#and goes into some tangents

[roydeezed]

One Piece-Chapter Round-Up(Chapter 1083)

Okay so this week is probably the first normal chapter we’ve had in a while after Oda’s streak of absolute 11/10 chapters in the last few weeks. It was just a 10/10 chapter. Average really. Jokes aside though, if you’re a One Piece fan and reading this, can I just take a moment to gush about how amazing this series and its community are? Like, we’re all over the world. Most of us don’t even share a language or continent, much less the same country. We all got into it at different points in the past 25 years and at different points in our lives. And it’s affected us all so much. I can’t help but romanticize such a romantic series. It’s been a journey for us as much as it has been for the Straw Hats. And like with every journey, it’s going to come to an end too. It’s bittersweet but I can still remember the feeling I had reading certain chapters and moments. Where I was during Rocketman’s chase in Enies Lobby, what I was doing during Skypeia, how stormy and dark it was outside when I first saw Hogback, and how reading Ace’s death shocked me for the entire school day. And all of that’s coming to an end. I know a lot of people joke about Oda’s estimate that One Piece is going to end soon, but if you’ve paid attention, his insistence that it’s going to end in 2025 has always remained the same. I bring this up because in a recent announcement about the live-action show, Oda brought it up again. I think we all realised it when “He Laughed” happened, but One Piece is going to end soon. I just want to say I’m really glad I got to take part in this journey. And meet and talk with people in real life and over the internet about it. And also enjoy the creativity it’s inspired in the readers too. We’re really lucky to have such an awesome series and awesome community be a constant in our lives for the past while.

Okay rose coloured glasses Roy over, it’s time to shift over into analysis mode. I know it’s not for everyone but I love One Piece politicking so much! But before we get into that below the cut, I just want to talk about how adorable and sinister the cover page is. Doffy is helping out the baby chick but he’s so doing it to manipulate it later. Never change Doffy, stay despicable. Alright see ya down there!

Okay, so we get into some really intense political and tactical discussions right away. This chapter is almost laid out like the establishing chapter of a big battle, like we’ve seen in Alabasta and Dressrosa. Where we needed to know the locations and particular struggles of each battle. But it’s not going to be a battle. At least not in the fisticuffs sense. It’s more subtle. But that’s exactly why Oda is being so thorough in this chapter. Oda prefers to rely on the art to tell the story as much as he can so with the amount of dialogue in this chapter it’s almost like that one chapter of Hunter X Hunter. You know the one.

Right away, we get Sabo establishing the objectives they set out to accomplish and Dragon and Iva clarifying to what degree they were successful. It’s a really effective tool to deliver expository dialogue and reminds me a lot of the way Christopher Nolan delivers it in his movies. It’s necessary to do it in such a direct way to take the hit of setting things up as early and in short an amount of time as possible but it’s also punchy and dynamic as the deliverer of each set of expository dialogue gets to showcase what their priorities and personality are. 

So the objectives. Let’s start with the first. Destroying the celestial Dragon’s symbol. It’s really interesting how the Revo’s symbolic targets are the Celestial Dragons. To me this, and Sabo’s realistic morals later on, symbolize a muddled goal. Because, in the way One Piece deals with dreams and ideals, it doesn’t leave space for realism. Dreams are meant to be outlandish and unreal and way too far out of reach. They shouldn’t be realistic. But this chapter grounds it all. Makes us face the realism of it. And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love it, the crunchy technicality of it all. And I think this is an incredibly smart way to go about it. But if we’re looking at this through the ideals Oda has set up, I think he’s saying this is the wrong way to go about it. It reminds me of how way back in Sabaody, Rayleigh said that the Straw Hats might come to a different conclusion once they learn the true history. And how the twenty kingdoms destroyed the Ancient Kingdom and took over. I think there’s a parallel there and it’s about how systems of power will continue to oppress if only the cogs in it are replaced. Meaning, the Revo’s could end up just becoming the new oppressors. It’s a cycle of power and abuse perpetrated by the system. 

