#gryrr.txt

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie made a lot of minor changes that imo, cumulatively, changed how some of the themes hit

I think one of the most jarring was the Capitol students, and how, placed side by side, the film portrayed Coriolanus as sympathetic, and even decent. That he is somehow “smarter”, takes action compared to a lot of the Capitol students, and even somehow shows more empathy. And he definitely isn’t in the book

First, Arachne’s death. This one is maybe a little more forgiving since Snow’s duplicitous nature is hard to translate on-screen, but still minor changes made some striking differences in characterization. When Arachne is killed in the film, Snow jumps into action, being the first to go to Arachne’s aid, and tries to keep her alive. Whereas in the book, he pretty much shakes in his boots before Lucy Gray shocks him into action, and even then, he’s nearly more concerned with his reputation on camera than Brandy’s nor Arachne’s death.

And then, Clemensia. The academic-focused Asian. In the film, she’s depicted as too greedy for success, butting her way into Coriolanus’ assignment when he gets Dr. Gaul’s attention. When she tries to take the credit for Coriolanus’ work, she “rightfully” gets what she deserves when she’s bit for lying

In the book, she’s more forgivable. She’s distraught over Arachne’s death and doesn’t think that Dr. Gaul would still be expecting the assignment, which both her and Snow were voted into, instead of her volunteering for it. She lies so that it doesn’t look like she’s “feeble”, and doesn’t even hog the credit. Still, for this lie, she gets six mutated and highly poisonous snake bites (and not just the one like in the film lol). In the book, you see her left isolated in her suffering and her body gaining snake mutations from the side effects, even with the quickly administered antidote. It’s such a disproportionate punishment for a pretty harmless action, and shows Dr. Gaul’s unjustifiable ruthlessness

Lastly—and they did her a downright disservice—is Lysistrata. In the film, she’s practically an afterthought. When Jessup’s revealed to have contracted rabies, it is Coriolanus who has to force her to action. He pleads for her to send water to scare him off and that he’s “practically dead”, and precious moments are lost to Lysistrata’s indecision as Jessup chases Lucy Gray, shouting, accusing, “what have you done to me!”

In the book, while she has relatively minor role, it’s still a significant one, especially when you foil her with other students like Arachne, Sejanus, and Coriolanus himself. She’s intelligent, and compassionate. While she’s not as vocal as Sejanus from the start, she voices her opinion against war during discussions, and openly shows her gratitude after Jessup saves her life. She quickly realizes that water is needed to scare Jessup (who in the book seems more dazed, zigzagging into Lucy Gray’s direction, but nonetheless dangerous) and sends so unprompted. She‘s more or less composed, but sheds a tear over his death, and is one of the very first to acknowledge the tributes as human beings.

When you add up all of these differences together, I wouldn’t say Coriolanus’ arc in the film falls in parallel to the books. In the film, Snow is kind of a “good egg” (especially compared to his Capitol-born classmates, who’re either power-hungry, oblivious, or meek to a fault)

In the book, he was never such an outlier. He was never more empathetic than his Capitol-born classmates. But he hung on to the worst parts of himself (the hunger for power, the ruthlessness), and that’s what made him devolve to the President Snow we know in THG

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To add to this post:

Looking at halflings in dunmeshi, who mature at 14 and have a life expectancy at around 50, Chilchuck could very much be middle-aged, the equivalent of 40 to 60 for IRL humans. It lines up with his behavior (drinking, demanding respect despite his young looks, etc.) and life experiences (divorced with adult children)

Since dunmeshi also leaves tall-men’s life expectancy to be about 60 years old, we could even assume that 50 is the older end of middle age if halflings, like tall-men, tend to die before they reach old age the way they did in the medieval period

So Chilchuck is an adult both to dunmeshi’s canon standards (14 years old to 50+) and IRL standards (18/21 to 70+)

The “she’s a 1000 year old dragon”? Only holds up to IRL standards. The oh she’s 18, she’s legal standard. But considering how they tend to blur the lines with the way she behaves, it’s usually unclear if she’s actually an adult by dragon standards. Yes she’s 1000 years old, but what if the age of majority is 3000? That part specifically is what makes it dubious. They never hold her to her in-canon species’ standards, but IRL humans

