#out of context and also i picked the most spoiler free ones i could find

[darklight-owl]

So I've been in this one tiny server for ages where the writers each have a channel dedicated to their WIPs and I'm just. gonna post some of the deranged shit I've said on the CoU channel in recent time-

[doodledoodlesdoodles]

My way too long Opinion of YIIK 1.V (at least before I start Benevolent Psychosis.)

TLDR: I started the game with uncertain expectations though was happily surprised with a pleasant though abstract game. It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea in my opinion least story-wise but I genuinely had a good time with it. Especially the battle system, it's a lot better.

Also if you don't know what Benevolent Psychosis is don't worry if you play throughout the game you'll find out eventually.

I try to not put in that many spoilers but I'll still say be wary of spoilers anyway just in case.

Also, i'm not an expert in gaming, just someone who really wanted to write down my thoughts on it.

Also I didn't read a certain book + these reflections are based on the first edition alone and not future games like Benevolent Psychosis.

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Thoughts of the original and my bias.

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I think I should start off establishing some bias I have towards the game when I picked it up.

When Yiik was first around, I didn't really give it much consideration. I think I was vaguely familiar with a modeler of the game since I followed them on tumblr? I could be incorrect.

Though the most I became interested in the game as a whole was Uricksaladbar's video 'YIIK - The Hero You're Supposed To Hate'. I had (and somewhat still do) not a lot of experience in things like post-modernism. From my understanding of that video combined with the many others that I engaged with at the time the creator crafted a self-insert intentionally-made asshole who obviously failed to grab audiences. That impression expanded into a creator who believed he was smarter than he was by including his past failed games and declaring that 'my mistake was thinking that video games were art' upon receiving a plethora of criticisms. Criticisms that focused on things such as the confusing plot, the narrative of Alex being at the center of everything contrasting the game's moral of not being self-centered, the creator directly ripping lines from books, the bizarre add-ons of things such as the 'golden alpaca', the real-life inspiration for one of the characters being based off a real mysterious death, and lastly the game - implementing a 'mini-game' like system into rpg battle mechanics (which I believe is much better utilized in games such as Knuckle Sandwich) being at best taking way too long (To the point you don't want to use them. Some of them taking like 10 minutes) and at worst just broken overall (I believe I recall some people abusing Essentia's ability frequently).

At best some of those critiques were taken out of context or misinterpreted. For example, one of the other videos I would watch showed off an almost identical real-life copy of Alex saying it was what the creator looked like. Cue my surprise modern day to find out that he doesn't look like the insufferable protagonist at all! Wow! Some of it also was based on Kokatu's articles which wow! They definitely haven't had some controversy about being a poor media outlet in the past! (Sarcasm!) I can understand why some of it could make people uncomfortable though, I know I had originally felt pretty iffy myself over a plot point being based on real-life events or the awkward way Alex talks or certain dialogue that many said came off as 'forced'. I also didn't understand the plot and not many of the people I watched around that time seemed to either. I wasn't sure if it was intentional either and old game updates only seemed to confuse those who engaged with it more. I didn't play the game and moved on with my life, occasionally seeing friends online joke about the game or a few posts putting the protagonist in shitposts.

Cue to modern-day, YIIK I.V coming out and I hear it's going to be an improvement on the game's story and combat while also adding new elements such as the mysterious 'nameless child' character. I played the demo of the free promotional demo 'Nameless Psychosis' during a relaxing call with one of my dnd buddies. I still found myself getting a little lost (though that might've been because I was on call and half paying attention. However, some other reviews I've seen of the demo found it also a little confusing. The music and sound effects I also found a little weird.) but at least for me - the confusion felt almost intentional in an 'artsy' sorta way. I was at the very least intrigued by this version. I know the original certainly failed to attract me despite its inspirations falling into things I enjoy. Plus, regardless of my feelings about the game, it's at the very least admirable that the creators here had a passion for their project to the point they wanted to improve upon it. I bought the game at a discount with the eventual intention of playing it in the future. I tried to prepare myself a bit by watching more positive opinions of the series such as Planet Clue's 'understanding of the "worst" RPG protagonist - YIIK' and Kellkrai's analysis of the game. 'YIIK ANALYSIS' of the original ( While I did end up appreciating the dive in showing Alex's mind and how it transfers to the world around him + The analysis of Essentia, I was still a little confused haha.)

I should note I didn't even know about Deviation Perspective - Wrong Soul Reqium - additional material that works to explain aspects of I.V. So that might affect my opinions of the game.

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PREMISE

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If you don't know what YIIK is about somehow it stars Alex, he just finished college for Liberal Arts and pretty much has no idea what to do with his life as he moves back home to his town Frankton. Thereafter following a cat into an abandoned factory for stealing your mom's shopping list - Alex meets a mysterious girl called Semi in a confusing landscape before she's kidnapped by mysterious otherworldly beings. After witnessing this, Alex makes it his mission to find the woman and by doing so joins a team of internet friends to investigate. During this, the world - as planet clue says - 'gradually starts to make less sense'.In - what i'll call the 'b-plot' - stars 'The Nameless Child' (Also called Allison and Carrie) who is trapped in another world entirely. There she must trek the confusing reality that is her existence through bizarre landscapes.

Other characters include

Vella, a girl from another universe who left hers possibly from the trauma of a mysterious record. Due to her experiences, she has a lot of knowledge about the world and souls that exist inside and outside Alex's world.

Rory, a contrast to Alex (referred to as The Good Brother to Alex's The Bad Brother by the Nameless child)grieves over the loss of his dead sister. He's awkward and how Alex treats him throughout the story affects his involvement in the story.

Micheal, who was once a childhood friend of Alex suddenly inserted back into his life. He has a fascination with computer games and photography though appears to know more than he lets on about the reality he's been brought into.

Claudio, an anime nerd who owns a large chain of record shops. His family also had a mysterious disappearance of his younger brother - he's made it his life mission to find out what happened to him and other people who disappeared like he did.

Chondra, Claudio's younger sister who more often than not I found as a 'straight man' or the the one who questioned what the hell was going on around her the most. She keeps her brother company though expresses frustration with the fact that Alex has wounded Claudio in obsessing over the past.

The Essentia 2000, is a mysterious robot of Alex's dreams who claims to be his 'soul-mate' in the 'truest sense of the word'. She claims to be many people all at once but her past lies in mystery and betrayal.

Sammy (Semi), the current obsession of the online forum Onsim1999 (the one that the protagonists engage with) due to her very mysterious disappearance and murder. Who is she? Why do we keep finding lookalikes of her all around that no one seems to recognize? Why was she kidnapped? Was she even really kidnapped in front of Alex?

Krow, is an inhabitant of Alex's mind(?) and is often associated with The Nameless Girl's mysterious journey. Why is he here? What does his waxed poetics mean for our secondary protagonist?

Asuka, a professional actress and best friend of Chondra, is preparing for a role for the Japanese film director Kisage X though the performance she's preparing oddly seems to have parallels with the world of The Nameless Child and Alex.

There's technically more but these characters felt the most important to me without getting TOO spoilery.

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COMBAT

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As mentioned before, the combat mostly circled around Wario-ware-like minigames. While that idea sounds fine on paper (and good lord the RPG genre does need spicing up every now and then) the main critique was that they were too long or too broken. While the story is probably one of the major features of an RPG, another is mechanics and battles. For me at least, the two should have harmony with each other to be a good RPG. I don't even need a groundbreaking story for it to be a 'good RPG, I'm a fan of even the original Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 whose whole story mostly surroundings Mario having to save Princess Peach from Bowser again (though I think personally paper Mario was able to have a fun twist or add ons to the story to make it unique). I'll get on the story later but the point is if your player is actively avoiding fights then you're failing as an RPG.

I'm not skilled in the nitty-gritty of everything that makes RPGs 'work' and 'not work' but I personally at least found enjoyment in the new battle mechanic.

(YIIK I.V)

(Original YIIK)

I think even UI and aesthetics alone in 1.5 bleeds (haha) have more charm compared to the original. Even little things like the camera moving down as a party member leans over a lunchbox for items or (I didn't play the original so maybe this was a thing in that one?) how certain status effects like Blind give the characters affected sunglasses.Also instead of battling on a generic landscape (Which isn't bad perse but lacks charm - especially compared to its inspirations such as Earthbound the bizarre designs of the enemies just stand out much more) the characters battle instead usually in abstract visuals or shapes. The main critique so far is that the camera angle of the battle makes it a little difficult to find out which enemy is attacking my party though usually the character screaming in horror after being attacked fixes that. Also, some characters in the game will use guns and shoot out projectiles that will slowly drain characters' health- I found these enemies pretty annoying overall.

Anyway, each character has an average attack, their special attacks or skills that cost PP (Either by destroying an enemy's Karta- I'll explain later- or until a little clock near the PP UI clicks back into place.), and their element or 'Pokemon type'. Like Pokemon - the way the types interact with each other can mean higher damaging attacks, lower damaging attacks. There are also 'clashing elements' where if the attacker and the target have the same affinity, there's a chance that the defending element will be weak to the attacking element. There's no way to switch out party mid-battle like Pokemon though so to be honest I usually ignored the effective move scale entirely and did fine. This meant that a lot of the time my party was usually performing the 'clashing mechanic'.

Another aspect of the characters you play is their Life (HP), their ATK (Strength stat), Speed (...Speed), Luck (The chance of getting critical hits), Piercing Power (The chance of attacking the target HP and destroying their 'Shields' or Karta), Agility (The chance of dodging enemy attacks), and Karta (Let me explain timeline first!).

Speed affects your character's and your enemies 'timeline'. Every character starts at the 'WAIT' region and upon entering the barrier of the 'ACT' of their timeline- you can choose their moves. Depending on how fast your character gets to the metaphorical finishing line then they perform their attacks. Mostly just a visual way of showing your turn order though occasionally i'll admit I did find it a little confusing with enemies such as 'Shitty OC' (real name! It's a sonic oc that throws bombs at you). If you lose a party member in battle an angel-like figure thing will appear on the timeline. Once they're in the ACT phase, they'll send out a new teammate to help you battle. I didn't pay attention much to act except when I was in a boss fight since I admittedly found it hard to tell the turn order at least with the enemies. I felt I usually had only a vague idea of how it operated.

Have you ever played a dungeon crawler that gave you 'armor' or 'shield' that acted as temporary hit points without ACTUALLY harming your character's health overall? Karta is basically like that in the RPG form of that idea but expanded upon. For you to attack an enemy (and vice versa) you have to break through their 'karta' and drain their life. Upon destroying all their karta (or vice versa) they will enter the 'bleed' status where they will slowly lose hp throughout the battle. You can have 3 card slots to put your cards in from the front (more likely to be destroyed first), middle, and back. It's generally good to have all Karta filled because of this in my opinion. (or use items that create temporary Karta when you run out). Plus it also engages more with another feature of Karta, that being the types of Karta at your disposal.

Each Karta will not only modify your stats as long as they're not destroyed (Some good and some bad- The Hungry Traveler gives you a speed of 150 at level 2 but others like Level 3 Torn Hat will offer a good boost in Life and Speed but take away 2 from your Agility.), give you a bonus while still in your hand (The Deep Well will change your character's type to water and auto extinguish the being on fire effect and The Seamstress doubles your life and regenerates a little bit of every turn), though ALSO gives you something if you're willing to use the card and possibly risk sacrificing a good defense you might need in battle (I like using the Seamstress's ability to restore life of all allies and The Sorrowful Maiden's ability to lower the maximum life of a target). Do I want to USE The Torn Hat to make it impossible for my enemy to pierce through my defenses (Karta) or would I be better off trying to keep it because its IN-HAND ability means I get more EXP from the battle?

It took me a bit to get into it but once I did I found myself genuinely enjoying the mechanics of it. I hear it compared to the Persona series which I've never really played before (I do need to though) mechanics.

The characters also have their own playstyle and abilities. You can also get 'combos' from how long your character attacks without getting hit. I didn't pay all too much attention to it since I couldn't really plan ahead for a enemy attacking a character but somehow I still got Alex's 'Amateur MC' achievement so shrug.

I personally used Alex for defense and using items, prioritizing his Panda Barrier move on harder enemies but otherwise playing with LP Toss, Hair Whip, or Feedback. It felt like Alex got the easiest access of moves due to the fact you obtain a decent chunk of them through natural story progression compared to the other party members who primarily obtain them through Alex's mind dungeon.

Micheal, I used it every now and then, usually when I didn't have many party members left or if he had happened to be sent out. I think despite not using him too much he has some interesting moves such as being able to create copies or enemies, turn enemies against the party, and reduce enemy accuracy. Also if your party is all blinded or all dead, Micheal will pull out a fucking gun. I found this hilarious the first time I saw him do this. I'm not 100% sure how it is different compared to the camera so take this with a huge grain of salt but I believe it does more piercing damage?

Vella's banish ability was kinda useless to me unless I happened to run into a soul survivor character (Which would suck if I entered a battle without her because that could've meant I had to kill them? I have to see if Rory's protest ability - which acts somewhat similar - could do it too. Not being able to attack the soul survivors at all in battle was a little annoying to learn at first.). Despite that I use her a lot in battles, she's got some good buffs and healing abilities and her Bass Drop ability is pretty good for handling a starting hit on some enemies.

I didn't really use Rory that often, I liked interacting with him in the game but I felt like a lot of his abilities could be swapped with Vella. If Vella dies though he's a decent 2nd option if he happens to come out. I feel like a lot of his abilities can be similar to her's anyway. He can give allies karta, give them a heart card and make them stop bleeding, convince enemies to leave the battle, and swap HP with an enemy. He also doesn't instantly attack due to his pacifist nature. Instead, if you have him 'attack' he'll enter a counterattack move which he will damage back the enemy attacking him.

Claudio, I ended up also using a lot. Dragon Jump kinda acts like a fly from Pokemon and Vampire Blades is good for keeping him alive. It's really nice to use on bosses in my experience. Also loved using Storm Fury when dealing with multiple enemies at once if I was able to.

Chondra is a 'wild card type' which means she can change her Pokemon type with the move 'copy element'. If you go towards the 'clash' mechanic more than I do i'd imagine you'd like Chondra especially since the copy ability costs 0 to use. I usually used her Spread Item effect to give my party gauze (an item that creates artificial karta space) or healing items though I didn't end up using her a whole lot unless she popped in from one of my teammates dying. Her character is one of my favorites so it's a shame that I wasn't as interested in her moves.

We don't really get Semi/Sammy that often in the game so I don't even know if it's that essential to list her off in usefulness. She works as a decent tutorial character for Alex to work off of battle-wise.

Essentia's able to upgrade her STR and use an all-enemy-focused attack that usually takes care of weaker enemies on the field. I also read that she can attack Soul Survivors but I'm not 100% sure on that one yet. I didn't use her all that much but she was alright.

Krow's abilities I do find interesting and fun to use though you can only really use him a selective amount of times so far. He's usually your ally anytime you visit Alex's Mind Dungeon and it makes sense since his moves are about healing Karta or cutting enemy Karta. He's there to make mind dungeon battles a bit easier to handle.

Speaking of which: The Mind Dungeon! In the original game, it was highly contested as being an obnoxious and confusing way of leveling up. Based on video's I've seen i'd be obliged to agree. It doesn't even really explain the stats or elements all too well.

In the new version of the game, its been updated entirely. A hub of areas for Alex to trek like a platformer to Level up (at the spawn point Krow will show you three cards to choose from and those three cards will boost specific stats. The Top shows you the leveled-up stats and the bottom shows you the modifier added on), the ability to level up Kartas to be more powerful (I'll explain this later), Obtain Abilities (Some trapped by puzzles, platforming, and unlocking overworld abilities), and see little performances by Handsome Krow (I think this is a different ish character from Krow?) and his puppet things.

Handsome Krow's performances are something transferred from the old game I believe, showing Alex's subconscious thoughts of some of the people he's encountered via transforming them into workers or inhabitants of his mind. You meet them by getting to certain floors of the original game's dungeon though they kept the dialogue of Handsome Krow explaining what floor they're on in 1.5 which made me super confused! I assumed that i'd meet puppet NPCs around the overworld but they're only there every few performances you get after leveling up.

The dark cups spread around town (ones with blue flames above it) around the overworld give you character abilities. I think the explorative aspect of it is fun though the bizarre background music in the game makes it very irritating. If you unlock another song for the Overworld via the jukebox not too far from Spawn i'd consider taking advantage of it. I got really sick of hearing the same repeat of the song even though I DID like it when I first heard it. It fits the bizarre world but man it was annoying.

You're also probably wondering what's up with the key, the fetus thing, and the blood bag right?

Blood bags are easiest to explain, after defeating certain enemies in the game you obtain blood bags that can be used to upgrade the power of the cards which boosts their stats! Physical representations of the cards are usually hanging out near the spawn ready to talk to.

The 'fetus' things can be found around Alex's mind dungeon hidden in areas accessible from platforming or using your overworld skills. There you can hand them over to this lady at her card stand and she'll hand you a key. See that golden thing next to her? You need you use a key on that. There you'll fight a version of The Nameless Child with a certain karta card on her during the fight, upon defeating her you can get whatever karta card she used in battle.

Overall besides the repetitive music, I enjoyed exploring aspects of the mind dungeon. At the very least I did want to revisit it (something I assume was not many players experience in the original) any time I got an overworld upgrade just so I could see where it'd lead me or maybe if I could get myself a new Karta to play with. Not a negative per se but I was also able to get to areas I probably wasn't supposed to due to just platforming around it rather than getting an upgrade from progressing the game. I didn't experience it TOO much (I mostly remember 2 instances of me being able to do that.) but it's worth noting I suppose.

Aesthetically it just looks nicer overall compared to the old mind dungeon. It feels more disorganized and jumbled of memories, locations,or thoughts that Alex has. One moment you're exploring a mysterious temple and you suddenly find a replica of a bedroom. The bright visual in the skybox did start to irritate me but I got used to it.

(old mind dungeon entrance)

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The Nameless Child's Gameplay

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The Nameless Child's sections don't work as RPG, her sections are more on the experimental side but I feel comfortable calling her sections more 'puzzle-like'. Her Karta usually is flavor or like inventory to me. For example, there's a section where Carrie gets trapped in tank control movement signified by a 'tank karta' card, after removing the card Carrie gets a gun (lol). The Gun Card in the corner of the screen will show how much ammo Carrie has at that moment before needing to collect a refuel. Other times her cards are 'you stepped in cat poo and now when you walk you make a frog noise' or 'you'll be safe when you walk in fire'.

While that sounds confusing and messy (and sometimes it can be, though you can always check the descriptions of your karta for clues) I found myself always excited to see what bizarre landscape my characters going to traverse this time. Whenever I went back to Alex's plot I always felt myself wanting to return to The Nameless Child. At the very least I felt less inclined to look up where to go and how to do things in her sections rather then Alex's.

