#i think villain rika has a lot of potential

[voxofthevoid]

Ch 248 is once again a mixed bag for me. On the bright side, it has a development I've been looking forward to the most since Sukuna left Yuuji's body—Sukuna acknowledging the effect Yuuji has on him. Until now, he's mocked and belittled Yuuji, deeming him weak and boring, except that the specific brand of vitriol Sukuna reserves for Yuuji has made it very clear that his beef with Yuuji is a lot more personal than his conflict with any other character. There's a pettiness there, a kind of irritation that's borderline childish, that wouldn't be present if Yuuji didn't well and truly get under his skin.

So to see Sukuna take a moment in the middle of battle, complete with arms on his hips and a goddamn pout, to reassess himself, his ideology, and his enemies and their goals, all to figure out why Yuuji irritates him and then to see him conclude that it's because Yuuji has indomitable will that he can't stomp down? It's sweet, sweet vindication. Sukuna's immediate resolution to tear that will down with, again, a kind of personal vendetta we rarely see from him marks the exact kind of fight I want out of Yuuji vs. Sukuna.

And Yuuji himself has been a sight to behold despite his relatively fewer scenes so far, from his final moments with Higuruma to the reveal that he can use RCT. His greatest strengths so far have been how quickly he grasps CE usage and now attuned he is to his body. The two combined is what's made him so lethal despite the lack of a CT or even advanced techniques like simple domain. RCT fits quite neatly with the kind of power progression he's shown so far, and combined with his natural durability and sheer resilience, it'll make him even more of a monster.

These are elements I'm very happy with. However, this chapter confirms Kenjaku's end and sets up Sukuna as the final villain, and that's... underwhelming at best. I'm not complaining that Sukuna isn't a particularly complicated villain; it's refreshing and suits how he's presented himself from the beginning. But part of what compensated for one villain being like that was the other being a mad scientist with a pretty cunning mind who kept plotting and planning with every tool in their arsenal. You could trust Kenjaku to keep things interesting while they sought the chaos they dearly wanted, and even the merger coming from them would've had certain meaningful implications because not only is it a dream they strived to fulfil for centuries, but it's also a way to see them finally "let go" of Tengen after exhibiting some fascinating attachment behaviors with her. That authority passing on to Sukuna is about as impactful as Yuuta killing Kenjaku—that is, not at all.

The Yuuta+Rika vs. Sukuna fight that's currently being teased makes me wary for similar reasons. It lacks the buildup Gojou vs. Sukuna had (battle of the strongest, i.e., clash of two immense fucking egos), and another contest of raw power sounds about as appealing as watching paint dry right now. Maybe it'll surprise me, but I'm not holding my breath.

To compare this to Shibuya, the emotional component that made its climax so compelling is almost entirely missing from this fight. It's there in Yuuji facing off against someone who took Megumi and Gojou from him, like how he fought the curse that took Nanami and Nobara from him, but overall, the deaths feel hollow and the stakes are so impossibly high that they start to feel like nothing at all.

I can't even fully capture what I'm feeling. It's not that I'm not looking forward to the upcoming chapters; I am. It's not even that I think the plot and climax are unsalvageable; they are, to an extent. But by this point, the plot fumblings and wasted potential have added up to a looming shadow I can't ignore even when there are parts I'm genuinely excited about.

[nogenderbee]

No cause, have you seen that parody of inside out 2 where riley got a lobotomy?

Anyways, another questions since im feeling a bit creative😈 whose your..

Fave character??

Comfort character??

Fave character by design??

Fave character by plot??

Guilty fave??

Selfship fave?(If u have one)(It basically means a character you ship with your oc, [oc x cc])

And lastly... All time favorite!!

(this question goes for all fandoms ur in, have fun😈)

(my guilty fave would be mafumom... IK SHES THE VILLAIN BUT OMFG SHES SO NICELY WRITTEN!! like we know she loves her daughter but she doesn't exactly show it correctly?? I would LOVE to hear her backstory cause i feel like she and mafuyu relate alot??[generational trauma] i still dont condone her actions but shes so nicely written like..🫠)

-Daily! Anon

I didn't ToT Tbh I didn't even watch the Inside Out 2 in the first place... I'm planning on it but all I can base on for now are just tt...

As for the questions... Omg that's a lot... But!

I think my fav character won't surprise anyone... An from PJSK and Xinyan from Genshin!! I love them both sm!!!!

As for comfort characters... I feel.lile that's also both of my faves but also Rui! And sometimes Zhongli too... depending on what type of comfort we're speaking of here!

As for design... I feel like Lingyang from WuWa stops my heart recently <3 Maybe it's because 2nd game I play most... but oh well~ HE'S JUST SO CUTEEE

By plooooot... I'm sad to say I have no idea 😔 I never read THAT much plot so it's usually hard for me to speak here... But I guess I can go for Ichika? I don't really know why, I just gotten into her plot a bit more recently and I'm honestly liking it so far!!

As for selfships... I'll just do OCs because I'm not really big fan of putting yourself with chars like that but it's just for me!!! But I got OCs AND! Shin is assigned to Ena and... Kako got assigned to Toya, I'm kinda shipping Eimi with Haruka but am also opened for other ships and I'm still questioning Rika since she was made for (friends oc)Nene's brother... So maybe Nene but still not sure??

AND FINALLY GUILTYFAVE

I have to agree with you here! Oh who'd expect a tiktok would change my mind about mafumom...

Basically I saw how she was panicking over Mafuyu being out of the house and her not knowing what to do and genuinely (I believe) crying and that made me just go like "omg someone cooked her..."

Is she bad? Yes. Do I feel like she has good reason to be like that? I'M HOPING SO BECAUSE SHE HAS POTENTIAL!!!

So I'm slowly starting to JUST A LITTLE like her 🤭 well more like how she's written but... I believe that's always something!

Also I hope you don't mind this bath of rambles I did here because... well I had fun! But I'm just aware it turned out to be A LOT

[lightringstars]

So gen 9 huh?

(MAJOR SPOILERS, And poor spelling)

After realizing that I would essentially be attending a school called “Grape” in a town that directly translates to “Enjoy Table” I straight up ran with the food theme. I named myself Peach and my team was named after food. It was glorious.

My boyfriend did eventually correct me that Mesas were also a geographical structure but I’m still calling it Enjoy Table town fight me

While I do love this game I’m not going to say it’s perfect. This is a game I want to see a Third Version of the most. There’s a lot that I think could be expanded on with more time and resources. There is a lot of potential here that I do look forward to being realized in the future.

But with that onto the parts I didn’t like.

Yes the game is glitchy. I don’t think there’s anything more I can say on the topic that others already haven’t. I would guess the game runs a tad better on the OLED but I don’t have one so I can’t say. While it’s not my biggest problem with the game it is objectively the worst part of it. I think it’s worth playing but prepare for lag.

My least favorite part of the game might just be a thing with open world games in general (I don't play many so I don’t know) but a lot of the towns just felt kinda lifeless to me. The stark lack of NPC dialogue and not being able to enter houses was jarring. The world was beautiful but it felt so empty at points.

And the clothing options are terrible. For the love of god who is forcing me to wear the bloody uniform when I’m on the other side of the region?

I sorta get why they wouldn’t level scale the bosses but I kinda wish they did. I started from the west and worked my way mostly up and around and the progression was reasonable but when I got to the east part of Paldea my team could basically steamroll anything it came across.

That poor bug leader…

Anyway. Stuff I did like!

Character design! Amazing! Everyone looks so unique and charming

And Rika can step on me

Everyone also gets really good development. They are my friends and I love them.

My favorite is Arven. Yes I got emotional when I saw his backstory. He needs several hugs.

Also how big is the Arven/Julianna fandom and where can I join yall?

Also the world is just fucking beautiful. And I get to glide!

No I do not know how you’re supposed to get to the mountains without climbing and no I will not learn.

The moment I got surf I immediately went mad with power and just swam until I hit land. It’s how I found the water gym, and where I realized there was no level scaling

Spoilers below

(Minor spoilers below)

I spent about half the gym storyline wondering if Nemona was going to be insane or something. Idk if the devs didn’t realize how creepy she could come across or something but that girl was two steps away from being a full yandere.

I had two of the elite 4 self KO their last Pokemon (one with rocky helmet and the other by using brave bird with like 10 hp) I think they just gave up.

Geeta was not a particularly hard fight. Only thing I had issue with was her ace on the grounds I’d never seen it before and couldn’t tell what type it was.

Props to Florgres for basically carrying half the endgame bosses. She was what got Geeta’s ace. You did good Mint.

The end fight with Arven was so satisfying. Yea boy! Show off that development!

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

I figured out Penny/Cassiopeia/Big Boss were the same person almost immediately. I kinda wish you were given the option to point out you knew it already because a) it’s not a particularly hard thing to figure out and b) I think it would add something to Penny’s development that you knew all this but chose to help her anyway.

At least the game doesn’t take the Clavel/Clive thing too seriously. I briefly thought Clavel would be the villain because he gave off weird vibes in the intro but the moment he stepped in with that fucking wig that thought went straight out the window.

He has a real cool battle theme though. The fucking reveal of him having the unchosen starter was great. Reminded me of the Kukui fight in SuMo

Penny’s theme is also a banger

It’s not SwSh level good but a lot of the songs are bops

(MAJOR MAJOR MAAAAAAAAAAJOR SPOILERS)

I want to live in area zero holy fuck it is beautiful

I wish this game was voice acted because a lot of the end scenes feel less impactful in just silence

I did like the interactions though. Everyone gets to put their character development to use. Penny and Nemona getting their updated trainer classes is neat. Arven and Masbotiff fighting the Paradox Mons that fucked them up last time was sweet.

The fucking cutscene of them jumping into the crater! Arven grabbing your hand and pulling you on to the rideon! My heart! My shipping goggles!

If you had asked me where I thought the story was going “the professor was actually a dead Robot” would not have even remotely crossed my mind.

Like I figured they were gonna be evil fairly quickly. And I kinda wondered if they were a robot at the end but I was still surprised.

I do love the idea of both professors being a divorced couple though.

It was also the coolest fight in the game (and up there with Lusamine as my favorite boss fight period) so I’ll give them that.

MIRADON HAS HIGH FRIENDSHIP BECAUSE YOUVE SPENT THE WHOLE GAME WITH THEM! AAAAAAAH!

Idk if it’s scripted or not but during the final boss my Miradon tanked a move with 1hp left and I saw the “They didn’t want you to be sad” line and my heart melted.

This was what I wanted in a Pokémon story. I don’t think the series needs to have a grand story. The characters are what make the games good and the focus on character based plot lines was very compelling to me. The ending wasn’t just about saving the world. It was you and your friends having an adventure. The fact you save the world (and nobody even knows about it) is more a neat tangent. I hope more games take that kinda story approach.

I really like this game but I’m not going to say it’s perfect or that it’s flaws can be looked past or whatever. I hope that the next games can use what was good here and improve on it. I hope that some of the bugs get patched. I REALLY hope we get a third version because I think you could do a lot here with more time.

Good game. Know what you’re getting into if you play it though.

[crystalelemental]

Yesterday, I talked about my horrifically missed predictions in Masters from December of last year.  And what fun is it if I don’t do the same this year?  So now, here’s my hopes for new sync pairs in the 2023 year.

First Timers We’ll start off easy with the brand new characters to the game.  Like last year, but for real this time to avoid temping fate again, I’ll be putting forth five options I’m hopeful to see.

Drasna.  With Bertha now in, Drasna is the #1 hope.  And she is inevitable.  They added both Sinnoh and Hoenn CS, and now all that remains is Kalos.  And Paldea.  If Kalos loses out to Paldea, I will laugh.  And then cry because When Drasna?  Ideally, I want her with Dragalge, but I really love Noivern too, so there’s no failing here.  Just let her in.

Brassius.  “Wow, even more than Iono?”  Yeah dude.  Arboliva would be his ace, and he’d be general pool, which means general pool access to Grassy Terrain.  That’s good shit.  Also Brassius is super cool and I love him.

Iono.  But I also love this gremlin child and want her in the game too.  I actually kinda want Support.  I know that doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but given how Bellibolt works, the concept of taking damage to boost power seems ripe for Team Shout 9 and some new effect for potentially Moves Up Next at like a 30% rate when taking damage.  I do see Iono being one of those “PokeFair on arrival” types, but I could be wrong about that.

Anabel.  Specifically Gen 7′s version of Anabel, because Anabel and Looker are a set and they are currently separated and I’m not okay about it.  Let her in.  Mega Salamence, Raikou, whatever you want just get her in here.

Rika.  Dude, she mains Clodsire.  Come on.  That’s cool.  Clodsire is cool.  And having an option that’s potentially going to have Ground and Poison-type damage?  It’s like SS Giovanni but maybe cooler.  I’m on board.

