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silyabeeodess · 11 months

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Thoughts on TWST Book 7: Knots in an Already Twisted History

Now that I've caught up to the available translations for Book 7's current chapters, I can't help having some thoughts on the lore that's been revealed to us. Much of this focuses on the world's history, specifically between humans and fairies, as there are some dots that aren't connecting when we look at the bigger picture. As this is a lengthy analysis, I've broken it down into sections. Please note there will be major spoilers ahead.

Where the history we know meets TWST's:

To begin, it's revealed to us in Book 7 that Night Raven College has been established since at least Lilia's days as a Royal Guardsman. While there weren't always seven distinct dorms, with Pomfiore's being the first/oldest, I get the feeling that at least Diasomnia's dorm must've existed by this time. My reasoning for this is because, even though Lilia's application came centuries ago, Maleficent still isn't mentioned except as a legendary figure in history.

I know there's probably some people who want to think of this Maleficent as the one from the 2014 film--especially with inclusion of Henry in TWST's story. However, I get a strong feeling that just isn't the case. All flashbacks have pointed us to the animated films alone and it's important to emphasize that the 2014 version of Maleficent is extremely different from every other incarnation of the character across the Disney franchise, including in Yuu's flashblacks. In 2014, she was painted as a tragic heroine that tried to undo her own curse on Aurora and helped save both the human and fairy kingdoms. I'd say that film was a complete middle finger to the original, but who's asking...? Moreover, that wouldn't explain how that ending where the two kingdoms merged peacefully changed to their being broken up again with no mention of how or why whatsoever.

More than likely, TWST's Henry is a reference, but not the same character. If he was, the timeframe also wouldn't fit since Maleficent is missing from Lilia's backstory. Even if we consider the possibility of her being Malleus' grandmother, it doesn't explain why Malenoa (except as maybe a Maleficent stand-in herself), Lord Longan, or Revaan exist or why Aurora is also missing. Yes, Silver is a heavy Aurora parallel, but Aurora should still exist just like every other Disney character explained in TWST's history: The Great Seven, the mermaid princess that was Ariel, the puppet that came to life as Pinocchio, etc., etc., etc. It wouldn't make any sense at all for only Aurora and/or Maleficent to be replaced across this entire game. Keep in mind, the characters in TWST mimic the original Disney ones, but those originals have also played their own, separate roles in the world. To call Silver Aurora's replacement would mean we would have to call all of the others replacements too when that is clearly false.

Therefore, the only possibility left is that Maleficent is much older than anyone we've seen and is no longer around because she was killed by Phillip well before even Lilia existed. This would also make sense with TWST's history being so distorted: Not even the long-lived fairies that were there during the events we see were old enough to witness Maleficent's downfall; ergo, none of them can say what truly happened outside of the stories that have been passed down to them. Which brings me to my bigger point: If Maleficent wasn't around to see the same conflict that we do, if her and Aurora's story already happened, what else has occurred that we didn't see?

A Fairy's Blessing:

This section is more of an in-between, but another point that adds to the events of Sleeping Beauty occurring much further in the past is Silver's and the Knight of Dawn's lineage. They're both described as these ethereal beauties recognizable for their blonde hair and unique eyes, a fact so important that Lilia was glad when Silver's hair color changed because other fairies would be suspicious of his features. As he points out though... they aren't natural colors. Just as Silver's hair turned to a color of moonlight from a Night Fairy's blessing, so should it have been that shining blonde from a Day Fairy's blessing. The Knight of Dawn was blessed the very same, having been given the ring that was passed on to Silver. And who else do we know that was extremely beautiful that was blessed by fairies at birth? Aurora.

Moving on...

Night Fairies vs. Day Fairies:

Despite the story pointing to a conflict between humans and fairies as a clash between species, although the Day Fairies have a direct connection to the Silver Owls, this alliance is never properly addressed. One would think that the Day Fairies would take issue with nature itself being destroyed just like the elemental fairies do, or that the Night Fairies would call them traitors or hypocrites, but neither happen. Moreover, again, what we see follows the flow of the original Sleeping Beauty, with the three fairies who give the Knight of Dawn his ring and guard Silver mimicking Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather blessing Aurora.

This conflict of interest was shown in both the animated and 2014 films: In the former, a matter of good vs. evil and, in the latter... Honestly, it wasn't well thought out beyond "spreading peace," since their entire characters were resigned mostly to comedic relief trying to wean off the original's. Thank goodness the names were changed so I don't even have to think of them as the same people. Maybe they were actually bodysnatchers that kidnapped the real Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather.

Let's review what fairies really are and how their hierarchy works in TWST's world. To repeat what was covered in the Fairy Gala event, the fairies aren't all one, solidary people like Book 7 presents them as. There are those like Malleus who can pass as human and there are those who take on a smaller, more traditional appearance like what we typically think of; there are those who transform into beasts and those who exist as manifestations of natural elements; they speak different languages and even their leaders won't recognize each other, just as human civilizations often don't. All of this, Malleus himself explains, which is why he couldn't help when the fairies came in and stole the mage stone. Clearly, the Day and Night fairies fall in-line with this example: They are literally named as polar opposites of each other.

There's another factor to consider as well, and that's that, just because the Day Fairies sided with the Knight of Dawn, that doesn't mean they were on the same side as Henry or the Silver Owls or are even necessarily against the Night Fairies as a whole. Why? Well, we see the Knight of Dawn disagree with Henry's actions and save Lilia with a pre-hatched Malleus. He didn't go directly against Henry because he felt indebted to and was scared for the king's life due to an illness. The Knight of Dawn was a good person forced to serve a bad one; facing Malenoa, an enemy just as prejudiced (it doesn't matter if you feel she's justified or not, she was still fine treating innocent humans like dirt like our NRC group); and doing the best he could to do what was right despite the terrible, complicated circumstances he was stuck with.

While this gets into strong theory territory, the reason I brought up Aurora before is because I think this might actually explain the Day Fairies' strange allegiance. They aren't allied with humans or fairies, but to one, special lineage: Aurora's and Phillip's. If you think about it, the Knight takes on the traits of both. He's as beautiful as Aurora, her blessings passed down to him, while as strong as Phillip in combat, his battle with Malenoa a much more tragic parallel to Phillip's battle with Maleficent. He carries himself with "virtue and truth," and even has a magic sword.

Why was he originally an abandoned orphan despite this royal lineage? Well, probably for the same reasons he died and Silver was left alone: Whether or not it was well after their deaths, someone took over Aurora's kingdom at some point in the timeline thanks to territorial disputes or other factors; Maybe even someone of Maleficent's lineage/species, since Malenoa's castle looked exactly like the Sleeping Beauty castle we know from the film. It's confirmed in-game as well that the Night Fairies had another, more fortified one that better matched Maleficent's. The Day Fairies' allegiance never changed, or at least the allegiance of three of those fairies: They've always supported Aurora's bloodline. As is true to real life, it's not as simple as one side started this conflict and is wholly evil--the Night Fairies aren't all like Maleficent; humans aren't all like Henry; and, even shown in individual relationships in the story, we have Malenoa and Lilia who weren't like Lord Longan in their original views of the world and its people--but rather that power dynamics have been constantly shifting over time with both good and evil individuals caught up in them. Moreover, because of that waxing and waning, Aurora's story is almost repeating itself in Silver's--only with other humans acting as an added threat to his life.

Is there another story playing out different from what we believe?

All that being said, there is another, small possibility that might be worth thinking about: That TWST's history as the characters know it might be real after all rather than distorted over the years as we thought. I take this into consideration because of our experiences with Mickey. Just like us, Mickey comes from another world, another reality in the Disney line-up. Therefore, there's a chance that, just like how we're able to communicate with him across dreams, maybe what we're seeing aren't flashbacks into TWST's past, but rather reflections of what has occurred in Mickey's timeline instead, as a world potentially existing similarly to Kingdom Hearts or how interactions in the parks are presented, to help us deal with the current issues we are having in TWST's world. This also would help us explain why territories are so different from the ones we know from the films. For example, barring a name change, there is no Greece that Hercules takes place in, but the Kingdom of Heroes and the Island of Woe. TWST may be taking the concept of separate canons into the realm of an existing multiverse within its lore. In this case, history isn't being twisted by those retelling it, but by alternate timelines taking shape. Because of this, anything that isn't adding up, like with the Draconias living in the Sleeping Beauty castle and the land being taken over by the Silver Owls, could be dismissed: We would have to take Yuu's visions simply as warnings and shake off everything we've known.

EDIT: Adding this late, but it occurred to me that the Tsum events could also possibly be evidence for this, as they also come from another world and act as AU versions of the characters. With those events seeming to be more of a simple, funny crossover with the brand, it's hard to consider it canon. Still, Yana Toboso is known for creating comedic side-stories in her works that hint/contain important information we wouldn't fully understand until later.

Again though, I list this as a small possibility rather than a theory. There's not much else to give way to it beyond that fact that other worlds exist like Yuu's and Mickey's. We would likely need to explore more of those worlds and how they're connected before considering this idea further. Another clear factor going against this is that there's also not enough in TWST's history altered except that certain events are being painted in a different light. Take Aladdin's story for instance: In one tale society passed down, he's a portrayed as trickster that Jafaar caught red-handed. In another, he's just a man that shared bread with starving children, leading to a saying that "if you eat a big baguette, you'll never go hungry again." They're both technically true events playing out just like we have always known them to since childhood: It's clearly how they've been told and in what way they're connected that's changed, with no one knowing that it's the same person in both stories.

Anyway, thank you all again for sticking with me through another long post.

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst spoilers #twst silver #malleus draconia #lilia vanrouge #twst henry #silver owls #twst book 7 #video games #analysis

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mha-grievances · 2 years

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Another character I’m interested in your opinion on. And if you already did her, feel free to say so.

I love Uraraka as a character and, even if the show itself fades into obscurity,I’m not sure that will go away, she leaves that positive of an impact on me. But to be honest, I feel opposite about certain things with her as opposed to how the fandom thinks of her. And do you have any ideas on how to improve or different ideas for her?

There’s one thing I still don’t get or understand, and maybe you can help explain (or maybe nothing to explain at all). In the beginning of the manga, Uraraka states she went to U.A so she can get a good, paying job for her parents. (And I think that’s such a realistic and relatable motive).

But after the Overhaul raid, there’s that scene where Uraraka says she wants to help people when she’s talking to Aizawa, which overtime paved the way to “Who Helps The Heroes When They Need Help?” (Something that’s also completely in character of her.) But I heard from a lot of fans saying how that’s peak character development for her, changing her focus being a hero for money to wanting to help others. Even Horikoshi went in on this, using Aizawa to comment on how Uraraka “grew up” after the 1-A vs 1-B fight.

And I’m over here thinking, “…has anyone been paying attention to her at all?” Our introduction to her is literally her saving a stranger from face planting just because. She’s always shown to want to care and look out for others. The flashback of her as a child showed helping people and making them happy and smiling is in her nature. She wants to be a RESCUE hero. This isn’t a shift in her character whatsoever, it’s been established from the first season who she is. Why are we all of a sudden treating like it’s something revolutionary? What’s wrong with her wanting to have both goals?

Another thing I feel in the minority about is her dynamic with Toga.

