#it's not about the conclusion it's about the argument

[raleighrador]

I think it ultimately comes down to what you think the films are about. I think part of the confusion is you have variously intersecting through lines in the story.

Anakin Skywalker as a character I think basically tells a straight forward story: a good person in the wrong circumstances can do incredible evil. Despite that evil, they always have the option of choosing to do good.

We see the good person Anakin at various points choose to do evil things. We then see the evil person Darth Vader choose to do good.

This is I think the most coherent “big” thesis of the 6 films. Good and evil are not essential and immutable components of character but rather outcomes of choices and actions. I have always read this as a deliberate rejection of essentialism and - for what it’s worth - a subversion of genre tropes about good and evil etc.

This is made more clear by the fact the films spend a lot of time dedicated to the “good” (Jedi) and “bad” (Sith) and expounding a very typical view of good and evil (“once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny” and “by now you must know, your father can never be turned from the dark side”), only to dramatically have them both proven wrong.

All of the above is - to me - very clear and coherent across the films.

I think where the story is weaker (or maybe just less clear to ME, maybe it’s very clear to Lucas or others) is when it goes one level down and tries to address “why” someone chooses what they do.

The explicit mechanism Lucas tries to use to address this “why” is “attachment”. He spends a lot of screen time having characters talk about it but it’s never really clear. I 100% agree with you that Anakin’s logic is basically consistent in episodes 3 and 6. For me it rings hollow to say in episodes 3 he acts based on attachment, that’s bad, but in 6 he acts on something else, that’s good.

They seem the same to me.

I think what Lucas is getting at is intent. This is consistent with his wider cosmology - in the same way that your mental state can influence you (in universe) to use the light or dark side for similar looking acts (e.g. fighting/violence/stabbing people with lightsabers), I think Lucas is saying that some significant part of the moral value of an action is your intent.

Anakin’s intent in episode 6 to save Luke is selfless and good; his intent in episode 3 is selfish and bad.

That is a plausible moral argument many have made, deontology is a thing. I think where that through line breaks in episode 3 is somewhere between “rise, Lord Vader” and “I don’t want to hear any more about Obi-Wan”.

In Palpatine’s office, Anakin is very clearly making a choice to save Padme’s life. The wild political ramblings and insane jealousy come later - after the choice has been made.

The issue, is in trying to make a point about “attachment” Lucas basically uses a sleight of hand to replace Anakin’s selfless motivations with selfish ones off screen.

In effect he crams in the conclusion without having made the argument.

If in Palpatine’s office Anakin had said “I can’t live without power” or something, or if his dreams had been about becoming the most powerful Jedi, then it would work. His motivations would have been clearly selfish, that’s the seed of evil, dark side, got it.

That isn’t what happened though.

This is further confused by the fact that what is shown on screen (both in episode 2 and 3) is a slightly different - arguably opposite - implied argument.

Anakin was not wrong to want to save his mother. Anakin was not wrong to want to save Padme.

What he did, however, was monstrous and evil. Murdering an entire village - after Shmi is already dead - serves no possible function and is horrific. Wiping out the Jedi temple, even if it saved Padme, is (externally) far too high a price to pay.

His intent didn’t matter, only his actions.

That, however, is something closer to either virtue ethics (actions have inherent value regardless of outcome ie murder is never ok regardless of intent) or even utilitarianism (though that is weaker and more a sense of Anakin being bad at math).

I think a lot of this confusion is honestly a function of the genre. It’s fantasy action. It’s about knight and evil knights with swords and both of them need to swing them.

The genre requires you have violence on both sides. I think the OT is strongest in its articulation that while violence can sometimes feel necessary it is never just.

It’s why the peak of the entire series is Luke throwing away his lightsaber. It’s honestly kind of amazing that 6 films with the word “Wars” in their title reach their crescendo when the hero lays down their weapon.

The PT - and specifically Anakin - are a far more confused text because Lucas tries to maintain that basic idea (violence is inherently unjust and pointless, as writ large by the Clone Wars being a manufactured war) while also trying to achieve nuance that I don’t think he achieves.

