#I have my evidence and analysis to back it up too and the majority interpretation is fine just I... biasedly I suppose... know mine's

[dxxtruction]

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[shyve3]

Deacon Anaylsis

Once again, I'm joining the fandom in yet another post about character analysis! Idk how I feel about posting my fanart at the moment because it's all traditional art, but i'll get to posting that too...someday.

Please bear with me if you're a major Deacon simp like I am or just someone who likes reading character analyses, because it's so much longer than I expected. I have never written so much in my life, holy shit. (EDIT: I probably have. But this is 3000 words. so it's a lot!)

Also: everything I say in this post is just my interpretation of his character. I've littered a few headcanons here and there. And while some of this may sound harsh, I swear I'm not trying to demean him in any way. I love him because I relate to him, so half of this is me calling out my behavior as well, just indirectly :3

Let's start at the beginning.

We see Deacon as Chase's cousin, who's frankly an annoying, nerdy older brother figure in Chase's eyes. He's always *cough* studying *cough* and most definitely not reading hopeless-romantic-fairytale-books-where-there's-a-random-hero-saving-the-damsel-in-distress. I remember when I first saw him, I thought he was the most pathetic dude ever. In a good way of course. But, eventually my opinion of him built up to be a lot more complex.

We see a glimpse of his ACTUAL character in Chapter 10, when he first goes with Chase and Grandpa Ralph to meet Aunt Myra. His mom, Beth, is seen to be pretty strict towards Deacon. She immediately points out the fact that his shirt isn't tucked in and Deacon's dad immediately goes to ask Chase if he has a job before even saying HI! (Can we get a hi, hello, how are you doing???)

His parents are on the stricter side, and we can see how it affects him in many ways:

Deacon is always dressed in super "nerdy" clothes: button ups, slacks(?) if that's what you call them, plain sweaters. He doesn't really get to express himself to them, and his mom most probably still buys his clothes. (He's literally 20! A young adult!) Ouch.

He's scared to stand up to them for the right reasons. Even though his parents are kinda harsh on everyone Deacon doesn't really retaliate back. That type of strictness towards kids can make them a so-called loser who's extremely awkward and can't stand up for himself. It's evident with how Deacon reacts towards his parents, immediately getting shot down the second he tries to say anything.

Deacon working to be a doctor. Even though it's not what he wants, he goes along with their wishes. After all, people would kill to have as much money as his family. He is humble and grateful, which I think is so important in helper archetypes. He understands their reasoning, that they just want him to be successful, even if it goes against what he wants emotionally: freedom.

Even though Deacon HATES the fact that he's the helper, because it's what he's been doing his whole life, he is still on the journey to learn that being the helper isn't always the bad thing.

Helping others doesn't mean you can't be the hero: Deacon has this secret fantasy of being the hero and proving himself to people: it's why he always consumes media related to "saving" someone (like Ship of Sorrows or any other of his romance novels he reads.)

It kinda also ties into why he's such a hopeless romantic. While it seems funny how he's always dreaming of women and saving them and what-not, it reveals a big truth about his character:

He's pretty f'ing lonely. Most people who look for romantic partners in literally anyone (like Deacon idolizing every single GIRL he meets), are usually lonely. He just wants the comfort in knowing, "yay, I finally proved myself to someone!"

I truly believe that he's asexual or somewhere along the aro/ace spectrum for this reason. His "crushes" on women are truly because of his hero complex, idolizing saving them rather than real love. It's silly, but real. I think he's just experiencing a horrible case of limerence with any woman he meets. (That, and I NEVER see him crushing on real life women. We also don't get a chance to see him with women in real life, but ya know. Anyways, this is just a HC.)

When he first started going into books with Chase, he was extremely excited to be a part of something. His fantasy to prove himself the hero became true: for two seconds.

He feels like his role was a "lame sidekick." Bronze was kinda salty to Deacon's closed off attitude, leading to a little miscommunication between them. (As Punko confirmed, in Toffee Break he purposely sent Deacon into a story with an outfit that didn't include underwear. He must've been reallll salty!) Deacon constantly dodges his role, and he's not ready to be a helper, both in real life and in books.

Deacon's self-worth kinda gets worse when they first go into Toffee Break, getting into the way of his story-going adventures. I love how narratonin is such a journey that really relies on emotional intelligence. It's also the reason he struggles to make it through Toffee Break.

He hates when people point out how his help isn't enough and isn't working, even when it's the smallest indication or a tiny jab. Deacon and Chase start arguing about how Deacon's help wasn't "enough", and it digs at him worse than Chase expected. He's extremely sensitive.

"Toffee Break" stressed him out immensely because of the fact that he learned that he didn't actually know how to help out in the story. He struggled with the fact that this story was extremely counter-intuitive.

Usually, his help consisted of careful strategic planning, like what to say around his parents, making sure they are satisified with whatever he does or says, and also hiding the fact that he's not actually interested in the career path his parents chose for him...

Now, his help consists of adhering to the story and what the heroine does. He has to follow behind her (Chase, in this case), and whatever random path she goes down, something that he's never done.

Buddy makes a second dig at him after his squabble with Chase, saying "Guess no one needed your help", to which he says, "Yeah. Guess you're right." and leaves immediately after. While I love them as a duo, their indifference to each others' characters is what makes them so hard to get along with each other.

I talked about in my Buddy analysis how Buddy takes pride in his role as a villainess, something that probably took him months or even years of discipline. Even though he's closed-minded to "changing the story" like Deacon, what sets them apart is his passion for his archetype in stories. In the beginning, Deacon is inexperienced in embracing his role as a helper and it’s what holds him back. That combined with his lack of knowledge of deviating from the story (much like what Buddy suffered with) was double damage. It's one thing to not be able to deviate from the story, but you can make up for it with your passion to a role despite being "confined" to your role. That's something Deacon needs to learn to have.

After leaving the story, he confides in Bronze with how he's always had everything laid out for him by his parents (proving my point to what I said earlier: That type of parenting changes a kid forever. And he's stuck with a closed-off mindset.) After he comes back into the story, he's feeling a little better about his role, and he's able to realize that sometimes, the best thing to do in life is to wing it. After all, you don't get schooling on how to be the helper, sorry Deacon. While he felt like his life and attitude towards helping others was "laid out", he subconsciously learned how to help others in the way they wanted him to.

After this arc, Chase and Deacon bond a lot more over stories and how to go about hunting for narratonin. Deacon's helper role represents him a lot in real life, and he's the voice of reason to Chase's energetic and spontaneous personality. They balance each other out perfectly, spontaneity with reasoning. Basically, they're the perfect storybook duo with Deacon's book-smart and Chase's street-smarts blending together.

I'm pretty sure I saw this in another analysis, but I'm adding it as well because it's such a good point. (EDIT: I can't find who posted it. PLEASE comment so I can tag you...!)

Deacon plays an important role outside of stories as well. In Cinderella Boy, we get a lot of Chase's insights of his life and traits from, who else but DEACON! He's literally a storyteller.

In Dreams by Day, he tells Silver (and us) about Chase's projection habit, which is extremely hilarious. But it's also an indicator of his personality and his little quirks that "Deacon got used to."

He's also a BIG lore dropper for Chase's life. After all, how would we know about Chase's dad, his mom, his selflessness, his quirks and personality that make him a true heroine?

The two keys also play important roles to him outside of stories.

Bronze is essentially telling him all the time: "No Deacon. Being a helper doesn't mean you neglect your own needs to help others. It means putting yourself first and taking the time to reflect on what you really want and THEN throwing yourself at the oppurtunity to help others. And also, stop being a huge people pleaser. I'm salty enough to know that you're a helper because you feel the overwhelming urge to forget about your own needs because you've been taught to put others first." Also the way that Bronze jokes on Deacon's rigid and insecure perspective of things is also kinda funny. While Bronze is mainly joking, he's also saying: "Dude. Are you serious? You have a life and emotions too!"

Silver also helps him. While the heroine key wouldn't seem like the wise advisor, she's wise emotionally. She always looks on the bright side, and after Deacon tells her that "People fail all the time", she says that hoping and wishing sometimes is enough. Passion is enough for someone to succeed. She is optimistic and believes in everyone, much like Chase. these words make Deacon feel better about himself. Surrounded by Silver and Chase will do that to ya! Leave it to a key and your cousin who's also extremely right about believing in yourself to make your life a little brighter. I believe in ya, Deacon!

He goes through a little bit of a mishaps during the Sick Day arc, getting a little too carried away. Once again, he wants to be the hero, and what better way to do it in one of his storybooks? He's also kinda upset about the fact that he's "always working hard for someone else", basically stuck in a moment of self pity. And so, he thinks, extremely in-the-moment: "hey! I should be the hero right now!" and so he does what Chase does: deviates from the story.

Except, he doesn't make it work. With the helper, deviating from the story doesn't go the same way it does with the heroine. This isn't to say that Deacon shouldn't be deviating from the story: it's just more-so how he goes about it. With the helper key, deviating from the story is a lot more risky. You can deviate from the story, just make sure it works with the plot. (and no, don't try to change your role in the story when it’s not subconsciously happening…Sorry Deacon, it won't work.) With the heroine, she can deviate from the story because her role kinda depends on it. She GETS what she wants, because most fairytales and stories GIVE the heroine luck.

Deacon's hero complex got to him again. He followed his fantasies and it backfired, and it's why deviating from the story just in a frenzy of praying you can change your role doesn't work. (It's also extremely unexpected that Buddy has to be the hero of Sick Day, saving both Deacon and Chase. But that's a whole other spiel to go off of...Someone pick it up from here.)

Buddy starts to play a more important role in Deacon's life, something I'll continue to talk about later on in this anaylsis!

The most important lines are "Maybe for once, I wanted to be the hero!" and to which Buddy says, "A real hero takes on his role because he has to. Not because he wants to. There are times we must be the hero, and many times where we need to be a helper."

Basically, he's clowning on Deacon for glamorizing the role of a hero. The whole idea of the hero archetype of the media in general is fed into the magic-guy-saves-the-world, ignoring the fact that heroes do their role for a purpose, a REASON. Not to get a wish. Again, this is another thing he must come to understand. Deacon's a rational guy, but when it comes to proving himself to others, he's an idiot. Once again, his wretched hero complex!

Even after the entire Sick Day arc, he still wants to be put in the spotlight and looks for some way to prove that he's cooler or better in some way, which is kinda funny.

In All that Glitters, Deacon isn't too big of a focus but we can sorta see him piecing together the shift in Chase and Buddy's relationship.

Stargoth are getting closer, and he's kinda smart so he goes, "Wait a minute. Their relationship is mutual. But they're too dumb to realize it." and he senses that shift. With the advice he's been following all his life, which is to think "realistically", he tells Chase to be careful about telling and not telling Buddy things.

As much as they could just tell Buddy about Prunella, to make sure he doesn't get his feelings like he did when he found out about the helper key, Deacon realizes what's more important. He knows Ex-Libris would most probably punish Buddy for getting another key-holder for another key that went missing. Therefore, he encourages Chase not to tell him, but he feels extremely guilty for it.

Also another detail I didn't really talk and I just noticed as I went to read "All That Glitters" was how Deacon has an obsession with horses. Once again, he wants to "change" the horses with his heroic complex that he has despite having the helper key. (Funny, yet goes along with his character perfectly. He really is something.)

The Honor Among Thieves arc is another important aspect that also ties in with Stargoth and Deacon’s perspective of it. He SEES things. He sees stupidity and these dumb pining idiots fighting with each other. Being the voice of reason, he's absolutely fed up with their bickering and their antics at this point. It's also accidentally hypocritical of him:

He's always the guy to get carried away with fantasies of meeting fictional women who he proves himself to. Yet, when he sees Chase absolutely losing it at Buddy's *cough* *hotness* he is SO done. When it comes to Stargoth, Deacon's fitting into the role as a helper perfectly. C'mon! At least it's not a fictional character, DEACON! /j I don't blame him as a very sapphic Cinderella boy stan...

At the end of Honor Among Thieves, they manage to give the story its happy ending despite the crazy antics and curveballs thrown at them. Good job for Deacon being able to deviate from the story AND help Chase. It's a win-win!

He also essentially tells Chase at the end to not feel bad about the fact that they hid Prunella and Goldie from him, because they had reasons to. Even though they would hurt Buddy emotionally, they could physically keep him safe from what would happen if they DID tell Buddy. And of course, Chase goes to sniff the hoodie right after, saying "You ever feel really wrong even when you're doing the right thing?" *cough gay* *but also foreshadowing. Yikes, Deacon. You were right for directing Chase, but it backfired after he found out :(*

The Book of Deacon is the closest we get to seeing Deacon's perspective. And there's many things I have to say about that episode:

First, the dry texts he sends to his mom. He is so tired of being the helper, and while he's writing out the notecards for the stories? Ow, double damage. He's tired of being the helper once again, constantly shifting back and forth between feeling better about himself and his role as a helper, both in stories and in real life, to having it constantly shut down the next second. The texts with his mom confirm, once again, he feels pressured and forced to help other people. That definitely doesn't help him feel better about himself.

The fact that he TOOK the hero key to go into a book as a hero: he's trying so hard to change his path again, only to feel better about himself. His fantasies and desires to be a hero are what help him avoid the role of a helper...

It's also kinda insane as many people have noted that he immediately resorts to CRUSHING on silver in the book. Dude, that's a key! But it also plays into his stupidity and hopeless-romantic character. No, I'm not saying him NOT EVEN SNAPPING OUT OF IT AND ALMOST ASKING OUT A KEY was justified. Just that he is SO irrational when it comes to chasing after women (whether it be fictional or out of his league, like literally. Girl, that's a KEY!), completely forgetting about everything else. After all, it's why he's so unsuited to being a hero when he forces himself to be one.

