#i dont sympathise with people who feel killing animals is good

[theskyexists]

Yeah. A curious cognitive dissonance stretching back thousands of years...

I have been a sheep caretaker for like two days and already I'm like. Wow. I get it.

I get why these were some of the earliest mammals to ever be domesticated. They look up to humans with this sort of dumb but all at once innocent and pure and trusting expression. They're happy to see you. They follow you around. They like to be rubbed under their chins. Maybe its just some latent Scottish highland shepherd DNA I still have in me but I look at my sheep charges and suddenly I see why the love of God for humanity is so often described as a shepherd and his sheep. I'd fight a wolf for these guys. I'd go way the Hell out of my way for them. I'd carry their young for miles on my own back.

[mrsstampede]

So I have thoughts on tlou2 I need to get out.

I haven’t finished watching the game but i've seen enough to feel a certain way Spoiler warning for those who haven't finished the game.

I genuinely cannot understand the logic behind the sequence of the game. Joel is murdered by Abby about an hour into the game. We get to play Abby for a short amount of time before it happens but at no point during that time are we made to feel anything for her. It's far too short of a time for us to care about her. Yet ND expects us to later feel conflicted about her actions.

We’re not stupid. We understand why Abby wanted Joel dead. The thing is we as players/viewers have years of attachment to Joel. We have bonded with him and care for him. So them expecting us to care about his killer just because they show us her life before she killed Joel and force the player to play as her is ridiculous.

The players view and feelings for Abby are tainted an hour into the game.Then you play as Ellie getting revenge, which imo is fine, I personally have no problems with a revenge story. Anyway you go through all this shit with Ellie, you take out these people who want Ellie dead, even before she kills anyone btw. We see the people who helped kill Joel and they’re assholes. So once again we see them as villains. Why shouldn't I cheer Ellie on?(besides the obvious of the effects it take on Ellie and her life)

Again I get there motivations but like Ellie says at one point, they're out to kill anyone who shows up in there area, not even making sure people aren’t in need of help. They are not exactly coming off as the nicest. They come off as bad guys yet were later asked to see them as people who are just like Ellie. They were wronged by Joel and so they seek out revenge. Its simple but it really isnt that easy. Even if them being standoffish is logical in this world people will still always associate the bad guys as the ones who kill anyone without giving them a chance. 

How many villains become villains because of revenge and are simply bad guys. Giving them a motivation isnt enough to make them interesting and much less make them sympathetic. Of course it's needed and helps but it's not all you need to make a interesting grey character.

Joel himself is a good example of a character that is not strictly a good person. He kills a bunch of doctors to selfishly keep a girl he’s grown to love and see as a daughter alive. He makes choices that you can argue are wrong yet we sympathise with him. Through the progression of the game we learn to care for him so when we get to the ending we now understand Joel. We fully understand how fucked up it is but we also get where Joel is coming from. We know the fire he’s playing with. The choice he makes and the lie he now carries. The first game does a wonderful job of giving us a flawed morally grew character.

Tlou2 does not. It fails miserably. It tries to force and manipulate the player by making them play Abby. It tries to manipulate you with pregnant Mel parallelling Ellie’s pregnant girlfriend, Dina. Using lazy tactics like flashbacks showing Abby’s loving dad being a cool dad who rescues animals and is playful with his daughter. Yet Abby is such an uninspiring character. She just isnt likeable. You have to be able to like a character to be able to sympathize with them, Just showing me that her dad was great and loving, isnt enough. Showing me Mel was pregnant, Owen was struggling, Manny was caring about his friends isnt enough. Yes it's good that they are being humanized but it all feels far to late and fleeting (even though her playable time is so long and god damn boring ass hell).

ND tells us these people are humans just like Ellie. They are flawed just like Ellie. Don't you feel conflicted? Don't you feel for Abby, who lost her father? 

but frankly I dont feel anything for any of them. I feel for Ellie who lost her father figure. I feel for Ellie who slowly loses herself. I feel for Jesse who loved his ex and his best friend and didn't care they got together. I feel for Jesse who died before getting to see his child. I feel for Dina who never got to directly tell Jesse of her pregnancy. I feel for Dina’s unborn child. 

