#you can dislike her and her actions but have some common sense

[kideaternomnom]

Azula antis: She’s pure evil.

Me: ...Well, Zuko changed so why can’t she get a chance?

Antis: Uh- she was born evil! She had no empathy!

Me: My guy, she was raised by literal Ozai and was neglected by her mom along with Iroh. Zuko could’ve been the same and so could’ve ANYONE. That was the whole point of that one episode showing Roku’s backstory. She’s also still only 14 in the finale and 16 in the comics.

Antis: Erm- uh...She rejected redemption! Yeah- she’s pure evil for that!

Me: Zuko rejected redemption in season 2. But he still changed.

Antis:

[hero-next-door]

Defending Nathan Prescott

(From Every Accusation)

All fact proven & common sense theory

No bullshit.

I suck at grammar. Deal with it.

I've replayed the game far too many times to gather this. I read into everything and even read into and WATCHED people who have suffered the same mental illness and situations Nathan has been in.

What I'll be covering:

Illness, rib breaking, dead animals, bdsm, Chloes pic, Rachel, gun on campus, Kate, Pompidou, Jefferson, wealth and his father.

And dont even THINK about skipping ahead!

Everything here is tied into one another. Read from start to finish. You're on this post to understand, right? Or to argue? Im not here to argue so, bye.

Lets start from the top...

Nathans downfall was caused by society and all who failed him. He's driven by hatred of others who don't understand him, and the game purposly wrote him off that way. They want players to hate him from what sides of the stories we've experienced. They gave this character controversial hobbies and a cynical bully attitude to really keep you suspecting him and not guessing Jefferson. The game isn't about Nathan. It's about Max. We learn so much about Max and everyone close to her. The tears they shed, the pains they've endorsed. Same with Chloe and Rachel's story. My heart goes out to all of them. We don't get to see that with other characters. Therefore, we don't care for them...or that's the games' intentions. We don't know the ins and outs of Nathan. Only what the game shows us, which are all negative. So, of course, disliking Nathan is only reasonable.

Mental Illness

We start with mental illness. He has Psychosis. Lots of proof, but i'm assuming you've seen it all already. Like, do people know what Psychosis is? Do they REALLY know what it is? Because this ALONE changes everything. And not Psychopathy ..Psychosis. Two different things, pookie. Psychopathy is the one where part of the brain is missing or disturbed. THEY'RE the ones that don't have empathy. Psychosis is different. Anybody can get it. This illness can take your empathy and awareness away, then bring it all back after the harm is done, leaving you to process that. Schizo and Bipolar are also all quite a handful to deal with too. Loud Noises/downgrading voices in your head SO LOUD that people will do anything to calm them. (Dont be shy, youtube: "28- Psychotic Episode" by Collège d'Alma) The feeling of loosing your mind is something I notice a lot of haters dont empathize on especially if they killed or hurt sombody. The brain slips into a state so disconnected that interviews with recovering patients I've seen describe it as confusing and scary and dont recall saying the stories they told and actions they did others. Imagine not being able to remember the hurtful things you've said and done. Imagine being told you killed somebody... with your own hands? And you can hardly remember what happened. Like... how would you react? Think about it. Anybody can get psychosis with enough trauma or a kick in the noggin. Some people who were interviewed that had psychosis said that they found relief when getting high or drunk. Little did they know the symptoms could bounce back up to 5x during withdrawal. But they were so desperate to get rid of the voices that they abused the drugs. Like....wow the game really did their research to create such a complicated character. Anyway, moving on.

Edit: After further research, he certainly had bipolar disorder first. Then it went left untreated, therefore sunk him to worse mental state of many other illnesses. Drugs only made things much, much worse. Bipolar disorder can cause schizo and schizo to lead to psychosis. 🙄Jesus Nathan quit hogging all the illnesses.

Now, let's break down everything else...

Shooting Chloe

Just rewatch it. Aims gun, Chloe pushes him, it tightens grip, ACCIDENTLY shoots her, immediately drops gun and gets really scared of he's done, checking to see if she's alive! If you specifically rewatch the ending of Lis1 when Chloe gets shot, they extend his reaction. He goes back and forth, checking her body. If he wanted to kill her, you check pulse and then run. Not sticking around crying about it. There's your empathy you're all saying he doesn't have. Other times where he could have shown more empathy ties with his Psychosis. Some people with the illness said that the voices loudly in their head will convince them that everyone around you is your enemy. Everyone is after you. It can twist your brain to feel anger and fear towards others. Nathan is always hung up on how everyone is using him and trying to control him. Which people ..DO use him. So now he's convinced that everyone is. He's not choosing to feel this way. He just needs psychiatric help.

Breaking Ribs

In Before The Storm, his entire demeanor is completely different than the Lis 1. He's more cowardly and not loud and aggressive. We'll be mentioning his creepy "pervy" binder later. Nathan isn't violent until the end IF you let Nathan get bullied and push his life in a negative direction. Sure, it's not Chloe's responsibility, but this is the game's way of showing you his downfall. We need to remember the game hides scenes and expect you to make up what happened behind the scenes. He broke Samantha's ribs over ..what? She's always so desperate to defend Nathan and even gets upset with Chloe when she doesn't help. So, if you tell her the wrong option to pressure kindness into Nathan, it results in him breaking ribs. How, though? Haters immediately hop online to say cause he's a mean and abusive non-empathic nut head. Are you sure he didn't just push her away, and her clumsiness just fell over? This took place after the play...so he possibly...pushed her off... 😰 She did say she was clumsy. You don't think she would have tried to hug or touch him in any way. Ok ok...calm down... Let's take a step back.. You get this "breaking ribs," ending from letting Nathan get bullied and embarrass himself during the play that his father pressured him about! Adding a little "..fuck you.." to the audience. Showing his start to his villain career and the start of him hating everyone, and you tell Samantha to go hug him!? This is the start of his mental spiral if you let things play out this way. But hurting her with intention? No. Lets tie this in with the other endings to their relationship. You get the clumsy ending. She hurts herself differently, and Nathan is with her in the hospital. Saying how he feels bad that she got hurt. (empathy bell) And they continue yo talk about her photo or whatever. Tie this with the rib one, tie this with the Chloe getting shot incident, and tie this with his mental illness. Come on, do i gotta spell it out for you.. Hurting someone is not what he attends to do. Like he quotes in his voice mail. (Speaking of that voice mail, empathy bell.) He does get angry at Samantha and hurts her, and we as players dont know the full story. But what was playing in his head seconds before and the entirety of the game that led up to this IS the reason why he accidentally hurts her. His anger from the entire game was built up and, unfortunately, released on her. Whatever happened, breaking her ribs was not on his to-do list! And then we have.. The good ending. He sits beside her, smiling.

Oh, wait! He's a little psycho with no human emotion? Psychosis has all parts of the brain attached, pookie. For most cases, It can be cured and helped. I can get it. YOU can get it. He has human emotions when he is at his very rare peaceful moments like with this good ending, when with Victoria ig and other scenes we tend to forget. Because painting him as the villain was the games goal. Jefferson was the plot twist.

Daddy Issues, Smug Talk, and a Gun on campus

Simple guys. Simple. You represent this school. You represent our name. This is a legacy. You will not embarrass me. This isn't about you or your problems!

Sure, YOU wouldn't crumble under that pressure, but Nathan sure did. Sure, child abuse isn't an excuse to "kill" people. But is it the child's fault? Sean-beanbag prescott should be arrested for not taking his boy to the asylum. Instead, he argues with a doctor!? Goofy, bro. But so many people are fueled with anger towards Nathan instead. It's whatever. Prescott, literally being his name, was already a red flag to other characters and chose to hate and bully him over it. Drew hated for what his FATHER did. Nathan did ..what again? Notice how that "rich Malfoy talk" wasn't really present in Before The Storm. Sure he tried to burn Drew with a family financial situation insult but the "Im rich, my father owns everything, I got a lawyer, money this and that" wasn't in his character in the Before the Storm. I believe being a prescott wasn't really in his future goals, and he wasn't ever really passionate about it. It's all in the annoyance in his tone with his father before the play. Lis1 he uses it so often to show that he's the boss and in control. He is influenced by representation for his family/school, wealth, intimidation, and of course hatred and believing everyone hates him. In his mind, everyone is against him, after him, and wants to use him. Again, he doesn't choose to think this way. Let me explain my last sentence clearly, though. Imagine being surrounded by a ton of people. All their attention is on you. They hate who you are. They talk about you. You have a defensless stomach sinking feeling and scared because all these people surrounding you are looking at you and all your insecurities and laughing at you. Well, obviouslysome of that is not going on in reality. But to Nathan, that IS his reality, and he has no control over it. Anyways I shouldn't have to keep explaining mental illness and how it stresses the brain. The bottom line is that his status and waving a gun around is what he thinks keep others out of his head. He can barely throw a punch. He had to use his head on warren, and did you catch when Max hit him in that scene? The dude was literally holding onto his face like he'd been battered. Like she did NOT hit that hard lmao. He's weak. He's always been the same tiny Nathan from before the storm. Just now, he uses masks for intimidation to stop his bullies, and anyone he thinks is "after him." He never meant to use a gun on anybody, just a threat. During the second scene where warren reunited a head butt with Nathan.. If you pull off warren, he barely even aims the gun when he runs away towards his room. Cowardly. He feels that he has to, to protect himself. He also uses his father as a threat, but clearly, that never worked. Also, I noticed him crying when you let Warren get crazy on him? Dudes apologizing and sobing? Guess that's not his first rodeo, rip.

Dead Animals

There is no proof he hurt animals. That's not really like him. He does have a list of illnesses, but Psychopathy isn't one of them. Y'all can keep yappin, but it's not. Clearly NOT one of them. He could have hurt an animal during an unaware episode, but there will not be any awareness behind it. Anyways, there are plenty of artists that do the same thing. Nathan is very passionate about photography and protraying solitary but not in the same way Jefferson does. Jefferson certainly uses that manipulation, but we'll get to that later. There are artists that like to shine on death in a positive light and in sorrow. There's also beauty in anatomy. It's not my cup of tea, but someone close to me can name me all kinds of gross organs and would be down to disect any animal. Yuck. But to them.. its fascinating, and they are the greatest people in my life. In love and in empathy. (NOT comparing my pookie to Nathan, PAUSE.) In anatomy theres Education and surprise. Death is also a theme and style too. Skulls and gore, super "rad" fukin "knarly."

BDSM Skip to (●) next part if needed

Ok.. so he's a little frisky. Y'all need to remember this is a fictional game first, okay? Lol Anyway, I can't defend him much here, but I got something. Firstly, the game WANTS you to suspect Nathan. Can't keep his room pretty and pink. They have to make it freaky and spooky. They paint Nathan as the villian for you to only focus on him as a suspect. So that everyones jaws are dropped with Jefferson twirls in.

Anyway...defending BDSM? This can bring trauma to those who have experienced it negatively or view it negatively. So skip to the Frank defense or read more if you want.

Bdsm relationships are very controversial. Some people see it as unhealthy, abusive, and sick. But if you have talked to or listened to other people within these relationships, they state that its completely consensual, safe, harmless, a breach of deep trust with their partners, and simply a fetish or kink The goal is to have fun at your limit..not pass the limit. There are twisted people who have broken that barrier and made it not fun and abusive. That's where I can't argue. If you feel that way towards the topic, I completely empathize with you.

Nathan has shown in his other photos a black and white theme of solitary. And you can tell that he might have taken those bdsm photos himself. As the quality is almost like the Pompidou photo. Everyone blends him taking bdsm photos with his angry behavior and "non empathic" demeanor. But this is where I loop back to Before The Storm hugging-my-binder Nathan. It's shown that in one of his endings, he took photos of Samantha. Obviously, NOT bdsm photos. His binder was a school project. But Samantha obviously consented, and Nathan was passionate enough to show her. He sees them as art. Naked girls have been models for sculptures and paintings. Its beauty. That's IF she was naked in some way in those photos. Which I still doubt. School project. Im sure the photos were gentle and strange and misunderstood, and Drew was just in his bully era. His reaction would have been a lot more eye-opening if he had a face full of tits or straps. Nathan begged for his binder back and even nervously reacted, showing he had love for his work and 'took time with it' (as he quotes when Drew throws it). I bring this up here to show that the women in his photos were indeed given consent, and if hes passionate about depicting his art, hurting them wouldn't be on his agenda. As we all learned today that hurting people was never his intentions until drugs and illness met with pressure and intimidation clouds his brain.

