#feel free to ask me if this unclear

[ratcandy]

Big Huge Irritated Rant About The Latest COTL Update's Story Choices and the Implications

So the lore drop in the new Cult of the Lamb update, Unholy Alliance, pisses me off. The writer's confirmation of what that lore drop means pisses me off more.

Why? Because it's unnecessary recontextualization that was made pretty obviously in favor in one character in particular, and somehow in that process makes that very same character way less interesting. I think it's incredibly detrimental to the story and I will Explain Why in a second.

But before I do, I just want to put this out there: Prior to this update, my opinions on the Bishops and Narinder and that entire plotline were pretty neutral. I'm an NPC enjoyer, I spend my time thinking about that moth with two lines of dialogue. I did not previously have strong opinions on Narinder or Shamura outside of mild dislike for fandom treatment. So I'm not coming from a place of bias here (or at the very least I'm not trying to be). I genuinely, wholeheartedly, 100% believe this writing decision was unnecessary and the Wrong one to make, and I think it severely undercuts the original plotline because this was a retcon and one that sucks pretty bad.

Ok we're on the same page here? Ok awesome. Long rant ahead, and obvs spoilers for the Unholy Alliance update

So first, what the hell am I talking about? What part of the update do I not like? Let's clarify that first.

It's Shamura's dialogue. Like, all of it. For ease of understanding, here is all the dialogue I will be talking about:

"Ah... we gathered here, the four of us, a council of war and I the general. I have not forgot. I did not tell them that chains to bind a God must be forged of Godly matters. What matter of Gods? What matters of Gods? I have not forgot. The betrayal of kin, the breaking of spirits, blood spilled, his and ours. ...the sacrifice of what we had sacrificed so much for... ...shaped into shackles for our own brother. And our wounds always to weep. Such sharp claws..."

--

"He sought to break nature's own laws. Death was his, yet he placed his sacred duty in peril. His experiments... Experiments I encouraged. I am not... blameless. My soul, stained... yet I do not... Ah, The story. Yes the story... He wanted to open the doors between Life and Death, to... to allow their return. Those mere... mortals. Even though he knew their sacrifices, their faith, their fears sustain us. Death must be the end. Otherwise, what use would they have for Gods? They began to flock to him. What he promised, we could not match. He swelled with devotion... while we waned. Would he have let us perish? I could not take... the risk... the hunger... You are lucky there are none left to force such a choice on you. Hail, Lamb. Last God... lonely God... Ah... I feel... unburdened..."

And for fun, before anyone tells me I'm misinterpreting any of this or that it's left up to interpretation or is intentionally vague, Word of God (the writer of CoTL):

And it's this being Word of God that's spurred me into making this post to begin with. Because prior to this, I just seethed about this dialogue's implications in my server and hoped I was wrong. But now it's been confirmed what this means, and I'm . Disgruntled, to say the least!

And since I've started writing this post, there's been another addition made to further clarify parts of this. But I'm going to go over that addition more towards the end, because it also irritates me for separate reasons.

So, let's get this straight.

Prior to this update, the specifics of what happens between Narinder and the Bishops were pretty vague. We were told Narinder was "gluttonous in his ambition," per Shamura's previous dialogue, and that they "introduced him to ideas of change" but "Death cannot flow backward." Heket somewhat elaborates on this by saying he preached "heresy" and "noxious ideals" that would not be tolerated. Heket also notably refers to Narinder as a flat-out "monster." Narinder attacked his siblings and left them each with a big, symbolic wound. Then he was chained by the four of them, with Shamura the one to lead it (in their own words).

There's a lot of talk of betrayal, but before this update, it was unclear if the betrayal was meant to just be Narinder's experimenting with death (which even then was pretty heavily suggested to be resurrections) or the wounds inflicted upon his siblings. There's also a lot of talk of sacrifice, i.e. from Leshy if you kill Heket before him: "After everything we did. After everything we sacrificed. He will not be satiated."

Regardless, the picture this painted was of Narinder being this ambitious, evil, violent God that even his fellow Gods (Kallamar) feared and felt needed controlling. The idea that the wounds could have been in the nail in the coffin to this entire ordeal made sense; as they were obviously planned by Narinder to some extent (otherwise why be so intentional about who got what wound?) and a fair reaction to Being Mutilated would of course be to chain him.

Then of course there's the idea that the wounds were given while he was being chained and in self-defense, which only seems possible if you think Narinder could take on all four of his siblings at once like that and only manage to lose his claws in the ordeal (which was only revealed in this update to be something he's implied to have lost thru the relic). I thought this at first too, but realized it seems pretty impractical for that to have been the case if the wounds were also purposeful in who got what. I mean, sure, they could all be coincidentally symbolically appropriate for each Bishop, but I have doouuubts?

but now we're here, with this update, and all has been revealed.

And what's been revealed exactly?

Narinder's thing he was doing was indeed resurrections (we knew that)

Shamura encouraged him to do it (we also already knew this)

It seems like he did literally nothing else outside of that

His siblings got pissy about this because it made their domains purposeless and got all their followers to flock to him

"Would he let us perish? I could not take the risk" - Implies they literally did not even ask him

Shamura knew that in order to forge chains that could keep Narinder down, it would require a sacrifice of their bonds AND their flesh

They DID NOT tell the other Bishops this

Their wounds were requirements to chain him. They had to get the wounds they bear now in order to chain him. ONLY Shamura knew this. That means they allowed their siblings (and themself) to get attacked knowing full well what would happen. They may have even encouraged it, perhaps provoked Narinder into it, seeing as they knew the wounds were necessary to have him chained. (Or they just knew he would retaliate. Which, like. Yeah. They're condemning him after he went down a path they encouraged and, as far as we can tell, nothing else.)

And for... what?

In this version of the story, Narinder was experimenting with resurrections, and Shamura told him to keep doing that. Then he was successful, mortals turned to him, and his siblings (including Shamura, the one who told him to do it) got mad. That's it. That's their reasoning for chaining him. There's nothing else given. "Would they perish?" We have no idea. Is that how it works? Seems like Shamura doesn't know either. Or at the very least doesn't know if Narinder intended for that at all. Gives the vibe that literally no effort was made to talk to him and figure this out. They don't even really go down the "it puts nature out of balance!" path, which would at least have some merit, maybe. It's literally just "we are no longer sustained. What's the point of Gods in this world?" <- idk babe you had all the other ones slaughtered. So you tell me

And then Shamura just took it into their own hands, leading their siblings to their shared wounds (WITHOUT consulting them) and their inevitable destruction because of........... reasons, I guess. (I mean, if you think about it really hard, they probably also already knew what would happen following all this. With the lamb genocide and Narinder's resurfacing and etc. And they had their siblings wounded anyway. For no god damn reason)

And now why does this make me mad?

Because, honestly, in and of itself, there's not anything necessarily wrong with this added context. It's not contradicting anything in the main game. Shamura knowing what was needed makes sense, after all.

But it's... unnecessary. It screws up the motives and makes them more shallow, less nuanced, more... petty. Making gods petty is cool and all, I love doing that honestly, but in this case it just feels like a waste of potential.

But beyond all that. But most importantly.

This entire recontextualization of events REEKS of being made specifically to absolve Narinder.

I mean, come on. He's made out to be the victim, here. Shamura knew what he would do, knew what he would become, and knew exactly what would happen to their siblings if they sought to chain him (without doing so much as talking to him beforehand), and yet they encouraged it.

All blame is being shifted on Shamura. All Narinder did specifically against his siblings was inflict the wounds, which at this point seems to be hinted as self defense or a retaliation against threat or insult (assuming he was provoked into attacking, somehow). Because the wounds were part of the process.

And almost equally irritating, this seeks to arbitrarily absolve Leshy, Kallamar, and Heket as well, as they had no idea what the plan was and were just strung along. Which is just kinda worse, right? As far as they are aware, Narinder did just randomly attack them for no reason, and this wasn't foreseen, and surely couldn't have been stopped. All because Shamura didn't tell them any of it.

Shamura is being made into the big bad. Shamura is at fault for everything, for all of it. Narinder is a victim of Shamura encouraging him down a path they later condemn him for, their siblings are victims of Shamura and Narinder both (the latter of which could have been resolved at any point prior), and now any possible intrigue about Narinder being this big bad guy who tore apart his siblings due to his own ambition getting the best of him is ERASED.

