#imo it’s so much worse for most of us that Know everything

[betweenthescarletmoon]

hello fellow mutual from tiktok!!! I am so happy to see you put your thoughts here, i feel it was much harder for us to discuss jayce over there!

I agree with everything you said. A fourth act would've worked wonders for Every Character, not just him. And it does anger me so much that Jayce wasn't seen nor Written as a profound character because of s1. I wish i could have a talk with Christopher Linke about this

The idea that people can only like characters because they're attractive to lessen the load of digesting media is imo most likely the Editing Effect of inatagram and tiktok. It pains me to say but i do wonder if arcane came out by the time we as a generation watched AMVs and 7min edits on youtube instead (or at least i did). Maybe then people would have more profound thoughts on all the characters, including Vi, Jinx, Silco, Mel. And i am glad we can discuss things more over here, but it's still not as common to discuss and analyze as it used to be either.

You've mentioned one of my biggest gripes with fandom interpretation in the cave, WHO would debate bisexuality when they have nothing left but the crumbling inner workings of their mind, building the last comfort it can?? Thank you, i really like the idea that he also found himself resenting them, that is actually a much closer observation to how he Looks at them. I truly like that transition from his tears (which represent his old, vulnerable, sweet self) to that colder bitterness that guides him for the rest of the season (until we get the ending, which from a character narrative standpoint, doesn't make sense to me tbh).

Here's the thing, I've also placed myself in the difficult position of liking those thirst edits, saving them in a folder called "thirst traps" to keep them apart from my Real Jayce Folder, laughing at some of the "why trauma jayce kinda" and the like...while also deep down just feeling so empty and sad about it but feeling like there was nothing i could do about it? I don't wanna be dramatic but it Felt isolating. And maybe it does make me a hypocrite! Conformity and yadda yadda, but i cannot imagine that Jayce was designed to not be hot. I believe that was fully intentional, but i also thought that they were prioritizing his character. When i first saw act 2, i didn't know his agency would be obliterated and his arc ripped from his hands to place it solely on Viktor's. So now it feels even worse, that That is what the writers used him for too. And people are completely fine with it! They're so happy about the soulmates.

Your observations about him not stopping and being stuck in survival mode bring me clarity fr. He's never truly been a man about rest, was he? Perhaps that was his main trauma response all along, sacrificing sleep and Academy grades to get Hextech running, almost killing himself the moment he felt he lost it. Of course he'd do that at a more extreme level, but because act 3 doesn't rest or let the story breathe, i frankly didn't interpret it as that, it just felt like he conveniently stopped being mentally ill to give a speech and fight the war 😂 if he survived, he probably wouldn't have stopped, because stopping meant that PTSD would rear its ugly head. But the tragedy of it all Was that he died. Saving the world yes, but it feels so empty and cruel that he suffered so much just to die. No real accomplishment or meaning, just him serving the narrative and saving Viktor.

PS : i adore viktor i really do but it's getting hard not to resent him bc of what the writers did to butcher him, and how they stripped jayce of everything he was outside of him. I still love him! I promise!

And mutual! If you wanna keep talking in DMs you are welcome to!!

Random Thoughts on the Arcane Fandom about Jayce

this is gonna be a mess but I have nowhere else to talk about this.

I've recently noticed how Jayce Talis has been subjected to all kinds of sexualization since the drop of Act 2 of the second season. People have mentioned many times how trauma has made him "hot". A good and well-known example of this is Danny Motta's reaction to episode 5, where he said, "Holy shit, they made Jayce hot! [...] My dude went from looking like a Muppet to the king of Rohan, and all it took was a little bit of trauma."

This isn't entirely new for him? If people didn't hate Jayce back in S1, they ogled him in the scene where he works on the Forge shirtless, which IS kinda the point because the animators are making him very obviously attractive. But most importantly, he as a character has been reduced to his sexual or romantic relationships since the beginning of time.

It seems that S2 is a response to this in a way. His arc from the ending of S1, where he took responsibility of his actions out of guilt for the child he killed, was slightly set aside for Viktor. Well, ALL of his life, dreams, decisions, everything about him was eclipsed by Viktor's shadow because of the whole "all times, all possibilities" twist. He wasn't expected to show up as a Councilor in any of the meetings, and we must assume he quits at some point, but he surely hasn't resigned from his position by the time Viktor wakes up. Apart from that much needed scene between him and Cait, and the one where he attends the memorial (and is attacked by a vengeful mother), we don't see many of his decisions or what leads him to make them, other than Viktor. This is beautiful in a way because we can SEE how it is a trauma response to losing him. He is obsessive by nature, and he clings to what keeps him and his loved ones safe excessively, but I still had to do a bit of mental gymnastics as to why he went back on the second promise: to not build Hextech weapons again. (Hint: it has to do with the fact that VI saved him with HIS weapon, but it went so fast it's hard to process in the first watch.)

Now back to the sexualization problem. Every time I look up his name and trauma, or PTSD, 95% of the results are thirst edits on Tiktok about how hot he is. No joke. One of the more serious results is my own edit. Of course, a lot of people connect with his suffering without naming it as trauma, and that is great. My concern is that there has been so much focus on Jinx's trauma, Viktor's trauma, even Silco's trauma (which are all valid and fascinating to explore), but there's less attention for other characters who clearly show how their own traumatic experiences has shaped them. Vi, Caitlyn, and Jayce are some of the clearest examples of this, and they've experienced some truly heinous things in the show. Trauma cannot be compared, ever. But why is it that Jayce, who lived through an apocalypse that HE knows HE caused, and lives in complete isolation except the "company" of metal watchers, to the point that he loses touch with reality, and is changed so irrevocably that he loses the naivety and starry-eyed optimism that has always defined him...is seen as hot? And more importantly, why is it that there is very little attention to his experiences on that cave? Every scene between him and Viktor is uploaded in 1080 HD quality, but the scenes of him alone? Fighting to survive? Showing remarkable resilience in the face of his suffering? No, that's not as fun. Not a single one of those scenes is uploaded fully, and I have checked many times. (Some people have actually skipped those scenes to focus on Timebomb. I'm...)

I went online and looked up "why do people sexualize traumatized characters" because let's face it, it's real, it's interesting, and I cannot judge or else I am a hypocrite. Bucky Barnes, Loki, Ellie Williams, Dean Winchester, Vi herself, the list goes on much longer but I can't think of others off the top of my head. We connect with their suffering, and we are pulled by their experiences.

However, Jayce is such a complicated case because he is usually thought of as the greedy himbo that fumbled two baddies, or the confused bisexual, or the guy who lost it because of a situationship (much like Vi, who DID NOT lose it because of a failed romantic endeavor bfr). And then the plot goes and tells us, "Actually, yeah, his life outside of Viktor doesn't matter, he's not even supposed to be alive, because Viktor saved him. All of time is completely inextricable from Viktor." People hate meljay because she manipulated him and "trapped" him in a relationship or something, only to celebrate it when something suspiciously similar happens with the male romantic interest? I initially thought it was beautiful too, bc Soulmates, but man. Mage!Viktor really left the man he loved to rot in complete isolation, eating raw reptiles until throwing up, losing his mind. Say what you want about the allegory for Viktor's life, at least Viktor's isolation was metaphorical up until the Glorious Evolution.

Despite us being shown this, people make thirst edits of him in his black fit, and fighting with sexual tension with Viktor. I fear...that I am the only one who finds this tragic. The man forced to create a larger than life persona to sell his work and be seen as an attractive pawn of the system, has become the attractive pawn of the narrative. Viktor's narrative.

Perhaps Viktor was forgotten by the world. But Jayce's kind heart, and brave soul, were forgotten by us.

Just some thoughts to chew about my favorite character and my wish that more people focused on his arc with me

[blossoms-phan]

they’re being VERY generous with the marketing of this tour if things are gonna keep going they way yesterday did like don’t sit there with your pizza and giggle and tell me to take my mum or sister or bf im so glad I just said fuck it and bought myself a ticket instead of trying to drag a clueless friend or someone with me I’d genuinely rather kms than have any blissfully unaware person in my life know anything that’s gonna go on in this show

[kradogsrats]

Now we know What Viren Did(tm), and...

My personal side-eye aside, that denouement is actually an incredibly elegant application of the story's themes, within the scope of restrictions imposed by this particular medium (i.e. a cartoon targeted for pre-teens and younger). Like, I personally assumed for a long time that we would simply never find out the details, because it would be either too grim and/or violent for the story's intended rating or... kind of a let-down. On the surface, what we got seems like the second.

