#and then explain the buildup from a different pov

[pizzabookbuying]

Anyone else kinda hate alternating POVs in (romance) stories? I ask this as a person who is currently writing a fic with alternating POVs, but who has also recently read a handful of novels (both romance and not) with alternating POVs that just bored the hell out of me. Idk maybe it’s just that some writers tend to use it as an excuse to overwrite certain scenes or take any tension out of a dynamic?? There have definitely been multi-pov stories that I’ve LOVED but also ones that ruined an otherwise interesting story

[shima-draws]

Saw your tags and omg HARD AGREE. Dragon Cry is SO bad nfkanmdsa

ME AND YOU SHAKING HANDS

Actually yes thanks for giving me the excuse to rant. Hold on. I'm typing furiously rn.

-Okay first of all they gave us the most ridiculously confusing plot I've ever seen. The twist with Sonya being Animus was kinda cool but they never really. Explained why she had a bond with him? She mentioned he used to be kindhearted at some point but we never see that literally ever at any point in the movie?

-The storyline is so all over the place it's a HOT mess. Especially the scene right after Natsu escapes the weird bird cage thing he runs off to find the others and suddenly they're all there? For some reason? Where did they come from. Why didn't they have a little reuniting scene. I literally rewound the movie to make sure I didn't accidentally skip a scene but nope they just made the most awkward cut/story progression in history I guess!!!

-The fanservice was so. SO bad. Like yeah the majority of the time I can at least tolerate it but this time it just made me extremely uncomfortable. Why are Erza and Lucy's boobs SO fucking large. Why did they have to make Lucy dance in like two strips of cloth. I thought I woke up in an alternate universe where Fairy Tail was a hentai. I genuinely wanted to vomit lmao

-The animation style really threw me off like I can tell it was either animated by a different studio or they wanted to try a different art style for the movie? But it just felt wrong and the proportions and faces were weird and. Yeah idk.

-What was up with the Three Stars?? Iirc we never got to learn their names or what their motivations were they were literally just. There. And they were built up to be these super powerful wizards only to get their asses kicked by FT like two scenes later. I get that being a movie obviously the fights had to be shortened but they literally did the same thing in Phoenix Priestess but WAY better. They really were like yeah uh we need some enemies for Team Natsu to fight let's just go with these guys and not give them any personality or backstory or motivations. (Except for the doll dad he was okay I guess)

-WHY WAS LEVY THERE. LITERALLY. ACTUALLY. She literally did nothing she served NO purpose in the movie she was just there?? Did they just want to shove in as many cameos as possible??? I know generally Levy isn't much of a fighter which is fine, I was kinda expecting them to do a Gajevy scene where Gajeel rescues her from some soldiers or smth which would have been fine but they didn't even do that. She literally just stood there and had like 2 voice lines. GO GIRL GIVE US NOTHING

-SPEAKING OF CAMEOS this is more personal beef than anything but man WHYYY wasn't Loke in the movie,, my boy my beloved my stupid idiot lion I'm so mad he wasn't even onscreen for like, 5 seconds

-I'm sorry but Juvia was so unhinged this movie her possessive/stalker behavior over Gray was actually super fucking creepy lmao

-What did they do to Happy. What the FUCK did they do to Happy

THEY MASSACRED MY BOY. LOOK AT HIM. HE'S GOT ANXIETY

-ALSO the scene where Happy and Lucy were crying over Natsu and we got tons of flashbacks from his POV of people who are important to him? WHY THE FUCK WASN'T HAPPY THERE?? They literally showed everyone from Fairy Tail precious to Natsu except Happy and I'm just sitting here like. HELLO?? You are SO wrong for that

-I will say I DID enjoy the little Nalu teasers we got especially the scene where Natsu showed Lucy the stars 🤧

But yeah I was here for this and this only:

The Nalu + Happy family bonding moments made it OKAY

Anyway sorry rant over. Dragon Cry bad. Natsu's brief moment of looking half dragon was a super sexy character design choice but the buildup is not worth it imo

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SIDE C

Charles Kinbote Propaganda:

World’s least reliable poetry critic. Weirdly obsessed with this poet John Shade and then publishes a commentary on his final work and wildly misinterprets lines to make it seem like him and Shade were bffs.

Ok so basically this poet John Shade just died. Before he died he (nearly, by one line) finished this big poem about death and his life. Kinbote considers himself Shade's good friend (he's not- Shade describes Kinbote as "some neighbour" in the poem at one point) and decides to posthumously publish the poem with his annotations to explain it since Shade is dead and can't explain it. It's pretty clear from the start start that Kinbote is completely bullshitting however he also claims some pretty crazy stuff. He believes the whole poem is about this country called Zembla, which Kinbote apparantly told Shade a lot about before he died. Zembla isn't real. Kinbote uses the annotations as an excuse to infodump about Zemblan lore. He believes he is the king of Zembla and is pretty clearly delusional (although possibly aware of that? at the end he says that after writing the annotations he might end up in a madhouse). Also Kinbote might just be someone Shade made up after faking his own death to make a big statement. It's a little unclear. Sorry if this made no sense lol.

Nana Daiba Propaganda:

Okay, I have heard literally nobody else say she is an unreliable narrator and I'm not sure myself, but I need to get something out of watching that recap movie so hear me out. Rondo Rondo Rondo, as well as a recap, is Nana's perspective on the series as a whole, and I'm very convinced that the way it's told isn't just because they needed things to be shorter. A lot more emphasis is given to some scenes than others, and when this happens, a brand new scene plays out, putting equal emphasis on it, and all of these brand new scenes have one thing in common, beyond the revue component; Nana knows. She knows every detail shown, but doesn't acknowledge details which aren't, which makes sense for a recap movie, but the way she interacts with the plot is so distinctly different from the anime itself that I like to think she's leaving things out. We don't get a significant amount of the buildup to the revues, because most of that is interpersonal stuff which Nana simply was not involved in. But we do get a massive chunk of episode 7, the episode which, outside of the recap, is still from Nana's pov. Junna and Mahiru's respective revues with Karen and Futaba and Kaoruko's revue with each other are shown very briefly and divided up into sections which Nana is shown acting out with the Giraffe immediately after, but large amounts of emphasis are put on Nana's two revues, even if they're both kind of mixed together (which I think makes sense. Hikari and Karen were the two girls who brought about the end of her repeat performances, and she wouldn't have lost if Hikari hadn't arrived and Karen hadn't gotten the drive to stand on stage from her. Of course she'd kind of mix those two losses together. Though rip to the scenes in between because even though it makes sense that a lot of the stuff there would not matter to a recap movie or Nana I still think it's funny that Nana's whole big conversation with Junna where she reveals the time loops just does not exist to Nana or the movie. So sorry Junna). Certain small, emotional scenes ARE shown, like Junna and Nana's talk at the end of ep 9, but considering that Nana was involved in that and the immediate next scene is a new one where Nana discusses how Junna essentially saved her, yeah, that specific scene would be in her head. There's a lot of things which Nana wouldn't know, but since this movie is confirmed to be Nana's pov I do think that it could be both where the recap angle kind of takes over and Nana's general perception of Karen and Hikari's whole childhood friend thing. Also, since everything following this is very much recap-centric, aside from the additional scenes, which are 100% shown to be from Nana's pov, I need to address the scenes following the revues again, just because I think it's funny that, within Nana's pov, she gets to act out the previous revues in an even more unreliable way. I love this girl and I'm not sure how much Rondo Rondo Rondo counts as her being unreliable but I love her for whatever she had going on in this movie anyways.

[lightyearssurrogatedaddy]

gotta say, I've done a thingie or two about how Nine Inch Nails is the perfect sound I associate with Error. Starting with Into the Void and Only. Every song I listen to from them I keep going, "Goddamn, this would be THE soundtrack for him."

Here are the thingies I thinged. I actually did a lot of other songs and I figure I'll finally make one giant post about it

long, just a heads up. I saw a bunch of songs and I fled

Why I think Nine Inch Nails Belongs On Every Error Playlist.

NIN might be my favorite band right now, so I'm listening to it constantly. I've connected the lyrics and sounds to Error and I'm going to explain why. I'm breaking up things into little groups to make things easier.

group 1) Error's stubbornness and anger group 2) his lonely :( group 3) his chaotic nature and weird self-contradictory behavior

If I designed music for Error I'd have a sturdy bassline to rep how unchanging his opinion is, and the playing instruments an electronic mess of thoughts and feelings for his shitty cycle of a mental state. NIN perfectly captures how I envision it soundwise.

Song: Only

The beat and the guitar 100%.

"I've becoming less defined, as days go on by, fading away well you could say I'm losing focus." This is the point where Error starts to feel the effects of real lonesomeness, like with Into The Void, which is just him waking up and realizing his situation, Only is a continuation of it.

"Less concerned with fitting into the world, your world that is." The Stubbornness.

"I just made you up to hurt myself." Error finding a way to cope with the crippling Nothing and lack of company by saying that the only real reason that he felt it to begin with was because he wanted to punish himself for something. And instead he finds more reasons to love things about the Anti-Void than hate it out of spite. Group 1 and 2.

"There is no you, there is only me." Him separating himself from other characters as something entirely different, he feels like he's nothing like them, and that aids in his incredible apathy towards other people, especially those with AUs.

Song: Into The Void

The start of the song adds onto itself bit by bit as it progresses, starting with a simple tune and then adding another intrument, a baseline, and zangy electronic shit. Kind of like waking up.

"Try to save myself, but myself keeps slipping away." The vastness of the void traumatizes everyone, just an empty white that goes on endlessly. I like to think this song could be used to depict Error's feelings about his home, how existentially scary it is and how it effects him.

The rolling tune, where near the three minute mark it swings up and then falls back down again in a sort of out-of-sync and deteriorating way, like a buildup to a strong emotion (anger, stress) and then switching to relief or calmness once it passes, he's dealing with the pressure of his own thoughts. This puts the song in group 2.

Song: GOSSIP (Maneskin)

WIth the hard+heavy beat with the wacky guitar, the sound of the song fits with the theme already.

"So sip the gossip, drink 'til you choke. […] you're not iconic, you are just like them all." Directed at Ink and their disagreements.

"Keep drinking and acting cool […] nobody likes a gloomy face." in reference to how Ink has control over his emotions and yet chooses not to agree with Error.

