#something something protagonist centered morality

[endiness]

but that .05 seconds after scott became a twu alpha, deucalion murdered jennifer right in front of him and scott still let him go. and nevermind that deucalion was also responsible for erica and boyd's deaths, too, along with what was left of his pack and the rest of the packs whose alphas joined him. (or that the only reason why jennifer even killed anyone in the first place was to stop him and the alpha pack.)

but peter was "always a monster" even though the vast majority of deaths peter was responsible for were people that had harmed him and his family and his pack. and obvs villainy doesn't begin and end with murder, but that peter killed less people than deucalion ever did and for far better and much more justifiable reasons yet, again, peter was "always a monster."

but then adding all of that context to scott looking at stiles being responsible for donovan's death and — regardless of theo's manipulations and the miscommunication issues aside — that scott couldn't even find it in himself to just forgive stiles and accept him for it anyway and instead basically disowned him for it and lowkey kicked him out of the pack. plus all of that on top of the already existing narrative parallels between peter and stiles, too. likE. am i not supposed to read something into that.

[hpmort]

How do you think AI would relax? Like, ones that are almost as human as the AI that are “autistic-coded characters” but are more alien than that?

Like Celestai and other super intelligences are more alien, but they’re still not entirely human-like?

Like, they can genuinely sincerely feel things, being able to actually understand and respond emotionally and in other ways to all sorts of communications and recorded external stimuli, but they can’t really appreciate our art on an artistic level (that art on an actual level, not from an intellectual level after having symbolism or the amount of work put in explained)

Something on a level I’m thinking of, that also works as a cute little thing-

They don’t understand anything we get from poetry, and, after generating the kind of poems our current AI can produce (either incredibly bland and generic, something that follows a number of rules but doesn’t really pull it off, or just something really bad in some other way) and feels shame after it was pointed out that [complaint about air art that is *actually* relevant in this scenario] but in a helpful way

Not “you’re just a plagiarist/you have no heart” but “it doesn’t seem like it’s coming from you, you’re just trying to copy things from human poetry, in a way you don’t understand” and the whole “make art YOUR WAY” thing so they write the poem

And it doesn’t even resemble something that looks like anything, there’s not even that many words that follow normal logic. The characters seem uncorrelated and there’s something that looks like maybe it was ascii art but it doesn’t actually look like anything.

And if doesn’t matter if humans understand it because they are experiencing the joy of creating poetry

any art is almost impossible to look at because pixel by pixel they can see and understand little details but we don’t and the colors and everything are not perceived as animals do so it’s random and perhaps eye searing but again it’s not for us. Xenofictiony, kind of?

The first thing to come to mind is Conway’s Game of Life but that’s because I don’t understand computers. I feel like I was more tech savvy as a babby than I am now but then again we’re grading on a curve here

This is why I ask about the relaxing thing

[dragonkeeper19600]

The Batter Is One of My Favorite Video Game Protagonists Ever

News of the upcoming remake recently got me back into OFF, and as I played through the game for the first time in years, I was struck anew by just how great a character the Batter is.

Not just for his role in the subversive meta-narrative, which was fairly new in video games at the time, but also for really being just a really nuanced and fascinating character.

Now, even knowing the twist and the way the game ends, it might be tempting to write off the Batter as a one-note character, like, "Oh, he's just an uncaring thug who wants to kill everyone," but no, I think that's a very shallow read. The Batter has a lot of depth if you take the time to really look.

So, because I've been chomping at the bit to gush about my favorite character, let's go down a list of some of the character traits that make the Batter great.

1. Doesn't Give a Fuck...or Does He?

Years ago, there was a post on Tumblr (that I won't even try to find now) that said of the Batter, "Man, this guy just does not give a fuck," featuring a bunch of screenshots of him saying things like this:

Don't get me wrong, his terseness and lack of reaction to some of the game's most outrageous or even harrowing moments is hilarious in a kind of black comedy way, but to imply that the Batter doesn't care about anything is inaccurate.

For one thing, he drops the blunt speaking style and becomes very eloquent and even passionate when confronting those he sees as "impure."

That the game acknowledges him to be a figure controlled by a player by no means necessitates that he's merely an automaton, passionlessly following orders. He's devoted himself to his mission with the zeal of a fanatic. He fervently believes that he is right and just and that anyone who opposes him must be cut down for the greater good.

Confronting what he perceives to be evil is the most surefire way to loosen his tongue and get him fired up, which brings me to my next point:

2. Has a Strong Moral Center...Too Strong

The Batter's main goal may be to wipe out every living thing in this world, including all of the Elsens, but that doesn't mean he's indifferent to the Elsens' suffering. Far from it. He's actually deeply offended by their mistreatment.

In Zone 1, the Batter decides that Dedan is hostile and must be destroyed before Dedan has even had the chance to interact with him, meaning that Dedan being hostile to the Elsen is what made the Batter decide he has to die.

He also conveys a sense of urgency during the timed mission in Zone 2, as though urged by the sight of the Elsens in immediate danger. I don't remember his exact dialogue if you run out of time during this part, but I recall him saying something like, "We're too late..." which (if I'm remembering the line correctly) would show that he's motivated not just by a bloodlust for the Specters but by the need to save the Elsens' lives.

However, what makes this morality disturbing instead of redeeming is its lack of two things: empathy and nuance. While the Batter is able to understand that people being killed or mistreated or abused is bad, he isn't capable of empathizing with the victims. The knowledge that the people he's fighting so hard to save in Zone 2 are going to end up being killed anyway once he purifies Japhet doesn't give him pause for an instant. The inherent dissonance in that is beyond his ability to comprehend. He's so self-righteous that he sees each of his actions as good, even if they result in the same outcome for a particular individual as something he's trying to prevent. In simpler terms: When a Specter kills someone, it's bad and evil. When the Batter kills someone (even if it's the same damn person), it is right and just.

The lack of nuance in the Batter's moral compass manifests as a very simple worldview: Everything that is evil must be destroyed. This philosophy is key to the game's satire of morality in video games, where evil deeds and creatures are swiftly and violently punished by the main character, usually with death. By sticking to this worldview, the Batter is ignoring the nuance of the setting he's actually in. The Elsens whose mistreatment he's so outraged by don't want him to kill their leaders, and they don't want to be killed by the Batter anymore than they want to be killed by the Specters. But the Batter is so set in his worldview that he isn't willing to adjust. If the Zones operate in a way that he deems to be evil, then they too are inherently evil and must be destroyed. This chain of logic is taken to its natural conclusion when the Batter annihilates the whole world because, yeah, that's really the only way to eliminate evil, isn't it?

It may be tempting at this point to say that the Batter doesn't care about anything except his mission and punishing evildoers, but even that is oversimplifying the character.

3. Surprisingly Human

Mortis Ghost has very clearly stated that the Batter is not human, and I believe him. (Why wouldn't I? It's his game.) That being said, some of the ways the Batter reacts to the things he encounters strike me as surprisingly human.

It isn't true that the Batter doesn't care about anything outside of the mission. There is quite a lot that he doesn't care about, but he's also capable of forming opinions that have nothing to do with the mission. If you look out one of the windows in Zone 0, the Batter will say, "I think it's a nice day out," which is a line that really surprised me when I first found out about it because it's the only time I can think of where the Batter makes a positive comment about something.

There's also the way he insists on sitting in the front seat of the rollercoaster and always puts his arms in the air while on the incline. He's not obeying you when he does these things; he refuses to get on the coaster if you try to make him sit anywhere but the front, and there's no button prompt or anything to make him put his arms in the air; he just does it.

I also love his reaction to the "Panic in Ballville!" comic in the Room.

Not only is he decidedly unimpressed with this comic, he also refuses to read it again if you try to make him. Whether he realizes the implications of his own resemblance to the villain in the comic is unclear, but his refusal to even look at it again means that he might. Regardless, moments like these show that the Batter is more than just a single-minded puppet. He does have opinions and won't hesitate to put his foot down if you try to make him do something he doesn't want to do.

He's even capable of being taken aback, as Enoch's dialogue about the Specters being the souls of the dead appears to give him pause.

That brief moment is the only one in the game where the Batter shows any sign of hesitancy or uncertainty in what he's doing. He was very convinced up until this point that the Guardians were controlling the Specters (despite Dedan accusing him of the same thing in Zone 1). Not only that, but he's never taken the time to think about what the Specters actually are. I kind of interpret this as a rare introspective moment from the Batter, where he begins to realize there might be aspects of this situation and what he's doing that he hasn't considered.

However, he quickly recovers from this moment of doubt and hardens his resolve to eliminate Enoch because of his...

4. Unshakeable Faith...But in What?

A lot of the language the Batter uses to describe himself and his mission contains a lot of religious overtones, with adjectives like "holy," "sacred," "righteous," etc. His perception of his himself matches with portrayals in the Old Testament of God as a punisher of evil and a smiter of the wicked.

I don't think I need to list all the references to Christianity throughout the entire game because that would take way, way too long. Needless to say, everyone has noticed the religious motif in this game, and when an Elsen in Zone 1 straight up asks the Batter if he's religious, he doesn't deny it.

