#and i am going to read so much meta

[movementsofmylife]

kinnporsche ep 6

the symbolism (and foreshadowing?) of this episode is great.

i did appreciate cute bickering enemies to lovers etc., despite the fact that they were clearly in their own little show outside of everyone else leading mafia kp lives. which is the entire point, how different they are outside of the constraints of their environment.

yet even in this one kinn forcibly (and deceitfully) ties porsche and himself together and has more power in the relationship as the only one who can free them.

and in the end this forcible conjoining was what dragged them down. what stuck them in a literal hole.

(if this shit doesn't play out in real time in the rest of the show like what would even be the point??)

and it was only after kinn let porsche go that he was chosen by him freely. that he was able to save him.

and in the end they're forced together again because of the violence of kinn's life, and pushed back into their roles and their bad habits.

the show itself tells us that the best, safest, kindest thing for porsche would be to not end up back in kinn's life. and then to shrug it's shoulders and say, "here's some evil henchmen to shoot you back into your places bc plot lol".

and i think that when porsche finally chooses to be in the mafia, that's when he's both going to be finished his character arc of 'corruption of the innocent', and also when his relationship with kinn will be more on an even keel, when it'll finally actually feel like a choice.

the only thing that really matters in the mafia side of this show is power and its execution through violence. and it's only when porsche is able to wield some of that, and its consequent moral ruin, that porsche will have more agency in that world and in his relationship.

which feels fucked up, but this show is kind of fucked up lol.

[always-a-joyful-note]

Enstars sure is an experience. Did I miss anything?

[necrotic-nephilim]

@sasheneskywalker i love when you enable me to ramble about things because oh my god do i have thoughts.

so recently, i made a post discussing the phenomena of DC x DP and DC x MLB crossovers and why they exist and part of that post was discussing how largely speaking, at least half, if not more of the Batfamily fandom doesn't read the comics. if they interact with canon DC material, it's adaptations that are their own sequestered universes and oftentimes not remotely comic accurate or seeking to be. the most obvious example is the Young Justice cartoon. i'm adding a cut to this post because it just got so long i'm so sorry.

a lot of times, when people are discussing the "why" of this oversaturation of fanon-only fandom, they blame Wayne Family Adventures. and i think, to a point, i agree WFA is responsible for a boom in this fandom. but as someone who's been in the fandom long before we had WFA, to me it's the other way around. WFA was DC's way of meeting the demand for this easy-to-get-into, easy-to-consume content about the Batfamily that predicates itself on the comics just enough to be vaguely the same characters, but has a more sitcom, slice-of-life sort of vibe so DC could profit off of this section of the fanbase that otherwise wasn't consuming its primary material. and well, it's definitely worked. not only that, but i have a weird theory that the decline in the MCU also led to the rise in the Batfamily fandom. when you consider the fan content that made the MCU popular within fandom, it's that 2012 "they all live in Avengers Tower and Thor is eating poptarts and Clint is in the vents and there are movie nights every Friday" sort of vibe. those were the fics that were a hallmark of the fandom. and as the MCU has strayed from well... quality content in general, but specifically well-thought-out crossover content where characters can have their own arcs but also exist in a wider story where they clearly care about each other, that fandom was sort of homeless. so where do you go, if you like a superhero found family where you can have villains for angst but also stick them all in one big family-like home for silly crack and have a plethora of options for gay ships? well. you go to the Batfamily. if you write a crack/fluff Batfamily genfic with silly vibes and low stakes instead of say, a fic about a very specific comic issue even if it's a popular comic, you're *going* to get more traction for the former. because the fanbase largely just isn't reading the comics.

and i feel... complicated about this. because on one hand, Don't Like Don't Read has been a tenet of my fandom experience. i'm very pro-fandom and that includes fandom content i don't like. and to an extent, i do think this sort of should apply to Batfamily fanon. i enjoy having my moments with other comic purists, giggling over exceptionally painful OOC headcanons or even facepalming in pain over some content but it is on me to not interact with that content. you don't make fandom a better place by being hostile to fans who engage with canon in ways you don't approve of. and frankly? we as comic readers are not going to get non-comic fans to read the comics by being asshats to them. no one is going to want to pick up any comic if we get a superiority complex about it. and also, i feel like we're all lying to ourselves a little bit insisting comics are so, so easy to get into. they're not. we can just all agree, they're really not. i've been single-handedly helping my sister get into comics, specifically Wonder Woman and no matter how simple i make it, i watch her get frustrated trying to understand what pre-Crisis and post-Crisis and New-52 and Flashpoint and all these things mean and what a retcon vs a reboot is and what a Crisis Event is and what the hell Diana's current backstory even *is*. sure, you can give someone a beginner list of comics to start with and slowly dip their toes in the water but sooner or later, *something* is going to confuse them. comics as a medium straight up aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea. and if someone *just* wants to read silly fluffy fanfiction about the Batfamily, i can't entirely begrudge them for not wanting to take the hours and hours out of their day to understand this medium. it's not an accessible medium to get into. "read this and this, but this run is out of print and this run wasn't collected in trades at all but also make sure you read that event in order and this is a good comic but the backstory in it is retconned and you *have* to read this it's so important but it's also really bad because the author kind of sucks" sounds. ridiculous for someone who like. just wants to read some stuff about Nightwing. sometimes, we all make reading comics sort of sound like a chore, not a hobby.