I think this song could be used to depict Error and Ink's relationship from Error's POV and show why they disagree with different reasons other than, "that one destroys that one protects, obviously they argue about that and only that." Error probably sees Ink defending AUs as not worth the time and energy, something that other people have conditioned him to do or something he thinks is a 'normal guideline' to follow. the irony is that while Error critisizes Ink about letting other people define who he is (even though Ink's actions are actually entirely his own) he himself locks himself up in a box of, "I'm the bad guy, I'm the destroyer. That's my purpose because I've heard it told to me so many times."

But not FGod territory, Error believes wholly in his goal, but embodies it instead of it just being a thing he has faith in. This song goes into group 1.

Song: Squares (That Handsome Devil)

Very nifty 1900's vibe is always welcome. "To refuse would be square. And that terrible label must be avoided at all costs." to add on to what shapes I use to draw Error with. Nobody wants to be Error, he's a square! He probably doesn't drink or do any other mysterious 'get high' activities now that I think about it. This song is once again about Ink and Error's dispute.

"Stupid bastards blasting telling me what's cool." he hates being told what to do, probably has some form of authority problem.

"Sorry girl, you're far behind where it is you draw your line." Error draws the line at Outertale because he's biased, and can't understand why Ink keeps going and accepting new variations. This song goes into group 1.

Song: Destruction (Joywave)

The beginning: "will the soundtrack please produce a sound? (chaos noise) go on, […] any sound! (another chaos noise) well, that's not quite what I had in mind." Error's a little shit and does the exact opposite of anything out of spite (for shits and giggles)

"Oh my God, I'm a giant with an appetite." I relate Error to a black hole, since he eats up AUs like one does to stars.

"Oh my God, there's nobody who can set me right. I've been sent to torch the palace down in broad daylight" he knows everyone thinks he's wrong, and he knows nothing can be done about it. And also the second line "I've been sent" to lose that sense of self and rely on a higher purpose.

"I've been creeping round I saw a little thing I didn't like You tried to hide I've been creeping round I saw a little thing I didn't like You tried to hide from me."

The song also has a very BIG vibe to it, like going somewhere. Walking up to a thing or person with an intent. I think this song could be used to flesh out how much JOY he gets from causing anarchy and destroying things. It gives him a sense of power, makes him feel free and in control, a very sought for feeling we all seek. Group 3.

Song: Get Seduced (The Faint)

Funky noises!

"Tell us! How rad is it living in a microscope? Broadcast into every single living room." I more of related the AUs to the TV shows in the song, it follows their everyday life, "Hot lights on your love life. Let me buy. Close up tabloid shots of your cellulite." I feel like that last line is more sarcasm towards it, "like sure! I'm totally all for your bullshit!"

"You're getting so obsessed its all we talk about." Again, could be used as a reference to Ink.

"Hypnotizing pages of advice From their demented fashion do's or dies." Hypnotizing like Error believes everyone else is being tricked into liking absolute garbage, and if you DON'T like it, you're a bitch!

Song: Digital Silence (Peter McPoland)

"I won't ask a question, I'll state the truth It's everything I know and all I do."

The entire thing is very nihilistic, someone who's downright exhausted from things they feel like need to change but aren't being listened to.

"They're gunna blind date everyone until you love them too." adds onto what I said for Get Seduced, poor Error's the only one who has a brain huh? (What an asshole, really.)

"This is the answer to the question. This is the sound of the truth. This is the answer to the question. There is nothing you can do." He's near unstoppable and unchangeable.

"Digital style, digital hate. Digital god, digital pain. Digital violence, digital world. Digital boy meets digital girl. Digital silence, digital yell. Digital heaven, digital hell. Digital start, digital end. Digital birth, digital death." obviously, being digital makes it so there's a barrier between you and whatever you try to interact with. In reality whatever you do online is ultimately fabricated. Error's a glitch! A digital aspect that can't hurt you outside of the screen, and he's put up barriers and walls around himself and excludes everyone else as "not real", flipping the "nothing online is real" to make himself feel better.

YOU are digital. Not Error. It can't possibly be Error because that's reportedly not what he believes. Group 1 and 2.

Song: The Hunter (Slaves)

I saw the "Are you satisfied?" on the album cover and got reminded of The Origins. Hiii Crunch!

The first half is Error asking what's gunna happen when people get bored of making AUs, all that energy will be completely wasted, what then? Would there be any point in continuing to stray from the original source if the end goal just fizzles out meaninglessly?

"Oh, what is it your justice, cut the hands of the thief? He was starving, his children were crying to be fed. And now they're bawling and dying. But at least you are ahead." getting left behind or entirely forgotten about, that's unfair, Error uses the excuse that nobody would want him to begin with because of what he does, and that's why he deserves to be as unreasonable as he is.

"You keep it, we don't want it." nobody wants trash cluttering up their multiverse! Just get rid of it! He says.

"Just be patient, keep waiting. That's what they always say. But you're tired and you're aching. And the pain won't go away." and his reaction to coping with that pain is to lash out at what he thinks is the cause.

Song: Head Like A Haunted House (Queens Of The Stone Age)

"Desperation can led to madness." Fun line that could be used as an art piece title for him lmao.

"Let you mock and then copulate me. A dirty trick and it's making me sick." explanatory with what I've already established.

"Tonight I'm gonna put up a fight, I'm gonna get a reaction that I'm right. [...] To trick them all because of which is why I'm ashamed. Petty disguises more like skins, a distinction, vice." he feels that everybody's just out to get him, and he feels the need to defend himself. Group 1 and maybe 2.

Again, these lines more or less can speak for themselves.

Song: The Hand That Feeds (Nine Inch Nails)

"Will you bite the hand that feeds you?" Error acting out against the Creators even though they're the ones that spawned him in. Kind of like a rebellious teenager.

"What if this whole crusade's a charade. And behind it all there's a price to be paid. For the blood on which we dine. Justified in the name of the holy and the divine." all the bullshittery of the multiverse and Ink's goal to preserve and spread it (a crusade) holds a horrible end for them all. Maybe things go up in one big explosion GIF and letting all the AUs run free ruins the structure of reality in the long run. Ink's justified in the eyes of the Creators because he upholds their desires.

"So naïve, I keep holding on to what I wanna believe, I can see. But I keep holding on and on and on and on." yeah this puts it in group 1 for sure. Stubborn.

Song: Jealous (Eyedress)

veering away from his outwardly asshole behavior. I don't see Error having great thoughts about himself. Maybe he appears confident and sure of his opinions as a way to cover up that he genuinely doesn't know how to communicate or get help in any way. So he pushes on that higher purpose excuse to avoid possibly getting hurt if he ever does try to reach out.

And if someone tries to get close to him he shoves them away all like.

"You could have anyone you want. Why would you want to be with me? You know, I'm nothing special." everyone already thinks he's a jackass, so why would anyone wanna approach him kindly?

"She tried to call me yesterday. But I didn't pick up. 'Cause I don't got time." he don't got time to get hurt and cry about it, not risking it. :(

finalizing lines to prove my point, "Only care about myself. 'Cause everyone's trying to hurt me. Just leave me alone. Just leave me alone."

Group 2.

Song: Alien Blues (Vundabar)

Friend Crunch suggested this one to me! Thank my buddy.

"Oh no, more surprises, guess it's like this I'd do anything for you, Mrs. Highness." yes he WOULD like someone to be close with (that's the whole point of feeling lonely.)

"The sun is fun, the land is dandy. I only talk to dogs because they don't understand me. My teeth are yellow, hello world. Would you like me a little better if they were white like yours?" him thinking that would he have to change himself to gain someone to talk to. He's off in his own world and goes by his own rules, so obviously, since everyone's against him, the only way to get positive attention would be to not be himself? Character analysis or me projecting. You decide.

"I need to purge my urges. Shame, shame, shame on you."

Shame on you for not having better things to do than read through all of this!

Here's your hard earned prize.

[finitevoid]

1. What makes horror in visual media is very different from what makes horror in written media. the key— in my opinion— to what makes horror novels scary is not what is said, but rather what is unsaid. the most unsettled I felt during the experience of reading what moves the dead was when it became clear that madeline had drowned months before the events of the book even began. And then. And then madeline just HAD to have a grand villain monologue where she says, “I’ve been dead for over a month,” my god, why TELL ME? I already figured it out. Why must she say it! It’s obvious! Why are you explaining it!

2. the fall of the house of usher doesn’t need… explaining. It’s like 7 pages of short story about the existential terror of hereditary illness. the victorian cultural fears its touching on are numerous— there’s the literal, fear of being buried alive. This was a thing that happened sometimes— people would get so ill they wouldn’t breathe, and they’d get buried in the family crypts, only for the crypts to get reopened when someone else passed away only for it to be incredibly obvious that someone was Alive In There and spent a long time trying to Escape. Look it up. but there’s also the complex social fears of losing (fiscal) class, of losing oneself to illness, the inevitability of death, and what I can only describe as a victorian understanding of mental illness. roderick (in the original story) is portrayed as talented and artsy, but losing faith in art and losing interest in his talents. it’s said that madeline used to be an artist as well, before she became nothing but a shell that roams the hallways. Man. It isn’t subtle stuff

My point here is that there’s SO MUCH HERE for a poignant horror novel about dead people and I didn’t get that. Also the bookshop I got it from included a bookmark with a WARNING for grotesque descriptions of dead animals so I was so ready for a really gory book and then it was fine so I’m a little disappointed I won’t lie any disgust I felt at the description of madeline’s condition was offset by how stupid her villain monologue about the Evil Fungus being her friend was

I did like the earlier chapters. Basically everything before her “death” was really solid. the way she acts, the way she’s described, the slow buildup, the HARES, oh my god that whole scene where the fungus talks through her to easton was great. So why did you have to undercut all that subtle horror with a long winded expository explanation of how fungus works. Not to mention denton explains half the plot in the latter half of the book like dude! why am I listening to this guy explain it when I could’ve been shown all of this! I could be experiencing it! If, narratively, I can only learn this information at this point in the story, why not write a flashback from denton’s pov of these events? or even RODERICKS? WHY DO I NOT GET TO SEE RODERICK KILL HIS SISTER

3. Why make up an entire fake country with a fake third gender warrior caste Thing in order to justify your protagonist being trans-of-some-kind in 1890s europe without actually writing a whole novel about it like dude that’s INSANE. tell me more about how this works?? You want me to believe kan is going around with buzzed hair and mens clothes and visible breasts in 1890s europe and the only shit kan gets is mild verbal awkwardness? I mean alright but I think I need more than a few paragraphs of explanations to believe that! ALSO WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ZOMBIE FUNGUS

um yeah overall? Weird book

“what moves the dead” was, like, objectively, a good book. There was nothing wrong with it. I liked easton and angus. I liked eastons little bronance with the awkwardly transphobic american. I like a good horror story where everyone works together to kill the creeping evil, that’s always nice. Um. But like. Why ? Why does this exist in the way that it does. Why is it so SHORT

[mayadoesfandomstuff]

The Nukes Could Have Worked

I've been thinking a lot about the Dream SMP finale ever since I learned about what happened and I'm trying to wrap my head around why I genuinely didn't like it. Like yeah, there's the weird part about c!Dream and c!Tommy's conversation that maybe I'm not all for, but I'm more confused as to why I don't like it for everyone else in the server. I mean, i know that the fanbase is split on this but I personally just couldn't support the ending.

