#super compelling very tragic

[pumpkinrootbeer]

"Mandy deserved better" "lip was so ungrateful" the rape scene guys. guys. the rape scene. she literally rapes him guys. he says no and stop repeatedly and he tries to push her off. and then hides in the bathroom for 45 minutes after. guys.

[pocketoon]

get ready im drawing MORE TRIGUN

[blackfyrerebels]

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ aegon ii targaryen fic recs *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

if you want your fic removed from this directory, please comment or message.

though these are recommendations, my reviews will be honest and I will mention certain things I disliked. I do not mean this in a hateful way, and I hope I cause no offense with my criticisms.

Series

More coming soon...

One-shots

Cruel Fate - @spider-stark

x reader | second person POV | mildly NSFW | no incest | 5k+ words

Summary: "Having been in love with Aegon your entire life, you always assumed that he never felt the same. Now set to wed his brother, Aemond, your frustration finally peaks and leads to you confessing your feelings." - written by the author

My review: Beautifully written and slightly tragic, it is open ended enough that I spent time afterwards extending the story in my mind (Aemond VS Aegon ultimate showdown.) My one criticism is that the author tends to italicize words for emphasis- with frankly absurd frequency- which I found distracting, but Aegon's characterization more than makes up for it. He's cheeky, possessive, and hot tempered, and the author does a great job showing how Aeg would be if he was a halfway decent person...

He Needs Me - @teethingbeetle

x reader | third & second person POV | explicit NSFW | uncle/niece incest | 2k+ words

Summary: "is it punishment or comfort aegon seeks with you? either way the path to either allows him solace and aegon is nothing if not selfish." - written by author

My review: Though I typically don't read smut, teethingbeetle's character blurbs impressed me enough to give this a shot and I'm so glad I did. This is a fairly short, straightforward sex scene with little in the way of plot, but as we spend most of our time inside Aegon's head, it serves as a compelling psycho-sexual character study while still exploring dom/sub sexual dynamics in an arousing way. My only complaint is the incest, but I'm more than willing to let it slide when it actually serves a purpose within the story.

The Summer Islands - @fairysluna

x reader | third person POV | SFW | no incest | 8k+ words

Summary: "In a failed attempt of escaping, Aegon accidentally arrives in an unknown island where a lovely and lonely girl lives." - written by the author

My Review: The cutest Aegon fic ever. This is definitely like the fan fiction equivalent of eating fairy floss: super sweet, super fluffy, uncomplicated and makes you feel like a little kid. Though the prose is very simple and leaves a lot to be desired in terms of detailed description, the rom-com plot doesn't really need to be bogged down in complex language, so I think it works to this fic's advantage. If you're in the mood for something cozy and comforting, this is the fic for you.

[marzipanandminutiae]

You talk a lot about the (tragic) lack of love for female characters we typically see in fandom spaces. Did it always come easily to you to prioritize/be super interested in female characters or did you have a journey to reach that at some point when you were younger?

When I was about 3 years old, my father took me to the book store (mostly to look at the pictures, of course) as was our usual habit. apparently, after wandering around a bit, I said to him very seriously, "Daddy. There's a problem."

"What is it?" he asked.

"Not enough books about girls."

He took me to look around the kids' section again and see. Afterwards, he turned to me and said, "Marzi, you know what? You're right. What are you going to do about that?"

To which I'm told I responded, "Write some."

So yeah, it goes back pretty far.

And to be clear, I don't think focusing on female characters is some kind of moral imperative or sign of superiority or anything else more than just...really liking female characters. Some people do, some people tend to have a more balanced array of faves gender-wise, and some seem to end up gravitating more toward male characters. Which I do get! For me, female characters just have this...undefinable Shine about them. They're almost always the most interesting and compelling to me. Maybe it's because I'm a woman; maybe it's because I'm a lesbian. I don't know. It's just always been like that, and no other gender of character can compare (though I can of course find them interesting to some degree as well).

And of course :) this includes trans female characters :) because those are also Women :) just in case anyone gets any ideas that they absolutely fucking should not :)

It's more the widespread attitudes and trends one sees writ large in fandom that can irritate me at times. there's a difference between "yeah a lot of my faves are male" and "I just think femslash is only good when it's a genderbend of two male characters" (which is a real hot take I've really seen) or all the shows I've seen clogging up my dash with GIFs of pretty male couples and learned exactly nothing about the female main characters in the process.

[juniperhillpatient]

I know I'm terminally coffin-brained lately but hear me out it really bothers me that the perception of the Coffin of Andy & Leyley is ONLY "hehe incest cannibalism game" which is....not EXACTLY inaccurate but it certainly simplifies it ya know??? like I call it the incest cannibalism game too as a joke but I'm realizing there are a lot of people who think of it as like...a porn game? & btw I'm not AGAINST porny games or whatever I just think it's reductive & inaccurate to call Andy & Leyley that when in reality there is not even (so far) any textual sexual content beyond a demonic vision of a possible future. yes very obviously their relationship does have a sexual & romantic undertone, but it's compelling specifically because it's a complex story about siblings who have been genuinely fucked over by their parents & the world & they have developed a topically obsessive codependent relationship as a result.

like the initial conversation that the game's title is based on is Andrew casually half-jokingly talking about killing himself & it's just so..... narratively delicious. Ashley is not some horny one-dimensional slut who just wants to fuck her brother? Her reaction to Andrew talking about suicide is to joke that she'll race him to the balcony & he says back - semi sarcastically but we KNOW there's truth in his words, that he's clearly thought about this - that it would be too romantic, that they would be smashed together on the pavement, buried in the same coffin & like...the game proceeds from there with these two living in this intertwined fate, tangled together in ways neither of them can ever escape. it's romantic but it's also tragic & awful.

Andrew's love for Ashley will always be bitter & tinted with resentment because he was thrust with the responsibility of raising his little sister when he was only a child himself. he was made responsible for caring for Ashley with absolutely NO example of what caring for someone looked like & he was barely old enough to care for himself. Ashley never had anyone care for her in her entire life except Andrew & so she absolutely adores him to a dangerous & unhealthy degree.

like I hate it when people think Ashley is oh so abusive & manipulative or Andrew is so awful & selfish (she is manipulative & he is occasionally selfish) but like - as if there are not layers upon layers of WHY she treats Andrew the way she does & WHY he's so resentful. (as a side note I think debating who abuses who (aside from obviously the fact that they were both abused in different ways by their mother) or who's "worse" just...misses the whole ass point.)

and the cannibalism is initially about survival & the stakes are very apparent & built super well given the opening of the game spends a lot of time just demonstrating that they are literally starving to death to the point where Ashley is fainting & they're sharing a can of tomatoes out of the garbage joking that it's the best meal they've ever had. it is highly worth noting the way their actions escalate & get worse & worse with time as the game proceeds & you can see the way they're both getting more & more comfortable with violence & taboo. this game just would not compel me if it were just randomly "lol let's eat people!" get real

idk I just feel like people who don't know the game get the wrong idea about it when it's actually SO narratively rich okay bye

