#so it's a really weak link

[dazais-guardian-angel]

alright I've thought about it for a while, and I'm fairly confident that is in fact Bram, and that Aya isn't hallucinating/seeing an illusion.

The biggest thing casting doubt, aside from the obvious different outfit, is the fact that the chapter ends on this reveal, suggesting it could be a cliffhanger bait. However, BSD's cliffhangers always involve something terrible happening that gets rectified in the next chapter(s), to scare us before giving us back hope; there's never been a case of the other way around, where something good happens to get our hopes up, only to have the rug pulled out from us at the start of next chapter to show that we were foolish for hoping. Asagiri is never that cruel. He loves his death baits and his dangerous situation baits before letting us know that everything is okay, and he'd never suggest that it was wrong for the audience or the characters to have hope, when BSD is quite literally about having hope even in the most absurd situations.

But more specifically, just.... what would a fakeout like this accomplish? The only way I could maybe see it was if this is Fyodor, and we think Aya is safe but she's actually not, but there's no way it's him, because we see him with the singularity and Kunikida/Tanizaki at the same time as this, he's wearing Bram's outfit and not the one this person has, and we've established that he wants to protect Aya, not hurt her. Granted, he obviously doesn't care enough about protecting her since he let her escape and get hurt all on her own lmao, so that's exactly why I ask what would be the point of him suddenly showing up just to save her from the rubble, only to then just hurt her anyway? None of that is logical.

And then, if it's Akutagawa, then that means we had our emotions played with for a twist that is just.... mildly disappointing but also not outright bad for the characters? Disappointing because Bram isn't back after all, but also not a net negative because Aya is still being rescued by someone we know and trust. If that were to happen, Aya hallucinating Aku as Bram, I just can't see it happening as a chapter cliffhanger fakeout at all; it would just feel cheap and cruel, playing with our feelings (not to mention Aya's feelings!) regarding a character we want to come back, for a reveal that isn't really worth it and doesn't change the status quo (because she's still safe regardless if it's Bram or Aku).

Aside from the lack of narrative justification, I also believe that if Aya were to hallucinate Bram, she would see him exactly as she knew him back when he regained his body — I mean, she basically does see him like that when she's remembering his last moments with her in this chapter and in the previous one when she's yelling at Fyodor; sure they're just repeated panels as flashbacks, but they're still her memories of how she sees him. I was unsure for a while about the figure's identity, but it was seeing it pointed out that Bram no longer has his nails that was really the final nail in the coffin haha get it, it's a multilayered joke, please laugh- for me: why would Aya hallucinate Bram not only not in his own outfit, but with his body altered from how she knows it? There'd be no reason why she would, and no way she could. She's never seen him in a different outfit, with different nails. Note that every other instance we've gotten of characters hallucinating significant figures in their lives (Atsushi, Mushitarou, Dazai), they're always wearing the clothes they're most known for and what the person knows them to wear. There's no reason to assume this would be different for Aya, and that she'd imagine him wearing a completely random outfit from the one she associates with him, and randomly without his signature long black nails.

This closeup panel of Bram's collar right when he first begins speaking pretty much proves my point. It's inconsistent with the new outfit (Aku's outfit) we see him wearing on the last page, but with the framing of this, with him being entirely in shadow in the rightmost panel when he first appears, it's clear to me that Aya can't see him clearly yet, so she's imagining him the way she remembers him. And then he gets closer/lifts the beam higher so that the shadow starts receding from him, and his feet and hands and different outfit become visible. The tone of this moment and the way it plays out is exactly as I've seen in numerous other visual media, where a character thinks they're on the brink of death and has lost all hope and is ready to accept it, before the slow, grand reveal of the person they thought they'd lost rescuing them, often with them posing a philosophical question to challenge their current despair or their belief that their loved one couldn't possibly still be alive, just as Bram does here. If you've seen enough movies and TV, you can probably imagine exactly the kind of scene I mean, and exactly how this moment would play out if it were animated I say "would" because it's never a given that Bones will adapt it with the right tone like I imagine.

