#I decided to feature him more because he's pretty important to her story and character

[stormy-blossom]

Guess who decided to update Erisu's reference because she hated the old art!

In all seriousness it was because I've updated her design a bit since I made that old one, bangs and eyes more specifically. I also decided to add some new doodles to the side.

Ive made it kind of obvious recently, yeah I'm shipping her and Volo, have been for a while but I'm a little embarrassed to share stuff like that... I've decided to call it: Ancestral tale shipping so I'll use that to tag anything I make with them if you're interested :)

Just gonna post the extra info from her old reference here:

She joined the Galaxy Team a few years ago, as she is in her early twenties by the start of the PLA events. She is sort of a... weird older sister figure, she will poke fun at you as siblings do, but she'll also beat up anyone who insults you.

Her father was banished from the village when she was much younger after a Pokemon he had caused severe damage, and he refused to release it. She doesn't know if he's alive or not, but she has a feeling he isn't. Because of this she had a very close relationship with her mother.

She dyes the tips of her hair blue because it was the same color as her father's, she does it in sort of memory of him.

At the beginning of the game she'd only have a Quilava (a gift from her father) but later picks up a Petilil and Zoura.

She's known Volo since he first started visiting the village with the guild when they were both younger. She would talk to him whenever she knew he was there. She considers him a good friend and really enjoys listening to him go off on tangents about Hisuian history.

Now speaking of Volo, he's the one who gives her the Sunstone to evolve her Petilil into Liligant.

She's a bit resentful towards Kamado since her father was banished but gets along rather well with the rest of the Galaxy Team.

She also sees Laventon as a bit of a father figure, so she likes to joke that she, MC, Akari/Rei, and Cyllene are a family.

She'd end up standing up for the M/C when they get banished, ending up with her also having the same fate.

Quick thing about El, she's my Sinnoh protagonist and as said Erisu is her ancestor.

I just think shes neat, originally she was going to act as MC before I found out they got isekai'd, so I decided she would be my mc and I would just rewrite the story a little. But then I actually played the game and created my own character so now I have a story with my protagonist and the kind of abandoned AU where Erisu is the protagonist.

[ploppythespaceship]

Uglies - Movie Thoughts

On a whim, I decided to start re-reading the Uglies series a couple months ago -- so imagine my surprise when I found out it was getting a movie! Said movie is now out, and it was interesting to watch with the book being so fresh in my head.

Overall, it's... eh. It's not a complete train wreck, the way most critics seem to want you to think, but it is fairly bland and uninspired. It's a very watered down version of the book. It also has the misfortune of feeling like yet another a Hunger Games wannabe, despite the original book pre-dating that series by several years.

Spoilers for everything under the cut.

What I Liked

Based on reviews, I seem to be in the minority here, but I thought the cast was pretty good. People seem to hate Joey King as Tally, but I thought she was fine. Brianne Tju is easily the best in the cast, stealing the whole damn movie as Shay. Laverne Cox also gives an excellent performance as Cable, though I do think she should not have been given that role for other reasons (which I'll get into later).

I've also seen complaints that the characters aren't ugly enough. They talk about how ugly they are and point out their specific ugly features, when they don't actually appear that ugly. And I think everyone complaining about that is completely missing the point. The "Uglies" aren't actually ugly -- they're just normal people, who've been conditioned to think their imperfect features are hideous.

I was honestly unsure how the Pretties would be visualized -- in fact, I wondered if the book would just be fundamentally unadaptable because of it -- but they did a fairly good job. I think leaning on CGI and unnatural affectations was the right way to go. All the Pretties have this uncanny quality to them that suits the story perfectly.

The overall production design was solid as well. I like how Uglyville is all gray concrete and muted tones, while New Pretty Town is shimmering golds. Then upon reaching the Smoke, all the colors of nature finally come through. I do think that could have pushed that last one a little bit more, but it still works well.

Apart from that, I don't really have much to shout out. It's competently written, well-performed, well put together. I know it doesn't sound like I have much praise, but it is a competent movie.

What I'm Mixed On

By far the biggest change from the book is Peris becoming a Special. And I'm torn on it. On the one hand, it does make him a bigger part of the story -- he's honestly not much more than an inciting incident in the book. It gives him and Tally a unique arc that's probably the strongest through-line in the story. On the other hand, the Specials as a concept are so under-cooked (more on that later) and the actor is so bland that it still doesn't quite land the way it's supposed to.

What I Didn't Like

The pacing of this movie is by far its worst issue. We are flying through this plot. There is no time for anything to breathe, for characters to develop meaningful connections, for the bigger moments to feel earned. Some things do make sense to condense -- Tally's journey to the Smoke would have been incredibly boring without her internal monologue, so condensing most of that into a montage makes sense. But I do feel we lost too much. That's where a lot of Tally's characterization comes out, where we can see her bravery and ingenuity -- none of that comes across in the movie.

A lot of important beats are rushed. Tally agreeing to help Dr. Cable is over in a flash. It feels like Tally's in the Smoke for all of fifteen minutes. Tally and David barely interact, so their relationship has no real stake. Everyone is kidnapped by Special Circumstances, and then rescued immediately after. I almost think a 5-6 episode mini-series would have worked better -- but that might have introduced the opposite problem, where everything takes too long.

The movie also has frequent montages that don't really work. It seems like they were trying to show the passage of time, but it just makes everything feel even shorter.

The beginning of the movie has an exposition problem, as well. It opens with a montage explaining the entire setting... before leading into several scenes that also explain the setting through dialogue. We get fed the same details about the surgery and the Rusties and the flowers at least three times at the start, and it gets grating.

As already mentioned, Tally is pretty severely underwritten. In the book, she has a distinct personality and a unique presence. In the movie, she's just the main character because she happens to be the main character. Her intelligence and resourcefulness are pretty much gone.

I also think changing her motivation for going to the Smoke did her a disservice. In the book, Tally goes to the Smoke so she can have her surgery, and because she's convinced herself that Shay needs her help. In the movie, Dr. Cable tells her that the Smokies have a weapon, and she will be saving lives by helping to find them. I think giving her a more selfless motivation robs her of her character arc. She always comes across as someone trying to help, who wants to best for other people, rather than someone who had to consciously learn that.

The Specials are barely even a presence. I'm not sure they were even directly called Specials. People who hadn't read the book would never realize that there was an entire separate status of person here. You never see their disturbingly beautiful faces or their terrifying strength. Considering how pivotal the Specials are to the overall story, especially in the later books, it's really odd not to see them properly established here.

Like I said, Laverne Cox gives an excellent performance as Dr. Cable... but I think they should have thought twice before casting a trans woman. It's not necessarily that there's a trans woman in the villainous role, but that there's a trans woman in the villainous role who specifically wants to force people to have surgeries to brainwash them. Like... did the optics of that really not occur to anyone? At all? I think Cox could have played David's mother, instead.

[illegiblewords]

Almost current in Dawntrail, I make some references to plot stuff under the cut but this post isn't mainly about Dawntrail. This is an analytical rant. There are people who disagree with me that I adore/respect to bits who have done brilliant stuff from angles I wouldn't take. People shouldn’t stop doing what they’re inspired to do according to whether I like or dislike something. This post qualifies less with 'I think' and 'I believe' statements/is a little harsher because I'm venting though. Proceed at your discretion.

Features critical/darker discussions of Venat and Hermes with brief mentions of Zenos.

I really, genuinely think a lot of people are only getting pieces of what's going on in FFXIV.

The story still isn't black and white. Characters very, very often are not what they advertise themselves to be. Neither the cast nor fans are immune to misjudging.

Hermes is not as compassionate as he presents himself. There is an enormous discrepancy between what he professes and the choices he consistently makes, both with regard to other ancients and creations. I do believe he was genuinely miserable but he is basically Satan from Paradise Lost, who wonders why he alone was made unsatisfied with obedience and perfection. Who recognizes there is difference in himself compared to others but is conflicted about whether this is a defect or higher calling. Satan sees himself as inherently 'other' above all else and Hermes is just the same. The shared snake imagery isn't a coincidence either.

Everything I've seen points to Hermes being a narcissist who does not have instinctive empathy in a society where empathy is the most valuable quality a person can have. He strives to have more empathy than all other people without truly understanding what that means. It's why he projects his anger and hatred onto the wolf creation as it dies instead of offering it any kind of comfort. It's why he sends Meteion into space to suffer pain, death, and despair as a high empathy being who challenges all concepts of what it means to be alive… instead of presenting her to the Bureau of the Architect, where her very existence might instigate star-wide reform for how all other creations are handled. For his ego, he needed to be the only one with extensive knowledge of dynamis. He needed to be the only one with answers from on high regarding the nature of life. That was far more important than Meteion's wishes or well-being, and the creations he claims to love are expendable for this purpose. He frequently oscillates between seeing himself as beneath all other ancients and the sole, divinely powerful judge/jury/executioner of all living things. Like Satan from Paradise Lost he can't be grouped with those around him. He can't be just one of many ancients dealing with fears, doubts, despairs. He MUST be exceptional above all else. I'd argue the main reason he accepts the Warrior of Light at all is because we do not appear as a fellow ancient to him--he sees us as a familiar, and therefore inherently without equal authority and agency compared to him. When we are useful to his worldview he uses us and when we aren't we're disposable.

I've seen people claim that Hermes is just anxious and that's why he didn't submit Meteion. You don't opt for genocide and decree all of humanity as immoral and unworthy of mercy without even allowing your targets a voice to answer out of anxiety. You certainly don't do that while having specifically gone out of your way to avoid any steps that might have given room for more charitable judgments. Hermes opted to destroy everyone because it was what he wanted to do, but it didn't fit his self-image as a benevolent and empathetic person to do so. That's why he made a loophole via memory erasure.