Guess the answer should be obvious? For me, a nuke ending means that this whole story about trust, attachments, and trauma didn't matter at all and this ending might as well be the dressed "it was all a dream" ending that people were worried about for months since the finale was announced, but I don't feel like that's it.

I myself enjoy nuke endings and even had a story that I was writing for some time's main ending to be that everything was nuked. It was a logical conclusion for that narrative and the nuke delivered a gut punch on the meaninglessness of the conflict and how tragic everything is. If I were to be able to access that file again, which had sadly been lost to time, I might be able to get something off if it but I guess that's the thing though. The nuke ending for that lost story had a different purpose than the nuke ending here.

Compared to a story about the meaninglessness of the violence, the nuke ending in the Dream SMP calls forth the meaninglessness of not only the conflict but also every other story within the world. There is no purpose for the nuke than just erasing all of that and resetting everything to the beginning. The nuke night as well be someone waking up from a dream. That's why it's disappointing.

Regardless, the ending in itself being a literal nuking of the server isn't necessarily a bad call. It was just executed poorly. I believe that this is pretty confusing for some people but let me explain. In a better written narrative for the story, it could be possible to not only make the nuke ending meaningful but complete every other characters storyline or make their abrupt end feel more tragic than frustrating.

It's a lot to ask so let me stick with the easiest way this could work. The easiest way for the nukes to succeed is to make it an event. Bring almost everyone, if not everyone, in the server for the nuking and have them stream all of their POVs. This could add a sense of urgency or dread no matter how you relay this. Even more effective is to have the characters know that the nuke is coming. This would make the other characters have an excuse to finish up loose ends as best they can for their arcs or abruptly end it for a tragic finale.

It sounds crazy, but it's not like it hasn't been effectively done before in Minecraft roleplay. Think for instance Doomsday, a smaller apocalyptic event that wiped out the entire country of L'manburg from the map. There was a buildup to it, all involved CCs were informed, and most of the big players for the event logged in and streamed their POV with what happened. The emotional stakes and drama that came from that allowed for interesting character moments, arcs, and impact in later parts of the story. I mean, people still celebrate the L'manburg Independence Day despite everything.

Okay, that's just one country and technically all the characters kept moving on from that and that wasn't really the apocalypse, so let's bring up a story where it is the apocalypse - Hermitcraft Season 8.

To those not in the know, hermitcraft season 8 ends with an apocalyptic crashing of the moon that wiped out the entire server. Hermitcraft isn't known for lore-heavy content before this, so it was a surprise for almost everyone in the fanbase that they went with this direction instead of just simply restarting the server for the new season like they typically do.

Either way, the basic premise is that the moon suddenly started crashing to the earth and the hermits were faced with the dilemma of what to do in order to survive the collision. From trying to worship the moon to appease it, to trying to destroy it outright with missles, it's all pointless and the server gets wiped anyway. Now, this ending is still continuously dramatized and looked back on by the hermitcraft fanbase despite it's bleak ending and how all of the different storylines like the beloved Boatem Crew, the Advertising War, and even Zedaph's weird little research were all basically wiped out of existence.

The reason? Most of the hermits had time to dedicate to the lore on how their characters would respond, tie up as much loose ends as they can, and all of them uploaded how things ended for their characters virtually at the same time. This allowed closure for a lot of the fans who may not want to see the season go and give a somewhat satisfying conclusion to what happened to everyone. Of course, I know that not everyone's happy about this ending, but it has been received well by most of the fanbase.

Guess what I'm trying to get at is this. If the most of the server was online and had the chance to act out the finale alongside the ones that were there, then maybe it could have been a better narrative. It would still result in a nuke ending, but at least there's some closure with the other characters. Although, I have to admit that other CCs may make some flashback content leading up to the nuke, but it isn't the same since we have the benefit of hindsight and the emotions of the viewers may had already been set. An annoyed viewer may just be even more annoyed that their favorite character went through a defining story arc for themselves which was then erased like it didn't matter with the knowledge that it won't matter compared to a viewer who is still in the dark about the ending.

If, let's say, c!Quackity finds time to meet with c!Slime again to patch up their relationship (I wish lol) and the two have genuinely made amends, I would probably just be pissed off than devastated knowing that this wouldn't matter anyway. It isn't tragic, it's annoying. If them patching things up happened while I know that nukes may blow everything up instead of will blow everything up, I would be more invested in the dread than frustrated in the meaninglessness.

I guess another thing that sours everything is what happened after the nukes. Are you telling me that everything's all honkydory now that all of those people died? We're back to simpler times? It's a disturbing ending to say the least.

Honestly, with that in mind, maybe an even simpler fix is to not end it with them in the new server and make the ending vague as fuck. Don't say that this is a good ending at all and don't try to comfort us that our favorite characters are gonna be a-okay. Like what I said, knowledge of what happened at the end is probably the things that causing frustration instead of the devastation of the tragedy.

The whole c!Dream apology thing is also equally contentious with this whole thing, but again, I'm just looking at how it could be salvaged for every other character in the story.

I mean, this little Minecraft story has already ended and I doubt I'll come back for season two. Maybe complaining is definitely pointless. But I could still want for something a little more from this, ya know?

[softer-ua]

The differents points of view

Ok, so I was re-reading the manga since the beginning and noticed a few things.

The “when” their relationship got bad has different perspectives

-For Katsuki, it was the river incident “Why’d he have to look at me like that?”

-For Izuku is when Katsuki received his Quirk “But after his Quirk manifested…he started down the path towards ‘bad’ “

So when the River incident happened, for Izuku, their relationship was already getting rocky. Katsuki was teasing him for being useless by then, so he still chasing after Katsuki even after he persisted in pushing him away makes more sense. It was more gradual from his pov meanwhile for Katsuki it went sideways immediately when Izuku offered his hand.

They have talked about these issues in a surface level; they tend to dance around the bush when trying to address the specifics of when and how they came to that conclusion.

"I've never felt good about this myself, which is why I never told you"

Izuku only tells pieces of his perspective, he tends to internalize his problems and we know Katsuki does it too.

So when they have The Talk™ they will have to: Either be emotionally honest and pinpoint how the misunderstanding started OR try to explain the situation without digging to deep.

And it could be unintentional too (One can assume they are talking about the same subject) or maybe they don’t want to expose too much.

It’s tricky, there’s also other factors that could go wrong too (OFA vs.AFO, School, Hero society, Izuku’s coma, etc.)

This is just a vague analysis, so all this could end up being baloney xd, but I think their relationship could fall again before rising again. Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I believe whatever happens they’ll reach out eventually, they can’t stand being apart for too long and there’s too much buildup of them working as equals for the relationship to fall. But maybe this the climax before the finale.

I honestly would love to see differents opinions in how their talk could go. This is fun to analyse.

Submitted by: @harumiwashere

Softy: I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS OMG! THANK YOU FOR POINTING THIS OUT

[papers4me]

Fruits Basket Manga Review , ch 109

-The Tragedy of a an episodic format attempting to connect narrative in a series: (Tohru’s Background or Kyo’s Focus?)

One of my issues with se03, ep6 (other than it being 3 chapters combined horribly with new material added for shock value) is that it was weakly undecided who would be the focus? who would the narrative follow?: Is it tohru’s own pov abt herself? is it the gramps giving boring exposition abt tohru over weak still images of flashbacks or is kyo thinking abt tohru’s pain?

The truth is, it was all the above in the manga, but the manga gave each a chapter focus so that the chapter is well-directed with focused narrative. The anime weakly jumbled the 3 chapters together as they always do. You mix chapters & tada~ you got an ep, you only need a broad weak theme that connects the dots! here: it is tohru! & that’s it. As long as the 3 chapters discuss tohru in any form & manner, nothing will seem off if we put them next to each other in a 20 minute ep! right? riiiiiight ????

.. this was never a correct way. Just like a chapter needed a narrative direction, the ep is the same!!

ch 107: The beginning of tohru’s pov on her realization abt loving kyo.

ch108: tohru’s full pov of shock upon reaching the conclusion that she loves him & the beginning of her mom’s issues & abandonment.

ch109: Kyo’s pov abt tohru’s pain & his involvement, guil & the sheet hug.

ch110: (completely cut from the anime!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Kyoru’s part: the aftermath of kyo & tohru crossing the line of being in the most vulnerable & intimate, building towards a more crushing impact of the climax. The stronger & more painful their love is, the more it will hurt. Also a yuchi buildup?!!!!

-so, you see each chapter has a direction i& a narrative it follows independently that is weaved together to make a connected tissue of the overall plot. The anime puts the 3 chapters next to each other & we are lost on who to follow? kyo or tohru or the gramps. That’s why it feels tohru is weak & her two chapters worth of pov is stolen from her cuz it cut or shortened to include the grandpa, kyo, isuzu, shigure & let’s not forget (kazuma, yuki & haru) at the beginning, the dramatic shock value addition & OP & ED. All these take valuable screen time. The ep shocks us by moving from tohru to kyo. One minute she’s crying with him on the streets, next he’s at the grave & she’s visiting isuzu.

Kyo said he isn't going to the grave in the ep, upon seeing him actually going, I just assumed he wanted to avoid, hana, cuz I’m so invested in his story that I remember sth happened in se1, ep 14.. ages ago, The anime didn’t even allow kyo to inner talk abt avoiding hana... In their weird mind, kyo only inner talks in dramatic situations..See the difference!

Not only the writer (a) reminds us why kyo avoided the grave visit, she also (b) seized the opportunity to shine lifht onto an issue that will be the center of kyo’s struggles: Running away!

