#the plot necessitates people to be stupid

[meliohy]

I'm reading too many transmigration/reincarnation webcomics so here are some random plot ideas:

- I got transmigrated in a shonen/adventure novel but all I want is to seduce the main character/villain/mentor/some character. With the power of this sword I stole found, I will make sure my beloved character can take a break from their quest to get lovey dovey with me

- I got reincarned into a fantasy romance novel but I'm not interested in the male lead, or the second male lead, or anyone else because I'm aroace. I'd rather worry about the upcoming war and other catastrophes that are used as plot points. Now let's go on a quest to gather cool powers to survive all that

- I got transmigrated in a fantasy world and met a handsome Duke who took me to his manor. But he's married! And his terrifying wife is stalking me! She must fear I might become her husband's mistress. How will I survive?? (Or How I became the mistress of the Duke AND the Duchess)

- My favorite character ever (who is terribly underrated!) went through a tragic arc where he had to betray the main character because of his tragic backstory. It obviously backfired on him and he got cast away from the main group and disappeared form the story. But after so many chapters without him, he finally appeared again in the latest released one! We learn that he went through many hardships and is in a tight spot, and is desperately trying to do a summoning to get help and... I just got summoned to another world by my favorite character??

- I love stories set in medieval worlds because drama between nobles is fun but now that I've been reincarnated as a prince(ss) I can't ignore my anti-monarchist believes. My goal is now to get rid of monarchy and change this medieval fantasy world into a solarpunk utopia

[welcometothejianghu]

Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: 沙海/Tomb of the Sea/Sand Sea.

Sand Sea is the 2018 installment of the DMBJ/Lost Tomb franchise, which tells the story of the search for an ancient desert city, a fight against a secretive assassin family, the raiding of more than a couple tombs, and a whole bunch of other action-packed bullshit.

Have you ever watched an anime adaptation that outran the as-yet-incomplete manga it was adapting, necessitating it throw together a largely befuddling ending based on the available clues? That's Sand Sea. At time of production, only ~75% of the Sand Sea novel had been written. As I am making this post, that's still all of the Sand Sea novel that has been written. I finished watching the show and had a lot of questions about its loose ends. I read the book. It didn't help.

So, I'm not going to try and summarize the story, much less try to sell you on the show on the strength of the plot. What I am going to try and do is convince you it's a good time anyway.

As I mentioned earlier, it's part of a larger franchise, but you shouldn't let that stop you from diving in here. Most of the DMBJ shows and books are narrated by Wu Xie, the series' special little birthday boy. Sand Sea takes a different tack -- your main POV characters are completely new to the world of the tombs, meaning that the show explains things to you while it's explaining things to them. Wu Xie's still a major character, but you're seeing him through the eyes of a befuddled teenager who wasn't even supposed to be here today.

I'm going to give you five reasons to watch this series, and all five of them are relationships. I'm pitching it to you this way because, as was the case in my rec for Reunion (one of the other tomb-raiding dramas), I'm assuming you have zero familiarity with DMBJ, which means that any appeals to the larger franchise or its twists and turns will have no impact. Instead, I am here to sell this to you on the strength of character interactions. If you're interested in what the characters are doing, the plot will come.

1. Dudes Rock

The aforementioned teenager narrator is Li Cu, a too-cool-for-school underachiever who lives with his abusive father and has no direction in life. He comes with his two best (and only) friends: earnest pushover Su Wan and neighborhood bully Yang Hao.

They're a trio of problem children who cannot succeed by the metrics of society at large: Li Cu and Yang Hao are both from family circumstances that have hampered their ability to perform academically, while Su Wan, bless his heart, is just not that bright. They do, however, all do well when put in situations that play to their strengths and given appropriate mentorship. (Alas that all of their mentors are terrible people; see point 4.)

They're set up as an intentional next-generation parallel to the Iron Triangle, which is the term DMBJ uses for Wu Xie and his two closest people. Normally, the Iron Triangle would be the core of a DMBJ story -- but since that threesome is broken by Circumstances at the moment, these boys become the substitute triad whose friendship is one of the main bonds holding the narrative together.

They have such teenage boy dynamics, it's great. They're stupid about girls and alcohol and money and homework and all the other things teen boys are stupid about, while also being stupid enough to get themselves entangled in shadowy international conspiracies. Huge parts of the plot are fueled entirely by their dumbass decisions. But they also barely have any competent adult supervision in their lives, so you know, when you're seventeen and basically feral, renting a warehouse so you can beat a bunch of frozen snakes to death actually sounds like a good solution to the problem at the time.

It's not all comedy, though. Li Cu and Yang Hao in particular are deeply traumatized young men even before the story starts, and events of the series make it worse. They're definitely the "feelings are for girls!" type of young men, and they need Su Wan there as their eternally bippy buffer. When he's not, they can get mean.

What's also charming about this trio is that they're all pretty darn straight. In a franchise chock full of (unintentional?) homoeroticism, these three manage to keep their platonic dude dynamics pretty platonic. I mean, I myself come at most things with slash-colored glasses on, and even I'm of the opinon that they're befuddled heterosexuals struggling with how the entire tomb-raiding industry's gay. And even if you assume everyone in this entire show is straight, these boys are still going to get a bunch of real-time lessons in how to love other people, whether they like it or not!

So if you like a Teen Boy Squad of goobers who don't want to admit they're close or have emotions or anything like that, right up until they're all each other have, this may be just the thing for you.

2. The Only Good Het in the Tombs

DMBJ is not known for its high-quality heterosexual romance, to put it mildly. Most of the time, it makes the smart decision to not even try. When it does, you mostly wish it hadn't.

Therefore, you cannot imagine how shocked I was to find myself falling head-over-heels for the incredibly weird canonical love story between horny hot mess Dr. Liang Wan and emotionally constipated 80-year-old virgin and arsonist Zhang Rishan.

Their relationship goes a little something like this: He needs something from her, so he contrives a plan to ask her out. She declares him her boyfriend. He continues the relationship in order to continue getting things from her. She thinks he's hot, so she's fine with that. He warns her that continuing their relationship will involve messing with some very bad members of the Tomb-Raiding Industrial Complex. She's like, again, you're incredibly hot, so that's not a problem. He makes her memorize maps and sends her to a desert. She dresses up like him and pepper-sprays him. And somewhere in the midst of all that, he falls for her and she gets sick of his shit, and they wind up for-real dating as equals.

Part of what's so delightful about their relationship is how awful they are to one another. It'd be bad if that awfulness were one-sided, but man, they each give as good as they get. He's heartless and exploitative, and she's neurotic and insecure. She makes constant demands of him that he's almost too confused by to refuse, and he keeps putting her in situations no sane person should want to be part of. He comes from a cutthroat world of complete bastards, while she wears her heart on her sleeve whether she wants to or not. They're extremely good for one another, because he trusts her competencies and is going to make her demonstrate every one of them, while one of her chief skills is calling him on his bullshit.

It is at this point I need to sing the praises of Liang Wan, hottest of the hot messes. She's one of the principal POV characters for the novel, where she's just as boy-crazy (though for a different boy, because Zhang Rishan's not in this book) and just as far in over her head. The adaptation has absolutely done her character justice. What makes Liang Wan so charming to me is how much she absolutely refuses to let herself be stopped by being completely out of her depth. She doesn't know what the hell is going on most of the time, but fuck it, she's rolling with it. She's just also going to be applying moisturizer and anti-aging serum the entire time, because you know what, sometimes when your whole world is falling apart around you, the one thing you can count on is your skincare routine.

Zhang Rishan is surrounded by people so cool, butter doesn't melt in their mouths. He can be balls-out naked in front of them without batting an eyelash. It is her thirsty disaster charms alone that have set fire to his frozen heart. I love them to bits.

3. Enemies to ... ???

This is Sand Sea's Wu Xie. You're not going to like him at first, because he spends the first several episodes tormenting a teen who only mildly seems to deserve it. What you find out as the show goes on is that Wu Xie is having a bad time -- more than that, he's having a straight-up bad decade. He has taken a lot of psychic damage and decided to cope with it by being absolutely insane. He's a bitch with no sense of self-preservation living in constant gremlin mode. He is no longer under the active supervision of his husbands, and he's going to make that everyone else's problem.

The show chooses to start out by inflicting Wu Xie on a bunch of strangers through an arc that's bizarre, lengthy, and mostly completely unrelated to the larger plot. It does introduce a few elements that will matter, though, and one of them is Su Nan.

When Su Nan appeared as the badass head of a mercenary outfit, I was braced for one (or both) of two things to happen. Thing one, I figured she'd die or otherwise leave the narrative after the first arc, which made me not want to get attached to her, if she wasn't going to stick around. Thing two, I was all but certain the show was going to try and make her Wu Xie's love interest, which made me make such a face, because [see last point].

Neither happens. Su Nan is still around in the final episode, and what she becomes to Wu Xie is much, much more interesting.

They're not friends. They're never friends. They can't be friends, because they absolutely can't trust one another. Except sometimes they have to trust one another, and in return they have to allow themselves to be trustworthy.

In the last relevant chapter or so of the novel, Wu Xie gets his throat cut and shoved off a cliff ... and because the novel isn't finished, we have no idea why that happened or who did it. The drama decides that when he goes over that cliff this time, throat unslit, Su Nan needs to go with him. This means they spend much of the later part of the series depending on one another for survival, getting real vulnerable, sharing trauma, and occasionally fucking one another over anyway, because they are both bad and untrustworthy people.

And they're ... kinda into one another? But because it's not textual, it winds up being great. If the show had tried to write their romance, I would have hated it. Instead, it chooses to leave things fraught and unspecified, with the two of them obviously having a lot of feelings but not even knowing themselves what all those feelings are, much less how to react appropriately to them. That is delicious. Pour that right into my mouth.

I also choose to interpret Su Nan as being transfemme (complimentary), if only because that's the most charitable explanation for her dedication to keeping her tits out and her lipstick game sharp even in wilderness conditions.

4. This Man Should Not Be Trusted With Children

As I mentioned before, all members of the Teen Boy Squad wind up paired with adult men who act as their mentors. Li Cu and Wu Xie are the main duo, since they're the main character of this show and the main character of the entire franchise, respectively. Yang Hao winds up in an even more abusive dynamic with a bitch of a man who takes advantage of Yang Hao's capacity for rage. But precious baby Su Wan is lucky enough to be adopted by, well...

If you read my rec for Reunion, you will recognize him as the guy I called "this giant fucking loser" with all the affection in the world. Hei Xiazi is both the worst and the best, which makes him the perfect man to take care of the tender soul that is Su Wan.

Su Wan's a poor little rich boy who is happy to be bullied by his friends, because it means he has friends! He's a dipshit because he's sheltered by his family wealth, and he's also a dipshit because he'd be a dipshit no matter how much money he had. He needs someone to kick his ass in a way that builds him back up again and helps him make the transition from doormat to functional adult.

The circumstances that bring these two together are so batshit, they're not worth recounting here. Suffice it to say that as one adventure arc ends, Hei Xiazi is tasked with taking Su Wan home. Su Wan expresses interest in whatever Hei Xiazi's whole deal is, and Hei Xiazi responds by offering (in a roundabout way) lessons in what exactly his whole deal is.

Hei Xiazi is a terrible teacher, but he's a perfect teacher for Su Wan, who is the kind of boy who would go find the nearest dictionary if you told him the word "gullible" wasn't there. They're preciously weird at one another. The work so well together because Su Wan believes the best of everything, which leads him to see right past the parts of Hei Xiazi that other people (correctly) find inscrutable and offputting. With Hei Xiazi's questionable guidance, Su Wan finds for the first time in his naive, privileged life a goal for himself that is both achievable and worth the effort.

