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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

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Shiramine Nokia, and her role in Cyber Sleuth’s narrative

This one’s on request! Cyber Sleuth is quite the interesting game and a rather landmark entry in the franchise, mainly for being a love letter to the franchise and its long history itself, and for being the franchise’s very first work exclusively aimed at adults, meaning that it can explore different topics that wouldn’t normally be Sunday morning timeslot material, while also being a little more willing to assume that the people playing this are familiar with a lot of older parts of the franchise (not that it’s advisable to have complete lockout, but the game benefits greatly by not needing to assume lockout by default).

One of the ways Cyber Sleuth exhibits its “franchise love letter” status is by starting off the game all the way back at the franchise’s roots, before Digimon Adventure changed the game and everyone’s perception of Digimon and Digimon partnership, when the V-Pet lore was intertwined with Digimon as elements of hard sci-fi. As the game proceeds, the atmosphere slowly starts to resemble the more fantasy-like version of the franchise established by Digimon Adventure and its follower entries -- and that change is represented in none other than Nokia herself.

Before we begin: As anyone who follows my meta work has probably noticed, I generally prefer to have my analyses use tons of references and screenshots so that it’s easy to follow and the evidence is concrete, but Cyber Sleuth is a game, and it’s much harder to get those things without replaying the entire game, so I hope this won’t be too hard to follow despite being mostly text.

Nokia’s background and personality

If we want to apply the producer’s statements on Twitter, Nokia is 17 years old at the time of Cyber Sleuth, and has a backstory of having originally been a shy, bullied child who broke out of her shell thanks to the influence of her cousin (who, of all people, happens to be none other than Date Makiko). The flashback we get with Nokia in chapter 18, however, portrays her as just a fairly cheerful, go-getter child, but (although we only get to see her hair) she’s not quite as “flashy” or in-your-face as the description entails.

A possible hypothesis for rationalizing this all together comes from a what we learn about the process of memory wiping in Cyber Sleuth chapter 14: even if memories are extracted from the person, there’s some kind of residual memory left behind (the producer’s above statement also states that the same thing had even happened to Suedou). In Hacker’s Memory chapter 16, Arata confesses to Ryuji that the first Under Zero incident and Jude's loss to the Knightmon had re-triggered his trauma from having lost Yuugo years prior -- “not the memory, but the feeling.” So in other words, there was some feeling of loss that came after the loss of Yuugo that impacted those involved -- and it’s very possible that this deeply impacted and traumatized Nokia as well.

Assuming we’re still following this line of thought (since, again, this background point wasn’t actually in the game proper), Nokia eventually decided to break out of her shell thanks to Makiko’s influence, and become eccentric and assertive, and thus, the game begins.

While we’re here, I also want to point out that Nokia is also voiced by Han Megumi, possibly the Digimon franchise’s most notorious “promoted fangirl” who freaked out after getting to meet her childhood characters’ voice actors while cast as Airu in the Xros Wars crossover and ended up casted in a handful of major Digimon roles thereafter as a result. Which is not to say that her voice performance wasn’t also absolutely perfect for the bright and aggressive Nokia, but, you know...considering the below analysis, food for thought.

Nokia as a representative of “the conventional franchise”

Cyber Sleuth opens on a world where Digimon are largely seen as hacker programs, and even the hackers themselves only see them as non-sentient programs; there are ones like Chitose who treat them with empathy, but his attitude seems to be kindness towards them in a way not entirely unlike a family would treat a Roomba. Although he doesn’t admit to it at first, Arata himself also comes from this “world” of hackers, and we later learn that Yuuko herself is as well (via her “Yuugo” persona), meaning that, other than the playable protagonist, Nokia is the only “outside-context” person -- a completely ordinary civilian who’s gotten dragged into all of this.

Much like, say, the protagonists of Digimon Adventure.

With this background behind her, once she’s thrown into the world of hackers, she immediately has a “fateful encounter” with Agumon and Gabumon, instantly recognizable as two of the franchise’s most prominent Digimon (and complete with their Adventure voice actors, too). And I do especially bring up Adventure specifically, because while Nokia’s position in the game does end up taking in certain elements that roughly came around that era and possibly slightly predated it (mostly Digimon World and V-Tamer), Agumon and Gabumon weren’t particular mascots of the franchise until Adventure basically blew everything to pieces.

Right off the bat, Nokia does not have a single shred of doubt that Agumon and Gabumon are living beings and should be treated as such (again, much like the protagonists of Digimon Adventure; even Taichi in his “is this a game?” mode never doubted this). And they open up their meeting with this conversation:

Agumon: Umm, who are you? Nokia: It... It can talk?! It's so... so... so adoooooorable! M-M-M-M-My name's Nokia. What're your names? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

And on top of that, Agumon refers to Nokia as having a “familiar” scent. Remember this for later.

Nokia’s second encounter with Agumon and Gabumon in Cyber Sleuth chapter 3 involves her properly partnering herself with Agumon and Gabumon, and learning about the existence of the “Digital World”. Note that, for all intents and purposes, EDEN had been treated like the functional equivalent of the Digital World in this narrative up until this point -- cyberspace with hackers, coming from the network, it’s basically a “digital world” from top to bottom, and yet here Agumon and Gabumon are introducing the concept of a more fantasy-esque incarnation of a digital world. (And, in fact, despite EDEN being right there, many long-time Digimon fans playing this game often complained about how little you get to see the “Digital World” in this game, because of how associated that term is with something more fantasy-like.) So, again: here we have Nokia, who’s forming a partnership with Agumon and Gabumon as equals instead of recruiting them as hacker tools (even the protagonist wasn’t immune to this method), and being indirectly responsible for introducing the more fantasy-like concept of the Digital World that the modern franchise is currently associated with.

Nokia embarks on the conventional shounen anime character arc of starting off cowardly, but eventually learning to have her own inner strength, with her Digimon evolving in accordance to her emotions. And, eventually, in Cyber Sleuth chapter 8, she decides to form her own hacker team, called the “Rebels”. She ostensibly bases it off the old creed of Jude, having heard that they were a team that never caused trouble for others, but we later learn via Arata turning out to have been its former leader, and the even later portrayal in Hacker’s Memory of its spiritual successor Hudie, that this is an extremely rose-colored image of them -- Jude (and Hudie) was not a well-intentioned team by any means, but rather a sort of mercenary group meant to enforce the “freedom” of EDEN, often taking on shady jobs and “punishing” entities they considered to be causing chaos. But in this case, Nokia forms her team under the idea of legitimately fighting for justice and good will -- again, much like a Digimon Adventure protagonist.

In case the metaphor weren’t clear enough, Nokia decides that the members of her group will not be called “hackers”, but “Tamers” -- the same lingo used by the franchise to refer to a human who partners alongside a Digimon to help them get stronger -- and that she wants to promote the idea of humans and Digimon working in tandem (complete with emotional bonding exercises). For this, everyone looks at her weird, and yet her methodology, initially naive as it seems, keeps working, because Nokia’s natural charisma starts bringing people from different places together and making quite the formidable team. Everyone is perplexed by this, but perhaps it’s only natural, because Nokia has just independently invented the modern concept of Digimon partnership in a world where it did not exist. And this is eventually solidified by the Under Zero invasion in Cyber Sleuth chapter 10, in which Omegamon is finally formed (from sheer guts on her part).

Omegamon is yet another symbol of the modern franchise, but it’s important to remember that he hasn’t always been so; even his appearance in V-Tamer was as more of a tactical piece than any kind of game-breaker, but the impact of Our War Game! has led him to constantly make a resurgence in major franchise roles (maybe a little too much these days). However, on top of Nokia basically embodying the modern franchise itself by doing this, Nokia and Arata’s positions are an obvious reference to Our War Game! in particular, being Omegamon and Diablomon Tamers -- but they’re not seen directly fighting each other. In fact, Arata’s partner only ever reaches Diablomon when he’s at the highest point of his morality, so the reference is more ideological; Nokia represents the more idealistic and heroic side of Digimon, whereas Arata represents the more dirty-playing and cynical hard sci-fi side of it (remember that Diablomon himself was rather detached from the fantasy conflict of Adventure, being a mysterious entity that sprouted out of nowhere on the Internet and wreaked havoc). Moreover, Nokia’s usage of Omegamon embodies a theme that’s central to both Our War Game! and Cyber Sleuth itself as a whole -- while most people associate Omegamon with Taichi and Yamato these days, the original method of formation back in Our War Game! came from “bringing people from different places together”. Nokia managed to bring together a formidable army in a place where everyone else in the hacker world was trying to promote a dog-eat-dog philosophy, and the sense of cooperation is arguably making her stronger than anyone else.

(I should also point out that Nokia’s name is, obviously, a reference to the Finnish telephone communications company, and this has a lot of relevance to the game’s theme of connection, along with her phone Digivice...and, also, the method used to bring everyone’s powers together in Our War Game!’s spiritual successor, Diablomon Strikes Back. Feels a bit too on-the-nose here.)

In the second half of the game, when the world starts falling apart due to the Digital World portal opening, Nokia becomes one of most important people holding everything together as Arata goes off the deep end and Yuuko starts fixating on her own personal problems and revenge -- because she’s the one most in tune with treating Digimon as the living beings they are, she’s most active in advocating for them and helping them bond with humans, and and she’s the one making the chaos be a little less chaotic. The second half is basically the more fantasy-esque version of Digimon leaking into the sci-fi, with the sidequests progressively resembling your average Digimon anime monster-of-the-week episode, and holding that all together is Nokia, who becomes a vital figure in maintaining that fellowship by being in tune with the modern franchise’s philosophy.

Through all of this, Nokia ends up taking a role rather similar to a Digimon protagonist, which is highlighted very strongly in Cyber Sleuth chapter 18 when she ends up literally becoming the player character while the main protagonist is out of commission. During that time, Yuuko and Nokia learn the truth of what happened during the EDEN incident eight years prior -- and we also learn that the five children involved had an extremely conventional “first meeting in the Digital World” experience that could have been pulled right out of the first episode of a Digimon anime, with them having a lovely adventure meeting new creatures. And at the center of that “first contact” was none other than Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon themselves:

Agumon: Um... who are you? Nokia: Ahem! I am Nokia! And just who are you? Agumon: Me? My name is Agumon! Gabumon: I... I'm Gabumon. Nokia: Agumon and Gabumon? Hee hee! What weird names! Gabumon: Hey, they're not weird! Agumon: You're the one with the weird name! Nokia: As if! My name's not weird! Hee hee!

Nokia, Agumon, and Gabumon’s meeting at the beginning of the game had been an (accidental) reenactment of their first meeting in the Digital World eight years prior -- and, in the flashback, Nokia invites them to go on an “adventure” with them. So in other words, Nokia getting involved in the hacker conflict at the beginning of the game was, unknown to all of them, her attempting to restore that beauty and idealism of the Digimon Adventure-esque philosophy and fun in a world where the Eaters had torn it away and EDEN had turned into a haven of cynicism and hacker battle royale.

In the end, the game’s conflict is only resolved by bringing everyone together; Arata has to be retrieved from the deep end, and Yuuko has to settle her deep-seated personal grievances. Everyone makes a promise to return together, in the sense of making things right and repairing the connections between them that had been cut in that incident. The final battle (momentarily) causes the playable protagonist to literally fall apart, and the one reaching out to them and sending her message to them at the end of the game is none other than Nokia herself -- again, in the absence of the game’s protagonist, Nokia is the one with the closest role, because in the face of the new world going forward, she was the one who contributed most to restoring its idealism.

Ultimately, all of this is especially because Cyber Sleuth works under one of the most terrifying imaginable premises for a fan of a kids’ franchise: “we made an entry for this, but for adults.” Many of us can testify that this kind of premise can go very well, or very badly -- the latter especially in the case of things that decide “taking the opportunity to do things that you can’t do on a Sunday morning kids’ timeslot” means “going out of your way to put edgy violence and sexy things and cynicism just because you can”, or, in other words, looking down condescendingly on its kids’ franchise roots with malice and deciding that something for adults means “more suffering” and not “issues that require more life experience to understand”. The reason the game ended up getting as much acclaim among longtime Digimon fans as it did was that despite being the franchise’s first venture into this territory, it did end up setting itself up as something that took that opportunity to do something new and unique that would have never made it into any of the prior entries (holy hell the doll quest) and yet never gave up on the idealism and themes of connection that make up the franchise at its core, and paid respect to everything that had contributed to all of that while it was at it.

And at the center of that is Shiramine Nokia, who is effectively the spirit of Digimon Adventure, condensed into a single character.

#digimon #digimon story cyber sleuth #shiramine nokia #nokia shiramine #shihameta

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citrineghost · 4 years ago

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GUESS WHAT I LEARNED TODAY, FUCKERS

I’ve been bitching for approximately 15 fucking years that Google Docs doesn’t let you change your default font settings and found out today

by COMPLETE ACCIDENT

that you CAN and it’s just unintuitive and stupid as fuck

If you use Google Docs and are tired of having to manually change your font and update your heading fonts every time you make a new heading and it fucking forces it back into Arial, here’s how to change it

[ID: a screenshot of a document with the default title format displayed to show how gargantuan and stupid it is as well as showing where the text style dropdown is to the left of the font dropdown /end ID]

So, this is the default title style. If you want to make a title, you select your text and click this style and it makes it big, ugly, and Arial. The reason why choosing to make certain text a title or heading style is important is because, regardless of its appearance, it changes how that set of text is viewed by things like a table of contents or, if you do SEO or content writing, how it’s viewed by Google and your browser. Anyway, text styles are important when doing things that are more than casual.

However, if you’re like me and you fucking hate Arial and you don’t need your title to be fucking 26! point! font! you are lamenting every single day about this.

Because if you type something out and then make it title, it doesn’t just keep the current font and make it bigger, it changes the whole title style to 26 point Arial.

Here’s how you fucking fix this:

[ID: a screenshot of the same document with a sentence written in 15 point Tahoma. The sentence is selected and the mouse is shown navigating to an arrow on the title text style selection box. The navigation box shows an option called “update ‘Title’ to match” /end ID]

If you type out a title (or any other heading type) and make it the size, weight, color, and font you want, you can then select it, open the text style dropdown, go to the style you want to overwrite with your new style, go to the little arrow on the right, and hit “update to match.”

[ID: A screenshot showing that the text style for titles has been updated to look like the sentence previously typed and selected /end ID]

By updating the text style to match the selected text, it makes it so that any titles, even the old Arial one that was there before, will be in the new style.

You can even make terrible fucking decisions.

[ID: a screenshot of the same document showing that the title style has been updated to a terrible font called “rock salt” that is ugly and hard to read /end ID]

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

Don’t want to customize your text styles every fucking time you make a new doc?????

Make your terrible decisions permanent by going to the options box at the bottom of the text style dropdown and hitting “save as my default styles”

[ID: a screenshot showing the cursor hovering dangerously over the “save as my default styles” button, accessible through the navigation arrow to the right of the options at the bottom of the text style dropdown list, threatening to legitimize the terrible choice to use the rock salt font forever and ever /end ID]

So, that’s it!

Go wild. Make all of your text styles horrendous or actually make them suit the work you do so that every time you make a new doc, you can simply select the heading option and have your heading match and be of a reasonable size. Note that this works for the “normal text” style as well, meaning you can change your default Google Docs font.

Thank me later

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derekfoxwit · 3 years ago

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Doctor Dorpden’s Critical Tips of Prestige

Note: This post was made with satirical intentions in mind. I’m only emphasizing because I’ve had a couple of comments on previous joke posts I’ve did take it seriously. With that said, here we go.

Tip 1: For starters, remember that when looking at the work, if the Mystic Knee twitches fast enough to punch a hole in a wall, this suggests that the work should be near the lowest of the low. No further development of opinion is needed.

Tip 2: For an equal degree of sophistication, give the warm comfort of nostalgia at least 5 times more chances than the new thing that MAY seem actually poggers.

Tip 3: If you have the anecdote of encountering shitty fans, then use them as a scapegoat for the show they flaunt over being shitty. Clearly, they’re always making the show the way it is.

Tip 4: If you haven’t heard much about a newer film or show you’re yet to watch, there’s an 85% chance that film or show is actually not worth your time. The Father (2020) isn’t as widespread as Joker (2019) for a reason.

Tip 5: At this point, just go for the Asian Artist Dick. I’m actually in the mood to see merit in that because I want to look edgy against cute doodles. Stop attacking Uzaki-Chan, you cowards!

Tip 6: Avoid the electronic tunes. They’ll make you smell like a bum, for there’s no structural in a music album that’s nothing but wubs.

Tip 7: If you see a Tweet that looks dumb, use it as a means of generalizing all the fans of a work as sharing that same opinion.

Tip 8: If the cartoon I’m given doesn’t provide me with mature ideas such as slicing an Arbok in half or fake boobs, then the cartoon might as well be on the same level as Teletubbies.

Tip 9: You know the music is (c)rap when it brings up drugs, regardless of lyrical context.

Tip 10: Raw mood is the indicator of quality cartooning. If you’re quick to assume the worst in the newest HBO Max original cartoon, then you got thyself a stinker. Same thing if you were super bummed out when watching a new thing, regardless of anecdotal context.

Tip 11: When you’re not given continuous throwbacks, ensure you’re as reductive and over-generalizing about the works shown as possible.

Tip 12: If your hazy and imperfect as hell recollection of a children’s film, whether it’s Wall-E or Lilo & Stitch, would describe said film as “too sugary” or “key-waving schlock”, then that HAS to be the case. No meat on that bone whatsoever.

Tip 13: Simpler, more graphic style that isn’t as realistic as old-school Disney or Anime? You got yourself a lazy style with zero passion put into it.

UPA? Who’s THAT?!

Tip 14: Don’t trust anyone saying that western children’s cartoons had any form of artistic development after 2008 (with, like, TWO exceptions). If it did, why didn’t we go from stealing organs in a 2001 cartoon to showing opened stomachs in a 2021 cartoon?

Tip 15: Big booba is always important to the strong female character’s quality.

Tip 16: Only MY ships count, for they provide me with a feeling of intelligence.

