#do i see any narrative purpose for that? not atm

[whentheynameyoujoy]

Of my many wishes for Alecto the Ninth that would make me explode if fulfilled, Alecto somehow finding that birthday T-shirt from Pyrrha and remembering would lead to the greatest meltdown by far.

[shadowshrike]

Astarion on Halsin Leaving

I can't stop thinking about Astarion's lines when Halsin chooses to leave your party, so have a fun mini-analysis. Note that this text is pulled via datamining because I don't have all the appropriate saves atm. Since the context of your personal story is everything in this game and can wildly change how lines come across, please take my thoughts here as a fun exercise with the text and nothing more.

I think the things that are needed to fully understand where my head is at regarding his lines are two fold:

1. How Astarion talks about other companions leaving

Shadowheart and Wyll can both also leave in Act 2. His responses are as follows.

Astarion: I don't see what Shadowheart got so upset about - it was not that nice of a temple.

For Shadowheart he gently deflects the crux of the matter. This isn't surprising because he is a master of minimizing other people's grievances when he thinks they're legitimate but inconvenient. Otherwise, he responds fairly mildly.

Astarion: So, that's how the legend ends. The Blade of Frontiers, cast down to the Hells. Hardly a fitting ending. But so few are.

Unlike Shadowheart, Wyll is forced to leave by being dragged to the hells. There's no justification he needs to rebuff for Wyll leaving the party's side, so instead, he uses it to double down on his philosophy that 'nice guys finish last and the world is a dangerous and horrible place.' Which, ironically, is not entirely unreasonable given the circumstances.

2. How other companions talk about Halsin leaving

The Good companions don't blame Halsin for leaving. Wyll even blames himself for not doing enough. Karlach also regrets the loss of another strong person around, reminding us once again that Halsin is physically imposing in the narrative, even if the stats say otherwise because of how D&D balance works.

Gale: Druids will always follow nature's purpose over any mortal threat. Halsin goes where he is needed, as must we.

Jaheira: Halsin long urged the Harpers not to abandon this land to the curse. I cannot blame him, for being unable to bear it a second time.

Wyll: I can't blame Halsin for leaving. We could have, should have, done more for him and for the cursed lands. They may never again feel the breathe of life on them. What a shame.

Karlach: Pity about Halsin. I was getting used to having an extra Strong around. He smelled nice, too. Like outside.

(Fun fact regarding Karlch's comment: Astarion has a line where he refers to Halsin as "musky bear-fellow" - musky is also the word used to describe the attractive smell of corpse flowers - and Halsin's underwear smells like an herb garden according to its flavor text. Apparently, the guy canonically smells really good?)

Even Shar Path Shadowheart expresses regret in losing Halsin. Not because she wants to end the Shadow Curse, but because Halsin's nice to look at.

Shadowheart: This land remains cloaked by Lady Shar's power - good. A shame it cost us Halsin as a travelling companion though. He may have been misguided, but I liked looking at him.

That brings us to...

Astarion's tantrum over Halsin leaving

Go ahead and listen to it yourself first, and then I'll dive into both lines.

Astarion: Just like that hulking bear to stomp off in a huff. I swear, druids care more about the plants of this land than the people.

"Just like that hulking bear to stomp off in a huff."

This first statement is not only indignant and deflecting, it's so factually false that it's laughable. Halsin is always calm and regretful when staying behind no matter how you treat him.

Player: You have to come - I need you. Halsin: This place needs me. I wish it were different - I truly do. As long as the curse remains, so must I.

Player: Do as you wish. Halsin: This isn't what I wish. It's simply the way it has to be - I'm sorry.

Player: The shadow curse was always your burden - not mine. Halsin: Yes, and so it must remain. I wish you success on your path. Had things been different, I might have walked it with you.

Player: Perhaps we can still do something to lift the curse. Halsin: No. If you linger, you'll only jeopardise your own mission. This is my burden alone now until either the curse is lifted, or I breathe my last.

Halsin is renowned for letting people treat him horribly and taking it on the chin. Him pushing back is usually related to calmly setting boundaries or expectations. The only times I can think of offhand where he raises his voice in anger is with Kagha, if you interfere with the portal, and briefly after certain parts of the Evil companion routes, though not as intensely (I might do a write-up on that later because his reactions are interesting). He certainly never "stomp[s] off in a huff", and he's not doing it now either.

However, the way this is worded gives me pause. Because "just like [him]" said so angrily gives the impression that Halsin has reacted this way to Astarion before. Given Astarion's habit of rewriting exactly how events went down to absolve himself of accountability, it makes me wonder if Astarion's tried to get a rise out of Halsin in camp and been shut down. Since Halsin is the only Good companion at that point who is also old and worldly enough to not get flustered by Astarion's cruelty, mind games, and flirting, it wouldn't surprise me if Astarion has built up resentment. Halsin refuses to be manipulated or confirm Astarion's cynical worldview, and Astarion isn't ready to consider changing his mind with Cazador on the horizon.

"I swear, druids care more about the plants of this land than the people."

This is, again, a false statement wrapped in a little more truth than the first. Druids are indeed infamous for putting nature above humans (see: Shadow Druids), and Halsin talks a big game about Balance and Nature. However, Halsin is probably the most people-oriented traditional druid we see in the game, going so far as to cause chaos in his grove by aggressively taking in refugees and personally traveling with an undead and servant of Shar because they need help. He chooses people over Silvanus' classic teachings so often that it's fascinating.

That aside, given what the shadow-cursed lands are doing to anyone on the way to Baldur's Gate, choosing to stay and attempt to lift the curse is hardly serving plants over people - the Absolute and the Shadow Curse are both significant threats to people. What Halsin is doing, however, is prioritizing his own problems over those of Astarion. He's setting aside the tadpole cause, not because he's selfish or duplicitous, but because he's not willing to abandon the other people he swore to help a century ago and has obsessed over ever since.

Some fun implications

Given all this information, there are many interesting ways to read Astarion's language beyond a surface "he hates Halsin and/or druids" level (gotta love his charlatan background making almost every line capable of ambiguity). Some personal favorite interpretations of his feelings:

Begrudging affection towards Halsin. Astarion has no reason to get so angry and make such absurd statements if he didn't want Halsin to stay. He certainly didn't make such a big fuss about other companions. However, since Astarion isn't in an emotional place to be able to consider Halsin's worldview seriously now that he's staring down Cazador, that admiration gets bungled into a "well screw you, I didn't like you anyway" attitude, much like how he handles some partner breakups.

Resentment and fear of being left behind or rejected. Astarion is selfish. He's been fairly consistent that he doesn't want to help others, but he also hates when no one helps him. That self-fulfilling prophecy is a rather large part of how he moves through (un)life and can easily continue through Act III depending on whether your dialog choices give him an opportunity to express it. Seeing a good person that he truly believes is good choosing something else over him makes the 'truth' of this cynical, self-centered worldview sting harder, especially as he is at his most vulnerable heading into Baldur's Gate.

Guilt for not doing more. Halsin has been clear about his priorities from the start. He's one of the most straightforward, reasonable communicators in the whole game. That means Astarion knew he would leave if the Shadow Curse wasn't lifted, especially since Halsin doesn't have a tadpole and, therefore, has no reason to risk his life for them. Since Astarion is almost universally unwilling to take blame for his own actions or inactions, he's trying to push the responsibility onto Halsin by painting him as unreasonable for following through on his stated priorities rather than let himself feel bad about not helping Halsin.

I'm sure there are even more readings you can think of, too. Hats off to this hidden bit of dialogue, the incredible delivery, and how much depth it brings to a relationship which is easy to ignore.

[bestworstcase]

The mentions of Cinder and her weakness to Silver Eyes due to the Grimm beetle remind me of a theory I have. I don't know how this would fit in with your theories, but I've been wondering if Cinder even IS the Fall Maiden. My thought is that Salem engineered the beetle to hold the powers of the Fall Maiden (or any Maiden), and Cinder can only use the Fall Maiden's power because the beetle is (currently) part of her.

ok.

to what narrative end?

the only narrative purpose this would serve is to 1. abrogate cinder’s agency by reframing this magic as something salem tricked her into believing was hers but is capable of revoking at any time, and 2. punish cinder for her wrongdoing through loss of magical power when she leaves salem. if you think cinder’s story is about how the former child slave needs to be brought low and humbled before she can become good, erm…sure?

but that’s. a) not what cinder’s story is about and b) also a wild postulation away from the text because in the end, cinder receives the fall maiden in accordance with the magic’s own rules, i.e. she’s in amber’s final thoughts and the fall maiden literally rips itself free of the aura transfer machine to choose cinder.

we’ve seen that this magic doesn’t obey attempts to circumvent and control it in the way you’re proposing. the only reason the grimm beetle works at all is that it works with rather than against the magic’s rules: cinder half-kills amber (leaves her comatose) in a manner that makes it impossible for amber to think of anyone else, so she claims half the magic. the grimm beetle is just a murder weapon, likely one designed to force the magic to start cleaving from amber’s aura before she fully dies.

moreover (and more importantly), the fall maiden is the maiden of choice and cinder’s thematic role as an agent of choice in this story is very clear and narratively critical; she’s the maiden who chose herself, the one whom ozpin cannot control because she knows the truth about him and his world and is bent on burning it to the ground, she prevents the use of the ATMs, she responds to salem’s cruelty in v8 by throwing down a gauntlet and making salem blink first, she chooses to use the lamp rather than choosing not to act out of fear of ‘wasting’ the last question like ruby and hazel did, she is the furious embodiment of the fall maiden’s fairytale lesson (to see and appreciate what one already has: “you atlas elites are all the same! you think that hoarding power means you’ll have it forever, but it just makes the rest of us hungrier! …and i refuse to starve.”), etc.

the narrative continually legitimizes her as the true fall maiden/maiden of choice—this is also why she isn’t allowed (narratively) to Get any of the other maidens—and she became the fall maiden through an act that prevented the corruption of the process via the capture of amber’s soul. it’s. bananas to think that she’s she’s Somehow not actually the maiden because the real maiden is the grimm bug that got smashed halfway through killing amber. like ??

also did we forget that the magic cleaves to aura which grimm. famously. do not have.

[inusmasha]

Just rambling about InuKag dynamics I don't see ppl talk about.

this is 'long post' disclaimer .

Its a ghostly day today, and I have it all to myself. So while defrosting this english muffin I started musing about what sort of dynamics I like most in fiction. Like not just romantic wise. I wanted to figure out what was.. the tension? I enjoyed most... between what two archetypes?

And I what I noticed is that I love a good Mentor/Mentee dynamic. It's something that's been pretttyyyy consistent since childhood. (I can't name any atm to help my argument but you feel compelled to keep reading)

However, I didn't see how this would fit InuKag? My Titanic? My ship of dreams? My childhood? InuKag sometimes stands out like a sore thumb compared to my other interests. I was going to chalk it up to "Well it's baby's first anime so.." UNTIL..

I realized the fandom tends to focus on how Kagome helped Inuyasha (recover his lost heart, humanity, the unconditional selfless love, understanding ect.) but like.. we don't really talk about what he provides for her as much? And I'd love to indulge you with my take but we'd have to go over why I think Kagome decided to leave the modern world and opt for a life in wilderness of the Feudal Era.

Yes, yes. A big part is Inuyasha. That is a huge driving factor. But Im saying step back and see what's happening in the grand scheme of things.

I think..for Kagome..her romance with Inuyasha acted as a portal to a type of freedom she didn't know she craved. He acts as a guide of sort. He gives her access and safe passage to explore this dangerous world fully without fear. It reminds me of when I was with my first bf and I was over the moon happy when I realized I could walk around at night with him. It was THRILLING to my sheltered teen ass. It was like I was holding the key to the VIP room. I was allowed backstage. He was a door that opened me up to new experiences that would not of been available to me at that time otherwise!

