#that’s the most tragic thing ever tbh

[beware-of-you-98]

Something was definitely in the water during the Paramore AUS “This is Why” tour pls they were so unhinged 😭

[toubledrouble]

Did it hurt? When they turned your favourite deeply flawed and terribly tragic couple into a pair of cutesy lovers? Or when they turned your favourite pathetic and imperfect tragic hero into a perfectly conventional sweetheart?

[katierosefun]

step 1 of watching suits: haha fun plot! look at this little guy pretending to be a law school graduate. yeah this won't have any consequences whatsoever

step 2 of watching suits: oh this little guy and that bigshot lawyer have some good chemistry. yeah they're both committing a crime by having him work at this new york big law firm but it's fun :)

step 3 of watching suits: they're actually facing consequences to their actions now, but oh god i don't want to see either of them lose. yes, they did something terrible but don't we all want to feel a bit special. don't we all feel stuck. doesn't our own ambition swallow us whole. don't we feel insanely loyal to the person who gave us everything. we're going down together. if you go, i go.

[crazywolf828]

This is two years in a row I haven't written sunnybees smut for my birthday 😔

[sugarcarnation]

girls when dazai hates pain 🫠

[rhpsdys]

y’all ever write a character except ur like wow i know nothing about you

[aphel1on]

the longer i look at this panel the more deranged i feel about it. this is environmental storytelling at its finest.

the eodio stand-in doll in particular makes me crazy. where did it come from? did thistle just pop into the village like "hey ungrateful wretches, one of you needs to make me a life-sized mannequin, For Reasons". did he make it himself? seems quite unlikely, yet the possibility haunts me. i mean, i guess there could've been one just lying around the dungeon somewhere. it's the act of replacement itself that really gets to me. (edit: it's been pointed out to me that the eodio doll also could have been left behind as part of delgal's escape plan. slightly different kind of madness but tbh, just as funny-sad to me if that happened and thistle went Ok, Guess That's Eodio Now.)

both the wives are there too. we know very little about them, which makes me tend to assume thistle wasn't all that close to them, but they're still included. when did they end up here? did he kick their souls out of their bodies at some point, or were they among those who left their bodies voluntarily to try and escape? when did yaad become an effective orphan, delgal an effective widower? women in the margins of the narrative, tell me your stories!

and the fact that they're surrounded with the living paintings, which thistle habitually wanders through to relive the past. this truly is his inner sanctum, his place of utmost comfort... and it may as well be a tomb.

that panel is so creepy when you first see it. just a sense of "ohh jeez, there's a lot to unpack there".

and actually, yeah, it remains creepy from pretty much any angle, but the more you think about it the more it's also tragic.

this is where many of thistle's happiest moments took place. everything he had in that picture is now gone. first he lost their warm regard, then one-by-one their bodies became hollow shells. before the end, none of the people here needed or enjoyed food anymore. the dinner table, as a center of both family life and nutrition, became obsolete.

a line from someone else's excellent post about thistle has stuck in my head ever since i read it: "to eat is to live, but to eat together is to be loved". to me, this is the sentiment and symbolism at the core of everything that happens in dungeon meshi.

it makes this bit all the sadder and more disturbing.

there's several things to note here:

thistle has gone from seated and eating with them as part of the family, to a lonely and ominous figure hovering over delgal's shoulder

eodio is conspicuously absent from view, and his body would have been a husk by now, but yaad says parents, which forces me to assume that they are sitting at the table with eodio's soulless body, hidden under yaad's speech bubble

they're not actually eating anything.

those plates are empty. you could assume that they've already finished eating, maybe, but yaad refers to it as sitting around the dinner table. in fact, he compares it to what he's currently doing; sitting at the dinner table watching the touden party eat, not eating anything himself.

it paints a pretty grim picture. for some time even after the fantasy had fallen apart, even after there was no need or desire to eat, they kept gathering around the dinner table. at that point, i'd guess only so as not to provoke thistle's wrath.

but even that last happened a long, long time ago.

this is a callback to what senshi said in the golden kingdom: the reason the people keep maintaining their fields and silverware and so forth is that they need to do so in order to stay sane.