(this is not an anti Gravecest post either just to be clear, I fucking love the ship I just feel like it gets oversimplified often & also that Ashley especially is highly mischaracterized a lot, even in the game's marketing sometimes. at the core of the game are two deeply broken people who were fucked over bad & who are tied together in a way that neither of them can ever escape. it's love as horror & I loooove that about it)

[maladaptivewriting]

marauders era characters and their favorite movies

if they lived in the muggle world circa 2024

remus: little miss sunshine brutal and disturbingly human, but intertwined with themes of love, family, support, and healing

james: talladega nights the theme of this movie is that friendship is magic. you know james was saying "if you're not first, you're last" for years after seeing this movie. also he tried to create a shake-and-bake thing with sirius

sirius: howl's moving castle "that howl is so fucking hot" "he literally just looks like you" "exactly" sirius sees himself as this main love interest (howl) and he sees remus as sophie, especially when she's an old woman that howl has to take care of. all he wants to do is take care of remus

peter: bridge to terabithia peter seems like the kind of person to find stories of tragical childhood friendships really compelling. he also loves josh hutcherson (who doesn't)

regulus: the secret life of walter mitty he relates to the main character - a man who is controlled and meticulous but longs to go on an adventure. he also wishes that sirius would pull him out of his monotonous life and into the unknowable but with complete acceptance of who he is.

lily: little women in the way that i feel like i've been shot every time i watch a movie involving complicated mother/daughter relationships, lily would be deeply compelled by stories about sisterhood. especially jo and amy who always feel second to each other

mary: princess mononoke she would relate to the main character and be very enthralled by ashitaka. definitely a comfort watch for her.

marlene: raising arizona or zoolander she loves absurdist comedies with lovable and endearing characters. she is also low-key attracted to nick cage when he was young, but don't tell anyone, it's a secret.

dorcas: arrival or parasite dorcas has unequivocally good movie tastes. she likes high concept stories with heavy thematic writing and devastating plots. she talks about them in detail for weeks afterward

pandora: midsommar and pan's labyrinth she loves movies with comically intense violence. she finds high control groups fascinating. she definitely loves pan's labyrinth because of the freaky monsters and the fact that it sounds like it could belong to her

xenophilius: the twilight saga he knows every detail and loves to examine the story from all sides. he and pandora bond over the fact that carlisle is a joseph smith archetype.

evan: deadpool evan sees deadpool as barty and loves the character because of it. he is also envious of the characters freedom to be himself

barty: the mummy he just thinks that everyone in this movie is really fucking hot

snape: pride and prejudice (2005) finds it super romantic and loves the way characters talk and deliver lines. he listens to the soundtrack as background music while he works.

frank longbottom: spiderman (no way home) no one was more excited than he was when the three spiderman characters interacted. he cried a lot when watching this movie

alice: narnia it was her sexual awakening ;)

narcissa: glass onion she loves a who-done-it story, she reads mystery novels all the time and she thought this one was the most exciting

bellatrix: barbarian or bones and all she watches bones and all like "when is it my turn to be happy?" and she watches barbarian like "what is it like to have a mother who loves you?" everyone thinks she's crazy

lucius: dune or the king he sees himself as the king. that scene where robert pattinson's character is slipping around in the mud and timmy's character is standing there unbothered - that's how lucius pictures himself and arthur weasley. he also thinks of his own family when he watches dune

also this came from a question that @wolfpadx asked in the discord and i just had to elaborate on my thoughts.

[mixelation]

thoughts on itadei, itakisa, and itasaku? and i guess any other popular itachi ships that are not currently coming to mind for me lol

ItaDei

Love it. Have written tens of thousands of words about it. It's sort of a frustrating ship to write because they're both assholes about their own feelings (and I don't think Itachi in canon... has a lot of thoughts on Deidara), but Deidara has an extremely canonical gay melt down over Itachi, so I feel like there's a lot of ridiculousness to explore. The fact that they're both criminal villain ninja means there's a lot of room for understanding that other ships might not have. Yes, Deidara blows buildings up with people inside, what of it? He's not like "ooh aah you monster!!" over the Uchiha Massacre. And I like that they both have wildly different, but demonstrably lethal/successful, attitudes towards problem solving. Like I think they cover a lot of each other's flaws while also making each other worse, you know?

Since it's "brutally honest" opinion time, I will add a complaint I haven't made in a while. I hate the way a good chunk of fandom writes Deidara in mlm ships. For some reason, people like to make him a naive uwu bean to play the "feminine" role. Stop that, it's boring and OOC.

ItaKisa

This is a ship I don't really mind but also don't find super compelling. I'm not a big Kisame fan-- like he's fine, I like writing and reading about him fine-- but he's not one of my favorite Akatsuki members. I don't filter on ItaKisa but the tag won't make me NOT click a fic. I could be compelled to write it if I had an idea for it. I do prefer exploring their relationship from a more platonic angle. Kisame is most interesting to me when he's the guy dealing with Itachi's bullshit 24/7 and somehow still thriving.

ItaSaku

My original OTP!!!!!! Okay so I think they're super compatible and HERE'S WHY--

Basically I think Itachi is someone who has idealized romance in a way where he has an extensive very bland fantasy about nice Konoha girls who let him have the most bland vanilla hetersosexual marriage of all time. He wants the culturally appropriate equivalent of a white picket fence. Would he actually be happy with this? No, obviously not, but Itachi also thinks he's a pacifist.

Meanwhile Sakura is a violent maniac who is trying her hardest to BE that nice Konoha girl. They indulge each other's insane fantasies about it. Itachi looks at Sakura and is like: "oh yes, the perfect Konoha kunoichi, the student of the Hokage and Hatake Kakashi, a healer with the face of an angel--" But if his ability for self-analysis were 2% better he would realize his favorite Sakura moments are all like "ripped a man in half" and "brought that same man back from the brink of death to interrogate him." He is ready to lay back and let Sakura live out her own fantasy of Fixing the tragic S-ranked missing-nin WITH HER LOVE because that is also what Itachi wants. Ignore that the village is on fire, please

Other Itachi Ships

Let's see.... every once in a while I get intrigued by the idea of Kakashi/Itachi, but I have never hit on anything there that I really like. I'm fine with Shisui/Itachi, but I don't think Shisui has enough of a canon presence for me to go really feral over it like I would ItaSaku or ItaDei. I'm intrigued by some other Itachi/Akatsuki ships although I don't think any of them are popular. For example, I think Itachi and Sasori would clash horribly in that they're both assholes in similar directions, and this would make SasoItaDei a beautiful trashfire for Deidara specifically.

I've written some Itachi-Karin interactions that I thought were fun so I think ItaKarin could be interesting. Ummm..... OH! I regularly forget Izumi even exists. Sorry, Izumi.

[oh-no-its-bird]

hello dear author may i get ur opinion on genma. perhaps even genma/kakashi. perhaps. mayhaps. i just think they r neat and if u put them together that's double the neatness.

