#if i take the game at face value then there's literally nothing to talk about. i just straight up do not care.

[gay-jesus-probably]

Seeing as the Gerudo turned on Ganon, he might not have been that much better of a ruler.

First of all, we literally have no idea, because the only ancient Gerudo that we actually get to interact with is Ganondorf himself, and he has nothing to say about his own people. The ancient Gerudo sage doesn't count btw, she doesn't have a name, we never even see her face, and she has literally nothing to say except repeating the exact same dialogue as the sages for the other races. The narrative does not treat the ancient sages as people; they are four completely interchangable weapons that are owned by the royal family.

And secondly, I don't care how Ganon ruled them; the Gerudo only get one man every century, if their king sucks, they've obviously got their own system of government to fall back on. I have no idea what kind of authority the sages had among their own people, but honestly I'd say if the four of them were in charge of their respective people, then they were just puppet rulers appointed by Rauru, given that all four of them happily agreed that to sell their entire race into servitude the second Zelda asked them. Say what you will about Ganondorf, but I fucking know that if he was told the Gerudo people existed for the sole purpose of serving the glory of Hyrule, he'd drop kick Zelda into the fucking sun.

And don't get me started on the implications of the cultural differences we see between the independent Gerudo and the annexed Gerudo. The background Gerudo characters all have their own models, and we can clearly see that the ones siding with Ganon have their own unique looks - for example, the amazing lady with the mohawk that summons the molduga swarm in that one flashback. And men are never mentioned in these flashbacks at all, which implies that the Gerudo genuinely didn't care about settling down. Ganon even speaks derisively about marriage, implying that it's very rare for Gerudo women to make serious romantic commitments with men. It implies that their culture is more along the same line as their portrayal in OOT - they are a closed culture. Men trying to force their way into their areas are arrested, and mocked for being entitled dumbasses. Outsiders are only welcome if they can prove that they respect the Gerudo as people, and aren't just there to try and pick up chicks. It's never outright said, but OOT also makes it pretty clear that the Gerudo women just aren't interested in marrying outsiders - close relationships occur with other Gerudo, Hylian men are only considered useful for making babies.

Meanwhile the Gerudo we see serving Hyrule are all trying to measure up to Hylian beauty standards, and appeal to their men. Their one goal in life is to meet a man and get married. Men are welcome in their lands, and only kept out of the town itself... and even then, there's a small army of guys trying to force their way into the town anyways, which is brushed off as just haha, boys will be boys. No men allowed isn't even about independence, it's just a silly romantic tradition.

Of course this is just a fictional culture in a game world, but it's still really fucking uncomfortable that the 'evil' Gerudo are the ones that have independence, both politically and socially, and display a unique culture that refuses to tolerate disrespect from outsiders. Meanwhile the 'good' Gerudo are the ones that canonically exist to serve a kingdom where 95% of the population is light skinned (even setting aside the unfortunate implications, just saying one race exists to serve a different one is super fucked up), they have classes on how to be more appealing to Hylian's, and their entire social structure is built around finding a Hylian man to marry, making them all inherently dependent on the goodwill of outsiders. Even their biggest value of 'women only' is treated as a joke; men trying to trespass in BOTW are just shoved back out the door, letting them keep trying all day if they want. The crowds of men plotting to force their way in are laughed off as a joke. Nobody cares that there's a guy running laps around their city walls and trying to trick women into being alone with him. I mean for fucks sake, in TOTK we find that the creepy guy trying to lure women away has taken advantage of a massive disaster to get into the town, and he's still there once things return to normal. You can't kick him out, or alert anyone to his presence. And the Gerudo just tolerate Hylians blatantly ignoring their boundaries. For fucks sake, TOTK even reveals that the seven legendary heroines they've been revering the whole time were actually completely useless and unable to achieve anything... because they needed the eighth hero, a Hylian man to teach them basic tactics and do all the heavy lifting.

TOTK does not respect the Gerudo people in the slightest. It doesn't respect anyone who isn't Hylian or Zonai.

...This got a little off track, but the point I'm trying to make is, no, I don't consider the Gerudo turning on Ganon to mean anything. The entire game does not feel like the real story of what happened, it feels like the propaganda version of history meant to make Hyrule look as good as possible. I genuinely cannot believe that we're being told the real story about the Imprisoning War, because none of it feels real, and we don't get to know any details that might have made Hyrule look even slightly imperfect. We're told that Ganondorf is evil because he hates Hyrule, and he hates Hyrule because he's evil. The Gerudo people followed Ganondorf and saw him as a hero of their people, then suddenly he was their worst enemy. Hyrule is a perfect kingdom that has strong, equal alliances with the other races, but also all of the non-Hylian races exist for the sole purpose of serving Hyrule, and their leaders are expected to swear eternal loyalty and submission to the Hylian royal family. King Rauru and Queen Sonia united all of the races in peace and equality, which is why they're sitting on the world's supply of magical nuclear missiles, and every member of the Hylian royal family is allowed to walk around wearing them as cute accessories, but everyone else only gets them at the last second, and they all need to outright swear to only use that power to benefit Rauru and his descendants.

There's just so many fucked up contradictions, and so many hints of something more nuanced going on... but the story refuses to acknowledge any of it, and just keeps aggressively pushing the narrative that Hyrule is the ultimate good and couldn't possibly do anything wrong. I don't even believe that Ganon was a bad king honestly; we never hear why his people stopped following him. We also never even see if the Gerudo people turned on him at all; all we know is the ancient Gerudo sage wanted him dead, and given that she also happily sold her people into slavery, she's not exactly the most trustworthy source of information. All we know is that Ganondorf was a hero to his people, only one of his citizens is ever shown having an issue with him (and her motives are never explained), and then he lost the war and was sealed away, leaving his people open to be conquered by Zelda and annexed into Hyrule. By the time we see any Gerudo actually opposing Ganon (apart from the ancient sage), it's been ten thousand years since the war, and all anyone knows is the Hylian version of the story.

[koimethehorizon]

Amazing Digital Circus Theory: Gangle is an NPC

Sooo, I wasn’t expecting to talk about this show. I was perfectly content to just enjoy Digital Circus as is.

It’s a show that invites theories as to what exactly’s going on with the setting and characters, but I didn’t have much room to think too hard about it. Who’s Abel? Is Pomni really a human? Why is this VR game emulating an N64 game at the start? I like the show plenty, but it just wasn’t as interesting to go hard on any of those questions at the time.

But with this recent episode… a single, perhaps throwaway line got the brain nagging. And it’s kind of a bizarre one to waste hours analyzing.

Okay, so yeah, it’s a joke on submissive and breedable. (Don’t give them ideas) But try taking it at face value.

What does he mean by this? Sure, Jax is an asshole, and being a bullied kid is Gangle’s whole archetype… but what if it means a little more than that?

Gangle’s trapped for all eternity this asshole and she’s just letting him boss her around. Zooble can choose not to participate, so no one has to. Why does Gangle listen to Jax at all?

Let's entertain a thought: Is Gangle an NPC?

With Episode 2 bringing so much attention to the autonomy of NPCs, it seemed natural to start pointing fingers at characters being this or that. But this isn't just a random crackshot, I feel that there is a story to tell here.

Look back at Pomni’s “orientation” with the other humans. Ragatha, Zooble, and Jax ease her by saying that they’ve been trapped in this world for years and then bring attention to Kinger being the oldest.

But Gangle… she’s isolated from the peanut gallery, busy moping about the broken comedy mask instead.

Every character has been given some hints as to how they’ve been coping with the situation. Jax no longer empathizes with anything, Ragatha once had trouble adjusting but now tries to stay happy, Zooble picks and chooses her involvement, Kinger is the eldest and just exists for the hell of it, and Pomni is new to everything.

With Gangle, it’s a blank. No opinion, no hints of her human side, how long she’s been here, no thoughts on the games, nothing. She’s just Jax’s punching bag.

Even Kinger gets a potshot on Gangle in a rock-paper-scissors game…. and he likely forgot that she doesn’t have hands!

And that brings me to another detail. Doesn't Gangle look different from the others?

Unlike everyone else, Gangle's just a mask and a ribbon. No hands or legs, or just any limbs in general. She stands out as looking a bit simpler than the others.

Gangle's most interesting design trait is that she's based on comedy and tragedy masks. The ones used old Greek theater to dictate the emotions of their characters.

The first episode seems to imply that with a broken comedy mask, Gangle literally can’t stay happy. Hence why we see her sad most of the time. That's a strange limitation if Gangle's human mind is supposed to be completely intact, especially with how expressive the other characters can be.

It's not delved into too much but does Gangle actually rely on these masks to "feel" emotions?

The obvious hole is that Caine would’ve just killed her a while ago if she was an NPC, but he's not exactly omniscient.

He even admits that he has to kill them off because it’s possible for him to lose track.

Now normally I could just stop here, but I’m all about the grand statements. You know, the retroactive readings of an episode once you get a theory going. Why does Gangle being an NPC matter at all? How does Ep 2 change?

While deep diving, I realized that the thematic core of Episode 2 is Pomni and Jax’s approaches to surviving the Digital Circus.

In Pomni’s A plot, we see her connecting with Gummigoo, the NPC that Caine pitted their group against. After discovering him lamenting his new reality, she finds a strange comfort in being existentially lost together. Because in the end the NPCs and the humans are just as displaced and frightened in this meaningless world.

In Jax’s B plot, he forces Gangle to follow some insane orders. Sabotage the game to let the big chocolate turd monster destroy the Candy Kingdom. To Jax, he is the main character. Helping or displeasing this giant population of fake people doesn’t have any consequence for him, so why humor anyone but yourself?

A bit of a stretch, but what if Jax already knows Gangle is an NPC and is keeping it quiet as long as Gangle follows orders, hence the “submissive” comment? He’d be a way more unpleasant character with this reading, but it doesn’t seem off the cards with how he treats everyone anyway.

This dichotomy already plays out well within the episode, but when reframing it as Pomni and Gummigoo vs Jax and Gangle, the parallel is a lot more interesting.

Make an NPC an equal, they die. But keep an NPC under wraps as long as they continue to obey you… they live.

The episode ends with a grim conundrum that NPCs can’t be together with the humans, not because of their differences but because they're just... not allowed to be. But what if one already in the group, proving that they’re just as capable as the humans to play the games and grieve loved ones together?

PS. Despite knowing everyone else's name, I actually forgot Gangle's until I started finding evidence for this intrusive thought. Sorry Gangle.

PSS. I couldn't fit this anywhere, but Gangle's door frame doesn't work as evidence against the NPC theory, because even the mannequins have their own rooms in that hallway.

[speadrunner]

Who is (actually) the hottest Monsters & Girls character?

Link to poll: https://www.tumblr.com/idolomantises/745892368364060672

CW: This will be a long post;

(Note: this is completely for comical purposes, please don’t take this too seriously. I have all the respect in the world for @idolomantises and their work)

1. Sera

👍: Perhaps the titular character of the series, Sera is beautiful angel (literally) and is arguably the kindest character in the whole series

👎: I challenge you to draw this woman without screaming at yourself/into a pillow

2. Lili

👍: Endearing, welcoming, understanding, and can be very fun. Pretty much wears her heart on her sleeve with how open she is.

👎: Literally THE sexy character. It’s obvious why you picked her as the hottest, now go get better tastes.

3. Cheri

👍: She’s sooo soft omg. She’s so sweet you’ll have a sweet tooth just for her even if you don’t like sweets

👎: I will not talk ill of this lady because I literally cannot, but for all intents and purposes this is a contest to see who is the hottest, not the most wholesome. Sorry 🫡

4. Junior

👍: Blunt and cute, plus a goat. Cute goats are always an A+ character design. Where would we be without them tbh?

👎: Bluntness can lead to rudeness and or discomfort. Nothing super bad about Junior just prob not the best choice for this. Just sayin

5. Scylla

👍: Lord have mercy I understand where people are coming from. Hooo doggy what a woman.

👎: I can’t remember the exact post but I recall it being said that she bites your head off or something if you get too close or look at her weird. That’s no good

6. Ciel

👍: Easily one of my favorite designs. He’s definitely the prettiest boy of the entire cast

👎: One of those cases where he’s too good for you, ya know what I mean? He’s way out of your league I don’t make the rules

7. Catty

👍: Nya~ Very fashionable going off of recent appearances. Design hasn’t changed too much in comparison to others, meaning that

👎: I like dogs more, plus she’s not open with her thoughts and feelings, leading to awkward moments when she lets it all out

8: Luvart

👍: Big, beefy, strong, fire. Need I say more? She treats sex workers with respect for their profession and would be a completely package when you don’t consider…..

