#this entire chapter is basically a subversion

[shsl-hubris-guy]

I'm feeling like being controversial today. Here, take some DR character opinions. Clutch your pearls besties

17- Makoto. I feel nothing for this character, in any positive or negative direction. To me, he's only ever been the vessel for which THH takes place for the player. That's kind of it. Bro is just chilling. (Note: these opinions are exclusive to the THH game.)

16- Leon. He suffers from what I like to call chapter 1 syndrome. Not only was he killed extremely early, but he had no plot or character significance before or after the fact in-game. I think the idea of a character that hates their talent is really interesting, and his design slaps, but he just didn't have any sticking power for me.

15- Yasuhiro. He's got funny moments here and there (the ghost bit in the ch 5 trial never fails to make me laugh) but he has no story. They don't do anything with him besides 'stupid occult man' jokes, and I can't help but feel like there was wasted potential to do something with his fortune-telling talent that was only ever used as another gag of his stupidity. Disappointing as a character, but at least he was around longer than Leon.

14- Byakuya. Asshole characters are always hit-or-miss for me, and Byakuya missed by a ton. I know he *technically* got showed up during the chapter 4 trial, but getting upstaged once and acting like nothing happened afterwards isn't enough of a character arc for me to find him surviving over so many others in the cast worth it. He's also just pretty weak as an antagonist in comparison to the others in the series(not to mention there was an objectively better option for antag in this very cast). He's the type of character I'd probably like way more in like, Ace Attorney, but here I just got so sick of hearing him speak.

13- Hifumi. I can appreciate the attempt to make a subversion of the 'perverted nerd' character, but they failed the second they actually made him a perverted nerd, even if they gave him that bare minimum ideal of rape being bad. Fanon interpretations of what could've been prop him up for me a good bit, too.

12- Mukuro. Similar to Makoto, she feels like a character that exists to serve a narrative purpose, and we never really meet her as herself in-game. Unlike Makoto, we actually got FTEs playable in the post-game that allude to a greater story with her and her doubt in despair that makes her retroactively more tragic and adds both to herself and her sister.

11- Toko. They just didn't do enough with her in THH to warrant me placing her any higher than this. I think the differences between her and Genocider are interesting, and I wish they'd been given more growth in the game instead of spending the entire game post-chapter 2 pining over and stalking Byakuya. Toko gets ranked lower because she wasn't as fun to have onscreen and I got sick of her insisting people disliked her for being ugly, even though she's pretty conventionally attractive beyond having glasses.

10- Junko. She was an incredible mastermind twist and had a ton of charisma and presence in the final trial, from her sprites to the VA's performance, but they just didn't use her enough to warrant putting her any higher than the characters above.

9- Mondo. I like the characters he's attached to more than I do Mondo himself. I like the 2-sided coin of toxic masculinity they write between him and Chihiro, and I love his relationship with Taka, but I just don't care much for him outside of what he provides for those characters. He's fine.

8- Genocider. Basically everything I said with Toko, but she's way more entertaining from her cheery and violent personality and is just more expressive and fun. I got excited whenever she came onscreen because I knew I was about to have a good time.

7- I don't think you could change Kyoko's role in the story much at all without drastically altering the game as a whole. Makoto may be the POV, but Kyoko is undoubtedly the main character of THH and not only is she the most capable member of the class, but her growth as she opens up to Y/N Makoto and puts her faith not only in the absolute truth, but also hope is beautiful to watch, especially as we get to learn the mystery of who she is and where she came from. In another world, she'd be my #1, but I've never actually shed tears for her so she ends up as low as 7th.

6- I'd say from an objective standpoint, Sakura is probably the most well-written character in THH. Her internal conflict as she's forced to play the role of spy paired with her rapidly growing relationship with Hina as she finally, finally finds someone that sees her as the woman she so desperately wants to be acknowledged as, growing past her greatest weakness- her fear- to stand up to Monokuma, and having to take the role of a fighter on for a class of people that hated her to be both victim and killer, freeing her classmates from having to become either- I think I've made my point. I still wish we'd gotten that 3rd-person fighter about Sakura.

5- When I went into THH, I fully expected Hina to be a dumb blonde character for the entire game, with no substance beyond her character design. Maybe that low expectation was what made her shoot so high up my list. She wasn't the smartest character, sure, and the game definitely focuses on her body an uncomfortable amount, but she still has an incredible arc in her relationship with Sakura. Her depiction of grief is so deeply emotional, and her sense of justice, which up until then had been alluded to but never put into her hands, became a weapon that almost took down the entire class with her tears. Not only does she lose her best friend, but she's then manipulated by Monokuma to make that pain so much worse by pinning the blame for her loss on everyone around her and herself. Her attempt of a murder-suicide of the entire class followed by the reading of Sakura's real will and her guilt and regret afterwards is one of the strongest moments of the series. I've always thought if Makoto didn't exist, Hina would've been a great choice for a protagonist for this game, since she starts with that same optimism and easygoing ability to make friends that Makoto does, but is a strong character in her dedication to her sports and fierce love of those closest to her.

4- As a trans man, Chihiro's story was a lot like looking in a mirror, especially when I was playing the game as someone who'd only just started opening the closet door. His insecurities due to his body and his attempts to forcibly feminize himself to receive acceptance and masquerade as something he wasn't was something I was intensely familiar with, and the tragedy of his finally gaining enough confidence to open up to a close friend and seek out help to try and become his true self, only to be betrayed by said friend and killed before he ever got the chance, was one of the best personal gut punches I've gotten from this series. Regardless of the transphobia and misogyny written into said storyline, he's a character I'll never not relate to. There's a ton to dive into with Chihiro's character writing, and he's one of those characters I can tear into like a raw steak and go not only into how he's treated by the show, but also by how many ways there are to write him better than the game actually did and all the different ways different corners of the fandom have treated him. (Also, to be clear, I'm not opposed to transfem Chihiros hcs, I'm using he/him bc that's what's canon.)

3- Taka. My beloved boy, underrated outside of his relationship with Mondo. I'll defend this man until the day I die, and will always believe he should've been a member of the surviving cast over Hiro. His constant uphill battle with trying to connect with and protect his classmates only to fail at every turn from his lack of understanding of social norms, going as far as to rationalize hobbies as a form of studying in his first FTE, and his pure joy in finally connecting with someone being decimated by the reality that that man went on to be a killer is so powerful. Watching him completely snap and go near comatose, only being pulled out of stasis by the news that an AI of Chihiro still exists and begging for forgiveness for not being able to prevent his death was shattering, and his fusion with his perception of Mondo pushing him over the edge only to be killed unceremoniously in the background of Celeste's plan was infuriating. This man struggled and clawed his way through the first half of the game for whatever scraps of screentime the creators would leave him, and then they tossed him out when they couldn't think of anything better to do. Justice for my man!!!

2- Celeste. Remember when I said there was a character more well-suited for the role of antagonist than Byakuya in this game? Well, this is she. Not only would she have worked as a narrative foil to the player, as Makoto and Celeste are both in the class for their luck-based talent, but she would've had a much more powerful and thematic rivalry with Kyoko, the girl who seeks out absolute truth, as the girl who wraps herself in a veil of lies. I already found her fascinating as she was, having a character that's unashamedly a bad person and follows her own ideals with no regard for the effects on the rest of the class beyond how easy it'd be to manipulate them, but her lack of regard for the class trials and refusal to cooperate could've been how she functioned as an antagonist, refusing to help the group when it didn't immediately serve her or intentionally leaving out details that put her in a bad position. Essentially, she'd function as an antagonist in a way inverse to how Kokichi functioned, which not only would've been phenomenal for THH, but for the parallel storytelling V3 later goes on to employ. That said, that's all hypothetical, but even without all of that, she's still an intriguing character that I can't stop thinking about.

