#she is ALWAYS thinking about other people and their perspectives

[primrose19]

I haven't been quiet about my dislike (hatred, even) of the last two episodes of the show but I'll say it again

(I cannot speak for everyone, obviously, so these are just my personal feelings on the matter)

People tend to confuse "happy" with "satisfying" endings. Let's look at Lilia's episode. She died. Literally. Technically, that is a "sad" ending. But it wasn't, actually, because I did not feel sad. Quite the opposite, actually, I ADORED how her arc was concluded. I had happy tears. Her end truly felt like a beginning. My point is, I was expecting the same emotional impact from Agatha's end because there was no way this show would end any other way. Agatha was always going to die. But execution fucking matters. Hell, the hug in e4 had more emotional impact than the kiss. Do you know why? Because in the, supposedly, Agatha centered show, we got BARELY NOTHING regarding Agatha's backstory and we got EVEN LESS about Rio and Agatha's relationship. And I'm not even speaking from a shipper perspective. But Agatha's story has been so interwoven with Death, it feels like something fucking crucial to show. I don't disagree that there's a certain allure in leaving things unsaid and implied but when you want to have that sort of ending, it needs to have the emotional impact to back it up. The ending needs to fit the rest of the show (example: HTTYD 3, but we are not going to unravel that disaster here since it's neither the time nor the place for it).

And don't even get me started on the comic book lovers. "It's ending was comic book accurate so I'm happy!" Well, I'm not a comic book reader. This ending meant absolutely nothing to me the way it was shown. Which brings me back to my first point; execution fucking matters.

As for your "this is not the end of them" comment, I don't necessarily disagree. Originally, another thing that made me hate the ending was the fact that we got no resolution between the two. At least, no explicitly shown resolution. Now, I think maybe they left it open-ended on purpose, to maybe (hopefully) touch upon that in future projects. However, it truly does feel like the time for the backstory is over. I can't fully explain this feeling but the closest example I could give is spinoffs; you know how you get certain main characters and then this work gets a spinoff with a new set of protagonists but the old ones still make some appearances here and there? You get to know what they're up to in present time but you no longer get a full view of them. That's what this feels like.

Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted talk

Honestly, I don't understand the people who are bitter about the way Agatha All Along ended. I thought it was freaking amazing.

Agatha and Rio got to be angry and in love and epically drawn to each other. And petty as all hell.

We got a kiss (and Rio's face those seconds before Agatha kissed her and she felt it coming). We got to see the wounds Agatha left in Death. We got to see a moment where Agatha essentially forgave Death (even if she wouldn't acknowledge it to Rio). We watched Rio cover her grave in the color that meant most to Agatha. We watched how Rio gave Agatha the time to love her son (because even if the older Agatha refused to see it - because it hurt too much - she would clearly have taken that gift a second time if she found herself back in that moment).

And it wasn't even the end of them, because if you don't think Rio is going to keep pursuing Agatha's soul now that she's floating around as a ghost instead of coming home to her, you're wrong (you're just... wrong).

It might not have been a "happy ending" but it was freaking glorious.

[thedream14]

I recently saw several posts about Logan being a polyglot. From my personal perspective, I agree.

The guy has been around for over 200 years, so it's impossible for him not to know at least the basic structure of other languages like German or French. Plus, we're talking about a war veteran.

Usually, these people, by interacting for so long with other cultures, end up learning from the locals. Also, in terms of military strategy, many soldiers learn words, phrases, and codes from the language spoken by the enemy.

So if we assume the Wolverine: Origins montage is canon, Logan served in both World Wars on the Allied side. He was at the D-Day landings in France and was a prisoner of war in Japan… (PS: I don’t know how my friend managed to get to Asia over the course of a year amidst all the chaos of WWII 👀 Mis respetos lol). Later, the guy was also sent to serve in Vietnam.

As we know from the comics, Logan ended up learning Japanese during his time in Japan. In that sense, it’s possible to assume that he probably learned several languages ​​during his military service in Europe, such as French, German, Italian or Spanish. In addition, he most likely also managed to learn Vietnamese.

It is even possible that in Vietnam he reinforced his French, since in that country, by the early 1950s, many people spoke French, due to its colonial past (French Indochina).

In short, Logan being a polyglot is more canon than the Poolverine being roommates.

