#caveat important

[stil-lindigo]

the way that the iran/israel situation has escalated so fast into potential ww3 is terrifying but its also worth saying that if you care about palestinian lives and holding israel accountable, it's not the time to be muting tags. western media is gonna be doing its best to make iran seem like the aggressor. you'll play a part in upholding the narrative by bearing witness now.

[mariyekos]

Going back to @kurookami-no-kuraitsuki's reblog, Halone's a bit of a mixed bag, but isn't as outright dismissive of concerns as Nophica is. Now Halone's my patron deity so I'm definitely coming at this with a bit of bias, but I read her words as acknowledging the faults in some who worship her even if she doesn't outright scorn them, whereas Nophica just gives the elementals the green light.

(Above: screenshots of the third and fourth Halone line below)

Halone: How bold you are to summon me, NAME. 'Tis no less than I expect from one of mine. Halone: In recognition of your valor and deeds, I offer a word of counsel. Halone: Well do I know the power of men's hopes - of mortal faith. And there is no faith that I reject. Halone: Yet in every age, there are those who invoke the name of the divine for their own ends. Be not misled by them.

In the third line, Halone seems to be saying that there is no inherent wrongness in being faithful, as it is powerful in its own right. But in the fourth line, she warns against those who use faith as their excuse to do bad things. No names are named and no details are given, but this acknowledgment of the misuse of the divine to further one's own ends (like what King Thordan and Archbishop Thordan VII, among others, did) is key. Yes faith can be good and she has no problem with faith itself (line 3), but people can abuse faith for selfish reasons, so you should watch out and not be misled (line 4). She does not explicitly mention Ishgard like Nophica mentions the elementals, and she does not say their actions are good, just that faith is.

Basically, Halone seems to be implying she is not happy people have done selfish (or bad) things in her name, which can be read as her not being happy about what some Ishgardians have done even if she is fine with being worshipped in general. It's the actions that are bad, even if the belief is not. And that's what makes the two different!

I know it's in the RB above mine, but I'm going to put Nophica's lines (including the two before it) in the text here just to make it a little easier for me to read and compare.

(Above: screenshot of the lines below).

Nophica: Why, if it isn't NAME! You with to speak, do you? Nophica: Tell me, have you ever met an elemental? Nophica: Many hold that they were born of me, and as I mentioned, they are the voice of those who abide in the Twelveswood. Nophica: At times, they may seem excessive in their actions, but it is out of an abundance of love. So pray be good to them, and heed their warnings!

As @eriyu said, Nophica seems to be just dismissing the problem of the elementals. Even if Nophica doesn't hold any power over them, her message is one of approval. I will note that she doesn't explicitly confirm she actually made the elementals, just that other people think she did. But it's less an issue of whether or not she made the elementals or whether or not she holds any power over them, and more an issue of whether she's fine with what they're doing. Since she tells you to be nice to them and that their actions are done for a good reason (love), I'd say yes, she is.

So...

Nophica basically says "yes the elementals may be doing excessive (bad) things, but it's okay because it comes out of the goodness of their hearts. Do what they say, and don't blame them for being bad!"

Halone basically says "faith can come from the goodness of people's hearts and I like that, but you must be wary of those who use faith as an excuse to do selfish (bad) things. Don't let yourself be led astray by those who do bad!"

If neither can actually stop people/creatures from doing anything, the only thing we can judge them on is what they think of those actions. When the creatures associated with Nophica do bad things, Nophica says to listen because it's for a good reason. When the creatures associated with Halone do bad things, Halone says not to listen because it's not. Hence why I find Nophica's line "worse" than Halone's. One goddess gives an excuse and says to keep doing said things, while the other gives an explanation and says not to.

Tl;dr Nophica does not acknowledge the faults of those associated with her whereas Halone does and that's what matters to me.

what baffles me about the Gridania situation isn't that the problems "still" haven't been dealt with; it's that the story seems less interested in exploring them than it did in ARR. there is so much ARR content that clearly acknowledges that the racism is a problem, that the xenophobia is a problem, that the elementals are a problem...

but later storylines are just more and more content to gloss over it all. as of 6.5 we just have Nophica telling us "teehee, listen to the elementals; all the shitty things they do are just because they love too much :)"

[beannoss]

Something I think about a lot and wonder if maybe gets overlooked in Twilight’s story and as vitally indicative of his character is actually in the very first chapter:

Anya isn’t needed for Strix. Twilight decides to adopt her anyway.

