#it’s just a skill issue that pisses me off

[asairayn]

OKAY HERE'S THE ANALYSIS OF ORIGINAL ECLIPSE

I LOVE THIS. such good interpretations of every version of eclipse.

I do want to talk about the original Eclipse, though, because I have a lot of thoughts on him and his motivation and his issues- I might be a little bit biased towards him (I wrote over 20k words about him over about eight months and wasn't even CLOSE to done).

So! Trying to analyze Eclipse at the very start is kind of difficult because... so much has been retconned, or forgotten about, or turned out to be just Not True- remember when Eclipse said he caused July 16th? Hard to tell whether that was him lying or something that got retconned as soon as they realized they needed a second villain.

But! from the best I can gather, largely from much later episodes that talk about the beginning, the original Eclipse was actually very heavily motivated by feeling betrayed. He actually said it himself

The original Eclipse was Moon. He started out as Moon, he had all the same memories... and then he was abandoned. Fully. Before he even existed. And then he was left in Sun's head for... an indeterminably long time (has the timeline been cleared up yet? how goddamn long before the show starts did july 16th happen?? because he was conscious in Sun's head for long enough before that to create Bloodmoon.), where he was able to hear and maybe see what was going on around Sun... but not do anything. Solitary confinement will get to anyone!

(He actually talked about that as a betrayal and how much it Sucked to be stuck in Sun's head in this clip (well. the reincarnation did. but good fucking luck finding the original eclipse talking about feelings.))

So he was Moon, and then he came to consciousness stuck in Sun's head with Moon's memories still thinking he was Moon, and then was stuck there for... a long time. He created Bloodmoon fairly early... and then was immediately abandoned again. Somehow, in however long he spent in the void in Sun's head (I have a lot of thoughts on that void, but they're not technically canon), he managed to craft himself a new identity. Because he was Moon!

And then he watched Sun and Moon get to exist and have a life while he was stuck for a long time in what was essentially solitary confinement. He hated them- he hated them a lot. It's mentioned many times, especially in the first few episodes with teaps Sun and Moon (i'm at that point in trying to catch up, so. i don't know whatever's happened beyond that), that Eclipse fucking hated being stuck in Sun's head- he hated loss of control, he hated having to watch.

And it shows in what he was trying to do! He hated Moon for abandoning him, and he hated Sun for not letting him have control... so he tortured Moon and completely revoked all control from Sun. Technically his goal in that era is to get the star, to... erase the world and make it better, or something, but. To me, that doesn't show at all- he doesn't act like that's his goal, he mostly acts like that's a fun pastime while he tries to lock Sun and Moon away permanently.

That all doesn't work, evidently. Lunar betrays him, which everybody but him expected, and lets Moon help Sun figure out what the hell to do, and eventually Eclipse gets killed/expelled from Sun's head. Goodbye to the original Eclipse, sucks to suck loser, shouldn't have abused your brother.

But the original Eclipse, at his core, hated Moon for abandoning him but hated Sun for locking him away.

He was mostly motivated by hatred- he'd had a long time to stew in it. He had a lot of abandonment issues and a lot of spite.

Quite literally, at that time, the only way that he could have any kind of control was by shoving Sun into his own head... which made both Sun and Moon hate him more. There wasn't actually any way he could take control without pissing them off- excluding maybe communication, but it's Eclipse. and he'd have to be communicating with Moon (notoriously bad at communication). He also had zero communication skills- he was Moon and then spent a long time unable to talk to anyone.

BUT THE JULY 16TH THING THAT I MENTIONED EARLIER IS IMPORTANT. I forgot I was going to talk about that.

So! The biggest thing that made Sun and Moon hate Eclipse from the beginning was that he claimed he was the one who took over Sun's body and killed a bunch of children on July 16th. Well, technically, he may have just said that he caused it and let Sun and Moon come to their own conclusions about how- but in the beginning, he was definitely saying that he was the one who killed people on July 16th.

