#like the emotion route.

[frogmaru]

oough reincarnation apple ranmaru hehehehheee

[ewwww-what]

friendship so strong it grants you a sixth level spell slot. I have words to say.

[akechi-if-he-slayed]

ann confidant rank 9 essentially

[reminiscentrainclouds]

I finally finished playing the yttd emotion route AND the mini episodes (I had only played through the logic route beforehand), and it made me want to doodle a bunch of characters I haven't drawn yet. Except for the top two. I just wanted to draw Joe and Ranmaru.

[isan0rt]

You know, when you consider Azure Moon as a self-contained narrative, the use of ‘unanswered questions’ and ambiguity as a reinforcement of the themes of the route are really effective. I honestly think having the route not address the Slithers was the best narrative choice IntSys could possibly have made given the themes of Azure Moon.

Like. The developers didn’t really expect people to actually play all the routes; they designed the game so ‘everyone would have a different experience.’ As a result, all the routes have very different themes and scopes. Azure Moon is the tightest, most character-driven narrative despite not being the shortest route.

And Azure Moon is about grief.

Grief hangs over the entire route; except for Mercedes, every single one of the Blue Lions is haunted by the Tragedy of Duscur and the unanswered questions surrounding it. Felix loses his brother directly, and his worldview and best friend to the aftermath. Ingrid loses her fiance, but also her sense of security; without Glenn, her people may starve, and her personal future is now uncertain. Sylvain and Glenn were the same age, so we can assume they were friends, though his loss is less direct; Sylvain is surrounded by people broken by loss, including his own father. Annette’s father leaves her family in disgrace over being unable to stop the tragedy. Ashe loses his foster brother to the aftermath; and later his foster father as well. 

Dimitri and Dedue lose everything.

All of them spend the whole route wanting to find answers and some kind of closure for this event. It drives the entire narrative for all of the Lions actually from Faerghus. Mercedes, meanwhile, stands as an outside observer to that tragedy - but she is also dealing with her own personal tragedy and unanswered questions about her brother, and that drives her during Azure Moon.

And the thing about grief is that sometimes you never get closure. But you still have to move on, anyway.

That’s the whole point of Azure Moon. Dimitri has to move on. All the Lions have to move on. 

Mercedes cannot regain her brother, whether you find out his identity or not in the route. She has to move on anyway. Dimitri cannot reconcile with his family, not with Rufus (Did Dimitri kill him? We the viewer can never really know for sure) and not with Edelgard. He never finds out whether Patricia wanted to kill his father, or whether she loved Dimitri at all (and we the viewer don’t, either). He has to move on anyway. The Lions never find out the cause of the tragedy.

They have to move on anyway.

Involving the Slithers at that point would not only add a bunch of last-minute narrative complications that aren’t necessary in Azure Moon, it would undermine the emotional impact of the route (in much the same way the last map of Verdant Wind does, honestly). The themes of Azure Moon not only don’t need to answer the question of the Slithers; not answering that question is the point. Bringing up the Slithers at that point would take all the air out of the personal drama the route takes its entire runtime addressing.

Dimitri hesitates at the end. He stops, and tries to look back, and Byleth stops him. He has to move on. He can’t keep looking back at Duscur. He’s got to walk forward. 

And that means leaving his questions unanswered. 

[petr1kov]

look sorry for the reference but simon's relationship to fionna is giving barbie movie vibes to me. she both exists and is 'real' in some capacity but is also a creation made by a person, and is therefore directly affected by her creator's thoughts and actions. simon is like america ferrera inadvertedly giving his fionna barbie thoughts about dying and just generally ruining the vibes of 'fionnaland' because he's so overwhelmingly depressed that it seeps into how he perceives that world in his mind

[natasha-in-space]

So I'm replaying Ray's After ending rn, and it got me thinking that what I adore so much about Rika as an antagonist is just how damn scary she can be. I always found those who cause harm with good intentions (at least in their point of view) much scarier than those who hurt you with pure intention on hurting you. I think the best example of it is this CG in particular:

Look at that. Such a loving, gentle expression on her face. Probably kissing his forehead. Because she loves him. Heck, without any context, this CG looks even sweet, if you think about it. And yet, all that is while Saeyoung is forcefully sedated on a powerful concoction of drugs even a trained agent like him can't do anything about (and Saeyoung WAS definitely trained to deal with this sort of thing, hence it's mentioned that this is a 'special' kind of drugs). He looks miserable. Bags under his eyes, his expression pained and troubled, even his hair is paler than usual. All that as a direct result of her actions. But she's utterly blind to it. What's scarier, is that she knowingly shuts off her understanding of what's really happening. She's not oblivious to it at all. She just chooses not to see it that way. Simply because she doesn't want to.

