#shades nier

[miel128]

my friends

[guavie]

[becquereliart]

And yet, this world.. this world is so full of beauty

[cartooniste2z]

Day 2 of Lixmas!

Lix as 2B

Let's keep the streak going!

[wieldsrage]

when kainé in route [E] said she has a strange feeling like somehow not all shades are bad, don't think for a second she was referring to tyrann. that dude can choke...

[miracleheart]

whenever I see people try to blame Kaine for not telling Nier, that the shades are people and not monster. I cannot help but wonder if we played the same game...

[sxlphie]

Ignore the fact that she has literally just passed away but when is Devola going to tell me the shade of her lip gloss/balm

[guavie]

Prototype YoRHa Gunners! I got inspired by the designs in the manga (except No. 16 who existed already)

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Actually, okay, I'm curious about this point and couldn't find any concrete answer either way, so I figured I might as well use this new fangled 'poll' system them kids are having fun with:

[larkawolfgirl]

Okay so I'm happy because I think I finally pieces together most of the deeper meaning in Nier Automata thanks to the anime. I have to figure out how to formulate these thoughts into a coherent text, though. I also need to finish watching the anime in case anything else jumps out.

[nieryourlocation]

finally... after 260 hours i've beaten shadowbringers and unlocked access to the NieR crossover raids...

this is genuinely the only reason i bought the ff expansions

[kikizoshi]

In the spirit on NieR-related stories never to be written, here's a what was once meant to be an opening line: two paragraphs I wrote with the concept of Nikolai hailing from Facade, in which he'd been sentenced to that thing where you have to stare at sand for a long time:

In the ever-flowing sludge of quicksand, Nikolai Gogol felt two long years of his life drift away. Should someone have went up to him at that moment, to ask him for a favour or to otherwise simply ask how he was doing, he wasn’t sure that he’d be able to resist hurling them in with the skiffs floating endlessly along the canals. ‘Though, I can’t, of course,’ he thought. ‘Such a thing would break Rule 89: "Intentional murder of another citizen for no discernible reason is hereby strictly prohibited…" Then again, who may blame me, were it naught but an accident? I could hurl myself into the river, along with him…’ Nikolai’s face fell into a grimacing smile. ‘Ah, but then that breaks Rule 338: "Throwing oneself into the sand is forbidden." They truly do think of everything…’

[desaintjustfancam]

Bodies in Nier Replicant

NieR Replicant is a game characterized by a preoccupation with bodies, their failures, their betrayals, and their significance both constructed and inherent. Each of its protagonists enjoys a complicated relationship with their body, its main plot threads revolve around the discrepancy between body and soul, and the game both out of necessity and seemingly some genuine interest engages with sexual politics. An accounting of this ought to be made in an organized and thoughtful fashion, and I believe the best way to proceed with such an account is to discuss how the questions of corporeality touch upon each of our protagonists, painting a picture as we go. It is worth noting that I will from time to time touch upon the question of authorial intent, as Yoko Taro and associates have been vocal and engaged with fan questions. While this may be the case, I am engaging with NieR as a text, of which its creators' interpretations are one of many and do not possess a unique charisma of truth. I also do not wish to make conjecture about authorial intent, but merely about what I regard to be substantive and valid readings of a work of fiction. Spoilers will be unmarked and plentiful.

Kaine is a fairly apparent and explicit case of bodily and sexual politics. Kaine is an intersex woman of uncertain parentage raised in a xenophobic, superstitious, and authoritarian society. Within her society she is a pariah along with her grandmother Kali and is forced to the social margins, often subject to violence and abuse from a young age. Kaine is a creature of contrasts and contradictions: a beautiful woman full of hatred and profanity, a victim who has become a fierce warrior and herself a victimizer, a social outsider who herself participates in genocide and the destruction of the other, a woman ashamed of her body who dresses in an outfit that would make Hugh Heffner blush, a human and a shade, an object of sexual gratification but also one of revulsion.

