#I think this is the longest analysis post I've written...

[geospiral]

Sua wanted to protect Mizi’s “innocence,” but with the new comics that have been released, it’s become clear that Mizi wasn’t naive about how she’s viewed societally or about the Alien Stage competition itself; what she was naive about was believing she could have some control over her circumstances and over how she is perceived while in the position she was in. That's the innocence Sua wanted her to hold onto for as long as possible.

Sua lets Mizi have control over her—lets her take the lead when it comes to their relationship and feeds into Mizi’s desire for control over her life. Mizi could “crush” her, but she doesn’t, and when Mizi’s emotions do get the best of her, she’s horrified and regretful, knowing that what she did was wrong because she truly loves Sua and doesn’t want to see her hurt.

Sua knows that the bubble that they’ve formed for themselves is the only real place Mizi can have control, because try as she might to live a life the way she wants, Mizi can’t truly change how others see her. Mizi being a kind and joyful person isn’t a lie, but the problem comes with the fact that she’s a people pleaser and tries to keep up that part of herself even when she’s uncomfortable or upset. She tries to skirt around and act oblivious in situations where she knows she could hurt others' feelings because there's a chance that they will hurt her when her wants don’t align with theirs. 

Mizi wants others to like her and to be her friend, but the only person she wants romantically is Sua. If she ignores the feelings that the men around her have for her, then hopefully they’ll sort themselves out and everyone will be fine in the end, right? "Please don't confront me, please don't feel entitled to me. I don't want either of us to get hurt."

Even after that unnamed boy physically harms and accuses her of being a manipulator, Mizi gives him the benefit of the doubt. She doesn't want to hurt anyone in any way; she never tried to lead anyone on.

Back then, even before Alien Stage, she felt guilty because she believed this idea of herself that she presented in order to hide her true feelings, a happy-go-lucky and carefree girl, was the reason that others resented her, idolized her, or thought of her so shallowly. She thought that the control she believed she had was what caused others to see and act the way they did to her. 

Mizi hiding her “bad” emotions probably did affect how she was perceived a bit, but even if she didn't, would it have mattered? As previously said, she didn’t completely hide away who she truly was; she just played up the part of herself that she knew others liked. Her being completely transparent about everything wouldn’t have stopped some of the men around her from feeling as though she owed them something just because she was a woman; it wouldn’t have stopped people from resenting her for “having it easy.”

Mizi knows what society expects of her but still wants to feel as though she has control, so when she is harmed by societal values and expectations such as heteronormativity, she believes it’s her fault to some extent despite being disgusted with them herself.

This finally leads us to the Alien Stage competition itself. Surely she and Sua can make history with a tie, surely she can control how this ends, and their performance can convince the audience to let them move forward together. Guardian Shine and her family may have not understood her, but as long as she’s loved by her peers, she knows she will survive. She and Sua will show them their love, and they will be loved by them in turn. They are going to make it.

Sua knows better, though. She’s let Mizi have control over her for as long as possible—has let her take the lead for as long as possible. She knows that individually they cannot change the hearts of those that subjugate them, that the audience's love for them will not save them. So she takes the control that she’s granted Mizi back, one of them has to die and Sua’s making sure it’s herself.

(translation by: sorrowcure)

Mizi wants to have control, so her survivor's guilt tries to convince her that she always was the one in control and accuses her that this is what she wanted. She feels as though she can only blame herself for what's happened to those around her.

[acesw]

Disabled Characters in Reverse: 1999 - Part 3

Welcome to the final installment of this list of the game's disabled characters (for now), and we are ending it with the most interesting of them: the neurodivergent characters!

These characters are particularly special since a lot of them are mainly speculated, but they draw heavy parallels to their respective conditions that they had to be taken note of.

Now because there are so many characters, they became an entire category of their own instead of being lumped with the previous post, and this became undoubtedly one of the longest texts I've written down among most of the analysis posts I've made for this game.

I hope that you enjoy reading this final piece, let's get started.

Autism: 37, Horropedia, Melania, Balloon Party, Avgust

All of these characters are incredibly similar to each other, and yet they all have their share differences. For example, both Horropedia and 37 are characters that embody one of the main stereotypes about autism: Incredibly intelligent characters who fixate on specific subjects. 37’s focus is on mathematics, while Horropedia’s is the horror genre. Even their personalities are quite similar: arrogant yet kind and understanding people.

They lace their speech with associations to their topic of interest, and will infodump about it unprompted. The two of them also struggle to pick up social cues, nor can tell if the information they’re sharing is unsolicited because the information is normal to themselves.

However, the difference between them in this is that Horropedia is more carefree about it, whilst 37 is more self-aware about the fact that she can’t come to a mutual understanding with others.

The rest of the characters here also share these traits, but they all stand out in their own ways:

Melania’s intricate way of making plans tends to be in the form of academic exams. These tend to be her greatest motivator when it comes to doing work, and gets easily frustrated when having to change them. She also has a set routine that she gets easily surprised by sudden interruptions.

Balloon Party’s speech is found to be unconventional (i.e. the speech impediment from earlier, the tone of her voice is found to be naturally flat) and is paired with word association and echolalia.

Avgust has a unique understanding of the world around him, with him associating everything and everyone with more innocent concepts. (e.g. his father’s death is often referred to as him “sleeping in the mines”) None of these mean that he doesn’t understand things like death as what they are, only that he’s very young among the cast and has been raised in a healthy environment that allows him to continue thinking this way for a bit longer.

ADHD: Regulus & Eagle

With Regulus, it’s more of a headcanon than it is backed by evidence, but the main points that can be found for her are her restlessness, lacking attention span, and her impulsivity. They’re common aspects (hyperactive) in ADHD, and thus they aren’t exactly conclusive.

But I also found that Regulus also tends to bring her interests to light when navigating through conversations, and this with the reasons mentioned above makes me personally believe that Regulus does not just strictly have ADHD, but still overall neurodivergent.

Eagle seems to have the inattentive type of ADHD. A more established indicator of her likely having it is through her anecdote, where she was said to have had some sort of attention-deficit. In that anecdote, Eagle mainly acts on her own impulses such as jumping to try to find the missing boy scout, and even helping X if it meant that it progressed her mission.

She struggles to take rejection and constantly tries to prove herself to be able to gain the acceptance she’s looking for. It made me believe that she has Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. (RSD)

While these alone aren’t conclusive either, they still give me enough reason to believe that Eagle could be implied to be neurodivergent too.

AuDHD (Autism + ADHD): Vertin, Marcus, AliEn T

From the earlier points, we find that some of the mixed traits that make for auDHD are found in Vertin, Marcus, and AliEn T. All three of them are quite emotional (even Vertin in spite of her stoicism) and impulsive people, where they tend to jump into action when they have a rough plan set in mind. They also have their own interests (wildlife, reading, Earth) and tend to get absorbed into their own thoughts quite often. Because of the latter, they tend to lead themselves into executive dysfunction. Some things about them differ, however.

Starting with Vertin, most of the “obvious” signs are present in her childhood, where she was restless and curious of the world beyond SPDM, making it difficult for her to focus in school. Yet, she still kept up with topics that interested her, going as far as skipping classes to learn in her own way.

She has gotten punished often for her “defiance,” and ended up being radicalized by it and by the trauma she faced in Chapter 3. Currently, she masks quite heavily to a degree, leaving her main indicators to be her tactile tendencies (i.e. touching things and others out of curiosity) and her becoming absorbed to her own thoughts.

Meanwhile, Marcus is an incredibly anxious person. She often relied on someone like Hofmann to socialize with others and make decisions for her since she struggled greatly in that aspect. She can be easily upset by things and even by her own overthinking, taking rejection quite poorly before resorting to immediately coming up with ways to resolve it.

She often retreats back to reading to be able to ground herself from any stress. But now with everything that’s happened, Marcus has begun working on herself and mustering the courage to be able to push her limits independently.

We’re not entirely sure about how AliEn T’s home society is structured, but it can be argued that his and our societies tend to parallel each other. For example, AliEn T is seen as a bit eccentric to his kind like the regional manager and co-workers because of him being emotionally prone and being very fixated on the Earth. (which his society collectively avoids)

A lot of his notes about his home in the anecdote imply that in his home society, they have their equivalent of some of the struggles found in the neurodivergent experience, which is why he and Officer Williams in the anecdote could empathize with each other.

Others / Related but non-diagnostic: Mesmer Jr., Isolde, Pickles, Kaalaa Baunaa, Tooth Fairy, Blonney

As I explained in the previous post, Mesmer Jr. and Isolde both greatly suffer from conditions that particularly stem from their trauma and subsequent C-PTSD.

Again, Mesmer Jr. is heavily hinted to have OCD, while Isolde has many disorders linked to C-PTSD. (formerly named as "hysteria") Due to the nature of their respective conditions, they both deserve a place here in this list.

It can be assumed that Pickles is neurodivergent due to him being nicknamed as an “indigo pup.” While this might be related to his arcane skill, the nickname is also intriguing because it's like the term “indigo children.” 

“Indigo children” are classified as those who are incredibly intelligent and possess special talents or powers according to the New Age concept. However, this classification is closely associated with neurodivergence due to the similar descriptions.

Meanwhile, Kaalaa Baunaa, Tooth Fairy, and Blonney have shared stories in which they've had to maintain some form of distance towards their arcanist identities due to the hostile nature of their environments. They embraced it as part of themselves in the end, though.

Kaalaa Baunaa has been an avid researcher ever since she was young, and enjoys maintaining punctuality through routines. However, she had been often discriminated against in her initial workplace, where her arcanist identity had been picked out first before taking her research in consideration; even her research had been disregarded due to the “unconventional” methods that she applied to conduct them.

It can be considered a familiar feeling among neurodivergent people and it is incredibly frustrating when it happens. For KB, it had gotten bad to the point of her (and Kumar) getting kicked out of their institution, but it never stopped either of them from continuing to do their work.

Tooth Fairy and Blonney both grew up in mixed societies, where they had to force themselves to conform to be able to be accepted in both human and arcanist social spaces.

Tooth Fairy, while achieving this balance in her college years, had never been treated as an equal by either side due to both her arcanist identity and frequency to interact with humans. She was bullied for it and was even taken advantage of when she made the medicine in her character story. These experiences led her to accept her own identity and eventually stop overtly conforming to both societies.

Blonney meanwhile moved to a predominantly human society, where she greatly conformed to human ideals and trends to “fit in” with the humans. But she was still off-handedly discriminated against due to simply just being an arcanist. She tried really hard to suppress herself, to the point that she dimmed her own “light” and was unable to use her personalized arcane skill. But when she came back to Green Lake, her mask slowly fell apart, and then it reignited her passion, which allowed her to begin accepting herself again.

Honorable Mentions

Sonetto, Matilda, Sotheby, Ezra, Jessica - Autism (mainly credited from: @/H0LOdm on twt)

While these are mainly headcanon, some of these characters here do display neurodivergent traits in their own ways, most especially the latter 3 of these characters here. They all struggle to pick up social cues and tend to struggle in (conventionally) socializing/empathizing with others.

Sotheby and Jessica in particular both lace their language using their interests and the environment they grew up in. Ezra also uses his interests in fungi as a conversation starter with others, eager to see any mushrooms that might be potentially found anywhere.

Final Notes and Thanks

When I started writing these down I didn't really think much of it outside of the fact that there were so many characters who were particularly neurodivergent, which then further extended to the rest of the disabled characters as well. I tried my best to word these as respectfully as I can, and that I hope people could find fun in reading these as much as I did writing them.