[Spoiler warning: Mostly this post deals with early chapters already in the anime but there is reference to chapter 62, which has not yet been animated and will be in season 3]

Twilight decides it — “I’m going to rework the mission so it doesn’t involve a child because that’s too dangerous” and he’s 100% right! Donovan Desmond is canonically a far right warmonger with fascistic authoritarian aims. His government made liberal use of the SSS — a group to mirror the Stasi — who continue to operate in morally dubious ways (much more likely they’re actively morally reprehensible, though we’ve mostly only had rumours of that so far). From what we can tell, Desmond is at best an absent father and likely actually worse than that: if that's how he treats his own children, imagine how he might treat others. And the timeline seems to indicate that the experimentation performed on Anya was done under Desmond's government — even if Twilight isn't aware of experimentation on children, he is aware of both human and animal experimentation under Desmond's government. Taking all that and also the complexity of Strix's aims, undoubtedly there were other things that could be done, more straightforward if not necessarily easier.

So. Why? Why entertain the change at all? And then, having entertained it, why go back when the reasoning is indisputable?

On the Doylist level, I think Endo wanted to ensure that Anya had some agency within the set up — Endo also does this with Yor. It would be much harder to be on Twilight’s side fully, or to trust him on an ethical level/take him as any sort of moral authority, if he were just straightforwardly using these two people. To have them be active and consenting participants (arguably to actually be affirming the arrangement: Twilight sets it up, but Anya and Yor actually make it happen) even if the audience only knows the depth of their knowledge/motivations/etc currently, shifts the power dynamic in important ways.

But it also the set up tells us important things about Twilight. He is largely impatient, cold, detached in chapter one. His overarching feelings towards Anya are, I think, real annoyance, real confusion, and real impatience. He just doesn’t understand this damn kid and it turns out she’s a person which is frankly unacceptable — he’d needed and anticipated an automaton, ideally of himself in miniature form. (Though I think one could ponder whether Twilight was, in many ways, an automaton himself at this point, but that's maybe for another meta 🙃)

He’s not entirely unmoved of course — we're given to understand he’s affected when Franky tells him how many times Anya’s been adopted and returned, and isn't amused by Franky's joke about names. Franky's comment — "Just don't get attached" — reinforces this. The prospect of “the future” perturbs Twilight when he’s reading the parenting books. His initial reaction to Anya’s kidnap is horror. All these are true too.

Then there’s also this, from earlier in the chapter:

It’s exposition, yeah, and it’s also exposing. "Hopes" and "joys" are very specific words to describe those events. It could simply have been "A marriage? An ordinary life?" but describing them as such — hope for marriage; joy in ordinary life — expose something of what Twilight feels about those two experiences and, on the flipside, they expose what he deems he's lacking. No hopes of intimacy; no joy in (an ordinary) life. There's an argument as well, of course, that he's being ironic but I don't think that actually invalidates the above analysis. Drawing attention to 'hope' and 'joy' at all are revealing, regardless of Twilight's tone in thinking of them. I think it's also interesting this panel, taken in conjunction with a pair of panels in chapter 62, Twilight's backstory. The above is almost a pulled out version of this below panel of Twilight's recollection of his childhood, and of course the returning image of not just a rubbish bin but a rubbish bin on fire when it comes to disposing of his identity:

Back to Strix. Both his final interaction with Karen and the whole everything of the framing of Strix is making Twilight think (and feel, ahem) things that he hasn't for some time. Twilight decides, I’m reworking this. It can’t proceed this way. Not because Anya is a pain in his ass, not because she’s not as (apparently) intellectually advanced as he’d originally thought, not even because he thinks he can find another child who would better be exactly what mission parameters called for. No:

And what changes his mind is Anya asking to come home.

One of the important parts of this to me is this:

He seeks consent.