👎: …She has no qualms murking you just because and her greatest offense is being the arch rival of the best character a special someone

9: Adam

👍: Dude can become a dog for you to pet and is quite honest in most cases. Plus those scars look neat wouldn’t you say?

👎: Unless you are a - former angel now fallen, a TV show host, have a broken halo, while simultaneously sharing a name with a pizza company and a game tile, then you ain’t getting nothing.

10: Domino

👍: I can see why so many are stricken by this fella, he’s quite cute, quirky, and has an adorable way of being blunt

👎: (Domi- No hoes) He’s just not good enough. He seems so ideal at face value but he berates angels to the moon and back and for what? His fault for his own downfall.

With all that said, clearly the hottest character of Monsters and Girls - for appearance AND character - is obviously….

POWERS

LITERALLY PERFECTION IN ITS PUREST FORM! CHISELED LIKE A GREEK GOD(DESS), ROSE TO BE AN ANGEL - REJECTING HER DEMONIC ORIGINS, FOLKS IT JUST DOESNT. GET. BETTER!

A Vote For Powers Is A Vote For Truth, Love, And Happiness!! Vote For Powers in the Home Stretch Now!

[dogtoling]

RE: Question about whether the Deepsea and the Octarian Domes are directly connected to each other. sorry i'm stealing your reply @bucketsquid but i see a chance to talk about this i have to take it. So idk let's try to decode how they might actually be connected.

This is the obvious conclusion. For the record I think it's the RIGHT conclusion after Side Order because they seemed to REALLY imply it this time. I thought for a really long time that the Deepsea and Octarian domes HAVE TO be connected because not only are they both subterranean but also literally how else do you get that many freaking Octolings in there? Since the metro is connected to the Inkopolis subway anyway wouldn't it be WAY EASIER TO JUST GET SQUIDS? (though to be honest i still stand by this.)

Anyway the obvious assumption is that the Deepsea and Octarian domes connect to each other. though it's not so straightforward. How they connect to each other exactly? we don't really know. Anyway let's get back into this in just a second i need to show what absolutely dashed my hopes and made me really mad when it happened

THIS MAP. THEY POSTED THIS MAP. Before this map I was having a great time because this is what the map was in my head:

"why was that the map in your head" idk. the giant stretches of water surrounding both canyons and inkopolis stretching into said body of water gave me the mental image that the canyons were in the ocean by inkopolis' coast. alongside some of the very old concept art that shows some of the domes even being underneath inkopolis if i'm not mistaken!

from the art of splatoon 1. this is an ancient and I MEAN ANCIENT manga depicting what is obviously an early concept of the story so it shouldn't ACTUALLY be taken as fact (almost nothing in this manga holds up anymore). But some of the things WERE kept! I have to assume this is also why you get into Octo Valley through the sewer in the games because the story mode was meant to take place literally straight underneath Inkopolis... it makes a lot less sense in the final result when you supposedly take the sewer like 50 kilometers (i dont know the actual distances but i think they're able to be deciphered) underground to a canyon in the middle of nowhere.

Why is there even continuous sewage all that way. What is happening. Is it even a sewer or a really long underground secret tunnel that Captain Cuttlefish dug because he's been really bored for 100 years.

kind of besides the point. back to the issue of the deepsea and the octarian empire being connected. You know, with the Deepsea Metro being located in Inkopolis Bay and the domes supposedly being all over the Inkopolis underground and the surrounding locations, it didn't seem that far fetched that they could siphon Octolings from the underground (where they live) to another very close-by fork of the underground (the Deepsea). However,

1. the Deepsea is NOT Octarian territory, but its own type of society. which is really weird considering how much Octarian iconography is down there, let alone how many OCTARIANS are down there

2. We have SO LITTLE knowledge about the true scope of the Deepsea that you can't even say for sure whether the Deepsea is *JUST* the Deepsea Metro and the facilities and industrial cities in that exact specific area, or if it's a big underwater and underground empire similar in scope to the Octarian domes, maybe even built in the exact same dome network - or a neighboring one. (This would mean they have a border somewhere undefined, underground.)

3. At face value with only the map, this is the distance for a Single Octarian to travel in order to get from where they live/are stationed, to get to the Deepsea Metro which is cluttered with one billion octarians

HELLO? THAT IS SO FAR. it's even worse than the distance Agents 3 and 4 are swimming through the god damn sewer. This also makes very little sense if we assume all the subterranean domes in all of these locations are exclusively under their surface counterparts... which... well, we don't know.

We know that the Deepsea Metro is connected to the Inkopolis Underground (it even shows this on the map with the little dotted line). I don't really know the significance of that but I've taken it to mean that the Deepsea Metro that is highlighted in the map shows specifically the area covered by the Kamabo Corporation and the tests there, and honestly again, I don't even know if the Deepsea is any bigger than that. Since it's been stated to be an independent society from Inkopolis or the Octarians, you would ASSUME there'd be ample space for people to like, live, and maybe work, and produce stuff you need to like, live. Instead of the test facility being literally the only place that exists plus a city built around only that to sustain everything.

Furthermore, we don't know if Octarians have cities on the surface in their part of the surface world! This is something that really bothers me because I think knowing whether or not this is the case would change SO MUCH (i'm currently under the assumption it is a barren wasteland with Literally Nothing). However given the location of the Salmonid Swim Zone, we can SEE cities in the background of multiple stages, and judging by this map those would be mainly on the Octarian coasts. This could mean that Octarians have surface cities where they coexist with the Salmon, it could mean that they USED TO have surface cities and abandoned them, OR it could mean that Salmonids actually live on Octarian surface turf while the Octarians themselves live underground! Idk! There's a lot of options!

I kind of doubt Octarians have cities on the surface because if they did, then it would feel redundant for the game to keep coming back to "the Octoling world" being this horrible military regime underground that people try to get to the surface from. If it was that easy to get to the surface it feels odd that it would be a big deal. We know that the Octarian domes, at least in Octo Valley, are specifically an underground *secret* military base.

(*Secret* being explicitly stated before and it would imply that they wouldn't necessarily NEED to live underground, but it's just way easier to do Secret Things underground. Plus the surface is a wasteland so honestly not a lot to lose there.)

We still haven't really seen what they have aside from that. We don't know where they get their food, for example. There's got to be farmers in a society. There HAS TO be some kind of surface access or activity, and if you squint, Octo Canyon IS a surface city that they seem to have free access to. So why not have others? It seems only logical to have more. In this case the oppression of the Octoling world and being forced to stay underground feels really case-specific, but it seems to also be an overarching thing that's quite widespread, so... I don't know, I WANT MORE OCTARIAN WORLDBUILDING *PLEASE* i'm working with crumbs here.

Anyway. my current assumption of the subterranean areas of the Deepsea and the Octarian empire goes something like this, all things considered that I've talked about...

(Not exactly that but you get the general picture)

When you put it this way, it suddenly makes a lot more sense that Octarians would be getting into the Deepsea. Generally I tried to keep the locations of Octarian tunnel systems to their turf, and the locations of Deepsea tunnels under the ocean floor, though with Octarian domes explicitly stated to have been dug by humans there's. really no reason they couldn't stretch into Inkling territory. We have no idea how big these tunnel systems are in scope, NO idea.

And that's also the problem with trying to solve this part of worldbuilding, because my concept could easily be right but it could also be COMPLETELY wrong! It's totally possible that the dome networks are actually secluded and tiny and are *just* under the Octarian craters and nowhere else, and it's totally possible that the entirety of the Deepsea is JUST Kamabo Co and the few settlements surrounding it. I'm not that confident that I'm right but I'm not really confident that we'll get answers to these questions either, at least as long as the story modes keep intentionally avoiding expanding on existing game locations and pretending theyre not in the splatoon world at all by making their key locations abstract and closed off bubbles on purpoCOUGH HACK who said that

There is 1 thing I've completely failed to mention in this post and it's that Octo Valley and the Deepsea Metro are like, explicitly connected. Which by the way makes NO SENSE given they're on opposite corners of the map. But between what we know from Side Order and from this Official Snippet from Splatoon Base, the Official Splatoon Story Resource By Nintendo,

Ignoring that none of this makes sense anymore or is intentionally misleading compared to what we know from Agent 8's memory loss now. Anyway. This seems to just imply the Deepsea is *under* Octo Valley. WHICH WOULD LINE UP WITH SIDE ORDER, weirdly enough. It is possible that the Deepsea domes could actually OVERLAP with Octarian Domes, it's just built FAR under sea level, not bound to the actual location of the sea itself.

I want to point out that this segment in the splatoon base and the game itself and dev interviews all tend to contradict each other in some ways when you look at them side by side, which is frustrating, but also serves as a reminder that sometimes the official resources don't know exactly what they're talking about either. so it's often not worthwhile looking them up and trying to conclude something based on it just to find out that it's literally contradicted in the game itself.

anyway, we know One Thing now and it's that there's at least no way that Octarian domes and the Deepsea AREN'T connected to each other in some way. this post doesn't exactly solve the issue of How but there was an attempt. I don't think this is ultimately something you can come to a concrete foolproof conclusion on until there is more information. But in the meantime I guess there's speculation.

[calp0sa]

what do you like and dislike about airy?

CRAZY MESSY INFODUMP INCOMING OH LORD

well there’s nothing i truly dislike about airy, because everything about him just makes him who he is. i just wish we got more insight to him as an Actual person rather than his host facade, even though that was sort of the point of one 17-18, i feel like the fact that he’s pretty much a regular ass dude went over most people’s heads (Not mine though because im really smart and could beat albert einstein in a rap battle) i know the mystique is the most prominently interesting aspect of the whole show… but yknowwww it’d be nice to know a little more about him personally considering how we now know he’s far from a one-dimensional character and shouldn’t be taken at face value (i am side eyeing a huge chunk of the one fandom as i say this) now okay if i were to talk about everything i like about airy we’d be here til the next solar eclipse but i’ll try to jot down everything i can. airy, to me, is the most fascinating object show character there is. i swear every time i observe something about him it’s like i’m opening a matryoshka doll as i dissect his character further and further… every rewatch of one i notice something, whether it be minuscule or glaring, there’s always something for me to brutally analyze. see, and here’s where i contradict myself, because while it’s frustrating not having much official trivia on him, i actually quite love how mysterious he is. i love how he seems like he knows a lot more than he lets on. i love how his caginess only sparks more questions. and i love how FESTERED he is. how you can tell there was so much that led up to him being so numb and stagnant… it does nothing but pique my interest. and i love how this festered-ness parallels with the contestants. i can’t help but feel as if the true extent of airy’s suffering was reflected through those on the plane, how the contestants went through so many fluctuant stages of sadness, denial, hopelessness, anger… all in the midst of isolation akin to airy’s forest. it makes me wonder if ONE served as catharsis to airy. not just a purpose or a distraction, but something to spark resonance within a desolate soul. speaking of distraction, it’s really interesting to me how reliant airy is on escapism, and this is most evident in how he literally takes on such a gilded and contrived host persona to the point where it’s difficult for the viewer to discern who he is OUTSIDE of ���airy”. big fan of how the show basically tricks us into thinking he’s this ruthless malevolent all powerful entity until it takes us by surprise and reveals that he’s Just Some Guy, and it could’ve been anyone in his place. but this isn’t to defend him… no… airy was definitely a selfish and inconsiderate asshole (sorry yall) he just isn’t as awful as everyone makes him out to be. airy is not evil, nor is he good, he just kind of sucks LOL. and i love him for that honestly! the thing about this is he should’ve stopped and asked himself “what am i going to gain from this” yet he was so absorbed in trying to hoist himself out of that inevitable pit of dread that he did not care if he destroyed everything else in the process (Might i add that this is a huge parallel to liam’s impulsive vengefulness… i swear i could go on and on about how those two are brothers from another mother) another interesting thing about the hosting stage of airy is the chance that he probably did feel some sort of regret. especially after the shock of breaking his face, being confronted by harsh genuine emotions after such a long time… an iota of the pain and fear he assumed was long gone… as well as the crushing reminder that he basically threw himself and all his senses away just for a stupid game. What a loser amirite. even if he had some semblance of a wish to end ONE, he knew he couldn’t. i’d imagine he told himself mockingly “yeaaaa you basically dug yourself into this, you’re not backing out any time soon” (even though he could’ve easily backed out he was just a loser ass COWARD!)

i didn’t know the paragraphs had character limits! interesting. anyway i can’t help but wonder if airy made that effort to take care of liam in an attempt to break the cycle, the cycle of destroying everything else, including your very self, for the purpose of One thing. maybe airy thinks violence and spite is just a huge waste of time yes of course, but i think he understood liam to some extent (remember what i said about resonance 😁😁😁) i just love how everything about airy is so subtle, yet so major, so jarring and confusing yet when you piece it all together it makes such a scary amount of sense. i love making sense of how nonsensical he is. (of course i do. i am possibly the biggest fan of nonsense there is) now i will add a funny little thing i like about him. i like how he’s all impatient and snarky. and i know you’re probably thinking “franklin how in the abraham lincoln’s bootycheek do you think he’s snarky” Listen, it’s really funny once you actually notice it. there were so many instances where he sounded exasperated with the contestants. my personal favorite being

“yes, as long as you are here, you can’t die”

>”WE CANT DIE?”