I read up on other artists that painted things similar. In their paintings, they expressed dread, vulnerability, feeling traped, and ..feeling used. If Nathan did find the images he took arousing, then why would he hang them up like everything else in his room like art? I believe that they're depicted in an artful way and in its black and white shading brings a sad darkness. If it's anything like the painters I mentioned, maybe Nathan has a deep level of empathy we don't understand.

●Frank and Pompidou

I didn't even know he took a picture of Franks hurt dog in the road because you little freaks threw his treat in the street!? This will also tie in to chloes pic, but we'll get to that. Frank first, as it's pretty simple. Nathan runs some system with Frank. And it's pretty obvious it's the same thing Drew was doing in Before the Storm. Nathan clearly doesn't like it as he finds it controlling, but getting his hands on drugs is a great way to forget his flaws and calm his illness symptoms. Which only created a loop of his symptoms worsening, as talked about before. His illness is very active towards the end of Before the Storm. You can tell by his huge character difference that drugs only made it worse.

Pompidou is a good dog, but just remember he's not the one who hurt him. This ties in with what we explained in the dead animal phase. The Imagine is black and white. It's a strange art most people don't understand. Man, I don't even understand it. But these people aren't heartless, and they're simply expressing pain. Or.. he took it for the same reason he took Chloes pic. To feel that he's in control, thinking this will help his mental reality of thinking everyone can use him, as explained earlier. But i doubt it. One is in color, and Pompidou is not. One is misguided, and one is "art."

Jefferson, Rachel, Kate, Chloes pic

If i see one more person throw him in the same trash bin as Jefferson, im going to puke. Anyway, I've twisted my head around this story so many times, begging to see the bigger picture. No pun attended. Jefferson was pulling the strings all along ..you know that, right? If Nathan was never there, Jefferson would have still done his disgusting projects. He certainly brought Victoria over without Nathan's usage. He didn't need Nathan, Nathan just made it easier cause he can easily be manipulated. Making Nathan do it all so the consequences will fall on him. Jefferson is smart and knows the right words to say. Nathan is missing the kindness of a father figure. All he has to do is play with his feelings. Nathan falls too easily to kindness. He felt the kindness of Samantha during the good ending, and He felt the kindness from Victoria.. but Victoria toxic bully nature wasn't helping. The bottom line is Jefferson easily manipulates him and understands his mental reality and uses that against him. Adding thoughts into Nathans head. Jefferson learned to use Nathan's illness to his advantage. Nathan trusted Jefferson as did everyone in that school. Why on earth would Jefferson wrong him? He looked up to him, so when Jefferson slowly brought him into his plans of drugging girls, Nathan thought that it was all ..moral. In reality, you and I know obviously that's not okay, but to Nathan (and his severe illness), he trusted Jefferson was doing no wrong. We don't understand the mental strain he was under. Manipulation goes a long way. Heres how he did it. He probably said things like 'We are the same Nathan, this is art just like yours.' It starts small, Nathan gets him the drugs. Then he pulls him in, and Nathan starts drugging the girls for me. Start driving them here. Start helping me inside the dark room. Start helping me inject my victims. Jefferson had so much power over him. He was connected with his father. He can threaten his grade, his representation, and his future in art. He knew all the right things to say and do. He knew how his head worked. Clog him up with drugs, and keep him quiet. Heal his missing father needs and demand him for your needs. Does this not make Nathan a victim, too?

Then ...the Rachel incident happened. Nathan was NOT mentally aware of what he's done. The excited "Rachel!" When he saw Max at the diner clearly shows that he truly expected her to pull up. This mixes with the symptoms we've discussed. He only remembers bits and pieces as obviously it was beyond traumatizing. Sending him in an insane spiral and the infamous psychosis drawing. (Don't be afraid, google psychosis drawings. Damn. Just imagine you recovered from psychosis and laying eyes on that and not remembering you drew that..ugh...I'd cry.) Someone with Psychopathy wouldnt feel traumatized from such events, debunking the fact everyone thinks Nathan has Psychopathy. He doesn't have Psychopathy, he has psychosis. Moving on. Jefferson was certainly angry with him and drugged Nathan himself after the incident, which really helped Nathan to forget what he's done. But Jefferson's anger and not talking to him tore him apart. His emotional attachment clearly wasn't having it. The note he wrote Jefferson in desperate attempt to bring him back after ruining Jefferson plans goes to show just how much he wants that sense of being cared for. If only it was someone else that wasnt Jefferson ..or his dad can do is fucking job too.

Alcohol was certainly a great method of forgetting what he did. So then comes Chloes' interaction with him. We know the story. He did not SA her, I can say that right here and now. Nothing like that was behind this. You can tell by the way Chloe presented the story to Max. There wasn't an uncomfortable tone to her story. She didn't seem traumatized but more shocked, and "it was pretty crazy." She also wasn't drugged for that long. She woke up very soon, fully clothed. What obviously happened is that Nathan used this to feel in control like the mentioned way above. Drugs and Psychosis is no jokes. Who knows what hell is playing in his mind, but I unfortunately believe that this was to try to win back Jefferson. He had been angry at him and ignoring him, and even tho he hates drugging, his confusion and drunk state led him to this. He's cowardly, and his mind is slipping and tries to do what he thinks is right for him. He's misguided and leads down the wrong path.

Nathan did not SA Kate! Kate story breaks my heart into a million pieces, but if she was SA-ed, it wasn't Nathan. After everything I said above, you can tell that that isn't in his character. But here I want to bring up the voicemail. Nathan claims multiple times that he never wanted to hurt anybody, implying that he felt forced to do harm. Something he DID NOT want to do. Why on earth would anybody have felt forced to SA somebody!? I'm not saying Kate WASN'T SA-ed as I can only assume maybe the boys she was shown with in the video did something or Jefferson. Victoria was Kates bully!!! Nathan wanted to be liked by Victoria and was influenced by her nature. He's desperate for attention and kindness. Victoria did far more to hurt Kate and her reason as to why was shit. You go THAT FAR to one up your photography game. Girl, bye. She spread that video, and she still has empathy, too? Her regretting everything? Did she reallyy regret it? Or did she want to make herself look good for her representation? She showed regret via text message in Before The Storm, too? She doesn't have a mental illness, but the game gave her an act of forgiveness and used her as a victim so the audience would sympathize with her. Goes to show you the game controls what they want you to feel. If they were to do that with Nathan..would opinons be different? Taking us into his mind and how he sees the world around him. They could have..but didnt. Well.. We have the voicemail, but obviously, that didn't stop the haters. It's unfortunate. But the game gave me just enough little clues for me to shine light on in this post. They put so much into his character but never showed the audience the truth.

Conclusion

What we've learned today is that Nathan isn't the villain you think. He's been manipulated, used, and needs mental help, but im sure my old Nathan-defending friends have said this time and time again. Im here to add something....

It's been PROVEN that he's capable of all human emotions. You just refuse to believe it because you're mistaking his illness and claiming all of this was intentional. Psychosis can be temporary. It's like a hand that steals your common sense, feelings, empathy, and sympathy, and you're only left with acting on pure chaos and negative or fearful emotions. After long treatment, your sense of reality returns, your feelings, your empathy, your sympathy.. And all you have now is guilt and regret and self blame that you hurt somebody. If you let Nathan kill Chloe, he is arrested. He had doctors aware of his illness and would have been charged with illness in mind. Forcing the treatment he needed ages ago. By the time Lis 2 came out... I wonder how he's taking it all in? What he did to everyone, what he did to Rachel.

He was written off to die, be locked up, and blamed. Unfortunately, he was caught in the crossfires of the harm of our favorite characters. If he was born in a different family and away from Jeff, he would have never hurt anybody. Matter a fact, he would never have suffered with his listed mental illnesses.

This goes out to all real accidental murder cases. There will always be a great divide in opinions. I hate comparing fictional games with real life, but I find it crazy that we call others nonempathtic when they aren't empathic themselves. It's like the word "accidental" is worthless.

Its always a debate..

Do we feel bad for the lives lost and their families

or

Do we feel bad for the mental crumble of the one who never meant to kill and how their familes have to deal with that.

Are they worthy to walk this earth? Are they worthy to see the daylight again? Are they still human, too? Should they die, too? Is redemption possible?

Who knows. Peoples opinions won't change unless they themselves fall onto the opposing team. If they were to suffer the chaos of accidentally murdering someone or the grief of losing someone from an accidental murder.

Red Nathan, the first Nathan we all experienced from Lis1. Damaged and doomed. Used and mentally obstructed. It's unfortunate things ended this way.

Blue Nathan, Appears in Before the slStorm and Max's alternate timeline. He is clean and hasn't touched drugs. He had not been involved in crimes or violence yet. In this alternate timeline, he has been somehow saved and kept away from mental destruction and Jefferson. We will never really know what drove Nathan towards this peaceful path, but I assumed that it was the kindness of Max that led him in the right direction. (Max somehow changed Victoria, too. With her demeanor being so gentle. I really am curious about the whole back story of that timeline... I think about it alot)

[bestworstcase]

Your post re: Salem's attitudes towards magic got me thinking about "Why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans, when we can replace them with what they could never be?" from Lost Fable again. I'm finding it a little difficult to blame people for believing she thinks the current crop of humans are just inferior when the only subject on offer in that sentence is "these humans." Of course when you stop to think for two seconds why Salem says or does anything she does it makes total sense that her hangup is with the gods, but that just makes me wonder even more why write the script like that? How unreliable is the direct dialogue in Jinn's vision supposed to be taken vs. her narration? (The simplest read of that episode seems to be of course the narration is biased per the question asked, but otherwise it's a frame narrative for the flashbacks which may or may not be more objective portrayals of events. The fact that the characters are also physically witnessing these scenes means they can't be 100% objective I think, but still leaves open the question of what's skewed and by how much.)

Unreliable or not, it's just a surprisingly absolute statement to put in her mouth considering how often we're invited to question her motivations everywhere else.

i do take the dialogue in the lost fable to be accurate to what the characters said, perhaps with some smudginess if what we’re seeing is ozpin’s memories exactly – in which case the dialogue in scenes he wasn’t present for is suspect because it’s what he imagines was said based on what salem told him, and the rest is probably closely accurate paraphrase because no one could be expected to remember the exact wording of conversations from several thousand years ago! but even then i would expect the parts he was there for to be reliable enough. 

so much rides on the lost fable and specifically this one line that it would be beyond cheap for the resolution to be “she didn’t say that at all, actually.”

the first time i watched the lost fable, i did intuitively interpret that line as salem alluding to the gods – so i think there’s probably some degree of her statement reading as ambiguous or not ambiguous depending upon how one habitually uses the word “redeem.” specifically: how precise one is about the verb requiring an indirect object. 

to ‘redeem’ something means to take some action to settle a debt, or redress a wrongdoing, which—inherently—implies the presence of a creditor or wronged party. in some contexts, the implied creditor is only an abstraction (think “the city’s robust public transportation is its only redeeming quality”—redemption is used here in a figurative sense to mean that the one making the statement dislikes everything but the city’s transit system); and in casual speech it’s fairly common to leave off the indirect object if it isn’t necessary to identify the wronged party (think the common phrasing of “so-and-so redeems themself”).

but while it isn’t incorrect to drop the indirect object, necessarily, there always is an indirect object; it isn’t possible to redeem a debt or a wrong that doesn’t exist, nor to have a debt without a creditor or a wrong without someone wronged. (as an aside, this is why redemption arc discourse tends to always be arguments about forgiveness—redemption does, inherently, definitionally, necessitate forgiveness—and this is also why i’m pedantic about differentiating ‘redemption arc’ vs ‘atonement arc’ vs ‘villain-to-hero arc’ and dislike the popular usage of redemption arc as an umbrella term.)

anyway, in simpler terms: when salem says “redeem these humans,” the apparent meaning of the next clause depends on whether or not one is predisposed to hear that phrase as a clipping and mentally append the implied indirect object, which makes her complete statement “why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans [from my sin in the eyes of the gods] when we could replace them with what they could never be?”