Anakin blowing up a ship (and killing at least several Nemoidians) is good. Anakin killing Tuskens is bad. Anakin killing Geonosians is good (or maybe neutral?). Anakin chopping off Dooku’s hands is fine. His head is bad.

I think, ultimately, all the intent stuff is besides the point. I go back to the first big thesis: a good person in the wrong circumstances can do great evil.

I think Star Wars is at its clearest when you read the characters (and their actions) as happening within a context, a set of circumstances and it is that context which is to be examined and critiqued.

It’s a kid movie about space wizards and yet it spends significant screen time on trade deals and parliamentary procedure and sub committee meetings and executive 1 on 1s etc etc etc.

This is where your point about power dynamics comes in - you’re absolutely correct, as a function of his lived experience both pre and as a Jedi, Anakin simply cannot divorce himself from power dynamics, and he constantly finds himself in circumstances that honestly justify that.

Star Wars is a story in large part about the actions of one man, put into the wrong circumstances, but it’s also about the circumstances themselves.

He takes the ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son.

[competitioneddie]

discourse time baby.

can we look closely at the amount of people who only like tommy bc they've been explicitly clued into the idea of him as a love interest vs buddie being implicit.

wdym you were invested in ted and robin for 9 whole seasons despite the very fleshed out and long lasting love interests that you hated bc you knew in your heart of hearts that they were endgame but you're clinging to a character whose backstory is 'love interest of previous love interest' bc 'noOOoOoOo bUcK aND edDIe aRe plAtONIc'. why don't you cling to taylor like that she was a fantastic character and she loved buck even if they weren't a good romantic match, the same arguments that apply to tommy should hold for her...

like truthfully what is the reason you're so opposed to two men having a friends to lovers situation. i've read this book before and the answer is usually a construction of queerness rooted in a deep seated form of misogyny that skews people's perceptions of how gay people romance. pls take a moment to reflect on the idea of coupledom you're building there for buck and for the queer people in your lives. gay people can have relationships that are not purely sex driven. friends to lovers is universally the single most common way for people to bond and partner up romantically.

if buck and eddie were a straight couple no one would question that a slow burn friends to lovers is on the cards and i think that's telling. you're entitled to dislike eddie as a character or as a love interest for buck but can we please stop acting like interpreting last week's episode as the high point of a friends to lovers feelings realisation is some outlandish shit we're making up. even if the conclusion isn't buddie. we've seen this before for straight couples. and no one heard "i'm not in love with him/her" and immediately decided that this is the showrunners shutting it down. c'mon we all watched bones & booth break up and nobody thought "well yeah that's it for them".

pls don't be that person, and if you absolutely have to, like, don't be nasty about it? it's not a good look.

[bradleysass]

sword - @moonkillermicrofic - wc: 582

Barty had been staring at the replica sword for weeks. Months, maybe. He didn't keep track of time unless it involved making someone else's life harder.

It gleamed in the shop window, a perfectly crafted medieval longsword, the kind a warlord might wield. It was beautiful. It was terrible. It was absolutely necessary.

There was just one problem.

"Barty, you are not bringing a sword into this house."

Remus didn’t even look up from his book when he said it. He knew. He always knew. Barty had barely opened his mouth, and Remus had already reached the inevitable conclusion that Barty was about to ruin his own life and possibly theirs.

"Why not?" Barty whined, throwing himself onto the couch like a teenager denied concert tickets.

"Because our child lives here."

Barty scoffed. "Teddy's like, what, one? He's not going to pick up a sword and go on a rampage."

"He's learning to walk. He will fall face-first into it within five seconds of you setting it down."

Barty narrowed his eyes. "You're making him sound uncoordinated. He's very advanced."

"He puts his foot in his own mouth."

"It's a sign of superior flexibility."

Remus closed his book with the deep, weary sigh of a man who had already fought this battle a hundred times in his head and was losing it in reality. "Look, Barty. If you can come up with a logical, reasonable argument for why we should have a giant weapon in our home, I'll consider it."