“Yes… that’s… what i just said 😐”

he has this barely noticeable “oh my god can you let me do what i need to do” attitude and it’s SO funny. i like to imagine he rolled his eyes a lot while he was hosting. its really funny to imagine. and its also funny to imagine him smiling like an idiot like he did hosting in one 17. that scene was really cute it makes me want to run into ongoing traffic and get continuously ran over by 12 different semi-trucks. if you ignore how miserable the contestants were (sorry contestants) it’s actually really endearing how excited and eager airy was when he got ideas for challenges. i bet he felt so proud of himself it’s honestly kind of sad. he’s sad. what the hell. he really thought he was the SHIT when he said “riches… immortality… whatever your heart desires 😌” Oh my god he’s so pathetic don’t even get me started MY ONLINE CLASSES ARE STARTING I GOTS TO GO BUT ANYWAY FEEL FREE TO ASK FOR AN ANALYSIS ABOUT LITERALLY ANYTHING AIRY RELATED I HAVE MORE THAN A HUNDRED BIBLES’ WORTH OF SHIT TO SAY ABOUT HIM BYEBYE THANK YOU FOR ASKING THIS

[goldeaglefire1]

so. played the Pristine Cut a few days ago (not the first time I've played Slay the Princess, for the record; I actually got into it like a month ago and have kinda just. lurked in the background, not making any posts about it. so uh. hi guys) and. GOD this game is good for so many reasons, with even more reasons being added by the Pristine Cut, and I know a lot of people have made posts about how good Happily Ever After is already, but, since I haven't seen anyone post about it from the angle I'm looking at it...y'all mind if I ramble about how good the Happily Ever After route is from a narrative perspective. trick question, I wasn't asking; I'm going to ramble about how good the Happily Ever After route is from a narrative perspective.

so! let's talk about the Damsel for a minute. this is all fairly obvious stuff but stick with me here; we need to lay the groundwork for the main discussion. the Damsel, from a purely Doylist perspective, is the archetypical "damsel in distress" trope - the girl at the end of the villain's lair who has no agency of her own and exists purely as a reward for the hero completing his journey and beating up the villain (before you get mad, I know the Damsel is not actually like this in-universe, and that fact is actually a surprise tool that will help us later, but, again, looking at this from a purely Doylist perspective: outside the world of Slay the Princess, not in it) - fundamentally, she's there to make you happy. the Shifting Mound changes based on perception, and by treating her as the archetypical damsel in distress in Chapter 1, she actually becomes one come Chapter 2, with all her hard, unconventional edges like, to pick a random example here, "the capacity to horrifically self-mutilate herself," being sanded away for a perfect storybook ending. that's what you wanted, after all.

and, if you take everything at face value, that's exactly what you get! if you follow the Voice of the Smitten's advice and completely ignore the Narrator's nonsense about how she'll "end the world" or something, you will get exactly what you asked for, because, well. that's all there is to it! there is no deeper story here, it's just "hero saves princess, the end," end scene, move on to the next princess. but that's the Damsel route, and we're here to talk about the Happily Ever After route. and in order to properly get the Happily Ever After route, you have to horribly fuck up the extremely simple narrative presented before you. so, how do you do that? two ways - either try to question the princess's character and see what underlying motives she has, or, the method I'm choosing to focus on (both because it's the one I got when I first got the Happily Ever After route and because it better illustrates my point) - when you get near the end of the Damsel's story, right as you're about to get your Happily Ever After...you listen to the Voice of the Hero. because while the Smitten may be ignoring literally everything the Narrator says, the Hero has not been doing that, and quite frankly has some concerns about the potential end of the world thing. if she really can end the world...well, she just wants to make us happy, right? so surely nothing will go wrong if you just decide to stay in the cabin forever! it's a perfect compromise!

spoiler alert: it is not a perfect compromise. it is in fact as far from a perfect compromise as you can possibly get. makes sense, really, as there are no real compromises in Slay the Princess - you can either choose to trust the Narrator in any given route, trust the Princess in any given route, or you can choose, to quote the Contrarian in the Apotheosis, the third option that nobody wants. and the only two times the third option is any good is, well, when you're very intentionally spiting both parties - hi Contrarian - and when there's an actual third party you can appeal to, as is the case at the end of the game. every other time? you will be massively punished by the narrative for trying to find another option. try the "let's keep the princess in the cabin" maneuver in chapter 1? you get the Nightmare. try to be a smartass and avoid the "slay the princess/save the princess" issue altogether? you get the Stranger.

hell, every chapter 3 is ultimately the result of you not playing the role you're supposed to in the narrative (aside from the Razor who forces you to go to a chapter 3 no matter what but she doesn't count). if you play the role you're given in chapter 2, you'll be fine! for example - did you get the Spectre? congratulations! you get the Voice of the Cold, a cold-blooded killer - except, hmm...the princess is already dead, so no one to kill there...but there is the Narrator, who you're fairly mad at for the frankly terrible reward for doing your damn job, so how do you kill him? easy - take the princess out into the world and let her world-destroying properties do the job for you. did you get the Beast? congratulations! you get the Voice of the Hunted, a meek prey animal trying to avoid a massive predator...except, well, bad news, boss - you're the only food around here, so you're going to have to get eaten. sorry man. did you get the Nightmare? congratulations! you get the Voice of the Paranoid, a nervous wreck who, frankly, does NOT want to be here, and, well. honestly, do you expect to be able to save the world? the fact that you're even managing to stand up next to this eldritch abomination is a miracle; you might as well just let her out, because, frankly, who would blame you? and so on and so forth.

the Damsel's narrative is extremely simple. you get the Voice of the Smitten, a classic, overly dramatic, simple hero to match the simple princess you're given. your job is to swoop in, sweep her off her feet, and leave. that's it. that is all there is to it. the Narrator's talk about her ending the world does not fit into this narrative, so you have to discard it. after all, why would the hero release a world-ending monster into the world? that's preposterous! he must be lying, obviously. but, by giving the Narrator the benefit of a doubt, or trying to dig deeper into the Damsel's narrative role and find depth when there is none, you expose the cracks in that narrative...and chief among those cracks is that the Damsel is not the simple character her narrative role wants her to be.

I'm not going to do a full character analysis on the Damsel because that's not the point of this post, but even on the most surface-level reading, the Damsel has two very clear desires - she wants to make you happy, and she wants to be free. and, yeah, that's fairly straightforward, but it's more than nothing, which, ah, doesn't exactly bode well. after all, the Damsel's narrative role is that of the damsel in distress, a role most known for, very notably, having no agency, and here you are, dangling her freedom right in front of her face and snatching it away, and quite frankly, that sucks! she wants to be free! she wants to be free a LOT more than she wants to make some stranger she barely knows happy, and while normally those two desires have no conflict with each other, now they do, and while the chapter 1 princess could have done something about this situation and gone Nightmare on your ass, being a blank slate as far as the narrative goes, that's not an option anymore - you've locked her into her narrative role, now, and as a damsel in distress, she can't do shit. the worst she can do is be mildly upset but otherwise have zero objections to your proposal

luckily (or, well, unluckily depending on your point of view), that's enough for you to get your proper comeuppance in the form of Smitten. poor, poor Smitten - unlike the Damsel, he really is as simple as he appears to be on the surface. even on other routes, he is always, always madly in love with the princess, no matter how she looks or acts, and all he wants is to make her happy. a simple character for a simple narrative, who, conveniently, is NEVER forced to question the Princess' role in that narrative...until now. until you forced the fact that she is NOT the simple damsel she's supposed to be directly in his face, and that she's unhappy with your decision, well. that can't be right. she can't be unhappy, we're supposed to make her happy no matter what! something's clearly wrong here - it can't be the princess, because blaming the princess for anything is inherently not an option for Smitten; it's not in his nature. it can't be us, or at least he can't figure out how it could be us, because he's a simple character for a simple narrative, and the thought of "dangling the princess's freedom in front of her and then taking it away is a massive dick move" doesn't even occur to him, because he doesn't realize that's what we were doing. so...it must be something else. maybe the Narrator, who's been describing her as this world-ending abomination when she's clearly a maiden in need of rescue, or this cabin, because, well, why would a princess be in a cabin? she need a proper castle, obviously! he can fix this, surely, there has to be some solution here, he can make this work again...and it all begins by bearing out his heart.

or, rather, YOUR heart. which, you know, kills us. everything goes dark, and we die, etc., onto the new chapter! or epilogue, if you want to go by the title card. welcome to Happily Ever After, the reward you deserve! you goddamn bastard. this route is effectively Smitten's attempt to fix the narrative you broke - and, in many ways, his efforts can be compared to the OTHER route you get by breaking the narrative of the Damsel, that being the Burning Grey. in that route, you kill the Damsel, and, well, that very obviously breaks the narrative, so when Smitten kills you in retaliation and a new world is formed, the Damsel, now the titular Burning Grey, tries to fix it. much like Smitten can't blame her, she can't blame you, because her narrative role doesn't allow it, and she doesn't blame herself, because she did literally nothing to deserve that (aside from like. the fact that she killed you that one time but frankly if you hold that against her that's a bit of a dick move), so she comes to the same conclusion that there must be an external force responsible for derailing the story. the difference between Smitten here and the Burning Grey is the solutions they come up with: the Burning Grey, fundamentally, is part the Shifting Mound, the embodiment of change, rebirth, and death. so, naturally, the solution she comes up with is to burn down the cabin with both herself and us inside, finally being together with her love forever. by melting together her and our flesh. which, you know, sucks, but at the very least the death is...relatively quick?

the Happily Ever After route does not give you or the Princess the luxury of death. after all, Smitten is not a part of the Shifting Mound, but a part of you - the Long Quiet, the embodiment of stasis and stagnation. killing you or the princess doesn't even occur to him as an option - at least, it doesn't now that he's outside of you. and while this allows him to get something much closer to what we would associate with a happy ending, it falls apart fast. the same feasts over and over again, growing more stale and bland with time, the same games over and over again, excitement dulling into boredom as you play repeatedly with no end in sight...it's not Happily Ever After, not even close, but it's the best he can manage. after all, isn't this what you wanted? you DID save the princess, and Smitten is a simple character for a simple narrative, so, this is the only option he can think of outside of riding off into the sunset with our beloved. so, this has to be what you wanted, right?

and as for the princess? well, if she was locked by the narrative before, it's even worse now with Smitten. after all, as far as she's concerned, Smitten is us, so all she knows is that, after we dangled her freedom in front of her and took it away, and she showed even the slightest bit of resistance in response, we proceeded to make her already bad situation into a living goddamn nightmare. so, yeah, she is terrified of what could possibly happen if she shows she isn't happy with this, so she's quick to smother any and all signs of dissatisfaction in the hopes that, as long as she seems happy with all this, you can't make this worse somehow. the MOST she does in terms of resistance is wear the Pristine Blade as a necklace, which is honestly more of a vague hope of "if you won't let me free from this cabin alive, then maybe at the very least you'll let me free from this cabin in death? please? on god?"

and, well, you could in fact do that. or, hell, if you REALLY feel like being an asshole, you could decide to NOT break the facade at all. but if you really want to make it up to the princess? if you realize how badly you've fucked up and want to actually make up for your mistakes? you have to let her actually express her discomfort. you have to give her back the agency she's been denied by the narrative - the agency you took away in the first place. and once she finally has that back...she cries. in relief, because she's finally free from the hell you put her in, in sorrow because, despite it all, the facade of a happy ending was nice while it lasted, in a mix of both with the tears she'd been unable to shed for so, so long...and, at the end of the day, despite having every right to hate you...she doesn't. because you DID set her free, in the end. you realized your mistakes, you learned and changed as a person, and you actually made things right, so even though you might have made her life a living nightmare...she's willing to give things a fresh start. and whether you decide to amicably part ways or start something new together, at long last, she'll finally have her chance to dance under the stars.

this is a love story.

