#actually to elaborate on the first point. the contrast between

[purecommemasolitude]

you guys ever listen to vse kar vem

[tarjapearce]

Could you elaborate more about the fight Miguel had with your family that was mentioned in the soccer family proposal imagine?

Ayyy! It's the perfect chance to get the angst out of me jsksj. And of course, no relationship is perfect 💔.

What caused the fight Pt3

Gabriel's eyes settled on the both as you entered Miguel's apartment. Solemnity and listless faces dragged inside.

Gabriel was as perspicacious as his elder brother. A habit rubbed on him through the years of sharing the apartment and drunk in mezcal and tequila talks.

You were teary eyed, unable to look him for more than a couple of seconds before acknowledge him with a lip tight smile and follow Miguel to his room like a scolded puppy. The room felt smaller, crumpling around you, almost suffocating. A couple of your belongings scattered around the place.

So far the only indicators that a woman occupied a spot in his life. Silence felt so deafening it crawled and bit on your tremorous skin. Dread had made itself comfortable in your guts along anxiety ever since you left your old house. Cause you'd certainly wouldn't able to call it home.

And after all these years the little to no improvement had only made you oath to yourself that you'd stay as far as possible from them.

You'd notice the white of his knuckles gripping so tightly at the wheel, that when you tried to get a hold of his hand, his hand recoiled from yours. An appalling contrast from hours ago where he'd held you and gave gentle touches to ease and relief your nerves.

You had warned him, and still the both got burned. Him specially. It felt like the person you had as a mother figure was doing it on purpose to upset you and him.

It couldn't be that bad between the both, right? If he was honest, at first he thought that nothing but a small fight had ensued and that you were a little immature about it. But as your relationship kept growing you'd tell him just the highlights of your mother's behavior.

Something that he actually related way too well. He knew that speaking of your family was still a sore point, something you were treating with therapy.

"What's wrong, Miguel?"

"Nada." (Nothing)

"Mentiroso. ¿Qué te pasa?" (Liar, what's wrong?

Silence. You were done with it.

"You haven't spoke much ever since we got back from my old house. You're not... even looking at me!"

"Your family thinks I'm a freak."

You frowned and shook your head.

"And I apologize for that. I warned you about them-"

"Thanks for the fucking late warning"

His massive back heaved with subtle anger as it turned to you. His hands in his waist.

"Miguel..." Your eyes went wide at his words, head buzzed with his hurtful words.

"I bet you didn't even tell them about me."

His accusing tone was certainly tugging too hard at your heart seams. "I barely keep communication with them, Miguel. You out of everyone knows it!"

"Are you ashamed of me?" His self doubt threw daggers at your heart with each syllable that formed the question.

"W-What?"

"¿Qué no oyes? Te avergüenzas de mí o qué?! (Didn't you hear, are you ashamed of me or what?!)

"Le bajas a tu tono que no eres mi papá. No le permití jamás levantarme la voz para que tú lo hagas ahora." (Chill your tone down, you're not my father. I never allowed him to do so for you to come at me like that now.)

"And now you're scared of me"

"Listen to yourself, Miguel! Pull your head out of your ass for a second and listen to how you're talking to me! Haven't I been there for you and with you since last year?"

Gabriel gave a silent whistle as your fight grew loud enough for him to hear everything outside Miguel's bedroom door. He retreated to his room out of politeness.

"Yeah, we've been-"

"Then why you act like I'm being a burden to you all out the sudden? Why are you acting like I'm the one that hurt you?! You know that I'd never do that!. I'm not my family, Miguel."

Your voice cracked.

He shook his head. He had seen the way everyone stared at him when he tried to open the beer with his teeth. Fearful, disgusted.

The exact way he was looking at you.

To say it hurt was an understatement. He was deliberately prying open your chest and ripping your heart out while showing off and marveling at the process of such act.

"You... You don't wanna be with me anymore?"

The question sent a painful jab to his chest, but his wounded ego had taken all the controls on his rational side.

"Maybe it's time for you to get someone that's fucking normal. I'm clearly not. So why staying?"

A hiccup.

"Because I love you, you fucking idiot!"

A sob, and his heart sunk deeper.

Apologize. Now.

His mind chanted but his pride joined in the maneuvering of his spilled and jagged emotions. Adding more dry bones to the fire.

"But clearly this... this isn't working out, isn't it?"

"Clearly."

Your head nodded as your arms braced your quivering form. A meek protection from his cutting words.

"Sorry to have wasted your time then." You spoke in between angry sobs as you removed the necklace he once gifted you and shoved it back to his hand.

His bottom lip pursed as he saw you picking up the little traces of you in a haste. He went for your shoulder gently.

"Mira, yo-" (Look, I-)

You recoiled away from him as silent tears kept rolling down your face. Some watered the carpet underneath your feet.

"You've said enough."

A way too polite 'Don't Touch Me"

You picked up your things in your arms, messily. The room was clutching at your throat, cutting bit by bit your breaths, but Miguel's indifference was the one that made your head spin from the sudden lack of air. He was killing you with his suffocating coldness.

You hadn't mind the little brostbites he'd gave you, but this one had been too bad for you to keep holding it up. The burn had been too much. Too fast and too deep for you to properly process. All you knew is that you needed to get out.

Now.

Bundling up the things in the cardigan, you went out his bedroom's door.

Stop

His steps followed you, but this time he was the one unable to catch up. You were already closing the main door with a quiet close.

His hands trembled as they found their way on each side of his hips. Gripping and provoking enough pressure to at least feel a fraction of the pain he just put you through.

The necklace in his hand still warm. His own heat dulling yours. Just like your smile. Just like you. Just like every damn thing that made him feel good and happy.

Self sabotage was his best trait. Something he clearly forgot to warn you. But it was late.

The texture of the metal chain crunched underneath his fist.

Too late.

[jellyjays]

transfem kuai liang headcanon

hi. as a precursor to this whole post, i'm going to give the forwarning that i am absolutely batshit insane about this. if one could call an avid fan of something 'down the rabbit hole', then i am in the core of the fucking planet of this. i am thinking about her at all hours of the day. i have a several thousand WC braindump doc that i still need to elaborate on. with that said, if you're willing to give a look-see, jump down the rabbit hole with me as i give you the rundown.

i have many, many, many words about her. many of them. but i'll try to summarize my reasoning for this particular headcanon because it's actually much much deeper than the initial vibes.

THE DEEPER REASONING

kuai as a character seems really closed-off and disconnected. especially when we first meet him. he's duty first, no-nonsense. he's quiet. and then we get to know him more, and to know bi-han more, and there's this... sense of unease, somewhat? like bi-han, we can see that he is standing on firm foundations of his ideals. we know what he wants. we know who he is. he stays true to these ideals, even by betraying his brothers to join the side of shang tsung and quan chi. he is a character who knows what he wants and we can predict his actions based on it. on the other hand, in contrast, kuai liang seems almost... unstable, in a sense, and adrift. we only really get to know the fact that he valued his father's teachings. and bi-hans betrayal seems to throw him even more adrift.

and being adrift and unstable on his foundations is a trait i see VERY often in my own experience and in the experience of my transfem friends (and here we hit my biggest point on why i headcanon kuai liang as transfem-- the sheer number of parallels between his story and trans experiences).

when bi-han betrays the lin kuei, and in turn, kuai and smoke, kuai has no issues taking down SEVERAL fighters along with general shao-- and you can sense the rage that fuels it (yet another parallel with trans experience). that feeling of 'i put faith in you, i trusted you,', and in this case, 'i followed you, i am who i am because of you, i changed myself for you, and you repay me with this?'

it's unbelievable pain and anger and betrayal, and though he eventually calms enough that he goes back to his quiet, calculative self, it's earth-shaking. this parallels a lot of the feeling, in the trans experience, of the betrayal you feel when your loved ones, the ones you trusted, you changed yourself for, turn to transphobia and terf rhetoric. turn to the beliefs you know hurt people (earthrealm, or your trans friends) and hurt you, and make you their new target.

i'm sad we don't get much focus on kuai liang after that chapter of the story-- i'd pay good money to get an expansion of his story. we know at the very least that he goes on with smoke to form the shirai ryu, and train the young hanzo hasashi, but that tells us nothing, so i don't have a lot to work with. but that gives a lot of wiggle room when making guesses at his character.

reviewing what we know, i reiterate that parallels make kuai liang's character incredibly readable as trans-coded. and i will say now that i know nothing about him screams 'fem!', but i see his character as transfem because of other things-- once again, parallels. kuai liang, as a character, is very clearly honor-driven. he values, above all, his family. his lost father, his bonds with his brothers. his clan. and on top of that, none of his character reads... as 'man' to me. kuai just doesn't read as someone who identifies with a man to me. by that, i mean that he does not seem... comfortable or confident in his masculinity. and that disconnect, once again, is a DIRECT parallel to trans experiences.