The issue of Kaine's presentation is a recurring discussion in the game, frequent reference is made to her undress and Weiss refers to her with the increasingly affectionate nickname "hussy", despite the fact that Kaine's sexuality is actually a subject that is not broached in the game – her existence is solitary and lonely, and her only romantic inclinations are rather chastely directed towards Nier himself within the game itself. Indeed, in Ending E, NieR is reincarnated with all his purity in the body of a child, and the pair cling to each other in nudity amid a pure white blossom – a Lunar Tear, which by this point has taken its place as a signifier of pure love (Yonah and Nier, Kali and Kaine, and now Kaine and Nier). As Kaine holds NieR, there does not appear to be a sexual element to her protective embrace. In this sense, we see a glimpse of Kaine the maiden, Kaine the woman.

The audio CD "Lust" depicts Kaine as lustful and fixated on Nier, and engaging in necrophilia by proxy in a fit of madness. Kaine is also a murderer, with a dark passenger in the form of the shade Tyrann who permits her to live only so long as she victimizes others. Kaine is uniquely situated to prevent the wholesale slaughter inflicted by Nier upon the Shades, including innumerable children and infants, yet she remains quiet and does not disclose her understanding of their language. Kaine drips with profanity, threatens to mutilate her enemies often in sexualized fashions. Kaine, in this context, is powerful, violent, lustful – here we have Kaine the monster, the phallic Kaine.

These contradictions are not tolerated well within Kaine. Her duality, reflected in her twin swords, one of which is ultimately destroyed in her conflict with Nier, is the source of a great deal of suffering. She struggles to continue to psychologically steel herself to kill Shades as the apparent evil of her deeds makes itself clear. Even after avenging herself on the shade Hook, Kaine is not satisfied and simply wishes, feeling her purpose exhausted, for death to take her before being, effectively, reanimated by the benevolence and purity of child Nier. Even Tyrann, symbolic of Kaine's evil and masculinity is eventually moved by the experience of love and comes to regard himself and his actions with disgust. Kaine ultimately resolves the struggle between feminine-masculine, good-evil, chastity-sexuality in favor of her womanhood.

However, as in all conflicts there is a unity in opposites. Kaine's phallic aspect is given rise to by her desire to protect her womanhood, her virtue, from the community of hatred that surrounds her, from a society that spurns and rejects her. Kaine is hateful and murderous because she has been given no other recourse, no other communities, no other options. A clear example of this is in Ending E, where when the player attempts to manipulate the camera to obtain the vaunted panty shot, and as the game's achievements frames it, "discover her secret" – a clear reference to her ambiguous genitalia, Kaine assaults and eventually murders the player themselves to defend her chastity and modesty. Rather than an intrinsic quality of her person, her aggression and masculinity are passed onto her by her grandmother as means of self defense. Kaine's greatest acts of evil and murder are all fundamentally acts of love, tribute, and defense to those who have given her life meaning. One might interpret her clothing, which shows clearly a body she hates and despises, as an act of self-sacrifice, a hair shirt, a tribute to the efforts of her grandmother and to those that love her.

Emil is textually homosexual. He expresses his wish during the wedding of Facade's King to Fyra that he might enjoy such a wedding some day and as Nier assures him he will find a bride some day, he is left to awkwardly note in his absence that this is not what he desires. The creators of the game have similarly confirmed their understanding of Emil as a homosexual character who is motivated by an unreciprocated love for Nier. Emil is depicted as pure and essentially omnibenevolent, despite being cursed with a body that destroys everything that he sees and later contains a monstrosity so profound that it exterminates entire communities. His love for Nier is chaste and is held in contradiction to the terror of his condition.

I think, however, equally compelling as a strictly homosexual reading is a reading of Emil as transgender. Wishing to be the bride in a wedding is conducive to such a reading, and NieR is a game with a lot to say about bodies. Emil is first met wearing a blindfold, alone, isolated from the world, unable to see the people he loves or wishes to give himself to, the very act of looking, of desiring, in this regard, becomes violent for Emil. Emil spends more time with Kaine than Nier for his time in the narrative, and they develop a close bond. It is, as well, Kaine who Emil petrifies with his gaze, not Nier. It is to free Kaine from the stone which symbolizes Emil's world that Emil descends into the depths of his home, his past, to confront the monstrosity within, represented by Halua, his twin sister, who has been reduced to a monster.