so my point is, i do extend some grace to Batfamily fanon for existing. i think my biggest gripe is, as i said in my other post, misuse of tags (if you're not creating content about comics, maybe you don't need the comics fandom tag on Ao3, just the all media types umbrella tag) and my far bigger gripe: when panels are taken out of context to support fanon only headcanons. if i could impart *anything* onto the Batfamily fandom as a comic fan it'd be this: if you haven't *read* the comic, don't spread the panel. if you don't even know what comic it's *from*, don't spread the panel. it's fine to use comic panels to discuss your headcanons, but so often i see someone spreading a comic panel from a comic they haven't read, and when asked where it's from, they can't source it. a silly example that comes to mind is a post going around, taking a panel where Dick, in his internal monologue goes "here comes the sun. do do do do." and the post is claiming it's from him getting buried alive. when that panel comes from Nightwing (1996) #140, and he gets buried alive in Nightwing (1996) #127, two completely different moments frankensteined together. if you're going to not read the comics, that's completely fine, but unless you're sure of the source and the context, panels shouldn't be spread around. i'm sick of this specifically happening to Red Robin (2009), with ppl claiming Tim has totally killed people because he blew up some of Ra's' bases, when those panels within context, make it clear he gave everyone time to escape. and in a later arc in that very comic, Tim grapples with the idea of murdering Captain Boomerang, and *specifically chooses not to*, because he doesn't agree with murder, even against the person who has hurt him the most. if you'd like to write fanfiction where Tim is pro-murder and has done some sketch things, i'm totally on board and would probably like to read it. but there's no need to pretend it's canon from a few panels you saw out of context.

beyond that, i think it's not *entirely* correct to say that fanon is harmless. whenever i see very WFA-positive posts, they often default to the argument that WFA is fun and silly, and comic fans are killjoys for not liking it. which. i think is complicated because the issue is, WFA and fanon don't exist in a vacuum. if you like WFA power to you, i don't think it's the worst thing ever, but i do think it's degrading to these characters because honestly? they feel incompetent in the webtoon. it's one thing if WFA was solely a slice-of-life sort of deal, just having silly episodes where Bruce is taking on a PTA mom or they're all fighting for the last cookie. but when WFA attempts to take on more serious plots with these characters, it *fundamentally* falls flat in understanding them. i get it, Bruce comforting Jason having a panic attack because a noise reminded him of the crowbar felt cute in a microcosm, but i'm so serious when i say that storyline destroyed how like. half of this fandom understands Jason Todd's relationship to his trauma. it doesn't understand how he reacts when he's triggered, what coping mechanisms he seeks out, and how he would handle Bruce comforting him. even if i can believe for a brief moment Jason *would* be triggered by something like that, him running and trying to hide and then getting a hug from Bruce to make it okay is just. painful. WFA needs everything to be wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow. so even when it starts to tackle interesting concepts, it makes them fall flat with its need to be soft, low stakes, hurt/comfort. there was a two-parter episode that dealt with the complicated mutual hatred/jealousy between Tim and Damian that *almost* really interested me because for once, it felt like the webtoon wanted to explore canon messy dynamics. but of course, it had to be fixed with one conversation and a hug. you don't mend the *years* of issues these characters have like that. WFA isn't in character because these characters are hyperbole cartoonified versions of themselves to fit within the medium and be a cute happy family.

because that right there, is the crux of it. the Batfamily fanon seeks to simplify the Batfamily and force them into a nuclear family. there are so many fantastic posts on here discussing how the nuclear family-ification of the Batfam is eroding decades worth of complex histories so i won't go too far into that. but what i will say is that there's this need, in the Batfamily fandom, for the Batfamily to exist as a unit. they are a *family*. (honestly i think calling it the Batfamily is a misnomer and has been for years but we're in too deep now.) they exist to each other first, and any teams or friends they have come secondary to this family unit. you can *specifically* see this demonstrated in what headcanons are becoming popular these days. i have an entire lengthy meta in my drafts about how i *loathe* the "the Batfamily meets the Justice League" genre of fanfic because it makes no *sense*. in order to have this genre of fic exist, you must operate under the assumption that no one in the League, or adjacent to the League, knows the Batfamily exists and are thus utterly shocked to discover Batman has kids. and to make *that* work, you have to strip *every single Batfamily member* of such important dynamics and friendships so you can lock them all in Gotham for their whole lives. Dick can't have the Titans, Tim can't have Young Justice, Duke & Cass can't have the Outsiders, Jason can't have the Outlaws, Damian can't have the Supersons, Babs can't have the Birds of Prey, and so on. because if they had these relationships, they would be known to the League. the Batfamily fandom doesn't care about this, it's just "silly fanfiction", it's not trying to be serious. but how can you say you like Dick Grayson as a character if you don't understand the Titans *are* his family? at some points of his life, moreso than the Batfamily even is. it is constantly repeated to us in most comics with Dick how much the Titans mean to him. he *needs* them to be who he is. the same extends to every other Batfamily member, most of which have been full League members at this point. but in fanon, that doesn't matter. the Batfamily are a sequestered unit first, and all of those side relationships are secondary and easy to toss away, if it makes your fanfic work better.

and because they have to be a unit first, you have these forced relationships that dump years of actual canon material for the sake of making them get along. the Batfamily fandom has its favorites and well. it's no secret it's usually the boys. Jason and Tim by *far* stand out as fandom faves so, their dynamic is a heavily explored one. it does matter that in canon they don't tend to get along and especially don't see each other as family. what matters is that you can push dynamics onto them. and so fanon gets all twisted up about which Robin Tim actually idolized as a kid (Dick) and what member of the Batfamily is pro-murder but still an older sibling figure to him and looks out for him (Helena, or if you want the dynamic of once tried to harm Tim but they've reconciled, Jean-Paul) in favor of who's the most popular. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are always going to be the standouts for popularity, but it's specifically Jason and Tim who are getting fanonized the most. and that's because really, we don't have much canon content of Tim that *isn't* the comics. for Dick you've got Young Justice (tv), for Damian you've got the DCAMU, for Jason you've sort of got the Under The Red Hood movie, but Tim sort of lingers in this limbo. (yes, he's in Young Justce (tv) and Titans (live action) but in neither is he the main character nor given much depth) so, he gets a *lot* projected onto him and has become fanonized. and even with Jason's animated movies, you don't see him interact with Tim, so people build it from the ground up how they want to see it, disregarding of canon comics. i think it's what makes him so popular in the first place- he's malleable into whatever you want or need him to be.