He comes to the realization that he HATES being a hero. Now THIS is the first token of acceptance we see him getting towards the helper role. This is where he fully accepts his role. He doesn't really like having a set path for himself. While it's probably because of how he hates set paths, possibly hinting to him standing up for himself later on...

He decides to help Chase in Requiem of Blood and Moonlight (finally, and without any sorta self-doubt or worry.) First, he starts with taking him into the story, and a part of him is happy with seeing that Chase is happy with it as well. It's so adorable seeing Deacon actually accept his role, and it's so attractive I SWEAR! Like oh my gosh, he's finally loving himself more!

Buttt it kinda backfires when he disregards Deacon's info on the story and warnings altogether. His help and usual voice of reason is useless to Chase, who is a gay IDIOT (see, there's a pattern here: love fantasizing about relationships that you'll never have makes you stupid.) Now we're faced with the question: what is Deacon's role now?

And that's where Buddy steps in.

Deacon and Buddy bond with their mutual desire to end the story, and they do this by taking on other roles. Even though Buddy's the villainess, he won't hesitate to fit into other roles in the story, and ends up being kinda like the helper. "The keys can take advantage of certain...loopholes." Similarly, Deacon is kinda the hero of the story now, without it being forced. (See Deacon? You can't force yourself to be the hero! Now, you HAVE to be one :) )

Deacon unknowingly becomes the hero after fighting off the wolves when he's locked outside the castle in this arc.

He steps into the scene of Buddy and Chase trying to tackle down Lucifier in the book. It's a parallel to Honor Among Thieves where Deacon was the one helping.

This story is the first story where we see him bonding with Buddy and unknowingly being the Hero without boasting about it nor making a big deal out of it! I'm so impressed.

To sum it up, I think Deacon's a character with a big hero complex built on his insecurities and he's so keen on proving himself to others. His insecurities come from his parents and rigid mindset that you must be realistic even if it's not what you want. The fact that he's so insecure also makes him a hopeless romantic, searching for unattainable standards of romance. He has a hard time accepting the fact that he can help others while also making room for himself, but he's growing to stand up for himself, not just others. My guy is going places! He serves as a voice of reason to Chase, even though sometimes he has to be reasoned with...And his role in stories changes when he isn't busy wishing for it. And, he's extremely book smart, slowly building up street smarts with the help of Chase and Silver as well.

Anyway, that's all the anaylsis I have on him so far.

I can't wait to see what advice he'll have for Chase after Buddy found out about Prunella and the Hero Key.

I just know next arc is going to be ROUGH. Praying for everyone's mental stability! (Can't guarantee we'll get any though.)

[ijustreallylikebrainsok]

Why do I want an annoying blog that probably won't mean anything to anyone?

Brief intro to me, I'm working on my PhD in neuroscience and the focus of my research is psychiatric disorders, how they arise from within the brain, and if there are different ways to target these disruptions in the brain to provide more effective treatment for those suffering from a mental illness.

Personal details that shape my experience/interpretation of all this nonsense: in my late 20s, lesbian, non-binary, grew up in a very conservative suburb in Dallas

I'm so sorry for anyone reading this, it's really just self-indulgent analysis of mental health and psychology and neuroscience, but I wanted an outlet for my seemingly sudden obsession of *why* feelings even happen in the first place.

I've kind of always been interested in this concept but I haven't really acknowledged it or spent much time with it since it is such an overwhelming concept to even begin to understand the human mind and why we act the way that we do.

I have to assume my initial interest in why mental illness happens came from an actual interest to understand myself. Even at a young age something in me knew that my thought processes and seemingly overwhelming feelings weren't "normal", in that they were deeply affecting me in ways that didn't seem to be happening to other people. And it seems that the way my brain is wired that led to a NEED to understand WHY exactly this was the case as a way to cope with feeling alienated and different than everyone else.

I've struggled with depression the vast majority of my life and gone through so many different treatments to try to alleviate my symptoms and some things have mildly helped but mostly just left me back in the same place I've always been, depressed, overwhelmed, apathetic, avoidant. And I think this struggle with my own brain fighting against me being happy (whatever tf that means) is a lot of what drove me toward neuroscience in the first place.

It's almost a coping mechanism actually to put the psychological distress aside to focus exclusively on what is going wrong *in the brain* that makes me this way instead of examining any other external factors.

Don't get me wrong, the study of neuroscience (or any biology affecting humans for that matter), can definitely be a largely noble pursuit. I want to help the world cure an infectious disease, I want to cure cancer since it's such a large problem. But I think what I'm getting at here is that underlying that "noble" pursuit of helping humanity, there's almost always a selfish reasoning for that. For people studying Alzheimer's, a lot of them know someone who has or is experiencing that horrific disease. For people studying various forms of cancer, they know someone who was affected by the currently available treatments for cancer and how devastating that whole process can be to your life.

But neuroscience seems uniquely positioned to be a selfish study, in my opinion. We want to understand ourselves so strongly that it drives us to delve deep into the brain and pick it apart to understand what makes us human. This is an obnoxiously philosophical approach to why we do science but I think it's an important one to consider ESPECIALLY in the realm of neuroscience and mental health.

I think there's historical evidence of this too. When the field of psychology was first coming about there was some interest in what was happening in the brain to make us act in certain ways, but a movement of thought-leaders or whatever you want to call them shifted the field AWAY from the brain entirely to focus on behavior. And I'm sure there are a ton of different more "logical" reasons for approaching human behavior this way, but in my mind part of that reason has to be that at the time we had no method of accessing the brain at all so it was essentially an unknowable void. If we can't physically get to the brain to mess with it or see it or anything how can we possibly begin to understand what's going on in there, so the response is to then say the brain doesn't matter at all because it's too overwhelming to imagine a singular organ controls every aspect of our experience.

Now, however, neuroscience is a massive field of research and there's almost a complete divide between neuroscientists and psychologists and I don't think this is the approach we should take either. My boss is a very strict neuroscientist and that school of thought is really interesting to me in a deterministic way. His thoughts about behavior essentially boil down to dysfunctional behavior is EXCLUSIVELY maladaptive wiring within the brain. And I don't think this is incorrect necessarily since basically any type of experience or even weird genetics can rewire your brain in a way that's very strange to others and cause behaviors that are destructive to your life.

However, I find this approach to be too narrow-minded to fully understand the human experience and how mental illness comes to be. Yes, the brain is affected by everything you do and all the people around you and your parents and whatever else you can possibly imagine, BUT we still don't have the technology or techniques or methods to explain everything that affects being a person as a whole and why some people seem to have a much harder time with that experience than others.

Essentially it boils down to, neuroscience is an incredible way to understand biologically why we are like this, but I also think in some ways the human experience is too complicated to ever fully understand how social interactions shape us as we get older or how the collective experiences we share affect some people much more deeply emotionally than others. Right now, in 2024, we just don't have the tools to fully understand the complexities of conscious thought. Neuroscience aims to understand this in many ways but it's limited by how we can dissect the brain to understand it. Not only is generally the human experience complicated but the brain itself is constantly changing and the ways different regions are connected to each other and interact is so complex and we simply do not have the ability to unravel all of that complexity.

In short, neuroscience is the coolest science ever, but we are complicated. In this blog I will ramble about psychology (maybe neuroscience too who knows I don't have a plan) and just the fun ways our brain decides to interpret things and rationalize our behaviors.

[chara-deltarune-enjoyer]

✨Introduction!🌟

* Greetings.

* I am Chara.

(yes, really)

And this is my Undertale/Deltarune (UT/DR) theory blog! I'm setting this up in advance of the release of ch3&4 of Deltarune, which I've been anticipating for quite some time.

✨About Me - I know more about Chara than anyone! 🌟

I've been a fan of UTDR since UT's release in 2015, meaning I've been a diehard enjoyer since I was 10 years old. It is no understatement to say I grew up with UT and a significant part of my moral code was shaped by the game. I don't think it's an understatement to say I have thought about Chara as a character alone more than 99.9% of UT fans in the world!

I always enjoyed consuming fan content for the game, and as I grew older I adopted a stronger desire to make some of my own. When Chapter 1 of DR released that was my opportunity; I started creating buckets worth of theories and started to try to learn how to draw (which never panned out, mind you). As Chapter 2 released, that was when my interest in DR became a full-on obsession. I live and breathe this game and I have created and consumed more content than the Oblivion Theory interpretation of the Knight (iykyk), and now that ch3&4 are on the horizon, what better opportunity to start a theory blog to host all my work than now? 💖

My Theorising Style - Bold conclusions from safe assumptions

My specific brand of theories largely pertains to analysing the themes of the games or motifs present in certain characters and using them to make hyper-specific predictions. By far my most popular work was a Twitter thread after the 9th anniversary newsletter, positing the possibility that Chara was acting out of fear in the No Mercy route (transcription of which is linked below!).

I don't just limit myself to DR, naturally 💅 While I consider UT to be a complete story I frequently theorise about it too simply to provide a foundation to better understand DR, given their numerous connections and UT's boundless depth.

Some of My Previous Work

=) A small-scale Chara analysis that sums up my chief interpretation of them as a narrative entity 🔪 🌨 What the poem from the Winter 2024 newsletter says about Noelle and Dess' relationship and how it provides potential evidence for Dess being the Knight ⛄ 🧵 Transcription of the aforementioned Twitter thread - How Asriel's letter recontextualises Chara's desires 📧 🔇A full analysis of every Silenced Spamton Sweepstakes page in as much detail as I could muster 💾

My Future Plans - Preparing a portfolio for ch3&4

I have several ideas for new theories and many half-complete drafts already - I will aim to finish them to create a decent corpus of text before ch3&4 finally drops, including one very large theory analysing Dragon Blazers and how it may be used to predict Chapter 3's major plot points. I will also use this account to share interesting information I find that may be of use to anyone interested in examining the circumstances of how DR was made. If that sounds at all interesting, feel free to follow and I'll follow back if you're into UTDR too ✨ I can promise this will be a blog of only the highest-quality UTDR content I can muster for as long as, and long after, DR is relevant in pop culture!

[starfieldcanvas]

I apologize for making it seem like I thought OP had no other opinions on the music industry. I should've been clearer about the reblogger tags I was simultaneously reacting to, and been far far more objective than "OP is most distressed by x." You are correct that that is not a claim I can back up with evidence; saying it was a mistake and I regret it. If I made the post over again, I would change that part.

However, I have to admit I'm pretty surprised you're interpreting my points as being in bad faith. I made them because I think they're relevant. You might disagree with me on how relevant they are, but I did not bring them up to be disingenuous or condescending or any other weird bullshit. What OP said, and the reblogger tags I saw on the post, genuinely bothered me. I wanted to respond to them with my thoughts on why OP's and the tagger's analysis and framing was misleading and in some ways actively regressive.

If you disagree with me, that's totally reasonable. If you think I came across as condescending, well, that's a reasonable reaction too! I struggle to come across as "challenging an understandable but wrongheaded claim in the spirit of friendship" as opposed to "lecturing like an asshole," and a lot of the time I fail. Me trying to be casual and approachable while presenting information I know decently well often reads like me not taking the other person seriously in a way that goes beyond just confidently suggesting their argument is flawed. It's a problem!

But to the extent that "bad faith" means not engaging with the ideas being presented, I was not arguing in bad faith. I think it's regressive to frame female stars vocally embracing their sexuality as inherently suspicious! I think it serves the patriarchy to present the issue the way OP presented it! I think contrasting female stars having fun being sexy on purpose as a major part of their entertainment careers with male stars "basing their careers on being people" is (1) misidentifying a systemic industry problem (2) blatantly sex-negative AND (3) quite frankly downright misogynistic. I think making a point to say "dancing on stage in your underwear ISN'T empowering!" is indistinguishable from either (A) conservative tradwife bullshit or (B) SWERF bullshit.

But I gave OP the benefit of the doubt and assumed they were coming from a place of wanting to support women in the industry and women's rights generally. Hence talking to OP like I thought they might be interested in the basis for my take even if I strongly disagreed with them.

If you disagree with either my conclusions or the connections I made in order to draw them, you're welcome to elaborate!

Okay and I’m gonna totally sound like my mom for a second here but it’s interesting that soooooooo many women in entertainment have careers based on “embracing their sexuality” but the vast majority of men in entertainment base their careers on like … being people…. and like maybe there’s a reason most men don’t seem to find going on stage in underwear “empowering”…? Bc it’s not…?

[bookoftheironfist]

    Wow, it’s been...three-and-a-half years! 

    Way back in the summer of 2018, in the lead-up to Iron Fist season 2, I started writing a series of posts providing commentary on the entirety of season 1. It ended up being a much bigger project than I’d anticipated, and I didn’t finish in time; I got through eight episodes before season 2 hit, and then the cancellation happened. I tried to re-start the project a few times after that, but couldn’t find the heart to do it. 

    However, it was announced a few weeks ago that Netflix would be dropping all of the Marvel shows at the end of February when the character rights reverted to Disney, which gave me a deadline (I have Iron Fist season 1 on DVD, of course, but it’s, uh...much easier to screenshot Netflix). I realized I finally felt ready-- and excited again-- to finish this thing up for real. The show is gone from Netflix as of today (and will be moving to Disney+), but I did manage to get my research done before it left. I will be posting my commentary on episodes 9-13 intermittently over what will probably be the next few months. You can find the earlier installments of this project (covering episodes 1-8) in my Netflix IF Analysis tag. 

    Now, let’s get into it.  