Venat, further, is not a hero. She's gray at best and in all likelihood a pretty dark shade of it. Light motifs and crystal mommy themes do not change this. She not only decided, independently, that Hermes' genocide was an appropriate course without allowing anyone else room to discuss or address the issue--she actively denied everyone else knowledge of what happened or even basic information about dynamis (LET ALONE METEION'S LOCATION) so they could deal with the issue effectively. She passed judgment on the entire Convocation because of Hermes' appointment without once judging herself for withholding information on his true character. There is a reason Emet-Selch called her out for being immediately ready to see herself as a morally correct messiah of the star. He wasn't wrong to do so. And especially after Endwalker I think Venat grossly misunderstood not only what led to worlds self-destructing on a philosophical level (never mind Meteion's emotion amplification powers), I think she misread her own star and its people. Pursuit of purity and certainty was what led to the destruction of worlds. The total absence of pain is just one form that can take, but it isn't necessary for a world to be in perpetual agony to avoid that. Venat dismissed the despairs and struggles of her own fellow ancients because there was no room for them in the view she had of herself and her world. If she didn't see them they didn't exist, but even when she did see them they didn't count enough to sway her judgment. Venat had to be the most correct person and she didn't allow even as Hydaelyn the possibility of making mistakes or unwarranted cruelty to others. She is 1000% guilty of 'ancient hubris'.

Venat might be a more middling gray, in my view, depending on whether she'd been trying to shield as many people as possible from tempering with the traveler's ward only for most of the star to become tempered by Zodiark post-summoning. There are a lot of repeating phrases between Elidibus, post-Final Days ancients, and the lunar shades that I think point to mass tempering. Venat would have grounds for assuming people had homogenized views, prayers, and voices if the star was largely tempered. If they weren't, I think she becomes pretty sinister for how she deals with people's post-Final Days trauma. Her injustice toward the ancients in that case would just happen to be in a way that benefits the shards.

The Zodiark plan prevented life from going extinct. It was necessary. Zodiark's tempering and the subsequent sacrifice spiral were not deliberate I suspect, seeing as Zodirk was the first primal EVER. People have been consistently misreading the loporrit quote on this to try and argue that Zodiark didn't temper the Unsundered.

The line states that Venat used a different summoning technique to the one utilized by Ascians. Venat's technique specifically does not temper people. The Ascian method does. If Venat's technique was used to summon an entity of Zodiark's magnitude (whose power could not be resisted according to Emet-Selch) there might be a slight tug toward tempering despite the technique being much safer.

This is not saying Zodiark didn't temper anyone. It's specifically saying that despite Venat having a safe technique, Zodiark's summoning was on such a monumental scale that even Venat's technique would carry some risk.

Meanwhile, Lahabrea has been getting set up for years as someone who has been dehumanized, judged, isolated, and misunderstood. This has continued to increasing degrees through Dawntrail. It has been going on since A Realm Reborn. The sheer consistency of it is insane at this point. There is a HUGE gap between how Lahabrea emotes and what he's actually feeling. His choices reflect this and it is demonstrated firsthand in Pandaemonium.

No one seemed to think it was weird that Lahabrea was ready to commit a pseudo-suicide by killing Hephaistos. No one seemed to catch that the 'pseudo-suicide' in the lyrics to Scream referenced Lahabrea, as did the 'shadow left far behind' line. People contorted themselves into pretzels trying to say that Scream was not about him. Nevermind that Pandaemonium is the Lahabrea raid, in which all other characters were supporting cast to flesh out Lahabrea. It must be mainly about Hegemone and Agdistis! If not them, it must be mainly about Erichthonios!

The man's entire story is about being dehumanized, dismissed, invalidated, and excluded while suffering severe mental illness. It's kind of horrendous that fans are continuing to do this to him on a meta level.

Lahabrea has a long history of Abrahamic imagery. If the Warring Triad mirror the Unsundered, Sephirot as the Tree of Life maps to the Kabbalistic process of creation. The game explicitly and correctly references this in the attacks used. The lyrics to Fiend track for Lahabrea as does the association with Id issues, and there's symbolically significant overlap between muscular/multi-armed Sephirot (where multiple arms reference the boddisatva Guanyin, who uses those many arms to help those in need) to muscular/multi-armed Zodiark as Lahabrea's creation. And Zodiark being Lahabrea's creation is indicated in Akademia Anyder. People have been trying to attribute Zodiark to Hermes because Hermes hijacked him in EW and it drives me nuts.

Meanhwile, what did Pandaemonium do?

Paired the Tree of Life to The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. There's a ton of snake, fruit, and mouth imagery in Pandaemonium. Athena is Eve offering Lahabrea as Adam knowledge of good and evil via the soul bonding. Lahabrea has been afraid of himself as an extremely powerful ancient (which I've analyzed before, tying to Emet-Selch too), particularly given he's in a position of power. He reflects the societal idea that someone with his aetherial strength and authority cannot afford to be selfish or he risks causing immeasurable harm to others. Result is that Lahabrea is absolutely terrified of being selfish in any capacity, even on a basic healthy level. Athena meanwhile is a purely selfish being. Like I believe is the case with Hermes (and am positive is the case with Zenos)--she does not have instinctive empathy. Athena deliberately psychologically violated her husband by forcing him to acknowledge understanding selfish desire through her perspective, then compounded it by exploiting his lack of self-confidence to say he was bound to be just like her for understanding such selfishness. She's not an authority on that, but Lahabrea sees himself as personally less than Athena and is not at that point equipped to argue on his own behalf.

Anyway. Abrahamic connections, Hegemone has the snake imagery. Agdistis has the tree and the fruit. Athena is Eve. The soul bonding is the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Hephaistos uses a ton of snake imagery too. Lahabrea is covered in symbolism both on a personal psychological level and tied to traditional symbolism via the hand of god acting upon the world, the eye of god watching the world. For savage, one arm is covered in eyes. This is his role as Lahabrea employing power for his people. The other arm, his personal desires/needs, is long and thin and malformed/not really functional. He covers his heart with a pair of wings for protection and reduces himself, weeping, to DNA because that's the only value he sees in himself. He'd rather be that than himself as a person because at least as DNA he's wanted for something. Lahabrea doesn't think anyone would ever give a shit about him on a personal level.

When Hephaistos is defeated, there's a reason Lahabrea is shaken when he states that Hephaistos' goal was never to raise himself high. That was what Athena wanted and what she told him he'd want. All Hephaistos wanted was his family back and to be loved. That was the moment Lahabrea had to introspect and realized Athena wasn't correct about his motives. Her declaring something about him didn't make it true.

Erichthonios is convinced he has a cruel and indifferent father for much of the raid. We see him twist neutral-to-kind gestures as malicious in front of us, as with Lahabrea allowing him to go to Pandaemonium as a child but insisting he know spells to protect himself. Erichthonios takes Lahabrea's insistence as believing he's not good enough instead of wanting him to be safe. We also see Erichthonios construe something that actually points to Lahabrea being depressed (giving himself no credit for completing the phoenix and advertising nothing only to be surprised by coworkers throwing him a celebration anyway) as him scorning Pandaemonium for not sharing the achievement with them. Erichthonios was taught to do this by Athena, and Athena likewise twists Lahabrea's self-image as a form of psychological abuse from the moment he approaches her in the soul bonding scene. She cites his status and accuses Lahabrea of thinking himself morally above others for descending to Pandaemonium and judging her. It never occurs to Athena that Lahabrea would try to stop her because he loves and wants to protect his son.

People are projecting their own personal beef with parents behaving poorly to assume Lahabrea is an uncaring father. He's not. He's extremely mentally ill and Erichthonios was groomed by an abusive mother while having no concept of what Lahabrea's mental illness would even look like... let alone how to deal with it.

Lahabrea explicitly thinks Erichthonios is better off with the false memory of a mother who abused him than having him present as a father because he considers himself so personally worthless. He can only see his presence as a detriment in his son's life. He is a short step from the kind of suicide people commit when they think other people would be happier and less burdened if they were dead. 'They might be sad for a while, but ultimately they'll be better off.'

I'm not even bringing out my citations right now. This isn't an Archon Thesis because I want my evidence properly assembled for that. But I recently saw someone try to frame the Convocation and Zodiark plan as uniformly awful, when the reality is doing nothing would have resulted in life going extinct. And if we're talking about zodiac signs mapping to Convocation members, there are more layers to it than 'Ascians = bad versions of the zodiac'.

Ex. The duality (two fish) and creativity associated with Pisces both apply to Lahabrea, but the emotionality does too. It isn't obvious at first but when you look it's there. Lahabrea has hidden strong emotions consistently through a variety of methods across the game. Sometimes it's reserve, sometimes it's aggression, sometimes it's hysteria. But when you look at the surrounding circumstances from his perspective, it makes perfect sense how and why he'd emote that way. It has never been safe for him to be emotionally vulnerable.

One of the earliest moments of 'villain laughter' from him we see is at Carteneau. His assistant waits quietly for him to finish. At that point Bahamut had been unleashed in yet another action that goes directly against Lahabrea's own morals, but is necessary to the Ardor. The sundered respond by invoking Lahabrea's phoenix as protection for humanity against a primal Lahabrea helped orchestrate. On some level people instinctively believe Lahabrea can and will protect them despite his failures, their own reincarnations, and thousands of years passing. It's ironic and horrible but this kind of irony has been happening to Lahabrea over and over again. If he doesn't laugh the dude's going to cry and (again) it isn't safe for him to do that.

(Also as the only Ascian to ever refer to Zodiark as 'master', Lahabrea is A) very tempered B) continuing a pattern of thought/behavior/worldbuilding where he puts his people first and himself dead last C) not talking about Athena. Lahabrea says in-game he had no earthly idea Athena was in the Heart of Sabik. I do think Heart of Sabik effected him by magnifying his desire to save his people and redeem himself in the face of survivor's guilt. It might have influenced his phrasing too. I have theories about what Lahabrea did at Praetorium but blowing it up was not 'the ultimate magic' by any means. I'm pretty sure he used it as a Themis and/or Zodiark backup drive, which Athena's presence at Anabaseios proves is possible anyway. He doesn't need to know about her to figure it out.

