#not sure i find the analysis convincing but it's an interesting take

[fembrie]

on the topic of why women voted for trump, hannah berrelli (from the redfem podcast) wrote an interesting substack post on this. her argument is that women abstaining from relationships and sex with men in general meant that women weren't driven to vote for the pro-abortion party.

[bearprofessorr]

a second chance.

sometimes getting stood up is the only way to find what you really needed.

ship: declan o'hara/fem!reader. tags/warnings: drinking, making out, no y/n. word count: 3.8k.

(crossposted on ao3)

---

The night was young, and you had plans. A date. One of the boys that helped out with the Cotswolds Round-up plucked up the courage to ask you out after a few weeks of idle chatter in the breakroom. You dressed up for the occasion - even if it was only for a drink at the one proper pub in the area. It wasn't often you would be asked out; normally you would be making the first move, hoping that it was reciprocated. Not tonight. 

You arrived slightly before you planned to meet him, wanting a drink to steady your nerves as the clock got closer to 8. you finished your first drink - a simple vodka coke - and looked back at the clock, now reading 8:15. Panic rose in your throat, but you kept it down by ordering another drink. Thankfully, there was a TV behind the bar that you could watch to pass the time, distract yourself and try and convince the other patrons of the pub that you were really enthused by... golf. 

The night continued to pass, and the golf blurred as you stared at the screen instead of watching it. The clock hit 8:45 and you had to swallow the pain of being stood up. You looked around the pub, seeing if anyone was looking at you - no one spared you a glance. There were faces you recognised, some from Corinium's other departments, but none that you spoke to at all; Until you looked down the bar, in a dim corner, noticing Corinium's prized jewel; Declan O' Hara, slowly nursing a glass of whiskey with his eyes just as glazed over as yours were, staring at the TV. Rumours had been circulating around the offices of Declan's wife being scouted for work in London after prized director Malhar Verma was spotted at the O'Hara's New Year's party. Although you knew nothing of Maud personally, she had been in some of your favourite films as a kid, and you were sure her return to the acting world would be well-received. However, from the looks of things, Declan wasn't taking the rumours too well, and from where you were sitting, it was unclear to you whether Declan was even sporting his wedding band. It wasn't as if you could go over and strike up a conversation, though. You had spoken to Declan in passing, mostly because your team helped Cameron with research and analytics - taking the analysis of audience retention and opinions off of her plate so she can do what she's best at. 

Whether he noticed you looking at him was another uncertainty - but you noticed his head move out of the corner of your eye, and you decided to act very interested in the golf again. When he stood up, you took no real notice, until he walked up next to you, got the bartender's attention and ordered another glass of whiskey. 

"Did Tony send you?" He leant his forearms on the bar, looking you over for anything he deemed suspicious behaviour, "'Cause if he did, tell him to fuck off, will you?"

"What?" You asked, more confused than defensive. 

"You work at Corinium, do you not?" Declan mirrored your expression, eyebrows furrowed as he waited for you to respond.

"Yeah, but I'm no spy - promise." You put your hands up in defence, giving Declan a weak smile and a shrug to try and calm his nerves. The bartender came over with Declan's drink before he could speak, so he quickly thanked him and took a long sip before continuing.

"So you just come to the pub - all dolled up and alone, for fun?" 

"I wasn't supposed to be. I got stood up."

"Oh. Sorry..." He awkwardly patted your shoulder, in some kind of apology - or sympathy. 

"Don't be. It was my mistake to assume he was being genuine."

"Men are cunts, take it from me - don't waste your time on them." His mind immediately darted to Rupert Campbell-Black, and his attempts to court his daughter. A small part of him looked at you, noticing you and Taggie appeared similar in age and he chastised himself for the thought. He went to say your name, but realised very visibly that he couldn't recall it, even though he recognised you. You noticed this and held out your hand, introducing yourself like you were taught to.

"I work with Cameron on research." You smiled, appreciating his gentle grip as Declan took you hand in his to shake it, placing his other hand on top to solidify the gesture. "We've actually been in the same meetings for the last month."

"Ah, that explains why I've seen you around - wait, are you-"

"Brainiac, yeah. Tony called me that once - probably not in the nicest way - and it just... stuck." You rolled your eyes at the memory, sighing, detaching your hands to run your fingers through your hair, "But I would prefer for that to stay at work. Obviously."

"Obviously," He parroted, "Of course." He noticed he hadn't reciprocated the greeting, and hated the fact he assumed people knew who he was, "I'm Declan."

"I know that." Declan winced ever so slightly at your response. You smiled without thinking, for the first time that night, "You're the golden goose of the network; and working with Cameron, I do research for your show. I think if I didn't know who you were through all that I'd be kicked to the street."

"Right." Declan chuckled, looking defeated as the conversation fell into a lull. "If you don't mind me asking," He presented the question, his journalistic instincts kicking in, "Who was it you were supposed to be meeting here?"

"Sebastian." The name rang a bell, with Declan recognising him for around the offices, mostly tailing Cameron wherever she went. Before he could make a comment, you spoke back up, "He... well- he said we would meet here and go for dinner, but that clearly isn't happening. I'd rather not dwell on it, if that's alright." You gave a flat smile, taking a long breath to stop the anxieties from crawling back into your mind. "I should have been realistic, he's... he's him, and I'm-"

"Don't sell yourself short. You're a beautiful woman, and it's a pity for him he hadn't recognised that." Declan cut you off, a stern look on his face. He took a moment to truly look at you then, in a way he hadn't dedicated the time to before - what self-respecting married man would spend his time gazing at the women he worked with? 

As much as you would have wanted to believe him, wrap yourself in his kind words, you simply couldn't. What did it matter if you were beautiful if no one was around to treat you as if you were? Actions and words meant very different things - both needed to be true if you wanted to believe it. This came across clearly on your face as you turned away to stare into your glass, both hands interlocked around it on the bar. 

"Thank you, but that doesn't change anything." You sighed, draining the last of your drink into your mouth, pulling your bag onto your shoulder, "I'm sure you didn't come here to comfort my bruised ego - I'll get out of your way so you can actually enjoy your night."

"And what enjoyment do you think I came here for?"

"I don't know," You shrugged, scanning the room before looking back at the TV, "Maybe you just wanted to watch the golf."

He laughed at that, raising his eyebrows in disbelief, leaning his back against the bar as you stepped away from it, "Really?"

"Look, what else am I supposed to say?" You looked down at his hand around his whiskey glass, noticing he was still wearing his ring, but the words came out of your mouth before you could hold them back, "That you've come here to drown out your troubles? I'm not like you, Declan, I don't pry."

He noticed your eyes dip from his, and a part of him wanted to hear you say his name again, in that perfect accent of yours. It was that same part of him that he kept locked away for fear of turning into the men he criticised. The small glint in his eye at that quickly disappeared, not without you noticing. "Maybe you should. You'd learn a lot about a person that way."

"You look like you're dying to tell me why you're actually here," You stood your ground, relaxing your posture, "so, go ahead."

"I wouldn't say dying to, but if you insist-" Declan teased, shrugging while he gestured with his glass for you to sit back down, but when you didn't, he nodded to acknowledge your lack of action and continued, "I came here to avoid Taggie sitting me down and trying to stop me from falling into 'old habits'." He exaggerated with the curl of his fingers. 

"Old habits like the one in your hand?"

"Bingo."

"Maybe you should listen to your daughter, Declan."

"Maybe you should mind your own business, darling." He mocked, enjoying the anger that immediately rose to your face, only to be concealed - except the lingering red around your ears.

"You're the one who-" You scoffed, noticing the smile playing on Declan's face and taking an audible breath, turning on your heel, "Forget it. Enjoy your habits, just try not to leave when the bar closes - makes you look like you have a problem."

"It's only a problem if I leave alone." Declan called out to you, and he watched as you stopped mid-step and placed your foot down delicately.

You paused, still facing the door, hands tensing as you considered your options. There were two ways this could go, if you stayed - and misread his signals, you go home disappointed. If you're right about the undertone of his words, and you stay, you can forget Sebastian and enjoy some good company - maybe more.  Already having been disappointed by one man tonight, the only way that has the potential to change is if you stay. 

"Is that so?" You turned, your head tilting to emphasise the playful nature of your question. "In my mind that would just be two people fuelling each other's addictions, but if you'd prefer I stay to make sure you get home in one piece-"

"I can take care of myself, you wouldn't need to carry me home." He paused, "If anything, the opposite's more likely."

"I think you underestimate how many people I've drunk under the table who've thought they can hold a light to my drinking prowess." You were bluffing - you'd only competed against one person, who was already pissed and was half-way to the bathroom after the first drink. 

"And you're the one saying I've got a habit? Looks like you've been practicing yourself."

"Only on weekends." You joked, and by the look on his face, it was clear Declan understood you were playing up your tolerance, and made space for you at the bar as you stepped closer.

"Right." He chuckled, "It's not for sport, then?"

"You could say it's more a hobby." You smiled, taking your seat facing Declan, while leaning an arm on the bar. "There's not much else to do out here."

"It's fair to indulge every so often." He gestured with his glass to the bartender for another round, taking the last sips from it, "Less destructive than hunting."

You rolled your eyes, the reminders of your summer job at a range leaving a sour taste in your mouth that was quickly replaced with a drink. "It's a hobby for assholes with delusions of grandeur, as far as my interactions with them have gone."

"So, the whole of Cotchester?" Declan raised an eyebrow, eyes following yours.

"Unfortunately so." 

"I'm certain you've heard everything there is to know, then?"

"Not that isn't already common knowledge."

"You'd be surprised - like how we all 'know' about Cameron and Tony-" The commonplace gossip slipped from Declan's mouth before he could think, but since it was only to another Corinium member, he realised it was safe to speculate. When you cut him off to fill the rest of his sentence, he breathed out a small sigh of relief.

"But his wife's none the wiser, yes I'm aware. I don't have the protections you do to go around telling everyone's business to any ears that'll listen." You shook your head, relaxing it to rest on your hand, propped up on the bar.

"Now, what's that supposed to mean?"

"You're Declan O' Hara. Your whole schtick is digging up people's pasts, making a living off of the skeletons in their closets." You accused with a flourish, taking a long sip from your glass.

"Not always."

"But you have, right? Like with Rupert - you didn't say what it was but I know for a fact you had something catastrophic." There was a sparkle in your eye at that, the thrill of the chase, Declan knew that tone - he used it himself when he knew he had someone pinned. Backed into a corner, ready to strike. "You reached for something. I saw. Twice during that interview when you were readying yourself for the question, you reached," You reached across, poking the side of his chest. "Right there, for your blazer pocket."

"I was bluffing - to throw him off, and it worked like a charm." Declan brushed your hand away, lightly closing his hand over yours. Your heart fluttered at the contact, "Now, if I did have something on Rupert, as soon as I made the choice not to say it on air, that information never really existed."

"Because of your daughter?"

The question caused him to pause, the words hanging in the air. 

"What?" He tried to regain his balance, his gut tossing itself to the side. Thankfully, you didn't notice, and kept talking to fill the silence. 

"I overheard people talking about her bursting into the building to track him down during the break - did she know?" You interrupted yourself, "Was that what you were going to expose him for?"

Declan shook his head, trying his best to mask the disdain he felt for Rupert's advances on Taggie, "No, there wasn't anything to expose. Rupert's life has been incredibly public, everything I said was already out there, public knowledge."

"Tony and Cameron public or actually public?"

"Front page of 'The Times' public."

"Hmm." You didn't look fully convinced, but dropped the subject simply because of the look Declan was giving you - stern, final. "You two seem... friendly."

"We are." Declan agreed, adding with a knowing smile, "He's better than people assume he is - once he comes back down to earth." 

You chuckled at that, knowing the stories that filtered through the area of his specific brand of ego. The alcohol had fully seeped into your bloodstream now, if the dull pulse of your heartbeat in the back of your head was anything to go by. The lights seemed to shine a little brighter, haloing Declan in a warm glow. You didn't say anything, didn't feel the need to. You simply stared, observing how in the silence, Declan turned to face ahead of him, leaving you with the side profile of his face. He was tired, that much was evident - the light beginnings of unshaved stubble rising on his cheeks, a similar shade to the bags under his eyes, half-hooded eyes that threatened to close without forceful blinks every so often. It was only once you hand made contact with the side of his face that you realised it had moved to brush against his cheek, a slow, soft movement with the backs of your fingers. Declan moved his eyes before his head, an equally soft look and light glisten of water in them as they noticed the touch. 

Your eyes widened, your hand froze, you took in a short breath and held it tight in your chest. As soon as your hand twitched to move back, his rushed to hold it, trying to form the sentences in his mind to express what had made his heart stutter. All that came out of his mouth, like a plea, was the simple question;

"Can I kiss you?" 

You barely had time to process your head nodding, your instincts answering for you, before his lips met with yours for the first time. The first thing you noticed was how he tasted, of whiskey and cigarettes, combining with the scents of cedarwood - it was addicting to say the least. He pulled back, Declan's hand lingering on your cheek. Your eyes looked into his to try and find any hint of hesitation, of regret, and found none.

It was the light jeering of a table off in the corner that took you both out of the moment, made you duck to hide your blushing face from the other patrons of the bar. 

"Don't listen to them," Declan used the hand on your cheek to guide your face to look back at him, "They're only playing around."

"It's hard not to, not when I can feel them looking at me-" You cut yourself off, draining the rest of your glass. It was almost abrupt, the way you stood, grabbing your bag. Declan put a hand on your arm, trying to slow you down, and you answered his question with your own before he was able to ask it, "Are you coming or not?"

It took a moment for his mind to catch up, but as soon as he met your eyeline again, saw the light reflect in them, he nodded and slid his hand down your arm to lace your fingers together - the bar had his card on file, they would charge what they wanted. Frankly, he couldn't give a shit about how much he had spent, all he wanted was to follow you wherever you decided to go. That was good enough for you, and the pair of you left the bar to light cheers from the same table as before. As soon as you were outside, as soon as Declan knew there were no more eyes on you but his, he pulled you closer, feeling the goosebumps from the chilled air on your skin.

Declan's eyes were focused on your lips, physically restraining himself from devouring you there. You took the initiative in a rare moment of confidence, hovering over his lips before pressing them together, breaking apart for a moment only to return open-mouthed, deepening the kiss; His hands rushed to pull you closer, tangling into your hair and around your waist, fabric bunching under his grip. You pulled away, the chill of the night forcing you out of the moment. Declan chased your lips with his, instead electing to brush their noses together before pressing his forehead to yours. "What's wrong, darling?"

You smiled at that, had to stop yourself from breaking down into a puddle of laughter at how soft the situation had turned, "I- We might freeze to death out here if every ten paces you stop and-" You dodged his lips again, turning your head so they pressed against your cheek, still giggling all the while "-God, if you don't let us actually get to where we're going, I'll never forgive you."

It was almost childlike, how Declan pleaded with you, how his round brown eyes tracked yours, "I'll keep you warm, sweetheart, I swear."

"Declan-"

"No-" He interrupted, running his hands down your arms, interlocking your fingers once he reached your hands.

"As much as I would love to take your word for it, I can't feel my hands right now."

"They're fucking freezing." Declan commented, pressing both of your hands together so he could cup his around them in some attempt to warm them up. 

And at that moment, the bright lights from the unfortunate turn of a car into the driveway of the pub caught you both off guard, and something in your gut felt the need to make significant distance between you and Declan. Luckily so, since as the car pulled up, Declan recognised it and winced, knowing what was going to happen already. Not Taggie, but Rupert stepped out of the family's car first, with his daughter in the passenger's seat. 

"Fuck."

"Declan! Man of the hour, thought I'd find you rotting away here!" Rupert cheerily leant on the bonnet of the car, a shit-eating grin on his face as he crossed his arms. "Look, I'm not one to judge what a man does with his time but-"

"Fuck off Rupert." Declan rolled his eyes, pulling his blazer across himself. You were glad you hadn't been noticed, and tried to just start walking home when Rupert lifted himself off the car and walked with a brisk pace to step in front of you.

"Not so fast, sweetheart." He placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, not quite meeting your eye, "I know the last thing you want to do is talk, but I'm not about to stand here and let you walk home by yourself."

He turned around to look back at the car, watching how Taggie had stepped out and was standing face-to-face with her dad, chastising him for staying out so late. Declan looked over for a moment, offered a small wave to you and Rupert and resigned himself to the justified beratement from his daughter - he knew in the bottom of his heart that she was right, but drinking was the easy way out and they both knew that. 

Taggie carted him into the front seat of the passenger's side, and beckoned Rupert over with a stern but tired look on her face. Rupert patted you on the shoulder, leaving you with a small, "Just one second, alright?" before jogging over to Taggie. You couldn't hear what they were saying, but with the vague gestures that Rupert made to you and the glances you caught from Taggie, you assumed they were talking about you. It made you want to dissolve, but that was the risk you took. And, at the end of the day, you were glad of the rest of the night you had, even if it ended prematurely.

Rupert, ever the gentleman, walked you the 30 minutes home, in relative silence. He broke it only to ask your name and if you were alright, both questions that you answered with the least information required. 

After a particularly awkward walk, you got to your door, and as you fumbled with your keys, you paused, took a breath and turned to face Rupert. "Look, I don't want this to become a whole ordeal-"

"Don't worry, I won't tell a soul." Rupert smiled, and it looked more genuine than the ones he flashed on Declan's show, "Your secret is safe with me." He reassured, nodding goodnight as you disappeared into your house to sneak into bed, alone.

[thagomizersshow]

Ranting about how JP is not a good critique of capitalism made me want to talk about a sci-fi monster movie that is an excellent AND highly relevant exploration of anticapitalistic themes: Alien (1979).

First I want to say that if you haven’t seen Alien, please do so before I spoil it for you. It’s not just one of my all time favourites, but also one of the greatest pieces of science fiction ever created. For real, please go watch it.

The biological aspects of Alien are often the most talked about themes in the movie, which is fair, because they’re simultaneously very interesting and in-your-face. Most viewers remember the movie for the gory sexual imagery, not for an authentic depiction of class struggle. I actually wrote a video essay a while back that I never made about how our innate disgust and resulting fear of parasites/parasitoids is the primary driver behind the xenomorph’s ongoing popularity. I’m not immune to this aspect of Alien’s eternal intrigue, that’s for sure.

However, there’s one narrative element that makes Alien ripe for class analysis, especially today, and that is the film’s portrayal of artificial intelligence.

