#but overall i think that its less about the metaphor and more about the thought experiement

[pixeljade]

Oh I definitely believe the metaphor is incredibly poorly-formed, but still stands in a lot of good ways. That's kinda the problem with metaphors, they cant ever be a 1-to-1 representation of the situation they represent, because if they were...they'd be that situation, not a metaphor.

But I digress, regarding the X-men, I think they are overall a really good metaphor, but the metaphor really REALLY falls apart when placed within the greater Marvel Universe. When theyre in their own universe, its easy to see them as outcasts, with a massive debate over whether or not they should be given rights. Little details about their powers really lend themselves to it, like, I'm sure we all know the post thats like, "Of course Storm thinks their powers are a gift, Rogue kills everyone she touches". That post can be used metaphorically as an example of how oppression and privilege affect people differently, it could be seen as a discussion between a trans person who fully passes and someone who doesnt, or it could be between someone with a debilitating disability versus a milder one, etc etc. And of course, these kinds of debates are useless when considering that we all face a common enemy, but the discussion eventually settles on that fact too. There's good parallels everywhere.

But like you say, there's nothing in real life that parallels PERFECTLY with superpowers! The supposed threat trans people pose to society is an existential one, but Rogue can *literally* kill people with a touch! But see, I think that serves perfectly into another form of parallel, which is exemplified in another comic series: Maus. In Metamaus, Art Spiegelman admits that he really played up his father's "Jewishness", turning him into almost a direct stereotype. The Vladek we meet in the comic speaks broken english, is miserly and penny-pinching, worries over everything, etc. The real Vladek spoke nearly perfect english and was much less concerned about money than we're shown. Art played up these stereotypes, though, to ask us a question: Even if he WAS a stereotype, does he deserve the hell that he suffered through?

Rogue serves a similar purpose, she parallels fears about the AIDS crisis. Back then, many ignorant people believed they could catch AIDS by being around them, and the AIDS wards were largely abandoned by folks, including the very nurses who were supposed to be caring for them. Some even feared a touch could kill them. Rogue, though, is that fear realized, and begs us the question: Does she not deserve care? Does she not deserve a place of love? And as such, does it even matter if queer folks DO represent a threat? Do they not deserve our love as well?

And ultimately, the X-Men is all about presenting those extreme examples, and asking us if they deserve our love. Magneto wants to rule over humanity for much of his early story, and has the capability to do so. Magneto is basically a worst-case representation for an oppressed person! But the stories make it clear that he only has the desire to take over because the world has been so utterly cruel to him and those around him. And even if he has this darkness to him now, Xavier wants to bring him back from his supremacist ways, show him that he's become what he hated. And eventually, he does, and Magneto leads the X-Men. And so, while the metaphor is hardly 1-to-1, it presents enough of a metaphor to set up that sort of thought experiment, and so, I think the metaphor doesnt need to be 1-to-1.

our modern society really needs to start understanding that a solid chunk of superhero media is straight up right wing propaganda. and no i dont just mean in the "MCU has a partnership with the military" way, I mean in the hyper-individualist "Some People Are Just Born Better" way.

[homestuckreplay]

Refusing To Give Dave Strider The Jester’s Privilege

(page 443-455; general discussion of character parallels)

8/7/2009 Wheel Spin: Long Pesterlog Verdict: INCORRECT (1 page too late….)

8/9/2009 Wheel Spin: Captchalogue Lore Verdict: ABSOLUTELY NOT. PUPPET LORE ONLY

In this page spread, we see the ‘Dave equivalent’ of two things that have already happened with John and Rose. The first is the meditation on the weather, the day, and the general mood that’s accompanied by a misattributed quote and animation of a character gazing at the sky. The second is the character exploring their house and reacting to their family member’s interests, with one eye open for that family member, who could appear at any moment.

Both of these play out differently with Dave than they did with John and Rose, twisting the pattern now that it’s established. And I have to say, I don’t find p.444 (Dave) as effective as p.307 (Rose) or p.82 (John). The animation is good - not quite as cool as the cinematic opening of the clouds in Rose’s page, but I like how it shows us Dave isn’t just dealing with regular heat, there’s apocalyptic fire dripping down from the sky, and how it shows us Dave’s home in its local context. I also like the metaphor of the hot needle ‘hot needle skipping on a groove its tracing 'round the earth,’ and the world as a turntable, referencing Dave’s instrument the way the other pages do with theirs.

What I like less is the ‘izzle’ suffixes and the deployment of Snoop Dogg lyrics as the misattributed quote. Again, this is a white author and character referencing Black rap culture in a way that’s not overtly racist, but feels like it’s used here as a joke. John and Rose’s misattributed quotes were reflective and relevant to their situations, while Dave’s is just lyrics from a popular song (a song where the lyrics are probably not the main form of artistry). There are plenty of thoughtful Snoop Dogg quotes that could have been used here, bud it feels like this slang and these lyrics are used as a counterpoint to the more serious tone of the other pages, which doesn’t say great things about Hussie’s overall opinion of Black culture.

I think I understand the intended effect here - Dave’s mind is wandering, descending into first his own raps and then someone else’s. He’s not one to linger in the malaise like John and Rose are, he’s leaning on his ‘ironic rapper’ persona even inside his own head, and his personality is refracted out into the meta layers of the story. I get that. But this page still positions Dave as a comic relief character who isn’t allowed to have a serious moment, and it’s hard for me to take him seriously as a character if the narrator won’t either. As we’re still in act 2, this page doesn’t reference an act title like John’s and Rose’s did, which also makes Dave feel like a secondary character even if that’s not the intention. 

Dave’s brother lives in the living room - he sleeps on a futon and has his whole computer and gaming setup out there. Whether or not they have parents around, Dave’s brother is the family member who controls the communal space, keeping Dave confined to his room. Dave is wary of using the Xbox, showing that he’s not allowed to use equipment in what should be a shared space. His brother might not have the parental authority over him that John’s dad and Rose’s mom do, but he has authority over the space (and by extension, Dave’s ability to leave the house), which contributes to Dave appearing just as isolated as John and Rose. The way his tower stretches above everyone else’s in the city, meaning Dave can’t even wave to a neighbor through a window, is a great visual for this.

The sequence of Dave interacting with and commenting on the different puppets around his house is really effective - these pages allow Dave to be different from John and Rose without making him less of a character. John and Rose don’t really distinguish between the various harlequins and wizards around their houses, but Dave knows these puppets - often by name - along with some of the stories behind them. He’s also careful and respectful when he moves them around, treating them almost like members of the family, while John and Rose have no issue damaging the equivalents in their own houses.

Dave’s feelings about the specific puppets are variable - he seems to like puppets with clothes and defined personas better than nameless nude puppets. He finds it easier to see the many layers of irony ostensibly surrounding pop culture figures like Mr. T and Chuck Norris, justifying an interest in them, but seems more off put by the ‘weird nude puppets’ perhaps because he can’t justify why his brother likes them. Lil Cal is the most interesting of all - he appears from nowhere between p.450 and 451, and Dave worries about him like he’s an actual person (‘man you hope the little guy's alright’). 

We know objects can appear from nowhere if they’re taken out of a sylladex, and we know Dave’s brother uses Cal as a ventriloquism doll. Sylladex + ventriloquism could easily mimic magic, so I think Dave’s brother is hiding somewhere close by, using sylladex tricks to play with Cal and waiting to catch Dave in the act of using his Xbox and computer.

And finally, we get some gameplay for (presumably) Grand Snack Fuckyeah, discussed on Dave’s blog (p.325). I am delighted to learn that this game involves collecting Doritos the same way you’d collect coins in Mario. This game was absolutely invented for college stoners. Sadly, there’s no answer yet to Dave’s burning question of whether popular beverages will play a role, which is a shame because Mtn Dew Baja Blast would fit right in here.

[ctrl-alt-em]

I have a lot of Thoughts about Delacy.

On detail that stood out to me was that Delacy doesn’t have a proper holster for his gun Rooster. This whole time I pictured him having a simple but nice holster that stood out from the straw hat and worn overalls, something that showed he spent what little money he had on his gun or that he got it someone in his home life like his father. But no, it’s homemade from scrapes of leather. Delacy left home with only the clothes on his back, his gun, three crumbled dollars, and a holster he made himself and then got on a train for the first time in his life while not even knowing if he needed a ticket to ride. Delacy ran away.

