#says one thing and does something COMPLETELY ANTITHETICAL

[mazhai]

the more this girl opens her mouth the more i loathe her

[starcurtain]

Hello! I just saw your latest post and you might have been referring to my ask if it was the one about Ratiorine's differing philosophies or of what philosophies they abide by (existentialism, absurdism, etc) then that's me! If you weren't referring to that I apologize for the confusion. Sending it off anon this time so maybe it doesn't disappear 🥲

Sorry for the ask disappearing the first time; I'm not sure what happened, and I was so sad because I had been carefully holding on to it to answer it! I'm glad you were able to resend.

I do have to say first that philosophy is not my area of expertise, so there may be much more qualified philosophy buffs out there who can answer this more accurately than me, but I'll give it a go with my personal understandings of the characters:

First, Ratio is the easier of the two I think. As many people have said, he's a good fit for existentialism. His entire shtick is basically believing in the power of the individual to improve and enrich their own life, to fight valiantly regardless of the hardships imposed by their life's circumstances, and to make themself into a better person by their own choices.

It's important to underscore that this means Ratio believes in self-determination, in the idea that people's lives are not foreordained but are actually actively shaped each day by personal decisions. Therefore, people have inherent freedom to decide the course of their own lives by accepting what they approve of, refusing to accept what they disapprove of, and harnessing their own individual power to ultimately achieve self-actualization.

Essentially, Ratio works under the impression that life is not guided by something as intangible as destiny, and no matter where you start off in life, what ultimately happens to you is within your control (or at least within the control of whoever controls you). This is likely a small part of why it grates on him so badly that he wasn't recognized by Nous, because the fact that one can dedicate everything to a goal and still not achieve that goal runs contrary to his central philosophy.

If he believes that people have the power to determine the course of their own lives, then what does it say about him, who fought so hard to do exactly as he claims even idiots can do--seize control his own fate--and yet didn't succeed? Are there some things outside of man's power? It's enough to make even a renowned doctor question himself, and Ratio decided to come out on the side of "It's a personal failing, not a flaw in my philosophy." He literally said "Skill issue" to himself.

Changing tack a tiny bit here, I think it's also important to emphasize that there is a difference between existentialism and nihilism even though these philosophies dovetail. Again, I'm not an expert in philosophy, so my understanding is very limited, but the basic idea of existentialism is that "existence comes before essence"--that is, things start as a blank slate and gain nature and meaning after the fact. We are not created by some grand design, nor is there any inherent "purpose for living." Things just exist because they exist.

This is where existentialism intersects with nihilism, at the starting point that existence is inherently meaningless. But, in my personal opinion, nihilism as a philosophy fails to move beyond that. Pure nihilism is ultimately self-defeating because it leaves us with no motivation to commit to growth. It's a philosophy antithetical to the continuation of life as we know it. Existence is meaningless and any meaning you personally derive from existence is also meaningless, so why bother attempting to derive any meaning at all? This complete apathy is the Device IX that Star Rail paints as so dangerous.

And Ratio is not this way at all. His philosophy absolutely reaffirms that life can have meaning, so long as people create that meaning for themselves. He simultaneously asserts that anything that people create is not meaningless ...which basically means that meaning itself cannot be meaningless. (If that makes any sense to anyone.)

Frankly, I would argue that this philosophy may be a core part of why Ratio has not been recognized by Nous so far, rather than simply his "being a good person." (Nous is a robotic AI super-computer, why would THEY care about the presence or lack of human empathy?) Ultimately, Ratio's central philosophy about people being capable of determining their own fates and purposes also applies to his understanding of knowledge--knowledge is not something which is inherent in certain beings from birth or limited to the purview of the "special" (geniuses), but is attainable by all people. People are not "born talented" or "born untalented," they are simply "educated" or "uneducated," with the only barrier between these categories being one's own personal willingness to change. The mundane can become the divine--if they work hard enough at it.

Thus, knowledge is not wealth to be hoarded, but a currency to be spent to enrich other members of humanity.

(By the way, completely random aside--it also surprises me that everyone relates Ratio to Alhaitham from Genshin when they literally have such a glaring fundamental discrepancy in their understanding of the concept of wisdom... But anyway, back on topic!)

Ratio may (sort of) respect the members of the Genius Society, may recognize their incredible knowledge and abilities, but at the heart of the matter lies a single all-important question: Does Ratio even really believe in "genius" as a distinction (other than as a concept to insult himself)? Does he truly believe there is barrier between brilliance and idiocy that "ordinary people" can never cross?

He speaks convincingly about geniuses being different from "the ordinary," but if his core belief is that people have the power to pull themselves up out of despair and achieve greatness through effort and self-development, rather than some form of luck or god-given talent at birth, then... do born "geniuses" even really exist? Is there really an insurmountable difference between brilliant and mundane?

If knowledge is the equalizer of all sentient beings, do we not all have at least the initial capacity to become geniuses?

I personally think this central distinction about the capacity for knowledge among all humanity is the actual deciding factor in Ratio's rejection from the Genius Society, because, at the end of the day... how do you become a member of the "Genius Society" when you fundamentally reject the distinction of "genius" as an exclusive category from the start?

Ratio wants to share knowledge and uplift everyone (even if he thinks most people are starting off at the rock bottom known as idiocy).

His mission is diametrically opposed to the concept of a "Genius Society" in the first place.

He wanted in to the cool kids club because he desperately craves validation and acceptance, but the philosophical values of the Genius Society are ultimately incompatible with his own. In short, he would have to cease to be "Veritas Ratio" to succeed in joining the geniuses.

Okay, okay, back to the original point again, and just one more note about Ratio: Even though existentialism also goes hand-in-hand with absurdism, I don't think Ratio is far enough down the philosophical rabbit hole to believe in the wider definition of absurdism. Although I think he does agree with the inherent meaninglessness of existence, I don't think he views existence itself as truly irrational and the universe as as manifestation of unknowable chaos. I think he'd at least like to imagine that there are some ontological principles and inherent laws governing the operations of reality, and I think he does believe that certain things can be predicted with the application of enough thought... He certainly seems to believe in some form of "objective truth," at the very least.

I think he'd at least like to believe the universe is semi-orderly, even if he might deep down admit this is also wishful thinking.

So, to me he reads as a strong metaphor for pure existentialism, with deliberate rejections to both nihilism's apathy and absurdism's lean toward solely subjective reality.

PHEW, this is already long and I still have a whole other character to talk about... I had more to say about this topic than I thought. Sorry for the long read!

Anyway... Aventurine.

I've seen all sorts of things thrown around for Aventurine's philosophy, and while I think he does inherit a bit of Acheron's absurdism by the end of 2.1, I actually don't think Aventurine is an absurdist, an existentialist, or a nihilist.

I think Aventurine is a struggling fatalist.

He doesn't like it. We see him actively question it, but ultimately, he does come back to the concept of destiny over and over.

First, I think it's important to draw a clear distinction between Ratio and Aventurine: Ratio's existentialism is a philosophy that technically works even in a theological vacuum. Nous doesn't have to exist for Ratio's philosophy to function. Ratio's belief in the self-determination of humanity is, in fact, somewhat opposed to belief in aeons in the first place, and only works because technically the aeons of Star Rail used to be human (or were originally human creations). It's essentially an atheist viewpoint.

But Aventurine is a religious character. Like, he's just... religious. That's a fact about him. Even though we do hear his doubts, at the end of the day, he actually believes in Gaiathra, and believing in a omniscient supernatural being that is not human in origin (is from outside the aeon system) comes with a whole set of philosophical foundations that most aeon-worshipping characters just don't have in Star Rail. (Sunday is the obvious exception here, by the way.)

Kakavasha's like the one practicing pagan in the middle of an atheist convention. Awkward.

Being more serious: Religion requires faith. Faith requires the ability to believe in things you cannot verify with empirical facts. To believe in things you can only feel, never see. The belief that a goddess is watching over you, blessing you, and guiding you requires you to also accept the idea that events in your life are not always in your own control--that some of what occurs to you is decided by powers beyond your comprehension.

In essence, faith requires belief in fate. And that leads to fatalism.

No matter how much he doesn't like it, no matter how much we see him struggle with it, Aventurine does actually seem to believe in the concept of fate. He believes that some events in life are destined to occur, that some things are outside of individuals' control, and that ultimately not everything can be changed.