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Positive Notes

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I think overall the game's ui is much more appealing compared to what I've seen of the old game. Character stats have full models and a more interesting hierarchy in the text compared to the static set of stats and a tiny icon in the original. It's so much more fun to look at compared to the original. Even the text boxes use bright blue compared to the drab brown or purple pops much more.

I think once I got used to it, I enjoyed the visual card format of The Nameless Child's karta and how that translated into her own gameplay. I think her involvement overall is an improvement and the general direction of it all feels like a niche arsty audience. Based on a line Kisage X says in one of the cutscenes, this is probably intentional.

Speaking of Kisage X, I enjoyed his involvement overall and how they used his script as the lens of the story. It feels like I'm watching a very 'artsy' director display his own abstract vision which I think matches with the vague cutscenes in the game. It also plays with this distortion of what's 'real', what's alex's world, what's 'reality', so on and so forth. They have characters that appear in the story reference a script or characters mention admiration for the director or they refer to Kisage X's distinct way of recording people by having the person not know they're a part of the story or recording.

Aesthetically I enjoy how Alex's monologues are recontextualised in the form of a standup routine. It allows his stupid nervous body language to shine through and make his otherwise pretty drab rants more interesting. It gave me a 'some trying to do standup and doing it very poorly' vibe and I'm pretty sure that was intentional given Alex's attitude.

If you like Michael and Chondra I think you'll like the update, Micheal more so though. Not to say Chondra isn't given a spotlight though, more just Micheal. She's someone who isn't stuck in the past or a delusion like the other characters and she suffers because of it. I only can compare it to Homestuck terminology so i'd compare her to the mage class. Someone who gains knowledge from her own suffering. Micheal fans will eat good though since he gets a large focus in side cutscenes of the game. He's the 'best friend' archetype but is a man who feels trapped in that role rather than naturally living it. I think his cutscenes and him pulling out a gun only when no one is around or if everyone else is blinded really displays that. His persona cracks only a few times around others.

While i'll go more into in when I talk about visuals and music, I heard some people uncertain about the reliance on physical models over the visual novel like portraits. Personally, I think it adds to the uncanny nature of it all especially when the visuals are at its most bizarre. The scene where The Nameless Child's model is shooting off balloons of a certain character or micheal entering a room of a bunch of wide mouthed puppets of someone typing away at computers comes to mind. If it wasn't clear I overall love the aesthetic of it all.

I can't get into it much without going into spoilers but I'm always a sucker for things that explore the mind even a little bit. While obviously not the same kind of game as YIIK, I always enjoyed games like Psychonauts because every time I entered a mind I was able to analyze and understand a character I previously only had a few shared lines of dialogue with.

If you're more into the surrealist way of storytelling, I think you'll genuinely enjoy dissecting this game apart. It doesn't go for a traditional storytelling approach despite what it may seem upon first glance with Alex's story. I was slightly worried when I started the game that it was just going to be the full alex run and then all the cool new stuff but luckily it wasn't that thanks to the spliced nameless child bits, side characters cutscenes, unique battles, so on and so forth.

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Nitpicks

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A lot of it is nitpicking and personal preferences, I want to say overall I still enjoyed my experience.

There's a certain character in Chondra and Claudio's story that appears in Alex's mind dungeon. I know it's possible to encounter them in the original but I did not so color me very confused when these two told me about it.

Whenever you go to a shop or buy something at a vending machine there's a side window of Alex's reaction to the item you have selected. If he's sweating - for example - that usually indicates that the item is probably expensive. I didn't really understand what his other reactions meant, I think he bites his lip if it's a cheap item and goes: :O when its more costly. Not 100% certain however of this.

I thought it was weird it let you buy the basic version of weapons that your party members get - especially before you're even able to add them to your team. Just sort of felt pointless and left me having more of old items than I needed to.

I did hear some people complain about the screams that characters do when being attacked during battle- I was able to tune it out just fine but I can imagine for some people it can be a little annoying.

The intro - namely The Nameless Child's part - is a bit repetitive walking back and forth to figure out what you're supposed to do. While her sections can still include that in future levels I at least didn't find it as tedious. However, it could've just resulted from me getting used to it.

For certain mind dungeons or areas, I had to google to figure out what I was supposed to do or go - Vella's mind dungeon came to mind as I could not figure out what was up with that balloon of Vella.

They do reuse the old mind dungeon's entrance section for a future part, which I can imagine people who never saw the original could be a little confused on what alex means by 'How did we end up back here?!' That could be a nitpick though since otherwise I didn't have issues with that part.

In the steam version you only get achievements after quitting the game, not the end of the world but something I noticed. Some of the achievements also felt a little weird since the battle mechanic plays much differently compared to the original.

There's a certain section of the game that builds up to your party preparing for a great disaster (if you played yiik you probably already know what it is). Before that Alex has to gather everyone in the party and during that you can still explore the world as much as you want to your leisure. As soon as you get micheal though? Even entering a dungeon to battle that one last enemy will count as an entire day so I guess don't do what I did and just explore those dungeons as much as possible WITHOUT micheal. Also a bunch of Onism1999 side quests blow up during the period of training which is a LITTLE annoying. Also before you had any option to enter the mind dungeon but now if you do that'll also count as a whole day. I think I would've liked a warning at least similar to how I was warned about Yuzu's battle before entering the area it starts his cutscene. Not only that but leveling up in the mind dungeon counts as a WHOLE DAY which really annoyed me since I was at 2600 (26 levels!) with 18 days left that I spent doing side quests and dungeons which ALSO count as a whole day. Said dens and side quests give you 100 EXP that you would need to use the mind dungeon to actually level up. I wish they counted entering the mind dungeon as a whole day rather than leveling up. I feel like I was essentially punished for trying to complete the dens and quests because it locked out of a day that I could've spent leveling my characters up.This was the only part I was VERY annoyed by and consider outside the nitpick category maybe when it comes to alex's gameplay at least...

Had weird glitches where the parties levels would be off- it used to just be a level so I didn't pay it much mind but towards the end I would have Alex at 41 and the rest of them at like 54? Not sure what was going on there since as far as I knew all the party leveled up upon alex leveling up.

I wish the Onsim 1999 side quests were something I was able to see whenever, I felt like I had to backtrack to my house just to see what other quests I had to do.

A lot of the funny lines or bizarre (Nobody cares about your dead sister, THIS THINGS DIGITAL BABY!, There are more Vellas then final fantasy games, the two brothers cameos and appearance) are still there. For someone who hasn't touched the original but watched theory videos of it I took it more as 'Alex's pretentious mind' at best and found it hilarious at worst. I can easily understand critics who say the talk sprites make the lines stand out or sometimes the lines themselves are a bit on the nose. Other times its confusing on what's the actual reality and what is a part of alex's but I suppose that'd a bit of the point. The game includes more cutscenes and visual flare to hopefully display dialogue more interestingly. Speaking of which...

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VISUALS (and music)

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I've already mentioned a few of the aesthetical changes previously, so it's only fair I elaborate a little more on it.

As a side note, the music was one of the most appreciated aspects of the original game and at its best, the update keeps its most promising soundtracks. One of the battle themes that played in Essentia's mind dungeon - even though it was just for normal npcs - had me bopping. Other times YIIK I.V does struggle to use repetitive music that - while nice on the first few hearings and I believe does symbolically match with the game's visuals - gets on my nerves a little bit. I was right with some of the more ambience in the nameless child's sections though other sections like the intro which plays a repetitive plink drained me rather quickly. Other songs like the custom-sung songs (especially in the main menu and final cutscene of the first chunk) appealed to me the most.

Anyway, I was told that supposedly they weren't able to get more profile visual novel-like pictures from the artist during the development of the update. I can't really confirm that statement, however.

The way the models look I can understand may be jarring for some people, especially with the fact that sometimes they move their mouth and others just straight up don't. Other times I can imagine people being uncomfortable with how each of Alex's teeth are modeled. Personally though? As previously stated I think it adds to the uncanny nature of it all. It especially matches the psychedelic and bizarre imagery scattered across the game (Especially in the nameless child's parts). Even then, I feel like I at least was able to understand everyone's emotions and feelings just fine and the locations they walked around were always beautiful to look at even when it got more bizarre.

(reminding you that this show exisited.)

It's definitely not something i'd recommend to someone who has epiliepsy issues though. It's not what i'd call Problem Solvers bad but it can certainly be a bit jarring for people who arent' really 'prepared' for it, y'know?

I'm sure you've noticed me toss around the term 'artsy' a lot. Despite the Oxford definition of it I wouldn't necessarily say it's a pretentious display of art per se, but it's definitely something I can see being a turn off for many and extremely appealing for others. Sometimes the aspect ratio of Alex's little booth talks changes and leaves wobbly red lines and other times places from the old game have been completely recolored (Mt. Town's lush forest is replaced with melancholic blues or the island that alex is trapped on after a certain thing happens has been changed to reflect the 'despair' of the situation more appropriately with black and white colors.).

It's something you have to 'open your mind to' (Hope you like that joke yiik fans). Not a lot of it will make sense at first but it's something that's still worth seeing just what happens next. The state of being confused is at least what I found personally interesting to engage with which I understand sounds very counterintuitive but if you like that mystery to it and that drive to found out what's going on I think you'll find it interesting!

As i've stated before, treat it as if you're watching a surrealist film or experimental movie like the game presents to you with Kisage X's shaky camera and visuals. Do I watch Un Chien Andalou (Don't watch this is you're squeamish to body mutilation, holes, eye motifs!) expecting a linear narrative in mind? Hell no, that movie was purposely made with no conventional plot, it uses dream logic as a narrative for the whole thing. YIIK is like that to me on my first playthrough.

A lot of the initial story is there but the cutscenes and changes that are made and interspersed throughout the whole thing really drove me to engage more with it despite knowing the general beats of Alex's story. there are so many things brought into this free update- even if I didn't like the game (I do like the game!) it's admirable they wanted to bring in this much passion for something that people at the time only ironically fandomed over. It got me at least to check out Benevolent Psychosis!

Speaking of which, Tell Kisage X that you don't think you're a parallel Alex. I think it would bring some interesting changes. Also save before you do the big battle just in case you pick the wrong option initially like I did (I thought the game wanted me to say I was him because of my player insert lol.)

[clevercorvidae]

Hazbin Hotel 1st Season Review

Ok so I've been sitting on this ask I got back when the series started airing for some time now.

And I was struggling with how to answer it because as much as I personally love the show and had a lot of fun with it I understand that it isn't really for everyone.

But now that the series' first season has concluded I feel like it'd just be easier to give a review of all the negatives and positives that I saw in the series for anyone who is wondering if its worth getting into. I'd like to give a fair and honest overview of all the show's quirks as there is a lot of misinformation, bad faith criticism, and blind praise of this show going around. It can be overwhelming with so many strong opinions and I'd like to give people a more balanced and down to earth look at the show for what it is.

I'll start with spoiler free stuff and put all spoilery stuff below a cut in a reblog. Be warned, this is still gonna be very much based on my own opinions and very long, I just hope its less...intense than most reviews.

Overview

For anyone who doesn't know, Hazbin Hotel is a new animated series on Amazon Prime Video created by Vivienne Medrano and A24 Studios. It's basic premise is that every year, sinners in Hell are killed by angels from Heaven in order to keep the population low. This devastates our main character, Charlie Morningstar, the daughter of Lilith and Lucifer and Princess of Hell.

So she decides to start a rehabilitation center called the Hazbin Hotel in hopes to allow sinners to redeem themselves, keeping the population in Hell low whilst allowing people to continue existing, and hopefully putting an end to the exterminations for good and saving her people. She does this with the help of her girlfriend Vaggie, a famous pornstar named Angel Dust who agrees to be her first guest, a very shady demon named Alastor, and more.

The show's pilot episode was first released on youtube in 2019 and has a sister-show called Helluva Boss that takes place in the same universe and began airing episodes on youtube while Hazbin was being shopped around to be picked up by a bigger studio.

I personally do not recommend this show at all to anyone under 18 due to its subject matter and depictions. However, the show is listed as 16+ for all but one episode which is 18+. Make of this what you will.

Now, onto the discussion.

Positive 1: Design

So a lot of people look at this show and are put off by its character designs and general look. But frankly I think it's very well designed and cohesive for what it is. Its designs are complex and gaudy but they're earnest in their presentation. It very much draws from Vivziepop's roots as a youtube animator who got big in the 2010's

All the designs are very out there and edgy and almost sparkle-dog-esque. And I think it's commitment to that style in favor of something that would draw in wider appeal makes the series feel more artistically genuine. Just look at Angel Dust and Alastor's designs for example. They ooze 2010's deviantart and I find it very charming.

I also enjoy the balance and uniqueness of many of the designs, they're so fun to look at. And their level of detail makes them super fun to pick apart. The range of body types could definitely be improved (an unfortunate remnant of that 2010s style I was just praising) but there is still plenty of diversity in silhouette to differentiate the characters at a distance.

I also often see the criticism that there is far too much red used in the designs and frankly this criticism is so unfair. Within the context of the show its pretty obvious that red is just part of the design motif of hell.

I can see the issue ringing true in the pilot that the characters bleed into the backgrounds often because of this design choice but in the official show the background style is a lot more distinct from the characters and they don't really have this issue at all.

Here's a screengrab from the pilot that I find to be a particularly bad offender vs a screengrab from the official show including acvery red character on a very red background that I think highlights the difference a bit.

There's nothing wrong with a show having a very cohesive visual motif to tie all of its characters to one location. The heavenly characters in the show have their own color motif of bright pastels for instance. I think the designs are a highlight of this show and people should stop being so harsh and unfair in their assessment of them. They're so fun! Enjoy them!

Negative 1: Pacing

You've probably heard people mentioning this one and unfortunately I 100% agree with this criticism. The show is INCREDIBLY fast paced and it seriously impacts character development.

Now, I don't think the way people criticize this aspect of the show is very fair. Most people push the blame for it onto the creators and writers when in all actuality they're just doing the best they can with what they were given. 8 episodes is a very short runtime for a show of a this scale.

A story with this much worldbuilding, this many plot threads, and this number of important characters could NEVER be told properly in this amount of time. Even if they'd properly paced it it would've ended up awkwardly truncated with an unsatisfying finale. Frankly I think the writers did a very good job stretching what they had, but unfortunately the issues are still very present and impact the viewing experience.

This show desperately needed filler. They NEEDED low stakes plots and episodes. As is the story is very complete and I'm glad the short runtime didn't create any agregious plot holes but its still...lacking. The first season is meant to take place over six months of time and it really doesn't feel like it.

The lack of episodes means we don't get to see the natural progression of these characters and their relationships. Many characters have seemingly out of nowhere changes of heart. Even the best done plot lines still feel pretty cramped and rushed.

It's very sad and unfortunately is becoming increasingly commonplace for shows to have such short runtimes that they feel like extra long movies rather than feeling like a tv show. Hazbin Hotel feels like a very long musical pace-wise. And if you decide to watch it that way I think you might have a better time honestly. But its still sad to think of what could've been.

Positive 2: Music

Oh my fucking god the songs are so good. None of them are bad in my opinion. I have my favorites and least favorites of course but none of them sound bad or annoying which I can't say for 90% of musicals especially cartoon musicals.

Almost every song feels like its 100% necessary to express what the characters are thinking and feeling. Every single VA has a fantastic singing voice. Apparently one of the main writers of these songs is half of The Living Tombstone which is pretty apparent from the style of the songs. If you like their music you'll be in for such a treat here.

There are 2 songs per episode and I think its safe to say you'll enjoy the crap out of at least one of them. They make up for a lot of the short runtime with them too, being able to fit a whole lot of character growth and interaction into a shorter period. This show is definitely carried by its stellar soundtrack. I think it's its best trait for sure.

If you like musicals, you have something to gain from watching this show, I can guarantee that.

In the spoiler section I'm gonna rank all 16 songs and explain my reasons btw so look forward to that.

Negative 2: Editing

The editing of this show can be...questionable at times. Sometimes there will be very harsh unnecessary cuts and sometimes the camera moves all over the place when it really doesn't need to. It really feels like the editors got the raw animation files and were trying to clock in overtime by making unnecessary and bizarre editing choices all over the place.

It wasn't very jarring to me personally and I feel like most people will get used to it within a single episode but if you're unsure of how to feel about it I'd go watch the song Happy Day in Hell on youtube because it's probably the worst offender in the show and about as bad as the editing will get.

Positive 3: Characters

As sad as I am that the show has so little time to explore the characters they are VERY well established regardless. These characters have a lot of charisma and almost all of them have a completed arc within this season.

I've heard a lot of people claim that Charlie, the main character, doesn't get enough screentime or doesn't feel like a protagonist and I'm sorry but I can't see this as anything but bad faith criticism. Hazbin Hotel is an ensemble show with a very limited episode count, not every episode can have Charlie at the center. But she IS the center of the main plot and she is a very active protagonist with strong relationships to the other members of the ensemble. Her goals are tightly wound in with the central plot and themes and she makes the decisions that drive the story.

She very much fills her protagonist role well and I think this attempt at criticism is just a biproduct of the several years of development where occasionally we'd get bonus content for other characters and Charlie didn't get much. But it's pretty clear that that was cause her character IS the plot and Vivziepop didn't want to spoil the entire show before it even aired.

Beyond that I've seen people claim that all the queer characters are over-sexualized. Which is hilarious because as far as I can find there is only one canon straight character in the main cast and the rest are all queer. There is only one character that has an storyline focused around sex and that's Angel Dust...because he is a sex worker. The other characters occasionally make sex jokes but no other queer characters have sex as a focal point.

Overall, the characters definitely balance each other out in this story and they're a big draw for me. Even minor characters that only appear prominently in one episode are super charismatic and interesting. Hell, my favorite character in this show is one of these minor characters.

One thing I very much enjoy is how none of the characters ever seem to be dumbed down for the sake of the plot. The stakes remain high because all of these problems genuinely feel like there is no easy solution that the characters are just conveniently ignoring. All of the characters' choices feel like theyre in-character which is very impressive given the episode count.

Neutral 1: Dialogue/Jokes

So this is a topic I've seen a lot of people discuss specifically here on tumblr. The characters are very sweary and many of the jokes are very crass and explicit.

Personally I had no issue with this at all the jokes were fine to me and the swearing just felt like Hell's natural dialect to be honest. Plus I swear like a sailor irl so it was barely different to my normal. Very much a non-issue for me.

I could see how it could be off-putting to others though if it's something you're not used to. And I do find it to be a bit much in the sister-show Helluva Boss because it feels a lot less natural. (side-note, if y'all want me to make one of these for Helluva Boss let me know cause I have a LOT to say about that show). So honestly I think this is a matter of personal taste and I'd encourage people to still give the show a whirl if this is your main issue with it as its pretty minor.