And after it all and he got his $2000, his home life and parents weren’t something he was in a rush to get back to. The idea of the group going their separate ways was upsetting to him. While he would like his parents to know if he died, he didn’t leave home with the intention of earning money to provide for his family and then returning home. (I would like to note, despite having parents, Delacy doesn’t use a last name. He’s only ever just Delacy, whereas all the other members of the posse have full names.)

While he doesn’t want to go home to his biological family, Delacy still wants a family and to be cared for. He found that with the posse. In the first episode, Delacy intimidated the saloon owner into giving him a bottle of whiskey, which he then found out tasted awful. In multiple instances after that, he requested whiskey or implied he drank it. But when the group was at the saloon after the bounties were done, he doesn’t force himself to drink whiskey because he thinks it’s gross and feels like he can acknowledge it aloud. During their adventure at the World’s Fair, Delacy felt safe enough to act his age with Edie. He’s excited to meet his hero. He takes Edie’s word seriously at the hall of oddities and assumes she has all the answers. It didn’t occur to him that she might not have all the answers to his questions. In their forced duel, trigger-happy Delacy refused to harm Nate and instead of pulling his gun, he sat down like a kid. He trust that the real Nate wouldn’t hurt him and they’d only known each for, what? A week? At Dead Man’s Worth, Garnet didn’t think Delacy was the kid of kid you could hug, but after the duel Nate picks him up into a hug. When Delacy first met the others, he’s putting on a forced act, pretending to be what he thinks an adult is (or acting how an adult in his life actually is, a heavy drinker that solves problems with aggression perhaps), but by the end, he feels safe enough around them and shows much more of his true personality and age.

While he is a bit of a cold killer and hasn’t fully developed an understanding of death yet, he still believes in honesty (see threatening a sideshow barker about the hand), justice in a way (people shouldn’t be lied to in any way and the hand should be buried with its proper owner) and is rather genuine when he feels like he can be. He was starstruck meeting Billy Joe and delighted to just catch a glimpse of Buckthorn the horse. He likes cotton candy and a gun tricks. He liked that Billy Joe liked cotton candy too (at least as far as he overheard). He didn’t even hesitate signing a contract when Billie Joe asked and only changed his mind when Edie reminded him of Nate. He takes what everyone he trusts says at face value (to the point of being ready to shoot someone due to a metaphor).

Delacy is young, naive, a bit dense, and ready to shoot, but he is, at his core, a good kid who just needed adults in his life that will encourage him to find less violent solutions and to act on his kindness in productive ways. Garnet and Nate have helped him learning more about interacting with people. Edie acknowledges his young age but still takes him seriously and trusts him and in the end, she offers him a way to use his shooting skills to help people. She takes him as her monster-hunting apprentice. Even Silas, who barely interacted with Delacy, grew to like the kid enough he would acknowledge Humble Ned (a devious, spindly legged beast, no matter how humble he is) as good people for Delacy’s sake.

Delacy might have left the farm with the help-wanted ad seeking adventure and fortune, but I think he found something he needed a lot more.

[scph1001]

thank you for ur input on the metaphor re:fantazio game 😼 now i am debating whether to try the demo or not right now, i am worried i will get too into it and i will hate waiting to actually get to buy it... but i like fantasy settings like it, what are ur thoughts on its story and gameplay so far? i like the redhead girl i like that she is a knight and the little fluffs on her ears are cute i think she would look cute with an animal nose and tail

😼😼😼 yeah not trying out the demo if you dont have the money for it is a good call it got me hooked pretty quick

long rant ↓

gameplay

-

gameplay is incredible. every bit of it is great. its a perfect mix of user friendly well also not being too optimized in a way that would make it feel all pointless.

them knocking out job systems on their first try is really impressive. messing around with combinations and trying out builds feels great.

also exploring towns is really nice. you dont really get that much with SMT so its cool to see!!

story

-

story is a bit more tricky. if i wasnt picky and conscious i would love it fully. ATLUS is very good at setting plot points up along with keeping things going at a constant pace. theres always a new plot development and new characters about. the overall concept is very fun- world building is good- characters have been great. it has all the works. it feels very expertly crafted. i felt like the start of some confidants were rocky but im a bit through brigittas and hers has been incredible so far..

i dunno it feels like many companies would kill to be able to pull off what ATLUS usually does at the start of its games.

on the negative. its ATLUS' first fantasy (in the DQ/FF way) game and they think they need to have all the fantasy tropes including race politics. theres already been one "hurting/killing your oppressors makes you just as bad as them" moment and i imagine there will be many more.

i am a bit wary of how they are going to handle royalty. very early in the game (literal first cutscene before you even click "new game"- so i dont consider it spoilers) you learn that they main villain you will be chasing after has recently killed the king and apparently cursed the prince in the past.

throughout the game characters talk about a fictional book where everyone is equal and they all go "i hope that can be our world. a world where the king is picked through popularity and the power is in the people sounds wonderful!!" they say all this but use it as a point to go "(the villain) is a tyrant since he killed the king for power we need to put the royals back in power" which is just a whiplash of tones. it feels so egregious to go "yeah the people should pick the ruler" and then go "yeah it sucks the king was killed he was perfect for this country!" that i feel like they have to be planning something.. they cant be that stupid.. especially given the fact that even P5 was brave enough to go out and criticize the government despite its lack of backbone.

also the game repeatedly goes on about how the religious structure / head in the country is unfair. i feel like theyre trying to go a weird middle route of "the state instated region is bad and oppressive but the prince and king are good since theyre #different". but also everyone seems lowkey addicted to the prince so maybe they are ensnared by his comatose charm.

i dunno. i have some hope (well alot of hope but less so in the politics regard) we will see where things go.

they do seem decently socially conscious (more than usualy moreso) and its nice seeing a game by the developers of P4 that isnt jumping at the chance to make fun of everyone ever and be seconds away from saying slurs.

CLOSING THOUGHTS!!!

-

maybe you could sue and get it for free since this character design seems ripped from your mind / style

[lumsel]

Reviews of movies I watched on Qantas flights this week

Poor Things: I expected this one to be more harrowing, actually. I got that vibe from what I heard about it? It's more like a weird fairytale about sex and sexuality though. I am good friends with @utilitymonstergirl of Replacable Parts though so that may be skewing my baseline for what most people consider a shocking lmao. I like how totally blase it is about its own problematic elements, it never blinks or tries to justify itself in any way, it just goes "lmao check this shit out". Refreshing in a moment that feels marked by overbearing didacticism in media. Not to say this movie doesn't have a very clear Point, mind you, which is basically "stop being weird about sexuality", but it tells that Point with a level of focus and confidence that I find satisfying.

Oppenheimer: There's a few seriously eye-rolly moments in here, like the one where he says the I Am Become Death line while his mistress is mid-insertion, but it's like a single digit number in a three hour movie. Very well paced too, it did not at all feel like three hours. I really like how it uses the language of film to get you understanding why Oppenheimer made the seemingly contradictory decisions he did during his career. When Oppenheimer is building a nuke, you're biting your teeth like "oh man, I hope Oppie builds this nuke in time!" And when he's trying to stop them from building more nukes, you're like "oh jeez, I hope Oppie can stop these nukes getting built!" Despite the expansive and star studded cast, this really does feel like a movie primarily interested in getting you to understand this one dude specifically, and I really respect it for that.

That One DnD Movie: Fun!!! It's a little jank, and the exposition can feel clunky, but it was a fun movie overall. God, though... the second act sucks so much ass. I feel like this happens a lot in movies, where the first and third acts are where the substantive parts of the narrative happen, but the second act feels like the plot is spinning its wheels while we set up the climax. This one is particularly bad where the cast just takes a sidequest in the middle of the movie to grab some inconsequential artefact and nothing that happens in that sequence matters particularly much. Anyway, fun as this movie was, I almost forgot entirely to add it to this list of reviews, which probably

Anatomy of a Fall: Yeah this was good. Very good-movie coded, like the foreign films I always see my mum and dad watching when I'm cleaning up after dinner at their place. I feel I don't even have much to say on this one because it basically just executed everything it was trying to execute efficiently and without any jarring mistakes. You can tell from pretty early on that this is gonna be one of those stories where you never find out the Real Truth of what happened, although I found one of the sides to have a broadly weaker case and I'm not sure if that was intended.

