#surface level he may seem that way in some instances to some people

[bluespiritshonour]

Somethings I noticed:

Katara, Suki and Azula are the only ones who haven't ever expressed any sort of misogynistic sentiment.

Aang would come a close second with minor mishaps here and there.

First, the girls:

Ty Lee, while fighting the Kyoshi Warriors: you're not prettier than we are.

Girl, where did that come from?

Mai has several instances of this when she says the Kyoshi Warriors’ uniforms are too girly (I don't mind her not liking how colourful they are; that's totally different) and later lowkey slut-shaming Ty Lee. And while she's rightfully unimpressed with Zuko's seashell (she's right Zuko, step-up your game) she could easily have countered his “Don't girls like these stuff?” the way Suki did with Sokka’s ideas about gendered generalisation. Also, you must have noticed that Mai's feminine too. She's just dark feminine to Ty Lee's light feminine.

Toph: she has absorbed a lot of toxic masculinity that's for sure. She isn't feminine, she light-heartedly teases Katara for being feminine and Aang too. She does give off the “one of the guys” vibes. You know which ones I'm talking about. “Are we going to watch two little girls fighting?” and later mocking Aang for his passivity.

But it is to be noted that Toph manages to do this without being racist to Aang. She's the one who mocks him the most about his pacifist beliefs (which are cultural to him) and she's kinda misogynistic the way she goes about it. But she's never racist to him. (I guess she is in the comics but fuck the comics). Even when Aang was really really nasty to her when Appa was stolen and she had every right to be mad at him—she wasn't. Given her age and her sheltered upbringing Toph's surprisingly mature. But I digress. Among the comics, I love the Lost Adventures only—and I love the spa day Katara and Toph have both in those comics and in the show. It feels like Toph's healing from that internalised misogyny? My reading of it is that just like girls in real world, Toph derides femininity because it has always been a chain to her. Her parents forced her to confirm so she hates it. But being friends with Katara probably let her heal that part of her. She's still not as feminine as Katara and mind you, nor should she be—let some girls never want to be feminine—it’s fine. But she learns to not to act out of a place of hurt.

Sokka: Sokka's misogyny was literally a plot point and he overcomes it. Also he and Aang have actually done drag and not been mocked for it. It's rare to see in media. The only other example I can think of is Good Omens.

His misogyny also feels kinda surface level (as opposed to Zuko in whom it's less obvious but seems more deeply ingrained).

Also. Zuko never did drag. Shame on him.

Aang: is the least misogynistic of the boys. The only instances I can think of are either kinda vague: when he tells Sokka that “It's nice dress!” It's kinda ambiguous if his tone was mocking or complimentary but it upsets Sokka nonetheless. And when he's upset at being played by a woman in Ember Island Players. The first time I watched it I felt it was OOC. But he was also kind of justified as it was racism and misogyny combined on behalf of the Fire Nation in portraying him that way.

Phew. These were purely my own opinions simply by the virtue of gender expression meaning different things to different people. I might say Mai is actually quite feminine while Toph isn't... But what even is considered masculine or feminine?

I love Katara and Toph's spa day because Toph learns that being girly wouldn't kill her—but she also doesn't suddenly become Ty Lee levels of feminine either. Some women just don't wanna be feminine. Oftentimes it's because femininity is derided by society itself—and that's something that one needs to heal from, like Toph did with Katara’s friendship—but everytime I've seen a story like that, the girl, upon realising that femininity isn't a bad thing is suddenly hyper-feminine.

Like, can we have them heal from internalised misogyny and still not wanna be feminine—even though they don't consider it bad or embarassing or fickle anymore?

Toph and Katara’s spa days do it perfectly.

When those girls mock Toph and Katara tells her she's pretty, I can't tell you much I loved it. The same feelings toward Suki’s “I am a warrior, but I'm a girl too.”

[shoegazingmonad]

Classpecting the Candy / Omega kids

I've been hellbent on trying to classpect these 4 kids and after spending hours analysing every scene each kid appears in, the narration and anything used to describe them, and their conversations I believe I may have finally reached a conclusion for all 4 of them. Here's the fruits of the most arduous labour I've ever been put through in the form of a huge ol' text post then, I guess!

Tavros Crocker

Tavvy's currently my favourite and he's the one who started this classpecting spree so I'm going with him first.

At surface level he isn't visibly a very angry or aggressive kid like Rage would suggest, but the first time we see him in HS2 is when he's having to bother with Gamzee's corpse which leads to him screaming, kicking and punching his corpse and then feeling something he 'refuses to call fear' that, based on the description, seems to be some kind of repressed anger. Also in a similarity not-so-visible at first kind of way, he's a little chaotic unintentionally (or passively). It doesn't appear as the large scale destructive chaos Gamzee causes, instead it comes across as him simply being clumsy like when he breaks a jester on accident in John's house and gets Gamzee's shoe stuck on him which causes them all to fall in the school. Despite being a very orderly and passive person (thanks to his upbringing) he's shown enjoying a little bit of chaos and feels somewhat comfortable in the presence of confident people who actively cause it like Vriska.

Even at Tavvy's first appearance in the Epilogues at age 5, he's incredibly intuitive and pacifistic but whenever he's shown trying to pacify or reason (which comes off as very meddling adjacent) with another character it only makes them more angry, sad, confused or scared / worried, in a way that would suggest he 'Makes Rage' for others like how a Sylph of Rage would. There're a few instances where he makes 'rage', like Harry's birthday party in which it's said 'John's heart wrenches at the sigh of him (Tavvy)' and John tries to kidnap him because he pities his cruel homelife and wants to help Jake out, but he ends up so mad his breath powers destroy the room. It isn't always rage as extreme as that though, sometimes it's made in the way he's viewed as a wimpy loser by people like Harry, or when he tries to understand and explain why a person may be feeling unhappy or stressed about an event or the situation they're in (often with Vrissy). Over analysing and explaining people's feelings or words is a pretty big part of his character and it's one that makes the Sylph part terribly obvious.

However we've yet to see much hatred towards lying as described in the Extended Zodiac definition. He doesn't agree with his Mother's wrong and cruel views on trolls, even though he grew up pretty sheltered and probably should've picked those views up. He also understands Gamzee isn't a good person despite the attempts to instill otherwise through the whole 'redemption arc' propaganda, so maybe he simply notices lies easier than other people do and / or leans more towards just explaining / passively combating misinformation rather than committing to the destruction of it thanks to his nature as a Sylph? Gonna have to wait to get more on this it seems.

Harry Anderson Egbert

Harry's probably the one that took the least amount of time for me to get the gist of what he was about because taking his time (like a Thief of Time) is apparently what he does best. It, like time in general, is brought up constantly with him. He mentions atomic clocks the first time we see him, he takes too long talking to Vriska, Tavros finds him typically 'slow to respond', when he's trying to choose his strife specibus he struggles a little with the time limit, he has a car ride with John and apologises for how long it took for him to be done, in her recent appearance Vrissy mentions he 'can't go five minutes without pestering her over something', and his morning routine suggests he takes his time tending to his appearance. Though just time in general isn't the only thing associated with the aspect, in his conversation with Tavvy at night he asks 'what does it feel like to know someone who's died?', and death is another reocurring theme with Time.

He's a fan of remakes of old earth movies (remaking a movie involves taking the idea / liberties for yourself) and enjoys making costumes. Though the cloth, needles and stitching could suggest he's a space player as we've seen them take a particular interest in clothing / fashion, or things like the 'fabric of space', this could be because the opposite of a Thief of Time (someone who steals time for themself) is a Knight of Space (someone who serves space for others). But the costumes he makes take up most of his 'free time', and his sewing machine was given to him at 10 to stop him borrowing Roxy's all the time. In his little scarf sequence he's also shown wearing a scarf that looks Hephaestus themed, which is the Denizen of Dave's planet and presumably the Denizen associated with time players.

Almost everything about this guy screams 'Time' to the point I'm questioning whether they're making it super obvious to throw people off.

Though an issue I have with the Time aspect specifically here is that it wouldn't fit the 'aspects we haven't seen in the beta and alpha kids' trend we've got going on with the others. Mind/Rage/Blood/Doom but instead it's Mind/Rage/Blood/Time? Might make more sense in the future if there's any additions to the group to make up for that.

Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley

Funnily enough, Yiffy, the kid we've seen the least of so far and haven't even gotten any proper dialogue from was still somehow way easier for me to classpect than Vrissy, the first kid we see and the one with the most appearances.

Bards, as Calliope (seemingly correctly, based on what we've seen of them) states, are a 'wildcard' with a spontaneous story-altering influence who can cause the 'spectacular downfall' or 'improbable victory' of the group. Bard of Mind would loosely mean 'someone who allows logic / mind to be destroyed or invites destruction through logic / mind', and from what we've seen of our new dog kid they sure do manage to bring about victory through the destruction of logic / the logic they impose because of their existence!

Their entire existence is quite literally an anti-logic bomb due to their creation, life, and character being a product of the Candy timeline's slow disintegration into nothingness now that there's no more narrator or space cherub looking after it. They're a character who shouldn't and couldn't exist if we're to consider the rules of canon, but they do and they kick ass because of it! Candy Jane, the fascist dictator billionaire baker baroness who seems to practically own or rule over everything that's within Candy Earth C puts them in a shock collar with enough volts to immobilize or kill - and they still get up and desecrate a shitty other-bards funeral, all whilst the panels of them show jolts of electricity with similar colour and shape to Terezi's mind powers!

Jane even starts listing all of the reasons Yiffy shouldn't be acting up during their revolt; from the assistance she'd given their parents, to what Rose and Jade would think of them if they saw them behaving like this, and that she has agents ready to deal with them if she continues. But Yiffy doesn't listen to a single one of them. They simply growl, slap the remote out of her hand, and proceed to boot Gamzee's corpse into the crowd. The logic and reasoning others try to apply to situations is something they blatantly disregard.

Also, steering into the aforementioned Terezi and Mind aspect territory here; when Terezi is discussing with Ult Dirk about how she's able to see his narration and why Rose can't despite also being a Seer, she tells him aspects that oppose eachother (e.g. Heart and Mind) 'define each other on a fundamental level', seemingly allowing the opposing aspects to pick up on the presence of the other better than non-opposing ones would. And the only mention of Yiffy by someone outside of the Candy timeline is when Dirk is messaging Hussie and it leads to a tangent about the implications and him saying 'her very existence feels like broken glass screeching over my frontal lobe' which would be a pretty fitting description for how he views another Destroyer class with the Mind aspect as a Destroyer of Heart.

Vriska Maryam-Lalonde

I've been struggling with Vrissy for a while now but since her reveal there's been this consistent 'I know a guy' theme for her that I don't think could mean anything besides Blood. Mage though? Not as sure as I am with her aspect considering we barely have any strict definitions for them compared to any other classes thanks to the lack of their presence in Homestuck. I do think that she's some kind of knowledge class though, and luckily we've got a Blood version of the Mage's accompanying knowledge-based class the Seer; Kankri. And comparing him to her, she doesn't actively participate in seeking out knowledge in the same way he and other Seers do, instead it looks like knowledge of her aspect comes to her more naturally like Doom does for Sollux and Heart does for Meulin.

Her first appearance in the epilogues is the scene where her and Harry are meeting up. They kiss, and Harry has to wipe a bit of blood off of his mouth. Vrissy proceeds to bring up Meenah and Karkat's relationship (which I'm gonna bring up again later), hinting at her affinity for close bonds between people.

The first time we get to see her in Homestuck 2 is when she's interacting with Vriska, who's a Thief of Light and not a Blood player or Mage, but she literally shares her blood colour and upon meeting her she immediately tries to befriend / form a bond with her. The scene that comes before this conversation, is one that involves her interrupting Vriska in the midst of the most blatant depiction of 'bonding' we could get (bonds being a huge part of Blood as an aspect) aka, sex.