I give my acknowledgements to these people for their help and support for the creation of list in entirety: Jager, Lupjo, Reg, Bee ( @e-0timely ) , Abyss ( @abyss-idiot ), and Tokki

Considering the nature of this list, I want to say that are non-conclusive and can be interpreted in any way you want. As I said in my previous version of this post, "...Every experience is different, and I think these characters here openly show that."

Feel free to add your own insights, corrections, and even your own headcanons here. Thanks for reading, and have the two links to the first two lists down here.

Physically Disabled Characters Psychologically Disabled Characters

[jynxedshapeshifter]

Masterlist of My Analytical Ace Attorney Essays (including shorter posts that probably don't qualify as essays)

Figured I'd make it easier on people who are interested in these things lol. Please note that I do not factor how the games are written in Japan into these, not because I don't care but because I don't know enough about them to be able to form an opinion. All of these are based on my interpretation of the English localizations and supplemental material only.

the promised Ryulock/Homumiko essay [1776 words] - The first Ace Attorney essay I posted. While I was playing The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve (specifically Twisted Karma and His Last Bow and The Resolve of Ryunosuke Naruhodo), I was struck by numerous parallels between Sholmes's dynamic with Ryunosuke and his dynamic with Yujin. This led to a desire to analyze the two dynamics and point out similarities between them, because I was genuinely sad that it wasn't talked about a lot.

Analysis of Klavier's hairstyle between his 17 year old design and his 24 year old design [422 words] - An analysis I did after noticing that Klavier's hair when he's 17 doesn't look cleanly cut. It's a little less objective than my other analysis posts and is also a bit more speculative, but it's still something I think is interesting.

Analysis of Kristoph's treatment of Apollo during Turnabout Trump [592 words] - An analysis I did while I was working through my second replay of Turnabout Trump, during which I noticed Kristoph treats Apollo eerily like an attack dog. I also briefly speculated on Kristoph's motive for mentoring Apollo in the first place.

Analyzing Klavier's Behavior Because I Am Nothing If Not Predictable [3952 words] - An analysis I did on Klavier's behavior across both Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies because I thought Klavier's behavior in Dual Destinies could be explained without saying he's mischaracterized during Turnabout Academy. This is the longest analysis I've written to date, and the one I spent the longest on (although that's because I kept getting distracted while I was working on it lol).

mini Eustace Winner analysis (anyone who follows me and has seen the essays I've posted probably saw this coming) [479 words] - An analysis I did after finishing the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection because I didn't really like how TVTropes and the Ace Attorney wiki talk about Eustace's intelligence (yes, I'm serious). Basically, I noticed as I was playing the last two episodes of Prosecutor's Gambit that Eustace isn't nearly as dumb as the game would lead you to believe, and what seemed like low intelligence was a result of Excelsius manipulating and gaslighting him into thinking he was an idiot to make him dependent on other people. I plan on doing a longer version of this analysis because Eustace deserves it.

Why Kristoph Gavin Is Like That: An Essay [3636 words] - An analysis I did to explain why Kristoph is Like That. "Why is he like that" and "I want to study him in a lab" seem to be common sentiments around Kristoph, so I thought it'd be fun to analyze him to answer the question of why he is how he is.

Analysis/ramble on Kristoph potentially gaslighting Apollo [391 words] - An analysis I did after noticing Kristoph and Apollo's dynamic has some red flags? Shall we say? Which I actually only really realized because I was researching workplace gaslighting.

Analysis/ramble on Apollo's behavior and attitude toward Athena in Dual Destinies [369 words] - An analysis I did after realizing Apollo's behavior in Dual Destinies could very well be a trauma response and it very well could have been intentional on the writers' part.

Trucy's Characterization Never Changed: An Essay [2219 words] - Basically a ramble with analysis included because I'm me about why I don't think flanderization is an accurate term to use with Trucy's characterization.

I'm tired and aroace, so here's a reading from that perspective on Klavier's character arc in Apollo Justice [1641 words] - An analysis on Klavier's characterization and the two Gavinners songs we have official lyrics for based on the idea that both are easily read as Klavier being aroacespec and polyamorous in a amatonormative society, because I'm aroacespec and headcanon Klavier as also being somewhere on the aroace spectrum.

Response to an ask about my headcanon that Kristoph killed his and Klavier's parents, which quickly turned into another "why is he like that" analysis [1270 words] - I was asked to clarify why I think Kristoph killed his and Klavier's parents, which led to whatever that turned into

Analysis of Klavier's fawn response in Turnabout Succession [498 words] - I noticed Klavier has a really intense fawn response to Kristoph while Kristoph's testifying during Turnabout Succession and decided to analyze it.

Analysis/ramble on the dynamic between Dhurke, Nahyuta, and Apollo [522 words] - I got a bit annoyed about how people treat Dhurke, Nahyuta, and Apollo's family dynamic so I pointed out that while it's not explicitly mentioned at any point, we're given so many hints in canon that the dynamic is that Apollo sees Dhurke as his dad and Nahyuta as his brother and that's the reciprocal dynamic (ie, Dhurke also sees Apollo as his son and Nahyuta also sees Apollo as his brother) that it's basically canon.

A Thorough Analysis of Nahyuta Sahdmadhi's Self-Sacrificial Behavior [1481 words] - Exactly what it says on the tin; an analysis of how Nahyuta's tendency to be self-sacrificial is what drives his character arc, including commentary on what people get wrong about Nahyuta as a character.

so apollo's dynamic with klavier is interesting [3038 words] - I noticed differences in how Apollo's dynamic with Klavier is portrayed in AJAA vs Dual Destinies and decided to explain how the differences are actually because of the POV character in AJAA vs Turnabout Academy (basically, it feels different because in AJAA we know what Apollo's thoughts on a given situation are, while in Turnabout Academy, we don't, which makes sense with Apollo's tendency to hide how he's feeling about Klavier).

I also have some more of these planned (because they're fun to write and think about, fight me) and a Ryunosuke one in my drafts. Please keep in mind that all of these are my personal interpretations of the characters based on how I interpreted them while I was playing, how I grew to interpret them after either replaying the games or thinking for a while, and explanations that make sense to me personally. You don't have to agree with them, and it's perfectly fine if your interpretations are different (just be nice about it if you do disagree with a conclusion I come to). I just like sharing my Thoughts on media I'm interested in via analysis lol.

[obsessionatthemoment]

I feel the need to make a small intro post, because although I prefer to be anonymous online, it would still be nice for people to be able to get to know me. (Also a post with links to the Byler fanfics I have written, and fanart I have made.)

I'm not comfortable sharing my real name, so you can just call me my username, or the abbreviated version oatm.

I'm diagnosed autistic, and also have a very severe history of mental illness. And, I am very open about my 4 years spent in the troubled teen industry (it's actually about to be my 1-year of being home anniversary as of making this, which is the longest I've been home for since 6th grade!).

I'm very imaginative. Some of my interests are writing, reading and drawing. I also love a good analysis.

The only fandom I'm currently active on is Byler, but I have a lot of other pieces of media I'm interested in, such as:

-The Perks of Being a Wallflower

-Young Royals (as long as I pretend season 3 doesn't exist)

-Red, White & Royal Blue (as long as I pretend the movie doesn't exist)

-Heartstopper (as long as I pretend the TV show doesn't exist, are you sensing a theme here?), and all of Alice Oseman's other books (especially I Was Born for This, and Radio Silence)

Byler fanfic recommendations:

Random recommendation post link

Some links to the Byler fanfics I have written:

Don't listen to assholes Are you okay? series (complete)

Max doesn’t cry very often, but this is enough to make her eyes fill with tears. She can’t respond, so she just shakes her head instead. Will buries his head in his hands, and she remains there, lost in thought. How is she even supposed to handle this information? Is he a su*cide risk, or was he simply saying that being told to k*ll himself made him briefly think about it? Should she tell Joyce?

“Don’t listen to assholes.” She eventually comes up with. It’s really just a brief summary of what actually needs to be said, but she can’t be articulate when she’s been hit with this situation.

Or: Max witnesses a bullying incident with Will, and suggests they skip the rest of the school day. They go to the junkyard and talk about Mike, college, and eventually the events of the day.

Sleep in my room? Are you okay? series (still in progress)

Over the past few weeks, the already murky line between friends and something more with Mike and Will has been further blurred. They’re stuck in a sort of limbo, and have been for some time. The thing is, Mike has been aware of his feelings. Will has been, too. They just don't do anything about it, and both have their own reasons to justify this static place in their relationship.

However, their relationship is progressing anyway, even without intention, or some label. Maybe it’s because sleeping in the same room is so intimate, or maybe it’s simply going to the place it needs to be. In any case, things are changing, and progressing, whether they like it, or not. They're closer now than ever.

Or: After Mike finds out about Will's sleeping issues, he invites Will to start sleeping in his room. This becomes routine, and over the course of their freshman year of college, their relationship progresses into something romantic.

Is this real? Are you okay? series (complete)

Properly panicking now, chills run through his body, and his breathing becoming shaky. He doesn’t understand what's happening. One second everything was fine. He was having a good time with his friends and his boyfriend in his home. The next second, everything turned wrong. Their voices went wrong. Everything got dark and cold. Now he’s living in a nightmare.

Or: Will is having a derealization episode, and Mike, Max and El help him through it.

Fine Are you okay? series (complete but being rewritten to better fit the narrative)

Will and Mike have been living with each other for a few months. Will is trying to be happy while struggling with some serious mental health issues. When lying to himself becomes a bit too much, Mike is there to help him through it.

My Byler fanart:

[raayllum]

Will you ever do a long meta on Runaan's character arc? If not, that's okay. I just think that there would be a lot of aspects to unravel.

I've written a few Runaan metas in the past:

Callum & Runaan parallels (probs my longest meta on him thus far)

Some Ezran & Runaan thoughts

Rayla (+ Runaan) going into S7

Mini meta: Runaan & 3 doorways/thresholds

Mini meta: Runaan's similarities to Claudia (post-s3)

but none have ever been particularly long, I think. Part of this is because I put a LOT of my thoughts on Runaan and how he operates into "if time is money" (a now wildly canon divergent post-s3 decoining fic, but in terms of characterization + headcanons verging on analysis, I think it holds up very well).

The other part is a few things, I think, said with a lot of love for his character:

1) Runaan is mostly characterized through his bond with Rayla (her characterization / her understanding of their culture) given that he just isn't in the majority of the show, and isn't usually the Focus even when he is (i.e. in 7x02, he's effectively a plot device with very few lines and makes zero choices other than agreeing to go with Rayla). A lot of Rayla's actions are also in opposition to what he (or her troupe) would want (see bulk of arc 1) or are because of her own mindset(s) she's taken from him / her other parents years ago (arc 2), so it's also not super effective at exclusively characterizing him (which I don't think is the intent, anyway). (That said, the question of where the distinction between Rayla's internalization of Runaan vs Lain&Tiadrin's teachings or mindsets, the difference between them if there is literally one or just one in what her or her parents' takeaways of each other's are, could be interesting.)

For an alternative example, Harrow is also not in much of the show but we routinely get flashbacks or dream visions with him. He, as an individual, heavily influences Ezran and Viren as characters as well, and we consistently see how in specific ways (often directly quoting him, referencing him; making decisions based in specific opposition or alignment, etc).