THE FUN STUFF

ok now that i've gotten that out of my system i can tell you about the more fun headcanons i have around her heheh

uses she/he pronouns

smoke gave her a golden scorpion-shaped hair claw and she uses it ALL THE TIME.

she likes to wear eyeliner in everyday life and do fancy eyeliner for battle

he and smoke have bonding time while smoke braids her hair. she very frequently falls asleep during braiding time.

smoke is also her biggest supporter, but hanzo is very frequently fighting for the title.

i will be adding more as i think about it. this is all for today. i hope you enjoyed this post. ok byeeeee

[all-of-her-light]

Ruby and the Unplayed Role

(Warning: Long analysis post.)

In Chapter 115 of Oshi no Ko, as Ruby is preparing to take her turn in the interpersonal acting audition, she reflects on her relationship to acting itself – and describes it as running very deep.

And by "the whole time", she seems to mean the whole time. As Sarina, she "played the role" of a girl who faced her circumstances bravely and bore no grudge against her parents for their neglect, because rebelling against those miserable circumstances would have been futile. Upon her reincarnation, "Ai's daughter" too was a role she played, and after Ai's death, she acted as the bright, innocent, non-grieving idol that she believed Ai wanted her to grow up to be. At this point in the story, we've already seen black-starred Ruby hide her vengeful anger behind a smiling facade, but this monologue suggests broad artificiality in Sarina/Ruby's self-presentation even before her vengeance arc.

Notably, Ruby also wonders here whether Ai's bright persona was an act in the same way that hers was:

This helps set the stage for later story beats like the end of Chapter 134, where Ruby again deepens her insight into Ai by personally relating to her.

And then, as if to drive home the point about her own acting, Ruby's turn in the audition consists of her expressing raw, acute grief over Ai and Gorou's deaths...

...before putting on a bubbly mask and acting like the grief isn't real.

Later on, the scene in Chapter 123 where Ruby spills her guts to Aqua seems to elaborate on the nature of the act that she's been putting on:

Ruby has been burying all of her sadness and anger and frustration, seeking to "smile all the time" in order to be loved. She's been performing a sanitized, idealized version of herself out of fear that no one would love the real her. Just like Ai did. Which, again, gives Ruby a powerful avenue for understanding Ai.

But there's an issue with this analysis. If you look back at Ruby's behavior in the manga's early chapters – before she discovers Gorou's corpse, meets the Crow Girl, becomes vengeful and all that – you'll notice that she doesn't actually express unfailing cheer, optimism, kindness, confidence, or generally Ai-like behavior. She doesn't even seem to be trying, really. She's bright and cheerful sometimes, sure – but other times she's unapologetically not, for understandable human reasons.

For instance, there's that time in Chapter 19 when she begs Miyako to hurry in starting an idol group for her to join, openly expressing insecurity about fitting in with her celebrity peers:

Or that time in Chapter 37 when she approaches Kana to confide in her about her stage fright:

(It's hard to imagine Ai seeking out support from a groupmate like this, at least without them opening up to her first in the same conversation.)

Ruby is also not above being rude or hostile to people, even when it's against her own interests, as can be seen in her bickering with Kana in Volume 2:

And then there's Chapter 23, when Ruby gets on Aqua's case about neglecting family time in favor of LoveNow-related activities:

(This is also one of those things Sarina/Ruby does that takes on a new meaning once you learn about her relationship with her original parents.)

There are more examples of pre-vengeance Ruby expressing various negative emotions to others, but I won't belabor the point. In general, I think perceptions of pre-vengeance Ruby as acting consistently cheerful or positive come largely from exaggerating/simplifying the contrast between her and her gloomy brother, or between her and her "darker" future self. They don't reflect her actual behavior.

Now, speaking of Sarina/Ruby's relationship with her original parents, I think it makes sense that a badly neglected child like Sarina would develop a tendency to avoid behaving in any potentially unpleasant ways around her parents, implicitly hoping that they'll want to spend more time with her that way. I also think it makes sense that she would extend this strategy to other relationships, given the formative role of one's relationship with one's parents – especially in Sarina's case, due to her isolation.

Importantly, though, we don't see Sarina trying to perfectly sanitize herself in her interactions with Gorou. Indeed, they both seem quite comfortable teasing each other (in flashbacks both from earlier chapters and from more recent ones):

The fact that Sarina doesn't walk on eggshells with Gorou suggests that she's relatively secure in her relationship with him, rather than fearing that failure to get along with him flawlessly will drive him away. I think this means Ruby's characterization in the early chapters is compatible with Sarina's later-revealed backstory if we understand Sarina's relationship with Gorou as also having been formative, teaching her that she doesn't need to act perfect to be loved. I also think this interpretation helps elucidate why Gorou means so much to Sarina/Ruby: his robust, reliable love and care for her gave her a level of confidence and security in herself that she didn't have before.

Now, what about Ruby's grief over Ai's death? Don't Chapters 115 and 123 imply that to be the single most prominent feeling that pre-vengeance Ruby was burying beneath her acting? How do the early chapters portray the effect of Ai's death on Ruby? Is that portrayal compatible with 115 and 123 (interpreted the way I did earlier)?

I am again going to argue: not really, no. 115 and 123 have Ruby recall "[acting as if] overcoming my mother's death, becoming a bright and innocent idol" (115) while secretly thinking "it'd be easier if I could just forget about her" (123). They seem to portray Ruby's past coping strategy for Ai's death as avoidant in nature; she tried to avoid letting the tragedy affect her or ideally even thinking about it at all. However, the early chapters portray Ruby's coping strategy for Ai's death as distinctly un-avoidant. Allow me to explain.

Starting off, Chapter 10 shows us Ruby's behavior in the days following Ai's death. We first see her reading social media reactions to Ai's murder and expressing anger and distress at people saying she was asking for it if she had a secret relationship, while Aqua listens silently:

A while later, though, after Ai's funeral – in fact, starting in the very next panel – Ruby and Aqua have the following conversation:

This conversation is echoed in Chapter 12, after the post-prologue timeskip, when Ruby, Miyako, and Aqua talk about Ruby joining the underground idol group:

In both conversations, Ruby doesn't deny her family members' claims about the hardships of idolhood, but she expresses a desire to become an idol anyway, not wanting to let the hardships stop her. After all, Ai sparkled, and Ruby wants to be like her.

(To reiterate, by the way, pre-vengeance Ruby's desire to "be like Ai" does not seem to involve never showing any negativity in her personal life. And it's not even as if Ruby never saw any negativity from Ai to begin with; see e.g. Chapter 4.)

But what does this drive of Ruby's have to do with her grief over Ai's death? After all, Ruby has wanted to be an idol – and to be like Ai – since before she was Ruby. She didn't need Ai to die to want those things. And how would her idol ambitions even psychologically relate to processing her grief?

Well, I think we get a pretty good look at a relation between them later on, starting in Chapter 41. This chapter opens with Ruby talking in her thoughts to "Mama in heaven", telling her about developments in the twins' lives from the past few months (which also serves to fill in and recap for the reader). After the recap, Ruby reassures Ai that she's doing well, and then we get these panels:

Ruby believes that performing at a dome – the elite opportunity that Miyako in Chapter 8 told us was "everyone's fantasy" – was also Ai's fantasy. But Ai's dreams of soaring to maximum fame as an idol were dashed by her murder. And now Ruby has taken it upon herself to fulfill them in Ai's stead, giving her another major reason to pursue idolhood.

We see Ruby visiting Ai's grave again and giving her more updates a couple in-universe months later in Chapter 72. Ruby tells her about the upcoming trip to Miyazaki, Aqua having become more cheerful lately, and then:

All of this implies that Ruby has been visiting Ai's grave and connecting with her memory in this way every few months for who-knows-how-long, and she has no intention of stopping.

This is not the behavior of someone who is trying to avoid giving mental space to the death of a loved one. On the contrary, pre-vengeance Ruby repeatedly confronts herself with the concrete fact of Ai's death and responds to it with mental fight rather than flight. The dark side of the idol world may have killed Ai's body, but it hasn't killed her spirit. Ruby copes with the tragedy of Ai's death by turning it into motivation – to preserve Ai's memory, to take up her mantle, to defy the darkness to ensure that her spirit lives on.

So what should we make of these discrepancies in Ruby's characterization between the earlier and later chapters? Honestly, I'm not completely sure. Maybe there's some way in which all of this makes sense after all. Maybe something got lost in the translation from Japanese to English? Maybe some of Ruby's recollections in Chapters 115 and 123 that we've assessed are meant to apply specifically to her vengeful self, or to the times when she was making public appearances? Maybe Akasaka deliberately wrote some of those recollections to be wrong to show that Ruby's awful present mental state is distorting her memories and sense of self? It seemingly wouldn't be the only case of that happening; Ruby appears to claim in Chapter 122 that the reason she became an idol in the first place was to avenge Ai and Gorou, which we know isn't true (and which Aqua also refuses to believe).

