#trance ending

[aressida]

[hyunpic]

HYUNJIN | SKZ DOCUSERIES EP. 1: I-DAYS MILANO, BST HYDE PARK, LOLLAPALOOZA CHICAGO

[fennelwasp]

Before/After Day 21-22

[spotaus]

I am begging on my knees that Tumblr posts this. It has no audio but I cannot send it from my computer to phone and I want it archived lmao-

[crystalpallette]

god. rulue.

one more set of alts ft. rulue! two of them are quest alts, and then one's from madou saturn because oh my god. I am not immune to legs

there's just something about her that makes me want to draw pretty ladies even more than I already do, and I spent the whole time on this in a fugue state. but it looks pretty so who's going to stop me

-

ringo | arle | amitie | ally | rulue | maguro | lidelle | ?

[no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist]

Juliette, the Girlboss Trope, and Structural Change

From what I’ve observed, stories with “girlboss” protagonists tend to be less likely to critique existing power structures and end up focusing more on slightly tweaking surface level aspects of them to allow the protagonist to prove themselves within the context of the existing system. To me, this is extremely interesting within the context of These Violent Delights because Juliette is arguably initially set up to fulfill this archetype. Because she is a girl, her claim to the status of heir is questioned by those around her more than it would be otherwise. She feels more pressure to be ruthless and to do whatever she can to earn the respect of those around her. Toward the very beginning of These Violent Delights, she threatens to kill Tyler when he attempts to upstage her, saying that she will kill him before she lets him take her heirdom away from her. Without knowing that These Violent Delights is a Romeo and Juliet retelling, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect Juliette to become the leader of the Scarlet Gang and somehow fix things from the inside at the end. She is well set up to be the Strong Female Protagonist ™ who takes what is owed to her and is hardened and kickass and ruthless and doesn’t let interfering men get in her way. 

But importantly, regardless of how much Juliette initially knows it, this is a facade. The image of the hardened ruthless heir may be one that Juliette encourages, but it is a heavily distorted reflection of who she truly is. Because at her very core, though she was raised to be the heir of the Scarlet Gang and therefore should be the literal personification of the continuation of the blood feud, that is not who Juliette is. Throughout the duology, her main motivation is protecting those she loves. At first, she believes that she can do this by working within the existing system. She tries to legitimize herself as heir within the existing power structure of the Scarlet Gang. However, the Scarlet Gang Juliette is set to inherit is one built upon a foundation of fractures that legitimizes its existence through the perpetuation of the blood feud to the extent that to solve the blood feud, or even seek to calm it, would be a violation of its very nature. The Scarlet Gang could never accept a leader that sought to do this, nor could the White Flowers, who equally rely on the blood feud as a source of power, accept the figurehead of their rival gang as an ally. To do so would be a fundamental betrayal of the nature of these two groups. Thus, Juliette must choose between legitimizing her position as heir, bringing more suffering upon the people and city she loves in the process, and giving up her position as heir and forfeiting her power. 

But if Juliette forfeits her power, who does she forfeit her power to? After all, if she merely walks away, the blood feud will still exist. The refusal of one person to fall in line cannot topple an entire system. The answer comes back to Tyler who, unlike Juliette, truly is meant to represent the continuation of the blood feud. He feels the need for vengeance and hatred at his core, and is constantly suspicious of Juliette, recognizing her lack of loyalty though it is incomprehensible to him. Ultimately, there was never room enough for both of them. When Juliette threatened his life in These Violent Delights, she did so out of fear of him usurping her place. Little did she know, he already had. In representing the longevity of the blood feud, Tyler, not Juliette represents the longevity of the Scarlet Gang. While she was the heir in name, he embodied the very lifeforce of the gang. In a way, he almost represents the Juliette that could have been. And that is precisely why Juliette had to kill him.

Though Tyler’s death is foreshadowed by Juliette’s initial threat in the first book, when she shoots him in Our Violent Ends, it is not the callous, unfeeling kill of an heir pushing aside the final obstacle before claiming their rightful place at the top. Instead, it is Juliette’s final severance from the vicious cycle of the blood feud and the illusion of her status as heir. She recognizes that the power she would wield as the future leader, or even the true heir, of the Scarlet Gang stakes its legitimacy in the continuation of the blood feud, and therefore, she would lose legitimacy as a leader if she were to act against the blood feud. This is further demonstrated when Lord Cai tells her that she can choose between dying a White Flower and being heir following his discovery of her relationship with Roma, representing her direct defiance of the blood feud, and her murder of Tyler, representing her sabotage of the longevity of the blood feud and her rejection of her status as heir.