2) On the one hand, Runaan is both very connected to the themes of the story — he starts off perpetuating the cycle, does a 180, develops worldbuilding, helps kick off the monster motif and mirror foreshadowing — and very limited in his thematic scope at the same time. His primary concept is being "already dead," but there are characters in the story who embody it better by having been literally dead (Viren) and/or killed (Aaravos) for example. Most of his thematic groundwork is there to serve Rayla and when he does re-enter the narrative, he's mostly there to challenge Ezran. This makes sense, he is a side character and they are main characters, but it does mean most of his character — at least to me, as evidenced in my metas linked above — is deciphered relationally rather than individually. And one of my joys of true foil examination is being able to carve characters out as individuals and then see how they exist together in the narrative; Runaan largely just has the latter. A lot of his character / thoughts is speculation (what are his views on dark magic, for instance?) and while I deeply enjoy speculation for lore, it's not as much my cup of tea for characterization.

3) Runaan's character arc doesn't have a ton of stages. I think this is one of the reasons why — despite writing a fair bit of Ruthari — neither him nor them haven't held my long lasting attention in terms of meta. Like: we can do speculation on Runaan's childhood (which I have in detail; linked fic above) wherein he perpetuates the cycle. He is then regretful in the coin and out of the coin; after being saved he is readily forgiven and loved by his family members who harbour zero anger or pushback towards him; he regrets killing King Harrow and decides (presumably) to no longer being an assassin. Ethari loves and supports him and doesn't try to sway him even in all of these decisions (outside of telling him that Rayla probably wasn't ready, which he folded on anyway) and I'm a bitch who THRIVES on fictional interpersonal conflict up the wazoo.

Getting him from Point A to the last stage has always been the most interesting part of Runaan to me, hence writing like 100k about it, but it's not heavily explored in canon, nor are there that many ways to get in (in fic, Ezran was his breaking point; in show, Ezran is his breaking point, albeit in different ways/fonts).

It's kind of like... what is Runaan's character arc now? They could dream up one for him that would be super interesting and I'd very happily eat my words, but I can't really deduce one right now beyond "post-7x09 Runaan will have changed to not want to sacrifice anymore, and will influence Rayla to do the same" in arc 3. Other than that he is presumably going to be... vibing? And that's just less interesting to me than characters who are being heavily challenged or pushed to change / reveal new sides to their characters, or who have narrative tension stapled on top where yeah things are fine now but you know they're inevitably going to Snap (arc 2 Terry and Ezran).

I also think, much like Soren, a lot of what we see is what we get. Runaan has like, one (1) cognitive dissonance (being an assassin) and it's directly addressed blatantly in canon. He's grumpy and a bit stern but not necessarily overtly judgemental, and despite being secretive we always know 100% of what his secrets and feelings are. It's a bit open-and-shut (again like Soren, who despite adoring I also don't write a ton of meta for) and that's less interesting to me from a pyschological standpoint. He's almost too easy to understand so I don't feel the need often times to dig deeper.

ALL OF THIS SAID, there are a lot of interesting things about Runaan, and probably lots of things smarter / more invested (in him) people have noticed that I have not. Additionally, here are some other interesting things I noticed:

Runaan's "you cannot carry his pain for him" being something that both enabled Runaan's ability to be an assassin/shirk the pain he inflicted, and something he had to then accept more internalized responsibility for in 7x09 ("I see now that you carry that pain inside you")

"And yet you've managed to lead with grace and kindness" about Ezran for a king / side of the boy he's never truly personally seen but undoubtedly knows about and believes in (who told him — Rayla? Callum? Delicious)

All of his Viren parallels, down to the "hand / arm wrap thin white strip of cloth" etc etc (1x01, 2x08) and monster parallels.

Runaan eventually visiting Katolis and the Valley of the Graves

Runaan's potentially changing position in the village following no longer being an assassin

If people ever wanted to suggest aspects or drop request for specific Runaan related things in my askbox, I'd definitely be down to look into it and it may get the gears going. But as is, he just doesn't grate my cheese, most of the time.

[vasito-de-leche]

;R1999 DIKKE - General Headcanons

Compilation of headcanons and analysis on Dikke as a character and other related things.

as promised, here's the Dikke post where I go deranged talking about her, since it was one of the two with the most votes in the poll <3

the other popular result was to talk about the parallels and use of racial issues within the story, how the game replaces actual racism for fantasy racism (arcanists vs humans) - so that one will deffo take me some time!

On the subject of justice and Dikke's inspirations.

I've seen some people say that Dikke is based on Joan of Arc, given her righteousness and religious themes - but there are so many more details about her design that point toward other figures!

Like, really. A lot of references to law and deities of justice all throughout history and different cultures.

The most obvious one is Dike, "goddess of justice and the spirit of moral order and fair judgement". In Dikke's interview with Pandora Wilson, they literally address her as "the goddess of justice". And a small statue of Lady Justice, the personification of justice that originates from Justitia (roman equivalent of Dike) can be seen in her insight 2 garment.

It goes without saying that Dikke's sword is another symbol representative of the previously mentioned figures - but to have only the sword and not the scales could have some implications about her way of imparting justice.

I would like to point out that Dikke's sword has these two dangling pieces that allude to the scales she's missing in her design. And sure, it might be a reach, but given how much detail and thought goes into the characters of the game and their designs, I really believe this is the case!

On Dikke's items, we also get the name and description for the sword.

The name alone leads me to believe that Dikke's weapon and its design represents both the sword and the scales of Lady Justice, it's the totality of justice itself. Dikke WIELDS justice, she ENFORCES justice, she IS justice. You're going to get really tired of me repeating the word justice in this post, but bear with me!

On the subject of swords, there are two swords mentioned all throughout Dikke's in-game profile and information. Her insight 2 garment is titled "Sword of Hamurabi".

This is evocative of something called the "Code of Hammurabi", one of the longest legal texts dating back to the first dynasty of Babylon. According to wikipedia, this stele it also depicts yet another deity of justice, Shamash. Wikipedia also makes note of the prologue within the Code of Hammurabi, in which the author - Hammurabi - claims to have been given these rules "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak". This is extremely relevant to Dikke, as someone who fought hard for the rights of arcanists.

Pandora Wilson: I have heard many legends about you. The violent ghost of punishment, the crime-slaying sword of execution, the goddess of justice, the people's savior... Dikke: The desperate always need hope.

The stele of the Code of Hammurabi is ALSO relevant, because the artifact that follows Dikke around explicitly "belongs to some ancient stele". Yet another object that embodies justice and law.

I won't pretend I know anything about Babylonian culture or history in general, so anyone with more insight on this is welcome to add on to details and corrections!

The second sword mentioned can be found in the title for her 02 Story - "The Sword of Damocles".

This excerpt seems to be written by one of Dikke's coworkers, perhaps someone in a higher position of power since they mention being able to give others a day off. Overall, we're reading the thoughts of someone who is abusing their power and who does not think highly of Dikke.

"The story of Damocles is but a story" is something that Dikke herself says. At the end, there's a different phrase written and crossed out - "But the story of justice is not just a story".

Now, the anecdote of Damocles talks about how positions of authority and power are double-edged swords - a king may have all the riches and fortune in the world, but also be burdened with the anxiety of knowing there might be someone plotting against him. In the story, Damocles switches places with king Dionysus, to know what it's like to be a king, but to really make Damocles understand the position of king, a sword is placed above him - one that can fall and kill him at any moment.

With this in mind, Dikke's 02 Story becomes more clear - the first phrase is a warning given by Dikke herself to those in positions of power. The story of Damocles is a story, because not everyone will understand the consequences of being in a position of power. Not everyone will be given the opportunity to even reach such a position.

The author of the 02 Story is not a good person, only considering the idea of giving people HALF a day off, excluding those who work on the fields who will get nothing, refusing to lower taxes for the poor, and imprisoning someone who "interfered with the lord's land acquisition".

The sword of Damocles is also used to allude to the impending tragedy for those in positions of power, caused by the smallest of catalysts. So it makes sense to me that the final phrase, the one crossed out at the end, was either written by Dikke or alludes to the demise of this author at her hand.

And while we're at it, might as well talk about the last remaining item - her robes. Judges are required to wear these when working on trials, but Dikke is specifically stated to wear them outside of them - because she's always imparting justice. She's the opposite of Oliver Fog, she's always on the clock.

We haven't even gotten to another big aspect of Dikke's character - the fact that she's part of the Inquisition.

Without getting too much into actual historical events, the Inquisition as we know it focused on heresy and the conversion and persecution of Jews and Muslims. Within the game, this is recontextualized as a focus for arcanists instead. It's worth noting that her 01 and 02 Stories are written from the perspective of those who are in support of the Inquisition and its practices, or who profit from abusing their own power - hence the wording of "the Inquisition has been abused and considered evil by the ignorant."

There is an emphasis on how the Inquisition seeks power, while Dikke's final goal is justice.

This whole thing and yet another part from her interview with Pandora Wilson, is related to how Dikke associates herself with the corrupt and allows people to view her as a needlessly violent person for the sake of setting things right. On one hand, she could associate with the Inquisition and become a bishop to destroy corruption from inside out - on the other, she could acknowledge that to impart justice, one needs power because they're things that go hand in hand. The Inquisition is only able to have this much influence over trials for arcanists because of the common hatred towards arcanists throughout history.

The interview revolves around all the rumours surrounding Dikke, and we can see her showing distaste at the idea of cooperating with "what [she] shouldn't allow for the sake of justice" while at the same time, not denying her involvement with them. All the things she does are a means to an end.

Pandora Wilson: Does that mean you will cooperate with what you shouldn't allow for the sake of "justice"? Dikke: Fie. Pandora Wilson: Is that supposed to be a secret? Dikke: It sounds like we are talking about a conspiracy, yet it is but a means.

As for Dikke's own relationship with justice and her personal views outside of all the historical references used to create her character, I think this voiceline she has pretty much sums things up nicely.

Everything I doth… is so I may enjoy this calm wind on nights like this, rather than hear the sorrowful cries and moans of unhappiness.

She's a character that is strict in her ways and doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of life, such as the injustice arcanists have been subjected to for centuries. This extreme focus she has for upholding justice does cause Dikke to appear cold, and yet her ideals are almost childish, pure even - a world in which all misdeeds are punished and all good people are heard. Hell, her Ultimate literally purifies all negative statuses.

Dikke could easily lean towards righteous characters who exclusively see things as black or white, yet many of her voicelines and the origin of her devotion, show a very gentle heart. This is made clear by the fact that she's a healer.

Her two attacks and their names speak volumes about her own ways of thinking. Power is violent, power is not something that a judge should have so carelessly, but it is allowed in the name of "justice". Justice in quotations.

And then, actual justice is a rare occurrence, being merciful is not something that rules and the law take into account, but it's needed for those who cannot defend themselves.

On the subject of Dikke's backstory.

There's no resolution to this point, it just came up randomly while writing the previous one, because it just hit me that Dikke's Cover profile does not list where she was born. And that got me thinking about the fact that before settling down, she traveled all around Europe.

First of all, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pamiers is an extremely specific location - one that has ties to the Inquisition, as a very important document regarding the Inquisition's procedures during a very specific trial was found there, as far as I know with my surface level research into history references. This document also talked about how, within this trial, the inquisitor and the bishop had "almost equal responsibility".

We can assume that this is the place where Dikke became bishop officially, if this was her final destination.

This starts to fall within headcanon territory, since it's mostly speculation, but I feel that the 02 Story takes place before she becomes bishop and settles in Pamiers - as a member of the inquisiton, she must've traveled all over Europe to do her job.