I love Genma so much actually, I think he's one of my favorite supporting characters to see in fics. Whenever I need a character to fill the roll of "random shinobi" I tend to default to him bc of biases (also his senbon is cool!! I love characters w a gimmick of just having like a toothpick in their mouth, and he has that but w a lethal presumably poisoned needle!! Love that for him)

I don't know how much canon actually provides for him character wise (never actually interacted with canon media lmao, I'm all fanfic) but I feel like there's honestly a lot of wiggle room with him

One of my personal favorite takes that (if I remember right) stems from a couple of @ blackkatmagic's fics is that he comes from a very small clan, distantly related to Orochimaru's own super small clan, the Orochi. Similar to how the Hyuuga and Uchiha are related

I lovee the mamma bear hc with him, I also love seeing him and Kakashi be any kind of friends. Currently I think one of my favorite takes on his and Kakashi's dynamic can be found in @vodkassassin's fic, Ear to the Wall.

Gemna only really shows up for a little bit, but the scenes he did get left a really big impact on me and how I see him (also the fic itself is amazing and is a very large inspiration for Orochimaru's involvement in Chasing Shadows, 10/10 read I HIGHLY recommend it, its a time travel fic but honestly even if time travel isnt your thing I'd still reccomend it bc its just one of those fics that fucks so hard you don't even care ab how you got here to start)

(<- spoken as someone obsessed with time travel fics)

Anyways, Genma/Kakashi!!

Actually thinking about it, I don't think I've seen any real fics about that pairing? I've run into it a few times as a past ship, like they hooked up once or twice or were fwb before the main pair gets together. But never one where they're the focus. That's tragic and needs to change immediatley

I love the idea of Genma being part of Kakashi's class when he graduated stupid young, never really interacting w him but like, existing. He wasn't Gai when it came to trying to hang out and around Kakashi, but he was certainly around.

No idea what he is in canon but I like to hc him as an information / infiltration specialist. So along with being around, he was also the kind of kid to really notice and keep tabs on stuff. (Konoha gossip king Gemna is THE hc to have sorry but I love it sm)

He didn't really approach Kakashi outside of any sort of casual nods or polite "hey"'s till after his whole team imploded.

I can kind of see him interacting with Kakashi in that in-between time where he was ANBU under Minato. But he was still mostly a very observant spectator, no real interaction

So then Minato dies and Kakashi goes off the deep end REAL hard, and Genma finally steps in. Maybe he joins Gai in trying to forcefully pry Kakashi out of his death spiral, maybe he approaches on his own, maybe he notices smthn or bumps into Kakashi alone while he's having a panic attack or smthn and there's a specific moment for that "final straw" where he finally decides to step in

Dunno!

But anyways that's when they start to get to be friends fr

I think Genma would be interesting and good for Kakashi at that point, bc he isn't a stranger, he knows what happened, he can make a lot of very good guesses at Kakashi's triggers and traumas and know what to avoid talking ab. But he's not Gai, who was sort of in the middle of it for a good portion of the drama, having a front row seat to it all. Which also comes with it's own emotional baggage.

Genma is a good middle ground, if that makes sense?

Also I think his calmer carefree energy would be good for Kakashi, especially at that point

They're pretty cute together!! If nothing else they make for very compelling friends when you really sit down to think ab it, and I can for sure get behind them as a real ship

Suddenly I need to go looking for fics with them as a pairing, I might come back and actually write something for them as a ship later

What's their ship name btw? I honestly don't know

[greenerteacups]

If there was one major plot element that you could change in the original canon what would it be?

The Marauders' deaths. With the exception of James, I don't think any of the Marauders die in a way that's narratively suitable — or, to be more particular, they die in a way suitable for a narrative I don't like very much. James is an acceptable (though, obviously, tragic) death to me because it completes his arc: he's an obnoxious, arrogant bully who grows into a selfless soldier on the side of the light, and lays down his life as a final gesture of abnegation. It's not Proust, but it's good, right? His death represents a symbolic triumph over Voldemort because it's something Voldemort would never do.

None of the others make the same kind of sense for their subplots. Sirius dies at the Ministry because Harry fucks up and lets his abandonment issues override his judgment, and while that's a compelling moment for Harry — whose hamartia is a trauma-forged combination of hot-headedness and desperate fear of losing people — it's not for Sirius. Sirius's problem in Book 5 is that he's emotionally stunted by his years of imprisonment and refuses to grow up, because he's clinging to the life he thinks — rightly — he should have gotten to have. This is made painfully clear in the Department of Mysteries, wherein some of his last words to Harry are "Nice one, James!" He refuses to treat Harry like the child he is, and he keeps acting like he's this fun-uncle type, blowing off rules and pissing off Mom (Molly), because that's the dynamic he should have had with Harry if Lily and James had lived. Sirius doesn't want to be Harry's guardian and role model. He wants a brother and a nephew, and he's trying to force Harry to be both, because he's all he has left of that family. His death doesn't tie any of those threads; they're left dangling. That's a valid narrative move — every death cuts a story short, and you can't give everybody an arc — but I loved Sirius. Giving Harry the "grieving loss of a parent" arc that was originally meant for Ron (Arthur was the original Big Death of the OOTP, in JKR's drafts) also means that Ron spends a lot of Book 6 without anything to do, whereas Harry goes through what's essentially a more intense version of the grieving-and-recovery arc he did after Cedric's death.

Remus, on the other hand, is just — first off, a Mess, I agree with so few of the choices made with Remus in the later books, but let's say he's deep in the trauma, the grieving, and whatever living among werewolves as a spy does for your mental health. So he gets into this will-they-won't-they with Tonks, gets married, tries to abandon pregnant wife, then goes back and gets to be with his wife and son for about half a year before dying, with said wife, in battle. Okay. So like:

I think the Remus Weirdness in Book 7 is actually an attempt to close a plot hole, which is that the Horcrux Hunt happens completely without adult supervision, despite the fact that there are lots of adults the Golden Trio could and should ask for help. Harry's insistence that he doesn't want to risk anyone's life except for Ron and Hermione's is, while understandable as a character move, utterly ridiculous, because the other Order members are risking their lives anyway. One of the biggest holes is Remus and Tonks, who are (a) both already targets for Voldemort because of who they are, and so have nothing to lose, but also (b) both care for Harry on a personal level, and would never accept his reasons for pushing them away. So Teddy Lupin is conceived in order to bench Tonks, who's safely out of commission while pregnant. But that leaves Remus, who probably in fact would have super complicated torn-loyalty feelings about the situation, and who is scarred and traumatized and probably has enough abandonment issues to try and walk out, but — in my view — never resolves any of those things. He doesn't suddenly realize that he loves Tonks and wants to be with her, or feel a sense of duty to his son; when Harry's justly furious at Remus abandoning his kid in Harry's name, Remus gets pissy about it and goes "well, if you don't want my help, fine," and leaves. Which is, again, fine, a character flaw, it's childish, he's allowed to be, and he is, in fact, similar to Sirius and James — but it left a bad taste in my mouth, because that's one of the last conversations we get with Remus, and it's such an impoverished vision of his bonds with others. It doesn't delve deeply into why he loves Tonks or Harry, or the substance of his conflict between them; like always with the Marauders, he just invokes James, and Harry throws James's name right back at him, and it ends there.

