#and the antagonists are those who refuse to give up but are going about it at the cost of everyone else

[unma]

I think a fun little detail I love in Chapter 3 of Nekropolis is that Sans looks perpetually like he's going to die a second death.

[theglassesgirl]

The Ithaca Saga: What IS a Monster, how it’s presented, and when fictional S.A is integral to the plot.

So -

This was originally a response to @ / anniflamma which you can still find on my page unedited. But with the new discourse surrounding the suitors, I figured I could retool it as a standalone essay to express a topic I’ve been trying to pin down for a while now; What exactly does the mean when they call a character a monster? What do they do, do the reasons matter, and how does the subject of rape affect how the fandom consider some monsters more unforgivable than others? When IS rape in fiction “necessary” and why such questions defeat the purpose of exploratory creative works.

In this post we will discuss all the major antagonists of the Epic Musical, Penelope’s agency, the label of Monster and the types of moralizing one might do when faced with uncomfortable subjects in fiction and how to prevent these feelings from blinding is about what a story is trying to say.

For those who read my original response; there’s new content to read here and posts that will be referred to, if you’d like to give it another gander!

Thank you,

Let’s begin;

I think making the threat of rape explicit was very much needed, actually.

It’s come to my attention that there are people here and on tiktok who are so uncomfortable with the subject matter in this CENTURIES old tale that they’re both refusing to accept that it plays an important part in the original poem and musical, AND are bizarrely insisting that Jorge should have magically done away with it to make more palatable.

This is beyond juvenile - it’s a clear sign of media illiteracy.

What, if I may ask, do you think it means when you say that the suitors are going to force Penelope to choose one of them to marry.

You may respond that they want to take over Ithaca. That they want to be king. But take a moment to consider what forcing a woman to marry one of them will entail. I wonder if you think that one can divorce the idea of sexual violence in this plot.

It would be…unfathomably difficult to do so. Because you CANT. There is an implicit threat of Penelope’s will breaking and having to have unwilling and reluctant sex with any one of them in the event she just gave up and picked one.

This isn’t a storyline that depicts Penelope of being willing to marry any of the suitors. She is WAITING for her husband’s return. Even if he doesn’t, she doesn’t WANT to marry someone else. Her consent is being violated by the very merit of them being in her palace, eating her food, and threatening her son.

They’re doing ALL OF THIS in order to bend her will in the HOPES of raping her as a bonus to becoming king of Ithaca.

My contention is the use of “unnecessary” when it comes to this trope in media - though themes of rape can be uncomfortable, to call them unnecessary HAVE to meet certain criteria. Which this specific instance doesn’t.

By observing various responses, it’s clear that the threat of rape went completely over many’s head in this instance of the story. So I very must appreciate Jorge making it SO clear that it’s upsetting.

This part of the odyssey, and the musical, is very much about Penelope suffering under the threat of assault for YEARS. In the same way Odysseus was (a thing I touched upon in my calypso essay, in terms of his ambiguous situation in the musical) - it’s a parallel that works as both Antinous and Calypso were introduced (regardless on your personal interpretation of what Calypso did or did not do, but that’s neither here nor there).

It has taken an emotional and psychological toll of either spouse. And the kicker is that neither of them are freed of this situation on their own - they are both rescued by outside forces. Athena/Hermes helps free Odysseus; Athena/Odysseus will help free Penelope.

The looming threat of rape is SO necessary that it helps the catharsis factor we feel toward PENELOPE’s story - it’s nothing to do w Odysseus who by now is a force of nature as big as Poseidon, his actions happen TO her, and it’s up to her to decide (per “would you love me” ) what she feels about that. She can very well reject him! She’s suffered under male violence for YEARS. Odysseus’s violence and those of the suitors toward her are basis enough for the comparison.

Do all men, including her husband, become violent? Does she want to put up with that? We know from her song snippets that she is NOT a woman that simply succumbs to the Rape Rescue trope as suggested by ignorant consumers of media - and I call it ignorance and consumerism because there’s a clear lack of engaging with the material in an intuitive way. It’s just blind consumption - as if one bites into a burger and find a pickle, which you personally don’t like, and having it removed - you can’t treat ART that way .

Penelope is a very intuitive and emotionally intelligent queen. Stop infantilizing her. Her own husband suggests that like the suitors, his actions make him just as bad as they are and presents his hope as being understanding if she rejects him on those grounds. But those ARENT her grounds. She has full autonomy and can make a distinction FOR HERSELF whether she considers her husband equal to the monsters who have harmed her.

So let’s talk about the “Monster” label as it is presented on the entire musical.

Some have erroneously suggested that Odysseus has been given an out to commit cruel and ruthless deeds with out “good justification” - he does it for his family,, after all!

Which is a misunderstanding of everything every antagonist of each saga has done.

Let’s start with the Troy Saga: Odysseus has killed a BABY. He made the choice to put his family over this child. Everything he has done and lost would be for literally NOTHING if he hadn’t, as even if he had killed the suitors and regained everything - the GODS themselves would make sure that child would come to an aged Odysseus and slaughter him, Penelope, Telemachus and his entire kingdom when he came of age.

Odysseus STARTS as a monster. We have been rooting for the man who laid Troy and its children asunder. As such, the label of a monster is NOT so much a morally subjective label - it simply a thing that IS. Or rather. It is what ALL the antagonists ARE, but it’s hardly a condemnation of any of them.

(Peep that one of the first lines Ody says refers back to in the Vengeance Saga is what he did to Troy - he STILL views his actions over there as unforgivable, so not even HE will ever see himself otherwise, the problem was that he felt so guilty over it that he became a detriment (a different kind of monster) to his friends and family when they were all guilty of the same thing and trying to get home.)

ALL of the antagonists have a “good reason” to kill ALL the soldiers (who again, have looted and slaughtered the Trojans) Odysseus and his close friends included. Whether your AGREE is almost irrelevant…because the story itself proposes that it’s irrelevant.

The next saga introduces the cyclops: his motivation is primarily that his FRIENDS the sheep have been slaughtered. You can argue in the scope of things, you can’t empathize with this but it’s his good reason. He’s the son of a god, and these sheep are all he has. His friends, who matter to him as much as Polites does to Ody, are being taken and slain, he is being drugged, attacked and maimed. VERY much was Ody goes through in the final saga. And even so.

The Cyclops is antagonistic to the party, he’s a monster who feels justified killing to avenge his killed sheep. A monster is a thing he IS.

As Poseidon’s son, he asks his father to kill the 600 men who have ransacked his home and beat on him. He doesn’t view his father as being wrong for this. In the same ways Ody and Telemachus don’t waste any time addressing the slain suitors later on. Poseidon is a monster of a god - it’s just a thing he is. Not even being stabbed 100 times is enough to repay the harm he’s done - to most everyone, not just Ody, but we are not asked to quantify that. Just live with it.

Circe has killed NUMEROUS men over the years. HER “good reason” is that something bad happened to her nymphs when she let a stranger in her islands. She doesn’t even promise that she WONT kill in the future - her song ends w the suggestion that the world may continue to need her to puppeteer! Because she does not exist to be “redeemed” - she is somewhat more reasonable and capable of empathy than even the likes Athena, who being a greater and more powerful god, does not have the one on one affection to her follows as Circe does. She’s a monster! It’s a label, a thing she IS.

So here we begin to ask; is it LOVE that gives people the capacity to do monstrous things? Because the cyclops loved his sheep friends, Poseidon loves his son, Circe loves her nymphs.

And by now you’re saying now wait a minute didn’t the Underworld Saga go over this? Why yes it did! And Odysseus decides to “become the monster” - he already IS one by the standards of the cyclops, Poseidon, Troy - they all see him as a monstrous being. But he accepts that, after being one in Troy, he held back and ruined the lives of his men, making him a monster to THEM. His “good reason” for being so!

He attempts very hard to be the General he was in Troy and prioritize them going home, sparing no sympathy towards his enemies - but in the Thunder Saga we see the gods further push him to be completely self-serving like they are. The sun gods cows are harmed, he sends Zeus in relation - his “good reason” being his friend were personally harmed.

Odysseus’s “good reason” is ultimately decided to be the same good reason he had to slaughter the Trojans - to get back home to his wife and son.

Like with the Cyclops sheep, Circe’s nymphs, The Sun gods cows, and Poseidons son, WE are shocked and made to feel some type of way about Odyseuss’s reasoning. Surely HIS personal suffering shouldn’t cost the lives of “innocent” men…but it does! It surely does.

He is a monster. It’s just a thing he IS.

Now, Odysseus spends the next seven years under the thumb of ANOTHER monster. And through calypso own reasoning, despite her tragic backstory, her “good reason” she IS a monster. She’s incapable of understanding why she wasn’t reciprocated. Incapable of empathizing with a human because as a god who has spent eternity alone, it stands to reason she, like all the other monsters mentioned before, prioritizes HER personal suffering over everyone else’s. In some versions she either kills herself or does spend the rest of eternity alone. She’s a monster. This is a thing she IS.

Now what the HELL does all this have to do with the suitors?

Odysseus started the musical a MONSTER. He’s worn different hats, but it is what he IS. It’s a label, not a moral critique.

ALL of the antagonists of every saga have a “good reason” NONE of them are ruthless for ruthlessness sake! It’s immaterial whether you agree with them or not, but to understand them for what they are.

Odysseus is the antagonist of the ithica saga, md while the suitors are the antagonist to him and his family, we see their fate form THEIR POV

The suitors could not have been depicted as “rude youthful men” like Telemachus. That Odysseus killing them should be shocking - a frightening condemnation of everything he’s done and became. But I ask once again - in what world are the suitors not implicitly set up as monsters?

Because again. They aren’t being rude for rudeness’s sake! They aren’t JUST eating Penelope’s food and sleeping in HER house. Them threatening Telemachus, as you propose, isn’t “enough” of a reason because they didn’t wake up one day beefing w this boy. Everything they do is for the express purpose of sexual violence towards the Queen of Ithaca, who upon assaulting, will make it so any one of them will be King.

You can’t separate the one from the other. You get a nonsense scenario. The whole REASON they’re there in the first place.

Even if you create a fanfic where 108 men wake up one day and raid the palace to slaughter the royal family with no intent of sexually assaulting either (because remember Telemachus is also the subject of Hold Em Down) and then fight amongst themselves to be the next king, but then isn’t that STILL a “good reason” for Odysseus to slaughter them?

Now I hear what you may be asking: but if all the monsters of the sagas, Odysseus included, have a “good reason” even though we might not agree with it, what kind of monsters does that make the suitors? Surely and clearly THEY aren’t doing what they’re doing for noble reasons.

I consider them akin to the 600 men who died under their captains command.

Because, as stated before. Odysseus views his actions in a Troy as his start of monstrosity. He did all that to finish the war and do back home. He ruined the lives of all Trojans.

So did his soldiers.

The only moment in time (even in the deleted songs) that the bulk of them repent about the war is in terms that it left them without food.

But glasses! They were just following orders!

Which is what one of the suitors suggest in song 38. Their serpents head is dead, THEY were just going with Antinous’ flow, they are innocent.

Like the 600 soldiers, the 108 suitors sacked a home that wasn’t theirs and harmed a wife and child - does them being the queen and prince pale in comparison to the hundreds of wives and children slain in Troy? Homer is a genius to ask us to see these parallels for what it is.

The suitors ARE monsters. That is simply what all 108 of them are. In the context of the story itself, their intent is to break Penelope’s will, commit martial rape, and become king of Ithaca. They aren’t there for kicks, they aren’t ignorant boys, they’re socially accepted adults abusing the hospitality rule with an express purpose.

So a GROUP of monsters are slaughtered by ANOTHER monster, and though in this instance we can argue it’s morally justifiable, it doesn’t take away from Odysseus’s fear of being rejected by his family. He has ruined the lives of the Trojans, his men, AND multiple gods! To get to this point. He IS a monster. And the story asks US, through Penelope, if he is still worth loving.

Seeing Penelope as merely his reward is so backwards and bizarre. It’s very clear that bad faith interpretations of her are based on objectifying her erroneously, when the narrative presents her as a fully developed character.

In the story both in the poem and the musical that the suitors ARE NOT her guests. She is being sequestered against her will.

In what world could the suitors be “just” murderers and not….very clearly rapists? It’s BUILT into their motivation. You would have to change the very FOUNDATION of the Ithaca plot line and Penelope herself??? To say nothing of Telemachus’s role!

What’s the proposal here? That Penelope invited these suitors? That’s she’s actively looking for a replacement husband? Okay, again, that changes literally SO MUCH of the story, but wouldn’t that put Telemachus in a position where he too has to change? Does he resent his mother for doing this? Is he helping his dad out of spite or because he wants him back? How are we meant to view Penelope in this radically new and hip Epic the Musical? Is she savvy and in her right to choose a new boo? Okay…okay, so then….you want Odysseus to be the only one unchanged and go axe crazy because….hes jealous? He kills these upstanding men….curtain call. That’s all folks!