Later books give evidence that all three of the boys eventually go to work for Hei Xiazi, which I think is great, especially since he is somehow the least toxic and terrible of all the mentor characters. ...Man, though, that bar is low. It's a miracle anyone in DMBJ survives into adulthood.

It's also cute to think about how the boys are no doubt context-appropriately homophobic, because it's so easy to picture their respective reactions to finding out that their strong, terrible male role models are queer. Cue Li Ci and Yang Hao's respective no-homo freakouts, while Su Wan just has a million slightly offensive but ultimately well-meaning questions about how bisexuality works.

And I'm just going to say, if you watched the Untamed and loved Xue Yang? You owe it to yourself to see that actor suddenly become the sweetest little butterscotch muffin ever. ...Yes, if you didn't recognize him earlier, that's Wang Haoxuan, and he turns in an incredible comic performance here. Su Wan is consistently one of the funniest characters onscreen. The bit with the saxaphone kills me dead.

Anyway, unlike the first three relationships I've talked about here, this is one you have to wait a good long while for. Su Wan shows up in the first episode, Hei Xiazi appears about a dozen or so episodes later, but it takes their storylines much longer to cross. It's worth the wait, though, knowing that eventually you'll get to see these two weirdos bounce merrily off one another.

5. Everybody Loves Pangzi

This is the Iron Triangle I mentioned earlier. Obviously there's Wu Xie in the middle. The perfect boy in the hoodie is Xiao Ge, who is at the time of this series slightly stuck in what's basically a giant time-lock safe, so you're only ever going to see him in flashbacks. (Xiao Ge is trapped, so you can't have Xiao Ge.) And then, over there on the left is the man whose nickname translates to "fatty," Wang Pangzi.

Hold on to your butts, because I am now going to wax poetic about how much I love this fictional man.

Pangzi is the best. The best. He's funny. He's kind. He's got terrible taste in men and only slightly less terrible taste in women. He's a gentleman. He's the party shock absorber. He's prone to making things explode. He's impeccably dressed. He's charmingly superstitious. He's not subtle. He's got an excitable little stammer and an atrocious Beijing accent. He's a flexible fat man. He's the most fuckable person onscreen no matter who's onscreen with him.

He's also usually the DMBJ everyman character, except Sand Sea has a ton of everyman characters for a change, so he winds up filling the role of a badass insider instead. His job is basically to hold down the fort while Xiao Ge's indisposed and Wu Xie's off being insane. In the absence of both his beloveds, Pangzi's going to do what needs to be done, and he's going to be incredibly hot while he's doing it.

Usually, DMBJ shows serve up a huge amount of Pangzi and Wu Xie interaction. Sand Sea only puts them in the same room near the very end -- but they're collaborating throughout. In fact, the only way the whole story works is if they're basically so much in each other's back pockets that they can function as a single unit even across great distances. The record will show that I read them as husbands -- but more importantly, they're good friends who understand and trust one another completely. As much as it pains me that they're apart for basically the entire thing, they're never really apart, you know?

However, because Wu Xie is physically elsewhere for so much of the show, Sand Sea provides a unique chance to see Pangzi interacting on his own with other characters. Wu Xie is the special little boy who always takes up all the oxygen in the room -- and of course Pangzi doesn't begrudge him this, because Pangzi loves him. Without Wu Xie around, though, we get to watch all the other relationships Pangzi has cultivated over the years.

One of the best is with Xie Yuchen, a.k.a. Xiao Hua. In other series, we see the two interact, but only in the context of having Wu Xie around. Sand Sea presents us with a little window into what is clearly a longstanding friendship. From the tiny bit we get of their interactions, it's obvious they hang out on a pretty regular basis. They're chilling and having spa dates while their husbands are out there getting sandy and fighting snakes, proving that these two urbanites are absolutely the brains of their respective marriages.

...Hold up a second,

I hear you say,

IS this show actually gay? Because you keep using words like "husbands" and talking like it's intentionally, onscreen, boys-kissing-boys gay.

On the one hand, no.

On the other hand: Is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid gay? Textually, taking it at face value, and especially considering the context in which it was made, no, it is absolutely not gay, nor was it meant to be gay. But when you step back and realize everything it's doing, you kind of can't avoid the really romantic implications. Maybe Butch and Sundance never smooch, maybe they don't even want to, but they're each other's other halves. We would instantly recognize what they are if one of them were a lady. In a narrative setting where gayness is unthinkable, nothing they can do can be gay, which loops around to making everything kinda gay, and ... look, I'm just saying, if Pangzi were a woman, we'd know immediately what she is to Wu Xie (and holy fuck she would be so hot). If Xiao Hua were as female as the opera characters he plays, we'd have no questions about her relationship to Hei Xiazi. Keep everything beat for beat, line for line the same, and there'd be no missing it.

This is something you get a lot with stories about men written by men, this unintentional homoeroticism from male authors who don't realize their misogyny has actually poisoned them against heterosexuality. Remember what I said earlier about DMBJ's regrettable het? So much of it stems from the assumption that getting a girl and a boy together will inevitably to romantic feelings from at least one of them, so there's no reason to bother spending time giving either of the participants any actual reasons to like one another. (Sand Sea does this too! Just with a character I haven't mentioned here, because I'm trying to talk about the good dynamics.) This kind of thinking treats women not as people, but as as basically interchangeable desirable objects. But men are people, which means the male characters' feelings are worth discussing in the narrative! So what you get is these well-developed, intimate relationships between men described in loving detail, sat right next to perfunctory heterosexual couplings -- and we're supposed to believe that one is romantic and one is not based solely on the genders of the participants? Yeah, no, I call bullshit.

And -- if you'll permit me to loop back to the boys for a minute -- we now have a model for how a straight Iron Triangle would behave, and it is not the way the actual Iron Triangle members are about one another. Those teens love one another in a way that is fierce and strong and not what Wu Xie, Pangzi, and Xiao Ge have going. Maybe it could become that, but it's not now. It's not better or worse now for being what it is, but it is different, and it makes by contrast some things very clear (and very queer).

So that is why I feel justified in referring to them as husbands and will continue to do so despite the lack of explicit textual support.

Anyway, back to Pangzi!

Where were we? Right, Xiuxiu!

Pangzi's always at his best when he gets to be a knight for someone he cares about. This time around, that's Huo Xiuxiu, who who only shows up after you've met several of her matriarchal family's other members, all of whom would be at home in a Tank Full Of Dangerous Ladies. Xiuxiu is not a fighter like they are, but she does have an object that means everyone's out to get her, and as such she relies on her Pangzi to keep her safe while she's trying to survive the fucked-up games her family is playing.

And Pangzi clearly loves it. He absolutely thrives on being the big brother/bruiser figure for her. He loves how cool it makes him look to her. He doesn't have Wu Xie around to be a tank for, so he's going to tank for her. In fact, he's even going to bring in reinforcements to help him do it. (What's the deal with the cute Tibetan boy? Look, shh, just appreciate that you've got a cute Tibetan boy.)

Then there's his dealings with the rest of the Tomb-Raiding Industrial Complex, who are a bunch of shady dudes with impressive family pedigrees and expensive suits, all of whom are trying to play twelve-dimensional chess with one another. There's going to be lots of names dropped, of families and of individuals, and the show is going to act like you're supposed to be impressed. And if you're familiar with DMBJ canon, yeah, you could be impressed! Or you could be like Pangzhi, who rolls up in his amazing Holstein shirt, not giving a single fuck what any of these rich bastards think about him.

This is actually some character development for Pangzi, who has in the past been cowed (pun unintended) by the wealthy, mostly due to his own financial situation. That stage of his life is over now. Honey badger has ceased to care. The cool, pretty people are going to try and give him shit, and he is impervious to it. You better believe the Iron Triangle trashed this fancy restaurant the last time they were in here, and if you give Pangzi half the chance, he'll fucking do it again.

No wonder Zhang Rishan likes him. A pair of little firestarters.

Don't let me oversell you on how much Pangzi is in Sand Sea, because he's not. There's maybe a dozen of the 52 episodes that have any Pangzi content, and he's only in small parts of those episodes. Pangzi is a rare and precious event, like an eclipse. Cherish the Pangzi moments and all the wonderful interactions contained within.

caveat: You call that an ending?

Buddy, if you'd seen how most other DMBJ series end, you wouldn't be asking me that. But because I'm assuming you haven't: Yes, I call that an ending, because it actually attempts to do a winddown and conclusion, instead of just wandering off on a cliffhanger. The ending isn't wholly satisfying, but it is an ending. There is a narrative, and that narrative concludes. Does the conclusion make sense and tie up all the loose ends? Absolutely not! But it does follow basic story structure and resolve the action semi-competently.

As I said about the sweet disaster that is Psych Hunter (which was also directed by the guy who did Sand Sea!), I think knowing in advance that an ending sucks makes the ending suck less. It removes the disappointment factor and lets you enjoy what is there, instead of making you grumpy about what isn't. No, you're never going to understand a lot of things. That means whatever you want to be true can be true. The book is unfinished. The series is nonsense. Canon has no hold on you. You are free.

As compensation, here's a picture of Xiao Ge without his shirt on.

Are you feeling like it's Tomb Time?

There are a couple places you can get this one! Try Viki, WeTV, this YouTube playlist (which is missing the first episode for some reason), or this YouTube playlist (which has the whole thing). Note that subtitles vary in quality from place to place. The YouTube versions also have the bizarre, amazing in-character commercials, and it's up to you if that's a plus or a minus for your viewing experience.

I love this bonkers show. It is balls-to-the-wall weird, to a point that will make you question the translation. I got to the part where Zhang Rishan explains that ancient people worshipped fish with snakes in their eyebrows, caught the fish, took out the snakes, and implanted the snakes in their own human eyebrows -- and I thought, surely that's not what he's actually saying. Nope! The subtitles are accurate. It's the show that's off its rocker.

Anyway, once you've watched Sand Sea, scroll down to the bottom of my rec post for Reunion and find out how you can get even deeper into said tombs! Trust me, there's a lot down here.

As those other posts would indicate, this would not be my first choice for how to get into DMBJ. It is, however, how a fair number of people have gotten into DMBJ, so what the hell do I know! Or maybe this post has convinced you that Sand Sea is worth watching, but you'd rather build up to it than go into it raw. That works too! Whenever you get to it, it'll be here: under a bunch of sand, tattooed and inexplicable, and extremely gay whether it knows it or not.

Go to the desert, they said. Find Gutongjing, they said. Solve the mystery, they said. Fuck it, we nap.

[tainbocuailnge]

the thing about everyone saying ffxiv story gets good in shadowbringers is that vibes-wise shadowbringers-endwalker is basically a different game than arr-stormblood, thematically it's all been talking about mostly the same shit the whole time but the tone and presentation is noticeably different before and after that breakpoint. the way I would put this difference is that after stormblood the game shifted from having material political stances with real-world analogues to talking about a more abstracted human condition, and so the later expansions could be tighter in execution because the game was no longer at odds with itself about whether it wanted to have politics or not.

i think it's notable that in terms of how present and involved the scions are it's not until shadowbringers and endwalker that they were actually consistently all there for most of the main story. in arr you mostly work with one or two at a time to get to know them, in heavensward most of them go MIA so you can focus on the expansion's protagonist alphinaud, in stormblood most of them get put on side errands or hospitalised so you can focus on the expansion's protagonist lyse, arguably wol doesn't even really become the protagonist instead of a supporting character on a plot-structural level until shadowbringers. this also correlates with shadowbringers introducing the duty support system, which on a gameplay level necessitated that a light party worth of scions accompany wol any time something is about to happen, so naturally this would have the story shift to be more of a "wol and the scions" thing than "one or two scions and wol" like it was before, together with the more general shift in tone.

so now many people associate "ffxiv being good" with "wol and the scions are there" even though an expansion having a focus character other than wol and only one or two scions present not only is nothing new but in heavensward it literally won awards. gamers love to feel like the most special princess in the world and to deepthroat shadowbringers as the only good thing in ffxiv so it makes sense that dawntrail moving away from wolcentrism back to the more supporting role that they've literally had for the majority of the game would make those gamers explode, and it makes sense that the writers saw coming from a mile away that those gamers would explode if they had the scions disband forreal and that's why they backtracked on that so embarrassingly, but it doesn't make it less stupid. wuk lamat is literally fine.