Its laugable that ND gave us Dina and Jesse yet thought we’d be feeling things for Owen and Abby who have sex when Mel is carrying Owens child. Am I supposed to feel bad for them because they didn't get together when they were younger? Am I supposed to feel bad for Abby when Ellie killed Mel, when Abby betrayed her herself? 

Abby and friends where always going to have a uphill battle to be seen as more than villains yet it feels like ND did the bare minimum to them likable.

I will never understand why they didn’t introduce us to these character first so we could get to know them before our view of them was stained by Joel’s death. The game can only be so long so I get not having a lot of time to make us care which is why im kinda baffled they even went this route. Not that its impossible to do.

Then there's Joel’s death. Boy oh boy was it so underwhelming. I felt sad but honestly it was fairly fast and I felt like I had no time to really feel much. One moment he’s being beaten the next we’re with Ellie then we find him and bam he's dead in a few more minutes. I'm not saying it should have been some long drawn out sequence but it all happens to fast. I would have liked to get reacquainted to him before he died. See him and Ellie together more again. It would have hit so much harder then. Instead we see him a two(?) times then he’s dead. That's it. The main character of the first game is done. 

I know how it ends and what happens but im waiting to see it to. I want to see it and see what my feelings are but i'm not excited. What i've read sounds dumb frankly but we'll see i guess. 

I dont even hate the game or the plot. Fuck im not even mad about Joel dying. Hell I dont think id even be mad about him dying so soon if he’d have died in a better written scene. I just genuinely think the way it happened was so poorly written. It all feels lazy and badly put together. It feels like they think we’re stupid and would just like dark zombie movie like game with morally grey villain. That just because Its part 2 of a beloved game we’d just eat it up. It feels like ND got cocky and thought they were master storytellers because TLOU was so beloved and raved about.

Idk man I just want Abby dead and we dont even get that :/

TLDR; Bad bland unlikable villains that are supposed to be morally grey and sympathetic, bad story sequence, poorly written death scene. Oh and god awful cringy sex scene. Don't hate it, dont like either.

[mythicamagic]

Answers for Ruki?

Give me a character and I will answer:

Why I like themHoo boi. I love Ruki. On some days he's my second favourite. What an interesting character. Great backstory, which even has him completing a character arc, going from a selfish aristocrat, to a street urchin struggling with his pride, and then a branded leader of three boys. I admit my bias is tall dark and handsome guys, but it's warranted with Ruki. He's almost like a cold military leader, and is very into control with Yui. His manipulative and dominant side is kind of hot to me, to be honest. He does everything in order to tighten the net around Yui and make her see only him. I think what people overlook though, is Ruki's stress and inner turmoil. It's a thing that crops up every time with his character and really it makes me like him more. It shows that there are consequences of being the leader and being wound so tight with control.

 I see him as a good brother to the Mukami's too, and I really like their bonding moments where Ruki shows he cares. I'd be lying though if I said his softer moments with Yui don't slay me. They don't happen overly much but when they do, I melt. His Sleeping Vampire killed me when he grew interested in Yui's dreams. His philosophical side is also another reason why I like him, and he reflects on his position quite a bit.

Why I don’tHe killed a cat, I love kitties. I understand the mentality behind his actions though, but still. Sad times. I also dislike it when he pushes Yui away even in Dark Fate and refuses to share his worries with her, but again, it's part of his character and he does move past it.

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

Anime

Manga

Favorite season/movie/game

Uncertain tbh

Favorite line

‘But… …I am the snake tempting Eve. You are tempted, given the sweet nectar, and in the end, became corrupt. That’s your role. Even if it’s a mortal sin against God, I won’t stop. You will become my Eve.’ - Ruki’s Vampire End MB

Favorite outfit

OTPI really ship Ruki x Yui. I don't know how to explain it but this guy needs Yui. Obviously all the guys do to an extent, but being a leader and keeping everything to himself, he NEEDS her, as someone to share that stuff with. He'd never admit it, and he pushes her away constantly, trying to stand on his own, but as I said before, stress is a huge part of his character, and Yui is his potential catharsis.He worries about Karl abandoning them, about not fulfilling their debt, about keeping Yui at his side, about being Adam, about Yui being taken away from him, his brothers finding out that Karl manipulated their lives- *pauses for breath*

Deep deep down, he needs someone to stand with him and be that someone who will listen to him and be a person his brothers can look to as well. And this does happen. Yui notices Ruki's stress and hidden emotions, when even his brothers don't. Ruki naturally hates that she knows this side of him, that she voices her concern, because it means to him that he isn't in control. She makes him feel weaker because he unknowingly sympathises with her position as 'Livestock' because that was what he used to be. 

