#like yeah some perspectives are weird to me

[amoebab22]

I completely agree with this. I feel like this is one of the worst parts about Veilguard. My Inky is in the South, and while I firmly believe Orlais is the devil, it's very weird that Tevinter is just super chill about my elf Rook when my elf Inky had constant micro-aggressions as well as just out and out slurs hurled at her. Also I'm going on a rant about Mythal.

SPOILERS BELOW

Bellara also seems to just...kind of ignore that I'm an elf? Davrin makes more sense. He left his clan and joined the Wardens because he just didn't really vibe with the Dalish. He'd think of himself as a Warden first, I think. Wardens don't seem to give much of a shit about your race or religion or sexuality or whatever. In The Calling, they canonically don't give a fuck about the gay couple in their little group, or that Fiona is a mage and an elf. Absolutely irrelevant. So Davrin could start to fall into that mindset because frankly, it's a nice way to live. It's just not real outside the Wardens.

So when Bellara is like oh my god our gods are evil and Davrin is like eh, fuck 'em, that's actually about the most realistic reaction we've got re: elves. Davrin is just out here like yo I'm a little busy saving the world fuck them gods. Love Davrin.

Also, in Inquisition, there's concern that knowing Corypheus's artifact is Elvhen will cause violence against elves. So knowing it's the Elvhen gods causing all of this? The consequences of that, even if an elf Rook saves the world, should be looming for a Shadow Dragon in particular. Clearly Inquisitor Ameridan's race did nothing for the elves of Orlais. It was covered up over time. His sacrifice meant nothing to the humans. This should make Solas's plans to restore the elves much, much more tempting.

The way the Crows were presented REALLY bothered me as well as someone who romanced Zev. The Crows *tortured* him, sexually assaulted him, made him feel worthless, because it was seen as necessary. Sure, Lucanis being blood family might give him a very different perspective and experience, but Jacobus is just allowed to be a Crow and start his own house when he wouldn't kill? I mean, I totally agree that prolonged, public shaming and imprisonment is worse for this individual, but like.... That's not how the Crows work. They kill stuff for money. Sure, they run Antiva and would be pretty pissed off about the Antaam taking their territory I'm sure, and they might work with Rook since Rook helped Lucanis and he's a big deal to the First Talon. But like... It should be a hard choice to work with them for Shadow Dragon Rook, because SLAVERY.

I feel like the pullback on slavery is to make Solas's actions seem more ambiguous, and to make it seem like there was some equal power between him and Mythal. But I have a very hard time believing he was never Mythal's slave. Also, a spirit of BENEVOLENCE? Get ABSOLUTELY fucked. She was fine with SLAVERY. Thought she could just slowly phase it out, maybe. Yeah, no .

Because here's the thing: slavery is evil. Whatever you have to do to stop slavery, short of participating or killing slaves, is pretty easy to justify. Maybe I'm just John Brown-pilled from living in Kansas a good chunk of my life, but killing slavers and slave owners and freeing slaves is MORALLY CORRECT. FULL STOP. A "kind" master is still a master. Sure, you can give them a chance to free their slaves and make reparations first, but waiting to vote slavery out didn't work. The US had to go to war. Haiti had to rebel (and give basically all its GDP to France for like two hundred years. Fuck Orlais AND France).

The only reason my Inky was able to befriend Dorian, at first, was their shared trauma in going to the future. That changes people (that whole quest fucked me up the first time I did it) and I think my elf Inky was looking for reasons to trust Dorian and ignore the system he participated in. She didn't have to see it so it seemed less real. He's an altus so he doesn't own the estate. He seems open to other opinions! And some part of him knows it's wrong, or he wouldn't be so awkward upon talking to Inky the first time.

But Solas's inherent and never fully overcome distrust of Dorian isn't wrong. Solas needs to see action; words aren't enough. I don't blame him.

This is the same softening we saw of the Templars in DA2 and Inquisition, but if you read The Stolen Throne and The Calling and play DAO, it's very clear that mages are oppressed by the Chantry and live in horrible conditions. The ones in Lake Calenhad are described as pale and kinda sickly looking (or something like that) because they don't get any fucking sunlight. Fiona is happy to go to the circle at first because she was a SLAVE in Orlais (Honestly Loghain's hatred of Orlais is justified even though his actions aren't). If you decide to allow the right of annulment or whatever in DAO, Zevran calls it genocide. Zevran isn't one to mince words. He doesn't pretend he isn't a killer or that he wasn't tortured.