AI in Alien is consistently shown to be hostile to the crew, but not because of a glitch, like HAL in 2001: Space Odyssey, or because they decide to rise up against their oppressors, like in Terminator. No, what makes Ash, the android, and MOTHER, the ship’s AI, so threatening is that they are doing exactly what they were programmed to do — whatever it takes to ensure corporate interests. In this case, they are programmed to ensure the survival of an extraterrestrial monster at the cost of the crew.

The audience isn’t privy to all the things that Ash does to meet this goal, but at the very least he breaks quarantine protocols, does a shitty job of watching the facehugger, lets Kane join the rest of the crew for a meal (when they still don’t know what it did to him!), plays dumb once the xenomorph is on the loose, and attempts to murder Ripley when she discovers his mandate. If it weren’t for Ripley being a determined badass, Ash might’ve gone unnoticed until the whole crew was dead and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation had their mitts on the alien so they can cause another catastrophe.

This horror, that you will encounter AI whose programming doesn’t care if you live or die, is what makes Alien’s take on the subject so relevant. Dipshits like Elon Musk or some shitty tech journalist might try and convince us that ChatGBT scary because it can fake being human, as if Skynet is right around the corner.

No, the real horror of AI is that the people in power (our bosses, our politicians, etc.) are going to use it to exploit us, just like how they use everything else.

In the end, it takes being skeptical of things that seem trustworthy for Ripley to defeat Ash. The audience finds out from the Nostromo’s captain, Dallas, that Ash was a last minute addition to the crew, as chief science officer. This is a role that inherently engenders trustworthiness in the face of the unknown, especially for a crew that is basically a bunch of working joes. It’s not unbelievable to conceive this was purposeful by Weyland-Yutani to make Ash above suspicion. That, combined with literally naming the ship’s AI MOTHER, of all things, shows that the company is deliberately weaponizing aesthetics to foster a positive relationship between the crew and their AI agents.

Alien serves as a reminder to be vigilant as we enter the AI boom, because these programs will be used to exploit us, and corporations WILL try to cloak this purpose behind relatability, convenience, and trust. The AI we encounter is more likely to be Ash or MOTHER than it is to be Data or Skynet.

[deathon1leg]

byler & yellow curtains (inspired by this incredible post by @love-byers)

i wanted to contribute some of my own findings (which i’m sure have all been pointed out before—i’m no genius discoverer) and personal analysis!!

this post got way longer than i thought it would, but i kept noticing more things to talk about. it’ll be s4 focused but i have some from other seasons too if anyone’s interested in another post :)

mike and el’s fight:

outside of el’s room you can see yellow/orange curtains through jonathan’s door, and some of el’s window through hers. when mike goes in, the window is the brightest and most vibrant thing by far and its curtains are WIDE open. when he goes to put a plate down the left curtain is almost perfectly between them, dividing them like a wall.

at first she doesn’t look at him, so only we (and not mike) get to see her face, which is cast in light and a bit out of focus. (also, the yellow-green tree she’s putting back together for her diorama is peaking out in the corner.)

the bottom two pics are el’s POV, hence the blurry background mike—she feels disconnected from/misunderstood by him.

when she finally turns around is when she’s talking about being different and not belonging anywhere (which, while in an entirely different way, mike can relate to). the light hardly hits her face anymore because it’s shifted to mike’s POV. he sees her in shadow.

the next time we get a full shot of the window is when el says mike can’t even write “i love you”, when she stands in front of it and it frames her.

i wanna point out mike’s face here. he looks so—guilty? afraid? vulnerable? just more genuine than he does the rest of the fight. he knows he’s been caught, and he doesn’t have an excuse (which is why he ends up deflecting and calling her ridiculous)

when el grabs the letters, the window is between them, separating them, and a curtain is directly behind her. also, she says “from mike” or “from” a total of 7 times. coincidence? idk. maybe i’m reaching.

the window/curtains take up a whole half of el’s shot here, and are still “between” them in continuity—it’s as if they’re another character interrupting the shot, just like will did many times in s4 m*leven scenes.

a few lines before “they’re nobodies and you’re a superhero” mike says “you know what i think of you, you’re the most incredible person in the world”. it comes across as ‘i think you’re the most incredible person because you’re a superhero’.

i think el’s “not anymore” is a response both to “you’re a superhero” and the “you know what i think of you”, because this is when she comes to the conclusion that mike doesn’t see her as the most incredible person anymore, and that mike loved her powers/his idea of her rather than her as a person (i do believe mike cares for her a ton and loves her as a friend, but this is el’s perspective) .

her expression changes as she realizes these things, and mike can tell he didn’t convince her.

mike’s talk w/ will about his and el’s fight:

will paces back and forth in front of the yellow/orangeish curtained window in jonathan’s room, venting about everything. it’s not actually a curtain but a sheet/tapestry, so it doesn’t do much at all to block the bright light. (note the bright lava lamp, too.) mike’s not really listening, and is instead staring at the note el left: Dear Mike, I have gone to become a superhero again. From, El

mike knows what el’s saying here. ‘superhero’ = a version of herself that mike can love again, and ‘from, el’ = her acknowledging he doesn’t love her (again, el’s pov) OR implying she doesn’t love him anymore, either. imo it’s a coded breakup/pre-breakup.

this is preoccupying his mind enough that he’s not paying attention to will talking about the very serious situation they’re in.

the note is a symbol of mike’s lack of romantic feelings for el, which lead to the deeper truth of his true romantic feelings for will. with that in mind, here’s what will says when it cuts away from mike looking at the note:

i audibly gasped when the cogs turned in my brain while collecting these screenshots

textually, he’s talking about hawkins here, but COME ON. if we read between the lines…

imagine will’s rhetorical “you” is actually directed at mike—which is easy to do since he’s the only other person in the room—who’s currently staring at the symbolic note.

the thing that needs to be kept contained is mike’s feelings for will, which cannot be contained at all without el. she’s his cover, his beard, his excuse to not face what he’s trying to suppress.

the window appears even brighter when the camera focuses on will.

after this, mike absentmindedly responds with “yeah,” and will notices how distracted mike is, saying:

AKA, if you keep ruminating on your feelings they’re not gonna change, you know?

so, he crumples up the note and throws it in the trash.

this means one of two things: 1. he’s choosing to continue to ignore and “get rid of” his real feelings, or 2. he’s accepting that his feelings won’t change, and is gonna stop trying to get rid of them.

considering the wide open door/‘closet’ behind him, the poorly concealed window, and the “i didn’t say it” “you didn’t have to” scene that comes later (‘it’ being ‘i love you’, as established here, and this convo being coded as also about mike and will’s fight)… i’d bet on option 2. then again, contradictory things happen later, so it may be a mix of both 1 and 2.

a single proper ray of light is peaking through the window, and it’s landing right on a green (blue+yellow, but you knew that) chair, pointing towards them.

even though they’re talking about mike and el’s struggles, will is in the forefront of this shot. he’s lit up by the window’s light, and even though mike doesn’t see that side of his face i believe it’s from mike’s pov.

note the red (el’s color) lamp by will’s head signifying that he think the convo’s just about her, and the yellow potted plant below it that the lamp would be shining on if it were on. (also note the upside down cross next to mike, showing that he feels his feelings for will are “blasphemous”.)

suzie’s room:

this one’s one of my favorites. after eden tells them where suzie is she says “make sure to give that selfish little four-eyed shit a nice little shove for me”. they get to her room but she’s not there.

mike’s, in the front, is first to notice the window, which has open yellow curtains w/ blue trim. the window itself is open, with a gentle breeze and birdsong flowing through it as delicate music plays.

it continues to zoom in on mike as he says this. the door’s open behind him. for some reason or another we’re supposed to focus on mike’s reaction to the window.

“give ‘her’ a shove” as in shove ‘her’ out the window—it’s open, it’s beautiful, it’s calling out to mike, he just needs a shove. and whaddaya know, in the next shot…

mike was the first to stick his head out the window, and is still in the forefront. the sun gets in his eyes and he squints and dodges it a few times, but then he smiles. he doesn’t regret it.

and just ‘cause, here’s another shot where mike and will are perfectly framed by suzie’s yellow-beige curtains:

mike and will talk about el and vecna:

in the top one, they each have a window behind them again. the whole house is filled with windows (w/ open yellowish curtains or shades) and just straight up holes in the wall, and unobscured sun rays come through practically every one of them.

the little curtains in the top left are green-ish and look blue from afar. here, sunshine pours onto will, and mike is exactly right outside of the ray—look at his arm and shoe.

will explains that he can still feel vecna’s presence and that they need to kill him. with (yet again) yellow curtains behind him, mike says:

he crosses the distance and puts his hand on will’s shoulder, and the light hits it.

mike’s in the light now—his arm, at the very least. he reached out into it with intent, giving himself a shove, and now they’re sharing the same ray of sunshine. when they hear a car approaching they look behind themselves at the window, acknowledging it, and then they get up to look outside it.

aaaaand that’s it. i hope you enjoyed this post <3 i spent way too much time on it… disclaimer that i have no media education and this is all from my (untrained) perspective. i also don’t claim to be the first to discover any of this, i’m sure i’m late to the party for a lot of things here, so kudos to those more attentive than me. thanks for reading!! :)

[carigm]

A BREAKDOWN OF THE POTENTIAL S5 EPISODE TITLES!!

Okay, so today entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider shared some alleged insider info about S5 of ST, mainly directors and titles of the first 6 episodes.

Here’s a screenshot

It’s important to keep in mind that this guy isn’t always the most reliable, and considering he also said he believes S5 could come out before the end of this year, let’s not take any of this too seriously. (Many cast members have mentioned they’re filming until December of this year so that’s literally impossible). The information about the possible directors I believe is correct, because it’s been circulating around from other sources too.

The episode titles I’m less convinced about because it’s also possible the Duffers could’ve put out fake episode titles in case they leaked. I remember for S2 all the episodes titles they announced were changed later on lol. But for the sake of fun, here’s an analysis of all of them:

1. The crawl (only confirmed title) is a very broad, open title. It personally makes me think of the UD and vines, or maybe even the idea of Vecna crawling back to life. Could also be an allusion to the military.

2. The Vanishing of ___ Wheeler is arguably the most insane one. The journalist said he wasn’t revealing the actual name of the person because it’s a spoiler ofc. My gut tells me it’s gonna be Holly, mainly because of the recast and her supposedly being involved in the hospital plot, which we have guessed takes place in episode 2. Could explain why she’s suddenly “more important” this season, especially if she’s used as a plot device of sorts. Could also tie into what Ted’s actor said in a podcast back in February about the first episodes being a rollercoaster of emotions, and that comment he made about Ted having a soft spot for Holly. It would be a perfect tie in for Karen to find out about the UD as well. The implications of naming the episode the same as the first episode, which is so intrinsically tied to Will, is very interesting. It’s also a new connection/tie between the Byers/Wheelers that I assume will bring the families closer together. I don’t think it’s about Mike because I doubt he’ll go missing in ep.2, or be dragged to the UD just like Will was. It would be an interesting concept but I doubt it. I also don’t think Nancy’s gonna go missing. Karen could be interesting but I doubt it as well. Ted would be an incredibly funny choice. Imagine he just goes missing while at the house 😭 Nonetheless, I think Holly is the clear choice here, and I do very much worry for her if she goes missing. Mainly because while Will survived this, I’m not sure they’ll do the same for Holly :(

It also ties into Vecna’s threat to Nancy against her and her family.

Here’s an interesting leak from the same anon that leaked the hospital stuff (which seems to be correct)

I think this could be the very same scene Holly goes missing.

3. Turbow Trap 😭 This one is utter nonsense. I have no idea what a Turbow is, so I assume it’s gonna be a code or nickname for something. Absolutely clueless here.

4. Sorcerer is incredibly interesting, and imo a clear allusion to Will. His D&D character being a cleric, basically a wizard. Could also be a reference to Vecna imo. Or both 😉

5. Shock Jock is clearly tied to the radio station plotline. Imo the title could be a reference to Steve, Jonathan, or even Murray (he fits that eccentric, somewhat annoying personality quite well) In case you guys don’t know a shock jock is like a very eccentric radio host.

6. Escape from Camazotz is another crazy title. He’s a figure from Mayan mythology who’s a bat spirit. That immediately makes me think of Eddie, but also Steve ofc. However, camazotz has a larger meaning that goes beyond “bat spirit”, it’s also a representation of death and night. So the title seems to be alluding to someone escaping from death or a perilous situation.

Even more interesting perhaps is that kamazotz is a name of a planet in A Wrinkle Time. It’s the planet where IT resides, the mind controlling antagonist of the narrative. So I guess in this comparison Kamazotz is the UD, and IT is Henry.

[mirrormazeworld]

Twst Analysis and Findings Why Crowley isn't Malleus's Dad, Unpopular Chapter 5 Diasomnia Twst Theory

While 99.9% of people seem to be convinced that Crowley is Levan, I'm that 0.01% who is still not convinced yet because there are some things that I found really odd if Crowley is Malleus's dad. So odd that this post itself has become a long post.

If you search for something and want to read where Crowley isn't Levan/Malleus's dad, then this theory and analysis is for you because here I'll explain some points for your considerations before jumping to conclusions, though I'm not sure if anyone will care about what I write and hear this small opinion at this point.

1. Heavily implied "another dragon from another country"

In Diasomnia chapter 4, it's said from Lilia's dialogue that "Draconia clan are the descendants of the dragons". All this time we might think that "Draconia are the only dragon in Twisted Wonderland" but in chapter 5 it's revealed that Draconia aren't the only dragon in Twisted Wonderland because there are other dragon clans from faraway country.

Malleus's dad, Levan's title is 竜眼公 in Japanese and it can be translated literally as "Dragon Eye Lord" or "Longan Lord". (More about his title, you can see it in my previous post)

If we see it the way like how longan fruit is named, (龍眼) either 龍眼 or 竜眼 still have the same meaning, but the only difference is 龍眼 is from Cantonese while 竜眼 is from Japanese.

But the main points in common are : They are both "Dragon Eye" and "Eastern Countries"

Which means there's a high possibility that Levan is a dragon from the longan clan/eastern dragon clan.

What's more interesting is that Lilia seems to be very fond of this "Long/Eastern Dragon" that he wants to spend the rest of his life there in their homeland. Out of all the countries he can and had ever visited, why did he choose "Red Dragon Country" in particular?

In first Halloween event Diasomnia also went with the theme of Long and it's revealed that it was Malleus's idea himself with Lilia providing more information about the Eastern Dragon Country culture and the Longs. And then there's that one dialogue said by Lilia himself in the Halloween Event :

"In fact, one such Long became a family's guardian spirit"

It is somehow similar to Levan who has been like a guardian to Meleanor and his draconia family, as her husband, her Left General alongside Lilia (Right General), and her most trusted person (Meleanor's Eyes and Limbs)

If it's not a subtle information but also kind of important that it's heavily implied many times just like Malleus who froze the time in Endless Halloween then I don't know what it is.....

2. Discarded Character Concept (?)

In twst exhibition there's an initial concept art of Crowley where he seems to have a similar theme and is somehow grouped with Diasomnia. It's because he had the same color as that of Diasomnia, even you can see the thorns on his leg and arm which as we know, is the symbol of Diasomnia/related to Draconia family (Sleeping Beauty Squad)

However, if we compare Crowley's old design and his original, usual one, in the design of the Crowley that we know now, twst seems to actually change every Diasomnia/Sleeping Beauty concept out of him and replace it all, from "thorns" to "mirrors" and "golden keys", and leave only the "corvid" part of him.

The question is, Why did Yana and twst team go into such trouble to change him all the way?

In Diasomnia Chapter 4 it's revealed that "Briar Kingdom has two castles : Black Scale Castle (Briar Valley's Main/Capital Castle) and Wild Rose Castle (Meleanor's Castle)

Diasomnia chapter is heavily tied with Wild Rose Castle rather than Black Scale Castle and places the main casts of Diasomnia chapter in Wild Rose Castle rather than Black Scale Castle and wrote Meleanor as Princess rather than a Queen. I know Diasomnia chapter was written with Sleeping Beauty as its story frame, and Meleanor is supposed to take the role of Maleficent in that story, but the question is why they created two castles and used Wild Rose Castle as the main background of the story rather than just create and use one castle, and give the title "Princess" to Meleanor and not a "Queen" since Maleficia, Malleus's grandma is the Queen? In the original and older version of sleeping beauty by Brothers Grimm, "Maleficent" is depicted as a Queen who is jealous of Talia (Sleeping Beauty) and not a Princess. It's as if they want to separate what is "exclusively Diasomnia chapter" from Briar Valley/Briar Kingdom itself.

This is honestly only my personal opinion, but based on these facts, the only logical, possible explanation I can think of is because they want to give this Diablo/Diaval's role to this Lord Longan so that Crowley can play a more bigger role rather than just a diplomat/messenger, and thus, discarded the old Crowley concept and made it invalid.

Thinking the old design as the valid source of information means that you want to tell people that "Epel with skirt and Idia as the little brother are canon" but are they now? Do twst used that concept in the end? Does Epel wear skirt in game and Idia is Ortho's little brother? Of course not, and you already saw it yourself that Yana already discarded that idea completely.

3. A seemingly Disastrous Chronology if Levan is Crowley

With the given information from in game, I want you to think with logic here :

Lilia is 700 years old. NRC gave him a letter of acceptance 500 years ago, but then he ripped it, and then Levan taped it back and stored it in royal archives. Silver said they are in Lilia's dream from 400 years ago and as we know this is when the war between faes and Silver Owl occurred, and at that time it's said that Levan was missing.

Now what I find odd is : if Levan is Crowley, then who sent the NRC acceptance letter to Lilia? We all know the Headmaster is in charge of student admission just like how he permitted Yuu and Grim to become NRC students, sending letters to people acknowledged by dark mirror, persuading Kalim's family, letting Ortho enroll even though he is an android and so on. And if Crowley is Levan, he wouldn't be able to do his job as Headmaster in Land of Dawning because he would need to be present in Briar Valley by Lilia's side to tape back the letter Lilia had torn to shreds.

Keep in mind that there are no official exact years and number from twst itself how long Crowley had been headmaster of NRC yet but from Diasomnia chapter it's clear that NRC already existed back then far before the war between humans and fae.

This one is just my personal opinion, but I'm more convinced that Crowley was the one who cast complex, ancient spell on Grim and therefore, know something about the extremely rare overblot incident that seems to always happen in NRC (and so we heard his voice summoning Yuu and said "we are all running out of time" in the prologue") and so he is tied more heavily to book 8 (Ramshackle/NRC) after Diasomnia if it does exist in the future than book Diasomnia.