1- Sayaka. I hated Sayaka when I first started playing, not because of anything she was doing, but because I didn't like how the game was seemingly gluing her to Makoto's hip. I didn't like having to slough my way through tutorial after tutorial going through her to talk to the entire rest of the class, and I didn't like being forced to burn my first FTE on her when there were other characters I wanted to learn about. I cheered when I found her body because it meant I wouldn't have to jump through hoops to speak to the other characters anymore. All that hatred dissipated as the first trial took place. Taking the cutesy sidekick girl and making her not only the first victim (something that was huge for the genre at the time) but also going on to reveal that she was actively betraying us and plotting to frame us for murder to save herself and her fellow idols was a genius move. Since then, Sayaka has become a stronger presence in my mind for this series, and her impact on the series as a whole can't be overstated. She put the first killing game into motion. She carried with her the first despair, and inspired the first hope from Makoto. Her desperation for a dream she had to fight tooth and nail for, that desire to hang onto her dream that'd kept her going for so long pushes forward everything. 11037 became a staple point for the series and the fandom, not just because of the poor western translation, but also because that was her point of regret, the guilt that stopped her from killing Leon successfully and ultimately saved everyone, her final moments being to save Makoto and the others. Every moment spent with her at the beginning is designed not just to make her seem like the desirable sidekick girl, but also to weave into your perception of her the darkness she carries on the inside, the dedication and determination to remain liked and retain her fame by any means necessary, feigning being agreeable yet still unwittingly developing genuine feelings for someone who's nothing but genuine. The money I'd pay for a prequel anime about Sayaka's rise to the title of SHSL Idol is unreasonably high.

[sexycornenthusiast]

hey gang i'm back for another long ramble about an anime game but i feel obligated to put it below a cut bc it's 500 words long and about sketchy treatment of underage girls in media and implied csa (bc it's danganronpa so horrible things have to happen) etc etc but. I actually think Kotoko's character presentation could've worked as an okay bait and switch if the writers had been willing to fully commit and that makes what they actually did with her so much worse.

There's this phenomenon everyone notices but is expected to pretend doesn't exist where if you watch enough anime, it's (unfortunately) almost an inevitability one of them will be weird about underage girls, and Danganronpa is a game that eats sleeps and breathes anime, for better or for worse. If you're already immersed in the weeb culture of fanservice episodes and "FBI, open up!!" jokes and 500 year old little girls, Kotoko's few lines of icky broadcast dialogue are barely a blip on the radar to the desensitized mind. The history of the medium primes you to think of it as background noise that won't go anywhere and just "look past" it for the sake of the good content.

But then at the start of chapter 3 they go, "No. This fucked up thing happened to her and she's not okay, and the way she acts is a reflection of that". Which is... kind of good actually, and true to life in a horrific sort of way, and you thought you were getting a gross tropey character but you're actually getting a character who's visibly deeply scarred. A basic subversion of expectations, yes, but a compelling one because of how uncommon it is.

And that makes it feel even worse that the narrative goes out of its way to re-sexualize her, to undermine the switch by giving back the bait. It's almost like the developers were genuinely afraid of alienating the ""lolicon fans"" in their audience, and it's fucking cowardly and gross for a game that's supposedly trying to be a serious examination of childhood trauma. Because God forbid the audience have to sit with the systemic harm done to this little girl for even a second without being prompted to laugh at it. God forbid someone might decide to think about the way the media they consume treats said little girls. GOD fucking FORBID she be given the same respect and validation her male teammates get for their pain, that would be the end of the goddamn world.

Every other kid character gets their backstory laid out in the open for the audience to sit with and that's it. No non-committal back and forth, no trying to shove it back into the box or cover it up with someone's fetish material. The three boys (monaca is complicated and I have no idea how I feel about her) are allowed to be messed up by their traumatic experiences without the game bending over backwards to mock them for it. She isn't. That One Section ruins the entire chapter and there's literally no reason for it to be there other than as a cruel joke at her (and honestly also komaru's) expense.

That's why I'll never say this game is good, no matter how much I like it. I can overlook poorly designed gameplay in a story-based game. I can't overlook this. She deserved so much better, and it's obvious that some people on the development staff really cared and I wish they hadn't been undercut the way they were.

in conclusion she deserved to kill her parents and they should've let her kill haiji too and i will be her number one supporter until i die

[glasshalftrue]

just finished reading 17776 (warning for those who haven't heard of it: there's a very mild jump scare on the initial page). overall it was basically what i expected - which is good, because i'd heard a lot of good things about it!

some scattered thoughts:

this is one of the most measured takes on immortality i've seen in a piece of media, and probably the one that most closely aligns to how i feel about the concept. it doesn't go the whole "immortality is a curse" route, which i've always thought was pure sour grapes, but it does acknowledge the very real problems that we'd run into when faced with eternity. one of my favorite quotes by a fictional character is from mr. peanutbutter in bojack horseman: "the key to being happy isn't the search for meaning; it's just to keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead." and turns out he's right, even if eventually we won't be dead.

the sheer level of cultural and societal stagnation strikes me as a little far-fetched, but i understand that it serves several important functions (reinforces the story's themes about contentedness; keeps things more grounded and comprehensible for the reader; a source of humor), so i'll let it slide.

one of my favorite moments was when the 500 ball crashes into the bulb: in the video leading up to it, the unsettling music, the dread in ten and juice's voices, and even the title of the chapter ("No no no no no no.") lead you to believe that something terrible is going to happen and that the stakes are suddenly about to become much, much bigger. what is about to be destroyed? is it something related to the nanomachines? is this going to cause humanity's long period of rest and relaxation to finally end? and then... it turns out it was just about a light bulb that's been burning for a long time. but then, you realize that, in a world almost entirely free of loss, something like this really is as tragic as it gets: an irreplaceable piece of history from the before-times is gone forever. it's a great little double subversion of expectations.

the focus on football is the most conflicting element of the story for me. on the one hand, i know nothing about and do not care at all about football. on the other hand, the story is clearly not really about football, and anyways in the story it's evolved into something completely unrecognizable from the sport today. on the other other hand, it's written by someone who does actually care a lot about football, and it comes through in the writing, so there is a certain element of the story that feels inaccessible to me. on the other other other hand, i think the genuine passion that bois has for the subject gives the story a level of specificity that couldn't have been achieved any other way. ultimately, i think i personally would've liked it if the story had been mostly the same but centered around something i cared more about (i know there's also thematic relevance around it being football specifically because of america and whatever but tbh i don't care as much about that as i do the broader themes about humanity), but given who the creator is, i'm glad they wrote it the way they did.

[endless-sketching]

Just finished watching the first ep of the senpai wa otokonoko and my god do I just love it

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime ED)

Spoilers! I will talk about future events so shoo if you haven't read all of the manga plus some bits of the prequel manga

All that being said, goodlord I still hate the title the anime- wait no the entire story is name using that name god damn it

The name in question is "senpai wa otokonoko: this is him (can't be anyone else)"

And I want to say I like the title but something about it just rubs me the wrong way, I've prob talked about it before in one of my previous posts but I get that it's supposed to be a title subversion. You see a cute girl on the cover and the titles says it's a dude, cool and it's stupidly smart how it will catch people's attention.

But the story later on doesn't exactly tackle it fully, it side steps the "is makoto trans or just likes to dress femininely as a guy?" Question too many times in the manga for this title to really sit right with me.

