#don’t get me wrong… there *is* meta to be written here

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

Why did Oden called Buggy second son? And does that mean he also confirms them as brothers like marines did? First son, second son, sound brotherly to me but I am not fluent in English and know nothing on Japanese names. And is buggy younger? By month me he is, If so why he angry at that?

oden gives a number of characters nicknames of a sort, where he combines their name with a syllable or two of a typical japanese personal name. white-kichi, buggy-jiro, red-taro… the strawhats do something similar to blend in while they’re hiding out in wano, but as far as i can tell the endings they pick are fairly random, while i think oden assigns his with intention.

吉, kichi, means good luck or fortune—and i think that first meeting with whitebeard is something oden looks back on as being very fortunate. it changed his life, in several very big, very meaningful ways!

太郎 and 次郎, tarou and jirou, taken literally mean eldest son and next son. surrounded by grown men, two boys, and his own family, is it any wonder oden gives these kids nicknames that emphasize their youth and position them in roles similar to those of his own children? i don’t think it means anything more than that, though.

we don’t get confirmation of who is older or younger of shanks and buggy in the text… we’re told in extracanonical places like data books and sbs answers that shanks and buggy are the same age, and they were given birthdays by goroawase rules, which puts shanks’ birthday in march and buggy’s in august. so i guess buggy is younger by five months or so?

and i can’t say for sure why buggy is mad about being assigned second son when he is, in fact, the younger of the two of them—though you have to remember, buggy’s temper is rarely a logical beast—but i do have my pet theory.

i may have mentioned it before, idk, but i think buggy was a pretty competitive kid. if you’ve spent much time around that kind of kid, you’ll know they can turn anything and everything into a competition, even stuff they have no control over. who’s fastest? who’s tallest? who’s oldest? who got the biggest piece of meat at dinner? who got the biggest piece of cake for dessert? any way they can make themselves out to be the winner, the best, they’ll take it. and any way they appear to come in last, or even in second, will make them miserable.

now, i’m not here to get into the psychological underpinnings of why such kids are so competitive… but i’m given to understand there’s usually a bit of an inferiority complex involved, which certainly feels appropriate for buggy.

[hopefulleafva]

Papyrus Wrote the UTDR Mystery Valentine

Okay so with a 2025 release for Deltarune chapters 3&4 confirmed I want to get this off my chest and document it for future me to either feel vindicated by or have a good laugh at how wrong it was. This has been eating me alive since the Valentine’s newsletter and I never said anything but I want this out there before anything new comes out.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is a theory other people have already made posts on or not because all I ever see is “it’s Gaster!” or “It’s not Gaster, it’s Dess/Egg Man/[Insert mysterious character here!]”. If someone has posted this theory before I missed it entirely. Not looking to steal anyone’s theory thunder here.

I’ve convinced myself this is Papyrus and just want to get my thoughts down here.

So. I see a lot of people talk about how the flippant and humorous way it’s written makes them think this isn’t Gaster. To get the Gaster stuff out of the way, my stance is that everyone has their own preferred idea of how they think Gaster acts and whether or not he could have a sense of humor, but we really have yet to learn a lot about him in canon. I don’t love us trying to make rules about what is and isn’t “in character” for him when we really haven’t met properly and have very little dialogue to go off of. I get a lot of people are basing their ideas of him being serious off Entry 17 and the popular assumption that the intro voice is Gaster. I think that’s fair and very understandable, but even still it’s only an extremely limited peek at what the guy is like. Point is, maybe he does have a silly sense of humor and maybe he doesn’t. I don’t want to entirely dismiss the idea that Gaster wrote this based on “it’s too silly, Gaster is serious!”. But I also think that the idea that because the speaker is a mysterious voice with meta knowledge of Deltarune that it MUST be Gaster is also a bit shaky.

Anyway.

Is it just me or does the bizarre roundabout way of phrasing things in the letter perfectly fall in line with how Papyrus speaks?

One of my favorite notes in the Undertale Legends of Localization book (HIGHLY recommend by the way, a really fascinating read) was this:

While yes, it’s important to bear in mind that this was the quote of a localizer and not Toby directly, I think it still rings very true for Papyrus’s character. Don’t really think I need a laundry list of examples for this point, right? Papyrus’s fun and unique way of speaking is such a memorable part of his character that you encounter in all routes.

Which is why it’s so interesting to me that this mystery writer seems to have a highly similar way of phrasing things in a unique and playful way.

The first one that really sticks out to me is the “I never forget someone I don’t remember.”

Really reminded me of the little bit you get after a post neutral run reset.

While not something I originally weighed in to my theory, it is worth noting that this bit between Papyrus and Sans occurs immediately after Papyrus has recognized Frisk after seeing them for this “first” time. This makes the mystery valentine writer’s preceding comment that they will know the forgotten person they are looking for immediately upon seeing them extra interesting.

This bit also stood out to me:

Because it also felt like very familiar phrasing. It took me a while to realize what it was making me think of.

Down to the quotations around a common phrase like it’s an alleged thing not a very common thing??? Like MAN.

While these were the only two parts I felt directly and strongly paralleled specific phrasing Papyrus has used before in canon, there were a few other things that caught my eye.

A faith in the power of love, and the power of belief.

(Yes, I realize the “even if you don’t think so” appears to negate the idea of Frisk’s beliefs being an important part of their ability to change, but I’d say Papyrus is still emphasizing that his beliefs are significant in this.)

Very strange that the writer doesn’t dismiss the idea that the person they have forgotten they wanted to help could be themself. How could you forget yourself? But then again…

And while not really the same degree of strength in a parallel, I just want to bring up that the letter writer remarks that the reader is odd yet reliable for responding out loud to a piece of written communication.

It is strange that the author seems to have still heard the reader’s out-loud reply to the letter. A weird instance where a mode of communication that has limits on what SHOULD be able to be perceived by the other person somehow has those limits broken and allows that person to comment on something they shouldn’t be able to perceive.

Kind of like if you were having a phone call with someone far away from you but they still seemed to somehow be able to know exactly what you were looking at and where you were. Where have we heard that before…?

Also come on. You can’t tell me “PUT ON YOUR COAT AND WASH YOUR FACE! OR, PUT ON YOUR FACE AND WASH YOUR COAT. NOT NECESSARILY IN THAT ORDER. OR, IN ANY ORDER AT ALL.” doesn’t sound like a Papyrus-ism.

I know some people may point out that Papyrus already has Valentines that are very explicitly from him in the newsletter, so it would be weird to have three that are and one that wasn’t. But I don’t think that necessarily should refute this idea. It could be possible the “signed” valentines are from Undertale’s Papyrus, and this one is from Deltarune’s Papyrus. Even if you subscribe to the idea that UT Papyrus IS DR Papyrus, this could simply be a letter sent from a different point in time.

Anyway, this has been eating me alive since February so I wanted to get it off my chest. Maybe this is completely off base, but interesting to think about.

[goingbuggy]

Good morrow my shuggy liege!

I was pondering if I should or shouldn’t ask but I hope it will not be too much bother to answer

It’s about one of your metas about the love and sacrifice Beautifully written I must say but reading through it again made me wondering how does buggy fall into the sacrifice themes of one piece?

It pains me to admit that once I’ve read 1082 I had many different feelings and one of them thought of buggy sacrifice as quite selfish in a way? Don’t get me wrong I’m sure came from him believing in shanks and the love he had for the boy! It just it felt in a way like he was burdening shanks with his own dreams

I’m happy he finally got the courage to follow his own path It’s beautiful and inspiring I just wonder if my interpretation is coming from anxiety or is actually true? Thank you and I’m sorry to sending this on anon

Hello, anon! Thank you for your kind words about my metas. Before I answer your question about where Buggy might fit into the wider themes of One Piece -- like sacrifice -- I think I should address your interpretation of 1082's events and compare them with mine.

I can understand why someone might conclude that Buggy's faith in Shanks is a burden of sorts, and ultimately selfish; after all, Shanks never asked for the weight of Buggy's expectations, and you could argue that Buggy's plan was to live out his dreams vicariously through Shanks. However, I think that there are some key points which entirely re-frame the situation.

Buggy didn't actually tell Shanks about what he did.

This isn't explicitly confirmed by the manga, but based on 1082's events and Shanks/Buggy's relationship timeline going forward, I can definitely make a strong case for their miscommunication in this regard.

Although we have Buggy's narration in 1082 to guide us through his flashback and enlighten us with his true feelings about Shanks, remember -- it's an internal monologue. The only thing Shanks knows is what Buggy tells him, and what Buggy tells him is not the full story. Look at this series of panels to see what I mean.

We have a very important contrast here -- Buggy's thoughts ("You're not the next generation's king?! I misjudged you, Shanks!" / "Don't you care about following in Captain Roger's footsteps?!"), versus what he actually says. ("You coward!" / "It's your fault I lost that treasure map!")

In classic Buggy fashion, we see him deflect from the truth; instead of explaining how much he believed in Shanks' potential, he brings up a petty grudge and insults Shanks out of disappointment, hurt, and anger/frustration. Nowhere do we see Buggy explicitly tell Shanks what/why he gave up. And this miscommunication is not only the heart of Buggy's sacrifice, but the exact reason why they split in the first place: Shanks did not tell Buggy what made him change his mind about going to Laughtale, and Buggy did not tell Shanks about his decision/dream.

I think this is key to understanding the way they navigate their interactions later down the line, in Marineford. Remember: Shanks believes that they split due to the whole map ordeal, which is not only a relatively lighthearted grudge to hold, but also very confusing from Shanks' perspective.

I love the curt answer he gives here, because it really reflects Shanks' limited understanding of what actually transpired between them that fateful day at Loguetown. Thus, it's also understandable why Shanks acts the way he does at Marineford. I highly doubt Shanks would be so casual if he knew Buggy's real reasons for parting ways. Hell, their split was so important to Shanks that he still remembers Buggy's gripe about the map 20+ years later -- and even uses the promise of one to draw Buggy back into rehashing things between them. (The anime expands on Shanks' confusion/limited understanding even more, but because we're dealing with the manga only, I'm not going to reference those added scenes.)

This interaction can seem quite confusing, but place it in the wider context I've just proposed, and it makes a lot more sense. Something fundamental has permanently shifted between them, but Shanks does not understand the gravity -- nor the real reason -- behind that change. And yet again, Buggy perpetuates this cycle of miscommunication by not telling him.

So, now that I've argued why I believe Buggy didn't tell Shanks about his true dream/decision to give up on said dream, why is it so important?

Well, this leads to my second point.