Dream Scenario: Ultimately was disappointed by this one. Thought there was gonna be a multilayered metaphor underlying this one but it turned out to be a pretty shallow piece on social media fame framed around some dude who really wants to cheat on his wife. Let down by the synopsis, I spose. I think the constituent parts work at cross purposes and make the movie undermine itself a little: the kafkaesque surreal horror is harder to feel the depth of when the protagonist is so obviously a shithead, but the unsympathetic protagonist is less compelling when the things that happen to him are an inexplicable nightmare scenario rather than his own decisions taking him down a dark path. There'd be a way to make it work but honestly I don't think this movie was pretentious enough to pull it off. It needed to be willing to get weirder and harder to parse with it rather than keep everything so broad and crowd-pleasing.

TMNT Mutant Mayhem: I liked a lot of things about this movie. The pacing is fantastic, and I found the character writing to actually be quite good. I actually found myself quite liking the density of pop culture references, because yeah, that's how teenagers talk. Makes it feel more real. And the animation. I'm glad more animated movies are incorporating actual fight choreography these days because it fucking whips every time. Unfortunately it really fell apart by the end for me because the pacing gets janked up to hell and it starts cramming in way too many unearned character moments. Something about it got kind of unbearable for me personally, I just stopped watching the movie.

Labyrinth: Technically a rewatch, but last time I saw this one I was like single digit aged. Thoroughly it despite it being structurally a mess. It's basically just Jim Henson's Creature Shop coming up with various Situations to put our protagonist into, threaded together in a very loose framework of a plot. The lead is not that good at acting, the jokes rarely made me laugh out loud, and yet! I was smiling the whole time through. There's an interesting contrast to the DnD movie for me, where that one has a fine first act, an awful second act, and a fine third act with divisions between them so sharp you can hear a clunk when the gears shift, Labyrinth is pretty much 80% second act, with a bit of intro at the start and a quick bit at the end to wrap it up. Makes it feel like a very storybook fairytale type of story, and I love that for it! And, unlike the DnD movie... I don't think I'm likely to forget I watched this one a week from now :P

[margotoo0]

Jj freak

I DON'T JUDGE, I JUST SPEAK MY THOUGHTS

WOW, idk, but I really surprised by the Boxer!Sukuna trope. So, I did some research and I can confidently say that Sukuna is a true jujutsu AKA taijutsu freak. MAXIMUM – MMA (But it's a big question).

Of course, Sukuna is a master of battles and fights, the philosophy of struggle, strength... But I still want to make a big clarification that Sukuna is closely connected with the Heian era, and jujutsu is a truly Japanese martial art.

Yeah, okay, "but we're writing AU, why not, lmao." I’m not judging, no, just let’s think: boxing at least lacks freedom in kicks, only hands. In the manga, Sukuna puts up a good fight, but he also uses his legs, which is suggestive. Again, I say: restriction of certain limbs. Who are we to limit this wonderful guy? Let him use his legs!

Also, it seems to me that jujutsu is more rich in philosophical themes, since...Wow, JJK is not just a battle. This is a battle of philosophies as well.

"The main goal of ancient styles was to effectively kill the enemy; the main focus of modern jujutsu was self-defense"

Don't engage in direct confrontation in order to win,” do not resist, but yield to the enemy’s onslaught, only directing his actions in the right direction until he is trapped, and then turn the enemy’s strength and actions against himself.

Yes, perhaps a similar approach can be applied to other types of martial arts. But I think Sukuna is still an old ass lmao. (In addition, other types such as aikido, army combat, sambo, etc. originated from jujutsu.)

I can’t help but say that Sukuna really chooses her favorites and enemies “according to her spirit.” He has some magical chemistry with Gojo (AND WE'RE READY FOR THIS TALK). Sukuna gets frustrated when the enemy can't stay on the battlefield a little longer. Understand that if you look deeper, Sukuna does not have one goal to “win”. He already considers himself a winner, so he is interested in looking at OTHERS.

“If someone annoys me, I kill them. If I’m interested, I play”

Even now we see him clinging to the same Yuta in Gojo's body. Sukuna is not looking for a quick battle, oh no. Many people talk about the "Plotkuna", but let me say that Sukuna literally LOWERS to many sorcerers. (there was a metaphor with uncut gems). He is waiting for them to reveal their abilities. And wow, remember that Sukuna still puts magic and spirit above physical strength, he tested this in PRACTICE (black flash in Maki’s stomach, lmao).

The funny thing is the meaning. "Soft, flexible, pliable".

Additionally, in the manga, the main method of combat is hand-to-hand, aka taijutsu.

Why is MMA in question? It's simple: Sukuna puts pleasure above discipline. Lmao. (My opinion may be wrong, but professional MMA is more demanding in terms of athleticism. It seems to me that Sukuna cares less about the overall appearance (body aesthetics, for example). Of course, Sukuna and the genetic monster included, just... Fuck, he doesn't give a shit. Just don't give a fuck. Give the man a good fight, he's bored of crouching). Jujutsu is more universal in this regard, as the emphasis is solely on technique. Not excluding endurance training, etc., this is always mandatory). Yes, MMA is more versatile as it includes a mixture of many martial arts. But the technique in some martial art will suffer, so it is better to give preference to one thing. But, again, this does not prevent you from adapting. But jujutsu has more advantages due to its grappling and choking techniques, then boxing.

OKAY, OKAY, I’m not talking about “worse or better” now, what I mean is that Sukuna would choose Japanese martial arts if he really was a professional INSTEAD OF KILL DAMN PEOPLE IN THE GAILWAYS, FUCKING KILLER, YOUR MOTHERFU–

Nuh. We understand me, guys. But I really don’t believe much that Sukuna would go professional, since there are too many restrictions, and he is a free bird. He is destined to go down a crooked dark road. And using your favorite Japanese martial art techniques is a great tool for achieving your personal goals.

Heian freak, omagaaa

(I'm crazy pfff)

[auriza-side-tomb]

Something I really love doing is taking the power system from a piece of media and coming up with a completely new setting to explore it in. Some examples I’ve thought of include:

Nen (Hunter x Hunter):

While everyone can learn the same basic techniques, the true power of nen is to construct your own power based on your specialisation, skill, creativity, life experiences and training. You can also put arbitrary restrictions on your own abilities to increase their power (the stricter the more powerful). It’s overall one of the best designed power systems I’ve ever seen, and is honestly far too complex to explain fully here.

Imagine a setting in which specific groups/families hoard knowledge of how to construct specific nen abilities. Opposing factions would constantly be locked in an arms race and information war with their rivals. Struggling to steal each other’s knowledge and techniques, while at the same time developing and protecting their own.

This could be the stage for any number of supernatural, power based political/class dramas and/or conflicts. And that’s not even accounting for the chaotic influences of more random individuals with extremely specific techniques, agendas and allegiances.

Alternatively, in a less chaotic setting, you could have a school/academy for Nen. People learn the basic techniques and are then given guidance on how to construct their own Nen ability. You could slot this into any number of world settings.

Stands (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure):

A physical/ghostly manifestation of one’s soul, often with a specific ability and specialisation. The series already uses this power system amazingly in regards to fighting scenes. With characters having to juggle the effects of multiple complex abilities at once and try to outwit each other.

One thing JJBA doesn’t really do is explore the social ramifications of Stands. In part 8 there’s a few lines that explain how Stand users are often very secretive about their abilities, even to their close friends and family, as one’s Stand is literally a representation of of their soul, their true self. But the series never really goes any further with this idea.

Imagine how this could be used in a more socially intimate story. Explaining your Stand in detail to someone would be just about the most personal thing you could share with them. This could be used in a romantic setting. It could be used as a metaphor in a coming out story, to show someone’s acceptance or rejection of another’s true self.

Alternatively, if the setting is one where the general public knows about Stands (and people who have them are generally in the public eye), you could create a metaphor about how invasive and privacy destroying fame can be. The media, fans and internet constantly trying to pry as much personal information from you as possible, taken to 11 as the subject of their focus is your literal soul. This would also highlight the dangers involved, as having a well known Stand would make you more vulnerable to having its weaknesses exploited in combat.

Those are all the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but feel free to share if you have any more ideas :)

[jaecantwrite]

fic writer interview!

tagged by @strawberriesinmoominvalley and @lottie1824 (thank you <33) im a little late now BUT we power through :D

How many works do you have on AO3?