This is framed as a triumphant, hopeful scene, of a knight coming to rescue his princess after he was thought to be dead. Aya has hurt her leg here, she's trapped, she's realizing she's about to die, and she's at last fully convinced herself that everything she so staunchly believed in was wrong and that everything she fought for all that time was for nothing; firstly, why would she suddenly hallucinate Bram if she had already lost all hope, but most importantly, why would the narrative have Bram defy death and return to her and challenge the idea that all her ideals and actions were meaningless, only for it to turn out that it isn't really him, when she misses him so bad? That just.... wouldn't be right at all, that's not the feeling this scene gives at all. This is their moment, Bram has to be the one to say these things to Aya with their history together, not anyone else, and I can't imagine Akutagawa saying something like what Bram says to her here, about royalty carrying out their pledge to protect someone without fail, even if he has inherited Bram's protectiveness towards Aya like Fyodor has. No, I'm 90% certain that is indeed Bram. It can't possibly be anyone else.

...And so, all that to say that yeah, I believe that Bram has Fyodor'd himself into Akutagawa's body, since he's wearing his outfit. We don't really know the extent of Bram's powers, but it's looking likely that he can bodysnatch any of his vampires for himself if something ever happens to him, or perhaps Aku might be special since he was the first vampire Bram created at the start of all this. Needless to say I'm not at all worried about Aku though; this is probably the beginning of why he ends up with that suit of armor later on, since Bram has his clothes... I just have no idea how we get to that point. But Aku will be fine, I'm sure; this may even be the only way he can come back from being a vampire.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

hope you feel better soon!

I am riddled with ailments, but I stay silly!

[turtleblogatlast]

Man “Battle Nexus: New York” was a great episode but I do have one major gripe with it.

Like. Raph being paired up with Ghostbear? Makes sense. Works great. Works amazing, even.

Mikey being paired up with Meatsweats? Yeah that checks out!!

Donnie getting…Hypno…? I mean. I guess Donnie doesn’t like magic so it kindaaa works but Kendra would have been a much better choice to me personally. Maybe Big Mama didn’t wanna include a human or something…

And Leo getting…uh…one of the Sando Brothers???? Of all villains? Nah let’s be real, his main villain is more Big Mama herself (or Leo could be considered his own worst enemy lmao-). Hell Hypno would have probably worked better here considering their shared love for magic tricks and stuff, but Carl Sando????

[atomra]

The full alucard/atom comic! I had a lot of fun with this and I hope to make more dynamic comicy things like this in the future 😎💙

You can see more about Atom here!

[smilesrobotlover]

Some love at twilight stuff with the fam. Rusl and Uli are cute, Colin is an annoying little brother, and Kori and Rela are bffs and do everything together. I love them all.

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

big scary demon Zhao Yuanzhou bringing “weaker than a human” energy levels to fight the final boss was so choice

[batsplat]

It's a thing I already knew but all your beautiful analysis really made obvious (to me) how much of a grudge holder vale is. That man is never letting it go he's gonna hold his grudges into his grave

you know, I do think this is an interesting issue, because I'm not sure this is true of all his grudges. just sticking here with the grudges he accumulated in his capacity as a competitor, rather than just his general approach to life or whatever... how you judge this will kinda depend on how you feel about the 'reconciliation' he's experienced with some of his rivals - and whether you read the whole thing as sincere or not. now, personally I reckon he still dislikes biaggi, but also you are allowed to just dislike people so I'll give him a pass for that. some of the others, I'm a little more convinced by the whole reconciliation schtick

let's get valentino's take:

interesting that he mentions those three together, isn't it? and like, he's still not messaging biaggi or inviting him to his home - "even with max" kind of tells you all you need to know - but the other two? they said some proper nasty things to each other over the years!! I mean, the casey rivalry, there's some remarks from both sides where quite frankly I think I would struggle just a touch to get over it

I don't know, obviously this could all be pr stuff, but I kind of feel like... y'know, why bother? it's 2022, you're retired, who gives a fuck? sure it's a good look to be all magnanimous, sure it can be a bit of a way of twisting in the knife to the guys left in the cold, but also, who would care if you don't play nice? I think especially with jorge, you surely don't need to do all that, inviting him to your home and dancing with him... (which, again, some of the spats those two had...) and with the casey rivalry, if there's one guy who's still hung up about what happened between the pair of them, it's obviously casey (speaking of blokes who can hold a grudge). maybe this is giving valentino too much credit, but personally I buy it's more or less sincere. there's nothing to really indicate he's still particularly bothered by any of their past disagreements - he's basically going for the 'all's fair in love and motorcycle racing' approach. he knows he was an asshole, he accepts they were assholes too, whatever, that's how these things work. he's generally a fan of drama in rivalries, unsurprisingly, and he was happy enough to contribute his fair share - but he does see it as fundamentally being part of the game

