#maybe its that first one and im misremembering but idk maybe someone knows better than me

[basslinegrave]

the horror, the horror.

[roseworth]

what do you think of the rhato webtoon so far?

tbh! more than anything i think its just kinda boring.

i dont think the jason characterization is TOO terrible. i hated the "bad robin" stuff they were doing in the first few issues but they havent really brought it up since so whatever. honestly the plot immediately leaves my brain right after i finish reading it so maybe im misremembering this but?? they took the job to get the idol from just some guy and didnt ask any questions,,, including when martian manhunter tried to get it back,,,,,, idk! like babygirl you know better than this what r u doing!!! it seemed very odd to me that the fact that a justice league member was trying to stop them from taking this "family heirloom" wasnt an immediate red flag

as far as artemis and bizarro go its kinda eh. i hate hate hate how artemis's face is drawn, it looks too yassified to me. also she had some kind of she ra moment in one of the eps which felt very weird. i dont read a lot of artemis content so i cant rly say whether or not shes being written in character. shes a lot like she was in rhato 2016 and i liked her in that so! sure! but bizarro-wise ive mentioned this before but. the opposite talking gets old FAST. the one (1) thing i will give lobdell credit for is that he knew biz was gonna be a recurring character so he didnt do all that because it def gets annoying

anyways. aside from me being picky, overall its just kinda boring. the plot isnt very interesting and it feels like even when things happen, nothing is rly happening ??? idk. i think that webtoons are one of the worst ways to tell an actual story. like wfa works because its just a little slice of life thing and it shouldnt be taken seriously, so the webtoon is a nice format for that. but when rhato is trying to like. Tell A Story it doesnt really work to tell it in a webtoon

but i do like things about it! i think there are fun moments! i rly liked the ep where jason could tell that someone had replaced artemis because he knew exactly how she drew her sword :) that one was a nice one that stuck out to me. i also still think the art is very pretty even though they do artemis dirty

tldr: its fine, there are things i like about it and i have no strong moral objections to it, but its mostly just not very interesting

[ccsthemovie2]

(I think it's a word over 500, but:)

"Speaking of Tsukishiro, how's he doing?", Eriol asks. Frying pan to fire to volcano.

"He's good," Touya says quickly, before Sakura can say anything. Yukito is not even in the ballpark of "good". Yesterday he called Touya and begged him to bike over and said it was important and when Touya showed up he was asleep, and stayed fast asleep right through to the next morning. He keeps trying to make appointments with doctors, and then falling asleep before he can call, or, when Touya calls for him, before he can make it out the door. Privately, Touya isn't sure how much good a doctor can do for him, but anything has to be better than this, right?

"Really? I'm glad to hear it." Ugh, how much has Sakura told him. Not that she doesn't have a right to talk to her friends, but, come on, would it kill her to least keep it between her and Tomoyo and the funny looking cat.

He's good, that's an obvious lie. Ruby has said Yukito could barely stand upright at school. Every inch of Touya Kinomoto is packed full of magic. Sooner or later, Eriol figures, either Sakura will be powerful enough to sustain him, or Yue will have to get over himself and just eat already. Touya can't actually do anything with his magic, so it's not like Yue, even weak as he is, will have to face much of a struggle to take it. (Aside from competition with Ruby, of course. There's something to that, right, articles and studies about animals being healthier if they need a bit of careful planning to get their food? Yes, so this works out nicely.)

Or maybe- oh, that's probably it. Yue's on to him, isn't he? He's just being stubborn as usual, figuring sooner or later Clow will appear via Eriol and save him. He can imagine how surprised, overjoyed, grateful Yue would be, if Eriol showed up and saved his life. He can imagine Yue's head resting on his neck as clearly as if he had kept Yue well-fed with magic a thousand times in his lifetime. It would be nice, in the short run, but it wouldn't be right, no. Clow is dead, and Yue needs to learn to live with that. If he knows what's good for him, he will take responsibility for his own life, and if he doesn't...

Ahh, well, maybe it's Clow's old sentimentality, maybe Eriol is just warming up to Sakura's moon guardian all on his own, but he can't bring himself around to the idea of letting Yue just die. He'd save him, if it came down to it. But, he tells himself sternly, only as an absolute last resort. He's just worrying because he misses Yue and wants to get to know him better all at once in that past-and-future way- it's worth a visit, soon. Yes, a nice little visit, and Yue will never even have to know it happened. Just to check in.