I will acknowledge that we did have that amazing chapter of Makoto at their grandpa's place and how it's an excellent reflection of Makoto's mental space and how it leads up to them deciding to confront their parents about who they are

But oh my god they didn't give Makoto enough screen time to decide who they are

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

The story focuses too much on the traumas of the side characters, I love Aoi don't get me wrong. The scenes she have and how her life is with divorced parents tugs on my heart strings to me genuinely crying when she breaks down crying in front of her grandma, but oh my god why can't we have this kind of scene with Makoto too.

Like genuinely, the story revolves around Makoto's identity and how it affects their relationships. And at the start, the story leaves it a mystery because even they question and try dressing up normally as a guy after their mom found the cutesy handkerchief Aoi gave them. And then an extremely heart wrenching scene of them throwing away everything they love that hits too close to home for me when I first read it.

That whole arc was basically a big first step towards asking "What is Makoto's gender?"

Only for us to never find out, aside from a really subtle hint at the end of them going to school, in the female uniform,from their hom, without their wig.

Not only that but I am so afraid of what the internet is going to think about Makoto's grandpa, because it's a genuinely interesting take on the "man in a dress" trope that hinges too much on controversial story elements like lying and traumatizing Makoto's mom to never dressing up femininely again. It's a very controversial point in the story that I'm afraid Twitter will not have the nuance to take it in properly and discuss it civilly.

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime ED)

I get that the story doesn't have to be explicit about Makoto's gender to run the story well. There's been plentiful of hunts that they will stay the way they want no matter what people say. It's just not having a firm confirmation of what Makoto is frustrates me because this anime will just become another means of ammunition to use against queer people if done by some loud asshole on the internet.

I really do hope the anime rectifies this problem I have in any small way possible. The creator knows the importance of this story to a lot of people and how fragile of a topic it is as stated in one of the post she made after the announcement of the anime. Take that info with a grain of salt because I think she never really explicitly said that the topic of Makoto's identity, but acknowledged that the story is near and dead go many and wants to do it justice.

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

The anime itself is beautiful, and I just love how they adapted the more goofy scenes the manga had into these more stylized scenes with thicker lines

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

It must've been a massive budget help with how simple these scenes look and animated while still staying true to the manga without it feeling cheap

(Source: Senpai wa otonokono anime)

Like this scene is surprisingly really good looking with the mix of both styles. I really like this style but it can't really beat the normal style the anime has.

Seeing how all of the characters from the story is featured in the anime's opening, I hope the anime is a full adaptation of the entire story.

So you should check it out too! If you haven't read the manga then this anime is the next best thing.

[danggirlronpa]

Speaking of “intentional bad writing is still bad writing”, I will never forgive V3 for killing Tenko because it had to have the double murder and the shock value of the inc*st reveal. Instead of, you know, having characters make actions that make sense.

Even more egregious that Korekiyo acknowledged that using only Angie’s murder to escape would have been smarter, but he did an unnecessary second murder for basically no reason.

Honestly, this whole trial is one of the weakest in the series. The murder itself has a whole host of issues - the motivation has nothing to do with the story, provides almost no new or interesting information about the world around the characters, acknowledges within itself that the double murder was unnecessary, and relies entirely on the shock value of "this time the murderer IS the guy who seemed like a murderer!", which is not exactly an effective subversion. And the trial is frankly an affront to Angie directly. But its greatest sin for me is that it destroys Tenko and Angies' potential character arcs for seemingly no reason.

And not because they died early in their arcs! There is some very effective tragedy to be found to in killing a character just when they are starting to change. Hiyoko is a great example of this - in the exact same chapter where Hiyoko starts to drop her many barriers and open up to people she once hated, she is brutally murdered in her first attempt to follow a fellow student's advice, and Hajime is specifically striken by the grief of knowing someone who had just started on the path of recovery had their life taken by the cruelty of the game without any regard for them. That's effective tragedy!! That's fucking SAD!! And while I personally feel that Hiyoko surviving would've served the overall themes better than some other chars (sorry Kazuichi), it's easy to recognize that this, too, was a compelling story.

Angie and Tenko don't receive this sense of tragedy, because Angie and Tenko don't get character arcs. They never change or learn in any significant way. Angie in particular never truly is allowed any character depth beyond a surface-level gimmick - even her FTEs are just more of the same, particularly the ones with Kaede. Angie and Tenko are completely flat characters whose sole purpose in the game becomes, in chapter 3, to prop up Himiko's character arc.

THAT SUUUUUCKS. They have so much potential!! There are so many interesting and compelling directions their stories could've taken! And it removes the little existing nuance to their characters as their flaws become irrelevant compared to How They Make The Survivors Feel. But instead Spike decided they would have one shtick, and once people got bored, they would die. (Korekiyo suffers from this too but it's overwhelmed by...everything else they do to Korekiyo.)

This has gone on too long I think. But to sum up I pretty firmly believe that V3 Chapter 3 was created by picking three characters to die and then making up a ton of other stuff to make it work because the writers were tired of them. And it shows.

[minecraftrelatedrandomness]

⭐ ramble about whatever you want o7

[ask game]

because i know you like it + i've wanted to talk about it for quite a while, i'll talk about and i can't live in a fairytale of lies in its entirety:

the humble beginnings + misc

i first started writing down the introspective/emotional spiel at the end of chapter 2 while i was at the yata supermarket in mong kok east. i wrote like half the fic in like five hours that day after coming home LMAO

also, i mentioned "no quarter given" in both chapters of the fic with no explanation for what it means. iirc it's basically old-timey military terminology for "kill on sight even if they surrender" (or sth along those lines)

titles

the working title for the fic was counting sheep, after the crane wives song whose lyrics i used for the chapter titles

there's one specific set of chapter titles that i decided against using in the final version purely because it's too politically inflammatory (as in i could get arrested)

[everything else under the cut because i like yapping a bit too much]

kuervo in childhood

[Chapter 1] Four walls. A tallboy of a child's clothes that no longer fit. A wall of books on Nayan history, politics, and military affairs, a decade or more out of date. [Chapter 2] As night fell, he read through some military documents from the Armada's offices. Perhaps it was out of sheer boredom, or perhaps he just wanted to stay up to date with the Armada's activities after all these years — though the reasons for that had changed, from genuine investment in state matters to something related, but quite different in motive.

my guy was Interested in big topics from a young age. it probably came with the childhood trauma and the propaganda. whether you'd classify it as a hyperfixation/special interest or whatnot is ENTIRELY up to you to decide.

btw a tallboy is basically like a wardrobe. a time period-appropriate wardrobe.

for there had been no tears left to cry since 1037, and never would there be again.

pirates started in 1040 (he was 19), so he was 16 in 1037, when it all began. i feel that emotional (and especially tear) repression crops up a lot in my fics. funny because i'm a pretty big crier in real life.

also, very sad, i know: kuervo needs a hug. he GETS a hug. but the person he gets a hug from doesn't UNDERSTAND the sheer amount of emotional turmoil he's been through over the years.