Positive 4: World-building

I really enjoy the complex world in this show. A lot of its takes on the lore it's drawing from are actually pretty unique and nuanced, it's obvious the creator did a lot of research. Any lore that is changed was clearly done with the knowledge of its true origins. It really feels like Viv knew the rules well before she broke them with this.

This is one of those worlds where you can't help but imagine yourself in it, especially with it being the afterlife. It's no wonder the fandom is so dense with oc content, its very fun to imagine creative character designs when there's so few limits to what a character can look like.

And the world-building seriously elevates the story so well. This is one of the few times the short episode count actually helps the story I think, because there's still so much to explore and discover here. I like the delayed gratification of getting all the info about how hell and heaven function its nice to chew on theorize about. It's just a very appealing and interesting setting what can I say.

Neutral 2: Handling of Subject Matter

This has got to be one of the most divisive things about this show and I think this is the thing that most comes down to personal opinion.

There are a lot of criticisms against how this show handles incredibly serious subject matter. And frankly, as much as I don't have any issue with its portrayal of these things personally, its incredibly understandable why others take issue with it. I encourage everyone to give the show a fair shot and judge it in its entirety as a lot of these things really need context to be criticized fairly.

However I understand that, even if you agree with the way Hazbin hotel handles these subjects, you may still be incredibly uncomfortable or even triggered by the graphic depictions. So I'm going to take some time and list out every possible trigger that you will encounter in each episode to the best of my ability based on my recollection. Because even though Amazon does give warnings they are too vague for my tastes and I wanna make sure anyone who watches this show on my recommendation is going to be safe (Let me know if I missed anything and I will edit this to include it):

Episode 1: 16+

Blood

Knives

Religious Trauma

Graphic Violence

Mild Gore

Eye Stabbing

Genocide as a topic

Sexual harassment

Drug Use/Alcohol

Beheading

Guns

Christian Imagery

Death

Episode 2: 16+

Mild Body Horror

Drug Use/Alcohol

Guns

Christian Imagery

Episode 3: 16+

Beheading

Blood

Cannibalism

Graphic Violence

Sexual Harassment

Guns

BDSM

Episode 4: 18+

Graphic Depictions of Sexual Assault

Rape

Sexual Harassment

Graphic Depictions of Physical Abuse

Graphic Depictions of Routine Sexual Abuse

Alcoholism/Drug Addiction

BDSM

Roofies

Nudity

Graphic Violence

Guns

Emotional Abuse

Exploitatin of Sex Workers as a topic

Building on Fire

Gambling Addiction

Episode 5: 16+

Alcohol/Drug Use

Non-sexual exploitation

Graphic Violence

Guns

Blood

Religious Trauma

Absentee Parent

Christian Imagery

Episode 6: 16+

Religious Trauma

Christian Imagery

Amputation

Eye stabbing

Graphic Violence

Blood

Guns

Knives

Alcoholism/Drug Addiction (+enabling)

Physical Abuse

Exploitation of Sex Workers as a topic

Sexual Harassment

Genocide as a topic

Episode 7: 16+

Guns

Knives

Blood

Cannibalism

Episode 8: 16+

Guns

Blood

Graphic Violence

Genocide

Gore

Death

Animal Death

Christian Imagery

Religious Trauma

Amputation

Knives

Building Collapse

Stabbing

I believe that should be everything.

I highly encourage you to be cautious if you have PTSD or C-PTSD regarding sexual or physical abuse in particular for episode 4. The episode is quite graphic and realistic in its depiction. As someone who hasn't been through sexual abuse I cannot speak to the accuracy of its portrayal apart from the fact that it is very clearly not created to be tantalizing or glorifying.

I've been told many different opinions on how this episode portrays sexual abuse and whether it is accurate or respectful and it seems like the answer varies greatly person to person from being extremely comforting and relatable to being offensive and feeling gratuitous. In my opinion I think this means the show did a decent job and had good intentions, but it also means that this show and this episode in particular just aren't for everyone. Make of this what you will and stay safe.

Positive 5: Themes

The themes in this show are baked into its core. It manages to get its message across without feeling too clunky and the focus of the story never strays from that purpose.

Redemption is often a mixed bag in shows especially in cartoons. But I think Vivziepop and the rest of her crew do a good job showing the effort it takes to change and grow as a person in the short time they have.

I think the dedication to themes is a huge part of how genuine the story feels. It's earnest in its message and that gives the plot a soul.

If you want to watch a story about broken people lifting each other up this is the one.

Neutral 3: Vivziepop

So a lot of you have perhaps heard some not-so-great stuff about this show's creator.

From what I've gathered in my research almost all of the serious claims made about her are either proven to be false or big ol nothing-burgers. However, there might be legitimacy to some of her employees and coworkers' complaints about her company, Spindlehorse, which aren't great. And I personally dislike how she conducts herself on social media as the spokesperson for her creation.

In short, she doesn't seem to have much tact.

I think its a little ridiculous and overdramatic to avoid the show over it personally but if this just strikes a particular nerve with you there is always the option to pirate ig. It's fully up to you. Just make sure you do your research and don't go around shaming fans of the show or spreading misinformation about a very real person.

Conclusion

I'd personally give the show an 8/10. Its a fun time and clearly made with a lot of passion. I'd recommend it to everyone who's interested. Now I'lll start working on the spoiler bit of the review.

Let me know what y'all think! If anyone reading this has questions I'm happy to answer as well.

[aotopmha]

I'm finally catching up with the manga for Vinland Saga because the season 2 material overall is just ridiculously solid, but I'm also always sad when a great story defaults to old, uninteresting tropes that I think could fairly easily be avoided.

After episode 18 of season 2 I decided to finally pick up the manga to see what happens next (so spoilers here) – and, yes, as is easy to assume, Arnheid dies.

It "makes sense" that she dies in context, but so few stories seem able to avoid this trope of killing the cool female character to make you sad and the more it is done, the older it gets to me.

And the biggest issue to me here is that I feel like you absolutely could've made the same narrative point without killing her.

As far as I know Ketil and his farm, Einar, Arnheid or almost anyone else in this arc aren't even historical. Thorfinn, Leif and Canute are the only characters to currently have the most historical backing.

Vinland Saga is a hyper-dramatised narrative combining history and the fantastical Icelandic sagas and it usually does a good job balancing the historical and fictional aspects of the setting, but the discussion of "realism" within these types of stories is always interesting to have.

Thorkell can throw Thorfinn against trees and long distances in the air, breaking countless bones and he survives and is fine through so much hurt, yet the story can't bring itself to have Ketil hit Arnheid a few times less or just a little less hard or even have Snake interrupt a few moments earlier, so she could at least recover.

I only made it to her death scene right now and it almost even made me tear up. (I think I probably will cry when it happens in the anime.)

It's a well-written scene in isolation, but there is also an element of strange thematic disconnect to have the characters directly tell you the very solid reasons she could have been kept alive on the narrative level.

She could've found new hope and a new life travelling with Thorfinn and Einar and be one of the women joining them on the ship to their journey to Vinland.

The whole arc was about Thorfinn finding/rediscovering (new) meaning to live, so why couldn't have Arnheid?

It's the first time I've taken issue with the actual writing of the story, which is fairly impressive (took almost 2 whole seasons) – any issues I had prior to this were fairly minor (pacing with Canute's arc, for example), but this really bothered me because the narrative literally kept none of the reasons to write Arnheid out, either.

Her previous husband (and child) already died. Leif gave money for her and aside from that, Ketil seems to be heading to be captured, dead himself or simply surrender to the king and stay where he is.

(We'll see where that goes.)

Einar, Thorfinn and Leif are now free men and have no beef with Canute and even if they were to run into issues with him, Arnheid would have little to do with it.

And even if they all survive and at one point give chase, I think Ketil, Thorgil or Snake could be taken on by Thorfinn and Einar.

My point is, it feels like killing Arnheid was writing a sad scene for the sake of writing a sad scene.

I think tragedy works when it has backing. And I think this has some character backing (her rejoining her husband, additional motivation for Thorfinn and Einar), but I think at this point not much thematic backing or even plot backing.

People often say characters deserve better simply because they like them, but I think Arnheid absolutely not just deserved better because she was a cool character, but because she deserved better writing backing her character.

It's so strangely jarring to me because I think the story has been so good otherwise.

I know at least one other important female character should show up to be a mainstay if the story keeps to history and that character should be there to stay up to the end, but it's also a bummer that the first female character in the story with any depth got such a jarring ending.

I'll hear the story out (I'm currently at chapter 93) because this is still right after Arnheid died, but I really doubt there could be any reason the story could give me that'll make her death feel less like shock value.

[richincolor]

Group Discussion: The Quince Project

With summer finally here we thought a fun beach read would be a good idea for our summer discussion and The Quince Project, a sophomore novel by Jessica Parra, seemed like the perfect fit. 

Publisher’s Summary: Castillo Torres, Student Body Association event chair and serial planner, could use a fairy godmother. After a disastrous mishap at her sister’s quinceañera, all of Cas’s plans are crumbling. So when a local lifestyle-guru-slash-party-planner opens up applications for the internship of her dreams, Cas sees it as the perfect opportunity to learn every trick in the book so that things never go wrong again.

The only catch is that she needs more party planning experience before she can apply. When she books a quinceañera for a teen Disneyland vlogger, Cas thinks her plan is taking off…until she finds that real life is more complicated than a fairy tale. Cas soon discovers that the party is just a publicity stunt, and she catches feelings for the chambelán. It’s clear that her agenda is about to go way off-script.

But maybe Happily Ever Afters aren’t just for the movies. Can Cas go from planner to participant in her own life? Or will this would-be princess turn into a pumpkin at the end of the ball?

Warning! Spoilers Ahead!

Let’s start off with some fun questions. Since this book is based in the OC (Orange County) the home of Disneyland, there are numerous Disney references all throughout the story. If you’re a Disney ��head,” did it work for you, or if you’re not, did some of the references get lost with you?

K. Imani: I’m a total Disney head (fun fact…I actually went to the park one day while reading the novel and got a “I’m Celebrating” pin) so I enjoyed it and was able to catch all the references. I will say that at some point in the story I did feel all the Disney and Star Wars references were a bit overwhelming, but I really did love the way Cas used Star Wars as inspiration for Paulina’s “unquince”. 

Crystal: The Disney aspect was really fun for me. That’s super cool that you got to visit Disney while reading. Most of my elementary school years were spent in Orange County, so it’s a place of nostalgia for me. The last time I went to Disney was quite a while ago so the Star Wars references were actually sort of unexpected. I appreciated them though since I am also a Star Wars fan. I enjoy seeing characters or folks in real life being inspired by the things they love. It made me want to go for a visit. 

Audrey: I’ve never been to Disneyland and have no particular desire to go. The Disney and Star Wars references that I understood were fun, cute, or thematically relevant, though I will fully admit I know I missed out on references to the more recent movies. It was fine—context provided enough information that I didn’t get totally lost. Both Disney and Star Wars have significant presences in the book, so if you actively dislike those companies/franchises, this might not be the book for you.

Jessica: I’ve only been to Disneyland once and I’m not a huge Disney person – the only Disney movie I watched as a kid was Mulan – so I did miss a few references, but overall, I thought it was a fun touch! Now that we’re talking about it, I do really want to go to an amusement park now…  

Cas’s sister Po has a ton of malapropsisms with her sayings. Which one was your favorite?

K. Imani: I giggled so much at Po’s malapropisms, but my absolute favorite that I think I’d love to include in my life and share with my students is “Believing is Seeing.” Her saying became Cas’s mantra but I think it’s a good saying to use to help bolster self-esteem and to become what we imagine ourselves to be. It’s very freeing in a way. 

Crystal: I too appreciated the reworking of sayings. One that on the surface looks negative is, “If it’s broke, don’t fix it.” Sometimes we are so caught up in fixing that we don’t see the opportunities of other things around us. 

Audrey: Hurricane Po was a delight, and it’s hard to pick just one! I think what I enjoyed most was the times Po got her various quotes right—Cas was quick to pick up on the timing of correct quotes versus when Po didn’t quote perfectly.

Jessica: I’m going to have to choose “believing is seeing” as well. It’s manifesting! I love it. So much fun. Honestly, there were so many great lines. 

We must talk about the romance! I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where the main love interest is so forward. How did the romance come across to you?

K. Imani: I actually found the way the romance was written to be very refreshing. Usually the “will they/won’t they” creates good tension between the characters and builds the romance, but this time, with Javi being so intentional about his interest, that it took some “pressure”, if you will, off Cas. She wasn’t focusing on him at all because she was so focused on being the perfect party planner. He was a nice boost to her ego when she really needed it and I found their relationship truly realistic because of that. 

Crystal: I too enjoyed that the main focus wasn’t on if they were going to get together. He is that open book for her and I loved that for them. Their story is sweet. His openness was definitely a contrast to her secret keeping so the tension was more a matter of worrying about when everything would all fall to pieces and whether or not they had built something strong enough to withstand the impact. 

Audrey: Agreed, Javi’s honesty was refreshingly straightforward, and I liked that he wasn’t pushy about it. He made his interest in Cas known, and Cas was interested right back, so it didn’t take long for them to start dating. Same thing with Po and Paulina! And as Crystal pointed out, the romantic tension didn’t need to be “will they/won’t they” for this book’s structure—the higher stakes would be to have Cas’s lies revealed while they were already dating. It made complete sense to have them, and Po and Paulina, start their relationships before everything exploded.  Jessica: I thought it was a really interesting twist on the usual YA conventions, and I enjoyed it! It made space for a different aspect of Cas’s journey. I think writing what comes after “will they/won’t they” can often be incredibly challenging, so I was duly impressed by the departure from convention.

The major theme of this book is grief and the different ways we handle trauma. Cas handled her mother’s death differently from her sister and from her father, with each of them not talking to each other. How did you feel about the various depictions of grief?

Crystal: Having grief within both families was something that helped Javi and Cas bond, but it also showed that families and individuals most certainly have different ways of coping with or living with grief. Both families had times when they didn’t talk about the loved one. Javi and his mom would just veg with dramas or telenovelas which is one of my preferred methods, but they also had times when they would talk. Cas’s dad was doing the avoidance 24/7 and Cas was too in her own way. 

Audrey: Grief is messy, complicated, and nonlinear, and the nuanced way the author handled various people’s coping mechanisms in regards to their losses was something I appreciated. The anger Cas had at times toward her sister, and most notably her father, was especially impactful. I totally understood Cas’s warring desires not to upset her father but also being desperate for him to be a father and support his grieving daughters better than he had been.  

Jessica: I agree – I really appreciated the different approaches that the author took to depict how people handle grief. And the contrast between Cas and her father, versus Javi and his mother, as you pointed out Crystal, really highlighted that. Just depicting that was so powerful. 

K. Imani: I agree with all of you. In fact, it made the story more real to me as there is no “right” way of expressing grief. I found it heartbreaking how Cas’s father expressed his grief and how he didn’t realize he was hurting his children more by it.  And when Cas finally told him, it woke him up and I loved that it started both of them towards healing because Cas snapping at her father also made her realize that her actions were a part of her grief as well. 

The “Parental Past Tense”, the term Cas created in her discussion with Javi, really hit me, but I do think it was an interesting way of expressing grief. What do you think of Cas creating the term “Parental Past Tense”? 

Crystal: That phrase definitely sums up that awkward and painful moment of having to basically reveal that your parent is no longer alive. It’s a situation that often happens out of the blue and there’s always a moment when you can decide to omit using the past tense or just breeze past it. There are layers there because it’s about how the words impact the listeners as well as the person sharing their loss. Again there was contrast with Javi as he has gotten more comfortable with this past tense over time and Cas is just beginning the journey.

Audrey: The “Parental Past Tense” was a hard-hitting turn of phrase. It captures so much in just three words, and I really appreciated it from a language-learning standpoint. It’s something new, something that requires practice, and something that will take time to master.

Jessica: It really was a hard-hitting turn of phrase. Cas coming up with “Parental Past Tense” really says it all about how Cas and Javi approach grief, and Cas’s own struggles. 

K. Imani: The phrase hit my heart as well. It made me think of my students who have lost a parent and how they deal with their grief. I feel like the phrase really encompasses what it means to lose a parent and how you move forward. 

Lastly, what books are on your summer reading list?

K. Imani: I’m catching up on a lot of reading I was unable to do during the school year for reasons, but I am really looking forward to reading Children of Anguish and Anarchy, the conclusion of the Children of Blood and Bone series. I’ve been looking forward to this book for so long. 

Crystal: I have London on My Mind by Clara Alves on hold and am waiting for Where Wolves Don’t Die by Anton Treuer. I’m also excited to get to The Worst Ronin by Maggie Tokuda-Hall. As a teacher, summer is prime reading time so I hope to get to those and many more. And though it doesn’t come out until the first week in August, I am really anxious to read Hayley Dennings’ debut This Ravenous Fate.

Audrey: I have a road trip this summer, so I’m hoping to cross off a lot of books on my list. I’m especially looking forward to Asking for a Friend by Kara H.L. Chen. There are also several horror anthologies out this summer that have caught my attention, including We Mostly Come Out At Night edited by Rob Costello, The White Guy Dies First edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker, and The House Where Death Lives edited by Alex Brown, and I’m hoping to get my hands on some (or all) of them.  Jessica: I have Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao and Bunt! by Ngozi Ukazu at the very top of a huge stack of books on my desk and they are staring me in the face right now! I’m also interested in reading Asking for a Friend by Kara H.L. Chen and The Worst Ronin by Maggie Tokuda-Hall. And thank you for the reminder about the next Children of Blood and Bone book! I need to go put that on hold. So much to read!!