Tip 17: “PG-13″ and “R” rating just simply mean you’re not caring for expressing themes in a sophisticated manner. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 18: In this age of smelly radicals, “Death of the Author” is more important than ever. Without it, this’ll imply that a classic like The Matrix was secretly toxic, due to what the Wachowskis have to say about it being an “allegory of trans people.”

Tip 19: Turn the fandoms you hate into your torture porn. Ask in Tweets to Retweet one sentence that’d “trigger” them. Go out of your way to paint all of them as blind consoomers. That’ll show them, and it’ll show how much more intelligent you are compared to those clowns.

Tip 20: Whatever the Mystic Knee dictates upon the first viewing of a work is what shall indicate the full structural extent of the film.

Tip 21: The mindset of a 2000s edgelord is one that actually understands the artistry of the medium of animation. Listen to that crazy but ingenious man.

Tip 22: Because sheer ambition makes me feel manly, the high pedestal you bestow upon a cartoon work should be based mostly on the mere mention or mere suggestion of serious topics. This means that pure comedy is smelly.

Tip 23: Is the new work tackling subjects that you’ve loved a childhood work of yours for covering? Just assume it’s super bare-bones in that case compared to the older case, for there’s nothing the older work can do to truly prove itself otherwise. Seriously, Letterboxd. Stop giving any 2010s cartoon anything above a 4/5

Tip 24: If the Mystic Knee is suggesting that the work is crummy, then consider any explanation off the top of your head for why the work in question is crummy.

Tip 25: Sexual and gender identity is inherently political, so don’t focus on them in the story. It’s no wonder why Full Metal Alchemist has caught on more than the She-Ra reboot.

Tip 26: Since I got bothered by a random butt monkey type character in a crummy cartoon, I’m now obligated to assume that having a butt monkey will only harm the writing integrity of the cartoon.

Seriously, Mr. Enter....what?!

Tip 27: We’re at a point where pure comedy for a kids’ cartoon is doing nothing but dumbing down the children. Like seriously...... I doubt Billy and Mandy would ever use farts as a punchline, unlike these newer kids comedies.

Tip 28: The difference between the innuendo in kids’ cartoons I grew up on and the ones Zootopia made is the sense of prestige they give me. Just take notes from the former instead.

Tip 29: Wanna make a work of artistic merit? Just take notes from the stuff I whore out to. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 30: Always remember this golden rule: If the newer work, or a work you’ve recently experienced the first time, was truly great, why isn’t it providing the exact emotions from your younger, more impressionable years?

Tip 31: If the Mystic Knee aims to break the bones of a character doing certain things (.i.e. having body count of thousands; lashing out to character; etc.), that means the character is bad and deserves no redemption.

Tip 32: If you want me to believe there’s any intrigue or depth in your antagonist, give them redemption, for I am in need of that sorta thing being spelled out. Looking at you, Syndrome. Should’ve taken notes from Tai Lung.

Tip 33: In a case where you’re going “X > Y” (.i.e. manga compared to western comics), ALWAYS CHERRY PICK! Use the recent controversies of the “Y” item while pretending that the “X” item has never had anything of the sort.

Tip 34: BEFORE you bring up those comments that shat on the original Teen Titans cartoon back when it was new, whether for making Starfire “more PC” or whatever.......the DIFFERENCE between them and me is that THEY were just bad faith fools that couldn’t see true majesty out of blind rage. I, however, am truly certain that calling any western TV cartoon from 2014-onward a work that transcends its generation suggests a destruction of the medium.

Tip 35: Based on fandom growth, it shows that any newer show isn’t being watched much by kids, but rather loser adults that act like children. Therefore, there’s more prestige in what I grew with.

Tip 36: The focus on children is bad at this point since the children of today have attention spans that flies would have.

Tip 37: A select few screenshots (or even one) of either a less elaborate attacking animation, less realistic game graphics, or a less on-model image in a cartoon indicates EVERYTHING about the work’s quality.

Tip 38: Consuming or writing media where characters go through constant suffering is little more than gaining pleasure out of it. YOU SICKOS!

Looking at you, Lily Orchard!

Tip 39: Whether it’s a sexual awakening story or just simply a romance, focus on a character being lesbian, trans, bi, etc., then it shouldn’t be in a kids’ work. It’s too spicy for them by default. Kids don’t want romance anyway.

Tip 40: The very idea of a western cartoon with no full-blown antagonist (i.e. Inside Out) is a destruction of animated artistry. Sorry, but it’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 41: Unless it’s my fluffy pillow, such as Disney’s Robin Hood, it should be obligated to assume the inserting of anthros is only there to pleasure the furries. Looking at YOU, Zootopia!

Tip 42: With how rough and rash The Beast was, it shows that he was more of an abusive lover. Therefore, I refuse to believe that Beauty and the Beast has any of the meticulous moral writing that most of Disney’s other 90s films has.

Tip 43: When you suggest one work should’ve “taken notes” from another work in order to do better, BE VAGUE! Those who agree will be shown to be geniuses.

Tip 44: Remember how morally grey Invader Zim was? That really goes to show how little the Western Animation scene has been trying since that show. Really should just be taking notes from that series (and of course anime).

Tip 45: Even if I have a radar that clearly indicates such, hiding the item I look for inside an enemy is always bad, for I refuse to believe it would be inside the enemy.

Goddamn it, Arin!

Tip 46: People struggle understanding your gender identity or pronouns? All there is to see in that is a giant cloud of egotism that reads “My problems” zapping another smaller cloud that reads “other people’s problems”. Seriously, kids are starving, so WHAT if you identity confused someone. Grow a spine!

Tip 47: Stop pretending that adaptations should colorize how a story or comic series should be defined. No way in FUCK can a cartoon or film incarnation become the definitive portrayal of my precious superhero idol.

Tip 48: Enough with your precious “limited animation” techniques, YOU WESTERN HACKS! All you’re doing is admitting to sheer laziness and lacking artistic integrity. Now if you excuse me, I’ll be watching more anime, since that gives me a sense of prestige.

Tip 49: If getting five times more detail than the 2D animated visuals have requires someone getting hurt, so be it. No pain, no gain after all.

Tip 50: Yes, I genuinely struggle to believe there’s this majestic level of layered material without having the most immediate yet still vague re-assurance practically yelling in my face. But that’s STILL the work’s fault, not mine.

Tip 51: Every Klasky-Csupo cartoon has more artistic integrity than any of them cartoons with gay lovers such as Kipo or the Netflix She-Ra show.

Tip 52: If Sergio Pablos’ Klaus is anything to go by, we have no excuse to utilize those smelly as fuck digital animation “styles” found on Stinky Universe, Suck-Ra or Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turds.

Tip 53: Stop projecting your orientation onto works of actual talent. Seriously, how does Elton John’s I’m Still Standing expel ANY rainbow flag energy?

Tip 54: Hip hop and electronica have been the destruction of music, especially the kind that’s actually organic and not farting on the buttons of a beeping or drumming gadget.

Tip 55: The audience for cartoons has become significantly less clear over the years. We should just go back to Saturday mornings of being sold toys or shit kids actually want.

Tip 56: PSAs for kids shouldn’t be about ‘woke’ content. They should be actual problems such as doing drugs; not playing with knifes / outlets / matches; or acceptance.

Tip 57: The instant you realize a detail in a childhood work that’s better understood as an adult, you’re forced to paint that work as the most transcendent thing in the world. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 58: Before you lash out on ALL rich people, remember this: #Not All Rich People.

Tip 59: There’s nothing to gain out of the (c)rap scene other than becoming a spiteful, gun-wielding thug that sniffs weed for breakfast.

Tip 60: Since the Mystic Knee told me to get anal about prom episodes in several gay cartoons, this shows that writing about one’s younger experiences just makes you look pathetic.

Tip 61: Another smelly thing about Zootopia is how it was painting a police chief as stern and exclusive. #Not All Chiefs

Tip 62: Me catching a glimpse of Grave of the Fireflies as a kid and turning out fine shows that you may as well show kids more adult works without worry. No amount of psychological questions being asked will suggest otherwise.

Tip 63: There’s a reason why the Mystic Knee keeps leaning more toward the 90s and early 2000s than most decades. That knee KNOWS where there’s a sense of true refinement.

Tip 64: The BIG difference between rock and electronica? Steward Copeland actually DRUMS. All that the likes of Burial, Boards of Canada, Depeche Mode and several others did was push drum buttons.

Tip 65: One exception to the golden nostalgia is when the work in question doesn’t stuff your face with fantastical, bombastic stories. At which point, there can only be rose-colored blinds covering Nickelodeon’s Doug. Nothing of merit or personal resonance to be found.

Tip 66: Remember that the sense of nuance in the work comes down to there being everything including the kitchen sink, whether it involves multiple geographic landscapes; giving us hundreds of characters; etc. Only through the extremes will I be able to tell there is nuance.

Tip 67: Once you see a joke that has an involvement with sexual or violent content, just ignore the full picture and just reduce it to having nothing to it but “sex, violence, gimme claps.”

PKRussel has entered the chat

Tip 68: With all the SJWs messing up the art of comedy, lament the times where you could be called a comic genius, NOT a monster, for shouting out the word “STAB,” calling a gay weird, painting Middle Easterns as inherently violent, etc.

Tip 69: Guitar twang will always win out over (c)rap beats. There’s a reason your grandma is more likely to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd than Kendrick Lamar.

Tip 70: Once the Mystic Knee notices a lack of squealing at the video game with linearity, that shows there’s more artistry in going full-blown open world.

Tip 71: Related to Tips 66 and 68, ensure your comedy gets as much information and mileage out of each individual skit as possible. EMPHASIZE if you need to. Continuously spout out your quirky phrase of “STAB” if needed.

Tip 72: Based on the onslaught of TV shows with many seasons and episodes, animated or otherwise, it shows that there’s more worth going for that than simply having a miniseries or a 26-episode anime.

Tip 73: Building off of the previous tip, you’re better off squeezing and exhausting every little detail and notable characterization rather than keeping anything simple and possibly leaving a stone unturned, especially if there’s supposed to be a story.

Tip 74: Playing through the fan translation of Mother 3 made me realize how much some newer kids’ works just try too hard to get serious. Why even make the kids potentially think about the death of a family member?

Tip 75: The fear I had over Sid’s toys from the first Toy Story and similar anecdotal emotions are the be-all indicators of what kind of show or film is fitting for the children.

Tip 76: Seeing this British rapper chick have a song titled “Point and Kill” just further exemplifies the fears I’ve had about rappers being some of the most harmful folks ever.

Tip 77: The problem with attempting to make a more “relatable” She-Ra is that kids aren’t looking for relatability. They want the escapism of buff fighters or something similar. This is why slice-of-life is so smelly.

Tip 78: Based on seeing the rating of “PG-13″ or “R,” I can tell that the dark humor is little more than “hur dur sex and guns.” Given the “TV-Y7 FV” rating of Invader Zim, the writers should’ve taken notes from that instead just so I can sense actual prestige.

Tip 79: The original He-Man has more visual intrigue in its animation than any of those smelly glorified doodles found in the “styles" of the 2010s and early 2020s.

Tip 80: It’s always the fault of the game that my first guess (that I refuse to divert from) on how I have to go through an obstacle won’t work.

Tip 81: Zootopia discussing prejudice ruins the majestic escapism I got from my precious childhood films from 1991-2004. Them kids might as well be watching the news. Now to watch some Hunchback after I finish these tips.

Tip 82: There is no such thing as an unreasonable expectation, and there’s especially no wrong way to address the lack of met expectations! For example, if you expect some early 2010s cartoon on the Disney Channel to be a Kids X-Files, yet you get moments such as some girl getting high on stick dipping candy, you got the right to paint the worst out of that show for not being “Kids’ X-Files.”

Tip 83: Related to my example for Tip 82, if you get the slightest impression of something being childish, you know you got yourself a children’s work that does little than wave keys and has basically nothing substantial for them. In this situation, those malfunctioning robots found in Wall-E are the guilty party.

Tip 84: Without the extensive dialogue that I’m used to getting, how can one say for certain there was any amount of characterization in the title character of Wall-E?

Tip 85: Ever noticed yourself gradually being less likely to expect an upcoming work or view a work you’re just consuming as “the next best thing”? That’s ALWAYS the fault of smelly “artists” (hacks really) and their refusal to give a shit.

Tip 86: It’s obligatory for your lead to be explicitly heroic just so there is this immediate re-assurance that they’re a good one.

Tip 87: Without the comforting safety net of throwbacks, one cannot be for certain that there has been an actual evolution of a series or the art of animation and video games.

Tip 88: Don’t PSA kids on stuff they give zero fucks about. That means no gender identities or pronouns, race, etc.

Tip 89: Don’t listen to Mamoru Hosoda saying that anime women tend to be “depicted through a lens” of sexual desire. He’s just distracting from the superior prestige found in anime women.

Tip 90: If you’re desperate to let others know that your talking points are reasonable, just repeat them over and over with little expansion on said talking points.

Tip 91: 7 or more seasons of art is better than 26 episodes of art. EVERY TIME!

Tip 92: Always remember to continuously talk up the innuendo and mature subject matter of the childhood work as the most prestigious, transcendent thing of all time. With that in mind, there’s a high chance that your favorite childhood work will be better known than Perfect Blue (1997), and there’s likely a reason for that.

Tip 93: An art style that gives many characters relatively more realistic arm muscle details will always shine through more than any sort of art style done for “simplicity” (laziness, really).

Tip 94: Seeing a few (like, even VERY FEW) people show more enthusiasm for Steven Universe over Invader Zim really shows the lower bar that has been expected out of the western animation scene compared to anime.

Tip 95: Electronic music makes less conventional time signatures cheap as hell. REAL music like rock makes them the exact opposite.

Tip 96: If your Mystic Knee suggests that the 90s cartoon being viewed doesn’t showcase a vague sense of refinement or artistic integrity, then every related assumption of yours is right. EVERY TIME!

Tip 97: Doing everything and the kitchen sink for one series or movie shows a better sense of refinement and prestige than any form of simplicity. THIS includes character design as well.

Tip 98: The advent of that Star Wars: Visions anime really shows just how stinky western cartoons have become.

Tip 99: For those wondering, no, Europe isn’t being counted in my definition of “western animation”. Doing so is a complete disservice to prestige.

Tip 100: If even less than half of these tips aren’t being considered, you can kiss that prestige badge goodbye. After all, I SAID SO!

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katara0524 · 3 years ago

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Impromptu Ramblings about the NEO:TWEWY Demo

In case y'all weren't aware, I've been a pretty big fan of TWEWY for a couple years now, and with the sequel coming out next month, the excitement I feel for this game is greater than ever :) I played the Demo for the first time yesterday, and following a couple views of some livestreams of others playing it, I felt like sharing my (very ramble-y) thoughts prior to the release of the full game. This post WILL contain spoilers for both TWEWY and NEO:TWEWY, so if you want to avoid those from now on, please block the tags: #twewy spoilers, #ntwewy spoilers, #neo twewy spoilers, #ntwewy, and #neo twewy ^_^ Oh, and if you wanna keep up with any other posts I make about my experience with this game, please refer to the tag "kat plays neo twewy" :)

-First things first: I have not watched the Final Trailer and I don't plan on doing so to avoid spoilers, especially after the pre-release era of KH3 where a lot of the later trailers spoiled a lot of the endgame content. That being said, I've seen some minor screenshots from the final trailer including what many believe to be characters from the original TWEWY, namely Shiki and Joshua. That is all I know about the Final Trailer and I would very much like to remain as blind as possible going into NEO :)

-The very first cutscene was quite ominous in the sense that this game is likely going to be about "changing fate" (a recently common theme in Squeenix games, which I do appreciate), perhaps leading off from the end of A New Day in the OG and trying to stop an Inversion of Shibuya. Also worth noting that A New Day had similar aspects in which the main character experienced "future visions" of tragic events, although in A New Day these events were not able to be changed, while in NEO it seems like one of the main "powers" our protagonist has is specifically to rewrite these events and avoid a "bad ending." Very interesting indeed!

-I really like the revamped comic book style dialogue scenes, it's much more fluid and modern, which is an excellent direction for the series to take!

-I would love to have an actual PokemonGO knockoff of Final Fantasy creatures, please Squeenix that would be incredibleeeeee

-Also the LINE stickers??? Are so cute???

-I would just like to point out that Fret is an absolute treasure throughout this entire demo, he's hilarious and I will protect him with my life

-UHHHH don't like that Fret picked up some Reaper Pins just out of nowhere.....or the fact that they're apparently popular all over Shibuya.............did y'all not learn anything from the OG game or what lmao

-Okay so when I first got the "curry or ramen" scene and heard NPCs talking about the new curry place replacing the old ramen place I became IMMENSELY distressed that Ramen Don was totally cut from the game because....well, Ramen Don is a King okay?? But I'm glad to learn that no, he didn't fall off the face of the earth, he's still in business and he's the one opening the curry restaurant lolol. PHEW, crisis averted!

-.....I don't like the sudden appearance of a Wall Reaper and being able to read NPC thoughts. Wtf happened when they left the ramen place??? Are they playing the Game alive somehow?

-Okay so I have my own theories about this "Swallow" character and what they're up to but considering this is only the Demo and I still Have No Idea What's Happening, I'm just gonna say that I think Swallow intentionally led Rindo and Fret to the Crossing so they could join the Game. I mean, add in the fact that Swallow still communicates with Rindo during the Game and you've got yourself a suspicious character right there lol

-"Hey they're shooting off fireworks!" Fret honey that's not fireworks oof (see also: "*laughs* I'm in danger")

-WOOOOOO way to traumatize Rindo right off the bat like that LMAOO

-The visuals for the intro are VERY GOOD, the song is pretty decent until it gets all "screamo" (which I absolutely cannot stand sorry lol)

-Shoka is every Customer Service employee ever and I respect that

-Susukichi went from being "meh" to "WOW THIS GUY IS FUN" in the span of 10 seconds and I also respect that (he is also built like an Absolute Unit which is hilarious)

-The Wall Reapers (and just Reapers in general) seem.....way nicer and more helpful this time around?? Like in the OG the Wall Reapers were SO RUDE gfhjgjdfkhn and yeah I'm sure we'll get some like that but the juxtaposition of the first Wall Reaper in the OG compared to the first one in NEO is insane.