"Long may he reign." And may he and the Commanders reign until the Sun, Moon, and stars are extinguished and fall from the skies and all other life is destroyed, and may they reign thereafter as well.

this is actually a "me in real life" thing: snarking about "long may [totalitarian leader] reign" being so long that they're still alive at the heat death of the universe (or equivalent) and are STILL alive afterwards. except i tweaked it to be less scientific because of setting limitations; my basis for pirates worldbuilding IS the first half of the 19th century, after all.

nayan politics

there's so much politics that i could go into much more depth about. the anti-subversion laws and incrimination(? i only know the chinese as 連累) of family members who might not even be involved, among many others. though usually the incrimination part won't take literal decades to occur like it does in this fic; if this fic were to be realistic about it, mila's father and entire family and bloodline would probably be dead within the year after her escape (even a decade might be stretching it tbh).

the part about hidden postboxes for informants to tattle is partially inspired by totalitarian regimes in western europe in the 1940s, but moreso the chinese "spying/tattling on each other" mandate from legalist traditions over 2000 years ago. and also the cultural revolution. ESPECIALLY the cultural revolution. you can tell that my cultural experiences with politics REALLY affects the undertones of this fic.

also the fact that canon never explains why naya wants kuervo alive (as stated in the wanted poster). i actually gave an explanation here: political corruption. since his family is in high places in canon, part of me was arguing the whole with great power comes great responsibility thing + higher-ups should theoretically receive worse punishments, but my brain then said that was the legalism talking (i took a course on ancient chinese philosophy two years ago) + most real-life governments would let it slide much more easily, so i decided on the latter.

and the fact that his family is convinced that he's just misguided or whatnot. totalitarian politics is complicated, and the entwining of love and politics is even more complicated (and isolating). i personally didn't intend to project that part, but i just realized as i was writing this response that i might have done so subconsciously LOL

agriculture, connections, & kuervo's unreliable narration

At least his parents, in all their wealth and influence, were supportive of his newfound interest in the drink [coffee] and could afford to purchase some for him — they only grew well in the tropical south, and living in the far northwest meant that the average Nayan citizen would never see a coffee bean in their entire life. A guilty pleasure, he would call it, but it was one of the few remnants of his stint on the Faction Isles that he could keep where he was — Graecie had introduced him to the drink one autumn morning, saying that Marnie had introduced it to Will, who had introduced it to her. He wasn't quite sure if an afterlife existed, but if it did, he hoped that Alex could meet Marnie there. They'd get along well, even with Alex's devotion to what he had believed to be the Armada's anti-piracy convictions, and if the Nightingales were to be believed, she would welcome him with open arms nonetheless.

this part makes me so freaking sad for so many reasons.

on one hand, it's the biologist urge to talk about biology (climate and agriculture; kuervo implies in the dec 2nd stream that naya is located in the far northwest)

a lot of this segment is also inspired by that one tumblr post about how everyone is a patchwork of the people they've interacted with in the past: in this case, how coffee was passed down through interpersonal connections + kuervo misses his friends and the isles, dammit

on THE OTHER hand, it's also about kuervo NOT KNOWING the ending and what becomes of the faction isles. he doesn't know (for sure) that the isles survive their last encounter with ivy and iris. he doesn't know that p!will is dead. [and dw for context, the coffee enjoyer part is confirmed canon on p!will's part.] he doesn't know about how p!graecie's grief doesn't end where he left. he doesn't know he carries more than two dead people's direct legacies and memories with him.

in retrospect, the fact that this fic still works in the context of the bad alt ending for canon kills me even more, because kuervo's fate is among the very few that DON'T depend on the defeat of ivy and iris, so you can very well interpret this fic to take place in that continuity and it would still work out perfectly well. which then makes everything i said above take on ten extra layers of Sad bc Everyone Else Is Dead and Kuervo Doesn't Know.

political tactics

Alas, an order was an order, even when it was not worded as one, and again, he was no fool.

here i go, talking about totalitarian politics again. totally not because i live here.

Los Pelicanos, los Halcones, los Guinchos, y los Azulillos, he wrote of the factions. None of them were the correct translations for the birds, but it would hopefully throw the Armada off everybody's trails for a while.

i described this specific part in my writing outline/ideas as "he gives info but like, a bit to the left lol" [sic]

iirc guincho means "osprey" + i (and by extension, kuervo) deliberately worded it so that you can't directly refute the names on sight from the poster & the faction banner designs

symbolism

i talk about "unbound sailors" because that's what "pirates" translates to in my conlang LMAO

so here's the thing about the conlang: 'unbound' is the very direct translation and it initially refers to "not bound to a government or allegiance" or whatnot, but then the people living in ecclesia were like "so you are an anarchist type? so you must have no loyalty and must want to hurt everyone. pirate." and so the connotation was formed in-universe + how we got this translation + why pirates don't do "classic" destructive pirate activities

(i have SO SO SO MUCH worldbuilding lore tied to a single word, i can't believe it either. also speaking of: i do think of the faction isles as their own legal entity in-universe, but that's another can of worms to unpack LMAO)

"allies" who might turn him over to the authorities for two and a half dozen silver coins to line their pockets

thirty pieces of silver, it's fine, you can laugh me out of court, i had the then-new tv tropes page on my mind when i wrote that

tying stories together

so then i went on this entire spiel about the kingdom of rupestria, which actually ISN'T unique to this fic! i first mentioned it at the end of through blood and name, my p!owen naming fic, as the navy that she got arrested by and then served under (with commander sam) before getting out of dodge in her backstory

since owen mentioned that she came from the northwest (sept 20th vod, scott pov), i figured that her places of origin were located in the same general area as naya (i mentioned that headcanon in the life is a railway writer's cut too)

[through blood and name also mentions "owen of the egretry"; that's a reference to my "the faction isles are their own legal entity" headcanon as well bc i hc that the heron faction publishes under that alias into the greater academic world of ecclesia; egrets are taxonomically herons]

in this case, i also tied p!sausage's backstory into this bc i headcanon that his home island (canonically in the north iirc) was located in disputed territory around rupestria's waters. the section was mainly analysing the ethical implications of the attack from the navy's pov (but ofc, navies of ecclesia don't give a shit about this)

(again, i wonder about if there's correlation or even causation between the kites settling the northwestern side of the faction isles + so many totalitarian or otherwise restrictive regimes being located in northwestern ecclesia)

introspection & psychology

a lot about kuervo's quiet resistance after being put under house arrest near the end was me channeling my 2019/20 sociopolitical activist energy into a fic, hence the projection tags. the numbness towards politics? that's also me, but from 2021 and onward. as i said, it's been so long since i've written and published anything of that sort; i think the last time i did was in 2020

the naïvety self-blame is also kind of a very personal thing bc i remember watching the 2012 local chief executive (basically mayor/governor) elections on tv when i was a kid and the guy i was predicting to win (with all the innocence of a 7yo child) DID win. i was so happy at the time but then i was 7 and didn't understand the true political implications at the time, and i learnt just a couple of years later that the guy was actually an asshole (+ all-round not a person i should align myself politically if i want to stand by my morals and values)

i don't really blame myself for that bc i was 7 and didn't know better, but i feel that this is something that kuervo still has to come to terms with, because he grew up in a loyalist/pro-totalitarian household and his naïvety lasted until he was 16 before the entire world backflipped on him and crashed down in a single night, so i felt that the psychological impact of everything on him would be much greater when compared to my personal experience

and also as i mentioned in the tags: "i may or may not have given kuervo ptsd", so yeah: the flashbacks are canon + nightmares here, avoidance 101 (gun avoidance in canon) + sleep issues and paranoia here + ongoing negative emotions & blame (bro has been on a revenge arc for OVER A DECADE since CHILDHOOD) + implicit social isolation here (chapter 1)

conclusion

anyways teehee kuervo was one of the more fun cubitos to write purely because i get to put a spotlight on the guy and then OOPS i may have accidentally set him on fire with the projection beam in the process

(also holy shit this entire writer's cut is like 2k words long by itself. the fic is only 2.9k words. i like to yap i guess)

[seizethecringeofproduction]

“I dunno,” Sonic replied with a shrug, “My first guess is somewhere in Soleanna, but I don’t recall any ‘T’ tower existing in the New City over there!”