Barty opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. "Because I want it."

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose. "No."

"Remus. Remus, please. Look at me. I have wanted that sword for months. It's calling to me. Do you know what it’s like to have your soul connected to an object and be cruelly denied it?"

"Yes. It's called a full moon, and I don’t get a choice in that either."

Barty flopped back dramatically, groaning. "This is oppression."

"This is parenting."

"This is tyranny."

"This is me reminding you that your father cut off your inheritance. How are you even planning to pay for this thing?"

Barty wiggled his eyebrows. "Don't worry about it."

Remus worried about it.

The next morning, the sword was in their house. Not subtly, either. It was propped up in the kitchen, resting against the counter like a guest at breakfast.

Remus stared at it. Then at Barty, who was very deliberately buttering toast like a man who had done nothing wrong in his life.

"Where did you get that?" Remus asked, voice dangerously calm.

Barty smiled innocently. "Oh, this old thing?"

Remus inhaled sharply. "Barty."

"Funny story! Turns out our dear friend Peter owed me some money. And I may have told him that if he repaid me in the form of an incredibly specific, historically accurate weapon, I would consider his debt forgiven."

Remus sat down. He massaged his temples. He considered his life choices. "I hate you so much right now."

"You don’t." Barty grinned, grabbing the sword and giving it a dramatic swing. "Look how cool it is!"

"Put it down."

"Never."

"Barty."

"Moony."

"If Teddy so much as looks at that thing, I will hex you into next week."

Barty, still grinning, rested the sword against his shoulder like a victorious knight. "Then I guess I'll just have to train him to be a proper little swordsman, won’t I?"

Remus groaned.

This was going to be a long, exhausting battle.

[lizhly-writes]

currently staring at my current big wip doc, specifically at my wu youxuan/chen liwei cnovel offshoot, because. look. sometimes, you (me) are impatient. sometimes, you (still me) are not in the mood for writing buildup. what if you (astonishingly enough, still me) skip ahead to the point where they're already in a relationship. what about that point, huh.

...this is the state of mind in which fluff fics originate from, huh.

[metanarrates]

Hello. Sorry if this a stupid question u can ignore if u want.

How can someone get better at media analysis? Besides obviously reading a lot.

Im asking this bc im in a point where im aware of my own lack of tools to analyze stories, but i don't know where to get them or how to get better in general. How did you learn to analyze media? There's any specific book, essay, author, etc that you recommend? Somewhere to start?

I'm asking you because you are genuinely the person who has the best takes on this site. Thank you for you work!

it sounds like a cop-out answer but it's always felt like a skill I acquired mostly thru reading a ton, and by paying a lot of attention in high school literature classes. because of that I can't promise that I'm necessarily equipped to be a good teacher or that i know good resources. HOWEVER! let me run some potential advice to you based on the shit i get a lot of mileage out of

first off, a lot of literary analysis is about pattern recognition! not just pattern recognition in-text, but out-of-text as well. how does this work relate to its genre? real-world history? does it have parallels between real-life situations? that kind of thing.

which is a big concept to just describe off the bat, so let me break it down further!

in literature, there is the concept of something called literary devices - they are some of the basic building blocks in how a story is delivered mechanically and via subtext. have you ever heard of a motif? that is a literary device. it's a pattern established in the text in order to further the storytelling! and here is a list of a ton of common literary devices - I'd recommend reading the article. it breaks down a lot of commonly used ones in prose and poetry and explains their usage.

personally, I don't find all the literary devices I've learned about in school to be the most useful to my analytical hobbies online. motifs, themes, and metaphors are useful and dissecting them can bring a lot to the table, but a lot of other devices are mostly like fun bonus trivia for me to notice when reading. however, memorizing those terms and trying to notice them in the things you read does have a distinct benefit - it encourages you to start noticing patterns, and to start thinking of the mechanical way a story is built. sure, thinking about how the prose is constructed might not help you understand the story much more, but it does make you start thinking about how things like prose contribute to the greater feeling of a piece, or how the formatting of a piece contributes to its overall narrative. you'll start developing this habit of picking out little things about a text, which is useful.