And then he dies, so that baby Teddy Lupin can be an orphan, and we can do a parallel to baby Harry Potter. Even though we don't see Teddy Lupin on the page ever, so we have no idea what that comparison means, or how their experiences compliment or contrast one another, or literally anything more substantive than the series beginning and ending on the same event. Which: great. Okay. To quote a Roger Ebert review that I think about, on average, once every thirty-six hours:

"J.K. Rowling has learned from better novels that authors sometimes create narrative parallels, but she has not learned why."

[singing-not-sleeping-beauty]

What are the five good werewolf movies?

Ginger Snaps: early 2000s horror movie in which the titular werewolf is a teenage girl named Ginger Fitzgerald, sister focused narrative that acts as a metaphor for the death of girlhood, super gory, tragic ending that leads into the sequel, warning for depictions of self harm for both movies

Bhediya: Bollywood horror comedy with a strong environmental message, fantastic score, and compelling character growth

The Wolfman (1941): this is where the formula for most modern werewolf movies comes from, and it is certainly dated in some aspects, but it exhibits something that most copycat movies forget, we should feel sorry for the man behind the monster. We should be saddened, not indifferent, to his inevitable demise

Wolfwalkers: Very different from the other films on this list as it is an animated kids movie, but it is an Irish film inspired by the legend of the wolf-men of Ossory, with a unique 2D art style, and themes of anti-colonialism

Werewolf by Night (2022): yes, this is a marvel special presentation, but it also works well as a stand alone piece, and stays true to the idea that we should sympathize with the werewolf. Jack Russell is immediately endearing, and unlike so many werewolf movies he neither dies nor finds a cure by the end. While it works as a contained story, it still leaves you wanting more in the best possible way

[ultraericthered]

King Magnifico: Reimagining A Good Baddie Into Disney Villain Excellence.

I did not plan on doing another post about King Magnifico but dammit, the man just compells me. Since I recently drafted a revision treatment for the story of Wish, dubbed The Fully Fulfilled Edition, and it got me thinking more about Magnifico and the iteration of the character that I envisioned for my version of Disney's sentimental centennial tale. I've covered the troubles with the finalized official Disney character enough times already; I feel like the handling of his character and execution of his role as the story's villain was like a basketball wobbling along the rim before falling through the basket rather than a straight slam dunk. He's easily the most well-realized, enticing, entertaining, and developed character of the whole picture, the only one who comes close to being three-dimensional. But even he could've been better. If all the kinks were to have been ironed out in him, what might that actually end up looking like in practice?

Note that for this undertaking, I did not want to super drastically alter Magnifico's character to the point where he'd become completely divorced from what we got in the film and just be Magnifico in name only. I make just enough expansions, alterations, and fixes necessary to turn what I find good enough into what I'd consider truly great.

For starters, his tragic origin story being told to us upfront right out the gate helps to clear the air early into the picture, when we've not yet met King Magnifico but are given the background information of the man who became King Magnifico, wed Queen Amaya, and built the kingdom of Rosas. In my take on the backstory, the young would be-King Magnifico's family lived in a harbor town, working slavishly on what's implied to be export and trade. It's said that one day the young man, wanting his family to be happier and have more time for him, made a wish upon a totem for his family's burdens to be lifted. Well, that ended up being a vague wish that in a way did come true, as the town was soon attacked by a band of greedy marauders. In the storybook images the town would be shown going up in green flames as young Magnifico takes a boat to survival. Unfortunately, the boat ended up getting wrecked landing on a desert island, and the story would tell us that the youth lost everything he had in the wreck...even though he'd clearly be holding onto something in the accompanying picture. It is then said that Magnifico understood well the value and the danger a wish can hold, which inspired him to learn the arts of sorcery and magic that can extract a heart's deepest and most precious wish as a tangible substance held within a magic orb. Eventually he and the loyal wife he'd married built a great kingdom on that very island Magnifico had landed on, the kingdom of Rosas, where the citizens wishes are given, protected, and granted in the benign rule of Magnifico and Amaya, the "long lived" king and queen.

With that backstory and the reasons for why Magnifico founded Rosas and created the wish giving system established, the first in-universe look at the king we're given is in statues, in murals, in his face painted in various locations, even in the cookies Dahlia bakes. The face looks very kind, dignified, wisened, majestic, and above all gorgeously handsome. His presence is also subtly felt in what we'd be shown of the average Rosas citizens - some who are overly happy and enthused in a very cult-like manner and some who are only half-awake and half-heartedly trying to stay into it. This is heavily implicit as being a result of the system and society in Rosas, where the happier people are the ones who've had their wishes granted or have such good standing with the royals that they feel they're likely to have their wishes granted in the near future, while the lethargic ones are those who've given their wishes away, cannot remember what they even were to start with, and have been tirelessly waiting for when the time comes for Magnifico to grant them in a wish ceremony.

So then when we’re properly introduced to King Magnifico after all the build-up, it'd be immediately striking how the appearance of the man himself doesn't quite measure up to what we'd seen depicted in the kingdom's arts and crafts. We were told he's beloved by all, yet the man we meet here would come off very...Stephen Strange-ish. He'd be very smarmy, disgrunted, irrate and patronizing towards Asha, visibly or verbally condescending to her and treating her like a silly, hapless child who he doesn’t believe will attain the position. However, he is coming off of another interview that ended poorly, so we think maybe he's just in a sour mood and we shouldn't assume too badly of him. If we hold onto hope for his better nature to win out, it seems to pay off when he appears to empathize with Asha after she's told him of her deceased father and all the ways in which he'd inspired her to dream big and to love Rosas; it's almost like the king sees some of his younger self in Asha, and through that, he's able to recognize that she could be a good fit for the job of working for him as his apprentice, someone he can shape into being more like him and following his ways. He'd do the "I too suffered great loss at a young age due to the selfish wishes and actions of greedy thieves and built Rosas as a place where that would not happen" thing like in the movie, but not only do we understand that more due to having been given the whole backstory, it'd also be more noticeable just how...calculated it feels. Like, Magnifico might as well say "I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. Y'know, my late son, Beau..."., y'know those shows of pseudo-empathy that political leaders love to do.