Absurdity at its finest. You throw Penelope’s agency out the window. Her weaving and unweaving her loom is meaningless or simply doesn’t happen. Or maybe it’s that she wakes up one day and goes hey yknow what I WILL consider marrying one of these guys with no sense of dread and fear. Oh wait Oddy has killed then all! Never mind me feeling unsafe a week ago, he’s done a Bad.

Crazy.

It’s just…not going to end up making Penelope look like a well written female character if Jorge has done what you wanted! THAT would make her a mindless prop. You seem to think she is one, and that’s not the case. Historically, in fact!

She is a whole person in the poem and musical whether you understand it or not. You would have to argue so thoroughly why she sucks and let me assure you - there are entire DISSERTATIONs on why you’d be incorrect.

So, no.

No, you CANT take away the rape in Penelope’s storyline. It matters ALOT. It’s the ROOT of the matter! Could old school vegetales make something up that’s more to your sensibilities? Maybe at its peak but god, I couldn’t possibly come up with a draft that could reflect that. I won’t even try.

The rape aspect of the Ithica Saga isn’t unnecessary - it’s INTEGRAL to the plot. It can make you uncomfortable, but it’s BUILT into the royal family’s suffering whether it’s explicit or not! And it SHOULD be explicit! Because you seem to think because it usually isn’t, that the rape aspect isn’t there!

I cannot imagine coming to this kind of conclusion.

They are not random men going on a siege of the palace one day - you cannot “sanitize” the SUITORS because by the very merit of them calling each other THE SUITORS there is an implicit threat of sexual violence. Because Penelope doesn’t WANT suitors. She rejects them. They’re already violating her consent.

How the FUCK to do you censor the rape when it’s in every action they take? And I know what you’re saying: but didn’t Jorge censor the rape aspect that both Circe and Calypso commit towards him?

Further reading: suggests that ALLUDING to it is not the same as censoring, that it still FITS the PURPOSE of these characters in regards to Odysseus’s suffering under them. That after ambiguity, it is NECESSARY to make the rape aspect CLEAR in order to create both catharsis and MEANING at the end of the narrative. The THEME is still respected and present, it is not REMOVED. Please consider reading the linked follow up that answers this question.

In short.

It’s truly a matter of using one’s goddamn head when it comes to view fictional depictions of rape as “necessary” - because though some depictions can be presented BADLY, to suggest they should not EXISTS lends itself to rape culture. It silences the voices of victims. Its representation denied. Don’t talk about it, don’t even suggest it, because rape is bad.

It’s an action that happens to people. It’s a crime in civilized society. It’s a physical and psychological trauma that has always been. It happens daily, in fact. Though epic the musical is a source of entertainment for you, it doesnt exist solely for that purpose.

When Homer included it within his original oral story, he did so as a storyteller trying to get his audience to philosophize, not simply have fun.

I think we’ve come to some abysmal conclusion that men can’t write about these topics when we have historical evidence of at least one man knowing what the hell he’s talking about. And Jorge has done a phenomenal job even when he hadn’t depicted blatantly.

If you’re uncomfortable to the point of not wanting to see it at all, that is entirely on you, art and creative works allow us to explore these topics safely. Whether it’s from the POV of the assailant or one of the victims commenting on it, fiction is one of the only places we can talk about it and learn about ourselves in a way it doesn’t harm real people.

I don’t even want to BEGIN discussing all the losers who are still harassing Antinous fans or people who genuinely enjoy his song despite/BECAUSE of the subject matter. Its purpose in the story matters more than you policing how it’s presented and how it’s consumed. No amount of people enjoying themselves will take away the foundational POINT of the character and song. It’s perfect the way it is.

Like with the chaos that calypso discourse wrought, you cannot control how people treat a NOT REAL CHARACTER or the songs they sing - if it bothers you that one type of fictional villian is treated one way or another, it is on you to find likeminded people instead of going into others faces and pretending to be a self-righteous prick. You can throw whatever buzzwords you want, the CONTEXT these characters live in has nothing to do with how others want to play with them. If you don’t understand the difference between the two instances, fandom is certainly not for you and will not be changed to suit your sensibilities.

To end this post, I want to thank those who further asked me questions and bounced ideas off with me, and wow, what a phenomenal ending to a grandiose musical. I hope I can see it live, animated, streamed, developed into a game etc whatever form it takes now that the concept albums are published

Thank you all for engaging w my work💖

[sunshine-zenith]

A thought — Ballister and Ambrosius’s relationship probably wasn’t public in the movie until the end. They probably weren’t secretive about it, given how Todd (someone neither of them like or would confide in) was clearly antagonistic to Ambrosius after Ballister’s jailbreak, but even then that just might be because their connection was well known — they liked each other more than any of the knights liked them, most being neutral overall to Ambrosius and outright bullies to Ballister. No one in the public seems to know about them

Media perception is a reoccurring factor in the movie, with the opening scene giving exposition in the form of a news cast. During it, Ballister is shown to be controversial, with a there being a few comments questioning the Queen’s choices related to him. Ambrosius is also brought up as someone everyone’s looking forward to seeing officially knighted, with no one questioning his relationship with Ballister or even bringing it up

While everyone is fearing and hating Ballister after the Queen dies, Ambrosius is still popular among the masses — people stop him in the streets to get his autograph. Nimona, who admittedly probably didn’t do much digging into Ballister beyond the initial news reports on the Queen’s deaths, seemed surprised that Ballister and Ambrosius had a connection. She even had an “ohhhhhh” moment after picking up on their vibe the first time they saw each other post-arm chop (and yeah she initially calls Ambrosius Ballister’s nemesis, but she clearly clocks that something romantic was going on given the “arm chopping is not a love language!” comment). She also asks if he wants to die in a (literal) closet, which like. Y’all.

Before the Queen’s death, all their PDA is in private (on the catwalk) or subtly around other knights (helping each other put on their armor with lots of heart eyes and lingering hands). Otherwise, their interactions are those of Two People Who Are Close but aren’t necessarily explicitly romantic (Ambrosius wanting to throw hands on Ballister’s behalf, teasing each other, Ambrosius cheering with the crowd). Granted, there wasn’t a lot of screen time for them to just be happy before Everything Went Wrong.

We can’t really judge whether they were private from their interactions after the Queen’s death, since most are focused on a “so this traumatic thing happened and I don’t know where we stands right now” vibe or have them just fighting. The three times Ambrosius says he loves Ballister, one was just the two of them on the catwalk, one was in a mental rant and not actually out loud, and one was while they were trying to hide their identities. Ballister continues to defend Ambrosius, saying he’d believe them if they could just talk and that the arm thing is just “complicated,” “part of their training, up until Ambrosius outright tries to arrest them (which might as well be a breakup without saying “we’re breaking up”).

In the comic, the Director says she knew about their relationship and that she disapproved. Given how much she manipulates things, it wouldn’t surprise me if she knew in the movie, and encouraged them to downplay things at least — “you should keep your private lives private so you don’t taint your public images/yes we support you, obviously, but you’re here to protect the people, not show off to them/you don’t want to overshadow things with more controversy, wait a few years until after you’re knighted/what if this is just a phase, it would be a mess to clean up if you go public now/people will talk if they hear Gloreth’s only current descendant, a promising young man, is being courted by someone they aren’t certain about who comes from nothing and can’t pass your genes on/you have each other, shouldn’t that be enough?/etc.”

We don’t see them be in a relationship publicly until after the wall — the symbol of fear of the unknown, systematic abuse and oppression, refusal to learn and grow, and let’s be real homophobia/transphobia — comes down and the Director — the one going to murderous extremes out of fear of change — is dead

I dunno. This movie is a large celebration of being queer, but it’s also about how queer people are demonized by society to the point of everyone suffering. Ambrosius is the model minority everyone loves but no one knows because all eyes are on him; Ballister is both tokenized and targeted from the moment the public meets him, having to prove himself over and over until the public unquestionably turns on him entirely; and Nimona is called a monster for just being herself. All three already had to hide who they really were. I’m not 100% sure if Ballister and Ambrosius were out or not about being together, but it’s not a stretch to see, and it fits in with the themes/arcs of this movie

[vigilskeep]

now that you finished inquisition, what did you think of it? like favorite things, least favorite, etc?

oh man okay

things i love about dragon age inquisition:

capturing the specific feeling of bonding with a group of people you have absolutely nothing in common with because u all had to go through something long and specific together

the maps can be so pretty and in places really calming and lovely to spend time in. it does make me want to explore and i have no explorer’s instinct

i love the war table and judgements i think those are really fun features

i like that approval for many major decisions applies to everyone regardless of who you bring to specific events/quests. it feels a lot less like you have to manage that really hard, as you sometimes do in the other games and also really noticeably to me in something like baldur’s gate 3. it’s irritating when i have to plan ahead and can’t take who i want to hear from

i like how attached you can get to little npcs who wander around

i loveeeee fighting dragons and how beautiful they all are

little puzzles <3

the collectibles are also mostly fine by me i am a magpie by nature. as long as i can find them, obviously, bc if i can’t they suck and this whole game sucks

the templar specialisation is fun and i enjoyed that part of combat a lot. wrath of heaven/spell purge combo is a power trip

i thought my character was pretty :) i defeated u in the end dai character creator. may you be as merciful when we meet in battle once more

i’m not a huge crafter but being able to tint things is rlly nice

blackwall’s romance is good

vivienne is there

they let me briefly tame a dragon at the end there

things i don’t love about dragon age inquisition:

some genuine cruelty in writing the dalish in a way that feels shockingly callous to the real world cultures the writers took inspiration from

never giving the dalish or the rebel mages any kind of voice of their own and making the player do all that work if they care, which i also feel limits my roleplaying creativity

refusing to let you challenge any of the often overwhelmingly conservative views expressed by other characters without receiving only derision and disapproval. inquisition is a game that punishes you at every turn for having your own opinions, in a way that could be interesting if it was willing to truly let you develop complex or antagonistic relationships with those characters, but ends up mostly just feeling mocking when nobody ever even tries to see your side, while simply agreeing with these people always rewards you with content. origins was capable of letting you engage in discussion, and da2 let you form rivalries that mattered; inquisition, despite starring some of the most intentionally controversial characters, does neither

the game engineering conflicts against groups like the freemen of the dales or the avvar that mean nothing to the player and range from vaguely to seriously upsetting in their assumptions about who it’s normal to just start killing en masse. it’s both boring and distressing

odd, for lack of a better word “casting choices”, like having the fantasy impoverished racial minority all be white within the party while the wealthiest and most privileged are characters of colour, or for a more in-world example having the elves express the most distaste towards elves and the mages express the most caution about mages. i don’t know that i quite have the vocabulary to fully discuss why these weird me out, but it all feels... disingenuous? and chosen to forestall criticism based on real world comparisons in a game series that i wish had the nerve to openly confront what it’s talking about if it’s going to try to make any of its conflicts feel relevant

most of the companions, and indeed most of the quests and time spent playing the game, feel disconnected from the main plot. it’s hard to feel any pressure when the game tells you we need to deal with the main plot “right now!” and “get there before corypheus!” when the bulk of the game is doing other things while you’re supposed to be doing that. the majority of companions could be cut without changing anything. and when you finally want to deal with the main plot you just click to start it. it’s not engaging

the game fails to fully expand dialogue for the player character options it provided, particularly notable with its confusing chantry focus when you’ve said for the dozenth time you’re not andrastian

the 2-handed weapon whirlwind ability sound effect is an exercise in creating the worst and most grating sound effect for someone to constantly hear

they didn’t let me romance vivienne

they killed my dragon :(

[leonenjoyer69]

OKAY, HELLO MY NEGLECTED TUMBLR, HERE'S PART ONE OF,,, WHO KNOWS HOW MANY, ON THE SIBLING AU!! creating an AU of your own AU is crazy, but hey, you know how I am. (Edit, theres now a part two with Elias!!)

This post is all about:

Henry Animus Kell! The sibling AU version of Mindkyll, but not evil <3 also NOT related to Henry Jekyll, they just look oddly similar 😋

Kell was born with an issue in his left leg, leading him to need a cane on him constantly, as his muscles will occasionally spasm or give out. As a child, Kell looks up to his parents, who are both quite well off doctors, and all the other high society folks around him. He's taken to balls sometimes, causing him to mimic the speaking manners and actions of the people around him, especially their charm. It's at one such ball that he vaguely meets Robert Lanyon, who somewhat enraptures him. Robert doesn't seem too interested in him, leading Kell to try and charm him like he's seen the adults do.

