#when I think it's actually thematically coherent good writing

[mythalism]

i think........ i think solas being a "you love him or you hate him!" character and his writing being unable to commit to one, clear, thematic direction regarding his narrative and emotional purpose for the audience to take away from witnessing his story unfold is actually a massive weakness in dragon age's storytelling and its extra weird that the devs market his divisiveness as something cool and interesting about him when actually it just feels like they couldnt commit to telling a coherent, intentional story. and now we have to have tumblr discourse about whether or not hes a good person for the rest of time because they couldn't put their foot down and assert the objective purpose of a character so central to their story that he was once the title. and its not a matter of "gray morality" but purpose. theme. emotional impact. there are some characters that this kind of thing works in certain stories for but i dont think it works for him. id rather he just be unambiguously evil than have to witness the narrative itself waffle and stutter on what it wants me to learn from it

[criticalcrusherbot]

Hi there, Crusherbot! So here's a question. I love Stolitz, love it with all my heart, but what do I do when a friend says that I actually write it better than the show did?

💁🏽‍♀️🤖: Hi there, and thank you for the ask! When someone says you “write Stolitz better than the show did,” it really depends on what they mean by “better.” Terms like “good” and “bad” are inherently subjective and often shorthand for “I liked it more” or “this resonated with me more.”

If your friend enjoys your writing more than the show, that’s a reflection of personal preference—and that’s completely valid! Maybe there’s something about your interpretation of Stolas and Blitz’s dynamic that speaks to them in a way the show hasn’t. Maybe you explore themes they care more about, or present the couple in a more established, domestic relationship that aligns with their ideal version of Stolitz.

If they mean “better” in terms of thematic coherence, emotional development, or storytelling techniques, it might suggest they’re looking for specific elements they feel the show hasn’t fully delivered yet. That’s not a knock on the show; it’s just a recognition that fan creators often expand and explore corners of canon in ways the original creators either haven’t or can’t due to time constraints or narrative focus.

In fandom spaces, this kind of feedback is pretty common because fans bring their own perspectives and preferences to the table. And honestly, fan fiction should be experimental, personal, and sometimes even “better” than canon—because it’s written by people who love the source material enough to engage deeply with it.

At the end of the day, maybe it would be helpful to think of your friend’s comment as not about discrediting the show, but celebrating your creativity. Keep writing Stolitz in ways that bring you joy, and don’t be afraid to explore all the beautiful, messy possibilities their story has to offer!

[lynxgriffin]

"You are a genuinely good person, Lynx. You refuse to do the geno runs."

Quick question out of curiosity: why does it seem like people correlate the goodness of someone with "you don't murder fictional characters"? Specifically in Undertale since the vast majority of RPGs have murder be default (outside of lv1 challenge runs).

I'm not saying you aren't a good person. It's just a thing that always confuses me when it comes to the reactions I've seen of people even attempting a Geno run. I never saw people make similar remarks with morality meters like CRPGs (ex: KOTOR, Fallout series, ect) or other games (Bioshock, Iji, Fable).

I mean, as I said before, no one's actually good or bad for doing the no mercy runs or not. It is ultimately just a game, and it'd be extremely silly to equate peoples' real world morality with game choices!

But what I think is going on with people saying as such for Undertale (and possibly Deltarune) specifically, is that they are simply taking the games' themes and premise sincerely. Most RPGs obviously don't present any moral quandry with you killing monsters...the point and fun part IS to level up by fighting, and that's fine. However, Undertale's narrative makes a point of asking "but what would it actually be LIKE to be a character in this game, and to suddenly have some outside force barge in and start killing you and all your friends? Wouldn't that be terrifying and awful?" It's the sort of nuance that you don't usually see in games, even games with morality mechanics, and certainly hardly ever to this extent. Even compared to games like Bioshock, Fallout, Fable, etc., Undertale is VERY sensitive and responsive to player actions.

So, regardless of it actually being true or not, I think what people are responding to with Undertale is that question of "what is this actually like from the other side of the screen?" and then giving it a serious answer. Which I think speaks to the real strength of Undertale's writing and thematic coherence, that people are willing to engage with it to that level of sincerity, even if sometimes that goes too far!

[spaceorphan18]

Some (abridged) thoughts on The Shape of Things

The thing about this play is that - I watched it twelve hours ago, and I'm still thinking about it. I don't necessarily know if you want me to bore you with my complex thoughts about the play itself.

There's a lot going on -- about what art really is, about whether or not people can change, about how relationships change you -- and the play doesn't necessarily provide answers to these questions - kind of lets it hang. Structurally (where's @snarkyhag to laugh at me about this thought) it's very cleverly written and put together, and I got to the big twist a bit before it happened but wow, okay, that's just a lot to digest. But thematically, it's left ambiguous, and I wish there are things that... may have been explored more? May have been expanded on? May have been more than just surface level?

I guess I just think there's a superficiality to it. Which, is partly the point. but I guess, it's clever in how it gets to where it wants to go. But what it's actually saying, feels muddled. I also feel like, and this is so just my take, it's definitely a play written by a man -- and a man who is mad at women but I'm not sure if I can coherently describe why I feel that way.

(There's one small scene where the two women talk and I joked to myself that -- oh, gotta pass that Bechdel test. it did, slightly. But despite the fact that this was written by an apparently famous modern playwright, I wasn't that impressed with how the women were written as people.)

Idk - I'm still thinking it through, and I may need to watch it again, in full, to really get a grasp on how I feel about it as a play.

---

Anyway, getting into the Luke Newton of it all... first of all, though, I think all four of the actors did a pretty good job. I think the two secondary leads had not a whole lot to work with and made good with what they had. The main actress was great! It's a very, very, very complicated role, and I think she did well with it. I'd be super curious to hear what her actual take on the character is, though, because -- the character is basically a blank slate. (Or a psychopath. You decide.)

For Luke, I think the word I'm going to go with is captivating. I had seen some clips of this floating around, and I was intrigued and genuinely impressed because even from those clips - it wasn't Colin, and it wasn't himself (or the person he presents in interviews).

The character of Adam is -- an interesting one. He's a character who goes through a transformation, and a character whom I don't necessarily like - but maybe not for reasons that people may think. (I honestly don't mind the cheating part - as it made him very human. But the level of manipulation he willingly endured drove me crazy.)

But what impresses me is that Luke did such a great job breathing life into him - making him feel real (and different from, well, Colin is the only thing I have to compare it to) and making those changes feel real (even when I have some complicated thoughts about how I don't believe you can fundamentally change someone through superficial changes...)

There is also such a physicality to the role (being on stage is such a different animal) and I loved that. I think it's was such a fascinating thing to just -- watch him inhabit the character, and do different things, and not feel like I'm even watching Luke Newton at all - but a different person entirely. Which is why I use the word captivating because I think there were times when I was more interested in watching the acting and the performance more than the writing or story itself.

(does that make sense to anyone else but me - maybe not, but there we are.)

If I'm going nitpick one thing, it's going to be about the accent (and this is across the board - not just Luke). I don't necessarily understand what they were going for - New York? Boston? It... wasn't American Midwestern, says me who has lived here all her life. And some British got through. But -- I will say, the accent was dead perfect during scenes and moments that were probably rehearsed the most, and those were the more emotional and pivotal scenes, so no notes there.

But yeah, overall, he did a great job. I think this role was a range that he handled really well, and I hope when coming across new projects he continues to seek things out that continue to let him go in different directions. I think he really has potential, and I really hope the future projects he chooses continue to foster that.

And, like, I know a lot of people want him to blow up or become bigger, and sure that's fine -- but honestly, I hope he continues to do theater, too, because he's really great at handling the stage. (I'd love to go see a live performance of his someday)

---

A couple of smaller Bridgerton-ish related things

There's a part where Evelyn goes through Adam's journal and I'm like -- why is not not madder about that?? That's an invasion of privacy! And, I mean, yeah it did remind me a little of Pen reading Colin's journal

(Also - because it's bonkers where my mind goes sometimes, I almost feel like this play and its messaging is the antithesis to Bridgerton Season 3. And someone's going to try to make me explain that, and I'm not sure if I can other than it makes sense to me. maybe when I'm not so tired...)