This moment is a keystone, I think, to understanding Twilight. It’s also more telling than he maybe realises. Twilight is decisive — we all laugh because he spirals at the drop of a hat when his daughter or wife look even mildly upset but outside those (also very telling) scenarios, he makes decisions and he pursues them. Often he makes decisions quickly. He’s a dab hand at it; it’s a large part of why he’s as good a spy as he is.

He’d decided to change Strix.

Anya asks him, in essence, not to.

So, he doesn't.

But it's wild that he entertains keeping her request at all — why? Why even entertain it? It’s dangerous; it’s impractical; there are too many moving parts outside his direct control; Anya isn’t the sort of child he’d wanted for the mission if he’d spent any time thinking about what a child might actually be like; Strix is in many ways an extremely long shot anyway, Desmond could just stop attending for reasons unknown and unrelated; etc.

So, yeah, why? Maybe because of this —

In conjunction, I often think of this moment in the cruise arc:

Twilight first naming the feeling as lonesome, and secondly tacitly conceding that he perceives Yor as a companion and that that relationship is important to him, something to be missed. What makes this for me though is that Anya calls this out "Papa's you're so sappy" and Twilight's reaction is that of someone caught-out. He doesn’t say “nuh-uh!” but he may as well have. Essentially, something landed a bit close to home, hm? Maybe some of that hope for marriage? A soupçon of joy of an ordinary life?

Twilight’s loneliness underpins many of his decisions with his family — probably without him being fully conscious of it. I think he is at least somewhat conscious of it, but also if he looks too closely... Well, best not to. I could fill this post, I think, with images that demonstrate his loneliness throughout the series; that sorrowful/pensive close-up of his eye(s) is one of the abiding motifs for Twilight throughout. I'd probably start with this one from Twilight's backstory arc:

Anya's request plays directly off his loneliness. Still though, he doesn’t immediately capitulate — he emphasises Anya’s choice. Is she sure? The last day has been scary for a child (and for him, but he's ignoring that part) and Twilight, in his increasing recognition that Anya is a person, is probably aware in the back of his mind that he hasn’t exactly been warm or welcoming or at all patient with her. Things that people respond to — he's otherwise excellent at manipulating people, so of course he understands this. So. Given she'd just had this scary experience, given he hasn't exactly been great with her: Is she sure? She wants to come home — with him?

I think the moment may get a little lost because Anya says something riffing off his own earlier thoughts and self-revelation (featuring that shadowed, lonely eye motif again!)

Were this a post about Anya, I’d talk about how it’s an important character moment for her as well by way both of demonstrating her agency/choice and also that she isn’t nearly as dumb as Twilight thinks (and the audience, maybe, also thinks).

But in my view, she didn’t actually need to say anything about it making her cry. I think she could simply have said yes in that moment and Twilight would have agreed.

Twilight’s an unreliable narrator; he’s disconnected from his heart and that shrouds his own motivations from himself — something he actually also concedes in this chapter!

And it shrouds from us just how much he actually understands himself. He’s also a master of deflection. Easy to assume or say that bringing Anya home is just to align with Strix. Nothing more to see here; nothing else going on. But also that ripping off of the mask in the panel above — and the literal 'riiip' sound effects — also indicate to us that this is an unveiling to himself.

In my view, Twilight agreeing to Anya's request, deciding to go back to original mission parameters, actually shifts his motivations, subtly. Now he’s committed not only to the original mission goals, but also to Anya. He needs Anya to succeed at Strix, not only for Strix's sake, but also because otherwise the mission will end and she’ll have to go back to the orphanage, and he’s just agreed with her not to do that (not right away, in any case). I don’t think at this point he’s thinking it’s forever — his thoughts throughout the manga indicate he still expects the Forgers to be temporary. I don't think the shift in motivation is necessarily even conscious, but given the set up, I think something inside Twilight recognises that agreeing to bring Anya home is a compact, jointly engaged. Mostly all this has become subsumed into Strix: he makes decisions. He pursues them. He deflects, even from himself. Of course it's just for the mission; this saved him the trouble of reworking it, of figuring out something else. Nothing more to see; no need to think any more on it. And to be fair to him, Strix is very high stakes, resting pretty solely on his shoulders, so of course that is, objectively, motivation enough. Why even consider beyond that?