paradoxically, the dinner table is the most striking evidence of thistle's insanity, and at the same time, it's the only anchor to sanity he has left.

he kept enforcing the ritual of dinner together long after it lost significance. when even that was impossible- because almost everyone's souls were gone- he kept their bodies at the table anyway. it's fine. it's fine! he's protected them, physically, just like he set out to. they're all still breathing. at a glance it looks like they could wake up and resume dinner at any moment. like this, it's easy to pretend.

isn't that what being a dungeon lord is, at the core of it? rejecting reality, staying in the prison of one's impossible desires. it's just one long game of pretend.

thistle did all this to protect his loved ones. no matter how obsessive and twisted he became in pursuit of that over the years, his core motivation never changed. this is all he has left of that dream: his loved ones' bodies gathered around the locus of their happiest memories together. like this, he can tell himself he's succeeded.

when eodio's body vanished with delgal's soul in it- when he couldn't even have that anymore... well.

i want to reach through the screen and shake him. no, they're not, thistle. THISTLE, NO, THEY'RE NOT! the doll of eodio is the closest thing to him in this panel, underlining the point. when that final illusion was shattered, he became completely unable to cope with reality.

therefore casually forgetting the creepy eodio doll isn't real.

thistle isn't stupid. eodio's body vanished at the same time as delgal's soul. shortly after, more adventurers came pouring in than ever before. deep down, he knows what happened. if he didn't, being confronted with the truth by mithrun wouldn't have made him panic so hard he summoned chimera falin to the first floor.

yet still...

he absolutely can't admit that to himself. he is clinging to the last scraps of the illusion with everything he has.

this is a dungeon lord at the end of desire. this is a lotus-eater machine left running long after its conclusion. this is mithrun lying listlessly in his bed, his replica lover having given up any pretense of being human. the illusion is all that's left. (an illusion is all it ever was.) thistle and the citizens of the golden kingdom- they're ghosts just as much as the ones who wander the dungeon floors. and if it weren't for thistle sealing the lion away, he would've been eaten by it long ago.

all of this encapsulated by that single panel of the dinner table.

[anonymous-dentist]

Okay I did some vod searching and here’s Cellbit’s pov of the prison announcement (in the form of a pretty badly clipped video lol)

A couple of things to note:

The silence

The stammer

The knife

The eyes

First, the silence, because it could be easy to miss from another pov because he was already pretty quiet before. But you can see the literal second it registers what Forever had just said because the change in the silence is palpable. He didn’t even raise his voice above the noise when he asked Forever if he was being serious.

Second, the stammer. This is a man who is very good at talking. Look at him during the presidential debates, nothing was able to keep him from talking, not even his own suicide. But then here he… can’t talk. He’s that shocked, and he’s terrified. See:

Third, the knife. Now this knife. Now this knife. It’s his emotional support murder knife. He only brings it out when he feels scared, and it’s gotta be a real deep fear for him to bring it out. It’s only been a few times, namely when he’s been triggered over his past, most notably when he and Richarlyson explored the Federation prison after Pac’s kidnapping.

And then fourth, the eyes. After he takes the knife out, Cellbit’s eyes flick back and forth between Forever the audience in what appears to be genuine confusion. Because, and this is important, Forever never told Cellbit about the prison. So between the fear and the Horrors, there’s some actual legitimate confusion in there because he didn’t know about this.

So now, after all that, let’s take a look at q!Cellbit’s character in general because I know there are people who don’t know about his very tragic backstory.

So Cellbit was in prison for… something. Probably murder tbh, but that was never confirmed. He was in prison with Pac e Mike and he was a really bad person. As in, murdering people, threatening people, ripping human ears off, stabbing, inciting riots (I think???). He killed Felps. He almost got Pac and Mike to kill each other.

And then, after being left to die alone on an island, Cellbit got some goddamn help for the first time in his life.

Before prison, he was in a war (ie the Hunger Games.) Then he was in prison, and the math is hunting towards him being incarcerated prior to his eighteenth birthday. He was 18-ish when he was in prison, and he’s 26 now, and he spent those eight years in therapy. Now he’s a better person, and he’s a very scared person.

