#its MESSED UP on a fundamental level

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he comes across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt, and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh." Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmare, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[optimisticgardenhologram]

I feel like there’s something very cultish about Wammy’s House. I looked up common characteristics of cults and found these similarities:

Recruitment: The residents at Wammy's House are some of the vulnerable humans imaginable, not only children who are impressionable and helpless by nature but specifically orphans who by definition don't have anywhere else to go, have no other ties to the outside world such as family or other adults to advocate for them or help guide them in life, and are completely dependent on the Wammy's House for their care. 

Isolation: Recruits are whisked away to an isolated and secretive place which is likely in another country or even across the world, where their pasts are erased, identities are stripped and re-assigned. Like previous mentioned they inherently have no ties to the outside world, which leads into the next trait...

Control over members lives: As a private orphanage/school Wammy's House controls every aspect of its children's lives and they are only allowed the freedoms, opportunities, direction and experiences the institution provides and permits them. It also establishes their life goal for them and monopolizes all their time, thoughts and physical energies in service to the institution's vision.

Us-vs-them mentality: The idea that this an elite and fundamentally special group of people, the world's most gifted children, with a special purpose. Where belonging is proven through the competition in an environment where the kids are publicly measured against each other and with the underpinning implication that their value and potential as humans is tied to their performance. This also raises the question of what happens to a child who is brought in but then fails to perform at the high level expected, are they shunned - cast out back to another orphanage that is perhaps not so materially nice and permissive with its kids?

A charismatic leader: How the entire organization revolves around the veneration and almost religious ideation of a human leader (L) who is the living embodiment of a practically unreachable ideal and to whom members proclaim zealous loyalty.

Apocalyptic thinking: The stated purpose of the house is centered on waiting for the unavoidable cataclysmic event of their charismatic leader's death and about how the new order will be established after.

Conformity and control: All of this happening within a closed-system echo-chamber environment.

..............

So yeah, those boxes get checked. I'm sure it's all fine and none of the orphans will come out of that system messed up at all though, right?

[transformers-spike]

MORE ON THE BRUISING THOUGHTS CUS IM ILL !!!

i can imagine smokescreen being so nervous the first time he learns that humans bruise. he would have a moment of panic, asking if youre alright, if you should go get a repaint –can you even get a repaint?! he would be so scared to touch you afterwards, he is a mess but only because he cares... you would explain to him that its normal and that it will heal on its own, which doesnt help whatsoever bcs wdym you can regenerate on your own???

i feel like with ratchet it would be somewhat complicated. he understands it on a fundamental level, blood vessel damage -> blood leakage -> discoloration and so it doesnt phase him. he learns to like it with time but keeps it mostly to himself, too ashamed about it. but synth-en ratchet? he is all over that and proud of it too. not only are you able to wear evidence of his touch on your skin but youre even more tender and sensitive after? he cant get enough.

Going feral over these bitches. Damn your sick brain is conjuring up fire ideas

[anim-ttrpgs]

Reading the book, and I'm already loving it. I agree with a lot of the things y'all say in it (players control the characters, not the narrator, etc.), but I was surprised at the strong insistence on 3rd person play.

Personally I like 1st person play because it helps me with immersion. If I play in 3rd person then my mental camera goes 3rd person, which feels more like playing a video game and removes that thrill of embodying someone else and living in a new world.

Usually I see people either take a strong pro 1st person stance, or a noncommittal stance, but this is the first time I've come across a game that insists on the 3rd person. I'm curious about the reasoning behind it. Was it just a philosophical decision, or did it bear out in playtesting that 3rd person was the better method? In the book y'all acknowledge that 3rd person play doesn't eliminate the threat of griefing from bad faith players.

Y'all clearly put a lot of thought into the game, so that really interested me. Could be a good learning opportunity!

I passed this on to one of our team and this is what she had to say:

In addition to our own home table just preferring to play in 3rd person, we believe that perspective is an important element of TTRPGs that doesn't get explored very often in the modern landscape. The games we play are composed of language - not just the words on the page, but the words we say at the table. Changing the verbiage will create a different emotional space, and a different experience. That zoomed out mental camera you describe is part of the point! In any TTRPG, players are always two things: participant, and audience. The narration we employ at the table affects the game world, yes, but we are also the only people there to see it play out. Eureka strongly emphasizes the "audience" side of that equation, and wants to frame the "participant" side as an act of authorship and discovery rather than one of inhabiting the world.

Just on a fundamental level, perspective is a defining part of any media - the camera angle in a movie or video game, the person of a book's prose, who tells the story, and who they tell it for. The way we frame a story changes the response it evokes. As you say, you've seen either strong pro-1st-person stances or neutral ones, but not a strong pro-3rd-person stance. I don't think that's because 1st person is inherently better for this sort of game, I think its because there is a tendency in the hobby right now - for a variety of reasons - to treat TTRPGs like a form of improv theater. That's not a problem in isolation per se, but I think it's one that limits what the medium can be or do. TTRPGs can be improv theater, but is that all they can be?

On a final note, we have also seen the insistence on 1st-person play and the approach of "embodying" a character occasionally cause real harm when the people involved have trouble separating player and character. That's also part of the reason we're so insistent about these being two separate people, because investigators tend to do some pretty messed up things (this being a horror focused game, after all), and we don't want people equivocating their friends with the characters they play when that level of emotional intensity is involved. Many people who play in 1st person are able to engage with that in a healthy way and understand the difference, of course, but I think it's hard to deny that the language makes that equivocation easier.

- @ashweather (person from out team who doesn't normally run this blog)

Adding on myself, another thing that I always like to bring up in this discussion is that first-person verbiage did not used to be so universal! Playing in the hobby even 4 or 5 years ago, you'd see (or at least I would see) a mix of third and first person verbiage at tables, and even people who used both interchangably. It's only in the past few years that third-person verbiage for TTRPGs has gone practically extinct, and i think most of the blame lies at the feet of big-budget "actual play" shows like Critical Role being many people's only reference for how a TTRPG can be played. Critical Role uses first-person, so therefor that's how TTRPGs are played.

I've even had people tell me on multiple separate occassions "that's wrong" when I'm trying to use third-person verbiage for TTRPGs, when playing with rulebooks which explicitly say in their text early on "you can use 1st or 3rd person to describe your character's actions"! (most, if not all, D&D edition rulebooks say this!)

