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sugarstickery · 4 years ago

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An Allegory Within the Dark

This is an unofficial fan translation of chapter 3 of Jujutsu Kaisen’s first light novel, Departing Summer and Returning Autumn by Gege Akutami and Ballad Kitaguni.

Summary: Mahito stumbles across an unusual human in his search for a place to call ‘home’.

Featured characters: Primarily Mahito, with brief appearances from Hanami and Jogo, along with an unnamed novel-only character

Timeline: An undefined time prior to the events of the Vs. Mahito arc

An Allegory Within the Dark

If you want to hide a tree, you go to the middle of a forest.

So if you’re looking to hide a person, you should go to the middle of a city.

Following that logic, it makes sense for curses worthy of being the true humans to set up their hideout in the city center.

Cursed spirits would actually have it much easier if they spent their time in places crammed with fear where humans and the like can’t live: deep in the mountains or in densely wooded areas, for example.

But for a group of curses plotting to overturn the current era, a base in the heart of the city is crucial for invasion and seeking refuge. That being the case, it’s also better to try aiming for a location with a high concentration of negativity.

Anyway, that’s how some employees from a scam business ended up massacred.

“This really is the simplest way to handle it. All of them nest together up here away from the public eye, so clean-up is a cinch.”

Jogo laughed while trampling the burning remains of a corpse underfoot.

Roughly two minutes ago, there were about six humans in the office.

The curses considered a few ways to handle dispatching them but ultimately decided that burning was the fastest, so Jogo quickly turned them to ash.

“But humans used this building, didn’t they? Won’t it be a problem if there’s property management or something?” Mahito asked, poking at an ostentatious vase displayed on a shelf.

Apparently the concern was unnecessary. Jogo tried to answer with a grin, but a nonsensical language cut into their conversation.

“⏁⊑⟒⟟⍀ ⎎⍜⋏⏁ ⟟⌇ ☊⎍⌇⏁⍜⋔”

“Oi, bastard—! Stop talking, Hanami! It makes my head itch!”

Though Hanami spoke in nothing but meaningless sounds, the intention behind it was somehow transmitted directly into the minds of others. This was usually unpleasant and it irritated Jogo.

When he noticed Mahito still looking his way, Jogo continued to explain despite his frustration.

“Hmph... What? There’s no need to worry. I asked Geto what his aim was, and it looks like these were the kind of underhanded humans who got involved in plenty of unethical things.”

“Hm. So basically, other humans won’t actually come close if they get that curse stuff happens here.”

“Exactly. Any respectable, straight-laced human would never come near this place under normal circumstances. It’s the perfect city-center hideout.”

“Is it really?”

“...What is it, Mahito? You don’t seem satisfied. What’s there to worry about? It would put us in a great position to start preparing our plans for the city, and it’s great for a quick escape if we need one.”

“Mm... No, you’re right, but...”

“But what? Spit it out.”

“It’s just... This room is really tacky.”

“Huh?”

With a pop, a small eruption burst forth from Jogo’s head. His narrowed eye looked like a painting of a gently sloping mountain.

“It’s tasteless, isn’t it? Stuff like that gaudy gold lion in the sparkly jar or this cheap-looking sideboard.”

“What are you even saying?! I have no idea what’s gotten into you lately, but you’ve been so annoying!”

“Movies.”

“Movies? Are those overly-embellished portrayals of humans really that interesting?”

“They’re references for my studies on the structure of a soul,” Mahito replied with an ambiguous smile.

If humans could see him, they might be reminded of a proud elementary schooler discussing the knowledge they gained from a book report.

“If I’m being honest, I don’t find the stories that interesting either, but I don’t hate the sense of visual aesthetics that humans have. That said, this room has too many useless colors and really hurts the eyes.”

“Such bratty, selfish complaints... We can just burn or toss anything that’s an eyesore.”

“No need, I’m going to look for a place to settle down on my own.”

“What? Ah, hey— Where are you going?”

Not waiting for Jogo’s response, Mahito waved over his shoulder and vanished like smoke or a gentle breeze, off to who-knows-where.

“Geez… Maybe it’s because he was born from human fear, but even knowing he’s a curse, he tends to be way too frivolous. Watching movies and all…”

While grumbling out his complaints, Jogo took a pipe from his shirt pocket to put in his mouth.

Unlike human cigarettes, this wooden pipe somehow imitated a screaming face when smoked.

“But that Mahito...”

Jogo spun around to survey the room with his one eye.

“...He says that, but it doesn’t seem tacky to me.”

“⊑⏃⋏⏃⋔⟟”

“I already said shut up!!”

You can only find a hideaway that suits you by looking for it on your own.

Mahito wandered through the city with this in mind. He alternated left and right turns on a whim any time he happened across a traffic light, walked alongside stray cats, or sometimes simply went in the direction of clouds that he liked the shape of.

While traveling along his chosen path like this, he keenly felt just how laughable humans were.

Though the city belongs to them, no one walking in and out of it was more free than Mahito.

Everyone seemed constrained. They were captured by ties of obligation and vanity, living in a wide, deep, big city with such narrow outlooks.

Unaffected by the enormous sky sprawling out endlessly overhead, they box themselves into their concrete city with their own hands and limited perception of souls, passing the time by whittling their lives down further and further.

Mahito even learned the words for some of these human concepts to study later.

For example, they call it “morals”. They call it “common sense”. They call it “emotion”.

But a human soul isn’t anything more than the resulting mechanical movement that comes from external stimuli.

And so they let go of freedom and live tightly controlled lives, fearing the judgmental stares of others, stooping to flattery for society’s approval.

“...What a waste.”

Everyone is bound by ostentatious shackles of their own making.

That’s why these curses know there has to be a change, as far as humans go. Those who cannot do anything but crawl in such an unsightly way under the magnificent sky must hand over the world.

Mahito thinks. He ponders over any topic his soul turns toward. He walks wherever the wind blows him.

Before long, the time had come for the sun to descend in the western sky. He could hear the burbling of a river.

“Not bad.”

The hideaway Mahito found was under a bridge, across the river.

It was a tunnel, vacant and huge like a temple.

Pipes ran along the inside, clear water flowing from them and into the river. It looked like wastewater was drained here after being purified, so there wasn’t much discomfort.

Apart from the humid air and the moss that emitted a peculiar grassy smell, it seemed wide enough to splash and jump around in, and the concrete’s cool texture provided a refreshing welcome.

There’s a season that curses are partial to.

Negative human emotions accumulate from the end of winter to spring, and it could be said that the rainy season served as the so-called peak of their ripening.

The inside of the damp tunnel held the same atmosphere. There was a gloominess there in the dim lighting that could easily nurture fear. It gently moistened Mahito’s skin; he felt cozy.

“Yeah, let’s stay here.”

When choosing a place to live, it’s best to trust your instincts.

Perhaps humans should do the same, but what they can’t readily do, Mahito can decide without hesitation. If he’s free when he wanders, then he’s free when he settles down, too.

Mahito stepped into the tunnel in good spirits, knocking solidly on the concrete floor.

The soul’s metabolism smooths out in comforting spaces. But…

“Huh?”

After walking a short distance, Mahito discovered “that”.

He initially thought it was some garbage or something that a human illegally dumped. But before long, it became clear that it was a sack-like silhouette leaning against a wall.

At first glance, it perhaps looked like a mere collection of rags.

But the shape of a soul was there.

—Ah, it’s alive.

Yes, just as Mahito had realized, it was a human.

The tattered clothing and wildly overgrown hair and beard hid his shape, but it was undoubtedly a human.

His exact age wasn’t clear from his outward appearance, but whether he was 60 or over 80, he looked elderly.

Mahito thought it was a bit of a pain.

There was already a visitor living in his precious hideaway.

Of course, taking care of this issue would be an easy matter for him. But he felt the same discomfort as a homeowner finding a stain on the wall of their new house.

‘Anyway, if I’m gonna deal with this, let’s get it done,’ Mahito thought, reaching out toward the old man with a little sigh.

Whereupon, unexpectedly, the old man spoke.

“...I’m sorry if you’re displeased.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know what you came here to do, but... I’m sure your mood has soured after stumbling across the home of an old fool. But I have nowhere to go, either.”

Mahito was a little taken aback.

The old man was clearly aware of Mahito and turned toward him to speak. This wouldn’t be surprising at all if he was talking to a fellow human.

But Mahito is a curse.

The eyes of a mere human can’t clearly perceive cursed spirits.

It isn’t impossible, though. If humans are born with cursed energy, it isn’t unusual for them to be aware of the existence of curses.

What caught Mahito’s attention was this old man’s lack of ‘eyes’.

As in, he had no eyes in the physical sense. Instead, in the empty sockets that once held them, there was a burn scar that was painful just to look at.

Even sorcerers rely on their eyes to view the world.

They depend on their field of vision to spot cursed spirits. That’s why so many of them use sunglasses and the like to conceal their line of sight, as it helps them remain unaffected. It also helps them maintain a balanced mind when their daily life overflows with curses.

However, that was not the case for this old man.

“Can you see me?”

When Mahito asked, the old man answered with a gentle nod.

“At the very least, I can feel you.”

“But you can’t see the world?”

“Naturally. That includes the scenery, what you look like, what color your skin is, and even your gender. Even so... I know you’re there.”

“...Are you a sorcerer?”

“Most likely not.”

“You’re being pretty vague, even though you’re talking about yourself.”

“For a long time, that’s what I’ve been the most vague about.”

Mahito began to notice something strange.

He can feel the shape of a human’s soul.

He knows the movement of a soul’s metabolism, whether it takes on a harsh form, withers weakly, or flickers with liveliness.

However, this old man’s soul was hardly metabolizing.

It was like a meadow with no wind, or a still sea, or the blue sky on a cloudless day.

No, it would be most appropriate to compare it to a stone.

His soul was like a stone on the side of the road.

No fancy ornamentation, no polishing. Unmoving, unwavering.

Calmly passing the time while growing moss.

That was the shape this old man’s soul had.

No matter how calm or how old a person is, the human soul always flickers.

As the years stack up, common sense doesn’t disappear, selfishness isn’t eliminated, and fear isn’t conquered.

But this old man was different.

The old man’s soul was at peace. He had sincerely accepted that everything would decay with time, but that didn’t mean he would throw his life away. It was truly similar to the way in which nature existed.

It was Mahito’s first time meeting anyone like this.

For a while, the tunnel became something of a den for Mahito.

He had gotten a hammock from somewhere, which he hung up between the pipes. He lounged in it and read, passing the time in comfort.

In a movie about life on a deserted island, a human who was desperate to survive made a hammock. Through it, he was able to regain a little peace of mind.

Since it looked surprisingly comfortable, Mahito gave it a try and it worked out nicely.

The arguments and fights of the outside world didn’t reach the inside of the tunnel, where only the burble of the small stream could be heard.

It provided a good environment for soothing the soul.

While leisurely absorbing new knowledge from his books, Mahito would sometimes absentmindedly gaze up toward the ceiling, or glance down at the corner where the old man squatted, looking as he always did.

“How do you live like this? It’s pretty mysterious...”

In the end, Mahito didn’t kill the old man.

It’s important to note that the old man wasn’t much of a hindrance for him. If it would make no difference whether he was there or gone, then Mahito figured getting rid of him would be more of a hassle.

The old man was just there, even quieter and more carefree than a stray cat.

Mahito knew the phrase: ‘man is only a reed, but he is a thinking reed’.

He found it hilarious and also genuinely liked it. It simultaneously boasted about being trapped in thoughts of the soul, while also showing that humans were frail as weeds.

It could be said that the old man was an unthinking reed, then.

No – he was even quieter than that; more like grass or some type of moss. In any case, the old man said nothing and simply carried on living.

Every now and then, the old man would suddenly shuffle off elsewhere, but he would be back to sleep before Mahito knew it. He was surely getting food from somewhere, but he never seemed to gain weight. If he lost any while in the tunnel, he would eat just enough to gain it back when he left, and no more.

It was a style of living so close to nature that it seemed more like a phenomenon than a life.

“That’s why I seriously wonder if you can see me.”

The suspicion was uttered suddenly.

Mahito wasn’t exactly speaking to the old man. Rather, his tone was that of someone talking to themselves.

But when he noticed that the old man’s soul didn’t waver even after hearing him speak, Mahito finally addressed him directly.

“How long have you been here?”

“Let’s see… I think a few winters have passed, but I’m not sure,” the old man muttered, his reply quiet.

Since they were two beings with souls who were aware of each other’s existence, Mahito felt it would be more natural to chat every now and then.

“Don’t you get bored?”

When spoken to in a soft tone, the old man also responded softly.

“I’ve forgotten how to be bored.”

“How do you usually pass the time here?”

“I don’t do anything, really. I just listen to the sounds.”

“The sounds?”

“The sounds of the water flowing.”

“...Is it fun?”

“It’s not. But I forgot how to have fun a long time ago, too, so it’s not an issue.”

So it was like that. Mahito nodded.

If this old man could no longer even feel the pain of boredom, perhaps his soul was worn down.

Humans of the city gasp and struggle through the hurt of not having enough, yet always wish for more even when they get what they wanted. Their souls grew fat and tattered through the rich accumulation of these negative feelings.

So in that regard, from Mahito’s point of view, the old man had a thin soul – but it could be said that was clever of him.