    Episode 9 is a stand-out episode for Madame Gao, who is one of my favorite MCU-specific characters and really shines in Iron Fist. She is just fun-- sharp, cocky, hilarious, and disarming in a way that makes her extremely dangerous. A major thing happened at the end of the previous episode: Danny received solid evidence that his parents’ deaths were murder, and that Madame Gao was somehow involved. With that huge bombshell, he is now falling deeper and deeper into the depths of his own repressed trauma, hurtling with dangerous abandon toward what will become the realization of his revenge quest, and Gao is starting to understand this. She offered what I interpreted to be a mostly bogus, self-serving psychoanalysis of Danny way back in the aftermath of the Grand Duel, but even if she genuinely wasn’t clear on his motivations then, she is now. 

    Gao is a great bluffer, and we get some hints that she might actually be just a teeny bit nervous here, but by this point she also sees what Danny does not yet, which is reflected in her calm demeanor. She has been captured by the Iron Fist, flown back to New York (what must that plane ride have been like?! We were robbed, I think, a little, by not getting to see any of that) and yet she appears completely relaxed because she knows that Danny is too twisted up inside to be dangerous. She is even enjoying it. She baits him, daring him to lose control, seemingly curious to see just how far his rage will take him (foreshadowing, foreshadowing~!). And while Danny is still in control, channeling his anger into intimidation tactics, he’s clearly holding back with some difficulty. 

    Colleen and Claire, in contrast, are not able to read Danny’s emotional state nearly as accurately (or at least...aren’t as intrigued by it as Gao) and are understandably upset.  

[cloverthirteen]

Was Ace Attorney made as a satire on Japan’s legal system? -- An analysis

I wouldn’t really call myself an Ace Attorney fan--I’ve never played any of the games, the closest I’ve come being watching other people’s let’s plays. I do like reading about the series on wikis and interacting with fan content for it, though, so I do know a fair amount about it.

One thing I see being said pretty often by fans is that the series was intended as a satire/parody of the Japanese legal system, which is why the courts are ridiculously biased towards the prosecution, prosecutors often care more about perfect win records more than putting actual guilty people behind bars, etc. If you’re familiar with this, you’ve probably heard of Japan’s 99% conviction rate. This interpretation of the games and the way they work definitely makes sense.

But after hearing this many times I eventually noticed something. There isn’t a single actual source (creator statement, interview, etc.) that backs up this claim. Every time I see someone online say “the series creator made Ace Attorney to parody Japan’s actual legal system” there is never a link to an interview or anything that proves their statement correct. If someone has an actual, verified source from Shu Takumi or someone else who had significant involvement with the series, please prove me wrong and show it to me. But according to all of the creator’s statement’s I’ve read, there’s no evidence of the series being an intentional parody.

So, what do we know about the creation of the Ace Attorney series? Well, it was created by Shu Takumi, who wrote and directed the first three games. After working on the dinosaur survival horror game Dino Crisis for Capcom, he was given the opportunity to make any kind of game he wanted. He really wanted to make mystery and adventure games, and from that came Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

MC: Before developing Ace Attorney you worked on Dino Crisis. How does one go from dinosaur survival horror to virtual courtrooms?

ST: Dino Crisis was the brainchild of my then boss, Resident Evil creator, Shinji Mikami. Working on his projects taught me not only how to make games, but also how to think about them. After Dino Crisis 2 wrapped, Mr Mikami gave me six months in which to create any kind of game I wanted.

I was still pretty wet behind the ears, but as I'd originally joined Capcom with a desire to create mystery and adventure games, this was a huge chance for me to make my mark as a creator. In the end it took a team of seven 10 months to produce the first GBA Ace Attorney title. Having the freedom to create exactly the kind of game I wanted was amazing and it was a real pleasure to work on that project.

MC: Can you remember when the idea of Ace Attorney first came to you? How did your bosses respond to the idea of a lawyer-based adventure game when you first described it to them?

ST: It was in 2000 when Mr Mikami said I could make my own game and my original idea was a fairly typical adventure with a detective as the main character. Most mystery adventures have the player choose from a number of different dialogue options for their character in order to progress the story, but I wanted a new gameplay style that enabled players to deduce for themselves what was happening, rather than just selecting canned responses. I developed this into the concept of facing off against the suspect in a crime and exposing the contradictions in their statements.

I was sure my new idea would be a fun and original take on the genre, so I started to revise the main character, since a detective would be too traditional for such an original concept. I asked myself, "What kind of professional would face off against a suspect and expose their contradictory statements?" The answer, of course, was a lawyer and so the Ace Attorney concept was born.

(source, from an interview on the making of the series)

Takumi’s original concept for the game involved Phoenix as not a defense lawyer, but as a detective. The gameplay was to consist of “facing off against the suspect of a crime and finding the contradictions in their statements.” However, Takumi eventually realized that taking apart contradictions wasn’t really a detective’s job, and decided to change the protagonist to a lawyer and the setting to a courtroom instead. And thus, the game’s concept was finalized.

Janet: As you know, “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy” is coming out world-wide this winter, and as I was brainstorming what to write about for this week’s blog, I remembered your tweets from 2010.

Takumi: Tweets from 2010?

Janet: …Well, it was a long time ago…

Takumi: ???

Janet: I-It’s OK if you don’t remember…

Takumi: …Oh, THOSE! Yes!

Janet: I remember reading them and being shocked by how different the original draft of the game’s story was – how Phoenix wasn’t even a lawyer, but a private eye!

Takumi: Yes, AA was originally supposed to be a detective game, so naturally, Phoenix was to be a private eye. But then, one day, I made a startling realization: the gameplay concept I was going for was for players to enjoy finding and taking contradictions apart, but that was hardly related to investigating or detective work at all. In that moment, I had it – I realized that the main setting for the game should be the courtroom.

Janet: That’s quite the jump, but you know, I can’t imagine this series being anything else at this point. 

(source, from an interview by Janet Hsu about the game’s early development)

During the development for the game, Takumi actually knew very little about the intricacies of the legal system--and in fact, he’s been very transparent about that fact in interviews. There’s even a story he talks about in a blog post where he was asked “shouldn’t we do some research on law before we make this game?” and agonized over it for a bit before deciding that being accurate about courtroom processes wasn’t important--what was important was that the game made the trials exciting and fun.

November, 2000. The characters were coming together, and I was working desperately on my first scenario (the current Turnabout Sisters). One day, I was asked about the one thing I didn’t want to be asked about.

“Mr. Takumi. Don’t we need to do some research on law?”

The knowledge I have about the law, pretty amounts to the one fact that in Japan we have the Roppō Zensho ('Complete Book of The Six Major Legal Codes').

“Don’t bother with that. This is a detective game. “

It should have been over with this one line, but…

“But this isn’t a detective game, it’s a lawyer game!”

“If it’s not going to be realistic, I don’t see why this should be about trials.”

“People who play this might get wrong knowledge from the game!”

“We might get sued by the Bar Association!”

“They’ll start complaining!”

…Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney GBA) is simply a “mystery game.”　“Being realistic” is not what is important. What’s important is emphasizing, and recreating the unique “atmosphere” and “tension” of the courtroom. That is why the judge uses a gavel, even though no judge uses that, and why Naruhodō shouts "Objection!" even though nobody does that either.　This game does not need a “realistic courtroom”!

Chasing the true murderer down to the end, and then getting applauded for that in the courtroom. That feeling of thrill and excitement. It was only by February of the following year when we finally manage to recreate that in the game. The couple of months after this had happened, we looked around, got lost and troubled our minds in search for the answer of the big question of “How do we make a trial into a game?”.  Fall was passing by, and the cold winter was close upon us.

(source, from an archived blog post by Takumi)

So, realism and knowledge of law wasn’t important to Takumi during the development of the series. But there’s also the fact that Takumi has actually personally denied that the Ace Attorney series was an intentional satire or criticism of the court system at any point. In fact, according to a blog post (done as if Phoenix and Maya were reading the column and commenting on it), he actually dislikes people seeing his work this way, as he never intended the games to have any big political statements.

A major prerequisite for Gyakuten Saiban is it’s so simple “even my mother could play it”.  So there is only one point at the core of the game: “Seeing through lies”.

Naruhodō: It wasn’t even supposed to be a game about the trials at first. Mayoi: Eh! Really?! Naruhodō: “Simple” is basically all this game is about, according to TakuShū. Mayoi: What do you mean? Naruhodō: He didn’t want to add all kinds of elements for the player to think about, like alibis, tricks or about the culprit. It’d just confuse them. Mayoi: Really. Naruhodō: Basically, you can proceed in the game if you just think about where the contradiction is. He figured that with that, the controls of the game could also stay simple. Mayoi: But, but, why the trials then? Naruhodō: “A story about a detective seeing through lies” wouldn’t be any different from the other games out there. So that’s why he decided to have someone whose job is seeing through lies as the protagonist. Mayoi: So a defense attorney. Naruhodō: Occasionally  TakuShū sees magazines introducing the game as “a work that dared to take on the theme of trials”, and that actually hurts him. Mayoi: He never meant to be something as big as that…. 

(source, from the mentioned blog post)

Ultimately I see how easy it is, if you know a good amount about both Ace Attorney and Japan’s legal system, to come to the conclusion that the games were made as a dig against the latter. However, somewhere along the line, people apparently stopped seeing this as merely a theory and instead as a definite fact. Now, that doesn’t mean that the theory is entirely unfounded--given that Takumi focused only on making trials interesting and fun in the games, you could say that the games work as an light, comedic parody, not meant to make any political statements. And hey, maybe there’s something I missed--maybe there were other people working on the series who did have significant knowledge of law and wrote some parts of the games as intentional satire of the system. Again, if anyone has evidence of this, don’t hesitate to provide it. But with what I know, I don’t think going “well actually” to people who point out the ridiculousness and unfairness of Ace Attorney’s court system is necessary. It’s simply that way to make the games more fun.

[ilikekidsshows]

Idk how to phrase this properly, but can you talk about how despite Ladybug steps on Chat's triggers sometimes, she's still a good friend to him and an exception and a symbol of hope to him that not everyone is like Gabriel at all? (Like the differences in her and Gabriel's attitudes towards him in episodes like Glaciator and the NY special?)

Yeah, the New York Special and 'Glaciator' are both cases where Marinette kinda screwed up. However, using these cases to say Marinette is like Gabriel is just not on. Marinette and Gabriel have parallels, but their treatment of Adrien is not one of them. In fact, I'd say it's one of the most important points of contrast, aka difference.

When it comes to the New York Special, I believe it isn't fair to judge an entire relationship based on what the characters do in situations where they're under extreme duress and the narrative purpose is to create drama. On a regular day, Marinette never would have stood in silence when someone was falling to pieces right next to her. The only reason she was suddenly mute in the middle of the sewer scene in the New York Special was so that the writers could include a really melodramatic breakup-get-back-together plotline. It happens in so many series finales and really makes me think the NY Special's script was originally written for the movie that's coming out. It has a broody atmosphere, it has collateral damage, there's a breach of trust and our heroes break up, Marinette falls off her bike and sobs while lying on the ground in the rain and Hawk Moth launches a nuclear strike. The New York Special is way more dramatic than the show, it's melodramatic even. The level of melodrama makes the NY Special easy to generate salt on, but that doesn't mean it's accurate salt on the show itself, since the show proper is so tonally different. No one's judging anime series based off the OVAs they put out.

But, if you're still interested, I did do a full conflict analysis on the New York Special here, where I went over how Adrien's tendency of projecting his relationship with his father into his relationship with Ladybug got some solid countering evidence to help him overcome that in the special (if the special is canon to the show). I've also discussed my interpretation of what's going on in 'Glaciator' here and here. However, I'll say here that Ladybug accidentally treating Cat Noir like Gabriel does Adrien in 'Glaciator' is not the reading the episode is going for. Marinette forgot Cat Noir existed due to some personal issues she has while Gabriel blatantly doesn't care what he does to Adrien and uses his disregard to manipulate Adrien into staying home just in case Gabriel might grace him with his presence. The perceived similarity exists in Adrien's mind because 'Glaciator' focuses on his trauma from his abuse at home.

The primary difference between Marinette and Gabriel is that Marinette genuinely is terrible at managing her time and responsibilities and tends to forget a lot of Ladybug-related stuff in the first two seasons, while Gabriel is knowingly and purposely neglecting his son in order to keep him hanging on to his every word. There's a huge difference between someone who cares being bad at showing it and someone who cares knowingly manipulating you. The difference is that, if Marinette knew she was actually inflicting Cat Noir with the same pain his father does, she would regret it and try to make up for it. Gabriel knows what he's doing when he does it and does it repeatedly even when he knows what it does to Adrien. He's an empath. It's deliberate. Meanwhile, Marinette is clueless. The two situations are in no way equal.

However, Ladybug does do genuine good to Adrien's emotional state. She isn't just the person who unknowingly hurts him. A big issue with people unleashing any salt on any character is that they tend to ignore the entire narrative and focus on only some moments that they then give their own interpretations to that take a lot of liberties. Simply put, a major underlying theme in Miraculous is self-actualization, and Ladybug is one of the primary people in Adrien's life, in addition to Nino and Plagg, who not only let him be himself, but actively encourage it. Let's face it, Adrien is a lot when he's Cat Noir. He exaggerates himself, he always speaks his mind, he refuses to be contained. And Ladybug accepts it. And not only accepts, but loves it.

What does Gabriel do when Adrien expresses any part of himself that he doesn't approve of? He isolates him, sends him to his room, and forbids him from going outside. Even the slightest bit of unacceptable behavior or the smallest of mistakes gets punished severely, with no room for negotiation or compromise. Because Gabriel doesn't want to understand Adrien's point of view, he shuts down any conversation Adrien wants to have. Gabriel also constantly uses isolation as a punishment. He denies Adrien his company and the company of his friends constantly, even when Adrien has done nothing to “deserve” it (he could never deserve it, I’m merely referring to Gabriel having something to use as justification).