2. Buggy is a character primarily motivated by greed.

This statement does not need to be argued; it's as explicit as can be, because it has been well-established by Oda. In fact, it's very likely to be what people remember best about Buggy's character, in the midst of the massive narrative that One Piece has become. (I will touch upon this later, because this is exactly why I view Buggy's sacrifice as so impactful to the reader.)

Now, my last point:

3. Buggy is terrible at hiding his true intentions.

Buggy usually makes it quite obvious what he's hiding through blatant lies which hint to the truth, or even a direct slip of the tongue, like in Impel Down. This is partially for the sake of comedy/divulging necessary information to readers, but it's also a genuine aspect of his character which reinforces the comedy. Buggy's intentions are comically apparent to readers, so it's ridiculous to see his followers fall for his schemes.

These three points, in tandem, are exactly what makes 1082's reveal so impactful. Oda uproots everything we thought we knew about Buggy's character in order to give us the missing puzzle piece -- the reason why he is the way he is. This exact decision.

Buggy is a character motivated by greed, but he gave up on his dream, a pillar of freedom and existence in the One Piece world. He is self-absorbed, and yet he de-centered himself from the narrative. And for who, of all people? Shanks, the very man he claimed to despise in his first introduction. Are you starting to see the groundwork Oda's laying down here?

Buggy is notoriously bad at hiding the truth when he lies, and yet readers are blindsided by this reveal, over a thousand chapters after his first appearance. He kept it a secret, not just from Shanks, but from us. 1082 subverted our expectations and further developed Buggy's character in the process. It's a great display of what I love most about Oda's writing.

Before 1082, it would be difficult to claim where Buggy lies in One Piece's themes of sacrifice or dreams. But post-1082, it's a lot clearer. Oda has shown us that Shanks is just as important to Buggy as Buggy is to Shanks, and he's done it in the most effective way for a greedy character: by showing us that even Buggy is capable of sacrifice, when it's for someone he cares about. And what did he give up? His dream -- one of the most important things people have in One Piece.

Sure, it's possible to dismiss Buggy's decision as selfish, but remember: he didn't tell Shanks. He didn't expect anything in return. In a way, he has actually spared Shanks from feeling burdened; Shanks doesn't know the truth, and so he has no opportunity to feel guilt or responsibility for Buggy's decision. For a character like Shanks, who is defined by responsibility, this is also massively significant. Buggy's choice is not Shanks' fault, and by deflecting to trivial matters like the map, Buggy has -- intentionally or not -- lifted a possible weight from Shanks' shoulders. Shanks still feels the loss of their relationship, but instead of potential guilt, there is confusion and miscommunication.

So, no, I don't view Buggy's sacrifice as selfish. He did what he did because he truly believed in Shanks. He was willing to let Shanks become king and live out his dream, all without burdening Shanks with the truth. It's the antithesis of everything we've known about Buggy up until this point -- a decision without his greed, egomania, and overt schemes at the forefront. And if that's not a selfless act from Buggy, then I don't know what is.

[toastandjamie]

So like, can someone explain Perrin to me? Like, don’t get me wrong I love Perrin! Love him to death but I just do not understand him or his character arc. Here’s the thing, I’m currently writing a meta essay on the Ta’veren boys story archetypes and how they relate and effect the modern fantasy genre. It was going smoothly until I reached Perrin and I just drew a complete blank on what to write. I settled on the gentle giant archetype but when I compared it to what I had written for Mat and Rand it felt decidedly lackluster and shallow. I’ve never really understood Perrin’s character, like with Mat and Rand I feel like I have a good grasp on what RJ was trying to say with them, how they work in the story and how they think and feel. I feel like I understand them in a way that I just never could with Perrin. Anytime I try to write about Perrin it feels like I’m just staring at big blob of nothing and trying to shape it into a coherent analysis. I really want to dig in and understand Perrin better, I’ve tried combing through the myths of Thor and looking into the mythological roots of lycanthropy but none of it has really helped me with his overall character

[pellaaearien]

Hey so here’s a really mean Sandman thought I had...

I just finished reading The Kindly Ones for the first time. (Yeah.) And I must say, it was a very interesting experience from the perspective of someone who both watched the show first and has also been hanging around deeply into fandom enough that I’ve absorbed spoilers/meta/whatever else surrounding the end of the comics before reading them to draw my own conclusions.

Now I have. And I think I’ve come to some interesting ones.

First off, naturally, Neil Gaiman has written the ultimate tragedy. Everything comes full circle, every decision made with the best possible intentions has the worst possible outcome, and it was always going to be this way. It’s a masterstroke, and as I read I was less sad than admiring at the completeness of it, the way everything slots into place so neatly.

Ever since I spoiled myself for the ending (which I’m glad I did,) I’ve read quite a bit of Kindly Ones meta. Many words have been spilled around the subject of “if someone had just SEEN what was wrong...” but MANY people did! Fiddler’s Green. Matthew. Nuala. And, of course, Hob, who Dream walks out on - again - because he’s being too perceptive. Again.

I was also reading the book with the foreknowledge that this is all an elaborate suicide plot on the part of Dream. After all, as Death says at the end, “the only reason you got yourself into this mess is because this is where you wanted to be.” And, later, when Dream says he has made all the preparations necessary, “You’ve been making them for ages. You just didn’t let yourself know that was what you were doing.” To which Dream replies, “if you say so.”

So we have lots of people saying lots of things about Dream, but what do Dream’s actions say for themselves? Because I must admit, reading the book knowing how it was going to end threw a lot of those assumptions into a new light.

Let’s go back to the conversation with Death. Dream says: “I did not plan this, my sister. I had imagined that I would be able to keep events here in check. I intended to play a waiting game, in which, ultimately, no harm was done.”

This I believe. One of the things that never sat right with me was Dream sitting back and letting his creations suffer, if his intention all along was to destroy himself. I don’t believe that’s in character for Dream in any incarnation.

What was Dream’s motivation? Dream is tired. He says so himself. He’s been tired for a long time, probably even before his imprisonment and having to basically remake the Dreaming and since then he hasn’t had a moment’s peace, what with Season of Mists and Orpheus and everything else. I think meeting Daniel planted the seed in his mind, that there was an out. As Death says, “...the stuff you do. Where you do it, and you won’t even admit to yourself it’s what you’re doing.” 

Meeting Daniel was that moment for Dream. Someone who could take over his responsibilities in the Dreaming. He can’t just walk away, like Destruction and Lucifer. That’s not who he is. I think Dream’s plan was to wait for Daniel to grow up some, and then... something. ??? profit. Maybe he would’ve gone to the Fates himself and taken their punishment for Orpheus. (Because he does, as Nuala astutely points out, want to be punished for Orpheus).

BUT, Daniel gets stolen while he’s still a baby. So Dream sends Matthew and the newly-remade Corinthian after him. Lyta, meanwhile, instigates the Furies, so now they’re on a ticking clock.

(I don’t, personally, think that Dream freed Loki with the intention of setting all this in motion, but that’s up to reader interpretation.)

Dream makes preparations. It certainly seems like he’s making peace with the fact of his death. He visits Nada (a small boy in Hong Kong), does a census of the Dreaming, acknowledges his servants, feeds pigeons, examines his properties in the waking world, and reviews various treaties and agreements to which the Dreaming is subject. He is responsible. He’s getting his affairs in order in case things don’t fall the way he expects them to.

When his Griffin is killed, Dream tells Furies: “I can create another, who would not even know that it had ever died.” Cold, perhaps, but very in keeping with the type of backwards kindness we’ve seen from Dream throughout the series. He also says: “This is my world, ladies. I control it, I am responsible for it. You with neither destroy it nor will you destroy me.”

The last part, as we know, is simply true. The Dreaming can be restored endlessly, and even if the facet known as Morpheus is destroyed, Dream will continue. But it’s the first part that’s significant. I control it, I am responsible for it. That part says to me that he would not allow his creations to suffer. He is responsible for them. And yes, he could restore them with a thought, but why bother? If he’s trying to get himself killed, why doesn’t the story just end here and now? With the Furies and Dream alone in his throne room?

Clearly, he’s waiting for Daniel. He can’t allow himself to be removed without a successor in place. Once the Furies leave, he immediately calls Matthew for an update. Matthew comments on how cold Dream sounds - he’s feeling the pressure.

Fiddler’s Green is killed. Does Dream say “I can create another?” No. He immediately goes in search of Lyta, to hopefully negate the wrath of the Furies. A stopgap, as the Furies would find another avatar in time, but Dream is taking action. He is not passively letting his doom collapse around his ears.

He’s foiled by Thessaly (all my homies hate Thessaly). While they are estranged exes, Thessaly admits that protecting Lyta from Dream was “not entirely” to hurt him: she struck a deal with the Three for a bit more life. Hurting Dream was an added bonus. She knows Dream well enough that he won’t break the rules in order to kill Lyta.

Dream is visibly upset by this. He won’t break the rules, but Thessaly’s actions (and his own, by extension) mean that more destruction will be wrought in the Dreaming. Lucien takes him to task for it:

Lucien asks why he isn’t restoring the things the Furies destroyed, but it makes sense to halt the source of the destruction first, rather than needing to fix things over and over again. Dream is at a loss. His plan was foiled and now he has no way to hold off the Furies. And Daniel is still missing. He could summon his sister right now (as he says, “by his own hand or another’s”) but that would leave the Dreaming in disarray, and he won’t do that.

Now to add Nuala’s summons into the mix. While Death will later point out that yes, Dream could have rejected the summons, I think it’s important to remember that he does actually try, at first:

“I must most earnestly beseech you...” That is begging. That is literal begging from Dream of the Endless, and it doesn’t stop there.  “You do me a disservice, Nuala,” Dream says, after Nuala quotes his promise back to him. He tries to get out of it! But Nuala won’t let him, throws his words in his face, and thereby seals his fate. Because Dream of the Endless, if nothing else, keeps his word, follows the rules. As he says later: “If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves.” 

He can’t just leave his realm like Destruction. He can’t ignore the rules and kill Lyta anyway. He can’t go back on his word and reject Nuala’s summons. If he did that, he would no longer be Dream.

So, he sets Daniel up in his new role as best as he can with the time he has left, and then he takes his sister’s hand to prevent any further damage to the Dreaming. Death accuses him of planning the whole thing, and perhaps that’s true. Perhaps he saw where the pieces were laid on the board and manipulated them to his advantage. I certainly don’t deny that ever since Orpheus he had intended to take himself out of the picture, one way or another. But I truly don’t think he meant for it to happen like this. I don’t see him as a cold-hearted chessmaster, forcing himself into a corner until he has no way out, with his creations’ existences hanging in the balance. I think he had a plan, and tried to stick to the plan as best he could, as the true tragedy spun into place around him: it was always going to happen like this.

Are y’all ready for the mean thought?