A fat and full human soul leads to a fear of losing the gratifying present moment, which in turn gives birth to curses.

“It’s hard to get your attention. What’s your name?”

When Mahito asked, the old man looked into the air for just a second.

“I left that behind. You can call me whatever you like.”

“There are humans without names? Even curses have them.”

“If you don’t meet other people, you don’t need a name.”

“Isn’t it a problem if you don’t have one?”

“When is it a problem?”

“When it’s time to be buried.”

“I don’t need a gravestone with a name. I can just be stuffed into a common grave, or maybe I’ll rot undiscovered and return to the earth that way.”

“Can’t you take a joke?”

“…Was that a joke?”

The old man didn’t laugh. Neither did Mahito.

But Mahito had the feeling that this old man was childish, contrary to his appearance. His lack of attachments created an unsullied disposition that might make him younger than he looked.

His interest in the old man simmered and surged.

It was his first time seeing this type of human, his first time feeling a soul with this form. For Mahito, this was a rare specimen.

What kind of path must life take to make this kind of human? What would be the most intriguing shape to make with a soul like that? What uses could one plan for such a person?

And what kind of curse would be born from them?

With these questions fueling his curiosity, Mahito started to chat with the old man.

“Why are you here?”

“…Why?”

The old man looked up toward the ceiling through his unruly bangs.

His eye sockets were empty, but it seems like even without sight, humans tended to stare into nothing when they were thinking. One curiosity of Mahito’s was satisfied.

“You weren’t born and raised in this tunnel, right? As a human, you must have been in that noisy city.”

“Ah, that. I lived a fairly busy life a long time ago. I inherited the house, worked, made money and supported my family.”

“So you were a human in a pretty good position.”

“In human society, yes. Looking back on it now, it was all meaningless.”

“So... what, you basically started living in a hole like a mouse, then?”

“I did that because I lost everything that I needed up to then. I lost my social status, my money, and a place where I belonged.”

“You lost it all?”

“I was tricked. That’s when my eyes were burned, so I lost my sight then, too.”

Mahito incidentally recalled the company Jogo attacked.

“You got tricked, huh? You seem pretty good-natured about it.”

“That’s because I didn’t care much about being tricked.”

“You’re a weird old man. Is this some kind of hobby where you get your kicks when people deceive you or something?”

“I’m just saying, that’s the kind of person I was back then. The ones who tricked me were my old friend and my wife. My eyes were burned in that so-called “accident”¹; they claimed I wasn’t of sound mind and body after that, and under the guise of caring for me, they stole everything I worked for before I knew it.”

“That’s a pretty flashy way to trick someone, isn’t it? You’re talking like it’s someone else’s problem.”

“Those two loved each other, and I was loved by no one. Knowing that was more monumental to me than being tricked.”

It was hard for Mahito to interpret what the old man said.

Love. Is it really such an important word?

It’s said that curses born from love exist in the world. It seems there are tremendously powerful ones among them, too. But Mahito doesn’t understand how the mechanism by which people love each other is any different from a cat’s attachment to a blanket.

Still, Mahito knows for a fact that people are obsessed with it.

“Didn’t you curse them? The ones who tricked you.”

“Not really.”

“’Not really’, huh. You know, normally a human in that situation would get angry and hold grudges, and it would make the shape of their soul deteriorate.”

“It’s true, though. I don’t think I had the energy to even consider seeking revenge or hurting them.”

“...I get it.”

Mahito nodded, filling in the blanks.

Regardless of whether or not he can guess the trends in human emotion, Mahito has studied many movies, novels and poetry so far.

Then there were the humans he tinkered with. Mahito could put together the pieces he gleaned from those things and use them to break down the old man’s story.

“So basically, you were in despair. So much despair that it was like your soul was about to die. That’s how you broke through the creation of grudges and curses and ended up like this.”

The old man slowly shook his head.

“I may have been disappointed, but I don’t believe I felt the intense despair you’re thinking of.”

“Are ‘disappointment’ and ‘despair’ different?”

“They are; this is just my personal experience.”

The old man raised his face, following the memories.

“There was no burning resentment or turbulent sorrow. It’s just... I was tired, I guess. Between work, assets, reputation, my life situation and duties, dealing with others, caring about the family name... I think I was probably just tired and worn out because of it all.”

“And that’s why you didn’t get mad even after being tricked?”

“I was at peace. They say the soul gets lighter after going through disappointments.”

The old man’s voice was calm.

It had a cool quality to it, like muddy water that had been filtered clean.

“I couldn’t see, I had no money, I had no love... But as I was walking through the city with nothing to my name, it all suddenly became inconsequential. And then, as I looked around, I saw the city in a new light.”

“Even though you can’t see?”

“Yes. When you can’t see anything, it’s just sound and wind that goes on forever anywhere you are. I couldn’t even see the walls blocking the city in. It was just endless darkness spreading out forever, like a starless night. For the first time, I understood how wide the world was. And I thought to myself... ah, I’m free, aren’t I?”

Mahito blinked rapidly.

This old man’s thinking didn’t fit any other case he had gathered so far.

Even hearing about his past, he couldn’t understand the old man’s thoughts.

But even from Mahito’s point of view, the old man was certainly free.

Without so much as leaving the middle of this tunnel, he knew that the sky was vast.

Perhaps he knew it better than any member of high society walking around freely in the city. He knew the wide spread of the sky, the soft caress of the wind, the gentle sounds of the water.

This old man, who looked like a simple rakugoka², had no property or social standing. He even lost his connection to other humans... And maybe that’s precisely why he could uncover the elusive meaning of the word ‘freedom’.

He was just existing, just being alive, without attachments, grudges or curses.

“So basically ‘not all those who wander are lost’?”

“Yes, though quoting Tolkien’s works might be a little tedious.”

Mahito smiled when the man immediately caught the reference to a book he just happened to read.

“Were you a bookworm?”

“All I did was cram a lot of information in.”

“It’s good to be well-read.”

If curses are born from the fear that humans feel, could this old man even be considered human?

As Mahito is, he struggles with the expression of human emotions.

But he was calm.

For the first time since coming into contact with humans, he had a feeling of peace.

“I think if everyone in the world was like you, I wouldn’t have been born.”

Mahito looked back at his book.

The old man, staring into nothing as always, fell silent again.

Curses are born from humans, but they also kill humans. There is no way for the two to coexist.

But in this tunnel, a curse and a human were doing exactly that.

Though distorted, this peaceful period of time flowed by gently.

It’s only natural for humans to hate and fear other humans.

Since they can’t see souls, they can only make guesses about the feelings of others, and they’re swayed by their own emotions.

They don’t understand that these things are just a reflection of the soul’s metabolism. They don’t even know where their soul is.

Mahito investigated the matter.

This blind man lost his sight and his connection to others, so his soul received less stimulation.

And so, no longer influenced by unnecessary things in the physical world, he spent a lot of time facing his inner world and reflecting.

“It’s kind of like a monk’s training. Through strong introversion, a person looks at their soul more often.”

Mahito walked around the city, skimming through a beaten-up copy of the Heart Sutra.

It was a sutra handbook that focused on controlling the soul. It looked like humans of the past did their own research into freeing the soul from the material world.

The old man’s life ended up in a similar state without him setting out to do it on purpose.

That was likely how he learned to feel other souls through the darkness he lived in. Mahito concluded this was the reason he was aware of curses.

“I think he was already predisposed, but... seems like it’s easier for introverted humans to show promise.”

If he gave the old man’s situation even deeper consideration, he could probably make a lot of guesses about a sorcerer’s training. There’s even a way to encourage the first manifestation of cursed energy.

In that case, it should also be possible to take a talented person and ‘make’ them into a sorcerer or curse-user.

Unleashing a curse-user made by a curse onto a sorcerer...

That might be a fun experiment. It’s easier to shake up a human’s soul by having them fight other humans, rather than just exorcising curses. Sukuna’s vessel should be no exception.

Although...

—Maybe it’s fine to do that a little later?

Yes, Mahito thought it over at his leisure.

He is free. When it’s time to move, he moves. When it’s time to rest, he rests.

And he was not in the mood to launch that plan into action.

Rather, for the time being, he just wanted to gather knowledge and indulge in thought. He also got some new books and wanted to read fantasy novels while basking in the quiet comfort of the tunnel.

Mahito’s gait became lighter. While walking alongside the throng of people, he even began to hum.

Suddenly, a loud voice rang out from between two buildings.

“—so damn annoying, yeah?”

Looking over that way, he saw two young humans: a man with long, thin hair, and a muscular skinhead. They were undoubtedly people who looked like trouble.

The long-haired man listened as the skinhead rambled on with his complaints, seemingly in some kind of sullen mood.

“Damn, it’s seriously freezing. Anyway, every last one of ‘em just puts on shitty airs, but it’s all just talk. Nothin’ but excuses. Ah, I wanna kill ‘em all...”

“You say that, but come on. You talk big about wanting to beat these guys to death when you’re pissed, but could you actually kill someone?”

“Sure. Ain’t like killing’s hard.”

“Seriously?”

Mahito squinted and listened, the conversation going in one ear and out the other.

It’s not that he disliked the way they acted or how they spoke bluntly about their heart’s desires. But Mahito knew people like this were all talk.

“Yeah– seriously, anyone’s fine, I just wanna kill someone.”

Then maybe you should do it without saying anything.

Better yet, he thought about practicing some killing methods on them. But Mahito felt the light weight of the book in his hand as he reached out, and he stopped.

Rather than sparing any consideration for this, he just wanted to go back to the comfort of the tunnel and read.

“I’ll kill ‘em.”

The skinhead’s grumbling voice sounded like a spell.

But the words would find no power or heart to shelter in. Shut away between these buildings, the most a person can do is talk to themselves. It’s best for humans like this to stick to the narrow back alleys, foolishly thinking they’re enjoying a wide world.

Mahito averted his gaze and made his way back home.

“Why did Gregor become a bug?”

Mahito suddenly asked the old man, not taking his eyes off the novel.

It was a famous book by Franz Kafka.

A story in which a human unexpectedly turns into a poisonous insect.

“The most popular theory is that the bug is a metaphor.”

“Metaphor?”

“It means he was a person who was hated and oppressed within society, treated the same way a human would treat a bug. Kind of like an old man who was suddenly blinded and tricked one day.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Not exactly.”

It was detached and dispassionate, but an answer would come back any time Mahito said something. When conversing with the old man, it felt like talking to a dictionary. He had a lot of information.

He knew about things like the inner workings of the mind and human culture, and he was smart enough to explain it simply in discussions.

For Mahito, who analyzed human souls through books and movies, this old man’s knowledge and conversation helped in its own way.

When do humans get angry? Why do they grieve?

How do they trust and in what ways are they betrayed?

Mahito lived with a different sense of ethics when compared to humans, so there were many things he struggled to interpret. The old man explained them and helped him understand.

He had a strong interest in the experiences of the old man, who had once lived among humans but didn’t act like them.

“After becoming a bug, Gregor eventually hid away like he was told to, but he still ended up being spotted and it led to his death. Jii-san³, why do you think that is?”

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

“That’s a quote from Virginia Woolf, right?”

When Mahito immediately and correctly guessed the source, the old man raised a brow slightly.

“You’re a pretty avid reader, too. Conversations with you are really stress-free.”

“Do you have to go back to living with other humans, then?”

“If you don’t have any attachment to the human world, there’s no need to run from it or stand against it⁴.”

“I see,” Mahito murmured to let the other know he was listening, eyes still on the book.

Even if he wasn’t looking at it, the old man’s perpetually calm soul was aglow in the dark like always.

Mahito read his book in the dim room lit by the brilliance of that soul instead of a candle.

Time quietly flowed through the darkness.

Outside of the tunnel, signs indicating the end of summer crept up.

The end came abruptly.

One day, when Mahito was heading back to the tunnel with an abandoned poetry anthology that he picked up on an aimless walk through the city, he felt a noisiness that shouldn’t have been there.

There were one, two, three swaying souls.

One had a very familiar shape, but it was terribly frail. It was like the dying flame of a candle weakened by the wind.

With the same unchanging gait as always, Mahito stepped into the tunnel.

As expected, the old man was there.

But the unusual thing was the crumpled, strange position that he was in.

He was also sandwiched between two younger men who were looking down at him.

“Oooi, isn’t this bad? Did this guy seriously die?”

A man with long, thin hair spoke in a tone that was not particularly anxious.

“Didn’t I say it? I said I could kill,” a muscular skinhead replied, his voice casual.

“But ain’t this just impulsive?”

“Yeah, well, the old man had some real cheek, looking down on us when he’s this weak. So why not just kick him?”

The skinhead likely played sports, given that his legs were as thick around as logs. Kicking an old man to death would be easier than crushing a can.

The two didn’t seem to have a single scrap of interest in the old man, his life or his soul.

There was no reason, no grudge, no clear murderous intent.

It seemed like they simply arrived at the tunnel somehow. They took the opportunity to do as much violence as they wanted. They beat him on a whim.

It could be said that this way of being is freedom for humans.

Mahito crouched down, peeking at the old man’s face.

The beaten visage of the man with burned eyes came into view. But even at a time like this, his expression was as calm as always.

“Are you going to die?”

Mahito searched for even a mumbled word or two in response.

“...Seems so...”