(sorry the formatting got weird when i copypasted lol!)

hiiii thanks for the ask!!!

if we talk about this convo we need to back up and talk about how it got here. this should give you some idea of how badly this needs to be under a cut for length lol.

so it all starts with the bit about how someone falling and being caught is something that happens a lot in ccs. how with eriol, it's purposeful, and with fujitaka (and i misremembered it but since found out she fell *on* him and not *caught* by him, which lolol i hope he broke a bone, but also its fine the fic's already marked canon divergent, or maybe the story gets misremembered, whatever, in any case), it's an echo of clowriol's intentional artificial-trustbuild-dangersaves but without the magic or purpose to back it up (just like fujitaka himself!), but it's a situation he quickly makes favorable to him, because it may be a blank slate but it's made of the same material.

this whole convo was part of one of the very first chunks written, but everything was going to go in a very different direction at first. (there's a lot of Cut Content from this fic, some that i just didn't like, some that wasn't connectable with the rest of the fic after it took the shape it took but might pop up somewhere else one day idk). in this particular bit i cut the later half of the conversation because i really didn't like what i'd written, but then even though the direction of the story changed the conversation was still going so it had to bounce somewhere else, so it bounced to yukito. here we are answering your ask 2 paragraphs in!

yukito, iirc in the anime, did catch her from a fall, (in the manga, which made way more sense for why she had to change her clothes and rest so much, he saved her from drowning, again iirc because who can trust a memory) and at a point where eriol still has some investment in making yuekito/sakura (ewwwww) happen, he's going to try and draw on that symbolism to nudge her in that direction, right?

so all this said, SPEAKING of yuekito. how are they doing.

bad, obviously. touya's freaking out. i imagine that part of what's stopping yukito from seeing a doctor is yue, though- he knows it wont help, and i dont think yukito has, like, person insides that will stand up to medical tests, and yue would pick up on yukito like, not wanting to be outed to the doctor as a magic construct because he, like, doesnt actually have a real heart that pulses, just a repeating heartbeat sound. doesn't for real have blood etc to test, just records of blood type (for personality reasons).

and also touya's a very like keep-ur-problems-not-everybodys-business type so hes like imagining sakura venting her fears to this weirdo and getting pissed off. but that didnt actually happen, eriol knew all on his own lolol. touya you have to say something nice should happen to sakura to make up for wrongly suspecting her now

and this bit on eriol's end is all wrong information and inaccurate conclusions and i was really worried ppl would take it at face value but i hope nobody did. in ccs we get moments where eriol wants sakura to take power, or to learn that power can be taken- his final battle with her, for example, where the answer to his light and dark puzzle is to use kero and yue's power, except that's not something she would ever Want to do or would even Occur to her to try. the power is gifted to her by kero and yue (and syaoran!) because they love her.

same concept, here- the answer to the 'yue is dying' puzzle is to eat touya's power, and he can't imagine the real reason why he won't just do that, and when he thinks about it too long it goes right to his ego- yue looovvvvesss clow, and by extension me. he wants meeeeeee to save him. he wants to neck kissy MY magic soo sooooo bad. but yue isn't considering any of that at all. he's thinking about yukito and what touya means to yukito and why that would make yukito hesitate to reach out, and that no way in hell will he just ambush his other self's crush down a dark alley and take his magic, even to save both their lives. he's a lot more selfless than clow and eriol ever realize. maybe- this is just a half formed thought right now, i dont know if im like certain about it, but- maybe they feel his devotion to clow was a form of selfishness, that he Wanted Love as a thing he could hold and own, whereas pretty much everybody else who meets him goes like YOU SELFLESS MAN YOU CANT JUST DIE FOR PPL YOU CARE ABOUT YOU GOTTA TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF TOOOO

and there’s also that bit of teacherliness intrinsic to the three of them again: im doing this to teach him a lesson. im letting ruby do her thing without telling her what’s going on to help and encourage yue, etc.

anyway, that (in terms of fic weaving itself into canon) solidifies his decision to do uhmmmm a thing that creeps me out real bad in the anime (knocking yue out to have a moment with him, and oh, ding, there's another 'you fell but i caught you' moment!). eriol loves this manner of hanging out with people, you see it later in this fic, even:

It's important to say what's in your heart to the people you want to say it to, even if you have to make sure the other person never hears it. It's important for your own emotional freedom.