Ladybug is a different story. She can't know Adrien. Their secret identities depend on it. So, there's a huge blockade stopping her from really understanding her partner. But she wants to and tries to. Anything Cat Noir wants to tell her, Ladybug listens to. She's so willing to listen to him, even when he says things she doesn't want to her, like when he tells her they have to protect Chloé in 'Evillustrator'. This is season one Marinette at her most unreasonable, abandoning her duty in a huff. She delegated the duty of protecting Chloé to Cat Noir alone, but she didn't say he was wrong, even when he said something she really didn't want to hear, that Chloé was in danger and it was their job to keep her safe. Gabriel never listens when he's angry, something we see especially in 'Félix', where he goes on an angry tirade. But, even when she's steaming mad, Ladybug does acknowledge Cat Noir is right, even if grudgingly (cause it's about Chloé).

Another thing to note is that Marinette doesn't take it onto herself to punish Cat Noir for perceived misbehavior. At worst she might snap at him, but she never dangles the right to be in her presence as only being allowed if Cat Noir stays on his best behavior like Gabriel does. Marinette knows she could do this. By season two she's fully aware that Cat Noir is in love with her and is fully dedicated to her. But she doesn't use that because she's a better person than Gabriel, and because she enjoys his company too. She doesn’t walk out on him for a bad joke, or flirting at the wrong time. There isn’t a single moment in the series where Marinette tells Cat Noir to leave the way Gabriel does. She does on occasion run away from conversations, but never in a way that would signal to Cat Noir it’s his fault, like in ‘Oblivio’ or ‘Frozer’. Even with all the difficulties Marinette has with communicating, especially with Adrien and Cat Noir, she never shuts Cat Noir out, unlike Gabriel, who seems to do nothing but shut him out.

[melohax]

Sunny’s Feelings About Basil

Warning: Longass post ahead as usual. Also Major Spoilers.

I’ve gotten DMs here and there from people who read my OMORI story explanation. I’ve been asked if I’m implying Sunny is a Bad Person cus I say he subconsciously feels both love and hatred for Basil. Also have people asking me if I think their Sunny/Basil ship is bad or problematic so lemme clear those up!

So first off: about shipping.

I don’t really care about what anyone ships and for what reason.

I also don’t mind if someone ships a relationship that is considered “unhealthy”. Like seriously, don’t be scared to ship what you want how you want. You don’t need my permission or anyone else’s. Think up whatever scenarios you like about the story and its characters, have fun.

On to Sunny and Basil:

I’ve said before that it’s very obvious to me that Sunny loves Basil and much of the game revolves around Sunny’s quest to save him. I’ve also said before that I also think there’s hatred mixed in there with Sunny’s feelings for Basil.

I think resentment towards Basil does play a significant part in Sunny’s subconscious feelings for him. Like I said before, you can talk to invisible “strangers” in the blackspace hub if you press A (on controller) while walking between the doors. Those npcs have varying things to say, including sarcastic quips about how lucky Basil is to have Omori try to save him and they also say that they’ve seen what Omori does to Basil when he isn’t “pure” or “uncorrupted” enough for him.

The fact that those strangers are part of Sunny’s psyche to begin with kinda tells me that he subconsciously feels guilt over his mind’s treatment of Basil (both the idealized Basil and the one he calls “Stranger” at the same time) cus otherwise, the stranger npcs wouldn’t make a point of talking about the horrible things Omori does to Basil or being sardonic about it.

Shadow Basil also tells Omori that he was split in half the day Sunny “became nothing”, alluding to the two Basils Sunny created in his mind. He then asks Sunny which he thinks is more painful, becoming nothing or Basil being split in two. This tells me that this isn’t just about Sunny seeing Basil “out of reach” but that it’s him/Omori realizing the way his mind separates the “pure” part of Basil from the part of him that hurts Sunny with the truth he carries.

Then afterwards, there’s the event on the good ending route in the Blackspace church where Omori stabs Basil while the latter begs Omori to stop. Not only does Omori stab Basil but he purposefully walks on his corpse. This isn’t just him not caring about the “fake” Dreamworld Basil anymore. Deliberately spiteful imagery is being used there.

There’s also the pretty ruthless choices Sunny can make during his night sleeping over at Basil’s house.

Here’s the scene we see as soon as Sunny falls asleep in Basil’s living room:

We’re shown right there that Sunny isn’t as unaware of Basil’s intentions as he looks. This means he very likely knows Basil will hurt himself unless he intervenes. Its shown by how Sunny himself (not Omori) is lying down in Whitespace, watching Basil being enveloped by “Something” until he’s swallowed up while begging for forgiveness. Note Sunny’s “epiphany” expression too.

It’s no accident that it’s this moment that makes Sunny decide to face the truth once and for all

After this, you take Sunny through the Truth album. Basil has one request he repeats during this process and it’s for Sunny to please forgive him. Sunny’s mind is shown to fixate on Basil’s words with how many times he recalls Basil asking for forgiveness.

When Sunny wakes up from the Truth Album, that’s when we get the numerous options Sunny can take.

One of Sunny’s choices can be interpreted as a message that no, he doesn’t forgive Basil when he decides to go back to sleep in the living room. Sunny wakes up and gets to choose wether to look at Basil’s corpse or not. He can then choose to go back to his house, sleep until the next day and move out with his mom.

The evidence is very much there that Sunny preemptively knows that Basil is in danger. When you go to Basil’s door, you also get the option “Do you want to save Basil?”. The wording is important here, with how “save” implies that Sunny is aware Basil’s life is on the line, that he’s aware of the consequences of not entering Basil’s room. It’s also as if the prompt is asking Sunny if he actually wants to save Basil or if he’d rather let fate take its course with him.

You can then choose “No” and then you can also choose to just go back to the living room and sleep. These are all choices Sunny can as a character can make, which imo shows his intentions without outright spelling them out. Its Sunny making a deliberate choice there of leaving Basil to die.

We could say Sunny’s fear of having to live with the truth is involved in this as well but I don’t think that’s the main reason. The fact that this whole sequence of events happens right after Sunny’s mind has been ruminating on Basil’s apologies, I get the feeling that this is all Sunny’s answer to Basil’s question of “Will you forgive me?”. Whatever action Sunny decides to take right after waking up in the living room is his final answer to Basil.

To clarify, none of this means that I’m saying Sunny is “evil” or whatever. I’ve written another analysis post before on why I really disagree with people who say Sunny is primarily cruel and/or a psychopath. Darker feelings like resentment and even anger make sense for Sunny to feel alongside fear, yearning, sadness and remorse.

Sunny’s coping mechanism of “It did not happen/ I do not see it” means it makes sense if he subconsciously also feels some particular bitterness towards Basil. Not only does Basil always inevitably force Sunny to see the truth with his mere presence alone but the way Sunny tries to avoid facing his own actions as much as possible means that blaming Basil even just a bit helps with taking himself out of Mari’s death. Another way to interpret it is that this could be a way he can use to avoid admitting what he himself did to Mari.

So yeah TL:DR: Ship whatever you like and Sunny is a complex character capable of both good and bad things simultaneously. None of this makes him irredeemable or evil or whatever.

[aayilahkaylee]

Carbon as a major factor in the origin of life and carbonated water.

Summary: They both think too much and are highly interpretive of their surroundings - objectively, of course. So it is inevitable that they will do the same with their soul mate brands, but things will look really simple on a trip to the zoo, where many carbon-based life forms are gathered, an element that is also part of their trademark formula.

Notes: This is part of the first challenge done on Twitter by @DcstChallenges, with the theme of soulmates. Don't hesitate to join on twitter and participate or support future challenges.

The system of soulmate identification was nothing more than an inefficient diversity of methods with a huge margin of error or at least ambiguity.

Statistics and probability confirmed this, Senku made use of these calculations in trying to understand this phenomenon, ruling out unprovable facts such as the resonance of dreams or thoughts, or slightly questionable ones such as writing on one's own skin and this also appearing on the other person's (how many could be writing on their own skin and inventing that it was their soulmate who had written to them?). Also the countdowns to over a thousand years were also proof of the untruthfulness that came with it.

Rooted to the facts, the mark on Ishigami Senku's right forearm was supposed to be the mark of his soul mate, but to him it was nothing more than the affirmation that he loved science.

At a certain point, he came to think that simply marks like his did not mean that someone was his soulmate, but that they simply had similar enough tastes or interests that they could hit it off. Which would explain why most people who found his markings ended up being a couple.

On his arm was tattooed the formula NaHCO₃, one of the most important compounds in history, to which he gave the meaning of being what proved that his destiny was science.

On the contrary, Asagiri Gen wondered if among his peers there would be someone whose first word they would cross with him would be that compound; would they pronounce it as the formula read, or would they simply say 'sodium bicarbonate'?

Eventually, his peculiar mark of soul mate became just another joke in his extensive repertoire, with the formula actually demonstrating his deep love of soda, with every bottle of cola that fell into his hands being his destiny.

They didn't think about it often, in fact they even forgot they had such a mark as they were so focused on their respective scientific and psychological/magical matters. So that Saturday, the marks on their arms were not foremost in their brains, instead they found themselves early in the morning preparing to leave for the zoo.

Byakuya found it opportune to distract his busy eleven year old son from incessant curiosity from time to time, offering visits that were stimulating and fun enough that Senku couldn't refuse, though there was no way he would have declined because he appreciated the old man's affectionate intentions... sometimes, when he didn't force him to wear a cap because of the sun.

At the same time, with the pressure of socialisation and the opportunity to experiment with his own charisma, Gen spouted witty remarks and questions to uncover those classmates who invited him on this outing. Exploiting his charisma and his wit to make their company more pleasant, until he was able to get a break after the lion section, offering his companions to set aside a table until they returned with snacks.

Had Senku perhaps taken two seconds longer to heed his periphery, he would have continued the tour with his father to leave and subsequently go for a bite to eat together, but inevitably he noticed the wrist of a young man of about fourteen or fifteen.

NaHCO₃

And he immediately asked Byakuya to pause, sending him to sit down to wait, which the elder somehow interpreted as a coy statement that Senku was hungry, so like a good tutor he retreated to get food.

Senku adjusted the straps of his backpack and positioned himself in front of the jet-haired boy, who was arranging a pair of pretentious sunglasses. He thought of a few probing questions, certain that the young man in front of him was also a science buff (What else could that mark mean?).

But Gen won the speak, slightly taken aback. "Are you lost?" he asked at the boy's sudden appearance.

So Senku dismissed all the questions he had thought of, remembering where they were and convinced that Gen was there for academic reasons.

"Elephant gestation lasts about twenty-two months and during elephant pregnancy the calf grows to a hundred or a hundred and fifty kilograms." he said.

‘Huh?!’

Senku counted thirty seconds, in which his determination showed in the way his brow tightened with each passing second. Gen remained expressionless despite the discomfort, inwardly contorting his face in stupefaction ‘What the hell is this...?!’

"Hah~," he regained his composure immediately and smiled. "as interesting as elephants being afraid of bees." replied, assuming this was one of those kids who liked fun facts... until realised he was looking for something more technical. "It's because bees can get into the mucous membranes and delicate parts of the elephant like the trunk, mouth or eyes and sting them. Of course, they can't pierce their skin, but you should know that.

This time it took ten seconds, which made the major sweat, until Senku smiled slyly.

"Not bad." the younger acknowledged.

Immediately, feeling a great deal of encouragement to exchange his extensive knowledge with Gen, he surmised that perhaps such chemical reactions, like the one he was feeling, were the explanation for why people who could not see colours got it when they met the person they matched with. Or how eye colour could change when they met, nothing more than physiological reactions related to hormones and perhaps genetic compatibility.

Interest was also piqued in Gen, who was trying to explain why Senku had taken the seat next to him so deliberately. When would he get the chance to meet someone so slightly peculiar again? The intrigue to know how effective his skill would be with this boy was agitating.

"Are you sure you're not lost." Gen echoed, holding his hands out to his sides in an effort to appear receptive. Senku's body language indicated he was being cautious. "Your parents won't be angry that you got separated from them, animals and information plates are so entertaining that they do this all the time."

Senku denied, lifting his face from the horizon to Gen. "You assume I'm coming with my family when the likelihood of me coming for a school trip is seventy-five percent, considering the offer they have for students on weekends." replied quizzically at that miscalculation.

If this kid had information about the elephants' pregnancy, why was Gen surprised that he also knew that accurate figure?

"You're right from a monetary and practical perspective," Gen said, not doubting that Senku was correct. "but, statistically, weekends are used for family and friends." the boy seemed unhappy that Gen didn't give an accurate figure "I think if you came with friends, you would have been lost together, and you don't look angry enough to explain away an argument."

Because of his sullen nature, Senku looked at him incredulously, slightly annoyed by the blatantly accurate analysis. He attributed his discomfort to the lack of numerical data that could have helped him compare and assimilate the diagnosis.

"Go on." Senku demanded.

Gen's hands continued the expressive mimicry, unconsciously showing his mar. "If it was a school trip, your teacher would have already reported you missing, the same applies if you were accompanied by the parents or relatives of your friends; the responsibility for a child who doesn't belong to them would have already mobilised them. I see you're learning a lot, but the absence of an alarmed teacher" Gen glanced around before continuing. "-means that a school trip is not the case."

"Efficient, a ten billion percent efficient." Senku credited.

All it took was a push. "Or could this be a distress call?" Gen moved slightly closer to add privacy. "Are you running away from someone?" he added in a sympathetic, empathetic tone.