People have tried to say Athena is Lahabrea's god instead of Zodiark. Especially given the history of abuse and Lahabrea's own repeatedly shown priorities/actions, that take is pretty appalling imo. Completely dismisses how devoted he has always been to his people to destroy his will and identity altogether on a meta level.)

Even if we strip shit down to the most bare bones narrative form and ignore evidence--where motives and arcs are concerned 'oh Lahabrea has always been evil/uncaring/sociopathic/self-absorbed and stayed that way forever after' is bad storytelling. That would require a 'failure to change' arc as literal or spiritual death. That arc form ties to death because life requires accounting for/adapting to new experiences. If a character fails to do that (for better or worse) that character is stagnant and effectively not living. Such arcs require meticulously showing the process of rejecting experiences though. Zoraal Ja actually approaches the form a bit when we see him repeatedly taking nothing from the trials he undergoes, but his trajectory becomes 'change for the worse' after losing to his father's shade. None of the Unsundered are set up with that arc form, Lahabrea included. It wouldn't offer any insight, fit with what we know of the ancients and their values/society, or carry any emotional impact. Trying to go that route without setup is just bad storytelling and makes characters less believable. But yeah. Tl;dr I really, really wish people paid more attention and examined words vs actions vs surrounding circumstances vs motives.

[snackara]

Asha (The Alondra of Rosas)

I have no idea how to start one of these so let’s just dive into the madness-

I took a very different take on Asha, to say the least. Instead of being a cheery peasant girl or a gracious princess, she’s a charismatic, cunning, and emotionally distant thief. so an accidental puss in boots ripoff-

My main goal with Asha in this rewrite is to give her more of a personality, as well as a character arc. She had a little personality in the movie, but ultimately just falls into that “quirky female protagonist” trope Disney has been doing lately. I drew a lot of Asha’s personality from characters like Meg, Raya, and especially Esmeralda. As far as a character arc, she doesn’t really have one in the film. The only change she really goes through is becoming a little sparkly and becoming the fairy godmother or whatever (which was such a stupid idea especially after they JUST defeated Magnifico but for another day). Not to spoil much here, but in this rewrite I decided her character arc will mainly revolve around opening up to people and vulnerability.

As a quick side note, her nickname means “The Lark of Rosas”. The citizens call her lark because of the way she glides across rooftops so gracefully, and for her singing voice.

As far as her design goes, I wanted her to closer resemble Brittney Lee’s concept art, shown below.

Her facial features and hairstyle just seem more fitting to her in this rewrite, and the warmer colored clothing would make her stand out against the other citizens of Rosas, who wear a lot of cooler colors.

(credit unknown)

As for her outfit, I went with the classic Spanish Musketeer look like the design above (minus the pistol). The art is pretty close to what I imagine, though I’d probably have her just wear a shirt and not the blue vest seen above.

Now, I know what you may be asking: What about Valentino? Well, he’s still here, but um…

…he changed quite a bit too. This is a genet, a catlike animal native to Spain, and a much more fitting companion to a thief than a goat. Think of him like Abu from Aladdin.

Now for the fun part: angst

Asha was born in Rosas to Thomás and Sakina. A few years after she was born, her mother died during the raids. Afterwords, her father guided her and many others to the Uncharted Forest, where they built the hamlet.

Like Asha, her father was a thief who stole supplies for the hamlet and gave money from the nobility to the poor of Rosas. He became well-liked by many, and stood as a symbol of hope for poorer citizens. He was basically the closest thing the hamlet had to a leader. Until one day he disappeared when Asha was just 14. (This will be somewhat important later in the story)

Asha felt she had to take her father’s place to keep hope alive in Rosas and began to steal from the nobles, sharing their riches with commoners as he had done. Around this time she was taken in by an older man named Sabino, who had been friends with her father.

Sabino never really approved of Asha’s thievery, but since she was the only one bringing supplies into the hamlet he didn’t say much. Asha eventually became very closed off to people, and had Sabino and Valentino as her only real companions. Although most people like her, she doesn’t really have friends in Rosas or even the hamlet. She’s too scared of failing their expectations of her, and avoids growing close to anyone besides Sabino.

This girl has a lot of expectations weighing on her, and they’re only about to get a lot heavier. But this time, she won’t have to carry them alone.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more.

[saraanzu]

bsd speculation: what’s up with this girl in bram’s flashback from 107.5, and what can we learn about her from dracula?

(prefacing this with some rambling… actual analysis starts after the readmore)

107.5 came out the same day as the s5 trailer and it was right after an exciting mersault chapter which is the vastly more popular pov and it was a whopping 9 pages - it was bound to be disliked. I won’t pretend a 9-page chapter isn’t disappointing (no idea why recent chapters have been so short - I hope they get a bit longer again when s5 is done airing?) and I think it’s fine to prefer the mersault storyline but I’ve also seen some god-awful takes about this chapter.

aya and bram aren’t side characters! they have been core to bsd’s plot ever since their introductions (in aya’s case, her re-introduction) and you can dislike them all you want but it’s objectively incorrect to claim they aren’t important to the story.

I also don’t agree with the take that 107.5 didn’t further the plot at all - obviously not a lot can happen in, again, 9 pages (that’s 1/3 the length of 107!) but aya deciding to remove bram’s sword and him actually encouraging her to do it even when he doesn’t believe it’s possible and previously told her not to is a huge turning point in the story! 107.5 certainly isn’t a favorite of mine but I will say we’ve had (slightly) longer chapters in recent months that had more exposition and setup with less plot.

I’ve seen some people worry that, because bram pictures someone who looks like aya in what’s presumably a wedding dress, bram and aya’s relationship is going in a creepy direction. I want to make it clear that no matter who this flashback girl is, even if she’s bram’s dead lover and/or aya in a previous life, I highly highly doubt that anything weird is going to happen between bram and aya. their relationship hasn’t been set up like that at all, in fact bram has parallels with aya’s father and he explicitly sees her as a child (more on that later) (look. bsd is not above using some Weird Tropes. in particular, the tanizakis and mori come to mind (and in mori’s case, it doesn’t even really function as a reference to the irl author - vitas sexualis has nothing to do with pedophillia!) but it’s important to mention that, while I wish those tropes weren’t in bsd at all because they’re unnecessary and add nothing of value to the characters, they are ultimately gags and nothing more. they don’t really set a precedent for how weird asagiri is willing to get when it comes to legitimately serious plot points.)

okay! got it all out of my system here’s the actual post

part 1: the dress

personally, when I first read 107.5, I didn’t think this girl was in a wedding dress. my initial assumption was “this must be bram’s daughter, she’s wearing some sort of tiara and bram was a nobleman”. but looking at it again, it does resemble one, and we should consider how bram’s backstory might reference dracula.

“the brides of dracula” are three seductive vampire ladies who live in count dracula’s castle and attempt to feed on jonathan harker early on in the book before being stopped by dracula, who chastises them for trying to eat harker and feeds them a human baby instead.

while they are known as dracula’s brides in pop culture and are often portrayed as such in movie adaptations, they go unnamed in the original novel and their relation to dracula is unclear. from what we see of them they refer to each other as “sisters”, although perhaps not in the literal sense. two of them have dark hair and are described as having similar facial features to dracula while the third is blonde, which may imply the third is dracula’s wife and the other two are his daughters. I imagine they’re pretty vague and mysterious on purpose, they could be dracula’s wives/sisters/daughters, or even just some vampire ladies crashing at his house.

however, I don’t think we should disregard details exclusive to adaptations of dracula and only focus on the original book when thinking about bsd. film adaptations of the book are actually more influential on dracula’s perception in pop-culture than the book itself, so it’s not unlikely that asagiri would reference elements that appeared in adaptations but not the novel.

so, because of “the brides of dracula”, I think it’s quite possible this girl is indeed a bride. she does look a bit young for it, but I’ve seen others say they think she looks older than aya, so I guess that’s subjective (and people would get married younger in bram’s time I suppose).

that doesn’t mean she has to be bram’s bride - again, the “brides” in the original novel have no explicit relation to dracula and could easily be his daughters or sisters, and I really do think her being his daughter instead makes more sense thematically.

part 2: her relation to bram

I believe bram subtly parallels aya’s father in a few ways. aya’s dad is verbally and physically abusive, and he berates aya for not being good at traditionally feminine activities. he doesn’t see her for what she is, a child, and instead expects her to be a perfect traditional woman.

right before we see this flashback, bram is surprised by aya’s age, and comments that she is “too young to even use a spinning wheel” (also a traditionally feminine activity). both of them question aya’s desire/ability to be an ally of justice but for different reasons: aya’s father finds it unladylike while bram finds it too big a task for a little girl (he is also sleepy)

I didn’t understand the point of this scene’s inclusion before, but in retrospect I think it serves as foreshadowing for bram’s flashback and demonstrates how he and aya’s father both associate aya with dead people, but this causes them to treat her differently.

aya will never live up to her father’s expectations because she can’t compete with his idealized memories of the dead. her own accomplishments are irrelevant in his eyes because she isn’t enough like the wife and daughter he lost. I suspect his grief is part of the reason he’s so horrible to her in the first place.

it’s the opposite case with bram. in his eyes aya does compare to someone who he remembers fondly, and the end of 107.5 implies that’s the very reason he’s okay with aya pulling the sword out.

I don’t necessarily see bram as a father figure to aya (to me he’s more of a weird creature who’s sort of grown fond of her after being unwillingly dragged around… but hey, who says that can’t be a dad?) but I do think it’s possible that this mystery girl was bram’s daughter in the past because of how he parallels aya’s father.