and of course, the fanon ignores other characters in the Batfamily it doesn't know about. i feel like you could create a tier list of Batfamily characters by their popularity, going from the fandom main characters: Tim, Jason, Bruce, Alfred, Dick, Damian. to the underrated: Steph, Duke, Babs, Cass. to the forgotten about unless they're convenient for a story: Kate, the Foxes, Helena Wayne, Carrie, Selina, Harper Row, Maps, Minhkhoa Khan. to the absolutely unknown: Helena Bertinelli, Jean-Paul Valley, Onyx Adams, the Clovers, Julia Pennyworth. it's not lost on me that the ignored characters tend to be women and people of color. which is both a canon and fanon problem, DC will continue adding interesting characters to the Batfamily, play with them for a few years, then drop them to default to the "Batboys" again. and it's a vicious cycle of the fandom only caring about the "Batboys", and thus people entering the fandom via fanon osmosis won't have content about the other characters, therefore, they won't be interested in those characters enough to create it, and it's just this ouroboros consuming itself, no matter how much canon content we have of these other characters. and it's ridiculous just how large the Batfamily is becoming because of this, which is why i'm a pre-Flashpoint fan, because then the Batfamily was contained enough to actually feel like a family with every character having nuances relationships with each other, but i digress because those thoughts could be their own post.

and the thing about fanon is it doesn't exist in a vacuum. DC has started turning the comics to accommodate for what fans are asking for, because fans will beg and beg for content they're not going to consume. Tim Drake: Robin had Tim as a coffee drinker because that's the fanon accepted headcanon. and the resolution of the recent Gotham War arc was for Bruce to buy this new manor for everyone to move in and call him. nevermind that most of these characters have their own homes and have zero reason to be moving in with Bruce. Tim had his marina in Tim Drake: Robin, Dick has Bludhaven, Cass and Steph have their little side of town in Batgirls (2022), and so on. these characters are being forced together as a unit, as one big happy family living together, to appease what non-comic fans want and it's damaging comic relationships. Robin: Knight Terrors saw Jason and Tim team up and working together, which i've seen varying opinions on but i personally despised. their interactions made zero sense for any of their canon history, but it appeases them being this close sibling relationship that fanon acts like they are. also the fears they faced in their respective knight terrors didn't make sense for either character and *only* worked as a moment of bringing them together so they could reassure each other and have this weird dreamscape bonding moment. the canon is bending itself to the will of fanon rather than building on the pre-existing complex relationships. Tim barely even gets along with his most important team in Dark Crisis: Young Justice because it seems the only important relationships the Batfamily can have is with each other. and when we do see them outside of the Batfamily, it only seems to be to relive the glory days like with World's Finest: Teen Titans, instead of developing them as they currently exist. this isn't recent in the comics, it feels like you can trace it back to the New-52, but it does feel a *lot* worse over the recent years. WFA is fine when it exists in its own bubble, but the simple truth is, DC content never exists on its own. the adaptations will reflect back onto the comics. (the damage the Young Justice cartoon has done to some characters should honestly be studied) and so it does frustrate me a bit when fanon-only or adaptation-only fans act like we're being nothing but killjoys for being frustrated with this. since they don't read the comics, they don't see how the comics are suffering as a result of this.

people argue about what's out of character for the comics they don't even read. i'm sorry, but "bad dad Bruce" is consistently canon. that man is just kind of shitty. when you take someone who has the drive he has, who has this need for the Mission first, who needs a teenager in spandex next to him to keep him off the ledge, that guy is sort of going to be a shitty father figure. he just is. not on purpose or with malice, but when you compare him to any other dad in a big DC family, he sure takes the cake. it's why characters like Oliver Queen tend to *really* fucking hate Bruce for how he treats his kids. Bruce loves fiercely, but he doesn't do well with putting that love first. and his love is a controlling one, he is very particular about controlling how others in the Batfamily are "allowed" to operate. it's what drives the wedge between him and Dick, it's why Steph is never a true daughter to him. (besides the reason of her needing to be a love interest to Tim first, anyway-) i've never understood the massive outcry of people reacting to Bruce kinda being shitty in comics they're not reading. there are some moments that get ridiculously OOC with how cartoonishly evil he is (the whole Gotham War arc and that... complicated mess with Jason) but largely if you want sitcom loving nuclear father Bruce, you have to accept that is a fanon thing, not a canon one. the Batfamily being a nuclear family in *general* is fanon. most of the "Batkids" don't actually see Bruce in a particularly fatherly light and begging for moments where he calls them his kids or they call him dad outside of incredibly specific circumstances is just OOC.

it's getting harder and harder to exist peacefully in this fandom it feels like, if you don't comply to the standard fanon has set. i'm happy people are having fun with their blorbos, even if in ways i dislike, but that "harmless fandom fun" does ripple it's way back to canon, eventually. so i end up pretty tangled with my feelings because are fans at fault for DC making these poor decisions? probably not, but it certainly feels like an unfortunate cause-and-effect situation whether at the end of the day, nobody is happy. and of course, i know some fanon-only fans are striving to be more canon accurate and care about canon dynamics more than others, but for them it's always going to be an uphill battle with the above-mentioned out-of-context panels thrown around and ever-pervasive fanon overtaking anything that's truly seeking to be canon compliant. so really, it sometimes feels like we're all losing.