My Inky and my Rook are both 'no gods no masters' types, which is why I think clan Lavellan sent their First on a risky mission supposedly by herself (got real sick of her shit lol). As a result, she heavily sympathizes with Solas's cause, and would have happily joined him in bringing down the Veil if he'd just agreed to spend time making sure as few people died as possible, particularly after she meets the Avvar and sees how spirits really are. She knows Solas better than anyone, and even without a full explanation, she'd know that his reasons for doing this were morally right. He freed her people. He never meant to hurt them. He can't live with his guilt. Inky (who in my game was more like 30 because I don't think she could have made decisions or led on her own at 20, nor would she have been a studied enough mage) wants freedom for everyone. She's chaotic good.

Rook is a Shadow Dragon who killed slavers a little too hard for an organization dedicated to killing slavers (based Rook). They're also chaotic good, and a bit of an idiot, bless them, who kinda sees everything as a nail because they have a hammer. They see slavery, they fight it. Fuck the consequences. Solas did the same.

So why is Rook not bringing up slavery a lot? Why is Rook only finding out that Solas freed slaves on the regular at the beginning of the game? Did Varric just decide that wasn't worth bringing up to a person whose entire life revolves around ending slavery? Why is Rook not having an existential crisis after talking to Solas and finding out the truth of his past in his memories?

Look, all I'm saying is that I don't understand why more people aren't angry with Mythal and why no one is talking about slavery and racism. The whole point of fantasy and sci-fi, and the point of Dragon Age, is to critique modern society through thinly veiled references. That's why people get so passionate about Star Trek. And yeah, yes, it's necessarily going to make a piece of media more niche, or people are going to bitch about it (especially gamer bros my dude calm down, sorry something is very briefly not about you), but it makes a game *good* and lasting

BG3 did a good job of exploring the themes of trauma and power imbalance, and while some characters I think needed more fleshing out (Wyll my beloved, I owe you a lengthy fanfic for the injustice done to you), it was particularly powerful in Astarion. The people are ready for real exploration of real issues. We always have been. Backing off was a mistake.

ANYWAY I have feelings and none of my friends share my special interest. Here you go.

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Maybe it's just me, but does it feel like some people are just constantly walking on eggshells whenever they send you an ask? Like, being overly apologetic for everything and constantly putting a bunch of qualifiers before anything they say? I get kind of weirded out by it, cause i mean, you're a person! And you're offering to have these discussions and answer their questions! They shouldn't be afraid to talk to you. I don't know if it ties into how some White people try so hard not to be racist that they try too hard and go the other way into overbearing apologies and self-shaming whenever they talk to a Black person, but it's a little concerning nonetheless. You seem so chill and engaging to talk to, so I don't think people should be scared to ask you questions that you've repeatedly stated you are open to answering. Regardless, this is from the perspective of someone who doesn't personally know you OR anyone else who's sent you an ask, so I could be completely off-base here. What's your perspective?

I see what you mean. It can be a bit awkward at times, but it's not really something I feel the need to put extra effort into. Tbh, I'd rather people come in over apologetic reaching for politeness than rude ASF. I can deal with all the sorries, that's (hopefully) in good faith, but when I get asks that basically go "hey Google, what is ___" or send me imperatives, that's when I'm like hmm kay lol. At least drop a hi lmao

But yeah I think the only time someone "should" feel guilt hitting me up is if the thing they're asking me could possibly be found in the lessons I've written. It does bother me; read, hurt my feelings and mild annoyance; when people ask me things without even consulting the resources via the lessons I've taken months to compile. Like if I did all that and you couldn't find it, that's fair! Especially because I don't know everything and can't answer every question. But please look 😅 I work very hard on those.

[buggbuzz]

my gender is like meat leaf i think. boy materials in the structure of girl. like im a girl made out of boy things but not in a transman way like i like being female im just. a girl-leaning boygirl. maybe??

[insufferablemod]

hmm realizing that the ship i like properly Ship the most is probably arasol...

