#it’s about THEMES guys and it’s a really good THEMATIC ending

[screenshotsonpinterest]

I often see people complain about httyd the hidden world and its ending and I do understand, it is sad and tragic and a little frustrating

But I feel like people sometimes miss the point that the httyd world is supposed to be our world. It’s explaining why we don’t have dragons now, in reality, in the 21st century. It’s saying that the dragons are still in the hidden world, waiting, and asking us to believe that, if we can treat the earth well enough maybe, one day, they’ll come back

[phillietemple]

analyzing the TIT preshow playlist

I don't remember when, but in a preshow dan said something about how he carefully curated the terrible influence playlist to reflect the exact themes of the show, and that like, you could listen to every song and analyze how it connects to the content of the tour. so I decided to do exactly that! yapping under the cut

also here's a link to the playlist if you haven't seen it!

now i'll be honest, at first i didn't entirely believe dan because he has a tendency to exaggerate things like that lmao. and i saw some of the selections on this playlist and was like "wdym that's about something completely different how is that connected to tit." but then i listened to it with phannie goggles on and like.. he was not kidding! a few of them are a stretch, but all of these songs could be read in a way that is thematically connected to the show.

we know that the tour's main theme is dan and phil healing their relationship with their audience. this is a parasocial relationship that has at times been incredibly toxic for both parties involved (that's what their own song was about). it got to be too much and they had to step away for a bit, but now they are SO BACK and better than ever in a new era where they're older and gayer and everyone's just having fun.

Idolize - Dorian Electra

parasocial moment! yeah this is 100% what’s going on. “i don’t play nice, I scratch, I bite / and I just might have to idolize your life” this is like, the whole problem, isn’t it? great choice for the first song

2. JOYRIDE - Kesha

this one’s so fun. as part of this playlist it’s kind of saying “get ready, this show is about to change your life.” there’s also the line “don’t even try to g-give me shit, i’ve earned the right to be-be like this” which kind of makes sense for this new era.

3. New Woman - LISA, ROSALÍA

i mean this song is about rebirth/ rediscovering yourself and gaining confidence so it definitely applies to this new era of dan and phil. i like the line “pain has come and gone again"

4. Otaku Hot Girl - Megan Thee Stallion

this is dnp recognizing the anime nerds in the audience lol. this song is funny, it’s also very confident which is becoming a theme

5. Drama - aespa

“i bring all the drama” i mean yeah that’s us. that’s this show

6. Talk To Me - Two Shell, FKA twigs

oooh this one’s good. “called you just to check you never wanna see me again / i fly high with the hope that you’ll look up / with one chance, i just wanna be the one that you love” this is like, during the hiatus. we just wanted to talk to them! and i think that goes for both sides!

7. Busy Girl - Tove Lo

another confidence song! this one specifically being more about hustling and being good at your job. dan and phil ARE busy girls. and they are the center of our world

8. Death and Romance - Magdalena Bay

i love this song! and it’s definitely about a toxic/ slightly codependent relationship. “my hands, your hands, I’ll hold forever / no way I’ll break hold, no, not ever / yeah i give and you give til it’s all that we have / you know nothing is fair in death and romance” and interestingly, at the end it changes to “you give and you give til it’s all that you have” which kind of signifies burnout on one side. dude!!

9. Starburned and Unkissed - Caroline Polachek

i had trouble with this one at first since the lyrics are so abstract, but the chorus starts with “come home,” and like. yeah. it’s about missing someone/ something. we’re literally coming home guys

10. So Long London - Taylor Swift

haha funny because they’re leaving london to go on tour. except wait a minute. “how much sad did you think I had / did you think I had in me? how much tragedy? just how low did you think I’d go before I’d self-implode / before I’d have to go be free?” ughh it’s hiatus!! we got a happy reunion eventually but this is the sad “breakup” before that. oof

11. Please Please Please - Sabrina Carpenter

ok the phannie interpretation of this is really funny. the song is about being ashamed of a partner who may not be the best person and how it reflects back on you. “I beg you, don’t embarrass me motherfucker” could definitely apply to both sides here. they’re saying “you guys are crazy but we love you anyway”

12. Lithonia - Childish Gambino

they’re in their era of not giving a fuck! wait this is crazy. “Cody LaRae / he had a break / he’s finding out that nobody gives a fuck” dan and phil had a break and then came back and found out their fans are chill and awesome!!

13. Heartbreak Feels So Good - Fall Out Boy

i haven’t listened to FOB in a long time but this song is really good. it’s kind of about going through a lot but having fun and dancing anyway. like it’s a very emotional song and we don’t even know what those emotions are anymore it’s just A Lot. “we could dance our tears away, emancipate ourselves” yeah!!

14. DiE4u - Bring Me The Horizon

another toxic relationship song! i like the bridge. “this isn’t love, this is a car crash / this isn’t love, this is a bloodbath / this isn’t love, this is a sentence” guys we’re stuck with each other.

15. This Is Why - Paramore

“this is why I don’t leave the house” i mean….. yeah lmao

16. LUNCH - Billie Eilish

this is kind of just a song about being lesbian. i mean it’s queer joy! that’s relevant! i think it’s here for the girl kissers in the audience and also because this album was the best of the year argue with the wall

17. Rush - Troye Sivan

and this one’s for the gays! this is a really obvious choice i mean it’s troye sivan. dnp sing this all the time too

18. Von dutch - Charli xcx

this one is SO good. the confidence song to end them all. “cult classic but i still pop” they’re literally number one you bitches could NEVER. dnp don’t really have haters or people pretending not to like them the way charli is singing about, but the song still fits so well and is just such a banger. fantastic choice

19. HOT TO GO - Chappell Roan

this is also just queer joy! it’s on here so that everyone can sing along and do the dance in the audience which was a 10/10 experience let’s go lesbians

20. Toxic - Britney Spears

the perfect one to end it on. the adrenaline that came with hearing this song start right before the show was insane, and like, the whole time i’ve been saying this is the story of a toxic relationship! so what better song to illustrate that, not to mention dnp’s history with it like it’s just beautiful.

ok that's the end hope you enjoyed reading my barely coherent rambling! lmao i figured at least a few of you give a shit about stuff like this so there you go. have a lovely day

[paesagex]

Shimura Koutaro and wasted occasions for depth within My Hero Academia

Thinking about Koutaro Shimura one day a realization suddenly hit me. If Gran Torino and All Might fully believed for five whole years that All for One was dead, but neither knew of Koutaro’s and his family's tragic passing in a “mysterious Villain Attack”, that means that they never tried to get in touch with him.

That’s not a big revelation, we already knew that, but the more I thought about the implications of this choice, the more fundamentally wrong it felt.

There was one sole reason Koutaro was sent away from his mother, and that was to protect him from Afo. but once Afo was “dead”, there were plenty of good reasons to try to look for him.

Out of minimum decency, Koutaro deserved at the very least an apology and an explanation for his abandonment. He also deserved to know that the death of both his parents had been avenged, as the man that is behind all his family’s trouble was believed to be dead. Besides, was Koutaro even ever informed of Nana’s death? If she tinkered with the documentation, it would mean that there was no legal proof that Koutaro was her son. Therefore, no government official would know to notify him.

One may counteract that they tried but failed, but that’s a weak argument.

Koutaro was a successful businessman who likely had a lot of social connections, and his name wasn’t even changed. All Might, with all his resources, should have been able to find out anything that Afo, the guy who Koutaro was supposed to be hidden from, could.

The motto of this story is “Plus Ultra”.

If it is the right thing to do, you should put the whole of yourself in achieving your goal, no matter how difficult.

Therefore, All Might and Gran Torino, thematically speaking, have no excuses to not have tried to make things right with Koutaro. Even if, let’s say, Afo had managed to make the whole ordeal of the Shimura’s mysterious deaths go mediatically unnoticed, the heroes aren’t excused from their inaction.

Or rather, the narrative that established this theme isn’t excused from not calling this out.

THE WEAKENING OF THE NARRATIVE'S OWN MORALS

In fact, this last consideration is really my main point. This essay is titled “wasted opportunities,” not “heroes suck,” after all.

The problem with this oversight from the two heroes isn’t really that it’s a clear show of neglect towards a man that lost his childhood innocence because of the choices heroes made for him.

It’s that they’re never called out about it.

Making characters mess up, make bad choices and ending up hurting others is not bad writing at all, actually it is very good. This shows that they’re complex and have multiple facets, and that their actions have consequences within the story, which is what makes them well written!

However, when the narrative fails to acknowledge bad, hurtful choices, especially if it is trying to frame a character as a “good guy”, then it creates inconsistency.

All Might’s arc is one of deconstruction, where he’s supposed to go from A, an untouchable idol, to B, a man with flaws and sins. However, this example I’m bringing up and many other ones people pointed out over the years shows that his arc really goes from A, to B, and then back to A again. The story never fully dives into all the things All Might could have been criticized for, it is afraid to touch upon Deku’s idolization of him.

Despite my opinion in the matter being that Koutaro and his right to know should be mainly Gran’s responsibility, as he was involved personally in the decision to abandon him, All Might is a much more important character, and should be challenged harder.

Of course though they’re both left off the hook, All Might to protect Deku’s moral integrity and refusal to question his idol, Gran because he’s specifically thought out as a stagnant old fashioned hero who represents the suppressive justice system which Deku was supposed (and failed) to surpass.

Letting the matter of these two heroes just leaving a presumably still alive man unaware of the reasons behind a huge injustice imposed on him when he was just a child makes them look bad, but not in a good sense. They seem indifferent. The fact that Koutaro was already dead by the point of Afo’s “head massage” is irrelevant. It’s the fact that they never even think about making things right with him that counts.