Once Asha has the job and returns to the castle for her first day of apprenticeship, King Magnifico would show us that oh no, this guy might actually be worse than we'd thought he was before. He's now in full Handsome Jack from Borderlands mode, acting more giddy and animated because he just loves his apprentice's first days where he can "dazzle them with all his splendor, and win over all of their love and devotion and appreciation for all his royal duties." And he just acts completely unkind and insensitive to Asha, making her do all sort of minor chores the way Lady Tremaine would do to Cinderella. He lets Asha into his sanctum of wishes, where he holds, juggles, balances and caresses some of the various wishes in a way that seems unsettlingly possessive, akin to how Mother Gothel stroked Rapunzel’s golden hair, and as he does he sings these words:

If happiness was a tangible thing, it would be you If you'd have told me the feeling you'd bring, I'd think it untrue And people search for a wonder like you all of their lives You still amaze me after all this time You pull me in like some kind of wind Mesmerized by the hold I'm in Leave you here, I don't wanna I wanna promise as one does I, I will protect you at all costs Keep you safe here in my arms I, I will protect you at all costs At all costs

Then the shoe drops. Magnifico reveals that he doesn't just collect these wishes to safeguard them and grant them in ceremonies: he uses the magical blessings cast upon the wishes as means of keeping his own magic powers charged every day, and it's also how he has sustained such slow aging and long living for himself and his wife. Yes, the royals feed off of the souls of their own subjects in order to keep their lifespan going, with the wishes extracted from the beautiful innermost part of those souls serving as convenient battery power for them. Unnerved as this makes Asha feel, the subject of a long life span naturally calls her almost 100 year old grandfather to mind, and she makes the dreaded "nepotism favor" request that the king consider granting Sabino’s wish at the ceremony. Magnifico, disappointed but not surprised, declines this request, rationalizing the wish could be too vague and might pose a threat to the kingdom. Asha then realizes Magnifico intends to never grant most of these wishes yet refuses to return the ungrantable wishes to their owners. She openly questions the king, telling him it's unreasonable of him to keep the most beautiful part of his subjects very selves from them if he truly has no inclination to ever grant them with his magic, and he should return those wishes to their owners so that they'll remember them and gain the drive to at least try to work towards fulfilling them themselves. Magnifico lashes out at her in fury ("I decide what everyone deserves!") and as consequence we get the ceremony where Magnifico pulls the spiteful fake-out with the wish granting just to shame and humiliate Asha, and let her know that her family's wishes will be kept by him forever, never to be granted. Also just barely noticable in the same scene would be that Magnifico reveals the wish of the person he grants it to and how it had been worded, but what he gives is notably a distorted alteration of the original wish. For all his high horsing about "be careful what you wish for, wishes worded too vaguely might go wrong when granted and that's too much of a danger risk", he himself exploits vaguely phrased wishes in order to twist them into something with benefits to the kingdom, his rule, and his image. For years, he's really only been using this system of wishes to make his own wishes come true, and has been routinely dishonest and hypocritical about it as he defrauds his people, committing theft by deception. What a self-obsessed bastard.

After Asha's made her wish to the stars and called Star down to Rosas, Magnifico and Amaya, having witnessed the wave of magic it brought, fear an unknown magic source that might threaten their kingdom and the hold they have on all the magic and wishes, but they find no answers in their books and scrolls to what this strange light might be. Magnifico starts acting furiously paranoid, remarking about how much he hates craven thieves and traitors. Due to how things went over with Asha, she is his primary suspect who he fears is now out to usurp his power and might not even be acting alone. As he starts to be overcome by desperation, Magnifico turns to his tome of forbidden dark magic and goes to unseal it. Fortunately for him, Amaya remains level-headed and is able to talk him out of it, to which he gives a very transparently half-hearted "thanks", followed by the "I am a handsome king" bit when Amaya tells him that, as they cannot baselessly accuse and arrest Asha for treason, they use the people’s love of him as their monarch to get them to reach the truth for them.

Of course, during the briefing with the public, people start asking how and why their wishes might now be in danger, which leads to questions about why Magnifico established the system the way that he did, which leads to deeper questioning such as why everything in Rosas is so tailored towards the king despite his role being to protect and provide for the people - like, why does the king need to have his handsome face plastered everywhere? When everyone feels the next wave of magic from Star’s evolution, it proves definitively what Magnifico told them: that this magic didn’t come from him, and that only creates a sense of disillusionment among the people. A furious Magnifico warns of a traitor within the kingdom conspiring to use this magic to steal all wishes and topple the monarchy, who must be found and punished, and that a wish will be freely granted to anyone who identifies this person. Then he shuts the doors back into his castle, frantically pacing about and looking to see if the magic came from somewhere within. Visibly aggitated, Amaya tries to soothe her petulant husband urging him to calm his mind and cheer himself up by gazing at his reflection in the mirrored walls. Which leads to....

"This Is The Thanks I Get" (Revised version)!

In between the second chorus and the bridge, Magnifico walks in front of the forbidden magic tome and vocalizes that in his years long reign, he has been far too soft on his people, spoiling them into becoming greedy, entitled ingrates who are all no better than thieves, so he needs to harden his heart and exercise more power “for their own good”, to tighten his grip over Rosas and preserve his power. So he unseals the book, opens it up, and gains power from its corruptive influence. And he made sure to do this when his wife wasn't around to stop him from doing so. This was his choice. He wanted this. In his desperation to not let his power over Rosas slip from him, he turned to what he knew as wrong primarily for the convenience of it enabling him to shed anything within himself that was restraining him before, and to grant to him more destructive, awesome power to squash all dissent with. This is what takes him from "big jerk" to "true villain."

After being told by Simon that Asha was indeed responsible for Star's summoning and has been plotting against him, Magnifico goes to Asha's family's home and assaults Sabino and Sakina with magic that’s holding them down when Asha and Star return. Declaring he must arrest the whole family for both high treason and harboring a criminal, Magnifico also takes time to relish some cruelty towards Asha, not only stepping on Sabino's already broken lute in front of her but bringing out Sakina’s wish and using his new dark power to shatter it in his grip, making Sakina reel in agony as the energy from her wish, a sacred part of her soul, gets absorbed into Magnifico’s black magic. Realizing how much power he can claims from the wishes delights the vainglorious monarch, who says had he known this, he would've broken wishes ages ago! So now Magnifico has a singular goal: to absorb the magic of both Star and all the wishes in order to become an all-powerful tyrant, motivated purely by pride, spite, desire for retribution and control, and the power high he's on.

Forging his new dark magic scepter, Magnifico addresses the public once more, revealing the traitor to be Asha and Simon to be the one to sell her out under the promise of having his wish granted. But be careful what you wish for, Simon! Magnifico twists the wish once again ("to be the king’s greatest, bravest and most loyal knight"), this time using his new dark magic to bewitch and brainwash him into a magitech knight. Magnifico then puts out the reward of another wish granting ceremony for the wish of whichever of his subjects helps the knights capture Asha and Star, with the added threat that the longer it takes for them to be captured, the more wishes he will break so that no one may get their wishes granted in the end, which makes the masses erupt into carnage and division between the fearful but still adoring loyalists to the king, and those who see this is not right and want no part in it. To quell this disorder, Magnifico unleashes more magic, desecrating the area and putting lives at risk, prompting a distraught Amaya to suggest he reign himself in better, and to her surprise, Magnifico points his staff at her, telling her to never again second-guess him or give him orders or else. He then orders all dissenters to be rounded up and thrown in the dungeon. So it's pretty clear by now that Magnifico is far gone, and this time the needless "looking for a way to save Magnifico from the thrall of the dark magic only to learn it can't be done" plot point is omitted, as this Amaya knows from the get-go that once you open the book and read from it even once, your addiction to the power it grants is unbreakable.