In closing, yeah, if Eureka were a video game, it would be in third-person. Eureka doesn't want you in its world, it wants a character.

[richardsphere]

On the one hand, i like the "destruction isnt evil, you can destroy a bad thing and thus make the world a better place" angle. but this should've been a part of the show since season 1. Like Horrificator and Kung Food both had giant walls they made to cut off access to places. Creation doesnt fix that, destruction does and we've been complaining about that shit for 5.5 seasons. It's nice to see this acknowledged, but its too little and too late. I dont like having it crop up now so marinette can have a veneer of deniability though. "I didnt mess with Alya's memories, i just told Chat to do it for me". this is some Pontitus Pilate washing his hands-level delegation. Because in the end, this episode is just pretending Oblivio didnt happen so Mari doesn't need to be held accountible for either the lies or the memory-tampering. Maribat salt mini-rant about this new power and all the ways i hope it gets used under the cut btw.

I need one of those stupid-ass Batfam crossover fic's to have Chat just... remove the joker-chemicals and fix the joker. I need that after all the "adrien sucks" in those fics, him having powers that can canonically fix the worst and most overhyped batman villain without breaking the Hero Code is so irrationally important to me you wouldn't believe. I need a Maribat/Adribat fic where he destroys the pit-corruption from Ra's al Ghul... I need this... Or have Adrien de-venomise Bane mid-combat. I need this power to get used so much. Its such a cool power and i hate that the show introduces it in this shit-ass way that makes me hate a power i should be loving I need a fic where Adrien destroys the connection between the Akuma and Lila. I need this power to be used and explored in ways that the show never will (because it would fundamentally break the formula, like its justifiable not using it in this last way in cannon but i need to at least see it in a fic)

[lgbtlunaverse]

saw that qin su post and i literly dont think i could ever make out exactly WHY jgy felt he needed to kill his child or if he didnt why did he have to die? like if people found out would that really.....im not laughing but would that rly even be that bad?? like would people really care considering all about his father, their own sexual exploits, and how generally messed up powerfulrich peopls sex lives usually are anyways?? like was there something about the child like did he have a disability due to incest, but even then why would that mean he has to die lol they couldve just hidden him away and tell everyone he died! or just say hes not ~fit~ to be the heir so then he could just have another one lol?? or just have a child with a concubine and name him heir?? do you remember/know the reason or was it like paranoia or shame or

There is a big difference between jgy and his father. Jin Guangshan is the rightful Noble-born sect leader of the richest sect in the Jianghu, and Jin Guangyao is a bastard son of a whore who was thrown down a flight of stairs as a child for the crime of showing up to his father's house, and the reaction by the cultivation world at large to this news was that he had it coming and he should've known his place.

I would say that incest and cheating have a different level of taboo, yes. If it turned out Jin Guangshan had accidentally slept with his half sister that would have been more of a scandal than every single one of his previous exploits ever were, and the child would suffer most of all.

But the nobles of the jianghu don't see jgy as one of their own. They see him as fundamentally an outsider who they tolerate because he's good at his job, has access to money, and keeps his public record so clean they don't have anything to say about him except for his parentage. The moment he slips up they'll pounce on him like piranhas. Which... they do! We dont have to speculate about how they'd react, we see them do it in the story, with calls for his death and lurid glee, attributing his sexual deviancy to his mother's profession. What else could you expect form the son of a whore?

Did A-song have a disability? Maybe, we're told he was a bit slow, but it was subtle enough that no one thought anything of it (certainly not that the cause could be incest) before the news came out. But maybe it was more severe behind closed doors, and the only reason the rumours are so mild its that jgy has worked very, very hard to keep them that way. Who knows!

Why didn't jgy fake a-song's death? who knows! Too many loose ends? An actual dead child means no one to come back one day to ask his parents on why they sent him away, nor any caretakers you'd have to keep quiet.

Have another one? With who? His sister-wife?? (you name this and the concubine as different options so I can only assume)

So why not a concubine? Well, jgy has a chip on his shoulder about cheating and refuses to be unfaithful to Qin Su, even in ways that his society would condone. Especially if it would involve disinheriting his legitimate son in favor of the concubine's child which would basically be spitting directly in his wife's face.

But... A-Song was never the heir. Jin Ling was. Jin Guangyao was only ever acting sect leader until Jin Ling came of age. Jgy didn't need an heir, hence why he didn't need to have another child after A-song died.

So do I remember what this precise reasons were? no! And I never knew! Because no one does! It's left so unclear in the story on purpose, to leave us speculating just like the character are. Because mdzs is a story about how much you can, and can't, know another person. And so it deprives us of crucial information intentionally. jgy clearly feels responsible in some way, but that still leaves a wide variety of possible scenarios, which as I say in the post I love to play around with. (Maybe that other sect leader really did kill rusong but jgy had prior knowledge that that was likwly and still let it happen?) But anything confirmed? Zilch. Nada. We don't know why he did it, we don't even know if he did it. All we have is rumours.

[chiisana-sukima]

hi so what qualities do you think dean admires about sam and vice versa would like to know your thoughts

Love your meta btw as a new spn fan

Hi Nonny, tysm for the ask!

I haven't thought a ton about this question prior to now, so I'm interested in other people's opinions too if they want to add them on reblog. But it seems to me that the 'what does Dean admire about Sam' half of the question is pretty easily answered, because Dean isn't shy with his praise of Sam in canon.

He's also not shy with his criticism, of course, and I think this is because some of the things he admires most about Sam are the same things that are dangerous to him personally. My favorite recap is in the finale:

And there's this from 15.11:

Dean says similar things in other episodes, going way back to 1.11, which the finale speech is practically a word for word recap of:

I think Dean legitimately believes all this; that Sam is better than him in practically every way-- smarter, more compassionate, more optimistic, possessed of a better moral compass (usually), more skilled in a variety of ways, etc. And especially that Sam is healthier than him; more of a complete, autonomous human being who would be fully able to live a "normal" life if circumstances were right, whereas he, Dean, would not be. By "you're stronger than me" (which he also tells Sam before he goes to Hell in s3) he means "capable of independence".

I have decidedly ambivalent feelings about the "Dean is Sam's Parent" reading of spn, but I do think this is a very parental type of admiration; both because of the 'I'm proud' piece and because 'I raised you to be able to outlive me' is maybe a parent's primary responsibility second only to unconditional love. And I think it's realistic and sympathetic that Dean admires these traits in Sam while simultaneously fighting tooth and nail to undermine Sam ever actually becoming fully independent as long as Dean's alive (and until the finale, even afterwards). "You're better than me; don't leave me" is honestly extremely relatable.