***

Personally, I would like to think that Logan knows Spanish and since he took on the role of Laura's father, he has been practicing and reinforcing his knowledge of the language.

Logan understands the importance of speaking another language and how it help to understand the depth of feelings and ideas. That is why Logan is interested in practicing and learning his daughter's native language.

For Laura, that interest translates into love. She is always grateful for her father's efforts to get closer to her. Also, she admires his dedication.

- FUCK ! Laura, can you come over for a moment? I have a question…

- Sureee. I’m all ears.

- What is the preterite perfect supposed to be?

- mmm very good question, I don't know either.

- The Fuck… aren't you supposed to speak spanish?

- Yes… But let’s say I only know one rule…

- which one?

- The rule that says: Te amo mucho papá.

- that is not a rule…

- No, but it is a fact.

- You know, now that I think about it, I also know a grammar rule. Do you want to know what it is?

- Sure.

- The rule says something like: También te amo, mi adorada hija.

[therobotsoul]

Last thing I want to say about Arcane before Act 2 falls upon us like a cartoon anvil. I realized something very weird but incredibly interesting about Vi.

Vi is, in esence, Caitlyn's noble savage.

You know those western movies or other historical dramas in which a white person goes to a foreign land and they get acquainted with a local that maybe knows their language or in general is more aligned with the protagonist than with their own people? Well, that's Vi.

Think about it, Caitlyn goes to prison because she needs information about Silco. She knows basically nothing about Zaun, not really, but she meets this other girl, she is from Zaun, and with a bit of convincing she joins Caitlyn for her own reasons Cait doesn't bother asking about.

Vi and Cait get close but in this uneven way where Caitlyn understands Zaun a bit better but always from the perspective of someone coming from above and "fixing it", and Vi, who only cares about her sister, ends up agreeing with her. In fact she's the one pushing for a raid inside Zaun in the Council. The noble savage ends up agreeing with the protagonist and doing things their way.

In a lesser work of fiction, that would be it. in fact, we wouldn't have Vi's perspective, but in Arcane we do. We know directly, from Season 1 Act 1 why Vi does what she does. We also have other perspectives from people like Silco, Vander, Jinx and Ekko, giving a much richer and complex picture of what Zaun even is. Which makes Caitlyn's, no matter how sympathetic, seem limited.

Which leads to Act 1 of Season 2. Caitlyn suffers inmense grief caused by someone from Zaun, people from Zaun attack the public memorial for her mom, and suddenly all of that sympathy she had goes out the window. Understandable, but the way she talks about zaunites IN GENERAL now has this venom to it. Not Vi though, Vi is the good one, her noble savage, so Cait asks her to sever all her ties to Zaun by BECOMING A COP with her. And Vi does.

But Vi can't let go of the last thing and let Cait kill her sister and a random zaunite child. And then the moment her noble savage disagrees with her, well "it's her blood on your veins", they're "animals", you're all the same.

This is a bit reductionist and goes over the very understandable grief that Caitlyn has, but it illustrates something about her relationship with Vi that she needs to get rid off yesterday if she is to redeem herself.

[whateverisbeautiful]

Would love your thoughts on Sasha’s 5b assertion to Michonne, “you can’t help me. It worked out for you.” There is so much left unsaid and as you noted the actors killed the scene. I’d love to hear you unpack what was implied based on what Sasha (and others in TF) witnessed and how Michonne could have interpreted that pushback as she genuinely offered support and empathy. It still took some time for Michonne to “work up to” confronting her feelings about Rick. What do you think her initial response was to Sasha?

Thanks for asking! That was such a well-acted scene. And I wrote my thoughts below ⬇️💗:

I definitely think Sasha’s line about it working out for Michonne was Sasha acknowledging the family Michonne found with the Grimes. Once team family had all reunited after Terminus, I imagine that most of the group could tell that Rick and Michonne were different. Like they were always visibly fond of each other at the prison but by the time they were back with TF in s5 I think it was clear to everyone around them that whatever happened post-prison made Rick and Michonne family on a deeper level.