The anime introduce this in kyo’s pov only when kyo confronts tohru. Only when it was needed & couldnt be avoided. This is sth that will be the core of all the climax & the aftermath as well! Kyo running away.. How bad are you if you avoid inserting one line only that can be said in few seconds & establish great deal & foreshadow plenty!!!!!!!!!! I can’t for the life of my understand why short lines are cut from kyo when in the anime they have him be standing silent in the graveyard. Like slap the line above the silent scene!!!!! But doing so means the anime team understands tohru & kyo’s issues. They don’t. Not the slightest.

-Ep 6 signals the beginning of the anime moving from episodic format of se1, 2 & 5 eps of se3 & entering a connect plot. The anime doesn’t know how to do that & screwed tohru in the process. The protagonist’s main issues are one ep worth only. The antagonist main issues are one ep only (ep7).  Ep 6, was treated as a stand alone ep (minus the inserted shock scene to create a lingering issue that needs a following ep to explain. TOLD YOU they don’t know how to make a series!). Thus the following ep 7 is akito’s focus. Everything that was established in ep 6 was pit on hold until akito reaches the craziest mindset for the climax. See why ep 6 was so bad? it is Should NOT be a stand alone ep.

-The plot connects kyoru emotional & physically: (Kyo’s chapter with a tohru’s focus:

Unlike the anime, the chapter knows what it’s presenting 7 where it’s going. Kyo’s issues. This ch focuses on him uncovering parts of his past as it connects with tohru’s. Unlike the anime, we know why kyo's connection to kyoko’s past. The anime is hiding this for the climax, no problem, it can still work both ways. However, hiding kyoko /kyo connection doesn't necessarily mean hiding kyoko/tohru connection. But the anime is cutting this to milk it in an ova or series next year~ no problem,  it can still work if you handle this ep’s  flashback better. for all the artistic creativity they inserted in the added scene, they failed miserably in tohru’s flashback portion. how?

By choosing a frontal pov shot in tohru’s grandpa flashback as if the audience are the ones who abandoned tohru or opening the door to find her alone. it does NOT work at all. why? the audience are encouraged to be like tohru since ep 1 as tohru is the mother, angel, fixer & endearing hopeful girl. The audience will NEVER abandon tohru, that’s why tohru’s story felt disconnected & weak in the anime. Not knowing what kyoko did, who would abandon such child?! differently not us. so why use the frontal pov shot? -_-’

-tohru confesses her pain to kyo without being ushered by isuzu, without any outside factor. She simply visited the grave & came home. hiding her pain. once again. like she always do. One question by kyo, prompts her to “ complain a little” call back to se1, ep5 as he advised. we see tohru get out of her shell little by little. NOT SCREAM OR SLAP. She opened up. why? cuz the story is abt “ opening the lid” not abt “ snatching the lid”. No need for shocks. Yuki opened his lide slowly, tohru even slower, kyo is resisting opening his altho it is cracking in this chapter. When your story focuses on character buildup it pays!

-I’ll give the anime credit when it due. The hug scene is so good both in manga & anime. but so awesome in animation, colors, music & voice acting. It’s breathtaking & painful. The most beautiful kyoru scene in the whole anime.

-It represents their mutual vulnerability, understanding, pain & determination to love the other but not also let go. kyo has made his mind to be locked in order not to hurt tohru & tohru has made her mind that she can’t let go of her mom.

You see, the scene’s meaning hits different between manga & anime; In the anime: tohru has already challenged the sohmas & screamed to be with kyo, while kyo is still decided to leave her. In the manga: they’re both at the same spot (undecided). I like both interpretations but I’ll choose the manga’s version. Simply cuz it means tohru is still uncovering her issues which means more focus on her, & more explanation of why cant tohru love her mom & kyo at the same time.

-This expression on tohru’s face is a the complete opposite of the shock value expression in ep 6! T_T. I do’nt even hate the shocked scene addition itself that much, I just think (a) this is NOT its time! Tohru deserved better spotlight! (b) kyo didn’t friggen forget! ah! THIS I HATE! (c) the whole shocked scene was so wasted in ep 7. tohru return to her stupid dumb lalala~ land, cooking & forgetting kyo. what growth? what determination & screams to isuzu? what enduring kagura’s slaps? nope! just happy & cooking, lalala~ no one was freaking over her mom’s picture~ lalala~ & kyo just slept it over~ shhhh... its okay. he’ll forget again... see? totally wasted!

The anime knows nothing abt connected narrative! augh!

Side Notes:

We see kyo asking the gramps why he’s offering him info abt tohru which is so logical! XD. I love it.

I’ve read ch 110 & wanted to insert the kyoru scene in ch 110 here, & put yuchi alone in a different post, then I realized I’ll need to talk abt it again once I analyze yuki’s own expressions! XD. so, I’ll put all ch 110 together in one post. It kinda half written by now, so I’ll publish it very soon in two days time. I didn’t read ch 111 yet tho.

I hope ch 110 is the last I feel this much disappointments in furuba’s anime & by ch 11, it hopefully be be minor changes altho I doubt that cuz the manga needed to dwell into tohru’s mindset & the anime kinda stopped after ep 6. so, yup! more big changes coming!

The sheet hug is so brilliant in theory & application! so romantic & so endearing! love it so much! The anime did it so well, too!

I love kyo’s narration & pov cuz it’s so refreshing change from the anime where he rarely does!

I really wish they kept the kyoko abandoning tohru part in the anime... sigh~ it has nothing much to affect her story with katsuya. so it won’t ruin the spin off/ ova or whatever it’s called. 

I love the light focus on tohru in this chapter & how organic & natural it is opposed to how forced the plot seems in the anime....

[thetaoofbetty]

this is a sincere question i always wanted to ask you as a betty fan :) (and jughead and bughead in general ofc but this is only about our baby coop!) what do you personally think about betty kissing archie or the fact that (as others say) she is not a good friend? the fact that when she makes a mistake she prefers livin in gulty more than hurting her loved ones. what's your pov? you can not answer this but i was curious since you also explain betty character really well.

what do i think about betty kissing archie? it was stupid. aside from the kiss itself being shoved into a musical with no buildup, they didn't establish any real reason for it to happen in my opinion. it's not because betty is a bad person or doesn't love jughead, it was so clearly obviously done to blow up the core 4 before graduation for the time jump.

the very little foreshadowing they've done to make it seem like b/a was going to be what blew it up (jughead's insecurity in 1x10, archie in 1x13, betty using archie as a jughead filler in s2, jughead and archie's conversation in 2x14, etc) made me aware that there was always going to be some sort of plot device for b/a but this one was particularly poorly handled. and then it felt like they went in a very specific direction with archie in 4x18 and walked it back.

badly done all around.

tho, i will never not find it funny the show paid b/a dust the way they did.

and yes, betty sits on pain/guilt to keep it from hurting others much to her own detriment. if people haven't noticed from the first episode of s1 that betty sits on her emotions i don't know what to tell people. it's always been right there. i do think it's funny that the people who always come down on her for it are the same people who hate archie for always opening his mouth no matter who it hurts. then again, same crowd who thinks betty didn't apologize to jughead so, eh. what can you do? is it one of her better qualities? no. do i think we should also vilify her for something so obviously born from trauma? also no. it's a learned response, it's not something she does to hurt anyone with.

as for betty being a bad friend, none of them are perfect friends but yes, there is a weird thing where betty gets held to a different standard than the others. and at times, they'll load betty up with so much plot that she doesn't have room to breathe much less be a friend to people. betty's hierarchy of concerns is often:

jughead/her family

the case she's working on (and this becomes #1 when she doesn't have her family or jughead to worry about)

everyone else

there's also a lot of times where they stick a friend in her plot to move the story along and that's the only time she gets be a friend/have a friend. i don't think it's a failure of betty in particular, i think it's a failure of the show all around. this is not the show to watch if you're hanging your hopes on the found family trope. everything revolves around the ships and their stories. 5a was the v/a show. we got lots of what archie and veronica were doing but very little bughead. which i'd guess is what 5b is for.

i do think that a lot of this is building up to the musical at this point, since it's so cooper focused and betty is not doing well. i'd vote early 5b is lots of jughead and him dealing with stuff before getting into the betty stuff. mostly because he's the only person they ever write really caring about her mental health tbh and the mystery/polly stuff is certainly taking its toll on her.

[jason-pipers]

the jason/piper breakup and jason’s subsequent death

it is a long and angry post so you have been warned 

 I’m really sick of seeing Jason Grace/Piper McLean slander in their own tag, and I’m really, really sick of seeing people justify their breakup/his death as good writing. 

As I’ve been studying literature and text for the past four years at Uni- I can say with absolute confidence that The Burning Maze utilizing Jason and Piper was horrible. Like a bag of shit mixed together then smeared on paper and published kind of horrible. Actually, you don’t even really need a degree to be able to point out the very basic absurdity of them appearing in TBM. So even though I have a paper due on a completely unrelated topic and a lot of homework, I naturally decided this was a much better thing to write about: 