R.e. the 'what does Sam admire in Dean' part of the question, I think that's more complicated to explain, and I'm especially interested in what other fans think about this part. I think obviously if someone asked Sam what he admires in Dean, he'd be able to run off a list of traits. And he does sometimes mention traits he finds admirable in Dean, like in 8.14 where he says "You're not a grunt, Dean. You're a genius" and says Dean is a better hunter than either himself or their father.

But for the core of what I think Sam feels about Dean that's in the same, idk, synonym group ig, as 'admiration', I don't think 'admires' really covers it very well. It's almost more like worships. He thinks, quite simply, that Dean is good. And since he thinks that he, Sam, is fundamentally not good, he sees Dean as the final arbiter of, well, everything. Sam thinks Sam could never go on a quest like Galahad, but although it's never specifically mentioned, I think its pretty clear he believes Dean could.

I think Sam feels about Dean the way I think deeply religious people--not the kind that mouth platitudes but the kind that have really struggled with and thought long and hard about their faith--feel about God. He knows Dean makes mistakes, he knows Dean is deeply fucked up in many ways, he yells at and argues with Dean and goes behind Dean's back and lies to him and etc, all because he does truly understand that Dean's decisions are, on a practical level, sometimes honestly pretty messed up. But he also has an unshakable faith that where he, Sam, might make bad choices because he's bad, Dean will struggle but ultimately always eventually choose correctly, even if one of the steps along the way is chopping Sam's head off with Death's scythe. Because Dean is good. Sam fans (myself included) will look back on the panic room and think "wow Dean sure was living up to the family-is-hell premise on that one", but Sam will look back on it and think "he saved me".

[eri-pl]

A long post about why chromaticism is awesome

(in the context of Ainulindale) and what Melkor did and what he didn't and what Rúmil got wrong

Because 17 of you voted for it, one for "don't care" and one for "we don't need anti-Melkor propaganda" which isn't true: we do need more anti-Melkor propaganda :D (Told you I'm going to ignore some of the votes! I like him ok? I just don't like what he did.) (It's not even particularly focused on that… )

So, long post below cut:

Inharmonious?

 it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar [to make himself more important]

Let me ask you a question: Did Melkor sing music that wa snot compatible with the theme of Ilúvatar? Yes, you say, 'tis in the quote.

Nay, I say. It came into his mind to do so. So he did try. But he did not do it, because it is not possible. He simply assumed that what he sang was fundamentally incompatibile. Also, it was too loud and badly timed and confused many of the Ainur. Yes, it was ugly and didn't work well. But it was not, on fundamental, harmonic level, incompatibile, as:

And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite

So: no. contrary to common way of talking about it in the fandom, Melkor didn't play anything fundamentally … how to phrase it? The themes were fundamentally good, just in wrong place and too loud.

["A lot of evil is a misprioritized good" is a thing that probably has a lot written about it already.]

The nature of discord

So, time for some music theory (Yay!)

"Discord" is Tolkien's word for "music I don't like, eg the Beatles and jazz", but generally, discordant notes mean notes that aren't part of the current harmony, or even part of the scale, and make spicy intervals with the notes that are already being played.

Except.

A better word for such notes is "dissonance" or "tension". Because they aren't inherently wrong or ugly. They are something that feels like it needs to be dealt with, they create more energy in the music.

Sure, a stiff classical music teacher (the kind who tries to be Mozartier than Mozart and cleans the trumpet only on the outside, you get the vibe) would tell you that you can't have a second, or a tritone (the famous "devil chord" allegedly) and so on.

That's not true.

You can have those, just not for long, and not too loud and they need to go somewhere and so on and so forth. But used properly, the tensions make music richer and alive.

(But of course when someone decides to be a jerk about it and plays them for too long and too loud… Every sensation made too long and too intense becomes pain, and empowering something that should be temporary always ends up badly.)

Fire isn't inherently wrong, but when it gets out of control and burns everything, it's bad. Cold isn't inherently wrong, but freezing to death is nasty. Change isn't wrong, but can be.

Well, "change isn't wrong" becomes true when there are imperfect beings: beings that can change without becoming less. Like, you know, mountains, and trees, and Men.

What was Melkor's calling?

I think it was to add tensions. But to add them in a normal amount. And this required him to do two things: a) to sing keeping the harmonic tension regardless of everyone else singing differently, and b) to not overdo it and frigging accept the fact that everyone else is singing together.

Well, he managed to do half of it. :F Yay. :F I'm gonna make him a sticker saying "you tried". :F

And yes, this is difficult. That's why the most powerful of the Ainur got the job! And he still messed it up. Because he preferred his pride than the actual job.

But yes, I believe his job was to sing "in discord", just politely. And then at the end on the Music get quiet and yield, because that's what you do with the tensions. And then go happily hang out with your fellow Ainur who would appreciate what he did. Because it's very much not "he was made evil", just "he was made different and other, and became evil by trying to make everything like him when he was supposed to be the contrast".

[Pause, because I made myself sad about how much he messed up such beautiful ideas]

Men (and Elves)

Rúmil says they were created only as a response to Melkor's discord. So, without evil there would be no free will, and no people. Right?

Wrong. Rúmil, go home and rethink your life.

If Melkor did what I described above, the themes would still be able to progress normally, just without drama. And we would have Men and Elves and whatnot, because I don't but a "people are inherently a result of evil" setting, my BS detector flares red on that. (Should I say "sorry"?)

I'm not going into "does free will need evil to exist, or just the possibility of evil or some secret third option" because I don't want to go into real-world philosophy with this post.

Chromaticism AKA: what do you mean "rarepair", it's not a rarepair!

OK, so back to the music theory. Remember when I said that dissonant notes are, among others, notes outside the scale? Those are called "chromatic tones" and are used to add more emotion to the music. Usually the sad types (and scary, yes, this too) of emotion.

So, Nienna. The Vala who, among other things said about her, gets probably the best, awesomest description line in the whole book. My fav. The gothy psychopompy evil-in-early-versions weird lady whose windows gaze West of the West, to Darkness. The edgiest but never crossing the edge (unlike you, Melkor!), the one who prefers to weep for so long than to rise in pride.