Rika is the type of antagonist that will cup your cheek into her warm hand with the most loving of smiles on her face, all while you are getting elixir poured down your throat. Even whispering to you that you're doing great, that the pain will soon pass, and that she can't wait to see you reach the happiness she knows you deserve. I won't be surprised if she even cried genuine tears of compassion during some ceremonies for her believers. All while being the sole reason behind their suffering.

And that's... God, that's terrifying to me. I love that about her.

Rika Kim, they could never make me hate you

[elmendea]

SO. This piece of work.

I honestly thought Halbrand being Sauron would have been so on the nose, but somehow, they managed to make it absolutely fucking terrifying.

Think about it. He was pulling every single thread from the very beginning, with deadly purpose and terrifying precision. He knew exactly was he was doing at every step, the whole time. 

Yes, even if he was feeling repentant at any point, as published canon tells us he was -- I’ll be damned if he didn’t always have the option to completely drop the repentant ordinary life in Númenor the minute he ran into something that forced his hand, like Galadriel did, in the back of his mind. Or, even if she hadn’t -- the minute he got bored of playing ordinary smith.

And he would have. Yes, yes, he would -- he has a mind like a subtle knife. The very second he got bored...

He let Galadriel learn the truth about him. He had no reason to keep playing peaceful king -- he’d seen Celebrimbor at work, seen the elves’ panic first hand, seen Mordor take shape, seen all the key pieces having been moved into the right places.

He could have spun an actual, spoken lie, this time: that the line of the kings hadn’t been broken, that he was the very last survivor of a bloodline that had hidden itself for centuries. It would have been as easy to him as breathing.

But where’s the fun in that? Where’s the conquest? Why reign over an insignificant little mortal kingdom when you can have all of Middle-earth gripped in an iron fist?

Who wants mere subjects when you can have worshippers? 

Fuck repentance. Let the true king finally take what’s his. Tell Galadriel the truth.

Again.

That’s all he ever did. Not one lie, not once.

He is so horrifically good at what he does that he doesn’t even need to lie to deceive people.

He’s Sauron the Deceiver, after all.

[thatneoncrisis]

Curious about your issues with the show!! I have my own ofc but always interested In more opinions

spoilers for like. all of the show el oh el

its hard for me to like. properly articulate on the fly but i think its primarily 1. a show that is genuinely trying to build a complicated structure out of the rusted metal and twigs that makes up LoL lore that gets overhauled every like, four years, so often times it feels like a character in arcane will get hard shafted out of a natural arc so they end up where they "should be" in accordance to their league counterpart.

strongest example i have off the dome is violet, where i think in act 1 of arcane shes a really intriguing and well crafted character whos sympathetic and has goals and values you can follow. and then they shunt her off to prison during the time skip and when she comes out shes like. everything she does from that point on just feels Tilted it feels like they gutted out all the parts that would have gotten me from A to Z wrt her going from scrappy kid in the lanes whos like. direct causes of terror and unhappiness in life were from enforcer. to a bitch who joins the enforcers. and its not that i dont think that turnaround is possible, i just dont think they articulated it well with such a truncated amount of episodes split between so many subplots

and then my main Thing 2. uuuh. this is more of like my own issues with this kind of story telling in general rather than an arcane specific issue that i will codify as "liberal progressives attempt to Both Sides the issue of apartheid in their magic story." the creators of the show emphasized that they wanted each character to be morally grey, differnt shades to them and the motivations contextualizing their actions. which is like, fair enough thats just good character writing but i dont think theyre particularly. great at that. especially when trying to marry it to my earlier point about how certain characters essentially have to invert to become their league analogs in some sense. also someone like ekko? not grey. hes just right? he doesnt fuck with enforcers and he doesnt fuck with the kingpin flooding the lanes with shimmer, he just wants to help the people suffering the most. stand up dude.