By this point, Juliette has established that she cannot live as a part of the blood feud. She put a bullet through its heart, firing on her own kin to do so. Because the blood feud has no future, she can no longer pretend to occupy the role of heir. But at the same time, in killing Tyler, she has rejected her place within the blood feud. She cannot die a Scarlet, and she cannot die a White Flower because she refuses to be either. In the end, it is not her and Roma’s apparent deaths that aid the end of the blood feud. Instead, it is their rejection of its perpetuation through their rejection of their statuses as heirs. Their continued survival after their apparent death and the birth of their daughter stands in direct defiance to the division brought on by the blood feud. Though, as is further explored in Foul Lady Fortune, this division is still very present, Roma and Juliette’s continued survival both acknowledges that the kind of change required cannot be brought about by the efforts of one titular protagonist, no matter how world ending their sacrifice, and gives hope for a better future. Unlike the girlboss protagonist, Juliette rejects the status quo and achieves her goals by rejecting power. Instead of seeking to be the figurehead of change, which would also be extremely ahistorical, she does her part and steps back, acknowledging that as a singular person, she does not and should not have the power to fix everything. In the end, she watches from the outskirts of Shanghai, and though she is doomed to forfeit her place within her home to protect the people she loves, she is safe enough to live with her husband and raise her daughter and use her remaining connections to do what she can. Because in the end, one person cannot fix everything, no matter how powerful they are. And the spark of hope represented by Juliette and Roma’s continued survival and the birth of their daughter as well as the protection offered by their weapons ring is enough. 

[inkyu]

This was an OC doodle page but someone in a discord server requested for me to draw Roxas from KH <333 (Trance is the green guy... his name isn't Chyo...)

[airenfolio]

rare wip post for yall, both in the sketch phase :)

[realareturns]

Some NiGHTS-adjacent music some might have not heard from Club Saturn, an album of remixes released by Sega! There are two NiGHTS tracks, an ambient trance one and a drum & bass one:

Both are pretty good, and the trance one actually uses some of the game’s sound effects and the Nightmarens’ voices!

Here’s the whole album:

[storys-from-eli]

You went about your day like any other. Nothing special, today it was just very warm for a early spring day, so you took off your jacket. It was already evening, some birds chirped towards the sunset. The sky was clear and after a hard day you bought yourself a cold drink and sat on a park bench on your way back home. You opened your phone and scrolled around a bit. You didn't know what you wanted to do for the rest of the day, whether you would meet up with friends or just go home and throw yourself into bed?

When you looked up briefly you saw a woman sitting across from you, on the other side of the park, which wasn't really big, but across from you, somehow. A real quite one, so you looked over and thought to yourself, who wears Barrett's? She wore a dark blue barrett with a dark dress, it shimmered slightly in the low light. With her light, brunette hair, it was a cute combo. She was reading a book, but you couldn't tell what it was from that distance. When your gaze had been on her for an uncomfortably long time, you looked down at your phone again.

Should I go over and talk to her? But what should I talk about, the book? It could work, but I hardly ever read, I wouldn't be able to answer anything then, you thought to yourself. When you want to look over again, the woman is suddenly right in front of you. You have half a heart attack. The woman speaks to you in a shallow and calm voice, asks what time it is. You first look at your watch, then at your phone, cause your watch seems to have stopped. It probably wasn't the best idea to get the cheap watch.

You say it's 5 minutes to 8 o'clock. The woman looks down at you in surprise and asks how you know that so well? You look surprised and show her the clock on your phone, whereupon she leans her arms on your knees and stares at the phone. You're completely surprised at what's happening when she asks if you could explain your phone to her. At first you're confused as to whether she's kidding you, but you go into it and start to explain that you can take pictures or send messages to others or call them directly.

She sits right next to you, listening very intently. You're only now noticing what shimmering green eyes she has. You also notice her white tights for the first time in the shadows or her black patent ballerinas. She looked completely out of time.

Your heart felt heavy, she was so innocent and cute. She asked you if you could come over again tomorrow at the same time? You immediately agreed and wanted to get something out of your jacket, but as soon as you turned back to her she had already disappeared again. Now you just realized that something was fishy. You felt like you had woken up from a trance state.