Dunmeshi loves to poke fun at exactly this, these age differences due to varying lifespans, maturation rates, and consequently differing perceptions. When Chilchuck announces his age, it’s surprising because it’s way older than the audience would expect (he looks like a teenager) but also Marcille and Senshi immediately hold his age to their species’ standards. Elves have an average lifespan of 500 while dwarves' is 200, so by their standards 29 is still an immature kid (sure enough, Senshi looked to be 11-14 y/o when he was actually 36), which Chilchuck does not act like

a BIG part of the lore of Dungeon Meshi is how ageism is bad. About how the long lived races treat the young lived races like children and thus infantilize them and do not show them the respect and understanding they deserve simply because of their looks or short life spans. Whether its because to them they look like children in their eyes (like half foots and gnomes) or because the adult ages of the younger lived races are still in the child ages for the longer lived ones and so they get treated/viewed as children (we see otta receive comments about getting with minors when in reality she dated adult half foot women. so we already see this view towards things like this are a thing in the lore) We see this with chilchuck, senshi, and marcille where the two later view chilchuck as a child and treat him like one even though he is a full grown man who drinks (and is supposed to have grey hairs) all because he looks young and in the newest episode its revealed he is 29 which is still young children to the two of them. We see how perspectives that characters are children because of their age being a childs age for a different race as opposed to their race or because they look like children is a completely infantilizing and disrespectful behavior that causes so many problems in the long run. a theme that is completely flying over the average tumblr users head.

ive seen people get furious at other people because they sexualize chilchuck and even marcille

“oh they look like kids so dont do that you freak”

you absolute fool you missed a major theme of the fucking story. But because they look young suddenly they are children? have you paid no attention to the story? did you just ignore how the ageisim and weird mindset about ages like that causes so many issues that could easily have been avoided. and as for the age one i see people getting furious at others for being into and sexualizing izutsumi even though she is a year past adult in tall man years, but because she isnt in the adult age range in real life (wild your applying real life society standards to a fictional medieval fantasy world). even though even in lore she would be well an adult able to get married and everything tumblr really does have the media literacy of a toddler.

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First reaction: hmm this dude kinda gay huh

Literally look at that stance

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Edit because reblog wont let me upload a video:

Any doubt has been removed

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Wtf Castti’s Chapter 3 goes so hard I didn’t expect that at all

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Finished Blue Eye Samurai. Some thoughts, especially on the trans allegory

I actually really expected to like this a lot, so I’m a little bummed that I didn’t actually love it like I wanted to but have complicated feelings about it

If you’re trans masc and dysphoric, I recommend skipping some scenes because you definitely get a full eyeful of Mizu. Which, yeah, a lot of that basically felt like, look! She’s a woman!! Not a man! She’s got breasts and everything

(More on this under the cut + major spoilers)

And if you combine that with the “official” story where the mother who raised her forced her to always “look like a boy” because the “bad men will be looking for a girl”, you get the impression that she’s a cis woman who was forced to be a man for survival. Except I just don’t see that, personally. Just seeing it from a trans perspective—heck, even a cis one—where is the dysphoria? If she was a woman, we don’t really ever see her distressed about dressing as a boy and looking like one. We don’t see her really mourning the loss of her hair or even trying to explore her femininity (appearance-wise) when she begins to hit puberty. You don’t see her comparing herself to other girls and seeing what she “could have had”

Nah, when they start developing breasts, they start binding with bandages and that’s such a trans masc media staple you can’t help but snort. When Mizu gets a husband and becomes a wife, you don’t even see her use that newfound freedom to explore “finally being a woman”. You don’t see her awe at her new silhouette with the more feminine hairstyle and kimono. The most you see is her trying to learn to cook (which, still, is a stretch since that is more her trying to fulfill wife duties), letting down her hair, and having sex with a man with her tits out and all (more of the tits out, frankly, but how much of that is her being a woman vs the show’s addiction to showing boobs).