But I personally think that to the extent he's aware of it at all, there is something else going on, that he wants to have Anya for as long as it takes him to work something else out for her. If that's the case, then of course, we have Occam’s razor: the simplest solution may be the best one.

Maybe Twilight should just keep Anya himself, eh?

[Image description: gif from Spy x Family season 1, episode 1. Twilight and Anya have just found out Anya passed her entrance exam and are overjoyed. Celebratory, Twilight picks Anya up and swoops her into the air as they smile at one another. End image description]

[ot3]

double whammy of invoking bioessentialism for media analysis and then namedropping shonen manga as the best female character writing you've ever exposed yourself to.

[cementcornfield]

Some of Tee and Ja'Marr's thoughts on the Tee Situation

Tee said to me 'right now I get to play with one of the, if not the, best quarterbacks in the game, I get to play with one of, if not the, best wide receivers in the game, that opens up so much more for me.' And then he said 'this offense is designed for so many different players to be spotlighted, the way that I am used in this offense so plays to my strengths.' And then he said to me, 'can you guarantee I can have that exact situation anywhere else?'

....

So do I think he's taking a home discount? No. But I do think that he is very very smart, he sees the whole picture out there...

....

It's very easy to compare this situation to what Ja'Marr had at LSU with Joe Burrow and Justin Jefferson. And Ja'Marr has said Tee is very different than Justin Jefferson. That every single minute with Justin Jefferson was a competition. That everything was who makes the more dynamic catch, who has more catches in practice, who runs faster? Everything was that way. Ja'Marr had to speak up and demand the ball a lot at LSU, because so was Justin. Ja'Marr told me that he doesn't have to do that in Cincinnati because Tee, and this is a quote from Ja'Marr, is one of the most unselfish humans you'll ever meet.

[opalescent--eye]

"We build our own prisons. Bars forged of oaths, codes, commitments. Walls of self-doubt and accepted limitation. We inhabit these cells, these identities ... I thought I could break free by eliminating those I deemed my jailors. But...

I think the cycle only ends when you find the will to walk away."

[gif by molinaesque]

[crescentfool]

having the hc that minato is ace is incredibly funny sometimes when you think about how ryoji is oh so very bi because it's like. "ah. death stole my ability to be attracted to people," in the same way that ryoji stole minato's eye color and energy level. like wow, thanks ryoji, you just keep finding things to steal from minato!

[thatswhatsushesaid]

Okay, but what do ✨YOU✨ think JGY would think about LXC’s flute solo trait? 🤣

I'm experiencing deja vu, anon, because I feel like I have for sure answered an ask about this once before!! but I can't find it, woe etc.

anyway, jgy will patiently sit through as many flute solos as his er-ge feels compelled to perform, both because it is always a joy and a delight for him to listen to lxc play, and also because it's not like anyone else in lxc's life is granting him the space to express his feelings in whatever way makes him feel the most at ease!

like in all seriousness, lxc spends so much of his time and energy across all adaptations of the canon taking care of everyone else around him, and there is exactly one person in his life who makes space to provide him with support (emotional and material), both before and after he actually has the power to do so.

jgy's love language in the text consistently manifests through gift-giving (e.g., fairy for jin ling, all the presents he gives to huaisang which are tailored specifically to his interests) and acts of service (e.g., protecting and sheltering lan xichen during the war, using his newly acquired influence to secure the funds to rebuild the cloud recesses, as well as [iirc] preventing lwj from facing too much political blowback after wwx's death; literally dropping everything in the middle of hosting a banquet to help huaisang with yet another problem, etc).

so basically, imo, if what lxc needs every so often is to exorcise his own emotional demons through impromptu flute solos, there is no one in his life better equipped to understand why than jgy.

[agnesandhilda]

as a Makeup Understander my official position is that most of the characters in blue lock whose designs include what I can only interpret as in-universe eyeliner probably use black WATERPROOF liquid liner to get looks like that that stay on during games—except for kaiser, who could plausibly be using a really tough waterproof pencil liner

[rimouskis]

there are bed people, there are couch people, and then there are computer desk people. these three refuse to understand each other.

[cornedbeefhashtags]

Can we make out while watching Clue?

YES, but only if you’ve seen it before!