[kamreadsandrecs]

Title: The Lure of the Moonflower (Pink Carnation #12) Author: Lauren Willig Genre/s: romance, historical, Regency romance Content/Trigger Warning/s: period-accurate misogyny, period-accurate racism, one use of the N-word in a period context, mention of a parent’s suicide (in a character’s past) Summary (from the author’s website): Portugal, December 1807. Jack Reid, the British agent known as the Moonflower (formerly the French agent known as the Moonflower), has been stationed in Portugal and is awaiting his new contact. He does not expect to be paired with a woman—especially not the legendary Pink Carnation. All of Portugal believes that the royal family departed for Brazil just before the French troops marched into Lisbon. Only the English government knows that mad seventy-three-year-old Queen Maria was spirited away by a group of loyalists determined to rally a resistance. But as the French garrison scours the countryside, it's only a matter of time before she's found and taken. It's up to Jane to find her first and ensure her safety. But she has no knowledge of Portugal or the language. Though she is loath to admit it, she needs the Moonflower. Operating alone has taught her to respect her own limitations. But she knows better than to show weakness around the Moonflower—an agent with a reputation for brilliance, a tendency toward insubordination, and a history of going rogue. Buy Here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-lure-of-the-moonflower-lauren-willig/11145744 Spoiler-Free Review: Now I’ll admit: one of the reasons it took be so very long to pick this up is because of the pairing. I wanted to know what happened to Jane, of course, given the events of Purple Plumeria, but I wasn’t feeling very kindly towards Jack, who had caused everyone a world of trouble in Blood Lily and again in Purple Plumeria. And since I wasn’t all that into the pairing, I decided to pass on it until I was in the mood...which basically took me almost a decade to get over. But hey, that was the point of this massive reread: to finally just get on with it. Plus, my feelings regarding Jack had softened over time (and the fact that I’d forgotten most of what he’d done haha), so I decided to just get on with it and read it to finally finish the series. And I’ll admit, I was pleasantly surprised by how the pairing worked! My dislike of Jack came back over the course of the reread, albeit in a milder form than when I first read the series, and the way he acted in the first few chapters of this book certainly didn’t help. He struck me as an unnecessarily edgy SOB, whose past was certainly tragic but: come on. To be fair though, I thought that Jane was rather unlikable as well in the first chapters - something I didn’t notice in my previous read but which I finally noticed in the reread leading up to this book. Jane is, frankly speaking, a bit of a bitch: high-handed, snooty, and a know-it-all on a level that’s pretty annoying. There’s glimpses of it in Garden Intrigue, and then again in Purple Plumeria, but you really get a front-row seat for it in this book and BOY is it annoying. So you’d think these two wouldn’t have any sort of chemistry, and for the first couple of chapters, that is very true. I was skeptical of the pairing initially, wondering how the author would make it work. But I am glad to say that the author DID make it work - mostly by having these two abrasive personalities rub up against each other (metaphorically speaking - though, okay, also a bit literally in certain scenes) until their prickliness smoothed out and they, finally, became honest with each other about their past experience and emotions. Willig also used this as an opportunity to explore how the racism that Jack experienced as someone of half-British, half-Indian descent meant that he could not truly belong anywhere and engage with society as he wished to, unable to put his immense talents to good use in a legitimate way, In a similar fashion, the constant overwhelming misogyny and chauvinism of British society at the time meant Jane could not serve her country in the traditional way. Both Jack and Jane have been denied the traditional/legitimate paths to service and glory because society has denied them the opportunity to do more - Jack for being mixed race, and Jane for being a woman. And it is this connection that draws them together, and then as the novel progresses, becomes the foundation on which their romantic relationship is built. While the love story is certainly something I enjoyed, I will say that the fate of the Gardener is...something I kind of predicted. I guess it comes from the intense familiarity I have with the series because of the reread, but suffice to say that I already knew how a certain scene was going to turn out, which means the tension of the scene itself was entirely lost on me. Speaking of things I saw coming from a mile away: Eloise and Colin get a happy ending, though there’s a bit of family drama that rears its head up in this novel that, like the aforementioned scene involving the Gardener, loses all its tension - not just because I already knew how it would turn out, but because it just seemed a bit...silly? Anyway: I AM FINALLY DONE WITH THIS SERIES AND CAN PUT IT TO BED BABYEEEEE~! And now I think to cleanse my brain with something a bit harder-edged. Rating: four moonflowers

[demonir]

Ok lmao I literally watched emesis blue with my mom last night here’s what I did, I originally was just gonna say it in tags but I got a lot to say apparently bc I love to yap

Also I know this post is hours old so I might be late but I still wanna share ✌️

MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD, THEY WILL BE MARKED

Watching the movie doesn’t require in depth knowledge of the source thankfully but some surface knowledge would enhance the experience such as “two ugly old brothers have 2 teams of mercenaries fighting each other in a worthless war in New Mexico in the 1960s, also when they die they come back to life and it’s called respawning in game terms” this all depends on if you’ve already told your dad abt tf2 or not I uhh… had infodumped for 4 hours prior to watching the movie with my mom lmao

Key info that I think should be mentioned: that RED and BLU are acronyms and they will be mentioned in the movie as well (mainly Builders League) - Also that RED and BLU look identical and it’s on purpose, this might be confusing to a bystander - Also explain what the medigun is and the concept of rocket jumping since both are mentioned or at least implied and someone that doesn’t know might not understand shit (mainly the medigun, I feel most people can figure out the rocket jumping part from context alone but the medigun “looks like the ghostbusters thing” according to my 53 year old mother)

I advice mentioning beforehand that the movie is psychological horror and very violent just in case, if your dad is not one for confusing and time bending plots you might have a lot of explaining to do and it’s fine if you say you don’t get it bc truly it’s like that on purpose

This is just a general note that I think is immensely useful and everyone should know: Emesis Blue comes with subtitles in a lot of languages, I watched it with Spanish ones for my mom and they were very well made idk abt the others but I assume they are too. If you don’t need them in another language English is still there as well (and they are very helpful for parts where audio might be hard to understand such as the phone calls)

You might sound annoying but specifying that paying attention to the movie is important is a good thing bc truly I had to go back a few seconds sometimes because my mom missed something and she immediately got confused because missing the plot is THAT easy with this movie

Cool pieces of trivia to mention during the movie or after:

(EMESIS BLUE SPOILERS AND “M” SPOILERS) The tapes Medic has are mostly old real German movies, the movie scout picks up titled “M” is a movie about a child serial killer and the symbolism of the “M” will be prevalent throughout the movie and parallel Medic’s journey as well in fact, the scene at scouts house when he’s watching said move he receives the phone call right when the murderer finds his fist victim and if I remember correctly later on the tv shows the scene where the murderer has been caught and it also directly parallels the scene in emesis blue. ALSO the fact medic gets literally an “M” branded on his face at one point which happens in the German movie to the killer (he gets marked with an M on his back so that they could find him later). Btw the movie “M” is free on YouTube with English subtitles, all of it and contains no gore (it’s a good watch)

The movie is fan made with a free software released by Valve that’s now pretty fucken old, I think emphasizing this can bring into view how cool this is from both an artistic and technical view (while I think that the SFM models are different from the in game models they were still made years ago)

(SPOILER) The burned pyro face we see momentarily in the movie is an actual game asset from another one of valve’s games (I believe half life?) which depicts a burn victim except it’s an ACTUAL REAL burn victim and the texture used came from a real medical book (I loved telling this to my mom bc I saw the disgust in her face lmao)

You can for a fraction of a second see the 2fort cow when Medic is running away from the masked Heavy for the first time, I believe just saying that the cardboard cow is a running gag is enough explanation and it makes it funny (my mom thought it was a real cow and saw no issue with it being there bc it was a “slaughterhouse” after all)

You could mention that the Conagher Slaughterhouse is an actual in game map although edited

(SEMI SPOILER) The engineer(s) have no eyes because their models simply were not made with the idea to take off the goggles ever, this is being used for added horror factor

(SPOILERS) The movie has lots of references to other movies and pieces of media but I genuinely don’t remember the names right now, most specific thing I remember is soldier’s attempt to cross a broken bridge but falling being a possible parallel to a story of a man trying to escape hell and go to heaven but directly falling into the deepest layers of hell instead (I’d really appreciate if someone remembers the actual references and could list them, if not I might go look them up again and reblog again with the list) (EVEN BIGGER SPOILERS) also the fact we never truly find out the contents of the briefcase is a reference to another famous movie with almost the same plot line

That’s all for trivia I can remember rn, I asked my mom what she’d like to say/recommend about the movie for another parent to watch and here’s what she had to say:

Talk about it like you would any movie, explain the overall plot or a bit of it to catch attention and raise interest

It’s a really good movie that makes you think a lot and has an interesting plot that holds well even if you’re not into the source it comes from

Do not mention the fact that it’s gonna leave you with more questions than answers

Besides this she agreed with what I said before so 👍

That’s all from me hope it helps you or anyone else or just gives you some funny trivia idk also if anyone knows more or better or saw that I got smth wrong feel free to let me know, I watched the movie again last night but a lot of the trivia I knew from months ago so I might be remembering it wrong (I tend to do that)

Have fun 👍

Okay y'all, tomorrow I'm going to be forcing my dad to watch Emesis Blue. Any advice you have for him that you want me to tell him? Or context or anything like that because I suck at giving advise and context

[jazy3]

Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 18X01

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

I was really excited for the Premiere and I have never been so disappointed in my life. It took me a few days to write this review because I’m just so unimpressed. I feel like the only interesting parts of the Season 18 Premiere were the Meredith and Hayes FaceTime call, Levi in that outfit and Jo with that hair, and the interviews. That's it. I mean Teddy and Owen’s two weddings were interesting if you’re a Teddy and Owen shipper, but I never have been so that didn’t really do anything for me.

The pacing of the episode was super slow and it was just altogether boring. There were also just so many inconsistencies. For example, Teddy and Owen originally planned to get married at the park with just Megan, Farouk, Evelyn, Leo, and Allison which doesn’t make sense because prior to their break up they were talking about planning their dream wedding. Now they finally get married and Richard didn’t even know about it? They asked Megan to fly in, but they didn’t tell their friends at the hospital after they just all attended Maggie and Winston’s wedding two weeks earlier?

It’s also not clear if Meredith knows that they got married which is weird because she’s the main character of the show and was an integral part of Owen’s previous two weddings one of which was held at her house. Also, Amelia and Link weren’t there and it’s not clear if they even knew about the wedding which is weird because Meredith, Amelia, and Link were all present when Owen proposed to Teddy at Christmas at Meredith’s house and they are all co-parenting Leo together.

While I appreciated the shift to a lighter tone and that they chose to have this season exist in a post-COVID alternative universe where we can see the actors faces again without the PPE and return to escapism the Premiere didn't pack the punch I was expecting. The premieres are usually super shocking and action packed and this one just wasn't. It was just boring and all of the most interesting stuff happened off camera during the two weeks between the Season 17 Finale and the Season 18 Premiere which is just stupid.

I saw the priest getting hit by one of the cyclists coming a few minutes before it happened based on the promo and the context of the scene and there wasn't a big shocking event like there usually is. The pace of the Premiere really felt off to me. My friend Amy who I watch with every week described it as the pacing you usually associate with a nice stroll through a moonlit garden. Fine for episode two or three or a connecting episode but not the Premiere. I feel like they really misjudged what fans were looking for and I’m hoping that they do the work and course correct now that the Premiere has aired and the completely dismal fan reaction as come out.

One of the few bright spots for me was the introduction of Peter Gallagher as Dr. David Hamilton. I love him as an actor! He's great! His recent roles in Grace and Frankie and Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist were fantastic! I was super excited when I heard he was coming to Grey's. I like Dr. Hamilton so far and I'm interested to see how his relationship with Ellis and Meredith having dreams about her mother following her battle with COVID will play into the story this season. While it would be interesting to see Meredith work in Minnesota temporarily like Cristina did back in Season 9, I don't want her there permanently. Seattle is as much a character in the show as any of the main characters we've come to love, and something would be missing for me if she moved.

To be perfectly honest, it doesn't make much sense to me for Meredith to move to Minnesota permanently when she only knows a few people there. Who would watch her kids? If she's going to move to me, it makes more sense for her to move to Kansas where Alex is or Switzerland where Cristina is. Her kids have already lost their father and so many other caregivers and Meredith has stuck it out in Seattle for so long after everything that's happened that her moving to Minnesota for me would be bonkers.

Also, where were her kids in the Premiere? All of the interviews that came out prior to the Premiere talked about how Meredith’s focus at the beginning of the season would be on her work and her kids, but they were nowhere to be found in the Premiere and it’s not clear whose watching them while Meredith is in Minnesota. The interviews also made it seem like Meredith and Hayes would still be circling each other at the start of the season with quotes about how timing hadn’t been on their side, that they still needed to have an official drink and go out on a date, and that while Meredith wasn’t looking for a relationship one might find her.

That had literally nothing to do with the Premiere we saw whatsoever! The kids were MIA and it turned out that Meredith and Hayes started dating off screen following Maggie and Winston’s wedding and we didn’t get to see ANY of the firsts they talked about so much over the last two seasons. So stupid. The Premiere was a total rip off. I hate that Nick Marsh is back and I’ve never gone from liking a character and an actor to hating them in such a short period of time ever. My God. I’m so pissed off about this. What the hell were they thinking? Why did they think we would want this at all?

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Nick Marsh as a character and Scott Speedman's portrayal of him when he first showed up in Season 14. I was all ready for him to be Meredith's next great love and I was on board. But then he disappeared and was never heard from again and it was reported that Speedman wanted to take a break from TV for a while so I mourned the loss of what could have been and moved on. I sat through the out of character nonsense that was the DeLuca storyline in the belief that eventually that storyline would end, and Meredith would get a real proper love interest that made sense and would be her post-Derek endgame.

So, I was really excited when they introduced Hayes and I have really come to love his character and his budding relationship with Meredith. I feel like I've been waiting forever to finally see them go on a date and I am super pissed off that we didn't get to see it. I would have loved this storyline with Nick if they had introduced it at any previous point in time, but now after they've spent so much time setting up Meredith and Hayes it's just infuriating. I feel immense rage over how they handled Meredith and Hayes and Meredith and Nick’s storylines in the Premiere. I'm so angry. The whole thing just made no sense. That Premiere should never have aired. It never should have gotten past the draft stage. It was that bad. The first date and all of the firsts that come with a new relationship are the most exciting parts of a romantic storyline for me and I love seeing all of that on screen. They hyped Meredith and Hayes’ relationship up so much and even had the two of them talk about 'firsts' and dating after death so for their first date to happen off screen along with Austin's panic attacks and bad reaction to his Dad starting to date again is just such a rip off.

I have stuck with this show through thick and thin and for them to reward that loyalty by having the most interesting parts of that storyline happen off screen while showing a bunch of stuff on screen with other characters that they could have just told us about? So ridiculous. I was so excited for this season and now I'm just angry. I'm hoping that they are building to a big mid-season finale where Meredith is going to return to Seattle and by that time Bailey will have helped Hayes out with Austin and the two of them will finally get together on screen but I'm starting to feel like every time I get invested in one of the Meredith's new love interests, they pull the rug out from under me and I'm getting really fed up.

In other news, I'm not too surprised that Megan and Riggs broke up off screen only because Virgin River, which I love, just got picked up for two more seasons and I imagine Martin Henderson is busy filming that and it looks like Megan is going to be around for a while and they had to explain it somehow. I loved Meredith and Riggs together and I hated how they ended that storyline so I'm not sad about them breaking up off screen.

The Premiere also broke my heart over Amelia and Link’s storyline. It’s just so stupid. It’s drama for drama’s sake that’s all it is and it’s tired. When did marriage become so important to Link? In the span of a few months, he went from being totally fine with not getting married and checking in with Amelia every few weeks on how she felt to convincing himself that Amelia wanted him to propose so he did so at her sister's wedding and used her dead brother's children to do it. Amelia's right the whole thing was super messed up and manipulative and she was right to say no.

Link decided marriage was important to him and that fostering Luna would be totally fine without ever talking to Amelia. Yes, Amelia should have shared her thoughts with him too, but he also should have paid attention. Now their otherwise healthy relationship is over because she doesn't want to participate in an archaic ritual that involves signing a contract and exchanging vows? That's just stupid. I hope they find a way to work it out and get back together because I really like them as a couple.

I like Dr. Michelle Lin the new Head of Plastic of Surgery that Bailey and Richard are looking to hire. I thought for sure after that photo of the other guy made the rounds on social media that he was going to be the new Head of Plastics, but then he said that he doesn't do "free" and I knew he was out. I'm excited for there to be another female surgeon of colour on the show as the gender and racial balance on the show has been more white and male as of late and I think Grey's is at its best when you have a roughly equal number of women and men and as many different races being represented as possible.

I think it makes the storylines more interesting and authentic and personally gives me more characters that I can identify with. This new doctor seems driven, determined, and could have a potentially interesting dynamic with Richard and Bailey. She’s also giving me some Cristina Yang vibes and I’m all for that. I love Cristina. Always have. Always will. That being said, I'm a bit confused as to where they are going with Jo's storyline as I thought for sure the new Head of Plastics would be a guy and her new love interest. But Bailey did say they still needed to hire a new general surgeon and a new neurosurgeon so maybe one of them will be for her?

I can't really say that there was anything I loved about the Premiere which is disappointing. Jo's parenting hair dye mishap was funny, Levi's outfit cracked me up, and I liked that Bailey agreed to help Hayes out, but that's about it. The thing I was most excited for coming into this season was Meredith finally being back on her feet and seeing the romantic storyline between her and Hayes finally come to fruition.

Finding out that she's going to be in Minnesota for the foreseeable future, she and Hayes started dating off screen but had to call it quits because seeing his Dad date someone new caused Austin to have panic attacks, and finding out that Nick Marsh is back? I hated it. I don't understand how the same person who wrote the Season 16 masterpiece “Snowblind” with that amazing snow scene between Meredith and Hayes wrote the Premiere. I just don't understand. I really hope they're not going to do a love triangle with Meredith, Hayes, and Nick because that would just be so stupid.

She's a forty something award-winning surgeon who's a widowed single mother of three. Love triangles made sense when she was young intern, but at this point it's just dumb. I also didn't feel the chemistry this time around between Meredith and Nick like I did the first time. It felt forced and flat. I like Maggie and Winston together, but I didn't find their storyline in the Premiere particularly engaging. I'm glad that Amelia stayed true to herself, but I hate that Link has decided marriage is the only way forward and that they're still fighting.

The only moment that really made me laugh out of the hour was when Jo opened the door and Levi was in that ridiculous outfit. I loved the FaceTime call between Meredith and Hayes, but I hated the context. Honestly, I'm not really excited about any upcoming storyline this season which makes me really sad. I'm usually super positive and hopeful when it comes to this show, but this episode just stomped all over my dreams. All I can hope for now is that they pull a twist and everything I was hoping for happens in the mid-season finale otherwise I don't think I'm going to like this season very much.

Until next time!

[wrenhyperfixates]

Loki Series Thoughts—Glorious Purpose

Ok, I’m always nervous about posting my thoughts, but here we go. Spoilers ahead of course!!! (Disclaimer: Any gifs or images are not mine.)

Let’s start out with the episode’s name: Glorious Purpose. I know some people were a bit miffed about the emphasis put on the line, but I actually thought it worked well. It’s not so much that Loki actually believes in this “purpose,” but rather he is clinging to what he’s been told his purpose is. And by the end of the episode, he’s finally working through some of the things he’s been hurt by, abandoning what he’s been forced into and ready to be who he wants. Granted, it’s still going to take some time for him to come to grips with all that has happened, but I’m excited to see the journey.

The TVA. They undeniably suck. Whether or not it will be addressed directly, they are the (or one of the) antagonists in the show. What they are doing is, frankly, tyrannical. Three “time keepers” have taken it upon themselves to force countless versions of time and people into one single stream. And you know what? They can’t control that timeline. Not like they want to. As much as Loki’s line about “the weak” applies to himself, it applies to the TVA, too. It’s a facade of control that they cling to; if they truly had the right, the ability, to control time, everyone would follow their path. There would be no variants. Now, I could write a whole separate analysis on the MCU’s explanation of time travel. It’s convoluted and in a large way doesn’t make sense.

