#i really liked the idea of simply leaving it up for interpretation and speculation for the reader whenever i write nia

[tired-needs-sleep]

you guys know

lore drops!!!! there's a lot of possibilities to make stuffs work with nia with the new information i have

the first idea is to say that nia's original backstory did happen separate from ari. meaning that she technically did have a childhood and the past was just altered to make it possible, along with becoming an interceptor, but got super unlucky with bio parents. basically the time person added a new character to the timeline with a backstory and had the other main characters rest in her subconscious while nia lived her life.

the second idea is that the backstories are one in the same, so it happened to ari (and axel) and nia suffered the same effects and such under the illusion it was her memory and hers only. fun fact, i originally imagined nia having two other siblings, one specifically being a brother she was close to. that's ironic lmao

the third, ari was simply reborn much earlier into nia and is revived as a newborn instead of a 17 year old, and ari is just a past life, which also is closest to canon while also not changing as much. here the only thing that was altered in the past was the interceptor stuff, plus getting nearby people in the area to discover baby nia, and it was just by chance that nia got terrible parents. (they weren't terrible in the beginning. things just went on a downward spiral as she got older.)

[rubberduckyrye]

Rye's Ramble Analysis/Theory On: Kirumi Toujou

Okay so this is gonna be VERY haphazard and nothing like what I do over at @unweavinglies so bear with me, but after I was reminded that Salmon Mode and Kirumi's LSE excisted, I looked into those and like. Holy shit why were none of these character details in canon--or even in her FTEs?

These details change Kirumi's characterization so DRASTICALLY.

Analysis Exhibit #1: Self hatred/Self Deprecation--AKA there's TRAUMA in this Bish

Kirumi is really hard on herself when she makes the most. Nothing burger mistakes. She even suggests that Shuichi could berate her in any way he saw fit because of how "bad" she thought the mistake was--and even implies that she deserves it.

This is not something someone who has a stable self image thinks.

People who have a stable, positive self image are more likely to go "Oh! Whoops, anyway--" over berating themselves for not knowing someone prefers green tea over black tea.

Her whole LSE is about how Kirumi feels like her romantic love for her master would be a bad influence on him--that she needs to leave because her feelings are bad and wrong and--

She doesn't feel like she deserves her feelings to be validated.

People don't just come to the conclusion that their feelings are invalid all on their own--often more than not, this is a huge red flag for trauma--neglect and abuse coming to mind. Kirumi was definitely put in a situation where she believed that her feelings weren't just hindrances--but bad influences, that her feelings weren't valid at all. Combined with the above point, it's pretty clear that Kirumi may have even been yelled at for making mistakes as a child. There was definitely verbal abuse from how willing she was to let Shuichi have at her for her mistake, and her feelings being things she associates with negativity or being invalid suggests that she was often scolded for having feelings at all.

I think her maturity is a mask for her insecurities and potential trauma, and her hard-working nature is the result of thinking she needs to make herself useful to others by any means necessary in order to feel worthy of praise--maybe even worthy of living.

Kirumi even protests to the idea of Shuichi (her master) seeing her as an equal--a sign of dehumanizing herself.

With all that being said--

Her protest is never completed, but considering how Kirumi views herself, it's VERY likely that she would feel like if she doesn't clean the place up, then she isn't worthy. I think that this line can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but I see it as her trying to say "When you clean, I become useless."

And like.

Her whole LSE is her beating herself up about how she doesn't know how to prepare konjac.

All of these signs point to some kind of verbal abuse or severe neglect--more likely the former over the latter. I'm not exactly sure who abused/neglected her, but the signs are very much There.

It's possible her adamant dislike of being called mom or being referred to as "motherly" stems from this very-likely abuse, but that's more speculation and it's as equally as likely that she just simply finds it degrading. Either way.

Analysis Exhibit #2: People Pleasing (Struggling to Say No)

Kirumi has a very distinct inability to say no to most "reasonable" requests. I specify "requests" because it ties into the points above and how Kirumi sees herself.

Here, she is blatantly stating that if Shuichi is requesting her to watch this documentary then she will. Despite her very clear dislike of bugs, if she is told that it is a request, then she will complete that request, much to her distaste or discomfort.

The fact that Kirumi declines the offer if it isn't a request shows that despite her nature to please, she really dislikes bugs. She wouldn't be polite and watch the film with Shuichi due to how much she hates them.

This is also shown here as well:

She does, of course, have boundaries she will not cross, as shown here:

But she outright states that "Maids have the right to refuse requests."

Except she only goes by this motto when the request is extreme in nature, like if she feels that she is being objectified or sexualized... or told to take a hecking break.

She even says this:

Suggesting that, rather than just flatly telling Shuichi "No, I'm NOT burning this place tot he ground, are you out of your mind?" She asks him to "retract his statement." She asks him to hold the power over her, telling him that she would be willing to burn an entire building for him simply if he had a good enough reason for his "request" but also telling him that he has to be in control here. He has to retract his statement, she cannot simply refuse.

Analysis Exhibit #3: A "Go Don't Stop" Kind of Girl

Kirumi does take breaks, but she struggles with resting quite a lot.

Firstly:

Kirumi's likes and dislikes line up with her chosen profession--being a maid. She likes cleaning, but hates resting. With everything else above, I'm personally convinced that Kirumi more so likes to feel "useful" and dislikes to feel "useless." So if she works, she is considered "useful" to those around her.

Even when in a kidnapping situation, she is thinking of the others care and comfort:

While I'm sure Kirumi has escape on her mind, she is also trying to make accommodations for everyone else at the same time. Serving everyone else is just as important to her as escaping with her own life--something I'll further address in a moment, but for now:

This girl literally comprehend when someone just wants to hang out with her and talk to her as a person. Everything is about her being a maid, and she makes it pretty clear that her status as a maid comes before all else.

Now, about her life...

Analysis Exhibit #4: A Maid's Selfless Devotion (Verses the Trolley Problem)

Kirumi chose to die with everyone else whent he time limit was running out.

Despite there being no strings attached, despite there being a young man offering up his life for the others to take, everyone--herself included--refuses the offer. Why? Because in that moment, she is serving everyone in that group, to her detriment.

While the "We'd rather all die here than kill someone" sentiment is unspoken, there is proof that Kirumi is going with whatever the group as a whole wants:

Implying that, had everyone chosen to die at the time limit, she would have done so as well. It's more likely that she and everyone else would die fighting rather than sit back and let their deaths happen, but her life coming to an end was a very real possibility that she, as a very intelligent and logical person, weighed against everything and decided that saving herself via murder was not worth her own life.

This, of course, changes in chapter 2:

Because Kirumi is led to believe that her life, her service, is the only thing keeping a whole country safe.

Whereas before Kirumi's loyalty to the group was so solid that she didn't even fall to the temptation of murdering someone to escape, when she is presented with what is essentially the penultimate Trolley Problem, she goes and chooses the path that has the fewest casualties. Her choice between the V3 cast VS the entire nation of Japan is a very logical choice, almost a no-brainer. She even convinced herself that Ryoma was offering up his life to her after she confessed to him that she had too many reasons to escape from that hell of a school. He turned his back on her--and logically, he would never have done that if he had any self preservation left in him. That is her logic, her reasoning, her excuse to make her crime less egregious to herself and the others--but she had too much on her shoulders. She did what she thought needed to be done, and that was that.

Final Notes:

I'm not gonna lie, I came into this not expecting a whole lot.

From what I remember when I did my initial research on Kirumi, I thought that she had very little character to her. She was a Maid and that Was It. And it's sort of true--in canon and even in her FTEs, she's portrayed as nothing but a maid.

But her LSE and her Salmon Mode paint a slightly different picture of her--one of a lonely, neglected, abused girl who thinks extremely little of herself if she's not being useful. Someone who was taught that her feelings were rotten things and invalid, things that would only hinder other people and their potential. She works and works and works just to prove to herself that she's worth it. That she's as useful to as many people as she physically can be. She struggles with casual conversation, probably because she can't imagine anyone would want to talk to Kirumi Toujou, the person, and instead needs Kirumi Toujou, the Ultimate Maid for her services.

I think that this information being in extra game modes and buried under canon (plus a more accessible bonus mode) that did absolutely nothing for her character, I think Kirumi gets a bad reputation as a character who's got nothing else to her. Like I don't blame people who missed this information and/or thought nothing of it--in isolation, it's hard to pick up on/easily overlooked in favor of the characterization she got in the main canon story and even her FTEs.

I used to think that Kirumi wasn't much of a character--but now, I realized that's very, very wrong. She's more than just a maid! But you have to dig around and put the pieces together to actually see what's behind that perfect mask of hers.

[orionsangel86]

Subtext Glorious Subtext! A Dreamling on Netflix analysis in The Sandman - Part 3

1589

Insert distracted boyfriend meme here...

1589 is when the queer coding starts ramping up a notch. Let me tell you how I am fascinated by their choice of actor to play Shakespeare - a twink with stars in his eyes - amazing. Bravo. Not even Hob manages to look at Dream like he wants to be utterly ruined by him the way this actor looked at Tom Sturridge. Here on Tumblr.com I am sure we are all very much aware of the theories and speculation about the actual Shakespeares sexuality with the consensus being that he was probably bisexual, and my GOD have they decided to lean into that on this show.

There is a lot to analyse in this scene. Hob’s dialogue about what he has been up to is almost word for word the same as the comic, but Ferdie’s delivery is perfect with its mix of flirtation and desperate need to impress. Look at this dramatic fool:

Dream’s curious reaction to his bragging is almost as if he is trying to figure him out, but unlike the comics/audiobook, the conversation between Shakespeare and Marlow is interspersed with this one, with Shakespeare pulling Dream’s attention before Hob has even finished talking. This adds extra tension to the scene and raises the emotional stakes. In the comics, Hob had already finished talking when Shakespeare gets up and starts reciting Faustus to the point that he draws Dream’s attention prompting Dream to ask Hob who he is.

One of the interesting changes made is the removal of Hob’s description of Kit Marlowe as “bent as a pewter ducat.” A wise choice as it comes across as somewhat homophobic, but its removal also serves to not “other” Marlowe and therefore “other” the idea of homosexuality as something different to Hob. The other similar change to the show was the removal of Shakespeare flirting with the waitress whilst Marlowe claimed he’d “stick to boys, my horned “actresses”.” 

It’s funny to me that by removing the moments in this scene that canonically confirm one characters queerness, the show also removes any interpretation that could “no homo” the other characters, ultimately making everyone appear much gayer in general!

(My giffing skills are woefully inept so have an image of Shakespeare's heart eyes instead)

When Dream approaches Shakespeare in the show it is insanely heated. The music swells with mystery and intrigue, Shakespeare stands and stares at Dream in complete awe. Enraptured by Dream’s gaze. The whole

“Have we met?”

“We have, but men forget in waking hours.”

Sounds like the ultimate pick up line. It's basically a play on One Upon A Dream from Sleeping Beauty in my opinion! This line is in the comic, and also in the audible book, but the delivery of the line in the show is the only time it comes across like a come on. Tom Sturridge please explain yourself?!?

In fact, all the acting choices here blow my mind. Seriously. I wanna know what the director told these two. Its really easy to see Dream’s proposition to Shakespeare as something beyond a business transaction. With the mysterious and rather romantic music, the soft candlelight, and the cameras keeping in close up of the two characters as they hold each others gaze... It’s a moment where you raise your eyebrows and wonder if the show just implied that their lead character just took THE Shakespeare off for a one night stand passionate enough to inspire the entire “Fair Youth” series of sonnets.

Joking aside, it doesn’t help the extremely queer undertones when the camera cuts back and forth between Dream, Shakespeare and Hob looking on at them with an expression one can only describe as hurt.

(Gif link)

It’s the editing in this scene that really sets it apart from the comic and audible book. Dream is distracted throughout Hob’s talk, and continues to look over at Shakespeare much to Hob’s apparent distress. When he eventually gets up to leave, he holds a hand up to stop Hob talking and simply walks away. Which only causes to further upset Hob and heightens the emotional intensity of the moment. As Neil Gaiman said in the episode 6 watch party - Hob is having to watch his date get up and leave him half way through. It’s specifically framed in a way to emphasise the hurt Hob feels, as well as the envy towards Shakespeare.

This is far more subtle in the comic and practically non existent in the audible audiobook where Dream actually tells Hob “Excuse me” before approaching Shakespeare. I found this funny because where the audiobook interpreted Dream’s behaviour in the comic as rude and clearly sought to attempt to change that, the Netflix show makes his behaviour worse by framing it as Dream abandoning his date. Playing up the emotions of the moment and making the whole scene come across like a live action distracted boyfriend meme!

I do encourage every Sandman fan to listen to the Audible audiobooks, but fair warning, the tone is NOT the same. The meeting with Shakespeare is played completely straight (in both senses of the words). This is in no way a criticism of the audiobook, but it is an excellent indication of director decisions and how different elements in different mediums can convey certain tones. I find that the show in general plays heavily into Dream being other and oftentimes it is very easy for other to be subtextually layered alongside queer (see the entire history of queer coding in cinema and why gay people love the horror genre). Interestingly, the audiobook doesn’t give Dream this same vibe. People such as Hob, Shakespeare, Constantine, etc, they just treat him as a bit of a posh lord. His otherness isn’t heavily emphasised in scenes set in the Waking World, indicating he is better at blending in than he is in the show.

So after Dream goes off to ravage Shakespeare - ahem - make a business arrangement with Shakespeare, the final 1589 scene is Hob’s final reaction. The line is the same across all mediums.

“Everything to live for, and no where to go but up.”

In the comic, the final panels here do not give any indication that Hob is upset by Dream’s leaving. He get’s distracted by the joys of having white bread. Simple pleasures please comic!Hob far greater than mysterious black clad lords.

The audiobook follows this along to the letter. Audible!Hob is joyful, laughing and happily reminscing about killing for bread (NGL I don’t particularly like Hob in the audiobook. No offence to Mathew Horne but 1. I can’t separate his voice from Gavin in Gavin and Stacey, and 2. I just think he comes across as really laddish and I find it offputting.)

In the show, Ferdie gives an absolute brilliant performance with just the right mix of hurt at being ditched for a young twink, and hopeful optimism for the future. Gone is any mention of killing for white bread, and in it’s place is a thoughtful Hob who looks at the spread of food laid out for his Stranger, and accepts it almost as a consolation prize. He’s gonna eat through his hurt and try to forget about this for the next century, but we all know he won’t forget at all.

Follow on to Part 4 to read my analysis of 1689

[vro0m]

You think Helmut may actually leave Red Bull?!💀 I’m thinking it’s all just a power play and they’re going to meet in the middle somehow cuz Red Bull (whatever they like to think, isn’t going to survive at this moment without Newey and Max) also I’m no lawyer or HR person but I don’t get the suspension of Helmut?? You didn’t suspend Horner when you investigated him and is firing Helmut for leaking those stuff not basically confirming that those stuff did in fact happen??

No, firing HM would not mean anything by itself. Let's again be very careful with the jumping to conclusions thing in this situation. We still don't know for a fact that the material on the google drive is real. I'm not saying it is not, it may very well be, but we don't know. We don't know that HM is the source of the leak either. I've also seen divergent interpretations of whether he said he could be fired/suspended, or whether he said he might leave out of his own volition. And Newey being brought up in the midst of all this is coming from nowhere really afaik. But more than anything there's obviously a lot going on behind the scenes that we are not aware of.

The main problem with the RBR situation, as many people who are actually in and around F1 have pointed out, is the total lack of transparency. From the outside in it does look like there's at least 1) the employee harassment case and 2) a power play going on (already rumored last season btw). But what exactly is going on and who is in whose camp and what's a stake and how these two things are interrelated is impossible to tell from where we, as spectators, stand.

Speculating on such unclear circumstances is simply a bad idea, especially when we are talking about real outside-F1 potential consequences and victims. This is not a game.

What's for certain is that they're gonna have to solve this sooner rather than later because it is explosive, obviously very bad for the team and the brand, and some key players are more or less explicitly threatening to walk out on them, including their sponsors that are getting real annoyed by the lack of explanations.

This goes beyond the realm of usual F1 politics and I again urge everyone to restrain themselves from reading into things like it's daily gossip. All we can do is wait and see what happens.

[louisisalarrie]

Also I haven’t seen any solo Louies say what you just mentioned [hating Harry & saying he is sabotaging Louis]

......

Haven't you come across this notorious blog? She has run a hate blog for Harry since 2019 and thinks Sony is still sabotaging Louis' career so that all the fans go to Harry. All the louies who liked this post think the same.

https://www.tumblr.com/seasurfacefullofclouds1/733327325614292992/i-was-thinking-about-the-harry-styles-ben-winston?source=share

Woweee no I have never come across this blog before. I had to read this post like 3 times to gather some thoughts on it, Christ. It’s a bit of a mess, this post, a jumble of a lot of emotion and ideas, but I’ll do my best to make some commentary. Anon, and by extension OP, welcome to the show.

First off, I’d like to say that while Harry’s team, the Azoffs, did groom him from a young age and grabbed him the second they could to push a solo career and use him as a money maker, Louis, Zayn, and Liam being inactive to a degree does NOT mean that Harry’s team silenced them. And Harry’s success wasn’t entirely dependant on their silence (it helped, sure, but my point stands). While Azoff already has a massive monopoly in the industry, they knew the right ways to push, market, and deliver Harry Styles™️ to the public. That’s why the Azoffs are so big, because they’re good at what they do, and have held a legacy for a long time. Harry was picked up by them for a reason, and we all knew early on that Harry was always going to be the golden child. He was always marketed as it, from the very beginning of 1d, and they took advantage of that. Harry was the most famous member during 1d, and he had the potential to get bigger, more flamboyant, and appeal to a wider audience. It’s very simple marketing. It’s how a career grows. It’s how managers choose their clients. It’s why A&R positions exist.