Also, while you do eventually see Mizu as a “wife”, as properly as she can be, I can’t help but think it looks so… awkward. On her. With the odd-looking makeup and the still-masculine-looking torso covered by a feminine kimono, I can’t help but think she resembles many of my butch and trans masc friends who have been forced into makeup and a dress. Who lower the cinch on their waist down to their hips or flatten their chest to emulate a more masculine silhouette until it looks a little goofy, and like you’re forcing a square peg into a round hole. And that Mizu looks infinitely more comfortable in their own skin as a very male-passing rogue samurai. But maybe I’m just projecting hard

But laying all these side-by-side make it a pretty confusing picture. Freaking Nimona was a more straightforward trans allegory and the character in question is not even human

If I had to conclude anything, though, just based on my opinion, I wouldn’t say Mizu is cis. But maybe not strictly a trans man either. While they do bind, it’s not suggested to be because of any dysphoria reasons—in fact it might be pure practicality. I mean, imagine posing as a man with your chest out in full view or doing all those epic fights without a sports bra. Basically, agreed with other posts that Mizu is probably just very disconnected to gender. Man or woman, they don’t care. Revenge comes first, after all. Gender crisis is further down the ladder of priorities

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Finally playing the Ryutaro case, and I love how basically everyone’s agreed that he’s a handsome dude

And yea, I can definitely see him as the smart pretty boy archetype in anime. Just look at him!

Also, I definitely see Rei leaning to bisexual. She’s so into Ryutaro that I think she could get a butch girlfriend in the future lol

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Running through my list in OT2, and just finished Temenos (I can finally take him off my party now lmao) and Agnea’s final chapters

Maybe my Temenos was overleveled while Agnea was under but I actually found Agnes’s chapter boss harder. It was way trickier.

Fight spoilers + party info under cut

I had to play 3 members who could technically be healers to keep my party alive since she kept on taking away members (crowd taking em away, Love’s Marionette kma) or literally not letting my dps do damage with Stage Etiquette (bc of this Hikari was too squishy for me lol)

My party:

Agnea (dancer/thief)

Temenos (cleric/armsmaster)

Castti (apothecary/cleric)

Partitio (merchant/arcanist)

I found it was a lot easier with Castti (apothecaries take the W yet again) since Dolcinaea has a lot of moves that buff her or gives status ailments to your party. So at least two of my party members could: heal HP, heal party status ailments, buff my team and/or debuff Dolcinaea

Then Temenos or Agnea (All Together Now + Ruinous Break or HP Thief helped a lot lol) for quick breaks, and ofc Partitio would help in a pinch as BP donor, Seal of Diffusion + Rest/Seal of Immortality in case she’d have three big moves in a row

Took way longer than ideal though since Temenos was my only actual DPS, and when she sealed his moves I was forced to just survive and spam overheals (Sealticge Seduction + Prayer for Plenty) so I could time the break for when his offensive moves were available again

Way trickier than Kaldena imo. Even Phase 2 Kaldena seemed more straightforward, and I found it was easy to avoid taking damage with Partitio’s Seal of Diffusion + Sidestep and any status ailments just needed Rest

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What was goddam real about Bojack Horseman is how awkward af things can get and how people don’t know what to say or spill out all the wrong things

The characters might even say or do the right thing, but the person takes it completely wrong. But that’s cuz they’re imperfect too. And people are sensitive about things others don't know about

I like Todd’s iconic line of “you are all the things wrong with you”. It’s clear by that episode that it’s a line that really hurts Bojack, and in the next few seasons it’s because he desperately wants to believe he is a good person deep down. He wants to stay close to Diane because she consistently believes he could be better, while Todd lowers his expectations of Bojack in order to not be disappointed. Which isn’t what Bojack wants to hear

I know there are some people not happy with that line because it feels like he’s confirming Bojack’s fears that he cannot change, that he’ll forever be evil because of the horrible things he’s done, that he’ll always be this because, as Beatrice says it, he was “born broken”. And that might be what Bojack took from it, but Todd is still right in saying that Bojack doesn’t get to feel shitty and think that makes everything better. That he needs to start changing his behavior if he really wanted forgiveness