And I’d bet some of the more observant among them could even tell that Rick and Michonne loved each other on a deeper level as well. Some characters who I think probably peeped the Richonne love that was stirring ahead of time are Glenn, Sasha, Abe, and as many of us often say - Daryl been knew there was something between Rick and Michonne. 😋 Rick and Michonne had several Richonne bubble moments in front of the group - like their exchanges in that barn and their first night in ASZ so I think those are moments that definitely let Sasha know it worked out for Michonne in a way that it didn’t for her and Bob. 

It makes sense that Sasha would address it the way she did in saying that it worked out for Michonne because for Sasha, she lost two of her closest people on the road - Bob & Tyrese. And so while she still has people who love her it’s different than having your closest family with you. So when Sasha looks at Michonne she sees someone who doesn’t just have a general sense of family but her own personal family in Rick, Carl, and Judith. It worked out for her that the ones she loves most and who love her most are alive. 

Regarding Michonne’s response to Sasha saying that - Michonne's expression makes me interpret that Sasha’s words make her think and re-angle her perspective. As she shared, she’d been feeling asleep in ASZ and restless at the same time (which I really do think an element of the restlessness was connected to that “you’re okay, I’m okay” thing she has with Rick, so him really not being okay during this time had her feeling off as well).

If I remember correctly, Rosita noted how Michonne seemed to be wrestling with the fact that they found something. And that pull between being out there fighting the fight and living a domestic life of normalcy within safe walls has always been something Michonne has had to actively process and navigate. So I think she’d had so much on her mind with this adjustment to ASZ that hearing Sasha say it’s basically already worked out for her gave her pause and also got her to think about what she has from the outside looking in. A whole family.

Especially because Sasha probably doesn’t know of the family Michonne lost. So in Sasha's eyes, Michonne gained so much more than she has. I don’t think Michonne took it personally when Sasha pushed her away at that moment because Michonne would understand that Sasha’s frustration wasn’t with her at all. I think she still responded to her with empathy after that and probably maintained hope that just like she gained a personal family after losing one, Sasha could (and would) too one day.

[rita-repulsa-ke]

Death and Time

“Why don’t you want me?”

Why don’t you want me.

Hey, Agatha, why don’t you want me?!

Before Agatha, there is nothing for Rio to lose. She is loss, the final end of all things. Nothing can be taken from her. All things die and so all things are hers. Until Agatha, and then, for the first time, she understands loss from an outsider’s perspective.

“And when I do die, a long, long, long, long, long time from now, I don’t want to see your face.”

Sure, she can do that. It’s not like she appears personally for everyone, though she could. Some people find their way past the veil without a guide. Some are ready for it. She picks the one who aren’t, those who feel their time has come too early, the ones who want someone to complain to or a long-suffering shoulder to cry on. She does her best to talk them around, but ultimately, one way or another, they’re coming with her.

Agatha will probably hurl herself past the veil and immediately start causing problems on the other side. She will never go gently into that good night. She’ll find the rules and then she’ll try to break them, arrogant creature that she is.

Rio misses her every day.

Or however long. She has trouble with Time. Not her domain. A day is a week is a month is a year; it all blends together.

Until she gives some to Agatha. Then she watches, unseen, and sees the hourglass tick down, grain by grain, until the inevitable end.

Which is, of course, her.

All she knows is that it has been too long. They did battle across continents until Agatha hid from her with dark magic and that hurt worst of all, the long stretch where she can’t even find the woman she loves. She doesn’t know how long it was. It felt like an eternity. It wasn’t.

When they were together, Agatha handled Time, mostly by being annoyed at it. Nothing has ever moved fast enough for Agatha. Rio doesn’t understand—there is only one thing to hurry towards.

And now that she’s arrived, Agatha doesn’t seem too happy to be here.

Too bad. This time she’s coming with Rio. It’s been too long (how long?). Death wants her favorite girl.

Only, Agatha is kissing her. Properly, even hungrily, and all she can do is let it happen.

How long has it been since Agatha kissed her?

Agatha’s mouth is so warm, exactly as she remembers, and Rio’s anger abates almost instantly, transmutes into something far more tender and adoring.

Agatha is so good at kissing her that it takes her some time to realize she has been cheated out of her prize.

She stands next to the grave. Agatha stands—floats—next to her.

“So,” she says. “I was thinking. Maybe we should let bygones be bygones. You know, dying really has a way of changing your perspective.”

If only. Rio knows her too well. “What do you want, Agatha?”