[fightwing]

🔥 Unpopular opinion about your muse? 

i dont think its necessarily popular but just seen often in the tags, but i am the #1 hater of the 'dick was the angry robi.n' thing thats been going around. i just never saw it that way in any of the early dick!robi.n runs ive read and i know nostalgia goggles are a thing but dick and bruce generally regard their early years very positively. and yes dick did want to kill tony zucc.o but i feel like we're missing the plot here seeing as how a big part of that story was that he didn't!!! that he had the chance, he had the desire, and he didn't. and just in general i'm just a very big fan of the dick and bruce were exactly what the other needed to see the good in the world at that time idea, and the whole 'light to the dark knight' schtick.

[astriiformes]

Fucked up that Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium and Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica were published the same year. 1543 was just like. Hey what if all of science changed so much forever.

[variousqueerthings]

people who see themes in a text that are intended to be unsavoury and respond by going "how dare there be unsavoury themes in this text, does the writer know?"

people who see bad guys having bad opinions and respond by going "the text is sanctioning the opinions of the bad guys by presenting them to begin with"

people who see "good" guys having "bad" opinions and respond by going "this text is sanctioning the opinions of bad guys by presenting people who aren't perfect"

people who see characters having complex and uncomfortable journeys in which they're not always the uncomplicated good guy/handling their situations in unpalatable ways and go "but if the character we're meant to be rooting for isn't purely good, then that character must be bad, and if a character is bad then this text is bad for depicting them in the first place"

people who see interesting, charismatic, enjoyable to engage with bad guys and respond by going "this means that the writer/audience approves of [x] bad behaviour in real life"

people who see bad guys occasionally or often showing behaviours that they might agree with and respond by going "this means that they're being redeemed for their badness or their badness is approved of by the narrative, because no bad person ever does things I would ever agree with"

people who see bad guys having self-awareness about their actions and possibly even redemption arcs and respond by going "but no bad person can ever be less bad, all bad people are uncomplicatedly, un-changeably bad and must be punished, and any text that says otherwise is sanctioning badness"

people who see intentionally foreshadowed narrative moments in complex (and often not even that complex) narratives coming and respond by going "i can't believe that the writer is working intentionally with the audience to set up this moment, it must be bad writing, because they've been depicting bad behaviours and therefore the story/characters doesn't/don't deserve catharsis"

people who get to a point or the end of a complex (and often not even that complex) narrative that has depicted unsavoury themes that ties up the exact threads that it was following, and respond by going "this was clearly an accident, considering the unsavoury themes that made me uncomfortable, there was no way the writer was doing this on purpose"

people who engage with a story where things aren't all neatly wrapped in a bow, and not all emotional threads can ever be fully explored, because it's emulating the limitations people have in real life and respond by going "but if everything isn't perfectly wrapped up then that means that the writer endorses bad things happening, and should be punished/sanctioned in real life"

people who engage with tragedies and respond by going "i can't believe this was tragic"

people who engage with gothic romances and respond by going "I can't believe people did bad things"

people who engage with horror and respond by going "I can't believe this was gruesome"

people who engage with dramas and respond by going "I can't believe people couldn't communicate adequately"

people who engage with a story that includes conflict and respond by going "I didn't like that this story had conflict"

people who read stories and go "I didn't like that there was an arc"

people who engage with stories as if they're the enemy and any well-constructed element is an accident and not the craft of storytelling, rather than attempting to engage with what the texts are trying to do -- whether or not they manage it is something one can discuss afterwards, but people who fall down at the first hurdle by not even asking "what is the text about and why is it about this" and then perhaps the next question which is "what is the format of this narrative and why is it being told this way"

I think literacy and analysis ought to be a recurring class throughout adulthood, considering some of the things I've seen. sometimes it feels as if people don't like stories at all

[magratpudifoot]

I've been ruminating on a Disc Horse since some time last night, and I am rewarding myself with a piece of carrot cake for keeping out of it and just reading some books.

But...just checking in...do we all know what oppositional reading is? Where a consumer of a piece of art can come to a different conclusion about the meaning of that art than what the author intended? A different interpretation than what is commonly accepted as "right"? And that doesn't make the oppositional reader wrong, and in fact is totally fine and normal?

We all know this, yes?

It is very important to me that we know this.