I love her so much.

Her reaction to Melkor's dissonance was to weep. And how do you weep in music? Chromaticism. Which is a type of dissonance, technically.

Oh, if only Melkor didn't get it into his head to try to court stalk and pester Varda… :(

Also, the text doesn't say that Nienna was one of the main singers in the Third Theme (like Manwë was in Second), but the vibes very much suggest it. And honestly, with a theme that's not finished it is honest to not discuss who was the star of it?… anyway she is closely tied with the Third Theme, I'm sure everyone will agree on that.

So yea, the Third Theme, I'm so veryveryvery about it *deep breath* I'll try to keep it on-topic

The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came.

I cannt imagine "immesurable sorrow" in music without chromatic tones. I don't care what Rúmil would say, I don't care what Tolkien would say, the Third Theme is (if we imagine it as not physically music: it is the metaphysical equivalent of) chromatic. It just is.

It's sad and subtle, and the description sounds very much like a minor scale, but don't get me into scales and chord types, because then I'll digress into places we pretend aren't part of the discussion.

But yea, "minor ending with a Picardy third" would be a good approximation of the general feel, I guess.

Oh, and do you know how do you make a chromatic thing work— how do you make any "dissonant" (in classical terms) chord work? (No, Melkor (and Stravinsky), not by repetition!!!)

You put it into open voicing.

So, what is open voicing? I'm glad you asked. Imagine you're playing on a piano. Open voicing is when the notes are far apart and you would need longer fingers to play them at the same time. It's generally the notes being far from each other in terms of pitch. This does reduce the dissonances, because for example C4 and D4 clash much more than C4 and D5. So you put the notes in separate octaves as much as possible and it works, and it makes a chord that would be clashing into a beautiful epic-sounding and generally awesome.

Now, ask yourself: Where have we seen (heard?) about something like that? Because we have.

and in one chord, deeper than the Abyss, higher than the Firmament, piercing as the light of the eye of Ilúvatar, the Music ceased

OK, you can argue that the "deeper and higher" mean it is wide, but it doesn't imply that it's a chromatic chord. the implication goes only one way. True.

But "piercing"? Can a purely diatonic chord feel piercing? IDK

…is diatonic/chromatic even still a question at this point?

So, chromatic is a good thing, right? So, Melkor—

Noo… Not like that. Chromaticism is like— like fire. Or electricity. It can make good thigs better, and beautiful things more beautiful, but it's tricky, and needs to be used properly.It's like admin mode on your computer. Like "see advanced settings" button.

Also, Melkor did …provoke (for lack of a better wors) chromaticism in the Music, but his song on its own is the very opposite of chromatic. Which is sad and ties very well to one of my earlier posts.

He's not nuanced. He's just

had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes

which is as non-chromatic as you can probably get :(

I made myself sad again, end of post.

Edit: Yeah, no, I went to take a morning (noon) shower and ofc realized there's a lot of it left. Like: why is Melkor-being-not-chromatic a sad thing if the chromaticism is tricky?

So, to be explored in a next post some day:

the ("dynamic" says too little, "self-defeating" claims too much... complicated?) nature of dissonant non-classic chords

the nature of Men, their out-of-FateMusic-ness and how does that relate to chromatic and non-chord tones and music in general

idk, probably more

[cherrybomb107]

Idk friends, but something about having Jinx, a severely depressed and mentally ill victim of oppression at the hands of Piltover be the one to “break the cycle”(what even is the cycle fr?) by leaving is…not great.

Obviously the way “the cycle” is framed is inherently flawed. The show is telling us the cycle of violence is what needs to be broken, and I’d agree, if not for the fact that they’re putting interpersonal violence on the same level as the state sanctioned kind, and because they’re putting interpersonal have Jinx specifically be the one to break it. There’s nothing wrong with Jinx feeling like she’s the real reason for everything and outsizing her guilt. Thinking that everything would be better if she wasn’t around. That’s definitely something that Jinx, as so deeply insecure and full of self loathing would think. But the narrative never calls her out for thinking this way. In fact, it supports it! And that’s not right.

Saying that Jinx, who has been shown to be capable of becoming a better version of herself, as evidenced by her relationship with Isha, is at fault for the tensions between Piltover and Zaun is just false. Piltover is the real monster. That oppressive institution is the reason why people like Jinx exist in the first place. If not Jinx, then someone else in Zaun would’ve said “enough is enough” and decided to fight back. It was inevitable. Plus the Piltover/Zaun conflict has been going on for centuries. The conflict is a result of institutionalized violence against Zaun more than it is the choices of individuals. The individuals only made the choices they did because of Piltover, yk?

Making Jinx, who is not only a Zaunite but has also had very real struggles with her mental health(which again, were absolutely exacerbated because of Piltover) be the one to “die”(I know she’s most likely not dead. It’s still a shitty message to send regardless) is very strange. I know the show wants to spread the “both sides” narrative, but this is not the way to go about it. Instead of making it genuinely both sides by holding both people like Silco and the Chem barons AND the Council/the institution of Piltover accountable for the conflict, only Zaun loses. Only people like Jinx, Ekko, Vi, Sevika, and Gert lose. Only they suffer. The onus to pick up the pieces and rebuild the relationship between Piltover and Zaun rests squarely on their shoulders.

Furthermore, this is why I take issue with the idea that Jinx leaving is “good” because it “prevents other kids like Isha from looking up to her and wanting to rebel”. Huh??? What the fuck are you talking about? That’s such an awful thing to say! Feel how you feel about kids participating in protest movements(it’s been done since protest movements have existed) but come on! It is not on Jinx if people are inspired by her. It is on Piltover for imprisoning children, gassing the streets of Zaun, enforcing martial law, and much more. It is NEVER the fault of the oppressed for fighting back. The blame always has and always will lie with the oppressors. Blaming Jinx for more kids dying for their freedom is fucking yikes…

Zaunites put on enforcer uniforms and died fighting for their oppressors. Meanwhile, because of time constraints as well as other factors, the oppressors lose nothing. Sure, Noxus and Viktor were defeated, but they were both used to scapegoat Piltover. Piltover is the real monster, remember that. What fundamentally changed after the final battle? Did Caitlyn step down as commander? Issue a formal apology to Zaun and promise to do right by them? Was she ever punished for allowing Ambessa to come in and seize control? Will the remaining Zaunite fighters be compensated for helping Piltover? Will they finally be treated with respect? Will Zaun ever get its freedom? Does there exist a world where the blame is not always placed on that of the marginalized to clean up the messes of those who are responsible for marginalizing them in the first place? We don’t know! And we never will, because the show brushes these issue off because “forgiveness”.