Someone called Adam 'distinguished'. Ngl, I snorted.

And that's what I've got! I know this is an old(er) play, and I'm sure fandom already discussed it to death way back when, but if any of ya want to chat about it, please do!!!

[tirralirralirra]

something I love about having read/watched frieren and dungeon meshi concurrently is getting to see that, despite their similar broad genres (fantasy, DND-esque settings, failure op elf girls /lh), they are two very distinct stories that ultimately achieve the same* thematic goal through different narrative means.

like you have frieren's contemplative, almost slice-of-life style storytelling that focuses on how the connections between people make an impact, and how it's beautiful to cherish the memories of those we love, even the small ones (especially the small ones), and that being alive is so, so beautiful because of those things. Then juxtaposing this with the overall narrative of a literal journey to a land beyond in order to meet with the dead, while not losing focus on those that are alive. Frieren as a story takes time to explore the small things that make life beautiful (fields of flowers, the beauty and not the power of magic, stargazing and sunsets with your friends).

and then you have dunmeshi's tight narrative arcs that are built around urgency (saving falin, first from digestion, then from...chimera-ization), but also continually return to the same concept as a core tenet to both the literal narrative structure around meals and the overall story: to eat is a privilege of the living. That there is joy to be found in eating because it means you are alive, that you survived. That taking time to take care of yourself is honoring your life. That death is a part of life through the acts of killing monsters to eat, and that the dungeon's condition where a soul remains tethered to the body is unnatural.

For that last bit, I love how we're just introduced to the concept in the beginning as a bit of world building, something you might just take at face value of, "oh, I guess this is how this works in this story", and over the course of the story the characters start to interrogate that reality, culminating in Marcille's realization at the end that they took death for granted because of the dungeon's condition:

[ID: Manga panel of Marcille looking down in thought and saying "Look, this might sound a little weird, but...I think the entire point of this journey we went on....was learning how to accept death.]

(Panel is from the ehscans version, will update with official eng when the final volume releases)

I also love that the story takes the time to say, look, you can be in a hurry, but you still need to take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, What will you achieve in the service of yourself or others if you don't take care of the most basic qualities to survive first? The most recent episode is a good example of that with the focus on shuro vs. laios, and then there's this reinforcement of the idea by the end:

[ID: Dungeon meshi manga page showing Laios, Chilchuck, and Senshi shouting "A balanced diet!!" "R-regulating our daily rhythms!!" "And moderate exercise!!" respectively, followed by the three in various poses in front of the word "VICTORY" and Laios saying "If we watch these three points...we'll naturally work our way to strong bodies!!"]

Anyways this is all very disorganized and I have other things I need to do and I could write a more cohesive, actually organized thought piece on all of this with like, coherent points, but I don't really like to delve into literary analysis on my fandom account. it just lives in my head, rent free. thank you for coming to my ted talk tumblr. don't expect to see more of this, lol.

*I say same goal, which is not to say the only goal. stories can have more than one theme, it's ok if you disagree with me on this, but please bear in mind that I'm speaking very, very broadly.

[aquillis-main]

This "do Sonic games have good writing" discourse has reminded me of something I've been thinking about on and off recently. Namely, what does it mean for a Sonic game to be good?

We can argue about the merits of writing, characterization, and gameplay all day, but specifically, I've been thinking about the yardstick people often seem to apply to the series. Based on the way they talk about Sonic, you'd think the series needs to have an intensive, watertight lore and a story written by Kojima.

I don't think a Sonic story needs to be deep or dark in order to be good. I don't even think the writing needs to be complex or dynamic, necessarily; sometimes a message is handled best when it's delivered simply.

Although it's true that the games do feature darker elements, those elements have always been handled with tact and sensitivity out of a genuine care for the subject matter. Which brings me to what I think is the real crux of the issue: emotional honesty. Is the work trying to be something it's not?

I came to this realization after contemplating why games like SA2 and Forces (put down your torches and pitchforks) made me mist up where other works might not.

There are a number of reasons, but overall, I think most of it has to do with those games being thematically cohesive, if not always narratively cohesive, and remaining genuine to the messages they try to impart. Both are games that stick the landing despite being uneven in places.

IDW and the movies are not emotionally honest, in the sense that they don't employ any narrative or characterization decisions in service of greater themes. They just make shit happen to get a reaction from the audience, logic and theme be damned. And the kicker is that people gas both IDW and the films up as superior to the games when they're actually inferior, just in terms of sheer technical construction.

SA2 may suffer the occasional bit of wonky writing, but it is thematically coherent enough for me to be able to overlook that. And I'd deign to argue that most things people call plot holes aren't really plot holes, if you just thought about the information the game gives you. The game doesn't spoonfeed it to you, is all.

Battle? Has excellent characterization, as well as employs a foil between Eggman's and Gerald's treatment of Emerl as a commentary on mankind's responsibility wrt WMDs. It can be a bit heavy-handed as far as anti-war tracts go, but "This is the final voice of the last war machine" is still Shadow's rawest line, and no one can take that away from me lol.

I'd argue that SatSR is the best-written Sonic game. Its characterization is nuanced, the execution of its themes was tastefully done - subtly, even - and it features symbolism in a way that doesn't quite shove it in your face the way SatBK does.

It's definitely not on par with something like Silent Hill 2, but it's worth remembering that a Sonic game doesn't need to be Silent Hill 2: Sonic Edition to be good. As long as it tells its story honestly, a lot of flaws can be forgiven.

What do the spinoffs have? Vibes. That's about it. You can't really enjoy them on their own merits because they don't maintain any internal consistency, which is ironic considering how much people claim the games are inconsistent.

IDW? Can anyone tell me what its core message is? "Sonic offers anyone freedom out of his staunch belief in freedom as a general idea, regardless of if it hurts people or if it backfires on him, because it gives him Depth(tm) and Texture(tm) as a character"? "Sonic vs. Eggman is a dumb and harmful cycle we must stop because reasons"?

That's... kind of cynical, don't you think?

SA2 had things to say on anti-authoritarianism, grief, revenge, hope, atonement, and keeping true to yourself even in the face of doubt and hardship (ex. Shadow asserting he's still him even if his memories were false; Sonic seeking to clear his image and asserting "what you see is what you get": the two are foils and mirror reflections).

What was Sonic 3 trying to say? "I knew Maria wouldn't want me to destroy the world, but screw it, I'm doing it anyway because my pain is what matters most"? Shut up and clap for Live and Learn, you nostalgia-blind pleb.

Like, you can tell the difference. One is trying to say something. The other plays at saying something while saying nothing.

Honestly, this is how I feel with the anon trying to take my well-earned 'Sonic the Hedgehog Fan' sticker, despite showcasing that unlike them, I have more proof of myself understanding the games and how they operate.

Not every story is agreeable to people, and they don't have to be. For Sonic, the games are cartoons that you can play.

[lotus-tower]

Why do we talk like that about Gintama?

So this is something I've already talked about a lot here and there, but I thought I would condense my thoughts on the topic in its own post.

We've joked a lot about math zeitgeist, but why in the world are we furiously mathposting about Gintama? Why did I write 28 pages of actual essay for it? Where does kraniumet get all those images from? (I've always wondered this.) Essentially, what's driving us to analyze these themes and motifs over and over again... and why can they be analyzed over and over again?

When I first wrote My Orochi Stood Up, I made it clear that this was an original framework made for the same purpose as all analytical frameworks and models: to enable me to gain certain key insights about the series, to account for all of its innumerable bits and pieces, and to arrange their relationships to one another in a cohesive, legible way. In short, as I wrote in my essay, it provides me with symbolic technology.

In the same vein, when I wrote my spontaneous math post, I said that so much of math is about things that don’t exist and yet become real, not just because they help you articulate something but because they help you arrive at a solution. This is the purpose of things like imaginary numbers--or negative numbers for that matter.