There might also be something related to the name mentioned, "Murville", but I don't have time nor the brain to start connecting the dots with actual french history. All in all, I like to think that Dikke was given the position of bishop as an attempt to distance her from, you know, killing every single corrupt person in a position of power by keeping her in a single place.

None of her voicelines give away anything about her life prior her entire journey of justice, as far as I can tell.

If we take Dikke's ties with Joan of Arc, maybe she was a common girl roped into things beyond her control. But I personally don't like the interpretation of Dikke's ideals being born from divine intervention instead of her own experiences, seeing the crimes committed against arcanists and realizing that she would like to do something about it.

Another option I'd like to explore about her background - maybe Dikke did have a relatively safe and normal childhood, away from the stigma and persecution. A nice, gentle life that she willingly gave up after she was confronted with the reality of the state of the world, without Jean of Arc's holy realization. To me, there needs to be an emphasis on Dikke's choice and decision to fight corruption. Making this dedication a result of "God told me to do this" would render her a little shallow - not to say religion cannot be part of her character, but in my opinion, Dikke is best when the focus of her moral compass is a genuinely care for the weak and the defenseless.

On the subject of Dikke and the loss of humanity.

Yes, that's THREE characters in a row that I analyze and that have themes of loss of humanity. There's just so many characters who've lost or given up their own humanity for the sake of something greater or something wicked.

Pavia's was a result of how he was mistreated and as a way to reclaim power, Forget Me Not's was a self-imposed torture originating from his inability to take responsibility. Dikke's seems to be self-imposed as well, but unlike the previous two, her loss of humanity is more of a sacrifice she makes for the greater good.

In her voicelines, we see that she leads a very strict schedule - she's straightforward and curt (but never impolite!) with Vertin, alluding to how simple justice is (if one commits a crime or abuses power, they shall be dealt with regardless of their social status) and how her body is "a representation of justice". Dikke has become a symbol for an idea, the concept of a fair system - she is no longer an individual but a savior, an executioner, a violent ghost, a witch, a threat, etc etc.

The loss of humanity is obvious in the way we do not get to know Dikke outside of any themes regarding justice. It's extremely hard to gleam any information about her childhood, her family, her interests and so on because they've all been displaced by this identity as justice itself. To me, this speaks about how power and responsibility on this scale will inevitably separate you from the people, THIS is the Sword of Damocles, now applied to Dikke as much as it applies to those in line for her judgement.

And yet, there are still very small hints of humanity left within her (still related, in a way, to her goals) in her care for the weak. Dikke's quote on her hobbies in a way reminds me of Sonetto.

The idle chatter of the people is entertaining, but 'tis more entertaining that they are always the first to know about the corrupt behavior of nobles.

Sonetto is a character that is similar to Dikke, in the sense that they both became the embodiment of concepts that ultimately stripped them off their individuality. Sonetto by fulfilling her training at the Foundation and becoming the PERFECT example of a military dog, a child martyr who struggles to connect with others because she was only taught how to exist FOR the Foundation. And Dikke, by all the things mentioned before.

But both of them have very endearing hobbies. Sonetto reads newspapers and collects them to find TYPOS IN THEM. Dikke's hobby is to listen to people talk as they go on about their day, not gossiping but to just listen to people exist.

In the main story, Sonetto's upbringing causes her to have a barrier with the people she truly wants to connect to (Vertin, namely) and Dikke's goal causes her life to revolve around a single thing, now only able to engage in mundane things from an outsider's perspective. She listens to people, she doesn't talk to them. She protects people, she doesn't live among them.

I like to think that, even so, this is when Dikke is most at peace. That she enjoys people watching, knowing they're safe and sound - because it validates all her efforts, it means that what she's doing is, in the end, worth it. This might also be why Dikke tells Vertin that they might be on the same path - Vertin, slowly figuring out the truth behind the Foundation and Manus Vindictae and acting as a saviour for those stuck in the middle.

As for headcanons, here's a couple I have!

Dikke has such a dry and deadpan sense of humour that only Vertin can understand it.

Sometimes, very rarely, Dikke will chime in with the most outlandish reply - straight out of the blue, spoken in the most serious and monotone voice. Those who aren't close to her will most likely brush it off as yet another intimidating thing they can't understand about her, but those close to her like Vertin?

It's THE funniest shit in the world and Dikke, who is very aware of the image and respect she commands, knows it.

Dikke and the artifact that follows her are friends.

Quite literally, that thing is the hand of justice. I like to think that Dikke can communicate with it non-verbally, even though it's implied that the artifact is not created by her arcanum.

Part of me likes to think that Dikke insists on said artifact being just her partner in her long journey of bringing justice to the world, but due to all the years spent together and all, the artifact itself (and whatever entity that shows up in her Ultimate) have come to see Dikke as their protégé.

[everliving-everblaze]

I've seen new people floating around for a while, but I haven't actually written an introduction post, so here! ^-^

I go by Catherine (and sometimes variations "Cath" and "Heron"), my pronouns are she/her, and I'm an adult. I've been reading KotLC for around a decade now and been in the fandom for over seven years! I'm also Catholic, and my passion is language.

I've kind of been all over the fandom! I'm the longest-active user on the wiki, which I ran from 2018-2020, and I've been part of the fandom on Goodreads, Pinterest, and Discord as well. Basically, I never shut up about KotLC, so. >u<

Mainly, I think I'm known for loving Sophitz, making (often cursed) edits, and my various work editing the wiki, writing analysis, and writing fanfiction. Sometimes I'm also funny, but I am first and foremost a major nerd.

I'm not great at responding quickly, but I love to chat, so feel free to hit up my askbox!

Nice to meet you all!

[stellafrin]

You're super sweet and your blog is great! 🫶

Have a good rest of your day!

Hello there JJ, one of my hornier mutuals

Thank you, I hope you're havin' a good day too

With the timing I'm guessing this in reply to the #'s I added to the top 10 post so I thought I'd add a little more, jumping off both my tags and tangentially related to a thing mentioned in the post itself.

This might be a disjointed mess if I don't figure out how to make it flow tomorrow

Since following you I've definition learned to be more open and patient with people and more open to some things in media.

In the past when I've seen someone proclaiming how they like "problematic media" in their header or bio they've almost always turned out to be the worst kind of fan. Going out of their way to harasse people because they're uncomfortable with certain topics in media, throwing around slurs, and just being all around assholes.

But you havn't, not only have you just been a decent person from what I've seen, you've also written/shared some really good thematic and literary analysis on these anime/manga I would probably have just avoided at all costs (and in some cases had already been avoiding.)

I've always had this insatiable need to know, to understand.

When I'm confused by something, I want to know more about it so I can atleast understand on a basic level and be able to make a (semi)informed decision on it.

But despite saying this, for the longest time there were still many things I'd basically completely written off, decided I'd never dig into. Which is honestly a bit hypocritical?

I mean, there's this YouTuber I used to watch consistently called NyxFears (I havn't watched her videos in like 3 years, hell I havn't really watched anything on YouTube consistently in over a year, streams and driving have just taken up so much time)

At the time I'd been keeping up she'd cover weird, grotesque, and violent films and remembering back to that all I can think is.

How is the horny worse?

They're both fictional, I know this. Media can give you different view points to see the world from and thus alter the way you see it, it's important to stay aware of this and know that it's fiction, and I am.

Why's the horny worse than the violent?

(Hell some of the films she covered were horry as hell in the weirdest fucking ways too but *waves hand* ignore that)

This is just a dumb realization I've been having every once in a while since I started following.

But yeah, seeing the thoughtful analysis (amidst the torrent of boobs and horny posts) on these anime/manga I'd usually avoid has been interesting.

I'll accepting that the character in this show is infact incredibly fucking trans but the age of these characters with how horny it gets + the incest squigs me the fuck out so I'm still not gonna watch/read it.

Finally, thank you so much for being so on point with tagging basically every anime/manga you reblog consistently. It makes it so easy to mute or look up something whenever I want to see less or more of it.

I've muted a handful of tags for media that makes me uncomfortable, but I've also found some that I actually enjoy, thanks.

...

Uh...

✨️✨️✨️how do you end a post✨️✨️✨️

[sliebman10]

Fanfic Interview

I didn't get tagged, but I'll pretend I did lol. Open tag for anyone else who is feeling reflective or procrastinating...or both.

How many works do you have on AO3?

128 👀 (This includes everything from drabbles to short/long fics. My longest fic is 30k at the moment.)

What's your total AO3 word count?

531,326

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

Family Vacation

Architect's Anonymous (Collab with the lovely @soloorganaas)

A Work of Fiction (Collab with the lovely @gaerfinn)

Sanctuary

Scripted and Revised

Do you respond to comments?

Yes. I like the interaction, and I want commenters to know I appreciate everything from emojis and key smashes to in depth analysis.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I...don't really do angsty endings. I mostly try to go for ending on a hopeful note.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Hmm, probably the Lupin-Black Wedding, my aggressively fluffy happy ending fic.

Do you write crossovers?

I haven't yet, but never say never.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I've received rude comments, yes.

Do you write smut?

Yes! I feel like it's a natural expression of my characters' love for each other.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I've a couple requests, but I don't think it was ever followed through.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have as part of @mixed-up-writer-fest, and as a an experimental group writing idea, but I haven't outside of that. I wouldn't rule it out.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Wolfstar. Obviously 😄

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Umm... Well. Nothing posted. I have a few abandoned drafts that will never see the light of day.

What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. I enjoy writing it, and people frequently comment on it.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Sustaining a structured plot. It's hard to let the plot play out and not have it feel rushed or incomplete. I'd also say incorporating b-plots too, but I'm working on both of these things.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Eh. I don't want to offend anyone who speaks said language, so I'll stick to wiring in English.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

At some point, I'd like to try Snowbaz from Carry On. And I know I'll also write a Bodoc (Bodhi/Ridoc) centric fic from The Empyrean when the mood strikes.

What's your favorite fic you've written?

Well. I love my fics for different reasons. But I have a special soft spot for my first real AU, Sanctuary, and for my aforementioned wedding fic, The Lupin-Black Wedding.

[halemerry]

for the game please:

common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

that one thing you see in fanart all the time

it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

So I've written a couple iterations of this answer across the past few months of trying to catch up with my inbox and realized in general that most of it just comes down to like people consuming media in a way I find exhausting. Like that's a bigger thing that this question is trying to get at but honestly it's the thing I see the most these days where someone takes meta too seriously or starts arguing over something on someone else's post or things like that. And like. Listen. There's nothing wrong with being attached to a piece of media and emotionally invested in it. Like I get it. This media has been a hyperfixation in my brain for decades at this point and I care about them a great deal, but there's a difference between that investment and letting strangers ruin your day because your versions of a character are different or you favor different theories on something. Or. I dunno. I genuinely like seeing takes that are different from my own? Even if I don't agree with certain things it's fascinating to see the different experiences people have with the media we all engage with. And it's so important to keep in mind with literary analysis personal life experiences impact what we read as being on screen just as much as what's actually literally on the screen does. This is why we see different things in the same piece of media and I think that can be one of the best things about media in general. But a lot of meta comes across as this is the One Truth - and this is partially because you are presenting an argument and the language that goes with that lends itself to that angle - and I think that's a really unhealthy way to go about this. Like there's a reason I write meta that can contradict each other right? It's literary analysis not an argument I'm preparing for a debate. In my experience if you're so locked into proving yourself right it's really easy for meta to devolve into something that's doing more harm to you than good - especially when it's impacting your enjoyment of the media and the fandom in the first place.