[gottalovethegeeks]

I've always been a "Yeah probably" kind of person about most anything and to me that's completely normal so it's fun to make people take a step back when I say somethings attractive or I'd at least try some kind of kinky thing or whatever

And then i was rewatching the ritual on Netflix and later texted my friend like "Yeah I'd fuck that" and sent her this picture

And her immediate response was "i feel like this is too much information to know about you which is weird cuz i already knew you were a monsterfucker"

After looking at this from an outsiders perspective I can see why someone would be taken off guard but again, completely normal to me

Accidentally wound up on "hear me out cake" tiktok, and I swear, if another one of these bitches puts down an at-most-unconventionally-attractive human man, Lady Dimitrescu or Nick Wilde/Robin Hood I am going to lose my fucking mind.

Saw one where the first person they named was Disney's Aladdin and I tapped out so hard I entered a fugue state and didn't regain full consciousness for like a solid hour.

[butchhansolo]

in-universe "logistics" aside, i think it's good that echo has the permanent scomp arm instead of a hand for like. real-world representation reasons.

in star wars sure they have fully articulated replacement prosthetics but we very much don't have that in real life, and i feel like echo with the scomp is good rep for that. he's one of the most competent characters and i think it's good to show that he can do All That as he is, especially with how irl people with only one hand usually are very capable, even more if they've been living with it for a long time, and very rarely do we see that in media.

like, mark hamill once said he talked to a kid for a make a wish thing who was about to have his arm amputated, and the kid said that he wasn't worried because luke did it too. i think that's important

[commsroom]

one of the things that makes wolf 359's characterization work so well and feel so genuine is how much it's about perspective. maxwell is a manipulative backstabber in hera's story, a "gift of a friend" in jacobi's, and - from their subjective perspectives - both of them are right about her. i love eiffel, and i'm completely on his side, but... if you were kate garcia and your ex you had a toxic relationship with, a man you had to tolerate in your life because you had a child with him, who - after you were awarded full custody - attempted to kidnap your daughter, and got in an accident that left her disabled... if you thought that man was serving 26 years in prison for what he did, and then you thought he was dead, and then he showed up alive - walking free - and wanted to make amends...? would you want to hear him out? eiffel has suffered so much, and he became a better person in a way carceral punishment would never have done, but from kate's perspective, it must seem like he has never had to face consequences for anything. and that's... complicated, but it's real.

[hanzajesthanza]

~a vampire at dawn~

excuse the quick sketch, for this post is less about the art and more about the idea behind it... i have this headcanon from when geralt's company was trekking with the beekeepers through the wilderness:

although they were initially very grateful to have three meals a day prepared for them, they quickly got sick of having honeyed porridge served for all three of them. "Everything was sticky from the honey, even the young women." milva began to get nauseous at mealtimes, and cahir, usually ravenous at mealtimes as befits a strapping young lad such as he, even turned down a few bowls.

regis, however, was quite happy with it.

because, as is mentioned later in the book, about saovine traditions: "The spirits of the dead (...) should be given honey and groats, all sprinkled with vodka…" i imagine some confusing night where he went into a villager's hut to drink blood, but, it was around saovine, so they were even expecting someone like him to arrive and to even be looking for such a thing. prepared for such a situation, they handed him some kasza with honey. he didn't really know what to do with it, but they instructed him on how to eat... it was surprisingly pretty good, so he started pulling this on all the other villages, like hey i;m "undead" (whatever that means) do you have any "porridge" with "honey." yeah also put a little vodka on it while you're at it.

so honeyed groats turned out to be the first human food he ate, and over time, became like a comfort food to him. now he has it without the vodka though

[blitz0hno]

Me pondering: kids are capable of going through and understanding complex problems and their feelings should be taken seriously when it counts.

Me practically: who are all these annoying fucking kids in the milgram fandom and why are they posting the worst takes and most irrelevant bullshit I've ever seen ever???

I think these are valid to coexist.

[bmpmp3]

dysgraphic artiƨts risɘ UP!!!!!

[icewindandboringhorror]

The evil slow creep of it being like "haha these will just be quick little side quests, not much effort at all!" and then noticing each one is getting progressively longer than the last, thus no longer being minimal effort.. auGh....