Hearing what Sonic said made both Barry and Wally’s eyes widen. The first thing they looked to in silence was Sonic, as if to make sure that was truly what he said.Then, their eyes scanned over to the building itself as it silently rested so far from the shoreline, separated by them only by a metal fence and a few miles of glistening bay water. While both of their jaws dropped in their awestruck silence, it was Barry’s that was quivering along with the rest of his entire body.

He didn’t need any more details. He didn’t need to see anything else.

He knew exactly when he had been transported to.

He knew what he had to do.

Without alerting either Sonic or Wally, he ran .

Flashpoint 2: Advent Solaris - Chapter 15

[linkspooky]

Cipher Academy, Chapter One Thoughts. 

As I’ve said several times Medaka Box is my favorite manga ever, and Nisioisin my favorite author so I was excited for Nisio to be  writing another manga in Shonen Jump Magazine. At first I was waiting to see if the manga would make it past fourteen chapters before writing meta on it because I didn’t want to look stupid writing meta on a series that got cancelled early, but my friend @kaibutsushidousha​ encouraged me to just go ahead and look stupid anyway so here we go. My goal is to go chapter by chapter and catch up with chapter seven by next week. So, here we go. 

Nisioisin writes good protagonists, and the first chapter if anything does the work of establishing both Irohazaka’s personality as well as his main flaws. More on this underneath the cut. 

1. The Token Boy

If you haven’t noticed Nisio has a habit of writing harem series, which are also a common format in Shonen Jump. Usually these series depict one boy surrounded by girls with several of them having romantic feelings for him. Nisio is well aware of these tropes and instead of playing them straight he tends to subvert them. Medaka Box is nothing if not an analysis and subversion of the entire battle genre. The first episode is both a look at the kind of personalities the main characters of these harem series tend to have, and also a subversion. 

Due to the fact that most of these series where one male main character is surrounded by girls are written not with female readers in mind but to appeal to male readers, mostly as a romantic fantasy, the main characters are basically generic, milquetoast, wishy-washy, characters who do not have personality traits because they are meant to be easy for readers to insert themselves into. Like Bella Swan, but for boys. 

Irohazaka starts with several traits of these wishy-washy male main character. In the first place he presents himself as the most untalented member of his class. He joined the academy witout any big dreams unlike the rest of his class. He seems to be confused and thought Cipher Academy was just a regular high school before joining. He apparently joined a school for code deciphering and puzzle solving despite the fact he has never solved a crossword in his life. 

Unlike the other students he basically has no motivation, he cannot solve the introduction crossword puzzle because he does not have a reason he came to this school. He is in almost every way an average high school student surrounded by more extreme personalities. 

Tohshusai treats him like he does not exist, she cannot even remember that they were in the same class. She even outright calls him the token male main character.

Tokenism of course meaning the making of a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a specific thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality in a workforce. Essentially saying that Irohazaka both does not belong in the class, and was not admitted because he himself has any merit. 

This resembles the protagonist that are so typical of the genre after all, harem protagonists somehow attract a lot of girls without really any effort, they don’t pursue the girls the girls pursue them, they don’t really have anything special about them, no talents, they barely even have personalities. Just like Iroha is accused of being the token male student, they are more or less token male main characters. 

Iroha even seems to be basically handed a device that will allow them to cheat at solving puzzles for basically doing nothing, just helping a female students hide for five minutes. However, Iroha’s not really having the puzzles solved for him, just receiving help from a friend, something that the teacher establishes right away isn’t a bad thing. Even the fact that Iroha has little knowledge solving puzzles doesn’t really have to count as a mark against them, after all they are at a school they are here to learn. 

Iroha then carries on this theme of making friends and choosing your friends when three other girls gang up on them and try to pressure them into giving up the location of the girl they were searching for earlier. 

The glasses that Iroha are given also do not solve the puzzle for them, but rather just gives them hints and clues. They’re not cheating, just receiving help from a friend. Iroha still has to solve the rest of the puzzle on their own. Which is something we see earlier Iroha isn’t a lazy student, when they had trouble solving the crossword puzzle cryptogram they were working at it for hours, and had several books open in the attempt to solve it on their own. 

They’re clever enough not only to figure out the rest of the puzzle after being given a hint, but they also realize it was a trick question that was set up on the assumption that Iroha would take the easy way out and just try to guess randomly one of the three girls present rather than just solve it on their own. 

The manga starts with both everyone seriously underestimating the protagonist, and on top of that assuming they’re incompetent and spineless only to show that the protagonist both has a spine and makes choices on their own, they choose who to be friends with rather than being bullied into the choice, they’re also capable of solving the puzzle. The problem of having bland main characters is not really exclusive to harem series, Shonen manga in general are known for having power of friendship main characters who everyone likes and are automatically good at everything they try. In fact Nisioisin’s last series Medaka Box basically spent the entire time mocking such a main character. Often when reading shonen manga we end up asking ourselves “Why are we following around this loser? Why does everyone like them so much?” 

So, this entire first chapter does the work of establishing both why Iroha is the main character, and how in a class of geniuses, eccentrics and weirdoes they’re still someone capable in their own right. 

[genericpuff]

(1) Hello, than you for your posts about Lore Olympus and for recommending the Pyrrhic_Victoria podcast. I'm a very casual reader of the series, at time going months without checking the episodes and it's fascinating how many problems just flew over my head, although I had weird impression when reading the chapter about Persephone defeating Kronos, it felt odd and off (the reporters - just... how?).

Considering you put this into 3 parts, I'll just be responding to all three in one post if that's okay! (hence the copy pastes above!)

The S2 finale was definitely where I really started to go "uhhhhhh" with the series. The trial already had me raising my eyebrows (such as the Eris reveal) but the S2 finale was where I really just started to drop off and lose the love I once had for the series.

ETA: I realize the tone of this post kinda went off but it's a hot button topic of mine that I enjoy talking about so bear with it haha Thank you for wishing me luck with Rekindled, I got big things planned ❤️❤️❤️

To address #2, I actually have a liiiittle bit of beef with that notion. As a writer, I don't think it's necessarily good form to blame the audience for failing to meet expectations. Yes, audience members can come up with some wild theories and expectations especially when it comes to serialized stories like this, but the core of the issue is that LO/Rachel doesn't manage what it sets up well at all. Even the most basic expectations for where the story is going seem to be dropped, expectations that anyone who pays an inch of attention to the series would come up with.

For example, I don't think it was too big of an ask to expect the time skip actually show more than it did. A lot of people were hyped to see Persephone be on her own, forced to do her mother's job, and live up to everything she had bragged about at the start of S2 (about how she had 'peaked' in her mother's duties) not to mention offer her an opportunity to make spring her own. There was also the theory/expectation that it would potentially lead to an actual genuine abduction, through Hades option to go to the Mortal Realm and take her "back" to the Underworld in defiance of Zeus' sentencing.

And of course, there's what happened with the Eros x Psyche myth, the return of Kronos, and the Hymn of Demeter, all of which are stories that not only had setups as far back as S1, but Rachel has butchered within the confines of LO because she wants to try and be "subversive", not realizing that being "subversive" doesn't mean completely screwing over the original meanings of these myths or writing a poorly-constructed story.

These, to me, are not wild expectations to have in the slightest for a comic that's claiming to be a retelling of the taking of Persephone. But LO is as far from being a true retelling as retellings can possibly get. It can hardly even be called fanfiction at this point.

Point is, it's up to the writer to fulfill the expectations they set, and that's a separate thing entirely from an audience setting their expectations "too high". It's not like people are asking for anything that's outside the reasonable realm of what Rachel is tackling, everything that I see people "expecting" is pretty par for the course for the stuff Rachel has noticeably set up (like the return of Kronos, for example).

