#what did she have to die for? where is that post about female characters dying so male characters can feel sad but it's a gifset of all the

[flugame-mp3]

what do you fucking mean that's how charlie dies. THAT'S HOW CHARLIE DIES??? i mean i know the show has a penchant for killing off every character who's not a winchester brother or an angel of thursday but good god. what the fuck. charlie was such a good and enjoyable recurring character, and she had such a fandom impact that i've seen, and she's only around for THREE SEASONS?? (sidebar: it's amazing she has the presence she does for only being around for a couple episodes in the long run!) but: was this necessary? and she just dies offscreen after her skills are utilized to progress the plot of decoding the book of the damned?? oh my god. what in the actual fuck. i'm finding myself getting genuinely very upset at her death. she did not fucking deserve that. and i can absolutely see why the fan response to her death is what it is now. completely fucking unjustified and throwaway and useless.

[deripmaver]

Which is worse, rape or murder? - Or, should Casca have died during the Eclipse?

Unlike most of my meta posts, this is one I'm making as a direct critique of a specific take I've seen. It's similar to my meta about apostle Casca in that regard, where I want to look at a specific idea and why I dislike it, as opposed to wanting to explore my thoughts on an aspect of canon. To be clear, this is only something I do if I've seen a take a bunch of times, enough so I know it's not a one-off. It's also not something I do because I want to engage in discussion with the people who've said whatever the take is, it's something I do in case other people who agree with me might be interested in a meta post that's more in line with their viewpoint.

I provide this disclaimer because, as I've said a few times now, the idea that it's the better choice to have Casca die during the eclipse is one that I just really dislike, and I make that preeeeetty fuckin clear. I can't control who sees this or who comments, but I did think I should make my stance explicit.

Berserk fandom is an absolute treasure trove of bad takes about rape and sexual assault. Considering the seriousness with which the manga takes rape, despite it's sometimes quite dodgy framing and portrayal, the fact that the fandom is Like That is fully a testament to cishet men's inability to consume media without turning into a brainless amoeba of toxicity.

I have to say, though, what shocked me the most was that this particular take, that Casca should have just died during the eclipse, was not from the dudebro side of fandom ('cause if she had they couldn't make their silly little "casca enjoyed it" jokes).

I'm coming right out of the gate with my opinion, which is a firm no, Casca should not have died during the eclipse, and the story would be weaker if she had. I'm going to presume during this analysis that the people who say this assume that her death would be instead of her rape, as opposed to her being raped and then dying, which would be... Horrific. Even more horrific than canon, lol.

I do have sympathy for some of the people who wish she had died, and in a way I understand, though I vehemently disagree. Some of the posts with this POV sound almost traumatized as they proclaim I wish she would have died, it would have been better. As this is something I've only noticed in the tumblr fandom side of things, where most people are women, I think this comes from women readers feeling furious and sick about one of the most vile rape scenes out there. In some ways its intentionally vile, in others - ie how grotesquely sexualized it is - it's unintentional. Then, of course, she continues to suffer in her disabled, infantilized trauma state. I hear these readers wanting to shout at Miura that he should have just killed her off rather than force her, and us, through reading that. It would have been kinder.

I have... Far less sympathy for others. There's a side of fandom that simply does not care about Casca (in a different way than the dudebros who don't care about her despite gushing about how she's peak tomboy waifu). It's amazing the veneer of progressivism these people put on as they say that Casca should have died, because she did not contribute to the narrative before the eclipse, and she certainly hasn't after. Going to get even spicier for a second and point out fandom's long history of wanting female characters dead because they get in the way of mlm ships, and how I think this is SOMETIMES simply another manifestation of it.

To be fully fucking clear, I do NOT think that being a grffgts shipper (censored so this doesn't show up in the tag LOLLLLL) precludes being shitty about Casca. I think tumblr's demographics, and those demographics' typical shipping preferences, mean that grffgts is naturally going to dominate. By simple statistics, most of the people whose opinions I hate are going to be grffgts shippers. Same with most of the people's opinions I like on tumblr tbh. I do, however, think it's prudent to point out old school fandom misogyny, and how I personally feel it's showing up in the fandom, and also point out that it pisses me off that Casca dying during the eclipse is at all presented as the least misogynistic outcome.

I'm also going to say now that this is firmly being kept in the realm of fiction. In real life, there are horrific discussions about how being a victim of rape defiles you for life, and that it's better to die without the "shame" of being raped than live with it. While I have to be blunt it's difficult for me to separate some of the discussion of Casca dying during the eclipse from that anti-survivor bias I see in real life just because ~we live in a society~, I in general think this sentiment is coming from a place of simply analyzing, narratively, which outcome is less misogynistic given how the rape in canon is portrayed.

Would it narratively have been better for Casca to have died? What about the impact of her death versus her current storyline?

First, I think I need to outline my interpretation of the eclipse rape. I don't think that the decision to have Griffith rape Casca was Miura simply being a misogynistic cishet dude who threw in rape for the hell of it. I also don't think it's OOC. Again, there's much to critique in how it's drawn, but not in the fact that it happened. Griffith, in his moments of feeling out of control and powerless, uses sexual advances to reassert his control over the situation - see Charlotte, or the wagon scene with Casca. A distaste for sexual violence committed by his enemies doesn't mean Griffith is incapable of wielding sexual violence as a weapon himself. In real life, there's a paradox where rape committed by political or social enemies is seen as the worst crime one could ever commit, while the mundane rape committed as a consequence of patriarchy is excusable and the victims should be blamed and shamed. Did Miura have the gender studies acumen to think about that when writing? I dunno, but neither does anyone who thinks he didn't.

I also think it's supposed to establish his actions during the eclipse as fully over the moral event horizon. Without it, it's easy to ask if ultimately, Griffith's decision to sacrifice his followers to a cruel death is justified to create a perfect utopia. With it, it establishes Griffith as acting fully on cruel, malicious impulse in moments of emotional turmoil, which puts his future utopia in jeopardy. I can't be the only one who sees Falconia as a ticking time bomb. Of course, this doesn't mean he needed to rape Casca, but simply that I think it was necessary to his character to do something that crossed that moral line. He could have raped Guts I suppose. Killerbambi has entered the chat.

While I think this might sound strange, I actually think it's immensely validating to have a character who is a victim not just of rape, but of rape committed by someone she already knew. That's genuinely unique in media on the whole, which plays into that paradox I mentioned earlier - in real life, the vast majority of assaults are committed by someone the victim knew. Having the story surround the continual, horrific trauma of betrayal, of having to watch the person who hurt you move on while trauma keeps you in horrible stasis is almost so realistic it's... uncomfortable. Painful. Hard to read.

There's no greater purpose to what happened to Casca. She didn't grow from it, instead she regressed.

Her general lack of agency post-eclipse is much critiqued in the fandom and like. Fucking yeah fair LOLLLLLL BUT ALSO... But also. Fandom on the whole can be so cruel about traumatized female characters, like there's no way they can do trauma "right." In Casca's case, her lack of agency is turned into a reason she should simply have been killed off instead, as though there aren't so many survivors who, while not as literally as she does, retreat into a shell of themselves and are frozen with trauma as the world begins to pass them by. Of course, the critique would be that she's not a real person, she's a female character written in a misogynistic way by a man, but I personally think this overstates Miura's issues with his portrayal of rape. To me, it presents what they think are his biases as justification for their own biases.

Time and time again, I see survivors discuss feeling validated by Casca's trauma response after being assaulted. Even the parts of the rape scene that I vehemently dislike, such as the hyper-focus on Casca's body and the physical reactions she's having, I've seen more than one person say they felt validated because they too had an unwanted arousal response during an assault. I'll still critique the scene, but regardless of if this was Miura's intention, its impact is clear.

I'll again plug this article by Jackson P. Brown, How Berserk’s Casca challenges the myth of the “Strong Black Woman.” Just to show a quote from it:

All of the action of the story after Conviction Arc is in service of restoring Casca's mind. During Conviction Arc and after, Casca has groups of women who love and protect her, with women as her source of safety. Guts is single mindedly focused on bringing her back, putting his body on the line again and again to protect her and restore her. I wondered about including Guts here because I'm sure I'll get some anon about the Beast of Darkness, which again fair LOL. I have complicated feelings on that, but mostly I think the importance the narrative puts on her mind and her protection is touching, and I think this outweighs how the negative things apparently mean that she should have died.

Her story and trauma, despite its flaws, is shockingly realistic and validating to so many people. She's also a key narrative component post-eclipse, and not just ~for Guts' manpain~ or as a helpless plot device, her story is her own. I've written about Elaine as a character and what she represents, but in brief, Casca doesn't disappear after the eclipse. Miura wrote Elaine with these moments where Casca comes to the surface, and while I wish we had more of her POV I think you can look at how she's coping from how Elaine reacts to the world around her.

I also think it's necessary to have Casca at the Hill of Swords. There's Guts, who Griffith torments in the way only a bitter ex can, and Rickert, who doesn't know what happened the day of the eclipse, but I think Casca is the key component in that scene that cuts through all of Griffith's posturing and Guts' anger. She is there, making the real, human cost of what Griffith did during the eclipse unignorable in a way that no other character could. It's one thing for Guts to be furious with him and Rickert ignorant, it's another to have someone who loved him so innocently and dearly trembling just at the sight of him. Let's not pretend that the depth of betrayal in this scene would be the same if you swapped her for, say, Judeau.

It's funny, Miura is quoted as saying that his initial reason for keeping Casca alive was to provide Guts an ever-burning flame of vengeance, an eternal reminder of everything that he lost during the eclipse. What's wound up happening, on a meta level, is that Casca provides the reader a constant reminder of what happened during the eclipse. As more and more focus is given to her PTSD with her revival, the cruelty with which Griffith acted (and continues to act) becomes harder and harder to ignore. It becomes more difficult to push it aside as just bad, misogynistic writing.

And also, quite simply, I like narratives about trauma recovery, and therefore I'll always find Casca's story worth telling despite my frustration with a lot of it. It's absolutely wild to me that for how often I see the fandom complain about her being "fridged" they think it would have been better to see her ACTUALLY fridged, no chance of coming back at all, just dead to fuel Guts' revenge arc. Would it really be better to have her be just another dead girlfriend? Really?

That's really what it comes down to. I like Casca as a character, and I want her to have lived. The people who wish she had died, many of them simply don't like her as a character. Not all, particularly in that first group I mentioned at the start, but many. Everyone has their preferences of course, but I don't think I need to respect when someone thinks a character has so little influence on the narrative that they should have just died, especially if that character is Casca.

If Casca had died during the eclipse, it would not have been a good death. It would not have been brave, or triumphant, or worth anything for her as a character. Judeau died to protect Casca, but even his death was not brave, it was just sad. That's the whole point of the eclipse.

To have Casca die that way would be a disservice to her as a character, far moreso than to have her struggle on as a traumatized victim of sexual violence. That's genuinely what I believe.