Secondly, I know it has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but Harry not denying Larry is just a thing that’s happened. Whether you believe it’s because Louis was protective and took it on the chin as the older one in the relationship, or whether you think 1d’s team didn’t think Harry would be able to handle it/make it convincing, or whether it was simply to keep Larry as a topic still up for discussion because we held on to the fact Harry never denied it, is up to you. However, if the OP wants to talk about queerbaiting, let’s do it.

So, queerbaiting, or larry baiting, or whatever people in this fandom are calling it these days, can exist to an extent (before it truly becomes unethical). Sexually ambiguous pop stars in this day and age gains traction, gains attention, double the news stories and double the scandals. Yes, I agree that Harry’s team play up his image to keep people interested, and yes, I believe Harry truly enjoys dressing/acting more freely in his life. I believe that yes, he is allowed to act more himself and open, but still under the umbrella of stunts and needing to keep his sexuality open for interpretation to leave a space open for said stunts. I mean… people are speculating his sexuality alllllll the time, while still getting the added bonus of news articles with TR… it’s working, right?

I think, personally, OP is demonising Harry as a person, and slips in and out of the public narrative at times. Like, they believe it’s his team, but also Harry encouraging it. And I don’t think it’s the case. I think Harry is doing what he can right now, in the circumstances that he’s in. He’s at the high point of his career, the peak, you really think he’s gonna argue with his team to a point of losing everything he has??? Like I’m sorry, but simply put, if Harry gets dropped from a major music team like the Azoffs, they’ll ruin his career and any plans he has for the future. Tragically, he’s so reliant on them as well, because he knows that if he ducks out now, he’ll probably have like 2 years left of a dying solo career, and a lot of harries will leave. Not the die hard fans, sure, but the GP and more casual fans won’t be attending his shows, because he won’t have that platform anymore. It’ll be absolute crash and burn. And if he wants to do that, I think he’ll risk it all and do it with Louis, or do it when he’s contractually allowed to, without burning all his bridges. He’s under some seriously strict clauses right now (pls just trust me on that), but people seem to not recognise that due to the fact he’s more “free” now. It’s a problem, and continues to divide the fandom due to a lack of understanding of contractual obligations and toxic solos.

The whole thing of him recently where he showed up to the footy not as flamboyant as he usually is, is sooooooo dumb. Like, the fact people are saying he’s straight because of that? Truly shows you what an image and narrative can do. Anyway, let’s carry on.

So, I actually had never seen Euphoria and forgot entirely about that whole thing until my housemate made me start watching it and I got so shocked HAHA. But… I do find it extremely interesting that there seemed to be a lack of approval and it went to air. Using their names and likeness and throwing us and fic writers into the mix was not necessary for that scene to go ahead. Also, it’s a well known topic that causes some serious shit when it’s brought up. Perhaps there’s some sneaky little loopholes the writer used, I can think of a couple actually, but I’d have to dig deeper to make sure I’m getting my terminology right, but yeah. If that can go to air without problem, and Louis tweeting after the fact “I can categorically say that I was not contacted nor did I approve it”, speaks volumes. He didn’t get super aggressive, deny Larry, whatever. He made it clear that he didn’t approve it because like… why the hell would he? Why would Harry? They’d much rather have that part of their lives private and not aired like that, and god even if they weren’t together, that would’ve been horrible to see too. Euphoria fucked up for that, and breached fandom/band/GP crossover big time.

However, OP seems to think that Harry and/or his team approved it. That it was another one of his marketing ploys, using Larry as “fresh meat for Harry’s fetishizing, fantasizing, mostly heterosexual female fans” which, yeah. I get what they mean, but Harries don’t tend to like Larry. It’s not a tried and true method, like the stunting has been. In fact, I imagine it made a lot of Harries very angry and turned off of Euphoria and just caused a bunch of fighting instead. And trust me, Harry, nor his team, would’ve signed off on that shit. Absolutely no way. That doesn’t fit what they’re pushing, it just… doesn’t. And being mad about Harry not saying anything, well… it is what it is. I don’t think he needs to. I think Louis often says enough for the both of him, and is in a very different situation to Harry anyway.

Anyway, the further down this post from OP we go, the more bitter it seems to get, and the more emotional. They say how Louis’ overcome the odds, how he’s thriving, and yeah, that’s true. It’s just not necessary to compare them because that doesn’t make sense, in industry standards and trends.

Then, we head onto Harry “siding with the abusers and colonizers, because that’s where the money and fame are” which is a… uh… yikes statement? Sure, he’s been around some questionable folks. Sure, he’s stayed silent on topics that if he could comment on, he would. But his position in the industry requires him to rub shoulders with these people. It’s work. And it sucks. But simply put, would they be saying the same if Louis was hanging out with those people? Because if they would, then good on them for holding their values so highly. But unfortunately, it is almost impossible to consume any kind of media these days without someone horrible having been involved in the creation, promotion, or acting adjacent to the creator of the art or the art itself. So, yeah. It’s not something we should be silent about, I’m not saying it’s okay, but that won’t change for years and years and years to come. Plus, see above when I talk about him losing his career. Because yep, that’ll happen if he speaks up, too.

Next, OP says a bunch more nasty things about Harry, and then contradicts themself, and then the final sentence basically says that he’s made his bed, he’s sided with oppression and greed, and… idk, I feel like OP’s post jumps around so much, and fails to hit home with the point they’re trying to make, because it is so emotional.

Listen, we all love Louis, and it can feel frustrating to see Harry shoot out into the stars ahead of the other boys, and that of course can cause resentment and anger. I’m not blaming the OP for having those feelings whatsoever, I just think they maybe need to analyse a deeper split of Harry, Harry Styles™️, and how much control artists at that level actually have over their career. And it is a real shame that this is what it’s come to. And so many Larries turned into solos, and with Harry and Louis acting quite outspoken in very opposite ways, it’s easy to see the split of fans leaning one way or the other. But, I don’t like to see this kind of anger towards the boys themselves. Get angry at the industry. Fight the belly of the beast.

[captain-astors]

Hi, can you do 003 for Arima Kishou please?

I ABSOLUTELY CAN! Fun fact this is about the length of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Telltale Heart. God I was hoping someone would ask for him yet, despite my excitement I feel like I'm going to disappoint the Arima likers and dislikers twain, but no matter. 

Mood for this entire thing: Screaming.

Behold the most horrendous thing I’ve ever written. 

How I feel about this character: all caps warning for about a paragraph bellow the first sentence.

Places him in a shoebox with no notable amount of affection nor violence, simply acceptance that this is where he belongs. 

THIS IS A MAN THAT SLEEPS WITH BLANK, WHITE SOCKS ON IN THE MOST NEUTRAL, BORING NIGHTCLOTHES YOU’VE EVER SEEN. AS A CHILD ANY POTENTIAL EXTRAVAGANT FASHION TASTES WERE FORCEFULLY SUCKED OUT AND ABSORBED BY SOUTA LIKE A BLACK HOLE OF REPRESSED HOMOSEXUALITY AND TOXIC MASCULINITY, AND THE SCRAPS OF ANYTHING BARELY NOTICEABLE LEFT BEHIND WERE TAKEN BY RIZE TO MAKE THAT LOVELY DRESS. HIS UNIQUE HAIR COLORS ARE A GIFT OF PITY FROM GOD BECAUSE OTHERWISE HE WOULD BE SO TERRIBLY NON-DESCRIPT THAT ABSOLUTELY NO ONE COULD RECOGNIZE HIM, EVEN IF THEY’D KNOWN HIM FOR YEARS. HIS FACE AND CLOTHING ARE TOO NEUTRAL TO BE IDENTIFIED BY THE MOST ADVANCED AI. GOODNIGHT. Okay. Now that I’ve cleared up the feral screaming, funny story. I don’t know if I’ve ever detailed my terrible facial blindness here (probably not, it’s not a crucial detail about myself) but that applies to fictional characters as well. Things like moles, hairstyles, clothing, and speaking mannerisms are lifesavers. I do genuinely believe him to be a very neutral looking character, but half the reason for my rant above was the fact that I kept wondering “Why is Kaneki fighting himself” for 2 pages of the end of the first manga, and did not recognize him as the same guy for a truly unfortunate number of chapters in the second despite moving on to :re very quickly after finishing the first tg. Then I thought he and tatara were the same person for a while. It was bad. And I don’t know why the glasses didn’t mark out SOMETHING for me, I think I’m just too used to seeing them on and off faces at different times that it just… didn’t register? But I really don’t have any good justification for it. 

I don’t understand why some people hate him so violently but at the same time his adult version falls into the “a guy” category for me. Had his moments, but I definitely could’ve found more constructed sympathy for his plight had the story not been so afraid of allowing the reader to be bored by focusing on someone else that it wasn’t constantly bashing me over the head with “but don’t you care about how KANEKI is affected by this?!?” No actually I don’t, because I understand him well enough from the last hundred-something chapters that have revolved around this guy to have a good idea of what’s going on inside his head. Arima remains a mystery, his choice to put the responsibility of the fate of this all on Kaneki instead of someone else when he passes or trying to tough out his inevitable fate up to interpretation, and I think that’s a portion of the reason he’s passionately disliked by a large portion of the fandom. This is all speculations of a madman, but from my point of view his mistreatment of Haise/Kaneki/Whatever, while ultimately motivated by the desire to exploit, wasn’t the byproduct of explicit malevolence, but rather in that aching pattern of every garden child, say it with me folks, being afraid to/not knowing how to healthily love, or even care about a person in a genuine way that doesn’t end up hurting both people involved. He did care about Kaneki, but first and foremost he felt a responsibility to use him. Tangent to more general and less Arima-focused thoughts, this isn’t to say that writing a character in a way that leaves things up to imagination is a bad thing in writing. In fact, I really enjoy taking the broken pieces of a puzzle and attaching them together into an image of my own liking after being left with little to work with (Hi Shikorae), but the thing about Tokyo Ghoul is that this is the case for a lot of characters. It’s the inverse of the Arcane (the show not the game) problem, instead of every side character being so deeply fleshed out when they don’t always need to be, the vast majority of side characters are left to interpretation though some of them logically shouldn’t, we could’ve been given a little more to work with… maybe. I’ll never know if this is just my sadness over the lack of content for my own favorites when I speak like this but still, I feel like every character I’m attached to is left in this awkward “almost works perfectly but not quite” area as a byproduct of lack of attention, whereas Kaneki does the same but as a byproduct of too much (Juuzou lives in the middle ground good for him). I am filled with righteous fury that is only quelled by unending love for this story, somebody sedate me. 

Not the worst option for “One-Eyed King” placeholder but I’m not even going to pretend I understand the why of it enough to criticize or praise. I don’t think it was necessary if the One-Eyed King was more of a symbolic concept of revolution than a person to begin with but honestly I could just be missing content. Such a cool name for something that seems ultimately underutilized, but I do like the note of Arima being unknown as the One-Eyed King when, similarly, unlike his brother’s, his revolution is a quiet, bitter and clever thing that takes years instead of equally clever but flashy, impossible to ignore. I could ramble for hours on the dichotomy of their plans to take down the circumstances and system of the origin, the merit of taking things down from the inside out and planning for the generation to come, vs. screaming the injustices of the world in everyone’s face, making a mockery of it all until you can’t look away because it’s always been everywhere but now you can see it too. How unfortunate the conclusion of their plans both ended up in the hands of Kaneki to execute, by design or otherwise.

Oh hey back to my issues with the lack of focus, those were almost completely gone with Jack! I love Jack-Arima and half of the reason for it is his dynamic with Fura. I live for the extremely controlled, calm, quiet, powerful and intelligent yet isolated Arima being temporarily pulled out of his almost machine-like world by the aimless yet fun-loving Taishi, who in turn learns what it means to be striving to protect something, and what it means to take a life. My qualm with it? I wish it was longer. It would’ve hurt even more to know he had to live the rest of his short life pressed back into a stifling role if he actually got to learn, even briefly, what it means to live normally. But, something something in order to know how to love you must be loved, the world didn’t raise him right and even that small period of time would have thrown a ripple in the chain of events that led to his choices and bad father figure role. Even so I like to imagine he looks back on those few weeks where he got to try to “live normally” (even if it trailed right back to ghoul extermination) with fondness.

Anyways to summarize Arima is another one of those characters I am choosing to be oh so normal about. I say choosing but I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. Just a guy, but in a way that makes me want to pelt him with beanbags affectionately. It’s funny how little and how much I care about him simultaneously. The disjunction of man, am I right? 

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: And thus the disappointment of everyone commences. Congratulations on being the first person to pick a character I actually have opinions on. I see the arieto in your icon, you’re so right for that, but I flip between seeing eto as aro or shipping her with Itori, Rize, or both, and I want everyone to die alone unless it’s tragic, witnessed, unpreventable or caused by themselves, seeing their lover in their final moments is not a kindness to either but a cruelty. Hello, yes vashwood and lawlight did shape me fundamentally, and I am the world’s most spiteful creature, a russian nesting doll of mutually assured destruction. Anyways I especially want Arima to die alone, besides Kaneki, unloved with that as an exception and staring the one child who latched on to him and hoped for so much in the eyes with the guilt of knowing “I did this to him and because of me there’s a good chance he will get worse from here on out.” Arieto is a hilarious pairing conceptually and personality wise, and outside of a canon universe I can absolutely get on board, the hijinks would be legendary, but in-universe? Eto’s LEAGUES too good for you Arima. Love you, but you could stand to suffer some more. 

Oh also I’m not quite sure if I ship them but Arima and Fura kind of have the energy of guys who kissed once in highschool and have adapted the mentality of “if I don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen.” But they do think about it. So maybe I ship them in the Jack era for 5 minutes of poor judgement, teenage-ness, and the intrinsic desire to make that rivalry homoerotic, and then I’m just here for the bisexual denial. 

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: H a i s e that is his son and he does not know how to raise him and I can’t even say he’s really trying but he’s definitely there and just. Oh I wish he knew how to lead a normal life. Also Furuta, they never met in the parts of the story we’re shown, and they don’t particularly need to for me, but just conceptually they’re such fascinating foils. Living manifestations about everything I love and hate in the non-protagonists of Tokyo Ghoul, they should both burn. The most siblings to ever not sibling. 

My unpopular opinion about this character: I don’t care what power scaling this universe gives us and how far up on it they place him. I could beat up this old man in a fight. I COULD. I WILL. I’M GOING TO KICK HIM DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS, WITNESS AND REVEL IN MY SPECTACLE. Also he has no charisma. None. He’s strong and intelligent, that is all he has going for him. And some nice hips but you didn’t hear that from me. 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: The realization. Some kind of spinoff that further detailed the schemes and functions of his collaboration with Eto behind the scenes. Give me the forbidden one-eyed monarchs, not their narrative child. 

Favorite friendship for this character: Oh… the potential of Kureo being a healthy mentor figure (if you don’t elaborate enough on what happened with him teaching arima about quinques, I will assume the best for today), Akira (take notes on how to parent, Arima), Fura (but particularly the potential of them growing more distant and formal over the years as Arima is absorbed by his work and quiet aspirations.) 

My crossover ship: I don’t have one so I’ll just note that I listened to “The Way It Ends” from the Death Note musical for most of this and by god I have never felt so cringe.

Oh wait actually Elendira the Crimsonnail but just the Trimax version obviously. Trans queen.

[princeofgod-2021]

LIGHT OF LIFE 285

John 1:4

HONOURING THE ALTAR 4: IDENTIFYING THE MINISTER 4

Rev 2:2 I know all that you’ve done for me—you have worked hard and persevered. I know that YOU DON’T TOLERATE EVIL. YOU HAVE TESTED THOSE WHO CLAIMED TO BE APOSTLES AND PROVED THEY ARE NOT, FOR THEY WERE IMPOSTERS. CEV

The Next thing you must look for in the Minister is the words that proceed from his mouth.

That seems close to the first point but this is what would help you to “confirm” what you suspect or “see” of his life.

Mat 12:34-35 But YOU WHO ARE KNOWN as the Pharisees ARE ROTTEN TO THE CORE! You’ve been poisoned by the NATURE OF A VENOMOUS SNAKE. HOW CAN YOUR WORDS BE GOOD AND TRUSTWORTHY IF YOU ARE ROTTEN WITHIN? FOR WHAT HAS BEEN STORED UP IN YOUR HEARTS WILL BE HEARD IN THE OVERFLOW OF YOUR WORDS! “When virtue is stored within, the hearts of good and upright people will produce good fruit. But when evil is hidden within, those who are evil will produce evil fruit. TPT

It can be difficult to “catch” a man at his words because if he is deliberate on a mission of “deception”, he can “tailor” his speeches to cloud his intentions and personality with double-life for a long while.

But some days, he’ll “let his guard down” and say some very despicable things.

Take note of those things.

Ecc 10:3 Yes also, when the fool walks by the way, HIS UNDERSTANDING FAILS HIM, AND HE SAYS TO EVERYONE THAT HE IS A FOOL. WEB

Even with this point, it can yet be difficult to detect what “stuff” our “Man of God” is truly made of because really, you probably don’t live [around his residence] with him, and it truly take a person who dines and moves around with him to fully tell what he is made of, right?

Well, not to worry. You see, what he is made of is what has filled him up and what will “spill” from inside of him. He can’t hide it.