14! which feels like a lot for me when i think about it but then i remember i write drabbles a lot and just post them without thinking. so. thatll do it lmao

What's your total AO3 word count?

33,177 :) the unfinished fics are screaming at me to let them make this bigger but here we are

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Big (Or Rather Little) Matter of Spoons (with @lottie1824) - 551

bring it home - 336

the more that you say, the less i know - 284

Can I love you? - 261

Fuck The School Run - 222

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i do! i love leaving comments on other writers' works and i love hearing what people have to say in response so i can only return the favour really. comments give me life :)

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

fate, belated - purely because its. major character death and i got told a couple times that it made people cry HAHA - a lot of the time i struggle to not end my fics happily because the blorbos just NEED to be happy okay i dont make the rules

i've written an ambiguous ending too but its more hopeful than anything so... yeah. see? still cant make it that sad HAHA gotta rely on mcd

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

come one, come all, his blender's whirring again - maybe im biased and am just happy with my metaphor work in this fic but. its pretty happy at the end. if not this then bring it home tbh

Do you write crossovers?

im only active in one fandom right now, so no i havent/dont 😅

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

not that im aware of and i hope it stays that way <3

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

i tried. once. and ive avoided it ever since HAHA

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i dont believe so! i hope not anyway

Have you ever had a fic translated?

again, not that im aware of

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have! i wrote The Big (Or Rather Little) Matter of Spoons with @lottie1824 🧡 just one long string of discord messages lmaoo

What's your all-time favourite ship?

Lando Norris/Oscar Piastri

shocker really isnt it

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

say hello to my published friends the more that you say, the less i know and You Belong With Me - i WILL finish them one day because i think it would be a disservice to myself if i didnt but. yeah. theyre not going too hot

then theres the countless other wips i have stashed away in my notes but thats for another day

What are your writing strengths?

i have been informed on multiple occasions that i write descriptions well, so like setting, character features, that sorta jazz. honestly writing a setting description is probably one of my favourite parts of writing because its so easy to stick little metaphors in everywhere

What are your writing weaknesses?

dialogue. dont think i need to say more. i hate it, it hates me. we have a working relationship

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i think its nice, ive done it a couple times with the odd word or two. i understand the frustration of needing to go look up a full sentence maybe if theres no easy translation but overall i defintely think it makes the fica feel more authentic

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

formula 1 😭 im just a baby

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

see THIS is a tough question because i basically only write landoscar. ummmm

aside from the pairings that are going to be in Roots (my main wip) i think writing Ollie/Kimi would be fun. theyre very cute. maybe Piarles too. idk

What's your favourite fic you've written?

it was come one, come all, his blender's whirring again for a long time but now i think it's bring it home - but also a special shoutout to stepping on the last train

(it'll probably be Roots when i finally release it anyway so. looking forward to that day in a century's time)

this was very enjoyable to do 💖

no pressure tag to @pumpkennpie and anyone else who wants to have a go ! <3

[shdwtouch]

While I absolutely agree with the sentiment and think oc positivity is sorely needed, comparing writing canon muses to fast fashion sounds a bit icky to me. I know you don't mean it in a bad way, but it does kinda sound like you're implying that people writing canon characters are putting less love, effort and creativity into their portrayals. Just because there are multiple people writing the same character doesn't cheapen their value, so I'd personally look for some other metaphor.

firstly, just want to say: I have so much anxiety about this message. like I know you're coming from a good place but its confrontation and alarm bells in my head so let me see if I can articulate. ; ; also, I'm posting this from mobile so I apologize for any weird formatting etc owo;

I'm going to stand by my statement (tho I deleted the tags [edit: I did take a screenshot for context sake]) honestly because I definitely was not implying that canon portrayals have less value, in fact I specifically stated that both canon and original characters have value, just like fast fashion and couture have their own values.

let me explain my thought process.

you walk into, say, Walmart and pick up a pair of Levi's. why ? because you've probably worn them before and like them, or heard of them from others and want to try them out. or because you're simply browsing and like the style and color and they're in the right size so why not ? canon muses have that ease of access, whether it be knowing the fandom or simply having a range of content and reviews to go off of as a "consumer".

original characters don't have that luxury; I don't know about other people, but for me sometimes engaging with original characters - and this is coming from someone who writes predominantly fandomless original characters and agonizes over how accessible their lore is - is, well, bottlenecked by my own energy and willingness to engage with the information and content the creator had provided. it's much easier for me, energy wise, to play a video game and then gravitate to muses from it because I'm already familiar with them, so I already have a foot in the door so to speak.

I fucking love reading original lore tho ! I also FUCKING LOVE canon divergence and headcanons ! but it isn't always easy to engage with or incorporate, and I think that's something that impacts a lot of people in how they view ocs compared to canons. original characters just often take more effort to engage with and understand, and that's not a bad thing ! but in a busy life it's understandable that folks want to go to what is comfortable and what they know, so they pick up a pair of Levi's instead of going to get a tailored pair of pants.

next, I should clarify that the characters are clothes, and we, as writers, are the ones who wear those clothes. which is to say, our own personal style and actions play into the overall appearance and feel of our portrayals. two people can take the same shirt and make completely different outfits with it ! maybe one of them decides to crop it, or bleach it, or cut it up and sew it into something new. and all of these things are valid ! and they all have value. you may be wearing the same shirt as someone else, but you still style it the way you want to. you still look different, still unique, still beautiful. there is nothing bad about liking fast fashion or canon characters. fast fashion is convenient, so are canon characters. some canon characters are poorly written and need to be dressed up or fixed to be worn, while others are quality and wonderfully made ! just like clothes ! and honestly, the same applies to original characters too !

the pants I'm wearing right now ? my favorite pair of pants. I've had them for like... four years. and they're still going strong. fast fashion isn't necessarily cheap, just like couture isn't necessarily haute. but again, it's about how you wear it. and everyone in the BG3 rpc wears their clothes, whether they be canon or original, in their own unique, beautiful way ! we all have our own style, and that style provides value to what we're trying to portray. neither canon nor original characters are better than the other, they BOTH have pros and cons. just like fast fashion and couture. they both have value, and their mode or means doesn't detract or add to the value of the final product.

I apologize if it seemed I was implying canon writers aren't as valuable as original writers, or somehow cheaper due to volume, in my tags. I definitely see where you are coming from and that's a valid perspective. However, that was not my intention and I hope I've managed to clarify my stance and explain myself a bit better. thank you for your message, I hope you're well ! sending lots of good vibes ♡

also, in case anyone was curious, my pants:

they are incredibly soft and flowy, very nice. I sleep in them and wear them out. I know they're winter themed but I think they're subtle enough to be worn outside the season, plus they have polar bears on them and I love polar bears !

also, if it's of any value, I have written my fair share of canon characters. I wrote extensively for assassins creed and marvel, in fact that's where I got my start in the rpc ! if I had to carry the metaphor, my "fast fashion" would be my (canon divergent) cli.nt bar.ton. I may have gotten him from marvel but I have since sliced him up and incorporated the pieces of my portrayal into my original projects ♡

[rubberduckyrye]

Re: your execution post

As much as I dislike Mikan's execution because it's kind of eh imo, I think it's one that went into the direction you mention, because many people don't read her report card: Mikan hates oversized objects. The giant syringe is causing her despair. I wish it was better executed because the CONCEPT is there

That's an interesting fact that I did not know about Mikan--but that sort of dislike falls into the same category as Teruteru being deep fried because... maybe he doesn't like deep-fried food. Again I don't know if that was actually the case but like I said, even Kodaka himself disliked most of the DR2 executions.

Like... idk, it just doesn't feel like it's enough, if that makes sense?

Like maybe you could argue that her execution was a metaphor about overdosing and the high (which would explain the... ahem, ~behavior~ Mikan has before the arm-rocket shoots off into the sky) you get from the drug before it sends you to the literal heavens, but the way it was executed is no where near the level of, say, Der Flohwalzer, which has layers of metaphors and Kaede's despair to it.

Kaede wasn't just "hanging herself" in the form of a self sacrificial suicide--there were metaphors of failure to her whole execution. Being forced to play an easy piano song incorrectly, being booed at and having stones thrown at you, the imagery of the clock spinning faster and faster to indicate that she ran out of time to save everyone--there is a lot of intense thought and care put into this execution. Each moment is filled with some kind of reference to her character--from her thinking that all she's good for is being a piano freak and taking even that away from her by making the last song she ever play be so poorly done, to the metaphor of her killing herself to try and stop the mastermind--and failing. Again, it all comes back to the essence of failure, and the Execution isn't letting her forget that she died a failure. Worse, even--she died a murderer who failed to make up for her sin.