(note: she has normal human ears rather than pointy ones, but bram was turned into a vampire by his ability and wasn’t bitten or born as one, so I don’t know if he’d necessarily pass down his vampirism to his children. he also may have developed his ability after becoming a father, or his daughter could even be adopted).

part 3: her relation to aya

the most common idea I’ve seen to explain the resemblance between these two is that aya is a reincarnation of this flashback girl. introducing reincarnation out of nowhere seems a bit random even for bsd, but surprisingly this theory does have some basis.

in the movie bram stoker’s dracula (1992), the character mina harker, jonathan’s fiancé, is a reincarnation of dracula’s long-dead lover, elisabeta. dracula recognizes her as a reincarnation due to their resemblance and mina agrees to assist him, still harboring feelings and memories from her past life. it’s fairly common for dracula adaptations to portray dracula and/or mina as having romantic feelings for each other, but this isn’t really the case in the novel, and elisabeta is entirely an invention of this particular movie.

so, aya being a reincarnation of a girl bram once knew could work as a reference to this. I did say previously that I think it’s possible asagiri will reference adaptations of dracula and not just the novel, but I’m not so sure he would make something specific to one particular adaptation a major part of bram’s backstory.

personally, I’m partial to the idea that aya’s ability will be introduced soon, and her resemblance to this flashback girl may have something to do with it. (the ability idea and reincarnation idea aren’t inherently contradictory, aya’s ability could very well be reincarnation)

this theory by @jo-dieeee suggests that aya’s ability is called mirror, due to the discussion of mirrors in 107.5 and the book above.

mirror: the fiction and essays of koda aya isn’t actually a book written by irl koda, nor is it just a collection of her stories. it was written by ann sherif and discusses koda’s life and works, including some translations of her short stories in the second part. however, the existence of this book and aya emphasizing mirrors in 107.5 is quite an interesting coincidence! whether or not it’s called mirror, I’m fairly confident an ability reveal is coming up.

it’s also worth bringing up that aya’s resemblance to this mystery firl might not have a supernatural explanation at all. it could easily be an artistic choice simply made to indicate that bram is reminiscing about someone who aya reminds him of. I’m not too into the reincarnation idea myself.

[tyrantisterror]

Wizard School Mysteries: Book 1 Side Characters

Ok I'm 90% sure I've shared all of these sketches before but for funsies, let's look at some of the minor characters from book 1 of Wizard School Mysteries.

We'll start with the four elemental experts of the AAAM's teaching staff. While I generally use the four humors theory as, like, a surface level detail for my students, I tried to make the four teachers who specialize in the elements really live up to it, witch each teacher sporting the personality traits associated with the humor that corresponds to their elements. Lymf Splenik is a sadsack melancholic, Sulfrous Bladgal is cantankerous as befitting a choleric, Arturiel Haemoglobe is free-spirited and sanguine, and Mewcosa Glycocet is sweet but extremely emotional, as a phlegmatic should be.

Their names, of course, play on this too. Mewcosa is a play on Mucus, Sulfrous's last name, Bladgal, is a corruption of "Gall bladder," which makes yellow bile, Artery = Arturiel and Hemoglobin = Haemoglobe, and Lymf = lymph nodes while spenik is a corruption of "spleen," which makes black bile.

Professor Alys Evelina, teacher of Sorcery Studies, ends up serving as a secondary antagonist for books 1 and 2. Given how wild I went with making a lot of these side wizards explicitly monstrous, I decided to make Alys look excessively normal, even attractive, to not play into the "ugly = evil" trope. Don't read too much into the Alice in Wonderland motiff - while Alys and Alice both share a general disdain for things that are don't make sense to them, Alice Liddel is a much more likable character.

We don't get to see much of Alys's rival, Broomhilda Siegfried, but I still wanted to put some effort into her design anyway. She's meant to visually contrast Alys in the ways that Conjuration contrasts to Sorcery - notably, she's a lot shorter and hides her face, to go with the fact that Conjurers are kind of looked down upon by sorcerers. She's not keen on how her magic is viewed as the "lesser" of the two main ways to be a wizard.

They might not all get named, but we do see a lot of the non-educator staff in the first two books as well. Astrae Bygonn, the bugbear who runs the AAAM's Lost and Found, plays a pretty important role for how little screen time he gets. Esmer the gargoyle is named, while Quasi and Modo go uncredited in their roles as the two gargoyles working the school dance that starts the climax of Book 1. I think Ralda might only have showed up in book 2, but what the hell let's include her here anyway. And of course the janitorial homunculi are always on the fringers, being gloppy, helpful little guys maintaining all the school's functions.

Though they don't feature heavily in the story, both Ambrosio Medina (the alchemy professor) and Curdletongue (the prophecy professor) have named cameos in book 1, and they'll have slightly more important roles later on. Ambrosio is specifically meant to resemble Vincent Price, as I wanted him to have that charming yet slimy quality to him that Price so often brought to his roles.

I wanted the school to feel full, so I had my friends in the writers workshop discord I'm in pitch loose concepts for wizard students so I could have, like, a few dozen to pick from whenever I needed a background extra. Eventually we sorted them all loosely into the minor arcana of Tarot, and then expanded it to include some of the arcana from Minchiate, a card game very similar to Tarot that might be a parody of it? We were having fun making wizard students, what can I say.

Mugre Repellus was pitched by @bugcthulhu while Bartholomew Crawson was pitched by @dragonzzilla, and both of them went the extra mile to do some concept art too, which I adapted into these designs. They were two of the earliest spare wizard students we made, and we grew a bit attached to them - and since they both had claws on their arms, they were unofficially named "the claw gang" despite only having two members. Then, because it was fun, I made Shere Statchell to be their third member, the Jessie to their Team Rocket, and the Claw Gang became a sort of quirky trio who we kept making fun side stories for while working on the rest of the Spare Wizard Kids.

The joke was fun enough to keep going, to the point where I've made them recurring background extras and cameo characters in the series. What can I say, I love the Claw Gang.

Of course, another reason I needed a big ol' bucket of Spare Wizard students is that this is a mystery series, and mysteries need victims. I warned all my friends sending me pitches not to get too attached, because some of these kids were gonna die.

I'm a firm believer that a character's death should serve a purpose, though. You can kill a random one-off character for a gag, but if a character actually has, like, stuff going on, their death should have some weight to it. And book 2 needed at least one death that we felt - a side character who we liked enough to be sad to see go.

I picked Gabriev because his concept pitch - a wizard who also wants to be a chivalric knight - felt easy to make likable very quickly. Possibly a bit of personal bias - I'm a suck for knights in shining armor - but all you really need to do is make him nice and profess his desire to be a hero who goes out and does good, and suddenly that untimely death he's facing seems tragic.

Buuuut, if you do that too hurriedly, it'll be obvious he's set up to die - akin to having an old character say "I'm two days away from retirement" in a monster movie. Gabriev had to be seeded subtly, so audiences think he might have a future ahead of him.

So I put him in book 1, as a nice but not terribly prominent background extra in one of the main classes the kids attend in it, so readers might remember him and assume he's just a recurring extra like the Claw Gang. Ain't I devious?

Gabriev Zelgad's design and name is another Slayers reference. His armor is based on Gourry Gabriev (who is also obviously the source of his first name), and his last name is just another Slayers character, Zelgadis, without the "is." Like Gourry, he's a beautiful blond young man who's a bit of a ditz, and like Zelgadis, he suffers horribly tragedy.

Before I started the Spare Wizard Student project, I made a handful of supporting cast wizard students based on alternative names for various Major Arcana cards. Liam O'Sullivan here is based on The Lust, which is what Aleister Crowley renamed The Strength to in his Tarot deck, because of course he would, the horny old bastard. I initially didn't want to use that as a prompt because, like, what the fuck would that character end up being, WSM's take on Mineta? But then one of my friends joked I could just make him another take of the running gag I have in my TTRPG campaigns of introducing side characters who are deeply unflattering caricatures of myself that inexplicably end up in relationships with hot, terrifying goth women, and I smiled wickedly and said, "Oh you dumb bastard, that's canon now."

...which ended up being a godsend, because it gave me a way to introduce The Queen of Night, a minor character who's nonetheless important to book 1's mystery, as romancing her is the goal of the true antagonist. Sometimes torturing a specific part of your audience accidentally leads to a useful story beat.

Mr. Mackers is another minor fairy character who I wanted to use to show that Midgaheim does not work on the "Seelies = good fairies and Unseelies = bad fairies" trope, and also that it doesn't follow the "all fairies are explicitly evil eldritch horrors" trope that's becoming increasingly common as a "more true to the myths" approach. The mythic Nuckelavee is explicitly evil, to be fair, but not all fairies are, and I figured taking a fairy that's popular in internet culture for being so damn creepy and monstrous and having it be a relatively nice guy was a good way to subvert the modern expectations of what fairies should be - and try and stay true to the general mythological approach to fairies, which is that fairies are complex, not just good or evil.

Finally, we have good ol' Lornwig Kayjay, no relation to any children's book authors who decided to be figureheads for hategroups that specifically bully trans people. My rough concept for Lornwig was "that kid you get in at least one college class a semester who deliberately antagonizes the professor and every other student in class," because dear god you always get at least one class with a That Kid in it. The worst I ever endured was my class on Environmental Studies, because we had THREE That Kids in there. My second worst was the graduate class I took on Medieval Literature About Hell, because despite my best efforts, I was the That Kid of that class. It's a weird phenomenon.

As pre-writing chugged along and a certain children's book author became more prominently deranged, I decided Lornwig could get some theming outside of her role as a That Kid. And, you know, she's not the only That Kid I have planned. There's different flavors of That Kid, you know.

While Lornwig's role as a minor antagonist doesn't leave a lot of room for depth, I tried to give her a consistent philosophy behind her douchebaggery. She likes order and categorization, and things fitting into neat and tidy groups that you can sort into "Good" and "Bad" categories. That's a very human mindset - not a good one, but a very human one nonetheless. And she lives in a world of dangerous magical monsters, she does have some reasons to be scared and paranoid.

But mostly, she's That Kid.

Next time: minor characters of book 2!

[i-am-autistic]

I feel like if you have any media literacy at all you should know Jancy is very likely endgame.

You can read my posts and see I'm not even a hardcore Jancy or anything I lean more Jargyle. It's just like........