I hate it. Both Toga and their “relationship”, whatever that is.

I don’t understand how they are suppose to be each other’s foils. All I see in Toga is a collection of fetishes that’s given a name and a sad backstory that is suppose to shield her for her selfish desires and psychotic behavior, but fails miserably. The only connection they have is crushing on the same guy. And because Toga’s crush is the only thing she has that makes her relevant at all, Uraraka is forced into the situations where Midoriya is the ONLY thing they talk about, further pushing that she’s nothing more than a love interest. So if anyone should be blamed for Uraraka for becoming nothing but a L.I, you should turn your frustrations to Toga. Uraraka has been trying to become more than just a girl with a crush on a boy.

Anyway, do you have ideas on what can be done to improve Uraraka? Such as have it to where instead of finding inspiration solely in Midoriya, she learns and finds inspiration from others? Or viceversa: we see more instances of people being motivated and look to her for guidance? Should she have a different villian? Things like that.

As a character, I like Ochako. She’s not in my top ten, but I find her to be well written and very sweet. Now, I do feel her motives have always been a combination of wanting to help people to see them smile (which is why she wants to go into the rescue work field) plus wanting to support her family, but the second part seems to be focused on more in the beginning while the first part is touched in the second half of the series. I think both should’ve been touched on more in the beginning, or at least mentioned. I think the reason people see Ochako as some sort of gold digger is cause when asked about being a hero, she mentioned the money part first, and people focused on that rather than her actions as a hero which shows that there’s more than money that motivated her to be a hero. If she really wanted to, she could’ve gone and done literally anything else. A quirk that makes things weightless would be useful in any field involving physical labor. The fact she’s continuously risking her life instead of doing a much safer job speaks volumes about her as a person, but people ignore that.

So I like Himiko a lot, but Hori really dropped the ball with her to be honest. Now, her and Ochako connecting over their feelings a boy can definitely work, but it should’ve been expanded on way further. Family love, the love for friends, all that could’ve been tackled. The idea of love making you want to be abandon your own sense of identity so you can like the person you love (Himiko) vs love serving as motivation for being the best person you can be (Ochako) should’ve also been tackled. Instead, it’s written pretty weakly and like a fetish at times. It’s treated as a D plot when imo it should’ve been written as a C plot (Izuku and OFA’s story is the A plot, Katsuki is the B plot that shouldn’t exist, the Todoroki family is the C plot, and Ochako’s rivalry with Himiko is the D plot). As the C plot, I feel their rivalry could’ve been explored far better than it currently is. If you reduce Katsuki to the D plot and divide the screen time he gets between the Todoroki family plot and the Ochako/Himiko plot, there would be tons more room to explore Ochako’s character and the concept of true love vs toxic love.

#bnha critical #mha critical #anti bakugo #anti bakugou #anti katsuki bakugou #anti bakugou katsuki #anti bakugo katsuki #mha ochako #himiko toga #mha ochaco

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navree · 2 years

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ok if you know me you shouldn’t be surprised to know that i really don’t like bridgerton (i know, shocking, a history buff and writer who openly despises bunk theories and shoddy worldbuilding doesn’t like the show predicated on a bunk theory followed by shoddy worldbuilding, stop the presses), but i have watched it, mostly for background noise, but watched it nonetheless, and i think i finally figured out what irks me not just around season 2 of the dumb show but also the fandom response and reactions to the dumb show.

the show, to my understanding, said prior to the season 2 release that they were treating the story between anthony and the sharma sisters as more of a love triangle (which made a lot of fans mad because edwina’s supposed to be one of those characters who exists solely to cheerlead a different character even if it’s at their own expense which is just the worst kind of character), and so fandom is reacting accordingly by treating this as if it were a “team edwina” and “team kate” situation that you see in other tv show love triangles and the like. but here’s the thing. a love triangle, as understood in most media, is that characters a and b like character c, who likes both of them and is torn for a while before realizing that they like character a/b more and thus ends the love triangle.

except that’s not what season 2 of bridgerton was. it’s not that anthony likes both kate and edwina but ends up choosing edwina for a bit before finally realizing his true feelings lie with kate. anthony doesn’t like edwina at all. i’m fairly convinced that he couldn’t differentiate edwina from eve. anthony shows no care or concern for her at all not even as a love interest, but barely as a person, and has no regard for her personal feelings or wants or objectives or desires or literally anything about her. i’d be genuinely surprised to learn that he’s ever felt anything for her beyond the standard feelings we have towards humanity as a whole in knowing better than to do shit like punch randos on the street. this isn’t necessarily a solely anthony problem, the narrative appears to treat edwina exactly the same way which is bad writing because yes, she’s not one of the Main characters of the season, anthony and kate are, but she’s still a major player nonetheless. nor is this necessarily me writing anthony off, there’s a reason for his asshattery that’s been well established both by backstory and by the canon of the show itself back in season 1. the issue for me is that it doesn’t seem that anyone realizes that this is why anthony and kate were in the wrong with the marriage thing.

edwina got a lot of flack from the fandom for being upset at kate and anthony about the whole wedding fiasco, and for holding a grudge for a while afterwards, and a good chunk of that seems to come from that old gripe i mentioned earlier about how edwina wasn’t following her book characterization of being kanthony’s number one cheerleader. but a lot of it is that i genuinely don’t think people understand what the issue is here. yeah, anthony deciding to marry edwina for shallow reasons even tho he knew she wanted a happy love match, while also being into her sister is bad, and kate knowing all of this and still deceiving edwina is also bad. but the core “this is a fucked up thing to do” element in her anger at kate is that kate is very aware of the fact that anthony literally just does not care for or about edwina in any capacity whatsoever beyond what he would care for, like, a lady passing on the street, and she was still willing to lie to edwina and let her enter into a marriage with someone like that, not only not giving edwina the full information to make her own informed consent about whether she wants to be in this marriage, but also just letting her walk into a situation like that knowingly. like, imagine how psychologically damaging it must be to be married, shackled for life, to someone who probably wouldn’t even remember your last name if it wasn’t the same name as the lady he was actually into. that’s a very valid reason for edwina to be mad at the two of them, especially in being mad at kate, considering that a guy screwing you over is one thing, but a close sister doing the same is a whole other level. and if edwina lashes out because that’s a fucked up thing to do, even for the “right reasons”, honestly that’s fair and valid. i love my sister to death but if she was egging on a marriage between me and someone whose only concern about whether i lived or died would be how it affected my sister, i’d be pissed for a really long time.

(and no i’m sorry the “kate was doing it for edwina’s sake like she does everything” doesn’t really fly, you can’t pull the “i do everything for everyone can’t i do this one thing just for me” excuse out when the person you’re “doing everything for” a) never asked you to do it b) never had any expectation for you to do it and c) would have been perfectly content and likely even happier if you hadn’t done. kate’s reasoning is something that needs to get brought up with mary and with idk her regency era version of a therapist, not edwina. that’s not edwina’s responsibility, because most of us generally learn the concept of having to handle our emotions and that how we react to things is on us alone by age ten generally.)

and the worst thing about it is that it’s never resolved. edwina is justifiably angry at the people who hurt her, the fandom’s mad because it’s viewing the situation through a love triangle lens and not the “two people who refuse to admit they wanna fuck and also the poor innocent who got dragged into and very nearly got screwed over as a result” and also because edwina’s being Mean to the primary couple and isn’t hopping up and done in ultimate ship mode for them. and then kate hits her head and that’s it, the justifiable anger is over and done with. i don’t think that edwina should have still been holding a grudge while her sister was dealing with a serious head injury that could have killed her, but that shouldn’t have been the end of the situation. none of edwina’s concerns got addressed or even understood, it’s just that the narrative wanted us to view it as edwina being unreasonable and coming to see the light and the glory of kanthony after nearly losing kate, which makes no sense. as mentioned, edwina’s anger is justifiable, because when you actually look at what happened and not the “love triangle” angle, it is an entirely reasonable anger. that edwina was willing to put it aside when kate was in trouble, because she loves her sister and obviously doesn’t want her dead and is relieved that she’s okay, that works. edwina being immediately over it does not work; her grievances aren’t addressed and it doesn’t seem like the narrative, let alone the characters themselves, understand why she was upset, and thus any reconciliations ring hollow. i mean hell, she doesn’t even get a scene where anthony, like, openly admits that this whole situation was a dick move on his part and sincerely apologize for his behavior and what he put her through, which really only cements how little, if at all, anthony cared about her in any way.

edwina should have been allowed to take her time on forgiveness, and the way that she and kate especially built back trust and rapport should have been vitally important and deep character work, not just for edwina herself and the satisfaction of her arc, but also for kate and for her own development. but instead, edwina’s over it, she’s the cheerleader at long, and she gets dangled the possibility of a consolation prize as her reward for no longer being upset at her fiancé for being an ass and at her sister for violating her trust and nearly putting her a deeply unhappy situation for the remainder of her natural life. it’s bad writing to the extreme and it also makes kanthony both as a ship and as individual people seem like jerks and the total misread of the situation and the hate edwina got for her reaction just makes the fandom seem borderline illiterate.

anyway this is rambly and not very eloquent and likely riddled with spelling errors but i woke up at 5am and made myself mad about this while getting ready for the day so this is my two cents on a specific element i hate about the dumb bridgerton show and its dumb ways.

#personal #anti bridgerton #i know it sounds like i'm being mean about this and like i hate these people #but the thing is i don't care about this show or these characters at all #the only ones i can stand are edwina and the lesbian who wants to figure out who julie andrews is #like there's just so little i like about the show except idk i think that the bridgerton boys' hair and how they were styled was good #but the rest of it is just......nope #and this part in particular is a big ole NOPE #also i made sure to tag this anti so if you need it tagged anything else lemme know but if ANYONE #hops on my dick and gets mad about the fact that i tore this show a new one while it's literally tagged 'anti show'#i will beat you with a metal bat

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ac-liveblogs · 6 months

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Penacony 2.1

Penacony is endlessly frustrating. The main takeaway I have is that parts of Penacony's world-building and character design are exceptionally well thought-out, but the main quest utterly fails to make use of any of it in an interesting or engaging way.

I'm reminded of Fontaine in that, like with the 'Ace Attorney' style trials, HYV is once again trying to ape a narrative style that they don't know how to write. In this case, it's... a lot of things.

Penacony makes a lot of allusions through its chapter titles, especially in 2.1. 2.0's final chapter is called "Whodunit" and ends with two impossible murders and at least 3 suspects. 2.1's chapter titles are a grab bag - there's detective novels, movies, music, a psychological gothic horror, a psychological thriller, philosophy, film noir, a children's book and references to depression-era America and the disillusionment experienced by the masses following WW1 (the Lost Generation), with a few other literary shoutouts scattered throughout the mission.

While I think these concepts were woven together rather effectively in concept and Penacony sounds like a really fun and fascinating place that I'd like to explore in a game made by someone else, I also think that the main quest we did get utterly fails to make use of them in any compelling or competent way either due to technical limitations or an unfamiliarity with what they're referencing.

There are no hard rules for writing any kind of story, but there are genre conventions for a reason - as a detective story, be it as a Whodunit (which this isn't) or a Howdunit (that's closer to the truth), I think Penacony failed to make the mystery here engaging in the slightest.