Mat 12:34 You snakes—HOW CAN YOU SAY GOOD THINGS WHEN YOU ARE EVIL? FOR THE MOUTH SPEAKS WHAT THE HEART IS FULL OF. GNB

Mat 15:18-19 BUT THE WORDS THAT COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH COME FROM YOUR HEART. AND THEY ARE WHAT MAKE YOU UNFIT TO WORSHIP GOD. Out of your heart come evil thoughts, murder, unfaithfulness in marriage, vulgar deeds, stealing, telling lies, and insulting others. CEV

If you are sensitive enough, you could know the weakness and indulgences of the man from what he says. Besides, if they are “desperately sinful”, their words will somehow portray their intensions.

Many times, an adulterous preacher will likely “eye” your parish women and his voice will carry his “seductions” around them.

You must never leave such alone with your women as their counselor. Be warned please.

2Pe 2:14 They're always looking for an adulterous woman. THEY CAN'T STOP LOOKING FOR SIN AS THEY SEDUCE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T SURE OF WHAT THEY BELIEVE. Their minds are focused on their greed. THEY ARE CURSED. GW

Also, when it comes to the Messages they will be sharing, listen carefully and you’ll see they are very lousy in their interpretation of scriptures.

This is easier if you are a good bible student yourself though.

1Ti 1:6-7 Some believers have been LED ASTRAY BY TEACHINGS and SPECULATIONS that EMPHASIZE NOTHING more than the empty words of men. THEY PRESUME TO BE EXPERT TEACHERS OF THE LAW, BUT THEY DON’T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA OF WHAT THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT and they simply love to argue! TPT

Ultimately, many such men don’t love the scriptures; they are only forcing themselves because they don’t want to look “fake” before you.

Watch them carefully, and you’d see that they avoid “deep scripture” and rather tell stories and crack jokes, and pray boisterously and loud, then call for donations.

Isa 8:20 To the Law and to the testimony! IF THEY DO NOT SPEAK ACCORDING TO THIS WORD, IT IS BECAUSE NO LIGHT IS IN THEM. MKJV

If you’re the type of Christian who is always looking to “spice things up” in church, you’d probably MISS the heresies because you could get excited when such men begin to bring their personal quotes and thus you forget your responsibility to place every “jot or tittle” of their words on the scale of God’s Word.

Luk 10:25-26 An expert in the Law of Moses stood up and asked Jesus a question to see what he would say. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to have eternal life?" Jesus answered, "WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE SCRIPTURES? HOW DO YOU UNDERSTAND THEM?" CEV

Never get carries away with New Doctrines. For all new concepts that is “exposited” on the Altar, our heart must “quickly” demand a scriptural reference and all explanations must be congruent with Bible.

If the man is deliberately “evasive” of scriptures, be very wary of him; heresies will follow.

Psa 119:127-128 THEREFORE I LOVE THY COMMANDMENTS ABOVE GOLD; YEA, ABOVE FINE GOLD. Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; AND I HATE EVERY FALSE WAY. KJV

The 3rd thing you need to check with the “man” on the Altar, is what he has to say about JESUS.

Joh 5:38-39 NOR DO YOU HAVE HIS WORD RESIDING IN YOU, because you do not believe the one whom he sent. You study the scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, AND IT IS THESE SAME SCRIPTURES THAT TESTIFY ABOUT ME, NET

This is a most difficult “acid test” because [sadly] too many Christians are not really interested in Christ.

So, how would you want to question anyone who [always] comes and tells you fables and excites you about his cars, mansion, travels, promotions and escapades?

Sheer waste of precious church time.

1Co 2:1-2 My brothers and sisters, when I first came to proclaim to you the secrets of God, I refused to come as an expert, trying to impress you with my eloquent speech and lofty wisdom. For while I was with you I WAS DETERMINED TO BE CONSUMED WITH ONE TOPIC—JESUS, THE CRUCIFIED MESSIAH. TPT

I am always worried, where I see that people are not profoundly exhilarated about Jesus.

I wonder how you would feel complete in a week if you’ve not thoroughly filled your heart with messages about Jesus.

May God make us desperately hungry for Him, in Jesus name.

Don’t stop reading; join us on Friday for more digging into this enlightening subtopic.

Keep Shinning!

Brother Prince

Wednesday, December 07, 2022

08055125517; 08023904307

[retrogradedreaming]

Arcane Astro Thoughts Pt. 1

Since I can’t get into a show without speculating about character astrology, I wrote out some thoughts about it. This is all just for fun��I didn’t look up any birthdays beforehand, so this is based on what I’ve observed in their personalities, how I interpret their characters, etc. I plan to do most of the major characters, but it started getting long, so here’s Viktor and Jayce for now!

Viktor: Aquarius sun | Sagittarius moon | Capricorn rising

Viktor’s core qualities center around innovation, progress, the greater good, and making his mark through those things. Viktor can’t help but get excited about science and magic and innovation, and we see over and over that the times he’s most in his element are the times when he’s using his mind to solve a problem. He’s got the drive and determination with his Capricorn rising, the kind that simply does not allow him to stop until he’s achieved success, and then he aims even higher. 

The Sagittarius moon makes him a little bit reckless but chill at the same time. He does science for FUN even if he gets obsessive about it and goes to extremes for the sake of progress. The thing here is that he has the risk-taking, fun-loving, passionate, “let’s just try it” attitude of Sagittarius and he isn’t really comfortable unless he’s going out of his comfort zone. It gives him the fiery drive to keep pursuing his goals. Plus, he’s got more wisdom than I think people around him give him credit for. 

The Aquarius sun comes with innovation and constant ideas—air signs are known for overthinking, and I think for Viktor this comes in the form of wanting to make his mark, wanting to be known for his mind, and having a NEED to keep creating new things. He has the good of other people in mind, and he’s focused on always continuing forward with new ideas. He processes the world through a lens of innovation and he uses his own mind, plus his dedication to his work, to meet the needs of the world. He also comes across as serious at first—you go in thinking maybe he’s a serious workaholic type of character, but it doesn’t take long before we see his wit, his humor, his calculating personality, and his balance between being serious about his goals but being willing to try unconventional approaches to get there.

Jayce: Libra sun | Cancer moon | Leo rising

In true Libra fashion, I think Jayce tries to keep the peace. He’s a little bit too chaotic to ACTUALLY be peaceful, but he tries, really tries, to see where other people are coming from when they tell him their ideas, thoughts, and how they see things. That’s kind of what helps him incorporate new ideas into his work because he sees that his ideas could help people and make a difference, but it’s also what makes him so impressionable. 

With a Cancer moon, his heart genuinely goes out to the people around him. As we kind of see in his room at the beginning of the show, he lives in controlled chaos and leaves a lot of projects unfinished, jumping from one to the next when he gets a new idea or interest. He’s got a bunch of different things going at once, but I don’t think he really forgets about any of them entirely. I also think the Cancer moon plays into how he helps people and makes it so he really tries to connect with people emotionally, and he can be a little too trusting of others. He wants so much to relate and nurture and BE nurtured that the amount of social and emotional influence here makes him open up quickly and really want to get to know people on a deeper level.

His Libra sun and Leo rising make him reach out to the people around him and they combine to make him a good social and political figure. He wants to help people he can see in front of them, the people he interacts with personally, which can mean he forgets about the people he can’t see (like how he wants to help Piltover, but as he comes into the council position, he prioritizes them over his and VIktor’s original intention to help the Undercity). He’s also really dedicated to the people he loves—Viktor, Mel, his mom, Caitlyn—and that’s part of the watery influence combined with the social, affectionate Libra and Leo. He’s got the combo of sociability and charisma that comes with the Leo and Libra—he can easily work his way into social situations and make connections in ways that other people marvel at.

[mybg3notebook]

Astarion Analysis

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were made up to the game version v4.1.101.4425. As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information.

“Morals are all well and good, but power always wins.” 

“If all I want is shallow praise? Hardly, there is also gold, sex, revenge, quite the list, really. But failing any of those, I will always settle for shallow praise.”

--Astarion 

The majority of sources used for this article are in the game itself (including Astarion-solo playthroughs) and the dev’s notes and datamined information provided by pjenn. Astarion as origin is (almost) not taken into account since it’s not finished and is highly unpolished. 

The itemised list will show some instances of approval or disapproval as seen in the game. To make the reading of this article easier and shorter, you can skip them since they are basically the proof I use to sustain the introductory concept of each block. 

We can infer a lot of Astarion by analysing what he approves and disapproves of. Sometimes, we can even lightly infer some information from his neutral reactions, but let’s be honest: this way of analysing a char is pretty poor since it leaves everything to speculation. Neutral reactions can only be analysed by contrasting the same situation in other contexts, and seeing what other options Astarion approves or disapproves of. With these considerations in mind, we can proceed to describe this character.

Disclaimer: this is a meta with my personal interpretation of the character, sticking as much as possible to the facts and leaving little to “desires” or “projections” of what I want him to be. If I do so, I will state it explicitly in the text for the sake of analysis honesty. I want to be clear about what is canon (facts shown in bg3 EA), from what’s personal interpretation with little proof.

Also, this list is extensive, gathering as much as I could in my many playthroughs, but I’m sure it’s not absolutely complete. Some details may have escaped to me, but honestly, I believe they will be easily fit in these blocks once the pattern has been seen.

Understanding Astarion by enumerating his reactions

Astarion is usually seen as a character whose behaviour is the embodiment of “randomness”, and after several Astarion-solo playthoughts, I began to see the patterns that showed little randomness in my opinion. 

We can say that he likes gratuitous cruelty and murder. He has a special taste for animal cruelty too. He is greedy, but mostly if it leads to murder or to make little people suffer. Sometimes this greedy side comes from the fact that he doesn’t like to “work for free”: most quests should have a reward for him to be neutral to them. Accepting them without asking anything in return tends to earn a disapproval. He is more reticent to humiliate or outsmart NPCs that may be potentially stronger and more powerful than him. 

[[1]] Situations showing his greed:

He supports the robbery of the fishermen that were helping the mind flayer (MF) after the crash. 

Astarion supports stealing the “magical” ring from the tiefling kid (Mattis). This could be seen also as a gesture of outsmarting a person or mere trickster behaviour (see below).

He supports asking for compensation from the deep gnome we saved at the windmill.

He agrees to force Tulla (dying gnome in the myconid camp) to give you her magical boots.

Denying Baelen the scrolls because “they don’t come cheap”.

He approves pickpocketing Mirkon while being lured by the harpies.

[[2]]Situations displaying plain murder or violence:

He supports joining Lae’zel against the tieflings if you persuade them to free her, since this means killing (which is always an entertainment for him) creatures he considers lesser.

He supports killing Gimblebok and his gang near the Jergal ruins if you avoid any attempt of persuasion. This can be shown as a demonstration of power. (see below)

He supports killing Kagha without trying to persuade her or change her ways, not because he thinks Arabella’s death was an aberration (he enjoyed the show, as his approval and later comment confirm it) but simply because he enjoys murder.

He supports attacking the goblin camp. It’s a great spectacle of murder combined with his personal dismiss towards goblinoid races.

He approves of joining Minthara and massacrating the tieflings. It’s another great spectacle of murder, but in this time, of weak people (He detests weak creatures, and despises Tieflings in general).

He approves of killing Lae’Zel in the scene where she attacks Tav during the night, out of fear of turning into MF.

He approves of killing Rugan in the hideout. 

Still related to this level of violence and cruelty, he supports learning more about Shar once Shadowheart explains Shar’s teachings, all about violence and death, fighting against the illusion of safety.

He approves killing Ellyka, the tiefling spying on the Gith patrol, if Tav is a Githyanki (true or disguised as) and chooses “Attack.”

He approves of helping Glut in massacring the whole Myconid colony.

He approves of sacrificing one of the companions to the fish-people who worship Booal.

He approves fighting the fake god Booal because it’s a massacre; where there is bloodshed, there is Astarion’s approval. 

For the same reason he approves killing the Githyanki patrol: pure bloodshed.

[[3]] Situations of gratuitous cruelty: I understand that a lot of people confuse this trait of his personality as a “trolling attitude”. There are different archetypes of tricksters in DnD, and he is not particularly the silly-funny one (e.i. Jester in Critical Role), but the cruel-funny one. His “pranks” don’t cause annoyance or silly troubles, they usually end up in murdering the person he is pranking, or causing them great pain. What he considers “funny” is always related to a lot of blood and suffering. Examples of this:

He disapproves of diffusing the situation between Aradin and Zevlor after the first goblin attack. He is “missing” his show. This situation is also related to enjoying humiliation of others (see below).

After letting Arka kill the goblin and take her revenge, Astarion will approve the comment that refugees are desperate and they will do anything. He is enjoying the show of despair of weak creatures. And he is also expecting for some of them to become survivalist beasts.

He approves of telling Kagha that you enjoyed the show of Arabella’s death as an answer to her question about if she is a monster.

He also approves of telling Arabella's parents that Kagha will release their daughter when the Rite of Thorns is completed (while Arabella, in fact, has been killed by Kagha's snake). This is another example of Evil Trickster, a prank with a really dark taste. This also shows that Astarion likes to give false hopes [One of the most iconic characteristic of Cazador]

He approves of telling the tiefling kids training with Wyll that they are going to die, inspiring that despair he enjoys to see in weak creatures. (see below)

He approves of breaking Alfira’s teacher’s lute, leaving the tiefling heartbroken because that had been the only memento she got from her teacher, and could not finish her tribute song.

Astarion approves of interrupting the goblinoid couple having sex, which he considers disgusting. After killing them, Astarion will support the idea that it was funny. Another example of Evil Trickster where the prank ends up with the death of the pranked one. But we also know Astarion despises goblinoid races.

He approves of killing Crusher after humiliating him.

He supports Tav who volunteers to torture Liam at the goblin camp.

He supports of laughing at Lorin (the elf trapped in Ethel’s house) after pretending to be the monster he sees (psychological torture). This example can be part of the list of humiliation too.

He states that seeing Mayrina’s horrified face after resurrecting her husband was funny. Another example of false hopes [One of the most iconic characteristics of Cazador] On the contrary, if Tav kills the undead afterwards, Astarion will disapprove, since he missed the “fun” of seeing Mayrina tortured. 

He enjoys every state of Abdirak’s torture upon Tav. This can be seen as a fine bloody show he is enjoying, or as a way to put Tav in a humiliating situation (as he approved the dung-smearing or the foot-kissing instances)

Using the leader gnoll Flind to attack her own gnolls earns his approval. Asking her to devour herself increases approval once more. This situation could also be seen as enjoyment of animal cruelty (since gnolls are considered animals by Astarion too) but also as the reflection of Astarion’s inner desire of becoming a Master of bending wills.

 Probably the most innocent prank so far we saw, he approves of doing Baaa at the redcaps in the Bog.

[[4]] As I said previously, he suports any form of animal cruelty:

He approves of kicking and killing the squirrel Timber in the Druid Grove. According to the dev’s notes, he is “shocked and annoyed” because “you stamped a squirrel to death when he could’ve eaten it.” (DEN_General_Squirrel)

He supports prodding to death the bird that Nettie was healing during the dialogue (you need Speak with Animals for this).

He supports freeing the Owlbear cub at the Goblin Camp, and feeding it later, because he wants to bite the owlbear cub eventually (he uses the word “delectable” to describe him, and when the owlbear escapes, Astarions states “You‘ve scared off the little snack.”)

When we find Halsin in his bear form, Astarion will have two instances of approval: the first one when Tav tells the goblin kids that throwing stones with sharp edges would hurt the animal more, and then when Tav themself joins the goblins in throwing rocks at Halsin. 

We can also add the confrontation with Flind, the Gnoll leader, as another example of animal cruelty since he approves a smart yet twisted way of killing her by double-using the tadpole. First to command her to attack the gnolls, and then to devour herself. However, since Gnolls are considered aberrations lore-wise, this point could be left aside in this particular case. 

If we take into consideration that Astarion sees Goblins, Kobolds, and Gnomes as animals, killing them always increases his approval. This happens when we kill, out of the blue, most goblin NPCs, or simply attack the camp. (Datamined content) He will also approve of killing slave gnomes in Duergar Encampment (place you find after the boat). All these moments can be also seen as “animal” cruelty if we take into account Astarion’s perspective.

He approves of killing Priestess Gut in the Goblin Camp. It could also be interpreted as his usual dismissal towards goblins (he sees them as animals), since he never believed that she could help them in the first place. Or this approval can fit perfectly fine the cruel, murderous aspect of Astarion. As I said, many approvals overlap different aspects of Astarion, but all seem to fit his patterns either way. 

I suspect that the reason behind this particular kind of cruelty comes from those two hundred years of torture, in which he had to drink animal blood. Considering he was such an unfair magistrate, directing his rage against the ones who are not the root of the problem seems fitting. 

[[5]] Astarion is filled with racial bias and prejudices. 

He only sees elves and humans as the only creatures capable of thinking. (Scene after the bite)

However, he has strong biases against a particular ethnic group of humans: Gurs. He thinks they are all cut-throat, and probably would approve the rest of stereotypes that Gandrel added in that scene. (Scene of meeting Gandrel)

He mocks halfling and dwarf Tavs, who he thinks are naturally weak, until they prove him wrong. (Stargaze scene for short-sized Tav)

He supports the idea that tieflings have demonic powers just because of their heritage. (Speaking with the Grove halfling seller). During the party, he compares the lives of the tieflings with the lives of the goblins as something of similar value (which we know he considers as animal).