 Maybe in another world, Rick’s ghostwriters will be better at writing his books. The reason why the Jason/Piper breakup was extremely confusing and done very poorly in the sense of their character arcs was that there was no buildup to the breakup. In fact, I think these two got together off-screen and broke up off-screen. Yet, I’m sure Riordan sat at his desk thinking “now why don’t people just like Jason and Piper?? I give them so much!” Actually, you gave them nothing. It’s also considerably easy to disguise their breakup as logical when it isn’t. Now, people will argue that the basic foundation of the relationship was poorly made because of Hera’s meddling and that’s why they broke up. This is a lazy way to think about it because it’s obvious you don’t care about the characters so you should just say that and go. Hera’s meddling (putting false memories of Jason in Piper’s head and wiping Jason’s brain) really only gave Piper a vague notion of Jason (based on real attributes the Mist pulls) and also gave PERCY and Jason multiple relationships after the switcheroo. But Piper actually meets Jason and then has a subsequent breakdown that maybe he’s not her boyfriend. However, once she gets to know the real Jason (very accurate to the one she knew in her memories because Aphrodite said she could sense real possibilities hinting at their romance), she is still developing romantic feelings for him. It’s implied that the reason why Piper is falling so fast is because the memories she has of Jason are based on the real Jason. It’s easy to establish that Piper has real romantic feelings for Jason, not the made up Jason because the majority of TLH is them getting to know each other. If she felt like there was some confusion on her part about developing feelings for him because of Hera switching Percy and Jason- why did it not come up EVER? The months where Jason and Piper started dating. How about that long ass quest on the Argo? It could have been a valid plot line but it never came up. If it had come up near the end of the series or maybe even if it was a small subplot in the series, it would make the breakup logical, at least narratively. But no, we end Blood of Olympus with Jason and Piper coming full circle with the moment in the stars. Flash forward three years later to TBM where everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) about Piper and Jason are thrown into the trash. They’re broken up due to the false memories and overall I guess it’s implied Piper doesn’t have feelings for him anymore or something? Or the trauma of being in something like that prophecy was a lot for her to handle and she needed some time to figure things out? Yeah of course! Just like when she will go through another trauma (Jason dying for her) and start dating someone new right after. This would be so much easier to read and digest if these things are shown- in their own series and maybe not as a side thing to Apollo’s series. Reading it in TOA was completely out of left field. I know SO MANY PEOPLE were like that makes so much sense! Good for you Piper! But I was like girl, who are you? I feel like I have not spent any time with you and none of what you’re saying is connecting to anything you were like before. Which leads me to believe people just did not like Piper in HOO but just say that and go. HOO Piper is not TBM/TOA Piper. RR doesn’t know how to characterize his own goddamn characters. Furthermore, everything in canon up until TBM implies and directly states that Jason and Piper are endgame. It’s not to say they didn’t have problems that were resolved or that the way they got together was conventional. There was not even a smidge bit of reluctance to admit they were canon endgame- I think RR even had Cupid involved. There was no prediction or even hint of what would happen in TBM in HOO, which is a very big narrative problem. Jason, always isolated by loved ones and quite frankly always shouldering way more than a human can handle dies exactly the way he suffers. There is no growth or even a small lovely moment where we can see Jason. 

This brings me to the most unnecessary death I’ve ever read in my life. I know RR’s ego hurt from the complaints about Jason/Piper/Frank/Hazel/Leo (basically a non-Percabeth character) being underdeveloped. I know his ego was fucked when he “killed” Leo but didn’t really kill Leo so everyone was like what the fuck. I know he wanted to prove he is a good writer but like any other bad writer, he decided to jump the shark. And I know he wanted Jason and Piper to be more likable but the fandom really wanted a Leo-esque character. The breakup really happened because he wanted to demonstrate to critics that he could live with couples not being endgame and knew Jasiper was relatively unpopular compared to Percabeth/Caleo/etc. He wasn’t thinking in terms of ‘does this fit what I’ve created’ but in terms of ‘people might be like oh shit this is violent and they’re finally gone!’. I don’t know what idiotic thought process made him reach the point of killing one of them but he obviously got there. See, there is no difference between Jason or Piper dying in TBM. It could’ve easily been Piper who was impaled by Caligula and reminded Apollo “what it’s like to be human”. They were made *that* insignificant in TBM. Pretty much fucking interchangeable. IN DEATH. It also could’ve been anybody else in the world. It could’ve been that cheerleader from The Battle of the Labyrinth. It could’ve been Piper’s dad. It could have been Sally Jackson. Not a single part of Jason’s death was really related to Jason or his growth. Jason was the main/lead from HOO and if he was destined to die (which he wasn’t because RR doesn’t think anything through anymore), he should have died in his own series. That would make his sacrifice more compelling and important, but dying in TOA is just a big fuck you to his character. I think the only equivalent I can think of is if HOO had solely been Jason’s series but RR pulled up Percy to simply kill him and then just kept writing. What the fuck does TOA have anything to do with Jason or Piper? Or even Leo? I usually love when characters make cameo appearances to remind us of the past we loved them in. Kind of like when Lynda Carter appeared as Asteria in WW1984. Conversely, involving them in the plot and then using them as a plot device for the main character- AKA USING YOUR MAIN CHARACTER AS A PLOT DEVICE FOR ANOTHER MAIN CHARACTER IN A SEPARATE SERIES- is not only dumb but it truly makes everything else you’ve written for the first main character devoid of any real significance. Jason was never a fully fleshed-out character, the way he deserved to be written, because RR couldn’t world build as well as he thought and that ‘every single character gets a POV’ didn’t do the legendary thing he thought it did. However, anything that mattered about Jason was pretty much killed in TBM because he was easily killed by a villain that was not even remotely interested in Jason or aware of his existence. What does FUCK does Caligula mean to Jason? Nothing. Did the final battle create a full circle for Jason other than the line “remember?” which is not really related to his amnesia- no. His character arc was about an identity crisis- being pushed and pulled in two directions. Jason barely means anything to Apollo so RR using Jason as a convenient kill to send home a message is also shitty for Apollo. Lead hero characters can die- they sometimes just have to. Marissa Cooper’s death in the OC narratively makes sense due to the nature of the character being a damsel in distress from the very beginning- a foil to her counterpart, Ryan Atwood. But in this case, RR knew he had to shock people to keep getting $$$. I never got the impression RR cared about Jason or Piper, especially since he was incredibly disrespectful and lazy when writing about Piper. (For that- I can link really detailed posts explaining his racism). The truth is Riordan cannot live without putting his characters in relationships- Frazel, Caleo, Tyson/Ella (?), Hedge/Mellie- but he wanted to prove that he could which is why Jasiper broke up.

Piper’s girlfriend in TON- I didn’t read TON for the reasons above and I don’t think I’ll ever read a Riordan book again: I did find out that Piper gets a GF in TON which at first I thought was incredibly neat but then later became angry when I learned it was only months after Jason’s death? I have always wanted Piper to explore her sexuality but RR has this case of never giving important things the development it deserves. He’s incredibly messy and inconsistent when he creates lgbtqia+ characters, usually only including them so he can get credit for including them. He’s never actually explored Piper’s sexuality fully in the series, but he threw her in yet another relationship we didn’t get to read about right after she was almost beaten to death and then witnessed the murder of her ex-boyfriend. If you think that is representation, please rethink that. We don’t get to hear her talk about anything at all, except maybe mentioning the girl’s name. A subtle hint. Just representation is not good representation and it is right that we demand better representation. Don’t settle for less. For fuck’s sake, Riverdale is only really good at queerbaiting but they get so much praise. (Do they? At this point I can’t tell). If we wanted to explore Piper’s sexuality, it could have been done while she was with Jason or even broken up with him in her own series- why didn’t RR explore the nature of being lgbtqia+ in an Indigenous family? He had the chance to demonstrate an awareness of intersectionality through Piper but he fucked up. He had so much to write about. So, people who are yelling happily about that Piper appearance in TON-??? 

 This was long and frustrating to write. But I had feelings.

[tubbo-in-a-boat]

Wake up honey time for me to talk about block game roleplay

Particularly had tommy in my mind a lot (for obvious reasons) so just wanted to talk about why that is exactly! How this death feels different from the others seen so far.

However if you don't want to hear about that, but still want to read something about the current arc, then don't worry cuz the other half of my rambles is just different ideas as to what will happen! More lighthearted and fun, trust me.

Cw for death, abuse, and the entire arc holy shit it's dark.

Also if you expect me to be critical and negative then jokes on you, if someone speaks bad about my hyperfixation I will cry B) enjoy

So like, where do I begin??? Who was expecting THAT. I mean, some people considered the idea, but it seemed so unlikely that after everything that has happened in the story, he would just die.

One of the things that really put me off was just HOW it happened. Let alone that the fact it even happened was painful, but his death has been different from the other deaths seen in the smp. When Wilbur died, it felt like the end of his story, and despite the circumstances, Wilbur was the one who chose to die in the end. He asked for it, literally. Which is sad and fucked up in itself, but it felt like a good conclusion to the character that is wilbur, and we still got a piece of him in the form of ghostbur. Wilburs story is over, but Tommy's wasn't.

I'm going to go into more detail about his death and what lead up to it in the next paragraph so just skip to the next one if you would rather not hear it!

//

Tommy's death is probably THE most cruel death in the smp so far, and it's so bad I don't think any other can that can top that. Not only was he trapped in a confined room surrounded by lava (both facts we know makes tommy uncomfortable), but he was trapped with dream, you know, the person who abused him. It's not a light term, dream separated tommy from the world, made him believe no one cared about him, and broke him to the point he almost took his last life. Tommy was finally off his reach, finally able to move on from all the war and pain from his past, and grow. And it was taken away, by Dream himself. As I said, I trully believe no death can top the absolute horror Tommy experienced. He was stuck with Dream, for a week, and was just beaten senselessly to death. No weapon, no glorious exit, no famous last words, just a "dream I'm going to die" and then nothing. He didn't even fight back, no one was by his side, no one even saw him die. Schlatts death felt deserving, he simply succumbed to his own vices, surrounded by the people he hurt in some way. Tommy didn't deserve his death, he died alone and unfairly.

//

I really enjoyed the end of the disc arc, I think it's probably my FAVORITE moment in the smp. Tommy finally had something good happen to him, he didn't have to sacrifice anything like he has had to all his life, people came in to help him, Dream was imprisoned, and Tommy was freed. So for tommy's future to be taken away like this, it's horrible. Tommy had his whole new life ahead, so his death has made many feel either disturbed by the way he died, or sadden because it all seems to have been for nothing.

I'll be honest, when I saw Tommy had died, I straight up didn't believe it. I thought it must have been a mistake, an accidental blooper like when dream exploded himself, just a funny accident. Didn't help that Tubbo didn't seem phased by it, I was expecting for someone to come out behind the curtains and say it was an accident. But it wasn't, I still can't believe this even happened. It felt ridiculous and unnecessary, all this buildup for tommys future, only for him to die?? What was the reason for this?? What the hell??? Is THIS it?

In many ways, this seemed unfair and unprompted. But now I that it's been a day I've managed to think about why this death felt different. It's very obvious but, the fact that it seemed so unscripted, so sudden and unjust, it's just .. too real. Wilburs death felt like the end of a story, Tommys felt like the death of a young kid with a future ahead of him. It sucks and it hurts.

Well that was depressing, onto the other (and lighter) half of this.... this thing, I don't know what this is-

Do I think this is really the end of Tommy in the smp? Hell no, there's several reasons in and outside of the story for tommy to come back. I'm going to go from the least to most positive, cuz I really need the positivity rn </3

Starting with the most unlikely and sad one, Tommy simply stays dead. No revival arc, nothing from tommy's pov, everyone just has to mourn the death of this kid and move on. Fucking depressing!