The Whodunit disintegrates when all three of your suspects say they ain't dunit and the player doesn't investigate any of them in any capacity whatsoever, and the Howdunit doesn't work when the player doesn't get to go to the scenes of any crime to try and find clues. The main way the mysteries are progressed is by rotating through one of four POVs and going to find the right person to talk to, who will then dump a bunch of exposition on you - rinse/repeat.

This information is sometimes repeated over routes, too, which feels especially tedious - the amount of time you spend in conversations feels pretty disproportionate to how much you learn and or see of the world. It's also really not helped by how verbose and repetitive HYVs dialogue style is.

Unlike the previous patch there's no real attempt at horror (unless you count the documents Acheron finds or Aventurine's backstory, which I don't), and I don't really consider Aventurine's long-winded gem gambit particularly interesting or compelling given how poorly defined the Cornerstones even are in both ability and significance.

(HSR unfortunately didn't really make good use of Topaz to establish that back in Belobog.)

Despite this entire story supposedly being a thrilling web of people with different motivations, it doesn't really play out that way either. Aventurine is supposed to be manipulating you, but you barely engage with him and you always broadly know what his plans are (especially if you're familiar with his motifs), and no-one else really... does much. There's theoretically off-screen politics with The Family, but Sunday and Gallagher are the only real reps there - the other three branches may as well not exist, and Sam just fucks right off. It feels like the complexity is being saved for later or there's just a lot less going on here than the game wants you to think there is.

A lot of Penacony's remaining world-building - mostly things that tie into the allusions to the Lost Generation, the disillusionment and abuse of Penacony's underclass etc. is mostly conveyed to you by either Acheron or Gallagher - you don't get to see it and it doesn't factor into the mystery outside of (probably) Gallagher's exposition. It will probably factor in next patch in some capacity but... come on. We're 2/3 done.

What the allusions in Penacony do accomplish are either loosely tying to the contents of a chapter or near explicitly outlining what's going to happen; A Cat Amongst the Pigeons, Double Indemnity or When the Sacred Ginmill Closes being the former, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Statue of the Happy Prince being the latter.

I would find this a lot cuter if the mystery hadn't already been spoonfed to me, figured out the murderer and Aventurine's exact trajectory by the time I got to play as Acheron. As it is...

To clarify, I really don't consider 90% of the clues being info-dumped to you 'engaging with a mystery' in a videogame. I'd like to walk around and investigate myself - even in books, detectives tend to visit the scene of the crime and I don't see why I should have to take someone else's word on what a place is like or how sad the people there are in an interactive medium where I should be able to go to those places and talk to those people myself.

Especially not in a trippy dreamworld where you can enter people's thoughts, mess with their emotions, see into their dreams, interact with invisible cartoon characters and have a weird cult that's sort of vaguely able to make you part of... a collective consciousness? I think? In a vague and nebulous way?

The dungeons were just the road to get to a location! What is this! I don't think I've ever played a mystery game so unwilling to let you solve a damn mystery!

I hated sitting around and listening to the characters tell me things I'd rather go find myself - I can take some of that, but not all of that, eapecially when barely anything else is happening in the meantime. It's a shame, too - the deaths outlined in the documents Acheron found sound like fun horror elements I'd like to see.

But thats just it. I'd rather have gone to try and find the traitor than have him reveal himself in the last minute. I'd rather confront Aventurine in some freaky Emoscape or nightmare caused by the Harmony rather than just get flashbacked everything really, really slowly. I'd have rathered done a lot of other things this game could've chosen to do, but didn't despite the possibility being very real.

Unfortunately, as usual, I get the sense that HYV took the easy way out again and that the story and gameplay weren't really made with each other in mind - and as such, I don't think this patch did very well with either.

Anyway, the secret main character. Aventurine. In concept he's really good and I think his motifs and literary allusions chain together really cohesively, but he was let down by the main quest again. I didn't find him very compelling. He didn't do much given how much screentime he had and way too much was revealed about him without me ever feeling like that time was spent productively.

I would've happily cut some of his segments to keep some mystery about him and had more Express exploration - I don't think he or Acheron needed to be playable, honestly. That time would've been better spent having them interact with the protagonist.

I feel if I'd been better able to connect to Aventurine as a character and was wondering what on earth he was planning then identifying his tragic motifs might have resonated with me more. Unfortunately despite the patch really wanting me to buy Aventurine as a sad, tragic meow meow who is secretly a paranoid nervous wreck, scared at all times and relying on his own luck, the way it chose to convey those personality traits to me was by having a dream-version of Aventurine show up and explain that to me.

Instead of like. Actually showing any of those traits at all. In a strssful situation. Like the one he was in. How'd we spend so much time with him and not get any of that? Seriously???

You can't put a character in front of me and say 'look he's sad. be sad for him.' You have to make me like him first. And I ended 2.0 on "oh, maybe I could like him. If they do more of this with him next patch".

I swear it's not that hard to make me like a character! You just have to do something interesting with them!! I'm not that bad!! I'm not really a heartless shrew! I can feel emotion, I swear, HYV is just really bad at pulling it out of me because they are terrible at writing characters feeling genuine and compelling, I feel like that's not too much to ask!

Can you show and not tell like, one thing? Is it that hard?! You couldn't even avoid having Sunday and Ratio explain Aventurine's really simple gem gambit to death!

I could've liked him. I really could've. And don't even get me started on Acheron and Black Swans stupid trailers.

So, yeah, I guess my final takeaway is that Penacony could've been really really fun and good and cool and I love the concepts here. I just wish literally any other company had written it.

Do you think next time they have Nasu over to visit, they can get him to punch up their scripts?

Other Notes

I was very disappointed that the game focused more on Aventurine's time on his homeworld than his relationship with the IPC, given what a major factor the IPC is going to be next patch and... that he just died for them.

It also kind of sucked that Acheron didn't have much to do beyond her cool showing at the end, and the Trailblazer's grand contribution was chatting to a DILF at a bar then doing a truly obnoxious boss fight.

Aventurine's sad tragic backstory also reminded me a lot of Scaramouche's quest in Genshin, which I hated. Guy calmly reacts to his horrific backstory, which is being shown to him, and doesn't actually concretely affect him, the characters around him or the story in any way is not fun, and it feels like a really cheap attempt to make the audience feel sad. This isn't to say that Aventurine's backstory didnt affect him; its that it coming back up in the final dungeon to haunt him didn't.

Aventurine's motifs are really cool and flow into each other nicely in concept but it really does suck that the danse macabre connection with the Trailblazer seriously fizzled out the way it did.

Sam fucking off and coming back to reveal his true identity the way he did was lazy and sucked. Have him run around being mysterious more, jeez.

The Bloodhound statues around the place were a cool touch and I liked them.

Black Swan's segments all sucked and were tedious. Should've cut 'em and let us investigate Acheron given, you know, she's a confirmed murderer and we really dismissed her as a threat super easily given that fact! What the hell was that! Why did we just take everyone's word on them not being the killer, what kind of murder mystery is this! If you didnt want to deal with any of that why even pretend this was a Whodunit!

How do you copy a genre designed to let you investigate characters to learn what their deal is. And just. Not do that. Hello? Hello???

I'd like to go to Clockie's Dreamville. That sounds fun. I want to go.

Can I have Penacony, actually? I'd have a lot of fun writing this place. It's so cool. It is my exact jam. Holy shit someone at HYV went hard coming up with the concept for this place, it's so good. Some of the side quests here are super cool too. God damn the main quest sucks though.

Aventurine is fun to play with. His boss battle fuckin sucked though.

i miss dan heng :(

#replies #ac plays hsr

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ncisfranchise-source · 10 months

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NCIS: Sydney 1×01 “Gone Fission” is a welcome return to episodic television after such a long time. But that’s not the only thing that makes the episode work. In fact, after a rough first half of the episode, “Gone Fission” is actually a pretty promising Pilot for NCIS: Sydney, one that by the end of the hour, makes us kind of excited for the future of this show.

It isn’t smooth sailing from the start. Olivia Swann and Todd Lasance take a while to get there. Sean Sagar and Tuuli Narkle, on the other hand, have a much easier chemistry, not just with each other, but with the rest of the cast – and the same can be said of Mavournee Haze and William McInnes, who seem like they fit in with everyone. They are, of course, not being asked to do as much as Swann and Lasance, so in a way, it’s not truly fair to judge them by the same standards.

But there’s no denying it takes a bit for this episode to click, just as there’s no denying that once Swann and Lasance do click the rest just fits. Even they have to begrudgingly admit it. It’s hard to tell if the awkwardness at the beginning was planned, or if was just a byproduct of the circumstances, but it ends up working in the show’s favor.

A Good Foundation

Perhaps the most important thing is that it feels like there’s a good foundation here, and though this is set to be a short first season, if NCIS: Sydney uses the eight episodes it has properly, there’s a lot of promise in this show. That’s great news for CBS, particularly considering there’s a great upside to international versions of NCIS (not that they make any real sense whatsoever, but whatever, why should we apply common sense to this fictional agency).

The smart move now – and probably what we’ll get, considering the filming timeline and the restrictions, is to make Season 1 of NCIS: Sydney all about NCIS: Sydney. Once that’s established as its own thing, then the show can begin to think about expanding, and bringing in characters from NCIS, NCIS: Hawaii, and even canceled NCIS: Los Angeles. For now, all we need is some entertaining cases and a little bit of backstory on these characters we’re getting to know. That’s where the show needs to invest because that’s where we need to invest. And that particularly holds true when it comes to …

Opposites Attract

The rule of thumb with procedurals is that opposites attract, but for that to work you need a lot of things. You can’t just throw two opposite personalities in the mix and hope for the best – which felt like the show was doing with Mackey and Dempsey at first. Ten minutes in, the vibe was that they just didn’t like each other and that they were right not to. Thirty minutes in, however, the sense was that they deep down had more in common than they would have wanted to admit, and that’s why they were clashing.

Now, that’s a more interesting dynamic. Especially because we’ve only scratched the surface of what these two might have in common – and the very different ways they handle their issues. Add to that the sense that their superiors seem to be delighting in the fact that they don’t seem to want to work together, at least for now, and we’re in for a very interesting early dynamic for Mackey and Dempsey, who will likely also clash when it comes to who is actually in charge.

Though, we’ll just say – her title is “NCIS Special Agent-in-Charge.” That counts for something. Not that we’re picking sides or anything (except we kinda are).

Enemies to lovers isn’t the vibe here, but antagonistic reluctant partners to “you’re the only one I trust” to more? We could get behind that, just saying. We have gotten behind that before.

#ncis sydney

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gamer2002 · 2 years

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Thoughts on Project Eden’s Garden

So, I played PEG, the Danganronpa fangame, and I have couple of thoughts.

First of all, it’s really professionally done. If that wasn’t a stated fangame, you wouldn’t be able to tell much of a difference from V3. Voice acting is also good, particularly Tozu’s VA makes fantastic job at making a villain that takes plenty of good things from Monokuma but is still his own unique thing.