Sygna Suits Ah, Sygna Suits.  With Cynthia revealing that actually you can have three of them if you want, there’s a high level of potential here.  But I’m mostly going to stick to “They don’t have any yet,” unless there’s something specific and really exciting I can think of.

Caitlin & Gothitelle.  It has to happen.  This is my most wanted thing in the game.  If it winds up as a seasonal, fine, but I really need to see this.  Gothitelle is her ace.  They gave her Reuniclus because at one point they must have expected an alt for her down the line.  Deliver the goods, DeNA.

Lusamine & Nihilego.  This.  This is the exception.  Because I am SCARED.  Anni Lillie is rerunning now.  Alola VA is, at an estimate, about 6 months away.  Archie and Maxie got rerun with their villain arc.  DO NOT DO THAT TO LUSAMINE.  I do not want to see just a rerun of Necrozma, who is now super outclassed by SS Steven.  I want a new thing, and it damned well better be Nihilego.  If they give it to Lillie...honestly I’d probably be okay because I really like Lillie, but it would be really annoying.

Darach & Gallade.  I really like Darach’s team, in terms of the thematics of always being like...super Butler-aligned designs.  Gallade in particular was a big hope, specifically as support, to provide for Caitlin’s base form.  I’d like to see that play out here.  I think a support Gallade, or shiny for if they want to SS Wally it, could be great.  I will, however, also accept Male Indeedee.

Kahili & Baile Oricorio.  I secretly like Kahili a lot, for a character who gets effectively no attention.  And I really like Oricorio, with at least three of its forms being really cool.  I am 100% on board for a Baile form Oricorio and Kahili alt.  I think it’d be great.  It would also be Fire. But this is what life is like now.

Glacia & Froslass.  I know it’s unlikely, but Glacia should get a Froslass alt.  We have Froslass as a BP pair, but it’s a known allowance that another unit can get it as well.  I think Glacia makes a solid amount of sense, given that this evolutionary line is her ace, and she deserves something.  Hoenn supports got blasted so hard, but Glacia feels way worse due to the whole 5* thing.  They did not need to do this to her.

Seasonals I’m including Special Costume here.  Basically, anything that’s limited in the way where it’s like once a year appearances.

Lisia.  I cannot tell you how hype the rumored leaks for New Years make me.  New Year Lisia would be to die for, and while I know full goddamned well it would be with Jirachi, that’s fine.  I’d prefer Meloetta, but...we know.  We all know.  I’m just desperate for Lisia to get an alt.  I like her, and I really like her hair, and I’d love for her to get an outfit I don’t hate.

Fantina.  Special Costume, for a contest lover type deal.  I’d specifically want Frillish.  It feels very cute, it saves Jellicent (whose design I like less) for Marlon if he gets anything ever, and would be great for me.

Cheryl.  Palentine’s.  Appletun.  Think about it.  She showed up in the first event, knows how to bake, is all about HP as the highest stat which Appletun has.  This is a slam dunk.

Gardenia.  Halloween.  Someone pointed out that each year, someone who appears in the Halloween event without an alt gets one the next year, and that this means this upcoming year is likely Gardenia or Lusamine.  I will obviously prefer Lusamine/Nihilego if it doesn’t happen with the Villain Arc, but assuming I get what I want there...nothing would be cooler than Gardenia/Trevenant.  It’s such a cool pair concept.

Alder.  Legitimately, I just think the guy deserves something, don’t expect a Sygna Suit for the villain arc, and his entire team is accounted for so they’d have to go outside of that, and seasonals tend to do that.  I don’t even particularly care what he gets, I just want him to get something.   Although as an alternative for the bonus round...

Summer Cynthia.  But specifically in an outfit similar to like Summer Lyra or Summer Hilda.  Just annihilate the hopes of the worst in the fanbase.

Master Fair Master Fairs have gone off the rails at this point, allowing multiple alts with the same effect, and the same character to have multiple effects.  This is mildly bananas, but I guess opens a lot of possibilities.  I’ll take a stab at three I’m anticipating.

Champion Dawn.  I feel like this one’s an inevitability.  Protagonists now have access to Champion alts, with Serena and Calem leading the pack.  Dawn is a known popular protagonist, who is like...destined for this.  I’m not even sure what I want.  Mesprit feels like an ideal, but I kinda feel like that might be the rumored New Year partnership, and like that, if nothing else, Calem and Serena got general Pokemon.

Lilllie & Magearna.  Lillie will absolutely get another Master Fair with the Villain Arc, and my hope is that she gets Magearna.  I don’t have any else I’d particularly want with Magearna, it carries on Lillie’s Ghost/Fairy-type trainer status, is a cute partnership, it doesn’t take away Nihilego from Lusamine, and DeNA gets to continue its love of slapping mythic legends into villain arcs just to have them around.  Everyone wins.

Geeta & Glimmora.  “I thought you didn’t like Geeta all that much?”  She came out kinda bland, not gonna lie.  But I like Glimmora, and most significantly?  I want to see what they do.  Because Geeta Tera-types to Rock, which is an objectively bad move.  Poison-type would make tremendously move sense for it on every level, but especially in this game.  And given DeNA’s fear of making Poison-types good because they already have that passive damage why do they need more, I’d want to see the first instance of a Master Fair worse off than Anni Steven.  Sometimes I just live for the thrill of things going badly.

BP I was so horribly wrong about last year, but surely this year nothing bad will happen.  I’ll predict four, since we only got four.

Roxanne.  Golem or Relicanth.  I can’t decide which I want more.  Golem has the emotional attachment of her talking about always having wanted to raise a Golem, while Relicanth as a fossil Pokemon is just fitting.

Clair & Dragonair.  It would be such a cool support pair.  I like Dragonair’s design better than Dragonite’s, and think that either BP or Lodge Clair should get Dragonair as her focus.

Gordie.  I need to be fair and include some guys here.  And we desperately need Galarian units to be free.  So my pick is Gordie.  Partially because Gordie’s a cool guy, and partially because Rock-types feel scarce and I’d like another.

Wikstrom.  I couldn’t bring myself to pick a BP unit for one of the Kalos male gym leaders.  So I’m picking from the E4 instead.  Wikstrom’s alright.  I’d be good with any of his team, but something about the idea of Klefki tickles me, so maybe that one.

Master BP I was even wronger about this, but now I’m on to them, so this should be easy.  I’ll predict two, since that’s how many we got.

MU & Raikou.  It just feels like it fits.  Like, Electric Teamwork and a Main Character theme skill just...fits with the Electric-type Archetype at its peak right now.  I’m not even sure it would need to do anything, either.  Not like Red or Ash have ever needed help.

Morgan & Virizion.  Her trio focus is the swords of Justice, and we already have Rock and Fighting accounted for, with Cobalion being with MU.  So the only logical connection is Grass Teamwork with Virizion.  Which works because I like Virizion a lot.  She could also get Latias with Dragon Teamwork and I’d be cool.  Basically, this would be hard to mess up.  Just...Morgan over Dana.  I don’t dislike Dana, but if I get to pick, you know?

Lodge Lodge is an exciting time.  We only get 12 of these units a year at current pace, which is...sobering.  It really does not look good for the characters I’m hoping for.  I’ll take a shot at five I’d really, really like to see.  I’m also going to try avoiding the obvious picks on my end, so I won’t mention Caitlin or Jasmine.

Steven & Skarmory.  I think it’s safe to say Steven is an inevitability.  I’m actually looking forward to his addition.  While I do ultimately want him to get Aggron, I’d rather that be with a different alt where it can mega evolve.  In this situation, I think Skarmory would be a cool pick.  I just love Skarmory, and it left a really big impression on me in Emerald.  It’s such a strong lead for a main game fight.

Lysandre.  I just think it’d be hilarious.  I don’t know if he’s actually popular, but like...Serena’s accounted for, and Kalos isn’t a popular place.  Calem and Diantha are the only two options that offer like any competition to this happening.  And I just think nothing would be funnier than antagonists in the Lodge.  Like...come on.  You know you’re curious.

Iris.  I’m really, really hopeful that Unova Act 2 comes with Lodge Iris, if nothing else.  I don’t even particularly care what she gets, I just want her to get the Lodge alt, because I feel like she deserves it.

Kris.  I don’t have a strong preference for what, I just want Kris to get more stuff.  I’m really happy this year focused on her, she deserves it.  Fantastic Sygna Suit, really cool Eevee alt despite all the trouble surrounding that focus, I just think she deserves a bit more than she gets.  Maybe with Dunsparce.  Or Dudunsparce.

Cyrus.  Okay, look.  There are too many options for this to happen.  At a minimum, Dawn.  But hear me out.  Lysandre was mentioned because I think he legitimately has a chance in his region, given that almost no one else exists that competes.  Cyrus is closer to that mark, but also infinitely funnier.  Lysandre is social.  Lysandre is charismatic.  Lysandre could hold a conversation and go on an outing and be a pleasant guest.  Cyrus cannot.  And you have no idea how much I want to see that in action with Lodge.  Just imagine it.

NPC Trainer Classes NPC Trainer Classes are one of the coolest new additions DeNA made.  I actually love these.  That said, I don’t tend to care all that much about the trainer models, so I’ll stick to like...three.

XY Female Ace Trainer.  Top pick, this design was so cute, I love her outfit and her hair and I would kill for this inclusion.

DPP Aroma Lady.  Aroma Lady was just a really pretty design in this gen.  I’m invested.

GSC Kimono Girls.  If they count here, which I imagine they do, this is where I’d want them.  Kimono Girls were so cool when I was a kid, I really want more of them.  I know the Eevee alts are happening, but listen.  They can do Eevee again.  No one will mind.

General Pool Sync Grid Expansions General pool  grid expansions rule.  They’ve consistently been fantastic, except for Glacia who bears the Hoenn Support Curse, and I’m really hyped to see more of these.  I’m going for a full five of them, but like...there are so many.

Caitlin.  I just want the best for Caitlin.  She’s a striker without a single multiplier anywhere in her kit.  If she doesn’t get full Brainpower benefits, heads are going to roll.  Just ramp up that damage.  I’m sorry, I love the idea of defensive striker, but it does not work.  We’ve tried.  It’s not successful without stupid levels of specific utility that she does not have.

Lisia.  Lisia is one of my most anticipated grid expansion for a few reasons.  One is, much like SS Leaf, she’s a utility unit with a lot of avenues for play.  Unlike Leaf, Lisia gets a normal expansion, and thus half cost, meaning Lisia has a much, much better chance of her expansion mattering.  Secondly, her grid expansion’s offensive needs are so hilariously obvious that you can fix the whole thing in two.  Towering Force, Tough Cookie.  Done.  That means she can have a nice blend of power and utility in the same set.  Finally, the transition of Mega Evolution means losing out on her AoE flinch rate, which is a rough time.  So the inclusion of utility tools that kick ass but she didn’t even have before, like a flinch on Dragon Pulse and removing weather on Defog to perfectly set up her sync nuke, is enticing.  Lisia has a metric ton to gain from an expansion, and I’m expecting big things.  Do not Glacia this.

Jasmine.  Jasmine’s a support, so I anticipate dramatic levels of failure.  Which is sad because Jasmine’s support feels pretty easily salvaged, you just have to pick which way to go.  On the one hand, recovery from Recuperation is huge, and that grid leaves 16 energy to work with, so you can just add special defense boosts for a better tanking set.  On the other, expanding on her offense buffing seems the way to go, as she currently only powers up defense with any reliability.  But then there’s also the fact that Jasmine’s slow as dirt, but has strong offensive capabilities somehow, so speed boosting wouldn’t be a terrible call either to work the meme build with Palentine’s Marnie.  She’s got a lot of options, and I’m very hopeful for something fun.

Dawn.  Dawn feels a bit like Jasmine, because of the defense buffing support designation, and the ability to spec into offense.  What kills me about Dawn is that if she had some self-buffing for crit, or her attack buffing wasn’t so slow and locked to getting hit, she’d honestly be pretty respectable in multiple ways.  Her best attribute is being super sturdy, and I’d like to see them play into some team support that also facilitates her surprisingly nice damage potential.

Gladion.  Gladion feels very much like a product of his time, similar to like...Anni Lillie, frankly.  “We gave them a really good utility tool, so time to dramatically limit everything else they can do.”  Gladion hits everything for super-effective damage, but critically misses out on significant multipliers or really all that much of value.  Worst of all, he can only change type once, meaning Gauntlets that change weaknesses tend to ruin him pretty badly.  Gladion feels like a very clear-cut fix.  Give him some multipliers, and a second shot at trainer move guaranteed to shift his typing a second time to keep on top of fights like Regirock, and he should be good to go.

Lusamine.  I lied, one more.  Bug-type damage is rare, Lusamine is another product of her time where really high offenses meant lackluster multipliers, but we get shit like SS Hilda now, so I feel like Lusamine deserves some raw firepower.  But what I do like is that there’s openings for utility.  Double drops on Lunge and Bug Buzz.  The AoE freeze on Blizzard.  Lusamine has some interesting potential.