Heroes neglected Koutaro when they decided that his right to have a parent was less important than fighting Afo, and they just kept neglecting him even after they believed the fight was over.

WHY THIS CHOICE (in my opinion)

I thought about it, I tried to find a reasonable explanation as to why Horikoshi would just pretend this whole deal wasn’t there. And the only one I could come up with is the same one I reached in trying to explain myself why nobody ever seemed to look into Shigaraki’s past once his identity as a Shimura was revealed:

Horikoshi had already planned the whole Afo/Ofa psychic connection and wanted that to be the way Deku grew any interest in understanding Shigaraki.

All Might and Gran Torino looking for Koutaro would have uncovered part of the mystery behind Shigaraki too early, while the author wanted the protagonist to be able to look directly into Shigaraki’s heart through the power of One for All, the Quirk Created to Save.

However, as many pointed out before me, the last arc and Deku’s newfound interest in helping villains feels incredibly rushed, his empathy forced, which is frustrating since there was, through the whole time of the story, a huge pile of information just lying there gathering dust that the characters had tons of good reasons to look into and be interested in.

MISTAKES AND USING THEM TO BUILD A STRONGER STORY

I fully believe that the story building would have worked better if Deku’s interest in Shigaraki had been gradually built from the start, and Koutaro was the key to achieve this.

Heroes are “forbidden” from focusing too much on the Shimura tragedy because that would ruin the story’s strong plot twists and tragic flashbacks, which are one of MHA’s main strong qualities, one might say. However, this isn’t a true problem.

In fact, if you think about it, making so that All Might was aware of Koutaro’s and his family gruesome death would have created 1) foreshadowing to Shigaraki’s identity reveal, 2) added weight to his shoulders, challenging not any hero, but the Symbol of Peace himself to face the consequences of his neglect directly, and 3) at first, it would have made the assumption that Shigaraki was the one to kill his family even more horrifying.

If we as readers had been aware of the level of violence that the death of the Shimuras involved before Shigaraki’s flashbacks, we would have been lead to believe, just as any character who would have bothered to do any research about them, that they were a perfectly normal, loving family that couldn’t possibly have deserved this tragic fate. Making Shigaraki, who is said by Afo to have killed them, look like an innate psychopath.

For these reasons, the emotional investment of Shigaraki’s flashbacks in the My Villain Academia arc would not have been undermined at all, actually it would have strengthened it, as in this case, they would work both as an explanation of how Shigaraki was manipulated from childhood by Afo and it would unmask an impression of superficial happiness and perfection, one of Mha’s big themes.

Moreso, a gradual investigation through the whole story on the main Villain’s past would, as we already said, have created a more earned interest from the protagonist, but it would have also… made a lot of sense logistically.

His Quirk was known, so was his real surname, by this point the fact that the police never connected the dots and didn’t manage to find his old neighbours, kindergarten teachers, anyone who could have testified that Tenko used to be perfectly normal and even exceptionally gentle before he was taken in by Afo is just a huge, unjustifiable plot hole.

CONCLUSION

Keeping All Might and Gran Torino so disinterested of Koutaro’s and his family’s fate is both a bad choice in moral consideration and, because of the way it is (not) handled, in writing, just as the gaping black hole that is the nonexistent investigation on Shigaraki when there was plenty of information.

The Shimuras are not only amongst the biggest tragedies of this story, they’re a missed opportunity for a fully deep exploration of the story’s themes. One of many, unfortunately.

One that fully reflects all the things that make MHA a hypocritical, double standard narrative that parrots its desire to uncover cycles of pain and violence and hold society accountable but then never fully commits to its message.

Koutaro and Shigaraki, father and son, led sad lives, neglected by the people who should have protected them and therefore becoming easy prey for Afo, and then died horribly without this sadness ever being really acknowledged, the people responsible never expressing their guilt appropriately.

There was no improvement between their two generations, Deku’s teachers didn’t manage to be a good example to the new Symbol of Peace by facing their mistakes honestly.

My Hero Academia presents the tragedies of the Shimuras as ways to uncover cycles of violence and societal neglect, when it is actually using them to create empty emotional engagement that isn’t used to add depth to the story and doesn’t even reach a real resolution.

To put it simply, they’re wasted.

[mormshaw]

I HAVE to address this MHA leak. This is getting out of hand. I think you guys may actually like this chapter if you pause and take a deep breath.

First, I rarely post about this kind of thing as I hate getting caught up in fandom drama- very few things take the enjoyment out of something quicker than people being pissy to each other (and to creators) because something didn’t go how you imagine.

BUT.

I need to say a few words in the defence of this new chapter, and I think there are a lot of really positive things going on that can be chalked up to character GROWTH and not character ASSASSINATION as everyone has been yelling about. Things that actually really tie up three really great characters in healthy ways, and in ways that also highlight the themes of moving forward and reaching out hands that the author has been pushing. I’m not going to address Ochaco’s growth here, which is also good, but I need to discuss the Baku-Deku stuff.

I’d like to preface all of the following with one important thing: when I read and watched MHA I never once incorporated SHIPPING into my enjoyment of these characters. It wasn’t the part of the text I was interested in. Did I think there were some cute moments between Izuku and Ochaco? Yep. But that’s about as far as it went for me. I also fully expected from day one that they would end up together because that’s how these kinds of stories in this genre go. I will also say that the character dynamics and growth between Izuku and Bakugo was something that is generally well done and a key aspect of why both those characters are so enjoyable for me-one of my favourite parts.

So, when I read these leaks, I actually found a bunch that I think tied up these characters really well.

I’m going to start with the big elephant-in-the-room one that everyone has been freaking out over. The: “Izuku would never turn down an offer to work in an agency with Bakugo that’s just so not him and he’s awful and I’ll never forgive him” thing that I just can’t…understand why people are angry about. This is a GOOD thing.

One of the things I actually sort of critical about in the INITIAL ending was that Izuku seemed like he still wasn’t putting himself first. One of the things that especially Bakugo KNEW to be the case about Izuku was he “never thinks of himself” and how self-destructive that was. We saw it time and time again- he was always sacrificing things for other people: his health, his time, even his QUIRK were sacrificed for OTHERS. He never put his own self-interest FIRST. He grew in strength, he grew and matured as a HERO, but part of saving people means also knowing how to save yourself.

The initial epilogue had this air of ‘he’s sacrificed something and he’s incomplete due to that’. Others (Bakugo and class 1-A) stepped up to help him fill that hole with the suit, and that thematically worked, but there was still a gap there for Izuku’s growth. I think this chapter completes his arc in the best possible way. Izuku did something purely for himself. He LEARNED that last lesson he needed to learn. AND he did it by ALSO helping Bakugo learn a lesson too.

Bakugo offers, in sort of a round about way, for Izuku to join his agency as a sidekick. He’s turned down other sidekicks because they thought he was amazing and wanted to be in his shadow. He wanted a sidekick that would say they would ‘surpass’ him. For Bakugo that has always been what he admired (and sometimes resented) about Izuku- Izuku wasn’t afraid to say that he would push himself to be better than Bakugo, and in doing so they both made themselves stronger.

But I’d argue that this rivalry was an endless cycle for both of these characters- not an opportunity for them to change how they saw each other. Izuku would surpass Bakugo and Bakugo would work to surpass Izuku on and on for eternity. Bakugo even mentions this in the hospital- that he hoped they would get to compete with each other “for the rest of their lives”. BUT that would also mean they would NEVER be more than rivals to each other.

When Izuku turns down Bakugo’s offer to be his sidekick, Izuku ISN’T saying “no, I don’t value you or what you did for me with the suit”. He’s saying, “I know what you did for me and I’m thankful for you, but I have to make my own choices separate from you.” Izuku is NOT Bakugo’s sidekick, or vice versa. They are adults that should have their own separate goals and lives. And, in a way, he’s also telling Bakugo, “you are your OWN person. You don’t need ME to be stronger. Keep pushing yourself forward on your OWN terms.”

And that’s the thing about Bakugo- from day one his growth has been DEFINED by Izuku. He’s pushed himself forward almost entirely because of how he sees Izuku, as a rival and, in some cases, as someone who he has to constantly try to live up to. That isn’t particularly HEALTHY. Bakugo sacrificed his LIFE to “catch up to Izuku.” Like, great acknowledgement of Izuku’s ability and moving on from being a bully, but not a physically healthy thing to do. There were a couple things about the initial epilogue that made me a little edgy because while Bakugo grieved the loss of OFA almost more than Izuku did (which was growth, and interesting growth), then worked tirelessly to get Izuku the suit, he did it because he wanted Izuku to keep being his RIVAL.

When Izuku turned down the offer to be his sidekick, but in the same scene also says he can’t wait to work as a hero again with his friends and see Bakugo MORE OFTEN as a guest lecturer in his Hero classes (which like, I don’t see why people are pissed about since that’s literally one of the biggest fanfic ideas people have been writing about since chapter 430 dropped), it actually shows how much more GROWN UP these two ARE. Izuku is acknowledging Bakugo as not only an EQUAL (not someone to chase after), but also a FRIEND. Someone he looks forward to seeing and working with. In fact, Bakugo saying “see you” isn’t a goodbye. It’s a PROMISE.

The panels of Izuku walking away are actual true character growth for BOTH of them. Izuku putting himself and his choices first, and Bakugo, for the first actual time in the ENTIRE SERIES feels like he doesn’t have to chase after Izuku. He can let themselves walk their own paths!