Senku closed his eyes, weary of the other's deductions. "Fine, my father couldn't wait for us to go out to get something to eat, I know exactly where he is."

Gen smirked, proud that he had so neatly broken down the boy's suspicious barriers "So you came to me to entertain yourself in the meantime?" he remarked, considering he was apparently the only one who was also alone in waiting and thus became Senku's target. "You don't seem like the kindly type who would come up with an interesting fact just to entertain others without getting something in return." he mentioned intentionally.

If it was not help the younger man required, was looking for something more, an his restless gaze confirmed it.

The small, calloused hand pointed to Gen's forearm. "Your mark, it means sodium bicarbonate." said.

Among the things Gen expected to hear next was not his mark of a soul mate "I'm aware of that." replied. He wasn't aware of was that wearing a short-sleeved shirt in the heat would attract the attention of a stranger that day.

Senku smiled. The older might be different from what expected in terms of methodology and analysis, but that he knew the significance of his tattoo evidently earned him a ten billion points.

Gen for his part recalled the Monster Hunter player who explained the original use of NaHCO₃ for soda, which was the origin of the joke that, looking the boy straight in the eye, he backed away from wanting to change to an allusion to cheating on chemistry exams.

"Do you know what it means?" Senku asked with abrupt energy. Revolutionary inventions and the many uses of NaHCO₃ flashed through his head.

Unexpectedly, that excitement rubbed off on Gen and he replied. "I know what it means. "

Byakuya didn't wonder at first why Senku had decided to leave his arm exposed for the rest of the tour. The heat was reason enough... until he noticed that his son kept staring at the mark when he always downplayed it.

"In the rest area there was a boy who had the same mark as me." Senku revealed, making his father's jaw drop to the floor.

Sure, it had to be something like that, but Byakuya could never have guessed it was that encounter. And it wasn't his fault either, the last time Senku had been dismayed by his mark, it was when he explained to a stranger in Monster Hunter the uses of NaHCO₃, pleading for the component's inclusion in more video games.

As a result, Byakuya dragged Senku back to the zoo in search of his soulmate, admonishing him for being so insensitive and for letting the encounter go unnoticed without remorse. Disgruntled, Senku reaffirmed that all this talk of love and romance was as tedious as it was counterproductive.

Gen was satisfied on the way to the train station, the talk he had with the boy stretching into a mutually stimulating mix of technical commentary on carbon and life on earth, and a smattering of curiosities and humorous observations that he knew would please the youngster. He had been put to a demanding test, in a way that none of his companions could ever have done.

Which was perhaps why he ignored them until one mentioned:

"Asagiri, that boy you were talking to when we arrived, I saw him before we left and on his forearm he had a mark similar to yours." he alluded hesitantly.

The pieces fell into place... and Gen lost his senses once again.

It certainly wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last time sodium bicarbonate would bring them together under a new manifestation.

[firelxdykatara]

If you interpret Katara’s aggression towards Zuko as romantic affection, then you have some serious issues of your own. Is a very dangerous message for teenage girls indeed. People who ship Zutara have to seriously analyze how unhealthy the message of the pairing would be. Katara hated Zuko for a valid reason, and to twist it into something it’s not is massively disrespectful to both the character. The outdated and ridiculous notion that a girl who acts like she doesn’t like a guy is simply “confused” and “denying her feelings” is so sexist and degrading. Take her emotions at face value. It's never been

Yawn. Boring. This is the same old tired argument I’ve heard a million times before--the one that proves a) you don’t actually understand how relationships work, and b) you’ve never read a single zutara meta in your life, because that’s the only way you could seriously get the ‘good girl is secretly in love with the bad boy and hopes to fix him’ read of a relationship that bares absolutely no resemblance to that particular collection of tropes either in the show or in our fandom.

But ok! I’ll bite, since you clearly want so badly to be educated and evidently don’t have the time to watch the show yourself, nor the reading comprehension necessary to understand the sort of media analysis that goes on in a lot of atla and zutara-focused meta in this fandom.

Which probably means that anything I write here will fly right over your head, but oh well, what can you do?

At any rate, the first mistake you’ve made here is assuming that I (or zutara shippers in general, but since you came into my inbox, I’m going to be taking this just as personally as you clearly intended me to) interpret Katara’s aggression towards Zuko as romantic at any point in the series prior to their reconciliation (after which point, there is no aggression from Katara aimed at Zuko for anyone, me included, to interpret romantically in the first place). I don’t, and I never have, and neither does a vast majority of the zutara fandom in the spaces I frequent (which encompasses tumblr, occasionally twitter, and the very large zutara discord server I’ve been an active part of for two years now). Pointing out oddly suggestive tension in early parts of the series (such as the “I’ll save you from the pirates” and “you rise with the moon, I rise with the sun” lines, or the fact that Zuko wore Katara’s necklace around his wrist for like nine episodes when there was absolutely no need for it) is just that--pointing out tension.

There doesn’t need to be feelings for there to be tension, antagonistic or otherwise, but that tension is the foundation from which their relationship arc throughout the series grew, developed, and eventually evolved. This is what is generally known as relationship development, and it occurs when two characters go from having one kind of relationship to another within the course of the story.

For example, enemies, who become friends, who become lovers.

Now, your mileage may vary on this next part (although I really hope not, cause Y I K E S), but I, personally, think that ‘if a boy kisses you without your consent, but he really really loves you, then you owe it to him to love him back, especially if he just saved the world, and you should never expect an apology because since you suddenly decided you return those feelings, that means the violation of your boundaries was ok since clearly you really liked him all along’ is a much more damaging message to send to young girls--and boys, to be frank, especially since learning about consent is hugely important at young ages--than ‘if a boy who was your enemy goes to great lengths to better himself, to the point where you forgive him for when he hurt you and become close friends with him, then it’s normal for those feelings to grow and change, even to the point of becoming romantic, and it’s ok to explore them’.

And guess which one of those is canon to the AtLA finale?

Next, you say ‘Katara hated Zuko for a valid reason’ as if that was ever in dispute. It wasn’t--certainly not on my blog. I know there are some people who hate Katara because she was ‘too mean’ to Zuko, but I don’t agree with them, nor do I associate with them, since I have no time, energy, or room in my life for Katara slander. However, do you know what the operative word is in that sentence? Hated. As in past tense. As in, ‘Katara used to hate Zuko, but by the end of the show that is no longer the case, and they are extremely close friends with a deep bond and multiple life-debts between them’.

Why are you so insistent on not only denying Zuko’s hard-earned and bitterly fought for redemption, but also Katara’s emotions and feelings, which you end this weirdly disjointed ask by insisting they be taken at face value?

And it’s actually really funny (ironic funny, not so much ‘ha ha’ funny) that you use the word ‘confused’ there, followed by the phrase ‘denying her real feelings’, and then call that ‘sexist and degrading’, as if that isn’t exactly what happened in Katara’s canon endgame in the show.

She said point blank that she was confused, she showed with her words, tone, and body language that she was not open to Aang’s romantic advances, she had completely forgotten about the last time he’d kissed her without her consent, rather than reflecting on her romantic feelings as one would expect of a girl who’d been kissed by someone we’re supposed to believe she’s had feelings for since book 1, and was completely taken aback by Aang’s reaction to the play and his weird believe that they ‘were gonna be together’, when she had never once indicated that she wanted to be with him in any romantic sense. And yet, he kissed her--and while she got angry about it and stormed off in the moment, he never apologized for crossing her boundaries, and they also didn’t have a single significant scene together between that moment and the epilogue.

What happened to taking Katara’s emotions at face value? What happened to how ‘sexist and degrading’ it is to assume that if a girl says she’s confused, that must mean she’s ‘denying her feelings’? What happened to caring about Katara’s agency, even a little bit?

Anyway, I’m gonna wrap this up by saying: I do not believe Zuko and Katara should’ve been making out in the finale instead. I actually hate the fact that the final shot of AtLA was a romantic kiss (particularly for such a poorly written pairing), rather than a shot of the gaang together like it should have been to show what the series was meant to be about. I think that focusing on the romantic relationships in the finale undercut an already weak ending to an otherwise great (not perfect, but certainly good enough that it deserved much better closure) show.

That said, I also think a Zutara kiss would have been more earned, at that point in both of their narratives. Because Katara’s feelings had been the focus of their relationship throughout its entirety. Zuko’s feelings mattered, too, of course, (in stark contrast to how they were treated during his relationship with Mai), but Katara was the one who got to choose when and why and what she felt about him. She got to choose when to forgive him. She got to choose to help him, and to save his life, and her emotions were frequently the focus in a way they never were during her relationship with Aang, so nudging those into a more romantic light not only would have fit better with her character arc, it also would have been far less jarring to see that as the culmination of their respective storylines, rather than a romantic kiss coming out of nowhere when her very last scene with him was being kissed without her consent and storming off about it because it upset her.

My most fervent hope, anon, is that some day you actually watch the show, Avatar: the Last Airbender. Because Katara and Zuko are amazing characters, they have amazing storylines both separately and together, and it’s really a crime whenever someone misunderstands both of them so badly. I hope that when you do watch the show, you pay attention. You may see something amazing.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

On the Citadel and writing (Star Wars) essays.

I’ve just stumbled upon captures of clones deaths in the Citadel and Obi-Wan’s reactions (easily summed up by “we must keep moving”), and the op was using this as evidence of Obi-Wan dehumanizing them, and I can’t stop thinking about it and it’s making me so (irrationally) angry. 

...

So yeah instead of ranting, I’ll attempt to direct my seething frustration into trying to organize a few thoughts on character analysis. Rule of thumb: text without context is pretext. Or in this case, picture without scene is probably bs. When using a particular frame as a piece of evidence supporting a take, you have to make sure you’re not excluding any surrounding material that could potential contradict that take, or else the analysis doesn’t hold. Quick example: using pictures of Yoda goofing around to test Luke’s patience as evidence that he is insane doesn’t work, because it’s revealed right after that he was playing an act. 

This principle is to be broadened when analysing entire scenes or episodes. You can’t take them out of the wider narrative. 

The post I was talking about continued on to say that this wasn’t the first or the last time that Obi-Wan was careless with the lives of his clones. Unless they were referring to RotS (which isn’t fair or intellectually honest because it was made long before anyone considered giving the clones identities and individual thinking), I don’t see that as being the case at all in canon material. Obi-Wan fights on the front lines. He takes the exact same amount of risk as his troops - he takes more risks even, as established as early as Christophsis (when he tells Rex to retreat with his men while he holds off the B2 super battle droids). 

What the op was probably talking about was the many plans of his that result in clones dying (ex: on Geonosis with the zombie worms, many troopers die as they escape). Here’s what I meant about the wider narrative: TCW is about war. It’s about people dying, and it has to be so the audience can understand the horror of a full scale war. And since it’s still (supposed to be) a kid’s show, it has to be mostly faceless people dying. 

I’m borrowing a quote from @trickytricky1​‘s absolutely amazing vid ‘Your Body and Your Blade’, which compiles scenes of Jedi placing themselves between their clones and enemy fire: “We are shown a war, and in that show, to tell that story, they will kill the soldiers. They will kill the soldiers regardless of whether we think they should have been able to be saved. They will kill the soldiers to prove a point, to tug the heartstrings, to move the plot, to set the scene. But that is far from the only thing we are shown.”

So there, wider narrative. The clones dying in missions led by Obi-Wan don’t say much about Obi-Wan himself. And speaking of Obi-Wan, more on character analysis. Obi-Wan, according to Matthew Stover’s Lucas-approved RotS novelization, is “the ultimate Jedi,” Jedi being supposedly defined by their compassion.

Obi-Wan is the guy who cradles one of his worst enemy in his arms as he dies, the guy who knows like a billion languages and is always shown to be super respectful and/or knowledgeable of other beings’ cultures (the Twi’Leks whose homes he doesn’t want to destroy, the Zygerrian whose culture he uses to buy Anakin time to disable the bombs, the Geonosian Queen, telling the Gungans they live in symbiosis with the Naboo...) and the one who knows the names of the 501st troopers despite not being their general (see The Deserter). Obi-Wan is not presented as dismissive of people or things because he does not understand them, and he certainly is shown to value all sentient life above his own. That does not jibe with Obi-Wan dehumanizing the clones. 

What we’re uncomfortable with might be the show itself not delving deeply enough into issues we as an audience can perceive because we have the benefit of omniscience and hindsight. Just as Yoda and Obi-Wan killing the clones in RotS does not inform their characters but the real life context of the movie’s creation, the same can be said of most problems with clone rights that we are indigned by. (Except in Krell’s case, or Tarkin’s - that’s what dehumanization looks like. And that’s what the show draws attention to, practically screaming “hey, look, these guys are evil for doing that!!!”)

To go back to the Citadel arc itself... Again, context. They’re in the middle of a highly time-sensitive mission, their failure could (as far as they know) mean complete defeat and the end of the Republic if the Separatist invade the Core worlds, and it’s more than probable that the clones who came along volunteered. (The ones we know are all high-ranking officers.) 

With this in mind, Obi-Wan not taking the time to show grief (again with the context that Obi-Wan isn’t one to wear is emotions on his sleeve) says one thing about his character, and only one: he’s a damn leader. As Piell puts it, this is war. You act first, survive first, mourn second. It’s hard to swallow as the audience, because we love the clones and care for them and want other characters to show that they care too, but fan-service can make for poor writing and characterization. 

(And by the way - Obi-Wan carries a clone on his back when they make their way down a cliff. He also personally assists most of the men up and down ledges, he gives out the warning about the blast doors closing... He’s trying to have everyone’s back. Pressing people to move isn’t being cold, it’s being cool-headed.)