Because thinking about it this way, if truly all he wanted was a way out, he could have expedited the process at any point. As I hope I have shown here, to the contrary, his behaviour reads to me as someone who held out until the absolute bitter end, until he literally had no other choice. What are we to make of this? On the one hand, we have Death’s accusation about  “...the stuff you do. Where you do it, and you won’t even admit to yourself it’s what you’re doing.” Maybe that’s true. Death knows Dream, and knows what she’s talking about.

On the other hand, we have a scene, way back at the beginning, with Hob. (Hob who, incidentally, doesn’t seem all that surprised to see Dream outside the confines of their century meetings, given that he thought their toast during Season of Mists was a dream, but I digress.) (Dream also goes to see Hob the instant there’s any inkling of trouble, again, as he does in Season of Mists, but I digress a second time.) And Hob is, as in 1889, too perceptive by half. As Dream is walking away, Hob says:

“You take care of yourself.”

What if Dream went to Hob, knowing his friend, being perceptive, would guess that something was up?

What if he just wanted to be reminded that someone cared whether or not something happened to him?

He gave Hob a promise that he would take care of himself. And so he did, in the face of overwhelming odds. (Odds that he may or may not have set in motion himself, true, but that just makes it more extraordinary.) Until he couldn’t any more. Until taking care of the Dreaming took precedence over taking care of the aspect, Morpheus.

Because Dream of the Endless always keeps his word.

[sewersewersewercouch]

A macro post for a Micro-phone!

To those of you I’ve been threatening with this post for god knows how long–yes, I’m finally doing it. I’m writing the goddamn Microphone meta, because I have SO MANY THOUGHTS on this silly little sentient microphone. (She’s not even my favorite character, she’s my second favorite. My favorite is Cabby, but Cabby makes me go into such a feral state that I can barely form words about her other than writing copious amounts of fanfiction. I digress.) Before I get into it, though, I have some general “please be normal on my post” housekeeping I want to start with.

Firstly, this post is about Microphone. Specifically, about Microphone and the themes of choice and morality as they appear in her arc. This post is NOT meant to comment on the morality or choices of any other character. Specifically, by the nature of Mic’s story in the majority of the show, Taco will probably come up a lot because she’s there for a lot of it, but in a weird way, a lot of this post is kind of about how Mic’s arc doesn’t revolve around Taco as much as it’s often believed to? I don’t know, hopefully it’ll make more sense when you read it, but whatever, this post is not about my views on Taco.

To add on–THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT SHIPPING. I don’t want to hear about how much you like or dislike XYZ ship in the comments or reblogs of this post. Make your own damn post. If you want to know how I feel about a certain ship, you can always feel free to ask, just…like, not here. 

Also, I will admit, part of the reason I started making this post is because there were certain interpretations of Microphone in this fandom that bothered me, but I don’t want that to be the vibe of this post as a whole. I do the “I’m always right about this character and nobody else gets them” bit as much as the next guy, but when it extends beyond being a bit, that’s when you start to be kind of an asshole who refuses to so much as listen to views different from their own. I don’t want to be that. I know I’m not incapable of being wrong, and I also know there’s a lot of this that’s subjective, because it’s a fictional story written by people whose minds I cannot read. I don’t want to make this post to hate on others’ opinions, I want to make this post to love Mic! We are all love Mic!

Lastly, I started drafting (read: rotating in my brain and vaguely mentioning it to friends) this post pre-II16, and as I’m writing this now I’m just after act 1. So this may have spoilers for act 1, but also some of this I came up with before that even existed and had to kind of adjust in order to account for that. Obviously Mic wasn’t in there much, but there are a few small adjustments so I will say here there be spoilers. I also have so much ADHD (so does Mic, but that’s a different meta that I mayhaps will write if this goes over well) and I am allergic to being concise or staying on topic. The title does not fuck around, it really is quite a macro post. Sorry in advance.

That said, it’s Microphone time!

Ok so there are a couple quotes from a Brian livestream that I really appreciated because they kinda summed up the general thesis statement of this post, if you will? So I’m gonna put those here and then refer back to them as needed:

“What I find most interesting is how you would think when [Taco] comes back in season 2, and she’s like, ‘oh, I’m gonna make a deal with Microphone’, that she is going to manipulate Microphone, she is going to be the one in control, the one in power, the one, you know, leading the more ignorant and innocent Microphone, but Microphone at a point is like, ‘I’m done,’ and cuts Taco off.”

“I think Microphone was completely justified to leave [Taco] in Hatching the Plan. Perhaps would have even been justified to do so sooner than that. But, you know, it’s really up to what she wants and what she’s comfortable with, and she set a boundary, and we stan.”

“I really enjoyed the subversion of expectation with [Microphone], that she was not a victim, played an active role, and when a line was crossed, she was like, ‘I’m done, I’m out.’ And you really gotta respect the integrity of that, I certainly do.”

Okay, remember those? Good. We’re going to get back to them in a while, because we’re going through this shit episode by episode.

So, for the first…quite a while, actually, Mic doesn’t really do a whole lot. Like, we see that she’s generally pretty friendly but with a rather short temper, and her main schtick is that 1) she’s loud, 2) this causes her to screw challenges up, and 3) this in term makes most of her team not like her and behave quite rudely towards her. That’s kinda all we got. 

Oh, and she seems to be being stalked by some kind of mysterious entity, but whatever, that’s a later problem.

One of the earlier on scenes I’d like to draw your attention to is in Theft and Battery, where Cheesy walks up to Mic and, apropos of nothing, says, “Mic! I've just experienced the most horrible thing! It was a monstrosity! Your personality! Get it? Because everyone thinks you're annoying!” Which, like, I know I said I wasn’t commenting on the morality of other characters, but I will take this moment to say, fucking asshole. I don’t usually dislike Cheesy but I would have decked him for this one. Mic went so easy on him.

But I digress (I do that a lot! You’re going to find that out over the course of this post!) We see Mic blow up like she usually does at comments like this, but before that, we see inside her head for a second—she imagines being surrounded by Cheesys, all laughing at her expense.

This is the first time we truly see how much all those remarks from her teammates actually affect her. It’s not just a split-second flash of anger—all those things are really, truly, hurting her.

In the next episode, Rain On Your Charade, we see the first time she has an actually good interaction with another Grand Slam, this being Soap. Mic and Soap seem to bounce off each other pretty well—Mic’s impulsivity is a good counter for Soap’s much more rigid way of thinking. They give each other advice on their respective problems and comfort one another. For once in her life (literally in her life thus far, given you-know-what!) we can see Mic having a healthy interaction where she is clearly valued and supportive. Someone who encourages her to listen to her heart—as we see, this is gonna be a theme.

So, of course, it’s just Mic’s luck that Soap gets immediately eliminated.

And now Mic is stuck alone on a team that hates her—that makes disparaging remarks about her every move, and that is doing an absolute number on her mental health. She refers to herself, in her own diary, as annoying, harmful, random, useless, insignificant, a loser. And now she has absolutely nobody in her corner.

Enter Taco, with a cup of tea and a deal to make. 

Okay, the first thing I want to address is the way that Microphone reacts to seeing Taco. Well, I mean, first, she reacts with, “AAAAAA,” as I’m sure many of us would if a British woman jumped out of a bush at us. But after she’s done doing that, she says, “What are you doing here, Taco?” And it makes me sound really silly to say “how’d she know her name?” because, uh, duh, genius, it’s an object show, she’s a taco, but like…you get what I mean, right? She addresses Taco like she knows who she is. Which makes me wonder, did she see season 1? (Did she even exist when season 1 would have been airing?) But she can’t have done, or she would have heard about all the Pickle stuff. The most likely option in my opinion would be that she heard the season 1 contestants talking about it, I guess? But either way, she seems to know that Taco has done bad things in the past, and instinctively doesn’t trust her. (I mean, also she has been actively stalking her, which maybe doesn’t help. Whatever.)

I don’t have too much to say about the rest of this interaction—Taco offers to guide Microphone through the game in exchange for a fifty percent cut of her winnings, Microphone declines, Taco tells her to think about it.

Next episode—Mazed and Confused! As usual, the Grand Slams immediately ditch Mic, and she winds up getting kinda pulled into the Bright Lights group. And there’s some interesting Mic dialogue—featuring the II-typical move of characters not discussing their issues outright but rather showing them via thinly veiled projection. And I will fully admit that I love this. Every time I see it I go nuts for it. Firstly, Marshmallow is talking about Apple using her, to which Mic says, “Maybe it's not so bad if someone uses you, if- if it benefits you as well, right?” Then she has this interaction with Fan:

Fan: B-but in that song, the vocalist lovingly chronicles how they couldn't deal with themselves until they gain the companion they need! It's pure poetry!

Microphone: So, everything he does is decided by someone else? Nice message…

Fan: Well, Microphone, what gives you the right to have an "interpretation"? When's the last time you gained something of value from true art such as this?

Microphone: Ugh... certain people always tell me I have so much to gain.

So, obviously, “certain people” is Taco, and we can see how conflicted Microphone is about the whole situation. On the one hand, she doesn’t like the idea of blindly following someone else’s directions without making any of her own decisions, but also, even if she’s concerned that she’s being used, she does see how it could benefit her. (Also, this is far from the last time we’re going to see Microphone flimsily attempting to justify something going on with her.)

Well, apparently she comes to a decision, because she runs off to get help from Taco. With Taco’s guidance, Mic makes it through the maze, and Baseball even compliments her. We see a clear example of how she could potentially benefit from this partnership. (Well, until she accidentally gives away the position of the exit to Test Tube, but I digress.)

As we get into “Kick the Bucket,” it seems like Mic’s pretty all-in on working with Taco. However, right off the bat, we see a moment where Mic outright gives Taco a hard no on one of her directions, that being, using her temporary paralyzer. (Side note: it absolutely cracks me up how she goes “you don’t do that!” like she’s telling off a small child for stealing candy or something. Never change, Mic.)

We see a couple of things here—one, that Microphone has no reservations of telling Taco she won’t do something where she crosses a certain line. And secondly, with some other evidence, we can figure out where that line is. She refuses to use the temporary paralyzer, she freaks out about Lightbulb and Test Tube being sent back in time, she stops Taco from letting Knife’s minecart go over a drop, she makes her promise “no violence” before they go on the Shimmers’ ship. 

And yet, look at the scene after this, with Balloon. She purposely tries to get in his head to make him feel anxious and afraid that he’s at risk of being eliminated, and then later makes fun of him to her other teammates in order to cast doubt on him. And she came up with this plan against Taco’s advice—although it does end up impressing Taco, that’s not why she does this, it’s pure Microphone. So it isn’t hurting others that she draws the line—one could clearly argue that her messing with Balloon like that is pretty hurtful. It’s specifically physical violence that bothers her, which is kind of an interesting place to draw the line in a world where dead contestants can be revived, but emotions are forever.