Emil gives himself to the monstrosity willingly, sublimating himself and being devoured by it with the hope that he might take it similarly into himself. And he does. Emil and his feminine counterpart, twins, exist within each other as anima and animus. Emil is blessed with sight, desire, knowledge, power, but is placed into a monstrous, hideous, ghoulish body, which he despises and which provokes fear and hatred from those who might previously have offered him kindness. It is a body designed to inflict harm, a body which does not suit its contents, a body which Emil himself desperately fears. In joining Kaine within the ranks of monstrous bodies and dysphoria, Emil is able to free her from this self-imposed prison. He is able to enable her to live a normal life. Emil rescues Kaine again in the narrative, saving her in Ending E and in the Shadowlord's Castle. These are tasks Nier is incapable of performing. Nier, despite loving Kaine, does not appear to understand her and might be incapable of understanding her. It is only her peer, someone who truly does empathize with her monstrosity, Emil, that is able to free her.

Emil as a pre-awareness transgender woman, trapped in a rotting, artificial, ghoulish body designed to do harm on her and others, able to free and empathize with those like her, pining after a man who cannot understand her, now free to desire but acutely aware of her own ugliness, inadequacy, and the hatred her desire provokes in others, I argue is extremely compelling. It is worth noting that Emil's bodily monstrosity escalates as the end of the eternal childhood her body had been trapped in, her beatific and cherubic features melting away to bones at crude angles, her hair falling away, at the moment she is meant to be graduating into self assurance and control.

Nier and Weiss are somewhat less involved from the perspective of body politics. Nier is noteworthy in that per associated works he was forced into sex work as an adolescent in order to get by, and that as a result he binds his hair into a ponytail as a response to sexual trauma. As he matures into adulthood he severs this ponytail, wearing his hair loose, representing in ways a growth past this. In doing so, however, Nier steels himself into a warrior, devoted only to recovering Yonah, sacrificing everything in his path to do so. In this sense I am not sure Nier has grown past his trauma so much as he has sublimated it into the acts of brutality which he inflicts upon others and his obsessive, bordering on incestuous, fixation on his sister. Nier is repeatedly prompted to feel empathy for other victims and outsiders and refuses to do so willfully, choosing to remain ignorant and deluded in his quest. Weiss, himself without a body or bodily autonomy, assists Nier in remaining blind and hardening his heart.

Louise forms a mirror to the concerns of bodies that are exhibited by Emil and Kaine. A Gestalt without a corresponding Replicant, Louise is a girl who was born without any options, a cruel product of fate. Able to think, feel, and take a false form as a woman, Louise is unable to speak or sing or perform in human society. She admires the beauty of humanity and desperately wishes to join them, cursing her own hideousness and admiring, desiring, the beauty of the world. She is infatuated with Hans the Postman, who cannot and will not reciprocate her love. She is denied humanity or sympathy by Nier and Weiss – although Kaine and Hans are able to provide it for her posthumously. In this sense Louise is a mirror of Kaine and Emil. This parallel might cast Neir and Hans in somewhat of a Walrus and the Carpenter role ��� they will both mercilessly eradicate the Other from the world, but one will, at least, cry about it.

Louise, is of course, the pinnacle of the Other. She has no Replicant. No earthly or human attachment. She cannot become anything except herself, her efforts to do so render her even more monstrous, hideous, and terrible than before. The sort of perverse excitement with which Nier and Weiss regard her extraordinarily powerful body feels at times reminiscent of discourse about the physicality of transgender women and athletes. It reminds me of the times one clocks involuntarily a person they encounter. It feels dirty, transgressive, and wrong.

There are innumerable stones left unturned in this brief discussion of how NieR Replicant talks about and shows bodies and people's relationships to them, but I thought it would be interesting to reflect on my own thoughts on the issue, how they made me feel, and what kinds of readings can be made of the work.