[sco07ut]

what just happened!!!!!!!! s19 rambles (negative) ↓

going to be messy cos im just planning on writing whatever outrageous moments stand out as i go along

first of all????? DOC FUCKING DIED?????????? i literally had to rewatch a few times to realise that’s what they were saying 😟 when the fuck did he die bc doc eas Inside the staff of charon and wash was fuckijg idk?? on the surface of chorus right?? how did doc die saving him what (genuinely someone smarter than me if you’ve figured it out please tell me) bc like the point of the charon fight is that they were stuck in the mementos room right? idk

anyway he was done so dirty i literally do not think there was a reason to reveal doc was dead in the last five minutes

on that note, where was donut?? did he die too ? how long after chorus is s19 set like was that undisclosed location iris or what. did he do his whole ‘tour of the universe’ thing early? like i would’ve been fine with even just a passing comment but they were so vague with it

WHY DID SARGE DIE AND THEN PROMPTLY BECOME IRRELEVANT????? aside from simmons grif & caboose not a Soul mentioned the fact that a whole man was dead. i was so convinced that there would be some big funeral with everyone attending at the end

i did sort of like the plot though, simmons getting a leadership role was kinda fun

tbh i did like simmons this season it was so great seeing him finally get recognition but good grief i cannot talk about simmons without bringing up the ending/lack of grimmons

it makes sense that they wouldn’t get together if grif went home and simmons stayed in the army BUT WHY DID SIMMONS STAY IN THE ARMY?? RICHARD YOU DO NOT HAVE A FUCKING TEAM ANYMORE (on that note. where did lopez go. i’m only just realising that he literally vanished) i’m so insane why did they do that. they could’ve gone home together. and kissed about it idk

i mean i didn’t actually expect grimmons to happen but i thought they’d stay together?? it’s always been them. like that’s the whole point of their characters. every other person who’s been on their team before has died and left them (grif sleeping through being glassed, hammer dying during basic, the red team at rat’s nest and now sarge and donut i guess?????) why did they not stay together

also on the grif family note, the kai cameo was nice (though i will say i do Not understand the point of the whole retro con thing, i feel like it went on for ages, did nothing to set up the plot. the meta could’ve been introduced some other way surely)

also while i’m thinking about it, why did it take tucker/the meta months to get from chorus to a point where he was actively searching for epsilon ?

anyway sorry kai cameo fun but she should’ve had a bigger role idc

it kind of feels like they suddenly realised almost all their female characters were overlooked and they tried to shove them in to be like ‘ohhh look we care about our female characters’ and then screwed them over by making them either insignificant or nothing more than a cameo

with the exception of tex maybe. i fully did not expect her to come back prior to watching but when caboose was like oh help me remember i started to get a feeling it wouldn’t be church. i’m also so glad they addressed the whole ‘created from failure/destined to fail’ thing, tex fuckijg deserved that win. sad that she died though (i wasn’t expecting that either and was like fully geared up to start making post restoration fanart of carolina and tex hanging out and learning how to be friends/family again)

idk i just feel like we missed out on so much stuff due to time constraints, there were so many scenes that should’ve been put in imo like carolina and tex having some sort of moment together, grif and kai having a moment, carolina & wash seeing 479er again

ok wait different chain of thought. everyone was like really eager to kill tucker. there was no moral dilemma of everyone being like ohh beneath the meta hes our friend we can’t hurt him but we still need to take him down what’re we gonna doo. although on second thought it was red team so . yeah the mindless attacking does make sense a bit

new thought again overall it just felt weird like everyone had their assigned pairings and couldn’t acknowledge anyone outside of them?? like during the fights there wasn’t much of a reunion when tex/carolina joined and then wash (and apparently not fucking doc) like idk. i was under the assumption thatvthere would be a sweet little scene where they got the gang back together

whatever man that’s everything off the top of my head. i had no expectations going in and still somehow left disappointed. i Will be making an au version that fits all the things i wanted to see

[atopvisenyashill]

I would like to offer up my least favorite rancid takes and I’m doing it on anon instead of in a reblog because some would get me hate mail.

Making fun of Dany for miscarrying or acting like her being unable to bear children is a sign she’s evil or lesser. This is just misogyny. I don’t have issues with most Jonsas but I’ve seen takes that boil down to “Jon deserves a partner like Sansa because she can give him healthy kids and Dany gave birth to a lizard” like ok. Get out of my house.

In the same vein, gleefully theorizing that Sansa will be infertile. This is just weird and mean-spirited. It would add nothing to the narrative and also screams misogyny.

People who get really weird about the Starks being pale-skinned. Like I understand the take “it’s weird to draw only Arya and Jon with darker skin and give the other kids super fair skin since Arya and Jon are described as plain” but some people get super super defensive and go off about Arya’s “beautiful white skin” like hello? Do you not hear yourself?

Really any gleeful theorizing about Sansa or Dany dying. It’s fine to craft theories about this especially because Dany did die in the show but the attitude people take makes a huge difference. And it almost always boils down to ship wars. Jonsa fans smugly theorizing about Jon stabbing Dany for the sake of loving Sansa. Jonrya fans smugly theorizing about Jon pushing Sansa from a great height and professing his love for Arya to mirror Petyr and Lysa. Like. What’s wrong with you guys. It’s just shipping. You’re giddily posting about imaginary teenage girls being killed by an imaginary teenage boy they love for the sake of a different imaginary teenage girl. Seek help.

“Arya is actually very feminine and if you say otherwise you’re the misogynist and also a classist because Arya’s femininity is smallfolk femininity” you do not understand the difference between femininity and being female and the fact you get offended by people saying your fav is less feminine than other characters is showing your ass. You still think women are inherently feminine even if you’re willing to expand your definition of femininity and this will always loop back to sexism.

Victim-blaming. This is far more rampant with hotd but I see takes like “Dany raped Drogo” and “some part of Sansa wanted Petyr to prey on her because of that line where she momentarily kissed back” puke vomit goodbye. The number of times I have seen TB people insist that “people hate Rhaenyra because she’s not a perfect victim” and then say that Alicent didn’t have it so bad evidenced by the fact that she didn’t fight for power and cried when Viserys died is maddening like hey bestie guess what you’re doing right now? :-) I’m throwing tomatoes at you

dany & sansa infertility talk

oof yeah i've talked about this one before in that i think part of why everyone is so weird about dany's infertility is that clearly george is cooking somehting up here but no one (imo) has hit on just what it might be. and because the concept of infertility = bad is so prevalent in fiction, and also quite a hot topic in asoiaf, it means people theorize the most out of pocket shit imaginable. they do it with dany, with sansa, and it's so annoying. especially because it's like - neither of these two are even 18 i think it's sooo uncomfortable to speculate over "they're infertile because they're eeeeeeevil" when it's like no, there's a pretty clear reason dany is infertile actually and it's that she gave birth for the first time at 14 and is horrendously inbred! "oh but the magic" so have we noticed that there seems to be an uptick in in miscarriages when valyrian women give birth under 16 and are a bit more inbred or ??

pale skinned starks

in general i think people are so nauseatingly weird about this. i got at it in my original hater ask where i said i don't follow those "weird racist libs" because people always do this regardless of whether they're a stark or dornish or valyrian, it's just soooo fucking weird to harass someone because they're drawing a character darker than you think it's appropriate regardless of why you're doing it. i've seen this happen where people will get mad that dornish characters are drawn particularly dark and never mind that one of the places in the world that george based dorne off of is, ya know, fucking north africa, which has a large array of skin tones! and like i guess i get the criticism of "jon and arya are described as plain" but it's also sort of like well but...in canon they're described as having "northern coloring" as opposed to the more "tully look" and i think if you consistently draw other "northern coloring" characters like jeyne poole, beth cassell, alys karstark, lyanna stark, harwin, etc etc who are not considered plain as also a little brown skinned, it's fine. why is the idea of like, being fucking normal about skin color such a hard concept for this fandom to grasp.

love triangle stuff with jon

i do think some of the vitriol is due to like, the sheer number of people who are picturing women closer to sophie, maisie, emilia's ages in later seasons when they picture sansa, arya, and dany. i think for a lot of people, it's a lot harder to swallow dany's tragic ending as being, ya know, tragic, because show dany is just not particularly tragic as a character and the Fandom At Large loves to pretend like she's a hated character when she's consistently popular purely because of her aesthetic (and emilia's face) and not because of any real interest in engaging with her character. which is frustrating because it's like....i think the finale is coming when none of these characters ar even 20. they're going to be young as HELL when the long night comes and their youth is the tragedy. "old men talking young men dying" and all that. i say this as someone who does think it's not unlikely jon kills dany explicitly to save sansa, arya, or both girls, but I think the people who posit this as some sort of triumphant murder scene as if george didn't deny us happy catharsis over tywin and joffrey are in for a real rude awakening when we get ados/george's eventual outline to be released in like 40 years and see he meant all along for us to weep when the final moments come and not cheer!

but yeah the moon door stuff is especially stupid because it's like bro lysa basically date raped petyr when she was sansa's age, she consistently shows herself to be selfish and incapable of empathy even as a young woman (and there's like reasons for that obviously but the heinous way she's treating her sister and niece is not like, excusable especially when neither catelyn nor sansa are the reason her life sucks shit. killing jon arryn was fine tho let's be clear). what on earth has sansa done that is even in the realm of that? and no, the trident moment doesn't count, that's insane. i think the "jon puts down rabid dog dany" type takes are similar to the "jaime puts down rabid dog cersei" takes in that it's like maybe there is a framing here of "he has to kill her because someone has to" type deal but it's NOT going to be that clean of a kill, there WILL be guilt and a lot of discussion over whether it's necessary, over whether they're adding to the cycle of violence, over the toll it's going to take on them, and even whether they themselves are culpable in the sins of the woman they're passing judgement on!

arya is feminine

yes my GOD i posted here about this a little bc someone quote tweeted that last one about "erasing arya's femininity" with "what femininity???" and it's like YEAH. arya should be allowed to Not Do Femininity, she should be allowed to Do Womanhood The Way She Prefers and the way she prefers is NOT femine! that's okay!!!!!! the entire point of her character is that women shouldn't HAVE to be a certain way. if you're looking for "character who is gnc partially bc she's denied access to feminimity" that's BRIENNE not arya, arya wants nothing to do with it!!!

victim blaming

ya this is part of my "tg loves to say daemon is an abuser and then refuse to acknowledge rhaenyra is his victim" spiel. screaming about how "rhaenyra you saw what being a teen mom did to alicent now you're doing it to rhaena" RHAENYRA WAS A TEEN MOM TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! people constantly put rhaenyra in this third space 's like "well she sees herself as a man because she's entitled and she acts like a man because of that so i can analyze her from the point of having male privelege" WHAT IS THAT. NO!!! THIS IS VICTIM BLAMING. and YEAH i see that take a lot with alicent, that viserys isn't "abusive" so it's fine and it's like. how do you miss tery real commentary going on here about how every one of these relationships where a teenage girl is marrying a grown man is abusive to some degree. how do you miss the commentary that a man sees his wife as an extension of himself and therefore denies her personhood is a structural, societal problem in westeros and the way he dismisses her real fears and wants and desires and uses her as a replacement for both his dead wife and his daughter he can't talk to is deranged, abusive behavior? except i know why it's bc these exact same tb stans are saying that "the feminist marriage is when a woman chooses" bud we are quoting stephanie meyer here with this. lyanna's relationship with rhaegar isn't feminist bc she "chose" him, she's 16 this is like saying aria and ezra from pll is a feminist relationship bc she "chose" him. that man is her abuser. it doesn't matter that there's no physical violence or that the sexual violence isn't actually ~violent. rape and assault still exist even when the victim doesn't fight!!!!