-The puzzles are quite a bit more entertaining this time around even if it's generally the same "fetch quest" formula lol

-"Rindo's Group" way to go Fret HFKJDGHSDFKJ mans really left the default name in there lmao

-OKAYOKAYOKAY so to those who aren't aware I am a MASSIVE SIMP for Sho Minamimoto, he's my absolute favorite and I think about him daily. HIS INTRODUCTION IS. INCREDIBLE. I LOVE IT SM.

-GOD hearing him actually SPEAK FULL SENTENCES is just SO SURREAL I love this sm

-Also the remix of his theme???? NEO TRANSFORMATION????? IT'S SO GOOD????????? It's like gone from a Boss Theme to a more triumphant sounding theme and I am HERE for it (every version of Transformation is just INCREDIBLE and getting a new one is even better)

-I Love Him, Your Honor

-Also idk how exactly but it's kinda weird seeing Sho in the OG vs NEO, cuz while he's mostly the same Insane Math-Obsessed Catboy, he's.....calmed down quite a bit?? Like OG made a whole point of how poorly he cooperates with others (not to mention just being completely unhinged and trying to kill everyone), whereas here in NEO he's......actually kinda working with others??? HELLO???? Sir what happened to you and Neku during those 3 years I would love to know all about it

-I guarantee you Sho is still probably scheming shite and will likely pull some total insane BS later down the road, and I am very much looking forward to that. Also, is he looking for a certain Pin or something??? Cuz he keeps talking about different Pins and even mentions "this is just another Psych Pin" like he's actively looking for a Pin to do something with. Maybe it also has to do with the "latent powers of Players" thing he mentioned as well??? What is this dude UP TO oml (also is he in contact with Neku at all?? they're both technically fugitives at this point right?? WHAT HAPPENED AFTER A NEW DAY I AM BEGGING YOU)

-I seems like Sho ALSO has an idea of what's going on in this specific game (even if he won't admit it straightforward). Per his quote "The game's 142,857. Factor it out," he's essentially saying, "This game is a neverending cyle, figure out how to get out of it" (or at least that's what I got from his "cyclic number" nonsense lolol)

-I do like how Sho mostly stays out of sight until he's needed for a battle or assisting with a mission, that's kind of on par with his whole "uncooperative" quirk from the OG, plus he might literally have to stay out of sight of other Reapers and Players considering he's likely breaking the rules of the Game (not surprising considering him and Neku broke practically every rule in the book during OG)

-The nicknames for Sho- I can't- They're so FUNNYYYY GFHJSDFKJ

-He goes from being called "Pi-Face" and "Tabooty" in OG to "Mr. Minami" and "M-Teezy" in NEO LMAOO

-(Wowee I just realized I've been mostly talking about Sho oopsies sorry y'all, this is what I meant by thinking about him almost daily he is THAT much of a fav of mine ghfkjsd)

-Okay RIP Fret and Rindo for not getting literally ANY explanation as to how the Game works OOF, that is kinda cringe that whoever gets the Pin earns points, not whoever erases the Noise (which like I understand but also URRRGGHHH I WANNA SEE THE SQUAD SUCCEED)

-"I should be going home now it's getting late" Oh you sweet summer child-

-Also love the mention of parents in this game???? KH you could learn a thing or two from TWEWY (poor Rindo's mom fhgjkdh)

-KUBO IS HILARIOUS I SUPPORT HIM AND HIS GROSS FACE (also thank you Final Trailer thumbnail for spoiling my suspicions about him very cool smh)

-Kaie is a LAD I also support him, go King type those funky texts I believe in you

-FRET PLS STOP SCANNING FHGJKSDHKJFGHFKJ he's like me when I scan in OG during Weeks 2 and 3 and see Taboo Noise coming after me ghfjdshfj

-Also Rindo can you stay off your phone for TWO SECONDS ik you're trying to figure things out but Fret is a jelly boi and I don't want him to be upset with you my guy

-Sho being an actual sorta mentor to the kiddos?? Who are you sir this is so unlike you ghfgskj what happened to the guy who tried shooting children in the face 8 times over LMAO (granted he's probably just using them but it's still nice to see him actually cooperating and sharing knowledge with the kiddos aaaaa)

-EYO EIJI OJI THE TIKTOK INFLUENCER IS BACK LMAO

-hgjkfshgkjf "we aren't glorifying capitalism on my watch" THATS SO FUNNY TO ME GFHJFSDGHJKS (also an all-orange ensemble is disgusting you deserve jail for one thousand years fkn Cheddar Goldfish Cheezit ass woman)

-WICKED TWISTERS NAME DROP EYOOO we love to see it

-gfhsgjf Poor Rindo embarassing himself for the sake of the Game that's incredible

-R e t u r n t o M O N K E. That is all.

-Dialogue during boss battles is HELLA cool i love that

-HHHHH THE KANON SCENE MADE ME A N G E R Y FRET STOP SIMPING MY GUY says the girl with a Literal Simp Encyclopedia and simps for pixels on a screen daily

-Can't wait to see the other Reapers :eyes emoji:

-CAN'T WAIT TO SEE NAGI MY BELOVED YEAHHHH WOOOOOO AAAAND that's about it for the demo lolol, I absolutely CANNOT wait for next month, this game is gonna be INCREDIBLE holy hell Prepare for more simping, more screaming, and more vibing from Yours Truly :) I fully intend on sharing more general thoughts like this on both Tumblr and Twitter so it's not just reblog-retweet-reblog-retweet with the occasional comment fhgskjd

If you wanna witness my insanity up close and personal I have a Square Enix Discord server called Sea Side Dreamers! You can look it up on Disboard, or you can add me on Discord @Katara0524#9244 for a direct link :) We have topics about Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, NieR, and ofc TWEWY (as well as other topics!), so if you want some good ol' chaos and chitchat, you're more than welcome to join!

#neo twewy #ntwewy #neo twewy spoilers #ntwewy spoilers #twewy #neo: the world ends with you #the world ends with you #twewy spoilers #twewy rindo #rindo kanade #twewy fret #tosai furesawa #twewy sho #sho minamimoto #long post #also shameless Discord plug lmaooo #kat plays neo twewy

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dancingdimitri · 4 years ago

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Well, it’s officially been a year. On March 23, 2020, I unboxed the secondhand Switch we had obtained by some incredible stroke of luck, solely for the purpose of playing Fire Emblem Three Houses, and started my first ever playthrough--Blue Lions route, of course--which I affectionately dubbed “Dimitripocalypse.” I chose this name because immediately prior to actually playing the game, I was aware of several facts:

- I was somehow already in love with Dimitri. - The Blue Lions story was both 1) centered on Dimitri, and 2) tragic. - I do not handle tragedies well.

(spoilers following, obviously. And lots of introspection.)

I knew about Three Houses since its release, but waited until many months later to actually play it for a few reasons: we (“we” meaning myself and my twin, Aki) didn’t yet possess a Switch; getting our hands on a system, plus the game, was an investment of several hundred dollars; there were no Switch games other than Three Houses we had significant interest in playing at the time, and besides, we were already plenty occupied with Fire Emblem Fates and the multitude of older games keeping us entertained on our outdated handheld systems. Our original plan was to buy a Switch for our birthday in May of the year following the release of Three Houses. Once the news of an impending lockdown started to spread, though, it became apparent that if we were going to get a Switch any time in the foreseeable future, that time was now. Our in-person shopping was mostly fruitless--no Switch, but we got our copy of the game while we were out (we like our physical copies)--but by some miracle we managed to find a previously used system for sale online: in retrospect, probably one of the last ones to be sold for a very long time after that.

By restraining myself from actively seeking out fanmade content, I managed to avoid significant spoilers for Three Houses. Inevitably, though, as months passed after the game’s release, I absorbed tidbits of knowledge that happened to roll by on my social media feed. I probably learned about the general concept and organization of the game (for example, obviously, the fact that there were three houses; more specifically, that it was a tragic story, and there was a timeskip somewhere in the middle), and the names of a few characters, but my recollections of my initial phases of information osmosis are fuzzy at best by now. My earliest memory of having a cohesive thought about anything in the game was sometime around September of 2019, when I happened upon Dimitri’s post-timeskip portrait. Immediately upon setting eyes on it, my heart went: He’s the one.

I still haven’t figured out what my heart does or how it works in such tight coordination with my eyeballs, but I have this tendency to abruptly fixate on one character in a given series, thereby selecting my single, immutable favorite character for that series. Yet, even as I subconsciously judge these characters based purely on appearance, when you also factor in aspects like personality and backstory, which I inevitably learn later, I somehow manage to also have a very consistent and predictable “type.” This was exactly what happened with Dimitri. Granted, it took me until February 2020 to form a significant emotional attachment to him, to the point where I was thinking about him constantly, but I never doubted from the beginning that it was Dimitri who would be the source of my “brainrot.”

I always wonder how things might have been different if I didn’t know about Dimitri beforehand: would I still have picked the Blue Lions house, solely because blue is my favorite color? Would Dimitri still have drawn me in through his many characteristic charms? Or would I have picked a different route, a different favorite character? How many things would be the same as they are today? But then I remember one of my favorite passages from what has been my favorite manga since my adolescence: [There’s] no point in thinking about the things I could have done, because there’s no guarantee that any choice is the right one. Alas, the timeline that exists right now is the only one that I know for certain, so it’s the only one I can discuss at length.

Sometime in the months that passed between finding that portrait and the beginning of lockdown, my knowledge of Three Houses had grown more cohesive, as vague as it still was. I knew that Dimitri was a tragic character who, due to some sort of traumatic events earlier in the story, became significantly more emotionally troubled after the timeskip. Looking back, I think this ended up being just the right amount of knowledge to have about the game before I started playing, because at any given point I had the faintest idea of where the story might be going, but no clue whatsoever about how it got there, and, perhaps most importantly, I still did not know how it ended. Nevertheless, another notable reason I hesitated for so long to play Three Houses was because I knew I was faint of heart and not adept at coping emotionally with even fictional tragedy; knowing what I did about Dimitri, I assumed playing Three Houses would leave me in a significantly worse emotional state than I had before playing the game. (I already struggled with generalized anxiety, a stressful family life, and recurring nightmares.)

Fortunately, I was very wrong. Even so, with no way of knowing this at the time, I figured that a lockdown would be the perfect time to start my playthrough. I was temporarily furloughed from my day job for the foreseeable future and obviously had no plans to go anywhere or do anything, so if I was going to get emotionally wrecked and needed significant time to recover, I might as well do so while I was stuck at home anyway.

(Side note: we could have gotten a Switch Lite with much less hassle if we wanted to, but we opted against it because we wanted to utilize the large television we had in our living room at the time. This ended up being an excellent decision. Second side note: it took me a few days to figure out there was a button on the system itself for taking screenshots, but I’m too sentimental to delete my lower-quality phone pictures.)

On the first evening after dinner I played for only about 45 minutes, enough to select my house. I ended up restricting myself to playing only in the mornings after that, because I lost practically all of my sleep to speculating. I primarily remember wondering about the deeper aspects of Dimitri’s character--what kind of person was he, really? I wrote an unnecessarily detailed paragraph about all of my guesses, based solely on his dialogue up to that (very early) point in the game, synthesized with things I knew about myself. I supposed, with the reservation that these were just wild guesses, that he might be very much like me. Every last one of my guesses turned out correct.

I experienced the story roughly one chapter at a time in two- to three-hour sittings, to allow myself ample time for emotional processing. I figured I might need it, and again, I was right.

As they say, the rest is history. Writing out all of the impressions I recall from Dimitripocalypse would make this post more needlessly long than it already is, and you can gather most of those from my regular posts, anyway. For the sake of as much brevity as I can muster, I’ll skip to the most important conclusion: I’m so glad I played this game.

Again, things could have easily turned out much differently. I very nearly stopped playing the game entirely after Dimitri’s sudden outburst at Remire Village gave me a panic attack so awful that I struggled to manipulate the controllers because my hands were trembling so badly. (I would have quit then and there, but I didn’t realize what was happening until after the fact.) But, after having Aki look up the ending to the route to confirm that it was indeed happy (for Dimitri, anyway--an important distinction), I persisted, also keeping in mind another favorite quote: something about the importance of continuously making an effort to understanding someone you love, even though not understanding them is “the greatest fear.” In retrospect, with how Dimitri’s character arc continued to develop, putting in the effort to reach that understanding at that specific point in the game saved my butt and made the vast majority of what happened later much, MUCH less of an emotional slap in the face. And with how the story progressed, I needed as much free cognitive space for emotional processing as I could get. The post-timeskip reunion with Dimitri led to my first good, cathartic crying session that I could remember in probably seven years. If I remember correctly, think it lasted a total of an hour and a half.

Even with that in mind, or maybe because of it, Dimitri’s renewal halfway through the second part was the single most cathartic moment I can recall ever experiencing. With how hopelessly attached I already was to Dimitri even before knowing the grisly details of his upbringing, the development of his story felt quite literally like something chipping away at my soul. Dimitri’s second peripeteia, then, wherein he realizes his past mistakes and decides to change for the better, evoked the sensation of my soul gently being reassembled, each broken shard softly being set perfectly back into place. I’m still not entirely why a fictional story felt so much more therapeutic than any therapy I had ever gotten up until that point. Somehow, though, just by experiencing that moment, I no longer carried with me a background-noise level of emotional anguish that had, at some point, become my default state.

With all of that said, I’m not entirely sure how to start wrapping this up.

It’s been a year since I took my first fateful step into the world of Fire Emblem Three Houses. There was no way of knowing where the steps after that would take me, even if I did predict a few aspects of the story. I’m certainly happy I was wrong thinking that I would end the game in a worse place than I started. Now I’m standing here looking back, one year later, amazed at how all of these experiences culminated into the present I know today.

I was always entertained by how, when you select which house to lead at the very beginning of the game, Rhea responds with “Your heart has made its choice.” My reply is always: “Yes... yes, it certainly has.” Maybe in some alternate timeline, it is true that this path was a choice I consciously made for myself. But in my current reality, that is not the case. Somehow, my heart makes its own choices independent of the thoughts in my head, and this particular choice is just one river joining the flow of time that continues to sweep me along.

My recurring nightmares never stopped entirely, but they significantly declined in frequency and severity. Moreover, for once, I even recalled a few good dreams I had: those, for me, are rare. I can count on one hand the number of such dreams in which Dimitri unquestionably appeared. One in particular sticks out in my memory to this day. I think of it whenever I have to negotiate with my estranged mother and I resort to perhaps unnecessarily diplomatic, emotionally distant and yet affable language; when I converse with someone about how it is crucial to discern when to change what is unacceptable and when to simply accept it anyway, even if--especially if--when the thing in question is something about yourself; when I keep in mind that, as much as I’d like to care for others until all of their needs and wants are met, because it brings me joy to see them happy as much as it pains me to see them hurt, there are times when I have to care for myself first, or else I will have none of myself to give.

Oddly, or perhaps, just as it should be, this dream did start out more like a nightmare. I recall feeling very anxious. But the difference this time was that Dimitri was there. Though I seldom experience such vivid sensations in dreams that I still remember them after I wake up, this time, the physical contact our bodies made as we embraced felt real.

“Dimitri,” I murmured, though I didn’t know why, “I’m so scared.”

His response, in perfect tune with the sound of his voice in the game:

“It’s all right. I’m here. Even when I’m not by your side, I’ll always be with you.”

#dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #fire emblem three houses #dimitri #disclaimer: using the phrase 'in love' loosely because i still identify as aro/ace #but i haven't found a different term that feels like a better fit to describe how something fills your mind #until you can't think about anything else even when you try #i'm told that's also called a hyperfixation but in this case i feel like that takes away from the emotional significance #because oh boy are there emotions involved #just not ones that are necessarily romantic

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eury--dice · 4 years ago

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history, huh?

chapter 3: propius

(check the rb for chapters 1 + 2 on tumblr + ao3 links!)

Adam was woken at 5 o’clock on the dot with a series of sharp knocks on his door. “Up and Adam,” Gansey’s voice called, making the one stupid dad joke that always set Adam’s blood to a boil. He was too tired to react, however.

“Kindly leave until a later time,” he called, his voice heavy with sleep. “I don’t have class for another three hours.”

Gansey opened the door anyway, striding in with more pep than anyone should have in the morning.

“You’ve made the tabloids, my friend. Your weekend with Ronan finally hit.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Nope,” Gansey said cheerfully. “‘From America, With Love: Ronan and Adam flaunt friendship.’” He turned on his heel once he’d crossed the length of the room, which Adam could never forget was formerly Malia Obama’s, and seated himself in Adam’s desk chair.

Adam had never been closer to considering strangulation. He elected to shove his hearing ear into his pillow instead.

Unfortunately, the muffled sounds of Gansey speaking still made their way in. “‘Photos: Adam’s Weekend in England,’ oh, that’s boring…ah-hah: ‘New Bromance Alert? Pics of FSOTUS and Prince Ronan.’”

Adam resigned himself to his fate and mentally promised himself a giant cup of coffee. “As long as I’m getting fewer death threats on Twitter, I’m happy,” he mumbled into his blankets.

Gansey ignored him. “Why are you so tired? It’s the hour of kings, time to be awake and alive.”

“I’d settle for dead if it meant I could sleep at this point, to be frank.”

“Please don’t be frank. Be Adam.”

Adam sat up, eyeing Gansey in his wire-framed glasses with disdain. “Any more puns and I suffocate myself with this pillow.”

“Please don’t,” Gansey said, but his eyes had already returned to his screen. While he read through the articles, he continued his line of questioning. “Working on the campaign late last night?”

“Not really,” Adam admitted. “I had a Press and the Presidency paper to write.”

“Just write ‘I’m Adam Parrish’ on a piece of loose-leaf paper to turn it in and you’ll probably get an A. You live it every day, for Christ’s sake.”

“And yet I still need to cite sources in Chicago Advanced.”

“You’d think nepotism would work out more in your favor.” He flicked to a fresh article, a gesture Adam only recognized from all the other times Gansey had done it. “Luckily, I think the press is eating this one up.”

Adam grimaced. “Fantastic.”

“Not-campaign-ruining, you mean.”