[sphealingit22]

FUN FACT

Did you know that Yoko Taro was deeply influenced by the world's response to 9/11 when directing the development of Nier? As an outsider to the politics of the war on terror, he contextualized it as a conflict between two sides carrying a dogmatic notion that their brutality against the other was justified, an this perspective's influence on his work is most visible in the conflict between humans and Shades which gets further and further recontextualized as the game continues.

It also means that this is true

Happy 9/11

[starly-amazing]

Thinkin about Zelda and ISAT

They're both two games/series near and dear to my heart which have a lot of crossover potential. Just wanted to ramble off some disjointed (emphasis on the disjointed) thoughts before I trip and fall in my own crossover hell which I DO NOT have time for (also why you haven't seen any Nier/ISAT crossovers from me despite the MASSIVE POTENTIAL for crossovers from so many similar themes between them, mainly Nier: Automata).

I haven't read more than part of one isat/zelda crossover of it but I occasionally see fanart of it which I love so so much but it's also weird seeing Mirabelle/Siffrin drawn as (usually BOTW) Link since neither of them are really "chosen ones". They're both "just a guy". Like, don't get me wrong I love the fanart and no shade to the artists but it gets my brain going sometimes.

I think crossovers would work better thematically with Wind Waker. WW Link is 'just a guy' who wanted to save his kidnapped sister. He's not the chosen one who died ages ago and never returned which is what spurred the events of Wind Waker in the first place.

He's just a guy who left his island home with pirates he just met to try to save her. Through the game has to collect the Triforce fragments to prove he's worthy to go back down to old hyrule to defeat the Demon King Ganon.

WW Link also has the King of Red Lions helping him. This can work nicely with both Siffrin/Loop (somewhat rude helper with a secret identity from a world that 'no longer exists') and Mirabelle/Euphrasie (Chosen because they showed potential and because they're the one who happened to be there at the time)

I love Zelda games; I love the settings and the gameplay and art styles and stories, but at the same time it's lacking for me because I don't really get into Link's head as much as he's closer to the blank slate protagonist as Siffrin is at first shown to be before we get into the thick of the game and realize 'oh...oh no'.

Obviously we can see Link is nice and heroic and cares about Zelda and being the Good Guy (aside from trashing everyone's houses). But he's still overall someone written for as many people as possible to fill in his shoes so he's going to lack the depth that really gets me. But ho ho holy shit does ISAT rip out all my insecurities and problems and shove them into one little fella, trap me in their head in their time loop and make me suffer personally.

Honestly I don't even know what point I'm trying to make rn. More Wind Waker/ISAT crossover art I guess. Mirabelle and Siffrin being "just a guy" forced into a hero role rather than The Chosen One. Link and Siffrin both have cool pointy hats.

Look at my cat her name is Kainé Sunny Fartypants Von Siffrin L'Dadnier.

[toskarin]

as someone who knows about the drakengard plotline in question, i'm kind of curious on how it's paralleled in later titles. that's a detail i hadn't picked up on in my playing of the drakenier games, i'd like to hear more on that

I'm a bit out of it today, so I won't get horribly into things besides pointing out the vague shape of them. apologies for that

enormous spoilers below the break for the entire drakenier franchise, naturally

at the core of the mainline drakenier games, imperfect protagonists are navigating doomed relationships with their siblings (or the closest things they have to them) and finding out just how miserable their situation really is by trying to solve what they view as a simple problem

Nier and Yonah are a very easy comparison, with how they're more of a normal sibling relationship in a horrifyingly bleak world. where Caim's distorted connection with Furiae stems from the distance between them, Nier's healthier connection to his sister exists in a world that is distorting all on its own. they were dead before they even knew they were alive.

in SINoALICE, it's even confirmed that Nier never finds a cure for Yonah and goes on to kill her when she becomes a shade. whether he wants to or not, he has to walk in Caim's footprints

I probably don't need to elaborate on how Drakengard 3 is "kill my sister world" echoed out into flowering fractals, but in general, a lot of the plots echo the ways in which Caim's simple act of existence unknowingly kills his sister

see also: Emil and Halua, and the general horrors of having a twin in a Yoko Taro setting