This is the dead opposite of Ratio's mindset: No matter how hard we fight, how far we push ourselves... in the end, sometimes people fail. Sometimes the only answer to our endless struggles is that we die, as we were destined to, before ever achieving the greatness we sought or the futures we were promised.

As an aside, I don't think faith or religion are necessarily the only factors connecting Aventurine to this particular philosophy either. Even removing theological aspects from the conversation, his extreme focus on the gambling aesthetic suggests a strong connection to fatalism too--if not a goddess, then one's fate may as well be in the hands of luck itself, of the whims of the rolling dice--or the push and pull of "powers that be," those figures of authority in the room where it happens, who make their shady deals according to preset rules and expectations, every bet resulting in an ultimately predictable outcome.

(He keeps gambling and gambling, hoping that he'll get a different result than the one he knows is inevitable...)

This is, of course, an inherently pessimistic mindset, a perfect dark-mirror to Ratio's deep-down optimism. Fatalism puts humanity into a position of powerlessness. All hopes and dreams are given over to the goddess, by whose judgment and whims the actual events of one's life are decided. Pain and poverty are inevitable trials. Suffering and death are foreordained.

And yet Aventurine has to cling to this, as much as he doubts it, as much as he hates the idea that things in his life are beyond his power to control.

Because if fate doesn't exist... If it wasn't destiny, if the tragedies of his life weren't trials from the goddess, if things weren't supposed to go this way... Then every single thing in his life really is meaningless. Everything he suffered, everyone he loved and loss, his mother's and sister's sacrifices, the torment he went through--just sheer bad luck. All of it, completely and utterly meaningless.

How can you convince yourself to keep living, in the face of such supreme and all-encompassing Nihility?

This is the central struggle of Aventurine's character, the actual mental and emotional journey we see him undertaking from 2.0 to 2.1. He is literally on the precipice, swinging between a viewpoint that he hates--his fatalistic belief in destiny--and an entirely self-defeating philosophy--nihilism--whose only possible final outcome is suicide.

This is what his talk with Acheron at the end of 2.1 is all about. This is how she saves him. In that final cutscene, we witness Aventurine reach a mental compromise, managing to finally reconcile his necessary faith in the concept of destiny with the reality that life may truly begin meaningless--but beginning meaningless does not mean staying meaningless, and believing in destiny does not bar you from making your own choices or finding your own purpose in life.

Later on in Penacony's story, we literally see Acheron use Ratio's philosophy to reject the same nihility that crept into Aventurine's:

Acheron wards off nihility's apathy through an absurdism all her own, but one which manages to enclose both Ratio's and Aventurine's otherwise incompatible mindsets: We have no way of ever knowing for certain whether the events of our lives are fated or mere nonsense. We have no way of knowing if our choices are our own or foreordained. But we don't need to know this to find meaning and value in them. Whether life is nothing more than unpredictable chaos or a predetermined pattern of cause and effect, what matters is what you make of it.

Ultimately, I think that this post has really helped me recognize just how well Aventurine and Ratio work as philosophical foils.

They really are perfect opposites.

Aventurine's fatalism is deterministic, while Ratio's existentialism is self-deterministic. Aventurine's philosophy is inherently pessimistic; Ratio's is inherently optimistic. Ratio's philosophy operates on a core belief in the freedom of humanity to decide their own paths in life, while Aventurine hates but does ultimately believe that people aren't really in control, that even if no gods are guiding us, we can't rise above our own natures. Ratio's philosophy makes meaning from growth; Aventurine's makes meaning from loss...

And they both struggle with fundamental doubts in their own philosophies, core questions that are directly tied to their own lives. Aventurine worries that his faith might be misplaced, that destiny might not exist, and that everything he suffered might have been in pointless, empty vain. Ratio faces the crisis of recognizing that his core belief in the power of humankind to determine their own paths and make their own meaning might not actually apply to everyone--because it doesn't seem to apply to himself.

It's literally only by bridging this philosophical binary with Acheron's anti-Nihility absurdist rhetoric that we can reach some sort of healthy outcome. That's why it takes both Ratio's note and Acheron's comments to finally lead Aventurine to acceptance. Ratio probably needs a little bit of Aventurine's "If you didn't make it into the Genius Society, there's got to be a reason" mindset to finally reach some peace with his situation too.

I'm not even a philosophy expert and even I can see that there's really only one takeaway here: These two characters were totally written with each other in mind.

Aventurine and Ratio need each other on core metaphysical levels! 😂

It's so good guys. You can't see it, but I'm making chef's kisses, I promise.

[meanbossart]

ASK COMPILATION: LORE, CHARACTERIZATION, AND THE ONE IN WHICH I RUIN A BUNCH OF PEOPLE'S FUN

As usual, this is far from all of the asks in my inbox but I'm trying to catch up 😩thank you everyone for your patience!

For the record, if your ask isn't being answered, that most likely means one of three things:

I am saving it as a possible art prompt.

I sincerely don't have a very interesting or good reply for it yet!

It's a question I have been asked multiple times/the answer is in my pinned post.

Glad you like them!!

As much as I don't limit what I draw to canonical events, vampirism is so antithetical to DU drow's character journey that I couldn't really envision it, to be honest, but who knows! Maybe I'll cook up some Ascended Astarion scenario someday that is kind of a role-reversal of the Bhaalist DU Drow AU I have going on in tandem to the story.

I'll be honest, this is one of the rare times where I'm really not sure which aspect of DU drow's weirdness this is in reference to. Do you know something I don't? 😅

His masochism is very... Classic, I guess? He's in it for the pain and for the emotional connection, and the process of being pierced wouldn't cut it whatsoever, it's too subtle. The body modifications he has are an incidental result of it, but they were never really the goal.

Also having stuff dangling off his face or body would just irritate him, he specifically only does rings because all other types of jewellery get in the way too much. Pre-tadpole Bhaalist drow obviously wore them by the ton, but only as a symbol of status and because he had a permanent new-money complex🤷 so yeah not a piercing-type of character at all, sorry!

He's smooth from the eyelashes-down and profoundly weirded out by body hair LOL

I don't personally think that whatever Astarion had for a home before would bear my resemblance to it after 200 years - having probably gone through several owners, remodeled, if not completely lost to the destruction of the end-game. I do HC that he used to visit it whenever he could as an enthralled spawn to read his mail, but he stopped after his father passed.

THANK YOU, I THINK? I can't say that isn't a passionate description at least!

I'm honestly surprised that this comes up as often as it does LOL but it's just an stylistic choice on my end!

The latter - for sure. He figured that them dying at each other's hands at the end was a given and took that assumption entirely for granted (and I'm sure daydreamed about it often while Gortash went on and on about political strategy during their dinner meetings.)

;))) way ahead of you and by "way ahead" I mean "eventually and whenever I can figure out when to do it alongside the other 30 ideas I am currently juggling" (but I really do want to make a little comic out of it!)

He used them! Not immediately, but he grew to trust the guardian after some initial suspicion and happily gobbled up those squirmy little things alongside Astarion. Because I made his character on a whim and without any planned backstory, I didn't really put any thought into his Guardian's appearance either, so she's just a human woman with a Joan of Arc look going on who's of no significance to him or his past.

But DU drow did trust her, again not immediately but eventually. It was honestly a big kick in the gut to him when the Emperor revealed himself and it definitely set their relationship up to fail from the get-go.

This is also why he didn't ascend to the next stage of Ilithid power, he just stomped the thing dead right on the spot LOL

LMAO I think Gortash is too proud to chase a tail he can't catch like that

He was probably very overwhelmed by the sudden realization that OH, THIS IS ALL HAPPENING BECAUSE OF ME which naturally didn't come across whatsoever to anyone present since he immediately bottled it up and tucked it away out of sight. However, as the story progressed and DU drow helped his friends get out of their respective pickles he was probably able to justify it to himself as it having been for the greater good - since it led to Astarion being freed from his master and Shadowheart to defying the Sharrans.

As for all of the rest of the ensued destruction and death that resulted from it? Well you can't make an omelette without cracking some eggs, or whatever is the wizard version of that saying. He has essentially turned the entire situation into a net-positive in his mind and sleeps great at night because of it.

[anamericangirl]

State capitalism is capitalism, just not free market capitalism aka "pure" capitalism. Under capitalism, capital is privately owned (that's the literal definition of capitalism). Under state capitalism, the state privately owns the capital. Yes, the state can privately own things. Private ownership of capital just means the public has no direct effect on its operation. A privately owned company has no public stocks for example. Your mistake lies in believing capitalism necessitates a free market or ownership by an individual, when it actually doesn't.