To finish off, I’d like say that the “death of the author” principle is great when you’re writing school essays and want to show off (I should know, pretending that I’m smart and know stuff about literature is basically what I’m majoring in). But it can very easily lead to interpretations that - while valid to the degree that you’re entitled to make them and that they’ll probably always be defendable in some way - are not what you were meant to take away from the story. (Ex: the Empire was actually good, the Jedi deserved genocide, the Dark Side is freeing - go crazy, make defending these into fun rhetoric exercises, actually believe them if you want - but it’s still not what Lucas was trying to say.) 

Here’s what JAT (Obi-Wan’s voice actor) had to say about the Citadel. (Borrowed from the amazing @gffa​.)

“He has sympathy and heart for the clones, but at the same time he knows the mission.” 

tldr: the Citadel isn’t an arc meant to highlight Obi-Wan’s flaws (if anything, it’s an Ahsoka arc, and an Anakin arc setting up his future interactions with Tarkin). The deaths we see him walk away from are mostly for shock value, to make us understand what how dire the situation is and to make Even Piell’s death believable when it comes (which in turn is to further Ahsoka’s arc).

So yeah, keep the author alive, try to make serious analysis in good faith and not based on your emotional reactions to character you cherish, but go crazy on the wildy AU headcanons and don’t let people spoil your fun. 

[chitto]

I Analyzed All Of the Songs on Ranboo’s Lore Playlist and Here’s What I Learned.

We can pick a few themes out from the songs: 

Time

Fighting something inside of you 

Alluding to a villain arc 

Transition of a person 

My biggest theory from all this is that c!Ranboo is a time traveler from the future (probably before Mizu but after the Haunted Mansion). He traveled to the past, November 27th specifically, to stop c!Tommy’s exile. We can assume that in c!Ranboo’s future, c!Tommy burned down c!George’s house by himself but when c!Ranboo went back, he got caught up in it, thus creating a time paradox. (Evidence from the songs Merry-Go-Round of Life, all songs of Hawaii - Part Two by Miracle Musical, and The Ruler of Everything). Now knowing he is the cause of c!Tommy’s exile, c!Ranboo feels immense amounts of guilt for his actions, the regret keeping him up at night (Ain’t No Rest for The Wicked). This mental stress is something that has resulted in the beginnings of insanity for c!Ranboo (The Mind Electric). 

A villain arc is very plausible for c!Ranboo in the near future, most likely brought up by harm coming to c!Tubbo or Michael (Killer Queen, Mr. Bad Guy, I Can’t Decide, Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked, and Live and Let Die) 

Full Analysis on Each Song Under the Cut: 

(All Song Lyric Analysis Credits go to the wonderful people on genius, I merely fit them into the context of the DreamSmp and c!Ranboo) 

Prologue (StarKid) - A simple ticking clock. ARG trailer tie in as well as even more references of time. 

Introduction to the Snow (Miracle Musical) - Comes off an album that (storywise) has the listener loop over and over the songs in the album, as a time paradox. 

Dream Sweet in Sea Major (Miracle Musical) - Final song in the album (loops). Occurs in three movements. Tells the story of a sailor that gives himself up to the mermaids. Lyrics don’t give much in terms of hints at anything. 

Turn the Lights Off (Tally Hall) - About a journey through puberty and adolescence (??) perhaps could be changed to fit. However main name of the song is meant to convey accepting differences and confronting fears, something c!Ranboo doesn’t really do. First line also says ‘Don’t go in there, you’ll become one, Freaky creatures, monster party’ perhaps relating to the enderwalk/possession c!Ranboo goes through. 

The Mind Electric (Miracle Musical) - The song starts off in reverse, the singer speaking backwards. Once the song straightens out, we’re shown that the protagonist of the song is a mentally unstable man trying to figure out what triggers a specific fear. The second verse then goes into a young child who’s been held trial for insanity. The child and the judge then have an open dialogue throughout the rest of the verse until the child is sent to an asylum. The song concludes with insane yet peaceful thoughts from the child. Obviously I’m not a psychiatrist but doing some light research into insanity (NOT psychosis, as insanity is more of an umbrella term for unstable mental state while psychosis is a specified disorder) you can see a few signs of insanity that could be applied to c!Ranboo. ‘Denial of obvious problems’ Many times c! Ranboo has dismissed or downplayed his issues and problems, most notably when he’s found in a panicked state by c!Sam who asks him if he’s okay, to which c!Ranboo replies that he’s fine. ‘Delusions or Hallucinations’ this is a big one as throughout the Doomsday arc, c!Ranboo spoke to c!Dream in his panic room, only to realize he was talking to no one. ‘Dramatic changes in sleeping habits’ This is more of a reach as we have no actually confirmation but it could be assumed that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking could be disrupting his sleep patterns. 

Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney) - a song about a once young person who used to say ‘Live and Let Live’ but has now changed their maxim to ‘Live and Let Die’. Could be said that as people grow older they grow more cynical. Granted the phrases mean the same thing but one seems much more pessimistic. 

The Ruler of Everything (Tally Hall) - Once again a song about time, the entire song meant to symbolize how time controls our lives (once again feeding into a time paradox theory). The song has a verse that is a man and Time itself singing. The song then starts to speed up, representing how short periods of our lives can be in the grand scheme of things. ‘Do you understand that mechanical hands are the ruler of everything’ This lyric of the song is meant to mean that time (the mechanical hands of the clock) are at the root of everything, once again drawing us back to a time motif with Ranboo’s character. This specific line could lead us to believe that c!Ranboo is being ‘controlled’ by time, aka perhaps caught in a time travelers loop. 

Merry-Go-Round Of Life (Howl’s Moving Castle OST) - While the song itself is an instrumental without words, one could do some digging into the story of Howl’s Moving Castle, spoilers for the film in this analysis. In Howl’s Moving Castle, there is a sequence in which Sophie goes back in time to find Howl, seeing him as a young boy. She calls out to him, telling him to find her in the future, before getting taken back to her time. It seems pretty insignificant until you remember that in the beginning of the film, during Howl and Sophie’s first interaction he says to her, “There you are, sweetheart, sorry I’m late. I was looking everywhere.” thus representing that Howl has been looking for Sophie his entire life after she called out to him in the past. So what does this mean for c!Ranboo? Well its just more time motif and even more time paradox themes. But what even is a time paradox? A time paradox is when somebody who has traveled back in time, becomes a part of the past and causes the events they set out to stop in the first place. Perhaps this means c!Ranboo traveled back in time to stop c!Tommy’s exile, as it was a catalyst event that resulted in many problems on the server (L’manberg’s second destruction to name one) before getting sucked into the events that caused it himself. 

Killer Queen (Queen) - Really can’t say too much for this song as the song is meant to convey how “that classy people can be whores as well” (Freddie Mercury). Freddie also said that anyone else could call their own interpretations of the song as well. I can’t really think of too much about the song that could be molded to c!Ranboo. 

Mr. Bad Guy (Freddie Mercury) - This one is more interesting as the bridge of this song details how Freddie is ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ and that he can ruin people’s lives and many people are afraid of him. This could sound like something c!Ranboo would say in relation to someone trying to threaten the people he cares about. c!Ranboo going to any length for those he cares about (most notably his family) is something that recently cc!Ranboo has tried to drive home, making it a tweet under his character’s lore thread on twitter. 

Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked (Cage the Elephant) - The main line of this song is a bible verse that means that those who are sin-free can sleep well at night knowing they haven’t done anything wrong but those are commit sins need to keep one eye open at all times. Perhaps c!Ranboo believes that he has done something wrong that keeps him up at night. It could be tied back to the time paradox theory by saying that c!Ranboo is kept up at night by the fact that he couldn’t stop the bad events from happening, even becoming a part of them. 

The Bidding (Tally Hall) - While the song itself is about an auction in which men are trying to “sell” themselves to a woman, I would like to call attention to one specific verse. ‘I’ve been training like a Pavlov dog,  Let my independence out to take a hike, All you gotta do is activate my bell, and I’ll fetch you anything you like’. The first lyric calls reference to Ivan Pavlov, who ran a conditioning experiment on dogs, training them to associate the sound of a bell with food, whether they actually got food or not. The last two lyrics I find particularly interesting as we have seen somebody “activate” c!Ranboo. c!Sapnap. After c!Sapnap visited c!Dream in prison, c!Dream asked c!Sapnap to deliver a message to c!Ranboo. The message being ‘:)’. When c!Sapnap repeated the message to c!Ranboo, c!Ranboo immediately switched and began to speak in enderman language before wandering off. He then spoke to c!Sapnap in chat saying, in ender, “Doomed are those who try to run, for it always catches up eventually :)’. This is one of many incidents of c!Ranboo being switched into his enderwalk state, in which he does stuff for c!Dream such as burning down the community house. 

I Can’t Decide (Scissor Sisters) - This song is a upbeat song about a psychotic killer trying to decide on whether or not he should kill his victim. This song could relate back to c!Ranboo’s relationship with c!Dream. c!Ranboo has been very cagey on whether or not he would like c!Dream, most recently being very eager to break into prison and murder him. This song could also hint towards a possible villain arc for c!Ranboo. 

Stardust Crusaders (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures OST) - Unfortunately, this song is another instrumental. And even more unfortunately, I don’t watch JJBA so I can’t comment on what the song could be alluding to. Stardust Crusaders is the name of an arc of the show but reading through the plot summary on Wikipedia doesn’t turn back anything that could be tied to c!Ranboo. 

A Mask of My Own Face (Lemon Demon) - While the song itself is relatively simple, a man singing about how he wants to wear a mask of his own face to confuse people, a few lines have sparked certain people to examine the song deeper coming to the conclusion that the singer wants to cause chaos and controversy. The mask of his own face would allow him to mask his identity, as no one would wear a mask of their own face, while still allowing him to be associated with the chaos. For c!Ranboo I can’t really see this pointing to anything but the Syndicate. c!Ranboo really does believe in their core value of dismantling the things on the server that are bad but also he knows many people he’s close to who are at odds with members of the Syndicate, most notable c!Tubbo. However this could be rather lose as cc!Ranboo is a big fan of Lemon Demon and who hasn’t put a song from their favorite artist on a playlist even though the vibe doesn’t necessarily fit. 

Stranded Lullaby (Miracle Musical) - Another song of the Miracle Musical album Hawaii - Part Two, which loops itself over within the story. This particular song is about a sailor sailing through a cerebral ocean, which may or may not represent time itself; the sailor being a time traveler who had a mistake in his time traveling. This once again brings us back to the theory of c!Ranboo as a time traveler. There is also a line I would like to call upon, ‘Aimless thoughts and papers blown around, A million moments meant remembered rest in deep dark sound’. These lyrics are meant to relate to memories and how truly fleeting some may be, just papers floating in our brains eventually lost to time. This obviously can relate back to c!Ranboo’s memory problems, which are a known side effect of time travel, as told to us through the story of c!Karl, the only other time traveler on the server (excluding c!Connor who is only theorized as a time traveler for right now). 

Hidden In The Sand (Tally Hall) - This is slightly complicated as the song has two meanings. On the surface, the song is about a man who falls in love with a woman who leaves him, however the man is still in love with her. But in the music video, a new meaning can be found. The music video shows a cruise full of people, all very nice and kind until the ship begins to sink and the real, selfish, sides of the people is revealed. ‘Hidden in the Sand’ is meant to symbolize that a persons true nature is covered up by their outward acts and personality. This could apply to c!Ranboo, as he is outwardly very polite and gentle, growing attached to every animal he finds and refusing to kill any Enderman but he could have a whole other personality to him that we don’t know about. If songs such as ‘I Can’t Decide’ and ‘Mr. Bad Guy’ are any hints, we could theorize that c!Ranboo has a secret dark side to him that could be exposed in the events of his family being threatened. 

Now I’m Here (Queen) -  No statements or theories about what the song means or any of the lyrics. 

& (Tally Hall) - This song, as with others off this particular album, deal with opposites. The whole chorus of this song is about certain opposites such as dark and light or cold and hot. Relating back to c!Ranboo, perhaps this song is meant to tell us that c!Ranboo is a foil of a certain character. Possibilities could be c!Dream and c!Ranboo, as c!Dream is very against attachments towards things and is a very outwardly violent person while c!Ranboo is attached to almost every animal and enderman (not to mention c!Tubbo and Michael) and is a very peaceful person, or perhaps c!Ranboo and c!Karl, the two time (theorized) travelers on the server. c!Karl has a stronger control over his abilities and seems to retain most of his memory fairly well so far while c!Ranboo perhaps can’t control his power and has short term memory loss and can’t remember where he came from. 

I’m Gonna Win (Rob Cantor) - This song is a description of a fight between the singer and his inner demons, the fight resulting in very physical injuries for the singer. This can relate back to c!Ranboo, as he could be fighting the demons of his enderwalking state. This song has a very cheerful outlook on the fight however, as the singer is very confident in his abilities and knows he will win. c!Ranboo isn’t always the most positive, sometimes believing more in the pessimistic outcome but this could be a new leaf for c!Ranboo or a goal of his to be more positive. 

[phoneybeatlemania-bit-the-dust]

I’d disagree with the anon that Paul was “incapable” of love, but I do agree he was very distanced, and pretty cruel (to women) when he was younger. (It was unfortunate they bought into the love at first sight myth, but he was also a charmer, and dropped affection and got colder after fucking them.)

But I just can’t see romantic interest on Paul’s end. I’m sure he loved John, but a lot of the “sexual/Romantic evidence” really can just be as construed as platonic love. I feel there may be some confirmation bias looking for “clues”. (Not an attack on anyone, but some of the analysises seem to try too hard, really).