That being said, on a more lighter note that's probably more in the spirit of this question, my longest running version of this is the whole Crowley loving Queen thing. Don’t get me wrong I think it’s a fun character trait to assign to him, but it does kind of make me laugh because I grew up with the interpretation that the Bentley doing this was a constant minor annoyance in Crowley’s life. One of the most relatable scenes in the book to me was Crowley using music to try to get his mind off the Antichrist situation only for the Bentley to play Bohemian Rhapsody, prompting him to shriek and scramble to turn the music off. And I just adore the idea of the Bentley being a little bit of a menace and Crowley being like a grumbly pet owner in a constant state of fond annoyance.

that one thing you see in fanart all the time

Mmm, generally, this fandom is pretty fantastic when it comes to its art but, the one thing that’ll make me not reblog a piece of art is making Aziraphale too skinny.

it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

Religious text as inspiration for fanfiction? I understand why people don't want to engage with it, don't get me wrong, but there's certain stories I’m shocked I've never seen repurposed for fanfic. Exhibit A of this is the story about Nehushtan, the brazen/bronze/fiery serpent who heals and protects the wandering Israelites from seraphs sent to punish them for questioning God, in particular, is one I'm always shocked that I've never even seen referenced even as a throwaway line.

your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Honestly this fandom doesn't miss much and the thing I started answering this with kind of devolved into 80% just it's own meta post so we're gonna not go down that rabbit hole twice but the sort answer is I feel like we don't talk nearly enough about the fact that the way magic works is at least slightly tied to belief, expectation, and assumptions of the entities wielding it. I'm obsessed with it.

[leonidskies]

2023 Writing Reflection

This is a chunky one, so forgive me! I write fic. Sometimes (most of the time) I write lots of fic. It's basically a personality trait at this point, so I may as well ~talk about the thing~

I've posted alllll my fics for the year now. Last year I tracked how much I wrote vs posted, but this year I stopped tracking how much I was writing when I realised I wasn't going to hit my goal, but as always I wrote a TON (and posted only a fraction).

My posted fic stats for the year are:

208k words posted

80 fics posted (88 chapters total (avg wc: 2.3k))

55+ different character perspectives

33 different romantic ships

49 different platonic ships

29 different fandoms

Longest fic: 13k words

Shortest fic: 214 words

I posted fewer words this year compared to last, but the same number of fics - the numbers of perspectives and platonic vs romantic ships were pretty close, and I wrote for a couple more fandoms than last year. The stuff I wrote was more spread out, too (more on that soon).

I didn't manage to finish anything super long this year, which is a shame and I hope I can change that next year. I like writing longfic, but w a full time job this year I haven't had the attention span. I have several projects I'm really deep into that are unfinished!

These are my cumulative vs 2023 ao3 stats - not gonna dwell on them a ton, but I'm coming up on the 1.7mil mark for fic published on ao3 which is exciting!! I also find it helpful (to me) to reflect on stats every so often bc engagement stats are "fake". By fake, I mean I wrote good stuff I'm proud of, but largely in fandoms that don't read the kind of fic I was writing. People who've known me maybe 3/4 years will know that I've worked REALLY HARD to detach worth from engagement, and I think I can say I've succeeded now!!

The following images are from my ao3 'top 10' for all the fics I wrote this year. First up is Relationship tag, which is pretty funny because I only wrote four relationships more than once....and two of them were a flavour of Shalvis. Shoutout to Handers for being up there two years running btw.

My T>G>M rating distribution is almost exactly the same as last year, which is a thing?? I continue to be predictable. My relationship type distribution is weighted more gen, less m/m this year, but the rest are basically the same as before.

I wrote less FE this year compared to last year by a significant margin, and a bit more Dragon Age, but Xenoblade remained a mainstay (I wrote more Xenoblade this year than last, actually). Also interesting is I wrote more evenly distributed amongst FE games!

Anders is once again blorbo of the year as my most frequently written character, but written a lot less than last year - I wrote a wider variety of characters this year in general, actually! Shoutout to not one but TWO of my Dragon Age OCs (four of the five instances of Male Lavellan and all of the instances of 'Surana', which is an incorrectly wrangled tag for Nonbinary Surana) being in my top 10 this year.

Below is my top 10 additional tags for the year - they're all pretty close together still, with no standouts I'm always writing. Interestingly, fluff is not my favourite thing to write but it still just kinda happens! More on trans characters later (I did a comprehensive analysis for myself ahaha).

My 2023 in trans characters: I wrote 20 fics with trans characters, 21 with nonbinary characters, and 34 fics with trans/nonbinary characters total, which is a nice 42% of all fics I wrote this year. I wrote 52 trans/nonbinary depictions total, which is transing one gender per week (!!). Of those 52, there were 40 different characters I depicted as trans. 44 depictions were headcanons, 8 were canonically trans characters! This came to 23 trans men, 23 nonbinary people, and 6 trans women.

There were only six characters I wrote as trans more than once:

A(lvis) - 5 times. This was a chara who got revealed as canon nonbinary this year!

Adrel (my nonbinary Dragon Age OC) - 4 times

Alear - 3 times

Kagetsu, Shulk, and Byleth - 2 times each

Overall I had a really good writing year :) not in fic, I wrote a whole (!!?!??!) fantasy short story collection. I'm going to redraft + maybe more next year!! I'm really excited about it. I do have some goals for next year though - to finish some of my dang wips that have been sitting around forever, for one, and to write more for myself. I wrote a LOT of request fills and exchange pieces this year. Next year I want to write more thoughtfully + for me.

Ty to all of you who were here for the writing vibes in 2023. Here's to even more next year!

[callipraxia]

The closest I've ever come to just throwing something out there without editing it is probably with "The Great Cosmic Cartoon Chess Game," which I think was my first Gravity Falls essay and which I wrote in one or two sittings and then posted at like one in the morning one night...pretty sure it's the second-most engaged with post I've ever written, unless it actually surpassed both the Ford Essay and the first Hirsch interview analysis essay I wrote a couple of months ago - it would take a lot of tedious clicking to figure out exactly which one is the One Essay To Rule Them All and I only have four minutes left on my work break, so I probably will determine that for sure later, but it did very, very well and I was very, very surprised. However, even as someone who is normally kind of nitpicky about anything that's posted and isn't a personal complaint, I can attest that you really do have no idea how the audience is gonna take things. Exhibit A: those two times I wrote about Bill Cipher torturing someone.

I spent weeks working on the chapter of Interproximal Gradations where that happened, but it wasn't because I thought it was too far out of pocket in terms of what was portrayed. It was just because I was trying some structural stuff with the chapter overall that I had never tried before and I wanted/needed the writing to be extra-good to support it. As far as Bill being a nightmare went, I thought I was pretty well within the lines canon had established for the portrayal of such things, and indeed that I was a bit more restrained than canon. The audience...was of a different opinion. Apparently, it's the most horrifying thing I ever wrote, despite my multiple attempts to write about physics coming unraveled and a character literally melting and...wow, I write a lot of messed-up stuff, don't I? I now kinda want to protest that I'm not one of "those" writers, but I'm not entirely sure what writers I mean by that, so let's move on to the other time I wrote something on that general theme.

The other time took place in "The Player of Games," and it is the one and only time that I have ever made myself deeply, deeply uncomfortable with something I've written. Like...this one scene is no small part of the reason why I assumed at one point that I would never finish "Player" and why I hesitated to post it even once I realized that I was, for whatever reason, going to finish the thing. That scene was...bad. I put a trigger warning on it, despite being Old and therefore often not doing that as much as I probably should (for the longest time I just forgot, having been writing with and for the same five people and nobody else for twenty years at that point and it having not been as much of a thing when I was younger, but even now, I often wrestle with myself over whether what I wrote is really upsetting enough to spoil the contents of the chapter over, especially when the upsetting material is or is a direct result of a plot twist). And I meant for the scene to be horrifying, so horrified reactions were expected, but y'all know the Internet - I was afraid it would instead be interpreted as me being into something I actually find deeply disturbing, since I couldn't exactly underline "and that was bad and sick and wrong" explicitly in the text without lowering the overall quality of the text (like I said, I'm one of those pretentious people who takes my fanfics semi-seriously and tries to produce the best writing I can, within some vague semblance of reason). And then...pretty sure that only one person ever commented on the scene I'd been so squicked out by writing, and that person seemed to understand perfectly what I'd meant by it, so good thing I didn't abandon the project over it, I guess?

TL;DR, audiences are indeed often at least a little bit unpredictable no matter what approach you take, basically.

If posting fic online has taught me anything, it’s that I have no idea how the reader will react to anything. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Not the faintest clue.

Fics that I think I scribbled off just to get them out there get the kindest, most rapturous feedback. Fics I slaved over, agonized over, bled my soul into get a couple tepid replies. Fics I thought were me revealing the darkness and weird kink that lives in my brain, scared to even post it for fear of judgement, get, “Aaaw that’s so sweet!” replies. Baffling.

My conclusion? You just never know. You really just can’t know. When I did a workshop with 20 other writers I would try to guess what their critique of my story would be and I was right maybe 1 in 20 times. Only one other writer would have the same critique for my story that I had. And it wasn’t even always the same person.

The encouraging part about this is, if self recrimination, the fear that you know what people won’t like about your story, is holding you back, just say fuck it! You’re almost certainly wrong! All you can do is make it the best story you can for the energy you have. And yeah, sometimes that means scribbling it out in an evening and kicking it out to the void of the internet before you can change your mind or worry about editing it more than once because then you’ll never post it.

It’s all chaos, man. You don’t get to decide what the audience thinks. All you can do is create it and put it out there for them to decide.

[cleaning-has-its-benefits]

back in march of last year, I decided to start writing a nice analysis. It was going to be divided in three parts, and these parts would have contained multiple posts, so I also was planning to write a nice index.

Im not goov at guessing how long a writting of mine will be, but little did I know what I was signing for!

nearly 30k words in, and Im still not done with the first part... this is already on the way to be the longest thing I've written! my record is 32k)

will I reach the 50k? you'll find out eventually! but I had to let my pain be known...

So if everything goes well, I'll publish that here on tumblr, or so was the plan! but yet again there's rumors of tumblr kicking the bucket yet again. Im not too worried about those, because how many times has that been said? but who knows, thirds time's the charm or so they say (or would it be like fifth times the charm in this case?) I was planning on leaving anyways by the end of this year, soo when I say Im not worried, it isnt so much because Im convinced it wont happen, but its because I dont care that much, I have been loosing my attachement over my decision to leave, you see. and after all, this is the only blog Im keeping updated... Im pretty much sticking around to celebrate one last anniversary, and talking with fellows fans whenever for one last year, if anything of this experience of having one social media, that has been nice and I think I'll miss it. but all those reflections will be for my goodbye post in many months, lol.

But then the problem is, what if tumblr ceases to be before I finish my nice analysis?

I thought about this, and I remembered a bold thought I had once. now that Im learning to make websites, what if I make a fan website for omori to put all my texts?

but that's just a thought, because Im not completely convinced if I woulv commit to mantain it... eventually, I decidev that if in two years or so I still like the idea, then I might do it. maybe I'll even make an email for it and have a section where I answer messages, like in the old days! but I wonder how much trolling anv spam it'll get. I brieftly considered having a guestbook but I quickly changed my mind for that reason.... though besides my texts, dunno what else I could add. retrospectives of my own fics would be neat, and fic recomendations too, but its not like I read a lot of those. Having guestwriters from time to time would be cool too, but that's wistfullthinking. I could host my stupid edits too.

in any case, then I remembered I have a ao3 and I could just publish the analysis there. I have seen people upload non-fiction works like that on ao3, so that problem is solved.