Hell, Mic says it outright in the next episode, Alternate Reality Show–”You say that like we didn’t do our share of permanent damage.” She’s aware what she did was “permanent damage,” and Taco didn’t even tell her to do it, and yet, she did. This is where we first start to see the cognitive dissonance that Mic is dealing with here—she has a strong sense of morals, seeing as she’s giving back the temporary paralyzer explicitly against Taco’s wishes, because “it’s the right thing to do.” And yet, she’s actively making choices that go against that sense, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Next up, we’re looking at Mine Your Own Business, AKA one of Mic’s best episodes. Her and Taco’s plan in this episode is to try to get Knife on their side because he’s seen that they’re working together. This goes…not as planned, starting from the moment they blow their cover by getting into an argument about whether you should say “excuse me” when you sneeze, while invisible behind him. (We didn’t get enough of them as a comedic duo, by the way. They crack me up so bad in this episode.) Anyways, Mic tries valiantly to bring Knife in with a very convincing, “Join us…yeah!” When Taco and Knife inevitably begin arguing, however, Mic says “We just wanna help!” Which…do you? Yeah, okay girl, keep telling yourself that.

There’s also the little scene where Mic is trying to get Taco to open up about why she was reaching for the portal. This is one of the first interactions we see them have that isn’t about the game. Microphone just…genuinely wants to know what was distressing Taco so much. You know, like you might with a friend. And that’s one thing that interests me about this—Microphone thinking of Taco like a friend isn’t something that Taco did on purpose to gain her trust, and in fact, she seems rather resistant to it. It’s entirely Microphone initiating these friendly interactions. (Even though soon after she does imply she doesn’t feel she really knows the real Taco.)

Then we see the bit where Knife is about to go off a cliff, Taco gives a thumbs up, but Mic doesn’t approve and manages to get Knife into their minecart. I touched on this above, but this is another example of Mic’s resistance to physically harming others.

The next time we see this terrific trio, Taco apologizes to Mic for not being open with her, and I kid you not, Mic responds with, “aww, Taco!” (I reiterate: Never change, Mic.) And, even when Knife explains what happened with Pickle, Mic still comes to Taco’s defense. Some of this is because of the fact that Mic is beginning to truly see Taco as a friend, yes, but I think another part of it is that previously mentioned cognitive dissonance. She wants to believe she’s doing the right thing, and not just aiding and abetting someone who hurts others, so of course she’s going to want to defend Taco–because if Taco is a bad person, and she’s purposefully helping her achieve her ends just for the sake of winning a game show, what does that make her?

On to Hatching the Plan! (We’re in the home stretch, I promise!) We see Mic joking about the idea of what happened to Pickle happening to her—”At least, until you inevitably ‘drop me too,’ or whatever.” Clearly, she didn’t take too much stock in Knife’s words, and she’s pretty convinced she’s safe from a similar fate. (Which she is! Because Pickle was being unknowingly strung along, and Mic is willingly helping Taco reach her goal. But that’s a later problem.)

Now we see Knife confronting Microphone and trying to convince her to, “stop, idiot, have some dignity?” To which Mic tells him that she “has a voice” (as Taco, in the background, turns off MePad’s volume), “no one’s shutting [her] down” (as Taco powers MePad off) and she’s “not just being dragged along” (as Taco literally drags MePad along.) And the thing is, obviously there’s the ironic juxtaposition of what Mic is saying and what Taco is doing, but Mic also…isn’t entirely wrong?

Remember those Brian quotes from earlier? Here’s where we start using them!

Because here’s the thing—like he said, you would totally expect Taco to be playing Microphone the entire time, to be the one in power and manipulating her, because that’s what happened to Pickle. But that’s…not what’s happening. Rather, Taco has been pretty upfront about what she expects of Mic and what both of them have to…well, for a lack of a better word, gain. And it’s not like Mic has no choice in this matter! She has repeatedly shown that she is willing to say no to Taco when she crosses a line, and as Brian said, she would be totally justified to have noped out way earlier than she ends up doing. But…she doesn’t. She’s making her choices, and then bending over to justify them, because as I said, Mic has a strong sense of morals and knows there’s something that’s off, but she doesn’t want to admit she knows that and has continued to do what she’s doing.

So anywho. Taco and Mic use MePad’s teleportation to go after Fan and Test Tube on the ship, but not before Mic tries to make Taco promise no violence. Taco does not promise this, and of course, immediately kills Fan and Test Tube upon arriving.

This is where Mic’s cognitive dissonance runneth over, and she makes the executive decision to ditch Taco’s ass and leave the game.

I’m going to put Mic’s whole little speech here, because I really like it and it’s kind of the culmination of all the points I’m making: “I haven't been... listening to my heart. Instead, I've been listening to... this... well... It was a voice in my head! And it would tell me how to... go further. Further than I was willing to go. I heard it so often that I never... I never heard myself. So... what's the point?” And also, “I didn't make the best choices. So now... I'm making my first good one. This is what I want.”

Because that’s kind of the thing, right? Deep down, Microphone always knew cheating and messing with people was wrong. But she was, by choice, not listening to that instinct, because what Taco was promising seemed so attractive. Getting the prize, yes, but she also just fucking wants friends. And when she does well in the game, her teammates want to be friendlier to her. And also, as I said she came to see Taco as a friend, and she didn’t want to lose that either.

But…okay, here’s where I complain about a take I don’t like, and I’m sorry about that. I find it to be an oversimplification that Mic left Taco because “Taco hurt her.” Because, honestly, she didn’t really directly? What drove Mic to leave was seeing Taco hurt other people, and that by proxy, Microphone was…not even a bystander to these things, but kind of an active participant. Morally speaking, she couldn’t sit with that. So she decided that the prize and the recognition weren’t worth it, and boom, she was done.

I don’t really have much to say on the following episodes that are already out, because Mic has  barely in here. But I do have a hot take on what might potentially come next for Mic I’d like to share.

I don’t really…care whether Mic and Taco end up on good terms.

Okay, maybe that’s not the best way to say it��rather, I think there are ways to do either way well, and ways to do either way wrong, and what I care more is about whether Mic’s story is well-written than which direction it actually goes.

Quick disclaimer that I drafted this section pre-II16, and at the point we’re at now, I’m operating under the assumption that the deleted contestants aren’t actually going to be dead forever and we will have Pickle again. (If this turns out not to be the case please don’t make fun of me.)

I’ve seen a lot of discourse around the fandom about whether Microphone and Pickle will forgive Taco, and the first problem comes right there with aggregating them into one MicrophoneandPickle entity. Microphone and Pickle are two different people who had very different relationships with Taco. As I’ve said earlier, the Pickle that Taco knew was entirely a facade, whereas with Mic…well I don’t want to say she was entirely honest about who she was, because I don’t think she’s entirely honest about who she is with herself, so let’s just say as honest as she’s capable of being. Pre-II16, my suspicion was that they were going to split the difference and have one end up on good terms with Taco and the other not. Like, I think in terms of the message that the show is trying to give, this would be a good one—if someone has wronged you and tries to make amends, you can choose to accept that or you can choose to walk away, and neither is a morally wrong choice. Post-The Reality of the Situation, I’m going to say that if this does happen, it’s going to be Mic the former and Pickle the latter, just having seen how Taco’s apology went over with Pickle. And that’s the thing—Pickle had no choice in what happened to him. Mic had agency over her situation, and went along with it in full knowledge of what that entailed. The Taco that Pickle had a relationship doesn’t exist, but in Mic’s case, she does. And most importantly—Pickle’s qualm with Taco is that she hurt him, but Mic’s was her actions towards other people, not Mic herself. If it’s proven that Taco has changed and doesn’t want to hurt others anymore…I think it’s not impossible that Mic could be lenient.

But either way—whether Mic ends on good or bad terms with Taco—what would make it satisfying to me is if it’s not framed about whether Taco “deserves” or “doesn’t deserve” her forgiveness, but rather whether Mic chooses to forgive her. Like Brian said—it’s up to what she wants and what she’s comfortable with. Choice has been such a major theme for Mic, and I think she deserves to have her agency at the forefront.

Anyways, it is literally after two in the morning and I wrote this entire thing in a fit of hyperfocus, god help me. Again, if this does well and anyone wants to see a “why Microphone II has ADHD real and canon” post I will absolutely do that.

[inklessletter]

I don’t know if this makes any sense to you, but I’ve been having thoughts about Steve and Eddie, as characters, (I mean who am I kidding, they live rent free in my mind now) and I’ve noticed a conceptual parallel between both of them that I can’t unsee now.

I’ve read several analyses and opinions about how Eddie was created and inserted in the story as some sort of substitute for Steve because they needed his death for Dustin’s arch, but they didn’t really want to kill Steve because he’s one of the series’ icons now. This has been used in the show several times now, with Barb’s death, and Bob’s, and Billy’s, so I buy it (if I think that it’s a lazy resource to make your characters evolve or if it’s lacking originality when you do it four times now, is something I won’t approach here, ahem). It fucked me up because I rewatched the last season a couple times now and I see it. I can’t not see it anymore. I can see the conceptual similarities (the age, the fact that he’s some sort of outsider to the group, the reputation, Dustin’s undeniable affection and respect…) but there is a particular feature that I noticed recently that has broken me, because it’s so fucking meta.

Speaking in general terms of course, most people I know that have watched the show like Steve, but they didn’t like him in S1, which, understandable; the writing in S1 didn’t make it easy for the audience to stand by him. Steve’s got several characters against him (Barb is the sweet victim, Mike is a clear protagonist, Jonathan is the direct rival as a love interest for Nancy), and if those characters, that are written and shown to be reliable, you instantly believe them, that he’s King Steve, that he’s a jerk. He goes with Carol and Tommy that are straight up bullies, he makes questionable decisions about how to face certain situations (such as breaking Jonathan’s camera [that I know it’s controversial, but personally, I totally, totally get why he did it], the slut thing in the cinema board, the fist fight…) so yeah, it’s easy that you go along with the thinking that he’s sort of not worth it. But here’s the thing, Steve spends the whole season trying to make up for his mistakes, trying to fix what he broke. He buys Jonathan a brand new camera, he confronts and ditches his so-called friends and actually goes to apologize to Jonathan, and then to Nancy. So what we have here is what it is said about Steve vs. what Steve really does. Even at last, when he had the chance to run for his life, he came back to the house to do the right thing. Steve is a great guy, but he’s written for the audience not to think so.