The sun had disappeared and suddenly it was 30 minutes after 8 o'clock. So when you finally got home you entered the park directly into Google to find out what had just happened. But you just found random articles about gardening at first until you came across an article that was a hundred years old. This was about an accident involving a young woman on the grounds of what was then a much larger park. Are you on a date with a ghost now??

[henrysglock]

S4 Victims: Story by Proxy?

Okay so. In spitballing with Em...something stuck in my head.

So we all know how serial killers leave crumbs because deep down they want to be caught/want the truth to be revealed? Well what if the Duffers, or even current Henry, are doing the same thing. That is, leaving breadcrumbs.

This mainly has to do with the S4 victims, their stories, and the order in which they're chosen.

So, it goes like this:

Chrissy: Abusive mother who resembles Virginia

Fred: Eaten alive by the guilt of being responsible for the accidental death of an innocent.

Max: Suicidal over guilt about Billy's death and her response to it. Billy, who died saving her/while she was saving herself from the Fleshflayer, a regenerated form of the Mindflayer.

Patrick: Abusive father, not much else told.

Max (again): Suicidal Ideation, dies, soul taken, but was revived by El. She's now in some limbo-state, where her body lives but her identity/mind is elsewhere. She will likely be brought back entirely by El in S5.

It almost feels like a story by proxy if we piece it together.

So, let's piece it together:

Person with an abusive mother...feels responsible for the death of an innocent...a sibling who was killed while this person was trying to save themselves from a monster which came from Hawkins lab, which leaves them suicidal...and this person lives in a situation with an abusive father figure. This person becomes suicidal, and their suicide attempt was not entirely successful. They were revived by El, and end up in a limbo state. They may or may not be brought back by El later.

Now, let's collect details about our serial killer:

Abusive mother? Check. (No matter how we frame it, Virginia was not a good mother.)

Innocent died? Check. (Henry has nothing bad to say about Alice, which we know he would if she were not innocent, since he does this with every other victim.)

Sibling died as a result of saving oneself? Check. (The Creel massacre was a situation where Henry was, with whatever intentions we may assign for the other family members' deaths, trying to save himself from Virginia and by extension the lab.)

Ended up with an abusive father figure? Check. (Well...an abusive Papa, one might say.)

Brought back by El multiple times? Check. (El was the one who took Soteria out and brought Henry back from being powerless. El was the one who put Henry in the UD/limbo state. El was the one who opened the gate for his return to the RSU.)

IT ALL ALIGNS. So let's put it together with all the feelings involved:

Citations (I guess? Explanations?) are in the tags listed by number!

Henry had an abusive mother who was at least trying to have him shipped off to the lab, if not actually trying to kill him outright. This situation builds and builds, him wanting to be left alone (1), putting out subconscious and conscious cries for help (2), and her targeting him about it, until March 25th, 1959.

Virginia starts it, attacks, and this time she's out for blood (3). Henry defends himself (4). Virginia, being the parent with powers (5), doesn't actually die (6). Victor, Alice, and Henry go for the door (7). Virginia's on the stairs (8). She's got to finish what she started, since her original plan was botched (9). Henry puts his energy into trancing Victor (10), protecting him from Virginia, since logically two people can't occupy one person's mind.

This leaves good, innocent Alice to fend for herself, standing directly in front of the staircase. She's a loose end (11). Virginia kills her, but can't kill Henry or Victor while the trance is occurring. She figures Henry's going to run himself into the ground (12). She figures she can call Brenner in to collect Henry, like they planned (13). If she disappears, she figures it'll go into the news something like this:

"World War II veteran kills entire family in deranged fit of insanity. Wife missing, presumed dead. Son dies in hospital."

And on both counts, she's essentially right. It does basically go into the papers that way. Victor is taken in for murder, and Henry is taken by Brenner, but not before he sees that Alice was caught in the crossfire (14).

Henry ends up with Brenner, the abusive Papa. He's got the guilt about Alice's death, something that makes him sad and angry. Brenner, maybe, decides to push this in order to increase Henry's powers, but it backfires. Henry's powers increase, but he does...something. He lashes out, he snaps, maybe he even tries to kill himself. He's Brenner's prized pet, though, so Brenner can't let that happen. He seals Henry's powers away with Soteria. It's a death for Henry's entire identity, so far as to have him under the name Peter Ballard. Then comes along 011. She removes Soteria from Peter Ballard...and revives Henry Creel. She then exiles him to the Upside Down in 1979, only to eventually bring him back in 1983 when she opens the Mothergate.