PokeFair Sync Grid Expansions PokeFair expansions are a lot less hype to me because 5/5 and full energy cost tends to gimp their utility, but we’ll talk about five I’m looking forward to.

Diantha.  My top anticipated upgrade.  I really like Gardevoir, and I like Diantha a lot.  The upgrade feels very easy.  Gauge control, move damage multiplier.  I feel safe saying that, while they will 100% give her something like Brainpower to power up her sync, what she really wants is DPS.  Diantha’s Moonblast DPS is really strong, and I think granting it another multiplier on grid would be tremendous.

Steven.  Metagross is going to be an interesting one to me.  If it were a 3/5 style upgrade, I’d say no question it would be devastating.  But 5/5 and full cost means he may wind up losing Aggravation or Haymaker, significantly limiting his overall impact.  I’m dying to see it, because I’m dying to know if they make him worse.

Alder.  Alder feels like someone who can reasonably ignore his entire grid right now, and thus is the perfect kind of candidate for this expansion.  He’s likely going to be Raihan’d, where everything gets overwritten in a way that these six new tiles are better than the entire previous grid.

Lance.  I’m dying to know.  Like, isn’t everyone?  The man with Hyper Beam, whose limitation was not being able to buff a single stat?  That’s such a fascinating limitation that had to have been terrible even at the time.  I’m dying to know what they do.  They try self-sufficiency for stuff like this all the time, but he also doesn’t have multipliers on either sync or move damage.  Lance’s demands are through the roof, and there’s no possible way to fix all of it.  But god I want to see them try.

Gloria.  Similar to Alder, but way more real.  Gloria’s grid is downright bad.  They put all their eggs into the natural multiplier basket that no one likes.  She’s absolutely discarding the whole grid for whatever the new tools are.  All she really needs is damage, too.  I’m just so curious what they’ll aim for.  Especially since her self setup isn’t that great either.  Gloria feels desperately in need of help.

[elmaxlys]

Juo/Deva Alliance AU but instead of brainwashing Rika to be Apostle or using him as an hostage, they provide him with a support group and shower him with love and the assurance they’ll never abandon him. They then become the most feared trio in the history of the high-rise world (which, admittedly, is pretty short)

[deltaengineering]

that was the winter anime 2021 that was

Still not quite ready for a dozen posts about how terrible the likes of Combatants Will Be Dispatched are, sorry. Watch Vivy though, it owns. Here’s some more things that are (mostly) good. As always, worst to best.

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki S3

Yatogame has long run out of hot Nagoya facts and its ensemble comedy never amounted to much, so now it seems mostly content to just spam more and more wacky character designs. About the only thing that it has left going for it is that 3 minutes a week are more effort to drop than to watch, so I expect them to make a movie next. 4/10

Go-toubun no Hanayome S2

Quints is a weird one. S1 was a barely good enough (i.e., well above average) implementation of the ages old harem chestnut. S2 is actually better at the core of its appeal, since it gives all the characters a sharper profile (things like taking Nino from joke to badass and making Ichika a villain are no mean feat), but it does pay a steep price for it. You see, to deliver a steady drip feed of meaningful character moments it apparently has to rush through the source material at a breakneck pace, which completely wrecks the "story" part of this story and makes every episode seem like a recap. And it still keeps wasting precious time on vestigial nonsense like its framing device and the Kyoto flashback scenario that was already the worst part of S1. But by far the most annoying aspect is its insistence on keeping all the options valid, since it prevents any real progress and makes everything seem arbitrary and pointless. So sure enough, after a season of much ado we still don't end up anywhere — you can't really raise the stakes if all at stake was "who wins" to begin with. It's watchable and even enjoyable scene-for-scene but it's getting harder and harder to call it a solid show overall. 5/10

Skate Leading Stars

I was watching this primarily because I didn't like Yuri on Ice much and wanted to see if something that is a blatant attempt to cash in on it would be better — because while YoI delivers on one aspect (being hella gay), it really is an absolute shambles of a sports show. And sure enough, Skate Leading has none of the auteur appeal of YoI, but it just works much better. In particular I appreciate how it managed to make me care even a little about a cast of assholes, which is a nice contrast to the nauseatingly ingratiating way YoI tries to make you love its characters. Also, Skate Leading is just generally cheap and unambitious, so not susceptible to trying hard and painfully flaming out on the presentation side like YoI is. But at some point you gotta let go of these comparisons and on its own Skate Leading is... just fine, I guess? Competent, mildly engaging, not very memorable. And that's probably where it loses to Yuri on Ice in the end after all, even if I think it's "better". 6/10

Idoly Pride

Idoly Pride sold itself on me with a really good (and hilarious/tragic) first episode that was just too bizarre to ignore — I mean, how can you ignore GHOST IDOL MANAGERS. Well, the majority of the show isn't like that. It's a competent and solid version of the idol franchise show, yes, but it really had more potential than that. Especially midseason, it gets lost in these dozens of characters, and while they're all likeable, it does seem like a waste of a good story just centered on Mana/Kotona/Sakura. By the end it comes back around to the heart of the matter with a Maeda-style sob story, which could be a disaster but seasoned veteran Jukki Hanada makes it work anyway. Overall, there's quite a bit of ridiculous hacky melodrama in this, but quite honestly that's the best part and I wish it would concentrate more on it. The rest is just okay. 6/10

Yuru Camp S2

Yuru Camp is still likely the best pure iyashikei show when it gets down to business. Compared to S1 though, this seems to happen less and less. At its peaks (i.e., basically any quiet moment with Rin) it's at least as good as ever, and there's some good cast additions like Mini-Inuko, but it appears that Yuru Camp simply has run out of things you can do with camping and it fills up the time with other... stuff. This stuff includes the generic school club shenanigans it was never particularly good at, and a gigantic helping of crass consumerism. Yeah, I would say the majority of Yuru Camp is just a straight up infomercial at this point, which itself ranges from the perfectly acceptable (which cute anime isn't about food constantly), to the sketchy (I don't know whether the Izu tourism board cut this production a fat check, but if they didn't, Yuru Camp still gives its best effort to make it seem that way) to the highly irritating – I am aware that camping requires gear and you can't just ignore that, but you most definitely do not require whole arcs dedicated to talking about raising funds for the purposes of acquiring the Lamp of Comfy Happiness at your friendly local Caribou™ either. Not to mention an arc where the aforementioned lame school club does the same, for double irritation. Make no mistake, this show is so riddled with scenes that beg for a solution to embed affiliate links in video files that it makes me wish I was watching something as anticapitalist and underground as Love Live. And irritating really is the last thing a show with this core concept, as stellar as it is at that, can afford to be. Bummer. 6/10

SKOO the Infinity

Skoo has one really huge asset: ADAM, its magnificent villain. It also has one really huge liability: Reki, its not magnificent protagonist. To be more specific, it's very good at anything outrageous, physics-defying and silly, such as most scenes ADAM is in, and quite bad at anything serious, dramatic (in a serious way) and down to earth, such as most scenes Reki is in. So, what's the verdict? Well, the rest of the cast is more ADAM-like, and Reki's co-protagonist Langa is fine as the straight (yeah, right) man. The tedious buddy drama is a comparatively small part of this show, and at least it pays off quite well in the end. Seriously, I was ready to give this a 6, but the final episode is probably the best one of the show, in all of its aspects. That's really not something you see often. Skoo's a great time. Except when it's not. 7/10

Non Non Biyori Nonstop

Speaking of the rare good ending, what about we gave one of those to a slim and inconsequential slice-of-life show? NNB has always been solid, comfy and amusing quality with a couple of standout moments (usually something with Renge), and Nonstop has that plus an ending as conclusive as any show of this type is ever going to have. Besides, it does a lot of things right by focusing on more characters than the central 4 (especially Konomi has great material in S3), it expands the universe just enough to not get stale, and it moves things forward — It's definitely a lot better than the movie, is what I'm saying. Apart from that, well, we're three seasons in, if you have any interest in this you probably don't need me to explain what's good about NNB at this point. Bonus points for being nothing but an ad for the manga. 7/10

Wonder Egg Priority

Oh boy, so here's the big one. Wonder Egg is the rare Meaningful Arthouse Show About Real Issues You Guys, as you might have heard. And well, the long and short of it is that it's a very good show with quite a few glaring problems (besides not actually being finished due to production issues, but what we have is enough of an ending to be able to meaningfully talk about it). In particular, one problem: WEP is, at its core, one of these metaphorical Magical Girl-ish series that are just a thin layer of abstraction over coming-of-age or societal problems. The issue is that "metaphorical" in this case means "literal" and "thin" means "basically nonexistent". This show is not subtle regarding what it's about, at all. This is a double-edged sword — on the positive side, some things really should just be said aloud, and I'm really, really fucking tired of the Ikuhara style of "here's some wacky things, maybe a blog post will eventually tell you how it's actually about the most important thing ever" obfuscation — if it's really so important, just spell it out. On the other hand, there are limits to this and when a second, different Ai appears I don't really need a voiceover line telling me that yep, this show is about parallel universes now. WEP spells out many important things, but it also spells out many things that are implicitly clear or better left vague. Not to mention that with being so obvious up front, the show's tendency to leave figuring out what it's actually saying about it up to the viewer can leave the wrong impression. Again, I settled on the opinion that it's subtle after all where it counts the most, but you might easily get the impression that it pulls its punches (Ikuhara does this the exact other way around — once you figure out what the fuck he's talking about it's abundantly clear what he's saying about it).

In fact, this show is so good at subtle, quiet character moments that it calls into question the need for big huge fighting fantasy layer in the first place, especially since I'm not a fan of the fantasy designs and the fights aren't great. Sure, they look impressive on a technical level (this show is very good looking in general), but the lack of actual impact or rhythm makes me think this is not made by people who are very familiar with action and maybe they should have asked some seasoned shounen veterans for this — or just, you know, not do it. They can (and do) impress with character acting in quiet scenes just the same. And while Ai's character story actually does pay off quite nicely by the end we got, and Momoe and Rika are also handled well, Neiru's backstory is significantly less good, not to mention the whole Frill subplot regarding the show's mythology that they introduced just before (and that's the part to be resolved at a later date), which is a huge can of worms. We'll see how well they handle that, I suppose, but as it is it's a weird and vestigial detour that doesn't add much besides thematic headaches.

But yeah, apart from all that — I like it, a lot. Great character writing in the details, cool looks for the most part, tons of ambition, and a message that I consider to be appropriately handled — for the most part, and for now. Not quite ambitious arthouse anime at its finest, but also not a pretentious disaster like Sarazanmai, Monogatari et al. 8/10

[randomavatarfan]

Nekodamashi-hen Eps1-4

himatsubushi-hen was the turning point of the og series, or at least was supposed to be.  All the pieces are finally on the board and the central mystery behind all the noise is laid out.

Please see my ramblings on Nekodamashi-hen and comment with your own theories and interpretations!

:readmore:

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Rika's resolution in Ep1 that she was only going to allow 5 more loops made me reconsider what Nekodamashi-hen's place in the plot was.  This would be a longer chapter leading up to the resolution a la Matsuribayashi-hen, or maybe she would find resolve to keep fighting, which as of ep3 seems to be where it's going.

Ep1 introduces the sword that can kill loopers like Rika, and there's a little caveat with it.  First is that it's missing.  Second, there's the possibility of another looper.

I like to think these may be red herrings or at least not to do with the one pulling the strings.  The culprit doesn't need to be a looper, as we've seen in Matsuribayashi-hen. Takano's certain victory had nothing to do with her reliving any part of her life, but rather just sheer determination to become great.  The sword went missing well in advanced of the festival, at least by the time Takano and Tomitake broke into the saiguden on the festival night.

Takano's role is a puzzle however.  Her MO is completely different- stealing a van alongside Tomitake instead of just injecting him and inducing L5 symptoms until he kills himself. The Yamainu are still around, but they're not creating the GHD. But Ep2 makes me think it's still her somehow involved.

 Akasaka, Akane, Kimiyoshi, and even Keiichi all give their "villainous speeches" that came straight out of Document 34, which we know Miyo would use to manipulate people. Rika being at the center of the murders (Oiishi's rant) were not one that she gave in the original, but that still doesn't rule her out. Satoko's motive however and doesn't translate well if you assume every killer we saw in Nekodamashi-hen so far was a result of Takano's manipulation. 

My current theory is that Document 34 was the bait used for the others but maybe another event occurred to set Satoko off. I don't think Takano is the puppet master this time even if she did play a role in rule x. 

Rika's life at St Lucia's is more important than they're letting on, but what we've seen so far is red herring. I think her original death in 1988 is important but had a lot more than "oh she left Hinamizawa."  I'm kinda upset that she's going through that guilt. So much trauma occurred there that she should be able to have been happy outside Hinamizawa where she suffered for so long. I'm wondering if her initial death was a call for help or at least otherwise overlooked- something that happened in 1983 caused her death in 1988. That's going to be the key.