Agatha’s ghostly lips shape themselves into a cruel smile as she abandons the pretense that she isn’t doing what she always does, manipulating Rio’s fondness for her own gain. “Information. How does all this—“ here, a motion to her ghostly form, a bit of a twirl. “Work?”

Rio snorts. “How would I know? Ghosts aren’t mine. They deliberately defy the natural order.”

“Oh. Well, then. Ta, darling,” Agatha says, starting to fade.

”Actually, there is one thing I do know about ghosts,” Rio says, contemplating the grave.

“Oh?”

“In the end, they always come to me.”

Agatha considers that, then leans over and taps her on the nose, a whisper of something spectral against her skin that Rio has to work not to flinch back from, she’s really not the biggest fan of ghosts.

“Not the worst fate in the world. But I’m not done yet,” Agatha says with a wink and disappears.

Rio stands frozen for some unknowable duration, then shakes her head with a small smile. Agatha never fails to surprise her.

Fine, then. She’ll wait as long as she needs to—Time means nothing to the end of all things. Eventually, everything is hers.

And now she’s got something new. Hope—also not her domain—that by the time Agatha comes to her, her beloved will finally be ready to admit how much she wants Death.

For something cute, try the wedding

for something angstier, try jealousy

[togglesbloggle]

There's a discussion pattern that floats by every now and then. Stop me if you've heard this before:

LIBERTINA: These regulations about proper utensil manufacture are onerous, odious, and condescending. People already know that they are taking a risk by buying double-bladed knives that have a serrated handle so that there's "more knife per knife". You don't need to pass a law dictating the minimum convexity of a butter knife handles.

DESPATRICK: You say that, but there were six thousand cases last year alone of people hospitalized with hand injuries for improperly grabbing a novelty omnidirectional fork. You say that people 'know' they shouldn't do this, but there's obviously a problem here, and it's a public health risk that needs common-sense regulation to fix.

LIBERTINA: But that risk was deliberately chosen by these people! If they didn't want to participate in the Forb Challenge, where TikTok teens eat with fork orbs, then they could just not do that. You're not protecting people from anything other than their own preferences.

DESPATRICK: That's a specious argument. First, it presumes that nobody has a compromised ability to provide informed consent- that they're mentally fit, adult, that they understand the risks, and so on. You say 'people already know' but I think what you mean is 'most people already know'.

LIBERTINA: Everybody who's mentally fit to engage in cash transactions, anyway. What I mean is "if you understand that currency can be exchanged for goods and services you can also be presumed to understand that grabbing the pointy end of a sword is bad." DESPATRICK: Okay, fine, but what about the people that aren't buying these things, but are still exposed to them? How many of these customers are also parents of small children?

LIBERTINA: Sooner or later you always use this excuse! Yes, won't somebody think of the children. That somebody ought to be the parents, we've already had this conversation a million times, and every time we just come back to the fact that we entrust parents with a huge amount of responsibility for childcare and there's no viable alternative, political or practical. And anyway, you're obviously using this as a post-hoc excuse to regulate my experience, whether I have kids or not.

... and so on, and so on. Most recently, in this corner of the internet, it's the "building windows in bedrooms" regulations.

Anyway, my basic nature is to be sympathetic to Libertina here; at the bare minimum, she should probably always have the benefit of the doubt. But I there's a corner of this conversation I don't see explored as often, and I want to explore that corner out loud a bit to find out how I feel about it.

Basically, I think that describing people as having a preference for "more knife per knife," or whatever, is formally true but hiding a lot of complexity about what is actually preferred, and that Despatrick's regulations intersect with that penumbra of values in complicated ways. Libertina frames this as a case of purely restricting people's preferences (or in the case of cost-saving measures, of letting them make their own tradeoffs between risk and expense), but I get the feeling that she's making a mistake by limiting her analysis to preferences of consumer goods.

Just to break frame a moment, consider the case of laws banning businesses from racial discrimination against their own customers: for example, a ban on a "no blacks allowed" sign in a department store. The most confusing thing about these laws, from a certain perspective, is that we needed them at all! Why would a business decline custom on the basis of irrelevant demographic information like race?