He has many triggers, but the one that’s come up the most has been prison. He killed Abueloier that first time because they were in a prison-like cell. After hearing that Pac e Mike were arrested, he almost became another person as he interrogated Foolish (just watch that vod back, the whiplash is there.) When exploring the Federation’s prison, he was visibly on edge, clutching his emotional support murder knife and tensing when he saw all of the cells and almost stabbing Cucurucho when it appeared. Foolish asked if he could arrest him, Cellbit immediately turned him down, and he went behind his husband’s back to convince Foolish not to arrest him, either. (I’m not sure if he knows in-character about the prison cell in the new murder mystery game, but he will Not be happy if he gets put in there.)

So. Prison.

He wants to be a better person, is the thing. Cellbit doesn’t like thinking about who he was as Cell- he canonically even avoids cellphones when he can (see: Abueloier.) But he can’t help what happens when he’s triggered: he killed Abueloier, he almost attacked Cucurucho and risked his whole new infiltration plan. He’s worried about hurting someone again, because he knows he’s capable of it. He might not be the best at pvp, but that doesn’t matter when half the server is just as bad as he is (/affectionate.)

He doesn’t want to hurt his family, and there being a big huge physical trigger all of a sudden in the form of this prison he wasn’t ever told about has clearly made him realize that, oh shit, this could be bad. Bad for himself, and thus bad for others.

[proximacalamity]

Venom: The Last Dance thoughts/word vomit. TL;DR: it could've been good but...

spoilers under the cut, duh

I didn't even expect much because at the end of the day I know what we're dealing with here but I was still disappointed.

I knew they wouldn't kiss (again) and we all knew they would be separated at the end but damn... It was done in such a bland way. And their relationship kinda takes a backseat to the whole Knull shit which like... I'm gonna be so real, I hate that they tried to win over the average MCU watcher with the introduction of Knull and teasing the plot surrounding him. I was worried when the marketing was hinting at the involvement of that plotline and I was right to be. It was stupid and pointless.

Like, I'm sorry but at this point you have to realize these movies are not pulling in the people who want this convoluted plot bullshit because they think these movies are shit (and they are, but it's good shit! or they can be!) AND most importantly: this is the last fucking movie bro. There will be no more. Why "tease" Knull when clearly the most important thing this movie should be focusing on is the relationship between Eddie and the symbiote and how it's coming to an end? How they need each other so much but they get separated? Eddie spends the whole movie in a mood and bitching to the symbiote so that when they actually get separated I almost even expected him to be relieved to be rid of the symbiote. They get so few moments where it feels like if they got separated it would actually affect Eddie emotionally that the last moment feels cheap and dull (the fucking maroon 5 song doesn't help, though it did get me to laugh) contrast that with the endless endearing stuff the symbiote tells Eddie like the scene in the van. Like seriously I think Eddie was more affected back in the first movie when the symbiote saved him than here, I'm not joking. Eddie should've been way more torn over the fact that the symbiote is gone, not just an "I miss you" and some slightly sad expression (like sorry Tom but c'mon the love of Eddie's life just died saving him...give us a bit more please)

Like, for these movies I can forgive how they're really mediocre in almost every aspect that would make a movie good, I can forgive it because tbh Venom for me is just about silly fun and the first two movies have that in spades. I don't need them to be good. But this? It's just not that fun? It takes itself seriously where it should be funny and it jokes around when it should be more serious. Like the whole bits with the scientists and the military guy is soooo not interesting, I do not care, please let's go back to Eddie and the symbiote.

The worst bit is that there are some scenes where it feels like with just a few small tweaks, the relationship between the two improves so much more. Like in the van, in the casino, in Ms. Chen's room (this one felt like it a bunch was left out to be fair) or during their final fucking scene in the helicopter where there definitely should've been an I love you!!! (They cut it from the last movie, why not put it here?) The scene after where the symbiote spits Eddie out to save him and extended a limb, with Eddie thinking it was coming to touch his hand but instead it goes to shield him from harm, we needed more shit like that!!!