Socialism on the other hand is when capital is completely publicly owned. For example, under socialism there is no single person in charge of any corporation. All people are considered equal shareholders.

The Nazis were state capitalists, since in Nazi Germany, things like factories were taken from the people who owned them, privatized, and became property of the state. That's state capitalism. Since actions speak louder than words, we can say they were state capitalists regardless of what they said, since in the end they did things furthered state capitalism.

As convincing as it is for you to just rehash all the claims I've already addressed with absolutely nothing new to add to the conversation other than your own misguided opinion, which you have more confidence in than I do, I must disagree.

Because you are wrong.

Your mistake is you don't know the difference between the public sector and private sector.

It's not a mistake to think capitalism necessitates a free market because it does. That's how it's defined.

Capitalism means private control of the means of production. The word private is from the latin word "privus" which literally means individual. It is inherently anti-state and anti-public ownership. Capitalism means private ownership, specifically of the individual. Otherwise it's not capitalism. State capitalism is an oxymoronic term that translates to "state non-state." Anyone who uses it, such as yourself, is just advertising that they have no idea what they are talking about.

Public ownership is defined by state ownership. That's what it means. If "state capitalism" is state ownership then it's socialism because state ownership and public ownership are the same thing. The word public is from the latin word "publicus" which means of the people or of the state.

Socialism is not all people are considered equal shareholders lol. That's the modern day socialist utopia lie. If all people are "equal shareholders" that basically means no one actually has a share. Except the state. And if everyone did equally have a share that would be dictated by....you guessed it...the state.

Socialism is state ownership of the means of production. There are different kinds of socialism but they all require the state to own the means of production. Which, remember, is public ownership which is the opposite of capitalism.

You explained yourself why it's not capitalism. If factories were taken from the people who owned them to be owned by the state that's antithetical to the very concept of capitalism. Something being "privatized" means something state owned becomes owned by a non-government party. A private party. An individual. Private ownership is the opposite of state ownership so claiming they can be done simultaneously just shows you don't know what those terms mean.

The Nazis were not state capitalists because state capitalism is an impossibility. They were socialists. Because socialism is exactly what you described in your attempts to define "state capitalism" lol.

What you really mean when you say the nazis weren't socialists is that they weren't marxists. Which is true. They weren't marxists. But they were socialists. And trying to rebrand socialism as an inherently contradictory phrase like state capitalism to try and distance socialism from the evil it led to just makes you look ignorant.

[one-and-a-half-yikes]

Don't mind me but can you plz rant about colly a lil more... :3

I'll do you one BETTER @ch1-kasak0

I'm gonna talk about Colly AND do an accidental Cuphead analysis on the side lmao

I will say, it is crazy to me that years ago, one of the reasons I had for why I didn't like the idea of Cupanny was because I perceived Fanny as someone un-ambitious, who seemed to have a bleak outlook and no real hope for a better future, something that was completely antithetical to what Cuphead needed in his life.

Obviously I don't hold that viewpoint about Fanny anymore, but I do think it's funny how that critique of mine (which I never shared on here I should add and I regret it lol) came back around but in an unexpected way. The Labyrinth arc was genuinely the deepest look we've gotten into Cuphead. With the thing that hit me the most stepping into Cuphead's dream and really seeing how much of himself is consumed by the guilt he feels about making a deal with the Devil, was how that guilt had basically consumed his personhood in a way.

Mugman dreams of being a pilot for the Calix Animi, of marrying Cala and having a whole, completed family; that his parents never left, that his dad was alive; Mugman dreamed of a future for himself. A fantasy that could never really be real, at least mostly, but it was a future nonetheless. Everyone, except Felix who's a special situation given his circumstances, dreamed of a future. Something that they were fighting towards even after they left the Labyrinth.

Except Cuphead.

He could never envision a future for himself, because so much of what made up who Cuphead was as a child was stripped from him that he's essentially a husk of who he was. We saw the real Cuphead in his dreamscape. He had aspirations, and goals he wanted to reach. But when your whole is spent struggling to survive it's hard to have real goals and aspire to them. It's hard to dream a dream that you hope comes true.

And then the gala happened.

Something that seemed out of reach for someone like himself suddenly seemed like a real, genuine reality within his reach. All because of his love for Holly. His love for her made him finally see a real future. A real dream. For one second, Cuphead didn't think about a bleak horizon that he was walking towards, but instead a beautiful sunrise that he wanted to walk towards hand-in-hand with Holly and it says a lot. It really does. In my Cuphead analysis I did say that his dream was still him in the background playing the role of Cuphead the Supporter rather than playing an active role in his own future where his own ambitions and drive exist alongside Holly's. But it doesn't detract from how much his love made him see something that for the longest he never saw as possible and that means something. It really does.

But oh, bitch I'm not even done yet. Y'all asked for this!!!

There's this one scene, I'm too lazy to go back and find it again (EDIT: I couldn't find it for some reason so my source is trust me bro), where Cuphead and Holly, and maybe Mugs was there I think, were talking and Holly said something along the lines of "I like your childish side" (paraphrasing). And that stuck with me, because when, in the other previous relationships that Cuphead had, has he ever been told that being his actual true self is the part they like the most about him? That the sulking badboy persona who's all rough edges and mysterious isn't nearly as interesting as the real him.

The thing I think a lot of people sort of forget, is that for Cuphead it's not a persona, it's just who he is. Because everything else has been stripped from him via abuse and threats to himself and his brother. From unethical experiments forced on him as punishment, to beatings from the boss when they screw up a job, to being yelled and cursed out by Hat because they messed up during training, and so on. So much of who he is, who he was, was taken from him and all that's left is whatever identity Cuphead needs to put on in that exact moment. Mugman was right when he said that for Cuphead, it's always about the damn mission. Keeping him and his brother safe, desperately trying to right his wrongs, and just trying to not have anyone see his weaknesses means the Cuphead we saw before in the Labyrinth is a ghost. Someone else entirely. A speck in the distance that feels entirely out of reach now to Cuphead.

But there's this part of him that he's tried to keep safe and held close and we see that in the Wonderful Winter arc. When Cuphead and Mugman started chasing each other, throwing snowballs at one another, it's the closest we get to seeing Cup in a light where he's not putting on a persona; the real him. And Holly notices that, too. But not just that she notices that, but that she is intrigued by it enough that she wants to get to know him more.

Holly had a crush on Cuphead, but the Tree Princess chapter is where she really fell for him. Which makes sense cause that's the chapter where she truly realizes the depth there is to his character and how multifaceted he was as a person. He wasn't just a killer thug like she'd first assumed, but a true complex person, just like her and all the other Questers.

And I think that's fucking beautiful man.

Of course I'd love to gush about Cuphead's perspective on Holly, but there's not really enough to say outside of:

You know it's true love when you're willing to spill all your secrets to this one person; to bear your whole heart and soul to them if it means being able to have them back in your life.

[blasphemousclaw]

So if Rykard and Morgott hate eachother why are there two abductor virgins at the roundtable hold in Leyndell? 🤔 (i dont mean this antagonistically in anyway, im genuinely curious what your thoughts are lol)

a very good question!!! These guys are pretty unique among the placement of the other abductor virgins, because every other one is in a location with some connection to Rykard himself (which I went through in this post).

The Leyndell Roundtable Hold is called the Fortified Manor, and we can see a big lion crest on the outside wall:

As we know, lions are associated with Godfrey, so I think it’s a safe guess that this manor once belonged to him. The other piece of information pointing to Godfrey is that the Roundtable Hold is a stronghold of Tarnished — like a safe haven for Godfrey’s warriors of old returning home.

What’s strange about the abductor virgins being here is that Rykard’s faction is notorious for employing Tarnished to kill other Tarnished, which goes against everything the Roundtable Hold stands for as a safe haven and non-combative space for Tarnished. The Roundtable Hold is also an operative of the Two Fingers, Volcano Manor’s explicit sworn enemy.

So what’s going on with these guys? Why are they found in a place not only unconnected to Rykard, but antithetical to his beliefs? If we investigate the Fortified Manor, we find it abandoned and seemingly ransacked. There is a dead body with Mad Tongue Alberich’s clothes. The abductor virgins are patrolling the inner courtyard. The Roundtable Hold that we visit is completely separate from this “real” version and seems to exist in a kind of liminal space.

