if it's getting renewed or not.

given the IMDB ratings of this episode so far, I don't have very high expectations for the renewal, but I'm still hopeful because this show is a great thing, one of the best things that happened to me over the course of this quarantine. I've become so attached to this show, the cast and the friends I made through it, that I don't know what I would do if it just ends like this. writing these reviews and posts about this season has been so fun for me to do and thinking that this may be the very last one is a painful thought.

I'm sorry if you were expecting this post to be as light-hearted as my other posts about the episodes, I just had a lot to say about this episode in particular.

all my episode posts are tagged with "#guac's episode text blocks :)" in case you wanna read through and reminisce the simpler times🥲

#it got kinda cheesy at the end there oops #i love this fandom so much #i cant imagine if we dont get s3 #hsmtmts #hsmtmts s2 #hsmtmts season 2 #hsmtmts season 2 finale #hsmtmts spoilers #guac's episode text blocks :)

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af1899 · 3 years ago

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*quick, act like you don't know who they are*

Ahem― "oh my goddddddd who could they be?????? I can't tell!! 😩😩😩"

Anyway, onto a more serious content, I would like to throw some guesses onto what the characters are doning and ramble for a while about that, if you're still on the dark on what has happened before, I would like to suggest reading my earlier entry about that.

So... Fallen Male Robin can indeed be seen to the left, while Kurthnaga is to the right, the hairstyles do give them away, plus the flames surrounding the silhouette to the left help evidencing that's indeed Robin.

[1] Artwork of Fallen Male Robin in Fire Emblem Heroes, by Okuma Yugo.

[2] Artwork of Kurthnaga in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, by Kita Senri.

But there's not much to be said about that since the leak from the other day and the obvious silhouettes don't need much thinking, specially if you're acquainted enough with a few of the related games/characters in the series. So I'd like to throw in my guesses onto what they're both wearing in the recently revealed silhouettes:

First of, while I'm not acquainted with Chinese culture in general, I've heard and read about the Jiangshi several times, Fire Emblem Heroes even has Ena since 2020 Halloween seasonal banner became a thing dressing like a Jiangshi, see the artwork below:

[3] Artwork of Ena for Fire Emblem Heroes, by kaya8.

With the kind of hat that I can picture Kurthnaga wearing based on the shape in the silhouette and the extra decoration I can only attest there's a fair chance Kurthnaga will also dress similarly to Ena, plus both are somehow connected as they're dragon laguz from Goldoa, so I see him perhaps having his interest piqued by what he saw Ena wearing and decided to tag along with something similar.

As for Robin, I can see something strongly similar (or inspired) to his female counterpart like shown below:

[4] Artwork of Halloween Fallen Female Robin in Fire Emblem Heroes, by Teffish.

But that's mainly because I can see him with the wolf ears he's wearing on his head, much like his Female counterpart does, of course though, he'd be wearing something less revealing and perhaps more menacing or intimidating, but still kind of cosplaying a wolf.

...

I'm quite curious myself, and see how well I did with the guesses, we'll definitely have the trailer in about 22 hours, mainly because the silhouettes are out and by rule, the trailer should follow-up ~24h after, plus the [Tempest Trials+] banner starts 4 hours after the trailer, so they can't delay it at all even if they knew we know about the units in the coming banner.

Talking about [Tempest Trials+] though, I'd like to see who the next free unit is, they weren't leaked, but that's not really important since they won't ever cost [Orbs], so you can plan to build them anytime. I'm asking too much if I said my totally unbiased guess would be Mia, but I'd like to think of more realistical possibilities... maybe either of our fellow Goldoan dragon laguz like Nasir or Rajaion could qualify ― there's only one Tellius unit listed in the leak, while there are three Fódlan characters (in two units) and the remaining character is from the world of Ylisse, the unit could also be related to Robin, that didn't happen last time though, but it doesn't mean this year this will hold true as well (because I.S. can break patterns randomly, like how they create them), but if it does then that's neat, it seems like the more likely thing anyway. Nasir would perhaps be more interesting though, and fitting, so perhaps my best guess, and there's not much science behind it:

He's a... special connection with Ena, I don't want to spoil the details but feel free to read who are his relatives here and what's more, he could be a blue dragon unit (hopefully armored but infantry will do) based on his gameplay in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, we also haven't gotten a free blue dragon unit since mid-2018 (you can see the full list here), so it'd be great to see one again after over three years.