[normalbrothers]

peaky blinders for the ask meme pls 🤧 ignore my shameful previous ask

my favorite female character: well, as said polly and linda almost an equal amount, but polly wins out.

my favorite male character: tommyyyyy ... and arthur is close second; in terms of investment i think it's about the same even, but it's always going to be tommy in the end.

my favorite book/season/etc: season 3! it's truly the event horizon of the show; what s1 and s2 built up finds its climax there, and everything post is the long, painful aftermath (sexy 2 me)

my favorite episode (if its a tv show): s03ep04, of course.

my favorite cast member: well, i like cillian murphy u.u

my favorite ship: tommyarthur by far

a character I’d die defending: i find the idea of defending character as if on trial (they aren't real, come on) generally futile, nevertheless fandom is annoying, so tommy ... maybe i wouldn't die for him, but i might jog a steep hill upwards (<- thinking of, this is worse than dying)

a character I just can’t sympathize with: barring the villains, alfie annoys me. you sort of can see where he comes from, and plenty can be understood as sympathetic, but he's so obnoxious to me in s5 and s6 it kind of soured my entire opinion of the guy. it would have been best if he had died on that beach fr

a character I grew to love: i've always liked the characters i like ...

my anti otp: it doesn't really amount to anti otp, because lack of genuine emotional response, but i couldn't care less for tommy/may - why did that happen, why was she there ...

[archer3-13]

Fire Emblem Engage: The Four Hounds, Execution and Intent

got past ch23 of engage, gameplay wise its a fun enough chapter using map environmental damage gimmicks in a way that generally works. as you can tell from the title though, thats not why im making this post. I'm making this post because spoiler warning:

this is where the four hounds and the plotlines tied to that whole group basically culminate. id be surprised anyways if anything more comes of them, but at this point i feel confident enough at their part in the story to comment on it.

under the cut

the tl:dr of it all is that the four hounds are a villain quartet idea i love in concept, but find lacking in execution in regards to their place in the story.

but what do i mean by that? well, we'll start by going over the concept of what engage wants the four hounds to be. at the bare minimum the four hounds are our evil quartet/mini group for the game, a timed honored tradition not just in fe but across media of all sorts. in terms of general archetypes we have

zephia: evil sexy female group leader and bosses right hand mauvier: the honorable obviously going to heel turn or die tragically guy griss: the crazy one in it ostensibly for the lols possibly for another reason marni: small bratty child who was duped into it with candy

and if they were just the bare minimum I probably wouldnt have much more to say on the matter, but the game does give them some extra narrative teeth and its something that kinda flew past my head for the majority of the game because it didnt feel that important. we will get to that.

but essentially, ya know how in ch10/11, the snippet of the scene marketing decided to use to tease the four hounds pre release? when zephia notes how the four hounds are 'like a family'? shes not just saying that she literally means that, its their 'unique selling point' so to speak as an evil group. aside from their evil archtypes you can also map them like this

zephia: mommy mauvier: daddy griss: son marni: daughter

and to give the game credit where its due, when that realization did finally hit i'll admit, i appreciated the four hounds and what was going on with them a lot more. the irrational attachment mauvier and marni display to zephia despite how awful of a person she is makes sense, why mauvier is being so weirdly passive about all the things the hounds are doing especially to veyle despite clearly taking issue with it makes sense, why marni wants to go back to the hounds and mauvier fuckin encourages her to go makes sense.

a lot of what im mentioning there is pretty clearly suppose to be irrational behavior taken for emotional reasons of course. the game presents it as such, but it was always the context of why the characters were acting irrationally that got lost. the deathbed clarification between griss and zephia does clear up a lot of that confusion, atleast for me, and brings some interesting weight to previous storybeats. the four hounds are a family, but a clearly dysfunctional one serving a dark god.

and it tracks with what in retrospect are the wider themes of engage, family and what defines the individual in relation to them. veyles struggle for recognition from her father sombron to the point of believing in his lies until forcibly confronted with the truth, veyles evil alter ego being the complete opposite of veyle in every way except in the desire to be sombrons daughter, ivy and hortensia having had a loving father in hyacinth until his obsession with the fell dragon saw him willing to abandon his own daughters for power, alcrysts and diamants father being described as a paradoxical fierce warrior and gentle family man, alears relation to lumera and how they decide to be family by choice instead of family by circumstance etc.

which is why i will ultimantly say that watching griss and zephias death scene chocked me ever so slightly [in that good emotional release way] with griss providing a gentle reprieve in their dying moments, with a genuinely kinda beautiful final shot of their corpses lying next to each other with griss holding on to zephias hand in the end.

how, fucking, ever.

you'll notice how when describing their death cutscene i pretty much exclusively focus on griss leaving zephia out of the descriptor entirely despite the cutscene being just as much about her as griss. and thats because well i can definitely understand and appreciate the concept intellectually

execution is another matter

were introduced to the four hounds fairly early on in engage, over ten chapters before their whole plotline culminates. and right off the bat i'll note that the screen time for these chucklefucks is kinda wasted in a lot of instances. when they do appear in story they usually could just be replaced with bit villains, and i mean that from both a gameplay and story perspective but for this post story is the more important aspect.

so! the distribution and utilization of their screen time is already wonky and uneven. that'd hurt things even if it was executed really well. but, as i said it isn't and i can point to two primary factors in that matter that i feel needed some serious tweaking to get this to work

the interaction of the hounds as a family unit

and zephia herself

so, starting with the easier problem [in my opinion], the hounds and the time they spend interacting. if the idea were suppose to be grasping is that the hounds are like a family unit, if a very fucked up one, then its important that when the hounds are on screen interacting with each other that their interactions always carry a very distinctive family dynamic to them. and this is the first hurdle engage trips over with the hounds because frankly they dont.

dont what? dont interact all that often as a group, dont interact like a family. as stated their screen time is already wonky, but even when the group is all together on screen is very heavily weighted either to zephia talking mad shit, or to evil veyle/veyle interactions. that leads us into the second part of this problem, and its that even when the four hounds are all together interacting they never really feel like a family, even an off brand one. they feel like evil coworkers in an organization brought together as colleagues to do missions as they try and impress their superior for individual merit.

and thats a problem, cause if we are suppose to feel sad for their 'family' when it starts fraying at the edges, when the ideological and moral weight and contradictions of their actions and individual perspectives start clashing and tear the family asunder, suppose to feel bad when mommy and daddy start fighting because mommys an evil bitch who stabbed their daughter, then they need to feel like a family right from the get go and in every interaction and appearance they make.

which brings us to what i would consider the bigger problem. zephia herself. why is she a problem? because shes the biggest impediment outside of screen time and dialogue distribution inn getting this group to work and feel like an actual family. and screen time and dialogue distribution? giving the four hounds room to interact and feel like a family? thats a writing issue sure but a fairly easily fixable one you just have to give and write them more lines of interacting like a family.

zephia however simply does not work character wise as a mother figure for the four hounds family unit. even if you tried to get them to interact more like a family unit youd run into the problem that shes written exclusively as sombrons evil sexy secretary. and yes secretaries can be mothers but thats not the point.

in order to get this idea of the four hounds as a family unit across, and not the facade of one but an actual pseudo sort of family unit that were suppose to feel for as a family unit, then you need to have characters capable of displaying affection and compassion for each other. and zephia just cant do that the way shes written, itd be like trying to write petrine [or aversa really, who zephia shares way more writing dna with] in a domestic family situation. they're both characters that are too outwardly cruel and cold to realistically manage that without feeling either disingenious, as zephia felt the entire time i was playing whenever she mentioned the four hounds as a family unit which is part of why it didnt stick with me at first, or just feeling out of character.

and unfortunately the only way you could practically fix that, is by rewriting zephias character to one that would fit what the story wants to convey. at which point she becomes a different character, just one sharing zephias face.

best solution i can think of is to shift zephia from a aversa type as it were to more of an eremyia type if that makes sense. cause eremyias big thing in the fe12 assassin sub plot is how she outwardly presents the facade of a kindly matron of a church orphanage well underneath shes a cruel and cold taskmaster of an assassin cult for gharnefs objectives. if zephia had at least been somewhat similar, presenting a wholesome motherly facade before letting the teeth out to achieve sombrons objectives, then i feel things would have hit a lot better in regards to the four hounds and their plotlines.

it would make more sense why the group stays together despite the horrific shit they do, it would hit harder when the cracks form, it would be more shocking when marni gets stabbed by zephia, more impactful when mauvier declares his intent to kill zephia, and more heartbreaking when zephia belatedly realizes she wasted her opportunity for a real family of sorts by taking the four hounds for granted and similarly more heartbreaking when griss lets the facade drop for a moment to comfort zephia before passing away himself.

but... they didnt. or atleast it doesnt come across that way in the english translation. and thats why i consider it a really good concept, with poor execution.

[turtlemagnum]

in one of the episodes leading up to where i am now, they introduced a female character who not only has a face that isn't just yuria's again, but actually has a pretty cool design and seemed like she was gonna be a credible threat to ken. but holy shit did they handle her poorly in what might've been the most sexist way possible. like, i thought it was kinda bullshit that mamiya isn't as competent a fighter as at least rei is, but at least she pretty consistently can mow down the nameless goons about as well as the other two main fighters. but this new character, i think they named her bella, immediately like. her mom's like "hey!! give up fighting and go back to being a woman!!!" and the character sending her after ken is like "heh... ken would NEVER hit a woman... my plan is flawless....." meanwhile like. i didn't really see much of an indication that she didn't want to get into martial arts, and ken explicitly refuses to fight her not because she's a woman but because it's obvious she doesn't actually want to kill him. i definitely feel like we're supposed to take away that she doesn't wanna be a martial artist and that ken doesn't wanna hurt her because she's a woman? but i think what's explicitly said by the two themselves is A Lot Less Shitty and is actually coming from their own mouths, so i'm gonna purposefully misinterpret what the author probably intended to be less shitty.

there comes the point where she no longer wants to fight ken, and now she has to fight the person coercing her into doing this, and i know this is gonna sound weird but like. this is a show where men regularly get every part of their body viscerally mutilated, exploded, amputated etc, and that's all well and good. but the goddamn instant it's a woman getting mutilated, they only show a rose getting cut into pieces and it's like. that's fucking sexist, right? like i know i probably sound weird to a lot of you for wanting a woman to die brutally on screen, but i think if your show can explicitly show men dying brutally in a fight then women should be able to as well, y'know?? gender equality

i think part of why this stuck out to me as particularly shitty is that it frames her whole one episode arc as like, showing how tragic it is that a woman has to be a fighter in the post apocalypse, but it's like... mamiya was literally right there, has been shown time and time again to be an extremely competent fighter, and they never really made that big of a deal about her having a pussy while fighting. and like, i definitely see why they couldn't make her as strong as ken, because he's the Main Guy and you wouldn't want a non-antagonist side character to be an outright equal to him. i get that, there's a reason why you don't make vegeta as strong as goku, y'know. but like, in a world with straight up fucking magic, i don't see why your vegeta couldn't be a woman, y'know? i made mine a woman, at least. but even then, they didn't make mamiya's whole fucking deal that she was Woman, like it was definitely a significant part of her character (arguably too significant) but like, she had other qualities; which is what makes this character being Like That sting that much more, y'know

[alicerosejensen]

A moment of weakness

Have you ever listened to the beautiful compositions of Olivier Deriviere? My heart freezes and cries from "The Night (La Nuit)" Thanks to such talented people, I have been writing a fucking agnst for 10 years now. Don't get me wrong, I love a happy ending, but almost all of my work ends with the deaths of the main characters.