Most of us have looked at Claudia killing the baby deer to heal Soren's paralysis and went "well, it was obviously that, but y'know... worse, somehow," which is a completely reasonable assumption to make. It was definitely what was narratively implied, which makes the supposedly-damning ingredient being "your mother's tears" instead of like... idk, "your mother was pregnant again and I used the life of that unborn child to save you" or something kind of "... oh. Okay, then."

To be fair, that might also be why they went so hard in the IMO inadvisable male-dominated writer room direction of "so I held her down and took what I wanted" to convey the requisite "he's doing A Bad," which is what all my side-eye is toward. But here's the thing:

On some level, dark magic is about violation���of nature, of others, and of the self. Even violation by Aaravos, ultimately.

But it's also not just that.

Dark magic also sits at the center of one of the primary themes of the whole story, which is the evil of denying others' personhood. We see it again and again from the angle of the heroic cast: "You keep calling it a monster," "You knew he was a person, just like you," "She's not 'the elf.' She's Rayla." The evil they do not allow to take root is seeing people as things, the place where all other evils begin. (GNU Terry Pratchett, IYKYK.)

So Viren's damning crime, the crime that is dark magic, is this:

In that moment, he looks at his wife, and sees only a source of what he needs. One that he can take from as he wills. That's why Lissa leaves—Viren has pulled the circle he draws around "people" versus "abstractions, things to be used" in so tightly that she has found herself suddenly on the outside of it. That's not something you come back from, in a relationship.

As for it all being over something as innocent as Lissa's tears, as opposed to something like her blood, her unborn child, her heart, her last breath—that's also, I think, part of the point. It's a renewable resource, harvested without doing permanent physical harm, but it's still a violation of her. This is the ultimate refutation of the "but what if ethically-sourced phoenix feathers" argument as being, for the final time, bullshit.

When Viren bursts in looking like he walked straight out of hell and demands use of her tears, could Lissa have given them freely? Sure... but she didn't. Could he have talked her around, if he invested the time and respect for her that would require? Probably, but again, he didn't! He took what he'd decided was necessary, did what he decided he had to do, because he could.

And like, he knew, even then. Because while dark magic twists your perceptions and reasoning, dragging you deeper each time—it can't twist you so much that you no longer have a choice. It will do everything it can to make you rationalize making that choice, over and over, but it can't erase that it is a choice.

Like, I'm honestly kind of emotional about it because while the surface level watching experience is kind of hmmmmm, it delivers so well on a thematic and meta level that I'm just like idk. Fuck. It's good.

[thigholstercas]

So I wanted to have all these parts of scripts that I love with destiel moments that were erased, changed, or added context in one place. Bare in mind that there are some that are Production Drafts and others Writer's Drafts, and so on.

4x02 - Are you there, God? It's me, Dean Winchester

Oh honey, he's gonna be your husband

Honestly, I'm just putting this here because I love this scene.

5x04 - The End

Cas received the order to follow Dean's commands once, and he sticked to it up 'til the end of everything.

7x17 - Born again identity

Just remember, this was after everything that happened in season 6 and widow!dean arc 1.0

Forward to Cas' speech in 15x18, yes the parallels.

Swear this is a whole Dean thesis. If we go back to what started this whole thing in tmwwbk. Dean tells Cas, we can fix this. And he never stopped wanting to fix it.

8x17 - Goodby Stranger

Like, I know they established that it didn't make sense for Dean to say I love you here, which fair, and we ended up which I need you (somehow worse).

But if we look at this as a whole, what Dean might understand is that saying I love you makes people leave him. Fastforward to the part when Dean takes the sigils so Cas can find him and Naomi visits and tells him that Cas doesn't return his feelings. Fastforward again to the You didn't trust me because even if we get to know that it was hard for Cas to leave with the tablet, away from Dean, Dean doesn't. For Dean, he left him, without even acknowledging that he loves/needs him, ignored him, and didn't trust him. Imagine you say I love you and you are left feeling abandoned, betrayed, and angry.

8x19 - Taxi Driver

This in the middle of I love you, and You didn't trust me is something

8x22 - Clip show

The one guy that's always had your back.

9x22 - Stairway to Heaven

Don't know what they smoked to write this, but I want some

10x23 - Brother's Keeper

You'll see the word shattered used a lot. This very much both destiel and drowley imo.

Season 12 is weirdly filled with these, so here are special mentions (because the max of pictures is 30 and there are too many moments). Most likely, it has to do with the market research by the end of 2016, which is why from 12-15, these scenes are more emotionally charged.

Mary saying Good friend when Dean and Cas hug in 12x01

Cas told Mary I promised (Dean) when they were talking outside the barn before going in to help Dean save Sam in 12x02

Dean telling Mary Get him outta here! when Cas was wounded in 12x12. And of course, when Cas says the things they have shared changed him (but that's on screen)

Cas texts? from 12x16

Dean is a worried husband on 12x18.

Dean explaining that no matter how much Cas messed up, did the wrong thing, or every dumb move he got it in 12x20. Cas was always Cas.

12x10 - Lily Sunder has some regrets

Dean telling Cas he has changed, and it has all been for the good. Again, forward to 15x18.

12x19 - The Future

This whole episode is charged with scenes from Dean and Cas. Like you have the angry Welcome home from Dean when Cas returns from Heaven. Dean calls Cas a super strong dude in a trenchcoat. The mixtape scene with the That was a gift. To keep. And Dean softening a bit even if he's angry because he's more worried.

But I think the biggest one is this one. The destiel sex scene (jk)

And after this, even though it is said in the show. There is more insistence from Dean to not let go of Cas -> We're not gonna let you just walk away. Not again. Not happening.

12x23 - All Along the Watchtower

The word shattered is mentioned a lot in the scripts. This is every part that describes Dean's reactions after losing Cas. Forward to 15x18.

13x06 - Tombstone

This is one of the best things that never happened in the show. You have Dean choking down his emotions saying he's much better now and Cas who fought with the empty with everything he had in 13x04 to return to Dean, coming to a meadow near a windmill because Dean thought he'd like it.

13x14 - Good Intentions

Forget about the in love part. They are best friends, and we didn´t get this.

13x20 - Unfinished Business

He lost Cas and it damn near broke him. Not we lost Cas, I.

14x12 - Prophet and Loss

Losing Dean was unacceptable. Cas said that losing Dean was unacceptable. And Dean got emotional. And then forward to 15x18, Cas just goes no, Dean can't die because that'd be unacceptable to me, so i'll sacrifice. And then, Dean gets emotional. Again. But for Dean, the unacceptable happened.

15x09 - The Trap

Forward to 15x20. In this future that Chuck showed Sam that he lost Dean the second Cas was gone.

Have I said how much they used the word shattered. Anyway, Dean wanted Cas to stay. That's his best friend.

He's amazing.

15x18 - Despair

This is not that different from what it was filmed, it is just that seeing it described makes it different. Especially when you get things as Still beautiful, still Dean Winchester, Dean is emotional, stunned, shocked. And have I said how much they used the word shattered. Also, you can see how it starts as a confession because Cas is confessing that he made a deal, but then it ends as a declaration, a declaration of love. Which makes testament such a good word for it.

15x19 - Inherit the Earth

The fact that Dean couldn't say Cas was gone

He's not the ultimate killer. He's not daddy's blunt instrument. He's someone who raised his little brother for love, who fought for the world for love and the most caring man on Earth

15x20 - Carry On

We don't talk about this episode because the script has way too many [omitted] but this is exactly what happened in 15x09 when Chuck showed their future to Sam if they followed the road they were taking.

Okay, that was it. Probably missed some, but for me, these are the parts that stand out.

[lurkingshan]

My mind has been spinning and spinning around episodes 3 and 4, and I have so many feelings about them that I have been struggling to decide what I want to write about. One of @bengiyo's questions is about the different feel of this part of the story in the transition from page to screen, including the overall kdramafication effect, and I felt that most keenly where Hyung was concerned.

Let's start with the obvious: Hyung is not supposed to be this young and hot. But then, Young is not supposed to look like Nam Yoon Su, so I guess we can let that one go. More than that, though, I think episode 3 went out of its way to make Yeong Su a more appealing love interest than he ever seemed to be in the novel, and that had a clear purpose: to make the comedown in episode 4 so much worse.