The prologue trial over a dummy from a past event is a good introduction. It serves well as a demo case and establishes the main players of the cast. Even though Eva is more active during pre-crime portion, but Grace and Wolfgang do make a strong impression. Ulysses was also good, and everyone else was alright. But the case was too small to have everyone a chance to shine. But they do an interesting collection of DR-like characters.

My mixed feelings are with the protagonist. I do appreciate the idea of having an anti-hero, which is a good change of pace, but Damon… The writers are following the outline that was used for other, more pure, Ronpa’s heroes, and it doesn’t work that well with Damon. Particularly, we didn’t get any early detail about their past, which wasn’t that necessary, because most of them were using an everyman archetype. But Damon is supposed to be successful, which makes him arrogant, but we know nothing about his successes. In the Groundhog Day Murray plays similar archetype of a somewhat successful guy that let too much get into his head, but he does have a clearly established success of working for the local TV. Damon narrates about his past successes, but gives no specifics that establish his reason to think of himself highly. He comes quite ignorant, being unaware of Wenona, the actual elitist top dog of the group.

He does improve during the debate, being able to keep his cool through it. I like also the side he shows if you use Pathos. Damon acknowledges that Wolfgang maybe isn’t making the most convincing argument, but he is the only one experienced with actual crimes, on an Ultimate level, so him stating that 28 stab wounds is obviously too fucking extreme for self-defense means something. This side of Damon shows he respects genuine talent and is capable of recognizing proper authority on a particular subject, even if he could’ve undermined them with arguments. It’s especially good moment, because it depends on the player.

But the dude still knows nothing about tact. I understand that he is shocked like everyone else, when the Killing Game is revealed, and I agree that people shouldn’t forget about being realistic in such scenarios. And I agree with him that he has contributed more to the debate than the commie who thought the gun was the murder weapon. But there were other situations where Ultimate Debater showed no tact whatsoever, while the guy should have some knowledge on swaying people to his side.

It’s fine to have a MC that needs to learn his lesson, but we still need to understand from where MC is coming from. Like, Damon has an experience with some Ultimate Pointless Talent that has was just using his fame to encourage his supporters to attacks those that criticize him. Maybe Damon ended up beaten up, for making a perfectly sound a logical critique of that Ultimate. Which is why he despises violence and undeserved recognition, and sees that Ultimate in every other that is in ‘noncontributing to the society’ category. This is why ‘we are Ultimates, therefore we all are here to improve the world!’ makes him unable to stop from being condescending. It’s just an example, it doesn’t have to be a tragic backstory, but it has to be something. Other example is showing Damon genuinely hard working to be able to contribute to the society, while seeing other Ultimate peers just enjoying fruits of their fame after they got their titles.

Overall, I appreciate the production values and the writing, but the novel anti-hero protagonist could have a bit better introduction.

#danganronpa #project eden's garden #killing game #fangame #visual novel #free game

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de-fright-ful · 1 month

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AMITY: PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE KNOWLEDGE

❝ DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, ❞

TRIGGER WARNINGS: MENTIONS OF DOMESTIC ABUSE, INJURY, DISABILITY, DEATH, PARENTAL ABUSE, PARENTAL DEATH, BULLYING, TRAUMA, BROKEN FAMILIES & SLIGHT NEPOTISM. So, not too dissimilar from standard Pokemon topics! /j

Jokes aside, though, Amity's backstory and the knowledge of parts of it can be distressing. I try to avoid describing it in great depth, but caution is advised by the reader. Nothing here is meant to be advocated in any way; I just personally enjoy writing broken characters who choose love instead of falling headfirst into the cycles of toxicity that birthed them!

ALSO, THIS IS LOOOOONG. A whole backstory worth, in fact! Bun Standard at this point! Push the Readmore at your own risk!

PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE : MADE COMMONLY AVAILABLE THROUGH WORD OF MOUTH, TRAINER BIOS, HISTORY & GOSSIP MAGAZINES. AMITY PARTS WITH THIS INFORMATION OPENLY AND EASILY.

Amity, also known as Ami, is a native of the Kiyose Countryside, which is one of the least populated but most historically significant prefectures in Saijikara.

Amity is a direct descendant of the ancient Joy clan—the same Joy clan from which all Nurse Joys originate in one way or another. Though it should be stated that Amity's branch is the original starting point, all Joys originate from Saijikara and have been distributed far and wide throughout the known world from this shared origin!

When asked about her distant family, Amity can only respond, 'There's so much of it! It'd be like measuring a palossand.'

Amity is the middle child of nine children, having four older full siblings and five younger half-siblings on her mother's side. She bristles at any emphasis placed on the 'half' aspect. They're her siblings; end of all, what does it matter?

Amity is twenty-four years old and was twenty when she first became the Gym Leader of Autumn* (I have a whole deal on Amity's team, but it's an ENTIRELY separate post).

Amity lives on the MASSIVE old Joy estate, which is a twenty-two-acre property (or about seventeen American Football Fields, for reference) that, in an age far gone, housed the aristocratic Joy family in a palace, villa and entertained with extensive gardens, pokemon stables and a training/breeding area and MANY gardens. Today, though, given the small size of the immediate Joy family, Amity has scaled down the property -- changing the deeply manicured and carefully cultivated gardens into naturalized preserves and pockets of authentic nature for her Pokemon and wild Pokemon to enjoy. Whereas the central portions of the property - the palace, first pond, stable/barn & most recently, the regulation battle area, remain perfect time capsules into a time long passed (with a bit of a spooky makeover but not impacting the architecture whatsoever! That was important to Amity!) (there's also one last part of the estate, hidden deep in the back beneath overgrown trees is the ORIGINAL Minka the Joys established before the palace that's been forgotten by time and considered too cursed to even rip down)

Amity is the third youngest gym leader the Region has had in its history (this is due largely to the fact that the Gym Leaders tended to be chosen not due to trainer ability alone but due to being seen as community elders, artisans and spiritualists and it wasn't until recently that they became more open to all walks of life beyond art and experience alone)

Amity is also the second youngest current gym leader on the Saijikaran roster and is fairly decorated for her age! She has earned several badges across continents and in different countries, and she is the Three-Time winner of the Annual Saijikaran-hosted Pokemon Tournament and participated in the Pokemon World Tournament, though not placing as highly as she'd hoped.

Amity is both mixed-race and tri-ethnic. Her father was purely Saijikaran, and her mother was both Unovan and Kantonian and had deep roots in both regions. Though Amity is entirely Saijikaran-passing, being her father's daughter more than anything, to the point most wouldn't guess she's mixed until/unless she points it out. Compared to her siblings, who reflect their mother's side more, she won't deny she feels a little blue, though not enough to dislike her appearance or covet anyone else's.

Amity is very well-travelled and has regularly recounted her journeys from Saijikara to the nearby Sinnoh, Unova and Kalos, even showing the sparse, disorganized badges she'd earned in her periods abroad! Though admittedly, these travels all occurred when she was much younger (and her father was alive) - as she's gotten older, any chances for adventure beyond her home have slimmed to nil, though the recent introduction of the Saijikaran to the greater Pokemon League has renewed her hope!

Amity was named by her mother! Though her father tried to sway her to the name Ami, Rhiannon was INSISTENT. Amity meant friendship and friendliness; it denoted warmth—it was the way! And Amity laughs. Her mother always had a way with words, and her father had the backbone of a Dunsparse, so she was and is Amity!

OBSCURE KNOWLEDGE : MORE ESOTERIC DETAILS, LARGELY KEPT IN THE CONFINES OF FAN CLUBS, INTERVIEWS AND GOSSIP MAGAZINES. AVAILABLE IF YOU LOOK FOR IT BUT NOT SURFACE LEVEL. AMITY MIGHT INCLUDE THIS INFORMATION IN LONGER MORE IN DEPTH CONVERSATIONS.

Amity's Pokemon are the 'SOMEONE WILL DIE,' to her 'Of fun!' they are a freaky, violent bunch that genuinely lives up to the Pokedex entries of the earlier game - but thankfully for all, even though most fall on the more vicious or sadistically mischievous and trouble-making side. They ALL listen to her above all and follow the pace she sets. Now - don't get me wrong - I would never call her a Pokemon master, but she is SKILLED at raising, earning, and inspiring respect in her ghosts and keeping them in line!

However, regardless of their brutality on the battlefield, they're the strangest band of little freaks (affectionate), and she adores them all so much! She says as much herself! Describing her role as an 'emotional support human,' and there is no question that their Pokemon and master bond is no different than best friends of years!

Amity's Pokemon ARE dangerous, in the sense that ALL Ghost Pokemon can be - by nature of their creation, they're sewn into a fabric as delicate as souls - sometimes they don't know their power, and sometimes they do and delight in it. But Amity KNOWS (not believes) that when a Pokemon has the will and desire to be better, to find companionship or follow someone they deem worthy, they can overcome the inherent danger of their nature and are just as worthy of love, respect, patience, guidance and honing as any Dragon or Fire Type. She even goes as far as to trust her ghosts with her own life; she has that much faith in her training and their characters.

(*except for Spiritomb, Amity doesn't like to talk about Spritomb because it is a unique case, and on some level, she keeps it close by, not out of trust but more so out of fear of its capacity for hurting humans and delighting in harming humans. Amity knows she's the outlier, not the norm, and she tries hard to work with it, but it's difficult to put it lightly. It wants her affection, her respect and a place by her side, but it has no desire to change its attitude towards other humans; it wants HER to change and follow its ways, and she feels like she's trudging uphill through a snowstorm on the best of days but call her foolish, she has optimism that Spiritomb will change their demeanour someday when it realizes its current way sparks no joy)

AMITY IS NEVER SEEN WITHOUT A HAT; it doesn't have to be her big witch hat! She's always wearing a hat, to the point where it's become something of a joke!

Amity is such a fan of hair dye! She's gone on record for saying that she has never before attended any public or private appearance related to her Gym Leader Status or her roles with her natural hair colour, leading to much debate by fan clubs about what her hair colour actually is! Leading theories are that her hair is either BROWN or BLACK, but Amity makes no public comment!

All of the costumes you see Amity wearing are hand-made! She sews every part of them herself and even creates the more intricate hats and accessories you see her wearing!

If you visit Kiyose through the large train network of Saijikara, you might notice a familiar voice announcing the stop and welcoming you to the prefecture - that voice is, surprisingly, a younger Amity! Back when she was eighteen, the train station was undergoing a complete facelift for appearances, and that included replacing the old, near illegible recordings with new ones. They put out an ad to the local area - Amity needed the money, and history is history! Two years later, she underwent the trials to become an official Gym Leader for the Region (secondary to the job interview process itself, which she had been approved through), and after securing her position, the station was emboldened and doubled down on the recordings, even using them as a further novelty, even though Amity has admitted she finds them embarrassing.

Amity is an orphan and has been an orphan since she was sixteen. First, her biological father, Kija, died in a workplace accident when she was only thirteen, and later, her mother, Rhiannon, suffered complications during childbirth when she was sixteen. After Amity's mother died, her older siblings (largely) left her to fend for herself and upkeep the estate and encouraged her to give up her half-siblings to save her resources. Amity refused and has been caring for her five younger siblings with the aid of extended family and family friends since.