Both The Watcher from Island of Woe (Idia's family) and the primeval spell that casted on Grim which seems to be similar to Shroud family's curse were from when the nature of overblot was not known yet and was considered as natural disaster, dated back to the "Age of Gods" which is approximately 1000 years ago.

But then you might think "Oh maybe Crowley had lived that long and pretended to be Levan to play his role." This is impossible because Lilia, Meleanor and Levan are childhood friends and well, Lilia said it himself that they were still children, besides Lilia is 700 years old and not 1000 years old.

Therefore I don't think Crowley is Malleus's Dad, Levan. But if someone said "Crowley was Maleficia's (Malleus's grandma) subordinate, then I can believe them because that way it will be possible for him to exist since the Age of Gods.

And perhaps this is also the reason why Yana and twst teams purposely wrote Diasomnia story with two castles and used Wild Rose Castle as the main background scene in the story rather than just created and used one castle, because they do wanted to separate it and created a place exclusively to tell Diasomnia story so it wont disturb the other plot of the other story and create a plot hole as a whole.

And so that's all the many reasons why I don't think Crowley is Malleus's Dad. Unless someone can answer the questions that had been swirling around my head because of how absurd Crowley is Malleus's Dad theory is which I had been marked with red color in this post and explained it logically or the official told it themselves then I won't be convinced.

[yinyangofnevermore]

So you’re considering watching RWBY

Or you’re trying to convince someone else to watch it

(I made another similar post about this a while back)

But you/they aren’t sure. Something is holding you/them back. Like:

“But the animation n stuff is SO BAD!” - Sure. In the beginning it’s not great (though many of us now look back on those early volumes with fondness.) But you have to understand, RWBY started as a passion project at a small company with a budget of like $20 (yes I’m exaggerating but STILL.) They simply didn’t have the funds for good animation. But, after volume 3 came out, the show became a literal international hit and so the budget increased. And, subsequently, so did the animation quality. You can see that progression easily enough here. The quality goes from this:

To this:

“It looks stupid and childish!” - Yeah, in the beginning it’s meant to seem silly. And it still has its cartoonishly silly moments later on too. But those silly moments are meant to soften the blow of the PAIN. Because, while RWBY starts off as a silly, “good always triumphs over evil” slice of life magic academy type show it does not STAY that. There is PAIN. LOTS OF IT! If you keep watching, you’ll find out within like 6 hrs worth of watching that it’s not just some silly slice of life show. There is a complete 180 along the way when you find out what RWBY is truly about. The show actually delves into some pretty heavy stuff. PTSD, abuse, neglect, abandonment issues, alcoholism, loss, the inability to move on from loss for some, and more. For more on this, check out this post.

“I saw some stuff on Twitter/Tumblr/Youtube about how bad it is.” - That’s because there are ppl out there who want the show to be something it’s not. Or they got upset when things didn’t happen the way they wanted. Like Blacksun shippers or Adam and Ironwood Stans. Or they just want to shit on something. But EVERY show has its haters. Every piece of media has its haters. And they like to be loud edgelords about it. Sometimes just to be controversial and pick a fight. But that doesn’t mean shit. There are ppl out there who absolutely hate your favorite pieces of media, whether you’re aware of it or not. And that doesn’t stop you from liking it, does it? Don’t let a few haters prevent you from potentially finding your new favorite thing. Because there are a LOT of ppl out there who absolutely LOVE this show.

“I tried watching the first few episodes and I just... Couldn’t.” - Dude, I get it. Trust me. I did the same exact thing when I started watching. I watched the first couple of episodes and literally turned it off. But then I saw a few ppl posting about it here on Tumblr a while later and gave it a second shot on a whim. And BOY did it not disappoint when I got far enough in (and yes, that took a minute.) Mind you, this was back when Volume 3 was originally airing, so the drastic improvements in animation hadn’t happened yet. But I stuck with it anyways. And now look at me. But the show does take a while to really ramp up, so to speak. The beat doesn’t DROP until a bit later on in volume 3.

But, if you enjoy character growth and analysis, then you will most likely enjoy this show. The number of analyses on Tumblr and prolly Twitter as well are MANY. The main 4 characters are badass ladies learning how to fight and deal with life. Every character in the show is based on either a fairy tale, mythology, history, pop culture, etc. (sometimes they have multiple allusions to different degrees) and teasing out those details on top of everything else is quite fun if you enjoy searching for Easter eggs, significant imagery, foreshadowing, parallels, and so on. Interesting villains too. Not just the standard “Evil Witch because she’s evil with henchmen” thing. But fleshed out villains that have their Reasons™️. Like “Cinderella took so much abuse as a kid/teenager that she fucking snapped” type reasons. There is SO MUCH you can delve into with this show if you want to. Details as small as a whale statue in Gepetto’s office, or Belle reading a book with a candelabrum that looks like Lumiere, or characters wearing the colors of the person they love, or characters having eyes the color of their love’s aura (an extension of their soul.) SO MANY PLACES TO FIND THESE DETAILS. Including the lyrics to the music.

Which leads me to the music in this show is freaking AWESOME. And if you can’t appreciate that Casey Lee Williams has been singing in these soundtracks since she was like 13 or 14 (and listening to how she’s grown as a musician throughout it all to the point where she is now one of the music leads for the show) then I don’t know what to tell you. The music is all produced in house. And the lyrics reflect that. Each song is from the perspective of a RWBY character (or like team RWBY in general, depending on the song) and the lyrics give insights either about the characters or about stuff in the show (lore, foreshadowing, etc.) And they’re as fun to analyze as they are to jam out to.

The writing is FANTASTIC. Is it perfect? No. Of course not. They made mistakes along the way. Prolly will make some more. But every piece of media does to some extent. People aren’t perfect and so neither are their creations. But those imperfections don’t outweigh how amazing the story they’ve woven is. The writers of RWBY constantly subvert expectations in a BRILLIANT way. Not in a “wtf?? Where did that come from?” sort of way. But in a “OMG! Now that I go back and watch this again it makes SO MUCH SENSE” sort of way. And things that happen in early volumes actually COME BACK to affect things later. The show doesn’t just MOVE ON. The writers have been playing the long game this whole time. And rewatches will almost always show new details and foreshadowing you might have missed before.

Also, it GAY. And it’s THE major romance of the show. Not just a side story. And the voice actors are the Captains of the Ship! And it’s a beautifully written slow burn romance (amongst other romances also in the show) with yearning and pining for DAYS.  I believe it was Monty who said, “Good romance is earned.” And boy are they earning it!

So, in short, FUCKING WATCH RWBY.

DAMMIT.

If you do decide to watch, Volumes 1-8 are all on RoosterTeeth.com for free or everything is on Crunchyroll. And I definitely suggest starting with the 4 trailers, in order: Red, White, Black, then Yellow.

[dorky-kawa]

Is the avant mv really predicting the jjk ending? - an analysis

There's no way to be sure, but on the other hand, it sure is racking up to be a lot of strange coincidences if not. People have made several observations that the MV seemed to have foreshadowed Nobara's return all along, while others have made other theories on how the MV may be telling us of the return of the glorious blue-eyed king.

Putting the stuff about our blue-eyed king aside (we'll return to it), the MV was scarily accurate about Nobara's return.

But one thing that I noticed from the latest chapter is that the MV may have also showed us Sukuna's defeat months ago.

References from the MV -> chapter 268:

In a brief panel of the MV, there is a blob that looks similar enough to the Sukuna blob we saw this chapter. The blob is coughing up black ink/blood? as if it were punched, almost like Sukuna taking damage from Yuji's black flash.

Sequence in the MV:

Also, at the start of the sequence, there appears a pair of hands holding on to the blob, just like Yuji holding Sukuna with both hands as Sukuna faded away.

Now, if this convinces you snippets of jjk's ending have been hidden in this MV, it gets interesting regarding what else this MV might be foretelling. Interpreting an MV is a subjective art, but users on twitter have pointed out another sequence in the MV in which a portrait with two eyes (that have clouds floating in them) becomes blotted with ink over one of the eye.

This connects to the suspicious amount of official content with Gojo that only has one eye opened. Why do you keep drawing him with only one eye, Gege?

In the end, what does it mean for Gojo? No idea. Some people are saying he's coming back with a binding vow that requires him to give up an eye/Six Eyes. You can probably find the theories on twitter. What would be the purpose of him coming back at the end of the story? Who knows.

— but the picture is there, and depending on whether you're convinced or not, the MV seems to have referenced the jjk ending in it, so it might be worth it to check it out to see if we can figure out more about the ending before it's ending in 3 chapters anyways.

As an aside, this post is just talking about whether we can rely on the MV to predict the ending; the MV itself has other panels that refer to canon events in the manga. It's pretty cool - check it out on Youtube if you have the time.

Also, in case anyone is not familiar with how the MV predicted Nobara's return:

References from the MV -> chapter 266-267

[cryoverlife]

So I made a brief post talking about Ruby and Julius Kane being bad parents and uh... here's the essay.

(quick side rant, omg this post is going to be long)

honestly I really should make a series about it, because after really thinking about it, the Kane Siblings have a severe lack of any good parental care in their life. This isn't exactly abnormal in the Riordanverse, but compared to the other series, which have minimal adult characters (that aren’t dead or immortal), the Kane Chronicles have many adult characters and many of the important ones were there to take care of Sadie and Carter.

Yeah that didn't work out.

I mean there's a lot of facets to the Kane siblings relationships with parental figures. From the... interesting and like definitely racist environment Sadie had to deal with while living with her grandparents to Carter's mental state and identity(?) while living with his dad. there is so much I could over analysis, and I'm not a fan of these books to sit around and reread all day so uh, I'm gonna over analysis all of it.

Eventually, but this post will be long even talking about the more aspect I want to talk about with out dragging the rest of the things I find interesting into it soooo.

When first reading the Kane Chronicles, Ruby and Julius actually seem like good parents. they certainly made mistakes but they do love their kids. and even now, I don't doubt they love their kids. It's just an incredibly interesting scenario where the parents, no matter how much they love their kids, are capable of putting the well being of the world first.

And that's the crux of the issue. Ruby and Julius are capable of being excellent parents, but in the situation they were in, they decide it was either the world or Carter and Sadie and they didn't hesitate to choose the world.

In fact, I'm pretty sure Bast said something very similar to this.

Anyway, I'm gonna start with Ruby and Julius's deaths. Personally, I think saying they abandoned Carter and Sadie isn't actually wrong here. I'm definitely not saying someone dying is abandoning the people they love, but it's the way Julius and Ruby both die and how both situations are almost planned.

Now there's not a lot of cannon conformation about Ruby's death, but I, personally, inferenced that Ruby and Julius predicted that it was a very likely scenario that freeing Bast would mean Ruby's death. Or at the very least they definitely knew the dangers of it.

Unlike Julius, Ruby didn't choose to die, but she did put herself in a situation where it was likely. Did she do it with the best intentions? sure. But I find the whole "we had no other choice" thing dumb. Diviner doesn't seem like an incredibly reliable source of information, and unlike the greek pantheon I'm not aware of any being in Egyptian Mythology that specifically controls fate (feel free to prove me wrong here). The idea that they couldn't have done anything else, is kind of absurd.

I mean they convinced Iskander that banning gods was wrong so like? maybe they should have leaned more into that angle.

Also like, they freed Bast, which good for Bast, but doing that sped up the process that allowed Apophis to get free. Ruby had a couple of visions and the two of them spent the rest of they're lives deciding to not just prevent the apocalypse, but to put that burden on their children's shoulders.

Personally, I think Ruby's death was while unfortunate not a surprise to either of them, considering she didn't really seem to try to survive, denying both Isis's and Bast's help. Maybe she wouldn't have been able to handle the power, but like, she could have tried.

Now the bigger Issue I have is Julius's death, cause Ruby's is mostly speculation on my part, I could be wrong, but uh, Julius planned his death. He brought to kids into what was going to be an incredibly dangerous situation. And yes, he did ask them to stay out of the room, but the idea that he used them to help him accomplish this which would leave them without their one living parent while also implicating them of any potential crimes the mortals might decide had happened (which is canon) is horrible.

Arguably, We have no idea weather or not Julius planned on releasing Set, and having Carter and Sadie host Horus and Isis (though those amulet are suspicious). Personally I believe that he had some idea what was going to happen, he's not stupid, but similarly to Ruby's death he decide to take that chance anyway.

Was it for the good of the world? sure. Was it for the good of Sadie and Carter? no, absolutely not.

Even if the situation hadn't thrown Sadie and Carter head first into a deadly quest it would've have severely traumatized them. They could feel guilt for helping their dad commit a crime (especially if they had no idea what was going on) or get himself killed. It doesn't help that Sadie already had abandonment issues due to him.

But more importantly, (not to say his relationship with Sadie isn't important, but his death has a far larger impact on Carter), he left Carter with no one. Besides for maybe Amos, but not only are the two of them estranged but I can't really think that Julius would've thought Amos would take Carter in. And honestly living with the Uncle you barely remember isn't much better than living with stranger, there no one for Carter to go to.

Julius was Carter's single guardian and his only form of stability and familiarity for six years. Do I think he was a good support system of Carter during those six year? not really, but the fact that Julius was willing to throw Carter to the wolves (the government and the foster system) isn't a good sign.

so yeah, the fact that both Julius and Ruby basically went willingly and knowingly to their deaths is kind of abandoning their kids.

I wish I could say (that's a bad way to phrase this) that Julius had planned the quest to defeat Set but I kinda think that would be speculating a bit to much.

Luckily, it's basically canon that they expected Sadie and Carter to save the world so anything I might say about that isn't at all a stretch.

My biggest problem with them though is that neither of them even mentioned the idea of being magicians to Carter or Sadie. And it;'s not because they're to young, because many magicians learn what they are at a very young age.

It could've been to protect them from The House of Life, but considering how violent and uncontrolled they're magic can get with zero knowledge of it it's seems weird that they wouldn't try to teach them how to control it.

(also It was denying Carter and Sadie a large amount of knowledge about their family and even culture to some extent)

Both of the parents fully understood that Sadie and Carter would have to save the world, and yet despite that both of them died without even hinting at Sadie and Carter's abilities.

And there's a big difference between this and what many of the better parents in the Riordanverse did by trying to avoid telling their kids about their heritage. People like Sally and Natalie Chase did it with the intention of trying to protect their kids as long as possible. Sure, it didn't help but they either weren't given a chance to fully explain when the kids were old enough or tried to but it came a bit late (for reasons they couldn't control), Ruby and Julius fully understood that Carter and Sadie would be put in a lot of danger and didn't even inform them of that the gods existed.

Yeah technically most of the Riordanverse parents did that, but there is a big difference in the lives of demigods vs magicians. Telling a demigod about the greek god would also mean having to explain the fact that they being hunted down by monster, which is not something you should tell your seven year old, especially if the real danger is going to come a bit later. Magicians don't actually have a lot of danger associated with them, Carter and Sadie are sort of an exception to that. Like sure, don't tell them about the saving the world part until they're older (Not that Julius even tried) but like tell them about the magic part, my goodness.

Sadie and Carter learned all of this on a really dangerous quest, while trying to save their dad who had planned his death, and in the end they were forced to make a decision between their dad and the world. A decision they didn't really get to make because of the situation and Julius's plan had already made it for them.

Sadie and Carter were shoved into a dangerous world with arguably less help than any other Riordanverse character (excluding the MC series, cause they all died to find out about Norse gods). Like at least the demigods had a camp to go to, Carter and Sadie had a world wide society on their heels, a possessed uncle, a clay person having an identity crisis (which wasn't even over the fact she wasn't real) and a single cat goddess who was forced to ditch like half-way through the book.

Julius legit went "Hey sorry I planned on dying, why don't you almost die to try and save me even though it's useless and than find out me and your mother planned out the worst way to give you the burden of saving the world along with a bunch of responsibilities you don't want *cough* Carter wanting nothing to do with being in charge *cough*.”

I could complain that they also encouraged and helped Sadie and Carter do dangerous stuff (give them a dangerous criminal while knowing he would escape) but unfortunately that’s a common thing parents in fantasy books do.

Like, if they’re kid is already in a dangerous situation and they can’t get them out of it or the kid has to much of a guilt/ hero complex, then better they try to help their kid as much as possible to try to protect them, then forbid them from doing anything which will lead to the kid trying to do everything themselves and getting into more danger.

course the reason Carter and Sadie are in so much danger is because of their parents.

actually Ruby and Julius have a lot of similarities with the gods when it comes to parenting. Cause problems, help your kid a minimal amount after forcing them to fix the problems you caused for you.

Are Julius and Ruby bad people? No. In the end they’re doing what they think is best for the world, which no one can really blame them for that.

they simply faced the love one vs world challenge and had to choose the world.

The thing is being a bad or good person doesn’t usually have anything to do with being by a good or bad parent.

a bad person is capable of being a good parent and a good person is capable of being a bad one.

Trying to save the world does make Ruby and Julius good people, but at the expense of their kids mental, emotional, and physical health. And no matter what the reason, anyone who willingly chooses to put their kids in that type of situation, isn’t a good parent.

anyway, that was really long, so any of you that actually read that entire thing, thx for reading my over analysis.

[the-magiarcheologist]

What happened to Mr. Morganach?

I want to try to do something a bit different today. I usually come in with some in-depth analysis of some details in the game. There is an element of speculation to everything I post but I usually try to stick as closely as possible to some canon events/elements found in the game to deliver an analysis that is as plausible as possible. And there will be in-depth analysis today too! We will be having a look at Isidora’s journal entries.

But I also have a theory. It’s perhaps a convincing theory or perhaps a completely crazy theory, hard for me to judge at this point because I’m so deep into it! So I want to try this: we’ll start with the analysis. All very reasonable and based on facts. And then we’ll plunge deep into the harebrained theory and I’ll see if you follow me or not.

Let’s go!

(Also, a warning if you’re planning on clicking that "read more" button: this is a loooooong post. So be sure you have some minutes to spare!)

The Analysis

Ok, so, we find 7 excerpts from Isidora’s journal throughout the game and, if we read them all together, they tell a pretty clear story of where she went and what she did after she graduated from Hogwarts and how she came to be able to take someone’s pain away.

First journal entry

We learn that she is at a camp treating people suffering from the bubonic plague. This, in and of itself, is fascinating because this gives us a glimpse of how things were before the Statute of Secrecy went into effect.