Episode 3 used the familiar trappings of romance dramas to help us understand why Go Yeong was so drawn to this man despite some of his rough edges. They had interesting dates with good conversations. They shared an umbrella in the rain. They kissed sexily outside. They danced together in Yeong Su's (much nicer than described in the book) apartment. I may or may not have actually said OH MY GOD out loud when they were moving together to that old song; it was intoxicating in exactly the way early attraction is. Instead of viewing Hyung through the bitter recollections of Young's memory already knowing he's a bastard, we experienced him the way Go Yeong did when he was first catching his interest, and it was easy to see why he would latch onto this man as a balm and a distraction while he was going through a very hard time with his mother's illness.

Which means it hurt so much worse when Go Yeong emerged from that initial haze in episode 4 and realized who Yeong Su really was. He got a hard look at the deep internalized homophobia Yeong Su was carrying and projecting onto him, and it was not pleasant, nor was the way it echoed across his experiences with his mother.

Another interesting change made in the adaptation was to increase the severity of Hyung's crime; where in the novel he only searched and read articles on the evils of homosexuality, in the show he wrote the damn article while Go Yeong slept in his bed. A much larger betrayal and blow for Young. And this makes sense for the screen version, IMO; the romance is deeper and therefore so must be the fracture. Everything is just a bit bigger and more dramatic to amplify the themes of the story and to help the audience understand why this might drive Go Yeong to such a low moment without the benefit of his internal monologue to connect all the dots.

I was reflecting on these changes and how they affected the tone when I read @solitaryandwandering's thoughts, because I was intrigued by her reception of these episodes as darker, where for me, with the (much) more depressing novel version in my head, they felt lighter than expected. Which is kind of a wild thing to say about a section of the story that includes Young's suicide attempt, but context is everything! The T-aras, of course, also contribute to how different this section feels. In the book, Young is presented as so isolated and alone with this relationship, but in the show he has friends who know and care and try to help and show up for him in his low moment to make sure he is not alone. It makes such a difference to the bleakness of it all, and also makes the story feel more cohesive across the different parts in a way the book intentionally does not.

I think ultimately the adaptation choices made here were smart, and I continue to be impressed with how thoughtful Sang Young Park has been with his different visions for his story in each medium.

[ganondoodle]

okay i do have to do a mini (i call it mini now.. this is just letting my feelings about it out, so its spelled agressively bc im just so .. frustrated ... also not hate to the studio or the people working on it .. obviously >_>) rant about arcane-

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ARCANE SEASON 2

its the most beautiful show ever produced, i mean it, its style, fortiche's (the studio) style, is just .... impossibly pretty, 3d and 2d, the animation is just so GOOD, the designs largely (like 95%) are too, the acting and sound design, the voice acting (at least the english one) is so emotional and good, the show in general is just good ... until the last episode

i have my own problems with riot declaring arcane the new canon out of nowhere and for no good reason since it was, im very sure, never conceived to be that, its a reinterpreation and works best as such, now literally everything is once again completely messed up, no one knows whats real and what isnt, no champion or story is safe, especially with the weird hexcore bullshit potentially erasing the VOID (whish is like ... half on which the canon was built on tbh) AND hextech- multiple champions being impossible to exist now .... but thats not what i wanted to talk about

i was pretty on board with everything the show did, though i wasnt a big fan of the whole hexcore stuff, but it all spiraled so far out of control, it just kept making everything worse, also with bringing in the black rose and leblanc, it kept piling stuff onto the plate despite them already compressing everything so drastically; espeically regarding viktor, but i kept my hope up even after season 2s act 2 bc it still seemed 'fixable', though not easily so

what i liked about it (in its writing) despite its pacing issues was that it was rather .. self contained for the longest time, focused on the characters and the class struggle of piltover and zaun, and doing so rather well imo, like it did and said things i did not expect riot to let through

i was worried with the alternate universe stuff that came with the escalating hexcore bullshit but held onto hope even until episode 8 and then ...man .. the last episode ... the fuck was that- like i hate timetravel and multiverses and whatever but the thing with ekko was done rather neatly ... they made all those chaarcter models and sets just for that short stuff and really .. was of little use other than getting heimerdinger out of the picture as well lmao maybe he will get his own series to advertise for 200 dollar skins in league hahaaaa but i guess the main point was to give ekko the z-drive ... which feels alot like what i feared about them forcing it to comply with the characters in game ,,,, even though that wasnt for everyone like warwick was done SO dirty after giving me hope in act two

everythings focused on the hexcore/arcane shit, theres the black rose shit (honestly i think it was a mistake bringing them in too bc .. noxus is its entire own region with so many champs and story itself that got connected via ambessa .. which was a new character the show made up until they made her a champ now .. its just too much to put into this one show already going at a breakneck pace), mel doing her bit with them then bam she mage now which felt like a champion teaser more than an organic part of the story, especialyl with how hard it got pushed later (poor little riots gotta sell more game cosmetics uwu), jayce just taking over control again and everyone going with it, singed reviving stupid version victor via using vander/warwick WHO WAS STILL ALIVE AFTER ISHA BLEW HERSELF UP TO STOP HIM FROM KILLING EVERYONE (which was ALREADY pretty cheap, but i guess jinx had to be even more suicidal than she already was heehoo), dont even ask me HOW, viktor was just whoops from corpse to im a cocoon now, ambessa being so obsessed with it, the entire class struggle being """"solved"""" by piltover and zaun fighting stupid viktors weird ass robot shitheads together and then acting like giving sevika a seat at the council is the solution to it, half the cast just dying horribly for honestly no reason?? ORIANNA being now i guess some weird viktor robot but without the mindcontrol part and singed just kinda ... winning i guess by giving her cocoon some goo of stupid viktors cocoon

it just all ... turning from this so drama, character and class struggle thing into weird ass dimension hopping magical world war that all gets solved bc we fought together once uwu AND it being a fucking timeloop WITHIN what ONE episode? and that being the ENDING (i know i know the hexcore bs was building up throughout the show but it still felt so .. unearned and sudden ... )

also i got personal gripes with the 'ending' bc .. was it REALLY an ending like they kept saying?? was it?? viktor, jayce, heimerdinger, jinx are just disappeared i guess, mel going back to noxus- the fucking 'our story isnt over' tease???? the last minute appearance of swains fucking raven???? pecking at something blue and shining like idk a hex crystal??? SHUT UP i dont want more to come, this story should have had its self containing ending, not this open ended bullshit that just reeks of corporate meddling bc they want their game to connect to their popular show as much as possible now so we gotta bring in as many teases and connections to other champions YIPPIEEEEE (yelling)

also if jinx is dead, wow, what a way to end her story, the traumatized suicidal character being tortured and tortured especially after seemingly having something good for once (i liked act 2 except for its ending the most bc ... man jinx was so enjoyable there, i loved her dynamic with vi and isha and half wolf vander warwick with the beast and man struggle i love alot, that part was genuinely beautiful, i wasnt a fan of the idea of idk ekko doing time stuff and them having a happy ending bc i just dont like going back in time to fix everything kinda stuff, but i would have much much prefered that, not changing the existing story into the perfect world where everythings happy (though i liked that part ... vander silco being gay husbands like that is just so goood) but to fix what is fixable in the present- them still having gone through alot but being able to live with it, so act 2 setup was honestly my favorite way to not invalidate everything and still have something happy .... but no we gotta kill the kid to make jinx even worse and vander/warwick too while we are at it

if shes not dead (given you see a blimp(?) flying away and her scribbles showing up and caitlyn looking at the blueprints of the hexgates) then ... ??? oh yeah lets make her leave zaun and just idk go be the main character in noxus or soemthing for the next show they are gonna do bc jinx is popular so putting her everywhere is a good idea!!!1!!11

ALSO since vander/warwick is my favorite .. i thought maybe after isha doing that, if they dont reverse it, hed get taken by singed again or ran away and turned fully werewolf like he is in the game (though i would have liked if they were able to be a weird family like in act2)- but no he just gets used as fuel for stupid viktor cocoon and then mind erased and made into the ugliest weird robot thing that looks more like galio than him JUST and i feel like it really is JUST to have Vi at the end do the scene that gets jinx 'killed' .. to lead into the 'more to come' teaser.. idk about you but that scene felt so .. forced, the typical oh no platform is slowly falling down but Vi suddendly gets emotional about weird ugly robot warwick (who conveniently comes back to life as ugly robot beast since his human mind got erased but not the beast??? i guess???) and completely ignores jinx yelling at her to get to safety, it felt so WEIRD to me (if you gotta do him like that at least let Vi listen to jinx, them embracing and then watchign emotionally as robo vanderwick falls into the hexgate thing .. that was still active somehow i guess??)