It's GONE. All in favor of making him more sympathetic.

And sure, about a million different excuses could be made for Shamura, or could be used to headcanon whatever you want about exactly what happened. But with what we're given right now, just from the source, no attempt as made to stop Narinder before it got to this point. It is literally suggested they didn't even talk to him.

"Maybe they were too scared" - For the other three, maybe. Shamura is the eldest and clearly the most respected one, by Narinder as well (he holds some amount of respect for them even STILL. After EVERYTHING). They at any point could have stopped this.

"Narinder could still have been a bad guy outside of the attacks" - Sure, but we're given little to nothing on that front. In the old dialogue, literally all that's mentioned is the resurrection stuff and the wounds. Shamura is the one who said his ambition made a glutton of him, by the way. And hell, this isn't even touching the very real possibility that all of the Bishops (Narinder included!) are unreliable as hell.

"But Kallamar feared him even before his chaining, that suggests he was still a bad guy beforehand" - Sure, it could! But that's about all we get! And hell, in this new update, Kallamar's fears are fucked with, too. He states:

"Once, long ago, Followers would worship at my altar just to glimpse the beauty of my temple… of course, it could not last forever. Perhaps my siblings did not understand this, but I have always known. It did not make me less afraid. Cowardly Kallamar, ha…"

Here, it seems Kallamar's fears have been changed to be more about the decline of his temple and the loss of his followers, which was happening because of Narinder. He refers to Narinder's plans as "foolish" as opposed to... idk, horrifying, or threatening, or whatever. He also fully takes on the 'cowardly' title, giving the impression that his fears were somehow unfounded, which wouldn't make a lick of sense if Narinder indeed sucked ass outside of the wounds.

Not to mention he "didn't want to hear it" when Shamura "revealed the plan," but we know because of Shamura that they didn't mention anything about the wounds, so Kallamar didn't want to hear that they... had to chain Narinder? That's literally all he could've been told about the plan. Why wouldn't he want to chain Narinder if he was scared of him up until that point?? Doesn't make any sense!!! EDIT AFTER I POSTED: On reconsideration this might just be referring the lamb genocide plan, but that's hardly better, because now this update absolves Narinder, Leshy, AND Kallamar by making them blameless in everything (both Leshy and Kallamar expressed not fully understanding the plan for the slaughter or, in this case, not wanting part in it). What's up with THAT. Why is Shamura getting the blame for LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

Anyway, my point is

This was a story decision made to make Narinder sympathetic. It's so blatant. And it's so, so irritating. It gets rid of so many potential cool flaws of Narinder and replaces it with "Actually, Shamura was the bad guy the whole time! Huzzah!"

And honestly, had the entire game come out like this to begin with, released at the start how it is right now, I don't think I'd care this much. But being added now, as an afterthought, after the fandom and devs alike have grown to favor Narinder above all others, it just...

It reeks of favoritism. It smells of revising the story to make Narinder more likeable. It's just erasure.

And for what. Like, I don't want to be That Guy, but I cannot help but notice that one of two nonbinary characters (outside of the Lamb/Goat themselves) is being this heavily demonized in favor of absolving a Man of his crimes. What's, uh. What's up with that.

Oh, and that addition by the writer I mentioned was made while I was writing this.

This was made after Jojo was questioned whether this was a retcon as to who caused the wounds, as this whole thing could also certainly be read as Shamura being the one to directly wound their siblings (which I didn't think was the case, but still).

"I don't know if they thought it would be so severe" - How do I put this in a nice way. This feels like a weaseling out answer. This feels like giving Shamura an out only after being questioned on this writing choice. How could they possibly not know how severe it would be. This spider is Knowledge. This spider has Foresight of some kind. And how do you not know what they thought. You are the Writer. If you want to clarify something like this you gotta say it with your full chest.

Not to mention a good portion of the fandom probably won't even see these tweets, so this context is all missing from the story presented in the game. This is Tacked On Context on top of already Tacked On Context. It's unnecessary retconning all the way down.

Anyway. I realize the fandom at large will not care about this, because (and I mean this in the nicest way I can manage) the Narinder favoritism in this fandom is already impenetrable, but for me personally? This retconning that was so clearly done out of that favoritism?

It ruined Narinder's character for me. More than the fandom possibly could have. I mean, if it's fanon, it can be ignored. But this was canonized. Because Narinder is the dev team's favorite guy.

And I can't stand it.

[i-really-like-phrogs]

For the next tutorial, Lydia Deetz won by a whopping 80% on the community poll! That’s more than fair, of course. After all- what’s a Toon-juice without his gothy little pal?

Surprisingly, I sometimes find Lydia harder to draw than Beejtlejuice since she’s got a LOT of little details- but she becomes easier the more you draw her! (It often takes me at least three or four tries before I feel like I got her correct, bur she’s definitely a loving challenge for me 😂💪)

[kerizaret]

"Let me stay with you one last time..."

[deoidesign]

just wanted to say that I absolutely LOVE your comic I am so inspired by it and it’s so lovely and I wanna buy the physical books (I’ve never done that before) I just AUGGHHH EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS SO 💙💙💙

do you allow fanart? And is there anything not allowed? I wanna draw adam and steve so bad 😭

Of course it's allowed! Fanart fanfic fan music fan dubs whatever!

I like to think I'm sort of "building a playground" when I make a story, have fun on it! I made it for you!

In my general opinion, it's not my business what my "fandom" does... It's on you and also me to curate our own spaces! If you're inspired by my work in any way, that's the greatest honor I could imagine and I want you to feel fully free to explore that. If someone is being weird, I know where the block button is and they can keep being weird where I don't have to see it haha

Just don't like... sell it... it's messy legally with webtoon and I'm one person making the story and it's my whole income so the few sales I get are kind of huge for me ;_;

[artinandwritin]

Doing a lil art dump cuz ya girl is busy crocheting and doing market and comms related things but yknow

Old art still has my heart and sometimes i forget to post fun doodles <333

Modern au hc: Siri's big into my little pony and Gustav has a fursona. Theyre very passionate abt it and its adorable

Sunniva thinks her dad is stupid. She is correct and everyone but him knows it

One of my favourite modern au Siri doodles!!! Look at the bbygirl,,,

Im very funny and this meme is literally them (Siri cannot swim)

Some of my fave adult life gussiri sketches!!! I think most are from like half a year or so ago (almost all sketches in this post are actually) but i really like them!! My babies fr fr <333

[hishoi]

Hello people!!

A couple days ago i got inspired to crochet a manatee, so i did! And, i have a pattern for you guys too, if you want to make one yourself. I am still working on the skykid pattern, but i'm a bit out of yarn right now so there will still be a while until i can post it.

Anyways, here's the pattern!

Sky: cotl manatee crochet pattern

Yarn colors: white and yellow. You can use any size hook you want, but i used a small 2.5 hook

Body (white)

Start every new row with a chain 1, - indicates new row. The entire project is worked in single crochet.

-Crochet 6 sc into magic circle, tighten the circle

-Inc in every stitch around

-inc in every other stitch around

-do 3 regular sc rows

-5 sc, 1 inc, 2 sc, 2 inc, 2 sc, 1 inc, 5 sc

-do 3 regular sc rows

-6 sc, 1 inc, 1 sc, 1 inc, 1 sc, 2 inc, 1 sc, 1 inc, 1 sc, 1 inc, 6sc

-now you do 12 regular single crochet rows. At this point you can start stuffing

-6 sc, 1 dec, 1 sc, 1 dec, 1 sc, 2 dec, 1 sc, 1 dec, 1 sc, 1 dec, 6 sc

-3 regular single crochet rows

-5 sc, 1 dec, 2 sc, 2 dec, 2 sc, 1 dec, 5 sc

-3 regular single crochet rows

-5 sc, (1 dec, 1 sc) x2, 1 dec, 5 sc

-3 regular single crochet rows

-Decrease in every other stitch around

-Sew the end of the body shut by doing one single crochet through 2 stitches across from eachother, and then chain one, and do one single crochet on top of the securing stitch. Chain one, and break off yarn.

Fins (white)

You will do two of these.

-ch 3, start in the second st from the hook, and do an inc in both stitches (4)

-Ch 1, 4 sc

-Ch 1, 4 sc

-Ch 1, 2 sc, 1 dec

-Ch 1, 1 dec, 1 sc

-Ch 1, 1 dec

Ch 1, break off yarn.