And then the benefit of being immersed in nature. With your lover. Who is a figure that exists outside of the society that was keeping you locked up in the first place. Kagome's name is also referencing 'a bird in a cage'.

Like?

Kagome also serves as a guide for Inuyasha. She brings him back from the liminal space of the forest to the village/community/connection. Again opening him up to the possibility of trusting others and forming bonds and setting down roots in the village.

Kagome also represents us the Audience. She is our perspective. She is "The Ordinary Teenage Girl". She's pulled into the well like we are being pulled into the narrative. She grapples with her identity. Her purpose. Her abilities. She's lip singing to Kelly Clarkson with her hairbrush in front of the mirror. She's trying to get to school but...OOP...You know what? I'm 16. I'm suddenly in a fairy tale. The faries spirited me away and I can't take the test right now. The magical jewel was in my hip you see. I'll think about high school entrance exams later when I'm done shooting my sparkly arrows.

You can't sit there and tell me that you didn't long to escape the druggery that came after graduating lol? The what so I do now? The who am I ? And where do I belong? What major do I want? I have to buy a house now? No? I have to fix my credit score-

No babe. You're going to hitch a ride on your bf's back with ya hair down and eat fruit by a waterfall. He's going to ask you wtf a test is to the sound of a million birds chirping in the morning. Then you're going to go back to your loving village that welcomes you home and calls you a hero.

It makes sense that she stayed. It makes sense. You just gotta... see the vision.. you gotta FEEEEL the escapism.

Anyway yeah lol. Not really a mentor to each other per say but their meeting was a catalysis for a lot of growth and learning and trials and tribulations that changed them for the better. And it just feels similar.

[sapphire-weapon]

All the RE fandom proved while shouting at you was:

1. They have no game and don’t know what flirting looks like.

2. They don’t know what a hobby is.

3. The majority of the Twitter EagleOne side of the fandom are cowards and it’s pathetic.

4. They have a weird relationship with sex and need some serious therapy.

5. Aeon fandom is the second dumbest fandom I’ve ever seen. Absolutely the most self absorbed though. I can see why the rest of the RE fandom hates them. I do too now.

I also 100% believe you’ll be proven right in time. Thanks for having genuine discussions on characters and story arcs on your blog. I truly appreciate it.

The hobby one was really strong. I literally had to bury my face in a pillow to stifle the barking laughter that came out of my face because it was hella early in the morning, and my roommate was still asleep.

It wasn't as funny as the person who literally screencapped someone's tumblr post and circled a paragraph in it and tried to treat it like an objective source of fact that I was stupid for not knowing.

It also wasn't as funny as the person who, without a hint of irony, tried to pass off "Leon couldn't have hit on Ashley in RE4make because of what happens in the original RE4 and also RE6." as a legitimate argument.

And it also wasn't as funny as the person who wrote up and sent me a screenshot of a barely coherent rant in Notepad about how Leon doesn't really even like Ashley as a person, actually, and I'm delusional for thinking he does anything more than tolerate her, and it was steeped with outward misogyny and projection.

But it was still really really strong.

Like, I can't express to you guys in words how genuinely and truly funny some people were about this. It was like people watching at WalMart without having to leave the house.

I've heard that the EagleOne discord has turned on me, though, which is just. Wild. Anyone is free to come talk to me about this at any time, but I'm not going to apologize for Aeon fandom getting butthurt, and I'm also not going to apologize for telling the truth about the canonical nature of the ship. What Aeon fandom feels or does is not our responsibility, and we need to stop acting as though it is.

But here's my discord if anyone wants to take it out on me:

I'm at work, so I can't have an active, lively discussion ATM, but I'll take whatever hits the fandom wants to throw at me if it'll make them feel better.

I'm not going to stop talking about narrative devices, storytelling techniques, character arcs, or the usage of layered dialogue -- nor will I give it a rest pointing out literary allusions or the purposes and usage of cinematography, imagery, or symbolism. Too many people were not taught how to do these things in school, and if we let discussions like this die, we may as well all just become Aeon fans who buy into Leon's mafia backstory and give up on thinking all together.

Keep bringing your ideas here, friends, and we'll keep working through the narrative together.

[lazyliars]

/rp

Before I get into it, I want to state that is EXPLICITLY an analysis of the Characters, and is not intended to touch on how the cc’s played them in a meta sense unless specifically stated otherwise.

Also, this is technically a part two to my other post, which took a more in depth look at Techno and Phil’s reactions to Tommy’s death. It’s not necessary when reading this post, but I don’t address their reactions here.

So. The question must be asked.

Are we [the Syndicate] the baddies?

Yes.

The End.

 Why are the Syndicate the baddies?

They got damn logo is a wither skull.

The End.

That's not how this works.

Yeah, yeah. You’re right.

The Syndicate's goals as an organization are not inherently bad. They seem to have good intentions behind them, and the focus on the freedom of it's individual group members is important to remember when talking about it; It is not a government. There is no hierarchical power system. No one is forced to do anything against their will, or surrender any of their rights or power to remain a member. It is not a government.

I also want to address Techno and Phil backing Ranboo into a corner – I see them getting a lot of flack for this, but I personally do not think it is relevant to the greater discussion, or necessarily representative of any contradictions within the organization. It was clearly played for laughs, and after they back off they clarify to Ranboo that they won't force him. Then later when Phil and Ranboo are alone, Ranboo feels safe enough to express that he felt like he was pressured into it, and Phil assures him he is allowed to leave whenever he wants; He is not being forced to do anything, and he is not being coerced or blackmailed.

None of the Syndicate members have done any wrongs against each other in the context of the Syndicate, OR gone against any of the Syndicate's core principles.

That, said, holy shit are they the baddies.

Listen, there's trying to telegraph a meaning or message to the audience and then there's having your logo be wither skulls on blackstone. That is straight out of the skit I keep referencing, seriously.

Okay, but, they laughed at it! It was played as a joke, just like the Ranboo thing!

The Ranboo thing was improv, the Syndicate's headquarters were planned – the artistic choices that they made reflect on what role they want the build and the organization inhabiting it to play in the future storylines.

Wither Skulls kind of have some CONNOTATIONS. Techno is an English major, I don't think he chose the most threatening imagery possible on accident, and then joked about the way people would interpret it just to stir the pot. This reads as hugely intentional.

And beyond that, the jokes they make during this part aren't “haha yeah, we look bad but we're actually good!” they're “you can tell by looking at these that we're the good guys wink wink, this is good guy stuff right here :)” It is a joke about how they are definitely not the good guys. This isn't even a case of unreliable narrators, this is one step down from flat out saying the meta intent.

But okay, I hear you, I'm talking about things that haven't happened yet. The Syndicate hasn't used any Withers, they could be an aesthetic choice.  Lets look at what they do in practice.

So, they barge into private property, assess Snowchester's right to continue existing based entirely on their own ideals of what Freedom is, and then only once Tubbo assures them that they have no standing leader do they grant the place their approval to, and I gotta stress this part, continue existing.

 In my Quackity meta, I already talked about how Government in the context of a M1necraft RP cannot be compared to IRL Governments on a one-to-one scale. They don't serve the same purposes or have the same type of power. What I didn't talk about was Agency in the context of m1necraft governments.

In an irl government, if you are born into one, you can't really leave without committing a massive overhaul on your life, which can be expensive and difficult, if not impossible for many people. Even in a “benevolent” government, the simple physicality of where you were born can prevent you from leaving it easily.

The same hurdles do not exist in the Dream SMP. People who join M1necraft governments choose to. They want to, either at the beginning when they form one, or later on when they join up. So far, no Government has just Sprung Up and forced the current residents of an area to become dependent on them, except maybe the Eggpire, who's status as a government is... shakey.

And even when people want to leave or separate from the government, they have been historically able to do so without any trouble or any effort from said governments to stop them. Jack Manifold emancipated from Manberg. Fundy and Quackity both left to start new nations. In all cases they were allowed to do so without any attempts on the part of the governments to stop them, either through force, or institutions preventing them from doing so.

The most anyone has lost when leaving a government is their house, which is still usually their property anyway, and is something that is easily rebuilt elsewhere and is inconvenient to move anyway.

The only exceptions to this might be Schlatt exiling Wilbur and Tommy - but even then, they weren’t trying to leave, they were trying to get back in, and of course the original L’manberg revolution, where Dream attempted to force L’manberg back into the Dream SMP, which wasn’t even a government at that point in time.

I don’t consider Phil’s house arrest an example of a government forcing someone to stay a citizen - that was treated less as a matter of a citizen wanting to leave the country and more as a threat to national security. Still pretty fucked up, but it’s a different issue.

What I'm saying is, If Tubbo wants to create a government out in the middle of nowhere, threatening no one, forcing no one to join either through force or desperation, and allowing people to join willingly because they want to, then he should be allowed to do that.

The Irony of the Syndicate, a group of people consisting of some of the richest, strongest people on the server, going around and enforcing 'Freedom' that entails no one person having more power than any other, is absurd. 

It shows an extreme lack of self-awareness and/or self-righteousness, as they seem to think that they deserve to be the ones who decide what constitutes a government.

Snowchester is a small independent nation - they shouldn’t have to live in fear of being obliterated if they don’t walk on eggshells to meet an arbitrary standard decided by people who’s only authority on the matter COMES FROM THEIR PERSONAL POWER. No one elected them! No one chose them! They were not “approved” by the server at large to enact this kind of law.

The Syndicate are not a government, but they are an unsupervised power structure exerting their ideals on a land that did not ask for them. Like, These people have invented an actual Authoritarian-Anarchist faction. How the hell did they manage this?????

Back on topic.

Tubbo shows them the crater left by his nukes. The reaction is oddly positive – the nukes are fine by the morals of the Syndicate, apparently. I'd argue that they come across as more impressed than anything else; they seem to respect Tubbo for having gotten ahold of “real” power.

(There's a few good memes out there about “We can excuse nuclear weaponry, but we draw the line at Government!”)

So. By the Syndicate's standards: A single person or group of acceptably equal persons with weapons of mass-destruction are only worth “keeping an eye on” because they might provoke other people.

Like, I consider Project Dreamcatcher to be one of, if not the most morally ambiguous thing Tubbo has ever done, largely because it was all on his own initiative. He holds some culpability for The Butcher Army and Phil's house arrest, but they weren't his ideas and he was mostly following Quackity at that point.

And Phil tells Tubbo, IMMEDIATELY AFTER SEEING THE NUCLEAR CRATER:

“Looks like you've reformed a little bit Tubbo, I'm proud.”

And it's fine. Crimes against nature? Fine. A sign of healing in fact!! Tubbo is having a sweeeelll time and he definitely didn't make these nukes specifically in fear of being attacked by these exact people! Tubbo is doing great. Tubbo is doing fine. Tubbo. is. FINE.

Anyway.

I don't think this presentation of the Syndicate was an accident. Looking at the greater lore of SMP right now, after the Egg is done, their list of enemies is slim, and considering that they seem solely invested in taking down governments, that leaves maybe Snowchester, Kinoko Kingdom, and Eret and the greater Dream SMP.

Snowchester has not been shown to be corrupt, evil, or have any intent to go down that route. The most ambiguous thing they've done is, again, is the nukes. Other than that, it's pretty much your average cottagecore snow village.

Kinoko is presented in an even more morally 'good' light, Karl having founded it specifically for his Time-travel library purposes, which are currently being treated by the narrative as a selfless act, if not downright heroic.