Out of everything in Vrissy's life, it's reiterated that she thinks her relationships with others are the most practical and important part of it. Like Tavvy, her kismesis. He should have a typical tempestuous blackrom relationship with her, but they still genuine care about eachother enough that she feels like she 'can't lose him'. She trusts that he won't tattle on her and Tavvy knows that despite her cool indifferent front she's got some troubles of her own and tries his best to understand them. And in the same scene in the previous link, Tavvy also hints at Vrissy's frustration towards bonds being broken, specifically in reference to a 'mutual' bond online that he assumes is a 'sacred bond of trust'. Her matespritship with Harry is also very stable, and whenever they interact there's clearly mutual care and reliance on eachother even when we see some screw ups or arguing from either of them. Her friendship with Vriska is all good at first too, but she quickly realises that Vriska isn't trying to form a genuine mutual connection with her as much as she's trying to create a student of her likeness so she can feel smug about it.

Focusing a little bit more on the Mage part here, the scene where Jade and Rose inform the others in the tower about Yiffany; Vrissy and Kanaya are the only ones agitated and she mentions later in her texts with Tavvy that she feels like she was the only one who was mad about not knowing Yiffy existed, and for a Mage of Blood (a role dedicated to knowing about relations), learning you somehow weren't aware of a close blood relative like a half-sister must be infuriating.

Other general Classpect stuff

Anyway now that I've got all of the main reasons for why I think those kids are what Classpects; I just want to bring up the interactions between the 4 of them and characters outside of their friendgroup, parents, Vriska and how they might correlate to them.

Starting with Tavvy, currently his significant interactions with other characters have been with Gamzee, a Rage player, in the Epilogues and Kanaya, our only Sylph on Earth C.

Harry's not had too many important interactions with anyone outside the group, but when he's texting Vrissy at night he says he went to get some water but the adults were discussing something and he didn't want to interrupt. This scene is after the Yiffy reveal and John finds out about Dave's death when talking with Jade at some point we don't get to see directly, but according to Harry the conversation they were having seemed quite serious, so that could've been when they were discussing Dave. And besides Aradia, Dave was our only other time player on Earth C. He's previously had quite a few positive interactions with Dave as well, shown in Candy 23. There's also another interesting (and too specific for me to disregard) comment from Meenah about her going to Harry Anderson's birthday party, perhaps hinting at him as a Thief. However John has a lengthy conversation with Sollux, who has apparently been getting to know Roxy which could suggest he might be Doom if we consider that they're both Harry's parents?

Vrissy's meeting with Vriska should mean some kind of link with her as a Thief / Light player but so far she doesn't have any Thief of Light traits at all. Returning to Vrissy's first conversation with Harry in the Epilogues, the one where says that her and Harry could run away and join the rebellion and be 'wild rebels in love, like Karkat and Meenah', her comparison of their relationship to another between a Knight of Blood and a Thief of Life could imply that either of them share a aspect / class with one of those two; which I'm guessing would be Blood for Vrissy and Thief for Harry, because Harry says he doesn't have the 'rebellious stature of someone like Karkat' and he jokes about how he couldn't lose an eye like Karkat did, leading to a retort from Vrissy claiming she'll be the one with the eye patch. 7 chapters after this she actually informs Harry that she got a place in Karkat's rebellion thanks to her parents (who aren't blood related to her but she trusts and relies heavily on them like she does others). There doesn't seem to be any specific interactions for the Mage part as of now though.

And as I already stated earlier, Yiffy's linked with Gamzee (our only Bard) due to her presence at his funeral and the electric lighting we see from the collar used on them has a similar colour + shape to Mind abilities we've previously seen with Terezi, which is pretty much the best we can get with no Mind player available on Candy Earth C.

The last possible hints I'd like to bring up are weapons. We only know 2 out of 4 right now but Vrissy uses a pair of dice bound to each other and Harry uses what is arguably the slowest cutting weapon we've seen in all of Homestuck so far, a pair of scissors, which can also be to 'steal' things when used to cut off part of something you need for yourself.

That's all I've got. Took so much skimming between the Epilogues and HS2 but this was pretty fun and I'm looking forward to getting more on the kids and their classpects. I might end up adding more onto this at a later date when we're more well-informed and have a lot more text to make use of but as of now I'm done with this. Here's the appearance hc notes for fun

[s3janus]

Never thought the first thing I'd post here about tbosas would be Strabo Plinth analysis, but here we are

On a surface level, the most morally reprehensible thing Strabo does is provide the Capitol with munitions during the first rebellion and then move his family to live in the Capitol after its all over. Its the reason his relationship with Sejanus is so rocky, after all

But what I like about it is that if you really try to get into his head and justify it in the way he probably did himself, his choice to do this actually makes a lot of sense. From a perspective other than just "Oh, he did it because it was a good opportunity to make money, since District 13 was no longer providing nuclear weaponry for the Capitol." That's possible, but I think it's deeper than that

The way I see it, Strabo's decision to side with the Capitol was probably more of a survival strategy than anything. For him and his family

Strabo no doubt felt guilt over what he did. You could imagine him being completely cold and desensitised to the actions of the Capitol, I guess, but he had firsthand experience of what it was like in the districts whilst the war was happening. Even if he was living in a more privileged area. After all, if things were going to shit in the Capitol, it was probably ten times worse in even the best areas of the Districts. He saw the damage that the Capitol was causing and no doubt witness deaths over the events of the war, likely even deaths of people close to him

So, why would he help them?

Well, I think that if you look at the war from the perspective of the Plinth family, the outcome would most likely be a lose-lose situation. If the Capitol won, conditions would likely become even worse in the Districts. (Which ends up being the case.) But if the Capitol loses, well, what's the plan moving forward? He couldn't be sure of how well thought out the rebels ideas were, if they even knew what was going to happen, should they win. But things would likely become worse for a time due to a lack of proper structure. And the Plinth's, already living what seemed to be a perfectly fine life in District Two, would have a lot to lose, should shit hit the fan. Their munitions empire, for instance. Would a new, rebel controlled society even allow for independent munitions manufacturers? There's no telling.

These were likely the outcomes which Strabo was considering. And he wasn't only worrying for the wellbeing of himself and his company. If his munitions empire fails, if he loses his fortunes, well, he has a young son to care for. Say what you will about Strabo and Sejanus' relationship, a lot can be said about it, but Strabo seems to, on some level, want what's best for his son. Would Sejanus be able to thrive in a newly founded society, potentially without a munitions empire to back him up?

So perhaps, if you're looking at it like this, the best decision may be to side with the Capitol.

If the Capitol won, and Strabo had helped them, then it would be safe to assume that him and his family (his son in particular, consdiering young adults were being made targets of the Capitol's aggression and Sejanus would be reaching that age in only a matter of time. He couldn't have known that the hunger games were going to happen, however, he could have predicted that people of Sejanus' soon-to-be age range would face punishment if it all went poorly) wouldn't be faced with such severe punishment as other district people

So, even if it means turning his home against him, even turning his son against him, Strabo may see helping the Capitol as his only option. I can see no way that the Plinths wouldn't have suffered if he didn't.

His decision, whilst arguably immoral, was likely the only thing he could think to do in order to assure the safety of both himself and of those close to him. Like I said, he does care about Sejanus. That's shown in a few small ways, if you ask me. Particularly from the fact that when they did move to the Capitol, the main thing he wanted was for Sejanus to have a good education

If you're looking at it this way, and he did make the choice to help the Capitol out of a desire to protect Sejanus, it would make sense that the thing he would want once that protection has been assured would be something to allow his son to thrive (In theory.)

The whole thing likely came from a lack of any other reliable options and a need to assure Sejanus' safety, rather than purely for monetary gain. Even if the decision wasn't necessarily right, I think he did it for the right reasons

Ah, I love a morally grey character

[skaruresonic]

Count me in as another one who got preemptively blocked. Posts like the Metal Sonic one are why I nowadays prefer to be as concise as possible with whatever I have to say unless I *have* to elaborate. Posts like that one seem to promote the idea that quantity of words is quality, that if you say a bunch of baseless nonsense, the quantity of said nonsense (and its "passion") translates to actually knowing what they're talking about.

Count me in as another one who got preemptively blocked.

You, too?

Well. If I had my suspicions about the existence of a blocklist before, now they've become a hell of a lot stronger. People don't block me under this name because they probably know me better by my old handle.

I wonder what it says. Probably some mishmash of telephone, made-up accusations, stuff like "They think Flynn is literal Satan," "They gag on Sega's boots" and "They all condone death threats and harass people! (ignores the million threats and instances of harassment we've received)"

Posts like that one seem to promote the idea that quantity of words is quality, that if you say a bunch of baseless nonsense, the quantity of said nonsense (and its "passion") translates to actually knowing what they're talking about.

I don't know if quantity is a factor so much as surface-level emotionality. @woodchipp found a, er, piece of "writing advice" by Omocat which succinctly sums up the concept as "feels before reals."

Whatever emotional truths people are predisposed to believe matter more to them than accuracy or logic.

You'll notice posts of this nature tend to use very loaded and definite language, in addition to a noticeable lack of concrete examples. They say lofty things about the games and characters without much nuance or qualifiers to dilute them, because nuance is pesky, and qualifiers get in the way of making A Statement. It becomes little wonder that the truth gets lost along the way. They speak to the emotional truths of people, which are then ruined by canon or logic. If you buy into Metal's existential crisis and you find it poignant, naturally, you're going to exaggerate that part and perhaps neglect or forget the part where he egomaniacally claims he's going to become the "supreme being" of the world and rule a giant robot kingdom. The former doesn't fit your presupposed picture of Metal as an uwu identity-crisis angst-having boy, but it's important not to miss because it's an example of Metal exerting agency. Without it, he's just a passive receptacle of fate: according to OP, he may have "asked" Eggman to remove his voice.

Personally, I think the idea that Metal has an identity crisis of not being the "real Sonic" was a canon-migrant idea that leaked from the OVA into our understanding of the games. And that, even if we were to accept it, by this point too little has been done with it to really mean much.

I would have been willing to have that conversation with them about that - I genuinely feel the games haven't handled it well - but because I'm not willing to say "fuck the games" all the way and like, toss them in the trash or whatever, I guess whatever I said must not have merit. Something something Sega shill.

All that being said, this stuff is actually getting pretty comical.

[carriagelamp]

Had the sort of month where I could feel my books crying out for me while I was at work. They wanted to draw me home into their loving embrace…

My main take away from this month is that if you're going to be anything, by god be sincere

Bury Your Gays // Straight

My hold on Chuck Tingle’s latest horror novel came in just in time for spoopy season, which felt very appropriate, so I read both it and Straight, his horror novella that I hadn’t known about until I was looking up the release day for Bury Your Gays.

Both were quite enjoyable reads, and struck similar chords. He does a really good job of taking a potentially campy concept that’s been done before, and giving a very unique spin — not just in the inclusion of queer themes which can often come across as surface level and token if poorly done, but from the societal commentary that’s woven through both works. The queerness isn't window-dressing, but inherent to the story, horror, and criticism that’s present in both. Another thing they both have in common is that they are also, fundamentally, about hope and community and overcoming horror, which feels very relevant to the topic matter.

Straight is the shorter of the two, and on the surface is a zombie story. Due to vague cosmic horror, a strange thrall comes over straight people once a year that causes them to become rabidly violent towards all queer people. Two years out from the first instance, this story looks at how a group of queer friends deal with the trauma, how society has responded to it (and the fact that this came out 2021 feels very obvious as it looks at a fictional global pandemic), and how the friends themselves brace themselves for this years event. Isolating themselves out in the desert, they batten down and hope to wait for it to pass by relaxing and playing board games… obviously this doesn’t happen as intended.