<- and then the question becomes, which “them” is she referring to? “these humans” or the gods who will judge whether redemption has been earned? her elision of the gods is entirely within the realm of common vernacular, and salem is a character who regularly circumlocutes (and earlier in the lost fable itself we have ozma’s quizzical “what are you saying?” signaling that salem’s speech is cryptic or confusing – because ozma doesn’t understand her; this is an intended trait versus the writers fumbling), and she says this in a moment of emotional distress (which she mostly bottles up, but while ozma is explaining all of this to her she’s leaning on the desk with her arms folded, listening intently – this is the same posture she has when she’s huddled in the shadows making herself miserable with conjurations of her children in 8.4).

so there’s quite a bit of weight here on the side of, “salem just discovered that her partner has been manipulating her into serving the gods she abhors throughout their entire relationship, she’s deeply shaken, she isn’t awesome at clearly articulating her thoughts in general; is it really surprising that she might misspeak to the tune of saying ‘them’ in reference to an (elided but necessarily implied) antecedent of ‘the gods’”

it (clearly) isn’t going to occur to most viewers as an obvious interpretation of the line, but i think it’s well within the bounds of what is reasonable for the narrative to later reveal that salem really meant this, particularly given how deliberate and how clear the storytelling themes are. definitely a risk, because some section of the audience is undoubtedly going to feel lied to and cry retcon, but rwby takes creative risks all the time.

and then there’s the ‘fairyales of remnant’ piece of it – the anthology is very much in dialogue with the lost fable across the board (on this see also ‘the two brothers’ presaging the thematic treatment of the brothers in v9, and ozpin’s paired commentaries on ‘the infinite man’ + ‘the girl in the tower’ being discussions of truth, propaganda, and forgiveness). so why does ‘the shallow sea’ begin like this:

Long ago, before the fish had scales, before the birds had feathers, and before the turtles had shells, when our god still walked and crawled and slithered the earth, there were only Humans and animals. (And Grimm. There have always been Grimm. There will always be Grimm. But those creatures don’t figure in this story, so just put them out of your mind, if you can.)

and end like this, after a story about the god of animals leading their chosen people to transform by submersion in magical waters, to the horror of those humans who refuse to change: 

From that moment on, there have been animals, Humans, and Faunus. And the descendants of the Humans who turned away from our god’s great gift have always carried envy in their hearts. To this day, they resent us for reminding them of what they are not and what they never can be.

humans and animals (and grimm) -> animals and humans and faunus, and the last line – the mythic explanation for human hatred of faunus – is a nearly direct repetition of the last thing salem says in the lost fable?

now obviously not everyone can be expected to read ancillary material like the fairytale anthology, and that’s why the shell game with the implied indirect object matters; but it is interesting that ‘the shallow sea’ is stated to be a very old oral tradition (one which “contains deep truths,” no less) and that it repeats that line in a context that is quite plainly not about genocide – but rather cultural pride in the face of intense, often violent, persecution. 

this story also 1. explicitly belongs to a closed tradition, and 2. is (obviously) one ozma knows despite there being no indication that he’s ever reincarnated as a faunus. which – together with the story’s age – adds up to at least the implication that it is possible he heard this story from salem, because the reasons she might be conversant in ancient faunus oral traditions are. well. obvious. 

…and if that’s so, then ‘the shallow sea’ as written in the fairytale anthology completely recontextualizes salem’s last statement in the lost fable as salem quoting from a faunus creation myth both she and ozma knew in order to express her rejection of the brothers’ mandate, which would 1. neatly explain why ozma seems to have understood exactly what she meant even though none of the lost fable witnesses picked up on it, and 2. provide an elegant and very simple opportunity to ease the general audience into this revelation by having a character in vacuo retell this myth, using that same closing line. you don’t even need to mention salem directly – the turn of phrase is memorable enough that a lot of viewers will go “…why does that sound eerily familiar” and that plants a seed for later. (or if you’re going for more of a sudden record scratch moment, salem is the one declaiming.)

from a character standpoint, it also makes a lot of sense for salem to respond to ozma in this way – his liking for stories is, one presumes, not a new thing that developed after the ozlem kingdom’s collapsed, and he also clearly isn’t just cynically using fairytales to deceive and manipulate – else he wouldn’t have apologized to the kids by referencing ‘the girl who fell through the world’ and comparing himself to alyx. stories are just important to him and part of how he communicates.

so if salem heard everything his god told him and then said “no, none of that matters, why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans when we could [paraphrases the conclusion of a story where the hateful envious people who refuse to change are simply sent home and not allowed to live in the harsh but free new world with the people who chose to embrace change]” – she made an effort to say what she meant in his language, and what she meant was either 1. figuratively associating the brothers with the envious humans who were sent home and “these humans” with the faunus who were now free to determine their own fates, or 2. “okay yeah these humans aren’t great, have you considered more faunus as a solution” (<- this would be extremely funny if it turns out the shallow sea is a more literal story than i think it is, but i think it’s much less likely).

more broadly, to the question of why the line is written that way – i can only speculate based on what i would be thinking in the writer’s shoes, and the overall structure of the narrative around salem – but i imagine the absoluteness is sort of the point. it’s meant to be a really shocking and frightening thing to hear coming out of her mouth, while also being, if you pause to think very precisely about what she said, quite plausible as a verbal stumble – the alternative antecedent of “the gods” for “them” is implied and eliding the indirect object of “redeem” is common vernacular – and then there’s this other possibility hinted in an ancillary text that she might have actually been quoting a story as a verbal shorthand both she and ozma understood. 

there’s a narrative expectation that the viewer will be right there with the kids making the same snap judgment about what salem meant – because i think the kids all absolutely did take this at face value as a statement of genocidal intent. the story itself is structured like a nesting doll such that each new revelation appears at a glance to be the whole story, but isn’t and in fact has large gaps and details that don’t add up which become glaringly obvious as soon as you reach the next layer and look back, but if you’re paying careful attention as you go it’s also quite possible to piece together the missing pieces. 

delivering information this way trains the audience (…mostly) to expect that the information we’re given is incomplete and maybe not wholly accurate. the advantage here is that even if the vast majority of the audience is completely blindsided by a specific reveal, for most viewers that’s going to feel really exciting – this happened in v9 with the lore reveals about the brothers, massive overnight reversal in the mainstream fandom views of darkness with the general mood being that it was cool – as opposed to feeling tricked or lied to by a “retcon.”

and that builds up a certain kind of trust, that the story is a puzzle but it isn’t going to cheat. it’s also a bit of a challenge or an invitation for the audience to try to figure out what’s coming, like a mystery.

with salem, i’d bet that one line in the lost fable is supposed to seem weirder and weirder the more you think about it, because… why doesn’t it track with anything she says before that point in the lost fable? why does the story begin with salem waxing poetic about humanity’s virtues? why does the narrative make such a big deal out of nobody knowing what salem wants AFTER the main characters witnessed a seemingly open-and-shut declaration of her “true” intention?

at the same time, the amount of explanation required to argue for an alternate interpretation – even if it’s really not complex or a reach – compared to the ease of just taking the statement exactly at face value, in and of itself is both a misdirection (most of the audience will take the path of least resistance, and hopefully enjoy the journey the story takes them on while leading them to the eventual right answer) and sort of the thesis with respect to the storytelling themes. salem thinks coolsville sucks!

but i am also very willing to consider (because of my own intuitive reaction to the line) that the writers perhaps did not mean for it to seem quite as unambiguous as the general audience and most of the fandom ended up taking it, because if you’re spending a lot of time immersed in a specifically theological context regarding redemption (which the writers probably would’ve been, given the importance of the religious narrative in the lost fable and in relation to this line in particular) – and if you’re also in the habit of being very precise and careful about how you phrase things (which is true of how rwby is written in general) – and if you’re writing what might be the most critical episode in a complicated puzzle box story, whose fulcrum is a red herring that is also meant to provide a clue to anyone who thinks to look at it more closely and with an open mind — then yeah i can see a scenario where the writers may have felt that the specific wording of salem’s statement was more ambiguous than it actually is. in which case the echo in ‘the shallow sea’ might have been a bit of an effort to correct course by giving the subset of fans invested enough to read the fairytales (<- the cohort most likely to be keen to unravel the puzzle) an additional hint. who knows.

[yuseirra]

ONK theories: how the ryosuke incident played out & the character's motives/about how the manga will go

ONK SPOILERS CH 155 and beyond:

To get straight to the point, I've correctly guessed all the key elements of the latest chapters of this manga. I'm quite confident in my abilities, so keep making posts about onk... I should stop.. I'm nervous talking about work that's still in progress but well!!! When will I be able to do this again!!

Although I'm usually terrible at solving mysteries and just watch while going "Oh~ Oh~," this manga is more about emotional analysis than deduction, so I've been able to guess a lot of the major points correctly.

Here's what I've guessed right:

Aqua has romantic feelings for Kana.

Ai liked Kamiki quite a lot and was considering him in her future plans.

Kamiki wanted to take responsibility for the children, but Ai hid and disappeared to protect him and avoid burdening him.

This process likely occurred unilaterally without Kamiki knowing about Ai's feelings and circumstances.

I got all of this right. There are some minor differences in the details. Ai didn't just like him quite a lot, she loved him deeply and informed him about the pregnancy (though she said it would be difficult to keep the baby), and they broke up after that.

Having guessed these things consecutively, I have a good sense of what these characters' personalities are like and what actions they'll take, so I'm motivated and have been continuously writing about it. I'm quite confident in this area.

Previously, I wrote a post about something odd during the dome performance celebration incident, but I didn't consider Nino at that time. Even then, I felt that Kamiki didn't seem like the culprit.

Please read that post first, as I plan to continue writing from there. I'll put the rest in the read more for viewers who scroll past!:

In that post, I focused on three possible scenarios.

It’s true that Kamiki leaked the address to Ryosuke. That isn’t a lie, and that character probably believes he is responsible for Ai’s death because of it. So, with that as the baseline, I came up with three possibilities:

If Kamiki and Ryosuke weren’t acquaintances from the start

If they were acquaintances and went to the hospital for Ai’s delivery with a common purpose

If they each had different purposes but met near the hospital on Ai’s delivery day and became acquaintances then.

Except for the first case, the assumption was that the "middle school boy" near the hospital on Ai’s delivery day was Kamiki. However, with Nino entering the picture, I started to think it might have been Nino who was near the hospital.

Therefore, I think it’s most likely that Kamiki is case 1.

There are reasons why it isn't case 2, which you can see if you read the post. Even if it were case 3, I concluded that Kamiki likely had no intention to harm Ai.

So, why do I think it’s most likely that Ryosuke and Kamiki weren’t acquaintances?

If Ryosuke, Nino, and Kamiki are connected in some way,

the one most likely to be acquainted with Ryosuke is Nino.

Ryosuke is a big fan of B-Komachi and Ai and even personally handed over stardust sand at a handshake event. If Ai remembered him as a fan, he must have been either extremely enthusiastic in his activities or conspicuous in some other way. Given Nino’s interest in and jealousy of Ai, it’s highly likely she took notice of Ryosuke.

If Nino found out that Ai planned to have babies, she might see it as an obstacle to Ai’s career as the perfect idol. So, she could have coaxed Ryosuke by revealing this information and formed some kind of collaboration.

From my perspective, Kamiki doesn't seem like the type to have any aversion to the idea of having children with Ai. Even if he thought Ai left him because she got pregnant, she told him she wouldn’t keep the babies before leaving. So, if he later found out that Ai did have the babies, his reaction would likely be one of confusion or curiosity rather than dislike. Something like 'Why did she have them when she said she wouldn’t?' And then, I think his reaction would go beyond surprise to possibly even happiness.

The character’s attitude towards the main characters, the twins, is pretty tender. Even if you assume "Mephisto" is his song, he calls out to the children telling them to come after him. He shows no signs that he intends to harm them. It just makes sense to me that he does care for Ai and his twins. They're his kids too. I keep talking about this, but Kamiki's said he was glad Aqua got to meet and talk with him in 153 and it makes sense given this character’s past personality that he has a father's heart. What he says seems genuine.

Nino is different. Nino cares about Ai, but I don’t think she has positive feelings about Ai’s babies. The whole group went on hiatus because of those babies (which made Nino realize the group revolves around Ai). Ai not only focuses on being an idol but now has something else to focus on because of them. To me, it seems Nino not only hates Ai but also desperately wants to preserve Ai as an idol. She doesn’t want that image to be tarnished at all. If there’s something that threatens it, she might want to remove it. The issue is how extreme she would get. If Nino knew about Gorou’s death, she would realize that someone died because of her actions, which could lead to her breaking down. That could have caused her to act out even more. Nino’s mental state, based on the few panels we’ve seen, seems really unstable and destructive.. the way Ryosuke's been.