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Lestat wooing you would include~

(Not my gif)(Requested by anonymous)

( I wrote this draft a while ago, and only now edited and finished it, so hopefully I'll still like it after my next viewing of IWTV lol. I tried to balance romance with Lestats naturally manipulative and toxic side. And I tried to make a neutral set of headcanons for something I think would really depend on the type of person.)

- When he can, and when he wants to be, Lestat is like a dream personified: one you feel so vividly and yearn for so ardently that you pray you’ll never breach the waking world again. He sweeps you off your feet; both figuratively and literally, until all that’s left of you is a foggy haze that can think only of fairytales and fantasy. 

- And yet, the dream is bound to end as nothing short of a nightmare. 

- Lestat views mortals as toys, things he can do with as he pleases, and dispose of as quickly and as often as it suits him. He hardly ever takes into consideration the feelings and the value of those around him, save for when he decides he wants them: and even then, he can’t help but play cruel little games. 

- Lestat’s love, in general, is a game. It’s a game of cat and mouse, one that only he ever manages to win. No matter how long it may take, no matter how hard you may try to avoid it, no matter how much it might hurt you, you’ll end up being his in one way or another, even if it kills you....

- At first, Lestat is very open about his infatuation with you, introducing himself to you in the dead of night as you walk the streets or sit in your garden. He apologizes for scaring you, ignoring how strange his sudden appearance may be; how it seems almost impossible for him to be where he is right in that moment.

- Though you're too distracted by his physical appearance to truly consider the logistics. Too distracted by his complexion and his hair that seems to be glowing in the moonlight, how striking his eyes are, how expensive his clothes are. He's completely foreign to you; both in physical attributes and status, and because of that, you're taken with him from the start.

- Being with him is thrilling, it's exhilarating, and it feels almost dangerous, so comparably taboo to everything you've ever been taught to yearn for. You would have never imagined that you'd be sneaking away in the middle of the night, tiptoeing past your parents room or climbing down the steep side of your home's architecture: all to meet with a man who only ever appears to you in dark corners and secluded spaces. You would have never imagined slipping back inside just as the sun rises and hiding your exhaustion in the morning at the breakfast table, knowing that if your father ever found out he'd lock you away.

- But just being with Lestat is enough to make you forget about any and all consequences that you may face. He's able to strip away your worries: waxing poetic about how he loves you and how he'll never allow anything to happen to you. About how he's capable of giving you a life that you couldn't even imagine.

- He's worse than the devil when telling you how he'll let you live deliciously: promising you no more pain or sorrow for the rest of time, how not even sickness or death could ever touch you again. But only if you'll trust in him, love him, accept him, him, him, him. His tone is never above a whisper yet it's deafening, rendering the world around you silent so that all you can hear is the beating of your heart and the softness of his voice.

- When he talks to you about the future, it's as though he can read your mind: as though he understands you on some deep and emotional level, perfectly summing up your deepest and darkest feelings that you do your best to hide. He promises to change the things you wish to change, to give you the things you have always yearned for, to rid you of the grievances and the heartaches that you have grown to worry about. Out of everyone in your life, it is a complete stranger who seems to know you best, and it makes you feel as though you are somehow one in the same, connected on some otherworldly level.

- He flirts with you in your more lighthearted moments together: making you laugh and flush and hide your face. He speaks so smoothly, so charmingly, so intelligently. All the boys you've ever met have either been perfectly plain or dreadfully boring, and Lestat is the total opposite: so full of life and passion and romance. It's like he holds your heart in his hands and tells it when to beat.

- He calls you such beautiful things: things reserved for your parents or the letters between history's greatest lovers. Some are comparably innocent to others, holding the affection of a guardian rather than a lover. Pet, lambkin, sugarplum, treasure, angel, beloved, darling, dove, lover, my love, my dearest, my heart, etc. Not to mention when he speaks in his native tongue.

- It's easy to forget who you actually are when every name he seems to call you is a term of endearment or your name spoken in a tone that you've never heard before. He makes it seem so foreign and different: makes you feel different.

- And when he feels his words are no longer enough, he moves on to gifts: covering you in gems and jewels and satins. You tuck them away in the bottom of your dresser, keeping them hidden away from your families prying eyes. The first time you visit his home, you're shown a room that's already made for you: it's closets and dressers full of luxuries that you've never known.

- When he zips and clasps you into them, his fingers linger on the pulse beneath his touch. He kisses your wrists and your neck as his hands slide across your body, listening to the heartbeat racing in your chest and the thoughts crossing your mind, knowing that his affection is filling you with burning heat.

- It's an age of innocence that you live in, and Lestat is a creature of sin: when he woos you, it's bound to include seduction and lust. He wants to sway you towards a life of debauchery, the type of life he has lived for quite some time, the type of life that he can give to you: one without punishment and restriction, one with only pleasure.

- He tries to lower your inhibitions: tries to trap you in a whirlwind of excitement, and romance, and affection, until all that's left is a dizzying love that makes you want to give yourself to him and only him. When he feels he can get away with it, he'll lean in close, staring straight into your eyes as his mouth draws nearer to your own. A grin pulls at his lips, feeling as though he is seconds away from stealing a kiss and sealing your fate.

- It's then that you pull away, wanting to; needing to, preserve your chastity, not wanting to allow yourself to get carried away and do irreversible damage; to be a fool for the sake of love. On one hand, he loves it. On the other, it infuriates him. He soothes himself with your touch, pausing only for a moment as your head turns away from his own before dropping his face into the crook of your neck or burying it in your hair, feeling your softness against him; a promise of what he is capable of winning as long as he can remain patient.

- You're so soft, so warm, so sweet: all attributes he tries to imitate himself; wanting you to trust him more than anything. He drapes himself across you, lays his head in your lap or rests his chin on your shoulders, wanting to seem gentler than he is. He is a monster, yes, but he's determined to convince you that he is not: as though he holds less control than he actual does, as though he is weaker than he is. Perhaps in a way, he is weaker: weak for you, for your touch, for your acceptance, for your love.

- And in convincing you that he is weak for you, he manages to win you over and turn you away from your family, planting seeds of doubt in your mind and ideas about running away with him. He introduces you to passion, to all of the things your family taught you to stay away from because they're sinful and will lead you down a dark path. He questions why something so beautiful and pleasureful would be so wrong for you to engage in. Why god would mean to keep you from enjoying them, from enjoying life and enjoying him, enjoying all the pleasure that he convinces you to let him give to you.

- At some point, he will find himself an entry point into your regular life: likely by attending a party that you and your family are at, and making himself known as an honored guest or sponsor; someone that the people around him are bound to respect and trust. He pretends not to know you when the two of you are introduced, though the way he looks at you when he kisses your hand will tell anyone who's watching that that is simply not the case.

- He plays nice in the presence of others, treating you more like a child than a potential wife: acting like a protective uncle when in the company of your family, friends, or suitors. He cultivates a close relationship in public with you under this pretense, lowering your families guards and making them believe that he truly has your best interests in mind. When other men come around, he is not seen as a competitor, but rather a guardian, someone that they must convince to like them if they wish to get close to you

- Yet for all of this acting, there always comes a time in the middle of the night when he finds you alone, acting as though a switch has been flipped and he cannot keep himself off or away from you. He grabs you from amongst the darkness, concealing your shrieks of surprise as he holds you close to him, growling about how he's missed you and cooing at you as grumble about how he's treated you all evening. He reminds you that you must keep your love a secret; whether it was initially his idea or your own, and against your better judgement, you begin to soften once more; forgiving him as he smiles at and hugs you close to him.

- He keeps you close to him at parties once he feels he has earned the right to; or even when he feels he hasn't, urging you to sit with him at his side and leaning into you so that he can murmur little comments in your ear, grinning as you giggle and try to hide it. You sit at his side as he plays the piano, watching his fingers fly across the keys as he quietly makes lighthearted conversation or teasing quips.

- In the presence of others, his affection turns gentle and innocent: tapping your chin, booping your nose, patting your cheek, escorting you around by your interlocked arms. In private his affection is more intimate: brushing your hair from your face, toying with your jewelry, lingering caresses, purposefully placed hands, long and gentle kisses. It's hard to grow used to the difference: how he can be one man one moment, and seem like a totally different one the next.

- But Lestat enjoys this difference, this game of his that he gets to play with you. It's a game he takes even further in an effort to make you jealous, to make you even more interested in him: to invoke some kind of strong reaction in you and bring the two of you closer in the long run. It's a rotten and dangerous game that he plays: brushing you off in favor of another, disregarding how happy you are to see him, taking pleasure in your confusion and disappointment.

- He expects to bite then lap at the wound like a dog, be the one to hurt you then strip you of the pain. He expects you to eagerly accept his undivided attention later on: for you to feel fortunate for the scraps, to wait for his beck and call. And how rewarding it is for you when you ensure that his plan backfires. Two can play at that game, you reason, and you watch as he conceals his own jealousy in response to your actions.

- When he stands you up during your nightly meetings, you don't show up the next day yourself. When you're at a mutual party, you dance and stay by the side of a boy your father boisterously insists you'll marry one day. When you need fresh air, you take the boy with you and sit in the garden side by side. And oh how Lestat could snap his neck like a twig: drain him right in front of you and sully your little saintlike dress. There's still a chance that he will....

- Your attention is like a drug to him and when he is left with none of it, he festers in sickness and in agony, rotting from the inside as he suffers from withdrawals. He must remind himself to be patient when he thinks about sweeping you away, about making you his and forcing you to stay with him until the end of time.

- He'll undoubtedly interrupt you, whether during your sit down with your potential suitor or after it happens: either scaring the boy off with the sheer tension and anger that radiates off of him, or stealing you away when his back is turned, grabbing you in the blink of an eye; reminiscent of times when you were both in much more jovial moods. His ability to suddenly appear will never cease to shock you, to startle you before you gain your bearings and sigh at the sight of him; whether in relief or annoyance.

- It's in these moments that he has to be very careful. He feels the need to turn you, to ensure that you're not going anywhere, but in doing that, he is playing a very dangerous game. Lestat believes that you could grow to love him over time, that you would get over the initial resentment of being turned once you realize the gift that he's bestowed upon you. But what if you don't? What if he loses you all the same? You'd be as good as dead then, wouldn't you? Immortal and yet refusing to be by his side. He wouldn't let you, but that's besides the point.

- If he does manage to quell those urges, manage to convince himself that now is not the time to change you, then he must decide on how to deal with you accordingly: decide if anger is the way to go, if sorrow is, if kindness should prevail above all else. Sometimes his temper gets the better of him and his sweetened words turn sour, making you wonder if the man standing before you is the same man you've grown to love.

- Oftentimes, you respond just as angrily, lashing out at him in the same venomous way, your pain and your exhaustion showing through. He can't help but love it, love the anger and the passion that you show him. He finds your fury exhilarating: proof of why he chose you in the first place, proof of how perfect you are for each other.

- It's then that he turns on the charm: smiling and laughing in amusement, somehow turning this rage of yours into a bonding moment. It's baffling to witness, and it gives you much to think about. It's in these moments that he might be forced to turn you, seeing the conflict on your face, hearing the words leave your lips, orders for him to leave you alone, how you never wish to see him again.

- He can't allow you to make that decision, to leave him and be rid of him forever. He'll ensure that you're unable to: that no matter where you go and no matter how far you run, he will continue to be the only one you can turn to, the only one who can understand and guide you. You'll learn to love him then, he'll make sure of it. Despite all the aggravation, a life without him will be even more unbearable, ...and you'll realize that soon enough.

