#warproduct rambles

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I was overwhelmed by queer educator feelings while looking at all the new art so yall get the tweets

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it's one of those things definitely where in moderation it's helpful because yes, yes absolutely we need more people who when they're comfortable and when they have what they need to live comfortably look around and ask okay who else needs help

but then of course gets pushed to extremes where it's like no you can't have anything nice and it really does stay with folk

like I grew up with-I would like to say-fairly moderate Catholics who were fairly balanced about yes nice things are fine in moderation (are gifts, and gifts to be shared with those in need) and not all, you're a sinner and a pile of shit you have to be constantly grovelling for God's grace (for a Catholic queer I think I came out miraculously well-adjusted lol)! but I still am dealing with that same 'a nice thing only for me makes me extremely uncomfortable' because i know i've been blessed with a lot that isn't guaranteed to others and my more personal wants, how can those compare to people's needs?

empathy and consideration of others' needs, is most definitely good. recognition of what you have and others dont is good. but like anything it has to be in moderation and I think a lot Catholics, former and present, are still realising that or have yet to

before i had gotten close with ex-catholics i was under the assumption that "catholic guilt" was mostly about sex, or serious topics.

but i was naïve. it's apparently about every positive experience. enjoying a meal? you're so lucky, children are starving. spending your day off cosy in bed? wow, so selfish, homeless people are freezing to death.

every former or present catholic i've met has a very obvious anxiety disorder and it's so painfully not a coincidence.

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screaming because mafuyu looks so scared in her card and there's no light in her eyes once again.

howling because the colour-wheel ranging books scattered around ena that she seems to have drawn in, over, are reference books, study guides by the look of their contents.

screaming and howling because of how protectively kanade is holding the container with the live purple butterfly in it, when around her are flowers and insects pressed and arranged for display, ornamentation (and dead of course, dead for this display)—

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Me musing to myself: how to go about this... I think mizuki still feels, personally, like they could be possibly fem enby, or possibly specifically x-gender, considering the momentary resignation when explaining to that well-meaning classmate in anni4 that yes, she does like wearing 'cool' stuff, just particularly likes wearing cute things, and that absolutely rang to me like 'complicated gender Stuff™ for cis people: intro class analogy 'cause i'm not getting into it'. Also i like how using multiple pronouns in English helps nod to the fact that some things are lost in translation, so it'll be a nice touch to acknowledge some of the unique gender identities that spring up in Japan. So when i write fics i will continue to use both they and she for Mizuki as I feel is right and shift according to how i'm writing for that piec-

Me: *sees the zero reading comp folk insisting that the classmates making transphobic comments asking if ena's a guy too or a normal girl means mizukis actually a boy*

Me:

Me, tucking my interpretation onto the shelf: i'll come back for you when it's just good company again ok? It's gonna be singular pronoun sets for a bit.

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writing or drawing or editing or what creative form you please, doing so for x thing and then seeing people wish that there was more people making for x thing and it's like

are you looking? are you making the effort to find past works for x thing? are you showing appreciation that the maker can see? do you share the work, fanwork or original, so others can also see and enjoy, so the creator knows 'hey, i thought this was good and i want others to see it too'?

cause i promise you there's people there who have made what you want, or would. but do they know there's people appreciative of the time and effort they put in, who want to share in that interest?

course it's not a mandatory thing. but people make and share what they make for it to be seen. if you aren't able to make it yourself, for whatever reason, then be a person who helps get those works in front of someone else's eyes.

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GOD FINE!!! Divinity/Avatars AU thoughts that tumbled around on the way home:

either gods themselves or chosen by gods to be their major actors in the mortal realm

a lot of people petition plat (maybe something like, swift resolution to conflicts (because there are many ways, to bring a conflict to stillness)) and she's jaded because they go and plead and pray but then go dunk their head into the next conflict and they put it all on her to fix it, rather than lift a finger to actually address the root of their problems?

then she helps resolve something for maria (perhaps a god for those who need shelter in the dark, complementary to those who can find the strength to step forward in her sister's light) and she tosses some snarky offhand advice as she leaves because No Filter and maria actually acts?? on the advice??? And actually goes to thank plat directly and try to bring her something she likes, tried making something by hand because she sees plat gets a lot of certain offerings everyone assumes she likes-

and my thoughts stop there because it was a short drive home but something something plat constantly testing to see if maria is a True sort of person or just seeking something from her, and when she finds she is just, genuinely wanting to be near plat for plat and not what plat can offer her in terms of strength or blessings, being drawn into her orbit.