other forms of in-text pattern recognition can be about things like characterization! how does a character react to a certain situation? is it consistent with how they usually behave? what might that tell you about how they think? do they have tells that show when they're not being trustworthy? does their viewpoint always match what is happening on screen? what ideas do they have about how the world works? how are they influenced by other people in their lives? by social contexts that might exist? by situations that have affected them? (on that note, how do situations affect other situations?)

another one is just straight-up noticing themes in a work. is there a certain idea that keeps getting brought up? what is the work trying to say about that idea? if it's being brought up often, it's probably worth paying attention to!

that goes for any pattern, actually. if you notice something, it's worth thinking about why it might be there. try considering things like potential subtext, or what a technique might be trying to convey to a reader. even if you can't explain why every element of a text is there, you'll often gain something by trying to think about why something exists in a story.

^ sometimes the answer to that question is not always "because it's intentional" or even "because it was a good choice for the storytelling." authors frequently make choices that suck shit (I am a known complainer about choices that suck shit.) that's also worth thinking about. english classes won't encourage this line of thinking, because they're trying to get you to approach texts with intentional thought instead of writing them off. I appreciate that goal, genuinely, but I do think it hampers people's enthusiasm for analysis if they're not also being encouraged to analyze why they think something doesn't work well in a story. sometimes something sucks and it makes new students mad if they're not allowed to talk about it sucking! I'll get into that later - knowing how and why something doesn't work is also a valuable skill. being an informed and analytical hater will get you far in life.

so that's in-work literary analysis. id also recommend annotating your pages/pdfs or keeping a notebook if you want to close-read a work. keeping track of your thoughts while reading even if they're not "clever" or whatever encourages you to pay attention to a text and to draw patterns. it's very useful!

now, for out-of-work literary analysis! it's worth synthesizing something within its context. what social settings did this work come from? was it commenting on something in real life? is it responding to some aspects of history or current events? how does it relate to its genre? does it deviate from genre trends, commentate on them, or overall conform to its genre? where did the literary techniques it's using come from - does it have any big stylistic influences? is it referencing any other texts?

and if you don't know the answer to a bunch of these questions and want to know, RESEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND! look up historical events and social movements if you're reading a work from a place or time you're not familiar with. if you don't know much about a genre, look into what are considered common genre elements! see if you can find anyone talking about artistic movements, or read the texts that a work might be referencing! all of these things will give you a far more holistic view of a work.

as for your own personal reaction to & understanding of a work... so I've given the advice before that it's good to think about your own personal reactions to a story, and what you enjoy or dislike about it. while this is true that a lot of this is a baseline jumping-off point on how I personally conduct analysis, it's incomplete advice. you should not just be thinking about what you enjoy or dislike - you should also be thinking about why it works or doesn't work for you. if you've gotten a better grasp on story mechanics by practicing the types of pattern recognition i recognized above, you can start digging into how those storytelling techniques have affected you. did you enjoy this part of a story? what made it work well? what techniques built tension, or delivered well on conflict? what about if you thought it sucked? what aspects of storytelling might have failed?

sometimes the answer to this is highly subjective and personal. I'm slightly romance-averse because I am aromantic, so a lot of romance plots will simply bore me or actively annoy me. I try not to let that personal taste factor too much into serious critiques, though of course I will talk about why I find something boring and lament it wasn't done better lol. we're only human. just be aware of those personal taste quirks and factor them into analysis because it will help you be a bit more objective lol

but if it's not fully influenced by personal taste, you should get in the habit of building little theses about why a story affected you in a certain way. for example, "I felt bored and tired at this point in a plot, which may be due to poor pacing & handling of conflict." or "I felt excited at this point in the plot, because established tensions continued to get more complex and captured my interest." or "I liked this plot point because it iterated on an established theme in a way that brought interesting angles to how the story handled the theme." again, it's just a good way to think about how and why storytelling functions.