theres a lot of different levels to which this clashing between intent and execution falls flat for me in arcane but the one ill get into now is silco and vander. from an objective view its a classic story of two close brothers in arms driven apart by ideology/circumstance, weve seen it with professor xavier and magneto, it also reminded me of tchalla and killmonger although they dont have the childhood friends aspect going for them. but the point is its not like a unique idea. two people want to change the world for the better, one of them starts killing civilians about it, the first guy is like hey! maybe dont do that! epic fall out ensues.

and the story is cognizant of the fact that silco IS an antagonist: not just in the sense that he is opposing our protagonists goals, he sold out the children to the enforcers in the first act, he released shimmer onto zaun and keeps a stranglehold on the city with his circle of chem barons like he fucking sucks. and the whole time im watching im noting how his methods to "free zaun" are like, THE thing destroying it. the streets are rampant with nameless mutated homeless people hooked on shimmer he is directly responsible for. and i was kind of waiting for like. a shift within his circle. if that makes sense. obviously people like violet and ekko and caitlyn dont like him but they never did they dont have to be convinced, but to have someone who initially put all their trust into him as the guy to bring zaun into glory and then slowly have to reckon with the fact theyve propped up a mad man who has prioritized power in himself over the initial goal of liberating the city would have whipped ass.

and then it just didnt happen. theres this fascinating thing going on with silco where hes talking mad shit about the likes of vander, oh hes too softhearted, he will never do what it takes to truly ensure the safety and freedom of the lanes bc he cares too much about his damn babies. and then silco finds himself as caretaker of one of those babies. the show meticulously shows me how he cares for her, he softens for her, he lets her tinker in her silly cave all day and blow up cops with harley quinn bombs. so we have three main things to keep in mind with silco:

his primary stated goal is to free zaun from piltovers repressive rule.

his shimmer production is one of if not The thing actively destroying the lanes

he now has Baby, whos safety has become a growing priority for him.

this culminating in the finale where he is presented with the opportunity to hand her over to the authorities in exchange for zauns independence. now THIS could have been a really interesting internal dilemma for him. he is now faced with the exact choice that led vander to becoming "weak" in his eyes. whats one girls life in exchange for his dream finally becoming a reality. but its also an impossible thing to ask because thats his Daughter. so now hes risking scrutiny from his underlings for being wishy washy. ooh intrigue mystery. youd really need some time to steep on his agonies and what hes really willing to prioritizeat this point in his life

and then none of that happens bc hes immediately kidnapped and shot and never has to seriously consider it. he never has to SACRIFICE he always just. has everything he wants. forever. until he dies. powerful chem baron running the show with his army of teen supersoldiers.

another route i considered them being able to do is something more focused on him and sevika. she left vander to join his cause specifically bc she thought vander was weak. as his right hand, she would do anything for silco, including literally giving up her fucking arm when she saved him from the blast in act one. timeskip, now we see she has a fun new mech arm powered by silcos own shimmer, which we are shown the side effects of time and time again. i thought this was leaning into a metaphor about how her emotional dependence on him and his cause was being represented by a chemical dependence on shimmer. like its destroying her physically and mentally but she NEEDS it to work out to know it wasnt all for nothing so shell put up with whatever sketchy bullshit hes got going on, the ends justify the means. and we get like six detailed shots of shimmer being pumped directly into her body i thought for sure they were gonna be like oh this is fucking killing her, like a compound v situation

but shes like. fine. theres no side effects besides a cool scar. shes chilling.

i also thought her antagonistic dynamic with jinx was going somewhere. like if sevika noticed that silco was putting her above what needed to be done for the sake of liberating zaun, and noticing how it mirrored how vander became "weak" and getting that much more pissed about playing second fiddle to a 17 year old. like imagine you get that whole scene where sevika makes it look like shes gonna execute silco, then murders the chem baron who asked her to do it because she trusts him THAT much, then later she hears about jayce's offer to silco and sees him GENUINELY considering leaving the offer on the table JUST for jinx. sorry if i was her id snap. id go crazy id start a coup.