And, because the writing is actually better than you guys are giving it credit for, this choice actually does give them opportunity to still compete because Izuku will be on the chart now as an independent agent (because remember he’s not rejecting the suit and hero work, he’s incorporating hero work into a teaching career he’s ALSO grown to love and is good at). So now, as Izuku starts climbing the charts on his own (which he will because it’s Izuku we’re talking about), they can still push each other forward ANYWAY so like…that’s a GOOD thing. It’s like having your cake and eating it too, for BOTH of them.

Take off the shipper hats for a moment. And really LOOK at this scene. Is it kind of sad they won’t work together every day? Maybe. Does it mean they are growing apart and will never see each other? NO. They are closer than ever because now they are EQUALS and FRIENDS- neither is ahead of the other.

[cosmerelists]

If We Had Cosmere-Themed Chess Sets...

Now that I think about it, these might simply exist. B-But anyway, here's how I think a chess set could be constructed thematically from various Cosmere books.

[Spoilers! I wouldn't read these unless you've read the series mentioned in the title]

1. The Stormlight Chess Set

King: Elhokar. He is the king and also, and I say this gently, he doesn't do much or go very far, typically. Just like the king in chess! Queen: Jasnah. Is the queen...albeit at a different time than her brother is the king, but eh. Very powerful. Can move anywhere. Might be the strongest piece on the board. Bishops: Kadash and Pai. I just think they should be Ardents, and I picked my favorite two. Knights: Renarin & Adolin. Renarin because he should be the piece that moves in the most unique way. No one else moves in an L shape! And Adolin? Well...not gonna lie. I just think Adolin should be a horsey piece. Rooks: Dalinar and the Sibling. Dalinar because he needs to be a piece that is strong. That moves in a firm, straight line. That can do that castle move which is about protecting the king. And the Sibling because they are literally a tower. Pawns: Bridge 4. Main purpose was to be sent out to die, although if they make it allll the way across the board they can get a very special powerup and become one of the most powerful pieces on the board.

2. The Mistborn Era 1 Chess Set

King: Kelsier. Yes, the game is supposed to end if the king dies. No, Kelsier-King does not play by the rules. Queen: Vin. I mean, she's a Mistborn, which to me is parallel to being the piece that move in any direction as far as it wants. Very powerful. Bishops: Hammond & Dockson. Stand on either side of the queen and king. One can only move on black squares, and one can only move on white, which symbolizes how Ham & Dockson are on the same side but rarely see eye-to-eye. Knights: TenSoon & Marsh. Knights make hard turns as pieces, and these are characters who are always making hard turns: TenSoon from one side to other, from one body to another (and yes, I gave him the animal piece. Sue me). And Marsh from human to Inquisitor to, uh, Death I guess. Rooks: Demoux & Spook. I can't tell you why rooks read as "true believers in Kelsier" to me, but they do. And I kinda like these two as a pair. Pawns: The Skaa army that Kelsier tries to recruit. Sorry to those men.

3. The Mistborn Era 2 Chess Set

King: Harmony. Can't do much himself, but does direct the other characters. If he gets killed (shattered), the game could be over for Scadrial. Queen: Wax. Harmony's sword. Can zoom all over the place killing other pieces. Bishops: Steris & Marasi, as the resident believers in Survivorism. Knights: Wayne & MeLaan. Yes, I'm realizing that I see kandra as the little horsey pieces, I guess. And the knights can't move straight. And neither Wayne nor MeLaan are straight either. Rooks: Ranette & uh...Marsh again? Am I forgetting someone? Why are there so few characters in Era 2? A-Anyway, Ranette and Marsh definitely make sense because they're both, uh, support characters. Ranette making weapons. Marsh dropping info. And the Rooks are there to support the king! Pawns: All the kandra. Pawns of Harmony, every one. Bleeder is the really angry one determined to make it across the board and get promoted.

4. The Elantris Chess Set

King: Raoden. As a dead guy trapped in Elantris, Raoden doesn't have a lot of moves he can make. But dang is he really good at doing a lot with a little. Queen: Sarene. Sarene, on the other hand, has a LOT more freedom of movement and she uses it. Bishops: Hrathen and Dilaf. Hilarious to have them on the same side as Raoden and Sarene, I know. But listen. They gotta be the church pieces. Knights: Galladon and Karata. Since knights trace out the letter "L" and the Elantrians need to draw symbols in the air to do magic, I thought...wait. I swear this made sense in my head. Rooks: Kiin and Eondel. Kiin because the rooks kinda look like they're wearing a crown and Kiin was due to become king, and Eondel because he's the guy who has the strong private army. Pawns: I think it would be fun if the pawns were people with the Shaod, since they could become really powerful but they aren't currently.

5. The Warbreaker Chess Set

King: Siri. Not only does Siri spend the whole book being shuffled from one room to another (like the king can shuffle one square at a time), but a major plot point is Keep Siri Alive when the other side tries to kill her, so. Queen: Susebron. I do want Siri and Susebron to be king & queen, and it just works better this way. Once he gets his powers figured out, he's an all-powerful sort of guy. Bishops: Lightsong & Blushweaver. They're literal religious figures. Knights: Vasher & Vivenna. Mainly because they're warriors. Rooks: Parlin & Llarimar. I know Llarimar should be a bishop because he has the hat, but I like the Returned gods as bishops. So I made him the rook--and Parlin too (as soon as I remembered he existed. Sorry, Parlin). They're both there to support/protect another character. Pawns: I think they should all be soldiers from the Lifeless army.

[satoruiasis]

Gojo Satoru Is Not a K-pop Idol (Mostly): How Akgae Culture Shaped Gojo-Only Fans and Their View of Shipping

I guess this is my first post on here lol. Here goes.

Prefacing this with not all Gojo stans, and not all kpop stans. I do not want to cause drama or discourse, and there are fans of characters other than Gojo who give their faves this same treatment. This is in fact a fandom-wide pattern overall that’s just brought to a head by the fact that Gojo is the it boy of the moment and is practically more famous than JJK itself, and has essentially developed a fandom of his own, and therefore this effect is particularly strong/noticeable in how certain corners of the fandom interact with Gojo. These are purely my own musings on things I’ve observed in the fandom, and I mean no ill will towards anyone. I’m just trying to explain why some Gojo fans seem to hate Geto despite shipping Gojo with Geto.

Ok so basically a lot of Gojo stans are also K-pop stans, who, before being into JJK were mostly involved in K-pop fandoms. More specifically, they’re akgaes, aka solo stans. Akgaes are fans of one specific member of the group, but not the whole group in general or the other members. Think of someone who likes Jungkook but not the rest of BTS. In a similar way, there are a lot of Gojo fans who aren’t fans of JJK, just Gojo.

These fans essentially treat Gojo as an idol they stan, and not as a fictional character. So they’re extremely aggressive about “defending” Gojo from anyone implying he has character flaws because they’re not defending a well-written and complex fictional character, they’re defending the reputation of their idol. The way they interact with fandom is extremely different. Pointing out nuances of the character, like saying Gojo is morally grey, is equivalent to calling their idol a bad person, as opposed to him being a complex character with diverse motives who doesn’t always make “pure” choices. Quite bluntly, he’s in charge of recruiting and training a bunch of child soldiers who he knowingly sends into physically dangerous situations, which is an intrinsically morally complicated position.

They also are fans of the character but not the work, so the idea of Gojo being a component of an overall story, as he is in JJK, is like their idol getting sidelined for the rest of the group. Hence why they’re outraged over Gojo having a “bad death,” because to them they weren’t reading the JJK manga, they were following Gojo’s career trajectory, and the idea that his “career” ending could be anything but horrible injustice is incompatible with the way they interact with fandom. 

To them, fandom is a competition to make their fave the most beloved, popular, and important character, the same way K-pop stans obsess over streaming numbers. It’s important that Gojo, as an idol and not a character, be seen as morally infallible, as opposed to the morally complex mentor he is, and that he be the most important character (member) of the series (group). This is why they were outraged that he was not, in fact, the protagonist who was going to defeat Sukuna, Yuji and the other students were, because anything else would totally decimate the themes of JJK.

As their bias, Gojo must also be universally beloved by all the other characters/members, as opposed to him being disliked for rational reasons by other characters (like him pissing them off on purpose because he finds it entertaining). Because they treat Gojo as an idol and not a character, saying people around their idol dislike their idol is seen as slandering them, as opposed to being a character element. So they get mad that the guy with bad social skills whose whole thing thematically is his inability to connect does not in fact have many close personal relationships.

This is why you’ll notice that this particular type of fan won’t really like Gojo’s students (especially Megumi) as anything other than props to prove how much Gojo is loved and what a good person he is, and they’ll even get mad at the students for not giving him enough attention/affection/ “giving him his flowers,” even if it’d be out of character for them, because they mostly see the rest of the cast as being there to reinforce how beloved their favorite idol is.

That’s why they’re typically so militant about dad!Gojo being canon, despite him very explicitly not being that in canon (at least not in the way they like to portray it, where Gojo is living with and raising Megumi and Tsukimi as though they’re his children). To them, Gojo must be seen as this perfect, doting father figure who raised Megumi with warmth and care, not as what he actually was: a mentor and benefactor with a complicated and somewhat distant relationship with him due to their respective personalities and traumas.

(To be clear, not all dadjo likers! I myself have enjoyed dadjo. But it’s fanon. It’s just people who have an intense need to argue that dad!jo is indisputably canon and that anything else is essentially Gojo slander.) Megumi actually having mixed feelings about Gojo is absolutely taboo to them, because it contradicts their idol fantasy where everyone in Gojo’s life adores him unconditionally. The reality, which is that Gojo saved Megumi from a worse fate but also left him to be primarily raised by Tsumiki, who was also a child at the time, is something they refuse to acknowledge. They try to paint Megumi’s more reserved attitude toward Gojo as just grumpy teen’s “tsundere” behavior towards a beloved and doting dad instead of what it actually is: the reaction of a kid who had a supportive but ultimately transactional relationship with a mentor figure who, despite their time together remained “untouchable,” not an uncomplicated and loving father-son bond.