The old man answered in a hoarse voice. He likely barely had the power left to speak now. It appeared as though the two men didn’t hear him over their loud conversation.

He intently inspected the old man’s soul.

The peaceful soul was not flickering, nor did it hold anger or grief; it was simply coming to an unhurried end.

Mahito was impressed.

This old man had found the true meaning of freedom. He really was released from every tie of obligation in this world. Even on the verge of death, that didn’t change.

Being able to make sure of that with his own two eyes, Mahito felt considerably relieved. In the same way he would watch a flower wither and fall, he observed the old man’s death.

Nevertheless...

“Jii-san?”

He had a feeling.

It’s like seeing a plot twist you don’t want to see if you keep turning the pages of a book.

Or like knowing the contents of a present before you open it.

That kind of buzz spread through Mahito’s chest.

While he puzzled over the instinctive alarm bells screaming at him to stop watching, everything was heading toward its end.

“...I thought I would die alone.”

The old man’s soul dimly flickered.

A smile was on his swollen face.

“...To have someone... here to witness this old fool’s last moments...”

The flicker might have been insignificant, like a single drop breaking the water’s surface. Even so, for an instant near death, at the end of it all...

The old man’s soul ‘metabolized’.

“...Tha...nk... y...”

The old man died smiling.

“. . .”

Mahito’s eyes opened wide, and for a moment, he was frozen.

He thought the old man was different when compared to other humans. To Mahito, he seemed unfettered.

Mahito thought the unique philosophical views stemming from such an extraordinary state of mind had freed him from all the shackles of this world.

But despite all of that, the old man was still captured right in his last moments.

On the brink of death, he clung to someone else so he could avoid a lonely end.

The old man was only human.

For a human, it was likely satisfying enough. Perhaps it was even the proper way for one to die.

“. . .”

Mahito said nothing.

But what felt like a dry wind blew through his chest, leaving him cold.

He didn’t know the name humans gave that emotion. But his consciousness was like yarn tangling in on itself, wriggling around like a worm—

And suddenly, it all cut off at once.

The only thing left behind was the sensation of standing in a dry and barren wasteland.

“—So basically,” the skinhead’s voice echoed. “Police probably won’t do a proper investigation. Not for this old nobody.”

“Hey, hey, hey; that’s still a person,” the long haired man answered lightly.

“Yeah, well, that guy started it.”

“He shoulda looked at who he was talking to before he picked a fight.”

“Anyway, my pants are dirty from all that kicking... That’s a problem.”

“So fussy. That’s what you’re worried about when you just killed a guy? How funny.”

“That ain’t a person. Anyway, don’t you know I like being clean? Ahh, the blood won’t come off... Water doesn’t do any good, right?”

“Yeah, it doesn’t – but more importantly, if you’ve settled down, I’m hungry. Let’s stop by a convenience store.”

“I dunno. If you’re gonna look, buy a bento and let’s get outta here.”

Mahito quickly stood up in the same way one would when they finished looking for something in a store.

A sense of fatigue was deeply ingrained in his body.

Their incoherent voices persisted, reverberating through the tunnel, smeared with excuses and attempts to escape reality. He couldn’t hear the soft burble of the stream.

With deep-seated listlessness, Mahito approached the skinhead as one would move to pick up fallen trash.

Idle Transfiguration. The technique spreads quickly.

And thus, the moment he tapped the man’s back, its shape was no longer human.

“Ee—!!”

If he just killed them, it would create a nuisance in the form of a corpse, so he simply folded it up into something palm-sized and kept it alive.

Then, with a careless sweep⁵ of his hand, he folded up the other man as well.

“Begh—”

It fell silent.

Mahito gathered up the two, now no bigger than chess pieces, and turned his attention down toward the remaining corpse of the old man.

It was now just a bag of meat full of bones. Not even the soul remained, so he couldn’t use Idle Transfiguration to fiddle with it.

He was briefly troubled by its disposal, which served as the biggest inconvenience.

In the tunnel, there nothing but the sound of running water.

It was a day where the sky seemed farther away than usual.

Clouds peeked out from around the buildings and a good feeling was carried in on the wind.

Mahito aimlessly walked about the city.

“Maybe I’ll catch a movie. It’s been ages.”

He picked a tiny, somewhat old-looking theater and snuck in.

He’s had high motivation lately, and it seemed like some unnecessary things had peeled away from his soul, leaving him more carefree than ever.

Thanks to that, he had also begun to toy with humans more often.

If he can fold a person up and make them small, he wanted to test out inflating one instead, but he slept on the idea overnight. It was pretty fun, but he knew that he was getting too absorbed. He also felt that carrying on with too much persistence wasn’t a good thing.

A change of pace every now and then was fine, too.

He hadn’t closely checked to see what was being screened. It was mostly just plain and obscure movies, but if one went in with no expectations, they might come across a surprisingly interesting tale.

Curiously, he had that kind of a feeling.

While walking through the hall of the theater, he casually felt through his pocket, which had grown bulky with the ‘small humans’ that he had touched.

—Speaking of which, he thought that was a nuisance.

He carelessly tossed some of them away.

Opening the door, he stepped into the theater.

Perhaps because it was a weekday, there weren’t many customers. The silhouettes of what appeared to be students filled out a few seats here and there.

From where Mahito stood in the corner, he had a good view of the screen.

Soon, instead of a curtain raising, the theater was engulfed in darkness.

T/N: [1] In this sentence, the implication is that the “accident” was very much orchestrated by the old man’s friend and wife, who burned his eyes somehow and then merely made it look like an accident [2] The rakugoka is the storyteller in rakugo, a form of (often) comedic theater that relies solely on spoken word from the rakugoka, who only uses a fan and hand towel as props [3] A way of referring to old men in general, basically like “gramps/grandpa”; Mahito never calls him by an actual name [4] Essentially, the old man’s saying that he (or anyone) can exist parallel to human society without interacting if they have no attachments to it and can still find peace, contrary to the Woolf quote [5] Kanji reads sweep, furigana reads cleanse (the same word for exorcism that sorcerers use)

Thanks as well to Pixi for help with editing and tl checks! If an officially translated version of the novel becomes available in your country, please consider purchasing it, or consider buying a copy of the original novel in Japanese if possible!

#jujutsu kaisen #mahito #mahito jujutsu kaisen #mahito jjk #jogo jjk #hanami jjk #jujutsu kaisen light novel #translation #departing summer and returning autumn

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mermaidsirennikita · 4 years ago

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bridgerton--the good, the bad, the ugly

The short of it: Bridgerton excellently captures the tone of Regency romance novels and offers a lot of escapism and great sex scenes, but could definitely use some serious work in terms of how it depicts race and it should have made some further alterations to the dated and flawed source material. Definitely loved a lot of it and am hotly anticipating the second season, but I want to see more work done and I HOPE that this encourages the adaptation of better (and less inherently flawed) romance novels.

Now for the longer take.

The Good

Bridgerton depicted sex and romance in a way that is totally different from anything I’ve seen in period dramas, for sure, but possibly different from anything I’ve seen on TV. The romance of it all was woven into almost every aspect of the show. There is the handsome and seemingly severe but extravagantly wealthy and sexually adept duke sweeping into town. The (multiple) rakes who just want to have fun while also being hot messes. The awakening of female sexuality and the copious use of the female gaze. (Note the pretty modest and minimal focus on female nudity, while we get plenty of lingering shots on Simon.). People want love! There is pretty minimal violence and perhaps the most physically violent scene involves Simon beating a man up because HE IMPEACHED DAPHNE’S HONOR~.

The sex scenes themselves focused on Daphne’s pleasure for the most part, and were probably among the best I’ve seen since Outlander in terms of chemistry, in terms of the visuals, in terms of focus on sex as an act of emotional connection and FUN. Yes, there was some Unlikely Vaginal Orgasming, but we also saw Simon tell Daphne about masturbation. On the wedding night, he was pretty clearly touching her to help her enjoy it. He ate her out... a good bit.

And aside from that, we got all of the grand speeches, the stolen glances and touches, an excellent buildup of sexual tension that led to some pretty hilarious moments.

I also really enjoyed many of the performances on this show. Rege-Jean and Phoebe had great chemistry and excellent back and forth. Jonathan was a GREAT Anthony. I would argue that as lackluster as I found his relationship with Siena (more on that in a minute) it largely existed as a way to set him up for his romance with Kate. He now has even more of a reason to be down with love, as opposed to solely relying on a kind of flimsy tragic backstory. Additionally, his overprotectiveness of Daphne added tension to the story and made him a source of comedic relief for me? I loved it. Give me disaster Anthony all day; can’t wait until he falls to the enemies to lovers trope just like Simon fell to his FLAW-FREE fake dating plan.

A lot of the changes I found were really good. Obviously, it was important that the show incorporated greater diversity (though they need way more). Benedict was INFINITELY more fun and interesting than he was in the novels, and acted as another standout for me. As much as I hate Portia Featherington, I think that the elevation of her to a proper villainess is probably necessary and Polly Walker excels at those types of roles, though they need to maybe have her be less like, actively racist. I adored the addition of Queen Charlotte; she was excellent comic relief. Lady Danbury’s expanded role and relationship to Simon was one of the best moves they made. It touched my entire soul.

Buuuut....

The Bad

The show needs to work on casting more men that are frankly on Rege-Jean’s level. It feels a bit awkward to see a guy that is by most people’s standards kind of stunning and then.... Colin looks twelve. Lord Philip is like... a farm guy. Get rid of the sideburns, we’re in romance novel territory.

In the same note, the girl who played Siena wasn’t a great actress and wasn’t super stunning, so even though I’m fine with her being a placeholder.... Eh. Go for better casting. The woman playing Madame Delacroix would’ve played that role so much better and I really enjoyed her dynamic with Benedict because she was just fun.

Frankly, I don’t know what the fuck they’re going to do to make me want to watch Penelope and Colin fall in love. Their book was already a bit basic--fun, but far from revolutionary. I don’t really get why they would receive attention similar to that of Kate and Anthony, basically. The issue is that Colin, again, looks and sound rather young and twerpy. It obviously wasn’t great for him to be tricked into raising another man’s child, but.... For fuck’s sake, how much would that have affected his life on a practical level. He’d never know unless he was told, thanks to the lack of DNA tests. He was marrying far out of his league in terms of attractiveness. He’s a rich white guy in England with a supportive family.

I really disliked the fact that Colin told Marina in his huffy little tantrum that he would have married her anyway--because would you have, buddy? Really? The thing is that Marina had no way of knowing that and her entire life (and the reputations of her cousins) was on the line. She didn’t know if she could trust Colin to keep her secret. They barely knew each other. He basically came off as a whiny child and I’m fine with him staying in Greece if that’s the plan.

Penelope was just... psychotic. And that was really disappointing, because I love Nicola and would love to have loved to see the fat girl get her sexy love story. But first off, lol, it wouldn’t have been sexy because Colin was miscast. Second, she basically tried to destroy Marina’s life and that of her sisters? And herself? Because Colin? Because Colin, a guy who hasn’t even shown any amount of attraction to her at this point? Her tears, her whining, it was all too much. Penelope was dealing with a crush and Marina was dealing with the real Grown Woman issues of a child out of wedlock and as it turned out a dead lover and they were not on equal footing.

I mean, Penelope could very well make a great villainess at this point, and if done well I’d embrace it. But I do not know how the fuck they can make me interested in her love story. And the idea of her basically being launched into villainy because she was this chubby white girl obsessively jealous of a beautiful black woman...... not a great look.

The show definitely needs to explore diversity in terms of sexuality too--I don’t think it’s correct to read Benedict as straight because he still seems to be open to exploring. Once he has more screentime, I think he could totally end up being bisexual, and it’s possible that the writers were trying to feel the audience out in terms of their receptiveness to taking a straight character who has a big straight love story in the books and making him LGBT+. Eloise could also easily be a lesbian, and I’d be thrilled to see that happen. They need to do something to expand the world, and if there are 8 Bridgerton kids, all of them being straight as an arrow seems SO unlikely.

The Ugly

Obviously, the rape scene was bad and should have been written out. Simon could have gotten caught up in the moment and blown up at Daphne after he accidentally didn’t pull out in time. Men.... accidentally don’t pull out in time... a lot. That’s how babies happen. It would’ve been believable, and due to our sympathies being with Simon largely, I don’t think he would have become irredeemable if he was more at fault than Daphne.

As it was, I will say that the scene was somewhat better than it played in the books because Simon was conscious and totally sober, and it was a bit? Confusing? That he didn’t just roll Daphne over and pull out? Because she wasn’t really clearly trying as hard as she was in the book to wrap her legs around him and hold him tight. But it remained a rape scene. The show also did a better job, I think, of establishing how fucked up it was that Simon took advantage of Daphne’s lack of knowledge. Whatever he said about thinking she knew what was up--he knew she didn’t even know about masturbation. He had to know she wouldn’t understand what pulling out meant. He did very clearly mislead her to think that he was sterile and therefore denied Daphne her ability to give informed consent. Did that justify what Daphne did? Nope. Two wrongs don’t make a right. But both of them did a fucked up thing and I think that we honestly could’ve stopped at Simon’s misleading.