When Kamiki and Ai were dating, he didn’t show any signs of being obsessed with Ai’s idol work, like saying, “Wow, you shine so brightly, I want to preserve that image.” At least, based on the movie arc, he seemed to have had a normal relationship with her, aside from his terrible life circumstances. I'm thinking he changed to his current ominous self after Ai’s death. Up until just before they broke up, he seemed fine. There wasn’t a big difference from when he was younger.

The "IDOL" song was a spoiler. It had the stance of, “Our invincible idol Ai, I’ll protect you no matter what. I can’t forgive you for being less than perfect, and I can’t forgive myself either for being this way.” That perspective came from a fellow member. That’s why Nino, who is obsessed with Ai’s "perfection" and would be hostile or at least unkind towards the hidden "children," fits this profile.

For these reasons, I think it was Nino who was at the hospital and collaborated with Ryosuke.

Did she really intend to go as far to harm Ai’s children in a physical sense? That, I don’t know yet...

And then the first attempt failed; Gorou died.

Ai returned to her activities, hiding the existence of the children and doing well. Perhaps, that led Nino to think, "Is this enough...?" and kept low for for 4 years. She had her own career going too and if Ai was performing beautifully, there wasn't a need to take more action.

But then Ai tried to show the babies to her boyfriend... If things had gone well and Ai and Kamiki had become close and interacted well with the children, Ai might have even tried to reveal everything... Maybe Nino wanted to prevent that from happening.

Looking at chapter 132, which shows a glimpse of Nino's insanity, it seems (surprisingly) that Nino didn't want Ai to die either. Ai was very significant to Nino, right? She hated her, was jealous, and wanted her gone, but didn't actually wish for her to die. If someone like that disappeared, it would feel more than liberating; it would feel empty. Nino doesn't seem all that sane. For this character, Ai became an obsession at one point, and losing Ai meant losing her "idol". Kamiki, on the other hand, while he also idolized Ai to some extent, speaks as if he understands that Ai was just an ordinary person. To him, Ai was the love of his life and partner. He liked her differently, not just as an idol to be worshiped.

Nino probably coerced and used Ryosuke again, giving him a knife to scare Ai, which led to her death, resulting in Nino's "regret." Maybe she even arranged for Ryosuke and Kamiki to meet? That bouquet of flowers...; I mean, could it be that Kamiki really asked to deliver flowers to celebrate the dome performance? If Ryosuke was introduced to him as Ai's fan by a B-Komachi member, Kamiki could've just lent the flowers to him to pass it on his stead. Isn't that possible? Am I thinking too optimistically? But it's not because I like Kamiki's character that I interpret it this way; (if he's the one who killed Ai, I'm ready to grab him by the collar and spank him anytime) it's just that his personality shown around that time doesn't fit with him intending to "scare" Ai. He's too mild..;

I can't quite guess how Kamiki and Nino, or Ryosuke and Kamiki, met.

I think it's more likely that Ryosuke and Kamiki met shortly after Ai’s phone call. Honestly, I can’t really picture Kamiki and Ryosuke being long-time acquaintances. What would they do together? Is there anything that would keep them in contact? Meeting his girlfriend’s hardcore fan—what’s the point? It would make sense if Kamiki had the intention to harm Ai, but I believe Kamiki when he says he didn’t actually think Ai would be killed. This seems true to me. I don’t think he could have imagined that the person who killed Gorou wouldn’t kill Ai. Up until that point, Kamiki was probably still relatively gentle. He hadn’t darkened yet.

We need to look at Kamiki’s personality. Even when someone like Airi, who exploited him, died, he was mentally distressed. The timing is a bit tangled... thinking about it, did that happen after the main characters were born? I think this guy was simply... entranced by Ai? As Aqua says in the very beginning (chapter 2), he’s like a moth drawn to a flame, unable to stop himself even as his wings burn and he falls. He seems to genuinely like Ai a lot. He probably blames himself for her death and can’t stop. Omg I just noticed, Aqua’s line is strikingly similar to what's described in "Fatal"...

Kamiki and Nino seem to cooperate, I think their common goal is related to Ai.

After meeting with Ruby, Nino says that no one can surpass Ai, not even her daughter, and she wouldn’t accept it.

In contrast, Kamiki was actually happy when Ruby showed the potential to surpass Ai. He was disappointed when he thought she just wanted to resemble Ai.

From this, it seems they both do want to find someone who can surpass Ai.

Nino can’t accept such a person, but does Kamiki feel the same way? If so, his reaction to Ruby should have been different. I think their intermediate goals are the same, but they might want different outcomes.

I suspect that Kamiki is searching for someone who can replace Ai to offer as a tribute to a "god." Thinking that he simply can't accept someone surpassing Ai and kills them seems too simplistic given the songs. The songs clearly express the desire to find a way to fill the "Lack of AI" (absence of Ai). The songs really seem to reflect Kamiki’s feelings. He is looking for a way to revive Ai or at least meet her again, and there is likely a character in the story who can make that possible. In a world where gods can reincarnate souls, there would be someone with the persuasive power to claim they have such abilities, whether it be real or just a mere taunt.

Ruby is the one who showed that potential, but considering that Kamiki just passed by Ruby in chapter 155, it doesn't seem like he would harm her. I closely examined chapters 153-155, and no matter what, he doesn’t seem like a crazy person who would harm his own daughter for the sake of his wife/girlfriend. If Ai hadn’t died, he would really have been the kind of person who could have raised the children with her as she envisioned. After Ai's death, he strayed off and is now firmly on the wrong path. That’s probably why Ai asked the main characters to help him, she knows what kind of person he originally is.

Continuing on, "stars" are likely the "gods" of this universe. The black star is a "god who loves absurdity and irrationality" and probably possesses great power but demands a high price in return. It seems that Kamiki is influenced by that.

In the anime, Akane's star eye color is different. That might be because it's an imitation. The humans truly inhabited by gods are different. Ruby, Aqua, Kamiki, and Ai are likely to have something inhabiting them.

The white star and the black star may each correspond to the "god who loves humans" and the "god who loves absurdity and irrationality" mentioned in chapter 144. The line "キラキラお星様宿したあなたのeyes(Your eyes with glittering stars in them)" in Fatal’s lyric could imply that Ai may also be a person inhabited by a star=god. Pay attention to the word "宿した" in the lyrics. The original Japanese lyrics can be translated like this: "your eyes that the sparking star that dwells within"

宿した< I looked it up, and it can be translated as "bears" or "conceives" "dwells".. it seems like a "star" was blessing Ai, it lived in her as she was alive (the fact that there's a "god that loves humans" oddly works with how Ai's whole life was about loving, too..)

Coming to think of it, didn't this manga start with a disclaimer that "this story is fiction"?

Then, is this manga in fact a stage meant for the gods?

Wow, and I JUST noticed as I went back and checked, the first scene of chapter 1 has the exact same quotes compared to what Kamiki says in chapter 153.

Fiction being "Fabricated, exaggerated, and everything inconvenient being completely concealed".

But Aqua rebuts him saying what he's made isn't one:

With the basis being Ai's love was genuine and therefore "true".

I have a feeling that the conclusion of this manga might be something similar.

It might be that everyone is like pawns in the game of gods, but the sincerity within them is all genuine.

The development is somewhat ambiguous... but this manga is definitely well-structured. There are certainly a lot of hints, and I see that things mentioned in the very beginning are being brought up again in the latest chapters? Still. So, looking at the bigger picture, maybe we don’t have to worry too much.

There's no new chapter this week... I backed up some drawings on Pixiv without knowing about the break. If I had known, I would have drawn a bit more before uploading... ;v;) well, it'll have to do!

Maybe now is the time to really sit back and watch patiently.

If things go the way I think they will, I can draw a lot more stuff, so I wonder how it will turn out...

The songs are definitely spoilers, for one thing.

They’re definitely related to the development of the story. It feels like they’re spoon-feeding us, but I'm not sure what exactly they’re spoon-feeding us. The creators seem to have a lot in mind.

[nikethestatue]

In my opinion people hate acofas for three reasons: 1. Feyre deciding to start trying for a baby with Rhys. They can’t stand that she became a young mother and that hatred continues to this day. 2. Elriel moments. Elucien was officially dead in the water and elriel was sailing. 3. Characters, especially Rhys, being mean to their favs. Whether it’s Tamlin or Nesta.

I know the fandom changed a lot in 2021 and that was the beginning of the end, but I also think you can trace a lot it back to 2018. I noticed people started getting more “anti” Feysand (because of Rhys’s “meanness” and for the pregnancy decision). Which continues to this day, people think Rhys was too mean in ACOSF and people belittle Feyre and hate that she had a baby in ACOSF, and they call her horrible misogynistic things. Obviously some people didn’t like elriel then and they hate them now. People started to feel sympathy for Tamlin then and they stan him now. People started to be “team Nesta” or “team Feyre” and I know you love Nesta but I think there is now a type of “Nesta stan” now that… we all know about and avoid lol. So I think these factions have roots in the ACOFAS era. It’s just x100 now. In my mind, the fandom falls into two categories. Category 1 is feysand lovers, elriel lovers, people who look at the text closely and have high reading comprehension, people who love most or all the main characters, dislike ACOSF, like ACOFAS, favorite book is ACOMAF.. and category 2 is gwynriel lovers, Nesta stans, people who yap a lot on tik tok, come up with crack theories they believe aren’t crack, people who read too much into certain phrases, people who hate the main characters except like 2, Azriel stans, favorite book is ACOSF, hate ACOFAS. I know not everyone falls into these categories but I think ACOFAS was the start of this divide.

All this to say I think the hate for ACOFAS is based on pretty petty, and sometimes harmful, reasons. I don’t really think it’s based on “there was no plot.” I think they didn’t like the direction acotar was going in that everyone didn’t girlboss their way into the sunset, and there remained conflicts between characters and feysand was starting the next chapter of their immortal lives. I love ACOFAS and it’s a red flag to me if someone hates it.

I think I would agree with this. I think the fraction of Feyre vs Nesta became pretty apparent after ACOFAS.

Overall, I've come to realize that Elriel and Feysand stans are more cerebral in their reactions and their arguments. Gwynriel and Nessian are intensely emotional, where 'feelings' trump any rationality and common sense, and forget canon. And Eluciens only care about Lucien, so everything else is irrelevant. That's why 94% of all debates end up with Gwynriels blocking the other person, because emotions take over and it's as if they can't deal with the argument.

To me, the whole 'don't read ACOFAS it has nothing to offer!' call to action from GAs is very telling. I, or any Elriel, would NEVER and have NEVER told a new reader not to read ACOSF or Azriel's bonus. We don't care. We have enough evidence that we don't need to hide a whole book because the book is 'inconvenient' towards our ship.

Elriels also don't prosthelytize on every platform and preach the Gospel of Elriel. We don't care. We don't descend in droves on every newbie and start screaming 'BUT DID YOU READ THE BONUS CHAPTER!?!?!" Elriel is endgame regardless of how many faithful adherents it has. We just enjoy the pairing because it's a good pairing. And it's canon.

[powdermelonkeg]

Out of curiosity, why Gale/Taliesin? I'd have thought you'd match Astarion with Taliesin and maybe Lucien or Remiel with Gale. Not to say I dislike the ship, I can see the potential, but I'm curious where it came from.

Funny answer:

"I have a cat, a library, and a weakness for a good glass of wine. And if the mood takes me, I'm known to try my hand at poetry."

Divines, ask him to dinner before you make a proposal, Gale! Have some decorum!

Serious answer:

So, I do get the impulse to match like with like. Astarion and Taliesin have a LOT in common; roguelike qualities and smooth, self-assured charm, an affinity for knife tricks, sass and drama, some good vanity. Same with Gale and Lucien (can't say anything for Remiel, haven't had a chance to do a proper playthrough with her yet).

But camaraderie and shared personality traits don't necessarily mean they'd compliment each other in a romantic sense.

Let's start with Lucien. He's the youngest of the group, younger even than Wyll (iirc, Joseph said he was 21? He might be a couple years older, but regardless, Wyll is 24). Bubbly, bright, full of enthusiasm and scholarly wit, with a penchant for jokes and a drive for exploration.