“That too, I suppose.” He wanted nothing more than to flop back against his pillows and get the sleep his body so desperately craved after being jet lagged for a week, but he fought the urge.

“That _ People _exclusive takes the cake, I think. I didn’t realize how much you cherished your relationship with Ronan.”

“Fuck off, please. Or end my misery.”

“No to both. Why are you even taking that press course?”

Adam slid out from under his blankets, rolling his shoulders to try and wake up more. “Curiosity, I guess. It never hurts to learn more of what not to do.”

Gansey looked up from his phone to level a glance at Adam. “And what have you learned so far?”

“…Don’t have a sex scandal?”

“You _ would _need someone to tell you that.”

_ “Hey,” _Adam said, affecting outrage.

Gansey lifted his thumb to run over his lower lip, tilting his head consideringly. “One of us three will probably have a scandal before your mother’s second term is up.”

“If there is a second.”

“Chin up, young padawan. With you working on it we’re guaranteed.”

“I don’t know, Gansey,” Adam replied. “I don’t think I’m the good luck charm you believe in.”

“Of course you are,” Gansey said. “We won the first time, no?”

Adam glanced exaggeratedly around the room and to the phone in Gansey’s hand. “I’d say so. That or we’re about to get questioned very thoroughly about the the events of last three years.”

“Don’t make me cut you off on the true-crime videos.”

His eyes narrowed, focusing on Gansey. “Don’t you dare.”

“Blue agrees, anyway,” Gansey said, successfully deflecting topics. “Said there’s a ninety-four percent chance you’ll get into a sex scandal before the general.”

“Both of you date more than I do, why am I the one who’s supposedly having a sex scandal?” Once his initial outrage passed, disbelief crept in at the time of day. “Did you just text Blue at five AM and get a response? How the hell did you manage that?”

“She’s been up,” Gansey dismissed. Adam stared at him for a moment, and then Gansey seemed to feel the weight of his stare. His eyes widened almost comically. “Oh, Christ, no, not that. Nate Silver asked for another set of eyes on the Superbowl predictions, and she’s trying to get a shoo-in with them before the primaries begin. I just brought her some coffee.”

“And you didn’t bring me any?”

“You’re the only one of us who hasn’t been up all night. You need coffee the least of all of us.”

“Don’t blame me for your bad decisions.” Adam squinted at Gansey. “Were you working on an article all night or something?”

He snorted. “Hardly. They’ve been blocking all of my pieces. Too far from my mother’s politics, too far from your mother’s, too controversial, too critical, all in that order.”

“Thought you were liking the _ Post _gig?”

“On paper,” Gansey dismissed. “I’ve defaulted to writing about Welsh history.”

“Sounds like it’s right up your alley, then.”

“Once again, on paper.”

“How do you even connect the Welsh to the hellscape of American politics?”

Gansey waved a hand. “‘Eternal spirit,’ ‘fighting for honor,’ ‘remembering Glendower and others who set a pristine model,’ et cetera, et cetera.”

“People read that? That just sounds like you in high school spouting off again.”

“Yes, Adam. People read it.” Gansey squinted at his phone again. “Twitter _ really _likes you and Ronan together.”

“We’re exciting,” Adam said dryly, reaching for his laptop. He scanned over his most recent paper while Gansey dramatically narrated replies to the gif of them on _ This Morning. _

“‘Either of them could stab me and give me one of those smiles and I’d thank them,’ Jesus Christ,” Gansey read, “They really love your fake smiles… ‘name a more iconic duo, I’ll wait,’ hm, maybe any other duo? ‘Oh my God, just _ kiss already.’” _

Adam choked out a laugh as Gansey punctuated the last one with a dramatic and uncharacteristic hand wave. “At least it’s working,” he allowed, shutting his laptop once he felt secure about his essay. “Now get out. _ Some _of us have places to be.”

Adam’s phone buzzed on his way out of his cursed Presidency and the Press course.

Somehow, the interest of those around him seemed to pique even higher when he looked at his phone instead of in front of him. It wasn’t a new sensation by any means; ever since starting at Georgetown, he’d felt eyes on him constantly, but the intensity increased tenfold each time his classmates thought he was too occupied to see them staring. He noticed every time, but of course nothing could be done about it.

The name _ HRH shitty bird boy _ popped across his screen. How strange - in only a week, he’d almost entirely forgotten that the name he had (quite maturely) given Ronan in his phone was… _ that. _As he swiped the notification open, he felt a certain amount of trepidation as to what a technology-averse prince would ever text him about.

His harassment and emergency fears flew out the window with the body of the text, simply a screenshot of their tabloid appearance with the added caption of _ youre the nerd and I’m the cool jock. _

_ Competitive yachting? _Adam asked in response, nearly tripping over his own feet while typing.

_ ffs i told them to stop writing that as my preferred sport. _

Adam felt his lips twist against his will.

_ I’m sorry, this is a common problem? _

_ you can’t even imagine. _

_ I appreciate that they consider competitive yachting a regal sport. _

_ status symbols and faux athleticism are the core of the monarchy. _

Adam blinked down at his phone, stopping short abruptly. Persephone, from behind him, adjusted accordingly.

He…hadn’t been expecting this. Any of it. The text, the almost-joking response, the casual statement about the monarchy being ridiculous despite him being in it. Their conversation ended there, and it was probably for the better. He resumed his pace, trying to get to his next class. He almost forgot about the texts, too; save for a rogue screenshot Adam sent him of speculation on Ronan’s presence in Majorca, nothing else went between them.

Sometimes, Adam could _ just barely _ get away with being on his phone during briefings with Maura. He hated to be distracted during them - they were _ important, _he knew that, but all the same occasionally she spent a particularly long time covering an obscure dignitary’s comments and he’d gotten too few hours of sleep to truly focus and someone or other was blowing up his phone.

Maura’s topic of conversation this week appeared to be a series of Buzzfeed articles run on the lack of pets in the First Family, complete with a power point dissecting their points

The glamorous side of politics, truly. Discussing a clickbait series in the West Wing briefing room.

_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **

_ Resumed 30 October, 2019, 1:47 pm _

_ if you want a pet chainsaw dragged in a mouse the other day _

_ Ah yes, the mouse. A pet eternally beloved by constituents. _

_ we can’t all have a raven, that would be unfair _

_ Your heights of cool and goth are truly dizzying. _

_ im glad you agree _

_ Modest, too. _

_ it comes with the wealth and fame _

_ As long as you’re being straight with me, feel free to be as ‘modest’ as you like. _

_ i’m the prince of bloody england. i’m straight all the damn time _

_ That’s the biggest lhxemxlp_

His phone slipped from between his fingers, landing with a dull _ thud _onto the wooden floor. Adam stared helplessly at it, a sleek black rectangle hiding between types of oak. But Maura repeated his name, and he suddenly remembered what had made him drop his phone in the first place. He dragged his eyes up, staring at a spot on the sterile white wall just beyond Maura’s head.

“Adam,” she said a third time, but he refused to look her in the eyes. She conceded immediately. “What the hell?”

He felt his cheeks darken as blood found its way up. “I’m sorry.”

Her lips thinned just like Blue’s did, turning into a dark line on her brown face. “Do you even remember what I was saying?”

“Er…” he scrambled. “Don’t mention animals in any public setting?”

She looked at him for a long moment, then picked up a mug of coffee and took a controlled sip.

“Get out?” she said once she’d swallowed her sip.

“I-”

She pointed to the door. “I am impossibly busy. Take your phone and go laugh in private.”

He nodded once, finally, ducking under the table with his spine pressed against the bottom to grab his phone. His fingers closed around it, grip the edge of the wood, and he was up in a second.

He couldn’t regret it.

Because - well, here was the weird thing.

He wanted another text from Ronan.

_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **

_ Resumed 31 October, 2019, 12:03 am _

_ it’s finally spooky day in your hell country _

_ Isn’t it 5 am in England? _

_ Do you ever sleep? _

_ bold of you to ask that question _

_ halloween, bitch _

_ it waits for no one _

_ I’m really going to have to advocate better habits. _

_ I understand, you’re enthused for Halloween. _

_ do you even care at all _

_ I enjoy halloween like everyone else. _

_ Though your level of excitement feels a little pagan? _

when the skeleton army rises Jesus will forgive me

_ appreciate this glorious day parrish _

_ I have enough fear in my daily life, thanks. _

_ I filed my own taxes all throughout highschool. _

_ And payed rent. _

_ The horrors of early adulthood. _

_terrifying _

_ terrible i’ll never deal with that shit _

_ You’re the prince, we know. _

_ Do you also not have enough horror in your life? _

of course i do

_ but parrish. listen. _

_ this is the one day a year all the monarchy and parliament dress as they are in life _

_ hideous monsters _

He laughed a little harder at that than he should have.

_ You’re telling me the monarchy plays dress up. _

_ ronan_frankensteins_monser_costume.jpg _

_ matthew insisted. did this on me an hour ago _

_ oh my god _

The makeup _ was _really good, and the monstrous look suited him, but hell if Adam ever said that to him.

He may have saved it to his phone, though, to glimpse Ronan’s green-paint covered skin and crooked, drawn-on stitch smile on his perfectly blank face.

Although Adam certainly didn’t intend to make a habit of texting the Prince of England, when he saw a funny bird or a stupid article or an obscure meme his first thought became _I should send that to Ronan. _And Ronan, clearly, was thinking along the same lines. The sheer number of sole emojis that seemed to tell a Ronan-centric story he received at all hours only affirmed that. And somehow, between all the pictogramme and jokes, he started to learn snatches of information. Declan was a better storyteller than Ronan, Matthew was the only person who could make Ronan attend family dinners ever since their father died, and his mother - the Queen of England, Adam had to remind himself sometimes - drew further away every day.

The problem became that he always wanted to know _ more, _and Adam didn’t know if that was due to his rampant curiosity or something else buried deep inside of him, and he was too afraid of what he might uncover by digging to look.

Adam had very few friends.

Most of that came with the territory of being part of the First Family; nothing made casual acquaintances drift away quite like being constantly surveilled by Secret Service agents and trailed by NDAs. Adam didn’t have time for small talk and coffee, a fact which he sometimes lamented and often loved. Part of this came from the type of friendship he became accustomed to with Gansey and Blue, the all-encompassing type of friendship that took over their minds in spare moments and forged ties stronger than steel between them. He’d probably forgotten how to have normal, casual friends, not friends an outsider would think he was completely in love with. And, perhaps more than anything else, it came back down to Robert Parrish and his heavy hands and ringing words. Adam’s memories of his first few years were scattered and inconsistent, but they filled up a too-large corner of his brain all the same. Blue, who entered his life at the tender age of 5, had won his trust with greater ease than their other peers, and Gansey had done the same in high school. They knew him and what he’d been through, and so they could (platonically) love him for all that he was. When campaigning and political office came into the mix, that full truth of Adam Parrish became a secret to guard like any else.

But, oddly enough, Adam had a third friend: Noah Czerny, the thirty-three-year-old baby of the Senate.

Noah and Adam met through an Aglionby networking event while Adam was a student and Noah a recently-elected congressperson, both green as grass in different ways. Adam, thrown neck-deep into a Presidential campaign, had questions, and most of the time Noah had answers. Although all of the professors had warned Adam to proceed cautiously with Czerny, Adam found nothing to fear. Noah had mellowed out quite a bit from his high school days, becoming a familiar face at political events and a surprisingly-wise piece of advice always at the ready. Despite Adam’s near hero-worship of this brand-new politician, half-Mexican just like him and just as frequent to lose sleep rewriting policies that unjustly taxed communities of color or defunded children’s education, they’d formed an improbable bond. The summer before his sophomore year, Noah let Adam closer to the politics process than even his mother had as he ran for the Senate, and Adam took to it almost at once. A politician twelve years his senior was perhaps not a conventional choice of friend, but Adam seldom remained conventional.

It wasn’t too out of the ordinary for Adam to arrive at Noah’s congressional office unannounced, either with business or without, and so when Adam rounded on Noah’s stark, bright, white office, he wasn’t at all surprised to see him ducked over an obscene number of papers.

“It’s Friday night,” Noah said without looking up, barely before Adam had even crossed into the office. As always, the tiny burst of color in the Pride flag deposited in a tourist mug drew Adam’s eye for a long moment before Noah himself did. All Adam could see of him was his brown curls, resolutely held in place even as bent over a desk. “Go party or something.”

“Damn, I didn’t _ think _ this looked like a frat. I knew something was off.” Adam slid into one of the seats across the desk. He had several inches on Noah, but he always felt smaller in those chairs across from the most important legislators in the country. “What’s got you here at eight PM?” Off of Noah’s brief, incredulous look, he amended to _ “this _particular time, I know. You’re salaried. Shouldn’t you…ever go home?”

“I’m trying to get something done so that there’s at least a hope of banning fracking in our lifetimes.”

Adam scoffed quietly, though not for lack of faith in Noah. “Let me know when you’ve cracked the code.”

_ “If, _but sure, I’ll be in contact. Now, why are you here?”

“You didn’t answer my leaving-the-building question.”

Noah’s eyes flickered shut briefly. “Jesus, Adam, I am salaried by the taxpayers of millions of Americans. I’m not going to slack on them.”

“Fine, but don’t make me drag Gansey in here to make you take a long nap and drink some hot soup.”

Adam’s phone buzzed, but he ignored it; despite it being almost 1 am in England, Ronan could presumably take the blame. Noah asked, “Did you catch the Fox town hall last night?”

Adam grimaced. He’d seen part of it, trying to multitask with his macroeconomics homework at the same time, but instead he’d fallen asleep with his head on the laptop screen. “Part of it. It was a shitshow.”

“You can say that again.”

“I honestly thought that Whelk would pull more support from the extremists. He just seemed desperate last night.”

“Oh, he definitely was.” Noah leaned away from his desk, appraising Adam as though considering his words carefully. “We went to school together.”

“Aglionby?” Adam asked. He knit his eyebrows together. “How did I not realize he went there?”

“The school doesn’t exactly love toting him.”

“He’s older than you, though, right?”

“Yes, Adam,” Noah said slowly. “I’m thirty-three. He’s already announced a bid for President. How old do you have to be to run for executive office?”

Adam scowled. “I just came from class, I can’t use my brain. He was a senior when you were a freshman?”

“Yep,” Noah replied. “We were paired in upperclassmen-lowerclassmen bonding.” His lip curled a little. “He outed me.”

“Wait, _ what?” _

“He outed me to the school,” Noah repeated. He looked back down to the papers on his desk, his voice softening to a barely audible level. “I trusted him, which was a dumb thing to do, but I was a really stupid freshman. Scared, too. He was a friendly personality.”

_ “Fuck,” _Adam said, pushing a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, that’s…”

“Terrible?” A bit of Noah’s life returned to him. “Don’t worry about it, kid. It was years ago.”

“But then…Whelk, he was the reason you…?”

“He didn’t make my parents react the way they did. They did that on their own. But no, they wouldn’t have known without him.”

Adam shook his head. “I thought it wasn’t possible to like the guy less, if only because of his politics, but he’s done it.”

“Done what? Received the full wrath of Adam Parrish?”

“He very well may.”

“Don’t worry about him. Whelk will be out soon, believe me. I know him. He may have his parent’s money, but he’s barely old enough to hold office and he’s running on fumes.”

“If he’s not, I’ll convince Blue to skew stats until he is.” Noah knew just as well as Adam that that wouldn’t change anything, but it lightened the air anyway. “It seems kind of pointless to entertain any of them. Greenmantle is probably going to win no matter what.”

Colin Greenmantle: former antique collector, congressperson from Massachusetts, and millionaire with the funds to take over the Republican primary, and very possibly the whole election, before any papers were even filed.

“It’s early,” Noah said. “Too early to worry about it. Too early to even be _ talking _ about it.”

Adam slanted a half-smile at him. “Never too early to worry about an election.”

Noah looked back to his papers before broaching the next topic. “I hear you’ve got a job on your mother’s re-election campaign.”

“Once I graduate, and maybe a little earlier, yeah.”

Noah cast a glance around the office. “Are you sure this is the life you want?”

Adam knew he was referring to the constant bustle, the fear of disappointing and harming instead of helping, and the ever-evolving media scrutiny. He knew it was the closest Noah would give to a warning. “I’m sure.”

Noah sighed. “Fine.” He pointed to the door. “But I won’t let you throw your youth away, not this early. After you graduate, Parrish. Go get drunk and make out with someone.”

Adam stood, his frame unfolding and standing tall. “You are a terrible role model.”

“Can’t hear you over the loud music.”

“You and Blue and Gansey - if I die of alcohol poisoning, it’s all your fault.”

“Feel free to blame, so long as you’re out there and not here.”

“Alright, alright, Jesus. You’ve made your point.”

“Finally,” Noah called after Adam’s retreating form. But Adam could hear the amusement in his voice all the same.

For someone so allergic and averse to technology, Ronan sure seemed to share a lot with Adam.

_ iMessage chat to _ ** HRH shitty bird boy **

_ Resumed 13 Novemeber, 2019, 8:38 pm _

_ bird.m4a _

_ she wont stop nuzzling my head?? _

_ Picking for lice, probably. _

_ God knows you have so many. _

_ my scalp is perfectly clean _

_ Forgive me for abstaining from running my hands over it all the same. _

_ I’ll leave that to her. _

He didn’t always respond, though.

Adam tried not to read into it.

(He mostly succeeded.)

Adam never tired of stepping into the Oval Office. On the Wednesday right before Thanksgiving, he stepped in with the same amount of awe he always had, allowing himself a single moment to glance around at the wide windows and perfectly upholstered furniture. He sat on one of the couches without preamble.

His mother looked up from what was in front of her on the desk and smiled, albeit a tired one that frayed a bit at the corners; Adam had seen a few particularly troublesome foreign dignitaries be escorted away not long before, so he didn’t have to guess at the reason. Ana looked like she belonged to sit right there amongst all the history at that desk, from the sun dipping just beneath her halo of hair straightened within an inch of its life and her stick-straight posture. It might have been a lot at times, but seeing her was a reminder of all the good that came from her position.