Attatch the fins around the ninth row of the body, one on each side of the head, with the side with decreases facing back. (Hope that makes sense)

Tail piece (yellow)

-Ch 2, and do 4 sc in the first stitch

-Ch 1, 4 sc

-Ch 1, 4 sc

-Ch 1, 2 dec

-Ch 1, 1 dec, ch 1, break off yarn

Attatch to the end of the body (not exactly sure how i did it myself you'll just have to wing it a bit)

Head pattern piece (yellow)

-Ch 2, and do 3 sc in the first stitch

-Ch 1, 1 inc, 1 st, 1 inc

-Ch 1, 1 inc, 3 sc, 1 inc

-Ch 1, 1 inc, 5 sc, 1 inc

-Ch 1, 9 sc

-Ch 1, 1 dec, 5 sc, 1 dec

-Ch 1, 1 dec, 3 sc, 1 dec

-Ch 1, 1 dec, 1 sc, 1 dec

-Ch 1, dec through all 3 stitches left, so that you end up with only one stitch. Ch 1, break off yarn

Head pattern piece (white)

-Ch 2, and do 2 sc in the first stitch

-Ch 1, 2 inc

-Ch 1, 2 dec

-Ch 1, 1 dec, ch 1, break off yarn

Sew the white piece onto the yellow piece, and attatch that to the body. After that you should be done!

This didn't take too long to make, maybe an hour at most. If you're looking for something fun to do for a little while, you can make this! If you make it, please let me know, rb this post with the results or tag me, either way i would love to see how you made it!

[batsplat]

thoughts on challengers ? 👀

haha okay sure. I was overthinking this when I first saw this ask but since then I've sent half an hour worth of voice notes to my number one person I send half hour's worth of voice notes to (listen she keeps encouraging me to) and I've ironed some of my thoughts out. also I should probably watch it again. some of this might be me misremembering shit. also it's not that serious. quick warning, this ended up being just. too long. it's basically just a long rant. under the cut it goes

so first of all, I really enjoyed watching this film. I liked the central premise a lot, I liked the chemistry between the characters, tashi was very hot, the score was fantastic, the cinematography was at least interesting, and a lot of the non-tennis bits are interesting

having gotten that out of the way. there's an interview where guadagnino says he doesn't watch tennis matches because he finds them boring, which to be clear is completely fair enough - but I do think it does slightly come across in how the tennis is filmed. there's definitely fun, neat stuff in there: the shot where it follows around the ball, the shot from underneath the court, all of that stuff. and I think there's obviously a lot of challenges with filming tennis when you have to make sure you can't, like, see the actors actually play tennis, and I don't know anything about film-making so I don't want to judge it too harshly. but there are a few established angles from which tennis looks good, and this film doesn't really use them all that much. it was interesting to what extent they went for side shots (basically from the tashi pov in the final match) rather than... well, picking a side, and at different points of that match actually giving the viewer a clearer sense of the visceral nature of what they're doing here. like, if you're going court level from behind the player, that's how you capture the weight of the shot on screen. which felt was a little bit... missing

okay... ffs this next section ended up kind of being tennis tactics 101, and then the other bit ended up being about how matches work. my basic point here is that I think this film did some interesting stuff with the tennis but, and this is part of my more longstanding frustrations about the untapped narrative potential of sports, I think you could've done a lot more and communicated a lot more through the actual tennis. not just for annoying people who want to go 'oh look that's an extreme western grip and explains why her forehand has so much spin but can also be fragile when absorbing pressure!!' but for the general viewing audience. I want to be very clear here: I do not really care about realism except when I'm being annoying in voice notes, I care about storytelling. if you understandably do not give a shit about all this tactics and match construction stuff, skip to the bit marked 3 for more of my thoughts related to the actual film

1

now you might go 'okay but this film isn't about capturing tennis and doing it justice - it's not even about tennis'. yeah, but tennis is the central metaphor! tennis is a relationship, right, but it's also a conversation. it's a way of communicating something to the audience, yes, in a way non-tennis fans can also pick up on. and a lot of the tennis looked pretty same-y. the points were very similar - the intensity was ramped up mainly by the characters just... whacking the ball harder, running side by side, and then sometimes they both move forwards. this isn't a realism issue, it's a storytelling issue. you can tell a story with a tennis point, you can construct these points in different ways to tell you different things

just to give you an example (I promise this is relevant): okay, the most common rally pattern in tennis is hitting cross court. so either you hit on the deuce court (from your pov, this is from the right side of your court to the left side of the other player's court, aka the forehand side for right handed players) or the ad court (the opposite, and thus the backhand side for right handed players). this is for a bunch of tactical reasons. the net is at its lowest in the middle so, y'know, you're less likely to hit it. perhaps most importantly, it's a question of angles and... okay look I don't want to bore the two people reading this with the details but just to very quickly explain, here:

say player a is hitting the ball along the red line to player b, the orange zone depicts the theoretical area in which the ball trajectory of player b's answering shot can go. like, if you want to get the other player to move 'out of the court', you can only do so by going back cross court... which is obviously where, in a cross court exchange, the other player is already standing. this is why a lot of the times, players don't 'recover' after their shots to the exact centre of the court, but instead make a judgement of where the centre is of the theoretical zone the opponent can hit. to put it in plain english: I hit a forehand cross, I don't move back to the exact middle of the court because I know where you can hit the ball back and I need to be in the middle of that - which skews to the right of centre. also, I just know it's more likely you're going to go cross again, because that's just how this works

you want to move the other player around, right, first of all to get the ball past them - but also to make it harder for them to attack you. you're trying to construct a point so that eventually they are the one who can't reach the ball/makes an error, not you. a lot of the times, continuing to go cross court is the smart option. it's less risky than going down the line, and also if your down the line shot isn't perfect, where it isn't a winner or at least a shot they'll struggle to attack, then you're setting up a situation where they have all the angle in the world to work with, where the centre of their theoretical hitting zone is nowhere near where you're actually standing and they can easily whack the ball past you

now, why the fuck does this matter when we're talking about the tennis threesome film? obviously, I don't expect the director to interrupt the film to explain angles to the audience. in tennis terms, 'go cross court' is tactics for babies, but it's still not something most viewers will be instinctively familiar with. but think about what it actually does if players keep exchanging shots cross court because they can't risk going down the line: they're engaging in a direct contest! they are measuring one shot against the other, my forehand against your forehand, my backhand against your backhand, and they are trying to assert dominance. sometimes, you have no choice to escape that exchange even when it's risky because their raw cross court shot is better than yours. sometimes, you're trapped in that exchange. how you can extract metaphors from that should be fairly obvious, and I don't think this should be visually too tough to get across - it's a power struggle between two people contained within a simple shot pattern. it adds variation to what the viewer is being shown (and, yes, it does make the points feel more realistic), but it's also a way of gradually ramping up intensity. my shot against your shot - who wins? who is willing to risk deviating from the norm? who sets themselves up for a trap - does patrick sucker art into attacking him down the line? can he then manage to counterpunch (to use attack as defence) by making it to art's shot in time and placing his response into the open court? who blinks first etc etc

look, this is only one way you can visually use tennis to add to the story. another common tactic is (if you're a right handed player) hitting forehands from the ad court, to 'run around the backhand'. that's an expression of dominance, it's a power play - you're trying to bully your opponent with your most powerful shot (which is the forehand for 99% of players, some might have better backhands but they won't have stronger ones), and you're deliberately recovering less to the centre. you're camping out on the ad side, and going 'yeah I don't actually think your down the line shot is good enough to hurt me, I actually feel very comfortable standing right here so I can more easily move far enough to the left to continue hitting forehands'. it's a tactic that is implicitly passing judgement on the opponent, and again, I refuse to believe you can't show this in a way that the audience understands roughly what's going on. have patrick bully art with his forehand into the weaker backhand or vice versa - they can use their faces to show how comfortable they are with their respective positions. y'know, make the actors act. have one of them find the backhand down the line, fire it into the bit of the court the opponent has completely left open. your characters are using tennis to assert dominance over each other, to manipulate, to deceive each other - you can do that with the actual tennis they're playing

you can also express character through tennis. I'm not saying different play styles function as a personality quiz, but inherently the way you play is going to reflect what you feel comfortable with doing on the tennis court. is your preferred point three shots long or twenty shots long? are you looking to dominate your opponent with your big weapons, or are you looking to trick them with your variety of shots and smarts in using them? or are you looking to just grind them into submission with sheer relentless consistency?