(poor viktor got done so dirty too .. i liked him .. until it all went weird wit hthe hexcore stuff ....... ..... also jayce weird speech to him .. why the FUCK did you not do that back in the cult camp instead of blasting him to bits, i get it he was fucked up from seeing the future, but then later hes just ... okay???? pretty fine all things considered??? and pretty aware of everything?? also his weird speech being all like vitkor actually you were perfect in your imperfection BITCH HE WAS SLOWLY DYING AN AGONIZING DEATH???? idk ??? it all feels so weird to me, like there episodes literally missing- ambessa dying also felt so unnecessary .. just so mel can take her place and go to noxus and have more shows maybe- )

i just .... and just like how i cant enjoy botw anymore after them fucking it all up with totk ... i dont know if i will rewatch arcane knowing it ends like that, what was that for, the most beautiful show ever made just to do a game of thrones ending in a single episode?

im so tired of it all ..... im so tired of being disappointed and feeling let down over and over no matter with how little expectations i go in with

this willl be the only arcane rant unless theres some .. big stupid reveal that gets me more frustrated than i am now, which i hope there isnt .. im tired of being and feeling like this .. i just want to enjoy things, everythings going to shit IRL and i cant even find something enjoyable to watch

[eightyonekilograms]

Obviously, JD Vance's proposal to give parents additional votes stirred up a furor from progressives saying it's anti-feminist, reactionary, trying to keep women in the kitcen, etc.

And I agree with them. Frankly I wouldn't shed a single tear if Trump "who will rid me of this meddlesome running mate"-d a second VP in a row and I never had to hear from Vance or his 2010!NRx ideas ever again. But I have a more prosaic objection also: if implemented, I don't think this plan would actually work?

Like, as I understand it, there are two proposed justifications for how this might be a good idea, but I don't think either of them stand up to scrutiny.

The first (and less plausible) one is, people who selfishly want more votes will have more children in order to get more political leverage for [whatever they want]. Even though they're doing it for selfish reasons, children are a public good, and so on net this is good for society.

I think this theory can be dispensed with pretty easily. It sounds just like one of those $1000 payments for having another child that budges the birth rate not at all because it's way too small a reward for the expense involved. Even speaking as someone intensely annoyed by trendy anti-electoralist cynicism, I know the EV of an additional vote is microscopic compared to the expense of having children. It won't move anyone except at the very bleeding edge of the margin.

But that's the easy case. The much more interesting theory of the Vance Plan is that of fixing broken incentives. The story goes like this: one feature of democracy, for better or worse, is that it rewards those who show up. If you have no vote (or don't use your vote), you are invisible to democracy, so your wants will be systematically underrepresented. This is why wealthy first-world countries are increasingly gerontocratic in both legislative makeup and resulting policy: old people reliably vote, young people don't, so even with no conspiracy involved, democracy gravitates to favoring the wants of the old. Vance says, hey, children cannot vote, so just as you'd predict, their interests (as a class!) get ignored, so we end up with a legislative landscape that doesn't favor children and makes it harder to raise them.

It makes perfect sense on paper! But I think in the real world it falls apart.

What are the actual bits of legislation and policy which discourage people from having more children? I mean, people can and do argue furiously over this question, but IMO three of the most significant ones are:

NIMBY localist housing policy locking young potential parents out of the housing market

More localist tax and education policy making competition for "good schools" a Red Queen Race which drives up house prices still further, requiring two working parents

Safetyist legislation which, while well-intentioned, is making everything from cars to child care more expensive than it necessarily needs to be

In order to believe that giving parents additional votes will cause a more child-friendly society to emerge via electoral pressure, you have to believe that parents are more likely than non-parents to oppose 1, 2 and 3. And that just... doesn't seem true? At best there's no difference, and to be blunt, I think as a class parents tend to be worse than non-parents on all three. #NotAllParents, of course, there are plenty of people with kids who still want good abundance policy, but averaged over everybody I think it's hard to deny that parenthood tends to push people toward defensive, loss-averting "protect the children" mentalities which, on a global scale, fuck everyone else over. That talking point you constantly see among the Very Online Right that parents are more likely than non-parents to think Beyond Themselves and want to build a stable world for the long term, just seems obviously false to me. Or at least if it is true, it's true in a way which is mostly irrelevant, since these "long-view parents" don't know how to turn those wants into policy which actually achieves them.

Frankly, I think it's easy to envision a world where the Vance Plan makes all policy around child-rearing worse instead of better, and depresses the birth rate even further.

[windvexer]

What counts as a spell? Is intent all you need or do you have to do something before to get it all juicy and stuff.

Hi Anon! What a fun question, because there is no answer except this CAN OF WORMS you just opened.

There is no consensus anywhere as to what constitutes a "spell."

There is even LESS consensus as to what makes a spell go.

Intent is a good starting place. It is probably where you should start for all acts of practical magic.

But I find that in it's common form, the idea of intent + willpower = magic has been diluted past the point of utility for most people.

Like if we're talking about "intent is everything" I'm reminded most closely of Chaos Magic. But Chaos Magic is not a school of "just set your intent and you've worked magic!". It's a very rigorously developed system.

In Hine's Condensed Chaos, he lists the third Core Principal of Chaos magic as technical excellence, and I quote:

One of the early misconceptions about Chaos Magic was that it gave practitioners carte blanche to do whatever they liked, and so become sloppy (or worse, soggy) in their attitudes to self-assessment, analysis, etc. Not so. The Chaos approach has always advocated rigorous self-assessment and analysis, emphasized practice at what techniques you're experimenting with until you get the results you desire. Learning to 'do' magic requires that you develop a set of skills and abilities and if you're going to get involved in all this weird stuff, why not do it to the best of your ability?

Later in the book, Hine likens "magical powers" to the concept of achievements, and goes on to say:

Something which is an achievement is the result of practice, discipline, and patience.

Shortly after:

Chaos Magic is not about discarding all rules and restraints, but the process of discovering the most effective guidelines and disciplines which enable you to effect change in the world.

(In above quotes, all emphasis my own)

But these ideas get taken - and I'll give a big nod to the LOA which is just the worst kind of brainrot for encouraging the "intent is all that matters" mindset - and the ideas get diluted so much that people are literally out here saying, "so all those people who spend years studying magic in order to get results are buffoons? All I have to do is imagine what I want and it will be delivered to me? All humans since the start of history just have to decide they want something and it will happen in a miraculous manner?"

(Not you, Anon. I'm just in a mood)

In my mind, yes - something beyond intent must occur in order to make spells go.

But what?

Anon, have you ever heard that dumb belief floating around that all herbs in a spell can be replaced by rosemary, and all stones in a spell can be replaced by clear quartz, and these two things are "universal substitutes"?

I am 95% sure that this nonsense was based on two very popular dictionaries Cunningham wrote in the 80s, the Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic, and Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs.

In the very long entry for Clear Quartz:

Quartz crystal is used as a power amplifier during magic. It is worn or placed on the altar for this purpose.

And from Rosemary:

Rosemary is generally used as a substitute for frankincense.

And I believe that someone somewhere got the idea that since clear quartz amplifies all other powers, it therefore somehow magically Ditto-copies all other powers, and like a shapeshifter somehow becomes something it is not nor ever was.

And, you know. What's the difference between subbing out frankincense and blackthorn between friends?

These beliefs have become so popular that sometimes when unscrupulous blogs rip off entire Cunningham encyclopedia entries and paste them into tumblr posts (without credit), THEY INCLUDE THE EXTRA MADE-UP BIT ABOUT ROSEMARY BEING A UNIVERSAL SUBSTITUTE.

Anon, your question is "is it just intent or do we need other stuff to make it go," but sadly,

IMO common beliefs about the stuff that makes spells go have also been diluted past the point of utility for most people.

Because if I sat here and said, "hey Anon, it's not just intent, you also have to use correspondences ^-^/" then the very first thing you are likely to run into is absolute nonsense about correspondences. IMO, effective utilization of correspondences is a skillset based in research, theory, and technique.

Or if I said, "you also have to raise energy! 👍", this may be mistaken to mean, "set intent but also visualize white light inside of a candle," because the concept of raising energy and visualizing has been (IMO) diluted past the point of utility for most people. I believe that effective utilization of energy work is a song composed of many notes and chords, several of which you must practice before you can utilize it.