1. The writers like their original pairings from s1 a lot. Mike-El/Will(Im pro Byler, yes Will isn't present in s1 but Mike spends like 90% of the season moaning and talking about him- for the sake of this post El/Will are interchangeable), Jonathan-Nancy, Joyce-Hopper and then they also like Max-Lucas. All 4 of these couples have been presented as romantic since the pitch bible and from their first interactions.

2. S4 was all about division and how the characters lose when divided. They really focused on the absence of Jancy in s4. Hence they are building to an s5 with a lot of Jancy. We also got s4 featuring the other 2 main couples: Jopper and Lumax so it's probably going to switch to the other 2 couples to finish it off and wrap up the relationship and character arcs. The duffers really really love the whole story beat of "break the characters up and then show them coming back together". You can tell because this is exactly what they did with Jopper and Lumax in s4. Jopper obviously had a physical distance that broke them up but Lumax had an emotional distance. The same things Jancy and Mileven/Byler are bringing into s5. Arguably you could even say Byler went through this in s4.

3. Cmon bro the final scene where Nancy RUNS to Jonathan and Robin pats Steve's back is the most obvious thing of all time. People bring up the script and that it wasn't a big moment in the script but those scripts are redacted as hell to avoid giving out more information.

4. Jonathan and Steve had a pretty clear parallel this season when talking about having kids in the future. Jonathan and Steve essentially come to the same vision for their futures but both decide differently. Jonathan hates it and Steve loves it. We also know from s1 and every piece of info we've got about Nancy since s1 that Nancy also hates it and doesn't want to raise a bunch of kids. Yes I know it's possible to pursue a career and have kids. But kids in this situation and the vision Steve have don't only represent kids but also represent her parents and their relationship. Which is what the show has always told us Steve represents to her and in everything we saw in s4 he hasn't developed into this new person, he still represents that. Even if the character himself has still improved he still represents that.

5. As soon as Stancy is introduced in s4 we also get introduced to the fact that Nancy isn't over Barb and Barb will still be a part of her arc. Which she pretty inextricably links to Steve.

6. This is the one people don't realize often but s4 is literally maybe 5(?) months after the end of s3. Taking place in March 86 with S3 ending Oct 85 and about 8 months after the end of s3. Steve has seemingly had literally 0 contact with Nancy in that time and doesn't fall for her again in s4. He's already fantasizing about her as he says so it's presented as a continuation of the feelings he's always had for her and he seemingly isn't as over her in s3 as was implied. If the writers are going to write that relationship, they are essentially saying they were wrong, the characters were wrong and the audience was wrong about the relationship.

7. This is kind of a half point expansion of the above but like.....seriously it's important that none of the feelings in s4 are new feelings, it's all old feelings for a relationship the writers have told us 1 million times doesn't work. I keep seeing people say "they are different people" but they aren't that different from when they broke up. Steve's actual in show character arc has always been a lot more revolving around Nancy than it is about his relationship with Robin or the kids. Like as much as the fandom is about Steve and the kids and it's cute(And I like this too! I don't dislike this) in the show when he becomes friends with Dustin it's all tied back to Nancy with that final Dustin-Nancy scene and the relationship literally being developed with Steve ranting about his relationship. S3 his relationship with Robin in the original version is written as a romantic one as he gets over Nancy. Even in the show for 90% of s3 it seems Steve looks at Robin as a romantic partner and then switches to friends when she's not available. I think people forget he's not actually babysitting the kids in his off time in the show-the fandom is cute and such- but I don't think he spends significant time with anyone except Dustin and Robin in the show. This is moreso a point about how the writers of the show are kinda poor at evolving the characters. But seemingly the way it was presented in s4 Nancy and Steve are essentially in an incredibly similar position to when they broke up in s2.

8. Joyce in the recent play. Ok I need this to be said but like Emmerson vs NYU is a thing people make out as a bigger deal than it is. Emmerson is like an excellent university too??? Like IK people want Jonathan to be validated but he is getting validated by going to a big university. The university you pick when you're a kid doesn't really matter that much and seemingly even Jonathan hasn't brought it up. Like as a kid I wanted to go to my local uni a lot but I didn't go in the end. Emerson isn't like bumming it out it's a pretty great uni. But morseo I mean Joyce's whole arc in the First Shadow is about not going to university as an art student. They are surely not going to make her son do the exact same thing. This one is really simple I don't need to explain it.

9. I think Jopper literally solves like all of Jonathan's family issues because he won't feel as burdened and that he HAS to stay.

10. Oh as a final point I'm fairly certain Argyle with Eden in Suzie's house in s4 was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a spinoff. And I think Jonathan's only other ending they've given so far is California. I think maybe they could include Jonathan in a spinoff but I don't think they'd want to. Like they've said they don't want to continue any mains story after s5 and Argyle is periphery enough he could leave and have a spinoff and it could work with an occasional Dustin cameo or whatver but with Jonathan I feel like he is a bit too tied to the Byers for him to be in a spinoff. Like you'd have to include the Byers too and I don't think they would want one that features central characters too much.

11. This is just my opinion.

[valeriefauxnom]

Dev's (C)Leo Biases,

Or,

A Comprehensive History of How Leonidas Became Nearly Everyone's Object of Thirst

So, among the Dragalia Lost team, it was rather well known that they admitted to a strong Cleo bias.

It's pretty easy to see, in anything from Cleo's early spate of alts, like Dragonyule and Summer in quick succession, to the utterly random unique outfits they flaunted in ch.9 that you can just tell they drew for funsies but really liked them and wanted to put them in the game despite it serving no real purpose...

The dev team just really, really loved Cleo and drawing her. But after they apparently used up their Cleo allowance to make Gala Cleo probably the single strongest character in the game at the time, they cooled it down a bit.

However, as much as they were apparently thirsting over Cleo, I would joke that somewhere along the way, some part of the dev team, feeling desperate now that the yearly Cleo Allowance was running dry as they prepared to release Gala Cleo, decided to find a new fixation to quench their addiction.

And since Cleo was off-limits, they turned to the next best thing: crossing out the C in Cleo to find their newest substitute Dev Thirst character.

That's right, we're talking about the one and only Leonidas.

Leonidas had kinda just melded into the background with the rest of the siblings at this point to my observations. Sure, he was a campaign antagonist. People weren't particularly clamoring for him in particular over the other siblings, though. Honestly, I'd wager Emile was more popular at this stage, even in a 'love to hate' sense, just because we'd already seen him so much.

But then, it started. Whether it was art like this being posted on their twitter just a few scant months before G!Cleo's debut...

...They just seemed to have a certain edge in artworks featuring Mr. Curry in a way to make one squint and tilt your head sideways.

For instance:

It's one of those cases where you just kinda get a feeling the artist(s) found x attractive in a way that simultaneously still can give you a moment of self-doubt if that's not just you projecting because there's no blatantly obvious signs, you know? Whether it's something about the posing, or angles, whatever it is, I got this air increasingly whenever they put out any Leonidas art.

Thankfully, they decided to put me out of my misery and just flat out make what's likely the single most suggestive wyrmprint (or honestly art piece in general since Dragalia was thankfully very very very tame) starring none other than, you guessed it, Leonidas.

(Secret Cygames/Nintendo conversation, probably: "As you can see, it's vitally important that we draw this character in a speedo with sparkles around him." Nintendo: "...I'll allow it. This time.")

Even if he puts on some more clothes in the refined version, we're still back to that air I mentioned, as the shot focuses almost entirely on him instead of the wildly popular Chelle or his pet panther (which, yes, seemed to be an actual pet of his):

Even the Ilia-damned funny chibi comics got in on this thirst train as it went on and made quite possibly the raunchiest joke in the entire 400+ comic run featuring Leonidas, even if the exact same joke didn't make the translation overseas, however they tried. You can see a brief breakdown of that in THIS post.

Not content to restrict it to art and comics, Leonidas also dropped this line that is permanently engraved into my mind with just how shocking it was to see anything of this caliber in Dragalia, in his baby brother's story to boot!

At this point, I could no longer deny it: the devs and artists had collectively acquired a new fixation to satiate their once insatiable Cleo appetite in the form of Mr. Currymeister. (Don't worry about Emile there, he's just drowning, he does that all the time in waist-high water)

And this attitude even extends to in-universe, too! People increasingly fawned over the first prince, who very much was filling in the role of 'this prince you know vs. his hotter and more competent elder brother', as virtually represented by my expert skills in Microsoft Paint artistry as such:

Naturally, there was only so much time before the people IRL could succumb to Leonidas Fever (and no, this time we're not talking about all the people who were so devoted to this dude to effectively set themselves into a fatal, firey, steroid-filled death!) at this unrelenting onslaught.

It was hard not to see comments such as these that started pouring in (and yes, all of these were just about Leonidas exclusively):

(I'll attribute the misspelling to being overcome with Leonidas Fever, a grave illness indeed!)

(Another serious symptom: the decline of any self-preservation instinct around Leonidas, who is indeed Very Dangerous and Will Kill You!)

Ahem. You get the picture. Thus concludes the slow, insidious buildup from just another sibling for Euden to probably commit a whoopsie-daisy fratricide in the future to one of the fandom's favorite menaces, all carefully plotted-out by the collective efforts of devs who were the first to succumb to the sickness...Right?

This concludes my professional historical report on this very serious issue that I suspect lingers to this day. The Fever has but been put into remission; it has not faded yet.

Extra:

So a long time ago I commented that some of the royal family seemed to have pointier teeth than normal, which I speculated because they deliberated giving a bit more 'draconic' traits to define dragonblood, and I didn't realize how pervasive this was until I saw Emile's model there. Look at his fang!

...

...How did I forget the weapon skin of Leo's gun is additionally named "Royal Dominator"?