Instead, he meets Elias Lanyon, Robert's neglected and troublesome little brother, who's usually kept away from the balls as to not taint the family name as much with his "misbehaving". Of course, Kell quickly sees Elias as an opportunity to get through to his brother, basically just using him as an in. However, he begins to actually get quite attached to Elias, quickly becoming Elias's main friend.

The two hung out constantly, Kell slowly warming up to Elias's odd mannerisms as the two practically became inseparable. Kell's parents took quite a liking to Elias, so they were quite alright with it, and the Lanyon's saw it as a positive influence on Elias, somebody that would hopefully fix him. Lanyon does eventually warm up to Kell, but he has to work through a lot of jealousy first.

In university, Kell plays around with boys a decent bit, using that charm he learned through childhood. Unknowingly, he tends to go for boys that remind him of Elias, but he quickly gets bored and drops them, until he finally just quits dating around near the end of his and Elias's second year. This is also the year that Jekyll comes in, causing confusion considering his and Kell's similar looks. At first, Jekyll gets mistaken as a Kell, but as Jekyll begins to make a name for himself, it starts going both ways.

Eventually, after a nasty breakup on Elias's side, Kell and Elias finally realize their mutual feelings and get together, quite happily. They also help keep Jekyll and Lanyon together through Lanyon's arranged marriage. When Elias gets disowned by refusing his own potential arranged marriage in his last year, the both of them and Kell are there for him.

Post university, Kell starts his own medical practice (eventually taking over his parents) with Elias by his side. Jekyll still goes on to open the society, Lanyon much more willing and happy to help, and Jekyll hires his younger brother Edward on as well. Kell and Elias focus on their practice, but help out at the Society a decent bit, whether for medical reasons, moral support, or financially. Kell has calmed down his charm quite a bit, but when dealing with high society, balls, or people he doesn't like, it still certainly shows itself.

Personality wise:

When he's younger, Kell is quite guarded, usually charming his way through situations, just as he saw the adults doing. He's quite empathetic, but mainly only for those he cares about. He has a habit of speaking the truth around people he's comfortable with, and he's quite easy to fluster or confuse. He can be quite antagonistic towards people he doesn't like, usually not immediately or directly though, saving it for the right moment or when it's needed most. He tends to fight for what he wants, being quite argumentative at times, but specifically with his peers. He can be a bit cruel at times as well, but never with the people he cares about.

He has the biggest soft spot for Elias, letting down most of his walls for the blond. When they're dating, Kell makes sure his partner knows he's loved, going out of his way to make Elias happy, taking him on picnics, giving him gifts, etc.

Post university he mellows out quite a bit, becoming more of a kindly gentleman, always smiling and gentle looking. Of course he still has his moments, especially towards people that aren't his special people, but he's got quite a good reputation, not many can seem to hate Dr. Kell.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Time to be delulu yet completely serious on my bnha 423 opinions.

Good points: The resolution between AFO and Yoichi was satisfactory, love as a reason for evil and evil deeds, the rooftop trio having one final moment full of emotion, the moment of Kurogiri thinking about Tomura and the LOV, Deku having a quirk of his own born out of determination and hard work, Deku as the protagonist of bnha in general, Tomura's last actions and words.

Bad points: Rushed arc conclusions, moments that felt kinda repetitive or lacked the punch given that we've seen/lived them before, not the best compositions we've seen from Horikoshi on the panels, Tomura's arc being rushed to a martyr ending— for impact???? ( or it ending on another cliffhanger that is gonna turn to be different from what we expected ).

I'll go in depth, so please check under the cut.

GOOD POINTS:

Yoichi and AFO:

The last conversation among these brothers was everything I was expecting. The love was there and it transformed them. It made AFO a monster and Yoichi a ghost.

For me, this time the AFO ending needed to be quick because we've already said goodbye to him too many times. This was supposed to be about AFO's refusal to give up on his brother and the unresolved relationship of those two.

I really liked how Yoichi reminded AFO that he needs to face the consequences of his actions and that he's love won't be able to save them.

Villain love:

Love as a reason for pain and destruction is perhaps one of my favorite tropes. So many stories approach love as this purely morally good feeling, when in the end it is just like any other feeling, you know?

People go to war for love all the time. They kill for love. Die for love. Do unforgivable things for love. Human existence is sooooo complex, why would love be the exception?

Horikoshi has been REALLY careful with the AFO backstory and his motivations. He didn't want an antagonist that felt empty. He made AFO human without redeeming him, okay? Because our ability to sympathize with some of AFO's traits doesn't make him less evil. To put it simply, it means that evil things are also human at heart.

Even those acts that you can't forgive or forget are motivated by something.

Kurogiri and the rooftop trio:

We knew from the beginning they were not the main characters of this manga.

We've gotten their story through glimpses and moments. Their time together had always been somehow rushed. Too many things to say, not enough time and they are on opposite sides of the war after all.

We knew that Kurogiri would go back because we knew he would protect Tomura during the final fight. We knew that he'd help the heroes defeat AFO. We knew he'd have to make his choice and say his goodbyes to his old friends.

Kurogiri, Tomura and the LOV

"He's friends are waiting" along with the image of Spinner asking Kurogiri to bring Tomura back to them was the highlight of this chapter for me. (You all expected it, right?)

Something about the way it reads like a father who wants his son to live because he is being waited for. He has friends who love him and would do anything to protect him, see him safe and sound. Something about the symbolism of Spinner putting Father (aka Kotaro's hand) on Kurogiri's face as he asked for it.

This chapter acknowledged that Kurogiri and Shirakumo share the same character core. They are always the protectors, the ones who would sacrifice themselves to see their charge survive. Similar to how Mic was waiting for Shouta so Shirakumo made sure that Shouta would survive, Kurogiri wants to do the same for Spinner and Tomura.

This alone would require an entire post to elaborate.

Deku's quirk:

The debate between endgame quirkless Deku or endgame OFA user Deku is settle.

I really liked that Deku got a quirk on his own that was born out of his own determination to be a hero. It's a nice representation of all he is as a character and what he stands for. Similarly, I enjoyed a lot the fact that it was short-lived. I'm the type who likes it better when things require a sacrifice or when miracles have their own conditions.

Deku doesn't feel overpowered to me. You get that sense that he really deserves everything he has and that it hasn't been a nonsense gift from the narrative. There's also the human condition, the limitations that keep him grounded.

Bnha and Deku:

Deku defeating AFO 'cause villains and heroes help him, his friends being there for him and being there to cheer for him as he fights, his sensei being there despite the fact that Aizawa at first thought Deku wouldn't make it— all the details that make bnha what it is.

They were good.

The UA kids really keep the story consistent when it is about them. They don't give up on anyone, they fight for each other, they stay to witness things for themselves. I love them <3

Tomura's last actions and words:

Careful here. Listen to what I'm saying.

If the narrative had pointed out to this ending, this would have been a good way to execute it.

Tomura coming back along with the vestiges to pack one final punch to defeat AFO— I know many fans that would be moved to tears and would be super excited to see it. Tomura was on point in this chapter, dialoguing with Deku without the hatred in his heart, his face being clearer and almost tender.

He felt defeated, like he had accepted his death already. There's also the connection to Kurogiri and Nana (who defended him) and his words to Spinner, that are meant as a general message to depict how much Tomura values the LOV.

Even the fact that AFO kept him around 'cause a part of him loved / cared about Tomura feels fitting, but I'm not sure if I correctly read the leaks in that part...

Anyway, we got the old trope of the antagonist who used his last moments to help defeat the real villain. It serves as his redemption and the expectation is for the public to feel sorry bad for him.

BAD POINTS

Rushed conclusions:

In my opinion, this chapter was too fast paced and therefore was not as emotional as it should have been.

It doesn't give the feeling that it's fast because the battle is intense. It gives the feeling of too much information packed on one chapter, so nothing really shines on its own. It's way too informative, not enough action narration.

Like I said before, the fatal mistake of a story is to be boring. Art has to provoke you, it has to engage with you, question you, awake things in you. This chapter tho, many things happened at the same time and it grew a bit murky.

Repetitive moments

Again, personal opinion here.

I think certain bnha movies were a mistake. Not because they were bad or boring or whatever, but because Horikoshi wrote parts of bnha real ending into them to the point you'd say "we've already seen that" while reading bnha 423.

Deku and Bakugo teaming up to defeat AFO was so expected. Not as in "the narrative is making sense", but as in "we saw it on heroes rising".

I feel the same with the students all appearing to help Deku fight AFO. That's a typical shonen structure where the friends making space for the protagonist to reach the main villain. It was already happening, so why bring AFO back?? I think the story is over-explaining here, making everything way too obvious. We could have had AFO's resolution with Yoichi before and the students moment after. In truth, it feels like Horikoshi closed some character arcs before he should and left plot holes without explanation, so he needed to reopen to accommodate.

Panel composition:

I admire Horikoshi when it comes to panel composition. He has some amazing panels that make the story really flow, but bnha 423 isn't there.

There are too many elements clustered and empty spaces that don't feel with purpose (in manga, even the blanks must have a purpose). This chapter should have been at least two, so you wouldn't have to rush Bakugo appearing, Yoichi and AFO resolution, Kurogiri saying his goodbye to the rooftop trio and facing AFO for Tomura's sake, Deku remembering where he started and where he is, Tomura last words and the Tomura and Deku resolution...

Those are too many important plot points to illustrate in a hurry.

Also?? The panel of Tomura and Deku punching AFO is so unserious. Totally wrong place to be funny sjbdjdnd why does it even feel like the vestiges are punching air???

" Tomura's ending " :

I'm not the first to say it feels anticlimactic and as if it isn't the ending at all.

The major problem is that through the manga, Horikoshi has focused a lot on Tomura as a character, carefully developing him, giving him tropes that are often reserved for the hero or the main character, making sure we empathize with him, we understand him, hyping up Deku's journey to rescue him.

We got an entire arc from the LOV perspective. This is not the type of one sentence ending you give to an antagonist you spent so much ink and sweat on. The nonchalant way of Tomura accepting his death? The little reaction from Deku? What was the purpose of the manga building up the LOV friendship to the moment where Kurogiri told AFO that Tomura's friends were waiting for him, if you'd make him just disappear on thin air?

This reads absolutely like a bunny within a hat.

That's being optimistic.

If we want to be cynical, maybe this is all there is. I don't find it readable to end the story with Tomura dying. All that effort to save him and it ends in "oh well, he decayed along with AFO"?!

If you think about it, Toga status is unknown because we don't even know where she went or if she's still alive, Touya status is also unknown although we know he wanted to live and that the ice prevented him from further damage, we haven't seen Spinner, we don't know if Kurogiri vanished with that last attack on AFO and now we saw Tomura decaying into the wind.

Yo kill half the surviving LOV would be a bold move that wouldn't follow the narrative. The reward for the hero students should be being able to save their counterpart, so the world can regard them as the greatest heroes 'cause they save the unsalable and blah blah blah.

There's also the fact Tomura hasn't been saved yet. Tenko? Nana and Deku saved him from Kotaro. The crying kid? Saved from AFO by Deku and the vestiges and the others. Tomura? Nop, he's dying/dead. The one person Spinner really wanted to save was Tomura. He didn't know about the crying kid or Tenko. He wanted to save his friend, the "irredeemable" villain, the young man he played videogames with and fought alongside and vowed to follow.

If this is the end, it's incomplete.

So we might hope it is not the end.

[lacamorte]

~ if you're gonna be the death of me

(in for a long and suuuuper messy one today, folks, pls bear with me)

In the world of Proud Immortal Demon Way, the Protagonist is Luo Binghe, destined to battle and conquer and eternally emerge victorious against all he raised his blade against.

Shen Qingqiu is the Calamity, whose meridians are so tangled and damaged that he drains the life force of all he touches. He will bring the world to an end.

aka: PIDW is not a stallion novel, but rather a power-of-friendship story where the main antagonist is SQQ who, as one of the most powerful cultivators, has a qi deviation so terrible that he almost ends the world until LBH kills him.

So when SY transmigrates into SQQ, he thinks about the role he has to play as SQQ, the Calamity. The thought of hurting anyone in Cang Qiong makes him sick to his stomach. He almost enters a qi deviation at the thought, and has to enter seclusion in the LingXi Caves to stabilize himself. After preventing LQG's death, he decides to go to great lengths to not stress himself out. Thus, he concludes that in order to achieve a stress-free life, he has to leave Cang Qiong.

Brilliant idea! Except, when SY goes to Qiong Ding to speak to YQY about his retirement, YQY blatantly refuses him. SY tries again the next day, but he's refused every time. The Sect Leader, who used to seek out SQQ often, miraculously began avoiding him.

Well. SY has always been better at asking for forgiveness than permission.

He leaves the sect in the middle of the night, with all the documents for his resignation on his desk. He becomes a wandering cultivator, evading cqm's every attempt to bring him back.