[doodlejoltik]

my favourite writing device is having an un-Rei-liable narrator

[bittersweetresilience]

say hi to me i don't know, i just remembered being so much brighter, i guess

cigarette ash like wildfire burning holes in the nighttime open scars feel like barbed wire white lies flying high like a ceasefire dropping flags on the shoreline this is as far as i can feel right 'cause what you don't know can haunt you

and all we ever wanted was sunlight and honesty highlights to want to repeat let's get away from here and live like the movies do i won't mind when it's over at least i didn't think for a while

don't drag it out living like that doesn't mean a thing

so let's, make a great escape and i'll be waiting outside for the getaway it doesn't matter who we are we'll keep running through the dark and all we'll ever need is another day we can slow down 'cause tomorrow is a mile away and live like shooting stars 'cause happy endings hardest to fake

and i wanna let you know i wanna let you go but i just can't bring myself to speak but this is how it goes the end credits, they roll this bridge was built over kerosene but we can watch it and all i ever wanted was sunlight and honesty highlights to want to repeat let's get away from here and live like the movies do i won't mind when it's over at least i didn't think

so let's run, make a great escape and i'll be waiting outside for the getaway it doesn't matter who we are we'll keep running through the dark and all we'll ever need is another day we can slow down 'cause tomorrow is a mile away and live like shooting stars you can wish away forever but you'll never find a thing like today

[hellofeternity]

ORV transcends language | how ORV is kind to readers (1.1k words)

the difficulties in analyzing text are already numerous without a language barrier, the way one word can mean 5 things and when you put it in a sentence suddenly it can mean 50 things and put that sentence in a paragraph? go further and put that paragraph in a page? construct a whole world around it, weave it into the fabric, and suddenly you are painting with words.

ORV is a daunting text, it calls and references so many mythos world wide, greek, roman, indian, chinese, japanese, it plays with meaning and intent and uses gaps in our knowledge like weapons, making us extrapolate our own meaning between the sentences, it is a tome of knowledge when it comes to histories and philosophies it feels at times like I will never understand all these things inside it.

One of the difficulties of reading a translated text is that when we analyze a text the authorial intent weighs very heavily in our minds, sure we can immerse ourselves in the world but once we start picking apart at the threads we hit a wall pretty soon when we start asking ourselves "what did the author mean by this?" however in a translated text there is an obvious gap, a game of telephone, did the translator actually capture the authors intent? or are we just reading the translators perception? sadly I don't know korean, and I cant say I have the drive to learn it, as such I know there will forever be a side of ORV that I will never be privy to - however I am bilingual and had the pleasure of reading two translated versions of ORV, an English translation and an Arabic translation, I didn't finish reading the said Arabic translation but a couple things stood out to me when I briefly did ORV is very kind to readers, following along in other stories can seem confusing at times, the pacing might be too fast and you might miss some details in a characters actions, the wording might be too vague and ah damn 20 pages later you realize you don't actually know why the characters are doing what they are doing. A big writing adage that you will see a lot is "show dont tell" and it holds merit, but ORV doesn't subscribe to it, because ORV shows AND tells. ORV built a world around readers and reading, and it makes sure that there is clarity every step of the way on what is happening, first by starting out as a homage to the isekai genre, and not deviating too much at the start, making the readers feel at home in a worldview they are familiar with, systems, leveling, videos games etc, and when it starts deviating it explains things with clarity that no matter how bad the translation is you understand the general intent, and secondly by being VERY blatant about the names of things and having a built in "story" system that is built on common story tropes and names the themes for you! take for example "unbroken faith" and "Blade of faith" both of these are two translated versions of dokja's sword. I will never know which one is closer to the original authorial intent, but I can tell you something, dokja's sword is symbolism to the faith he is wielding. (CH386 vague spoilers) or the entirety of "the great war of saints and demons" being about the concept of good and evil fighting and how kimcom aren't just above being good and evil, they are both. By using story tropes that we are familiar with to explain the complexity of situations in a simple forms you no longer have to worry about losing you readers understandings through language barriers. Every story in the world in every language knows what good vs evil is, every language has the words to explain them. and therein lies the beauty of ORV. But of course this isn't to say translations don't matter, it does speak to the strength of an original texts clarity when it accounts for the big things by making them simplified, but when we get down to the nitty gritty it starts to lose form take for example

"Tell me, you fool. If I continue to regress, will I ever get to meet you again?"

this person here has a great write up explaining the translators thoughts behind this specific line

but it has spawned a lot of debate in the English speaking fandom, as to the strength of its translation, I remember when I first saw someone claiming that its a mistranslation and "you fool" isn't part of the original, my first thought was "and so?" I do not mean to be dismissive to the original text, but I do not exist in a space where I can appreciate it in the original korean, I do not exist in a worldview where I can understand the historical implications of a lot of the characters, and even when I try to research it in English sadly the resources do not exist yet and its even more laughable to think of finding these things in Arabic. (Goryeos first sword doesn't have an English wikipedia page as a clear example) a lot of people have issues with the most popular English fantranslation of ORV - and I can understand why, being bilingual I have a lot of opinions on how a lot of things SHOULD be translated most of the time, and have done my own translation work but as I sit and think about this popular translation I cant help but just feel love for it, it might be lacking to some, it might be inaccurate at times to others, but its just enough for me to paint the gaps in the text with my perceptions, the words used are tied to my affections the Arabic translation of ORV is clunky, it is messy, it doesn't have as much grace as the English translation of ORV does, the words barely string together cohesively, but it has enough clarity, enough intent, and enough love for its readers, to catch their hearts, their attention and their energy

and so I want this to be the first post on this blog because, the author is dead here, not because I buried them, but because the tower of babel fell down a long time ago, and all we have is rubble and each other. a lot of the analysis on this blog will try to be respectful to the korean original wherever it can, however my words will be coming from an anglosphere perspective, and build on other English reader's perceptions of a text translation that a decent amount of people don't think is adequate, but just like ORV is kind to us, we can be kind back, I will quote the most popular version because its what connects us together, and while the authors intent might be lost, we can share our own meanings with each other, and build our own intent from the rubble.

[threewaysdivided]

The Shaper of Minds and its possible consequences for a certain character

I have finally joined the rest of the internet in losing my mind over a D&D Podcast - in my case, the wonderful Dan Jones & Dragons.  With Episode 26 due to stream on Dan’s Twitch this week, I really want to talk about some of the stuff that came up across the just-finished Gala sessions because the fallout from that has the potential to be incredibly fraught.