He does make references, with the whole “calling him babe during concerts”, and “in bed” but that could just mean he’s not uncomfortable with coming off “gay”. He has a quote about it somewhere I think. He’s supportive of the community at any rate.

This is kind of my own bias, but at times I think he…plays it up a little during the present day? Again, I’m positive he did love John a lot, but with how he is, a charmer, good at manipulating his image, he knows there is a benefit to building up the “magical” Lennon McCartney dynamic. John’s dead, and the old conflicts have faded, so he has no reason not to. I don’t think he’s anti-social, or a psycho or anything, but he certainly does put a lot of thought into his image, especially now, with how he wants to leave his legacy.

I’m less knowledgeable about John, and the speculation about his mental illnesses, but on his end, I can certainly see it. Maybe he’s just blind, but the looks are very much…yeah. He does seem to rely Paul a lot, and hold him in very high regard (REGARDLESS of what those old male biographers might make of him). You just know he was suffering over Paul, poor bastard.

Not sure if anything happened. I think Paul knew though, and either ignored it, or was kind, knowing John wouldn’t act on it. OR he didn’t notice! With the whole “we shared beds A LOT. you would think he’d make a pass at me, darling~”

I guess that’s how I see it. I don’t really have strong feelings on the nature of their relationship, or want them to be “confirmed”, so I try to be as objective as possible! Not a shipper, but not a male biographer. In fact, I was very put off learning the ship was a thing at first! With every fan base “having to” ship the main male leads, that’s what I thought this was. But after three years, reading actual books, primary stuff, I’ve began to change my mind on its legitimacy, and this was my conclusion. But new information can always change!

(Sorry for the long long analysis, god! I just took my adderall and I should go eat! Feel free to block me for spam/harassment.)

Yeah, this is basically my big mclennon dilemma: did Paul love John?

Of course he loved him, but I mean did he harbour any homosexual feelings towards John - and I just go back and fourth on that a lot.

In my last response to an anon I wasn’t necessarily trying to argue that Paul was romantically/sexually attached to John, because all in all, I don’t believe he did - but it probably came off that way because I didn’t particularly like the way the anon had phrased some stuff (like calling him “a master manipulator” and “incapable of love”) and so I just sort of wanted to show that the relationship was more nuanced then just “john was simping for paul”. My overall point with that response was more so that whilst I think Paul struggles in showing real affection and emotions, I don’t think he was incapable of love prior to Linda. I think he did really love John (in whichever form of love you want to take it: romantically, platonically etc.)

And so my point I guess wasnt so much that Paul was always capable of love (because I think he did at least love his family, his close-friends, probably Jane etc.), but maybe more so that he was always capable of intimacy with another person, though he struggled with it.

But yeah, he was quite cruel to a lot of the girls he slept with in the 60s, but I wouldn’t say that suggests he was incapable of love (i know thats not what you’re saying but other people might interpret it through that lens) I would just say he was young, dumb, ridiculously rich and famous and not emotionally mature enough yet to really empathise with most of those girls. Not trying to completely excuse him, but like, i dunno, i always just try to view people from the most human perspective. Everyones an twat sometimes yknow

I also really struggle to see romance on Pauls behalf towards John - the only times I think “wait but maybe he did fancy john back” is when I read some of his lyrics (like in ‘Coming Up’, ‘Yvonne’s The One’, and to some extent ‘Here Today’ - though I think interpreting Here Today as strictly platonic love is still a valid interpretation). I mentioned this in a different post though, that analysing his lyrics just isnt particularly convincing for me, because it feels more like speculation - and also as someone who does write songs, I know that a lot of lyrics just arent as deep as we wish they were. It is really difficult to be truly introspective and honest in a song, without exaggerating or hyperbolising or fictionalising any autobiographical aspects.

I do see your point with Paul possibly playing up the “Lennon/McCartney m a g i c” - im not entirely sure how much I agree, but I do agree to some extent. I think he’s always been very image conscious, and being in what is probably the all-time most famous pop band definitely wouldve heightened that. Even as a teenager I think he’s always just had this natural charm about him, and that tends to stem I guess from a need to be liked; I think you can see it in every interview he’s ever done to be honest. Its not necessarily a bad thing, (because id take a charmer over a rude knobhead any day) but I guess it sort of just shows that Paul is flawed like everybody else. Also, just read @mothernatures-sons tags and I agree with her - Paul just knows when to be a nice person! Nothing wrong with that! It isnt manipulative like the last anon suggested, its just how most people are: polite :) Ive heard a lot of anecdotes from people who have worked with or met Paul and the majority of them say he was a just a nice guy. Not saying he was never an arsehole (cause yeah he was pretty cruel to those girls in the 60s) but I think overall, hes a pretty good guy 👍

On the other hand though, you could also say that superficial journalists are looking for superficial answers - and Paul knows what the people want to hear. But occasionally ill hear an interview that does seem more intimate then most - I havent listened to it in awhile, but the interview he did with Sean I remember felt more honest to me then most. And when he said he’d like to spend the day “in bed” with John, to me that felt like a genuine and fitting response. Because, whilst it has sexual connotations, it also just feels like he’s saying he’d just like to sit around, chat, dont chat, just whatever with John for a day. Like he would just like another moment of intimacy with him.

I think we are pretty much in agreement on most of this though! At first I was also like “nah, mclennon isnt real, teenage girls just love shipping guys!” (I am a teenaged girl and I can confirm this lol) but then it just sort of became apparent to me through reading more and more about their relationship that there probably was something more on Johns behalf. If John wasnt in love with Paul, then it feels as though a lot of things he said and did just dont add up (the big one for me is him marrying Yoko so soon after Paul married Linda - like I really cannot come up with a heterosexual explanation for that!)

But when it comes to Paul, though ill have moments of doubt, I dont think he was in love with John (homosexually) and I do think a lot of the evidence on Pauls behalf seems like a stretch (but like you, im not having a go at anyone, because I understand that it is easy to carried away, plus its fun - but realistically, most of Pauls evidence just is not convincing to me). He’s comfortable with his sexuality, and I really do try to respect that and not force a gay interpretation of quotes or songs from him, unless it is genuinely making me question his sexuality and mclennon.

PS dont worry, I didn’t take this is spam at all!! And also, I would never block someone just for disagreeing with me! I enjoy discussion and I think its good to engage with people who disagree with you! To be honest, id only block someone if they were purposely being a real arsehole <3

[lucky-sevens]

on doctor carmilla and her relationship to the mechanisms

welcome to my carmilla analysis post! all her lore is too big a subject to handle in one post, so i’m starting with this more specific one and seeing where it goes!

the main thing i’m going to be talking about here is the fan interpretation of her. i’ve collected all the evidence that supports fanon carmilla*, and i’m going to use it to discuss why fandom interpretation, while it has a basis, could be better done/more accurate to the character. i’m collecting evidence here both to support the fan interpretation and criticize it; this is very much not a discourse post, it’s an analysis post!

*i’m defining this as unnecessary experiments on and/or further abuse of the mechanisms.

(that being said, please don’t make her racist/ableist/homophobic; i’ve seen far too much of that, and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable as she is a disabled japanese lesbian and is also most likely trans. i mostly see this in modern aus, but it’s in ‘canon compliant’ works as well- the largest offender here is the popular headcanon that she forced jonny to change his accent to a british one, which for what i hope are obvious reasons given this section doesn’t sit right with me.)

rest under the cut! warnings for medical trauma, including non-consensual drugging and mind alteration, and discussions of abuse (both from a parental figure and from a significant other). it gets heavy; please stay safe!

first off: this isn’t really on the lore of her backstory, but i will touch upon that occasionally as it’s important to understanding her character! i would really suggest to listening to exhumed and (un)plugged (bandcamp / youtube) and ageha (prototype edition) (bandcamp / youtube) and reading her wiki page to get a grasp of the deeper lore; not necessarily before reading this, but definitely if you’re planning to make her a major character in your work.  

we only have two first-hand sources into carmilla’s interactions with the mechanisms; lashings (part one / part two / transcript) and homesick (video / transcript). in both of those, we see that the mechanisms- or at least jonny and nastya- are very uncomfortable with and/or afraid of her. lashings has a few examples of this, regarding nastya; her tone is noticeably quiet and cold whenever she speaks to carmilla and near the end of the show, carmilla hugs her from behind without warning, making her freeze up. 

homesick is even clearer in this regard- after the song is performed, carmilla and jonny have this exchange, which i’ve copied from the transcript in its entirety as it’s all potentially relevant.

[JONNY] (very, legitimately afraid) ALRIGHT ALRIGHT- Stop stop stop stop stop, whoa whoa whoa okay okay okay- I can’t take it anymore! Are you going to kill us or not? Cause I’m (stuttering)- It’s lovely when we’re playing songs, and it's great. But we shot- well, one of us, shot you out of an airlock, and I wanna know. What are you going to do to us? Other than killing me?

[DOC C] Now is not the time, Jonny, I’m feeling a bit tetchy.

[JONNY] Watch it. You’re- you’re planning something. Something. 

[DOC C] Medication time.

[JONNY] Yes-- (cutoff)

the video ends here. the lines at the end are most likely a leadup to the song welcome to medi bay co, but given carmilla’s tone in the recording, it could also be a threat towards him. this implies she has non-consensually drugged him in the past. his conviction that she was going to kill him also suggests that that has happened as well.

from this, we can conclude carmilla’s actions in the common fanon are not out of character, but her motives and thoughts towards the mechanisms could often be considered so. the default motivation for her seems to be to experiment- she’s driven out of boredom or curiosity, and is simply using the mechanisms as test subjects. there are a few cases to directly cite in canon of her experimenting on someone (out of something other than necessity so that they survived)- the first one is from exhumed, and is not in reference to the mechanisms, but instead a clone of herself (x). (i won’t elaborate too much on the post i linked as a source here, but it’s very interesting and i’d suggest giving it a read!)

doesn’t fit too much here, but you know what does?

Highly amused by the moral ambiguity of the events leading to his supposed demise – where both Brian and the priest believed themselves to have the moral high ground, she rebuilt Brian with a slight modification – an inbuilt morality core, with two settings.

brian’s switch. the bio straight-up says she made it out of amusement, which is a huge issue as anyone can flip it (except brian himself; don’t have the source on hand, but there was a post a while back that mentioned it was on the small of his back, which he can’t reach) and it changes his entire mindset!

however! this is the only case of something like this happening!

maki has said that carmilla cared for the mechanisms, and considered them her adopted children. while the evidence i’ve noted earlier almost becomes worse with that knowledge, it’s a different mindset than test subjects.

this is getting into a bit more of personal thoughts/headcanons, but we know carmilla had a lot of trouble with healthy relationships, including familial ones. she could wholeheartedly care about the mechanisms, and just not know how to form an actually positive relationship with them. in addition, if you view my personal headcanon that carmilla made loreli into a vampire instead of the other way round, she sure does have a problem with people she’s attached to dying, doesn’t she? she’s more sympathetic in general than she tends to be painted, and she has had good interactions with the mechanisms. (mostly drawing on what maki has said on the mechscord for this- sadly, invites are currently closed).

not elaborating on it too much here, as there’s a lot to unpack vis a vis lore and red stringing, but it’s also likely that carmilla does grow and change and get better as a person- she left the mechanisms most likely of her own volition, as maki has said she ‘didn’t leave via the airlock’, and made an active effort to fix her past mistakes. this is in contrast to the other mechanisms (except possibly brian) who never make any kind of effort to stop being terrible people. (may write a meta/lore explanation on this eventually, but it’s too large a topic to cover here!)

tl;dr: carmilla was abusive towards the mechanisms, but she was more likely to be well-meaning, rather than bored or curious.

[butterflies-dragons]

Hey love your metas! I want to ask about Sansa dealing with her sexual assaults and trauma. The way she mismemorised the traumatic events, do you think she gonna misremember any other similar traumatic events in future? Do you think her family will help her remember these events n dealing with it?

Hello Anon,

Thank you ♡

I recently wrote about Sansa dealing with trauma, particularly sexual assault trauma. 

Here is the post for anyone interested. 

And here is another one.  

Almost every meta, essay, analysis, etc, about the so-called “un-kiss”, has been written from a sexual perspective.  For the majority of this fandom, either shippers or not, Sansa remembering a kiss instead of the sexual assault she suffered and later having nightmares with her assaulter being in bed with her, CLEARLY means that she is having sexual fantasies with her assaulter, that she is expressing her dark, repressed, hidden, deepest desires about her assaulter, that all this is part of her sexual awakening.  

But every time GRRM has been asked about the subject, either from a sexual perspective or not, he consistently tagged Sansa misremembering things and events as “unreliable narrator.” Lets see.

In chronological order:

JUNE 26, 2001

SF, TARGARYENS, VALYRIA, SANSA, MARTELLS, AND MORE

[GRRM is asked about Sansa misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword.]

The Lion’s Paw / Lion’s Tooth business, on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom… but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it’s a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

[Source]

It is very curious that the person who misremembered Joffrey’s sword name wasn’t Sansa, it was Arya:

The big man shrugged. "I was Joffrey's sworn shield. The butcher's boy attacked a prince of the blood."

"That's a lie!" Arya squirmed in Harwin's grip. "It was me. I hit Joffrey and threw Lion's Paw in the river. Mycah just ran away, like I told him."

—A Storm of Swords - Arya VI

But despite the unreliable narrator’s identity confusion, what I understand from George’s answer is that misremembering a minor detail like Joff’s sword name “it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory,” like the “un-kiss” for example, that George mentioned next. 