This movie more than the other two should've been the stupidest, most absurd romcom ever with a tragic ending, because truly the symbiote dying is not a problem. The problem is that it doesn't give their relationship the work it deserves and instead it tries to be ohhh serious, ooohhhh Knull can't be released, ooohhhh he's coming and it's shit and no one cares.

In conclusion 2/10 there was not enough romcom weird gay shit and no alien mpreg (I'll just go read the Costa run again and pull up ao3 for some REAL Venom)

[osarina]

honestly the most tragic relationship in civzai/pmreader universe is yosano & reader and i will stand on that hill forever.

like originally i was thinking maybe they only rarely interacted while on tokoyami island, but the more that i thought about it, the more i realized that they probably did interact frequently. mori would've wanted his "immortal regiment" as soon as possible and to have it perfected, he needed reader's ability to be able to "heal" the soldiers' minds. so mori would've likely had yosano try to help her figure out how to work her ability. they would have been friendly enough with each other, the only two young girls in the warzone, both dragged into this war in some manner or another, yosano probably saw her as a younger sister tbh being 3 years older, wanted to help her as best as she could.

and then mori does mori things. when yosano's help doesn't give him the progress he needs, he starts using other tactics to try to get her to develop her ability in the way he needs. starts comparing her to yosano, starts holding her place at his side over her head, threatens to send her back if she can't be useful. all things that a kid in her situation would be terrified of.

and like you guys have to understand pmreader does NOT have a reliable narration of those years. like we'll see it in the canonverse & the civzai verse (which is actually what stemmed this post), but her memories of those years are very warped courtesy of trauma & mori's manipulation. it all happens directly after she watches her entire village slaughtered in the crossfires of the great war so she's already very unstable, and mori gets in her head VERY quickly.

so she thinks back to these years and can only remember the threats of being dropped back off in the ruins of her village & the way mori held yosano as a type of idealized figure that she'd never be able to catch up to no matter how hard she tried. "be more useful like yosano and you can keep your place here" and stuff like that. she doesn't have like ANY memory of the months yosano spent trying to help her figure out her ability, doesn't remember how she would sit with her for hours and tell her that she's making good progress even when mori would give that disappointed frown, doesn't remember anything because its all been warped and twisted by moris' constant threats and comparison. so naturally she becomes resentful and hateful about it.

meanwhile, poor yosano only remembers the 7/8 year old girl she tried & failed to help, couldn't do anything when mori separated them and turned reader against yosano. yosano got off of the warfront and out from under mori's thumb, but reader didn't, and yosano has had so much guilt over it for years, living in the what ifs and wondering what ever happened to her.

and obviously mori's manipulations of reader never stopped after that—probably gets worse, even, because he would lament losing yosano while keeping reader, would've preferred the opposite. so when reader and yosano meet again years later, reader immediately rejects and spurns her, and yosano is just soooo distraught over it like the one person that could rlly truly fully understand her rejecting her in such a manner HURTS. hurts even more when she sees how reader has turned out so similar to mori bc she still remembers her as the kid she was and failed to protect.

i suppose while we're on the topic - i always get a lot of questions about reader and mori's relationship. dazai kind of mentions it in 'i laugh like me again,' but reader has like undying loyalty toward him that he definitely doesn't deserve. as shitty of one as he is, he's the only father figure she remembers, she still feels like she owes him her life for rescuing her from the warzone and has a VERY intense complex of trying to make him proud of her. i wouldn't say that mori doesn't care about her, he does in his own way, but whatever feelings he does have for her are overshadowed by his ambitions.

anyway tldr: yosano and reader are tragic, and mori is a cunt. i feel like im missing stuff concerning reader's and mori's relationship but that wasn't the point of this post anyway maybe ill make it its own post

[bloomeng]

I see you’re planning magical girl designs for at least the superfam in addition to the bats and I’m extremely hyped for that. But wouldn’t it be funny if in the au only the bats were magical girls. Like it’s not a thing superheroes do (green lanterns insist what they do is totally different). You see a guy do a magical girl transformation to fight you and expect magic from all the lightshow, but the guy just becomes vaguely cuter and hits you with a giant hammer

Exactlyyyyy so I do think that the batfam retains their “hardly ever seen by the public” thing going on meaning most of the time they transform out of sight. We’re operating under sailor moon logic where it’s like low levels of hypnosis at play so that people don’t recognize them in costume. Even with that in place Bruce still opts for a mask and tries to get the kids to wear them too but they compromise by transforming out of sight.