Can Lucien talk Gale out of blowing himself up for Mystra?

Would he, Mr. I'm-going-to-ride-a-daedric-horse, my-new-best-friend-is-a-murderous-automaton, discourage Professor Hubris from claiming the Crown of Karsus?

I think Lucien would be concerned for Gale. I think he would know the right option. But I don't think he has the finesse to navigate the tangled weave (heh) that makes up Gale. Lucien is naive, he's sweet, he's willing to accommodate, to the point that I don't think he could tell Gale "no" when it mattered most.

Would they get along? Absolutely! Lucien could teach Gale how to handle magicka, Gale could teach Lucien how to conduct the Weave. Both of them could have lengthy philosophical debates that go over everyone else's heads. Gale would have enough caution to temper Lucien's dwemerology enthusiasm, Lucien would encourage all kinds of discovery into Tamriel's wonders. But I see that manifesting as a mentor-apprentice sort of relationship. Still very close, but having them depend on each other in the way Gale approaches romance would be...self-destructive, I think.

Taliesin and Astarion are a similar, if slightly more dark-tinted, deal. Tally's just gotten out of an organization of horrible, horrible people, whose actions in which he was complicit. He's trying to be better. Astarion has just left a situation of literal slavery to one of the most awful people on the Sword Coast. He's enjoying the chance to be worse. We know how Astarion feels and his opinions on things; he likes hurting people, he's very self-centered, he has a lot to work on himself across his entire character arc as he comes into his freedom.

Personally, I think they'd make each other worse.

That's not to say that I can't see it happening. I could, definitely. It would take a good chunk of meeting in the middle, tiptoeing around each other's baskets that they're struggling to unpack, Tally's aversion to vampires, Astarion's casual cruelty as he lashes out. My personal opinion is that any getting involved would be via Astarion's seduce-and-fling strategy so he gets that foot in the door for Tally's sympathy, and Tally not ever taking it further because Astarion reminds him too much of his fellow justiciars and never assumed it to be more than transactional.

If they DID somehow make it to the endgame, assuming they did everything right, I can see it all falling apart at Cazador.

Tally would probably object to Astarion becoming the Ascendant. Everything in Astarion's life points to ascension being a dangerous thing--if not for continuing Cazador's reign of terror, in subjecting mortals to his will and viewing them all as beneath him, because Astarion's cruel streak would get all the power to fuel every whim it draws up. That kind of dynamic, on a romantic plane especially, is SCARY. If he fails to persuade him but still refuses to help, Astarion leaves him: "I hope you die screaming."

But say Tally DID let him become Ascendant. Whoever the man he fell in love with before ascending is dead. Astarion is a wholly different person with that much power. And he wants to make you his spawn. I can't see Tally willingly becoming a vampire, and I DEFINITELY can't see him becoming a vampire without free will. His whole deal with leaving the Thalmor is getting his autonomy back and being able to make his own decisions. So they leave each other.

I see Tally/Astarion ending in abject tragedy either way. An entertaining story, definitely, but one that brings out the worst in both parties until its inevitable spiral, if it even takes off the ground.

Hence, why Wyll is with Astarion in my plans. He'd bring out the good in Astarion, Astarion would crack the self-sacrificing shell Wyll has. They'd compensate for each other's flaws and compliment each other's strengths. I could write an entire essay about their potential dynamic, not to mention all the flirty lines between them in-game.

Would Tally and Astarion be friends? Absolutely. They share gossip and snark around the campfire. Would Tally help Astarion absolutely gut Cazador? Would Astarion offer to carve out Tally's dad's throat? Definitely. The two are inseparable, and would kill anyone who dared raise a finger against the other. They'd mull over their shared plights of terrible overlords and being used and abused. They'd push each other's buttons and be petty together until it was time to buckle down and win a fight, then celebrate after. But a romance would require so much compromise on one side or the other that I think they both risk falling to pieces over it. There's much more room for differences in lifestyle if you're not planning to spend your life with someone and pour the whole of your heart out to them.

Now, the crux of the question: Gale/Taliesin.

The way Gale shows love is in unwavering devotion. However, he never expects it in return; he's prepared to make his case many times over when he first asks you for an artifact, and half-expects you to throw him away when he reveals the bomb in his chest.

Taliesin is willing to follow his rescuer to the ends of Nirn if you save him. Even into dwemer ruins that terrify him, even if you (to his knowledge) go as mad as Septimus when you read the Elder Scroll, he's prepared to look out for you. Even when it's your destiny to fight the end of the world and be surrounded by death as you do it, with a high probability that he'd be a casualty.

Gale's fatal flaw is his hubris. Tally would have no problems telling him "no" when the Crown came into play, or any other similar power for that matter.

If you talk to Taliesin about his past, he mentions that at one point, his father made him resent many aspects of himself, "even [his] own body."

Gale is willing to marry a MIND FLAYER if they're the person he's come to love. Completely seriously! He loves them! He doesn't even flinch, he even pays them mind flayer-specific compliments in the epilogue and means it with his whole heart!

Would Tally be willing to hang out with the walking apocalypse? Would he be able to talk down detonating the orb, and beg Gale to choose him over the Absolute's demise? Would he be able to tell Gale that going for the Crown of Karsus is a bad idea? Would he be willing to put his enchanting skills to use to buy Gale a few more days of life? Would he like Gale for the man he is over the magic he commands?

Would Gale be able to commit himself to Tally, regardless of how different Altmer are from Eladrin? Would he appreciate every part of Tally, no matter how he differs from conventional Altmer standards? Would he be willing to stand between Tally and his dad, and do it without shattering the rest of Tally's family (as murder threats would)? Would he appreciate Tally for the mer he is, the mer he's TRYING to be, as Tally leaves the Thalmor behind?

They both share a taste in books, both educational and spicy. They both like cooking, and Gale would be willing to cook up vegetarian meals in a snap. They both have a curiosity for culture and knowledge they have yet to encounter. They both love cats and a good bottle of wine.

The clone spell would let Gale match Tally's lifespan.

Tally would love and pay perfect respects to Tara (as everyone SHOULD).

Misty Step could be a solution to crossing bodies of water, and Ice Spike could be an upgrade to Ray of Frost.

Imagine, after several tendays of roughing it, a perfect illusion of a fancy date on a warm shoreline under the stars.

Imagine the two of them reading together by a warm hearth while it pours outside, wearing silk robes and sipping Alto Wine.

I think they'd bring out the best in each other, they'd enjoy each other's company and each other's idea of relaxation, and they'd share enough interests that they'd be happy to trade back and forth.

Also I think Gale's mother would absolutely love him. She HAS to meet him. And spoil him. He'd join her and Tara for tea and gossip, I guarantee it.

[wingsdippedingold]

I couldn’t reblog this normally since I have the og poster blocked, but this is a pretty common sentiment in the community that I want to put my comment on:

Now I’m not gonna sit here and argue that there aren’t people who like Feyre more in the first book and consider her to be “better”, because people do, and I think it’s valid to think that as well as valid to not think that. To clarify I think neither, but more on that later. This is also a decently long post, I tried to make it concise but it’s anything but that 💀

I think comparing her character in the first book to her sisters (this post is specifically Nesta, but I’ve seen it done with Elain) is purely made in bad faith. Equating them in this manner blatantly ignores the obvious differences in characterization and nuance in their writing.

It is widely known that SJM has said that Elain and Nesta were just made to be caricatures and cartoon evil sisters and that she didn't initially plan for them to become anything more than background characters. They were meant to be flat and evil, because that’s all the purpose they had at the time. They were there to give Feyre a hard time and make us sympathize with her, and they did that.

No one is saying that that it’s silly to get hung up on Nesta’s actions because they “happened a long time ago and she had development”, they’re saying that because her actions were literally meant to be cartoonishly evil and not to have any actual depth or reasoning to them.

However, Feyre at the time was still a fleshed character that was supposed to be in the spotlight. Her character traits and depth were continuously shown off, whereas her sisters only existed to give her a backstory and struggle. Her character in the first book cannot be written off to the same degree as her sisters, and it’s false equivalency to think that it can be.

At the time the way Nesta and Elain was written was fine, but in deciding to change them to be actual characters with thoughts, feelings, and backstory, Sarah majorly fucked herself over. This is why she had to retcon things and add their own struggles later on and why you’ll see a lot of people defending them for their cabin actions; and as a side of the fandom who take her retcons as canon, you can’t pick and choose which ones you don’t want to take as canon solely because they change the your notion of the character. It’s a packaged deal, either you’re down with SJM’s narrative and story, or you’re not (I’m not), because guess what? The other characters around said character will also comply by these retcons.

But when you hammer it down so hard that these girls are horrible people in the first book because you couldn’t give the time of day to make sure you’re actually creating a cohesive storyline, rather than just trying to push out a character for people to immediately sympathize with, it’s hard to rectify that, and I often find it the mark of a bad writer (and poor planner) regardless if you weren’t planning on ACOTAR being a series.

I 100% understand Nesta hate, it’s hard to change your idea of a character when you’ve already been made to dislike them and like the character they initially antagonized. If she, or any other character, is not your cup of tea, that’s fine. Like what you like. Hate what you hate (assuming you stay in your lanes and tag correctly, which many of you do not do, and instead tag specifically to push your anti content into pro spaces and make people mad, but that’s a different topic) u, this circles back to my original point that you cannot equate the validity of the characters and writing of Nesta and Elain to Feyre in the first book.

Now do I agree that Feyre was her '"true self" in book 1 vs the others? No.

I think a lot of people, and a lot of antis, earlier Feyre lovers, and probably some of my mutuals, will disagree with me on this, but Feyre's character progression has always made sense to me. That's not necessarily to say that I like it, but considering her circumstances, the people around her, the environment, and her own personality and beliefs, her change and progression from ACOTAR to ACOSF makes total sense to me. I do think there's some inconsistencies, and I definitely think there’s a lot of situations where ACOTAR Feyre would react differently than later Feyre, but that’s just a product of her being a character with an arc and overall I can understand how she got from point A to point B.

I won't get into the details here, but if anyone's curious on why I think so, Imk, l'd love to talk about it

There’s also a good chance that the original poster of this will try to argue my way directly from my account, which is weird because I have you blocked, so I won’t see it, nor do I care to… so don’t? Idk man, save your energy, the stalking is crazy

[angelscorpses]

cherry valance rant bc GOD cherry hate infuriates the shit out of me i need to let this out

made smth like this before but it was so incoherent lmao, im aiming for this one to be a little better worded/constructed. literally just gonna be a whole rant defending cherry/refuting common counterarguments i see

im being so genuine, can yall tell me a GOOD REASON why you hate cherry. every single reason i hear is so stupid, all of her actions that make her "hated" are incredibly understandable if you had just taken a moment and tried to imagine what it was like given her situation.

a good example would be "she didn't visit johnny in the hospital" :: johnny killed bob: cherrys boyfriend. johnny is her boyfriend's killer. name one person who would wanna go see their partner's killer. and a counterargument to this i see a lot is "johnny defended her against dally" :: which, yeah, maybe that made cherry somewhat like him a little more, but she had never even met him until the drive in. and, i simply believe someone killing your partner outweighs the one good thing that they did for you.

"being rude to ponyboy" :: socs couldnt really be seen with greasers because it would ruin their reputation, and rep is very important to both socs and greasers. i do agree it might've been a bit selfish, but you have to take into consideration the time period and their situation. this also can apply to the scene in the movie where cherry didnt wave back to ponyboy at school. but, cherry explicitly stated that she probably wasn't going to say hi or wave back, and told him not to take it personal because she would if she could: "you're a nice boy and everything, but we just couldnt let our parents see us with you" bringing back my point about reputation being important. she obviously WANTED to talk to him more, but couldnt due to social expectations

cherry disregarding ponyboy's issues by saying "things are rough all over." if you read the parts whenever randy spoke, you'd know this argument is pretty weak. and even then, she wasn't even disregarding them, she just wanted to give pony a sense that he's not alone.

a lot of this just boils down to trying to put yourself in her shoes; you have to understand where she's coming from. i've made this point a couple of times within the paragraphs. she's also only 16.

also, i've seen a lot of people who hate cherry also love dally? .. how are you gonna hate a character who's actions are pretty understandable if you just put yourself in their shoes, but like the character who's does FAR worse things, mostly just for fun (jumping little kids, cheating, drinking, etc.)?? talk about hypocrisy... i feel like this lowkey has some misogynistic undertones too but whatever.

anyway, you dont have to like her. like her, dislike her—whatever, just maybe come up with a good argument

[shamelesstragedyenjoyer]

Now I'm curious, how would you rank the batfam based on how you'd get along irl??