take the drop shot: a shot that 'drops' right after it clears the net as a result of how the player has put a different kind of spin onto it. ideally, it's so close to the net the opponent can't sprint forward quickly enough to reach the ball. how effective your drop shot is depends on several things. obviously, it's how good the shot and the placement and the spin you've put on it is. it also depends on where you're standing and where your opponent is standing, which means that particularly effective dropshots usually come after big, heavy attacking shots that have forced the opponent to move back and have allowed you to move into the court. and it also depends how good your disguise is: for as long as possible, it should look like the shot you're playing is going to be a bog standard forehand or backhand - until you readjust your grip at the last moment and slash the racquet downwards (vs the upwards motion you'd make with the bog standard forehand or backhand). this is a shot that depends on the element of surprise. it's about trying to fuck with your opponent, it's about choosing your moment. it's about playing with them! and you can get pretty memorable reactions from your opponent. if you wrong foot them well enough, they'll literally stumble when they realise what's happening and never even start running. maybe they'll comically flail their arms

I feel like when the men's world number seven throws his arms up in shock every time somebody hits a short ball, you can probably convey this kind of dynamic in a film

and think about what it says if somebody's using a shot like that. again, you're trying to fuck with the other player, and you are relying on your knowledge of the opponent to figure out when they might be susceptible to it. now, obviously, this is tough to do when you're playing someone for the first time and (unlike top level professional players) don't have a vast amount of data to work with and how often xyz shot works against them in xyz situation. this is generally why early in a match, it's a good idea to just like, test some stuff out to give yourself a sense of how they'd react, if it's a good idea to use it in a pressure situation (you also do a version of this in the warm up if you're smart, just check how they react to that high ball to the backhand! all about being curious y'know). but if you know someone, if this is an established rivalry, if this is someone you've played with since you're kids... well. then it's a different ball game entirely

patrick has the psychological edge in that match-up, right, and the whole point of that final match is that it shouldn't be that close but it's that close due to the mental dynamics between the pair of them. patrick constantly wrong-footing art and frustrating him is the easiest way in the world to visually demonstrate that dynamic. you're constantly trying to guess what your opponent is going to do, you're constantly trying to anticipate, yeah? you know what I said above about how you're 'recovering' to the centre of the theoretical zone and all that? well, sometimes you don't do that - you guess where the opponent is going to go. most often, you've got to do that when you know the opponent has a relatively easy shot and they can hurt you with it, so you have to play the probabilities and hope you get it right... it's basically like a penalty kick in football. it's a quick judgement you're making on the basis of past data, of what you think your opponent is thinking, of how big a risk you want to make - of when to time it, because if you move too early they can still change the trajectory of their shot and go the other way. maybe you even feint one way before darting the other. and your opponent might shoot one way or the other... but, sometimes they'll drop shot you while you're moving in one direction as you frantically try to change course. or, which is even more humiliating, they'll go straight down the middle - since you're no longer standing there

in narrative terms, what does it tell you if a character guesses rightly or wrongly? what would it say if art or patrick had that kind of intimate knowledge of each other - I know you usually do this, but I know you know that so I'm going to go the other way - round and round in circles, a mental contest between people who are so familiar with each other that it can become actively confusing to try and preempt their moves. tennis is a relationship and it's a conversation and the way we construct a point tells us a story about the history between you and me. it tells us a story if art, the six time slam winner and more accomplished player by far, is being read so perfectly by patrick that he's tripping over himself and getting in his own way and flailing. one of the most common commentating cliches is about the ball, or indeed the player, being attached to the end of a string. the extension of that metaphor is that one player is the puppet master and the other player is a puppet. easy visual metaphor bingo

you can literally express how the characters feel about each other by... where they're standing. if you're scared of your opponent's shot, then you're going to try and give yourself more time to react. if you are on the attack, then you need to move in, to take the ball earlier, to take time away from the opponent. to me, if you're showing fictional tennis, you really should be playing with time and how you can use cinematic techniques to play with that sense of time. now, you can do this on the broader level of the match, because your subjective sense of time is dependent on how well you're doing in a match. time never moves faster than when you're losing a six love set. but it's also obviously integral to actual points, because you are usually trying to maximise your own time and minimise your opponent's, trying to make sure you will always have enough time to get to the ball and making sure they won't (obviously often u kinda have to pick one of those because of how time works)

where you stand on the court is an integral part of that, for obvious reasons related to 'basic physics'. and, again, it's also psychological. take the return position, right, aka where you're standing when the opponent is serving. most people have a built-in preference for both the first and second serve, and a kind of basic 'return strategy' of what kind of shot they'd like to use and where to move. generally, you'll stand further back for the first serve because it's more powerful... but hey, maybe you have a slightly unorthodox return strategy where you're just trying to 'block' the first serve and use the weight of the opponent's shot against them, and then you step back for the second serve and have a massive whack at them. just as an example

and, again, this is another way in which you try to fuck with your opponent. there is nothing more annoying than seeing the twat on the other side of the net move in to the court by an insulting amount because they don't respect your shitty second serve and think they can take a swing at it from in front of the baseline. some players just do this in general - prime offenders on the women's side are garcia and ostapenko (and with all love to them, they do this more than is perhaps tactically prudent)

(for the other end of the spectrum, see another place from which you can theoretically return a serve from if you're out of your fucking mind) (this particular player's return strategy has been like a top five discourse point over the last few years but we do not have time to get into all that)

but you can also vary it up in a match, and you probably should if you're being smart. so for instance (and there's a specific match in 2022 I'm thinking of here), if you know your opponent has an awful second serve and a lovely little habit of double faulting when under pressure, maybe as the returner you just... well, look, the ball from the first serve has rolled right to your feet, so obviously you need to politely pass it to the ballperson, and maybe it just takes a little bit longer so that you know the server is looking right at you when you meander in front of the baseline to wait for their second serve. and then they double fault and that's the break of serve right there. you're not always standing that close to return second serves, but you're standing there when you know it'll make them most nervous. again, I am not saying the tennis threesome film needs to explain the difference between jelena ostapenko's and daniil medvedev's return strategies, but these ARE the kinds of things you CAN organically integrate, and give you very blunt and easy to understand messages about the characters and their dynamic

and like... different people have different play styles, yeah? let them express a little character! tashi is relentless, maybe she's constantly attempting to take everything with her forehand to attack and attack, or maybe she trusts herself to attack from any place with any shot. maybe she's so lively and confident and uncompromising that she uses down the line shots more than anyone else, or maybe there's surprising subtlety there in how the intensity and rage fades away for a moment as she flutters a slice across the net. what is it about her game that so captivates the two boys, its aggression or its complexity? is her game already more complete and well-defined and self-aware than it has any right to be from a high school student? or is it raw and untamed and a little wild and so full of potential?

art has a one-handed backhand and uniqlo gear in a very obvious federer allusion, but does he share any more with federer than that? is he particularly prone to rushing the net, especially after the serve? does he want to end points quickly? does he have good hands, is he trying to wrong-foot his opponent - or is he the one constantly getting wrong-footed as the others dance around him? is he constantly trying to assert his dominance, to end points quickly, and initially you think it's a sign of his power and confidence... but then you realise that it's insecurity - he's worried what will happen if they go on too long, if he gives too many chances to other players to outsmart him, if he's uncomfortable playing defence because it makes him feel reactive and weak. maybe in the second set he has to knuckle down and accept the rallies will be long and gruelling - which is a central aspect of tennis, it's about patience and managing risk. maybe he's so tense and nervous that he's just an error machine in the first set, but then he decides to just slow the pace and live with patrick in those forehand to forehand exchanges, let his natural weight of shot do the talking for him and force patrick to change things up

and patrick, with the unorthodox technique and the sleeveless shirts and the money and how he never really grew up - what does that tell us about his tennis? is it rough and energetic, big swings at the ball, layering on more and more spin to propel it high over the net? does he throw a massive forehand at art's backhand, making him hit it at a high point that is naturally uncomfortable for the one handed backhand? wouldn't it be interesting if you had patrick have a strong point to his game that naturally matches up to art's weak point, the chink in the six time grand slam champion's armour? what about the physicality, does he lunge further and harder and throw himself into balls just that little bit more? is he stronger than art, or is he faster, or is he neither? is he driven by instinct and gets in his own way less than art does, or is he tactically more astute and gets the better of art that way?