....

I think that was all I wanted to talk about today.

Or at least I cant think of anything else to say, so its the same thing.

oh yeah, if you wanna take something from this, then if tumblr goes down, you can find me at my imaginary fansite!

[vvienne]

2024 retrospective:

posted 3 fics for a total of about 13k this year; all were bnha on roughly the same subject... did not have as much time for fandom frolic and fun, added to the fact that i've been reading much more ofic than fic lately...

the long way around is the longest fic i've finished and posted and yet i can't shake the idea that it's also among the worst i've written... there truly isn't a plot in sight. i enjoyed writing it, but i'd like to do something very different the next thing i try to finish. tlwa is a character study / post-manga retrospective - what i wanted was to do analysis on the manga and on my favorite bnha character, not to write a compelling story or particularly stretch myself

there was something very particular i wanted to get across. after losing my mind to the end of bnha i found myself intensely frustrated by the slew of fics i found w tdrk choosing to quit heroism. this makes sense to me as a valid reading of the character but i personally fucking hate it, i think there is something so disappointing about it. this might be my generally immature outlook; i also hated the fact that deku ended up losing his quirk and his chance at heroism though i've since come around on the decision as thematically sound and moving

i also wanted to rehash what ended up being the major highlight of bnha summer; the big dabi shouto blow out. i LOVE that endeavor ended up so sidelined in shouto's development, i think that his urge to save his brother is probably the biggest form of character growth / self love you could've given the character. and i am ofc always a sucker for complex and contentious sibling rships

the fic is very much a response to these chapters; quotes from their fight intersperse the fic in a way that i spent a good amount of time arranging... i wrote specific scenes just to align with certain quotes. ready yet, shouto? seemed like such a stylish beginning to me... a rehash of all tdrk shouto's latest hits. i'm a clumsy writer but i'm sort of pleased w that

in terms of specific writing choices i made i now question the decision to avoid plot entirely; twla revolves solely around shouto and his interactions w other characters: aizawa, natsuo, uraraka, hawks, deku, and ofc touya himself. i think this plotless structure made the fic relatively easy to write - the bulk of the drama is entirely internal. the bnha plot is over. my fic concerns itself w the emotional aftermath. but i also this this decision of mine is sort of lazy; i imagine a smarter writer could've gotten the themes i wanted AND a structured plot

on a line level it's probably the most unbeautiful and long winded fic i've written in a while. i mean. it's not concise. a look at the summary itself makes this very clear. honestly the whole thing could've benefited from a rewrite but after a point i kind of just wanted to post it. ultimately i think i was successful in a thematic sense but was way to didactic about it, probably in part due to the structure i ended up going w.

the other bnha fics are better on a line level, in part bc they're so much shorter... lines i'm proud of

For so long, Shouto had wanted for nothing; needed for nothing; had seethed quietly and uselessly in the sensory deprivation room of his childhood until a stranger ungently pulled him out. That had been the great kindness of Shouto’s life -- a hero to save him. A route out of hell.

Shouto doesn’t think Touya ever left hell.

^ the rhythm of 'wanted for nothing, needed for nothing, had seethed {blankity blank blank blank}' is something i ended up really liking

Out of the villains his classmates hoped to save, only Touya has clearly survived. Toga Himiko and Shigaraki Tomura are dead. There’s no good reason for this to be the case: having done nothing to deserve it, Shouto can only live with it -- this strange and uncertain reality where miracles might happen and be reversed at any moment.

^ i think i did ok w the wording of this sentence, especially after the colon. the redefining of what 'it' through the different sections worked ok for what i wanted i think

Over the course of his bitter life, Touya has grown used to acting impulsively, setting fire to his loved ones without a second thought, but this is still -- exceptionally stupid, even for him.

^ successful deployment of canon-relevant metaphors?

on the whole this was a very middling writing year for me... not nothing but not at all close to what i wanted to do. i started about five million dc projects that i did NOT end up finishing, though i'd very much like to get to them eventually: the damian kane reverse robins au, the batman!jason fic, the poison ivy casefic, the genderbend bdsm damitim. to be honest i spent a good amount of time this year struggling to write poetry. hopefully i'll be able to bang out something complete by the end of this year; might write some sort of fic for the next book i read, no matter what it is

this means that before 2024 is over i will hopefully have written a complete drabble for either some random ass regency romance, an ursula k le guin, or a sci fi that truly needs no continuation. looking forward to it

[david-talks-sw]

An argument I hear from time to time is the following:

"I don't care that this novel is considered Legends, if it was canon when George Lucas was in charge of Lucasfilm, it's still canon to me now. Whatever George says is what counts, I don't care what Disney says."

Putting the Expanded Universe's Star Wars and George Lucas' Star Wars in the same basket. And that's, uh... inaccurate.

So without further ado, let's explore:

George Lucas’ involvement in the Expanded Universe

Early years of the EU...

When the first bit of EU content came out in the form of the novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Lucas was too busy working on the films, so Alan Dean Foster wrote it by himself (which explains why Luke and Leia's relationship plays out romantically).

After the movies came out, when new material was going to be created, George told Lucas Licensing and other authors that the Prequel era was off-limits to write about, because he might tell that story one day.

Beyond that, they could go to town and write sequels, for instance. After all, part of why Star Wars was created was to let people's imagination run wild and George was happy to let other artists play in the sandbox he created.

That said, things were very clear from the get-go.

These weren't his stories.

The Thrawn books, Dark Empire, all this material was explicitly just Tom Veitch and Timothy Zahn and whoever else's creation. Not George's, who was described by Lucas Licensing's Lucy Autrey Wilson as "not very involved".

The most he did was answers "OK/Not OK" questionnaires about what the EU writers could or couldn't write.

Telling Yoda's backstory? Not OK.

Telling Han's backstory, between the Prequel and Ep. 4? OK.

Having someone wear Vader's suit after his death? Not OK.

The Emperor returning in a clone body? OK.

So that's it. That was his involvement in the 90s.

Him saying "don't write something set during this/that period".

"OK/Not OK" questionnaires.

It's also worth mentioning he didn't approve of Mara Jade, Luke's wife in the EU. In his mind, "Jedi don't marry".

Rather, the character herself wasn't an issue... until she married Luke. When Timothy Zahn asked for Luke and Mara to be married or engaged, back in 1993, Lucasfilm initially vetoed the idea.

According to Brian Jay Jones (author of "A Life", George Lucas' biography), in 1995 George convened a 'Star Wars Summit' wherein he gathered licensees and international agents to Skywalker Ranch to reinforce "the need for him to maintain quality control, especially in the areas of publishing, where some characters—such as Luke Skywalker, who’d been given a love interest in a fiery smuggler named Mara Jade—were living lives far beyond the ones he had written for them in the original trilogy".

Sources:

During the Prequels...

George Lucas was writing and directing three movies with large themes, shot almost back-to-back, commuting between Australia and California. That's hard enough as it is.

Also, in the 90s, most movies were still shot on film. During the making of Phantom Menace, Lucas shot parts of the film by combining prototype digital Sony cameras and using them in combination with videotapes, rather than shooting on film.

For Attack of the Clones, George worked with Panavision and Sony to develop fully digital cameras, which eventually became the standard.

As if that wasn't enough, by making the Prequels, Lucas and ILM were also creating fully-digitized worlds (Coruscant, Geonosis) and characters (Jar Jar, Yoda) and laying the groundwork for the CGI technology that has now become essential for today's blockbusters.

Having established all this...

Do you really think he had the time or the patience to read through a bunch of novels and guidebooks?!

Simply put: George Lucas was too busy revolutionizing cinema to be involved in the development of the EU.

So if you ask George who Tahl or Vitiate are, or what the Stark Hyperspace War or a vapor manifold are, if you ask him to recite you the Sith Code... he'll grumble and say "heck if I know".

He outright admitted that fans know more Star Wars lore than him.

Because SOMEBODY ELSE wrote that stuff.

And he let them do it because:

It made money. A lot of money, especially after TPM came out. Money that could fund his next films. You don't mess with licensing. Hell, it's why he was so cool with there being all those Star Wars parodies.

He didn't see those stories as canon anyway, so it couldn't hurt. He saw them as a separate universe, an alternate timeline wherein the films happened ALONG with all these other tales.

So associating the EU content with Lucas is unreasonable. He was too busy, so he just let Howard Roffman, Lucy Autrey Wilson, Sue Rostoni and Lucas Licensing do their thing and crank out new stories and transmedia content for the fans.

It was a one-way relationship. The licensing parallel universe needed to have some internal consistency AND adhere to what Lucas established in the new films movies (which was difficult because they weren't involved in the production process), but he didn't need to be in line or consistent with anything they established.

Now, George did set some guidelines/boundaries and there were obviously do's and don'ts. But once those boundaries were set and the brief was established, the authors had a lot of freedom and, like, 99% of their interaction was with their editors from the respective publishing houses (Scholastic, Del Rey, Dark Horse) and the folks at Lucas Licensing.

George was only really brought in to sign off on, like, some of the major plot points only once in a blue moon. Stuff like:

"Let's make a Maul novel". George would go "fine, just keep him mysterious."

"What species should Plagueis be?" George: "he could be a Muun, here's concept art."

Nothing more than that. Again: the Expanded Universe was other storyteller's interpretation of what Lucas had created.

Sometimes, it was spot on and it aligned with George's vision.

Other times, this additional lore was created by writers who didn't know what he was doing with the Prequels, so they were in the dark regarding certain plot points.

And then you have the authors who absolutely disagreed with George's vision of the Prequels, or of Star Wars, in general, but wanted to engage with the material nonetheless.

Which is why, whilst sometimes the EU fixed some plot-holes, sometimes the EU had inconsistencies.

Inconsistencies such as Ki-Adi Mundi being a Knight on the Council, who is married and has kids (when the Jedi being prohibited from marrying is a major plot point in the Prequels)...

… or the Jedi being essentially superhuman (when one of the narrative reasons Qui-Gon is killed is to show that the Jedi are mortals, not supermen)…

... or other stuff like Mace having a blue lightsaber for a period (because who the hell knew purple was an option?!) or some Jedi having red lightsabers, or Sith Lords being able to become ghosts after death, when that's a feat you can only achieve by being selfless.

It's also why you get conflicting definitions of what the Jedi call "attachment" or conflicting narratives trying to reframe midi-chlorians as a cold, intentionally-flawed way of seeing the Force (when they're meant to be a beautiful metaphor for symbiosis and how the Force works).

And it makes sense that some of this stuff wouldn't track, considering how Lucas stated multiple times that he didn't have anything to do with it, that it was a separate universe from his own...

Safe to say that if George had any involvement in the EU, it was so minimal that he, himself, didn't count it as "involvement".

Additional sources:

Later years of the EU...

After the Prequels were over and done with, Lucas created The Clone Wars with Dave Filoni. At first, he'd just suggest a few storylines, but he quickly got VERY involved in the whole process. Far more involved than he ever was with EU content.

And y'know... Dave Filoni is a massive Star Wars fan and an avid EU reader. So, from time to time, Filoni would bring up EU material for Lucas to consider during the story conferences, and they'd look at what was out there together.

But it's important to note that George's stance toward the EU didn't change and became a rule for everyone on the writing staff: the EU content was nothing more than a pool of "fun what-if ideas" that they could draw inspiration from.