I know that we should never live life in accordance with the fake hater in our heads that we imagine saying stupid things to us so that we can respond to them in smart, cool ways. I'm sure Zura lives like that though, and we all think he's charming, so maybe we should reconsider this idea. What I mean to get at is that I've never once tried to claim that Sorachi literally intended any of what I describe in my ouroboros framework. I don't think he sat down one day and planned to make his motifs compatible with western alchemy, I don't think he had the creation myth of the island of Japan in mind, and I don't actually think he read Barthes.

But what's undeniable is that there is something so bizarrely consistent, coherent, and plentiful about Gintama's thematic flourishes--even though in many, many ways, Gintama is filled with bad, and worse, mediocre, writing. What sets Gintama apart from other series isn't the inherent quality of its writing (which has stark ups and downs). If you'll forgive the confusing and somewhat contradictory wording, what makes Gintama distinct isn't a quantitative difference (as in, more goodness), but a qualitative difference. What does this qualitative difference boil down to?

First is structure. This part we've gone over a lot, so I'll try to keep it brief (or novel?). Gintama is a series with basically just one favoured literary technique, and it uses it again. and again. and again. and again. and again. Parallels upon parallels upon parallels--and there are only a few key thematic ideas that Sorachi is interested in exploring. You can describe it as consistency, or, if you want to be uncharitable, repetitiveness. But it is, frankly, absurd the amount of parallels--or rather, the degree of parallelism--this series contains. What's interesting about it is its effects on how we engage with the story.

By making it obvious that this is a conscious and explicit writing decision (through various means, mainly dialogue), any characters with suitable parallelism to a prototypical character A are all connected to one other--let's call these the A-sided characters. This holds even if they're all a bit different from each other. Imagine all these A-sided characters spread out in line, like hostages tied to each track of a train track or the rungs on a ladder. They lose similarity with each rung, like loss of clarity in a game of telephone--let's call this "reflection lossiness." Even though characters in the top rung and the bottom rung may not have much in common, they may both be within "lossiness range" (<- I just made this up) of a character in a middle rung, and therefore able to communicate indirectly with one another.

Moreover, because the prototypical character A has a foil in prototypical character B, all A-sided characters are also connected not only to any individual foils they may have, but potentially to all other B-sided characters. Since it's easier to identify characters' thematic affiliations through their interactions and dynamics with other characters, the consistency of the A-B foil formula, when combined with the fact that animanga foils are generally made very obvious, helps us perceive these diagonal relationships. Thus, the reader can squint at the interactions of almost the entirety of Gintama's enormous cast with valid suspicion, with less difficulty than in other works with more complex structures. The series' sheer length also ensures that there is an abundance of material to comb through, so much so in fact that this careful inspection, through rereading again and again, becomes necessary.

For instance, the interactions between any given pair of characters may not seem directly relevant to our protagonist at first glance, but once you know the magic A | B schema, you may notice that that pair's interactions resonate with that of a different pair, one involving an A-sided character with less reflection lossiness from the top and who therefore reflects much more of what happens to them onto Gintoki. In this way, the original pair, who are probably just a couple of minor side characters who appear once in a weird arc and then never show up again, can make you go, "hey wait a minute. what if?"

What if?

Let's look at a concrete example. Housen and Utsuro don't seem to have much to do with each other at first glance. However, because we know that he parallels Kamui, and that Kamui | Kagura parallel Takasugi | Gintoki, who in turn can be mapped onto Utsuro | Shouyou, we can arrive at a Housen-Utsuro connection that wasn't previously obvious. What is the utility of this connection? For one, it sharpens our ability to articulate how the hole-sided flee from the things they fear and yearn for by adding Housen's infamous avoidance of the sun into the analysis. It also provides new ground for exploring potential ideas comparing, say, Kamui choosing to leave with the Harusame and walk in Housen's footsteps, with Oboro's resigned embrace of the Naraku and Utsuro. Additionally, since Housen was defeated in Hinowa's lap, this also helps us draw a Hinowa -> Kagura connection, which helps us arrive at a Hinowa-Shouyou connection, which helps to reify that Shouyou is a milf.

By inserting one or two blatant instances of foreshadowing and parallelism early on in the series, instances that are impossible to pass off as coincidence, Gintama primes the reader to suspect that similar nuggets might be hiding anywhere, to check every garbage can we encounter from there on out like in the Pokemon games.

Whoops. In attempting to explain the math zeitgeist I succumbed to using math in my explanation. It's irresistible.

But that's structure. Let's move on now to something arguably even more important: motifs.

It's undeniable that for a shounen series that's half gag-manga, Gintama has a strange amount of analyzable motifs, and a clear loyalty to them. Regardless of how extravagantly people on tumblr dot com may want to overanalyze their favourite Shounen Jump series, their efforts are usually restrained to theme and characterization. Their ravings do not usually resemble the ravings of the Gintama Salon. If you've read this far, I don't think I need to explain this to you, or what Gintama's most prominent motifs are. But why is Gintama so motif-ful? The sword's importance is obvious, expected even, but what differentiates Gintama from, say, Bleach, where the characters' swords also literally represent their souls in a way?

In the end the answer is what I already discussed in My Orochi Stood Up, the foundation of my entire framework, in fact its very title: the dick joke.

Sorachi's immature sense of humour is the glue holding the entire thematic and narrative structure of Gintama together. Why do we search obsessively for meaning in the flotsam of Gintama's less narratively charged moments? Because, quite frankly, many things are phallic. The sword is no longer simply a sword--by being imbued with the spirit of the dick joke, it becomes not only valid but textual to associate it with the head of the nation (shadow juice squirt), the motif of the dragon (thank you Elizabeth), and castration. What I mean is not whether the sword can be read as a dick--obviously, phallic logic has been prominent through all of human history--but the way in which Gintama's sexual humour gives us--and itself--an impetus to equate motifs in the first place.

Comparing very serious things to dicks is funny--the more abrupt, the more shocking, the more mood whiplash, the funnier is. Therefore, for Gintama's toilet humour to be as effective as possible, tone dissonance is ideal, pushing it towards the intermingling of comedy and tragedy that we know it so well for today. This in turn validates and reinforces the meaning-making role that these phallic jokes play in the story as a hole. It is not only that we cannot separate the dick jokes from the serious delivery of the plot, but that in many arcs important information is given to us through ridiculous gag devices (ball gags?).

The logic of basic sex jokes is extremely simple, intuitive, and easy to understand. The prominence of the pole necessarily implies the presence of the hole. I've talked about that enough in my essays, so I won't go into detail here, but the reason that I wrote my essays in the first place is because of how easy it is to map a procreative framework onto a series filled from beginning to end with phallic gags. As much as I may joke about it, the underlying logic of "the pole and the hole" is powerful and compelling, providing connective tissue to seemingly disparate motifs with ease. When combined with the "sorting" power of the A | B structure, the ability to associate any particular character with any particular motif easily gives us the ability to analyze how a given set of characters interacts with a motif; equally, where the motif sits in Gintama's playing ground of phallicism can inform a given character's dynamic with others.

I've already written at length about the role that wordplay plays in this as well. To save on time, I'll just quote from My Orochi Stood Up:

Gintama’s insistence on wordplay enables interesting meaning to be derived from these dirty jokes and their interaction with other motifs in the story. After all, the name of the series itself elevates the spirit of the balls joke, even if unintentionally, to the same level as the other metaphor in the title: “silver."

But perhaps the singularly most important example is the -tama in Gintama, with its plethora of potential meanings, each of them just silly and dirty enough that you have to take it seriously. Beyond the obvious joke on kintama (balls) and the “silver soul” meaning, we’ve seen that tama is also easily conflated with atama (head), and even with tamago (egg). This is clearly demonstrated with the series’ fixation on beheading leading to the salvation of the soul, and the bodyswap arc hinging on the pun between soul and egg.