He sees goblins, kobolds, and gnomes as animals. (Scene after the bite)

After killing the goblinoid couple which was having sex, if Tav choose to say that the situation made them scrub their eyes, Astarion would add and extra “dehumanizing” comment against gnomes. “I’ve seen worse. Gnomes can be… ughh.” (Scene of interrupting sex)

[[6]] He finds pleasure in humiliating people or in outsmarting them, especially if they are trying to outsmart Tav. He dislikes weakness and loves to humiliate weak people in particular.

He approves telling Lae’Zel to say “please” when we met her again in the cage, humiliating her. 

He disapproves of diffusing the situation between Aradin and Zevlor after the first goblin attack. We know he is “missing” his show where one of them is being humiliated.

Astarion approves of telling Elegis that she is pathetic for being scared of a few goblins. Once more, humiliation due to weakness. 

He disapproves of telling Arabella's parents that the Druids overreacted when speaking in the Druid Grove’s stairs. He is disapproving for defending a weak and silly creature who was not smart enough to survive on her own. 

Astarion supports stealing the “magical” ring from the tiefling kid. This is another situation of humiliation of a weak person and outsmarting them. This could be considered a prank of a more silly-funny trickster doing an innocent prank.

He approves of telling the tiefling kids that they are going to die.

He feels disappointed when Lae’Zel did not kill Zorru, the tiefling that she forces to kneel and confess where he saw the Gith patrol. He approves the psychological torture of the interrogation.

He enjoys interrupting the goblinoid couple having sex. This is an example of the prank cruel-funny trickster. This “prank” ends up with the goblinoid couple being killed.

Astarion approves of smearing dung in the guard's face at the goblin camp entrance. The show of seeing someone being humiliated is satisfying.

He supports booing and humiliating Volo off the stage in the goblin camp. 

He supports licking the goblin’s foot (It could also be considered a prank).

He supports kissing the goblin’s foot while stealing the ring. This situation puts two things he enjoys in the same place: the humiliation experienced by Tav and how the Crusher was outsmarted in the process. Astarion will approve if Crusher is the one humiliated and forced to kiss Tav’s foot. 

He approves of laughing at Lorin (the elf trapped in Ethel’s house) when the elf is scared of Tav who pretends to be the monster that’s torturing him.

Humiliating “low people'' is an important aspect of Astarion’s personality, since it’s a small petty pleasure he can have now, when during the last two hundred years it had been done to him. Humiliation has to do with power as well, another symbol tight to Astarion’s personality. Through humiliation Astarion can taste a little bit of power, that power he lacked for two hundred years. That power that, if his backstory is not retconned in future versions or in the full release game, he had before turning into a vampire, abusing those groups he considered less.

[[7]] If we think in power, we also have to think in manipulation. And of course, Astarion is a great master of it. Sometimes the events that stand out his taste for manipulation overlap with the ones displayed in the humiliation section.

Since the moment we meet Astarion, we know he keeps working in turning himself into a pleasant and useful companion for Tav. Astarion knows he has bigger chances to succeed and survive staying with this group. A lot of his “neutral” behaviours respond to this goal: he doesn’t want to enrage Tav to the point of being kicked out of the party, it’s not about a hidden gentle side inside he is showing with an apathetic neutrality, it’s, once more, raw preservation and survival. During the first scenes of the game, when we don’t know he is a vampire, Astarion tries to avoid taking a position in the situations we face: he is just feeling the ground all the time: with Sazza and with Arabella’s death is clear. He doesn’t judge hard, he is testing Tav, he is trying to understand their mind, and acting as pleasant as he can according to what he sees. It’s a natural use of manipulation to guarantee his survival in a group of strangers. During the bite scene—when this façade finally ends—he is truly nervous of being killed for his vampiric nature, and tries to convince Tav of keeping him in the group using arguments that go from seduction to practical usefulness. 

The scene of stargaze also shows his usage of seduction as a manipulative tool to guarantee his survival (he weponises seduction and sex). Although he says mostly the same, he reacts very differently in tone depending on Tav’s approach. If Tav is wary, Astarion will act encouraging their ego and enumerating several feats, while getting uncomfortably closer. If Tav is already interested in Astarion, the elf will use softer manners to keep the seduction into a more intimate tone. This is a scene of a predator tasting his future prey as well (Dev’s notes are pretty clear about his manipulation). In this scene, also, Astarion is light-headed because he has not drunk blood in a while, and has “his head foggy” (something we can repeat during his origin as a personal tag). Exact words he will use as a narrative hint during the bite scene. Therefore, this scene has little of “Astarion falling for Tav”, and has everything of vampiric hunger combined with a raw sense of survival and usage of seduction to guaranteed it.

(potential interpretation) He approves when he is persuaded into sharing his dream with Tav. In any other character, we usually would understand this as an approval for caring about the character himself. In that scenario, failing the approval doesn’t cause a penalty (unless the character understands this failure as prying, as it happens with Shadowheart). In Astarion’s case, when you fail this persuasion, you are penalised with a disapproval. We can understand this in the same way we see it with Shadowheart: this is his annoyance for prying into his personal business. But there is another interpretation in this disapproval: he recognised a bad execution of persuasion as a manipulative attempt, and Astarion is in particular very sensitive to manipulations and mind games (see point [12]). 

Most of his “romance” is manipulation as well, keeping in mind the first point of this section: he becomes pleasant for Tav, using whatever shape he needs, so he can survive (this is especially noticeable with a good-aligned Tav). Astarion has weaponised seduction and sex without any hint of subtetly for the player (As the Dev’s notes say: “For Astarion, this is a game of power - one he’s played many times before in the taverns of Baldur’s Gate, trying to lure people back to his master. He’s an old hand at seduction, very self-assured at first, but the player might not go along with the script he expects them to follow.”) We can assure that Astarion will find more satisfaction in having “fun” with a high-approval Tav rather than a low-approval Tav.

If Tav is not evil enough (and therefore has a low approval), Astarion will need to be the one inviting Tav to have sex (to be sure the control is still in his hand, still pushing for “catching” Tav). If a low-approval-Tav invites Astarion, he will decline saying that he “has standards'', implying he needs to be the one controlling the situation (he is basically playing “hard to catch”. Astarion already knows that he “caught” Tav in this scenario since Tav was the first one showing their interest). If Tav is evil-like (and has enough approval), Astarion will not only weaponise sex, he may express some degree of personal desire in having “fun” with Tav. After all, evil characters can like one another. In this case, he would accept Tav’s invitation for more hedonist reasons such as personal pleasure and not mere survival. Still it’s always present the layer of using this situation as a manipulative tool to have control on Tav.

Approves persuading Crusher without a fight, understanding it as an approval earnt for the good manipulation tool used. Of course this scene is combined with the natural approval that Astarion gives when outsmarting creatures he considers lower or animal-like (See point [6]). 

Successfully persuade Lae'Zel to "play along" when meeting the Githyanki patrol, and pull off the deception.

I personally found funny that Astarion, without the intention of the writer, is so good in his manipulations, that he broke the fourth wall and ended up manipulating a good amount of players as well into believing him. 

[[8]] He supports revenge in all its forms and degrees, which is not strange since it’s his main motivation against Cazador.

He approves of letting Arka kill Sazza in the cage as revenge for her brother’s death.

He approves of the attack against Nettie when she poisons Tav.

He approves of telling Edowin's siblings to find the beast that attacked him as a way to avenge the True Soul.

Astarion approves of Arabella’s mother killing Kagha at the party.

He approves of helping the Sovereign to take revenge against the Duergars that killed their young. However, it’s not clear if Astarion approves the revenge itself or the method proposed, which is, according to his own words, “a bit genocidal” and therefore more entertaining for him (we need to remember he enjoys the display of murder and violence in all its forms, [2,3]). 

He approves of helping Glut in massacring the whole Myconid colony, since according to Glut’s words, they saw Glut’s circle being killed by the Duergars and did nothing, so Glut is looking for revenge. 

[[9]] He doesn’t like to get involved in anyone’s problems unless you can obtain a benefit or a reward for it (this is directly connected to his greed aspect [1])

He approves of telling Mayrina’s brothers that they are on their own, and actively disapproves if Tav agrees to help them find Mayrina.

He approves of declining to help Halsin in killing the Goblin leaders.

He disapproves of helping Wyll to save the Tiefling refugees in the Grove.

He disapproves of helping Zevlor.

He disapproves of finding evidence that confirms that Kagha is working with Shadow Druids. He will additionally disapprove again if, after exposing her, Tav asks her to change her ways. From Astarion’s point of view, Tav is basically meddling too much in the Grove’s problems for free, and ruining all the instances where murder could happen. 

He also disapproves if Tav agrees to help the two Zhentarim humans that are attacked by gnolls without asking for compensation.

He approves of not getting involved in the rescue of the Duke when Tav speaks with Florrick

[[10]] Despite having been a slave, he lacks of empathy for those who shared his fate and, instead, he supports slavery:

If we take into consideration what Swen said about his background in one of the first playthough he showed, we know that Astarion, as a magistrate, used criminals as food for local vampires, and in an attempt to outsmart them, he began to sell them into slavery (we can see in this brief background that Astarion has been greedy and cruel before turning into a vampire).

Although he disapproves paying for Oskar, the painter in the Zhentarim Hideout, he does it because of the money. When Tav buys the painter and demands him to stay silent because “slaves should speak when they are spoken to”, Oskar will think this is a joke (which is not the case, since none of those options has, in this patch at least, a (performance) tag). When Tav reinforces the idea that this is not a joke, and Oskar is now a true slave, only then, Astarion will approve. 

When seeing one of the servant Duergars of the Myconite Colony, Astarion will comment on how useful they are, and how Underdark drows should learn about these creatures, since these slaves are more efficient than the standard ones. If Tav brings awareness about the contradiction that those thoughts cause coming from an ex-slave, Astarion will justify his thinking saying that they are husks without mind, claiming that his feelings “may be different, had they been conscious beings. Or maybe not.” He emphasises in this dual possibility. And we can be sure that he certainly would not care slavery on conscious creatures, as we confirm it later with Oskar (A human who is not a Gur, and therefore, a creature that Astarion consider thinking acceptable beings). 

(Datamined content) When reaching the Duergar Encampment, once Nere is rescued, there is approval for killing the slave gnomes when the True Soul orders it. One can interpret that Astarion minds little for these slaves because they are gnomes, and therefore, animals.

[[11]] He looks for power and dominance, to have control over others and also as a way to guarantee his own freedom. 

In the discussion after every dream, Astarion supports the use of the tadpole's power in every opportunity, dismissing their effects. He is thrilling for the ability of bending everyone’s will (curious note, this is one of Cazador’s characteristics most hated by him)

He approves of letting the Koa-Toes bow before them as the Booal's chosen. This scene can be understood as a typical prank of a trickster, but also as a taste for being adored as a master/entity with more power. This scene shows that he and Tav are placed in the “Master” position. This reinforces the idea that Astarion wants to be a Master/Cazador, eventually. (Check post about Astarion and Power 1 and 2)

If Tav claims that the worship to them as True Souls can be useful after letting Edowin’s siblings leave, Astarion will approve. He shows in every instance more delight for having Cazador’s powers, making emphasis in the mind control ability, again.

Astarion approves of keeping the Necromancy of Thay tome. As we see later in his scene, he believes that there is something powerful hidden in it that may help him against Cazador. He wants to muster all the power of any kind he can.

Astarion approves of sparing Auntie Ethel’s life when she surrenders during battle because she will grant them power in exchange. He wants to muster all the power of any kind he can.

[[12]] Astarion is particularly sensitive to mind control. His expressions and the tone of his voice against any type of mind control are filled with feral ire (video here): 

He is angrily affected by the movements of his worm in his own head, 

He screams against Ethel’s control when using the mask, 

The insults at the harpies when he is lured, 

The way he is annoyed by the telepathic spores in the Underdark, 

He disapproves failed attempts of persuasion (understood by his character as failed, obvious attempts of manipulations). 

And, potentially, this is the reason why he disapproves of Priestess Gut cleaning Tav’s mind.

[[13]] Because he likes power, he also likes the demonstration of power whether his own or his allies’, therefore he likes most intimidation options in general

He approves of intimidating Gimblebok and the gang near the ruins. 

He approves of intimidating or provoking both Aradin and Zevlor at the Druid Grove.

At camp, when discussing preferred methods of death, he approves if Tav tells him "If I die, I'll take you with me." (after first picking "Try it and I'll spill your guts") . He also approves if Tav chooses a method of death (decapitation, knife, poison). Both options show resolve, strength, and freedom in deciding one’s fate. Since Astarion died at the hands of strangers, he values the freedom of choosing how to die. He will disapprove picking the option of letting others decide your death.

He approves if you intimidate the mirror into allowing passage.

[[14]] He is a survivalist character, and therefore, a lot of his approvals are related to elements that will guarantee his life, such as looking for his own freedom, the acceptance of his vampire nature, and the encouragement in looking for strong alliances or keeping alive strong individuals that can be useful as allies. 

He approves of being accepted with his vampire nature and allowing him to feed on Tav’s blood. He keeps approving if Tav defends him during the exchange of opinions in the camp. 

He approves if he has permission to feed on enemies. 

He approves of killing Gandrel. This approval is also mere raw survival.

He approves if during sex, Tav allows him to drink their blood. 

He disapproves of promising Nettie to take Wyvern Poison if you feel symptoms of the Tadpole, since it goes against his survival instinct.

When Lae’Zel is killed by the Gith patrol, he will state in banter that it was a waste since Lae’Zel was a powerful/strong specimen, so clearly he is lamenting the loss of a powerful ally. 

Despite appreciating his freedom, he has explicitly stated that he “would choose servitude over oblivion any day”, showing how extremely survivalist he can be.

[[15]] He likes to find a solution to their tadpole problem using unconventional ways, or at least, using options that may lead him to the twisted solution he needs (which is not exactly being cured of the tadpole, but to control it, he certainly needs more exceptional means)

He approves of telling Auntie Ethel about the tadpole in the Druid Grove simply because she “looks lunatic”.

At first, Astarion disapproves of Raphael's invitation to remove the Tadpole, claiming that he would not change one master for another. However, when the situation starts looking dire, he will approve of the idea, because anything “may be better than Cazador” adding later that he “would choose servitude over oblivion any day.” 

A bit contradictory when he was the first one claiming that Raphael used mind games similar to Cazador’s, games they know they have won before starting.

[[16]] He has a “soft spot” for helping people to escape their masters or killing/rejecting people that can be seen as Masters. However it’s requirement that those escapees could be seen by Aastarion as strong and capable creatures. He would mind little for creatures he sees as underlings. (Weak concept, seeing it with squinted eyes)

He approves of helping Karlach to get rid of the Tyr followers, since they are in fact working for Zariel, Karlach’s previous master. With all what Karlach explained about her past, she certainly qualifies as a strong person who is trying to get rid of her master.

He disapproves of Tav who tells Raphael that they would do anything to remove the Tadpole. This is probably resounding in Astarion: his past bad choice when he was at death's door due to the Gur attack and Cazador appeared to “save” him. He knows that going to that extent has poor results.

Astarion approves of Tav if they say that they won’t become Raphael's pawn (conversation in the camp after the encounter with Raphael). It’s true that when the other options narrow, Astarion starts to consider the possibility of changing a vampiric master for an infernal one.

This post was written on April 2021.

→ For more Astarion: Analysis Series Index

[inspiteallthedanger]

Also, it seems a little too typical to just blame Yoko for everything, but had things started to go sour between JP before that? I see India discussed a lot and the White Album sessions of course, but things seemed pretty okay still in '67. Did Brian dying start a ripple effect? I know it's the million dollar question of course (and no need to answer if you have discussed it already at length), but I'm still trying to navigate everything! (2/2)

Hello again. Yes that’s the size of it. Massive high in 1967 and an equally massive crash back to earth in 1968.

So. As I said, John was really over doing the acid thing. He was super desperate to find an ‘answer’ that would help the mental anguish he kept falling back into. He briefly (in a pattern for John) thought acid was it. Lots of people commented that John was happier and softer and seemed to think ‘love was the answer’ during the early acid going. That’s not unusual for people doing that sort of drug. But… John being John he used it as a way to not be in his own head and that made it worse whenever he came back to himself.

There’s some speculation that Paul and everyone agreed to India because it would stop John doing acid. And it did. And he was happier for a time there. He had a new answer in the Maharishi and all the Beatles were there — which he found massively comforting. He and Paul wrote constantly (often in Paul’s bedroom).

But. By the time he’s home his childhood best friend says John was the worst he’d ever seen him.

And, more than that, Paul seems to feel… guilty/worried/strange just after India. They go to NYC to promote the launch of Apple and Paul is… simply not there. He just has the look of a man that knows he’s fucked up but doesn’t know how to fix it. Worth noting both John and Jane were furious with him. So. (He also meets Linda again here)

Obviously Brian’s death was massive. Not just because John loved him and relied on him for lots of things. But also because John thought he was a curse on the men in his life (he had experienced a lot of loss by then). So I can’t imagine this wasn’t hugely triggering for him. So, I’m sure it knocked him off his stride even more and made his depression worse. It probably also meant he was extra specially desperate for The Maharishi to cure him, because everything must have felt a bit bleak.

There is a burning question as to what happened in India. I talked about it in that link but here for some thoughts on why Yoko wasn’t what he was missing.

But to add a little to that: this is could be seen as the culmination of his and Paul’s insane closeness the year before. John’s just tried to get them all to move to a Greek island together (Paul’s not into that idea). So, it’s easy to imagine there could have been this building tension. John and Paul have basically been a couple (the sex or lack there of is up to interpretation) when Jane’s not there. But. Jane and Paul are now making a last ditch effort to make it work and are engaged.