I see the argument crop up a lot that people should just "lower their expectations" of LO for the sake of enjoying it, but frankly, if I were in Rachel's position, I would be downright insulted and disappointed in myself if I found out my audience had to lower their expectations of me and my work to enjoy it. I don't want an audience out of pity, I want an audience because I've put out a damn good piece of work that's earned that audience. And this isn't something that's unique to me, this is pretty much the viewpoint of every other creator I know, so if Rachel is seriously hiding behind the notion that it's her audience's 'fault' for having their expectations too high, then she's a coward, full stop. She set those expectations herself in a lot of ways, and especially by going so far as to claim LO as a 'retelling' of some of the most beloved myths in literature.

As a writer, it's disrespectful as fuck to see people come up with these kinds of arguments instead of expecting better of someone who claims to be a professional and regularly brags about their awards (which weren't even earned, they were very likely bought).

As an audience member, I shouldn't have to turn off my brain and forgo my own intelligence as a reader to enjoy someone else's work. I'd rather just stop reading it altogether and put that energy into something else far more enjoyable and worth my time.

[star-light-shadows]

You know, a lot of people cite that we can beat up or ally enemies in Deltarune and it doesn't drastically change the ending as evidence that "Your choices don't matter" is the real theme of the game, but, like, when you think about it, doesn't that just give the player freedom to make that choice without ruining the ending they're going for?

Like, narratively, the big difference between Undertale and Deltarune is that Deltarune doesn't portray fighting as a sin. In the Deltarune universe, defeating enemies through attacking them just results in the enemy running away. Unless you actively seek out the weird route, Kris and co aren't murderers.

You are (sort of) encouraged to play without violence in chapter 1, but that's moreso a part of Chapter 1's specific narrative arc. An arc that ends with a message that falls more in the middle. Then chapter 2 doesn't actively encourage it at all.

You're allowed to play Deltarune like a normal RPG and use force to get through everyone in your path to the salvation of the world. And there are changes that this causes, but they aren't like Undertale where you've got an inescapable mark on your soul(LoVe) that disqualifies the player from getting the best ending.

And really, when you think about it, the ability to choose between Fighting and Mercy has always played second fiddle.

Even in Undertale, where it was central to the themes of mercy and the subversion of RPGs' idea of Monsters, it still ultimately plays second fiddle to the story and writing. Mainly because it boils down to choosing one of 3 narratively rigid routes and doing the same thing the entire game in order to pursue said route. (The only real changes you can do being in the Neutral route, which by design, gets the player nowhere aside from understanding the ins and outs of the characters a little more.)

And if you take that away, and look at it purely in the context of the basic RPG Battle System that both games use as the foundation of their encounters, it's even more of a second fiddle to the bullet hell mechanics.

If the theme of Deltarune is supposed to be the power of choices, that our choices DO matter, then it actually makes infinitely more sense to do what Deltarune is doing.

Making it so that the player can choose to fight or ally normal enemies, and it won't drastically change the narrative. It will change things and have consequences, but not game-changing consequences that dictate the entire story you experience.

The choice to fight or spare plays second fiddle to the bigger, more important, storyline focused choices you make throughout the game.

[crystaltoa]

Part 4

First of all, content warning that I do discuss physical abuse in relation to the content of the chapter, as well as consent and lack thereof in sexual and non-sexual situations.

But first... Whenua's wardrobe.

I suggested suspenders as something vaguely practical but also kind of goofy thing Whenua might wear as a werebeast that gives him a vaguely Wind in the Willows/Beatrix Potter kind of vibe. He's just being a cute forest critter chilling in his cave-cottage, living in an entirely different genre from everyone else.

Unfortunately, all my attempts at drawing him in this outfit make him look (depending on how humanoid/animalistic I make him) either like a plush toy or a furry stripper. No in between.

HORRID LITTLE OWL MAN

While not sexual in nature, the preening scene shows negotiation and navigation of consent and boundaries. Whenua is reassured by the fact that Nuju can and will say no to him if something isn't right.

So, werewolf/werebeast stories often go into the realm of dubious consent and loss of control. This one is a bit different. Whenua is certainly spooked by his now impossible-to-ignore attraction to Nuju, and is also worried about hurting Nuju. It's not hard to read between the lines that Whenua is afraid that his new instincts may drive him to take advantage of Nuju's trust and vulnerability. But the fact that they negotiate consent for something as basic as back scratches suggests that this won't be the case.

In fact it might actually be Whenua who has more difficulty expressing boundaries and discomfort, because he is confused about what he wants and feels shame over why certain things make him uncomfortable. But even so, he is still able to stop and step back when it becomes too much for him.

(As I mentioned above, owls can hear the heartbeats of other animals, so Nuju probably noticed the quickening of Whenua's pulse there.)

After suggesting that one headcanon about them sleeping like this, I did briefly wonder if Nuju could do that without hurting him.

My research has concluded that badgers are largely unbothered by this kind of nonsense.

Sure buddy.

Also, the similarities and differences between Kopaka and Nuju in navigating intimacy boundaries with potential partners are very interesting to me. We don’t see much of a reaction from Kopaka throughout the whole chapter, apart from his obvious discomfort when anything to do with unity is mentioned, but I do wonder what he was thinking about upon learning this part of his mentor's history. And Nuju, please check in with him. He has the ice toa curse of “I’ll just soldier on and refuse to reach out for help with my problems until they get really really bad.”

Nuju: Yes, okay we lived in a cave together! But not because I like him or anything!

Whenua: Dear, we have been married for nearly two decades. I think they know.

(Gali. Gali leave those poor old men alone)

Okay, this was a nice surprise. It's easy to assume Onewa's reluctance was because he didn't want everyone knowing about how much of a jerk he used to be (possibly his motive for similar behaviour in the canon), or, for people who have read the blog posts, his tendency to run around naked and take off into the woods to shag a cryptid. But his primary concern being Vakama's wellbeing was unexpectedly sweet.

One thing that strikes me tonally about this part, and I presume this was intended and not just me being Very Ace, is how profoundly unsexy this scene is. For such a hyper sexualised character, Roodaka’s brutal treatment of Vakama is not played as titillating. It’s just awful and monstrous and sickening.

Roodaka’s wild fluctuation in tone, gentle and soothing one moment, aggressive and brutal the next, comes straight from her canon characterisation, but in canon her violent outbursts were mostly taken out on Visorak. The same behaviour directed at Vakama is absolutely chilling.

This scene becomes another interesting, and much darker subversion of the werewolf "loss of control" trope. Vakama HAS lost control of himself- body, mind, etc… but it's not causing him to take advantage of others- it has instead put him in a position where he can be taken advantage of. He is not capable of giving consent, because Roodaka will not take “no” for an answer, making every “yes” the product of force or coercion to some degree.

Teacher AU update. Big one. Hoo boy.

Summary: The Turaga share a story from their past to help the Toa connect better.

[macchiatosdumptruck]

Tis I

No prompt or haha - just condolences on the lost work. That always sucks 😞

I was editing a chapter on AO3 one time and for some reasons ended up adding a bunch of stuff then accidentally hit something that deleted it - the rage was real.

But some encouragement / what you had was awesome so I 💯 support your potential plan to write it proper :)

Also:

Even if the claiming wasn’t public, there’s always how they did it back in the day, according to history.

People waiting outside the bed chamber and a priest and whoever else comes in to check to make sure the deed had been done.

💯 freaky pervs listing for the moans and screams, bed creaking, all in the guise of verifying that the conception/ consummation of the marriage was done properly.

Normally back then it was wiping a cloth to check for semen and blood because only honest brides bleed on their wedding night 🙄 or having the consummation be on white sheets.

The midwives would be tasked with checking the human before the ceremony and they would sometimes cover for them if they did not find one.