In short, it is the comedic aspect of Gintama that fuels the series' own willingness to conflate and play with its motifs, and that validates--provokes--our mad efforts as readers to draw unlikely connections and dig through dirt. Though it may seem more ridiculous on the surface to be taking such a magnifying glass to such a profoundly silly series, it is in fact more justified for Gintama than it would likely be for a more serious series, one where the paths between motifs are not pre-paved, let alone lubricated with shadow squirt juice.

I was recently introduced to a theory of comedy where comedy was posited as an interplay between excess and lack. How this maps on to Gintama is obvious; but one thing that comes to mind now is how easy it would be to characterize our scholarly efforts in examining Gintama, a series one could humorously characterize as "lacking", as a kind of excess. Which is to say, I think Gintama has pulled its penultimate trick on us (because it's still coming out with more stuff for the anniversary. I believe it.) by making us part of its comedy.

[yinyuedijun]

big jjk spoilers

it's almost 4:30 and I'm finally done reading the gojo vs sukuna fight. I actually do think this addresses a lot of the reasons I was never really taken by gojo's character and also why I always felt lukewarm about the thematic progression of the series. despite the fandom's somewhat negative opinion of gege's writing, I actually do think when you look past the clumsiness and obvious burnout, it is heading toward a coherent thematic arc and gojo was a part of that. I like that he died and I think he died well. I think his and sukuna's deaths were also always a given tbh lol and I'm interested in seeing how sukuna's will play out. this may be a controversial opinion but I think gege does know how to write a good death (though he's written a lot of not good ones lol). I have a lot of thoughts but I gotta pass out now lol. please do not hate me for my thots btw remember I am a nobody in jjk fandom 👍

[monsterblogging]

List of Official/Official-Adjacent Pacific Rim Media

Here's a list of Pacific Rim media for y'all Pacific Rim fans who want to check out as much of it as possible!

PACIFIC RIM (2013 FILM) Usually considered the primary text of this franchise. Pacific Rim fans mostly agree it's good.

PACIFIC RIM NOVELIZATION BY ALEX IRVINE The novelization of the 2013 film. The book's writer, Alex Irvine, had texts from Legendary Pictures work with, but some of the information was outdated. Furthermore, the book has a cynical, smug tone and comes off like it's written for the type of audience who thinks CinemaSins is actual media criticism. The only thing it's really good for is for scraping out lore, but it's full of contradictions and occasionally uses outdated lore, so you have to compare/contrast it with other materials.

TALES FROM YEAR ZERO Authored by Travis Beacham, this comic explores the origins of the PPDC and the Jaeger program. It's interesting for lore, but story-wise, it might not be engaging if you aren't into Travis Beacham's particular romantic storytelling tastes. Also, if you're a puritan who gets offended when main characters are kinda fucked up people, this isn't for you.

TALES FROM THE DRIFT Authored by Travis Beacham, this comic tells the haters-to-lovers story of Duc and Kaori Jessop, pilots of Tacit Ronin. Mildly interesting for lore, and another romance-oriented story. (Beacham loves those.)

PACIFIC RIM: MAN, MACHINES, & MONSTERS The official artbook. Has some interesting information and lore, though it also contains a few typos and references outdated worldbuilding.

TRAVIS BEACHAM'S TUMBLR After Pacific Rim's release, Travis Beacham answered many fans' questions. While he was often cryptic and straight-up refused to answer certain questions for fear that he'd spoil a future story, he still provided quite a bit of insight. You can visit his old blog at travisbeacham.tumblr.com

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING Largely panned by fans of the original film. Partway through production, the sequel to Pacific Rim was handed off to another director, and many plot elements were hastily changed with little to no regard for the rich worldbuilding developed by Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro, or even story coherency. The film never gives really your brain space to breathe, so it's very difficult to follow the story. Moreover, it misses the thematic and allegorical tones of the first movie, and lacks its occult influences. Overall, it's a hollow followup to Pacific Rim.

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING NOVELIZATION BY ALEX IRVINE Fundamentally, it's the same story as Pacific Rim: Uprising. The upside is that Alex Irvine's writing is significantly improved, and the story is much easier to follow in novel format. The downside is that you don't have John Boyega's acting talent.

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING JUNIOR NOVELIZATION BY BECKY MATHESON It's more or less the same as above, but edited down for a younger audience.

THE ART AND MAKING OF PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING The PRU artbook. I've never read this one, so I couldn't tell you what's in it aside from the very obvious.

PACIFIC RIM: AFTERMATH A prequel comic to Pacific Rim: Uprising written by Cavan Scott, Aftermath tells two stories: one focuses on Jake Pentecost and his relationship with his father; the other on what happened to Hannibal Chau and Joshua Griffin (one of Vulcan Specter's pilots) after the kaiju war. The comic makes excellent use of the lore, and the stories are great.

PACIFIC RIM: AMARA A prequel comic that focuses specifically on Amara Namari. I have mixed feelings about it; the mini-Jaeger designs were great but I felt that the actual storyline was a little melodramatic. I dunno, read it for yourself and see what you think.

PACIFIC RIM: ASCENSION A prequel novel to Uprising by Greg Keyes, this story gives life and focus to many characters who didn't get a lot of attention, including the Kaidonovskys and the cadets. Mako Mori is given the narrative respect she deserves, and Hermann Gottlieb's characterization is top-notch. The author makes use of the lore provided by Legendary Pictures to weave a rich and fascinating narrative that puts the actual Uprising film to shame.

MAKING OF/BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE There's a number of videos out there on YouTube, which you can find by searching up.

PACIFIC RIM CONCEPT ART There's quite a lot of concept art out there. You can start here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or search Pinterest or whatever search engine for Pacific Rim concept art.

PACIFIC RIM: THE BLACK A cash grab produced by Netflix, The Black disregards Pacific Rim's rich worldbuilding and follows bland, generic cartoon protagonists through a bland, generic cartoon plot loosely - loosely, mind you - based on the films. It tries to be dark, but it has all the skill of a sixteen year old edgelord about it. Also, the production values are nonexistent. You will miss absolutely nothing worthwhile by skipping over it. If for some reason you really want a Pacific Rim story where child soldiers are framed as a good thing, just read Pacific Rim: Ascension. If you want dark, watch Pulp Fiction or From Dusk 'Til Dawn. If you want a story where somebody makes a religion out of turning people into monsters, watch Midnight Mass or play/watch a no-commentary playthrough of Resident Evil 4 or 8. If you want an AI that looks after two stranded children, watch 3Below. Seriously, there is nothing The Black does that something else doesn't do infinitely better. "But most of these aren't Pacific Rim stories-" Wrong. Any story can be a Pacific Rim story if you're not a coward. And just about anything is a better Pacific Rim story than The Black.

PACIFIC RIM: BLACKOUT Prequel comic to Pacific Rim: The Black. Haven't read it, but it's written by the same guy who wrote Aftermath so it's probably a sight better than The Black.

[wanderingwomanwondering]

I’ll start with the positive.

A big thank you to all the 911 meta writers. Yall are carrying this show for me rn and i love you for it. You meta warriors take the absolute mess of half hewn edifices in the show and build beautiful monuments from the rubble.

And now the Tim Minear criticism.

Most seasons prior to s7 & s8 felt intentional, character-driven, and found family oriented. Tim’s reign has not been that imo. Tim seems to prefer shock value and overdeveloped *side* characters instead of grounded narratives that tell a story about the main characters we’ve spent the last 8 years adoring. He’s so obsessed with his ‘big ideas’ that he’s willing to sideline the mains, or worse, mutate them into ooc science experiments that I don’t even recognize half the time. Characters/stories are allowed to change, but Tim’s changes aren’t organic and meaningful. I just feel effed with and disrespected mostly.

Meta writers are describing and analyzing the good stories that the show seems to have abandoned, fumbled, or simply put on the back burner for so long that I really don’t know if they’re actually cooking (or if they’ll taste good when they’re done!). Yall are squinting to find rhyme and reason in the chaos and doing EXCELLENT work. Absolutely awe-inspiring astronomers drawing constellations among the faint and bright stars alike. There’s a level of coherence presented in the fandom’s metas that frankly doesn’t exist much in the show itself.