I see this as the point where Paul’s no longer able to balance the two of them. He gave too much to John during Sargent Pepper for him to accept less and Jane is, frankly, tired of waiting for Paul to make it all official. It’s hard to say how explicitly this came to a head (ahem) in India. Whether John made an ultimatum of his own or if some lines got cross. Or, if John just needed Paul because he realised fairly quickly that meditation wasn’t going to fix him. John certainly seems to be genuinely at a crisis point — I really believe he tried to reach out to Paul for a lifeboat. And Paul left him there and went home with Jane. I spoke in the India post about why I can easily believe Paul didn’t realise that by leaving he was giving John the final realisation that Paul was never going to commit to John like he wanted. That’s the read I get. Paul genuinely thought he’d annoyed Jane enough with the month they’d already been there and John and he could pick back up afterwards. Reader they did not.

Five weeks later (and two after John gets back to England — during which he’s doing alllll the drugs — he and Yoko get together. So this is why I don’t think Yoko was the problem — all of that was already there — but a symptom of it. He brought her everywhere as part security blanket, part provocation to Paul to show he didn’t need him any more (right where he knows it hurts Paul). It must be said that Paul then brought his own new girlfriend into the studio too… which I’m sure deescalated everything nicely. lol.

Why was John so furious with Paul? Well, whatever happened in India coupled with Paul trying to step in to Brian’s shoes. I don’t know how actively John was annoyed at the time with Paul for being bossy and how much was a retroactive feeling of resentment because of other issues. I suspect a bit of both.

I mean, to an extent, they were always going to crash and burn. They couldn’t commit and they couldn’t walk away. So an explosion was in some ways inevitable — and Paul simply does not dump people (because that’s conflict) but he will force the issue and make you do it. And boy… John did. And then… changed his mind a bunch until Paul sued them all. But that’s another story.

[theleftovertaco]

You Were Maid For This

There is an increasing amount of boys on tiktok in maid costumes, and when someone dressed up as Malfoy in a maid outfit, I had to write this (if you want the video just send an ask and I’ll send you the link). Here we have Fred, George, Harry, Ron, Neville, and Draco. Just a heads up, some of the details are purposefully vague so that the reader can be interpreted as being from any house, in any year, and of any gender, if i trip up or you think there is a way i could improve, please let me know since i finally have asks and submissions enabled

•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•

Whoever decided this was a good idea.... was absolutely fucking correct

It was you, you decided it was a good idea

You darted into the great hall, sat down, and told Colin Creevey to set up his camera and to not be a snitch, and then you waited.

Fred and George came first, and to an onslaught of laughter and a little bit of applause.

Because low and behold, they came in wearing matching maid outfits. 

Pink. Frilly. Fucking. Maid. Outfits.

“We wanna know”, George said as he plopped down on your right, “who thought it would be funny to take all our clothes in the middle of the night and leave us with only THESE!” You stifled laughter by shoving a piece of scrambled egg in your mouth.

Fred tilted his head your way from the other side of you. “You think this is funny, do you love?”

“I find it to be the purest form of comedy.”

“Ugh” came the simultaneous replies, “This has to the fluffiest thing I have ever worn.”

“I don’t know”, laughed Harry, “the cat ears just bring out your eyes so well!”

He got identical middle fingers in response.

“Maybe you should just work with it, not against it” , Hermione interjected her two sickles into the conversation, “try to rock it.”

“Rock it?” They both titled their heads a little to the left.

“It’s a muggle expression, when a person tries to make a style work even if they’re not fond of it.”

“Ah.” Came the reply from your left.

“Maybe we should try to, uhh, rock it.”

You giggled and turned to Colin, “You two have fun with that, in the meantime, would you mind taking a picture, I’d like it for blackmail material.”

“Colin, you take that picture and I smash your camera.” Fred’s threat fell on deaf ears and after the image was pointed out on Colin’s new Polaroid you took the image, fanning it as you slipped 5 knuts into the small boys hand.

In McGonagall’s class, the boys flounced into class and immediately began flirting with the other boys in class.

“Weasley and Weasley, sit down before I turn the dress green!”

“Professor, that would clash with our hair.” A stern look silenced George pretty quick and they both sat down, though after they did McGonagall had to turn around to hide a smile.

Professor Sprout let out a booming laugh when they entered greenhouse four and simply shooed them to their stations. The Dittany plants they had planted into the plant beds saw that the white of their costumes were freckled with brown, but a quick scourgify from Sprout and they were good as new.

She sent them on their way with a comment that they, “look adorable!”

Flitwick couldn’t say much, he fell off his book stack laughing when they walked in and stayed on the floor for half and hour.

Charms class was excused for the rest of the day since their professor couldn’t calm down.

They reconvened with you for study hall in the courtyard looking a little too pleased with themselves.

“I take it people liked them?” You shouted across the yard.

“Yeah, Flitwick couldn’t stay on his stack.” Fred grinned.

“Well, I really must say, you both look very pretty.” They both laughed but you didn’t miss the way their cheeks flushed at this very different compliment.

“Yes, they look very pretty, don’t they”, Malfoy sauntered across the courtyard, “It’s such a manly look for them. Very fitting, since you two are too stupid to get any job outside of being janitorial staff.”

Fred nearly growled and you and George had to pull him to sit back down on the fountain ledge. 

“Don’t worry, he’s next on the list.” You whispered. Identical mops of red hair whipped towards you.

“It was you!” came the in unison exclamations.

“Of course it was me, who else would it be!”

“Y/N!” Fred bemoaned.

“How could you betray us like this?” George was howling like he’d just been stabbed. 

“I wouldn’t call it betrayal, just a bit of fun.”

“How did you even get up to the common room?” Fred was incredulous.

“You should know by now that I know how to get past those charms.”

“Ok, we’ll admit that was pretty funny.” George replied.

“Thank you, I try. Just make sure you don’t tell anyone else yet.”

“Of course. So, where are our clothes?”

“You’ll get them back when I’m finished with the prank. Bye you two.”

You got identical “NOOOOO”s as you left the courtyard.

2 down. 4 to go. 

•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•

                         “Creevey! Same drill as yesterday.” Colin nodded and whipped out his camera to get it ready.

“You might wanna hide for this one, I doubt Malfoy would appreciate you taking his picture in this state.” He promptly ducked under the table until just the lens peeked out above the table. 

Draco stomped into the Great Hall, sat over at the Slytherin table, and huffed as most of Gryffindor let out thunderous laughter. 

“Whoever did this will be on the very unpleasant end of an unforgivable when I find them!” You could barely hear him above the giggles. 

“Mr. Malfoy, I know I did not just hear a threat from you?” McGonagall walked past the table and let out an affronted sound.

“Er-...of course not professor.” She hmphed and walked off.

“I don’t know Malfoy, maybe this could be good for you. This is what you get for making fun of the twins.” Fred and George nodded next to you, still in their outfits from the other day.

“Shut it, Y/Ln. If this was you I swear to Merlin.”

“I will admit to no such thing.”

Draco, unlike the twins, very much did not rock the maid outfit. Flitwick had finally gotten over his laughter and could teach as normal, but Professor Sinestra couldn’t help but let out a chuckle when a very grumpy Malfoy stepped up the astronomy tower with a few Gryffindor students trailing after him, making some rather inappropriate jokes about his backside.

Snape merely grumbled that his costume better not interfere with the lesson and moved on.

“Ok.” Malfoy finally sat down at your table in the library, “I concede, now please give me my clothes back.” 

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” You said with a sinister grin. 

“Y/Ln!!!!” he groaned. 

“It's not that big of a deal. So you wear a dress. Guys can wear dresses.”

“Doesn’t mean I want to!” he yelled, before being shushed by Pince. 

“You know”, you began to speculate, “I think you’re arguing to deflect because you don’t want to admit that you actually like wearing a dress, even if it’s just a little bit.”

There was only silence in return and you smirked.

“You get your clothes back when I’m done with my prank.”

“Thank you. One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you change my outfit to be green? Pink is not my color.” 

“I disagree, but fine.”

Halfway done. 

•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•

By day three, many of the boys at Hogwarts held the mild fear that they would be next to have their clothing swapped. 

Creevey had also picked up on the drill at this point.

Ron and Harry were next. 

You knew Harry would at least try to be a good sport. Ron, on the other hand, was a bit more of a wild card and you were a little nervous for his reaction.

“What. The. FUCK!” He whisper shouted when he got to Breakfast, slamming his hands down on the table. Harry chuckled and sat down next to him.

“So we were the next victims, hm.” Fred and George must have told Harry it was you, since he looked you way and playfully glared and stuck his tongue out at you, which you happily returned.

“Mature, Y/N.”

“You started it- wait no, ok now I hear it.”

“I swear to Godric Colin if you take my picture in this I will end you.” Ron snapped as the kid squeaked and ducked down, but the click of the lens appeared nonetheless. 

Harry and Ron went about their classes trying to attract as little attention as possible. Flitwick was used to the skirts at this point and merely smirked and asked the boys to sit down while commenting they should be careful with the lace collar since it was delicate.

During quidditch practice, Harry and the Twins did have a bit of trouble flying with the dress, since some of the other players and onlookers made comments from below. 

“Oi! Stop peeking!” Fred shouted at a third year girl who giggled and scurried off.

Professor Trelawney stared at the two before claiming that the fates told her to advise them to wear a blue dress the next time. 

“Harry told me it was you.” Ron huffed as he slumped down in the grass by the lake near you. Harry sat down shortly after.

“It’s not that big of a deal. Honestly, I think you look cute in it.” Ron blushed at the compliment but didn’t say anything more. 

“I’m guessing we won’t be getting our clothes back for a while?”

“You’re catching on. Only one more day. The last person is tomorrow and then you get your Friday off from wearing it.”

“Oh thank Merlin.” You heard Ron sigh in relief.

1 more person left.

•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•

If we’re being honest you were most worried about Neville. That’s why you wanted him last, so he would only have to deal with it for a day in case it backfired. Also so that Malfoy couldn’t say anything because he would also be wearing his.

Neville kinda just shuffled into the Great Hall, and then darted over to the table where he wolfed down his beans on toast before rushing back out to hide until his next class.

“Neville!” Harry and Ron ran after him, dresses jumping back and forth as they left.

It was doubtful you woulf see anything from them directly, you didn’t share any classes with Neville on thursdays.

Ron and Harry would have to catch you up afterwards.

You met back up with them at dinner.

“You ok, Neville?” He offered a sheepish smile and nodded.

“Harry and Ron said I’d be ok and that no one else could really say anything.”

“Snape just said not to be ‘any more of a nuisance than usual’”, Harry interrupted with a shitty impression, “ Binns was too interested in his fucking textbook to make a comment, McGonagall called the three of us ‘adorable’ and Dean and Seamus keep playing with our ears!” He batted away Seamus’ hand for what probably was the 40th time that day.

“Well, Neville, what did you think?” Eyes turned towards him and he blushed bright red.

“I”, he paused for a second, “it was fun, I guess. It was kind of funny seeing Malfoy in them.”

There was a slight pause, and then.

“I guess I’d do it again. Not the outfit but the dress or skirt. Maybe even the headband. Just not as fuzzy.” Neville looked down and kinda whispered the last part.

“I would too.” Ron, surprisingly was the next to admit it and from there came a round of agreements at Gryffindor table.

“Well if we’re being honest I think that George and I did indeed rock it.” Fred said as he dug into his pot roast

“That you did. If you lot want, we could go to a shop next Hogsmeade weekend, take a look around for some other skirts?”

You got a round of “yes”s and the conversation turned elsewhere.

•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•

“Hey,” Malfoy dropped into the seat next to you during study hall, “ how are you.”

You squinted at him.

“Fine? Why are you being so weird? You’re never nice.”

“Er, well, I mean I was hoping...that maybe... perhaps...”

“Spit it out Malfoy!”

“Could you take me to get a skirt?”

What?

“It’s just, after the first day, I kinda liked the skirt.”

You glared at him for a second.

“Yeah, ok, meet me at Hogsmeade entrance next month and we’ll go. Everyone else is going so play nice.”

He thanked you and left quickly.

•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•-•

“Well, you all look beautiful if I do say so myself.” You said as they each stepped out of the changing room wearing their skirts. Fred and George twirled around, Harry and Ron did a little dance, Neville jumped around a little bit, and Draco shifted his weight from foot to foot.’

“Well thank you love.” Fred skipped over to you in a plaid circle skirt, “I will say I prefer this skirt to the poofy one in the maid outfit.”

“You like the skirt, huh? You could even say you were maid for it.” You offered with a sly grin

“Why are you like this?”

“Nooo!”

“Shittiest pun ever.”

“Whyyyyy!”

“Please never speak again.”

“I literally hate you right now.”

Well, you win some, you lose some.

Tag list:

@omg-imatotalmess

[sailormoonandme]

Usagi’s Evolution as a Healer Goddess

The other day I saw a post discussing the evolution of Usagi’s fuku and it occurred to me how Eternal Sailor Moon’s costume was her first Senshi uniform to ditch the tiara. 

That in turn led me to consider how that kind of makes Usagi weaker as it removes a very useful weapon for her. After all, if you include the movies, Usagi uses some variant of Moon Tiara Action in practically every season prior to Stars.

However, dwelling more upon it I realized how this tiny change was all too appropriate for Usagi’s character development.

Firstly, by supplanting the Tiara with her Moon planetary symbol, Eternal Sailor Moon more closely resembles both Queen Serenity, her own Princess Serenity form and her future self as Neo-Queen Serenity. 

Since all three are objectively more powerful than Usagi typically is as Sailor Moon I think the change emphasises how she has ‘levelled up’ in her Eternal form. When combined with the angel wings, Eternal Sailor Moon shifts Usagi visually closer to her future self as NQS, which in the anime is implied to be her most powerful incarnation.* It is almost as though the visual was communicating that the Divine Miracle Magic that she’d previously drawn upon as Princess Serenity in Classic-SuperS had now become ingrained in her standard Senshi form and thus was more accessible to her. 

It was in thinking of her previous efforts as Princess Serenity that I inevitably recalled her duel with Metalia/Beryl in episode 46 and realized that Eternal Sailor Moon was the first time since Classic that Usagi’s default attack was a healing  technique not a destructive one. 

Moon Healing Escalation was Usagi’s first healing technique but until Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss (and it’s later upgrade, Silver Moon Crystal Power Kiss) it was also her only healing technique. 

Between regaining healing techniques and ditching her tiara/other destructive attacks/weapons, I think this represents her subtle growth in both her power and status. After all, it is a sad fact of life that it is easier to destroy something rather than fix it, thereby making the latter far more impressive.**

This skewing towards healing power rather than destructive power is also (arguably) thematically appropriate given the nature of Sailor Moon as a female power fantasy as (rightly or wrongly) the act of healing is typically coded as feminine. 

We can even take this further by examining things from the ‘opposite direction’ as it were.

Consider that in the climactic final episodes of Sailor Stars, Eternal Sailor Moon’s healing technique actually fails her when used against Galaxia. In later episodes, upon adopting her Princess Serenity form (complete with larger and more obviously angelic wings), she uses a sword to duel Galaxia.

Obviously a sword is, at least predominantly, an offensive weapon and can therefore be viewed as symbolic of aggression; let’s leave any Freudian or gendered interpretations alone for today. Her use of the sword is highly uncharacteristic (in the anime). Even her explicitly offencive weapons (like the Cutie Moon Rod or Spiral Moon Heart Rod) weren’t as clearly aggressive nor obviously violent. Desperate times calling for desperate measures? Perhaps, but we might also speculate it was her subconsciously reacting to grief. Not only can grief make you act in ways you wouldn’t normally, but a sword after all was a weapon wielded by her lover in his Prince Endymion incarnation. Her lover whom Usagi had just learned Galaxia had murdered. In other words, amidst her grief she reacts by going too hard in the other direction after healing her enemy proves ineffective.

However, when all is said and done the sword fails her.*** Ultimately is simply escalates the conflict by prompting Galaxia to become Chaos Galaxia and thereby make Usagi’s chances of victory all the slimmer. If we wished to stretch things, you could perhaps say that this is a commentary about how war and violence ultimately begets yet more war and violence.

Even if that is an over extrapolation though, it still served to emphasis the point that a sword is not befitting of Usagi, that she was doomed to lose if she continued to battle with destroying her enemy as the end goal.

In fact, her road to real victory begins when she not doesn’t attack Galaxia but makes it easier for herself to be attacked. In the end, Usagi doesn’t confront her most powerful enemy as the God-Queen of the future, the demi-goddess Princess of the distant past, the sailor-suited soldier of love and justice in the present, nor even a humble school girl.

She does it by literally stripping herself of all those things, of stripping herself of everything in fact.

Her weapons? Gone.

Her other items, like her Tiare? Gone.

Her comrades? Gone, and they’d be powerless against Galaxia anyway.

And finally, even her clothes? Gone!

Beyond the Silver Crystal (an outward visualization of her heart/soul) and the angel wings (symbolic of her role as a saviour) she is completely (but tastefully) naked.

Usagi visually and quite literally is more vulnerable  than she’s ever been, even more so than on her first night as Sailor Moon.

And yet this is Usagi at her actual most powerful.

It is her distilled to her absolute essence as a person, all other trappings removed. She’d just one person showing another they will categorically not harm them, that they bear them no malice and they have nothing to hide. That openness and compassion is what ultimately enables her to connect to the good within Galaxia and pull her away from the darkness that had corrupted her.

Usagi in this moment completely fulfilled her character arc.