The issue too is that this leads into a bigger problem the show had. It wanted to include diversity (yay!) but did not consider the total implications of what was happening (not yay). Daphne and Simon’s dynamic is inevitably influenced by the fact that she’s a white woman and he’s a black man, regardless of whatever handwaves happened. This influences the sexual assault and makes it even more messy.

Speaking of mess, I’m not sure what exactly would have fixed the “we don’t want this to be a colorblind casting” issue... but the explanation they came up with wasn’t good. Never mind that this makes everything SUPER confusing (racism is over like..... maybe 50 years MAX after Queen Charlotte’s marriage if we assume she was a teen when she married and is in her 60s now?) but Lady Danbury’s dialogue explaining this was HORRENDOUS. “One of them fell in love with one of us”. The implications are awful. I don’t know if perhaps setting back the integration of society centuries earlier would have helped? But this wasn’t it.

Additionally, the writers and casting directors didn’t seem to get that diversity is all well and good, but what about the fact that almost every black character has a light skin tone? Why are there so few black female characters? Why is Marina, the most prominent woc on the show, given the “pregnant and desperately trying to trick a man into marrying her until her jealous white cousin fucks her life up and she is humiliated into settling for a loveless match” plot? I desperately hope we see her next season, falling in love with Sir Phillip or perhaps having experienced a plot twist that gives her someone else... And she better not die. Eloise can find someone else if Marina really ends up with Sir Philip.

Ultimately, again, I really loved the show. But it needs to work on some things. I think that a lot of its issues can be addressed and fixed in a future season, and I HOPE they do that.

#bridgerton #but fuck polin for life lol

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beautifulterriblequeen · 3 years ago

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B2:S - Chapter 3

Much of this series will be about the differences and additions in the novel version, and how they contribute to my understanding of story canon. But there will be character appreciation, the odd theory and headcanon, and suchlike as well.

Here be Lujanne, Callum, Rayla, Ezran, Bait, and Soren goodness!

Spoilers for Book Two: Sky below.

Lujanne having excellent fitness for all her walking around the Moon Nexus, and she's so energetic that Callum has trouble keeping up with her! She seems like those active grandmas who almost never stop moving, who have a lifelong supply of endless stamina. It makes me wonder if Lujanne will need that level of fitness for some upcoming conflict.

Callum feeling really hungry over not eating grubs and then still deciding he'd rather be hungry. It makes me wonder all over again how Lujanne got to the point where she eats grubs, considering that other Moonshadow elves we know of back in the Silvergrove don't. I still love my hc that the giant leech ate all of Lujanne's moonberry bushes and she's taking her revenge. Whatever's going on there, Callum is definitely not at that point yet.

When Lujanne asks Callum how he knows she's real, he thinks to himself that he'd put up with just about anything from someone who was going to teach him magic. That's a great parallel and foreshadowing for Viren's student/master relationship with Aaravos! And it's telling that neither student gets exactly what they hoped to get. Lujanne doesn't actively teach Callum any spells, because she believes he can't learn Moon magic at all. Aaravos does offer Viren power, but it takes him to some very dark places - literally and figuratively - and the cost is terribly high.

Callum sees a moon shape among the ruins, and Lujanne explains that the Moonhenge layout is an intricate rune that uses the structures themselves as part of its symbols and power. That's apparently a thing even with ordinary Moonshadow villages like Hollow Wood in the east, which is the coolest idea I've seen in a while: city planning as magic runes!

Yes, that's the same shape as the pendants Ethari made for himself and Runaan. Protection? Home? Feelsiness? A sense of safety and belongnig for all cycles and seasons?

Wonder what this Moonhenge rune stands for, then, and how much of this landscape is included in that rune. I bet it's more than we think!

But it makes sense now, how toppling the stone pillars would disable the spell the druids would cast to connect with the Moon Nexus lake. Breaking the infrastructure of the Moonhenge breaks the rune.

There's a physical sensation involved with the visuals that Historia Viventem brings up! When that one ghostly druid walked through Callum, he felt icy cold. Like in ghost stories. I really wonder about what exactly Historia Viventem is doing when it activates. It shows truth, "what really happened here?", so it must have some kind of time-related element, maybe tied to how the moon always repeats the same cycles or something. But it also seems to draw on the spirits of any living people involved in the flashback, because Callum could physically feel that wispy shape passing through him. So very interesting!

Orrr... is that all wrong, and there's something else at work with this spell than time? Maybe the world beyond life and death can act as an imprint of the things that have happened in the living world, and the spell that Lujanne (and later Callum) casts taps into that place, with perfect recall. I'm looking really hard at the sentence that says "dozens of translucent elf ghosts" and "phantom Moonhenge" and "lost in their own world" here.

Lujanne says more here than in the show about the world beyond life and death, being her mysterious Moonshadow-mage self. She says that "beyond" and "between" might both apply to where this other plane of existence is, and she doesn't much care which. With all the relativity swirling around this place, and not much in the way of empiricism, it's sounding like perhaps multiple conflicting ideas might actually coexist in such a place, allowing more ideas to fit there than we might normally believe is possible. Which is a fascinating bit of worldbuilding. Basically, every headcanon anyone has ever had about the Moon Nexus could all be true at the same time, for all we know.

Oh oh oh, Callum coming in soft with a secret wish! He takes one look at the Moonhenge and immediately thinks of finding a way to see his mom again! Poor boy, my heart! I'd say that could be another interesting parallel with Viren, but then, who wouldn't hold that sentiment?

Oh my, is this another breath of life into Ye Olde Ley Lines headcanon? Lujanne mentioning the Nexuses again, so soon after talking about the runic design of the entire Moonhenge, makes me wonder if the six nexuses are in fact giant runes. On Earth, the places where ley lines cross are called nexuses, and there are those who believe those points got marked with ancient structures, like Stonehenge and many many others. If Xadia were crossed with magical lines which naturally formed nexus points where they met, and if powerful magical runes were built across those entire areas, well. That would be cool beans, fams. Can I smack a map of Xadia and release a spell like Luz Noceda does? Because ngl that is my first instinct here.

Lujanne has got to be missing some grandkids to spoil, right? The way she's always whipping out cake and ice cream for Callum, and she's so grandma-ish about it. Headcanon about her being Runaan's mom aside, she is canonically lonely and she's very sweet to Allen and Ellis and I think she's missing whatever family she once had in the past. She may never get to have that family back, so she's finding a new one among the humans who live nearby, and I think that's sweet. Found family isn't just for the young.

But Ellis is straight up gonna be her fave, I bet, because she didn't turn up her nose at Lujanne's illusion food!

Ezran and Bait have a lot more to their relationship than was visible in the show, and I'm so excited by it! Ez can tell by looking at Bait's colors that he's not truly jealous of Zym, even if he's really grumpy about the dragonling taking up his favorite human's time.

And Ez thinking a lot about his dad and the things he's taught him. They're soft leadership material, and I love that so much! "Pick your battles" and the importance of encouragement. Ahh, my heart. Ezran, you're going to be such a good king.

But wait a second: both times that Bait gets extra grumpy in Zym's first training session, Ezran has just mentioned something about flying. Guys, I think Bait wishes he could fly, really badly. And that's his biggest problem with Zym, and with Ezran teaching Zym to fly, instead of Bait who doesn't have wings so. Bait is so old that his secrets have secrets, and I'm really curious how flying fits into them now!

Rayla, Dramatic Assassin: "I need to patrol for dark forces." That's what Lujanne called the source of the purple wisps that found them. I wonder if that's an official term all Moonshadows know, or if Rayla is just taking her cue from a veteran Moon mage. And I wonder how far Rayla is falling into the apparent pattern of "one mage, one assassin", since she does spend a lot of her time patrolling without being asked.

When Callum tells Lujanne that he was bad at prince stuff, and she asks if he didn't give up and got good at those things anyway, it's an opportunity for Callum to embrace subverting his parents' expectations in favor of seeking his own path, which is a primary theme of the show. But Lujanne is a couple generations older than Callum, at the very least, and I have to wonder what her upbringing was like. Is her version of success the one she took? Was she bad at magic once too, but she persisted? She is very soft and doesn't want to kill anyone.

Maybe Lujanne had dreams of doing something else with her life, but she felt she had to pursue the destiny that others handed to her, so she studied magic as hard as she could, and she did get good at it, but using it to defend Xadia from humans is not what she wanted to do with her life. Whether there's a parallel between her and Ethari on that point, there's one between Callum and Ethari, I think. How much of your life are you willing to let others direct for you?

LISTEN I WAS DYING AT THE EAR BREAD SCENE OKAY

This is my new favorite Soren and Claudia moment ever. Soren loves him his bread, okay. Even as earplugs for Claudia's sleep ocarina tune. The fact that it's "super effective" makes me think of a Pokemon defense. The fact that he learned it at camp, where he also learned about Moonshadow Madness, is hilarious. Later on, Corvus doesn't know Soren by name, but I still love the idea of Corvus being a kind of Strider-esque camp instructor, filling the ears of his young charges with all kinds of useful tactics like ear bread for magic spell songs (which actually seemed to work as intended), and warnings about the enemy elves' blood-themed tactics (which may or may not come back around in BH)

I thought they were gonna go in a kind of deep direction when Soren still wanted his ear bread back, but then he just. Eats them. Just noms them. I love this kid. Give Soren all the bread!

#book two: sky spoilers #book two: sky #b2:s #tdp spoilers #ToX spoilers #gloaming glade spoilers #lujanne #callum #rayla #ezran #tdp zym #soren #tdp claudia #tdp bait

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littleeyesofpallas · 4 years ago

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Bleach Cosmology 4/4

Last post in this series on Bleach world terms: [1] [2] [3] The super super unaddressed Quincy realm from the final arc, soon to be adapted into the final anime season...

Schatten Bereich(シャッテン・ベライヒ) Sha-tte-n' Be-ra-i-hi, German for “Shadow Realm” and pretty literally interpreted in Japanese as [影の領域] “Realm of Shadow(s).” A straight forward description of what it’s supposed to be as a place hidden in(?) the shadow of Soul Society, and the Seireitei specifically. It’s a real shame we didn’t get any actual explanation of what this realm was or how it worked or really much of anything other than the super vague description...

Did the Quincy make it themselves to hide in? Did the Shinigami make it to banish them to?* What was that thing about Yhwach having a time limit he could spend away from it that just never came back??? If the Quincy were wiped out 200 years prior, how are there so many of them in there?* Had they been recruiting new Quincy from the human world?(As Nodt having been in a hospital bed suggests yes) How were people getting in there? Or were they supposed to be original Quincy from the conflict 200 years ago, in which case... we were told Quincy were specifically humans who’d just mastered and passed down a set of distinct skills, so how did they survive 200 years without just aging and dying?

*[edit]: My mistake. It’s mentioned at the start of the second attack that they hid themselves in the shadows of soul society specifically 1000 years prior, and following the alluded to first conflict between the Shinigami and Quincy. Although that event wasn’t really elaborated on either, so that just raises other questions.

Anyway... none of that has to do with the locale itself, and frankly there aren’t really any answers to uncover in the sparse world building material the final arc gave us... As to the physical features of the realm itself, Kubo really pulled an awkward repeat of Hueco Mundo with the stark white stonework in a realm of eternal darkness... But this time, it’s more explicitly cold and also literally icy.

I feel like there was supposed to be some kind of theme about the Quincy living in shadows and not seeing the light of the sun, and being denied its warmth, which just seems like a tiny tweak of the Arrancar Arc’s night sky and day light/sun and moon imagery. Was the Soul King meant to have a sun motif that we just never got to see? (equating light of the sun with love of god and loss there of, harkening back to biblical revolt of heaven imagery?) Sun gods and sun king and god kings are all pretty classic to Japanese mythos, and also to Japan’s fetishization of some of classical Europe (although that’s more French rococo, ala Louis XIV, than German) If there’d been a more overt Sun theme with the Soul King it would’ve made a much more interesting parallel with Ichigo’s Black Sun(opposite Rukia’s white moon) motif.

Sorry, off topic again, and mostly just filling space here...

Wahrwelt(ヴァールヴェルト) Vaa-ru-ve-ru-to meaning “True World” and written as [真世界城] “True World/Society Castle.” Note that while [真世界] being read as “True World” obviously is meant to mirror Wahrwelt, [世界] can also read as “Society” which is probably meant to directly mirror Soul Society[尸魂界] although they don’t use the exact same construction to denote “Welt” and “Society.” It suggests that Soul Society is a false regency over the spirit world, and that the Quincy are the rightful rulers, rather than being outsiders come to take over. Although it feels a little misplaced that the Wahrwelt was specifically the replacement for the Royal Realm and not what replaced the Seireitei.

Silbern(ジルバーン) Shi-ru-baa-n' just meaning “Silver.” Written as [銀架城] meaning “Silver Mounted Castle.” I've seen people translate this is “Silver Cross Castle,�� but I think this is a misunderstanding of the verb kakaru[架かる] meaning "to cross." But that's not "(a) cross" like the Quincy cross, it's "to cross" like to cross a street. The Quincy had a whole thing about silver stretching pretty far back in the series so there’s consistency there, but it doesn’t seem like there was much more going on with it...

As you might expect from the kind of shoddily put together final arc, there’s not a whole lot else to go off of here. Which is a shame, because although there’s not a wealth of potential the way the Arrancar arc had, there was certainly a lot of empty space to fill as far as world building or character motivations go. It would’ve been nice to have actually taken the time to explore any of that...