At the climax of the story, King Magnifico ascends the castle’s tower, sucks the life out from every wish that has been released into the night sky through his sanctum's open ceiling, and absorbs it all, sending droves of people in the kingdom into agonizing pain, anguish and despair. With no wishes to charge himself with, he gleefully traps Star in his scepter to act as the new living magical battery for his power. He thanks Star and Asha for how they've challenged his rule, because if they hadn't, he'd not have ever learned how much more gratifying it was to take all that he wants rather than "pretend to care and lightly snack on the magic of those wishes only in desperate moments". Asha's attempts to stop him are easily overpowered, as he then KO's his wife with a magic blast for her betrayal, then uses his dark magic to block out the sky so that the citizens never again may wish upon stars, then creates magical chains from out of the ground that bind all the citizens in place, and when the knights rush to stop their mad king, he not only chains them too, but unleashes waves of dark magic that set Rosas ablaze with green fire, madly declaring that he will oppress the disspirited masses forevermore: "No more hope, no more dreams, no escape, no chance to rise up, no one to tell any tales, and no one to challenge me ever again! And I would gladly rather see my great kingdom burn and crumble to Rosas' soil than give up this awesome power I so majestically wield!"

What happens next...well, you all probably know that by now.

So that's Magnifico's progression as the villain in my revision of Wish, but there's one last tiny yet hugely significant touch I'd add to fully bring his character together. A little before the big climax, Amaya would make reference to the fact that sealing the forbidden black magic inside “that heirloom” was among the first fundamental cornerstones of Rosas, but Magnifico has now totally backtracked on that and betrayed his oath to his people and their wishes. Hearing the book called an "heirloom" and then looking back at the storybook images of Magnifico's origin story at the start of the film makes the two pieces click together. That tome of forbidden magic belonged to Magnifico's family, the marauders sought it out and opened it up, which is what actually set the town ablaze, Magnifico took it with him as he fled to the boat, and it was the only thing he had that survived the boat's wreckage onto the shores of what would become Rosas. Throughout the story, Magnifico would have lines expressing his disdain for "thieves", "traitors", "cowards", "ingrates", and "weaklings". ...But this did not really come from just his trauma with the thieves. It's because he felt as though he himself, as a youth, was all of those things. He was a thief who stole his family's book, he was a traitor for making that vague wish that brought the marauders there, he was a coward and an ingrate for fleeing and leaving his family to burn, and he was a weakling for lacking the power to stop any of that from occurring and get things under control. To us on the outside looking in, it's easy to see how irrational it is for Magnifico to blame himself like that and have such self-loathing for boyhood mistakes and things beyond his control that were not really his fault. But tragically, no one ever told him this, not even Amaya. So what drove Magnifico forward in life was a pathological need to change his self image, to become someone greater and more powerful than that thieving little coward, to assert himself as the height of perfection, someone who could be loved and who could love himself in turn. He needed to be a king, for back in the day, a king was considered the only flesh and blood mortal human on Earth close to or secondary in power to the divinity of God Himself, for they had "the divine right to rule", the mandate of Heaven. So not only could Magnifico be that, but his magical power, the extension of his life via the wishes, and the system for taking the secret hopes, dreams, and prayers of the commonfolk to protect and decide which among them to grant, could put him that much closer to being a god among men. That is the core of what King Magnifico wanted; to feel like he was God, so as to erase his own inner pain over the fallability of being human. He was for years perpetually feeding his own power and ego, and yet it was never going to be enough. And he became so enthralled in his own God-and-Savior Complex, in playing at being the highest power in all the land, that he became a greedy, immoral, disruptive and destabilizing individual who brings suffering to the lives and wishes of others, like he'd once been the victim of; he became the very threat to Rosas that he’d been so wary of. And so, he got rewarded as such a threat deserves.

Dammit, now I'm low-key pissed at Disney! Say the line, Peridot!

[anghraine]

your blog is great, and you talk about your interests in such a compelling way! out of curiosity, who would you say are your top 10 fictional characters of all time? also, do you use twitter?

Thank you very much! It's hard to be entirely accurate about my personal top ten, but I still enjoyed thinking about it rather than about being sick and miserable, lol, so here's my attempt to come up with a Faves of Ultimate Destiny list.

(This isn't necessarily about evaluating their worth as characters or even as people, but just how much raw affection I feel. It's also not ranked, just the order in which I thought of them!)

Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (the book character specifically) — I know, nobody is surprised. He actually is my #1 choice.

Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars original trilogy — it's always hard for me to choose between him, his father, and his sister, but ultimately, I feel the most powerfully about Luke. I'm not here for soft, sunshiny fanon Luke, but I am super here for a Luke whose personal kindness, strength, and powerful loyalties mingle with his struggle against rage, fear, even hatred, and an inclination to idealize martial violence and solve his problems with it, yet who comes out the other side as the kind of Jedi that Anakin might have been rather than the authorities around Luke succeeding in forging him into something alien to his true nature.

Faramir from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (very definitely the book character specifically) — again, I'm not super into soft and accommodating mundane guy Faramir, but very into the interplay of his basic compassion and gentleness with the repeated descriptions of him as stern, commanding, willful, and just really fucking strange. I love others a lot but no one can take his crown. (He may be uncrowned in canon but not in my heart!)

Gwen Thackeray from Guild Wars: Prophecies and Guild Wars: Eye of the North, games which most of you haven't played and I suspect would not enjoy for dated mechanics reasons, but which won my heart in the original tutorial zone. I have an explanation about Gwen's greatness here.

Attolia Irene from Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief books, but especially The Queen of Attolia. She's so precisely tailored to my tastes in female characters that I was kind of astounded, even though I read the books specifically for her based on my friends' TQT blogging. I mostly don't talk about her on this blog, but my feelings are really strong!

Aravis Tarkheena from CS Lewis's The Horse and His Boy. I know everything wrong with Narnia and specifically with THHB, but Aravis, what an icon.

Tarrlok from Avatar: The Legend of Korra. This is another close competition (with his brother Noatak/Amon along with both members of my beloved OTP, Korra/Kuvira), but if I'm being honest, he's the one who scrapes into the fave Avatar character slot. I've loved a lot of tragic villains, but he's really top tier.

Annabella from John Ford's seventeenth-century revenge tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. The title is quasi-ironic; it comes from a dismissive description of her by a super corrupt Catholic cardinal. Both the title and subject matter (murder, consensual sibling incest, a ton of misogyny) can make it a difficult play for some. But for me, Annabella is really what makes the play succeed on its own terms and outshine its Shakespearean inspiration.