To which the answer, of course, is that local profit-seeking, and indeed the pursuit of individual preferences with full generality, is embedded within a dense fabric of social expectations and semantically rich rituals. For every prisoner's dilemma, there's a mafia ready and willing to break your kneecaps if you're a snitch.

As long as you could discriminate against black customers, you faced tremendous pressure to do so, because so many white customers wouldn't shop at 'that kind of store. The short-term pursuit of your preferences in one case (selling clothes to a black family) would conflict with those preferences in the long term (selling lots of clothes to lots of families). But once segregation was banned by law, black shoppers were no longer a signal of being 'that type of person', and there were no white-only alternatives, so the downsides vanished and only the upsides remained.

This is at its most consequential (and useful) in the case of positional goods; red-queen races where people don't care about the commodities intrinsically, but are locked in to arbitrarily growing expenses in pursuit of what they do want, which is to have 'more' or 'better' commodities than others in their community. It's particularly common where people are trying to sort themselves by social class or wealth, but it's all over the place in general.

And the thing that both Libertina and Despatrick miss, I think, is that this works in reverse as well.

Think about it: if it suddenly becomes legal to build windowless bedrooms, then basic economic forces tell us that such bedrooms will likely be built (and a new style of architecture will spring up to accommodate it). We can guess, further, that windowless rooms will be cheaper on the margins than windowed rooms, that people considering new homes will be able to decide whether or not they'd rather have the money or the window.

Let's even grant the (~dubious, but not unreasonable) premise that this wouldn't cause the cost of windowed rooms to go up, that this would purely represent an opportunity to save a little cash by opting out of this feature.

But something else happens, too: it's now possible for somebody to resent you for having a window in your bedroom, or to admire you for it. As of now, this is not an option! Everybody with a bedroom has a window. But once this is deregulated, there are people-with-windows types of people, and people-without-windows types of people. And the people-without-windows type of person is, in a word, poor.

There will be studies released, showing the strong correlation between windowless bedrooms and substance abuse, criminality, unemployment, you name it. There will be weird political battles about zoning for windowless structures because they attract the Wrong Sort. Millennials will be accused of valuing their fancy windowed bedrooms over saving for a house, and students with access to natural light will be thought of as frivolous and unserious. There will be dating advice, and it will be the most rancid dating advice you could imagine.

By making the 'worst possible apartment' worse for most people, we have made minimal constructions cheaper and expanded access to the housing market for the very poor. But we've also added a moral dimension to a quality-of-life feature where there was no such moral dimension before, and initiated contests over that space in which community members will use all the strategies at their disposal to sort themselves by social status.

In other words, repealing laws that mandate access to natural light in every bedroom may well lower (or raise) the quality of life of many people, even if they didn't move or see a change in rent.

As long as our preferences extend beyond commodities, to social values about our community and our place within that community, then regulations on commodities should probably be considered in light of their consequences on that axis as well, and not just in light of their immediate costs in production efficiency. Which status competitions do they open, or close, and what are the likely consequences of those status competitions? If you weigh those contests against the efficiency gains of deregulation, is it still a net good for <all, most, some> people?

[ultimateloserboy]

rare shadow the hedgehog post but i actually dislike shipping him with any of the girls and heres why (please hear me out chat) (no hate btw just an opinion)

first of all, rouge specifically is implied to have a sister relationship to him. its implied multiple times, especially in SA2 that he sees her as a sister the way he saw maria, and when shes in danger he feels the same fear of losing a sister. ignoring that, i feel, takes away from both of their characters and is kinda weird.

second of all, expanding on my previous point— i think shadows deep respect for women and girls is a huge part of him and it doesnt stem from attraction at all which i think is actually VERY important. he sees every woman as an extension of his sister, while her killers were men, and all villains afterwards are ALSO more men! he trusts women and girls naturally, while he distrusts every man he comes across. this doesn’t necessarily mean he sees every girl AS maria and every man AS GUN or other villains, but he does see them in similar light.

shadow has seen the cruelty of men compared to the cruelty of women and from his perspective, women have only been positive influences, people to admire— while the enemy is always a man. i feel turning that to attraction takes the sentiment away of WHY he respects women so highly in the first place. not saying he cant like women, i just feel none of the girl characters hes close to would work without taking this factor out of him. he cares for them so heavily out of deep respect and i feel its kinda disappointing to change that to attraction. it defeats the whole point.