To these fans, admitting that Gojo wasn’t a doting dad isn’t just a character discussion, it’s an attack on Gojo’s image, the same way an akgae would react if someone said their idol wasn’t acting as a perfect parent to the children in their care. That’s why they can’t stand people pointing out that Gojo was not Megumi’s father, didn’t raise him, and predominantly served as his benefactor and teacher. Because in their minds, saying that is like accusing Jungkook of neglecting foster kids or something. It’s slander against their perfect, universally beloved idol, and that is completely unacceptable to them.

(Prefacing again with not all bottom Gojo fans, not all multishippers, not all Gegos). While it may seem contradictory, akgaes will often ship their male bias with other members who they are not fans of because of this need to emphasize how loved, adored, and desired their idol is by the people surrounding them. These people ship their idol with other members, often multiple, in order to reinforce the desirability of their idol, despite not being fans of these members and wanting these members to be below their idol lest they threaten their favorite idol’s popularity.

So these people will ship Gojo with one or multiple other characters not because they like the other characters but to emphasize how desired and worshiped Gojo is. To them, it’s important to perceive him that way, because for people who see him as an idol and not a character, the idea of him being the “least favorite coworker” is slanderous and degrading and not just a part of the character.

It’s also very important that in all slash pairings like Sukugo, Nanago, and Gego, Gojo is the bottom because they don’t want to see him being active or desiring the other character. To them, the point of shipping is to emphasize how desired and loved he is, not any actual interest in the relationship with the other characters. Think of someone who’s like “Jungkook is so beautiful that all the other members are in love with him and want to fuck him” but still doesn’t stan the other members. It’s essential that the other character wants their bias, Gojo, more than he wants them.

Because of this, this specific genre of Gojo fan ships Geto with Gojo because they want Geto to be in love with Gojo, since to say otherwise would be reducing the desirability of their bias. Frankly, the material is all there. But it’s also important to make sure that Geto is not loved by Gojo as much as he loved Gojo, because that makes their bias into something other than a passive magnet of desire and into an active character, lest he be seen as anything other than pure and angelic. To balance this, Geto must be seen as though he was always secretly evil and is less popular or desired than Gojo, despite the opposite being explicitly stated to be true in canon. This fulfills their need to see Gojo as loved, cared for, and simped over, while making sure that Geto himself doesn’t get any love or appreciation as a character, and instead exists solely to validate how they perceive Gojo, like how a solo stan may ship another member with their bias, but also consider them a rival in terms of streams and therefore root against their success and even post hate about them so their bias isn’t surpassed.

This is why they crash out so intensely over fandom jokes about Gojo fumbling Geto, because it doesn’t mesh with how they perceive Gojo, which is as someone who is always desired but never desiring, (unless he’s begging for dick for fanfic purposes). Even then, it’s important that Geto/Nanami/Toji/Sukuna/Designated top of the day (I’ve seen this specific group ship Ichiji x Gojo. Yes in that order) desires him more. 

This is also why they’re typically militant about bottom Gojo and will often feel the need to “enforce” that Gojo must always be a bottom on any post that implies otherwise. To them, they’re defending their idol as the ultimate object of desire, and making him a top is slanderous because it contradicts their perception of him as a pretty (which to be clear he is), passive, and pure object. That doesn’t make for a very interesting character, but these are very much values projected onto idols.

(Again, not all Gegos! There are plenty of Gegos who also like Geto! I myself consider STSG a reversible couple. There are also people who give other characters in JJK the idol treatment, including Geto!). This means that for a lot of Gojo stans, the appeal of shipping Geto with Gojo is that they can write about Geto being obsessively in love with Gojo, and generally just write about Gojo being precious, pursued, and adored. At the same time, they don’t want Gojo to care about Geto all that much or continue to love him or desire him, because to them that makes Geto and not Gojo the object of love and desire, which reduces Gojo’s value as the most popular idol.

Thus, while they ship Geto and Gojo, it’s important to them that Geto is less important to Gojo than Gojo is to Geto. Hence why they’ll often say “Geto defected because of how Gojo was treated,” which is imo not really true. We see the reasons for his defection laid out very clearly, and Gojo’s main impact on Geto’s defection was Geto’s belief that Gojo had left him behind and no longer needed or valued him now that he couldn’t keep up with Gojo. Not saying there was absolutely zero impact at all, but we actually do see what thoughts Geto was having about Gojo that caused him to leave, and none of them were about how Gojo was a helpless victim of the system who he left in order to save. They were entirely about Geto feeling inferior and abandoned.

For stans like this, they vehemently are against Geto being a character outside of Gojo but hate the idea of Gojo being motivated by Geto, because to them it changes the dynamic of who desires and who is desired. To them, the whole purpose of shipping is to emphasize how desirable Gojo is, and any attention/importance Geto gets infringes on that.

That’s why this particular type of Gojo stan dislikes the idea that Geto is canonically attractive and desirable, because that directly threatens the way they need Gojo to be perceived. Gege has explicitly stated that Geto was more romantically popular and well-liked than Gojo, but this contradicts the way these fans want Gojo to be seen, so they work overtime to downplay it. That’s why there is such extreme hostility toward anything that associates Geto with softness, beauty, or femininity, because to them, those traits must belong exclusively to Gojo in order to maintain Gojo’s idol image.

This is why, despite Geto being shorter than Gojo and roughly the same size physically, Geto is often written as an over-masculinized brute while Gojo is hyper-feminized, with an obsessive focus on how pale, thin, and delicate he is. Gojo has to be the most beautiful, the most adored, and the most wanted, and to maintain that, Geto has to be rewritten into his opposite. That’s why fandom interpretations of Geto often make him twice as wide as Gojo, physically dominant over the now-dainty Gojo in ways that just aren’t canon, with exaggerated features that make him seem more rugged or threatening. 

His skin tone is frequently darkened far beyond what it actually is in canon, specifically to create a stark contrast with Gojo’s fairness, because in the colorist fandom beauty biases, pale equals delicate and beautiful, while darker skin is coded as masculine and less desirable. Even though both Gojo and Geto are fair-skinned. If you disagree, try showing someone a screenshot of Geto from the anime and call him ‘representation for darker skin tones.’ That is a beige man.

To be clear, I enjoy tanned Geto HCs, and it’s not only Gegos who have them, but there’s a pattern here that’s rooted in broader fandom trends where darker skin is equated with masculinity in a way that reinforces certain biases. See meme below.

This also ties into the way some fans call Geto "ugly" for having more typically East Asian features, despite the fact that he is literally an example of a well-known Japanese beauty standard. In Japan, Geto would be considered a salt-faced (sio-gao) ikemen, meaning he has a sharp, refined, and slightly serious-looking face rather than the sugar-faced (shioga-gao) ikemen look that Gojo has, which is rounder, softer, and more boyish. Both are recognized beauty types, but because Gojo has the more exaggerated "anime bishounen" look, some Gojo-only fans tend to dismiss Geto as being "plain" or even "ugly," and even resorting to racist insults about his features (ex. the recent drama about a Gojo fan posting a yellow-peril style racist caricature of Geto) They downplay or outright reject that Geto is canonically handsome because acknowledging it would put him on equal footing with Gojo, and that is something they cannot allow.

The hostility toward anything feminine being associated with Geto is a direct extension of this. To these fans, Gojo must always be the soft, adored, babygirl-coded one, and Geto must always be the one pursuing, protecting, or desiring him. Any suggestion that Geto himself could be pretty, soft, or cherished is treated as an attack, because in their minds, allowing him to share those traits with Gojo takes something away from Gojo’s image. That’s why jokes about "princess Geto" or "babygirl Geto" get met with outright vitriol from these fans. It’s not just that they disagree with it, it’s that they see it as stealing from Gojo’s rightful place as the fandom’s one and only precious, beautiful, feminine-coded object of desire.

(To be clear, they’re both my babygirl princess pookies. I’m completely correct about this and won’t hear any opinions to the contrary /j)

This is also why they insist so aggressively that Gojo must be the bottom in every ship and Geto must always be the dominant one. They need Gojo to be the passive, delicate one, and Geto to be the rough, hulking, obsessive force that worships him. If Geto is allowed to be beautiful in his own right, to be desired instead of just desiring, it throws off that entire dynamic. It makes Geto an equal instead of a tool to reinforce Gojo’s desirability, and that is unacceptable to them.

Ultimately, this isn’t about character analysis or ship preferences, it’s about maintaining a hierarchy where Gojo is always at the center. If Geto is acknowledged as attractive, as someone who could be soft, as someone who could be adored, then suddenly Gojo is not the sole object of everyone’s desire. That’s why they fight it so hard, because their version of Gojo cannot share that space with anyone else, because, again, he is their bias. 

TLDR: Gojo is not a member of a kpop boy group. A lot of the reason you see some Gojo fans being 1.) shocked by Gojo’s canon behaviors/the plot of JJK as being “OOC” or “disrespectful to Gojo”  and 2.) extremely hostile towards the character they “ship” Gojo with, is because a good chunk of his fandom thinks that he is.