Bury Your Gays was very different again, and between the two feels like the more ambitious in terms of imagination and story telling. The main character of this story is a partially closeted screenwriter for a major film studio who has had some success, both cult- and critical-success. However he starts to realise that there may be something sinister pulling the strings when he comes face to face with a fan dressed up as one of the horror monsters he had created for the screen. It must be a fan, right?

Both of these are excellent stories, and I appreciate how they shamelessly demand the reader suspend disbelief. They don’t bother over-explaining things, and allow horror to be unapologetically horror, slightly fantastical and campy and definitely scary. I have to admit, neither quite lives up to Camp Damascus, but I enjoyed both quite a bit nonetheless.

Defekt

The sequel (technically midquel?) to Finna, though it honestly stands alone fairly well. Finna, which involved hopping wormholes through fictional Ikeas, was alright, but I definitely think if you want something like that you’d be better for reading Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix. Defekt, on the other hand, I thought was an excellent novella and I’m glad I decided to give it a try! If you’re on the fence about this series, I’d skip right over Finna and just go straight to Defekt.

This novel is about Derek, who is LitenVärld’s most loyal employee. Everything about his life is centred around his work… even after his shifts he goes no farther than the storage crate in the LitenVärld parking lot where he lives. In this way, and many others though, he starts to notice that there are some… inconsistencies between how he views the world and how his coworkers view the world. He has never quite connected to them before, but do they have entirely different manuals? And why is his superior getting so angry about him taking a sick day when his colleagues seem to see no problem with it? Things come a head though when he’s scheduled for a special sort of inventory shift and he finds himself face to face with not just one but a whole team of people who seem to be his direct clones…

Doctor Who: The Day She Saved The Doctor

Like many Doctor Who novels this one is… fine. If you’re in the mood for more Doctor Who and want something easy it’s pleasant, but nothing world rocking. It’s composed of four short stories that bill themselves as feminist tales that focus on Sarah Jane, Rose, Clara, and Bill and how they “save” the Doctor. Honestly my main complaint is that they don’t actually do a great job sticking to this theme. The stories range from rather hamfisted to completely insincere — none of them have a truly impressive “save” but part of that might just be that they’re such short stories that they really have no space to come up with a complex rescue mission. None of them were actually bad, but also none of them stuck with me enough to describe them now…

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

I was disappointed by this one. I feel like I’ve seen rave reviews for this novel, and it’s been on my reading list for ages, but now that I’ve finally sat down to read it I found it… profoundly underwhelming. It seems to be going for a sort of “cozy academia” vibe and I’m sure that works for some people but mostly I just found it… very boring. Maybe I was hoping for something more like a grown up Spiderwick. Emily Wilde was an okay character, but without much depth, and the male character they introduced was uninteresting to me. I ended up giving up on it part way through when I finally gave up on the plot picking up in any significant way. If it does get better, it wasn’t worth the slog to get there imho sorry to all the people out there that love it.

Hakumei & Mikochi v1

I honestly just adore stories about Very Tiny People in a Very Big World. This completely scratched this itch I have for Borrower-esque stories! It’s an episodic manga about the lives of Hakumei and Mikochi, who live together in a tree house, and little events in their life such as shopping in town, camping, and befriending a necromancer! Normal day to day things! I wouldn’t mind reading a second, it was very chill and charming.

Jaws

I honestly don’t know what I expected here. I had never seen Jaws before, but me and my friends have spent so much time swimming this summer to keep cool that we decided it was the time to finally watch it. I see why the movie is such a classic, it was an excellent film! Very well made thriller! And a great end-to-the-summer movie. Then I made the mistake of deciding to read the original novel. I got about eight pages in before they said faggot for the first time. At that point I decided maybe I should read a review or two. Honestly I might have pushed past the homophobia if the novel itself sounded good, but apparently the types of horror used in the novel vs the film are very different. The novel has none of the subtly that the movie uses and is primarily sexual and gross-out horror that was fairly typical of the 70s pulp horror scene. So. I did not continue reading Jaws. I feel like I need a nega-pride flag for this one.

Poison For Breakfast

Really neat novella by Lemony Snicket, and honestly I have a hard time classifying this one. It’s technically fiction, but in a lot of ways feels like it’s not, it’s autobiographical about someone who doesn’t actually exist. It starts with the author receiving a note telling him that he ate poison for breakfast. More than anything, it’s an entire book of philosophy told through the lens and language of Lemony Snicket. If you have any fond memories of The Series of Unfortunate Events then honestly you should read this. Even if you don’t, it’s worth reading. The language is so evocative and it genuinely made me stop and think and squirm with a general discomfort that good philosophising around life and death can bring about. 

Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, The Wide Window

I stumbled across Poison for Breakfast specifically because I decided to reread the Series of Unfortunate Events. I’ve been fairly anxious lately (more than usual, which is saying something when it’s me) and I needed something that would hold my interest but otherwise be an easy audiobook to listen to at night or during my morning commute. Since I’ve never actually read the whole series as a kid (they weren’t all out yet when I started and I never got around to finishing it) I decided now was the time. I’m especially excited to read it as an adult because I’m picking up a lot of nuance I simply didn’t notice as a kid, especially related to the Snicket / Beatrice subplot. Lemony Snicket really does now how to write a compelling mystery.

If you’ve never read The Series of Unfortuante Events, it’s got to be one of the best youth novel series out there (I say, unbiased). The narration is unlike anything else I’ve read in any genre, as is the strange world that the story is set in. The series starts with the three Baudelaire children learning that their parents died in a horrible fire that consumed their home, and that they will have to go stay with a distant relative who they have mysteriously never heard of before: Count Olaf. It quickly becomes apparently that the cruel Count Olaf is only after the Baudelaire fortune that Violet will eventually inherent, and though they expose him by the end of the first book it’s only the beginning of the tragic events that will dog at their heels from here on out…

The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window are the ones in the series I’ve reread the most, and were very comforting to return to! (also I feel compelled to mention that Tim Curry does the audiobook for The Reptile Room and he uses his fucking Nigel Thornberry voice for Uncle Monty and you haven't lived until you've heard Nigel Thornberry get horrifically murdered in a completely unrelated novel... wild experience.)

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent

Easily the best book I read this month. This book was originally meant to be a series of interviews between Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea about her time as a Shakespearean actor. The interviews took place over four years and were meant for archival purposes before O’Hea realised how much these might be enjoyed by a wider audience — and boy was he correct about that.

The interviews are profoundly insightful about the various roles Dench played, her opinions on the characters and plays themselves very compelling, while also being interspersed with wit, banter, and reflections on everything from her fellow actors, to costuming choices, to green room antics. Dench has a remarkable memory and it means the interviews are able to go into great detail about the specific productions of each play that Dench participated in. I listened to the audiobook and if you have even a passing interest in Shakespeare I really can’t recommend it enough.

The Scum Villain Self-Saving System v2

 I continue down the SVSSS rabbit hole and honestly I have to applaud this series for proving to be more than mindless fluff, which is kind what I had been expecting of it (sorry, I was very biassed against this series). Don’t get me wrong, it is a genuinely hilarious series and an absolute parody of the genre, but it’s more than that which I think is important. Despite being a parody, it’s very sincere in its characters and relationships and story; while the main character may bitch and moan about certain “story tropes” and the “shitty author” who wrote the webnovel he’s found himself in, he’s as much swept up in this world as anyone else is, and the story forces you to acknowledge even the tropier aspects and look at how they would fit into a world where such things dictated every day life.

In this volume Luo Binghe (the “protagonist” who is supposedly destined to kill Shen Qingqiu) returns from his “presumed death” in the Abyss, much earlier than in the original story. Shen Qingqiu is frantic when he finds out, desperate to ensure his back up plan is in place and that he might yet avoid the inevitable death his character is meant to suffer at Luo Binghe’s hands. Of course, nothing is that easy, and Shen Qingqiu has irrevocably changed the plot (and possibly the entire genre) of this story, though he himself may not realise it yet…

Yuri Is My Job v1

So, my earlier comment about sincerity? How both SVSSS and Chuck Tingle’s stories intentionally use a lot of specific tropes and parody their genres? Despite this, both examples clearly love the genres they’re lampshading and ultimately commit to the story they’re telling. They never break away from the story to wink at the audience and say “see how dumb this is?” (cough Marvel) — they are completely embroiled in the worlds they create, they are entirely sincere in the story they’re telling.

And then you have this. Yuri Is My Job is a yuri manga about a protagonist who hides her true self behind a cutesy, beauteous mask. She’s determined to be the prettiest, sweetest, most desirable person in any room — she always wants to be the first pick! And things continue well for her, until she finds herself getting roped in to covering a shift at an usual themed café: one that’s based around a fictional private academy where the “students” work at the cafe and play out little dramas for the customers.

This could have been fun, especially as the protagonists realises that everyone is wearing a mask, and how their performed personalities can differ wildly from their true personalities, but there’s just no sincerity here. It makes me think of Ouran High School Host Club but without any love behind it. OHSHC can get away with a lot, and I’ll suspend a lot of disbelief while reading it, because it’s having so much fun with what it does. This manga seems to suck away any joy by constantly poking fun at its own premise.

So I dunno… YMMV, maybe this is something someone else would enjoy a lot, but it honestly just kind of annoyed me, especially when I sat down to figure out what exactly I didn’t like about it.

If you’re going to be anything, be sincere at the very least. Show me that you love what you’re about.

[gaytwirights]

Baw the beheno post, explain /lh

okay so i am going to assume that this is asking me to explain what used to be a crack ship between Behemo and Seth (rather than explain an alternate universe where the two of them get along well enough to be doing coke in a bathroom together), which will get a bit long so yeah

i'm gonna be honest. i started shipping* these two because we were going through the standard yearly 'why plagiarism is bad' section of the school year, and they began occupying a non-standard amount of my brain. then i figured it would be funny to put them together. so here is my incomplete manifesto on dragonmask** supremacy.

[* it's less about them as a romantic ship, and more about them as a compelling duo. sometimes, bitches just be silly

** i'm gonna be honest, i do not remember where this name came from. i think i just saw someone use it on tumblr one day, and then it became part of my brain. but yeah that name is not my creation.]

Reason 1: They are funny

what can i say, they're funny. Behemo canonically stepped on Seth, which is something i don't think a lot of ships have going for them, in terms of canon interactions.

also they really hate each other, but it doesn't feel like some surface-level hatred. it feels like divorce hatred. and that dynamic appeals to me.

Reason 2: They have good chemistry

obviously, i'm not saying that they get along well. rather, they get along in a way that is interesting to the audience.

thing is, they don't really get much interaction, aside from the scene in the hellish yard, which is pretty entertaining tbh. however, it's the way they talk about each other that seems really interesting to me.

for instance, this part from OSS:C, when Seth talks about his creation of Meta

And this, surely, would be a great enterprise on par with the “god creator of mankind’s bodies, Behemo” himself! My “old friend”’s face came to mind. Ha ha…That one would surely be stomping his feet in a rage if he knew about this!

i may be seeing things from a braindead fandom perspective, but it kinda seems like Seth is talking about Behemo with a bit of admiration.

like, yeah, they're antagonistic, but that first paragraph seems like Seth is putting Behemo as somewhere "above" him, seeing them as someone who is more accomplished, but still someone he can surpass. and idk that dynamic seems kinda interesting.

now, obviously, there's the wording of "old friend" (in quotations, even) that is, again, sarcastic and antagonizing, but ultimately still putting them as (vaguely) equals.

furthermore, it's the specific word he uses: friend.