She died in despair.

Maybe because of its nonsensical nature, it makes Mikan's feel less like execution and more like... Well. It's like saying that Kaede's execution should have had her riding a bike to death. Like sure, the girl don't like bikes but... okay? So she has a phobia about bikes at worst. You're making her scared, not despair.

Even if the oversized objects thing is downright a phobia, fear is a different emotion than despair. Despair is hating yourself, of hating the world, of feeling like there is no salvation for you--that you deserve every painful second of what is happening to you, even if you're scared of dying.

I think that's why despite dying during his execution, Kaito's execution was considered a fail. He didn't die hating himself for being a sinner. He died seeing the stars he adored so much--and died a hero. He didn't get to find out that his execution was just a rehash of some random guy who overall wasn't even all that important. He died happy. Not scared, not angry, not sad... but happy.

If the characters do not feel despair, then that's the problem. That's why the executions in DR2 are lackluster. Most of them don't play with the despair. Like what about oversized objects gives Mikan despair?

I hope that all makes sense tbh. TL;DR: I acknowledge that the oversize objects could have been used to tie in to her dislikes, but they aren't apparent means to specifically invoke the feeling of despair.

[orionsangel86]

As someone who basically knows the deepest parts of everyone's minds, what does Morpheus think of the concept of privacy?

Ha! If only we could ask him ourselves!

I think by his very nature, privacy probably isn't something he considers too much. He basically has a direct line to our inner most thoughts, dreams, fantasies, imaginations, etc.

He IS Dream after all. He contains the entire collective unconscious of all living things that dream within him. I think he is less concerned about privacy of others, and more concerned about burying that burden so he's not constantly being bombarded with all of that.

In the show alone, we have seen him enter Constantines dreams to watch her worst memory play out, without her consent, he turned up in her apartment and watched her sleep whilst he waited for her to wake up. He was able to reveal the dreams of all the diners to John without a glance. He revealed the traumatic past of Louise Baldwin to Hob Gadling by simply looking in her direction. He was happy to flick through entire dream journals on Rose Walker before they met. He and Rose intruded on the (sometimes very intimate) dreams of her friends and housemates.

I don't think Morpheus thinks much about boundaries when humanities most intimate dreams and nightmares are basically his day job, even more so, they ARE a PART of HIM.

It amuses me that there is an area of the Dreaming called the "love fields" which appears to be nothing but sex dreams. The fact that the library of the dreaming contains all the unwritten works of famous authors that they only ever dreamed about, as well as the entire dream journals of every dreamer.

Dream is nothing BUT a huge invasion of privacy lmao.

Its interesting that its an area that doesn't really get touched upon much in either comics or show. But I wonder if perhaps this is part of what he struggles with. The fact that he has to maintain a constant level of control so that the collective unconscious doesn't consume him - implying he has some metaphorical dam within him holding back everyones innermost private dreams and he only allows certain things to trickle through when he chooses too.

It's also worth stating that Morpheus' himself apparently doesn't get much privacy within his own realm. His emotions project outwards and affect the dreaming to the extent that all his subjects know the intimate details of his disastrous love life. His siblings affect each other just as much as they affect every other living thing, with Desire clearly being able to influence and affect Dream in ways that any regular human would find absolutely horrifying. He rarely uses his private chambers, and when he does want true privacy, he has to go through an elaborate process of locking door after door to ensure he is not disturbed. His ravens can find him wherever he is - though Dream made it clear to Matthew that he doesn't appreciate being spied on - and privacy appears to be something that is in short supply in the dreaming in general.

Overall, I think it's less that he has no respect for people's privacy, and more that he doesn't have a choice either way, because by his very nature, its impossible for him to truly respect our privacy.

[sometimeslapine]

It's not about quantity, it's about quality. Even if they arent the same scale, I'm sure I'm not alone in saying they would be appreciated.

And I'll be honest, engaging in a dialog about kink that is just ping ponging ideas back and forth sounds fun. Sometimes you don't need one massive work to lay out like a blanket to cover all the reasons and facets and quirks you like about a certain kink. Sometimes you don't even need a patch work quilt that you build upon. Sometimes you've earned the Worlds Worst Bonus from your job at the Cotton Ball Factory and you're just throwing little ball after ball at the topic, not caring where they land or if you've hit the same aspects again and again, and then you look back and see you've done a pretty good job covering the topic anyway.

Even if you aren't writing a novel, with your art you do a great job of making kink... I hesitate to say Feel Real but you make it Make Sense in a Real Way. Like of course if you lived in a world with Boob Growth Lotion, you can't just rub it in with your hands or else you'll get Boob Hands and that's Fun because Of Course that would happen. And I just kinda wanna see what you can cook up if you didn't have to find a way to visualize and show and make it look good.

bit of a delayed response to this one while turning over possible replies in my head... struggling to explain a few more conceptual blocks. writing's always been a weird subject matter for me, in one way or another. pls bear with me

so like. comparatively, inflation kink fics span back a good two decades, at least. there's an established pool of tropes, visual metaphors, ideal pacing or story beats to hit, tones or themes that set the mood, key phrases that really get at the brain, and points of finality that overall mesh really well for a good story. not to say there's no originalities to be had in this space anymore, but there's a lotta prior work to draw from, were i to need assistance filling a void in a sentence or two.

but the thing is, with the more nonsensical stuff like That Comic Thing You're Referring To, there isn't a lot of pre-existing stuff i can reference! i often find that i completely lack the language framework needed to put those weirder scenarios into words. i'm just making it up as i go, after all! and so drawing it out in some loose manner becomes infinitely easier than trying to capture all the nuances of it in a paragraph or two, because i get to lean a bit heavily on the storytelling mechanic of "Show, Don't Tell" as support.

though these scenarios being physically sketched-out-on-paper may end up leaving them a bit more concise than intended in their delivery, i'd like to think the concept i'm exploring's still getting conveyed effectively (even if i can't put the scenario to art in the way I'm /fully/ hoping to, whether due to the limits of my artistic skill, or just other general constraints of anatomy & form in a physical space) because ironically, despite a "concise" delivery, a drawing still remains open-ended enough to have its blanks filled in by the viewer's own preferences/themes/biases in enjoyment (in the same weird way the sketch of a piece can sometimes look more visually interesting & carry more emotion than that piece's finished lineart would) with the open-ended nature guiding one's thoughts to what potential fun lies outside the final panel. as you experience art, art experiences you, etc. etc. etc.

as for making it feel "real", honestly sometimes it's less about realism and more about exploring the fun and wild "consequences of over-indulgency" (said with as much love and appreciation as possible, just so we're clear!!); it's acknowledging the dangers of going wild with a Topical That Changes You without hesitation, it's of not thinking it through before leaping directly into in the path of that TF raygun beam, it's of playing with dangerous and ancient magicks because the spellbook had funny drawings that poked at the kinky parts of your psyche, it's of getting too lost in the sauce to have an escape plan.

consequences, for lack of any better word, can help ground fantasies into something more tangible! makes it feel more Real, despite very much being weird fantasy nonsense at its heart

anyway. run-on-sentences and streams of consciousness aside, i appreciate that my weird brand of nonsense is enjoyed all the same

[veliseraptor]

December Reading Recap

I thought about trying to do some kind of 2022 reading summation/best of/worst of/whatever and I might still do that but right now I'm just going "too many booksahhh" so I'm just going to keep on going with month two of my "here's what I read this month" short reviews.

I read a lot this month, but unfortunately it involved several books that missed for me (but a few that I really enjoyed).

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: vol. 1 by Meatbun Doesn't Eat Meat (Seven Seas Translation). I mean, as usual, even without knowing the actual quality of the translation as a translation I am still pining for a professional translator. And yet I'm still reading, because this is the way I have to read the thing as translated by an actual human, and I am enjoying it. This time around I am falling much more in love with Chu Wanning than I did the first time around when I was laser focused on Mo Ran as more nakedly ~my type~ but boy!! *pats Chu Wanning* this man can fit soooo many issues in him.

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang. I feel like my relationship status with R.F. Kuang's writing should just be listed as "it's complicated" because I don't even know how I feel about this book, really. It's conceptually fascinating, it's doing so many cool things, the way she chose to end it is very bold and I respect the hell out of it, and something still just didn't quite...click for me in the way that I wanted it to.