Cesare Borgia from Showtime's The Borgias. In my heart this slot goes to both him and his sister Lucrezia (where #8 is definitely Annabella's alone, although I like Giovanni; if only S1 existed this slot would be rightfully Lucrezia's). But if I have to choose between them in the context of the show, I felt his arc was smoother and more coherent and satisfying throughout the show as a whole, so my love for him is less impeded by frustration.

I wasn't actively trying to only choose one character per canon, though it's wound out that way, but here's the exception: Cassian Andor from the 2016 Star Wars film Rogue One (and only that film—I'm not here for the novelization or other EU depictions or Andor or anything except what's in the movie). He's a gift of a character I never expected Star Wars to provide, and half of the only romance in SW that seriously matters to me.

Honorable "rewired my brain" mentions: Moiraine Damodred from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time (also in the show!), Sandrilene fa Toren from Tamora Pierce's Emelan books, and Lessa from Anne McCaffrey's Pern books were all deeply formative.

As for Twitter:

I definitely don't use it any more. I used to have multiple accounts, though I wasn't super active outside of academia/chatting with RL friends and the occasional random scholar who deigned to notice me. Twitter wasn't really the natural platform for my preferred "LJ fandom expat" style of online writing, and was mostly stuff like this:

[Damn, I had no idea what was coming with "AI" ... anyway.]

I was deciding whether to keep using Twitter as the Elon purchase was going down, and then he immediately did an antisemitism and I immediately cut all use of it. I later got around to locking down all three accounts; I only maintain them to control the usernames. Most of the people I knew on Twitter joined Bluesky around the same time as me, or can be more easily reached on Discord now. I mostly use Bluesky when I feel like microblogging, but it's not a feeling that often besets me.

[shxugx]

my theory academia

also known as “what i wrote in my notes app to explain my mha theories to my wife, who knows the bare minimum of mha lore”

* manga spoilers ahead *

SO i begin with Red Shoe TheoryTM

Red Shoe Theory is basically the idea that Izuku’s trademark red shoes are a specific brand made for quirkless people.

The doctor in episode one explains that quirkless people are biologically different than quirked people. one of the differences is they have a second toe joint in their toes. a very specific and odd thing to include, but go off i guess

then we see izuku’s ugly ass (affectionate) red shoes. he wears the same damn shoes since he was a kid to literally current day. no one else in the series has this type of shoe and he wears them with everything.

theory is basically bc of the toe joint, they have to wear specific shoes to accommodate.

now: this is kinda a dumb theory by itself. however, i lied when i said only one character in the series wears them.

there is two.

introducing the Shigaraki was Quirkless theory.

HandJob McGee is the only other character that wears these red ass shoes. but they’re not just red. they’re fucking identical to izuku’s. again, not super compelling at first.

until you take in account the UA traitor, Aoyama Yuuga.

he was quirkless. his parents, rich and stupid, asked AFO to give him a quirk. he gives him Naval Laser and now basically has his family enslaved and forces him to be the traitor.

something odd about aoyama’s quirk (besides that is fucking stupid) is that it hurts him. not in a “worked out too much” way but in a “can barely use it” way. he gets better with training but he can barely handle using it for a few seconds without being in pain and he is RELIANT on support gear, something people with quirks are taught not to rely on as it is a handicap in case their gear is destroyed. he has no choice and has to wear it because otherwise the fuckin bitch leaks n shit

there are two other characters who’s quirks hurt them like this. izuku and his liquified bones, who we also know was quirkless

and shiggy.

all the characters we have seen that have toxic quirks have a natural immunity or defense against it to protect them (IE: kacchan and fire, mina and acid etc)

however, shigaraki is literally flaking away. we also know that he was originally Tenko shimura and had black hair and black eyes. now tho, he has white hair and red eyes and his skin is so dry he scratches constantly.

his quirk is decay.

his body is slowly decaying itself as a reaction to the quirk because it’s not supposed to be there. he’s basically turning albino.

now. this i feel like is too obvious to not be canon but *shrugs*

AFO manipulated and groomed baby Tenko bc he’s a petty ass bitch

AFO forced decay onto bb tenko, causing him to accidentally kill his family, and be the one to find him after to “save him”, and it was planned every step of the way.

So this is easier just to go in order of tragic events.

Yoichi Shigaraki, first user of One for All, brother of All For One, so obviously All For One is a shigaraki.

Nana Shimura. Seventh user of one for all and All Might’s beloved mentor.

All Might, who is still alive and who AFO hates.

Nana Shimura. Also known as Tenko Shimura’s grandmother.

now.

nana is dead. bc afo fucking killed her.

all might is not dead and is proving to be afo’s biggest asshole to date.

all might continues to be heartbroken about nana’s death to current day. it’s no secret how important she was to him.

afo, an immortal petty bitch, thinks hmm how can i make all might suffer the most.

oh i know.

finds her quirkless grandson and says “hey lil boy i can give you a quirk! :D”

tenko, 4 and stupid, “omg really!! :D”

afo, *gives tenko a super fucking destructive quirk*

*sends him home*

(note: he could have also have it to him without tenko knowing it happened idk. the details are flexible but the main point it the important thing here)

tenko, fucking accidentally kills his entire family bc how was he supposed to know better.

afo, is immortal and rich so has people watching to make sure no one gets close to the boy and he swoops in to “save him”

proceeds to groom him and traumatize him by making him wear his fucking dead family’s hands on his body to constantly remind him he is a killer and evil and afo will be the only one to be kind and care about him

afo brainwashes tenko into forgetting what happened and who he used to be (through grooming, gaslighting, etc) and now he only knows himself as tomura shigaraki.

plans to make him basically the successor to afo and be what kills one for all/ all might is sick poetic fuckery of all might being killed by his mentors grandson.

(also adds a reason as to why nana is the only female user. to show that she is important to the story beyond just being a past user/mentor)

now this next theory has less of a hold bc of lack of evidence but i personally head canon it to be true.

Dad for One

basically. midoriya izuku’s dad, midoriya hisashi is actually AFO.

he left when izuku was diagnosed as quirkless which could be considered hypocritical considering he sought out tenko but i think afo is a dramatic bitch and wanted to fuck with all might but ALSO

tenko is older than izuku by at least a few years, so he would have already had that plan in motion and may have stuck around just to see if izuku developed a quirk worth stealing or not and decided he wasn’t worth it. or could have also just not been able to get away with using him bc of inko and the bakugous. or a little of all that idk. (i GUESS it’s possible that he also actually did care about izuku and didn’t want to hurt him but i meeeannnnn idk man i wasn’t there)

BUT BESIDES THAT

* horikoshi has confirmed that izuku’s dad would be revealed before the end of the series and we kinda don’t have many options left here (at least i saw something that said that at one point, could be bs but STILL his dad is one of the last mysteries of the show)

* afo’s fuckin face is destroyed so we can’t see any resemblance BUT Yoichi looks INCREDIBLY similar to izuku

* it honestly makes the story super fucking interesting?? like izuku is the son of afo, born quirkless, given the quirk one for all by all might, all might basically becomes dad might, and izuku is the one to take his father down with the help of the previous users (including his uncle yoichi) in an incredible poetic justice loose end tying satisfying ass ending

i also wanna add that the Dabi is Touya Todoroki theory being canon gives credibility that this story has a thing for the family drama plot line and why wouldn’t they use it in the main characters storyline?