Amity's first Pokemon was Whinnie! Her Drifblim! Amity never had a formal introduction to Pokemon like her older siblings, with inherited Pokemon to guide her. She found her own - or rather, her own found her! She occasionally mentions a foundational incident as a child when she 'got lost' and was rescued by Whinnie, who brought her back to humanity, and how that moment saved them both and sparked their career. Most think a lot of THAT is fluff inspiration wording and that the true story is less mutual saving and more her finding and befriending the ghosts.

Amity is a trained Pokemon Nurse, and could have been one of the Nurse Joy's, but due to 'Personal Reasons,' she's never stated to the public (lack of funds, lack of any jobs in the small locality, and needing to be close to home to care for her half-siblings and the estate when it became clear it was all down to her) she ended up having to shelf that dream! She doesn't consider it a waste of time or a waste, though - her lessons come through in the occasional work she does as a homecare nurse for aging people and Pokemon in the nearby town and outskirts and in the naturalized / reserve area of the Estate, and she feels it gives her an edge in battle too!

Amity has a large continuous hypertrophic burn scar running from her wrist to her elbow on her right arm that stands apart from her more pale skin in a dark brown-red hue. She's spoken at length about it and how it limits her mobility and the bad days, especially in relation to League efforts to make training more accessible to trainers with disabilities.

Since she began, Amity's status as the Autumn Gym Leader has been challenged three times, and every time she has won & rebuffed the effort to claim her position!

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE : INFORMATION A PERSON WOULD ONLY KNOW IF THEY WERE LOCAL TO THE AREA AND AROUND AMITY DURING HER FORMATIVE YEARS. AMITY CONSIDERS THESE HEAVIER TOPICS SO, WHILE IMPORTANT, SHE TENDS TO BE MORE CAREFUL ABOUT HOW SHE EXPRESSES SUCH INFORMATION.

Amity's birth hair colour was SALMON PINK, matching her TEAL GREEN EYES! Pretty on par with the common appearance of the Joy family! LIKEWISE—Amity's current natural hair colour (white) isn't a personal choice, and neither is it white-haired anime logic. Amity's white hair is actually a medical condition! It's called CANITIES SUBITA or MARIE ANTOINETTE SYNDROME, and it developed during that small window when she went missing at eight!

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE MINKA INCIDENT GOES HERE. No one in Kiyose believes the fluff wording that 'I wandered off. ' They all know the truth; the now-adult girls involved know the truth. Amity chooses not to drag out the experience, though, as a way of letting that past be laid to rest. She forgave all the girls long, long ago. It's done, it doesn't define her - hell, it gave her two of her best friends (Whinnie and Magnus); she says the town and the others need to let it go. She already has.

On THAT subject, the incident in the Minka lasted two days, give or take a few hours. After the first day and night passed, the girls who had locked her in there returned to release her, fearing she was still in there. Amity, though, was not. She was nowhere in there, and her exact whereabouts for a while were unknown.

What IS known is that after two nights, Amity re-emerged from the forest but in a zombie-like state. Her clothing was ripped, she was missing a shoe, and she was covered in mud, scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Her hair was deathly white and a nest, and her eyes were unfocused and staring straight ahead.

Instead of walking home or even to Illumise's home, Amity sort of stumbled her way to the local schoolhouse, making it in before the bell and without saying a word to anyone. She sat down, staring straight ahead into the distance. Her friends tried to talk with her, and the teacher tried to talk with her. Nothing, no acknowledgement or even sign she'd heard them. In the end, she had to be taken directly from the school to a hospital and showed very little improvement for weeks.

After the incident, Amity struggled with speaking for three years and had extensive speech therapy to overcome the Selective Mutism that developed. Thankfully, her efforts paid off, and she no longer struggles with it. If anything, the experience has given her far more patience and understanding for her nonverbal younger half-brother, Orin.

Amity has no clear recollection of what happened during those two days. She remembers blips of colour, lavender and deep purple, which she assumes are unfocused memories of Whinnie and Magnus finding her and helping her out of the house. But really, she only started picking back up days later, and 'familiar' feelings are what've put pieces together about that time period!

While the closeness between the Gym leader of Spring, Illumise Mikasa, and Amity has been well recorded—to the point where Amity is known to call her Auntie, even in public—the truth is, there is ZERO biological relation between Amity and Illumise. However, Illumise was a close family friend of Amity's father, Kija, and HIS father, Chikao, whom Illumise grew up alongside.

RUMOR HAS IT ILLUMISE ALWAYS HAD FEELINGS FOR CHIKAO AND SECRETLY WISHED SHE HAD THE PLACE OF HIS WIFE AND THAT HIS KIDS WERE HER CHILDREN, but Amity simply chooses not to notice that. She does NOT want to unpack that!

Illumise has been around for Amity's ENITIRE life. She was the nurse working when her mother gave birth to her - she was the family babysitter when Amity grew up - she was the first adult that had rushed to the school to access Amity after she had reappeared from the forest. When Kija died, she was the only one who really stepped up for Amity, giving her a safe place to mourn and to exist outside of her (understandably) resentful older siblings, new half-siblings and her mother's on-and-off boyfriends in the aftermath of Kija's death. When Rhiannon herself died, it was Illumise who became Amity's rock and supported her emotionally when she made the tough decision to continue caring for all of her younger siblings despite the lack of support she would get from her remaining family.

When the Late Gym leader of the Autumn season went into retirement for his health, Illumise raised Amity as her sponsor for the next Gym Leader to take his place. And I hear you, isn't that nepotism? And yes! It is, but that's sort of how the League in Saijikara works! Every gym leader raises a would-be gym leader that they personally sponsor (from their own pool of students/passing past challengers) both financially for the trials and in an honour sense. If a hopeful contestant fails, it's the reputation of the Gym Leader who raised them up who answers for it. And while most failure, like gym battles, isn't considered 'shameful' in a reputation-breaking way -- raising potentials with known problems in personality and personal character WILL, and in most cases, that alone prevents Gym Leaders from sending their ill-fit kin to try and take the role, because the social backlash would be intense enough to the point where it could cost them their own position as well. That being said, there are always situations like Amity's where nepotism is dubious on all levels. Was Amity qualified? Absolutely, she SWEPT the challenges that pitted everything from the depth of thought in team building on an artistic front, to their battle capacity. Did Amity deserve it? I'd argue so. She fought hard on all levels, both in terms of scraping by for equipment and hustling for support BEYOND Illumise (to the point she refused the customary financial incentives typically given when a person is elected by a current gym leader) She did it all, helmed her own ship or so to speak, not only for herself but her younger half-siblings who looked up to her as their primary role model. She wasn't gifted the chance like a cheque over dinner. She EARNED it, receiving the offer after winning a small pot cash prize for participating in a homebrewed battle competition with her then team of four. Now, Illumise felt the decision wasn't kin-based; she felt she was rightful in electing Amity. After all, who knew her better? Who had seen her growth and worthiness better than someone who had been around since the start and watched her grow? But at the end of the day, dubious is dubious, and some will remark that the only reason she got the position was because of Illumise.

That big nasty burn scar on Amity's right arm? That occurred not long after she became a Gym Leader for the first time in an accident. The Pokemon League wanted to update the previously established indoor battle venue on the Joy Estate. Amity agreed and let them have at it, but battles needed to continue. They set up an area in a field with little in the way of environmental hazards; all were up to code on the distances, but being so new to the trade, Amity forgot the most crucial consideration of outdoor battles: the wind and as it turns out, so did the League Representative sent to help Amity set up. The battle started, and things went well for the first half -- Amity had the head and whittled her opponent's team down to a Magby. They cast a flamethrower at Whinnie, Amity's Drifloon(at that point), but the wind changed, and the fiery plume with the accelerant made by Magby blew right into Amity. Setting her aflame and causing her to drop to the ground SCREAMING.

To not go too far into Whinnie's backstory: CHAOS ENSUED, HAVOC WAS UNLEASHED. Several people ran to put Amity out, put fire extinguishers and their small water Pokemon. The heat and the sound of Amity's screaming caused ALL of her Pokemon to unleash themselves and go into a rage. Whinnie had a post-traumatic episode and evolved into a Drifblim. MADNESS, COMPLETE MADNESS. But! EVERYONE SURVIVED, which was the main thing! It was an extremely trying period, but Amity made it out with major but healable burns. The other trainer was okay; both of the Pokemon were panicked, but neither died, and Amity counted her blessings for that alone.

ALTHOUGH DESPITE THE MANTRA OF 'THIS IS FINE, IT HAPPENED, ALL WORKED OUT' SHE STILL FEELS UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNTS OF SHAME FROM THE EVENT. Whinnie, well, Whinnie, with his PTSD, just disobeyed; he stopped listening to Amity entirely - he wasn't anchored in reality. He thought she was dead and believed it with his whole heart - in that split second when the fire took her, and he heard her screaming, she was gone, he was still the little drifloon that was helpless when his other best friend died - Whinnie lost both of them all over again in that split second, he failed them both, he couldn't protect either of them, his best friends were dead, and it was all his fault. but the outlier was, when Whinnie's last friend had passed, there was nothing to blame; it was an accident without recourse to lash out against, BUT THE MAGBY THAT DID IT WAS RIGHT THERE. Staring at his best friend burning - and that alone did it.

Where Whinnie was frozen in terror and shrieking before, seeing Magby watching just brought out something awful. Whinnie stopped and began evolving on the spot. Meanwhile, Amity - now put out, was left in pain and trying to calm all the Pokemon that had broken loose and prevent the situation from getting any bigger - and most did - they were terrified but redirected the attention from 'AVENGE OUR FRIEND' to 'help stabilize her so we can bring to the hospital' does Miracles in de-escalating. Some of her more reliable ones even returned to the balls, much to her relief, but Whinnie, her boy, didn't. She looked over to see him evolve, and just as soon as she'd called his name. He grabbed that Magby in its arms, constricted it to the point that the entire situation was drawn from Amity to this Magby screaming bloody murder and took off high into the sky. Amity knew in an instant what Whinnie was going to do: take it as high as it could and throw it down to kill it - like Wingulls with Pincurchin. And she was SCREAMING for Whinnie to listen and get back down to NOTHING. He would've KILLED that Magby; she knows it. If it hadn't been for the lucky break that Spiritomb had been in her team and intervened with hypnosis, putting Whinnie to sleep on her behalf... she knew how that situation would've ended. & That fact alone haunts her; in the end, the whole situation amounted to nothing more than a big accident, no major punishments or reprimands needing to be taken other than her gym being suspended until the internal construction was complete, and a harsh reminder that Pokemon are still animals at the end of the day. (mind you, though, she was ACTIVELY ON FIRE for most of the situation, so take her judgement & harshness on herself with a big grain of salt)

Who would've guessed that being really good at forgiving OTHERS doesn't translate very well to forgiving YOURSELF. On that note, though, Amity's forgiveness isn't lip service or a superficial effort to make herself seem or look better. It's genuine! When she says no hard feelings, she means no hard feelings!