If we talk about Resident evil, then just the other day I wrote a short (no, it was long, I'm lying) chapter where the main character (the original female character) died in Leon's arms and he had to kill her HIMSELF. They had a long journey indirectly related to Leon's work, but in the end, despite all the attempts to save his beloved, despite all the ways they went, Leon literally had to go back and kill her. Moreover, she understood that he would have to do it anyway and repeatedly told him about it! And yes, I didn't make the main character an agent of D.S.O or B.A.S.S, she was literally a person who was just unlucky enough to encounter a fucking psycho. And then Leon Kennedy rushes to the rescue (but in fairness, while he was not there, she also held up well).

I enjoyed describing their relationship so much! Tender sex in Peru, after which Leon almost lies on his beloved and holds her right hand with his intertwined fingers, while the rays of the morning sun fall on them through the blinds. I love this scene! Considering that the main character is already broken, and Leon does not want to lose a dear person, then later it is he who jokes that she will not go anywhere from him. Hell, they literally had a conversation before that, during which Leon flared up when she told him that it would be better for her to die in the place from where he pulled her out.

Go all the way to find a cure for his bride, but in the end her salvation was death by his hands.

Leon was ready to start a quiet life with her. He wanted him to have at least partially what other people have - a quiet family corner. 

“Maybe even one child.

Do you really think that after what they did to me, I can still give birth?”

You see, he WANTED to take a chance?! Because I believe that Leon always wanted his family, considering how his childhood passed. This dialogue of theirs (of course it's quite long there) confirms this.

And now about the ending: His fiancee is dying, as already mentioned earlier. I cried my eyes out while writing her death and hated myself for turning Leon's heart into a mess.  

That's what I called this chapter "Emptiness". Because Leon had nothing else besides her. He's lost everything. Love and the last dreams of a normal family with a woman he fell in love with.

And do you know which composition of Oliver finished me off even more? "O Ma Belle Lune" Have you seen the translation from French? I cried like a bitch.

“Oh my beautiful moon

Your embrace and your good love

Make me like you

Pretty and strong, at dawn”

This is literally the first verse! Further only better! But the main theme of Leon and OFC would be "I'm Sorry" by the same Olivier Deriviere.

I still cry when I reread these pages. Because I like the suffering of the characters, despite the fact that Leon didn't deserve it. After all, the fan fiction originally had a good ending, but I killed everyone again.

I just wanted to share my thoughts. That's why I wrote this long post.

[sleepymarmot]

Glass Onion

Yes, I had been waiting for this movie for a while and dropped everything to watch it the day of release. What about it?

Liveblog

Is it bad that I’m already like “I want all of these people to die”? Well, maybe not Lionel I guess.

Lol a bit of sci-fi to justify the actors not wearing masks for the entire movie

Is the bad CGI robot some kind of Star Wars legacy? :D

Aww, poor Benoit Soo, one of the guests plans to murder the host for real, and invites a detective to frame another guest?

It’s been 30 minutes, can people start dying please (Not Andi though, that’d be uncool)

Love the scenery, and Craig’s outfit is nice

Cool shot where Andi has the same expression as the Mona Lisa

“This is reckless. And you’re gonna get somebody killed.”

Okay, so far we’ve established the motive for: Peg, Duke, Lionel, maybe Claire. What about Birdie? And the random guy hanging around? And Andi? Is Andi automatically disqualified because we saw her destroy the box? That could be a real alibi or a red herring.

Nooo, so awkward, I can’t watch this Oh, he did it on purpose, that makes it a bit less painful

Huh, he didn’t mention Andi in the monologue...

Oh good, exactly an hour into a murder mystery, someone finally died! Yes, yes, of course it was an attempt on Miles’ life, I thought we’ve already established he’s who everyone wants dead. Cool trick to keep Norton among the active cast, I thought it was weird for the most famous actor to play the victim. (It’s nice to see Norton again btw, I wondered a while ago why I hadn’t seen him in new movies recently.)

Lmao the lights! Now this is fun

Oh no, Andi! :(

Plot twist!! Well now he's responsible for an innocent woman’s death, that’s going to give him a motive to find the killer

This shit is wild

Hell yeah she’s alive!!!

Is she going to attack the Mona Lisa?..

I feel bad about the painting. The way this was framed as a triumphant moment has the same energy as that Tumblr post about destroying famous paintings because rich people like them.

Review

[Additional spoilers for Knives Out, The Last Jedi, Midsommar, and The Handmaiden]

The film takes too much time to get started. The characters are too flat to carry it until the plot actually launches. Only gets good after the plot twist. The secondhand embarrassment scenes are excruciating.

The plot: “rich people bad, the detective teams up with a pure-hearted woman of color and helps her win”, take two. Are they going to make a whole franchise out of this? Not a great foundation for murder mystery: just look for the most entitled white man and that’s your killer.

Benoit Blanc himself, though, is a good character to build a movie series around. A classic independent detective with a kind heart and a taste for adventure — I want to see more of him. Many people have said it already, but I want Blanc to replace Bond as Daniel Craig’s #1 role.

The biggest strength of the film were, of course, all of the clever and fun twists and reveals. As you can see from the liveblog, I was misdirected very successfully and loved it every time.

And now for the biggest flaw of Glass Onion in my eyes. Just like Knives Out, this film has an extremely fun outer layer wrapped around the heart that I find a genuine downer. Most of the shallow, annoying characters got off scot-free, and what was harmed the most in act 3 was an innocent painting. I’ve already seen The Last Jedi, I don’t really need the same ending scene as the Canto Bight storyline — except worse because the writer doesn’t see the difference between “rich asshole’s property” and “priceless piece of art”. Which is a bad enough take to see on Tumblr, but straight up baffling to encounter in a high budget movie, written by a professional filmmaker. (Amazing timing, though. How did they manage to release this not only in the middle of the Musk major meltdown/Twitter takeover but also soon after the Van Gogh soup discourse?)

In retrospect it also reminds me of a couple of other famous scenes with a female protagonist involved in destruction, and the comparison is not in Glass Onion’s favor. Midsommar also ends with the heroine and a huge symbolic fire, but it’s a horror/drama, and the event takes not only the lives of those caught in the fire but the soul of the heroine. The Handmaiden, on the other hand, features a scene of art destruction that is genuinely positive and cathartic, but the nature of art and the role it plays in human lives is radically different.

[Edited to add] I’ve seen people who liked the ending defend it by saying that people are more important than art. The thing is, if this were framed as the trolley problem — if destroying a priceless work of art were presented as the only way to save an unknown number of lives — I would feel differently. Instead, the film seems to want the viewer not to value the Mona Lisa just because the rich amoral characters do value it.

In a more Watsonian and practical sense, I don’t see how this is a win for Helen. She was the one who burned the painting. The fuel played only a minor part, the painting would have been destroyed just the same without it (in fact, that’s what expected Miles’ lighter to be for). But even if it were otherwise — okay, so this new fuel can easily cause a fire; well, so can electricity and gas if you’re not careful! Not great for PR of this specific product, but not a death sentence either. Most importantly, it’s the person who committed arson that will be charged for it, not the person who unwittingly provided the fuel for the fire.

I did have a good time, to be clear! Very worth watching unspoiled. The release was timed well: the overall lighthearted tone, clever twists, vibrant visuals (bright colors, stylish outfits, idyllic location) make this a good holiday movie.

I’m having trouble with a numerical grade (the worst part of IMDB and Letterboxd is that they make me care about grading, even though it doesn’t work with how I think about media at all). Glass Onion feels like a 7, but I gave Knives Out a 9 and they don’t feel two whole grades apart.

[xxx-theartofsuicide-xxx]

Saw this post in the Inuyasha tag, unfortunately. And I just have to ask why ship sessrin? It’s such a boring bland couple. There’s no spice, unless you’re into children. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I like some dark messed up ships, but for the life of me I don’t see anything compelling or suggestive about sessrin in the manga nor anime.

Seriously, the only reason I can see it being somewhat popular is that people self insert into Rin to fuck Sesshomaru or they like lolicon. That’s it, nothing really deep about it. 🙃

Otherwise, as a character she’s a total wet blanket with personality of generic nice kid. To make things worse, has such a dull design. Definitely, see why people love her, because if I were to pick a character somewhat close to Sesshomaru but doesn’t have any recognizable characteristics it would be hopefully “adult Rin”. Sadly, Rin’s nothing but a plot device both in the original story and in that awful sequel show.

Besides, that kinda homophobic that people don’t ship Kohaku with Sesshomaru, considering he has just as much relevance and impact with Sesshomaru as Rin does. Guess people don’t self insert into Kohaku or like shotacon. 💁🏻‍♀️

The closest romantic relationship Sesshomaru has in the original series is Kagura, who he wanted to save or honestly his freaking dad. Considering how obsessed he is with him. Lol 🤣 Otherwise, Sesshomaru is very much just an asexual individual who’s only real concerns are power and eventually learning to care about others platonically.

Which is pretty much why yashahime as a show, sucks. Boring characters, terrible plot, and horrendous animation. Sessrin is so shallow as a ship that it needs to steal from Inukag. From their friends/family, tree of ages, and rehash plot points/ character development from the original. Hell in their own series they have no engaging scenes as a couple. Other than Rin saying “Sesshomaru sama” for the millionth time. 🤮 As well as, their Mary Sue twins that look like discount Kagura/Byakuya. Are so utterly lame and boring, just like their supposed mother Rin. However, I will admit it’s funny that they die a lot on the show. 😂

Sorry got off topic, but anyways Sessrin will never be interesting nor canon. As Rumiko said herself, Inuyasha was done on chapter 588 and that Sesshomaru is Rin’s hogosha. Also, voice actor of Sesshomaru, Ken Narita has said that he can’t imagine Sesshomaru in a relationship and that this show feels like an experiment. You can look up the interview. Lastly, even the author of yashahime manga Shiina has said this terrible sequel is a what is in the inuyasha verse, not canon.