obviously you can't do all of those things in a film and you shouldn't because it's distracting. but what I'm trying to demonstrate here is that there is a whole range of potential storytelling you can tap into here. now, nobody's actually doing this, and my thing with challengers is that in many ways it came closer to the kind of narratives I would like to see. but then it still falls short just a touch, which is where the frustration comes in

a rivalry has got a history that is woken up again every time you step on court to face your old foe - you remember how they play, you already know what you want to do to beat them this time. you are trying to unsettle them. you know how they want to play and you want to deny them that opportunity. inevitably, any defined play style tells us something about the player and their personality and their approach to the game. the film is quite scarce on details about its lead characters and using the tennis more deftly would've been a great way to give us a stronger sense of who they are in a very economical, concise way. what does it mean for tashi's game that she can no longer run? yes, obviously it means she can't compete any longer, but the injury does different things symbolically depending on how big a part movement was of her game. often, tennis injuries directly affect your strengths. take a player who puts a lot of heavy spin on the ball by snapping their wrist - they are putting more strain on said wrist and may end up injuring it (a particularly terrible part of the body to injure for a tennis player). there's something extra cruel about that because it also affects how they'll recover, if they'll ever be able to trust that body part again. these are career-threatening injuries not just for physical but for psychological reasons. same thing if you're a great server with a shoulder injury... or if you're a great mover with a leg injury

also, and okay this probably did come across as nitpicking and it's not really an issue if it worked for people who aren't familiar with tennis... but omg the last point was so confusing. did check and this wasn't just a me problem, though I'd be curious if it worked for people less familiar with the game. when they came closer and closer to the net and hit back and forth, I thought what was happening was that they'd like, given up competing and were just hitting back and forth as a symbol of defiance or something. that they'd basically decided to stop playing the match and just play with each other. because like, you just can't do that in a match, the point would immediately be over especially if they're just standing there - they're too close! you'd immediately get the ball past! so I only realised when the film was over that it was supposed to be a really intense point... but I think that's the kind of thing where most people watching will probably be fine with it, so again. y'know. whatever. I do think you could have staged that point a little more cleverly to get to the same conclusion in a more natural way, but also. whatever. it's fine

(obviously there are also some other broader suspension of disbelief issues that I'm far less bothered about. the technique was like, not great, but also probably about as good as you'll get from actors, though again I would've liked a little more thought put into what they're doing beyond 'art's got a one handed backhand and patrick's got a quirky serve!' I thought the patrick serve thing was really neat and fun and theoretically you could hit a serve like that, though quite frankly in the men's game you'd probably be fucked because you need more racquet acceleration than that - but that does fit in with his character and the stubbornness and all that so it's fine. the art serve quirk... well, most players deliberately construct serving rituals like bouncing the ball several times or ball placement or whatever because it's the one shot in tennis that's completely 'on your own racquet' but is also really tough, so you're trying to trick your brain into always doing the same thing. I find it a little tough to believe art wouldn't have been aware of what he was doing, but again, not a massive issue. beyond my concerns about the lack of variation in the points they were showing, it did also trip me up whenever they were obviously stranded in no-man's land - you need to be either on/behind the baseline or right at the net and there's certain areas of the court where if you spend too long in them you are very much fucked. the whole concept of 'recovering' after a shot is like, as important part of tennis movement as getting there in the first place, and there's whole footwork patterns you use while you're hitting the shot and immediately afterwards to get yourself in position again. at times they'd just be standing in place in the fuck end of where on earth are you standing until the next shot comes and. listen. it really Does Not Matter beyond how it's fun to be annoying about this stuff but it did make me a bit twitchy)

2

so. match constructions and narrative arcs. I think if a literal match of tennis is the framing device of your film, you should think about the natural narrative tension that exists within a literal match of tennis. again, a match is a conversation, it has its ebbs and flows and peaks and troughs and all that other stuff. you are more tense at *4-5 30:30 than you are at 1-1* 15:0. you are feeling better about your life choices at 6-4 *5-3 than you are at 7-6(8) 0-6 *1-3. you change over the course of a match, as you test yourself physically and mentally and acquire a situationally specific data bank about yourself and the other player, as you notice and learn certain things about what's going on in your own game and your opponent's game. maybe you have a moment where you go 'yup the backhand's a catastrophe today, time to slice everything and hope for the best' or you go 'lol that's the third consecutive djokosmash they've hit, maybe I'll throw the ball high up again next time they get to the net'

also obviously all these things vary over the course of a match - and they do so more than they have any right to! there's no logical reason why 6-1 1-6 6-1 scorelines should happen, but they do! because game breaks and changeovers and set breaks and all of it can represent massive shifts in momentum. you play a *5-0 game differently than a *0-1 game, and suddenly those beautiful forehands you were ripping for half an hour are all flying out of the stadium and, shit, time to change tactics to defend more except now you're really screwed because you're playing your opponent's game. the most important thing to remember about tennis is that it fucking sucks. matches are psychological torture. I want to feel that part when watching the tennis threesome film

the basic mechanism of narrative tension in a match is the serve vs return dynamic. if you serve, you need to protect your serve, because those are the games you are supposed to be winning. if you return, you need to attack the opponent's serve, because those games represent opportunity. you want your service games to be short and fast and you want your return games to be long and tough and miserable for your opponent. and after every game, it ticks back again - you are literally passing the ball to the other side of the court. your turn, have fun!

there are a million different ways you can construct tension on a micro level within a match. you have breakpoints/matchpoints, obviously, which to some extent the film did feature. you have games that just get stuck on deuce, with neither player able to win the requisite two points in a row to release them, so it's like... basically groundhog day in sports as you keep trotting from one side of the court to the other, both players frustrated, one unable to escape the danger and the other unable to seize the opportunity. battle of the wills. games can completely realistically last more than twenty points. obviously you've got tiebreaks, which again the film did feature (though icl I had no clue what the score was supposed to be, again it doesn't matter but). you have the old cliche of 'it's not a break of serve unless you've backed it up' (aka by holding your own serve) and how common it is to be broken straight back for various nasty psychological reasons

I wish they'd played with this a little more, just showed a little more of why the players were reacting emotionally in the way that they were at certain stages of the match - rather than just basically reacting to the flashback we've just seen. like, there's plenty of reasons why a player might get particularly angry at a certain point of a match in a way that just feels a bit more organic. if tennis is the medium through which to explore this three-way relationship, then showcase that push and pull factor, those changes in momentum. the film suggests patrick has always had the upper hand - I'd make more clear this is the classic 'pigeon' dynamic where basically the head to head between two players is more skewed than it has any right to be given how 'good' those two respective players actually are. usually that means there's something funky going on with the play styles or it's something mental or it's an interaction between the two. patrick really cares about art, right, and then he's always able to beat him because he gets him and knows how to mess with him. art has the more raw ability(?) but it takes a bit longer for him to actually realise how good he is, in part because he always lost to patrick

the way they should've done this imo have a place where art does actually choke a sizeable lead, a kind of unexpected switch of momentum. like have this be the first set where art comes in hot and is y'know the obviously better player and all that, but then patrick just increasingly manages to unsettle him. make it a proper bad one, say *5-2 to 5-7. throw in a long deuce game. and then art is confronted with all his old demons again, his inadequacy, all that stuff. and then you've got the momentum switch after the set break when art manages to pull himself together. the thing is, they do actually show a fair bit of the match, but it's not always that interesting because it lacks a little bit of specificity, a little bit of detail... just make a few adjustments that accentuate the central dynamic. you don't have to go with this exactly but go with SOMETHING, 6-2 2-6 is such a nothingburger score lol like what does that tell us... 7-5 1-6 is what it's all about

(dumb nitpick corner: unlikely a time violation would get called between first and second serves, and if you do so then you'd better hand out a time violation if the receiver starts faffing about between points right after, rather than quietly talking to them off-mic. but hey, the establishment is corrupt, they obviously wanted art to win. also, there's a mistake on the scoreboard at the *5-6 game where they accidentally make it look like art is serving for the match at that stage, which would completely change the dynamic of that game and the previous game and the implications if art had let it go to a tiebreak - aka he would have choked. just slightly confused me when the umpire called out 'thirty love' after patrick won the point lol)