His mother abandoning him makes it extremely difficult for trust to be born between them. They're a very deep and potentially angsty ship, but once they're past the emotional barriers, Ruki demonstrates the kindness that he shows his brothers. And he IS capable of it, even though he appears stoic. I really love the symbolism of Eve with the Serpent anyway, and there's a lot of different themes that can be explored with them. I like couples that don't necessarily understand each other, but can still find common ground in shared pain. I also just like him being a super serious depressing thinker and Yui just completely derails his morbid thinking with her sunshine.

BrotpAzusa and Ruki are great bros. I think Azusa is a big reason for why Ruki was able to become a leader for the Mukami's in the first place. On top of being slightly humbled by his time on the streets, Ruki now had this lil boy following him around (Ruki met Azusa first out of the Mukamis) and I dunno, I just think it taught him about looking after someone other than himself. This is especially apparent when Ruki and the others get shot while escaping from the orphanage, and Ruki tells Azusa to keep running and leave them behind. To say that Ruki not long before was whipping his servants and acting like a spoiled brat, this is an amazing load of character development to happen before the events of More Blood even start. 

Head CanonWhen Ruki and Yui have children, or just one kid, I imagine that he'd read to them every night. He'd be a patient father and teach them things. I dunno, the thought of Ruki teaching his kid to tie shoelaces is really cute to me. Naturally the kid will be spoiled rotten by having the other Mukami's as uncles.

Unpopular opinionI don't think I have one for Ruki. 

A wishAgain, I don't really have one, just for him to be happy and open himself up to trust.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happenFor the fandom to see him as nothing more than anime Christian Grey. Ruki has waaaay more depth than that guy and just...no.

5 words to best describe themDark, Handsome, Complex, Dominant, Guarded

My nickname for themI don't really have one for Ruki but I always tend to think of the saying - gentlemen are just patient wolves

[tumblunni]

OH MAN GEEZ IM FUCKIN EMOTIONAL ALREADY black butler: book of circus spoilers below:

oh god, the ways they expanded the story for the anime are SO FUCKIN SAD I kinda like that they made it so you actually do see the circus crew kidnapping children this time. I mean, I dont think its made to make them any less sympathetic, but it definately reminds you that the playing field is even here and they’re morally complicated rather than just poor innocent victims of mr evil protagonist. Also its REALLY GORY and REALLY PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR

Its so messed up, seriously These poor kids are being sent to kidnap other kids, by a creepy asshole murder pedophile fuck. And they dont know WHY theyre kidnapping kids, they don’t know what happens to the ones they hand over. And they’re all JUST FUCKING KIDS, they’re fucking children who’re all heavily disabled in different ways and LITERALLY owe their life to this horrible villain man. And they dont know why they were saved and why these other kids are.. going.. somewhere else. And they really dont know whether to trust their ‘father’, but its pretty clear they all have their suspicions that the kidnapped kids might be dying. But they dont have anywhere else to go if they disobey their father, and he’s fucking with their heads so they all feel like they’re the only onw with doubts and they cant even question it or everyone will turn on them and they’ll get kicked out on the street again and never see any of their siblings. And they all VERY MUCH know what its like to be dying on the streets. And this time they’d had a chance to know what its like to have prosthetic limbs and medical help and be able to eat three solid meals a day and wear pretty clothes and have a family. Having all that taken away will hurt even more than if they’d never known what it’s like..