[glavilio]

my annoying beastars thoughts under the cut. continue if you dare

the thing that makes beastars so interesting to reminisce on is that it is poorly written in such a way that it becomes actively difficult to engage with the story without interpreting it as a gay one. its really only aesthetic in the first part of the story, but after louis runs off and the murder investigation arc starts, all of the character points set up with legosi and his relationship to herbivores as interspersed with love are severed from haru as she's almost completely sidelined. the only conversations between legosi and haru are ones in which legosi is being a terrible partner, never hitting any actual beats that might progress their relationship's development. meanwhile, all of the beats furthered in a romantic or even sexual context are feature the relationship between legosi and louis, and while i don't think the story or author are intentionally pivoting, that fact + all the suggestive framing between louis and legosi + how legosi's character foil riz is pretty overtly queer-coded, ends up making a very compelling story almost entirely by accident. there are plenty of aesthetic and incidental things that make the story really... gay (which are sometimes half played for laughs, like like legosi french kissing riz to identify unknown saliva by taste), but i think the the most poignent examples are the more subtle but critically important plot beats like this:

(itagaki really should've had the foresight to involve the the actual intended love interest in the story, so they would be able to put that character in this very important scene. id argue this chapter is THE most important component of legosi's romantic arc, and yet haru is still MIA)

this is why everything goes so downhill so quickly (aside from the drawing-burnout on itagaki's part, and the random nonsense concepts of course). from a character standpoint, everything set up in the first part with legosi's character has pretty much been resolved, while his relationship to haru specifically is totally underdeveloped. so itagaki decides to just revert legosi to a previous state, undoing all the character progression and making him jarringly unlikeable as he appears to have learned nothing. meanwhile, louis has almost nothing to do, and haru still does not get the focus she desperately needs from the story. instead, random elements are thrown together, a few of which stick, but don't adress any problem or shortcoming of the story thus far and instead just make them more glaringly obvious as previous arcs are vomited back up half-digested as the story flails around, trying to latch back on to what worked. beastars was always a character driven story. the world was interesting, but could not stand on its own without the interesting dynamics that pushed the first and second arcs forewards. when those disappeared, the whole thing seemed retroactively suspect: the reader is forced to consider if the story was ever really that good in the first place.

the story tries to have it both ways. if it has ended here, it wouldve been the perfect conclusion to louis and legosi's character arc. the story with legosi as a protagonist would need to end here, or very shortly after, because legosi's internal conflict is largely thematically resolved, even if his relationship with haru isn't, because the story substituted louis, rather seamlessly, into her role in legosi's development. of course, it would be better if the story ended with haru actually having a character arc, but to move naturally past this point it would need to switch POV characters (ideally to haru herself). instead, it has to make an abrupt and very clumsy shift to continue with legosi, and fails both the potential for haru's conclusion to work and retroactively weakens everything that happened up to this point. i think a great deal of blame lies with the context in which beastars was being produced as well: a good editor should've caught this in advance, and the story was likely renewed for new chapters without a plan or really the full enthusiasm of its creator. thats speculation on my part but itagaki's interviews seem to strongly imply it. i have more thoughts but perhaps they are better saved for another time

[gentil-minou]

Background Info about OUAT for my MDZS fic

So I recognize not everyone has seen Once Upon a Time so this fic and premise might be a bit confusing. I wanted to make a short notes/guide in case people might be curious about the premise of the show and how it will fit into my fic specifically.

You can read the fic itself here on Ao3

Once Upon a Time is a show where characters from various western fairytales get cursed to live in modern day Maine. The hero is Emma, who is the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming but was separated from them as a baby when the curse hit. She grew up in the real world and suffered the perils of foster care and other not fun realities, so by the time we meet her she's almost 30 and pretty jaded. Then, the son she gave up for adoption ten years ago finds her on her birthday. He says he's her son, Henry, and that she needs to follow him back to his hometown, to lift the curse set by the evil queen and help bring these fairytale characters back where they belong.

The fun part is, this evil queen, Regina is actually Henry's adoptive mom and the primary antagonist of season 1. And although Emma is skeptical of Henry's claims, she realizes she wants to be his mom after all and get to the bottoms of all the mystery surrounding the town and its odd inhabitants.

There's like so much more involved, like Emma's best friend actually ends up being her mom Snow White, and in one season they go to both Camelot and Hell, and also they play fast and loose with what a fairytale character is because the doctor is Victor Frankenstein. and pretty much everything gets fixed with True Love's Kiss it practically becomes an in-universe meme. The plot gets absolutely unhinged (I mean this with all the love in my heart, I adore this show), but I'm mostly drawing from the first season.

Mostly the bits I took from the show are the whole curse, except here the cultivation world is dragged into some American small town with no memories of where they're from. There are some hints that not everything is as it seems, like all the signs being in Chinese and no one being able to leave/contact the outside world. However, just like in the show, because of the curse the people in the town have no idea anything is wrong, they just believe this is all normal.

The show goes a bit further in that the town has basically been frozen in time while Emma aged 30 years, only unfreezing when she arrives. I decided to do away with that, so in my fic it's been about 5 years since they arrived and everyone aged normally.

Another important thing to remember is all the fairytale characters are basically growing up miserable and cursed with the exception of Regina, the evil queen who set the curse and acts as the mayor of the town. For instance, Snow White and Prince Charming are cursed to be separate as Prince Charming is both under a sleeping curse and engaged to someone else. Basically everything sucks then Emma comes and fixes it. That is something that will also be happening in my fic, and the first few chapters are about establishing the level of suck before we get to mystery involved.

The formatting of the show is also important. Similar to the MDZS novel, each episode features flashbacks to the fairytale land in the past that tells a bit more about the story happening in the present modern day. That's not something I can easily achieve in fic form, so instead at the end of each chapter (hopefully) I am including a once upon a time excerpt meant to tell clues about what happened to lead our characters to where they are. It's canon divergence from the burial mounds, as evidenced by the fact that in the first chapter Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are already together in the burial mounds with A-Yuan and the Wens. I'm hoping to give more info at a steady pace, but the intention is to leave the readers as confused as Wei Wuxian and everyone else is.

Otherwise, besides the basic premise and a few easter eggs, the plot and characters in my fic are more true to MDZS and not at all to OUAT. For instance, Regina's role is taken by Lan Wangji but he is absolutely not the one who set the curse and is under it just like the others. There's more, but I won't spoil it.

Some of the bits of fun easter eggs I added were Wei Wuxian's Lilttle Apple Bug, based on Emma's yellow bug that basically becomes a character of its own in the show. Also his red leather jacket is based on hers too. The book A-Yuan shows Wei Wuxian is also based on the fairytale book Henry shows Emma, except I'm picturing it looking more like a more extravagent version of the books in the Cloud Recesses

I want to add more Easter eggs as we go but my main focus here is on MDZS than the show, but if you catch anything else you get a gold star!!!

Thanks for reading this mess if you did sdjkghd. I think I covered the main bits I wanted to clarify, but if you have any questions dont be afraid to reply or send an ask, or leave a comment on the fic! I'm having so much fun with this AU featuring two of my favorite fandoms, so yay!

[jinjinranran]

Byeol x Yoosung 💚

Bi Yoosung is canon /j no but what else could I hc him as, with his big ass crush on Saeran 😭 and I believe it wasn't the only one - tho I think most of the times he'd be oblivious and confuse his boy crushes with simple admiration, because he likes girls after all! But boy. Sweetie. My dude. You're fruity and it shows.

With Byeol being nonbinary, Yoosung's a bit confused at first. He doesn't live under a rock, he heard about nonbinary genders, just hasn't really done any research about the topic. He has no problem with accepting them in any way regardless if he fully gets it or not. He just needs some explanations and learning to do so he could understand their identity better.

Other characters: 💛 💜 🧡 💗 ❤️ 💚 💙 🤍 🤎

Byeol's story under the cut:

💚 Eunbyeol Kim (Byeol) ♡ she/they/he ♡ 20 yo ♡ nonbinary, pansexual

Byeol likes both feminine and masculine clothes and interests, but has always been praised only for presenting feminine ("You're such a pretty lady!", "you look like a little princess in this dress" "you look much prettier with some makeup on") and it felt wrong so she started to resent these and dress as androgynously as possible, rejecting everything that was considered feminine.

Dislikes how feminine their face and body is, always admired androgynous people, and wishes breasts were an accessory you can put on and off depending on the outfit. Related those feelings to just wishing to look good in both male and female cosplays, only much later realized there is a deeper reason for that.

Bought her first binder for cosplay purposes and oh boy the happiness it brought!!

Generally wearing masculine outfits always brought that little, unexplainable spark of excitement.

Once when gaming someone referred to her as "he" and it felt cool so she never corrected them. Now goes by mostly he/they online and she/they irl (but honestly is fine with any).

As a teenager started to be more active online, and finding lgbt communities, she discovered the existence of nonbinary genders and started to put the pieces if her life together. Rotated between different identities (demigirl, demiboy, genderfluid, agender, etc.) but at the end decided to just stick to nonbinary as it felt the most comfortable.

Cut their hair at the end of high school, out of impulse and spite for her family pushing the idea that a woman must have long hair. It felt so freeing, even tho she ended up looking like a disaster lol

Their family is conservative and not very accepting to anything outside of the "norm" so they're not out to anyone except one of her older sisters who does everything to support them, even if she didn't fully understand at first.

While doesn't mind she/her pronouns, other gendered words (like miss, sister, girlfriend etc.) makes her uncomfortable so prefers to use gender-neutral alternatives when possible.

Definitely prefer to be referred using their shortened name - Byeol - since it's gender neutral, than the feminine full name - Eunbyeol.

Now - after learning that the way they're presenting nor interests do not invalidate their identity - embraces their feminine features (still thanks gods for the invention of a binder but doesn't always feel the need to wear), actually likes wearing makeup and dresses sometimes, loves to play with fashion and mix both feminine and masculine pieces of clothing, and is obsessed with accessories.

Regarding the romantic/sexual attraction, he has 0 experience, but never put much importance to it, "if I fall in love then I fall in love, the only thing that matters if we get along well".