Going back to the burning incident, that trainer that accidentally had her nearly burned: she was a childhood friend, not a frenemy, a TRUE friend who had come to train with Amity on the grounds for so, so long. They knew each other, they knew each other's Pokemon, they were close, and after the incident, there were no hard feelings. Amity was the one that brought up a rematch - no Whinnie involved - and apologized deeply for the entire situation. The trainer didn't expect that; god knows, she was in tears apologizing on her and Magby's behalf and weeping at the sight of Amity's arm, but even though the incident did leave Amity permanently damaged, Amity wouldn't let it do that to her friendship, too. And with Magby, even despite everything - they're pretty close, too. Amity visited them in the Pokemon Centre as soon as she could after the battle to make sure they were okay. She knew she wasn't mad, that it was okay, and that it was an accident. That's just Amity's character!

Anyone in Kiyose knows Amity's team has gone through SO MANY CHANGES, and she frequently switches her buildup between the active Pokemon she has on rotation. Typically, Whinnie is involved, except in the year after the fire incident, when he was benched for his mental health.

Amity can often be seen wearing what appears to be a mechanical brace on her left arm that's been covered in a cloth sock of sorts that's been painted and themed like the anatomic view of a skeleton forearm. Most chalk it up to a fashion statement, especially given Amity's witchy wardrobe and alternative fashion choices, but it's not! Beneath the arm warmer / brace cover is a medical elbow brace! She's SUPPOSED to wear it every day, but because she is young and optimistic (read: dumb) and unwilling to listen to her body, she chooses to wear it only during painful flare-ups from the scar tissue.

Also, funnily enough, while Amity and the family HAVE A WHOLE PALACE out here, Amity actually LIVES, and SLEEPS in the refurbished, furnished, insulted, etc. barn of the property for the sole reason that its large size makes it more accessible to her fully evolved Pokemon that want to sleep close to her and get cuddles in a way they can't in the palace! Sadly, when puppies get big, they don't always appreciate how large they get!

PRIVATE KNOWLEDGE : KNOWLEDGE ONLY KNOWN TO HER DIARIES AND THE CLOSEST PEOPLE TO AMITY. DOES NOT PART WITH THIS INFORMATION LOOSELY AND SOME FRIENDS NEVER LEARN.

Behind closed doors? Everyone who knows her well KNOWS she's the embodiment of the tired but determined 'We Stay Silly'

SHE IS SO DEEPLY CLOSETED IN HER SEXUALITY THAT IT IS NOT FUNNY. Unfortunately, it's the most significant and overlooked aspect of the VISCOUS early bullying she faced as a girl. Yes, Amity was desperate for friendship and social validation. Still, she was hopelessly smitten with the main girl who was orchestrating the bullying, and it coloured so much of her experience. Of course, there is the gaslighting and reliance on the fact that Amity was an awkward, nerdy, not very socialized girl otherwise rejected by her older siblings, so being told 'this is what friendship is' does have additional meaning there. But even her Aunt Illumise could see it; she practically worshipped her and doted after her, hungry for affection and attention, and that alone was why she desperately held on to the idea that maybe, deep down, they actually were friends and that she DID love her back. It was what led to her putting up with abuse after abuse and humiliation until The Forgotten Minka incident -- after that, Amity sort of shut down towards them. There was no explosive ratting or revenge; they tried to 'make it up' and 'explain,' but there was no going back. Amity simply didn't care anymore. After that, though, she never really REVISITED her sexuality, too much in her personal life going on to consider such trifling matters. Not until her status as a public figure and Gym Leader brought it back to the forefront of gossip and interviews, like a forgotten bag of trash. Amity was the second youngest Gym Leader, the third youngest in recorded history and a GIRL. Everyone wants to know about sweethearts. Do you have any courters or plans? Family in the future? What about Natsuo, the young cherry-season Gym Leader?

HER FAMILY IS SUCH A HOT MESS IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY. Amity has very sparse to no contact with her older siblings; they consider her a 'traitor' for refusing to kick out her mother and then her half-siblings and a failure for refusing to follow through on being an esteemed Pokemon nurse, and for not keeping the entire property to the former standard it had when they were growing up. Amity's younger half-siblings are mostly oblivious to the tension of their family. Still, they're not stupid, and she can tell that the older they get, the more they can see and appreciate her wearing at the seams from the stress, but she doesn't WANT them to bear that burden of feeling like they've ruined her life. They didn't! She adores them! They can't help that their mother, well, she set all the dominos to this inevitable conclusion. & Amity's late mother was - well, she was PROBLEMATIC; she stole THOUSANDS from Amity and her sisters' Survivor's Benefits from Kija's death. She forced them all to endure her NUMEROUS failed, toxic and unstable relationships after Kija's death, isolated them from their extended family (which were judgemental of her decisions), and hid the truth that THEY owned the family home and had inherited it. She set them all up like meat shields for herself, she steered them from a comfortable existence into a more impoverished one - she kept having kids to try and fill a hole in her, and most unforgivable to Amity, she just LEFT them. She died, of course; she probably wouldn't have chosen that, but it's the cherry on top of her. Amity's mother created a teetering tower of unstable blocks and ran away before watching it crash. Now it's only Amity and these innocent children, and she's barely more than a child herself trying to make the scraps WORK! And while Amity TRIES and TRIES to forgive her, tries to fully understand and put together the pieces of her mother's troubled, troubled life to understand herself that her mother had... demons, ones she was thankful to not experience, it's so hard to not feel so angry. Her anger is a void in her stomach, and she's felt it so long and hard that it's nothing more than a festering void.

Amity misses her Dad SO MUCH MORE THAN HER MOM. She has grieved for her Mom, but less for the person she WAS and more for who she COULD have been and the relationship they COULD have had.

Being that most of her siblings were SO young when their mother died, many of them have only ever known Amity as their mother, and this... well. It sparks that dysmorphia; of course, there's the joke about the 'world's youngest milf,' but truly? Amity is not their mother. Their mother was an awful, awful person; the comparison is claws in her chest, and it really puts into perspective EVERYTHING; she's raising her siblings; her siblings ARE her children, and she didn't have a single say in it. She's a mom, but mentally? She's not. She hates being a mom; she wishes she could just be their sister again, and it could be carefree - or at least FEEL more carefree.

When Amity was first called 'mom!' by the twins, they were so happy about it. Their little chests puffed up with pride, and their smiles were as wide as a Gengar's, and, to them, I think they felt they were clicking in that piece of what was missing. Sort of a 'maybe she never asked us 'cause she's SCARED we'll forget mom, but we'll show her! It's okay! She's our mom!' but it was distinctly the opposite, and she could barely hold back the tears until they ran off to play, and she was left alone with the emotions.

When Amity's mom died, her then-boyfriend (father to the twins) was still living with them. Now, Amity didn't actually WANT to kick him out and potentially disrupt the horrifically tenuous situation even further, or at least, not IMMEDIATELY, he was an absolutely useless scumbag, but unfortunately, her mother brought him around. The kids had become attached and had already experienced one loss, so should she throw another right at them? For her ego? She couldn't. She grinned and bared it for them and vowed to keep her distance. The palace IS big, but unfortunately, it was not big enough for his ego. He should've been happy, free board, and his kids were being cared for; there was no pressure from Amity. But she assumes he wanted to be 'the boss', not her, to have a say but do no work, and what that translated to was being cruel to her and her siblings. He had to GO, so Amity packed up the kids for a fun night with their Auntie so she could handle things and finally cut the leech loose, and it didn't go well. It went SPECTACULARLY wrong, in fact. She was eighteen and relatively petite; at least, she had to guess this guy was in his early thirties. It escalated fast, and between the screaming, she got the hell beat out of her but took bites out of him and eventually, it took her, a knife, and her Pokemon to heave the fucker out. She called up Illumise that night and asked that she keep the kids for the entire week; she explained a little but not much, and that whole experience and the follow-up sort of changed everything about the reality they were living in. He never showed up again after that (A part of Amity is convinced her Haunter, Magnus, caught up to him and either killed him or scared him in a way he wouldn't come back from), but what happened happened. And Amity's oldest (but still younger) sister, at sixteen, sort of broke out of the haze of fully taking Amity at her word. She remembers returning and seeing what she thought were poorly covered-up bruises, Amity with nothing but good news, and that guy... gone. She didn't miss him, but she knew somehow, somehow Amity was lying, and it sort of altered things.

On the family subject, Amity knows she's never having biological kids. Will she adopt and be an older sister and maternal figure to any lost person who follows her home? Absolutely, but she's never going through with pregnancy, giving birth, or raising immediate children from her. She can't; she simply can't mentally.

THOUGH I WILL ALSO SAY EVEN THOUGH ITS THE MOST OPEN SECRET, SHE LOVES AND REMEMBERS EVERYONE WHO'S COME TO STUDY UNDER HER AND DO THE OCTOBER / FALL TRIALS. She has pictures of every graduating class since she started and keeps in touch with all of them. It's the guiltiest delight she has. She loves her old friends! She wants them to succeed. I guarantee that she'd show up if they invited her to anything.

What is the biggest reason Amity is always wearing hats? It's not for the aesthetic or even to hide her hair's white roots. It's because the CANITIES SUBITA that caused her hair to be completely white is joined in hellish union with ALOPECIA AREATA, and she gets these spots, the size of quarters, where the hair falls out in ugly clumps when she's too stressed out. Amity hates it, but the hats make it so much easier to hide!

SECRET KNOWLEDGE : INFORMATION ABOUT AMITY THAT NOT EVEN SHE KNOWS / IS ONLY KNOWN TO THE GODS AND THE WRITERS

Amity isn't exactly... human. A part of her IS human, but, well— it's complicated. To make it simpler, let's go back in time, all the way back to that fateful day with the Haunted House, when the local mean girls locked her inside the Forgotten Minka and barred the door to prevent her from escaping. Laughing all the while saying that she'll be food for the Gengar. This, the betrayal & terror all caused Amity to have a panic & asthma attack in the House, clawing at the door and then her own neck trying to breathe.

According to Amity's recollection, it was after this panic that Whinnie (a drifloon then) approached her, then Magnus (a haunter) emboldened by Whinnie, seemingly as scared as she was, trying to soothe her crying and calm her down. This is true... but it's not the entire story. Whinnie and Magnus only found Amity after the Legendary, ancient Pokemon found her.

The Legendary Pokemon had been hibernating and licking its wounds for centuries since its last battle with the Seasonal Quartet of the Saijikara region. But Amity's death throes awoke it from its slumber and drew it from its hiding place, deep in the skeleton of the Abandoned Minka. It approached the dying, terrified, gasping Amity and prepared to do what it's always done — steal her identity and her life. But this is where things became... complicated; Amity, while scared, was in a place between death and life, beyond pain, kind of delirious and in a way, she knew she was dying and was happy it wouldn't be alone. She THOUGHT the legendary Pokemon was, well, a normal Pokemon, one she just hadn't seen before, so she embraced it like one. Reaching out and embracing it, forgiving it because, on some level, she knew the truth, it was going to eat her after she died, and she was fading fast. But, despite it, she forgave it, gave it her blessing, and loved it. Her terror turned to delirium and turned to relief and gratefulness not to be alone.

The Legendary Pokemon watched it all, and it couldn't... process it, it understood, but they couldn't understand— it wanted to understand, but it couldn't. Not in that form, at least, but Amity's dying moments touched it deeply, and when it took her genetic material (bit her corpse's arm off) to replicate her through its own body and power.