[kohakhearts]

im still pretty fresh out the psych ward so i have some pretty bad writers block as you can probably imagine however i have also been coping with my suicidal depression slash burn-out induced leave from work by watching shitty christmas romcoms. and im not at a point yet where i can Write the fic so bear with me while i just get the plot bunny hopping here. or whatever

so anyway im brainstorming all the sickening holiday tropes i can that i can feasibly put two guys who are in the most intense fake dating gay chicken relationship you can imagine before one of them breaks and goes ok you got me i actually liked it when you grabbed my ass and called me darling or whatever. obviously it’ll take a lot to get to that point because the pride is bigger than the ego or something like that so i’m open to suggestions here but. so far ive got

ice skating. timeless classic. character a sucks and keeps falling on their ass and character b is, for some stupid reason, a total pro at this and is going to do all the waist-grabbing-slash-hand-holding-slash-laughing-at-character-a that that necessitates. probably pretty obvious who is the bitch who cannot skate and who is the one laughing at him. and also catching him when he falls and being a total jerk about it. because isn’t that just a wholesome mental image

the quintessential only one bed obviously. this has more to do with the circumstances of the plot in my head than it being christmastime specifically but the holiday rush factors in there somewhere. never mind the whole fake dating angle

the whole Thing is christmas parties and whats a christmas party without a) too much wine and b) some well-placed mistletoe. and yeah maybe c) some stupid matching ugly christmas sweaters. i will never get sick of that one

gingerbread house decorating. but theyre forced to be collaborative about it. someone dies. its the most godawful gingerbread house anyone has ever seen. but thats really damaging to their prides so they really get their shit together for a beautiful 15 or so minutes and kind of make it look better and still lose the competition anyway because 15 minutes of harmony does not negate 45 minutes of throwing candy at each other like bullets. with the very real intention of Causing Pain

some kind of excuse to have them walk around together with a group of people in the evening when its dark and they can admire the christmas lights. whether it’s some kind of holiday charity work or just seeing the christmas lights or, god forbid, carolling, there is something to be said about the experience of slipping on a patch of ice on a cold winters night and having the worst time of your life because your so-called boyfriend think its hilarious that you just ate total shit. thats romance babey

last-minute christmas shopping…already a nightmare ordeal but now you have to do it because you and your fake boyfriend need to bring a joint gift to a christmas party but you cant agree on anything, ever. they are getting kicked out of no fewer than 5 stores guaranteed

ok i think im all out of holiday torture scenarios but well. i’m sure i’ll be back. ideally with actual writing but everyone is telling me to take small steps so. we’ll get there if we get there and if not then that’s ok too

[problemnyatic]

You gotta let go of optics and appearences man. They're superficial at best. They don't mean anything, and if you put stock into them as a means to get an easy read on things it becomes trivial to mislead and misdirect you.

Abusive Situations so often do not actually involve Malice and Plotting, the toxic dynamics are just so baked in they become casual. Good people look like fuck and hell. Racists can be really nice and abusers can always seem to, if not genuinely mean well.

This is why critical thinking is so important, and not just shorthand for "don't be stupid lol." It's more than that, and it's a genuine skill that is not just not taught in school, but explicitly sabotaged. You need to be able to step back and think "It looks this way, but does it actually add up? What am I actually doing by engaging with this? What do they get out of this and what can they do with it?"

I've spent all of my teen and adult life helping people who live in abusive situations, and being a community moderator, and I can say with confidence that optics and appearences are the fucking mind-killer. The right thing is often messy. The easy and "safe" feeling thing is often complicit in perpetuating a toxic status quo.

Comfort is all too often the enemy of necessary progress, and giving a fuck about the greater good often necessitates being willing to shock and upset people, and often requires you rock the boat. Nobody likes the boat being rocked, but you can't spend all your life worrying about what people like when things like health and safety are on the line, be it your own or other people's.

[irl-wolf0]

I know I'm late, but I have a genuine question about your stance on gear pricing within the alterhuman community. Why direct frustration towards artists who set high prices to make ends meet, rather than towards governments, corporations, and companies that perpetuate a capitalist system which necessitates such high living costs? You claim that others are missing the point, yet it seems you're overlooking the fact that artists aren't at fault for needing to set high prices. If the concern truly lies with the artists' welfare, the focus should be on why it's appalling that they must price their work so steeply just to survive.

See yall get confused a lot.

I never said it’s the artists fault that shits so high.

I SAID

Artists should also take into account the people they’re selling to. Cus hello your customers are everything when you’re a business.

Like i said “$50 should suffice”

I don’t give a fuck about cost of time

I don’t give a fuck about cost of materials

I don’t give a fuck if you think “gear is a luxury” or whatever stupid bullshit that is. 💀

I don’t give a fuck.

Yall mad at me cus i said lower your prices like yall are so into the capitalism and white supremacy of society that it’s almost like yall don’t *want* to change. And that’s what’s hilarious.

So that’s my stance. 💗

Edit: Also yall keep talkin bullshit to me about corporations and shit bitch do you see big corporations making good quality therian gear? Be fucking for real 💀 did I say “the government should lower their prices” (while they do) im specifically talking about artists who make therian gear, yall keep talkin bout and bringing in other shit that don’t have to do with the plot 💀

[pochapal]

1. Congrats on the kinda blown up post!

2. This is a really weird, kinda stupid ask, but out of the Umineko characters u know, who seems like they’d be the most fun to play in a ttrpg? I ask because I know multiple people have done this one character and, for spoilery reasons, I have no clue how.

1: thank you i guess! feels weird to have a post gain traction among people beyond my usual follower circle lmao

2: now the first thing you need to know is that i don't do ttrpgs or understand anything about them in any meaningful way so this is very hard to consider. i do think the dice rolling factor of certain tabletops plays nicely with the whole "demon's roulette" angle of umineko except for the part where umineko only pretends like it's a series of random chance events and not a thoroughly premeditated script but maybe chance vs control could thematically translate into a good ttrpg character basis maybe? i guess the hard thing with umineko is that everything including its characters was not designed for a rng roll one outcome of millions scenario but instead deliberate consideration and understanding - idk much about ttrpgs but i feel like needing to take a 3000 word break to painstakingly sketch out a deeply biased account of a character's tragic backstory in order to explain the relevance of the morally questionable action they have just taken (the explaining of which being as plot-critical as the actions themselves) isn't the most friendly thing you could mix in with a ttrpg formula.

as character archetypes i think a great deal of umineko characters ire fun and engaging to explore on their own terms, but ttrpgs often have a growth/power fantasy element baked into them that isn't entirely congruent with the grounding theses of most of the cast. natsuhi is deeply fascinating as an individual but "powerless woman who is snared in the twin nets of pride and desperation and whose only agency is whether or not she can uphold a conspiracy to people who can leverage all kinds of abuse towards her" doesn't really work in any kind of rpg sense. if natsuhi were to get "stronger" and "advance" this would lay ruin to the underpinning tragic essence of what makes natsuhi *natsuhi*. same goes even for characters like battler who you'd think would click more with this formula - even a hypothetical mystery-solving based ttrpg could not accommodate battler as the inherent gamification of the narrative necessitates truths and evidence being revealed on a diegetic level in such a way that battler could actually figure out, and at that point what we're talking about is basically danganronpa instead of umineko.

i think in this way despite being a vn and thus a form of video game so much of umineko is heavily resistant to being "played" in the traditional game sense. there is a game going on in umineko between writer and reader, but this is a game of thinking and interpretation and understanding and not something that can be broken down into quantifiable Progression Units. the only "final boss" of umineko is your own lack of understanding and this fight is waged in your own head and not within the fabric of the story - even if in umineko proper battler "figures out" the mystery, it won't end up in a climactic final fantasy-esque showdown with beatrice on rokkenjima. gamification is kind of like "fantasy" within a narrative context (this is something i have/will talk about more in the writeup so forgive me if this isn't clearly defined yet) in that it's an embellished obfuscation of truth in the Romantic sense where you get lost in the process rather than the results - in theory, battler cornering beatrice during the denouement and saying definitively "this is the truth behind everything" is as a decisive an action as battler using the power of anime and friendship to energy blast beatrice into ash. the difference is the former keeps the mystery and tragedy front and center, while the latter out of necessity makes it specifically about battler as the center of the narrative universe.

this goes into the territory of mystery fiction and whether or not the designated Detective (capitalized in the stock archetype way and not the literary analysis dichotomy way) character must also occupy the traditional role of protagonist in the Hero sense. battler is the central character in umineko and the most crucial information is filtered through his lens, but battler is not the Hero of umineko - he is a passive witness to the tragedy who can only grow more desperate and powerless as the atrocities continue to pile up. the troubling thing about a lot of mystery is how you make a Detective that isn't basically just a cop - there is a certain power tension in mystery where through uncovering the truth the Detective takes the obfuscating "power" held by the Culprit and redirects into a clarifying force of their own. a denouement is when the Detective has, after a sort of hero's journey, acquired enough truth/power to unmask/dominate the Culprit, and as a "reward" is able to use the power structures of society (police, carceral punishment, "Just" murder) to get their way (return to a status quo) where the Culprit was previously able to use the power structures of mystery narratives (tricks, unreliable perspective, misdirection, "Unjust" murder) in order to get theirs (subversion of the status quo in accordance with their motive). all of this very easily feeds into copaganda-esque regurgitations of power dynamics and grows more prominent the more physical agency a Detective-Hero has in their given narrative situation.

bring those elements to a gamified stage and what you're left with is more a simulation of dominion through your character's power biases than a nuanced understanding of the social conditions that led to the formation of these events in the first place. you could of course perform a complete dissection of the Events and Circumstances of a ttrpg's setting, but is producing a diatribe on social structures and reinforcement of power akin to "playing"? i think maybe an umineko character might work in an undertale/deltarune-esque manner where there is an explicit conflict and tension inherent to the non-neutral action of "controlling" a character, but i don't see how that easily fits into the dna specifically of ttrpgs. there is an element of roleplay in ttrpgs where there is a meeting of the player's self and the character's self in order to produce the performance of the game-narrative in accordance with the structural rules. laying out like that i guess there's overlap between the premise of a roleplay-focused ttrpgs and the Witch Narrative, but both have different causes and different end goals. in a ttrpg no matter what in some form your goal is to "win", to attain something and move on to the next thing - everything in a ttrpg/game serves more as a vessel to enable the player to both achieve and experience a victory-state. there are ttrpg types that could interrogate these elements in a satisfying way, but nothing in umineko is directly about these things and thus a translation in this form would be to lose something in the process.

you don't come to umineko to "win" umineko. or if you do you'll quickly figure out that that is something not possible within the story's verbage. mystery and horror and tragedy do not produce victory in the conventional sense and any story in those genres that uncritically ends on a "victory" is dubious at best and incompetent at worst. in these worlds and fictions, how is it that something you could call victory can be attained? what sort of person would you need to be in order to strive for this victory? if any of the umineko characters were capable of this trajectory then they would never have ended up in the situation that they are in. to not only be concerned with powergaming but also to have the ability to do so fundamentally changes an individual's position within a narrative - for the premise to exist it implies a way out of any potential hardship, that if you're good enough at [power verb] then you can attain autonomy/power/dominion. nobody on rokkenjima ever had any of these things, which is why this is all happening in the first place. i don't think you can ever satisfactorily separate umineko characters from their disempowering material conditions like that.

the silly answer to this question, of course, has to be beatrice who has already been roleplayed by half of the cast of umineko at this point anyway. beatrice "exists" and beatrice is a vessel for power so in this way beatrice is already kind of a ttrpg character in that sense if the ttrpg's goal is desperate slaughter through at least two layers of metaphor and obfuscation. the important thing to take into account is that a playable ttrpg character "exists" and so maybe if more people on rokkenjima were into roleplaying none of these horrors would be happening lol.