I’d like to talk about Loki’s characterization. I am, in a word, relieved. From the trailers, Tom seemed to be over-acting, something rather strange for someone so good at conveying deep emotions through nuanced actions. Now I believe any exaggerated lines from the trailers are just Loki trying to separate himself from who he’s been told he is, and trying to reinvent himself. I don’t think that’s a bad thing either; they’re not rewriting Loki, he’s just growing in a new way. And though this way is “new” I think it will be similar to what we’ve seen before. From what we’ve seen so far, there is good continuity, and they are addressing things about Loki that should be addressed in canon.

Loki projects. Most notably in the Avengers, but also a bit in Thor 1 and The Dark World, a lot of Loki’s lines can be applied to himself, though he is talking generally or towards another group. What comes to mind is actually something he touches upon again in the series. The illusion of freedom. And though it is not said that line in particular is him thinking of himself, it can be inferred based on his admission that the line in the gifs above apply to him. Also that little gesture when he says “weak” breaks me. He’s hurting so much.

Loki is not a villain. He may think he’s one because everyone else is telling him that, yet we’re already seeing it brought up that it’s not true. I can only hope that we’ll see Loki state this himself later in the series. He was largely forced to do what he did. It is not his fault, so how can he be a villain?

Loki cares. Tom’s acting is just *chef’s kiss* Seeing his mother’s death hurts so much. I love that his first response is denial. Loki is thrown into something he’s never known about before, being shown things that, to his knowledge, have never happened. But then when he’s had a few seconds to wander around the TVA on his own terms, he’s more come to grips with all that’s going on. So, when he’s by himself and see’s Frigga lying there, dead, it gets to him. Then seeing Odin still call him his son, he feels the slightest glimmer of hope, but also regret; he already knows in the back of his mind that he’s not actually going to get that. Loki’s living from second to second, trying to hold on. He probably thinks this ends with his death. (I do have issues with that Odin scene in context of Ragnarok but that’s more a tangential aside, so I’ll gloss over it for now.) Then seeing Thor and himself acting like brothers again is heartwarming. So just when he’s feeling uplifted, Thanos comes into the picture. He realizes how much control the titan still had over his life; he never really escaped. And in the end, Thanos made good on his promise. And that is terrifying! And he laughs at it. It’s a sad sort of laugh, one that’s slightly crazed. Loki feels that no matter what he does, it ends in pain. By the end of seeing all that, he is a man broken. Rather, more broken than he already was.

Loki is struggling. That’s nothing profound; it’s obvious. But where it really stands out to me is actually in a part I originally thought to be out of character. I am referring to “What if I was a robot and I didn’t know it.” Upon closer inspection, I realize it’s actually that his perception of himself has been so thrown that he really isn’t sure about his own chemical makeup anymore. Odin and Frigga keeping from him that he’s a frost giant made him so unsure of himself, he thought he might not even be a living being.

Nervous tics. Was I the only one noticing his leg bouncing when he talked to Mobius? And what about that scene when he’s sitting on the steps? He begins to pick at his hands. Note, that’s something he did in T1 after finding out he was a frost giant and while confessing to the Warriors Four about how he was the one who told the guard of their trip to Jotunheim. Just a little detail I really appreciated. (If anyone has gifs of any of these things, feel free to share :)

Mobius. I’ll be honest, I’m a bit undecided. I’m hesitant to say he’s evil. After all, we haven’t seen that much of him yet. However, I will say he is unscrupulous and manipulative. His questions weren’t to help Loki work through his trauma. Mobius was trying to goad him into helping, and likely was trying to gauge how much this Loki is like the variant he’s tracking. When Loki makes any admission of his feelings, it’s something he already knew, not a conclusion Mobius helped him reach. Mobius mocks him a bit and pushes his buttons because he sees Loki as a means to an end, and wants to know how easily he can get him to work with him. And what strikes me is how similar Mobius’s deal is to Thor’s deal in TDW. Thor doesn’t offer Loki freedom, he offers revenge. Mobius’s deal is just another variation of this. He can’t offer “salvation” but he can offer something “better”. Working for the TVA really isn’t better, though. So what does he mean? Well, I think he means a chance for Loki to prove he’s a hero. I hope as the show progresses it’s addressed that Loki doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone. That’s what he’s been doing his whole life, but I want Loki to see for himself that he doesn’t have to.

Miss Minutes. Propaganda. Plain and simple, it’s propaganda. Besides the way it praises the “time keepers” as amazing saviors, necessary to keep the world in order, it’s essentially saying “don’t think for yourself.” The whole point of the video is “the time keepers are great. The TVA is flawless. Trust us to decide everything. You have no autonomy in the world we want, so surrender your free will. Submit to the system we’ve decided is perfect and everything will be just fine.” Of course, by “just fine” they mean the variant will be pruned and the timeline will keep going as the time keepers see fit. The animation style was great though! It really fit.

The infinity stones. I think their inclusion makes sense. If you remember from Endgame, the stones being in the right place in the right time keeps the timeline from branching, and thus prevents the multiverse from being created. Likely, the time keepers used the stones to make their “sacred timeline.” Naturally, any variant time stones would cause a problem. That’s why they have so many extras. But think about how pointless so much of what happened seems. Nat, Gamora, Vision, Tony, everyone who was snapped, everyone who was left. So, literally the entire universe was flipped upside down for paperweights. It really puts Thanos’s pursuit of the stones into perspective, doesn’t it?

The cloaked figure. I think there’s some misdirection going on here in one way or another. Mobius says he’s chasing a Loki variant, then immediately it cuts to a scene with the cloaked figure. Our minds are likely to assume that is the variant then. But they don’t actually say it’s Loki, so I’m inclined to believe it’s not. Though, I don’t have enough information to say who I do think it is, I could make a couple of educated guesses and say Mephisto (he certainly interacted with Loki in the comics, plus there’s the stained glass window) or Sylvie. Well, whoever Sophia Di Martino’s character is. I know she was previously listed as Sylvie on sources such as IMDb, but that has since disappeared. But why would you have a “young Sylvie” (Cailey Fleming) without an older version? There is speculation Di Martino’s character will be Lady Loki, but I hope this won’t happen. If they make Lady Loki her own character, I doubt we’ll see Variant Loki get to be fluid. Even if it’s confirmed on the record, it’d be nice to see actually happen beyond a piece of paper. And with twist villains being such a prominent force in modern media, I’m interested to see who our cloaked friend really is.

Time travel. Like I said earlier, this is a lot. But I can’t talk about the episode and not mention this aspect in at least a little more depth. I don’t like how the MCU deals with time travel. I think it’s an unnecessarily complicated mix of a number of different, already complicated theories. However, I think Loki will ultimately escape from the TVA and create a multiverse too difficult to prune (and maybe he’ll actually get to burn the place down too!) This will then tie directly into Doctor Strange 2. Do you guys know what that’s called? The Multiverse of Madness. Actually, in the Miss Minutes propaganda, they almost exactly say “will throw the multiverse into madness.” Will we get to (finally!) see a certain raven-haired god meeting Dr. Strange? And maybe even the Scarlet Witch herself? Well, I’m not sure, but right now I think it’s looking pretty good!

And some random things that didn’t really anywhere else:

Peggy is in the background?! My thought here is that Steve wasn’t supposed to stay with her. This made not only a Variant Steve, but also a Variant Peggy. We may not see Steve, but I bet he’s been taken care of too!! And who knows? Maybe there will be a cameo later. Otherwise, it might be something that was cut from the show, or just a fun easter egg of sorts.

The score was so good! It sets the mood perfectly.

Loki is a good fighter. Even if he’s overpowered, he finds a way.

Some of the humor didn’t land, but that might just be a personal thing.

So now my final thoughts. It’s their strongest pilot yet. So much emotion crammed into less than an hour. A lot of exposition, too, yet it didn’t feel tedious (Endgame I’m looking at you). And then we get to delve into Loki’s psyche, something that really appeals to me! Overall, 9/10. I hope the rest of the series is as good!

Did I miss anything? Was there something you were hoping I’d mention and didn’t? Or do you have something to add or (politely!) disagree with? I’d love to hear it all! Remember, fandom is a safe space to talk about, analyze, and debate about things you enjoy. My ask box is always open with anon on. Reblogs and comments are great too. Thanks!

Me after watching the episode:

[cavehags]

chell! any thoughts on kevin can fuck himself? i was surprised with how much i liked the pilot, but that's all i've seen so far. curious to know if you're enjoying it

i am enjoying it! i'm caught up up to episode five now and i think the fifth episode was the best and most focused so far. there are a lot of flaws that i wish i could swoop in to fix, but i like the show so much for what it's trying to be that the downsides don't hurt my experience all that much.

the positives: i love how it looks. the multicam-to-single-cam shifts are quite jarring at first but become very natural as you get used to it. i love that the variation in lighting allows you to pick up on little details that you can only see in one of the two worlds. in the multicam, you can see that kevin is wearing shoes that are brand-new. but in the single cam, you can see that allison's sweater is stained or in tatters.

i also love how gingerly they're developing allison and patti's relationship. it's not too fast in that instant-best-friends way that you get on comedies; there's a real hesitation to trust there and it's not all in allison's control. allison's attitude toward patti is very interesting; patti's ignored her or treated her outright cruelly for so long, but she's so desperate for an ally that she doesn't seem bothered by those old wounds. the fact that allison is the one chasing patti's friendship and patti is the one rebuffing her, in spite of patti's treatment of her, paints such a heartbreaking picture of allison.

i like how the show is balancing kevin's hijinks with allison's mission. i read quite a few interviews about how challenging it was to find plotlines and jokes for kevin that the audience would enjoy watching even though they hate him and i think they're succeeding there. i really appreciate that the writers have found episodic storylines that are perfectly par for the course in a sitcom but quite chilling in light of what we know about allison's inner life. the fifth episode did the best job of this. when kevin stations his buddies on the couch and then puts patti and allison in the hot seat, asking questions in a booming voice that showcases his power over them, that was really masterful. it was so sitcom-esque that no one would think twice about it in a show like kevin can wait, but in context, it was really really disturbing and scary.

my main concern going into this show was that there might just not be enough plot to justify eight full hours of allison trying different methods to kill her husband. i had envisioned that her attempts to kill him would be episodic trial-and-error, attempting one method in one episode and trying another one the next week when the last one didn't work out. in the end they wound up leaning more serialized with allison sticking to one main approach and just going about it all very slowly. i'm glad that's what they decided on. but while i appreciate the gravity the series is bringing to her storyline by giving it the slow pace it deserves and allowing each installment to properly build on the last, not to mention the very deliberate contrast it draws between that and kevin's more episodic antics, i have to admit that i find it hard to feel compelled by this drug dealer stuff. i think my problem with it is that the obstacles that allison and patti keep running into are pretty external and disconnected from the kevin of it all. and although there was a bit of this in episode two, i still think the series could do a better job of highlighting why opioids are a particularly elegant murder weapon for the housewife who nobody listens to. but (spoilers) they've moved past the murder-by-pills angle now so i doubt we'll be circling back.

i also like the character of sam, the guy who owns the diner, and what allison's crush on him brings to the story. however, i do worry that he's not being afforded the type of inner life that allison has fought for. allison seems to care for him, but her apparent lack of interest in his pre-existing relationship and his newfound sobriety worry me a little. we're getting breadcrumbs about him though and i wonder if the writers are attentive to the fact that it's not uncommon for a love interest who is a person of color to just be a tool to prop up a white lead. i wonder if it's deliberate. maybe sam's need for interiority could be a setup for season two?

my last gripe is that i still want to learn so much more about allison than what we're getting. patti comes through very clearly to me--her acerbic wit, her hesitation to trust people and burden them with inner life, her big heart that causes her to put herself in bad situations. what we know about allison outside of kevin's orbit is that she's quick to temper, she has unfulfilled dreams, she's impulsive, and she has a dorky sense of humor. (annie murphy is really doing fantastic work with her expressions whenever allison makes a joke and sort of half-smiles as she hopes it will land.) i really badly want a flashback episode to see who allison was before she met kevin, and what her family was like. just want to see how she landed in this multicam world where so much of her is erased. i think we have a shot at seeing something like that in the back half of the season so fingers crossed. 🤞

overall i think the show is managing a lot of moving parts very well. it's very entertaining and it's really scratching an itch for me! i would like to see some more of kevin looming large even in the single cam storylines that he has no involvement in, just to better show the suffocating grip he has on allison's life. like when he reported the car stolen, interrupting allison and patti's day just when they felt they were free of him, that was really gripping. and i would like to know more about allison and how she got to this point. i'm hoping we get more of both in the back half of the season.

[chitto]

I Analyzed All Of the Songs on Ranboo’s Lore Playlist and Here’s What I Learned.

We can pick a few themes out from the songs: 

Time

Fighting something inside of you 

Alluding to a villain arc 

Transition of a person 

My biggest theory from all this is that c!Ranboo is a time traveler from the future (probably before Mizu but after the Haunted Mansion). He traveled to the past, November 27th specifically, to stop c!Tommy’s exile. We can assume that in c!Ranboo’s future, c!Tommy burned down c!George’s house by himself but when c!Ranboo went back, he got caught up in it, thus creating a time paradox. (Evidence from the songs Merry-Go-Round of Life, all songs of Hawaii - Part Two by Miracle Musical, and The Ruler of Everything). Now knowing he is the cause of c!Tommy’s exile, c!Ranboo feels immense amounts of guilt for his actions, the regret keeping him up at night (Ain’t No Rest for The Wicked). This mental stress is something that has resulted in the beginnings of insanity for c!Ranboo (The Mind Electric). 

A villain arc is very plausible for c!Ranboo in the near future, most likely brought up by harm coming to c!Tubbo or Michael (Killer Queen, Mr. Bad Guy, I Can’t Decide, Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked, and Live and Let Die) 

Full Analysis on Each Song Under the Cut: 

(All Song Lyric Analysis Credits go to the wonderful people on genius, I merely fit them into the context of the DreamSmp and c!Ranboo) 

Prologue (StarKid) - A simple ticking clock. ARG trailer tie in as well as even more references of time. 

Introduction to the Snow (Miracle Musical) - Comes off an album that (storywise) has the listener loop over and over the songs in the album, as a time paradox. 

Dream Sweet in Sea Major (Miracle Musical) - Final song in the album (loops). Occurs in three movements. Tells the story of a sailor that gives himself up to the mermaids. Lyrics don’t give much in terms of hints at anything. 

Turn the Lights Off (Tally Hall) - About a journey through puberty and adolescence (??) perhaps could be changed to fit. However main name of the song is meant to convey accepting differences and confronting fears, something c!Ranboo doesn’t really do. First line also says ‘Don’t go in there, you’ll become one, Freaky creatures, monster party’ perhaps relating to the enderwalk/possession c!Ranboo goes through. 

The Mind Electric (Miracle Musical) - The song starts off in reverse, the singer speaking backwards. Once the song straightens out, we’re shown that the protagonist of the song is a mentally unstable man trying to figure out what triggers a specific fear. The second verse then goes into a young child who’s been held trial for insanity. The child and the judge then have an open dialogue throughout the rest of the verse until the child is sent to an asylum. The song concludes with insane yet peaceful thoughts from the child. Obviously I’m not a psychiatrist but doing some light research into insanity (NOT psychosis, as insanity is more of an umbrella term for unstable mental state while psychosis is a specified disorder) you can see a few signs of insanity that could be applied to c!Ranboo. ‘Denial of obvious problems’ Many times c! Ranboo has dismissed or downplayed his issues and problems, most notably when he’s found in a panicked state by c!Sam who asks him if he’s okay, to which c!Ranboo replies that he’s fine. ‘Delusions or Hallucinations’ this is a big one as throughout the Doomsday arc, c!Ranboo spoke to c!Dream in his panic room, only to realize he was talking to no one. ‘Dramatic changes in sleeping habits’ This is more of a reach as we have no actually confirmation but it could be assumed that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking could be disrupting his sleep patterns. 

Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney) - a song about a once young person who used to say ‘Live and Let Live’ but has now changed their maxim to ‘Live and Let Die’. Could be said that as people grow older they grow more cynical. Granted the phrases mean the same thing but one seems much more pessimistic. 

The Ruler of Everything (Tally Hall) - Once again a song about time, the entire song meant to symbolize how time controls our lives (once again feeding into a time paradox theory). The song has a verse that is a man and Time itself singing. The song then starts to speed up, representing how short periods of our lives can be in the grand scheme of things. ‘Do you understand that mechanical hands are the ruler of everything’ This lyric of the song is meant to mean that time (the mechanical hands of the clock) are at the root of everything, once again drawing us back to a time motif with Ranboo’s character. This specific line could lead us to believe that c!Ranboo is being ‘controlled’ by time, aka perhaps caught in a time travelers loop. 

Merry-Go-Round Of Life (Howl’s Moving Castle OST) - While the song itself is an instrumental without words, one could do some digging into the story of Howl’s Moving Castle, spoilers for the film in this analysis. In Howl’s Moving Castle, there is a sequence in which Sophie goes back in time to find Howl, seeing him as a young boy. She calls out to him, telling him to find her in the future, before getting taken back to her time. It seems pretty insignificant until you remember that in the beginning of the film, during Howl and Sophie’s first interaction he says to her, “There you are, sweetheart, sorry I’m late. I was looking everywhere.” thus representing that Howl has been looking for Sophie his entire life after she called out to him in the past. So what does this mean for c!Ranboo? Well its just more time motif and even more time paradox themes. But what even is a time paradox? A time paradox is when somebody who has traveled back in time, becomes a part of the past and causes the events they set out to stop in the first place. Perhaps this means c!Ranboo traveled back in time to stop c!Tommy’s exile, as it was a catalyst event that resulted in many problems on the server (L’manberg’s second destruction to name one) before getting sucked into the events that caused it himself. 

Killer Queen (Queen) - Really can’t say too much for this song as the song is meant to convey how “that classy people can be whores as well” (Freddie Mercury). Freddie also said that anyone else could call their own interpretations of the song as well. I can’t really think of too much about the song that could be molded to c!Ranboo. 

Mr. Bad Guy (Freddie Mercury) - This one is more interesting as the bridge of this song details how Freddie is ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ and that he can ruin people’s lives and many people are afraid of him. This could sound like something c!Ranboo would say in relation to someone trying to threaten the people he cares about. c!Ranboo going to any length for those he cares about (most notably his family) is something that recently cc!Ranboo has tried to drive home, making it a tweet under his character’s lore thread on twitter. 

Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked (Cage the Elephant) - The main line of this song is a bible verse that means that those who are sin-free can sleep well at night knowing they haven’t done anything wrong but those are commit sins need to keep one eye open at all times. Perhaps c!Ranboo believes that he has done something wrong that keeps him up at night. It could be tied back to the time paradox theory by saying that c!Ranboo is kept up at night by the fact that he couldn’t stop the bad events from happening, even becoming a part of them. 