Furious at his behavior, the System figures that if telling SY no won't stop him, perhaps showing him how hopeless the situation is will. And so during his time away, SY tries again and again to resist the plot. again and again, the System foils his every attempt. its favorite method is isolating SY — anyone the man wants to befriend always mysteriously ends up suffering or dying. SY had always loved PIDW for the beauty of its world — he'd never anticipated how witnessing it all alone after weeks of camaraderie and laughter for companh could be so harrowing.

he never finds out whether it was all because of his role as the Calamity, or the interference of the System. that damned thing stopped speaking to him ages ago.

LBH is a kid roaming the streets freshly bereaved when he meets SY, a gaunt looking man who gives him his food. eventually, LBH starts trailing SY, and SY tries to dissuade him, but he persists. whenever SY switches towns, LBH follows. he sometimes catches a man wearing white talking to SY, and every time the man leaves, looking more stony than when he arrived. LBH develops a habit of stealing some food for SY, and SY scolds him but LBH wont take no for an answer and they compromise by splitting the food between them. eventually LBH gets into serious trouble when he gets caught stealing and SY saves him. SY is remarkably quiet as he gently pats LBH's head as he cries.

eventually, SY stops trying to convince LBH to stop following him. instead of camping out in the forest, SY enters inns and makes LBH take the bed. this is how LBH learns that SY is actually loaded. but then if he's so rich, why does he never buy himself food? inedia can only sustain someone for so long. turns out, the only meals SY has are the ones LBH steals for him, and even those he tries to turn down. so at the inn, LBH insists on splitting everything in the meal SY gets him.

the white robed man visits again, and LBH is wary of him bc of how gruffly he speaks to SQQ. still, no matter how gruff he might be, SQQ is far more uncooperative. in all the time LBH has known him, he typically responds in one word only, often not replying to anything he doesn't consider particularly important, which is most things. the white robed man asks that question again — why? the same one he's been asking every visit. SQQ stares at him soullessly, before suddenly reaching out and patting the man's head.

"i'm sorry," he whispers. somehow, LBH thinks both he and the white robed man will never get the answer to that question.

as SQQ spaces out again, as he often does, the man drags LBH outside and LBH is of course wary and fights back. that is, until the man lets go of him and tosses him a particularly sturdy branch, a similar one held in his own hands.

"hit me," he says. LBH stares, incredulous. he throws the stick at the man, who deflects it and it whacks LBH square in the face. this ignites his anger and he spends the rest of the afternoon trying to land a hit on LQG.

then, when LBH finally collapses from exhaustion, the man gives him a waterskin.

"same place, same time, tomorrow." he says.

"fuck you," LBH swears hotly. he does turn up the next day. he leaves with more bruises than the day before, and a bag full of clothes to replace the ones the man rips on accident.

this becomes routine. one that LBH begrudgingly look forward to, bc these days, the only time SQQ looks anything other than disinterested and aloof is when he's treating his wounds. most of the time he just glowers and frowns, but when LBH is lucky, he can get a few angry mutters about "stupid liu qingge" and "careless brute".

so the next time LBH goes to the site, he has a name to cuss out. he leaves with more bruises, and SQQ has never had more to say.

LBH doesnt think much of it until he finds himself supporting SQQ on one of his missions, when he can stand on equal footing with the monsters his master battles on the regular. when SQQ looks at him, he looks annoyed.

"now i have to get you a sword," he grumbles. LBH feels bad until SQQ spends 5 hours going through each and every little tidbit and detail about his commission with the blacksmith, whos all but ecstatic to craft a blade for the mysterious cultivator who solves any problem in exchange for concealing his presence. at least, that's all SQQ asks for, but the residents eventually learned that its easier to dump the gold and fruits and furs onto the cultivator's little disciple with the sparkling eyes. they'd tried complying with SQQ's request to keep his whereabouts a secret at first, but after seeing how LQG trailed after SQQ like a particularly lost, particularly strong puppy, they couldn't help but make an exception for him.

idk what happens exactly, but i do know i want LBH to grow up and become a strong disciple under SQQ's tutelage. he wants to prove himself to his Shizun during the immortal alliance conference, and rife with resignation and a mourning LBH will never understand, SQQ agrees and they go. and when the demon invasion happens, the peak lords happen to be confronting SQQ, and he stays silent as they yell at him, demanding an explanation.

that is, until SQQ reaches out to touch one of the beasts leaping towards him—

—and it disintegrates into dust beneath his touch.

"a demon will become the hero," he murmurs. "and a human, the villain."

in the end, the System really did manage to teach him a lesson.

i think ill make it so the endless abyss is sort of ecstatic to be so close to the Calamity — the excitement of which unlocks LBH's demon inheritance. in the og novel, SQQ sent down LBH. Here, SY takes his face in his hands, tenderly wipes the demon mark from his forehead and conceals it, and chooses to go down to the abyss. LBH cries out, cries his shizun's name —

but when SQQ turns around to look at him, LBH's breath is caught in his throat.

'that is not my Shizun,' his heart whispers traitorously. his Shizun had been stoic and quiet, yes, but his eyes always held something unyielding.

yet when SQQ looks at LBH, LBH sees something broken. LBH sees something turned to dust, something withered, something as fleeting as a dream.

LBH wonders how someone alive could look so dead. in the end, SQQ turns around, and falls into the abyss.

not understanding, and not wanting to risk telling people what happened, LBH tells everyone SQQ was dragged into the abyss... and likely dead. it's a lie he tells so many times he begins to believe it himself.

in the end, LQG has to drag LBH to bai zhan peak kicking and screaming. it's weeks before LBH can do anything besides scream, cry or hurt. he can't even eat without insisting on giving it to his Shizun, or making tea in case he comes back. in his grief, LBH becomes a model member of BZP, and while his sect siblings don't understand the gloom that clings to him, they see his resolve and respect it immensely.

to honor SQQ's memory, LBH goes around various towns helping the hungry and the needy. he plays SY's guqin — he can't play quite as well as SY, but that might be bc he can't stop himself from crying every few notes — and he spars with LQG. maybe they bond over their shared grief. maybs bingliushen, idk. maybe LBH believed SY dead until LQG gave him a look and said "he's alive." something about the cold certainty in his voice, as if it couldn't be anything but the truth, helps strengthen LBH.

LBH befriends LMY when she finds one of the poems MQF asked him to make for his 'therapy'. he befriends NYY when he helps her take care of the garden that SQQ apparently left behind when he left CQM. he even befriends YQY, who seems to find comfort in the presence of someone mourning as much as him. no one can deny LBH, not when his fumbling with formalities juxtaposes so beautifully with his perfect tea brewing, not when the food he makes particularly well match the tastes of the qing jing peak lord exactly, not when his less than ideal upbringing doesnt conceal how he is so clearly SQQ's.

no one can say no to the Protagonist.

there are rumors of HHP investigating abyss rifts. LBH and LQG are cautiously interested, at least, until HHP announces that they've caught a Heavenly Demon. LBH, aware of his heritage, feels like he has to go. YQY, LQG and co. bring him along.

"where do you have him trapped?" YQY inquires.

The HHPM laughs, waving dismissively. "well, in truth, the demon was suppressed by immortal binding cables and some of our best talismans. as long as you don't disturb it, it doesn't bite, so i thought it best to let it roam around. its hardly going anywhere in the state that it's in."

the words spark suspicion amidst the cang qiong delegation. still, nothing prepares them for the tall, lonely figure roaming the gardens, golden ropes binding his wrists like bracelets rather than suppressants.

SQQ won't even look at them.

[typellblog]

Nadeko Medusa - An Analysis

Otorimonogatari begins in media res, with the emphasis on the inevitability of this ending solidifying it as a kind of tragedy. Why am I here, Nadeko asks. Why me? Why was this so inevitable?

What did the rest of the cast do that allowed for their problems to be solved, that allowed for Koyomi to help them instead of becoming enemies?

In truth we’re well off the rails - Nadeko doesn’t even have the typical specialist appearance that so consistently helps in every other arc. The one that unravels the mysteries is the serpent, Kuchinawa, who turns out to be none other than Nadeko herself. 

In other words the specialist role is filled by Nadeko, the protagonist role is filled by Nadeko, the victim role is filled by Nadeko, even the oddity afflicting her - all Nadeko. It’s an entirely solipsistic, fabricated story.

As a result, Koyomi’s involvement becomes singularly unhelpful. I don’t know if people really do just go ahead and save themselves, but at the very least they have to try to let others save them. There’s a particular poison about Nadeko that makes Koyomi’s usual modus operandi, seen from the outside, particularly useless. We see in his interactions with her throughout the arc that he suspects she is the victim of an oddity despite her denials - Nadeko thinks she is lying to him, but Koyomi’s guesses are already completely off from the perspective of Nadeko herself being the snake. He doesn’t think of her as someone capable of manipulating and deceiving, as someone capable of being the instigator of her own incident. 

Koyomi’s partial immortality is a representation of his self-sacrificing nature, him lowering his ‘intensity as a human’ in order to better approach others. But the more he lowers his guard around Nadeko the worse it gets, her poison stopping him from healing. 

Poison is a topic that comes up in the previous arc, the motto of Gaen Tooe, Kanbaru Suruga’s mother. “If you can’t be medicine, then be poison, otherwise you’re just plain old water.” What she means by poison is also ambiguous. It does bring to mind the antagonist of that arc (if you can even call her that) Numachi Rouka. Rouka, a girl that Koyomi couldn’t save, couldn’t even meet. Nadeko and Rouka have one main similarity - a tendency to run away from their problems & avoid getting to know other people. 

When something is asked of her Nadeko’s typical response is to do nothing, neither refuse or accept but simply wait until they give up, papering the interaction over with various ‘sorry’s or ‘anyway’s to avoid addressing the main topic. Nadeko is barely aware of what she herself is doing throughout much of the arc, avoiding thinking about the problems instead of doing anything to address them - like asking for help. After she snaps in the classroom, she leaves - after eating the talisman in Koyomi’s house, she runs away - no destination in mind besides getting away from the questions and expectations placed on her by society. 

Nadeko’s depression and anxiety, just like Rouka before her, alienate her from life itself - embracing inhuman death in the form of becoming an oddity. 

One of the things about oddities is that they don’t appear to ordinary people. Hachikuji calls it the ‘backstage’ in Nisemonogatari. They’re cut off from the ordinary operations of the world itself, only visible to those with supernatural connections or their own chosen victims. 

And Nadeko, by the end of Otorimonogatari, is quite firmly an oddity, a creature that can’t be approached for no reason. 

Koyomi saw the Lost Cow because he was lost. In encountering the Curse Cat he was, in fact, cursed. He has no business with the god of a dead shrine. No doors to unlock, no prayers to grant, no story to tell.

The narrative no longer sees him as trying to help a friend, but rather trying to forcibly involve himself with an oddity, in the same way as he wrestled the jagirinawa in Nadeko Snake. Don’t mistake the person you’re trying to save, Suruga tells him then. Nadeko is no longer the person he’s trying to save, now. 

This leads me to believe the point where it’s officially Nadekover is when she takes the talisman, fuses with Kuchinawa, loses her last reason to be attached to the narrative of herself as a human. The framing of the novel presents it as an inevitable ending because it’s narrated from the perspective of a Nadeko who’s already reached that ending. For her, looking back, there’s no changing the sequence of events that led her there. The idea that everything happening to her is inevitable and beyond her control is a neat excuse for her, but it’s not true. 

Okay, but seriously, how did we get here?

Nadeko constantly interprets events in a way that makes her feel guilty, like she did something wrong. Her fundamental view of the world revolves around “victimisers and victims” (i.e. people who hurt others and people who are hurt).

She would rather see herself as a bystander, as someone who doesn’t interact with others in either way. She finds the idea of human interaction, human touch, to be uncomfortable. However, people tend to see her as a victim, leading to an increasing worry about having a victim complex, thinking of it as ‘tricking’ others into seeing her as a victim, which becomes, in the extreme, victimising them in itself. 

She dissociates as a coping mechanism, seeing what she does and what is done to her as if it was happening to someone else. “Nadeko” did it, not her. “Nadeko” is how other people see her. An important part of Nadeko’s image is her bangs, which help craft an image of her in others’ minds, by obscuring her eyes and how she truly feels. This serves a kind of contradictory purpose, as while it’s implied Nadeko chose the bangs to deflect from her cuteness (even wearing baggy and unfeminine clothing as much as possible to avoid emphasising her cuteness) the bangs still result in people seeing her as cute. They can’t see the real her, and substitute their own assumptions onto her.