They changed their minds in S2, apparently, when the writers made him more layered, more likable, and the audience lost their minds. He was absolutely loved now, a favorite. A sweetheart. A romantic tragedy. And they kept all those features in S3, but giving him tons of lines and screen time, and an iconic outfit, and making him the biggest ally in the whole show, and now you’re trapped because you love him.

But you see, loving him was a journey. The audience went from finding him kind of annoying, or straight not liking him to fall head over heels for Steve.

And the writers, bless their souls/fuck all of them, mimicked that affection journey in S4 with Eddie Munson, using Steve Harrington as a catalyst.

You see, Eddie has this very same dichotomy of what people think of him vs what he really does, the only difference here, the major one, is that the people who speak ill of him are not protected by the writing. So you, as a member of an audience, embrace the fact that what the whole town says about him is not true, and that he’s a good guy. They fast forward the whole process by setting Mike and Dustin by their side, that the whole Eddie tragedy is a simple wrong time, wrong place. I mean, there’s no way you can go wrong about judging Eddie’s character.

And here’s where it gets interesting.

Steve rejects the blind trust. 

Steve doesn’t like him. 

Steve listens to the rumors. 

Steve calls him the freak. 

But the season goes on and bless his soul he starts paying attention to what Eddie does, to who Eddie is, and ends up pretty easily rejecting what the whole town feels towards him. Because he sees him now. 

Because he’s been there.

It is such a wholesome phenomenon when you realize that Steve, who at first was reluctant to find him, gets protective of him, out of mere empathy. He never gets angry at him, or mistreats him in any way; if so, he brings him beer and cigarettes, he worries about him leaving Skull Rock since all Hawkins is after his ass now. 

He cares.

And god, he even thanks him at the Upside Down woods. He doesn’t thank Nancy, or Robin. He thanks Eddie, because he knew that back in the boat, Eddie didn’t have to jump into the water for him, the same way he didn’t have to go back to the Byers’ house once he saw the Christmas lights violently flickering, because in any way that was his business.

So he thanks Eddie, probably because Steve thinks that it would have been nice that someone actually thanked him to save Nancy and Jonathan’s asses instead of getting a relationship out of pity that ended up with him dumped a year later and a bunch of issues.

The season goes on and they talk it out, they both admit having believed what people said of them, but now that they know each other, they can actually see how wrong they were. They make a fresh start, and the story seems to get to the right point, the way it should have been between them if it weren’t for the absurd jealousy pretext. 

Now they both align with how the audience is feeling.

So, you see the parallelism here. Steve’s behavior towards Eddie was a straight up reflection of the emotional journey the audience had towards Steve. 

And this probably wasn’t intentional, since the writers didn’t know for sure how much love and admiration Eddie was gonna get before s4 was released, but the fun part here is that it is quite difficult to find someone who loves Eddie Munson that hasn’t loved Steve Harrington before. The process of falling for those two is exactly the same, and most fans probably are not aware that they have gone through the same emotional journey twice. And it makes sense, because it is familiar. But whether or not you are aware of this, after they enter the Upside Down, Eddie and Steve are linked together, and that you know, even if you really don’t know why. They are impossible to untangle.

So yeah, absolutely, beyond the screen time together and the undeniably flirty behaviors, their chemistry, their journey and their young history, steddie makes sense.

So, when they make Steve a vulnerable mess, expressing that his only wish as a character is to love and be loved in return, and have a future, they go and kill Eddie. And it’s heartbreaking, because he’s a character with orphan needs and desires, and he didn’t even get the chance to fight for himself, and no, I don’t mean the demobats. 

And in a deep part of our brains we fear for Steve, because they’re in an unfinished war, and Eddie’s fate could easily be Steve’s in s5.

But you see, what is absolutely mindblowing about this fandom is the fact that here is where they picked up and made something incredible. For months we have been rewriting, consuming and creating thousands of universes in which Eddie gets what he deserves, that is, a happy ending, not only that he lives, but that he ends up being happy.

If this is too much of a projection about the fear of Steve getting killed in s5, that I don’t know; what I know is that I’m not at all worried.

I know we can make it better.

[gulava]

Sora may have opened the door in KH1

This isn’t to say Riku didn’t do wrong in KH1. He did. But, as far as the door and Destiny Islands is concerned, I think we’ve been getting hints for 20 years that it was Sora and Riku just got blamed for it on top of what he DID do.

How did Riku leave the islands? He disappeared into darkness and woke up at Hollow Bastion. You’ll recall Alice Lidell did the same. A disappearing act, so to speak. Data Riku and Xehanort leave through a dark corridor as well.

In the film, Alice cried tears and floated into Wonderland. Water plus sadness equals DARKNESS, my friends. She never opened the door.

Whether KH2 First Visit Belle is a Riku or Sora parallel in this particular scene is in the eye of the beholder. She’s a Disney character in a relationship so she’s one of the characters that it switches depending on the circumstance to create a balance in the relationship that is Sora and Riku but...

The 3D scene in the dream had me very...curious as to what was going on because we didn’t see Ansem SOD in the original version and sleep holds our memories they say which is why Roxas was able to access Xion’s memories and tell Axel something only Xion would know. That he’d always be there to bring them back. I don’t want to imply Ansem SOD possessed Sora in this moment but it’s plausible since...they met earlier. It always came off as odd to me that Ansem SOD would even speak to Sora if he wasn’t about to use him.

YMX says that Ansem SOD possessed Riku and saw his experiences in real time which...okay, then why wasn’t he with Riku here...? He doesn’t follow Riku when he runs to the inlet. He doesn’t follow him in the dark corridor either. We don’t even see Ansem SOD again until Hollow Bastion way later on when we KNOW he actually does possess Riku. Riku doesn’t know him in the COM Novel when he meets him on the islands during Departure. HE DOESN’T KNOW HIM. Sora does. Isn’t that...suspicious? All Ansem SOD says is that the door will open soon and Riku goes off to find Sora. He doesn’t open a door!

He doesn’t remember Ansem SOD being there.

But he was following him.

Right before this scene, Data Riku states something very interesting after Data Sora accuses him of causing the bugs (the cause being Sora’s shadow). He says: “This world has been connected. Memory and reality now stand tied. It’s time for you to learn the truth.” Ansem the Wise states that data is a clue. The Datascape is shown again in Re:Mind to “remind” us that the future is already written and to go back and revisit the game known as Coded. But I recommend ALL the games on top of that so you can put the pieces together like I have. This is what Remy from Ratatouille was trying to tell Sora and co. about the fruit that he was gathering. (Essentially Nomura trying to hint to the audience that the answers are all THERE if you do enough digging.) He was trying to take the pieces and make it into a dish. In each game, therein lies another hint. Another piece of the puzzle. This is how I work out my theories. I treat each game as apart of each other without the assumption that nothing was planned. This is how Riku laughing like Namine did in COM WORKS even if it’s only finally shown in 3D and KH3. Writing evolves over time and so do characters.

“On the road ahead, more than one truth will come to light.”

What strikes me as even odd is that what they use to put Sora in a deeper sleep in 3D is things that happened back when the Islands fell but one of them wasn’t Riku holding out his hand or Kairi being swept away from darkness. It was something we never saw. It’s Ansem SOD coming up close to Sora while he’s either sitting or lying down. Perhaps...before he took a nap at the start of the game even. Hopefully, you’ve read my meta on how Replica Riku has some of Sora’s memories. Horrifying really as he’s used to play on Sora’s guilt as a way to get him further into the castle. But there’s one line in particular that bothered me to no end in the COM novel.

Ventus didn’t remember what happened to Strelitzia nor taking the book for himself. Baldr didn’t initially remember what happened to Hoder. It’s not that hard to grasp Sora might...not correctly remember a good chunk of things. Especially with how vaguely he describes his KH1 hurt in KH3. I imagine a person whose eyes cannot lie like Master of Masters...might educate him on the truth and it will probably be very ugly. My understanding is Sora’s true darkness will involve remembering. Yes, forgetting can hurt but knowing the truth will hurt you even more. I think remembering everything will be what breaks Sora. It certainly didn’t have a good reaction on Ventus or Baldr, now did it?

A very small bonus. Yuffie, a memorable “thief”, opens a door and hurts Donald in the process in the world right after the door opens and the darkness carries Kairi away so...there’s that. Sora is shown running through it also.

TLDR; check out the rest of this scene from KHUX below.

Alice is on trial for opening the door to Wonderland and she didn’t do it but is found guilty despite the lack of evidence against her. Hm...but how did Player get into Wonderland, I wonder? Ever consider that?

*glances at Sora*

[schattenhonig]

Something has been rummaging around in my brain, maybe it'll go away when I put it into words... I have no idea if this all has been pointed out before.

Good Omens S2 felt wrong from the first minute on. Not wrong as in bad, badly written or wrong wrong, just. Off. People who died in S1 are alive again, completely unaware of what happened to them and who they were before Armageddon't, like Maggie and Nina. Yes, it could be a coincidence that they were recast, and it could be because they are brilliant actresses, I completely agree. But I get a feeling that even if this was done without any specific intention, it must have felt right to Mr. Gaiman and the great people working on the show.

Plus, Gabriel-as-Jim says a line that stuck with me:

Gabriel: I’m me. I just don’t know who ‘me’ is. Aziraphale: I see. Gabriel: But you know me. You recognize me. Aziraphale: Well, I know someone who looks like you. Gabriel: That’s probably me then. I think that’s one of the main ways you can tell.

I don't think this is a coincidence. And the fact that neither Crowley nor Aziraphale recognize Nina and Maggie as people they have met before Armageddon't, makes it all the more eerie.

I think this whole memory wipe business is more important than we think; and this is going to be more meta now, but bear with me; because who needs a book of life when all the memories of a person and their own memory are gone? If there's not a trace of a memory left about you, did you ever exist in the first place? The answer is yes! Because you made an impact on life itself around you that is too complicated to be erased. Maggie and Nina brought about Armageddon't the way it happened because of the baby swap gone wrong. They might not remember it, nobody else was there and able to remember it, but it happened. And it changed the course of history.

But (here it is, you knew it was coming) if no one remembers it, you could tell them anything had happened. If you are the only one who remembers, you can tell your own version of the story, and the others will believe you. They have no other choice, they don't even know that there has been a choice, another version of this.

S2 boils down to this for me: erasing somebody with the book of life, as if they had never existed is way too complicated and dangerous because you couldn't possibly foresee what other parts of the story you want to tell would be changed. I don't think that is a risk Heaven or the Metatron would take. It wouldn't fit with Heaven being control freaks.

But erasing memories until only your desired version of the story is left... That's power. That's foreseeable, and it's controllable. And Heaven would totally abuse this power.

[the-somwthing]

Welcome to my little meta analysis essay called

Why do we misremember Flower Husbands as being “nicer” than it was?