We don’t know exactly when Isidora lived but the Hogwarts Legacy Artbook tells us the Keepers lived during the Tudor period (1485-1603), which is in line with them being around close to the creation of Gringotts (in 1474). Anyway, this means Isidora most likely lived a century or more before 1692, when the Wizarding World broke off from the Muggle world. And we learn here that, back then, muggle doctors and witch healers worked together to heal those afflicted by the plague!

What’s also interesting in this entry is that Isidora seems more worried about the grief and mental pain these people may be experiencing than their physical ailments that can be healed. (Although we know healing these physical ailments is not as trivial as she makes it sound considering how many people died!) And here she first introduces her meeting with a man that reminds her of her father and that she wants to help get rid of his grief.

She also mentions "the others are wrong." This indicates, to me, that even back then she had already talked to the other Keepers (not just Percival) about her desire to take away people’s pain using ancient magic and they had already told her not to do it.

Second journal entry

This follows directly from the first note. She is further debating whether she should help people with their psychological pain or not.

It’s interesting here that she mentions "I travelled to learn" and also mentions some research that she is doing. Is this research the reason why she came to this camp? Is she even helping heal the patients at all (physically healing them from the plague I mean, not the taking-away-pain thing that she’ll attempt later)? Or is she just a passive observer (hence why she feels so frustrated about not doing anything)? And if so, what is she observing? For what purpose? Or is the research she mentions something completely different than what she initially came to learn at this camp? She could have more recently started to research the possibility to take away someone’s pain, after experiencing all the grief from the plague.

All interesting questions but not something we ever get any answers about and not the focus of this post. What I take away from this entry, mostly, is that we also learn that the man mentioned previously, the one who reminded her of her father, just left camp. So he’s not under the supervision of other doctors or healers anymore. She also directly mentions wanting to help him. This is important for what Isidora will do next.

Third journal entry

Now this is the pivotal entry! The first time Isidora ever attempts to remove someone’s pain.

Re-reading these journal entries after I first finished the game, I though this note described what happened with her father, how she lost control of the spell and how he came to be the empty husk we see in San Bakar’s memory. Reading the notes in order again after some time, it’s pretty clear that this is not about her father. We will see further evidence of that in future journal entries but considering that the order of the entries follows chronological events in Isidora’s life, this happened during her travels, before she came back to Hogwarts and before she healed her father.

I think it only takes a minimal amount of connecting the dots to understand that this is Isidora attempting the pain-removing spell on the man she met in the plague camp who reminded her of her father. He had just left camp, was completely alone and unsupervised. She likely followed him and, with or without his consent, attempted to heal him of his grief. Of course, we learn here that it completely failed.

It worked at first and she did remove his pain ("I recall feeling a sense of euphoria as I watched the pain vanish.") but then she lost control of the spell and lost consciousness ("But then everything started to turn." and "The world floated back to me as if in a watery haze. How long had I been unconscious?") The result is that she completely emptied the poor man of all this emotions and perhaps even more (his soul? his spirit?) ("I only remember his eyes. Empty. Empty of sorrow, yes, but also – "). The way she writes "I only remember his eyes" even implies the man could be dead because, if he was still alive in front of her, she would not need to remember his eyes, she would see his eyes. Or perhaps he just left while she was unconscious. Unclear. It could also imply the spell had an effect on Isidora’s own memories (as well as her emotions: "I recall feeling a sense of euphoria as I watched the pain vanish."), giving her some amnesia episode which makes it hard to recall what exactly happened after she performed the spell (hence why she also asks: "How long had I been unconscious?")

We also learn that Isidora’s head hurts. She immediately supposes it is because she hit her head when she fell unconscious but it is just a supposition on her hand ("I must have hit my head"). It’s also likely her head hurts because she just attempted dangerous and powerful magic and it had an effect on her as well as her patient. Hence why she can "neither feel nor see a mark" because she never actually hit her head, the pain is caused by something else. Also, an important detail that, in my mind, confirms that this happened while she was travelling helping plague patients: she worries that her headache could be the plague (the "Black Death"). She would only worry about that if she had recently been exposed to it, ergo if this journal entry was written when she was still working in that camp.

Also, last detail I want to note, she says: "The world floated back to me as if in a watery haze." I point this out because I have another post I’ve been meaning to write for some time now about ancient magic appearing as water. We see ancient magic appearing as blue water droplets floating around the Keepers wands whenever they use ancient magic. Whenever the MC activates an ancient magic hotspot, it appears like water surging out of the ground. And when the MC crosses one of the ancient magic portals it’s like they cross a very thin watery film with little droplets following in their wake. All of that is a topic for another post but I just note the use of that vocabulary by the writers here.

Fourth journal entry

This is where everything starts to make sense. She says she had a breakthrough and finally understood exactly how to remove people’s pain without emptying them of all emotions. The key is that one must not use too much power but instead be very delicate in the application of the magic. This, to me, further confirms that the man with the empty eyes in the previous journal entry is not her father. She lost control of the spell with that first man and then worked to understand what went wrong and how to control the spell properly. She is now able to remove "the merest whisper of pain from just above the heart" which is what we see her do in all of the Keeper’s memories, including the instance where she applied the spell to her father. This is what she does to Niamh and, likely, what she did to the Hogwarts student she dragged down to the repository cave. We don’t know what harm this does to the people it is used on but it certainly does not empty them of all emotions.

And speaking of unintended side-effects, it seems that this spell, even much better controlled, could still be having some effects on Isidora’s own emotions ("I sensed a surge of peace myself, as though I knew instantly that what I was doing was right.") Although it is hard to tell what is the spell and what is just Isidora. We know this research means a lot to her and she is certainly very emotionally invested in succeeding in this so these could be entirely natural emotions. And yet, considering the strange effect inhaling that haze has on her later on and how it turns MC’s eyes red at the very end of the game, we should not discount quite yet that the spell may be doing something to the caster themselves.

I want to also again note the specific vocabulary used in several journal entries to talk about what she is extracting. "Whispers of pain." Is this a metaphor or is she hearing literal whispers? Whenever we see this spell used in the Keepers’ memories we do hear actual whispers along with it so I’m inclined to take this literally. And do you know where else one can hear whispers? Near any ancient magic portal (conjured by Percival and Charles in their trials) or any ancient magic hotspot! And the whispers heard may very well be "whispers of pain". Near the ancient magic portal, I and several other people agree we can hear a voice say "Avada Kedavra", hardly a joyous thought. And if you pause next to an ancient magic hotspot before activating it, you can hear two voices (who sound like children’s voices to me) and one of them sounds very much like moans of pain.

So is the source of the ancient magic used by the Keepers and the one we find existing in the world "whispers of pain" like the ones that Isidora extracts? And yet, ancient magic existed and was used by the Keepers before Isidora ever invented her pain-removing spell! Indeed in the memory of the Keepers using ancient magic to save Feldcroft from the drought no whispers are heard. Percival confirms directly to Isidora that there are different kinds of ancient magic (because the magic she saw them wield was : "a particular kind of ancient magic", implying there are other kind, and when he first sees her pain-removing spell be performed he says that "the traces of that magic are different from what I’ve seen before"). So, perhaps, the magic used on Feldcroft is different than the magic found in the inter-dimensional portals and the ancient magic hotspots. And yet that leaves a pretty big gaping interrogation along the lines of: why were the Keepers using the "whispers of pain" kind of magic when creating their portals?! We will come back to that but keep that in mind because it’s pivotal information!

Fifth journal entry

This is where she finally healed her father. And this happened after she had mastered the spell to avoid any complete mind-wipe.

Not much to say about this because we see these events happen in the Keepers’ and her own memories. I do find it interesting that she says that Niamh seemed to understand what she was doing. We harldy see Niamh’s reaction either in Percival or in Isidora’s memory but, from what little we see of her face during these scenes, she looks more wary than interested. But ok.

Also, to note that all of that likely happened before Isidora started inhaling the "pain haze" that escapes when the spell is done.

Sixth journal entry

And here we have it: she started inhaling the pain-haze!

And we’re once again faced with this question: is the ancient magic affecting her emotions and thoughts or not? This "sense of purpose" that she mentions feeling, it’s hard to tell if this is an actual effect of the magic or if this is just Isidora’s hubris and her convincing herself, when faced with the opposition of the Keepers, that the magic itself is giving her signs that she is on the right path, in a sort of cognitive dissonance effect. This sentience she attributes to the magic, is it real or is she imagining it? I don’t think we ever get a clear answer to that question in the narrative.

All of that is made even more complex to disentangle by the fact that inhaling the pain-haze also makes her magic stronger. I think this effect is real and not just an illusion on Isidora’s part. We can explain that by the fact that she is absorbing a piece of someone else’s raw emotion and we know that strong emotions felt by the caster makes their magic stronger. We see that happen several times with Harry in the books. So, when she inhales these strands, Isidora stews in other people’s emotions and that lends her magic power (but also likely volatility).

And lastly, another little "vocabulary" section: often when she refers to the people she is helping, Isidora calls them "souls", even in some of her earlier journal entries ("number of souls I have been able to help" and "I have the power to help these souls" in her second entry). Does that mean that her pain-removing spell is acting on people’s souls? That would certainly explain why this magic is so dangerous and why the Keepers fear it so much. We know that splitting any part of one’s soul is extremely dark and complex magic (Horcruxes) so removing any part of someone’s soul must be equally so…

And also, does that mean that our emotions are part of our soul? The way Dementors work tends to confirm that.

Seventh journal entry

The most interesting tidbit in this entry might be that we learn that the Keepers were already calling themselves "Keepers" before Isidora died! This contradicts the explanation they give to the MC. Here is what Percival says in the last scene in the Map Chamber before opening the way to the repository:

"You see, we could not destroy the strands of emotion Isidora had stolen from so many. So we did all that we could to keep them safe. "We also realised that until they could be destroyed, the magic used to create them was a danger to wizardkind. "Hence, we became Keepers. Keepers of an unfathomable secret. We knew that – some day – one with the ability to see traces of ancient magic might be seduced by its power."

This strongly implies that they became Keepers after they realized Isidora’s stored strands of magic could not be destroyed, so after they discovered the repository.

This could be just a harmless simplification on Percival’s part. They could have become "Keepers" shortly before Isidora’s death, maybe after Niamh learned that she was continuing her experiments and using Goblin Silver to store that sort of evil, dangerous magic. But then, it’s strange that Isidora knew they called themselves Keepers. Surely they would not have told her that they were forming a super-secret alliance to move against her! Did Isidora find out anyway? How? This is just another one of these things that does not quite add up about what the Keepers tell the MC. I wonder if there is something else they are "keeping"? Another magic-related secret they’ve been keeping for a long time and that they, at first, asked Isidora to keep with them (hence why she knew about the name of "Keepers") before she broke away from them. Maybe they are just keeping the secret of how to wield ancient magic (because we know it can be wielded even by those who don’t see traces of magic, so, logically, there must be a way to teach it even when it does not come naturally like it does to Percival and the MC).

And this is also where Isidora mentions she left a trail to follow (much like the Keepers later did with the portkey). This trail must be the entrance to the Undercroft that lies under her house, the tryptich and canvas pieces, her memories and her portrait. I actually have a lot to say about the trail Isidora must have left behind (and how the Keepers must have actually "stolen" a part of that trail for their own purpose) but I’ll leave that for another post. Though I will still note here that it’s interesting that she had already left this trail behind very early on in her life. She says: "I confess I have begun to wonder if I will ever find another in my lifetime with whom I can share this work." And sure. But, by all accounts, Isidora still had plenty of time before her at that point in her life. Plenty of time still to teach others her pain-removing spell, plenty of time still to find a worthy successor. So why was she that worried that her knowledge would be lost? Why create a secret path to her research right now when her research had barely begun? Did she know she might soon be killed or silenced? Sure, the Keepers had made it pretty clear they were opposed to what she was doing but had they threatened her? Did she know something else that she knew she might be killed for? Isidora’s paranoia is all the more striking because she turned out to be right! She would not get to live much longer.

From San Bakar’s memory we know what must have happened shortly after she wrote this journal entry: her father was found, emptied of all of his emotions, in their cottage. The same night, Percival found out that Isidora had been removing pain from her students. This convinced the Keepers to confront her. Percival attacked first (an Expelliarmus on Isidora) and, when retaliating, Isidora hurt Niamh. San Bakar then decided to permanently neutralize her when it became apparent that she was too powerful and might overpower both Percival and Charles Rookwood. The end.

...But I haven’t even come to my theory!

Ok. Here goes.

The Theory

What happened that night

There is one thing in this whole chain of events, an especially in light of my re-reading of Isidora’s journal entries, that does not make any sense to me: why was her father emptied of all his emotions?

We’re given to think that Isidora did this. This is certainly what San Bakar thinks when he finds her father and hence why he runs to Percival to warn him. And yet, with everything we know about Isidora, her motivations and her journey, I don’t think she could have been the one wiping her father’s mind like that.

First of all, I don’t think she would ever do that intentionally. She cared about her father too much. She wanted to see him come back to life, not become even more apathetic than before! And even if we suppose that a) she had entered a state of madness and started loosing control of the pain removing spell or b) that she became so obsessed with ridding people of their pain that she considered that wiping their mind of all emotions was the ultimate act of salvation from any negative emotions, then why did she not wipe the mind of the student she dragged down to the repository that same day? She says she is healing her students of their pain, Percival says she is using her spell on them. And yet, that student was just fine when the Keepers found them. Why would she loose control/abuse of the spell on her father, the person she cares about the most, but not on her students?

The only reason I can think of why she would wipe his mind like this is if her father had somehow turned against her. If he has started telling everyone around him that the pain-removing spell was a bad idea, then, yeah, maybe she would want to silence him. But that’s a big "maybe". We know she loved her father and all that she did, she did for him. It’s pretty unlikely she would turn against him like this.

But there might be another explanation for what happened to her father...

Ok. This is where we really leave "analysis" territory and enter into "crazy theory" territory. None of what I’m about to say is strongly supported by canon events in the game. It’s just a theory I have and you can agree or disagree but hear me out: another ancient magic user attempted the pain-removing spell on Isidora’s father.

We know from Isidora’s journal (entry 4) that this is a very difficult spell to control. What happened to Isidora’s father (empty eyes, empty of sorrow but also everything else) is exactly what happened to the first man Isidora attempted the spell on. In other words: what happened to Mr. Morganach is the work of someone that is a novice in the practice of the pain-removing spell. It cannot be Isidora. She had mastered that spell a long time ago and would have been even more unlikely to slip up with her father, considering how much she cared about him.

In fact, we know that until the very end of her life, despite all other forms of madness she exhibited, she still had precise control over the spell because she used it on Niamh and on her students without wiping their minds.

If we accept that to be true – the fact that someone else was using (and abusing) the pain-removing spell – then the list of suspects is pretty short: we only know of 4 other people that were able to use ancient magic at the time.

I don’t think it’s Bakar since he seemed honestly shocked when he discovered Isidora’s father. Of course, he could have falsified that entire memory but I think falsifying memories is something really hard to do and would usually leave some traces. So let’s take him off the suspect list for now. That leaves the other 3 Keepers. And that’s when Percival starts looking really suspicious…

It’s pretty much implied that Percival was the one to send Bakar to check on Isidora in her home. When Bakar enters Percival’s office he just says: "Isidora was not at her home," implying that Percival already knew he had gone there to look for her. And if Bakar reports like this to Percival it makes sense that Percival was the one that asked him to go check. Percival then says: "I’ve just learned that she has been wielding that magic on students." How exatly he knew that is never explained. Finally, Bakar says: "We must gather the others." So Bakar and Rackham had been investigating Isidora on their own, the other two did not know yet that anything was wrong.

Of course, there is the "innocent" explanation: Percival was looking for Isidora, perhaps to talk to her, but could not find her. He sent Bakar looking for her in the most likely location for her to be: her home. Percival, in the mean time, might have been interrogating her student to know where she was/what happened and that’s how he discovered everything. They then gathered the others and confronted Isidora, killing her to stop her madness. It’s still unclear how they even found the repository, though, again, it could have been the student who told them where Isidora was taking them to remove their pain.

But, if we go by the hypothesis that another magic user had just mind-wiped Isidora’s father (accidentally or not) while Isidora was not at her home, the story starts to look quite different. So let’s contemplate another scenario: Percival, for as-of-now unknown reasons, finds himself experimenting with the pain-removing spell he told Isidora not to use (making him quite the hypocrite). He goes to test it on Isidora’s father, either with the explicit intention to hurt him (we will explore later on some reasons why he would have wanted to do that) or just because he knew the spell had already been used on him so if there were any bad side effects, Isidora’s father would have already been suffering from them making it less risky to use the spell on him again than on someone else not suffering from any side effects yet. The spell backfires because it’s a very difficult spell to control and it requires practice. Now Percival knows he is going to be found out. He knows that as soon as Isidora gets home she might realize what happened (because of her extensive experience with that spell) so he puts his plan into motion: he goes back to Hogwarts, tells San Bakar that Isidora has disappeared and that he needs to go to her home to see if she is there. He knows Bakar will find her father and immediately think Isidora did this to him because she is already known to experiment with dangerous spells.

By that point, Percival might have already known what Isidora was up to below the castle (but he had not stopped her because, secretly, he was actually interested in knowing more about the pain-manipulation magic, hence why he had already been experimenting with it himself). Or he does interrogate her student in an effort to find her so he can move against her when Bakar comes back. Either way, Bakar does come back horrified by what he saw, suspects nothing of Percival’s involvement and Percival enrolls him to convince Niamh and Charles of Isidora’s evil so they can all go kill or subdue the only one who could possibly have exposed Percival’s lies: Isidora herself! Isidora being dead, Percival’s crime against Mr. Morganach is covered up and he gets away with it!

Now... I see the sceptical eyebrows raised! You might think that this makes as little sense as Isidora herself harming her father. There is nothing to support that Percival would have wanted to use the pain-removing spell. And I agree with that. But I would like to bring up the repository that sits under Charles Rookwood’s castle. Because what the hell is a repository doing there?

The Rookwood Castle Repository

I have actually already had this discussion with @superconductivebean who had some compelling arguments to explain why Isidora might have put a first test-repository under Rookwood Castle. Charles Rookwood likely wasn’t living in that castle at the time (the castle was already a ruin when the Keepers came to Feldcroft during the drought and Charles calls it his "former residence"). Buried below an abandoned ruin actually seems like a pretty good place to hide a magic repository you don’t want anyone to find. So, ok, this repository was likely built by Isidora without the Keepers’ knowledge (just like the Hogwarts repository).