The satoko culprit theory is what we end with on ep4, so let's turn this chessboard around:

Onidamashi-hen ends with a struggle between Rika and Satoko. The struggle between Rena and Keiichi was just filler. Original Onikakushi-hen really didn't see anything about Rika's struggle so it's a similar deal I guess.

Watadamashi-hen last saw Rika go to what appears to be Yamainu who were also planning on executing Document 34/GHD. Either Yamainu succeeded in killing Rika and the Banken prevented GHD, or potentially Satoko killed her. It's still hard to say at this point.

Whether she killed Rika or not in this chapter,  Satoko's roll of the dice did play an effect in the story. Shion's focus specifically on Rika during the ladder scene rather than Satoko's cursed blood can be interpreted that at that point she was being played by Satoko.  Why was she at the Sonozaki residence? Probably being confronted by Mion who saw something going on,  or otherwise continued manipulation of Shion.

Tataridamashi-hen, finally, the most inexplicably strange chapter of the first three questions, is essentially a retelling of the answer arc Minagoroshi-hen rather than Tatarigoroshi-hen it was named for. What was Satoko doing in this one? She didn't have much chance to set her gameboard. But I did notice her behavior during the altercation between "Teppei" and Keiichi. It does seem rather calm. I think she induced L5 in Keiichi.

we have some sort of confirmation now that Takano is not after Rika or a GHD, but we're not sure on why: Is this a manipulation on Satoko's part, or is this something else. Memories of a past fragment does not equal a looper, as we've seen with Keiichi. Could she have woken up with a bad dream of how Matsuribayashi-hen ended? And the string of loops throughout Nekodamashi-hen, were they all a result of Satoko, or did Takano or even the Yanainu have a hand in it, as implied by the references of Document 34

I don't like invoking the Umineko witches to explain Higurashi. It's a nice metaphor though, and I'll use it here;

We're not seeing a Lambdadelta game. We don't see that certainty that we saw with Takano's game: Rika is killed by Takano, and then Hinamizawa is destroyed. Rika's deaths are always different in each game, in each loop. There is no pattern or certainty other than Rika dies.

We are seeing, however, something more like Beatrice's game. The only certainty is that everyone is dead, but the manner in which they die are so different, and the rules are much more higher level and conceptual than the og higurashi rules.

Rule X: Someone succumbs to Hinamizawa Syndrome causing the tragedy.

Rule Y: On the night of the Watanagashi, Takano and Tomitake go missing.

Rule Z: The will is strong enough to overcome the Yamainu's plan to kill Rika.

I think rule Z is the most important clue we have: Satoko is good, but is she good enough to be able to affect the actions of a town who essentially ostracized her? She has a hell of a motive but using her friends as collateral seem out of character, even if she is L5. If not her, who has the ability to overcome a certain fate so easily?

If Satoko is a looper and the culprit, how can she be stopped? Apologizing didn't do much; as it appears, she's not ready to forgive. Teppei might slow her down but not enough. Is she really possessed by Oyashiro? Why would Hanyuu do such a thing?

Please share your own thoughts. I know this was a ramble.

[anon-drabble]

okay but anyone else get the strongest jumin feels during v's route? even more than in jumin's route. my own ramblings and feelings below.

(this is not hate on v or rika or anyone else, i love all of them and their roles are all important, this is not to bash anyone.)

{spoilers for v and saeran's routes}

i mean, this is shortly after rika's disappearance than jumin believes is her death. we know he had strong feelings at the very least for rika, if not in love with her. he's dealing with that. he's trying to help v and get his eyes fixed while still trying to cope himself. not to mention he's essentially been put in charge of the rfa because v is struggling. then a stranger joins. more on jumin's mind. he takes longer to trust mc in another story but accepts the new person simply because he is told to.

days later, this new person and v are talking about rika being alive. don't tell me that wouldn't hurt jumin to his core. the intelligence unit begins (the cat project of sorts for another story. jumin is afraid, worried, doesn't know what will happen and in this story, he has no one to rely on or talk to. no mc to help him with all of this. so he pours his time and money into the new project, the intelligence unit. jaehee gets more work but unlike his usual cat projects, the unit actually helps.

until seven cuts access. jumin is cut off. from v, from rika, from mc. v is in danger, and jumin can't do anything. he doesn't know how to not use every resource to help his friends. he's been forced to sit and wait and you know it tears him up inside. but no one asks if jumin needs help or someone to talk to.

luckily, a few days later, access is back. but v's off to the hospital, badly wounded. rika did it. they know rika was the head of the cult now. arguably jumin's first love and she's a villain. those threads inside him are razor-sharp and slicing through him with how tight they are.

but at least now he knows that mc is truly a member of the rfa and he can treat her as such. but at the hospital, he gets v's melodramatic (but sue me i love it) request of taking mc for him. jumin agrees... why? because v asked? or does he maybe see mc in a similar light like he did rika?

then v heals but goes off to find himself. leaving jumin the head of the rfa and with mc. jumin does a good job (he always does, no matter what) but he never feels like it fits as well for him to manage the group. he does it but to me, i feel like he doesn't like it. and he's taking care of mc. this poor man barely knows how to handle his own emotions and here is his best friend's potential girlfriend that jumin has been told is now his. even if jumin has no feelings for her, it's awkward. if he does feel something for her? and then v comes back and takes mc and jumin is left... back to how it was before. after two years of struggling, trying to handle everything, maintaining that cool exterior. then after a short day, it's gone again. he's relieved but again, there's no one helping jumin this time. he's relieved but it's so sudden he doesn't know how to react or how to even feel. and there's no one to help him because v and mc have each other now again. what is jumin supposed to do?

(i saw another fic writer get a request of sort of if jumin fell in love with mc and she returned his feelings but then v came back after 2 years to claim her again. and i think about that prompt a lot)

i adore v and his route but every time, i spend all my energy trying to focus on jumin. give me another story with jumin's happy end. i love v but i want to play his story with romances with other characters. don't even get me started on how much i want to play saeran's route but with v's story.

[mysticmessengerclues-blog]

I’ve seen some folks post vaguely about this, but none have had much traction. I’m not active in the Mystic Messenger community, despite actively participating in the game itself and looking/reading up on the fandom without ever commenting on it. Despite that, I thought I’d share something interesting I noticed in the new Rika backstory DLC and V After Story since I haven't’ seen it spread around or talked about.

I was surprised nobody mentioned this outright. Rika’s backstory arc and V’s After Story mentioned that it was related to fictional religious beliefs, particularly during Rika’s route. But no one mentioned the fact that the song that played during every overtly ‘religious’ scene was a song from their previous game, Dandelion.

This was similar to how Cheritz tied both Dandelion and Nameless together, through the song ‘Blows’ that first played during various Dandelion cutscenes but appeared throughout the ‘secret ending’ in Nameless (the link for the song is here). Every Rika’s cutscene with ’God’, whether in her backstory route or V’s AS route, established Rika’s desire for her desperate wish coming true to become the sun. This was portrayed using starry-skyed ‘alternate worlds’ that felt similar to the previous two Cheritz games where there was a super-powered ‘Wizard’ working behind the scenes to grant each character their most desperate wish, though the powerful being itself was female instead of a male wizard like the past two games.

While Mystic Messenger utilized a love-focused caring ‘God’/Wizard character rather than Dandelion or Nameless’s selfish antagonist Wizard, it felt related. I know there’s a lot of Wizard theories out in the Mystic Messenger fandom pertaining to 707 and V, and was surprised these two recent DLCs haven’t been talked about. Maybe Mystic Messenger is linked to the previous two games after all, but it’s not as overtly connected to the core of the game as the previous two? Maybe these DLCs proved that MM is established by desperate wishes, but without the primary wizard to help grant them, using a new ‘wizard’ or god-like character (that isn’t a part of RFA) instead?

I thought this was clever. If I’m correct, I’m not talking about how, “707 is the wizard!” or how, “V is a separate wizard scene in Dandelion and is evil!” I’m more talking about if Chertiz do a good job at linking MM to their previous two games with this new DLC, without making it a pivotal point for fans who haven’t played either.

 Hear me out.

 Dandelion’s “Ra rochu ra no so - In a Frozen Dream” is a beautiful song. I was in shock when I first heard it in the new Rika backstory DLC, and again in V’s after ending “Forgiveness” ending. I played Dandelion and Nameless (Cheritz’s two previous games to Mystic Messenger) after completing all Good/Bad routes of the core Mystic Messenger franchise. I went through both games after the core MM game and secret endings were released and played through, but before V or Ray’s stories were released. Definitely before V’s after story or Rika’s stories were even announced.

I always liked the Wizard theories despite not completely giving into them. After all, Chertiz’ first two games " Dandelion - Wishes brought to you” and “Nameless ~The one thing you must recall “ ended up both being inter-connected because they both utilized ‘The Wizard’ and his desire to make desperate wishes come true. As a player, you initially believed they were two separate Otome games made by the same creator, and then found out through the deep-story plot that they were inter-connected. Both games were created by a repeating villain, ‘The Wizard’. He had powers to reset time and change the fabrication of the world through his powers of desperate wishes.

In Dandelion, he became obsessive over repeating the story of the protagonist due to being in love with her and wanting to see her excited or in pain from her desperate wishes derived from love through different routes. The secret ending was how he decided to create a world for himself with the protagonist, thus relenting his powers as the wizard who could control the repeating reality of the game’s story.

Nameless was similar. The player could tell throughout the game that there was a mysterious figure ‘pulling’ the meta-strings of the Otome game as she desperately wished a new life. Every route the player pursued, their protagonist could recognize a similarity to a previous route they played. Soon in deep-routes it became apparent that there was an antagonist behind it all, wanting to see the protagonist romance every character so that they could gather ‘heart’ pieces and ultimately meet them, a person from her past. That antagonist could only become who they were due to the magic of (surprise), the exact same Wizard antagonist. Despite ‘Dandelion’ and ‘Nameless’ not being prequels or sequels of each other, they both shared one common character -- The Wizard. Only, the Wizard retired at the end of Dandelion. It appeared to fans that his story took place before his retirement during the sequel, Nameless.

Naturally, any previous fan of Chertiz games wanted a similar theme to Mystic Messenger. One of the perks to Cheritz was that they connected every game using this meta plot point, and Mystic Messenger had similar themes that could potentially connect the two previous games. Every character had a secret, desperate wish. Hell, it even mentioned the two previous games in passing dialogue. But it was never explored beyond minor Easter eggs.

But one thing that really separated Mystic Messenger was that it grew much more popular than Dandelion or Nameless. Many of these players never experienced ‘Dandelion’ or ‘Nameless’. Where both previous games had a few thousand fans, MM surpassed several million between IOS and Android phones. The fans who sought out Cheritz-wizard theories received backlash because of this and various other reasons. Theories about 707 being the Wizard of MM were brought up and criticized, as did V being an evil wizard. There were more subtle theories in the fandom about negative consequences about resetting the game, and how the protagonist might be the wizard (after all, she did have ‘reset’ abilities and could romance different routes), but even those were never overtly confirmed like how previous Cheritz games revealed plot in their prior games.

Me personally, having played all their previous games? I wanted to see MM inter-connected, and even head-canonned that it was. But none of the theories in the fandom made sense. I figured that so many new players in MM didn’t play previous games, that it may be vaguely hinted at at-most. But I still always wished that Cheritz would allow MM to elude to their meta ulterior-plot, if only because I loved a good meta storyline in games.

Cut to the new V After Ending and Rika’s backstory DLC.

This sort of setting falls in-line with the ‘wish’ dynamic of Dandelion and Nameless. Two examples:

Both showcased a Wizard making another person’s wish come true. Even in Nameless’s case, where the other person ended up being corrupted in their wish.

But in Dandelion, the Wizard gave up his powers. That plot point appeared at the very end of Nameless, where that same Wizard who was helping another character, Nameless himself, disappeared after having his own wish granted. It felt as if the super-powered character speaking to Rika wasn’t this same Wizard, but someone in the same realm of ulterior story. Whether it is the same timeline of the previous to games or just vaguely inter-connected, I think Chertiz did a great job at introducing a supernatural character that both linked MM to the previous two games, without confusing fans that had never played either of the past two games.

This character was different. They’re a girl-voice and gentle soul. Hell, maybe the fans who thought the MC was inter-connected was right, or maybe this god-like character is just another wizard in the realm. I don’t want to assume. Either way, she has a much more innocent approach to wishes than the Wizard in the last two games, but still just the same seeks to help Rika reach her desperate wish.

I love this approach. Using the same song and ‘wish’ plot point as the last two games, Cheritz managed to successfully link fans who have the Wizard theory to the previous two games. In the same breath, anyone who isn’t a fan of those theories or who doesn’t even know about them to relate them to God, just as Rika herself does.