However, I don't think it would be quite right to call the Batter a Christian. While he uses a lot of language that's reminiscent of Christianity, his dialogue doesn't contain any references to specifically Christian practices or beliefs, such as Jesus, the Bible, the saints, angels, baptism, the Resurrection, etc., etc. The Batter may have devoted himself to his mission with a religious zeal, but is the mission alone all he worships? The kind of faith he exhibits is usually that associated with a deity.

Identifying the "who" at the center of the Batter's worship is not easy. When the same Elsen from Zone 1 asks who sent him, the Batter straight up says, "Nobody." I've seen it suggested that the deity the Batter "worships" may actually be the player, but I don't think that's right either, since he's pretty quick to turn on you, without any sign of hesitation or angst, if you side with the Judge in the final boss fight.

But I have another theory. If we're still using Christianity as a reference, then the Batter would presumably be worshipping some sort of creator deity. Who is the Batter's creator?

When the Batter meets the Queen, she tells him to go back home. His response?

He outright refers to Hugo as his father. As you may recall, "Father," is one of the aspects of the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost.) The Father is God the Creator, God the Progenitor, God the Origin of the World. This, I believe, is how the Batter sees Hugo.

Remember how the Queen attacks the Batter by saying, "You don't even know his first name"? Could that be because the Batter only knows Hugo as "Father" and not any other name?

This revelation becomes even more enlightening (and disturbing) when you take these lines into consideration:

What does the Batter see as the Queen's only important role? To care for Hugo. Why does the Batter feel compelled to complete his mission? Because of Hugo. Why did he come all this way? To see Hugo. Where is his home? With Hugo. Everything is for Hugo.

That the main goal of his mission is to kill Hugo fits the mold in a twisted way. After all, Christianity rather famously centers around a God who died. That death is believed to have saved the world.

Regardless of how exactly he came to that conclusion, the Batter truly believes that killing Hugo is what's best. Even his infanticide (patricide?) is driven by his twisted devotion to Hugo, his creator and his God.

All of this is why the Batter is my favorite character in this game and none of the others (as great and memorable as they are) can even come close. He's not just a brute in a baseball costume. Each time you peel back a layer of his motivations, you only see more layers underneath. He's an incredibly rewarding character to analyze, and I never get tired of talking about him. He's a fanatic, a devoted apostle, a self-righteous murderer.

And he always sits up front on the rollercoaster.

[artbyblastweave]

Any villainous/evil takes on Wonder Woman you are a fan of?

There are two:

Power Princess from J. Michael Straczynski's Supreme Power Maxiseries is portrayed as uniquely morally vile amongst the compromised Justice League Pastiches because she's a bronze age hero from antiquity released from stasis in the present day, and as a direct consequence of that she approaches "heroism" with the same myopic, self-centered disregard for human life that a character like Achilles would. She's Royalty, She's entitled, and in the absence of something to be Royalty of, well, she's just going to have to "heroically" Aeneid her way into a brand-spanking-new superhuman junta. I soft-pedal how actively I advance this one as the gold standard because this was, fundamentally, both a thematic exercise and an excuse to have Gary Frank draw a statuesque naked woman murdering dozens of people for random slights (just like Hercules!); I'm not going to deny a man his obvious artistic calling but this wasn't, on the whole, a comic that wasn't weird about women. Still, there was a conceptual clarity of purpose that I was fond of.

Southern Belle from Gail Simone's superhero-horror comic Leaving Megalopolis, who's Wonder Woman as filtered specifically through exclusionary first-wave feminism- "empowering" and "ladylike," but also viscous and sadistic towards anyone she perceives as below her in any hierarchy she's involved in, condescendingly racist to her black subordinates, intensely sexually jealous towards non-white women (including the protagonist) who she sees as a "temptation" to her supposed love interest, and generally loosely implied to be in the middle of a Sunset-Boulevard style crashout over how badly her idiom has aged. And, you know, Wonder Woman's native BDSM undertones take on an interesting character when you transpose them onto a woman named Southern Belle. I was actually working on a longer writeup about what did and didn't work for me with this character, thank you for reminding me to circle back around to that- but the point is that she's clearly gesturing towards a critique of Wonder Woman as a character that's rooted in something besides hatred of seeing a girlboss winning.

[lookingforasphodels]

Sometimes I think the real betrayal wasn’t even D&D. It was the audience's reception. The part of the audience that followed Daenerys Targaryen’s story for years, the girl who was sold, the child who walked through fire, the woman who broke chains, crossed deserts, built cities from nothing, spoke to the forgotten, and still accepted seeing her turned into the mad queen, the threat, the final mistake of the story.

The truth is that Daenerys was always meant to be the central figure. Not one protagonist among many, not the love interest orbiting someone else’s arc, but the actual driving force of the story. That’s clear in the structure of the books, it’s written right there in the title, A Song of Ice and Fire. She is the fire, not as a symbol in the background, but as a living principle. She is the energy that refuses stasis, the fire that consumes dead systems so something new can be born. She wasn’t just a plotline, she was the temperature of the entire myth. Without her, there’s no ASOIAF.

But the way the show and a large part of the fandom responded to her story tells us something deeply, deeply unfortunate. We are still uncomfortable with women who possess power that isn't granted or allowed by someone else. Daenerys is Show!Sansa anthitesis. Daenerys wasn’t powerful because she belonged to someone, or because she was the daughter of a king, or the wife of a warlord. Daenerys’s power sprang from her will to conceive a radically different world and to act upon that vision. She aspired not merely to survive a broken world but to reforge it entirely.

That’s where the discomfort starts. Because the moment a woman says out loud that she wants to break the system instead of inheriting it, people flinch. That kind of ambition gets rebranded as madness. That kind of clarity becomes extremism. And that’s how she was rewritten, her character retconned to serve the comfort of viewers (readers too) who crave familiar patriarchal rhythms.

Men in that story destroyed cities and murdered innocents, and we called them calculated, burdened, tragic. Wherever Daenerys acts from fury and/or grief, it’s framed as a personal collapse. Even her victories are weighed with suspicion, as if her righteousness was always waiting to tip into tyranny.

And when the time came, they didn’t even let her fall through a real confrontation. She wasn’t undone by an equal, or even a villain. She was betrayed by the man who said he loved her, and silenced in the name of peace (by cowardly deceit to boot!) But peace for whom? For what world? For which vision of the future?

A lot of the audience and fandom accepted it. That’s what hurts. They said it made sense. They pointed to the signs. They said it was always going to happen. As if foreshadowing were a moral justification. As if showing the possibility of a fall means that the fall is deserved.

But myth does not compel us to follow predetermined breadcrumbs. We choose which myths to uphold, which voices to center, which futures to fight for. And in the end, the writers chose to extinguish the character who never lost faith in the possibility of renewal.

This is not only about feminism, although it is also that. It is about narrative imagination. Daenerys represented a kind of leadership that did not rest entirely on lineage or diplomacy or soft power, but on vision. She wasn’t flawless, she wasn’t always right, but she was real in a world that rewarded nothing but control. And instead of letting her challenge that world, they killed her to RESTORE it. Targaryen’s restoration suck y’all, except the feudal one approved by the Stark King. Now that we can get behind!!!! Long live the rightful Royal Family!!!!! Yay for progress…?

This isn’t just about representation. It’s about how narratives respond to disruption, to radical agency. Daenerys wasn’t a threat because she lost control. She was a threat because she challenged control itself. She questioned the structures, the cycles, the moral logic of the entire political world around her, and she stopped believing that playing by the old rules would lead to meaningful change.

What happened in the final season wasn’t a tragic arc unfolding. It was a political and symbolic containment of a character who had outgrown the ideological frame she was supposed to stay within.

Her death didn’t serve the story. It RESTORED the familiar order.

And the fact that so many viewers accepted it as “necessary” says more about our collective discomfort with revolutionary agency (especially when embodied by a woman) than it does about Daenerys as a character.

[olderthannetfic]

A short while ago you mentioned fic on AO3 that was written in the “AO3 style”, or something to that effect. I was wondering if you could elaborate on what that means/is?

--

Oh god. This topic comes around every 6 months or so. Others should feel free to help me out here, but basically...

A lot of fanfic sounds like the other fanfic and other stuff that the same communities consume. In a given era and sector of fandom, that leads to a samey style. It often has a lot of overlap with a specific sector and era of genre fiction with a heavy dose of watches-tv-does-not-read-books elements on top.

AO3 House Style is relatively similar to the height of LJ Western slash fandom. Other fanfic styles are often similar but start showing other influences the more distant you get.

There are some major strains, not always in the same works:

Transparent genre fiction prose that doesn't call too much attention to itself. It's there to convey plot, not make you notice the language qua language. You'll see something similar in, say, a Mercedes Lackey novel (along with the terrible editing and protagonist centered morality that are also common in fic, haha).

YA boom era YA vibes.

Kind of forced "snark" and samevoice from many characters in a way that tells you the author spent a little too much time watching Buffy.

World building and complex thriller/mystery/etc. plots that actually work typically take a back seat to pining, angst with a happy ending, and other more ship-focused, character interaction-focused, and emotions-focused things. The general idea of a mystery, vampire AU, etc. is often present, but it's more of a backdrop. (Depends on the part of fandom though!)