TL;DR Having Jinx be the one who had to sacrifice herself in order to “break the cycle” is icky and weird

[aliceoverzero]

Arknights lore continues to be insane

Babel event spoilers below . . .

What a mess. Finding out that the Originium project is human instrumentality via contagious protomatter is interesting. What threat was so horribly insurmountable to Doctor's people that the best solution they had was to create a grey goo scenario that also subsumes everyone into a simulated reality? It does explain the alternate version of events glimpsed through the dialogue in Kal'tsit's Remnant skin, as Originium has become more successful at its original purpose in that outcome.

This means Dorothy unwittingly reinvented a crude imitation of Originium via the transmitter fluid, which so far is only mildly less terrifying as I don't think it's been established to be capable of self-replicating. My favorite Warcrimes Jerboa has been made to look even more insane by an event she has nothing to do with, because holy shit girl.

Speaking of alternate means of making the many into one, is Terra operating under some passive rule of carcinization but for human instrumentality? Between Originium, Dorothy's transmitter and the Seaborn we're already at three different methods/interpretations of the same goal that are/were trying to unite all people on a fundamental level.

All those "if I met original Doctor I would be filled with the strength needed to beat them to death with my bare hands" types of posts are right. It's not that this fucker was unempathetic, they actually cared for people deeply, it's that they did care but ultimately twisted that caring towards serving their original goals. "It's fucked up that people are suffering right now, but I can end all suffering by having Originium consume the universe and integrate everyone into the Minecraft server that is running on it."

Fuck, every time we're shown Kazdel culture it's fucking bleak. The only way to be notable as a Sarkaz is to be a successful mercenary, and they perpetuate a habit of using toxic-masculinity bravado to cover up and downplay the fact that they were deprived of education. Literacy and just general wider knowledge of the world is a luxury to have in Kazdel.

This event has really made it feel like the Victoria arc is what the current writers want people to consider to be Arknights' real main story. The Lungmen arc can't be outright dismissed because of how much it's used to characterize so much of the main cast, but I do get the impression it's something that we're being further encouraged not to linger on. I get the sentiment. Those first few main story chapters are a rough read, made even rougher depending on when you started playing and what event stories you can contrast against it. I talk pretty regularly about arknights with my sister who started playing just before Lone Trail originally dropped, and comparing that writing against the Lungmen arc is an abyssal power gap that does make the main story harder to trudge through.

That said I do wish Babel was positioned better from a narrative perspective. I've spent the Victoria arc up to this point sitting on a lot of questions of "who the fuck is this guy" that were only answered just now. I'd probably have appreciated what's going on with Theresis, Theresa, Manfred and Ascalon a lot more in my original reading if I had been given the context for the baggage between them and why they're all this way.

[elbiotipo]

this is probably confirming the "if you introduce time travel make it a story about time travel" because i think its an unsatisfying system otherwise, but my favorite idea for time travel is that humans cannot change their past.

you can go back and blow up the earth, all that you did was create another branch in the infinite branches of time, when some freak showed up and blowed up the planet. your actual present cannot change, you're "linked" to the same branch, all you can do is make it twist and turn with your actions to change the future

Like I said time-travel stories are a headache but to me that makes more sense, you make "branches" or parallel timelines, there isn't a single timeline you can change. It's fundamentally indistinguishable in an individual level maybe but still.

Something like this happened in Rick and Morty (yeah I know), in one episode where they mess up everything, and they move to another timeline where everything is the same except their counterparts are dead, and so they just move into their lives like that.

There it's intended just as a dark humor joke, but it does bring a huge moral question to any plot that involves multiverses and travelling between universes/timelines. There are infinite versions of you and your Earth. So if you have the ability to travel between infinite universes, why would you care about what happens to them, you could just blow everything up and no matter, that's just another branch. Or, on the other hand, shouldn't you feel some kind of duty to your other "yous", your loved ones or the whole of humanity (or maybe your nation, your planet, your galaxy, or some other thing) which are in "bad" timelines?

There's so much to talk about time travel, no matter the method you choose, that's why I don't think it's the kind of plot you can get into unless you've really thought it out.

[qweerhet]

I think it’s because people have often used ‘TERFs hate men’ as a way to implicate trans women as men or argue that TERFs focus primarily on men and not trans women, so people are sort of trying not to do that, plus the fact that TERFs do the most damage towards trans women. In my opinion, I do think TERFs hate men but trans women are A. minorities and B. radical feminism often manifests by just trying to sex segregate as much as possible, so the people they don’t like way over ‘there’ are much less likely to be direct targets of vitriol and violence than the people messing up their dichotomy and trying to come over ‘here’

i agree with your basic analysis, but i stop short of the conclusion that radical feminism's targeting of trans women isn't fundamentally rooted in the way it analyzes men and manhood. many transfems are not men (some are, important to note when making broad generalizations about gender and feminism); radical feminism targeting transfems is targeting women (among tons and tons of other genders, transfem men included), however, the political ideology itself is premised on the idea that the groups it is targeting are solely made up of men, and it is positing an entire framework for how gender operates as an axis of oppression that casts these demographics as male.

like it is factually true that radical feminism's Transgender Problem flows directly from the fact that it perceives gender as the radix of oppression within a binary sex modality. it is patently garbage analysis because sex is not binary and gender is, in terms of societal forces, an abstract set of social conditions enforcing the constructed sex binary (rather than any material or ontological trait of individuals). radical feminism perceives trans women as dangerous, predatory, and a threat to cis women precisely because it perceives sex as a binary that is fundamentally immutable and unchanging. it wholly perceives anyone with an arbitrary number of primary and secondary sex characteristics as a man, on a level where "man" is a biological category that bodies themselves slot into. it's based on an understanding of patriarchy as a structure controlling the means of reproduction, and gender as solely a weapon with with which to maintain control over the means of reproduction (a lot of it is really just failed attempts at transplanting, unchanged, marxist analysis onto the concept of childbearing and its relationship to patriarchy).

i think it's important to keep your analysis grounded in this fact because, well--yes, radical feminism explicitly targets transfems and is a massive source of violence toward transfems in particular and trans people overall, but laser-focusing in on only how it interfaces with transness--particularly to the degree of arguing that it only targets trans women, and doesn't have anything in particular to say about men, because it does not categorize transfems as men within its ideology but rather as super-abusable women that are only misgendered for the purpose of manipulation and extortion--that throws out an entire section of analysis that's. genuinely important to how it affects the material world. like, radical feminism's framing of men and manhood directs a significant amount of violence toward intersex people, for example, and casting sex as an immutable binary category is the entire basis for that violence. if it didn't analyze sex as an immutable binary in which men are cast as owners of the means of reproduction by virtue of their unchanging sex characteristics, that would not have the same interaction with intersexism. you can't accurately analyze the political movement's fundamental intersexism without first understanding this.