But, if you really believe people were blind and should not be disgusted by sessrin. You can rewatch episode 99 where Koga ponders about Rin and Sesshomaru to quote “I wonder why he’d let a little kid tag around him like that. Now if it was a pretty girl like Kagome, I’d understand bringing her along, but a young kid like that…” And he’s silenced mid sentence by his companions, as he pretty much suggests that Sesshomaru is only taking care of Rin, because he wants to bang her. Which is fucked up since she’s a kid.

Again, which shows that sessrin is only a ship for self inserters or pedos. That’s it nothing more or nothing less just bland nastiness. 🥱

I did not read this past "boring bland couple" bc

I love myself too much to waste time on idiots

I could feel my braincells dying as I scrolled down and all of your ad hominems began to merge together, not one of them transforming into an intelligent argument

Anyway, they're married and they fucked and had babies and Kagura is dead in the dirt and all of the other female (and male) Inuyasha characters pretty much hate Sesshomaru's guts. It feels really great being so right while you and your ilk writhe in the gutter in your wrongness. I do not envy you 😬

Imagine loving Inuyasha and the characters for all these years only to be told by the creators that everything you thought is wrong and actually hey, you don't know dick about dick 🤣 couldn’t be me

You know what I don't do ever? Ever ever ever? Send anonymous messages to people I don't like. I'm too busy using my talent to create things that I do like. Your existence seems wrought with misery. Sucks to suck I guess.

Here, this is for you, I think you need it. Good luck with coping, you seem to be having a hard time of it.

[pandoricpies]

SSO Horrors

A post diving into how dark this franchise’s storyline gets and ideas for a horror game that will never actually be created. SPOILERS for the SL books and SSO storyline.

This idea originally came to me after reading the second book of the SL trilogy, The Legend Awakens. Props to Helena Dahlgren for the Pine Hill Manor scenes in that book; I was completely left on the edge of my seat the entire time. Linda’s whole experience was definitely an unexpected thriller for the children’s genre; cutting her leg on a broken window, exploring an old creepy mansion owned by the centuries-old psychopath that was targeting her, her friends, and their horses, being chased down halls and having to barricade herself in rooms to be protected from the apparent non-human dark riders (not to mention the way Dahlgren describes the animal sounds and scratching that they made, chills), and, to top it all off, nearly dying from sepsis due to her cut becoming infected.... if that’s not horror game material, I don’t know what is.

If you can’t already tell from the title of this post, I am a huge fan of the horror genre. The suspense-packed and often deep moral stories are always a fun watch/read. I personally am currently making my way through some classic Stephen King books that I haven’t read yet which was sort of what inspired this post.

Taking a look at SSO’s storyline on the surface level, we see a classic dark vs. light story, with horses and female heroines as the main points. However, there are quite a few darker elements hidden among the story quests, most of which would only be noticeable to the eye of the older audience of the game. The potential for this plot to be upped to a more mature level as far as darker themes go is definitely there. Regardless, the already existing underlying themes have some heavy themes...

- Teenagers, around the ages of 15-19, have been tasked with saving the world from a demonic entity. They have been granted special powers to do this with. These powers however can be extremely dangerous, as we see with both Alex and Catherine with their Lightning Circle incidents, in which they almost killed living beings. These factors combined would no doubt take some sort of psychological toll on the Soul Riders, as they are so named.

- Brainwashing and cult-mindset was a huge theme brought up with Justin’s kidnapping. He was abruptly cut off from the outside world, had his memories removed, and his mind artificially filled with thoughts of Garnok and world domination. It’s clear when he is rescued and goes back to his home that he’s depressed; his Midsummer dialogue a year back was “My dad thought it would be good for me to get out. I don’t do that much anymore” (not exact but close enough). When he talks to his mother during the memories quests the first thing he jumps to seeing her pregnant with him is “I wonder if she’d would be so excited if she knew all the terrible things I did”. To add to that, upon getting Justin back home, Thomas tells our character “If he keeps having these dark thoughts, I’ll have to turn to the druids.” That in itself was pretty unsettling. All this dialogue was put there to draw attention to the mental affects of literally having your brain tampered with.

- Elizabeth’s story was probably one of the saddest in my opinion. She had to stand by while her friend group fell apart, one going on to die, one going missing, and the other two continuing to split away from her. She then felt it was her responsibility to make up for her sisterhood’s failures, staying with the druids and eventually helping recruit new Soul Riders. Seriously though, imagine that. She saw what pain the magical war brought to her and her friends; knowing that she was pushing four more kids into a situation like that would’ve been devastating (here comes the morals vs. duty idea). Our character must have been a whole other level of that feeling. She saw what Catherine went through with her magic - the fear, the near madness. Then of course she goes on to imprison her close friend’s son (it appeared from the quests that she was closest to Catherine so that just adds to the pain). And to end it all, she sacrifices herself to save a girl who she considered a daughter.... jeez. - Catherine is another issue here for obvious reasons. A teenage girl is entrusted with goddess-level powers, then nearly goes psycho from the inability to control them. You can clearly tell from her last few diary entries how exhausting that was and how happy she was to finally have a somewhat normal life with her husband and son.

- And finally of course we have the DC gang. Mr. Sands is a basket case all on his own, a man who has used mind control (arguably in my opinion one of the creepiest forms of dark magic out there) on numerous victims including his own grandson, a man who legitimately worships a demon, and not to mention has it out for a bunch of teenagers. His whole backstory with Rosalinda made me feel some sort of sympathy for his character (he watched her nearly be drowned to death), and I’m actually quite curious as to where they’re going to take that. Also, The Nightmare Institute? That could be a horror game within itself. All we know so far about that place is that humans and animals are tested on with dangerous materials (ex. Mr. Anwir). Let’s not forget to mention the dark riders who apparently have animal qualities now? (as it was described in the SL books) Ok so we can clearly see that SSO’s storyline gets a bit dark. But just imagine; a Pine Hill Mansion first-person POV game, where you’re in a situation similar to Linda’s, or even one in DC or the Nightmare Institute. Honestly this entire storyline could be turned into some Resident Evil plot lol.

But that being said, as much as it’s fun to speculate these types of things, I enjoy SSO’s storyline just the way it is. It’s enjoyable for me as an older player, but it’s also filled with great moral stories and motivation for young children, especially girls. I love the atmosphere of female empowerment, and it’s especially unique to SSO because around the time of it’s initial release, that wasn’t seen much in video games.

Might start during these ‘chat’ or ‘random things that come to my mind’ posts more often.

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Paramount War (Part Two)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

ace’s execution is, in a way, the exception that proves the rule when it comes to one piece’s themes of blood and family. ace is set up to die for the crimes of a father he never knew and never wanted, and he does die here, but in the end he dies for the family he did choose, in the form of luffy, rather than the one he didn’t. 

god do i wish we knew more about ms portgas d. rouge. with ace’s storyline pretty much wrapped it looks unlikely that we’re going to be learning more about her than what we got, which in my opinion is an absolute tragedy, because what little we do know about her is amazing and she’s an absolute badass. oda give us more female ds please.

whitebeard’s power is so cool. it might be one of the visually coolest devil fruits we’ve ever seen, in my opinion. he he causes earthquakes and tsunamis while far past his prime; he pulls the sky apart with his bare hands. this whole arc is world-shaking, and whitebeard’s power is perfectly appropriate for it. 

doflamingo’s speech on justice and rightness is one of the most well-remembered quotes from this whole saga, and rightly so. i’ve always found it fascinating, myself, because he’s right. he dead-on hits how the one piece world works- the world government and the marines rule the world not because of any inherent actual goodness or justice or right, but because they won a war a very long time ago. 

in a way, this reminds me of blackbeard’s line of “people’s dreams never die” from jaya. i like how oda isn’t afraid of letting his villains be right about the themes of the story, sometimes even having better awareness of them than the protagonists. 

man, if i had to pick a single favorite spread out of the whole manga, it might be luffy’s marineford entrance. it’s so epic, and so completely unexpected for everyone else there. absolutely nobody was expecting strawhat luffy to drop out of the sky with a posse including two former warlords. it just makes me grin!! so much!! 

it also gets followed up by a solid two pages of just people’s reactions, from smoker’s “what the HELL is he doing with CROCODILE” to moria’s immediate incoherent rage, and i just love that the world and cast of one piece is so well-established and built up that we know exactly how all of those people know luffy and why they react the way they do. 

going back to what i mentioned in the last post about marineford being luffy’s conflict of interest arc, i’d say it’s also the only time where he isn’t the future king first and foremost. in this arc, before anything else, he’s a little brother.

there are a lot of what-if moments in marineford. moments where you kind of have to ask “what if this specific thing hadn’t happened, had gone differently?” would things have turned out differently? squard’s betrayal is one of them. does this change the outcome? would whitebeard have been able to survive if not for this injury? there’s no way to know. marineford is a lot of little tragedies, and they just pile up and up.

marineford has just so many incredibly striking spreads. all of the momentous moments (and there’s a lot of them, in this arc) are done full justice. this is such an image heavy post just because marineford is such an incredibly visually strong arc. 

conqueror’s haki is so cool and i love the way it’s set up and built up throughout this saga, with luffy’s constant inadvertent uses of it, from duval’s bull to marigold and sandersonia to the wolves in impel down, all leading up to this moment. 

i’ve heard people complain about conqueror’s as kind of a deus ex machina, but i honestly love it, it’s very cool and honestly i think it just seems to fit luffy as a power. if there was ever gonna be a character who turned willpower into a weapon, it would be monkey d. luffy. 

i’m gonna take this chance to talk about garp, because this sequence of panels is heavily implied to be garp’s thoughts just before luffy punches him down, and it hurts. garp is a flawed person who makes some bad choices, and there’s no arguing that, but i think it’s very obvious he really, really cares about his grandsons, even if he never could understand them as people and that they never would have been happy as marines. and that’s just tragic, really. 

the moment ace gets freed and the brief span of time where he and luffy can fight together feel so triumphant, and i think it’s one of the reasons the final tragedy of marineford hits so hard and feels so cruel, because luffy succeeds, here. he saves ace. he gives absolutely everything he had and makes it, and saves ace. the ultimate failure isn’t his. there was nothing more he could have done. 

the first time i was reading one piece, i hit this page (which is also the last in the volume) and had to put the book away, take the bus downtown, wander around for a few hours, and buy myself some candy and some new books before i started feeling okay again.

the thing about ace’s death, i think, is that it’s a tragedy, but it also feels so completely essential to the story going forwards and luffy’s character growth specifically that it’s really, really hard to imagine one piece without it. there are a lot of (really excellent!) fix-fics out there for marineford, and although those are often really good and their authors super talented, i think it’s really hard for them to ever hit the same way canon does with regards to this. 

i always think of this scene specifically in contrast to zoro and mihawk’s fight, back on baratie. zoro and mihawk are both people who believe in honor in battle, true victory or death, and that’s reflected in their fight, in zoro’s refusal to turn and run even in the face of imminent death, and mihawk’s respect for that resolve. whitebeard, too, is an honorable man. he refuses to turn to run, even when facing certain death. 

the blackbeard pirates, however, are not. 

i do enjoy how, just like roger’s, ace’s execution backfires tremendously on the marines. this was entirely a predictable outcome, too! this exact thing happened twenty years ago! the marines don’t learn. they don’t change. they’re so assured of their own rightness and power that they make stupid mistakes like holding a massive public execution after the last one blew up in their faces. 