uh let's see what else. analysis is a collaborative activity! you can learn a lot from seeing how other people analyze! if you enjoy something a lot, try looking into scholarly articles on it, or youtube videos, or essays online! develop opinions also about how THOSE articles and essays etc conduct analysis, and why you might think those analyses are correct or incorrect! sometimes analyses suck shit and developing a counterargument will help you think harder about the topic in question! think about audience reactions and how those are created by the text! talk to friends! send asks to meta blogs you really like maybe sometimes

find angles of analysis that interest and excite you! if you're interested in feminist lenses on a work, or racial lenses, or philosophical lenses, look into how people conduct those sort of analyses on other works. (eg. search feminist analysis of hamlet, or something similar so you can learn how that style of analysis generally functions) and then try applying those lenses to the story you're looking at. a lot of analysts have a toolkit of lenses they tend to cycle through when approaching a new text - it might not be a bad idea to acquire a few favored lenses of your own.

also, most of my advice is literary advice, since you can broadly apply many skills you learn in literary analysis to any other form of storytelling, but if you're looking at another medium, like a game or cartoon, maybe look up some stuff about things like ludonarrative storytelling or visual storytelling! familiarizing yourself with the specific techniques common to a certain medium will only help you get better at understanding what you're seeing.

above all else, approach everything with intellectual curiosity and sincerity. even if you're sincerely curious about why something sucks, letting yourself gain information and potentially learning something new or being humbled in the process will help you grow. it's okay to not have all the answers, or to just be flat-out wrong sometimes. continuing to practice is a valuable intellectual pursuit even if it can mean feeling a tad stupid sometimes. don't be scared to ask questions. get comfortable sometimes with the fact that the answer you'll arrive at after a lot of thought and effort will be "I don't fully know." sometimes you don't know and that can be valuable in its own right!

thank you for the ask, and I hope you find this helpful!

[gaym3bo1]

i've said it before and i'll say it again

thame and po have Such a wild mix of fantastic communication and bad communication going, i need to study them under a microscope

[handweavers]

at what point does something stop being made by a person and start being made by a machine? is someone creating a photoshop action so the computer will run code to edit a photo they found online all that different from someone inputting words into a human made algorithm trained on human made images to generate a photo? if i use a knitting machine to make something does it count as human made or machine made or both? if i design a program that knits the object without me having to manually operate the machine does it still hold emotional value? what if i allow others to use that program to do the same thing and they input a sentence into the program articulating what they want made and the machine creates it? is 3d printing art? is technology itself capable of being art? if we define 'what gets to be art' by the % of machine involvement at what % does it stop being art? does this entire argument not feel a bit futile and arbitrary to you?

everyone will have a different answer just like how everyone has a different answer on 'what is art' and that's an argument we've been having for ages and will continue to have for the foreseeable future. i'm a weaver and an artist and my tendency is to lean toward the romantic, but in my efforts to be a materialist i ultimately find these questions largely unhelpful on the topic of 'should generative ai art be forbidden' because if we're only talking about how things make us feel and how we want the world to be and not the actual material impacts of things from a practical perspective we'll never get anything done. it's why i said that arguments against generative ai that take this stance are unconvincing and if you try to critique ai from an angle that isn't materialist you will run yourself in circles.

[trashogram]

If we’re arguing about a show and I ask you for examples to back up your point but you tell me “just re-watch the show, I shouldn’t have to give you examples!” than you have lost credibility and subsequently lost the argument.

You don’t go to the bank to cash out a check that you don’t have, guy. That’s not how this works. Debates require evidentiary support and I’m not tolerating less.

[psink]

Translation of the interview with Kamiya Hiroshi (Kusuo's VA) and Nojima Kenji (Kuusuke's VA)

The TV anime "The Disastrous Life of Saiki K: The Final Chapter" will air as a year-end special program on the TV Tokyo network on (friday) December 28th from 7:35 to 8:30.