While this has some upsides for Nadeko, as it allows her to retain a blameless image, it also results in a lack of an identity. Nadeko knows who “Nadeko” is, but not who she is. She doesn’t truly identify with any of the things she does, so they’re attributed to “Nadeko”, not her. When others compliment her for being cute, she doesn’t feel as though she is being complimented. She doesn’t feel cute. She feels like she’s tricking people into thinking she’s cute. This constructed Nadeko allows her to feel like a bystander, the very thing she desires to soothe her guilt, but the more she feels as though she’s deliberately constructing it the more guilt she feels over the ‘deception’. 

Tsukihi is a kind of anti-Nadeko. Someone motivated with a strong sense of identity. Someone who’s direct to a fault and uncomplicatedly happy when people find her cute. Someone who doesn’t ascribe to Nadeko’s victimiser/victim dichotomy, because she believes in a third role, the hero. Someone who can touch others without making them uncomfortable, put in effort that doesn’t just help themself. 

Nadeko fears and loves her in equal measure. Fears her, because her attention is one of the few things capable of breaking through Nadeko’s shield of indifference. Loves her, because she’s exactly the kind of person Nadeko wants to be but thinks she never could. 

Trying to deal with Tsukihi reveals some of the contradictions inherent to Nadeko’s attitude. She acts passively, in a way that encourages people to be sympathetic, but then professes to be upset by getting that sympathy. Tsukihi, on the other hand, gives Nadeko just as much sympathy as she thinks Nadeko deserves, and Nadeko craves more nonetheless. In some ways she does still want to ‘look cute’ to others and relies on the acceptance that comes along with it. She’s stuck in a weird Catch-22 where she cant get closer to or further away from other people without resenting herself even more. 

It’s suggested that Nadeko’s crush on Koyomi is originally sourced from Tsukihi. It makes sense that Nadeko would pick Koyomi as a more conventional target for her affections, thinking the closest she could get to Tsukihi was a kind of sister-in-law relationship. 

Koyomi is someone that she supposedly feels love for, but is that coming from “Nadeko” or herself? The problem is that it’s not love exactly, it’s just another kind of shield that performs a similar role to her bangs. It gives her an excuse for why she isn’t interested in romance. It allows her to present as ‘normal’ to others, but of course that perception of normality belongs to “Nadeko”, not to her. Even Koyomi himself can’t get through to her. She doesn’t want him to understand her, to break down the barriers between them, she wants to keep him away with the bangs, to look cute to him just as she does to everyone else. She doesn’t actually want Koyomi, she just wants to remain in a constant state of wanting him, an unobtainable dream.

Cracks start emerging because of Hitagi’s presence, and that’s what has Nadeko praying for divine intervention. Hitagi makes the story of her loving Koyomi more trouble than it’s worth. It introduces jealousy, the business of dealing with his lovers. The real way to keep it stable isn’t even to kill Hitagi, it’s to kill him, affix him in the heavens as an unchanging star that will never grow any further or any closer. 

It’s tempting to see this particular purpose as the reason why Kuchinawa, as an oddity, descends upon Nadeko. But Nadeko herself doesn’t want to think about it. It’s not like Tsubasa, who after casting away her memories & emotions is genuinely unaware of them. Nadeko feels guilty about her curses towards Hitagi, wants to look cute by not mentioning them. The role that Kuchinawa fills isn’t to get Nadeko on a beeline to the talisman - he works much more indirectly.

First, and most obviously, Kuchinawa is a bully. He speaks rudely and directly where Nadeko is quiet and demure. This isn’t a shift in alignment, Kuchinawa isn’t ‘bad girl’ Nadeko - he just says what she’s been thinking this whole time and doesn’t want to admit to. His comments when he goes into school with her all question the ‘point’ of what she’s doing. From one view it’s an ancient god questioning new concepts, from another it’s Nadeko finally allowing herself to question things that she’s had to quietly accept this whole time. The intrusive thoughts stop her from concentrating and eventually lead to her snapping and fully channeling Kuchinawa to talk to the rest of the class. Again, while we could see this as Kuchinawa’s “influence”, it makes much more sense that Nadeko herself can no longer hold her feelings back. 

After all, another role that Kuchinawa’s directness performs is allowing Nadeko to poke at her own insecurities and contradictions. Kuchinawa is the voice in her head pointing out all the things that Nadeko has done wrong, ensuring the sources of her guilt are never far from her mind. There’s an odd kind of comfort to it, though - unlike the criticisms of other people, Kuchinawa never expects anything from her in response. He is amused by Nadeko’s deceptions, not resentful. He sees everyone in the world as a victimiser, as a liar. Everyone lives while deceiving themselves and others. It’s only natural. Therefore there’s nothing Nadeko can do about it. No way of her remaining a bystander.

Ultimately what I think Kuchinawa represents is Nadeko’s creative impulse turned towards escapism. He allows her to construct a story, present her life in a way she can accept, participate in a narrative she chooses. Her love for Koyomi is a story she’s been telling for a while, one that allows her to paper over the cracks in her life and give her the strength to continue. Now cracks start emerging in that story, and to paper them over she reaches for a paper-thin talisman. 

The question arises of why Kuchinawa (why Nadeko) even needed it in the first place. Clearly it plays a role in feeding Nadeko’s fantasies, granting Kuchinawa the supernatural power he needs to become real. But despite being billed as capable of granting any wish, it can’t actually make the story of her love for Koyomi real. It can’t make him love her. Because she doesn’t want him to in the first place. 

No, the talisman’s powers are limited. It can’t truly turn back time, or erase her mistakes at school, because she doesn’t believe her actions could ever be changed. It’s been over from the start, Nadeko says. There’s only one way it could ever end for her, only one type of person she could ever be, only one choice she could ever make. 

Every other Monogatari character has had multiple choices. Take Koyomi, who was prompted to kill the monster entirely, and instead made it one with him. Suruga, who was encouraged by Rouka to leave her alone and just live a normal life, and instead came back to play a final game. Tsubasa could have just let the oddities in her mind go burn off her stress and pretend it had nothing to do with her, but instead decided to let them back inside.

Let alone two options, though, Nadeko fails to see even one. What she ends up pursuing is neither of the two options, but instead the bad end, as if Koyomi had remained a vampire with Kiss-Shot.

She refuses to face reality. That’s what Tsukihi says - “telling someone to dream is like telling them to face reality.” It feels a bit contradictory but it fits into a theme that’s been consistent over the last few arcs. Seeing a dream is like having an end goal to work towards. Ougi says in Mayoi Jiangshi that it’s better to not achieve your dreams, because they’ll be inevitably disappointing. Koyomi says in Suruga Devil that wishing for something in itself is fine, it’s a destructive focus on the end result that’s the issue with the Monkey’s Paw. Tsukihi says she would support Nadeko if she was really trying to date Koyomi, but she’s not. She can’t face the reality of Koyomi having a girlfriend, of Koyomi being out of reach for her. What she’s doing is acting as though she’s in a different reality where that’s not true. 

It’s a fitting followup that when Nadeko snaps, acting her most Tsukihi-like, it’s to tell the rest of her class to face reality. As a result of Kaiki’s charms the class has started acting, in her words, “just like Nadeko”. Because lots of people’s secret feelings about each other were revealed, they no longer trust each other, assuming everyone around them are trying to trick each other, trying to act cute, to the point where they’ve given up on trying to make close relationships. Given up on the year, the class, entirely. Because they think they have no choice. 

Nadeko tells them to face reality, to accept that the world and the people around you aren’t as pretty as the stories we tell about them. To pursue a dream where everyone makes up in the end. To ‘rewrite’ the memory of that class with their own effort. It’s a vision of a Nadeko who does try to address her issues, as embodied by the class and the effects of Kaiki’s talismans. It’s what Otorimonogatari really should have been about, if Nadeko didn’t go ahead and make up another story on her own. A fantastical decoy of a story that has her running out of the classroom and never seeing the result of her efforts. 

Kaiki’s talismans, if we remember, were fake, their effects not genuinely manifested for anyone but Nadeko, who bought into the story, went as far as to research her own methods of breaking the curse, and ended up making it worse. It’s not as if she was at fault for what happened, it’s not as if she did it on purpose, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it happened according to her desires. It let her reconnect with Koyomi, didn’t it? 

Nadeko is the type of person who can take something false and through her creative impulse, chuunibyou, escapist fantasies, whatever you want to call it, make it into reality. It’s just that she’s unconsciously biased in a destructive direction, one that results in either her being hurt or her hurting others. 

This culminates in her consuming the talisman and becoming a god. The story she’s actually trying to make real isn’t the world where she’s an eternal victim, Koyomi constantly looking out for her. It’s the story where she’s an eternal victimizer, a serpent god with sharp fangs. 

Due to her new heat vision, her hair isn’t an inconvenience to her any longer, just to others. It pushes them away actively instead of just concealing her. You could say the hundreds of snakes move independently of her will, but in another view they are her will itself, animal instinct embodied. They’re only uncontrollable in the sense that she can’t control her own violent impulses. It’s easier for her to get rid of people than deal with them directly, and this confirms her view of herself as fundamentally selfish. She can’t be like Tsukihi.

In a complete inversion from the ethos she espouses to her class, Nadeko says she’s someone who likes people only if they’re kind to her, and can’t like anyone who dislikes her.  It’s a story where in becoming an oddity she no longer has to deal directly with the human world, no longer has to be concerned with what’s going on with her classroom or her parents. 

But that, she says, is “Nadeko”, not me. At the end of it all what she’s doing is still a performance for the benefit of others. She still can’t tell what she really wants, really is. She still gets by with the excuse that she’s a bystander and there’s someone else doing all that stuff. The phone call at the end makes her dissociation clear, I think. If she really wanted to kill Hitagi and Koyomi and Shinobu, would something so simple really stop her? If she actually hated and was jealous of Hitagi, would she calmly listen to her? Does she really have to thank her for her advice? The way she reminds herself that people who are kind to Nadeko are good people sounds like she’s trying to convince herself. 

Becoming the serpent god is in line with how Nadeko sees herself, but it’s not what she actually wants. She doesn’t really want an “I”, she tells Kuchinawa as they discuss her lack of self. She just can’t bear existing without one. She says it from the start of the book. She doesn't actually want to defeat Koyomi and reign victorious over the shrine. Nadeko’s way out of this whole mess was for him to kill her. 

I get it, Nadeko, I really do. Living is just so tiring, after all.

[mysterious-prophetess]

Metaphor: ReFantzaio—Parallels and Foils

This is going to get into spoiler territory, so I'll put those parts below a read more.

In most fiction, there is usually one obvious parallel set up between our Protagonist and his main Antagonist.

Metaphor is no exception. Will/The Protagonist and Louis serve as excellent foils to one another, especially after some late-game reveals show just how closely they mirror each other.

Another set of foils are Maria Alces and Cirisium Zorba. This is made more ironic when you consider that Maria's follower bond gives rise to the Healer Archetype Line and Zorba is a Necromancer.

Maria and Zorba's parallels are interesting because Zorba is what Maria might have grown up to be had she been left on her own without others helping her find her place.

Like Maria, Zorba is of mixed heritage—he being half-clemar and half-mustari while Maria is half-rhoag and half-ishkia.

Like Maria, his status is blatantly obvious as he displays visible marks of his mixed heritage— such as the third eye of the mustari but a single solitary horn from his clemar side. Maria's single pair of wings give away her ishikia heritage, and also give away that she is only half-ishkia from it being a single pair (we never see her ears, but I assume they're pointed like Grius's were).

However, where she found family and acceptance, Zorba only ever found a dark and twisted version of that with Louis and his patronage to the point of being so utterly devoted to a man who lacks the capacity to see beyond his own aims.

Now we circle back to Will/the Protagonist and Louis. Spoilers to follow. You have been warned.

Let's get this out of the way.

Both are of Eldan descent and have connections to both the Elda and More/Hythlodeus V, losing family to the burning of the Elda Village and being inspired by the Fantasy Novel.

Both can inspire others. Neither gives a damn about what tribe someone is.

Both are skilled at magic, albeit Louis is far more powerful in this regard; keep in mind that Will/the Protagonist comes pretty damn far in power level in FOUR MONTHS. Who knows how much closer the fight might have been had Will had the time to train prior.

I digress. Both have ideals they refuse to back down from. It's in executing their ideals where they differ the most. That, and Will wants to help everyone and Louis will only help those who can help themselves.

Will/the Protagonist has had the deck stacked against him, almost as much as Louis, and they even share the same traumatic experiences to a degree.

Yet, Will held on to his desire to make the world a better place in spite of its massive flaws and would work to create the world of his ideals, while Louis never escaped the flames of that night and only ever saw destruction as the solution.

Louis sees fantasy and ideals like Will's as lies because he was failed by More/Hythlodeus V when the King gave up on life (basically) after the cursing of The Prince/Will.

Will sees fantasy as inspiration despite More/Hythlodeus V giving up on the world and—by extension Will—until Will has to show his father's own vestige More that he was holding firm to his ideals, unlike More/Hythlodeus V.