However, I think we should also consider the possibility that Akasaka just changed his mind about how he wanted to write Ruby partway through the manga, and the discrepancies in her characterization are artifacts of that without a good in-story explanation. For instance, maybe Akasaka only nailed down the details of Ruby's role in the Movie arc relatively recently, and the things he wanted to do with her required her to be able to personally relate to Ai in ways that didn't line up with her established characterization. So Akasaka tried to reframe what he'd written before to make Ruby more similar to Ai in certain ways, without complete success.

If this hypothesis is true, then Ruby isn't one fully consistent character throughout the whole manga; we have to distinguish "Old Ruby" and "New Ruby" at a minimum. And that idea disappoints me; Ruby is one of my favorite OnK characters, and inconsistencies of this size in her character progression interfere with my ability to appreciate it as it continues into the future. I also just kinda like Old Ruby better than New Ruby; I think Old Ruby better distinguishes herself from Ai and contrasts her in an interesting way. Old Ruby (pre-vengeance) is a person who knows the feeling of loving and being loved, values living authentically, and largely succeeds at it from day to day, but is nevertheless building her life on a couple of big lies and misunderstandings. (Ai didn't dream of the dome; Ai didn't want her children to remain a secret forever; the Ai who Ruby has dedicated herself to honoring is not the real Ai.) I think a character like that is a valuable addition to a story like OnK, and I'm disappointed at the idea of Old Ruby's arc never getting a proper, non-retconning second half and conclusion.

[yeehawpim]

HI UM i really admire you and your art and i was wondering --

so i really love the way you format your comics, its really straight-forward and lets the reader process every word with ease (which i think adds to the impact of the writing), and that one rue comic with the split colors for the parentheses... how do you do it without making it look so messy?? to bring up another example, the hide-and-seek comic- i love how subtle and genius the call back to hiding behind the door was, it blew my mind... i take a lot of inspiration from the way you format and lay out your comics but for some reason i cant wrap my head around how you do so much with so little (in reality this might just be the result of me wanting to add so many little details for others to find , while being conflicted on keeping it simple, and,,, AGH...) for context : im trying to make a comic about isolation, but i keep filling up the page because i want to add things - when really i know i should be keeping it simple... but other than removing unnecessary details, i want to know what else you do to make your comics so clean and simple yet it rips out the emotions from your heart and has you stare at it as it beats. like... i want that type of impact!! i want to affect others on such an intense level!! i want to induce emotions!!! but how?

(sorry this was long, HAHAHA i just want to drive my point home- again with the 'wanting to add a lot of stuff to prove a point' thing but i digress)

ok first of all that is a huge compliment and it means v much to me, thank you 😭🙏❤️❤️

tbh for me the answer of keeping things uncluttered is paying attention to spacing and eye direction. Spacing depends on timing, if you want an action to happen slowly for instance you can make the space between panels longer, or take more panels for someone to complete an action. There's tricks for directing your eye, if you ever read anyth about focal points (eg biggest contrast, triangular shapes pointing towards what's important), but really with comics I keep in mind you're reading left to right and top to bottom.

The ruehob comic is actually simpler than you think 😅 I already knew which text had to be on the left and right with august's text post. And after that the "lanes" were so narrow there weren't a lot of complicated things I could do, just make sure you still read left to right and saunter vaguely downwards.

when you talk about putting little details, that doesn't necessarily have to distract people. Like I honestly applaud you having the drive to do detailing. You just have to make sure your compositions allow for it. Like if you think about ghibli backgrounds, they're elaborate and beautiful af.

For smth about isolation, my first thought was that you can draw a person in a setting alone among a bunch of objects, for instance. If you keep the person small but surround them with a bunch of detailed objects, it could feel very lonely. Just make sure the person still stands out b/c they're what's important, so for example the background stuff is a less saturated colour, or the person is the least detailed thing on the page. I think that's the main thing, you just have to make sure the things important to what you're saying stand out. Clarity is rlly half the battle when I'm laying things out haha

In school our teacher called this "killing your babies" because it sucks when you work hard on a cool drawing and it just doesn't work out😂This also still happens to me, it's actually partly why I keep things simple so I can work fast and throw out less

Here is a timestamp from supereyepatchwolf's video about Chainsaw Man, which has some of the coolest fuckin layouts

He's got other stuff that talks about manga and how eye direction can work and what cool stuff has been done. Off the top of my head his vid about one piece and his vid about gantz have helped me understand how to cause Emotions. Also I think he has one about Junji Ito that specifically talks about how details can make you scared, if you're into that 😂

hope this helps!

[queerholmcs]

okay. you know the drill. i do need to elaborate on some of these, moreso than is allowed within the character limit of the polls; see the read more at the bottom of the post. yes it gets a bit long, i'm sorry, i'm not normal about this show, we've established this.

stop making me watch this. this is indecent. this is not suitable for public television. please get a room.

they all know sherlock and they know that he's insane. where they go wrong is in assuming that john must then be the sane one of the pair of them. (save mycroft; see number five.)

'here, use mine' as the obvious opener. but then we also get the bit where john returns to baker street and sherlock's like 'oh haha yeah i called you across town to ask you to send a text' and john gives him the most exasperated, reluctant look before giving sherlock his phone (heart). because at this point, there is no other option. (i won't say more. essays have already been written on the matter.)

the way a point is made to demonstrate sherlock's deliberate ignorance of molly's attempts at flirting. and john's painfully awkward attempts to hit on mycroft's PA. contrasted with their every moment on screen together. 'we can't giggle, it's a crime scene!' SHUT UP.

where do i start with this one. (mycroft is my favourite. i'm not sorry.) he puts so much effort into this stupid little trick and john completely holds his own against him. he's also the only one to see that john is also not sane and that as much as sherlock is going to be some sort of influence on john, john is going to do the same to sherlock. 'might we expect a happy announcement by the end of the week?' → 'i can see from your left hand that's not going to happen' → 'time to choose a side.' hello??????? thank goodness mark gatiss mycroft holmes is here to spell things out for us.

it all starts when john says 'i looked you up on the internet last night' (weird move, it has to be said) and then doesn't immediately praise sherlock's blog. but then he also doesn't tell sherlock to piss off for deducing him and airing his family secrets like that? and from that point on, every remotely clever thing sherlock says, he looks to john for his response. ('do you know you do that out loud?' 'sorry, i'll shut up.' 'no, it's... fine.') i maintain that he only points out anderson and donovan's little affair to show off for john.

look. do i even have to say anything here. we establish that everyone sherlock interacts with thinks he's gay. we establish that john and sherlock are both unattached and that girlfriends definitely aren't sherlock's area and that it's fine to have a boyfriend, by the way, john thinks this is fine, just if you wondered, he's also unattached and it's fine if girls aren't your cup of tea and have we mentioned they're both unattached? and they have what is about the most intimate eye contact ever for far too long while doing so.

chance or chess? play the game. engage with the story. read between the lines. is it a bluff? or a double bluff? or a triple bluff? play the game. (mention the game one more time. i dare you. shut up.)

this is in both the physical and the metaphorical sense. they have no concept of personal space, either of them, and it is a bit awkward for everyone else in the room who's forced to watch them make bedroom eyes at each other. on the metaphorical side—john is the first to say 'actually, it's not obvious, so get on with it and share your thoughts with the class, would you?' and '...bit not good, yeah. maybe be slightly more sensitive to people's emotions, there.' and 'you're so full of it. you absolutely do guess, admit it, i can tell when you're lying.' lestrade watches them interact for all of ten minutes and then declares that, though he's known sherlock for five years, he still doesn't know sherlock nearly as well as john does.

who is he? well, he's with sherlock. it's sherlock holmes and doctor watson. they're a set. (do not separate!) they go together, they are defined by each other, they balance each other far too perfectly to ever be removed again. welcome to The Dynamic. you'll never know peace again. (or is that just me?)

[hamartia-grander]

Please I’m begging you on my hands and knees please elaborate on Luis and Ada being foils

I am SO happy that someone finally asked me to talk about this I know I asked you to ask me I love you so much thank you because once I had this realisation it made me love both of their characters - and the re4 remake as a whole - so much more than I already did.