Second one kinda latches off the previous point, but Tommy is seen in the afterlife. I dont think this is very likely either as it would have to be a lot to pull off but I'll explain anyway. The afterlife was proven to be a thing while Ghostbur was trying to be revived. We know Wilbur and Schlatt (AND MEXICAN DREAM..) are there, so maybe Tommy will meet Wilbur there! Except Wilbur isn't happy to see him. This would probably be a very heartfelt moment! Or they will both shout at eachother. No in-between <3. If they really aren't thinking about bringing tommy back, this could be a comforting conclusion to an otherwise bitter end.

Climbing up the ladder were finally getting to the ones I think are more likely, and not as bad!

Tommy gets turned into a ghost. If they really want to go through Tommy's death, I see this happening! Tommy needs his content guys, so Phantominnit is born :) I don't think they will be as complex as Ghostbur, I don't see Tommy roleplaying that hard pfft.

Dream brings Tommy back to life. This one is easy, and probably the most likely alternative. After all, Dream could tell everyone he can bring Tommy to life, in exchange for his freedom. This one leads to either them complying, them keeping him in prison, or somehow tricking him.

Based off of that, there's also the possibility of Wilbur getting revived as well. Wilbur IS back, as a writer at least, and I have no doubt Wilbur had something to do with writing this entire plot, so maybe he's planning to bring his character back through this somehow.

There's also other honorable mentions, tho these are more farfetched:

Karl somehow going back in time to revive him! The only proof present is that he stated that his newest tales from the smp will have "the most ties to the main story yet", but I personally think it's going to be about the eggs and it's origins. Speaking of which...

The egg bring back Tommy. Why would the egg EVER do such a thing? Look, the egg has mysterious properties, this isn't impossible. Maybe the egg manages to bring back Tommy.... Except Tommy is a bit off.

Tommy is brought back to life by Philza. Philza claims to know about the subject of revival, maybe Ranboo begs Phil to try to revive Tommy out of guilt. Interesting concept but not so likely.

Tubbo. I dunno man, Tubbo alright, he's too powerful, he could just say "no <3" and drag tommy out of the afterlife with his own two hands. He needs someone to throw the flowers in his wedding.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 17 of 26

Title: The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle #6) (2001)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Third-Person, Female Protagonist (Kinda)

Rating: 5/10

Date Began: 7/8/2021

Date Finished: 7/12/2021

The sorcerer Alder is haunted by a recurring dream. Every night he stands at the border of the afterlife, and the dead call to him from the other side, begging him to free them. Fearing that he may unleash evil upon the world, Alder seeks out Ged, a living man who once escaped the land of the dead. Alder finds himself central to a vast mystery; the origin of the afterlife and how it relates to mankind’s ancient connection to the dragons.

“I think,” Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, “That when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all I didn’t do. All that I might have been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed." 

Content warnings and spoilers below the cut.  

Content warnings for the book: Death, suicidal ideation, references to child abuse, reference to misogyny, mentioned animal death, mention of slavery.

Man oh man do I wish I enjoyed this book more. It’s not horrible, and there’s stuff I liked, but I found it really hard to get through at times. The Other Wind feels different than anything else in the Earthsea series— to its detriment. There are three main issues I have with the book, all of which I’ll get into.  But ultimately I consider it a mediocre conclusion to an otherwise great series. 

First, this book has unusual pacing. The Earthsea books are generally slow, with a gradual buildup and gratifying conclusion that ties the themes of the story together. The Other Wind is more like a reverse bell curve; it has a great beginning and finale, but the middle meanders and stalls. The novel is split into five chapters, roughly the same length, and the middle three are a slog. There’s the barest whisper of an interesting plot, but not a lot happens— and what does happen isn’t very compelling.

The closest thing to a story in the middle is a subplot involving Seserakh, a Kargish princess. She’s sent to King Lebannen’s court with the expectation he’ll marry her to secure an alliance. A stock idea to be sure, but I can see how it might provide political intrigue. But it’s just aggravating. Tenar is in this storyline for some reason, and she feels contradictory and out of character. She wants to live a simple life and leave palace politics behind— but she also wants to push the literal king into a marriage he doesn’t want. Lebannen gets framed as The Absolute Worst because he (1) doesn’t want to get married to a woman he’s never met, and (2) is distracted by other stuff. There’s an implication that the match is a great choice, yet Seserakh and Lebannen don’t have a conversation until near the end. Of course Lebannen falls madly in love with her the moment they talk. No need to… develop their relationship? Normally I can gloss over a weak subplot, but since so little happens in the middle, that’s impossible here. It’s irrelevant to the main story, so it’s a shame Le Guin spent so much time on it. 

There’s a lot of talking in this book, but little action. Dialogue-heavy characterization isn’t necessarily bad. Le Guin is usually great at that kind of writing. But here, it emphasizes my second problem with the book: there’s too many major characters. Previous books focused on 1 or 2 people, allowing for intimate connection and character growth. LeGuin clearly tries for that here, but there’s so many people and relationships that everyone is underdeveloped. Perhaps this would come off better with a single perspective character, but Le Guin instead chose a shifting POV between 5+ characters. An alternating POV isn’t inherently bad, but it wasn’t a good fit for such a short book. I found myself wishing for focus on Alder (the protagonist!), who’s a genuinely compelling character. Alas. 

My third problem with The Other Wind is exposition. This book resolves several plot threads from previous entries. Obviously, there needs to be some context from the series to tie everything together. But the sheer amount of recap is unreal. So many scenes boil down to a character explaining something that happened to them in a previous book, then connecting it to the current plot. It’s not subtle and sometimes happens with the same event multiple times. It genuinely feels like Le Guin didn’t trust the reader to infer ANYTHING on their own. Having just read the rest of the series, this was especially irritating. I can cut a little slack here; this series began in 1968, and perhaps some returning 2001 readers wouldn’t recall key events. But regardless, The Other Wind is one of the most over-explained things I’ve read in a long time. It’s especially odd because the previous books aren’t like this.

There are things I genuinely like about The Other Wind. On a prose level, Le Guin's a great writer. Even the plotless parts of the book are full of interesting writing choices and philosophical observations. One nice thing about Earthsea is the characters age over the course of the series. Ged started A Wizard of Earthsea as a young boy, but as of The Other Wind is a seventy-year-old man. It’s cool to sit back and see just how much each character developed over time. Earthsea itself changed with them; each book’s events have serious repercussions for the world as a whole. And this book has the most significant change of all. 

When the The Other Wind’s plot is relevant, it’s one of the most interesting in the series. I think it’s a fascinating way to tie up two disparate plot threads. As much as I love The Farthest Shore, it does present a glaring conundrum regarding Earthsea’s core themes. True immortality is only obtained through death— not because of an afterlife, but because the dead become one with the rest of the world. So why does the Archipelago have an afterlife at all? Why is it so bleak and depressing? Why are there no plants, animals, or dragons there? Speaking of, there’s the revelation that dragons and humans were once the same species. Tehanu introduced this idea with various folktales, and the eventual reveal that Tehanu/Therru is a dragon. This idea is newer to the series and thus more malleable, but I like the idea of an entity being two creatures at once, and the mystery behind that.

I think the integration of these two ideas is interesting. Dragons and humans were once the same, but decided to split into two species to pursue different goals. They formed an ancient bargain to rule different aspects of the world. Fire and air represent the dragons’ realm, freedom— and water and earth represent the humans’ realm, ownership. But some humans learned magic and broke that covenant, binding everything to its true name. This established a form of freedom— immortality via one’s name. The afterlife is a result of that; it shouldn’t exist, which is why it feels wrong. Everything links back to the desire for immortality without change as introduced in The Farthest Shore. On a meta level it’s weird that none of this came up in that book; the explanation that dragons suddenly remembered this great wrong is a little retcon-y. But I understand Le Guin probably never intended to expand on these ideas, and it’s nice to see the contradiction of Earthsea’s afterlife resolved in the end. I went into this book expecting the titular “other wind” to be the other side of Earthsea, not another plane of existence; and I think that surprise is pretty cool! I like the metaphysical aspect of this other realm and how it connects to the  dragons. 

Even though I didn’t love the book, I do think it works as a series conclusion more than Tehanu did. Tehanu drops such a huge, unresolved bombshell in its ending that I’m surprised Le Guin intended it to be the final book of the series. The Other Wind does create some open-ended mysteries, but they’re the kind that don’t need a resolution. 

Despite that, I find myself wondering if this book was necessary. The Other Wind ties together some threads, but I wasn’t a fan of the execution overall. If the dragon and afterlife plot was a heavier focus, maybe I’d like the book more. Instead there’s a bunch of filler and extraneous detail. The book feels forced, like a novella stretched into a full novel— yet also like something’s missing. Perhaps The Other Wind works better on a reread, but I’m inclined to skip it in the future.

[ostrichlady]

THOUGHTS AND RAMBLES ABOUT SNK CHAPTER 139 (SPOILERS!!)

Rating of this chapter: Lukewarm tea.

And everyone knows lukewarm tea tastes bad.

I do think the best way to deal with this chapter is to not overanalyze it. Read it once, call it quits and move on. I did that and felt great the next day. But because I spent too many years of my life in this story, of course the thoughts came back and there are a few things I need to say before leaving this story behind.

I never wanted a happy or tragic ending. I never wanted for everything to be solved neither for everything to end on a depressing note. The only thing I ever asked for was that the finale was fair and made sense.

But unfortunately, what happened was the exact opposite.

Everything that happened after the 3 years time skip was a big whatever and the only thing that comforts me is that Armin is alive, and Historia seems happy with her child. 

I still don’t understand why Reiner and Annie were so easily accepted. I mean, at least Reiner showed huge amounts of regret and we saw how he dealt with the trauma that everything caused to him (although now he's back to being a creep for Historia? Ew). But Annie? She herself admitted she would do the same shit all over again no problem, and why was she tearing after talking to Eren in the PATHS? Didn’t she say a few chapters ago that if they had to kill him, she wouldn’t hesitate and was almost judging Mikasa and Armin for not thinking the same way? Excuse me Annie, but what made you so emotional all of the sudden? 

Then we learn that the world is still a very dangerous place for Eldians and Paradis; the yeagerists are in charge of the military force and will swoop the alliance’s ass very easily if they find them chilling outside. And my question is: killing 80%of the population lead to this? Really? At any moment, Eldians can be exterminated, this is even worst than before!? They don’t have proper military training, the world still doesn’t like them and the alliance ambassadors or whatever are not very liked either sooo...I truly don’t understand the point of this. Now, don’t get me wrong: I never liked the Rumbling plan because as Hange said, "There's never a good enough reason for committing genocide", and I also always believed the Rumbling would make everyone else hate Eldians even more. But if 80% of people had to have their lives taken, at least don’t let it go to waste!?