to point out the obvious, check out who he's left out: sete and marc. that's where he can't let go of the grudges... because it's not about the offence itself as much as it is about the betrayal. this is the thing with valentino, right, it's about what kind of bond you had with him. if you weren't his friend in the first place and then piss him off as a rival then, y'know, whatever. obviously he's going to be vicious in trying to get back at you, but also he's really not going to waste his time feeling too aggrieved by it. I mean, think about how all the bullshit between him and casey dropped off sharply post-2012... from valentino's end anyway. think about how jorge and valentino pretty quickly got on again whenever they weren't fighting for supremacy within yamaha. they weren't friends in the first place, then they were enemies for competitive reasons for a while there, then it's over and valentino is basically happy enough to call it bygones

but... if it's a certain kind of bond you had with him and then you wrong him... that little mental list of all his past grievances, all your past transgressions, that's where it comes in. that's where he ices you out. denies you any emotional warmth. ensures that any interaction going forward is conducted entirely on his terms. where even any public 'reconciliation' won't truly be sincere.... or, certainly he's not going to forget what happened. if something else happens... it's like you've always got the potential of triggering this lingering resentment, in a way, where all that past stuff is still primed and ready to be called upon. he certainly doesn't just let it go

or, as he puts it in his autobiography:

Biaggi and I never talk to each other. I mean, we've never had a real conversation, anything that's lasted more than the requisite time to insult each other or put each other down, in the nastiest way possible. In any case, I don't hate him. It's true, we've never been friends, but hatred is something different, and that's too serious a word to describe our relationship. Far too serious. No, we have a reciprocal antipathy. No doubt this is a result of what we do for a living and the fact that we both want to win every single time. And perhaps it's also a function of the fact that we have very different personalities and very different ways of seeing things. Still, I don't think this means we hate each other, as some journalists have written. I think I could feel hatred for someone, but only for someone far worse than anything Biaggi has done. For example, if I were betrayed by a friend, then, yes, I could hate him. But Biaggi will never betray my friendship for the simple reason that we are not, and never have been, friends. Our relationship is very clear: we compete on the track - outside the track, each goes his own way. You could say we detest each other cordially.

... I mean. he said it, not me. and given this book was first published in '05... biaggi can't betray his friendship because they were never friends... I'm not saying he's thinking about sete, but it has to at least be a possibility, right? he's talking about one rivalry here and refusing to even mention the other... and the one he's refusing to mention is the one where he was friends with the other bloke. I don't know, maybe that's reading too much into it! and anyway, even if this passage wasn't really about sete, it's obviously still revealing. "detest each other cordially" is essentially what he was doing with casey and jorge (or from his point of view in any case, not entirely sure they'd agree with that). the grudge comes when he feels let down by you... and then, yes, he'll never let it go

of course, he's willing to set aside his grievances for a while if there's sufficient motivation for him to do so. in 2009, when he had so definitively won that rivalry with sete, why bother kicking up a fuss? in 2016, quite frankly it was just too much, and it was getting to the point where it was obviously hurting him too. on the one hand there was the media furore that had been going on non-stop since sepang, on the other hand it was also hurting his own approach to racing. there's reports from the time how visibly aggrieved he still was in the first few races of the season, and it took until they got back to europe for him to... y'know, have fun again. it's not sustainable to be walking around with a constant dark cloud over your head and broadcasting burning resentment towards your two main rivals. certainly not for someone like valentino - he needs to be having fun! the slight rapprochement needed to happen, in a way, because otherwise those years would have been even worse for everyone involved. but that doesn't actually translate to forgetting any of those grudges. this is about convenience more than anything else

goes to show, really... most of the time he doesn't take these things personally. I talked about it a bit in this post, how maybe it's also something that changed over time for him: the question of whether he was willing to develop these kinds of bonds in the first place with competitors... because he does possess a certain level of self-awareness in terms of what these kinds of rivalries are like and what they do to interpersonal relationships. ideally, you don't want to be hurt by a friend like that, right? better not to have that kind of emotional attachment with your competitors in the first place. how unfortunate it'd be if all those years after sete the circumstances aligned for him to see a competitor as something like a friend again... because, after all, those are the only people who could betray him. those are the only people where he thinks he could truly hate them

[sweeteastart]

I love your art!! Could you maybe do Warriors for E2 for the outfit thing?