But, at some point, the Keepers (or at least Charles and Percival) did find out about it. By the time they are creating their trials and their portraits to communicate with a future ancient magic user, they know about it! Charles Rookwood, talking with the MC in the Map Chamber, with Percival present, says about Rookwood Castle:

"Not only is it the location of the next trial, it is home to a source of power that would be devastating in the wrong hands."

And here is why this raised all kinds of alarm bells for me: why is the repository not as well protected as the one under Hogwarts?

This repository is not buried nearly as deep as the Hogwarts one is! Hence why Ranrok found it relatively easily once he had a vague idea of where to search. We know the Keepers cannot destroy the repositories but surely they could have moved it to a more secure location? Say, under Hogwarts with the other well-guarded repository? And if they could not move it then surely they could have devised other strong protections for it! Why not post a few of those pensieve guardians around? Another locked door that only opens to the one wielding a very special ancient magic wand? When we find that repository open, there is nothing to suggest it was strongly protected. No broken down pensieve guardian statues, no obliterated doors. It seems that repository was only hidden by a few stone wall in the Rookwood Castle basement. Sure it’s somewhere behind the door that open with the magic runes thing but those runes are activated by any old spell. And it’s just a set of doors, just one layer of protection compared to the many layers they put to protect the Hogwarts repository. None of this makes any sense!

To make matters worse, as @superconductivebean pointed out in a recent post (yes this post is in Russian. No, I don’t speak Russian. But I would encourage anyone to bust out the online translators to read these analyses, they are always so in-depth!) they left this repository just by the path to Rookwood’s trial! Even if it had not already been busted open, the chance that the one going through the trial would stumble upon it was pretty high. Why would they take that risk? Before going through Rookwood’s trial, the person doing the trials knows nothing of this magic and why they should not use it. So putting them on the path of forbidden, highly volatile magic is just stupid! This goes against everything else they do to ensure this kind of magic does not fall into the wrong hands!

@superconductivebean suggested (in a last ditch attempt to explain this madness! 🤣) that they might have left this repository here to act as a beacon to lure someone able to feel magic to Rookwood Castle so that they could find the Portkey and be set on the path. That’s a possibility. But it’s a very reckless one! Because someone did stumble upon this badly protected repository and did use it for the wrong means: Ranrok! I just don’t understand them taking this kind of risk.

Unless… Rackham and Rookwood were doing some secret experiments of their own on the "whispers-of-pain" magic from the repository.

Maybe Rackham and Rookwood did not want to lock this repository away like the other one because they were actually interested in that kind of magic. They took the risk of leaving that repository accessible in order to study (or even possibly use) it.

(Although, even if they wanted the repository accessible to study it, they could still have made sure the path to their trial was away from where the repository was buried, say… on the other side of this massive castle! This is still an inconsistency.)

'Whispers-of-pain" magic

So let’s talk about the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic I brought up earlier! This "whispers-of-pain" magic must be closely related to Isidora’s pain-removing spell. It’s the same whispers we hear during Isidora’s spell and near portals and ancient magic hotspots. And yet the Keepers use it! They use the pain-whispering inter-dimentional portals in their trials. And the pain-whispering ancient magic hotspots, were left behind by the Keepers! Charles Rookwood straight up says that these hotspots are:

"Evidence of the Keepers' efforts to manipulate the power of ancient magic during our time."

Speaking of evidence, that’s a pretty damning one against the Keepers! First of all we learn that the Keepers were experimenting on "manipulat[ing] the power of ancient magic" (something that, by the way!, they directly caution the MC against doing at the end of the trials!) but they were not trying to manipulate the power of any kind of ancient magic, this one is specifically the "whispers-of-pain" kind! I don’t know how to record video from the game so I can’t link some evidence of it but, really, go stand above an ancient magic hotspot before activating it and listen. Tell me you don’t hear the whispers! What were they even doing experimenting with that kind of magic? And what kind of experiments were they doing that left traces centuries later?

There is a possibility that these experiments were them trying to see if they could destroy or weaken the magic left in the repository. But then, why does Charles not say so? And why are the traces of these experiments all over Hogwarts Valley and the Coast, i.e. far away from where the repositories are? And why are they encouraging the MC to go and absorb them? It still does not add up.

We know that the Keepers can wield another kind of ancient magic: the one they use when they save Feldcroft, or even the one they use when building pretty pillars, which is not followed by any creepy whispers. In fact, if they wanted to create inter-dimensional portals, couldn’t they use the "crystallized stone" kind of space-bending doors? Like the ones Isidora uses on the mirror as entries to the Undercroft? No creepy whispers around those, as far as I can hear!

So when did the Keepers start using the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic? And I say "Keepers" but, really, I mean Charles and Percival. I don’t think there is any clear evidence of Niamh or San using the "whispers-of-pain" magic. There are no inter-dimensional portals in their trials and they are not present yet in the Map Chamber when Rookwood explains what the ancient magic hotspots are so it’s unclear if they really know about those or what they are. It’s just Charles and Percival! Always just those two! At the center of everything that does not make sense about the Keeper’s path! The only two Keepers that for sure knew about the repository under Rookwood Castle. The only two we know for sure used the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic in their trial in the form of inter-dimensional portals. And the only two Keepers that were present at the very end when finalizing the path for the MC to follow by hiding the container and leaving their memory in the Gringotts pensieve. Why were Niamh and San not present that day? Why always just those two?

And to all of this evidence, your honor!, I add even more!

Isidora's warning

Isidora wrote "Percival is hiding something" on the boards of the Undercroft.

Did she know that Percival was looking into the pain-removing magic he had forbidden her to use? Was Percival doing some other secret ancient magic experiments unbeknownst to the other Keepers?

Remember Isidora’s paranoia in her seventh journal entry? Her leaving a trail to follow, a path for others to learn as if her days were counted and she soon would be unable to pass on her knowledge herself? Well that would certainly explain that! If she knew some dangerous secret about Percival she might have feared that he would discover that she knew and come after her. Percival might even have mind-wiped her father as a way to plant evidence against her, and to give the other Keepers a strong enough motivation to move against her with him.

And, lastly, I bring to the stand: Niamh!

Niamh's warning

It always struck me that Niamh’s lesson during her trials applied just as much to the Keepers as it applied to Isidora. She says:

"But there is no light without shadow as there is no shadow without light. Simply because you can eliminate darkness does not always mean that you should."

Of course, we all understand how it applies to Isidora: she saw people suffering and sought to remove that pain (i.e., darkness) but did not anticipate the consequences of that. Because, as one of the writers for HL puts it: "If you take someone’s pain away, what do they feel? Can you really feel happy, then?" I think this is what we are supposed to take away from Niamh’s trial, as a first reading.

And yet, Niamh’s lesson also applies to what the Keepers did! There is no denying that ancient magic can be used for good, we see as much when the Keepers save Feldcroft from the drought using ancient magic. But when they saw ancient magic used for evil (i.e., Isidora using it to remove people’s pain without their consent, something that might be volatile soul-magic and that they think will have bad consequences and should not be done), what is their reaction? To take away ancient magic altogether! To seal it away, never to be used again by anyone! They removed the darkness entirely. But, as Niamh explains, without it the light (as in: the good that ancient magic can do) dissapears too! In that respect, in the context of the narrative of HL, Niamh’s lesson applies more strongly to the Keepers’ actions than to Isidora’s because we do not actually see any "light" that Isidora’s action has taken away. It is implied several times that taking someone’s pain away could have negative consequences but we are never shown these consequences. (The only negative effect we see is Isidora’s father’s complete mind-wipe but, in my theory, this did not actually happen because of Isidora’s actions). We are, however, clearly shown the consequence of ancient magic disappearing from the world because we have clear exemples of the good it could do (saving a village from a drought or all the protection charms that Hogwarts offers).

But what does any of that have to do with my theory? Niamh also says during her trial: "nothing is what it seems". She even says this two times! Once at the very beginning of her trial and once at the end when we are walking through the mourners before we get to her tomb. And, as I’ve already explained in that post, I don’t get what she means by this because her trial is actually pretty straightforward. There’s nothing hidden. There’s no plot twist or huge revelation. But what if she was trying to warn the MC about the Keepers (specifically Percival and Charles)? What if she had realized, at the end of her life, that Percival and Charles were hiding something? Or what if she disagreed with their decision to seal ancient magic away entirely and suspected they had hidden motives to do that? (Such as keeping all the power of ancient magic, including the "whisper-of-pain" magic, to themselves?) She might have been afraid to go against Percival and Charles herself (especially if she knew they had been playing around with repository-magic from the secret repository under Rookwood Castle and were therefore more powerful than her) so she instead tried to sneak a warning to the next person coming along with the ability to wield ancient magic, to encourage them to not take everything at face value and to not blindly trust what Percival and Charles were telling them.

(And if I add to all of this my theory that Niamh is a time-traveler, I argue that she could have come back in the future (after Percival and Charles had already died and could not interfere with her actions anymore) and actually modified her trial to include this warning to the MC.)

Concluding remarks

Okay. So, that was a lot I just unloaded here. Let’s take a step back a little bit. My theory is, of course, not the only explanation for what happened to Isidora’s father.

There is a possibility that Isidora’s spell does not immediately empty people of emotions but that it happens over time. Maybe the spell opens something, creates some kind of leak and they progressively loose themselves. Her father is the first person we see her use the spell on and maybe that’s why he is the first one to get the empty eyes. Perhaps Niamh ended up just like him after some time. Isidora may have hid what was happening to her father and she was already too far in to walk back or admit that she was wrong, even after realizing her spell was not working and basically killing those she wanted to help. It could explain why she gave into the madness towards the end. But that would mean that all the students she used the spell on also ended up completely empty of emotions. Surely, if a bunch of Hogwarts students ended up as soul-less husks as a result of Isidora’s actions we would have heard about it? The Keepers would mention it, if only to even more strongly illustrate the danger of Isidora’s spell. Or someone would remember that episode form Hogwarts' history.

It’s also possible that, even when well controlled, the pain-removing spell, when used too often, would still end up wiping someone’s mind. Isidora, seing that her father was not getting better even after she removed his pain (because what could her father feel once his pain was taken away? how to fill the emotional void of all the years he spent in deep depression?) just used the spell again and again, hoping each time for a different result, until it was too much, her father was completely gone and she succumbed to madness. But I wonder then why the writers did not explicitely state that this is what happened. This could have added to the emotional weight of Isidora’s tragic story. Why leave the whole thing so vague?

And even if we find an alternative explanation for Isidora’s father’s fate, that still leaves open all the other questions I brought up: the unprotected repository under Rookwood Castle, the whispers of pain heard in the Keepers’ magic, Isidora’s inscription, Niamh’s cryptic warnings.

But, I’m sure many of you will have other ideas about what could have happened and how to resolve all these little mysteries! So please do come and argue with me!

Tl;dr because that was a very long post: I argue that Isidora couldn’t have been the one to mind-wipe her father. She had already experienced loosing her grasp on the pain-removing spell and completely wiping someone’s mind and she had found how to avoid such a consequence and I find it unlikely that she would have relapsed like this, especially with someone like her father that she very much cared about. So I argue that another person who could wield ancient magic wiped Isidora’s father’s mind through a badly executed pain-removing spell and the one who had the strongest motive to do so is none other than Percival Rackham!

[inkblackorchid]

What the hell happened with Crow: an autopsy (Part 3)

Trying my absolute damnedest to finish this one and part four sooner now that I've finally covered the Pearson backstory. *Ehem* Hello again! I hope you're ready for more yelling about a certain spiky-haired Blackbird aficionado, because I sure am.

To get some things out of the way first, though, here come the usual disclaimers:

This is part three of a series of posts about hpw Crow's character was handled during 5Ds' whole run. You can find part one here and part two here. Reading them technically isn't required, but things sure will make a whole lot more sense if you do. (Bring snacks, they're long.)

This post isn't meant as a Crow hate post, nor is it meant to convince people who didn't vibe with his character to change their mind. This is my very long winded-attempt to analyse the writing decisions surrounding his character as best I can, without too much bias. That said, full disclosure, I do personally like Crow, so there's a good chance that will shine through whether I want it to or not. But also, I'm trying to have fun here, so please cut me some slack.

In case you haven't read my previous Crow posts (no shade there) and/or still believe the many, many production rumours that have been haunting the 5Ds fandom since the show's original run, please let me burst your bubble(s) with some insanely comprehensive research by someone over on Reddit (thanks again to @mbg159, who's also here on tumblr): No, Crow was not meant to be a dark signer, or the final boss of season 1, and his spike in screentime has nothing to do with his cards. And also, No, Aki didn't get less presence in the narrative because her VA got pregnant. What if you don't have the time to read either of those long posts? In that case, please take away this simple, very easy rebuttal of why the above theories are bullshit: Their would-be "key points" don't line up with the 5Ds production timeline. At all. Not even vaguely. So please, ditch them, let them die, seeing them still talked about makes me feel like I'm gonna break out in hives. And for the love of god, don't use this post or in fact anything else I post to pit Aki and Crow against each other. Both characters have their strengths and their reasons to love them. I am not the least bit interested in starting any character discourse. So please, spare my sanity. Ok? Thank you.

And now, we can get to the good part at last. In my previous post in this series, I stopped my analysis at episode 95, a.k.a. part two of the Pearson backstory. In this post, I will thus be picking up right after, at the very start of the WRGP—with the Team Unicorn match. The goal for this post is to analyse Crow's part in this particular arc, then provide some food for thought/ideas on how things that rubbed some people the wrong way could have been improved.

More below the readmore, and I give you not just my usual warning, but an extra warning, too: The universe will not let me write short things, so tread with caution, stay hydrated, and expect a veritable dissertation below, because this post feels long even to me, who has long since lost her sense of length when it comes to text. (But I'm well aware this is the result of me refusing to split the WRGP part into two separate posts, so I take full responsibility for that.)

Since we left off right after I chewed through all the issues with Crow's rather belated backstory and especially Black-Winged Dragon last time, we jump right into the thick of things now, with episodes 96 and 97, which serve as the preamble to Team 5Ds' first WRGP duel against Team Unicorn. Crow only gets two major things to do during this short stretch of episodes, the first being that he's Team Unicorn's gateway into roping Yusei into a duel during practice, which helps them set up a ruse that baits the 5Ds gang into sending Jack as their first wheeler because they think Jack's deck is best suited to countering Andre's—which, as it later turns out, it is not.

(Arguably the screenshot where Crow gives off the strongest Youngest Sibling Vibes during the entire show. Look at him, all chastised.)

Crow's second role is an odd one that I argue only he out of the main three guys could fulfill at this point: He's the one to get injured right before the Team Unicorn match, rendering him unable to compete, which leads to Aki offering to take his place for that particular match.

(Pictured: Bird Boy regretting all his life choices up until that point simultaneously.)

Here's the first moment I have to talk about in greater detail. See, the thing is, I don't know what the fandom consensus on Crow getting injured here is, but I argue that this moment was a (rare) strategic decision made by the writers at this point. Crow's injury accomplished several things: 1. It sets up the mystery of why his back wheel locked up out of nowhere, which is later paid off through Team Catastrophe's shenanigans. 2. It organically allows Aki to take his spot without introducing any argument about which of them is "worthier" of having that third spot. 3. Through this, it also allows him to actually bounce off Aki for once (a point I will come back to below, during the Team Catastrophe section). And 4. It allows the show to (TECHNICALLY) pay off the setup they did in letting Aki get her turbo duelling license and train with the boys. (Generally, Crow's and Aki's character writing intersects a bit during the pre-Diablo incident WRGP section, something I'll touch on below.)

Moreover, I think this is also the only match where they could have done something like this, and the reason for it is very simple: Team Unicorn are one-off opponents whose presence in the narrative is only relevant as far as it concerns the WRGP, and they are also one of the first teams the 5Ds gang faces. If we think about the opponents Team 5Ds has after this, it becomes very obvious why Crow could only be injured during this duel: If they had tried pulling this stunt later, it would have forced the writers to pull Aki centre stage during a much more plot-relevant duel than this one (which they were apparently allergic to, but let's not go there), not to speak of the fact that it would have forced them to sideline someone they were definitely trying to sell as the third portion of their protagonist trifecta, which would have probably been awkward. (If not for the fact that they literally did this to Crow later in the show, but I'll get there. Yes, I know there's a lot already that I'll still be "getting to".)

The thing is, whether or not it feels like an awkward writing choice to make so early in the big tournament of this arc (you be the judge of that), Crow's injury finally allows him to have a few interesting character moments for once. For one, there is his immediate disappointment about being forced to stay on the sidelines. Aside from the fact that this is a human and relatable reaction to his injury, it stings even more for the character than it does for us as the audience, because Crow got a moment where the Satellite orphans he previously took care of cheer him on for the tournament literally within the same two Team Unicorn preamble episodes.

(Say what you will, this is just stupid cute.)

So when Aki eventually offers to take his place during the match, he's understandably apprehensive—and again, this is human. It may seem mean in the moment, but from a character writing standpoint, it's a natural response. Plus, it's certainly more interesting to watch the group have a bit of conflict among themselves, rather than everyone immediately jumping straight to acceptance. It introduces tension, and, for however brief a moment, raises the question of whether Crow might refuse to let Aki take his spot. This is also the point where Aki and Crow's character writing officially intertwines, at least for the stretch of episodes between the Team Unicorn duel and the Team Catastrophe duel. And you know what? Say what you will, but I think it does a world of good for both of them. The 5Ds cast, as lovely as it is, doesn't get a lot of room to bounce off one another where it concerns personal matters anymore, once the WRGP starts. Arguably, they get little time to bounce off one another outside of plot-related discussions at all once this portion of the show comes around. The characters are treated as "fully developed", and thus, the writing largely doesn't take the time to show us how the group naturally interacts with one another anymore, especially not with how many side characters (chiefly Bruno and Sherry), antagonists, and duels the show now has to juggle. So Aki and Crow getting even a smidgen of personal conflict here is honestly a breath of fresh air. The interaction kicked off by Crow's injury isn't completely plot-irrelevant, like most character interactions during the pre-WRGP were, but it's not something that feels like it's only there to explain the machinations of the antagonists to the audience, either.

Let me go through this in a little more detail to illustrate my point.

So, episode 97. Crow storms off after Aki offers to take his spot, while Aki heads out to prepare her runner, intent on helping her team. The personal motivations here are already very nice and reflective of these characters as we've gotten to know them up until this point: Crow's angry and disappointed (mostly at himself, which is noteworthy!) because he can't compete. And specifically, he's angry because not being able to compete in the first match means he can't show the kids his duelling like he wanted to. Then there's Aki, whose offer to take Crow's place is every bit as much of a strategic suggestion as it is a bid for acceptance from her. Acceptance, which is the thing she's been all about ever since she was introduced, basically. So she pleads with her friends to accept her, see her as an equal, and allow her to duel for the team, which they do. And Crow initially throws a fit, but then...