We can come to the Fortified Manor to complete a quest with Bernahl for the Volcano Manor where we invade the Tarnished Vargram the Raging Wolf and Errant Sorcerer Wilhelm. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we come to the “real” version of Roundtable Hold in order to kill Tarnished on Volcano Manor’s behalf, and Bernahl, who declares his intent to defy the Greater Will, might see attacking the Roundtable Hold as a way of attacking the Two Fingers. So we do have a connection to Rykard here in a way, and it’s an antagonistic one.

Maybe the presence of the abductor virgins has something to do with the Fortified Manor’s abandoned state? Maybe there had been some kind of invasion carried out there by the Recusants, which we continue by helping Bernahl? The only other thing of note here is that in the courtyard, there’s a lift that leads to the Divine Bridge grace, the place where that teleporter chest in Limgrave takes you. The teleporter circle is now active, and takes you to the Isolated Divine Tower, where you activate Malenia’s great rune. Does any of this have anything to do with the abductor virgins? I can’t think of any reason why it would. perplexing

Anyway, we can’t be 100% sure of why the abductors are here, but if I had to guess, I’d say they have something to do with the Recusant activity there. I guarantee you that it isn’t because Rykard, a guy known for decorating his house with paintings of burning Erdtrees, and Morgott, the Erdtree’s #1 defender, were working together. lol

[biblicallyaccurateslut]

Sooo, I just read a post saying that gaylors are disgusting because they want to force Taylor out of the closet?? And that NYT should not have posted that article???

Let me get something clear, if you are closeted, you try and hide your queernes as much as you can. You dont go around singing about your agumentative, antithetical dream girl and wearing someone like a necklace. You dont talk about hairpin drops. You dont dress yourself in the bi pride flag colors and sing about wanting boys and girls. Is not something you do if you are closeted.

Forcing someone out of the closet is disgunting, thats for sure, the thing were this person is wrong is that we are not trying to force Taylor out of the closet. Forcing her would be something she does not agree on but since she has been putting all the queercoding and queer slang in her music (out there to listen and analize by everyone) and decide to do some things queer people use to identify each other and send signals in public, aware she is being watched by the whole world, I would argue that the talking about her probably being queer is consented by her.

Also, saying she is in a closet would mean she is secretive about it and trying to pass as straight, which I think I gave you enough examples as to why she is not secretive about it. Is out there to see. And because is out there to see, it is okay to talk about it. She put it out there. The NYT only talked about queercoding in her music, which is completely fine to talk to. She wrote that music and she released it. She filmed that videos. Chose that words. She is in control and she decided to leave hairpin drops as often as she could. The NYT was not outing her or anything, it was just doing a reading of a piece of art using certain simbology, that happens to be the queer one. And if we think about how the art and the artist are connected, is fair enough to wonder if she could be attracted to woman. She hints at it in her music!

[yousaydisco]

we've all heard of Kim as an android but what if HARRY was the android?

What if the four months before Martinaise was him defecting/deviating and coming to realize that he wants more than to be the robot cop that he was made to be and him dressing in Disco clothes is his first attempt in expressing an interest in something, especially because it's completely antithetical to what everyone else at the Precinct likes? What if his lashing out and increasingly aggressive behavior is him battling with his code while also trying to suppress that anything has changed at all?

And then the fateful day comes when they arrive to solve The Hanged Man case and Harry pushes everyone away because they're talking about sending him in to get a reboot because they've noticed that he's different and he's like. I'm not going to be replaced by another version of me, I'll die as I am currently before I let that happen. But just like in the canon of the game he doesn't successfully go through with it and he wakes up with a damaged memory chip and having to relearn everything.

When he meets Kim downstairs on that first day Harry is told that Kim was expecting other officers and one support android and Harry is like. well. I'm all you have, I guess, I don't know what you're talking about. What's an android?

There's two directions to go here: Harry wakes up and forgets EVERYTHING, including that he is an android, and so he ends up doing and saying weird things in front of Kim because he just thinks that everyone more or less operates how he does. He doesn't eat because he doesn't need to and he licks more things than just the rum countertops so he can run an analyze of it (though nothing ever comes up useful as he is in desperate need for repairs so he ends up just seeming like he licks things for his own enjoyment). Kim would eventually figure out that he's an android with this route but he would never bring it up, either because he has a secret soft spot for androids in general or he sincerely just likes Harry that much that he doesn't want to remind him of his inhumanity.

OR: Harry forgets everything he's ever processed but still knows that he is an android, a busted one at that, and he has to keep it a secret so he doesn't get decommissioned. But he doesn't have access to any memory banks or any servers with information like other cop androids do, probably because he would alert someone watching out for his specific model to come back online, so he's really flying blind out there. There's an extra layer of tragedy since this means he's outright lying to Kim the entire game and at first he thinks he needs to since Kim, dedicated to following the rules of the RCM and being professional, would be honor-bound to report Harry as a defective android that is operating without his human partner and is besmirching the RCM. Except as they get closer Harry starts to feel more and more guilty about lying to Kim and then the tribunal comes and Harry is injured and he's bleeding inhuman blood and Kim is still trying to save him and Harry is like

"you don't have to work so hard to keep me alive, they will just replace me."

and before Kim can really process that Harry saves him and then passes out and Kim still stays awake with his concussion keeping Harry alive, but instead of an infection the challenge is getting Harry's components fixed when he doesn't have access to ANY android parts and he can't get any without alerting SOMEONE so he's trying to make do with like. GASP what if he uses pieces of the Kineema to fix Harry? Nothing major that would make it undriveable (idk enough about cars to justify this honestly) but it would be this huge emotional thing.

And then Harry comes back online and hes's like. Oh my god I'm still? Me? I haven't been wiped clean? and Kim is like "of course you're still you. It was only a gunshot wound, after all." and that's the last that they mention it.

(they can't keep it up forever since Kim cannot directly contradict anyone from the 41st when they know that Harry is an android, but he can defend him against accusations of being defective by citing all the moments where he showed that he's within perfect working order. It's the closest he can get to preventing Harry from being sent for a reboot).

[musical-chick-13]

How would a female Jishi be? Is it a cursed concept?

This is an interesting question, because I think, in order to have a female Jinshi with the same general characterization choices, the entire premise of The Apothecary Diaries would have to change.

Jinshi's major point of characterization is that he's in a position of power and political significance that he has to take part in, but that he doesn't actually want at all. The line of rule/inheritance is through the sons, and women are afforded very few actual career opportunities outside of being a courtesan. Maomao is an exception, not the norm--very few girls and women are allowed to be on retainer as doctors or detectives. They can be servants/court ladies, they can be ladies-in-waiting, they can be courtesans or, if they gain enough standing and attract the attention of the right people, concubines, but they aren't often allowed to be anything else. Not in the miliary, not in serious medicine, and certainly not in politics.

If Jinshi is suddenly female, then...well the only way for this character to be in a position of political power in this universe is to have gotten astronomically lucky in the process of actively working for it. The world of The Apothecary Diaries isn't going to plop a random woman into a political position for grins, and the only justification anyone would find to install a female official is...if someone had an exceptional amount of skill that was recognized by the right people, like in Maomao's case (and Maomao isn't even an official, nor does she want to be one). But how WOULD this version of Jinshi have gotten that skill, if Jinshi hadn't worked to develop it? Jinshi-as-a-girl would not have been afforded the level of education needed for that to happen, and if female-Jinshi had pursued that education on her own time...then that would suggest that she wanted to be in politics, something completely antithetical to the version of Jinshi that we know. (And even if we suspend disbelief past the point of reason and say that she magically ended up with this training she doesn't want, the only way that skill would ever come to light is if she were consistently using it in front of people, which...I don't think she would do if she wanted to avoid politics that much.)

If Jinshi doesn't have this disinterest, we have a completely different character. Which is completely fine, there's nothing wrong with that at all, plenty of character traits and archetypes can be interesting or entertaining. But I don't think a version of Jinshi that remotely resembles the canon version of this character is possible if Jinshi is now a young woman.