All this to say: It could be his own story, told through the stories of his victims.

Breadcrumbs, or maybe...obvious things, which nobody by any chance ever observes.

Below the cut is where I speculate into motivations for his actions after Soteria's removal, so...not required reading for this particular analysis.

Years of MKUltra torture warp Henry's guilt about the situation into a bastardized, violent, brutal, unethical savior complex based in the notion that he's a predator by nature, but a predator for good. He "saves" the lab kids from a future like his own, filled with nothing but torture. He "saves" El from her ignorance about the lab and intended to have her join him, thereby attempting to "save" her, technically his little sister, from the lab entirely.

He "saves" his s4 victims from their guilt and suffering, which so closely mirror his own, which no one saved him from. I could even go so far as to say he was "saving" Will, who is set up to be so much like him, from a world of horrible people who (from Henry's viewpoint based on his lived experiences) would only serve to abuse and betray him.

This of course isn't to say any of it is right. None of it is right or good...but it makes sense. It follows a pattern. It coheres. The math...maths.

[veryobsessedchild]

Chat, I think that I am reverting back to my fourth grade self who essentially created hurt/comfort fanfic with a semi-coherent plot in their head every night while falling asleep or when I was bored despite not having ever heard the word fanfiction in my life at that point😭😭😭

The only difference is that now I know what fanfiction is😓😓😓

[taeyungie]

.

[mirror-ralsei]

THOUGHTS: Threat Level and TwistedSwd

This is just a quick connecting of a couple of dots: the “threat level” demarcated by backing out of deleting a file at the last minute, and the ThornRing only being acquired by aborting a Weird Route at the last minute. (Shoutout to HalfBreadChaos for pointing out both.)

Notably, keeping the ThornRing - that is, a last-second abortion of Chapter 2’s Weird Route - is required in order to craft the TwistedSwd. We know little about the TwistedSwd beyond that it’s “a strange blade” for Kris that lowers Trance (contrasted with the ThornRing itself, which increases Trance).

“Twisted” kind of reminds me of Chara’s line to us about “a perverted sentimentality,” especially in context. Chara is specifically talking to a player who completed a No Mercy run twice, something most players would not do.

This, to me, is a bit similar to the conditions required to keep the ThornRing, and therefore obtain the TwistedSwd: a very obscure and deliberate path, probably followed for the purpose of obtaining a specific result. In the double No Mercy player’s case, it’s probably to see what kind of dialogue might change. In the TwistedSwd player’s, it’s obviously to obtain the TwistedSwd.

There’s also one more use of “twisted.”

Flowey describes you as “more twisted than [him]” if you subscribe to the newsletter “just to see what would happen if you unsubscribed. This does seem to line up with the way “perverted” is used to describe us by Chara.

Even if that’s not the case, and there’s no parallel between these ideas, I think “threat” and “trance” will probably be some kind of Chekov’s Guns for plot purposes later, as will the TwistedSwd. And I definitely wonder, like others, if we might have to do some, well, twisted things to get a “good” or “true” outcome.

(Screenshot credit: 1 2 3)

[no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist]

The way Chloe Gong pulls off fake deaths the way she does is an amazing testament to her skill as an author.

Usually fake deaths cheapen the blow of losing a character. You have to go through all of the emotional turmoil of losing a beloved character and watch everyone mourn them only for everything to be okay because actually they were kind of integral to the plot and the author needs them but also they also wanted to make the book sad for a little bit but hey everything is okay now!

But Chloe Gong doesn't do this. She gets you invested in what you usually know from the start is a doomed story. She makes you very desperately want to believe that the character that you know is going to die won't die. And then. She kills them.

And it's horrible. You mourn for them. You have to watch the other characters react to the death. But most of the time, it's a fake death. And even if you know or suspect this from the beginning, it still hurts, often just as much, if not more, than it would if the death were real.

And not just because of the way she writes grief, which gets more and more painful with each new book she releases. But instead of killing off a character for a quick gut punch and bringing them back because they were actually way too important to kill and she needs them for the plot, she uses fake deaths to create these absolutely insane scenarios that are often, at least in my opinion, more painful then just killing off the character.