[arcplaysgames]

DAWN OF THE FINAL DAY, TIME TO BEAT SOME ASS

Magatsu Inaba is by far the best dungeon. The best ambient music for sure, and also just annoying in interesting ways. Adachi has a lot more control over the place than previous folks did, which leads up nicely to the revelation about him that we all saw coming.

There's a point where he's like "let's play a game! get thru this level without getting in any fights!" and it was so fucking irritating, i got booted out of his world twice trying, and like... that's a fun trick, to have the mechanics of a place be more hostile so you dislike Adachi even more. Also, the level where you have to follow the spiral all the way to the middle, passing or fighting about 8 shadows? goddamn fucking bullshit. I hate Adachi, he's amazing.

WHEN I TELL YOU I LAUGHED OUT LOUD

OH GOD I FIGURED IT OUT he's like dime store Handsome Jack. he doesn't nearly have the swagger, but because that swag is not so Off The Chart Bonkers like Handsome Jack, he seems like less of a poser than Jack? So it actually works really well. Adachi is just enough of a total bitch that he can still back it up. He's a delightful villain!

Like literally if you removed the tacked-on stupid sexism (WHICH WEIRDLY? THEY DO? IT DOESN'T COME UP AGAIN REALLY AFTER HIS INITIAL REVEAL) he's a top five villain. Huge fan of this odious little bastardman.

B R U H

Adachi, I love you, you're such a shit

Which, I am cackling, but narratively, he works phenomenally well for his position in opposition to the seekers of truth. Oh yeah sure he's the killer, but also he is going to drop some hard fucking realities on your plate while he's at it. Yeah, many cops are bullies who go into the force to get access to power. Yeah, the public will be angry at the revelation that Namatame isn't the killer. People want specific truths to become reality, and that is what has fueled the Midnight Channel all this time.

HE'S GREAT. TEN OUTTA TEN. Well, nine. The weird "bitches and whores" thing was so odd, glad they left it behind now.

As far as dumbass Assimilation Plots go, this one is better than most.

Okay so I seriously way overleveled for this game's difficulty, but even so I love the Adachi fight. After seeing everyone's Shadows as these huge weird unleashed id-creatures, going into combat against just a guy, that was really way more effective and menacing. Also his idle animations are great. Adachi will stare at whoever is up next and every few seconds he just has a hysterical laughing fit behind his hand. It's AMAZING, he's so creepy and cracked.

Also as I expected, this bitch got a Persona. Which makes sense! He has faced his inner self and his reward is a Persona, which seems to be the Magatsu Izanagi that was hinted at in his maxed-out SLink I glimpsed in the other ending.

So not only does he have Reverie's power, not old is he a Wild Card, he also has the same persona but Disaster-flavored.

Sadly he's really not a difficult fight. I would have killed to have an Adachi with multiple persona, but that would necessitate questions about him and the Velvet Room, blah blah.

ANYWAY HE'S GREAT.

pats Adachi on the head as condescendingly as i possibly can

OH BUT LEST YOU WORRY THAT YOU'D GET THROUGH A PERSONA GAME WITHOUT A BIG NIGHTMARE EYEBALL BOSS, WE AIN'T DONE YET

[pwnyta]

can’t fall back asleep so in honor of October 3rd yesterday have some salt: seeing yet another milquetoast ‘fma shouldn’t have had war criminals as main characters but we’re not READY to have that discussion yet’ take and wanting to ascend. Like yeah the ending containing shades of ‘this guy can fix the broken system’ certainly doesn’t hold up today and I’m not crazy abt that aspect but the whole plot of the show kind of. Necessitates the war criminals. The violence caused by the system is literally the biggest thing driving the plot. Idk I get it if ppl don’t like the show bc of that but it gives ‘i want everybody to just dislike this show’ vibes. Like I’m sorry I have also disliked hugely popular media but you gotta learn to cope.

Yeah its pretty jank when people have like bad faith commentary on old series. Like its fine to criticize but framing it as like a moral failing to enjoy is fucking stupid. If someone wants to criticize the problematic aspects of some old show and have fans of it listen and understand it needs to be done less aggressively or theyre just going mock any good points. And considering its as old as it is... it probably doesnt matter anyways. I doubt anyone was watching FMA for some moral lesson...

I never finished FMA so I cant really give any opinion on it but like...

[onewomancitadel]

on your thoughts on knightfall becoming canon ( how high do you believe thats possible like if this was gambling how much stock would you put into it)

I think it's worth emphasising that I constantly make note of my own personal cautiousness about the matter, mostly because I think that's just part-and-parcel of the analytic procedure. Lol.

By nature with works-in-progress you can absolutely never account for authorial whimsy, even if at a minimum you accept that there needs to be canonical intelligibility to any given fan theory - and authorial whimsy can be anything from realising a better idea actually works to draw out your original intentions (this is why the appeal to the 'original pure idea' is usually wrong, because it's not really one-way like that) to actual handovers or conflict of creators/creative vision to it simply being revealed they had very different ideas than what were originally conveyed because it took time for that to come through to simply being kind of stupid.

What's frustrating to me is that a lot of naysayers think that the conversation begins and ends with, 'It's not that deep,' or 'it's not that smart'; it's an easy position to argue from because people assume it's an argument which doesn't necessitate evidence. You don't need to think that hard. What you actually need to do is demonstrate where it isn't thoughtful, and where I would generally agree that, say, the White Fang has poor execution, in terms of its thematic ideas (which in part contribute to some of its tone-deafness), it is actually totally thematically consistent. But most of the fandom doesn't think that a nonviolent solution to the conflict with Salem is possible or even on the cards, so they're never going to be reading these broader ideas into an earlier plotline in the show, and they're never going to connect the redemption and reformation of the White Fang to the redemption and reformation of the bad guys in the story who are all deeply hurting in their own ways (no, Adam was not set up for a redemption arc and is a corrupting force), and I think most people would tell you that the reunion between the Faunus and humans comes off tone-deaf to a lot of modern social justice movements - but it's describing individual psychological harmony - and to be totally fair, I do think that they misused the allegory in a serious way. It's the danger of allegory. Once you introduce magical animal people, I don't think a social justice allegory works, but I think this is a case of where they prioritised the ideas they had (nonviolence, psychological harmony) over the execution proper, and then in addition to that were clumsy and yes, perpetuating racist - and everything else - ideas about the way people are supposed to fight for their freedom.

But I also wouldn't say that the Faunus storyline runs counter to the ideas of the story in any way. Not at all. I think that's where you can identify the fallout.

So the question isn't even necessarily grounded in, 'Is this story stupid?' but, 'Is this story coherent?' which don't always mean the same thing and don't always speak to the same sort of quality. Because I find the friendship is magic stuff bullshit, and at first I thought it was just stupid, but with Cinder and Ruby's respective development, I am basically led to believe it is stupid. It is stupid, and that's coherent - the overemphasis of it has led to a refusal to confront and accept the necessity and transformation of pain, and the beauty which grows from that. This is why I don't really think Pyrrha is the stickling point for the pairing, since her and the Fall of Beacon - which makes the abstract personal for Jaune - basically sets the romance up.

But the point I was working towards is that it needs to be demonstrated where the story is not thoughtful. The difference with RWBY is that most of it is thoughtful. Character arcs are basically connected, basic narrative events are foreshadowed, the romances have thematic- and plot-work to do in the story, the allusions have meaningful employment most of the time. All of it's beholden to Ozlem. It's actually working towards some greater idea and it has specific goals in mind about resolving Salem and Ozma's conflict and about situating Ruby in the story (particularly across this volume). Why her? What's the point of all the little heroes in the story? Of course, what you're fighting uphill against in this fandom is that a lot of angry people online don't appreciate basic storytelling tools. They have a severe case of the narrative cynicisms and literalism, and frankly, this is an ideology which gains traction in the world of outrage and easy clicks and contrarianism just for the pure sake of it. This is more extreme than just, 'Why does the good guy always win?', like asking fundamental and interesting questions, but more like a complete rejection of character transformation. A lot of people view static character as being logical, and especially power fantasy as being logical, which means a total rejection of most events in the show. Or then you've got simple tonal mismatch where people think it's the bestfriendsforever show.

I'm making this case here because it's not actually a simple question. Jaune/Cinder is a serious polemic. It's not a twee power fantasy romance, it's not guy gets the girl as a reward, it's not hero/villain for the sake of it because it's hot, it's actually much more than that and if you came to the ship through that reasoning, that's fine, but that's not the angle I'm arguing from and it's not the angle that I think it's being argued through in the show either.

The case you have to make for Jaune/Cinder is both a thematic one and a character one, because even amongst people who believe in Cinder's redemption, most of them would tell you that job belongs to Emerald, and others might say Ruby. Why would romance be relevant here? Why would Jaune not just end up with Weiss or whichever female character gets relegated to narrative obscurity? It's a positive case which has to be made because what you're relying on is RWBY having some sense of intelligible, consistent (consistent) storytelling, which is thematically motivated, with specific ideas it needs answered - why is the power of friendship the one to fail, why can no one reach Cinder? - which doesn't lean into puerile self-insert power fantasy or the easy, lazy answer, or just the guy waiting patiently until the pretty princess notices him now he's a good boy with almost zero narrative consequences. The much more radical idea to me is that Jaune's character development actually has serious narrative consequences in respect to Cinder's character arc and redemption. You've tied the romance to a major turn-the-tide event and now you've got justification. It's not there for shits and giggles or because it would make a handful of Redditors happy.

(Yes, I do think the interactions Cinder has with the Maidens are calculated, and they have done work to tease out Cinder's specific growth over the past few volumes. But I do think it can be said that every redemption arc so far and yes, every romance has had specific people involved for specific reasons).

But the problem here is that I think the average naysayer would say RWBY isn't that smart (or that Jaune/Cinder is problematic, but you're watching the wrong show if so). Of course, that's why I refer to the canon romances so, and especially the prominence of Ozlem in the story. No other romance best realises Ozlem in such literal reversal. It is curious that Jaune/Cinder mirrors Ruby/Oscar interactions. It is curious that Jaune/Weiss mirrors Blake/Sun in the time of a Volume 4 reprisal-ish when V5 followed on with a serious volume-finisher indicating Blake/Yang and oh yeah, that very one also had the best interaction of all time in the show with Jaune and Cinder. It is curious that the canon romances all in some way line up in ways that Jaune/Weiss doesn't, and even curiouser that Jaune/Cinder does. The romances in RWBY are embedded in the plot. They realise specific ideas. This is foreign to a lot of people who think romance is when people blush at each other and make funny jokes and kiss. Good, interesting, justified, passionate, transformational, heart-moving, soul-touching romance is more than that, and it's part of what I like about RWBY's execution of the romances, because it speaks to a sensibility I appreciate. This isn't radical stuff necessarily, it's just radical to paint-by-numbers understandings of storytelling.