Eret is also a fairly 'good' aligned character atm. He's been on that redemption grind since the og betrayal, and doesn't seem keen on backtracking. He's actively tried to leverage his position as king to make things better, and hasn't been quiet about that. He was also 'validated' by Tommy*, a character who has been described both by his allies and enemies as “the hero,” so take that as you will.

What I'm getting at is, all of the current potential enemies for the Syndicate aside from the Egg, are currently being cast as 'good,' and if they were to be attacked, they would undoubtedly have the moral high-ground, unless something drastically changed.

The only potential shakeups I can think of is are a Dream escape and/or a Wilbur revival, both of which could draw the Syndicate's attention and ire, depending on how things go. That said, it's just as likely that either or both of them would join the Syndicate – Dream still has that favor, and Phil and Techno both seemed to think Wilbur would've agreed with their blowing up L'manberg.

Both of those characters are currently **villains – the fact that they're both prime candidates for the Syndicate is a huge indication of the direction it's going to go as the plot moves forward.

((*I know some people are gonna come at me for painting Tommy as the “deciding factor” of what is morally good, so lemme just stop you there. I'm not talking about Tommy somehow having the 'right' to decide who is and isn't good, and definitely not the right to decide who should and shouldn't be king. I'm saying that Tommy, a character who the narrative treats as, if not a good person, then a person who is trying to be good, was in support of Eret, a character who has also been trying to be good.

Eret doesn't gain the moral highground because Tommy said so, he gets it because a character who the narrative treats as trying to do better, acknowledged Eret's earnest attempts at doing the same.

**I'm referring to Wilbur here as a villain because Tommy seemed convinced he would be if he were to be brought back. There is always the possibility that he's wrong.))

So, to summarize this: I read the Syndicate as being intentionally positioned as future antagonists, if not outright villains of a future arc. They are NOT a Government but their goals are contradictory with their means, and it is important to keep in mind that they plan to enforce their own brand of freedom on people who did not grant them either the authority or permission to do so.

So, uh. Can you tell I loved these streams? They were seriously so good. I kept switching between Ranboo and Techno's POV's trying to keep up with everything. I still have to watch Niki's!

All in all, I'm super, super excited for whats coming next, egg stuff, Syndicate stuff, Tommy stuff, all of it.

[thejolteonmastertjspoilers]

Eeyyo remember that interview where Horikoshi said to watch Aoyama (Shinso, not Aoyama, Imisremembered) and Monoma during the final arc? Well we know why he said that about Aoyama now, but, why Monoma?

We’ve caught exactly one glimpse of him since the War arc started... We know nothing about what’s been going on in his head since the Joint Training arc and he (and the rest of class B for that matter) have been oddly absent from the story through all this planning for the final battle, despite class-B having been heavily involved in the previous battle...

... Horikoshi, I’m stumped, what are you doing?

Maaybe Monoma’s the other “traitor,” but, k’know, a mostly good guy “traitor,” obviously.

I could see him attempt to be a double-agent or infiltrator of sorts, emphasis on attempt, remember how deer-in-the-headlights he looked during the summer camp attack? More-so in the anime than manga, but still, even in the manga he uncharacteristically never voiced any opinion on the whole summer camp arc till Joint Training, and even then it was limited to Bakugo’s role and meant to get Midoriya riled up to brainwash him.

Perhaps Monoma tried to give the wrong location for the camp on purpose or something, that’s why “how’d they know we’re here” was the first thought to pop into his head.

We know those civilians in the leaks are taking orders from AFO, there’s more than just Aoyama. Plus, we know Shinsou’s going to be helping Aoyama somehow, creating a narrative opportunity for Monoma to work with him again if he’s also been tangled with AFO.

OOOR perhaps he’ll just come in clutch during the final battle, his quirk has infinite possibilities after all. As I’ve mentioned in a previous meta, he might simply be avoiding interacting with 1-A since the Joint Training arc cuz he’s stubborn, and feels awkward about how close the rest of his class has gotten to them, eheh.

Perhaps class-B as a whole will come in clutch & that’s why they’re absent atm too. They’re probably staying at UA & if AFO attacks the school while class-A is away...

Either way all I got is a lotta speculation & it’s driving me nuts. 😅

Oh,

Oh yeah, almost forgot, Deku’s Quirk’s become mostly public now hasn’t it? That’s another major thing that’s occurred since Monoma’s last interaction with him.

For all the analysis I’ve done on Monoma’s character, I don’t have the slightest idea how he’ll react to the true nature of Deku’s quirk. There’s several directions it could go.

On one hand, I can see him be justifiably VERY suspicious due to it’s similarities with AFO, also jealous to top off that already volatile situation.

On the other hand I can also see him empathize with Deku as their quirks are quite similar, once he gets enough information on it anyways. As in, like, they’ve both likely struggled with the thought that their power isn’t truly their own, right? Once he learns Deku was Quirkless before getting the Quirks, for all the “we must act unheroically to get by” talk I don’t see him holding the distrust against Deku for long. Of/c he doesn’t know Deku was quirkless yet as far as we know....

Then I’ve got a few ideas that almost veer off into fanfiction territory, like Monoma being able to use multiple quirks he’s copied at once when using Deku’s Quirk, cuz being able to use multiple Auirks simultaneously is a passive attribute of Deku’s Quirk? When Monoma copies Deku’s quirk, does Shigiraki’s OFA-sense track him too? Oh look at me, just rambling like Deku by this point.

IDK, y’all, anything can happen.

[radley-rambles]

hello. you give such good advice that I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on villains. what you think makes them interesting or boring or fun?

Bold of you to presume I give good advice (No but seriously, thank youuuu that's very sweet!) Fair warning, my head is full of covid atm so this may. not.o be entirely coherent BUT

The villains in my first two books are mostly there for Plot Purposes. They fulfill a role, and they are bad people who make conscientiously bad choices (even if they're very pleasant and polite about it). And that's fine! In stories where the focus shifts in other directions - in my case, on the development of the central characters' relationships and the untanglement of various mysteries - you don't necessarily NEED a super-complex, multi-dimensional villain.

BUT ALSO I LOVE THEM, so I'm giving my villains waaaaay more flavour in my current projects.

I think my favourite villains are the ones who d/evolve slowly out of heroes, whether before or (especially) during the narrative.

Characters who become more and more cynical as their attempts to do good and Change The World fail to have any meaningful impact. Who lose all faith in the system as they see the 'real villains' of society - politicians, businessmen, etc. - getting away with their crimes.

Characters whose personal beef and obsessively toxic love/hate nonsense with the hero drives them to gradually abandon all the moral values they once held dear.

Characters who go through the same trauma as the heroes, but react to it in very different ways, and never get the support they need to heal. (That's a dark narrative that a lot o'folx who've been through trauma can relate to - you can often see the ways you let it twist you, the ways you passed your own hurt onto others, even those you care about. So it's very interesting to explore, but also pretty painful sometimes ngl lmao)

However, at the end of the day, a 'good villain' is one that works with the story you want to tell. My favourite type of villain isn't going to fit every narrative, and it would get supremely boring if every single villain was like that. So go buckwild, bestie~

[une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir]

WHERE IS THE REST?

After “Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon” came out, it has come to our knowledge that Stannis will be burning Shireen in the books as well. It was revealed somewhere last summer that Jorah and Grey Worm were supposed to betray Danerys, but then they changed their mind about it.

This isn’t special on its own, but it is once you notice that all of this was hard-coded into the GoT’s foreshadowing a long time ago, for example through transition scenes... yet they dropped plots and cherry picked fanservice what they wanted for the final season.

it’s angering “fun” to see what they foreshadowed through those transition scenes, what made it and what didn’t made it. In specific, D&D have said transition scenes were important, because they say something about them. I cannot find the proper citation for this, but it’s common knowledge.

What I’ll write next is only for ONE episode, but this exercise can be made in SEVERAL episodes, this isn’t an isolated case by any means. (the following is a repurpose of an earlier post I made for this matter and i only have paint ATM, which is why the graphics are so shitty).

S03E01: Valar Dohaeris

Danerys is sailing through the Summer Sea while she watches the dragons fishing. While she’s fond of them, she doesn’t think they’re enough to conquer the Iron Throne so she wants an army. Jorah suggests she buys Unsullied and while she doesn’t like the idea at first because they’re slaves, she eventually relents as she believes it’s mecessary. Later, she arrives in Astapor and tours the Unsullied barracks.

There are two Danerys’ scenes in Valar Dohaeris, which are preceeded and followed by other adjacent scenes which characterise Danerys’ motivations during her stay at Astapor by contrast and parallels. Below, I enclose the scene transtion schematics.

[3] Sansa with Shae in King’s Landing port watching the ships.

[*] Danerys sailing the seas and beng suggested the Unsullied.

[4] Davos confronts Stannis about Melisandre burning people..

[5] The Tyrell siblings and Cersei / Joffrey having dinner where they discuss Margaery’s charity.

[*] Danerys arrives at Astapor and tours the Unsullied barracks.

[3] Sansa is powerlessly watching ships at the port, wishing one of them would take her away from captivity. This is followed by a contrast, Danerys is on a ship doing whatever she wants and going wherever she wants. Danerys and Sansa are foils.

Shae and Sansa play a game about where the ships come from and where they go. At some point, Littlefinger comes to talk to Sansa, promising to take her away

Remember this one for later.

In the show, Ros tells Shae that Sansa’s birth was a joyous day, where the bells were rung from sunrise to sunset. In the books (the equivalent chapter where Danerys sails the seas), Danerys recalls her own birth was during a storm which destroyed her father’s ships. Much later in the show (season 7), Danerys’ birth is brought up again, it’s mentioned that she was born during a storm and the dogs barked the entire night.

There is a clear contrast between these two characters births according to the show canon. Sansa was born and there was joyful bell ringing during the entire day, while Danerys was born and there was ominous barking dogs during the entire night. Take note that the foreboding for Danerys is in the books’ canon as well, as the storm raged all night and destroyed the Targaryen ships.

Sansa cannot go home because she’s a prisoner with no power (no movement), while Danerys is sailing free and returning home because she’s free with power via the dragons (movement).

There is a clear contrast between these two character in agency and power as well, which also translates into how they rule. Sansa is a prisoner that had to learn politics and how to play the game of thrones because she had no dragons to rise to power, while Danerys is free after she births the dragons so she never learnt either because the dragons gave her power.

Danerys doesn’t think the dragons enough to get the Iron Throne and wants an army. Jorah suggests to buy Unsullied and Danerys decides that she will get them. This is followed by [4] Davos confronting Stannis for allowing Melisandre to sentence those that oppose them to burning alive, but Stannis justifies this as necessary for the war he’s fighting. Stannis (through Melisandre) and Danerys as parallels, basically Stannis (through Melisandre) is Danerys on dragon steroids LITE. Stannis and Danerys have many adjacent scenes for this reason (for example, walking into the fire, threatening to burn people, activelly burning people, and so forth...)

Stannis confronts Stannis after he’s informed by Salladhor Saan (earlier in the episode) that Stannis follows what Melisandre tells him to do due to the prophecies she sees in the fire. In parallel, (in the books) Danerys follows what she sees in dragon (fire) dreams and other prophecies as well.

Stannis (through Melisandre) and Danerys both follow prophecies that are associated with fire, which are interpretated to suit their narcissistic delusions of grandeur. The magic is real, the meaning they gave them is not.

Melisandre is said to sing to her enemies as they burned, while (in the books) Danerys is said to “sing” while she commmands the dragons to burn the Unsullied masters (yes, this very story segment we’re on!).