Will finds the strength to keep believing, whereas Louis sees belief as a weakness to be stamped out (see his hatred of the Sanctist Church beyond his legitimate grievances with their leader attempting the genocide of Louis's people).

Will also shares some parallels with Maria and Zorba because, like them, he is actually of mixed heritage—half-clemar and half-elda. He can easily pass as just elda, but that's not much better for him considering how the elda are treated. However, because the game doesn't touch much on this, all I can point out is Maria and Zorba show different ways Will's own life might have turned out, but the same could be said of his parallel with Louis.

In the end, it's that Will has friends (in true POWER OF FRIENDSHIP) and the strength to keep going and stick to his ideals that allows him to triumph over Louis.

Yet, it's so easy to see where Will could have become Louis (or even Zorba).

[atopvisenyashill]

Worst things GOT did casting wise:

- making Dany too beautiful (+ styling her in a way that she never has a hair out of place, always wears BLUE - which makes her look peaceful and soft and angelic, not making her burn her hair off etc). I just think of that one official art piece that's in the illustrated AGOT book where dany is bald, with the dragons and sparks and frames around her and its so striking instead of the "beautiful angelic blonde women stand empowered with her tits out" scene we got

- casting Iain Glen as Jorah and not like. a random Lannister (like. Come on. He is a burly and ugly man... why are you casting one of the most beautiful men to play him.... this is how we ended up with dany/jorah shippers)

-making Joffrey too unattractive (this is not meant to disparage JG who is a great actor and seems like a really cool dude and i'm not saying he's ugly but I think from his very first scene Joffrey looks very punchable and it would have been so much smarter to make the audience .. relate to Sansa's infatuation with his golden looks. In my head (and in all the official art) Joffrey looks like a male version of cersei/a younger version of Jaime.)

- making Dany, Jon, Robb, Marg, Brienne etc 10+ years older than Sansa and the younger starklings .... It's not "the main characters and arya (who is so cool and can kill people) + the little children" it's ONE AGE group of equally important characters

Like I know people are upset at Ned/Jon etc being too attractive, WHICH I GET, but I feel like those were very vibe based casting decisions and i'm ultimately fine with that (I also think it's easier for the audience to root for someone if they're attractive so like. I guess they had to do it) but these other things resulated in people's perception of the characters being so wildly different from what they're supposed to be. The real reason people get so angry whenever someone says they wish tamzin had stayed is because they don't like the idea of daenerys not being this ethereal beauty (TM is beautiful but not in a conventional way) that they can fully root for without issue.

1. NO YOU ARE SOOOOOO RIGHT ABOUT THEM REFUSING TO LET DANY LOOK UGLY. it’s not to say tamzin isn’t clearly beautiful, but i think she’s beautiful in the same way gwendoline christie is, which is that she’s very striking and she has a strong presence but she’s not exactly what people picture when they say “typical hot lady” (which is Crazy these are all able bodied white women, like the definition of “beauty” is soooooo fuckijg narrow that tamzin merchant is ~atypically beautiful) vs emilia definitely is, and YES like everything from not burning her hair off to emilia being,,,,,fuller in figure than dany as a fourteen year old would be is just very clear that they saw dany different than the way she is On The Page. i mean i know people whack george for saying that she’s like a sexy funny lady or whatever but george never lets go of the fact that she’s incredibly young whereas d&d completely miss that part of her character.

i will say i Get the criticism of tamzin perhaps not picking up on the conlangs easily because one thing you can say for emilia is that she had a decent head for the conlangs, she’s even still partially fluent in dothraki lmaooo. but all the other stuff they said about why they recast dany it’s like. hmmmmmmmmmm.

2. absolutely right about iain especially because he’s similar to idk paddy in that he’s got CHARISMA but unlike viserys, they didn’t intent to portray him as a deeply flawed, antagonistic character they went in portraying him as like an objectively Good Guy dedicated to dany. he’s just so much less creepy and pushy in the show and has several scenes where he shows some moral backbone - that “yet here you stand” “yet here i stand” scene is sooooooo good for example, the fact that he actually apologizes for spying on dany, giving him the greyscale story & not having him fuck a valyrian looking woman in a brothel 💀, etc etc - and you also just lose some of the creepiness here because emilia is clearly a grown if young woman and ian is handsome, so it’s like. welll of Course you want to root for them to be together! and never mind that this is a Massive departure from their book characterizations!! again, they have this idea of jorah in their head that doesn’t match up with what’s on the page even a little.

3. i do get your point re: joffrey and i think this is my problem with aidan as littlefucker too - they’re too obviously villains and it makes ned and sansa look stupid. like, in the books we have that moment where robb almost decks joffrey which does seem to signal something bad but the crown prince being full of himself doesn’t mean he’s going to threaten his betrothed’s sister with a sword then get his ass handed to him by a toddler. in the show we get QUITE a number of scenes where joffrey is shown to be a brat AND as you say, just like aidan, jack has a Certain Look, he looks like a shitty jock who has allegations against him ajsjdj like irl when jack smiles he’s so adorable!! but in the show they REALLY play up his ability to channel a greasy aura ya know aksjd. when the point of asoiaf is often that villains don’t LOOK like villains, but some of our Main Villains clearly resemble typical villains in the show.

4. “it’s ONE age group of characters” NO YOU ARE SO RIGHT. like, there’s several years difference from robert to ned to cat to the twins to tyrion but they’re all the same generation of characters. there’s that exact same age difference from brienne to robb, dany, jon to sansa, arya, bran, with theon kind of similar to characters like jorah, who are old enough to remember The Before Times but aren’t quite in either generation. but because they wanted dany, brienne, jon, robb, and margaery to be more of a Typical archetype rather than an exploration of that archetype, they aged everyone up and essentially invented another generation between the “adult” characters and the “kid” characters. not to be super nerdy here but one of my favorite worked shoots in wrestling is one cody rhodes did where he was ranting about the way young wrestlers get put through the grinder and he has this amazing line where he sums it up as “old men talking, young men dying” and it’s not to say there aren’t a lot of old dudes Also dying lmao but you really see this where young leaders are often unprepared for their responsibilities and used as puppets by older men and you just MISS THAT when that whole generation is so grown!

it’s like they looked at those themes of war being terrible and all consuming and brutal no matter how justified you feel you are and went “wow war is brutal 😍” LIKE PLEASE????

[wordy-little-witch]

Nonbinary Buggy Hours lezzgo

• Fairly early on, Buggy got the whole "I don't fit in" vibe but chalked it up to Being On A Crew Of Monsters. It's only after Oden and later Toki join that things begin piecing together - I'm dropping some cultural blending here but Wano for whatever reason has WILD mixed bag energy as far as folk tales go. Roger has some flavor of UK Energy, Rayleigh has old English vibes, etc etc. Buggy and Shanks got old seamen's tales as bedtime stories, shanties as lullabies, but the crew also would share children's stories and folk tales from THEIR youths as well. Some of them had mystical aspects as well and there were some fun stories with the fair folk or spirits and shape-shifting. Buggy loved those the most.

• Toki joining the crew led to some quick acclimation, but Buggy was hesitant - she was New and Unknown and so a Danger. But Toki was just.... so sweet about it all. Buggy went from I Don't Trust You At All to That's My Auntie within maybe a month. Complete night and day.

• Bugs' First Forray Into Makeup was via Toki. They do silly Self Care Evenings and include the babies and Oden is SO SMITTEN and Roger is DYING for a camera. ((Shanks is dying for other reasons, much to nearly everyone's amusement, poor kid)).

• Buggy's first instance of being Not A Boy was a result of a silly trick/prank done by the crew on Fishman Island. Some really fancy restaurant had a Mermaids Eat Free event going on so they decide to dress the kids up as mermaids - Shanks is down for the funnies, and is laughing and bright eyed and finding humor in it. Buggy is prickly and snarky and sassy the whole time until he saw himself in the mirror. He went... alarmingly quiet.

- Buggy was frankly stunned because the mer-species they went with was a clownfish, something he was absolutely LIVID about, but the orange complemented his skin and hair so beautifully. The orange, white and black hair pin holding his hair was a wonderful pop of color. The black eye liner made his eyes pop, the bronze-peach lip gloss was stunning and....

They felt so wonderful. So beautiful. So Free.

• Buggy wears orange a lot after that.

• when Buggy hesitantly asks Rayleigh and Roger if genders can be different in real life, Rayleigh is confused, Roger cackles- Buggy's scared for a moment until Roger point blank says "oh, it can be whatever you want it to, baby blue! We're pirates - who cares for allowance?" Then the captain gives that smile, the soft one, the one only those deemed His got to see, the one that peeled back layers of a person and saw to their cores, and asks, "Is there something you want to tell us, squirt?"

"I'm... not a boy."

"Okay. Are you a girl, then?"

"I don't think so."

"Alright! Ye' still want to go by Buggy?"

"Mmhmm."

"Alrighty then! You just let me know if anything comes up that you want to tell me, alright, baby bug?"

"Okay. Thanks, Captain!"

• yes, when Buggy leaves, Roger wails. Yes, Rayleigh gives a long suffering sigh and pays his back. And yes, Roger is crying hecausr that happy smile of Buggy's was simply "too cute, my heart! It's melting!! I'm a pirate puddle!!!"

• Buggy, with the room to experiment safely and explore, finally settles on nonbinary, neither gender really all that interesting, but pronouns don't matter either. Presentation is all about Presentation (<MegaMind Voice)

• Shanks calls Buggy his Clown Wife and Buggy refuses to admit to blushing every time it happens. He also drops lines like "I miss my clown wife" while sipping a bottle of rum and staring forlorn at the sea.

• Shanks also has The Range and will unashamedly be like "I don't understand people who say their wife is a bitch and they hate them.... my wife is a bitch and I like him SO MUCH!!!!"

• Luffy and Buggy: Enby to enby communication. Autism to autism antagonist.

• Buggy's crew BTW knows that their captain is simply Their Captain, pronouns your/majesty (/j), and nobody cares beyond the mild worry that a femme presenting Buggy will accidentally seduce another high ranked naval officer because somehow that ALWAYS HAPPENS. And the Navy is the MILDER concern. They're so stressed.

• lowkey considered clowncore meets punk bc I feel like Buggy would be. Scrumptious. Like that. Colors and patterns and leather and lace and studs and smiles and just - hhhhhhhh niche interest leave me aloooone-

• speaking of niche, I really love the idea of the Buggy pirates all having a passing knowledge of both circus acts and management, leading to random bouts of.... really smart insight. Like. Some outsider or newcomer is like "damn this right here is a Problem" and some average joe lookin ass in harlequin diamond patterned tights somersaults over, drops a nugget of wisdom and fucking absconds. Let The Circus Bastards Be Weird, I Love Them They Deserve It.

• also the crew drinks Respect Women Juice no I don't make the rules but I DO enforce them. They drink Respect Everyone Juice but women are simply the biggest of the recipients of the regard. Sex, color, religion, abled-ness, gender, sexuality - none of that matters. Everyone us equal. The buggy pirates support equal rights and equals lefts.

• Crocodile and Mihawk did NOT receive the memo at the beginning which led to some very wild miscommunications but it was resolved when it was revealed that Mihawk is just Like That To Everyone and Crocodile didn't even realize Kimi-san from the marketing department was a girl when he went off on her. Mihawk, when asked about his treatment of others, just owl blinked and made a vaguely threatening comment on how women, men, he didn't care, they all get cut the same. Crocodile just took a puff of his cigar with a monumental 'what the fuck' face. "I would say the same things to a man, a person, a woman, both, neither, I literally could not be paid to care about someone's crotch configuration or identity what the hell."

• Buggy wears a dress for the first time in Cross Guild's creation, and Crocodile breaks a fountain pen while Mihawk carefully sets his wine glass down hopes nobody notices the hairline fractures. Buggy is oblivious, as they tend to be.

• after some awkward half assed roundabout questioning, Mihawk and Crocodile just..... casually drop some dresses into Buggy's care or room, wordless and embarrassed but also lowkey threatening. Buggy is terrified until he realizes that some math isn't mathing and just asks. He's pretty decent at reading between the lines (#weaponizing-the-anxiety), and the first conclusion is wayyyyy off but the second conclusion causes clown.exe to crash HARD, to Alvida's delight and Galdino's suffering, but at least the nail polish is dry and the wine is good.

• it becomes a bit of a THING once the polycule is running, a subtle display of possessiveness. Collars don't really Work on Buggy, though he lowkey wishes they did, so this is a very good followup alternative

• Crocodile really likes putting Buggy in coordinated colors with his outfit or crisscross patterns both because Possessive and Claim but also because Buggy looks mouthwatering in it. Mihawk has much the same response for deep jewel tones, black and lace. Buggy adores the attention and the heated gazes, the little minx.