so basically what im saying is. lotta different options to make the characters richer and more grey as they struggle with what they really care about. but the story just kind of shuffles past them and then insists that the bonds were there the whole time you guys jinx and sevika are totally besties now shes a symbol of zaun <3

[itsmistyeyedbi]

Quick question for people's twc detectives: in what ways have they changed for the better after meeting and joining ub? And have some aspects of them changed for the worse?👀

[aroaceleovaldez]

listen I know everybody makes Orpheus and Eurydice quest aus of Nico bringing Jason back BUT we already did Orpheus and Eurydice in canon like at least three times (Nico bringing Percy to the Styx, Nico bringing back Hazel, and Piper in general is Orpheus as an Argonaut) AND we are missing the much simpler canon-established method.

Remember the whole soul-trade thing Nico was doing in BoTL that got dropped completely? Even though it was like the entire subplot with Minos?

The requirement is a soul that has cheated death for a soul that has died. Now, quickly ignoring the convenient emperors running around who very much cheated death and the entire main conflict in TOA is Apollo trying to get rid of them. There are a ton of escaped souls from the whole Doors of Death/Thanatos getting captured thing. They're just kind of around. A lot of them were in the Giant Army but not all of them and a good number of them are random mortals and they're just. Somewhere.

So that's two loose plot threads: Nico is 100% fully aware of a completely Underworld-Legal method for bringing people back from the dead and there's an absolute ton of random souls-who-cheated-death running around who knows where completely unaddressed. Also, we know from BoO that Nico has changed his stance since BoTL and is now completely down for some murder.

Now, is there a very compelling plot within there about Nico and his sense of Underworld justice/Nico's morals and how he views the situation (insert the "That word ['please'] didn’t make sense to Nico. The Underworld had no mercy. It only had justice." quote from BoO of Nico killing Bryce while he's begging for mercy here.) vs Jason's own sense of justice/morals and the knowledge that Nico 100% actually murdered somebody to bring him back. THAT'S FASCINATING. It's a good conflict for a story and it ties up loose threads! We don't need to invent new mechanics the worldbuilding writes the plot all on it's own.

[syni-gin-ryn]

This thought's still cooking, but I think Tomas (Thomas?) Astruc's a good case study on both why being too attached to your character concepts and self-inserts are bad for writing.

I'm not going to really touch on whether or not Chloe deserved a redemption arc, but I do feel confident in saying that Tomas's disdain for her character (and people who found her enjoyable/redeemable) did have a noticeable negative impact on the writing and theme. He couldn't stand the fact that not everyone despised her (and some gasp! liked her), and so turned her into the most grating character possible... to the detriment of literally everything else.

The same could be said for Marinette, though that also ties into my second point. Marinette isn't Tomas's self-insert, she's his self-insert's daughter. Because she's his fictional child, she can never really have any kind of deep flaws - and any deep flaws she does have you're totally imagining and making up! Derision is the prime example for this. Her behavior towards Adrien can't be creepy, that's his daughter original character! So he writes an entire episode that's, imao, kinda demeaning to explain away this "supposed" character flaw.

Had he been more detached from his writing, I think he could have seen these things coming from a mile away. But because he's so deeply entrenched in his own concept, he sort of blinds himself, and when he can't deny them anymore, he has to prove that he's right by handwaving them away.

[wutaijiemei]

後世人再會......

[ajihaew]

how many stitches do you think he reopened during the grand finale

[sunshine-and-her-ikevil-stuff]

I haven't even read it yet and it ALREADY HURTS (even more so with context of what happened just before)

I already feel too many emotions

screaming "I DIDN'T HAVE IT IN MYSELF TO GO WITH GRACE, 'CAUSE WHEN I'D FIGHT YOU USED TO TELL ME I WAS BRAVE!"

[skunkes]

i dont like when character being blunt/having no filter = character just being Mean, and im trying to find a good balance with that for Talon. I guess it's not that hard since he's not an (active) overthinker and I have drawn him saying things he considers neutral that seem rude to others...I guess I have to find a way to show the opposite, too