[isuzukuretsuki]

I never thought I’d see a day where I am defending Rika’s character but I am so sick of people whining about how Saeran’s route “botched” Rika’s character and how Rika was “badly written” in Saeran’s route. Like listen. There are a lot of problems with the way Rika is written; but consistency is not one of them.

Let’s start with Rika’s treatment of Saeran. A lot of people are pointing out how Rika’s forceful behavior (and borderline 6th-grade bully attitude) towards Saeran is uncharacteristic but that’s not true at all. A lot of people also say how Rika is only forceful towards Saeran and all her subtle manipulation is gone but that’s not true at all either. Rika goes back and forth between forcefully bullying Saeran into submission and acting kind and affectionate towards him. 

We’ve seen Rika acting cruel and using put downs and insults like calling Saeran useless. But we’ve also seen the opposite end of the spectrum: where Rika acts kind and nurturing towards Saeran (obviously for her malicious purposes). We’ve seen Rika affectionately “nurse” Saeran back to health, we see Rika sweetly telling Saeran that she loves him and that she’ll never abandon him (and her VA did a fantastic job making Rika sound genuine while also clearly conveying that she’s not genuine). We see Rika fling horrid insults at Saeran like calling him useless, yet we also see her say things like "you’re useless but if you work hard, you will be useful! All you have to do is obey me!” Rika doesn’t just insult Saeran into submission by making him feel as shitty as possible; she gives him shreds of hope to make Saeran think that he may actually be good for something. This is to motivate him to work harder under her control.

This treatment of Saeran is very true to her character that we’ve seen in V’s route; where she tells MC that her treatment of her believers in Mint Eye is a cycle of “reward and agony”, in English; the cycle of abuse and she says something similar to those lines in Ray’s route as well. She controls her believers by going back and forth between being kind and being cruel.

Rika has always treated her believers like this; however we’ve never seen the extremes of both ends of her treatment until Saeran’s route, and this is what causes people to flip out. The whole “Rika was never this forceful towards Saeran before! Rika has never punished Saeran this harshly for messing up before” is simply not true. In the Secret Ends, when Saeran refuses to listen to Rika and throws a tantrum over her decision to keep Seven around, Rika orders her believers to take Saeran away and says word for word “he needs to be brainwashed again”. Like yes, Rika isn’t jerking Saeran’s head towards her and pouring the elixir into his mouth, but the implication is the same. If Saeran disobeys, Rika uses force. We’ve also seen via bad ends that Rika is willing to discard Saeran from Mint Eye completely as a consequence of screwing up. Rika uses the elixir not to punish him but to get him back under her control. She even openly admits in V’s route that she uses the elixir to control Saeran. So seeing her actually stay true to her words shouldn’t come as a surprise.

We don’t see Rika act this way towards Saeran in V’s route because Saeran’s loyalty towards Rika has never faltered. Saeran begins to question his loyalty towards Rika in the Secret Ends after Rika breaks her promise towards him and Rika reacts the exact same way she does in Saeran’s route: more drugging. But even then, Saeran’s faltering loyalty in the SEs is small scale compared to his own route where Rika is actually at risk of losing Saeran. This causes Rika to amp up her aggressiveness and cruelty in a way unseen before in order to try to get him under her control again.

Ultimately, Rika is more forceful and aggressive to Saeran because Saeran is actually on the verge of wrenching free of Rika’s control, and this is a threat that Rika didn’t have to face prior.

Now. Onto Rika’s treatment towards MC. A lot of people are irked over Rika’s cruel treatment towards MC but her treatment towards MC is probably one of THE MOST consistent thing about Rika from V’s route. Rika treats MC in a way beneficial to herself depending on the circumstances. 

Let’s talk about Rika’s treatment of MC in V’s route in particular. In V’s route, Rika views MC as a convenient tool to bait V out and ultimately hurt him. She views MC as an object that she can steal from V to make V suffer, which is why she treats MC so kindly. She tells V things like “I’m not mistreating her. She likes it here” and at one point pressures MC into telling V off completely. Rika’s MO is ultimately to get MC to choose her over V (to probably rub in V’s face that people like her more than him), and that obviously can’t happen if Rika acts abusive or cruel to MC, hence why Rika is kind to her.

Once MC leaves Rika for V, Rika continuously tries to get MC back under her influence by painting V out to be this abusive monster. However! Once Rika realizes that her grip on V is actually stronger than her grip on MC, Rika’s attitude completely switches. She tries to guilt V back into a relationship with her, and acts increasingly aggressive towards MC, at one point even screaming at MC for “stealing V away from her” and threatening to make MC pay. When she realizes both V and the RFA are completely out of her influence, her attitude switches again from kind to aggressive to desperately pleading for “help”, hoping to convince MC to not leave her.

If there’s one thing that V’s route establishes about Rika’s treatment of MC: it’s that she’ll change her attitude and treatment of MC depending on the circumstances to suit her needs. Ray’s route carries this trait out very consistently as well. Rika is very polite and very kind to MC at first too, just like in V’s route. At this point in time, MC is an outsider and a critical tool for Rika’s plans. 

It’s not until Rika realizes that MC is loosening her control of Saeran that Rika starts becoming cruel and aggressive. See, the reason why Rika treats MC so different in Saeran’s route vs V’s route is because MC’s role is different. In V’s route, Rika sees MC as a possession to be stolen from V. In Saeran’s route, Rika sees MC as a threat that will steal her possessions (Saeran) away from her. Unlike at the end of V’s route, where MC is potentially the only one left that could “understand” Rika after V and the RFA realizes what a huge shitstain she is, in Saeran’s route, Rika is still very confident in her influence over V and the RFA. MC isn’t a V/RFA replacement or makeshift emotional crutch this time; she’s nothing more than a nuisance that will risk stealing Saeran away from her, so Rika has absolutely no reason to be kind to her. Rika isn’t mean to MC for no reason; she bullies MC to try and break her spirit and drive MC to be submissive towards Saeran to fuel Saeran’s need to abuse others to stand on top; this is all so she can use Saeran’s anger to control him better.

That being said, once Rika realizes that MC won’t bend or break, she switches her approach again and goes from being a 6th grade bully to trying to convince MC to co-rule Mint Eye with her because she realizes that MC is useful and has a stronger influence over Saeran than she does. Rika constantly switches her attitude towards MC over the course of Saeran’s route to manipulate her, and she does it the same way she does in V’s route.

Rika’s attitude towards Saeran at the end of day 10 also mirrors her attitude towards MC at the end of V’s route. Once Rika realizes that Saeran can no longer be swayed, Rika reacts similarly to how she reacts when she realizes V, MC and the RFA will no longer accept her: she breaks down and promises to do better and begs them to not leave her. The moment Rika realizes that things are spinning out of her control, her confident facade completely strips away and Rika is an emotional, pleading, desperate mess. This is very consistent characterization for Rika in both routes of Another Story.

TLDR; Rika’s character is not inconsistent at all from V’s route, or even the Secret Ends. If Rika is a badly written villain in Saeran’s route, then she was always a badly written villain.  If you’re upset that Rika is “more cruel” in Saeran’s route compared to the other routes and that because she is “more cruel”, she’s “badly written”, then you probably don’t understand Rika’s character as well as you think you do.

[myrfing]

js rika’s most interesting and powerful trait (whiiiich is unfortunately 99% told versus shown) is her deliberate ability to manipulate others and the charisma that accompanies it. Being abused as a kid resulted in her clinging to that trait to survive. she def isn’t mentally stable, but she was out of a threatening situation, showed competence, and had a lot of autonomy at the time she decided to uhhh stab her boyfriend in the eyes and run off to start a cult.

the most interesting part of her motivation is the fact she “tried” to live like a good person, but in part due to her past and yes Bento Illnesses paired with the event of accidentally killing the choi twins’ mother, drew the conclusion that 1. she could never be forgiven or redeemed, and is inherently evil 2. “if this society wont accept me then I won’t accept it either”. this sort of thing CAN be written very well into compelling, interesting, and scary villains, but uhhhhhh (it was very clumsily done lol especially since, if she had simply sat down and put work into sincere change for the better, quite literally nobody in the RFA would have hurt her and would have 100% taken her side and worked with her. so her very emotional-coated-as-rational motivations aren’t...too...compelling)

but her brilliant fanz would rather throw all that potential away in favor of ferrying her as this weird child who has never made her own decisions in her life because she’s Mentally Ill or w/e dumb shit and can never be held accountable (passing over that this is like, a very reach-y argument to make considering the scale and precision of her operation AND despite the I’m So Woke nature of it, such a awful ass harmful concept to teach young mentally ill people) and hovel blame on her fucking boyfriend of all people for not doing more than begging her to stick to therapy like he’s her mom lmaooo.

I mean, she herself, en route, straight up tells you “yep i know what I’m doing is “wrong” but that’s by normal society standards, not mine!”. The most her vague mental illness can cover for her is like...delusions of grandeur and her staunch, bad conclusion that she can never be happy in a healthy way. whiiiich isn’t enough to pardon her for stabbing someone, kidnapping, enslaving a child, coercing hundreds of people through careful manipulation to be her devotees, blinding someone, deliberately feeding someone’s paranoia and overdependence (again, to gain control over them), illegally producing and distributing harmful drugs, embezzling funds from a charity project, forcefully drugging people, guilt tripping someone into sexual situations, etc etc. like...mental illness only serves as a cover when your basic morals don’t fucking change for the worse because guess what you learn morals yourself that’s like your responsiblity as a person in society and mental illness cannot magically give you new right and wrongs all of a sudden when it comes to hurting others. Sure, it can influence your train of thought, and lead you to false conclusions, but honestly, when you’re in therapy and surrounded by supportive people, that’s pretty much where your part of the job in controlling your mental illnesses lies. Someone that can be excused by mental illness is, say, a person who has a complete breakdown in how they percieve reality and suddenly are 100% convinced a human isn’t a human but a grotesque, dangerous monster, and attacks out of percieved self-defense- they don’t think or know at all that they’re doing something wrong and believe themselves to just be reacting like any other person driven by momentary peak paranoia and adrenaline. Or someone who has been kept generally isolated and is under the stress of threats and/or constant abuse, and has no chance to sit down and work on themselves and learn how to cope.

did she know V was just a human being and that he posed no physical threat to her at the time she blinded and then searched for and stabbed him later on? oh hell yah. Did she know saeran was a kid who couldn’t resist her if she forcefully kidnapped and brainwashed him? oh hell yeah babey. Did she know yoosung was an impressionable, demotivated kid who could easily be manipulated? yes. did she know people feel pain when they are beaten, berated, and starved and that pain isn’t considered good? LMAO what do you think tm

you don’t have to have empathy. morals are not inherent. but it’s your responsibility regardless to follow at very least the standard for good in whatever society you were born into yes. And if you want to change something, you must work with others. again, her most compelling position is female villain who wants (and COULD have justifibably had) many reasons to go to the extremes to change society. her ideas and methodology are stupid and overly self-serving though so i get why you want to treat her as a mentally incapacitated child lmfao

[jaeheekangisimportant]

1/4 As someone who went from walking into the secret endings thinking that the Rika hate was just classic sexism to really, really disliking her, I can assure you that a lot of the Rika hate... actually DOES come from people apologizing/excusing her actions. I know it's easy to chalk it up and say "no one defends her actions" but the victim blaming against V, equating an abuse victim (Saeran) to his abuser, and outright denying Rika's actions (like blinding V) is actually a /VERY/ real issue.

2/4 Espsecially when you have popular blogs brush off hating Rika for her atriciously abusive actions as just “ignorance on mental illness” and trivializing abuse victims who latch onto characters like Saeran and V because of shared trauma as just “jealous fangirls”. I’m not saying that V and Saeran did nothing wrong but at the end of the day, they are Rika’s abuse victims no matter how you slice it. So people are obviously going to be able to empathize with them more.

¾ It’s important to note that, despite male villains usually being more well recieved, this type of trivilizing treatment is treatment that people who despise abusive male characters actually don’t recieve. Because like… you obviously can’t be accused of being a sexist, jealous fangirl if you hate a male villain. Rika isn’t a bad villain at all; however the huge back lash she recieves isn’t simply because she’s female character in a fandom of Straight GirlsTM but rather because she’s a

4/4 very realistic portrayal (far more realistic than most male villains tbh) of an abuser in a fandom where people can easily use her gender as an excuse to wave off the hatred as just “misogyny” rather than an instinctual reaction to seeing a character who walks, talks, and acts like a real life abuser. There’s nothing wrong with liking Rika, but I think some perspective is necessary before just throwing your hands up in the air and going like “she’s a woman and we only like hot men. the end”.