Anyway that’s my rambling notesapp thesis I banged out on the subway. Love you all and thanks for reading! And again, not meant to hate whatsoever, just meant to explain a particular phenomenon (why do some gojo fans who ship satosugu hate geto)

[sourb0i]

Just got out of Beetlejuice 2! I'd give it a 4/10 overall

Pros:

All the original actors (Michael Keaton, Catherine O'Hara etc, Wynona Rider) reprised their roles really well; Catherine O'Hara in particular

The relationship between Lydia and Delia was nice; I enjoyed the whole 'you did it to me, now it's happening to you' between Celia, Lydia, and Astrid

Practical effects were good; honestly it was just refreshing to have any at all. I especially liked Charles' shark-bite effect

There were some genuinely funny parts, especially the (first part of) the wedding musical number

I thought Dolores was interesting as an antagonist, and I liked her character design (though I have gripes- see below)

Cons

The vibe just wasn't there. The plot didn't really feel committed to any one thing, and when the movie ended my first thought was "what the fuck was that about?"

There were also a lot of plot holes-- or at least, worldbuilding holes. Why was Beetlejuice working in the Afterlife office? Why is there a crime unit (and laundromat)? Why couldn't Lydia see her dead husband, even though he said he "checked up on [her and Astrid]" periodically?

I am honestly really pissed about how Barbara and Adam were written off. Obviously they can't have the original actors reprising their roles, but they deserved a better ending than a hand-waved one liner.

While Dolores had a lot of potential as an antagonist, she wasn't given nearly enough character. Her only lines (as far as I can remember) were "Where's Beetlejuice". Why is she so obsessed with him? What does she hope to gain by reuniting with him? What's the deal with her soul-sucking quest for immortality? So much wasted potential

The same was true of...the Murderous Boyfriend Who Was Such a Non-Character That I Forgot His Name As Soon As He Said it.

Seriously. They could've set up a great plot twist if they'd given him more character/more set-up with the parents. Instead the guy was a walking red flag.

I also wasn't a huge fan of Astrid's character. Like they set her up to be this girl who is ostracized bc of her mom (fair), but then instead of leaning into that they made her into this Gen Z Feminist/Eco-Warrior archetype, and it just felt like the writers were trying to make fun of that instead of actually making her into a whole person. Like, ok, she knows who Marie Curie is (even tho she got the nationality wrong), but what does she do for fun? What kind of music does she like? Does she have any hobbies outside of activism?

While I enjoyed some of the musical numbers (the wedding, and the soul train particularly) on their own merits, they just felt really out of place. The original had a solid musical theme, but this felt all over the place

Also! I wish we'd gotten to see more of Lydia interacting with ghosts in her day-to-day life! That seems like something that could be really traumatic and/or played up for comedic purposes. I loved the gag with her and the other actress in the bathroom! Give me more of that!

Overall, the movie felt like it didn't really know what to do with itself. There were so many out-of-place cameos (Burn Goreman, I'm looking at you), and stylistically and thematically it never really felt committed to one thing. It was an empty movie with nothing to say, and that's really disappointing, because it had a lot of potential to be something fun.

(Also. Produced by Brad Pitt?????)

[oneslimybastard]

Another underutilized aspect of N, Natural Harmonia Gropius himself, is that he's conceptualized as not just a Math Guy, but a Math Genius if we go by some interview trivia notated on Bulbapedia.

It clearly shows in the way he speaks since his (translated) dialogue (idk about the original japanese one) is full of hamfisted references to formulas and frustration expressed when the chaos of the world does not align with them — which to me is like, the core of his character, something that makes him both An Asshole to deal with but also a very intellectually curios and creative individual. It's just a brand of creativity not a lot of people can keep up with nor understand.

N likes math because a lot of math is about clearly defined variables and their relationship to one another. If you come across an inconsistency that doesn't fit any prior definitions, you iron out a new definition and suddenly the field has expanded upon itself tenfold. It aligns with how his Very Autistic Brain functions, x + y = z, if I do x to y then z will happen. If z doesn't happen, then that just means I have to identify the hidden variables within the exchange and rewrite the formula to be more accurate.

Black and White's quality of writing is. Like pokémon often is. Questionable at best. The foundations are there but the execution is dumbed down and corny because it's still aimed at kids, BW in specific really cutting the theme of pokémon trainer ethics short in favor of just "dang u beat me in the pogiebattle guess ur right!". How-ev-er. In my head, and the reason why I still find the plot of those games compelling (aside for my unhinged thirst for goth man-milf Ghetsis) is that to me they're about local cult-raised autist Normal Henry Gropus bashing his head against the world over and over to desperately try and make the formulas make sense, to distill it into variables he can understand and predict on a consistent basis, and failing miserably at it. Because even if the world is Technically made up of a bunch of chemistry that you could, in theory, predict, there's just a lot of random noise in there from microscopic complexities that fuck everything up.

Pokémon are simpler creatures (discounting the eerily intelligent ones) who will be nice enough to behave like math problems most of the time. Humans rarely extend that grace, the more N studies them like a science project the more contradictory variables pop up. They have a million thoughts in their head he doesn't have access to, that brew into feelings he doesn't understand, which leads to actions he can't do a proper traceback through. Which is frustrating, devastatingly frustrating. At least at first.

Due to how BW2 pans out and my own yearning for thematic mirroring, whereas Ghetsis gives in to the Autistic Bitterness over all these NTs he doesn't fuckign understand, I like to think N develops a sort of joy in studying people like the impossibly complex math problems we are. Because he likes math, he likes figuring shit out, he likes buying a nightmare rubik's cube and charting the squares out on a nightmare variable graph (listen i am not a math guy. i respect the hustle but my skill level is too low to accurately attempt to simulate the process in writing. im sorry math guys) so he has a home-made flexible cheat code on how to solve any possible mix-up of it. It's fun for him, it stimulates his brain and he is so stupid good at it that he can only share that joy with like a stray alakazam or metagross because he's a bit of a tarzan just hanging out in the wilderness, he doesn't know any high end mathematicians he can casually geek out about combinatorial game theory with, and the normies just do not get it .

I think this math enjoying is kind of a big part of his ~Innocence~ as well, since there's a lot of childlike glee to being a Math Guy. It's the love of problem solving as a process rather than a means to an end, it's playful, but severely misunderstood to the point where people kinda might assume things about you if you are a math guy.

N's love of math helps him love the world but it also isolates him. He's a genius, but since he can't communicate it in a palatable way it'll get overlooked in favor of him just being a loomy weirdo on the street chatting up the local patrats.

If introduced to DnD though he'd spend so much time on forging ridiculously optimized multiclass builds, then migrate to digging through old obscure sci-fi ttrpgs from the 80s with hellishly complex systems just for the funsies of learning how the presented variables behave within a variety of frameworks, but then if you actually invited him to play with your group he'd look at you like you'd just called his mom a llama.

He's a neat guy to me, STEM guy who's also one of those animal rights activists who's a little too PETA-coded, I like him :)

[minyard-05]

damocles

me again coming back to type up another word vomit 'essay' about a song i've had on loop for the past ~8 hours.

SO. damocles.

the main thing that stands out to me lyrically is the tense change. like a lot of sleep token's songs have a tendency to be set in the past, as if vessel is recounting feelings and events that can't be undone. from this perspective he picks apart his own emotions and analyses himself, questioning his own existence through the lens of trying to put himself in context for the audience (in some cases this presents itself as almost trying to justify his actions but thats a different post). damocles does have a bit of this, in the bridge with the 'nobody told me' lines, but primarily, it's about what's happening now, how he feels now, and the entire chorus is focused on the future. that uncertainty in the lyricism, and the honesty of lines like 'no one else knows that i've got a problem' is i think what gives the entire song its whole Vibe, and why i think it's probably one of their hardest hitting tracks so far. before, the stories might have been sad, but they were certain. like, we may be doomed but at least we know we're doomed. but in damocles, vessel doesn't know what's happening or where he goes from here, and that's what makes it scary.

another thing it does really well is capture the whole feeling of catastrophising and overthinking, as shown in the chorus:

"When the river runs dry and the curtain is called / How will I know if I can't see the bottom? / Come up for air and choke on it all / No one else knows that I've got a problem / What if I can't get up and stand tall? / What if the diamond days are all gone, and who will I be when the empire falls? Wake up alone and I'll be forgotten"

a big part of what backs up the uncertainty theme I mentioned earlier is actually the way this part of the song is done technically. the piano is the only instrument alongside vessel's voice as of yet, and it begins softly, mirroring the vocal line in a ballad style, but when the chorus starts, the tempo increases. the entire first chorus happens in the span of about 25 seconds, whereas the first verse lasts twice longer, about 50 seconds. this increase means that the song doesn't feel rushed, but tense, before it slows back down to bring in the drums on verse 2. i don't know about you guys but the first time i listened to it i actually kind of felt a little on edge, because the way it's composed means that it musically raises a question that isn't really answered. in a sense, the chorus never really gets closure, all the questions vessel asks himself don't get any response from sleep, if that's who he's talking to. damocles is telling us a story that doesn't have an ending, not yet.

lyrically though, and this may be somewhat of a self contradiction, but it feels to me like damocles is something of a sequel to caramel. side by side, the songs actually feed fairly well into each other, following similar thematic ideas, but the main split is that caramel is about the pressure of being known and damocles is about the fear of being forgotten. i talked about this already a little in my caramel post but i feel like there's really no way where this song isn't an incredibly personal message from the singer himself, not the character of Vessel.