(this is why they need coby so badly, for the record, and why it’s important that he still decides to become a marine after witnessing their corruption firsthand in shells town. the marines are long overdue for a reformation, one that orients them towards real justice.)

i really, really enjoy crocodile in this saga. mostly because he hasn’t been redeemed at all, he’s still pretty much the exact same kinda awful person he was in alabasta, he’s just on luffy’s side this time, and it lets us see him in a better light, when he gets angry at whitebeard for nearly dying or when he helps luffy and jinbe escape to keep the marines from getting their way. few of one piece’s characters are truly so one-dimensional as they can seem, and i really appreciate that. 

i really really love all the interactions between luffy, ace and sabo as kids. they’re so fun and bounce off of each other so well. even though we only see them together for a brief time, they really feel like siblings. (which of course only makes later events hurt so much more.

i’ve always been a little fascinated by the fact that it takes us this long to get luffy’s full backstory. it’s almost a fakeout, because we get part of his backstory in the very first chapter, and we’re kind of led to believe that’s all there is. it’s not until ace’s introduction nearly two hundred chapters in that we’re given any indication there’s more.

but at the same time, it makes sense. marineford is luffy’s focus arc, as arlong park to nami or thriller bark to brook. he hasn’t had a focal arc that’s really about him before this, while all his other crewmates have. it makes sense that this would be when he finally gets his flashback. 

i think it’s cool that dragon and the revolutionaries show up at the grey terminal fire, because it’s one of the only looks we’ve gotten so far into what their actual regular operations are like. and, of course, they’re saving people. i really like this about the revolutionaries, that helping people in trouble is basically their modus operandi, when pretty much everyone else in one piece’s world mostly does saving on an incidental basis if at all. 

i think a lot about how the last line of sabo’s letter to ace is also both of their last words to the strawhats. 

death in one piece always feels much realer and more impactful to me than in most other series, and i think this is part of the reason why: in one piece, we are always shown the mourning. nami at bellemere’s grave, carrot grieving pedro, ace and whitebeard’s funeral. 

there are fewer deaths, comparatively, than most other series, but they’re given so much room to echo. we’re still feeling the impacts of ace’s life and death in the most recent chapters of wano. it ties into the theme of inherited will and all the way back to hiriluk’s final speech, of men not being dead so long as they’re remembered. 

the picture of luffy at marineford always kind of strikes me. he looks so young and so solemn, and yet much more himself than he did when we last saw him losing his mind on amazon lily. i really like it. 

sometimes i just think about the sheer depth of trust and love the strawhats must have in each other to separate for two years, far longer than they were ever together, to solely dedicate themselves to improving for the sake of crew and captain. none of them even hesitate, and none of them ever doubt that the crew will be reformed at the end of it.

after all, luffy keeps his promises. 

[thedeviljudges]

Re. Soohyun - if her death does turn out to be connected to her investigation, then imo I'm okay with that because (within the show's narrative) it would be a result of her own actions/choices, in line with her characterisation, e.g. charging in on her own, not thinking of her own safety, risking it all for justice, etc., and unrelated to her relationship to the male character, rather than just someone hurting her to hurt him. She still retains agency, just with tragic consequences. (1/2)

And yes there are legit criticisms to be made re. the writing of SH's character, but in the rush to do so some ppl seem to be overlooking the rest of the female characters - Elijah, JJ, Sun-ah and Cha Kyung-hee (love em or hate em!), who imo are all well-written, fascinating and strong in different ways. Yes CKH died, but she went out on her own terms in a way fitting to her character and even in death made more of an impact than any of her weaselly male counterparts! (2/2)

I agree with this; although the one small part I will play devil’s advocate with is the fact that the only reason Soohyun continued her and Gaon’s investigation into Yohan is because she doesn’t trust Yohan who has Gaon under his thumb. So, I suppose indirectly, it’s still about Gaon because she’s trying to persuade her friend not to trust Yohan and whatever she found could’ve been the key.

The thing is, Gaon tells her before they leave his house that they can continue looking for evidence about Yohan after they deal with the rising violent situation. But she doesn’t listen, so that truly does align with her character in terms of pride and self-righteousness.

Then again, even if it is indirectly about keeping Gaon safe, the entire thing is still a mystery and she did have agency to go out and try to discover it on her own without being tied to Gaon in that way, so I’ll give it that for sure. She, at the very least, had one thing for herself this episode outside of Gaon. And to your point, which I think is so true: someone hurt her specifically for her nosiness rather than in relation to Gaon. As fucked up as it is to say it, I do hope that’s the reason she was taken out, and the more I think about it, I think the more plausible it is, especially given how charged the preview for episode 14 is.

To your second part: I think it’s easy for people get so hung up on one female character dying because of how the film industry/writers treat them in general. Which is a totally understandable response to have. Women die off for male characters as a narrative device, for them to learn, grow and continue carrying out the plot, and it’s a nasty trope.

The thing is, we can’t avoid women’s death in film because then that’s just too unrealistic. I wish we were given more with Soohyun, that she could’ve been fleshed out and not just a plot device, that she could’ve been way more well-rounded like all the other women/men on the show, but sadly that’s just not the case. I don’t know if the writers just got ahead of themselves with the plot and were like ‘oh shit, gotta do something with her’ or what.

But with that said, you do have a point that there are other women on this show. It’s all about subversion of tropes. We see it with Gaon (he is a female character through and through); we see it with the minister, with Sunah, etc. I know it’s easy to also blame the writers for killing off Kunghee as a female character, but also tell me how many women we’ve seen on screen make a choice about their own death??? To me, her death was profound because she made the decision - she ultimately represented what it means to be pushed to the limit, and that can happen with anyone. She did so not because of a man but because she knew she was backed up against a wall by literally everyone; that makes sense to me.

And Elijah. I’m truly so happy with her, especially because she hasn’t fallen victim to normal teenage tropes and shit. She’s smart and witty. She’s still a teenager that back talks. Given she is confined to the house for safety reasons, she’s still so fleshed out, which tells you a lot in comparison to Soohyun.

And even further, I don’t think any show can every truly be perfect, and faulting it for having some errors is just going to be normal no matter what. Humans make human mistakes, even in the content we create. I recognize that completely. It’s easy to write lines and lines about how Soohyun was failed as a female character, and I think that’s normal to write about, just as it is for any other character, but after that, it’s important to sit back and breathe and just remind yourself that no perfection exists regardless of what should or could have been done.

Unfortunately, it is what it is, and that’s how the show will forever be cemented. And this is why I haven’t made too many posts about Soohyun because there’s nothing I can do outside of it aside from trying to dissect what little information we have about her character in relation to the themes and tropes of the plot.

All of this to say, I do hope we’re right in that even in death it can mean something. I think the friendship component was such a mishandled thing and it had so much potential. Everyone cries about how gays make shit things unnecessarily gay, but we never ask why hets do the same thing. Why does every m/w have to be romantic? Where are the friendships??

For what we do have, flaws and all, I'm happy with their exploration of tropes, how they've mixed it up, especially for genders. They've done a phenomenal job despite a few hiccups - how many shows can say the same??

But yes, I totally agree with all of your points!!! They’re very valid.

[mimiri22-6]

Let's do this. One last time.

Ducktales 2017. I didn't think I was ready for the end, but the finale was too perfect to be sad nor angry.

There's so much to say-too much to say...and I'm going to try my best to say all of it.

EVERYONE IS HERE!! ENDGAME WHO?! DUCKTALES!!!!!

Seeing Webby and Scrooge interactions now, after watching this once, is just-They're So Soft! AND everything is just-AH I love it. It's so weird, but when is the family tree not screwy(also, Webby=Scrooge's clone? Webby=female? Trans Scrooge=Cannon?! I think Fucking So!)

Aaaaaaannd that's all we get from Gladstone and Fethry. If there's one thing I wish was in this episode more it would be more cousin interactions and Daisy. Though, Daisy not being too into it makes sense. Loved what we got of her tho. At least we got a little bit of them this episode, it was already pretty character packed

Well...Launchpad is only half wrong.

Oh wow. Oh Wow, I love this dynamic between LP, Drake, and Fenton...ot4? because I refuse to leave Gandra out. I love how Drake doesn't know about Fenton and Gizmo while it seems like everyone else in the world does. Still, LP/Drake and Gandra/Fenton some of my faves. So good

OH YEAH! Even the other 2 Caballeros are here!!

And the last adventure STARTS

I find it Fantastic how Dewey and Launchpad will probably die thinking F.O.W.L used the last level of a videogame as their secret layer layout

*sigh* This is why I avoid previews and wish I was better at avoiding theories from after those previews. I would have been more surprised and probably would have enjoyed this ep even more if I had Nothing to expect. But the theories were right. Tho, I did not expect how (or should I say Who) Webby was cloned from...though also I was spoiled by that when I was looking for the ep. Some ass used "Scrooge is Webby's dad" as a video title. I didn't think it was real, but I was wrong.

Awwww. Don has such a soft spot for kids

I love Lena and her development.

...*sigh* ok. "you've already got sisters" with this line, I am obligated to drop the Webby/Lena ship. I'm sorry, but it's one of my many rules for being ok with a ship. If the characters Ever say, even just once as an afterthought, they see each other as siblings or something similar, I will see them as that. It's why I've never been ok and have been uncomfortable with Shiro/Keith since Keith saved Shiro from...his clones...huh. So, from now on, I'm going to be Very uncomfortable with anything Weblena...even though the thought of them in the future was cute

HOW does a show about building ottomans have plot???

I wasn't sure how to feel about the clones All throughout this

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO HUEY JUST FIRST NAMED BEAKLEY!!!!!

GOLDIE AND DAISY ARE ON THE BOARD!!! SCORE!!

Oooooh. That picture of Webby's parents...is fake. It's like some picture Beakley took off the internet.

I saw a post saying how Della had to convince Donald to go on one last adventure and how she had to watch him almost die, but she really Didn't. She helped him pack and she was ready to let Donald go on his adventure("but Daisy's my adventure" They are too damn cute for their own damn good. I love them. donsy for the win), but an actual Crisis came up and he had to stay. Donald nearly dying by void was not Della's fault and if I see any more posts about how she roped Donald into a death mission, I will go up a wall and break a neck on my way down

Man, it's weird hearing this and knowing that Webby's parents don't exist

Wow! Beakley just knocked out Scrooge! Damn!