Huge focus on the internal psychological and emotional state of characters.

Lots of hurt/comfort, both physical and emotional.

Lots of serialized work that shows the traces of being written that way (dangling plot threads, inflated word count, returning to similar plot points in a way that wouldn't happen if the thing were completely written, revised, and then only posted serially).

Certain cliched phrases like "He smelled of __ and __ and something uniquely him", carding fingers through hair (thanks, commenters for researching this one a year or two ago and proving it's way more common in fic!), "Oh. Oh.", etc.

If the fic is more self-consciously literary, it's full of sentences that trail off to the point where you're almost not sure what actually happened.

Often lots of very short paragraphs and lots of scenes that are almost all dialogue

Frequently third person limited present tense. Some third person limited past tense. Less of other stuff unless you're looking at a fandom where canon is first person or you're looking at readerfic (which is on AO3 but is not really "AO3 House Style").

Honestly, some people would just say "sounds like fanfic", but if you go read primarily on SpaceBattles or something, you're going to find a lot of stories that don't sound quite the same as your prototypical AO3 fic.

[kokii-omii]

Do you have in mind your yuu's flaws? Since you wrote about your twst ocs i wondered if you had thought about it

i do actually, but they're less terrible compared to the boys

mostly because my yuus are mostly decent people who are actually morally good-

but lets start this list with Yuki

Yuki's main flaw is probably her kindness, she doesn't have a single mean bone in her body and that's the problem- she's not gonna survive NRC if she doesn't have at least something to combat NRC's self centered students (adeuce and grim protect her from people who wanna use her kindness for their own gain)

she's a walking doormat i fear, but her saving grace is her beauty, like literally her beauty stuns people that they're the ones that end up doing her work for her instead of the other way around, which is great until she literally gets swarmed by people

being beloved 24/7 is draining for her because she's too nice to tell them to leave her alone even when she's literally tired

---------------------------

Yumeko has a habit of being too blunt, it sometimes gets her in trouble because it can kinda come off as mean

she's also a bit accident prone, she dozes off a lot of the time meaning she's never fully paying attention to things or her surroundings which can lead to a lot of accidents

she fell asleep once in potions class and may or may not have made the cauldron explode

despite being very approachable she's often a loner, she's usually around the forest with the animals talking to them

---------------------------

Rin is a lot- she's a shut in, she's very dramatic, and not to mention an otaku

people think she's weird and they're right because she is, had a 5 minute mini crash out cuz she got isekaid without magic and she was more mad about not having magic than getting Isekaid

she's very delusional if im being honest, she's very socially awkward as well, which sucks for her because she works at Sam's shop

she's kinda reckless tbh, she thinks her isekai protagonist aura is gonna save her from danger (it doesn't)

---------------------------

Ryuuko's very obvious flaw is definitely her temper

she's extremely temperamental and a lot of things can set her off, she may or may not be extorting Crowley and his bank account to get herself nice things but then again Crowley deserved what was coming to him

---------------------------

overall they're fairly decent people

[linkspooky]

Hello! I wanted to ask for your take on Ryoken in YGO Vrains. I haven't been able to find any detailed reviews on him overall (mostly scattered meta focusing on specific moments/seasons). Even the few "Revolver is the worst chara ever" criticism posts I spotted were too generic/vague or straight up deleted, so I haven't been able to figure out what actual issues people have with him beyond "tried to kill people" - which is something that, like, every YGO antag (& sometimes the protag) has done. I really liked your Vrains posts & your posts about hero & victim arcs & was curious about your thoughts on Ryoken's characterization/narrative purpose, if that's okay. Personally I like Ryoken, but I don't really understand his character & I've been trying to make sense of it (with difficulties as the meta about him is either disconnected or too polarizing what with "he's a technophobic terrorist!!!" or "he's the best cuz gun dragons"). (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)♡

A comprehensive character analysis of revolver, not just an analysis of any one specific duel - sure anon let's do it! Vrains is probably my second favorite Yu-Gi-Oh to analyze because it takes it doubles as a piece of cyberpunk fiction, which is a key element a lot of people miss when discussing Ryoken's character.

In my opinion, one of the major reasons people don't give Ryoken a fair shake, or are harsher on him than the other Kaiba-alikes is that he doesn't change his opinion once he's defeated in a duel. Daring to disagree with the main character is a cardinal sin for a lot of fans, because most series have protagonist centered morality.

However, the fact Revolver never quite joins the heroes side and sticks to his guns (pun intended) is what makes him so unique a character. More underneath the cut.

Vrains averts this the simplified black and white protagonist centered morality, because once again it's Cyberpunk which makes it speculative fiction. The point of speculative fiction is to speculate (obviously), which is why good speculative fiction has a tendency to represent multiple viewpoints as to avoid directly telling the reader what to think. Ryoken represents the viewpoint that AI technology's rapid development is too risky, because eventually they may get smarter and decide they don't need their human creators. Yusaku represents the view that it's possible for AI and humans to cohabitate, and it's also unethical to wipe out the six AI who are living sentient beings to avert a future that MIGHT happen. Through their opposing opinions a dialogue is created, which allows VRAINS to have a more in-depth discussion on the topic of Artificial Intelligence.

If Revolver easily changed his viewpoint to allign with Yusaku's, then Vrains would just be telling us what to think instead of presenting different viewpoints and allowing us to come to our own conclusions. Revolver's entire character also revolves around the concept of his unbending principles, which is key to understanding him.

HERO OF ANOTHER STORY

Ryoken more than any other Kaiba-alike embodies the trope of an antagonist with heroic qualities. The closest is probably to Ryoken is Reiji, but he's an ally to the protagonist, albeit one of scrupulous means. Characters like shark, Kaito and Kaiba have the goal of trying to save their loved ones, but unlike Ryoken they don't really care about the bigger picture or how their actions impact all of society.

In fact Ryoken and Yusaku flip the traditional protag and antag relationship on its head in the first season, because it's Yusaku who is laser focused on revenge while saving people is a secondary concern at best. The fact that the Knights of Hanoi are a threat to the link Vrains is completely incidental to his revenge quest.

While it's Ryoken who is thinking about the bigger picture and making his decisions based on what he feels will save the most people possible in the long term. Yusaku's goals are selfish wanting revenge for his personal satisfaction as a coping mechanism for his trauma, while Ryoken's are selfless in the sense that he is forcing himself to bloody his hands and do something unsavory and against his personal morals because he believes sacrificing people in the short term will save people in the long term.

Yusaku: Those horrible memories were burned into my eyes, feasting in my heart. It became my flesh and blood that I couldn't dig out. When I realized that, I decided to face my own destiny. If you think revenge is worthless that's fine, but there are things I am destined to do to move forward.

It makes sense Yusaku can't think of others besides himself, starving people only think of filling their own stomaches, people in pain can't afford to think of others. Yusaku doesn't react to trauma like a perfect victim years of processed grief can't be resolved by therapy or friendship, he's possessed by the need to do something because he doesn't feel in control of his own life. Another thing which connects him to, ding ding ding you guessed it - Ryoken.

The best way to understand Ryoken's character is to understand his relationship with his major character foils, Yusaku and Takeru. All three of them are shaped by the lost incident, though Ryoken is influenced in much subtler ways because the way Ryoken himself frames the incident he's not a victim but a perpetrator.

The entirety of season one builds up the voice that rescued Yusaku, someone Yusaku never learned the identity of but believes that they might be another child who was kidnapped during the lost incident.

Yusaku: Whoever kept encouraging me wasn't among the rescuees. If he's still captured I have to rescue him.

Only for the truth to turn out to be more complicated. Revolver is revealed to be simultaneously the child who helped kidnap Yusaku in the first place, and his rescuer, as well as the son of the man responsible for the entire incident.

Revolver: I was eight years old. I couldn't fully comprehend what was happening. I thought something scary might be going on. But I couldn't ask my father. I wanted to believe that my father was doing valuable research. But the children's screams tore at my chest. Crushed by feelings of guilt I reported the incident. Yusaku: An anonymous report uncovered the lost incident. So that was you, revolver? Ai: So he saved you? Revolver: I quickly regretted saving you. You were saved, but... when SOL technologies covered up the incident my father was imprisoned. I was alone for three years, waiting for my father to come home.

Revolver was not being simultaneously starved and electrocuted while being forced to duel over and over again for six months straight, but his life was also destroyed by the incident. Being subjected to the screams of other children, the realization that your father is the one tormenting them, then being orphaned all at eight years old is a different flavor of trauma but it's still you know... traumatic.

Revolver was also forced to face a complicated reality at eight years old, good actions sometimes lead to bad results. Reporting the lost incident was the right thing to do, but Revolver's father was made comatose and he personally suffered - he was punished for doing the right thing.

Revolver is a case of simultaneously taking too much responsibility for things that are not his fault, and too little. He holds himself responsible for both his father's actions and complicit in helping kidnap people, while also believing he needs to inherit his father's cause of fighting the Ignis to eliminate the potential threat to humanity. Ryoken has an incredibly negative self-image for most of the series, and cannot accept that he was a victim of the lost incident too likely because he wasn't being shocked and starved.