She rose and walked to join him, her heels clacking lightly at the ground before she sank onto the cushion beside him and pulled him into a loose hug. Adam had overtaken Ana in height some years before, but there had been a long gap in there as he grew - like one day he was three and a half feet tall and wrapped tightly in her arms and the next he was off to Georgetown and several heads taller. She pulled away after a minute, slowly and bit-by-bit as though savoring her moments as a mother rather than a president. Her hand reached to muss his hair a moment later, and Adam ducked away instinctively before exchanging an identical grin with her.

“God, I forgot how light your hair looks in here,” she said, leaning back a little. “Almost golden.” She tilted her head as though examining him. “Nah. Still brown. But much lighter.”

“How could you forget? The photo here was in _ GQ, _the same article that first declared me the family golden boy.” At the corner of their conversation was the knowledge of where he’d inherited that hair color, as it sure as hell wasn’t from Ana. But he let the thought stay buried, patting the dirt back down with the shovel himself. Their relationship always had an absence in it, and he didn’t particularly feel like deepening it in the Oval Office.

“Ah, so that’s the one I have to blame for your big head,” she responded, reaching for a piece of fruit from the little coffee table. It was a familiar half-jest, borne from Adam’s constant contradicting confidence and imposter syndrome. Idiosyncrasies were just Adam’s style, never one to make things easy for himself. He sometimes wondered if so much of himself conflicted because he tried to walk the middle road so often, balancing his weight over all sides to minimize the damage if the rug was yanked from beneath him, like lying down on a bed of nails: a thousand tiny, dull pains over one sharp, potentially fatal puncture. She smiled again. “Is Noah doing well?”

“For Noah he is. He would barely look up from some new reports on fracking, seems hopeful he’ll be able to garner enough support.”

Ana snorted. “Good luck with that. I’ll be shocked if it reaches the floor for debate.”

“That makes three of us, then.” He nodded towards the desk. “Bad meeting?”

The frown lines on her face deepened. “Don’t get me started,” she drawled, falling back fully against the cushions. After only a moment, she _ did _ get started regardless of what Adam did or didn’t do. “We received the memo a few days ago that a delegation from Sweden wanted to be in contact, right? Fairly standard stuff, Maura gets back to them quickly because they worded it like it was an urgent matter, and there’s a back and forth for a while about scheduling and accommodations. We’re of the belief they won’t be out here until Monday at the earliest.”

Adam knit his eyebrows together. “It’s not Monday.”

“You fuckin’ tell me. Anyway, I’m halfway through a meeting with a few UN representatives when Maura has to interrupt. They arrived at the White House, claimed they had a meeting, and just…didn’t leave. Evan Maura couldn’t get through to them, which is the thing that scared me a little.”

“You should have put Calla on it.”

“Believe me, if she were here, I would’ve. But as it was, I had to hurry out the UN members to deal with decidedly more antagonistic foreign relations.”

“Why were they even here?”

“They wanted to discuss the military relationship between our countries-”

“What the hell?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” she said, waving one hand in dismissal. “Any points they were trying to make went straight out the window when they started pulling out cue cards, to be honest. I might have to call Löfven to smooth things over.”

“Well, there’s never a dull moment,” Adam said fairly. His mother snorted.

“Sure isn’t. Anyway,” she said, glancing at her watch, “it’s now Thanksgiving, so no more meetings for twenty-four hours.”

“It’s Wednesday.”

She pulled a face in dismissal. “We take our patriotism seriously, darlin’. Don’t want our home state gettin’ too mad.”

“Of course.”

Ana checked her watch again. “The turkeys will be on their way to the Willard by now, so we’re not ruining any American traditions today.”

“Wait,” Adam said. “Where?”

She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “The Willard. They stay there every year.”

“What? No. _ No. _You cannot give the turkeys five-star accommodations with taxpayer dollars. You’ve been doing this every year?!”

“It’s public knowledge, sugar. Every news outlet mentions it.”

“How did I not-” Adam cut off. “There is no way you can do that! They’re turkeys! It’s a waste!”

“It’s precedent, Adam. I’m not sure if there’s anything to be done at this point.”

Adam stood quickly, pacing back and forth, and his mother stood behind him. “It’s a _ blatant _waste of money, I’m shocked we haven’t already been-”

“Hon, every president so far has done the same-”

“Imagine the story if we broke the tradition! Even conservatives would have to applaud your frugality-”

“We can’t play games with tradition, you know they already call us disrespectful-”

“-we can’t be using _ taxpayer money-” _

“-by all means, if you have the time to find lodging for two forty-pound turkeys-”

“Put them in my room!” Adam blurted. His mother stopped short.

“You’re not serious,” she said. “We’re not putting the turkeys for me to pardon in your bedroom.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Adam-”

He shifted his feet, coming to a stop. He lifted himself up to his full height. Debate Captain Adam, six-time Best Delegate Adam, and First Son Adam converged into one. His mother barely looked phased.

“Oh, God,” his mother said. “I can’t listen to another sales pitch.”

“Madame President,” Adam began, “I’d like to echo the sentiments of the forebears before me-”

“Nope,” she said, making double-time back to her desk. “You’re not going to filibuster me.”

“In 2018 alone, at least forty-three articles in the Wall Street Journal accused the sitting administration of wasting tax dollars. This came on the heels of a tax increase for Americans making more than ten million dollars per year and the subsequent pushback from a more conservative electorate in Congress.”

“Fine!” Ana said, her hand falling to the desk with a thump. She brought it back up to her head to massage her temple a moment later. “I’m too tired to hear my own history read back at me. You win.”

He sat back down on the couch, crossing his legs primly. “Perfect,” he said, allowing himself to smile once again.

23 notes · View notes

sgnjunhyung · 4 years ago

Photo

sgn task #01 — general a look inside junhyung’s phone!

— what kind of cell phone do you have? iphone 11 pro max in midnight green (512 gb). for the camera, of course.

— how often do you use your cell phone? an average screen time of 7h 13m. I text girls and use social media a lot.

— what is your phone’s lock screen photo? a picture of an alien someone sent to me. something about how I look like that when I get wasted at parties. I thought it was pretty funny and accurate so I made that my lock screen.

— what is your phone’s home screen photo? a picture I took of the sunset and city skyline, my favourite view.

— how many contacts do you have in your phone? 1034. probably should stop asking girls for their number.

— do you customize contact names or enter as given names? mostly given names, unless they change it themselves. at most, I’ll give them an emoji or two, especially if I relate a certain emoji to them.

— do you have personalized ringtones for your contacts or does everyone use the default ringtone? default ringtone for everyone but my ex. I haven’t changed it back but I guess there’s no need to either.

— how many alarms do you have set and why? one. because I abuse the snooze button instead of setting multiple alarms.

— what are your top 3 most used apps? 1. instagram 2. imessage 3. spotify

— what are your favorite apps? fimo — you can try out different film filters with this app and its pretty close to the real thing. artemis pro — recommended by baekso hyung! he knows the best video apps, really. spotify — can’t go a day without listening to music.

— what are your last 3 google searches or the last 3 things you’ve asked your built in ai? 1. funniest tinder pick up lines 2. why does my dog keep humping the cushion 3. portrait photography classes near me

— do you delete your internet search history or use incognito mode? if so, how often, and why? no, I don’t bother to, which is also why I have way too many tabs. as for incognito mode, I only use it when I’m browsing material that isn’t... family friendly.

— do you download music or use a streaming app? if so, which one and why? I stream on spotify. one of my exes used spotify and I wanted to make a playlist for her so I started using it too and haven’t stopped since then.

— what are the last 3 songs you’ve listen to on your phone? 1. silvertongue — young the giant 2. chelsea dagger — the fratellis 3. why’d you only call me when you’re high — arctic monkeys

— what does your photo album consist of? a whole lot of sunsets, skylines, scenery, pictures of my dog, screenshots that I don’t clear, pictures of lecture slides from classes because I’m too lazy to write notes and some photos of my family, friends and myself.

— what is your texting style? do you reply quickly or are you a slow texter? do you send several messages at a time or paragraphs? I’m either extreme ends, if I’m interested in you or our conversation then I reply really fast and isn’t afraid to double text but if I’m not then I either reply really slowly or just ghost entirely. I usually send several messages at a time unless I’m talking to someone I’m not close to like a professor or distant relative.

— what are the last 3 texts you’ve sent? danbi » you want the ones with wings?? should I get the overnight ones too? baekso » hyung THANK YOU 😭 you’re a godsend I swear seokwoo » hi do you want to watch howl’s moving castle with me tonight hahha

— who do you text the most? it’s a tie between danbi and whichever girl I’m interested in that week month.

— what are your top 6 used emojis? 😏😍🤤🔥😤🤪

— how often do you call others? hardly ever, unless it’s for something urgent.

— who were the last 3 calls made to and why? 1. a photography school — to enquire about their portrait photography summer classes. 2. my grandpa — to ask him if he prefers seolleongtang or samgyetang so I can get it for him on my way to his house. 3. riya —got in trouble and needed her to get me out of it again.

— who do you call the most? I don’t even know myself. there’s no fixed person since I don’t call people very often.

— do you have someone blocked? if so, who and why? a few. usually clingy and overly-attached exes when they spam call or text me. otherwise, I don’t bother enough to block anyone else.

— are you apart of any group chats? with who? quite a number of them. a few friend group ones like one with sunwoo and danbi, some school-related group chats with the cinths, photography club members and project group members. oh and there’s a family group chat that we hardly ever use, it’s basically just my mom sending pictures of herself.

— do you use the notes app? occasionally, to jot down random things like phone numbers, passwords etc. but because of how random and disorganised they are, I tend to forget what most of my notes are about.

#—task.#sgn:task01 #sgndanbi #sgnbaekso #sgnseokwoo #sgnxriya #sgnsunwoo

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moviestorian · 5 years ago

Note

Im glad the asks helped! I have anxiety and depression and can understand what youre going through. My ask today is what are your thoughts on Bo Rhap as a movie?

Thanks! :) I’m above all extremely happy to see people on this site being so kind and supportive in time of need, it’s a human quality that will never get enough praise! I’m also really sorry to hear about your problems. :( I send you lots of love, I can imagine how difficult it must be for you, but I’m sure you're strong and coping❤️

As for your actual question - that’s some truly excellent and interesting timing, considering that I rewatched BoRhap (with @incblackbird) literally three days ago. :P It was already my third rewatch, and while I enjoyed the movie overall, I liked it quite significantly less than upon the last time I saw it. Of course, there’s been gazillion discourses about BoRhap, whether it’s genius, extremely evil, etc., but since it’s such a broad topic (and I think some of my opinions could potentially outrage certain parts of the fandom), this time I’m going to stick to purely cinematic terms.

Needless to say, the soundtrack is excellent - with music such as Queen’s you don’t really have to do much, but they made a good choice of songs, alternating between their best known hits (We Will Rock You, Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody) and songs to fit the narrative (Doing All Right, Now I’m Here, Who Wants to Live Forever, Love of my Life). It’s practically impossible to leave the screening of BoRhap without at least one Queen song stuck in your head.

The cast was overall very good, too. My personal favourites in terms of acting were Gwilym Lee (who I liked even more than Rami), Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton and Allen Leech - I think they did a great job with their roles as they were written (whether their characters were well written or not is a subject for a whole another discussion). All the side characters were well acted, too (Mike Myers, Meneka Das and Aaron McCusker, for instance, I found particularly memorable), but I must admit I wasn’t a big fan of Joe Mazzello and Ben Hardy, but even they weren’t bad. So, acting is definitely one of the strongest points of the film.

Moving on, I also think they did a great job when it comes to costumes (Brian lending some of his old clothing definitely helped) and make-up (except for Roger’s wigs, perhaps); the choreography and stage movement for the characters were super well done, too - and it definitely wasn’t an easy task!

Now, let’s discuss cinematography. I will talk about editing in a separate paragraph, so for now I’m gonna stick to other aspects. The composition of shots struck me as rather mediocre, nothing particularly exceptional in either good or bad way, it was pretty basic but rather correct. Of course, there were some shots I really liked, but if I were to start adding screenshots the post would become way too long. XD The colours I really liked, especially in the musical scenes - they were vivid and lovely, and they used a combination of colours that I tend to appreciate in cinema, like various shades of blue and red. Finally, the camerawork - for dialogue scenes it was correct; again, rather average with some use of handheld camera which served no particular dramatic purpose, but it wasn’t nowhere near very bad, also it’s quite a common thing in modern biopics I would say. Handheld camerawork isn’t bad in default, but my comment largely comes from my personal preferences: in most cases I don’t really like it, especially when it’s particularly shaky. Then, there are scenes in BoRhap which display excellent camerawork, namely Live Aid and We Will Rock You scenes. If most scenes were filmed like that, I would give the movie a higher rating.

Before I move to the worst (imo) cinematic aspects of the movie, let’s have a look at writing. It is probably the most divisive thing in the fandom - people seem to either adore or absolutely loathe it; my stance lies somewhere inbetween. The first time I saw the film (I’m gonna remind you that I’ve seen it four times), I had certain objections, but the script didn’t bother me all that much; I was mostly simply having fun in the cinema. With every next watching, the experience was getting gradually worse, but even now I don’t hate the movie. Yes, some of the dialogue is cheesy, trite and makes me cringe a bit - certain parts of the script definitely end on an “overly sentimental” territory, I can’t deny that. Knowing quite a lot about Freddie, Queen and their stories, I generally think they deserve a better script; some characterisation was a bit offputting and chronology was all over the place. Having said that, I understand where some of those narrative choices come from, as scripts for mainstream movies require oversimplification of events, archetypes, and patterns. And quite frankly, I don’t think BoRhap differs any drastically from most modern biopics; it’s not a masterpiece, but - in my opinion - it’s also not bad overall. Regardless the flaws of the script, the movie still managed to emotionally affect a huge, if not major, portion of viewers, entertain and move them, and honestly? I think that was pretty much the point. Btw, there were some lines that I really loved, like “Puritans in public, perverts in private”, and I still think that their decision to cut from Live Aid performance to Ray Foster’s grim face during We Are the Champions was the funniest shit ever. XD Would BoRhap’s script benefit from sticking to historical accuracy? I’m gonna say yes, I think so - the scenes that were the closest to actual events are definitely the strongest - but this approach would require tons of changes, including narrowing down the narrative scope and probably the characters, too. Also, a lot of people keep forgetting that this is not an arthouse, niche film and therefore resorts to narrative and cinematic choice that compromise between satisfying the fans and the newbies; it’s meant to tell a (simple) story and entertain, not educate and provoke existential and philosophical debates. Still, I think the script could have been done a bit better, because some scenes (the tour “Now I’m Here” montage) feel a bit...random?

Finally, the infamous editing. I totally agree that it was one of the most undeserving Academy Awards that year, because some scenes were simply atrocious, with their unmotivated and overly fast cuts and unreasonably ridiculous face that doesn’t fit the dialogue scenes, and those are honestly the worst when it comes to pacing and editing. I think the editing is the worst aspect of BoRhap; but even here, I could point at some examples of pretty amazing editing (Oscar-worthy? Not necessarily, but definitely very good); again, I’m gonna bring up Live Aid and “We Will Rock You” scenes, especially the latter, because less people talk about it. I already mentioned that it has some really nice camerawork AND colours, but also the editing is actually really cool, because it’s cut to the music! Which makes me think: “what a shame!”, because if they went with different editing choices, the movie would be affected in a positive way. The way we have it, it’s either a hit or miss (sadly, mostly miss), and the badly edited scenes are pretty striking, so the ones that are done nicely are unfortunately a wasted potential.

Okay, this is already waaay too long, so I’m just gonna finish with a few general remarks. Well, despite BoRhap’s flaws, I still like and enjoy it. With every screening slightly less, but enjoy it anyway. I don’t think any amount of discourse will ever take away my positive experiences and memories from seeing it twice in cinema. It sparked my previously dormant love for Queen and united me with some people in the fandom and in real life; making this movie made Brian and Roger happy; as a result, I like this movie. It brings back a lot of positive recollections, which sometimes is more important than critical discussions. And boy, do I adore those - I’m often critical and I adore analysing stuff academically; but I think that not all daily interactions require those and depending on who’s asking and what about, I’m capable of switching between the two options. If somebody asks me in 25 years whether I remember the times of BoRhap’s release, I’ll be far less likely to say “yeah, the editing sucked and writing was cringy, I remember the discourse on tumblr and instagram” than “Yes, I remember that chilly evening in December when I had a really fun time and ended up with 10 Queen songs stuck in my head”, because the latter is the experience I want to remember.

Thank you for this ask! Hope it wasn’t overly exhausting to read, I didn’t proofread this, sorry! xx

#answered #anonymous #is this my #the film anon #?#wera talks queen #borhap #welll this ended up longer than i even expected XD #i was trying to be as objective as possible but it's possible that i sneaked some unpopular opinions in there :P #wera talks film

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the-nerktwins · 6 years ago

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There’s more to “Another Day” than meets the eye…or, ear…

Sometimes the most interesting thoughts are captured during discussions. I recently began a thread in a Beatles forum I’m a member of, about Paul’s song “Another Day” and the deeper meaning I personally found within it. The conversation veered into two different directions. One was the concept of the lyrical content being overlooked for a few possible reasons, not the least of them being that the protagonist was a woman. The other branch of this conversation veered towards was the musical anatomy of the song and how it serves to add texture to the story the lyrics are telling.

It’s with regret that I report that some participants completely overlooked the musical complexity of this track. To illustrate, here are a couple of key quotes from respondents in the thread I started:

“In contrast to 'Eleanor Rigby, 'Another Day' is cute and perfect instead of full of contrast and dynamics. The cozy comfort of the music itself reflects the bland predictability of the protagonists' life, as depicted in the song. I'm just not sure that's the best approach to take. I think John and George's (Martin) influence would have added some dimension.”

“Yes it's typical of McCartney to wrap a dark story in a cute song. He likes to hide things (even from himself).”

I was left wondering if me and these posters were even listening to the same song! I was also reminded of how ready people are to default to and parrot the (false and grossly oversimplified) talking points that the fandom has been spoon-fed about Paul’s songcraft since the 1970’s. Paul is hardly ever regarded as a valid artist in his own right outside of the Beatles collective, that is terribly, truly wrongheaded in every imaginable way.