[makingspiritualityreal]

Your Saturn posts are very interesting and informative, so thanks to these I just realized that transiting Saturn is exactly opp my natal Moon.

What would be your advice on what to do in that period? No pressure of course, I'm sure you receive a lot of questions like that 🙂

The reason I don’t answer questions like this is that they’re material for a personal reading and not information for a general audience. There are many chart factors that could change the result of such a transit.

Also, my post about Saturn was in the context of Vedic Astrology and individual Dasha periods, which is not the same thing as a collective Saturn transit, which only lasts around 3 years in one sign. In fact, a dasha period will, from my experience, in a way affect you more than any transit could, although both of these factors create a completeness of a picture of our lives.

My general advice for Satun’s effects is, surrender. What is meant to happen will happen anyway even if you feel bad about it. Try to understand the reason why things are the way they are, and be conscious of the many factors outside of yourself that affect the world in general and your personal life in particular. Know that although you can affect change in this world through your own energy, the world is so much bigger than you and you will never be able to control everything around you, even if those external circumstances take everything away from you, because you’re swimming in waters of circumstances, and although you can move, everything around you is moving too, affecting you.

Ironically, I realize I can give this advice all I wanna, but people with weak Saturns (especially debilitated in Aries) will struggle against such understanding with all their being, as the planet is performing poorly in their chart. In fact, I knew such people personally and they argued their poor Saturns with me to their hearts content. And they can’t help it, because it’s who they are. They will still have to go through Saturn’s “cleansing”, life will just have to drag them kicking and screaming and they will do damage on the way. That’s what a badly functioning planet often does, it damages not just the native but the world around them with its lack of energetic alignment, if not kept in check. I often say there’s luck not necessarily in being extraordinary, but in having no weakly performing planet act up enough to really mess up the vibration of the world around you.

From experience, looking back, I understand why things happened the way they happened, as the situation within my family circle has never been stable. In a way it wasn’t “personal”, it’s just that being born into certain circumstances has consequences for everybody. Yet it still feels sucky on a personal level, when you have to pay the price for it, and you end up feeling fundamentally disconnected one way or another because of it.

I guess that’s what they call “clearing ancestral karma”, you pay the temporary price of personal happiness to set the score straight for something bigger, and one way or another, we all do it. With a more significant Saturn placement it will just be a more prominent part in such a person’s life.

[itsclydebitches]

There's something I find pretty messed up about Little's part of the story. Penny is dead. The story puts focus on this and how it's effecting Ruby and is why Little's death is what breaks Ruby. The volume ends though with Little coming back so it's a happy end, right? Except Penny is still dead and never coming back. And they are going back to a world where people die when they are killed. It's like "Forget about your dead friend cause we got one where your actions don't have consequences."

Yeah, that's an issue with the Ascension arc as a whole. As discussed previously, we're already starting from a place of confusing messages because the world can't decide what Ascension exactly is. Some beings lose all their memories and (arguably as a result) their sense of self. Some just seem to get cool upgrades. Some change in such monumental ways they probably can't go back to their old life even if they wanted to (can Somewhat ever live with the other mice again now that they're like fifty times their size?). And some, Like Ruby, undergo no changes at all except a convenient and ambiguous ~emotional clarity~

So Ascension is a catch-all "Anything could happen" situation where all options, no matter how shady they appear to the audience, are eventually presented as #good by the show... except I'm 100% sure they only come across that way BECAUSE they happen to side characters we're not invested in/are leaving behind. Would people honestly have been happy if Ruby:

Completely forgot who she was (King)

Got some crazy physical upgrade that would fundamentally change the power dynamics of the show/other her in Remnant/imply that she's a faunus to strangers if she got some animal trait (the Caterpillar/Somewhat)

Came away with a new "purpose" and decided she didn't want to be a Huntress anymore (the Paper Pleasers)

There's a reason Ruby did not change except to inexplicably regain her confidence because the show and on some level recognizes that these options are indeed an awful kind of "death," something that would be bad to do to your main character (baring a monumental shift in the show). When we talk about the importance of growth (in real life and in fiction) we're referencing a context in which a person changes slowly over time, adapting to each change in a natural way, all of it a combination of environmental factors and personal agency. To just have some magical tree instantly change you without consent, making you "better" by its own, undefined parameters... that's not wonderful, that's horrifying! But as you say, even if we overlook all that and come at Ascension from a direction the story wants, accepting and praising such an aspect of this world... Team RWBY doesn't live in that world. What did they learn from this then? Yay for people who live in alternate realities because they get to become "better" rather than dying? Good for them, but our friends are still dead and our lives are still on the line.

If RWBY wanted this arc they not only needed to reeeeeally clean up what Ascension is/how it works, but decide on the message they're trying to impart. Because what we got, on a literal level, is Ruby being depressed enough to choose ending (that version of) her life, instead being rewarded for that choice by a pantheon she's kinda fighting against (in a way that both skips her development and ignores every other implied rule of Ascension), and is returning to a world where none of this matters because death is a Permanent Thing That She's Going to Be Seeing a Whole Lot More of Soon.

Penny is dead. Many other allies are dead. Weiss' Kingdom is gone. Salem is set to exterminate the rest of Remnant, and instead of dealing with any of that Volume 9 gave Team RWBY a (literal) fantasy world where everything is just fine, actually. Wouldn't it be cool if no one actually died and whenever it seems like they did they'd just come back as an upgraded version of themselves? Yeah! Too bad that's not the reality they're heading back to.

Honestly, the way to clean up all of Volume 9 for me is to slap a "It was just a dream" disclaimer on it. Volume 10 we learn that Ruby had a crazy, contradictory fever dream post-battle in which the biggest trauma she's ever faced is magically fixed by her subconscious? Yeah, that tracks. More than taking Volume 9 at face value.