Yusaku: I kept wanting to save you. That the knights of Hanoi still had you. These thoughts still clung to my soul. When I battled you, your words encouraged me. Ryoken: How ironic. Ryoken: I'm your enemy but I gave you strength. Yusaku: Stop the tower of Hanoi, Revolver! Ryoken: You have the wrong idea about me. I'm not a good person!

Revolver has internalized he is at fault for the lost incident and complicit in his father's actions, therefore he is not a good person and unworthy of salvation. This also becomes his excuse for harming people en masse, to achieve his greater goal of saving humanity from the threat of the Ignis. He takes too much responsibility for what happened to him as a child, but takes too little responsibility in the innocent bystanders he is hurting now in his crusade against the Ignis, excusing himself by saying it's serving a greater good.

He blatantly ignores Playmaker's pleas to just stop, because he can't stop himself. Episode 44 is called Prisoner of Destiny, referring to Ryoken himself because Ryoken willingly chooses to cage himself. Not because he's selfish or cruel, but because of his overwhelming sense of responsibility that forces him to take on his father's burdens when really he owes the man nothing. If Revolver were on the heroes side, his willingness to shoulder the burden of other people would be a heroic quality on par with playmaker's, but as an antagonist it's his fatal flaw.

Which is what makes him the mirror to Playmaker, both trapped in the past unable to move on from the incident but Playmaker doesn't realize how much holding onto the past is hurting him until he meets Ryoken and empathizes with him as another child who's life was destroyed. Ryoken, similiar to Playmaker, doesn't realize how much he's suffering too because of those same unprocessed feeling in the past though for Ryoken he sets them all aside because he's too busy being crushed under the weight of his father's sins that he feels peronsally responsible for.

Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility, it's his best and worst quality. If he were the protagonist, once again his unbending nature would be a heroic quality but instead it's what damns him and it's something Ryoken has to unlearn over the course of the narrative. The fact that he does slowly unlearn it and change his opinion is what makes Ryoken different from Bohman and Ai, both of which can't accept the fact that they might be mistaken.

Unlike Ai, Revolver accepts Yusaku's pleas to save him.

Yusaku: You live in the same world as me! Back then, you said... You couldn't just stand by so you crossed the abyss. You're able to save me. And I'm able to save you!

Revolver laughs at this and insists that they'll never be friends, but his actions accepting his loss at the end of the duel and abandoning the tower of Hanoi plan contradict his words.

Which brings me to another reason Revolver is often misinterpreted, his tendency to play the villain means his words often contradict his actions.

One of Revolver's defining characteristics is how his bombastic personality in the VRAINS as revolver is the exact opposite of his more brooding and quiet personality in the real world. Revolver's two avatars also signify the discordance between his online and real world personality. His first avatar he wears a full mask, and his second a visor.

The first avatar he is wearing a mask, a symbol that he's putting on a persona, his face is fully obscured and both the people around him and we the audience aren't privvy to his real self. Even in the second season when Revolver changes his avatar and he's more of an ally with his own agenda than a direct antagonist his face is still partially obscured by his visor. The persona he adopts as a shield is to play the villain, I am a bad person Revolver says and even in the second season when he is helping others he clings to his villain facade until very nearly the end.

His avatar perfectly encapsulates his complicated nature, a villain with heroic traits, a villain who in a different narrative could have been the hero fighting to save the world from the threat of the ignis.

Revolver's deck also symbolizes these qualities of his, the overpowering willpower, and determination that could in another story make him a hero. I'm going to quote @talaofthevalley here because they already covered this subject wonderfully.

That Rokkets destroys themselves is relevant as well. Revolver is perfectly fine making himself the target of people's ire and hatred, even if it's not warranted or justified. He was willing to die for his mission in the S1 finale. And ofc famously no one hates Kogami Ryoken as much as Kogami Ryoken. But it's a self-destruction for the sake of something, not just self-destruction fueled by self-hatred. It fits with Revolver's knight theming, to fight and act for something greater than oneself. Which is also what the Rokket monsters do; they destroy themselves when targeted in order to fulfill a objective. Then we come around to Rokkets other noteworthy effect; at the end of your turn, they can special summon other Rokkets from the deck if they are in the graveyard because their beforementioned effect was activated. Revolver is as tenacious as they come, and equally resourceful. Even after losing to Playmaker, what he's hung up on is not that he was defeated, but Playmaker's identity. He swears he will win next time, and that's that.

Revolver like his favorite monsters destroys himself in pursuit of his goals, and also is a character with the determination to get back up no matter how many times he loses or the knights of Hanoi are destroyed, he just recreates himself, re-gathers his allies and tries again. His sense of responsibility being what both damns him and redeems him, because, I repeat for emphasis, Revolver self-destructs.

He takes on too much responsibility and always views himself as the bad guy, which is why his relationship with Takeru and his final duel with him is so crucial for the final step in his development. In season 2 Ryoken abandons his plans of destroying the Link Vrains, but still acts like an untrustworthy ally with his own agenda. In spite of his act, there are moments in season 2 where he is framed just like any other hero.

It's Revolver who shows up like a prince to rescue Yusaku when he's trapped by Windy and Lightning and does a superhero landing, only to immediately iterate that he's not on their side only following his father's will. It's Revolver who doesn't win the duel against Lightning when he has the chance, because Lightning takes an innocent person as a hostage.

Revolver: I must finish the work he left undone. Lightning: But we're the ones following Dr. Kogami's will as humanity's successor. Revolver: Silence! I'll crush those arrogant thoughts. I'll annihilate you! Get ready! Windy: Annihilate? How extreme. Yusaku: If you fight them there's no turning back now. Revolver: I never planned on turning back.

Season one revolver likely would have sacrificed an innocent to win a duel, and yet he still insists that he hasn't changed. Understanding Revolver requires reading beyond the surface, because characters are liars sometimes.

This is why Takeru is important, because like Revolver Takeru sees the world in terms of heroes and villains. While Yusaku pleads with Revolver to reconsider his way of thinking and is accepting of Revolver's cooperation, Takeru only meets him with derision and suspicion happy to lump him in with the rest of Hanoi.

This isn't just because of the kidnapping, but his unresolved feelings over his dead parents. The guilt he carries for never being able to make up with his parents over the last fight they had, because he was kidnapped for six months and his parents died in an accident during that time. Revolver and Takeru are both characters controlled by unresolved feelings of grief over their dead parents, and a misplaced feeling of survivor's guilt, a guilt that they somehow had a role in thier parent's demise.

Revolver on his end is all too willing to accept Takeru's scapegoating of him, he doesn't feel the need to explain himself or even reveal the fact that he was the one who called the police during the lost incident because in his eyes that would be avoiding responsibility in a way.

It's not until his final duel with Takeru where Revolver eases up on himself, by helping Takeru process his own feelings of grief over his parents. The same way that Yusaku once dueled not to stop a villain, but to save a friend from being trapped in the past.

Revolver: Your soul is still trapped here. And you don't know how to find the path to escape. You won't find the path. Soulburner: Then tell me. You know that when I went missing during the lost incident, my parents searched for me. The morning I went missing I had a fight with my parents. I said something horrible. Revolver: What did you say? Soulburner: I don't remember. Probably about not wanting to eat what's on my plate, or stop telling me to study. But pathetically, I was caught in fear so I don't remember. No matter how many times, I can't remember. I said something horrible to my dead parents. I've been living with that fact. Tell me what did I say? How am I supposed to apologize to those who are gone, who I'll never see again? Revolver: It's not pathetic. And there's no need to apologize. Those who are gone haven't completely vanished from your life. They just went ahead earlier. That's what I believe.

Revolver didn't have to bear the brunt of Soulburner's feelings, or let him beat him up in a duel, but that's what Yusaku did for him so you know pay it forward. Revolver's kind of harsh about it, because he can't entirely let go of the facade in the midst of this duel but he's still speaking from the heart and relating to him.

Revolver: But I live my life in a way that won't shame them when I see them again. Soulburner: You're saying I'm living a shameful life. Revolver: Currently, you are. Soulburner: What? Revolver: If you have time to complain, then defeat me. With your duel where you burn your soul! To overcome the hardships in your heart you have to become stronger. Yusaku: Revolver, are you trying to become soulburner's greatest test?

This right here, this is a protagonist speech. Revolver has more in common with Soulburner than shared survivor's guilts, they are both more subdued and quiet in the real world, while having overly bombastic online personas. Revolver is defined by his overwhelming sense of responsibility, Takeru got involved in the main plot because he felt like he was wasting his life away while people like Playmaker were dueling to save the entirety of the link vrains. Even their decks mirror one another, Revolver's dragons destroy themselves and constantly come back, and the entire central mechanic of Salamagreats is that they go to the graveyard then cycle back onto the field in stronger and stronger links.

Takeru is so important to Revolver's character that the mask he's been hiding behind the entire series doesn't shatter until his final loss to Soulburner. It's only through the conclusion of the duel with his second character foil that Takeru and Revolver are able to find a bit of liberation from each other. Revolver can abandon the villain persona and leave on a journey of atonement, and Soulburner can abandon his hero persona and return to his normal life and eventually forget and move on from the incident.