Okay, I actually think there are a lot of really good points in here and I do agree with most of it, there are also a few things I would contend with, and also some things I’d like to discuss in more depth now that I have an excuse to, but before I do that I have two things to say that I think are very important for everyone, including myself, to keep in mind

There are a lot of layers to any discourse, and I can’t cover every angle of every discourse all the time. I do try to be fair and objective and not totally one-sided but I also want to be clear and honest about what my position is and I also try to stick to whatever has been brought up in the asks I get. If somebody sends me an ask that’s like “hey V fucked up and I wish people acknowledged that”, well then, that’s what I’m going to talk about and there’s not always a lot of room for me to give attention to the other side

It’s impossible for everyone to have interacted with every single member of a fandom and ultimately no one will have the exact same experience with a fandom. I can only talk about fandom issues through the lens of my experience and what I have seen and been exposed to, and that won’t necessarily be universal

The rest is going under a read more because this got unexpectedly rambly and I’m truly sorry for that. I’m also sorry that it’s so unorganized I kind of started with a solid idea of what I wanted to say but then every time I thought of some new thing I kind of just went with it

So, about Rika. Whenever people have brought up misogyny in relation to her, I have always tried to be careful to say that I don’t think Rika hate is always inherently misogynistic but that I do think that some anti-Rika sentiments are rooted in it. I probably could have made that more clear and I apologize if there was any confusion. I have frequently said that there are totally valid reasons to hate Rika which is why I try not to go after Rika haters too much. When I see people hating Rika for the simple fact that she’s important to the other characters, or when I see people using very gendered language to insult her, that’s the kind of stuff that I think can reasonably be criticized for misogyny. But like, obviously there are perfectly good reasons to hate Rika so I don’t take issue with hating her in itself, and I have tried to say that as often as possible. I don’t think it hurts to examine where Rika hate comes from and, more importantly, how it actually manifests (I’ll come back to this in a minute). I do agree that brushing off all Rika hate as just internalized misogyny is wrong and counterproductive and very trivializing, which is why I try not to fall back on that argument. But I also don’t think that misogyny is entirely irrelevant to the Discourse about her. I think that “Rika hate isn’t inherently misogynistic” and “a lot of people would treat Rika differently if she were male” are ideas that can coexist

As for what you said about people defending Rika, this relates to Point Number Two I made up there. Most of the people in the MysMe fandom that I still follow these days are Rika fans, and honestly I have never seen any of them try to say that Rika did nothing wrong. I don’t doubt that people have done that, and I also am glad that I’ve never seen people like that, or at least if I have it was rare enough that it wasn’t a significant problem for me and I could just forget it. I think I’ve made it clear enough that I think Rika did very wrong. I have consistently called her a villain, I have repeatedly said that I think she deserves punishment for her crimes, I have referred to both Saeran and V as victims of her abuse (and I’ll get to them soon too). Even if I do like Rika and consider her a tragic and sympathetic character, I am really not okay with people pretending Rika didn’t commit any of the crimes or abuse that she did. I didn’t talk about it because I haven’t seen it, but if I’m wrong and people are doing that then all I can say is YIKES @ those people and please don’t assume I’m one of them

The subject of mental illness is one that the fandom really handles terribly and honestly the game handles it pretty badly too. I’m very mentally ill myself and I actually recognize a lot of my symptoms and issues in Rika (violent intrusive thoughts, the feeling that there’s just something inherently wrong and bad in me and I’m only ever faking being good, paranoid and dramatic/emotional outbursts that even I know aren’tproportionate to the situation, self-harming, self-sabotage and suicidal ideation), so I was inclined to sympathize with Rika. It’s also why I was so viscerally disgusted by the way V talked about her mental illness. Having said all of that, I really don’t like people blaming a character’s abusive actions on mental illness, as if mentally ill people can’t help being bad and violent. Like, I know a lot people probably think they’re sympathizing with us, but you realize that exact same sentiment is used to demonize us, right? You’re not helping anyone by saying that mental illness is an excuse for bad behavior

People really need to learn that there is a difference between an explanation and an excuse. My anxiety flaring up might explain why I’m so irritable sometimes, but it doesn’t excuse me from snapping at well-meaning people. My depression getting really bad might explain why I isolate myself for weeks and sometimes months on end, but it doesn’t excuse me from completely shutting out and ignoring my friends and family who really just want to know why I haven’t spoken to them in so long. Mental illness can make me act out in a lot of ways that are bad for me and for other people, but I would never try to use it as an excuse and I would never want people to use it as excuse for me either. There are still very real consequences to my acting out, I still need to apologize and make up for them, and I still need to try my best to correct that kind of behavior no matter how easy it can be to fall into (and I do try, and I have gotten much better)

Rika’s mental illness and backstory does explain a lot of her behavior. It explains it, it doesn’t excuse it. She’s still very much accountable for her shitty actions. I do think that Rika could have been a very different person if she had gotten proper and intensive help with her mental health, and I wish she had gotten it. I don’t think she’s completely one-dimensionally evil and I do think that, at the very least, she had the potential to be a good person. I do think that she’s partially a victim of her circumstances. But, I also think that arguing about what a character could have been like under different circumstances is pretty moot and that’s why it’s another argument I try not to fall back on. It doesn’t really matter what characters could have been like. What matters is what they are actually are like and Rika is. Well. Rika

I think that there is a lot to criticize about the way Rika is written in the game, mostly having to do with the fact that she perpetuates the Depraved Bisexual trope, or that portraying a mentally ill character as villainous is always going to come with some issues, or the extremely frustrating fact that aside from Jaehee there are no female characters in the game that we’re really meant to like. I kind of wish we could discuss the game’s actual writing issues more because uuum there’s a lot of really bad and messed up stuff in here actually

Also, when I say things about how I think Rika hate is out of hand, it actually doesn’t have much to do with how people react to Rika as a character. It has more to do with people harassing Rika cosplayers at cons, leaving rude and aggressive comments on Rika fan art, attacking her fans even after they’ve made it clear that they only like Rika as a character/villain. That’s more the kind of stuff I’m thinking of when I say that Rika hate can be unnecessarily vicious, when it extends to actual real people who are mostly just minding their own business and trying to have fun with a character they like. I understand that Rika is controversial and for good reason, but come on guys, it’s not hard to have basic decency toward each other

Okay now let’s finally get to V and Saeran. I’ve never denied that they are victims of Rika’s abuse so let’s get that straight right away. I’ve also been careful to avoid equating their actions with Rika’s. I know I have repeatedly said that Rika has done worse things than both of them. And I do deeply sympathize V and Saeran. Almost everything I’ve ever said about Saeran has included a sentence that started with something like “I love Saeran and I sympathize with him but”. And yes I do in fact sympathize with V and I have mentioned this before, but since I’m also pretty harsh on V a lot of the time I suppose that point can get buried.

As a sidenote - and I’m not accusing you of doing this, anon, it’s just something I do want to address - I really don’t like it when people assume that someone must have no experience with abuse or trauma just because they may feel differently about something. Abuse and trauma are heavy subjects and of course people want to make sure you actually know what you’re talking about if you’re going to be talking about it, but like, no one should be required to disclose their personal abuse/trauma history just to prove that they’re qualified to have an opinion. I just… we really should be more careful about things like that

Back to V and Saeran (I’m really sorry I’m all over the place and I’m probably making less sense as I go), even if I do sympathize with them a lot, and even if I can relate to Saeran on a deeply personal level that I don’t much like to share with people, I don’t think it’s right to completely dismiss their wrongdoings. It’s possible for characters to be victims as well as victimizers and I would consider V, Saeran and Rika to be both those things, though obviously to vastly different degrees. 

Just because I understand and sympathize with V doesn’t mean I think it’s okay that he enabled Rika’s unhealthy behaviors, romanticized her mental illness, treated her like his art piece rather than as a person, and remained silent and complicit in her crimes. 

Just because I understand and sympathize with Saeran, doesn’t mean I think it’s okay that he attempts to kidnap MC, threatens violence against both her and Seven multiple times, and actually does shoot V. And I was actually being generous there by only counting things that he did in Seven’s route and the secret endings, aka the canon stuff that ultimately matters most. If I was going to count all the shit he pulls in other routes (blinding Yoosung in one eye, as an example), in bad endings (sexual assault, kidnapping, torture, murder, as examples), in Another Story and in his own damn route (kidnapping, sexually harassing MC and almost crossing the line to sexual assault, keeping her locked up and being verbally abusive with her), it would be asking me to excuse a lot more. I do both sympathize and empathize with Saeran! I really do! He’s one of my favorite characters ever and he means a lot to me, I can’t even begin to tell you how much!! But a lot of his antics are still inexcusable!!

And again we have to go back to my point about people’s fandom experiences being different from each other’s. I haven’t seen enough Rika defenders for it to be an issue for me, personally, but do you know what I have seen a lot of? And I mean, a lot of? People talking about how hot it would be if Saeran abused and/or raped them, people saying that they would be perfectly happy to let V treat them exactly how he treated Rika, people insisting that anyone who even tries to say that something V did was Not Good are terrible people, or that liking Rika at all in any capacity or even just showingneutrality toward her makes you a terrible person. That was the kind of stuff I saw a lot of back when I was really involved in fandom and that was the kind of stuff that made my experience in the fandom so deeply unpleasant. So, when I talk about fandom issues, that’s the kind of stuff that comes up for me, because those were the issues that I had. Maybe you’re lucky and you missed a lot of the shit I saw. Maybe I’m lucky for missing a lot of the shit people are spewing in defense of Rika. And maybe reducing it to an issue of “Straight Girls only care about hot guys” is not exactly right or fair of me, but… well, Straight Girls who only care about hot guys have been a significant source of annoyance for me in this fandom so when I’m feeling particularly salty they become a very easy target for it. Again, not saying that’s right or fair of me

More often than not what I’m trying to do with V and Rika discourse is get people to realize that the situation was not as black and white as they make it seem. Rika was not one-dimensionally evil and V was not wholly good, that’s all I ever want to get across about those two. And what I’m trying to do with Saeran discourse is… okay honestly I don’t even know what I’m trying to do here I actually wish I could just stay out of Saeran discourse entirely but if it comes up I guess I’ll talk about it. I am extremely uncomfortable with many of the more popular fandom interpretations of Saeran but he’s also too important to me for it to sour my opinion of him (since Ray’s route has come out it’s been a pretty close call tho let me tell you and I swear if this fandom ever does make me stop liking Saeran I’ll never forgive them). I really want nothing more than to stay out Saeran discourse but lately it keeps finding me. I’m honestly kind of tired of discourse-ing about V and Rika on theseblogs because at this point I’m running out of new things to say about eitherof them and I think I’ve already made my thoughts and feelings sufficientlyclear in numerous posts, I’m not sure what else I can do. But again, if people bring it up, I’ll usually be willing to talk about it. 

I don’t really care if people hate Rika, and I don’t really care if people love V, I only wish people wouldn’t oversimplify either character and I wish people were more open to accepting that their situation was a complex one where, even if one of them (Rika) is undeniably guiltier, neither person was 100% innocent

[yandereshit]

(1) I want your opinion on something: do you think that the people who like rika excuse her for what she did to v? And is it because she's a female character? From my pov, it's hard to see it considering that v has a LOT of fans and rika has a LOT of people who want to rip her head off, not to mention that people who either disliked v or liked rika didn't really get a nice treatment from the fandom(a friend of mine was bullied)-

-(2) and with the amount of experience that me (and possibly others) got from many fandoms, if v was the villain, I can assure that he would still garner sympathy and would even be jokingly called daddy. I definitely won’t see him as daddy material but I’ll obviously like him as a villain. Right now? He looks more of a bella swan to me. My theory? It’s cause it’s a romance genre with a male dominated cast directed towards a female audience.

First thingI’d like to say: I do not wish to see hate of any sort under this post. Feel free to stateyour opinions, no matter what they are, as long as they’re still opinions. I’m not anti Vand I will not tolerate hateful behavior towards ANY of the characters.

I think agood starter will be a quote of an ask I saw today on someone’s blog. I will notcomment the answer not reveal the blog’s address as I’d rather avoidany kind of discourse with them. Let me just place this ask here:

“I feel like Rika’s fanclub has doubled in size sincethe new route was released so I’m glad there are still people like you whostill have some fucking common sense.”

Yes. Rika���sfans are undoubtfully treated badly in this fandom. No matter if it’s aboutliking Rika or justifying her actions, surely the amount of hate they get istoxic and overwhelming. It has nothing to do with an exchange of opinions anymore. It’s buillying in it’s clearest form.

I participate in RikaPositivity server on Discord, and it’s probably the best resource in thistopic. So, let me say that: I haven’tseen a single person who’d say what Rika did was good. Despite what somepeople try to push into our mouths, we do realize what she’s done – to V and toSaeran – was bad.

But you can’tjust say the blame is all on her, and let me explain, why.

There’s socalled human act, an Ethics term.There’s a difference between humanaction and human act and here’s a quite good explanatory I found (click on the text for the link to the page):

Human action or human act should be investigated because it is beingconsidered that not all human actions are considered as human act. It isconfusing but it is being determined that the act that was committed must bedone knowingly and willfully by any individual before we can declare thathe/she is accountable for it. In short, an act committed without the knowledgeand consent should not be considered as a human act.