[nothingwithdignity]

I don't feel like I have anything new to say about the end of Campaign 3 that hasn't already been said better by someone else but that doesn't mean that writing it out is any less cathartic. Character and story analysis have been a large part of my fandom since the beginning and I miss writing meta but there just hasn't been much of anything this campaign for me to sink my teeth into. I also don't want to be overly critical because at the end of the day, there are things about this show that I enjoy and there's a reason I have persevered through a three year campaign that I knew a couple weeks in would never be my favorite. That being said, even with a bit of distance many of my overall thoughts are negative ones. There are plenty of wonderful moments from this campaign and these characters but this post is meant to be about broad strokes.

From the very beginning it felt like there was a disconnect between the characters the players chose and the premise of the campaign. If any of the characters had been able to grow, this is something that might have been largely overcome by the end of the campaign. However, every character in this campaign remained almost entirely stagnant. Almost every character is at the end, almost indistinguishable from who they were at the beginning. This isn't an inherently bad thing, every campaign has one or two characters like this and it doesn't detract from it. The problem arises when most or all of the characters fall into this pattern.

Part of this happened because certain players are incredibly uncomfortable with making the big choices. They are happy to lean into them if someone else makes the first move, but they are never going to take that step on their own unless there is a clear, black and white, objectively correct answer. Again, not an inherently bad thing, every game needs a balance of player types but this campaign was built to be shades of gray and those black and white players were put at the forefront while our traditional risk takers took a step back. It was a doomed combination.

This campaign also struggled from its over-reliance on previous iterations. It's always fun to see where our heroes end up, and to see the long term effects they have on the world, but having them be so directly involved is a disservice to those whose story it was supposed to be. I'll probably write an entire post on this alone but the short version boils down to two points. 1. Previous characters are so loved that it puts extreme limits on the choices current characters are going to be able or allowed to make and 2. It made it very difficult to maintain story momentum in the way they needed to for a long form campaign.

The last point I'm going to make for now is that the lack of consequences for the characters that were supposed to be central to this campaign was extremely frustrating throughout but especially so when it came to the finale. I've already talked about this, I will continue to talk about this, this is fundamental to my interactions with this campaign. Part of why this show has been my go to for actual play is because it has historically allowed for consequences to play out and stick. That didn't happen this campaign and worse than that, the lack of consequences messed with the story telling that make other campaigns so strong. I get that because this is their DnD game first and foremost there is going to be some level of "happy ending" prioritized but if you are going to build an entertainment behemoth off of your DnD game there needs to be some level of commitment to the fundamentals of story telling that made your stories successful in the first place.

I'm just going to wrap up by saying, I think it is important to be able to criticize the stories and the media that you love so please don't take this as me hating everything that CR has done for the last several years. I am still a fan, I am still very much looking forward to what comes next and I will continue to revisit and enjoy the first two campaigns. I know they have the ability to make something beautiful so I'm hoping that whatever comes next is given the space to be everything it can be.

[cure-icy-writes]

Regarding the transgender and autistic coding of Octodad: Dadliest Catch.

To preface: this essay will be in two parts. One with spoilers, and one without. The spoilers will be hidden under a cut, and optional. 

Octodad: Dadliest Catch is a 2014 action/adventure game in which the protagonist, known only as “Octodad”, is an octopus masquerading as a human man. If it sounds ridiculously goofy, that’s because it is. Octodad rarely takes itself seriously, and that works to its credit.

Now, before going any further, I want to take a moment to lay some groundwork for the premise of the game and how it relates to otherness. Octodad, being an octopus, is fundamentally Other. He is a nonhuman in disguise, he is living a lie, et cetera. The concept of beings that disguise themselves as human is an old one, from Greek gods seeking hospitality to changelings left behind as supernatural brood parasites. They are shapeshifters and deceivers, whose stories are born from the fear of Otherness. And more often than not, these beings have malicious intent.

But Octodad, fundamentally, does not. He is a loving father and husband who hides his identity out of fear. He is Other, and this otherness isn’t portrayed as predatory or evil in any way. And viewing this story through the lens of Octodad, controlling his actions, the player gets to know a little bit about him.

Back to the trailer— Octodad’s gameplay is showcased, and it’s immediately obvious that the control scheme isn’t exactly typical. Players must control each limb individually, resulting in sloppy, uncoordinated movements. Octodad stumbles through the grocery store, across a play set, leaving destruction in his wake. He isn’t trying to make a mess, unlike a certain goose, but rather, this is the natural result of what he is. He’s literally a fish out of water— and yes, he is a fish if you’re pedantic enough about cladistics, which I am going to be for the sake of this metaphor. 

The control scheme is deliberately messy, a stylistic choice that forces the player to constantly remember that Octodad is something Other, and the resulting mistakes have consequences. The levels are designed in such a way that even an experienced player will have to make a mess at times, and it comes with a sense of shame— after all, a normal protagonist could do this. Mario could platform his way through this grocery store with no problem! But Octodad can’t. He slips on banana peels and breaks open crates and spills fruit all over the linoleum. And the UI forces you to be constantly aware of when others are watching, furthering that sense of shame.

The game won’t punish you for slipping up sometimes. But the mess you’ve made, the judgmental gazes of the NPCs, will. You are an imposter, facing a constant uphill battle to perform difficult and unnatural tasks that are effortless for the humans around you. They cannot see that you’re an octopus. They do not know that you’re an octopus. So long as you are wearing your suit, no one can tell, even with the tentacles and bulbous head and suckers on your limbs. But they can see your mistakes, and your failures.

How does that relate to autism and transgenderism? Well, let’s start with autism, since the transgender coding is mostly in story spoiler territory, while the autism is largely in the gameplay mechanics. Autism is a pretty broad spectrum, and it’s difficult to point at something and definitively call it autistic-coded when the autistic experience varies so drastically from person to person. But Octodad and his Otherness, even as a silly octopus, strongly parallels autistic masking.

Octodad’s enforced sense of shame strongly resonates with the autistic experience— constantly aware of eyes on you, always messing up because no one explained the rules to you properly, or struggling with sensory issues or executive dysfunction when everyone is trying to convince you that your experiences are normal and you’re just being dramatic. And in that sense, it’s cathartic to see Octodad, because he is unmistakably and undeniably Other. You cannot say “Oh, honey, everyone’s a little octopus, you’re just not trying hard enough,” to an octopus the way that neurotypicals often do with autistic people. You cannot deny him his Otherness which causes his struggles.