Explanation below the cut:

So first lemme define what a foil is when it comes to characters, not because I think you personally don't know Wilfred but in case anyone's reading this and wondering why I'm calling these characters aluminum wrap. I'm not, I promise it's a real narrative device. A literary foil is "a character whose purpose is to accentuate or draw attention to the qualities of another character". Essentially, a foil requires two characters to be identified, and they exist to contrast, reflect, or exist in an opposite way to their co-foil so as to highlight the other character's weaknesses, strengths, and personality. However, they are often also very similar in technical ways, and thus their behaviours and/or quirks that set them apart show the audience how some things just work for one character but not the other. Think of it like an inverted image, how some details look better in negative space but worse in positive space. This is true of narrative foils. In the remake of Resident Evil 4, Luis is written as a literary foil to Ada.

We first meet Ada in re2, and she's introduced as this mysterious woman who claims to be of the FBI but reveals no further details about herself. We as the audience/player behind Leon have to trust her to get to where we need to go, and she proves herself worthy of that trust. Leon doesn't question why she's helping him, because he believes that she really is FBI and that helping people is her job. He doesn't know her goal, but he's willing to help, and receive her help. However, at the end of re2, we find out that she's actually not FBI, that she was using that as a cover and she is actually a mercenary and spy, whose goal was to acquire a sample of the harmful G-virus and bring it to Wesker who was obviously going to use it for nefarious purposes, and she knew that. Leon (the audience) doesn't know this until the very end.

We first meet Luis in re4. Now in the original, he barely had any substance as a character, and his personality was simply an expression of cultural stereotypes and misogyny, masked under "charming flamboyance". In the remake, however, Luis does have substance as a character. We not only get more out of his personality, but we now know his goals, his flaws, and his interests. And just like Ada, he is a mysterious character with a dark past that led to him making bad decisions and aligning himself with bad people. However, the difference between them and the beginning of what sets them up as foils is that Leon (the audience) finds all of this out about Luis almost immediately. Unlike with Ada, where Leon took her word and went the entire game believing what she said, Leon was sceptical of Luis and had Hunnigan look him up - and sure enough, Hunnigan was able to find all sorts of information on Luis, despite Luis actively trying to make that information as well as himself untraceable. So rather than having the audience trust Luis outright like we did with Ada, and then having that trust threatened when we learn who she is later one, we learn who Luis is immediately, setting him up as someone who we should be sceptical of.

With Ada, by giving us a character to trust and see good in for an entire game only to end it with the reveal that she's actually working for the "bad guys", we are led to think that all of her actions up to that point were fake, that she was simply putting on a cover of kindness and care for Leon. And of course that's the wrong idea, as she clearly does care for him, which we see when he stupidly dares her to shoot him. And she refuses. IDK, even if I loved Leon, I would've shot him then just because he was being a cocky shit about it, but Ada is certainly stronger than me. Ada's actions prior to us finding out who she really is now are tainted, and we're led to see her actions as that of a facade. Adversely, with Luis, by giving us a character who's bad past we know outright and repeatedly meet up with throughout the game, we are led to see all of his actions from that point on as acts of redemption.

We first see Ada as a Good character and therefore all of her actions are that of someone just being herself, but with Luis we first see him as a Bad character, and therefore all of his actions are that of someone who must redeem himself. However, they are both very similar characters; but in the way the stories introduced them to us, and in the order they revealed information about these two characters to us, the narrative influences how we see these characters. Imagine if we had gone the entire game not knowing Luis used to work for Umbrella, thinking he was just Some Guy who happened to live in this village. Leon most definitely would have trusted him much quicker. But that 'Umbrella' background being the first real thing we learn about Luis means that his dark past will always be on our minds when we see him next. And it makes sense to us, given the events of re2, that Leon wouldn't trust Luis, even if the audience does. (Same with Ada; the audience could be distrusting of her, but narratively we see why Leon would've trusted her implicitly in re2.)

Both Luis and Ada are mysterious characters whose real moral alignment we are uncertain of for almost the entirety of their games. Both Luis and Ada tell lies to protect themselves or their cover. Both Luis and Ada withhold information they either feel too ashamed to admit or can't admit, again, to protect their cover. Both Luis and Ada - specifically in re4r - have a recurring theme of change. They both speak to Leon about people changing. They both show their own relationships with change. And yet, their endings are vastly different.

Where Ada withholds information and succeeds, Luis withholds information and is found out by Hunnigan. Where Ada can double cross Wesker and escape, Luis attempts to double cross Los Iluminados and gets found out and captured, which is how we meet him. Where Ada gains Leon's trust almost immediately and loses it at the end, Luis doesn't gain Leon's trust until the very end. Even when Leon shows situational trust in him - accepting Luis's help in the safe house, agreeing to partner with him to get the suppressant for the plaga for Ashley - he still doesn't trust Luis's motives, his goal, or even his character. Leon constantly questions Luis throughout their interactions, unwilling to believe this man would help them unless he had some ulterior motive.

That brings back up the theme of change. Luis asks Leon if he thinks people can change, and then Leon asks Ada if she has changed. Luis's death scene could very well be the first time - or at least, the first significant time - Leon has been forced to confront the idea that people change. His confusion regarding Luis's real motives the entire time as a result of learning that Luis used to work for Umbrella seems to be proof enough to Luis that Leon does not see him as someone who has changed, even though Luis desperately wants that to be seen. Adversely, Leon desperately wants to see some proof that Ada has changed, that she's not using him. He's learned from Luis, but he's stumped by his own personal lack of change. Leon doesn't understand how to identify that kind of change in someone; or at the very least, he doesn't know how to voice it. Ada replies "what do you think?", and this could be passed off as her usual way of avoiding the truth, but really she's asking him "Are you even able to know if I've changed? Did you ever pay attention to who I am, or did you lose sight of my character as soon as you learned something bad about me? Have I changed, or has your perception of me changed? Can I change to you if you never really knew me at all? What do you think about how people change?" (And I love this about her.) Luis is Ada's foil because the way Leon perceived Luis's change was so abrupt that now Leon is looking for change in everyone, even himself. And where Luis doubts himself and has to ask Leon - as he's dying - if Leon thinks people can change, Ada is sure of it.

And of course I have to add some serennedy in this. As @thebrokengate kindly mentioned, the dynamics between Leon and Ada, and Leon and Luis, are opposite. Leon trusts Ada and then that trust is broken; Leon doesn't trust Luis, and then that trust is earned, but too late. Luis isn't just a foil for Ada, but his relationship with Leon is also a foil for Ada's. We see where Luis fails in ways that Ada succeeded when it comes to their characters; but when it comes to their relationship with Leon, Luis succeeds where Ada failed. And it makes his death even more devastating as he had the potential to go further with Leon than Ada could, but he was killed, leaving Leon alone regardless. In both instances, Leon lost someone who affected him personally; but where one was lost with trust broken, the other was lost with their life taken.

Again, by giving us Ada's personality first and her background last, we soften up to her as a character before having to question everything we thought we knew about her, as who we find out she is contradicts what her actions have been. However, by giving us Luis's background first and his personality last, we start out sceptical of him, and when his actions contradict what we found out about who he is, we forgive him. I'll also take this opportunity to point out the misogyny in this fandom, as many fans still dislike Ada or believe her to be a bad person, when they love Luis. in many ways, they are the same character. We were just given details about them in a different order that influenced how we perceive their actions.

[tyrantisterror]

A Hundred Some New ATOM Kaiju Pt. 3

In this part of the ATOM unfinished kaiju showcase, we're going to focus on a bunch of very similar designs that are all for the same arc: Tyrantor in Love.

In this story, we followed Tyrantor, the son of Tyrantis. It's the 1970's, and the young tyrannopyrodon is finally fully grown and experiencing the mating instinct for the first time. So he descends into the Yamaneon tunnel system in hopes of finding others of his kind.

Early in his journey he runs into two males of his species - Sharp Eye and Blue Brute (the story takes place away from human eyes, so most of the kaiju in it would have names based on what Tyrantor finds notable about them rather than the melodramatic portmanteau names that are standard for ATOM). In sharp contrast to the rivalry that formed between Tyrantis and The Terror, the three young male tyrannopyrodons quickly become friends and decide to explore the tunnels together, figuring it's safer and also will make their scent stronger and easier for others of their kind to follow.

The trio eventually find an enormous cavern filled with other retrosaur kaiju, including more tyrannopyrodons. There is a couple of older adults - Black Queen and Gold King - who have traveled here to shepherd their eldest daughter, Pale Gaze, who like Tyrantor has just reached maturity. They also have a younger son, Sparky, who's pubescent but not quite fully grown, and an adolescent daughter, Small Crown, who is by far the most imperious of the tyrannopyrodons despite her small size and young age.

(Yeah, Black Queen and Gold King lucked out spectacularly as kaiju go, as having this many viable young, all within a few years of each other, is pretty improbable given how kaiju reproduction goes.)