I think it was that it felt a little heavy-handed with its metaphors. Which is fine, to be sure, and making your imperialism metaphors specifically about language and translation isn't something I've seen somebody do a lot with in fiction, but...yeah. I'm calling this one less a fault of the book and more a fault of the me, though; it definitely feels like a your mileage may vary situation.

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke. I picked this up on a whim and it wasn't worth it. The book was very taken with its own cleverness; I was not.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides. This was another one where the summary/description was more interesting than the actual book turned out being, which was, while readable and I was intrigued enough by the mystery to power through it pretty fast, underwhelming overall.

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots. Some people (me) keep picking up retellings despite at this point knowing better; other people (me) keep picking up superhero-comics-inspired books despite at this point knowing better, only this time I was actually surprised by how much I liked it. It was legitimately a good story! And you know I'm always going to be a sucker for a story that takes the villain's side.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. I have the creeping feeling that this book was too sophisticated for me and I would have liked it more if I was more sophisticated, which is an unpleasant feeling to have.

I wanted more deep sea horror from it than I got - not in the sense of ~creatures and tentacles~ or anything, but this was far more a book about grief and loss than it was horror, and it was billed to me as the latter, so I came in from the wrong direction and was a little disappointed. It was a good book, though, and beautifully written.

Everything I Need I Get From You by Kaitlyn Tiffany. Had I known that the title of this book was from a One Direction song (I didn't) I might have anticipated more how much it was about bandom and therefore less relevant to my interests. It was also lighter on the analysis than I expected/wanted, so ultimately this one was a disappointment too.

Beowulf trans. by Maria Dahvana Headley. This is the first translation of Beowulf I have ever actually read (!) and after reading it I kind of wished that I'd read at least one other translation to compare it to. But a lot of the things she was doing with alliteration and assonance and rhythm in the language were just spectacular. And it gave me the chance to read this one (by this translator) coupled with:

The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley. Adding this to my "books to read in pairs" list alongside the Song of Achilles / Silence of the Girls dyad. It's been sitting on my shelf for a while now, and I finally got around to it as spurred by reading the original Beowulf text, and...whoa. I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while and I want other people I know to read it so I can bounce off their thoughts about it. If you haven't heard of it: this was billed as a retelling (I know) of the Beowulf story set in a gated community but I feel like the fact that it's based on Beowulf is almost beside the point in some ways, and in other ways it's very much in conversation with that text and lives alongside it and maybe a little in argument with it.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: vol. 4 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (Seven Seas Translation). I feel a little bad about how my reaction to this volume was a little bit "this was mostly a lot of Wangxian stuff so I was less excited about it" but there you go.

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo. I have to say, I read The Chosen and the Beautiful when it came out and was a little underwhelmed, but the synopsis for this one sounded interesting, and people kept raving about it, so I decided to give it a go, and I liked this one both (a) much better than The Chosen and the Beautiful and (b) just as a book without comparison needed. It also made me want to dig more into early film history. The way that this book is in love with (in a way) early film is also a delight to read, and while I can't call it subtle, it's eerie and beautiful in a way that really worked for me.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp. I read a lot of horror despite the fact that I end up underwhelmed by the vast majority of it. I was slightly less underwhelmed by this one than I expected to be, but that is, as you might note, not exactly an endorsement. Part of the problem was that I found the main narrator just too fucking hateable in a very specific way to feel anything about his suffering but vague, detached interest in where it was going to go.

Heaven Official's Blessing: vol. 5 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (Seven Seas Translation). I just love this book so much and everything about the reading experience is difficult to judge in an objective way because my brain just kind of goes "look at them go! look at these little dudes go! they're so funny :)" in a very empty-headed sort of way.

This volume does sort of fall between my favorite bits, though (after end of Black Water Arc, before the Hua Cheng's Sculpture Gallery), so while it started digging into some of the Crown Prince of Wuyong lore it didn't quite hit the parts that are juiciest for me.

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett. This book made me so mad about public health policy. Like, so mad. I'm mad about it periodically anyway but this just made it worse. It's really good, very comprehensive overview of some of the emerging diseases since 1950, including Lassa, Ebola, antibiotic resistance, HIV/AIDS, and others. It's long, and definitely a rough read if you've got any kind of disease phobia (she isn't...gruesome about the clinical descriptions but she also isn't mincing words), but worth a read if you feel like you can do it and are interested in epidemiology.

There's definitely outdated terminology and some bits that made me squint about the book's politics, but overall the author's clear message of the need for holistic health policies for everybody mitigated a lot of those concerns (particularly the way the author repeatedly underlined the links between poverty and deprivation and vulnerability to illness, and the vitality of giving people a way out of that situation as part of public health policy.

The Bone Orchard by Sara Mueller. The last book I read in 2022! I'm so fascinated by everything this book was doing. There was some very interesting world-building under the skin of what was really mostly a mystery with a side of politics. And I say that favorably. Ultimately I'm not sure that it'd make my favorite books of the year list, but I'd give it a casual recommendation; that is, if someone was eyeing it to read I'd say it was worth picking up.

I'm currently reading Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg, which was published in 2007 (during the Bush years) and I can already tell reading it now is going to be an experience.

[keire-ke]

Three Body Problem/Dark Forest

I’ve only read the first two so far, and overall I really enjoyed both (with some caveats)! I have it on good authority the third one goes off the rails, but I’ll report back on this one :P Thus far they were very enjoyable as sci-fi epics, TBP takes place in more-or-less now, DF spans centuries, the worldbuilding is great, the ideas it has are very cool and the prose is so good.

That said, they are immensely frustrating, too, in very particular ways (least among which is “wow, this was definitely written by a man”). TBP not so much, that’s just great, but the follow-up...

I’m putting it behind a cut, because spoilers (if you’re thinking of reading the books, avoid spoilers, the spiral they take you on is Something Else)

My particular point of frustration is in how these books are broadly speaking about the relationship between the collective and the individual, how one feeds into and affects the other, but the individuals are... Well, they have names, definitely, and also occupations. It’s less of a problem in TBP, which is very straightforward with the cause and effect, but in DF it rolls out into a whole sprawling... something.

Okay, so book one, Ye Wenjie is so disillusioned with humanity after living through the Chinese revolution and watching her father’s murder that she asks the aliens to come over and destroy it. Cool. There’s a whole organization dedicated to helping the aliens out, which she leads, but she has second thoughts after things start happening, all that.

In DF we get the very explicit consequences of the “humanity over humans” in the form of the history of the Great Ravine(? - not sure how it’s translated in English), and how that lead to a nigh-perfect society based on individual rights, whose only real problem was that they were too trusting and hopeful, to the point that older characters refer to them as children. Also cool. Yes, sometimes bright-eyed optimism will not save the day, which doesn’t make callous pessimism right. Humanity didn’t get to its darkest hour by being too lovey-dovey (though mistakes were made and hubris didn’t help). In the end the only future is one of cooperation and mutual respect.

So, the day is saved by a guy who only really wants to reunite with his family. Again, so far so cool. Humanity is made of humans, who may think of humanity in the abstract, but they are also creatures of the here and now and that’s what civilisation is and should be about. For better or for worse.

The problem is, the guy’s family is a cardboard cutout not only in the meta sense of having hardly any lines and existing mainly between scenes, oh no. That would be... disappointing, but also par the course for, hell, most of literature. No, instead the family starts when Luo imagines a perfect woman, who becomes real to him, to the point he has self-induced hallucinations about her being in the car and having conversations with him, and later uses the societal powers granted to him to get the police (his chief bodyguard with whom he has a reasonably compelling actual friendship) to find him a girl matching that exact description. Who is then lured in to his house under the pretense of working for him. Within a year or so they marry and have a child.

And then the epilogue concludes that humanity has problems with the Dark Forest metaphor because love is so important in human culture (it’s not as egregious as in Interstellar, don’t worry, it actually comes off quite well). Which...

But wouldn’t it be much stronger if they were both actual characters? If they met the normal way, if they fought and made up and had human interactions that weren’t limited to Luo thinking how perfectly in line with his fantasies his mail-order-imagination bride turned out?

That’s not even mentioning that the core tenant of the Dark Forest theory is the complete impossibility of communication between alien civilisations, when the whole entire series is predicated on perfect communication being not only possible, but pivotal from the point of first contact, but that doesn’t actually affect the plot all that much.