Oooh! The girls are fighting

...Woah. I just realized, the blood and brain of Scrooge McDuck and the training of Bentina Beakley. Webby is even more of a beast than we knew.

IS THAT DEVELOPMENT I HEAR!!! YOU KEEP THOSE KIDS BEHIND? YOU LOSE!!! GOOD DAY SIR!

Pepper. Just Pepper. She seems like one of your parent's nice coworkers that brings you brownies and pinches your cheeks

"Look after your brother." YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I JUST WANNA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DADRO YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!! IT IS OFICIALLY BOYD GEARLOSE NOW!! YEEEEE!!!!

I also really like that you can't tell which Gyro is telling that to

God, I Fucking Love the concept that is Manny. He's one of those things that if someone asked you about him outside of the fandom, you wouldn't even know where to start. It's absolutely FanFuckingTastic. He's the most magical thing in the universe? Fuck Yes, give that to me Now!

HE SPEAKS!!!!!!(I couldn't place his voice actor, but I when I looked him up I realized recognized him for Glossaryck from SVTFOE)

(Edit: Just found out that the scene with Manny was a Gargoyles ref. Nice!)

Once again, I love everything about LP, Drake, and Fenton

And then Lena Died

Aww, they both have such soft spots for children

LUDWIG VON DRAKE?!?!!!?! WHAT THE FUCK?!

(that had to be a different font because really, what the fuck)

He really did just say he was too busy to die. This duck is too powerful

(I really just don't have too much to say between all of this. I just love all of it)

Woo! Louie with the motivation!

Pft-how both of them are singing? Love to see it...wait, we don't see Don Karnage after this...DID HE DIE IN THAT CRASH?! DID DEWEY COMMIT HIS FIRST MURDER?!

"Welcome home, April." I hate you.

Of course he dabs

"he was like this when we found him." Nice to know Gos knows what to do in the event that she kills someone

Oh that's horrendous. I hate that

"Now, let's get down to business." TO DEF[get's shot]

Why is Manny like actually the best?

God, Drake and LP really are two halves of a whole idiot huh? They're soulmates, your honor

"I. Am." "Not alone in this." That was so sweet, but also JUST TELL HIM!!

And now Glom is dead

Oh, that's a lot of mind control

"Even by our standards, this is a weird day." Couldn't say it better, Lena

"How do you think Della found out about the Spear of Selene?" OH, YOU MOTHERFU

"Oh, Bradford, how villainous." DAMN! HE REALLY DID JUST DO THAT, HUH?!

"MOOOM!" "NOOO!" OH NO, MY HEART! IT FUNCTIONS!

"Do you know how replaceable clones are?" Oh yeah, that's right. You're probably not the og Gyro

Man, we don't ever have Von Drake for long but I always love him

Those lights are really only there for dramatic effect, aren't they?

...Close enough.

Launchpad moment! Yeah!!!

HEY! I just noticed. While wearing the suit, Launchpad didn't crash...idk what to do with this info

The fine print is usually good to read...we people just don't do it apparently

"...your most trusted ally?" *picks Donald* Wow. That's right there with the feels ain't it

"it's not worth the risk." Fuck, I love them

Oh that sounds so weird. Scrooge has never been a dad, always Uncle. So Weird

And Gandra, Gyro, and Von Drake are dead. There is a Body Count this episode

"Donald Duck." "Uncle Scrooge." I SEE YOU! I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE! AND I LOVE IT!

Hehe. From Bitchford to bird brain.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS ENDING SCENE IS THE BEST!

Beakley thinking she's no longer accepted? Nah, she was granny first and foremost

ANOTHER FENRA KISS?! DON'T MIND IF I DO!

DADRO AND GOSALYN AND DRAKE?! LOVING IT!

MORE FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS?! WOO!

DONALD IMMEDIATELY ADOPTING JUNE AND MAY?! ONLY THE BEST FROM HIM!!!!

PROTECTIVE SCROOGE?! YOU DON'T SEE ME COMPLAINING!

"We're smarter" "We're tougher" "We're sharper" And we'll earn our way square." AH-I'M GOING DOWN LIKE THE SUNCHASER, GUYS

AND THE END CREDITS WILL NEVER BE MATCHED!!!!!

I don't know what else to say.

This show was amazing from beginning to end. I may not have cried, but I didn't need to cry. It wasn't sad and there was nothing bittersweet about it. Just pure perfection, just like the rest of the show.

Perfectly Preen, not a fether out of place.

Goodnight Ducktales, you were perfect

[ptitelidio]

“Black and White Contrast” a rivetra theory

Hi Rivetra fans, actually this is my first post on tumblr and I hope you will like it. Just to say a few words before beginning my rivetra theory, I ship Rivetra sooo hard but I like and respect other ships. Please if you get to see this post and like or share my opinion, an answer would be so cool! 

PS. Sorry for my English, I’m not a fluent speaker, but I try my best :) enjoy!

First, basically I called this post ‘Black and White contrast’ because I found out that the relationship between Levi and Petra is like this, a contrast, in many fields.

To show this I will use photos of manga panels, of the anime and Petra’s song, the light of two wings.

Let’s begin with the song. The first opposition we can see is in Levi personality; Petra describes Levi like that “Your sterness always stems from gentleness And I felt a warm light behind those harsh words“, basically she sees his true nature, behind the darkness, there is a light, that’s what she says. 

Now the other contrast is between the painful and the happy moments she went through:          “ I recall plentry of painful things.. But I made it to where I am , Free of doubts.. Sharing smiles and laughter along the way “

Now she says: “ Tiny feathers gather one by one Forming a white wing Fragile lives are lost one by one Leaving behind a black wing “

That’s when we get to read something with ‘black’ and ‘white’, here she talks about two wings, a black and a white. The white being composed of feathers (analogy with soldiers lives lost one by one), and apparently she talks about a black wing left behind... we’ll get to see more info about it further on. But it seems to be ralted with death, isn’t it?

“ Though a bird may be born to soar across the skies I’m sure it won’t be able to fly well with only one wing But you will shoulder the determination of all that is white and black And guide everyone to great distances beyond the walls “

She says that a bird can’t fly without two wings, so the black and the white ones. And he will ‘shoulder the determination of all that is white and black’, in other words the determination to fight of the deads and the living is something he has to carry on. She is talking to Levi, and says that he is the one to guide everyone beyond the walls, 

Then, she finally says before dying: 

“Don’t forget that you have the light of dual wings sprouting from your back                                                             And if I were to give a name to the light I felt…yes.. it would be… Hope..“

So once again that the light of dual wings (black and white) shows that he carry the spirit of the deads and the living, I repeat this on purpose because you will see that the symbolism of the contrast has not been chosen by chance, but on purpose. 

The second other point is that she perceives that light as hope, obviously we understand why, Levi is considered as the humanity’s greatest, so he’s the most expected to save the Eldian people. 

Now.. let’s show the black and white contrast elsewhere. 

Do a black and a white wings ring a bell?

Yup... exactly. And I’ll prove that they can symbolise Levi and Petra relationship. They can also show many other relationships in the SC but here, and with the song, it takes a different dimension, like thir relationship was like a black and white wing = black -> death, sadness... and white -> light, hope, or life

Petra is dead and Levi is alive,

Petra sees light inside Levi, whereas he grew up on a dark place (underground) and frequented bad people everyday (criminels etc...)

Now let’s focus on the anime...

What do you notice in this passage? This was when they were going to the former Survey Corps HQ with Eren. 

Petra’s horse is WHITE and Levi’s is BLACK, here Levi’s one does not seems so black but you can check on other photos in the Internet and you’ll see that he’s actually black, but now because of light and shadow it’s a bit light but whatever.

So, you probably notice that nearly every horse is colored in brown but not Levi’s, Petra’s and Erwin’s. Some other horses are colored in light brown but it’s not like them three, the colors are strikely different. And in the manga the horses were all brown basically, so why this change of color? Not for nothing obviously, the great messages remain in little details..

This photos shows that the horse are basically all brown.

Another contrast is Levi and Petra’s physical appearance, they are obviously different. He is black-haired, she is blond (ginger in the anime but the contrast stays with light color and dark color..) even their eyes in the anime are different but that’s not the essence of the theory, that was just a remark.

Now look at the Petra’s and Levi’s scene when she died and he looked down at her:

Isayama pictured the contrast in dark and light, notice how Levi appears in the light part of the grass and Petra in the dark one, she is dead and he’is alive. And bigger than that, there is also Levi’s Wings of Freedom emblem on his cloack, a double contrast where the white one is in the right and the black one on the left. Petra is on the ground, Levi in the air. They complete each other every time.

The contrast is even more striking in this panel:

The position of the panels for comparison, the position of the heads and eyes, Levi looking down and Petra looking up. The contrast in their hair is also emphcised here. Don’t you notice something else? If no, look at the Wings of Freedom emblem I put...

Yes... Levi is at the left (black wing) and Petra is at the right (black wing)... the analogy is here for those who searched for it.

And once again, their life status, one alive but painfully sad and the other dead but with an unfulfilled dream and she didn’t get the chance to confess to Levi, I quote:

“ And so.. I will die.. believing that.. Oh….how i wish this would last… But…it seems like my time is up… I have…one last thing…..I would like to tell you..                                            No… Nevermind…It’s Nothing….  “ (Petra’s song)

Let’s continue. 

Remember, we said that Petra tought Levi was the hope of humanity’s survival (she says it in her song). Now, did you know that Levi thought exactly the same of her? I will show it to you, and that was basically implied on Petra’s last scene. 

We all know how Petra put trust over all other things, work team was very important to her. The sentence that we remember the most of her is “trust us”, in her last scene -- when she and her team were riding horses and the Female Titan was hunting them -- she said that exact sentence to Eren. 

PS: It is written in French, but you can check it in English on your own if you want.

And everybody knows that Levi didn’t know if it was the good choice whether to put his trust on his comrades or to just rely on his own strengh. Well, on that day, Levi had a strong proof that he should believe in his comrades. 

Here: Petra: “Captain?!”, 

Levi: “He’s a real monster, I know that very well, not only because he has Titan abilities... no matter how strong he force with which it is immobilized, no matter how resistant is the cage in whic he is held. Nobody will ever be able to bend his will” 

-> So what does Levi say? He considers that Eren will to fight titans can’t be bend, in other words he is like a monster, ready to do anything to kill his enemies. But basically, Levi’s stance is that NOBODY can’t change his mind. He was sure of that.

And guess what happens? Eren hearing that from Levi wanted to prove that he was not a monster, he had enough. 

Eren “ I had enough. I don’t want to be treated like a monster...”

And the phrase that Petra told him definitely convinced him to do the choice to trust his new squad.

Now look at Levi’s face... he’s startled by Eren’s decision. Yes, he who was so sure that Eren will transform, Petra’s insistence to trust his team proved Levi wrong. That’s why he was so surprised. That scene and Levi’s expression is even on the anime, if you want to check it out.