Anyways, going back to when they’re still at war.

So Eren went around everyone’s mind and now everyone cries for him. A little late, but sure.

Everyone who was transformed into a titan is back, making the previous chapter be even more useless. Imagine reading the volume, get some shock value with Jean, Connie and everyone else becoming titans just to turn the page and they are back. I mean, I thought it was really unfair Jean died (and I hope he’s not arranging his hair for when they meet Mikasa) but having him and everyone else coming back like this is just....dumb? 

The fact we had Eren’s intentions explained this way makes the whole situation even messier. From his conversation with Armin to the road trip he did through people’s memories, it was just a big dump of information that did nothing but pull out a wtf from me. I think it would be a lot better if we saw a POV like the one from chapter 131, more honest and raw being that we would be seeing his true thoughts with no outside opinions and questioning. But this whole mess felt so, so displaced that for two seconds I wondered if they were all going crazy, Eren included. 

And I will never accept that Eren “killed” his mom for the sake of whatever the heck this became. Just no. Carla was Eren’s most important person, the one who said he was special simply for being born, and you want to convince me she had to be pulled into this mess because of some weird shit Ymir had going on with Mikasa, and Eren had to follow through?? This was cheap shock value that didn’t even shock because of how nonsense it is. The scene in which Eren asks Reiner why did his mom have to die lost all of its value and weight. How can one rewatch or reread snk, see the tragic and emotional scene where a 10 year old kid cries and screams as he see his mom be EATEN BY A TITAN and feel anything at all? Honestly, what a disrespect to Carla. Someone should have told her Yeagers can’t be trusted.

Speaking of Yeagers: Grisha, your kids are a mess. Come take responsibility for this-

Besides the fact that Zeke was killed for absolutely NOTHING, Eren’s character became a joke on a dozen of panels. More than angry, I’m shocked with how Isayama pulled this off. From having one of the best MC in modern shounen to having a pathetic little idiot that doesn’t know wtf he’s doing and has an intense unresolved crush on the girl he’s always had zero chemistry with. Legit I would be less surprised if he said he had a crush on fucking Connie, for god’sake. All of his motives, ideals and determination were sacrificed in sake of complete obnoxious notions of love I’m not even gonna ramble about here. And don't come at me with the whole "Oh bUt hE's JuSt A tEeNaGeR aNd DoEsN't UnDeRsTaNd HiS eMoTiOnS aNd WaS hIdInG hIs LoVe FoR mIkAsA". That's a cheap explanation for a cheap argument for a cheap mess that makes no sense. If you’re an Eren stan, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened but I feel your pain.

Last but certainly not least: Mikasa and Ymir.

I could say so much about these two but to sum it up: what a miserable duo. I’m not head over heels for Mikasa but I thought she had her place in the story and could have had some good character development. But ever since the timeskip, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to happen and it really didn’t. If Isayama chose this way for her because there’s a message between the lines, I don’t care because this was the last chapter and we all wanted answers. So we’re working with what we have laid down plain which is: Mikasa had a miserable ending, can’t let go of Eren and is stuck in the past. Her so called “selfless” love and obsession towards Eren is a very unhealthy response to her own traumas. This connection between her and Ymir just proves even further what I said as both of them are devoted to a love that never gave back and deeply hurt them in more ways than it’s apparent.

And still on Ymir’s topic, I don’t understand why she now has stockholm syndrome towards that nasty, disgusting, waste of human being king when the plot was setting her up in a complete different direction!? That whole talk of Eren finally freeing her from being a slave to the royal family, and giving her the chance of choosing her own path, where did all of that go!? What was that chapter for!? All of this buildup just because she was waiting for Mikasa?

Where has the entire talk about “everyone deserves freedom because they were born into this world” go? Why has a theme bigger than any of the characters gotten reduced to “waiting for Mikasa to decide herself about her feelings ‘cause omg tragic loooovee story”??? This just makes the deaths of everyone, and the scouts look completely useless. That Ramzi kid really died for this...

I swear, what a mess.

Overall, if you read this chapter in one go and then sigh relief as snk is finally over, this ending will probably be okay or just meh. I’m not angry or anything near that. Just disappointed and shocked that these two last chapters were this bad. Again, even if there are hidden messages between the lines, this is the last chapter and we shouldn’t have to be debating that. It’s okay to pull out a bunch of foreshadowing and questioning and whatnot in your story but to leave things in the open with the most weird messages and morals on the surface is just...blergh.

[sunshinemarauder]

Director’s Cut for Lace (if it’s not too late now)?

definitely not too late!!! keep 'em coming for however long you'd like! :)

under the cut cuz m-rated discussions

SO. Lace. This fic - it was so, so self-indulgent, like all of my spiciest headcanons of how James and Lily might get with each other were wrapped up altogether, except it was also a bit of a cop-out because I was too chicken to write what I wanted to read.

The idea for the fic started when I was, like, in the mood for writing something mature, hence the dream sequence (which I canNOT read without cringing, and it's relatively tame compared to the sort of smut in other fics??) but it had been in the works for over a month, and a month later when I revisited it I had no desire to write any more smut.

Which I was disappointed in because after all that buildup the kiss scene felt like a wasted opportunity for them to act on those desires! But I couldn't force myself to write something that I felt uncomfortable with, so alas, you have to make do with the kiss. HOWEVER, someday I might write an alternative ending that would include ~m scenes~ depending on how I feel about it. Normally all it takes is one person saying that they want to read it and I'll write whatever they ask for, but in this case, I tried and tried and just couldn't :/

On the other hand, if someone else had written the alternate ending... you BET I would have gobbled that ish up!!! I apparently am just a hypocrite lol.

Okay, moving on:

Another problem I had while writing this story is that I waited so long in between the first scenes and when I revisited it over a month later that my writing voice felt really different. It's a lot more juvenile, first-person-esque-third-person-POV at the beginning, while at the end it gets more emotional and less humorous.

He trains his gaze on the ground, determined not to catch her eye (or worse; somewhere that is not on her face), and thinks Snivellus Snape's greasy hair, Professor Slughorn's potbelly, vomit-flavored Bertie Botts beans.

versus

He can either tell her what happened, swallowing his embarrassment, or let her walk away from him and ruin their friendship forever. The answer comes to him as easily as breathing.

So I wish I had approached the writing at the beginning a little differently because I actually liked how the ending turned out, but looking back the first scene is awfully cringe.

--

Mary agrees to the top with a broad smile, and Lily immediately feels guilty for not approving of her boyfriend. The problem is, Bertram Aubrey is a total fuckboy. He tried to give her a love potion back in his fifth year (James hexed him to make his head swell to twice its size). Unfortunately, Mary thinks that Lily is jealous of her, no matter how many times Lily explains that she would rather snog Professor Flitwick than Bertram Aubrey.

Re: Mary and Bertram Aubrey, I read another fic where Bertram tried to give Lily a love potion and immediately adopted that headcanon for why James & co hexed him to swell his head. I don't have any strong feelings about that anymore, but I think it's an interesting way to peer into Mary's character.

One thing I regret about not writing multi chapters often is that Lily's friends are so one-dimensional. Like, in Lace, Marlene's flirty, Dorcas is helpful, Mary likes her boyfriend, and Imogen is just... there. If I could rewrite this scene, I would take Marlene out and replace her with Mary, I'd make Dorcas less passive, and I would replace Imogen with someone else with an actual hint of personality.

Imogen actually evolved to Ingrid from Tantalizing Waves, and Marlene was replaced by Bess Abercrombie, and I hope to give them some actual personality traits in future fics!

"Prongs is having a bit of a... hard problem," Sirius says gleefully, and Remus and Peter burst into laughter.

"Right," Remus says solemnly, after composing himself. "A conundrum, if you will. Stuck between a rock and a hard place."

LOL, I loved writing this, just stuck in all the dick jokes I could think of :) and I absolutely had Remus participate because I refuse to believe that Remus made a student conjure Snape in women's clothes at his first DADA lesson after showing up fashionably late Lupin wouldn't join in on making fun of James.

"Don't you alright, Evans me," Lily says sharply.

I just love the idea that James uses Alright, Evans? enough for it to become a verb in Lily's book!

She's been kissed a good number of times; by her ex-boyfriends Garrett and Max, and in a few drinking games.

Garrett Bentley is my headcanon to be Lily's ex-boyfriend. They dated in fifth year, back when James had a raging crush on her, so he's always kind of hated Bentley. He also tried to rekindle their romance in sixth year, after Lily dated a Muggle boy named Max over the summer and ended things with him and wasn't in a great emotional state because of the Severus incident, but it fell flat and she declined him for a second date.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that Garrett Bentley's name appears in another fic... here, when James calls him a wanker. Lily doesn't realize why, so her narration doesn't comment on it ;) It's a parallel to this drabble, where Lily calls Tillie Thicknesse (James' ex-girlfriend) a toad, but James doesn't realize why she says that. And because he's the narrator and he's very oblivious, we don't really get it either.

--

Okay, that was so much more than I thought I would write! But thank you for the ask @girl-ghostly, and feel free to keep sending them, y'all!

[peachymess]

Hey Peach! About the Armin sacrifice ask, you have to remember that Armin doesn't remember the events of sacrificing his life and dreams for Eren and the others to defeat Bertohld. So if he had to be told he ate Bertohld to survive injuries he didn't remeber enduring, how can he remember his sacrifice/ thought process? This isn't me fussing, just trying to give you a different pov and possibly Isyama's thought process. :) - an old mutual who's been silently watching ❤

Hi, old mutual! ❤️

That’s a good point. Though I would argue it’s not good enough to justify having Armin go through the same lesson twice. See, Armin is aware that he made the sacrifice (through being told). It’s not as though it didn’t happen. It did. And I’m sure he’s been made clear on the details so he’s understood what he did. He knows he chose to throw away something to change something. He knows he did the thing. But that’s only one side of the coin. The other is the audience. We saw him make the sacrifice. This is a construction made for our consumption.

Granted, in real life, people don’t learn and grow after every L or W taken. People make the same mistakes over and over and sometimes they never learn. Just like they can fail to see what earned them a win, thus failing to repeat it.