So I sympathise with them, I really do. And I really believe they could have been rescued, and could have been redeemed, and ultimately we shouldnt be blaming them for what they did, only blaming the man who forced them into it and gave enough illusion of choice that they were able to feel guilt about it... BUT STILL that was REALLY FUCKED UP AND DISTURBING AND SAD AND DISTURBING AND SAD

seriously they PUT ON A FINAL CIRCUS SHOW for every single kid they kidnap part of it is about luring them in so they trust them, but also it seems they take it way too far for it to just be that. They almost got caught because they spent so much time doing their performance for this poor lil matchstick seller girl! and its equal parts heartwarming and DISGUSTING because this poor kid is like.. I dont even know if they drug their victims or if she was just going insane from having to see them killing the policeman that tried to save her they’re just horribly gorily fighting the policemen, stabbing a fucking knife through some guy’s eye, and the kid is sitting there having a complete mental collapse, laughing as if this is all part of the show. And we get this twisted vision of her point of view, seeing the nice clown man doing a funny show smacking mr teddy bear with a mallet, as the dead body of the policeman falls at her feet. And then they bundle her into the carriage and thats just the end. We dont find out what happens to the kidnapped kids, any more than the kidnappers know... We just got to learn so much about this poor kid, and that poor policeman, and have a bunch of heartwarming moments of them becoming friends, and then she just turns the corner for like five minutes and the policeman is like ‘wtf is that flute music’ then sees a fuckin ENTIRE CIRCUS IN AN ALLEYWAY and gets stabbed through the goddamn eye trying to reach the kid in time. And she’s so out of it that she couldnt even see him. His last thoughts were probably seeing her glassy eyes staring right through him... And we know that he had a daughter that this street urchin reminded him of, and we know she had a sick little brother who really needed the money the policeman gave her, and an abusive mother that’ll probably be forcing that poor brother to go out panhandling now her daughter is gone.. And just... GAHH my fucking emotions my sadness and also A LOT OF FEAR so much blood

and I KNOW HOW IT ENDS i know that the kids don’t fuckin go to a happy place with a nice new dad and ‘father’ only spared those few kids so they could be pawns he could manipulate into capturing more kids, and test subjects for his evil science team’s freaky bullshit and they dont even KNOW that they’re test subjects! they dont know that their prosthetic limbs are MADE FROM THE OTHER KIDNAPPED KIDS WHO NEVER CAME BACK god, im already imagining how they’d fuckin animate the poor ringleader guy throwing up as he realizes his arm is made from someone else’s bones and then he just DIES they all just die horribly in service of this disgusting fucking child murderer pedophile that they thought was their father half of them never learn that they were the villains all along, the other half get to know it just in time to despair utterly as they’re killed off too

and evil bastard’s trump card that kept them all obeying him it DIDNT EXIST he fucking held it over their heads that their other siblings were still out there somewhere, at his ‘orphanage’, and they had to work with him so he could send money back to them so they could all be happy too when really he’d killed them long ago, and for all we know they could be the ones that joker’s prosthetic arm was made from T_T and ciel’s fuckin only chance to do something to help the people he completely failed who all died hating him and thinking he’d betrayed them, that they were the good guys and he was the villain... that last chance was a fucking lie he tried to save the ‘other kids’ and the fucking ‘orphanage’ was an empty abandoned building full of nothing but maybe a stray doll they left behind before they were all horribly murdered so we just end on our protagonist being the absolute villain of this arc, and the actual villains being sympathetic kids, and him laughing like a madman as his last chance of redemption blows away on the wind

oh, and he fuckin personally murdered a bunch of kids too, even though he didnt kill all his villain friends with his own hand. he found some of the kids in the lab that were test experiments, the few who hadnt been killed yet. the few who’d had to watch potentially HUNDREDS of friends be dragged kicking and screaming to that operating table, and see every second of them being eviscerated into pieces. And ciel just sees himself in them, they’re all so catatonic that they cant even see him and all he can see is himself and he knows from personal experience that a kid can come back from that, but he knows how much of a monster he’s become and he thinks the kids would be happier if they could die as they are instead of losing themself so he just sets the whole building on fire and i end up crying for him even as he’s committing a horrible act! fucking moral ambiguity: the show

