#bc again it's less about the ambiguous abandonment and more about the 'living a life i don't agree with and therefore can't be part of-

[welcometogrouchland]

Also what if I said the show taking time to show that Luz and Hunter aren't unhealthily dependent on one another post time skip the way they were in thanks to them (but still close seen in Luz's patches on her clothes or Hunter taking time off work to go to Luz's bday) actually plays in to the cycle of sibling betrayal motif w/ the Clawthornes and Wittebanes????

[kendrixtermina]

Someone finally uploaded a Kingdom Route run with everyone recruited!

So imma be doing a bit of reacting

Kingdom!Ignatz works a bit like Empire!Felix  - He wanted to go his own way unlike what his parents said and is thus following Byleth. In this case it’s of course somewhat less angsty ‘cause the Victors have the means to flee if necessary, unlike Rodrigue who was a prominent leader of the kingdom side of things

In an interesting parallel to how half the cast abandons the kingdom cause it’s a sinking shipload of kamikaze, on the other routes, Raphael complains about the instability and confusing politics of the alliance and how she should probably grab Maya and his grandfather and get them to Garreg Magh. I suppose a lot of people without connections or political accumen must feel this way. the monastery IS light javelin proof, so yeah...Raphael isn’t salty toward Claude himself tho. Then again he has little capacity for salt and in his paralogue it’s kinda shown that he makes a deliberate choice to live a low-salt lifestyle its not just obliviousness, he actively doesnt want grudges or awkwardness in his life

Leonie is also here to babysit Byleth and tells them not to let Dimitri push them around 

Hilda: “The Monastery is a mess. So is Dimitri. I’m only here because Byleth is competent and Holst is annoying“

Dorothea and Bernie have so far gotten identical dialogues to the church route

Lysithea is interesting and kinda morally ambiguous. She says outright that she cares nothing for the kingdom or anything other than a peaceful life for her parents. She wants to get at the slitherers for her own revenge and they’re in the empire so she finds Dimitri’s revenge obsession convenient. Also very ironic cause, are she and Edelgard gonna fight each other because they both want to get at Thales? Very interesting bc vanilla BL doesn’t adress the slitherers that much - of course Lysithea says she has beef with “the empire” and doesn’t elaborate. At the same time Lysithea is MUCH more logical and self aware than most of the kingdom crew bar Sylvain so yeah

actually,  Lysithea, like Felix, has TONS of route specific dialogue. I guess the devs expected those two to get recruited a lot since they are just flat out the strongest students apart from the house leaders. 

The Kingdom is arguably just as infiltrated but Lysithea doesn’t know... and at this point Cornelia’s cooperating with the Empire anyways

General trend of the Alliance recruitees not being all that attached to the Alliance as they hardly knew each other at the start and half of them had nothing to do with politics

Nothing to do with the recruitees, but so THATS what happens if you propose to go to Fhirdiad first. Dimitri is like “You’re supposed to lead the church! Go rescue Rhea!” ...he doesn’t know the whole thing with Byleth being experimented on by Rhea (neither does Byleth at this point) but it is kinda low. Mitya you have no leg to stand on here indeed the main reason I was sympathetic to you last playthrough is that you never ASKED Gilbert & co to put you on the throne and made clear that you’re not interested in that... so following you was on them to an extent. but you don’t get to say “Do your Bishop job” (that Byleth never asked for) if you’re not doing your job cause you’re too busy doing your kamikaze raid. Then again he’s probably too emotional and just plain done with everything rn to see the contradiction/look at this with perspective he’s probably physically incapable of chilling out rn

It just ends with Byleth doing a pointed sadface. daamn Mitya don’t be mean to By-By she still believes in you dude : (  Though it makes sense he’s big on obligation he’s doing this revenge trip because he feels he must. So it’s more a distortion than it really is a contradiction, as far as he’s concerned he IS doing his duty...to the fallen. I guess if you can’t handle him at his “Go be a bishop or something” you don’t deserve him at his “my beloved~” 

Still hurts a bit tho. Especially when Claude, though not without his own agenda, was distinctly a good friend on the topic, “Teach you’re in charge now be more confident~ the church doesnt run you, you run the church”

Before Aillel Dorothea says something about the Kingdom people also looking undecided of where to march, but she also wonders if some fighting/ victory will quell uncertainty 

Also she and mercie are standing next to each other! Ive said before that it’s weird how they don’t rly have a support though they are the two most popular extroverted ppl on the campus... they GOTTA know each other at least on a smalltalk basis

Alois is like “These kingdom ppl dont seem to know what they want... but hey this allow YOU to shine as a leader”... so basically Byleth is running this show but for all that they’re a good field commander and decisive when it comes to immadiate practical problems, as far as big picture direction goes, well, Sothis’ “boulder” quote comes to mind. They just never had big attachments on convictions, the Felix support chain is also salient here. They kinda just did whatever job they were given until they found a bigger cause/purpose after throwing in their lot with one of the lords or the remaining saints.

I wondered how this would play out as the Kingdom route is very kingdom-specific, whereas Claude, Edelgard and the church all have an universal cause for people to get behind. I guess how this plays out is that before Dimitri’s turnaroud there’s the kingdom faction and the Byleth faction and Byleth is kinda trying to run the show as they think Dimitri would if he were at his best

Caspar is still on the more unphazed side but also substantially more phazed than on the church or GD routes, he wasn’t particularly close to Randolph but he’s not unaffected by Dimitri going a tad over the top here - he also has the takeaway that Dimitri probably never trusted him much since he was born in the empire.

Sylvain actually alledges something about Dimitri not socializing much with any Adrestians even back in the academy days if you recruit him on CF so this does not come out of nowhere. Also kinda makes me wish they had a support - theyre both naturals at smashing things but they have very different attitudes towards it. then again i suppose it would go alot like the raphael one

Ferdie recognizes Myrrdin is a strategically better location but as Aegir territory is closeby he wishes we could have invaded through there so he could take it back... Would the citizens want him back tho? After the war its a no-brainer cause he helped end it, the peasants arent going to complain about too much peace and prosperity nor are they gonna feel nostalgic about anyone who started a war with their tax money and then lost it, but if he waltzed into an area that had thus far been far from the frontlines, following his fathers’s exploitative management and 5 years of semi equal rights under edelgard? he might have been welcomed with  pitchforks, through no fault of his own. 

He says something implying hed like to come rescue his relatives implying that some of them are still alive. of course the pm deserves all Edelgard threw at him and then some, but id be curious about Ferdie’s other relatives. His mom probably looks just like him, because he sure didnt get the looks from his dad... or anything else really, apart from the crest and hair color. - though i think the a support with bernadetta implies that shes no longer around

Lorenz bitterly remarking that of course Claude and his dad eventually made peace since they both only serve their own interests. (”So long as their interests are in allignment they will continue to cooperate”)   Says the guy we just rescued from his endeavors in turncoatery. Lorenz you’re pretty opportunistic too, and as for your redeeming features Claude has those too - but of course you’ll never find out in this one. Still, it shows that he’s painfully aware that his father - whom he would have died protecting if we hadn’t spared him - is a villain and a hack

Claude isn’t super trusting and knows that he gets percieved as shifty so he promises people to get them theirs so that they support him out of self interest. No need to take a chace. Of course by the end of this route he WILL take big chance on Dimitri 

That says Lorenz is not SO biased that he can’t tell that Claude might be interested in working with the kingdom army

Lysithea (who surprisingly has TONS of unique dialogue here, and I like that it’s a complex mature plot) is having her doubts and not trusting Dimitri for all that she finds him an useful idiot. By and large you get the sense that many consider Byleth the leader of this operation, she’s glad that Byleth is there to issue sensible orders. She tells Byleth not to tell anyone and worries about what will happen once the empire’s vanquished. No faith in team Kingdom... at all. Understandable of course

Hilda’s dialogue is largely the same as in the church route and at times kinda the same in all routes but I like how she’s like “Claude might’ve looked like a lazy bum but he’s smart! If he says he’s on our side he will defs help!” before the gronder fiasco

A lot of NPCs stir the suspicion here so it stands out how much she totally trusts him like hes any other friend

As with the other routes with the recruitees you get an idea of what’s going on in the other territories such as Lysithea deducing that Judith must be backing Claude in his gambit

One moment you think Lorenz is going to add some somber insightful commentary to the sincerity of Claude’s offer but then he’s like, “Granted Dimitri is much improved. He must be asking us for help cause he trusts ME” XD Like... no friend. You’re almost right but if there’s anyone here he was faith in its Byleth. And then he’s even like, “Well no choice but to save poor Claudesy” On the one hand it shows that there not just pure hate there on the other... lulz. 

apparently one of the first things Dimitri did after getting his act together post gronder is profusely apologize to Caspar for that ugly business with Randolph. Thats a worthwhile detail and i want fanfic of it. Caspar being Caspar he wasnt really keeping a grudge, they’re a warrior clan and they were at war

They had to move out so quickly that Hilda had no time to go shopping in Fhirdiad #Priorities XD

Meanwhile Ignatz, like a normal person,  hopes his folks will be safe

hilda does eventually remember to maybe save her folks and claude but only after making Byleth promise to go on a shopping trip with her. Someone should probably write that fanfic

Someone told me that Ferdinand had some prominent critical lines but it was really just one, and it’s as I suspected actually just a variant of the same “a king can’t be emotional” line he gets in all the routes, this time with the addendum that if he turned around and decided to go rescue the capital, he might be capable of reason/being a decent leader after all.  granted I guess compared to how most of the Kingdom people go along with everything it comes off critical? IDK.

Lysithea misses Rodrigue :( 

Lorenz and Ignatz standing next to each other was a nice touch they have a fairly wholesome friendship

Leonie’s just glad that ol’ Mitya is “back to normal” especially since she’s pretty sure that they don’t have enough soldiers to get to Fort Merceus let alone Enbarr

For obvious reasons, Petra is pretty sympathetic about the whole “retaking Fhirdiad” thing

Seeing Seteth and Catherine so certain that Rhea would want them to save the people of Fhirdiad first when you know that she wouldn’t hesitate to set the place on fire is just...OUCH. Though it does show the goodness in Seteth and Catherine themselves. 

Manuela wishes she could’ve moved her informary to gronder and save a few more peeps :(

It seems like to Leonie, Dimitri will always be just “Dimitri”, King or not. Figures she aaaaalmost adressed even Byleth by name XD You really DO get the sense that he interacted alot with the recruitees

All the house leaders shouldve had more supports. 

If you grabbed hanneman he’ll give you some extra backstory on Cornelia - apparently she was originally from the empire and an eminent scholar whose great work Hanneman was vaguely aware of. I would assume that was still the real cornelia. Judging by the timing it sounds like she might’ve smuggled Patricia out of Adrestia. Assuming both were still original at this point this might present a possibility for why she trusted/vouched for cornelia without being complicit / lend itself to a “she was duped” reading

But it’s still suspicious that she would end up courting the second most powerful man in the land right after number one. 

Some had suggested that Cornelia caused the plague in the first place but the thing is there was a perfectly credible  “mundane” explanation for it (the city’s sewers not being up to date technologically) that theres no reason to doubt

Assuming that all the replacements occurred 14 years before part one when Arundel stopped his donations/ thins being about the time when Cornelia’s personality was noted to have changed completely, that would mean both the “fixing the severs” thing and the soppy story about how Edelgards’ parents met would be real 

AAAA everything to do with patricia is just so ambiguous - if they were longtime friends wouldn’t she have noticed something “off”? Same with her brother actually. Lambert had his own country so its not like there was no one to protect her. 

Ahhh THIS is how lorenz gets iinto the midset for that prissy, hes pissed that Claude dissolved the Alliance and misses it XD

you DO get to call him out for being a turncoat himself tho. particularly hilarious since Byleth just blinks and asks a casual question there

He immediately changes his tune

oh lorenz dear, i love you but you, sir, are WEAK xD

Lysithea as always calls everything and notes how suspicious arundel was alluding to the hrym nightmare also mentioned in her paralogue

She also mentions that he was said to be good and just at one point suggesting that there was a real Volkhard von Arundel at some point. 

if the replacement took place when those donations ceased then Edelgard and Dimitri were 3, 14 years before part 1. Early enough that this could be around the time Patricia left enbarr, if this is when it happened then the romantic tower story might be real assuming that the Arundels were replaced at the same time - whatever arrived in Faerghus recomended patricia for a job so it probably had already happened by then 

Its all so ambiguos tho we can only speculate there are so many possibilities

Ignatz marvels at how Claude managed to minimize damage to Alliance lands throughout the war, as in CF only Deirdru itself got particularly thrashed. Ignatz’ folks are safe and sound! Leave it to him to wonder where Claude might have absconded to. He was always one of the insightful ones but not in the same way as the other clever ones. More intuitive I guess. Cant remember if it was indentical to what you get if you spare Claude on CF (Cue the lets player remarking that Claude is probably stuck in a washing machine somewhere... he hadn’t cleared the Alliance route at that point)

Lol HILDA “And then the whole Alliance descended into chaos...” or actually she is surprised that that DIDNT happen and how orderly Claude managed the dissolution. “But I Guess we’re screwed if Dimitri turns out to be a crazed despot... he’s not gonna go crazy again is he?” You of little faith XD But she says all this in her usual cheery nonserious voice like

this chapter has a lot of unique dialogue actually

Linhardt  impressed that anyone would have the guts to attack Fort Merceus directly and suggests looking for weak spots in the old walls

He shows up guarding it in SS and Vw doesn’t he? Guess he was visiting Caspar or something - or would have been familiar with the place from visiting the Bergliez clan in the past. 

Ferdinand is wowed by Claude bowing out giving him kudos for caring about the peoples wishes. He thinks Edelgard ought to quit at this point and he’s alot harsher on her here than in any of the other routes. (”Not reveryone with noble blood has noble ideals” - Coming from Ferdinand that’s an accusation ) Interestingly at this point hes sticking with Dimitri cause post character developement, lots of ordinary ppl support him at this point and hes popular with the crowds. He’s wholly on the Savior King bandwagon, and maybe that’s why he’s harsher. He’s partial. Says something about him actually, largely good things when you think about it. Dimitri is probably the closest to what Ferdinand’s (and Lorenz’) own beliefs were. He likes the existing order and living in a fancy palace but he thinks the rulers should serve the people.

Its kinda ironic and sad because in ALL the other routes he clearly thinks Dimitri is an idiot and a bad ruler, and says he should be more composed and objective. But Dimitri wasnt at his best there now was he? 

 now ill be sad everytime I get to those “Ferdinand disses Dimitri” lines. They couldve been buds! 

but i dont see this happening in any other route. According to something Sylvain says in cf Dimitri avoided ppl from the empire  at the academy so they wouldnt have cozied up pre-timeskip, and its only the version of Dimitri who has his shit together which appeals to Ferdie as a leader. 

really torn here on the one hand its a nice synergy to see lorenz and especially Ferdinand (who is waaay less arroganz than lorenz) sort of getting to win on their own terms with a ruler that jives with them and their Lawful Good fantasy classic thing. It’s not just a status quo thing its a protectors of the people thing. It’s heroic.  On the other hand it feels like they’re stagnating when they could have had growth. This is basically the same Lorenz and the same Ferdinand we first met except slightly more mature.  Notably lorenz is the same in the church route whereas Ferdie isnt as he still ends up rebelling fleeing and fighting against the empire. It helps that he practically winds up leading the remaining Eagles, albeit under Byleth and Seteth.  

He still gets that line about being kinda sad to see the empire go though he knows there must be an end to the chaos, i think a few lines are different, so, not wholly without doubt

Shamir muses about hoe the three countries were once one and the same, but wonders that even if we put fodlan togethere theres no guarantee that it wouldnt come apart again. i mean there isnt, and wether thats a bad thing would depend a lot on the circumstances but its also possible that theyll get used to being one and forget they wrere ever separate. no one controls the far future... and should they? After all its always possible that someone in the future will have unforseeable circumstances or better ideas

Caspar sighs with relief that they didn’t have to fight his dad, last second worry about him turning up in the capital nonwithstanding... right does he get to live in this? Carpar wonders what’ll happen to him if they win, but he’s not holding down Faerghus so he might not have died the way he did in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind. It’s at least possible that he was captured alive and pardoned somehow. 

Marianne’s adoptive dad sure smelled which way the wind was blowing; He was supporting Claude’s strategy to get the Cloucesters back under controll but sent Marianne to curry favor with the kingdom. Make friends with whoever wins I suppose. Ambitious politician indeed. 

When she doesnt her from him in a while she wonders if he forgot about her but says she wouldnt mind that much because at least she wouldnt have to do any more politics? I distinctly recall that in gd there was something about how they got along better after the timeskip. Sigh. 

she is real glad that Dimitri and claude ended up cooperating in the end

So does Dorothea but then she makes herself sad wishing that Edelgard was also there :( Me too friend, me too.  I think thats the one unique line she gets this route. I like how it’s consistent in the church route she’s also the one who feels the most sad about betraying her, they were pretty close pre timrskip 

as far as leonies concerned Dimitri is still just Dimitri even after taking back his kingdom. i like to think hed appreciate that. its also very typical of leonie. as with the “Caspar gets an apology” thing plenty of the recruitees get lines hinting that theres been more personal interaction between them and dimitri, kinda goes with how ppl in his own house follow him more out of personal loyalty than because they follow his plans like with the other two. hes kinda a very approachable sort of leader, makes the decisions with the group or follows whatever gilbert and Byleth decide, in the other routes theres always a distinct inner circle. Its cool how they incorporated the recruitees into that dynamic. 

Petra is dissapointed that they DIDNT do a sneak attack on fort Merceus contrasting her usual line about how she likes sneak attacks.  Dimitri naps both that an Enbarr head on doesn’t he? The Church has a smaller Army full of peeps who would rather not destroy Enbarr, and Claude agrees with Petra on the sneak attack thing and then Edelgard did that sorta shady but largely very gutsy thing where she didn’t sound the evacuation to restrict Claude’s movements knowing that there was zero danger that he would plow through the civilians (they don’t do this here cause last time they met Dimitri he was not feeling merciful indeed judging by huberts welcome lines and engage quotes he doesnt buy the turnaround), the AM ending narration also suggests that Enbarr wasn’t rebuilt, though Dimitri gave distinct “No pillaging!” orders, so they probably just couldn’t avoid wrecking the buildings and relocated the citizens. 

Ashe also speculates where Claude went. That’s one of the things i like about Ashe he consistently averts out of sight out of mind I particularly always loved how he consistently worried about Dedue. Someone ought to. 

Ingrid interestingly changed her tune here / kinda speaks positively of claude here - in CF she was like “I always though he was creepy”

Then again that was before fighting him I don’t recall If those two dont get the same lines if you spare Claude,  have to go back and check

id like to mention that the lets player put lorenz in the pyjamas/loungewear the whole time as “punishment” for being late to the reunion and poked fun at him throughout.

[kattimariias]

infodumping my infinite theories bc why not

Let’s started off with the unknown, deeper parts of his backstory, since I think there’s things Forces does not tell us.

Canonically, we already know that he was a mercenary that led a squad of other jackals, and harbored extreme hatred towards the world. I know he says that he’s grown bored of it, but I think that’s just saying it lightly. He wants it to be empty and destroyed, as visualized by the Phantom Ruby.

This is what motivates him into working with Eggman (despite protests from other members), which leads to his squad getting “destroyed” and his defeat done by Shadow. He breaks down, changes who he is, and then the events of Forces happening.

And this is where the questions come in. Why is he so bitter towards the world? Does actually care about his squad? What made him hate the thought of ever showing/being weak?

I think the first and last questions tie in with each other, and there’s evidence of this.

We know that he is a leader. A leader of a team that has to go through a lot of shit. Mercenaries basically risk their lives working for people, as there’s a strong chance they’ll be back stabbed themselves. 

In order to thrive, Infinite likely things he needs to succeed and never back down, or else they’ll be screwed. And such a thought process definitely has gone long enough to the point where he thinks that he is, well, ultimate. Better than the half-alien-chaos-powers-wielding-occasional gun agent.

Not showing weakness is a survival tactic that went too deep into his head. So when he is defeated by someone, probably for the first time in a long while, it basically breaks him, who he used to be.

Infinite is a lot less calm in both the tie-in comic and Episode Shadow. He lacks the elegant way he talks, and is outwardly aggressive; cutting straight into the action as fast as possible. This behavior is dropped as soon as he puts the mask and ruby on, and I think that’s because he tied it with weakness.

If he didn’t take the time to mock, if he sounded more subdued and less reckless-then maybe he won’t be weak anymore. He can change himself, and become better.

Not the better that the world needs.

His leader role also likely effected the way he views the world. Like I said before, being a mercenary often leads to danger. It can potentially show the worst parts of the world. Perhaps Infinite’s upbringing wasn’t terrible, but as soon as he needed to retreat to taking services from complete strangers, his viewpoint changed.

He couldn’t do much to escape from said viewpoint, so things became muddled. He objected to the poor treatment of others once before, but eventually he realized that this is the way things are in the world, and there’s not much that he could do about it. Least in his position.

Because I highly doubt he thinks hes worthy of redemption, but that’s for another time.

Also, note some of the lyrics in his theme song:

“I was born in this pain, it only hurts if you let it.”

“Only scars remain of who I was.”

“This pain, persists, I can’t resist, but that’s what it takes to be Infinite.”

I think it switches between his defeat, and what he feels internally on a general level.

He suppresses the pain inside, from losing what he thought he was, to the immense struggles of leading his squad, and the things he has seen that has changed his perspective. But he can’t fully resist, nor escape from it. He knows this by now, and it’s basically a part of him.

The scars are a representation of who he was in the past. Scars from battles, particularly the last one he had as his old self, are what’s left of those times.

Now onto the squad question. Are they related, or do they just happen to resemble him? Does he really care about them? Are they alive?

I personally believe that they are indeed related. Jackals in real life work as family units, and they can be kinda big. From what I can gather on that one panel from Rise of Infinite (the part where we first see Infinite), there seems to be six of them. There’s probably more we haven’t even seen, but I digress.

Which makes this next part kiiinda f/ucked up.

Infinite used to care about them. But the intense need to survive and improve himself as a leader led to him becoming selfish, and it came to a point where he just did what he wants and forced his siblings to follow suit. Hell, they became less of a family in his eyes and more like a squad. (they functioned as both, but more on the lines of family)

That’s what also makes me doubt they aren’t related/he never cared. If he never did, then they likely would’ve abandoned each other already. The reason why they stuck with Infinite is because he was apart of their family.

I also believe the theory that Shadow merely defeated the squad, and Eggman lied about them dying. Simply because it’s out of character as hell for Shadow to kill people after already experiencing familial death himself.

But I think Infinite becoming, well, Infinite, led to them no longer wanting to do with him. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was obvious that the Infinite they knew was gone. There wasn’t much they could do anyways, he’s much more powerful than them now.

Does Infinite care about their supposed death? Deep down inside, yes. But he doesn’t recognize these feelings anymore, due to pushing himself to becoming near emotionless. I’m not even sure if he understands emotions like fear and grief, because he seemed...confused? Seeing himself shake after his fight with Shadow.

One last thing is something more meta, but what does SEGA have in plan for Infinite?

His fate in Forces is pretty ambiguous (andistillcannotwatchthatcutscenewithouttearinguprip), and he hasn’t appeared in much since then.

Since Forces was a mixed bag reception wise, leaning towards more negative, SEGA probably wants to throw everything about that game away. But considering how characters from other mixed/badly received games (06 with Silver, Lost World with Zavok and Zazz) made appearances after, I’m not sure if this is a factor in it.

Even though the fandom does have a mixed opinion on Infinite, you can’t really deny he does has a lot of fans. Said fans that have been kinda begging to see him again. I think SEGA might be aware of this, social media accounts can help with getting reception from fanbases.

Infinite can’t be in IDW, and he hasn’t even appeared in any spinoff titles. But it seems like companies can make merch of him? Which is something Mephiles and Eggman Nega barely even have.

With those things in mind, I think it’s possible that SEGA isn’t getting rid of Infinite. There’s something they have planned for him, and honestly? I’m not sure what other than a major role in the next mainline game. Hell, they could even be secretly making an Infinite spinoff game...but that’s just wishful speaking lol.