Melisandre asks if Davos remembers all those men burning and yelling for their mothers, while Danerys burns every master in Astapor (including what’s basically children, as she says anyone over the age of 14)

Melisandre is called the “mother of monsters” for creating the shadow assassin through blood magic, while Danerys is called the “mother of dragons” for creating the dragons through blood magic, both using these fire magic instruments against their enemies.

Melisandre and Danerys blood magics are both characterised negatively. As a sidenote, Melisandre’s blood magic is sex and burning blood, while Danerys’ blood magic is burning others. In reality, it’s all the same shit, Melisandre’s sex “equals” to life (conception) and she made the shadow baby (subtle) and Danerys killed three lives for the dragons. Only death can pay for life.

Stannis isn’t so keen on burning prisoners and enemies, but does because he believes it to be justice against the infidels and what’s necessary to win the Iron Throne. In parallel, Danerys isn’t so keen on buying the Unsullied, but she burns the masters because she believes it’s justice and believes them necessary to win the Iron Throne.

Stannis and Danerys may both dislike abhorrent behaviour, but they engage in it regardless because they believe it necessary to achieve their objectes. Theis trend escalates from acceptable targets (the Faith of the Seven statues or Viserys) to uncceptable targets (prisoners of war that oppose them), until it’s unsustainable (Shireen or the citizens of King’s Landing) and then someone kills them. It’s worth noting that in the books, Jorah suggests the Unsullied and Danerys doesn’t even give a shit that they are slaves, getting excited with the idea instead.

[5] Margaery gives food to the poor. After, the Tyrell siblings have dinner with Joffrey and Cersei where they discuss Margaery’s charity, with Cersei implying it’s not genuine. This is followed by Danerys touring the Unsullied barracks, where she notes Kraznys being a dick to the Unsullied, which she later uses an excuse as to why she freed them, bt this isn’t genuine. Danerys and Margaery are (in hindsight) parallels.

Margaery does charity not for altruistic reasons, but because she wants to gain power by currying favour through the people’s support. Likewise, Danerys frees the Unsullied not because she cares about freedom (remember, she wanted to buy them regardless), but because she has no money to buy them and wants good publicity.

Margaery and Danerys are both dishonest about their real motivations for doing good deeds, because they’re basically just publicity stunts to harnass support and power. On one hand, when Margaery is taken by the Faith of the Seven, she eventually admits that she never cared about the poor and in fact hated them, but did what she did for power. On the other hand, when Danerys negotiates with Kraznys, she realises she has no money to buy them and makes sure they’ll follow for sure before dropping the dragon, only after she’s convinced by the dispute between Barristan advocating Rhaegar was loved and that’s why others followed him versus Jorah advocating that Rhaegar was honest and that’s why he died.

Margaery is dressed through these scenes in a similar way as Danerys when she’s pandering to the same “soft-power” tactics.

Good so far? Let’s rewind.

Danerys and Sansa are foils.

Sansa cannot go home because she’s a prisoner with no power (no movement), while Danerys is sailing free and returning home because she’s free with power via the dragons (movement).

Sansa adquires a “dragon” in season 6. He’s not the mythological beast proper, but her cousin Jon Snow, who’s secretely a Targaryen and therefore the “blood of the dragon”. Such, one of Jon’s narrative purposes for Sansa is the same as the dragons for Danerys, Jon’s there to protect and power Sansa, to take her home when others couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Jon protecting Sansa happens from the moment they reunite, as he vows to look after her and not leave her from that point forward (Ned haunting him is just a joke, as in show canon Jon doesn’t believe there’s anything beyond death, as he saw nothing when he did). So Jon protects Sansa from Ramsay and Littlefinger, gets angry on her behalf against Tyrion and Theon, there’s an unexplicable hiatus where he's a different character (what happened?), but at the end Jon returns to character and kills Danerys to protect Sansa.

Jon empowering Sansa, not so much. Jon accepts being King in the North instead of making Sansa the Queen in the North... until the very end and in this King’s Landing port (what were D&D indireectly saying that they wouldn’t say directly?)... where Jon forsakes being King in the North (even though that’s dumb, since he’s in jail now) and names Sansa the Queen in the North instead. It was done late and contrived (Jon has been convicted to “jail”, he could never be king again), but the correct foreshadowing was played straight neverhteless.

Sansa asks Littlefinger to take her home and he says that it’ll be treason since she’s property of the crown, but then promises he’ll try to smuggle her on a ship but she needs to be ready to flee.

Littlefinger doesn’t take Sansa home, he takes her to the Eyrie instead. In the books, Sansa accuses Littlefinger of lying about his promise and he admits it, while telling her to forget Winterfell and make the Eyrie home instead. Some time ater, Littlefinger promises to take Sansa to Winterfell after all if she marries Harry Hardying. A likely story... not. Littlefinger already had promised and lied about it.

In the show, Littlefinger does sell Sansa to the Boltons, so she technically returns home but since she runs away shortly after, there’s that feeling it didn’t count. It’s Jon that truly takes Sansa home, by defeating the Boltons and retaking Winterfell at her behalf because if he decided, he’d rather defect south. So, once again th foreshadowing was played straight.

It has been confirmed that in the books, Littlefinger won’t be selling Sansa to the Boltons, so she cannot return to Winterfell that way, not even technically...  So Sansa will realise Littlefinger will never take her home even if she marries Harry, so she’ll flee the Vale to the Wall, then Jon takes her home.

Sansa plays a game about the ships she’s watching, where they’re headed to and why. The captain is disillusioned with undeserving people and wants to go wait out winter in Dorne where it’s warm.

Sansa is playing a game of pretend, because she has a penchant to sugarcoat than face the reality of things. When Shae asks her why she’s doing it, Sansa says she does it because “the truth is either boring or terrible”. For once, a good original scene. Still, Sansa’s fantasy is quite specific, this captain must represent someone else.

Knowing D&D, thisis to be delivered later like something out of a shopping list later on. So... someone is going to want to escape winter to someplace warm, because they're disillusioned with undeserving people. As a matter of fact, the scene before Sansa crashes the no!funeral at Castle Black, Jon (born in Dorne) embodies it...

Jon Snow. Three out of three.

To summarise, these transition scenes predict Danerys storyline regarding some issues by paralleling Stannis and Margaery scenes, as well as by contrasting Sansa’s scene. This is reciprocal as Danerys’ scenes also predict Stannis and Margaery as well as Sansa’s by paralleling and contrasting with their scenes.

As for Sansa proper, to recap and in broad strokes, Sansa is watching the ships and wishes to go home on one but can't because she is a prisoner with no power, which is contrasted with Danerys sailing on a ship and going home because she's free due to her dragons. In addition, this also foreshadows that Sansa gains a “dragon” later on, who provides freedom and protection as well as takes her home and gives her power, the person being revealed in Sansa’s scene details.

It was all there.

Well not all... I got to say that Littlefinger selling Sansa to the Boltons wasn't the only bulshit D&D pulled on the northern campaign. This is because according to this reading that Jon is Sansa’s dragon, he is supposed to empower Sansa yet he accepts being King in the North instead of her. That's not empowering!

It can work though, for example Jon wanting to crown Sansa as Queen in the North, but then having to backtrack because Tyrion presses his marriage to still be valid, so accepts to be King in the North to protect her. Well, this is the realm of speculation, not the point of this post, which was “where’s the rest”...

WHERE’S THE REST?

Let's backpedal a little. Amongst the things Littlefinger says...

Littlefinger: You are the property of the crown. Stealing you would be treason.

In ASOIAF / GoT, a man stealing a woman is wildling code for marriage. This is bad, I don’t like this... because Petyr Baelish stealing Sansa Stark from the Lannister crown is not cool.... but no, as seen from the previous points the metaphor here is meant to be Jon Snow so...

Jonathan Snowflake, who is accused of stealing a redhead around this time in the narrative, later thinks about stealing a woman when confronted with the opportunity to take Winterfell from Lady Lannister, is accused of being half-wilding and having a bizarre endgame where he's suggested to be a wildling but not really since they mention he’s still in the Watch (what was that)...

Jon Snow stealing Sansa Stark.

Knowingly. Willingly.

Jon Snow stealing Sansa Stark from the crown..., which incidently is the Lannister crown, when Sansa is married to Tyrion Lannister. ... Uhm... Tyrion Lannister, who incidently features in the scene preceding this exact one, where Tywin Lannister denies him Casterly Rock and promises him a bride... which is Sansa. Lawl at foreshadowing choochoo train being all matchy matchy with each other.

Jon Snow stealing Sansa Stark from Tyrion Lannister.

I’d like to see it. Where is it?

As a side-note, Sansa's scene details of the ship captain and Littlefinger’s speech is interesting because they might hint at a scrapped storyline for how this entire would have developed, a storyline closer to the books.

Sansa: It's carrying silk and it's supposed to bring back wine in exchange, but it's not coming back.

Sansa imagines the captain leaves with the excuse he's going for a trade deal to exchange silk for wine (food) and in the books, food is actually a big deal with Jon being concerned about food often, at some point saying their best hope to get some arse is the Eyrie. For example, Jon pretending he's going to the Vale with Sansa to get food but then defecting for her sake fits.

Littlefinger: I saw your mother not long ago. She's very eager to see you. And your sister. Sansa: Arya's alive?

Littlefinger mentions Cat and Arya, which is interesting because in the books, Cat prowls as the undead Lady Stoneheart, having taken Brienne who’s looking for Sansa, and Jeyne Poole is impersonating as Arya Stark (she’s the one that marries Ramsay). So these threads may be more connected to Sansa fleeing the Vale than previously thought. Perhaps Stoneheart told Brienne where Sansa is, perhaps Sansa finds out about fake!Arya and that’s why she decides to flee.

Well.. that’s also the realm of speculation...

By the way... armed with this post, answer the following GoT’s endgame questions:

Danerys burning King’s Landing because she believes it’s justice against her enemies and necessary to win the iron chair was out of character?

Jon didn’t notice that Danerys was an arsonist lizard even worse than Stannis and Melisandre?

[INSERT JON BANNING MELISANDRE FROM THE NORTH HERE]

Jon didn’t notice that Danerys was a fake altruist bitch like Margaery?

I’d like to see it. Where is it?

WHAT HAPPENED?

[prince-of-elsinore]

Maybe I'm about to stir the pot but whatever here goes: idk why some (obviously not all) Sam stans get so defensive about the insinuation that Dean might be female-coded in some ways (well, actually I do but I don't wanna get into that 😂), but it got me thinking about what it is that some fans see in Dean, and for some female or gnc fans, what it is in Dean that we relate to. (Just for the record, none of this has any bearing on how female-coded Sam is--it's so not a competition lol. I think Sam can be considered very female-coded. Also, for the record--although this really ought to be self-evident--I don't equate female-coding with feminization, woobification, or even softness necessarily, nor innate relatability/sympathy.) Anyway, it led to some Dean meta thoughts:

First, I think a big part of it has to do with emotional labor, particularly within the John-Dean-Sam dynamic. We know that from a young age, Dean was aware of what his father did and was performing emotional labor in caring for his father when he was tired after a hunt (like the "It's okay, Dad" anecdote), or drinking too hard--and being practically the only such emotional support John had/would allow himself. Also, having your sibling's life placed in your hands, being repeatedly told it is your responsibility, is certainly emotional labor. And being in a household with two strong clashing personalities, being forced into the peacekeeper role (as we see echoes of in s1), is emotional labor.