When Marshall fake died, for example, she could've just had him die and forced Juliette to deal with the grief and guilt of killing her friend as well as the implications of Marshall's death for her relationship with Roma plus everyone else's grief and then created a weird situation where Roma can just,,, get over her killing Marshall and still like her. Instead, she creates this absolutely insane situation where Juliette is still grieving for the loss of her relationship with Roma, and Roma and Ben are grieving for Marshall all with Marshall still being alive. And rather than just using Marshall as a plot device to be sacrificed to make the other characters more interesting, she makes him more interesting as well. She forces him to watch as Benedikt and Roma grieve for him, making his relationship with both of them, as well as Juliette more interesting in the process.

And then when Roma and Juliette fake died at the end of OVE, even if you suspected it, it being fake doesn't take away from the pain very much, especially knowing what happens in Foul Lady Fortune. Alisa, whose only real family was arguably Roma and Benedikt, is left behind to raise herself and she is too afraid to check to see if Roma and Juliette are really dead. Because if they are dead, then she's truly alone, clinging onto the false belief that hope won out while everything she ever knew disintegrates around her. Plus, even though Benedikt and Marshall figure out pretty quickly that the death was fake, they're still forced to cope with the grief and guilt of having had a hand in the situation and forced to flee the country with only each other, thrust into a world where their best friends are dead and the hope that they are relying on to get themselves away from everything is based on the same sense of hope that ultimately lead to the "deaths" of Roma and Juliette. And then there's the cruelty of the sense of responsibility Rosalind feels for their deaths. And how after they died, she became deathly ill, but like them, was inexplicably saved. But she can't move on from their deaths and spends every waking hour and every unsleeping night of her immortal life trying to put the broken world they left behind back together. And Celia sees Alisa and Rosalind regularly. As she watches two people who she cares about immensely suffer for years after the deaths occurred, she can't say anything. Even though her first loyalty is to her sister, she's forced to watch Rosalind grieve and become a ghost of a person who seems to derive purpose solely from the pursuit of an impossible mission. And Roma and Juliette, who so deeply wanted to make the city better are forced to watch as things get worse and worse and the people that they seemingly sacrificed everything to save continue to suffer.

In Foul Lady Fortune, the fake deaths are a little different. So far, the only characters who have fake died are Dao Feng and Lady Hong, the later of which falls into this trope a bit more loosely. In Dao Feng's case, it leads to worry then betrayal on Rosalind's part. Her worry was all for nothing, and she's once again put in a place where one of the few people she dared to care about has left her and likely never truly cared about her in return (at least as of the end of FLF). Assuming that he did genuinely care about her based on As You Like It, I am very interested to see how this ends up playing out.

Lady Hong's case is somewhat similar. Although we never really think with absolute certainty that Lady Hong died, Orion suspects that his father could have done something to her and has no concrete explanation for her disappearance. He grieves her absence even though her relationship with him was always iffy at best. Only to find out that she never cared for him as anything other than a tool for her to take advantage of. Like Rosalind, he is left feeling used and as if all of his grief and pain were for nothing.

(Hiding the part below this because of huge Immortal Longings spoilers)

In Immortal Longings, you know that either Calla or Anton is going to have to die at the end because of the structure of the games. And as their relationship progresses, you dread the resolution more and more. You want a fake death. You want them to find some hole in the rules that will allow them both to survive. And Calla comes up with a plan that allows this. She gives you false hope. She lets you cling to the idea that the horrible ending you can so clearly see coming won't happen. And then that hope is snatched away, and you're even closer to the ending. And you know what's coming. You know that Anton has to die. And then the final crumb of hope is snatched away from you and they're in the ring together. And just when it's too late, Anton tells Calla that they could run for the wall together. He's finally willing to set aside Otta Avia, without who they wouldn't even be there in the first place. But it's too late. Because this is bigger than either of them. And Calla knows that she has to kill him. And she sinks her knife into his back in some of the most excruciating paragraphs I have read in my life. You see Anton realize that although he was willing to make a run for it with her, she has bigger plans. She isn't doing him a kindness by killing him first, and even though she may be planning on ending her own life as well soon, she cares more about killing King Kasa than she ever did about him. So when, at the very end, it is revealed that Anton somehow survived, it's somehow a million times worse than if he had actually died. Even though you so desperately wanted the book to not end in on or both of them dying, this isn't what you wanted. Now, he's alive and remembers just how willing she was to sink a knife through his back. And Calla must grieve for him all over again because even though he's alive, she surely can never truly have him back after what she did.

In conclusion, Chloe Gong is a legend and a genius. Thank you for coming to my tedtalk I guess.