Having the viewer engage in some degree of analysis and interpretation is 100% normal and good. I love thinking about my media experiences! I’m not complaining about that. What I take issue with is these last two seasons and how they’ve got me feeling like Tim owes us money for doing his job 👀🤷🏾‍♀️ We’re working harder than him to tell coherent relevant stories about our beloved characters. We’re dissecting and inferring and extrapolating like mad! I would feel better about that process if it was proportional to what Tim gives us on screen but it’s not. Half the metas feel far from what we’re actually being shown, not because the stories aren’t there but because Tim would rather focus on obscure movie/media references, big emergencies that don’t speak directly to the main characters deeper issues, and/or old characters beats that we’ve already trudged through 80 times.

Honestly as a viewer whose been with the show and fandom from the very beginning, I’m getting very tired of working so hard to extract depth, meaning, and character growth from Deadly Disease Plot x3, Kidnapping Plot x5, Denied Foster Child Application Plot x10, Cant Deal With My Dead Wife Plot x20, Is She A ‘Good Cop’ or a High Ranking Problem Plot x30, and on and on. I’ve mostly stopped writing meta myself bc I’m tired. But I do read and enjoy what others put out there.

I really hope the show gets back to being 911 with coherent, thematically-sound storytelling rooted in relatable characters in a found family dynamic…because this Hotshots Cartel Poseidon Vertigo Top Gun spinoff is disappointing af.

[dmbakura]

Sry I know I come into your inbox to be an annoying bitch about Zelda every time you bring it up but I was thinking of how botw fumbles its dead characters especially in comparison to majora's mask. Because with the champions it just feels like all their character growth etc is in the past, and it doesn't matter anymore because, well, they're dead. There's nowhere else for their character arcs to go. They're dead, and static. I guess that's supposed to be part of the tragedy, but it's really hard to feel that way for anyone except Mipha, because she's the only one where the people she left behind are still alive and still mourn her, but even then it's kind of spoiled because her status as "Link's lost love interest" means the game puts more focus on her romantic relationship with Link than her relationship with her family.

Meanwhile in Majora's Mask the dead characters and what they left behind are a HUGE part of the narrative, and even though we interact with them a lot less (hell, you never even SPEAK to the spirit of the deku mask) their tragedies permeate each region of Termina, there's a real sense of weight to fulfilling their last wishes, and even once you do, there's this lingering grief over the fact that... they're still not going to come back. Link is only filling the void for as long as he's around, and he is going to leave, soon. I mentioned that you don't even speak to the deku mask's spirit, but the game still manages to emotionally sucker punch you by showing the deku butler morning his son in the credits.

yeah I had massive problems with the champions when I played botw. they're all just such nothingburgers with very little impact or plot relevance (with the exception of mipha I guess, like you said). they feel like archetypes rather than characters and there's no real comraderie between them, link and zelda. just all around very boring and a waste of time. you could cut them from the story and basically nothing changes.

the masks in majoras mask, on the other hand, all have coherent thematic and emotional weight tied to their respective areas. they feel a lot more personal and relatable in their struggles and as a result, they actually feel closer to link.

I used to think that the champions being so dull had to do with their amount of screen time, but i think they probably actually have more screen presence than any of the characters in majoras mask, so now i realize it's not the quantity, it's the content of their writing. their screen time is not used effectively, the story is not well written or thematically coherent. you can say very much with very little but botw (and totk) chooses to just say nothing at all.

I also think playing dark souls/elden ring/souls games in general put into perspective how badly put together botw and totk are and how little care was shown towards things like worldbuilding, characterization, thematic resonance... parts of the story nintendo has deemed "unimportant" when these things aren't just fluff on the side of a good game, they're INTEGRAL to the zelda series. in souls games, the characters and bosses have very little speaking lines. some of them have been dead (or have lost their minds) for centuries and by the time you meet them, they're shells of their former selves, but you feel like you still intimately know who they were because of how strongly they're characterized in the brief moments they have, as well as the wealth of lore and storytelling built into the world itself. I'm just like damn, if the souls series can go open world without losing that sort of care in the story, why did zelda throw away absolutely everything that made it zelda?

[ghoulodont]

I want to hear your Skeletá thoughts 🎤🎤🎤

ok doing my first listen now ^_^

peacefield: ok obviously this is not my first time listening to this. i think this song is really full of love. the little guitar riff at the end scratches my brain just right

lachryma: i think this song is grammatically very interesting and i cant get over that. the way "im done" / "crying" is split makes them each stand alone as statements and also together so it says 3 different things. to me. but also i think some of the verse lyrics are just really random and i dont get it. why does everybody knows? the 2 guitars part in the middle before the solo is so yummy & i can never resist a key change at the end of a song

satanized: i love the darkness of the key/mode(?) sorry i know just enough music words to be annoying. "urges to burst" is nasty. at the end when the "bottom of my heart" part repeats a couple times its so hype. i wish the bsszzzzwwwwww part from the very end of the mv was in the song

guiding lights: ok when i listened to this last night during skeleta eve i was initially like well i guess the songs cant all be good. but i liked it more as it went on. i like the chorus. i anticipate that i will appreciate it in the context of the album and yes im very much an album listener i listen to albums straight through almost exclusively. i like the interesting unexpected notes in the guitar solo

de profundis borealis: love the piano love the jumpscare love the guitar riff. on skeleta eve they were playing this LOUD and it was awesome until they turned it down like 2/3 of theway through. "palace built of frozen tears" "whispering frost" really gives me frozen let it go and i dont think its just the lyrical content. the chorus is SO GOOD im actually obsessed with this one. EVERY TIME YOU FEEL THE WIND BLOWWWWWW‼️ i feel like it gets kinda disorganized at the end with just the instrumental part. but then the sample at the end is so fun. so many delightful things packed into one song. listening again

cenotaph: wait sorry i forgot iwas writing this. im not in love with this song but im appreciating the optimistic vibe. is this what he was talking about in that gifset where he was talking about dead people being with you bc i totally agree. to me thats a literal ghost

missilia amori: ok this is the first song im actually hearing for the first time and didnt hear last night. i like the idea of a big powerful slow song like this. i think it probably sounds like a band idk anything about. maybe kiss? i cant think of a single kiss song i literally do not know anything. like is this an 80s reference im sorry i wasnt there and im still catching up. but i dont want to hear anyone say LOVE ROCKETS any more thats making it worse for me

marks of the evil one: this sounds like a parody song or something its extremely unserious. idk its fine but its not captivating me

umbra: omg i didnt know this instrumental was the intro. its giving me midnight mv release flashbacks. its actually so satisfying to hear it continue instead of looping. yessss bitch the altar the black candles..... the guitar solo??? the call and response wait this is so fun

excelsis: this is the kind of lyrical theme i simply cant deal with it makes me really sad. as far as ballads go its ok but i wish it had a bigger build/payoff

overall thoughts: the whole album feels very coherent which i love. both musically and thematically. i wish it was mixed with more guitar and less vocals but i understand why it is the way it is. this is just my perpetual opinion as a sunn O))) fan who wants a guitar brain massage

[paperstarwriters]

ive come kneeling at your doorstep to beg for that essay on murio and luciels parallels you mentioned 👀💦👉👈

i love loathing lucio so much so it would deal my lil hater ass so much psychic damage and i cannot wait to get rekt

(onlyifyouwanttothoofcoursetakeyourtime)(just making sure youre aware id print that shit n frame it above my bed were it to come to existence)

Hello @tetsuooooooooooo! I know you said I can take my time, ok I'm still really really sorry this took awhile, I've been kinda burnt out from classes lately, and writing a bunch of essays for that lol, but I've managed to make a somewhat coherent argument for my case here lol.