Another obvious aspect (though for some reason an especially contentious one in fandom it seems?) relates to Dean's domesticity and role as a nurturer. I really don't care to argue here about how domestic and nurturing Dean is or isn't, because I think for purposes of this post, it's actually sort of irrelevant. The point isn't that Dean was the best homemaker ever; what's much more interesting to consider is how, in the absence of a female presence, typically "feminine" tasks fell to Dean, whether he was willing or not. Dean says it plain as can be in 12.22 Who We Are: "I had to be... more than just a brother. I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe. And that wasn't fair. And I couldn't do it." Of course he couldn't, because he was just a kid only four years older than Sam. But that doesn't mean that the burden of expectation, that that role was his to fill, wasn't there.

Related to the last point is how Dean suppressed personal desires for the sake of family, which is so often expected of women. It's an extension of the caretaker role; anything he may have wanted must come second to his duty to family. The shapeshifter in 1.06 Skin has access to Dean's thoughts and says: "You got to go to college. He had to stay home. I mean, I had to stay home. With Dad. You don’t think I had dreams of my own? But Dad needed me." In fact, you could easily argue that the only desire Dean ever really allows himself to have or express is family. Opinions on Lebanon may vary, but I don't think it's at all out of character that Dean's greatest wish was for his family to be all together.

I also think that Dean's brand of vulnerability is something that some female fans would find relatable. I don't want to sound gender-essentialist about it and I don't think I would call this female-coding, because it's not necessarily a universal female experience (not that anything that could be considered female-coding needs to be universal--that would be impossible), but I can say that it's probably the primary characteristic that drew me to Dean. Dean's insecurity is rooted in his fear of his emotional needs being too great. He is insecure about how much he needs his family, and worries that that need is not reciprocated (whether it is or not isn't the point--this is about Dean's perception). In season 1, it's his feeling that John and Sam care more about killing the demon than they care about him. For many more seasons, it's his fear that Sam will leave him. He's terrified of being needy, of his emotions and his love being too much. I would venture a guess that within family structures, this is a trait most commonly associated with mothers/wives.

I'm sure there are some more points that could be made (something about performative gender that I'm too brain-tired to write out atm?) but these are what occur to me off the top of my head. I don't think it should be surprising to anybody that both male leads of a show with a large female fanbase have aspects of their characters that could easily be considered female-coded, nor that different fans identify more with one or the other (which may or may not have to do with their individual brands of female-coding. In many cases, I think it does.) Personally, I also think that both Sam and Dean fans sometimes exaggerate these traits to the point of being OOC--and I think that's their prerogative, enjoying fandom as they wish to, though it can be frustrating when it seems like that fan version of the character is conflated with the canon character. But it is silly to think that only one brother can be female-coded or relatable--and for that matter, it's silly to equate female-coding with sympathy points. For some people, female-coding may make a male character more relatable, but female-coding and relatability or sympathy are not directly correlated. In fact, some discussions around female-coding are a little off-putting to me for the implication that any sort of relatable trait in a male character must be be female-coded, or that possessing/showing emotions at all is innately feminine. To me, it's just interesting to observe narrative and characterization trends in a cultural context. But that's a more complex discussion for another time!

[spooky-activity]

Just a little update on Cassandratopia 2: Electric Boogaloo (Or as it stands in my Google Docs folder rn, A Helping Hand). I’ll put it under the cut cuz it’s kinda long. 

I just wanted to say that I’m still planning on actually doing it, despite all evidence to the contrary lol 

I did Cassandratopia in a haze of graduating from college(where I was studying animation) and just having ended my first dnd campaign as a dungeon master (which went 3 years!). I was fishing around for internships, but since the pandemic had just kicked off I wasn’t having much luck. So I had a lot of creative energy that wasn’t getting channeled anywhere, and a lot of free time when I wasn’t applying to places. Which is how I did 4 pages a day several times per week. Which was insane. 

As it stands, I’m running 2 dnd campaigns(one meets weekly, the other every other week or so), and just scored a full-time internship at a video game company! The campaigns I’m running are a homebrew open world, which, for those of you who aren’t too familiar with dnd, is a metric fuckton of work to prep for each session because I have no idea what my insane friends and siblings are going to try and do every time we play. 

Anyways all this to say that my storytelling itch is kinda. Sufficiently getting scratched atm and I have a lot less free time. I’m still plucking away at the setting/refining the story of A Helping Hand, but it’s largely on the backburner. Cassandratopia was also, uh, like the first story I’ve ever told in any sort of format besides the give-and-take of dnd, so... I’m not used to having so much control over the narrative. Oddly. I’ve never thought of myself as much of a writer of stories; my main focus is character animation, so someone else is usually writing the stories I’m telling anyways, which is super cool with me. Honestly I’m surprising myself with how much I want to tell this story, which is why I’m still sure I’m doing it. Just. Slower. Than Cassandratopia got done. 

But I’ll share a bit of the lore I’ve been cooking up! Specifically about Zhan Tiri and The Drops. The story will be told in an extremely dnd type setting, because that’s the kind of narrative I’ve told before and am comfortable telling: hard magic rules, neat fights, scary monsters, a dash of eldritch horror, and huge emphasis being put on magical artifacts(kinda like in the show!). Here’s some stuff that’s basically locked-in. 

Zhan Tiri

Zhan Tiri is one of the many Demon Lords of the Abyss. She’s kind of a mashup of two of my favorite Demon Lords, Zuggtmoy, the Lady of Rot and Decay, and Pale Night, the Mother of Demons and Queen of the Night(with just a dash of Hannibal Lecter because who doesn’t like helpful, polite, manipulative-ass bitches lksjflkja;fj). Her domain sits almost exactly between the Sundrop and Moonstone, largely being the new growth that comes from death, and the endless cycle of life and death. Places where her influence is strongest includes the cracks in... Well anywhere really, from society to the planet’s shell, where metaphorical or physical rot could grow; musty, mostly ignored places where something could fester. Iconography related to her would include endless mazes, fungi, grasping skeletal hands, and rotting/blooming corpses. Her spores can animate corpses, which she likes to use as mindless minions when she doesn’t feel like sending one of her Acolytes. She shares a scrap of her power with those few mortals she likes. She appreciates ambition and the desire to Grow to be bigger than what you were to start with, as those are qualities she herself possesses. 

Incredibly intelligent and merciless to those she deems her enemies, her main thing is pulling the strings from the shadows and seeing just how far she can push people to act with as little prompting from her as possible. She does, however, have the power to kinda bulldoze her way through things if she needs to, but she doesn’t like to because where’s the fun in that? 

She first gained interest in the Material Plane when a Wizard with too much hubris from said Material Plane(Named Demanitus) contacted her trying to figure out more information about The Drops and how to control them. After indulging him for a bit, she started preparing to make a summer home on the Material Plane because it’s New and Fun here and Wow These Mortals are Really Fun to Mess With! And some of them she even genuinely liked! Demanitus then realized his mistake and locked her away in Pandemonium for what he hoped was forever, but turned out to be only around 1,000 years, due to the efforts of her followers. Her little stint in Pandemonium magnified the more... Chaotic aspects of her personality, so now she wants to cover the Material Plane in blooming mazes of fungal crops that she can break people with at her leisure. 

The Drops

The drops are two semi-sentient pieces of one original artifact, whose original purpose was to be a tool of creation for the gods. Which, through some great calamity(still deciding that one), got sundered and settled into the two basic aspects of creation: the nearly unlimited well of life-energy which organizes stardust into planets, cabbages, and kings, and the “you gotta crack a few eggs to get an omlette” destructive force which breaks down what the sundrop makes so that it can make more. 

The main goal of the drops is to reunite. I would want to as well if I was ripped in half! This manifests as a... General tug in the direction of the other drop. A desire in the host to Go That Way. It can be resisted, and even ignored for a bit, but it’s always there. Like being hungry if starving wasn’t a danger. Just a bit uncomfortable if you aren’t going That Way, but ignorable. 

Both drops generally try to be as helpful to their wielder as possible, as originally they were a tool of creation to the gods. They are innately obliging. They’re also REALLY UNSAFE FOR MORTALS TO BE MESSING WITH. The Sundrop is a little safer because the most it can do is kinda. Overcharge you into something distinctly not human but still alive, and King Fredrick was lucky he made the Sundrop into soup before giving it to Arianna. But King Edmund got his wholeass arm blasted off for touching the Moonstone. 

The Sundrop

Best I could whittle it down, the Sundrop has power over life energy, like the sun’s light. It also has power over the energy derived from geothermal activities, so deep sea creatures Are Not Immune To The Sundrop, which was a funny thought that crossed my mind that they could be, but that will likely never come up anyways salkdjf;ljsf It is, in its basest form, Growth and Progress. 

It’s a little sentient, but very much entrenches itself into whoever is holding it at the time. Like another mind looking through your eyes and seeing what you see/feeling what you feel while still retaining a bit of individuality from the host. It’s not... Parasitic because it’s in its nature to give, but it’s generally pretty firmly attached to whoever is holding it until they die( which isn’t usually for a WHILE. It ’infects’ a new host when one dies, usually a plant near their grave...) or until a solar eclipse. It wants what they want, but it’s very fussy so they have to ask it for power exactly correctly(like singing an incantation every time you want to heal someone, or doing a Ritual involving lots of very specific ingredients, Celestial Alignments, and Secret Words) or it won’t listen, like an orchid dying if the ph balance is off in the soil by a little bit. But it’s generally pretty intuitive to use, because it wants what you want and (as long as you ask right) is willing to help. 

Anyways basically under the influence of the Sundrop you get a few things: 

Basically limitless energy coursing through your body while you’re in a place with sunlight, which equates to rapid healing, mostly, because every cell in your body is being supercharged with free energy. Never getting exhausted in direct sunlight. (If Rapunzel lived in a place that was sunny 24/7 like near one of the poles she wouldn’t have to sleep like. until it started to get dark in the opposite half of the year. Then she’d have to sleep like a regular human being)

You stay at your prime, or if you are past it, revert to your prime. Someone who is holding the Sundrop, or who has regular access to the Sundrop’s magic can’t die of old age or illness. They have to be hurt beyond the Sundrop’s ability to heal or have it taken away from them. 

The ability to share this rapid healing with others (if you ask right)

The ability to freely draw on the raw, near-limitless energy of the sun to shape into things like cool-looking energy blasts (only if you ask right) 

The Moonstone

The moonstone has powers over varying levels of destruction: from destroying things by ripping them apart/ to Not Letting Things Be Destroyed(also known as protecting) by freezing them in indestructible rock. Like the moon, it can ‘reflect’ a bit of the sundrop’s power, so it can kinda provide energy, albeit a lot less than the sundrop can provide. It’s the inevitable march of The End of All Things, fertilizing the fields of time with the ashes of the old so the new can take root. 

The Moonstone is a bit more in the dark(pun intended hehe) when it comes to bonding with someone, it can only try to figure out what is going on based off the emotions of its wielder, and through anything directly touching the Black Rocks. Because of this it’s... Kinda dumb? It tries to do things to help(Like shooting red fear-rocks to try and scare away whatever must be scaring its wielder so badly) but often fails spectacularly at helping. 

Under the influence of the Moonstone you get: 

Mortals get Neat Body Armor that’s actually just you being turned into a rock! They are very fragile! They need to be protected! The best the Moonstone can do to try and preserve you is to Stop All Destruction by.. Pausing all bodily functions indefinitely. Rocks don’t need to eat, sleep, or breathe, and almost nothing can destroy you if you’re solid Black Rock. The weak reflection of the Sundrop’s energy keeps the host animated, but they’re not exactly alive anymore. Like cryostasis. Wounds (if any) acquired in this state won’t be a problem because they’re not messing anything up, because nothing is technically working in the first place, but they will be a problem when you’re not protected in this way anymore. It’s a cosmic ‘I’ll deal with that later’ button, essentially. 