like let's look at the line from the chorus again: "Who will I be when the empire falls?" and lets take this 'empire' to mean Sleep Token as a project. they've been immensely successful, especially in the past two years, and success for musicians comes as a blessing and a curse. more fans = more people to share your art with and more money gained from concert tickets and merch sales to then fund creating and recording more music, which is all good! however, success also means interest, and interest means critics picking every second of every single apart, it means there will be people who only like you when you're doing one specific thing, and if you deviate from that binary, it will never be as good as your old stuff. sleep token are not just a metal band, and damocles isn't a metal song, and the more you experiment with new styles and techniques in your art, the higher the chances you will alienate people who don't like your new stuff. unfortunately, a lot of people LOVE to voice this dislike online, and with the internet being the behemoth that it is, it's easier for artists to see those critiques. and yeah, fuck the haters, create what makes you happy, i'm all for that, but from an artist's perspective that's way easier said than done. all this to say that the speed at which sleep token gained mainstream popularity, and all the bullshit that comes with it, is undeniably going to take a toll on the musicians themselves.

they've been anonymous throughout their whole career thus far, and have been explicit in saying that choice was made to protect their personal privacy AS IS THEIR RIGHT. but i'm wondering if damocles is in part about the fact that while they stay anonymous to stop Sleep Token from taking over their lives, it kind of feels like it did anyway. because while you can disconnect from the internet and not look at the comments or the critics, there is always this nagging question at the back of your mind that says is it good enough? do they like it? do they like me? did i get it right? am i good enough?. fame is fickle, and if you're not constantly keeping yourself afloat, the tide will drop you. so to me, "Who will I be when the empire falls? / Wake up alone, and I'll be forgotten" sounds like vessel wondering if he's already written himself over in the context of the band, and when 'the empire falls', i.e, when the band ends, does he go back to his normal life? does he start over again? did any of it ever matter?

and the uncertainty comes back, because maybe he doesn't know when the empire will fall, maybe he doesn't want it to. but he is Damocles now, on his throne he looks over the empire, and he waits for the sword to drop.

[sidebar: in the original story of Damocles, he was a courtier of Dionysius (not the god), and flattered his king, essentially saying he was fortunate and blessed to have so much power. Dionysius offered Damocles the chance to sit on his throne for a day, but he had a sword suspended over it by a single horsehair. the moral of the story is that it's a lot more work than it looks to be a leader, and great ones will always have enemies, dangers that are just out of sight but ever-present. Sleep & Vessel parallels anyone????]

MAYBE that's a stretch. but i'm not done because now i want to talk about the bridge.

"And nobody told me I'd be begging for relief / When what is silent to you feels like it's screaming to me / Well, nobody told me I'd get tired of myself / When it all looks like Heaven, but it feels like hell"

THIS is where i am getting the strongest caramel parallel (ha). this is explicitly about chasing this golden promise of fame and love, only to catch it and realise it's burning you. the vocals here are melodic but to me it almost sounds quietly angry as well, like vessel can't openly scream 'nobody warned me', so he sings it instead ("too blessed to be caught ungrateful"). and he's angry because all he wanted to do was make music and share it with people, but Sleep Token isn't just a band anymore, it's also this huge collective of fans that it's built, and when something like that spirals out of control, you can't easily get it back. vessel's anger comes from the fact that he never started this wanting to write songs about how much it hurts to keep doing this. it was supposed to be an outlet and a way to make something beautiful out of pre-existing pain, but now it's come full circle and is the new cause, rather than the cure.

anyway. those are my damocles thoughts somewhat articulated but i may come back to them. i need a whole new post just talking about that drum mix fr

[randomuser678]

I love how most Batman villains have a genderbend version of them, specially bc as a trans woman I want to read into them being trans

Like, the Ventriloquist's design is of a mild mannered boring looking man who contrasts with his puppet Scarface who's much more rude and greedy, it feels like Scarface is a way for his ventriloquist to express his more rude side while distancing himself from them.

Now on my read where she's a trans woman there would be two layers of repression here, Ventriloquist personified her "masculine" side into the puppet who acts like a stereotypical tough guy, a rude bossy mafia leader, and she became a sexy trophy wife for him, this way she separates herself from the undesirable masculine traits, as well as becoming a love interest to a man who makes all the decisions for her, she only exists to support him, she finally made it to cisnormative and heteronormative ideals of femininity! It comes off as a tragic clinging to idealized femininity and male approval on a way I really relate to.

Clayface also has a really good portrayal of Dysphoria since in the versions I've seen they're an actor who hates their own face and got into a drug that would make their face easy to remold, then it went horribly wrong and now their entire body is moldable, Lady Clayface didn't have to change that general backstory for it to work at all, and the theme of beauty is common on female villains, but tbh I love this one specifically because of the trans read being more obvious, and this is the one case where a character didn't have to change backstories at all for the female version, she can still be a former actor with dysphoria that later gains shapeshifting powers, it's almost a happy ending for her now that she can change her shapes even if it's still tragic.

Calendar girl has a similar theme (Although she's both a version of Calendar man but also The Manikin) where she's a former celebrity who's horrified by her appearance under the mask and is "aging out" of her career, her attacking themed on holidays is both a mockery of her job as a model and needing to keep up with trends and also to show her resentment towards the passage of time, it's a really fun mix of characters and my trans read of her would be similar to Clayface. Also how youth and beauty is valued in society as a whole and older trans people in general are ignored on the mainstream.

And because the comic book world is really hostile towards genderbends (see Oswald from the newest Batman cartoon) a lot of them have instead characters who co-exist with their male counterparts, that was the case for the Ventriolquist since she just took the role from the previous one, but sometimes they do what they did here:

Madame Crow is part of the Victim Syndicate, a group of people who were victims of different villains and now resent Batman for not saving them, their powers are now ironic mirrors to the characters they were victimized by, and on Madame Crow's case, where she was a victim of the fear toxins from the Scarecrow, she made toxins that completely rid a person of any fear or self-preservation. And idk the fact that she wants to create something that gets rid of fears and repression just comes off as queer to me even though it was obviously not intentional, it's just that on a version where she IS the Scarecrow I would love how thematically fitting it all is.

I've seen pieces about how Batman is inherently queer bc super heroes and villains as a whole empower themselves through creating an alternative persona on an over the top camp way that's basically drag.

Some male villains have female sidekicks, Sugar and Spice, Query and Echo, and I guess those are harder to read as female personas of the same character like how I've been doing, but idk, you can rewrite the stories however you like to make these work, maybe twoface is bigender and flips a coin to decide which gender they're going with, that would be on theme. You can do anything ever with these characters.

Also I never understood why ppl were mad about Oswalda, every version of Batman changes backstories around, why is changing a character's gender or whatever completely out of line with that they've already been doing for decades? Anyways I'm trans and this is all.

[ikibli]

Halfa Barry Allen 2: Theming Boogaloo

In a previous post, I discussed how Barry Allen is totally a halfa, as far as origin stories(and phasing powers) go. In this post, I'm going to discuss why Barry specifically as a person would make a good halfa thematically, even if some other characters (like the Green Lanterns, especially Guy and Hal) could easily work as halfas/ecto-entities due to their superficial similarities.

First, their backgrounds and origin stories both share a note of irony. Danny is a kid raised by obsessive ghost hunters, who ends up becoming a ghost himself after an experiment they thought was a failure went wrong. Barry doesn't gain his powers until he's an adult, but he's been a fanboy of his predecessor(Jay Garrick) for almost his entire life, and has daydreamed of having super speed for just as long.

The irony is especially noted in his origin story in Showcase #4:

Quite literally, two panels later...

Yeah.

Anyway, both of them didn't expect their dreams to become reality. They expected to continue with their mundane lives- Danny wanted to get into NASA and become an astronaut, and Barry had already gotten a college degree and a well-paying job that he liked.

Then, the accident happened. Suddenly, they have powers they don't understand, they're not entirely human or alive anymore, their lives have been turned upside-down, and Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again(TM).

Except- their reactions vary. Barry embraces it, and Danny is horrified.

Why? Well, Danny becoming a halfa destroyed his dreams. He can no longer become an astronaut, and he's struggling just to keep his grades above a C at the same time that he has to keep a massive secret about who he is from his parents out of fear that they'll hunt him down and (re)kill him.

On the other hand, by getting his powers, Barry achieved his dreams. He's dreamed of being the Flash since he was a little kid, and actually getting those powers? It's awesome! He just achieved a lifelong dream that he never thought was possible!

Barry, in many ways, is just Danny if he was more successful and lucky. He got to grow up, to have a normal life and achieve his dreams, things Danny can no longer do.

And at the same time, Barry can kind of see himself in Danny, but not to the extent that Danny sees himself in Barry. He's an adult, and he can't really sympathize with Danny's lack of a future.

Becoming the Flash was a dream come true- opening new doors and allowing Barry to make real friends for the first time in his life. Becoming Phantom was a nightmare made reality- removing opportunities Danny had always taken for granted and isolating him from his already-fractured family.

You can imagine the story potential, can you? Danny can't help but be jealous of Barry, and Barry can never truly understand why.