And to complicate all of this, which non-diluted things in which combinations you need to make the spell go depends on what paradigm you operate off of, because while there are approximately one billion ways to do magic that works, my currently very dim worldview is that most people who are talking about magic are doing magic that doesn't work,

and in my opinion the actual basis and reasoning, like the rationality behind the magical systems is really important. Because you need that shit to understand what it is within that system that makes the spell go.

And you need to understand what makes the spell go to make the system fit into your life without breaking it, and in order to troubleshoot problems without making things crumble further.

Because when people don't understand the basis and reasoning you end up with "rosemary is a universal substitute" and "imagining white light makes the spell go."

There are a few circumstances where you can totally strip technique from theory and be successful, but there are also a hell of a lot of people out here feeling shit about their practice because their spells never seem to work.

So.

I really just recommend choosing what school of magic you would like to learn about and participate in, and reading an introductory book on it.

This is because it is the job of introductory books to explain the principles and theories behind a system of magic, and most importantly, what makes the magic go, and a step-by-step primer on what you, the practitioner, are supposed to do to make that kind of magic go.

Despite above rambles I'm really not a Chaote, so I can't recommend a strong primer. As far as I'm aware, Liber Null & Psychonaut by Peter J. Carroll is a core text.

For Traditional Witchcraft, try The Crooked Path by Kelden.

For something more Wiccan, I can't recall having anything bad to say about Psychic Witch by Mat Auryn.

If either of these things are too Witchcrafty for you, try Six Ways by Aidan Wachter, which is still witchcraft, but it hits different.

For a general primer on helping your spells go, try Elements of Spellcrafting by Jason Miller.

[shutupineedtothink]

Ok this has been sitting in my drafts for a minute but since nobody asked for it, here’s my full Nicky headcannon. It leads into an insane MCU witch movie with Agatha, Wanda, Rio, Billy, Tommy (?), maybe Jen and even Alice. All the witches! I got yall.

So, Nicky Scratch. That boy is Agatha and Rio’s but most prominently he is Death’s Son, right. A demigod something or other, an entity, Something Else. Not really human/mortal, but certainly not dead either. He’s in the same class of whatever Rio is. Rio knows this from day one. Agatha does not.

That means two main things: Nicky isn’t really “dead,” (he wasn’t even supposed to be “living”) and that kid should have hella powers. We should have seen some indication of that imo in the show but I can explain it away easily enough in a minute. Either way, under the surface he should have scary magic along the lines of Billy if not far more powerful.

Except while Billy has essentially Wanda’s magic, creator magic, Nicky’s is much, much darker. You know, something fitting of a child of Death.

Let’s say Nicky has Black Magic. 👀 haven’t seen that one on the color wheel of magic colors yet amirite. (Except the Darkhold I suppose, which is an interesting connection potentially.) Or maybe it's like Dark Magic, as in literal darkness. Darkling style. Maybe it's somehow a dark/light binary, like how Rio is technically a death/life binary. Idk I'm working on it, but you get the idea. He's on another level, something adjacent to Rio but not quite the same.

His magic is so strong, corrosive, not evil necessarily but heavy and consuming, that it was killing his mortal body from the beginning.

That’s why he was never meant to live in the first place — like Rio he is Another Being, his magic is Something Else. It’s too much for a human little boy. He needed to join her to really “live” and have any hope of control over his magic.

His powers also make him a massive target for who knows what demons and underworld beings. … you see where this could go.

So in this version, let’s say Rio has a much deeper connection to Nicky on a magical level. She can tell when his magic is about to manifest in the world of the living and takes him right before that happens, otherwise both him and Agatha will be in danger. Perhaps she even tells Nicky what’s happening, and he can feel it coming too, which also accounts for why he goes with her so willingly, to protect his mama from his own power. Kind of a lot for a six-year-old to understand but again, he’s Special.

Maybe Rio’s even been keeping the monsters off Nicky and Agatha’s trail while Nicky was human. Tbh it was a miracle she managed it for six years alongside her other responsibilities. She never told Agatha a) because she didn’t want her being more afraid than she already was, b) because would it have really made any difference, Agatha would hate her either way and c) For The Drama.

When Rio takes Nicky, maybe she stashes him in some kind of purgatory space. Pocket dimension? Idk we have no idea what she has access to but let’s say she hides him away somewhere so that she can teach him to use his magic and keep him away from the demons. This is where I would pull in Alice if possible, after we see Rio take her into the smoke in ep 8 Rio makes her an offer to help her protect Nicky in purgatory for a while, because his powers are only getting stronger and she's starting to get worried something's going to happen. Yes, diverting a soul like that is wildly against the rules. She does it anyway for her son.

All of this of course makes Agatha’s hatred for Rio that much worse, because Nicky is still “alive” in a sense and Rio is doing everything she can to protect him and raise him and help him control his magic. She can’t tell Agatha any of this because anyone else who knows about Nicky is a liability. Again, she really shouldn’t have even let him live with Agatha in the first place, it was a massive risk to everyone involved. But she did, and Agatha has no idea what a gift that was, for her and for Nicky.

All of that said, this would set us up for some CRaZy MCU witch/underworld stuff. So here’s the rough outline of my movie: let’s say the demons finally find Nicky wherever Rio has him hidden and take him to the underworld, Mephisto, blah blah whatever. I’m not worried about the motive at this point. Age Nicky up to Billy’s age roughly so he can be a real character. Btw, in my head Nicky is still the sweetest bean, total opposite to either of his mothers, too good for this world, cursed with this insane power he doesn’t know what to do with. Obviously, we have some opportunity to develop him from there.

Anyway, once she finds out he’s gone, Rio is forced to tell Agatha the truth. There’s no one else she can trust to get Nicky back. (I’m imagining a juicy confrontation between the two of them where we just let Kathryn and Aubrey cook with the exposition.) Rio can’t go to the underworld herself for some reason, because of The Cosmic Rules, and the Jac Schaeffer rules of Rio can’t hang around on screen for too long (which I like, actually).

Rio only deals with the mortal plane and directing souls to whatever comes next. So it has to be Agatha who rescues him, but as a ghost she’s stuck on the mortal plane too. So now we gotta “bring her back to life,” because I need real life Kathryn Hahn in this full movie not as a ghost, you feel me. And she has to be able to use her magic. So we gotta manifest a new body around her ghost form. At first they think Billy can do it, but even he’s not that powerful, not to mention still relatively untrained.

… Do you see the vision yet?

There’s only one witch, who may or may not be dead, who can manifest Agatha Harkness back into a living breathing body. And Agatha HATES it with every fiber of her noncorporeal being, but she needs the Scarlet Witch to make her mortal again, so that she can go to the underworld and save her son. Of course, chaos and shenanigans ensue, and Wanda and the boys end up going with her.

I’m calling the movie — Agatha Harkness and the Scarlet Witch. It’s a team up babyyyy! It’s about women and power, Wanda and Agatha being two sides of the same coin, mothers and their sons, rewriting your story, reuniting and letting go, etc etc etc. Yes I have entire scenes already written in my head, no I’ll never actually write the fic or the screenplay, if somebody wants to run with this please let me know and I’ll give you what I got.

The point is, the story potential on Nicky is insane to be The One Who Brings Everyone Else Together and I really hope they don’t just throw it away.

[destiny-smasher]

(Nemona getting totally blown off and stonewalled once again and trying to shrug it off once again, she's so determined! </3)

Since people on the Internet get fussy with this shit, let me state upfront these are my opinions, from the perspective of someone who shares a lot of personality traits in common with Nemona and used to be a lot like her in my younger years. Nemona's lying when she says Scarlet's behavior and needless secrecy doesn't bother her at all. She keeps enduring the neglect (and sometimes straight up abuse), because she thinks that's what Scarlet needs atm. It's hard to say how things will pan out atm imo.

The manga mischaracterizes Nemona in some ways for me -- or I guess it's more proper to say, I do not think the way the manga characterizes Nemona is as positive as the games. The manga so far really makes her out to be less mature, less healthy mentally/emotionally, and kind of a pushover who actively lets others step all over her. I don't prefer it lol

She experiences an 'invisible wall' between herself and everyone else. And Scarlet's behavior so far in PokeSpe would only exacerbate that -- BUT, the two could clearly have a very meaningful bonding if they both stick things through, in a way the game version of Nemona doesn't because the story forces the protag to more just go along with everything.

I want to believe the manga will eventually have Nemona learn to adapt to Scarlet, Scarlet slowly open herself up to Nemona over time, start doing GOOD for her in return, and heaven forbid, maybe even apologize for mistreating Nemona -- though I don't expect the latter for sure.