Like the moon, the Moonstone can reflect the light of the sun. It uses its rock crystals to do so, which can even split the sun’s power into different shades, like a prism. Essentially, different colored rocks can mean new and exciting power sets. 

Blue Lightning! The Moonstone can reflect the Sundrop’s power, so it also has access to pure bursts of energy, even if it is weaker and colder. 

The Moonstone is very helpful, but usually has no idea what you want. ‘Asking’ the Moonstone for more control over its power in the same way you would Ask the Sundrop for more power reminds it of the perfect bond it used to share. The Moonstone’s incantation deepens the bond between wielder and Moonstone in such a way that it actually knows what you want from it, giving you near perfect control of its powers.

*This is kind of just a side note of the Drops: While the Moonstone is weaker than the Sundrop in an head-on fight, it could hold its own if it were on the defensive. Redirecting the power instead of trying to overpower and such.

** Cass made of rocks means I get to draw her skeleton :) not in every picture that would be fucking nuts and way too much work alskjdf;lkjs;fv

[ryuichirou]

Hi, Ryu❤️ Hope u’r doing well❤️

Since u’r talking about ships lately, I’m really curious to hear your opinion about Aru//Ani, its execution, development and progression throughout the whole plot👀, if it’s not a problem and especially if u have the time to. Its shippers claim Isym has been doing a great build up since FT arc (???) and that, despite the lack of development onscreen, the dynamic makes sense (???) cause they “complete” each other and they learnt how to “love and respect” each other throughout the past 4 years (???!!!).

And... I don’t know, Ryu: I really tried to consider their pov, even reread the A/A interactions and look at the dynamic with shipping goggles on, but I really failed to see and understand what they claim. Actually, I keep seeing this dynamic as insulting not just for Armin and Annie’s characters in first place, but also for Eren, Mikasa, Hitch and Berthold. Moreover, it seems nothing but an addiction made out for fanservice, cause it serves absolutely nothing to the plot: if u cut their interactions post 131ch, the story wouldn’t change in the least. Also, their interactions weren’t even that romantic and weren’t focused at all about their supposed “crush” for each other. I personally believe Armin is using Annie as coping mechanism and/or just a mean to substitute Eren; whereas Annie is substituting Armin with her father, cause she feels adrift and desperate, and seeks for someone who cherishes her and appreciates her for the person she is no matter the harsh things she did in the past (I’m crying for Hitch in the mid time....). Other than that, I’m believing also in Berthold’s influence on Armin, cause it’s the only explanation for the sudden interest of boy towards girl, that happen to begin exactly after he ate Berthold: it can’t be just a coincidence imo.

So yeah, at the end of the day, I’m pretty sad cause I used to love both the characters and now I’m much conflicted atm, cause I see nothing but a huge derailment for both and a waste for Annie’s one, who’s developing literally over a love interest... And it’s a very huge pity to me.

Sorry for the big ask, lol... I have this weight on my chest and I confess it’s actually ruining my love for SnK: I feel like everything after 131ch started sucking pretty hard... Plus, the fandom became more toxic than ever😔😔😔

I was waiting for someone to ask me about them eventually, and honestly... Anon, you're such a big mood lol

You’ve guessed correctly: I don’t like AruAni. Not because we personally don’t ship it, but because it doesn’t make sense and (for now) it’s unclear what it the purpose of this storyline and if there’s even going to be a purpose. I don’t recommend anyone shipping them reading my reply.

Basically, Anon, you’ve described everything perfectly, so I’m just going to agree with all your points. I also don’t see a reason for Armin to have this type of love for Annie. I see a coping mechanism, I see something to escape to from the Eren problem, I can even see a self-punishment of sorts, but I don’t see that sweet crush we’re led to believe is there. See, Armin didn’t even know Annie that well. They talked like twice, and then the Female Titan thing happened, and then… he was talking to her for years, but he still never learnt anything about her. How can he love her if he doesn’t even know who the fuck Annie is? And yeah, it’s convenient Bertold timing, I wonder if it’s going to come up later.

We feel like it’s unfair to other characters. It’s also extremely unfair to Hitch that’s also been here for Annie for all those years but didn’t get the special treatment for some reason. Like... their reasoning would be pretty much the same, they could’ve made Hitch her love interest for all the same reasons.

It’s unfair to Annie herself, because, based on what we know about her, she’s drawn to stubborn idiots going against the flow. Because she herself could never do that. This is the point of her character: she could never stand against what people asked her to do, even when she knew it was useless or wrong. This is why Eren intrigues her, this is why Marlo intrigues her.

Of course I’m biased here, and don’t get me wrong: I don’t see EreAnnie becoming a canon thing either lol and I talked about how I don’t care about ships being canon in general a bunch of times already. I’m saying this as an example of a dynamic that actually... works for her type of character. But all the development Annie’s got was kickstarted by Eren being interested in her fighting style and being the first person who legitimately interested her on this island (and who was interested in her too to some extent, at least interested in something she was proud of and deeply loved). She also deeply appreciated it, they had funny dialogues together, and he was the first and only person she had flirted with, which is a huge step for a character as shy, distant and serious as Annie. Seeing her now blushing for Armin looks like a joke when you keep these things in mind. You can listen to his stories all you want, but it’s strictly one-sided. And, like I said, Hitch can also have the same chances with this type of logic. Their pie-eating scene has more chemistry than all AruAni moments.

The “good person/bad person” dialogue with Armin doesn’t feel like a development to me because they were just mirroring each other’s thoughts, so it’s like talking to yourself…

Ok, that was a little bit off topic lol. But yeah, this is why for now we think that either there will be a twist of sorts (i’ll take killing Armin as a twist) or the editor just made Isayama push this narrative, since Isayama doesn’t strike me as a type who likes romance that much or ships his own characters, plus he used romance for proving the cruel world motif so many times already. Or this is just exactly what it is, a last minute het romance, and we’ll end up sitting there like bitter losers being all upset, Anon haha

The fandom’s always going toxic and pretty feral as soon as het couples pop up, and in general huge fanbases mean nothing good unless you want that sweet clout to make money or get attention, so the only thing I can advice you is to distance yourself from them so that it won’t ruin your SnK experience even more. I don’t know you or your feelings, but I think you’re just upset about AruAni thing, this is why the manga sucks to you right now (well, you basically said it yourself, if I got you correctly). And that’s fine and we’re annoyed by this thing a lot too, so we can definitely understand this sentiment. Personally, we pretend like this bs romance never happened so it won’t ruin our experience, and we’ll see what to think about it when SnK is over. Like, what if it’s just a plot device and we get ourselves worried about nothing? I wanna believe that... :”)

And can I just… use this chance to say how frustrated I am that the majority of Annie content there is is either AruAni or BerAni (or the trio)? It’s like she isn’t important when she’s not in the context of those relationships… It upsets me a lot.

Let me just say this… Reiner had more development with Annie than Armin and Bertolt combined. There, I said it. And Reiner’s fucking gay.

Overall, we’ll see how everything plays out, and then you can come again to us and we’ll bitch together lol

[denkilightning]

Hey, I'm the same anon! I also have adhd and that totally makes sense I also get either really dumb or really resourceful at times so absolutely! This is why I relate to Kami a lot! And the stress is really a big factor, if someone has expectations of me I get really stressed and underperform (haha rsd is great) but if I'm alone while doing a task and don't have to worry about disappointing anyone I do much better. But I still feel like they play him off as dumb too much in some scenarios :/

fhsksh yeah same

and i agree!! hori really does play him off as dumb a lot of times (and putting him into the drained state every chance he gets) and my theory is that denki is hiding something (or just has something private he doesnt wanna show) and horikoshi masks any suspicious/"off" stuff about him up by dumbing him down. have you noticed how quiet he is most of the time? how we dont know his parents? why his quirk seems so underdeveloped? why does he want to become a hero?

hes officially a part of the main cast (is in every movie and ova, has a very important role in the cast, etc) but we dont know fundamental things about him. we only know the things he tells us.

and then theres also this subtle story telling that is gentler than any other info we were given: how denki is edgeshot's intern, which makes him one of the top 5's interns along with the four strongest people in the class (excluding our future nr. 1 yaomomo).

we dont see edgeshot at the sports festival and thats because the (atm) the number five hero!

then denki receives like a 100 intern offers which makes him the 4th if i recall most wanted 1a student

after the stain arc he says his internship was super easy and everyone loved him there. we didnt get a single scene showing him interning or even telling his intern hosts name (we knew or saw all the rest of the mains casts intern hosts)

hes the one to tell the audience about the lurkers officially teaming up

the team up itself was probably unexpected by other lurkers themselves since horikoshi said kamui woods cried for two/three hours straight after edgeshot asked him to team up

makes you think

hes also the one who tells kirishima to chill tf after the training camp!!! and to let the pros handle it!!!! cus he probably knew edgeshot and others already worked on it!!!!

then we get info that ibara, hanta and denki work under the lurkers in the internships pt. 2

and in the chapter 263 edgeshot refers to him directly, telling him to not let anyone escape (notice how no one but actual figures of authority, like aizawa, ever tells denki what to do, let alone makes denki actually listen, so these two have to have some story)

and im pretty sure im one of like three people to notice all of that

either horikoshi is THAT consistent... *looks at hawks beard*.... yeah nah denkis just that important to have a consistent narrative in the background

in conclusion: i believe horikoshi is dumbing denki down on purpose. what that purpose is idk yet but i hope well know in the future

[slumberinglabyrinth]

I’ve been playing (or thinking of playing) a lot of roguelikes lately and it’s gotten me thinking on the idea of a fe mystery dungeon.

To cut to the chase, I don’t think a fe mystery dungeon would work particularly well. You can argue that mystery dungeon is on some level already a trpg because of how it forces you to approach combat, but I think the key difference that sets that kind of trpg gameplay (and the likes of some other trpgs like devil survivor for example) from fe is that fe has you controlling lots of people at once on relatively large maps while in mystery dungeon you’re confined to a series of corridors and rooms and are lucky if you can have direct control of more than one person at any given time. I think you could use the mystery dungeon gameplay loop (which is itself a specific iteration of the rougelike gameplay loop) of ‘go into dungeon => progress plot => go into (new) dungeon’ but I do not think fire emblem's gameplay is compatible with the claustrophobic dungeons in md in the ways that final fantasy, dragon quest, and pokemon were.

But could you still make a half-decent fe rougelike? Oh, absolutely.

On some level, Echoes already created the basis for the actual dungeon exploration and Thabes is a smaller-scale actualization of what one ‘dungeon => dungeon => plot’ loop might look like. By fully divorcing the world the combat occurs in from the dungeons you create a game where the dungeons can be whatever you want them to be without sacrificing the kind of maps that fire emblem’s gameplay needs in order to flourish.

There’s no rule that says you can’t do the whole ‘encounters take you to a different map’ thing in a top-down, grid-based dungeon like what you’d find in md, but I feel it would necessitate incredibly low enemy density per floor in order to attain a balance between exploration and combat which would in turn necessitate some kinda wack layouts in order to make it not super easy to completely avoid combat? You’d be gaining easier procedural generation (which isn’t 100% necessary for the genre, more on that later) and a lower budget (which. I’m talking about games that probably will never be made. cost analysis isn’t a concern atm) for what'd probably be universally worse gameplay? I’ll pass

I won’t go over all of these but just to go over some options for how the dungeon stuff would be set up. you can mix and match these to fit your preferences but generally every kind of roguelike would fall under some combination of these

one dungeon vs several dungeons (mostly decided by the needs of the narrative)

floor-based (generally one-way) vs open layout (generally require backtracking to solve puzzles, etc.)

procedurally generated vs fixed layout (further divided into fixed floor layout vs fixed dungeon layout)

one massive dungeon with an open, fixed layout would be something like... dark souls. I think you could do a lot with it and I’d be kinda cool. less replayability than something procedurally generated but an environment that’s hand-crafted just hits different, yknow?