Y'all really want me to become a puddle huh ? Thank you so much,,, I'm happy people like my silly little things

Someone finally gave me my boy !

He is feeling bonita :)

Thanks for the ask ♪♪♪♪

[blueskittlesart]

do u have any navi thoughts from your oot replay

i've been waiting to answer this until I actually beat the game in my current playthrough because navi is another one of those characters that i think of in like a "set" with several other characters who serve relatively the same thematic purpose; in this case that purpose being the "mother" character, and i wanted to have all the characters in that set fresh in my mind. it's notable that while oot shows us very clear and consistent instances of the ways in which the adults of hyrule fail to protect their children, there ARE several adults who DO go out of their way to both oppose ganondorf and protect and nurture the children under their care. All of these characters are adult women, and all of them explicitly help the children out of some sort of parental responsibility or sense of duty towards them. in this group I include link's late mother, impa, nabooru, and navi.

all 4 mother characters, despite being adults or adult-coded, reject the inaction mentality which characterizes other adults in the game. they become either direct supports or shields to their children from the conflict the world has to offer them, and they are always explicitly punished for their interference--link's mother is killed trying to protect her son, impa's village is burned, nabooru is brainwashed. The mother's fatal flaw is that she will protect her child above all else, even in a world in which children cannot truly be protected. however, with the exception of link's mother, these characters manage to persist even in the face of her punishment, and this is where I think navi becomes the exemplary character.

Navi, after a lifetime of being link's only support system, the only adult in his life he could truly, consistently count on, receives her punishment at the hands of ganondorf--in the final battle, she is pushed out. she is unable to reach her child. she cannot protect him. However, BECAUSE link has grown up with her at his side, he is strong enough to take ganondorf down. and when ganon rises again, navi is there to support link, promising not to leave his side, and the intuitive targeting of that battle (a mechanic which navi is inherently tied to!!) makes it a cinch to win. Navi, and the other mothers we meet, are a reminder to the player that the world doesn't HAVE to be the way it is. Their persistence when punished, their insistence that their children ought to be protected, is a reminder that good adults do exist, and that good adults raise good children. link and zelda are able to win in spite of the adults who refused to help them, but also BECAUSE of the adults who DID. It's a reinforcement of the core theme of oot--that childlike idea that the world SHOULD be good and fair and if it isn't, it should be changed until it is. The mothers of oot are examples of what the world COULD be, reminders that it is possible to grow up without losing hope or growing bitter, and they are examples of the next step for the children they've raised to change the word--to continue fighting even in the face of punishment, to refuse inaction, and to foster that same hope and persistence in the generations to come.

[lastoneout]

So in botw you(as Link) buy the house in Hateno village and fix it up...but in totk everyone says it's Zelda's house...so we can assume post-Calamity Ganon fight Link absolutely took Zelda back there, and let her live there, and she did for SO LONG that the villagers consider it HER house???

It's very interesting, that's all I'm saying.

[bayofwolves]

i was on the most random nostalgia kick and rewatched the prince of egypt yesterday and let me just say... that movie is truly one of the greatest animated films of all time.

[fourswords]

one au idea i think would be super funny is if shadow somehow figured out that vio was only pretending to be on his side so he could get information and kill him like. almost immediately. like instead of them having time to actually get attached to each other that whole thing is foiled before it starts. and so instead of shadow flying into a rage because of a betrayal instead he's like "y'know what fuck it i can do that too" and starts talking like this whenever vio fishes for information

[1tsjusty0u]

wow this has such majoras mask vibes! (guy who is currently playing majoras mask)

[longagoitwastuesday]

Utahime's students >>>>>>>>>>>>>

[cyphyra]

i kinda hope that some older zelda games get remade down the line to recontextualize and better fit the zelda timeline as a whole

like OoT especially would benefit from a proper remake-- maybe give Navi some actual personality so her getting shunted out of the Ganondorf fight actually FEELS like something

and by remake i dont mean the upscales that ALttP, OoT/MM, and TP/WW got on gameboy, 3ds, and wiiu respectively-- i mean full-ass remakes/rewrites with modern gameplay conventions. like FF7R, but for zelda

the only games i think would actually benefit from proper remakes would be OoT/MM-- OoT for lore reasons and probably better character writing, and MM for gameplay, on top of the added fact that an MM remake would give an opportunity to revive previously cut game content

[magnusmodig]

ovo whispers menacingly abt his grandstanding .