- There's a very likely chance that he'll woo you after he bites you, that he'll turn you during your first meeting, or feed from you and later convince you to let him change you. For the sake of these headcanons, I've pretended as though there's a reason he's unable to steal you away in the middle of the night and run away with you. Just let it be known that under different circumstances, he might react very differently when trying to win you over.

- That being said: Lestat does try to give you the choice when deciding whether or not to change you; regardless of your history together. Although, it isn't much of a choice, is it? It's either change or die: a sort of "pick your poison" type of scenario.

- I can see him making his secret known in an attempt to win you over and intrigue you, to fascinate you with his mere existence and draw you towards him even more. Your interest in him facilitates his beliefs about you: about how you're made for his world and not your own. The fact that you're not terrified of him; that you still yearn to be near him even after learning what he is, proves to him that you're different from everyone else, that there's a reason he chose you out of every other person on Earth.

- Logistically, you know that things like him should not exist: that even if they do, they're dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. And yet, you find yourself incapable of of doing so. Knowing that he exists frightens you, and yet it fascinates you even more, making you want to continue seeing him: scared of losing this double life of yours that has allowed you to see things beyond your own comprehension and the set of beliefs that you've been taught since birth. If you turn from him, you risk going back to a normal and boring life, forced into realism after getting a taste of true fantasy.

- It's a hard decision to make; whether you'll choose to continue seeing him or not, yet you should rest assured that Lestat is seldom finished with a person even when they fully believe him to be. If he wants something, there is simply no preventing him from having it. And the thing he wants most is you....

[alpaca-clouds]

How redeeming Gortash would improve Karlach's story

I will admit, that the title is a bit overstated, because by the time you actually get to interact with Gortash, the plot just does not have enough time left to redeem him. Because other than what some folks in Hollywood think: No, giving a character one last minute "heel-face-turn" with one big symbolic act does not in fact redeem a character. Redemption is a process that takes time.

BG3 actually understands this, because Astarion's arc basically ends with: "You took the first steps towards redemption." Which is really good.

However: You could end the game at least in a way to set Gortash up for a possible redemption arc - and more importantly just... not have him die. Because actually that would improve Karlach's character arc.

I will get one thing out of the way first: The entire "Gortash redemption" idea is always contentious on the fact that he is a really bad guy. Like, he is bad. He brutally killed and tortured, he enslaved people, all of that.

I am an anarchist though. Hence, I do not really believe that punishment is in any way just. And to put it differently: Killing Gortash does not undo any of the harm he has caused. Not a single dead person will live through it, not a single tortured person will become untortured through it, and no slave is freed through it either (you kinda gotta say that as the player in a different mission).

And yes, I will say at this point that in general I was iffed by the fact that in many fights of the game I was not given a choice really. It was "either join the bad guys or kill them", and my "all charisma bard", who does not believe in killing for revenge, was like: "But... But..."

Like, my Tav was on board with killing Cazador (because literally in the situation it is "kill Cazador or have 7000 people die") and killing Ketheric (because he needed to die to end the curse), but he is already iffy on Orin (as she never had a choice but to be a killer) and definitely is not on board with killing Gortash (because there is no good reason to do it).

But let me talk about Karlach. Because the thing is... I have seen a lot of commentary on how Wyll is underwritten. And he is. But not as underwritten as Karlach. Like, her entire companion quest basically goes: "Kill some fake paladins, find Dammon, find two pieces of Infernal Iron, kill Gortash (which you have to do for plot reasons either way)". She doesn't really have a dungeon connected to her quest. Nor really an exclusive boss fight, because again: Gortash you kinda gotta fight for the story either way. Nothing really.

Every other character, too, also has to make one hard decision. Where they want one thing - but what is actually the good thing is something else. I wrote about this before, the "become what you hate" decision, basically.

Karlach doesn't. Sure, you could argue that the "die or go back to Avernus" decision is her big decision. But it feels very different than the decisions of the others.

Which brings me to Gortash and saving him.

Here is the thing: Logically speaking Gortash should probably be able to fix Karlach's engine. He understands infernal engines, as he built the Steel Watch around them. You can easily argue that yeah, he should be able to fix Karlach. And that... would actually make for a great decision for Karlach's story.

If I would get to fix Karlach's companion quest, I would probably do it like this: Put in some sort of dungeon where Dammon sends you in the hope that you can find some plans there, that might give him an understanding on how to fix the engine. Heck, if you do not wanna do a whole new dungeon, you could also just put some plans or whatever into the Steel Foundry.

The point is that it will then turn out that, yeah, even with those plans for some reason Gortash is the only one who could fix it. Putting Karlach into the spot to make this decision: Does she value her life more than her revenge on Gortash?

Because here is the thing: Gortash is supposed to be 1) the intelligent one of the dead three chosen, and 2) also clearly is the one who acts first and foremost in some sense for his own self-preservation. Which made me go like: "Nah, this does not make sense," when he decides to fight against me after his Steel Watch was disabled and I already killed the other two chosen.

So, yeah... You should get at least a chance to persuade him to just give up - or, going back to what I was talking about before - to save Karlach.

And again, I actually think that even for the Gortash part of the story it would make for more interesting storytelling. Killing him is not really that interesting.

Especially as, once again, killing him does not undo any of the harm he has caused. But given that he is this big egghead he could actually do something good if he got to live. And yeah, also there is the fact that... You know... Given what we know about his backstory, his actions are about as understandable as those of some of the companions.

Some of you might already know, I have written some fics dealing with the way how I would imagine something like this to go. Mainly Hurt begets Hurt (which is basically my Tav convincing Gortash to give up), An Impossible Future (Karlach inner turmoil after her engine is fixed) and Cheesy Noodles (Gortash being a big meany towards Tav, who is unphased by this).

I am right now writing a story featuring Astarion dealing with a very, very depressed Gortash.

[essektheylyss]

for the ask game: 🧡🖤💚

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with?

Until I see definitive proof that Ludinus is in fact as old as he wants people to believe he is, I will not believe it. I don't even really have an opinion on how old he is; I just don't think he's as old as he tries to suggest. And lest it be said that I am playing favorites, the thing about Ludinus is that he talks the way Essek talks in 91—and there are a lot of things Essek says at that dinner that I take with a good heaping of salt. It's this sense that they're talking around things that they would rather people not question; they're both very skilled at talking around things in a way where they aren't outright lying, but they'd rather you not think too hard about it because there's shit they're not saying. To be clear I also won't be mad if there does turn out to be some evidence in canon that he is that old, but thus far, there is nothing definitive, and I do not take the word of unreliable NPCs at face value.

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as everyone else seems to think?

I don't think this is really an unpopular opinion at this point, but Jester. Nice =/= good. I don't think she's evil, by any means! But her morality is a lot more complex than it's given credit for and I think it's one of the things that is most interesting about her. I'd actually consider her largely amoral; it's just not really an axis of consideration that she worries about. She doesn't want people to hurt her or her friends and she doesn't want something to destroy the world, but otherwise she doesn't really care much about what someone's morality is. "Just don't be evil to me" is an incredible sentiment for a reason. She cares more that Essek said they were his friends than the fact that he's the traitor they've been looking for. Ludinus is so insignificant to her despite his literally world-spanning evil plots that she has basically forgotten him six years later, even though two members of her friend group have spent the last six years trying to pin him down. Jester is hilariously amoral and I love that for her.

💚: What does everyone else get wrong about your favorite character?

[cracks knuckles] OKAY, this is where I've got receipts, because hooo boy do I have an opinion and I will be proving it.

Essek does not have an opinion on the Prime Deities. He does not really have much of an opinion on religion. He actually does not by the end of the campaign have any real issue with the Luxon, and frankly he primarily expressed issue with the Dynasty's worship because, until he got to Aeor, he wasn't certain that the Luxon was a real entity at all—which he contrasts against the Prime Deities, in fact!—and he seems to believe there is compelling evidence in Aeor that categorically disproves his hypothesis that the beacons are simply constructed Age of Arcanum devices.

Originally he is mostly concerned that the Luxon religion is used as a "crutch" which is "distracting them from what other good things they could do with the time and focus". He does specify that any religion can be used as such, but he only remarks upon the one he knows. His theory about the beacons, as of episode 91, is that they may be "artifacts designed in the Age of Arcanum that have been misread" that could be put to even further use.

He also does parrot the Dynasty party line in their first meeting about the Luxon being "the basis of how we've been able to free ourselves from the binds of the lineage the Betrayer Gods left for us", and while I do not take him at face value here (see the above commentary about unreliable NPCs), I doubt the truth of this statement is lost on him, considering his familial connections to Bazzoxan, which I can only imagine would not exactly endear one to the Betrayers, though this is only conjecture. If we do care to take him at his word here, it's not unreasonable, since he obviously has a lot more interest in the power offered by the beacons than anything else.

With all that being said, his tune on the Luxon itself has at least changed by the time they get to Aeor. He discusses iconography found in Aeor and when prompted by the Nein about whether the beacons were created by mortals, says, "I do not believe that they are made by anyone but the Luxon. They are of the Luxon. But they've been around since the Luxon's been in Exandria, which is the beginning."

So we started with him largely apathetic to religion, uncertain if this god was real, and by the time we circle back to him, he has now sided fairly definitively with the fact that the Luxon is an entity that has been around since at least the Founding. (For those keeping track at home, this is longer than Predathos has been around. In the Dynasty's creation myth, it may also have been around before the Prime Deities arrived, which is technically not incompatible with the creation myth of Exandria at large, but I digress.) Like most of Exandria, and as is perfectly reasonable for both his culture and his region, he probably doesn't have any love for the Betrayer Gods, but doesn't express much opinion if any on the Prime Deities. He has no time for religion, but frankly, he doesn't have time for much except for his own research, so it's hard to really ascribe any noted contempt to that.

Like, look, I've written plenty of religious trauma Essek fic, and I don't doubt that that element of it exists, but overall, in terms of canonical statements, it's pretty tame.

With that being said, I do want to fast forward a bit to draw attention to something else. Because I actually do think he ends the campaign with some measure of respect for, at the very least, the Wildmother.

In 140 after the Raise Dead fails, he talks briefly with Fjord about the unfairness of it. Fjord passively directs him to "if you were to ask my wise friend Caduceus..." Immediately after this exchange, Essek challenges Caleb to not accept defeat, and admits he wishes there was more that he or any of them could do, but concedes that, "Unfortunately, this type of magic is beyond my purview."

Immediately after this exchange, Caduceus asks for divine intervention.

Of course, he then spends several weeks gardening in a temple to the Wildmother, and seems to find some genuine clarity and perspective there, but I think this alone is enough to argue that, for a person as driven by empirical evidence as Essek, this sequence of events in 140 would be plenty to earn a wizard's respect.

So my formal belief is that Essek is not in fact anti-god or anti-religion, let alone against the Prime Deities. My opinion is that it's very easy to imagine him on his post-campaign travels leaving a small offering at any shrine of Melora he might pass, not out of actual worship but as a sign of respect.

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 11/06

@ben-guy asked: […] Imagine the Greek god level drama that would have unfolded with those 12 drama machines if they all went God tier. Even if they all entered the human universe without the two teams fighting over who gets to rule it, there would be no ending the divides that would form for any and all reasons, from quadrants to rulership over Kanaya's new trolls. Kinda curious about your takes on all this, even if it will take a while for you to see this :]

That's exactly it. Vriska's assuming that having a more powerful team would be strictly beneficial - which is hilarious, coming from her.

Like - Vriska. What have you done with your God Tier powers, lately?

Did it benefit the team?

Anonymous asked: its really interesting how the first time vriska kills not out of necessity or due to any extenuating circumstances, she almost immediately regrets it

Yup.

I think it's beginning to dawn on Vriska that she has nothing to hide behind this time. She's stopped being forced to kill, and has graduated to choosing it. It's little wonder she's falling apart.

Anonymous asked: for what it's worth, i've always taken vriska's interpretation of sburb at face value. it's a setting, or a stage, moreso than a character or an organism

Sburb certainly feels like a narrative, which is closely tied to its coming-of-age themes. John isn't John in the game, he's a character called the Heir of Breath from Consort mythology, and it's predestined that he'll fulfil this narrative role - or else.

Sburb is a play. And if you mess up your lines, the stage will collapse underneath you.