It can be very exhausting and draining to endure what Nemona is enduring, but if you have that determination and willpower to put up with someone's worse traits because you see the good in them, sometimes it's good to use that to be there for the other person.

Everyone's struggles are unique and people exhibit their flaws in different ways. Nemona is "too much" and Scarlet pushes back in hostile ways. Their personalities are potentially toxic for one another, tbqh, but there's so much value imo in them bridging that gap.

The core of most fictional relationships I genuinely care about and many of my real life ones is the idea of bridging the understanding gap, through communication and gestures and time spent together, where there is mutual growth and reassurance.

Because of how I've been mistreated in the past, it's REALLY difficult for me to look at Nemona/Scarlet even just as friends and not be very worried about them. They're not self-aware yet, much less mature enough to navigate their differences. But they COULD be.

Many of the most edifying and growth-defining relationships of my life were due to stark differences in personality being reconciled with mutual care, assurance, trust, and just plain holding on. I think these two can totally reach that. I just don't know if they WILL here.

Because the fact is, Scarlet's behavior is hurtful. She clearly has reasons she is this way, and sometimes you just gotta get that shit out. And having people strong enough to endure that shit can be valuable, even if you don't realize it at the time. But it's a fine line.

Scarlet seems to be dealing with mental health issues, or at the least neurodivergency -- and Nemona at least has the latter going on, too. That creates a lot of tension. But that also means they can be there for each other in a meaningful way if they can work that shit out.

At the current rate they're going, however, Scarlet's behavior isn't improving so far. It's like she just gets to be a jerk and 'get away with it' and everyone is supposed to be fine with that? Doesn't settle well with me, and Nemona sure doesn't deserve this treatment.

But at the same time, Nemona IS one of those rare people with the willpower and stubborn determination to keep being there for Scarlet in spite of things not going well for a while -- even a long while. She sees the good in Scarlet even if Scarlet doesn't.

The manga has NOT done much at all so far to sell us on Scarlet/Nemona working out even just as friends, but it feels deliberate how their dynamic has been set up. So I want to have hope there, but it does remind me a bit too much of stuff from my past, so I get trepidatious.

In a way, part of Operation Comet Punch (my long fic) entails exploring that very trepidation and (I hope) coming up with at least one 'version' of reconciling things in a healthy, mutually supportive way for everyone involved (and that goes beyond just Nemona and Scarlet).

I hope the manga can figure out ways to do this, too. Because I like the idea of Nemona and Scarlet at least becoming good friends over time. It's just difficult to see right now if you're being pragmatic.

"Desma this is a manga primarily targeting middle school boys wtf are you talking about"

Look, between my own fanfic about these characters and my real life experiences, I can't help but analyze and try to be optimistic on all fronts. I get triggered a bit by 'toxic yuri' and this is reminding me of that, but I want to believe in it EVOLVING beyond that (pun intended). And I know it can.

[swallowerofdharma]

Following the discussion from here. Hoping you don’t mind if I make a new post so that the other one doesn’t become too heavy. I’m answering some lingering questions, but I am also saying that I won’t be dissuaded from treating this manga differently. As said recently*, Yoneda takes such care to give details and context to the story, that it is intriguing to look into things with analytical eyes and I can’t see the problem with it. For those who maybe feel like “the story isn’t that deep”, that is more offensive to the author tbh than to me or others in fandom who write commentaries. * @dragomfry said: “It makes our analyses of her work hold extra weight because there are things that she wants us to look for and derive meaning from (rather than us trying to derive meaning from nothing to begin with)”.

So to clear this first.

I can’t quite see why this story would be distorted into something it’s not intended to be if we approach it under a romantic lens.

I am not debating people for approaching the story romantically, but - because some troubling arguments were made about the recent poll - I will say this. Rape culture takes some arguments from romantic and patriarcal views to defend the aggressors and blame the victims instead: this isn’t romanticism’s fault, but the very fact should be at least taken into consideration. [More on this below**]. So several of the reflections I was writing about framing the manga as romance rather than literary realism were prompted by this issue. And reading your thoughts about the story, I can understand where we differ so much: and that is in how we view Doumeki especially, rather than the rest. Maybe you are not romanticizing Yashiro and his trauma, but you are especially romanticizing Doumeki. For example:

I allow myself to indulge in the romanticism of it all; both of them falling in love at first sight, depressed Yashiro finally finding someone who truly cares about him, Doumeki who doesn’t back down when Yashiro rejects him, Doumeki still having feelings for Yashiro even after he shot him in the leg and pretended not to remember him, etc. There’s so much in this story that’s blatantly romantic, almost corny.

There are many aspects of the manga that I do find realistic in it’s portrayal, such as the CSA, what I don’t find realistic, however, is the portrayal of love, the romance. I find it very idealised and romanticised for the most part (i.e the falling in love at first sight (I’ll get to that), Doumeki being Yashiro’s exact type, Doumeki happens to be impotent which allows Yashiro to develop feelings for him, the fact that Doumeki is completely accepting of everything Yashiro does regardless of how Yashiro treats him, the fact that Doumeki is still in love with Yashiro after he shot him the leg, maybe he even stayed in the Yakuza world just to be near him (although who knows why exactly he did that?) Idk maybe it’s just me but I find it very unrealistic. It’s this romantic idea of „there is this perfect person out there who accepts you just the way you are and you don’t have to do anything to keep them happy, you can even shoot them in the leg and they’ll still love you, they’ll stick around no matter what it takes to be with you“.

I can’t pick and choose what I want to romanticize or not, I have chosen to look at things differently, and I am keeping the same approach when looking at characterizarion. When I look at Doumeki, I see as many problems as those Yashiro has. He is the one depressed imo, at the beginning of the story, he is in much worse shape than Yashiro. Yashiro has a support network, Doumeki was isolated in prison and kept family away when he was released. Doumeki isn’t this strong and stoic person who is in love with Yashiro and is therefore shouldering a burden or enduring abuse in the name of love. I have been misunderstood before on this, but I want to say that I look at these characters without romanticizing either of them. I am not so much interested in looking at who is right or wrong, or to paint one character in a better light and bashing another: I want to understand their differences and how they came to be, how the relationship is affected by those differences. This is why I don’t take a shipper’s approach either, I am not solely focused in their relationship, but in the story as a whole.

There are several posts where I talked at lenght about these characters, because Yoneda gave a lot of backstory, and I encourage who may be interested in checking further. Doumeki has trouble facing or recognizing reality, until reality kicks him in the face, and that is happening to him since the nurse and Aoi. So he is only observing when it suits him. Yashiro established his emotional boundaries plenty of times, and Nanahara is there to corroborate and reinforce Yashiro’s prefereces. Here are some examples, and these are from volume one alone. It is a pretty clear situation, and Doumeki understood it.

I know that people are objecting to the very idea of framing Doumeki as the aggressor in this case, but the power dynamics had already shifted at that point when things went down in ch 24-25. It is the result of an escalation that sees Doumeki hiding his feelings and his arousal, and becoming more aggressive and unhinged towards others during the investigation into who ordered the hit on Yashiro. Yoneda was painstakingly building towards that scene, while also painting a bigger picture and external plot, and there are so many details that I haven’t even touched upon yet, but nothing is filler. And the parallels between Doumeki’s arousal and his violent behavior can’t be easily ignored.

Again, I feel quite powerless and unequipped to persuade those who already formed their opinion. But when given arguments in favor of dismissing Yashiro’s right to object or arguments that shift the focus away from the simple topic of consent, then I have to ask myself why this is happening. **Rape culture does play a role, and as I said, rape culture can and does weaponize some romantic ideas about love. Or against the autonomy of the person, against choice and so on.

I find it very important that Yoneda chose to put those words in the mouth of an ex-policeman, while dressed up as a policeman, and of another abusive detective with the police. Or the fact that Inami commented on Doumeki’s father building a career to cover up his crimes. See these statements from the Wikipedia page on rape culture:

With how difficult has become to search on the web for unbiased results, I am just giving the Wikipedia page not as a source of authority, but as a peer reviewed summary that provides a starting point for research and some bibliography on the subject. For example:

I want to add that I don’t agree with the way the article frames “men” as perpetrators and “women” as victims. That should be corrected and can be misleading. Men have been historically and consistently discouraged to speak up about being victims of rape themselves and often the law didn’t even consider them. And the gendered approach contributed to make so many victims invisibile. There is so much we have to learn.