I'm not saying that Jaune/Cinder will be canon. I'm not a gambler. It's really hard to make predictions based off of a work in progress because you have an incomplete synthesis of ideas which can recontextualise everything that's been said.

It's kind of like how most people didn't twig that Cinder is sympathetic up until they made it really obviously textual until Volume 8 to most people (in my opinion it was the end of V7, but in terms of reaction that's when it was). It changes all her previous characterisation because now you understand there's an intended complexity there. Ironwood's fall casts his previous characterisation in a different light in addition to casting more ambiguity over Ozma himself and what Ozma had to handle with Lionheart - it makes Lionheart's loss more profound. I can say that right now Jaune/Weiss doesn't and didn't mirror the canon romance developments, and across this volume it hasn't, but the only point that seriously makes me question it is her casting him into the abyss. Whilst I can identify that as a parallel with Raven-Cinder (Vault fight) and Oscar-Ironwood (Vault fight) where it takes place in a magical place which can reach back into the normal world (a reverse of the Vaults), on the other hand it's the only thing that's given the pairing any remote complexity/drama which is a necessity for all of the pairings (think Blake leaving Yang and the Adam problem, Ren/Nora's backstories and Mantle/Atlas, Ruby and Oscar with the Ozma curse and lying to Ironwood, and then for Emerald/Mercury - well, need I say?). On the other hand, I was really weirded out that Weiss was never personally made uncomfortable with the Penny situation, and at present it seems more like something to inject complexity into Ruby's partnership with Weiss and further influence Ruby's disillusionment. Then once you get into Ruby-Cinder parallels, right now, Jaune being able to help Ruby who is remarkably paralleled with a certain Fall Maiden... does set him up for something else.

But the point I'm trying to make is that even if I could say to you, oh, Jaune/Weiss has almost no development and no paralleled development to the other canon romances crossvolumes, if the present development with Weiss hurling him into the abyss by accident actually addresses that, then you can mark up the Jaune/Weiss development to inconsistency and/or an about turn. Authorial whimsy. They might've changed their mind, or they might've not have wanted to draw scrutiny to the relationship at all until Jaune aged up and was more 'mature' for the pairing, or they might've considered the barren interaction of the awakening of his Semblance sufficient development until then... which it was not, especially because we never got anything between them and Weiss' development with her family in Atlas. Jaune's familial struggles should've come up in respect to that. That is so obvious it hurts! The Arc and Schnee inheritances should be central to the pairing. They've not abandoned either idea with them - in fact who Jaune is 'supposed' to be is one of his central character wounds, which hurts him, in respect to the way Weiss actually wants to reform her family name. Jaune wants to get away from it, Weiss doesn't. So why isn't and hasn't there been any development there whatsoever? Why is his initial crush on her actually tied up in something which hurt him, especially as this volume revisits this idea of the made-up hero he can't be? (Of course, that he's a real yet imperfect hero is the point).

They might've even just thought it'd be funny to put Jaune and Weiss together.

Because Jaune/Cinder hinges on narrative relevance for both Jaune and Cinder. It's giving Cinder a romance when most people don't think about that in respect to her except as a fetish thing which squarely puts her in a position of redeeming Ozlem and addressing her own character wounds (the truth is that nobody's ever loved you). It means that Jaune's presence in the story is completely justified by virtue of being the one to reach out to Cinder when it seemed impossible and seemed absolutely absurd and heretical (yeah I'm pulling the Joan of Arc allusion out here). He's not just here for the laugh of it; there's a quiet little love story between them against the backdrop of the epic spectacle. Ever since Volume 1 people have speculated over their narrative connections. I remember people predicting Cinder was going to be the one to kill Jaune, and I remember shock at the fact that it was Pyrrha and not him.

So I find it beautiful that such a curiosity was warranted, but it's actually contextually realised differently. It's because they'll fall in love. It's a positive subversion.

Is their romance and their respective character arcs actually that relevant to be in question since Volume 1? I think you can make the case for Cinder more because of her redemption and because of the Maiden power, and honestly with this volume, yes, I do think it's easier to make the case for Jaune now than it ever was before, especially as they didn't dismiss the aftermath of Penny but actually broke him even harder than I thought they would. Critically, their romance involves the Crown of Choice (a confrontation over this is near-inevitable, they're the last two survivors of the Beacon Vault), which seems maybe the only certain prediction I can make if their romance is canon.

If you weren't thinking that hard about his character? You would write Jaune/Weiss. If you weren't thinking that hard about Cinder's redemption, and you just finangle its evolution at the last minute? You wouldn't write Jaune/Cinder. Jaune/Cinder by necessity involves carefulness. It doesn't necessarily speak to a perfect execution, but it does speak to coherency, and it does speak to the fundamental ideas to the story, and yes, it does speak to idealism being valued in the story. Resolving Cinder's wounded idealism and prioritising nonviolence and seeing and not just looking and getting the missing side of the story even when she is someone who has broken you (and has the capacity to build you back up) is a tall order, but it's also magical and it does rest on validating fairytales in the story, but in a complicated way, because the dragon and the maiden are one. Why does there have to be a bad guy? Why is Cinder the bad guy? Can they meet in the middle? Jaune and Cinder is about meeting in the middle, even when it's deeply questionable to both sides and would potentially compromise them both.

The question of Jaune/Cinder isn't simply about my dollies kissing - it is about that, to be fair, and I'm not ashamed of it - but to my eyes, it is also what I find valuable about RWBY. It reaffirms RWBY's best ideas. It affirms its ideas, its playful storytelling, its particular intentions with the romances, its sense of transformational redemption. So I think Jaune/Cinder has the possibility to be canon insofar as it follows through on what's it set up and it's coherent and its character development is purposeful and actually, everything about it is purposeful. Jaune has hijinks this volume with team RWBY, sure, but it's also the Old Man and the Four Maidens. It's hard to read his interactions with the Winter Maiden as romantic, especially as she's the first to get through to him, so he can finally go find the Fall Maiden who's run away. But then why make Jaune so obviously and painfully Ozma-coded? Is it because there's a certain, other, actual Fall Maiden, not analogue, who herself has a Grimm curse much alike to Salem? Is it purposeful? Am I supposed to be thinking?

I don't pay much attention to Jaune/Cinder naysayers (and there are a lot of them) because I like RWBY. I like what it's got going for it and I think it's fun and joyful, and I like its sense of spectacle, and most of all I think it's sincere. I don't think Jaune/Weiss or any other Jaune ship is sincere and it would mean that I probably really had no reason to trust in any of Jaune's development or even really the other romances, because what's the point? Once you break what makes them all special, I don't see why I should be invested. Because you can only make a coherent argument for Blake/Yang throughout the show on a basis which conflicts with Jaune/Weiss or indeed even Jaune/Pyrrha.

I also think it has the potential to be the greatest, most thrilling, unexpected yet totally sensical romance of all time. So sue me. I think it's fucking clever, and if that cleverness isn't there, then I don't know if I have any specific reason to care about RWBY.

I couldn't tell you whether I'd gamble on it. I tentatively hope. But deep down I'm a cynic and I've been burnt before and my trust in something so good happening just isn't there - and this is why I hate people telling me this, because I already think it.

But then there's that terrible part of me which can't help but wonder, and I guess that's why I keep writing posts even when it's a controversial ship... I want characters like Jaune and Cinder to see their hopes reaffirmed. I'd like a hopeful story. I'd like a story which gives a shit. I'd like my own hopes to be affirmed, I suppose, even when it seems impossible.

[sepublic]

            I have a slight dilemma in the whole “A good portion of the Escapees want to kill Lloyd for the Sins of the Father” type of deal, because like. Admittedly, these powerful, (generally) competent, grown-ass adults repeatedly pouring everything in to kill a child is fairly ridiculous. Esp since it doesn’t feel like they pour that same energy into other things that should also abide by their reasoning (more on that later).

         It’s basically the Plot saying Screw this kid (who is a main protagonist) in particular, because things are from his perspective and need to suck. Like the reasoning behind “The Boss VS when you unlock him as a playable character,” though to be fair I DO want to tackle that sort of thing in my stories. Basically it’s a holdover from Lloyd being the central protagonist back then, because this DID all originate as a deeply elaborate Ninjago prequel keep in mind.

        But back to the point: To be fair, I could weigh into that madness of the Escapees even more, the irrational, emotional immaturity and how they’re driven by a mindless rage and they KNOW it’s stupid but they just don’t care at this point, and Lloyd has some appeal of his own as an easy punching bag. Well, a punching bag who SHOULD be easy, but there are people with their own stakes, pragmatic and/or unconditional, in him.

         And some of the Escapees DO have other motives (like Tamericus wanting to make the Philosopher’s Stone, Barracudox wanting to change the status quo of this family who has watched over but also meddled for generations, Lynkos liking the challenge of an impossible feat and finding Lloyd’s insistent survival enticing)… Plus, it’s admittedly hilarious seeing these dudes dedicate so much time to this nephew by virtue of proxy, because at some point Lloyd teases that they may as well go after someone’s pet goldfish by this logic (not that there is any, he of course concedes for the Escapees).

         Though I should clarify that it’s not like they’re spending ALL their time trying to kill him, nor is he the one they spend the most on. It’s the other adults who were actually responsible, but from Lloyd’s perspective, it feels like the Escapees’ entire lives revolve around him because that’s the only time he really ever gets to see or hear from them. He sadly does not have any connections to his relatives to build upon a more sonder worldview of these losers. And honestly, Lloyd probably isn’t even exaggerating that much…

         Is it all silly in the end? Definitely. But this particular series of mine does like to embrace the absurdity and inherent humor of a lot of things, while also going straight into the sheer horror of them at times (did I mention Fullmetal Alchemist was a formative influence upon me). Maybe it really is a matter of changing the Escapees’ motives/plans so as to necessitate them trying to kill Lloyd, but while they intend not to let it be personal though it comes across that way, Lloyd goes F it, it’s personal to ME by this point so why not? Why not make it so and irritate them as much as possible as a bit of payback?

        So you still get the hilarity of these fully-grown adults trying to murder a child, but also some of them are TRYING to retain the decency of not letting it get to their head, because to be fair yeah I’d also respond angrily. He’s fully entitled to his emotions. I AM being unreasonable. And OH MY GOD DID THAT LITTLE SHIT SAY THAT

[underforeversgrace]

(I'm so sorry, this and some of the replies gave me brainworms. I forgot the letter was already written in the original part. Just... forget the letter was there? I apologize for everything.)

~~~

“So, what do we do now to try to lube the situation up before the fucking starts?" Tony asked.

"Your wording confounds me at times, my friend," Thor answered, brows furrowing. Loki, meanwhile, shot daggers at Tony with his eyes. Tony counted himself relieved it wasn't actual daggers.

“There is reference to three human emissaries at an address that looks to be here on Midgard,” Loki said, though he still looked like he was contemplating Tony's untimely demise. (Tony was beginning to suspect that was just Loki's default expression.) The trickster pushed the ye olden times parchment towards Tony. 

He read through it, sighed, and pushed himself up from the table. “FRIDAY, plot a course for 800 Main St, Amity Park, Illinois.”

“Sure thing, boss!” the AI chirped.

“And alert the Accords panel I'm investigating a possible threat,” Tony added as an afterthought. “Let them know I'm following an anonymous lead, but I have Thor as backup. I will not engage the threat unless there is imminent risk to life, and don’t mention Loki.”

“Lying to your government?” Loki asked, a mischievous smirk playing across his face.

Tony snorted. “‘Course I am. They don't suspect me of breaking the Accords when I helped write it.”

“Your Captain Rogers really is rather daft, isn't he?” Loki mused.

“Captain Rogers is brave and worthy of Mjölnir!” Thor insisted.

“Being worthy to lift your hammer does not necessitate one being intelligent,” Loki said. “Besides, that argument stopped working when our sister shattered it like glass.”

Tony just grinned at Loki. He knew he really shouldn't be getting along so well with the god who threw him out a goddamn window, but Loki was a snarky asshole. Even Pepper was growing fond of Loki's hijinks as she helped Tony and the Odinsons set up a new home for the Asgardian refugees currently on the Compound's lawn. (It helped they'd gotten his name cleared with the Council. Graphic depictions of torture and an overriding of freewill tended to exonerate people.)

“Need a lift, Loki?” Tony asked, rolling his shoulders as the nanosuit spread across his body.

“I'd sooner die,” Loki answered, before shapeshifting into a crow. Fitting. The three of them were making their way outside when FRIDAY spoke up.

“Boss, before you go, there is something I feel you should know,” she said, almost hesitant.

“What is it, Lady FRIDAY?” Thor asked, leaning his head to the side as though that could make him hear the earpiece better.

“Well, that address… it's a high school, sir.”

The only response Tony could think of was to say, loudly and with feeling, “It's a fucking what?”