The Bidding (Tally Hall) - While the song itself is about an auction in which men are trying to “sell” themselves to a woman, I would like to call attention to one specific verse. ‘I’ve been training like a Pavlov dog,  Let my independence out to take a hike, All you gotta do is activate my bell, and I’ll fetch you anything you like’. The first lyric calls reference to Ivan Pavlov, who ran a conditioning experiment on dogs, training them to associate the sound of a bell with food, whether they actually got food or not. The last two lyrics I find particularly interesting as we have seen somebody “activate” c!Ranboo. c!Sapnap. After c!Sapnap visited c!Dream in prison, c!Dream asked c!Sapnap to deliver a message to c!Ranboo. The message being ‘:)’. When c!Sapnap repeated the message to c!Ranboo, c!Ranboo immediately switched and began to speak in enderman language before wandering off. He then spoke to c!Sapnap in chat saying, in ender, “Doomed are those who try to run, for it always catches up eventually :)’. This is one of many incidents of c!Ranboo being switched into his enderwalk state, in which he does stuff for c!Dream such as burning down the community house. 

I Can’t Decide (Scissor Sisters) - This song is a upbeat song about a psychotic killer trying to decide on whether or not he should kill his victim. This song could relate back to c!Ranboo��s relationship with c!Dream. c!Ranboo has been very cagey on whether or not he would like c!Dream, most recently being very eager to break into prison and murder him. This song could also hint towards a possible villain arc for c!Ranboo. 

Stardust Crusaders (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures OST) - Unfortunately, this song is another instrumental. And even more unfortunately, I don’t watch JJBA so I can’t comment on what the song could be alluding to. Stardust Crusaders is the name of an arc of the show but reading through the plot summary on Wikipedia doesn’t turn back anything that could be tied to c!Ranboo. 

A Mask of My Own Face (Lemon Demon) - While the song itself is relatively simple, a man singing about how he wants to wear a mask of his own face to confuse people, a few lines have sparked certain people to examine the song deeper coming to the conclusion that the singer wants to cause chaos and controversy. The mask of his own face would allow him to mask his identity, as no one would wear a mask of their own face, while still allowing him to be associated with the chaos. For c!Ranboo I can’t really see this pointing to anything but the Syndicate. c!Ranboo really does believe in their core value of dismantling the things on the server that are bad but also he knows many people he’s close to who are at odds with members of the Syndicate, most notable c!Tubbo. However this could be rather lose as cc!Ranboo is a big fan of Lemon Demon and who hasn’t put a song from their favorite artist on a playlist even though the vibe doesn’t necessarily fit. 

Stranded Lullaby (Miracle Musical) - Another song of the Miracle Musical album Hawaii - Part Two, which loops itself over within the story. This particular song is about a sailor sailing through a cerebral ocean, which may or may not represent time itself; the sailor being a time traveler who had a mistake in his time traveling. This once again brings us back to the theory of c!Ranboo as a time traveler. There is also a line I would like to call upon, ‘Aimless thoughts and papers blown around, A million moments meant remembered rest in deep dark sound’. These lyrics are meant to relate to memories and how truly fleeting some may be, just papers floating in our brains eventually lost to time. This obviously can relate back to c!Ranboo’s memory problems, which are a known side effect of time travel, as told to us through the story of c!Karl, the only other time traveler on the server (excluding c!Connor who is only theorized as a time traveler for right now). 

Hidden In The Sand (Tally Hall) - This is slightly complicated as the song has two meanings. On the surface, the song is about a man who falls in love with a woman who leaves him, however the man is still in love with her. But in the music video, a new meaning can be found. The music video shows a cruise full of people, all very nice and kind until the ship begins to sink and the real, selfish, sides of the people is revealed. ‘Hidden in the Sand’ is meant to symbolize that a persons true nature is covered up by their outward acts and personality. This could apply to c!Ranboo, as he is outwardly very polite and gentle, growing attached to every animal he finds and refusing to kill any Enderman but he could have a whole other personality to him that we don’t know about. If songs such as ‘I Can’t Decide’ and ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ are any hints, we could theorize that c!Ranboo has a secret dark side to him that could be exposed in the events of his family being threatened. 

Now I’m Here (Queen) -  No statements or theories about what the song means or any of the lyrics. 

& (Tally Hall) - This song, as with others off this particular album, deal with opposites. The whole chorus of this song is about certain opposites such as dark and light or cold and hot. Relating back to c!Ranboo, perhaps this song is meant to tell us that c!Ranboo is a foil of a certain character. Possibilities could be c!Dream and c!Ranboo, as c!Dream is very against attachments towards things and is a very outwardly violent person while c!Ranboo is attached to almost every animal and enderman (not to mention c!Tubbo and Michael) and is a very peaceful person, or perhaps c!Ranboo and c!Karl, the two time (theorized) travelers on the server. c!Karl has a stronger control over his abilities and seems to retain most of his memory fairly well so far while c!Ranboo perhaps can’t control his power and has short term memory loss and can’t remember where he came from. 

I’m Gonna Win (Rob Cantor) - This song is a description of a fight between the singer and his inner demons, the fight resulting in very physical injuries for the singer. This can relate back to c!Ranboo, as he could be fighting the demons of his enderwalking state. This song has a very cheerful outlook on the fight however, as the singer is very confident in his abilities and knows he will win. c!Ranboo isn’t always the most positive, sometimes believing more in the pessimistic outcome but this could be a new leaf for c!Ranboo or a goal of his to be more positive. 

[thewhitefluffyhat]

Bernkastel’s Umineko Origins

What is this guide?

<< Previous (Bernkastel)

(Profile continued) “In theory, she holds the strongest power of any witch, but in practice, that is no more realistic than saying a piece of paper can reach the moon if you fold it a hundred times. And fold it a hundred times she did.”

Since “Gou is a Bernkastel origin story” is quite a widespread theory, I figured it might be useful to compile every single piece of information Umineko gives about Bernkastel’s past in one place.

This is meant as more of a comprehensive reference post, so if you’re not interested in that theory, feel free to skip this section! 

Next (Lambdadelta) >>

[Also, spoiler warning for part of one character’s plotline from Umineko Episode 4/Alliance in here.]

From Umineko Episode 2/Turn:

Bern was probably once (a) Rika. Hard to get more definitive than using Rika’s catch phrase in the ??? Tea Party.

Bernkastel: “...Umm, in times like this, what did I used to say again? ……...Umm, uh, ……...Fi-Fight o~n. Mii, nipah~☆ ...It's so embarrassing, doing this. I've done this much for you, so quickly stand back up.”

Bern is a witch born from being trapped in a game against Lambda.

Bernkastel: “You are now just like I was in the past, when I was imprisoned inside Lambda's world. Shut inside a labyrinth of cruel fate, tormented by a witch, in a manner of speaking. I am a witch who was born from there. So maybe I'm like an older sister to you. So I decided that I'd lend you my power.”

The last time Bern and Lambda played against each other, Bern won by using pieces that started in their most powerful state.

Lambdadelta: “…...W-well, last time, I felt just a little pity and said that she could start her pieces anywhere she wants, and then that idiot Bern totally didn’t pick up on compassion and started with aaall of her pawns promoted on the eighth rank!!”

(Source: https://lparchive.org/Umineko-no-Naku-Koro-ni/Update%2062/)

From Umineko Episode 4/Alliance:

According to Lambda, Bern has experienced being denied a happy ending herself due to being a witch’s piece, rather than the one who actually experienced the ending she found.

Lambdadelta: “You aren't Ushiromiya Ange. You're a witch's piece with that name. Strictly speaking, the name ANGE Beatrice belongs to a completely different person. Know what that means?"

Ange: “I’m... starting to think I don’t…… ...Huh? Huh? Who... am I? Huh?”

Lambdadelta: “...And thaaat's why I think Bern's cruel. No, I think she's a meanie. Especially since it's not like she hasn't gone through the same thing herself."

Ange: "...Am I... being tricked... somehow...?"

Lambdadelta: "Yeah, but please don't blame Bern, okay? After all, depending on how you look at it, that kid isn't lying. If Beato is defeated, your family will be returned. Returned to Ushiromiya Ange. But she probably didn't say that this Ushiromiya Ange would be you, right...?"

(Source: https://lparchive.org/Umineko-no-Naku-Koro-ni/Update%20116/)

From Umineko Episode 6/Dawn:

Bern was once a human piece, but after being abandoned by an unnamed Game Master (implied in the manga to be Hanyuu), she became a witch by solving a logic error in place of that Game Master.

Erika: "...My master was also... a witch's piece?"

Lambdadelta: "Yes. That kid's master... was another bad one. Though she created the game herself, partway through, she lost sight of what her goal was. She ended up creating something like a broken game of backgammon, where the start and goal were connected like a donut."

Erika: "What do you mean, she lost her goal...?"

Lambdadelta: “I'm talking about a logic error. In her backgammon game, she was unable to draw up a line of logic describing how to reach the goal she desired. So, the game remained broken, with no goal at all."

“...In that case, she should have quieted down and thought of an answer herself. Instead, she despicably left even the thinking entirely to her piece, Bern.”

[insert long metaphor involving cats, monkeys, and typewriters]

Lambdadelta: “If she wasn't a witch... no, if she hadn't been able to become a witch, she would probably still be a black cat strapped to that typewriter for eternity. That child was blessed by a miracle, succeeded in typing out a 'miracle', became a witch, and returned from that hell alive.”

“That hell was so long and harsh... that her mind was completely broken. That's why she became such a mean and heartless witch.”

(Source: https://lparchive.org/Umineko-no-Naku-Koro-ni-Chiru/Update%2065/)

At some point prior to Umineko, Bern was Featherine’s longest-serving miko, trained by her to tear out the “guts” of stories.

Featherine: "...A cat who has learned to eat meat and choose its own path. It has been a long time..."

Bernkastel: "It's a path I'd never have to have noticed if you hadn't told me. You're the monster who taught me the taste of flesh. So, you've come back to life. Featherine Auaurora..."

Featherine: "...Augustus Aurora... You never learn no matter how often I tell you that…”

“...Very well. Even that brings back fond memories... I have heard the rumors... It seems you have taken the name Bernkastel, Witch of Miracles, and have been playing a far from praiseworthy Fragment game..."

Bernkastel: "I'm just imitating you. Though I could hardly match up to your level. If the rumors you've heard about me are bad, that applies a hundredfold to you."

Bernkastel sat unreservedly in an antique chair, as though she was already familiar with the place.

Featherine: "...What are you afraid of? I am merely celebrating my reunion with my longest-serving miko so far... Did you really find my messenger cat so displeasing?"

(Source: https://lparchive.org/Umineko-no-Naku-Koro-ni-Chiru/Update%2075/)

From Umineko Episode 8/Twilight:

An alternate explanation for Bern’s origins: she was Featherine’s pet cat who revived her master.

“Featherine Augustus Aurora. …...The legendary Great Witch. It is said that she surpassed the level of witches, becoming a Creator, and that, upon reaching this forbidden plane, she was cursed with a deadly ailment. However, in life, she once turned her pet cat into a witch. They say that this second witch wanders the sea of Fragments endlessly, searching for any Fragment that can revive her master from the pits of death called boredom, if even for a moment. And so, the cat revived her master. Revived the sacred witch who had reached heights none should reach…”

(Source: https://lparchive.org/Umineko-no-Naku-Koro-ni-Chiru/Update%20156/)

There’s also this little tidbit from Last Note of the Golden Witch, where Bern outright says she was once in “Higurashi.” That being said, in context she’s referring to the “All Cast Review Sessions” from the Higurashi VN, so… unless you also consider those to be canon, I wouldn’t advise thinking too hard about this. (See the section on Lambdadelta for another good example of this kind of reference.)

(Source: https://youtu.be/ZoIEID02sxI?t=7890)

.

...And that’s it. So, the question is, what was the game that Bern was trapped in?

It’s possible (and before Gou, not uncommon) to interpret all of these scattered bits of information as references to the original Higurashi. In that configuration, perhaps Higurashi was a game where Featherine/Hanyuu was a Game Master playing against Lambda, with Lambda using Takano as her piece. Rika/Bern won that game in Hanyuu’s place by manifesting a miracle, defeating Lambda and ascending as a witch after Saikoroshi (which then denied her Rika’s happy ending).

But now with Gou in the mix, it looks like the fandom’s long-held assumptions may be due for some reexamination...

Next (Lambdadelta) >>

[trashyswitch]

The Adorable Slimy Stranger

Chapter 3: Logan and Remus's Demise

Pumpkin seeks to make the collected Logan and the overly weird Remus become giggly babies under her tickly grasp. And boy, does she succeed!

SPOILERS FOR THE NEWEST EPISODE OF SANDERS ASIDES!The Episode: Working THROUGH Intrusive Thoughts If you haven't watched it, PLEASE watch the new video for context.

This triquel is also for PumpkinPaw! :D

Pumpkin was walking around, eagerly teasing everyone she could. She wiggled her fingers at Patton, earning a giggle and a few cuddles. She wiggled her fingers at Virgil, earning a squeak and a hood over his head. Lastly, Pumpkin wiggled her fingers at Roman, earning a big squeal and a big bear hug from Roman.

But Logan...didn’t react. He just placed his hand on Pumpkin and gently moved Pumpkin’s hands away. “Sorry Pumpkin, I’m just a little busy today. Your childish endeavors are going to have to wait.” Logan told the blob.

Pumpkin looked at Logan with big, black puppy eyes. Her lip even quivered slightly to add to the cuteness.

“Awwww, how could you ignore that cute widdle face?!” Patton asked.

“Pumpkin is a dear. However, she is also a little too distracting for my liking. So I would like to keep peace by kindly saying no to her motherly teases and cuddles.” Logan told him, talking way too casually about pumpkin.

“Jealousy is unlike you.” Janus told him.

Logan looked at Janus with confusion. “Jealousy? Explain, please.” Logan ordered calmly.

“Jealousy is a strange emotion for anyone, especially Logan. I find myself a little conflicted to see Logan acting soooo calm.” Janus reacted calmly. “It would almost be surprising to see you...crack open~” Janus hinted.

“Janus, I am a very black and white individual. I do not have hidden spots in my personality that quote on quote ‘crack’ open. And you will be treated with nothing if you even tried to ‘crack’ me open.” Logan told him.

“Ohh sure~” Janus teased. “Then you wouldn’t have an issue at all, if Pumpkin were to tickle your sensitive spots right now.” Janus hinted.

Pumpkin’s head shot up, sprouting puppy ears that lifted up curiously.

“Hey Pumpkin~” Janus called. “Logan is quite ticklish, and you would find his laughter quite amusing.” Janus told him. “All nerds have cute laughter.” Janus added.

Pumpkin gurgled eagerly and slid right over to Logan. “Nope.” Logan stopped the slobbery blob from going any closer. “Unnecessary. You know the rules, Pumpkin.” Logan told the blob.

Pumpkin gurgled and slid her gelatin bits through his hands and surrounded his arm in an orange blob as she moved closer to Logan. She gurgled happily.

“Nooooo...Don’t even think about it, Pumpkin.” He warned.

Pumpkin gurgled and walked away. Then, she ran up and fluttered her pseudopod onto Logan’s side.

“eeEEK! Pumpkin-” Logan warned.

“Yeah! get Logan, Pumpa!” Patton encouraged.

“No, DON’T get Logan! I am way too busy to get caught by a gelatinous monster!” Logan warned.

The little blob gurgled more and more as she let off nostalgic smells to calm him down.

“No, no, NO. Your childish endeavours will NOT overwhelm me! Your nostalgic smells that replicate Patton’s cookies will not cause me joy! It won’t!” Logan warned.

“Oh really now, Logan?” Patton teased.

Now Pumpkin looked very determined to get Logan to laugh, or even smile.

“Pumpkin, you are sorely mistaken to make me laugh. I will not laugh. I only laugh out of pity.” Logan warned.

“No you don’t! You have a cute laugh!” Patton protested.

“No I don’t! I have an ugly laugh! Much like my face!” Logan shot back.

Patton GASPED. “Did you just...talk bad about yourself?!” Patton asked.

“Yes. I did. It is not that surprising.” Logan told him.

Patton smirked and ran to Logan’s side. “Here Pumpa!” Patton pulled his arm up above his head. “Get his armpit!”

Logan shrieked and pulled on his arm. “NO! NO! PATTON PLEASE!” Logan begged.

Pumpkin jiggled her pods inside Logan’s underarms. This made Logan wheeze in surprise and jump about 5 feet in the air. But he didn’t laugh...Not yet.

“Come on Logan...Laugh for us! You’ll feel better if you do!” Patton encouraged.

“N-No!” Logan begged, hoping and praying he would give up soon.

Patton giggled and blew a raspberry on his belly. Logan snorted and threw his head back. “STAAAAAAAP!” Logan shouted.

Pumpkin started to take notice of something in his eyes. Something...unusual. But eager to see what it was, Pumpkin blew little raspberries onto Logan’s armpit.

Logan finally snorted and bursted out laughing. “STAHAhahahahahahap! Ihihihihit tihihihicklehehes! Plehehehehease!” Logan begged.

Pumpkin gasped and stared at Logan with awe in her eyes. She quickly went back to tickling Logan in a matter of seconds. She even tickled his neck and his ribs with even more pseudopods!

Logan tried to get out of her grip as quickly as possible. He feared he might’ve already shown the SCP something that he’s been keeping secret for years! Logan begged and hoped that Pumpkin didn’t see it.

Pumpkin smiled and gurgled as she cuddled Logan tightly and continued tickling Logan on his sides, belly, neck, and ribs.

Logan SCREAMED and cackled loudly! “AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! PUMPAHAHAHAHAHA! STAHAHAHAHAHAP IHIHIHIHIHIHIT!” Logan screamed and laughed.

Logan’s eyes were glowing orange...almost like an anime character.

Patton widened his eyes and stared at him in surprise. “Logan...Your eyes!”

“Oh what a surprise…” Janus reacted calmly, flipping a page.

Logan gasped and covered his eyes. Pumpkin looked at Logan and patted his shoulder. She made worried gurgle sounds.

“No. No I’m not okay. This was what I was worried about.”

“Oh what a tragedy…your eyes glow! How terrifying!” Janus reacted in the most monotone voice ever.

“JANUS!” Logan yelled.

“I don’t understand-”

“And you never WILL!” A voice said from behind. Remus giggled and showed Patton his big mace covered in blood.

“YOU!” Patton shouted.

“Oooooh! Think you can do something to-” Remus yelped as he felt something hard hit his head.

“Take THAT! And THAT!” Patton was throwing something at the dark creative side.

“OW! OW! HARD COVER-” Remus caught one of the books and shrieked. “BIBLES?!” Remus screamed.

“I’VE GOT 20 MORE READY FOR YOU!” Patton shouted.