If they could, they'd try to not mess with continuity... but if the story called for it, they could retcon anything without batting an eye. Because it wasn't canon to them.

It's why author Karen Traviss quit working with Lucasfilm after the Mandalorians were retconned into pacifists in The Clone Wars.

The only things that were truly canon were:

George Lucas' own word.

The movies.

Previously established The Clone Wars lore.

And that's it.

Everything else was somebody's else's concern. Not George's.

Sources:

This way of seeing the EU continued all the way to the time shortly before George sold the company to Disney as his drafts for the Sequels featured:

no Jacen, Jaina or Anakin Solo (Han and Leia's kids from the EU),

a still-alive Chewbacca (who died, later in the EU),

no "New Jedi Order".

Every version of George's Sequels ignored the EU.

Which would explain why the EU reboot was planned in the summer of 2012 (when Lucas was in charge)!

I'll repeat: the EU reboot was planned months BEFORE George Lucas sold the company to Disney.

Because of course it was! It's a natural result of 30 years' worth of content that's so intermeshed that it would stop future artists - namely George himself - from creating anything else.

Sources:

Exceptions to the rule:

1. Comics (kinda)

He did read the comics. Or at least, he gave them a glance.

Aside from the fact that he grew up reading comics, understand that George Lucas is a visual artist, first and foremost.

That's what he's about and that's what he loves, that's what speaks to him. There's a reason his upcoming Museum of Narrative Art will feature comic panels and pages of all kind.

During pre-production on Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, Lucas had the art team draw concept art before a script had ever been written so he'd have ideas for set-pieces.

Later on, J.W. Rinzler pitched him the idea of adapting his early drafts for Star Wars into comic form. Lucas' initial reaction was going "hell no". Rinzler had concept art made…

… and George took one look and was on board.

So it's not a stretch to assume that a book telling a story through beautiful drawings would catch his attention more than a novel.

Case in point: He knew who Quinlan Vos was and was enamored with the character. He knew Aayla enough to put her in Attack of the Clones after seeing a cover of Republic by John Forster featuring her (below, left).

(although, it's worth pointing out that he doesn't call her out by name a single time, in the director's commentary of the Attack of the Clones, she's just the "Twi'Lek Jedi" and her inclusion was done mainly to add more diversity to the Jedi fighting in the arena)

Over a decade later, when the comic Star Wars #7 came out in 2015, Lucasfilm acquired artist Simone Bianchi's original 20 pages and cover art for George, so he could feature it in his the Museum of Narrative Art:

So at the very least, he looked at the comics and admired the visuals.

Whether he actually read the comics in detail or just skimmed through most of them because he liked the pretty pictures (likelier, imo) is an entirely different matter.

Sources:

2. Video-Games (kinda)

Lucas would periodically check in on the status of LucasArts games, lending creative input and advice.

Sometimes, his advice ranged from "weird" to "he's gotta be fucking with us, right?"

Apparently, he advised the team developing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed that they dub Starkiller "Darth Insanius" or "Darth Icky".

And you know what? I have no trouble believing it.

Firstly because if you're going by the idea that he gave no fucks about the EU, then of course he'll come up with "meh" names. But also, this is the same guy who created "Winkie" in 2012/2013, the character who'd go on to be named "Rey".

He also told the team creating Star Wars: 1313 that he wanted a fresh face as the main character, then only weeks before the game was announced he went "let's make it Boba Fett".

Finally... the cancelled Darth Maul game by Red Fly.

Codenamed “Damage”, then “Battle of the Sith Lords”. Think Batman: Arkham City meets Star Wars.

Red Fly pitched it as a coming of age story where we see Maul be kidnapped, tortured, eventually joining the Dark Side, and ending in TPM. Then they had interactions with LucasArts and found out Maul survived his fight with Obi-Wan.

The game went through several iterations, partly because the people at Red Fly were kept in the dark about the developments in The Clone Wars (Season 4 wasn't out yet), and even when some tidbits came out and they knew characters like Savage Oppress and Death Watch would be included, they didn't get more details.

Whatever. They do their best to make something from what they're told. Then they have a meeting with George. As this GameInformer article explains:

“A friendly George Lucas entered the room and was eager to hear the pitch from Red Fly’s creatives. “Before they could finish their spiel, Lucas cut them off, stood up, walked over to [two Sideshow Collectibles statues of Darth Maul and Darth Talon], rotated them to be facing the same direction, pushed them together, and said ‘They’re friends!’” adds the source. “He wanted these characters to be friends, and to play off of each other. […] The problem with the idea of Maul and Talon teaming up for a buddy cop-like experience was that they were separated by over 170 years […] When this vast time divide was brought up to Lucas’ attention, he brushed off the notion of it not working, and said that it could instead be a descendant of Darth Maul or a clone of him.”

So now the game is about a descendant of Maul, guided by his ancestor and fighting a redesigned Darth Krayt, etc?

The game was eventually cancelled when George sold the company.

Worth pointing out that this was circa 2010/2011... around the time that George started working on his Sequels, according to Jett Lucas. And we know that the treatment for the Sequels that Lucas presented to Bob Iger featured old man Maul and Darth Talon as the villains of the trilogy... take from that what you will.

3. The Prequel novelizations (kinda)

They were all given a copy of Lucas' screenplay.

While most of their work was with Sue Rostoni, Lucy Autrey Wilson, and Howard Roffman on the Lucasfilm team (like some of the other authors), Terry Brooks, R.A. Salvatore and Matthew Stover all spent a bit of time with George before writing their respective novels.

George told Terry Brooks to write some additional material for Anakin Skywalker because there wasn't enough of that in the movie. He was shown rushes from the set, they "opened the safe" for him. When Terry had further questions re: midi-chlorians and the history of the Sith, George goes on a 30-minute monologue about all that.

R.A. Salvatore had a 45-minute interview with him that turned into a 3-hour chat. He was able to go back to the Ranch a few times during the writing process, and one of those times George chatted with him and his wife during lunch. He was shown various cuts of the film and concept art.

Matthew Stover and George talked for a whole afternoon (I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume he was also shown the other stuff like some cuts/deleted scenes, concept art, etc etc).

Was there a line-edit of the ROTS novel from Lucas? Regarding the Revenge of the Sith novelization, some people bring up the idea that George Lucas did a line-edit on the book because Stover wrote this statement on theforce.net:

That said...

Stover, also stated that Lucas told him to write whatever he wanted as long as it was good,

he also said he didn't actually see Lucas type the edits,

an anonymous Del Rey editor stated on theforce.net that the notion that George edited the novel himself is "extremely incorrect".

There's enough "reasonable doubt" for the argument to be made that the Revenge of the Sith novelization was edited the same way as any other Star Wars novel, rather than by George himself.

The fact remains, though, that it was a novel written by someone who understood the source material, as it was explained to him in detail by George Lucas himself (a luxury many SW authors never got).

Lucas' backstory for the Sith in the TPM novel: If Pablo Hidalgo is to be believed, the backstory of the Sith, as detailed in the Phantom Menace novelization, came from Lucas.

(Obviously, I'd allow for the very likely possibility that there was some embellishment by Terry Brooks)

20 years later, however, it seems George decided to stick to the idea that there was no war between the Jedi and the Sith.

Final thought:

A lot of people will insist that George was involved in spite of all the above-posted evidence. Saying stuff like:

"But [X person] said that it was canon..."

Sometimes, they’ll link you to this whole website collecting quotes of other people saying "the EU was canon" (never George Lucas except for, like, one/two quotes where he acknowledges the existence of Sequel books which MUST mean he saw them as canon, right?) and...

On the one hand... of course they'll all vaguely say he's "involved" and tip-toe around the subject; it's technically true and, again, they're trying to make money. It's a business, folks.

On the other... yeah? Duh. Of course it was canon to Lucas Licensing and the authors who wrote for the EU. But it wasn't canon to George. And I just gave you a whole bunch of quotes directly from him and/or the same people quoted on that website, all confirming that he didn't see them as canon and he wasn't involved (or barely was).

Other times, we're straight-up approaching "burying head in the sand/lalalala I'm not listening!" levels of justifications.

Like, we just talked about the Sith's origins, right?

I remember a while ago, this Star Wars YouTuber was reviewing this quote from Lucas, in The Star Wars Archives: 1999-1995:

The YouTuber's reaction the second after reading the quote is saying:

"And of course, what George is referring to, here, is the Battle of Ruusan and the Brotherhood of Darkness using the Thought Bomb created by Lord Khan to kill the Jedi Lord Hoth and…"

My guy! You read a whole excerpt that started with "there was never a war between the Jedi and the Sith" and the words "Ruusan" or "Thought Bomb" never being mentioned once in the passage (or in the TPM novelization)... and concluded that George was referring to the Jedi/Sith Battle of Ruusan? And all that other EU stuff?

See what I mean, folks?

Now, look, I grew up with these stories (heck, I grew up with these stories in three different languages). So I get it. I know they're awesome.

And, yes, there is a difference between the kind of content we used to get and the content we're getting now (for one, lightsabers used to be lightsabers, in video-games, not baseball bats).

But if you're trying to prop up the EU, the facts show that the "George Lucas signed off on them" authority argument isn't a valid one. Because he clearly wasn't very interested or involved in it.

And why would you want to use this authority argument, anyway?

You shouldn't need to say "this came from Lucas" to like those stories. They don't need to be George Lucas Approved™ to matter and to be validated as "worthy of appreciation". They're valid on their own, they're great stories. And if you like them better than the Sequels, go to town. I know I do.

The only thing you can't do (with a straight face, at least) is hold them up as "the True Lucas-Approved Canon™ as opposed to the Disney Trash" in a rant, because you'd be wrong and/or lying. Neither had Lucas' hand in them in any meaningful way.

Finally... I was devastated when the EU was officially made non-canon, in 2014. And for a few years, I saw the new Star Wars continuity through this lens:

"Any EU content is still canon unless it's directly retconned...!"

Trust me, when I say that only pain lies that way. Because that's not how a lot of Star Wars creators, including the Flanelled One himself, see it. The way they saw/see it is:

"Unless it's been shown in a movie or TCW... it's a legend, it might have happened."

This line of thought seems to be increasingly applied to the new Disney canon too, by the way. "If it's not shown on a screen, then it's probably canon yet also up for grabs to be retconned."

And the sooner you accept that this is how it's being treated, the sooner you accept that the EU was never canon to Lucas or Filoni...

... the less painful it'll be when, I dunno, you watch The Acolyte and it's nothing like the Darth Plagueis novel or Plagueis himself is absent, or he's there, but as an Ithorian instead of a Muun.

(note how I didn't use the word "painless")

[simlimpim]

I am SO sorry im tagging this again, but it's 3 am, i have more thoughts. Please feel free to ignore this second rant, op, but heres the second part to my analysis. An objectively better one than my last since i slept for 4 hours at least.

Also, I've decided to JUST have this psyco analysis up because my other one was more so the ramblings of a tired man

Also, im basing this off of the ssumtion that phantom was a forethought because he doesn't seem like an afterthought to me. And even if he was one. That has no effect on the real bobby because phantom is still a thing. Even if bobbys original intention was to be what the second chapter makes him out to be (which makes no logical sense, you'll see in a second) that idea is null because the phantom was eventually established. The real bobby is not prototype bobby

Phantom played bobby in two contradictory ways. Switching rapidly from this man that thoroughly cared for the well-being of his people and even the well-being of criminals,

And then this man that was morally un-sound. Calling criminals unrediemable and monsters, being a completely eccentric loser and calling himself the highest form of justice.