• there's precious little that really irks Buggy all in all, and she really does play the "am I man,am I a woman? No I'm a PYROMANIAC BURN BABY BURNNN-" card very well, good for them.

Incorrect quotes time

Alvida: as the crew's lady-

Buggy: hAH-

Alvida: I said lady, Buggy, ladies have CLASS, smth you LACK-

Buggy: oh okay fair carry on.

<><><><>

Boa: why are you not STONE?!

Buggy: I mean... you're cute but I really don't do girls, miss ma'am.

Boa: what

Buggy: also any aesthetic appreciation is drowned by the gender envy

Boa: wHaT?

<><><><><>

Buggy: I'm gay

Mohji: oh em gee what a shocker

Buggy: >:o0 rude!!!!!

Mohji: how is that rude, it's an astute observation-!!!!

<><><><><>

Rando: what are you

Buggy: I'm captain Buggy

Rano: no, what are you

Buggy: oh uh the flashy fool, genius jester, Buggy the Clown-

Rando: ugh, no, I mean what's in your pants!!

Buggy: Ohhh! Knives.

Rando: wha- OHGOD-!

Buggy, now holding bloodied knives: :3 teehee

<><><><><><>

Mihawk: stop calling me transphobic, I just told you to brush your teeth before I kissed you.

Crocodile, incredibly, blackout, shitfaced drunk: sad reptile sounds

Buggy, across the room, removing her makeup: I dunno, Hawky, sounds pretty transphobic to me~

Mihawk: I'm going to kill everyone in this room and then myself.

<><><><><><>

Buggy: I identify as a THREAT.

Croc, patting his lap without looking up, settling his hook around Buggy's waist when he settles on his lap obediently, smirks: a threat to my peace, absolutely.

<><><><><><>

Buggy: sometimes I wish I was a big tittied goth girlfriend, you know?

Mihawk, holding the remains of his garden sheers that he just crushed bare handed: do you ever think before you speak

Buggy: no why

<><><><><><>

Iva: you want me to what

Buggy: put the gender juice in the jars so I can take em like shots.

Iva:

Buggy:

Iva: genius idea, darling, I like your style

<><><><><><><>

Rouge: Buggy, sweetie, quick question.

Buggy: what's up, mama?

Rouge, hand on her swollen belly: do you wanna be Buggy-nii, Buggy-nee, or something else?

Buggy:

Rouge:

Buggy:

Rouge: oh don't cry-

[diiambee]

So like. Love in paradise!! Rambling and me dissecting the lyrics ahead! Prepare for a long post lol

Going to ramble more about the ending because god. It's Calypso's wording in particular that gets me.

It's no secret that the entire time she's been singing in Love in Paradise she was very insistent of sellung her Island to Odysseus, down right ignoring him when he says he has a wife and insisting even with his continued refusal—

For reference I won't mention on the matter of her SA of Odysseus due to never reading the odyssey on full myself, and i feel thar based off past songs and how Jay seems to plan to take this she'd be more a sympathetic villain than an outright evil one.

— Going back to my main point, people habe already pointed out her use of calling back to earlier character's phrases as if she's attempting to make herself more comforting for Odysseus, the use of open arms for polites, in your heart for hisother, and perhaps even the use of Ody for eurycholus.. but I want to ramble more on her phrasing for the earlier lyrics as Odysseus sings his heart out in agony.

Whether or not this was intentional— I can't help but be so scandalized (/pos) at how cleverly Jay seems to write a toxic conversations between the two. Perhaps it's more one-sided, as it seems neither of the parties are even listening to one another!

I especially want to highlight how Calypso deflects or downplay all of Odysseus' pleas here. Even if arguably you could say she cared for him and loved him, that's why she's begging him not to hurt himself— her love is so obviously not genuine, its superficial. She loves what he can give her, not who he is.

It's evident with how surface level her words of comfort are. He's screaming about agony, about all of those he's lost and how much he wants to just end it all but all her response to it are either shallow or with selfish (whether she realizes it or not, they're still selfish)

"It will be fine dear, come back inside dear, love of my life come back to paradise—" isn't really bad, its definitely comfort and a show that she cares, but it's the lyrics after that definitely highlight just how superficial her love is for odysseus, how it's not right.

"I know your life's been hard—" only time shes acknowled his troubles (in this song). "I'll stay inside your heart." Following it up with a call back to his mother.

"I love you, my dear.

I love our time here,

Life would be so much worse if you had died."

It's these lyrics in particular that truly cements, for me, how dark love in paradise really is even with a song with an upbeat middle. Jorge's a freaking genius being able to portray the sense of something is wrong even when the music tries to tell you otherwise— similar to how Calypso tries, and tries again to convince Odysseus to stay in paradise after everything he's been through, but Ody refusing because he knows this isn't the place for him.

She doesn't listen to him as he begs, and begs. She continues to speak, to try to comfort him with surface level comfort that truly doesn't help him or his state at all.. and it's with these lyrics you can really see her comfort with selfish intentions (note: I say selfishness not in a way to demean her, just to say that her words of comfort definitely come from a place of where she isn't thinking of Odysseus. She may or may not realize it, but it's still what I've observed regardless).

Yes. She truly did wish to ensure Odysseus wouldn't hurt himself, but take note of the reasons and what she says when she tries to do so— She only mentions herself, in which I mean she paints it as she's the only person Odysseus can rely on right now. She's the only person for him now. And yes.. that is quite literally true, it's just odd to me as it's as if she didn't truly understand odysseus within those 7 years. Like he hadn't with her, if you may.

Finishing this off with my belief again, I don't hate Calypso, but I don't like her either. She's a good antagonist and a good test of someone's (mine) media literacy LMFAO.. and again. This isn't me saying she didn't care at all or loved Odysseus within those 7 years, just that her love wasn't right. It never was and I doubt it was ever painted to BE right.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Analysis: Of Mice and Men (Characters)

GEORGE

George, a ranch hand, is Lennie's caretaker.

He is normally good-natured, but angers easily, especially if someone is threatening Lennie.

George seeks the American Dream in the form of land where he and Lennie can live without having to answer to anyone.

His life is unduly complicated by his role as Lennie’s protector, but he accepts his responsibility and appreciates Lennie’s companionship.

He emphasizes the rare nature of his and Lennie’s friendship, explaining that “[g]uys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world…. With us it ain’t like that” (15).

Their relationship and their dream of a better future sets them apart from other ranch hands, but it also makes them vulnerable to violence and loss. 

LENNIE

Lennie is described as “a huge man…[with] wide sloping shoulders” (2).

The text implies that he is developmentally disabled.

Lennie relies on George for his care, and he describes their friendship in the following terms: “I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you” (15).

He repeatedly asks George to tell him the story of their dream farm and expresses his desire to raise rabbits.

Lennie’s love for soft animals demonstrates his gentle nature, but due to his enormous size and strength, he inadvertently harms animals and people.

Ultimately, Lennie is vulnerable in a society that refuses to understand or accept him. 

CANDY

One of the oldest workers on the ranch, Candy lost one of his hands in a work related accident.

His biggest fear is that he will outlive his usefulness, and he will be kicked off the ranch with no place to go.

He expresses regret at the death of his sole companion, saying that “I shouldn’t ought to have let no stranger shoot my dog” (67).

This possibly inspires George’s later decision to kill Lennie himself.

After hearing about the piece of land that George and Lennie plan to buy, Candy offers to give them all of the money in his savings if they will let him live with them.

This gives Candy something to hope for, though things do not go as planned. 

CANDY'S DOG

This former sheepdog is incredibly old, with no teeth and advanced rheumatism.

Carlson insists that keeping the dog alive is cruel, so Candy allows Carlson to shoot the dog in the back of the head.

The death of Candy's dog foreshadows other events that eventually transpire in the story; additionally, this moment functions as commentary on society’s treatment of elderly and disabled individuals.

CURLEY

Curley is one of the main antagonists in the novel.

As the Boss's son, Curley treats the ranch hands in a very condescending manner.

Since he is a short man, Curley is angered and provoked by those who happen to be bigger than him, implying that he has to prove his own strength and superiority.

Additionally, he brags about wearing a glove full of Vaseline to keep his hand soft for his new wife.

Nearly all of the workers dislike him and poke fun at him behind his back. Curley attacks Lennie because he is jealous of Lennie's enormous stature, but he ends up having his hand crushed after Lennie squeezes it too hard.

Curley is representative of land owners who hold power over those of a lower economic class. 

CURLEY'S WIFE

She is the only female character who physically appears in the story.

The unnamed wife of Curley is viewed with thinly-veiled disgust by the workers.

The workers claim that she already has a wandering eye for other men, despite only being married a few weeks.

It is implied that she constantly seeks out male attention to relieve her solitude. Like the male characters who are consumed by isolation, Curley's wife is both lonely and regretful.

She says that she could have been in movies or magazines if she had not married Curley.

It seems that she only married Curley to escape her domineering mother, who did not let her go to Hollywood.

Ultimately, she is trapped by her circumstances and by societal expectations of women. 

SLIM

A quiet, observant man, Slim is portrayed as the true authority figure on the ranch.

While the other workers listen to the boss and Curley because they have to, they listen to Slim because they respect him as a worker and as a person.

He gently convinces Candy that it is time to give up his dog, and may be partially responsible for George's action at the end of the story.

Slim is the only character on the ranch who understands the bond between Lennie and George.

CROOKS

Crooks is the only African-American on the ranch, and he has a crooked spine.

Due to prejudice that he faces for his race and physical disability, Crooks lives by himself in the barn.

He is described as proud and aloof, but readers learn that he acts this way due to aching loneliness.

Crooks is secretly happy when Candy and Lennie come to visit him, and even allows himself to momentarily believe that he too will live on their little piece of land.

However, after Curley’s wife threatens him, Crooks “reduce[s] himself to nothing....no personality, no ego” (89).

This scene demonstrates that Crooks withdraws into himself as a form of defense against racist attacks.

He realizes that even if George, Lennie, and Candy let him live with them, it would never really work out the way he wanted because of his extreme ostracism.

CARLSON

Carlson comes across as a bitter and self-centered man.

He is the ranch hand who proposes the idea of killing Candy’s dog.

He expresses society's view that the old and disabled are of no practical use and can easily be eliminated.

AUNT CLARA

While Aunt Clara is not a physical character in the story, she serves as a powerful memory for both George and Lennie.

She took Lennie in as a child, and on her deathbed asked George to look after Lennie for her.

THE BOSS

The boss plays a very minor part in the story, only appearing in the first part of the book to interrogate George and Lennie when they arrive for their first day of work.

He is curious about George always answering for Lennie and thinks that something suspicious is going on.

WHIT

A ranch hand who had a minor part in the story.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[haystarlight]

See, a lot of people say "Steven Universe is a show about redemption" but that's not really true? Only Peridot and Spinel were really redeemed

Lapis? I mean technically, depending on how you wanna look at it, but her arc was kinda weird. Idk if she was ever really an antagonist, she was kind of an odd character. Maybe an anti-hero I suppose?

Bismuth? Again, maybe. But she reads more of a fallen hero. She never really stops being Garnet and Pearl's friend and her intentions were always heroic and all it really takes is one single conversation to get her back to being a hero.

Jasper? Steven literally murders her and brings her back to life, scaring her into submission. That's not redemption! She's literally terrified of Steven and just does everything he says because she's scared of him! She still calls him Pink Diamond, even.

The Rubies? Steven tries (and fails!!) to redeem both Navy and Eyeball but, once it's clear that the redemption didn't work out, he just gives up and we never see any of the Rubies again.

Aquamarine? Go back to the previous answer.

Emerald? Never heard from again.

Holly Blue Agate? Lost her power and reduced to a joke.

The Diamonds? Steven still hates the shit outta them. Everyone still hates them, they are visibly uncomfortable in their presence. Steven literally tries to murder White Diamond on screen. Nobody likes these bitches. They were convinced to play nice because killing them wasn't viable at the time of Change Your Mind and, now in Future, even though Steven does have the ability to kill them now, he decides not to because they're not really a problem anymore. It'd be kinda weird to kill them now that they're using their powers to help people and he couldn't kill them before because he wasn't strong enough. I've already talked about this.

We could talk about how Rose's arc was a form of self-redemption but that's more complicated.

So yeah, I don't think Steven Universe is really a show about redemption. It's a show about change. Negative, positive and just plain weird.

Every character (the antagonists and the protagonists, even the minor characters!) is faced with having to change. Those who refused to accept change are ultimately forced to change whether they liked it or not and those who accept change are able to have better lives because of it.

That change isn't always redemption, as we've seen, sometimes that change is just Homeworld no longer being a dictatorship and the once-powerful Gems now being powerless and not really being a threat anymore. They're not really "good guys", they're just not dangerous anymore.

[mllemaenad]

Not that you are by any means the worst offender in this regard, but it rubs me ghe wrong way how much leniency the NCR gets when it comes to considering the effects of their actions, and perhaps more importantly, their intentions.