[weebsinstash]

(bnha/mha spoilers) i've still got attachments to the characters and still think of certain concepts and stuff for them and all that but like, are any of you feeling like BNHA is just going the exact same route as Naruto did where they spent the entire series talking about how cool heroes/ninjas are, then started discussing "but wait, not everything is as it seems! There's evil afoot, and not just any evil, SOCIALLY SYSTEMIC evil!" and then just completely shelved those discussions so the Hero could punch the Bad Guy in the face and then the series ends with everything being fundamentally exactly the same if not in some ways objectively worse

Like im sorry but looking at things thematically, if you told me Endeavor got off completely scott-free and his family still talks to him and he never even went to prison and still gets to keep his job as hero, but Shigaraki who was failed by society and literally poached and groomed as a child to become a villain while still forming bonds with his found family of other abused people and minorities is just KILLED AND DIES SMILING, I would say something like "oh is Horikoshi trying to make satirical commentary on how the broken corrupt system will fight like hell to uphold itself and this is actually metaphorical?" but nah it's just legitimately presented as a good thing and a good outcome

Genuinely? The way the series is ending is making me agree with Overhaul. If you think of Heroes and Quirks as a service or product, then tools can be invented to serve those same purposes. The way that Quirks developed in the universe of MHA is that they became used almost exclusively for combat based purposes, and to even use your quirk, which is also a part of your body or identity, you need special permissions and a license which I bet you costs money to apply for, so now you have the government regulating integral parts of people's identities, and also Quirks that change people's appearances are discriminated against and there aren't really any laws protecting against that

In a way, Overhaul was and still is entirely justified for thinking Quirks should be disposed of because the series is literally ending showing that Quirks are just being used to uphold government and corporate interests rather than actually do what's right? Quirks are literally increasing the severity with which humans can harm each other to the point it completely overshadows the good? Oh yeah I'm really glad we have a hero with super speed to help stop robberies, meanwhile the government has like a secret agent who is creating like nuke strikes on foreign countries, like... the good that Heroes can do? Can be easily done by humanity with tools

Like the way BNHA is ending is in my opinion, extremely dark? Deku was kind of just a clueless foot soldier upholding the dark government of his country and now All Might has no powers, Deku is gonna be Quirkless again, and everything is exactly the same? You could argue the only "win" that's coming out of the ending is that AFO is dead, but like.... someone with AFOs exact same powers could just be born again? Except maybe this time he can be, like, a government employee or a cop or something to really fit in with the core themes of the series :)

[grumfy]

i'm humbly begging for tips on how to plot/structure a long-fic 🙏😔

ok please do not take this as law whatever, because I have been told time and time again that my process is insane and very antithetical to a lot of creatives but that’s how I work on literally all of my long projects SO. neuroses be upon ye below the read more.

I’m a hardcore planner and don’t like to start things without clear direction. If I’m planning something long that isn’t a self contained story, this is how I visualize it. It’s sort of the way that weekly serialized TV works, probably because I went to film school and used to want to be a showrunner, so I approach it with the mindset that I am the showrunner of my own weekly serialized one man show

And then each “story” is broken down like this:

(Keep in mind the beats above are very metaphorical. Funhouse just means the key facets of their character are on full display, like evasiveness or whatever, and seeing how they interact with the overall physical events of the world. Bad guys isn’t always bad guys, it’s just the looming threat, like a deadline)

Now onto the actual process. This is through the lens of shippy fics so it’ll usually be using terms/goals within that context!

“The thesis” is the first thing I decide and with and when it comes to fic it’s often a ship. It’s just the overall goal or point of what you’re writing. If you’re writing a shippy fic, your thesis is “X and Y Character get together” and everything that happens within that thesis is ultimately in pursuit of them getting together and then their happily ever after. The complexity of what happens for that to come into fruition is up to you.

“Thing I want to have happen” is usually a progression of a romance beat or the development of the relationship. Awareness of feelings, kissing, sex, etc.

“The story” that happens is the set of circumstances that lead to those beats, and for longfic pacing, I find it best to have each of these be thematically self-contained narratives to push things along.

Here’s an example:

Joe is in love with Brad, and they are in high school. “Story 1” they are paired together for a school project, and by the end Joe realizes that he enjoys Brad’s company, and invites him to his party. “Story 2” is Brad getting ready for the party, working up the courage to go, and then they play spin the bottle. By the end, Brad realizes that he likes kissing Joe. “Story 3” Joe has been avoiding Brad because kissing made him feel weird, but then he finds out they’re rooming together on a school trip. After they spend time together, they mutually realize they like each other and want to date; and screw. Then they go to prom, happily ever after”.

You have 3 separate situations with 3 different developments in Joe and Brad’s relationship. This sort of idea can be expanded to galactic scale, because ultimately when it comes to anything about people, human drama is all relatively the same. I think the important thing for longfics, both for keeping yourself interested and others, is providing some closure for some threads while opening up new doors, and this is conducive to that.

As for the individual story structure, that’s just how I plot everything self contained, it’s Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat Beat Sheet. I like compared to other plotting structures specifically because of “Theme stated, Fun and Games/promise of the premise, midpoint, and dark night of the soul.” I find that each of these are really conducive to understanding how to propel a story forward when you’re stuck, which can happen often when working on big projects.

Theme stated is usually what the characters need to learn, stated by someone else. It’s less a motif present and more of an emotional goal that the protagonist isn’t emotionally aware of and is resistant to. In romance it’s usually “you need to open yourself up more” said by a friend. This is usually a good thing to keep in mind in each scene, because sometimes if you write yourself into a corner; you can fall back on this and try and work out what your character can do next. Is Joe antisocial and needs to learn to trust others? and you’re not sure where to take it? Have him try being avoidant to Brad during their partnership, and Brad push back against that. Additionally, a great way to add drama is to have characters fall back on their old ways/not ingest the lesson of the theme.

Fun and Games/Promise of the Premise: basically just shennanigans that happen based on what you’re setting out to do. If Brad and Joe are working together, it’s the moments that arise from that. Moments where they clash, or go to the library, or one of them skips out on doing the project. Anything that they could experience while working together, as well as the romance implications of that. Bad guys close in is an extension of this—usually a deadline is approaching.

Midpoint: when everything seems great. For example, say you don’t know where to take Brad from the Fun and Games, have them create a really good project! They’re finished working, and realize they enjoy each other.

Dark Night of the Soul: they lose the project, they fight, Brad doesnt show up for the final practice and Joe feels betrayed. Anything that sets them emotionally back to square one, and then something happens to rally them once again to finish their school project.

In a big project, the big emotional issues may not be fully resolved from this, but from a plot basis, it gives you an idea of how to keep plot-based emotional momentum that all works through the ultimate development of the the thesis.

The theme of each arc should be different as they start to learn new things, because rehashing the same material doesn’t keep that momentum you need. So, if Joe learns to open up in arc one, maybe arc 2 is about him examining what he actually wants out of relationships with others.

Fic is a great place to do this because there’s so much shit you can mine for each story arc, and is really rewarding to readers when you bring it into play. And if you run out of that, eventually you can mine older arcs you write and bring their content back into play too. When you do this it basically allows you to have infinite arcs and shit if you want which is fun, and how TV shows go on for ages, for better or for worse

Anyways hope this is as in any way helpful! This is just how I do it haha

[el-bellanaris]

The lack of treatment of Solas as a human being in Veilguard lowkey drives me wild. I didn't really think about it until after finishing the game but the Veilguard really just take over his house?? Rook is sleeping in his meditation room, the room he uses to spend time in the fade and where if you made certain choices is his place of connection to the Inquisitor. He does have a bed upstairs in his office but I personally see that room as his bedroom due to how accessible it is.

Regardless of the exact details, one of the first things we do is move our stuff in as Rook into his room. We're supposed to feel a sense of belonging to the Lighthouse as shown through how the companions will make their rooms into their own. Adding new decorations, turning an empty shell into a home. But how audacious of Rook, of us, to believe our cause so good and important that we can take some man's house because he is "bad."

And I understand the themes at play, Solas originally stole the Lighthouse from Elgar'nan and used it as his base for the rebels who fought against the Evanuris. So now it's time for a new generation to take on this mantle but there's a huge difference from taking a fort from a king who has a palace somewhere else and likely has multiple temples and places to live in then taking away the literal home of a man who has nowhere else.

Solas is a god in the thematic sense yes, he is powerful and revered by many out of fear but he is still a person. Becoming the self-declared heroes of the world does not grant one the freedom to literally rob a person of their house.

And now at the end of the game he's basically no longer welcome in his own home. Everyone in the Veilguard basically hates him and then squat in his house making it their home when they all have homes and just expect him to take it cos hes a "bad guy." I remember thinking how sweet it was that Neve started to think of the light house as her home, how she and other people would start to invite others over to have discussions showing how this is now where others know to reach them.

But the fact that none of them feel any remorse about it is crazy, especially coming from Neve, Bellara and a Dalish Rook. You have Neve who works with the Shadow Dragons, an organisation that is founded upon the beliefs of freeing slaves and wanting to work underground to help those who are being oppressed. And she takes the home of a man who has no where else to go? A man who has lost his entire world? The Dalish know about how the world has mistreated them and how much they've lost so why do they not feel any remorse for literally stealing someone's home.

I was also thinking about sad it is that my Inquisitor or generally any Inquisitor was never able to visit the Lighthouse in game but now all I can think about is how sad of an experience that would be for her. For my Inquisitor who loved Solas who has chased him down for years to stop him and is finally able to see into his heart, his mind more intimately through seeing where he lives and it's taken over by a group of people who hate him with such a passion that they barely see him as a person anymore. They all want to put him on trial for his crimes whilst sitting on their high horses inside of his house.

Back to my Inquisitor, she's been to Halamshiral, she knows the haunting feeling of walking through the halls of a place taken over by those who did not build it. She's walked the Emerald Groves and the Exalted Plains, she has seen the graves of her people overrun by humans who just desire power and war and want to burn the Elves from their history. To make the world think of them as savages to justify violence and destruction.

Now thinking about her walking through the halls of the Lighthouse that is so intrinsically Solas's and seeing it become the homes of other people would seem so gut wrenching. To hear them talk about his most wretched memories and dissect his thoughts just so they can figure out how everything is the way it is whilst also just taking everything from him. They're stripping him of his humanity for their own personal gain and it would seem so ignorant, so cruel. They take his table and remove his seat and then expect him to be live with it because they can blame the world's suffering on him.