I think he has all the reason to be armored and blue dragon though, start with checking his base stats and growth rates in here, he's slow, he moves slowly and can't fly, plus since he's a [White Dragon], it makes him most likely somehow related with holy/light magic, blue is often delegated to users of light or thunder magic in Fire Emblem Heroes but that's not always true ― then again, Ena was added as an infantry unit, she moves as slowly as Nasir and has even lower base speed (but higher growth), so that's why I suggest either can happen if he's our free unit.

But we'll see, this all is just a guess with some ideas I thought would be fun to theorycraft and wanted to share, thank you so much if you have read through my guesses! 🙂

#feh #fe heroes #fire emblem heroes #fire emblem #radiant dawn

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ohcaptaintarthister · 6 years ago

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The Assassination of Jaime Lannister*

Rant contains spoilers of Season 8 Episode 4 of Game of Thrones. Look away if you haven't seen it.

Right. Here we go.

I did not read the series A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) until Season 5 of Game of Thrones. Fantasy is not my favorite genre. Besides these books by George RR Martin, the only fantasy novel I've read was The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King.

I was drawn to the books because of the show. They're not easy to read. Besides being thick enough to actually hurt someone with it, I read them with zero ideas about the conventions of fantasy, the worldling and so on. I was curious and wanted to see. Also, Season 5 took too long. After a weekend where I binged on Seasons 1 to 4, I needed to know about the books.

The wait for Season 5 was reason one. Curiosity the second. The third was I have fallen in love with Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth. Yes. I was in love with them as a pair. They are my favorite characters.

Back then I had no idea what shipping meant, and what fandoms were. But I knew I had to see if the chemistry of Jaime and Brienne in the show, awesomely played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Gwendoline Christie, resulted from casting and adaptation or if the characters' interactions sizzled in the books. In other words, and this is vocabulary I picked up once I began wading deeper into the fandom, I was curious if it was canon.

And it was!

On their own and together, Jaime and Brienne were written with nuanced complexity. Jaime, especially, seemed sketched to cover the entire spectrum of gray and other unknown shades of it. Readers and show-onlys went from wishing this guy Seven Hells for throwing a ten-year-old child from a window to cheering him on as he found himself, often with great reluctance at first, on a path to redemption. Because Jaime, once separated from his family--the continuing disapproval of his father Tywin because he was nothing more than a glorified bodyguard and the quicksand relationship with twin sister Cersei--was finally free to be a man on his own. It did not matter that he was one of the greatest sword fighters, that he was a Lannister and Kingsguard. Robb Stark's army captured him because he was leading the Lannister armies. He lost his hand for thinking being a Lannister gave him protection and privilege. One-handed and probably still fevered, he jumped into the bear pit to rescue Brienne of Tarth. And before that, he saved her from being raped too.

As all that Jaime had been was gradually stripped away to reveal a man who murdered his king to protect the people yet one who loved his sister without guilt, Brienne was there in the picture of him being rendered anew. Honestly, because of Brienne, I swung to Team Jaime. Possibly with pom-poms too.

But after reading the books and seeing some episodes again, I began to wonder if David Benioff and D.B. Weiss hated the character.

While in the books Jaime said, "The things we do for love" WITH LOATHING, in the show he said the line with a smirk, that throwing a boy out the window was the natural consequence of protecting his affair with Cersei. Maybe Show!Jaime didn't see it as a consequence but something that simply had to be done but without smugness.

Okay, I thought. That was weird but the writers have to know right? They read the books.

When Jaime and Brienne finally have that bath in the show, and how it was adapted as faithfully as possible, I thought the show finally understood him. It was weird that Jaime returned to Cersei before the Purple Wedding but i thought of nothing of it.

Until THAT episode in Season 4.

In the books, the scene above should be when Jaime returned at King's Landing after being captured by Robb Stark and The Brave Companions. The reunion was from Jaime' point of view. Cersei's consent was clear:

"Hurry," she was whispering now, "quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime." Her hands helped guide him. "Yes," Cersei said as he thrust, "my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you're home now, you’re home." She kissed his ear and stroked his short bristly hair."