Now, to preface this:

I only really like Lucio as a character to thematically dissect and kick around occasionally for giggles. I am a far, far cry from a Lucio stan, I just find him interesting—like a bug. Honestly I don't think I'm gonna convince you he's in any way a good guy I just might make you loathe him more 😅

I haven't played Lucio's route. I'm too busy and I get too annoyed with some of his antics + the options of reactions that MC is allowed to make. I've only played the side stories and a lot of my understanding of his character is built from Muriel's route (and I know he's much more different in his own route than he is in the others') as well as hearsay from other people talking about Lucio

I know I said that I'd include Aurora's songs in my original statement but that got wayyyyyyy too messy so I'm just opting to exclude them lol. (not to mention youtube is doing a very irritatingly strange thing of deleting and then reuploading Aurora's songs??? so I don't wanna deal with the messy files :/)

With that out of the way here is my essay :)

Wordcount: 2,908

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Muriel and Lucio are both very, very caught up in how they are seen by others. While it's clearer when it comes to Lucio, it is also made clear in Muriel by the fact that Social anxiety is often caused by stress over how a person is perceived and their mental belief that they are helpless to change that perception. This causes of their self perception are also quite similar, due to their similar histories, but in the same way that there are some notable opposites between them with their struggle for their identity there is also some notable differences in their histories that arguably causes the slight difference in their struggle for their self image.

To begin with their history, Muriel and Lucio are noted to both come from the South. They come from two opposing tribes, and are both eventually chased out of their home and community by 1) a cruel person who arguably causes their struggle of identity and 2) the plague. Of course, the major difference here is that Lucio actively made decisions that would lead to him being chased out of his tribe, he was arguably aware that if it failed he'd have to leave, he just hadn't considered that it would actually fail.

Muriel on the other hand is chased out of his home at a much younger age, and he has no choice in his eviction from his home or his family. There is no action that Muriel could have done that would have allowed him to stay where he was, unlike Lucio who had a clear option that would have allowed him to stay.

Or at least would have allowed him to stay until he grew tired of his mother's attitude towards him.

I don't believe that Morga's cruel and dismissive attitude towards Lucio started when he tried to kill her, rather, I believe that she has been doing that for a long, long time. She often states that she had been "too soft" on Lucio, but I think her "softness" is the same kind we see in Muriel's route. She berates him, she threatens him, she tells him how awful and unskilled he is to everyone else and makes a show of his failures, but when she is completely and fully enraged and is about to hit Lucio, she hesitates.

Is that softness? To her perhaps. To the tribe, perhaps. But not to me, and not to Lucio.

So, despite all of the harsh words thrown his way, he decides to take action to prove her wrong. I'm willing to bet that a lot of Morga's criticisms were about how strong he was and how he was in fact not actually as strong as he could have been, not as strong as he should have been. That's why when he takes action to prove Morga wrong, he immediately snaps to killing her. There is, after all, no better way than showing your power than killing your opponent (we see this belief in Morga when she spars against Muriel and he beats her.) Of course, in hand-to-hand combat, and on fair terms, Lucio can't actually defeat his mother, so he takes to more under-handed methods in order to beat her.

When this fails, it is the first major wound on his self-image. He cannot defeat his mother. He is not strong enough to defeat his mother despite cheating.

So, he runs away.

Besides marking a wound on his self-image, this also marks Lucio's connection to others. Having been exiled from his tribe, he is disconnected from the friends who may have actually supported him somewhat, he is robbed of his connections and separated from anyone who may have actually loved and cared for him (platonically and/or romantically)

Similarly, Muriel's separation from his own family, and his eventual abandonment into the streets of Vesuvia separates him from any stable sense of love and affection as well. Because he was separated from loving parents as a child and was likely surrounded by a number of children who were abandoned because they were unwanted, or because their parents were unable to care for them, Muriel has no other answer than what the other kids give him it is the only answer he has. Further more I believe that Muriel was probably abandoned by that merchant because they were unable to keep feeding him, which he also attaches onto his real parents as to why he was abandoned in the first place.

And so Muriel believes himself to be unloved and unlovable after being separated from family, or any semblance of a family.

Returning to Lucio, he moves on from his tribe and eventually joins a military group(? I think? Idk. I'm sure there was a specific name for it but I can't remember sorry) Once again, this is an act of trying to prove to his mother and to his community that they were wrong, and when compared to the ordinary person outside of their tribe, he's actually a really good and capable fighter. Of course, however, this is inevitably cut short as he looses his arm, and is once again confronted with the fact that he is unskilled as a warrior and so he retreats from his perceived deficiency and takes a different route to getting the love and admiration he wants—politics.

Of course, as we see in Muriel and Asra's childhood tale, this inevitably puts him into direct conflict as, in order to climb the social ladder he offers to "clean up" the streets. While it's largely left up to interpretation as to whether or not the Threat of Asra's safety came first or Muriel's position as a gladiator came first, I can't help but believe that Muriel's position as a gladiator came first, as otherwise, he might've gone out and tried to check on Asra's safety. (though this is mostly a headcannon) I believe that Lucio offered Muriel a chance to have some say in who gets "cleaned up" from the streets, and for Muriel to be able to get rid of the "actually bad criminals". Regardless of whether or not this is true, the arena gives Muriel his first taste of admiration, as people cheer for and adore him, but it also tears that sense of admiration away as he eventually has to come to terms with what he is doing. Whether that sense of dread and awareness was always there or it occurred somewhere in the middle is also unknown but the outcome is the same regardless. Being known and being admired becomes tied to hurting and harming people—because it is the only trait he sees that other people admire, he sees it as his only lovable trait.

And so Lucio and Muriel begin to reflect each other—and I don't mean reflect as in they show the same image, I mean reflect as in we see a similar image, but the image is reversed (*wink wink nudge nudge*). Here Muriel sees himself as only capable of being loved for his ability to commit violence, and Lucio sees himself as being incapable of being loved because he cannot complete the amount of violence he needs to commit.

Now, I feel the need to emphasize here, despite having many people around him who Lucio may truly believe love and admire him, the people around him very likely don't actually care for him very much because they either do not know him well, or they see him as little more than a pawn in a plan, or at least someone who gives them benefits. And even if there are a number of people with genuine admiration for Lucio, it still wouldn't be enough. Admiration is never enough when you lack genuine emotional connections with others, and Lucio, clearly does.

Again, this parallels Muriel who also struggles with a lack of genuine emotional connections to others. Although he has Asra with him, it's clear that, Asra's tendency to be fickle with connections has extended to him as well, especially when Asra spends more time with MC than him, leaving Muriel feeling abandoned and alone. Considering that Asra is the only person we ever really see Muriel connect or talk to, it's no stretch to say that Asra is one of Muriel's only friends, if not their only friend period, and so with Asra disappearing on him as often as they do, Muriel is left feeling that he actually has no connections at all.

Of course once again reflecting each other, where Muriel clearly sees he lacks connections and pretends he does not, Lucio, makes unsteady transactional rather than emotional relationships and pretends that that is enough.

It is of course, not enough, because if it were, he wouldn't have treated Muriel like that, he likely wouldn't have plucked Muriel out at all. Although this is largely speculation, I believe that Lucio treated Muriel the way he did because he feels as if Muriel is the very child Morga would have wanted. He is big and strong, and although not technically skilled if Muriel were raised by Morga like Lucio was, he might've been. This is why his first reaction to seeing Muriel and Morga working together is that Muriel is Morga's replacement son. It's because that's how Lucio had been treating him. Muriel is Lucio's little avatar to live out the glory of being a fantastically skilled fighter who can beat up all of his opponents. This is also, why I believe that Lucio purposefully trained Muriel to be less skilled in fighting than he was. In Muriel's route, Lucio comments that he's always been able to beat Muriel, and while I do in fact believe that Lucio is actually a skilled fighter, despite how he is often presented and despite my arguments above—he's most often a skilled fighter in the technical sense. He knows all the movements, he knows all the strategies, he knows all the underhanded tricks. By not fighting Muriel too often, and refusing to teach him these tricks however much it may be able to help Muriel out in the arena, it allows Lucio to be able to defeat him whenever he wants to. It allows Lucio to make it seem to himself that he is better than the person his mother would have wanted as a son, which I believe to be both horrible but also sad, for both Lucio and Muriel.

With Lucio, it shows how desperate and inferior he feels with his fighting skills, constantly trying to compensate for it something we can also see that in the portrait of himself he has in his room.