I find it galling that many fans still want to hear his early, solo work with a “Lennon filter” applied to it. I’ve seen people saying things like, “This song is good, but if he’d done it with John it would’ve been GREAT!” I completely disagree. McCartney’s compositional abilities by 1967 had evolved to the point where he could “hear” in his head almost exactly what he wanted his final product to sound like. He was adept at articulating his vision to producers, engineers, and bandmates rather early on.

It also hasn’t escaped my notice that certain fans resent his abilities within the confines of the Beatles’ collective since it did contribute to some friction within the band during their late period, and then they turn around and completely ignore his competency when it comes to his solo work (and lament that he couldn’t collaborate with Lennon or George Martin on particular solo songs). It’s a paradoxical mentality and I’m not shy about denouncing it. It gives me whiplash, if I’m quite honest about it!

Since I don’t know (and didn’t ask) the participants about whether they’ve had any experience as musicians, I can make some allowance for the fact that people who’ve played music can hear things in a piece that non-musicians may not pick up on. The thing is, there exist a fair number of sources which could at least illustrate what’s going on musically in “Another Day.”

As for me, since I have a musical background, and I can HEAR what’s going on. To me there are “contrast and dynamics.” The song builds, crescendos, and comes back down again. There's a lot going on in terms of time signature changes, and decorative elements which add texture to the story being told. It’s brilliant! I realize that someone who has little to no musical experience could miss it. There are musically-inclined people out there who can explain it, however, and I went looking online for just that. I conducted two simple Google searches: “Paul McCartney Another Day Musical Analysis,” and “Paul McCartney Another Day Sheet Music.”

With the second search, I found a website which allows the user to play a midi file of the song (with the lead vocals, backing vocals, and every instrument) while the user is taken through the sheet music. The parts being played highlight what’s going on in the song as it’s playing. If someone is inexperienced as a musician, it can serve as a nice, visual aid to see just how complex a composition is, and how much is going on within it. Here’s a screenshot of the site, and a link to “Another Day” for illustrative purposes.

"Another Day" by Paul and Linda McCartney on MuseScore.com

To me this is proof-positive that "Another Day" isn't just a cutesy, fluffy song.

For some further argument in the favor of the musical merits of this song, I stumbled upon comments from fans in the Steve Hoffman music forums, in a thread called "Paul McCartney 'Another Day' Appreciation Thread"

After the bit ".... leaves the next daaaaayyyy..." there's this descending run on the guitar that is perfectly placed, but very difficult indeed to play. – Edgard Varese

yeah, another day is an absolutely killer track. to me its really the perfect song: catchy as hell, yet imaginative and really far more complex than a casual listener would ever realize. i also agree with the thoughts on the rythym guitar. great song to learn for any guitar player, not just for the rythm, but for the chords also. i believe it starts with a g to a b7 with an f# bass and really you've got me hooked from there – andyw676

Listen to the bassline...amazing. – Stateless

I've always loved this song, everything about it really. The undertone of Rigby-esque sadness was obvious to me from the get-go, and the yearning in the "sometimes she feels so sad" bit as the music shifts up and down chromatically always put a lump in my throat. Paul's very good at getting some of the more delicate emotional shadings in his songs. Great song. Thanks for the thread! -- Gardo

That song has some crazy chord changes, and lots of em. Makes it special. – Dave D

To diverge just a little bit into lyrical territory, there were some nuggets of push-back within this Steve Hoffman thread against the typical appraisal of this song, namely it being labeled as “lightweight” or “trite” by certain critics or fans.

Similarly, on "Another Day" if you read the lyrics carefully you may come away feeling not uplifted by a catchy little ditty but a mite saddened by the sometimes crushing loneliness of the modern grind. Personally I love the "At the office where the papers grow..." and "Alone in her apartment she'd dwell..." parts, some of Paul's best lyrics. Remarkable concision. – Dr J

I don't consider it quite as light as I did. It's almost a social commentary on the way women's lives were in the 70s, although not a knock at anyone specific. I admit I'm stealing a little of my wife's analysis. – kevinsinnott

I find it interesting to note that the second poster needed some assistance from a woman regarding his appraisal of the lyrical content. It’s another reminder of the depressing reality that this song is likely written off as superficial and lightweight, and not much analysis applied to it, but because the protagonist is a woman. Just as a lot of our struggles as women are ignored or ridiculed, a song written by a male who sympathizes with our plight is written off as “silly” and “fluffy” by male fans, even if the lyrics have a dark subtext.

To me, the song speaks of something dark and existential going on within the protagonist's psyche, and Paul himself is simply a narrator, imploring the audience to empathize with her as much as he does. And by empathizing with the plight of a woman, Paul unfortunately gets labeled a superficial square who creates “Muzak” and isn’t “Rock N’ Roll” enough. And that’s not right any way you slice it. Even more ironic is that not long after "Another Day," Lennon at the behest of his wife would be singing and talking about Women's struggles for equal rights and the injustice of it all. He glibly missed his former songwriting partner's intent in this song. That's not unlike John at all, however, and that's certainly not the point of this essay. It's just an observation I found interesting.

"Another Day" also speaks to me as an acknowledgement that people who are highly functional can and do suffer depression; people are coached to wear a mask of being “OK” because it’s not socially acceptable to admit you are not OK. Just keep your head down, go to work, do what you’re supposed to do, get on with it, and don’t tell anyone about your problems…

“As she posts another letter to the sound of five People gather 'round her and she finds it hard to stay alive.”

To go back to the song being marginalized as a little bit of radio-friendly, pop fluff, when to me it clearly is NOT for a moment, I want to acknowledge something. Fans were less able to access opposing literature and materials in the early 1970’s, and McCartney himself wasn’t talking much to the press (and unless you’re a brand-new fan, you know why), so I can see why people sort of accepted this viewpoint at the time.

As Erin Torkelson-Weber has pointed out in interviews and on her blog, “The Historian and the Beatles,” Paul’s relative lack of response to the talking points being pushed by John and Yoko within their post-breakup PR campaign, as well as Paul choosing not to give too much weight to the unfair critical appraisal of his work that was tainted by rock music “journalists” essentially siding with John and Yoko, really created a vacuum, allowing for the fandom’s appraisal of Paul’s work to be dominated by this narrative. Therefore, it’s natural that many, if not most fans in 1971 would buy into these sentiments.

What I find annoying is that this tendency continues to persist within the fandom, even among younger fans! This is despite having a considerable amount of evidence available at our fingertips that can serve to point out how very wrong this narrative truly is, up to and including the damn sheet music!

With the ability we now possess to access contemporaneous source material and examine all of it objectively, and the ability to listen to virtually all of his music for free via the major, online streaming services, it demonstrates laziness when people within the fandom choose not to think for themselves regarding McCartney’s genius and artistic merit separate from the other Beatles (namely Lennon).

“Another Day” isn’t the only McCartney work I’ve seen suffer under-appreciation by fans, but it’s an excellent example to illustrate my point, since it was specifically singled out by Lennon and early 70’s rock critics and used as a device by Lennon and the prominent rock critics of the day to publicly mock McCartney and call his integrity as an artist into question.

A lot of McCartney’s solo work is written off in a similar fashion, and what a terrible shame that is. Quite frankly, I think people are depriving themselves of a lot of pleasure by simply dismissing McCartney and avoiding his music (or sticking to his “greatest hits” without delving into his catalog and giving everything a thorough listen), based on these antiquated appraisals of his work.

In conclusion, I hope this essay didn’t come across too harshly. I just hope it may inspire people to listen more carefully to Paul McCartney’s solo work and give him the credit as an artist that he duly deserves.

#another day #musical analysis #my posts #paul mccartney #solo #songs

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silyabeeodess · 5 years ago

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Fallout Shelter’s pretty much my one and only tie to the series because it’s the only game from it that I’ve personally played and only for a little less than a week now, but who’s up for an overthought, super dark theory?

So, you know how most of the Vaults were used to experiment on people? Based on some of the dialogue and the nature of the gameplay, I feel like the Vault you play in the game was established to test a cultish, hive-like society with human subjects--with the Overseer taking a kind of “god” role to manipulate its inhabitants.

I know that strong loyalty to the Overseer is already encouraged based on looking up the questions on the G.O.A.T. test, but hear me out:

To begin, let’s start by covering the dialogue. Most of the chats between your vault dwellers are quirky and normal. They’ll talk about their day, make quips at each other, etc. Every now and then though, you’ll see them talking about the Overseer (you, the player). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get screenshots, but this is some of kind the dialogue I’ve caught between my vault’s inhabitants from memory. If anyone can provide screenshots or has caught similar dialogues during their own playthroughs, please let me know:

“Rumor has it that I’ll be the next Overseer!” “Fine by me. I’ll follow anyone with blind authority.”

“Have you ever met the Overseer?” “No, I haven’t been deemed worthy.”

“Do you think the Overseer is watching?”

What we can infer from these types of conversations is that the Overseer is placed in a position of absolute reverence over the Vault’s inhabitants--more so than that of a typical leader. Seeing the Overseer in-person is treated as an honor. They have a predominantly “blind authority” over the inhabitants, to the point that when it’s time to pass the torch, they’re likely to just accept whoever is chosen without question. And then there’s this idea of the Overseer constantly watching them, knowing their every move and dialogue, which as players, we of course can do. Being only human, however, the Overseer can only do this by heavily monitoring their Vault.

We see that the Overseer is capable of monitoring the Vault from a single space from their Control Station, which features three screens that match up with your energy, food, and water meters in-game. What we don’t see, however, are the Overseer’s personal quarters. This holds no importance from a gameplay perspective--especially since it’s unnecessary for the kind of game Fallout Shelter is--but if we were to look at it from a story perspective, it also encourages this theory. We know that the Overseer isn’t sharing living quarters with the ret of the Vault’s inhabitants due to the fact that they’re rarely seen, meaning that they’re more likely to have their own, hidden quarters somewhere else within the Vault--locked away and out of sight, where they can give orders and keep in contact with everyone else behind the scenes. This is a stark difference to other Vaults in which the Overseer may have a secretary and you can personally meet them, or when they take on more advisory roles than authoritarian ones.

The really creepy thing is the Vault dweller’s awareness and acceptance of this fact: They don’t only know that the Overseer is playing this role, watching their every move, they’re totally fine with it as we can tell by the dialogue. Why though? Well, this brings up some of the gameplay. Maintaining your dwellers’ happiness is just as important to the game as keeping up with their basic needs. You’re rewarded on a grade-scale for it and it effects their production. New, adult dwellers introduced to your Vault--be it whether they grow up there or are brought in from the Wasteland--start out at 50% happiness, but can easily be increased to a 75% in a short time if you already have a high average. In effect, a happy worker with their only alternative for survival being facing the Wasteland alone isn’t going to have much of a reason to argue. And the Overseer is the one with total authority to throw any of the inhabitants out when it suits them.

Furthermore, the game encourages breeding rather than accepting newcomers from the Wasteland after a certain point early on in the game. Sure, you can use the radio station, but the chances of finding people are slimmer. It’s much easier to pair dwellers together and wait for the child to grow up. This is important story-wise because a child molded in this environment would be much easier to control than someone pulled in without exposure to your Vault’s screwed up society anyway.

Then there’s the total dependence the dwellers have on orders. At least when I’ve played, there’s no default for their behaviors besides ‘idle.’ If you don’t give them a role, they won’t do anything--the game slating them as having a “coffee break.” Again, for this kind of game, it makes more sense to be that way. However, there are other games in this style--such as Oxygen Not Included--where the characters do still tend to their own needs. The fact that the Vault dweller’s don’t and instead need orders for every single thing they do, even against their own happiness meters, shows an incredibly high dependence on the Overseer. They have living quarters, they have diners, they have rec rooms, the game even has a day-to-night system in real-time when you look out at the Wasteland from the Vault. However, they don’t go anywhere without being told besides when they’re wandering around in an ‘ idle’ state--and only then travelling from room to room if they’ve come on from the Wasteland or have just grown up, indicating a sense of being lost without commands. The only exception is when they’re forced on their own back in the Wasteland, when they haven’t been given a particular quest and survival is their main goal until the Overseer calls them back.

This position is heavily in the Overseer’s favor as a ‘leader of their hive,’ but going back to what I was talking about on that state of keeping separate from the rest of the Vault’s inhabitants and really only interacting with them through monitors, let’s talk about how this could affect the Overseer as a character rather than as the player. The Mysterious Stranger has been a reoccurring character in the Fallout series, and while I can’t say anything much on him outside of this particular game, I find it interesting that he can only be interacted with as this disappearing/reappearing figure. Yes, we get rewarded when we find him in a certain timeframe, but his presence can be really off-putting. You hear that jingle and suddenly you’re in a scramble hunting through every room in order to find him before he vanishes. This would seem to match a mild sense of paranoia/anxiety from an individual placed in severe isolation for long periods of time, who could possibly be hallucinating about this figure since there’s no one else they can truly interact with--meaning they’re being experimented on almost as much as the rest of the Vault through a test against their own sanity.

Kinda just spewing out thoughts on this, so I don’t really have a conclusion that wouldn’t just repeat what I’ve already said, but thanks for reading this overthought mess.

#fallout shelter #video games #fallout #theory

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osakaso5 · 6 years ago

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Momo 12 SONGS GIFT Rabbit Chat Part 3: Tell Us, All Stars! 1

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4 | Part 5

Yuki: Momo, happy birthday.

Mitsuki: Momo-san, happy birthday!

Riku: Happy birthday, Momo-san!

Tamaki: Momorin, hbd!

Yamato: Momo-san, happy birthday!

Tenn: Momo-san, happy birthday.

Nagi: Happy birthday, Mister Momo!

Ryunosuke: Happy birthday, Momo-san!

Iori: Happy birthday, Momo-san.

Sogo: Momo-san, happy birthday. I hope that we can continue to rely upon your guidance.

Gaku: Happy birthday, Momo-san!

Kaoru: Momo, happy birthday.

Banri: Momo-kun, happy birthday!

Momo: Thanks, everyone!!!!

Rinto: Thank you all for gathering here to celebrate Momo-kun! Takanashi-san, I'm sorry to entrust this to you like Anesagi-san did, but could you continue things from here, since you're so good at it?

Tsumugi: Alright!

Mitsuki: Momo-san, what kind of solo song did you pick?

Momo: It's a secret~!

Momo: I'll give you just the title! It's called "100% Happiness"!

Ryunosuke: That sounds great! It's perfect for you, Momo-san!

Tamaki: 'Cuz you're like, totally happy!

Momo: I know, right! Look forward to it!

Mitsuki: I'm sure the solo event will be a piece of cake to you, too! You're not going to have any trouble with the MC parts, live, or handshake event.

Momo: It's been a while since I did a handshake event! But that only makes me more excited!

Yuki: Maybe I should secretly participate, too

Rinto: You have work elsewhere, Yuki-kun!

Gaku: I think you'd be pretty easy to spot once you got in line (lol)

Sogo: It's surprisingly easy to go unnoticed if you wear a disguise.

Momo: Have you guys gone to see the other members' events?

Mitsuki: We've gone to see Iori and Tamaki's sports meet. We were in disguise, so it was all incognito.

Gaku: You and Osaka?

Mitsuki: No. Riku, Yamato-san, and Nagi came too.

Tenn: That's practically an all star crew.

Tamaki: You weren't fooling anyone...

Iori: You certainly weren't... I'm glad the students at our school are considerate about those sort of things...

Nagi: Iori and Tamaki have also come to study one of my shoots.

Tamaki: We did! That's the one where Nagicchi did a fashion mag shoot with a cat.

Riku: I heard about that! Apparently it was this rare, high-class cat. Did you go too, Iori?

Iori: Only as Yotsuba-san's chaperone.

Momo: You guys are so sneaky! lololol

Tsumugi: Well then, do you have anything to ask the others, Momo-san?

Momo: I wanna know what part of Yuki you like the most!

Yuki: It's your birthday, so you should make this about yourself for once lol

Momo: But this was the most exciting question I could come up with!!

Nagi: I know the feeling. I also want to collect an assortment of praise for Cocona, and preserve it for all eternity.

Momo: Right! Well then, I wonder what I should choose~!

Momo: I've decided!

Momo: Tell me how you make up with someone after a fight!

Sogo: A fight...

Momo: Yep! I'll be using these answers for reference in my daily life!

Yamato: When I think of you trying to make up with someone you fought with, only one person comes to mind.

Yuki: Oh. And who would that be?

Tsumugi: Ways to make up with someone after a fight, it is! Understood!

Momo: I don't see you as the type to fight, Maneko-chan, but how would you do it? Like when the other person is at fault, for example.

Tsumugi: You're starting with me!? Well then...

Choices/outcomes:

1. I'd be the one to apologize!

Momo: Typical Maneko-chan! You don't want the fight to drag on for too long, after all!

2. I'd demand that the other person reflects on their actions!

Momo: You're pretty confident, huh!? I just hope that the other person really does think of what they did, instead of getting even angrier!

3. I'd let the problem solve itself!

Momo: That might be a good method, too! Even if you're fighting, you'll still talk to the other person when you really need to, and sometimes you just hve to force yourself to get along with other people!

Tsumugi: I hope my answer was fine... I'd like to hear everyone else's opinions, too!

Tsumugi: Let's start with you, Okazaki-san!

Rinto: Personally, I'd just apologize. Even if I believed I was in the right, I'd apologize for turning it into a fight.

Rinto: And on top of that, I'd try to discuss the matter with them once more.

Yamato: What an adult.

Momo: Totally! Okarin doesn't go back on his opinions, but he'll apologize as soon as things get awkward! That way, both parties will calm down at the same time!

Tsumugi: Thank you, Okazaki-san! What about you, Anesagi-san?

Kaoru: I'd never do that. When I have a fight off work, I'll never apologize...

Tenn: Is that so. You're more impartial at work, so that's a bit surprising.

Kaoru: I do know when I should just give in. I'm sick of fighting, and acting stubborn is just making me feel lonely.

Kaoru: But I tend to take on the stance that I can't forgive the other person that easily.

Momo: You want to make the other person realize that you're hurt or angry, right! I think that part of you is pretty cute, Kaoru-chan!