Destroying the symbol of the Dragons also parallels with how the Straw Hats destroyed the flag of the Marines. Their attack wasn’t planned ahead of time. It was the fastest way to show Robin that they didn’t care who came after them. What she meant to them. This is also what the Revo’s are trying to show the world but the thought and planning of it, belies to us the impurity of it all. This also ties into the third objective Sabo mentioned. Destroying their food reserves and how the Revo’s were placing the Holy land under siege. The Dragons are horrible people. That, no one can deny. And I love the righteous rage of the Revo’s, Iva and especially Sabo. But notice the joy Iva takes in having them go hungry. How dramatic it’s made to be. It’s role reversal. What the Revo’s are doing may be right, but they’re just taking on the role of the oppressors at this point. And I know it’s not as cut and dry as that. That’s war. That’s why I love how Oda has injected this into the story. There’s always been great evil and great good front and center in the story. But the middle ground? The grey area? That’s always been lurking but is equally important. Now that we’re reaching the endgame, Oda has finally decided to let it take center stage and I’m so glad he has. If anything I can see this dividing the community and I am here for it. Because I think that’s when Oda is going to show us how the Straw Hats handle this. And that’s to dream and reach for an impossible ideal. I’m so excited!

Before we get into discussing the final goal, I also want to point out how casually Dragon mentions that eight of the twelve nations' uprisings were successful. You know what that means right? Four of those nations are going to incur a heavy punishment. And Lulusia has already paid the price. Sabo also mentions how Cobra was an acceptable loss but we’ll get more into that later. But this is the collateral damage the Revo’s are willing to accept. We know Luffy would never accept that. And that’s another point of Oda’s genius. The One Piece world is so nuanced. Because I strongly believe that Luffy is going to abolish almost all, if not all systems of oppression. And Oda wants Luffy’s blind hope to set an example. But he also realizes that it would kinda set the wrong message if the oppressed were told to seek out a peaceful resolution, because the world doesn’t work like that. So I think he’s using the Revo’s to soften the blow of it all. Where they’ll weaken the systems of oppression and somewhat take it over, but leave it in a weak enough state that Luffy can dismantle it. That way Oda can have his cake and eat it too. Speculation but I strongly believe it. 

And now finally the second point. The freeing of the slaves and Kuma. We’ve barely gotten off of the first page and I've written two pages of this in my google docs. I’m sorry for the length yall hahaha. But this chapter is incredibly dense. This point, of freeing the slaves, is probably the most uncriticizable of their goals. It’s definitely the system of power I can see the Revo’s outright abolishing. It also plays into the squeeze they’re putting on the Celestial Dragons. Not only have they lost their food but also their labor force. We also know that Sabo helped to free the slaves by finding the keys to their collars and that Bonney is in the area too and that she’s trying to free Kuma so I wonder if Sabo and her helped each other out. But Bonney is also the reason I think we’re going to see this lead right back into Egghead as she’ll fill in the blanks. 

Next, we get the announcement of a new set of bad guys who are directly loyal to the Dragons. Oda really can’t help himself. I believe Oda when he says One Piece is going to end soon, but things like this are why I don’t blame people for thinking otherwise. Oda’s the type to create 99 alts in an mmo before finishing the story with any of them (this comment is gw2 coded). But on either side of this reveal we get discussions on the part the media plays in this revolution. When I first saw Dragon mention that the media censored everything, I was a bit confused as I didn’t understand how the nations knew to rebel. But then I remembered the posters of Sabo and read closer. The news censored the mentions of other nations rebelling, but are mostly letting the truth get out about what the Revo’s did. I’m really interested in Big News Morgan as a character. Because on one hand, this all feels very calculated and in favour of the Revo’s while placating the government, but also Morgans seems to be someone only wanting to tell the best story while ignoring the inconvenient facts.

This all leads to the Flames of Rebellion. See, the way the story is playing out, with Sabo being the poster child of the rebellion, seems to work in favour of the Marines, as it gives them one symbol to take down and end the rebellion. But in actuality, it makes an unkillable symbol. Because if they let him live, he goes on to do more heroic deeds and raise the profile of the Revo’s. But if they kill him, he becomes a martyr and a symbol for greater revolution. That’s why this feels like Morgans is hoodwinking the marines in the guise of helping them and secretly helping the Revo’s. Or this could just be him telling the best story he could find. Either way this chapter must have been important to him as it did contain a lot of “Big News!”