3

so maybe this all does come across like I hate the film, which I really did not. I enjoyed it a lot, and honestly it's not like there's much to choose from in terms of 'sports media that seriously engages with the narrative potential of the actual sport'. there were plenty of storytelling details I really vibed with, especially the dynamic between the central three characters and the push and pull between them and how they work as a trio. all three sides of the triangle were good fun. the way the two blokes were so in sync at times, that kind of easy intimacy and familiarity - again, I think you could have expressed that more through actual tennis but that did absolutely work for me

the actual 'playing a challenger before uso' thing was also fun, though I was wondering what his ranking was like because it must have still been kinda in the pits. like, you can't show up to a challenger as a top ten player. not that it actually matters matters but just. whatever. I do think the premise is neat

(though, that challenger audience was not keyed in enough! like omg if you're showing up to some random challenger to watch a top player on the injury comeback try to rack up some wins and the final is against the guy he played doubles with to win a junior slam, everyone watching would be SO aware of it. those spectators aren't just randomly being drawn into the drama, they know what's up!! you just know the challengers tv stream is racking up crazy figures. idk this is obviously more of a subtle thing, but I feel like it was supposed to give off the vibe of the non-tashi viewers being surprised by why they were being such weirdos all of a sudden but nah they would be ON IT with their patrick zweig backstory. including the fact he used to date tashi lol, like yeah they'd Get It)

I loved a lot of tashi's characterisation, how fucking obsessed she was with tennis and how everything was About Tennis for her... like yeah very real!! of course it eats her up!! I had a bit of a debate about this but I personally really liked the college tennis thing because it felt like a complete curve ball given her characterisation. it's good though, this idea that she wants to fool herself into believing she's more than hitting a ball but she's actually not... because of course she isn't.... none of these people are.... I like that element of self-delusion, even though it still... hm, I'm not entirely sure the film COMPLETELY sold me on that level of self-delusion because it was so obvious she didn't care about anything except for tennis... like it never quite felt entirely clear what she thought she was getting from that experience. but yeah, the central premise of it all... like the fact she just can't say goodbye to that world, that she can't really escape it, that she has to pursue something related to it to feel alive, even by proxy, the suspicion that all she needs art for is to have that kind of second hand thrill... really good!!

I was talking about this with the unfortunate recipient of my voice notes, and she's more familiar than I am with american college tennis than I am for the fairly obvious reason that only one of us has attended an american college. she said she'd discussed this with some of her friends and that that kind of injury did feel a touch unrealistic in the context of college tennis, partly because you're less likely to be playing with the kind of schedule that professional tennis requires of you. now, this doesn't really bother me, but I almost wish they'd leaned into the tragedy of it more - that it was unlikely and she didn't even get it while playing professional tennis! she was engaging in this grand act of self-delusion that there was more to her than tennis, which, let's face it, just really isn't a thing when you're a very good junior player, and she got injured before she ever even got close to 'making it'. it's tragic because it should never have happened. whatever injury art picked up (can't remember if they mentioned) would be statistically more likely to actually fuck you over, given their respective ages and time on tour and all that. you don't typically randomly get career ending injuries when you're running for a ball, not if you've trained properly - both in the sense that you're moving 'correctly' on the court and you've developed the muscles to protect yourself (which admittedly she was looking a touch light on). perfectly fine as a narrative choice, lean into it more

the churro college conversation between patrick and art was good, but that's another thing I would've integrated more into the tennis. like, the thing about him actually going for what he wanted and all that? you can do that through tennis! I also kinda wanted more of a sense of what tashi brought to the coaching dynamic, just something very simple and straightforward even the non-tennis viewing audience can understand. again, you've got this fairly obvious federer expy set up going on with art, and the glimpses we got of his game ... I mean mainly the one handed backhand, it does lean towards him being a player that's naturally oriented towards aggression. I would've maybe gone for the whole.... y'know. him not really being able to embrace that, him always holding himself back a little bit, not willing to fully give himself over and throw himself into the game. that tashi kinda has to get him to go for it, to go after the ball, to step into the court and use that technically excellent flat forehand stroke and trust himself to find those angles and rush the net and play the game, rather than letting the game play him. linking that into his loss of motivation post injury, where he feels like he's achieved what he wants to, where maybe he kinda retreats into himself. which is partly a motivation issue but also about trusting yourself post injury... not really being able to go after it in the same way any more, struggling to commit to that kind of aggressive mindset when your heart just isn't it any more. or something! just a thought!!

that's the thing right - sure, tennis might be a relationship, but the tennis will always be a character in its own right in whatever twisted threesome thing they've got going on. at the end of the day, the real toxic relationship is with the tennis! it's sad tashi can't leave it behind, it's tragic she's organising her whole life around something that'll always be lost to her. but it won't ever let her go, even though it hurt her, even though it caused her physical pain as well as emotional. it's the truest love in the whole film, tashi and the game itself, and all other love is subservient to that. it's also the most interesting relationship that needed to be... well, a little more foregrounded. she's always chasing that high, that moment of perfect communication and understanding and all that - and it's an entire lifetime of work, chasing the briefest of moments and now even that is gone. something she won't ever be able to recapture. she can't live her dream and she can't move on, so she is forever trapped, in stasis, frustrated and tormented by desires she can't act upon, the worst kind of repression imaginable. and it's not just about playing tennis in general - it's about playing matches. the height of competition, the moment in the point and in the match in which losing or winning feels like an equal possibility, where anything could happen but only one player will eventually emerge victorious... she's chasing the high of uncertainty, of suspense - the equivalent to showing up to the bedroom of two blokes and knowing anything could happen, not knowing yet what choice she will make, who will win, who will lose. if you really want to get abstract about this, she's essentially functioning as, y'know, the tennis gods with these two boys, where she is the one to make the choice of who wins and who loses. she is the one creating the uncertainty, the suspense. and she's doing it all for the love of the game, because that's all she ever truly loved

or that's what I think they should've gone for idk. I also have a few kinda dumb thoughts like 'ugh I needed more of a sense of what patrick's career looked like, are we talking never made it to the main draw of a 250 or slam quarterfinalist because both are plausible'. but anyway I think narratives in sports are neat and I wish more people did stuff like challengers did, even if I think I was just looking for something a little different from what that film was doing. you do kinda need somebody who's really into sports to do some of this stuff I feel, but. well. sports rivalries really is a bit of a tragically under-explored storytelling set up. they're good narratives. somebody write them

[muninnhuginn]

Hi...if you don't mind, can I ask something from Link Click? What do you think are Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang’s greatest personality strengths and weaknesses? Why? What do you love about their dynamic? Sorry if you've answered these questions before.....

P.s

If you don't mind me ask (again), can I also ask your top fav characters and fav moments from the series (Link Click)...? Thanks if you want to answer....

Hi! Sorry for taking so long to getting around to answer this, but thanks for the ask. I do like getting the chance to ramble about this stuff, so this was a good opportunity.

I've put these answers below a cut because it got quite long. I also struggled a bit to differentiate between strengths and weaknesses, just because for these characters, a lot of their strengths are *also* their weaknesses.

Cheng Xiaoshi

Cheng Xiaoshi's most immediate strength to me is how he uses his empathy to connect with other people and his willingness to see the good in people, despite how others have hurt him in the past. This trait is part of what attracted Lu Guang towards him, and the dives are only possible because Cheng Xiaoshi chooses to put his trust in Lu Guang.

And in contrast to Lu Guang, Cheng Xiaoshi is very able to think outside the box and improvise. He suggested the trick in the season one finale to lure out the culprit as well as the photo-switch trick at the theatre in season two, to give two examples.

In terms of weaknesses, he has a tendency towards denial. This is most obvious with him clinging to the idea that his parents will return, but also colours some of his interactions with Lu Guang. This may err somewhat towards headcanon, but to me, there are times where Lu Guang is unreasonable in his requests during dives or withholds information to Cheng Xiaoshi's detriment and Cheng Xiaoshi just lets him do it until he's pushed past his breaking point (earthquake arc and the dive where he realises he was "responsible" for Emma's death). Cheng Xiaoshi not pushing back against Lu Guang in these cases would make sense from the perspective of Cheng Xiaoshi not really having anyone else. He has Qiao Ling, who's essentially family, but even she points out that Lu Guang is his first "proper" friend, and so Cheng Xiaoshi doesn't want to lose him.