In a scenario where I know their secret identities, and there’s a professional, almost co-workers-like dynamic, I think it'd varie greatly from one wherein which vigilante roles are completely absent. Among those I'd resonate with most (in the event I was born in their world) are Stephanie Brown, Duke Thomas, and Jason Todd. It's mainly due to shared backgrounds and similar upbringings, I think. Conversely, interactions with Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Damian Wayne might be more difficult for me. Strained, even, due to differences in ethical frameworks, perspectives, class understanding and overall core values. So there's two ratings; one where I'm in their AU and one where they're in mine.

Alfred Pennyworth: 4/10 - He might perceive some of my approaches as unorthodox, but I believe he would grasp the reasoning behind them. Our interactions would be limited primarily to joint missions. We wouldn't be close. | 6/10 In my world about 60% of elderly people seem drawn to recounting their youth to me, perhaps due to my perceived trustworthiness, and I like to think he'd be part of that demographic.

Bruce Wayne: 2/10 - Disagreements on methodology would likely hinder rapport, especially given my skepticism toward billionaires, which might result in minimal interactions outside of vigilante duties. | 1/10. I'd see him as a man-whore.

Dick Grayson: 3/10 - Our interactions would likely be brief and casual, without the potential for friendship. His typical millennial demeanor might clash with my sense of humor. But he reminds me of my older sister, so I can't rate him lower than a 2. The age gap might lead him to treat me like a younger sibling, which I'd find condescending. Certainly not someone I would befriend. | 2/10 My personal envy would breed hostility, resulting in a reciprocal cycle of unkindness between us.

Jason Todd: 8/10 - Especially in a context where we were familiar with each other before his whole "being-adopted-by-Batman" thing. He'd likely resonate with my approach to tasks and comprehend the motivations driving my actions. We're not THAT far apart in age so he'd get my humor, I think. | 4/10 In my world however, because I'd be nervous and there would be a lack of common ground between us without vigilantism.

Cassandra Cain: 2/10 - It would unsettle me to realize she can discern my emotions merely by observing me. While I'm generally transparent, this level of insight would make me uneasy, prompting me to steer clear of her. | 7/10 She shares some personality traits of one of my closest friends. Given my penchant for chatter and her inclination to listen, we'd likely complement each other well and have a harmonious friendship.

Tim Drake: 1/10- He wouldn't understand why I dislike him. And I wouldn't have an explanation. | 0/10. Earth isn't big enough for the both of us (completely one sided beef).

Stephanie Brown: 6/10 - She'd get how I roll, but Tim might have complained to her about me not being nice, so she'd be protective of him. | 10/10 We'd be the kind of girls who were super close in middle school, maybe even a bit too much. We'd drift apart in high school or college but still think about each other now and then, though not enough to reach out and become friends again.

Damian Wayne: 1/10 - Likely would perceive me negatively, interactions would be minimal. | 0/10 I just don't see us getting along.

Duke Thomas: 9/10 - He'd totally get my approach and might even be up for joining in (Bruce would see me as a bad influence). We'd both be game for pursuing each other's not-so-great ideas. Would have tons of fun but also engage in meaningful discussions about race, religion, politics, economics, society, art and allat. | 7/10 I can’t see myself being 100% comfortable around a man despite that, so that's how far it'll get, sue me !

Barbara Gordon: 4/10 - Like Dick, she'd likely see me as a kid, which would irk me because I'd want to be seen as an equal. However, since she's a woman, it'd feels a tad less patronizing and more maternal, so she gets one extra point in my book. | 6/10 She's that nice employee at the bookstore who takes my search for a specific book I don’t remember the name of super seriously. But we would not be friends.

To @voiddaisy who asked me a similar question, this is for you too ! Thanks for the ask !

[knightbeng]

RWBY and Neurodiversity

Ive been thinking about this for a while but resisted posting until Volume 9 ended. Mainly to see how Ruby’s ascension would resolve, because I knew it would impact how I felt about this. 

Also this is long. Like seriously long. Once I started it got out of hand. But I feel it is all Important. 

I will start by saying that I am autistic, and I have friends and family who are both autistic and or neurodiverse. I also understand that a lot of this maybe subtext or head cannon, and at times deeply personal. I also get that this will never be made cannon or had ever even be intended by CRWBY. But, I cannot escape some of the connections I have made or how I relate to some characters. 

Right with that out of the way

RUBY IS AUTISTIC, or at least somewhere on the spectrum.

From the first volume I could see some of the traits coming through. From the use of headphones and music separating her from the world around her. Her over exuberance when is excited or interested in something. Right up to her passion/special interest in weapons and being a huntresses. This is not to lessen the other characters interests or passions, but Ruby’s is very much all consuming. She speaks about how she went over board on Crescent Rose’s design, and about how much she likes others designs. Including Jaune’s classic Crocea Mors. I cannot help but see my own love of history. That took me to university and beyond. Like Ruby with any weapon, I love any history. 

Then there is her abilities in the classroom. Ruby is clearly a natural talent, but she is never shown to be a savant. She has issues keeping her attention in class and with the work load. Although I do understand that this can be put down to being jumped ahead and that Port n Oobleck’s class seem to have a similar effect on others. Much like me and some of my friends we had classes we loved but struggled to show it though other academic difficulties. 

The early volumes also cover her struggles to connect with people. Such as wanting to be with Yang, instead of meeting new people. Or with Weiss and hers rocky relationship, early on. Countered with the open acceptance by Jaune, who sees a fellow outsider. Although for different reasons. Her own comment of wanting “normal knees” is something I think everyone one with autism can relate too. The wish to be just like everyone else and not stand out. That, at times, can be the greatest wish living in a world you struggle with. 

Then there’s the events post Beacon. They show a defining personality trait so common in autism. Her unshakeable moral centre. It can be hard to describe but it is well documented the autistic people have a very strong sense of justice and morals. Although obliviously not all the same morals. We are all have a different in outlook, just like everybody else. Ruby’s is based around helping people and making the world a better place. 

This is shown most strongly in her mission to walk to Haven. Even if most would say she is too young and it is too dangerous, for 4 unqualified huntsmen/huntress. They went and got hurt and burnt out along the way. Yes others went with her but would they have gone without her taking the lead. It shows a lack of self awareness that can be common as autistic people. To the point that they burn themselves out pushing to achieve things, without taking time for themselves. 

The other massive tell is her reaction to Ironwood. She has no dislike for him and shares his goal. But, his actions and plans go against her moral code. So again she sticks to her morals and works to stop him, while rescuing Atlas, at the same time. Yes others agreed that he was in the wrong, but would the likes of Winter changed their allegiance, without someone like Ruby offering an alternative.

Then we get to the biggest thing for me and the reason I felt I had to put my feelings down. Volume 9. While Ruby’s mental state and issues during this volume are very much based in trauma, lose and depression. That a lot of people can relate too, not just the autistic community. I cannot help but think about what she says before she drinks the tea. “I don’t want to be me anymore.” I have never related to a character more. Or be triggered more, for that matter. When I spoke to some of my autistic friends about it, it was something all of us had felt at one moment or another, to varying degrees. See we all know we cannot separate autism from the rest of our person. Most of us don’t even know what is an autistic trait and what is just us. But, I need to make this clear, none of us want a cure or to be changed. More the reaction was things I have felt at times when at your lowest a small voice screams that would it be easier if you weren’t you. 

Then there is Ruby’s ascension. After episode 9 when it was put to her she could change to be someone else, and people where discussing how she might change, if you see Ruby though the lens I’ve described it can be harmful.

Now I don’t want it to sound like I’m accusing CRWBY of not thinking about this. Thousands of people watch RWBY and can be effected by it in ways they would not think, not having that person’s experience. They are telling a story, and that story includes these real moments. 

Back to the point. Telling someone with autism or that person thinking they have to change to achieve or be accepted is a horrible experience. And it is something almost all autistic people experience. It is the reason we learn to mask and hide who we are. The world tells you that it is what’s expected of you. So when in episode 10 Ruby chooses herself and is then reminded that her friends accept her for being herself. It is powerful. Again I understand that this can relate to a lot of things; imposter syndrome, being gay or race issues. But, as someone who is autistic this is how I saw it. I personally have only had 2 people truly accept me like this. 

PENNY is the only other character I see as on the spectrum. Obviously a lot of her character traits are put down to her being a robot. But as Ruby says to her does that make her any less a real person. In fact the relationship between Penny and Ruby is a massive indicator for me of them being on the spectrum. When they first team Ruby asks if she was just like Penny to Weiss. It is not uncommon for autistic people to spot each other quickly, whether they realise it or not. Then when they meet up at the tournament, both feel no need to hide who they are. Ruby is openly dorky in asking Penny about Ciel’s knowledge and Penny doesn’t hide her excitement to see her friend. 

This is repeated multiple times when Penny returns in Atlas. Each time they see each other they share and communicate in away that they don’t with others. Such as hugging Ruby first and asking do all hugs feel like this, before hugging others. She knows that Ruby will be honest and non-judge mental. In fact we can see how non autistic people react when Penny is her over excited, unmasked, self in front of them. Winter stopping Penny bouncing is a typical action from neurotypicals. Even if it comes from a place of care and concern, with no wish to harm, as I believe Winters was. But it is something neither Penny or Ruby would do to the other. 

Then there is Penny’s morals. She is clearly guided to help her friends, people and world. At great detriment to herself. She becomes the hero of Mantel, protecting those who can not protect themselves, and when others will not. Much like Ruby she will risk it all for her sense of justice. 

One of the most impactful parts of Penny’s story is that of virus. I didn’t even think of this, my friend pointed it out when I spoke to her about it. But her Penny is controlled by the virus, she felt it worked as a metaphor for Applied Behaviour Analysis or ABA. Which if you haven’t heard of it, is a horrible thing to experience as someone with autism. Much like conversion therapy for the LGBTQ+ community this works by trying to train you out of being autistic and make you more accepting for others. Penny is pushed towards things she doesn’t want to do and most horribly to do harm. She becomes a tool to the villains, which can also mirror how some savant autistics are treated. There skills used for a “greater good” instead of them being in control of their own destiny. 

Now I want to move on to discuss Ships. These are all Ruby related and while I’m not saying these should be cannon or that they are over other ships, cannon or otherwise, but I feel they work at different points in Ruby’s story when viewed as discussed above. 

LADYBUG is the first ship I gravitated towards in the show. For me Blake was the first character to simply accept Ruby as who she was. This does stem from Blake’s own wish to be accepted for who is she and not what she is, but it is still important to outwardly show it to others as well. I understand that a lot of people find this to be a boring ship, I think that’s because it lacks drama, but for me the idea of someone new accepting you without question or concern is powerful. That is why I like the ship. It is comforting and has little interpersonal drama between the two. More mutually assured care and concern. In fact that is why they talk so little in the show. They understand and trust each other. One of the many reasons people have Blake as a deputy team leader, during and after the events of Volume 9, is this mutual trust. 

NUTS AND DOLTS maybe the most loved ship these days. Outside of Bumblebee, that is. As I have already gone into Penny and Ruby’s relationship as being very neurodiverse. They are themselves with each other, and communicate more easily with the other. Although I would add this is the only one I see as asexual, but I think both characters can be seen as both asexual and not. Just when they are together, they are asexual. Plus after events in Volumes 8 & 9 I think we can call it as close to cannon as possible. 

WHITEROSE i find the most interesting. At the start of the series I never got it. Weiss was mean and uncaring to Ruby. Why would Ruby ever being interested romantically in Weiss. But then as the show progress I understood it. Weiss is just as bigger dork as Ruby but due to reasons outside of autism, she had to mask this. Seeing Ruby act as she wishes and not be punished for it, as she might have been, lets her drop the mask. Two big things outside of the main show solidified this for me. The first is Ice Queendom. We see inside Weiss’ mind and how she has locked away her childish side for protection. Going as far as to do the same thing to Ruby. The second is that I was recently introduced to The Owl House. Luz and Amity’s relationship has a lot of similarities to Weiss and Ruby. Both start with a cold and unforgiving person who is thawed by the loveable dolt. Bringing out there more natural playful side, originally hidden away to protect themselves. Now after the loss of Penny and Weiss being so accepting of Ruby in the ever after. She is the first to call her name when she returns and doesn’t ask any questions, after all. I can see it becoming cannon. If there is time. 