Since they're going to the same college as Yoosung, they saw him in the halls, a few days into 1st semester, and immediately got a big ass crush on him. Felt way too shy to approach him though, and everytime they ran into each other, only managed to mumble something incomprehensible (and that was very new and out of character for her, and also very embarassing). Later, slowly they started bonding over the same interests, though Yoosung was very oblivious of Byeol's feelings towards him. Until many months later when she confessed to him - or in his route, when he realized that the party coordinator he fell in love with is actually his college and gaming friend. 💚

[tortelette]

Late night insomnia theories AGAIN I CAN'T BLOODY SLEEP PLEASE LORD I TRY TO CLOSE MY EYES AND ALL I CAN SEE IS W SKILL ISSUE DANCING

Meursault and Don are the two sinners who are seriously SERIOUSLY quite the characters that have a lot to unpack. Two characters with almost a one-sided personality when interacting towards others. Especially Don, Don has a skewed-sense of priorities in life and I was beginning to question her.

We do know in the upcoming chapters that Ishmael is going to be featured and ever since Yi Sang's story has concluded(?) (EHEM, Gubo I am coming to kill you, EHEM) I believe that her chapter revolves around the sinners "reenacting" her voyage or meeting a member of her crew who was somehow alive. Might be between those two, I am so excited with that possibility and I cannot wait what Don and Meursault's story chapters have in store.

Don might get a story that revolves around her moral sense of justice and also "personality abandonment." You think that I will forget about those Mariachi peeps back in Chapter 2??? Their comments were on point to Sinclair and the fact that they commented Don as "insincere and lack of a pure heart" iirc means we are getting on to something. I believe that Don is a person who is indifferent to many happenings in the City yet she prefers to look and take action on the smallest of things rather than the bigger of it. (That weird double faced reaction when she VIOLENTLY decided to "save" a backstreet folk and their child who violated a taboo and her neutral reaction in a FUCKING GENOCIDE TOWARDS THE INNOCENT) (Like yeah, she learned something after Verg and her idol got her cucked in the checkpoint area but there has to be an active remnant of that judgement somewhere within her during the genocide in Calw) She wanted to be the center on something especially in a situation where she can properly control hence she ALWAYS try to take over the mantles whenever she can even if it is not in her own expertise.

Hence I believe her story would revolve around the concept of her own moral judgement and how she wanted to be someone important. I also believe she wanted the attention directed at her to be a "great Fixer" she would do everything for that. Pretty much explains why one of her skill type of her default has envy (she wanted to be someone that resembles a great and perfect idea of her belief on a true Fixer and be higher or as levelled as the greatest Fixers in the City). Her story would seriously tackle on breaking her "honorable facade" and might question her validity of her desire to be a great Fixer when in truth she is not genuine on such things to do and would act like that to cover a probable rotten or indifferent personality.

I do have a personal theory that Don Quixote is actually Sancho Panza (Don Quixote's squire in the book) but that will be in a different take rather than now.

Meursault on the other hand, I believe that his story would stress around "emotional and mental breakdowns." This fucker has a decent yet extensive knowledge on distortions. Fuck, he even stated plainly that he get to witness them meaning that he witnessed more than one distortions in his life. I do have two theories on what happened to him back then and would tackle more in the future. His original novel involves him murdering someone and possibly it might bring over to the game's lore as well (more like a portion of it), and I get to say... it is quite unlikely he kills someone with a gun but rather himself.

First theory would be that he killed a person under the process or already been distorted, my friends always think that it has to be his mother because of that quote he stated back at his promotional video. Although, me and my friends would debate that the way he expresses that is either he is forgetful of that incident or that he prefers not to think about that incident and decides to detach himself away from that incident hence he cant remember the entire details of what he had done, a person who killed his distorted mother. I can probably tell that N corp is a toxic workplace environment when there are a lot of questionable acts and decisions sprouted out from the company (problematic Nagel Und Hammer and the "New League of Nine") it would be no doubt there would be a thing or two who would distort after what they have been through.

Second theory is where Meursault is the one being distorted. This is a theory that got us excited the most because of game antics (one of our own sinners fighting against us? Funny enough is that he is the strongest unit with complete full leveled IDs and EGOs ready in my team. This is why I build Heathcliff and Faust as backup in case that scenario will happen.) This theory revolves around him getting into a mental or emotional breakdown (quite difficult what irks him to bend when we know that even in stressful situations he remains a calm yet annoyed facade - Rosespanner ID) and resulted him killing his own mother without him realizing it. But my friends and I were thinking that it might not only be the reason he get into jail. One friend of mine point out that killing one person is not enough to be seen as a threat because that is quite common in the City where survival is a must have because of people getting into each other's throats with or without a valid reason. What if... he kills many people? Yet the only person he realize that was killed in the mix is his own mother. After the onslaught he just returns back to normal after a sense of clarity came to him and in that part is where he gets jailed. He was ridiculed and spouting him anger because he has the ability to distort, something that represents of showing one's true self. Final boss material right here, his story might be about overcoming this distortion problem he is dealing with and also about his perspective of everything and why he thinks of it.

Alright I am done I need to sleep or else my mother find out I am still awake and write this shit. Time to fuck off.

[coffeecatttt]

Resident Evil 5 hates women

Replayed Resident Evil 5 and decided to look up the discourse from the era. The blatant racist imagery is obvious, and frankly I don't think the games press was in a great spot to discuss it adequately on release. Frankly, as a white person I'm also not the most appropriate person to do so either, so I'm not going to get in into that.

But for all the racist shit in the game, I was not prepared for just how overt the sexism would be. Sure, it's from 2009, and things have changed a lot since then, but... yeah, there's a lot.

Character Designs

Obviously, the RE games are no strangers to giving their lady characters scantily clad outfits, and even sexualizes a character who is arguably a minor in RE4, but RE5 really takes it to an extreme.

Literally every female character in the game has some kind of skimpy skintight outfit or dress, solely to accentuate their bodies, regardless of any possible practicality for a combat situation.

This is contrast with the male characters. While they’re also basically models as far as their body shapes go, they at least get to have much more practical fatigues and body armour.

But there’s also aspects of sexism that are coded into the gameplay. For starters, Sheva is relegated to a “2nd player” role. You can’t even play as her by default if you’re not in co-op. Instead she’s an unlockable character.

Presumably, Capcom either thought nobody would want to play as a woman by default, or maybe worse, because they thought that they could dangle a woman as a reward for completing the game.

But that's not the only unlockable! There's also the costumes. Sheva’s standard one isn’t modest, but the costumes all find a way to put her into even more skimpy clothes, including shiny gold “club” attire, a business suit with a skirt so short it wouldn’t make sense outside of a porn scene, and the infamous “tribal bikini”.

All of these costumes are things you have to spend your points to unlock, so not only is your reward for finishing the game getting to play as a woman, but dressing her up in increasingly pervy ways. Hooray!

Narrative Stuff

But the character designs aren't enough. Capcom also felt it fitting to cement its misogyny in the narrative. Pretty much every significant action in the story is driven by a man.

Sheva, despite being one of the featured protagonists, is basically just along for the ride, despite being the “local guide” for the area who should know much more than Chris. Yet Sheva never uses her skills and knowledge to move things along. She’s just there to help Chris do co-op stuff, like getting vaulted up to higher areas by him because she weighs less. Girl power!

In fact, the tertiary character Josh, Sheva’s mentor, arguably helps more to move the plot along than Sheva does, since he helps drive the boat and tells them where to go on a couple of occasions. This would have been ideal for Sheva, but I guess the game couldn't let her do anything important.

Jill returns in this game, but spends most of the game mind-controlled by Wesker using some kind of magic device implanted in her chest, I guess because her cleavage is the one part of her latex catsuit that has exposed skin? The fight against her has Chris and Sheva trying to tear this off her chest in an *extremely* awkward QTE.

After getting her butt kicked, instead of zipping up her top or bandaging herself up, she just leaves it open, chest wounds oozing. For the rest of the game she basically has no role except to deliver some deus ex machina plot advice over the radio, even though it'd make a lot more sense for her to help out as an active participant.

Excella Gionne, meanwhile, is the female villain, whose two character traits are worn on her chest. She’s vain, manipulative, and ultimately expendable when Wesker turns her into a monster to attack the protagonists near the end of the game.

Throughout the story, she basically does nothing except to occasionally taunt the player and unintentionally provide info to help them. Despite being the head of Tricell, a biotech company, we never get to see her business or scientific abilities on display, just her lust for power and attempts to seduce Wesker. Her ultimate role is instead to be betrayed by Wesker, cementing him as the true baddie at the end.

Get That Dilc

And yeah, I’m going to the DLC as well. The first is pretty good and actually has Jill in a fairly equal role to Chris, with a significantly less sexualized outfit, so that's cool. I wish I could play as her by default, but hey, progress!

But the second DLC has you playing as Jill during the campaign, back in her catsuit, chest still seeping. The dialog in this is gross. both Josh and new character Doug spend almost all their lines hitting on her, and instead of telling them to fuck off, she inexplicably entertains their advances. It's ludicrously tone deaf.

This part feels extremely triggering for me, and I'm sure for others. The frequency at which women are forced to accept unwanted compliments from men, and show some sign of reciprocation for fear of retaliation, is a disappointing aspect of lived experience for many women. That someone at Capcom thought this was "charming" or appropriate for the situation shows just how incredibly, deeply backwards their views were at the time.

Anyway

When I went searching online for discussion about the constant casual sexism and misogyny in RE5, I came up pretty much empty handed, save for a bunch of gamers on reddit and GameFAQs saying how hot they think Sheva's costumes are. So I guess mission accomplished?

Not only was games journalism of the time the game released not in a place to adequately talk about the racism, the sexism was also apparently barely touched on. Was it just normal back then? Were we blind to it? I'm a different person today than I was then, so maybe.

So yeah, old lady screaming about a nearly 15 year old game, what gives? Well, in all honesty, I have to give Capcom credit for how much they improved. The turnaround in portrayals of women for the RE2 and RE3 remakes really is appreciated, and shows a genuine effort to present them as real characters.