Again, this post is solely for the purpose of answering arguments or points made directly to me about how we interpret the story in Saezuru. These are my observations and reflections, the links I see, and it is possible because these things are in the manga. And last, I love love-stories. But romance - especially romantic tropes, often reinforced by fandom shipping culture - don’t always equal love to me.

[divorcedwife]

Im especially interested in your opinion of the companions! Did you like any, how would you rank them, how did they compare to other games.

I did enjoy veilguard myself cause admittedly im a combat enjoyer (boo me now) and the combat was great to me. But what is usually good in dragon age/bioware even if everything else sucks are characters and their stories and interactions and that was so bad in veilguard imo.

Still I liked Davrin and Emmrich and Bellara myself, rest were very mixed, and these three also suffered from bad dialogue and Bellara also from some overt cutesiness.

hehe noooooo i wouldn't boo you! this game really made me realize that i prefer video games as a form of interactive storytelling rather than purely for gameplay, but i mean, i feel like im the weirdo here if anything. video games are games first... as much as i like the combat (especially when it's in big open fields, with opportunities for cover ; god is it satisfying to slowly take down a mob of enemies through clever dodging and hiding, i wayyyy prefer that to spamming the flashy special moves), it feels empty to me if i dont feel connected to the world. ideally, i'd love to play games where i enjoy both, but if i have to pick, i'll prefer a game that i find unfun to play but where i like the writing

i think it's a pretty weak cast, yeah. individually, but also as a group, they lack chemistry to me. most of them get along just fine, but not in a way that's particularly fun or exciting. their relationships aren't interesting to me because they're very samey, both in that most people are friendly and also that they start out friendly and end up friendly. dai isn't a game i love, but for all its flaws, it definitely had fascinating character interactions to me. blackwall's friendship with sera is so different to his friendship with cassandra or with solas, and he's initially wary of cole but grows to like him after a while. and these people all have their opinion of blackwall changed forever by revelations. that's what's lacking to me in companion relationships! growth... change... i did enjoy davrin and lucanis's bickering at least. i also did like how emmrich talked to companions, his therapy talk was actually charming every time i liked emmrich and davrin the most! my only problem with davrin is how often he felt shackled to assan, like the writers felt the need to remind us that he has a cute griffon every three seconds in case we were losing interest. but as a character, i found him really cool. i like how level headed he is, i love how he can't tell when lucanis is messing with him on purpose, those feel like great warden traits. emmrich, i really liked that he had the flaws to match his qualities - i love it when he complains about needing to teach TEN students (gasp!), or when davrin asks him if he knows how to wash dishes and he responds like someone who hasn't washed a dish in ten years, and so on. that's definitely what i found lacking in most companions - actual flaws! it's mind boggling to me how much of the lucanis banter i heard was spent clarifying how unproblematic he is. like he doesn't kill children, doesn't kill people who acted in self defense, doesn't kill innocents. what??? he doesn't even have flaws from growing up rich in a mansion... or being the ultimate nepo baby.................... that made most of the companions feel pretty shallow to me, like they were born right before the game began and had lived nothing

lucanis has enough little things about him i like that i would still say i liked him, but he's not getting honours from me. i like his design (it's very satisfyin to draw somehow), i liked spite, i liked the idea that he's trapped in the ossuary in his mind, i loved going to the mansion and seeing how barren and sad it is there. but i think his romance is my least favorite of any i've done in any dragon age games, and i would say that he was a worse boyfriend to have than the one who tried to kill me and also than the one who turned out to be an axe murderer in disguise, cause at least these two liked talking to my characters! lol

i'd put neve next but if im being honest with myself, i disliked more about her than i liked. i liked her bitter cynic pessimist traits, but i found her somewhat inconsistent on that and generally too friendly. the remaining characters, i didn't find anything compelling about them, i dont remember any moment that i liked with them :-( i really wish i did! i gave everyone as fair a shot as i could, i didn't start out this game looking for things to hate, but they really didn't do anything for me. i think bellara suffered from the fact that i dont really like all the technology in this game, i prefer low magic sad unwashed fantasy. at least she was very beautiful so she does get point for that

[dust-and-grave]

hng, i am so frustrated by this whole watcher tv situation. i've been chewing on it ever since i watched their announcement video yesterday + i've been looking around online at other fan reactions. i'm having a lot of thoughts so i guess i want to throw my two cents in + hope it'll make me feel better to talk about it a little.

i think we all agree that creators should be paid fairly for their work; however, not all work is created equal, right? if i commission an experienced (and thus high-demand) artist to do an oil painting of my cat, they might quote me $500+ to do that + it would be fair. if an artist with substantially less experience (and thus in lower demand) spends 30 seconds on a crayon rendition of my cat, should they also received $500+ for their work? i think most people would agree that would be ridiculous.

in some ways, this is what it feels like the watcher team is doing to us right now, imo. we know that shows like ghost files or puppet history are expensive to make because travel costs (in the case of ghost files) + production costs, but we can see the effort put into the work. we feel that what we give for the show, whether that's turning off ad blocker while watching or buying show merch or supporting via patreon, is going toward making the product that we are asking for. these shows are the oil painting in the metaphor.

i don't agree with how mean + rude some people are being about steven lim rn, but frankly, his shows are the 30 second crayon drawing of the watcher channel. anyone can look at the view count on their channel + see that his shows consistently have performed worse than shane + ryan's shows. additionally, we can see that he blows huge amounts of money on his shows ("$913 seafood tower", "$1027 fried chicken") that may leave a lot of viewers feeling as if they're aren't getting as much bang for their buck.

frankly, i think people are valid for being upset that they're expected to directly foot the bill for steven's "i fly all over the world + eat expensive food while you watch" project. while youtube has a shit ton of problems (like, say, not paying their creators enough), one of the cool things about it is that you can gauge directly the amount of the interest in a project (and how many resources you should dedicate to said project) by how many eyes are on it. unfortunately for him (i guess), steven's shows just don't garner enough attention to justify the expense of making them.

which is why i see this shift to watcher tv as such a problem. this feels very much like using shane + ryan's success on the channel to force fans to fuel steven's pursuit of his glory days on worth it. it feels even more strange when they say that they're making the switch because the company isn't currently sustainable, but steven has just hired his friends from buzzfeed + continues to push his series that just don't seem to be making back the cost of production.

to be totally fair, shane + ryan don't get out of this clean either. some of their shows don't deserve to be behind a paywall either. too many spirits is filmed in ryan's parent's backyard with content submitted by their viewers. are you scared is just ryan reading creepypastas/fan submitted content on a minimal set. survival mode is just them playing games like any other streamer or gaming youtuber does. i love all of these shows, but are they on par with puppet history or ghost files? absolutely not.

this is where i think the disconnect is coming from. they're taking everything including the lower production shows to a streaming service where you have to fund them directly (rather than indirectly through ad revenue). they're forcing funding into steven's projects despite them just not doing well enough to justify the cost. they're coming across as disingenuous with their reasoning because their stated reasons for doing this don't align with their actions rn.

i feel like it would've made so much more sense to crowdfund new seasons of shows (which gives them feedback from the fans about what they want too) or put higher cost shows like ghost files or puppet history on patreon or channel membership. i would gladly fund mystery files, weird wonderful world, ghost files, puppet history, etc. with my own money, but i'm one of the ones who isn't really interested in funding steven's quest to eat all of the gold-plated kobe beef when i'll never be able to afford to eat at a restaurant that even serves it.

[my-pjo-stuff]

i think the reason why people who are against authority also hate Luke is because Luke wasn't anti authority, he was anti olympian/ god.

Seen through his method of trying to dissemble the authoritative power of the gods by overthrowing them with another form of authoritative power. Kronos was no better than the gods - not in myth or pjo - and by trying to take down one government by reinforcing another, similar (if not the same), he is therefore not proving to be anti authority instead just anti god.

Not a great comparison but similarly to when the Russian revolution had overthrown the Tsar due to autocratic rule however then implemented their own autocratic rule in the form of the soviets. This is not solving any issues but rather reinforcing the same structure through a different leadership, there is very little to no chance Kronos would have provided better conditions for the demigods.

that's just my two cents as to why people may be anti authority and anti Luke, (personally i love the titan army) he is simply trading one authority for another which may benefit him (although he was manipulated to believe so). It's his actions that speak the loudest.