Seth talks about his "friends" as people who can understand him. this theme of understanding (or lack thereof) will be part of another section.

and then, yeah, there's the last paragraph where Seth laughs at the thought of pissing Behemo off to the point that they'd be stomping their feet in rage. little does he know, in approximately 600 years, Behemo would indeed be stomping their feet (on him)

now, on Behemo's end, we also have this part from Fifth, Pierrot

he wasn’t going to tolerate those low quality copies of that creepy mask man mingling among humans, his very own creations.

i'm gonna be honest, there is nothing romantic here, and again, i don't plan on always interpreting these two as romantic. i just think their dynamic is interesting.

come on, tell me it isn't interesting when two people hate each other's guts, but are still incredibly similar.

Reason 3: They are incredibly similar

so let's go over the surface-level stuff first:

incredibly arrogant (for good reason)

creators of men (with varying skill)

one funky eye

looking at things from a christian perspective*, one could say that these two really exemplify the meaning of Pride. to be Prideful is to think yourself on the level of God, to assume that you are somehow exempt from his rules.

[* i go to a catholic school, and we have fucking christianity class. the past four months, we have been learning how to judge morality in a """christian way""" like what the fuck is that???? we really gotta LEARN in a SCHOOL how to judge right and wrong??????? that said, i am nothing if not a pleasure to have in class, and i am getting full marks in morality lesson.]

based on memory (because i have no intention of reading through the whole series again just for a duo manifesto), these two have the most iconic declarations of themselves as gods

“I’m a god. Gods are special cases.”

In that case— I am the god who creates “evil”.

obviously, these aren't the only times characters in evillious have declared themselves gods, but they're easily some of the most memorable, and the most often referenced in fanfiction.

also, there's just something So Interesting about a dynamic where one of the few things we know about is the fact that, at one point, one of them committed theft of intellectual property of another.

i know plagiarism is awful and all that, but it really does make for an interesting story. the theft of what one has dedicated their life to, and all that.

anyway, the funky eye. that's more of an aesthetic thing, but they do have a sort of theme of knowing more than other characters, of being the one manipulating things behind the scenes. one could say that their theme of one funky eye implies their role as the one who sees* all.**

[* "see" as in "knowing more"

* "all" as in "whatever goes on in a certain arc" (that is, OSS and mothy arcs for Seth and Behemo respectively)]

Reason 4: The deeper stuff (oh my god how did i write so much)

they are fake

they are lonely

something i like to think about is the fact that Seth wasn't able to create "perfect" humans. when he tried to make ghoul children and artificial bodies, they would eventually age rapidly, while the humans Behemo made would age normally. for all Seth talks about being a genius, even after years of study, he really cannot get on Behemo's level of human creation.

but the thing is, Seth really is a physicist second to none. he may dabble in creating humans, but it isn't really his field. just as Seth cannot create humans that age normally, Behemo cannot make a spaceship traverse dimensions.

........i mean, they sure came close that one time, but that was less "crossing dimensions" and more "turning digital stuff into reality"

hey, didn't Seth also do a poor copy of Behemo's actions?

and on that topic of copying, the two of them are incredibly "fake" characters. many of the evillious characters are liars, but these two are possibly among the few that are defined by the various "facades" they put on.

it's very hard to analyze Behemo's character without analyzing their queerness. whether one interprets them as a trans woman or a gnc cis man, the fact remains that Behemo's conflicts with other people--usually because they are looked down upon for wearing dresses--are a major theme in almost all of their appearances.

the thing is, Behemo never says anything about their own gender, usually letting others out them as amab, except for that "I'm a man" in The Tailor of Enbizaka. but going back to that novel, Behemo lived for fourteen years as a woman. their words say one thing, but their actions say another.

and here's the thing: in my media-addled trans brain, this willingness to let others assume whatever they want about their own nature is, in itself, a sort of facade. are they a gnc man or a trans woman? there's no reason to say anything.

but in my trans brain, i do know that, sometimes, it's easier to be avoided as gnc than to be openly trans. to me, it's the sort of facade that you make subconsciously. if people are gonna think you're weird, you'd rather not be more open than necessary.

and there's another thing, Behemo's facade of being emotional and "chaotic." don't get me wrong, i don't think this one is intentional, but it does feel like the sort of "tee hee i'm silly and chaotic and there's nothing more to me :3c" thing* that the people here go crazy for.

[* i wish more evillious fans would give Behemo the Maya Fey Ace Attorney treatment, where we see a character who's definitely meant to be silly and kinda sad (but mostly just silly) and then we proceed to analyze the different tragedies that they have gone through and allow them access to the full range of human emotions rather than just "tee hee :3c" and "One Moment of sadness"]

i do feel like Behemo is naturally a silly sort of person, but i do find it a bit uninteresting how people tend to delegate them to the basic "chaos gremlin" role. but i do also feel like this character archetype was an intentional move on mothy's part.

in the scene in the mothy novel, when Behemo reveals both their true identity as the Master of the Heavenly Yard, and the truth of the First Period to Allen, i think that's the most genuine Behemo we're ever shown. in other appearances, they're either plotting something (Fifth, Pierrot) or watching in the background while everything goes wrong (OSS, The Tailor of Enbizaka).

in the mothy novel, we learn about their past, about their origins as an avatar, about the first and second periods, but not about how they feel about that whole mess. the information we get is objective, 'this' and 'that' and 'then', but while this tells us about Behemo's story, Behemo themself never said much about their character.

now, back to Seth Twiright, because this was supposed to be a post about them as a duo, and not just a Behemo Insanity post. sorry for loving Behemo Barisol with all my heart. as if it's my fault they're such a compelling character.

Seth is an easy character to see as a liar. after all, the snake always wears a mask. throughout the OSS:C novel, Seth lies about his name, about his intentions, about pretty much everything.

Seth is meant to parallel the original liar, the Serpent of Eden, who tempted Eve into the Original Sin, and caused the downfall of humanity, instilling in us the subconscious attraction to evil.

except, that last part is the one that feels accurate to evillious canon, that attraction to evil (concupiscence, if my christianity notes are to be believed) would be Malice or HERS in evillious.

now, according to my notebook (sidenote: this is legit the most i've looked at my christianity notes on sin since i wrote them down), Eve's Original Sin was an "abuse of freedom" because she "desired to be like God (Pride)."

in evillious, the one who tempted Eve through deceit is Adam, meaning that it's Adam who has that parallel to the Serpent of Eden.

[EDIT (2024): in a move unforeseen by any of us, mothy revealed that the parallel to the serpent of Eden was Michaela]

now, applying this to the evillious Original Sin makes absolutely zero sense. in evillious canon, the Original Sin is the stealing of the two fruits, Hansel and Gretel, and not the abuse of one's freedom in an attempt to defy God.

however, this context on the christian perspective on Original Sin leads to my point regarding Seth: he's not responsible for as many 'Evils' as he paints himself as. Seth is not a parallel to the Serpent of Eden.

now, obviously, this is because i am a good note taker who goes to a catholic school, and i am analyzing something written by a non-christian, but it's not my fault that, according to my notes, Seth Twiright's parallels to the Serpent of Eden are mostly in the "snake" and "source of sin" thing, and in fact, he parallels the biblical Eve more than he parallels the damn snake.

so where does that leave Seth? on one hand, there's what the author clearly intended. on the other, there are my detailed notes on our teacher's discussion on Original Sin and also the unintentional implications of mothy's worldbuilding.

Eve released the Original Sin, which was then divided into Seven Sins. however, the reason for the sad state of the world isn't so much that Original Sin, but rather the Malice that, from the beginning, had embedded itself so deeply in all the people with the power to change the world.

this all culminates to a certain point: Seth is not the great "Evil" he claims to be, or even seems to think he is. Seth isn't so much a "cause" as a "source".

so what is Seth? a fake creator of men. a fake Horus. a fake father. a fake human. a demon who never does his job. a fake Serpent of Eden.

Seth is a fake, a superficial stand-in for evillious' equivalent for the Serpent of Eden. he's a villain, a Demon, and a redeemed father-figure for three feral children. but in the end, the true "Evil" was humanity's desire, and Seth was just as blind as the rest of evillious' long cast list.

wow, that got way longer than i had anticipated or planned for. the trans shit? the Eve shit? not part of my original plan for this section oh my god what possessed me to write all that.

anyway, the next point, they are both lonely.

lots of characters are pretty solitary, but i do believe that these two, in particular, are very strongly shaped by their loneliness.

i know i've been starting each section by analyzing Behemo first (because they're my favorite <3), but this time i gotta analyze Seth first. it's easier this way.

so. Seth Twiright. pretty lonely guy. in Outlaw and Lychgate, he even says that people can never understand what he is thinking. in the same section he does this, he namedrops Adam, Irina, Eve, Ma, and Lich as people who could have understood him, as potential "friends".

note: Behemo is not mentioned in this section. this is because mothy doesn't see the potential. (this statement is a joke. i would never dream of seriously saying what an author should have done with their work. but i will die on the hill that Behemo and Seth would be an amazing duo, if Behemo were more fleshed out.)

anyway, in OSS:C, Seth says this

“Evil” is like a virus. It spreads, it infects—and tries to make “friends”.

for Seth, to be a "friend" is to be "Evil", to be able to understand him.

but the most important part of Seth's characterization is exactly that: no one can understand him, and so, no one can be his friend.

now, i do believe this is his own fault. in Outlaw and Lychgate, Seth uses the specific wording of "telling what he is thinking."

this is impossible. obviously, he's not saying that he wants a friend who would be able to read his mind, but it's still impossible for someone to always understand your intentions, your feelings, and your wants.

Banica Concerto!! talks about "her friends and 'him'," implying that, even as they travel through space on a food trip without a destination, Seth continues to hold people at arm's length because he feels that he cannot connect with them properly.

that feeling of alienation, of never being able to connect with others, it's something that a lot of us know. i mean, this is the evillious fandom, after all. but aside from that, it's also a sentiment that is experienced by many queer youth.

and so, the truth of my love for Behemo Barisol finally comes to light: i found myself relating to them the moment i finished listening to Barisol's Child is an Only Child.

and that's the thing, Behemo's experiences are, as i like to say, the unfortunately realistic trans experience. even if Behemo acts like it doesn't happen, the fact of the matter is that there will always be that something that makes them different from other people, something that makes it hard to connect.

be it their dressing habits, their queerness, or even the basic fact that they come from a different world.

that, i believe, is the core of my Duo Manifesto. that shared feeling of alienation, of being impossible to relate to. they are lonely. they are fucked up. they can't find anyone to relate to, and they won't end up relating to each other any time soon, but wouldn't it be nice to have someone who understands your loneliness?

thank you for coming to my ted talk, and thank you to my One Evillious Friend for checking for errors because my brain is so tired rn

[owlyflufff]

I'm asking 2 and 17 :))

Thank you for the ask anon, especially 17 cause I've always wanted to talk about my special little guy <33!

2. What was the first fandom you were involved in? This is an interesting question because genuinely I don't know or remember TvT. Mainly cause I don't engage in fandoms in general ^^;

How do I word this, it might seem sad that I don’t engage in fandoms but for me personally, it’s pretty freeing. As someone with low engagement in them, I get to enjoy things on my own without the fear of reading mischaracterizations, fanart that isn’t favorable in my eyes or gaining warp perceptions of characters I love.

Don’t get me wrong, of course I love fanon content, fanfics and fanart most especially (and I love reading analysis of charas too <33), but there’s also this odd gratification of having just that, of enjoying this content on my own.

In the end, I love enjoying fan content but only at a great distance so I never truly touched a fandom/ engaged in it (the Haikyu fandom is most likely my first proper fandom but even I tapped out of it rlly quickly as I’ve seen a lot of art of my NOTPs, NSFW works or oversexualization of characters and general mischaracterization TvT, and this is me saying this despite me having already filtered numerous words and done everything I could to filter content <//3)

3. Who is currently your main comfort/emotional support character?

A little happy to be able to talk about him because I just LOVE this character with all my heart <33!