The January issue of PASH!, which is now on sale, features an interview with Kamiya Hiroshi-san, the voice actor of Saiki Kusuo, and Nojima Kenji-san, the voice actor of Kuusuke Saiki. We’re releasing a preview ahead of tomorrow’s broadcast. 

Amidst the busy end-of-year, good grief, a world-involving sibling fight…? We spoke to Nojima Kenji-san, who plays the older brother Kuusuke, and Kamiya Hiroshi-san, who plays the younger brother Kusuo, after they had just finished recording about the truth of the matter!

―― Please tell us how you felt when the decision to make the Final Chapter was made. Kamiya: I was very happy. Even if you want to adapt every episode from the original work, it’s not always possible to do so. But with this series, everything fell into place. I think the biggest reason we were able to adapt it all the way to the Final Chapter was because of the fans’ wishes, and for that, I’m incredibly grateful.

Nojima: I had heard that the Final Chapter would be made, but I was wondering about what form it would take, and it turned out to be a two-part year-end special. Could people really sit through an hour of this work?! What kind of focus would they need to watch it? I was a bit worried about that (laughs). But I’m sure that “The Disastrous Life of Saiki K” will deliver dense content that makes you lose track of time again, in the way only it can. 

―― Compared to other anime series, “Saiki” has about 2 or 3 times more dialogue per episode, right?

Kamiya: I had vaguely noticed that, but… Nojima: You didn’t want to know, did you? (laughs)

Kamiya: Certainly, for a 30-minute anime, it takes a lot of time to go over the script. Even when watching the DVD to check it, I thought “Hm? Is something wrong with the machine?”, because it felt like it was playing fast-forward (laughs).

Nojima:  I’ll be honest now, but on the day I first participated in the recording, I actually went into the recording without finishing all the checks.I checked the script at home and then immediately went to the studio. I was calculating in my mind the timing to start reading the script to record whilst still keeping my role preparation fresh. 

But, the amount of lines was beyond my imagination, so I couldn't finish the preparation… This was something that shouldn’t have happened, but honestly, I got through the latter half [of the recording] just with concentration (laughs). But, since I was able to maintain the momentum from the first half, I’m glad I was able to bring out a good sense of raw feelings. Kamiya-san, how was your first recording?

Kamiya: I already can’t remember, but when I re-watch Episode 1 now, I think the pace is still slow. It’s gotten gradually faster since entering season 2. In season 2, Director Sakurai was probably broken as the pacemaker (laughs). Nojima: Ahaha, I see. It's like a live band where the rhythm gradually speeds up, and you keep going without knowing the original pace.

Kamiya: Exactly. 

Nojima: Since you can’t keep up by just listening to the lines as words, you have to listen to the partner’s tone and match it. It might be similar to a music session.

―― In the Final Chapter, the relationship between Kusuo and Kuusuke seems to be a highlight. What do you both think about these brothers?

Nojima: The reason they can fight so much, do terrible things, and act recklessly is probably because, ultimately, they’re brothers. In a different case, it would have ended in a complete fallout, wouldn’t it?

Kamiya: That’s true. After all, what Kuusuke is doing is almost criminal. Nojima: Ahahahaha.

Kamiya: What I found especially dangerous about what Kuusuke did was the story of making the elderly villagers wear powered suits. The way he disguised it as caregiving while completely using them as his own puppets was seriously dangerous. Nojima: It’s surely his own sense of justice. I wonder if it’s an antithesis to how we should handle the aging society going forward (laughs).

―― Kuusuke’s obsession with Kusuo is also quite dangerous, isn’t it?

Nojima: Kuusuke has a very strong desire for approval, wanting to be recognized by Kusuo above all else. Challenging him to fights is, I think, a distorted expression of that. But I believe it is also an expression of his love and his desire to be loved back.