A final four tyrannopyrodons arrive, all female. Largest of them all is Big Quiet, who is uncharacteristically shy and docile for a female of their species. Then there's the punk trio: Gore queen, the de-facto leader, Murder Maw, the most brutal of the three and the one who's been in so many battles that she actually bears scars (again, a rare thing for kaiju given their biology), and finally Bright Hide, who is so named because she has brightly colored scales that are more often sported by male tyrannopyrodons (females tend to have duller color schemes), and who has a dynamic, energetic disposition to match her masculine-by-her-species'-standards color scheme.

All of the tyrannopyrodons in this are *loosely* inspired by various real world tyrannosaurs. To elaborate:

Sharp Eye = Bistahieversor Blue Brute = Daspletosaurus (one of the more robustly built tyrannosaurs) Black Queen = Tarbosaurus (a large Asian tyrannosaur) Gold King = Zhuchengtyrannus (another large Asian tyrannosaur) Pale Gaze = Gorgosaurus (gorgon, gaze, eh?) Sparky = Albertosaurus Small Crown = the now-almost-definitely-proven-to-just-be-a-juvenile-t.rex Nanotyrannus Big Quiet = Nanuqsaurus (polar bear lizard, big pale tyrannopyrodon) Gore Queen = Lythronax (the Gore King) Murder Maw = Teratophoneus (the Murder Monster) Bright Hide, who would at one point be called a "dynamic terror" in the story = Dynamoterror

[subzeroparade]

Im playing my first NG+ and it’s striking to me how bustling and alive Yarnam is while the sun is still up. The people scoff at you, outsider. The residents of Cathedral Ward are grateful, so grateful, to the church. You’re known as a hunter, smelled through the grime of beasts and blood and incense. You talk to someone; they respond with sanity. It’s so striking, to be part of a breathing world again, after the loneliness of the endgame after everyone is either gone or lost their minds, and the silence oppresses with its emptiness. Anyways. I can’t stop thinking about that relationship between Yarnam, its people, its powers, and you — the hunter. One of many. A slice of society. So many details stick out: the hunter chief emblem shows that hunting is an old tradition. Gilbert mentions that Odeon Tomb is in a more colorful part of town, and while you’re there, you can see how it’s more charred, from the Old Yarnam fire. A new lore video on the archeology of Yarnam analyzed the previous religion of the city, on its focus on motherhood. How base, and material, and bodily, this whole idea of divine ascension is. I saw a post on how Yarnam was possibly attempted to be evacuated— luggage and bottles of blood left everywhere, as if in a hurry. How few houses are occupied, how few people there are left— and despite Eileen’s assertion, there are a few left. Who here is the list one?

I so want to write about this — the relationship of the city to all of what’s going on. The perspective of a resident on these new foreign hunters. The betrayal of the church, sequestering itself beyond the Great Bridge. The way that this is just another hunt, we know how to do this. But it isn’t. We all know it isn’t.

I don’t know if I will espouse on this, but I love love love how you get into this in your Cainhurst execution fic. The tension between plebeian living and aspirational authority — its fascinating, especially in a place as fucked as this city.

Anyways. It’s 3 am. I think I’ve put my thoughts on a page. I hope to maybe elaborate of them further. But I wanted someone else to see them too. Thank you, for reading.

I wanted to actually share and respond to this because you’ve hit on some juicy stuff that I absolutely agree with. I’d never thought about the passage between endgame Yharnam and dusk Yharnam - which seems appropriately cyclical, if you think about it - but the difference, as you said, is stark. Even then, dusk Yharnam is still bathed in this sepia hue. It’s bleak, and grimy, and the air is full of smoke and soot and the smell of singed fur and gunpowder; the cries of beasts and the sounds of men having their last mindless hurrah before they too succumb. It’s “bustling”, but it’s still hellish, and grim. One of the reasons I love writing pre-Church and Church heyday is because if you rewind enough, you may, with a bit of effort, picture Yharnam as something other than depressingly dried-blood brown - green, even, with new marble, and polished white and yellow cobblestones. Glass and iron and slate and avenues lined with flowering trees, and the sounds of market and the clatter of carriages and all these things that become the drone of a lively city rather than the prelude to something coming to kill you. Surely there were bleaker sides of Yharnam, even in its heyday, as with most major cities - but the threats are different. Night is different. The smells are different. Everything is a little less stained, in all possible senses of the word. It’s also such a fascinating contrast to wonder how long people sat idly with the Church’s assurances before they decided “okay, that’s it, we leave tonight.” It seems like there might have been an event or two that triggered an exodus, or attempted flight by the cityfolk - and most didn’t make it out, as you rightly note, based on the scattered remnants of objects clearly intended for travel. It’s interesting to mull over what event(s) might have triggered that tipping point, for the people to finally ignore the Church and its Hunters’ calls to calmly lock their doors, and instead try their luck on the road. It’s certainly good fodder for a fic.   

Thanks for the kind words about my work - I’ll deal with some late-Church timeline soon enough, especially in two upcoming fics. But your point about the “perspective of a resident on new foreign hunters [and] the betrayal of the Church” is a really nice prompt, and you should write about it!

Hope you don’t mind me sharing your 3am rant lmao but I appreciated it. I don’t have any worthwhile WIPs to share atm, so please accept this Bloodborne-specific corner of a collaborative whiteboard session from a while ago (full disclosure idk why the elden ring crab is there but enjoy).  

[alexandriaisburning]

043: P. N. 03

Part of the ill fated Capcom Five, and the only one of the four not to be ported elsewhere, PN03 is anachronistic, both in design and structure. A third person arcade shooter with limited continues, unforgiving difficulty and tank controls, it gives a very bad first impression. The tank controls are the most immediate sticking point, with limited movement that contrasts with protagonist Vanessa’s fluid dance like animations. With twin stick aiming becoming the norm for shooters in the Gamecube generation, PN 03’s automatic lock and inability to move while shooting became common complaints. In short, it’s a shooter that doesn’t reward aiming.

PN03’s emphasis is instead on positioning and rhythm, with the developers intentionally aiming for a more defensive style of play. Attacks automatically lock onto enemies, rotating to you to face them if you’re in range, bullets have noticeable travel time, requiring you to time your barrages and giving you time to react to enemy fire. Vanessa launches her basic shots from her palm, with special attacks available but inputting specific directional combinations on the dpad. Vanessa can’t strafe, instead turning as you rotate the stick,with back on the stick making her twirl backward, quick turns snapping to her sides and back, and the shoulder buttons making her dodge left and right, which can be combined with crouching to roll under obstacles and duck into cover. Combat becomes a dance of weaving these options in and out of enemy attack patterns, mashing out attacks during your opportunities, and positioning yourself to find angles in between cover. 

Taken in context alongside the development of Resident Evil 4, the system makes a lot of sense. Both PN03 and RE4 attempt parallel evolutions of the Resident Evil’s tank controls for a more action oriented approach, but RE4 pulls in the camera for a more intimate view, emphasizing aiming and diverse reactions to ratchet up the tension. With PN03’s faster pace, larger spaces and flashier movements, it's easy to see how these tank controls might initially seem out of place.

PN03 has its own distinct rhythm, however. Despite the emphasis on long range engagement, its beats are more akin to a brawler, where you control a situation by getting a barrage of hits in, then breaking it up with movement or special attacks to keep away other enemies. Energy Drives, Vanessa’s special attacks, range from single target obliterating attacks, to room clearing homing or ricochet shots, and more importantly, give you full invulnerability during their elaborate animations. Managing the meter required for these attacks, and choosing which groups of enemies to target with them becomes a major part of creating a route through a stage, especially if you attempt to engage with PN03’s scoring system. 

That brings us to PN03’s biggest flaw--being on the Gamecube. Of the four games in the Capcom Five that actually completed development, PN03 feels the most restricted by the platform, with the Gamecube controller’s layout constantly getting in the way. The aforementioned Energy Drives are a huge component of the combat, but you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise, since they’re input on the miniscule dpad of the Gamecube controller, which was so small and imprecise it was frequently used only for auxiliary functions. The motions for these specials are short--only two or three directional inputs--the dpad is imprecise enough that even inputting these in battle can result in a miss and end with you standing still and taking a hit. A major frustration in a game with enemies with one shot attacks and limited checkpoints and continues. There’s some satisfaction to inputting the commands just in time, but for consistency it probably would have been better to assign them to single directions or the C-stick.

The problem is exasperated by the default difficulty of the game, where enemies take a lot of hits, making your basic shots feel weak. Ironically it leads to a lot of button mashing--something the devs have said they wanted to disincentivize--since shots can be fired faster by mashing. Alongside the limited initial continues, learning curve of the movement, instant kills, and input frustrations it gives PN03 a miserable introduction. 