and god, even this episode’s goofy friendship fun parts were horrifying too! it starts off with the whole ‘ha ha ciel doesnt know this kid is Doll, cos she ~looks like a boy~ when she’s not in costume’ random stupidness but its still cute cos she’s being so kind to the newbie, and you can learn a lot about her character from it how she’s trying to be all smiley and goofy and giving him candy and saying how she’d never even tasted it before, and now he can stay here and be her lil brother and never get hit by anyone and never go hungry and she knows the goddamn price she has to pay for all this, and she wants to keep ciel innocent of it she doesnt know he’s already just as corrupted, and he’s really a spy sent to take them down and then just DEAR GOD THAT SCENE THAT IS NOT OKAY but it was absolutely fucking necessary I think, to keep the moral ambiguity and not make us just hate ciel forever she fuckin.. accidentally triggers a ptsd flashback in the poor kid he’s never been homeless before so he doesnt realise its a group bathroom, and then freaks out and tries to run. but she’s just teasing him as part of her cool big sis persona, and doesnt realise he has an actual reason to be scared. So they end up fighting and she accidentally reveals the scar on his back to everyone the fucking brand that was burned into him when he was kidnapped and enslaved and the episode just ends with our usually unflappable protagonist curled up in a ball under a towel, shaking and crying and his only comfort is the demonic butler he’s using to enact his revenge, and all he says is just ‘you’re better than this, you’re a badass’ ciel never really has any form of actual sympathy, does he? the only person who knows about what happened to him is this morally ambiguous monster minion guy. and the whole hook of the series is that we never really know if Sebastian actually gives a shit about ciel or any of the other humans, or if he’s just waiting for the poor kid to fuck up and leave an opportunity to devour his soul. I wanna believe that Sebastian does have some sort of fatherly affection for ciel, or at least they both care about each other in a sort of.. mutually evil way. But even if thats true, its not like sebastian is gonna really be any good to talk to in a time like this. he;s just gonna sass ciel for showing weakness. he just has this fuckin motivational speech of ‘yo ciel youre a fuckin evil bastard, remember? get up and continue your evil bastard ways’. and somehow it actually kinda works and actually kinda feels affectionate in context :P BUT STILL SERIOUSLY POOR CIEL he could have turned out a lot better than this if he had someone in his life who could actually give him a goddamn hug but I guess thats not really what he wanted, even though its what he needed instead he wished for the power to enact revenge on the one who killed his family and enslaved him and he set off on this long horrible path of becoming an evil bastard to track down this other evil bastard when he’s only fuckin ELEVEN and he’s happy to throw away his soul, and doesnt care if sebastian betrays him in the end and he burns in hell forever, as long as he can stop that evil bastard from doing the same thing to more children and this arc is so fucked up cos he failed so horribly to stop some OTHER evil bastard from doing the same thing to more children and he’s become so twisted and antiheroey and cynical that he missed his chances to redeem those poor other twisted kids, and maybe he could have done better in stopping the real villain if he had.. and the only fuckin thing we got out of this arc was that the bastard kidnapping these children was a copycat criminal of the one who did it to ciel, so we at least finally have one clue that might lead to a resolution someday but EVERYONE DIED and ciel’s even more fucking traumatized! and he’s jumped off the deep end and become full antihero evil bastard and all the character development he had during the arc has been negated and fuckin completely reversed cos of how it ended and he lost a bazillion friends and he was betraying them the entire time, and they died resenting him, or resenting him AND learning that he was right and they’d been working for the villain all along, and then he couldnt even save their other siblings cos they were long dead and just THIS FUCKING ARC IS SO FUCKED UP GAHHHHH

I guess sometimes you just wanna watch depressing cinema, yknow? I do hope that someday this series actually ends with at least a bittersweet ending, not an equally fatalistic one that means everything was all for nothing. i want the poor circus kids’s deaths to actually mean something...

Also, randomly and incidentally, I want the giant creepy pedo incesty shipping fandom to die in a fire. Before I even started watching it, Black Butler was famous as ‘that pedo anime’, everyone acted as if Sebastian x Ciel was canon and they kept teasing it in every episode or something. BUT NOPE. NONE. NICHT. NON. NAG YDW. Where the FUCK did they even get it from, seriously?? We don’t know if Sebastian is gonna betray ciel or not in the end, but im PRETTY FUCKING SURE that he doesn’t have a boner for a fucking ten year old! I know the idea of a demon servant is a common romance novel thing, but seriously wtf is wrong with you... I know I’m mad that this arc ended so horribly, but still I feel like the various moral ambiguity discussions are super interesting and I would have regretted if I’d never read any of this manga just because of some awful fanbase members.