Disclaimer: I’m not here to talk about whether or not FH is “toxic” or anything like that. It’s just a fact that many old fans rewatching FH POV and new fans who are watching it for the first time after seeing fan content tend to be surprised at how they actually behaved in the series compared to how everyone remembered them being back in the day. This will NOT go over whether or not I think FH is unhealthy or whatever and instead just discuss why I believe this phenomenon has happened.

So, if I try to make this a fancy well written essay, I’ll be here all day, so I’ll just get to the point. 3rd Life came out during the DSMP era of mcyt. MCRP has been around for ages, but the DSMP style of RP (which I’ll be calling “smp rp”) was pretty much popularized by DSMP, mostly towards the end of 2020. For reference, 3rd Life started early 2021, so there’s about a half a year between these two events, and DSMP kept going for years so 3rd Life was absolutely happening during the golden era of DSMP.

But what does DSMP have to do with this? Well, it sort of created this idea of “lore” and only specific things being “canon”. You can make fun of me for the way I worded that, but you know what I mean, DSMP was weird about that stuff. I don’t really blame them as it was kind of a new style of RP they accidentally spawned, but still, it was a confusing time for SMPs.

3rd Life was actually less like DSMP and more like the modern SMP RPs, where there’s no (known, lol) scripted events and the fandom itself deciphers what is or isn’t “canon” rather than it being told to them, with mostly everything being considered canon. HOWEVER, I do believe that DSMP’s style did still affect the fandom, specifically with the topic of this essay, Flower Husbands.

But why would it only really affect Flower Husbands? Now we get into a rough topic: shipping discourse. Back in those days, shipping in the mcyt fandom was heavily frowned upon. Moreso than it is today (I know it’s still around, but it was a lot worse the earlier we go lol). I’ve even seen old relics of ppl saying flower husbands should only be portrayed as platonic cuz it’s wrong to ship them, despite their team name literally being husbands. But more importantly, for A LOT of people, flower husbands was the One Ship people felt “allowed” to ship, BECAUSE it was canon. So they would allow FH and shun every other ship.

My point isn’t actually that, with it being the only “acceptable” ship everyone tried to make it more wholesome, though I suppose that could be a contributor. But my ACTUAL point is where all the things I laid out finally close in on each other:

Ships were a Dangerous territory in mcyt fandom, and ships being “canon” was something a lot of people weren’t prepared to deal with. People don’t want to get too close to RPF territory, but back in the day their ideas of c! vs cc! wasn’t as great, so they default to the DSMP Rule of “if it’s stated to be roleplay, then it’s canon to the characters, if not, it’s noncanon and just the CCs hanging out”.

You see where I’m going with this? When trying to follow this rule for a character relationship where they don’t explicitly state what is or isn’t RP, they hear “we’re married” and instantly mark that as canon to the characters since it clearly isn’t true to the CCs, and tend to block out anything else, otherwise you’re risking it not actually being true to the characters. Especially when it’s things like Scott saying something mean about Jimmy; that directly contradicts the “these characters are in love” thing, so it must not be canon, right?

But wouldn’t people still remember that these things happened, or did they actually straight up not process any of it? My answer to that is: of course everyone was paying attention, but with the context that it’s the CCs playing a video game, all of the teasing and other behavior seems WAY less serious. It just looks like average friends playing a hunger games smp together. And as I explained earlier, the fandom was ONLY processing this as a CC thing, so Scott’s treatment of Jimmy never stood out because that’s just how it is playing games.

Back to DSMP, I’m not active in that fandom anymore but I’ll see snippets sometimes, and I’ve seen the claim that beeduo was actually boring in canon and the fandom was the one that made it interesting. I feel like this is exactly what happened with FH. Nobody was actually expecting anyone to go hard into romantic roleplay, so the fans just take whichever pair says they’re getting married and fill in the blanks themselves. And that was normal back then, it wasn’t fans making stuff up for no reason, it was kind of expected of us.

So yeah, I personally believe that this whole confusion about FH is a result of its time. Whether you want to finally look at the actual substance of the relationship rather than following weird rules about what is or isn’t “canon”, or you believe that since FH was from a time where romantic RP was confusing and weird it would make the most sense to take into account the time period it came from and ignore the less appealing bits in favor of the fanon, I don’t really care honestly. But man isn’t this an interesting situation.

[homestuckconfession]

one thing that really bugs me about hsbc is that roxy is canonically transfem in hs (you can find posts about it here on tumblr, it’s not terribly overt but it’s there and clearly written in if you look at her introduction + meta posts from hussie about the chumhandles and how they were chosen) and that’s being seemingly rewritten :/ i don’t like detrans roxy and im not sorry about it (the glasses fuck hard though and those should absolutely stay)

Coming out of the tags because I am against misinformation--Care to actually provide a link? Because I literally never find anything when I search, and whenever I have asked someone for proof directly, they just went on and on about symbolism with no hard evidence and then admit that there's actually no evidence at all when pressed. Don't get me wrong, I believe that Hussie did intentionally fuck around with gender stuff with the alpha kids, but all the same things that people say support transfem Roxy just as strongly supports a transmasc Dirk, yet nobody's insisting it's canon and going out harassing the postcanon crew for Dirk struggling with pronoun changes and making casual references to his penis.

Relying on symbolism as proof is literally how you get people saying bullshit like "Grandpa Harley raped baby Jade and that the resultant inbred baby died in her arms" and literally fully believing it's 100% canon no matter how much evidence there is against it because of belief perseverance and confirmation bias. By the way, that's a real theory made by a real homestuck analyst.

[littlerosetrove]

If. IF the show, for whatever reason, decides to stick with Eddie being (assumedly) straight, then boy will that be fuckin weird, disappointing and boring. And a disservice to Eddie considering how he’s been written thus far. 

If I may attempt to lay this out in the simplest terms. 

The entire time Eddie was married to Shannon he literally, metaphorically, and emotionally kept running away from her. As far as we can tell, not once did he ever truly allow himself to be vulnerable with her. Not in a way that matters for the health of a relationship/marriage. When Shannon tried to be vulnerable, Eddie shut that stuff down. 

Eddie was never vulnerable with Ana until literally when they broke up. He was never really invested in Ana or their relationship. His main investment was “get a new mother for Christopher.”

Same for Marisol, but somehow worse. He’s never been invested in their relationship nor Marisol as a person. He’s clearly been shown to be disinterested in her, actually. One way to avoid getting to know Marisol was using sex as both an avoidance technique (which he often did with Shannon), and using it as the only way for Eddie to accept any kind of closeness with Marisol. 

Hell we can even mention Kim. He’s not seeing her as her own person, but merely someone he can project his dead wife onto. 

When it comes to sex, frankly, Eddie does not seem to have a healthy relationship with it. Again, he’s predominately used sex as a combination of avoiding arguments, avoiding getting to know someone, and out of a sense of duty/obligation. The sense of duty plays into Eddie’s very heteronormative and frankly backwards/toxic stereotypes he has of what a male/female relationship in a marriage or otherwise should look like. ← This was inspired by both this fantastic 7x7 meta post by @sevensoulmates, and conversations I’ve had with @elvensorceress.  I genuinely question and wonder how often, if ever, Eddie had sex because he wanted to and not because he felt like he had to. I don’t think it means Eddie’s disliked every time he’s had sex, in part because let’s be real and keep in mind sex is biologically made/designed to feel good, but really. How often has he ever had sex because he actually wanted it? 

Important side note, I’ll always think that Eddie, out of the many reasons he needs to go back to therapy, is that he needs to learn healthy consent. He needs to know that if he doesn’t want sex he’s allowed to say no. He does not have to have sex because he’s a man, and “men should want and want to provide sex for their wife/girlfriend.” That it’s “a man’s duty to satisfy his wife/girlfriend.” 

Even with Shannon, Eddie’s relationships with women have been performative. He’s only been in and settled into relationships with women because it provides a comforting facade of “This Eddie guy here is a respectable man in a relationship with a woman and has a kid who he provides for, as he should.” ← Society, his family, his Latino catholic upbringing, and heteronormativity has taught Eddie this is what’s good and proper for him. That he should have and want to have a nuclear family (and that he must suppress what his heart really wants).

Three times (four if you include Kim) Eddie has consistently kept every woman he’s been romantically involved with at arms length. IF the show were to keep him straight, well they’ve been doing a shit job at making it look like Eddie even wants to be in a romantic relationship with a woman at all. To me Eddie very much comes across and reads as a repressed gay and demi man. 

Now if you have different views, perhaps you feel that I’m wrong in my interpretation and understanding of Eddie and Shannon’s relationship, or hell, maybe you think Eddie is bisexual, that’s fine. Neither of us are stupid for our thoughts and opinions on this fictional character. But please do not comment or reblog this with “well actually” or anything like that. I have my opinion in my corner over here, and you can have yours on your own, okay? Thank you.

[co-mixed]

Mark Waid’s Fantastic Four

It’s rare that a writer perfectly fits the character but when it’s Mark Waid and Fantastic Four, this is exactly the case. This was the first time when I was genuinely excited to read every new issue, and this is the book that’s finally made me like the characters. Well, not too much because Reed is still there (ugh). But you know what I mean. 

Anyway, if you haven’t read it, I very much recommend that, and if you have and want to relive it, go ahead and read the rest! 

The new look

Waid’s run starts with a meta-story that quickly points out what we’d been getting wrong all these years about the Fantastic Four. They were never superheroes, they were adventurers. And suddenly, right there everything falls into place. ‘A group of adventurers’ becomes the leitmotif of the whole run. In a way, this definition is a culmination of everything that came before – journeys through space, time, and the Negative zone, occasionally interspersed with supervillain encounters. But this is also a way to refresh the book by letting us view it in a slightly altered manner. I’d say that’s something the book needed desperately. 

It’s also immediately obvious how the book mixes the classic lighthearted tone with a more mature one. It’s ready to explore serious issues, which isn’t new for the FF, but it wants to keep things bright and colorful. That’s where Wieringo’s art works perfectly in unison with Waid’s stories. And such stories we get! 

FF is for family 

During Claremont’s run, I said that FF started to feel like a family. But everything before still had them as Reed, Ben, and two supporting characters. Even when each of them faced their own stories, and they confronted them together, they never felt like people who had known each other their whole lives. Waid gives them small interactions that remind you how close they all truly are. And it’s not just banter between Johnny and Ben, it’s the way Sue interacts with Reed, admiring his genius and mocking his poor social skills and the way they both interact with their children. The children, by the way, they play a role too. They are very delicately written into the stories, even becoming their center, but never serving as a plot device. I’m gonna go back and talk a little more about Franklin later. 

Waid allows the characters to interact effortlessly, and naturally, so they don’t feel like strangers. 