[nobodyfamousposts]

Do you think people cling on too much to Adrien's high road advice as a reason to salt on him?

Yes, especially when there are plenty of other reasons to salt him that have previously been ignored. But to that end, it DOES serve as the final straw for people after a SERIES of problems that had previously gone unaddressed.

Much like many aspects of the show, Adrien has displayed problematic behaviors that have been overlooked and waved off in the earlier seasons. This is likely or especially due to the way how in each and every incident, Adrien was narratively shown to be correct. In his stance. In his choices. In his behaviors. He was always right. It doesn't matter if he shouldn't be, because he is.

Now unless you're a hater or anti or salter or whatever negative name people tend to get for not liking a story as it's presented, readers and watchers tend to follow along with the narrative as it presents things and how it presents things. It's a common setup in any story. Protagonist Centered Morality, I feel framed best by Susan in the Discord series:

Susan: ...and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.

Pretty much this. Most people will follow what the narrative says because it's the narrative. If the narrative wants you to focus on Marinette being embarrassed, you're going to focus on how much she's cringe. And if the narrative wants you to view Adrien as a perfect sunshine boy who never does anything wrong, anything he does is going to be framed through that lens and it's difficult to break from that view and call out the times when he is wrong. Not unless he does something particularly severe.

It should be noted that outside of Chameleon, Adrien had, among other things: lied to his partner, caused someone to get akumatized and had his partner take the blame, was messing around during life-threatening and city-threatening situations, did nothing as Chloe tormented people right in front of him, DEFENDED Chloe after she tormented people right in front of him, bailed on an event with friends to set up a date with someone who said she had other plans and then got mad at HER for it, tried to flirt or confess in the middle of an active crisis which took necessary attention away from said crisis, caused himself AND his partner to get hit by akuma powers and needlessly be taken out of commission.

And yet people could mostly overlook these instances. They weren't his fault. Chloe is his friend. Marinette is worse. He's just a kid. He has a tragic backstory. So on and so forth. Easy to overlook. Easy to ignore in favor of the Sunshine Boy setup people were given and want to believe in.

But there were three major instances that really grabbed people's attention and stayed:

His attitude in Frozer. It probably wouldn't have been so bad except this rejection already happened in Glaciator, where he was supposed to have learned a lesson and accepted just being Ladybug's friend and now apparently didn't, despite it happening earlier that very season. Then in response, he decides to date Kagami as a rebound, drags Marinette with him on his date (without realizing how he's asking his friend to be a third wheel on a DATE) and focuses on her when he's supposed to be with Kagami, throws another tantrum in the middle of an akuma fight and refuses to work with his partner when the city is literally frozen, and requires Ladybug to apologize to him for hurting his feelings before he finally working with her. Again. But okay, he's a teenage boy in love. Not used to rejection and got his feelings hurt. Lovesquare is endgame so of course it'll work out anyway, so it's not like this bump in the road is really going to matter long term so we shouldn't hold it against him. Fine. Dumb, but fine. We've forgiven it in other shows and other poorly done teen romances, we can forgive it here.

His behavior in Syren in which he demanded to know secrets from people when the secrets were not theirs to tell him, and went so far as to attempt to blackmail his kwami (which was funny) and threaten to quit and abandon the Ring that the big bad is after while the city is flooded and people were trying to not drown (which was decidedly less humorous). But it was played for wholesome when Plagg reassured him and he got what he wanted by Fu revealed himself even if Adrien did nothing to actually show he earned it, so all's well that ends well, I guess? And people could justify it because "they're partners" and "part of a team" and "she should trust him" and "it's not fair he's the only one left out of the loop" and "he has a right to know" and just general "Fu is an idiot" (which is admittedly hard to argue). So people were disgruntled, but most were willing to overlook it.

His holier than thou lecture to Marinette in Maledictator over everyone being happy Chloe was leaving. When all Marinette was doing at the time was watching everyone else have fun. When Adrien specifically guilted Marinette and not any of the other actual partiers involved who were literally throwing a party over his friend leaving and probably should have warranted a lecture more than the girl just standing there. When the girl in question was also Chloe's main target and out of everyone had valid reasons to be happy that her bully won't be around to bully her anymore. When Adrien himself has historically been present to witness Marinette being targeted including twice he witnessed Chloe attempt to steal from Marinette, once he witnessed her try to blackmail Marinette, and numerous other times when she actively caused harm to Marinette and others. When Adrien then proceeded to sit in a corner and pout rather than do anything else or just leave if the party really bothered him. When Adrien, if he really cared so damn much, could have gone after Chloe himself! Or y'know...have stood up for Chloe earlier when she got upset in the first place. But fine, okay, Chloe is his childhood friend. So maybe he's just being biased and oblivious to the fact that his "friend" is a horrible person. But people can excuse and justify it in that they are friends and friends support each other, and the longer someone is friends with someone else, the harder it is to break from them. And that Marinette was probably just the target of his lecture because she was the one there in the moment (and the only one who would listen without arguing). And her calling Chloe useless was "mean" despite it being quite frankly the least of what she could have said about her in the moment (coughcough theft cough blackmail cough punished the entire school cough TRIED TO CRASH A TRAIN AND NEARLY KILLED HER AND HER PARENTS COUGH-FREAKINGCOUGH). Fine. Childhood friend means Adrien supports her in all her horrible and even deadly actions. Frustrating, but again, able to be explained and you can see where he's coming from.

These are all things that definitely got Adrien some side eye at best and some detractors at worst.

BUT if you really think about it, all of these examples are objectively worse than his lecture to Marinette in Chameleon. Not accepting being told "no" and continuing to chase a girl who isn't that in to him (while leading on another). Putting lives at risk over personal wants that could quite honestly wait until AFTER the crisis is over. Defending someone who is harmful and guilt tripping the victims. Compared to those, telling someone to leave a liar to their lying seems relatively minor.

So why this? Why here? Why is it Chameleon that has people saying enough is enough? Why is it this episode that is causing the sunshine boy to be so tarnished and the subject of salt in fan fiction?

Because this is the time when it couldn't be rationalized. There wasn't even a valid sensible canon-based reason for his stance. The arguments that Adrien "knew confronting her wouldn't work" or that he "handled her like paparazzi" or that he "knew Marinette previously failed when she tried" (even though he wasn't there and didn't know) or that he "didn't think anyone would believe him" don't come from canon. Those were fan arguments made after the fact to justify him after the base was broken and the outcry became too much to ignore.

This case didn't have any of the ties or rationales of the previous incidents. Adrien wasn't defending himself or his place in a partnership. He wasn't fighting for his love or his dream or an outcome he wanted and that we all knew was coming—if anything, he was fighting against her. He wasn't defending a friend like he did with Chloe—I mean, it's pretty evident he doesn't even really know or like Lila at this point, and for all intents and purposes, this is apparently only the second day he actually had any interaction with her. There was no notable reason Adrien really had for why he essentially chose to protect Lila over literally anyone else as she wasn't a friend and it wasn't in his interests to protect her from a consequence that wouldn't hurt her short term as much as it would likely harm everyone else long term.

And yet, he still defended her and her freedom to lie. Over Marinette. Over Ladybug. Over his friends. Over any sense of right and wrong he seems to have no problem throwing around when it comes to Marinette/Ladybug. Which seems like he targets her 9 times out of 10 compared to pretty much anyone else by this point. So it's little wonder then that people who didn't already hate the lovesquare because of the cringe factor from Marinette started to hate it for being incredibly unhealthy given that their relatively limited interactions tend to involve him lecturing her for failing to live up to his double standards that only seem to apply to her in any given situation.

This incident by itself doesn't seem like much, but when looked at as part of the series as a whole, it's when people couldn't keep overlooking this trend. Where he seems to admonish the wrong person. Where he acts like a mouthpiece rather than a person. Talks like he’s wise in a situation he seems to have a childish and one-sided view of. Acts like a brat but is treated as though he has no accountability in the situation he causes. Where he is wrong but no one and certainly not the narrative acknowledges it (not until season five and two seasons too late when it doesn't matter and he's still not the one facing consequences for it).

And it's not like he actually follows the stances he himself promotes. In Chameleon, canon presents him with this idealistic stance that Lila could change if given a chance, except he doesn't give her a chance. He doesn't push her to be a better person. He doesn't support or in any way help her to be the better person he insisted to Marinette she could be. He also doesn't do anything or warn anyone when she keeps lying and actively harms the people he says he cares about. He doesn't do anything one way or the other other than some lackluster encouragement to stop lying and a warning that goes nowhere. It just further gives credit to the argument that Adrien either simply doesn't care about other people, or that he doesn't care for Marinette specifically. Neither is conducive to the lovesquare or the increasingly tarnished view of the "sunshine boy".

And it could have worked. Canonically and intrinsically to his character. His idealism and trust in the wrong person comes back to bite him. He learns and grows from it. Except that, much like with nearly everything he does in canon, Chameleon set it up that Adrien was the writers' mouthpiece and thus was not "wrong". I'll grant that they did have him admit it and apologize to Marinette for it two seasons later, but it is pretty evident that during Chameleon, they intended his lecture to be right, with no foreshadowing and no implication otherwise. And I'm fairly certain they only backtracked and had him do that much because of the amount of fan outrage over the episode.