And now, to get into Sabo’s character. I love Sabo. But very specifically the adult version of him. As a set with Luffy and Ace, he wasn’t as dynamic as them. But as the Flame Emperor?!? He’s just perfect. He’s spurred on by a righteous rage stemming from years living with an unfocused anger. For the longest time, arguably his formative years, he grew up not knowing why he was so angry. He didn’t have any context to his anger but everytime he saw injustice in the world it felt like that anger grew. He was of two worlds so he can’t remain impartial or unrealistic. He has to pick one to avoid getting swamped by the other. And it’s a flame of anger he has to keep stoked by fighting and rebelling. He’s worried that if he doesn’t it’ll go out and then he’ll have no purpose. That’s why, while his humble nature doesn’t let him play too hard into the role of “Flame Emperor”, his self sacrificing side and righteous anger see it as only proper that he be the kindling to the flame of rebellion, just as Cobra was. It’s a guilt of being a cog in the machines of oppression. Cobra was a cog just like Sabo. Or so he believes. That’s why he’s okay with both of their deaths. Maybe the mera-mera-no-mi only picks users that see themselves as sacrifices, as kindling to greater causes. One thing we know for sure is that Luffy won’t let that happen this time. 

This picture absolutely sends me. If I saw this even I would be like, yo Sabo, this you? But I wonder? Sabo looked surprised at the picture. If Sabo never went near Cobra, could this be a reintroduction to Bon Clay? We always knew Bon was morally ambiguous, their greatest loyalty to only to their friends. So this could be a deal made with bon Clay to frame Sabo as a killer. Only for it to backfire, maybe due to Morgans meddling. Or this could just be an unlucky arrival by Sabo just in time for the picture. Though I wonder about that because it would be right in front of the Gorosei, who have been teased to be powerful, so they would’ve just cut Sabo down.

Anyways, moving on because this post is dragging and I am also running out of time irl, gotta go do something, we get into the actual flashback. We get the absolute chaos of scattered forces, a showcase of the despicable nature of the Dragons, and the reintroduction of one of my new favorite Revo’s now, Karasu. This only happened because of this chapter. (Karasuno Fly! Yeah I'm a Haikyuu fan too, what of it)(Okay weird tangent but by typing the Celestial Dragons as Dragons so many times, something in my brain unlocked and I just want to point out that Kaido being a dragon mirrors Luffy’s fight against the Celestial Dragons, with the big punch taking him out also mirroring Luffy punching the celestial dragon back in Sabaody, okay tangent over) Karasu is so dedicated to his crow aesthetic that he made a totally unrelated fruit work to enhance it and themed his attack style after it. Mad respect to him. But it also shows how fruit users define the fruit and not vice versa. Love the other captains too but Karasu has shot to near the top of my favourite Revo’s list. 

We also get Fujitora, a marine who despises the Dragons attempting to call down a meteor. Oda is able to inject humour into even the most serious situations. But compared to a lot of the fights over the series we see how tactical and precise the Revo’s are. What they’re doing is messy but they’ve planned it all out. They’re holding back the admirals while Sabo gets the keys. They’ve destroyed the food supplies and the symbol already, taking care of the instant tasks probably at the same time. It’s surgical. 

And now we get the main setup panel. It tells us what’s at stake and where everyone is. Sabo freeing Kuma will not only save Shirahoshi from the Celestial Dragon (forgive me, these shitstains are the only characters whose names I actively forget), but it will also accomplish Bonney’s goal. I’m eager to see how that plays out. 

I love Vivi so much. She often seems like the only one with a full awareness of events. She usually has a hyper awareness of events. We see her confronting Lucci, having her, who I see as a Straw Hat, meet one of their recurring foes she hasn’t had a chance to meet yet. I don’t remember if it was established earlier when we saw the reverie for the first time but the rest of CP0 was also seen in this chapter. 

And finally we come to Cobra. He leaves his guards behind and goes into see the Gorosei. Alone. You realize what this means. First of all. The assumption that Sabo is telling the truth is what we’re going ahead with. Which means. That the Gorosei outright murdered Cobra. That’s… huge. What could he have talked about that prompted such a reaction? With no break next week and such an extensive set-up chapter I feel like there’s a chance we find out real soon. CHOO CHOO, THIS HYPE TRAIN HAS NO BREAKS!!! LET’S GO ROCKETMAN!!!