Well, nobody before succeeded to do this: make Eren change his mind, he’s usually the one to ignore Mikasa’s advices even if he cares a lot for her. Petra, even if she was not so close to him, actually succeeded this task. This startled Levi. Who could change a monster’s mind? Yes, the one to carry hope for humanity. Actually in the anime, EVERY soldier carries that hope obviously, but in that precise moment, Petra was the hope Levi wanted for humanity. 

This reminds us of the song, when she says that she though Levi’s light was hope, actually she was also hope, like every one of her comrades. Now, Petra had that same light, hope. 

Oh and remember that panel from Chapter 112:

Yes. “Hope for Humanity’s survival” and beside what character? Petra. Everything is linked lmao, Isayama is a pure genius.

And now that I read this panel alone, it’s like Petra could have said these lines ‘I did it... because I believed he was the hope for humanity’s survival...” in other words, I sacrificed my life for Levi because I thought he was the hope for humanity’s survival. It could fit VERY WELL, I don’t think this is a coincidence because she said the exact same thing in her song...

PS: The Wings of Freedom can represent many pairs in AOT like Erwin and Levi for example, but Petra and Levi formed the wings of freedom too. That’s not a coincidence if Erwin’s horse was also white like Petra’s one, and we know that Erwin convinced Levi to joined the SC the day Ferlan and Isabel died. That day, Levi developed the Ackerbond with Erwin when the latter stated, with his federator charisma, that we can’t get to know the future etc. So Levi had the Ackerbond with Erwin so that’s quite obvious to justify why they can represent the wings of freedom, but what was Petra for Levi apart of a squad member?

Yes, she was special for him whereas he didn’t have the Ackerbond with her, and that’s why she’s even more significant, his blood didn’t play a role in his relationship with her. The only answer I find is, simply, love.

[sylvie--laufeydottir]

an obligatory analysis of sylvie’s character (aka: who betrayed who?)

in case you can’t tell, i like sylvie. but here’s a big fuckin post where i share my thoughts on her role in the finale in a sort of disjointed kind of way.

NOTE: this isn’t about sylki. i don’t ship it personally, but that isn’t really relevant to this at all. this also doesn’t go into the criticisms i have of the show because this isn’t really the place for that. maybe i can do that later, whatever.

also, this is gonna be a long post. i have a lot of thoughts.

sylvie’s introduction and motivations

one of the first things we learn about sylvie is her opposition to the tva. (okay, it’s literally the first thing, whatever.) in episode 3, we get to see her entire plan - overthrow whoever’s running the tva, and... that’s it. loki questions her about the power vacuum that would leave, to which she shows that she’s not interested in running the tva. (this is also stated in ep 2.) her goals are clear. she wants rid of the entire organisation, and doesn’t care about or want the sort of power that would come with pulling the strings.

her reasoning for this seems pretty simple. she doesn’t want the power ruling the tva would entail because she knows what it’s like to be on the other end of that deal. she had everything taken from her as a child, and doesn’t want that to happen to anybody else. she believes that that kind of power belongs to nobody, not even herself.

this easily establishes her as a character who, despite having an ego, has principles that trump everything else. she’s very dedicated to her cause; the ‘never at the expense of the mission’ line in ep 3 just states it out loud. her entire life has been dedicated to this cause. this is a good time to segue into the next section...

sylvie’s personality, character and flaws

she’s fuckin stabby.

despite only really being present for 4 out of the 6 episodes of the show, we manage to get a pretty good idea of sylvie’s personality right from the start thanks to episode 3 being largely a character study with both her and loki. she’s shown as a very competent and strong character - however, contrary to marvel’s guidebook on writing female characters, those aren’t personality traits. what we actually see of her is that she’s very confident, and has a tendency to be rude or dismissive of other people. episode 3 has a bunch of examples of this, but the easiest one to point to is the fireworks scene. after loki does something nice to cheer her up, something which visibly works, her response is to waive it away as ‘not bad’.

her coldness in this scene even after bonding with loki is likely due to her upbringing. sylvie spent the majority of her life, including her childhood, on the run, unable to form relationships with people who weren’t moments away from dying. it feels a bit redundant for me to point this out, but this is, as they say in the medical field, mega fucking traumatic. not only did sylvie not have the opportunity to form these kinds of connections, she couldn’t even develop the ability to form them. loki is a bandaid to cover a bullet hole in this regard, one she needs years to heal from. while she does bond with him to an extent, she is physically unable to trust him to the point where they can be considered close.

another thing we learn about sylvie is that she’s very violent - and that she enjoys it. being a character that grew up running from an organisation that wanted her dead, it makes sense for her first instinct to be confrontational. however, despite having to fight to survive, she visibly takes pleasure from fighting. this was brought up in an interview with sophia (that i am not going to link here, because tumblr is kind of a hellsite and i’m not in the mood for that today). here’s a nice extract instead.

“She's not trained like Loki is,” Di Martino continues. “She can't do some of the flourishes that he would, but she's figured out how to brawl. She's a street fighter and she loves it. That was a really great key to unlocking part of Sylvie for me, was how much she just loves a fight. She knows that she's either going to win, or if she isn't going to win, she'll survive. She's that damaged character who's dangerous because she knows she can survive.”

her tendency towards violence is actually a key part of sylvie’s character. this works as both a strength and a flaw. on the one hand, she’s able to survive scrapes most other characters wouldn’t, and she knows that. she’s not one to freeze in most (note: most) scenarios, because she knows what to expect. on the other hand, violence isn’t always the answer, and she’s very unlikely to consider any other option than a fight.

her enchantment abilities tie into this - they’re another weapon for her to use, and one she’s not afraid to call on. however, her eagerness to enchant people without hesitation puts her in a pretty bad place morally. her enchantment clearly leaves hunter c-20 traumatised, and yet she’s more than willing to enchant people for the sake of the mission. she’s also relatively dismissive of human sentient lives. an early example of this is in episode 2, where loki asks her if the person she had enchanted was dead, to which she responds with a casual ‘they usually survive’. additionally, she’s more than willing to fight the guards on the train in episode 3, despite them seeing her as a threat for completely understandable reasons.

in the case of the guards, her reasoning for placing such little value on their lives is likely that they’re about to die anyways. everyone on lamentis is doomed, so from her point of view, whether they die at her hands or at the hands of the moon from majora’s mask isn’t really important. however, c-20 is a different story. sylvie places next to no value on the lives of the tva’s workers, content to slaughter them en masse for the sake of her goal. this is despite her knowing that every one of the tva workers is a variant plucked from the sacred timeline. this sets up a weird sort of transactional nature in how sylvie views other people - to her, they’re less important than the mission, and she doesn’t hesitate to eliminate threats.

was this a long section? this was a long section. i would like to call back to the fact that this is not a sylki post for this next part. and also to praise anyone that got this far, because fucking hell, is this excessively long or what? who would have the time to write this out?

sylvie’s bond with loki

i want to go back to that whole thing about her relationship with loki. he’s the first person she’s really spoken to since she was a child who isn’t about to face imminent death. furthermore, despite their differences, they have quite a lot in common - enough to hit it off surprising well for two people who kind of want to kill each other. they’re able to relate on common ground like frigga, and even though they clash due to loki’s initial carelessness, they’re overall able to get along well enough aside from occasional bickering. the blanket scene from episode 5 is probably the best example of this. sylvie allows herself, albeit briefly, to be vulnerable around loki.

except, not really. one of the first things she does is tries to ensure he won’t betray her. i’ve seen somebody cite this before as proof that her fondness towards him isn’t real, and that she was planning on betraying him from the start, hence why it was on her mind. that’s definitely possible, but i think it’s far more likely that it’s just her difficulties connecting to people stopping her from feeling safe around him even as they share a nice moment. she really does seem to care about loki - an easy example of this is her asking how he is during episode 4 without being prompted. she’s just unable to properly process these kinds of feelings due to an incomprehensible amount of trauma. as loki puts it, she can’t trust.

and loki can’t be trusted. she knows - or at least, thinks she knows - his nature as a trickster and a villain. loki embodies a part of sylvie that she considers herself completely separate from; the tva-approved liar whose purpose is to bring out the best in others. while she does show him more decency than to treat him like that, at the end of the day, he represents something that makes her deeply uncomfortable, hence her rejection of the loki name. despite what they have in common, loki is an incredibly difficult person to trust, especially for somebody who has deep-rooted trust issues. so, this brings us onto...

who betrayed who?

so, sylvie and loki make it to kang’s castle. after all this time, she’s finally about to reach her life’s goal. she’s clearly nervous - this is out of her comfort zone, unlike most fights. loki reassures her, and they head in. they meet kang, learn the true nature of the tva, have the opportunity to kill him...

and loki stops her.

loki’s motivations are left ambiguous. the uncharitable interpretation is that he wants to rule the tva for himself, as per kang’s offer. he’s expressed such an interest to sylvie before. for the loki we know in avengers 1, this seems perfectly in character.

however, for the loki we’ve seen in the show, there’s a different option. he believes kang’s threat that there are multiple of him, and that killing him won’t solve anything. to him, he isn’t willing to risk unknown horrors for the sake of taking his revenge out on kang. this is the loki who offered diplomacy and guile to counteract sylvie’s brute force.

but sylvie, who can’t trust, assumes the worst.

to her, loki was the one who betrayed her. they had a plan - find whoever pulls the strings, and destroy them. to her, loki’s hesitation isn’t caution, but treachery. taking kang’s offer to rule the tva is exactly what she thinks she should’ve expected from the guy who hurts everybody who loves him. her fight or flight responses kick in, and she chooses the one she always chooses. loki’s attempts to reassure her fall on deaf ears, not just because she doesn’t want to trust him, but because she’s physically incapable of it. she makes the short-sighted decision of brute force, just like she did back on lamentis, because it’s all she’s ever known, and the cause she’s dedicated her life to.

from the outside, it looks like sylvie was the one who betrayed loki, but things look pretty different from where she’s standing.

this is why i take issue with people calling sylvie a ‘villain’ or questioning whether this was her plan for the start. in my opinion, her motivations line up pretty clearly as a creature of habit, one who panics at the first hint of smoke and pushes away the first person she’s been able to bond with for the sake of self-preservation. did she make the wrong decision? unquestionably - the effects of her actions will no doubt plague the multiverse (and the mcu, for us) for as long as they go unchecked. but she made the only decision she was capable of making, and that’s not villainous, just tragic.

conclusion

well, this is a kind of depressing way to finish this post. for what it’s worth, though, i don’t think sylvie is a doomed character. regardless of how brief it was, she did show a real connection with loki. just because something requires a lot of healing doesn’t make it impossible. this is why i like sylvie as a character so much; she’s deeply flawed and complex, but that complexity makes her interesting, and relatable. marvel has a long history of sexy lamps and supposed ‘tortured backstories’, but sylvie is the first time they paid attention to this with their character writing without having to give somebody a wholeass prequel movie. with loki confirmed to appear in multiverse of madness, i’m hoping we see more of sylvie - not as a villain, but as a hero who can overcome her past experiences and rise to better things.

or maybe another kang shows up and kills her immediately. who knows.