I don't know if Capcom is going to remake RE5. I have a hard time envisioning how the devs could sidestep the fundamentally racist imagery baked into the premise, or handle it with the grace it deserves. But if it does come to pass, I'll be very curious to see how its portrayal of women changes. They deserve better.

[starlit-hopes-and-dreams]

Hey Anna, happy STS!

So, I've been informed that there are miniature dragons in Shattered Dreams, which is a delightful concept. But are there also large dragons? Are they the fire-breathing kind? Are they sapient beings? Do they talk? What role do they play in the story? Just, your dragons. Tell me about them, please?

Happy STS, Claire!

Gonna start this one off with a link to some art I had commissioned featuring Alaia and Fyel, one of my mini dragons :D

Easy questions first:

No, I don't also have large dragons, although these can change size a little, its usually to get even smaller.

They... kind of breathe fire? Its more like breathing magic energy that burns cold, but it still burns.

They do talk, in your mind :D They can talk with the dragon caretaker and with their bonded person, and if they want to they can talk to other people but mostly don't.

Other quick dragon facts:

They are made of magical energy and have to get this replaced as they use it, or they could fade out of existence

Since their form is just solidified aether, they can make that form as insubstantial or corporeal as they wish.

They can also choose if they are visible or audible to any but their bonded

They can travel to other places instantaneously

They were made to bond with mages

Okay, so. *rubs hands together* You ready for some lore?

My gods are pretty hands-off regarding interfering with the beings they've created. Part of some agreement they made after they screwed up the world's elemental balance the first time.

Because of some plot things, the god of aether decided to um, hijack a human to prove that one of the other gods is doing fishy things. This is technically a no no for the agreement the gods made with each other, and he can't really interfere any farther than that one thing he did (to Alaia). But he needs something that can be more hands-on, so he convinced the god of air to help him make the dragons.

This was accomplished using intermediaries. The royals are closer to the gods than anyone, so one from air and one from aether were used in the creation process. (Kadin, a seraph from air, and Darian, a fae from aether, both secondary POV characters)

Kadin ends up being appointed caretaker of the dragons. He is not a mage, which is important because he is given access to raw fucking aether to recharge the dragon's energy. He also teaches the dragons about the world and normal stuff, which is important for plot reasons :)

The official purpose of the dragons is to bond with new, stronger mages to assist them as they come into their power. They can share, amplify, and help direct the mage's magic. They are basically magical and emotional support for the mage they bond with.

The dragons are basically babies, newly created during the early events of Shattered Dreams. Fyel was the first dragon, and he was always meant to bond with Alaia. The other dragons can choose their mages.

We get to see more of the other dragons in the second book. In the first, Fyel is the only dragon we see. Since my mc spends the entire first book in captivity, Fyel is her only link to the outside world. This is a wee bit important plot wise 🤏

[technovillain]

i love jameela to death so here’s some questions:

-after “fuck giving rich people dangerous technology” does she distance herself from technology entirely or does she keep making personal stuff and/or stuff that’s much harder to exploit? i think she could make some fucking awesome animal monitoring tech (like keeping track of individuals of endangered species, citizen volunteer data collection on bird populations and stuff)

-what’s her flavors of queer and/or neurodivergent

-does she ever end up doing missions or is she not super duper into the agent stuff

-is her dad a rich asshole or just oblivious and ignorant or a mix of the two

-how do you think she’d get along with some of the junior agents, especially norma, gisu, and sam

HI THIS ASK IS ANCIENT BUT I'VE BEEN HOLDING ONTO IT THINKING ABT IT MEANING TO ANSWER IT SO HERE WE GO. ALSO THANK U SOOO MUCH FOR ALL THE INSIGHTFUL QUESTIONS I LOVE THIS.

After that, she pretty much makes a vow to herself to never make a psychic invention again!!!! (....) and then time passes and she goes "Well just one little thing for myself." (....) "Okay just another for just myself." (.....) "Okay it's fine if I'm only making things for myself, even if it's a lot of things. I need technology." What you said there is Exactly the kind of stuff she'd be making too! While she takes a very loud approach to her activism, her approach to saving the world by trying to prevent the horrible future she saw is much more under the radar...mostly because she's still using the psychic technology that she built for herself but pretends that she didn't build at all because she said she swore it off! (She is constantly fighting herself in her own head about this lol.)

I haven't fully decided on this! But I would say that she is asexual and has OCD.

She really kind of functionally.... leaves the Psychonauts after a certain point. Like in a "You're always welcome to come back" kind of way. This is something that I still need to do more thinking on because I need to decide how I think the Psychonauts, being a government funded organization, would feel about psychic activism entering the public sphere.... But anyways yeah I see her leaving for an extended period but coming back when there is suddenly a mission that requires her assistance specifically (one involving Gusty and Veranda.)

I'd have to say he's definitely a mix of the two, leaning more towards the second one. I can't remember exactly how much detail I went into on her story and how it might have changed since I last posted about it (bc tumblr's tag search feature is functionally useless rip) BUT Dallas Delmarro is indeed a tech guru so while his concepts were birthed from those "childhood dreamer with a lot of big ideas" mindsets you always see in people like him, he ended up really focused on his company's bottom line. Business school changed this dude. He is still a pretty good dad considering everything. But considering he's a single father and his job pretty much consumes his life it is pretty easy to see why Jameela felt a strong need to get good at inventing things from a young age (cough cough so she would feel more important to him)

I like to picture these characters existing at the Motherlobe a few years after the events of Psychonauts 2, just so I don't have to think too hard about where they're at in regards to the plot of PN2. Just assuming that most of the big things regarding that plot have died down at this point. So all of the interns/junior agents from the game would be a few years older than Jameela when she gets there. I think she would probably like Norma okay from afar, but not really have any desire to become friends with her...because she can see how she gets. I think she would not know anything at all about Sam and be a little put off by her and not able to read her at all. She would totally be jealous of Gisu though. Because I see Gisu in a few years as working alongside Otto. And in Jameela's story, she came to the Motherlobe to work with Otto but something urgent came up regarding developing some sort of technology, and Sasha and him and Gisu were all working together to develop it. So Jameela doesn't really care for Gisu or Sasha just because they're interfering with her track to success.

[bklynmusicnerd]

They really did segregation today segregation tomorrow on this episode. They really separated Trina and all the other black characters at home while everyone else was at Wyndemere for the repass. They also had the audacity to have Esme have a grave in the same cemetery as Spencer and had Liz of all people grieving her?!? Had Trina and Cam interact for like 1 minute but the rest of the episode he and Joss were sharing memories instead of all three of them?!? Trina had 30 second scenes, but the rest of the family, who didn’t give a fuck about him, had more scenes. Spencer’s funeral wasn’t even the focus because it went right back to Sonny and his shit and Gregory/Finn’s shit😑

Yeah I just got done watching it and I'm disappointed at all the missed opportunities that are occurring but I'm not surprised. Before I get into it, I wanna credit TA again for playing the physicality of Trina's grief/depression so consistently. Grief isn't always loud tears. Losing someone is exhausting. It makes you weary. And as much as the script is falling short, TA's acting isn't. That's what's making the storytelling choices so frustrating.

C&D allowing Lucky Gold on breakdown (who is also credited on the infamous cabin episode) and Kate Hall on script to effectively disappear the black mourners once the memorial moved to Wyndemere is a pretty egregious legacy to leave behind. Again, this racial segregation in the storytelling is not just bad optics, IT'S BAD STORYTELLING. Emotional beats were missed because of this idea that Trina's family and Spencer's family cannot interact for longer than two minutes.

The problem isn't the writing for Trina's depression. It actually makes total sense for her character and the way she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, to perceive Spencer's death as a personal failure of hers and punish herself for it. The problem is there's no way Cam, Joss and Ava wouldn't be spending a lot of that time at Wyndemere concerned about Trina? I mean, they had Laura, Joss, and Cam looking at this scrapbook of Spencer pictures that Nik allegedly collected and the majority of them feature Trina.

It actually looked insane how hard they had to work to give these people dialogue discussing Spencer's journey that didn't mention Trina. Honestly the fact that they prioritized punishing Nik over that Esme bullshit so much that he wasn't even allowed to attend his son's fake funeral is a testament to how badly they're handling this presumed death arc.

Even the eulogy that Alexis gave made me laugh because she said something about how in the blink of an eye he became this confident young man who took responsibility for his choices. Uh, yeah, no, Spencer came back to town a bitter and angry young man who was stunted emotionally. Trina entering his life is what inspired Spencer to become the man that Alexis described. And Spencer himself said that many, many times.

Yes, he admired Cam and wanted to be like him, but those two didn't really bond until Spencer needed someone to confide in about his stupid hero plan to save Trina. It's the only reason Cam stood by him. The HS trio should have been the emotional center of this memorial. Instead, Spencer's family honored him by barely acknowledging the girl he loved so much he "died" for her. Because the writers decided maintaining their Generally White Hospital tradition (thank you to VA for that fitting title) was more important.

Trina and Spencer's story (and the sheer buzz around it) should be inspiring an integration of the canvas. Instead, it's being told poorly so they can enforce some pretty archaic storytelling politics. I really hope PM brings an end to that shit because it genuinely does mess up the flow of the story, disregards existing relationships and makes me uncomfortable when it comes to watching this soap.

There are shows from the sixties that aren't as strictly racially segregated as GH was today. I shouldn't even have to explain why that's not sustainable for a show trying to carve a future for itself. The writing culture under C&D's leadership was truly fucked up.

That said, this would have been a much stronger episode if we had SP or CG on script. They keep assigning these key aftermath episodes to writers who are clearly not comfortable writing long or in-depth pov for Trina. It's a poor choice, especially when we know it's a fake death and Trina is going to be key to his return. It's just unforced error after unforced error and that is why you don't see anyone seriously mourning the loss of C&D.