and before anyone says “ok sonadow shipper!” or some dumb shit, the reason why i dont mind him being paired with men isnt cuz i just dont like straight ships or something stupid like that. i will defend hunter and willow from the owl house until i die. and also yuri 4 life dont get it twisted. BUT. shadow just doesnt fit with women in that way, he is gods strongest feminist soldier and i just dont think hed be attracted to them out of such deep respect he just wouldnt consider it. and you could easily argue hes aroace all together. however, with men specifically he doesnt have that deep relationship and respect that i explained prior. i feel it takes away no real meaning to pair him with a man. if anything, it could add a meaning onto his distrust and him learning to trust or something gay like that.

basically, i just enjoy seeing a male character so influenced by the girls around him and NOT wanting to bang them in any sense. i find that very important to me and i get it if you dont care but its still sweet to see.

finally tho.. im gonna piss people off here but the sonic fandom is very ship-brained and i need to put it into perspective for yall that both shadow and sonic would be 20 when amy would be 16. i get that she definitely isnt always younger than them, but she is in plenty of versions of herself and is intended to be half the time, so i just dont get how you can bring yourself to ship them. but maybe thats just me. ive always found that to be uncomfortable even when i was little watching sonic X. i just dont feel comfortable pairing most of the cast together, especially amy specifically due to even the most sliver of a question abt her age making me feel weird. its honestly kinda funny that, mostly, the only characters that are the same age to be shipped are all men. again, im not fujo-brained, its just a coincidence with the characters specifically that i think shipping the guys is genuinely more appropriate MOST of the time. (not always!)

idk i dont think anyone is terrible for shipping shadow with the girl characters but it does make me super uncomfortable and i just wanted to expand on that cuz i like talking here and seeing others thoughts or whatever. dont get it twisted tho, some of you ARE weirdos and i wont tolerate you. BUT. thats not rlly what this is about and its not all of you. please dont misunderstand

[trunksette]

[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

okay okay okay one more dungeon meshi thought

I keep seeing people saying Falin is "better at social cues" than Laios. Y'all she's just quiet. 😭 She just keeps her mouth shut. 😭😭 Girl was proposed to, said "let me think about it," and then did not even tell her own brother. She doesn't know what's going on either she's just quieter about it!!! 😭😭😭

[boarcide]

I truly think that one of the biggest tragedies in BEAST in regards to the Akutagawa siblings is that, at the core of it, Ryuunosuke viewed himself as a beast, and showed his love in a way a beast would, while Gin was the only person who ever saw him as human and judged him accordingly. She did not see a beast acting like a beast, the way everybody else did, she saw a human acting like a beast and it’s part of what drove her away.

The ADA saw their rookie detective at his worst, and watched—and continues to watch—him grow from a beast to a human over time. Consumed by hatred and only knowing how to be cruel, and slowly learning how to become human.

Gin saw her brother at his best—the best he could be in their situation—and then watched him grow from a boy to a beast within moments. The scraps of humanity that he had, all disappearing into rage so primal it no longer made him seem human.

[chittychittyyangyang]

Blake is clearly Japanese, and Yang is clearly chinese, so isn't giving them darker skin tones racist?

I'm going to answer this is good faith, and I will accept no follow up.

Blake being "clearly" Japanese, just no. Belladonna is Italian believe, and Kuo Kuana seems to have a lot more influence from the Pacific Islands. Even if she was Japanese, there are darker skinned Japanese people.

Yang isn't just Chinese. Even so, Chinese people can be darker skinned. I also find this ask suspect because a lot of people in the fandom make Blake darker skin (and people have been shitty about it since V1) . I've reblogged a lot of it. I've NEVER gotten anything like this in my inbox in my years running this blog until it's Yang too. Weird.

I have met with many fans of the show over the years, and it seems like many POC can see themselves as the characters and want that reflected in their skin too. It made a lot of sense to me that someone with textured hair could see Yang's protectiveness of hers as similar to their own experiences. RW/BY sure lacks protagonists with darker skin, and it's not racist to make fan art of them darker (what is this take from anyway, 2003???)

I believe it was Miles who responded to some harressment a black Blake cosplayer got years ago that Blake is Blake no matter the skin tone.