Kamiya: Kusuo probably thinks Kuusuke is a troublesome person, but Kusuo is also at fault. Although Kuusuke is a genius, he worked hard to create the control device for Kusuo to help him control his superpowers, didn’t he? Kusuo should be grateful, but he doesn’t express it. “Thanks, big brother. I can’t live without this” - it would’ve been nice if he could’ve said that, but Kusuo doesn’t understand the feelings of those without [superpowers], so that didn’t happen. There was also the sense of taking it for granted because they're family, but thinking how this resulted in that difficult brotherly relationship is quite sad.

―― That’s deep.

Kamiya: Although Kusuke knows he’ll lose, he keeps challenging Kusuo to fights and enjoys the process, which shows his malicious side. He’s also quite twisted. So they’re both equally to blame. From an outsider’s perspective, their relationship can be summed up with one phrase "they’re just just not honest with each other”.

Nojima: Despite that, there are also times when they rely on each other.

Kamiya: It’s complicated. That’s why even in the Final Chapter their relationship will likely be depicted. 

―― Finally, could you give a message to the readers who are waiting for the broadcast? Nojima: I was worried about how much Kuusuke would appear, but he ended up having a lot more screentime than I had expected, so I was satisfied. I have no doubts that the viewers will enjoy it as well!  Since the story’s pace is fast, please acquire the ability to not blink while watching (laughs), and surely, you will be moved to tears in the end. There are emotional parts, but more than anything, I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for cherishing and enjoying this series for so long!

Kamiya: The TV anime is finally reaching its conclusion. For those who are watching for the first time, it might be difficult, as the story keeps quickly progressing whilst you’re wondering “what is this?”. But there is a scene at the beginning that reviews past episodes and introduces the characters, so I think you’ll understand what this series is about. That said, since it’s a gag anime, I hope you can enjoy it without thinking too much.

As for the highlights for the Final Chapter, Kusuo finally moves [his mouth] and speaks for the first time. You might be wondering “What is this person saying?”, but it’s exactly as it sounds (laughs). Please watch the main story to uncover the truth behind it. I’m sure you’ll be surprised.

[off-the-rails-raccoon]

When ctommy lived with Techno, he was very suprised to found out he and Phil eat Eggs with bacon for breakfast

And horrified, so very horrified. After loudly shaming Phil and Techno for half an hour Phil probably said something in passing about not even being able lay eggs and Tommy instantly had the assumption that was because of bird-menopause and silently lived with that truth for the rest of his life.

Techno also adamantly believed that piglins and normal pigs are different enough for it to be considered normal for a piglin to eat pork from a pig. But considering Tommy's lack of literacy and reading comprehension, Techno's proof in the form of books didn't help much.

[carlyraejepsans]

for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.

[messiahzzz]

it is completely fine to have different interpretations of a character, that is what the fun is all about. but if you honest to goodness believe that emmr*ch expresses any form of commitment phobia in regards to romantic love… then idk what to tell you

[watermelinoe]

just putting this out there but if you believe we should consider someone a woman if they were socialized female, will this also apply to the male children who are transitioned as toddlers?

[freakinator]

i wwonder if ls has always resulted in arguments about metastory or if it started in s4

[wonder-worker]

"[Elizabeth Woodville's] piety as queen seems to have been broadly conventional for a fifteenth-century royal, encompassing pilgrimages, membership of various fraternities, a particular devotion to her name saint, notable generosity to the Carthusians, and the foundation of a chantry at Westminster after her son was born there. ['On other occasions she supported planned religious foundations in London, […] made generous gifts to Eton College, and petitioned the pope to extend the circumstances in which indulgences could be acquired by observing the feast of the Visitation']. One possible indicator of a more personal, and more sophisticated, thread in her piety is a book of Hours of the Guardian Angel which Sutton and Visser-Fuchs have argued was commissioned for her, very possibly at her request."

— J.L. Laynesmith, "Elizabeth Woodville: The Knight's Widow", Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty

[scalproie]

Heichachi: So sad that even tho I love my family I had to put them down for being devils and destined for evil 😔 Alas there was no other way 😔

Jun, kissing Kaz and hugging Jin: Skill issue.