[ryin-silverfish]

Sorry for the very late reply: I stayed off Tumblr for like, a month or so. But this is a long reblog with a lot of interesting points I wanna respond to.

Honestly, the most common form of JCT doesn't stem from A Chinese Odyssey. It's inspired by the webnovel that's kinda a fanfiction to said movie, Biography of Wukong.

The predecessor to BMW, Asura Online, takes a lot more inspiration from the webnovel than its spiritual successor, and even tho BMW isn't trying to be a direct continuation of AO, I would argue that some of its themes and worldbuilding still slipped into BMW.

You mentioned not seeing JCT in the game according to my definition, and I feel like it's a matter of exposure. For someone who has Chinese as their first language, they are gonna to be 1) exposed to a shit ton of JTTW media, and 2) see a lot of interpretation about the novel proliferate that an English audience is completely unaware of.

BMW is not the most extreme or common form of JCT, but the general ideas are still recognizable. Like, just because it doesn't make all the gods evil, or all the yaoguais innocent victims, doesn't change the fact that the main narrative is still one of Oppressive, Conspiring Pantheon vs. Oppressed Yaoguais.

(Example: the lore entries' implication about Lingji and the Yellow Wind storyline is that Lingji is creating the weird stone Buddha heads and the Fuban yaoguai to 1) collect Lingyun, the "soul" equivalent, and 2) artificially create a threat so that he can rescue the Flowing Sands kingdom from it and convert them to Buddhism.)

(Instead, the Yellow Wind Demon became the rescuer and the kingdom started worshipping rats, which was why its people were all turned into rats.)

(Or, the most obvious one: the Western Heaven's genocide of the Yakshas in the Bull King family backstory.)

(As for Erlang: why do you think you find him inside a painting, which, according to the lore entries, is implied to be the result of him asking Maitreya for refuge from the Celestial Realm?)

And it's made even more jarring by the fact that the game wants to create a facsimile of the original novel through quoting its poetry and imitating the vernacular novel dialogue style, and make allusions to SWK's role as the Mind Monkey, without realizing how it conflicts with the Biography of Wukong-style interpretation.

You mention the lore entries, and that's actually my favorite part! Both the Ming-print style illustrations, and their simulation of the Zhiguai short story style.

But, again, there is a dissonance. The funny and strange Zhiguai-style entries are noticeably different in tone compared to the "main storyline" entries about major characters and backgrounds, which is written like modern short stories instead of a classical Chinese text translated into Mandarin.

And my problem is not that the adaptation is different, that it may want to change the allegory or reinterpret the themes for a modern audience.

It's the feeling that they want to have it both ways——be faithful to the novel (or at least create a facsimile of faithfulness), yet also stick to the Bio of Wukong style popular reading that proliferates in modern JTTW media for mass appeal.

And to me, the dissonance in the two narratives weakened the thematic coherence. Frankly, if it sticks to one or the other, I wouldn't have been writing these critiques: if it's a proper exploration of the original novel's allegorical themes, I'd be praising and loving it, and if it's JCT thorough and thorough, I'm just going to be like "Yeah, not for me" and leave it at that.

But it's this mixture of things I love and things that frustrate me that drives me to write and get down to the bottom of those conflicting feelings, which has little to do with JTTWR's original posts and his attitude towards adaptations.

Lastly: I'm very much coming from the perspective of a native speaker complaining about Chinese JTTW media and popular interpretations. My own opinions are not mainstream in the Chinese JTTW fandom either——JCT is so popular precisely bc it has mass appeal.

Just a thing to keep in mind.

I'm a Theravada Buddhist. I saw many people interpreting the story and meaning behind Black Myth Wukong, differently. But I hope the devs team didn't intend to insult Buddha Dhamma by recreating this new story and distort the meaning of Buddhahood or Enlightenment itself..

I don't know if they intended to insult Buddhism, but I can say that their presentation of Buddhism in the game is disrespectful.

@ryin-silverfish recently posted a wonderful essay on what's known as the "JTTW Conspiracy Theory," which is a method of interpreting the story by twisting details, making the heavenly hierarchy look evil. The game follows this method. I recommend that you read the essay:

I unknowingly ran into the JTTW Conspiracy Theory a couple of years ago. A Chinese article claimed that the Buddha lies in the novel. This is my rebuttal.