~~~

“The capital of Idaho is Alberta!” Dash Baxter, jock and dumb ass extraordinaire, called loudly.

Danny was 74% certain he could hear Lancer's teeth grit together in frustration. “No, Mr. Baxter. Alberta isn't in America,” Lancer said. “Anyone else?”

Danny raised his hand, excited to be able to answer a question for once, even if it was for a stupid reason.

Lancer sighed and gestured to Danny.

“The capital of Idaho is Boise,” the halfa said with a grin. 

“No, Mr. Fe-” Lancer started, before blinking in confusion once, looking down at the book in his hand, then back up at Danny as though Lancer had just seen god for the first time. “That's correct, Mr. Fenton.”

Danny basked in the glory known best to high schoolers who just answered an easy question when a cold tingle ran up his spine. Danny groaned internally, excused himself, and went to kick some ghost ass.

Five minutes and one soup-ified Box Ghost later, Danny was floating back to class, when it felt like seventeen jaguars scratched sharpened ice picks down his spine. Danny gasped and fell to the ground, landing hard and wrapping his arms tightly around himself. “What the hell?” he breathed, struggling to orient himself. It felt like his ghost sense had gotten amped up to 1000.

Danger, power, some instinctive part of himself growled into his mind. Danny closed his eyes and breathed slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Danny's ghost sense had done things like this before, but never this bad. It'd done it around Pariah Dark, and from Clockwork before the Ghost of Time had become his friend. It meant something powerful was coming, and likely meant him or his town ill will. Mine, that same part growled and Danny had to wrestle it back under control.

It took several minutes for Danny to feel like he was in charge of his body again. As soon as he was back on his feet, he took to the air and dug out his phone, needing to find his friends and sister immediately. Panic flared in his gut when he saw all three of them were in the same room within the school - the four all had different classes this period, that shouldn't be happening. Danny turned invisible and flew through the school, reaching his allies in no time.

And while he'd like to say he immediately burst into action when he found them, he had to admit his mind blue screened a little.

“We aren't here to arrest him!” Tony Stark insisted, in full Iron Man regalia, sans only his helmet.

“We are here merely to negotiate peace,” Thor, the God of literal fucking Thunder, added.

“Is arresting him an option?” Loki, the goddamn alien who invaded New York when Danny was nine, asked.

“No. Phantom is a ghost not holding citizenship on Earth or any Earthly extraterrestrial outposting and is therefore exempt from the Sokovia Accords. Section B, subsection Q, exemption listing 74,” Sam said, crossing her arms across her chest and somehow looking entirely unafraid of the two gods and superhero in front of her. 

“Besides, we don't know Phantom, any more than the rest of Amity Park does,” Tucker added, his expression stuck between starstruck and murderous.

“Then why are you so well versed in the Accords? If they have nothing to do with you?” Loki asked.

“Because fuck Tony Stark,” Sam answered without hesitation. That was what finally got Danny to pay attention again.

“He shows up, he helps us, he leaves,” Jazz pointed out. “We'd all be dead several times over if not for him. You'll have to forgive us for protecting our own.”