(Listen. You have no idea how much Crow and Aki getting to actually be friends means to me.)

He comes around to the idea and not only gives Aki his express permission to take his spot, he even coaches her a bit right before the match. Moreover, as his text states above, he literally entrusts her with the kids' hopes, as well as his own. This quickly brings both of them full circle: Crow, who already has a theme of legacy attached to him, passes the torch to Aki for this match, and in so doing, offers her the acceptance she asked her teammates for. (Frankly, stuff like this makes me wonder why on earth people were so eager to pit these two against each other, when their shared moments are actually some of the best-written during the often rocky WRGP arc.) So, though this injury pulls Crow out of the duel, it, funnily enough, ties him better into the story and to the other characters.

From there, we then dive into the Team Unicorn match proper. And well, being injured as he is, Crow doesn't exactly get a whole lot to do there. However, since we're in the portion where his and Aki's writing overlaps a bit, I do need to go on a quick tangent about what Aki's portion of this duel means for Crow.

(Sigh. Okay, buckle up for a quick and rough detour.)

First, something I need to get out of the way and off my chest: I have made no secret out of the fact that I hate Aki's portion of this duel, save for the moment where she summons Stardust. Hell, this duel segment is pretty much universally hated by anone who has even a smidgen of sympathy for Aki. It's regarded by many as the very moment the writers axed Aki's character, and for good reason: After all the buildup surrounding her getting her turbo duelling license, the supposed "payoff" of it all is that she gets to duel against Andre for a depressing four turns before being defeated immediately, which leads into Yusei's frustrating portion of this duel, which, to my knowledge, isn't regarded any more kindly by fans than Aki's segment. It's a massive let-down, simply put. But the thing is, it's not just a let-down for Aki. After all, the brief character conflict she had with Crow about taking his spot here can and should be regarded as part of the setup for this moment, and as such, it can also be considered to be wasted the second Aki leaves the track after barely making an impact whatsoever.

However, I do need to mention that I have a theory on why this segment was handled the way it was, mostly because I feel like Crow's later interaction with Aki, shortly after she's out of the duel, underlines it (mind that this is just my personal theory, though, after having watched the show perhaps more times than can be considered sane): I think there is a cultural aspect to this duel. See, the word ganbaru, which anime subtitles often like to translate with "do your best" or something along the lines, has a greater significance than the translation implies. Though it's not inaccurate per se, there's more than just the idea of doing your best behind ganbaru, because it's something like an umbrella term not just for doing your best and succeeding, it's also the idea that you have to keep trying, even if you don't succeed. It's related to tenacity, to persistence, even in the face of terrible odds. And make no mistake, I don't mean the Japanese equivalent of "if at first you don't succeed, try again" here. I genuinely do mean "you have to keep trying, even if you fail". There is no guarantee of success here. And for that reason, the idea behind ganbaru is also that it's not simply the success that has value, but the effort made in the attempt to attain it, regardless of the result. (Side note: I tried to scrounge up a resource I could link to that nicely explains this concept, but unfortunately, all the promising articles were paywalled and the ones I learned it from require institutional access to lecture materials.) And this is where I will posit the tentative theory that this is exactly what the 5Ds writers were going for with Aki's segment of the duel—it was very much meant to be the payoff for her turbo duelling license setup and her plea to take Crow's place, but it wasn't so much her success that was meant to be valued, as the effort she (and by extension, Crow) made for and during this duel. And this is where Crow's little pep-talk with Aki after she's out of the duel comes in, because it feels like it supports exactly this interpretation:

(This is essentially the whole sequence. Note how Crow, despite so fervently entrusting Aki with his and his kids' hopes prior, doesn't admonish her for making a bad showing in the slightest.)

I don't think it gets any clearer than it is here. During this sequence, Aki is painfully aware of how poor her performance was against Andre, especially after she was so insistent on duelling at first, and despite having been entrusted with Stardust by Yusei, to boot. Yet, Crow doesn't have a single word of criticism to offer her. Instead, he even tells her she did well and that nobody's perfect. It very much reads as valuing Aki's effort over the result she achieved to me, and thus seems perfectly in line with the idea behind ganbaru.

However, if we assume I'm correct about the intentions behind this writing choice, we come back to why Aki's segment of the duel is so hotly debated and why it may have arguably been a disservice not just to her, but to Crow, too, character-wise. Because the majority of non-Japanese watchers of the show culturally don't have a 1:1 applicable concept like ganbaru, this writing choice was more likely to fall flat for them, because to someone who wasn't raised to understand the idea behind it, Aki's portion of the duel doesn't register as a payoff; it registers as a massive disappointment, because it feels like the writers, who had so much setup already done for her, let her fail on purpose, just to later let Yusei attain his arguably dumbest victory of the entire show. Thus, they also essentially waste the conflict she had with Crow about whether she would be allowed to take his spot in the first place, because with how little she achieved during the duel, she may as well not have gotten on the track. (Figuratively speaking. Please Do Not take this to mean I would prefer a version where Aki hadn't duelled at all. That would be worse. It would be infinitely worse.)

(Also, side note: If this post reaches anyone who's actually Japanese and still remembers this duel, I would genuinely love your input on whether my interpretation is feasible or just wishful thinking. Did you interpret Aki's part of the duel the way I did here? Or did it fall flat for you, too? If what I'm saying here feels like an absolute reach, please tell me. I'm honestly just trying my best to make things make sense here and remembered this concept from some classes I took in Japanese studies at uni.)

With all that in mind, it doesn't come as a surprise that some people were just as frustrated with the way Crow was barred from duelling here as they were with Aki's segment or Yusei's later victory. But it is what it is—the Unicorn duel concludes the way we all know it to, and with that, the show begins setting up the following duel with Team Catastrophe.

The only other, non duel-related, noteworthy thing that happens between the Unicorn and the Catastrophe match is a brief appearance at the Poppo Time by Sherry, who admonishes the signers for celebrating their victory early and warns them about Iliaster. Why do I bring this up? Because it's one of less than five times that Crow is in the same room with Sherry. Remember, Sherry. The girl he later, during the finale, talks out of working for the big bad evil guy because he suddenly seems to have such a deep understanding of her motivations and character that he can accurately deduce what argument will make her understand that working with Z-ONE won't give her what she's looking for. So, does Crow get a meaningful interaction with her during this scene, then? Nope. Not even in the slightest. Crow says exactly one sentence that is aimed at Sherry during her appearance, and that sentence is this:

(What a meaningful conversation!)

And yes, I will come back to Crow and Sherry's dynamic in particular. But we'll save that for the Ark Cradle arc post. For now, just keep it in mind as we move along to the other WRGP duels.

So. Team Catasrophe.

During the duel against this team, which was previously only hinted at ominously, the writing for Crow and Aki overlaps again, and this starts with the writers essentially doing a complete switcheroo of what came before: Instead of Crow getting injured and being unable to compete, it's Aki who crashes, ends up in the hospital, and is thus forced to give up her spot during the duel. (This also goes hand in hand with her suddenly losing her powers, which we are given absolutely zero explanation for, but let's not talk about that clusterfuck here. If you're interested in my opinions about that particular trainwreck, I have a rant for you.) Additionally, it's during this stretch of episodes (103-105, which is a whopping four episodes less than Team Unicorn got) that we find out that not only Aki's crash, but Crow's previous one, too, were both sabotage, caused by the rather unscrupulous Team Catastrophe by way of a special card that can cause real damage even when there is no psychic duellist present. (A card we also find out was given to them by Placido/Primo, but this is irrelevant for both Aki and Crow.) Crow's reaction to this piece of information, particularly once Aki gets injured due to the same thing, is where things get interesting for him again, because he gets pissed, to say the least.

(A moment I imagine firebirdshippers must have been positively delighted about.)

Here, I have to reiterate an earlier point: Think what you will of Team Catastrophe, of Aki's crash, and of the sequence where her powers suddenly don't work, but this moment here, where Crow gets angry on her behalf and swears to duel Team Catastrophe into submission—not because he wants his kids to cheer for him, or because he wants to prove himself, but as revenge for his friend—is one of sadly only a handful of moments the writers use to show the strengthened relationships between the individual members of Team 5Ds after the dark signers arc. It's one of the precious few scenes that actually shows, rather than tells us or lets us search for scraps in the subtext, that the signers, and the members of Team 5Ds as a whole, care for each other outside of revolving around Yusei like planets around the sun. Even if it's laughably small, it's at least a hint that there are individual friendships between the other signers, too, that they all stick around one another for reasons beyond gravitating towards Yusei for one reason or another. And for that alone, I'm grateful that they put this here, even if Team Catastrophe was otherwise so ridiculous and made such a bad showing at their actual match that they could barely be taken seriously as antagonists at all.

Speaking of which. The actual meat of the matter. The Team Catastrophe match. What does Crow do here? Well, he duels! Even though he wasn't supposed to, for injury-related reasons. What both his participation as well as the actual duel accomplish, though, are that they not only showcase previously established character traits of Crow's again, but they also make a (possibly unintended) callback to a previous, major duel Crow took part in: His dark signer duel against Bommer/Greiger. Where and how? Let's see.

Firstly, Crow's participation. The reactions of the other characters to this make it very evident that Team 5Ds did not plan for this, with Yusei and Jack even going as far as to say they "had no choice" but to let Crow duel, because he insisted. This is perfectly in line with the stubbornness we already know from him at this point—a stubbornness that was also a major reason for why he took Bommer on and later continued his duel with said man, despite Yusei showing up and telling him he shouldn't be duelling a dark signer.

Secondly, there's the manoeuvring thing, and here's where I can call attention to a fun tidbit: The WRGP isn't what introduces the concept of manual mode during turbo duels to the audience. It's Crow. During his duel with Bommer. Being crafty and a bit shrewd as he is, Crow, during said duel in the DS arc, purposefully switches to manual mode when he duels Bommer, because he figures that attacks that can deal real damage can probably be evaded if you actually have control over your runner and aren't stuck in autopilot.

(Don't believe me? Here it is. And frankly, it is somewhat hilarious, yet also very fitting that Crow is the only one who thinks to do this during a duel with a dark signer.)

The reason this particular bit is relevant during the Team Catastrophe duel is because Crow essentially repeats this trick here. Of course, it's a bit less impactful now, given that manual mode is standard for WRGP duels, but still: Due to Hook, the Hidden Knight, Crow is forced to pay attention to the track and manually evade the monster's attempts to make his back wheel lock up during the duel, mirroring how he thought to manually evade Bommer's attacks during the DS arc.

Thirdly, there's the revenge angle, and this one is a particularly juicy callback. Remember, Crow's major reason for taking on Team Catastrophe, despite being injured, is that he wants to get revenge for Aki. This directly parallels how his major reason for duelling Bommer during the DS arc was that he wanted revenge for his kids, whom he believed to be dead at that point in time. (It also, interestingly, establishes a bit of a connection to his deck, which boasts a fair amount of revenge effects, but I'll not get into that here, seeing as I've talked about Crow's cards a bit before.)

Keep in mind, despite all the things listed above that this duel accomplishes, it's also by far the shortest WRGP duel. It lasts a whole six turns, total, which is ludicrous compared to the likes of 27-turn Team Unicorn, 26-turn Team Taiyou, or 25-turn Team Ragnarok. And I don't think it's controversial to say that the Catastrophe guys are probably the most forgettable WRGP Team, too. Yet, somehow, despite all its shortcomings in terms of memorable antagonists and plot relevance, this is one of the best duels of the WRGP where Crow's character writing is concerned. Now, I'll be perfectly candid: Coming into this post, I did not expect the Team Catastrophe duel, of all things, to end up being as good at actually showcasing Crow's character and his ties to other characters (who aren't Yusei) as it was, but here we are. And we had better hold on to the good the Team Unicorn - Catastrophe segment did for Crow, because the next thing that's coming up is a harsh break from the WRGP, starting with the sudden appearance of Placido's home-engineered army of killer duel robots. And what does Crow get to do during this part?

Uh. Well.

(Pictured: Bird Boy being demoted to benchwarmer while the city's being ransacked by murder duel robots.)

Nothing. A whole lot of nothing, is what.

During the duel robot invasion, we only ever flash back to Crow to ascertain that he is, in fact, useless during this part of the show, something he shares in common with Ruka, Rua, and Aki here, because all of them get pretty much nothing to do while Yusei finally gets the hang of accel synchro. Granted, Aki gets to save a little girl at the hospital, but in comparison to Yusei's lengthy, plot-heavy duel with Placido, this feels like a consolation prize. And for once, Jack is only marginally better off, too, because sure, he gets to beat up a couple of robots, but that's it, really.

Where Crow is concerned, his plot relevance doesn't actually resume once the Placido duel finishes, though. (And neither does Rua's, Ruka's, or Aki's, while we're at it.) Because wouldn't you know it, the next big thing directly after the duel robot invasion are the Red Nova episodes, where three out of five signers (Crow, Aki, and Ruka, unsurprisingly) are removed from the screen almost in their entirety again while Jack gets his much-needed dragon upgrade so he can keep up with Yusei, in order to uphold his status as a classic, almost-evenly-matched yugioh rival.

Speaking of upgrades and dragons, let's make a quick detour while our protag and rival duo take their express vacation to the Nazca plains. It is, of course, no secret that no signer outside of Yusei and Jack ever got a dragon upgrade within the anime. (No, I'm not forgetting about Life Stream Dragon. But that one, unlike Shooting Star Dragon and Red Nova Dragon, was a.) teased all the way back in the DS arc and b.) didn't have a unique summoning method or some other gimmick that made it an "elevated" synchro. So I'm discounting Life Stream as a "proper" dragon upgrade on purpose.) Is this the point where I start arguing that Crow should have gotten one, then? Well, not quite. Not with the writing the show canonically gave us, at least—after all, with how late Black-Winged Dragon was introduced, it would have been bonkers to upgrade him here already, if even at all. However, I do argue that the way the show hands only Yusei and Jack upgrades seems a bit... off. Now, I know why only those two get upgrades, or at least I think I do. After all, they're the central protag/rival duo, and within the framework of the character archetypes the larger yugioh canon has created for itself, this would have always made them the first, if not the only candidates for dragon upgrades. What feels a bit off to me, though, is that specifically the 5Ds cast feels like it... chafes a bit against those character archetypes, for lack of a better word. The problem is this: The signers, as far as the first two arcs are concerned, are sold to us as equals who all have very powerful ace monsters. Yes, Jack and Yusei are still undoubtedly the best duellists among them, but not on account of having uber-powerful extra special monsters that were acquired through supernatural means that are categorically inaccessible to the other signers. However, with the appearance of Shooting Star and Red Nova, this changes. While Yusei and Jack were previously and would have always been the two guys who had a Special dynamic with a capital "S" on account of their character archetypes, their acquisition of the dragon upgrades—and even more so, the lack of upgrades their fellow signers receive—now decidedly puts them in a different power bracket and skews the balance between previous, supposedly "equal" characters. (Which, unfortunately, is yet another thing that makes everyone else easier to sideline.)

Why do I bring all this up in a post dedicated to Crow? Because this new power imbalance arguably impacts him more than the other signers—because he's Team 5Ds' second wheeler and doesn't miss another WRGP match from here on out. Thus, that power imbalance is felt in the upcoming duels, where Yusei and Jack bust out Shooting Star and Red Nova like it's nothing, while Crow is left manoeuvring with the somewhat underpowered Black-Winged Dragon and whatever else he can come up with. This is also why I claimed that the show did sideline Crow in some aspects further above. Because while some parts of his writing go to great pains to establish him as part of a protagonist trifecta that is now supposed to take centre stage before the other characters, he also permanently lives in Jack and Yusei's shadow, ultimately barred not just from reaching equal status as a signer (due to his late and rocky introduction and dragon acquisition), but also barred from becoming the equal of his foster brothers as a duellist. Frankly, I'm surprised the show didn't make this a plot point, because the first thing my mind jumps to when I think about this is whether Crow felt left behind after his brothers acquired such immensely powerful, special cards. But more on my personal writing ideas later. For now, let's just put a pin in the power-imbalance thing.

So, when is Crow back on screen in any meaningful role, then? (Note that I mean this as literally as possible. As per my discussion about "screentime" and my gripes about it in part two, I gloss over the parts where Crow is on screen, but could be traded for any other signer or even a lamppost without affecting the scene at all.)

Well, the next thing Crow gets to do isn't exactly glorious, but it sure is funny.

(I want you all to remember that he has to wear this costume and play this part in Team 5Ds' absurd plan to capture Yaeger/Lazar because he lost at rock-paper-scissors. This will never not be funny to me.)

Ignoring the hilarious outfit and Crow playing the bait at a fabricated cup ramen promo event meant to lure Yaeger in, bird boy does actually get something that's not just for funsies to do during the two episodes where Team 5Ds is trying to get more information about Iliaster: He gets to have a duel revanche against Yaeger, who, if we remember the DS arc, ditched him the last time they squared off. Much like the Team Catastrophe duel, this one, too, calls back to previous duels Crow has had: For one, it's the obvious conclusion to his unfinished, first duel with Yaeger. And for two, Crow repeats a "trick" (for lack of a better term) here that is also unique to him: losing on purpose, which we remember from his duel with Lyndon.

(Identical-looking clown family jumpscare be upon ye.)

And again, much like getting injured for the Team Unicorn duel, I argue that this story beat here is something that could also only have been accomplished with Crow. Because he's the only one who has previously duelled Yaeger, firstly, because not wanting to make a child cry by beating their dad in a duel makes sense for him as a character due to him being a family-oriented person who loves children, secondly, and because losing on purpose in this scenario is a tactic that would seem out of character from anyone else, thirdly. (We recall, the only times Jack and Yusei, respectively, ever consider/offer to lose on purpose is when the lives of people close to them are on the line, in the shape of Carly/Rally. As for the others, aside from not being present, Aki, Rua, and Ruka are so heavily sidelined at this point that they would have never been an option for this. And if his writing is anything to go by, Bruno is mostly purposefully forbidden from accomplishing Plot Things, especially through duels, while he's Bruno.) But hey, due to the way this episode is set up, losing on purpose works out for Crow, because it convinces Yaeger to stop hiding and actually share his knowledge about Iliaster. This, by the way, is the second scene where Crow gets to be in a room with Sherry for a longer stretch of time. And look, him joking that Sherry might kill Yaeger if he doesn't spill the beans about Iliaster soon is fun and all, but in light of the Ark Cradle duel later, I have to point out that he, again, doesn't get to have so much as a shred of a meaningful conversation with Sherry here. Again. But moving on. The scene with Yaeger at the Poppo Time then leads us first to the small sequence in the arcade where the gang has to win a simulated duel to get Yaeger's encoded intel, then to episode 116—the Moment Express episode, where, due to this being a Yusei, Sherry, and Bruno-focussed episode, Crow gets nothing to do again. (And also doesn't get to interact with Sherry again.)