THE SHAPER OF MINDS

The relic the Flower Crowns were going after this mission – The Shaper of Minds – is a potentially fascinating narrative device that might as well have been lab-engineered to be my exact brand of personal nightmare fuel.   It’s a small, ornate brass key that can alter any part of the target’s mental faculties/thoughts/memories at will should the wielder touch it to any part of their victim’s skin.

Now, on one hand, there are a heap of interesting (and even benevolent) applications for a tool like that.  It could instantly grant access to skills, languages and knowledge that would otherwise take a person years of study to learn.  It could be used to sort through and resolve memories that had been faded by time, muddied by trauma or forcibly supressed by magical/medical means.  But on the other…

As described and used in campaign so far, the primary function of the Mindshaper is to alter memories (and the attendant personality) with the target having no awareness that their mind has been changed.  It’s basically gaslighting on steroids, except that where a gaslighting victim still retains their original recollection – and has to be manipulated by their abuser into doubting their own perceptions and instead accepting the alternate telling of events (a cognitive dissonance that can eventually lead the person to recognise the manipulation) – the Shaper of Minds entirely replaces the original recollection of events with the version the wielder wants their victim to perceive.  There is no internal conflict between accounts, no inconsistencies that could alert the victim that someone has broken into their head and rewritten their perceived reality.  The person they reshape you to be is the person you believe you always were.  And all it takes is a single touch.

That is a brand of existential horror that had me on edge all throughout Session 24 (basically from the moment it was implied the key was in play).   Reality may be objective, but each individual person’s internal reality is governed by their perception – their memories – of the events in their life, no matter how incomplete, biased or otherwise skewed that personal perspective may have been.  You have value just by being you because you are not replaceable, but the thing that makes you unique is, in large part, the sum total of those inimitably specific personal memories.  No-one else will perceive the world in exactly the same way you do, and even a few minor changes to just a few of those perceptions can flow on to massive differences in ideals, values, priorities and future choices.  In that regard, the use of the Mindshaper Key isn’t so much an alteration as an obliteration of the victim’s former self and replacement with someone new; even if that new stranger is largely indistinguishable from the original.  And, again, all it takes is a single touch.

[Sidenote:  This made Mister Wick an especially effective antagonist to wield the key, since his Galas functionally trap even targets who are aware of the threat within the rules of high-society behavioural expectations.  Otherwise-innocuous actions like a handshake or private conversation suddenly become incredibly dangerous, while being nigh-impossible for the Flower Crowns to extract themselves from without committing an atrocious faux pas and potentially tipping Wick off.  Perfectly designed stage for a psychological horror-thriller encounter.]

Which of course, brings us to a certain character who fell victim to the key in Episode 24…  [put under the cut for spoiler reasons]

MORENTHAL

This poor Drow, he can never catch a break…

Morenthal may not have been the most mechanically dangerous party member to fall victim to Mister Wick’s manipulations although, given that the key was revealed to let its wielder read existing memories during the alteration, and that all of the Flower Crowns were fully briefed on the locations and nature of the Eversteel artefacts, him getting a hand on any of them could have been very bad plot-wise but from a character point of view I think he’s the one who the key’s effects had the potential to be most personally devastating for.

The way things ended up playing out across Session 25 was precisely the nightmare scenario Gamb was fretting about out of game: Mister Wick forcibly implanted Morenthal’s mind with false memories of being his lifelong trusted confidant and supporter, then – before the Flower Crowns could reverse the key’s effect – Morenthal discovered that Mister Wick had been killed in combat with Coil and Preston, leading to the Party having to physically restrain him so they could use the key to undo the damage, thus confronting Morenthal with the realisation that not only was everything he thought he knew about Jonathan a lie, but in actuality Jonathan had committed possibly the most invasive violation he’d ever been subjected to in order to forcibly make Morenthal into one of his loyal tools.  That level of emotional and mental whiplash would be rough on any character, but for Morenthal it’s particularly brutal because…

Based on what’s been revealed in-game so far, the core of his character is that Morenthal is an abused child.  This most-clearly came up in his conversation with Gelnek in Session 14; he was a child who grew up with nothing, raised by the Bloodletter Mercenaries as a tool instead of a person, and taught to see faces only as targets – with him also mentioning to Hobson in that their “combat training” involved being relentlessly beaten down until he learned to fight back.  During his Session 21 visit with the Nightmother, he openly admits that “nowhere feels safe”.  From that it’s pretty clear to read that Morenthal has never felt unconditionally loved, safe or respected around other mortals.

(This also helps contextualise why he’s so devoted to the Nightmother.  From what little we have seen of his visits to her, Iris is a fond “adult” figure, who does not threaten, does not judge, asks nothing of him aside from his company, and cares equally for all the souls that pass through her domain.  For a child “growing up with nothing” but violence, that would have been everything.)

But then, enter Jonathan fucking Wick.  And now, just for a short while, Morenthal has all these “memories” of Jonathan being there to confide in, encourage him and support his escape from the Bloodletters.  Suddenly he believes someone was there for him and, while the memories might be fake, the feelings of unconditional safety they would have brought were very real.  Little wonder that he started acting like a Trilby-level naive goober around Mister Wick to the point of accidentally snitching on the rest of the group.  Only, then it turns out to be a lie and those memories are gone.

For me, I think one of the worst things Morenthal might end up dealing with in the aftermath of having his memory fixed isn’t the specific feeling of personal betrayal or the potential shame at having been caught: it’s the realisation that he was always alone.   That there was no mortal on the outside who cared or came for him when he needed them – just him and the distant fondness of a Divine.  That would be awful beyond words, and yet the Flower Crowns were forced to inadvertently inflict it upon him in order to restore his mind.  No wonder he wouldn’t look any of them in the eye before the session closed.