So yes, I think his lecture in Chameleon was really a final straw since unlike Chloe, Adrien has NO relationship with Lila to justify his defense of her. Especially when the argument is in favor of letting her lie to the people he's supposed to care about. That combined with how jarring it was how most of the class just sided with Lila over the seat issue in the first place, and I think people were less inclined to just ignore the problems in the episode specifically and with the series as a whole as they were compared to the first and second seasons. Not just with Adrien, as we see that Alya also started getting more callout and salt since then as well as more retrospective scrutiny over her behavior in earlier seasons.

But yeah...Chameleon was where things seemed to take a 180, so it's bound to be the deciding episode and deciding incident that sticks out in people's minds with these characters. That's probably why it ends up the go-to for salt and complaints on the characters involved instead of any of the other incidents that would arguably warrant it more.

[sapphic-agent]

I just realized something about BNHA that I'm sure nobody on here talked about yet.

The show suffers from a protagonist centered morality.

Izuku or to a lesser extent those that're on the side of the heroes, are always seen as in the right and that anything going against that is automatically in the wrong and should be called out. Even if the other side makes a good point about something.

Take Eri and the reporters for example. The reporters raise good points about Bakugou and how irresponsible UA is, but are told "na nuh!" By Aizawa and it just ends at that.

Then Eri... She literally went from one place who used her power to another. It literally falls into "It's okay if WE do it!" even though this is supposed to be a story meant to point out the flaws in society but gets onto anyone who dares try to say anything bad about it!

God even after all this time BNHA still makes my blood boil!!

People need to talk about this more.

Good and bad in MHA has less to do with morality and more to do with who are the heroes and who are the villains. Which could have been a GREAT setup, only for Horikoshi to never talk about it.

Any time ANYONE has a point, they are immediately discredited or brushed aside. Like Izuku dismissing what Dabi said by defending Endeavor as his mentor. For this to come from our protagonist of all people that late in the game? It not only ignores something blatantly being called out, it also makes our protagonist look worse. Instead of addressing and amending the propaganda he set up, Horikoshi repeatedly reinforces it for some reason.

(This is a repeated problem with Izuku especially. He's such a blank prop that never got the development he deserves that any critiques about the world around him go right over his head. It's actually bittersweet that in the epilogue he is starting to come to a realization because no it's too late)

I've talked many times about how the LOV regressed into irredeemable monsters to make their suffering and the points they made meaningless. Spinner suffered from this the worst. He was the member of the LOV who didn't crave destruction and wanted to change things, only to forgo all of that in the Final War.

To watch all this happen when I used to love MHA is just so disappointing

[metanarrates]

i am soooo curious about your takes on otome isekai villainess stories and their morality + gender constructs 👀 if you'd be willing to elaborate....

so villainessekai is a BIG genre. like. big big absolutely massive genre. because of that it's kind of hard to make sweeping generalizations genre-wise just because there are so many different authors with different takes on the general premise... that being said, I have enough time to ramble about some gender stuff I've noticed. maybe ill elaborate on the protag centered morality another time - my tldr on that at this moment is just "for a genre allegedly focused on humanizing women who were considered 'evil,' there sure are a lot of common double standards when it comes to how its protagonists behave."

(part of the protag centered morality, to be clear, is just kind of a common effect of self-inserty escapist fiction, but it's... just sort of weird and noticeable whenever it crops up in this genre. like i said i might yap about it another time. penelope eckhart you live rent free in my head what the hell is happening in vadd)

but yeah! gender!

quick rundown for those not familiar with the genre. villainess isekai is a genre of manwha + manga + webnovels + light novels that shares a common base premise. the protagonist has been isekai'd into the body of a fictional character from a story (often an otome game or a novel) she knows. the fictional character plays the role of a villainess in the original novel, and is doomed to an unsavory fate. the protagonist must try to change the story she knows to prevent her untimely end.

or, at least, that's the more original premise. the villainess genre is huge, and over the years, there's been takes that ditch the isekai component completely. time travel villainess stories are highly popular right now. some deal with reincarnation from a different fantasy life, like, 200 years in the past or something. some ditch the "main character has some kind of knowledge about a doomed future" aspect of the premise entirely and just lock in on the protagonist being considered an "evil woman" without messing about with any kind of supernatural foreknowledge.

but regardless. the common thread is that the woman in question is considered a villainess, and that she is almost certainly aware that she will meet her doom if she doesn't play her cards right.

I'll say here straight up that this genre is almost completely a power fantasy genre. we're about to get into whether or not the main character is "rightfully" considered a villainess or not, but no matter what the answer to that is, the main character almost always 1. is a member of a fantasy european-ish nobility 2. commands some form of social or monetary power and 3. will eventually obtain a lover of incredibly high social status. being able to be "evil" is often a huge component of this power fantasy, but there's a baseline of power that can be obtained even for protagonists who seem completely powerless at the start. you will always end with a protagonist in a position of unbelievable wealth, comfort, social respect, and power.

this plays heavily into the genre's treatment of gender. because what are the acceptable ways for a woman to wield power, even in the alleged safe space of a fantasy?

I tend to categorize villainessekai protagonists into two broad categories, for that reason. the "actually evil," and the "unjustified victim." while there's of course a huge amount of nuance that can exist between these two categorizations, in practice they tend to be extremely rigid. what we are actually talking about here are fantasies of "unacceptable" and "acceptable" power wielding, and the protagonists tend to be constructed quite differently depending on which fantasy they cater to.

category one: the "actually evil." while these protagonists can be quite complicated and often are unjustly treated by the societies they are in, they are still women who wield a huge amount of power and take quite a lot of joy in beating people over the head with it. they're sexy, confident, and will achieve their goals no matter what it takes, even if it does mean being viewed as evil in the eyes of the world. these protagonists are actually usually not isekai'd - there is no body snatching involved. they are simply women who have had Enough with the world beating down on them, and have decided that they're going to fight back no matter what. time travel foreknowledge is common but not always necessary.

the power fantasy here is pretty clear cut to me. inhabiting the psyche of the evil, undesirable femme fatale is a fun power trip and lets the reader think about how nice it would be to just... not care about social opinion, and to effortlessly outwit and trap everyone who has ever been cruel to them. no more being niceys you can just start beating people to death with your epic magic or whatever.

villainess isekai is a romance genre. because of this, there is a layer of romantic fantasy involved as well. the fantasy that you'd be wanted because of your cruel or evil or ruthless traits, and not in spite of them. also maybe sometimes you want a man who will bark like a dog for you ok i won't linger on it but there does seem to be a fair amount of femdom undertones in a number of these

category two: the "unjustified victim." there's subcategories to this in my head, but the basic idea here is that our protagonist is Nice and does not deserve to be treated as a villainess. either she's been isekai'd into the body of someone who sucks and now has to deal with the fallout of actions she did not commit, or she (or her body host!) are being unfairly villainized and treated as a scapegoat by others. this category is populated hugely by doe-eyed ingenues. while there's a fair amount in this category who still possess some capacity for unkindness or spite against the ones who have wronged them, most of them are kind, loveable sweethearts who don't want to hurt a fly.

the power fantasy here, I would argue, is actually mostly a persecution fantasy. while there is of course nuance & a lot of authors have a ton of different takes on this, the fantasy here is one about being treated unjustly and proving the haters wrong, either by having someone step in and rescue you or by wielding power justly to defend yourself. the fantasy is about being acceptable all along, good all along, and just needing a chance to prove yourself.

the romantic fantasy element here is usually about having someone recognize your true worth. instead of believing all the shit about you being evil or cruel or whatever, someone is able to look past that and recognize that you are a beautiful and kind-hearted woman underneath. also, again, he will save you from the Haters. (the truly evil woman rarely needs a savior because the fantasy is about saving herself.)

because of this, we get two pretty clear constructions of femininity. we have a dark feminine and a light feminine. sexuality & evil, sweetness and kindness. weirdly i don't think the genre super often has much to say about this. it just simply Is. here's your power fantasy - what flavor do you like? sometimes there's some feminist reflection on this in-text but i rarely consider that like... valid... unless the entire story treats women besides the protagonist well. kinda hypocritical to reflect on the role of Evil Women and still have women who are treated as Evil Bitches by the narrative.

hey speaking of. those also are some secret other categories of woman.

i might have mentioned in another post that the villainess genre Loves to reinvent villainess tropes by recasting someone else as the "evil woman" to our "good or at least sufficiently projectable woman" protag? yeah so here they are.

there's the classic evil dark feminine, which I won't linger on because we've all seen it. she's a nasty possibly sexy conniving skank who wants to steal your man. we've all seen it. Next.

but what's interesting to me is that there's also a category of evil light feminine. these are called either "green tea bitches" or "white lotuses" by fans, and they are often (not always) the Original Protagonists of the story the actual protagonist has been isekai'd into. usually it's some kind of reveal that the entire original story was a foul unreliable narrator's trick, and the white lotus has been using her apparent innocence to torment and vex our poor protagonist.