[misarem]

Umineko Episode 3 Thoughts or How I Was Deceived by a Thousand Year Old Witch that Doesn't Exist #Rokkenjimagate

Okay I really thought the jump from ep1 to 2 was crazy. I barely even know what to say for this one I'm so serious. It's almost like the preconceived notions I had abt this game based on like several isolated moments from it I've seen over the past year of wanting to play it were challenged the most here and I barely even know what to think. apologies to myself in the future reading these back to feel something for how incomprehensible they end up being but regardless

Right out the gate I was excited with this chapter focusing on Eva after my presumption abt how the adults were gonna be focused on throughout the Question Arc, and showing Eva Beatrice from the start as seemingly an aspect of Eva used to cope is an incredibly strong hook. Even tho all the adults are bastards in their own right it's hard not to root for Eva wanting so badly to achieve her goals to the point where you even start to go along with her self-deprecating persona. And after kind of a long October 4th, watching Eva solve the riddle of the epitaph is incredibly gratifying. Even tho it's obvious this won't last it still is awesome to see and feels very deserved. Especially Eva's voice acting during it. Honestly through this whole chapter her voice acting rivals Beatrice (especially considering she backs out of the limelight somewhat). And the following scene with the coronation of Eva Beatrice, the lavishly illustrated halls, her new witch outfit, Happiness of Marionette playing, its all incredible. Also a very good demonstration of how warped the Ushiromiya upbringing really is. Eva is really just horribly cruel in ways closer to anime youd only see in Top 10 Deaths videos on YouTube (perfect for When They Cry!) and i do wish there were more illustrations to show, on at least an abstract level, the fucked up shit she did to Rosa besides the ocean cgs recolored to jelly. The fall from midair part was good tho. Also crazier to see the even worse brutality only briefly mentioned that included MARIA. Didnt think this game would even pull that on a 9 year old so that sure is a new level of horrific. Overall a very strong chapter thanks to its focus on one of the strongest backstories of anyone on the island. And yea the satisfaction is short lived but for this game, especially this chapter, for something beautiful and grand to get pulled out from under you and twisted without recognition feels very. appropriate.

Eva isn't the only focus tho, as we learn a ton about witches here too, specifically Beatrice and her predecessor, and how the system of magic and witches really works. Their battle was cool, as cool as you can get for a kinetic novel. I liked what more or less felt liek Beatrice's origin story, with the broken vase serving as a metaphor for aspects of the human condition like life and trust. I like the growing narrative aspect of Rokkenjima being isolated from the outside world as if drifting away from reality, submerging itself in a haze of fiction that Battler must cut down with his truth, and all the dichotomies that form around that. And for a while, I liked seeing a "new side: of Beatrice, if you can even say that. The human side that never grew out of being a child, or knew anything other than captivity. I talked abt this already in a few places but seeing Battler spurn her like that was insane and hilarious especially with her losing a lot of the bold flourishes of speech and voice acting because of it, and having to take a backseat to Eva Beatrice, attempting to reign her in the same way Virgilia presumably did for Beatrice at the beginning of her witch training.

i do say this with the end of the episode looming over me like an enormous thundercloud. I do feel.. a bit stupid thinking she changed in any immediate significant way altho to vouch for myself I didn't think she was completely on Battler's side either. Hell I knew this game has like 5 entire chapters left and she was likely gonna have to go back to her old ways if there were gonna be more murders, and in the whole ending scene I was waiting for Battler to back out of relinquishing to the witch as he kept signing shit and humoring her. But yea I didn't imagine a whole chapters worth of pretending to have a huge change of heart with multiple moving parts and witches assisting in the subterfuge. It does make me wonder if Beatrice had begun this deception by showing her fight with Virgilia to Battler, or if she realized she could manipulate his emotions when he yelled at her over Rosa's deaths, since he said he could kinda see past the murders to view her as a worthy adversary, or potentially, when they applauded Eva together during her coronation. That Virgilia was seemingly a part of Beatrice's plot, looking at that insane face she pulls when they try to get him to submit, makes me think the fight was a ploy to make it look like there was more conflict between the witches of Rokkenjima and to have Virgilia close enough to Battler to manipulate him the way she did. Also generally confused abt what was even going on with Kumasawa around that point in the episode. We see every servant die on screen except her as a part of the first twilight, since who we think is Kumasawa ends up just being Virgilia, yet her body is listed with the other victims. Idk if she is a witch or not, I'm leaning towards no but it's smth I feel the need to keep a tab on since I'm trusting the story not to frame those events that way without purpose. I'm also gonna say I have a hard time believing that everything we saw Beatrice open up about wasn't a complete lie. Like I do think her existence and power on Rokkenjima will end up stemming from something horrible and traumatic Kinzo did to her and that she was a human at one point, hell Lambdadelta kinda confirms this in the witch segment. It's just that using this to pretend to open up was meant to be huge for her game up until-

The funny thing is I literally did not think Ange was gonna appear in the game til Answer arc, although when she started getting namedropped I got a sneaking suspicion we'd see some glimpses. But still this is much more than I expected. Much more depressing going off the little backstory blurb she gets in the character section, altho Evas more subtle, less violent brutality towards Ange is... foreshadowed well we can say. Actually its her upbringing under Eva that seems to influence her actions and character in this timeline (timeloop?) assuming she grieves normally enough under her Grandfathers care if Eva dies too. Really goes to reinforce my confusion on how this all even really works, specifically the two day loop inside of the "fiction" of Rokkenjima, as it remains untouched by the outside reality. If Eva returned from Rokkenjima, does the time loop end with everyone else dead, or just continue in some other plane of reality? Not something I'm super hung up on but idk. Sometimes with this story I don't know if I have the means to solve the bigger mysteries with me now or if I'm supposed to wait to get more pieces to the puzzle. Either way I'm open and excited to how Ange interacts with Rokkenjima that much later into the future.

What else. I liked the fight between kanon and the sisters near the beginning that was kickass and i like how Genji, Shannon and Kanon all care for each other. IDK what chapter it was where I read in Characters that they were like created by Kinzo but that gives them a good relationship. Also LOOOOOVED Kyrie here even tho she died eventually (this game loves badass moments that get cut off when the witch inevitably summons an even more powerful agent of hell) her fight scene was sooo good.

This cg in specific reminded me of a very specific part of, coincidentally, the third episode of The House in Fata Morgana, I wont spoil but if you played you absolutely know what I'm talking about. Just cool to watch with her and even Rudolph holding their own against literal demons. Thinking that the family is mostly framed as knowing abt the magic/supernatural stuff as only myth, and not shit that seems to actually effect them, but has surprising moments of competency like this might be a good indicator of either the true nature of magic in Rokkenjima or some hidden underlying thing about the family (Battlers parents are verry adept with guns for people who are described as legitimately shady in the Characters tab. Speaking of Kyrie it is funny how wrong my prediction was in the last one where I said one pair of parents would survive each first twilight and Maria would always make it to the end considering the. Exact opposite of that happened. TO BE FAIR it was Eva-Beatrices rules not Beatos (I liked the moment of Beatrice letting Maria down gently abt being promised into the Golden Land). In retrospect it does make sense that for these three pre-Ange episodes, the first focusses on children, the second on servants and the third on parents, and its a good way of giving everyone screentime. There really is not a wasted character in this game even tho some are just not that appealing still looking at you Krauss

Heres where I pick up the tier list with every character instead of just the 18. finally can put Beatrice where she belongs. really not a whole lot has changed other than im waiting for ange and beatrices friends to excite me more and i love Ronove and his shitty mustache. curse my butler bias. I think for now im gonna wait an episode to like, recalibrate my predictions. Half the time in this game Im waiting for Erika Furudo and Dlanor to just fuck shit up but i cant say im not having the ride of my life with this crazy ass game.