ANYWAY IN SUMMARY bunni cry over episode

[mythicamagic]

for the give me a character and ill answer anything can you pleaseeee do laitoo THANK YOUUU I LUVVV YOUR BLOG

Why I like themOh Laito. You’re so complicated to describe. I do like Laito, as much as I dislike his actions, I just can’t NOT like him. He’s written too well, too interesting, engaging. I always sit up and pay attention whenever he has a scene. He’s tragic and twisted but also always the one who tries to get his brothers together. He’s one of those characters that you could write an essay on, his mentality and philosophies are so striking and memorable. I harbour a lot of hope for him to be happy and to understand love the way it’s meant to be understood, but among all the characters he’s the one that struggles the most with getting there because of his mentality. Despite his flaws and messed up personality, I don’t think the franchise would be quite as memorable to me without him. I think a lot of people were first pulled into the series by seeing that church scene on you tube.

Why I don’tHe rapes Yui and breaks her mentally to the point that she wants to die. Unfortunately it’s something he regularly does with Brides. I sympathise with him because of the sexual abuse he endured at the hands of Cordelia but at the same time it doesn’t excuse him repeating that cycle with Yui. It is a line of thinking I can understand, as it’s something that a lot of abuse victims do, and Laito has a thing where he must ALWAYS remain in control. Even when he’s playing the fool or acting like a masochist, he always turns it around to humiliate his prey. He’s a complicated character, so I suppose it’s natural to have complicated feelings on him.

Favorite episode (scene if movie)

Anime:

Manga: Laito’s vulnerable moments kill me

This panel below is my favourite, though I don’t know why. 

Favorite season/movie

More Blood, but again, I havent read Dark Fate translations

Favorite line : All of Bloody Sabbath

Favorite outfit:

OTPHm, well I don’t really ‘ship’ Yui with him, but HDB aside, they have made good progress. I really like his More Blood route for that reason, and though they’re a dark pair, a lot of interesting themes can be explored with them. 

It’s not a healthy romance but more a dark, passionate, messy, emotionally complex oh-my-God-why-am-I-doing-this kind of love, and sometimes that’s just a guilty pleasure to read and write. I know that their dynamic has changed and progressed now with newer games though x

BrotpAyato and Laito. They for the most part seem to understand the way the other one thinks, even if they have things that separate them, I still like to think of them sharing a bond deep down, underneath all the circumstances. They kind of have a twin connection to me, despite being Triplets with Kanato.

Head CanonI think that Laito gravitated to the piano on his own. Kanato could sing for Cordelia and Ayato was being pushed to be the best, so Laito had the 'luxury’ to choose what he wanted to learn. Playing piano is one of the few rare times his emotions sometimes come through raw and honest. 

Unpopular opinionI know it sounds ridiculous but I don’t see Laito as the absolute hound dog that the fandom paints him as. Now hear me out; Yes he’s perverted and yes he forces Yui to have sex, but they way the fandom writes him sometimes, it’s like he has sex on the brain 24/7, when Laito himself says that his greatest pleasure is humiliating his prey. To me, he uses sex as a means to control, just like when he says 'I love you’ to Yui. I think at times he exaggerates his pervertedness to shock and horrify Yui because he knows it’ll get a big reaction from her, and that’s exactly what he wants. To stay in control. Sex is a tool he uses to do that, and yes he feels good from it, but I think his underlying intent is often missed and mistaken for shallow fulfilment. 

A wishI’m pretty sure this happens in Lost Eden anyway - For the Triplets to reconnect.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happenFor Laito to revert back to HDB Laito. Like yes, dark content is what some people like from the first game, but I wouldn’t want his gradual character development over the games to be forgotten.

5 words to best describe themComplex, Sexy, Beautiful Hair (it counts as one XD), Terrifying, Sadistic

My nickname for them: Philosophical Fedora Perv