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[steddiehyperfixation]

hc that steve actually likes metal and listens to it regularly, just always pretty quietly. so when eddie, who never has his stereo turned down to anything below 40 and even that's too quiet sometimes, gets in steve's car one day to hear metallica playing through the speakers with the volume only set to like 7, he's immediately torn between being ecstatic that steve is listening to one of his favorite bands and outrage that he's not giving it the proper listening experience it deserves

[maraudersidk]

???: i bet weasley only got the job cuz he slept with him ugh

Percy: *slept with him after he got the job* how ridiculous i would never😒

[xxplastic-cubexx]

chat i think im gonna be sick

(Powers of X #6)

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

I'm kind of obsessed with Blackwall's idealized ideas about the Wardens. He was once picked up by a Warden and lulled by the promise of atoning for his crimes and turning his life around, only for that opportunity to slip away when the Warden not only saved him, but sacrificed his own life to do it. This whole experience makes our Blackwall become a Warden in heart, if not in blood, but with his own ideas of what a Grey Warden should be - noble, brave, inspiring, heroic, self-sacrificial. Everything he now wants to embody. He knows well that he's not there, but he wants nothing more than to start from scratch and be that.

In his beliefs, he reminds me a bit of Wynne in Origins who tells the Warden at some point that the Grey Wardens are supposed to be more than killing machines and weapons against the blight.

“There’s more to being a Grey Warden than killing darkspawn and saving the world from the Blight. Ultimately, being a Grey Warden is about serving others, about serving all people, whether elves or dwarves or men. As a Grey Warden, you are a guardian of men. And you guard them because their continued existence is more important than you are.”

However, we know that's not exactly how it works. That's what they want the Wardens to be. The light against darkness. The shield against monsters.

Although it's not entirely wrong, either, I suppose, all things considered. The more darkspawn they obliterate and push back, the more people are protected from them. Of course, sacrificing their lives to fight literal monsters, which means those same monsters don't eat everybody's kids, ultimately is heroic, and it's something that must have been born out of the need to protect the world and its inhabitants (from the Blight). But to have idealized opinions of the Wardens to this degree, you have to ignore all the other shady stuff and the mentality we, as players, also know the Wardens for. The fact that the Wardens are primarily weapons to slay darkspawn, prevent and end Blights, by any means necessary. The last part is important. After all, they are the Grey Wardens, not the White Wardens. They recruit from all walks of life and are famous for taking in criminals. Not to redeem themselves and get a second chance at life, but because they usually have nowhere to go and nothing left to lose. It's not a coincidence that each of the Origins gets chosen by Duncan, not only because he sees them as capable, but also because they are in a situation they can't escape from. Either they join the Wardens, or they're done for.

We know the Wardens from a few games now, but does the public in the setting even know? Does the average person have any idea how far the Wardens are willing to go? Besides grand stories of slaying monsters in the dark and preventing the end of the world? Probably not. The order is very secretive. And it explains a lot. The Wardens end up sounding almost romantic, when being a Warden is anything but. Is it ignorance talking out of these characters? Perhaps.

It once again shows us this aspect of Dragon Age where you can't take everything a character says as a fact, because the setting is full of people who have no idea what they're talking about, but who are absolutely convinced that they do.

And yet, I can't help but also like Wynne's and Blackwall's romantic ideas about what the Wardens are or should be, almost knights in shining armour and all that. They're fairy tales, but they're beautiful fairy tales. And I can't fault the characters for wanting to believe it or even live it. Especially in case of Blackwall, who sees it as a way to make up for the crimes he committed, somewhat. In the end, this might actually be a bigger draw to join the Wardens than, "Got nowhere to go? Come suffer horribly and probably die gruesomely with us!" It all sounds great on paper, though. I can't fault Davrin for trying to find purpose in life by becoming a monster hunter, either.

And maybe a little bit of idealism doesn't hurt. Not only it's good motivation, but in the end, doing things by "any means necessary" doesn't always pay off, either. It led the Wardens into all kinds of trouble, like getting tricked into employing dangerous forms of blood magic and demon summoning, basically into doing their enemy's work for them. In their determination to win at any cost, they helped trigger a cataclysmic event. Maybe having some principles isn't so bad after all.