Make it several smaller dungeons instead, and you’d get something like echoes if you removed everything but the dungeons (or like. any rpg). There are genres where this kind of setup for the environments you explore works (ie. Monster Hunter, if it’s somewhat interconnected it could be like most metroidvanias) but I think there are better options for a roguelike given how much you’d be returning to those environments and how quickly those environments would become stale

If it’s a single procedurally generated dungeon, you’d get something like Baroque or p3, while if it’s several it’d be good ol’ Mystery Dungeon.

for procedural generation there are two main routes to go: rooms and corridors (see: MD) or rooms that are all directly connected (see: Rogue Legacy, .hack). I think the second works better here because the purpose of corridors is mostly to force you to into encounters and while various room layouts can effectively trip you up and force you to fight someone, something like thabes where there’s almost always some room to maneuver even if you won’t always succeed in avoiding an encounter is a bit more along the lines of ‘fun and interactive gameplay’

speaking of thabes: fixed dungeon layouts! they kinda suck unless a massive amount of care was put into their design! I think that you can get away with specific floors in a roguelike (pmd actually does this every so often but outside of blatant “hey you got a reward” floors it’s hard to notice if you’re not looking out for them) but unless it’s an open layout like in a soulsborne game or like. Ico, where the whole environment is a whole environment it gets very tedious very quickly. Thabes works for me (and me alone, apparently (lol)) because it’s short enough to get through in a few minutes so you can whack pots on the bottom floor and hope for regalia in record time but like. I don’t think a full game of that would be fun

the only major questions i can think of re: design that remains would be like. how to integrate something like permadeath and recruitment.

something like pmd’s model where you can recruit people in dungeons after you beat them... would not work very well, I feel. I think super mystery dungeon had a good overall model where performing various tasks (speaking to people in town, completing missions,progressing through the plot, encountering npcs in dungeons) would expand your linkedin connection orb network and then allow you to call upon those people, but if we’re talking about a smaller (ideally original) cast, then having them be available all the time would be...

uhhh actually let me backtrack and elaborate on that idea a bit

Okay so like. your *gestures wildly* group in this game is a team of people who for one reason or another go into dungeon(s). you can only bring a certain amount of people into a dungeon at once and if keep sending the same person on back to back to back expeditions their performance will drop and they’ll eventually get tired and need to rest, forcing you to use someone else.

Echoes did that by making their max hp drop dramatically (and all at once), but i think that it’d be better to also focus on other stats (ie. a crit/avoid penalty, then a strength/mag penalty, then a spd/hitrate penalty, etc.) and make them decrease in more gradual steps since it turns it into an actual question of “oh hey stacy’s not doing so hot but I still kinda need to send a thief in... should I still use her, or focus on a different goal for now?” instead of just all but outright forcing you to bench stacy for a few trips.

If you meet someone by performing various task, they’ll be added to the pool of units you can send into dungeons and you can call on them. It might be interesting to have different units be available on different days of the week (instead of making it partially usage-based but mostly arbitrary like PSMD), but I don’t think I’ll pursue that line of thought much further.

If someone gets mortally wounded, they’re forced to retreat. It could be a system that’s semi-interactive (ie. in valkryia chronicles where you need to reach a downed ally and call for a medic) or one where they just leave on their own (ie. casual mode), but either way they’re gone for the rest of the trip and they need to take several days off before they and their stats recover (like with the fatigue system). You can still field them, but if they don’t fully recover and take another mortal blow, they’re gone for good.

I think I could try to justify this in a more articulate way but like. blah blah it ties into the whole r&r system and also makes it less frustrating when the rougelike you’re playing inevitably decides someone is going to die.

mmmmmmmm i think that’s it! If you have any comments my askbox is open ;)

[dansiere]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm. tagged by: @breselin, & @citialiin; thank you for the tag! I was planning on stealing it. tagging: @rosiqe, @noirtux, @goldgliitters, @ndeavor,  @reminiscentsky, @battleshell, @ettards & whoever else wants to do this. Just steal it & tag me. -- go wild.

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated [loosely affiliated mainly due to the fandom’s size. I am quite open to crossovers of any kind, really even if it takes me a while to open up.]

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. [she is one of the deuteragonists; has been around since the pilot & while she has been sidelined during the epilogue, she was usually at least around with her story arc / actions having a huge impact on the overall story as such.]

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [I guess so? Then again, that’s an objective statement so I am just? Assuming? I personally find her general aesthetics to be quite amazing; she is a dance battler, graceful & elegant; a ballerina with a classical theme that runs through her design & attitude like a red threat. I have a weak spot for stuff like that.]

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO / IDK. [surprisingly, Pearl is considered to be the strongest non-fusion Crystal Gem according to the show (until Lapis Lazuli comes around). -- I assume prowess wise Pearl is high up next to Garnet & Rose whenever she can actually get her crap together due to having fought countless battles &, most importantly, survived the war in which she fought & shattered opponents thrice her size.]

Are they underrated?  YES / NO / IDK. [partially yes, partially no. She is controversial for sure but just as popular. At some point, the show delved deeper into her issues & actually had her mess up quite severely; the fandom’s reaction was so harsh that the showrunners had to interfere by “apologizing for making her human”. Pearl has always been a target for extreme criticism; some of it justified, some just straight down ridiculous.  -- It’s easy to forget what kind of complexity a character can offer when her resolution arc happens literally ten episodes before the show ends.]

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character?  YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. [Pearl becomes Steven’s guardian / mentor after the death of his mother Rose Quartz & can later be considered his stand-in mother alongside Garnet. It is safe to say that her actions have influenced Steven the most, both negatively & positively.]

Are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO. [she earned herself the title ‘The Renegade’ during the war for being the first (& arguably only) pearl that broke out of her conditioning; she used to be a wanted criminal / traitor to her own kind for 5000 + years until her record was cleared upon the beginning of Era 3 (aka official end of the Gem War). She is still being referred to as ‘The Renegade’ now & then; while she used to be proud of the title she has grown to resent it a lot these days.]

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. [it depends on who you ask; Homeworld Soldiers? Well, they despise her; she is a defective Gem & a war criminal. She stands for all that is wrong with the rebellion; I mean a pearl who refuses to serve & calls herself an individual? a warrior? THE SCANDAL!! Some soldiers are afraid of her, call her ‘Rose Quartz’ terrifying renegade’, even. However, in her ranks aka the rebellion, she is being seen as a silent heroine. A celebrated war hero, Rose Quartz’s right hand & sole confidante (some even whisper that there is more between them).]

How strictly do you follow canon?  — uh... well. Not really but... kinda? Steven Universe’s canon is messy & occasionally QUITE inconsistent. -- while it gives you vague details, some lore can best be compared to a gaping void. Thus my reason for partial divergence isn’t lack of good character writing (because Pearl is very, very complex even on screen), but rather inconvenient lore holes & SU’s habit of leaving important facts uncommented, “unshown” or just stuck between the lines. While I don’t mind deep analysis, some of those “buried facts” fly other people’s heads which leads to terrible, terrible fanon takes. -- in order to distance myself from that, I usually take canon & expand it with my own headcanons & metas based on lore / show analysis. I often alter / cut what does not fit my narrative BUT I always root my stuff in actual canon occurrences.

     Sometimes, I just straight down change certain things that canon messed up in my pov. For example, in order to make it explicitly clear that she fell in love & rebelled on her own volition (even if it has been confirmed like ten times by now), my Pearl is around 1500 years older than the original & (in)directly served White Diamond before being handed to Pink (not the only reason for that change but well I will elude on it eventually). She was a default pearl with no customization & usually spent most of her time with organizing matters in the palace until Pink accidentally broke her customized pearl; Pearl was then 'poofed’ & handed over; she possessed a more sensible personality & a strict rule protocol that was supposed to help her “raise” Pink Diamond into the ranks of a ruler. Most other changes are rather minor but very important or essential to my portrayal (for example whenever “A Single Pale Rose” is concerned: Pearl suggesting the “sealing of the secret”, her not wearing the dress from the beginning, her not calling Pink “my diamond”, her arguing with Pink long before the fake-shattering took place, etc etc.); the epilogue series is another can of worms I will get to eventually but lemme just say I didn’t really like the way Pearl behaved / the plot-bound ooc-ness she sometimes yielded to & other stuff. 

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.  —  well, she is a lesbian space rock from a strange universe; whose body is basically a manifestation of light? She is probably the most passionate being you will ever meet. -- if you are looking for a speedrun through human history, she is your gal. If you need someone to beat up some bullies, she will gladly come & smack sense into people; if you want to learn everything about Gemkind, sit down & listen because she won’t stop talking any time soon. 

     By definition, Pearl is a good person; the extreme loyal kind, absolutely & helplessly dedicated to a cause. She wears most of her emotions on her sleeve, comes off as genuinely caring, protective & trustworthy. She is empathetic & observant, she will always be there for you in one way or another. She is smart, loves to read & indulges in the higher arts such as (romantic) poetry, singing, painting, music (violin, piano, bass) & dance (predominately classic ballet / waltz but she has grown rather fond of jazz lately). Her knowledge about Earth & all that lays beyond is vast & if you ever want to see whatever is out there, she is the type to take you on a space tour with no questions asked. She fences, has learned to wield a lance, can engineer very well, has a very peculiar but... sorta adorable kind of humour that can either be hella obnoxious or super funny. There is no in-between. Pearl loves science, baking, housekeeping, ice-& roller-skating & is more than willing to take people along whenever she visits the rink. If you ask her for advice, she will gladly give it; if you need help, she will be the first to raise her hand. Pearl is orderly, has a strong sense of justice & a fierce, dedicated kind of resolve. 

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  Pearl. Is. A. Mess. No questions asked. She is an introverted, nervous, neurotic, grief-- & trauma riddled mess who loves to pretend & rationalize things to death. Her self-esteem is abysmal, she is extremely jealous, obsessive & possessive [to the point where she straight up murdered men just because they dared to be around her girlfriend]. Her mind is a compartmentalized mess of repressed memories & heavy, untreated cptsd woven into it; Pearl lives too much inside her head & gets overwhelmed by her emotions far too easily; she feels too much all at once & lets her temper get the best of her. 

     She is self-centred, does not seem to understand that words & reckless actions hurt people, believes that only she deserves to grieve Rose & willingly destroyed relationships just to soak in her own misery; self-destruction is her forte & she will indulge in it no matter the consequences. She is often high-strung, judgemental, always has to be right, overachieves & overdoes whenever a chance is given. -- she can be petty, arrogant & desperate for validation. --  Needless to say, Pearl is the kind of person that pretends to be fine for years but once she cracks she reveals that she is anything but. -- she cannot move on, hates men, & just is a lot to deal with. Getting in touch with her means you run the risk to get dragged into her mess, whenever you want it or not. 

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  first & foremost, my love for complex, purpose-driven female characters. I am a sucker for the “introvert, plagued lady” type & once parts of Pearl’s past were revealed during Season 1 I was sold. Pearl seemed relatable to me, extremely human & raw in her behaviour. While I love most of the SU cast equally, Pearl just wouldn’t let me go. Her aesthetic is amazing, her past intriguing. -- her connection to ballet & classical music, her elegant & graceful design just spoke to me. 