he loves to spend time with people exclusively on his terms, to the point where the other party never even knew he was there, because he knocked them out, or because he was just staring creepily at the outside of sakura's house while she did homework, etc etc etc.

tldr: it's all connected, aaaaaaaaa

[stuffandsundry]

Lemme preface this with a big hello there! I didn’t actually expect anyone to reply to this post, and so comprehensively either, haha!

dynamojacks replied to your post: Alt. P5 Justice Confidant

Hrrrrrmm. Can’t say I agree with all of this. It’s not like ‘being foil to the protag’ is the flaw with the interaction - or characterisation, of all things - it’s mostly the way said interaction is framed. Also, he’s less of a direct foil to him and more an 'equal and opposite’. Goro isn’t supposed to relate to the protag entirely, that’s kind of the point. He envies him. But he’s on his level, so to speak. It’s that aspect that draws him to him.

I think we’re using foil in a two different ways here. I use it as shorthand for “we, as third parties to this story, are supposed to compare and contrast these characters”. So, yeah, he’s set up as an equal and opposite you are totally correct there, but Goro aint the one relating to the protag, we as the audience are the ones comparing them. And that’s when problems arise, because quite a bit about the protag is so open to interpretation.

He also kind of KNOWS he’s special because he’s.. seen him, and Morgana, in the Metaverse (see: pancakes ‘gaffe’). It’s not just a one-sided perception, he’s absolutely right and this is a big fuck-off hint that he’s a wildcard in hindsight.

yo what seriously? i thought that the pancakes thing happened in the hallway of the TV studio how the hell did i misremember that badly holy shit

I agree that this should have been dealt with better, and that we needed more interaction with the PT to build a collective bond. A WHOLE, WHOLE lot more. I live and breathe any writings that bring them all together, like really. But to narrow the issue down to the protag being foil just seems flimsy. They ARE fated rivals per se and for good reason, it’s just that this aspect was shafted to buggery when it got down to it.

It’s not protag being foil that’s the problem, it’s “protag is the foil, focused on almost exclusively to the detriment of any meaningful interaction with the rest of the cast.” like, yeah, it does work, to a point. but it also could be a lot better, by giving the others a chance to shine.

The ‘god’s game’ apparently meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. That was exceptionally bad writing. To build up shit like that, but for Goro’s role as wild card to mean next to zilch.

Oh yeah, that resolution was very much so missing, which is a massive pity. Like you said, the whole fated rivals chosen to duke it out by god is a pretty interesting concept. I’m interested to know more about why you think that Goro’s role as a Wild Card mean zilch, though. Personally, I’ve been looking at it as: “Goro did had the potential to choose many different paths that could shape the world around him, signified by the Wild Card, but he locked himself very quickly into one path where he was simply being used as a tool by Shido. This, in combination with him holding everyone at arms length, meant that he didn’t form any significant bonds either aside from the real fucked up one with Shido, and so he inadvertently crippled his own Wild Card ability from the beginning” Actually, on that note, maybe he couldn’t have formed confidants. Whenever you initiate a Confidant in-game, it’s Lavenza’s voice that you hear, not Caroline + Justine. Would Lavenza have reached out to Akechi? Hmmm...

Also regarding Goro and fame, he’s not as hung up on it as Ryuji is/was, not NEARLY as much. One, mistranslation (not ‘public image’ or 'celebrity’, but 'reputation with adults’ and 'charisma’), and two, he knows his fame is fickle and dangerous in itself, having lived it for long enough. Ryuji romanticises it, Goro does not. Goro resents that those people do not know him for who he is, Ryuji thinks that fame will make him beloved.

Yeah!!!! This right here!!! This is a great contrast to have, they’d be amazing foils!! Ryuji and Goro are practically complete opposites, but they also share a lot of similarities too despite that. I spent like 5 min on this section the first time, so these are just the things that instantly popped into my head, but you could also draw parallels btwn the fact that Ryuji’s dad being in his life made it worse, while Goro’s being absent made his worse, or they way that Ryuji always had his mother with him vs Goro who’s mother left him alone, or the way that Ryuji is very bluntly honest about everything vs Goro who tries to keep everything hidden behind a veneer of politeness, or public perception of ryuji as a no good thug even if he honestly just wants to do the right thing vs the perception of goro as the person who would uphold justice/stop the breakdowns even if he was the very same person who was causing them, but DESPITE ALL THIS CONTRAST, ryuji is one of the most empathetic members of the team and absolutely would have tried to help Goro if he’d only known sooner what kinda trouble he was in (re: first impressions of makoto as a prick vs jumping in front of a car in order to rescue her)