In the end, I can appreciate that we get to see the clash of the old and new blood in Veilguard, where there's hope for the order to transform into an organization that's less secretive, less exclusive, and hopefully less prone to letting corruption spread through its ranks and make other devastating mistakes. Duncan once said that letting people join the Wardens isn't an "act of charity", and I like how Evka and Antoine go, "Yeah, you know what? Fuck that." And that likely inspires more loyalty. I imagine Blackwall would like that.

[sunlaire]

losing my mind over this random bishop talking about conclave and calling it anti-catholic propaganda and then the director coming back with what i think is, yeah, kind of the funniest response

like. to me the movie ultimately landed on a message of radical acceptance of other people. it said there are so many cruel and horrible things out in the world and within ourselves. but if we work together and have faith in the strength that others can give us, there can be real change. Things can be good. There are less differences that divide us as we may think. it isn't "Us versus Them" its just Us as human beings. To watch that and think "this is clearly anti-catholic propaganda". Is kind of funny.

[radioactive-mouse]

i think the thing about the way grian deals with grief is that he only operates in absolute extremes.

like. losing scar fucking. destroyed him. he literally decided he’d rather be dead than keep going after that (in a season that was the first and therefore had no precedent of anyone coming back) and then in last life something. happens. he spends the entire season trying to claw his way back to mumbo’s side and then just. slaughters him in cold blood. granted i think part of that is due to his absolutely wild paranoia spiral he was going through in last life (which is another thing i could talk about for ages, but like. see him murdering jimmy and mumbo in a situation where it was clear they weren’t going to attack and were actively fleeing the situation and then crying self defense as my Just Trust Me Bro evidence for now) but i also think the way he immediately turns to martyn for reassurance (“back me up here martyn, they went for me” literally exactly the first words he says after mumbo’s down) is extremely indicative of the way he will just. kill his ability to grieve at a moments notice. hell, i think the way he treats scar like shit in last life is part of this too! losing scar destroyed him so thoroughly that he literally couldn’t live with himself and i think for grian, when presented with the option to either open himself up to that kind of pain a second time or shut him out and bite and snap to make sure he never has to go through that again, obviously he’s going to choose the latter.

it’s the same thing every time. the horror with which he reacts to bigb’s death, vs him preemptively planning to jump ship the second joel and jimmy go down. secret life admittedly didn’t give him much room for grief, but i think that’s ultimately why he came out of it relatively unscathed and is able to start wild life out on a high.

and now mumbo and skizz. total obliteration or complete shutdown and move on. he cannot find a middle ground. he’s damn near catatonic as he marches his way down the mountain and tries to explain to skizz what happened, but now he knows better, knows it was stupid to think this wouldn’t happen again, and this time he’s ready. to him, skizz was already dead the moment mumbo’s body hit the ground.

[howlonomy]

Ms. 15.5%

[prismatoxic]

chilchuck: you're so stupid and weird that i probably wouldn't notice if you were being mimicked by a slime laios: haha. okay. well. there are other ways to tell

i love their dynamic so much it makes me ill

(i learned my lesson from the last time i shared a few panels from one of these, so the full one is below)

from misc monster tales #6

[tamamorikun]

Hii I just finished the chapter 7 dlc and decided to write a summary of it for those who might be interested, since who knows if or when it'll be localized ! I've only done the good ending so far though, but this got pretty long as it so I put it in a google doc for easier reading.

You can find it here ! Spoilers for the whole thing obviously, except for the bad ending. (I'll probably add it when I get around to doing it!)

I'll probably take this down if it gets localized or if someone else does a full translation, but I hope this helps someone who might be interested :) it was really fun!

[revehae]

we need to kill everyone at sm entertainment

[sweetest-honeybee]

was cleaning my fridge when I randomly thought "a clean home is a happy home" and now I'm thinkin how infuriated Home would be if he gets dirty or to add even more fuel to the already blazing fire, how much of a clean freak Grey Au!Wally would be to keep Home happy

Ohh! A clean home is definitely a happy home! I’m seeing this more like Home being such a clean freak haha!

[loregoddess]

2am Temenos thoughts I'm now typing out in the morning: I like Temenos' English voice acting but it has a very particular tone. Do you think that has any influence on his (mis)characterization?