“Or don't forgive us. I really couldn't give less of a shit,” Sam said with a smile that fit more on her mother's face than her own.

~~~

What crawled up her ass and died? Tony thought. To follow up that thought (and the lack of both coffee in his bloodstream and sleep in his past fifty hours), his mouth continued without his permission, “The fuck is your problem, kid?”

The goth girl - Manson - opened her mouth, but the two on either side of her slapped their hands over her mouth.

“Sam, what have we been practicing?” the older girl - Fenton - said. Manson mumbled something, but it was garbled through her friends’ hands. Fenton, however, just nodded as though she understood, and went, “That’s right! Deescalation techniques. And is calling someone a hypocritical asshat racist billionaire who will never understand basic kindness or human decency deescalation?”

Loki broke next to him, hands on his knees as he laughed. The boy also fell into laughter, his hand falling away from Manson’s mouth, clutching his stomach and wheezing. Tony just pinched the bridge of his nose. He hated children sometimes. Why couldn’t all of them fawn over him like Peter had? It was easier when they were too starstruck to critically think and realize Tony wasn’t any true hero.

“I beg your pardon, but it is urgent we speak with Phantom,” Thor said. Somehow, he and the Fenton girl seemed to be the only reasonable ones in the room at the moment. 

“He’s the one who fucking called for us in the first place,” Tony added. “He’s the one who gave us your names.”

A slight chill reached Tony’s face and he shivered, stepping to the side. Must’ve been closer to an AC vent than he thought. The three teens’ entire demeanors changed. They sat up straighter, their eyes more alert, their faces suddenly stony. Tony didn’t miss them scoping the room for exit points and a second chill unrelated to the cold went up his spine. There was something.. off about these kids. Something more alien than human. Something more warrior-like than befitted three teens.

“Phantom would never give you our names,” Fenton said. The also removed her hand from Manson’s mouth, though made a motion that either told the younger girl to let Fenton take the lead - or was magic. Tony honestly would believe either at this point.

“The letter bears his seal,” Loki said, making some complicated motion and causing the parchment to appear in his hands. He handed it over to Fenton.

“His… what?” Fenton asked, her face contorting into sheer bafflement as she took the letter. 

“As I stated earlier, we are here only to negotiate -” Thor started, but Fenton cut him off with a wordless shout.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she said, pushing the letter into Manson’s hands, who adjusted it so Foley could read as well. “Those stupid ass eyeballs!”

“I’m sorry, eyeballs?” Loki asked. 

Foley and Manson started cackling as they finished the letter, Fenton rubbing her temples and swearing in what Tony was fairly certain was at least three dead Earth languages and more than one language never spoken on Earth.

“This is hardly a laughing matter!” Loki insisted, drawing to his full height and stepping closer to the teens. “This is a matter of keeping the Earth safe, and seeing as how I am now part of this wretched rock, I will not see it decimated by some k-mmph!”

Foley, in an act that could only be performed by a grown man with a deathwise or a teenager with no common sense, had slapped his hand over Loki’s mouth, cutting him off. Tony quickly grabbed Loki’s wrist to keep him from disemboweling the kid. Foley spoke, apparently unaware that he was teetering a knife’s edge into death. “Give him a second,” he said, using his free hand to hold up one finger, looking slightly to the left of Manson’s head.

A beat passed and then suddenly a glowing teenager appeared, who couldn’t have been five foot tall or a hundred pounds soaking wet, screeching like a banshee. Loki and Tony both raised their free hands, aiming at the kid (ghost?) while Thor prepared his hammer. 

Whatever Tony thought the white-haired kid was about to do - threaten Earth, try to kill them, lead an invasion, etc. - it was certainly not for him to look up at the room with panic in acid-green eyes and shout, “When the fuck did I become a king?!”

All Father Thor, King of Asgard,

A new ruler of Hel has been chosen, the fearsome King Phantom, defeater of Pariah Dark. It is time for Asgard to prepare to pay the dues required to keep peace between the realms of the gods and of the dead. Bring the terms of your surrender to King’s Phantom’s representative on earth, Daniel James Fenton of Amity Park.

The Noble Scribe of King Phantom,

Ghost Writer

*****

“Okay so let me get this straight,” Tony Stark, Iron Man and Avenger said. “Ghosts are real.”

“Yes.” King Thor Odinson, Asgardian and god of thunder agreed.

“And they’re evil.”

“A bit of an oversimplification, but yes.” Prince Loki Odinson, sometimes villain and would be planet invader, answered.

“And the ghosts have had one ruler, the most powerful ghost in existence. And that new rulers are chosen by combat, meaning that every new ruler is more powerful than the last.”

“Yes, you’ve got the idea.” Thor said looking down at his knees for a moment.

“And since ghosts are so evil and so powerful, that means that their ruler is practically an unstoppable force of destruction.”

“Doesn’t it sound delightful?” Loki asked, to which he received a glare.

“So, for the past 10,000 years, at least, Asgard and plenty of other realms have been paying taxes to the ghost king to avoid a war. A racketeering scheme.”

“I don’t know what a racketeering scheme is but yes, the ghost peace treaty does require that Asgard pay the ghost king gold and magical weapons every century and if we fail to pay that price, then the peace treaty will be broken and Asgard will likely be forfeit.”

“That’s a racketeering scheme!”

“Well then yes.”

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. It was clear the man’s headache was only growing stronger as he walked through the information the two gods had dumped into his lap this morning. Thor and Loki both had rushed into his lab and started babbling about world ending threats and how they might possibly be absolutely screwed.

“So, now there’s a new king. Which means a new peace treaty has to be signed.” Tony said the words ‘peace treaty’ in the same way he’d say ‘nuclear bomb’ or ‘Steve Rogers’.

“I thought you said it was a racketeering scheme?” Loki asked.

“Shut it.” Tony hissed.

“A new treaty must be signed.” Thor repeated, trying to keep the three of them on track.

“And since the last king Pariah Dark was so powerful that he made the entirety of Asgard tremble, you’re pretty sure this new king, Phantom, is probably worse.”

“Pariah Dark had the power to suck entire planets into the afterlife, destroying them,” Loki said looking at his nails. “Stands to reason that a ghost powerful enough to defeat him could do much, much worse.”

“Right. Fantastic!” Tony practically shouted.

“I don’t think anything about this is fantastic.” Thor admitted, he was ignored.

“And according to you Asgard has been paying the ghost tax for both their realm and ours since we were under Odin’s protection. And since Hela and Sutur destroyed your entire planet and your entire people are refugees, now we have to figure out how to keep an ultrapowerful ghost from wiping out our home without any way of paying him.”

“Technically we don’t know if Phantom is a ‘he’.” Loki pointed out unhelpfully.

“The letter literally says he’s a king!”

“Could be a title. What do the dead have need for gender?”

“This is not the point of this discussion,” Thor cut in before an argument about the usefulness of gender and the concept of a female king burst forth. “We’re here to figure out how to make peace with King Phantom without resulting in a war that would destroy our world and our peoples.”

“We don’t even have Earth’s mightiest heroes anymore.” Loki said, referencing the painful results of the civil war and the Accords.

“We’re fucked.” Tony decided.

“Yes,” Thor agreed. “We probably are.”

[vastayan--vigilante]

★ ((@just--a--jinx ))

Firelight AU

Used to apply

Could apply if situation necessitated it/will apply further into the plot

Currently applies

I like you / I hate you / I dislike you / I love you / You are family / I would take a bullet for you / I would shoot you / I would lie to your face / I would say something cruel to you on purpose / I would say something cruel to you accidentally  / I would cheat on you / I would physically hurt you / You annoy me / You amuse me / I’d laugh at you / I’d laugh with you / I’d manipulate you / You scare me / You confuse me / I wish I knew you better / I trust you / I don’t trust you / You inspire me / I consider you an equal / You are beneath me / You’re better than me / I would trust you with my life / I think you’re mean / I think you’re petty / I think you’re childish / I think you’re smart / I think you’re stupid / I think you’re a bad person / I think you’re a good person / I’m not sure what kind of person you are / I wish you would listen to me / I want to make you proud / I wish you would notice me / I want to impress you / I would hurt other people for you / I’m not sure how to make you happy / I’m a bad influence on you / You deserve better than me / We make a great team / I’d have a one night stand with you / I’d have a relationship with you / I would marry you / I fantasize about our life together / I would trust you with my most treasured belonging / I would tell you my darkest secrets / You disgust me / You intimidate me / I hope I intimidate you / I’d hug you / I’d let you hug me  / I’m scared of losing you / I don’t think you like me / I want to be better for you / I respect you / I don’t respect you / You’re my mentor / You’re my friend / You’re my best friend / I have a crush on you / I could easily watch you die / I’d get drunk with you / I’d party with you / I’d comfort you / I’d prank you / I’d spike your drink / I’d act behind your back / I’d abandon you / I’d hurt you to get what I want / I would choose my happiness over yours / I would choose your happiness over mine / I despise how much I care for you / I need you / I’m dependent on you / I don’t know what I’d do without you / I’m scared of you leaving me / I’d give my life for you / You frustrate me / I’d call for you in a time of need / I would protect you / I’d visit you in hospital / I’d carry you if you were hurt / I’d feel guilty if I hurt you / I’d let you be near me when I am vulnerable / I’d ignore a phone call from you / I’d call you at 3am / I’d break you out of jail / I’d get angry at you / I would shout at you / You’re too loud / You’re too quiet / You’re too sensitive / You can’t take a joke / You embarrass me / I feel nothing for you / You’re reckless / You’re bossy / You bore me / I would ask your advice / I would blame you for something I did / I would cry in your arms / You have the power to hurt me more than anyone else /

[number1mongrel]

Man... I say this as a Gil fan but Kid Gil as a character makes no sense. Since he is still Gil I do love him as my son but well I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. (This post might get long bear with me)

Firstly, Kid Gil’s entire existence really irks me, because it goes against the entire point of the Epic. The whole point is that obtaining the herb of immortality/eternal youth is impossible. It’s what finally allows Gil to move forward and become a better king. In Fate this is still the same, where the snake steals the herb which, after Nasu changed his mind*** (important, I’ll come back to this later), gave Gil the epiphany of finally understanding humans enough to realize he’d been selfish and stupid and become a good ruler. But then, Fate just adds “but even though Gil realized he didn’t need the herb anymore he still went back and got another one later to make sure he has every treasure”. Which no, that was impossible. He only had one chance and he lost it. That’s the point. 

Second, Kid Gil as a character was really only created as a plot excuse in FHA, to let him exist in Fuyuki with everyone else without causing conflict. This was back in 2005, right after FSN was written. I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that Gil really had a pretty one-dimensional character in FSN. He’s a villain, and that’s it. Unlike Kirei, or even Shinji, there is no attempt to give him additional depth, other than “he’s arrogant and selfish and believes everything in the world belongs to him”. He laughs manically when ripping out Illya’s heart and claims he had no attachment to Kirei but was just using him (in fact both of these are retconned in the Ufotable UBW anime to match with his newer character). There is no delve into his backstory, except for him believing things were better back in his day. Like all the other Servants he has a short bio in his character profile but it’s very shallow*** (but there is something very interesting in that which again we’ll get back to later). This contains the very first mention of Enkidu, but again this is not in the story itself, only in the biography. FSN Gil has almost nothing to do with the mythological Gilgamesh. His bio is just window dressing. FHA does not do much to rectify this. Unlike Cu, Medusa, and Medea, who get much closer looks into their backstories than in FSN, Gil once again does not. (This is not unique to Gil unfortunately, as Heracles, Kojirou, and Cursed Arm were also snubbed of getting proper backstories in FHA.)

At this point, there is no possible way for Gilgamesh to be able to get along with everyone in the way FHA necessitates. And so, this is where Kid Gil comes in. He is able to blend in with society in a way his adult self is not. He is an all-around good boy who hates the adult he grows into. This is where we get into the first problem with him. Just like his adult self in FSN, Kid Gil does not get very much depth. The most we get is his explanation of his taste in women, which is admittedly probably the first little bit of Nasu trying to delve into his character. He explains how he is interested in people he can watch grow and change over time, how his love for someone is dependent on whether they become a person he’s interested in, and that he will loose interest and abandon someone who doesn’t meet his expectations. This is very consistent with Gil’s modern character, and it’s a detail I like a lot. However, other than this, Kid Gil does not do much other than simply be the owner of Waku Waku Zabuun. He doesn’t have much of a personality either, outside of being “a good sweet boy that everyone loves which contrasts to his adult self”. The only similarity he has with his adult self is honestly his poor treatment of women. 

Adult Gil only shows up in FHA by my memory three times. And each of them are far more interesting than his child self. The first of which is a joke scene, where Gil gets stuck in grail mud and keeps laughing insisting he doesn’t need help from Shirou even as he’s slowly being consumed. This is where his disaster outfit originates from. I love this scene it’s very fun. The second is the scene where he and Archer have joined Cu at the fishing pier. This is subtle but actually very important because it’s the first instance we see of adult Gil being loved by kids and that he actually has a bit of a soft spot for them. And the third is at the climax of the story, where he is fighting alongside everyone else, and he decides to fight with his full strength, which is the first time we see his “full power mode” AKA the one where he’s shirtless. But still, in a general sense, adult Gil is basically never allowed to interact with the rest of the main cast. Overall, FHA came out at a time where Gil’s character did not yet allow him to coexist with regular people, so Kid Gil was created as a band-aid of sorts. (Also worth noting is that the Hanafuda minigame contains the first mention of his clairvoyance). 

However, Gil’s character has grown a lot since then. Zero established Gil and Kirei having a common interest and partnership, becoming something similar to friends (the anime adds a lot of queercoding to this too thanks Ufotable). There is also a whole flashback to Enkidu’s death in the novels, manga, and drama CD (but not in the anime fuck you Ufotable), which is really crucial because you can’t have Gilgamesh without Enkidu. Gilgamesh would not be who he is without Enkidu.

Then there’s CCC, which was basically Nasu realizing how much he fucked up and what a missed opportunity it was to have the world’s oldest hero in your story and not do anything interesting with him. CCC Gil is what truly made Gil shine as a character. It frantically retcons some things; he doesn’t just kill people randomly bc he enjoys it, he only kills people for very specific reasons in his judgement of humanity. His whole backstory is gone over in depth, including the Fate-original concept of him being the sole person to separate humanity from the gods. He was a tyrant because he wanted to help humanity and thought acting as a villain would let more people feel the need to push forward, but more than that he just didn’t know how to express his feelings, because try as he might he couldn’t understand humans, or gods, and so more than anything else he was lonely. And then of course everything with Enkidu, and the search for immortality, and the snake. And Gil says how it was only after the snake stole the herb from him that he realized how childish he’d been, and how he began to finally understand people, and he started to laugh at his own foolishness*** (the same thing which will come up later). And then CCC really completes Gil as a character as he’s finally able to live out his dream of traveling the stars with someone he cares about by his side. There’s a lot more but I won’t get into it now lmao. Anyway CCC is really good please watch/read/play it (just be warry of the massive amount of fatphobia and fanservice if that makes you uncomfortable). 

Anyway, so right after CCC was the UBW anime, where as I mentioned before they changed a few things from the VN to make Gil seem not quite as cartoonishly evil. Then there’s Strange Fake, which technically debuted as an April Fools in 2008, but only seriously began being published as a series in 2015. This has a lot of great Gil moments too, and it further shows his general softness towards children. Anyway Strange Fake is really good please read it. Then FGO came about with the Babylonia singularity, which really just cements Gil as a great character. While Gil started of CCC as fairly menacing and antagonistic, only slowly opening up to Hakuno over the course of the game, Babylonia Gil is a hero from the start. A true wise king, the ruler of Uruk we’ve never gotten to see up until this point. This is also where Nasu fully decided to commit to the Mesopotamian mythology, even if typical of him he changed a lot. Babylonia made a lot of people like Gil for the first time, which is fair. Though a lot of people credit too much of this to it being “Casgil” not “Archer Gil” imo, despite a large portion of character beats in Babylonia being borrowed from CCC.