Groups like Caesar's Legion, The Brotherhood of Steel, House's factions, The Unity, The Enclave, and The Institute are treated as villains if anyone is even indireehurt because of them.

If two human surface-dwellers kill each other in Diamond City, people blame the Institute.

If the White Legs emulate Twisted Hair cultural traditions without fully understanding them, Ulysses blames the Legion.

And yet... the NCR is treated by fans as well-intentioned and good-natured despite the harm they cause. The situation in Nipton was the fault of the NCR. Its corrupt Mayor was from the NCR. The Powder Gangers were only in the Mojave because the NCR moved them there.

Vulpes set up his lottery (not that I'm saying it was a perfect solution) to address a problem that had gotten out of hand, a problem downstream of the NCR... and yet most fan discussions blame the Legion for what happened in Nipton.

ThevNCR seems to get a pass because people see their goals as noble... but their goals are to recreate the exact conditions that caused the Great War!

We see the exact same phenomena in pre-war terminals as we do in contemporary NCR. A government more obsessed with maintaining its own power than solving problems, a corrupt justice system that favours the wealthy, an obsession with democracy that makes decisions slow and bureaucratic, and a rapacious desire for resources that leads to expansion and conflict eith other factions.

Why is Caesar condemned for his ego, and his shortsigtedness, but Kimball is not?

Why is Roger Maxon blamed for creating an organisation that has hurt people, but not Aradesh?

Why is Justin Ayo blamed for his secrecy and lack of trust, but not Colonel Moore?

It's a double-standard. Others are blamed for trying something new, the NCR gets carte blanch to repeat old mistakes!

Hi, anonymous person.

So ... I've read this, and I've read it again, and again after that and ... I'm a little puzzled about what's bothering you. The NCR is broadly attempting to feed, clothe and house hundreds of thousands of people ... and fans tend to give them a little more leeway when they fuck up than they do, say, the Enclave, which is a fascist organisation bent on global genocide and this is ... bad?

Honestly not really seeing the problem there.

I've barely written anything about the NCR, and certainly not in depth character profiles of the people you bring up, so I'm not completely sure why this is directed at me. If you're saying that there are fans who refuse to acknowledge that the NCR has flaws ... well, I haven't met those people, but if you look for an opinion on the internet you'll probably find it, so I'm not going to try to claim they don't exist. I've seen people claim women don't play Fallout, which is kind of a problem, from where I'm sitting. :)

But. Well, okay.

It's a double-standard. Others are blamed for trying something new, the NCR gets carte blanch to repeat old mistakes!

Nobody's trying anything new. That's kind of the point here. War never changes. Just to do the main antagonists ...

Richard Grey/The Master is just doing eugenics with a sci-fi twist. He's going to forcibly convert everyone who can be into a super mutant, and prevent any remaining humans from breeding. One of the ways to beat him is to tell him that his "master race" is sterile. It's a horrifying plan.

The Enclave are American fascists. They believe that only their people are truly human and that everyone else should literally die.

Edward Sallow/Caesar is ... I mean he's just cosplaying as Caius Julius Caesar because he thinks it looks cool. That's an actual human being who lived, and who quite famously got stabbed to death. More historical precedent than you could shake a gladius at. Sallow got over excited when he read Caesar's Commentaries and decided he wanted to be Caesar. Presenting "doing ancient Rome" as new is ... certainly something, and particularly hilarious as a plan for a civilisation given the decades long clusterfuck that was the fall of the Roman Republic, plus fun subsequent imperial followups like "the year of the four emperors".

The Institute has just reintroduced slavery, only this time let's 3D print the people instead of abducting them so literally no one will care what we do to them! They also lean into the idea that they are the only real people, although they are not quite as committed to this as the Enclave.

What's new and exciting here that I should be willing to give a try? They're all old ideas, and ideas that seem to involve a lot of genocide, enslavement and general misery for anybody who isn't part of a specific in group.

Vulpes set up his lottery (not that I'm saying it was a perfect solution) to address a problem that had gotten out of hand, a problem downstream of the NCR… and yet most fan discussions blame the Legion for what happened in Nipton.

I ... what? Yeah, I'm going to disappoint you here. The massacre at Nipton was the Legion's fault because they were the ones who walked in there and, you know, massacred people. Mayor Steyn was absolutely engaging in a round of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" and if anybody tries to argue that he was competent I will dispute that wholeheartedly. But there was only a massacre because the Legion actively set one up.

There's political corruption in Nipton, but the problem of the Legion is that they think a lottery that decides who gets beheaded, who gets crucified and who gets sold into slavery is some sort of solution to that problem, rather than an atrocity. That's why they're still the bad karma choice, even if the NCR is kind of fucking things up.

Also ... ha. I promise you imitating ancient Rome is not going to solve your political corruption problems. I mean ... I know Vulpes Inculta makes his little speech, but Rome never did solve the problem of profiteering governors and corrupt politicians. This is not a problem that is going to miraculously disappear under Legion rule. And the idea of Rome somehow getting rid of prostitution is just ... Honestly, Caesar's Legion would be hilarious if you didn't have to have these conversations standing next to people dying on crosses.

If two human surface-dwellers kill each other in Diamond City, people blame the Institute.

... Diamond City is run by the Institute, under the synth-replacement of Mayor McDonough. The leadership actively plays up the paranoia in the city by refusing to investigate disappearances. The particular scene you are describing is paired with one that occurs in Goodneighbor, where the neighborhood watch is able to accurately identify a synth infiltrator – because they are not Institute run.

It's also a feature of gameplay that an inhabitant of one of your settlements may be a synth infiltrator and become hostile to the other settlers. So I'm pretty sure people are blaming the Institute for things they're doing.

If the White Legs emulate Twisted Hair cultural traditions without fully understanding them, Ulysses blames the Legion.

... The Legion massacred Ulysses' people. They enslaved some and crucified the rest along the roadside, like Spartacus's army of old. That's why he's the only one left who understands what the braids mean. His reaction is somewhat unfair to the White Legs, yes, who had no way of knowing what they were doing was wrong ... but I can't see why blaming the Legion would be a problem. They did, in fact, exterminate his people.

ThevNCR seems to get a pass because people see their goals as noble… but their goals are to recreate the exact conditions that caused the Great War!

There's a line I like, that Deacon says in Fallout 4.

I never really much cared for the Minutemen. The idea sounds great. But you give small men big power and sometimes you'll pay for it. –Fallout 4, Deacon Miscellaneous Dialogue

In the context of Fallout 4, the Minutemen are the scrappy underdogs you root for. They're helping to rebuild the shattered settlements of the Commonwealth and they're a potential source of resistance against the Institute. But if you talk to Preston, you get hints of the politics and infighting that brought them down the first time. There's no reason that couldn't happen again. They could become a controlling and exploitative organisation.

Do I think that means you shouldn't work with them? No, of course not. You deal with the situation in front of you. You try to support the people who aim to make life better for everyone.

If we roll back around to the Commonwealth in Fallout 8 or something (assuming I haven't died of old age by then) and the Minutemen have become a military dictatorship ruling the people with an iron fist ... well, we go deal with the fucking Minutemen then.

Deacon's right about the threat, but if you don't take the chance on trusting people, you never build anything.

It's a thing in Fallout. War never changes. There are some truly evil, terrible ideas that turn up again and again and need to be slapped down. But there is no perfect Utopia on the other side of it. There are just communities banding together to try and make it work. What stops them from going bad? Nothing. It can always happen. You make the best choices you can in every story, given what you have to work with.

Or you do an evil playthrough. Your choice. Not my business.

The NCR is supposed to hurt. Watching them fail is supposed to hurt. It's no good if it doesn't hurt. No one cries when you blow up the Enclave. That's a job well done. You can't say good things about them.

The point of the NCR is that you can. They have some runs on the board! Democracy! Agriculture! Education! You want them to make it work. And yeah, it lets you ask much more interesting questions like: how many fuck ups do we let slide?

We don't need the Enclave, or the Legion, to fuck up to know they're bad news. Their goals are bad. We want them gone. But with the NCR ... how much bad are we okay with, to keep the good?

You haven't given me any examples to work with, so I can't reasonably speak to what fans say. But I don't think the games give them any sort of uncritical pass. Fallout New Vegas is ... absolutely about the problems of colonialism and aggressive expansionism. It's very clear that the NCR has not made good choices recently. The game gives you a lot of room to figure out what you want to do about that, and no answer is perfect.

It's only with regard to the Legion specifically that it's an obviously moral choice – and they level the playing field for you there. Both the Legion and the NCR have imperial pretensions, and those are not good. But since that specific thing is the same, well, we're supporting the people who aren't implementing mass slavery and treating women as "breeding stock", right?

If there are people who won't admit flaws in the NCR, well, yeah, I'd call them wrong. But I don't really think it's a double standard to favour a group that doesn't have "wouldn't it be great if we murdered everybody" as a core philosophy over one that does.

[kukurykunapatyku]

Vinsmoke spooky combo day 1: zombie/hater

I should thank you @pharaohzeth, this prompt gave me motivation to finally work something for my kingdom hearts x one piece au <3 i mean, in the games Nobodies are kinda described as dead so i think it's close enough to count...

By rules of the games Nobodies should look like normal humans but I like when people make them look like corpses or give them some inhuman traits, so that's what we're going to do here folks

[I.D.: Two-panel drawing of Niji and Sanji from One Piece in my kingdom hearts au. Niji is on the upper panel. His skin is greyish and there are places where it came off, showing muscle and bones. His eyes are almost entirly black, his hair blue with yellow undertones. He's wearing the black zipped coat like the one used by antagonists in Kingdom Hearts games. He's smirking, head tilted to the right, holding his goggles in the left hand. Next to him is his yonger version in similar pose. The kid's eyes are covered by black smear. His hair is yellow with blue undertones. Second panel shows Sanji's shocked face. Panels are separated by words "Oh, come on... Don't you recognize me?" said by Niji. /End I.D.]

Eyes trailing over the places where rotting skin revealed the muscle and bone underneath, Sanji wished he didn't. Wished there was no familiarity in the way the creature tilted its head, that the mocking smirk didn't bring back memories he buried a long time ago.

He remembered how those monsters grabbed Niji, the way life had left his eyes, the way Sanji would have shared his fate if Reiju didn't push him through the window, into the sea. The way she didn't have time to jump after him.

It couldn't be him. Sanji refused it.

More about the au under the cut

So, quick KH lore for those unfamiliar: The universe is made from different worlds and it's difficult to move between them but not impossible. Also, it's possible to separate person's heart and body. When it happens, the heart turns into Heartless - monster of darkness that is drawn towards hearts and attacks people to get them, creating even more Heartless in the process. Meanwhile, the body turns into a Nobody - barely humanoid husk of a person. In some circumstances, Nobodies can retain their memories and looks, but without the heart they still lack emotions (at least at first). One of the main antagonists in the game is organization 13, made of Nobodies whose goal is to recover their hearts. Their motivations range from "I'm so desperate to get the heart I'll do literally anything" to "I don't really care but since I'm not human anymore I don't belong anywhere else". Those are the people I'm basing Vinsmokes role on.

[I.D.: Close-ups of adult and kid Niji's faces. /End I.D.]

Now to the au.

Judge was researching the power of hearts and darkness by conducting experiments on captured Heartless.

One day something goes wrong and the Heartless escape, stealing the hearts of everyone in the castle. Except for Sanji, who falls into the ocean and is carried away by the weaves, washing up on the beach in adjacent realm and meeting Zeff.

Later Sanji joins the Strawhat Pirates, the crew wandering between the realms in search of the legendary treasure - Kingdom Hearts.

Sanji enjoyes the adventures and nowdays barely thinks about what happened to his siblings (and his sperm donor too I guess). At least until something looking a lot like Niji runs into him on the recon mission...

Probably because of the experiments Judge was doing on them ever before the Heartless attack, Ichiji, Niji, Yonji and Reiju kept their memories and looks. They assumed Sanji was just too weak-willed and turned into the mindless Nobody after loosing his heart. Judge continues his experiments, now with a side of figuring out what powers lacking a heart will give you. Which includes sending Heartless into other worlds and observing the carnage...

Reiju didn't tell anyone she managed to get Sanji out of the castle, partly because she's not sure he didn't just drown and partly because she doesn't know what Judge would do if he discovered Sanji's still alive. Her worries are validated when Niji comes back with the news and Judge orders them to bring Sanji back to the 'family'.

Because she was older when she lost her heart, Reiju is better at pretending to be human than her brothers. She remembers having emotions and usually gives more appropiate responses. Ichiji, Niji and Yonji kind of suck in that regard since they barely remember what the appropiate response even is. At first Niji didn't even realize Sanji was scared of him when they met again.