Even though I am including the superfam etc. the batfam are still the only traditional magical girl group. Specifically the bats are the only group that has to physically transform. The speedsters will be the closest to the bats but not quite the same. But the superfam and wonderfam (tbh I don’t think wonder woman herself would bother with it but other members perhaps) are just emulating the style.

I like to think that it’s only humans that can transform. However, because the lanterns are an alien organization it’s different so GL is really operating on technicalities. Like “just because I’m a human who uses an accessory to gain powers and put on a uniform doesn’t mean I’m the same. It’s totally different.”

I do think it would be funny if only the bats had the actual magical girl aesthetic, however it tragically flies in the face of my og piece where I drew Tim and Kon.

[heartrender6]

most of the kuwei hate in this fandom is absolutely racially motivated and most of it is probably subconscious but i NEED to talk about this.

and not because i think people r thinking "i hate kuwei!! he's asian and i hate asians!!" tbh most anti asian racism on the internet goes way deeper than that.

basically, what i believe to be the most prominent type of racism against asians, especially on the internet, is stereotyping. specifically "uwu-ification." the east asian entertainment industry likes to paint asian people as cute, submissive and sweet because it markets disturbingly well to american audiences, and whether people mean to or not, they internalize it and it affects the way they think of asian people as a whole. This mostly happens to east and southeast asian women, but definitely a lot with men too, especially in more recent years with the whole yaoi culture thing (i fucking hated typing that) becoming more popular. simply put, it's fetishization.

so how does this relate to kuwei? well, when kuwei is introduced to us, and im not gonna dance around it— he is pretty stereotypically asian. he's shy, innocent, small, good at math/science and— you guessed it— no speaka engrish. leigh bardugo lays the perfect trap for fandom white girl weeaboos to gush over this guy. once i came across a modern au where kuwei's whole northern chinese-mongolian ass is a "shy japanese transfer student." i really wish i was making this up.

but then we find out that kuwei is actually a conniving little shit who is really quite terrible at science and spends all day making shitty drawings of his crush instead of doing math or wtv. The turning point where we are told this is the jesper kiss. This is the point where we find out kuwei is not the yaoi uwu baby we thought he was. and how does fuckin 2/3 of the fandom react?? hate. instant hate. If you search "i hate kuwei" on twitter there are tweets both defending and attacking him, but there is significantly more of the latter.

most of them claim to hate him for kissing jesper but like... jesper kissed him. He doesn't say anything because, in his own words, "we're all probably going to die anyway." does no one see how tragic that is?? he let his first (probably) kiss be taken by someone who he knew didn't even like him because he thought it would be the only one he'd ever get.

and yet the only thing people see is that he "got in the way" of wesper and he's evil. throughout the series kuwei is given no agency, and that's the point of his character. everyone on the planet treats him as a weapon or a bargaining chip. he gets tossed around like a rag doll and to white (or otherwise not asian) audiences, that makes him the perfect picture of a little asian cutie i almost vomited typing that holy shit. but the moments where he takes something for himself— insisting on going to ravka, kissing jesper back— that's what makes people hate him. and don't even get me started on the way people project their hatred onto the other crows, especially wylan. yall will act like wylan loathes kuwei with all his being. he doesn't!! wylan is not a hateful person and he always defends kuwei!! but nooo, kuwei sucks and he deserves it for daring to be a person instead of an idea.

and hey?? guess what?? kuwei was NEVER in the way of wesper. there was no love triangle. narratively speaking, there was never any threat that kuwei would end up with jesper instead of wylan. never ever. the kiss was literally only put there to create drama for wylan and jesper. we never even hear how kuwei feels about it. stop using that as an excuse to hate on kuwei when we can all see it's because you're subconsciously mad at an asian person not being nice.

also disliking kuwei does not automatically make you racist, im just saying a lot of hatred towards kuwei is rooted in racism.

tagging my fellow aapi moots (that i know of) because i wanna hear yalls thoughts on this! @hauntedacousticversiontv @dramaqueentruther

[tanoraqui]

Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: Marcille Takes Charge!