At the end of the day though, I am so very White and not the arbiter on what is or isn't racist. However, I'll always question the motives of anyone that raises a fuss over someone making cute art of characters with darker skin tones, more so in a show that lacks skin diversity.

[cnl0400]

"How are they going to make Thirteen/Mephistopheles/Raphael dateable If they aren't interesing in the MC"?

>A take made by someone who hasn't played S4 or any of the Memory cards/events that feature these three, or have gotten the Birthday calls...

It's even funnier with Raphael, because he's probably the one who states the most that he wants to get closer to MC, where do the "no interest" thing even comes from??

Even If you read all this cues as platonic, It doesn't mean that they can't become romantic later. That's what development Is for?????

[literaila]

On a scale of one to ten how emotional was readers reaction seeing megumi alive again

8.7 but she never really believed that he was gone. call her crazy but her son isn’t going to blindly submit to some manic gym bro from the heian era

megumi takes back his body and she’s basically jumping up and down with yuji and applauding. a standing ovation for her son, obviously.

and then later she goes home and cries herself to sleep because a. she’s really proud of him and b. the world is a terrible terrible place

[commsroom]

i'm still very attached to the idea that hera allots just slightly more of her processing power to monitoring eiffel than anyone else. "i've been keeping track of your vital signs and biological readings since commander minkowski brought you on board" as an expression of care, especially with how often eiffel is in danger, or sick, or missing, or... when hera is the first person to notice he's back in sécurité and even then doesn't quite believe what she's observing... that if eiffel asking hera "are you there?" - even knowing that she always is - is a bid for connection and reassurance, then the way hera keeps track of the people she cares about is how she tries to bridge that gap from her side, especially at times when otherwise she feels powerless to reach out and help.

[protect-namine]

I am about to start a neji route (because I feel that I need at least three playthroughs to fully understand neji and his plays, so I can't leave him for last). so my thoughts on this may change, but for the moment, my thesis is that neji and kisa are the same kind of thespian, just in different fonts.

(I am slightly exaggerating kisa'a character here. there are hints and I do think pushing the envelope of what her character could be is part of what makes kisa... kisa. as I'll explain later, for better and worse, kisa is constrained by the conventions of being an otome heroine.)

anyway. in essence. neji turns Other Persons into stories,

and kisa turns Other Persons into performances,

while they both simultaneously run away from, avoid, or sacrifice Becoming Persons themselves, for the sake of theater

or maybe it's the other way around. something something discovery if not recognition of the self through the other... except they're both unreliable narrators so who's to say if the recognition actually takes hold, really. kisa at least is a little bit self aware. neji, on the other hand, deals with realizations of the self through writing, without actually processing them (e.g. ms robin, domina, etc).

I keep thinking about (novel) kisa closing her eyes and feeling like her sense of self would melt away until tsuki centers her and gives her theater as a way to heal from the grief of losing her mother. it happens again during tsuki's univeil performance: kisa curling in on herself and tsuki pulling her back to theater as way to help kisa move forward with her dreams. pretending to be others is more fun than being herself.

and then there is neji (insert spiderman pointing at spiderman meme). but in his case, he would rather play eccentric roles, caricatures, comic relief, than be a Person With Depth on stage. neji is always either a seer of some kind (a fortune teller, a ghost who sees 10 seconds into the future) or a bit character (employee A), or... whatever he initially planned for domina. he is the mechanic behind the stage, but never the lead actor. his vulnerabilities do not need to "stolen" for the story, though others' are fair game.

kisa does not think about gender as it applies to herself in her daily life (mostly) and only sees it through the lens of acting and theater. how does she act mukai vs maiden, charles vs chicchi? the same way that neji does not think about the motifs and characters he writes as a window to himself, but rather as objects to be put on stage. rukiora is based on a younger neji, mary jane is I Am Death: Revisited (mary jane is to takihime as gashadokuro is to jacob), sissia is always meant to be the foil to I Am Death. but neji doeen't really understand that just like how he didn't understand oh rama havenna. sissia (kisa route, jack jeanne ver) is to kisa as domina is to neji.

literally kisa at her most extreme is just theater thoughts 24/7

kisa "I don't like being me; I'd rather be other people" tachibana 🤝 kokuto "I need to experiment and witness visions I can't create or I'll die" neji: this is a totally sane and Normal way to cope with abandonment and grief 👍