Remember the changeling story I mentioned earlier? Changeling myths and autism are inextricably connected, and far too often, they demonize autism. The problem with trying to define humanity in a way that excludes imposters that pretend to be human is that you will inevitably end up excluding and hurting people, particularly those who are neurodivergent, queer, disabled, or otherwise in a minority. So, if you cannot define humanity without excluding humans from the definition, then it serves to reason that broadening your scope will include non-humans. And this is portrayed as an unambiguously good thing, to acknowledge the humanity of an octopus.

Real life isn’t like Among Us, where the imposters are murderous freaks who unhinge their jaws and chomp off the top half of their fellow crewmates before hopping into the vents. Sometimes, they’re scared people who go through life hurting because they tried to be normal until they forgot who they were.

And now, let’s examine the story and talk about the further coding it contains. The first thing that catches my attention is Octodad’s morning routine— coffee. It seems innocuous at first, but it’s later revealed that this is the only reason Octodad has the ability to walk upright, because he’s constantly self-medicating with caffeine.

There’s a very domestic portion of the game where you see just how much Octodad adores his family, he does the chores for his wife whom he loves a lot, and then— he survives a couple murder attempts. His neighbor knows he’s an octopus, is a chef at the local grocery store, and is the main antagonist of the game. He breaks down the fence between their yards with some sort of nightmarish combine-harvester machine that nearly sucks in Octodad, but the situation is resolved quickly enough. Then, just a little later in the day, he goes out to the grocery store, where the chef finds him and chases him with a knife, threatening to turn him into moderately priced sushi. Interestingly, though, is the fact that Octodad seems more worried about his wife finding out than the fact that he’s an octopus than the threats on his life. We don’t know how often these happen, but he just brushes this off and hopes to keep up the masquerade a little longer. He has to be human, he has to be normal in order to be loved, and nearly dying alone to his murderous neighbor is a small price to pay. And… it’s sad, honestly.

The real meat of the game, though, is at the aquarium. Octodad is frankly terrified of this place, but he can’t tell his wife why. There was a scene that stuck with me— it’s meant to introduce you to the fact that the Biologist enemies are a threat who will recognize and out you, but it made me think about TERFs. They always claim they can spot trans people, as if there’s some secret sense for it, as if a world in which women are subject to random and invasive genital inspections is somehow better than a world where the lady in the bathroom stall next to you is standing up to pee.

After getting through the first part of the museum, Octodad has to find each member of his family and do some minigame puzzles. The kids are absolutely adorable, but what struck me was the conversation with Scarlet, as she grows frustrated with Octodad’s secrecy. He sleeps downstairs, he somehow “made more” when the printer ran out of ink, he lost a limb in a plumbing accident but it somehow grew back, and he’s keeping things from her. He won’t have an honest conversation, and she’s getting frustrated.

Take a moment to imagine the veneer of metaphor peeled away. Imagine you have been married to a man you love for ten years, but you know he’s hiding something from you. He doesn’t sleep in the same bed as you, never wanted to consummate things, and you’ve respected his privacy and consent, but he won’t explain why. He’s ecstatic about raising kids together, but he doesn’t want biological ones. There are these instances you can’t explain, like his sudden insistence on buying a shark plushie from IKEA, or the time you caught him mailing a tank top (was it a tank top, really, because you never got a good look at it) to someone and he looked guilty. You find a list of names, some of them crossed out, and wonder who these women are. He never wants to look in the mirror or have pictures taken. You love him and you want to respect his privacy, but the secrets are driving a rift between you.

Imagine it from the other side, now. You have been married to the woman you love for ten years. She doesn’t know you’re trans, and you’re terrified she’ll leave you if she finds out.. She didn’t seem to mind when you told her you didn’t want to get horizontal, but she doesn’t know it’s because sex in this body makes you dysphoric. You love your children so much, they’re the light and joy of your life, but you can’t help but wonder if your wife wanted to have them the old-fashioned way. You try to escape what you are but it’s getting harder to repress. You know she suspects something. You ended up with a binder, and sent it to someone you met online. You bought yourself a Blåhaj and you don’t know why it was that desperation had seized up in your chest when you saw it. You spent ages on name websites, looking for the perfect one, writing them down to see how they felt. You have the most amazing wife in the world and she is slipping away because you couldn’t keep pretending.

Scarlet asks Octodad to meet her at the shark tank when he’s ready to have a real conversation. And the shark tank is where things get interesting— the chef is there, waiting. He cuts off Octodad’s clothes with a cleaver, and tosses him into the tank, yelling, “Go back where you belong!”

The thing about the coding of Octodad is that it’s never a consistent one-to-one. That particular line? Could be read as immigrant coding, out of context. But then, looking at how easily he moves in the water compared to the flopping rag doll movements on land. He no longer has to mask, he no longer has to hide himself and navigate a world that is hostile and judgmental to him. 

And he’s miserable. He misses his family. And he’s determined to find them, and save them from the chef. So he sets off to do exactly that. 

There’s a series of objectives to complete to get there, but the one that stuck with me? Sneaking into the women’s bathroom. Granted, it’s for the purpose of going through the vents and causing a diversion in the break room, but it still strikes me that Octodad, who presents as a male human, has to sneak into the women’s restroom. And this is presented not as some scandalous affair of a peeping Tom, not a forbidden thing, but just an objective. That’s where the proper vents are, after all. 

On a sillier note? You walk into the aquarium in a shark suit, and you have to cause a diversion. So now, rather than Octodad’s clumsiness being a source of shame, it’s his strength, and it’s a point of pride. He’s an octopus! He’s excellent at making messes!

And then there’s the grand finale— it’s corny and dramatic and there’s a cafeteria on fire, and the truth is out. He’s an octopus.

And Scarlet? She says she was expecting so much worse. She loves her octopus husband exactly as he is, and no matter what adjustments she has to make, she knows her family will be stronger for it. Because now, she has the chance to love her husband in his entirety, in his Otherness, and she takes it.

Octodad is a story about an octopus walking around in a suit and pretending to be a normal human man, but it’s also a story about being closeted, masking, living in fear, and finally realizing that the love remains. That there are people who will love you as you are, genuinely and truly, tentacles and all.