Congrats! We've survived the WRGP break. This leaves us with three more WRGP duels before shit hits the fan and the Ark Cradle arc commences. And full disclosure, I'll be doing a bit of a quick-fire round of those three duels. Why? Because despite them all having their merits in their own rights (they're the better liked duels of the WRGP for a reason), there honestly isn't that much focus on Crow during them. He duels, yes, and I've seen people point this out over and over again as the supposed smoking gun that shows how Crow had so much more relevance and screentime than Aki and yadda, yadda. We've been there. And it's not that I can't see where this argument is coming from—I'll be the first to tell you that it's a travesty that Aki never got to duel in the WRGP again outside of the Unicorn match. But I want to use the final three matches to dig into how the way these matches—and especially the opponents to go with them—were set up made it nearly impossible for Aki to replace Crow again during any point of the WRGP finals.

First, episode 118. This is the only preamble episode we get for the first two WRGP finals teams, and here, our group is split in two: Yusei, Bruno, and Rua introduce us to Team Taiyou, while Jack, Aki, and Crow introduce us to Team Ragnarok. There isn't much to say here, because the only thing this episode does for Crow is a shallow repeat of what the Team Catastrophe duel did: By putting him in a group with Aki and Jack, and letting them decide among themselves, independently, to check out the exhibition match, it implies that he voluntarily spends time with signers who aren't Yusei. Thumbs up. Gold star. You made an effort (I guess). Then, the real fun starts.

Round one. Team Taiyou.

(Pictured: The sweetest country bumpkins to ever grace this earth. Yes, I'm biased.)

So here's the deal with Team Taiyou, from a narrative standpoint, as best as I can grasp it: They are a callback to Team 5Ds' roots. Specifically, to the boys' Satellite roots. The Taiyou boys come from humble origins, have only one, mostly home-engineered duel runner, and play using old cards that are widely considered shitty, as 5Ds canon tells us. They are essentially the non-signer, countryside version of what Jack, Crow, and Yusei once were, which is why this is the first duel where the duellist constellation on Team 5Ds' end couldn't possibly have been altered. Team Taiyou is there to remind us where our boys started, so it has to be our boys duelling them. This also goes for Crow, even though this duel otherwise doesn't accomplish much for him, character-wise. Instead, it's more of a narrative wink at the audience, as well as providing a breather between otherwise extremely tense, plot-focussed duels. But yeah, Crow's part in this match isn't much to write home about; he doesn't get any verbal interactions that are very meaningful to his character, can't get so much as a scratch in on Zushin, even with Black-Winged Dragon, and is defeated so Yusei can take out the legendary giant.

Round two. Team Ragnarok.

(Behold the pizzazz of at least two contenders for Haircuts With The Most Spikes in the show.)

Though this duel is framed as being even more so aimed towards bolstering Jack's character writing than Crow's, given the inclusion of Dragan's personal history with Jack, Team Ragnarok gets significantly more interesting for Crow again than Team Taiyou did. This is, of course, mainly because of Brave/Broder. Where Team Taiyou were a callback to the 5Ds boys' roots, Team Ragnarok are their narrative foils. Dragan is the duellist who lost his pride to contrast Jack, who's brimming with pride at all times, and Harald/Halldor is essentially the rich, "destiny isn't bullshit, actually" version of Yusei. Meanwhile, unlike the first two, who highlight our 5Ds boys' characteristics by contrasting them, Brave acts as Crow's mirror. Through Team Ragnarok's flashbacks, we see that he gets almost exactly the same, lovable-rogue-type backstory that Crow did during the DS arc, just in a different setting. The only, major difference between them is that while Crow is more down-to-earth, Brave likes to be pretty flashy.

(Keep in mind that he's doing this on a runner. Is there such a thing as courses on how to do acrobatics on your runner? Like there are courses for vaulting on horseback irl? I'm overthinking this again.)

Unsurprisingly, the duel thus ends up addressing the similarities between Crow and Brave, mostly through two things: One, the duel essentially becomes a contest of who can out-trickster who, culminating in the famous, ridiculous-in-the-good-way sequence where Crow activates a trap from his graveyard, to the shock of pretty much everyone present. And two, despite being on opposite sides, the two bond over their concern for the children they took care of and their concern for children in general, which is expressed most clearly in the scene where Crow's kids, in an attempt to hold the poster they made for him higher, very nearly fall over the barricade in the WRGP stands. Despite the hefty length of the full duel, these are pretty much the only things actually related to Crow's character that come up, though. They're good, don't get me wrong, but in a duel that is otherwise this dense with plot, Aesir shenanigans, and Iliaster foreshadowing, it's no surprise that the duel doesn't add that much to Crow's character, outside of giving him someone he can bounce off very well and relate to. Again, though, we are faced with the same situation as with Team Taiyou: Due to the way the members of Team Ragnarok are written, meant to contrast/parallel one male duellist each from Team 5Ds, nobody other than Crow could have taken the third spot here, either. It would have felt awkward from a narrative standpoint (as much as I would have loved to see Aki duel more).

Now, finally. Round three. Team New World.

(Welp. Here come the robots.)

I had to check to make sure I wasn't misremembering this, but due to the way this duel was set up so José/Jakob could bust out Meklord Emperor Granel with a ridiculous amount of attack points, Crow gets a resounding four turns total in this duel. (Gee, I wonder which other character got this treatment during a WRGP duel.) During those four turns, there are only two things he accomplishes: One, leaving behind two combo pieces Yusei later uses, and two, showcasing the shrewd tactics that earned him the label of "trickster" during the Ragnarok duel by bringing out a non-synchro monster that can take advantage of a synchro monster's attack points and effects—Aurora the Northern Lights. And arguably, this is a very smart play, moreover, it's the only time anyone in the show has the bright idea to not use synchro monsters against the known and feared synchro-killer Meklords. Unfortunately, as smart as it is, the narrative doesn't reward Crow for this play—José all but shrugs what could have been a turning point in the duel off, then proceeds to steamroll Crow the next turn, leaving Yusei to score the win, as usual. To get back to the "Crow got so much more screentime than Aki during the WRGP" thing for a second, of all the duels in the WRGP finals, this is arguably the one where Aki could still most easily have taken Crow's spot again, because here, it doesn't matter whether it's him or someone else, as this duel isn't tied to his character in any way. Unfortunately, due to the Granel-steamroller-strategy, this is also the duel where letting Aki take his spot again would have been the biggest shot in the foot, because unless they had changed Team New World's strategy, Aki would have gotten brutally guillotined here, same as Crow—something I can't imagine anyone, not even people who hate Crow, being happy about.

With that, though, we've finally made it through the WRGP. So, what's the bottom line here? Frankly, speaking from my own interpretation, Crow occupies an... odd spot during this tournament, to say the least. Though he does get to duel the majority of the time, few of the duels actually cater to his character in any way. Moreover, he only gets to be the star of the show in a WRGP duel once, during the by far most forgettable match against Team Catastrophe. And mind that I use the term "star of the show" very loosely here, because the problem the WRGP arc as a whole has, in my opinion, is that the rather lame Team Catastrophe duel is the only one in the whole tournament that isn't won by Yusei, which categorically means that any of the other character's big moments are usually undermined by the fact that they ultimately still need him to save the day. Thus, moments like Aki summoning Stardust Dragon and Crow using an anti-synchro-killer strategy that for once actually forgoes synchros are somewhat cheapened by the fact that they're not actually the turning-point moments they're initially painted as, because ultimately, Yusei always has to be the one to save the day. What's worse is that this almost feels like a bit of a non-issue that could have easily been fixed—given that the show tells us that teams can shuffle around their line-up for a match any time. But unfortunately, the writing never interacts with this as a possible strategic element, nor does it ever seem to consider letting Yusei lose, or forcing him to give up his spot for a match. I feel the need to say that I don't put the blame at Yusei's feet here, though: This strongly feels like an oversight by the writers, and perhaps a disproportionate need to have a nigh-infallible protagonist (on the duelling side of things) that their audience would never run the risk of calling "lame". For Crow, though, this chiefly means one thing: In any duel other than the Catastrophe one, it was always clear that even if he partook, he would never finish the match. And yes, this is technically an issue Jack has, too. But this is where the character writing outside of the duels comes into play, too.

Unlike Jack, who actually gets to do something during the Diablo invasion (albeit very little), who gets his very own dragon upgrade and who gets a very personal, pre-duel plot with Dragan, the show's writing doesn't bother giving Crow a lot of plot- or character-relevant things to do, once the WRGP starts. This is also why I was so surprised at how much the Unicorn and Catastrophe duels embrace his interactions with Aki—compared to the later duels in the finals, this portion still makes Crow feel genuinely relevant and interwoven with the other characters. Meanwhile, out of the three final duels, only the Ragnarok one actually tries to establish a connection to his characterisation, through Brave. The Taiyou duel only sets itself up in such a way that Aki partaking instead of him would have been awkward. Meanwhile, the New World duel just has him being treated like a floormat in a sad parallel to Aki during the Unicorn duel, seeing as they both get a nice moment where it looks like they might turn the duel around (Aki summoning Stardust Dragon and Black Rose Dragon onto the field at the same time; Crow summoning Aurora the Northern Lights, which couldn't be absorbed by the Meklords), only to have their hopes dashed as they're mercilessly cleared off the track. Outside of the duels, many scenes sadly give the impression that they may as well not have included Crow, though—he often gets so little to contribute to a moment or even to say at all that substituting him with a cardboard box seems like it would not have impacted the scene in any way. And that's without addressing his non-existent connection to Sherry, which feels extra glaring, given his later interactions with her on the Ark Cradle.

All in all, the WRGP feels like a very mixed bag, where Crow's character writing is concerned. His belated backstory, which I talked about in part two, is front-loaded and asks as many questions as it answers. Then the tournament commences, gives him some actually decent character interplay with Aki for once (at the cost of letting her succeed in the tournament, it seems), only for him to be basically irrelevant during the WRGP pause again. And once the whole thing resumes, it becomes this hot-and-cold thing where some duel aspects seem tailored to him, while others treat him as completely expendable. The end result is an arc where I'm left wondering why exactly the writers felt the need to make it seem like Crow made up one portion of a protagonist trifecta, if they never actually bothered treating him as equal to the other two. (The answer, I believe, lies somewhere between the fumbled setup they did for him during the Fortune Cup and DS arc, and the way yugioh in general treats its character archetypes. But that's just speculation on my part.) The one, saving grace the WRGP (outside of the Pearson backstory) has for Crow is that it at least doesn't introduce any new character- and/or timeline inconsistencies. In fact, his character stays remarkably true to form once the tournament begins.

Okay, onto the final bit, then. As I've done in both previous posts, let me delve into completely subjective territory and offer some ideas on how this arc could have been handled to make it seem a little less all over the place with Crow. And since his writing here canonically intersects with Aki's several times, let me try to do it while offering the best of both worlds to both characters, if I can.

As far as Crow's backstory is concerned, I've already offered my solutions to that in part two. Now, to stay consistent with my own suggestions, I'll try to branch off what I wrote in the last post. This means that, as per my previous two analyses, we're dealing with two scenarios again: One, Crow stays a signer and we try to touch canon as little as possible. Two, Crow isn't a signer and we adjust canon in whatever way we need to to make him feel interesting and necessary despite/because of that.

First, though, let's get two adjustments I personally would have made in both versions out of the way:

The way the WRGP is structured puts every character that isn't Yusei at a massive disadvantage, where character moments in duels are concerned. Thus, I propose an overhaul. Among the changes I think could have benefitted the characters (yes, all of them) are: One - Aki actually getting to accomplish something during the Unicorn duel (she can and should still have her moments with Crow, but maybe let her portion of the duel end in her thanking him for coaching her, creating a more upbeat scene that strengthens their friendship, which could double as good setup for their later double-duel against Sherry). Two - letting the Team Catastrophe duel actually play out properly (as in, they become more meaningful as opponents by having a better strategy, for example, and Crow could stick it out longer against them, in order to make this more so his win than Jack's. Also, why not let Aki actually see him get back at Team Catastrophe for her?). Three - giving Crow an actual character moment during the Taiyou duel (what if one of the country boys had played a card or two of the ones he learned to read from? It could have helped drive the parallel between the two teams home.) Four - letting Crow's anti-Meklord strategy get at least a little payoff, if only for two turns (show us at least proof of concept, damn it!). Yes, the Ragnarok duel is the only one I wouldn't rewrite (unless special circumstances are introduced, see below). Additionally, let Team 5Ds alter their line-up more than once, damn it. Let them actually strategise about the duels, let them take into consideration who should go first when and whose deck might be better suited to which scenario. Also, remove Yusei from at least one duel. Doesn't matter how, just let him not partake once. Perfect setup to let Aki duel again, and would also allow for spicy character interactions. (Arguably the best duels where this could have been done would have been any of the final duels, though it would have also required rewriting the antagonists somewhat in any case.)

For the love of god, give Sherry and Crow some setup. Let them actually interact, let them introduce their philosophies to one another, just do something, anything to make Crow understanding and talking sense into her during the finale seem earned. A few chance meetings, or maybe even a tiny side-plot could have done so much here. And if you can't let them interact outright, at least let Aki and Crow talk about Sherry! Double whammy! The two characters who end up duelling against her are made to seem even more like a team, and Crow actually gets to find out what Sherry's deal is on-screen. Just. Set. it. up. I beg you.

There we go. Now, onto the two branches.

Option A: Crow stays a signer and obtained Black-Winged Dragon.

Seeing as Crow's signer status, funnily enough, isn't all that relevant during the tournament itself (save for two notable exceptions), there aren't that many fixes to be made here. Crow can still get injured, miss out on the Unicorn duel and be the star of the Catastrophe duel. But giving him something to do during the duel robot invasion that isn't standing around and hoping Yusei will fix everything would also be nice. It's fine if he can't drive out there and duel, but why not let him do something else? He's a crafty guy, why not let him find, say, a way to fry the Diablos' runners, taking a few of them out even from a semi-stationary position without duelling them? He could at least get as much of a consolation prize scene as Aki got with her saving that child. Then there's Team Taiyou, which, save for what I proposed above, is a duel that doesn't feel like it needs changes. Crow does his thing here. That's it. The same goes for Team Ragnarok, especially given that they're specifically written to oppose an all-signers Team 5Ds. Finally, there's Team New World, which, if I'm being completely candid, I would personally overhaul to change the cyborgs' strategy entirely in order to actually let all three members of Team 5Ds shine. But this is the version where I touch canon as little as possible, so... Aside from what I wrote above, no changes needed. Just make Crow seem a little more relevant, make his strategy have at least a little payoff, even if Granel's back out and menacing literally two turns later.

Option B: Crow, as per my previous posts, isn't a signer and doesn't have Black-Winged Dragon.

This is the version that would categorically require heavier changes, though they honestly don't arrive until the break in the tournament. Unicorn and Catastrophe stay the same, I would still propose that Crow gets to be a little more useful during the Diablo invasion. But! In this version, seeing as he never acquired BWD, the break in the WRGP would be an excellent spot to let Crow acquire an upgrade for his beefy Blackwing ace monster of choice. Give him a little side-plot, too, something to do, something where he proves himself. Maybe let him run into Iliaster here, or maybe call back to Pearson again and introduce the new Blackwing upgrade as a treasure Pearson stashed away before he died (maybe this could have even been the card Bolger was actually after; the world is our oyster here). Then he's beefed up, too, and actually feels a little more on the same level as Jack and Yusei. The tournament recommences and again, the Taiyou duel could stay mostly the same, I think. Ragnarok and New World are where it gets really interesting, though. The way I see it, Ragnarok could go two ways with Crow not being a signer: Either he partakes as he did in canon and his non-signer status is called out as a peculiarity by our Swedish boys who happen to be obsessed with fate (which would make his performance against Brave seem all the more impressive), or, due to this being a duel all about destiny and celestial pissing contests, Crow's spot is given to Aki again for this duel due to her signer status (this would, obviously, require rewriting Brave, perhaps even switching him out for a Ragnarok lady instead). As for Team New World, this duel would honestly be a lot more juicy with a non-signer Crow, because much like he was for the dark signers, a non-signer Crow would essentially be an unknown in their plan for the cyborgs. He would be the guy who's Not Supposed To Be Here. Granted, he would still be beaten, but he could still get an excellent moment where his out-of-left-field anti-Meklord strategy genuinely seems to turn the tables for a bit, angering José and providing even stronger setup for Yusei to win later.

Aaaaand that's that. Somehow, I get the feeling the WRGP had the least things that needed fixing because it also had the least actual character writing. But that might just be me. It's late and I have been writing for A While. But hey, I got out part three faster than part two! I consider that an achievement.

Now, while I get my talking points in order for part four, I hope you'll have fun chewing on this one. See you in the grand finale to my Bird Boy dissertation.

[norbagam]

An analysis of Honor Bound- Death Note the musical

Context

First of all, the emotion and buildup to this song absolutely breaks my heart. Soichiro is shown to be a strong willed and moral person, who values ensuring that his family and those around him are the same- as seen in There are Lines and his constant opposition to L’s methods. Trying to understand that there is even a SLIGHT possibility of his own son being the monster kira was not a situation he was willing to consider. When faced with strong evidence of Light being Kira, he This song does a beautiful job of showing his realization in real time that there is a possibility that he does not know his own son, and beautifully shows how it affects him.

Lyrics

-“Any grounds for L’s suspicion surely lie with me. I must catch this monster Kira, so the world will see”

This poor man. He starts out the song still trying to deny this, trying to blame himself. The musical specifically in my opinion does really well in showing just how good of a father Soichiro was to Light. This lyric conveys his strong desire to take on the burden of clearing his son’s name, to prove his innocence no matter how impossible it is

-“My son is exactly who he seems to be: Honor bound and bound by honesty”

Obvious irony here- I won’t dwell on that. However, the different interpretations of this line are interesting. He could be saying this to someone who suspects Light of being Kira in an attempt to defend his son’s innocence and his reputation as his father. This would show how protective and family oriented he is, even with all odds against him. Or, this could be an internal monologue. If it is, the picture it paints is of very different colors. It would show his doubt versus his attempt to convince himself that there is no way he could have raised a murderer for a son. While these are up to interpretation, both meanings could possibly be true at the same time.