·      In the Dark Kingdom arc Usagi destroys (or seals away depending upon your POV) Beryl/Metalia.

·      In the Hell Tree arc, Usagi resolves the over all plot via a healing technique (although it is functionally similar to a destructive attack). However, that only happens because the Hell Tree both instructs Usagi to do that and because it lets her. It is the equivalent of a sickly doctor instructing a nurse on what to do to make them better. The nurse might have the power but their agency as a healer is limited.

·      In the Black Moon arc, Usagi, with help, destroys Wiseman/Death Phantom. 

·      In the Death Busters arc, Usagi does save Hotaru and ‘purify’ her. However, like the Hell Tree, that was something Hotaru wanted. Additionally, her purification functioned as a way to heal the body of someone sick and who wanted to sacrifice themselves, not someone actually evil. The evil in question was Pharaoh 90 and it is presumed that Usagi destroyed him (although it might’ve been Hotaru or the pair of them together). 

·      Forgive me for skipping the Dead Moon Circus arc as Chibiusa is the real protagonist there, and Usagi’s role is chiefly as a rescuer. It therefore doesn’t really apply, although the Nehelenia mini-arc from Stars is a different story. There, Usagi was a healer again, but she did it with the help of her loved ones and with the aid of her Tiare device. Nevertheless, we can see by this point Usagi’s capacity as a healer heroine had been gradually growing until we get to the battle with Galaxia.

By the end of series, Usagi has successfully healed Galaxia and it is neither with the aid of her comrades, nor with the power of a weapon or device, nor with any instructions from her ‘patient’ or any other third party.

Additionally, Galaxia (unlike Hotaru) wasn’t someone’s who was saved from a noble self-sacrifice or had a physical ailment that needs to be addressed. In Galaxia’s case, her very soul had lost it’s way and become corrupted. She had lost who she was supposed to be and her purpose in life had been perverted.****

When combined with how powerful Galaxia always was, how Chaos and the Star Seeds empowered her further, Usagi’s victory here cannot be understated.

Her ‘patient’ was more powerful than all her other adversaries, was in need of more healing than her other ‘patients’ and was more resistant to being healed. Not to mention, since she’d directly murdered her beloved friends (and indirectly aborted her future daughter), Usagi would’ve been forgiven for not  even trying to salvage Galaxia 

And yet, with no weapons, no backup and just the power of her heart and soul basically, Usagi succeeded. 

After Stars the idea that Usagi could heal the entire planet after a global catastrophe and reshape it into a fairy tale crystalline utopia was all too believable.

What’s healing one planet when her ability to empathise had already healed a whole galaxy?

Who needs a tiara to reduce evil to dust when you can simply convince evil to be good?

*This is arguably symbolized by baby Hotaru’s vision of NQS transforming into Eternal Sailor Moon in episode 1 of Stars.

In fact, we might argue that a low-key subplot running through all of Stars (both the Nehelenia and Galaxia portions of it) is gradually transitioning Usagi closer to the person she is destined to become as Neo-Queen Serenity, hence why the first episode features the most explicit reference to her fate as Queen since R. 

**Personally I am an atheist, but nevertheless I and others like me can grasp why  deities in most major religions through history weren’t simply capable of mass scale destruction, but also of essentially manipulating reality to create  things too.

By that same token, it’s little surprise that perhaps the widest spread religious figure in history was Jesus Christ who rarely (if ever) engaged in aggression or destructive acts, predominantly employing divine healing powers.

I suspect the attraction of such figures to human beings lies in the fact that on some level we know that, given the right time and resources, we mere mortals would be capable of destroying anything. Given time it’s all but certain we will develop the technology to even destroy planetary bodies. On the flipside, I think we also intuitively grasp that  reversing  such damage, of reattaching a limb, of stanching bleeding, etc, is far more difficult if not impossible. Hence we attributed the ability to do such things to larger than life Divine Entities.

*** Now that I think of it, it’s also poignant that Usagi tries and fails to defeat Galaxia with a sword when we take Sailor Uranus into consideration. 

Uranus is of course associated with her weapon, the Space Sword and, like Usagi, tried and failed to use such a weapon against Galaxia.

Giving Uranus a sword is symbolically appropriate given her role as the leader of the more aggressive branch of the Sailor Team. Having her fail against Galaxia and Usagi consequently fail by in some way ‘mimicking her tactics’ is equally symbolically appropriate. Not only because of their ideological conflict in Sailor Moon S but also their tensions in Sailor Stars itself. In both situations Usagi’s more open, less aggressive, ideology was ultimately proven correct. 

Thus in using a sword against Galaxia it represented how Usagi was always doomed to fail by taking the aggressive/destructive route and how she was arguably not being true to herself in that moment. 

****It’s not to dissimilar to Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker now that I think about it. 

[shihalyfie]

Takeru’s character song “Focus”

I alluded to this in a prior post (and, to be a bit honest about it, was a little concerned about how it would be received), but I had some friends ask about what I meant about this, so I decided to go more into detail with it! This is also partially in light of the occasion of the Best Partner albums also becoming a topic of interest again, so it feels like a good time as ever!

02 was a pretty prolific time for merchandising and side material as far as the franchise goes, and one of the many things that came out of it was the “Best Partner” series of character song albums (a whole 36 songs for all 12 Adventure and 02 kids plus their partners!). Of these, Takeru’s song “Focus” has been a particular topic of interest for many in the fanbase to its suspiciously loaded language and the fact that, well...it comes off as a romantic song, which is very unusual in a series that infamously didn’t touch on the topic of romance very much in terms of the actual series. Speculation has constantly abounded on what it’s supposed to imply, why it’s written this way, and what it could possibly mean...

But if you look at it closely? It’s probably not meant to be romantic, and it most likely refers to Patamon.

One thing that I do need to point out is context. Many who have been cynical about the song’s alleged romantic implications have generally put forth the idea that the music department was technically separate from the anime staff, so it’s possible that the music staff wanted to bait or provoke fanservice without much connection from the anime production. It is, undoubtedly, true that the music department isn’t necessarily fully tied in with the anime department, and has been fully willing to indulge in questionably-canon silliness (while 02′s Christmas Fantasy is certainly in-character, its placement in actual canon timeline has to be finagled with because of what we know about 02′s actual Christmas, and Tamers’s Christmas Illusion is far more comedic than the series itself actually permits), and, exacerbating this further is the fact that Hikari has her own extremely romantically loaded song, Reflection, which is often submitted as evidence that Focus must be made in the same vein, but tends to omit the fact that the album it comes from (Girls Festival) needs to be taken with a very heavy grain of salt given that it’s a notorious fanservice album that deliberately plays up the “maiden-like” characteristics of all of the girls involved for the sake of, ah, a certain subsection of the audience. (It was also made in 2002, long after 02′s production had ended.)

The notable thing about the Best Partner albums is that all of the material on it is extremely in-character, and this is especially notable because the song lyrics are significantly more obviously relevant to each character in 02 and their relationship with their partner than even the original Adventure character songs were (with said Adventure character songs often toeing into rather vague glosses that are only tangentially relevant to each character, and Mimi’s song on there pretty blatantly being an AiM single shoved onto the album for the sake of being called a Mimi song). Moreover, Focus isn’t just written by some random lyricist they grabbed for it, but regular Digimon lyricist Yamada Hiroshi himself, who was very involved in the anime production in terms of writing 02′s inserts Break up! and Beat Hit!, and, considering everything this series is about, you’d imagine he’d probably have been given some kind of details about what to do with Takeru’s representative song. It would be quite strange if, for some reason, Takeru’s song were the only one to go really off the rails about shipping bait instead of being, well, actually about his character arc. 

I should emphasize that the fact that this song is so commonly read as romantic persists in Japan as well, so whether it was via mishap or not, undeniably, the way the lyrics are phrased definitely make the romantic reading a very reasonable one to pull. The language in the song is extremely “loaded”, and, if it weren’t for the unique circumstances I’m about to describe, most reasonable people can’t really be blamed for taking it this way. However, I will say that all of the most common English translations of various parts of the songs have tended to assume the romantic interpretation as well, and have thus followed up with it by definitively translating it in ways that make it near impossible to read otherwise. So what I’m saying here is that I don’t think it was unreasonable for people to have taken the romantic interpretation, and I don’t particularly intend to blame or criticize the translators who handled this song for also taking it this way, but I also want to make clear that this is not the only way to read the song, and that there’s a very high possibility that this wasn’t the case to begin with.

(Also, since I mentioned Yamada Hiroshi earlier: it’s actually not all that uncommon for him to use heavily-loaded language like this in songs he’s written for the series -- refer to Beat Hit! -- it’s just that people haven’t traditionally taken them as shipping because the context and identity of the songs’ topic matters were so obvious that there wasn’t much need to do speculation about it.)

Let’s take a look into all of the parts of the song that have been traditionally taken as romantic:

"We were together since we were little”

One thing that’s interesting about how this line is phrased in Japanese is that it doesn’t actually specify who was little. And, obviously, if you’re talking about a relationship between humans, you’d think that childhood friends would grow up together, so you’d default to “we”...but, actually, the Japanese text doesn’t rule out the possibility of reading this as “since I was little”. Which means that, yes, Patamon isn’t out of the ruling here -- because, indeed, they met when Takeru was young.

In fact, this actually is a line that arguably should rule out anyone else, especially including the most common speculated topic for this song, Hikari -- because he and Hikari weren’t actually that close during Adventure, and their time “together” was relatively short compared to the rest of the adventure. Remember that the Adventure kids weren’t very close to each other after the events of the series, and Hikari and Takeru didn’t keep close contact between Adventure and 02 -- contrast Patamon being close to Takeru during the entirety of the series, and, bar their periods of disconnect between Adventure and 02, you could say that he’s been the closest to Takeru since this time, especially since Yamato hadn’t been able to be as present for him as he’d wanted.

"Running, rolling around, and always laughing"

Again, this is a line that practically excludes nearly anyone else from consideration. Nobody ever did this with Takeru in Adventure but Patamon, especially since Takeru was trying to present himself as a well-behaved kid in the presence of his elders, and it’s entirely possible he wouldn’t have been willing to do this with anyone else but the outwardly childish Patamon. It definitely would not have been Hikari, who was arguably even more reserved than him during this time.

“It would have been better if I hadn’t realized”/“I have a lot of things I want to tell you, but I can’t really say it”/“I can’t ask that”

Sentiments like “I can’t admit it”, or difficulty with accepting one’s own feelings, is usually associated with developing romantic feelings for another person and being touchy about admitting them, but the thing is that this is intended to be a representative character song, and Takeru is actually abysmally bad at admitting anything in general. And yes, that includes not being able to be straightforward with Patamon himself about parsing his trauma over his death.

Takeru was never able to have a straightforward conversation with even Patamon about the whole issue, because of his nasty habit of never opening up about his problems and never being honest about them. That’s why Iori had to be the one to take matters into his own hands and go out of his way to understand Takeru, because Takeru sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to work through this on his own, or even with Patamon.

“I can’t get you off my mind”

This one’s actually a stock phrase in Japanese that can refer to “being interested” in someone (romantically), but can also refer to something just not really being able to leave your head in general (from being bothered by it, or being very worried). So yes, this could mean anything from a romantic fixation...to simply being constantly worried and concerned about one’s welfare.

“You were always crying”

As far as people around Takeru’s periphery who apparently cried a lot goes, there aren’t a lot! The description doesn’t seem to fit Hikari much, either (she had her moments, but it’s not the kind of thing you’d imagine this kind of extreme descriptor for). Hm, but there is someone who might fit that description...

Certainly, enough that Takeru would remember.

(By the way, Patamon gets sent on the verge of tears in the middle of his own solo song...)

"The door that I couldn't reach that day, no matter how far I stretched out"

Very important part here: that day. There was a very important “day” that seems to be on Takeru’s mind here. What’s repeatedly referred to in 02 as one of the most traumatic and impactful days of Takeru’s life?

Incidentally, Takeru and Patamon’s duet song for this album also just so happens to use “opening door” imagery...

“You’re now standing in the light”

That use of “light” is usually submitted as evidence that it’s referring to Hikari via a pun on her name, but, well, “light” does happen to just mean “light”, after all (and it’s used in many contexts that don’t necessarily have to refer to Hikari in 02 itself). And, well...

Pretty apt description there, no?

"We were always being protected"

It could refer to Hikari, or anyone else Takeru was with during Adventure, but remember that Patamon was always the slowest to evolve (especially given the many circumstances that happened with him in Adventure that kept him unable to actively join the fight effectively for a very, very long time), and Takeru himself also had a pretty nasty complex about holding everyone back.

So, in conclusion...

Despite how loaded the language is, in the end, it’s probably meant to be a song about Takeru handling his trauma regarding Patamon very poorly at the time of 02. Which is, well, what his character arc in 02 was about, so it tracks, doesn’t it?

Bear in mind that, again, this is basically “one readable interpretation of it”, which I also personally happen to back very strongly because I think the evidence simply tracks too much given context -- the details described in the song rule out almost every other candidate that would be relevant to Takeru’s character arc, also happen to describe the events of Adventure too well, and certainly would track much better with everything else in this particular album series mostly being relevant to everyone’s character as reflected in 02. Song lyrics are song lyrics, and interpretation might be in the eyes of the beholder...but, you know, food for thought.

[flowerbloom-arts]

Welp, since two people asked (@xanzusx and @ratdaduniverse ) I suppose I have an excuse to do an unnecessarily deep dive into a character literally nobody cared about that much or bothers to draw before I came along with my thing for all too unpopular characters!

Let's start with a quick tl;dr :

Aunt Jane is (probably, this is more speculative than anything) a victim of capitalism and misogyny working together to create a damaged woman with anger issues and a toxic relationship with money.

How, you may ask? Well, let's take a close look at her titular, starring, and only episode of the 90s series;

episode 27: Aunt Jane

In the beginning of the episode, Moominpappa receives a letter from an aunt from his father's side and it's made immediately clear that he is not a fan of his aunt or the reason she sent the letter to him, it's also stated that Aunt Jane had no one else to turn to besides her nephew to "discuss money matters" as the episode puts it. Moominpappa says that he isn't really scared of Aunt Jane herself (though she is quite scary and a not-great person as MP himself describes, being bossy and not letting people have a moment of peace) but it's the money he's afraid of, he's afraid of having to discuss something he knows nothing about with someone he dislikes, so he takes it upon himself to leave before she arrives. (sidenote: this may tie into some fear Moominpappa has of looking dumb and ruining his ego, aswell as generally not being able to put up with people he finds unpleasant for very long)

Then Aunt Jane arrives on a rowboat down the Moomin Valley river with someone else rowing for her (cool detail: her boat actually matches her umbrella! We can assume she owns the boat based on this and the rower is either an employee or some guy she paid [his mustache is delightful by the way, I love the round little fella]) and she just has this... Very odd blank stare as our very first shot of her? It's an odd first impression for the viewer to be sure.

Jane gets off the boat and the rower simply continues down stream without her, Jane notices Snufkin fishing and asks for directions to Moominhouse, Snufkin gives her the tip and then Jane asks Snufkin if he could carry her suitcase of gold coins for her. Snufkin politely declines, saying he's busy, and then Jane attempts to bribe Snufkin by offering a "handsome reward" in a very confident manner, almost as if that trick has always worked before. Snufkin still declines, saying he just wants to fish. Aunt Jane is legitimately shocked at Snufkin not wanting money, now a first-time viewer might interpret this as Jane being vain with her wealth but it actually ties into how everyone in her life would simply be interested in her money (which is something that'll be elaborated further on) so Snufkin is perhaps the first person in a long while to not be interested.

Jane has little time to let that sink in as Sniff (the ultimate capitalist of the show) runs in, introduces himself as simply someone to help take her to Moominhouse and goes to help Jane carry her suitcase, to which Jane simply acts like a more poised individual and bimbles behind Sniff.

They arrive at Moominhouse right after Moominpappa had already left in the previous scene, Aunt Jane adjusts her glasses and says "A round house? How stupi- typical of my nephew." which establishes that Jane... doesn't like her nephew (and considers round shaped houses as being dumb [which I think a couple architects/engineers would agree but correct me if I'm wrong])

Jane gets welcomed by Moominmamma and after Moomintroll introduces himself Jane's attention immediately goes to Little My, assuming that My is a child of the family, she says that My's too small for a daughter (her expression says that she's bothered by it more than anything), then Moominmamma explains that Little My's not related but lives with them and My says she won't get any bigger, to which Jane simply squints at the small creature in a strange but I guess concerned manner? It's easy to assume that there were some strange beliefs about daughters that she was raised on.