It was at that point that Whinnie and Magnus found her, or rather, the Legendary (essentially), wearing her skin and mimicking her tears and panic that had stopped in death moments before.

What was intended as a sneaky attempt to assimilate her identity into it, turning her life into a mask to hide behind and escape the Seasonal Quartet, and all other legendaries it had pissed off along the way, was turned on its head. The direct copy of Amity, which it (essentially) cloned within itself to piggyback on, became an ENRAPTURING experience. The Legendary Pokemon was riding as co-pilot in Amity's body, but her mind, her heart -- the Legendary Pokemon saw it both and could finally understand and FEEL the way she felt through her spirit melded with its, and it loved it. It loved her, a little at first, but what started as a mask consumed the Legendary. It had no desire to burst from its vessel and destroy her; it loved her, it loved living through her, loved BEING her, loving through her, it loved her mind and her family and slowly, in time, it BECAME her.

The Legendary didn't assimilate Amity; Amity assimilated IT through her humanity and the bundle of traits unique to humans that the Legendary wasn't capable of on its own.

In that way, Amity is not human. Her body is something between human and the beast that took her corpse and replicated it through the DNA gathered, and her spirit? It's inseparably fused with the Legendary Pokemon. Amity WAS human, but her human self died and was resurrected enough to almost hijack this Legendary that was so overjoyed to embrace the change her body and mind gave it.

AMITY DOES NOT KNOW THAT SHE IS FUSED WITH THIS LEGENDARY, THOUGH. If you even brought up the theory to her, she'd think you were on crack. The idea is ABSURD to her, but there are things about herself that are perfectly explained by this explanation, even if she could never see it.

MISC THINGS EXPLAINED / ORIGINATING BECAUSE SHE IS PART LEGENDARY

The fact that Amity is seemingly immune or otherwise unbothered/unable to be possessed by the arcane and ghostly forces of both her preferred Pokemon types and the mysteries she's often pulled into. Amity is SURROUNDED by Hex Maniac and Possessed Channelers, and yet she's never faltered in that respect, even when training notably difficult Ghost Pokemon for reasons she cannot explain. She jokes about being a ghost-buster, but for some reason, her jokes have more than a bit of truth in them.

Enenra, Amity's Spiritomb, was already a powerful Pokemon and general spirit when she first encountered it and exorcised it from its former home/point of terrorizing humanity in the unearthed archeological site, where it had previously claimed the lives of five workers. But when it met Amity, it met its match, not only in battle but on a mental ground. Enenra tried to attack and weasel into her mind to possess her. It met a brick wall each time. Enenra assumed it was Whinnie or one of her other Pokemon stepping in to provide a mental block so nothing could possess her or creep into her subconscious, but even on her own, Amity was untouchable to it. It made no sense to Enenra, and only served to make Amity more of an enigma. But with the legendary dwelling within her that LOVES her and has converted their relationship to something symbiotic AND powerful? It makes more sense!

AND OF COURSE, THE BODY. In the post-game of HER story, she and the trainer, Summer, joined forces to finally deal with the matter of the Forgotten Minka and clear it of dangerous ghost Pokemon -- and bind the malevolent spirits to a keystone to protect the public and ensure no one else is made a victim of that building. In doing this, they discover a HORROR SHOW, to put it lightly. High-level ghost double battle encounters, disorganized messes of rubble, furniture weathered to ruins and a false imitation of a normal, traditional home, untouched by time but the errieness of that was nothing compared to the several decidedly human skeletons amidst the remains of Pokemon. All decomposed to nearly dust, and thankfully, Summer was none the wiser, remarking only that there were a lot of 'old Halloween decorations' and deducing the building must have been a former storage area for Amity (Amity didn't correct her) but Amity knew the truth and after dismissing Summer with a new, high level, shiny, one of a kind Spiritomb made from unresting spirits of the Minka. She turned her attention to the elephant in the room: the bodies. She called EVERYONE, shaking with the waning adrenaline as she stared at the remains, too terrified to move and for the first time in over a hundred years, the Minka was BUZZING with life. The poor people were collected and removed, and the entire building was swept through twice over. Their deaths were confirmed to be the result of Pokemon attacks DECADES earlier, though that as much could've been told by the broken, old Pokeball shells beside some of them and the faded, tattered clothing & all but one of them was given back their old names and returned to their family to be laid to rest, all but the smallest skeleton, no bigger than waist height, a child - a child with more clothing than all the rest - still clad in a faded flowery dress and missing an arm. That child, their bones (the original Amity, for clarity) HAUNTED Amity deeply, and even after she was given the clear on the building - something felt so WRONG. Why, why did they seem so familiar? Why did no one come forward to identify them and claim their child? They couldn't have been any older than six... and why, why did the sandal found near the body match the one she remembered wearing from The Incident?

BUT I WOULD ALSO BE REMISS NOT TO MENTION THE HIVE INCIDENT, so, after Amity and the others went through the Minka, she expected a sense of peace, a feeling of levity. After all, she conquered such a traumatic incident from her past and reclaimed it! She took her torment and gave it life and soul and a loving partner so it would never hurt again, AND YET, the uneasiness didn't wane. It only got worse - she was expected to open the Minka back up soon, and yet something in her gut screamed, IT'S STILL NOT SAFE, THERE IS DANGER, and while her loved ones TRIED to comfort her, it did little. She blamed herself for the former hiker and trainers' deaths. She wouldn't let anyone else be hurt - not on her watch or her conscience. Even if it meant putting HERSELF in the line of fire. One night, after sending her siblings to stay with their Auntie Illumise, she took Voltaire and Laverna to the house and began dismantling and destroying. Tearing up floorboards, opening walls, ANYTHING. Her feeling had weight, she knew it, she just HAD to find it before someone stumbled into it! That's when she fell, or rather, the three of them fell. The crashing and pulling at the seams of the Minka caused the aged wood to give way, revealing a deep tunnel hidden beneath the structure, carved deep into the stone base the entire structure had been built on, with claw marks as big as her arm. But the horror of the size of the creature that must have made the tunnel - and the power it had to possess was shortlived when Voltaire ventured further, and his light illuminated nothing but hundreds of feet of pure hive and EGGS, not Pokemon eggs, something different, the size of her fists, maggot white and ovate. Something like Amity had never seen, not in her lifetime. She'd wanted to run, but something inside of her refused. It was the Legendary, woken like a sleeper agent, gripping hold of her body in a way she couldn't explain, only long enough to order Voltaire to 'burn it all' before letting go and letting Amity and her Pokemon escape. Before Amity could renege on her order, the comb was alight, and soon, the flame took over. Leading the Trio to escape and Amity to real from WHAT THE HELL THAT WAS. She chalks it up to adrenaline and disgust, but it's not... no, while those hives weren't any immediate danger, the Legendary couldn't allow them to live longer - it had no need of them, no, it would never split with Amity and require The Swarm again. And its continued existence, a vestigial branch of its true form, would only serve to potentially expose it and hurt Amity -- and it would never hurt Amity, not on purpose. To quote my friend in the group chat, “I’ve had Amity for a fraction of my existence, but if anything happened to her, I’m killing the planet and then myself”.

THE LEGENDARY, HOWEVER, IS NOT FULLY GONE INSIDE HER; it lives on and prevents itself from being fully absorbed if only to live this life it has built with its favourite person unfold and to relish what it means to be truly alive and mortal (in a sense). BUT IT CAN BE BROUGHT OUT AND BUGGED TO THE POINT OF SHOWING ITSELF. However, such cases always end in death and bloodshed and will only come if Amity, and its beloved, cherished life is threatened in a way that truly matters.

ALSO BASIC KNOWLEDGE ON THE LEGENDARY POKEMON INSIDE HER:

It's an alternate reality, paradox version of Giratina, dubbed Vespidoza by the ancient people of Saijikara.

It is a BUG / GHOST type that cannot breed, doesn't evolve or transform beyond switching through three distinct stages of existence, henceforth dubbed Parasitoid, Swarming and Soaring.

Vespidoza does lay eggs, though—the eggs for the swarm that constantly surrounds it. They aren't really related, more so functioning as mini-clones rather than independent entities, and ancient texts refer to them as 'mouths with wings'.

Vespidoza's power largely comes from its ability to create massive swarms, measuring millions, that it can control with little more than its mind and the spectral magics it was formed from.

These swarms could, in a matter of moments, reduce cities to nothing and strip Tyranitar to nothing more than bones. They were, as an understatement - DEVASTATING to any Region it unleashed itself on.

For that reason, the Legendary and Mythical Pokemon of any region it decided would be the victim to the latest swarming event would come out of hiding to metrically kick its ass with all the power it could muster and typically, the efforts worked if only to put an end to the current swarm.

However, NEVER were ANY of the Legendary Pokemon or Pokemon of Myth able to kill it definitively. Like the pest it was, it would always manage to slip away - create mass, hidden caverns of hive beneath the earth, hidden in plain sight for the next century's Swarm and go into hibernation to gather its strength until it can detect death near its location. Which serves as its spectral cue to emerge and hijack the identity of the dying to facilitate its return and act as a living yolk to empower it until it's ready to split its host body into pieces and fly free to wreak havoc again.

Now, where did it come from? Vespidoza was recorded as far back as the Saijikaran region itself and in records earlier from nearby locations, so its methods of leaking into this world are a mystery. & Given the power of its counterpart, Giratina, it's easy to assume its power is probably due to it muscling through a rip left in space-time by the creation of our reality.

Past aside, I CANNOT understate how deeply Amity has changed the very fibre of who Vespidoza was. It will remain forever to fuel her, if need be, and silently watch if it means her light will keep it warm. It ADORES her, and the worst ending / Rainbow Rocket nonsense follows after a new innovation that was made to aid in the Nihilego apocalypse ended up exposing her as being not entirely human - Amity consented to basic tests, which ended up revealing Vespidoza inside her -- she panicked, but they delighted and wanted to run tests that were more dangerous. She didn't consent. It didn't matter. She ran away but was quickly caught, and the Amity's humanity died, leaving Vespidoza to emerge from her corpse in true horrifying Parasitic Wasp fashion, but it's emerging was not joyous. It grieved hard and was filled with so much anger and hatred over Amity's obvious murder. With it now capable of HUMAN EMOTIONS, it takes personal vengeance against ALL of humanity, starting with the people responsible for killing Amity before moving on to the rest of the world and letting all fall to the Swarm.

#about tbt #me??? posting my first things out of order? ABSOLUTELY

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pediamains · 2 years

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Jax mortal kombat 11

#JAX MORTAL KOMBAT 11 MANUAL#

#JAX MORTAL KOMBAT 11 SERIES#

With the help of the thunder god Raiden, the Earthrealm warriors were victorious and Liu Kang became the new champion of Mortal Kombat.In Mortal Kombat II, unable to deal with his minion Shang Tsung's failure, Outworld Emperor Shao Kahn lures the Earthrealm warriors to the Outworld where the Earthrealm warriors eventually defeat Shao Kahn. Among the established warriors were Liu Kang, Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade. The first Mortal Kombat game takes place in Earthrealm (Earth) where seven different warriors with their own reasons for entering participated in the tournament with the eventual prize being the continued freedom of their realm, threatened with a takeover by Outworld.