You know what, this is actually a very fair answer to my earlier question of "why couldn't the ancients just kill the demon?" Points to you again, Ms. Kui.

Truly I can't wait to see, like, every single Mithrun fight scene in the anime. The whole First Floor Incident is presumably going to be Episode 1 of Season 2, and I'm sooo excited.

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At first, I thought the Lion was being snarky here, but in retrospect, knowing its whole story and nature, I think it genuinely is just fond of all its former dungeon lords. What wonderful meals they gave it!

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That said, the Lion DOES have enough personality to Judge Marcille for her aesthetic choices; and I think that's beautiful :) <3

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MARCILLE, NO! You're showing how corrupted you've become/how you were never suited to this role in the first place by acting directly contrary to explicitly stated themes of the story!

There is, however, something very satisfyingly country-ruling foreshadowy about Laios (and Kabru!) looking down at all of this spread out, though.

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It IS painful watching Kabru try desperately to play both sides, keeping Laios safe from the Canaries without letting him go side with Marcille. Bud, I'm sorry but you HAVE lost control of this situation. And Laios is smart enough to have put everything together about what happened while he was unconscious, even when you deliberately didn't tell him.

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[whispering sternly to myself] It's not fealty. It's NOT fealty. It's the start of a beautiful best-friendship which just so happens to include 1 guy looking at another guy and deciding that yeah, he has good potential to fill the king-shaped hole that guy #1 has been searching to fill - but just, like, on principle; genuinely NOT for any personal emotional need. The best-friendship is a completely unrelated emotional need. The ONLY fealting in this story is, so far as I can tell, between Shuro and his ninja squad, because they're from a completely different culture and, tbh, genre of anime.

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But Laios, conversation is his means and mode! His sword and shield! If he can't talk it out, how is he possibly going to convince you to do anything, including save the world and be his friend?!

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God I love this. It's this perfect combination of "You are my polar opposite; you love the thing (monsters) that I'm terrified of, and I want to know how so I can do that, too, because I'm so tired of terror" and "You love a thing (monsters), understanding it to the point of being very good at killing it, the same way I love a different thing (people); we are the same and I just want you to recognize that like I do so we can happily vibrate on the same frequency forever."

It's very tragic-funny that Kabru genuinely try to introduce himself to Laios in a normal way, before resorting to taking his entire party to stalk him to dangerous levels of the dungeon and eating monsters. It's not his fault that Laios is completely immune to small talk.

I DO think that every pair (or throuple, etc) of narrative foils in every piece of media ever should at least try making out. At a certain point of narrative foiling, you might as well, you know?

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Note: Pattadol says she's "reporting" to Flamela, indicating that she's subordinate within the greater Canary structure even though she's 2nd in command of the most superior hunting party.

Also, it seems that the Canaries we know, the senior-most party, are genuinely the badassest of the badass and meant primarily for advanced dungeons including confronting dungeon lords and the demon directly. Tier-3 groups have less experienced guards, maybe criminals as well, and go on more scouting-type missions with no serious combat expected.

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She's not wrong, she's just a jerk about it!

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I get where the elves are coming from, I do. It's impossible to tell people people that there's a demon underground who'll grant their every wish while also communicating the dangers of this sufficiently that nobody goes searching for it. Even we the reader, don't entirely understand how bad it can get, how fast, until we watch Marcille do All Of That under the demon's active influence.

HOWEVER, it IS human nature to respond to this sort of thing with "well I/my friend won't go insane." There's gotta be a compromise wherein at SOME POINT far down the 'everything is going wrong in this dungeon' line, they just fucking tell people. They at least TRY. Otherwise they're just rolling their eyes at the short-lived races dangerous ignorance while actively refusing to reduce that ignorance.

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Again: Shuro is living in a slightly different, much cooler genre of manga than the rest of us. Also:

TEAM TOUDEN LET'S GOOO!!

The best part of this is that earlier, when our heroes were trying to figure out who might help them eat Falin's dragon half, I was like, 'hmm...they liked you, sure, but eating dragons is pretty weird...'