However, like I said, this is fiction. It needs to be a bit more polished. What I have an issue with isn’t so much realistic psychology as it is the writing here. From early on in the manga - almost since the start - Armin began dropping heavy forshadowing about this “big sacrifice”. He talked about the philosophy of becoming a monster to defeat monsters, being able to throw away things important to you in order to change the world, etc. He pointed to people who mastered it and kept asking himself what to throw away. Several times he even offered to give up his life prematurely (in the battle for Trost, for instance). But we as readers could tell that at those times, it was misguided. That he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t giving up his life in order to move mountains; he saw himself as a burden, disposable, in the way. He wanted to find a way to remove himself while also making it count for something. “The sooner I die, the sooner Mikasa has an excuse to take over my gas and blades, and the sooner she can save more people. Ergo, me dying saves lives. Ergo me being alive is an obstruction of the betterment of mankind as a whole.”

For the time being, he hadn’t overcome what was in the way, in order to learn the lesson he was set up for. The way it was being built up, we knew a big sacrifice was on the horizon, but he wasn’t ready to make it yet. His character development was focused around him realizing his worth first. Only then could he take action with a clear and strong mind.

When that moment finally came in 82, the arc was building up to it, the death flags were there. We saw him stronger, yet fumbling - like a flawed hero - to remain standing strong in the face of his biggest test. After all these arcs, all that he had foreshadowed, talked about, grown towards - plus his trust based relationship with Eren - it all culminated in Armin using his skills of intellect/manipulation/resolve and strength, to go through with this massive sacrifice that moved the mountains and gave humanity that impossible win.

... it seems incredibly awkward to then roll back that resolution, to nullify that development, to rehash that lesson when the climax of it had already happened. The theme of making that big sacrifice was already built up and it already culminated in a big plot point/story beat. Doing it a second time, without any more organic build up than to ride off the back of the old resolved foreshadowing/character development, feels... repetitive and stagnant. How many times does Armin have to sacrifice until he “gets it”, then? If the next sacrifice is, let’s say, sacrificing Eren - does he learn it then and not the first time? If so, that would render the first massive sacrifice without effect character development-wise. That’s a lot of story focus for very little payoff.

Or is the point that Armin has to just... keep throwing away everything that matters to him? If so, Isayama needs to start beginning to plant more explicit seeds that what Armin needs to learn is that “I was wrong about throwing away something to changne something; the truth is any advance needs a sacrifice and in order to keep advancing, one needs to keep shedding the things you care about.”

What I’m trying to say is that the memory thing is one way to explain what we’re seeing here, but it’s just not... strong enough, craftsmanship-wise. Not strong enough to be a good excuse for why we should strip the first sacrifice of the weight it should hold. It was built up over several arcs. He had to grow as a character to get to the point. He used his “would I ever lie to you” card on Eren, a first time breach of their trust bond - something that has its effect in the fact that it’s a first (no “second lie” is as hard hitting as the first one). All so that he could still not have fulfilled that looming “sacrifice”? Isayama now rehashing Armin’s old mantra of what to sacrifice fees so hollow. We already had the answer. He gave his life and singlehabdedly changed the course of the entire story. Such a complex manga and at one point, his sacrifice/death was the SINGLE one thing the story was focused on. For what? How could that not be the defining moment? How could he not grow from that? What lesson can possibly be better established and hard hitting enough to justify getting through to him more than 82? No second sacrifice will have the same weight. Especially not when it’s leaning on the buildup he already used for 82. Either this new sacrifice is the “true/final” outcome of the pre-82 build up (which makes that 82-climax empty and undermined) and he will struggle to top the fake climax of the return arc, OR he means to build a new sacrifice plot point without much justifiable buildup. Either way, he’d be so much better served by making Armin approach this from a changed perspective.

Now, I’m not saying one sacrifice is/should be enough to fix everything. And at this point, possibly giving up Eren is a very relevant topic to have to reflect on. But it would have been so much better if Armin could approach it from a changed/developed perspective. If he could pull a lesson from 82, to bring something new. He’d appear to have grown more as a character since those four (?) years ago, plus it wouldn’t feel like a rehash of something we’ve already seen. All in all, I’m just not a big fan of 82 not culminating in anything character-wise. Has he seriously not reflected on it or grown at all since back then, on this topic? I find that hard to believe. And I find it very dissatisfying as an Armin fan to see Isayama put focus back on this demand for Armin to sacrifice, as though what he already gave wasn’t heavy enough already. Because now that he’s put it out there, he’s got to go through with it. It’s the law of the Chekhovian gun; if you mention a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it has to be fired within act three. If Isayama makes Armin harp on about making sacrifices at the start of the final arc, a sacrifice has to be made within the end of the story. And I don’t think that’s fair, nor good writing, because it’s already been done.

I’m coming from the POV of a concerned parent. I love Armin like a son, and I frankly just don’t want him to have to sacrifice anymore. But as a writer, I feel like I have genuine reason to justify my dismay. That being said, it is what it is and whatever happens, happens. I have no say in it. Maybe Isayama turns around and throws us a curveball in regards to this. It just doesn’t seem likely. And I think - and this is my own opinion, not fact - that Isayama more likely just feel like this is Armin’s trope/base note at this point, rather than doing the detailed analyze of “memory loss would get in the way of this lesson”. Even though that analysis is a valid, realistic take. I think you thought more thoroughly about this than he did, to be honest.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. We might be seeing things differently, but I love a good conversation and it felt good to get this off my chest. And at the end of the day, Armin doesn’t need the further development to feel real and well developed to me. I’d love to see him have a new take on the whole sacrifice business, but I’ll settle for seeing him survive and thrive at the end of this (Isayama, I’m looking at you). Let’s cross our fingers, friend ❤️ And thanks for checking in on me! I hope you’re good!

[matoitech]

this is for when you wake up tomorrow, but can you please talk about galos superb emotional awareness?? he's got some serious emotional skills!

yeah of course!! i think its important to mention first and foremost that promare is built around compassion and willingness to listen and understand people you think are different from you just bc you dont have the exact same experiences. but in the words of nexus, we’re not so different. galo represents that! him and lio are literally the bridge of understanding and empathy. and because of this, both their characters hinge on love! love for other people and love for the earth. that’s why people misinterpreting characters like lio to be mean is so upsetting, because its missing the point of the movie. but anyway we’re talking about galo and his epic emotional intelligence so lets DO THAT.

so we gotta start with the obligatory “people think galos an idiot BUT ACTUALLY-” because its true! he may be oblivious about some things but he has an ability to look at a situation and know what to say and do to fix it; he’s passionate and has a solid belief in himself so whether or not he’s wording something perfectly people FEEL that hes being genuine. when you’re unapologetically yourself, people respond to that!

more than any other character it was galo that was the one who knew that lio needed help and was the only one who knew how to help him. and galo proves this isnt lio-exclusive (tho it definitely shows a lot with lio, and that’s for a reason lol). he knows what to say to reassure aina at the lake, he knows what to say to get heris to question her decision with helping kray, he knows what to do to get his teammates on his side to help, he saves lio and inspires him to save the earth. you could write an entire essay on any scene he surprises people and gets them thinking, he does this so much! i dont think this is something he’s totally aware of and uses to his advantage as much as its just people responding to how earnest he is about wanting to help others. 

the scene with lio as a dragon is brought up a lot when talking abt galo because its through his pov that the movie tells us that galo noticed lio was crying. we, the viewer, know what happened at the burnish camp. we saw lio lose his people and his best friends to freeze force, we know why he feels he’s lost everything. WE know why it isnt just rage, but its grief and pain as well thats fueling him, but galo doesnt know that. he sees the dragon, he knows its lio, and he notices right away that hes crying. he met lio a couple times and he’s kept in mind what lio’s said about burnish not killing- so he knows something is very wrong. something must have spurred lio to react like this. something must be hurting him. so now he knows that lio’s hurting and he has to do something to help, both for lio and to stop the fire in the city. no one else noticed or cared that lio was in pain. but galo’s whole thing is figuring out what people need and saving them! so of course he noticed. 

galo and lio save each other, MULTIPLE times. its through their differences they find strength! galo and lio are both passionate, emotional people, though they show that in different ways. its really lucky that galo and lio found each other; they work so well together, well enough to save the world! they’re both written with each other in mind, to draw out the best in each other and do together what they can’t do alone. they find strength through each other. that’s really important. 

to get back on track cuz i kinda went off on a side note there, i think it’s important to mention that galo being emotionally perceptive goes both ways. he notices whats going on with other people and notices how they feel and what he can do to help, but that also means he notices how people feel about him. people tend to assume galo just doesn’t notice when people get frustrated with him or when they’re rude to him, but i dont think thats true. its not that he doesnt notice, its that he’s used to it. he chooses to let a lot go. but when he snaps at lio for calling the matoi stupid, its from a buildup from ppl, whether jokingly or not, calling him or his interests stupid. u cant talk abt how galo perceives how ppl feel and acts accordingly without acknowledging that that also means he is aware of how ppl feel about HIM. another reason why him and lio work well together, with lio listening to him and taking what he says seriously, just like galo does for him.

anyway, the movie itself is all such a good example of galo showing rly good emotional awareness, and part of that also comes from him being open to trying to do better when he messes up. he apologizes when he does something wrong, he LISTENS, and he CARES about making things right. he cares about how lio feels and he cares about how the burnish feel. he cares a lot about making sure people are safe and happy, that they know he’s listening and is trying to help.

there’s a small line that i’ve always appreciated when galo is explaining the spaceship to lio. he says that the ship is human powered first, only adding that its the burnish specifically powering it afterward. this is an important line because its galo showing lio that he listened to lio earlier when he said the burnish were human beings just as much as galo. that small word choice means a lot, bringing the interaction in the cave back- galo said something insensitive, lio told him why that was wrong, and galo apologized and learned from it. the movie does a good job of showing you that galo has no problem with owning up to his mistakes and learning from them. that’s pretty good emotional awareness lol

also, at the end i will mention that galo’s pretty good at understanding his own emotions and knowing what to do about them, like when he goes to the lake to clear his head and work out his emotions bc he knows him being in the public eye and ppl associated him w the governor means he needs to be in control for his sake. he has trouble with this sometimes, not always making smart moves bc he is so emotionally driven, but he does acknowledge his emotions and try to deal with them in the best way he can. he could do this better if he went to THERAPY which he NEEDS -_- but that. is another topic. promare 2: everyone gets therapy

this got very all over the place, there’s so much you can talk about with it, but!! galo is a really good character thats a lot smarter- and more importantly, kinder- than people give him credit for, and i like talking about him :]