I think having a politically-savvy female character to contrast with Maomao would be very interesting (and given a few things I've heard, I'm hoping we might see some of that in season 2), in the sense that any power a woman has in this setting has to be carefully managed and, often, fought tirelessly and intensely for. Except for Maomao, who is...pretty much just living her life. Don't get me wrong, she does still have to be careful, and there is still a significant amount of danger she faces, but there's a surprising amount of leeway she's given, courtesy of her unique position and the fact that she has Jinshi (and. sort of? Lakan? maybe?) in her corner. And she gains a degree of relative peace in spite of her circumstances, without having to become a courtesan or concubine or politician. So for a young woman who is in a political or politically-adjacent situation to look at Maomao and go, "Well why do YOU get this degree of freedom but not ME, why do YOU get to be yourself, but I have to curate every aspect of my being?" would provide a complex and highly gripping dynamic. But I don't think a female version of Jinshi can provide that dynamic.

The only potential way female-Jinshi ends up anywhere close to the character we have in canon is if the entire gender landscape of this story is flipped--if women were the ones with social and political power, and men were the ones who had comparatively few choices afforded to them. (And this, of course, means that pretty much all of the characters have to be genderbent, which I do always find to be a really fascinating thought exercise.) But while a Reverse-Gender-Landscape version of this story isn't...a horrible idea, necessarily, I think there are very few writers out there with a deep and nuanced enough understanding of misogyny and gender politics to pull off a "What If Matriarchy Instead" story without having it fall completely flat.

But if the question becomes, "Would a female character with Jinshi's qualities still be compelling, or would she just be annoying," then. Well my answer is the same as it always is: any type of character with any combination of qualities can be compelling in the hands of a skilled enough writer.

[asherlockstudy]

Heya! I finally had a chance to watch the EB and had some thoughts on it, but I couldn't fit them in the reply, so I'm sending you an ask instead (it's probably going to be two due to world limit), I hope that's OK! :) My first thought was that OMG you weren't joking when you said it was complicated and basically just a big 'WTH are they even talking about…' throughout. In the beginning of the midlife crisis part, I thought 'oh Link is just being hyperbolic with the weird stuff, and he is probably trying to make it sound more interesting/fun or get attention', so I wasn't really taking the convo too seriously, until I started noticing that Rhett was getting into it, and not just to fill the time for the episode or wax poetic about his insights, as he often does, but like, a rhetoric. The first red flag was when he said 'there are certain social norms and certain ways we interact in the context of our community' out of nowhere. Why would the community be affected by it to the degree that Link should be careful? I mean Christy is one thing, because they are married and live together, but I got the feeling Rhett was talking about their public surroundings. Link sounded like he was talking more about sowing his wild oats and having fun with his remaining time, but the way Rhett framed it was more as though Link was about to do something illegal or at least very frowned upon. And I think that's part of why this whole segment sounded so disjointed, because there was this nondescript weirdness that Link wanted to get on, and it was never further qualified or elaborated (except that maybe it would be financially irresponsible, because Link mentioned that maybe he should go to a bank to get advice on safeguarding--at least that's how it sounded), but then Rhett made it sound like Link wanted to do something antisocial, or at least against the social norms established by their community, and it would result in Link getting completely isolated. This doesn't sound like your average Vegas bender/sportscar/face tattoo. The second red flag was the (and I do hate to say that because of what it might mean) not so discreet aura of manipulation coming from Rhett 'you are a father, a coworker…' and the 'manifesting your true self happens in the context of a community'. But Rhett, my man, why would that be a problem, are you implying that Link's true self is something antithetical or even reprehensible to that community? And how sad for Link to hear the equivalent of 'people won't like you if you show your self' (which Rhett even said outright, referring to Christy). And the subtle manipulation kept going: 'it [should] happen in the right context, with people who love you and respect you, not people who want to keep you from being a certain way' and then even more obvious 'if you are part of a team [and you do this] it's going to be harder to be part of that team'. I was literally staring at the screen in disbelief, because if that wasn't a covert manipulative warning, then I don't know what it was… And though Link said 'you're not keeping me from doing that, you're just giving me input', trying to sound resolute, I really think that what Rhett says will eat him up, even if he is resolved (he's also a very knee-jerk reaction, and impulsive person, so part of it has to do with his reactivity). And the third red flag was after that when Rhett saying 'do I want to be friends with that [example he brought up] of a person?'… WHAT. I mean where did that come from? It was honestly manipulation 101. I'm starting to think they have this dynamic that Rhett is only into Link when he is controllable, and I really think there is a lot of jealously underneath that (part1/2).

If Link is actually having a crisis where he's about to do something worrisome, and he deals by talking about it like it's no big deal, a true friend/caring lover/lifelong partner would see that and not give preemptive disclaimers in the vein of 'if you do this it's deal breaking, so keep to your lane', because obviously this approach will make a person on the brink double down on it even more. I don't know them, but Rhett's disingenuous commentary, and Link going 'la la la' in his head was jumping from the screen. I really think they were trying to broach a topic that they can't really put into words even in their private lives, so they are going circles around it, hoping that the other person eventually taps out. Also, it wasn't lost on me that Link was deflated afterwards, something in the way he was trying to laugh towards the end… I don't know what this big, mysterious weirdness that Link needs to express is, but the whole thing read to me like a teen movie where the nerdy kid caves in and hides his nerdy side to the bully popular kid he idolizes, and the popular kid knows that and represses him on purpose because he doesn't like the nerdy kid trying to break out of the school strata. I know I'm probably seeing things that aren't there, but the way that whole segment could make any sense is only if it's interpreted as a metaphor for whatever is really going on with them. In any case, it really reinforced my belief that Rhett probably had no intention of going along the tandem jump, or even at this point being a good encouraging friend. I don't think he has that big of a heart that he's doing it just to protect Link, he's doing it for himself, and this is the real question. Sorry for the wall of texts, but if you have the chance, I'd love to hear if this made any sense ^^;; Have a great rest of your day/night! (part 2/2)

ANSWER:

It was so valuable reading your input, not only because you see things that make me feel like I am not the weirdo crying in the desert but because you also provided additional, new ideas to entertain. There is not really anything I disagree or I think vastly differently about. I only refrain from considering Rhett straight away self-serving and not acting out of care for the most part. I don't disagree but it's maybe some sentimentality in me that still hopes in Rhett's mind he's trying to protect Link. Again, we don't exactly know what Link was truly raving about so technically we cannot judge Rhett just yet. I have to agree however that even in the most optimistic scenario it seems Rhett cares first and foremost for his own image and career and Link's interests and safety are secondary but, alas, so interwined with his.

You added to this a financial dimension that I had not taken into consideration. At the time of watching I thought this was some sort of red herring to cover the real topic they were discussing, much like they did by mentioning fleetingly hobbies and motorbikes. But you bringing this to the foreground made me think about it. What could be so financially irresponsible that could cause problems to Link's family, friends and business partners? Link is a very rich man and a big purchase - private islands notwithstanding lol - should not be it. It could be an investment but Link is financially frugal and cautious, I doubt he would take such a risk irrespective of Rhett's and his family's interests. Besides, there is almost an element of moral preaching in Rhett's stance, a legal purchase or investment would not justify this.

And then I remembered something that could be relevant, always thanks to you. This is something I haven't talked about almost at all. I have criticised many times how GMM has fallen to an irreversible loop of eternal food tests because they made the mistake to follow the clicks blindly and they created this type of audience for themselves. I have said how they must feel completely trapped in it as creators. Surely you will have noticed how frequently Link allows small jabs against their morning show. Have you noticed when they do something in GMM or GMMore, sometimes he will comment "Boy isn't this interesting?" or "Aren't you entertained by this?". He does this very often. Other times, especially in GMMore, he looks like he can't wait for the segment to be over. It actually happens very often. In their latest interview with Steve-O Link actually verbalized it, he explained how he feels trapped in what GMM has become, I think he said something like "he's squeezed in the corner". Then we have the time they seemed to have had a fight, shortly after Wonderhole. During those off days Rhett was really angry and made pointed comments addressed to Link like "That's his new motto, Stevie. I am not contributing" and "Now, this is teamwork, man" and more. (Recently it seemed Stevie also was temporarily at odds with Rhett and Link seemed irritated by her stance. I have noticed Stevie takes GMM very personally, she sees it almost as HER thing above all else.) So... what if Link wants to throw the towel...??? It's not that he doesn't want the creative partnership with Rhett anymore, not at all, but what GMM has become drains him. Furthermore, the merging of their identities with GMM and its popularity might be perceived by him as the obstacle to him exploring or expressing his true self and so he might have started becoming very negative against it. Rhett is certain GMM is their source of safety and income and the best provider of budget for their creative works so he thinks Link leaving GMM would destroy them. Link leaving GMM would cause a load of financial and legal issues he would have to take care of, it would cut him short of any income from the new episodes that is the biggest provider for his family, it would ruin the relationship of trust between him and Rhett and it would also cause enormous changes to GMM and Mythical (in which Rhett would like to keep working) and severe consequences for all the employees. Idk... it kind of fits? Maybe this is why Rhett stressed so much that he takes the most joy out of serving people by entertaining them and he is not considering stopping that... and that he would not be friends anymore with someone who does his thing irrespectively of anyone else.