In the show, she actually said, "It's not right!" a few times. Also, a few episodes prior to this, we saw Jaime complaining to her that he had been "back for weeks," and wanted to resume their affair. While in the books we saw two people falling in each other's arms after being apart for a long time, and needing each other desperately, in the show we saw rape. Though the claim by Benioff and Weiss was due to "bad editing/lighting" and that it was "unintentional," their refusal to actually address the issue and just re-edit and re-broadcast buried even more Jaime's redemption arc. As a viewer I forgave this mistake. Maybe next season?

Nope. It got worse.

When Jaime and Cersei made love by Joffrey' body in the books, this was the last time the twins would have sex. The books showed Jaime's gradual disillusionment with Cersei--he thought she drank too much, was tired of her scheming. Tyrion also told him about her affairs with other men. So when Jaime went to Riverrun to recover it for the Crown, he was not only the farthest from Cersei again, he was done. Just DONE. Her pleas for him to help her and promises of love end up tossed in the fire.

The show, rather than adapting this, simply diverged. Season 5 was as confused in what to do with Jaime as lots of viewers were. Season 6 saw Jaime and Cersei resume their affair before he left for the Riverlands. Returning to King's Landing in the finale, we saw the chilling look Jaime gave Cersei during her coronation.

Perhaps this was it. This would be when he falls out of love.

HA.

Season 7, until this weekend's episode, was THE WORST ADAPTATION OF JAIME. There. I'm saying it. THE WORST.

Why? It wasn't even the incest that pissed me off. Jaime, who slew the Mad King for wanting to torch King's Landing with wildfyre, did a dizzying 180 by ENABLING his sister, who murdered Queen Margaery, her former fiance, Kevan Lannister and other innocent members of the court by wildfire. Season 7 Jaime simply took Cersei at her word. Forget about Tommen, THEIR LAST SON. Who committed suicide as a result of his wife's murder. Forget about what really caused the Sept explosion. What mattered was creating a dynasty for "the last Lannisters who count."

Jaime stood by her side and in the queen' name, contributed in tearing further apart the Seven Kingdoms. No questions asked. LITERALLY no questions asked. Despite telling Cersei of the danger of her new position, he went on to rant about the lack of allies. That can be read as Jaime being practical but as the season progressed, it was proof that he would be at her side no matter what. No matter who had to be murdered. He DID say he would murder everyone until it was only the two of them left in the world. Alright.

LIoking back on past episodes, Cersei always succeeded in keeping Jaime at her side with promises of going public with their affair. In the books, Jaime pressed her to let people know he was her choice and she refused. In the Season 4 finale, she told him she told Tywin about them, resulting in passionate and this time consensual sex on a table in the White Sword Tower. In Episode 3 of Season 7, after Cersei fucked him to celebrate her victory over the Sand Snakes, we saw a loved up Jaime in the morning after.

This would be the happiest viewers had seen Jaime. Cersei, now really THE Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, would openly fuck him. The scandal reached as far as Eastwatch, with Tormund, wanting to clarify, asking which queen was discussed in a conversation. "The one with the dragons or the one who fucks her brother?"

After Daenerys and her Dothraki army burned the Lannister forces on their way back to King's Landing, a shaken and muddy Jaime returned to Cersei right away. And in the same episode, Cersei revealed she was pregnant again. This was happy news, indeed but Jaime needed to know one thing: who will Cersei acknowledge as the father.

"You."

Now I refuse to think Cersei had once again succeeded in manipulating him. I think she WAS pregnant. There's no way to fake joy like that. And yeah, though I don't ship them, I understood Jaime's happiness. Finally, he would get to be a real father.

Still, still, still. Season 7 Jaime really made no sense. There was none of Book Jaime here. None. What we saw was a guy who supported a tyrant willingly and was now going to be a real daddy. I hate it but that's really Season 7 Jaime. Even when he left Cersei, the reason was a headscratcher.

"I don't believe you," has got to be the worst break-up line because it's lame. Better if Jaime just looked at Cersei with puppy dog eyes and walked away. Really.

The beginning of Season 8 saw the writing of Jaime hitting the right beats. A different man, check. A man who honestly regrets what he did to Bran, check. A man who was no longer the golden lion and ready to fulfill a vow he made, check. Hearteyes at Brienne, check.