In particular there was the super SUPER curious bit with what appeared to be Quincy ruins left in Hueco Mundo that we didn’t really get much of an explanation of. Kubo even does a remarkably good job with visual story telling where the rough stonework we get only a glimpse of makes it very clear that the ruins aren’t the same same as the clean, sleek designs of Los Noches.

I think one of the light novels gave them the name “Negal Ruins” that the Bleach wikia references, but I don’t have Japanese copies of the LN to confirm that, and the wikia confusingly doesn’t cite where it got the name from or include any kind of kanji or kana...* But as little as that is to go off of, I do LOVE the idea that the Quincy once occupied Hueco Mundo in the past, and it just feels like the first tiny tiny step toward what should’ve been a much bigger plot point. Even the fact that Urahara is out there with scientific equipment doing some kind of research seemed to imply that he’d come back with some crucial information... I guess that was supposed to be the hollow pills plot device? But that wasn’t especially clear, let alone remotely satisfying either as follow up or even as its own plot development.

*no no, i was way off. It’s right there in the same chapter they show up. [ネガル遺跡] “NE-GA-RU” + “Historic Ruins/Archeological Site.” Dunno why my eyes just glossed right over that. Not that it really clarifies anything.

Curiously, the Taiyou-no-mon[太陽の門] “Gate of (the) Sun” that plays kind of a deus ex machina role toward the climax of the arc isn’t named in German at all. (it is mentioned on a few separate occasions, so it doesn’t come out of “nowhere” exactly, but it’s never really elaborated on either) It’s not clear if that’s supposed to mean something, or if Kubo just gave up juggling dictionaries to come up with a new name on the fly. It sticks out like a sore thumb by comparison though. Very odd.

Anyway that’s basically it for big world terms across the major story locales... There are a few misc. locations like the Valley of Screams or or Hell focused on in the movies and only briefly brought up in the manga, but they’re all pretty literal names: Kyougoku[叫谷] “Scream Valley” where the lost souls, Blanks wind up when they can’t make it to Soul Society, referencing their unheard voices. Jigoku[地獄] just the actual Japanese word for an underworld, originally borrowed from the Chinese Diyu[地獄] and the mix of indigenous Chinese and Buddhist influences mythos, but at this point linguistically used as the translation for any kind of penitent underworld, regardless of cultural origin. It’s written with the characters for “Ground” and “Prison.”

I may not have had a lot of take aways from all this, but I gotta admit going back over some of this material did kind of rekindle my excitement for the anime this year, so that’s something.

Bleach Cosmology posts: [Karakura] [SoulSociety] [Hueco Mundo] [Wahrwelt] [Hell/Naraka(allusions)] [Animal Realm(?)] [Preta Realm(?)]

#bleach #kubo tite #tybw #quincy #sternritter #wahrwelt

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icharchivist · 4 years ago

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Same nonny that you dragged into many things, is the a3 anime good?

👀

it’s a decent enough introduction and it still presents the characters well, but it skips and rushes a lot of things.

Still season 1 is rather okay, at least. The Spring session is rather well adapted (mostly what was cut were seeds for character arcs the characters will have later) for Summer i only remember having issues with the ending of the section (rushed closing night, entirely cut the reason why one Autumn character actually joins) but i haven’t watched this part in a long while. Autumn rushes a lot of things and skips quite a few character beats that are important (also cut the introduction of a winter character that was in it), and Winter made. very questionable decisions adaptation wise which led to just entirely cut the arc of my favorite character and half of the arc of my second character mostly to add scenes about two characters. This i’m biased about whenever or not that was “good” DKJLFDLKFJD i kinda feel like Winter really missed the mark adaptation wise (but Winter are my fav so i’m highly critical too) tho what’s done well is done very well.

and kind of in general the Main Character, Izumi, has a loooot of her personality and involvement being cut down which is a shame bc it’s rare to have such an interestingly rounded Main Character who could have so easily been a blend self insert (and she’s definitly not that).

Regardless to that, the core of the characters are well respected in general, so you’ll get to learn a bit about them all if you start the anime. The opening and ending are songs that aligns with the sort of songs you’d hear in the game so that’s also a good introduction (word of advice: do check the lyrics/translations version on youtube, i know the anime doesn’t sub them but they’re sooooo good). There’s a lot of heart poured into it so it’s still a really nice watch. It still follows the plot beat of the first 4 main story chapters.

Personally i do feel like it works better as a bonus to the game, but i would be curious what would be someone’s first impression on a3 from watching the anime knowing the changes here and there.

Anyway if you want to try a3 i think you’re safe watching the Spring/Summer section of the anime, and for Autumn and Winter i guess just proceed with caution before putting your judgement on some characters i guess?

The anime only covers the 4 first main story chapters as i said, so the game is still ways bigger than that now (after the 4 first main story chapters we got two events a month which added to the plot, and then after one year of that, we got Chapter 5 to 8 of the main plot, currently we’re starting the second year of story events) (and i’m only talking about the English server since the Japanese server is one year and a half ahead of us i think??)

So, this works well as an introduction to the franchise still.

I’ll just say that while the gameplay of the game is rather tedious, the visual novel portion part is genuinely good, using very well the medium in a dynamic way that is very pleasing to read, and on top of the main plot you’ll get backstage stuff which are basically bonus stories about slice of life events happening with the characters. So if you end up attached to any of those characters, i do encourage checking out the game because it’s so rich in little details that are just so neat to play for yaknow?

also i’m sure the main story may be found on youtube eventually (and i sure know i have all the events saved for anyone who’d want to read them)

but if you don’t know if you’ll vibe with visual novels and want to try the anime first, sure! go ahead!

i’d be curious about your thoughts if you do tho :O

i know my reply seem a bit negative but i do like the anime still very much! so if you want to try it sure!

#dkjfhdl i couldn't help but ramble sorry #the anime is honestly pretty good and i think that's why i'm even more upset at the parts where they missed the mark #ultimately it came from trying to squish 4 main story of ~35/40 chapters each - chapters being ~3 to 5mins long on average #in two seasons of 12 episodes of 20mins each #like i think i did the math once and we lose basically 2 or 3 episodes worth of content per troupe with the anime #i feel strongly about the things that were cut so it sours it a bit to me #but for what was kept it does a pretty good job and it's still pretty engaging #hope it answers it :3c #ichafantalks a3 #Anonymous #ichareply

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meisekimiu · 3 years ago

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5 of My Favorite Games I Played in 2021

This is my third year reflecting on the games I’ve played! Compared to last year (full of unemployment) I didn’t put as many hours into gaming, but I still enjoyed playing plenty of video grames.

Honorable Mention: Super Bogus World 2 (by hubol + Oddwarg)

I listed Super Bogus World 2 as one of my favorites last year, but I didn’t actually beat it until 2021. And damn... it gets even better. This grame is truly fantastic and I appreciate it even more now that I’ve actually completed it. There is something about this grame’s fascination with The Residents’ live version of “Loser≅Weed” from their 2013 “Wonder of Weird” tour that is so specifically relatable to me. Like what the hell... that is my obsession song what the fuck is it doing in this game being a central motif??? Yet there’s also so much other shit going on in this game that is bizarre and different it’s fascinating. It feels so intimately relatable and yet distant at the same time that it is truly a pleasure to explore this video grame.

Also I feel like to some degree all the games I put out this year were at least a bit inspired by this grame (even using Borgus Shop Pro to make a graphic for one).

5. Project Kat (by Leef 6010)

Project Kat is an RPG Maker Horror game. If you know what that specific micro-genre is then you already know exactly what this game is like. This game is still under development and I honestly don’t know what’s happening with it right now… but I enjoyed playing the initial prologue demo! I’m looking forward to more some day. It’s both cute and spooky and has that classic RPG maker game vibe to it. I also liked the music even though I think most of it was royalty free lol.

4. Yuru Camp VR Games

I love Yuru Camp so much and I loved watching Season 2 this year even if none of my friends watched it for some reason. Even though I played it in what is objectively the shittiest way possible (Nintendo Labo) the charm of the game still came through! These games really feel like little mini episodes of the show, but the game also lets you stop and just… look around and take in the atmosphere of the campsite. The games are honestly pretty short but the added details like showing text messages between characters and having little cooking cutaways with the narrator from the show really bring it together. They were both fun interactive OVA type experiences.

(also you can pet the dog and like I do think that the one “can you pet the dog” account on twitter is like poisoning all games so now everyone’s putting dog petting in games because it’s like a meme and I kinda hate that but the dog in this game is really cute and voiced by meshiya lol so it’s actually very good)

3. Famicom Detective Club Games (Missing Heir / Girl Who Stands Behind)

There’s this very specific micro-genre of “Famicom First Person Adventure Games” that’s always fascinated me. The genre is essentially the concept of a text adventure game but ported to the more limited Famicom/NES hardware, acting as primitive predecessors to the point-and-click visual novel format that we enjoy today. A few examples of this specific genre are games like Shadowgate, Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom, Idol Hakkenden, and of course Famicom Detective Club. The takeaway here is that if Danganronpa was made for the Famicom it’d probably look more like Famicom Detective Club than anything else. (Except Famicom Detective Club would be better lmao)

Anyway, all that is to say that when the fancy HD remakes of the Famicom Detective Club games dropped on Switch localized in english, I was really excited to play one of these games! And with actual graphics too! I have to say that both Famicom Detective Club games can get pretty infuriating at times; they’re incredibly linear and if you don’t know exactly what to do to progress you basically just have to bang your head against the wall and brute force every option multiple times until you select the exact right option the game wants you to pick to progress. But damn these games are pretty good. They’re just very high quality visual novels (at least compared to the indie ren’py stuff I usually play) and I really really really hope they make a third one that really takes advantage of the new modern visual novel engine they’re using.

2. ARCHANGEL:NEMESIS [S1E1] (by team★cpu)

I played this game in January and I knew before even finishing it that it would be going on this list. Honestly, I was anticipating it would be my game of the year (stay tuned for what that is... it will [won’t] shock you!). Everything about Archangel:Nemesis is incredible. The mood, the art style, the music, the story… even the weird spiritual word salad shit is amazing and I love it so much. Literally from the very first words of the game I knew it was going to be great.

Earlier I mentioned that Super Bogus World 2 has this blend of both specifically relatable things and yet distantly fascinating things at the same time and this game has that too. I feel strangely connected to this world and to Twigs’s story in particular but I don’t even fully know why and I’m so fascinated to see where the story could go. Immediately after playing this game my most anticipated game of the year became… well, the next game I’m going to talk about.

1. ARCHANGEL:NEMESIS [S1E2] ::: FRIDAY (by team★cpu)

I cheated a little here. For the other games on this list split into multiple installments, I counted each collection as one singular game. But honestly, that’s because with Famicom Detective Club or Yuru Camp, each new episode is just another game that’s roughly interchangable with the previous one (in other words, they’re totally fungible). When ARCHANGEL:NEMESIS Episode 2 was still in development… I honestly assumed it was going to follow a similar trend. It’d be more of what we saw in Episode 1, and hey, I thought Episode 1 was my game of the year back in January so I was totally hyped for just more of the same.

When I finally played A:N Ep2… I was floored. I had pretty high expectations and Episode 2 completely exceeded them. Episode 2 takes everything I loved about A:N Ep1 and goes completely fucking crazy with it. It is unbelievably good and without a doubt my most anticipated game now is A:N Ep3 (which looking at dev progress of that game it seems like it’s going to be even more ambitious!).

The two episodes of ARCHANGEL:NEMESIS were my favorite games this year and they won that honor by a large margin. I had to put both of them down in this list because they’re just that good. Honestly, I struggled a bit coming up with this year’s list because A:N just blew everything out of the water. I love these games. Please buy them and play them. And don’t forget to also buy emamouse’s album.

#project kat #Super Bogus World 2 #super bongy world #famicom detective club #archangel:nemesis

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ziracona · 4 years ago

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Pretty sure your sudden spike in Fate content is gonna be like the third time I check something out bc you started posting it (I know next to nothing about Fate. In fact, I think I now know less than before you started). I'm rly not sure what the best starting point to get into it is, though. Any recommendation? (also I got Moriarty on your quiz and now I want to know why he's so beloved)

Oh sick! Awesome! I hope you enjoy it!

Uhm, so, Fate notoriously swaps out like their whole creative team from work to work, so some of it is really good, and some is really bad, and some in the middle, because it’s made by very different people. The things I am most into are UBW, and Fate Go. Fate Go is a little gatcha phone game, that suffers from the fate of the whole fate franchise but as a single unit. They swap out writers from arc and event to arc and event, so sometimes you’re living and thriving, and sometimes you’re like *thousand yard glazed, pained stare* ‘why the fuck did I download this game?’ Very mixed bag. I enjoy it because I just kinda blow through any arc I don’t like and skim, and then go hella into the good ones, but it’s very much an individual matter of taste one. It’s very fun to collect spirits and get to know them though, and some of the arcs are fantastic. Also, they have made/are making some of the Fate Go arcs into shows, and I expect the ones that are of good game arcs are good? But I haven’t actually checked any out myself yet--I really need to watch E Pluribus Unum, because it was an easy top 3 arc for me in the game.