Okay Im typing this specific part after getting thru like half of episode 4 (im gonna have insane shit to say about that one so stay tuned). Since I know that one focuses heavily on Ange to where the narrative focus feels like its shifting heavily, im going to take the time here to talk about how the Ushiromiya upbringing and how that affected everyone is my favorite aspect of the game so far. Its not even that deep or anything. I think I mightve said in an earlier one that family trauma feels so universal now so its not hard to get her but that also means that this is like an incredible portrayal that I feel like almost anyone would connect to and it very effectively shows how not only how wealth corrupts and debased people but also how abusive parenting has long, LONG term effects on entire family lines and how trauma really does not inherently make you a stronger person. Krauss is just lazy and incompetent, which, IMO he cant really help with how he was raised, and it would be cool to see him be aware of this, but its obvious how this manifested in Jessica thinking her family and inheritance is an active hinderance of her desires. How Rosa was pushed around as the youngest child, shaping her into a sometimes-well-intentioned, but irresponsible and caustic woman, and how this created a cyclically abusive relationship where Maria is pushed further and further into her escapist fantasies by her mother's punishment of those eccentricities. Interesting, Eva's terrible upbringing is focused on the most here despite the fact that she has an outwardly good relationship with her husband and son. But I think, in her obsession with proving the Ushiromiya patriarchs wrong caused by the complex they gave her, she built her home on a rocky foundation, marrying and parenting primarily for her position in the family, and when that inevitably came crashing down, it makes sense that it caused her to give the last remaining Ushiromiya grandchild the worst treatment out of all of them (debatably if you think Maria's was worse).

And its in this portrayal of generational trauma that we see, in my opinion, the most hard hitting, nuanced and just real moments in the game so far, like Jessica finally coming to an understanding with her mom, only able to do this in the most dire of circumstances, or Battler having genuine trouble mourning and grieving for his own parents outside of just being appalled by the atrocity of the murders (hes clearly estranged from his dad and he cant even bring himself to see his stepmom as anything more than an older sister), or Maria (seemingly..?) forgiving her mother at the end of episode 2 in a moment of insane emotional maturity and clarity after compartmentalizing her mom's behavior as one of her only means of coping with abuse other than escapism. These are places many stories wont go anywhere near when tackling family trauma but Umineko just demonstrates a deep understanding about how dire, dysfunctional and callous some families can really be. And having to recognize that all of these painful things are born from earlier pain and the abusers themselves were horrifically abused is the hardest but most important part of understanding all of this and what makes the game so nuanced. It lays these cycles of abuse bare, not completely condemning or exonerating anyone, trusting both the Ushiromiya family and you, the player to flip the chessboard and come to a genuine understanding of why things are the way they are so that, even if the circumstances are still dire, healing can begin and happiness can be achieved.

That all being said, the only gap here is Rudolph and Battler and I'm not just talking about the 6 year one he took from his family. Its easy to assume that Rudolph, influenced by his own older siblings but kept slightly afloat by being older than Rosa, grew up into a hardass without much regard for his own son. But it also feels like theres much less insight into his own upbringing. We only get glimpses of his adult life through Kyrie's brief exposition in this chapter as she guns down. i think it was Leviathan? But things like the deficit in information about both of them, the nonchalant way the Characters tab refers to their shady business practices, the void that his first wife's absence in the story leaves, and the way they handled the demon sisters makes me think that we will get crucial info about Rudolph's upbringing soon, but that there was also a very very important narrative purpose to depriving the main protagonist audience surrogate guy (and be extension, us, the player) of a firsthand perspective of his father and stepmom for the past 6 years of the story. I said earlier that I was holding off on making theories but the gears in my head have been working a bit since I typed that and I think Rudolph and Kyrie are prime suspects at this point of time, with the servants and maybe Nanjo? being accomplices in some way, altho idk abt Gohda LMAO and i also saw a little bit of spoilers from clicking around too much but we'll seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[crusherthedoctor]

A positive ask: your top 5 Sonic stories? :)

In chronological order:

Sonic CD: This might be cheating since the actual plot is just "Eggman's kidnapping animals again but this time he also turned a planet into a Chain Chomp", but I love, love, love the visual storytelling at work here. Sonic was always more thoughtful and grounded than most when it came to the green aesop (including that one cartoon that claimed to be a Sonic cartoon but wasn't), and CD is the pinnacle of why. Seeing all the different ways the pasts and futures compare is always a joy, and it drives home how serious Eggman's threat really is to any world.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles: In no small part due to the level cutscenes and big set pieces, this game makes the journey feel like an epic quest. And while other games may highlight aspects of his character better (Forces highlighting his cleverness for just one example), I feel that this game is arguably the best overall use of Eggman, showing how he operates as a villain, and showing how dedicated he is to repairing the Death Egg no matter what it takes. The endgame is one of the best in the series, and a Super Sonic finale actually felt exciting rather than played out.

Sonic Adventure 1: I have my issues with it, and not just the obvious one, but I would say it's one of the 3D plots that holds up the best. Chaos is still the top-tier giant monster thanks to how he's built up and how he has more to him other than "he's a monster, fight it", Eggman has a great showing until That One Moment, I appreciate Tails' arc and Gamma's story - even if the latter is kind of irrelevant to most of the overarching stuff, which is one of my aforementioned issues - and I like how it focused on one aspect of previous lore (Angel Island) and expanded upon it in a way that felt natural, which is much better than haphazardly trying to connect absolutely every bit of lore and making the world feel smaller like what Flynn tends to do. Out of all the monster-themed stories in the games, the original reigns supreme.

Sonic Colours: Yeah yeah, I know Sonic said that one line that everyone hates and ironically loves to repeat more times than Sonic himself actually said it, but no matter your stance on the writing for everyone not named Eggman, the intergalactic theme park concept is just inherently fun, and the game really gets its mileage out of it with all the different attractions and announcements from the rotund one. Not to mention, using such a flashy setup as a ploy to convert innocent aliens into rabid beasts is quintessentially Eggman, since it would be his benefit to screw others over while having childlike fun at the same time. Like SA1, there are some details I would change, but overall I really do get a kick out of it.

Sonic Forces: The most controversial choice, I'm sure. Yes, this is mostly based on What Could Have Been, but unlike the majority of unironic '06 fans, I can actually acknowledge that; the setup of Eggman finally conquering the planet is just too good to pass up. And besides, however flawed in execution it may admittedly be, I still think it had a lot of good moments. Eggman still got to show a whole lot of underhanded deviousness, and other characters ended up well too, like Shadow. And I still like Infinite in all his edgy glory, because no matter how tryhard he is, he somehow still feels less so than Scourge or Surge.

Other game plots/concepts I like: - Eggman dumping Sonic on an island purely to murder his ass in over-the-top ways in SEGA Sonic Arcade. Simple yet brutal, I love it. - While I may not care for Heroes' plot as it is, the idea of a robot copying Chaos' data entices me. With Eggman's unused SA2 line about him vowing to conquer the world with his own power, him using said data to create his own Perfect Chaos (metaphorically, not literally) would be a great way to expand on that. - Battle is a little overly talky in its structure for my liking, and certain characters were unflattering (*coughAmycough*), but building up Emerl and his friendship with the group, only to then be forced to put a bullet in him when he goes apeshit, is what I call a power move. They played it really well… minus the obligatory upstaging of Eggman. - Solaris had the most potential out of all the post-Chaos monsters, and it could have worked as a deliberate contrast to Chaos. Iblis and Mephiles, on the other hand, can fuck right off. - Erazor and his relationship with Shahra, and how Sonic ultimately deals with him. - Robot pirates in Rush Adventure. Cause robot pirates are fun. - Eggman attempting a sort-of corporate takeover in Zero Gravity.

- Sonic being willing to do the right thing even if he's demonized for it in Black Knight. - Eggman successfully controlling the Time Eater in Generations. - Eggman clawing his way back to his rightful status in Lost World. - Giant robot that felt more like a worthy titan than the actual Titans in Mania. - Team Sonic Racing having a mysterious shady newcomer organize a tournament, and it turns out they DON'T have malicious motives for it… I dunno, there's something wholesome about it. Maybe it's because Big got to be right about something. :>

Non-game plots/concepts I like: - Eggman faking a "New Villain usurped me, you gotta stop him uwu" narrative in order to lure Sonic into a trap in the OVA. - The Helen episode of Sonic X. <3 - Eggman becoming a Super Eggman in the second movie, and in a way that's tailor-made for his characteristics at that. - Eggman creating a bio-mechanical virus with a devoted simp at his side SHOULD HAVE WENT DOWN A LOT BETTER THAN IT DID GRRRRRRRR

I know most of these revolve around Eggman, but I never claimed to not be a fanboy. :P And being the Bowser to Sonic's Mario, 90% of all Sonic plots start from his machinations, so it'd be hard to ignore him anyway.