And... that was a lie. Or retconned. Hard to say. You could technically say that he did still cause July 16th by creating Bloodmoon, but that's still a different thing. He didn't take control and murder children with his own hands- he created a person who got bored and took control to murder children.

But that means that Sun and Moon originally hated him for something he didn't do. They had other reasons to dislike him, sure, and he certainly gave them more reasons, but. The original thing wasn't actually him.

That has very little actual bearing on anything. They don't bring that up- it's not a Thing. but. it means something to me, I suppose. When Eclipse first showed up, the only Bad Thing™ that he'd done directly was take control by force. He portrayed himself from the beginning as the Big Bad, but he hadn't really done anything yet. I'm sure at least part of that was because- at least from what I can tell- they didn't actually have any plans for Bloodmoon yet so at that point he was the July 16th killer, but retcons just mean more fun for me.

Eclipse intentionally showed himself as the Bad Guy. He hated Moon for abandoning him, hated Sun because he was stuck in his head, and everything he did for the first few months was just... based in the kill code. He basically just did violence, until he started fucking with Sun and Moon, at which point he was filled with so much spite he couldn't be convinced to do anything else- and they didn't try.

Eclipse threatened Sun- the only person who Moon cared about ("Hi, I'm Moondrop, I don't care about anybody aside from my brother."). No matter what, Moon was going to hate him from that point on. Eclipse started by doing the one thing that Moon would not tolerate.

And then Eclipse created Lunar, for... somewhat vague reasons. And was awful to him, somewhat unsurprisingly. And, because he was horrible to Lunar, he would NEVER be forgiven (Until he came back from the third time, and was enough of a new person for Earth- who also Wasn't There- to not care).

I'm... very clearly biased towards the original Eclipse. I hate him so much and I've written so much about him and everything I wrote keeps being proven correct EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY TALK ABOUT THE ORIGINAL ECLIPSE.

Um. I'll be honest I don't actually know where the fuck I was going with this and I maybe just wanted an excuse to scream about Eclipse. And accidentally wrote over a thousand words of it.

Is there a certain way you go about the characterizations of the different incarnations of Eclipse?

Their motivations!

So at his core, Eclipse is an angry, paranoid, spiteful, arrogant, lonely, possessive, socially-inept person who can't communicate to save his own life. No matter where in his life you're writing him from, these traits persist.

The differences come in what his goal is, and which of his core traits are being amplified because of it.

I've written the Original Eclipse the least, mostly because I actually got interested in the show following his death 8'D. This Eclipse is the most closed off of all of them, the least likely to change his mind, the angriest and most vindictive. He hasn't been betrayed yet, he hasn't really failed yet, so his arrogance is at an all time high.

On the flip side, after his defeat and expulsion from Sun's head, this is also the rawest point in Eclipse's life. There's a lot of good fics about scraping his broken ass out of the woods and patching him up, and for good reason. Strip his arrogance away with his loss, and he has nothing.

My favorite is the Backup Eclipse. Eclipse 2.0, my beloved! Still arrogant, still angry, but spite is his strongest trait. He was defeated and he knows it, and he's learned that he needs to be a bit smarter in manipulating those around him. By escalating the game to the next level when he amplified Moon's kill code (giving us the guy, Kill Code), Eclipse started a chain reaction that is STILL going on in current canon.

The Backup is my favorite because his characterization runs from one end of the spectrum to the other. He comes back as a bedraggled version of himself, forced to deal with basically being Bloodmoon's prisoner while also getting them to work for him. He manages to enact one victory after another, culminating in him actually gaining the star. He did it, he won!

And then he fucking crashes.

Possession and loneliness are his strongest traits in the second half of his arc, and he picks up depression as well. Spite has become bitterness. Eclipse was never supposed to win, and he knows it. The star was only ever a means to an end, a way to get Moon's attention. And when Moon resets himself... Eclipse doesn't know what to do. He attempts to respark that rivalry, but New Moon isn't interested.