Call for four

The main four people in this graphic play are of course Sue, Reed, Ben, and Johnny. Here, for the first time ever I can say that I got to know them all. It’s both ironic and sad that it took 41 years for them to finally be portrayed as people, who you kinda want to hang out with (even though you’ll always be an outsider because ‘family’) 

I very much liked Susan here. She is shown as a genuinely happy woman, a strong hero, a great adventurer, a caring mother, and a wife. I’m not saying “good wife” because her not having left Reed years ago makes her either a legend or someone who needs serious saving. A legend if we go off this run. She still gets her jealousy moments that are not entirely justified. Sue gets jealous of Alyssa, obviously because Reed neglected to disclose the nature of their past relationship to Sue. But similarly, she goes as far as purchasing a statue of Namor to make Reed jealous. This isn’t how a healthy marriage works, Susan. And it makes me feel bad for Namor. His arrogant ass doesn’t deserve this. 

But it’s great to see her happy and joking, and spending time with her family while still trying to raise her good-for-nothing brother. 

Speaking of Johnny, Waid probably felt just like we all did - Johnny hadn’t gone through much growth before that. Yes he’d been married, and he’d saved the world, but when it came to living in it, he wasn’t very well-adjusted. Waid changed that by putting him in charge of the FF company (say it with me: nepotism!). Not just that, but we got to see Johnny navigate the business world, and face pretty unfortunate obstacles. I have to say, I felt real bad for him when Sue went off and blamed him for the stolen sample of unstable molecules. But it all worked out in the end. This is how this run started, by reassuring you that the FF has everything under control. 

We’ll get to Reed (ugh!) and everything that went wrong later. 

Back to Johnny though, he has a tough time losing popularity, he even seeks the help of Spidey to learn how to be unpopular with the masses. It leads to a funny arc that honestly, leads me to believe that Johnny’s success with women is just it - his fame as a superhero because he has zero game otherwise. 

Again, not a secret - I never liked the lovable blue-eyed Thing. He’d been quite whiny and manipulative, and from everything I’d seen so far, it was really hard for me to relate to his issues. Waid changes that too, he lets us see why the others like and appreciate Ben, which is not because of him continuously reminding them that he’s lovable, and certainly not for his textbook heroic actions that again, to me often came off as ingenuine. 

He has a sense of humor here, when he bashes good-for-nothing Johnny, his jokes really stick the landing. When he connects to Franklin, he is being 100% transparent and helpful. In fact, I think he’s one of the characters that have the truest understanding of what the kid is going through, and he doesn’t waste a second in telling him that. He is also ready to sacrifice himself and not make it a big theatrical act. And after building up that side of his character, when he dies in Latveria, it… well, it doesn’t stick, this is still comics, but it certainly affects you as much as it does his family. Waid doesn’t let us sit with this emotion but he doesn’t rush through it, showing exactly how deeply it had touched everyone. Especially probably Johnny, who conjured an imaginary version of his friend. And here, Wieringo comes back after a short break and delivers a stunning difference between Johnny’s daydreaming and real life. 

I already mentioned that Franklin stops being a prop and becomes a character. Waid makes him face the good old older child problem - sibling rivalry. When all attention immediately goes to baby Valeria, Franklin misses his quality time with his parents, especially his dad. And that gets you to see him as a little human who is going through his own set of issues. That becomes even more obvious when he is sent to hell by Doom and is traumatized by the event so much, he can’t speak. Waid showed us the toll it took on Franklin’s psyche, and he did it through the adult characters around him, without trying to imagine how it would be, and without making the kid sound wise beyond his years.

Doom politics

I’m gonna get to Reed but first, we need to talk about Doom. Because if I had to pick, I’d say this is where you can truly see the nature and the cause of the Reed-Doom war. First of all, different writers view Doom differently, and while some attempt to justify and redeem him, others go out of their way to remind you how evil he is. Waid is not a Doom apologist. He immediately shows us how ruthless he can be when he kills the real Valeria to gain mystical power and then shows us that the prosperity in Latveria is a smoke screen that’s hiding a small guillotine-equipped human disposal system. So after all the debate, Doom is still a dictator who disappears his critics to silence them and forces people to trade freedom for stability. 

Waid also does to Doom the same thing he does to Lex Luthor in Superman: Birthright. Now they both lose potential friends over a misunderstanding. Only in Doom’s case, he thought Reed had messed with the controls on his machine, which ultimately resulted in him hiding behind a mask. It’s not his arrogance now, but the jealousy he thought Reed felt toward him, that drives Doom. 

This time though, In his evil endeavors, Doom goes further than ever before: he uses baby Valeria to get to the FF, then imprisons Franklin in hell, and tortures the rest of them. He likes Valeria though, that’s kinda sweet. 

Needless to say, when the team finally defeats Doom, and even temporarily sends him to hell (but not before he disfigures Reed’s face). 

Reed (Ugh!)

Here’s the thing, this run didn’t make me like Reed any more than before. Sure, he gets his redeeming qualities, plenty of them in fact, but he keeps messing up big. He even gets mixed up in international politics, which I gotta say was written very well. As soon as Doom disappears, multiple countries (including neighbors like Hungary and Serbia, as well as the US, Russia, and China) are preparing to make a move on Latveria. Meanwhile, in an attempt to deDoomify Latveria, Reed moves his whole family there and takes over the country. That’s a terrible decision on his side, and one that he’s tried to pull off before. My question is, when is Reed Richards going to realize that he’s not a politician or a monarch and stop trying to enforce his vision upon everyone? 

Essentially, there isn’t much difference between what he and Doom are doing. They are both consumed by their own vengeance, and both believe they are making peoples’ lives better out of the goodness of their hearts. Either way, it’s the Latverians who end up suffering. Reed didn’t even make any kind of address to them, before raising his shirt as a flag above Castle Doom and pretending everyone was now free. He needlessly endangered them to prove the FF wasn’t there to hurt them and then invited everyone to loot the castle. Happy 1917, I suppose? 

The visuals in this arc are a little darker. I don’t know the process behind the decision, but this is where we temporarily say goodbye to the larger-than-life bright art of Wieringo and say hello to Howard Porter’s more realistic approach. He especially focuses on Reed’s Two-Face appearance, highlighting the more fitting side for each one of his statements.

Just like the first time around, Reed can’t seem to take over Latveria without a shadow of Doom looming over him. The first time, he was possessed by the armor, the second, however, it was all Reed, only with a physical scar left by Doom. Everyone else (except for Franklin who was in hell, after all) shook it off. But Reed didn’t. He was hell-bent on destroying everything Doom had and built just to make sure he would never return. Ultimately, it led to him imprisoning Doom (and causing his escape because when does it ever work out?)

He also shoots (and kills) Doom-possessed Ben to save Johnny.

Yeah if anyone was hoping this run would make me like Reed, they were wrong. 

Reed reminds me of Buffy. Everything does but hear me out: as the leader of the FF he drags them into wild adventures and some of them inevitably end in disaster. Then it takes writer magic to make everything work out and pretend that all the issues and idiosyncrasies don’t really matter. But they do, everything he’d done up to the end, everything he said be it in service of a bigger goal or not, still matters. He keeps making mistakes that go unnoticed when he comes out on top. 

As a reader, you can like the team and hate the person. And this run has absolutely made me like the team.

Bag of tricks

Waid utilizes so many narrative tricks like the team meeting the Kirby-god to restore the status quo. Once again, ironic meta-stories allow to push the story forward. 

Another trick was kicking the FF out of their comfort zone of being rich and popular. And that is a great callback to the first issue, in which Reed confesses to Valeria that he worked relentlessly to make sure the FF is popular and beloved to compensate for the cosmic rays incident. Because… imagine them having to live like mutants (and blame Reed for that).

Waid forces Reed to come face to face with the one thing he can’t understand - magic.

The dysfunctional Frightful Four’s family dynamics are juxtaposed with those of the original FF, and we see why one works while another keeps failing.

As the herald of Galactus, Johnny encounters a world of sentient ants, making us look back at the first FF-Galactus encounter.

Then the team meets the person behind Galactus, someone who in all honesty, is nothing more than an unimpressed hater. So… nothing shocking about him going around eating worlds after all.

And there is a moment when the team loses powers only to get them back because they can’t imagine being without them now.

All that draws these characters, lets you see them for who they are, good and bad, and leaves you wanting more. 

Final thoughts

Waid’s run is enjoyable in every possible way. It’s very 00s in terms of visuals - cartoonish and bright, with just the right amount of nostalgia especially if that’s your introduction to the comics era. Narratively, it turned out to be deeper than I expected, all the while maintaining that connection to the original Lee/Kirby era. I’ve noticed that this is a trend with Waid’s books, he tries to at least partially return the characters to their starting point, make them recognizable, and rediscover their roots. For the Fantastic Four, it works incredibly well.

If we ever get a Disney Fantastic Four cartoon, I would like it to be based on this run since it’s done a marvelous job of flashing out each person behind the uniform. 

[mediacircuspod]

“The Magic Trick You Didn’t See” is an essay written by an author who is on Tumblr, user ariaste. I think it’s a very well put together argument for “The Book of Life Theory” that has merit. However, I think there might be too much editing going on. I will explain.

I want to start this by being completely honest. I’m not sold on any theories because in the past I was so incredibly wrong about countless theories on Game of Thrones that made complete sense, I swear. But also were me just making up reasons for how the story could go my way. I’m actually really into the concept of “wait and see” because it places me firmly in the seat of “audience” or “consumer” and those are, in my opinion, the best seats in the house. 

So I’m not really a subscriber to the coffee theory or the book of life theory or the body switch theory, NOT because I don’t think they’re true or smart or have merit, but because I would genuinely like to “wait and see”. Even if that wait is until 2027. I waited this long for season 2, I’m not afraid of a few years for a good story.

Anyway, go read the very long, but very intelligent google doc, because even if you’re not sure about the theory, it has some REALLY cool meta, and some interesting easter eggs that you might have missed upon viewing the season the first go around, the very long document is HERE.

Alright here’s some highlights. Basically the essay is about how The Metatron could be pulling strings on Season Two with the help of “The Book of Life” for a number of reasons. Corresponding evidence being the lack of God’s narration, Maggie as a character, Eccles Cakes, and a whole lot of meticulous details. I really, really love the format of the essay too, but that’s just me being a nerd about magic tricks and “The Prestige” as a concept and as a movie. 

Where I diverge on this theory is simply how liberally it is applied, as well as the use of “bad” to describe certain ways of writing. And this is where my hot take kind of lies; I don’t think Good Omens 2 was bad. On purpose or by accident. I’m not saying my opinion is right, I’m just stating that that is where my perspective comes from. Now. Let’s get into why I like this essay. 