And this next one is both a strength and weakness depending on the situation, but Cheng Xiaoshi is very unwilling to give up, even when it's obvious to everyone that there's no way out. We see it time and again: his belief about his parents; trying to rescue Chen Xiao's mum; the entire Liu Siwen dive (he was very much aligned with his host here); trying to change the past with Emma; even with the secret recipe of the noodles. We see him fail more than we see him succeed, but the fact that he holds onto his hope regardless has clearly made an impact on those around him and allowed him to succeed where others would have been unable to.

Weakness again, but he's very impulsive - not as bad as people think he is, but it is a weakness. Think of how he dove into his second Emma dive and only succeeded in traumatising himself. He can hold himself back when he believes it's necessary (see: refusing to immediately jump back and "save" Lu Guang in early season two), but generally speaking, his choice whether to jump for it or hold back comes down to which direction the emotional resonance is blowing. When he refused to dive back to save Lu Guang, it was because he held Lu Guang's words in his head, but at the same time, when he was possessing Lu Guang during the hospital loop and thought he may be able to change things in that instance, he immediately tried to change the past.

Doesn't actually share much about himself in the present day. This is technically a neutral trait, but when you consider his history with being fairly isolated and look at how nearly everything we learn about him we find out through other sources it starts to explain some things. Some more headcanony spec, but we know he struggled to make connections because of his history and so it would make sense that he's just *stopped talking about it* entirely (especially when you factor in his denial about his parents). He never actually sits down and tells anyone about his parents or his childhood. We as the audience only learn that through Qiao Ling or through parallels to the people he's possessing.

Lu Guang

Strength: He clearly has a mind for planning and is very observant as we can see when he directs dives. He is *very* detail-oriented (and this is starting to sound vaguely like a CV).

Another strength: devotion. I know I said that Cheng Xiaoshi is unwillling to give up at times, but Lu Guang has definitely taken a leaf out of his book with his impossible quest. It's clear that Cheng Xiaoshi's mindset has inspired Lu Guang, for better or for worse.

The other side of devotion: controlling tendencies! It's easy to see where his mindset comes from, but his need to control every single variable often ends up backfiring on him. Lu Guang thinks that if he can hold all the information then Cheng Xiaoshi will have to follow his lead and he can take them both to safety. But Lu Guang's own perspective is limited. The most successful dives we see in the series are ones where Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi are able to actually combine their approaches (see: Chen Bin dive, season one finale dive where they're able to corner the culprit with Cheng Xiaoshi's plan). So by locking out Cheng Xiaoshi, he both alienates him and he makes it harder to succeed, because for all Lu Guang is a planner, he still loses the forest for the trees at times. He's so focused on his one path that he neglects any other options.

Linked to this: unwillingness to open up to others - somewhat mitigated by showing his care through actions well enough that Cheng Xiaoshi and Qiao Ling can both tell he's not just cold, but he still refuses to use his words. And that refusal to properly communicate is what creates the most discord between him and Cheng Xiaoshi. I don't think the series will fully go down this route, but the current trajectory has Lu Guang pushing Cheng Xiaoshi away rather than letting him in in a misguided attempt to save him, when to succeed they both need to work *together*.

Dynamic

I think my favourite part of the dynamic is their synergy when they're actually on the same page. And the way they can generally intuit stuff about each other without it needing to be said. That said, I do want to see where they head with *trust*. Because season one tests Cheng Xiaoshi's trust in Lu Guang and they eventually come to an understanding, but there's still so much that's been left unaddressed. And as long as Lu Guang doesn't fully put his trust in Cheng Xiaoshi, Cheng Xiaoshi is yet again left in the dark. We've seen through various other parallel relationships (season two with the twins, with Liu Xiao and Li Tianchen, etc) that shiguang's dynamic can very easily turn twisted. And if they don't fix things soon, they could just as easily end up with the same bad ends.

Top favourite characters

This has to be between either Lu Guang or Cheng Xiaoshi, purely because they're given the most characterisation to work with. After season one, Cheng Xiaoshi definitely had the most material, but season two has evened it up somewhat and saddled Lu Guang with one of my favourite tropes (looper), so yeah, now it's rather hard to choose. I am hoping season three gives more to Qiao Ling, but as of season two, she's still hopelessly outmatched by the other two in this respect, alas.

Favourite moments

Tbh, I think I have two main candidates for this.

The first moment is in the earthquake arc where Cheng Xiaoshi confronts Lu Guang about implying they would be able to save Chen Xiao's mum. It's the first time we see Cheng Xiaoshi genuinely angry at Lu Guang and it's such a layered interaction, especially rewatching post-season two. Lu Guang stands by his line about not changing the past but physically doesn't defend himself and eventually Cheng Xiaoshi runs out of steam, but they don't actually reconcile at this stage. It's also potentially an interesting preview of how things could spin out for them when Cheng Xiaoshi finds out that Lu Guang hasn't only betrayed his trust, but also his *own* so-called ideals.

The second is fairly predictable, but I'd choose the scene where it's confirmed that Lu Guang had travelled back at the end of season two. There's something different between suspecting it may be the case and actually seeing it *confirmed*, you know? Especially because one of the reasons the idea appealed a lot to me was the hypocrisy inherent in the premise that Lu Guang was diving back to save Cheng Xiaoshi. He spends so long in the series saying not to try altering the past, even when it means other characters have to stay dead, so for him to do so for Cheng Xiaoshi really makes you re-examine his character. And the "reveal" scene actually *acknowledged* that hypocrisy outright. Having Lu Guang be aware he's breaking his own rules is such a good way of doing it. (Plus, stepping back a minute, but the way the colours shift between the warmth of the 'present' vs the cold darkness of Lu Guang's past/future? The use of blood spatter on Lu Guang, who's usually considered more fastidious than Cheng Xiaoshi? It makes you *feel* that this is a timeline where something went wrong

[crescentfool]

on spoiler tags

since reload is coming out soon, i wanted to give people some heads up for tags i'll be using as a courtesy. please curate your experience accordingly! if you haven't used the mute feature, here's how to 👍

i will continue to use #persona 3 for all posts related to p3 (it's my main tag)

for posts about reload specifically, i'll be using #persona 3 reload, but it might also be worthwhile to mute the abbreviations #p3r and #p3re.

for the people who don't know anything about p3, i will attempt to tag spoilers for p3's events as #persona 3 spoilers but i cannot guarantee that i will remember to do so...

i hope everyone enjoys their experience with the game! i will still post here occasionally, but in general i'll be steering clear of socmed until i'm finished with reload.

tangentially related- i expect splatoon 3's side order dlc to come out during this time. all stuff related to that dlc will be tagged with #side order and will also be tagged as #splatoon (main tag)

thank you for your time! enjoy gaming, and remember to drink water 🥤

[axemetaphor]

finally made the tutorial for the axe metaphor jacket panel! i'll post the ideation sketch i did in CSP next. the video is fully subtitled in english. check description for full materials list

[lady-harrowhark]

PSA/reminder: after today (9/13) I won't be tagging for the third book on reblogs any longer, given that it's the one year anniversary of the release (happy birthday to the most deserving girl in the world!!!!)

HOWEVER

I will still be tagging for the series as a whole, and

I will tag for bonus content for a bit (idk what the consensus is with regard to a reasonable timeline for that? Open to discussion lol)

[shadowedresolve]

also. should i make a persona 5 oc. place ur votes now. more details in the tags so if you're interested, i'd appreciate your input!

[i-will-change-this-someday]

Okay, so this has been bothering me for a while now, and I haven’t seen anyone else say it; so I’m going to put an opinion out there and say that Martin and Melanie annoyed me in MAG 199.

(This is also a bit of an analysis of the episode.)

(just so you know, this is very long.)

So first of I should say that I 100% agree with Jon, that they should have trapped The Fears in their world; so just know I’m probably being, at least a bit, biased about it. (not saying killing the world is good)

I think the best way to do this is to start from the beginning of the episode and work my way through it, giving criticism as I go.

It starts with them avoiding the question until Georgie decides they need to talk about it; this is just a minor nitpick, and maybe I misunderstood what he was saying, but Martin says this:

Then later he goes on to say this:

So which is it, Martin? Is it up to Jon or not?

Anyway, then there’s this little exchange:

I know why Martin is so against it, but this just seems a bit obstinate; like I get it, he’s scared of Jon losing himself to The Eye, but you really want to go with The Web’s plan? You know, The Web, the manifestation of manipulation, the malevolent Fear entity, that Web? You want to go with that plan? Really?