And so, Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, has gone through a hero’s journey irl and gone from a one-dimensional villain to a true hero. Definitely someone who can interact with people without killing them on sight. In fact this happens in Emiya Gohan, which is basically just FHA without the serious side to it. Though not in the anime, adult Gil shows up multiple times in the manga and is able to walk around Fuyuki and interact with other characters and just hang out. They even keep up the bit from FHA of him being beloved by Fuyuki’s kids.

But, this post is about Kid Gil, who I haven’t mentioned in several paragraphs now. So, while his adult self who he admittingly hates gets to go through all that, what has the boyo gotten to do? Hey you know that really gross spinoff manga with the magical girls-- 

Yeah Kid Gil has only ever been relevant in Prillya. But honestly? He’s better there than he is anywhere else. As mentioned before he didn’t get much of a personality in FHA outside of wholesome and horny, and in FGO his existence makes the game worse overall. His interlude is just him creeping on Mash, and his Valentines scene is so infamous at this point it probably needs no introduction. But anyway, Kid Gil in Prillya is a much more interesting character. Though I say that loosely. He still doesn’t get much depth to him, but he does actually act like Gil. Kid Gil in FHA is so dissimilar to his adult self that its meant to be surprising that they’re the same person at all (this is actually pretty similar to how in FSN Gil has nothing indicating his identity from his appearance so it can surprise the characters and reader). But in Prillya, while definitely more agreeable and nice than his adult self would be, he still has moments that are unquestionably Gil. He lays around drinking wine (grape juice?), knows more than he openly tells people, and gets angry as shit if someone disrespects his treasures, particularly his treasure which represents Enkidu. 

I think this is a good time to say as a reminder again that Kid Gil isn’t “Gil summoned as a child”, but instead “adult Gil turned back into a child”. So his personality instantly resetting to his childhood self has always been iffy. It’s one of the things which makes no sense about him. Becoming a child again instantly resets your personality to how it was back then apparently. Though Prillya Kid Gil is slightly different, as he becomes a kid for a different reason but I digress.

But yeah, so apparently adult Gil takes the youth potion whenever he doesn’t feel like dealing with things. He almost does this in Strange Fake before Enkidu shows up. Since his kid version is just so different from him, I guess it’s like they’re different people so it’s the kid’s problem now? Or perhaps he thinks he’ll be more easily entertained by things while he’s a kid? It’s unclear. Oh I guess I should mention here too that technically in FGO it’s kept ambiguous as to whether the Kid Gil there is adult Gil turned into a kid or actually child Gil. But honestly it doesn’t make a difference since they don’t do anything with him anyway.

But, Gil taking the youth potion because he’s bored is ultimately one of the main issues I have with him. As, according to a Fate materials book (from 2009 I believe? I could be wrong), this is how Gil spent the 10 years between the fourth and fifth Grail wars. Specifically, he did it to “more easily blend in with society”. This was back before all the character development, or specifically character retconning, I was talking about before took place. This is still in the same mindset of FHA, where of course adult Gil couldn’t live peacefully in Fuyuki for 10 years. He’s completely unable to coexist with anyone ever. 

Anyway yeah it makes no sense. Not just because of later changes to his character, it doesn’t even make sense in the context of the time it was written. Kid Gil is written to be a good sweet boy, who doesn’t condone all the war crimes of his adult self. So, if Kid Gil was around for those ten years, he would probably not be okay with the church’s orphan basement. He would probably be very against it in fact. 

Then there is the question of how he would then go back and become the villain he is in FSN. I suppose there’s two trains of thought for this. One, he just stayed as a child for ten years without aging, which seems unlikely given he’s incarnated at this point so he can grow like a normal person, and also I don’t know why Kid Gil would willingly change back into his adult self then? It’s already pretty unclear how he changes back from his kid form into an adult in FHA, but regardless if Kid Gil knew the atrocities his adult self and Kirei were planning I don’t know why he’d willingly become that again. The other idea is that he just aged back up to his adult form, which could explain why it can sometimes seem like FSN Gil is younger than Zero Gil. But this also doesn’t make any sense. It would mean that Kid Gil grew up a second time, knowing the kind of person he became before, in a completely different set of circumstances, and then just happened to become the exact same way he was before? 

Going back to CCC, when Gil talks about his past, he dismissive himself as an early child, saying he’s so different they’re practically different people and that he probably wouldn’t even recognize himself. His childhood self had not yet sided with humanity, and was at the time fairly neutral. This is as much as we get about him, but it’s when his isolation began as there was no one to understand him. He was a king from birth essentially, made by the gods to be king. He did not have a normal childhood at all, and was always meant as a tool by the gods, to be the lynchpin of heaven. It wasn’t until later, his teen years, that he rejected this task and decided to help humanity instead, though again he went about it in a rough way.

Basically, the reason Gil turned out like he did as an adult was due to very specific circumstances, and it seems unlikely that not a single thing would change about him if he grew up a second time in Fuyuki. Of course he does hate the modern world, and living there for 10 years just made him want to destroy it more. But then Kid Gil is able to get along in the modern world more easily so does Kid Gil hate the modern world just as much? Just like with the orphan basement I think Kid Gil would probably not want to destroy most of humanity, and probably would want to get as far away from Kirei as possible

(Also this is my bias as a Kotogil shipper but I don’t think Gil would say at the end of Zero that he’s interested in teaching Kirei about pleasure and watching him find himself more and then immediately dip to become a kid).

And then, the whole thing with Gil spending those ten years as a kid anyway is kind of dubiously canon anyway. It is mentioned exactly once, in one materials book, and never again. Nasu is well known for retconning things he’s said in past mats books. And in fact, it’s finally time to talk about the thing I said I’d get back to later. So, this materials book contains both the line about Gil turning into his kid form, and also his profile from FSN. The thing is, this profile states that after the snake stole the herb of immortality from him, Gilgamesh then immediately “died from grief.” This is not true. It is not based on the myth. In fact, it is plainly retconned in later installments like CCC. Fuck, it’s even retconned by Kid Gil’s existence in that he has the herb still at all! Yeah I guess Gil ending his life in despair makes sense for the one-note villain in FSN, but absolutely nowhere else. And so what I’m saying is that if such a huge piece of information in this mats book has been retconned to fit with Gil’s newer character, it’s fair to theorize that the issue of how he spent the ten years is too.

And also? Everyone’s just been ignoring this anyway lol. Kid Gil is just less interesting as a character, it’s much more fun to imagine what his adult self would get up to, and in fact his adult self is able to fit into society just fine if he tries. Plus since it’s only mentioned in one mats book most people will never read I’m sure a lot of people don’t even know it’s a thing anyway. It’s just... really stupid honestly.

And while I think that one particular instance of Kid Gil is stupid, I think in general Kid Gil is just such a wasted opportunity. In fact sometimes I wish that we had like a Gilgamesh lily Servant before remembering oh right we do he just has basically nothing to do with Gil. If Kid Gil was actually Gil summoned as a child and not just his adult self aged down, I think it would be really interesting to go into his character. This is the time where he was truly isolated, before Enkidu, before he decided to become a hero/tyrant. He’s just a child king. I want them to be able to explore the pressure put on him by the gods to be the one to restrain humanity, and how he decided to reject them entirely. He has not met an equal nor has he learned to relate to humanity. While he is kinder than his adult self, he is far less human. And I think that’s interesting, and it’s a shame they’ve never done anything about it.

I guess this could still change. We’ll see what happens in Strange Fake, and I guess Prillya is still technically ongoing. I’ve given up hope of him being written well in FGO lol. But anyway yeah. If you’ve read this far thanks I guess I’m very passionate about Gil as you can tell.

[ranboo5]

I'm sorry OK not to be a hater bc GenLoss on the whole is fantastic and I'm extremely excited to see the next generations+where it goes from here. None of my haterisms are killer criticisms I did on the whole really like it and I do think on a fundamental level it really works and Also I think people have been a bit harsh on the first two episodes

HOWEVER. Out of those criticisms Hetch is absolutely the strongest one and the one that I find hardest to forgive

For a character apparently written by the same person responsible for the absolutely fantastic and effective Squiggles, Hetch is abysmal. While I liked fine what he did – his role in ep3 is fine, I don't have beef with the evil concept I think it works, and the faux-reveal in the closet of ep2 is fantastic as a plot beat, and hell, the bit where he was obviously lying to Ranboo in ep3/the prereveal dynamic is compelling enough – almost all of his dialogue was trite, overwritten, overexplanatory sludge. The first time he appeared in episode 1 he elicited a reaction of "well that's a bit cheesy and blatant but I can forgive it." It did not get better. Hetch's dialogue is exhausting to me from a story perspective – none of what he explains conveys any information that isn't conveyed and conveyed BETTER by Ranboo's reactions. It wouldn't work with the way the Social Experiments deal with surveillance to not have Hetch's dialogue audible, but if you put that aside, cutting the vast majority of it out would lose you nothing and net you a more satisfying story that doesn't feel like it's trying to explain itself to you at every turn. Hetch saying the obvious is least egregious at the end of episode 2, because Ranboo's reactions really sell the value of the scene as a faux-reveal subverting how this kind of thing is Normally a Shocking Twist, but his appearance in episode 1 doesn't manage to be quite worth it in the same way, and when he's explaining things about the situation that doesn't make sense to matter as a direct lie ("Oooh the mall Changed when Showfall moved in", explaining the wire monster (a different can of worms), &c), it without fail feels overwritten and irritating – I feel like I want to fast forward through it. The villain monologue at the end is the worst and most harmful example of this – it's so cheesy, and overhammed, and next to Squiggles already giving literally all the necessary information for Showfall's role in this and intent for Ranboo in WORLDS more effective and haunting way and to Ranboo's as always fantastic unmatched breakdown acting (has never flopped), it's actually painful in a way only matched by the agony of listening to Amon showing up anywhere in StarCraft II. Hearing him explaining in excruciating detail how actually, if you didn't connect the dots, Hetch evil, by the way, in case you didn't know (like WOW, I guess the next reveal we're getting is Squiggles evil, in case we didn't know, and then we're going to turn to the camera and say "the moral of the story is the entertainment industry is dehumanizing, be sure to turn in your reading comprehension worksheets by Monday,") is awful, and the stupid "THE AUDIENCE HAS VOTED FOR YOU TO DIE" line is especially awful for leaving me groaning in exasperation over an otherwise viscerally affective last scene. (It doesn't help, also, that Ranboo's acting is just in a completely different league from that of Hetch's actor's, making the contrast seriously jarring)

Hetch's role in the story is fine – excellent, even, with what it says about the incentives of the entertainment industry and how alone and doomed the MC truly is – but that role doesn't necessitate "fleshing out" of a character any more than Squiggles' does, and frankly, Hetch already gets far, FAR too much screentime and tedious, condescending (much of it not in the fun way!) dialogue as it is. Again, I'm still excited to see more GenLoss, and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if streamer ends up making me eat my words here, but like, as it is, I think it's a step in exactly the wrong direction to give Hetch MORE screentime

Floral Mel Days and I were discussing last night – it's likely that Hetch with his explanations and blatant dragging up of the pretty clear and surface level message (not a criticism! GenLoss wearing its identity on its sleeve isn't a bad thing and it does a lot of deeper and more subtle things with it) are a response to the audience reaction to c!Ranboo, which makes me, honestly, viscerally upset. While making GenLoss more accessible and, uh, possible to rewatch is definitely a sensible goal, GL's subtleties are easily its strongest aspect to me, even – hell, especially! – if they go over people's heads. It really does feel like Hetch is writing to people who are unable or unwilling to actually read into what the series is saying, and it feels really restrictive and sad, same as the Ranologues getting ditched. Hetch feels like trying to overcompensate for the worst of the esotericism of c!Ranboo lore with the most "ah, awkward improv" infodumps thereof, while also lacking entirely the character and pathos of c!Ranboo – a character and pathos that it takes time to build, and that, frankly, Hetch does not have enough of my good faith left of to enjoy

TL;DR: Hetch as a story element works awesome but Hetch's actual screentime almost all sucks absolute shit because it violates the principle of

I DON'T WANT TO SEE HETCH'S CHARACTER A LITTLE MORE

[laundryandtaxes]

I think this is kind of a silly fight to pick when it isn't like there are hoardes of self-termed transvestites clamoring for inclusion in transgender community and when most LGBT and queer people would find it incredibly offensive for me, as someone who does in fact "cross dress" full time, to refer to myself as a transvestite. But I do think that the loss of the term and framework has meant, and this is gonna get problematic but if you're old enough to be reading this you're a big kid and you'll live, that a lot of people who are really vaguely gender nonconforming have been shoved forcibly under the transgender umbrella in a way that might have been preventing by "transvestite" hanging around- that is to say, the term and concept intentionally held space for people who experienced life deeply as gender nonconforming people but who may not have wished for any medical interventions to alleviate dysphoria. This is a helpful concept to have around for two reasons. Firstly, it prevents people from doing what I think is ultimately often appropriating the language developed around transness to describe experiences that are much closer in line with the experiences of non-gnc heterosexual people than of someone who transitions from being read as one gender to the other- the number of people I've met and talked to who live their lives being read as straight women and think they're a member of a class (transgender) that is somehow marginalized by the class of which I'm allegedly a member (cisgender) is astounding, and the number of people who believe I "have" (gag) some level of cis privilege over people read WHILE PRESENTING AS DESIRED as wholesome heterosexuals is absurd. Secondly it provides a very clear form of potential identitification for people who wish to enact some very real and life-altering and sometimes life-threatening kinds of gender nonconformity but who don't wish to transition, and the loss of a framework for people like that (people like myself) has meant a lot of people, especially women, transitioning who shouldn't have- I do think there's a case to be made that we wouldn't be seeing this massive wave of detransitioners, largely women, if there were more readily available ontologies about gender nonconformity among LGBT people. The creation of a third gender box- and I'm aware that many people take serious issue with that understanding of nonbinary identity, but the fact remains that the popularity of that conception among LGBT people has had very harmful consequences and created whole new kinds of prescriptivism- has not ushered in some new variety of ways to be gender nonconforming, it has largely codified one or two additional ways of presenting.

I don't think the newness of the distinction makes it bad- the post I plucked this from presents the concept of transgender identity as being new in 1994, so it isn't like we are talking about some ancient and wise history, we're talking about changes in self conception among a tiny group of people from a few years ago to now- but I do baseline agree that the kind of chasm here is how you get people being offended at existence of communities specifically for butch and transmasc individuals to share as though there is all that much truly separating us when even plenty of butches are seeking out transition measures, making up stupid fake fights to have about almost entirely imagined gay men that exclusively use she/her, etc. I don't think that necessitates inclusion in transgender identity and community and in some ways I think it kind of argues against it, but either way we've truly kind of lost the plot here.