At the same time, the “un-kiss” will eventually mean something, but just now it’s a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

Take note that George’s answer is from 2001, after ASOS was published, so by that time he already knew about the existence of the shippers that want Sansa with the Hound being together in a romantic/sexual relationship. You can check this fact by reading the questions and answers from 1999 compiled in this post.  But he still mentioned that the meaning of the “un-kiss” was “a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.” 

So much for the so-called “evident”, “canon”, “endgame“ ship and ASOS being “their ship’s book”  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

* * *

OCTOBER 05, 2002

SANSA’S MEMORY

[Note: This mail has been edited for brevity.]

… this is an inconsistency with ASoS more than an outright error. In ASoS, Sansa thinks that the Hound kissed her before leaving her room and King’s Landing. In ACoK, no kiss is mentioned in the scene, though Sansa did think that he was about to do so.

Well, not every inconsistency is a mistake, actually. Some are quite intentional. File this one under “unreliable narrator” and feel free to ponder its meaning...

[Source]

Here George’s answer is more succinct: the “un-kiss” is not a mistake, it was intentional, file this one under “unreliable narrator.”

* * *

NOVEMBER 27, 2007

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

Here’s a really particular question (which I realize means it probably won’t get asked in a general interview): In A Storm of Swords, there is a chapter early on where Sansa is thinking back to the scene at the end of A Clash of Kings when The Hound came into her room during the battle. She thinks in the chapter about how he kissed her, but in the scene in A Clash of Kings, this actually didn’t happen. Was that a typo or something? —Valdora

GRRM: It’s not a typo. It is something! [Laughs] ”Unreliable narrator” is the key phrase there. The second scene is from Sansa’s thoughts. And what does that reveal about her psychologically? I try to be subtle about these things.

[Source]

Here George gave us little clues:

[The un-kiss] is from Sansa’s thoughts [an internal thought for herself, she is not telling anyone that the Hound kissed her]

What does that reveal about her psychologically? 

I try to be subtle about these things

Also take note how GRRM repeatedly highlights the word “subtle” regarding the “un-kiss”:

but just now it’s a subtle touch (After ASOS but before AFFC)

I try to be subtle about these things (Shortly after AFFC)

This is a stark contrast with the majority of this fandom, either shippers or not, that interpret and believe that Sansa remembering a kiss instead of the sexual assault she suffered and later having nightmares with her assaulter being in bed with her, CLEARLY has to do with her sexual awakening, that the “un-kiss” means that she is having sexual fantasies with her assaulter, that she is expressing her dark, repressed, hidden, deepest desires about her assaulter.  

And I wonder, since Sansa has similar dreams with Ilyn Payne and often feels naked around him:

As the headsman looked at her, his pale colorless eyes seemed to strip the clothes away from her, and then the skin, leaving her soul naked before him. Still silent, he turned and walked away.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

She dreamt of footsteps on the tower stair, an ominous scraping of leather on stone as a man climbed slowly toward her bedchamber, step by step. All she could do was huddle behind her door and listen, trembling, as he came closer and closer. It was Ser Ilyn Payne, she knew, coming for her with Ice in his hand, coming to take her head. There was no place to run, no place to hide, no way to bar the door. Finally the footsteps stopped and she knew he was just outside, standing there silent with his dead eyes and his long pocked face. That was when she realized she was naked. She crouched down, trying to cover herself with her hands, as her door began to swing open, creaking, the point of the greatsword poking through …

She woke murmuring, “Please, please, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, please don’t,” but there was no one to hear.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa VI

Once she dreamed it was still her marrying Joff, not Margaery, and on their wedding night he turned into the headsman Ilyn Payne. 

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa II

Does this mean that Sansa is having sexual fantasies with her father’s executioner as well? Does this mean that Sansa has dark, repressed, hidden, deepest desires about Ilyn Payne too?

I think that the “un-kiss” has to do with Sansa’s internal thoughts, how her mind works, how her mind deals with unpleasant/disturbing events. So in order to decipher its meaning we must ask ourselves about Sansa’s psychology, she is a deeply traumatized child by many events: Her direwolf’s death, her father’s death, the disillusionment of her Prince and the Queen as high moral figures, the disillusionment of the knights as fair heroes, the psychological, physical and sexual abuse she has suffered so far.  The “un-kiss” is a subtlety from the author, this can’t be as easy as “Sansa has the hots for the Hound”. 

Sansa: All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs. —A Game of Thrones - Sansa I

Sansa: Almost raped by the Hound during the night of the Blackwater Battle, he invaded her bedroom, pushed her to bed, put a dagger at her throat, requested a song from her under threat of death.  

There is a song called “Off to Gulltown” that says:

Off to Gulltown to see the fair maid, heigh-ho, heigh-ho. I’ll steal a sweet kiss with the point of my blade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho. I’ll make her my love and we’ll rest in the shade, heigh-ho, heigh-ho.

Sansa: The Hound kissed me during the night of the Blackwater Battle.

Fandom/Shippers: Sansa fancies the Hound uhhhhhhhhh

Sansa: Has unpleasant memories of the “un-kiss” feeling soiled by it. 

Sansa: Has a nightmare about Tyrion and the Hound in bed with her the night after Marillion attempted to rape her.

Fandom/Shippers: Sansa fancies the Hound and have fun dreams with him uhhhhhhhhhh

It's really all that easy?

George hates to be predictable:

I spoke earlier about how predictable stories bore me. And we’ve all, you know, seen the stories where the hero, you know, he seems to get in trouble—he’s all alone, he’s surrounded by twenty foes, but he’s the hero! You know he’s going to get out of it; you’re not really engaged. I want you to be engaged. I want you to feel what the viewpoint character is feeling. If the viewpoint character is in trouble, I want you to be afraid, I want you not to know whether he’s going to get out of it. And I think the only way to do that is establish very early in the books that you’re playing for real, that anyone can die, and if the character’s in a life or death situation that he might not survive it. That these are not superheroes, these are not Indiana Jones. These are fallible human beings who are vulnerable to death and betrayal and all that. To my mind, that makes the stories much more suspenseful and gripping and emotionally involving.

(...)

I also liked the idea of the story not being predictable. Too much of fantasy is too predictable, you know? They say we write the stories that we want to read. And I was a reader long before I was a writer, and as a reader I love stories that take me to places that I don’t expect, and I hate stories where you read the first five pages and you know exactly what’s going to happen for the rest of the book. Those stories bore me very quickly, and I don’t want to bore my readers or indeed bore myself in writing, so I try to, you know, create a fairly complicated thing that’s full of twists and surprises and unexpected turns, but all of them rooted hopefully in human nature and arising out of the characters and the desires and wishes and dreams of those characters.

—A Dance With Dragons: George R. R. Martin

And he is always distracting us:

There are some mysteries in these books. There are some things that I’m gonna reveal later on that I’m planting clues for. There are some later plot twists that I’m foreshadowing. There are things that are gonna happen in Book 5 and Book 6 and Book 7 where I’ve planted a seed for it in Book 1. But I don’t necessarily want to give away my hand. So, what do I do when I plant the seed? Well, I plant the seed, but I try to do a little literary sleight of hand, and while I’m planting the seed, my other hand is up there waving and is distracting you with some flashy bit of wordplay or something that’s going on in the foreground, while the seed is being planted in the background. So hopefully the seed is there, the foreshadowing is there, but maybe you won’t notice it, because it’s surrounded by so many other things.

—The George R. R. Martin Podcast, Episode 7 (9:17)  

Transcription provided by this post.

Think about it!    

* * *

DECEMBER 2016 ASKING GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ABOUT SAN/SAN

My question is regarding Sansa Stark. Her sexuality has evolved through every book and yet the memory that seems to stick the more with her in this regard is the night of the Blackwater. So I was wondering if you can expand on your view on what this is, since as before that night her interactions with Sandor Clegane weren’t really physical.

The night of the Blackwater, yes. Ahhh… Well, I’m not going to give you a straight answer on that hahaha… Uhmmm, but I would say that ahhh… you know a television show and a book each has its own strengths and weaknesses; there a re tools that are available to me as a novelist, that are not available to people doing a television show. And of course there are tools available to them, that are not available to a novelist, I mean they can lay in a soundtrack, they can do special effects, they can do amazing things that I can’t do, I just have words on paper. What can I do, well I can use things like the internal narrative, I can take you inside of territories… thoughts, which you can’t do in a TV show… Ahhh… You just have the words they speak, you see them from outside because the camera is external, while prose is internal, and I have the device known as “unreliable narrator”… Ahhh… Which again, they don’t have. So, think about those two aspects when you consider that night of the Blackwater.

[Source]

Here George was asked directly, by a shipper, about the “un-kiss” and Sansa’s sexuality, and he stuck with his classic “unreliable narrator” answer.

George also repeated these things:

I can use things like the internal narrative

I can take you inside of territories… thoughts

Prose is internal

I have the device known as “unreliable narrator

His comparison between a TV Show and a Book is very telling: 

You just have the words they speak, you see them from outside because the camera is external, while prose is internal.

Also, it seems that he is done with questions about Sansa’s sexuality, as you can see from the chronology of questions and answers in this post. 

So, the “un-kiss” and any other misremembering from Sansa has to do with her psychological state, not with her sexuality in particular.

Sansa did something similar with the Trident incident, where her direwolf Lady, part of her soul, was killed by her own father using his sword Ice. 

She remembered the facts exactly as they happened when she told her father about it. But later she started to blame Arya and Cersei, but exculpates Joffrey, her future husband:  

Sansa and Septa Mordane were given places of high honor, to the left of the raised dais where the king himself sat beside his queen. When Prince Joffrey seated himself to her right, she felt her throat tighten. He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him. At first she thought she hated him for what they'd done to Lady, but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey's doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate, her and Arya. Nothing bad would have happened except for Arya.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa II

She accommodates and compartmentalize a lot as a way to cope and survive every unpleasant, disturbing and traumatic event that already happened to her in her short 13 years.  

So to answer your specific questions:

Do you think she gonna misremember any other similar traumatic events in future?

I think so. This is sad because it means that Sansa will experience even more  traumatic events that she will have to deal with... 

We need to wait to know the “un-kiss” true meaning. She romanticizes the Hound’s rape attempt against her and made it into a kiss, just like a song called “Off to Gulltown” that describes a non-con/sexual abuse situation against a maid, like her.

Inside her mind Sansa decided to remember the good things that men like Tyrion and the Hound did for her.  In her first AFFC chapter (Sansa I), she thinks:    

When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her. 

When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety. 

When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort.

Only in her nightmares the true slipped out:

And she dreamed of her wedding night too, of Tyrion's eyes devouring her as she undressed. Only then he was bigger than Tyrion had any right to be, and when he climbed into the bed his face was scarred only on one side. "I'll have a song from you," he rasped, and Sansa woke and found the old blind dog beside her once again. "I wish that you were Lady," she said. 

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa VI

But after Marillion’s attack, Littlefinger forced kiss and Lysas’s death she is starting to join the dots.  For an instance, when she hears Littlerfinger using the same sexual innuendo than Marillion, “Let me warm you”, she realizes that Petyr Baelish is bad news:

Let me warm you, Sansa. Take off those gloves, give me your hands."

"I won't." He sounded almost like Marillion, the night he'd gotten so drunk at the wedding. Only this time Lothor Brune would not appear to save her; Ser Lothor was Petyr's man. "You shouldn't kiss me. I might have been your own daughter . . ."

—A Storm of Swords - Sansa VII

The whole passage from her first AFFC chapter (Sansa I) is very revealing: 

The things her aunt had said just before she fell still troubled Sansa greatly. "Ravings," Petyr called them. "My wife was mad, you saw that for yourself." And so she had. All I did was build a snow castle, and she meant to push me out the Moon Door. Petyr saved me. He loved my mother well, and . . .

And her? How could she doubt it? He had saved her.

He saved Alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. But she was Sansa too . . . and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle . . . but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she'd known at King's Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei's ear. And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort, not Littlefinger. Littlefinger never lifted so much as his little finger for her.

Except to get me out. He did that for me. I thought it was Ser Dontos, my poor old drunken Florian, but it was Petyr all the while. Littlefinger was only a mask he had to wear. Only sometimes Sansa found it hard to tell where the man ended and the mask began. Littlefinger and Lord Petyr looked so very much alike. She would have fled them both, perhaps, but there was nowhere for her to go. Winterfell was burned and desolate, Bran and Rickon dead and cold. Robb had been betrayed and murdered at the Twins, along with their lady mother. Tyrion had been put to death for killing Joffrey, and if she ever returned to King's Landing the queen would have her head as well. The aunt she'd hoped would keep her safe had tried to murder her instead. Her uncle Edmure was a captive of the Freys, while her great-uncle the Blackfish was under siege at Riverrun. I have no place but here, Sansa thought miserably, and no true friend but Petyr.

—A Feast for Crows - Sansa I

As you can see Sansa is starting to realize that the persons that help her, can also hurt her and have ulterior motives to help her, that the help is not unconditional and always has a price.  

So I think she will reach a point where she would be able to do the same with all her abusers, she will realize that men like Tyrion, the Hound, Dontos, etc, have helped her but at the same time have hurt her, Tyrion accepted to marry her and almost commit marital rape, the Hound attempted to rape her and repeatedly abuse her psychologically and physically, even Dontos, always requesting kisses.  

Do you think her family will help her remember these events and dealing with it?

Most probably. Meeting Jeyne Poole again, for example. Knowing what Littlefinger really did to her, and all his crimes against House Stark.

I really hope for that moment of realization, when she can stop lying to herself, when she can clearly see all those men as her abusers and that she owns them nothing. 

George, please! She had enough already... Give her some peace and quite! Give her true friends and her family back! 

Thanks for your message.