Personally I think while this may be the case in a meta light, we have to remember that Luke did not know all this. The Olympians were not just autocratic, they were downright tyrannical. The conditions were at the very bottom for demigods. If you remember up until Rick's retcon for HOO Luke was considered very old by demigodstandarts at the age of 19. They had practically no human rights at all. Luke allied with Kronos because it literally was his only fighting chance for his revolution, aswell as having gotten the promise to get a Golden Age for demigods. As it stands the "authoritarian government" thing was just something that would be there either way, the difference in the two options (to Luke) being "government that actively harms us" VS "government that doesn't". This is absolutely no attack on you or anyone else, but I think we need to remember to see these things from the POVs of the character. We as the audience can always easily say he should have done X or shouldn't have trusted Y based on the info we get- but we need to remember that most characters simply don't have that perspective. Ontop of that Kronos wasn't that much worse than the gods either by comparison. I mean...his main "crime" he's known for is being a tyrant and eating his kids. Zeus has canonically been at least compared to a tyrant one time. He ate Athena's mother in the myth to avoid a prophecy- that's how we got Athena coming from his skull. All things considered the gods and Kronos are round about on the same level on awful. Since you drew the comparison to Russia- the people who revolted against the Tsar did so not with the intent to instate another dictator. They did so because they were being exploited and starved by an upper class. The following tyranny was just something that developed after it in spite of the original idea and goals of the revolution. Luke was anti-establishment IMO who was forced to compromise his original values to some degree to even have a fighting chance.

Basically what I want to say is that while yes, everything you said is true- it's a lot more nuanced and complicated than that. And while it may take some time and thought to get into it- if people want to discuss on the topic they either have to put the work in or just stay out of it.

[klemsk-a]

TL;DR

S2a undermines the concept of redemption so badly it makes me want to cry.

Megatron changing for the better is interesting because it’s complicated. He used to be a warlord, a tyrant, people suffered directly as a consequence of his actions. Unfortunately ES fails to show us these consequences. The closes we have are Starscreams words and that is far from showing us anything.

There are no flashbacks, no actual conversations. Nothing but the present and most of it is from childrens perspective.

This lack of nuance is frustrating. For all we know Megatron might’ve acted exactly the same, but changed factions therefore he is a good guy know.

And this “autobots = good, decepticons = bad” morality is so on the nose in s2a it’s actually kind of pathetic.

The new season needed a villain, and all the hatred for cybertronians apparently evaporated (everybody else just had a change of heart ig and the only 2 people who actually disliked them are dead) and the cons were “always” bad so it doesn’t matter.

It allows the writers not to think about Megatron and problems accompanying his redemption because his victims are terrible so… it’s all fine, don’t worry 👍.

Perhaps it isn’t this way and I majorly misinterpreted the show.

The existence of the chaos terrans really makes me doubt it tho. It also makes me incredibly mad.

Aftermath literally comes into existence, has no idea what’s going on, who is everyone and they’re all fighting. So he does too. And immediately gets called terrible, basically the evil version of the terrans.

WHAT KIND OF MESSAGES IS THAT?

That because you aren’t from a perfect family you’re evil? That is what I got out of it.

Terrans = whole Emberstone = good

Chaos terrans = broken Emberstone = bad

For a show about acceptance and empathy that is a terrible plot point 😀

The episode with Aftermath and Jawbreaker (was extremely boring imo but that’s not important) gives you the impression they’re going to further develop Aftermath. Have him questioning orders and thinking about his choices. But no, he STOLE the entire water from a cave in one tank (how did he even manage???)

Spitfire is an even worse example.

On her first day alive, she gets told that if she wins a race she gets to go on an autobot mission.

She wins, by endangering Alex, and they tell her she won’t get the reword. It’s all understandable but the writers clearly don’t know anything about raising children or children in general.

Yes Spitfire did a bad thing and has to be taught that her behaviour was bad. No they cannot be mad at her for not immediately understanding and agreeing with them. That’s why children (especially toddlers) are infuriating. They don’t know better so you have to teach them, but they will find a loophole to help them get what they want (obviously depends on a child but we are rolling with Spitfires personality). Now depending on what they’ve done to get to it you either reward them or punish them. Because they don’t necessarily understand what they did wrong, even if it’s obvious to you, it can be hard to explain in a way that satisfies a child.

Spitfire lashing out and attacking Twitch is common for kids who believe that someone got something they deserved. It’s especially common if a kid has problems with aggression.

That could’ve been an interesting character development and a good message. Sometimes children won’t be easy to deal with (as all the terrans are, sure they can make bad decisions but ultimately they don’t cause much problems), sometimes they have unpleasant personalities or behavioural problems but it doesn’t make them evil. Being there and loving a child isn’t enough to raise them, discipline is needed and so is patience.

But no.

Aftermath and Spitfire are chaos terrans so they are evil by proxy. Too bad lol.

Twitch and Thrash needed to learn everything. So did Nightshade, Hashtag and Jawbreaker. There was a great deal about self discovery.

Aftermath and Spitfire already have alt modes (at least Spitfire I don’t actually remember Aftermath) and they are just terrible, no good people.

Case closed, problem solved.

Oh. And then they died so…

Unlucky 🤷‍♀️

Redemption in media, especially kids media is important. It sends a message that you can in fact mess up in life, make a couple (hundreds) of mistakes and still come out on top.

But redemption is earned, and it can be (and often is) hard to changed for the better (as opposed to changing for worse).

You shouldn’t change for those you have hurt but so it won’t happen again, so you won’t hurt others again.

Some will come back, some will not.

It IS important that you try nonetheless.

Because no matter what explaining isn’t excusing and no one is born evil.

This show is so FRUSTRATING to me because I cared, and still do obviously (I wrote two versions of this but accidentally deleted the first one so had to write one again).

I really hope S2b will be back on track about acceptance and redemption.

I think Starscream deserved better but sincerely hope they (autobots) will get a hold of him, and him and Megatron will actually talk.

At least let Starscream have his father-daughter relationship with Hashtag, please 🙏.

[alexxncl]

‼️NIGHTBRINGER LESSON 49 SPOILERS‼️

lesson 76 spoilers

gonna be using race and racism as an allegory and an explanation. don't like, don't read

masterlist | theories/spoilers | all lessons | season 3 | lesson 48.1 | lesson 48.2 | lesson 49.1 | lesson 49.2

(for context, the other response was something along the lines of "he really cried his eyes out, huh?")

regardless of how much luke has grown and matured, he's still a kid. like, a kid kid. they cry when they're upset, when they're angry, when they're throwing a tantrum, and when theyre confused and/or overwhelmed. i feel like the latter might be the case with luke, which is why i chose the "i'm sure he'll be ok" option

luke was raised with ideals that painted everything in black and white, as good and evil, and as right and wrong. up until his time as an exchange student in the devildom, he was, for lack of better phrasing, undeniably racist and prejudice to all of demonkind because of the way the celestial war was taught to him, because he was taught to think that way during some of the most foundational years of his life

he was thrust into a world that forced him to not only unlearn every harmful and incorrect thing that the people he believed knew best, that knew everything there is to know about the world, but it forced him to realize that everything that was taught to him was built on some sort of lie, that the life he'd been leading and the way he'd been treating the demons he interacted with made him act no better than, if not even worse than, the way that angels believed demonkind acted in their everyday life

with all of this in mind, he understood why the brothers fell and became demons. they disobeyed their father for (imo, not at all) selfish reasons and started an all-out war, costing who knows how many lives. while harsh, the punishment could be seen as justified

but with simeon, it was different. he was someone who disobeyed their father by stealing a ring with the intent of saving not just the celestial realm, but all three realms, and was banished to being mortal. being punished for acting selfless, for risking your life and immortality for the sake of billions doesn't make any sense, right?

and what makes even less sense is that despite his good deeds, despite being on the right side of the war, despite being an overall good person with good moral standing, despite already beinh punished to a life of mortality, simeon still is faced with the same fate as people who committed treason against god himself and cost thousands of angels their lives

imagine how hard it would be for a 10-year-old or 12-year-old to understand and process his entire life and moral code being flipped on its head, still working through and unlearning his negative biases, followed immediately by his big brother/pseudo father figure being faced with an unimaginably harsh punishment for a "crime" that shouldn't even be considered a crime

luke, to me at least, is an example of why it's so so important to teach kids at a young age how to live in and interact with the people and the world around them, whether they're part of a marginalized community or not. it's so easy to fall down the alt-right pipeline given how easily accessible the internet is to young boys, and unlearning the prejudices, biases, racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. that those things can teach you is not only extremely difficult, but a long road to walk down

idk how many people are gonna read this, and i doubt that it's gonna go outside of the obey me community, but i felt like i had to talk about it