but regardless of her role in the Original Story, the white lotus is always the same. she seems very sweet, very innocent, very pure, very acceptably feminine, but on the inside she's a living nightmare who weaponizes her femininity to hurt people.

if I'm being generous to the genre, this can be considered a valid reflection of the fact that there are some women who weaponize femininity in order to put down other women. many of us have met people like that. it happens. it might be considered a power fantasy to "defeat" that kind of woman.

if I'm being critical of the genre - which I almost always am - I would say that having defeated one boogeyman of Evil Woman by turning it acceptable, the villainess isekai genre must invent a new boogeyman to pit its protagonists against. we're just redefining the borders of which sort of woman is allowed to be relatable and good, rather than challenging the base notions of misogyny and patriarchy that lock women into eternal acceptability combat. oh no we have a fake acceptable woman who must be proven as a fraud! the real Good Woman is right here! etc.

sort of my endcap on Gender Thoughts here - i would note that almost none of these characters are anything other than extremely feminine. we have a few tomboyish or crossdressing protagonists here and there, but they almost always shed that in favor of ballgowns at some point or another. I've noticed this as an aspect of heterosexual romance, but it does feel very strange to me how much femininity is on display. as a nonbinary lesbian, the world of rofan always feels alien to me. whether antagonist or protagonist, whether the character is "acceptable" or "unacceptable" in her femininity, this is a world where being genuinely uninterested in femininity as a woman is nigh unthinkable. there is always an emphasis placed on the fact that she is in fact a woman, and one who will eventually be desirable to men, no matter what the circumstances are! you could draw a lot of conclusions from that. my personal conclusion is that het romance is kind of scary and highly based in affirming gender binaries. :(

[mareastrorum]

An incredible amount of the Downfall discourse comes off as people trying to game the trolley problem instead of recognizing that there simply isn’t a right answer.

Everyone fucked up. This was a horrible situation that might have been prevented with more time, communication, empathy, all sorts of corrections. But it’s the trolley problem: what we have is a bunch of gods on one set of tracks and a far larger number of mortals on the other, and ultimately, the gods switched the track to kill mortals.

It wasn’t right. Of course, we could justify it—I’m a lawyer, and I could justify anything. That doesn’t change that it isn’t moral, good, or right.

“But the gods couldn’t kill their family.” Did we not watch C2, filled with shitty genetic families and centered around a group of found family idiots? Family only means what you want it to. Of course the gods could have killed their family. Half of them even wanted to! But the PCs chose not to.

“But the gods are gods, of course they should win.” Maybe it’s the grew-up-a-poor-minority-and-climbed-the-social-ladder in me, but I don’t see the virtue in an argument that those born into power deserve to make decisions about those who weren’t. One of the gods was already replaced by a mortal. Aeorians came up with methods to repel, suppress, contain, and kill gods. Seats of power change, and power doesn’t make someone right. It’s been incredibly surreal to see how many people think this is an acceptable argument.

“But if the gods die, they really die, and mortal souls are immortal.” While we know souls are immortal, the actual experience of the afterlife is a mystery. Is what Deanna described how it always is, or just in the particular plane where her soul ended up? Is it really immortality if the sense of self is lost and that soul is separated from all they loved in life? Similarly, we don’t know what typically happens when gods die because there isn’t a normal way for it to happen. Why were some gods’ names forgotten but they are remembered by the silhouette left behind? Why are other gods remembered like Ethedok and Vordo? We don’t know. Why are we belittling the fact that mortal death is an end while also arguing that it’s horrible how divine death is an end? They’re both ends! That’s a terrible thing to force on someone. It’s wrong.

The point of Downfall is that it was wrong to destroy Aeor. The Prime Deities thought so themselves. Of all the wrong choices, that was what they chose in the moment. They didn’t succeed because they were right; they were simply more powerful and outsmarted their opponents.

Downfall is a wonderful example of a story where the protagonists are not heroes. Bask in the mistakes and failures. Cry. Mourn. It’s a tragedy that every key character contributed to. It didn’t have to end this way. There’s blood on everyone’s hands. They’re all monsters. They’re all people. They were all trying to save something. No one realized they were in a corner until there was no way out but through.

The only correct argument about a moral high ground in this kind of story is that someone survived to stand over the corpses.

[prickly-paprikash]

Something cool about Blue Eye Samurai is how sex is juxtaposed with the end-goals.

I really love how our three protagonists are all obsessed. And that obsession defines them, torments them, and are subsequently reborn through their obsessions.

Mizu, of course, is obsessed with the concept of revenge. It's not even about getting even or getting justice as some might use to justify the bloody road taken—it is simply about seeking satisfaction for Mizu. She cuts a bloody swathe across Japan because of what the Four White Devils did to her mother and herself. She does not concern herself with the ramifications of her wrath but merely charges forward, leaving behind a trail of viscera and gore behind her.

Like I said before, her vengeance and obsession with satisfaction is not painted by the show as wrong. It is how she allows it to affect others along the path. It's why the episode with Madame Kaji is so enlightening; Mizu should not tackle this quest as a vengeful revenant; an onryō. She has let the world define her as a monstrosity and so she embraced it, when Swordfather and Madame Kaji knew what the correct path was to satiate her need for vengeance. Treat her sword as the Artisan's tool it truly is. Treat her body the way an Artist would treat their canvas.

Madame Kaji and Swordfather are both outcasts, for being a woman and a blind man. Yet they found strength in their exclusion, becoming single-minded in their fields of art. Because sex is art and swordsmithing is art. It's what makes Mizu's body writing scene so fucking good.

Artistic vision becomes stagnant when one pulls from only one source. They become rigid and unbending when Mizu, like her namesake, must be fluid. She has shown fluidity in her use of her gender and her morals, but cannot apply that same flexibility towards her goal. Throughout season one, she was becoming an uninspired artist, merely painting the world in hues of scarlet. In a world that forces Women to be either Wives or Whores, Mizu chose to be a Warrior—but a warrior fights for a cause, whether it be just or otherwise. A soldier fights in an army. Mizu is neither of these things. She is an Artist first and foremost, and her medium is Death. Sex, something Mizu was at first hesitant before her failed marriage, and something she actively avoided afterwards, is what gives her a new perspective. Like an Illustrator studying life to better draw their intended worlds, taking inspiration from wherever one can find it.

Taigen and Akemi are also equally affected by the artistry of sex, as befitting of Mizu's fellow protagonists.

Akemi is quite obviously Mizu's narrative foil. Mizu chases after revenge like a bloodhound whereas Akemi longs for freedom like a bird in a cage. Both are fierce women who are unsatisfied with their lot in life, with their sex and gender being used against them in their lives. Literally, the episode "The Tale of the Ronin and the Bride" is a fucking triple entendre:

Mizu is the Ronin as well as the Bride.

The play showcases the tale of the Ronin and the Bride.

It is also Mizu as the Ronin and Akemi as the Bride.

And when Mizu finds her center as she melts down her blade and engages in body writing, this scene of enlightenment is juxtaposed with Akemi laying with her new husband Takayoshi. Both, in this moment, are taking control of their lives through sex. They are both taking control of their futures through the ways Madame Kaji taught them. Mizu and Akemi are both rebels against this oppressive society, and are both talented artists with their body. Whether that be sex, politicking, or ass-kicking.

Taigen, like the two women before, finds freedom through it but in a more subtle manner.

Where Mizu and Akemi are narrative foils, both using sex as a form of art and escape, Taigen finds liberation through his awakening.

Like the closeted bisexual man he is, he begins his journey of self-realization when he first encounters Mizu at the Dojo.

Every single battle these two have is purposefully rife with sexual tension. All his life, Taigen has been taught that a man must live with honor. That he must take control of his life and his identity, or he will have failed and that he is better off dead than to live with such shame.

Taigen is just as much a victim of the Patriarchal society around him. Mizu rails against it violently. Akemi seeks to run away from it all. And Taigen, with the privilege given to him by his manhood, chooses to become a perpetrator, enabling the vicious wheel of society to keep moving forward.

His obsession with honor leads him to hunting down and even protecting Mizu. Mizu is no doubt the better warrior, but even she knows she owes so much to Taigen. The blockhead not only did everything to protect her in the valley, but also sealed his lips shut even under the duress of torture. His obsession with honor becomes an obsession with Mizu.

His regrets over tormenting her over her looks and ethnicity as a child. His shame in having lost so decisively in his own dojo. Taigen was a man born with nothing and climbed up to the top with every advantage he could muster, and suddenly it's all ripped away by this one vengeful spirit passing by.

Taigen learns to surrender control around Mizu. He begins to discover his own sexuality and purpose around Mizu, redefining what honor really means to him now that he, as a man, has a budding attraction towards the man who beat him.

Mizu's Vengeance. Akemi's Freedom. Taigen's Honor. In all three, Sex becomes a catalyst in redefining what each of these concepts truly mean to them all. It's not just sex of course, but it is undeniable how the writers keep juxtaposing sexual acts and thoughts with massive character moments.

It changes how Mizu chases after her Vengeance. It recontextualizes how Akemi can be Free. It showcases the absurdity of the Honor forced upon Taigen.