(Speaking of Makoto, she’s absolutely the person that has the most parallels to Goro, and she should have been his rival. Both joined the team through some form of blackmail, both have incredible pressure but on them by the adults in their lives, both very similar characters vis-à-vis approaches to life in general, actually wait one second i have a quote from a friend on this.... “But I think Makoto works really well in terms of how they’re narratively set up as opposites? idk, like Makoto’s approach to subterfuge is to orchestrate the people around her while Akechi’s approach to subterfuge is to manipulate the people around him, Makoto’s impulsivity means she can be prone to direct confrontation while Akechi is on guard until he’s literally right at the breaking point, I just think…. it would’ve been so much more interesting to explore more of this than putting the burden on protag to carry Akechi Interest”)

and oh god im babbling sorry I HAVE OPINIONS

As for Yusuke? Madarame’s exploiting of his talent to his own ends (check), Yusuke wanting to please him but also trapped and nigh desperate to leave (check), Madarame being essentially responsible for his mother’s death (check), Yusuke having to rely on him to survive, for roof over head (check), and would be ruined, and even die one way or another if he tried to escape (check, check, and double check).                                                                      A comment Yusuke makes in Okumura’s Palace is extremely telling- about how someone who is oppressed will ‘desire for it’ (paraphrase). What’s even more telling, is when Yusuke said about Goro, quote: 'had I not met you all, I would have turned out like him as well’.   Haru? They’re both puppets to their fathers. Both are manipulated for the sake of political goals. Both are actually sweet by nature- at least, not ruthless, and really have to be pushed to be (SIU Director’s comments about the plot to FRAME the PTs as being ‘too brutal’… imagine how much more actually KILLING would be..). And both started out with a naive(ish), idealistic core, if Robin Hood and his fixation on Featherman R is anything to go by.

Eyyyyyyyyy this is some pretty hella meta, kudos to you. Like yeah!!!! YEAH!!!!!!! GORO AND PHANTOM THIEVES INTERACTIONS.... THERES THE POTENTIAL FOR SOME REAL MEATY, REAL GOOD STUFF IN HERE....GIVE US MORE OF THAT PLEASE...

And part of the reason why opinion changed per se, was realising just how flimsy Goro’s own resolve was, and how vulnerable. He wasn’t hell bent on bringing disaster, he was clinging on to straws in desperation. Ryuji’s comment, urging him to realise that he was his own person, makes this much clear. Their ire was more focused on Shido at this point. Still, they did not really forgive Goro, and made this much VERY clear. In any event, the last point might have been down to cultural differences. I’m.. not sure, but to those who understood this scene, it didn’t come ‘out of nowhere’, so you can’t necessarily say that’s a writing flaw on it’s own.    

Mmmm, sorry if I was unclear, but the two times I used ‘out of nowhere in this post were in regards to how i dislike goro approaching protag with little prior warning? So.... im not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. Out of nowhere is too strong of a term to use for this scenario, so if its a thing I’ve said someplace else in regards to the last scene then sorry, I’ll clarify now. It’s not out of nowhere, however, it stands in stark contrast to the entire team’s opinions of Akechi up until this point. Not necessarily a terrible, awful choice, but it is certainly jarring in a way that is completely avoidable. Which, again, brings me back to “give Goro and the other PT a larger share of attention instead of focusing on Protag”. Sae’s Palace would have been a perfect place for Goro’s facade to slip a little bit, and give the rest of the team a little bit of an idea of how he’s like when he’s not constantly on guard. Instead, Sae’s Palace focuses on setting Goro up as smart which............. he’s a teen detective that works with the police. We know that he’s smart already. We should have gotten more characterization in there instead! Giving us some form of transition, like, “he’s an enemy of the Phantom Thieves” -> “hmm, there seem to be some circumstances that we can relate to that made him the way he is now” -> “we understand why you did the things you did. we still can’t agree with it, but we know now.” ...Granted, the reason that I think of it as an abrupt about face could have been due to the face that they never mention Goro again after his battle. A short scene after Shido’s Palace had been cleared to look back on the impact that Goro had had on the PT would have been a great help.

thank you for your thoughts! c: