kareenvorbarra · 6 months ago
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doomed to always be the only nahuseresh fan in the chat
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greenhappyseed · 3 years ago
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BnHA Ch.340 - Review, parallels & comparisons
I take back everything I said in my leak reactions post except how much I love Sansa’s faces. This chapter was great! The real thing was so much better with full art and all the wordy bits together in context. Strategy-wise, I’m glad the heroes are FINALLY taking a page out of the villain playbook — we’ve seen our heroes get separated at USJ, the forest camp, Kamino, the UA crush in the provisional licensing arc, the Shie Hassaikai raid, the war arc, Deku’s solo stint….and never with a backup plan or Plan B. They CAN be taught!
At the outset, I was struck by the All Might/Aizawa foiling that forms the backbone of the chapter. They’re in the same building at the same time; a first since They Talked™️ in Ch.257. I love seeing these two disabled heroes, who were originally staunch loners, learning to rely on each other as a team. Of course, they still have very different styles. All Might is big and theatrical and energizing the crowd; Aizawa is quiet and straightforward and helps others conquer their fears 1 on 1. But seeing each man using their individualities to bring strength to a team? Yeah, we love to see it.
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I also like seeing All Might express faith in Aoyama’s heroism, because it’s the answer to the question Present Mic was asking a few chapters back; namely, can you really trust this kid? As I wrote here:
Mic is asking the kids to think hard about whether Yuga — the kid who sold out the heroes to save his family — is the right person to help the heroes deceive AFO. AFO, who wont hesitate to kill Yuga’s parents. The generations-old guy who can sense emotions and a change of heart from afar. Who uses other senses to make up for his lack of sight (meaning he likely has a Matt Murdock-like ability to sense pulse rate changes when people lie). In other words, what’s to prevent Yuga from victimizing heroes like Aizawa AGAIN when AFO goes after Yuga’s parents, as he most certainly will?
The real answer is no, they can’t 100% trust him, but they can support him and influence him with friends and faith. Friends to protect Aoyama and his family, and then faith that Aoyama will pick himself up and be a hero. Both All Might and Aizawa decide to put their faith in Aoyama, just as Izuku and 1A did last chapter.
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But I was impressed we heard All Might say, out loud, that this was a matter of willpower and CHOICE. He chooses to trust Aoyama and Aizawa, just as he chooses to keep living. All Might may not have a lot of options in this final battle, but he still affirmatively chooses to speak up and support Aoyama rather than roll over. It’s a nice parallel between All Might/Yoichi and Izuku/Aoyama. Yoichi, as the vestige leader, had to convince Second to support Izuku, just as All Might is convincing Tsukauchi to support Aoyama. Is it delusional to believe a traitor can save them all? “Can these boys really bring an end to all this?” Yes, they can.
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Further, All Might recognizes what AFO has done to Aoyama. AFO forced the kid to betray the heroes (or what Tsukauchi crassly refers to as “decent society”) but Aoyama did it to SAVE his parents. Aoyama knows what he did was wrong, but he had to choose who to save. He didn’t want to hurt his friends or teachers and is wracked with guilt over it. All Might, more than anyone else, knows how AFO uses lives as tools and throws them away.
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Toying with and breaking people is the very source of All Might’s rage against AFO, and the reason he says he can’t forgive AFO in Kamino. (Reminder: When All Might talks “defeat” or “putting down for good,” he doesn’t mean death, even for the “unforgivable” AFO.)
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There is also the harsh parallel to All Might’s own life. Since middle school, All Might has been “the pillar” and “the symbol,” but as the star-headed dude said in Ch.325, “along the way people forgot about the heart and soul that made the man.” All Might was himself exploited as a resource by citizens and other heroes. He knows the feeling of a society resting on his shoulders. He knows Aoyama’s inner turmoil. And he knows he passed all of that on to Izuku, too.
Actually, this chapter has both Aizawa and All Might reflecting on how they — as heroes and hero course teachers — are helping society exploit their students. Let’s turn to Aizawa: He’s had a similar pep talk with Izuku before the Shie Hassaiki raid, but here he is refreshingly blunt about the role of his students in this battle. Aizawa is taking personal responsibility for these kids and the choice to put them on the front lines. I don’t think we’ve EVER seen that before. Not from Nana or Gran, not from Nezu, not from the HPSC. And while both sides use people as tools, the difference is (1) Aizawa is transparent about what he is doing with Aoyama and Shinso; and (2) he won’t abandon his students afterwards when their utility is gone.
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Art-wise, look carefully at the panels of prior Tartarus conversations vs this Aoyama conversation. Horikoshi generally places his heroes on the RIGHT side of the page, except when making a particular point (go back to Ch.116 and see when AFO is flipped to the right side). But here, Aoyama is on the right side at the end. Kurogiri is shown head-on. Aizawa knows these 2 characters; he’s seen what’s in their hearts. He knows they can be heroes — and he knows they have friends to support them — so THEY sit in the hero’s chair. I still think that, overall, Aizawa is out for revenge for everything the LOV has done to him and his students, but he’s become more flexible in how he thinks about villainy and unfairness starting with people he personally knows well.
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In the panel below, Aoyama’s middle is missing, removing both his restraints AND all associations with his purchased quirk. Aoyama can still be a hero without that quirk (and, in fact, his value to the heroes right now has more to do with AFO than a belly button laser). BUT AIZAWA IS BEING HEROIC WITHOUT HIS QUIRK TOO. In this panel, Aizawa is exposing all of his physical weaknesses to the reader. His right eye, right elbow, and right leg are mutilated. Yet you can barely see that in the image. With everything hospital- and quirk-related stripped away, and both characters in clothes that aren’t their own, all you see is the teacher engaging his pupil in a vital lesson. That’s how Aizawa can contribute for now.
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Finally, why is 10km (~6.2 miles) the minimum separation distance for AFO and Shig? A few possible reasons:
It’s outside the radius of most radio waves so AFO and Shig can’t communicate easily;
it’s outside the radius of AFO’s gloopy warp (which definitely goes 5km in Kamino but unclear if it can go further than that);
vertically upwards 10km is the separation line of the atmosphere between weather/water vapor and calmer skies (but thinner air and less oxygen; eg, helicopters can’t fly 10km high);
vertically downwards it’s the edge of the earth’s crust (eg, the heat will kill you unless you regenerate like Shig in the Star chapters). For reference, Tartarus is only 0.5km below sea level, and AFO was able to coordinate w/Shig there.
We learned last chapter that the UA buildings can tunnel underground AND can fly (though Power Loader hints this may not be fully operational yet). Given that tidbit, I’m guessing this battle will go all out above and below ground. Also, AFO!Shig has wings and post-Tartarus AFO does NOT have Air Walk. While we’re on the subject, AFO!Shig lost Reflect, which would have been the hard counter to Aoyama’s navel laser, but AFO should still have his copy. Of course, who knows what quirks they’re swapping around with the LOV as they prepare for war!
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ilikekidsshows · 4 years ago
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Hey, I was wondering if you could talk more about what you thought about the conflict that happened between Ladybug and Chat Noir in the new york special?
Certainly. Mainly, it’s the same issue we saw in ‘Glaciator’ but manifesting in a different way: these two tend to misunderstand the relationship between them because of their personal experiences and expectations, which tend to naturally be in conflict because of the very different pasts the two characters have. I also think the conflict was two-sided and only one side of the issue at hand was solved. We had Cat Noir’s dishonesty and Ladybug’s inability to act as a comforter, with only the former being solved.
Since it's the one that gets resolved and it's more straightforward, let's start with Cat Noir's side. He's the child of a strict, emotionally abusive father and we've repeatedly seen that he projects his relationship with his father into his relationship with Ladybug, and here it happens again. Gabriel would not let Adrien do what he doesn't allow and we've seen what he does when Adrien disappoints him: punishes him severely.
Strict parents don’t raise obedient children, they raise children who lie well. And Adrien had more of a motive to be deceitful than most. This special was the first time Ladybug gave him responsibility over something. If he said he couldn’t do it, would she ever trust him with anything again? Or, would she simply tell him to suck it up and do as he’s told, forcing Adrien to choose between her and his father in their demands of him? And Plagg, who I will point out, has been actively more helpful in season three, actually helped Adrien come up with a plan that, to their reasonable expectations, would not have led to anyone being hurt or disappointed, so Adrien obviously saw that simply not letting Ladybug know that he wouldn’t be physically present in Paris would work out. Adrien even was responsible about it; he kept himself actively informed of the situation in Paris up until he was made to put his phone away. And then things went to hell in a handbasket at the worst possible moment.
However, here comes the fault in Adrien’s reasoning, which was very reasonable to him and his implied-to-be equally abused Kwami: Ladybug is nothing like Gabriel. Marinette would have heard him out and they’d have come up with a plan together to deal with the situation, as long as Cat Noir got a hold of her soon enough for them to meet up and make a plan. We don’t really know what the time frame is between Adrien finding out and the departure of the plane to New York, but, considering Plagg stopped Adrien from contacting Ladybug, and no time constraint was mentioned, they’d have had plenty of time.
This is the beginning and end of Adrien’s half of the conflict. After this point, he’s merely reacting to what he thinks are clear signals from Ladybug. He tries to help with the villain the best he can, while Ladybug keeps distracting him by berating him in the middle of the fight, finally breaking his will to fight entirely by declaring she can’t trust him anymore, one of the nightmare scenarios I mentioned earlier. Add to that the villain using his power to harm Uncanny, he was convinced that Ladybug would be better off with any other partner. When Ladybug didn’t refute his assessment that he was a failure and no good hero, he decided he was right and abandoned his ring. However, when Uncanny revealed to him that Ladybug did, in fact, still need him specifically as her partner, he came back, deciding that it didn’t matter if he was a worthless failure as long as Ladybug would find a use for him anyway. Adrien repeatedly describes himself negatively in comparison to others, his self esteem is awful, but that wasn’t really a matter being handled in the special.
When Cat Noir made it to Ladybug and was instantly welcomed back, he apologised for not being honest and Ladybug signalled her forgiveness with a fistbump. This gesture signalled to Adrien that he could trust Ladybug and that Ladybug trusted him back, that the things she’d said in anger were just that. This showed Adrien in a blatant way that Ladybug was nothing like Gabriel, who would have lorded Adrien’s failure over him and punished him, instead of accepting his assurance that he’ll do better next time. This was an important lesson to Adrien, because he needs to be as honest with Ladybug as their secret identities allow because they’re a team and can’t go doing things independently when it affects them both. Adrien’s experiences in the special are ones that will specifically help him overcome his character flaw of being too distructful of others’ intentions when it comes to Ladybug.
Then comes Marinette’s side, and this one is more complex. While how badly she was distracted in that fight and how badly she distracted Cat Noir was an issue in and of itself, it wasn’t the thing on her part that escalated the conflict. It was merely what set up her state of mind. What escalated the conflict were the things she said in anger that she didn’t take back while Cat Noir was clearly falling apart. Marinette was understandably upset by what happened in Paris, but she made a very big mistake with how she handled that: she focused only on herself. Marinette needed comfort because she couldn’t heal Paris, but Cat Noir needed comfort because they could do nothing to help Paris, he’d just temporarily killed someone and he felt like a failure as a partner. But, when Cat Noir didn’t instantly move to assure her that she was fine, Marinette turned her back on him and walked away. She wanted space, because Marinette usually finds a quiet corner to think when she’s dealing with something, but Adrien saw that as a rejection. And when Cat Noir voiced all these things going on in his mind, she was silent, making him feel like she was condemning him, seeing him as worthlessly as he did. So he decided to leave her so that she could find a better partner.
Marinette also has her own misconceptions about her and Cat Noir’s relationship. This is another thing I noticed in ‘Glaciator’: Marinette doesn’t think Cat Noir is an actual human being with real human emotions and problems. She got better about it after ‘Glaciator’, like accepting his feelings for her as genuine, but she still doesn’t understand that Cat Noir can get hurt emotionally and might need a bit of support every once in a while. In fact, in ‘Timetagger’, she blatantly shuts him down when he’s looking for affirmation, claiming he “already knows he’s the best”, when Adrien actually has very poor self esteem. I mentioned in another comment that Marinette sees Cat Noir as a fae-like being, someone who only goofs around and supports her, and is never touched by worldly things like pain and sadness. The only threat to him are the supervillains they face. Every time one of them has shown a need for comfort, it’s been Ladybug, and Cat Noir has always been the one to comfort her. They’re stuck in these roles, and Marinette doesn’t know how to break out of them when Cat Noir is the one needing comfort and support. To drive this aspect of the conflict home, this is the direct reverse of the situation in ‘Miracle Queen’. In ‘Miracle Queen’, Marinette makes a mistake with real consequences, gets Fu’s identity revealed to Hawk Moth which led to his capture, but Cat Noir overlooks that to support her instead. In the special, Cat Noir’s mistake causes property damage in Paris that they can’t undo, but Marinette can’t overlook it to support her partner through his mistake.
Here’s the thing: Marinette has a good life. She has a supportive family and supportive friends. This gives her a solid foundation as a superhero and it means she’s used to people picking her up when she falls down. It’s not just her relationship with Cat Noir that’s characterized by the idea that support just shows up when she needs it. Heck, at the end of ‘Love Hunter’, Luka seemingly magically appears for the sole purpose of giving Marinette some comfort. However, we’ve seen some hints, mostly in ‘Weredad’, that at least her dad wants to overly protect her. We don’t know how well Marinette would actually take Adrien rejecting her, but, considering how miserable she was repeatedly in season two over just not getting to see him, I suspect not well, and her dad was convinced she’d go as far as being easily shattered by that. Children need to feel small disappointments to be able to handle the actual hurdles they’ll face later in life. The way Marinette becomes an anxious mess over failing at something reminds me of myself as a teenager, and I was a very shielded child. My mom pampered me, not by much, but enough that I had to learn to pick myself and others up at a later age. And I feel that’s a lesson Marinette needs to learn as well.
We saw from what Marinette said to Uncanny that she didn’t think Cat Noir’s mistake was irreparable. She didn’t mean the gestures I described earlier as how Adrien saw them. She didn’t mean to turn her back on him to reject him and she didn’t mean her silence to be read as her agreeing that he was a bad partner. But she never once considered that she might be sending Cat Noir these signals, even as Cat Noir told her how he felt about himself in relation to her. Instead of supporting her partner by saying anything to refute his self-disparaging comments, or even sharing their pain together, Marinette remains silent, experiencing her own pain alone and leaving Cat Noir with his. Marinette is a good leader, but she’s not a good partner, because she lacks the ability to support Cat Noir. This isn’t her fault, it’s a character flaw like Adrien’s distrust of others to consider his well being in any scenario. However, it’s one that’s harder to fix than Adrien’s, because Adrien’s flaw is one of perception, so he just needs to see contrary evidence to learn better. Marinette’s issue is that she lacks important skills for comforting someone: spotting a need and responding to it. I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen Marinette actively comfort anyone during the entire series. It’s very likely she’s never had to do so before the moment with Cat Noir in this special.
This is why Adrien leaving her was so important to Marinette’s future growth as a partner specifically. Technically Marinette needed it to happen. Marinette had to learn that you can’t expect someone to be there indefinitely if you never let them know you want them there, and she had to learn that Cat Noir needs her to reciprocate the supportive relationship between them instead of only enjoying the benefits of her partner’s almost unwavering support. An unequal relationship will not last. If you just keep someone around for their comfort, they’ll leave you once they have none left to give. If you just keep someone around for their good days, they’ll leave you once their bad days come. But in this special we saw Marinette taking the first steps towards realizing her partner’s humanity, ergo, fixing the part of the issue that’s in her perception: she was still thinking about him when she was Marinette. I noted in ‘Glaciator’ that Marinette usually stops thinking about Cat Noir once she’s Marinette again, which is part of that whole “seeing him as otherworldly” thing. Breaking out of that mindset is as important as it is for Adrien to break out of the “everyone would turn on me if I didn’t please them 24/7” one.
Basically: the conflict was resolved, but it showed where development still needs to happen.
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And so preparations for the final event begin! Let’s see if these being one on one matches helps me get through them a bit faster when I’m not having to transcribe quite so much action all at once.
[No. 32 - Smile, Prince of Nonsense Land!]
Another character profile to start out with! (I swear I’m gonna have to make a post compiling these once we’ve gotten all of them for class 1a… maybe run a comparison with the end of chapter profiles? Eh shrug.)
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I swear, my instincts say that something that that tail should not be as flexible as it is because of its circumference. I know, I know, quirks, freaking magic, don’t think about it, but still. It’s a very straightforward quirk with a surprising amount of utility, and he makes full use of it. Good for him! Now, onto the chapter proper.
Kirishima is pretty hyped for a tournament, thinking about how they’ll be up in ‘that ring he sees on TV every year.’ Mina asks him if it was a tournament last year as well, but Sero’s the one to answer - the format’s always different, but most years involve some kind of head to head competition. (Apparently the year before theirs involved foam sword fighting, and now I’m incredibly disappointed we didn’t get to see that for this sports festival finale… would have been absolutely hilarious.)
Midnight holds up a box of lots, saying that match-ups will be decided by drawing lots. Once that’s done, they’ll move on to the festivities and then the tournament itself. It’s up to each of the sixteen finalists whether or not they participate in the fun, since she figures some of them would rather take a breather and save their strength. 
She starts to call for the first place team to draw lots, but Ojiro raises his hand, calling for her attention. He then states that he’d like to drop out, much to the shock of the others. Someone (I think Kirishima?) asks him why, since this is his chance of being noticed by the pros. Ojiro stats that he has no memories of the cavalry battle or anything that happened in it up until the tail end. And it’s probably his quirk that did that. 
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Ohh, ominous. And Izuku’s really concerned for Ojiro here. Ojiro states that he knows this is a great opportunity, and he knows it seems stupid to throw it away, but this final turnament… everyone else made it with their own strength. But he’s standing here and he doesn’t even know how or why. He just can’t take it. 
Hagakure says that he’s thinking about it too hard, and that he can just show what he’s made of in the tournament. Mina agrees, saying that by that logic, she shouldn’t really be here either. Ojiro starts crying, hiding his face in his hand as he shakes, explaining that he’s talking about his pride here. He doesn’t think it’s right. (He also has no idea why the girls are dressed like that. Really, the entire cheerleader gimmick seems a bit… awkward, here.)
Izuku has no idea what to say. But class B’s Nirengeki does - kind of. He admits that he can’t remember anything either, so he wants to withdraw as well. This is a contest of skill, so letting someone who didn’t do anything advance… doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the sports festival? Isn’t it against the rules?
Kirishima starts to tear up, calling the two manly. Up in the booth, Present Mic announces the strange turn of events, while Aizawa wonders what Midnight, as the coordinator, will decide. Midnight’s ruling?
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She likes it. The two are allowed to withdraw. Aoyama puts a hand on Ojiro’s shoulder and promises to win it for him. 
Midnight tells the kids that replacing the two will be members of team Kendo, who took fifth. Kendo replies that if it’s gonna be like that, then shouldn’t it be team Tetsu instead? Her team was immobilized pretty much the whole time, while team Tetsu were giving it their all to keep what they had until the very end. She then hastens to assure that they aren’t colluding or anything, it just feels right.
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Tetsutetsu is in tears by the gesture. After a brief transition, it’s decided that Tetsutetsu and Shiozaki will join the finalists, bringing the number back up to sixteen. And with that, the match-ups can be drawn!
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Izuku notes that if he wins his first match, his second’s gonna be against Shouto. Which I feel is very rude of him to just entirely discount the possibility of Sero winning the match. I mean, it’s an honest assessment, but STILL. Rude. Anyways, before his match with Shouto, he still has to face off against Shinsou, who has to be-
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And speak of the devil, there’s the guy in question. He wants to know if he’s Midoriya Izuku, which startles Izuku. Izuku recognizes him from the declaration of war two weeks back. He goes to respond, only to be cut off by Ojiro’s tail over his mouth. Shinsou huffs and turns t head away, while Ojiro warns Izuku not to answer him. 
We get a few other reactions from some of the other students: Shouto contemplates how his match with Izuku will be sooner than expected, and that he wants Izuku to bring his best before he takes him down. Katsuki wonders out loud who Uraraka is, which startles an eep out of her, possibly for using her actual name. Mei approaches Tenya, chucking as she starts to ask him something. And Present Mic announces that they’re setting aside the tournament for the time being, and getting on with the thrill-a-minute festivities. 
There’s a few snapshots of what everyone is up to over the course of the side events: some of the non-finalists racing massive balls (probably rubber?) around the inside perimeter of the stadium, Ojiro talking to a stressed out Izuku, Tokoyami napping in a tree, Tenya drinking five (5) cans of orange juice, Katsuki doing… something, Shouto crouched down resting somewhere outside the stadium, and finally some students searching for items on the cards they were given. Oh, right, and the girls are doing cheerleader stuff, with Hagakure being the most enthusiastic, and Jirou and Momo as the least. 
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Honestly, with that jump, Hagakure is either buff as heck, or Ochako is lending her a hand. 
While all this is happening, Izuku is narrating how some people preferred to psych themselves up, while others tried to relax. Everyone was dealing with it differently. And before they knew it, the time had come.
We come back into the narrative as Cementoss is just finishing up crafting the battle platform from scratch, which is honestly incredibly impressive. I guess his manipulation of cement includes being able to dry it out super fast. And really, with how it looks, he’s just showing off. Especially with those torches, like, those can’t have been made from cement. Were they just put there and the cement set around them? Did he use the cement to manipulate them into place? I have questions, sir.
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As I said, showing off just a touch. 
Present Mic thanks Cementoss before asking the crowds if they’re ready. He talks about how the students have been through hell to get here, but now it’s time for the one-on-one tournament! They’ll only have themselves to rely on. Even if someone isn’t a hero, that saying holds true! You know it! Spirit, technique, strength, wisdom, and knowledge! Use them all and show us your best!
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...They’ll only have themselves to rely on, even applied to non-heroes? Uh, wow. Talk about the underlying 𝓲𝓼𝓼𝓾𝓮𝓼 showing up here. I honestly can’t help but think that Izuku’s issues with heading off alone in the current manga arc has less to do with emulating All Might, and more absorbing all these small asides and comments from all the staff of UA. Which is fucking 𝕪𝕚𝕜𝕖𝕤.
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Anyways, while Mic’s doing his thing, Izuku is trying to calm himself before his match, only for Toshinori to come up to talk to him. He notes how it took a while, but Izuku’s finally getting the hang of using One For All, and gives Izuku a wonky thumbs up. Izuku is surprised to see his mentor there, but also corrects him - he doesn’t really have a hang of it, he’s still uneasy. He brings up his microwave visualization thing, and how he’s been trying to recall when he launched it at the villain, but it still feels dangerous. As if he could fall apart if he loses focus for a second, and, well, it’s like Toshinori saw. Given the level his body is at, even when Izuku controls it, it only gives a small boost in power. 
Toshinoir thinks on it for a bit, before reminding Izuku about that talk about giving it between zero and a hundred. As Izuku is now, heis body’s capable of about five percent. Izuku considers that, thinking that if it’s like that, then he’s just gotten lucky with everything. Toshinori gives him a few thwacks on the head and neck, telling Izuku that that’s because he’s always been trying his hardest, calling him a prince of nonsense. He also chides Izuku, saying he’ll never be a hero looking so mopey.
While Izuku recovers from the assault, Toshinori tells him to listen, before stating that especially when Izuku is feeling worried or scared, that’s when he needs to smile. Izuku’s come this far, so show some bravado, even if it’s fake. To punctuate this, Toshinori swells up into All Might, giving him another thumbs up. And I guess it kind of works as motivation, since Izuku seems less stressed?
Anywho, we finally get into the first match! Present Mic announces the two, with Izuku getting a comment about his making a weird face despite his good performance, and Shinsou getting a comment about not having done anything to stand out yet. The rules are simple - win by knocking out your opponent, immobilizing them, or getting them to say ‘I give up!’ Bring the pain! Recovery Girl’s on standby. And fight dirty if you must! ‘Ethics’ have no meaning here!
...this explains why Shinsou immediately went for such a low blow. 
Anywho, Cementoss makes himself a seat to watch from, so as to be prepared to stop the match at any time. Present Mic clarifies that going for the kill is a big no-no and will disqualify you, because a true hero’s fists fly only when in pursuit of villains. 
Shinsou starts talking, contemplating the ‘I give up’ option before asking Izuku if he gets it? That this battle’s going to test his strength of will. If you have any kind of vision for your future, there’s no sense in worrying about how you get there. Like that monkey, babbling about his stupid pride. 
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Wow is Izuku pissed. Present Mic announces the start of the match as Shinsou rhetorically asks what kind of dumbass throws away a chance like this. Izuku rushes forward furiously demanding to know what Shinsou just said - only to stop dead. Shinsou calls it his win, while in the stands, Ojiro is stressing out, tail flailing as he snaps at how he’d warned Izuku about this. Toshinori is waiting at the entrance to the stadium, confused. 
Present Mic asks what’s wrong, the battle’s just started, show some spirit! Mere seconds into the match, Izuku is frozen in place?
And we end the chapter on that cliffhanger. What an introduction to Shinsou, and we have more to go in the next… one or two chapters, can’t recall. 
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Anywho, see y’all next time for spooky quirk shenanigans! Can’t believe our first ghost sighting is about to happen. Fricken love ghosts.
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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years ago
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I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about why P5R didn't quite land for you. I had the same reaction to it, but I've never quite been able to properly articulate why the last section fell so flat.
God okay so I've tried several times to answer this, and it seems like the answer is 'I still have way too many feelings, personally, to say this in anything less than thirty pages and fifteen hours of work', because Persona 5 the original is a game I loved a lot and care about a great deal. And most of the reasons I disliked Royal feel, in my head, like a list of ways it broke some of the things I liked best about P5--which means explaining them feels like I need to explain everything I loved about the original game, which is a book in itself, complete with referents to P3, P4, Jungian psychology, the Joseph Campbell mytharc, and fuck all even knows what. And that is too much.
But today I realized that I could instead describe it from an angle of, Persona 5 Strikers succeeds really well at doing the thing I think Royal was trying to do but failed at. And that I think I can talk about in a reasonable amount of wordspace, hopefully, behind this cut because I have at least one friend who hasn't played Royal yet.
Note for reblogs/comments: I HAVE NOT FINISHED STRIKERS YET. I got through the jail that pretended to be the final jail and have not yet gone into the obviously inevitable 'ohshit wait, you mean there's something more than simple human machinations behind all of this?' dungeon. (I got stuck on a really frustrating side quest, put the game down, and then dived into Hades to avoid throwing the Switch across the room for a while--and anyone around this blog lately knows how THAT'S been going.) Please no spoilers past Okinawa!
So, one of the many, many things I really appreciated about Persona 5 was its straightforward and unashamed attitude towards abusers and their acts of violence. Because, while yes P5 is a story about the use of power and control to make others suffer, it fundamentally isn't about those abusers themselves. It's about their victims, those that survive their crimes. And this shows up repeatedly over the course of the game.
We do not give a shit why Kamoshida wanted to beat and rape his students. We really don't. Kamoshida does not deserve our attention one moment longer than it takes to make him stop. Because, ultimately, that's the goal of P5, start to end. We don't know for sure if what we're doing is fair, if it's justice, if it's questionable. What we know is that people are being hurt, badly, actively, right now this second. What we know is that victims are suffering. What we know is that we, personally, us-the-protag and us the Phantom Thieves at large, are in danger. And in those circumstances, we don't care about the abuser's side any more. We don't. We don't have the space or time or capacity to care, because that is not the point.
The point is to help the weak. To save the people who need saving, right here and now. To give others the courage to stand up on their own behalf. We're not even out to change society, not really--that's a byproduct. We are reactions. We are triage. We are important.
There's something so empowering and validating about that as a theme, y'know? In a media landscape so full of "sympathetic villains", the idea that, you know, maybe sometimes you don't have to break yourself to show compassion that might possibly heal the bad guy--that sometimes you can just make the bad guy stop hurting people--feels both refreshing and satisfying. I really appreciate it as a message! I liked it a lot!
And yes, there's nuance to that theme, and the game is not without compassion. We save Futaba, because 'make the bad guy stop hurting people', in that case, means 'make this person stop hurting herself'. We give Sae a path forwards, help her fix her own heart. Yet it's worth pointing out that in both of those cases, while we were very glad to do those things, to save those people, we also went into both of those palaces for extremely practical reasons to begin with. We needed Futaba's help. We needed Sae's help. The fact that we chose to talk Sae into a change of heart rather than simply stealing her treasure, while ultimately a very good thing for her, was absolutely a practical choice predicated on the need for her palace to still exist to save our life. And yes, we wanted to save her, for Makoto's sake--yes, we wanted desperately to save Futaba. But Sae and Futaba let themselves be helped, too, and that doesn't change the overarching themes of the story itself.
Akechi (and to some extent Okumura) would not let himself be helped. Akechi's another interesting nuance to this theme, because of all our villains, we do learn the most about what drove him to the cruelties and crimes he's committed. He's at that intersection of victim and villain, and we want to help him, as a victim--but we also know that stopping him as a villain is more important. We'd like to save him from himself if we could, because we save people from their sources of trauma, it's what we do. We regret being unable to do so. But in the end, what matters to the story is not that Akechi refused to be saved--it's that Shido and Yaldabaoth need to be stopped, for the sakes of everyone else they're hurting now and may continue to hurt in the future.
The thing is, there's space and maybe even a need for a corollary discussion of those places where victim and villain intersect. It's an interesting, pertinent, and related topic. Strikers made an entire video game about it, a really good video game. It's centered in the idea that, yes, these people need to be stopped, and we will make stopping them our priority--but they're not going after us, and that gives us some space to sympathize. Even for Konoe, who specifically targets the Phantom Thieves--compare him to Shido, who actively destroyed the lives of both Joker and Futaba, who ordered Haru's father's death, who's the entire reason the team is still dealing with the trauma of Akechi's everything. Of course the game can be sympathetic to Konoe where it can't with Shido. There's enough distance to do that.
But right--Strikers is a separate game. It's a separate conversation. It's, "last time, we talked about that, so now let's take it one step further." And that's good writing. (It's something Persona has done before, too, also really well! Persona 3 is about terrible, occasionally-suicidal depression and grief. P4 is about how you can still be hurting and need some help and therapy even if things seem ok. Related ideas, but separate conversations that need to be separate in order to be respectful and do justice to either one. P5, as a follow-up to P4, is a conversation about how, ok, changing yourself is great and all, but sometimes the problem is other people so how do you deal with that? Again, still related! Still pertinent! Still alluded to in P4, with Adachi's whole thing--but it wasn't the time or place to base a quarter of the game around it.)
So one of Royal's biggest issues, to me, is that it tries to tack on this whole new angle for discussion onto a game that was originally about something else.
Adding Maruki's palace--adding it at the end, which by narrative laws suggests that it's the true point that everything else should be building up to--suddenly adds in about a hundred new dimensions at once. It wants us to engage with "what in this abuser/manipulator's life led him to act this way?" for basically the first time all game (we'll get to Akechi later). It wants us to engage with, "if the manipulator has a really good reason or good intentions, does that mean we should forgive them?" It requires us to reflect on, "what is the difference between control and cruelty?" It asks, "okay, but if people could be controlled into being happy, would that be okay?" (Which, based on the game so far, is actually a wild out-there hypothetical! Literally not a single thing we've seen in the game suggests that could ever happen. Even the people who think being controlled is safer and easier are miserable under it. Control that's able to lead to actual happiness is completely out of left field in the context of everything we've encountered all game so far.)
That's too much! We don't have time to unpack all that! We only have an eighth of the game left! Not to mention we are also being asked to bring back questions we put to bed much earlier in the game about the morality of our own actions, in a wholely unsatisfying way. Maruki attempts to justify his mass brainwashing because "it's the same as what you're doing", and we know it isn't, but the game didn't need Maruki calling it out in order for us to get that. We already faced that question when we started changing hearts, and again several times throughout the game, and again when we found our targets in Yaldabaoth's cells. The fact that we change hearts does not mean we think "changing hearts is fine and kind and should be done to everyone, actually." Changing hearts has been firmly established in this game as an act of violence, acceptable only because it prevents further systemic violence against innocents that we must prevent. The moral question has never once been about whether it's ok to change the hearts of the innocent, only about how far it's ethical to go against individuals who are actively hurting other people. Saying "you punched that guy to keep him from shooting a child, so punching people is good and I will save the world by punching everyone!" is confusing! and weird! and not actually at all helpful to the question of, how much violence is it acceptable to use to protect others! So presenting the question that way just falls really flat.
(And right, I love Strikers, because Strikers has time to unpack all that. Strikers can give us a main bad guy who wants to control the whole world for everybody's own good, because Strikers has earned that thematic climax. It has given us sympathetic bad guys who started out wanting to control the world to protect themselves and ended up going too far. It's given us Mariko Hyodo, who wanted to control the world to protect other people and went too far. It's given us a long-running thread about police, the desire to serve, and the abuse of power that can lead to. And since we are actively trying to care for the people whose hearts we're changing in Strikers, we can open the door to questions about using changes-of-heart and that level of control to make other people happy. We can even get a satisfying conclusion out of that discussion, because we have space to characterize the difference--Konoe thinks that changing peoples' hearts means confining them, but the Phantom Thieves think it means setting them free. We have seen enough sympathetic villains that we as an audience have had the space to figure out how we feel about that, and to understand the game's perspective of "stop them AND save them, if we can possibly do both." And that message STILL rests firmly on Persona 5's message of "it is Good to do what you have to do to stop an abuser so long as you don't catch innocent people in your crossfire.")
It's worth noting that the general problem of 'asking way too many new questions and then not answering them' also applies to how Royal treats its characters, too. P5 did have unanswered questions left at the end! The biggest one, and we all knew this, was Akechi, and what actually happened to him, and how we should feel about him, and how he felt about us. That was ripe for exploring in our bonus semester, and to Royal's credit they did in fact try to bring it up, but by god did they fuck up doing it.
Akechi's probable death in the boiler room was absolutely the biggest dangling mystery of the game. It was an off-screen apparent death of a key antagonist, so all of the narrative rules we know suggested that he might still be alive and would probably come back if the story went on for long enough. So when Royal brings him back on Christmas Eve, hey, great! Question answered. Except that the situation is immediately too good to be true, and immediately leads to another mystery, which leads to a flat suspicion that something must be wrong. We spend several hours of gameplay getting sly hints that, oooh, maybe he's not really alive after all, before it's finally confirmed by Maruki: yup, he really died, if we end the illusion we'll kill him too. Okay, at least we know now. Akechi is alive right now and he's going to be dead if we do this, and that doesn't make a ton of sense because every other undead person disappeared when the person who wished for them realized they were fake but at this point we'll take it. So we take down Maruki, and okay, Akechi really is dead! Probably! We're fairly sure! Aside from our lingering doubts!
And then we catch a glimpse of maybe-probably-could be him through the train window, and I just want to throw something, because come on.
Look, it is just a fact of storytelling: the more times you make an audience ask 'wait, is this character dead or aren't they?', the less they will care, until three or four reversals later you will be hard pressed to find anybody who gives a shit. Royal does this like four different times, and every iteration comes with even less certainty than the last. By the end, we somehow know even less than we did when we started! Did Akechi survive the boiler room to begin with and Maruki just didn't know? Or was Maruki lying to try and manipulate us further? Or was he actually dead and then his strength of will when Maruki's reality dissolved was enough to let him survive after all? Is that even actually him out the train window?
Where is he going! What is he doing! How did any of this happen! What is going on! We all had these questions about Akechi at the end of the original P5, and the kicker is that Royal pretends like it's going to answer them only to go LOL JK NO. It's frustrating and it's dissatisfying and it annoys me.
The one Akechi question that Royal doesn't even bother to ask, though, let alone leave ambiguous, is how does the protagonist feel about him? The entire emotional weight of the third semester rests on the protagonist caring about Akechi, Sumire, and Maruki. Maruki's the person we're supposed to sympathize with even as we try to stop him. Sumire's the person we're trying to save from herself. And Akechi is our bait--is, we are told, the one thing our protagonist wished for enough to actualize it in this world himself. Akechi's the final lure to accept Maruki's deal. Akechi's survival is meant to be tempting.
For firm Akechi fans, this probably worked out fine--the game wanted to insist that the protagonist cared for Akechi the same way the player did. For those of us who're a little more ambivalent, though (or for the many and valid people who hated him), this is a super sour note. Look, one of the Persona series' strengths is the way it lets players choose to put their time and emotional investment into an array of different characters, so the main story still has weight even if there's a couple you don't care about that much. It has always done this. The one exception, from P3 all the way through P4 to here and now, is Nanako Dojima, and by god she earned that distinction. I have never met a person who played Persona 4 who didn't love Nanako. Nanako is a neglected six-year-old child who is brave and strong enough to take care of herself and all of the housework but who still tries not to cry when her dad abandons her again and lights up like the sun when we spare her even the tiniest bit of time and attention. It is impossible not to care for Nanako. Goro Akechi is not Nanako.
And yet third semester Royal doesn't make sense if your protagonist doesn't feel linked to Akechi. The one question, out of all the brand new questions Royal throws out there, that it decides to answer all by itself--and it's how you as a player and your protagonist ought to feel about an extremely complex and controversial character. What the fuck, Royal. What the fuck.
In conclusion, I'll leave you with this. I played the original Persona 5 in March and April of 2017, as an American, a few months after the 2016 election and into the term of our then president. It felt painfully timely. A quick calendar google early on indicated that the game's 20XX was almost certainly 2016, and the closer our plot got to the in-game November leadup to an election destined to be dominated by a foul and charming man full of corruption and buoyed up by his own cult of personality, the more I wanted to laugh/cry. It felt timely. It felt important. It felt right.
I went through Royal (in LP form on youtube, not having a platform to play it on) in summer of 2020, with a hook full of face masks by my front door and protests about racial tension and local policing that occasionally turned into not-quite-riots close enough to hear at night if I opened the windows of my apartment. The parts of the game that I remembered felt as prescient and meaningful as ever, if not even more so. The new parts felt baffling. Every single evil in the game felt utterly, painfully real, from the opening moments of police brutality to the idea of a country led by a guy who probably would use his secret illegitimate teenage son as a magical assassin if the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it. Yaldabaoth as the cumulative despair of an entire population who just wanted somebody to take over and make things be okay--yes, yes, god, in summer of 2020? With streets full of people refusing to wear masks and streets full of people desperate for change? Of course. Of course that holy grail of safety should be enticing. Of course it should be terrifying.
And then Maruki. Maruki, who was just so far outside the scope of anything I could relate to the rest of the game or my own life. Because every single other villain in the rest of Persona is real. From the petty pandering principal to the human-trafficking mob boss. The corrupt politicians and the manmade god of cultural desire for stability. And this game was trying to tell me that the very biggest threat of all of them, the thing that was worse than the collective force of all society agreeing to let this happen because succumbing was easier than fighting back--that the very biggest threat of all was that the world could be taken over by some random nobody's misguided attempts to help?
No. Fuck no. I don't buy it. Because god, yes, I have seen the pain and damage done on a tiny and personal and very real level by the tight-fisted control of someone trying to help, it never looked like this. Not some ascended god of a bad therapist. All the threats to the world, and that's the one I'm supposed to take seriously? This one man is more of a threat than the fundamental human willingness to be controlled?
Sorry, but no. Not for me. Not in this game. Not in this real-life cyberpunk dystopian apocalypse.
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makeste · 4 years ago
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What are your favorite hero names?
oh man there are so many. I had to limit myself to a top twenty, and even that was rough. anyway so first off, a few runner ups because I couldn’t go without mentioning these:
Vlad King - to be clear, this isn’t actually one of my top hero names. but I’m mentioning it here because back when I was first reading the series, one of the fan scanlations -- either Fallen Angels or Mangastream, I forget which -- had originally translated his hero name as Brad King. which, to be frank, would have been one of the greatest hero names of ALL TIME. you can’t imagine my disappointment when I finally learned the truth. it still haunts me to this day.
Jack Mantis - this is Kamakiri (a.k.a. the guy from class 1-B who can grow knives out of his body)’s hero name. my question is, why the Jack. the mantis part, I get! that’s fairly obvious! but the “Jack” is forever a mystery to me. it just adds this little layer of intrigue.
Mr. Brave - this guy is one of the few good things to come from the Basement arc. don’t get me wrong, he is completely useless. but his name? absolutely legendary. this guy, with his power of ripping his own hair out and turning it into a sword (yes that’s his quirk), an ability that could be easily duplicated or bested by literally any jackass who just went out and bought their own damn sword, really thought to himself, “I am going to be the BEST MCFUCKING HERO THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN. I AM GOING TO NAME MYSELF... MISTER BRAVE.” and they let him, you guys. they let him.
anyway so now for the top twenty!
20. Can’t Stop Twinkling - this isn’t a name so much as it is poetry in three words. I still cannot believe that Aoyama went up to Midnight with a hero name that sounds more like the world’s greatest Dear Abby letter, and she actually let him keep it. I’m not 100% clear on how this all works, but I like to think this means that Aoyama’s fellow heroes have an actual legal obligation to call him this in battle. I don’t think we as a fandom and as a people really take enough time out of our lives to stop and be grateful for Aoyama’s existence.
19. Uravity - it’s a pun!! it’s so cute and I love it!! and it’s such a perfect name in that it just instantly sums up and defines her whole brand, bringing to mind both Ochako the person and Zero Gravity the quirk. honestly she is one of only a few kids whose hero name I never space out on. with a lot of the others I usually have to pause for a sec and be like “wait, what was their name again?” but never Ochako.
18. Present Mic - this would make a really great band name honestly. I just like it. I’m pretty sure Horikoshi was going for “present” as in the verb meaning “to perform”, like in “presentation”, but to tell the truth I always pronounce it like “present” as in “gift” or “the present time”, which doesn’t make any sense at all, but IT’S JUST WHAT MY BRAIN DECIDED TO DO. anyway.
17. Tsukuyomi - I know this name has its origins in Japanese mythology, but to be completely honest I’ve always just associated it with Itachi’s infamous genjutsu attack from Naruto. I just think it’s the gothest thing ever and absolutely perfect for Tokoyami lol.
16. All Might - there’s just something about this name that kind of makes me just want to pump my fists and go “YEAH!!” I really like the use of “might” as a noun rather than “mighty” as an adjective like you see in so many classic superhero names. it’s just so much cooler somehow. this name really does conjure up the image of the strongest guy in the universe.
15. Midnight - honestly I’m almost mad that this wound up being a hero name, because it would have made a perfect villain name. it’s dark and mysterious and sexy. it’s no wonder why Midnight chose it lol. anyway so my girl is a bit kinky, nothing wrong with that, and it’s also a perfect name for someone whose quirk puts other people to sleep. it’s just such spot-on branding, I love it.
14. Ingenium - fun fact, I had no idea what this meant when I first came across it because I don’t speak Latin! apparently it means “genius” or “talent.” which is a very good meaning for a hero name! but honestly the real reason I love it so much is because it’s Iida’s tribute to his brother, and I am just such a sucker for that kind of shit. damn you Iida siblings. quit giving me all these feels.
13. Shouto – yes, seriously. I know a lot of people hate this name, and it’s always getting flak for being bland and uncreative. but I honestly think it’s a perfect name for Shouto. firstly because Shouto himself is very much the opposite of flashy in a lot of ways. he’s not particularly animated or attention-seeking; he is a very calm, sort of still-waters-run-deep person, and I think the lack of a snappy brand name fits that personality. I’m even more delighted that it hasn’t remotely curbed his popularity at all (at this point I think the only kid hero with more in-universe fans out there is Momo, and even then it’s probably a close thing), and I think a big part of that is that people are drawn to his unpretentious nature, especially in comparison to a lot of the other heroes out there. but most of all, I like the name because of the simple yet powerful way it serves as a declaration that he is his own person. he’s not his father, and he’s more than just a Todoroki. he is himself; he is Shouto. anyway so yeah, to me this is a fantastic name with so much depth and meaning.
12. Battle Fist - this is Kendou’s hero name AND IT’S PERFECT. like, holy shit. what should we call the girl who goes around punching bad guys around all day with her giant hands. how about BATTLE FIST. there really isn’t much more to say about this one, honestly. its greatness speaks for itself.
11. Vantablack - imagine being such an enormous douchebag that word of your douchey exploits made it all the way over to some guy in Japan who spends 95% of his waking hours writing a manga and has almost no free time. fun fact, although Anish Kapoor is the only one licensed to use the color Vantablack, the name Vantablack is still owned by Surrey NanoSystems (a.k.a. the guys who actually invented it), and so I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who decide whether or not someone else gets to use it. I wonder if Kapoor is pissed about his color being referenced in a popular shounen manga. anyways, all of that speculation aside, it really is the perfect name for someone with Kuroiro’s quirk.
10. Endeavor - look, say what you will about Endeavor the person (although I’m personally a big fan of the way his redemption arc is being done and think he’s a fascinating character, albeit a very flawed one), but there’s no denying that Endeavor is a badass name. but what’s really great about it is how it so perfectly captures the admirable part of Endeavor, the one thing about him that’s actually worth praising. he never gives up. he’s always pushing, striving, struggling forward no matter how hopeless it seems. and that’s a worthy trait, and it says something about him that this is what he chose for his hero name. a name that has nothing to do with fire, nothing to do with his quirk, nothing even to do with his goal of becoming #1. it’s simply a name that means to make an effort; to try and achieve something. and I like that.
9. Sugarman - this IMO is easily the most overlooked and severely underrated hero name in the series. it’s a hidden gem. everyone always forgets about Satou just because his power of being a Strong Punching Guy doesn’t particularly stand out in a manga chock full of strong punching guys. but he is a badass and a great character, and honestly “eating candy makes me super strong” is possibly the single greatest quirk in the history of time and I am jealous. anyway, so this is a really straightforward name, but it’s really smooth and catchy somehow and so it’s one of my favorites.
8. Gale Force - this is Inasa’s hero name! it’s another one which is criminally underrated, much like Inasa himself. airbender powers are just so badass you guys. wind is so badass. this name is all hurricaney and tempesty and super cool and powerful-sounding. this is one of those names that I’m honestly surprised wasn’t already a mainstream superhero name. Marvel was all “nah, we’ll just go with ‘Storm’”, like come on you guys where is the creativity.
7. Red Riot - this name is a fucking grand slam. it’s alliterative! it’s catchy! it’s got the word “riot” in it! it’s an absolutely perfect name for a passionate guy whose quirk lends itself towards good old fashioned brawlin’ and head bashing. the fact that it’s got additional meaning as a tribute towards Kiri’s own personal hero is just the icing on the cake. this is another name that Marvel probably legit wishes they had thought of first. it’s easily the best hero name out of everyone in class 1-A imo.
6. Sir Nighteye - hilariously for the longest time it was not confirmed whether or not Nighteye actually had a real name (he does! but I’ve forgotten it lol), and so there was this lingering question, absurd as it was, of whether or not Nighteye’s parents, whoever they are, were descendants of some proud Nighteye clan, and whether they had really, actually named their child “Sir.” anyways though, I love this name. it’s super cool and mysterious and perfect for someone with future-seeing powers, and the “Sir” just makes even awesomer because it implies that the Queen really liked him or something.
5. Mt. Lady - this name is a stroke of genius. supersize-me powers are a dime a dozen, but the characters always have names like Giant Man or Giganta or Goliath. as far as I know, no other superhero characters have ever thought to name themselves after mountains, let alone to name themselves as if they WERE a mountain. like, she isn’t “mountain lady”; she’s “MOUNT Lady”, as if she were an actual tectonic peak. it really bothers me that I can’t adequately describe in words why I love this so much. I just do!! I think she should get an award.
4. Suneater - Tamaki is out here proving to everyone that your hero name doesn’t need to have jack shit fuckall to do with your actual quirk in order to be completely badass and iconic. sometimes I wonder what Tamaki does when people ask him “out of curiosity, why did you pick that name?”, which someone surely must have done at some point. he probably turns beet red and tries to dissolve into the background. but anyway, the general public does not need to know the meaning of his hero name in order for it to have meaning; we know what the meaning is, and that it’s his way of saying “I believe in myself because my friend believes in me”, and honestly that’s all that matters. I am still of the opinion that certain other people whose childhood friends held a lot of unwavering belief in and admiration towards them could do worse than going down this same hero name route, but we will see! anyways Suneater deserves all your respect.
3. Best Jeanist - I had so much love for this name from the start, and then I found out it was a real, actual award. for people who make good jeans, or are good at wearing jeans, or something. it’s run by the Japan Jeans Council, which is also a real and actual thing. but anyway, despite it not being as wholly original of a name as I thought, it’s still iconic, and I love that he went with something that was recognizable while still fitting his quirk, and which has the added implication that he is the motherfucking best, because he is. also, given that he probably chose this name while he was still in school, and that only public figures generally seem to be eligible for the award, this implies that he chose the name Best Jeanist first, and then went on to win the actual award eight years running. presumably because the JJC got very flustered and were all, “IT’S LITERALLY HIS NAME... WE HAVE TO GIVE IT TO HIM... WE HAVE TO”, and so they did. anyway so that was a goddamn power move on his part.
2. Gang Orca - first of all, if you are an orca man, then naming yourself after orcas is a pretty apt thing to do and I have to respect that. but then along comes the “gang” part, out of absolutely NOWHERE, and it absolutely SMASHES. like, this name comes up to you and it slaps you in the face. GANG ORCA. HE’S A BIG AGGRESSIVE DOLPHIN MAN AND HE’S NOT HERE TO FUCK AROUND. IS HE ACTUALLY IN A GANG?? WE DON’T KNOW. BUT HERE HE IS, READY TO YEET YOUR DELINQUENTS AND HUNT YOUR MOTHERFUCKING SEALS. this name fucks so hard it came within inches of the number one spot. he is a ruffian and a champ.
1. Eraserhead - last but not least, the guy who DIDN’T EVEN PICK HIS OWN NAME. his best friend had to do it for him, and out of love, came up with the SINGLE BEST HERO ALIAS IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. first of all, this name sounds like a very funky and electronicy Thom Yorke song. second, it conjures up the image of a man with a big no. 2 pencil head, which could not possibly be further from the truth. it’s just so whiplashy in the best way possible. third, the very existence of this name is seriously a goddamn miracle. he could have been “Power-Stopping Man.” or “Sleeping Bag Man.” or “Scruffy Hero: Tired Man.” or just “Shouta”, but unlike Shouto there wouldn’t have been any actual meaning to it; it would have simply been a case of him not giving the slightest of fucks about coming up with a real name. but rather than any of these, thanks to the power of friendship we were blessed with the greatest hero name in recorded memory. this is one of the few kindnesses fate has ever bestowed upon Aizawa Shouta in his tragic, exhausting life, and I for one am eternally grateful.
anyway so that’s my list! sorry if I left out anyone’s favorites! but I think all of these are deserving of love. also if you want to see the single best thing Japan has ever come up with, please go visit best-jeans.com. they even have an instagram lulz.
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animatedminds · 4 years ago
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Splash Mountain, Br’er Rabbit, and the Tragedy of Being Represented By Other People.
So, this is probably going to be the realest post I’ll make for a while - or at least until The Boondocks arrives, but it seemed apropos. Immediately after this I’ve got rants about sci fi and Star Wars and other unrelated things coming up, but for now we have my earnest opinions on a decision I feel should have been better thought out than it was. This is going to read more like an article or an essay than a review, but I think it needs to be said.
It hasn’t come up too often on this blog, but I am African American. It’s my life and my perspective. And as an African American, a lover of animation and - though this definitely doesn’t come up on the blog - a passionate folklorist in what you could call an academic sense (in that I’m a writer and a student, and folklore is the subject of most of my research), people I know in real life have asked me more than once what my opinion on the removal of Splash Mountain in favor of Princess and the Frog, how I must be glad it’s finally being removed, what my take on the history there was, and…
Well…
To really give that opinion, I’ve got to start at the beginning. Not Song of the South - that, if anything, is the very middle. We have to start with Br’er Rabbit and who that character was. Sit back students, info dump incoming.
Br’er Rabbit is an folklore character of African American origin with - like many folkloric figures - a difficult to place date of origin, but he was known to have existed at least since the early 19th Century, He has obvious similarities to the far older figure of Anansi - with several Br’er Rabbit tales even taking elements of Anansi stories verbatim - though with a the notable difference that unlike Anansi, Br’er Rabbit was more often a heroic figure: an underdog and seemingly downtrodden figure who used his wits and his enemies’ hubris rather than physical force to win the day. The meaning of that kind of figure to an enslaved people is obvious, especially when you compare Br’er Rabbit to another, contemporary trickster figure in African American history by the name of John. Br’er Rabbit’s stories could even arguably be seen as a more child-friendly version of the John tales, in which a human trickster pulls the same kind of momentum turning ploys on villains - but those villains tended to be explicitly slave masters or overseers, and John’s payback often came with explicitly deadly results. The existence of John as escapism for the enslaved or just-post-enslaved (IE Reconstruction) populations is clear: a person who with no power who could fight back with nothing but their mind, preying on the fact that their enemies see them as incapable and helpless, and the connection of Br’er Rabbit to that message is difficult to deny. If anything, Br’er Rabbit comes off as a somewhat more child-friendly version of the concept.
But the most important thing to glean from this is who and what Br’er Rabbit is: a product of the African American community and its history, as a means of those people to express themselves and their values in the face of oppression.
Now we fast forward to 1881, and along comes Joel Chandler Harris: a white Georgian. Harris was a folklorist himself, and travelled the country collecting stories - most famously Br’er Rabbit stories. His stated reason was to bridge African American and white communities by sharing stories, but he was tainted by the perspectives of his world and his place in it, infamously creating a framing narrative for those stories in which the character telling them exuded the imagery of subservience and simplicity that was typical of perceptions of African Americans from the post-Civil War Southern environment in which he collected them: Uncle Remus, in other words. Harris is hardly the only white curator who adapted stories of black or brown peoples in a way that played up the people the stories came from as something of a theme park piece, as if noble in unintelligence and simplicity, but he’s one of the most famous ones to do so - and that’s because of the adaptation. To note, when people criticize cultural appropriation, this is the kind of thing that really triggers the outrage. Not any situation in which a white person is inspired by someone who isn’t white and creates something accordingly, but situations where someone else’s creation is taken and used for the fame and profit of others, to the detriment of the people who made it. It’s these situations like the one Joel Chandler Harris created centuries ago, specifically, that people are trying to draw attention to - even if sometimes social media gets a bit trigger happy sometimes, that’s the real, underlying problem. With that in mind, let’s put that aside and move forward.
Fast forward again to 1946. Walt Disney Productions, then less the company of grander, wider scale stories of epic quests and emotional upheaval that make us all cry and more a company more known for folktale adaptations in general, were looking for a but of American folklore to headline a live action, animation mix - a medium that allowed a bit more financial benefit, as straightforward animation was not always particularly profitable those dates. This wouldn’t be the last time they produced an adaptation of an American folktale or short story - their version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow a few years later being actually one of the more faithful adaptations of that short story put to film. Disney, who evidently read Chandler Harris’ stories, put together a project to see if they could adapted. Which they did. Pretty much verbatim. This is actually worth pointing out: the actual Br’er Rabbit stories in the films are very accurately adapted, and the actors involved in the story (including James Baskett, how also played Uncle Remus) did a fine job characterizing them. The issue is that Disney also adapted Chandler Harris’ stereotypical and offensive framing device pretty much verbatim, bringing Uncle Remus. And therein lies the problem.
To put the issue with Song of the South in perspective, the movie - with the framing device - can be categorized as something called Reconstruction Revisionism - which is basically a genre of post-Civil War media meant to present the pre-war South was perfect and idyllic, and that people are racially more natural in that environment’s dynamic and never should have left. One of the most infamous movies in history, Birth of a Nation, is the crowning example of this genre. Obviously, Song of the South is nowhere near as awful and inflammatory a movie as that, but there’s a degree to which it was seen as the straw the broke the camel’s back for black depictions in media, only a couple of years after Disney’s Dumbo also did the same. The end result, an African American creation was used in a film that ultimately demeaned the African American community, a decision that Disney has been ashamed of ever since.
Fast forward to now. Disney is removing Splash Mountain, the sole remnant of Song of the South that focuses exclusively on Br’er Rabbit - a choice we’ve had reason to suspect was coming for about a year now, but which was unveiled conspicuously in the middle of protests and campaigning for better treatment of people of African descent worldwide. The reveal was a rousing success, with people applauding the decision to finally wipe away the rest of that movie - though remember that for later, that the response relies on the perception of Br’er Rabbit as something that starts with Song of the South - and replace it with something else. Surely, as a black person I should be happy that they’re finally getting rid of that racist character for good and replacing him with something more positive? And again, well…
To put short, Br’er Rabbit has finished his journey from African cultural symbol to discarded pariah, all because others used the character in racist ways that they themselves now regret. And for that… let’s be clear, I’m not angry so much as saddened. I’m not railing against the company for making the choice, since I can see how from their point of view it was the wisest and most progressive thing to do. Song of the South is a badly old fashioned movie that they’re right to want to move on from, and it’s their right to downplay characters within their purview if those characters reflect badly on the company. I’m just outlining the tragic waste of it all.
For now, compare Princess and the Frog - the thing they’re replacing it with. I do love the movie, or at least any problems I have with it have little to do with representation, and I definitely don’t have anything against Musker and Clements and their beautiful visions and creations, but it’s difficult to deny that its an adaptation of a European story, adapted by a collection of mostly white creators (with Rob Edwards comprising but one third of the screenwriting team, but not of story conception), that’s ultimately just dolled up with African Americans characters and a very Hollywood-esque depiction of a African diaspora religion (Voodoo, which unfortunately has a long history of such portrayals). If we’re talking about representation specifically - which this move had definitely been presented as a champion for - it’s not the perfect example, more of a story with a surface covering of the black experience than one with an especially strong connection. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem (Tiana and her story do well depict strong black characterizations, and approach an interesting (if light_ implication about racism and hardship during the 1920s) if Disney had yet created any other franchise that was another actual adaptation of an African or African American tale or story (with involvement from such actual people), but Song of the South is actually it. They legitimately have nothing else to call on.
This is something I feel we should do more to remedy. I am a writer/prospective screenwriter myself, and trying to put more stories out there is one of my primary focuses and goals should I ever truly enter the industry, but at the moment we just don’t have very many options.
This is hardly the only time that people of color have had little control over depictions of their own culture - literary and film history is full of such situations in both minor and terribly major ways - but it’s something that stings especially hard due to being such a current example, and because of sheer irony of the end result. Now we have a situation where African Americans are being told that something their people created to represent themselves is negative and wrong, because years ago other people appropriated that creation and used it to paint a negative picture of the people who actually held claim over it, and now the enterprise that those people created wants to save face: another example of culture being treated like a possession of the ones who are poised to make money of off it. And what’s worse, while the culture is used and abused like trash, the people are now presented with this removal like it was a prize - like they’re finally being given something - when little has really changed.
Ultimately, the Splash Mountain news - though it had been coming for a while - made me rather upset for that reason. As a studier of folklore, I suppose I knew better than most where these things came from, and so the buzz around the move being a belief that Br’er Rabbit was an intrinsically racist character just highlighted the tragedy of how African Americans and their culture tended to be tossed about by American media. So no matter what, I can’t feel particularly happy about it.
Let me iterate, in the film industry, being represented by people who aren’t of your culture group is basically inevitable. That’s essentially how the industry works. I’m not saying we should rail against anyone who would try to represent cultures that aren’t their own. The people who produce and create are few, and eventually the truth is that you have to be represented by other people - at least for the moment. We shouldn’t be railing against representation by others in general, as that wouldn’t be cognizant of the situation and thus self destructive. What I’m saying is that we - both we trying to be represented, and those doing the representing - should be aware of the problem there: that when others choose to represent you in media, you essentially have to trust them to have a real interest in you and your best interests when doing so, and when they don’t that depiction is there forever. So it behooves us to try to be the ones who are representing ourselves as much as possible, and in situations where we can’t, to remind those who want to represent us that they have a responsibility to do so effectively.
This is Animated Minds for Animated Times, and really this blog is ultimately about emphasizing what makes animated media work, what makes it fun, and what makes it worthwhile no matter how old you are. And so in several years of sporadic and infrequent reviews, reactions and fandom posts it’s been rare for me to get this real about a topic, but this is something that is a serious issue feel was overlooked. Representation is complicated. And more often than not solutions that are handed to us are more band-aids that look like cures than necessarily being actually helpful, and that’s what happens when ultimately the decisions about how you’re represented lie in the hands of other people. Representation is one of the biggest things we need to work on in coming years, especially with stories and adaptations - which refer to history and culture that are often not widely known or accepted. Ask someone if they think there should be an African princess, and they’ll tell you they didn’t even have kings and queens in Africa - something that’s bluntly wrong, but is widely believed simply because those elements of culture are never represented.
And that’s the sum of my thoughts on the subject. I hadn’t updated the blog in months because this whole thing was stewing in me, and I couldn’t really go back to cheerful posts about new things until I got it out. I’ve got great thoughts about the Owl House, Amphibia, the new seasons of BH6 and Ducktales that are totally coming up soon. But for now, just a few sobering thoughts from someone who grew up loving cartoons, and desperately wishes people like me had more to look at in that field beyond apologies and promises.
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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago
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When MVA/MLA Arc gets animated, what will you be looking forward to the most? What (canon-compliant) additions and/or changed do you want or think Bones should make, if any?
There’s--a lot.  Does that surprise anyone?  There’s a lot.
o  I have been foaming at the mouth for voice actor announcements for almost a year now, particularly for Trumpet, Geten and RD.           Trumpet’s superpower is literally his voice!  I mean, nothing about that statement requires that voice be particularly entrancing, but it certainly seems like it should be, right??             Geten is a boku-type in the manga, but that was literally the only hint foreshadowing his pretty boy face through 21 solid chapters of Pure Feral Gremlin.  Everyone was shocked by Geten’s face reveal!  How do you maintain that surprise value with an actual voice actor in the mix?  Do you not even try?  Do you play up the disparity--in which direction?  I can’t wait to see what they do.           And Re-Destro!  Re-Destro requires so much range!  From his peppy, silly businessman persona, to the urbane commander, from the overeager yes-man to the raving zealot--who on earth do you get to believably cover all that ground?  I can’t even begin to guess, but I am living in anticipation of that article going up on ANN or the official Twitter sources.
o  I’m also much looking forward to getting official coloring on Trumpet and Geten.  Skeptic seems pretty straightforward--black, black, more black--and RD and Curious, we have color art for, but I wonder if Trumpet will also be all black clothes, to go with that dignified politician image of his, or if he’ll get some color to pep him up a little.  What color are those tinted shades of his?  His eyes?  The wicked-cool Sevens Loud?           I assume Geten is all wintery shades, but it’ll be great to confirm which ones.  I mean, we all assume he’s white-haired to better annoy Dabi with family parallels, but what if he turns out to be platinum blond?  And are his eyes blue?  Gray?  White?  What color is that awful parka?           Also, Re-Destro’s stress powers.  Having been writing them as black since at least August--Rorschach test blots are generally black, after all, and they’re the clear inspiration--I would much like it if the anime would have my back on this.  They made Destro’s mask a dark cinnamon brown, though, so I’m prepared to be unpleasantly surprised in this matter.
o  Predictable MLA adaptational choices aside, I’m also eager/anxious about how they’ll handle Spinner’s narration.  What I really hope is that they actually straight-up hand him ALL the narration duties--not just the stuff he dictates directly in the manga, but also e.g. the name and quirk explanation material that Present Mic normally gets, or the previews that are always handled by Deku.           The opening and closing sequences are another big structural thing, of course--based on the flashed snippets of Hawks and Endeavor in both our current and the previous OP, I’m expecting we’ll see at least a bit of something referencing the upcoming internship arc (which I expect to close out the season), but I hope the villains just walk away with the closing entirely.  I want my slice of life villainy ED, dangit.
o  Another thing I’m eager/anxious about would be Kotarou, and the Shimura flashback generally.  There’s a brittle edge of to Kotarou that I really love, and I hope he manages to keep it in the anime, despite the anime being generally not so great at moments that I would describe as “delicate.”  For example, I’d like it if he doesn’t get a super deep voice, and if they could manage to keep his pretty face, and capture how deeply bitter and tired he looks in the scene where he’s reading the letter Nana left him.           Also, I hope they keep the little montage bits and, crucially, the changes of clothes the family goes through.  We see Tenko in no less than five, possibly as many as seven, different T-shirts through the course of that flashback.  It seems like a small thing, but it’s one of the factors that makes me skeptical that AFO gave Tenko Decay, when so many days clearly go by between the opening with the man at the door and the tragic end.  It’d be nice not to see too much resurgence on that just because the anime can’t be bothered to come up with more than one outfit for the Shimuras.
I have enough issues with the anime’s usual adaptation choices that I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high on the actual content of the episodes.  The staff is diverting too much of its major talent to the movies (BAH) these days for me to expect the whole season to look all that great, and it’s never been particularly creative or daring outside of its climactic sakuga-heavy fight scenes anyway.  I’ve also long had a bone to pick with its scoring decisions, and am already eyeballing the climax of the RD/Shigaraki fight and imagining the minor-keyed terrifying dirge I fear the anime will play there, at the moment that Re-Destro (and, shortly afterward, Spinner) are supposed to be experiencing something akin to religious awakenings.           There’s also the issue of the violence and gore--judging by how the anime handled the scene where Shigaraki and Compress maim Overhaul, I have some severe reservations about how much blood they’ll be allowed to get away with, particularly in the scene where the League brutally decimates that CRC group and, of course, Shigaraki’s backstory.  I’m looking at MVA to serve as a preview for how all the same issues will be addressed in the War Arc.
That bit of pessimism aside, as to what I’m hoping they’ll add or change?  Well, off the top of my head.....
o  I would love to get a full episode devoted to the time the League spends fighting Machia.  Not that first tussle, but the six grueling weeks in the mountains.  There’s so much you could add there for character building and atmosphere that Hori didn’t so much as montage through.  Where was their food coming from?  How’d they pick out places to pitch camp?  How much access to news from outside did they have, and how frequently?  What were the circumstances in which Gigantomachia “told them himself” about his great sense of smell??  Stuff like that!             I don’t think we’re at all likely to get this--honestly, the series of late has had enough of a problem with trimming bits and pieces that I’m as worried about what they might cut as I am hyped about things they might add--but the one thing that gives me some hope is the training camp arc.  Specifically, the moment 1-A first gets to the Pussycats’ forest, they get jumped by earth golems, a fight that the manga off-panels entirely, but the anime spends a modest amount of time on, giving the kids a little bit of time to show off their moves and such.  I’d love to get something equivalent for the League.
o  On a similar note, I wouldn’t turn it down if they fleshed out some of those running street fights a bit.  One obvious thing comes to mind: there’s a weird jump in the manga between Skeptic and a horde of his golems being all but on top of Twice at the beginning of 233 and then that fight just--doesn’t happen.  There’s no mention of it at all.  I think the suggestion is that either Machia’s appearance or the tower going down interrupted it--Skeptic breaks off from his fight the same way Geten and Trumpet do theirs, shifting focus to protecting Re-Destro--but it’d be nice to see the anime touch on it.
o  It’d be nice to get a bit of expansion on the nature of the bullying Spinner endured.  We’re told he was, but was it limited to verbal?  Did he get beaten up a lot?  Was there an online element?  Deku’s our only other reference point for “bullied kid,” and whatever one might think about the story’s development of Bakugou’s mentality, it’s been made clear in retrospect that there was a lot more too that than just the matter of Deku’s quirklessness.  I’d love to know how Spinner’s bullying looked in comparison (not least because of some of the theories about Spinner and Deku needing to come to some kind of accord to free Shigaraki from AFO).
o  Make the Villa (both here and during the War Arc) look more realistic.  By which I mean, I know Horikoshi is capable of drawing interesting and lived-in interior spaces--he has an entire chapter dedicated to it in the 1-A dorm room contest, after all--but he normally doesn’t bother much with it.  At UA, it’s not too distracting, because we know good and well that that whole building is probably maintained by Cementoss anyway.  Ditto places like Tartarus (intentionally, dehumanizingly barren) or the League’s post-Kamino hideouts (abandoned homes and industrial spaces).  But the Villa?            For heaven’s sake, it’s called a mountain villa.  It has a clear reception desk on the ground floor; it’s obviously some sort of high-end hotel, if not an outright resort or rentable retreat lodge.  Speaking as someone who’s worked in one, places like that don’t look as fuckin’ bare as the rooms we see there always seem to.  For fanfic purposes, I’m happy to go on telling myself that e.g. the pool and the bar and the restaurant(s) and the gym are in the building Cementoss doesn’t tear in half, but it’d be nice if the anime could class the whole place up a little, maybe put some real furniture and decor in the rooms that are in use.  (Yes, I know this is a ridiculous nitpick.)
o  This is less a change and more a correction, but for fuck’s sake, BONES, give us white-haired Shigaraki.  The climax of Deika is a solid time for it, given that it’s obvious in the manga that Shigaraki’s hair gets paler in Deika--you can see it in the way Horikoshi inks it (which is to say, the way he stops inking it)!  I think if we ever get white-haired Shigaraki in the anime, a somewhat better time as far as narrative justification goes would be when Shigaraki gets out of the tube in the War Arc; you could easily justify it as a side-effect of the surgery.  Still, I’d rather see it here.  I want white-haired Shigaraki, gleaming and brilliant through the scattering ash in that crater, a veritable angel of sacred destruction.           Honestly, more than anything, the crater sequence is the one I hope I love.  It’s probably my favorite single moment in the entire manga, as Shigaraki wins over Re-Destro, Spinner and Gigantomachia in the same moment, and finally comes into his own.  If they can at least nail that, I’ll consider myself pretty satisfied.
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raguna-blade · 4 years ago
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So this just occurred to me to think about but shared symbols in the persona series. I’m sure there are others that I miss, especially relevant to the first two games, and right now i’m looking at just the one, but there should be SOME right?
And in this case the one i’m thinking about is glasses. So in persona 4, the glasses the characters wear are used specifically to be able to see through the fog in the other world, that is to be able to better navigate the world that is hidden and obscured right?
Heck, a critical scene in the game shows the absurd difference wearing them makes early on and Narukami hot flinging them away in the final scene is an indication of him more or less coming to fully understand the situation and having “true” sight of what’s going on around him. Which is cool!
But what’s interesting is that none of the Investigation team actually wear glasses in their day to day which is fine really. It’s as much a design thing as a story beat but what i’m getting at is going into persona 5 then, there can be this expectation that if one is wearing glasses they have a degree of special insight/ability to see things as they really are right? Not strictly, but as part of the same story family it’s not like those symbols disappear as a thing in play strictly, they just wouldn’t be emphasized because that’s not really the theme here.
So it’s interesting to me then that every single character who wears glasses normally in this game (with normal including their metaverse selves should they have one) demonstrably has special insight into the world or events going on, or else just general insight. Literally all of them, i’m not joking.
We’ll go in order here, Phantom Thieves>Allies>Foes>Maruki, and there’s probably more i could go into here but for the moment it’s kinda idle thoughts so forgive that.
Protag: So the thing to note is that his glasses are fake right so that may off the bat give you the vibe that this is wrong but well, that literally doesn’t matter for our purposes here. That Protag definitely has special insight into the world and events however is inarguable. Having been cast out of the standard safety net of society he gets a front row seat to a lot of weird things that aren’t immediately obvious. He see’s through the masks of all of the targets to some greater or lesser degree (admittedly not unique to him, but the thieves as a whole), get’s to understand to workings of the world and how it specifically fails outcasts, has inside knowledge on several of the major players (Shido, Maruki and Akechi most notably) that isn’t immediately obvious that they themselves aren’t aware of all the time, and as seen through the Confidants specifically he’s a remarkable judge of character and an expert and understanding people, something he does consistently.
That his glasses are fake actually, now that I think about it, is actually an interesting trait here. They exist solely to put him under the radar, which actually works so there’s that element of understanding appearances, but the fact that he really DOES NOT actually need the glasses to “see” the world accurately perhaps rolls back to his Designated Role as the Trickster (or at least one of them, We will get to Akechi in a second), and his ability to understand how the world works or specifically does not.
Akechi: Akechi is interesting here because in the real world he doesn’t wear glasses, as Prince!Crow he doesn’t either. So...Where does he wear glasses?
As Black Mask. And notably, they’re red tinted lenses, which actually lines up with another thing here. He does have true insight (and he’s sharp as hell we can’t possibly deny that) but he also, notably, has a crazy distorted view of things. As was kinda pointed out during his whole mental break down in the boat, he didn’t have to do like...any of the fucked up things that he did to achieve his goals. Even if he still wanted to kill his dad or just ruin his life he didn’t have to do it the way he did. He’s, one, literally seeing red, but two for all that his vision is keen it’s also more than a little distorted.
But also, as the other Trickster, the more destructive one at that, he also has keen understanding of the world and how it works, breaks down, and utterly screws over those who fall outside of it. Indeed, his insight is miles better than Our protags given he was more or less kicked out of the system from the get go due to family matters and had to actively claw his way back into the system in the first place. But of course, going back to his red lenses, as opposed to Akira who more or less rejects the system and wants to see it broken down one way or the other, Akechi desires to be part of it despite knowing intimately it’s copious failings. He has the vision and the ability to see but also fails to act on it (a thing he explicitly states more or less)
Futaba: Futaba is perhaps the most straightforward here. Does she have inside knowledge of events? Some, given her understanding of Cognitive Psience for sure, but her talents lean specifically in computer stuff, and the varying ways of getting information and such there. Of everyone here her glasses as symbol match up the cleanest with the Persona 4 use, in that her clear view vision is related to the world of cyberspace and how all of that works. That they carry over into her Rebellion outfit likely has to do with her understanding of cognitive psience as well, which while (relatively) basic is still far better than pretty much everyone else in the cast save 1 or maybe 2. It’s worth pointing out that, if I recall things correctly, she basically was the one who put together that entire escape plan for Joker to not get hot shot in the face.
Sumire: Now here’s a fun one! She doesn’t get her glasses until the very very end of the game, when she stops being Kasumi and starts being herself. Another straightforward one in two ways. One, she is able to actually accurately percieve herself as herself indicating clear and unobstructed vision for her self. Easy peasey, but also, of the group she’s the one who most understands what Maruki is doing and why. Despite having issues with his end game, she also makes it abundantly clear that if it weren’t for what he did she probably would have killed herself. It’s an understanding that the others have a little of, but they also don’t have quite as deeply for as long as it went on with her.
Ohya: Straightforward again. She’s an investigative reporter, and a damn good one. She was on her way to cracking something with Madarame, before the story even began she and her partner had some dirt on Shido (which seems on one hand easy cause Shido is kinda sloppy, but also considering the range of influence he has even getting a bit is wild), knows Kaneshiro as a mafia boss despite him not really being arrested, and yeah she just get’s it. She’s sharp.
It’s also noticeable that her glasses are also distorted, in that they’re sunglasses.That’s not “clear” vision since they shift colors. Obviously, she’s going to see things a bit off, and in her case it’s less general insight and more specific to her present circumstances. Relating to sunglasses, at the start of confidant she’s stuck working entertainment stuff which she hates and isn’t fond of, but she doesn’t feel she has other options or the ability to follow her true passions in journalism. And she’s not...really wrong actually. She does have a correct view of the situation, because if she doesn’t stick to what’s what, she’s going to lose her job, but at the same time the degree of resignation is well also wrong, as she get’s into pretty quickly. She still has options, but at the moment she couldn’t really see em.
That they are amber sunglasses and she’s seemingly a depressed drunk i’m sure has no relation.
Sojiro: Sojiro is straightforward really. He understands the world, how it works, how it breaks down, how various things look, has a keen insight into people and events in general, and has insight on the main villain specifically. He’s not exactly trying to upset things no, but he’s made the system work for him to have a peaceful life with his daughter and ward, which is perhaps super impressive given how absolutely obnoxiously petty Shido is.
Kunikazu Okumura: Very simple, he knows exactly who’s involved with the conspiracy. Also tied with that, as he’s also a member of the conspiracy, is a knowledge of how the world as it is works, for better or worse. Like...It’s fucked up, but unambiguously everything he does do actually does advance his goals. As much as it hurt people, as much as it hurt his daughter, it worked. It’s awful, but it worked.
Shido: So...Shido is interesting. He’s especially interesting in comparison to the last glasses boy Maruki, but Shido is interesting especially because well...
Shido is right? Like, his view of the world as it is is kind of unambiguously correct. People in power have the ability to manipulate and reshape the world as they please, avoid the consequences of their actions, the world really is going to shit, and he has the ability to save whoever he wants, and he has connections and power that would allow him to basically reshape things as he see’s fit.
He’s unambiguously correct in this. He understands the world and the systems at play intimately. He understands the people he works with Intimately, to the extent that not only are their cognitive forms almost indistinguishable from absolutely normal humans, but they behave in ways that don’t even necessarily benefit him even in their assigned roles in the cognitive space. I mean look at the Cleaner. He damn near let the phantom thieves walk if Yusuke would have agreed to be his personal artist, and the moment he got his ass whooped he just left.
It is, frankly, a terrifying amount of insight.
But again, his glasses are off color. His view of the situation is, in some way, incorrect, despite this insight. So where does he go wrong?
Once again, as seems to be the case with all of the tinted glasses now that i think about it, the issue lies in self reflection. His view of the outside world and such is correct, but where he makes his biggest mistake lies in both his view of himself as untouchable (he’s not) and that his method of salvation is at all the only one available, or even perhaps tenable.
The second point is perhaps the more critical one. Had Shido used his connections, insight and knowledge for good he could very easily change the situation that was leading to the disaster that he saw himself saving others from. He could make things better if he wanted to, if he thought to, but his failing is that he didn’t and perhaps couldn’t. And critically, his belief that he and his would be able to be safe on that ship for any period of time when the world around it has been utterly devastated is well...short sighted.
Maruki: Last but not least, Maruki. While his insight isn’t perhaps as broad about things, what he knows and what he talks about is...Well. It’s another version of Salvation for sure, but it’s one that the phantom thieves and I think the players have to argue with. Maruki says it extremely clear, it’s better for you to overcome your hardships yourself, it’s better to face your problems head on and fix them that way....But sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you really just cannot do it, you cannot surmount the challenge no matter how much you may need or want to, sometimes you’re just going to be broken and hurt and in incalculable pain and that’s extremely fucked up.And if that’s the case, if that’s how the world is, shouldn’t it change? If the system is broken, if the way the world is is wrong, shouldn’t it be changed?
It’s not unlike the phantom thieves, although the direction and end goal are different.
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hopeswriting · 4 years ago
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KHR x The Umbrella Academy AU
I need to get this out of my system before I think too much about it and want to write an actual story about it lol. With the Arco as MCs because I’m very predictable. TUA spoilers.
Words: 2579
Kawahira is Reginald because who else he’d be.
Every generation he gathers the most powerful extraordinary kids to make sure there will still be a world come next generation for him to do it again.
The current Arcobaleno he gathered are, well, the Arcobaleno lol.
Maybe there are the ones who’ll be smart enough to find another way around the Tri-ni-sette that doesn’t involve human sacrifices too, or strong enough to fight back against him and not let him kill them even if it means the world burns, or even strong enough to straight up kill him and put him out of his misery.
A dead man can’t be blamed to not give a shit about the end of the world after all or make it his problem.
(Well, this went dark real quick lmao.)
But why does he give a shit while he lives you ask?
He met this one human that one time and love sure has a way to make you care like the dumbest of humans.
(Yes I’m talking about Sepira.)
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An Anti Tri-ni-sette Movement is born in this generation only, but not so much because of the whole human sacrifices thing mind you.
By design they just so happen to actively trying to prevent it, but they don’t care enough to come up with an alternative to stop the apocalypse.
Not that stopping the apocalypse was ever their end goal because yeah, it’s Byakuran and his Guardians that lead the movement, and Byakuran would just like to say if Kawahira wanted the most powerful extraordinary kids, he was right there.
Also playing the anti-hero (when he’s actually a chaotic neutral bad guy lol) sounded like a lot of fun.
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The Commission is also still a thing because, well, someone still has to keep track and protect the timelines, right?
And as I’m writing this I realize it would have make more sense to have Kawahira leading it, or even Byakuran, but whatever.
Among their many assassins there’s this one elite squad the Commission tries very hard to keep them out of the field as much as possible (and fails), because they always need to send others agents after them to sort through their collateral damage and actually keep the timelines as they should be.
Yes I’m talking about the Varia.
Byakuran is very acquainted with them (both the Varia and the Commission), because they keep trying (and failing) to kill him.
Because Byakuran keeps using his power whatever the way he fucking wants, even while being very much aware of how timelines work.
Because of course he is lol.
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Reborn and Verde are number one and two respectively, and always butt heads.
Not because of jealousy or because Kawahira trying to pit them against each other works on them or anything like that, they just infuriate each other at a very deep level lol.
Especially because they recognize (and begrudgingly admire/respect/trust) each other’s respective strengths.
They just don’t agree/approve on how the other uses them.
(Does Reborn need to be such a huge show off all the time? Being confident in his strengths enough to play with his enemies before winning against them is one thing, showing all his cards for the world to see just so he can win against them after they tried their hardest to defeat him is just incredibly stupid.)
(Does Verde have to be so straightforward and play by the book every time? Being the smartest in the room is one thing, walking out of the room alive because of it is another one entirely.)
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A mission goes wrong and Reborn is dying, so Kawahira injects him with the Deus Ex Machina whatever-it- is, and he gains super healing.
And the super villains and every day villains are in for an entirely new level of Reborn wiping the floor with them lol.
(And yesI know, I’m shallow, but come on Reborn is too pretty to become half-ape, half-human.)
Reborn doesn’t go on the moon.
(They all turn eighteen and Kawahira isn’t even allowed to breathe in their direction anymore, let alone send them on the fucking moon.)
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Fon is number three.
I have this headcanon he’s a bit of a manipulator, and uses his nice guy persona to wrap people around his finger.
Or he can be anyway, but it isn’t nowhere near in the first options he considers, because I also headcanon he’s genuinely a nice guy.
Anyway he doesn’t exactly hate his power, but he doesn’t trust it himself for shit, and wants to rely on it as little as possible.
So he also ends up a martial artist in this universe, and a very quiet guy.
(He remembers all too clearly what kind of words he can speak while under emotional stress.)
(The awful, horrible, haunting feeling of realizing even he can’t take them back.)
(Lal remembers it too.)
(Then Kawahira makes it so everyone forgets.)
(And Fon makes himself forget.)
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Colonnello is number four.
Yeah I know, it could be Skull, but let’s go with him.
Reborn is number one but it’s Colonnello who’s daddy’s good little soldier boy.
For a very simple logic that goes like this: the more he behaves, the better he is at being and doing whatever Kawahira wants, the less traumatic encounters with his power he’s forced to have.
(Colonnello was never afraid of the dark, but then he’s thrown into the mausoleum again and again, and he never stops being afraid of the dark.)
So he doesn’t turn to drugs because he can’t afford to not be at the top of his game, but he does turn to Lal and her music.
If he closes his eyes and listens hard enough and it’s loud enough, he forgets the ghosts for as long as the music goes on.
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On the other hand he can’t help having a bit of one-sided strained relationship with Reborn, with a lot more resentment than he’d want.
(Meaning zero because in an ideal world they’re best friends, and it’s really easy to tell the rare times when Kawahira isn’t looming above their relationship.)
It’s not even like he can’t see where Reborn is coming from, taking a stand against Kawahira and defying them and crossing the line further and further each time (of course he does), but he really could do without the collective punishment.
All in all, number four is doing very good, while Colonnello is doing very bad, and maybe does become an addict as soon as he doesn’t have to play superhero anymore.
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Viper is number five.
They’re very happy with their teleportation power, and is right there with Colonnello in being daddy’s obedient child until they can hightail it the hell out of there.
Kawahira is very invested in their training and making them take the next big step with their powers.
Viper is smart so they know of the possibility of them being able to time-travel, but no surrogate A+ parenting dad is getting them in no time-travel shenanigans, nu-uh, they don’t think so.
 But then a mission goes wrong, and instead of the little jump back a few minutes in time they wanted to do, they jump in the future.
They keep jumping in the future as they try to go back, and oh, look at this, the end of the fucking world.
And his siblings’ dead bodies.
And a very alive, adult Skull??
(This is such a relief.)
(Skull is so happy to see them again.)
------
Something goes wrong when they try to jump back to the present, and only Viper makes it back.
In their thirteen year old body, because stopping a goddamned apocalypse isn’t enough to deal with already.
Their siblings are useless and no help and broken and very traumatized dysfunctional adults and alive, and they’re so, so happy to see them again.
(If they tear up and cry a bit later when they’re alone, that’s no one business.)
They hug (only) Skull, to no one surprise, and keep hugging, which does surprise everyone, and Skull may have written that book but he’s no monster and it’s Viper, so he hugs back.
(Of course he does.)
Viper still doesn’t know he’s immortal.
(Because Skull is a dumbass and kept waiting for the right moment, and what do you know, it never showed up, but to be fair with him they had a lot to deal with.)
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No number six even though I do like the Ben, and dead!Ben, and ghost!Ben storylines.
But it there was a number six, I guess it could be either Skull or Viper maybe?
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Luce is number seven as in she’s the most OP of them all. Not in a “raw strength” sense of course, but seeing the future?
I think Byakuran demonstrated perfectly how OP a power it is if you’re willing to weaponized it.
She doesn’t see the end of the world coming (where would be the fun if she did?), or at least doesn’t understand it’s the end of the world she’s seeing, and not just some big scale catastrophe.
She is not daddy’s good girl even though he shows a particular interest in her power, but he can go fuck himself actually.
She’s a bit of a number four too as in she hates her power, and it certainly gives her her fair share of nightmares.
It’s a special kind of gut wrenching feeling to see when and how people will die, and not always being able to save them even if she wants to.
(Nothing terrifies Luce more than when she sees her siblings in her visions.)
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Skull is also number seven as in he’s the ordinary one who’s actually the most extraordinary of them all.
They just never figure out he’s immortal because Kawahira doesn’t push them that far in training, and he doesn’t go on missions.
He’s shunned and isolated by everyone, except for Viper and, hear me out, Luce.
Viper is afraid of heights, and maybe it shouldn’t matter because of the “jump” way their teleportation works, but sue them it does and they can’t help it.
Skull is the only one who takes the time to help them with that in another way that isn’t telling them to get over it, or making them dangling over edges.
Their friendship starts from there.
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Luce on the other hand approaches him for selfish reasons.
Skull is the safe sibling, the one if she were ever to see his death, she can only hope it won’t be a too brutal one (or a brutal one at all).
But then, well. Skull is Skull, and he’s fun to be around with and funny, and he’s so good at keeping you out of your own head and thoughts, and he is such a breath of fresh air from her usual, unbearable routine, and—
He’s better than her at keeping his resentment and envy of her extraordinariness at bay than she is at doing the same with his ordinariness, and she’s so grateful he doesn’t push her away for it.
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Skull is still very much treated like dirt, and he rolls with it as best he can.
Mostly because being left out of this whole extraordinary superheroes stuff lets him see how truly fucked up it is.
Skull is the one who wakes up at night not because he can’t sleep, but because the others can’t, and they don’t always manage to be silent about it.
He’s the one who sees them coming back from missions injured like no children should ever be, who assists Kawahira during their training and has to help them up at the end of it because they can’t move anymore.
He’s the one who watches them never really growing close with each other as much as he is the only one shunned, because Kawahira only has enough favors in him for only one of them.
Except he doesn’t even have that of course.
Skull is the only one who hasn’t blood on his hands, and he always feels guilty and awful at how relieved and lucky he feels whenever he sees that look in their eyes.
So he rolls with it, but not quietly, and forcefully makes himself a place among them even if it’s only to be their Lackey, because these guys are in dire need of ordinariness, no matter what Kawahira made them believe.
No matter what Kawahira made him believe.
It doesn’t work a lot of times, and only work a little when it does, but it’ll have to do.
Skull of course still hurts and is forced into his own traumatic childhood, so he still writes the book.
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Skull figures out he’s immortal as soon as he’s left alone into adulthood because he is a dumbass.
The others learn about it because Luce saw the vision of his first death, and they were quite literally there to stop it from happening.
But instead they saw him coming back to life.
They don’t talk about it.
(None of them are in the right head space to talk about it).
And then they’re back at having no contact between them until the next time Luce has a vision of his death.
(Because he’s immortal now, but what if he’s not anymore?)
(Skull is so sorry of this new layer of fucked up he added to Luce’s visions.)
It’s very awkward when Viper comes back and tells them Skull is the only one who survived the apocalypse though they don’t know how, and they have to break the news to them.
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Lal is also number seven as in she’s the one being medicated to keep her powers at bay.
She’s The White Violin, if only because one of them needs the raw strength and ability in their power to blow up the moon lol.
Lal is extraordinary until she isn’t.
She’s thirteen, and the mission goes wrong, and she’s losing control of her powers, and Fon says some unfortunate words.
Then Kawahira makes him say other unfortunate words, and Lal never has been extraordinary.
(Because she’s too powerful, and he’s trying to keep the world turning, not end it whenever she’ll feel too strongly too much.)
Her relationships with the others kind of fall short because it kind of feels hollow/shallow now, and she ends up isolated too.
But because of their respective unique circumstances, Skull and her unfortunately never bond.
Colonnello and her stays close, because if Lal can be useful with her music that way, she’s more than happy to do it.
And on an entirely unrelated note, I really like the idea of musician!Lal actually.
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Sepira is Mom.
Yeah I know, the similarities with Luce would be very obvious, but let’s pretend it wouldn’t be.
And they don’t have a chimpanzee uncle, but they do have pets from that one time they gang together against Kawahira.
But they never said what kind of pets they wanted to have lol.
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So it goes something like this:
Number One: Reborn – Super Strength and Super Healing
Number Two: Verde – Either The Smartest Man In The World or controlling the trajectory of weapons (while still being the smartest man in the world even if it isn’t in the “super” way), or both
Number Three: Fon – The Rumor
Number Four: Colonnello – The Seance
Number Five: Viper – The Child
Number Six: Luce – The Prophetess
Number Seven: Lal – The White Violin The (Extra)Ordinary One
Number Eight: Skull – The Immortal The Ordinary One
*
I actually have AUs of this AU, but let’s not make myself too comfortable in this hole lol. Hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to add!
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autumn-foxfire · 4 years ago
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The thing is AFO has been telegraphed as the main villain since the very begining of the manga. Hes a direct opposite to All Might, the ultimate hero and is basiclly bnhas take on fire lord ozai or voldemort. One big badass villain whos root cause of most bad things, who doesnt have any deep motivations aside for I Am Evil and whos basiclly a boss fight waiting to happen.
And the thing is, for a simple battle manga that is perfectly servicable. Like you get you different flavors of villains in lov, yakuza, mla, gentle n endeavor n the comission to an extent but afo has his fingers all over the place and in the end he, his influence and his student are the ones to beat. Bnha introduces some moral grayness but is overall pretty straightforward. Beat the big bad guy n become big hero yusss
Like with endeavor arc horikoshi has proven he could write more delicate topics and write them pretty good but lets face it he also droos the ball quite a but when it comes to exploring some things in his own universe. And that too is also mostly fine (even tho i would love to get more hawks content bls hori i hunger) cuz this is about dekus journy n the journy of the rest of 1A to become heroes, exploring the world they are inheriting and which will one day fall on their shoulders. Bnha is only one manga n horikoshi is only one guy he cant really explore every implication n like thats why i find creating content for bnha so fun. I feel like to us content creators horikoshi made one big ass sandbox, left us a bunch of cool toys and went 'have at it' while he went to work on the theme park. So i can go ahead takes bits n pieces from bnha left unexplored n go 'ok but what if a create a hero agency laser focused on popularity polls and pumping out merch and write a heroin in it who actually has a very strong quirk but is often dismissed partly because that quirk presents itself in a silly way n partly because shes a woman n her agency is more focused on marketing how cute n appealing she is rather thsn how strong she is'. This is not something horikoshi will explore in his canon, but something he left enough elements for me n other creators to build and expand on.
And like i can get feeling frustrated that horikoshi isnt digging deeper into this or that thing, that the main evil is pretty obvious n not very subversive or that hori missed some of the shots wed love to see expanded on (SPY HAWKS) but in the end this is a simple straightforward story n we should let hori tell it how he wants to without getting all upset cuz its not deep n super critical. Thats what fanwork is for baby, get yerself a shovel n build your own sand castle
^^^^
Yeah, I feel like people are expecting more from Horikoshi’s work then he promised and that’s what’s disappointing people in the end. We could totally explore a more corrupt society with the pieces Horikoshi gave us but just because we can doesn’t mean he’s planning to (at least not in the way a lot of the fandom hoped he would with the villains).
Write your fanfiction of the villains having an epiphany and trying to change the world for the better and facing resistence from hero society (...though I do advise not making such fiction into hero character bashing), go wild with making Hawks join the League for good or making some of the students do so as well. Have fun making different students the traitor and the reactions and impacts that would have on the cast.
Just don’t expect it to be something Horikoshi would explore in canon when he’s already laid down the bare bones of his story and seems pretty intent on sticking to that route.
We don’t need canon to validate fanfiction, after all, that’s why they’re considered transformative works. Let Hori tell his story and then we can steal bits and pieces from it for our own fun!
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argentdandelion · 4 years ago
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Grace Monroe is a Liar (And Why That’s a Good Thing)
Note: this article does not sufficiently weigh Simon’s bad behaviors in Episode 11, “The New Apex”. This article has been kept unmodified for posterity.
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Grace Analysis
“You know Sheena...you were right. Chloe shouldn't smile until her parents can afford to give her braces."
Grace is not simply a liar, however: she is also, to put it plainly, fake. She’s something of a social chameleon, but rather than drastically changing her presentation to fit in, she dons a fabricated, friendly and encouraging persona to make others “fit” her own desires. She even has variants of her persona for different audiences. She sounds like a friendly “cool kid” to 15-year-old Jesse, claiming he was a “natural” on his first raid although he only halfheartedly kicked a cube. She acts like an adoring parent to the younger Apex kids, squatting to the level of shorter Apex children, praising their offerings, and telling them she’ll keep the offerings someplace special. To Hazel (and Tuba) she acts like a kindergarten teacher at the first day of school, simultaneously making Hazel excited about The Apex and acting assuring to Tuba.
The most striking evidence for Grace’s lying social-chameleon-esque acts is how much her mannerisms and very voice change when addressing the Apex kids and Jesse compared to addressing Simon. In the first and second episode, she feels open to banter and bicker with Simon, such as exchanging unflattering nicknames or saying she doesn’t want his “ripeness” (body odor) giving away their position; she treats no one else as a friend like this.
Grace is not simply an insincere “queen bee” highschooler-type, either. As Uncivilized Elk has pointed out in “Cult Recruitment in "The Mall Car" – Infinity Train Analysis & Review” (warning; profanity), intentionally or not Grace’s tactics with Jesse show a step-by-step plan to indoctrinate Jesse into the Apex’s worldview. She praises Jesse and acts as if she cares about him, but is only manipulating him to a particular end. For example, when Jesse thinks the candy tastes bad, she convinces him to throw it to the wheels of the train, telling him he can “do what he wants”. However, this is almost certainly a precursor to making Jesse accept “wheeling” (killing by throwing them to the train’s wheels) denizens. Furthermore, in “The Jungle Car” she misdirects Hazel on who’s to blame for an unpopular decision, minimizes it (saying Simon was “confused”) and “resolves” the problem almost immediately: very suspicious abuser or cult-like behavior.
Initially, she engages in cognitive empathy (internal emulation of the emotional states of others) without really caring about others, to figure out how people work and so manipulate them. She has a utilitarian sort of approach, changing her persona to make others do what she wants and change them. To be fair, it’s possible not all of her kindness and empathy is faked. When Jesse took his exit, Simon calls him “weak”, but Grace says he wasn’t weak, but misled, and says: "We just lost another human, Simon. Show some respect.” Still, she’s certainly not sincere, overall. For example, despite teaching him he can “do what he wants”, when what Jesse wants goes against The Apex, Grace and Simon immediately try to stop him.
However, over time, Grace's temporary, utilitarian approach of altering personas to her goal makes her "become the mask". She eventually finds it hard to justify her continued kind and compassionate acts to Hazel in relation to her Apex worldviews, and the contradiction causes her distress.
Simon Analysis
Simon, in contrast, lies much less than Grace and is more open about how he feels, especially in his disdain for Denizens. While he initially seems friendly, when Jesse’s off on a raid he has no patience with MT’s concerns and outright tells her to “get out of here before Jesse gets back. You can’t help him like we can.” (Possible: it didn’t occur to him that Jesse might still trust Lake, so being too mean to Lake would come back to bite him.) He is also more open about his disdain for nulls around Hazel, though it would clearly benefit him to tone it down before they can “ditch” Tuba.
Two of Simon’s more important deceptions are notably half-truths, not outright claims. He claims MT broke Todd’s ankle, which is technically true: Todd kicked MT’s metal body and in the process broke his ankle. Arguably, him saying “no one knows” where the passengers go is him honestly saying he doesn’t know exactly where they go; how could he know Jesse Cosay’s home was in Arizona, and which specific location? Indeed, sometimes he does not lie even would it be very practical to do so. For example, although acting as if he “couldn’t save her in time” and pretending to be deeply unsettled by Tuba’s death would have gotten rid of Tuba and not put Hazel’s cooperation into question, he outright tells Hazel he wheeled her. His attempt to comfort her about “never hav[ing] to worry about that null again” could suggest obliviousness to the viewpoints of others, but it could also be his version of trustworthy, straightforward honesty, in accordance with his own beliefs.
It’s important to note that, though Simon is more honest than Grace, he still lies, deceives, and manipulates others. The difference between them is finesse, speed, and frequency. Though Simon may think of Grace as his plaything, or come to think of her as such, it’s Grace who’s effective at making others her playthings, by manipulating her social presentation like a social chameleon.
Root Causes
Arguably, both Grace and Simon do not treat people as means in themselves, but means to an end: in essence, other passengers are treated as tools for their own goals. It’s interesting to see how much Grace and Simon treat Apex members (and each other) like they treat nulls: that they are “only good as they are useful”. When they stop being “useful”, in the sense of helping the Apex or each other according to plan, they eventually become aggressive. Admittedly, the change to aggression is slower and more complicated for Simon to Grace in Season 3; Simon’s end goal for Grace could easily have been “comfort and companionship”, which friends naturally give anyway.
Grace emphasizes Jesse’s ability to choose for himself, but when Jesse’s decision strays from The Apex’s values and Grace’s plans, she doesn’t let him go with a “you’re missing out, buddy” lamentation. Instead, she says: “I wanted to go for the easy way, but you made it hard” and shows the Flecs where Lake is, presumably so they can do the dirty work for them. Jesse has value to Grace as an Apex member, one under her control, and not in any other sense. Grace’s logic for showing Lake to the Flecs parallels Simon’s actions in trapping Grace in her own memory tape; he says “you made me do this”. The Cat outright says Simon treats Grace as an object with: “and how should she be acting? She’s not like one of your toys.”
Grace Monroe is a liar, and much more so than Simon. And it’s because she is, in the words of the Memory Tape’s Hazel, a “coward leading cowards”. Grace’s lying comes from her fear: her fear of being wrong, of not being enough, of being alone. Her kindness to the Apex kids, faked or superficial as it may be, probably comes from the desire to give them what her parents would not. Adding onto her cowardice and fears, she initially hid her dropping number from Simon in “The Chat Chalet Car” because she "didn't want the Apex...or you...to see me like this...and think less of me." Though her fear Simon would think less of her for it was unfounded, as Simon sincerely supported her then, afterwards she hid her number from Simon. She “cut him out” (in Simon’s words) from her lack of courage to be open and honest. As Memory-Hazel points out, when Grace had the “chance to make it right”, by revealing she knew about Hazel’s condition when it was obvious she was a turtle, she did not.
Conclusion
Grace and Simon are both villain protagonists messed up by unresolved trauma and eight years of being on the train with no guidance whatsoever. One starts off slightly worse than the other, only to get much better discard her animus for nulls. One starts off slightly better, only to get much worse and expand his animus for nulls to humans as well: his former best (and only) friend, at that. It’s the tiny differences in how they relate to others and operate that cause their slightly different moral starting points and massively different end points.
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davidmann95 · 4 years ago
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Comics this week (1/27/2021)?
X-Men #17: I guess Hickman told his editors “yeah this issue’s relatively filler and is pretty much here to set up a single straightforward Checkov’s Gun for later, so I guess you can put whoever needs to work on it” so that’s how that happened.
Shang-Chi #5: A nice little mini, but I’m happy Yang’s moving on to my boys.
Avengers #41 (got this late from last week): That patented Aaron-brand Avengers nonsense I love, how I missed you.
Daredevil #26: ...huh. Don’t take that as a condemnation on my part, that’s simply my plain reaction to the developments of an issue of comics I enjoyed. Huh.
Stillwater #5 (ditto): SO THERE’S SOME REAL SHIT FOR OUR TIMES
The Department of Truth #5: Love me that looooore, baybeeeee
We Only Find Them When They’re Dead #5: I did have to stop a few pages in to refresh myself on a few names, but gosh can I not wait for acts two and three.
Future State: Aquaman #1: I figured this one could go either way since I’ve read some work by Brandon Thomas I vibed with and one or two that baffled me, so happy to say this one worked out really well. And very happy to be getting Sampere on Action soon.
Future State: Batman/Superman #1: I’ve seen folks unsurprisingly let down by this as a pretty straightforward World’s Finest teamup for Yang’s debut that for the most part could have just as easily taken place now, but the more I sit on this one the more it grows on me. There’s a sense of melancholy knowing this is probably Clark and Bruce’s last adventure together like this before what’s about to happen to each of them in this timeline, a tension they don’t know exists even as we can see their friendship start to fray that crucial bit - not because they’re at moral loggerheads, but because the changes in their lives are driving them in such different directions. I like the idea of a little slice of a ‘future’ event like this having a chapter set just long enough from now that the changes in motion are irreversible, but not far enough out yet to have visibly shaken things up permanently, and how that changes the tone of the characters’ adventures at the unknowing last point where they’re still recognizable. Anyway, high-falutin’ aside, it’s Yang and Oliver, of course it’s a very readable superhero comic even sans context.
Future State: Dark Detective #2: Very much enjoyed the fleshing-out here of Bruce’s new means and methods of operation, and the Red Hood backup works surprisingly well too (between this and DCeased, is DC making Jason Todd and Rose Wilson a thing?). My confidence in the upcoming Tamaki Detective increases accordingly.
Future State: Superman vs. Imperious Lex #1: This is gonna disappoint a lot of folks, not because it’s anything less than really good, but because it’s ‘merely’ really good when it’s the Flintstones team reuniting for their big, basically continuity-free crack at Superman. Probably that’s in no small part because it feels like Russell modulating his voice a bit to prove he can play nice with the other books in the same way as his Sinestro one-shot awhile back. Still fine with me and still one of Future State’s better offerings, but not the clear home run it seemed at announcement.
Future State: Legion of Superheroes #1: Well THAT’S not who I was expecting the much-advertised traitor to be. Lots of cool details here I’m looking forward to seeing play out when the book proper returns.
Strange Adventures #8: I want Gerads on a Flash book and Shaner drawing as many forest landscapes as possible going forward.
Batman: The Adventures Continue #8: Pretty standalone after how #1-7 formed a loose arc, but this taps the best of BTAS’s treatment of its villains and is a nice little epilogue.
Batman: Black and White #2: 
* The King/Gerads Batman story is an extremely King/Gerads Batman story, in the best way.
* The Campbell Batman and Catwoman story plays with the format, such as it is, in the most amusing way of this mini so far or any of the preceding Batman: Black and White books I recall.
* The Hardman/Bechko joint is pretty and perfectly serviceable.
* The Weaver story I don’t even kind of get but it sure is lovely.
* The Aja story doesn’t live up to its art or its unique format, but it’s still David Aja drawing Batman so it’s fine.
* Love the Villalobos pinup, glad he’s still got the occasional DC gig even if he’s making his main comics home elsewhere these days.
The Other History of the DC Universe #2: It doesn’t blow the doors down in the same way as #1, but I don’t know that it could - it isn’t introducing the concept, and it’s juggling two characters with I believe much less defining history than the singular lead of the debut. Still a great comic, and it’s with this issue it hits me that in following B- and C-list characters specifically rather than your Green Lanterns or Cyborgs, the book gets to have its cake and eat it too by conveying a superheroic POV while still making them spectators to the biggest developments both world-shaking and culturally significant. And yes, very much looking forward to what Ridley will do with Superman in Red and Blue after the balancing act he continues to strike here, I feel like he could be to All-Star Superman what Snyder was to Morrison’s Batman in presenting what those books were getting at in a way the general audience can latch onto this time (though in this case probably with something a little more on the prestige side rather than a summer crossover).
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obscure-sentimentalist · 4 years ago
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“I need a hug. A six hour one.”- Flommy 😊
[Thank you, Anon!! Another one I’m months-late on, but with the way this idea decided to go, I do think it was well-suited for the wait, experimental as it is. Using (but not actually featuring) Klarion the Witchboy as a plot device seems rather Halloween-y to me. ;-)]
From the Comforting Cuddles Starters list
Loath as Tommy is to think it, sometimes he misses the days when the evildoers of Starling City were simply morally-corrupt businessmen and crime lords running the too-close-to-the-surface underworld. Obviously, still bad guys, but their powers were at least material and predictable: money, weapons, martial arts training from a mystical murder cult that also offers a minor in megalomania. And for the most part, Tommy wasn’t in direct confrontation with those seedy types, spending more of his time adjusting to the nauseating shift in worldview they presented, and then hanging on the sidelines to lend the occasional hand in the crime-fighting process.
Straightforward, unsurprising, fairly distanced—those are the types of villainy with which Tommy knows how to deal. But the world’s gotten weirder, and so have the enemies; it figures that he’d be thrown face-first into the unknowable machinations of some magic-wielding, whackadoodle…
“…C-list Scooby-Doo villain,” Felicity seethes, voice finally puncturing Tommy’s thoughts like a splinter. She turns sharply on her heel to pace in the other direction, the clack of her footsteps echoing off the basement walls. “I’m gonna get him.”
Though she isn’t facing him, Tommy glimpses her hands going up, claw-like, in front of her, and shaking in an imaginary stranglehold. It’s an adorably familiar enough gesture that it almost puts him at ease.
(Almost.)
“And his little cat, too,” Tommy agrees, slipping from his tongue as an instinctive reaction of humor. As if nothing’s… off about this picture.
“Yes, the cat!” Pale blue-painted fingers snap, leaving the index finger triumphantly pointing up. “You know I love kittens. But that thing? Last time, when it tried to…”
“Last time?” Tommy repeats, head tilting in curiosity. He belatedly realizes the rudeness of interrupting like that, but the discomfort of not knowing has a firm grip on the wheel. “You’ve dealt with this Puritanical nightmare child before?”
In the space between questions and answer, Tommy drifts the remaining few feet over to Felicity’s workstation. He doesn’t dare sit in the chair—that’d just be courting death, or at least a truly withering glare—but leaning against the table provides him a… grounding, of sorts. It’s the best thing he can get until this whole situation is resolved and reversed.
Depending on the response Felicity has for him, maybe that’ll come sooner than expected.
Both the interjection and the movement make Felicity’s spine snap pin-straight—an instantaneous shattering of illusionary comfort—and she slowly pivots to glance back at Tommy from the opposite end of the floor. Yet as useful as it might be to her, too, Felicity doesn’t make a single move towards the bank of computers and empty chair (towards Tommy), instead hugging her arms to her chest and rooting herself in place.
“Oh, yeah, a… a couple times, now,” she stumbles, biting her lower lip. “I don’t know, there’s just something about us—my team—that keeps him coming back on chaotic reunion tours. But this is the first time I’ve been his plaything of choice, and he’s never done something quite of…” she extricates one hand and waves it aimlessly around her “…this magnitude, before.”
“The Great Felicity Swap,” Tommy murmurs absently. It’s neither a joke nor a judgment, just a phrasing of the situation, but Felicity shifts her shoulders at the words.
“We’re going to fix this,” she says, quiet yet firm. “Even if Klarion’s gone to ground, or is hiding somewhere out of all of our reaches, we can still set things right without him. I refuse to believe anything else.”
Although she says “we” throughout those first two statements, that last part just solidifies what Tommy hears instead. It’s Felicity not voluntarily wanting to do this alone, but also fully prepared to do so—her expectations of being denied help higher than the ones she has of help being offered.
It’s painfully recognizable—one of the similarities Tommy wishes he wouldn’t find between his… universe’s Felicity and another’s. But at least the consistency confirms that the move he’s about to make is the right one.
“Well, I’m not really the guy with the plans around here, but I make for a pretty good gofer,” he starts, pushing off of the worktable and taking a few casual, tentative steps forward. “Tell me what to look for, what buttons to press, what you want for a meal break, and I’m your man.”
In yet another instance proving the importance of connecting his mouth to his brain every once in a while (and maybe looking into a script editor), Tommy cringes the second that last bit slips out and Felicity’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline.
Lending a hand to your maybe-sort-of-just-starting-to-call-each-other-by-the-terms girlfriend’s doppelgänger (whose relationship with your own is a pretty big gray area, because she won’t say much except that she cares a lot about him) is the polite thing to do. Doing so in a way that sounds like you’re offering more than just help, thanks to poor, unconscious word choice, is just plain stupidity.
“He does that too,” Felicity says after a moment’s pause. “My… my Tommy.”
Surprised by the reaction, Tommy tentatively cracks one eye back open to meet Felicity’s gaze. “I should have figured that foot-in-mouth was a chronic, multiversal affliction.”
She flushes a bit at that, eyes flitting to the side in embarrassment. “That’s not… I mean, you’re right, you both have that in common,” she stumbles hurriedly. A deep breath in, and she gets back on track, facing Tommy again with a knowing look. “I was actually talking about the other thing—about not being the one with the plans, only good for being pointed in the necessary direction. You don’t get to pull that on me.”
Tommy’s mouth audibly clicks shut at that, any jokes or affirmations of his original statements shriveling in his throat under the weight of Felicity’s stare.
“He minimizes his skills like that, makes himself just the right size and shape to fit with whatever anyone else needs him to be,” she explains, plain and simple. “He’ll play up a few things, make jokes here and there about how looks and charm and the like come effortlessly to him, because that’s what people expect.”
Tommy shifts his shoulders in an odd sort of shimmy, as if those observations have physically burrowed under his skin and set off an unbearable itch. It’s one thing to be called out so plainly by someone he knows so well, and a whole different one when it’s an alternate version of said person. It’s both the discomfort of being so easily read by a relative stranger, and the realization that if this other Felicity knows, then there’s a fair chance that his does, too.
Unsubtle as it must be, Felicity sees his twitching, and her face goes soft.
“The cooking, though, that’s a talent he owns in full, and will make it well-known that he’s the only one he trusts in the kitchen,” she notes thoughtfully. A split-second of silence lingers between the words, before she rushes, “Which is fine by me, because I’ll just burn everything anyway—at least that’s not as bad as making a full dish that’s arguably toxic, unlike some people…”
Amusingly, they both shudder at that—Tommy at the mere concept, and Felicity presumably at the memory of an actual offending meal. They each catch the other’s mirrored motion, and their gazes snap to meet in faint embarrassment.
It doesn’t last, as Felicity flaps a hand to break the connection and get herself back on track. “Point is, he’s capable of so much more than he likes to tell people, and I’m willing to bet you are, too.”
On that note, she tilts her chin up and offers Tommy a pointed, challenging stare. It’s an achingly familiar look—a Felicity Signature—offered to anyone who might cross her; not a dare to prove her words right, but an offer for her to wipe the floor with the recipient and their flawed rationale of why she’s wrong.
No matter where she comes from, Tommy’s not taking that opening with any Felicity.
That said, he does have his own, different sort of reply.
“See, this goes both ways, because I know my Felicity,” Tommy points out, leaning in as closely and carefully as he dares without making Felicity uncomfortable. “How she’s always prepared to take on things by herself, even when she doesn’t have to. When she has someone—and usually multiples—in her corner to back her up.”
Tommy tilts his head and raises his eyebrows knowingly, before continuing with quiet sincerity. “We can figure this out together, but I’m still on board with my original offer. Tell me what you need, and I’ll handle it.”
Felicity makes as if to argue, but after a moment’s consideration, she purses her lips and narrows her eyes suspiciously back at Tommy. “Turnabout is fair play, huh?”
“Something about this whole situation has to be,” he notes, grinning cheekily.
Felicity rolls her eyes fondly at that, but her expression goes quietly pensive a moment later. “I guess there’s one thing I can think of,” she murmurs almost absently, gaze drifting down as her breath hitches.
“Anything,” he assures her. A hand comes up to hover over her shoulder, though it doesn’t land.
The motion is still enough to snap Felicity back into her thoughts.
“I need a hug. A six hour one,” she blurts, and almost immediately turns red. Her head shoots up whiplash-fast, eyes wide (and lightly sheened) and lips already tripping over an apology. “Wait, no, forget I said that, that’s way too weird. We’re… not the wrong versions of each other, that sounds mean, but this you and this me”—she flicks a finger between the two of them to illustrate—“we don’t have any sort of relationship. Sure, hugs are perfectly platonic, and it’s not like we’re really strangers, but six hours is a long time for anything physica- agh!”
“I did say ‘anything’,” Tommy cuts in before Felicity can spiral any deeper (or either of them can turn too red at that last bit), finally settling a hand gently on her shoulder. “And maybe six hours is a while, but let’s just not put on a time limit at all. However long you feel you need.”
Looking at Felicity Smoak—no matter the universe from which she hails—and claiming that the fight has gone out of her is a concept Tommy would never dare verbalize, but something does seem to recede enough for the one in front of him to fall against his chest. His arms lock supportively around her lower back as her hands press at his shoulder blades for stability, and so they remain.
Not even a six-hour embrace would be convincing enough that the one in their arms is theirs, but maybe a fraction of that time can confirm a friend in the familiar, and comfort enough to carry on.
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linkspooky · 4 years ago
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The Characters of Nisioisin (3)
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Trickster - Kaiki Deishuu
Nisioisin often uses and reuses a lot of common character archetypes in his writing. An analysis on his common use of liars, thieves and cheats by comparing and contrasting the differences between Kumagawa, Iichan and Kaiki. More underneath the cut. 
A. Defining the Trickster 
Already covered in this post. 
1. Introduced as a Villain
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In the story proper Kaiki is introduced to us as the opposite of Araragi. If Araragi is the person who saved Senyjogahara’s heart, then Kaiki is the one who broke her heart. If Araragi is a hero who saves everyone, Kaiki is a callous villain who cons people and doesn’t seem to care about the consequences for those he cons. 
Their interaction with every character they both interact with is the opposite. Araragi helps Senjyogahara, Kaiki stole her money and ruined her family home even though they are both positioned as people Senjyo once loved and thought of as a savior. Araragi saved Nadeko from the curse of the snake, whereas Kaiki is indirectly responsible for her being cursed due to selling curse charms to middle schoolers. 
Araragi heroically faces off against Gaen to defend his sister, while Kaiki is the one who sold the information about Tsukihi’s location to Gaen in the first place for a quick buck. In every instance, Araragi saves, Kaiki cons. 
Kaiki is also one of the few characters that Araragi shows an open disdain for. Araragi who is usually a very passive protagonist, and will go with the flow and talk casually with people who have beaten him half to death and is overly forgiving outright despises Kaiki on sight. 
However, it’s important to remember that Kaiki calls himself a villain when making his first introduction to Araragi. He intentionally places himself as the villain so that Araragi can play the hero, even calling him “Manly”, “Cool” and “Grown-up” for doing so, implying again that Kaiki is his opposite. Kaiki however is a liar, and when he calls himself a villain intentionally that also is a lie. 
2. Subverts Expectations
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Everything we learn about Kaiki in his first introduction in Niseimonogatari is inverted later on. He is a character who exists to play upon other people’s expectations and cast everything into doubt. There’s even a meta aspect to this, originally Koimonogatari was foreshadowed to be Senjyogahara’s narration debut only for Kaiki to take the mantle of narrator from Araragi instead. 
Ladies and gentleman, dear readers and all of you who picked up this book expecting Hitagi Senyjogahara to be the narrator have been duped. The lesson you should take home from this is every sentence ever written down by a book is bogus. 
-Koimonogatari
Koimonogatari is a book that exists to flip everything set up by Nisei. It is a book where the villain saves the girl (Nadeko) whereas the hero is someone almost completely helpless the whole story (Araragi). You could even say that it’s Araragi’s actions which created the problem for Nadeko, as his complete ignorance of her, and his coddling of her helped push her to want to become a god. 
Koimonogatari also starts a turning point in the series, where Araragi who had been a straightforward hero until this part starts to have his character deconstructed. Araragi who is constantly remarked upon as a hero who tries to save everyone, we find out that in Owarimonogatari is not only are there people he never even made an attempt to reach out to and help (Sodachi Oikura), but that Araragi is someone who uses obfuscation and self-deception to cover up his bad traits. He is someone who cares far more for the appearance of being good and helping others, then the actual work of helping others. This is again an idea that is set up in the intro to Koi. 
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Humans have a desire for truth. or they have a desire to believe what they know is the truth. Kaiki brings up the example of the higgs boson particle that moves faster than light. Plenty of people will find this change in the truth alarming, even though most normal human beings aren’t physicists and won’t even bother to look at the math or data that proves the Higgs-Boson particle and will just read the headlines and take other physicists at their word. 
People often care more for the image of something, than the actual thing. That’s true for Araragi as well who isn’t as noble as he appears to be and is for all intents and purposes a normal people. Kaiki is presenting us with the image of himself as a villain, because that is general is easier to accept then viewing himself as a more complicated person. Kaiki also, prefers to view himself as a villain rather than what he really is, which is a failure. 
Araragi uses obfuscation to hide his bad traits, but as his foil, Kaiki always desires to hide his good traits. The reason being that Kaiki as a person when he acts with good intentions, things always tend to go opposite of the way he planned them. Kaiki feels in control when he lies, he can control others by lying to them, manipulating them, duping them, but reality is something entirely out of his control. He can try to save someone only to have the completely opposite effect. 
“You tore apart the Senjyogahara - and backed her parents into a corner from which divorce was the only way out - because nothing else was going to work, right? You judged that the only daughter would have no future if you didn’t cut her mother off from the family.”  “Uh huh, that’s right. I was actually a standup guy. A real sweetheart, just looking out for a kid. I was only putting on a show of being nefarious. You’ve got all the details, don’t you? You’re really well informed. But don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s embarrassing.” 
-Koimonogatari. 
Kaiki is ultimately someone afraid to be good. That’s his weakness. He knows his good intentions are not guaranteed to produce good results, and he can’t face himself when his failures spiral out of his control so it’s easier to present himself as a villain. Kaiki, much like Iichan only feels comfortable when he’s deceiving everyone around him. He exists to subvert other people’s expectations because it’s a way of grabbing back control, in a world that Kaiki is mature enough to realize by now is completely out of his control. 
3. A Lying Liar Who Lies 
When Kaiki said every word written down in every book ever are lies, what he’s talking about is narrative. People who see the world in narrative view are applying a lens to reality to make it more palatable and easy to understand for them. Once again, they are preferring to hold onto images and preconceptions, the idea of the truth rather than the truth itself. It’s true that books are like reality, but people will often craft a narrative about reality in order to believe everything has direction, meaning, and a purpose when there is none.
Kaiki is also one of those people. He embraces crafting narratives, and telling lies because it gives him this idea of control he otherwise would not have. Kaiki is someone who doesn’t have a lot of control over his own life. If you take him for his word in the book he has almost no background, no family, he’s legally dead, and he’s a wandering vagabond that never remains in the same place for long. Kaiki’s way of reclaiming that stability and agency is to always craft a narrative around himself wherever he goes. He’s the one in control because he’s conning everyone else around him at all times. He acts like he always has all the cards in his hands, and he’s the smartest person in the room, because he can’t admit how afraid he is of not being that. Of being vulnerable. 
Kaiki goes one step further not just by calling himself a liar, but believing the whole world is made up of lies. He’s not just a fake, everyone is. A world of fakes desperately struggling to be real. 
“The second you say it out loud to someone, it deviates from your true feelings. All words are lies, it’s all a scam. No matter how true, the moment you utter it, it becomes embellished. Words are only representations, so impurities find their way in. If you want to make a wish, to make it exactly as it is, you absolutely mussn’t say it aloud.” - Koimonogatari
Yes, Kaiki I’m sure this speech has nothing to do with your fear of ever letting your intentions be known. 
This is also something Iichan directly calls out in his own struggles with lies, the truth, and the trust in other people you have to find between them. 
Hime-chan said everything was a lie. I agree, that must be the truth. But- really. Really, really, really you know.  If this world were like what Hime-chan said, if this world were like what I think.  We would not be suffering like this. Do you get it? If everything is a lie and there is not one ounce of truth - if ther is nothing of comparison, then everything ends up being the truth, too. - Zareogoto Vol. 3
Kaiki is able to call out Nadeko’s assertion that everyone in the world is a liar, everyone was misleading her and leading her on so easily because that is the same narrative lens he applies to the world to cope with it.
Let’s return to the Senyjogahara household again. Basically imagine you're Kaiki, a homeless man with no family who spends all of his time in luxury hotels and you're watching what looks like an ideal happy household. They are a rich loving family, with a good marriage, and their daughter is basically the school idol. What you Kaiki would call “Normal Law Abiding Citizens” the kind of life he could only dream of. 
Traditionally held values say that these people should be happy forever, because they're good people doing the right thing. But the things the world tells us have meaning, are secure, have no meaning at all and easily fall apart.
So, he watches this good family, get struck by misfortune and fall apart. The loving mother sells her daughter to a cult basically, even though she originally joined the cult because of her daughter's sickness.
Now what's an easier story to swallow? That good people do bad things and good circumstances can easily turn bad for no good reason at all.
Or is it easier, and more meaningful to swallow that Kaiki showed up, conned them, caused the parents to get a divorce and therefore he's the villain in the scenario. By being the villain he turned the scenario into a story, he gave it meaning.
The first time I met Hitagi Senjogahara - two years ago, in other words - I thought to myself, What a fragile-seeming kid.  Of course, back then Senjyogahara was afflicted with her mysterious ailment, which is why her devout mother had summoned me, flying the flag of the ghost buster as I was. But even without the ailment business, I thought she seemed “fragile.”  The impression hadn’t changed.  Fragile. [...] Fragile, on the edge of fragmentation.  Which is exactly why her current self was a miracle. A mysterious ailment followed by a miraculous achievement - for someone who seemed so breakable to make it so far without ever breaking, not two year sago, not now, for eighteen years -  The mother broke.  But the daughter Didn’t.  -Koimonogatari
So Kaiki says he thought Senjyo and her mother were fragile, but he probably thinks that about everybody. He's cynical and disaffected because he's seen this kind of thing happen again and again. That's why he tells lies, that's why he manipulates, it gives him the illusion of control over a world not only him, but no one else has any control at all.
There are two sides to the story of Kaiki’s perception of Senjyo. First, that people are more fragile than you think they are. Even if you come from a good household, have a loving husband, and have money you can break. The second is that people are less fragile than Kaiki thinks they are. Even if your mother turns against you, you lose your money, status, and family you still might not break. Both of these things are true at the same time, people are both more and less fragile. There are truth, and lies, and even Kaiki is unable to face reality directly because he prefers to stare into lies and shrowd himself in them then ever confront the truth. 
4. Themes of Nihilism
Kaiki case believes everything is worthless and everything will be eventually lost so he thinks it's pointless to cling to things. However, that doesn’t have to be an inherently negative idea. Nihilism the rejection of the idea of inherent meaning, is also something that can lead to creating meaning which is where we get existential nihilism. 
Nihilism is the precursor to existentialism. To find your meaning in life you have to first reject the meanings that other people give you.
With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence. The meaninglessness or meaning of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism. 
He basically tells Nadeko that he likes money because the value of money is something entirely made up by people and yet it’s still something that has value.
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Kaiki loves replacable things while at the same time hating irreplacable ones, because he hates the way people tend to cling to things forever. Almost like, Kaiki himself is someone who always clings to his first love that he lost over ten years ago and doesn’t try to love anyone else, or find anyone else and Kaiki hates himself. 
Existential nihilism also means rejecting what society tells you to think has value, because you have to reject first before you can come up with your own meaning. Which is literally exactly what he guides Nadeko to do, he tells her to reject the thing which she thinks gives her life meaning, her love of Araragi and then find a new meaning instead in being a mangaka. and that she can do this because everything is worthless therefore she can try anything.
He also suggests that the work of having to create her own meaning to life, and follow her own dream, will make her far more satisfied than simply following the job of a god which was given to her by someone else.
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Humans are always changing their minds about what has value and that makes them human and Kaiki thinks that's a wonderful thing, that's existential nihilism, they're always inventing new meaning. Kumagawa is someone who always loses, but he tries again an infinite amount of times, and that struggle to keep trying again and again is what makes him human in Kaiki’s mind. It’s not the result, not the happiness or sadness, but rather in the constant searching for meaning that defines yourself. Once again. Kaiki sees the freedom in that. There is nothing in life that will make you truly happy, there is no meaning to life, but there’s freedom because it means you can try as many times as you want. 
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Everything is worthless. Everything will eventually lost. However, because of this it also means that you’re never going to lose something that will destroy you permanently. Because the things you were holding onto were worthless in the first place, you can always try to replace them. You can always try again and find something else. There is no ending that will permanently end you, there’s no loss you cannot suffer. Araragi is not really that important to Nadeko, she can live without him, she was only giving him that importance. This is also the compelte and exact opposite of Iichan’s a fatal would speech. 
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Iichan is someone so terribly afraid to hold onto anything, because he feels the process of trying over and over again at something he’ll never succeed at is going to completely destroy him. 
And Kaiki would tell Iichan the same way that he tells Nadeko that him constantly stumbling over his own actions and trying to find meaning in them, is something in itself that has meaning. That's what makes him human, his search for meaning. But philosophically Iichan isn't there yet. He's still a little baby nihilist. Tiny. Infant. He hasn't grown up yet.
“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.” “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy
[Albert Camus]
So if you were to put iichan at one end as the baby nihilist, and Kaiki as the adult (kind of) nihilist then the adolescent Kumagawa would be right in the middle. That’s the way to compare the three, Kaiki is a mature adult who has figured out the way he wants to live his life, Kumagawa is someone constantly in flux like an adolescent, desperately struggling to reach the point where Kaiki is where he’s decided how he’s going to live and not quite there yet and therefore always doubting himself. Finally, Iichan is a child who wants to cling onto his immaturity and his completely wrong views of the world because he doesn’t want to face them or have to change. All three of them are liars, and but the lies they tell are different and that brings us to the end of this comparison. 
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ghostmartyr · 5 years ago
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SnK 128 Thoughts
Pacing, I think, is the single most difficult thing to do correctly when telling a story. Out loud or in text, you have to juggle every cue you’re giving off, keep it all relevant, and make it so when things fall into place, they’re falling to the gravity that the story’s been given.
That’s why we’ve got something of a problem in this arc.
I complain a lot, because it’s easy, and this is hardly a flawless work. Organization has also been one of the regular things this series just has trouble with.
Still, while I really feel that the last few chapters aren’t the best way to tell this story, the story chosen is a monster to keep in line.
[insert amusing pre-cut joke of your choice here]
Conflict is the root of every story. Character vs self. Character vs character. Character vs nature. Pick one, then plant the seed and watch the clash reform the setting. Knowing your protagonist often involves knowing your villain.
Eren has always been the best protagonist for this series. He embodies the fury of humanity in an environment that embraces complacency. He is the voice that shouts for people to do something.
Back in Trost, everyone on his starting squad plans on picking the Survey Corps. Because of his constant, unfettering influence. He’s the one who is always reminding them that there’s a world outside that they’re abandoning. He never lets Jean forget it. He interrupts parties with the vocal equivalent of hammering 99 problems to every door.
Eren is one of the top ten soldiers in the 104th, and he makes sure everyone knows what he’s using his skills for. And before they themselves are confronted with what’s being asked of them to join him, everyone in his social circle is ready to make the same choice.
Moving forward is what Eren does in a world that’s been trapped in stagnation. He is a force of change. He is a force of impotent rage in the face of disaster.
He is every reaction the humans inside the walls don’t have, because as a people, they can’t imagine what there is to be done about their problems. Staying within the safety of the walls and limiting their potential in return for not dying a bloody death seems fair, to them.
They are imprisoned, so Eren, our protagonist, seeks freedom.
Being born free is the linchpin of his first successful transformation.
His first rather disturbing act of violence comes from him murdering slavers.
The wings of freedom are the iconic brand of his chosen military branch.
Subtlety.
That’s all very straightforward and simple to work with.
Then we open up the setting, and things are still rather simple, just in a turn that kicks off one hell of a problem.
The world itself is a cage. Physically, in the form of internment camps, or culturally, in the form of how people think about each other and act. There is no freedom for the citizens of Paradis now that they have broken out of their shell. There is just another prison, and a ticking time bomb.
Naturally, in its most basic form, this would make the world Eren’s enemy, because Eren is the champion of freedom.
Only then, if you stick to the most basic form of the concept, the simple answer is that when everyone else dies, then you will have your freedom.
Eren might be the story’s protagonist, but that’s because he stands at the fulcrum of all the story’s core ideas. He makes the rest of the plot move. He is the focus point. He is why there’s a story, and not a jumble of confused, dying people throwing themselves at the problem of titans.
He’s not everything that’s going on.
The world’s cruelty is not what this story is about.
Eren starts thinking about the outside world because a boy shares his dreams of the ocean.
Mikasa takes the time to salute a little girl on a battlefield.
Sasha fights a titan off with a bow and arrow to save one child’s life. She dies because she won’t kill a little girl.
Levi chooses not to revive Erwin so that Erwin can die without being brutally abused as the rest of mankind’s sacrifice.
Niccolo’s entire concept of what he’s fighting for is disrupted because people like his cooking.
Gabi is protected and treated like a child by the 104th even after they know she pulled the trigger on their friend.
Colt dies because of his insistence on giving his little brother comfort.
Reiner’s still breathing because there’s a few little kids he can do some good for.
Annie just wants to see her dad again.
Humanity, as a general concept, begins in an easily condemnable place in the manga. One of the first things Paradis does is send out a large percentage of its citizens to die so that the rest can live. Meanwhile, the only people who do try to go outside and learn more about the world are smeared even as they’re bringing back corpses.
By the end of Uprising, there’s a crowd of cheering people waiting for the Scouts to succeed.
People are awful.
They can do better.
A lot of Eren’s objection to Jean is highlighted through that. He never gives Connie a hard time for wanting to join the MPs. It’s Jean, who’s vocally joining up just so he can take it easy, that Eren objects to. Jean doesn’t have to be a jackass. It’s a decision he’s making.
Jean decides to do better.
In the beginning, people are willing to settle for ‘good enough.' Slowly, as the arcs go by, we approach a near universal take of people seeing problems and taking preventative action.
Here, with the Yeagerists, we come back to the original sin of Paradis.
As long as this one little island is okay, and no one on it has to worry about death, what does the outside world matter? Especially when that outside world has repeatedly promised to kill them? Killing them all first isn’t a problem, it’s a solution.
Samuel’s there at the start of Trost.
Sasha saves his life.
Connie kills him.
They don’t hate each other. Neither one wants to pull the trigger. But Samuel is willing to see the rest of the world die if it means keeping Paradis safe. Connie isn’t.
Over and over, the cycle plays out the exact same way. People kill each other to free themselves. As long as there’s always an Us vs Them dynamic, the bloodshed continues indefinitely. The Eldian Empire enslaved the world through titans. Marley won its freedom and decided it was okay to do the same thing as long as they only enslaved Eldians.
The methodology is what’s going to fuck everyone over in the end.
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During Uprising, it is routinely discussed that it’s possible the royal family and the upper brass do know something that makes a coup a bad idea. It’s possible that overthrowing them will bring Paradis into an even darker landscape.
What it comes down to is that whatever they know, they’re willing to let everyone else die if it saves their own skin.
Since that particular Everyone Else is united, the coup continues, and the island’s given its chance at actual peace.
Now, the Yeagerists are making that same argument.
Meanwhile, before we were dealing with this, we had Zeke. His argument was that seeing as the world would never change, Ymir’s people were all cursed and damned, it is for the best of all of us if we all die.
He’s the ultimate counter to Eren. Eren is fighting for life, while Zeke is only searching for the best death.
Only by all appearances, Eren’s fight has landed him in the exact same place. It’s only the question of which people are dying.
Getting back to Connie and Samuel, if you squint, Connie is betraying his allegiance to his comrades. ...If you squint. I know he feels that way, and I know what the chapter title is, but the Yeagerists are a genocidal cult who bully their way into power and try to kill off their actual Commander, who Connie is still following.
Samuel might not be aware of that, but that’s what we’ve got.
The closest Connie came to betrayal was throwing a Warrior Candidate into his mom’s mouth, and we wrapped up that subplot.
Without squinting, Samuel is betraying the ideals that Connie chose the Survey Corps for. Connie wants to save people. He doesn’t want all this death, regardless of how it benefits him.
So this whole conflict, throughout this entire chapter, is really all about who wants which people dead.
The Warriors are still fighting for Marley. Despite everything, that’s their home, and their base of operations if they ever want a chance at fixing things. Paradis has more friends on it than they like thinking about, but Paradis is not their problem.
Kiyomi and the Hizuru flock are pretty much... she is just so done, and it’s very easy to see why. This is not their war. They were looking for a beneficial partnership. For power and resources, sure, but they were willing to play ball. Now they get to watch as the nation they helped kills off the world and their only allies are rushing them to a basement. Hopefully to do something significant before their country burns.
What’s left of the Scouts who are actually following the legitimate chain of command is, surprisingly, focused on stopping Eren’s genocide.
Then I guess the rest of the world probably has opinions, but they don’t get any pages. But it’s pretty safe to assume Eren’s high on their ‘want dead’ list. If not all of Paradis.
We’ve got one group of people who are actually, actively, doing the anti-genocide thing.
The rest is just fighting over the biggest piece of the pie.
The conflict is that some people think genocide is bad, and some people think genocide is okay, actually.
And, you know, fine.
Only then we have Eren.
Protagonist boy.
We don’t know his conflict, and he has more power than anyone else in the entire cast. Unless we count the primordial ooze as a cast member. He is a giant stegosaurus monster who has threatened the entire world, and as far as anyone with eyes can see, he’s actually going through with it.
Nothing presented anywhere suggests that there is a way to stop him.
At best, if people succeed in killing him, they will have unleashed a bunch of mindless Colossals into the world. If we revisit our volume 1 knowledge, we know this to be a problem.
Making all of this really, really pointless.
Obviously, this is what all these characters would do in this situation.
Obviously, we have some feelings about them being forced to kill their allies while the world falls apart.
Obviously, the author probably being willing to fast-forward through all of this is not necessarily an indication that that is what creates the optimal story.
Obviously, these are important details.
The plot still might as well be a glacier.
There is one person moving pieces around. Everyone else is just scrambling on the board he’s created and rehashing whether or not genocide is a good thing every time they’re considering shooting someone they kind of don’t want to.
All of the tension is literally an ocean away.
As great as the character moments are, there’s nothing to ground them in. There’s just a baseless hope that somehow, there’s a way out of this, and the story doesn’t end with yet another genocide kicking off a rebellion.
Magath flips on his worst hot take immediately. He does that because his country is dying and it’s reorganizing his priorities and beliefs to line up with what he’s actually feeling instead of parroting the world that created him.
Yelena goes from being catatonic to being a nuisance because -- reasons?
Connie almost kills Falco then doesn’t, because he really, honestly, was never going to kill the kid and we all knew that.
The driving force of all these potential conflicts is just too distant. As much work as everyone’s doing, they’re only making progress towards getting to Eren.
When you have a character who can end the world choosing to end the world, it creates problems. When that character is your protagonist, it’s even worse.
In the past, Eren’s absence has spurred characters to action and revealed more of the world’s secrets. Presently, unlike in his various kidnappings, Eren is the one with the secrets. His absence is making people do stuff, but not stuff that has any tangible meaning outside of putting actions to the belief that genocide is bad.
Secrets, and people seeking answers, has been a major player in moving the plot from the beginning.
Here though, we have the issue of no one having the luxury of investigating why this is happening. Mikasa and Armin might be desperate to know, but they have no tools available to them except the airship. Which, again, just puts them in the same place as Eren. It does not give them much more than they had the last time they were in a room with him.
Whatever secrets are in place, they are insignificant next to the fact that the world is ending as they watch.
Only, you know, slowly.
Because the decision has been made that Eren’s perspective is going to be a Reveal. It has to stay private until the moment it’s relevant to the other members of the cast, or otherwise, what was the point of holding off so long?
The result is this. Too much going on in too little time, and all of it technically mattering, but not enough that spending 40 pages on it really changes how the story is progressing.
I’m not sure this is a problem that would be easy to see coming. In the design phase, I mean. I’ve kind of been cautiously whining about these concerns for several months.
But the stage is set like this: Eren pulls the doomsday trigger. Enough time must pass for Paradis to cultivate a new normal and for Eren to reach land with his squad of titans. The goal is gathering our cast and stopping Eren.
There’s a disconnect between what needs to be done and how much time it takes to portray those things.
Connie’s breakdown over feeding Falco to his mom is a character moment that helps to inform his emotions this chapter. That’s probably why it survived. It still drags four named characters off to a village in the middle of nowhere while Floch’s reign is establishing itself.
Magath’s turnabout this chapter is the culmination of a lot of the emotional connections he’s made with Eldians, and the attachment he has to his home, but it comes after driving in the point of why Marley is so fucking awful. He’s spouting rhetoric last chapter, then he’s immediately confronted with the birthplace of that rhetoric being destroyed thanks to events he’s had a part in forging.
Yelena goes from being willing to let Floch shoot her to having an interest in watching things play out. Courtesy of one background dump.
The emotional beats these characters are all due do not match up with what they have to do, and it’s making things come across as really disjointed. It’s a frustrating combination of this needing more pages, but the idea of yet more pages being spent off where the main plot actually is going on is exhausting.
The world is ending, but the world has been ending for months.
We’ve clearly got a checklist of things to get done before we meet up with Eren, but he’s hoarding the plot. Sticking around to watch the list be physically checked is...
To paraphrase some tumblr post from the past few months, it feels like laundry, mostly.
The story wouldn’t survive just jumping to Eren. The more time we’re away from him, the greater the impact when we finally know what’s up. The more time we have with our squad of unlikely, plucky heroes, the more we’re going to want to punch Eren in the face for not listening to them. Again.
It’s not that there’s no value in devoting chapters to all of this planning and reeling. It’s that no matter what happens here, it is not fixing the larger problem of Eren’s genocide campaign.
The plot is across the ocean, and we are months into watching our cast try to reconnect with it.
For me, that makes it a bit dull to read, but it is hard to hold it against the story. Writing the end of the world when you intend to make the audience care about the world -- even though the protagonist is ending it -- that is a lot of plot. Knitting it all together is not a simple task. You can see the seams popping.
Oh well.
One of the things I will stand by is that this manga is a great story told gracelessly. If you read it all linearly, problems are going to be noticed. Stuff be weird. Plus timed terribly.
But there’s a lot of emotion packed into it all. It’s a story that, when you look back in retrospect, free of any time line and observing only through the lens of your knowledge, it holds up and has power.
So I’m glad all of this stuff is being drawn, because one day, when the story’s over, having a fragmented, disjointed thread of progression isn’t going to matter so much.
Some stories survive on how they’re told.
Arguably, that includes this one, because the anime got people through the first few volumes.
This story, primarily, survives on the quality of what it is attempting to lump together.
...Not that I don’t wish it wouldn’t try a little harder to pace itself, but I suppose all that energy is being spent on Eren. You know. Since he’s the only one who has any of the parts of the plot that matter.
Uh.
As far as what actually happened this chapter, yay for Mikasa showing attachment to Kiyomi and crew. Intrigue for the question of where Eren is being such a topic (he’s a fucking giant stegosaurus last I saw figure it out). Sadness for Samuel being on the wrong side after surviving so long (Connie probably remembers Sasha saving his life). Sadness for Reiner trying to spare his friends the pain of what he went through for his cause. Pat on the head for Annie still being impossibly Annie. Pat on the head for Onyankopon just because (sorry about your life yikes).
The absolute funniest part of all of this, to me, is that Daz is now dead.
Beats freezing to death in a blizzard while two teenagers shout about philosophy over your unconscious body?
Anyway, another month goes by.
Much the way waves do in Wind Waker.
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