“OH FUCK!”

“LANGUAGE!” Patton screamed as another bible smacked him in the head.

Pumpkin gurgled in a confusing tone and looked to Logan. She got closer to Logan and hugged him tightly. Logan widened his eyes in surprise at first, but smiled as he took the hug. “It’s…it’s alright. You were only trying to cheer me up.” Logan told her.

Pumpkin smiled and wiggled her pseudopods onto Logan’s ribs and in his armpits as well. Logan jumped and laughed again, surprised by the amount of tickles Pumpkin was giving him.

“OHOHOHOKAHAHAHAHAY! YOHOHOU’RE MOHOHORE EHEHEVIHIHIL THAHAHAN UHUHUSUAHAHAL!” Logan reacted.

Pumpkin giggled a little and wiggled her fingers with a coo. She fluttered her pseudopods on the belly as well as his hips and chin to find other ticklish spots.

Logan giggled and wiggled around. His hips didn’t really tickle all that much, but his chin was making him do the giggle giggles. Pumpkin loved hearing Logan’s different volumes of laughter. It was new and refreshing to see Logan so vulnerable and giggly under the cute little blob.

Soon, Pumpkin cuddled herself closer to Logan than she ever had before. She hugged him, cuddled him, tickle him lightly and kissed his cheek. Logan didn’t know how to handle all the love he was getting, or any of the giddy happiness he was feeling from all the love as well. Pumpkin was really a genius at making anyone fall victim to the cackles.

“Ihihi wanna see Remus experience this.” Logan admitted.

Remus looked up from picking his nose. “Huh?” He hummed.

Logan picked up Pumpkin and showed him to Remus. “Hey Remus! Feast your eyes on the most happy go lucky being to ever exist. Though Patton is a super close second compared to this creature we call Pumpkin.” Logan told him.

“Logan, NO! Keep that powerful thing away from me! EEP! Fluff! It’s evil!” Remus shrieked, hiding behind Roman.

“Come on Remus...It’s not that bad.” Roman told him.

“Yes it is! It’s the most happy being to exist! And it’ll make me more fluffy and happy than even deodorant will ever make me!” Remus begged.

“Do you have something against being happy?” Logan asked.

Roman showed up in the background. “He thinks it makes him weak!”

“Yes! That is the exact problem.” Remus replied.

“We won’t judge you for being happy…If anything, we’ll encourage your happy mood.” Logan told him.

“I...But being happy is so...exhausting!” Remus complained.

“When it is forced happiness, yes. But when it is genuine, it feels completely free.” Logan told him.

Remus narrowed his eyes at him and showed his teeth at the man.

Logan finally placed Pumpkin onto Remus. “You’ll feel euphoric...like being drunk without the alcohol.” Logan told him.

Remus lit up brightly at that explanation. He had to admit: that sounded great!

Remus kneeled down to the floor and laid down so Pumpkin could access him better. Pumpkin happily took this as a sign to ‘get tickling’, and quickly made 8 separate pseudopods. Remus immediately widened his eyes and started to wiggle around out of nervousness. As you could probably tell, he was already growing nervous of the tickles he was gonna get.

The moment the 8 pseudopods hit Remus’s ticklish spots, Remus broke right open with literally no resistance. All the laughter came out at once!

“WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! WHOHOHOHOHOA! THIHIHIHIS IHIHIHIS-” Remus reacted as he curled up like a big turtle. It made him wanna scream with joy! It made him wanna do cartwheels around the house! It made him crave those gorey zombie TV shows again!

“THIHIHIS IHIHIHIS AMAHAHAHAHAZIHIHING!” Remus declared.

Logan smiled and adjusted his glasses. “Precisely. I experienced the same glee and irresistible euphoria.”

Remus rolled around all over the floor, laughing himself stupid beyond his expectations. This was more ticklish than what Roman was capable of! This creature really WAS the best tickler! Everything about the creature was true! It was the best tickler, the cutest little thing, and even the most puppy-like! Remus would even say...Pumpkin was a big gift to their life.

The smell of fresh fudge filled Remus’s nose as he was tickled. Who was baking fudge at this time? Or...maybe it was Pumpkin being nostalgic.

“LOHOHOHO IHIHIT’S SOHOHOHO MUHUHUCH! HEHEHEHELP MEHEHEHEHE!”

Logan blinked and watched in surprise. Wow...Remus was super ticklish...But Pumpkin was smart enough to know when to stop. And Pumpkin was not stopping. She just kept on going and going.

Remus seemed to be loving it more than enough. I guess Remus liked his tickles neverending!

Soon, the blob wiped off some ‘sweat’ from her forehead dramatically before returning to tickling Remus. Logan found this rather humorous, considering the fact that Pumpkin had no sweat, and was made of gelatin and smooth peanut butter. The drama behind the sweat rub made the moment even better!

Soon though, Remus’s laughter turned silent. Quite silent. When his laughter hit that point, Pumpkin took that as a sign to stop. Pumpkin returned the pseudopods to her body and lifted Remus up to a sitting position with her pods alone. Remus huffed and breathed heavily with little giggles still leftover. Gosh, Pumpkin looked like she wanted to eat up all those giggles. His laughter was a brand new treat for the orange blob!

Eager to show her love, Pumpkin lifted herself up and molded herself into the shape of a heart. Remus gasped and squealed upon seeing the heart. “AWWWWW! THANK YOOOU!” Remus declared. He was a lot more happy and giddy than usual. Must’ve been more than enough euphoria still in his system. Remus pulled Pumpkin into a big hug and planted big, mustachy kisses all over the blob. Pumpkin seemed rather overwhelmed by the kisses, but quickly warmed up to the loving gesture the longer Remus pecked its face.

After Pumpkin was let go, Pumpkin giggled at herself. She was covered in kissy lips and mustache hair from all the Remus pecks. He was certainly a weird, but bold man! And pumpkin started to understand that better, the longer she got to know Remus.

Not only did she get to hear Remus at his most vulnerable, but he even got to hear LOGAN at his most vulnerable! HOW COOL WAS THAT?!

Logan was always a calm, put together person with all the self control in the world. But just like SCP-682, Pumpkin was able to make even the angriest and most collected people laugh. ANd boy, was that a true gift!

[fresh-prince-of-denmark]

New Dawn Fades — Literary References Analysis Part 4: The Id, the Ego, the Superego

Cyberpunk Spoiler Warning 

Here’s part four of me going through all the endings and looking for the literary references in each of the endings, which I believe allude to what happens to V/Johnny, possibly in future DLC. If you haven’t read my other posts, you should read them here (Johnny’s Mikoshi poem, V’s Mikoshi Poem, The Star ending) first since we’re gonna loop back to them later.

New Dawn Fades was such a pain in the ass; because Johnny is such an art hoe, I found three different poems/stories scattered around. Not only that, but two of them are translated from Polish, and one of them us from Ovid’s The Metamorphoses. I studied English literature so…forgive me if this is super surface-level. Also, stuff gets lost in translation, so the original meaning sometimes gets lost. If Polish literature is anyones niche, please teach me a thing two, but all I can do now is my best! But from what I could tell, damn…paints a pretty depressing picture. Let’s start with the two Polish writers first:

Bolesław Leśmian, "Why so many candles...”

Why so many candles, these faces above me?

No more harm shall ever meet my body.

Everyone is standing - while here alone I lie -

Grieving, feigning. One must be true when one must die.

And so, buried under these wreathes of leaves, I lie -

Solemnly - Agelessly - Solitarily.

Death, gone silent, once again rushes to my head,

Though by now I know all my comprehension is dead.

How I loathe to become accustomed to this grave,

To be what I once was - that is all I crave.

This one is…yikes. Depressing. As I talked about in previous posts, V’s poem is more pessimistic: nothing we do matters, we’re all just dust in the wind, you know, the good stuff. Johnny’s poem has a very different stance; art makes us immortal, and we can change the world, etc. With this…Johnny seems to have given his larger-than-life attitude up in favor of V’s resignation that life sucks. Much like Prufrock in V’s poem, Johnny is lying “Solemnly - Agelessly - Solitarily.” Almost as if he didn’t want V’s body, not as a selfless gesture…but because he has grown accustom to his previous form. In Johnny’s version of Alt’s poem, it almost seems as if he embraces being a construct — the form of immortality it, and his legacy, grants him (remember all that hokey about being a golden bird to sing his message to the youth?). Blackwall was a kind of death Johnny knew — yet now:

“How I loathe to become accustomed to this grave,

To be what I once was - that is all I crave.”

Interesting. We never find out where Johnny is going when he leaves Night City, but it makes me wonder. Is he truly starting anew? Or hoping to fix what went wrong?

In the next room, we find another poem, this one an excerpt from Labyrinth by Wisława Szymborska:

So this way or that,

Or no, the other,

By ear or by your gut,

By your wits or by shortcut,

By any means necessary,

Cutting crooked corners.

Past whatever row in a row

Of corridors and gates,

Quickly, in the meantime

Your time grows short,

From one place to another

To one of many still open,

Of darkness and plight

But also delight, held just ajar,

Where there's joy, though sorrow

Lies well-nigh nearby,

And elsewhere, somewhere,

Wheresoever and whereabout,

Fortune in misfortune

Like a parenthetical parenthesis

Acceptance of it all

And suddenly - a fall

I’m a little shaky on the meaning behind this one. My immediate response is to compare it to the poem found in The Star — which contains a piece from The Marriage Between Heaven and Hell by William Blake. The overarching use of this poem, by my interpretation, is an explanation for what the Blackwall is: hell. But not hell how most would perceive it. In fact, according to Blake, hell isn’t so bad. Our views of heaven and hell, good and evil, are wrong. Everyone contains both good and bad within them, and neither is wrong, simply two opposites; between conformity and rebellion, art and obedience. If we were to look at it this way, V would most likely belong in “Heaven,” the world of the obedient, those who play by the worlds rules (at least, in the beginning of the story, before Johnny influences them toward the rebel path), while Johnny represents “Evil,” and would belong to Hell. In some dialogue choices, Johnny will even state that he no longer believes he is a human, and is in fact code, no longer belonging in the world of the living. In this scenario, both have found themselves where they don’t belong. Not only that — but one is supposed to be a healthy mix of so-called “Good” and “Evil.” The “Soul,” and “Body,” are one, not meant to be separated. Uh oh. The tone of this poem in Johnny’s context just seems so…lost, to me. Someone who found their other half, their perfect foil, a soul and body as one…and now it’s gone. What does one do after such a loss?

And finally, the most grim of the three stories: Ovid’s The Metamorphoses. Specifically, Book III, Narcissus and Echo. This one most likely has the greatest significance; not only is it a shard you can pick up, but an open copy of the book can be found in Johnny’s hotel room, drawing further attention to it. 

If you haven’t read it, let me give you a quick and dirty summary:

At the beginning of the story, Narcissus’ mother, Liriope, asks the prophet Tiresias if her son will live to see old age, which he replies “only if he does not know himself.” One day when Narcissus is 16, he is out hunting when he finds a mountain Nymph named Echo. Echo, as one might guess, was cursed by Hera and can only repeat what is said back to her. You know. Like an echo. Echo falls in love with Narcissus at first sight and follows him throughout the forest, waiting for him to speak so she can communicate with him. Narcissus eventually gets separated from his hunting group, and calls out for them, which Echo…well, echos. Eventually Echo reveals herself and Narcissus freaks out, telling her basically he’d rather die than be with her. She hides in a cave and pines until she whithers away from hunger, and only her voice remains.

Many other nymphs fall for Narcissus because apparently he’s a straight up snack, but he rejects all of them. Apparently someone gets so salty about it, they summon the Goddess of Vengeance to do something about it. She leads him to a crystal clear pool, in which he is able to see his reflection. Remember the thing about knowing oneself? Yeah…At first, Narcissus thinks the reflection is a different person and falls in love. He smiles, the reflection smiles, so it must like him back, right? Eventually he reaches to touch it, and realizes that it’s him. He freaks out, and much like Echo, stays by his reflections side until he withers away. Having a total meltdown, he cries out “Alas!” which is echoed, by well, Echo. Her voice lived on, and she watches him die as he calls “Farewell, dear boy. Beloved in vain.” Once again, Echo repeats this. Narcissus dies and all the thirsty hoes make a pyre to burn him, but when they go looking for him they find the Narcissus (flower) instead (nooo...dont transform into a flower, you’re so sexy ahaha). 

So what does this mean for Johnny/V? Well, two main things pop out to me: transformation, and reflections. Much like Echo and Narcissus are reflections of each other, V and Johnny reflect each other. As @ellitira pointed out in my analysis of the Star, V and Johnny constantly reflect each other. One of the most obvious ways is their literal reflection; if you look in a mirror during a relic malfunction, you’ll see Johnny, not V. But scenes are reflected as well; the first and last time V meets Johnny, they grab him by the shoulder from behind to get his attention as he turn to face them. The first time Johnny and V have a civil conversation, they’re sitting at a table in Tom’s Diner, Johnny’s foot on the table. This mimics their conversation in Mikoshi with Alt. Their conversation about taking a bullet for one another in the Pista Sofia where Johnny is sitting backwards on a chair while V is on the ground is also repeated moments later, as Johnny and V have their final conversation about who will stay and who will go with Alt. Johnny also mentions that he spent his first few weeks in NC laying in bed, staring at the ceiling fan. When he awakens in New Dawn Fades, what is he doing? Staring at the ceiling fan…in Pacifica, not far from the Pista Sofia. The boy who he gives the guitar to is even wearing V’s “favorite shirt”…the one we see them wearing in the first scene they’re introduced. There’s probably loads more, so feel free to share if you find any more. If you want to know more about why this is significant, make sure to read about V’s version of Alt’s poem. 

So why do these reflections/echos matter? Well, what does one do with a reflection? Reflect. Johnny begins to examine himself through V, and he begins to realize he doesn’t like what he sees. If V calls him the man who saved her life, he’ll respond with “you have no idea how badly I want that to be true.” He tries his best to right his wrong only after this conversation with V, not only in Burning Love and Chippin’ In, but in other ways too. For example, it’s Johnny’s idea to call V’s loved ones to say goodbye on the roof scene, because “he wished that he had had a chance to.” Because of V, he grows, changes, and becomes a better person, just as much if not more as he seems to change V. As he leaves V’s grave, he even states that he has changed; that he’s wiser now, and won’t make the same mistakes. He states he won’t dwell on what happened, but somehow I doubt that, considering everything above.

The other theme of Narcissus and Echo is of transformation; after all, metamorphosis actually means "to change or transform.” Echo becomes, well, and echo, and Narcissus becomes a flower. V and Johnny also transform; not only physically between engram and human, but they transform one another. Both of them fall in love, and neither will move on. Echo falls in love with Narcissus, and Narcissus falls in love with his reflection. Because they refuse to transform the way they feel, they must die and transform physically. So who represents who in this scenario? In a way, Johnny is both. Johnny is a bit, well, narcissistic. He’s self-absorbed in his flashbacks, and adored by countless fans, yet ignores them in favor of his own company. He thinks everything is about him (Alt’s death, Samurai, etc.)  and is willing to die for his beliefs. He is also constantly reflecting on himself through V. However, what really kills him is losing Alt; she tells him not to follow her (much like Narcissus tells Echo to leave him alone). He does anyway, and avenging her leads to his demise.

What’s especially sad about this is the way Johnny views transformation; he is very concerned with the idea of one’s individual identity, and hates the idea of turning into something you’re not. He despises that he’s going to turn V into himself by force. He hates dolls because he sees their behavior chip as something that changes them into something they’re not. He’s scared of V going to Blackwall not because it’s death, but because they “won’t be the same.” I don’t think Johnny ever wanted V’s body; again, not as a courtesy, but because it’s not him. After all, he could have just let nature take its course and let himself re-write their psyche, but instead he actively tries to save them as best he can. If V chooses to let him have their body, he hardly seems happy about it; especially compared to how happy he seems to see that part of him will live on in the way V refuses to give up should they choose to live on. By taking V’s body, he is no longer himself; rebel, rocker-boy, legend, and the guy who promised to save V’s life. Johnny in A New Dawn has lost his entire sense of self, his entire new and improved identity; one that learned from his mistakes and became a better person because of V. Johnny has The Tower tattooed on his arm, the card of (often painful) transformation and change. Yet this is what Johnny is most afraid of; not death, or even the not-so-bad sort-of hell that is Blackwall. He’s afraid of losing himself, and by losing V, he has lost a part of himself. The part of himself that was supposed to be a better person; who was supposed to save V’s life.

[rpg-elf-girl]

Shadows House

I have a lot of thoughts surrounding this particular show, both good & bad.

Allow me to give a quick summary for anyone who hasn't seen/read it!

Shadows House is about 'a faceless family of nobles who all live within this giant manor, the Shadows House.

When a Shadow comes of age they receive a 'Living Doll' to both serve as their face and to clean the soot they emit from their bodies.

The most important rule of the living dolls is "don't fret over trivial matters"

A task which is difficult for the ever curious doll Emiliko.

Watch this tale unfold as Emiliko & her mistress Kate navigate this ever mysterious Manor together.'

For a fan of slow burn thrillers, horror, slice of life, supernatural & mystery series' this has been an absolute blast!

It's not quite the combination of genres you'd expect from a show, but it works really well here!

In fact I was so into the anime that this is actually the first show where I broke down and read the manga!

Unfortunately there's no official English release, but at least there are some people translating the series!

As much as I'd like to go on about the manga, this post is meant to be more so about the anime so I'll (try to) leave it at that.

Though i feel obligated to warn anime onlys I'll likely refer the manga a lot in a spoiler section latter in this post I'll try to be vague but I can't guarantee anything. For anyone worried about that I'll lable it do you can read on until then.

Everything from the animation to the music was amazing & completely fit the mood of the story! I remember a couple scenes where I actually teared up because of this!

The Ending theme is an absolute banger! I've listened to that on repeat ever since I first heard it! And the Opening is also great! It's cool for it to be an instrumental, stuff like that is pretty rare! I also heard the song in the op as a motif in the music throughout the show! It really sets the right mood in each scene it's in! It's amazing for getting into each episode!

In terms of adaptation almost everything from the beginning to the end of the Debut arc was done amazingly well!

Even with the stuff they cut it still holds true to the spirit of its source.

The main important part that was cut is something that could easily be introduced latter if they decide to go for a second season, so I'm not too mad about that.

However! Everything after the debut is a bit of a different story.

There was a lot I liked about the last couple episodes but there were some parts that were immersion breaking for me.

I've been being vague up until this point l, but I'm planning on going into spoiler territory for both the anime and manga after this. So I'll make a quick spoiler free summary of my thoughts before moving onto that.

I really really loved this show but in my opinion the last 3 episodes were the weakest of them all. They went anime only for the ending. I don't mind that on it's own, but it was rushed and the writing was sloppy at times.