With no goal to latch on to, Eclipse crumples under his own misery and lack of purpose. On his way to winning, he destroyed everything that made his life interesting.

And then he got space lasered.

And then finally Eclipse 3.0, the Recreated Eclipse. I don't make a distinction between who he was before Lunar blew up his body and after, though I know some folks do.

Eclipse 3.0 starts off with anger, of course, and a lot of confusion and desperation. For a good amount of time in there he was p much feral. This one is mired in self-pity, and lashes out because of it.

Because that's what makes this one really interesting. He's picking up from where the Backup left off-- he has no purpose. I think he sunk his claws into the goal of 'find my creator' just to HAVE a goal. He's also interacting regularly with other people for the first time in his life(s), even if he does spend a lot of time taunting Moon for stuff that neither of them were personally there for.

Two things, I think, really helped Eclipse start stabilizing. The first was, uh. Solar's death 8'D More specifically, it was Puppet giving him an impossible task to focus on, and Eclipse always needs a goal. The second was Earth started socializing him. Which I love-- hell, I wrote that myself back in Sunk Cost. Earth always had the advantage of not being personally victimized by Eclipse like her siblings were, which let her be more tolerant of him.

Eclipse in his current state is still arrogant and possessive, and his people skills still suck. He's 'better' as a kind of side effect to Puppet's request; bringing Solar back, doing this Super Important Thing That Even Moon Failed At? Was a major ego boost. Eclipse learned a very important lesson:

Doing good things gets you attention and praise.

Which is why I think he had such a rocky start with the new dimension Sun and Moon 8'D He was chasing the high of being the hero, at the cost of actually paying attention to what was going on. He knew how things were supposed to go, that made him The Smartest. He's a good guy for extremely selfish reasons XD

But he's also finally made it to where a lot of fanfic authors have gotten him. A little less lonely, a few wounds healed. He does have people he cares about, without any intent for manipulation involved.

So yeah. I guess in summary:

Original Eclipse (Upright): Vindictive, angry. Would bite your hand off rather than take it Original Eclipse (Reversed): Lost, bewildered. A feral animal, but one that can be tamed.

Backup Eclipse (Upright): Spiteful, serious. Lost the game once already, has no intention of losing again. Backup Eclipse (Reversed): Bitter, desolate. An Eclipse without a purpose, can be coaxed onto new paths. Still will probably bite you a few times first. Recreated Eclipse (Upright): Arrogant, possessive. The end goal of many a fanfic, actually able to get along as a functional member of society... mostly. Recreated Eclipse (Reversed): Feral, desperate. Clinging onto what fragments he has in a life he didn't ask for, and hating every second of it.

Idk if that was useful but there you go!!!

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

Is refreshing my Spanish more useful in my day to day life? Yes. Do I end up doing that? No, because I’m a fucking idiot who can’t focus properly unless I’m into something. I keep saying “I’ve taken three Spanish classes through elementary and highschool. Re-learning it has to be easier than learning a whole new language!” and then when I open Duolingo I go like “ooh, Norwegian. I would love to be able to read that!” and take the Norwegian lessons instead 😑

[krafterwrites-alt]

I read some Youtube comments (a mistake) and apparently some people don't like how Frontiers looks? Like ?????? HOW

[kostnyan]

Hetalia fans will be like " nooooo!! Don't ship those two characters they're brothers/ father and son!!!" And its about two land masses who were colonial empires who've done irreversible damage to the world or something. Objectively what I'm doing is way better comparatively and has little to no impact on society soooo

[trickarrows-bishop]

thought about it and why are the parents in salt lake practically in a competition to be the worst parent ever ( other than kourtney’s ofc what a queen) like. why are they all not that good at parenting at all 😭

[captainjonnitkessler]