Jane then asks where her "worthless nephew" is (again, she doesn't think highly of him), Moominmamma barely manages to not tell her the truth and Moomintroll saves her by saying Pappa's away to find inspiration for his work. Jane says "When has he ever worked? I'm here to see him!" (Score 3 for putting down her nephew) and Moomintroll suggests she should talk to him instead, Sniff butts in saying Moomintroll knows nothing about money and Aunt Jane simply says "In that case it's about high time he learned! As for his father, I may still disinherit him." (Score 4), Sniff says he's a member of the family and she can talk to him about money, Moomintroll says he's a great friend of his, and Jane adjusts her glasses then says "But hardly a member of the family" (we can see here she only really cares about relations more than anything when it comes to others taking care of her money, perhaps the money was passed down through generations and she wants to uphold that tradition, which is only one major reason she wants to get rid of it)

Snork and Snorkmaiden walk in, Snork introduces himself and explains how his sister is a "special friend" to Moomintroll and basically that they might get married someday, thus merging the Snork and Moomin family together, thus making them practically family already (Which I find just so utterly hilarious, he can be such a weasel I love him). Jane doesn't accept that as an argument (OBVIOUSLY) so Snork explains that he needs money to fund his flying ship project, and then Mr. Hemulen walks in with a very happy confidence (that chaotic metallic theme [you know the one if you pay attention to the soundtrack] cues but then stops shortly, I got so hyped and it just ended like that :( ) and he tells Aunt Jane about himself and asks her to fund his scientific research (assuming Sniff had already told her about it) and Sniff tries to save it by explaining that they could grow a greenhouse of orchids and roses and sell them to make money, he corrects himself by saying "I mean you'll make alot of money!" instead of "we'll" which he thinks might make her more lenient to the idea, but Jane shuts it down by saying she already has plenty of money (showing that she really isn't interested in hoarding wealth, she's satisfied with what she has especially since the whole point of going to the Valley was to shove her money-related issues onto her nephew)

The three guys try to talk over eachother trying to explain themselves, Jane is overwhelmed and confused so she stops them and asks Snork to clarify that he's Snorkmaiden and it goes downhill from there, Snork asks if he's explained his connection to the moomins well enough, Sniff says he's a friend of Moomin's, Mr. Hemulen asks Sniff if he could explain his research to her for him, and they all talk over eachother, Aunt Jane looks back in forth in a confused and overwhelmed manner and then gets angry, then she yells "BE QUIET EVERYONE!" with an overhead shot of Moominhouse (this sort of sets up Jane's anger issues which builds and builds until the climax of the episode)

Moominmamma escorts Jane to her room and tells her that she can call if she needs anything before leaving Jane alone, Jane more or less just observes her surroundings (it's clear she wasn't used to such a simple environment but she isn't opposed to it either) and then sits down on her bed with her eyes closed, looking peaceful for literally less than two seconds before Sniff knocks and she stands up instantly with her hands held in front of her like a "proper woman" sort of pose. Sniff stumbles in the room with the suitcase of gold and sets it on the floor, Jane thanks him and then Sniff stands there and looks around as if he's looking for something and goes "Ehem". Jane sees this and unenthusiastically asks "What is it? Want a reward?" (This is like the most telling scene of the episode and shows that this kind of thing is something that she's used to) Sniff lies at first but then admits it after a second thought, he hesitates and looks around if anyone would eavesdrop on them, Jane tells him to make up his mind and then Sniff gets close to her and whispers that he knows where Moominpappa is, Jane dismisses it saying she knows that he's on a trip (atleast she's willing to believe it? Doesn't revert any of her put-down points tho), Sniff corrects her by saying he's actually nearby and Jane is immediately interested and asks Sniff where he is, Sniff says Pappa said not to tell her where he is since it's a secret and after teasing it with her Sniff says he'll be taking a risk if he tells her so Jane asks "Oh, how much do you want?" knowing full well Sniff wanted to get paid for this without him even saying it, Sniff plays it safe and says she can decide how much she'll give him.

Sniff leads her on the beach, Snufkin notices this and runs to the cave to warn Moominpappa before she arrives (what a champ, that Snufkin) and then Sniff and Jane enter the cave with it's watery floor, Jane thanks him with a singular silver coin, Sniff asks if that's it and then Jane replies (with a very angry tone) that yes that's it until she actually sees her nephew, the two enter the cave with no Moominpappa in sight, Sniff is bewildered by this and Jane is very angrily disappointed that her "worthless nephew" (Score 5, though it's just a repeated insult, it still counts) isn't there, Sniff says "this is very strange!" while desperately looking for Moominpappa and Jane assumes Sniff had tricked her and takes away Sniff's one coin as punishment and simply leaves despite Sniff's desperate cries that he has to be there somewhere.

Jane goes back to Moominhouse and enters the kitchen to ask Moominmamma where Moominpappa is hiding, Moominmamma gasps and tries to reiterate the lie Moomintroll said, but Jane says she wants to know the TRUTH, so Moominmamma stutters and Jane tells her to hurry up, Mamma sadly admits that Moominpappa is hiding in the cave but Jane says she's already been there and didn't find him. Mamma is suddenly hopeful and is like "Oh so he really must have gone on a trip!", Jane proceeds to ask why Moominpappa would want to hide from her anyway, Moominmamma "suggests" that maybe Moominpappa is afraid of her, and Jane gets legitimately surprised and furious over this and asks "But why!?", Mamma says that he's mostly afraid of money matters, Jane exclaims "Incredible!" and contemplates "Afraid of me because of money matters...?" and then storms out of the kitchen saying "He must be utterly mad!" (Score 6)

Jane sits down on the table in her room and talks to herself about how this family is so confusing and only Sniff seems to know anything about money, Little My enters smuggly and shits the behind her, saying she knows where Moominpappa is at that moment, Jane assumes Little My wants gold from her and My says she couldn't care less about her silly gold, Jane strangely enough seems to try and defend the thing by saying "My 'silly gold' indeed! With my 'silly gold' I can assure you you could do just about anything you want!" and My claps back with how it isn't helping her find Moominpappa, this arouses Jane and My continues saying she should forget about her money. Jane responds by turning around in her chair to look at Little My directly and says "Young lady, money isn't something you could just forget about! It needs constant looking after- that's why I must talk to Moominpappa at once! Now take me to that rascal nephew you of mine if you really know where he is, you hear me!?"

My and Jane walk down the dirt path and see Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden being all lovey-dovey with eachother on a tree stump, saying how they love eachother and such, Jane scoffs "Oh, how frivolous!" and My smugky responds with "Not really, if I could find a small enough boyfriend, I'd be frivolous just like them too!" and starts to walk away, Aunt Jane turns to her and says with a very strong sense of longing "Ah well, Fredrick and I were frivolous once..." (With an inexplicable voice change by the way) and My just teasingly says "Really? If you says so! Suppose I'll have to believe you!" while still walking away, and Jane gets so mad at this dismissal/mockery that she almost snaps her umbrella but stops herself and stomps forward to follow Little My. The marshmallow couple notices the two and follow them.

Little My interrupts a game of chess between Snufkin and Moominpappa in Snufkin's tent, she introduces them to Jane as a "special guest" and Snufkin is shocked by her presence, he says Moominpappa's name and he looks up to look at his very angry aunt, Moominpappa runs out of the tent and Jane chases him with her umbrella around a tree and stomps on the ground with enough force to make Moominpappa, Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden hop off the ground (OKAY I'M NOT GONNA GET INTO THIS PART SINCE IT DOESN'T REALLY TIE INTO THE THESIS THAT MUCH AND WOULD BE TOO SPECULATIVE BUT HOLY CRAP??? HOW??? WHY DOES SHE HAVE THAT KIND OF STRENGTH??? IS IT SUPERNATURAL??? HELP????), this causes Moominpappa to fall over on the ground and Snufkin intervenes by saying Moominpappa was just coming back from his trip and stopping by to play chess with him, Moominpappa tries to go along with this but Little My says it's no use since Moominmamma already told her the truth, Moominpappa gets all defeated and Jane asks him why he's afraid of her, Moominpappa says it's not that he's afraid of her, he's afraid of her money. Jane gets enraged by this and stomps of the ground again to send everyone hopping, she then tries to "reason" with Moominpappa on this by saying "It's perfectly good money and all in gold coins! Listen nephew, I'm depending on you as my only relative!" (For some reason her voice gradually gets higher pitched in this line? But anyway this just confirms Moominpappa is literally the only family she has left), Moominpappa echoes "Yes, yes, depend." and Jane continues with "When I get too old to do it, you must look after my gold for me! I'm relying on you!", Moominpappa gets spooked by this and desperately suggests they should just give it away to people who need it, Jane blurts out "HOW UNGRATEFUL!" and turns red from rage but then is subsides, the red fades away and Jane, probably after having a thought, breaks into actual sobbing and falls to the ground to cry even more, Moominpappa tries to comfort her and suggests that maybe they should put it in a bank, Jane retorts through her sobbing that her money would hate being in a bank and it's a terrible idea (which is the start of her talking about it like it's a person/entity which follows to the very end of the episode), Moominpappa reassures her by saying banks are so nice these days and Jane looks up asking "They are...?", Moominpappa continues by describing how they have "Flowers and shiny little piggy banks and paintings on the wall!" and Jane lifts herself up asking "Is that really true...?", then Moominpappa tells everyone they should go home and fix a welcoming party for Aunt Jane, the scene ends with a shot of a sad Aunt Jane looking around everyone, possibly confused or even sorry.

We cut to the dinner party when Mamma is putting the cake on the table saying it's her grandma's best recipe (I have to note that Aunt Jane's face here is just... So sad and guilty-looking), Moominpappa gets up and says to drink a toast to the only millionaire in their small circle and how he hopes she'll live a long and happy life. Everyone drinks except for Jane who simply looks around and then looks down at her glass to sigh, Moominmamma asks what's wrong and Jane says "Never in my life have I and my money felt ourselves so welcomed before, I'm so happy I could cry" (jeez woman that is actually sad to hear considering just earlier that day 3 complete strangers went to her asking for money and her nephew literally tried to hide from her before she even arrived, that must've been one heck of a welcoming party) and then she genuinely starts crying saying "And once you start crying- you just wanna go on and on-" and proceeds to sob a bit and says "Oh dear- oh deAr- Moominmamma-" and looks up "Moominpappa-?" Moominpappa answers and she says "I'll put some of my gold in a bag, but you must look after the rest when I'm too old!", Moominpappa hesitates and then Jane snaps into anger mode by asking "Why not?" and slamming her fists against the table, Moominpappa sheepishly describes how they'll take care of it and Jane says it's not what she had in mind though it does sound nice and sufficient, but then she says how the money will miss her. She decides then and there that she'll leave the suitcase of gold to Moominpappa so they can "get sorta used to eachother" and use it as they please, even complimenting the flying ship and botanical research funding as rather splendid. Everyone is happy except Sniff who laments he should've gotten a better idea than flowers, and the episode ends with Jane smiling and a pan out of the house as the narrator closes off the episode.

~

Alright so already we have quite alot to unpack here and it's all gonna get a bit rambly and jumbled if I don't segment it into specific parts so let's do that. We're gonna put allllll of that baggage into 5 parts

1. Moominpappa and the lack of a family

2. Money is not a good partner

3. A woman millionaire

4. A bitter, lonely maiden

5. Conclusion

~

1. Moominpappa and the lack of a family

It's been stated twice that Moominpappa is Aunt Jane's only relative, and it's said that they relate through Moominpappa's father.

(Side note: We'll be going by the 90s cartoon canon because Aunt Jane is a moomin comic strip character and in the comic strip Moominpappa wasn't left at an orphanage I don't think, so it's logical to assume they just met eachother because they're family. But we're talking about the 90s canon where Moominpappa WAS left at an orphanage like in Moominpappa's Memoirs/Exploits of Moominpappa)

It's really unclear on the backstory of their relationship. It's unclear how these two met, it's unclear when they've met, and it's unclear how they knew they were related. Moominpappa clearly met her atleast without anyone in his current family (esp. Moominmamma) and hasn't talked about her ever since (given how literally nobody INCLUDING MOOMINMAMMA knew who she was) which to me signifies that their encounter was both somewhat isolated and unpleasant given how he describes her as bossy and not letting people have a moment of peace (which only brings images of some kind of business setting when they met in my mind, and knowing how Moomin stories operate Moominpappa probably found himself as one of her employees somehow). Whatever happened between them has certainly put a sour taste in eachother's mouths, making Moominpappa believe Aunt Jane to be unpleasant enough to avoid at all cost (he probably also witnessed the horrors of wealth which is why he's scared of her money) and Jane believing Moominpappa to be incompetent, worthless and idiotic.

Pulling back from whatever encounter they had... Was Aunt Jane aware of her nephew's existence before then? We don't know the circumstances which lead to Moominpappa's parents leaving him at an orphanage in a paper grocery bag (if the person/people who left him ever WERE his parents), and since him and Aunt Jane are the last members of their family, it's easy assume something tragic most likely happened to the parents. And not only that, the rest of Jane's family would've been gone aswell, leaving Jane as the sole heir and possibly not knowing about her orphaned nephew. Can you imagine being in such a position? Your whole family is gone for whatever reason, you're the only one left to your knowledge, and you have all the money you could ever want in the early 20th century. You are responsible for millions of [money unit] in gold coins. Jane is responsible of that kind of money. And what is that to her?

2. Money is not a good partner

Aunt Jane's relationship with money is extremely weird but clearly somewhat toxic in a sense. We know she has it in the millions and she's not interested in making more of it (though we do have to ask if she runs a business or if all of it is inheritance and nothing more, does she turn in a profit? What business does she work in? How big is her paycheck? Does she work with employees? Why is it all in gold coins? Where does she even live? Nobody knows! It's all vague and unspecified and there really is no point in speculating something like this because there's literally no evidence to speculate about)

Anyway, money is 3 things to her: it's something people use to get what they want, it's a burden and it's something that needs to be taken great care of. It's both a commodity and a child to her, she doesn't particularly "like" having it yet she thinks it's in need of care by someone she knows she could trust, it's a pet she doesn't want since it attracts so many people who want to pet it. By the end of the episode she treats her money like it has feelings, it "hates being in a bank" (presumably because it's "uncomfortable" since Aunt Jane is swayed as Moominpappa describes how nice they are), it "has never felt so welcomed", it "will miss [Jane]" and it "needs to get used to Moominpappa", the thing is she hasn't treated it like an entity with feelings until her breakdown near the end of the episode. Moominpappa's "ungratefulness" broke her so much that she resorted to characterizing her money, and it's unclear if she ever has done this before in her life. It's odd to me, but her life does revolve around the thing, for all we know she's gone for extended periods of time talking to her money when she feels particularly unsafe/alone, but I digress.

Aunt Jane has presumably spent alot of her life taking care of her money and fears growing too old to do so anymore, so she turns to the only person she believes she could trust to continue that legacy. She has enough wealth to do whatever her heart desires, And what is her social reward for having such wealth to look after?

3. A woman millionaire

Misogyny exists. Yes, even in the moominverse, it sucks but it's true even if it isn't explicit sexism. Jane is presumably single, she had someone by the name of Fredrick who she was "frivolous" with but clearly that didn't work out as implied with the tone of her voice when she drops that information, Jane is alone in her wealth and that leaves her open to many people who believe they can get themselves some cash for whatever venture they want to pursue. It has happened plenty of times before in her life and it has happened within the episode when 3 males come up to her asking for funds, of course they didn't seem to care that she is a woman, not a word of it was even mentioned, but it's an issue that may be less present if she wasn't. Nobody is intimidated by her aside from Moominpappa who has met her, Snork and Sniff think they can weasel a family inheritance if they just do enough logical leaps, Mr. Hemulen just assumes she'd be interested from his botany credentials alone, and none of them really listen to her, they just talk over eachother trying to convince her to give them money until she bursts out yelling at them to shut up.

And she has to have some traditional feminity instilled in her, given the way she stands when Sniff knocks and gets in her room, how she arrived to Moomin Valley under a pink shade with curtains, having someone else carry her suitcase for her, being bothered at how small Little My is, her whole outfit among other small things, she seems to have been raised on traditional values, and those values, well, they don't lend well to someone of her status. She can be bossy and terrifying (and surprisingly powerful) but she's not respected by anyone that we know of, nobody's explicitly treated her kindly besides Moominmamma and maybe everyone at the welcome party if you count that, everyone only cares about her because of her money. Moominpappa is scared of her money and every other male only cares to get it from her for their own gain, she just can't win as a millionairess because any care directed towards her is actually care directed towards her money. And what does that treatment leave her as?

4. A bitter, lonely maiden

Jane is very, very alone. Nobody likes her as a person and the fact nobody likes her as a person only makes her more bitter and unlikable, it's a feedback loop. She doesn't seem to have anyone, and I mean, literally ANYONE. We have her rower but he's just a random guy she pays for all we know, she just sits there and stares blankly at the pink curtains until the guy rings the bell and she gets out, she just has no personal connection with anyone even by the end of the episode. Speaking of the end of the episode; she literally cries because she hasn't felt so welcomed by anyone IN HER LIFE (side note: I know I'm not supposed to bring up the comics but she actually cries when Moominpappa uses the word fond on her and it makes me so upset because she's treated even worse there too)

She's angry and alone because people use her for her money and don't care about her, everybody cares only about her money including herself, the only times she'd pay mind to her own self as a person is when she's flabbergasted at Moominpappa "BEING AFRAID OF HIS OWN AUNT!?" or when she feels disrespected by My teasing her about how she used to be frivolous with someone, Little My doesn't really care about her, she just takes her to Moominpappa to view the chaos that would ensue at such a meeting of two worlds. Moominpappa says she doesn't let people have a moment of peace yet it looks like she doesn't have a moment's peace herself, there's literally one moment and it's the one second she sits on her bed before Sniff knocks on the door.

Aunt Jane is both pitiful and somewhat sympathetic, she's an antagonist who's clearly not a good person but she has her own very understandable reasons as to why she's the way that she is. And what do we take from this?

5. Conclusion

I don't know if you know this but uhm, capitalism is bad, folks. It really just brings out the worst in people wether it's the scummy ways they gain money or the problems money causes for your mental health, and in Jane's case it's the latter. It's unclear how she got the money to begin with, I assume it's inherited but I could be wrong obviously, though I don't think that question could truly be answered. Aunt Jane is insistent on keeping her wealth and only giving her wealth away to her own family even if it's the root of her problems, but also Snork and Mr. Hemulen only ask for her money so they can continue with their hopes and dreams, Sniff is well, Sniff, but I'm pretty sure he's traumatized into believing he's only worth the wealth he has so that's another capitalistic problem.