It’s so cool. And detailed. And smart. I love reading things that connect dots and describe a persons critical thought process, and wow, this essay is incredible at doing all of that. The sheer amount of information I learned from taking the time to read it gave me a lot of insight about the things I missed on my watch of the season. I found I was a lot more distracted by the Austen-esque pacing than the author of the essay who noticed things like disappearing eccles cakes, how no one else’s power went out during Crowley’s lightning storm and a load of other things. But also, being “along for the ride” made me kind of protective of the story being told. Because Season 2 isn’t the beginning, middle, and end of a story, like season 1 was. It is the “quiet, gentle, and romantic” middle of a plot sandwhich.

In any case, the essay poses quite a few things. The only major issue I have is the idea that The Book of Life can alter will, and not just situation. I don’t think Crowley or Aziraphale are changed by the Book of Life. Their actions seem distinctly them throughout the entire season, which is exactly why the season needed to end on the note it did. Obviously from a story point, we need Aziraphale to go to heaven for what I imagine is the conflict of season 3; The Second Coming. But from an internal perspective, Aziraphale’s character demanded to make that decision. It wasn’t out of character, it was distinctly in character. And yes, he could have been influenced, or manipulated, or hiding something, but he’s been affected by all of those ideas for the entirety of his existence anyway. He’s had 6000 years of The Heavenly Host manipulating him, and he’s had exactly 4 years of being on his own side(openly) with Crowley. He’s going to still be susceptible to their tactics, especially if they say exactly what he’s been wanting to hear for his whole existence. “We were wrong, and you were right.” Metatron really pulled out every stop of the proper apology except for the little dance. We were wrong about you, We were wrong about how to run things, We were wrong about Crowley. You can come back and you can bring him and you can fix everything. Crowley refusing isn’t heaven’s fault, they still offered. It’s Crowley who rejected Aziraphale. (For good reason, but that’s not what this meta is about.) I made a post about Crowley and his relationship to forgiveness HERE, if you were interested.

So maybe things were changed by the book of life, the analysis on the opening credits is amazing, like great job. But I don’t know if they were. But that’s literally just me holding onto the plot of season 2 and shouting from the top of my lungs, “ITS ACTUALLY GOOD THOUGH BECAUSE I LIKE IT AND WHAT IT SETS UP” And who knows, we might be all wrong and what actually happened is that the whole thing was a very detailed dream that Aziraphale wrote down in one of his journals.

[alexis-royce]

Youuuuuu got it @windienine ! Updating an old post since the formatting broke on it:

Like any good OC gremlin, I have playlists for all my favs. The one I’ll put before the cut, though, is Kinesis’ theme song, written by Andrew Huang. He legit wrote it for Evil Plan. It’s both about my OC and it has a slick guitar theme that is just….EVERYTHING. It is the best character theme I have and I adore it.

Here’s a pile (though not even close to all) of character songs under the cut:

Evil Plan

Kinesis: Upside down - Barenaked Ladies, Defeat You- Smash Mouth, half the Dr. Horrible Soundtrack because of course, Evil Genius - Pat Benatar, Bank Job- BNL. A reader also once sent me “Sexy Supervillain” by Fanatical, and I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair.

Alice: Science Vs Romance, Rilo Kiley , Do It - Spice Girls.

William: Vanishing, BNL.

Lemon and Lime - Sunday Morning - Maroon 5

Sire

Anna & Susan - Odds Are - BNL

(Cannot for the life of me find the rest of those playlists. I’m sure there were a ton. Anyway I know a fuckton of weird old musicals, it’s mostly them.)

morphE - Mage: The Awakening Campaign

Campaign Theme: Dark Blue - Jack’s Mannequin

Ammi: Esperandote - Rika Muranaka & Vanesa Quiroz

Sanguine (The First One) - Mister Blue Sky in G Major

Amical: Golden and Green - The Builders and the Butchers, Hurricane - Panic!, Killer Queen - Queen

Billy Thatcher: Every fucking song from Chess, The Musical, by Tim Rice and the boys from Abba

Hendrik Rakove: Hurt So Good - John Mellencamp, Lovefool - Spencer Day’s Cover, Love Me Dead - Ludo, Grace Kelly - BYU A cappella cover, Talk about You - MIKA, It’s All Been Done - BNL, Boomerang - BNL, The Show Must Not Go On - Harvey Danger, Circus- Drew Gasparini and Lindsay Mandez.

Talaiporia- Choke - I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

Andrew Cross: Camisado- Panic!

Closing Shop - (The weird experimental meta campaign that literally ate itself)

Steam Rising - Murder By Death, Devil’s Calling - Florence and the Machine, Talkin at the Texaco - James McMurtry, Keepin’ It Real - Barenak BLOW BY KESHA BLOW BY KESHA GET MY SONG RIGHT GET IT RIGHT, Sometimes the Line Walks You - Murder By Death

Exit Signs- Slashers/mixed nWoD Campaign

Season One theme: What if I’m Wrong - Damien Rice

Season Two Theme: I Wanna Get Better - Bleachers

Cyril: Disaster - Drew Weston, A Little Irony - Tom Milsom.

Dea ‘Exit’ DeLus: When I Grow Up - Tim Minchin, Break Your Heart - BNL, If I Had a Heart - Fever Ray, Crystalline - Bjork, Still - Ben Folds, Come Into My Head - Kimbra, Dinner at Eight - Rufus Wainwright, What You Know - Two Door Cinema Club, Big Dark Love - Murder By Death, Bitter and Sick - One Two,

DRT: Bitter Rivals - Sleigh Bells, Passcode - BNL.

Swing: Boogie Feet - Kesha.

Deirdre Whitman: Welcome to the Ball - Rufus Wainwright.

NonPlatonic Forms

I’m Gonna Win- Rob Cantor Boomerang - Lucy Schwartz, Hate that you know me so well- Bleachers, Jericho - Rufus Wainwright, Guster - Center of Attention, Toe to Toe - BNL, Give It Back to You - BNL, Limits -BNL (I apologize for nothing I love Silverball), Blood - ANIMA!, Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1 - Mountain Goats, and of COURSE- Dead Inside by Patricia Taxxon!

- Other characters -

Channery Keene

Artificial Heart - JoCo, Erase Me - Ben Folds Five, Desperate Measures - Marianas Trench, Haunted - Maya Kern, Cake - Melanie Martinez, Bulletproof- La Roux, Cassandra - Area 11, Stolen - Greentree, Guster - Simple Machine, Make Me Feel - Janelle Monae, Could I Leave You - (specifically Donna Murphy at the Sondheim’s 80th concert).

Chrome and Prism

Kiss with a Fist - Florence and the Machine, Langhorns - Spybeat, Dancing’s Not a Crime - Panic!, Thanks I Hate It - Simple Creatures, Sweet Talk - Saint Motel, This Is Love - Air Traffic Controller, Nothing Without You- Vienna Teng

Harold Ludicael

Consequence Free - Great Big Sea, Sea of No Cares- Great Big Sea, Don’t Threaten me with a Good Time - Panic!, Dust and Ashes from Great Comet, I Need to Know from Jekyll and Hyde; Boy Decide - Murder by Death, Spring Break 1899 - Murder By Death, My Type - Saint Motel.

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Some interesting things I found in the code of Secrets of Legendaria (for the 3 fans of the actual game and not the TCG that still exist here)

I got a bit curious and started going through the game’s files, partially to see what went wrong and partially because I can’t stop thinking about how much wasted potential this game was (and a lot of Lionel Snill’s other games, for that matter)

Here’s a list of the most interesting stuff I found:

Moji doesn’t have an actual death animation for some reason, even though his death was kind of a defining moment in the plot as a massive change in tone. Either this was an oversight by the devs (unsurprising) or it was a really weird design choice.

Remember that disturbing, random secret you can find where you can buy the key to the smithy’s house only to find him dead? There’s actually some unused dialogue where he upgrades Lazarus’ sword. I have no idea why this could have been removed, since the sword upgrade as it is makes no sense as there’s no dialogue to explain it. This is also apparently where you were meant to get some of the correct answers for the Sphinx bossfight.

On a related note, that upgraded sword is referred to in the files as “Endervale Blade.” Could this be related to the Entervale bug where entering it as Chandrelle’s name freezes the game on a purple mist screen?

On yet another related note, there’s an unused map also titled Endervale, which also freezes the game on the purple mist when loaded.

The talking slime that refuses to fight you as you approach the dragon’s mountain actually does have code for a battle, but it’s not anything more interesting than the other slime fights earlier on.

Remember that theory that Jay from Vicious Galaxy is also the janitor in the temple in SoL because they look the same and he happens to have some silly meta dialogue about it? The janitor is referred to in the files as Jay, meaning that they might actually be the same character. Now, seeing as Lazarus and Moji Jr. also star in VG, it may very well be the case that SoL and VG take place in the same timeline. In this essay I will-

The Missingno enemy is not a bug, but a completely intentional easter egg. The weird game crash with it and the doppelgänger charm item was not intended, however.

Lazarus has a separate inventory, but we can’t access it normally within the game. The only time we get to interact with it is when Chandrelle gives him the locket half. It’s empty, save for the sword, though, so not much else to say about it.

The locket, on the other hand, is interesting. It has a description written in binary, but when translated it’s just nonsense letters. There is no second half of the locket.

The guard for the Sphinx’s boss room is named Jack, and he has an unused battle sprite for some reason. It’s really silly, actually; they just rip his door out and put it on the battlefield.

This one’s really weird: Chandrelle and Rebecha still have leftover code from when they were in Combat Arena X (I still can’t get over how SoL is technically a CA:X spinoff, it haunts me every day). This makes sense, they were probably just copy pasted over—but for some reason, in the buggy, unfinished, fog-hidden Kraken bossfight, Chandrelle’s fighting game functions get activated. This might be why you stop being able to use her moves in the middle of that fight.

Unfortunately, you can’t remove the fog from the Kraken bossfight, because it’s basically just a cutscene with buttons you can press that have no effect on the gameplay, as far as I can tell.

I would have loved to solve the mystery of the tiny hooded character who steers Chandrelle and Lazarus out of the fog, but they don’t actually appear in the files at all for some reason? If I had to guess, it’s probably Captain Barnay, recovered and wrapped in a cloak. He’s short because he’s hunched over and hurt, I would guess.

Finally, the matter of the ending, and perhaps the most annoying discovery of all: There’s an unused good ending in the game’s files, but no way to ever trigger it because it requires the old man to be in the temple before Vallamir. This can never happen in game, meaning there’s no way to actually seal Vallamir away at the end.

Now, that’s all that I, an amateur when it comes to this sort of thing, could find. If I missed anything or got something wrong, please be sure to let me know!