Thankfully PN03's easy mode provides a gentler intro. Every frustration of the normal game is still there, but with enemy damage and health reduced you're given more leeway to make mistakes. The lowered enemy health also helps to speed up the pace, allowing you to move through stages faster and spend less time mashing. It's especially helpful before you upgrade your suit's damage, something that's hard to do efficiently on your first playthrough, since it requires you to play well enough to take advantage of the game's scoring system.

Take the time to learn the intricacies of the movement and the scoring system and there’s a compelling rhythm to it. It’s easy to see the origins of Resident Evil 4’s Mercenaries mode in it. The same focus on controlling crowds using invincible moves, using the environment, and creating a route through enemies to keep a combo going is here. But here precision play isn’t about picking shots, but picking moments. With good timing you can slip through fatal missile barrages, angle your shots to catch enemies approaching around a corner, and launch an Energy Barrage that’ll clear a room and rack up the combo counter.

Even with the low variety of enemies and environments, the basic loop of chaining together kills and aiming for high scores is strong enough to keep up the momentum through PN03’s short runtime. It’s clear this was a project with a tight deadline and budget, showing all the signs of a work whose ambitions were larger than the resources allocated. Director Shinji Mikami has even been on record stating that Vanessa was originally intended to use guns, but they couldn’t get the shooting animations working in time.

What’s left of PN03 is a skeleton of a game. It evokes so many of the future ideas that would be built upon it, and provides a strong structure for them, but its actual form is barren and thin. With a weak first impression and an audience more than ready to dismiss it for its deviation from third person shooter standards, PN03 was never really given a proper shot. In recent years there’s been a retroactive appreciation for it, but its lack of commercial success and subsequent rereleases have left it as more of a curio in the Gamecube’s library. Its lean construction makes it one of the easier titles to emulate, and with Gamecube emulation being the most advanced of its generation, it’s easy to get up and running and give it a shot--without the awkwardness of the Gamecube controls holding it back. 

[rabbiitte]

I don't understand Mew haters, I really, honestly don't. 😭

I get you Anon. I felt the same way a couple of weeks ago, but I already rationalized it. Actually, I think it makes sense that Mew is one of the most hated characters on the show (next to Boston and Top). Allow me to elaborate, I've identified three main reasons contributing to Mew's widespread unpopularity:

1 | Mew is a threat to Sand and Ray's relationship.

As we know, most people who watch Only Friends do so for their ships (in fact, this is something that the Thai industry encourages a lot in BLs). First and Khao are a very adored duo, this is related to the fact that they have more trajectory than the rest of the actors (many of whom are relatively new faces to those not deeply immersed in the Thai BL scene). As someone pointed out here on tumblr, people want a different story with the same ending, in which First a Khao (in their respective roles) stay together. Well, In this context, Mew emerges as a potential disruptor to the envisioned blissful resolution. A word from Mew is enough to jeopardize everything the Ray and Sand built.

2 | Mew isn't a transparent character.

Mew's enigmatic nature adds to the discomfort expressed by viewers throughout the series. Since the beginning of the series I've seen a lot of comments from people saying they feel uncomfortable because they can't read Mew. Basically, that which is unknown is uncomfortable. Mew is what I call "a character to interpret." In contrast to counterparts who lay bare their motivations, Mew shrouds his intentions in secrecy. He acts and, based on the clues offered by the narrative/visual storytelling, you must interpret his actions. The receptive audience, attuned to these cues, can discern subtle hints, such as those suggesting Mew's romantic sentiments for Top. Conversely, those less receptive might try to make Mew fit into the narrative they themselves have created, proposing interpretations grounded in personal perspectives and experiences. That's why there are so many people who say they dislike Mew because they know someone similar in real life. In essence, those who overlook narrative cues may attempt to fit Mew into personalized narratives, offering alternative explanations, such as positing that Mew's actions regarding Top are not fueled by love but by a desire for revenge due to a perceived superiority complex, divorcing it from heartbreak.

I think most people try to fit Mew into a negative narrative because he doesn't generate too much empathy. Typically, beloved characters resonate deeply with the audience, fostering a sense of identification and emotional connection (like Ray, Sand, or Nick). However, Mew's development has gone the opposite route to the route that would elicit empathy. Yes, we support Mew's revenge but, in real life, to get revenge on an ex is an uncommon choice. Despite outward declarations of support for revenge, societal moral education remains influential. In Mew's case, the chances of feeling empathy for him in his revenge era are constrained and contingent on specific conditions:

the revenge must be inventive yet not excessive, calculated without veering into obsession, causing harm without irreparable ruin. Mew is expected to mirror Boston but without becoming someone worse.

As I say, the possibility of the audience feeling an emotional connection to Mew at this point in the story, if they haven't already, is quite unlikely and diminished.

3 | Mew is the main character.

Undoubtedly, all the characters in Only Friends are protagonists but Mew is the main character. Don't know what the difference is between a main character and a protagonist? Don't worry!

Main Character: This term refers to the central character in terms of importance or relevance to the story. The development of the story revolves around this character, and often, his actions or changes are fundamental to the plot. He may or may not face the main conflicts, but their presence has a significant impact on the narrative.

Protagonist: This term refers to the character who drives the plot, the one who faces the central conflicts. The protagonist is not always the main character, although in many stories they are. The story's perspective is often presented from the protagonist's point of view.

In short, the main character is central in importance, while the protagonist is central in action, facing the crucial challenges of the story. Often these two roles overlap, but may be different in some stories.

In this case, Mew shapes the story's development and the protagonists' development, without him we wouldn't have any story (just think about it) because he's the center of the story. One of the side effects of this is increased screen time, something that people seem to be annoyed at (especially those who initially thought First and Khao were the main characters). I don't know what the order of publication of the promotional images was (although the most renowned actors always appear first, as in the case of the intro), but Mew occupies a central place in the official poster and takes the lead role in the trailer (so I don't know where that idea really came from). From the beginning, it was clear that Mew would assume a central role in the story. Do you see what I mean about how people don't get the clues that the narrative offers (the visual narrative is created even before the broadcast of a visual material, in promotional images)?

Although, even without any preconceived ideas, Book is a relatively new actor and some find it controversial to cast lesser-known actors in major roles.

[eisforeidolon]

I always see this phenomenon. Do you also find it strange that mentality also trickles down to the actor? Jensen gets treated the same way. Which to me brilliantly highlights how stans are unable to disengage from media and get back to reality. Jensen isn’t actually Dean. He’s not supposed to be dying for Jared. He’s not supposed to be catering to Misha. SPN actually isn’t real life…. To your point, the Misha/Cas stans are actually losing the small territory they thought they owned. There’s so much actual representation in media now that their wails and whines don’t carry any weight (not that they carried much to begin with) I’ve seen people outside of SPN fandom rail on destiel for being total bait and not even good bait.

@holding-out-for-hea

Addressing this in a new post because I go on a bit (as per usual).

I have always found fans who treat actors like they're fictional characters rather disturbing. Whether we're talking in the sense of seeing them as actually being their characters (it's a job, ffs) or in the sense of thinking the RPF fans write must be trufax (you don't know these guys, ffs). Or both! It is an indicator of someone who has problems separating fiction and reality and strikes me as just creepily dehumanizing at its core. To be clear, I'm not talking about fans who are genuinely joking around, but I feel like sometimes the line can get so easily blurred between joking and “joking” I personally prefer to avoid even that for the most part.

As to the latter, yeah, that's why I've always scoffed at the assertion SPN's legacy was going to ultimately be heller positive in any significant way.

The first problem is that to believe D/C was ever a thing (or going to be a thing) in the canon pretty fundamentally required a deep dive into the fandom for the ship. Even if you wanted to, it's a lot harder to take meta whose underlying thesis is predicated on the existence of totally real signposts about the obviously intended ending of the show seriously when the ending of the show has aired and was so hilariously Not That. It's a lot harder to fully immerse yourself in an echo chamber of true belief when there's no active and prolific new reinterpretation content to be surrounded by on a weekly basis. It's a lot easier to see how cynically bait-y and baseless Misha's statements about the canon and Castiel's final scene were, given the nothingburger that's actually there. At the heart of it, so much of the necessary credulity relies on there being an active community to bolster it with years of sunk cost investment and ready-made nonsensically elaborate conspiracies to explain why it was totally going to happen but didn't.