Worse still, the nature of the key makes it incredibly hard not only to trust others, but to trust your own mind.  The players and audience above-table know that Morenthal is back to experiencing and remembering reality as it happened, but the question could very well linger for him, bringing with it a hefty dose of paranoia.  Sure, Morenthal correctly remembers that Coil is a straightforward, loyal person who wouldn’t be tempted to tamper with his mind beyond undoing Jonathan’s manipulations… but he “remembered” that about Mister Wick too, and wouldn’t that be a beneficial thing for the Party to have him think?   To Morenthal, people were already Not Safe™, but now the one person he ever believed might be had actually violated him worse than anyone else in order to force and abuse that trust.  How is he supposed to trust anyone if he can’t trust the authenticity of his own recollections.  (I get the feeling that Morenthal probably isn't going to be capable of relaxing until the Shaper of Minds is confirmed to either be locked back safely in the Vaults of Eversteel or fully removed from the Mortal Plane by Six).

It makes it really tragic that all of this came directly on the back of Episode 23, where Gamb revealed during the above-table break chat that - even if Morenthal didn’t recognise why – he unconsciously trusted Trilby and Gelnek enough to jump off the airship without checking that his rope was secure, because deep-down he knew they would catch him.  To go from that high-point to the whiplash of him first thinking the Flower Crowns had killed the only person he was ever “safe” with, then them inadvertently subjecting him to the most painful realisation he could ever experience and potentially leaving him wondering whether he can even trust his feelings about them is absolutely gutting.

I think the thing that scares me most about how the aftermath could potentially play out is another trait that Gamb and Dan have established for Morenthal: he's a flight-risk.   He shies away from letting people get close and, if he feels unsafe enough, he runs.  It’s already been mentioned/implied that he’s considered fleeing the group at multiple different points across the sessions.  And with him likely not feeling safe even in inside his own mind right now, that risk is probably at an all-time high.  The poor lad is staring down the barrel of a potentially-impending multi-level emotional crisis, where a lifetime of instincts will probably be urging him to run hard and fast because People Are Not Safe™.

And the thing is, that instinct isn’t a good one for him either.  Morenthal might have gotten by on his own “just living to be” up until Filgrove, but that feels a lot more like surviving out of necessity than having an actual life.  It’s pretty obvious that he pushes people away as a defence mechanism:  if you don’t care about anyone then you can’t be hurt by them or have those people used against you.  But if you don’t let yourself care and feel things, you’re not really living.  The truly tragic part of his running being a potential foreseeable outcome is that the Flower Crowns are good for Morenthal.  (I doubt Morenthal realises it and can’t speak to Gamb’s above-table thought process but it’s interesting that one potential interpretation of Morenthal’s cynical, faux-apathetic, “stinky” behaviour is that of a former abused child quietly testing the boundaries of whether he’s allowed to exist in a way that’s inconvenient for others, to which the answer from the Party has largely been yes provided he isn’t actively encouraging Trilby to get himself killed, or killing people without explaining himself).  He survived alone before because that was all he knew, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t do so well if he tried to go it solo again after being with people (he’s already confessed that the idea of Feyli being gone makes him miss her).   That’s not a road to walk on his best day, let alone with his current headspace and tendency towards self-destructive choices. 

It reminds me a lot of this article:

“Still, it’s easier for us to keep blaming ourselves because it’s preferable to facing the unthinkable: the fact that our parents don’t love us. …  Most people would rather do anything than accept this as the truth. Not only is it painful; it’s humiliating.”

So yeah, suffice to say I am incredibly concerned about how Morenthal’s arc is going to play out over the next session(s).  Here’s hoping that Gelnek and/or Coil have enough emotional savvy to keep an eye out, and enough patience to stick to him even if he lashes out in attempt to drive them off.  Even if it all works out okay, I get the feeling that this one’s going to be ugly.

Can’t wait to see how everyone chooses to play it ❤️‍🩹

[shallowrambles]

So I've been thinking. It's funny how enjoying meta is somewhat embedded with trust.

Like, if you're "friends" and have followed a person for a long time, you have more a sense of their values, and it's easier to read their difficult meta because you trust more that they're being charitable/nuanced.

If you don't know them, it's harder to trust that they're not funneling difficult topics into rationalization of liking/supporting gross shit.

[majestic-kestrel]

Thinking about the Captain's name and Ben Willbond's possible inspiration for it, I looked into Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which I've never read but know it's his favourite and hugely important to him from his interview on the 'Comfort Blanket' podcast. Based only on my very cursory exploration of Wikipedia, I think that the character of Jim Prideaux could possibly have inspired the Captain's name and some aspects of his character: Jim Prideaux - Wikipedia - described here as a man who served in WW2, he has ptsd, making it hard for him to adjust back to civilian life. He is implied to be gay. In his later career as schoolteacher he takes a child from a neglectful family under his wing as a mentor/surrogate father (like the Captain with Kitty?). I would be interested if anyone who is more familiar with the novel has noticed any other similarities? or if there is any evidence to the contrary?

[tales-of-sweets]

Zagi's Tragic Need For Validation

I don't think that Zagi became obsessed with Yuri the moment he met him or that an interesting fight alone was what motivated him to chase Yuri the ends of the earth. I believe he was out for Yuri's blood, yes, but not for blood's sake but instead because of what it symbolized... This is a headcanon/interpretation that I've probably talked about a million times before, but I'm thinking about it again! Since it chronologically references the events of the game and includes sources/examples it's pretty lengthy so I'll put it under the cut!

The first time he meets Yuri he's on a job and, while it seems to be the first worthwhile fight he's had in a long while, he leaves willingly when he's called to retreat (well, willing in the sense that this is the only time we ever see him retreat mid-battle while he's still in perfect fighting condition).

The next time we see him he's on yet another job, eager to kill "something", his choice of words even with Yuri right in front of him and they seem to recognize each other.

Zagi doesn't actually seem to acquire any fixation on Yuri at all until after the second battle, specifically after he's defeated... and Yuri compliments him. Even after what we can clearly see Zagi believes is a failure on his part (worth noting that in the official translation he says "...I-I retreated..." instead of "...I-I'm finished..." even though they both convey a similar feeling.)