My main comfort/emotional support character who is also my favorite character of all time is:

Ranpo Edogawa from Bungou Stray Dogs my beloved <33

Words can't describe just how much I love his character and how well written he is despite being a side character. To save anyone from spoilers, I'll only talk about the surface level of his character <33

For me, Ranpo is a comfort character and my favorite because he's such a fun character to watch and see his perspective overall. He's generally always happy and excited over things which makes his character so endearing and though he can be rash with his words, it's essentially due to his pride and intelligence and there are instances where it's honestly pretty funny like:

I genuinely don't know how to word my words for how much I love Rampo because he just makes me really happy whenever he's on screen or whenever I get to talk about him TvT!!!

He's a happy and silly character but behind it are his insecurities.

He takes a lot of pride in who he is and his ability but even he has his doubts and understands that there will come times where his intelligence can be curbed in the face of an enemy such as a piece of dialogue he said when the Agency went up against a certain rat (if some people know who I'm hinting at xD)

He may be childish and immature at times but he is no fool, when he knows that a situation is serious, he acts on it immediately and without hesitation.

Here is a character who once believed the world hated him, but then found people who loved, supported and cared for him in every way. In doing so, he would go to all ends as a means of saving them with or without an ability.

For all of Rampo's pride, it mellowed down and he grew so much from the person he was at the start of the series because of that care he has for the Agency.

Rampo' character growth, though subtle, will never fail to make me all emotional and give comfort.

To be loved is to be changed afterall and seeing it in Rampo makes me happier than anything else (along with Bokuaka ofc <3).

[goron-king-darunia]

Hey, remember that thing where we said to look out for things that give simple answers to complex or mysterious problems and funnel your anger toward a specific target because that stuff is usually propaganda? This is the shit we're talking about. The surface level information they're giving you AT THE OUTSET is designed to make you hate men because "haha, men, right? Fucking assholes. We have disease because they just can't stop fucking animals! That's exactly what men would do." And if you read deeper into their misinfo, you circle back to a lot of those racist talking points you may have been fed in a less-than-stellar health class like "we only have HIV because the barbarous African tribes just couldn't stop eating raw monkey brains, isn't that so gross?!" Which, you know, is racist as shit. Yes, bestiality is a thing that exists and yes it's gross for humans to do that and yes, there are problems that can happen because of that. I'm not here painting over the dark history of humans like "haha, that never happened." But as the EXPERT with the FUCKING DEGREES says, and as you can reason and research for yourself, STDs are not transmitted exclusively through sex. Most humans alive today have asymptomatic herpes. We've had it, as a species, forever. You remember how sex ed class warned you about drugs because needles can transmit HIV? How there was a huge crisis about "oh, what if I sit on a public toilet and someone before me had HIV/AIDS?!" and that's part of the reason we have seat liners (not to mention using the seat liner means you leave less skin residue and oils that pile up for janitors and you reduce the microscopic bacterial stuff you get on your skin)? That's because HIV/AIDS is, as he said, blood-borne. The idea that everyone that has an STD because they screwed an animal or had sex with someone who did is insane on the face of it, and the idea that you could trace back every instance of an STD to some bloke 5000 years ago who stuck his dick in an animal is only marginally less insane. Is bestiality a potential vector for contracting STDs? Yes. But so is eating and preparing contaminated meat. So is being around animal scat (you know, a thing you come into contact with inevitably if you keep livestock for food.) Cowpox was a thing milkmaids got just from being in contact with cows. The only reason we don't think ill of people who got cowpox is because we figured out that cowpox exposure made you immune to the much worse chicken pox. Imagine if we went around spreading lies that "Did you know the only reason we don't die from chicken pox is because some lady in ancient Greece was so horny for a bull that she built a full bull costume to get her ass destroyed and she just so happened to contract cowpox which made her immune? Size queens, right? Ugh, I can't believe I have to thank some nasty bitch named Pasiphae for the fact that I'm not gonna die of chicken pox or shingles." That would be absolutely deranged. The idea that having an STD all boils down to having the "wrong sort" of sex has been used to justify everything from anti-miscegenation laws to homophobia to misogyny and in this case, blatant misandry. This is absolutely not okay. We don't tolerate this misinfo. Thank god for Tiktok user microbiologywes fighting the good fight and correcting this stuff. Because lest we forget, this same rhetoric was used to promote sinophobia when COVID-19 started, and people were spreading lies about the disease being created in a lab specifically for biological warfare to "No way was this from a bat at a meat market, this is 100% some STD shit" especially in the early days where all the conspiracies were running rampant. I know the internet loves snappy comebacks and simple answers. We're all vulnerable to propaganda. I am. You are. Everybody is. If the goal of a TikTok seems to be to get you riled up against somebody, stop for at least a minute and try to figure out why. Because more often than not, you're getting hit with grifting, propaganda, or just regular old misinfo.

[dgcatanisiri]

Cyberpunk really does give me that queer frustration all over again.

I love the setting, I may have some issues with the story and characters, but I see the potential in them... But oh dear GOD the way queerness is handled...

Like, sure, Judy is damn good as portrayals go. But pretty much all other instances of intentional queer women fall into the typical "lesbians for straight guys" portrayals (and, on top of that, it's the same thing you get from BioWare's lesbian rep, where it's heavily femme, which, not inherently bad, but where are the butches in these worlds? Not anywhere the player character gets near, that's for sure).

And then there's the queer men, where our explicit rep is a bisexual guy the game wants to treat as just being gay (so erasing his sexuality) whose romance plays as him being more hung up on the dead guy in V's head than V themselves (even having the developers say that he doesn't get with female V because male V "better fits the image of Johnny" for him). The implicit rep? Sex workers. And the sex workers are also on the femme side, with the voices and mannerisms of the stereotype of queer men.

All this, of course, and even when you try and play V as queer, you still have the het romances seeming to expect their relationship with V to go to that point, even though a queer V would probably want to shut that possibility down at the first chance they get (on top of female V having to mention a boyfriend at one point with River, despite if the player had been playing her as a lesbian).

It's all just so... surface at best. It doesn't make any effort to consider a world where V is queer - look at the handling of the ONE gay bar in the town, Dicky Twister. It doesn't even LOOK like a gay bar - like, trust, there is a distinct aesthetic to gay bars, and you just have to visit one to recognize it. And there's the related gig, where it talks about the place as having shady shit happening that's taking advantage of the sex workers there (no surprise, both in general and due to the setting), and Padre talking about it in a way that you can hope is meant about the fact that sex workers are being taken advantage of, but you can't wholly shake the fear that he's referring to things there because it's literally the only place in the game that is explicitly for queer people. Or just simply the fact that the way V interacts with everything about it plays as V observing things as an outsider, and not someone who belongs to this culture.

And the part that gets to me the worst, end of the day... The fact that queerness is in there at all is STILL noteworthy, still something that I have to consider a net positive to gaming at large. It's superficially queer, and yet for a game on this level, it's... If not groundbreaking, then it's at least one of the initial cracks all the same. It feels like something to celebrate, even though in terms of what it gives is not all that celebrate-worthy in and of itself, because being there is still a big deal.

I wish we were at a point where this was outright called out for not being enough, rather than only being something that is celebrating it for being there.

[gingermcl]

Phrases like “the sky’s the limit” and “breaking the glass ceiling” likely are referring to this being a controlled & domed realm. ceiling is the same as sealing; like sealing off an area, the “glass ceiling” could mean enclosed in a dome. Cathedrals and other grand architecture often have a dome; maybe to better work with energy? Seems a domed shape inside a dome maybe the best way to achieve a flow state for conducting energy. Nesting dolls come to mind.

Many don’t realize the globe has only been taught in schools since the 1951. The firmament was widely & well known before this. Every ancient culture has drawn this realm with a covering over it. NASA was created in 1958 and wehrner von Braun is who headed the organization. His tombstone has one Bible verse on it; a verse about the firmament.

Admiral Richard Byrd was allegedly taken into a extremely advanced civilization within the Earth on one of his North pole military expeditions. He met with the leader and was told if surface dwellers continue to play with nuclear weapons, such weapons will be disabled. There have been multiple instances where nukes have mysteriously been disabled.

It’s hard to tell where Admiral Byrd actually went. I do feel he was taken by someone and the true story was heavily censored. I can’t remember, but I’m thinking the people were human but slightly different? I need to look Byrd’s testimony up again. It’s been a few years & I can’t remember the details.

In 1962 Operation Fish bowl happened. Operation fishbowl was “a series of high altitude nuclear tests.” Basically the military nuked the dome multiple times & couldn’t break it.

The existence of a “ceiling” does not negate the possibility of other worlds & other life forms. The sky may be the limit, but the kingdom of God is within, I think the same thing goes for the Earth. You go within the Earth to get to other places. It’s a Stargate and portal system.

What I have seen in here is we’re in a small domed section (looks like an egg) inside of a much larger egg with other domed sections on our level or plane. The big egg we are in is multi leveled; there are definitely worlds underneath us, and may be some above. Dimensions can lie on top of one another too. Like another realm could be going on in the same space, but it’s either such different frequency. We can’t see it.

[egowood]

                 please take note that Jett is a multifaceted character with way more to him then just being the typical ‘hollywood snob / spoiled brat’. 

[bakujho]

Another rant about another eel

It’s been a while since my last eels rant, but here I am again to rant about good ol’ Jade Leech and how the fandom seems to uhhh… gloss over the canon information we’re given and give him whatever personality they feel like. As always, if you don’t care about canon lore, or the blatant information we’ve been given and prefer house husband uwu soft Jade, carry on and do what you will. I’ll put the rest of this under a cut because it’s likely to get long because I am salty and so so so so so sick of takes that completely ignore his canon characteristics to replace it with uwu baby he’s so soooofft instead. At this point I am BEGGING the EN twst fandom to read more than bad youtube translations of the main story only, and read the card stories and events since the characters get their own spotlight and time to actually dig into their personalities because the uwuification of Jade is the *worst*

*ahem*

So, one of the VERY FIRST THINGS we learn about Jade, is that he enjoys playing with people, and using them to best suit whatever plans he’s aiming to achieve. For example, the conversation in Jade’s robes story spells out REALLY QUICKLY what kind of person he is

Jade: Frightening students so quickly after they entered school….. 

Jade: Don’t you think there’ll be plenty of chances to do that later?

Floyd: Eeh~. If you want to tell people something, isn’t it best to say it straight away? That’s way faster! 

Jade: Of course, that’s one way to do it….. But it’s not preferable. 

Jade: The thing I desire the most is not fear, but chess pieces that can be moved for the sake of Octavinelle 

Jade: And in order to get that, one of the most important things is “public confidence”. And to obtain that, first impressions are crucial

Jade: In addition to the country of origin, hobbies, preferences, the food they dislike and subjects they are bad at…

Jade: I also listed all their MagiCam accounts. I just happened to come to know about those too.

Azul: Oh….. And the ID’s listed under “private”?

Azul: Incredible, could it be that you managed to obtain everyone’s private accounts despite their attempts to hide them? 

Jade: Ah, oopsie. It was so incredibly easy to find, I may have accidentally gone and written all of those down too.

Azul: Oh, how terrible. If this list were leaked, everybody would be oh so troubled. 

Jade: In that case, you should make sure to properly manage the list so that it does not get leaked. 

This isn’t some misunderstanding, or fear of Azul to act, or some other misplaced garbage softboy bullshit the fandom sometimes spouts, he knows exactly what he’s doing, and it’s something that he ENJOYS. It's why he and Floyd work so well together cause Jade will happily fuck with their head before Floyd breaks their bones (standby for the ‘stop uwufying Floyd’ rant cause you know I have one of those too). And Azul knows and takes advantage of that exact fact. None of them are soft uwu babies, they all know what they’re doing, and are exceptionally good at it. 