Thank you for reading this I know it is long but I felt I never saw much discussion about RWBY from this perspective. 

[katyspersonal]

What are your opinions on our Lord and Savior Gywn?

He didn't save SHIT!! He took the perfectly (?) functioning humanity and ruined it! Look at it, it got Hollowing!!

Okay, I am making the 'Marika is a MILF Gwyn' jokes here and there, but 1) Marika is a bit more of a straight up cold and mean person, all things considered 2) Yet she still has enough nuance, and a lot of her actions might be written on reasonable fears and 3) Gwyn is even MORE nuanced than Marika, from what I have concluded so far! Laurence is a similar kind of sinner too. Comparison of the characters that share a trope is helpful for my thought process, so bear with me a little! With Marika I see a more direct disdain and fear before the very nature of life, cyclic and treacherous, uncontrollable, being meant to perish one day but with new life sprouting from it, and thus doing lovely things like shunning Crucible-related lifeforms. With Laurence, we have enough evidence so far that beasthood was not created by Healing Church but something already lingering in the human code after Pthumerians and Loran, so ambition to seize and control it it was risky but understandable!

But with Gwyn, we are confirmed that human nature itself is dark, undesirable an terrifying, as well as how he sorta had the chance to see it 'in action' during uniting with humans to take war on dragons. And also in Dark Souls the cyclic nature of Ages is just a fact, and it would make sense that should Age of Dark come, he and his family would be the first to go as beings of Light. It is a combination of things: his kind being in true danger and not just "risking to lose power", the treacherourness of how political allyship simply works (your today's ally country against the common enemy could tomorrow ally with someone else to start the war on YOU) and simply the not-so-metaphorical horrors of the Dark itself! is not a speculation, the dangers are RIGHT here!

Gwyn messed the natural order of humanity in a way that I personally dislike and express it on multiple occasions: trying to get rid of what's barbaric and dangerous yet natural and not accepting that there is no light without shadow, or life without death. But I also feel sympathetic because he had a legit reason to fear the darkness within men. In is not as much philosophical but a literal concept in Dark Souls lore. He acted out of fear, backed up with a precedent, and it brought the ruin to himself and everyone else. Writing this I'd say he sorta falls for the type of a person I can only like in fiction but resent in reality. I guess I don't need to explain what kind of people this is, paranoid "but for a valid reason", being "preventive" with their drastic measures.. Good intentions path to hell self-fulfilling prophesy blablabla. His specieism doesn't help his case in the slighest. Ironically, all extremely human behavior of him!

(LOL thank you based Goldmask as usual xddd) At the same time, he is not entirely corrupt with the power he seized and used to strip humanity of what was natural for them; he, in the end, committed to what he believed was better for everyone and sacrificed HIMSELF too. I can respect the cunning and machiavellian person who, in the end, is above the vanity of a 'savior' and can give themselves too, not only others. He also did share his power with some humans, showing that he can take kinda benevolent choices even with those he fears. Yeah, part of calculated risk could be there; dude gave the city and his daughter to the Pygmy to, again, preemptively avoid some animosity. But in the case with the four kings, did he HAVE to? Or Seath for that matter, who is a dragon, another species he doesn't like?

I find it hard to detect 'truly' corrupt people in Soulsborne setting in general, and yeah we can fiddle with 'nuanced character' and 'everyone is morally grey' forever and never discover THE big bad we'd love to hate. But, out of those big bads, I think he deserves the benefit of being seen as a way more nuanced character than the corrupt leader the most! It is the case where he should not have done anything, but also should not have NOT done anything.. Soulsborne is eager with placing characters in a position and knowledge where every choice is wrong and they just pick a poison for themselves (and everyone else xd). Jokes about "haha people in power moment" are still mostly jokes for me. He is sympathetic in a way not like I think I'd have done the same (let's be real, I revel in darkness gfjjghk) but in a way where I understand too much to feel negative 🤔

[austinslounge]

Based on the latest events I think that the end of this relationship won't be as soon as we thought (I hope I'm very wrong), Austin for some reason that we don't understand doesn't break up with her, even though they have nothing in common, their chemistry is null and his dislike for the way she lives her "fame" is evident and it's something that we can notice from miles away. I feel like Kaia doesn't want to let go of Austin, I don't know if it's because of interest or because she knows that he's a great man even though with her he's not a good boyfriend, everything in them is a "friend, realize" and it's evident that everyone around them realizes it except her. The fact that Austin doesn't break up with her makes me think that he doesn't like being alone, and this is not bad, he spent more than 8 years living as a couple, from when he was 20 until he was almost 30, it is clear that he likes to feel accompanied, then Kaia arrived, who at the beginning of everything showed herself as a different person, cultured, mature and who was his company, but something happened that all the affection they showed each other at the beginning vanished very quickly, but he prefers to continue with her even if he is unhappy. I hope for the sake of both that they decide to end this relationship that makes no sense.

I agree with you girl -- He does not look even the slightest bit as happy with her as he looked in his previous relationship. (Just saying 👀)

As far as why he stays with her --- I think relationships like this can be quite complicated? I don't think it's always cut and dry, ykwim?

One thing I'll say is that I agree with you. While I do think this relationship is dying, I unfortunately don't see it ending anytime soon. 🥴 Like I said before, we're just going to have to ride this one out, and let this relationship run it's course. #shrug

Some people stay in relationships because they don't want to be alone, or because they're convenient, or because they feel like they can't do better, or even because at the time of the relationship, they think that they love the person that they're with. It's only until after the breakup they realize that they weren't really madly in love with that person at all. But at times, the body (and actions) is already telling the truth before the mind even realizes it.

I would just have some grace with Austin, and just have some patience with him. 😔 One of these days he will realize that he's not really fulfilled in this relationship.

In the meantime, all we can do is just wish him the best, and try to focus on other things. 😊

[lia-land]

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

3.5/5

Spoilers for the first book in the Folk of the Air trilogy.

The Cruel Prince cares about the destination and not at all about the journey. It’s hard to rate it overall because some parts were 2 stars and others were nearly 5. Let’s settle on 3.5.

I feel like I'm not allowed to dislike this book. |'ve briefly touched upon how I didn't love it on Reddit and there are definitely lots of loyal fans who will die on the hill that this is the best book to ever exist. As with all of my reviews, my opinions are exactly that. Mine. I really did want to love this and I'm very happy i read it once in my life, but it fell short.

I had heard such great things about this book, but I just found it too childish. It was too ‘girl falls for her high school bully.’ I was expecting more after hearing about this series for years. I did keep reading, though, because I met Holly Black at a signing with Cassandra Clare a few years ago and she was very nice.

It got better around 200 pages in. Since it's only 370 pages, it shouldn’t take like 60% of the book for things to pick up, in my opinion. The only character I found interesting was Madoc for most of the book. It’s not that he’s necessarily interesting, just the best of the worst. I really didn’t like the whole Shadow squad or whatever they were called. Every time they’d interact with anyone or each other was just written awkwardly.

Many plot points were incredibly underdeveloped. Why did the Prince randomly appoint her as a spy and send her on a mission without any training? This was so casually skipped over. He fully just sent her into Balekin’s house and she casually walked in and out. And how does Jude get away with it for so long without being caught? This wasn’t a case of something ‘bad’ being normalised in Faerie and is casually written because it's normal in that universe; this was the crown prince appointing a human with no experience to be his spy. This book as a whole seemed rushed. Lots of significant things happen and big decisions are made, and then skipped over as if they were descriptions of the weather. This was especially apparent during and after the coronation. It was like the writing was trying to catch up with the plot. It read like those old Wattpad fics where the mom would sell the main character to One Direction, and then the way it was written was as if it was a very common occurrence to sell your child to a boy band. It’s apparently quite normal for your adoptive father to stage a coup. And for your twin sister to knowingly let you date her fiancé. And for the crown prince to come and ask you to be a spy as a teen with no training. ‘I guess I live with One Direction now. Anyway, what should I wear for my first dinner with them?’ Like… go back and expand on what just happened. Develop the plot. Develop the feelings about the situation.

The random piece of paper with Jude's name on it was weird and didn't really get acknowledged as much as it should have (in the rest of the series, too). Like why was Cardan just writing her name over and over? Ick.

I couldn’t decide if Jude was really stupid or really smart. She’s been through a lot and can clearly stand up for herself, and she’s not a generally dumb character, but then she spent five minutes alone with Carden in Dain’s office and suddenly we get this line: “Maybe I wasn’t fighting Carden at all. Maybe I’ve been fighting my own shadow.” Girl, please get a grip. This guy bullies her and then gaslights her, and then they start making out!!! Carden literally cannot lie and said that he is disgusted with himself for thinking of her, and her response is to kiss him.

The worst thing about all of this for me is how Carden doesn’t even make a good attempt at justifying his previous actions. He’s all like ‘I hate you because I can’t stop thinking about you and it’s disgusting’ and she’s like ‘okay, no worries, I’ll make that make sense.’ Then while he’s touching her up, she knows that he’s going slow because “he doesn’t want to want this” but everything we’ve been told about her character so far is that she’s not the type of character to put up with this. It didn’t make sense to me. Her attraction to him isn’t really explained. The story doesn’t flow and it reads like an early draft or a very late one where she had to meet a low word count but didn’t end to cut any plot. The only reason I can think of to justify this sudden nonsensical thing between Carden and Jude is that perhaps they are mated and we’ll find this out in later books, if such a bond even exists in this universe. I have low hopes for this, though, and I think it’s just a result of bad plot development. I get that she was also trying to punish him for wanting her, but it wasn't written well.

Jude is the most inconsistently written character that I have ever read about. Jude falling for Locke was so sudden and incredibly underdeveloped. How was she entrusted to be a spy when she couldn’t even see Locke’s red flags? He literally spelled it out for her multiple times. I got the ick when he said he wanted to “compose an ode” for her. It was also very random when Jude challenged Taryn to a duel. I understand the reason for it, but that seemed out of character for her until that point. There’s a difference between an unpredictable character and an inconsistent one. She doesn’t feel like her own character to me, rather, a plot device to make sure the story plays out the way the author wants it to and I think that’s lazy. Having a fast paced plot is not always a good thing. I would have rather read a developed story of this same length that ended at the coronation and then picked up in a second book.

I'm disappointed that nothing more was done with the tournament. A few books from around the same time that this was published have done this thing where they introduced some sort of contest and then they don't actually do anything with it. I assume it will come up in the later books, otherwise, it was not entirely necessary.

Something that was made obvious is that Holly Black does not like writing travel scenes. I have a very unclear idea of how far places are from each other because Jude would just say she was going somewhere and then she'd just be there. This doesn't affect the story, but it does impact the world building.

To be entirely fair, most of the books I’ve read in the past five months have been between 600-800 pages so maybe I’ve gotten used to stories being a little more dragged out. I don’t think that’s the only reason I felt that this book was rushed, but maybe I’m being more harsh. I think this whole series adds up to about 1000 pages and I’m unintentionally holding previously read longer books as a standard. Either way, this book would have benefitted from at least 70 more pages of smoothing out the development of the plot and characters. It felt clunky, for lack of a better word.

The writing itself is not bad, but it isn’t a style I personally enjoy reading. I had a similar issue with the Raven Boys series and also Neil Gaiman. They are not bad writing styles, but they’re not for me.

The high school bully thing is just a very juvenile trope in my opinion. Obviously this is a YA book, but it deals with mature themes, so the target audience is very specific. When I was at the age when I would enjoy these high school settings, I wouldn’t have completely understood the political themes. This point isn’t a criticism of the book, necessarily, just part of why I personally wasn’t as invested. As for all the political stuff, it was a stronger aspect of the book, but still underdeveloped. There was so much potential for this book to be amazing if it had just been a little less rushed. There was too much happening for a story of this length. The plot of this book alone could have been a duology.

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 8 Matsuribayashi pt. 78

It seems to be a common theme in pieces of media that depict battles where they mention the relatively small time scale compared to the action that occurred. It’s not exactly relevant to the point I was making but this made me recall some behind the scenes video for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, where Ewan McGregor talks about the emotion of a fight scene, and how it’s hard to maintain that for so long in a movie.