And based on instict alone, it feels to me like Link just wants to drop everything and everyone, buy an RV and roam around the world (ideally with Rhett, but Rhett won't follow this way.)

[cdroloisms]

like as far as the finale streams go, there's quite a bit that we can say preeeetty definitively were lies. c!dream literally goes into this whole thing like "this is the part where we monologue at you" to c!tommy, which is taking the credibility of literally everything he's saying and cutting it at LEAST by 80%

(me too tubbo)

the saw trap, rather definitively, was 100% bullshit top to bottom. i mean, come on now. dream literally gives him steak that they could've used to depress the pressure plate, and he's completely unsurprised about the two of them surviving. plus he literally added a bonus "WE'RE DOING THIS BECAUSE WE'RE EVIL" thing. like, laughably fake.

along those same lines, i mean, the "we killed vikk and lazar in every possible way for months" doesn't seem credible in the slightest. first of all, what months? unless they were doing so post-prison (and they continued to do so...after they supposedly found out about revivals causing instability???) -- and the whole point of bringing that up in the first place was pretty much just to set up for the saw trap. any and all death experimentation seems kinda limited by the fact that XD was apparently getting pissed over it

speaking of which, have we considered how funny it is that like there's a good chance that fewer problems were caused by the revival experiments compared to like. foolish dying from fall damage while building. bc foolish SURE DID DIE A LOT

i also want to bring up the "bring an army here to fight against us" moment just because it's ... so overt. i don't think it's a lie, but was dream like more than heavy-handed in hinting at what he wanted tommy and tubbo to do? holy shit yea

like, it's giving "talking about putting c!tommy in the prison" levels of overt.

the rest of it gets...a little murkier though, and in part because c!dream seems to at least, to some degree, contradict himself? i mean, what he says about death being permanent is SUCH a glaring example of this

like, he's clearly got some strong opinions on the permanence of death and revivals that he brings up. a lot. but at the same time, death being impermanent is also a problem...

...and specifically, a problem in the eyes of the god here. which is accurate--we've seen XD specifically make a whole Thing about how he needs souls, how he needs death. (though it does look like he's also kinda...beholden? to something? when he mentions that too, which is interesting.)

and look, here, too, when talking about death:

like i think it's pretty undeniable that c!dream...doesn't. actually want people to die. he's got an issue with this whole death thing. like--look at what he says, even, about the fact that they have to kill everyone? he literally calls it a problem. hell, when he could, by all means, technically get "closer" to his goals by killing c!clingy, he doesn't take it. he even revives tommy after killing him.

he's very explicit about not wanting death in the final stream, as we see here:

i've seen a few interpretations about what dream wanted being to, essentially, become immortal with punz after killing everyone. and i always didn't really agree, though i couldn't pinpoint specifics either--for one, the specific point of "only you two will be left" is something that tubbo points out first, not either dream nor punz. further, when dream mentions who would be left after "killing everyone," he actually specifically doesn't say that it's about the dream and punz show and the dream and punz show only--it's a choice of "join us in our research or die."

further...well, it's rather antithetical to what have been c!dream's stated motivations the entire time, right? dream doesn't want peace on the server in terms of just having like one (1) other person around that agrees with him or whatever. and again, there have been some mentioned contradictions just from these two streams alone. but looking at the contents of these last two streams again, and especially looking at the focus c!dream has on "everyone living forever and being friends and being invincible and the server being completely vanilla again" plus the return of mr. "end justifies the means", i can 100% see some kind of plan where--facing an immediate world reset--c!punz and c!dream decide to go for plan "kill people to appease the god while gathering anyone that's willing to do research with us to Figure Out How To Fix Things." the emphasis that c!dream presents on death not mattering, calling the revive book the "greatest thing" that's happened to the server, even, going "yeah it might hurt, but we can go back" seem to suggest that everyone that was babyjailed in limbo in the meantime would then be able to be revived after they idfk kill god or whatever.

like. i don't think they actually have Too Much of a plan, though we don't know that much bc we don't know how much their research went into. hell, we don't even know how much XD is actually involved in all of this! the events that trigger everything that happens looks to be almost completely out of punz and dream's control--they didn't seem to expect or even know about the nuke, they weren't involved in the egg hatching, and they weren't with eret and foolish fighting XD. all they did was...well punz revives dream and dream kills and revives tommy. (which, ironically, also what they literally said they shouldn't have done because it's what caused the instability????) -- as i pointed out in the last post, i'd say a degree of like "this is inevitable nothing matters" definitely affects c!dream in these streams, with the end of the world kind of happening around him. but as for whatever goal he DID seem to be working towards, the idea of doing research + wanting knowledge + murder for like, an actual purpose that aligns with earlier stated goals (preserving the server and making it so that people can live in peace without being haunted by death and pain and destruction) feels like it reads relatively well with what we know about 1) XD having to do with the reset, and the server being a cycle that involves worlds coming into existence and ending over and and over and over again and 2) what c!dream says in these streams, specifically referring to his stated end goal of living forever with everyone and not simply striving for immortality in its own right

[allbuthuman]

Why I think Chuuya's dislike of Dazai is deeper than vice versa

The reason is, to put it simply, that Chuuya has more reasons to be appalled by someone like Dazai.

I'm mostly referring to their mafia years, because that's when we've seen them interact the most, and because neither of them has been open enough to talk it out and let their interactions mature much beyond how they acted when they were teens.

Struggling with their humanity is a central part of their dynamic, exactly because their experiences are comparable by contrasting one another. Chuuya doesn't know if he's biologically human, yet has the emotions of a human being and clings onto his humanity; Dazai is, for all we know at least, and for all Chuuya knows, biologically human, yet either hides or derogates his human qualities. In that sense, Dazai is what Chuuya never wants to become. He's desperate to know that he is a human being, and desperate to stay one, and here he meets someone who almost makes a point out of discarding his humanity. (This is at least partly a defense mechanism on Dazai's part, since he's being taught that he can't afford being anything other than completely rational, but that's for another post.)

Of course he's going to be disgusted by him. He thinks that he has what he wants and yet disregards it, and, at the same time, that he is what he fears he might become. He was a traumatised teenager – he didn't have the capacity to try to understand why Dazai felt and behaved that way; not when he posed a threat to his sense of self.

Dazai, on the other hand, is, of course, annoyed by Chuuya, but doesn't have such a deep-seated reason to actually, seriously be appalled by him. He is annoyed by the too-human ways he behaves, which he sees as immature, and to which he can't relate to, but those are more of a nuisance rather than something that genuinely threatens his self-perception.

If anything, meeting Chuuya has sort of an opposite effect on Dazai. He goes through life unable to be surprised by anything, and then he meets Chuuya, who not only surprises him, but manages to impress him. (cue Dazai watching Chuuya fight with the closest his clinically depressed ass can get to heart eyes)

When you're that far gone into numbness, unable to afford sadness or anger, surprise might often be what will do the trick and bring you a step back. We see this happening even more clearly when Dazai meets Oda. Chuuya, in a sense, having managed to catch his attention even via mere annoyance, has a "grounding" effect on Dazai by indirectly teaching him what is and isn't a "human" way to behave. He doesn't do that because he cares about teaching him something, he does it because he's pissed off, but his admonitions are antithetical, for example, to Mori's approach, that seems to be doing the exact opposite. In contrast to an environment that encourages cold-blooded rationality, Chuuya's "actually, that's fucked up" reminders must have some effect, albeit small.

Both Fifteen and Dead Apple can be used as examples. In Fifteen, Chuuya scolds him for shooting a corpse, because that's an inhumane thing to do. In Dead Apple, he punches him for joking about someone's death, making a point of telling him that "nobody would believe he's human". That was cruel, and I bet it did hurt Dazai even a little bit, but the point got across. In Stormbringer, Dazai says that he couldn't possibly despise someone who isn't human that much. He becomes more aware of his own "inhuman" traits, through comparison with someone who is human enough to contrast them.