The second problem is the hellers remain hung up on insisting D/C was some kind of uniquely important cause that NEEDED to be canon because it was fundamentally more important than not only SPN's actual premise on the strength of platonic love, but better representation than any other show's potential LGBT+ romances … because reasons. Aside from the usual arguments why that's absurd, i.e. it's just their personal obsession speaking and they constantly insist their ship is "proved" through toxic stereotypes which actually underlines the opposite of what they intend? They have also really showed their asses by vocally and obnoxiously crying it's totally unfair and doesn't measure up to what SPN could totes have done if they weren't cowards when other media canonizes popular ships like with Good 0mens. As you say, the more time that passes the more common it's going to be to have genuine, well-written LGBT+ love stories incorporated into new canons to be contrasted against D/C fandom's 'two dudes who were never each other's first priority, often treated each other like shit, and explicitly stated their feelings were familial … but looked at each other + obvious jokes = the greatest love story (n)ever told and the writers owed me!'. Even to someone completely unfamiliar with SPN and therefore unaware they entirely queerbaited themselves despite the show's content? The longer ago the show ended the more irrelevant and unimportant to good representation the ship not being canonized becomes, when it wasn't particularly relevant to begin with. Sure they got some sympathy from the unaware about That Scene followed by an angel-free final two episodes (though a lot of the buzz was just memeing the scnee because it was That Cringe even sans context), but now? Why not go watch something else that actually has representation instead of whining about a show from 2005 that ended in 2020, after all? It's old news, if you hated it that much there's newer better LGBT+ content out there being made every day!

So yeah, not only is there no there there, especially in comparison to any real love story? But the most obnoxious shippers continuing to loudly make genuine real life issues and other canons' legitimate LGBT+ representation about their bestest realest most totally canonest ship ever D/C that they were also totally cheated out of? It can only become even more obviously ludicrous and self-serving - and it was pretty blatant to anyone with a modicum of discernment and familiarity with shipper behavior to begin with.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

Hot take but I actually don't like Isami's "hot-blooded super robot protag" makeover in the finale. (Elaboration below)

For one, I think his character design is now way less charming because 'Hero Isami' kinda just slapped generic protagonist design traits together and called it a day (and i know this is just personal taste, so no shade to those who prefer his new look). Also, while I like the symbolic reason for him looking like a super robot protagonist when he decides to fight back against the remaining Death Drives/embrace the kind of narrative he's in, I'm not super enthused by how they've executed it? I don't feel like he's really embraced it so much as 'had to embrace it', like how he kinda had to go along with the rest of the story thus far. His new look is very much a 'super robot protag' look imo, but I personally think the transistion from him running away to embracing the 'super robot protag' label is a little superficial in terms of the character's emotional development.

We're told that Isami accepts Bravern, and we do see them get closer, but we don't actually get any meaningful depth about Isami's definition of heroism prior to Bravern—we understand Smith's idea and drive to be a hero, we understand Lulu's motivations, but we don't really get that for Isami. The finale gave us "I never wanted to be a hero" to contrast with Smith's "I've always wanted to be a hero", but we don't really get why Isami wasn't interested, nor what he thought a hero was before Bravern. I know they wanted to set up a situation where Isami is inspired to become a hero because of Bravern, but the slightly ham-fisted way they say Isami trusts Bravern/is inspired by him etc didn't feel very compelling to me because they focused on Smith's character in the first 8 episodes and Isami's character didn't get that exploration.

For the impact of Isami finally embracing being a 'super robot hero' in the finale, we should see a change in either his understanding of heroism itself, or his understanding of himself in relation to the concept of heroism. I mean, i guess his talk with Smith kinda touches on it, but without exploration of how he was before Bravern re: heroism, the impact of him choosing to embody the typical 'super robot hero' approach (shown by literally changing his character design to fit the vibe) falls a bit flat for me.

And like! The idea that Isami needed to actively embrace the super robot story he found himself in to get his happy ending is a really neat one! He's been steamrolled into it for pretty much the entire show, so him seizing control over his story is inspiring—and I think a little more clarity on what heroism means/meant to Isami would elevate the character writing. Right now he's kinda just this guy who gets bullied by the story, and tbh the change between his despair + begging for his life to taking up the hero mantle willingly in the finale feels kinda like he's reacting in whatever way the plot needed him to. In general there were times where I felt Isami's reactions seemed abrupt for what was established between him and other chracters; it's not a huge deal, but it did stick out to me.

(As much as I loved the the love confession scene in ep 11, I was confused at Isami's emotional intimacy with Bravern; not because I don't ship it, but because Isami seemed quite bothered by Bravern's overeagerness before this point. They grew closer after ep 9, but the intimacy at the beach wasn't convincing on Isami's side for me because there was barely build-up. In general, Isami's acceptance/buy-in to Bravern's definition of heroism was mostly glossed over imo.)

Don't get me wrong, it's still a very fun show! I enjoyed the wild homoerotic ride and most of the humor (LOVED the little meta jokes), and the story's themes are really compelling in theory. Bang Brave and unleash your courage in a stylish explosion! I just wish they gave us a little more time to sit in Isami's head.

[veliseraptor]

Hard and soft headcanons for the three years in Yi City?

returning to these since I don't have further spicy asks in my inbox

hard headcanon: since @silvysartfulness just reminded me of this and it's something I also have very strong feelings about, though I think it actually came up on the xue yang version of this meme from the xue yang perspective, but. xue yang and a-qing! had if not an easy relationship than at least a comfortable one. like, I can imagine xue yang still making a-qing nervous and/or suspicious at times, but I just feel like there was a relationship there that wasn't just straight up "I knew he was bad all along and was suspicious the whole time!" for three years running.

I think they bonded over understanding each other better in some ways than xiao xingchen could understand either of them. they have the same background in terms of growing up on their own, turning to criminality to survive (though a-qing just sticks with theft, xue yang went ahead and graduated to murder at some point), mistrustful of others, a little cynical about the world in general and more practical than idealistic. there's differences, to be sure, but I think a lot about the ways in which they could have a relationship built on foundations of that overlap, in contrast to their respective relationships with xiao xingchen, who is a very foreign kind of person to their historical experience, and also hopelessly impractical.

soft headcanon: I have a range of headcanons for how far the relationship between xue yang and xiao xingchen went in terms of the "did they have sex" question, and there's something tasty about the versions where they don't, where there's dancing around flirting and maybe some kisses but everything implodes before anybody actually says anything or it moves toward something more than half a joke. but generally speaking I headcanon them as having hooked up at some point and I have gone on record as saying that I like when it's xiao xingchen who makes the first move.

I just think about xue yang out here playing it safe and careful and not wanting to give anything away and meanwhile xiao xingchen is daydreaming wistfully (and hornily) about his friend and probably angsting about how he doesn't want to ruin their friendship, he's going to leave soon anyway, I shouldn't make advances that will surely be unwanted, etc.

xue yang thinks he's playing this careful elaborate long-game strategy to get xiao xingchen to sleep with him without scaring him off and meanwhile xiao xingchen is ten feet away like "sigh. wish my friend would fuck me against a wall."

[saintsenara]

#9 and/or #29 for Severus x Sirius?

thanks for the ask, anon!

[ship ask game here]

9. baths or showers together? do they like elaborate ones with bubbles and flower petals?

[our scene opens in number twelve, grimmauld place, in the marble shower enclosure in the master bathroom]

"sirius, get your hands off me! do you have any idea how many people die from falling over in the shower?"

"i'm not trying to fuck you, severus, I'm trying to get you to wash your awful hair."

"very witty. and to think i was going to offer to put a sticking charm on you so you wouldn't lose your balance. but i suppose i'll just have to leave you to sort yourself out..."

"you are the most evil man in the world."

-

[later, we find our heroes jammed at either end of a magnificent, claw-footed bathtub, filled with a mountain of pink bubbles. sirius is wearing a deep-cleansing mud-mask.]

"this is ridiculous."

"stop complaining, severus, i'm the one with the tap poking into my back."

"if you must insist on us taking ridiculous bubble baths together - sirius, is that a water lily? - then we should at least use a bath that can actually fit two people into it."

"i always wanted to have sex in the prefects' bathroom..."

"you and half the school. it's why we had to seal it off."

"but surely you can still get in there..."

"there are many advantages to being headmaster, sirius."

29. what is something they can never agree on? how do they meet in the middle?

harry.

severus mellows, of course, after the end of the war, but all that means is that he likes watching voldemort's death scene over and over again in a pensieve. he still think harry is reckless, foolish, stupid, terrible at potions, lazy, arrogant, profligate, and obsessed with his own celebrity. sirius points out that he's also brave, merciful, kind, talented, and surprisingly willing to suffer through weekly brunches with them both.

they agree to disagree, and instead work on outdoing each other in how they dote on their namesakes and godsons.

james sirius is exactly as ruthless and quick-thinking as both the men who gave him his names. sirius buys him his first toy broom and endures a week of shouting from molly when he falls off it and breaks his collarbone [both harry and ginny agree he was actually pretty close to executing a perfect wronski feint]; he helps him through the animagus transformation and assures james that it isn't funny that his form is a pygmy puff; he buys him exclusively scarlet and gold items for a full eighteen years of birthdays, until james tells him he's now in a cottage-core pastel-boy era and he needs to get on board; and he breaks down in tears of pride when james is hauled out of the wizengamot for interrupting a session on crime to demand they make it an urgent priority to defund azkaban.

albus severus, in contrast, is subtle and sly. severus teaches him all the requisite techniques not only to be a good potioneer but also a magnificent cook and al is molly's favourite grandchild as a result; he adores all the shared in-jokes they have as the only two slytherins in an extended family of gryffindor idiots; he teaches him how to lie fluently and shield his mind from intrusion, which works on everyone except professor mcgonagall [a fact he sees fit to mention with glee to the headstone in little hangleton cemetery reading tom marvolo riddle: woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him]; and, when lucius malfoy tries to forbid the relationship between al and scorpius, because he's not simply content with being a terrorist, he's a homophobe as well, severus punches his old friend in the face, never speaks to him again, and goes off for dinner with the potters. which he doesn't actually hate doing.

lily luna's godfather is hagrid. it's chaos.