History is vile but there are some interesting stores about what women would do to get around that if they weren’t pure, and how women would help each other. One story I remember was basically using sheep’s blood rolled in something - to make a makeshift blood capsule - and inserted inside so that it would break during sex.

But this is an AU so maybe Terri makes sure her girl’s screams of pleasure and begging can be heard loud and clear through the chamber doors and once Terri finishes with her girl in private, holding her legs open so they can see the hole has been thoroughly used and she has performed her wifely duties.

They can also see the bite marks on the slim inner thighs - plus a lot more.

Terri telling them as they walk in once she tells them they can enter that she has rid her girl of her precious maidenhead aka virginity quite thoroughly.

You are right - it feels like something new. Maybe I’ll do a male Terry and Danny with an ABO.

I hope you write this one though 😊

fanfic writers when we accidentally press the wrong key and delete large amounts of work, because we, in our hubris, did not save a copy:

god, the myth that it's normal for a vagina to bleed during first-time sex, and that it's supposed to hurt? disgusting. actually violent. there's so much bullshit around the concept of virginity, (which like gender, is something that irl i think is bullshit, but in kink can make for some yummy and nasty tropes and subversion) but now is not the time or place.

A + for everyone involved in those stories, helping each other out against a gross patriarchal culture, fuck yeah.

we're here to be gross.

being gross i think Terri would LOVE to show Dani that that's entirely untrue.

i like the public, ritual sex, because like. idk. the most extreme form of exhibitionism, mixed with humiliation kink just gets me.

but there are other, less dub-con ways to use a similar trope, as you so mention.

okay, so i was actually kind of inspired by the handmaiden, a film I had never seen before but recently got introduced to by the ck after dark server for movie night, and it blew my mind.

there's this scene that is told two ways, spoilers for the movie lol. ( there's a crazy pov flip half way through, so everything gets a double take and it was just muah. )

again, spoilers

a couple is expected to consummate their marriage, but it turns out the girl wants nothing to do with the guy.

we are first shown one character's perspective on the other side of the wall, and then later on the actual events.

the first time we see the scene we are encouraged to see it as it is given to us. one person is miserable on one side of the wall, and the couple having a good (?) time.

it turns out that since she refuses to let the guy touch her, she gets herself off under the covers and then uses a pin to make a small cut on her hand and wipe it on the sheets.

end of spoilers

which is nothing like what i had in the story, but it gave me the idea for proof of consummation in this au.

But Terri would never make her girl bleed.

(that's a lie. she would. but not like that. blood kink is 100% a silverusso trope that we are not using often enough.)

I love the idea of Dani, absolutely mortified, having someone inspect her so directly after the deed. she would feel so dirty and used. Which Terri would praise her for.

"you opened up so nicely for me."

"Everyone knows what's going on, what does it matter if I let someone see my handiwork up close?"

"I've defiled you, you'll never be the same."

"This belongs to me now, and I can use it as I like."

I think part of the public claiming is also that it is a direct way for Terri to show off both her own skills and the beauty of her new bride. she would want other people to see and be jealous that Terri got to her first.

this is an unshakable headcanon that i have for nearly any version of this ship. Terry is a possessive bastard and he wants everyone to know he has what they want.

also, for Terri in particular, there's definitely an element of "I can fuck better than any man can" that she needs people to acknowledge.

For all of her confidence, she is still hiding insecurities within her. in fact, her confidence started partly as an act to hide her insecurities.

she is in 2 different male-dominated environments and is gay. she's gonna fight for every bit of respect she can get. even if she has to scare people to do it.

she's 100% that sleazy 80's businessman, but she's doing it better.

(i actually would like more sleazy businessman terry, we are sleeping on this as a fandom)

I also got abo vibes as I was writing it, lol.

(do it. write the story. i am an enabler)

shjkhhjkdff. i've got my head on wife kink now. domesticity kink.

It was new for me in that it was a genre I have never played in before. I had no idea how I was even going to come at it, but I'm glad I just sat down and started typing.

[koravelliumavast]

Well that’s a new one: Amazon Cosmere reviews Mistborn edition. (Snippets of two reviews)

Breeze, Dox, Ham, Clubs, most of Kelsier, and most of Marsh could be deleted from the book and you wouldn't be missing out on anything. You can skip most of the chapters of Kells and his "crew" bantering, and you won't miss a thing. That's the biggest problem with this book. Beyond that, the book actually has some above-average qualities that make the book a worthwhile read - IF you've already read all the better books in the same vein - (Wheel of time, {does op know that Brandon finished wot???}the first few Sword of Truth books, and I'd also recommend the Foundryside series) If you're going to read this book, I recommend you skip any text that features dialogue coming from Dox, Breeze, Ham, and Clubs. Oh, and also skip every passage where the characters are reading the Lord Ruler's journal, or where they're reading the history books. What an insulting waste of time. And none of it matters in the end. Oh, and skip all the first-person text at the beginning of every chapter because none of that crap has any bearing on the story either.

•••

Okay, Allomancy as an explanation for super-powers is new as a concept but so what? It turns the cast of very paper-cut out characters into the typical super heroes with one special magic trick or, rarely, into the super-super special hero with all the abilities roled into one stomach lining. The novel was also trying to be a slick super-crime such as Oceans 11's in its plot but obviously Sanderson doesn't have much insight into the sort of brilliance required for the supreme criminal mind nor much knowledge of the intelligence methods used by a totalitarian government. The meetings of the supposedly super-thieves were as dull as dishwater to read, a gloss-over of basic facts and illustrative of such shallow thinking that I was as bored as if it was a meeting with a low-level accountant. The conversations were as completely uninspired as the characters, their "plotting" so empty of sophistication or subtlety, and so full of holes, that I was unconvinced that these guys were really as slick as they were described; it certainly wasn't demonstrated.

Then the actual action had them doing things that even the most amateur of subversive criminals would never consider. One of my pet peeves, Sanderson either doesn't think about what the "opposing" forces might be doing in reaction or he succumbed to the "stupid enemy" contrivance. For example, the entire core of the elite team visit together the site of a hit by the dread Inquisitors, a place that was hit because they'd met there or because Vin, now a part of the team, had lived there; and they all show up to expose themselves in a world where, supposedly, everyone will rat out everyone else at the drop of a dime! But, not to fear, the totalitarian regime that made the hit has neglected to stake it out to watch who turned up to check out the mess afterward! And none of the crowd of spectators actually informs on them, either. It was juvenile mistake and I couldn't help but think that, trying to write this sort of plot, Sanderson was completely out of his depth. He should at least have read a few espionage and crime novels and gotten a clue before trying to write one himself. This team wouldn't have lasted five minutes in fiction, never mind real life...

•••

That said, I find it nice to read somebody acknowledge the fact that if you mistreat your comrades, they'll leave you. Granted, one of the 'heroes' said that. However, that was the only sensible "nugget of wisdom" aside from Slazed speaking about religion, or Ham trying to find a conversation. Speaking of Slazed, his name changes from time to time. {??? No it doesn’t}

On the other hand, there are several flaws. First off, for someone who's supposed to be insane, Keelsier sure does admit that a lot. Yeah, it should go without saying that unhinged people DON't do that. (That's coming from someone who's seen a stranger start squeezing her finger. So, his friend had to explain that the man thought her knew her.) Also, glares and flat stares don't even begin to look the same. That's unless you have some reason for being able to discern facial expressions.

[pikahlua]

what do you think about the dad for one theory?

I think it’s ten different theories sitting on each other’s shoulders while wearing a trench coat.