We play as Rook, we are the hero of this story. The one who chose to step up and take down the last gods that remain in this world. But can we truly be good as Rook if we are just allowed to treat this guy like a stepping stone. To treat his entire life, the only things he can say he owns after a couple thousand years of his world decaying, as a means to an end with no remorse. How are we different from Solas who betrays Rook over and over when we just sleep in his bed, when we just steal from others to get to the "good" ending. Taking his Lighthouse was just an inconsiderate move not too dissimilar to how Solas will only consider his actions as a means to an end. But we're the good guys so it doesn't really matter right??

[lesabear]

Thoughts on Veilguard

TLDR: If empty calories were a video game it would be Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The game is a pleasant enough - if generic and unremarkable - action RPG that basically abandons the themes and feel of the previous games, resulting in a bland story that largely avoids dealing with anything that might remotely cause conflict in the party or force the player to consider anything other than surface level good-bad morality.

If this is the direction they're taking DA, then I think I'm done with the franchise. If I wanted a generic, thematically uninteresting, action RPG there are so many other games to play.

Spoilers in my detailed thoughts below

The good:

It looks very nice - I wish I could have spent even more time exploring the world areas.

Very few bugs or technical issues unlike Andromeda (or most new games in general). I had a few minor issues near the end but overall was very impressed.

Manfred and Assan are great secondary companions. If anyone knows where to find a skeleton and/or griffon friend please let me know.

I quite like Emmerich, Davrin and Bellara and romanced the latter two and (Generally) really liked both. Disclaimer: I tend to have different tastes than the majority of DA fandom when it comes to romances. I expected to have mixed feelings on Bellara because of my issues with Bioware and their cutesy awkward naive/inexperienced female characters but I thought they (mostly) got her right.

Some interesting lore stuff, though I quibble with how it was delivered at times. Still was fun to get a lot more info on the Evanuris, Solas, Mythal, the Titans, etc. And there's also some fun lore stuff in the codices, although again I question whether that's the best way to deliver them.

The final mission is a lot of fun and the clear standout quest other than Weisshaupt maybe. Both are a lot of fun and combine multiple story elements with good gameplay for a satisfying experience.

Combat is engaging although it does get repetitive once you "solve" it. I did a lot of grinding to complete content though so that might be my fault.

Solas is very Solas-y in the game and the highlight of the antagonists by far. I wish there had been more of him and I say that as someone who finds the Solas fandom somewhat exhausting at times. He was far more interesting and compelling than the "even-worse" gods and the fact he's a fuck up who keeps making things worse because he's an egotistical fuck-up who thinks he's the only one that can fix things was is both tragic and fun.

Neve-Lucanis and Taash-Harding are both very cute. I actually think they might be my favorite companion romances off the top of my head (Tali-Garrus does absolutely nothing for me, and I don't even romance either character with my Shepard).

The not good

Why is the Inquisitor wearing pajamas.

Bioware can fuck off for making me pop about a zillion blight pimples. It's really not that much fun after the first 1000

Extremely disappointed with how sanitized the narrative is. There's little attention paid to major facets of the DA universe that are directly relevant to the plot (religion, Tevinter slavery, racism toward elves etc.) and you also get stuff like the Crows now being far lighter of an organization than they were previously.

Just as an example - both Davrin and Bellara touch on what it means to have their gods be the villains but they're just topics for conversation and there's no meaningful impact (especially as the bad guys rely on Antaam and Venatori forces - oh and generic mercenaries). The Dalish are just there (or victims of the bad guys) for the most part. I've read comments from Bioware that confirm this but it seemed obvious Bioware wrote themselves into a corner with making Elven gods be the main antagonists, as you then run into the issue of having the elves not only already be a persecuted minority but also be worshipping evil gods - but instead of writing around it they just avoided dealing with it and acted like it's just the Dalish getting a big win by not joining them.

Speaking of enemies, lots of bland dialogue from the non-Solas big bads. And the Venatori/Antaam/mercenaries gave off major "Cerberus in ME3" vibes - nameless, faceless goons thrown at you in waves that got very boring very quickly.

The way a companion gets hardened because of a choice early in the game is mostly meaningless unless you wanted to romance them. People getting mad about that happening are being ridiculous - if anything the game is too afraid (as usual) to have it actual matter beyond them briefly being upset before moving on.

One of the big choices is to decide whether to protect Treviso or Minrathous when both are attacked by dragons, but it happens so early you might lock yourself out of quests without realizing it. Worse, the ensuing mission is incredibly short and boring (basically a couple of packs of generic enemies and then a very brief dragon fight)

Why is the Inqusitor wearing pajamas.

Why can't I be a mean/"bad" Rook? Even the jokey responses feel super tame compared to previous DAs (let alone the borderline assholish purple hawke). Basically you're only allowed to be slightly different variations of a heroic figure.

While the companions are all nice they all top out at "I like them", with none matching the story or emotional peaks of previous Bioware games. Emmerich comes closest (especially if you account for Manfred) but there's just enough meat to him.

Disappointing romances compared to previous Bioware games(especially but not limited to Lucanis.). Not a ton of depth dialogue wise and at times it feels like they put more time into the companion romance than the Rook version (this time I am definitely talking about Lucanis).

Speaking of which, Lucanis was the biggest disappointment of the companions. I didn't want a Zevran clone but you have a hardened assassin possessed by a demon who (if you choose not to save Treviso, which cuts off a lot of his content) just drinks coffee and likes Neve and uh....

Completely forgettable soundtrack which is a major bummer after previous installments. Also, while I didn't have many technical issues, the music not always playing was one of them (although maybe it doesn't really matter given the lack of quality!)

Bad to horrendous incorporation of previous DA story which was also incongruous with the general tone, especially with the handling of the Inquisitor and the treatment of southern Thedas (especially if you get the Emmerich and Harding picnic conversation at an awkward time like I did.)

Lots of disappointing cameos but especially from my Pirate Queen/Wife from DA2. Isabela's hat is indeed very nice but what is that outfit? And I get they didn't want to deal with too complex a world state but man was it a bummer to see her basically reset after everything her and Hawke went through in my main DA2 playthrough.

Why is the Inquisitor wearing pajamas.

What did they do with Harding? Why did she basically get Dagna's story, even if Titan lore is interesting? She's such a nothing character in this game which is such a weird choice given that she's clearly there because they know fans like her.

The "Actually Varric was dead all along" did nothing for me. He barely shows up in game anyway and the weird framing of every appearance and the fact no one other than Rook ever interacts with him gave it away (at least partially)

[stackslip]

like i'm all about critiquing the execution of 03's ending and how sloppy cos is as an actual conclusion bc there's stuff that can be excused (the rushed production and cancelled final season and how little time/money they had and how much stress they were under) and stuff that can't (i love terminarcher objectively but it is deeply silly; winry's arc should have been concluded; imo it could have been executed better as much as i love the themes and ever since i learned of the original plan to finish the show in liore again i have been dying about it; cos is frankly a disaster on the amestrian side and nothing about the way it treats roy and riza makes sense except that the military are fan favourites who HAD to be in the big budget shounen movie)

but you cannot, for the love of everything holy, tell me with a straight face that manga/brotherhood's ending is better, nevermind perfect. like is it all tied up neatly. yes it is and herein lies the issue, again, bc it's so desperate to be a good happy ever after for everyone that it chooses to ignores the most vile implications of many characters' fates and plot threads' endings just so the Designated Good Guys can get domestic married and roy can be a benevolent military dictator. i've even seen people say that bh's ending inherently values winry more because she gets married to ed and settles and has babies with him. and yknow for how fucking messy the ending of 03 is, and how much of a weird mixed bag of a follow-up cos is too, for how out of context it SOUNDS weird but really if you've actually been following the plot and themes it fits perfectly, the ending to 03 is actually thematically coherent with its themes from the very beginning and drives home all its most salient points as hard as it can.

like sure the ending to brotherhood is much simpler and effective but you think about it for more than like five minutes and want to throw up. roy uses the souls of ishbalans to heal his eyes and becomes the fucking führer. ed and al have done nothing wrong ever. all the evil of the amestrian military comes from this Big Alien Bad Guy who Just Felt Powerless and when he's gone amestris is now a benevolent society that just happens to use ishbal as a frontier colony. scar wails and sobs about how evil he was for killing the people who actively participated in the genocide of his people while being scowled by an amestrian soldier. winry gets a domestic het ending. ling is gonna be cool emperor now and i guess mei can just deal with it. did any of the women ever really matter bc i keep being told brotherhood is a feminist masterpiece but what do any of them do besides return to the status quo with their boyfriend/husband/master or get domesticated and then olivier keeps being a fascist girlboss i guess. yay happy ending and don't you dare think about it deep it's not THAT deep, says the same crowd that calls og fma an anti imperialist masterpiece and a perfect series

meanwhile no matter how much 03 stumbles it legitimately feels like it's taking a look at all of these contradictions within the manga and slowly strangles them to death while looking you dead in the eye. THERE IS NO WAR THAT DOES NOT CONCERN US, ALCHEMY AND YOUR VISION OF PROGRESS ARE BASED ON MASS DEATH AND ATROCITIES, YOU CANT SAVE THE WORLD SINGLE HANDEDLY BUT THAT IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT FACING THAT WORLD FOR WHAT IT IS AND STILL CHOOSING TO TRY TO MAKE IT A LITTLE BETTER. and then i have to hear all about how grimdark and supposedly lacking in hope it is when it literally ends on the realization that you cannot separate yourself from the world or ignore its issues you have a duty to it and it is bigger than your dreams or selfishness. anyhow