Moominpappa is happy the way he is without the money, the Moomin family is decidedly non-capitalistic and Moominpappa knows nothing about how it works, so he chooses to simply not have it. They simply don't need it with the way things are.

And I suppose that was the appeal of the Moomins franchise that got people hooked into the fantasy of living there, it's pure freedom from an oppressive system that doesn't even give people what they're worth, it's being able to be yourself with a small, loving and accepting community.

But Aunt Jane never had that, which makes her feel out of place in this valley more than other outsider characters do in the show. And like the weirdly smooth and good animation that was clearly outsourced to a different studio for this one specific episode, being rich looks nice, but the cutthroat system of how it's made probably doesn't make it worth it.

[blushing-titan]

Reasons why I believe the cabin vision was Mikasa’s dream - and not an AU

I briefly touched upon this topic in my previous Mikasa/Anti Eremika-themed interpretation, but in this post I’d like to elaborate further - why do I think that the vision from chapter 138 was Mikasa’s dream, and not an actual AU flashback? As in my previous post, a little warning first: there will be spoilers, as I’ll be using panels from the manga.

1. I want to go back...back to our home

Many fans interpreted this as Mikasa having a flashback to alternate reality, in which she and Eren share a cabin in the mountains - a reality in which they’re both living safely and peacefully. However, it’s important to remember that for Mikasa, the meaning of home is very symbolic - it’s been shown ever since the first chapters of the manga:

After losing her biological parents, she feels like she has nowhere to go - her home was just taken away from her. She’s cold and scared...but then, as dr Jeager invites her to live with his family, Eren wraps his scarf around her and says:

...to which she simply replies: ...okay. Let’s go home. She has just been saved, and despite all the horrible things that happened previously, she has a home again - a home symbolised by the good-hearted boy who wrapped his scarf around her when she was cold. In the following years, this fact becomes a source of her strength and will to fight...

...but, as the time goes by, the boy who saved her changes and seems to be drifting away from her. She feels like she’s losing him, so this time it’s her turn to ask:

My point is that ever since they met, Eren has always symbolised home for Mikasa. He has been her safety, anchor and source of strength - which is why it’s so hard for her to accept that, after all his wrongdoings, he may not be the same person that he was when he wrapped the scarf around her. I believe that’s what she meant by saying: I want to go back to our home - in fact, she even thinks about his old self right before the cabin sequence starts:

Now, onto the second argument...

2. Mikasa idealizes Eren in her mind.

I’ve seen opinions that Mikasa views Eren through rose-colored glasses - and it’s not entirely untrue. When he saved her, she created an idealized image of him in her mind - she perceives him as a good-hearted, caring person who would never willingly go against his friends or hurt any innocent people. No matter what he does, she still tries to see him through this filter. It’s the reason why she often misunderstands him.

(Notice how even Armin is concerned by Mikasa’s answer.)

In another example, Mikasa tries to justify Eren’s actions by saying that he had done it all out of care for his friends.

Knowing all that, it makes perfect sense that the Eren from her dream would be an idealized version, too. He openly acts affectionate with her and is devoid of any fiery or violent character traits of the original Eren. Instead of hurting (or saving) anyone, he runs away with Mikasa to spend his last years peacefully, just with her. 

Many fans caught up that this version of him is quite OOC, as it goes against everything that his character represented up to this point. He has always been a fighter, dedicated to his goal of achieving freedom. Therefore, the decision to run away from problems (...along with his general behaviour in the cabin vision) just seems off to many people...but what about Mikasa’s goals? Quite frankly, they perfectly align with what’s shown in the dream - she just wants to be with Eren and keep him safe from harm...

...and yet, with the way Eren is, it’s simply impossible for her in reality...

...so she creates this scenario in her mind, as a way to comfort herself. In fact, it may have been suggested that she’s been dreaming about living away from danger with Eren ever since her training days - she even proposes that they could go back to the settlement together. Ironically, Eren leaves as she’s speaking, without her even noticing - instead, he wants to get stronger to keep on fighting.

3. Author’s note

A while after ch.138 came out, the information about the particular author’s note appeared on the internet. It said (35) draw Mikasa’s ideal, which (to my understanding) suggested that the vision was based on Mikasa's ideal answer to the question asked by Eren a few chapters earlier.

As we know, her answer was family. Later on, she wonders if she could have changed anything by giving him a different reply. Therefore, I believe the cabin dream was based on what she really wanted to say back then, and how she wanted for the following events to unfold.

I’ve seen many fans theorize that the vision was a flashback of the AU in which she gave him a different answer. I’ve said that in my previous interpretation, but I’ll gladly say it once again - Mikasa’s reply shouldn’t have such a huge impact on the future of the entire world. She should never feel guilty about it, as, at the end of the day, Eren went on with the rumbling and it was his decision. I really dislike how much weight the AU theory puts on Mikasa and her answer, when in fact, if Eren really wanted to give up on his plan, he simply would have done it. He had a lot of occasions to stop, one of which being a collective plea from all of his friends - including Mikasa. 

In fact, if he really wanted to run away with her, he could propose this idea himself - however, the fact that it’s clearly stated that her “correct” answer was required for it to happen makes me strongly believe that the vision was indeed Mikasa’s dream, based on her ideal reply.

4. Plot mechanics

Due to the fact that Mikasa’s See you later, Eren appears in the first manga chapter, many people speculated that it must be because Eren somehow saw a glimpse of an actual AU, dismissing the possibility that he could have seen Mikasa’s mindscape. Personally, I’ve never understood this argument - mostly because we already have a few complicated (...and not fully explored) plot mechanics in SnK that could explain this phenomenon - one of them being paths/founder titan’s power.

Ackermans are supposed to be immune to the founder’s ability to alter memories, however Mikasa is still a subject of Ymir. Therefore, as shown in the manga, she can manifest in the paths, meaning that Eren is able to connect and talk with her telepathically. Thanks to that, I don’t think it’s impossible that he may have seen her dreams/memories through paths, even without altering them - and from there, transfer these memories to his child self. Even more - this could also have been done by the original founder - Ymir Fritz - who’s been observing the entire interaction. At this point, it’s implied that she doesn’t have to be ordered by anyone anymore, so it’s perfectly reasonable to think that she acts out of her own free will.

Taking this into consideration, what’s the point in introducing an entirely new and confusing plot device (ability to experience AUs) when the story is one chapter away from finish? In my opinion, there are enough matters that need proper closure and questions to be answered in these final 45 pages - adding a new plotline only complicates everything more, when it should be the time to close up all the already existing ones.

That’s all from me today! Hope I managed to get my points across - thank you very much for reading! ❤️ All the manga panels used above obviously don’t belong to me - all credits go to the author!

[jayeray-hq]

Sakusa : You Know We’re Meant to Be

JayeRay’s fluff prompts

Post Time Skip/Manga Spoilers!

Warnings: A little but of Hurt/Comfort and bullying but lots of Fluff after

If you like this, please check out the Character Masterlist!

This is part of a collaboration I’m doing with @lilolpotato​ some fluff to counter some of the hate from the Sakusa Hate Night thing that was going around 😊💖 Also a huge huge thank you to the amazingly talented @yuujiscurse​ for the banner! Their work is amazing! 😊💖

You weren’t sure if they simply didn’t know you could hear them whispering or if they simply didn’t care, as you stood waiting for your boyfriend to emerge from the locker rooms. Hopefully you wouldn’t have to wait long, Sakusa was usually the first out due to insisting on showering before the others of the team could infect the space with their germs. Still today you hoped he would hurry, even faster than usual, so you could leave the receptionist and the woman she was talking to, likely someone who worked in the building, far behind you.

“What does he even see in her?” the woman who’d greeted you almost every time you’d entered the building with a saccharine smile that was apparently hiding a mouthful of venom whispered to her blond coworker.

             “I certainly don’t see anything special,” the other woman, a pretty brunette agreed giving you a clear once over a blatantly dismissive look on her face, “She’s probably absolutely hideous behind that mask she wears all the time.”

             Your hands balled into fists in your jacket, as you tried to ignore them, reminding yourself that you wore the mask for a reason. It was for both your comfort, and your boyfriends. Sakusa’s germaphobia was a very real fear, and frankly you didn’t mind doing a few things to accommodate his fear, or make him feel more comfortable where you could, especially since you knew he would and had done the same for you before.

 Wearing a mask out in public was a simple thing, and frankly considering the pollution in Japan, not all that uncommon. The women were clearly being deliberately petty and you sank deeper into the jacket burrowing into it, and taking comfort in the familiar smell and feel of it. It was one of Sakusa’s old Itachiyama jackets, one he’d gifted to you when the two of you had first started dating.

 It was warm and comfortable, and a blatant reminder of how very much your boyfriend cared about you. After all very few people were allowed to touch his things, and even fewer were given gifts, especially sentimental gifts. Komori had teased the two of you for days when Sakusa had first given it to you, exclaiming every time he saw you wearing it that even he had never been allowed to touch Sakusa’s Itachiyama jackets and he was his cousin.

 It smelled like him, clean and crisp from the detergent he preferred to use for all of your clothing, one you’d become quite fond of yourself, and that you associated solely with him. It took your mind off the cruel women in front of you, at least for a little while.

 “Can you believe just the other day he dropped his towel on accident, I tried to hand it to him, and he gave me the most disgusted look and just walked away,” the brunette told the receptionist clearly deeply offended by the incident, “As if I were something dirty he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.”

 “I’ve tried to give him pens to use before,” the receptionist admitted equally huffy as she explained, “He won’t touch them, not until he disinfects them with a wipe first, and even then he’ll only hold them if he’s wearing gloves.”

 You sighed quietly to yourself, a part of you wanting to storm over there and defend your boyfriend and an equal part understanding, just a bit where they were coming from. Sakusa had a fear, one that was very real to him, even if it seemed silly to others, and he had extreme ways of reacting when forced to face that fear. Still even you could admit sometimes his inability to properly interpret social cues could leave him coming off cold, or even cruel even if he didn’t mean to be that way.

 “I bet she’s not even his girlfriend,” the spiteful brunette hissed, “Just an obsessed groupie who follows him around.”

 “He probably treats her like trash,” the receptionist added in a cruel enjoyment to her unkind speculations, “Which is really no less than she deserves honestly.”

 The women were clearly lashing out, and on the only target the had readily available, but that didn’t stop you from feeling hurt or furious on behalf of your boyfriend. How dare they insinuate he treated you badly? The idea was infuriating especially when you knew how very hard he tried for you.

 Sure, your relationship wasn’t all smooth sailing, but then what relationship was? Yes, you’d had to exercise a lot of patience as Sakusa slowly worked himself up to touching you, but it had been completely and utterly worth it. The feeling of being held in his arms, knowing he desperately wanted you to be there, so much so that he fought off his worst fears in order to do so was indescribable. You’d honestly never felt as loved as you did when your germophobic boyfriend reached his hand out to you, assuring you that he wanted to be able to touch you.

 Even several years in you still couldn’t cuddle without a thorough shower beforehand, and some aspects of physical intimacy, including public displays of affection were especially hard, but it was worth it. You were so proud, both of your boyfriend and how very far the two of you had come as a couple, and it infuriated you that these two women, who knew absolutely nothing of his struggles would dare to insinuate such awful things about him.

 Oh, you knew they probably didn’t actually believe them. You’d dealt with jealousy from other women before. Your boyfriend was undeniably incredibly good looking, stunning even, and for some reason a lot of people found his supposedly aloof and cold demeanor cool and enticing. He’d had fans for as long as you’d known him.

 Still it didn’t stop you from wanting to march right up to the women and force them to take it back. They could say what they wanted about you, but in no way shape or form would you allow them to badmouth your secretly dorky and completely socially inept boyfriend. Honestly one more word from them and you might’ve done just that, fortunately or unfortunately your furious thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of your boyfriend.

 “Hey,” the sound of his voice pulled you from your murderous thoughts and turned your attention to Sakusa who had emerged from the locker rooms at last. His hair was still a little damp from his shower, the dark curls not quite as springy as they usually were as they fell across his forehead, and he was fully zipped into his Black Jackals jacket, hands in his pockets the traditional mask covering half his face, “let’s get going before the others come out.”

  “Sure,” you agreed trying to keep your tone as upbeat and normal as possible ready to fall into step with him and head to the store, which was the whole reason you’d agreed to meet him at the Black Jackals usual practice gym in the first place.

 However it seemed you hadn’t done a very good job of concealing the lingering upset from overhearing the women’s gossip session. That or your boyfriend was getting better at reading you, though both honestly were possibilities. He stopped in his tracks, forcing you to come to a halt as well, his brows sitting heavily over his dark eyes as he peered at you intently, clear concern visible in them.

 “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice taking on the clipped edge that let you know he was deeply concerned. Apparently, you’d been more obvious than you’d thought.

 “Nothing,” you tried to assure him, forcing your tone to be upbeat, not wanting to drag him down, “Why would something be wrong?”

 “Don’t lie to me,” he ordered, the words blunt, but the clear care in his tone taking any sting out of them. Honestly he had very little in the way of tact at times like these, something you should probably be annoyed by, but could only find strangely endearing.

 “It really is nothing,” you assured him, your own tone softening at his clear concern for you, “Just overheard people gossiping about us again.”

 “Were you upset by them?” he asked hesitantly, clearly peering into your eyes, his whole body fidgeting with restless energy, a tension to him that reminded you of a rubber band stretched and ready to snap. For all that many read him as uncaring you knew that Sakusa was extremely protective of the few people he allowed close to him, and that you were one of the privileged few. He was clearly ready and willing to tear verbal strips off anyone who’d dared upset you.

 “Yes,” you told him, figuring honesty was probably the best policy at this point, “But only because they were saying untrue things about you, about how you treat me.”

 Some of the tension in his shoulders relaxed at that, and his eyes softened. You couldn’t see his mouth because of the mask, but long familiarity let you know the corners would be curling up in relief,. He clearly didn’t care a bit what people said about him, an attitude you wished rather desperately that you could emulate.

 “Let them say what they want,” he told you firmly, “It’s not something that bothers me, so don’t let it bother you.”

 “If only it were that easy,” you told him your own lips curling into a wry smile.

 Your eyes widened in surprise as he pulled one of his hands from his jacket pockets and gently took hold of your face, the warmth of his shockingly bare fingers on your skin making your heart flip over in your chest  his thumb gently swiping across your cheekbone rendering you completely and utterly speechless.

 “The only opinions about my person that I care about are opinions from people who matter to me,” he told you sincerity dripping from very word, “And the only opinion I care about when it comes to our relationship is yours.”

 Your heart was beating a rapid tattoo against your ribs at his fervent declaration, especially since you knew he meant every word. Your boyfriend was nothing if not completely and utterly honest when it came to you, even brutal at times. He was never one who’d spare your feelings, which was how you knew moments like these were as raw and honest as it was possible to be.

 “I love you Kiyoomi,” you told him a little helplessly, the words falling out of your mouth before you’d had a chance to really think about them.

 “I love you too,” he responded without missing a beat, even if you could see the faintest of pink blushes decorating the tops of his cheekbones over the mask, “And I don’t like seeing you upset. What people say about me doesn’t bother me, so please don’t let it bother you.”

 “But wouldn’t you be upset if people were saying things about me?” you pointed out reasonably, well aware he would be, as he’d proven many times over in the past.

 He clearly couldn’t think of an argument to that and so instead remained silent, so you continued, “You mean so much to me Kiyoomi and it hurts to hear anyone might think poorly of you or insinuate cruel things about you and how you treat me that are blatantly untrue.”

 He watched you with soft eyes, his thumb still gently tracing your cheek as he explained, “So long as those things don’t cause you to doubt me I could care less.”

 “Never,” you assured him fervently, “I like to think that by now I know you pretty well Kiyoomi and I don’t think there’s anything ridiculous petty gossipers could to make me doubt you, to doubt us. Despite the fact that we’ve had our challenges I always felt like we fit well together. Like two pieces of a puzzle.”

 “I’m glad,” he admitted freely, “I’ve always hoped that you’d felt the way I do.”

 “The way you do?” you repeated curiously.

 “Like you know you’re meant to be,” he told you the words stealing the breath from your lungs and you were fairly sure you forgot how to breathe entirely as he leaned forward to press a gentle masked kiss to your forehead.

 Fortunately, or unfortunately you were pulled from your thoughts by raucous sounds from behind the two of you. It turned out you’d been so wrapped up in your conversation with your boyfriend you hadn’t noticed you were blocking the hallway and keeping the rest of the team as a captive audience of sorts. Apparently the private, intimate moment wasn’t nearly as private as you’d thought, and you were suddenly incredibly grateful the mask helped cover your cherry red cheeks.

 Apparently Bokuto was the one who’d interrupted your moment, too moved by it to stay quiet any longer, and now the former Fukurodani Ace was fervently congratulating your poor boyfriend about how smooth he was. Sakusa looked incredibly put upon as the team swept you up with them as they left the building in a small herd, all of them gently teasing or congratulating the two of you on how very cute your relationship was.

 In the midst of all the chaos your boyfriend managed to sneak his hand into yours, his fingers twining together to keep you close and connected to him. You accepted the gesture, feeling warm, and secure and completely and utterly loved, enough to shoot the poisonous receptionist and her bitter friend a blinding smile on your way out the door.

 Sakusa was right. Their opinions, especially on your relationship, shouldn’t matter to you, at the end of the day you knew he loved you and that was more than enough.