I’m big into Fate, but I actually have approximate knowledge of many things? And have not consumed as much media as you’d think. I tend to hear people really like Fate Zero, and very mixed reviews of Apocrypha, but I would wholeheartedly recommend the Fandom Classic(tm) and my personal fave as where to start, which is Unlimited Blade Works.

Sorry this is so long. Okay, so. Originally, Fate Stay/Night was a visual novel with three paths/routes: Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven’s Feel. All of these are shows now. Unlimited Blade Works was made twice. Do not watch the early one; it’s bad. Watch the 2014 TV series--it’s on Netflix right now. Don’t watch the English dub--the VAs are...not great. 110% recommend watching it in Japanese/original dub, with subtitles. (This one)

My usual pitch is that if you’re a normal person, you’ll probably go “This was a little confusing, but I really got into it: 8.3/10″, and if you’re like me and you never really gave up on wanting to become a superhero and save the world some day, you’ll go: “It was fantastic, 18/10, but it also ripped out my soul and left me wounded but somehow in an okay way.” Either way very worth watching. Since it’s not the first route, there are some things they don’t explain about the world because they kind of assume the viewer will know, but that’s pretty minimal--it’s def coherent enough that the more confusing bits are more of a “Uh, okay. I think.” than a “W-What the fuck is going on?”

It’s really good. Two seasons, the most beautiful fighting in almost anything I’ve ever seen, phenomenal soundtrack, and one of the best show opens (Season 2′s) of any show I ever saw. All around a just big blanket rec from me. It’s a long-time fan favorite for a reason. It’s one of my fave shows ever :’-] It was. Very personal to me.

Uhhhh what else--okay so, on Netflix if you watch it there, and a lot of streaming sites, they list “Episode 0″ or “Prologue” as the first episode? This was originally bonus content, not the first episode. It’s basically the first episode from not the MC’s point of view, but a different major character. It’s got some really great character moments and insight into Rin and Archer, and it’s fun, but since it was originally bonus, the pacing is super weird? So I would recommend you start with actual episode 1/Winter Days, A Fateful Night instead? Unless you just want to. Like it won’t mess up the show, but it might give you a weird idea of what the pacing is. So you can watch it first if you want, or later whenever you’re curious about those two, just like, if you start on it, don’t get overwhelmed by the stuff they’re not explaining, or the weird pacing. It’s supposed to be bonus content haha.

Very happy you’re interested! I really love UBW so I hope you enjoy it! If there’s anything else you want to ask feel totally free! I just don’t want to ramble for eight years about my special interest and fall into a black hole unprompted haha. : D Very happy you’ve been intrigued by my weird spike of fate content WAIT YOU ASKED ABOUT CRIME GRANDPA HOW COULD I FORGET.

Woof this is gonna be a long ask answer. Uhhhh, so Moriarty is from Fate Grand Order/Fate Go, the phone game. The game has three major arc sets so far: Grand Order, Epic of Remnant, and Cosmos in the Lostbelts. He’s from Epic of Remnant, and he’s universally beloved because he’s amazing. The MC in Fate Go is like 16, but he or she (you get to pick) is constantly having to risk their life and be hurt and traumatized and watch people die to save the world because there’s no one else to do it, and usually people are...not super nice to them. Moriarty shows up in the first of the second set of arcs and is like ‘Haha that’s a wholeass human child tho. Guys. Guys, a-are you sure about this?’ and he’s really there to pull of a massive evil culmination-of-my-life’s-entire-work-and-value scheme, but this kid is nice to him, and has nobody who looks out for them, and Evil Has Standards, so (Arc End Spoilers for that one ahead) he ends up giving up basically at the last minute. He had a plan that was totally working and could have won, but can’t really pull the trigger, because winning would mean this kid who has been nice to him and is already a massive pile of trauma and pressure and mental illness would die, and he cares more about them than his life’s goal. In Go usually boss fights are progressively harder, but his is super easy because he throws it, and chooses to lose, and basically throws away his life’s work for this one kid because nobody else is taking care of them, and lets himself get killed. This is a pattern with him. Other high points include later being 5 seconds into a scheme when Frankenstein (the girl one, who in fgo is like 14) stops him to call him Papa and asks for help, so he adopts her on the spot and just is her dad forever after that. He’s very goofy and I love him; he’s evil, but I’d trust him with my life, because he’s more good than he is evil, even though he’s both. Basically he’s just a very interesting and well written villain, but he’s also like, the /best/ dad in the game at the same time, and his dialogue is amazing. Evil Has Standards team dad poster man. He’s like the only adult in Fate Go who actually is responsible, which is fuckin wild. I’ll try to find some good screenshots of his dialogue. Anyway he’s incredible and I’m so happy you got him; Crime Papa is life.

Here have some Moriarty junk: (Shinjuku arc you have 3 partners, and the other two are adults but harass the MC constantly, and this was the dynamic. Bless Moriarty)

And here’s some him roasting Sherlock memes and being good dad to the MC

#ask #tathracyn #fate #long post

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roominthecastle · 4 years ago

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Thank you for taking the time and typing up your reply, @alma37.

Now I get where you were coming from. You are def much more attached to Zoe than I am. You don’t need to produce any other arguments and “I like it better this way” is a perfectly acceptable answer. And while I don’t believe Agatha’s return is completely at Zoe’s expense -- given that she would have died anyway --, I understand the pain of watching a favorite character used as fodder for another one’s story.

You’ve also raised some interesting points and the exact questions I’ve been pondering myself, so I’m gonna take this opportunity to just unload my thoughts here. Please don’t take this as me trying to talk you out of your opinion or preferences bc I don’t wanna do that.

This is mostly just me trying to explain my preferences to myself.

"after Blood Vessel, as much as Dracula liked her, I could not see him and Agatha together”

oh yes, theirs is an infinitely fucked up dynamic, there is no debating that. they are enemies, so murder attempts come w/ the territory, which is not every shipper’s cup of tea and that’s understandable. However, every relationship involving Dracula is fucked up this way by default since he automatically brings his "inclinations” into it. I guess one could write him already “tamed” and w/ less issues but then it wouldn’t really be him. This is a major thing I love about this show, how they are not afraid to portray him as a full-fledged monster who just keeps coming at you w/ a razor smile -- partly bc he literally can’t help himself. He is a predator who -- to once again quote the commentary -- operates w/ a “torturous sense of fairness” that, to me, echoes the amorality you can observe in the animal kingdom: there is no reasoning with a hungry lion once it’s spotted a zebra; it’s in its nature to hunt prey in order to survive. Empathy or morals don’t factor into this basic conduct.

Dracula has this hard-wired primal drive, too. And Agatha points it out early on when she calls him a beast who doesn’t understand the rules governing its behavior but simply follows them. Of course, he has a point, as well, when he claims he’s more than that. He is. Otherwise, he would just be absolved of all the killing he does, which would feel cheap and unjust and would rob his character of all the fun complexities. Underneath the veneer of a sophisticated nobleman there is a beast, and underneath that grotesque (protective) display are human remains and loads of festering mental health issues. But the only person who bothers to look at these layers and how they inform each other is Agatha. Her equally unyielding drive for knowledge & understanding is the power that allows her to counter him, exert control over him, and tap into his deformed human core in a way nobody else has ever been able to. She does this to save others from him but also to satisfy her own dark fascination, and in the process I think she also comes to feel for him. They reach a level of intimacy that makes this outcome inevitable, imo.

This, in my eyes, makes her pretty much the only person who has any chance at having a more meaningful relationship w/ him that lasts longer than his feeding time. This is also what comes across in Dracula’s indirect advice to Zoe: if she hopes to match him, she will need to conjure Agatha from his blood. He essentially gives her the key to his own destruction (which is also his way out), then retreats and waits. This has the same self-regulating vibe as him convincing himself that his immense supernatural power has ordinary loopholes like needing an invitation to enter or the sunlight. Shame is a control tactic and self-shaming is a form of self-control, albeit a very problematic one. He puts in checks and balances which you wouldn’t do unless deep down you knew you needed to be “checked and balanced” by someone who’s willing to take on the thankless task. He cannot do it, he can’t face himself (he literally smashes mirrors and turns from every reflective surface), but Agatha is willing and able to drag him back into the light.

This is why the parallel to Petruvio & his wife works so well. The design to Dracula’s mind (and therefore the way out) is scattered across time and many myths. Agatha collects these and uses them to lead him out of the prison he’s made for himself, which has its visual parallel in the maps being hidden inside the wife’s portrait.

In other words, I cannot see Dracula with anyone else long term since he sees everyone else as a toy and/or a prey -- a means to an end. That’s how he sees Agatha at first, too, and it takes some time for him to realize that he made a mistake. This delayed realization can also be attributed to his bestial drive that has subdued the rest of him for so long, he really cannot cut through its wiring on his own; he came to exist to continue his existence, and the pointless circularity of this is the biggest trap: despite leaving loopholes, he’s still a prisoner of his own hunger & shame. Feeling for others would make it infinitely more painful but shedding empathy only provides a temporary release. Still, life lived solely for oneself is never fulfilling no matter how long it stretches forward, and the insatiable hunger Dracula feels gels nicely w/ this.

It’s Agatha who breaks the circle when she makes him confront the human origin of all this mess. Once she gets through to him, once she makes him remember, we can witness what Mofftiss call the “beginning of morality” and empathy seeping back into Dracula, and his existence takes on meaning when he chooses to sacrifice his immortality to take away her mortal pain. To me this feels like a direct call-back to the scene where he asks her if she is willing to die to save that terrified child and she tells him she would die to save any terrified child bc “there is a nobler purpose to my life than simply prolonging it.” But Dracula only comes to feel this nobler purpose where Agatha is concerned (baby steps :). He still doesn’t care about anyone else but that could be a juicy problem to tackle next season if there is one. *crosses fingers*

“they needed Agatha to stay human until the end of TDC - but, in that case, why bring her so late in the episode?”

I’m afraid only the writers can answer this one. But my best guess is that there are other characters from the novel -- Lucy especially -- they wanted to play with a little. Since I like them, too, and like how they planted them into this modern setting, I have no problem w/ Agatha taking her sweet time resurrecting. This was also a nice way to show just how bored & lost Dracula is in her absence (side note: him using Tinder as a takeout menu + complaining that he has to exercise now that everything is delivered and doesn’t have to be hunted down will never not be hilarious AF). I have seen a few fans complain about the pacing of ep 3 but I think it provides a nice, strategic contrast to the more dynamic previous episode, again highlighting why Agatha’s presence in his life was so invigorating and how her absence is the opposite -- he is a 500-year old warlord yet his life is now somehow... banal bc he has no worthy match.

“If he really want Agatha so badly, and since Zoe doesn’t come after him (she has other things in mind, understandably), why does he not? To see if his little ply worked? If his dear Agatha is back? The only time Renfield talks about Zoe, Dracula doesn’t seem remotely interested.”

I think he is interested (his suggestion to use bats as surveillance cracks me up every time) and he is waiting. He keeps tabs on the Harker Foundation from a safe distance and, to me, looks rather crestfallen when Renfield tells him that his lady friend (aka Van Helsing aka his “Agatha incubator”) left and seems to have lost all interest in Dracula. I think he expected a different outcome. It’s speculation but I think he expected Zoe to drink his blood (bc it doesn’t come as a surprise later when he notices the changes in her) and expected it to have an effect sooner and time is running out since Zoe is dying. Zoe was supposed to act similarly to the bed of his own native soil (she is a “bed” of Agatha’s DNA) and regenerate Agatha even if it’s temporary. So he is both staying away (survival is still key) and wants her to come after him again -- a delicious contradiction he can’t untangle by himself.

Lack of (threatening) interest, however, is a clear sign that Agatha is not back. If she were, he def wouldn’t have to go and check. She would waste no time seeking him (and indeed she wants to go after him the second she manifests and, as Zoe remarks, Dracula isn’t surprised to find her at his doorstep -- another parallel to ep 1 where it’s Agatha who anticipated him coming for his bride). I think he was waiting for her return just like Agatha was waiting for his in ep 2 (another parallel). It’s Renfield‘s remarks that drive this point home for me as he has a front row seat to what Dracula is like during these 3 months: “I wonder what it is you actually want,” and “What are you doing with your time?” I think it’s no coincidence that both of these questions get answered only w/ Agatha’s return. Dracula basically idles in the meantime. And the fact that it takes Agatha 3 months to properly manifest, when Zoe is the weakest, is def a testament to Zoe’s strength of character. She is a Van Helsing, after all. And they vanquish the monster in the smartest, most elegant way: by making him feel something other than blinding hunger for the first time in centuries.

#alma37 #bbc dracula #dracula x agatha #musings

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personaconcept · 4 years ago

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Confidant Outfits

Master Post

It has come to my attention that I have not yet posted the outfits for the side characters. So here we go!

Gilbert

Up first we have Gilbert, the flirtatious Velvet Room attendant. As per Velvet Room rules, he’s got a LOT of blue. He’s actually supposed to have a really long ponytail that goes over his shoulder, hence the ribbon, to tie it into a ponytail and give him a classy look. Anyway, I couldn’t decide what vest I liked better. Both are hot. He also officially has a confidant route- the Aeon Arcana. (I think I’m spelling that right)

Akemi Sonoda - The Magician

I don’t know if you’ve realized yet, but I decided to change the Arcana of some characters. Akemi is no longer the Lovers, but instead the Magician. When I made her outfit, it was heavily Lovers inspired, but it fits her character. Her confidant rank rewards also stay the same, but they could also count as magic because literally, who gives you stuff or follows you for free? Gotta be magic.