-“Accusations, innuendo, theories full of cracks, timelines, and coincidences can’t replace hard facts.”

Even more of his denial. Again, this is an obvious use of irony (this musical REALLY loves that lol). He’s willing to see the hard facts and call them coincidences and theories, while grasping on to the only view of his son that paints him innocent as truth.

-“But if what I’m seeing bends as light refracts, am I blinded to what my son lacks?”

Obsessed with this line. One of my favorite things ever is figurative language. He acknowledges that he may not be able to fully see every side of Light. due to his own personal refusal of the truth. At the same time, Light Yagami LITERALLY refracts. He bends and contorts himself and his words at every angle he is seen at in order to avoid suspicion. What Soichiro sees in his son becomes COMPLETELY different when Light is with L, and when he’s with the death note.

-“If I thought these lies were true, would I have the strength to do, anything I needed to for justice’ sake?”

If there’s anything this musical loves, it’s irony and justice. Death Note itself strongly questions the definition of justice and how it changes and means different things to different people. That’s like, the whole point. What we see in this line is a glimpse Soichiro’s view of justice. The viewer/listener is inclined to question exactly how far he is willing to go in punishing Kira for Justice. Does he have the strength to accept that he has raised a monster? The strength to arrest his own son? To kill him?

-“Could I stand the pain and lies if it’s Kira that I find behind Light’s eyes?”

As he goes further in the song, Soichiro begins finding it harder to deny that Light is Kira. Before he allows himself to believe it, he questions how this fact would affect him. He is unsure that he could mentally handle the weight of the “lies” turning out to be true. He knows that it would break him.

-“Let me see the son I need to see”

When I first heard this line while listening, I had thought it was “let me see the sun, I need to see”. Only on the second listen did I actually realize that is was more likely to be “son I need to see” and I misunderstood the intended affect. However, it’s fun for me to make meaning out of what should’ve just been a forgettable moment on my part. While this is likely not intentional, this line has a double meaning. Saying, “let me see the son I need to see” shows Soichiro as being more open to the truth, more willing to come to terms with the idea. Similarly “Let me see the sun, I need to see” also shows him as being more open to the truth. However, instead of focusing on the emotional acceptance it would convey him needing to see things more clearly, in better light. Although that would be an interesting parallel, the actual lyric is definitely more emotionally satisfying.

Conclusion

The song is Soichiro’s humanity. A humanity that his son could not fathom in his wildest dreams.

[astarionancuninslittlelove]

avatar by mordeawearybone & header by summerwarlock!

=͟͟͞⚝ Stories 1-10 are a continuation of my series Indomitable featuring my OC (!F) Tav, Elowyn. Find her story here.

=͟͟͞⚝ The links will take you to the stories on AO3.

⊹ ♡ 1. Eyes On Me:

Astarion asks Tav to spend a rather intimate night with him in the Underdark. Tav tries to play hard to get, but gives in to Astarion’s silver tongue…in more ways than one.

⊹ ♡ 2. Delight at Last Light Inn

Astarion comes to terms with his feelings for Tav after seeing her get hurt defending the portal to the Shadowfell. He finds he is not as good at expressing his feelings with words as he is at expressing his feelings in other ways…

⊹ ♡ 3. House of Grief

Tav finds herself on a mission to the House of Grief. She is without Astarion for the first time on her journey thus far, and she is not adjusting well.

⊹ ♡ 4. Finally Free-The Pale Elf:

After defeating Cazador and convincing Astarion not to ascend, Tav and Astarion share an intimate and heated moment at camp.

⊹ ♡ 5. When Darkness Falls:

After the defeat of the Netherbrain, Astarion comes up with an idea to surprise Tav by putting a new spin on their first encounter.

⊹ ♡ 6. The Fissure of Tyche

After months of searching for cures to help Astarion walk in the sun again, Omeluum reaches out to Tav and Astarion with a promising lead involving the story of Tyche—original goddess of luck.

⊹ ♡ 7. Till Death Do Us Part (Well Sort Of)

Tav and Astarion celebrate tying the knot together surrounded by all of their friends. Their wedding night is surely one they will remember forever.

⊹ ♡ 8. Last Bite

After Tav & Astarion marry, Tav tries to come to grips with their own mortality and the uncertainty that comes with it.

⊹ ♡ 9. Interview with the Vampires

Tav and her companions have become celebrities in their city of Baldur's Gate overnight after they saved the city from imminent doom. Astarion, Tav, and their companions are summoned to Baldur's Mouth on the one year anniversary of the fall of the Netherbrain to be interviewed for the newspaper on what they have been doing since then. Astarion & Tav find a creative way to pass the time until it is their turn to be interviewed.

⊹ ♡ 10. The Ultimate Test

Astarion has a devilish idea that piques Tav’s interest.

⊹ ♡ 1. Perfect, Every Time

Features trans/nb Tav

⊹ ♡ 2. Tara’s Out of the Bag

Features F! Tav

⊹ ♡ 3. Good Girl

Features F! Tav

=͟͟͞⚝Stories 1 & 2 loosely go together. If you like the first one, you most likely will like the second!

⊹ ♡ 1. Sunday Morning Surprise

Gale wakes Tav up with a homecooked meal. He has a fantasy that he would like to get off his chest.

⊹ ♡ 2. Professor Dekarios' Fantasy

After becoming incredibly busy at his new job at Blackstaff Academy, Professor Gale Dekarios has a hard time juggling his job of teaching with his lustful breeding fantasy with his wife, Tav.

Skullweave

Long fic centered around OC Elowyn "Lo" Prescott & Gale. My other series, Indomitable (which I will be redoing partly eventually) is centered around Elowyn and Astarion. This is an alternate universe where Elowyn ended up with Gale instead of Astarion. Although Elowyn and Astarion are my OTP, I really wanted to play around with this idea along with the notion of somewhat of a butterfly effect where Lo's early decisions are different from how they originally played out, thus further impacting the romance between her and Gale.

⊹ ♡ Backstory

⊹ ♡ Character Analysis

⊹ ♡ "Get to Know Your Character #2"

⊹ ♡ “My OC As”

⊹ ♡ Character Development Questions

⊹ ♡ Her tagged content

⊹ ♡ BG3 Companions as The Tortured Poets Department Songs

⊹ ♡ Astarion in Trance

⊹ ♡ BG3 Companions & Where I Would Take Them in the Modern World

this image ^^^ was made by summerwarlock! :-)

Sparkly divider and heart bullet points made by @anitalenia

[sweetlullabyebye]

ok so during a strangers from hell rewatch i started looking at jongwoo and moonjo's outfits and

i find it pretty interesting how their outfits (well, their shirts) contrast each other so here is my analysis (feel free to disagree) (also i tried to apply it to other characters too but except for seokyoon it didn't work so well):

first time they see each other (first image): moonjo is doing that thing where he tries to pretend like he's 100% normal and getting jongwoo's trust. he got rid of his black jacket that he was wearing earlier in the day, and as you can see, they're both wearing more or less the exact same thing. jongwoo's trust in him is still high

second time: technically the second time they meet they're not wearing clothes, so it's pretty difficult to make a comparison here

third time (second image): i couldn't tell exactly whether moonjo's suit is navy blue something or black, but honestly their shirts' colors aren't too dissimilar. jongwoo still half trusts him, but he definitely doesn't trust him as much as before.

fourth time (third image): this time jongwoo doesn't trust him, moonjo just made the 'do u think it's human meat haha' joke-that-isn't-a-joke, their shirts are not so similar in colors (also their trousers are opposite colors with jongwoo's very light colored trousers and moonjo's black ones)

fifth time (fourth image): moonjo is being a little creep as usual, jongwoo realized that everyone in the building is very very weird, and their clothes are opposite colours (shirts are white/black)

sixth time (fifth image): jongwoo is growing convinced that moonjo is stalking him (and he's right) and he absolutely does not trust him and calls him a creep a few moments later, and their clothes are opposite again (jongwoo has a lighter yellowish white shirt, and moonjo is in all black)

seventh time (sixth image): this time completely opposite, with jongwoo wearing all light cream/grey colored clothes, while moonjo... is in the mood where you just don't want to change your clothes at all, so same as last image. jongwoo is disturbed and does not trust him, as per usual

seventh image (i'm not taking into account moonjo appearing to stalk him wearing his stalking outfit because i'm never sure when those scenes are real or not): actually seok-yoon doesn't appear in the picture, but he wears both jongwoo's white-and-some-red colors, and moonjo's black colors, as he is still in somewhat of in a middleground. jongwoo and moonjo still wear opposite colors, with jongwoo wearing a white shirt with red and blue lines (at least that's what it looks like on my screen), and moonjo is still in all black

eighth image: still the same day, but moonjo changed into a blue-and-white shirt with lines (although jongwoo's lines go - and his go |), as he tries to convince jongwoo to kill people. seokyoon and jongwoo are still wearing the same clothes, but seokyoon doesn't trust moonjo that much anymore, and his black patterns no longer match moonjo's black outfit

ninth image: jongwoo beat up some kids, just like moonjo wanted, congratulations, but jongwoo is very scared of moonjo and even if their buttoned shirts both look dark in this picture, jongwoo's is a lighter blue while moonjo's is a darker brown.

tenth image: jongwoo is scared of moonjo and doesn't want to be near him, is still wearing the blue shirt with blood on it, and moonjo's back in his black outfit

eleventh image: the whole massacre happens, jongwoo is in a dark brown shirt, moonjo is in his black outfit. especially with the lighting in this episode, the colors don't look too dissimilar, as jongwoo becomes a fellow serial murderer.

(also when we see seokyoon again, he is wearing white when jongwoo abandons him, which contrasts with both jongwoo and moonjo's darker clothes)

twelth image: congratulations to moonjo on completing his 1 week masterpiece, they're both in white and we even get the final shot of jongwoo being moonjo

[nyarlathotep-thecrawlingchaos]

Hi Nyarla 😅 uh, because you said this is a safe space, I was wondering if I could share something that's been upsetting me lately?

Don't feel forced to read or anything! Please stop if you're not in the right mental space or if you're just simply not interested or something! ❤️

So I've seen a lot of media (especially TikTok and stuff) portraying Crocodile, Mihawk and surprisingly Buggy as abusive towards their S/O 😅 As someone who's undergone abuse it's both triggering and extremely upsetting, and because you write for Poly Cross Guild so much and you stated you understand your brain being your worst enemy, I figured maybe I could list off the reasons I think this shouldn't logically make sense, or at least the reasons I'm trying to convince myself it doesn't, and ask your help and the help of all our community friends with it too? I'm so sorry, again, feel free to ignore this!

Crocodile, it's just...it doesn't 'fit'? In the sense that, sure, he beats up Buggy, but that's because he *CAN'T* kill him because he's serving as scapegoat, but otherwise he'd kill him and be done. Does that make sense? I mean that Crocodile feels like he wouldn't just...put energy into charming someone into a relationship to then hurt them? I'm trying to be so logical here it may come off insensitive and I'm so sorry, I'm just trying to grip into straws here, so I'm telling my brain he wouldn't 'waste his time' being abusive when he can just send the person away, or break up, or stuff. Because I know my brain won't just accept a 'He would just never do that because he is NOT like that and he would love you'. I genuinely feel like Crocodile is a kind of evil man with morals, along the lines of 'It is okay to murder people but it is never okay to disrespect your wife' kind? Also he just...he feels like once he finds somebody that won't betray him he keeps them so close? He very much gives the 'I will treat you how you treat me' kind of person? Plus I know it sounds stupid but with how much he seems to like and care for and protect animals I just don't think he would hurt his S/O? Also?? If it's because he kills other characters or beats up Buggy.....he doesn't??? Love????? Those people?????? You can't apply it to how he'd behave with a S/O?????

Mihawk probably comes from him being seen as very cold and distant, but it just....I detect no reason why he should ever be regarded as abusive either? He seems like he has a good heart, or at last not an evil one? Once again feels very much like a 'He wouldn't put energy into it'? He looks like he has very strong morals? And like he respects people in that sense?

And Buggy just...why? Because he yells at his subordinates and crew? That doesn't translate into anything? Buggy looks like he craves genuine love and clings onto it and falls into people pleasing?

HOLD UP

FRAND NEEDS COMFORTING AND REASSURANCE

This is gonna take a fair amount of typing so lemme sliiiide up to the ol laptop and—

Ow.

AHEM.

Anyway. First and very importantly, no apologizing, I am more than happy to be here in these situations. And you're giving me an excuse to do some good old fashioned character analysis?? Honestly, thank you.

Next, I already don’t like seeing them depicted as abusers in relationships. To each their own, but definitely not my cup of tea.

I hate it even more when it’s presented without trigger warnings. Trauma is a thing, please for the love of FUCK people, ADD TRIGGER WARNINGS. It takes all of TWO SECONDS to keep from making someone’s day worse.

Just fuckin do it mmkay.

Like, I get it. They’re technically villains. All three of them have the capacity to be complete jackasses, but no, I don’t feel like that translates into a romantic situation for any of them. At all. Crocodile, at worst, could potentially be neglectful to a point, in the sense that he ends up too busy with his work to spend as much time with you as you’d like, but he would find a way to make up for it when he becomes aware of it. And for sure the way a person treats animals is a clear indication of their character. It’s an enormous red flag to me when I see anyone that gets their rocks off on being mean to defenseless creatures (I know the bananawanis don’t technically qualify as defenseless, but still, same principle). Sir Crocodile is a busy man. It takes a lot of time and effort to run a successful criminal empire. He wouldn’t give anyone the time of day that he didn’t care about and downright treasure. He could be guilty of snapping off or being a jerk when he’s in a bad mood (who isn’t?), but, as you stated, he’s not going to waste valuable time courting someone just to use them as a punching bag, emotionally or otherwise.

Mihawk is still the human equivalent of a spoiled housecat to me. Cats frequently come off as aloof little assholes, they can be incredibly antisocial around other cats and people, but they are very capable of showing love and affection to their chosen human(s). That’s exactly how I see Mihawk. He’s shown a capacity for kindness to others even in canon. He didn’t have to let Zoro and Perona stay on Kuraigana Island when they showed up. He could have very easily killed them or sent them off. He also showed concern for both of their well beings’. He is more than capable of caring about others; he just has a tendency to be subtle about it. Not everyone’s love language is extravagant. Antisocial doesn’t translate to uncaring. Being antisocial frequently can mean just the opposite—that you would rather spend your time and affection on the people you care about than waste your energy making small talk with strangers.

I would like to have a word with whoever tf is depicting Buggy as abusive like?? He’s just a baby?? Okay, his temper could potentially be problematic at times, but abusive? Ex-fucking-SCUSE ME? I don’t track with this one at all. Lil guy is attention-starved. He would be an absolute sweetheart exclusively to his beloved. He would be clingy as hell to be sure, and he would spoil them rotten whether they like it or not, and his abandonment issues could be a lot to handle at times with a potential for jealousy, but none of that translates to abusive.

I say again, TRIGGER WARNINGS PEOPLE. USE THEM.

[arkiwii]

hello Liberi's Birdcage Tm as a fiaexu enjoyer, i would like to know, what're your thoughts on the chicken herself fiammetta? i adore her and her themes personally

u can call me kiwi or whatever (i didn't know people would call me by my blog's name LMAO)

my my, Fiammetta. she's a lot to talk about. i have, SEVERAL thoughts about her. well, I firstly got interested in her character as well as Mostima's thanks to a friend, so I'm not as much as involved as this person is, and most of what I've learned comes from our conversations. But you know, having people share about a character they like makes you Realize Things

also I hope I won't disappoint you by saying that I'm not into Fiaexu, so I won't be able to give opinions or analysis on it. like i said to someone, Fiaexu is the good ending. and man I want her to get the bad ending.

my memories of Guide Ahead are quite blury and Laterano isn't the lore I'm the most involved into, mostly because it's Complicated. I'm more of a person involved in a character's development and their mentality, and good for me, Fiammetta is full of angst and anger

what I particularly love in her? it's her "obsession" for Mostima (and Lemuen, but it's way more marked towards Mostima). i dont mean obsession as in "she likes her", i mean obsession as in This Girl Has A Problem. Her Operator Record in particular was putting an accent on it and it was delightful. Fiammetta decided to be Mostima's overseer, not because Mostima needs an overseer, but because Fiammetta was worried for Mostima. and who could blame her! Lemuen got shot down, Mostima has fallen, lost her Empathy, and is now banned from Laterano. it's only natural that Fiammetta was worried, and scared to lose someone she deeply cares about.

Turns out. Mostima is doing very fine on her own. Fiammetta thought that Mostima wouldn't be doing fine, and that's the opposite rather. so Fia puts herself through lies, convincing herself that she's here to keep an eye on Mostima, to help her, or whatever... then there's this line Patrizion says in her Operator Record. "Fia, it's not Mostima who needs you. You are the one who needs her."

that was a fucking ROCK thrown at my face i can tell you

Fiammetta always has been this one person to look cold, to look like she doesn't care about anyone, then you discover she has attachment issues. the incident with Andoiain in particular was the cataclysm. she almost lost two of her most precious friends. you BET she wants to put this man in hell. she doesn't care about anything else, this whatever ideal of Laterano he has, the Key and the Lock, whatever; she wants this man to DIE because he tried to take HER friends LIVES.

and because of this, because of her choices, she's throwing her life around. she's destroying herself. ironically, considering her thematic as a phoenix and her talent. but it's literally what is happening. she's just combusting slowly.

she could have a good life! become an Apostolic Knight! be with her adoptive dad! fight for Laterano! but no, instead, she actively decided to follow Mostima-I-Don't-Care around while telling herself a million excuses as of why she does it, "I don't want her to reveal secrets", "I need her to find Andoiain", "she needs my help"

AND of course Mostima being Mostima, her whole "I don't give a fuck about people" behavior is only worsening it, she tries to get away from Fiammetta but also can't escape her, it drags Fia to get ever more clingy... I'm pretty sure Mostima cares about Fia, deep inside, but she handles it just SO SO badly instead of just Having A Conversation

anyway, so Fiammetta? 10/10. i love this bird. i want her to get an alter where she gets better. or worse. Fiammetta the Renatus or whatever. im drooling about it