@manorinthewoods asked: You know, during your original analysis of the Creation Myth reveal, you made a lot of notes about how the Denizen grist caches must have been comically large, or multiplicative, to allow the alchemisation of universes. Clearly there is no need for that, given the Genesis Frog, so… what is it for, do you think? ~LOSS (7/6/24)

This grist is confirmed to be for the Ultimate Alchemy, which I've been assuming is synonymous with the creation of the Genesis Frog. I guess Jade's currently creating the Frog without any Denizen Grist to speak of, but I assume it'll come into play later on.

My best guess? The frog has to literally eat the Denizen Hoards to grow into a full-sized universe.

Anonymous asked: I wanted to stop by and say your liveblogs are super interesting!! Back when I first read homestuck I didn’t really bother with analysis, just kinda screamed inchoherentoy at my friends, so actually seeing the narrative and char arcs broken down like this into understandable chunks of why might it be written this way, what is the char thinking, why are they thinking that, how does that play into what might happen - it’s super cool thank you for all this !! Anonymous asked: finally catched up with your liveblog, i have been a homestuck for like a semester and i am rlly happy to see someone go this in depth on a liveblog about it! Anyways! Whats the character you relate the most to, so far? - bralsra

Thank you very much!

It's funny. I've talked before about how I was never great at writing analytical essays in English class - but I'm essentially doing the same thing here, and I'm having a great time. I guess it's just more fun when it's a science fantasy webcomic and not, like, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Who do I relate to the most, I wonder? To be honest, it's probably Kanaya, which probably isn't too surprising if you're a regular reader.

I've said things that are 90% similar to the shit she comes out with. She's so great.

@manorinthewoods asked: I'd like to hear your thoughts on each individual blood caste[…]. ~LOSS (7/6/24)

It's hard to generalize the blood castes, since we've only seen one example of each blood color thus far. Broadly speaking, we're aware that:

Lower bloods have more psychic power.

Higher bloods have more psychic resistance.

Highbloods appear to be physically stronger.

Kanaya's blood color is extremely rare, which implies that, contrary to my expectations, higher blood isn't always rarer than lower blood.

Beyond that, I can't say much more. Based on Karkat's position in the Trollian friend list, he was probably 'supposed' to have green blood, but I don't know if mutating out of the spectrum has actually changed his biology in any way.

He's not psychic, so we can at least assume he doesn't 'count' as being on the bottom of the hemospectrum.

@john-egbert-rose-lalonde asked: the searcherrrrrrrr

"why so discarded" - the drawer

Anonymous asked: Hey, since you like to experiment with stuff, what dl you think would happen if a Tier 2 Sprite prototyped itself into a Tier 1 Sprite?

Great question. I went in-depth into it during a previous ask - although I can imagine it's quite a rare occurrence. How often are two unprototyped Sprites on the same Land?

Anonymous asked: While I think a discord server is a good idea, I think it might be best for everyone if it's one where only you and those helping you with the blog can post anything. That might ruin the community aspect a little, but I feel like it'd be worth it to not get spoiled if you do ever make one. Feel free to completely ignore this- not exactly riveting things I'm sending here.

Right! Quick update on the Discord situation.

Initially, I was going to have Cat help me set it up, but she's been incredibly busy with her thesis lately. Plus, she hasn't really used the platform either, so we had no idea what we were doing. Might need to shelve the Discord server idea until later, or until it becomes necessary.

@krixwell asked: John Egbert when he's told the Earth is done for: John Egbert when his friend is his sister and his dad is his half-brother: John Egbert when he dies ignoble deaths at the hands of manipulators: John Egbert when Fruit Gushers are a Betty Crocker product: MENTAL BREAKDOWN

Dude's got his priorities straight.

@mhafanlol2000 asked: I’m taking an IT course next year, and I want a head start during this summer. Would you know any free beginner’s courses to any languages that would help in that department?

I'll always champion W3Schools as a great first port of call for tech self-learning. All the resources I've found there are well-put together, and let you test your code out in-browser.

As I mentioned to a previous asker, I'd recommend starting with the C language if you're genuinely interested in programming. It's a little harder to use than other, more high-level languages, but it'll teach you more about programming than they will. I'd liken it to learning to drive in manual, rather than automatic. You lose nothing, and acquire skills you wouldn't otherwise know about.

@caliquill submitted:

i'd like to briefly point out this tidbit of the first conversation eridan has with kanaya @krixwell asked: Gamzee to Equius, page 2221: "iF i CoUlD mAkE yOu SmIlE iT'd Be ThE bEsT fUcKiN mIrAcLe I eVeR dId PaRt Of." @dopplesgryndthloggle asked: I'm just gonna put this here: pg 2221 TC: WhAt CaN i Do To MaKe A bRoThEr FuCkIn ShApE hIs ShIt Up? TC: iF i CoUlD mAkE yOu SmIlE iT'd Be ThE bEsT fUcKiN mIrAcLe I eVeR dId PaRt Of. TC: hOnK hOnK hOnK! :o)

...this comic is going to go absolutely wild on a reread, isn't it?

Anonymous asked: oh god no, the clown got you :(

Thanks for the migraine, Gamzee!!

@5am-nztime asked: Insert the one millionth "The Heir of Void, Devoid of Air" joke you've probably gotten. I love dramatic irony

You're actually the only person who sent this one in - and I'm glad you did. It's kind of killing me.

Anonymous asked: a common interpretation is that equius smiles because he knows nepeta might find his body and he doesn't want her to think he died in pain :((

Shit, that's kind of devastating. That said, he had no reason to think Gamzee would leave his body where it was - but that said, he clearly wasn't thinking straight at the time.

Anonymous asked: fun little detail: the ==> leading to equius taking an arrow to the knee is replaced with an arrow, -->

He used to be a Sgrub Player like us :(

Anonymous asked: The idea that he somehow has the freakin' WARHAMMER OF ZILLYHOO in his jokerkind specibus but he STILL only brings out a low-tier pair of juggling clubs is somehow even more intimidating

Where did he even get the thing? When did he get it? Is this from before or after the Pen-Pal got their hands on it?

...if Gamzee is the Pen-Pal, I'm quitting the comic.

@morganwick asked: Well, as long as you don't know for sure whether Nepeta died, you could say… she's both alive and dead until she's observed? @ipunchvampires asked: By cutting away from Nepeta's fate, it's technically ambiguous right now whether she's alive or dead, since we cannot observe her. So you could say that she… heh heh, that she's Sch… she's Schröding…

....oh, god damn it.

Anonymous asked: I feel like there should be an intermission style counter. 4/12 Alien Children Murdered.

If you include Aradia and Vriska, the tally's up to seven. Murderstuck started a long time ago, it seems.

Anonymous asked: i would like to think equius says b100 like how boris johnson says blue in that one interview where he mentions the us brand new BLUE passports or whatever

I also think his voice suits Equius's character fairly well...

Anonymous asked: To be fair on the “overwhelmingly violent purplebloods” angle, Gamzee was stoned out of his mind basically 24/7 until they got to the meteor, so they probably would’ve thought it was a nonissue. […]

I suppose. But if everyone knows purplebloods are habitual murderers, I don't know why you'd ever let one into your friend group. There's always a possibility that one day, his slime delivery will be late, and he'll snap your neck for fun.

@wickedsick asked: You know, this would be the perfect spot for a paradox space intermission. You can read the fluffy comics to wash the taste of blood out of your mouth!

I thought about it - but in the end, I decided to liveblog the Paradox Space comics at the point in the comic where they were released.

Otherwise, Cat'd have to spoiler-check each comic with a fine-toothed comb, and I'd have to delay many of them anyway. Better to get them all out at once.

Anonymous asked: considering that eridan was on feeding duty for gl'bgolyb and had to kill lusii year round under apocaliptic threat im not surprised his response under pressure is to kill something

It really says a lot about the difference between him and Vriska, doesn't it? Vriska's reaction to killing Tavros was a full on existential crisis, but Eridan's first reaction to killing Feferi was to immediately kill again.

@witchoflight asked: hey sally i just wanna remind you of the conversation that dave and gamzee have, specifically about the line: "TC: My mInD'S NoT ThAt sHaRp nOw tHoUgH, iT'S BeEn aGeS SiNcE I HaD A GoOd pIe" gamzee hasn't had access to sopor for WEEKS, not since they entered the game. […]

Was he sober, though? He's still acting stoned, and using his original quirk, so if he did sober up, he must have immediately decided to pretend he didn't, and then arbitrarily reveal himself as sober later on.

To me, it feels like it just took a while for the slime's effects to fully fade. It might genuinely have taken a month for it all to leave his system.

@mimescantscream asked: Now that Gamzee has swiftly become the most important character, any thoughts on his transformation?

It's weirdly drastic, isn't it?

Like, if he was hiding this personality under sedatives this entire time, surely we should have seen some hint of it, in all the time we've known him. We've even been in his head, and he seemed like exactly who he appeared to be.

Was Gamzee unaware of this latent personality? Do we have a Jekyll and Hyde situation on our hands? He does say he's 'both' of his messiahs...

@elkian asked: You've now reached the point where I can (probably) say that the common fandom Exile match for Kanaya is Problem Sleuth, as he has the Vampire schema mode. (Plus a jade-green ultimate attack.)

Oh, I love that for her. We better be seeing Team Sleuth in some form before the end, even if it's just a cameo.

@krixwell asked: I think you're blaming the wrong chat program. Trollian is an advanced alien chat program powered by futuristic sci-fan shenanigans, with features specifically designed to allow the user to choose the timeframe at which they try to contact someone. Pesterchum, not so much. Pesterchum if anything is retro, with only the most barebones of 1-on-1 chat features, a status setting that barely changes anything unless you're rancorous, and a block feature that seemingly fails to recognize incoming Trollian connections from the same user at different times (possibly Trollian's fault). Even setting aside the frogskin barrier, it's a wonder the two programs can communicate at all. So when someone uses Pesterchum to contact a Trollian user whose timeline is entirely separate from their own, with no interface to pick a timeframe on, how exactly is either program supposed to know when to contact them?

I guess most of our nonlinear conversations have been Trollian-to-Pesterchum.

Karkat has tied himself into knots over memos, but that is admittedly a slightly different use case.

And can I just say, I love the concept of a 'frogskin barrier'. These two parties have been beaming messages from frog-to-frog this entire time, and the walls between their dimensions are literally made of skin.

@captorations asked: consider: this means that the sbahj joke that following kanaya's death was actually foreshadowing given the comic it's from

I can't fucking believe this.

Anonymous asked: tbh i'll never get over how the presumable FIRST THING kanaya did upon coming back to life was just. to wade through the horn pile to drink blood from a corpse.

Vriska's getting a little competition for Troll Of All Time!

@morganwick asked: I mean, technically Jade was already in the Fruity Rumpus Asshole Factory, it was just with two Karkats and Dave only made a brief appearance.

16-player fruity rumpus argument or we riot

Anonymous asked: do you think you'll liveblog tsg if you read it?

I wasn't planning on it, but if there's a lot of demand, I'll definitely think about it. If I was to liveblog any fanfic, it'd probably be that one, since it's a proper 'event fanfiction' from the author of TLT.

Anonymous asked: re: the ultimate riddle: karkat actually already explained it on page 1903. basically its just some more timeloop/alpha timeline predestination stuff

The sense I got was that there was a section of the conversation that we missed.

On Skaia, John begins a conversation with an early version of Karkat about the Ultimate Riddle, but the camera moves away before they really get into it. Then, on the Veil, an early Karkat shows up to continue a point he was making about the Riddle, implying that there's a section of this conversation that was deliberately obfuscated.

I initially thought that the Riddle was the mystery of Sburb itself - ie, what the point of the game is. I still think that's probably pretty close, but I do wish we got this full conversation, just in case.

Anonymous asked: “Scratch positioned [Vriska] as someone who will perpetuate a monumental, large-scale mistake, and I don't think there's anything she could do on the Veil that fits the bill.” When John was about to prototype jades sprite with a broken doll, Vriska made him fall asleep, and Becquerel jumped in the sprite instead, leading to Jack Noir becoming an unbeatable boss and destroying the trolls session. I think that could be the perpetuation of a large scale mistake.

Possibly. But as violent as Jack is, I don't think he's a huge threat to the rest of the multiverse.

He takes hours to rampage through a session, but there are presumably trillions of sessions out there in the multiverse. From a top-level perspective, he's not doing meaningful damage, and it's certainly within Vriska's comprehension.

I actually think Vriska's going to do something much worse than make Jack. If she contributes to the creation of Lord English, for example, she might be breaking something that can't be repaired.

Anonymous asked: Honestly its a little sad though right? That the troll kids are snapping and dying? Like yeah they were raised on a violent murder planet but also, they're all still 13 years old and have been without their means of Sleeping Naturally for a while (the sopor slime is how trolls usually get sleep) not being an apologist or anything but the murders could've been prevented with healthy moraillegences and good nights sleep.

Oh, it's horrific, that should go without saying. If the trolls had got some decent shuteye, it'd have kept them stable for at least slightly longer.

[tortelette]

It is god awful 4 am in the Philippines (insomnia growing worse due to worry) and I have one fucking theory on what fucking Demian said in the epilogue of Chapter 4.

Demian fucking returns to the presence of Dante as the Sinners took a feast for themselves at some restaurant and talks to them about the meaning and true purpose of technology and the morality behind it along with the concept of greed. One line took a fucking slap on me whenever I kept reading his dialogue.

This is...

A "The Little Prince (TLP)" by Saint Exupéry reference said by the Little Prince himself when he met the stranded pilot in the desert.

Back then when I was still studying religious literature and our main topic is TLP, there are many biblical references here and there from the snake who bit him down to the desert where the pilot has been stranded upon for some time. The sheep has many symbolisms back in my lessons, the common ones that I get to see are the spiritual transcendence of the prince, the representation of the truth, and the beauty hidden from reality. Mind you all that the story of TLP is quite imaginative and a sad one that gives the hopeful yet real life lessons of friendship, value, love, and loss. Hence many symbolisms are interpreted here.

Now that I mention those things... what does it have to do with Demian telling Dante to draw him a sheep like they promised to him? Judging from the structure of his tone, it appears that Demian knew Dante before Dante took their clock prosthetic.

Well my theory is that the sheep is the symbolism of "realization" or more likely "seeing the truth of humanity." Dante is a blurry yet blank slate when they saw that they lost their memories yet retained a sense of a trail of their true goal. Dante wants answers (an obvious reflection of decision for a person who knows nothing of the world) in everything around them and they are the ones who let's out the final decision to handle in everything with the Sinner's help. Hence, they take semi-control in seeing EVERYTHING and witness it along with them. So far Dante has saw the lives of four of their sinners (Gregor, Rodion, Sinclair, and Yi Sang) and see how cruel and unfair of the life they went through. Dante sees them all since they resonated as well with the golden boughs and sees a portion of their troubled lives. A normal happening of humanity in The City.

Dante has to draw a "sheep" to Demian, more likely... Dante has to share to Demian the "truth of humanity that they have witnessed through resonance with the Sinners in a refreshed look." In this chapter, it appears that Dante has to share their side of the truth to Demian about Yi Sang's life yet they appear to be at a lost as always. Just like a sheep that strays away from the shepherd's guidance.

Remember Faust's remarks when she stated on what would be Dante's reaction about their decision to suppress the bronze bull when they get their memories back? It is implying for me at least that Dante is a dislikable or negative character. I mean... look at them when we first started the entire game. Demian must have known this too and probably wants to get Dante to draw a sheep for him now that he can have a more "innocent" or understandable outlook about humanity.

In TLP, the sheep (if removing the more complex representations of various literary analysis) is a literal representation of one's ability to appreciate the beauty of all things through the heart despite the appearance. All of the sinner's lives are miserable in some way yet they are still "beautiful" for us because they manage to strive through their problems, they seek on the right of their belief, they live on to face their traumas, and to accept help from others in order to get back up. The disgusting experiences of humanity in The City is a facade that people always see, but the actions they have done that either support or combat those experiences is what makes it beautiful.

The truth of humanity, is the suffering that they have been through.

It would be interesting that Demian has the title of "The Little Prince" as a nod to it.

EDIT: How does my unhealthy insomnia theory get a lot of interactions- I... I am scared.

[uselesslexbian]

bottoms (2023) sentence starters.

we've looked like shit for years, and we are developing.

we're finally hot. at least, according to me.

nobody's going to want to fuck me this year, just like nobody wanted to fuck me last year or the year before.

i've been building tension.

i'm playing the long game with her, okay?

what the fuck happened to her?

that made me so sad. what?

i don't need this negative, really sad attitude. please.

what the fuck are you wearing?

nobody hates us for being gay. everyone hates us for being gay, untalented, and ugly.

oh my god, she ate shit is what happened.

she ate literal shit? what the fuck?

or did you get beat up again?

yeah, we went to juvie.

i don't want to say it, but we're fucked!

why do you always have to flirt with other women?

it doesn't count if they're not in high school.

would you like a safety ride?

i'm sorry that i looked at mrs. reilly and lightly grazed her left tit, alright?

don't talk to me, you ugly bitch, okay? i do not talk to girls in overalls.

okay, i might be ugly, but these aren't overalls.

you're being really mean right now.

i heard you, like, beat up my boyfriend last night?

maybe i SHOULD buy a gun.

what? don't buy a gun. nobody said buy a gun.

guys do that all the time, okay? that's the point of feminism.

that's not the point of feminism. you also don't care about feminism.

why would you lie to me?

so you killed a girl?

i know how to take a punch.

i was thinking, if they were coming at me with, like, swords and, like, knives, and like, guns and stuff, and you taught me how to punch like that, then i wouldn't die.

can i be honest? you're a person who's not coping with what's going on.

sometimes, when you have a new hobby, don't show up.

that's my favorite way to be an ally. you just say you're doing something, and then you don't do any of those things.

my dad left me, and i'm incredibly punctual.

i'm gonna finally reverse-stalk my stalker.

i'll be able to kill my stepdad.

i love talking about my trauma.

i literally jack off after every single therapy session.

yeah, well, all women are hot to me.

we had to just, like, fight people, sometimes to the death.

i still hear their screams at night, and that guilt will probably shackle me forever.

i realize now, i don't have to be that person anymore. i don't have to just let things happen to me.

i just get the hot people confused. jesus.

i can't answer that question, because i don't know how to read.

no, i would never cheat on you again, okay?

what about, like, a bomb? like a super small bomb. they're super easy to make.

yeah, let's do terrorism.

don't get distracted, 'cause we can be fined like $2 for this.

i really value when people use violence and raise their voices for me. it's actually one of my love languages.

no, leave the skin on his face, will you?

i'm not a fucking idiot. i just look like this.

man, i knew women were evil.

all of the blame just goes on me, then? like, none of this can be traced back to you at all?

i didn't want to do this from the beginning. you know that.

does it even matter? do you even care? do you actually like her? do you care about anyone other than yourself?

do you care about anyone other than yourself?

just find some other girl to jack off to and do nothing about.

if you don't wanna borrow firearms, then why are you here?

sorry, people didn't know you're gay?

i never had many friends, and that's sad. and as i've gotten older in this world, it's just gotten more sad.

okay, well, obviously, why would you lay it out like that? because it sounds insane.

i'm sorry for saying that you have no friends really loud in front of all of your friends.

i'm sorry for being an asshole a lot of the time. most of the time. all of the time.

that is obviously a red flag. are we not reading that as a red flag? that's crazy.

oh, now you want a bomb.

in your fucking dreams, which you don't deserve to have. when you sleep, it should just be like, total darkness.

i do want to say... i feel like you killed that guy.

we killed a lot of guys. we'll process it later.

you didn't have to start a whole fight club just to date me. you could have just talked to me.

[eowynstwin]

same anon who sent the ask abt price: MW3's writing was embarrassing tbh. i agree 100% that narratively, its the most logical and sensible for price to be the one who takes the fall. what you wrote i flat out completely agree with, and its deeply disappointing that we are stuck with an extremely poorly written and rushed story. the game was a hot steamy pile. everyone was slightly out of character, they all growled their lines like mad dogs, and the missions were ass. i cant believe no one talks about the mission where you get anti arab hate crimed. what was that??? what was the reason??? (the only thing i liked about that game were the 9 minutes of nikolai. i just find him entertaining.) i was replaying mw2019 while super high and got to the mission where you threaten the butchers wife and son and just thought to myself; that lady and that kid are gonna have nightmares about price for the rest of their lives. that room is going to come back to them again and again and again. they literally did nothing wrong except the crime of being the butchers family. what price and gaz did is never going to leave them, and gaz was right to question price on that. of course, the game doesn't care at all. they're disposable NPCS for a shock value scene. i dunno, the fact that the game doesn't really give a fuck, and seemingly even condones what happened, just kinda hit different and i had to put the game down for the evening. i guess that hit at that moment bc i had also read a fic a bit earlier where the reader was price's civvy gf and gets kidnapped by his enemies. it bent my brain a bit bc, the thing in the fic is literally a canon event perpetuated by price, portrayed as a good thing by the source material, that now price is the victim of. it was a very weird feeling for my weed addled brain to try and process. think i blue screened actually. i wanna put price in a jar and shake him vigorously. pin him to a board like a entomology insect. i want to bite him. i do love him i swear. but maybe make him actually face a single real consequence for his war crimes? (disappointing that it will never happen on screen bc these games are all gas no breaks outright propaganda. not to mention real war crimes are happening constantly in front of everyone's eyes and going completely unpunished) sorry this is really long, i have no one to talk to abt these games and i dont understand my feelings toward that British man

Yeah. The thing about Price is that he's not a good person in the slightest. We write fiction about the kind of man he can be--the best version of himself, a version we can all stomach--but the real Price is distinct from that, and the best people in this fandom recognize that.

Soap and Ghost have some plausible deniability simply because we haven't seen them doing anything other than action movie stuff. Gaz is on the road to becoming Price--Price is doing his damndest to turn Gaz into himself--but he isn't there yet. (@391780 did a GREAT analysis of the driving scene in mw19 and how Price subtly manipulates Gaz, but I can't find it.)

EDIT: Early kindly provided.

We, as the audience, are not actually supposed to worry that much about the Butcher's family, because Price is one of the Good Guys who would never let something Bad actually happen. Infinity Ward does not take the Butcher's family seriously, and does not want us to take the family seriously, because they are just a convenient vehicle with which to move the plot along. Their presence is, in the end, shock value. We are meant to stare, wide-eyed, wondering is Price really going to go that far? while in the back of our minds knowing of course he's not, because he's our hero. He's just doing whatever it takes. The family is not meant to be anything other than fodder for Price's characterization.

Same with Samara. We are not supposed to care all that much about her, personally--we're supposed to marvel over Makarov's canny brutality, his bRiLLiANcE in recognizing the obvious fact that an Arab woman would make a perfect scapegoat for a plane bombing. Samara does not matter to MW3. Only the shocking way she dies. None of these Arab characters matter to Call of Duty--only the entertainment value of their pain.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am reminded of when Price threw a man restrained into a bomb jacket off a balcony, with not a shred of remorse afterword. I'm forced to ask the question--who would Price scapegoat, then, if he felt justified enough?

And yeah, he's never going to suffer the consequences of his actions, because Infinity Ward doesn't think he's actually done anything wrong. We throw the word propaganda around a lot without actually defining it, but Price is emblematic of how the propaganda of Call of Duty works. Price does something reprehensible, and is shown to be justified in doing it--implying that real men like him are justified, too, because don't you understand how little choice Price had? Don't you get that there's no good choice to be made? This is how he has to act, and this is how all soldiers have to act, because war is a dirty business, and someone needs to be willing to do it for the benefit of the ignorant public.

The question of why any of this should be happening at all is never asked.

[basuralindo]

!!!! I'm in a ranting mood, but not a very articulate one, about Floyd/Jamil. Bear with me.

Like, obviously I love Jamil and Azul, but I can't believe how much everyone overlooks Floyd?

Jamil actually tolerates him, which is actually A Lot coming from Jamil. And he isn't just politely neutral, he's one of the very few people Jamil actually speaks to normally, and the very very few that he talks to normally without being overtly hostile.