Accordingto the study, only human acts can bejudged as they’re the things we’re responsible for and not everything we do is a human act. 

There are various obstacles of human acts, and mental illnesses are one of them. But not only. Lack of knowledge, addictions, accidents, even being, let’s say, sleepy on a particular day – these are things that can naturally make you less responsible for the things you do. (Keep in mind the blame usually can’t be pushed onto anyone else this way; there are things that just don’t depend on us)

Now, returning to V’s and Rika’s case.

Of course it’s only natural to try to get a treatment if you’re aware of your state, but I’ve heard an opinion stating that Rika’s completely at fault for being crazy, as she didn’t get the proper treatment even though V told her to. 

So, let me quote a dialogue from SE01, from one of their memories (beginning of 3rd episode):

V: How was therapy? It’s been three weeks already.

Rika: I’m going because you wanted me to… but I don’t know if my state is treatable. The more I talk to the therapist, the more I see the vicious sides of me. I’m so scared…

V: Rika… I’m sure things will get better if you keep talking to her.

Rika: No, I don’t want to go anymore. The therapist just tells me to find peace and overcome my wounds… but the darkness inside of me… can’t be healed that easily. I’m used to being depressed and feeling empty. If I just relax for even a second, my real self… my anxiety will just all come out.”

(…)

V: Just let go… and you’ll feel better.

Rika: I don’t know how to let go. Right now… I want to destroy myself. Don’t you get it?

V: Rika, look at me. You can if you look into my eyes. No matter how you are, I won’t leave you. So don’t worry… and just find peace. It will be better. Tomorrow will be better. I’ll save you…

Rika: You’ll save me?

V: I love you. If you want, I’ll save you.

(…)

V: You can test me until you believe me. Even if you strangle my neck, blind my eyes, and destroy my limbs… I love you. I am your sun.

(…)

V: I love you… If my absolute love can save you, if that’s what you want, that’s what we can do. Rika… So that even I’m the one who hurts you… choose to be mine. I will become a dominating and unfair person for you. 

(…)

V: I will be the person you need. (…) You are… already in me.

I showed three important points here. About Rika’s general state, her relationship with V and the way it influenced her.

Rika trusts V. She tries to get a treatment because he told her to. But it’s not helping her. Of course, three weeks is not a long time. Surely not enough to see actual effects. But Rika is already in despair; she doesn’t see any good sides in her situation. She even hurts herself at this point and believes it’s the right thing to do. She’s not a person who’s able to decide on her own anymore. But she trusts V more than anything, and, as this person in despair, decides to listen to him. 

Have a look at the important part of this conversation: Rika says she’s scared of ‘relaxing’, as it’d cause her bad side come out. But what V tells her to do is to ‘let go’, as he decides to take this all upon himself. He believes he can deal with whatever happens after.

V tells Rika he’s going to save her. He’s the one who says he’ll become her “sun”. He generally lets her know she doesn’t neet a treatment because he’s enough to deal with it all by himself. And she believes him.

And THIS is the exact moment when it all starts.

I don’t think Rika should be blamed for what she did to V, at least, not to the degree she is blamed for it now.

I will use another example here; a lot of people justify Jumin’s famous bad ending saying that MC was tempting him and generally telling him to treat her like a cat. I personally don’t agree with this excuse, but we have a similar situation here: the difference is that Rika and V are together for a bit LONGER than these… two days of ‘relationship’ (that’s why I don’t think Jumin’s behaviour can be justified, but it’s a completely different matter). And - as we know - Rika is already unstable all this time.

So it’s really hard to say that Rika’s guilty for everything she’s done to V: because, first, the reason why her ‘bad side’ came out is because V told her to ‘let it go’ as he assumed he’d pull it off somehow, and second, he literally tells her to do all these things to him, later on not regretting his choice and still keeping on his opinion that it’s al-fucking-right.

Rika’s state worsens drastically through the whole plot. In V’s route we still have some sight of her original personality; she doesn’t really mean to harm RFA, the way she’s talking to them using the chat is - in my opinion - sincere (of course it can be discussed, but that’s just how I was seeing this). We can’t forget that she really did care for the others, and a good proof is her reaction to Ray’s death on 10th day. She literally breaks down into tears. No matter if the whole cult was strongly related to her way of trying to ‘prove’ herself, it doesn’t mean she didn’t care about these people; even when she realizes it’s over for her, she wants them to escape so that the ‘bad world’ wouldn’t reach them. 

In Secret Endings though, her state is so bad she cannot be considered sane anymore. The way she treated Chois is completely different from how she acted in V’s route, which is really meaningful. While playing only Secret Endings, it wasn’t that clear, it may have seemed that she was that bad all along. But Another Story shows the contrast between how she acted in the past, how she acts now, and how she acts in the Secret Endings, and that’s a very important piece of information more of people forget to acknowledge.

And, why people hate Rika so much?

You mentioned it twice, the fact that Rika is a girl and that V is a man which does make a difference. Yes, Mystic Messneger is a romance game ‘destined’ to women, mainly straight women. The plot shows is pretty clearly that women are treated ‘worse’ as they’re potential rivals to MC. Jaehee is a character who’s totally friendzoned, and all the female side characters (except for V’s mother) are mean vipers, in general: Echo Girl, Glam Choi, Sarah. All the female side characters end up as antagonists, unlike, for example, Vanderwood (friendly reminder: he’s a MALE) who gets a way better personality, while these three are… actually quite similar in their reasoning and behaviour, nothing to really focus on.

And eventually, just as a definite majority of MM fans are straight women, the result is that it’s way easier for them to despise other women than men.

Another thing is, a lot of people decides to dislike Rika even before we get any actual info about her behavior, as I suppose, because of how RFA is focused on her from the beginning. Rika is a very important character and just as important RFA member. From the very first day we’re flooded with the mentions of her and especially Yoosung’s behaviour (in and out of his route) obviously doesn’t make us like her more. It’s also one of the rare situations when an important (even though undateable, at least untill 2 months ago) character is in such a close relationship he hasn’t gotten over yet. Rika is the only person that can be considered a rival to MC. In these circumstances it’s really easy to focus only on the reasons to despise her.

This work exactly the opposite way for V. His personality is more soft from the beginning, he gives us that needs-to-be-protected attitude and so, we’re more eager to find excuses for his behaviour even if we see him making mistakes.

To summarize it all, I’d like to say one thing.

Both V and Rika are very well created characters. They have good sides and bad sides. They do good things and bad things, less or more wittingly. But just as I believe Rika deserves more understanding from this fandom, I believe V’s mistakes should be acknowledged AND eventually forgiven.

I think the main problem was Cheritz’ way of presenting the ending of V’s route. I suppose they did it to please the fandom, and the thing they did is - let me say that - a little OOC (I should rot in hell for this statement). I believe in normal circumstances V wouldn’t want to completely cut Rika off like he’s done in his route, but after acknowledging what he unwittingly leaded to, he’d sincerely want to fix it one way or another, as even though he didn’t love her, he did care for her, which is obvious after that many years of a relationship.

Because neither V or Rika are bad people. What they’ve done is a result of either lack of knowledge or their mental state which partly or completely make their actions less of a ‘human act’. And even though their relationship became toxic, they chose each other out of their real feelings, and not a purpose to hurt anyone.

[spookyblueegg-blog]

Rika and BPD (Or, why you don’t have to like Rika, but shouldn’t just brand her as evil)

Okay, first off, TW for those who have BPD, or who have loved ones with BPD, due to the rather insensitive way in which Cheritz portrayed the disorder.

Now. It’s perfectly understandable if you don’t like Rika. She’s done a lot of really terrible, hurtful things--things that are difficult to forgive. However, I do think it’s both unfair and inaccurate to brand Rika as outright evil, or call her a snake, a bitch, etc, etc, because her behavior is rooted in sickness rather than active malice. And no, don’t worry, I’m not trying to say that her mental illness absolves her of responsibility for her actions. She does need to be held accountable for her wrongdoings, but knowing why she does all of these things makes her much more sympathetic. Hear me out.

With the release of V’s route (hooray for everyone’s favorite teal cinnamon roll), we learn a lot of new information about Rika, and gain quite a bit of new insight into her character. With this new information, it’s become pretty clear that Rika shows textbook signs of Borderline Personality Disorder. The link provides a more detailed overview from the NIMH (which in turn is derived from the DSM-5), but I’ll list the symptoms below for easier access:

(Continued under the cut, since this got pretty long.)

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment

A pattern of intense and unstable relationships with loved ones, often swinging from extreme closeness and love (idealization) to extreme dislike or anger (devaluation)

These first two are big ones, and are famously summarized by the phrase “I hate you, don’t leave me” that commonly characterizes BPD. And they’re very evident in Rika’s past and present behavior. She has deep-seated fears of abandonment stemming from serious childhood neglect and trauma (e.g., her dad abandoning the family, her mother killing herself, her aunt saying that she regretted adopting her...). Childhood neglect is a common risk factor for BPD, and it’s understandable why. If people have abandoned you from an impressionable young age, it’s easy to imagine that the pattern will continue.

This is (rather infamously) demonstrated in her extremely unhealthy relationship with V, as shown in the picture above. However, Rika isn’t doing this because she’s some awful manipulative bitch, as many seem to think. She’s doing this because she afraid that he’s going to leave her, just as her parents did. And she’s lashing out in response to that fear. While it’s unclear whether she’s referencing her adoptive parents or her biological parents (the former seems more likely, considering how the latter died when she was very young), it ultimately doesn’t matter. All of them abandoned her, and now she feels like another person that she loves is behaving in the same way that they are (e.g., not appreciating her, betraying her, etc). And so she thinks that he’s going to do the same thing that they did, and leave her.

The pattern continues with the MC, in V’s bad ending.

“I hate you, but I love you.” She’s not being contradictory here. She’s just exhibiting the idealization/devaluation pattern here once again. The symptom list goes on and on, with Rika checking off pretty much every single box:

Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior

Intense and highly changeable moods

Distorted and unstable self-image or sense of self

Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors

Chronic feelings of emptiness

Inappropriate, intense anger or problems controlling anger

Having stress-related paranoid thoughts

Having severe dissociative symptoms, such as feeling cut off from oneself, or losing touch with reality

All of her seemingly “bitchy” or “evil” behavior isn’t because she’s some terrible person, but rather stem from symptoms of a very severe personality disorder. Now, here’s where things get dicey, because Cheritz decided to take this woman with obvious BPD and then make her the villain of the story. I think it should be fairly obvious that people with BPD don’t normally start brainwashing cults and blinding their fiancees. As someone who has loved ones with BPD, this “violent and unstable” portrayal of BPD upset me, because it’s a tired old negative stereotype. However, as rare as it is, it is true that some people with BPD can become potentially violent when lashing out in fear and desperation. And that’s what Rika does. During dramatic mood swings, people with BPD often report feeling like they’re “losing their minds,” and can seem like two totally different people within the span of a few weeks (e.g., RFA leader Rika vs. cult leader Rika). And, as referenced by the last symptom above, extreme actions due to a loss of touch with reality are also possible (see: Mint Eye. She genuinely believes she’s helping lead these people into some kind of paradise). 

A lot of her other behavior, such as refusing to go in for treatment, also become more understandable within the context of BPD. BPD is infamously difficult to treat, and carries with it a very heavy stigma that would only be worse in Korea, where mental illness is still treated as a taboo subject. However, what people with BPD need is loving but firm support from the people around them to continue treatment. How V reacted, while based in good intentions, was very, very bad for Rika, by essentially enabling her destructive behavior and continuing the cycle again and again.

I have a friend with BPD who once told me that as much as she was sure everyone in the world hated her, she was the one who hated herself the most. I could go on and on, but the crux of the message is this: Rika does very bad things, but she’s suffering too. You don’t have to like her, or forgive her, but I think it’s important to recognize that she’s not evil. It sucks to see such a heavily BPD-coded character reviled in this way, because I’ve personally seen how people with BPD in reality get treated in very similar ways--getting called a “psycho” or a “bitch,” when they’re really just sick and in need of help. We should be better than that, you guys.

TL;DR: just check out the last paragraph, bby. thanks.

[randomavatarfan]

Satokowashi-hen Ep4 Phase 1- For You, The Replaceable Ones

Hhhhhhnnnnngggghhhhhhhh

Nothing is as interesting as Featherine right now. Honestly, I'm disappointed that we don't see a truly deep villain. Gou is going to end with Satoko and Rika seeking forgiveness and they both escape the loops, Rika leaving Hinamizawa, Satoko maybe not, and they promise to see each other again when the evening cicadas cry. The end.

I'm kinda disappointed with the development. I had a lot of fun in the first few arcs "what does it all mean?" but I feel like Satoko's motive is just too petty and the obvious ending is... idk. They're going to sing platitudes about trusting and forgiveness, but honestly putting Rika through the hell that she did for a motive so shallow, it's not even exciting.