"Satire requires a clarity of purpose lest -" Poe's Law has been a rule of the internet for longer than some of you have been alive and your inability to clock satire or sarcasm isn't the author's problem

[sagxshi]

god i love getting put against well-skilled teams who spawn camp our team for two rounds in a row

and have the audacity to say “gg” as if they played fucking fairly

[giantkillerjack]

Your stance on the Dunmeshi queerbait stuff is a bit selfish. Wanting this one manga to go exactly the way you want is a dangerous path - the way you phrase it is so entitled, making it clear it's not about consuming media about lesbians, but making one specific work suit exactly what you want. So many yuri mangas are written by sapphic women. It's a shame your stance is how it is.

And bastardizing the term queerbaiting does no good, either. Neither does the japanese manga market. You should research more before making such hurtful posts.

Hope you have a great day anyway.

[Anon is referring to this post, I believe.]

I mean, one of us certainly IS acting very entitled and weird about the media they like, and it ain't me. Like, I think you just have associated this piece of media with your own identity in an unhealthy way that makes you react to criticism of it with intense defensiveness. You don't own Dungeon Meshi. You aren't Marcille. Dungeon Meshi is NOT a yuri manga; it's a beautiful manga with either sapphic queerbait or a woefully underdeveloped queer relationship at its center.

Maybe if you had an argument besides "it does no good" to criticize it, but you don't. So.

Smh, it's a "dangerous path" - I'm screenshotting that bc I know it'll make my wife laugh. Like, friendo, wanting a piece of media to be better isn't dangerous. But calling someone selfish and hurtful for criticizing media while offering no clarifications as to who I've hurt or how (any fellow sapphics bleeding out in here? Or is it just me with my bonkers-heavy period??)... it's overstepping a social boundary in a bizarre way.

Like, I'm sorry that I'm better at media analysis than you (not actually sorry - I am being petty! :D), but I actually have studied queerbaiting!! I am willing to bet I have done more research than you! (Are you from twitter? You have that vibe. - Again, pettiness.)

... and I spend every day with my wife (the best writer I know; I'm so honored to share stories with her), talking of nothing but our shared special interest all day - i.e. media analysis. (I honestly don't know what neurotypical couples talk about lol)

And I've done enough research to know that one of the side effects of queerbaiting is that fans are often in denial about it and then get REAL MAD when someone points it out. I was there for the Sherlock/Supernatural fandom. Shit was crazy. (Not saying Super-who-lock bc my man Russell Davies was like MAKE THOSE BOYS SMOOCH! 😎)

Also like, my apologies to Ryoko Kui - I really do love Dungeon Meshi - but like, I'm just better at writing and illustrating queer rep than she is. I make real gay protagonists who do gay shit and are gay, and I will never queerbait my audience. Womp womp.

Also, honestly, even if I turn out to be wrong about the queerbaiting by the end of the series, this message was still rude and entitled and weird. We have a lot of issues facing our queer community that endanger real people; someone calling a story queerbaiting mistakenly is not one of them.

[butchlifeguard]

parents be like when i was yr age i totaled my moms car coming back from a party in another state. also dont skateboard too fast the neighbor said something to me ☹️

[forcedhesitation]

top ten dumbest things I've done.

number 4: try to play killer with bad wifi AND while mmr cap is altered so good killer players (me) are primarily playing against good survivors (usually swfs)

[sweater-equestrian]

I might be retraining Roxy to ride this summer. pray for me.

[makeitlookdecent]

end of year "colors" (sketch)

[holdens-second-official]

I was so excited when I heard Test your Metal was coming back, I'm so disappointed why does it suck so bad now

[goodbye-susan]

.

[wanderingmausoleum]

what is with studios making film/show adaptations of books lately and changing characters’ hairstyles from interesting to the most boring shit you’ve ever seen

[5-htagonist]

bro i remember being young and my grandma telling me if i dont learn to clean my room then i wont do it when im older. while there is some truth there what she did not account for was the audhd