He knighted Brienne. BIG, FAT CHECKS.

In episode four, The Last of the Starks, Benioff and Weiss, probably tired from the glare of their computer screens, seemed to have just written the episode in bullet points. It became glaringly obvious they wanted the series over and done with. Fuck decent writing.

Jaime Lannister is not the only one who was badly written in the latest episode. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about Qyburn's ballista and Euron apparently a sharp-shooter. We have no idea how Missandei was captured. That drinking game with Jaime, Brienne, Podrick and Tyrion was awkward and misogynistic--seriously, why shame Brienne for being a virgin?

And Sansa! Sansa basically saying if she had not been raped and abused, she wouldn't be in the position she is now! Who on earth says anything like that? Answer: no one. And I don't mean Arya.

And Missandei. The ONE WOMAN OF COLOR in a blindingly white show is chained and beheaded!

Then Jaime. Oh, Jaime.

There are no happy endings in Game of Thrones. Ned Starks gets beheaded. Jon Snow gets knifed. Sansa is raped. Catelyn, Robb and Talisa get butchered. Just when victory is within reach, characters are punished so cruelly it's inhuman.

But it doesn't mean crappy writing. At fifteen million dollars an episode this season, I expect writing that reflects intelligence. Who cares about CGI wolves and dragons when the writing is shit?

Now it's no longer a question if David Benioff and D.B. Weiss hate Jaime. THEY DO. Everyone else was buffed up or given meat. They couldn't even spare Jaime Lannister a decent-sized bone.

I don't blame Jaime for leaving Brienne. Hear me out.

After Brienne and Sansa tell him the latest developments in King's Landing with regard to Cersei, we see Jaime shocked and even horrified. The next scene, he's in the chambers with Brienne contemplating what to do. And this is where the writing becomes really shitty:

1. He left her without saying goodbye.

2. He LEFT Brienne with her thinking he did it for Cersei.

What was the point of according her the respect and honor of being a knight--done by his own hand? What was the point of telling her he was no longer the fighter he was? Where was the respect when he was going to leave her as a regrettable one night stand? (But Winterfell to King's Landing is a month by land so I assume they've been banging for that long)

Nothing, it's just illogical shit.

Had the writers made just a bit more effort, Jaime Lannister should have been shown experiencing some happiness with Brienne, rather than Tyrion telling the viewers about it. We don't see it. We're just told and have to take their word for it. Jaime could have benefitted too in leaving Brienne in the NEXT episode. Why? It increases the stakes. Just one scene showing Jaime happy, just one, and of him ACTUALLY talking to Brienne about having to leave instead of being found out, and the episode probably won't be as crappy. I don't mind Brienne begging and crying, heartbreaking as that scene is. What I mind is Jaime never being shown what he stands to lose if he leaves Winterfell. Olenna Tyrell, before he he grants her the mercy of taking poison, had warned him it will be too late for him. She's right.

I believe he goes to King's Landing because of the guilt that he began a war to protect Cersei. When he does things for Cersei, the consequences are horrible and far-reaching. Easy to call him dumb and he is. But let's not forget that he charged at Daenerys and Drogon with just a spear thinking to end it all. A spear against a fire-breathing dragon. Like, what are the odds, right?

I'm not going to say anything more about The Bang That Was Promised And Sucked Donkey Balls. Enough has been said, enough hearts have been broken. We KNOW the world of Game of Thrones is dark and bitter and almost without hope. We really do. But as fans of the books and the show, FANS WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR THE SERIES BE RENEWED AND HBO TO INCREASE THE BUDGET EVERY SEASON, all we ask for is good writing. We get that without actual material from George the writing is challenging. WE REALLY DO.

But is it too much to ask for the writers to set aside their hatred for one of the best characters in the series and understand him? Give him the material he deserves in the show? There is none of the Book Jaime trying so hard to be honorable. None. Instead what we've been given, since the first episode, is a train wreck of an adaptation that has now been confirmed as a character assassination.

It's not dragonfyre that has killed Jaime but writing that is careless, hurried and just plain awful. In Benioff and Weiss' determination and delusion in finishing the TV series on a high note, Jaime Lannister has been left with barely a whimper.

*Previously titled, "When Adaptations Assassinate A Character."

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