#JAX MORTAL KOMBAT 11 MANUAL#

The Mortal Kombat: Deception manual described six of the realms as: "Earthrealm, home to such legendary heroes as Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Sonya Blade, Johnny Cage and Jax, and also under the protection of the Thunder God Raiden Netherrealm, the fiery depths of which are inhospitable to all but the most vile, a realm of demons and shadowy warriors such as Quan Chi and Noob Saibot Outworld, a realm of constant strife which Emperor Shao Kahn claims as his own Seido, the Realm of Order, whose inhabitants prize structure and order above all else the Realm of Chaos, whose inhabitants do not abide by any rules whatsoever, and where constant turmoil and change are worshipped and Edenia, which is known for its beauty, artistic expression, and the longevity of its inhabitants." The Elder Gods decreed that the denizens of one realm could only conquer another realm by defeating the defending realm's greatest warriors in ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments.

#JAX MORTAL KOMBAT 11 SERIES#

The series takes place in a fictional universe consisting of eighteen surviving realms which, according to in-game backstories, were created by the Elder Gods. Interactive Entertainment currently owns the rights to the franchise which it rebooted in 2011. Following Midway's bankruptcy, the Mortal Kombat development team was acquired by Warner Bros. Early games in this series were also noted for their realistic digitized sprites and an extensive use of palette swapping to create new characters. Controversies surrounding Mortal Kombat, in part, led to the creation of the ESRB video game rating system. The series has a reputation for high levels of violent content, including, most notably, its Fatalities (finishing moves, requiring a sequence of button inputs to perform). Along with Street Fighter and Tekken, Mortal Kombat has become one of the most successful fighting franchises in the history of video games and one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. The original game has spawned many sequels and spin-offs consisting of several action-adventure games, films (animated and live-action with its own sequel), and television series (animated and live-action), as well as a comic book series, a card game and a live-action tour. The development of the first game was originally based on an idea that Ed Boon and John Tobias had of making a video game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but as that idea fell through, a horror-fantasy themed fighting game titled Mortal Kombat was created instead. Mortal Kombat is a video game franchise originally developed by Midway Games' Chicago studio in 1992.

#Jax mortal kombat 11

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alotofpockets · 2 years

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Not by choice | Kate Bishop

Pairing: Kate Bishop x Reader

Summary: You grew up in the Tracksuit Mafia, because your parents joined when you were just a baby, realising quickly that this was not the life you wanted to live. Only you weren't able to leave. Going to school was your way of getting to be the person you wanted to be. That's where you met Kate. What will happen when the Tracksuits bring in your girlfriend for suspecting she's Ronin and she sees you there? (full request)

Warnings: angst with a happy ending, kidnapping, mention of murder, mention of guns.

masterlist | requests: open | taglist | words: 1600

People say New York is an amazing place to be, for you however that was different. Being born into a crime family meant that you had to join whatever group your parents decided to join. Most of your life you had been a part of the Tracksuit Mafia, a crime syndicate that operates in New York City. Anything from robberies and money-laundering to murder.

You realised quickly that you wanted no part of this life, but ties bind you to the organization through your parents. So, when getting out wasn’t an option, you convinced your parents to let you work mostly behind the scenes. You picked up the financing and tracked all the in- and outcomes, whether that was money or supplies. Which got you the nickname of Overwatch. Of course, you rather also wouldn’t be doing that, especially not from the age of twelve, but you had no other choice.

Luckily they did let you go to school. A place where you could live your own life, a place where no one knew you were part of a gang, and no one was going to know. It was just you with a fake life you created to not stand out. It took a bit for you to make friends when you were younger, because it was all so new to you, there weren’t many kids with the Tracksuit Mafia besides Maya and Kazi. They were both a bit older than you and had already established a friendship before you were even born, leaving you on the outside. Not that you minded much, they were both convinced that this was the right way to live their lives, agreeing with their parents.

But once you got to college you had your fake life all figured out, making it a lot easier to be friends with people without having to worry about accidentally outing your actual backstory. After your first year of college, you met Kate Bishop. She was the captain of the archery and fencing team and could talk for hours on end about absolutely anything.

About two years have passed since meeting Kate, the two of you have been dating for the past month. You know you need to tell her about your actual life at some point. Some point soon. But how do you tell the girl you like you’re a part of a mafia group ruling the city? Yeah, there wasn’t really any good way to do it, so you decided to wait for the right moment to arrive.

The Tracksuits have been on a mission to take down Ronin ever since Ronin tracked down some of the higher up members and murdered them all, including William Lopez. Maya’s dad, she took it hard, but quickly decided to fall into his role of commander. She organized a search party for Ronin and gave everyone the mission to bring the Ronin back alive, she wanted the honor to kill him to herself as a way to avenge her dad.

After a news report of Ronin saving a dog from getting hit by a car, they finally had their eyes on the Ronin. Within a couple of hours, they not only have the Ronin in their possession, but also Clint Barton, better known as Hawkeye. They asked you to come in since Hawkeye was saying that the girl who called herself Lady Hawk just happened to wear the Ronin suit and that she was not Ronin.

When you rounded the corner your jaw dropped. The girl that went by Lady Hawk was none other than Kate Bishop. Why had they needed you to come to the front this time? This was not the right moment whatsoever. Also, Kate was Lady Hawk? You had seen Lady Hawk on the news a few times, but they were never very clear images.

Kate seems to be just as shocked to see you here as you are to see her. “You’re with the Tracksuit Mafia?” She asks fully of shock. “Not by choice.” You say, “I’ll explain later.” You turn around to Maya. “Let them go.” You start signing and talking at the same time. “They’re not Ronin. Kate is my girlfriend and Clint, well you know that he is Hawkeye.” She shakes her head and signs back, “Then how do you explain the Ronin suit.” Kazi joined in your conversation, “Well they did say she took it from a box at the auction and didn’t know anything else about it before putting it on. Maybe she’s telling the truth?” Clint cuts in, “Of course, we are telling the truth. Why would we lie when you’re all pointing guns to our heads?”

You look around and see everyone has drawn their weapons at them, “Everyone put your weapons down!” You order. “You think you still have a right to order us to do anything after all the times you’ve disagreed with our methods?” Ivan snaps back at you. “Okay fine, then just let me talk to them alone. You can leave a guard at the door or something if you don’t trust me.” With that they surprisingly agree.

“You better have a really good explanation for not being here by choice. How could you not tell me you work for them or with them or whatever?” Clint stays silent, letting Kate handle this situation. You move closer grabbing a pocketknife from your back pocket. “Can I cut you both lose before I explain?” They both nod. Once you’ve cut them lose you start explaining.

“My parents are criminals. They joined the Tracksuit Mafia when I was just a baby, I’ve never had a choice whether I wanted to be here or not. Like Ivan said, I have outed my opinions on the fact that what they’re doing here is wrong many of times. I have asked to get out of this life since I was about ten years old but there is just no way out of here.” You explain with a sad expression visible on your face. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I know I had to, but I just couldn't find the right way to do so. And I know everything might be messed up between us now. But I just need you to know that everything between us was real. The only thing I have lied about is some parts of my past, which I know is bad. But I never wanted this life. I’m sorry. I’ll get the two of you out of here as soon as possible.”

The first thing Kate says is, “Can I have a moment with Clint?” You nod and step away from them. You know you might have just lost the best person you’ve ever known. There was no way she would still want to be your friend now, let alone your girlfriend. After a couple of minutes Kate calls you back over. “Promise me that what you just told us is the truth.” She says. “I promise it is.”

“Okay, I believe you. Clint and I are going to get you out of here.” You had not expected her to say anything in this direction. Clint notices a scared look in your eyes. “We can keep you safe, I promise. You can stay at the Avenger Compound, no one from the outside will be able to come in, not even these guys. But it’s up to you, what do you say?”

If they trust you enough to open up the Avenger compound to you, you should be able to trust them too, right? Plus, your girlfriend was friends with Avenger, it had to be safe. Safer than here at least. So, you respond with, “If we head to the south wall, we should only have to fight off the two guards at the north side. We’ll have to head a bit further into the facility, but there’s a door leading outside at the end of the second hallway.”

Kate and Clint share a look, after which they both nod. “You two go, I’ll cover you.” Clint says. Kate grabs your hand and pulls you towards the south wall like you said. Once you open the door, the guards turn around and notice you and Kate leaving. They storm towards you but are haltered by Clint. “Go!” Clint yells to you. You lead Kate to the hallway with the backdoor and both started running towards it.

You’ve barely set two steps outside when you hear the window on the side of the building break. Clint emerges from it and shoots a smoke arrow inside the building. He joins you and the three of you start running until Clint notices a metro stop, you head inside and take the first metro that arrives. “So, you’re a superhero now?” You ask Kate once you’re sitting in the metro. She smiles, “Yeah, and I worked on a mission with Hawkeye!”

You start thinking, her getting you out of the Tracksuit Mafia didn’t mean she forgives you for not telling her about it. Kate notices your mind is somewhere else and places a hand on your leg. “Y/n, when we get back to the compound, let catch each other up to speed okay? You tell me about your past and I will tell you about the past couple of months with becoming Lady Hawk. We both weren’t fully truthful to each other and that might affect our relationship, but I want to be ahead of that and get everything out in the open now.” You smile, it’s like she could read your mind. “That sounds perfect.”

Main taglist: @yellowvxbes // @xxromanoffxx // @xxxtwilightaxelxxx // @danveration // @wandaswifeyforlifey // @marvelwomen-simp // @snooy245 // @peggycarter-steverogers // @wandas-slut-heart // @natashas-sunshine // @annephobic // @laaurrel // @catasha // @t00manyfand0ms // @multifandomlesbianic // @bandit2029 // @avengerswriter4eva // @gigistylestomlinson // @snowdrop1026 // @sylvies4ever // @youreatotalposer // @mellowladyangel // @milfloverslut // @natasha-danvers // @lyak12 // @smalls-words // @when-wolves-howl // @svftpetker // @la-reine-des-enfers // @official-chaotic-wandamaximoff // @b0r3d-s1mp1ng-b1tch // @bubblensqueak002 // @imabee-oralizard // @rafecameronswhore // @be-missed // @romaaa28 // @youresuchamom // @youralphawolf72 // @maia-lightwoood // @rootbeerfaygo // @elliesayshello869 // @vllowe // @princessprudy // @nightingalexx // @hallecarey1 // @wandsmxmff // @lissaaaa145 // @blackwidow-3 // @natashasapphic // @amessbian // @oh-thats-cute // @ratzyy

Kate taglist: @kacka84

#kate bishop #kate bishop imagines #kate x reader #kate bishop imagine #kate bishop fanfiction #kate bishop fanfic #kate bishop fic #kate hawkeye #marvel #marvel imagine #clint and kate #katebishop #kate bishop x reader #hawkeye #kate bishop x y/n #kate bishop x female reader #kate bishop x you

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army-of-mai-lovers · 4 years

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in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough.

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.”

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role.

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all.

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.”

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.”

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~”

y’all WHAT.

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back.

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai.

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too.

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!”

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse.

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.)

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out.

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show.

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.”

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring.

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what?

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her.

Conclusion

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked.

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here.

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice.

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us.

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