'The light is a hopeful spark amidst cold ash for many, but in her sister's shade is where you find true rest-'

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WAR ENTER THE HOLE WITH ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

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...oh, i missed a really blatant piece. mizu5 really is the event that keeps on giving.

in kaito's card stories, the major beats are, for the first, meiko and kaito disagreeing (but also meiko thanking kaito for not prodding Mizuki too hard) and a funny moment of both of them just walking away from luka suggesting she mediate, and for the second, a general 'oooh bad omen coincidence' of a gift mizuki made being lost, picked up, but part of it breaking, specifically a corsage Mizuki made.

And having read the event story before the cards, kaito's and meiko's unease at it breaking is felt the strongest, they are closest to the looming events, it's easy to stop at that very prominent foreshadowing. kaito's gruff and heads off on his own, meiko manages to fix the gift back on, both are worried, and that is what the writers definitely wanted to communicate.

but there's a subtler piece. not hidden, they didn't bother to hide it, just presented it so plainly that it's easy, for a mind to skip over it and not think about it until later!

the corsage was something made for rin.

Who is it, that Rin is most closely associated with in Niigo again?

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my fave things from c7. my absolute fave part. is upon the guy making the 'oh are you a guy too har har relax it's a joke' bit ena's just. what's that supposed to mean? it's not funny. that's not a joke. which is exactly what you should do if you have the mental quickness because it puts the jokers on the backfoot to have to explain their fucking shitty transphobia! but a lot of folk have to train themselves out of the 'laughter is often a response to unfunny things as well' instinct

and you can absolutely see ena is both simultaneously processing this new info, but also just hey. hey. the fuck you saying about my friend. what are you saying by me being 'normal'?

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Being who i am (a bit of gremlin and obsessed with maximising emotional response) i was kinda half hoping they'd disable or change mizuki's in-show shoutouts. Like if niigo would normally be called to then saying something like, '...normally they'd say something like that now, hah...' or if she'd be the one calling out instead saying '...guess i won't be singing with them anytime soon.'

Naturally i imagine there's many reasons for Not doing that (the amount of work players do for the advanced shouts, the amount of work it'd take to change mizuki shouts, and also deciding how far you take it (does this include for example Rui and An? Airi and Shizuku? Or even further connections?), and how these would have to be 'radio silent' until the next niigo event but ah. It was fun to imagine the screams from the playerbase on realising this.

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Exactly. And I think it’s another nice gameplay-story tie, most particularly when it comes to her E2 skill (biological rambles ahoy).

So her trust doc states that she can manipulate calcium and chemical compounds in an area around her, presumably including herself. Which is, hm, a buckwild skill to have considering Everything is chemicals! But for the moment we’ll presume calcium is her specialty, since that’s what she refers to in talking about creating a shield of enamel.

But she says it herself, that’s not the true power she possesses. Healing and defense is not the main/original operation of it.

You know what else calcium is involved in, in terms of biological processes?

Muscle contraction, responses of central nervous tissues to injury, and even more specifically, it serves in the response of the body to remove cells on the verge of death that would otherwise use up metabolic resources other cells--wordy scientific explanation short, it’s involved in the autodestructive mechanisms of nerves when too damaged.

So not only can she manipulate/bypass the usual limit people have in terms of generating force with their muscles (think of electrocuted people leaping far further than they’d ever normally be able to), strengthen shields, weaken organisms, she could probably just straight up destroy central nervous systems. I don’t know if the devs have considered That Far into calcium manipulation, but there’s potential in it there.

I think it ties to her E2 skill in particular because the first two can be mostly explained by her syringe gun. She administers first aid to one person, or she does it to several people around her (probably a system, not coincidentally, similar to Silence’s drone, that might be bolstered by her calcium manipulation). But her third skill is explicitly called ‘calcification’, it affects not only allies but enemies (also, specifically Arts damage buff? Hi, Ifrit) in what is a sizable range around her, and the only way you can get her to use it, is after what would be a significant amount of work together in Rhodes and trust built.