From this point forward, we never see him taking another job or working with Leviathan's Claw. Hunting down Yuri appears to have become his full time fixation. Zagi to me seems like an incredibly lonely man. He is isolated by his own abilities and his inability to relate to others in a meaningful way. He has reached a level of skill that few can comprehend, let alone match (things that are corroborated by this skit here:

He takes pleasure in killing and victory but has not known the rush nor the bond of a fair fight in so long. For all of his hooting and hollering about wanting to kill Yuri, I don't think that's exactly what he was truly getting out of this whole thing. I don't think that's actually what he was chasing. That was the first time he'd found someone on his level and that was the only time Yuri ever complimented him so to me it seems like what he's really chasing is that same high of validation. A connection. He wanted Yuri to come at him with full force, to find joy in their fights as he did, to connect with him... but he only got that the one time. All future instances involved Yuri dismaying at his presence, swatting him off like a pest, fighting him only to remove him as an obstacle. So many of his lines feel like validation seeking, not only in the form of wanting friendship, but more in the way of just wanting to be recognized period. For example:

He tried to make himself stronger, augmented himself, taunted him, but there was always some bigger issue that held Yuri's attention, something greater than him. To me, that played a huge role in why, in the end, he had to make himself Yuri's priority even if it meant destroying himself in the process. While the whole "you can't break the seal without my arm" bit is a little contentious (poor wording? an outright lie? mistranslation?), the truth of the matter is that, in a last ditch effort, he made himself Yuri's number 1 priority. He was now an important part of his quest, not just an annoyance to be brushed aside. Yuri had to take him seriously now.

And when, at last, he was defeated, he thought maybe then Yuri had seen his value and worth, that at last their fight had resonated with him.

Of course we all know how that ended. While I have many issues with the way this ending was handled, I think we get some interesting insight from it that I believe lends some credence to this interpretation:

I think it's worth nothing that almost everyone expresses some sort of sympathy and understanding towards Zagi in the end, except for Yuri. While it is a very valid and plausible interpretation to think that Yuri still doesn't care even after his death, I personally choose to consider the fact that Yuri, as we have seen time and time again, is not very upfront with his emotions and is not always the quickest to admit when he's wrong. I think he could see the tragedy of the situation, I think he could recognize that he really hadn't understood Zagi's intentions, and it's my personal theory that that's precisely why he took a more forgiving approach when confronting Duke in the end. I cannot, in any way, fault Yuri for not stopping to befriend the guy who, for all intents and purposes, seemed intent on killing him. But I also can't help but see the tragedy of the situation from Zagi's perspective. Raven states that something changed after Zagi met them. While it's hard to imagine him as an upstanding citizen or pleasant person to begin with, he probably wasn't always like this.

Raven lends a little more insight too, one of the skits following his demise:

Yuri, Duke, the Don (not shown in the screenshot, though Raven does reference him and Belius), they were held together by the bonds they shared with people who understood them. I think there could have been a chance for Zagi to have turned things around, not let his obsession with Yuri consume him to this degree. Hell, I don't even think it's improbable that he could have become an ally, put his energy into something more productive (as Yuri put it several times over). I don't think Zagi was always doomed to this fate, I think he just met the wrong person at the wrong time.

[theminecraftbee]

also i'm still more a ygo nerd than a magic one, but i HAVE been playing more magic lately than ygo and also i see a bunch of people who are new to card games being introduced to things like "why do these people enjoy the game differently than me" so i do think maybe you should be introduced to timmy, johnny, and spike,

[chocolate-cream-soldier]

-.-

[aromanticannibal]

The pattern is that people straight up do not read™. or they read a 3-5 tweet summary of what happened and treat it as if they did. or because shonen expectations based on "the classics" is bullshit and significantly rotted people's brains when deciding wether an ending is good or not.

Which could be nothing right

yeahhh. i will forever regret reading the last chapter through leaks because it was a dreadful experience, and watching everyone ever shit on it for like a week after genuinely made me want to just get off the internet forever or something because i felt like an idiot for liking the ending (all this is my fault for getting too invested in both tumblr and mha etc etc).

All the "it's rushed" and pacing complaints barely matter to me at this point because you just cannot feel the pacing of something correctly when you're reading it exclusively through leaks. you can't absorb info like that. And don't get me started on the number of complaints and criticisms I've seen of the last chapter that are just provably bullshit (I saw someone say Izuku didn't get a statue lmao. yes he did, you just read the fucking leaks and watched twitter drama unfold instead of reading the actual chapter i fear).

[charismaquark]

Finally watched Goncharov (1973) and while I’m not generally into mafia movies... the Fruit Stand Scene???!!!

THIS LIVES RENT-FREE IN MY MIND NOW.

Katya gives Sofia the apple. Sofia hands Katya the pomegranate. The Eve-Persephone parallels (women whose destinies changed irrevocably after being tricked into eating a piece of fruit) are SPECIFICALLY invoked. But the real question is, which one is which?

The framing of the scene suggests that Sofia is Eve (about to lose her sense of innocence and be inducted into the knowledge of evil), and that Katya is Persephone (trapped by a marriage that binds her forever to the (criminal) underworld). Except, that also makes no sense because we don't see them eat the fruit. How could they reap the consequences for an action they didn't actually take?

I would argue that it's not about the fruits they RECEIVE... it's about the ones they OFFER. The fruits they have already eaten, and been doomed by.

Sofia doesn't need to learn about evil. She lost her whole family. She knows enough about evil already. And Katya doesn't need to be bound to anything, when her own choices have left her so deeply entrenched.

"That’s the first lesson. Always blame the Devil for your crimes." (0:15:24)

Katya is Eve. Katya got roped into this mess a long time ago and has so many regrets now that she understands what it all means. Katya plays her piano in the room next to a murder, not because she doesn't know what's going on, but because she DOES. Katya wishes more than anything that she could turn back the clock to some idyllic time before her daughter died, before she joined the mafia, before she ever had to steal a purse or put a gun to a man's head. She tries so hard to end that cycle of violence... and it doesn't work. It was never going to work. The Apple of Eden isn't part of a cycle; it's just the beginning of the story.