While the outfit mostly stays the same, she chooses some accessories to better fit the weather. She wears the sweater open. If I decide that I don’t like how her picture turns out, I might just scrap having two different outfits altogether.

Haruka Kawaguchi - The Empress

I really, REALLY wanted a totally-looks-like-a-mom-trying-to-be-a-hipster kind of look.She does indeed wear all of those tank tops, layered. The jacket gets tied around her waist. And yes, those jeans are rolled above her ankles.

No, I did not make a mistake and put the same picture twice. It’s basically the same outfit both seasons, except once it gets cold she wears the jacket properly and rolls her jeans down like they’re supposed to be.

Yuuki Kawaguchi - The Emperor

...no I do not have a thing for hot dads, yes I think he would use his position as a teacher to roleplay with Haruka. Those sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, constantly.

Masaru Kazama - The Lovers

He’s pretty down-to-Earth for a Lover’s Arcana, but he wears his heart on his sleeve. Literally. Those are hearts. I wanted to make that pun, so I did.

He’s just the kind of cute boy who hides behind many layers of clothes. And he’s like, perpetually cold.

Tsubasa Himura - The Chariot

Did not feel like putting a singular gi (that is the right word, right...?) in one picture, so I just put it all here. The bracelet is a gift from his fiancee, so very special to him. I was thinking of having him having been a member of the police force before moving to Kamida, which would explain the PTSD.

Hiroki Hisakawa - The Hermit

MOUNTAIN MAN. Mountain man does not need much.

Unfortunately, the winters are cold, so a coat is required.

Mizuki Kazama - The Fortune

When one does not leave the hospital, one has not need for many outfits.

Dr. Ren Ueda - The Justice

I have several hot doctors. Dr. Ueda, Gilbert, and the MC’s mom. Relaxed and carefree. Couldn't decide if I wanted the original blue or if I wanted to continue with the green theme of the game for the vest.

Hiroki Ikeda - The Temperance

I just thought both were pretty.

Yota Sonohoka - The Moon

I really liked the design on the shirt, ‘cause, ya know, moons. The blue ring is his connection to Natsuki. Both shirt and jacket are oversized to help hide Natsuki’s naturally womanly figure, though the jacket is generally left unzipped.

Natsuki Yamauchi - The Sun

The ring, as said before, is the connection between Yota and Natsuki. She doesn’t really like it, but Yota does and it’s a comfort thing for him when he suddenly is thrust to the forefront and in control of the body. Most side characters wear the noral uniform, but she wears the blue sweater instead of the green sweatervest because it was just easier to give her one uniform than multiple. She only wears the fluffy socks, not the pretty heels.

Ehhh... this time I coudln’t decide if she’s wear the heels or loafers. Probably the heels. And personally, I think she’d look cute with either skirt, but I prefer the yellow.

Since Natsuki is an active actor in the theater troupe, she gets as many costume changes as the MC (in this part, at least). She plays Titana here.

The pink ribbon is actually supposed to go around the waist. Big ol’ ribbon, giant bow in the back. The whole shebang. She plays a more side character, the friend fo the main character. I’ve mentioned before how difficult is was to find a cast list for this show.

With her remarkable talents, Natsuki manages to snag the role of Persephone.

With another high profile part, she plays Meg.

Side character.

The jealous concubine.

Another side character.

Madame de Sade herself.

Sayuri Shimuzu - The Judgement

I felt like the outfit was missing a bit of ‘umph’ so I added the necklace. Then I came up with a whole sad backstory for it, and then I cried.

...I belated realized how SIMILAR this character is to Nanako, and I did not mean for that to happen. I made this outfit, and most of my ideas for my concept, before I ever watched the Persona 4 anime. I have never played the game.

As another note, I’m hoping to soon be able to get to making money again so I can get more official art (and maybe music???) and start working towards a demo for the visual novel to show you guys. I’m about half-way through the script for Yudai’s dungeon. Puzzles are hard, guys.

Master Post

#persona #persona 6 #persona 5 #persona 4 #persona 3

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syncogon · 5 years ago

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[QZGS TL] Butterfly Blue’s interview regarding the movie For the Glory (08/15/19)

Because the movie was released (and English subbed) online fairly recently, I thought I’d go back and translate this interview that BB did about it. It’s pretty long, but quite interesting! (As always, please let me know of any errors.)

bilibili interview link (remove spaces): https ://www.bilibili. com/video/av63863201/

Q: As this is the first movie of TKA, how did you choose the topic? A: We’ve already done a donghua, which already covers the plot of the main novel, so when we were picking the subject of the movie, we didn’t want to repeat a story that we’ve already told. I’d written some side stories [i.e. the prequel] earlier, which fills in a few stories of our characters during the ten years before the main story starts. So, we wanted to use the movie medium to help fill in the early stories or whatnot of our characters, so everyone can have a better understanding of these characters. Especially for people who might be curious about The King’s Avatar, or who might not have even heard of it before – if they watch our movie first, they’ll start from the very beginning and watch as these youths, with Ye Xiu as the focus, grow.

Q: When you were writing TKA, had you ever thought about Excellent Era’s Season 1 roster? A: Of the characters, only one was mentioned in the novel, that’s Wu Xuefeng, who was a most reliable helper at Ye Xiu’s side during the first years he won those championships. As for the others, in terms of characters, I hadn’t really thought about them when I was writing the main novel, because by that time in the story they’d all retired or they weren’t relevant to our main plot. But back then, because they were a team, players on a team all had their own accounts, and everyone’s accounts had a class. The classes were actually always maintained, Excellent Era had always passed them down. So, when we were making this movie, we maintained all of this. That is, every original character in the movie, the accounts they used, you’ll find that those IDs appear in the main novel – Excellent Era’s Elementalist, Spellblade, etc, they are all these same account IDs.

Q: Why was the first user of Peaceful Hermit changed from Guo Mingyu to Lu Liang? A: Oh, this is a bit awkward. While I was writing, I forgot, the one who I initially had – well I forget which it was but – anyway, I wrote two different first-generation users, so basically it was actually a mistake in writing, a bug. Then, in the movie, they helped me patch it up, so by using a plot point they were able to fix this mistake in the original that I could no longer go back and change myself, they were able to cover my error. So, we have two users, and between them they have a relationship of partnership and inheritance.

Q: Given that we already know that Excellent Era wins the Season 1 championship, how does the movie make matches more interesting and exciting? A: For this, we basically started from Excellent Era’s opponents at the time, Royal Style as a team. Following the original work, Ye Xiu had met a few friends in-game, and then under the support of an internet café boss, the eventual boss of Excellent Era, Tao Xuan, they formed a team. Their team was fairly grassroots. But we considered the world background as a whole, and Glory definitely wasn’t the only game, nor the only competitive esport. So under our understanding, in this profession, there are a number of professional teams, but Ye Xiu and the others aren’t a part of all this. In contrast, Royal Style is a professional team, but at the start, Glory wasn’t one of the games they played professionally. But after the Glory Pro League was established, the professional club Royal Style decided to create this kind of team to play in the Glory Pro League. So, compared to Ye Xiu and co’s background, Royal Style is more “professional,” more advanced along the professional path, they have professional systems or training methods, that’s the kind of team they are. And then, compared to Ye Xiu and the rest of them, Royal Style might be more cohesive, more powerful, with better training and logistical support backing them up. We hope that Ye Xiu can encounter such a powerful foe, so everyone can see how Ye Xiu was able to stand upon the summit of Glory in Season 1.

Q: When Ye Qiu gave the mask to Ye Xiu, was that because something changed about his attitude? A: From the fact that he brought the mask prepared to give to him, we can see that Ye Qiu’s attitude didn’t actually change. In their hearts, the two brothers understand each other. Ye Qiu knew that even if he came over here to find his brother, there was no way he would be able to bring his older brother back. So when he said you should go home etc etc, that was more just fulfilling his duties as the younger brother, or like this is a job the family gave me, but after he did that he immediately gave him the mask; he knew things would end up like this, there’s no way you’re coming back. But he also knew where his older brother’s qualms lay, or the things that would be inconvenient for him, so this mask demonstrates his understanding of and consideration toward Ye Xiu.

Q: What was the biggest pleasant surprise of this movie for you? A: For me, the biggest surprise was this one scene – so after Su Muqiu died, he left his account card to Su Mucheng, and during this time Su Mucheng was feeling very downhearted, and she kind of rejected this game. But then one day, she took this account card that her brother left her, and when she logged on, Dancing Rain’s avatar appeared, and the avatar said to her, something like, “did you miss me? I’m always here.” That moment was the most moving part of the movie for me, because when we were making this movie, we were really trying to let it have more positive energy, so we tried to focus on the esports and competitive spirit side of things. But in this moment, I saw the significance that ordinary games have in our lives. It doesn’t have to do with dreams or fighting spirit, but they enter our lives and bring to you thoughts and memories.

Q: Say something to the TKA fans on Bilibili! A: The fans on Bilibili are probably mostly those who watched the donghua, right, so I feel that, come watch our movie as well, see if you like it. Thank you everyone for your support all this time.

(reading Weibo posts) “2019 June 16, I wrote down in my planner that on August 16 I had to go to the movie theater. 2019 July 16, I tragically received notice that my school’s military training was on August 16…” Well, August 16 is just the release date, we’ll be in theaters for a while after, you can just go later haha

“I saw Tao Xuan in the trailer. At that time, they were all going to the pro circle for their dreams, for their own Glory!! And now, Excellent Era’s things are still here but the people are no more…” This user is sighing emotionally about Tao Xuan. But even if Tao Xuan changed later, earning money is still a dream, we can’t think that just because of this he’s all that… it’s just that the road he took is different from Ye Xiu’s.

“Guo Mingyu, you think that just by changing your name you can get away from your debt?” [laughing] That’s my mistake!

“Zhang Jiale perfectly avoided all chances of appearance.” He actually does appear, everyone look closely!

“This TKA movie you speak of, is it a good watch?” [bb misspeaks at first lol: “quan zhi dian ying gao shou,” all-class movie expert] Of course it’s good, you’ll know when you see it!

Q: Why does Ye Xiu go on morning runs in the movie? Probably because we still wanted to have a movie with more positive energy, let him maintain a relatively healthy physical condition. After all, by the time we see him in the main novel he’s a 25-year-old player, and by the time he wins the championship again he’s already 27-28. For an esports player, that’s extremely old, but even at such an old age he could still maintain that good of a competitive condition. If we wrote that off as natural gift, that doesn’t seem very suitable, so when we were writing this prequel, we wanted to have an explanation for why even when Ye Xiu became so old and many people had already retired, he could maintain such a high competitive skill level. It’s because he had a foundation in taking care of his body.

Q: Why was Su Muqiu so focused on self-made weapons? A: Because he relied on gaming to raise his little sister, his family, so in my original design, the most fundamental reason he focused on Silver weapons was that it was profitable. He needed greater income or whatnot, so after he discovered that this game had these Silver weapons, his thoughts would go in that direction. Because we have a saying in-universe, “the strongest weapons are Silver weapons,” so this had the greatest utility for him, it was a very down-to-earth judgment, it was an opportunity that would provide the greatest payoff, so he put a lot of effort into this area. To be honest, I feel like his goals are almost a level above the later dreams and “for the championship,” because he was doing this for existence, for life, for his home, for his little sister. So, when he’s going all out for this, it’s closer to our real lives, closer to an ordinary person’s attitude.

Q: Why does One Autumn Leaf get long golden hair in the trailer? A: That was his Awakening skill during the finals match. In the novel, we can use words to describe how awesome something is, but this kind of scene in an animation, we want to visually show a character transformation, something that will immediately make people know, “the One Autumn Leaf in this moment is stronger,” let everyone perceive this feeling more directly. So, we made him enter this long golden hair, cooler and more dazzling state.

Q: When Ye Xiu was still the little captain, what was his guiding principle for leading Excellent Era? A: This is actually the story we tell in the movie, how he led the team in the beginning, and then how he established those “golden phrases” or “fundamental creeds,” of his, such as what might be his most famous “Glory isn’t a single-player game,” in the movie we can see how this statement became Ye Xiu’s core spirit. And then in the finals, we use that kind of battle to show how his teammates supported him until the very end, how he relied upon the help of every one of his teammates to defeat the opposing Royal Style, which was a powerful team with top-level pro players.

Q: What function did Wu Xuefeng serve in the team, as Excellent Era’s vice-captain? A: Mm, to me, Wu Xuefeng this person, he’s a bit older than Ye Xiu and the others. When Ye Xiu became the little captain, he was barely an adult, only 18 years old, and in comparison, Wu Xuefeng was more mature, more stable. On the team at the time, I feel that he was in a steadier condition than Ye Xiu was. At that time, Ye Xiu was still young, he could be impulsive, he could be volatile. But Wu Xuefeng, at his side, was a very reliable character, he was the godly needle that stabilized the ocean [i.e. in Journey to the West, the pillar in the ocean that Sun Wukong took to serve as his iconic weapon]. Whenever problems appeared in the team, he would be the one mediating, he would be more rational, he would be a more balanced and steady character. I feel that he was a very good vice-captain at the time. Ye Xiu’s most reliable helper, that was how we defined him.