But now we are outright ALLYING AGAINST THE ELVES!

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Lmao. Classic adventuring party members, baffling NPCs as a team.

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oh this is cruel. this isn't fair.

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boys, focus.

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the comedic timing...

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lookit, that 30 seconds of desperate verbal flailing actually did help! Kinda!

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yeah, I DO really like that everyone looks to Chilchuck for his opinion on Marcille's 'make everyone live to 10,000' plan, as the guy with the shortest present lifespan and also the most age-wise of all of them.

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I Do Not Like This Visual. I Do Not Like the disproportionately large lion with human arms and hands shoving himself out of this book.

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Not to be pedantic, but I think if you're trying to entice a team of people into doing your will by calling out each of their individual strengths, I think you shouldn't make 2 of them as repetitive as "curiosity" and "inquisitive mind." That's not really what Senshi is bringing to the table anyway - I'd say "care" or maybe "sense of balance." Also, sorry Izutsumi but how tf is her "wildness" contributing to this mission?

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oh, Marcille, no...

[chaifootsteps]

while it's nice to see Vivzie finally acknowledge Stella is worthy of pity 'in her own way' (something about the phrasing on that tweet rubs me the wrong way tbh, feels like they're implying her pain is like less important or valid or something? might just be me) it's kind of frustrating to see the end of the tweet say 'that doesn't absolve her of the pain she's caused', because like

I haven't seen many people making that argument, tbh?

like sure there are Stella stans who unironically say she was in the right to order a hit on him and it's fair retribution, but I don't think they're the majority

the majority of fans & former fans I've seen are just frustrated at how much of a caricature Stella is; as a portrait of an abuser she's incredibly poorly done and as an intended Hate Sink with no redeeming qualities she's frustrating because her backstory is just as tragic as Stolas', arguably more so because she has way less power & social mobility than him yet we're supposed to treat her like an irreedemable monster because the writers decided she was evil since birth.

I don't pity her because I like her or because I excuse anything she's said or done to Stolas. I pity her because I look at her backstory and can easily imagine how much of a nightmare her life is & how the fandom only ever seems to consider the 'arranged marriage' part of it and not the laundry list of other things that are awful about Stella's life. And I pity her because she reminds me of people IRL - mostly women - who are stuck in awful circumstances then are victimized twice by people who, if they even recognize the circumstances are bad, don't care about how that influences the person they currently are or why they behave in ways that seem inexplicable to us

for example the whole Stella likes throwing parties thing. we're obviously supposed to take it as a sign she's vapid and shallow, but what else is she supposed to do? at least if she throws parties misery can have company & her friends can visit. We see Stolas make fun of her for not knowing how to spell, but was she ever expected to be literate or allowed to have interests outside of raising a child she didn't want? the show just doesn't care to answer what society looks like for someone in her position. her interests only matter insofar as they provide a vector for the viewer to hate her some more

(going back to the recent discussions around MLP it's so noticeable they went out of their way to avoid 'stereotypical feminine interest = worthy of scorn' by having Rarity & Pinkie's interests be fashion and parties and the rest of the cast being chill about that even if they don't share that enthusiasm)

I know there are some proposed fix it scenarios in your inbox that often throw in 'and then Striker kills Stolas' as a closer but like even those don't sound like they approve of Stella or anything she does. far as I can tell they just hate Stolas and are tired of him because the show keeps insisting he's a perfect angel who never means to hurt anyone so that makes it OK. there's no chance of getting any catharsis seeing Blitzo or anyone else stand up to him, so we have to imagine it. It's even more galling considering Stella keeps most of her ire focused on Stolas whereas Stolas is exploiting and gaslighting a member of the lower classes. I mean at least Stella seems to have no delusions about who or what she is, she knows she's being awful and she revels in it. Stolas meanwhile is in total delusion about who he is and what he's done & the show is running out of chances to fix that

so like yeah, nothing Stella has suffered absolves her of her treatment of Stolas. But that exact logic applies to Stolas, too, yet the show wants us to show him more than pity - it expects us to like and empathize with him while he frees Blitzo from sexual slavery mainly because he feels entitled to love & affection that he's not getting and was never owed

That's what it boils down to, really. Stella's not allowed a free pass, while Stolas is allowed to hurt whoever he wants for any reason.