Now I'm not telling you to not watch the show! Most of It's really really good, and I can still see people enjoying the parts I'm talking about if they want to give the anime a try. Overall I've fallen in love with this series and I could never recommend it enough.

If what I'm saying is giving you bad vibes the manga is available and doesn't have the issues I've mentioned. You can look for a translation online, it didn't take me long to find one so don't worry too much about that.

Also! if you're an anime only who's finished the series and want to know where to pick up the Manga I'd recommend at least skiming through the beginning. I know it might not be what you're looking for but there were a bunch of small scenes that either got cut or were merged for adaptation purposes that I think are super cute & give more context to different aspects of the setting. However! Pay close attention during the "night watchers part" something important got cut .

~~~Now for spoilers!!!!~~~

I don't want to make it sound like I'm some manga purist who hates the very thought of the slightest change from the source. I'm anime only for a lot of different shows and I've always despised it when that type of manga reader reared it's ugly head.

While I'll admit some changes did bother me I won't make a fuss about the smaller stuff.

With that said!

I hinted earlier in this post that I didn't have a big problem with Robe-same being cut. That was because without them there it does make for a more complete story if they only get one season to work with.

If there is another season they can easily be introduced latter on. Like maybe Emiliko & Shaun can meet them when the Debutant class reunion is going on before they talk on the roof (or right after that) I actually think that would be the perfect time to introduce them (other than the time they were supposed to appear, but I digress)

Louise teaming up & being friendly with Kate can be explained with some dialogue changes at the first Debutant Class Reunion. Louise can say she was just trying to show off or that she just wanted to get back at Edward and that she isn't interested in helping Kate with her problems. Things can then go on as they did in the manga.

Kates being reckless & telling everything to John can be explained by her being extremely panicked when Emiliko went missing, as long as there are some lines of dialogue adressing this it's fine. Though I do wish she tried to keep some stuff a secret but couldn't because Shaun tries to interfer because he's still brainwashed, or something along those lines. It felt a bit weird after she just told Emiliko to keep that stuff between them. Still that could be explained by how panicked she was.

There are other things, but I don't want to drag the post on too long. Most of the issues can be fixed with little changes here & there.

I never had a problem with the idea of them going in an anime only direction. I just want to have a good time with the show.

Unfortunately I can't 100% vouche for the direction the show went in. There were elements that I can't excuse, even viewing it as it's own entity instead of an adaptation.

My main complaint with it is how they handled the brainwashing of Ricky & Lou. They didn't say a word when the Debutants were talking badly about Edward & even went along with a plan to go against him. It makes absolutely no sense!

Shaun freaked out when John only suggested that he didn't have to be loyal to the house. These guys were flat out rebelling against an adult! It felt like Ricky & Lou didn't have a purpose & were just there to be there.

The whole point of the coffee is to influence shadows against doing stuff like this. It makes the coffee seem pointless and the adults seem dumb for relying on it to control the kids.

I haven't even brought up the fact that both of their brainwashings were broken by something as simple as a few kind words. It straight up contradicts the rules established by both the Anime and Manga.

This becomes very apparent when you consider all the trouble John & Kate went through to free Shaun & Emiliko.

This was my biggest complaint, but I have some other issues as well.

The next big one is how they handled Edward.

1. Why on earth would he even consider kidnapping Emiliko when he had complete control of the childrens wing? Before this point he was depicted as being a lot more crafty than this. He could easily have Kate monitored or something.

2. Why didn't he use his powers to stop them like what he did to Maryrose & Rosemary when they fought back being taken to the adults wing? He's already shown off his power at this point, why not?

3. Why did he reveal his soot powers at all!? Especially while using his face in front of the kids! The whole unification thing is one of the biggest secrets of the house for good reason! There's no way he wouldn't get in huge trouble for exposing it to children!

Here are some other related questions.

Why didn't Kate, Emiliko, & John react to Edward using soot powers? They shouldn't know about unification yet so why didn't they act shocked, or say anything about it?

Is Edward being banished even an option in the Shadows House? Wouldn't the third floor lords just dispose of him rather than risk letting him leave?

How did John even get a veiled dolls outfit? Louise had to use her powers to get Kate one & she left a long time ago.

I can't think of much else at the moment, but I think you get my point.

Please don't take this as me saying that I hate the show because of these episodes. Even if I consider them the weakest of the series I still found a lot of parts to be very enjoyable!

Like I thought it was adorable When Edward was attempting to interrogate Emiliko & she kept being her sunshine self pretending to eat & falling asleep.

Barbara getting to tell off Edward for breaking the rules was great!

I loved seeing Shaun hatch the plan to get Kate into the adults wing to save Emiliko.

Seeing John (attempt to) sneak around the adults wing had me rolling!

The ending scene of Shaun, Ricky, & Lou singing gave me the chills.

(Though I wonder how they'd handle Shaun & Emiliko being brainwashed again since they already used the scenes where they're freed)

Kate & Emilico being propelled by John back to the children's wing was absolutely amazing! I found Shaun & Ricky running over to catch them to be super sweet! (Not to mention the way that scene was animated was absolutely gorgeous!)

Getting hints to what was supposed to come after the debut was nice, at least the groundwork is there in case this gets a season 2!

To (try to) wrap this all up while there were a lot of things I loved and disliked about this show I still had a really fun time watching it!

I kinda hope there's a season two just to see if they can tidy up the mess that the last few episodes created.

Regardless of whether that happens or not I came out of this with a series I absolutely adore.

Heck I could make a whole other post about the manga. (Hopefully one that's less ranty)

Anyway! I won't take any more of your time.

I hope you all have a wonderful day/night! And I hope to see you in my next post!

(Sorry if this one was a bit of a mess!)

[silenthillmutual]

daniil dankovsky is autistic and here’s why:

because i’m autistic and i said so

i kid, obviously. what sort of autistic person would i be if i wasn’t read to back up my silly little claim with an overly long post of evidence a total of three people will read? (hi ned hi jordan hi raven :))

i’m aware that this is cringey because adults aren’t supposed to have autism or interests or talk about either of those things, but this is my blog and you are free to block me if the cringe is too much for you.

these are some things i picked out from the DSMV’s diagnostic criteria, found on the CDC website:

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

abnormal social approach

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

defecits in […] understand[ing] relationships

difficults adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

repetitive motor movements or speech

rigid thinking patterns

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input

there’s also some misc. stuff not in the diagnostic criteria (though it may be in the adir or gars-3) i thought was worth noting.

important note from the diagnostic criteria: “symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning”. i’d say that in his case, they do.

spoilers for pathologic classic, pathologic 2, and the marble nest

deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

in bachelor route of classic, daniil

seems completely oblivious to eva making advances toward him, to the point where she complains to him that he’s ignoring her in favor of asking questions about simon.

seems surprised when people mention maria being in love with him, despite outright asking her a couple of times if she’s flirting with him.

not to mention the fact that he asks her that at all.

his inability or resistence to making connections with others is typically considered one of his character flaws. although it is not outright stated in the dsmv criteria, one trait of autism and other neurodivergencies is “having extremely high or extremely low empathy” - and daniil, despite being a doctor, lacks empathy. which is not to say he doesn’t care at all. i think that he does, but is terrible at showing it.

for example, this scene from marble nest:

Sticky: You must feel terrible… right? That’s fine. I forgive you. You just got confused… Adults always do. Daniil: Oh yes, adults are always occupied with the most asinine nonsense. Like feeling anxious that a bunch of urchins keep roaming the streets, putting themselves in mortal danger!

daniil clearly cares about sticky’s wellbeing (and the wellbeing of the kids looking after him, though he’s not cognizant that he’s in a coma), but his way of showing it is… kind of by being a jerk. all of which bleeds into the next item on the list

reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect

he has no problem sharing his interests, but in both pathologic classic & pathologic 2, daniil speaks with a flat affect - which is to say that he lacks intonation. the words we read him saying may be dramatic or come across as passionate, but the actual voice reading his lines is very monotone, which may contribute to being read as lacking emotion.

and in pathologic 2, he has a voiceline lamenting not telling “her” (eva?) how he felt

in marble nest, he’s teased by the tragedians for being “heartless”:

Tragedian: Maybe. Possibly. But it’s useless to explain to a heartless man. …Take heart, Excellency! If you ever find it, that is. And then come back to us… Even though it all sounds like a rather implausible turn of events.

abnormal social approach

daniil has a tendency to say things that are tactless, odd, or just socially inappropriate. i probably don’t need to point out too many examples, as i think it’s fairly obvious - these are the things people love to pick at when it comes to him, but i do have a few in mind. like, for example, from haruspex route in classic:

Haruspex: What of the antibodies essential for making a serum? Bachelor: I don’t know for sure yet, I’ll send you a report in a few hours. Don’t go about cutting people’s hearts out for your panacea until then. It’s a… controversial solution, you know… Haruspex: What?! Do you even hear yourself? Bachelor: Sorry! I meant no offence… it was just a momentary lapse of… well, you know. Haruspex: None taken.

until artemy points out, daniil doesn’t seem to be aware he just said something rude. even with therapy, picking up on social cues doesn’t come naturally to people with autism, so we tend to say things that come across as rude or strange to others without realizing we’ve put them off. we tend to lack a “filter” that tells us when things are or are not appropriate to say. even when we may recognize it, the rules may not make any sense to us. for example, it makes very little sense that allistics favor politeness over honesty.

i think the glaringly obvious abnormal social approach in pathologic 2 is him threatening to hold artemy at gunpoint to get in the house, which is just overkill, but my personal favorite comes on day 7, when he’s complaining about the orders aglaya has given him. artemy stops him to say he doesn’t understand what daniil wants from him, to which daniil replies:

From you? Oh, nothing. I was just sharing.

to daniil, they were just having a normal conversation. but some part of this - his tone or his words or maybe even his body language - didn’t give artemy the impression that this was supposed to be a regular conversation. (we could, in fact, attribute the same idea to artemy here; why didn’t artemy pick up that this was a normal conversation? the reason i count it towards daniil is because artemy doesn’t seem to have this problem with anybody else. for the record: i don’t think artemy is neurotypical either.)

abnormalities in eye contact and body language

it’s hard to get proof of this in video games, but i will say i think it’s very funny that in pathologic 2 daniil’s idle animations are “pacing”, “sitting like he desperately wants to start bouncing his knees but is stopping himself from doing it”, and “standing unnaturally still” - but there you go. i don’t know anything about making gifs, or i’d gif this one specific talk menu idle he does where he holds eye contact for about three seconds, looks away uncomfortably, and then looks back out of the corner of his eyes.

deficits in […] understand[ing] relationships

mostly examples from his route in classic:

when the army arrives, he can claim to block that aglaya, whom he’s known for two days, is his best friend

he seems baffled by the fact that everone is smitten with maria and working with her, and seems equally baffled by the idea that she’s smitten with him

despite eva implying on day two that she is in a relationship with andrey, is completely blindsided by the revelation on day 6, asking him, “How in the world is she ‘your woman’?”

i’d also like to use his sign-off on his letter to artemy, day 2 of the haruspex route - he signs it as “Your friend (hopefully)”. i know i’m not the only autistic person who used to ask people if we were friends or not. pro tip, if you’ve never done this: don’t. it really weirds people out.

difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts

the fact that he stands out is blatantly obvious even in pathologic 2 and in the haruspex route of classic. people will comment on him being an outsider and mention that they don’t trust him. but you can watch it happen in real time in his route, because he never fully acclimates to the town. he says something about this to aglaya on day 7:

Bachelor: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. Inquisitor: Your line of t hinking is obviously falacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you, no one can really tell the future around here: and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes… but hardly more often than anywhere else.

actually, there’s an example of him saying something similar to artemy on day 5 in pathologic 2:

Damn this town… I feel I’m trapped in a nightmare. The absurdity of it all… There’s no one to talk to. Everyone’s so volatile. They all seem to want to help, but… their help is worse than hostility.

some of this can be explained by the town’s strangeness, but keep in mind that the first instance happens after he’s been there and involved in the ongoing for an entire week, and the second at nearly a week in. clearly he’s struggling to adjust to the changes.

it’s also worth noting that his reason for fleeing the town in the nocturnal ending?

I have no place here anymore.

This town is no longer mine. No longer human. No longer rational. It doesn’t… accept the likes of me anymore.

repetitive motor movements or speech

it’s harder to see the motor movements in classic, but remember how i pointed out earlier that he paces? pacing is a form of stimming. murky, who is canonically autistic, can also be found pacing as one of her idle animations. having stock phrases for characters to speak when you come near them already ticks off the box on “repetitive speech”, but that by itself doesn’t really cover what they’re talking about - echolalia.

but you know what this does fit with? “‘quoting’ things(communication is HARD! sometimes we need to take shortcuts and use someone else’s words)“

i’ll get to the more obvious example in a minute - i want to point out something that happens very early in pathologic 2 first. you know how you first meet him and artemy accuses daniil of trying to guilt-trip him by asking if it’s true that isidor would still be alive if artemy had come sooner? keep in mind that he spoke to rubin first. and this is what rubin says, when you get a chance to talk to him:

Yesterday, I was told you had killed your father.

That’s not far from the truth, Burakh.

You betrayed him. You left when he needed you most. He cried out for your help, but you didn’t care. He was in peril, and you were too busy elsewhere, He believed, truly believed, that your arrival would put an end to his troubles. And, as always, he was right.

i’m not saying this was necessarily the game’s intent, but it’s entirely possible daniil is parroting back to artemy exactly what rubin said to him.

now, for what you’re probably expecting in this section: the latin. people love to refer to his use of latin as “random”, so let’s clear that up:

it is not latin daniil has made up. with the exception of latin that is mispelled in the game’s texts, all of them are proverbs or otherwise common sayings. you can find most of them on the wikipedia list of latin phrases, or through a 3-second google search.

he’s a doctor. him having taken latin isn’t anymore strange than a lawyer taking latin. in fact, if you pay attention, artemy also took latin; this is implied when artemy tells him he’s always sucked at it.

his uses of latin actually aren’t random at all. what he says fits the situation, and sometimes is used in place of him having to come up with something to say on his own.

prime example:

Forget it, Burakh. I have a splitting headache. If you have no urgent business, then we’ll talk later. Later, later… Qui non proficit, deficit.

qui non proficit, deficit - he who does not advance, loses ground. in other words, “i’m sorry, but i really do need to keep working.” one of his voice lines.

as for why he doesn’t translate the latin: it probably wouldn’t even occur to him to. these are not obscure sayings. the utopians all have a certain degree of education - what would he need to translate them for?

this bleeds into something that isn’t really mentioned, but that i’ve found i have a lot of trouble with in everyday life. autistic people have a tendency to either overexplain (and then have everyone get mad at you because they feel you’re being condescending) or underexplain (and have everyone get mad at you because you haven’t explained anything). the latin would be a case where it feels like a justified underexplanation. you’ll notice that when it comes to anything scientific, he tends to do the reverse, and overexplain. this also happens in classic, whether artemy has asked him to clarify or not.

rigid thinking patterns

the thing i had marked for this was simply his strict adherence to western medical practices and refusal to acknowledge the supernatural, even when it seems obvious - he has a conversation in his route in classic with yulia about this, and that is in fact how he manages to get to her: by asking saburov if there are any other logical skeptics in town. it should be noted they seem to be breaking with this in pathologic 2, where one of his voicelines is “I’m no positivist. There are things in this world beyond our mundane perception.” i have no idea where they’re planning on going with that.

there’s also a quote floating somewhere around twitter about him having been raised by a military man, and militaries tend to enforce very rigid routines. you could say the same thing of block - who (in classic at least) i also have my suspicions about.

highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus

special interests. the one that should obviously come to mind is thanatology, though i would argue latin if not classics in general is a special interest of his as well - in addition to his usage of latin, he also references pericles in the marble nest and was probably refering to the roman occupation of haruspicy in addition to augurs in the same text. he also makes references to shakespeare more than once in both marble nest and pathologic 2.

hyper- or hyperoreactivity to sensory input

i don’t have much written down for this one but there seem to be several places in classic especially where he asks npcs to stop shouting at him. we don’t really have the privilege to know their volume or how they’re interacting with him, but i think it’s also worth noting that he’s the only one of the healers who wears gloves. in pathologic 2 he’s the only named character i can think of who wears them at all. his thing in the lucid dream about the brain being “a border”? gloves are his border, as is his jacket, which may be worn to cut down on sensory issues.

he will also sometimes seem to “overreact” to the situation at hand - such as in classic, when some dogheads mispeak and say that daniil is going to “sterilize” them, and instead of understanding that they must have mispoken, freaks out over the idea that they think they’re going to be… well… sterilized. or in haruspex route, when his reaction to the inquisitor arriving is to threaten suicide.

miscellaneous

he never goes anywhere without that carpet bag. we don’t see it in pathologic 2, but we do hear about it and he doesn’t let it go for a second in classic - not even in the cutscenes where he’s using the microscope. his bag could be a comfort item.

“getting very attached to things like inanimate objects” could work for the bag - but you know what it actually fits the bill much more obviously? the polyhedron. in the haruspex route he recognizes that it’s a lost cause, but he’s still too attached to it to let it go.

in classic at least, daniil is absolutely terrible at lying. most autistic people either are not good at lying, or feel uncomfortable or anxious with having to lie. when he’s asked by yulia and the kids in the polyhedron to lie to block (for different reasons) he’s clearly uncomfortable with the idea that it’ll work. and when it actually comes time to come up with a way to lie to block about why he needs five rifles, your options are to either buckle and tell him the truth, or simply say that you need them for “self-defense”. block believes that you’re not lying to him, but daniil can’t come up with any embeleshments to explain why he needs what he’s asking for.

Commander: Are you hiding something from me? Bachelor: No.

he comes across as naive to other characters. in classic, capella has a voiceline saying, “The Bachelor is not smart. Intelligent, yes… but not smart.” in Pathologic 2, Daniil complains that Aglaya takes him for “a useless dreamer”. he’s also easily used by the Kains to fulfill their endgame in classic.

my final, and absolute favorite: he takes things way too literally. autistic people (and adhd people, from my understanding) have a hard time differentiating jokes and sarcasm. so my favorite moment in marble nest is a case of him taking that earlier advice - to “take heart” literally, by bringing the tragedians a literal human heart:

Tragedian: Oh… Excellency. What a sordid sight! Sorry for underestimating you. You definitely do have… how shall I put it… a creative touch. But this is pure madness. You can’t take things so literally! Daniil: You wanted me to come back to you with an open heart. Well, here I am. …It looked too fitting to be a coincidence.

your mind map, after this, updates to say “I misunderstood the tragedians.”

conclusion

people don’t stop being autistic with age and i think he’s a good example of what it’s like to be in your late 20s and be autistic. i’m sure i missed things as i haven’t finished haruspex route of classic yet and there may just be some other things he does or says that i missed! if anyone has anything to add they think fits i would love to know, thank you for your time :)