There are so many assumptions made to get there, and like...yes, I will not be surprised if AFO turns out to be Izuku’s father, but I will also not be surprised if AFO turns out to NOT be Izuku’s father.

No one really talks about the evidence against DFO, particularly about the potential alternate explanations for the connections and parallels between Izuku and AFO or hints that a subversion could happen.

(AFO’s questionable motivation for choosing Inko or fathering a child, Dr. Garaki’s apparent lack of interest in Izuku, the subversion of Nana being Tomura’s grandmother instead of his mother, AFO’s treatment of his own brother, the lack of confirmation that AFO’s identity is knowable via government records or that the police/Tartarus/ALL MIGHT don’t know his name/identity, the sheer build-up and hints on the meta level being so drawn out, Horikoshi’s penchant for anticlimax/subversion in general, the disconnect between such a twist and the general themes of the story...

Or the thing that really sticks out to me: Machia catching the “scent” of two AFOs in chapter 287 where AFO was not physically present. Some may take this as evidence for DFO, but I question why both Tomura and Izuku would have that same scent as AFO if the connection was familial/biological.)

I also see the fandom make a lot of the same assumptions about DFO that they did about the Dabi-is-Touya-Todoroki theory, and those set us up for the emotionally dissociative nightmare that has been trying to understand Dabi as a character ever since that reveal.

And let me be clear, I’m not anti-DFO. I’m just bringing up the counterpoints because the pro-DFO argument doesn’t need my help; it has plenty of evidence others have already gathered.

The thing is...I just don’t know what we get after a DFO reveal.

I, too, enjoyed reading Conversations with a Cryptid, but canon AFO reads to me as an entirely different character now. His behavior during the war arc and the recent comments on his probable lack of emotions really...affects things for me?

Basically, I’m torn. I don’t know if I’m convinced by DFO, and if I am then I don’t know which version of DFO I’m convinced by or even want, and I don’t know what DFO actually...adds to the story, and if what it adds is good or bad or neutral...

There’s just a lot to unpack there.

For that reason, I don’t see much value in my dissecting the theory before we have a more concrete direction about it from the canon. I defer to others’ discussions on this and choose to abstain as of now.

[the-desolated-quill]

WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles

(Spoilers for the first five episodes)

Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.

The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.

Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.

Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.

So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.

Chapter 1: Bewitched

Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.

Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.

The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).

Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.

It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.

I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.

The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.

In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.

Chapter 2: I Love Lucy

So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.

Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.

See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.

WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.

Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.

As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)

If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad. 

If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.

And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.

Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave

You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.

[attackontitanreblogs]

[Spoiler] [Spoiler] [Spoiler] Hey, am I a only one who

like these 9 extra pages of ending and think they fix the ending?

I mean, I have several issues with ending (chapter 139) anyway, which include:

*Mikasa weren’t free and doesn’t have life aside Eren, which was implied too heavily;

*Eren didn’t even knowing why he was doing what he did anyway, which very badly executed his character (we hoped he had the best development ever, but it isn’t even true) and he was sooo simp. Also didn’t care much about any other person than Mikasa or Armin (Hange or Sasha died because of him);

*Eren being highly immature with his wantings and screaming he wanted Mikasa to mourn over him all the time, even if in the manga weren’t much implications on his feelings about Mikasa;

*the whole EM was shitty developed and I hoped Mikasa can get free of Eren and her obsession finally. Maybe it can be associated with my personal experience, but I also had unhealthy obsession about someone and I got finally over it, I won and I am not obsessing about anyone and have my very own desires which aren’t associated with anyone. I just hoped Mikasa can get over her obsession too and be healthy independent person with her own desires. On the Eren side I think as manga developed, the aro/ace Eren, Eremin or even EreHisu implication as true would be more logical and healthy than Eremika;

*happy ending for any character who lived after Hanji (aside Eren, Zeke and Ymir if we count), which is soooo improbably as Isayama liked to kill the characters before and there was no telling somebody will survive the chapter. It was too sweet for me, as Isayama couldn’t decide for a darker one ending;

*also I hoped Historia and her child would be more revelant to the chapter and the symbolism. I hoped Eren would be the father and will try to create the world which won’t burden his children or other children anymore with success or no success at all;

*it felt so much retconned anyway.

These 8 extra pages fixed (somehow) some of these things and gave the others new meaning:

*there was implication Mikasa has new life and new family, which proved she moved from Eren somehow. She was shown visiting Eren’s grave, but at least I doubt she focused on it as much as she would be being lonely and without any family. The only thing which would bother me was the scarf, but also remember when and why she received it. Eren saved her life. So the scarf could symbolise two things - Eren and the life, which she got because of the Eren. Since she didn’t decide to take her own life and join Eren immediately in afterlife or perish forever, more, she invested in her own life and bore lives with the new family we can hope she developed some distance from the Eren and he finally isn’t the only reason she still exists. From these and from her opposition of rumbling we can know she values life and she values it even more than person of Eren. She sacrificed him, because she values life, but also values her own life, which was saved by Eren. Maybe it’s why she valued so much Eren in the first place?? Maybe it’s why she kept the scarf, because it reminds her, beside of Eren, the life she got saved?

Maybe it still wasn’t best executed and could be better executed, but these pages got me better message about ending and Mikasa’s character - she lives her own life, but still remember the savior she loved - Eren. And it still gives us the room to hope she developed safe distance from Eren on whom she obsessed so much.

Also I read people’s opinion on her having husband on her own, which are “he is the second to Eren”, “she doesn’t care about her own husband but only Eren is on her mind”, “she needed her husband only to make her children and he was only a tool”, etc. These are not essentially to be true. If she was a good person I doubt she could value more dead person over a living person tbh. She knew Eren was doing very bad and finally decided to sacrifice him to save the remaining innocent lives. So well, if she was dedicated to her husband and kids I doubt she didn’t love them and valued their lives any less than Eren (why she could stick to somebody she didn’t love in the first place? unless she was in really bad mental state and toyed with somebody other and didn’t care about them, but I doubt we should get that kind of message and I doubt Isayama intended her to be like that.)

So, as bland and personality-less she is, it looks like she still got better executed than Eren. 

Also, her spouse being Jean or not: he looks like Jean, but it isn’t said it is Jean. Historia ended with random guy, remember? Even if it is Jean, I doubt she cared about him (other precious friend than Armin and Sasha) any less than for dead Eren.

At least I hope it is like that and it is possible, because I doubt Isayama could make her THAAAT miserable.

*Another point I want to make is that Paradise doesn’t have that sweet future, which is logical, possible and it is also a consequence of Eren’s doing. Paradis didn’t have titans, Founder and Colossal Titans in the walls, which would protect island. Which means, Eren doomed them forever. Eren didn’t surpased his father, he did even worse than his father, because he basically doomed entire generations down and didn’t solve anything, which is still logical consequence of what he did and it’s overall darker than the whole 139 chapter. It subverses whole surpassing the father trope, which is logical result and I like it.

*we got the time skipping (time travelling) with a tree and Paradis developing and destroyed at the end, which I like, because it in the whole reminds me the time travelling in the Time Machine 1960 movie. Maybe it’s personal and I’m becoming sentimental ahahhahah

*it is implied Eren isn’t free even in afterlife and have possibly taken Ymir’s place. It would be good, because it would be his sins’ atonement. This or the whole tree’s growing would be hallu’s (this weird spine thing) doing and Eren could have nothing to do with it.

What extra pages don’t solve:

*plot holes;

*Eren being shit (but at least got consequences);

*Historia being unrevelant to the plot;

*Hanji being dead and not being with Levi (:D).

Also the AU thing is sweet touch and comments aot’s own ending, which is nice, also remembers me Eren which I loved.

So, these are my thoughts on ending :)