And at least Martin has the excuse of caring about Jon, but Melanie? Why is she so against Jon’s plan? Is it really just because she hates him that much? The only possible reason I can think could be that she thinks that Jon will be selfish and prolong others suffering because she knew that he once hid the fact that he took Statements from random people, but even then, I don’t think even Melanie hates him that much.(Considering the fact that she didn’t actually think he murdered anyone, I don’t think she hates him as much as she says)

Next up, Georgie’s trying to talk out all their options and asks Jon about how The Fears will get out:

Martin is, once again, being obstinate here; he is out right refusing to even consider Jon’s plan, making any excuse to go with The Web’s plan.

Georgie reiterates their options so far:

Martin, you just said thousands of worlds don’t matter “cosmically speaking” by your own logic they should keep The Fears contained; because if thousands of worlds aren’t “even a drop in the bucket” then their world is hardly even a molecule.

Melanie’s in denial or something, because any reality with The Fears, even if it never gets to full blown apocalypse, is doomed; did she forget all the horrible things happening in their world before the apocalypse?

They have the little blame conversation, then Georgie gets to the third option:

Martin’s just agreeing to any option that Jon doesn’t take over the panopticon; he doesn’t care if their world dies or a thousand others do, he just doesn’t want Jon to go to the panopticon.

Then they consider the morality of five people deciding the fate of the world, leading to this conversation:

Despite what Martin says, yes, he is okay with thousands more suffering where he can’t hear; the excuse of saying it’ll be like before the apocalypse makes it sound like their world was good before. Their world was full of horrors before, where people could get eaten by monsters just for having bad luck, and Martin’s okay with giving that to thousands of other worlds.

I’ll put the rest of this conversation in before I continue:

I put (mostly) the whole thing because I wanted the full context, this is the main thing I wanted to talk about; so they're debating if their world is The Fears original world or not. Would killing them here kill them for good? yes, and if they thought it over longer they would have realized it; Melanie and Martin are arguing that The Fears were in their world for centuries before they managed a ritual, but now it knows how to make a successful ritual and escape it. what's to stop it from preforming a ritual, waiting for it to start running dry, then leaving to a new reality? (I say "it" because The Fears are one entity [kinda] with The Web as it's brain)

Melanie is victim-blaming thousands of other people to justify sending The fears to them; "if a apocalypse happens to them it's their fault they couldn't outsmart the embodiment of manipulation, so lets follow said embodiment of manipulation's plan, yeah?

(As a side note, one thing that confuses me is why they think The Fears can go to so many worlds, do they mean at once? Will The Fears multiply? Because how would they get to multiple worlds at once, they need to be together, that's why the rituals never worked, it had to be all of them. I always assumed it meant it could hop from one world and then the next when that one got dry. [like a spider on a web, it can travel between each point, but it can't be everywhere at once])

Jon puts the idea of killing the world faster out there:

No, they'll actually have less of a chance, cause now The Web knows what to do. Basira doesn't want to hear Jon justify killing their world but will justify sending the same circumstances to thousands of other worlds.

That's basically the end of the discussion, next is Georgie talking to Jon:

At the very least, Georgie knew that Jon wasn't going to follow the plan. I don't think it's a coincidence that she takes the lighter and immediately follows with an apology; Also she admits Jon couldn't outsmart The Web and it led to the apocalypse, but still goes along with it's plan. (Maybe she just accepts they shouldn't bother trying to outsmart it.)

and now to Martin and Jon's conversation

I kinda do Martin.

(Others have talked about Martin crushing Jon's flowershop/barista fantasy, so I'm not going to talk about it.)

Martin just annoys me in this scene to be honest "well, Jon, you promised not to do anything stupid; oh, and look, here's a plan given to us on silver platter by, none other than, The Web, you know, the one who caused this and traumatized you since you were 8, yeah lets do that. Don't worry Jon, we'll fix this...pass it on? Don't be silly Jon, I'm sure The Web gave us this plan out of the goodness of it's nonexistent heart."

Anyways I'll wrap this up in a minute, but first, one last thing:

I've seen others say this, but why would Martin killing Jonah stop Jon from taking his place? Especially if Jon's standing 10 feet away; if the idea is that whoever kills Jonah will take his place then Martin would just become the very thing he thinks Jon will turn into. And if you think it's because Martin's not tied to The Eye, you'd be wrong, Martin being tied to The Eye is the whole reason Peter wanted Martin to kill Jonah in season 4. If anyone should kill Jonah, it'd be Georgie because she's the only one not tied to The Eye.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying that any of this is bad; I just haven't seen anyone talk about it. I'm not saying that the others were wrong for choosing The Web's plan, (ok, maybe I am a little) it's not like I have to decide the fate of my, and many other's, world(s).

I just feel like I've seen a lot of people hold the other characters up on a pedestal while Jon's idea is regarded as the worse possible thing out there (again, not saying his idea was good, just the best out of bad options.)

And just so you know, I'm not saying Martin is selfish for wanting Jon to be safe, I'm mostly just annoyed that he hides it under the guise of caring about humanity (No, I'm not saying he doesn't care about humanity, just that he'd rather "save" Jon than consider the consequences of releasing The Fears) and most people take it at face value.

I have a lot more I could say about the morality of all the characters, but that's another post, if you actually read this whole thing, then congratulations, for sitting through my very long, hopefully intelligible, post. (I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on the episode [or this post])

[fivefeetfangirl]

Why faith!dean is fake 😔

Me (and probably all of you) before: yeah the water and electricity, that makes sense.

Well- apparently it doesn't! Thanks to @opheliathegreekgoddess for explaining hjsdhsd sorry for taking so long to get it

So quick recap: Dean is sitting in the water, the monster stands in the water and Dean electrocutes it with some sort of taser/stun gun. The electricity goes through the monster, into the water, and then into Dean (and his heart it seems, according to the doctor in the next scene).

Most of us know electricity through water is dangerous, which it is, but it doesn't make sense here.

The short answer to why it wouldn't work: a taser gun usually has two "outputs". Like a battery, a plus side and a minus side (see picture). So the electric current goes from one of the outputs, into the body (here, the monster's) and then back into the other output.

So like, you're not supposed to be able to get electrocuted by a taser. A taser with only one output sounds kinda illegal, I doubt it would be easy to find one. (No, I don't think Dean would be able to make one, sorry).

BUT if he did indeed have a taser with only one output! He would still not get electrocuted...

So, for those of you who don't know, electricity loooveeess the ground. That's literally the place it wanna be, give it the quickest way to the ground and you'll bet it will take that road.

When Dean electrocutes the monster (with the imaginary taser lol) the electricity goes from the gun, to the monster's chest and then travels down the monster's body into the ground. The electricity literally has no business going back up from the ground/water all the way up to Dean's heart.

There is no way the electricity would take that road cause it's the slowest one!! He might not even get a bit of shock cause there's no need for the electricity to travel in the water when the monster is standing on the ground.

There could've been lots of other fun ways to electrocute Dean tho, maybe Sam did it (👀), maybe Dean could've been touching the monster, lying underneath him so the current would have to go through Dean to get to the ground, etc etc.

[paper--moons]

Hello hello I’m really sorry to bother you!! This isn’t necessarily a request but more of a question!! Do you headcannons for if a character was a caregiver with a age Reddit partner?? Thank you!

Ah, I promise it's no bother at all to pop in and ask questions! Everyone is always welcome to ask whatever questions they might have of me.

And to answer yours, I do write caregiver posts for characters but it isn't something that gets requested as often; typically I tend to receive requests for characters being regressors, or requests for a specific match-up of Character A as the regressor and Character B as the caregiver. If you'd like to check out an example of a cg post that I've done that doesn't have a specified regressor, you can check out this one here and hopefully that gives you a better idea of what my cg posts are like than any rambling here might haha. However I should clarify that I don't write xReaders! Nothing wrong with it of course, just a personal preference. I've attempted it before, but it makes me anxious to do as I feel like it cannot perfectly encapsulate what the requestor wants to "experience".

So yes, I hope that answers your question! 🌙

[sinfulhares]

hi!! i love your art!! im curious, what software do you use to animate? those animatons are really cool and adorable!

hello, thank you so much!! <3 I use Clip Studio Paint to make drawings with different parts on different layers, then I use Adobe After Effects to animate it

I actually made a simple animation tutorial here!