But Featherine!!!! fiditsitdgodpfuoydufs.

First off, Satoko always seemed disconnected from Lambda. Her blonde color was different from Miyo, her name didn't hold the meaning, she just didn't seem to be the fit. But Featherine connected her to Vier, Takano's doppelganger, whose name is literally 3-4. If Satoko has the power of certainty on her side, then Gou could become endless...

So why does Featherine know Satoko as Vier, Mitsuyo, and a spinal specimen? Vier is definitely a Ciconia reference, spinal specimen... maybe??? Mitsuyo...??????????

(Potentially, she may be Jestress)

I honestly think the most interesting part about this entire chapter is Featherine and the potential connection to Umineko and Ciconia. I really do hope if they ever (re)make animes for them that they do it straight and not make a "Gou"-type thing (Unless we get to see Land of the Golden Witch ;) )

I think my next goal is to reread Ciconia and see where this new perspective comes from. I've tried comparing some of the characters to the Umineko witches, not as an attempt to use them to explain the conflict, but to help identify the conflict- who is the miracle? who is the certainty? who is the observer? Vier and the Jestress may well have the same goal. I also really believe Miyao's name is enough of a homophone to be included in the Ciconia 34 gang, but everything seems to be pointing to them being the good guys. Even Dark!Miyao seemed to be more of a harbinger and Oracle rather than the one pulling the strings- Miyao being a puppet. Who would be pulling his strings? Most likely his parents who birthed them in a manner incongruous with the world culture. But his parents are split: the Jestress and Tojirou are not on the same side. Tojirou wants to see the world burn with WW4.

I think Vier knows of the world outside... those scenes of people on the hooks that didn't fit in. That's the "Meta" of Ciconia, and now, potentially the meta of WTC as a whole. They're living in a simulation. Vier managed to cheat the system, she found a glitch and is living in a manner that wouldn't normally be allowed. The things her team studies are things that should not have occurred within the simulation. The Dreisig conversion, everything are things that should not be possible but are.

The three kings and tojirou/seshat have similar but conflicting goals. I don't think they're quite aware of Vier's base, or the world outside. Their goals however will lead to a more stable simulation while Seshat's/Tojirou's will more likely destroy the simulation. The Jestress has a set of goals at odds with Tojirou's, and potentially at odds with the Kings, but aiding the kings will help her for now.

I feel like i'm looking too much into the fantasy of the realm, but honestly I think the truth of Ciconia lies in there rather than with the Knights. I think the knights may be more in line with the Kings rather than Seshat.

Anyway, my goal is to reread Phase 1, take advantage of the hiatus and delay to really soak in details. What are your thoughts?

[tumblunni]

Digimon frontier ocs?

Randomly started rewatching CactusCasual's great Digimon Frontier critique series. He's leaving youtube soon and making the weird decision to delete his whole account and everything he's ever done. But he's uploaded a bunch of his best stuff to google drive so if people wanna keep.it they can. Still i think its a lil dumb to not just leave the account open even if you're not using it? I dont know anything about why he's quitting the site though so maybe he has his reasons.

ANYWAY this got me thinking again about how Frontier is so goddamn boring and weirdly cliche and badly paced, and like everyone just focuses on "but they changed how digivolution works" and ignores all the actual reasons its bad. Like, kids have fused with digimon in previous seasons too! And haven't we all wished we could be the awesome characters like angemon and etc? A digimonny power rangers henshin thing isnt an inherantly bad idea, it was just executed badly. I dislike it cos it meant we completely lost any sort of digimon and human bonding experience plotline. They gave us two recurring digimon characters but they were just basically a pokedex and the world's least funny comic relief. Gimme a version of the show where the kids actually talk to their "spirit evolutions"! Like maybe they have a digimon partner but its forever stuck in baby form or spirit egg form and cant fight without fusing with a human host? Or just give us a better non-combat digimon pal like bokomon and neemon but like.. Fully developed with their own character arc and relationships with everyone else. Maybe ophanimon could have been around the whole time and been a mentor and parental figure? And we could actually explore her moral ambiguity, cos seriously the show makes her kind of a "ends justify the means" asshole and just NEVER AKNOWLEDGES IT. Wtf was up with that scene where she illusions Cherubimon with a fake dream of him being purified and getting to just go back home and be friends? And then she just backstabs him and we never mention it again. Like seriously even if she couldnt actually cure him that scene at least revealed that he WANTED to be cured and it made him so much more sympathetic! If he can be reasoned with, maybe they could have talked him down and then gone on an adventure together to find an actual cure for him? Also seriously what is up with his entire plot! Cos he just gets 'infected with darkness' cos he 'had darkness in his soul' but its just cos he thought the humanoid digimon were being racist against the beast digimon? And like.. The council was 2/3rds humanoid with him as the only beast representative and since he got infected by evilness they never remotely tried to recruit a new one or listen to what beast digimon have to say. So he was kinda right, yo! Also wtf with the reveal that actually no everything we just said is pointless because his REAL motivation was just blindly obeying ANOTHER humanoid digimon that comes out of nowhere to be the final boss. Also what is up with all the increased sexism in this series!! Its so weirdly worse than even adventure which had the excuse of being "a product of the times" yet still had way better variety of female characters and less bigoted stuff! And frontier came right after tamers which was one of the best series for gender equality and even used the medium of the setting as an opportunity to talk about the subject. Shame they censored that in the dub tho, Renamon talking about how digimon have no biological sex and how she only came to think of herself as a girl when she came to the human world. And rika's family accepting her and inviting her to family girls's night and stuff! Like as a metaphor for transgender issues it really worked to try and explain it to a younger audience in a natural way. And then one season later in frontier we have ONLY ONE GIRL IN THE CAST and wah wah whining about fashion and oh no she cant ever win a fight and her goddamn spirit form is in skimpy lingerie despite her being 12, and the show is always perving on her! And then she loses her powers halfway through the first season without winning a single fight, and has to be the damsel in distress to motivate the dudes in a stupid love triangle. And even when she does get to fight she's only allowed to fight the ONE SINGLE GIRL ON THE VILLAIN TEAM and they have stupid slap fights and "who's the most pretty" and BEACH EPISODE and GAHHHHH

...anyway as you can see i have a lot of reasons why i didnt really like the series. But what i meant to make this post about (BEFORE I GOT DISTRACTED) is that the fundemental concept itself isnt bad, they just wasted all its potential. And its a really good concept for ocs! Make your own digi superhero person and explore the fragmented world doing stuff offscreen during the series! Like they left so much open?? We know that other kids also got on other trains to the digiworld and they all just failed or gave up or got captured by the bad guys. And we know there's a bunch of spirits that the heroes never use because the villains got them again, so its cool to imagine an alt universe where the roles were swapped. What if different kids became the chosen heroes? What if different spirits were corrupted by the villains? What would a good guy Grumblemon be like? What would the kid be like who got that spirit? Would their evolution form be wildly different from grumblemon? Do the villain forms and purified forms look as different as Duskmon and Lowemon did?

SO MUCH POTENTIAL!!!

So yeah i wasted so much space here blabbering, so i'll probably make a separate post about my oc ideas lol. But i'd love to see other people's ideas for ocs/reinterpretations/other ways to fix that wasted potential!

So! Digimon frontier oc ideas!

To start off,have an undeveloped idea of someone on the team having Angemon as their spirit evolution. Cos it would have made the transition to such a new series a lot easier if they had some sort of "hey this is for you" to the fans of the previous ones. And angemon is the Adventure digimon that already looks the most like a regular human in a weird mask.

SPEAKING OF WHICH! less regular humans in weird masks! Whats the point of "you turn into a digimon" if you dont turn into a digimon? Like i know the whole gimmick is "humanoid mode and beast mode" but even the beast modes often look like humans in a costume! And there's been so many humanoid digimon before who actually looked like HUMANOID MONSTERS rather than just normal dudes cosplaying! There's literally nothing "monster" about agunimon, he's just a guy in some knight armour. Like the most you can do is charitably assume maybe the horns are his own and not just attatched to the helmet. And its annoying cos the villains have way cooler evolutions! And also double annoying that they always bend the humanoid/beast rule in such transparently self serving ways. Tommy gets two beast forms cos he's meant to be the cute mascot-looking character. Zoey gets two human forms cos she's meant to be grossly sexualized all the time. When kouichi turns from bad to good he loses his interesting looking actually monsterous evolutions and just becomes another dude in an armour. A friggin palette swap of his brother!

Anyway anyway LOL IM RAMBLING AGAIN yo...

Ideas for ocs!

I was thinking of a main girl character who's basically just a "fuk u" to all the stereotypes they did with Zoey. Actually gets a monster lookin beast form and a warrior lookin human form and actually gets to goddamn fight! Maybe her name is Hilda or Hildegarde? And i'm imagining her as a chubby nerdy kid with glasses and curly hair and a super cute oversized sweater kind of fashion sense. And her main spirit form would be this super badass lady knight giant orc thing who can Protec All The Peoples! Maybe earth element or the irony of being light element but she's this big ol monster goblin with just a tiny pair of angel wings on the back, lol! And then her personality is normally super shy and socially anxious, but she actually finds the digimon world kind of freeing? She's a total badass in battle and acts like a big ol powerful protector of all her friends! And she's always super excited aboyt adventuring and gets carried away comparing stuff to her favourite books. And now we must learn everything about this new place!! TO THE DIGI LIBRARY!!! So she's able to be confident and bubbly when it comes to actual adventure stuff, but she's still shy about regular life and anything social. Maybe its her weakness? Like she's scared about going home because she thinks she'll be "just a nobody" again, and lose all the great friends she made here. And also maybe a backstory of her heroic side still existing even before she got magic powers, but in the most tragic way? She managed to fend off a burglar once all on her own, she just snapped and did everything possible to defend her family, even though this was a man three times her size! But instead of being seen as a hero it just made all the neighbours and kids at school spread rumours about her being dangerous. Oh she must be in *a gang* if she knew how to fight like that! Oh its so *dangerous* for a kid that age to have such anger inside! Maybe she's a *scary mentally ill person*! So the whole situation ruined her social status even more and made her retreat even more inside her shell. And this is why the circumstances of the digital world are such a wish fullfillment for her and she's so scared of just waking up and it all being a dream. I think the villains could manipulate her fears, and it could maybe lead to her Skullgreymon Moment?

And then another idea i had was for a trans boy? I just thought this would be a good framework to explore LGBT stuff. He'd maybe be the wind element? And his personality would be very "classic shonen hero" but without the "dumbass" part, instead he's the cynical planner type dude while Hilda is the "i didnt even think, i just wanted to save everyone" type. But he's still super peppy and tries to be the class clown all the time so people will like him, and loves to climb trees and stuff. I think maybe his fighting style would be all about trickery and random chance? If there was such a thing as an element of surprise then he'd have that one! And then his story is that he doesn't have anyone supporting him for who he truly is at home, and he's afraid that his new friends will call him a freak too if they find out. He took the opportunity and cut his hair short as soon as this adventure started, and just introduced himself to everyone as a boy. But he's scared that people will find out he "lied" even though he didnt, he's just been so beaten down with the idea that he's not allowed to be himself and he has to pretend to be everyone else's idea of an ideal cis man or else they'll reject him. So maybe he starts off a bit obsessed with cliche masculinity and has low confidence about himself? And this could reflect in his digivolutions actually changing! He starts off with a really over the top buff warrior dude form, even though his fighting style is entirely about speed and trickery. So he tends to get into trouble with this fake form getting in the way of his ability to fight. And then when everyone accepts him he gets all powered up and changes into a new form! A way less "cliche macho" dude who looks like a stage magician instead and actually synchronizes with his element to become super powerful! And he's all like "oh no i became less manly" but everyone is like "wtf dont let yourself believe you're any less of a man because of dumb stereotypes!" And Also Big Friendship Hugs.

And then maybe this provides a resolution to both him and Hilda's plots? Like when the story is over they still stay friends in the real world, and having a friend who supports them gives them enough power to withstand all the haters and stay confident in themselves. But itd be kind of a coincidence for all the digidestined to live in the same city lol! So maybe in real life they live at least a few towns away, and they become long distance pals who send letters/emails. Because I LOVE ALL MY LONG DISTANCE PALS!! Also itd make sense to have a Internet Good message in a digimon show, lol.

And then i dunno about the rest of the team yet but i thought itd be good to have a sort of moral divide? Like these are the two who have a shitty home life and dont want to leave the digital world. But then the other half of the group has big reasons to wanna go home. So the villains could play on this difference in goals and make them fight amoungst each other. Just generally make the villains more actually competant, yknow? Oh also if there's a Dark Agunimon on the villains he needs to be EVEN MORE of a boring human in a costume! Cos it sucks that all the villains have better character designs and the show seems to think theyre worse ones. Give me one case of more boring not meaning more heroic!