Obviously it’s not the best articulated, but that’s because it’s Todd who’s saying that. Besides the fact that Todd is not the most articulate person himself—he rambles, has a really roundabout way of saying things, has a hard time finding the right phrase or word—Todd‘s a little vindictive. He keeps track of how people wronged him. Todd was still fresh from the revelation about Emily. He was angry and rightfully felt betrayed, and the entire scene was him lashing out on Bojack as much as it was him reprimanding him to do better as a friend. And it just so happens that line hit Bojack right where it hurts

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I got yeeted back into Naruto, but I've been so bored but busy that I'm cheating at old games for fun now

Meet my team

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Temari should've had more canon appearances smh

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Thinking that Sally Jackson in TLT has always had some control and she showed that in subtle ways. She keeps Gabe close, placates him, caters to his whims. But uses the wiggle room she has to make it as good of a life as she can for her son—the blue food, the getaway to Montauk. All of those served her purpose: a life under the monster radar. She’s kind of stuck without an exit strategy, left in this miserable limbo of an abusive marriage, but while Gabe has had such an oppressive presence, he’s always been eating from the palm of her hands

The Medusa head in this case is the exit strategy. The power she regains and the tool needed to stand up to that oppressive presence and finally, finally escape that limbo. Because she no longer needs him. Percy knows what he is, has found Camp, and is being taught how to defend himself, so he can live a good life. She no longer has to keep quiet, to roll over in order give him that good life, so she pays that back to Smelly Gabe tenfold and reaps her reward

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Going thru my Octopath 2 final chapter list anddd… Temenos, Agnea, Partitio, Castti, and Hikari, done

I think I’m definitely overlevelled now cuz Castti and Hikari’s bosses were very easy lol. The boss HP is definitely not enough anymore compared to the damage that my Hikari can dish out (and I still can’t do any 99,999 either)

(Complaints & spoilers for Hikari’s story under the cut)

I can see some of the criticism about Hikari’s story in that the stakes for Hikari’s internal conflict (Dark Hikari) is pretty meh. As one YouTuber put it, you don’t really feel the danger of Hulk if you never see Bruce Banner Hulk out (or something like that). The closest we get to any “consequences” of Dark Hikari is when it comes out when he’s a kid and was ambushed, but even then it just doesn’t hit very well, imo. Yes, his mother died, but you can blame that on Mugen and the bandits. Rai Mei’s brother didn’t even die from Dark Hikari directly like I initially expected, but rather Mugen himself

Also I still haven’t finished the very final chapter, but Hikari’s story is rather unfinished? Or maybe I’ve just missed something. But at the very start of Hikari’s story, you’re told that the clan is “cursed”, and it’s implied that Dark Hikari is what they mean by this, and this is something Hikari shared with Mugen. Now, by the end of Hikari’s Chapter 5, I’m left to read between the lines, and I’m assuming that if Dark Hikari had won that battle and possessed him, you’d basically get what Mugen is now. Meaning that the current Mugen is Dark Mugen who had taken over

If that was what they were going for, then I could see how that would add to the stakes of Hikari’s conflict with Dark Hikari, and the importance of not giving an inch. Maybe it was lost in the translation as well. But as it is, if that was what they were going for, I feel like the hints were way too subtle. They never show a Mugen before the bloodthirsty version we see, for instance, so we have nothing to compare it to. We see how his rants and philosophy are very nearly the same as Dark Hikari, but that’s all we’re going on. Without Mugen’s internal thoughts nor contextual info on how he was like before, we just can’t say for sure

Also, I hope we get more lore info on the Ku Clan’s cursed blood, because I have questions. It’s pretty much suggested throughout Hikari’s storyline that it is not normal, and I definitely wanna know how that came to be. I just hope it’s addressed by the final chapter cuz any lore relevance to that would be really interesting

Will save my thoughts on Castti’s final chapter for another post. At least now I only have three travelers’ (Throné, Osvald, Ochette) final chapters left to do

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The second actual trial was something… but wtf that verdict was such bs. He shouldn’t have gotten a not guilty, should’ve been pronounced a mistrial, what??

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Genshin’s Fontaine AA shtick might be counterproductive cuz I’m now inclined to ditch the whole game and binge TGAA right now

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I’ve seen this so freaking much on memes I wouldn’t have guessed this is what happened

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I can’t fucking believe Walter White is pulling the they’re just somewhere far farrrr away on a twenty-five-year-old man, Jesus