Yes, Dazai's human qualities would be a threat to him when he's being manipulated by Mori, and even more so if we assume that he came to be that way because of some trauma in his past, but his defense against that is numbing himself even more. Being so detached, it's debatable if he's even in a position to be seriously enraged by another person, including Chuuya.

Now, in my opinion, that doesn't make their dynamic weaker. Plus, it's possible that the "gap" grew smaller as time passed and Chuuya became more confident in his own nature. I just think that the reasons they have for not liking each other, as well as for putting their trust in one another, are different for each of them, which only makes their interactions more nuanced.

[kingofdinosaurs]

Akihiko 1,2,3,4,5,12,18,23

1. why do you like this character?

lots of reasons probably? it's like hard for me to pinpoint anything i just like him a lot. i really like the specific ways he like reacts to adversity and shit. like persona 3 in general is like forming a squad of the most traumatized kids they can find (and also fuuka) but even within that i just think his whole bit is really interesting

2. favourite canon thing about this character?

I feel kind of bad for saying i really like his biggest flaw, but i really do like how he keeps falling back into that old habit and flawed coping mechanism of trying to reach some ill-defined concept of strength, and it makes a lot of sense to me that he's kind of stuck in this rut so much throughout his appearances, because he keeps just. experiencing new things that push him to retreat back into that. a lot of people don't like arena as like a regression i think, but it makes a lot of sense to me that it's not as easy for him to just. shake off all his heavily entrenched and maladaptive ideas one day just because. especially in the aftermath of persona 3. it's an ongoing struggle, but hey! he IS winning it, slowly but surely. hey check it out

3. least favourite canon thing about this character?

we need to fire that one atlus employee who keeps making characters be cops. like even discounting the baseline "cops are bad and we should stop glorifying them", it like. doesn't even make sense for akihiko to do that under the circumstances, which are "i want to follow in kurosawa's footsteps and help people like they helped me" BECAUSE LIKE ALL OF THE HELP KUROSAWA GIVES HIM IS LIKE. OUTSIDE OF AND AT TIMES ENTIRELY ANTITHETICAL TO HIM BEING A COP. i swear they literally mention he was on the verge of getting fired over the "selling weapons to children" stuff, like it just doesn't track. why is THIS the lesson akihiko takes away from that.

4. if you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, movie, anything, what would you put them in?

i think he would enjoy being in dragon ball ^_^

5. what's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

probably just his arena theme tbh, i have a lot of trouble coming up with songs for him. i would actually appreciate suggestions if anyone's got them!

12. what's a headcanon you have for this character?

i love forgetting everything I've ever thought about a character when i get asked about them -_- uh i guess the easy ones are he is trans and autistic... I wanna say something that feels less entrenched though...

OH yeah uh. this is more of a what-if thing but i do kind of think that if mitsuru hadn't approached him when she did, by the time p3 rolled around he would have probably built up a similar reputation to like kanji or ryuji. in some small ways he was really lucky to be given a completely consequence-free outlet for his desire to prove his strength, and i think if he hadn't had that, if mitsuru hadn't approached him, he would have tried to find that outlet in the real world no matter the damage it did to his reputation and relationships with others. i feel like people don't really think about this, but both in the answer flashback and in arena, he doesn't have access to that outlet of the dark hour and it does show in how he interacts with other people and what he prioritises. this is mostly a hypothetical, but i think it would affect how he thinks about kanji (and also ryuji in persona 5 arena coming NEVER)

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

ooh it's really hard to choose... i really love his relationship with mitsuru, i find his dynamic with ken really interesting under the like. especially the lead in from p3 through to arena, like how do you figure out that one from ken's end. must have been weird as hell. but i think i have to give it to him and aigis especially with the stuff they telegraphed at the end of arena of like. her doing some terminator shit with him to get his degree finished... in general the shadow ops trio are like a really fun successor to the senpai trio to me because instead of trying to like replace shinji they brought in aigis to make the situation even odder

23. favourite picture of this character?

oh god. it just has to be the misery expression like what else can i say. load bearing

[hey-loser]

TLDR: SRB Zoom Chat

In case you missed it, Sarah did a webinar on Zoom a couple weeks ago hosted by The Sunday Morning Transport to answer questions about Tears Waiting to be Diamonds. You can get a 60-day free subscription to access both the story and the Zoom over on Sarah’s tumblr, but for those who are unable to access for any reason, I received a request to provide a little recap, so here goes! Tried to make it somewhat organized but also it is going to be a little chaotic haha. 

New IOL Deets

The scene of Luke and Elliot getting together and confessing their feelings was almost only ONE SENTENCE LONG. Many thanks on behalf of the fandom to the anonymous critique partner of Sarah’s who told her that absolutely wouldn’t fly.

Elliot and Luke Post-IOL

Sarah says that Elliot doesn’t go over the border much, even though he is able to. Luke is afraid of Elliot going somewhere where he can’t follow, and even though Elliot doesn’t even think of it as a possibility, he tries to be respectful of it.

Pet names: Elliot sometimes will take classics and make them weird (like he does at the end of IOL). Luke will occasionally embarrassedly call Elliot “darling”.

Luke has fairly regular contact with the harpies. Elliot tends to spearhead their contact in terms of keeping up correspondence - he knows relatives even Luke doesn’t, and they often attend harpy festivals. According to Sarah, it’s a classic case of the in-law being the favorite kid. She jokes that he could have just gone to the harpies and lived with them when he was exiled, and they would have gladly taken him in.

WHY SARAH

TWTBD Parts 1 & 2 were initially meant to be published on consecutive Sundays. SARAH SUGGESTED THAT THERE BE A LONGER WAIT IN BETWEEN.

Why Elliot do that?

Even though Elliot has made some progress with his insecurities, he still thinks that Luke doesn’t truly know the worst that he can do, and just puts up with him. Over the years, they have worked through smaller issues, so he’s learned that he can be forgiven for these things (while before that he considered himself completely unloveable). Once he’s committed treason, he thinks that is the worst possible thing, something completely antithetical to Luke’s value system as a soldier, so he considers it inevitable that their relationship is over.

Sarah likened it to “the mortifying ordeal of being known” –  Elliot never holds himself back from being completely known, because then he can be loved for who he is. But Elliot doesn’t think that Luke knows the worst he can be (even though Luke obviously does and accepts him for it).

Luke’s Letters

Luke starts with angry letters, then more worried, then back and forth between the two. Some of the letters Luke sends to Elliot are well thought out and composed (probably because Serene helped him), while others are basically drunk late night texts that he has to admit to Serene later with shame (side note from me: anyone wanna write the fic that comprises all his letters? or am I gonna have to do that myself). 

Luke doesn’t even consider them broken up in the first place and was entirely unsurprised to hear what Elliot had done when he returned, while Elliot dramatically thinks they’ve been broken up for months. He doesn’t want to hurt himself by looking at the letters when he thinks he knows that they will say.

The meantime:

It had been a month since Elliot was exiled by the time Luke and Serene returned from war. By the time Luke arrives it has been almost four months. A lot of that time was spent figuring out what thad happened, possibly variously threatening people who had been planning on executing Elliot.

“A lot of Elliot’s diplomacy relies on the fact that there are people who will enact violence for him”

Peace is not a stable thing, and there isn’t an easy answer for it. As they get older, it becomes more difficult, since adults are held more accountable for their actions than children.

Serene and Luke actually were trying to figure out the diplomatic way to solve the situation: i.e., sending letters to form a plan once communication was initiated.  After getting no response, they tried to get him pardoned, which was difficult considering someone apparently has a transcript of a long speech Elliot gave that essentially said “I did it and I’m not sorry”. 

Luke and Serene would sometimes spontaneously decide they were going to go find him alone, and the other would talk them down from it, or they’d decide to go together, and Golden would convince them to wait.

Where’s Serene?

The story was unfortunately too long to include Serene, or even the few references to her that were initially included (such as Mark mentioning a rumor of the Sunborn Champion being involved with her).

Logistically Sarah couldn’t get Serene to the battle, since Luke would have flown to get to Elliot as fast as possible. She says that Serene definitely arrives within the day.

What happens after TWTBD?