Jamil is one of the only people who can manage Floyd's temperament without trying to suppress him. Like he's shown to work with Floyd's moods, and negotiate mutually beneficial solutions that Floyd actually agrees with, and all upfront. Jamil doesn't get scared and try to mince around him, Floyd doesn't get irritated and try to intimidate Jamil, and for the most part Jamil doesn't try to quietly manipulate him. Jamil also doesn't have to fight with him to behave, and Floyd doesn't back out because he's lost interest. For the way they both tend to operate around people, that all strikes me as mutual respect.

While he's usually not as aggressive about it as Azul, Floyd also shows an interest in Jamil. He specifically wanted to hang around Jamil in book 4. He was also impressed with Jamil's skills. He pays attention to Jamil's talents and interests and tries to engage with him on shared interests like dancing. He seeks out or positively reacts to Jamil in group settings. He actually seems to like interacting with Jamil on equal terms, rather than wanting to torment him for entertainment.

During the Halloween event, when preparing to enter the mirror, he was the only one to encourage Jamil to give it his all, and singled out Jamil specifically. (also Jamil teasingly telling him not to screw around, and Floyd reacting positively? does he do that with anyone outside of Jade and Azul??)

He nicknamed Jamil after an animal that preys on moray eels, and uses the -san suffix rather than -chan. Both of which implies taking him seriously.

The entire beans event??? This was set early on, before book 4, so they didn't have much rapport. But Floyd's entire thing was centered around Jamil. The only person he willingly came out of hiding to engage with was Jamil, specifically because he found him interesting, and he chose to help him out despite being on opposite sides, again because he was interesting. He said several times that he found the whole event boring, except for the opportunity to fight Jamil, which became his primary motivation for participating (aside from learning Vil's throw, which was his motivation for sticking with them instead of running off to hunt Jamil alone). He literally told Jamil to his face that he was "the best part" of the whole event. He refused to quit even after the event was over because he wanted to keep fighting Jamil, and for Floyd, that implies a positive opinion towards someone.

His beans vignette further elaborates that his entire motivation for sticking with basketball was to compete with Jamil. Even staying up for several days in a row to do nothing but practice in order to get on his level.

For Floyd, there's nothing he values more in a person than being interesting. There's nothing he respects more than competence. And he's blatantly stated that Jamil has both. He doesn't care for people who are intimidated by him and he doesn't tolerate people trying to boss him around, and he seems to genuinely enjoy Jamil, who does neither. I honestly haven't seen him show as much complex interest in any other character in the game (like beyond picking a fight or tryna get a rise out of them).

For Jamil, it's extremely rare for him to drop cold formalities and speak with anyone casually, but he does so with Floyd to a greater extent than most. Even if he doesn't seek Floyd out, considering he doesn't tend to seek anyone out, the fact that he'll engage when Floyd approaches him instead of trying to escape the conversation speaks volumes in my opinion. He also doesn't seem to overlook Floyd's intellect. He gets shocked by the extent of his abilities sometimes, but he never seems surprised that Floyd's intelligent, and Jamil doesn't usually think much of other people's intelligence. And so far Floyd's the only one who's gotten him to dance just for fun (one of the few independent passions he has), and he's managed it twice. Floyd brings out passion in him.

Just, they're both so othered in very different ways. Jamil keeps everyone at a distance, and is intentionally uninteresting enough that nobody seeks him out unless they want something. Floyd doesn't bother with anyone who doesn't entertain him, and either scares or frustrates most people so much that they avoid him as much as possible. But they seem to respect and understand each other, even if they don't drop their walls, because neither find the walls to be that big an obstacle.

There's just something really valuable to me about two such extremely overlooked/misunderstood people managing to see and understand each other so easily.

[k0setsuch1e]

Kosetsu Chie

🌊✮ ⋆ 🦈｡ *⋆｡

(Sorry for any misspellings I'm writing this at 1am..)

(Number one this is a BSD oc. Number two...I'm kinda new to this place in general so if I don't pick up on certain things here it's simply bc im new

- I'd like to set some boundaries.

-Mod is a minor so no nsfw

- any other fandom can interact

-Also, I will be just using normal text in character or quotation marks.

-If im ooc it will say so in tags

Also mod of this would like to remain anon even though my watermark is all over my art. whoopies...I'm not active on my main which is funny.

Mod's name is Yuma, you can refer to me as Yuma when talking to me ooc

Magic anon is allowed jst nothing nsfw ofc and you can't turn him into a baby bc no <3

Time zone btw: UTC-8. Mainly active on fridays through Sundays. or after school: 5-8pm)

yapping below this!!

IC STUFF

"I understand our way of justice is warped but my loyalty doesn’t lie with you."

Name: Kosetsu Chie Age: 22

Pronouns: He/him

Sexuality: Pansexual, Ace.

Height: 6'2 ft (190cm)

weight: 170 lbs (77kg)

Blood type: O

Ability: "Usurp one's Fortitude" - he can use any ability of an ability user he's touched.

(note about his ability: it takes a HUGGGEE mental toll on him, he'll be more irritable after using it. He can fuse abilities together but his physical state will become weaker, so he usually focuses his ability into his Katana. He doesn't have a completely natural ability up at face value, so he tends to have another person’s ability up and in use in the front of his mind.)

Some info with him and the Hunting Dogs: he's the closest with Teruko and Tachihara. He doesn't believe in this from of justice, but also doesn’t care. Others (The Hunting Dogs) ideals are more important to him. He doesn’t really care for the ADA, only the members that used to be in the PM and he wants them dead.

Likes: Warm tea, stars, sleep, reading, taking care of his hair, his katana, cats, slow paced games, silence, The members in the Hunting Dogs, cooking, justice. (no duh)

Dislikes: PM, DOA, some of the ADA, injustice, Hunter Shin [@looksatyouwithmybiggreeneyes], cruelty (unless called for), sexual themes, physical touch, bright lights, loud noises, strong smells, weird textures, uncertainty.

He is quite literally the embodiment of a caged bird.

Universe headcanons and extra info

Kosetsu art

Blooming (kosetsu art)

Not actually Teruko Headcanons

Backstory

Stories:

It almost worked

(Reference sheet. art by me :3)

Kosetsu au's so far:

@ih8chaos (young kosetsu

Doa au; @lawandsuffering

[legally-allowed-to-slime]

i disagree on the "it was a good kill and Gem is bothered by it/pretends she's not" bc it really wasn't,,, and Gem can be right in calling it pathetic and also not expecting it/knowing how to escape and also be not that bothered by it bc she does try to like, let (red life) people kill her the entire session, she's 'not a sweat' as she calls it

Mumbo literally lost a life bc he was going after Gem in the car (he pours lava where she was specifically), then tried to lava her twice, Grain had to tell him to keep going after her with a sword (also Skizz tries to lava her before that too lmao) and she still escaped it to the point Mumbo logs out bc hes embarrassed (in a light hearted way ofc) just to log back in, join in on Martyn helping them (Gem does just accept him digging a hole under her, doesn't move at all, she only tries to escape the lava) just for Ren to steal the kill like the little yellow life shit he is and then Mumbo tries to lava her again lmao. it is pathetic, let's not kid ourselves here, Looney Tunes type crap, especially with the speed. It's a good kill on Ren side ig??? idk

like. idk, people try too hard to make it seem like she's bothered or not, maybe the answer is simply that she accepts dying, but she also wanted the killer to actually try to get her (like Grian does, he clearly hates the cheap kills,,, unless it comes from his teammates lmao)

feel like ppl try too hard to make her look like Scott (and I don't think even Scott is that bothered, he just switches to survival mode for once lol), when both her and Joel are fine with ppl trying to murder them and succeeding, they show it multiple times this session

i don't think this makes her "untouchable" or boring either, bc I don't think any life series member takes death as seriously as fanon makes it seem sometimes (might be the dsmp brain wiring lmao, but to me it does matter how a person reacts to their death and what they do afterwards, and she goes back there and just. Tries to congratulate Mumbo until she realizes Ren did it. She doesn't hide, doesn't get annoyed or anything, so I don't see why would I take it as her lying to herself or the viewers. Taking her at face value is smarter here, bc she doesn't hide her feelings, she's open about being annoyed at Pearl/Imp, she's open about disliking ppl and how she feels about stuff). they know they're in a death game, know what to expect so it's whatever as long as theyre still green and have lives to waste

i know it's all in good fun and role-play, but I just wanted to give my opinion from somebody who's not that into this side of the fandom (this is also messy as fuck and i probably repeated myself a bunch but im too lazy to fix this, whateeverr)

i’d like to preface this with a disclaimer: gem is one of my favourites. i would never speak so derogatorily about a character if i did not obsessively watch all their povs and consume so much fanfic about them that i’m sick. put simply, c!gem is morally grey, and i’m entirely comfortable with it. moving on

i feel like we need to face the fact that every lifer is an unreliable narrator. yes, some to a greater extent than others, like how dl!pearl or sl!lizzie are clearly unreliable. but all of them, bar none, say and go through things that affect their worldview. an unfortunate phenomenon known popularly as “the human experience”. especially in the life series, when the ccs are deliberately roleplaying, it would be naive to take any of them at face value, especially when evidence says otherwise.

so yes, gem is definitely bothered. she talks about how she’s a target, even puts a target on her skin, and keeps on talking about how incompetent everyone is (even when they’re not trying to kill her). i don’t think this is unreasonable of her at all, i’m just pointing out an incongruence in her words and her behaviour. again, there’s nothing wrong with being bothered, but what’s really interesting is that she constantly says things like “oh, finally!” or “that was so bad” or just laughs. to me, i interpret it as her purposely trying to keep up the image that she isn’t bothered, that she is confident or that wow, look, the other players are so bad she’s getting frustrated that she can’t die. a “regular” lifer would probably just exclaim oh no if there was a failed attempt on their lives, but gem is much more deliberate with her words. i’m not calling her calculating, but maybe i am.

(i have noted before that gem is impressively good at faking real emotion, so that definitely plays a factor in my interpretation. it’s very easy to dismiss it as genuine exasperation, but based off her other words you can slightly discern that it’s a facade. obviously gem is gunning for a win this season, and if she’s gunning for a win, why would she try or want to die?)

as for the kill. directly before this, yes, it was a cartoon chase scene, but gem was in full survival mode and was darting around, constantly eating. it would be foolish to pretend that she wasn’t trying to stay alive.

you argue that she allowed martyn to dig the hole under her. i went back to check, and due to the sped up game, it took martyn a little over 2 seconds to dig the 2x2x3 hole. 2 things can be true: gem is good at the game, and the hole caught gem off guard. furthermore, gem was looking at grian and not at martyn when the hole was dug. so she’s in the hole, and she has less than one second to react before the lava is placed. gem pulls out her water bucket very quickly, and places it down the same second. too late. she’s caught by the lava, she yells, she takes out her shovel to dig, she digs one block and then dies. so how long does the kill take?

eight seconds. from the first block being broken to gem dying to the lava, it takes eight seconds. that is the opposite of pathetic. that is a well-executed kill and even with gem’s condescending “good job!” it doesn’t take away from the fact that it was well done. note that gem reacted very quickly, so it wasn’t gem “allowing” herself to be killed. she tried pretty hard to not die, but the lava was just faster. in no way did she accept dying when even in her own video it’s clear that she fought to the end.

gem is definitely not fine with people murdering her. the other attempts, yes they were bad, but gem also tries to dodge them. i feel like she legitimately forgot about tango’s trap and stood on it by accident, but changed her story when tango failed anyway, because she doesn’t even say anything to tango (like a cheeky “tango i’m standing here”) prior to the actual attempt. i wouldn’t go so far as to call her a sweat, but to go to the other extreme that she allowed people to kill her is also straight up inaccurate, even if gem acts like she did.

so, we’ve established that it’s a good kill. how does gem react? she tells the audience “oh it’s pathetic”, goes up to mumbo and tells him “mumbo i’m so proud of you”. that is textbook condescending. she’s trying to act amused, as if mumbo’s a toddler that’s just done a cool trick. (never mind that it was ren, it’s the intention behind her words) if she got outwardly annoyed, that would make it obvious that she was actually threatened by the kill, or that she was actually bothered. this faux nonchalance is what i’m trying to point out here. i don’t think she’s inwardly annoyed either. i just think she’s lying to herself.

as for that last bit, i don’t think i ever said this made gem boring. to me this makes her incredibly interesting and an incredibly complex character to dissect. i’m saying those who just believe whatever she says and believe that whatever she says is what she actually believes are making out her character to be more boring than it is.