I’m not sure if this is at large just a “we didn’t read that card or the translation was bad (like the Floyd fish nicknames for affection when it just says nicknames) or read at surface level or inability to understand what’s NOT being said” etc, but I see it a lot. A lot of things about Jade aren’t said outright, because that’s EXACTLY the game he plays to fly under the radar. He’s Monsieur Mastermind for a reason, Rook knows that every single one of his actions and mannerisms is thought out and pre-planned so I don’t understand why some folks out here are refusing to see it, especially when even in universe the characters regularly comment on this exact thing. There’s MULTIPLE instances of Jade using people and being facetious to keep up the facade of Azul’s lackey without much else going for him at all. His magic is understated, he fades into the background and lets Azul/Floyd be the standout Octa students, but he always seems to know *exactly* what is going on and where, and how to manipulate the situation to suit what it is he’s after. 

In his own dorm card he pretends to leave Octavinelle in order to manipulate Vil into doing some free promo work for the lounge, and no one is sure of his intentions the entire time he’s there. Rook and Vil know that he’s using them but can’t quite put their finger on what he’s up to, BUT because he’s so good at his job they let their inhibitions go and let him get on with whatever he’s up to. Jade knows how to act and what to do to get people to trust him, and part of his charm is that he keeps to himself so that there isn’t any negative correlations with him like there are Floyd. It seems everyone is afraid of Floyd’s mood swings, but no one suspects Jade of having any ulterior motive because he’s always so well behaved and kind to people. Even when Kalim is making him tea and he’s thinking to himself that his teeth are going to rot out of his mouth, he keeps up the kind demeanor and drinks the tea, because Kalim could always be a powerful pawn (which he then becomes in ep 4). During beans day 2 Azul mentions that between the twins, Jade is the more dangerous of the two, and who better than the one that knows them best to make the observation. I think it’s pretty obvious that Jade’s favourite type of game is playing chess with those he’s around (he even mentions he likes terrariums because he controls everything inside of them), but I think the focus on mushrooms and mountains sometimes detracts from that. Even sociopaths have hobbies, friends!

And that I think is where it gets confusing for some people, there’s the sociopathic tendencies, but he has friends and likes mushrooms and mountain climbing and smiles genuinely sometimes, so he can’t be all that bad! Except, having things you enjoy isn’t reserved for good people. Plus,  look at the people he’s closest to. Floyd is what I would personally call a psychopath (I know there’s a lot of takes on this, but that’s an essay for another day), and Azul is a few screws loose of being normal himself. They’re all brilliant, but that doesn’t mean they’re good people. Some of the examples I’ve seen for how Jade is ‘misunderstood’ as ‘evil’ are easily debunked by canon, because he almost always says something facetious and creepy afterwards to undermine the ‘sweetness’ of it. Not to mention that good and bad isn’t black and white. You can do good things while still being a bad person and vice versa, and doing good things while being a bad person is Jade’s bread and butter. Twisted wonderland in general is very much about morally grey characters where none are implicitly good or evil, and I think we’ve yet to see anyone *actually* evil, BUT the Octavinelle trio are the closest to classic disney villain bad guy we’ve gotten to see so far. 

To go off topic here a bit, I do wonder if the uwu-fication of the Octavinelle trio as a whole is due to the whole weird purity push that makes it so you can’t enjoy morally grey characters unless you can find the redeeming and good qualities in them. Hmmm. I understand wanting to find the good in people and so on and so forth, but the whole redemption of the villain to be able to like them without getting cancelled or whatever it is is really stupid. Let the shitty characters be shitty, because that’s what makes them interesting. It’s like with Crowley, he’s not a good role model but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad character because he’s a teacher and should be a good role model (or whatever mental gymnastics are there). The point of having a colourful cast is that not everyone is static or good and the characters grow, though sometimes that growth isn’t in a positive way, and that’s okay because it’s fiction. 

Okay back on topic, and back to Jade. 

So if we’re operating on the assumption that not every character needs to be a good person to be a good character, Jade is an EXCELLENT example. He is very multifaceted and if you look at him just on the surface he seems like a really decent dude. He IS very helpful, and he CAN be very kind, and he DOES enjoy wholesome things wholeheartedly, BUT i think boiling it down to those points and ignoring the sea of red flags is the entire point of his character. He wants to fly under the radar and not stand out as a bad-guy. That’s how he gets things done. Even in canon it’s commented on by Trey and Riddle, with Trey being taken in by the good guy act and Riddle mentioning he needs to look beyond the surface because Jade never does anything without reason. I think one of the best examples of how Jade thinks is in Silvers FG card. He immediately changes his tactic when dealing with Silver when the latter balks at Jade mentioning “forcing” the fairies to do anything for them. He immediately sees the change in atmosphere and as such changes the way he interacts with him and takes control of the situation with the fairy to get the results he desires. Silver, being the goodest of boys, doesn’t seem to see the point of Jades plan and words to manipulate both of them into doing the work he needs done. Afterwards, Jade seems amused by Silver’s words that he ‘spoke from the heart’ as if it’s something he himself had never tried. 

Jade: I didn't expect you to flatter them to receive it. You are quite the negotiator, aren't you?

Silver: Negotiator…? I only spoke from the heart.

Silver: If you speak with sincerity, it does not matter if they are human or fae, they will understand.

Jade: From the heart… I see. Well now, that is a wonderful vision.

“Sounds fake but okay” - Jade Leech, probably. This point in the story could be where we see more character development in that Jade learns that maybe shady and underhanded isn’t the best way to go about things, BUUUUUUUT, since the event is an “IF” version of a side event, I wouldn’t count on it happening anytime soon (if at all). Jade is definitely one of the most nuanced characters in TWST (imo) so I think it is easy to miss all of the hints and things that have been scattered between the main story, character stories, voice lines, and events, but once you put everything together I think it it paints a very clear picture what kind of person he is, and unfortunately it’s not the uwu soft boy house husband pushover that most of the EN fandom stuff I see seems to take him for. Again, if that’s your personal preference you do you, but I find it very hard to ignore the information that is SUCH a big part of his character. (Speaking of, I did see a complaint that most of the fandom is with me on the ‘Jade is a sociopath’ front, so like… can someone tell me where to find it cause I always find the opposite) To throw it all out the window to focus on the much smaller parts of his personality I think are doing him and his character a huge disservice by just … missing the point. Jade is a good character BECAUSE he’s a bad person, and because he doesn’t seem to want to be a good person at all. He (and Floyd) enjoy causing problems, and watching chaos unfold, and ignoring it for the less often seen softer points is lame. 

Moving onto how he cares for people. Of course he’s able to genuinely interact and appreciate those that he cares about. His relationship with Floyd and Azul of course is different in nature than it is with anyone else at the school. He’s known Floyd since birth and been friends with Azul since middle school, that being said… that doesn’t mean that there’s no tension there at all. During beans day, Jade mentions he’s glad to be on the opposite side as Azul so that he can challenge him, and can’t wait to see the look on Azul’s face when he loses (rip tho lol). He does provoke Floyd occasionally as well when he’s in a shitty mood, so it’s not as if he’s all sunshine and rainbows with them either. He does after all, fully agree with Azul to wringing the eel slime out of Floyd despite knowing that it’ll be really painful for him, laugh at him when he gets blasted by Riddle at their entrance ceremony and tease Azul after his overblot. In regards to the overblot, of course he’s worried afterwards. Azul is his friend, whereas the same can’t be said for most other people in the cast. Azul is more than a pawn, and though he would likely not hesitate to use Azul if necessary, Azul knows him well enough to help with his schemes openly knowing about any shady reasoning behind it so there would be no reason to. I think as far as friendship goes for him, the only ones he truly opens up to are people like himself (like Azul and Floyd) not because he’s worried that he’d frighten them, but because he wants people that will help him and enjoy the same things as him. His hobbies are his own personal interests so Azul and Floyd not sharing them with him is fine, but when he has the more malicious intentions, as is shown SO many times, he wants to have friends that will increase the chaos rather than trying to diffuse it. Even in his official profile it says that he dislikes being bored. 

One of the other arguments that I had seen about Jade was that he was “canonically shy” and doesn’t like showing his teeth because he’s embarrassed. I think it’s important in these situations to consider the context in which the information is presented. Jade has already said in several places that he doesn’t like when people watch him, and that he doesn’t like when people watch him eat (because he’s got such a big appetite) so taking a conversation such as this:

Ruggie: So in this school, doesn’t that mean Jade-kun and Floyd-kun would have a big advantage?

Ruggie: Cause they’ve got big bodies. And their teeth are sharp.

Jade: Fufufu, I wonder. I would be embarrassed to open my mouth so wide while everyone watches…

Jade: Contrary to everyone’s expectations, I may dawdle too long and be unable to grab an apple.

As facts he’s embarrassed needs to be looked into deeper. There absolutely could be a hint of embarrassment for someone that’s put on such a refined persona to open his mouth that widely since the row (or rows if you’re a pharyngeal jaw believer) of serrated teeth is a frightening view that could completely ruin the image he’s worked so hard to maintain. He does mention in his voice lines that he doesn’t like when people look at him too closely, and I think instead of that being shy/embarrassed or whatever else, it’s more that he prefers watching to being watched. This I think becomes especially clear in his PE story where he feels Rook watching him and seems to be uncomfortable about how much Rook may have learned from watching, though remarks that he probably had gotten nothing from it at all. He spends the rest of the card fufufu-ing with Rook because they’re the same sort of people. They both have their secrets, and they’re both hunters, though of a different type. (Also, Rook is great, Rook haters u suck). The idea that Jade is insecure etc about himself at this far in the game is absolutely absurd. He knows his strengths and weaknesses (are there really any?) and knows exactly how to progress and overcome any obstacle. In fact, when he confronts the Heartslabuyl team/yuu/grim in episode 2 with Floyd, he demands to know why they were spying and challenges them to a fight (then of course proceeds to chase them down with Floyd afterwards) These aren’t the movements of someone that isn’t sure of themselves, and is quite the opposite. 

I think I’ve rambled enough here at this point (we’re at over 2500 words weeeew), but I do think a lot of people overlook the shady and instead focus on the very clear parts of Jade that are present but DON’T make up the core of his character, because again, when characters are nuanced they’re not just one trait. Jade isn’t just a mushroom lover. Not just a mountains lover. Not just a poisoning his classmates for fun enjoyer. Not just a blackmailing his fellow students just because kinda guy. Not the knocking his classmate off his feet with a pie throw guy. Not just a making his close friends dance for his amusement while under his control guy.  Not just a shady mf that has LITERALLY SAID he would tie someone up and drag them to the bottom of the ocean never to be found again if they double crossed him. He’s all of those, and I think putting more weight on the “positive” and “good” traits is doing him a great disservice since those are just the cherries on top of his entire fucked up personality, because lets be real, the shady GREATLY outweighs the cute or soft things he does. And if anyone has read this far and for some reason still thinks he’s soft uwu boy (unironically), I’ll leave you with one of my favourite Jade quotes proving that he’s much shittier than he is soft, which is exactly what makes him such a good character. I could probably talk more about this, but this I guess covers the majority of what I’m salty about.

Indeed. If I were ever to be betrayed like that…I would drive them into a corner, destroy them emotionally, and then tie them up and drown them deep into the sea…Seeing you blame yourself and acting like such a martyr is, pardon my words, truly disgusting- main story ep 4

But no, tell me more about how he’s soft and sweet and misunderstood.

(Translations taken from a combo of the inactive @/twstarchives @/mysteryshoptls and kanadesmusingsblog)

[itsamiraculous]

Alya and Secrets

So I started making a post about Alya and secrets a little while back, but after Sentibubbler I put it off as I wasn’t sure, however after Rocketear I feel as if it still stands. 