Tsumugi: I act like that with my father sometimes, as well... Thank you, Anesagi-san! Banri-san, you're next!

Banri: So, am I allowed to make this answer a more specific piece of advice for when you fight with a certain someone?

Momo: Honestly, yeah. Go ahead, Ban-san.

Yuki: Who is this "certain someone?"

Banri: Got it. This is the type of person who lives according to their own rhythm and beliefs, so if you try to force them to be on time when they're feeling off, or disrespect their beliefs, they become overstimulated.

Banri: When they're overstimulated, they may seem like a stubborn and overly desperate blockhead who doesn't listen to advice, but they're really just genuinely trying to stick to their principles no matter what.

Banri: So, as long as they have somewhere they can be alone, they'll bounce back on their own. Once they've done that, they'll be able to give a sincere apology.

Momo: I screenshotted that!! Thank you so much!!!

Tsumugi: Banri-san, thank you! Yuki-san, you're next!

Yuki: Me?

Yuki: I'll wait for the other person to apologize

Momo: Aaaaaaargh I'm gonna lose my mind

Momo: But I love you!!!!!*:.。..。.:*・゜ (*´▽`*)゜・:.。..。.:*

Yuki: Me too ^^

Tenn: Have you never been the one to apologize?

Yuki: I have. But those times aren't really fights, it's just that I'm more likely to apologize when the other person stops listening to me, storms off somewhere, or starts crying.

Sogo: It's important to cool down.

Yuki: I'm a musician, right? So I get more stimulated by loud noises.

Momo: What's that got to do with you being a musician!?

Yuki: I think. That when people yell at me, it sends an unstoppable rush of blood into my head.

Momo: When I get mad, I yell really loud!

Yuki: I know. Which is why fighting with you will make the blood vessels in my head nearly burst on their own.

Momo: I'm seriously considering buying a punching bag for whenever we fight!

Tsumugi: P-please don't fight, you two! ><

Momo: We're not! This is a totally normal conversation for us!

Yuki: We're not fighting ^^

Yuki: In that case, I'll buy you a punching bag as a present.

Momo: Thanks! I'll get you cooling sheets for your head, too!

Yamato: As usual, I can't tell if these two get along really well or really badly....

Tamaki: Do you get stimulated when you hear loud noises too, So-chan?

Sogo: If anything, I think I get stimulus from fast tempos? That's why my head goes blank when I get nervous.

Yamato: So whenever you get nervous, we should all sing bossa nova together, got it.

Tsumugi: I'm glad you weren't fighting! Tsunashi-san, you're next!

Ryunosuke: How to make up after a fight, huh. I don't think I'd really be the one to apologize...

Momo: Really!? That's a surprise!

Gaku: Ryu's more stubborn than he looks.

Ryunosuke: If I think I'm in the wrong, I won't start a fight in the first place. So if I get into a fight, that means that I think I'm right.

Ryunosuke: I think it's pretty weird to go back on my own opinion just because it made someone else angry...

Momo: That's true...

Ryunosuke: So I think I'd try to compromise until the end. Listen to the other person's perspective, and tell the mine. We're not supposed to be fighting, after all.

Tenn: Right. You barely ever fight, anyway.

Ryunosuke: I guess I don't get angry a lot!

Tsumugi: Tsunashi-san, thank you! Yaotome-san, you're next!

Tenn: I'll do this in his stead.

Gaku: Why!?

Tenn: He's awfully aggressive, isn't he?

Gaku: And why are you talking like I'm not here.

Tenn: As surprising as it may be, he isn't actually trying to pick fights.

Yamato: I know what you mean!! There's been times when he came up to me and started talking all aggressively, and I got defensive because I didn't get that he was just greeting me.

Riku: Yaotome-san's really nice, but he feels kind of like a yanki at first!

Gaku: I wonder why. I'm just trying to act casual.

Tamaki: But I feel like it wouldn't help much if Gakkun started talking all politely...

Gaku: I'm just doing what comes naturally.

Ryunosuke: Gaku's cool, so maybe that's just the impact he has on people?

Momo: So Gaku, what would you do if you got into a fight?

Gaku: I think I'm about the same as Ryu. I'll apologize if I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, I won't.

Iori: Then, if you and Tsunashi-san fought, how would you settle things?

Gaku: Who knows?

Ryunosuke: Have we ever had a fight?

Ryunosuke: We've never really had any major disagreements, either...

Gaku: I wouldn't mind if we disagreed on something for once. Like whether we prefer bread or rice for breakfast, or whether we like cats or dogs.

Riku: Then, what if you fell in love with the same person?

Ryunosuke: Me, falling in love with the same person as Gaku!? I guess I'd withdraw once I find out about Gaku's feelings?

Gaku: Why? I don't wanna win by default. We need to settle it fair and square.

Ryunosuke: I wouldn't want to bother you or the other person by forcing my own feelings on either of you. I guess that's what makes the two of us different.

Gaku: We really don't have a lot to fight over, huh.

Gaku: We didn't fight just now.

Momo: Thanks for the info! lol

Riku: Don't you fight with Tenn-nii?

Gaku: I do. But I think he tends to be right more often, at least when it comes to work.

Tenn: How honest of you.

Gaku: I'm right about private stuff more.

Tenn: That last part was unnecessary.

Tsumugi: Yaotome-san, thank you! Yamato-san, you're next!

Yamato: Sorry, wait a sec. I think my phone's running out of battery.

Yamato: Who here took the charger cord I keep in my room?

Nagi: Sorry, Yamato. My cord burned out, so I borrowed yours.

Yamato: I don't mind if you borrow it, but why is it connected to a USB plasma globe?

Momo: Lmao, lolololol I'll have to do that at Yuki's place sometime, lol

Nagi: Touching it makes me feel like a wizard :-)))

Mitsuki: Now Nagi's impulse purchase is in Yamato-san's room, lolololol

Tsumugi: Well then, let's take a 15 minute break!

Tsumugi: Until then, everyone!

#idolish7 #momo #12 songs gift #translation #re:vale #rabbit chat

76 notes · View notes

agentravensong · 6 years ago

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Why Frisk, Chara, & Kris Being Non-Binary Is More Than Just a Headcanon

An UnderTale/DeltaRune Analysis

Since DeltaRune came out, I’ve been sucked right back into the Undertale fandom. Unfortunately, while I’ve seen tons of great fanart and interesting theories relating to the game, it seems the introduction of a third playable human character who isn’t explicitly male or female has also somewhat re-sparked the debate about whether the genders of Frisk, Chara, and now Kris are up to the player’s interpretation.

On one side, you have people saying to just respect everyone’s headcanons about these characters, down to deciding their pronouns. On the other, you have people saying the three characters being non-binary is part of their thematic purpose in the games, on top of being positive canon representation for a rarely recognized group.

I fall into the latter camp, and this post will explain why. (WARNING: long and text-heavy post)

NOTE: This post was written in late 2018. Since then, I have made an updated version with additional points in Google Docs, which I then used as the script for a YouTube video. As such, this post should be considered an incomplete, though still sound, version of my argument. If you have the time, rather than continuing to read this post, please click the above link(s) to read the Google Doc and/or watch the video for a full understanding of the topic.

If you find yourself repeatedly coming back to this post for whatever reason, remember that my ask box is always open! I’d be more than happy to clarify my position :D

A quick definition to start us off: if a person is “non-binary”, it means that a person doesn’t see their gender as being exclusively male or female. Many non-binary people prefer to be referred to by the pronouns “they/them/theirs” instead of “he/him/his” or “she/her/hers”, since “they” is already a gender neutral pronoun.

Also, just in case someone doesn’t understand this, a person’s gender identity is not necessarily related to who they are romantically or sexually interested in.

This post will be split into six sections of unequal length, with the focus progressing from literally interpreting the text to Toby’s intentions and the outside impact of having these characters be non-binary.

1. The basics: All 3 characters are referred to exclusively by gender-neutral pronouns in the games.

Let’s go character by character, shall we?

FRISK

It’s admittedly hard to find examples for this, since most of the time people are talking about Frisk in-game, they’ll be talking directly to them in second person. However, while looking through screenshots provided by the UnderTale Text Project, I found these:

Thank you, Alphys!

EDIT: Hey look, a more obvious example I somehow forgot about!

CHARA

All of the following quotes come from the character Chara was supposedly closest to in the entire Underground, Asriel. As you read, think about this: if Chara’s preferred pronouns were anything other than they/them, why would Asriel not use their correct pronouns here?

“Chara hated humanity. Why they did, they never talked about it. But they felt very strongly about that.”

“When Chara and I combined our souls together, the control over our body was actually split between us. They were the one who picked up their own empty body. And then, when we got to the village, they were the one who wanted... to use our full power.”

I’ve seen some people take Flowey’s mentions of Toriel in his New Home Genocide monologue to be confirmation that Chara goes by “she/her”, since he doesn’t refer to Toriel by name... even though Chara wouldn’t have been awake at that time, and when Flowey DOES talk about Chara in this monologue, it’s in second person, since he believes YOU are his old best friend. This misconception isn’t common, especially these days, but I figured it was worth addressing.

KRIS

Out of the three humans, I think Kris is the one who people are most likely to associate with a specific gender based on their name. But despite the theory videos and such you may have seen where people referred to Kris as “he”, this is not reflected anywhere in-game.

(Got these screenshots of DeltaRune’s code from this tumblr post)

The lines in the first photo are what Susie says when she’s trying to break Kris and Ralsei out of prison, and you have the option to suggest to her which way to go. The second example. according to Kris’ page on the DeltaRune fandom wiki, is said by Ralsei earlier in the game, if you do not run to complete the clock puzzle to open the door right after reuniting with Susie. Unlike the first example, it is clear in this case that Kris is the only one being referred to.

I remember seeing someone somewhere argue that Susie and Ralsei don’t know Kris well enough to know their “proper” pronouns. When it comes to Ralsei, I can see that argument... but did you notice that he knows both Kris and Susie’s names without asking? It seems he knows more than he lets on... and while Susie certainly wasn’t friends with Kris before this, the fact that they’re in the same class is enough for me to think she would have heard Kris be referred to by their preferred pronouns at least in passing by this point.

And that’s it. Frisk, Chara, and Kris are never referred to by other pronouns... with, admittedly, one exception:

Why does Chara use “it” for themself here? If I had to guess, it’s likely a combination of them being a ghost of their former self without a soul of their own (Flowey’s shown us how much your personality and sense of self is tied to having a SOUL) and the corruption from the Genocide run (remember that gaining LOVE affects a person’s mentality). They see themself as a demon, no longer a person. Whether that’s literally true to any extent or just how they feel after everything they’ve been through doesn’t really matter, I just wanted to cover this point before anyone else could bring it up. It’s not like it makes them not non-binary or anything.

To be clear, not all non-binary people go exclusively by they/them pronouns. Some prefer to go by masculine or feminine pronouns for their own reasons; some go by “neo-pronouns”, ones invented specifically for those who identify as non-binary; and some people go by more than one set of pronouns. However, in the case of Frisk, Chara, and Kris specifically, the fact that they only go by they/them pronouns makes them non-binary, and using any other pronouns for them would be incorrect (even if you have them go by they/them AND he/him or she/her).

Really, that should be enough to prove that the three humans being non-binary is canon. After all, you never have any of the other major characters in Undertale or DeltaRune explicitly state “I’m a girl” or “I’m a boy”. We know their genders because of the pronouns everyone refers to them by. Sure you’ll see gender-bends of those characters, but no one ever claims that those are on the same level of validity when it comes to canon as the actual canon.

But I know that isn’t enough for the people who came into this post disagreeing with the premise, so let’s actually get to countering some of their arguments, shall we? The main argument, of course, is that the humans’ are all meant for the Player to at least partially craft identifies for, including deciding which pronouns they use. But first...

2. Small Fish First: Other characters who are obviously not meant to be self-inserts use gender neutral pronouns.

...I want to cover the easier to counter idea that they/them pronouns are meant to just be, for lack of a better term, “placeholders”; the pronouns you use when you don’t know a person’s gender, rather than being valid permanent pronouns on their own.

If this were true in the case of Undertale and DeltaRune, you’d expect the humans to be the only ones referred to by these pronouns. They’re the ones whose identities are left ambiguous so the Player can project onto them, right?

But that couldn’t be father from the truth. In fact, the majority of the monsters you encounter in both games are referred to with gender-neutral pronouns (they/them and/or it), if any pronouns at all.

Now one might say, “But none of those monsters are really meant to be individual characters.” I get why you’d think that. But you’re forgetting at least one person...

Yup, Napstablook, despite what many fans have assumed from what I’ve seen, does not go by he/him pronouns, but they/them. And it’s not just in the narration either. Undyne does too in certain phone calls with Papyrus. ...Then again, she barely knows Napsta, and we see in DeltaRune that she defaults to they/them when talking about people whose gender she doesn’t know (specifically in that game, Alphys).

But that isn’t my last example. One of the few people who was ever close to Napsta was Mettaton (before he became a celebrity). And what does Mettaton say after Blooky calls in to his final show?

What this proves is that Toby recognizes they/them pronouns as valid for an individual in his work, which I hope makes buying that he purposefully made all three humans canonically non-binary easier for skeptics to swallow (we’ll get back to whether he DID purposefully do that later).

But I’ll acknowledge that there IS a difference between the three humans and the other characters in the games who use they/them, due to their relationship with you as the Player. So with that tangent out of the way, time to diffuse the “everyone can have their own headcanons about the kids’ genders” argument.

3. Thematic Context: All 3 humans have moments of asserting their agency, and part of the game’s subtext is how they each relate to the Player, rather than them all being blank slates.

Again, we’ll go character by character.

FRISK

This section is, admittedly, the one with the least evidence compared to the rest. But here’s what we have, and it’s pretty obvious:

After this moment, as was shown earlier, the other monsters know Frisk’s name and will refer to Frisk in the third person with they/them pronouns. Now, consider this: If Frisk used other pronouns, wouldn’t they have corrected the monsters here? Sure Frisk don’t talk without being prompting much throughout most of the game, but considering how they just shared their name, something equally as personal as their pronouns, I don’t think it would feel too out of place here.

Alternatively, if Frisk’s gender was up to the Player’s interpretation, the Player could have been given a prompt to correct the other characters with the “proper” pronouns for Frisk. You could argue it would be pointless this late into the game, but couldn’t that logic apply to the reveal of Frisk’s name as well? In this case, the lack of such a moment speaks more to me than having such a moment would.

Now, I totally get why people would project onto Frisk up to this point in the narrative, including assigning them different pronouns. It wouldn’t be a plot twist otherwise. Even their design seems to lend to that, with the unrealistic bright yellow skin Legos and emojis have to make them more race-neutral, and their emotionless, unchanging facial expression (though it’s worth considering that most of the other character’s overworld sprites don’t change expression much either; I’m pretty sure Alphys’ overworld sprite keeps her dopey smile even when she’s talking about the depths of her depression and failure at the end of the True Lab section). And this actually works to UnderTale’s benefit through most of the game, making the connections you forge with the monsters feel more personal.

The significance of this moment is that it asks the Player to be willing to change their perspective. Throughout the True Pacifist run, you help Frisk to change the mindsets of the characters you come across; this is most obvious with Undyne, who has been raised to see all humans as the enemy, but comes to admit that at least “some humans are OK, I guess” after befriending you. Along the way, you learn that there’s more to these monsters than first impressions may suggest (again, Undyne being a great example). Now, the game is asking you to look deeper one more time, and presenting you with the challenge you’ve posed to all the other major characters: are you willing to recognize Frisk’s autonomy; to understand there is more to this person than you first saw?

EDIT: Hey, remember that screenshot from earlier where Flowey asks you to “let Frisk live their life”? He’s literally asking you to let Frisk be free and truly themself, rather than resetting and taking control of them again. So there’s some more food for thought.

CHARA

While you are the one who names Chara (the reason for which will be considered in the fourth section of this post), consider these points:

1. If the purpose of Chara’s entire character was meant to be just a reflection of you as the Player, then why give them a “true name” at all?

2. Chara’s backstory is integral to the setup of UnderTale’s plot, and provides a good amount of hints at their original personality, easily making them less of a “blank slate” for the Player to project onto than Frisk.

3. Chara makes a clear distinction between the Player and themself in their monologues at the end of the Genocide route. In case you forgot, here are some reminders.

First meeting:

“Your power awakened me from death.”

“My ‘human soul’, my ‘Determination’; they were not mine, but YOURS.”

“With your guidance, I realized the purpose of my reincarnation.”

“Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong.”

If you agree to ERASE the world: “You are a great partner.”

In the abyss:

“Interesting. You want to go back.”

“You want to go back to the world you destroyed.”

“It was you who pushed everything to its edge. It was you who lead the world to its destruction.”

“But you cannot accept that. You think you are above consequences.”

“Perhaps, we can reach a compromise. You still have something I want.”

“Then, it is agreed. You will give me your SOUL.”

Second meeting:

“You and I are not the same, are we?”

“This SOUL resonates with a strange feeling... You are wracked with a perverted sentimentality. ...I cannot understand these feelings any longer.”

“I feel obligated to suggest: should you choose to create this world once more, another path would be better suited.”

To say there is no connection between Chara and the Player would be unfair. I mean, if they hated humans their whole life, why do they end up taking out that rage on the monsters, the ones who were actually kind to them, in the Genocide run? Like Chara says themself, you guide them, teaching them definitively that “in this world, it’s kill or be killed”; and the influence you have on them is much more obvious if you subscribe to the Narrator Chara theory (but that’s a whole other can of worms).

Like with Frisk, Chara presents the Player a challenge, but in a more subtle way: can you recognize that YOU are at fault, rather than blaming your actions on a damaged kid who learns from your example and never got the chance to grow beyond their mistakes? And part of meeting that challenge is recognizing that Chara is, or at least used to be, their own whole person.

KRIS

Now we get to the really fun part. DeltaRune as a whole seems to be delving even deeper and more explicitly into the relationship between the playable character as an unwilling vessel and the actual Player than Undertale did. Outside of the prevalent message that “Your choices don’t matter” (which I’m guessing will end up more like the “kill or be killed” of this game rather than DR’s intended final moral), the main evidence towards this is how the game starts.