Considering the extreme violence she dedicated to it when he was simply missing, now that Shion’s armed with an AK-47 the body count will soon rival that of a Rambo movie.

Video footage from the forthcoming bloodbath.

Getting back on topic, it’s kind of surprising that Satoshi’s symptoms are so much worse than Satoko’s were at her worst. I guess it kind of makes sense since disease can affect people differently, but given how similar Satoshi’s murder and Satoko’s are to one another one would assume that their relative Hinamizawa Syndrome levels would be more or less the same. Irie was able to bring Satoko’s down to manageable levels so it’s strange that Irie hasn’t been able to replicate his success with the kid he clearly likes more. My cynical theory is he’s comatose because Ryukishi07 couldn’t think of anything to actually do with Satoshi so he sidelined him.

Has anyone actually referred to him as Shotgun Tatsu? Up until this particular point has anyone really had any notion of how much of a beast Kasai is? I know there was that scene in Tsumihoroboshi where Rina and Teppei want to get away from him during their brief encounter in the cafe, but that wasn’t really a show of his prowess. But fine, sure, he’s a surgeon with the shotgun. I'm sure there's some line or other in Meakashi that I missed with them calling him Shotgun Tatsu.

Somehow we’re not done with the escalation just yet. Even with Papa Kasai’s wonderful shotgun and bulletproof vest dispensing ways.

Oh fuck off.

And so Kasai, Shion, Akasaka, and Irie embark on their quest to raid the clinic to rescue an imperiled Tomitake as well as a comatose Satoshi. Which one might be more useful in a pitched battle, whose to say. While Shion and the rest of the adults are off to commit their daring raid, Rika and the gaming club are off to engage in guerrilla warfare with a fully armed and trained military unit in a sequence of events I’m pretty sure is why people dislike this chapter compared to the others. Incidentally I do hope you’re not annoyed with all this talk of miracles so far in this chapter. We’ve still got about a dozen parts to go until this is over, it will come up again.

I know I harp on a lot about how I feel characters were done dirty by this chapter, but I’ve decided it’s hard to maintain that feeling in regards to the Mountain Dogs. Earlier chapters have tried to establish them as a hyper-competent team of hardened warriors and killers. But it’s hard to maintain that illusion when you think about all of their shortcomings from earlier chapters. Keiichi was able to outrun them, kill Mion and Rena, and outrun them again in Onikakushi. They kidnapped a small child in Himatsubushi but they got found pretty easily by Akasaka and Ooishi… somehow. Thinking about that, how did Ooishi and Akasaka find that kids wallet that led to them just zeroing in on their hideout? At the time I had assumed that the kidnappers did it intentionally as a ruse to draw the pair of them in to give up the construction minister’s grandson, but maintain the illusion they were fighting their hardest. Now though? Rena was able to give the Mountain Dogs the slip on no less than three separate occasions in Tsumihoroboshi.

I know in Tsumihoroboshi when those people were looking for Rena in the dump it was implied it was the police trying to find her on Ooishi’s orders. But I think it’s just as easy to think that Takano had ordered the Mountain Dogs to track her down so they could have another terminal L5 subject to experiment on before killing Rika later on. Their general ineptitude in keeping an eye on Rika led to her being killed by Shion in Watanagashi and Meakashi, thus leading to their overall failure to carry out the emergency manual. Which might have been intentional? They might have intentionally failed Takano to get her taken out, but that’s just an assumption on my part. The only times they’ve ever actually succeeded in their missions are the times they killed Tomitake in the past, and the end of Minagoroshi when they killed Ooishi, and the gaming club.

Which thinking about it further really isn’t that impressive of a streak. They got Tomitake in six of the previous chapters, only after they jumped on the guy after he was disarmed because of Takano’s actions. They got Ooishi and Kumagai, because they just happened to have snipers watching the telephone company building they were sabotaging. Also it wasn’t part of any nefarious planning on their part, if Ooishi didn’t get obsessed with their van there for seemingly no reason he probably would’ve made it out alive. They successfully ambushed those two detectives in Rika’s house, again, not terribly impressive considering immediately afterward they tried the same tactic on literal children who were able to escape and outrun them on foot. The only reason they won the fight with the gaming club at the end of Minagoroshi is because Takano showed up and killed Keiichi and then the rest in short order. Without her intervention it looked like the gaming club was going to win.

There was a line earlier in this chapter that tries to excuse away the incompetence of the Mountain Dogs (Matsuribayashi pt. 60). They’re not all trained combat operatives, some are basically civil engineers and not hardened killers. But I don’t buy or accept this attempt at justifying the unfathomable boobery that’s going to be on display soon. It comes across to me as a flimsy shield to try to deflect criticism for what I feel is a pretty justified annoyance with the plot.

I can’t even pretend to be upset at Okonogi’s characterization in this chapter. He hasn’t been in the other chapters to any significant degree. He seemed to be preying upon Rika’s insecurities about Irie and her whole situation in Minagoroshi, but that’s it. He didn’t get to exist for long enough for me to get any type of a read on who he is as a character. I could try to figure out his personality based on his presence in Umineko, but that’s set years after this series, and it might not even be the same character anyway. Also for what it’s worth he wasn’t much of a character then either! He showed up for a few pages and then promptly fell off the face of the earth!

If you’re evil plan is to try to seduce Tomitake to the side of evil, why on earth would you just shove the guy under a desk? Why not tie him up to a bed? You know, those beds that have restraints?

You know, cards on the table here, I don’t care for sad Takano. I liked her a lot when she was just being evil, but now? I just don’t like how depressing she is, bring back Minagoroshi Takano, or before the Conecting Fragments Takano, she had some life to her.

[charles-simmons]

My "small" essays on why Sootcest has actual interesting ships, except I'm only writing this to piss off a friend who hates selfcest. I'll send it to her later

Episode 1: Ghostbur x Revivebur

This is probably the most famous Sootcest ship, which makes sense. They have almost opposite personalities and even opposite colors schemes (blue vs red). These are common characteristics in ships, because people love seeing character that could never get along together being together.

But besides from that, what makes the ship specially interesting is the fact they're technically the same person. Now, some people might disagree with that. They have different memories, opinions, and act differently from each other. There are multiple theories on why the ghosts don't act like their alive version, which is something I can talk about on a different analysis. The point is, they're kind of the same person, but not quite the same person.

There's one thing that needs to be clear for this analysis and that is: Wilbur wasn't murdered, his death was assisted suicide. He begged for his father to kill him and it was his decision to die.

With that in mind, it's hard to believe someone who wanted his own life to end would fall in love with himself, or, in this case, a version of himself.

Ghostbur is a version of Wilbur who (supposedly) has no bad memories. Our experiences and everything we went through is what shapes who we are. Since Ghostbur doesn't have many of Wilbur's bad memories, It's like he didn't even live these things, therefore, didn't became the person Wilbur did. So, to a level, Ghostbur is the person Wilbur could've been if it wasn't for all the trauma he went through - trauma that led to him losing his mind.

Let's talk about Revivebur specifically now, the man who wanted to end his existence, but had to endure 13 years in limbo. Canonically, for him to be revived, Dream had to kill Ghostbur. In the few moments where Ghostbur was mentioned to him, he expressed dislike towards him or avoided the subject, which is understandable. For some it must feel violating to have someone who looks like you walking around and interacting with the people you knew. Someone as proud as Wilbur would probably hate the idea of being impersonated (not that that was what Ghostbur did, but it seemed to have felt like it). There's also the fact that people seemed to like Ghostbur better than him.

With all of that I think I can say that neither of them seem to have a positive opinion about each other. Revivebur has shown discomfort when it comes to Ghostbur, and Ghostbur is simply too different from Wilbur to even aprove or understand some of his actions.

Even if it was possible for them to coexist and for Wilbur to be revived without Ghostbur dying, there's a high chance they would simply avoid each other and actually live their lifes as different people. The idea of them actually actually falling in love is unlikely, which is what makes it interesting. They would have to face a lot of discomfort to even be around each other, let alone start liking each other. There's too much guilt and self hatred coming from both of them, which makes me wonder how toxic a relationship like that would be. Ghostbur would probably have a "I can fix him" mindset, while Wilbur would probably be dry and cold most of times, then "compensate" by giving him attention every now and then. Maybe with time they would actually do some good to each other, or maybe not and it would end up being a bad thing.

Regardless of all of this, Ghostbur and Revivebur are both very complex characters, so we don't know for sure what or how it would happen. The fact this ship is even a thing is funny, but it does have potential to be an actual chance to understand more about these two characters and how they perceive themselves and their own worth, which is why I genuinely think this ship is interesting. And with that, I conclude this essay.

Thank you if you read all of this by the way. My next one will probably be about Argbur and Incelbur. This is way too fun to write, so even if no one reads it I'll probably write it anyway.

[asongoficeandthrones]

A Clash of Kings First Read - Chapter 31

(POV: Catelyn III.)

Setting: Near Storm's End.

Favorite character: Catelyn, because she was the only one with common sense. I mean, the other two major players were Stannis and Renly, and I'll develop on that later, but they were both so set in their ways that they couldn't even see that an alliance might have been the better choice... for the time being. And I liked Renly even less than Stannis, because he seemed joyful at the prospect that he'd get to battle his own brother.

MVP: Renly, I guess? He has the advantage when it comes to military might compared to Stannis, from what I can see anyway. Though his decision to go to battle against his own brother didn't sit well with me.

Things I loved/liked:

Durran and Elenei's story makes me think of Aragorn and Arwen's story (and I guess Beren and Lúthien's story too) from LotR and the Silmarillion (Tolkien), with women giving up their immortality for love. And maybe it's the romantic in me, but I kinda love that trope.

Once more, the fact that Catelyn is torn between family (I belong at Riverrun with my dying father, at Winterfell with my sons) and duty to her king ("Robb sent me south to speak for him, and speak for him I shall") and duty to the greater good (It would be no easy thing to forge a peace between these brothers, Catelyn knew, yet for the good of the realm, it must be tried). And the fact that she chooses duty in the end.

I'm sorry, but both Stannis and Renly are sassy as hell. There's Renly with "The whole of the realm denies it [that Stannis is the rightful king], brother. [...] Old men deny it with their death rattle, and unborn children deny it in their mothers' wombs. They deny it in Dorne and they deny it on the Wall. No one wants you for their king. Sorry," and Stannis with "In your bed she's like to die that way [a maid]." But there are a lot of other examples throughout their conversation.

The parallel between Ned's actions and Catelyn's.

I kinda liked Stannis in this chapter? When he's first introduced, at least. First, he doesn't bother Catelyn about her use of "Lord" instead of "King," and he also offers her condolences for Ned's death, while remaining true to himself and then saying, "though Eddard Stark was no friend to me."

Things I disliked/hated:

Renly refusing to let Catelyn go before the battle. I guess I understand his point, but it still left a sour taste in my mouth.

There's something I don't understand/am confused about. The news of the incest is news to Catelyn only, and Renly acts as if he believes it to be untrue: "Were it only true [...]." And Catelyn has a point: if it's untrue, then Joffrey is the rightful heir. And then Renly himself has a point: if it's true, then Stannis is the rightful heir. So basically, Renly himself admits that he is only in the race for the Iron Throne because he has, in his own words, "the larger army." Which I think is rather idiotic. Also, his description of himself made me cringe a little ("I have it in me to be a great king, strong yet generous, clever, just, diligent, loyal to my friends and terrible to my enemies, yet capable of forgiveness, patient-") because I can see some of it, but definitely not all of it.

The whole conversation between Stannis and Renly, because yeah, they were acting like little children fighting over the last piece of cake. And Catelyn's right: because of it, the entire kingdom is at war. If only they would unite, at least to defeat the Lannisters, like she's suggesting... It would be one less host to worry about. But they're both so stubborn. And I don't mean it in a good way. (Cat's "If you were sons of mine, I would bang your heads together and lock you in a bedchamber until you remembered that you were brothers" was hilarious though... just picturing it!).

Quotes: Catelyn's "You each name yourself king, yet the kingdom bleeds, and no one lifts a sword to defend it but my son" (I don't necessarily agree with her last words - it doesn't seem to me to be Robb's motive right now, but well, I'll move past that). I think she has a point that the Seven Kingdoms and their four kings are tearing each other apart without a care for their people.

Thoughts overall: Kinda infuriating.