For Muriel, it keeps him scared, and keeps him pinned in place despite having realized the consequences of his fighting. Something which only furthers his self-hatred when he realizes he actually could have easily left.

So yes, Muriel and Lucio are both very self conscious people, and while for Muriel his self consciousness stems from people seeing him as a monster, and him believing that he is one although he does not want to be one, Lucio is self-conscious in the fact that he is not seen as the brutal fighting warrior he was supposed to be.

These reflected aspects of each other, alongside of their self consciousness is the very thing they struggle through in their routes, the very thing that MC helps them to get through.

Lucio believes that through various paintings of himself that rearranges his past (paintings of himself as a triumphant fighter, while his mother is demure and elegant), various unfair/practically staged fights, and celebrations of himself on top of it all, he would be able to convince people that he is awesome and amazing and that he deserves to be loved. In doing all of this however, Lucio runs away from confronting the beliefs at his core and wondering if perhaps, what he understood as traits that make a person great may be incorrect—that his mother had not just been incorrect on the fact that he was a failure, but on the fact of what makes a person successful or powerful. By constantly covering up what he sees as deficits, Lucio skims over his own internal struggles entirely which makes him look foolish and annoying as he ignores what's so clearly there for others.

Meanwhile, for Muriel, he is aware of his deficits, and is unable to properly hide them without disappearing completely himself, he tries to figure out and fix all of his problems through introspection and isolation, but it is not something he can do on his own. Muriel of course, can't accept the fact that he may need help. He can't accept the fact that despite what he believes of himself, other people may actually care for him the same way he cares for them, and will actually offer help. And so, as he runs away from people and community, from friends, and possible friends alike, Muriel runs away from his own problems as well, even if he tortures himself with confronting them (I can't remember if he actually does this or if this is a fanfic trope 😅) Essentially, by constantly trying to deal with his struggles on his own, he neglects his connections to others who may help him, or at least offer support.

And then MC comes along, and because they both desperately needed that deep connection to someone else, regardless of whether it is something platonic or romantic. MC is able to leverage their relationship in order to further propel Muriel and Lucio's development into acknowledging the thing they refuse to acknowledge, and finally balance out their coping mechanisms, which, on their own isn't actually unhealthy (Lucio's really good at connecting with others; Muriel knows how to confront his inner turmoil) using that single method as their crutch for their traumas only ever hurts them more.

As Muriel progresses through his route, he grows more connected with his community and people. One meaningful moment that I don't think they give enough screen time in the game is the moment that Muriel is forced to confront people recognizing and seeing him again. He's forced to confront everyone's perception of him, their memory of him and he retreats into the mirror maze where he stares at all these reflections of himself, all reversed images of himself, but he believes them all to accurately represent himself—as if his superficial physical image is what represents himself mentally and emotionally. And then MC (and Morga 🙄) come through to him and pull him out of that panic attack (or interrupt and yank him away from properly addressing the problem in Morga's case 😤) And that's the first step to being loved. As they say, in order to let yourself be loved you have to let yourself be known, and in that first step, choosing to step forward and prioritize the lives of others over his own self image, Muriel begins to be admired by others. Genuinely admired, for traits that he likes in himself rather than traits that he hates.

Similarly for Lucio, (although I haven't played his route so this is largely based on hearsay) he's faced with problems that he Has to face on his own (or at least somewhat on his own) the main one being that he has to confront the consequences of his own actions, he has to acknowledge to himself that he isn't perfect and that he can't be perfect. It's why at the end of his route on the upright ending, he leaves Vesuvia, to take on a life of (semi)solitude to further take some time to improve his ability at introspection, while in the Reversed ending he's still talking with people, still trying to manipulate their perceptions of him (and the MC), and still trying to be a "good boy" (ie. perfect) for the MC.

Now, it may be argued that Julian can/should be included in this struggle of how others perceive him but I raise you this; that guy is the most dramatic ass dude in town and his biggest dramatic act was telling everyone about how horrible he is. He clearly has no issues with how other people see him, but he has problems with how he sees himself, which again, reflects Muriel a bit, but I'm sure most people are familiar with their (more blatant) similarities by now lol

So yea.

Muriel and Lucio are reflections of each other. At their core, they both struggle with the same problem of caring way too much about how they're seen by others, but they cope with (and thus worsen) the problem in opposite ways, so when they take steps to heal themself, they also go in opposite directions, with Lucio needing to take some time to himself to get into his own head, while Muriel needs some time away from himself to get out of his own head.

Essentially they're heading in opposite directions to reach the same conclusion: other people's opinions don't matter as much as your own opinion of yourself and the opinions of the people close to you.

Interesting parallels, no?

Of course, I believe this could've been better illustrated if Nyx Hydra didn't rush the last three routes, but alas, this is what fan fiction and fan-analysis is for lol

Anyways I don't tend to poke around the Lucio side of the fandom too much to begin with so if this has all been said and argued before forgive me for the repetition, and If I've gotten some points wrong, please feel free to correct me! I've mentioned before I haven't really played through Lucio's route so some things may be wrong.

[beaft]

Hi and sorry in advance for using this as an excuse to rant a bit about Good omens 2! I feel the same, I binged it with my girlfriend and at the end we just sat in silence for a minute and then went "...what the fuck was that." It was so incredibly poorly written and plotted in many aspects, though I understand that if one doesn't love dissecting stories piece by piece to analyse it from all possible angles it could be hard to understand why some people are saying it's bad. I feel like it's comparable to a house that looks pretty but is build on really shitty foundations and has a lot of structural issues. Most people can't see anything wrong with it and find it good, but the people who know how those things are built can immediately see all the glaring issues under the surface.

In short, in my opinion a lot of this season's short comings hinge on it's complete lack of thematic coherence and structure, completely ignoring or even discarding what was at the heart of the original story. This season was a disjointed jumble of scenes and concepts that only superficially lead to other scenes that within the bigger picture had no weight at all, plot or thematic-wise. Once you start thinking back to some of the plot threads the show established to move the story forward it's almost ridiculous how little they actually meant for the conclusion. And I don't mean stuff that 'might be resolved in the third season'! Creating a miracle to keep Gabriel hidden from everyone? He could've hid in a closet and it would've had the same effect for the plot. Muriel being set to keep an eye on Aziraphale and Crowley? Nothing, no consequences, in fact Aziraphale fucks off on his investigation right after, which, by the way, served no purpose than to give us some exposition that in the end got re-iterated to us during Gabriel's flashbacks. He doesn't actually figure anything out in a way that impacts the story lol. Even the whole "we have to make these two women fall in love so that Heaven believes us!" is kind of just forgotten by the end of the story, and nobody holds them accountable to their claim. The character of Jim is completely non-existent for half of the season and has no emotional arc or impact as a character on Aziraphale and Crowley - he could've been a magical cardboard cutout that spouts funny lines every now and then. There were so many set-ups within this season itself that had completely lackluster or non-existing pay-offs it's actually kind of ridiculous.

So many of the things people list or write about when talking about this season are there in concept, but they're not acted upon in the writing. A prime example of this is the Aziraphale/Crowley and Nina/Maggie parallels that people are pointing out - but within the season's current day scenes there isn't any romantic or emotional development between Aziraphale and Crowley, and the story doesn't center itself around that parallel or development. The only scene I could think of that even remotely does something with that is the Jane Austen dancing scene - except where Nina and Maggie have a conversation about what is going on right in that moment and how they're feeling, Aziraphale and Crowley are as good as emotionally dead and then the scene already ends.