"Don’t you dare speak to me about Cosenza." (1:20:41)

Sofia is Persephone. Sofia is constantly arguing that murder isn't necessary- but she also nearly drowns Katya, and shows a bizarre fascination with death when Katya threatens her with the knife. Sofia is linked to nature (the green dress, the sunset motif, the vase of flowers in her first scene) but in paltry, disconnected ways (her dress has metal buttons, the sunsets are over the city, the flowers are halfway to wilting). Sofia is part of a cycle; moments of happiness and joy, interspersed and defined by recurring instances of death and violence. Her childhood in WW2. The incident where she lost her leg. Whatever happened that made her learn how to use a gun. Her whole bloodied dynamic with Katya now. But Sofia CAN escape... for a time. She can walk away from the violence and have her summer in the sunlight. At least until tragedy strikes again.

Which makes the ending of the movie really bittersweet. Sofia sails away on the boat (Charon's Ferry, making a reverse trip across the River Styx). And the scene closes as the first snowflakes start to fall. Winter comes to Naples, because spring follows Persephone when she leaves.

How long until she comes back?

[musical-chick-13]

Can somebody please explain to me what the appeal of vampires is.

[fierrochase-falafel]

CQL music analysis part 1: Local homosexual lunatic over-analyses people singing (with spoilers)

The Untamed has 2 albums, one of which contains all the songs with vocals they had recorded for the show. While I recommend all of them, a few favourites of mine being Bu Wang (for Lan Wangji) and Woodland (for Wen Qing), I'd like to focus on the fact that only 2 of them are in the show: the classic Wu Ji and Yi Nan Ping.

It's interesting that Yi Nan Ping is the only song other than Wu Ji, the literal wangxian song, to actually appear in the show.

Considering the main characters of the show are Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, it makes sense that their joint song Wu Ji is the most well-known; especially when you add the fact that it appears at the end of every CQL episode. It also appears several times in the middle of the show (especially episode 50, where they played it about 5 times just to make it really sink in how close wangxian are). On the album it has a Xiao Zhan only edition, a Wang Yibo only edition, a chorus edition with both Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, and a Bibi Zhou edition- it's very clear that this is a song made up of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, whether by themselves or together they are singing to and about each other.

Yi Nan Ping, however, is labelled on the album as [Interlude], as opposed to the [Theme] of Wu Ji. It's 4th from the bottom of the album. The song is recognised as Jiang Yanli's song at large by fans, which makes sense because it's heard when Jiang Yanli is onscreen, but I am going to speculate as to why it was not labelled directly as Jiang Yanli's song despite it clearly reflecting her character. The only 2 vocal tracks being Wu Ji and Yi Nan Ping was very deliberate to reflect Wei Wuxian's closest relationships. The show centers around him ultimately, it's largely in his point of view and so we hear vocal tracks in moments where he feels the most intense. For Wu Ji, it shows his relationship with Lan Wangji quite clearly, as one of his closest relationships.

My theory with Yi Nan Ping is that the reason it's not labelled Jiang Yanli's song is because it represents the bond of the Yunmeng trio itself rather than just Jiang Yanli. Jiang Yanli's loving and caring nature is presented as that which brings the 3 of them together- when she first brings her brothers back from the Yunmeng woods, consistently when she gives them lotus and pork rib soup, when she dies to protect Wei Wuxian. The lotus and pork rib soup is kinda like a motif representing when they were kids and could just play with each other, and come back to drink her soup that tastes like home. None of the actors for the characters sing in this song, the song is more like a sisterly blanket Yanli has for all of them where it represents their bond together rather than their own voices. One could also intepret it as Jiang Yanli singing, and that bringing all 3 of them together. I think it says a lot about her that she doesn't have an individual song named as being for her, but the songs she is involved in uplift the ones she loves and it becomes 'their song' rather than 'her song'.

Wu Ji, compared to Yi Nan Ping, has both the voices of Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji in abundance. Focusing on the chorus version, even if Wang Yibo says less individual lines (which is quite in character for Lan Wangji), his presence in the song is always felt. When I listen to Wu Ji, it's like Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are two halves of one tiger tally, the song incomplete without each other's voices pulling through. Wu Ji requires that which Yi Nan Ping doesn't: in the sense of the characters having to mutually acknowledge and be open about their feelings, singing them out loudly to the world together. Considering Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's relationship is frought with hidden feelings and miscommunication, Jiang Yanli's open love being what brings them together makes perfect sense- it's notable that the former 2 are only open with each other when they're forced to be at last in Guanyin temple (Wei Wuxian wouldn't have voluntarily told Jiang Cheng about the golden core operation, and Jiang Cheng never actually ended up telling Wei Wuxian why he ran away in the first place, resulting in his core loss). Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji though come clean within their first conversation after Wei Wuxian's resurrection, and have always put the effort to understand the other's position on important matters. In CQL, they're always as open about their feelings as they can manage from the get-go. Personally, I feel this sets up a dichotomy between Wei Wuxian's 2 closest relationships- that with the Jiang siblings and that with Lan Wangji.

Furthermore, where Yi Nan Ping reminisces about the past consistently (the most notable refrain in the chorus being, 'Can you still hear someone calling out “A-Xian”?', using the first online translation I could find by radishtears), Wu Ji reminisces vaguely about the past but always comes back to looking to the future (repeating, 'Why not soar high and free as a bird with the winds and waves, and sing this one song together to the world?', courtesy the genius lyrics translation). Yi Nan Ping is always a soft, comforting echo representing Wei Wuxian's past with the Jiang siblings and Wu Ji boldly looks to his future with Lan Wangji. They represent very different relationships and carry different connotations to a current Wei Wuxian, but they are the most important relationships to him to the point that they have vocal tracks directly present in the web series.