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  music. music. oh, and music. Poetry, long walks (I am not kidding), analysis, meta & hc writing, discussions with writing partners or my rl partner @rosiqe.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? [ despite my emo peculiar take on the character, I do hope that people hear her voice whenever they read my replies. ]

Do you frequently write headcanons?  YES / NO / SORT OF? [ I wish I could post more but I am very, very slow & a perfectionist at heart. -- I try to compensate for my lack of actual hcs by rambling in my tags. Most part of the time said ramblings include personal headcanons or analyses of specific scenes that include personal takes on pivotal situations; while I gather & write them down eventually, it can take me a long time to get stuff done. -- it is easier for me to jus blabber on & on in the tags. ]

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO [ all my ask replies are drabbles, ngl. ]

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO

Are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO / SORT OF? [... a sore topic. While I love my headcanons & have gotten quite proud of my writing over time, I constantly doubt myself regarding the “ic”-ness of my responses. I like to believe that I am doing rather well, but I am not confident, no. ]

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO. [ it took me a long time to develop my style; while I always struggle to believe in my portrayal I am quite confident in my writing as such. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but in general? I am proud of it. ]

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / NO. / SORTA.

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  Well, yes. As long as it is the constructive kind. I love receiving feedback, may it be negative or positive. I will most likely try to discuss criticism with you; aka if you (i.e) tell me that Pearl shouldn’t have (C)PTSD, I will deliver canon proof & state my reasoning for my decision to implement it in my canon, etc. What I will not do is tolerate character hate or unreasonable hate towards my writing. Be assured that I will never headcanon something that has no solid footing in canon.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  —  ABSOLUTELY. Send me random hc / meta asks, I beg you.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  sure. As stated above, I will probably discuss stuff with you. The chance of me dropping a headcanon however are rather low.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  Hm... it depends on what they don’t like. If it’s my writing, well, why are you following me to begin with?? If it is my take on things... well again, why are you following me? I stated in my rules what you should expect & that I will not water down specific aspects of a complex character. Disliking my portrayal is fine since I know that my kind of writing / analysis isn’t necessarily everyone’s tea but... again, why would you keep following me?

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  —  um. Not... well? While I will never excuse my muse’s actions, I dislike groundless bashing. In regard to Pearl... well. As stated above, I expected backlash the second I created this blog. Pearl is one of those characters the fandom either loves or hates; her canon relationship to Rose was branded toxic by a ton of people, people call her uncaring, salty, insane & straight up manic, she seemingly has no redeeming qualities, she is a bitch, too perfect (LOL) or arrogant & apparently has no character? I love it when people say stuff like that because... did we watch the same show? Is there a version of SU I don’t know? Please tell me, I wanna see it for myself! Some hot takes in this fandom are atrocious & make me want to commit a crime. 

     -- but I digress. I have spent too much time in her tag in 2014 + & I have seen quite the fights over the most ridiculous things; Pearl, in particular, got quite the flack for stuff that eventually got resolved in season 5 [which, again, was way too late but well]. In the end, clowns will be clowns, no matter what you do. I just don’t get why you would follow someone if you hate their character to begin with.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  yes, but please don’t be rude about it. I am German, English is my second language. I am currently learning Swedish / improving my Swedish so mistakes can always happen. Additionally, I am someone who posts her replies in the middle of the night & while I proofread a lot & most likely fix posts after I posted ‘em, some mistakes can still slip through. 

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  ... I like to believe I am but I know that I am overly passionate & I can come off as too strong or too fierce sometimes. I can be too much, I can be too excentric (I’m a Scorpio, Karen); I have strong opinions in regard to my characters & I will not hold them back. I criticise shows mercilessly & I will plough through canon as much as I please. Stans & I usually don’t get along. HOWEVER, I am a meme. I love lame jokes, I am awkward, & sometimes very, very insecure. In the end,  I just wanna talk about my favourite characters & develop sth wonderful. I keysmash unironically, I use old memes unironically. I mean I have been writing for ten + years & I am about to smooth sail post the 24 age border aka I will turn 25 soon which renders me old according to tumblr standards. I am just here to have fun before the staff comes to lock my account down due to my status as an rp-senior. -- yeah... that is the kind of stupid ass humor I mean. I digress but... please, I am an awkward, rambling mess, just hit me up via dms & you will see what I mean. 

[komatsunana]

Hi ! I love all your posts about NANA, especially the relationship meta ! If I may ask, do you have one about Nobu ? What do you think of him as a character ? What about his relationships with Nana, Hachi, Asami, Blast, Ren ? (sorry if I ask a lot...) Like every new year I think about NANA, I bought the first volume in january 2004, my feelings about characters and the choices they made may have changed since I grew up but, no matter what, I still love this story. Thank you for your time xox

Thanks!

Haha, it’s actually funny I was just thinking yesterday about my promise that I didn’t live up to to write some more meta (including a Nobu one) after my latest NANA re-read almost a year ago. A few deaths and other tragedies happened so I never finished my re-read... (Right at the start of my favorite arc at that!!)

But let’s see if I can’t give a quick summary of my current Nobu feelings....

My personal thoughts of him are complicated. Or maybe they aren’t? I don’t particularly dislike or like him. He’s definitely the character I understand the least.  

I’m very interested in his evolution of learning to call female characters by their actual names (Him refusing to call Hachi Nana until they broke up, him only starting to call Miu Miu instead of Myu when she hinted that it bummed her out no one ever tried to say her name properly, to him calling Asami Asami instead of Yuri the moment she told him her real name).

On the other hand, I have some misgivings on how Nobu becomes more grabby and manhandles Asami, grabbing her by her arm/wrist and stuff when it used to be a big thing with Nobu and Hachi holding hands.  I def need to finish my re-read to get a full grasp on that aspect of his character, because my memory of him doing all that is completely at odds with how I remember him being respectful of Asami being involved with sex work.

Another thing I am really interested in Nobu is like... Ok so I’m kinda a connoisseur of shojo (lol) and there’s this trope that often comes up with male love interests who are have sad backstories shutting out the female MC early on in their relationship and being like “you’ll never understand because you’ve had a happy childhood.”  And what interests me is that I feel like Nobu is that female MC in this case??? Like with Nana and Ren both kind of shutting Nobu out and telling him he should stop struggling with a music career and just take after his family business. What’s interesting about that is that I feel like it could just as easily been Takumi and Nana that shut Hachi out for the same reason... but they really don’t (even if they totally recognize that they are drawn to Hachi because of her happy home-life growing up). Idk if I’m explaining it in way that makes sense but idk I think it’s interesting.

I’m also like............. extremely interested in the fact that Nobu apparently has some ESP abilities?!?!? Like something very supernatural happened to him after Nana’s grandma’s death and then later after Ren’s death. I find that fascinating, especially in a series that is so praised for it’s realism that the most “normal” character hast this latent, unexplored ability.  I really hope we get to see more of that if the series ever continues.

His relationship with Nana is a stand-out relationship for me.  Outside of Nobu saying he used to have a crush on her, I really love that their relationship never goes romantic either.

I think Hachi once said that Nobu just kept saying all the things she wanted to hear him say right before they got together... And frankly he does the same thing for Nana.  The way he says he only wants to play guitar for Nana’s voice, when it’s all that Nana wants Ren to say to her... Gosh I am very interest in that.  

Both Yasu and Nobu take on a lot of Nana’s emotional burdens but it’s very interesting the different kinds of burdens she puts on them both? I can’t quite put my finger on the differences atm, but it’s not some simple thing.  But as Yasu said after the news about Nana’s mother broke out in the media, Nobu was the only one that Nana can completely cry and break down in front of without shame.

As for Hachi... I feel like I’ve talked at least a little bit about it but...

Hachi/Nobu was def Hachi’s most healthy relationship... And yet it wasn’t healthy.  As Hachi noticed early on in relationship, Nobu was idealizing her. 

I did note earlier that Nobu was grabby with Asami after his break up with Hachi, but I can think of at least one instance too where after their break up that Nobu grabbed Hachi by the wrist.  Idk if this was something purposeful in the narrative, but it really is something I want to look at more in the future because shojo manga really does have this bad habit of male love interests just grabbing women by the arm and that somehow completely subdues the woman and makes her unable to get away. (read about it here (Possessive Wrist Grab) and here (Standard Female Grab Area) on tvtropes for more on it) and I feel like it’s something that Nobu developed as a result of Hachi’s “betrayal.”

Idk, I really don’t have any new things to say about their relationship atm that I don’t (think) I’ve already wrote about. I think there’s quite a few meta I haven’t added to my meta masterpost. I’ll try and do that ASAP and reblog it

OK then! His relationship with Asami.... I really do need to sit down and do a proper full length meta about this relationship sometime but for now:

As I said earlier about Nobu grabbing at Asami’s wrists in a way he never did with Hachi while they were romantic.  Other than that, Nobu was pretty much always emotionally unfaithful to Asami (though I admit for a significant portion of it he was trying to get over Hachi) and all in all, a bad boyfriend to Asami.  

To my memory he was good at supporting her as a sex worker, but unfortunately I think the only reason he was able to do so was that he’d gone from the idealizing Hachi as a purity extreme to being with a woman that he was unable to separate her porn career from her a person.

Basically I think his relationship with Asami really just highlights that Nobu looks like a guy who drinks his respecting women juice... but really he kind of continues to struggle to see his love interests as women who are actual people.

(I really do promise I don’t hate Nobu!! And honestly lots of  this are just from my memory of the half of the manga I haven’t read in a number of years.)

Blast!  Simply put, Blast wouldn’t exist with Nobu.  He’s the heart and the reason for it’s creation.  

I think it’s easy to think that Nana is, but I’m pretty sure I remember that Blast was named before Nana joined - that Ren and Yasu were part of Brute before that. They didn’t say it but Nobu just isn’t the kind of guy that would be in a band named Brute.  So that name had to go for Nobu to be in it.  Lol.

Additionally, when Nana moved to Tokyo if Nobu hadn’t insisted on following then any band Nana would have formed wouldn’t have been Blast.  Blast on exists in Tokyo because Nobu went there.  Nana can have her own solo career, but Nobu won’t because he only plays for Nana’s voice but at the end of the day... Even though Nana is the singer and Yasu is the leader, Blast belongs to Nobu.

I mean, plus he writes the songs.  And he’s so passionate about music and Nana’s voice - that’s why their band succeeds.  Nana’s voice and Nobu’s desire to make music only for that voice.

And oh gosh... Ren....

Ren might have more in common with Nana, but Nobu is the one that really knows Nana better.  And I think Ren knows that - he trusts Nobu in a way he doesn’t trust his best friend Yasu.

I’ve talked about it a bunch before, that child!Ren is the result of Hachi’s current pregnancy and that Nobu is the biological father... And it just makes *so* much sense for Nobu’s bio child to have Ren’s name. I weep.

I already mentioned it but... It speaks so much volumes that of everyone that was mourning Ren’s death, it was Nobu who received that supernatural moment - the song that played with no CD in the stereo.  Ren leaving it up to Nobu to be the one to play the music for Nana’s voice, so Nana’s voice will never be silenced.  If the common theory that Ren’s gift to Nana was a song that Ren wrote for Nana to sing, then I think it’s likely the song that Nobu heard after Ren’s death was that song.

That’s all I got for now!  But I’ll write more someday... I promise!! I just can’t promise when.  But yes! I so relate - NANA was one of my very first manga too... One of the first 10 at the very least!!!!  I still remember so much, picking that first volume up at a library and wanting more just from the prologue!  I’ve loved measuring my own maturity by reading NANA and reacting differently... It’s just one of the those series!!

No problem!!!!! I always have time to talk to other NANA fans.