Q: What was the turning point for Ye Xiu when he decided he wanted to become a pro player? A: Well, first, when he left home, he didn’t have a very clear goal in mind. His family didn’t want him to play games, so he wanted to come out and play some games. And then he met Su Muqiu and Su Mucheng, and they were together for a while. At first, I feel like his life state was pretty similar to Su Muqiu’s, he would just do some power-leveling or some other very ordinary things just to earn a living, he didn’t have a clear plan. But the turning point was when Glory this game appeared, it was like Su Muqiu discovering Silver weapons in this game. After seeing the complexity of this game, how widespread it was, the things that this game was establishing, as well as his own ability and skill with this game, I feel that it was a gradual, step-by-step process and he decided, or wanted to try, “can I become a pro player.” And he had partners beside him, partners like Su Muqiu, and his boss at the time Tao Xuan, and a few good friends in-game, and everyone began to come together on this tide, this opportunity was here, and so with everyone he successfully stepped onto this road – and never looked back.

#quan zhi gao shou #qzgs #the king's avatar #qzgs movie #for the glory #mine #translation #i always find it really interesting to hear bb's thoughts #bb interview

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quincywillows · 4 years ago

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hi Maggie! This is kinda a Super Specific Ask but hopefully it’ll help other people too??? So how do you decide to write something as a book format or a script? I figured I ask you bc you have both experiences but I’m really at a loss rn like I started formatting a comic during quarantine but then I was like omg that’ll take so long and idk maybe I’ll make it into a movie script since I have a good amount of outlining and now I’m like but what if I have so much detail that it just makes more (1)

(2) it makes more sense for it to be written as a book but also I can see everything so visually so maybe script again and honestly it’s just been a whole debate over the last few months and I just need to decide. So how should I go about this? How do you decide and go about this? Sorry if this makes absolutely no sense but thank you anyways because you’re always such a help 💓

hi there friend! thanks so much for your patience on this. i know i said i was going to make a video for my new channel on this topic -- which i still plan to do! -- but my channel will be on hiatus for a little bit while i’m visiting family and i felt bad leaving you hanging, so i thought i would give you some starting thoughts here and then maybe i’ll have more to say or elaborate when i create the video. i hope that’s okay!

so to start, i completely empathize with this issue. it can feel like a lot trying to just figure out what medium would best serve the story, and i really do think that the right medium is important in serving it! sometimes you’ll just read a book or watch a movie etc and have that thought of like... hm... i think this would’ve been much better if it were ___ you know? so i totally get this concern.

here are some starting thoughts i tend to think of when i’m brainstorming early on in my own process to sort of determine which direction to take it:

does the concept / idea require a lot of visual elements? like is it highly cinematic, incorporate a lot of cool visual moments? it’ll need a visual medium (film, tv, comics)

similar, is the idea very fast-moving and plot-based? does it not require a lot of rumination or thought-process from the characters to move forward? again, i’d lean visual (film, usually). the key about writing screenplays is that they’re very sparse, economical about space, and don’t waste time on character’s thoughts or beats of introspection. the rule of thumb with scripts is that anything you want to be understood, you need to make sure it’s stated or implied via the dialogue or action. you don’t get any room to layer in subtext through thoughts or prose (which is something i struggle with, as a very novelistic screenwriter, yet cinematic novelist LOL).

of course, that’s not to say that a novel cannot be plot-driven. it’s more about like... what will be most efficient for that specific story.

on the flip side, does your idea rely on the innermost thoughts of a character or major details of a world? will the story be more impactful if we get a more intimate understanding of the protagonist? in this case, i think novels are prime. i think the reason many middle grade and young adult coming-of-age concepts are super successful as novels but sometimes flop as film adaptations is because what makes those stories so successful is getting to be in the head of that character. seeing their innermost thoughts and feelings, surrounded by their perspective, experiencing their introspection as they do -- you lose a lot of that nuance when trying to translate to screen.

in terms of character, is your idea very ensemble-heavy and driven by the dynamics of said ensemble? for me, television best serves this type of story. basically everything i write is ensemble-based, but the true ones that clearly fit television are those which have a core cast of 4 - 6 main characters. by using television, you’re able to spend more time across the board with each character and transition more seamlessly between them. it’s possible to do point of view swapping in novels (and i enjoy it when done well, and am aiming to do it with quincy willows future installments), but it can feel jarring and harder to follow because in prose we’re so used to nestling into the perspective of a home character. with television, you’re sort of inherently omniscient, so it’s much more flexible in jumping around from character to character. it’s just... roomier, in a way.

to this point, i think focusing on character and how it functions in your story can be very key to figuring out what sort of format you need. like when i first outlined quincy willows, i had structured it as a 10-ep first season of a television show, with ideas for future seasons on the backburner. and even though i still think of qw as overall an ensemble piece, i realized that jonah lee really is the central protagonist and our home character as an audience. so it made more sense as novels (that could become a show in the future), where we enter the world from jonah’s perspective and then build out from there.

but i think qw is a good example of how you honestly never know if the format is right until you start getting things down. i have written an entire 8-ep season arc and pilot for a show idea, only for a couple of trusted friends and betas to suggest that maybe it would be better as a novel. ages ago, a million moons in the past, travellers started out as what i wanted to be a book series, before it just slowly morphed into television format and really found a rhythm there (which was great, considering it’s so ensemble).

so honestly, aside from all the above thought processes (especially how visual is your idea and how important is character / who are your central protagonists), i would honestly recommend just committing to a format and seeing where it takes you. easier said than done, i know, but just see if you can get through the idea in one format all the way through. then chew on it, let other people take a look, and you’ll be able to figure out through their feedback and your own feelings on it if the structure feels right. like this sounds silly, but the story will let you know if you’re on the right track. but you have to give it the chance to breathe first!

hopefully this is at least somewhat helpful, thank you for your patience and this awesome question! i’ll try to get a video version up of this question at some point soon. let me know if there’s anything else i can answer or insight i can add, i’m honored you find me helpful in all your storytelling queries 💖

#writing tips #writeblr #writers of tumblr #writing gabs #writing #maggie.txt #Anonymous #ask and you shall receive

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deltaengineering · 5 years ago

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winter anime 2020 part 6: it is fin(e)

Part 5 seems to have fallen into some sort of Tumblr memory hole (it’s not flagged and I know this because I have plenty of actually flagged posts, and people can see it just fine with direct links, but it doesn’t even show up in my own timeline), possibly because of screencaps of shota bulge. But that’s just Interspecies Reviewers, and I’m a honest dude with honest screencaps. You can find it here.

A3! Season Spring & Summer

Oh, P.A. Works. You never know whether you’re getting Dr. PA (Shirobako) or Mr. Works (Glasslip) with them. The last thing they did was most definitely a Mister production (since it was Fairy Gone), so maybe they’re up for some greatness again? In short, no. A3 isn’t dreadful, but it’s more reminiscent of the likes of HaruChika, so maybe an undergraduate at most. It’s more than a bit confusing but at the end of the day it seems to be about a girl that inherits a shitty theater house and now has to make the various boys that hang around in the vicinity do actor things. This is based on a mobile game of the otome persuasion and while I was sussing that out, I saw some people be very insistent that it's MOST DEFINITELY NOT A REVERSE HAREM. It must be some other genre of fiction that is all about one girl being surrounded by pretty boys all day then. Anyway, the main girl is alright, so it seems fairly watchable, but overall it’s just somewhat clunky and not of the highest quality, so I don’t think it’s for me.

ARP Backstage Pass

ARP is a boyband anime, remember those? It’s a really predictable one too - mostly just introductions of the characters, who are all the kinds of characters you might find in a boyband anime doing vaguely boybandish things. You know how these go. What’s funny though is how it looks, which is to say it looks painfully cheap. Not that that’s rare for boyband cash-in anime (I’ve covered the topic extensively), but ARP is unusual in that it has above average looking CG performance sequences too. In the end this makes it look like they had these fairly okay CG music videos already and thought “I know a guy, we’ll pay him 10bux and have him bang out some flimsy connective animation and then we can pretend we have a TV show.” A+ hustle if true.

Dorohedoro

The manga Dorohedoro is a fairly known quantity, and that’s a good thing too because fuck me if I have to explain what it is. Okay, what it IS is not hard to explain: It’s a surreal tone piece defined by a grimy punk-on-acid aesthetic and an irreverent and dark comedic tone mostly based on ultraviolence - what’s hard (and tedious, and beside the point) is to explain the narrative content, so I won’t. The line between lolrandom nonsense and on-point surrealism is very thin, and you need a ton of style to pull the latter off convincingly. Dorohedoro definitely manages to make it work so far, and the only thing I don’t like as far as style is concerned is that they do the main characters in CG. It’s not bad CG, but this is a show that’s particularly good-looking otherwise so it’s still a step down - though CG tends to hold up better when the looks deteriorate over the season, and MAPPA aren’t the most solid in that regard. Hey, at least with them you can count on a ballin’ OP and Dorohedoro definitely comes with one of those. It still makes very little sense, and going by the opinions of people who read it, this won’t change in the foreseeable future or possibly ever. As long as it keeps the style and the quirkiness coming, I don’t really mind.

Kyokou Suiri / In/Spectre

So I was pretty positive on the first episode of In/Spectre, in particular the way it escalates from people sitting on a bench talking about nothing to youkai hunt shenanigans. I also liked the main characters quite a lot and the chemistry between them even more. Still, a few doubts remained - it wasn’t very visually appealing, it’s obviously based on a very talky novel, and what it eventually ended up revealing is that it’s essentially just some modern edgy version of Gegege no Kitarou or the many, MANY imitators thereof. But so far, so good, seems like a winner.

Then I got to episode 2 and it was so excruciatingly bad that I dropped the whole show 20 minutes in because I couldn’t take it anymore. Episode 2 is 5 minutes of very stilted characters banter, followed by, no joke, 15 solid minutes of Kotoko reading a newspaper to a snake. It’s not particularly relevant or interesting news items either - apparently Exposition Shinbun does gangbusters in this universe. The lame direction doesn’t help with any of this, in the end it was the director of Endride after all. With my professional duty already fulfilled by this point and an episode that is a contender for worst episode of the season so far, I ain’t got time for this shit.

Natsunagu

Natsunagu is a short whose unique selling point is, and I quote, “the first over-the-air television anime produced by a local government that lasts one quarter of a year.” Thanks, Kumamoto Prefecture, that’s exactly my strike zone right there. Apart from that bit of hilarity, it’s quite alright I guess. There isn’t much to the first episode because it’s all of 3 minutes long and barely establishes the concept (girl goes to Kumamoto to find an internet acquaintance), but it looks nice and it has a smooth tone that goes down easy. Might just watch it to be able to say I did.

Runway de Waratte

Runway de Waratte is about a girl who wants to become a super, nay, hypermodel but is overly short, and a guy who wants to become a fashion designer but isn’t an asshole. You know, I’ve had some luck with fashion-based anime before, but Runway de Waratte is no Paradise Kiss. There, I said it. It doesn’t even have a Franz Ferdinand ED! Runway de Waratte is the most basic shounen take on the same material; while Paradise Kiss was about a bunch of weirdos and outcasts, this right here is about a rich girl who’s mad that she’s too short to get everything she wants for free, but makes up for it with trademark assertive shounen enthusiasm. Designerman is, of course, the sensitive type and the show thinks that makes it say something about gender roles, which is just adorable. Runway is also very peculiarly paced, to the degree that I’d say it does border on just plain badly written - there is so much time spent on establishing the characters in a vacuum (and they’re hardly complex), only to rush through the part where things actually start to happen during the end credits. And it’s a bizarre coincidence plot too. This is another show that isn’t fundamentally busted and borderline watchable, but would simply have to be significantly better for me to give it more chances.

Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita

As someone who has been known to post charts about zettai ryouiki golden ratios and whatnot to social media with the comment “SCIENCE, BITCH”, I can’t really complain about this comedy in which science people attempt to get into romance but can only do so scientifically, graphs about chingrab angles etc included. Furthermore, I also think it’s more funny than not. Don’t expect too much from it, and in particularly don’t expect a show about ostensibly clever people to actually be clever itself. But I have an opinion about spicy romances between people trying to one-up each other, see #1 on this list for details. Of course, RgKnOndSs is nowhere near as good as Kaguya-sama, since it’s far more pedestrian and predictable, and it has some aspects that outright stink too; in particular, the obligatory interlude where science bear appears to badly explain some superficial science concepts is an annoying waste of time every time. Less bad but still not good are scientists #4 and #5, because they’re just very tired otaku clichees that I’ve seen a million times before. The main pair isn’t any less stereotypical, but at least a romantic comedy about them is news to me (no, fucking Steins;Gate does not count and even if it did, Okabe and Chris are tremendously unlikeable jerks with negative chemistry), and rounding out the cast is common sense girl that has common sense, which is probably necessary but not exactly innovative. In the end, this is a very minor production in all aspects, but Himuro’s incredibly dumb/adorable ponytail wag makes it worth watching. Q.E.D.

#anime #impressions #winter2020 #A3! Season Spring & Summer #ARP Backstage Pass #Dorohedoro #Kyokou Suiri #in/spectre #Natsunagu #Runway de Waratte #Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita

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