[samasmith23]

The dualistic rivalry of Wolverine & Mystique

While the majority of X-Men fans have listed Sabretooth (aka, Victor Creed) as the perfect rival for Wolverine (aka, Logan), I've personally always considered Mystique (aka, Raven Darkholme) to be a far superior dualistic foil to the fan-favorite berserker-rage mutant.

A lot of my fondness for the rivalry to the rivalry between Logan & Raven can be primarily attributed to the Wolverine: Get Mystique storyline by writer Jason Aaron & artist Ron Garney from 2008. Here, Wolverine was determined to get revenge on Mystique after she betrayed the X-Men to Mr. Sinister during the Messiah CompleX crossover event (Mystique had briefly become a member of the X-Men prior to her betrayal), tracking Raven down to the Middle East where the two engaged in a deadly game of cat-&-mouse pursuit.

But what elevates Get Mystique beyond a standard chase story is that Aaron uses the premise to intricately explore parallels between the two characters that had not yet explored by previous writers. Throughout the 1980s-2000s it was heavily implied that Logan & Raven had known each other for a long time, and might have even been romantically involved at one point, which does make sense since the two are both over 100-years-old. Aaron himself even elaborated on this in an interview from Marvel Spotlight: Wolverine:

The present-day chase in Get Mystique is simultaneously told in conjunction to flashbacks showcasing how the two first met each other way back during the 1920s. Specifically, Logan & Raven encountered each other by sheer coincidence when they were both scheduled to be executed by a firing squad in Mexico. The two escaped though, and Raven offered Logan to join her gang of two-bit grifters up in Kansas City, where he would serve as their muscle and protection.

These flashbacks showed how Logan was very hesitant about the idea of settling down since similar to Raven, he too was an outcast who had learned not to trust anybody over the years.

However, Logan's sense of mistrust came to a head when Raven and her gang attempted to rob a high-security Federal Reserve Bank, and Mystique suddenly fled during the middle of the heist when it was revealed that she allegedly sold her gang out to the police, who consequently gunned them all down.

But in a dramatic twist, when the police surrounded Logan it was revealed that he was actually the one who sold their gang out, NOT Raven, as he believed that she had been lying to and manipulating him the whole time, even though his only evidence to support that claim was that the cops weren't being paid off like Raven originally told him.

So while it is still very well possible that Raven would have sold them out later down the road, it was a pretty dickish move on Logan's part to sell out her gang simply due to mistrust based on a hunch.

These flashbacks are contrasted against the present-day chase in the Middle East, where Logan took Raven's most recent betrayal of the X-Men on a personal level since he views the team as both a family and a chance to atone for his past sins. Conversely, Mystique does not deny and even openly embraces her sinister nature, as she uses her shapeshifting abilities to manipulate, deceive, and murder others in order to survive and fulfill her own agendas.

So when Logan accuses Mystique of cowardice for hiding behind and sacrificing the lives of innocents simply to avoid a confrontation with him, this pisses her off. Essentially Mystique views Logan as a hypocrite since he has committed similar sins as her in the past, but he's too afraid to admit that about himself. Mystique yet again escapes Wolverine, but she steals a U.S. military truck and finally decides to engage Logan in battle. Confident & heavily armed, Mystique fights Logan completely naked as a statement of both her pride & lack of shame in her actions (whilst also emulating Rebecca Romijn's portrayal of the character from the then-recent live-action X-Men movies...).

During their climatic bloody showdown, Mystique continues to call out what she sees as hypocrisy on Logan's part. Raven questions why Logan wants revenge for her betraying the X-Men for the umpteenth-time, and she tells him:

"I’ve used the X-Men whenever I’ve needed to but they’ve never been my family. Much as you want it to be true, they’re not your family either. People like us don’t get to put down roots and play nice. I betray the X-Men because it’s in my nature, and someday Logan, whether you want to admit or not, you’ll do the same damn thing. You’ll turn your back on them because that’s who you are. Oh don't act so offended honey. After all, we both know you've done it before."

Mystique's words here allude to the aforementioned 1921 Bank Heist where Logan sold her and the rest of the gang out. Fundamentally, Raven views Logan as being ultimately no better than herself.

It's worth noting that some readers have criticized Mystique's words about her "not having a family or putting down roots" as contradicting her previously established relationships with her wife Destiny and adopted daughter Rogue. Except I can still see Mystique having this attitude since at this point in continuity not only had Destiny been dead for several years (she wouldn't be resurrected until the modern Krakoa Era), but during Messiah CompleX Mystique deliberately shot Rogue to subdue her when she outed herself as a traitor to the team. Rogue was already dying from a mysterious virus which caused her mutant powers to go haywire and made skin-to-skin contact immediately fatal. Mystique believed that both Mister Sinister’s resources and the infant Hope Summers (the first mutant baby since M-Day) were capable of curing Rogue from the virus. Mystique not only murdered Sinister by pressing his face against Rogue’s but also risked the baby’s life in the exact same manner in an attempt to cure Rogue. But while the baby fortunately survived, Rogue was so angry by what Mystique had done that she disowned her foster mother, and tried to kill her with her touch, though she only rendered Raven unconscious due to Hope curing Rogue of the virus. Mystique did all this in Messiah CompleX because these events were all foretold in the late Destiny's personal diaries. Essentially, Mystique believed that her own pursuits of maintaining a family were meaningless since her wife was dead and her daughter wanted nothing to do with her.

Which is potentially another reason why Raven despises Logan and his familial bonds with the X-Men so much.

These are all elements that I really loved about the dualistic rivalry between Wolverine and Mystique. Both characters undeniably have blood on their hands, but what ultimately distinguishes them is Logan's acknowledgment of his past mistakes and efforts to redeem himself, whereas Mystique continues to make the exact same mistakes.

Despite Logan's desire to make amends for the sins of his past, Get Mystique simultaneously emphasizes Logan's present-day failings which have severely negative consequences throughout the rest of Aaron's run. At the end of the arc when Mystique is mortally wounded following her battle with Wolverine, she is left to die alone in the desert with nothing but a pistol (in case she decides to take her own life), with Logan telling her to reflect on her life decisions while stressing that he now has a family in the form of the X-Men, whereas she's all alone due to the decisions she's made.

This controversial decision is ultimately proved to be Logan's undoing as Mystique not only managed to survive her injuries, but during Aaron’s later Wolverine Goes to Hell storyline Raven joins forces with an organization known as the Red-Right Hand (a cult comprised of various individuals who’s loved ones died by Logan’s hand) to get her revenge on Logan, helping them banish Wolverine's soul to Hell. However, Mystique would later betray the Red-Right Hand when she learned about their true plan for Wolverine to eventually climb his way out of Hell and try and get revenge on them, only to have him slaughter several of their elite assassins that were secretly children whom Logan had unknowingly fathered over the past century.

This plan was too horrible even by Mystique's standards. Even though she was not sorry for helping banish Logan’s soul to Hell she still tried to warn him about the Red-Right Hand's true plans out of respect for his friendship with her own son Nightcrawler (who was dead at the time in continuity). However, Logan ignored Mystique’s warnings and cut her down (she was resurrected a few issues later in Aaron's run), which unfortunately resulted in Logan doing exactly what the Red Right Hand wanted him to do by unknowingly killing his own kin. And it nearly broke Logan!

Mystique would appear a couple of more times during Jason Aaron's respective runs on Wolverine & Wolverine & the X-Men, with her shape-shifting powers enhanced following her resurrection by ninjas from The Hand (including her scent now being undetectable by Logan).

Overall though, if Destiny is the person whom Mystique loves the most, then in my opinion Wolverine is the person whom Mystique hates the most.

Both Logan & Raven are very similar yet very different to each other on so many levels, which combined with both of them being unique and fleshed-out characters in their own respect, makes their rivalry one of my personal favorites in all of comic book history!

From my perspective, Mystique is a far more interesting and nuanced arch-nemesis for Wolverine than even Sabretooth!