Sentibubbler revealed to me that yes Alya can control things by herself, is loyal to Marinette and wouldn’t reveal her secret easily. I never wanted to insinuate that she ever would, but now after Rocketear, I feel as if my belief that Alya will make a mistake with the secrets department. Alya has told Nino about Rena Furtive when Marinette had firmly told her not to, knowing of Marinette’s fears and her position as Ladybug.

Alya decided to tell Nino everything because she doesn’t like keeping secrets from him, her relationship has never been like that. Her role as a journalist is to seek the truth as well. She is not comfortable with keeping secrets, and I don’t blame her for that, I think it’s actually very commendable. What I don’t agree with is that she has gone against Marinette. The repercussions could be dire, like what happened in Optygami, or it could cause a huge rift in their friendship. In Sentibubbler Marinette was afraid that all of her secrets would get out and that she would be betrayed by Alya. I believe that she will still have a “betrayal” by Alya (also by Chat, but that’s a different post). Then in Gang of Secrets she was afraid of telling Alya everything could change and potentially destroy their relationship.

Rocketear also highlighted again why Marinette keeps secrets. We see it breaking her relationships throughout this season; she is making sacrifices to those she cares about because of the role she takes on and the stakes as Ladybug and is breaking her and potentially all of her relationships, whether that be with family or other. 

Rest lies below the cut, this is a long post

Her responsibilities are keeping her away from happiness, with her family, from her friends, and has also broken her chances for romance with anyone. I don’t think that is a coincidence that her family was brought forward and the fact of Marinette’s need/want to keep secrets will be tested with Alya. Marinette’s vehemence of keeping her identity a secret is also influenced by the events of Chat Blanc

Speaking of Chat Blanc, within this episode Bunnix explains briefly why she was chosen to be the bearer of the Rabbit miraculous and it was because she knows how to keep a secret. Alya has constantly been surrounded by the challenges of being Trustworthy. Key episodes this season being Sentibubbler, Gang of Secrets, Optygami and now Rocketear.

I feel as if this has much more weight on it now after everything that has happened in this season so far.

Previously Alya has been shown how trustworthy she can or can’t be. In Puppeteer 2, Alya insists she didn't tell Nino about Marinette’s crush on Adrien when she clearly had. 

She clearly did tell Nino, or accidentally told him because otherwise there wouldn’t be the narrative of Alya and Nino trying to get Adrien and Marinette alone together etc.

I do trust Alya, but she has a recurring theme where there is too much emphasis on the word trustworthy which insinuates that this is a challenge for her character. 

Alya can als be quite pushy. Like in Sapotis when she got too swept up, and Trixx planted the notion of becoming a permanent miraculous holder, but he was also the one to help her realise to prove herself trustworthy. Trixx and Alya can also be very hard to say no to, they have a persuasive attitude, but it can also make people realise things.

Alya can be very pushy when she gets swept up in “helping” Marinette get close to Adrien. Reflekdoll and Gigantitan always have rubbed me the wrong way with Alya’s role. In Gigantitan, Marinette wanted to help that woman up the stairs who had baby August in the stroller, Alya insisted for Marinette to stay, until the woman was really struggling and Marinette just went, and even then Alya was in her ear saying to hurry up as Adrien was coming.

If Alya just let Marinette be everything would have been fine. In all actuality, if Adrien saw Marinette he would probably help and it would start a lovely, genuine conversation considering he also wanted to help, but couldn’t. It’s in their blood to help. Both Marinette and Adrien earnt the miraculous because they were the only ones around who cared enough to help people. 

In Reflekdoll it was both the fault of Marinette and Alya that Juleka went in on herself. Marinette didn’t allow Juleka to speak as she bombarded her with questions. Alya was pushing because of the time crunch and pushed Marinette and Adrien together, she had completely overlooked Juleka’s feelings as well. Marinette didn’t completely get blinded as she did try to double check that Juleka was alright. 

Alya can just be impulsive sometimes. Most of the time when she is told to stop, like in Sapotis when Marinette tells her to slow down in trying to find out Ladybugs identity, and then when Ladybug tells her she can’t tell anyone, Alya complies.

Being impulsive is what Alya has in common with Chat Noir with his self-sacrificial tendencies and emotions clouding judgement.

She is aware of getting ahead of herself anyways

Alya and Marinette are both making mistakes. Alya made a huge one in Optygami because her judgement is impared due to her emotions towards Nino. Marinette has made and is making a lot of mistakes. The huge ones are those which take time to surface, like what happened with Chloe and what is happening with Chat Noir. Marinette decided to reward Alya by giving her the miraculous permanently. I don't think she should have done that, at least not yet. It's a huge risk on top of another. Marinette knew from the beginning that Hawkmoth knew who the holders were, yet still decided to give them out to the same people, however with Chloe it was totally different. She should have been open with her in the first place. 

Marinette has also always been super lenient with Alya as well, first with allowing Nino and Alya knowing their alter egos (although Alya knew of Nino in the first place), but again a huge risk really, as we saw in Catalyst, they got distracted, and their emotions getting themselves turned into scarlet. 

Although, I do understand that there was a time crunch.

Marinette often has a double-standard and bias when it comes to Alya. For instance, in Style Queen Marinette was going to give the Bee miraculous to Alya as well. 

Why!??? When Alya already had been using the Fox Miraculous. Ladybug’s decision to constantly not tell Chloe is what led to Miracle Queen. It was not fair. Sorry, there is no way I can really excuse that. She was so blind-sided by judgement in that decision.

However that has equally been counteracted by proving she is trustworthy, that she is loyal and also looks for the facts. Alya can also be level-headed like the approach of finding out who was framing Marinette in Ladybug. 

She has been a big help for Marinette as well, as we see in Mr. Pigeon 72.

She was a miracle in Sentibubbler as well! As she kept her cool and thought ahead. She still made a couple of mistakes like telling Chat Noir it’s a two person operation etc. Not her fault though. Nothing said in that moment would have helped.

Alya is definitely a huge asset for Marinette to have, by running ideas and taking some of the pressure off of her shoulders and ultimately being able to think for herself.

It all comes back to Bunnix in Chat Blanc as well saying she can keep a secret, so I fear what is to come. Alix has constantly been the one shown to have a rational head. Reverser being the big one, but also the little comments when with the girls like in Gang of Secrets and Gigantitan. 

I have a feeling that Marinette’s leniency with Alya may end up being a mistake. I do think it’s good some of her weight has been lifted, but now it seems she is being a little arbitrary. Alya we know has a huge target on her back. She may have saved herself in Sentibubbler, but now she has told Nino everything, against the wishes of Marinette. Although, Marinette says that she does trust Alya when Alya fixes things at the end of Rocketear.

I think Alya makes this decision as she is firm in her belief that secrets shouldn’t be kept when it comes to loved ones, especially those who are meant to be your partner (best friend, boyfriend/girlfriend). I also wonder whether this decision to tell Nino was also influenced because Marinette was easy on her after what happened in Optygami, thinking Marinette wouldn’t mind. Plus she got around it all in Puppeteer 2.

Marinette is actively going against her own beliefs (and what she was told by Master Fu) by utilising the same miraculous holders. I understand that she is the new guardian and she is making her own rules, but she also saw sense in keeping things secret, because of her own identity, and how she refuses to allow Chat Noir to know who the holders are as well. It is way too risky, whatever Marinette is up to. She is not allowing Chat Noir his right to know as much as she does; they are meant to be partners, but it doesn’t feel like that. That is all due to her fear of Chat Blanc and its events. She is now heavily reliant on Alya/ Rena Rouge. That is going to cause a huge rift once Chat becomes wise to their dynamic as we are seeing blatantly now in Rocketear. 

What happens if Alya slips up again and it’s huge this time. What is the secret that Bunnix is referring to that makes Ladybug/Marinette realise that she is the one to be trusted with the Rabbit miraculous? When will that be? Will Marinette have a falling out with Alya after finding out that Alya told Nino that she was still working as covert Rena?

I think what Marinette has decided was untimely. These kids shouldn’t be dealing with this, but they are. They are feeling way too much and are still trying to learn about themselves. It is not fair. They are bound to make decisions. I just have this unsettled feeling that there is too much concentration around this topic to overlook. I don’t think that Marinette is going to be best pleased when she finds out that Alya has told Nino everything, especially after all that she has sacrificed with Luka and Adrien and as Rocketear stated about her family again. I think the pressure will get to her again.

[fantasyinvader]

My feelings are the whole mess is the result of two things that should be contradictory, but instead they're fusing in a really worrying way.

The first is how people have turned away from traditional heroics. People have embraced the anti-hero because their methods are cooler and are often seen as necessary to get results. People are more apt to accept faults on the part of their protagonists, failings that are seen as a means to “humanize” them rather than the characters embodying some form of ideal. What's more, there's the latching onto supposed moral ambiguity, usually as a means to handwave the actions of the protagonist without actually thinking about what they are doing, like your urban vigilante who goes around unlawfully killing people they feel are the problem (usually emblematic of greater issues with society). People just seem to believe these elements automatically make things more mature and therefore a good thing.

I myself am a fan of a lot of this stuff when it's used well, but unfortunately a lot of it gets misused. The methods of the anti-hero get results, therefore the story may come across as endorsing them even when there's an element of examination going on. For instance in Bullitt, the original Cowboy Cop film with Steve McQueen. Bullitt is unable to protect the witness he was supposed to guard and his investigations into the killing result in the deaths of the people responsible, but at the same time because those guys are dead there is nothing left to get information on the mafia. Bullitt didn't play by the rules and because of that law enforcement have no means to go after the bigger fish. And this is kinda a thing when you look back on the films that built that genre. Dirty Harry, in the eyes of the original film's director, was only slightly better than the movie's villain, and him throwing away his badge at the end of the film was symbolic of him being disgusted by the law that protected the villain from Harry's methods. In Death Wish, it's shown that Paul Kersey's actions also inspire others to commit acts of violence while portraying violence as disturbing. Law enforcement and the politicians in the film don't want to glamorize him either because it could lead to people killing anyone they thought was a bad guy or cause criminals to escalate their crimes.

Of course, this was the late 60's through the seventies, come the Eighties these movies lost their edge. They became seen as tame resulting in cop films going further, like Tango & Cash or Cobra, and eventually we got Sledge Hammer, a TV series that parodied the genre by pointing out how deranged these sorts of protagonists had become. People missed the satire of Robocop and as a result he was marketed to children. Rather than being confronted with the issues that lead to the ills of society, people were just content to dehumanize people, ignoring their legal protections and cheering on their deaths. This is when the modern anti-hero really started imo, and while we nowadays are concerned about copaganda we do accept a lot harsher methods by our heroes than we used to.

Just look at Moviebob's infamous quote: There are no bad tactics, only bad targets.

The other issue is purity culture. That everything has to be squeaky clean and safe, and as a result people view liking something as a statement on one's own character. If you like a villain or content that could be seen as problematic, it would make you look bad. It lacks any sort of nuanced view or even understanding that you can't take things only on a surface level.

Combine them, we have people who are more willing to accept extreme methods in pursuit of what people see as good, but at the same time they don't want to actually think too deeply about those methods. They view grey morality as the great justifier when, really, it's supposed to make us question who is right and who is wrong. That if our “heroes” go to such lengths, are they really heroes? That sort of thing, and as a result people are willing to dehumanize those they feel as being in the wrong which in turn makes people feel they are morally superior to others.

But as I was writing this out, of course it makes sense that these two things go together. People want things to be simple, to be uncomplicated. They want things to be black and white, they want the purity culture. While the original Cowboy Cop movies had elements that would be seen in deconstructions later on, the genre got flanderized and those elements were lost. Dirty Harry and Paul Kersey were depicted as heroes in their sequels, and even tame compared to other examples at the time. They operated on black and white morality in order to justify their actions and at the same time entertain audiences.

People really aren't as mature as they think they are.