[dreamii-krybaby]

“Doll death was so unfair! She had a plot going on and they cut her out just like that!”

Don’t you ever think….that is the point?…

That’s the tragedy of Doll’s death

She did so many fucked up shit to get to her goal only for the literal Anti-Christ to show up and end her. Even deeming her worthless

That’s the whole theme of her character, that’s the whole theme regarding her family! Its the injustice & tragedy, and worthlessness of your actions

It’s supposed to be unfair and tragic! Just like most characters in the show

No one is going to miss her because she dug her own grave, she rejected every chance of redemption until she was literally dying. She literally left Uzi to die just to get the patch.

And she kinda did cross the line when she just decides to sacrifice a bunch of her classmates for her revenge plan that didn’t even work. And she could have definitely come up with something that didn’t require- you know, innocent people?

THE ONLY thing I didn’t like about Doll’s death is that she didn’t really do much to defend herself?… tho you could that Cyn’s attack on Doll was left short to maybe leave the viewer imagine what shit went down? But tbh, I preferred if they extend their fight.

[aspoonofsugar]

can I ask your thoughts on the direction oshi no ko has gone?

Hi!

I personally dislike it. It feels like tragedy for the sake of gloom rather than catharsis. It is an ending that de-powers everyone's arc really.

Aqua is the only one who gets a complete arc, even if negative. He has a tragic arc and fails to have a positive development. He literally dies idolizing Ruby in juxtaposition to Kamiki, who dies idolizing Ai. Narratively, it makes sense for him to die, as he kills his shadow (Kamiki), but I would argue it does not really work for the story as a whole. And that is because the overall themes and the other protagonists' character arcs are all sacrificed for this negative outcome.

Ruby does not get to solve her feelings for Sensei/Aqua and is stuck in yet another tragedy. I don't know how her arc will be solved. Probably in a bittersweet and yet positive way, but here comes the thing. I don't think it is believable psychologically speaking. Ruby grew a lot, but she is still defined by the loss of sensei and AI. Nothing in the narrative happened to make me believe she would not react very very badly to Aqua's death tbh. We'll see.

Akane failed her objective to help Aqua and repay him. As a result, her development up until this point does not get any catharsis nor resolution. It literally goes nowhere.

Kana is worse than ever. She did not get to properly convey her feelings for Aqua and she went from being the tritagonist to being a character, who quietly disappears in the background, in what is ironically an echo of her acting career.

Finally, Ai's death finds no thematic resolution and her two final wishes are not fulfilled. Not only her children do not manage to save Hikaru, but one of them even dies himself.

All in all it feels like the story set up a plot with specific roles for each character to fulfill and then decided not to have them fulfill them for the sake of drama, rather than theme. I also personally disliked we spent so much time in Aqua's head as he arrived about a self-realization about his identity and that the climax was all about it... That was never truly the point of his character nor the series. The focus of the story isn't if Aqua and Ruby are Aqua and Ruby or Goro and Sarina. The point is that they get a second chance at living, so they can solve their complexes. Aqua even lampshades this, before the climax.

Now, I like well written tragedies, but I don't think the series is written as a tragedy really. The structure sets up positive arcs until the end of the movie arc, where you can see the author started changing the order of things, so that it could end in tragedy. So, there was the fake good ending, which was positive, but very weak. And then, there was a twist, so that a more powerful, but negative ending could be delivered. Except, I would have preferred the positive ending with the struggle of the tragic one :''') Especially because I really think it would have been the most powerful one possible for this series.

Anyway, there are still a couple of chapters left, I think. So, we will see the denouement. That said, I think the series lost its power in the final arc, which is a pity cause up until that point it was excellent. Like, the Dark Ruby's arc is one of my favorite arcs ever. I reread it some weeks ago and I cried a lot. That is the kind of power I was expecting in the finale, but instead we got a theme attached on the story at the last minute and a forced twist. It isn't one of the worst ending ever (especially if you read the series and the chapters all together probably), but it is definitely below the level of writing this story had. These are just my two cents of course :)