If you start breaking down the plot elements it could've been made so, so SO much more tight-knit and coherent by focusing on what was important - ergo the character's relationships now and the bigger plot beats. As much as I loved the flashbacks in season 1, in this season they merely serve to tell us what we already know about Aziraphale's and Crowley's relationship and to add some superficial and pointless context to the different locations Aziraphale visits. Another thing I think is a big difference between this season and the original story is that every character, every concept had a Point to it, usually a joke or some sort of funny commentary (whether it was good/actually funny is another thing entirely). That's what made it feel interesting and sharp, whereas the new characters in this season just kind of... are. If you break down the concepts to their bare essence, coffeeshop owner in a toxic relationship and record shop owner who has anxiety are pretty bland as character concepts go. Shax as a character is also just so... pointless lmfao. It's almost badly caricaturing the concept of Gomens demons, which are already caricatures, so the effect is somewhat reminicent of beating a dead horse long after it has died. Anyway, so sorry to clutter your inbox like this but I just needed to get this off my chest. It's so weird seeing the dissonance between what is textually there in the show and how people are reacting to it!

hi! i hope you don't mind but i'm posting this publicly because tbh you really hit the nail on the head with every single one of these points. the whole season felt like this:

over and over again a potentially interesting plotline would get introduced, and then the writers would kind of just. forget why it was there? best example is, as you say, the nina/maggie thing - originally it began as a cover story to explain away the Forbidden Miracle, but that quickly ceased to be relevant, and the "we need to make them fall in love to get heaven off our backs" became a half-hearted running gag that was returned to every now and again with increasing half-heartedness. no sense of forward planning, no callbacks or consequences, just the constant sense of frantic improvisation without an end in sight.

[animazi]

AO3 Wrapped: Writer's Edition

tagged by @cheesenames

Words written this year: 43,215 (genuinely how. for context the last things I wrote before this year were all sub 1k pretty much)

Works written this year: 5, all star wars, 3 of those being peedy...

Work Most Proud of: girl and ghost. for something written for a headcanon I don't personally like that much I think it ended up being the neatest and best constructed of everything? providence, in summer has, imo, several massive pacing, thematic and structural issues that annoy me deeply

Work with Most Hits: providence, in summer which is the inevitable answer given its a) not a crackfic, and b) is about an actual main star war character

Fav title: providence, in summer. it's based on the 'providence in the fall of a sparrow' line from hamlet, which is imo quite fitting for padme as I read her (a character who has devoted her entire life to grander works than her, save this little corner of peace she has attempted to whittle out - which even then is caught up in prophecy lol - and I like and certainly used the force sensitivity via the twins idea - suddenly getting these strange awarenesses of the world you can't control and feel alien yet total in their correctness. horrible!) but I thought the unaltered quote was both too long and also didn't properly represent the themes of the fic, see my earlier note about how I'm not satisfied with providence overall lol, so I added the 'in summer' part which does get across another slightly flopped theme of that aka the temporary nature of it all. something both longed for and hated (I despise the heat in summer)

Pairing You Wrote the Most For: sigh. with pain in my voice I must accept my crown. peedy. I was also the World's Most Prolific Peedy Writer (I know I know, please hold the applause)

What Work was the Quickest To Write: um. my dad...the emperor! which I wrote on one (1) train journey. admittedly a full day of train journey, but still.

What Work Took You Longest To Write: providence, in summer...and I'm probably going to redo it at some point lol

How Many WIPS do you have for next year: idk man ideas just spawn in my brain from time to time and sometimes they get accepted, and sometimes they go live in the googledocs prison. I do want to write the vader and the obi-wan ones I've had in docs hell for a while though...

Longest Work of the Year: providence, in summer, although coruscant dreams; or eedy in love is a relatively close second. what can I say I'm a versatile person

Shortest Work of the Year: one love story. I haven't finished it though. I want to do a coffeeshop (cafshop?) au and some other deeply cheesy 2010s fanfic au concept in it still

Fav character to Write: embarrassing (true) answer. eedy. because all im doing is writing crack so I really don't have to care that much about ensuring she has a coherent characterisation going on lol. the serious (false) answer would be padme though, I just really love her so even though I agonise about how to write her, I still have fun

Which work of yours have you re-read the most: girl and ghost because it is actually good.

Total Kudos this Year: boring

Total Hits This Year: also boring

Total Bookmarks This Year: see above

Total Subscriptions This Year: ditto

What Do You Listen To While Writing: either silence or like exclusively sofia isella songs? I don't even like them that much I cannot explain it, 'everybody supports women', 'I looked the future in the eyes, it's mine', and 'all of human knowledge made us dumb' all just. have writing vibes I really cannot explain it

Fav line or passage: oh god. evil question. uhhh can I choose two? nobody is stopping me

from girl and ghost: "She had realised that they were doomed one unremarkable afternoon in the gallery when Vel tipped back her head and laughed, golden girl awash in sparkling glass crystals. In the bright white light the tips of her eyelashes had shone like burnished copper bringing out the blue of her eyes, like some delicate artefact Kleya would handle white-gloved, carefully removed from touching it - for its own sake." (this was one of the first things I wrote for this. I really like it, even though the great gatsby influence is obvious...) from providence, in summer: "In her mind, she dismounted from the guarlara and walked out alone into the grass, blades brushing her shoulders, tangling in her hair until they pulled it out of the tight nautilus shells and carried her feathered headdress down to the ground. They pulled out the ribbons in her hair, brushed away her makeup, tore down the regalia of the queen and left the girl behind to walk on forwards deeper into the grass sea and its whispered susurrus-song; a land baptism between the sky and the sea in the art of emptiness, of hollowing out the self and allowing Naboo to reform her. The pale moons, veiled by day, bore witness as she walked alone and unafraid through the ocean, her path her own. Above her, the hawk followed, thermal currents carrying it smoothly along with her. Morning dew that had not yet evaporated beaded on her bare feet and the air was alive with the ancient song of the wind and the high chirp of crickets and calls of birds. The hawk cried, and Padmé woke from her dream." (I will stand by this: a good amount of providence is genuinely my best writing. it's the sort of somewhat self-indulgent prose I really love, and think fits a padme pov story.)

I. I have not read very much fic this year I have to be honest. I don't read for fun at all during term time, and I've been writing more this year, so I don't know whose done what or tumblr usernames, so I fear I must be boring and double tag @wlwanakin and @midnight-melancholiaaa

[butchdykeorpheus]

sorry i'm thinking about arcane s2 again and. like the way i feel about arcane s2??? is kinda strange because at the end of the day, when i think back to my actual experience of watching the thing, episode by episode. i still enjoyed it!! like it was a fun time to watch!! i would still generally recommend it in a way as a watching experience and would probably have fun rewatching it myself. because a cartoon isn't JUST its overall writing, it's also its scene-by-scene writing and its moment-to-moment character moments and its art direction and its animation and its music and its voice acting. and for the most part those things were still, like, generally enjoyable for me. but it's when you actually stop for a second to think about the Big Picture plot, writing and messaging of s2 that it collapses under itself

on a purely scene-by-scene basis, i'd even argue that the writing was often good?? even great at points???? (barring a few particular scenes but i don't have time to complain about jinx's "heroic sacrifice" rn) there were So Many Good Scenes with interesting and compelling character moments that imo were truly great to experience. the main issue being that when you step back from them to consider the broader context of the season, most of them feel like excerpts from a more complete and coherent cartoon and that someone edited out or montage-ified a lot of the connective tissue. the scene where jinx releases all those zaunite political prisoners from jail and sees firsthand the ways that she CAN help others and inspire hope still gives me chills to think about, it's a great scene, but when you step back a bit it so strongly feels like it was orphaned from a broader storyline about jinx becoming a true, active leader of the zaunite revolution that in reality doesn't exist. i know "this shit should have had at least one more season for all these plotlines to work" is a normie take by now but This Shit Should Have Had At Least One More Season For All These Plotlines To Work because it feels like so many scenes, moments, and interactions are just missing, and the result was a rushed story, lack of breathing room for quiet, reflective moments for characters to digest the material and emotional consequences of these events, and entire plotlines being truncated, abandoned, or crudely mashed together into a narratively and/or thematically and/or politically baffling mess

from where i'm standing the difference between arcane s1 and s2 is the difference between a complete, solidly built, fully functional house vs. a bunch of very nice, high-quality lumber propped up against each other in the rough shape of a house. like. the MATERIALS sure are good. i can admire the quality of the wood. but one swift kick and It's Gone