Oh hmm, y'know I hadn't considered that but you might be on to something, because voice line delivery does affect how people perceive a character, although I think part of it may be localization choices and direction of the voice acting as well. (I had way more thoughts on this question than I was expecting to, hence the cut bc of length).

Like, I've seen discussions about writing quality vs. quality of voice acting ("whether the character writing is good, or whether the voice acting carries the character" is a debate I've seen several times), and also I've seen people talk about how differences in the voice acting performances across different localizations affect how the character comes across differently (i.e. there's a series of videos that were popular after BotW came out where every cutscene was compared in all the languages the game had been dubbed in, with a lot of people talking about how Zelda's breakdown in the "Memory 16: Despair" cutscene seemed way more emotional in some languages than others). So like, the vocal performance does factor into audience perception, no argument there.

I went ahead and looked up compilations of Temenos's voice lines in both English and Japanese, and while I'm very much not fluent in Japanese at all, and therefore can't pick up too much on tonal shifts, I will note that a lot of the anger Temenos spends so much time masking seems to come through a bit more clearly in his JP voice lines (his JP unique battle line against Kaldena is sounds especially furious, and while the ENG delivery of the same line is definitely angrier sounding than most of his other ENG battle lines, there's something that feels a bit rawer about the JP delivery, at least to my ears).

This is no shade at his ENG VA, since I think the voice acting was pretty strong overall (although the recording quality of some of the lines is another matter, but again not the VA's fault), and I don't think the JP is better or worse than the ENG voice performance, since (recording quality aside) they're both solid performances, but they do have slightly different feels to them.

I personally felt the ENG delivery of the story dialogue lines often gave Temenos a sort of slightly playful but aloof tone, but either by choice of the voice direction or simply due to how the VA's voice naturally is, the anger (while it's definitely there) doesn't come across as noticeably angry or aggressively as I've seen with some other VA performances. Which isn't a bad thing per se, bc even in real life no two people show anger or even sound angry in the same way, and I think Temenos's ENG voice still works for his characterization.

And that's of course just looking at one emotion. I'd have to do a lot more digging (or replay the game w/ the JP voices turned on) to see how the voice line delivery sounds for scenes like Jorg's death or the ruins of the Kal.

Unfortunately, since I can't translate like, 90% of what's being said in the JP lines by ear, I can't compare them against the ENG localization to see if the word choice of the localization shifts the tone or implied meaning any (although for what I can translate by ear, the localization seems to be a fairly close 1:1 for the battle lines at least, and typically I don't have a lot of beef w/ localization when I can get my hands on fan translations of original JP text to compare/contrast). I do think the word choice for localizations affects how a character is interpreted, even with good localizations--except, again how said word choice is interpreted usually reveals maybe more about the audience than the author.

For example, I know a lot of people read Temenos calling Crick "Little Lamb" as flirtatious, and I guess I kinda get why that interpretation exists, but to me the nickname always seemed...not condescending per se, and not intentionally mean, but almost as if Temenos is teasing Crick for his unquestioning faith and calling him childish for it. As a result, my reading "Little Lamb" as "your unquestioning faith is childish, I'm going to tease you a bit about that until you've matured" makes it seem like Temenos is putting a lot more distance between himself and Crick than reading "Little Lamb" as a cute, flirtatious nickname does. Now, I rarely read romantic undertones to a lot of dialogue, and shipping is the least important thing to me when I'm engaging with a story, so my interpretation of that line probably says more about me than it does about the intention of the writers.

However! The vocal delivery of the voice line doesn't really give us any insight either, bc while I didn't hear it as sounding flirtatious, lots of other people apparently did. Now, it's not like I know what goes on with the direction during the recording sections, how much information about the characters and scene and story the VAs are given, and how that information, or lack thereof, affects how they voice act, so again no shade on the VA or even the voice direction as a whole, but as you noted, choices were made in the direction that made it so Temenos has a very particular tone.

Now again, it's hard to say how much this does or doesn't affect a person's interpretation bc, well, vocal and tonal interpretation isn't like, a science or anything. Depending on regional dialects/cultures, two people from different areas can interpret the same voice delivery in two entirely different ways (i.e. the "are city people, esp. people from NY, really rude or are they just from the city" discussions I've seen floating around about whether it's rude or not to walk into a deli and order your food w/out any small talk, and how it's more about where a person grew up that will usually inform their initial reaction to that question).