Now, im not saying the real bobby couldn't have been some of the second. Clearely, he did have some problems if phantom played him like that, too.

But do you see how convenient it would've been for the phantom to "up" the second side? And blame it on bobby's behavior?

And he looked sounded and mainly acted like bobby. No one would suspect a thing if he just decided to be a bit more like the second aspect of his personality.

"But, simon, why do you insist that he upped the second personality? Maybe bobby just was contradictory like that. "

No one is that contradictory. Rn, im not seeing his trough the lens of an ace attorney character im looking at him as a real person. And, well, partially as a character written.

No person can physically switch that violently between morality codes unless they have some sort of behavioral disorder, and they dont let you on the force with those.

"He could've been faking being nice,"

He worked his ass off for a rehabilitators license, not easy to get, refuses to use his gun, only threatens with arrest, (and even that i think was either exaggeration by bobby taken seriously by phantom, based on the way its said in the game or just bobby goofing around in poor taste)

Not to mention, Bobby is kind in his own way. Hence, my example with the animals and the stroll in my younger post.

He knows what simon needs, and in order to rehabilitate him easier, he gives in most of the time to make sure simon is calm and doesn't feel like he needs to hurt anyone.

-He doesn't want to hurt anyone. Especially Simon-

Phantom, however, knowing all of this, can still toy with bobby's personality to make him more immoral than he already is.

When you copy a person that you haven't known for the longest time, you're going to exaggerate their behaviours a bit, and usually to your advantage in making others think that you are them.

No matter if you are doing this professionally or not, you will exaggerate them at least a bit unless you're playing a set role with a script and directors, which he's not.

I believe that he exaggerated the morally injust and eccentric parts of bobby.

I believe that bobby already had those traits, but phantom, in a position where he could safely lean into that side of bobby without being suspected, chose to lean into that for his own advantage.

Hence why his behavior felt so unnatural to me throughout the game.

As someone who reads too many psychology books and over analyzes myself and everyone I meet, bobby's behavior felt off from the start.

Even when i didn't know about the phantom, i could guess there was something wrong with bobby's personality, especially that suddenly - violent out of no where - part of his personality.

And no, it's not just me saying "bobby could never do something like that :(((" im pretty sure i didn't even full trust or like bobby at the start i just liked simon.

I thought he was weird, gaarish, eccentric, and made no sense.

And that's what phantom was basing on, a bit.

You see, by leaning into bobby's darker parts of his personality, he knew that others would stop questioning him as much. You dont question someone for how bad they are but how kind they are.

The rest weren't too surprised when he turned out to be rehabilitating simon because he had upped that "im so cool and justice" aspect of his personality to the max, making others not surprised and move on.

Perfect for the phantom, who needed no one to question why he was working on simon and subsequently on covering up ur 1.

People did, however, get surprised when he was a bit more pushy and forceful. And it's not just a natural reaction either. Cause bobby was doing it all the time. They should be used to it by now. But they aren't.

Their brains STILL dont anticipate phantoms behavioral patterns, which honestly only allude to the behavioral patterns of a mad man.

Even if you were to say that they didn't know bobby that well and were still just surprised at how he acted, that doesn't really explain it.

And also, a thing i really hate. The "which justice is more just" thing.

Phantom goofs that aspect of his personality right up.

We're shown that bobby can change his mind easily, that he reflects on things people tell him, and that he actually does try to be just after he is reasoned with.

Phantom, however, in hopes of playing the cards in his own favor, usually does let that slide in some parts but doesn't let it in parts that make no actual sense for bobby to not? Let that slide.

I've also explained my thoughts on the shackles in another post. I believe they are utter bullshit. For bobby, someone who clearely believes in the rehabilitation of criminals and making sure that no one is hurt needlessly (yes, even with the whole lets explode the door argument he still cares to not hurt people)

Using those shakles and making him feel NO remorse about it makes no sense.

Chalk it up to bobby, just being corrupt like that. i dont buy it.

He constantly works to rehabilitate simon (or, well, the real one would) and literally has used psychological manipulation via submissive behavior to pull out Simon of violent behavior in the past.

Why in gods green earth would the real bobby use the shackles for more than once.

He clearly knows how humans tick at least a bit, considering how casually he uses tricks to help simon (and no we cant say thats all phantom either because bobbys submissive tricks are part of his actual behaviour, if we are to trust phantoms fluxuating behavior patterns)

And not to mention, rehabilitators have to be at least physically stronger than their charge to make sure they can subdue them without needless violence (guns, tranquilizers, etc).

Bobby is stronger and can use brain tricks in his own way (he's a pd and a rehabilitator, come on, he's not that dumb. Ik phantom bimbofies him but)

So there's no actual need for allat.

"Yeah, but he does a lot of things that aren't needed," but those are usually harmless. Or just scary at best (insigna reaching)

And do you not believe that for a man that constantly questions himself and his own morality (and is oftern questioned!!!) And when asked about if he's sure about his on decisions actually SITS DOWN AND REFLECTS... do you not believe that a man like that would actually eventually grow to not want to use the shackles at all, if in theory he ever wouldve used them?

But again, phantom doesnt care about allat. He cares about keeping up a good enough bobby mask while also playing his chords in his own melody even if it sounded awful and unrecognizable in a psychological standpoint

But hey, that's just a theory

The Real Bobby Fulbright and Morality

Hey hey! I am back with yet another analysis post, this time focusing on Fulbright's morality! I often see fanon interpretations of him - that are super fun! - but I also feel like they focus on the positive aspects of his personality and avoid the darker ones, so I will be rambling about that under the cut! Enjoy B)

Before we get into specific examples, it is worth pointing out that this analysis is based off of:

The theory that Dual Destinies didn't originally have the phantom as the main villain.

That the phantom was included later in the story after several chapters were already finished.

The theory that Dual Destinies was going to deal with darker themes before it got altered.

Now, although I have more detailed arguments on why I believe in these points, this post is not about that (Though if anyone wants to hear my thoughts about it, I'd love to yap about that in another post ^^). In a nutshell, Fulbright's behaviour changes in between cases, in a way that suggests that his character was revamped. I believe that Fulbright was originally written without the phantom in mind.

Thus! While his character might've had his purpose shifted, if my belief is correct, then The Monstrous Turnabout - the first case with Fulbright - is the most accurate glimpse into what the real Bobby Fulbright was like. Yes, we are meta analysing it up in this house!

Via the assumption that The Monstrous Turnabout has the original idea for the real Fulbright, we can make some interpretations of what he's like, despite the canon saying it was the phantom impersonating him! ^^

So, onto actual examples (lovingly chosen from my transcript) and analysis!

Starting off strong, we first meet Fulbright with him wanting to arrest Apollo and Athena. Yes, there is the potential reasoning of "disturbing a crime scene", but the lawyers had only just gotten there. They had done nothing wrong. That is unlawful arrest! Them coming to the crime scene had several explanations, and yet Fulbright won't even hear them out:

[???] “Hey, who are you and what are you doing here? This is a crime scene!”

[AJ] “And who are YOU? Are you with the police?”

[???] “I asked first! Who are YOU and what are you doing here?! On second thought... I’m placing you under arrest for disturbing a crime scene!”

He prioritizes lunch over actual, genuine justice here, not even bothering to hear them out. He only changes his tune after finding out that they're lawyers. Even then, he doesn't allow them to investigate. Though that is what all Ace Attorney detectives do, I think the subtle threat that comes afterwards is important.

[AJ] “Ack! Under arrest?! B-B-But...”

[???] “Save it for the boys back at HQ! Now, come quietly or else! I don’t want to be late for lunch!”

Yes, he never pulls out a gun in the series (besides attempting to do so in Turnabout for Tomorrow as the phantom), but I believe that the inherent threat and power that Fulbright holds in this situation is worth mentioning. Apollo's assumption that Fulbright could pull out a gun is also quite telling in my opinion. Fulbright is a cop at the end of the day.

[BF] “Cease and desist at once, or you’ll have to deal with my little friend here!” { Hand goes to his holster }

[AJ] “Ack!” (Yikes! Is he reaching for his...?!)

[BF] “In justice we trust!” { Shows badge }

[AJ] “...!” (Phew, it’s just his badge.)

[BF] “This door simply will not open! We’ve tried and tried, but it won’t budge! It’s an essential part of the culture found in this manor, so we can’t blow it up either!”

The next concerning aspect I've found, is the seemingly normalized use of excessive force. The only reason they're not blowing up the door is because of its cultural significance. That is insane! It can be argued that it's not Fulbright's decision, however, the lack of reaction from everyone involved signifies to me that this is the norm.

With this moment, I wish to point out Fulbright's black & white thinking. I acknowledge that this is consistent for all detectives in the series, but it is a piece of characterization that is very important - Fulbright is very quick to call Tenma a villain, evil, a fiend. Thinking that someone is guilty and thinking that someone is evil are quite different imo.

[AJ] “So you still think Mayor Tenma is responsible?”

[BF] “That’s right! Damian Tenma is an evil fiend who must be banished from this world! Now, take my hand and together we will defeat this evil!”

[BF] “I won’t fall for that, you shameless rascal! I only help good little boys and girls!”

In general, Fulbright tends to think in an us vs them mentality - the people he likes are good, while the ones he dislikes are bad. He helps good people and puts away bad people. In a sense, yes, that's what a cop is supposed to do.

[BF] “Ha ha! My investigations are as thorough as they are foolproof, or my name isn’t Fulbright! I vow to resign immediately if I ever make a false arrest!”

However, this line paints a grim picture. Fulbright implies that he has never made a false arrest. That is statistically impossible, and implies that he has not only made false arrests before, he has also managed to get them convicted! The fact that the first time we meet him, he tries to arrest us only amplifies this point!

[BF] “What?! Are you questioning my sense of justice?!”

When he is confronted with an argument against his beliefs, he hides behind justice. In a way, he hides behind his badge, the very item that allows him to make the decisions on who is being painted as guilty, and who is not. In fact, he doesn't even question his beliefs.

[BF] “Prosecutor Blackquill! We’ve had enough of your hijinks! The foundation of justice is fair play, and you are in serious violation of that!”

And finally, the so-called 'jolts of justice'. I've seen arguments in the past claiming that the real Bobby Fulbright would never use electrical shocks on Blackquill. I politely disagree. Considering all the previous examples, I think it aligns with his behavioural patterns and is the epitome of his morality.

And thus, I would like to briefly propose my personally crafted theory about Dual Destinies: The game was originally going to delve into darker themes, and Fulbright's corruption was at the center of that.

Yes, Fulbright believes in justice, in good and bad. He has good intentions. But at the end of the day, he is a cop that holds power over others and justifies his wrongdoings with... well, justice. So long as he believes that he is doing the right thing, he is willing to reach for extremes.

I think this is often missed due to Fulbright's comical mess ups and overall cheery and charming demeanour. The characters don't really react to his more... extreme decisions either.

Consider a world where the phantom was not the main twist of the series, but some aspects remained. Such as... The tampering with evidence... Abusing police position to cover up a crime... Framing innocent suspects... It fits into the previously showcased negative traits of his.

Ergo, the real Bobby Fulbright might not be as justice-driven as many may believe. There are many details that tend to get overlooked when it comes to him, especially in fanon. Which is fine and good! It is comforting to think of a policeman that does his job properly. However, I also find this darker side absolutely fascinating and worthy of discussion.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this silly analysis post! Do feel free to argue or ask questions, I love a good debate and I love yapping <3