She only uses her personal power in a way that doesn’t just keep her up to keep defending, or keep others up, after all that time. And still, as stated, with restrictions.

Man, yeah? It makes a lot of sense to think of her as someone that took up the shield oh so vehemently after the Incident, because her refusal to put it down is clearly not just a preference thing, it’s something she sees as her duty now, basically.

It’s incredible that her Files detail just how powerful she is with her bare hands, and that she’s apparently reducing her own combat potential by dedicating herself to be a Defender and a healer. Honestly, all of this, couple with the fact that she participated in quelling down the Incident, makes me think that she brandished her full combat power against whatever it is Ifrit became, and then had a moment of realization, a moment of “Oh god, I beat her up, I beat up my child with my own hands in addition to having turned her into this” and felt so guilty that she decided to seal away her fists as penance.

It is oh so very Saria Flavored™ for her to do something like that.

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Just some rambles as well

I doubt colopale would go so far but i think it'd be really cool of them to have mizuki get a teacher, probably from abroad, who's also queer. The significance of that? How meaningful it would be, for Mizuki to get that 'oh you're like me' moment

Because it still v much is hard being a teacher who's openly queer in an ostensibly more progressive place, but seeing the kids who look at you starry-eyed. Who come up later to say a bit self-consciously 'i love your pin' or whatever thing you wear to signify. Who open up to you when a regular teacher's noted them as being maybe more reticent. It's so nourishing. It makes it worth it.

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...in twilight light when mizuki crosses a line and reaches out, ena turns before mizuki can touch her.

under the twilight light, at the end of the cultural festival, ena heard mizuki's secret before mizuki could tell.

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from a lore perspective would a 6* Arts Defender make sense for a Saria Alter if she got one in the future?

anon i'm not gonna lie, if you'd said brawler or some non-defender archetype, i would've have said no right off the bat, because i think there is a key part to how saria absolutely was a brawler type BHI (before hurting ifrit, see her flashing back as she fights dahlia) but! there is something i think could be very crunchy about how arts defenders only attack when their skill is up.

if saria maintained in some future story that same deliberate thought about how she chose to develop her calcium arts, the same deliberate thought in how all her skills revolve not around destruction but healing, then yes. i could be convinced.

but personally i'm of the mind for ifrit to be the arts defender.

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It's small in the scheme of Everything that happened during the event but. the flashback Mizuki has about someone saying that Mizuki's probably just 'confused', and another saying that when you're young, there's a time you think like that (AKA the good ole 'it's just a phase'). Man. It immediately reminded me of the perspective behind class s, and that's literally the conversation that colopale decided to open up this event with.

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the huge thing for me about the ribbon event is just. it's how when mizuki explains their interpretation of the song and the pain kanade's articulating, and ena says 'i don't understand that perspective', mizuki starts to handwave it, all self-conscious-

(and we and they are so. so aware. of how many people refuse to understand them and how they don't really expect people to truly try to accept them)

-but ena cuts her off and says in no uncertain terms, 'i don't get it, explain to me' neither invalidating nor dismissing mizuki's view but rather trying to clarify by expanding her perspective-

anyway. the writers Will be using this when mizuki's story really comes to the fore, and her secret isn't such to ena anymore. the foundation of their relationship is how ena sought wholeheartedly to get where mizuki was coming from, and it's just. you get it. you get it.

you know why mizuki would be so scared to lose her and the rest of niigo, you know that fear of 'i will Have to disappear in time' isn't one easily shaken when there's been years saying 'what is good can only stay a time'.

but you know too that this is the very foundation, the seeking to understand, you know how deeply unfrivolous ena is when it comes to people she calls Hers.

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the way akane banashi had tohru often obscured, a little washed out, never really seen directly, a little not here in chapter art after his expulsion until we saw him watching the stream of akane. he's a ghost, the literal ghost haunting the narrative and so many of the characters.

the way akane puts forth that rakugo (and storytelling at large is a time machine, the way her storytelling has literally brought this ghost 'back from the dead' into the present narrative-

and! the way the circumstances within the rakugo community that were *binding*, him and others, people unable to let go of the circumstances of his 'death' and find peace.

and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the former arakawa master. almost certainly the narrative will deal with granting *that* ghost peace