[maliro-t]

i'm pretty sure it was some josh sawyer interview i watched ages ago where he said something about knowing that pentiment 'isn't for everyone' and talked about that framing in general since it's such a niche project, and he was like, well yeah, it's not for everyone. neither is call of duty.

and it truly gave me so much peace lol. like ohhhh. yeah. 'objective' media assessment is nothing to me

[godsfavoritescientist]

Tbh? I still feel so out of my depth whenever I try to write Bill. For whatever reason it doesn't come naturally to me like writing Ford does. Every time one of y'all has thoughts on Bill's characterization or writes something Bill-centric I'm mentally taking so many notes

[kateis-cakeis]

people are really so weird and so fatphobic huh

(and oops most of my commentary is in the tags XD)

[thehollowwriter]

I've always found it so interesting how Vil describes himself and his actions as ugly, not his appearance. I'm tired af rn so I can't really put it into words, but it's very striking that Vil, at least to me, doesn't seem to believe in outward ugliness. In fact, he simply calls people potatoes. Not ugly. Potatoes. As some analysis' pointed out, it seems to be because he seems them as spudlings who haven't yet reached their potential. Like Quartz said, he doesn't want to change everything about you. He wants you to be the best you can be.

He is, as also Quartz said, a very selfless character and he seems to strive to be more than what he's been typecast as. That's part of why he had such an extreme breakdown from his actions and called himself "ugly." He was a villain. He was behaving just like others assumed he would. And if he's no more than the roles he's been trapped in, how could he possibly defeat Neige?

But in book 6, he had his "hero" moment. What he did was a huge sacrifice to make, especially when you consider what Vil risked. He risked literally his entire future and his reputation.

There are some fans who poke fun at him for being "shallow" crying about his appearance, but... wouldn't you?

Firstly, there's Vil's career. Remember, Vil is an actor and a model. He works in two industries that are centred around beauty. You can't have wrinkles, you can't be fat, you can't be unappealing for even a second. You must conform to beauty standards at all times. That includes not just your appearance, but what you eat and what activities you partake in, since certain eating habits and hobbies are associated with certain appearances (e.g ugly gamer).

Now that he's like this... who's going to want him as a model? Who's going to want to cast him in any role outside of an evil old hag, if they want him at all? How will his fans, the faceless masses who fixate on his appearance, react? Is there any guarantee they'll stick around?

Vil's entire future has potentially gone up in flames. He's been acting and modelling since he was a small child. What else could he possibly do?

Secondly, there's the fact that Riddle just got white hair, while Vil got all of his youth sucked out of him. He was not old just in appearance, his body was old. That's his entire future suddenly severed. He's human, and humans don't live for very long compared to fae.

From Vil's perspective, the decades of life ahead of him are gone. Now, in this frail body, who knows how much time he has left? Who knows what health problems might start ailing him and taking him early?

Well gee, no wonder he's crying! He might lose everything and he might also die much sooner than expected. I hardly find that shallow.

I find the comparison of Vil to a stereotypical mean girl overall very weird. Mean girls purposefully bully and tear down others to lift themselves up. When they insult people's fashion or appearance, it's not because they think they can improve. It's because they view those people as below them. Sometimes the outfit itself isn't even bad. It's just "poor people clothing."" Mean girls are also very manipulative and will tear others down to climb up the ladder and come out on top, even if they have to cheat and lie to do so.

Vil isn't like that at all. He doesn't insult, he criticises. And like I said, he sees people's potential and wants them to live up to it. His goal is not to tear them down and make himself feel better. As far as fashion goes, Vil knows different styles work on different people, and with how his character is, he's most certainly not going to hate or bully someone for using a "poor brand" or whatever.

Vil literally refuses to cheat!!! He does not want to win against Neige through cheating, because he knows that's not truly a win. He wants to earn that win. When he tried to poison Neige, that was a complete mental breakdown and he immediately regretted it.

So yeah. Vil is a harsh, but nurturing and actually very kind and selfless guy. Leave him.

(If I got anything wrong pls forgive me I haven't read book 5 in a while. @v-anrouge you're the Vil expert pls lmk if there's anything to add or correct)

Vil yap session