Luke and Elliot have to have several conversations, starting with a yelling conversation, a tender conversation, and then the normal combination of yelling/tender/insults. 

“If Elliot says loser, Luke knows that he’s okay and so pretty much the first words that Elliot said to Luke in the battlefield were reassuring because when he says loser, he means I still love you, which is what Luke was getting worried about.”

Elliot puts himself in tall towers and high places specifically so Luke can find him.

Sarah specifically quotes “This Ain’t a Love Song” by scouting for girls: “I know I’m lost, but I’m waiting to be found”.

More IOL

Sarah has said this before, but just in case anyone has missed it: she definitely has ideas of what happens to the characters in the future. She has said she has a strong story idea which would also need another novel in between to explain the middle events – so essentially a trilogy. TWTBD would take place in between these second and third books – the second would explain the events up to TWTBD, and the third would continue on from there. To be clear, Sarah has not confirmed whether this is actually in the works yet, or whether these would take full-length novel form or short story form.

On Trans and Nonbinary Individuals in IOL (specifically in elven culture):

Sarah says there would be some more freedoms for nonbinary/trans elves or dwarves than in human culture, but they would be restricted in other ways.

Sarah acknowledges that the IOL universe has been represented in a more binary way thus far; she plans to delve more into gender beyond the binary in the future after taking time to get the details and complexity right.

Long Live Evil Information

Sarah’s new upcoming novel! The protagonist is thrown into her favorite fantasy novel, but is unexpectedly classified as an evil sorceress and cast out with the rest of the villains. From how Sarah talks about it, the novel delves into villainy in fiction and what truly makes a villain. It also explores the joy of finding magic even if you think you’ve reached the stage of your life where you’re past it. (I AM SO EXCITED)

Hopefully this was somewhat coherent! 

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Ok, I'm in the last chunk of Valdemar, the third in the Founding of Valdemar trilogy, and a companion quite literally just went "We want and need our Chosen to be healthy, in mind, heart, and body," and y'all...not only does this ping my ableism bell, but it also seems to be rewriting Valdemaran history a little bit???

Like, let's be absolutely real here. On the page, heralds in other Valdemar books have experienced depression (Vanyel), PTSD (literally most of them, but Vanyel, Thalia, and probably Mags), hypervigilance (Vanyel again), anger management challenges (Tylendel), anxiety (Lan), and a host of varying physical disabilities (Jadus, Thalia, Amily, Pol, and the heralds whose name I forget who ends up severely burned in the Arrows of the Queen trilogy). I haven't always liked how the physical injuries and disabilities are handled, but they've always been present and they've never actually disqualified anyone from being a Herald, even if Amily had to be partly cured before being chosen and Jadus retired after losing his leg.

This new statement about how companions prefer explicitly abled heralds feels like a really icky attempt to rewrite history, and this book has handled disability in general really poorly, even for a Vakdemar novel. And no, this book doesn't even get the excuse of "it's a survival situation" because they've been in Haven for ten years, they're fine. They aren't actively traveling, they've succeeded in building a sustainable and defensible keep, everything else is details and time.

This whole passage is really problematic in the context of the Valdemar universe:

So there are a couple of key issues. First, we really, REALLY need to address why casual sanist language is not ok. The companion isn't talking about quirky behaviors or idiosyncrasies when they say "madness," and we shouldn't be quick to elide what I am choosing to interpret as clinical madness (mad studies scholars, help me out here, I know definitions can be slippery, but I don't have a good one for fantasy contexts) with personality quirks--which is what Restil is doing here. Be CLEAR about your term use and watch where you're using sanist language and maybe stop.

Second, I really dislike the whole idea that madness can spread. Yes, I know, companions are magical and have a weird hive mind thing happening, but I dislike the perpetuation of the myth that madness is contagious or that associating with mad people can make you mad out of nowhere. That's a deeply harmful, isolating idea that is kind of antithetical to heralds as I understood them in other books--particularly Vanyel's trilogy. Community strengthens and supports, it does not ostracize and isolate. This was actually WILD to hear in a heraldic context in a Valdemar novel, because I think every other Herald would rightfully lose their absolute shit over this. Whatever happened to "there will never be another Tylendel?"

Third, the swimmer and drowning man analogy is bad here, for the same reasons that perpetuating the idea that you can "catch" madness is bad. We do not leave people to drown, and the analogy oversimplifies the ever-loving hell out of mental health crises and what can be done to support the person in crisis. We do not just leave them to drown, and again, the Heraldic Circle literally would never.

Fourth...that last sentence is just straight ableist. It is very much expecting what Rosemarie Garland-Thompson defined as a normate: a 20-something cishet white man who is athletic. Literally the normate is so narrow and focused as to barely exist in the real world, and it completely negates the value of anyone who doesn't fit that mold. It's also contradictory to the "we take the weird ones" ethos the companion expressed earlier, so the writing itself is wishy washy on the whole thing.

I am just...floored and kind of disgusted by the blatant rewrite of what companions look for in their chosen here, and I cannot square it with other Valdemar books that handled this better (although not perfectly). Like, as someone who lost communities to chronic illness, I'm very much soured on companions after this book. I will take Yfandes or Kalira or Rolan over any companion in this book, and I'm pretty sure the circle in earlier books wouldn't have stood for this.

[nextstop-fixationstation]

Personally I think that the temples were written in a very clever way with how obvious and yet cryptic they are, because there are multiple meanings to take from their lessons. You have humility and persistence from the temples of wit and strength, which are the only two lessons that are kept rather purposefully obscure (as Valeriana seems to only address Anne directly, for whatever reason).

(This got longer than i thought it would, so i'm putting it under a readmore)

Humility has strategic benefits, as knowing when to throw battles to win the war is often key. Marcy is actually already very good at that, as shown when they play their game, but this is not true humility. At first brush, the idea of being "humble enough to lose" sounds like it's referring to only losing a game, but it actually refers to being wrong in general. "Lose" can mean being willing to lose something of yourself in order to maintain the relationships you have or accept new viewpoints. Loss itself is not a bad thing in this situation, and avoiding it can actually have dire consequences. Marcy's real trial actually technically ends when they accept that they were wrong about Andrias and about, specifically, wanting to cling so much to Anne and Sasha that they'd hurt all of them in the process. They were also wrong to view their friendships with so little faith, which is technically the crux of their insecurity. Insecurity and fear are the way that Marcy and the Core act as foils for one another as well. In this case, Marcy basically loses their life and potentially their friendships to save them, and that seems to be the actual culmination of the temple's lesson. Insecurity and pride are closely linked as opposites and as things of the same basic nature.

When talking about persistence, we also already know that Sasha is already persistent. We see it with toad tower and with the fact he takes over Newtopia, and the statement, "End of discussion," denotes a certain amount of stubbornness. He forges forward with his plans regardless of what his conscience might tell him throughout the series, until something changes in Turning Point. In that sense, it's not the idea of relentless persistence towards a goal that the temple refers to. Rather, the temple here is referring to persistence in change or becoming someone different. People make mistakes while finding their way. Sasha constantly makes them on screen, and that's why he loses Braddock and Percy. He nearly loses Anne completely. When he finally does turn around, he's persistent in trying to make things right. Something that I wouldn't consider a mistake but rather just an instance of reasonable hesitation is that conversation with Anne about how he's not sure he can forgive Marcy after this. It's a small interaction, but it shows just how persistent and dedicated he is to change. A previous Sasha wouldn't have put down his front long enough to even have the conversation. There's a lot of growth that's very apparent by the end of the series, and this "true strength" is what allows him to say with confidence, by the end, that he's "not that person anymore."

It should then be noted that these double meanings come from the fact that the aspect of the Heart, Anne's aspect, is what links all three of these traits (Wit-Stength-Heart) together to form, essentially, the power of a hero. Anne is the only one of the three to have any tangible feedback from a character to detail what the point of the trial is, and what worthiness actually means. In the end, Anne is worthy because 1) she admits she's wrong and has flaws, and 2) also tries every single day to be better. If you take those two statements into consideration, she already fulfills the other two criteria from the temples of Wit and Strength -- humility and persistence. Thusly, Anne Boonchuy is the most worthy of all three of the Calamity Trio. Perfection and embodiment are not required -- such a requirement would be antithetical to the series' thesis. Instead, Anne embodies the idea of metamorphosis and change, and that makes her a hero to everyone who loves her.