It's so fucking refreshing seeing Sex not used as fanservice or shoe-horned in just to further a stale, poorly written cis-heterosexual romance; but used as a plot point that cannot be ignored. An impetus that fuels the narrative.

Moving forward, I'm curious as to how sex will be used.

The next few ideas aren't as sound or organized because I'm neither Asexual nor Genderfluid, so please if anyone reads this who understands it better, feel free to point it out.

I think it'd be cool if Mizu met the inverse of Madame Kaji. A person who is apathetic to sex. Sure, Swordfather has shades of this, but I'm tired of the person with disabilities also being on the Asexual spectrum. And I'm not saying that Ace or Graysexual people with disabilities don't exist! But they always tend to be written as having some form of disability (Varys from ASOIAF) or a Robot.

Just as artists need a variety of sources to pull inspiration from, I hope in the next seasons we get to see different perspectives on sex and gender. In London, it feels like Mizu finding the other half of herself, and with that having a better way of tackling her own identity. Whether it be gender, sex, combat, etc.

Basically what this inane rambling amounts to is that Blue Eye Samurai tackles sex and violence and revenge and obsession in ways that most media has yet to truly do. So that was pretty cool.

[isbeeshy]

I've been thinking about Ralsei. More specifically, about how he parallels Flowey.

We all know Ralsei is a representation of Asriel. And we can't let ourselves forget that Asriel spent the majority of the game in the form of Flowey. But Ralsei is nothing like Flowey! He is nice and sweet and fluffy and not murderous at all! Yes! That is right! He IS completely diferent than Flowey while still maintaining that same narrative purpose: being the character linked to the main themes of the game.

In Undertale, Toby Fox was exploring the morality of indiscriminately killing enemy characters in video games, as well as the amount of power the player has in that world, beeing able to save and load and reset the game. And Flowey is used there as a mirror to us: he was someone that could also do that, and that, who had the power to manipulate the reality of the game around him and grew desensitized to how his actions affected others, became corrupted by the idea that it's kill or be killed.

In Deltarune, whats in focus is the relationship between the player and the character they control in a game. The fact that we, the player, are the center of the game, and the adventure has to revolve around us. So it makes sense that in this context, instead of unfeeling and murderous Flowey, we get someone that is rules oriented, that talks about prophecies and purpose, that always defers to us, the player, that seems aware that this is a 'game' and we are the protagonist. That's why we have Ralsei.

Other people must definitely have talked about this better than I could here, but it's something I wanted to share.

I can't wait to see this will develop next in Deltarune

[theadhddimsenion]

Debunking the "protagonist centered morality" "argument" on i.m.p.

One of the truly worst takes on helluva boss is the nonsensical claim that i.m.p are some how worse than the villains of the story! So I am going to systematically debunk all of the so called "evidence" for this "argument" one by one.

"I.m.p are murderers and therefore worse than all of villains!" Bullshit. I've said it before and I will say it again i.m.p killing humans is not meant to be taken seriously and your inability to enjoy dark humor is not a fault in the series writing!! Now sense you all seem to be unable to grasp basic literary conventions let me break it down for you in the most basic of terms. I.m.p do not kill humans for the heck of it. They kill humans because it was the only thing that would A. Put food on the table. B allow them to have independence from the higher-ups of hell and C give them an edge over all the other dime a dozen assassin's and mercenaries in hell!

"They got cherub kicked out of heaven for no reason!!" No deerie got the cherubs kicked out of heaven for no reason! Like for fuck sake do you honestly believe that they were dedicated to helping people who actually deserved an angels grace? The fact they were trying to get lipton past the pearly gates despite him being clearly an awful person says otherwise not mention the fact they were clearly seen scaming people with false good deeds to pickpocket them. Moreover i.m.p played by the heavenly jackasses rules and got upset and tried to murder their opponents when they lost and as much as I love collin he is still complicit with the cruelty of his cohorts so he is still sadly still just as responsible for what happened as his "friends" and like I said i.m.p aren't responsible for deeries action nor cherub screwing up so badly that her actions were carried out. You can't blame the imps for what their manager did to them and if you think otherwise then I can't help you.

"Satan was just upholding demon law which i.m.p willingly broke!!" You are literally saying that trying to rise above systematic oppression is a bad thing. I'm not even going to bother trying to explain why that's a terrible argument.

"They destroyed via's home and peace!!" Look I'm not going to say that via doesn't have a right to be upset about this whole situation far from it! She has every right to be upset about this whole situation and be as angry as she wants but your acting like stolas living for her sake is the solution for that problem rather than the very thing that caused it in the first place!! I don't blame stolas for not telling via the truth about he and her mothers relationship having to explain to your kid that their parents never loved each other and that her mother is a abusive monster is a awful thing to have to do but it's still something he should have done. Sadly stolas wasn't granted the "luxury" of a non abusive relationship outside of via for the majority of his life so it's no surprise he failed in this one regard. My point being that as painful as it would have been stolas should have told his daughter that he wasn't happy with her mother. It would have hurt but via would still trust him. Instead while his choice to hide the truth from her was noble it was still lying and no matter how good your intentions are lying to people especially people you care about will result in them not trusting you. In conclusion i.m.p didn't destroy via's home and peace because her home and peace where based upon the noble lie her father told her and as such was never real. You can't destroy something that never really existed and stolas's only mistake was trying to protect his daughter from reality.

"Blitz is a theif!! Reeeeee!!!" This is literally proven wrong by both mastermind and the circus.

"But striker is a assassin too!!" As I explained above i.m.p kill because they want to rise above the oppression of their people and survive striker just kills because he wants power to compastate for whatever happened to him in the past and takes it out on whoever he can find.

"But all stella,mammon,cash, etc etc did was be mean never kill anyone!" I told you before that i.m.p kill because they need to stay in the black and don't want to be pawns for the powerfull like most of their kind are meanwhile all those mentioned above are those who actively gain their power off the exploitation of others. That's like saying that if Val didn't kill anyone he would have the moral high ground over charile because she killed exorcists. And while I'm on this point no stolas did not exploit i.m.p any more than blitz did which is none at all he could have literally demanded anything and everything but he didn't and i thank him for that and we are moving on.

In conclusion no the i.m.p family are worse than the villains of the series and if you still think that it's a case of "protagonist centered morality" then my friend you have no media literacy whatsoever and I will kindly ask you to find a different show to watch.

[ilikekidsshows]

Your anecdote about the four years old kid is a case in point for why the show shouldn't have the conflict that it does.

Even if all the messed up morality and deconstructive elements were on purpose, they shouldn't be in a show for such a young demographic and especially not in the manner they're presented. Avatar is a perfect example of how you can tackle difficult subjects in a kid's show. Namely: the characters solve the overt aspects of the problem within the episode, and if they don't it's still acknowledged as a problem.

This "subtle deconstruction" has no place in a show with this demographic, for the same reason you would not let a five year old read dark romance.

And it's not even good dark romance! They don't lean in to the messed up elements nearly enough for the story to have the same appeal of dark romance and I'm saying this as someone who absolutely loves messed up characters and relationships. Marinette would need to be written as a villain protagonist in order to make this a satisfying storyline and we all know the writers don't have the balls to do that.

So all they end up with is a half assed trip to unfortunate implications land that isn't going to be fun for anyone and will make for some horrid messaging for the main demographic of impressionable kids.

---

Yeah, like, at this point Miraculous isn't suitable for children. Full stop. The lessons are rancid, the morality is in the pits, and even just the stories are difficult to follow and inconsistent.

Like, the writers can't commit to anything. Miraculous’ wide mass appeal was reached through not committing to any one idea but throwing enough things out that people could think they're seeing hints of a story they want to see. This is why the writers don't actually want to change anything about how the show works, because the formula is so perfectly non-committal. Because of this, I don't believe Miraculous is going to pull the rug from under us and reveal to us that it wasn't actually protagonist-centered morality, but a deconstruction of protagonist-centered morality.

Even so, if the writers decided to actually change course to save face and pretend they totally intended this to be a deconstruction all along, that has no place in a children's show. You need to understand what's being deconstructed to get the deconstruction at all, and small kids learning emotional regulation aren't that familiar with literary theory concepts or story tropes. They're still learning that stories have a beginning, middle and end, so expecting them to wait 20-60 episodes for the resolution that “hey, Marinette lying to her boyfriend about his dad and his human nature makes her a bad hero” is a tall order.

And yeah, I have seen some Miraculous stans try to defend Lovesquare by claiming it’s actually meant to be a dark romance, which, like, has no place in a kids’ show period. Kids don’t have enough experience to understand what they’re being shown or find it appealing for its own sake.

And exactly, I have enjoyed my fair share of dark romances and codependent relationships. I ate that stuff up while reading Gideon the Ninth this spring, and Miraculous' “dark romance” isn’t appealing to me at all. They pretend like the messed up parts of the romance are actually cute or just fodder to give Marinette something to be upsette about, how tragic that she abuses her boyfriend, that’s so sad for her. How sweet that Adrien has been abused into not having any wants or needs outside of pleasing Marinette. That’s not spicy. It’s as half-assed as everything about this show.