If I had to guess, I think the mischaracterization I come across for Temenos seems to stem from the fact that he puts of a façade 99% of the time, and rarely lets it slip. Unlike say, Therion, who goes through an entire arc and speech about how he's actually okay with wanting to care about and trust other people, Temenos rarely shows any vulnerability because his character arc wasn't about accepting vulnerability like Therion's was. Instead Temenos's façade plays into aspects of how he interacts with other characters, but isn't treated as an obstacle to overcome per se, which also means that the audience may miss that it's even there in the first place, mistaking the façade for the actual core characterization.

We get some indication of the "slipping façade" in the vocal deliveries, i.e. the angry "Kaldena!" battle line, or (if I'm remembering correctly) the voice lines leading up to the Arcanette boss fight, but the thing about Octopath is that it's only partly voice acted. Some of the parts where I read Temenos as letting his mask slip a bit, or otherwise him showing more emotion or vulnerability than usual, were in travel banters, which are entirely silent so we don't get to hear how the VA would have tried to navigate those scenes. Would the banters being voiced have changed interpretations and prevented popular fanon mischaracterization? Maybe, maybe not.

Possibly more importantly, Temenos's façade is notably friendly, or at least nicer than the "edgy loner who uses snark and sass to keep people at bay" façade that's on the opposite end of the "characters with trust and intimacy issues" spectrum, and most characters I've come across who seem to try to keep people from getting too close to them by being friendly tend to get mischaracterized by fans bc the "friendly mask" is so convincing and not as noticeably phony as like, being an edgy loner who's actively pushing people away despite craving friendship/love/etc. is. So this could just be a fandom thing in general, and not unique to Temenos or directly affected by vocal performances (i.e. Klavier Gavin from Ace Attorney is another character I read as masking a lot of trust issues and using friendliness as a means of keeping people away, and that is not a common reading of his characterization, at least not when I used to haunt the fandom, and AA has almost 0 voice acting so this isn't due to voice performance).

There is, of course, also the school of thought that "correct" interpretations don't exist bc everyone has their own experiences that are true to them and their interpretation of media is reflective of that, so I'll be the first to say that it's not that my interpretations of Temenos's characterization are more or less correct as compared to someone else's. And honestly like, it's a piece of fiction, so I'm not going to get upset about what the popular fanon characterization is, even if I personally think it's mischaracterization, bc I can also just ignore it.

Although, there is also a sort of fanonization that's become more frequent in fandom spaces where even characters with less complex writing get mischaracterized (simplified, smoothed over, etc.) in favor of popular fandom trends. Again, not the devil per se, but it definitely an unusual trend that I've seen an uptick in. It's almost like a commercialization of fandom, except maybe not as malicious...yet.

Anyhow, I've gotten a bit off topic, and this will be an endless set of tangents soon if I'm not careful.

So uh, yeah! The shortest answer to your questions is, yes I do believe the vocal delivery of a character's lines will affect how that character's characterization is perceived and interpreted, although there's other things that affect interpretation as well (word choice for the writing, audience's personal tastes/experiences, trends in fandom, etc.), and that a mix of these things will weave into whatever the popular interpretation and fanon characterization for that character becomes. But also everyone will still come up with their own unique interpretations of characterizations, so non-fanon interpretations will always exist as well.

[flowersinthegrocerystore]

the one flaw of nbc's hannibal (2013) is that will never got to tell hannibal to shut the fuck up

[musicalsiphonophore]

my workload this year is absolutely absurd (1.5x as much hw time as class time in maths, and since it’s double maths i have 8hrs of lessons weekly so that is A Lot, and probs as much hw time as class time in french and bio, but then i put extra time into bio myself). so i would expect to be deeply unhappy about this. but i’m not and i’m actually quite enjoying it. which is odd.

i guess it makes sense though. it has always been that in my spare time, i work on my hyperfixationy stuff, making notes on random crap or working on flute; i have never done nonworking free time stuff like watching tv (except going on tumblr ofc). and now a good half-odd of my school work is hyperfixation stuff. so i am, strangely enough, thriving under these conditions