in conclusion, i held my wife hostage for a solid hour and a half to explain these to her, not dissimilar to this meme;

and i wanted to share it bc i worked too hard on it to just delete the note lmfao

[vigilskeep]

how do i start caring about cousland origin? idk i just can't bring myself to give a single fuck about some noble guy's parents dying even though it's probably dramatic, traumatic and whatnot

it’s definitely the least interesting of the origins. to me. not that there’s no value in it and i’m not bashing couslands but it’s easily the most classic fantasy narrative and requires the most work on the player’s part to make interesting

i got invested in couslands only recently because i love fantasy worldbuilding and politics and the couslands have a really insane unique position in ferelden when you look into it. i also think they open up a lot of game decisions that otherwise don’t make sense to consider because they have quite a different background to the others, like they have very different political priorities, probably more complex fereldan loyalties and senses of their duty and rights that come into conflict w their grey warden directive, infinitely more likely to be an uncomplicated andrastian (side note, quietly non-andrastian cousland family would fuck. as an au/hc concept. has anyone done that), don’t instinctively relate to experiences of being oppressed or an outsider, etc. etc. i also think there’s different character opportunities in someone who has had a very sudden tragic downfall from a life of relative comfort surrounded by loving family, as opposed to someone who has uh always been exposed to threat in the way that the other origins in different ways have.

i would also say i think couslands work really really well (and i find them most interesting) in multiwarden worldstates. to play other characters off of by contrast. i probably won’t get around to playing my cousland but i would never do multiwarden without adding a cousland

overall i think you can take what’s basically true—that cousland is a very standard fantasy hero backstory—and you can either dismiss it or you can take the trope that’s been put in front of you and play with and challenge that. okay, so i have a standard fantasy hero. what does that mean? do they buy into their own story of being protagonist of the universe? do other people? how does it affect the way they deal with other people’s suffering especially the kind they can’t relate to? how can we fuck up the narrative? what do i mean with this and where do i think you could take it. um. i think cousland’s one of the best origins for an “evil playthrough” and that’s one way to take it but i’m also thinking of, like, you could do something SUPER compelling with... idk make alistair do the hero’s sacrifice for them and they have to live out their narrative knowing they were never the real hero in the end. you see what i mean like you just need to take the ideas presented and fuck with it, i think. cousland makes you do the work

[megaderping]

Late night SALT activated...

Disclaimer: This post is mainly about really aggressive/hostile fans. Disliking stuff is totally valid and curating one’s online experience is important, but... I’m very strongly convinced that the majority of people who vehemently hate Goro Akechi or Shuake to a really hostile degree either haven’t played Royal, haven’t moved on from base game, haven’t maxed his confidant, or really lack reading comprehension. ‘cause disliking a ship or a character? Super valid! Everyone has their preferences and comfort zones. I would never shame someone who genuinely just... doesn’t vibe with it, finds it uncomfortable, and wishes to avoid content or posts w/ the character or pairing. I also completely understand the frustration of wanting Goro content that isn’t ship-focused, since sometimes fandoms can make a pairing consume a character in fanworks (though I’d argue you can have the pair and still give him agency outside of it, at the end of the day, there will always be people who just don’t want it). But when I see factually incorrect arguments like, “Joker and Akechi hate each other,” I just go... “Did we play the same game?” The game where Joker’s greatest wish was to see Akechi again. The game where Morgana outright states that Akechi doesn’t really hate Joker and Akechi himself laments that they didn’t meet years earlier, and if they had, how they could’ve been friends. A game where it’s made very clear that despite the stupidity of going with the revenge plan with Shido and the lives taken along the way, there was still a disgusting power imbalance with Shido, a grown man in politics, effectively molding a broken teenager into being a hitman... And even the betrayal toward the PT- I feel like Akechi’s offer to have Joker join him was genuine as a sort of last ditch effort to get him out of that situation. The SIU director notes how the plan is way too callous even for Akechi, and after it happens, Akechi tries to downplay the dangers of the PT to Shido, suggesting a part of him, even if only a small one, does feel some remorse.

There’s this messy complexity to Akechi and his relationship with Joker and the PT... and people try to strip it of all of its complexities to make it a bland, black and white matter, and it sucks. It feels like those kinds of people want to turn Akechi into a hatesink when Shido is literally right there. And Kamoshida, and Okumura, and many other awful adults in P5. It’s weird how little flak they get by comparison? And I’m biased- Akechi was a character I developed an attachment to as I reached third sem and his character just came together for me. But it’s so freaking annoying to try and search up art of the character or ship on sites like twitter only to find the worst takes possible. Folks gotta separate their personal feelings from the feelings of the characters. The actual canon interactions and relationships are infinitely more compelling than “Joker/the Phantom Thieves all hate Akechi.” I much prefer what the game presents us- with characters like Haru and Futaba not forgiving him, but still sympathizing with his situation and (perhaps reluctantly) being willing to work with him when it’s absolutely necessary. The friction is just so compelling, because even if he’s a tragic person, his actions still robbed them of loved ones. ...but also, President Okumura requested many shutdowns himself and was an awful person, which also adds to the messy complexity for poor Haru.

Anyway, this is just a late night ramble because I went to find fanart and found annoying tweets. Argh.

[altocat]

That is imo definitely what makes Sephiroth so compelling as far as lab super-kids go. He stays eerily human and stable until Nibelheim whereas so many other lab experiment characters become sadistic and cruel early on.

That’s what gives Sephiroth his big tragic side. These other figures can be sympathized with for what they were molded into against their will and they are always tragic but Sephiroth being as enduring as he is adds even more weight to his downfall.

I think Sephiroth has the advantage of having people in his life to latch on to. Whether that's (presumably) Gast, Glenn, Angeal, Genesis, or Zack, it allowed him to maintain a consecutive sense of empathy.

While Sephiroth probably had a hard time relating to other people, he still demonstrated the ability to care for them, or at the very least recognize their pain and personal worries. I think his connections ultimately saved him from snapping sooner, allowing him to hold onto his humanity for a short while longer. It's only after he's lost pretty much EVERYONE that he finally succumbs to vengeance and madness. And sure, he still had Zack but you can only be burned so many times.

Sephiroth is shown to be super violent in Before Crisis when Shinra sets him out to kill people. But he seems to take absolutely no pleasure from it. Same thing in First Soldier. He's killing all the Rhadorans, yeah. But it's all business, not because he actually enjoys killing. Add to that his paranoid explanation of needing to kill before they kill him and... yeah. None of this is fun for him. That doesn't justify the fact that he's still killing people, but it's vastly different from the typical trope of the lab experiment growing sadistic over time. He doesn't become truly sadistic until Nibelheim.

Anyway I'm just spitballing. But Seph really is refreshing in a lot of ways. There's a duality to him that's very different when it comes to this trope imo.