To continue the woobified view of the Elites and my comparison of them to the Black Eagles :

Same for me regarding the BE, especially because they also literally fought Edelgard's troops in WC when you choose their house, and even if you don't, they definitely still would know that Edelgard dus nasty shits in WC.

The idea that media literacy is dead is quite fitting, because the idea that even rotten persons have loved ones/that having loved ones doesn't mean you're not rotten is a known thing, yet the Eagles and elites get a pass solely because "they genuinely believe in the cause" and "they love and care for each other"

Probably Fraldarius was as devoted to Nemesis as Ingrid to Dimitri, Lamine very well may have been as sassy as Dorothea, perhaps Goneril was as brave and endearing as Caspar, or Maurice was as loyal to his clan's interests as Petra to Brigid's happiness (through a strong bond to the Empire) but like the BE, they are butchers, who relished in the destruction of everything those against them hold dear, lap dogs and rabid curs of someone they definitely know have crushed innocents and scorn the very idea of peace except under their domination.

The only meaningful difference between Edelgard-following BE and the elites is that we can know more about the BE and we are forced to dislike cutting them down even as they refuse to let northern Fódlan alone.

Honestly I need a fanfiction where the BE are called out for that bullshit.

Yep!

That's the tone deaf feeling I got from Nopes, the Deers are hunting someone bcs their leader wants her dead for no reason, but Raph only comments on how hungry he is.

Uh, sure Raph, you're not the most thoughtful character in there, but come on? Some commentary or exposition on what you're doing? Hello KT? Can we have characters be challenged or even react to the events of screen instead of wondering what's for dinner/teatime?

No??

I wouldn't say it's an issue of media litteracy being dead, but more something in the lines of people being more and more "all or nothing" nowadays, without any nuance and conflating liking a character with the idea/image that might project on you : if I like ASOIAF's Cersei, I don't think everything she does is "justified", but modern fandom, I feel like some people would categorize you as a "good" or "bad" person based on the characters you like, and it's just... not what fandom is or was supposed to be imo, I'm here to nerd and gush about favourite characters, not write litteral essays about the Geneva Convention.

Corollary is what, imo, made the Fodlan fandom hell : some people really take "criticism" against a character personally - sure the way FE16 was written invites projection, but at the end of the day, making a Berning Fire Joke is, just, making a joke about a bunch of pixels, nothing more.

Back to the BEs, they can have a sense of camaraderie and genuinely support each other... as they tear apart "people because Supreme Leader told me to" and fight side by side with Bob the Carpented who was turned into Waldi the demonic beast.

Ferdie can skewer Flayn on her father's lance because she is "a creature that has plagued humanity for ages" even if they reached a C support before shit hit the fan - and still protect Mercedes and Bernie from their abusing Fathers. Does that make him a great guy? A nuanced guy?

I think the trope is called "even evil people have loved ones" or something like that?

I don't think so, but he is no random one note villain sycophant either - now, what is the more annoying with the Fodlan games is how this dichotomy is never called upon : everything is just a giant blob or Hresvelg Grey ("morally grey" but only applied to Supreme Leader) where no one really is angry at her, and all the "sacrifices" she's making are off-screen while the characters on-screen always moan about her "ReFoRmS" and "IdEaLs" without talking about the cost bar some milquetoast "but war bad". And no one, in the game, will ever throw this hypocrisy to their face - Gallant Ferdinand will dream about the Opera as he wipes off the blood of a young woman who just wanted to return to the only home she had.

Yay.

FWIW, some mutuals and I have nothing but pure lols about Doro's line in the non-CF routes being "we killed Ferdie professor :'(" because, hey, why should I care more about Ferdie than about random loldier 55 ? Rhea? Felix? Claude? Ignatz?

Maybe the Elites were really friends and became """"nice""" persons with time, to their families and loved ones ?

Does this magically erase what they did before? Will that "good" they did erase all the "wrongs" they have previously done? Will theyr forever escape the consequences of their actions?

In a game that depicts Flamey as a terrorist for 11 chapters only to drop that plot point by the window to moan, again, about her "IdEaLs", "consequences" are maybe something you can eat as a snack, or throw in a trashcan.

So following the rules of this verse, given how Supreme Leader never receives flak for her Flamey stunts, why should the Elites receive any for what they did? Look, Maurice calls Daphnel his friend, surely he is not that bad of a man? Well yeah, he might have seduced women and planted a lot of wild oats here'n'there, but he cares about his friends!

Jeritza likes ice creams and cats! Surely it's more important to paint him as a cat lover than to deal with all the consequences of his stunt as the Death Knight, kidnapping and implied rekting young woman while he was in GM, under Flamey's orders, right?

Calling it now, after eviscerating Seteth's older brother, Goneril might have melted in front of one of Rhea's kittens, and adopted the cat asap. Surely that makes Goneril a "good" character right? And forget the entire "genocided a bunch of hippies living isolated in their village" stuff?

I don't have fanfics recs where the BEs are called hypocrites, but I confess I don't read a lot of fanfics in the FE16 fandom because of all of the aforementioned issues.

[iturbide]

If I may propose another possible time for when the swap happened, I believe it was during the time skip. We know Claude invites Shez to stay in Leicester at the end of the Prologue yet, during the two-year time skip, Claude effectively left Shez to fend for themselves. Why would Claude invite Shez to stay if he didn't plan on making use of their skills whatsoever?

My theory is that Claude likely tried to dig up info on Shez's powers and may have gotten too close for comfort for TWSITD, so they swapped him with the swap happening very early on during the time skip. This would explain why he so suddenly becomes a different person by the time Part 1 begins but also explain how nobody, at least on the Fodlan side, has noticed it.

I actually think that this particular point could go either way in terms of when the swap occurs. It's entirely reasonable to think that the swap happened at some point early in the timeskip after Claude invited Shez to the Alliance, with him sticking his nose where he shouldn't have and getting grabbed because of it.

But I also think it stands to reason that Claude was already swapped before the timeskip, and the Agarthan recognized Shez' Awakened state in combat and realized that this mercenary has their own Agarthan connection. The invitation therefore could be the Agarthan wanting to have them close to keep an eye on them and try to figure out who Shez is and where their power comes from, since it is so familiar despite Shez themselves being an unknown factor.

At least to me, Claude isn't acting differently by the time Part 1 begins: he was already acting differently from his Three Houses self in the Prologue. His very swift declaration of trust in Shez, after just a few months of knowing them, is wildly out of character to me -- even with Byleth, he was pretty open about how he wanted Byleth on board because of their power and how he felt that could help him achieve his dreams, not because he trusted them. Claude is a schemer and someone that most people aren't inclined to trust, he's not all that dishonest -- but most of his lies are by omission, rather than whole-cloth inventions.

And then there's how he talks about his fellow students. There really does feel like a distinct difference between how he introduces them in Three Houses vs Three Hopes. Lorenz, for instance:

Three Houses: He's the heir of Gloucester territory. If you haven't already picked up on it, he's a bit arrogant and fancies himself a lady's man. That said, deep down he's really devoted and honest… Though I wouldn't mind never hearing him talk about his noble obligations ever again. Three Hopes: Have you met him yet? At first I thought he was real serious and persnickety. But that image shattered pretty quick once I noticed him chatting up every girl in the monastery.

He brings up of his own volition in Three Houses that Lorenz is devoted and honest and implies that his noble obligations are vital to him; in Three Hopes, he only discusses the surface level aspects -- the noble pomp and his apparent flirtatiousness. Or what about Ignatz:

Three Houses: He's the second son of a merchant family. Since his brother will inherit the business, he's training to become a knight. If you ask me, doesn't seem like he truly wants to be a knight… He's probably just doing it to please his parents… Three Hopes: Ignatz likes the great outdoors. Definitely more than the rest of us, anyway. He's the second son of a merchant family, but says he wants to be a knight. He doesn't really seem suited for it, though. Maybe his parents are making him do it.

In Three Houses, Claude is clearly attuned to the fact that Ignatz doesn't want to be a knight, and rationalizes that this is probably a move to please his parents. In Three Hopes, while he brings up Ignatz' love of the outdoors (something he didn't do in Three Houses), he says instead that Ignatz doesn't seem suited to it, which implies it's a physical insufficiency, rather than his heart not being in it. Then there's Leonie:

Three Houses: Leonie enrolled because she wants to be a mercenary. I think she said that her father is a hunter. She's pretty blunt and as stingy as they come. A habitual saver, too. I think she's hoping to repay her village for helping to send her here. Three Hopes: Leonie wants to be a mercenary. I bet you two would have lots to talk about. You're both pretty frank, too. I just hope you're not as obsessed with saving money as she is.

In Three Houses, he's not only aware of her father's profession, he already knows (or at least suspects enough to mention) that her stinginess and saving are to repay her village for helping get her to Garreg Mach. In Three Hopes, he knows she wants to be a mercenary, but then complains about her money saving, rather than offering an explanation.

So there actually is a pretty solid basis to say that Claude may have been replaced by the time we met him. And given that they never knew the real one...how would anyone know to bat an eye when he turns the Alliance into a monarchy and invades the Kingdom? He's the same as he's ever been, to them...even if he's not himself.

[starklore]

Okay to answer the question "why does Camilo remember Bruno even though he's the same age as Mirabel," here's my take:

Camilo doesn't remember Bruno very well. The image he paints of Bruno is clearly inaccurate to who he actually is. Bruno is not seven feet tall, for instance, but it makes sense that Camilo, who only remembers him from a five-year-old perspective, would remember him as much taller than he is.

Bruno also isn't nearly as sinister irl as he is in the musical number--and interestingly, in the number, it's Camilo who paints him in the most sinister light, despite knowing him the least.

Like, Pepa talks about Bruno like he was some kind of mischievous gadfly guy, but in Camilo's chorus he sounds like, downright demonic. "He sees your dreams and feasts on your screams." King what?

But it makes sense, because Pepa has actually good memories of Bruno being like a normal-ish dude in between psychic episodes or whatever, to balance her general perception of him out. Camilo doesn't have that.

To me, it seems like Camilo's impression of Bruno is a few sparse memories mixed in with picking up on the family and community's perception of him, from context clues given during the few times anyone actually acknowledges him. People only ever talk about him as this looming creepy figure of chaos, and Camilo doesn't really have any real memories of him to balance out that perception, so that's all he has. (And it's also probably exaggerated for comedic/dramatic effect in the number because he's just Like That.)

Of course, that brings us back to where we started: Camilo and Mirabel probably have around the same actual recollection of Bruno. So why is Camilo so comfortable filling in the gaps with the perception given to him by adults and presenting them as fact--or at least, close to fact--when Mirabel feels that she really has no idea of who Bruno is?

I think there are a few factors at play:

-Personality difference. I think Camilo is just more confident than Mirabel and trusts himself more–this time, to a detriment. It’s also possible that he’s just sort of more perceptive, in that he just pays more attention to what people around him are saying and reads into it more? Idk.

-Mirabel might be less likely to believe the worst of Bruno because she knows what it's like to be seen as the family’s black sheep. (This may be subconscious on her part.) While the family dynamic puts pressure on every member of the family, presumably Camilo included although it’s not explored, he is at least on a surface level accepted by the family, so he may have less reason to identify with Bruno and may be more likely to accept what he’s told about him.

–Also Camilo might just have heard more adult conversations about Bruno because he can shapeshift. Plus Dolores is his sister, so maybe she’s shared things she’s overheard with him that she hasn’t shared with the other kids. (Not that Bruno never left, because Camilo looked surprised and annoyed when Dolores revealed she knew that, but just things other people said about him–again, I think Camilo’s perception of Bruno is largely based upon things he’s heard other people say about him.)

-This is a sadder idea but I think it probably does factor in: since Camilo isn’t excluded from the family the way Mirabel is, he might just like, be around the house more and around the family more often, and that’s why he’s heard more cryptic references throughout the years.