1. A red soul appears on screen when the unknown speaker (presumably Gaster) asks you if they’ve successfully connected with you. The soul is what you control throughout this sequence. The implication? The SOUL in this game is a manifestation of you as the Player. In fact, considering some of the Chara quotes I mentioned earlier, this could be true of UnderTale as well.

2. You spend time making a vessel, only for it to be discarded, because “No one can choose who they are in this world.” This lack of choice is actually foreshadowed when you choose which legs you prefer, since all but the last choice are the same. The game is pointing out right away how superficial these choices are.

3. The speakers says “Your name is...” and Toriel seemingly finishes the statement by calling out “KRIS!”

The message of points 2 and 3 combined is pretty obvious to me: we don’t get an empty vessel to put ourself and our ideas into in DeltaRune. Kris is NOT an empty vessel; they have an already established backstory and personality, which we get multiple hints at (mostly when going around town at the end of the demo).

The fact that you have to go through this creation process on every new file, even after beating the game, suggests it’s more than just a framing device, but directly tied to the game’s narrative and/or themes in some way. So, let’s keep this scene in mind as we look at Kris’ defining moment at the end of Chapter 1.

In the middle of the night, Kris is wrestling with themself in bed until they fall out. Their walk is very stilted and jerkish, reminiscent of a zombie, or someone possessed.

Kris opens and closes their hand a few times before digging into their body and pulling out their soul, their eyes blank. (Notice how this doesn’t seem to actually leave a hole in their chest or anything? Almost as if the soul was never a part of them in the first place...)

They go to the wagon and harshly YEET the soul into the cage (the flavor text for which mentions it has already seen a few crashes... has something like this happened to Kris before?).

Kris walks back to the middle of the room, as if to purposefully stand in the center of the DeltaRune symbol on the floor, then pulls out a knife from seemingly nowhere, and turns to the camera with a red glow in their eyes.

Now, I totally get why most people will immediately assume that Kris has been possessed by a post-Genocide Chara here. I’m pretty sure the visual similarities between this scene and the one that plays if you choose to stay with Toriel in a soulless pacifist run in UT are intentional.

But remember how we mentioned the red SOUL, at least in DeltaRune, is a manifestation of the Player? This is actually reinforced in this scene, because you’re able to move the SOUL back and forth within the cage.

We’ve been controlling Kris via that SOUL the whole way through the game, and now? Kris is done with us. THIS is their prime moment of agency in Chapter 1 - reclaiming ownership of their own body - and I doubt that it will be their last.

There’s a ton of other stuff I could mention about Kris, like how:

* they had their own save file, which you overwrite at the first save point

* multiple NPCs in the town will comment on Kris seeming more talkative or looking off today, because YOU’RE making them interact with people

* Kris’ ability to play the piano is worse than normal with you controlling them, according to the hospital receptionist

* the narration says Kris feels bitter if you throw away the one possession in their inventory, the Ball of Junk (”bitter” isn’t the emotion one would feel if they did this of their own free will)

or all the hints at Kris’ true personality as an introverted, codependent prankster. But that could be a post in itself. My point is that, if Frisk and Chara’s individualism from the Player was subtle in UnderTale, this is pretty straightforward, if you know where to look.

And if these three humans are all their own characters, then shouldn’t we consider what seemingly little we DO know for sure about them as canon? We all take their names to be canon, so why not their pronouns?

That’s the bulk of the argument done. But when discussing canon, there is one thing that always has to be considered:

4. Can We Know The Creator (Toby Fox)’s Intentions?

Well, not really.

Some may bring up the one tweet where Toby suggested to name the fallen human (Chara) “your own name” as evidence that you ARE meant to project yourself into these characters.

However, I think you could just as easily argue that doing this ADDS to the impact of when Frisk, the character you physically control, confirms themself to be their own person with their own name, rather than a mold for you to pour yourself into.

And though Chara does make it clear that they themself as a character are separate from you, the whole Genocide ending monologue does hit harder when the person reprimanding you for their sins, who describes themself as “the feeling you get when your stats increase”, shares your name.

While putting this post together, I came across this interview Toby did about Undertale back in September 2015, and took particular note of this section:

While this technically doesn’t confirm or deny anything either way, how hard would it have been for Toby to say, “Well the protagonist is meant to have their gender be up to the player’s interpretation”? I doubt he would have gotten more backlash for that then he would have for definitively saying that Frisk is MEANT to be non-binary (though I doubt that would have stopped people from making them male or female anyway).

Then again, the article does start with the interviewer saying this:

“I told Toby Fox to skip questions he didn’t find interesting, and boy did he take me at my word.”

So maybe he just didn’t have anything worthwhile to mention.

I can’t say with certainty that Frisk and Chara’s genders were never meant to be up to the Player’s choice, even after what I mentioned in section 2 (and I doubt Toby would want to make a statement on it at this point). Same with Kris, for now.

However, if the rest of DeltaRune ends up going in the direction I suggested in the previous section, I honestly would not be surprised if there’s a moment where Kris confirms they are nonbinary, as a show of agency and individualism akin to Frisk telling Asriel their real name. I wouldn’t really call it a “theory”, and it’s hard to speculate what the other chapters of the game will at all be like based on what relatively little we have... but I wouldn’t have mentioned it here if I didn’t think it had any validity.

5. Why Does This Matter?

Outside of the previously mentioned stuff relating to the games’ themes/messages about choice, agency, and individualism, there’s one big reason: representation.

How many games can you think of where there are any explicitly non-binary characters? How many where that character is a major one, who doesn’t get treated as particularity different from the others just on the basis of the pronouns they use? And how many of those games are even close to the popularity of Undertale in its hayday? Even expanding these questions to media other than just video games won’t net many more results.

For people who are striving for representation, seeing posts like “Just let people have their headcanons :)” can come across as the OP not understanding how much that representation means. Even worse, coming back to the point I made in section 2 of this post, it could be seen as the OP denying that being non-binary is just as real and concrete as being male or female (a problem which more mainstream representation of non-binary people would help solve!).

But don’t just take it from me. After all, as a binary cis girl myself (”cis” meaning not trans), I can’t speak generally for all the trans and non-binary Undertale and Deltarune fans out there. So allow me to link some posts which provide their perspectives:

This first post is from before DeltaRune was released, and mainly focuses on Frisk, but goes in-depth on the topic (and the OP provided me some feedback on my post, so if they see this, thanks!)

I came across this post just while scrolling through the DeltaRune tag about why this stuff matters to non-binary fans.

This post is specifically about how using they/them pronouns for the kids is preferable whether or not it’s literally canon.

Here’s another post from the same person covering some common counter-arguments.

And if the other posts are too long for you to bother reading after going through mine, this one sums up the point in one sentence.

I know some people flinch at the mere mention of the word “representation”. I know that some will argue you shouldn’t need to see representation of a group you belong to in a piece of media in order to be able to relate to the characters and/or feel validated yourself - because I’ve seen people make this argument. But, I mean, I certainly find it easier to relate to characters that I share traits with; that’s just how humans work. It’s probably the main reason why people assign different genders to Frisk, Chara, and Kris in the first place! Besides, who does it hurt to include more diverse characters?

Oh right, there’s the idea that “forcing” creators to include representation is bad for creativity or whatever. Well good thing that’s not what this is about! As far as I know, no one is telling Toby he has to ADD new characters to fulfill a quota; the characters in question (Frisk, Chara, & Kris) already exist in his work. The point of this post is to show that the three of them were MEANT to be non-binary from the start (assuming I provided enough proof to convince you), so people won’t continue to erase that representation. By making them binary cis boys or girls, you’re only taking away from the original text (and giving people more to “complain” about).

Honestly, what does one even have to gain story-wise from assigning different genders to the human kids? I can’t remember a time I saw where making them strictly boys or girls added anything to their characterization or opened up different story possibilities (I’m sure you could could up with a theoretical example, but compared to the endless fanworks that DON’T do that, they hardly make a dent). Speaking beyond just Frisk, Chara, and Kris, characters being non-binary shouldn't affect how you ship them. You can give such characters more overtly masculine or feminine designs/appearances, but still have them be non-binary and go by they/them pronouns (most people don’t naturally look androgynous after all). In a work with voice acting, casting someone with a more masculine or feminine voice to play a non-binary character shouldn’t stop you from portraying the character as non-binary either - just refer to them with the right pronouns!

And if people who find your work continuously misgender your non-binary characters or ask what their “real” gender is, don’t let them get to you. You don’t need to respond to every such comment, but when you DO respond, clearly state that these characters are non-binary, politely correct the people who refer to those characters by the wrong pronouns, and, if worst comes to worst, block the people who won’t respect that. Before you (using “you” for the rest of this paragraph to refer specifically to my fellow binary cis peeps) can even think to argue “that sounds like too much work” or “it’s not worth the potential controversy”, remember that non-binary people in real life have to deal with this crap far more often than we do, and for them, it’s personal. If they can handle it, why can’t you?

Yes, Frisk, Chara, and Kris are fictional characters, not real people. But more representation of non-binary people in media helps others learn to understand and respect them, both in fiction and in real life. Honestly, it’s beyond time for people to accept that “they/them” aren’t “placeholder pronouns”, and the genders of people who use them aren’t up for others to judge. It’s just who they are, and really, how hard is that to respect?

If nothing else will convince you, think of it this way: if you’re not in the group being affected by a discussion like this, and you don’t care about the people in that group, keeping yourself out of the conversation saves everyone time and energy, without hurting anyone.

6. Conclusion

So, to briefly summarize this essay-length post’s main points:

1. Frisk, Chara, and Kris all go solely by “they/them” in their respective games, so having them go by any other pronouns is technically diverting from canon to the same extent that gender-bending any other character would be, NOT a valid interpretation of the original text.

2. There are other individual characters in these two games, such as Napstablook, who are referred to by they/them pronouns, even by those who were close to them.

3. The three humans are all shown to be more than just blank slates for the Player to project themself onto, making the stuff which IS definitively said about them (specifically, their names and pronouns) canon parts of their characterization unless directly proven otherwise.

4. We can’t assume Toby’s intentions, but even if he didn’t initially make Frisk, Chara, and Kris gender neutral for the sake of giving non-binary people representation, many people have taken it as that. Thus, seeing others say that the humans’ genders are up for interpretation is interpreted as those people not respecting non-binary identities as valid on their own.

The one other point I can think people might bring up would be the idea that kids as young as Chara or Frisk wouldn’t identify as non-binary because they wouldn’t understand the concept. To that argument, I’d suggest looking up videos about people who realized they were transgender as kids. In general, if there are concepts in this post you didn’t quite get or agree with, research is your friend!

Speaking of which, as this post I came across in the DeltaRune tag yesterday pointed out, fun fact: “non-binary” is an umbrella term that still leaves some slight room for personal interpretation when it comes to the humans’ genders! To use myself as an example, I personally headcanon Chara as firmly agender, Kris as a a demi-boy (someone who only partially sees themself as male), and Frisk as genderfluid (meaning that their sense of gender regularly changes). However, despite the nuances in their gender identities, I only have them go by they/them pronouns, their canon ones, in my fanworks. Doing otherwise not only goes against canon, but can be considered misgendering, and thus should be avoided.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t make up ANYTHING about what Chara, Frisk, and Kris are like either. People have plenty of headcanons about the backstories and other quirks of characters like Sans, Undyne, Mettaton - basically the whole cast of both games - and there’s nothing stopping you from doing that for the human kids. I certainly have my own ideas of what Chara and Frisk’s lives were like before they fell into the Underground. The difference is that those are speculating on things not outright said in canon. But Frisk, Chara, and Kris going by they/them pronouns IS canon, and should be respected as such.

At the end of the day, neither I nor anyone else (not even Toby) can outright stop people from having their opinions about these fictional characters. But since I had some free time this weekend, I figured I could take a stand for something I care about relating to a fandom I’ve emerged myself in for the past few years. My main hope in making this post is that you’ll understand why certain people disagree with the seemingly righteous stance of “It’s all up to interpretation, just let people do what they want!”. And if you knew nothing about non-binary identities before, hopefully this was educational for you!

If you have any remaining questions or suggestions relating to this post, feel free to reblog with your feedback or send me an ask. Until then, this is Agent Raven, signing off.

#deltarune #delta rune #undertale #frisk #chara #kris

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seasonal-spuffy · 6 years ago

Photo

Hello, friends! We’re doing a tutorial thing for our new participants. For those of you who can LiveJournal perfectly well or who are otherwise not here for this, I hope scrolling past 1 post a week for 6-7 weeks won’t be a hardship.

LIVEJOURNAL FOR SCOOBIES #1: HOW TO FIND THINGS

When one loves Buffy, it can be fun to visit livejournal dot com, where this fandom lived for years and much awesomeness was created.

On LJ, we can read classic works of literature, some of which aren’t archived anywhere else, and find rec lists galore. We can vote on important issues (this link isn’t worksafe) and seek answers to eternal questions, such as what Angel was thinking in IWRY and what everyone’s daemon would be. And we can still, in the year of our lord 2018, participate in active communities like @seasonal-spuffy, @iwrymarathon-blog, @buffyversetop5, and more.

These things go more smoothly when one has a decent working knowledge of the site. :) Luckily, that’s exactly what I have, and I’d love to share it! This will be a series of 6 tutorials, covering LiveJournal navigation, commenting, communities, and posting. While my main agenda is to help more people use Seasonal Spuffy, these posts will be for anyone who wants ‘em, so I’ll include a somewhat broader range of examples.

This post is about navigation. Ever had trouble finding the next chapter or more works by the same author? Do you wish all those customized buttons in people’s journals would do what it says on the tin? Maybe you just want to find your way around the site in general? Read on...

TL;DR:

tags are good for 95% of your browsing needs; mark the “Readability” checkbox for an easier life; and the search feature is at livejournal.com/rsearch .

How to find my dashboard? (Or news feed? You know, the posts of my friends?)

Click “Friends Feed” at the top of any LiveJournal page (screenshot 1 above), or go to yourusername.livejournal.com/feed/

How to find my profile, settings, personal messages, and all that?

The main menu opens if you hover over your username in the top right corner (screenshot 1).

How to find the right button in someone’s journal if they’ve code-named them all?

People can customize their journals, including button labels. If you’d like to remove someone’s custom style and view the journal with the default interface, click “Readability” in the top right corner (screenshots 2-3).

How to find all the fics by the same author?

Sometimes, authors put a masterlist at the top of their journal. See velvetwhip.livejournal.com for a beautiful example.

When they don’t, your best bet is to go to theirusername.livejournal.com/tag and look for a tag like “masterlist” or “index” or “fic”.

If you see a tag like “fic” at the bottom of a post in the author’s journal, you can click that, too (screenshot 5).

How to find all the entries about the same ship/character/topic...?

To browse a journal or community by categories like these, use the tags. Tags live at the bottom of posts (screenshot 5) and also in the tag page of the journal/community. To go to the tag page, click “Tags” (screenshot 3) or type the URL journalname.livejournal.com/tag

How to find the next chapter?

Authors generally want to help you out with this, but what they do varies.

Sometimes, authors link the next chapter at the bottom of each chapter.

If you’re in a journal that just contains the one fic, feel free to go to the next entry by clicking a right arrow at the top or bottom of the post (screenshot 4 and down below what you can see in screenshot 5). Most often, though, there will be other entries in someone’s journal in between the fic, so the next entry is not usually the next chapter.

Most of the time, authors create a TAG for the fic. You can click that tag at the bottom of the fic chapter (screenshot 5), and it will take you to all the chapters, newest first (screenshot 6). If there are many chapters, you might have to go a few pages back to find the beginning (click “Previous 10″ at the bottom of the page or add ?skip=10, ?skip=20, or similar at the end of the URL). If you’re in a community instead of a personal journal, there won’t normally be a fic tag, and the author/creator tag is probably the closest thing you can get.

Occasionally, authors use the memories feature to create tables of contents for their fic (screenshot 8). Memories are like bookmarked posts. You can go to someone’s memories using the navigation bar at the top of their journal (screenshot 3), and then you can check if the fic title is a keyword in the right sidebar and scroll down to filter by it.

If all else fails or if you enjoy shortcuts, try searching the author’s journal. The search icon (a magnifying glass) is at the top right corner of the page, and if you click it from someone’s journal, it searches that journal. Also, you can always find the search feature at livejournal.com/rsearch. For finding a chapter, you could use basic entry search (make sure not to use the author’s username as a search term there) or click the advanced settings icon and filter your search by author. See examples in screenshot 9.

How to find the rules/info of a community?

The profile of a community is almost always its “About” page that explains how to use it. You can go to the profile from the main page of a community (screenshot 3) or by typing the URL communityname.livejournal.com/profile

How to find entries by time of posting?

Journals and communities have an archive (sometimes called a calendar). You can open it from the main page of the journal/comm (screenshot 3) or by going to the URL journalname.livejournal.com/calendar . Once there, you can view posts by year, month, or day (screenshot 7). It’s also possible to hop straight to a certain year or month, or date by adding it to the end of the journal’s URL, for example, buffyversetop5.livejournal.com/2005 or buffyversetop5.livejournal.com/2018/01 , or buffyversetop5.livejournal.com/2017/10/31 .

How to find anything else, hopefully?

LiveJournal has a search icon at the top right corner. If you click it from someone’s journal, you can search that journal. Alternatively, you can go to livejournal.com/rsearch and search the whole site or any journal you like. See screenshot 9 for some examples. Note that entry search won’t recognize the author’s username; if you want to add the username to the search, use advanced settings.

How to find more help with using LiveJournal?

LiveJournal has extensive FAQs. For a quick start, try this one.

This tutorial by lolaann1 covers the basics well.

“LiveJournal for Dummies” is a community where many people have answered questions about using LiveJournal. Remember that you can search the community by clicking the search icon at the top right corner of the page.

And that’s all I could think of. If something in this post was confusing or if you have a related question & the resources in the last section didn’t help, feel free to ask! If I get many questions, I might make a separate post at the end.

Next week’s post will be about commenting. All the tutorials will eventually be found here.

- thenewbuzwuzz

#tutorials #livejournal #seasonal spuffy #btvs #mod post

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