(it is not implied in the game, but since kisa turned to theater to cope with grief as a child, I wonder if the reason she never looks too deeply into tsuki's disappearance is because she's once again using theater as an excuse to conveniently Not Think About It. out of sight, out of mind. tsuki must be doing well, wherever he is, whatever it is he's doing.)

there is also the meta perspective of how kisa in-game inhabits a role where the player can (and is expected to) self-insert. otome dictates that protagonist kisa must be malleable to the player (who can choose to focus on a variety of relationships in her stead), and the plot dictates that actor kisa must be malleable to her stage roles (jack or jeanne, maiden or hero, flower or vessel), and novel kisa dictates that kisa must malleable to pretending to be other people because it's more preferable to being herself.

every thought she has about herself must be tied to acting, somehow. kisa's personhood is defined through stagecraft. she is the maiden, and mukai, and charles, and chicchi, and sissia. she can romance anyone in the school, of the player's choosing. she can be jack, and jeanne, and jack jeanne. don't get me wrong; kisa is her own character and has a strongly defined personality, but the story also demands for her to be malleable. a painting and a blank canvass at the same time.

neji externalizes where kisa internalizes. where kisa Must Perform™ to function and to avoid herself, neji Must Create™ to function and to avoid himself. scriptwriter neji dictates that neji must use everything at his disposal — his memories, his classmates, his obscure knowledge — as inspiration for stories. director neji dictates that he must use everything he knows about his actors — their complexes, their relationships, their weaknesses and strengths — as inspiration for stories. from the cook (mitsuki) needing apricots for a recipe and wanting to harvest honey from a beehive, to mary jane (fumi) being good at sewing and wanting an equal in jacob. suzu and sou fighting and developing a rivalry leads to jire and fugio fighting over chicchi. kai limits himself as a vessel in hasekura, and kai learns to embrace his desires as the priest. from the water/ocean/drowning themes, to rukiora being based on neji's younger self, and her family life and relationship with domina.

every thought neji has must be tied to stories, somehow. neji's personhood is scattered through stagecraft. the more you read his plays and lyrics, the more you get a glimpse of who he is. it is to the point that neji himself doesn't... really see how his stories reflect himself. ms robin being a "random" song the jazz lounge singer sings thay hasekura and ando can dance to, oh rama havenna being a so-so throwaway play that neji doesn't understand why it's entertaining. lmao. neji, please.

and this is why when problems arise, neji becomes a demanding director and kisa becomes a chameleon actor with a shaky sense of self (we don't really see this a lot because jack jeanne is not that dark of a story and kisa is still an otome heroine of an uplifting game, but it's a reasonable conclusion if you push hard on the kisa from neji's "good morning" exercise, or kisa going ham on method acting as charles. kinda wish the game explored more of that. I think a very stressed kisa can get lost in method acting, just as a very stressed neji is almost paralyzed by the fear of the death of talent).

idk where I was going with this. just. them. they have the same issues, just in different fonts. and I think that's actually what first attracts neji to kisa. kisa "steals" (to borrow neji's own words) just like him. kisa is a fountain of inspiration, an ever changing muse. and neji provides kisa with an endless amount of prompts and characters for her to inhabit. kisa does like to play pretend a lot. that's why she's in theater!

kisa and neji: Art Imitates Life people stuck in a Life Imitates Art video game

ANYWAY usual disclaimer that I'm jotting down livebloghing thoughts and I know some spoilers to neji's route but I'm only just about to actualy start his playthrough so. yeah. this was drafted all the way back in may lol, opinions may change and all that

[doedipus]

a large amount of time I've been spending on -untitled undefined scope original fiction project- since the last time I posted about it has been trying to develop the protagonist concept I came up with last summer or whatever into like, a character that would feel real and era appropriate.

it's fun research to do. naturally a lot of the details I assigned to her are things that I already think are cool, so it's been a lot of fun trying to trace her traits back through the relatively recent past, getting reminded of how much things have changed, or where the gaps in my intuition are, and then doing a flurry of reading to get a sense for exactly how someone like her and the people around her could have happened and what her life was probably like leading up to her present day. hopefully this results in some good good verisimilitude.

[acourtofquestions]

Dont be angry, Finnula said. Be smart.