[dillydedalus]

what i read in january

too many books....

the unwomanly face of war, svetlana alexievich (tr. from russian) oral history of soviet women who served in ww2 (whether as soldiers, pilots, field nurses, laundresses etc, plus partisans) - interesting and harrowing, but honestly (& this just comes with the format i guess but it still made the book less enjoyable for me) pretty repetitive. 3/5

my sister, the serial killer, oyinkan braithwaite dark & snappy novel about beautiful ayoola, who has a habit of killing all her boyfriends, and her resentful but protective older sister korede, who always ends up cleaning up after her - until ayoola starts dating the man korede is in love with. not suuuper substantial, but an entertaining, twisty read with some hidden depths and great dark humour (ayoola about her trip w/ a boyfriend: ‘it was fine.... except he died’). 3.5/5

the private memoirs & confessions of a justified sinner, james hogg (uni) fucking wild ride of a book about (and mostly narrated by) a young calvinist radical who believes that, like, since he is one of the elect of God and his place in heaven is guaranteed no matter what he does, he might as well DO SOME MURDER!!! it’s fun, the theology is absurd, and one of the main characters (our young calvinist’s shapeshifting friend) is probably the devil! 4/5

friday black, nana kwame adjei-brenya collection of mostly speculative/dystopian short stories, some of which work very well, some of which don’t really. the stories based on racism in america are mostly very good, satirically heightening current issues to absurd levels while still feeling true. some others are not as good, including one where a man talks to the ghosts of the fetuses his girlfriend just aborted (like. bad.) the last story, a post-nuclear-apocalypse groundhog day type thing, is brilliant and i almost wish he’d turned into a novel/novella instead. 3.5/5

mythologies, roland barthes god, i wish french crit was always as fun as roro ‘kill the author’ barthes making fun of the myths of american evangelicalism and french imperialism. 3/5

moon of the crusted snow, waubgeshig rice set in a northern canadian first nations reservation, where one autumn, electricity, communications etc. fail. when no news (or scheduled deliveries of food etc) come from the south, the community has to figure out how to get everyone through the winter, relying increasingly on traditional survival skills. quiet & reflective twist on the post-apocalypse/social collapse narrative; occasionally the writing is a bit clumsy, but i’d still recommend it. 3.5/5

the haunting of hill house, shirley jackson a psychological haunted house story, more quietly disturbing than downright scary, but i really enjoyed the way the characters interact with each other and the visceral wrongness of hill house. also interested if anyone has done a queer reading bc i def feel like there’s some subtext between eleanor and theodora that plays into the horror (time to check jstor). and i just love jackson’s style of writing. 4/5

tentacle, rita indiana (tr. from spanish, i read the german translation) weirdo dominican queer post-apocalyptic time travel book involving yoruba/voodoo mysticism, time travel via anemone, art collectives, a trans protagonist who is the chosen one, destined to save the ocean, and a mention of einstürzende neubauten (automatic 0.5 point bonus). really cool! there is a lot of sexual & gendered violence so uh. that’s something to be aware of. 3.5/5

the orenda, joseph boyden ugh. so this is a historical novel set in 1600s northern america, centred around the huron/wendat nation and three characters: the wendat warrior bird, a jesuit missionary called christophe who lives among the wendat, and the young iroquois girl snow falls, who is... forcibly adopted?? by bird to replace his murdered family. interesting concept and a promising first third or so, but unfortunately the book is way too long, the characters and their relationships seemed shallow and their development was more Told than Shown to me, and it just never really came together for me. plus, halfway through i found out that boyden has apparently been either greatly exaggerating or completely making up his own native heritage so uh. bad. 1.5/5

nichts was uns passiert, bettina wilpert smart & very precisely observed story about an alleged rape in a lefty/academic social circle. anna claims jonas raped her at a party, while jonas says the sex was consensual. anna eventually goes to the police and as rumours begin to spread, the people around them begin to take sides and try to figure out how to deal with this thing that Does Not Happen To Us (the title) and is definitely not Done by People Like Us. in a smart twist, this is presented as testimonies collected by an unnamed first-person narrator who questions jonas, anna, their friends and family, which i found very effective as a narrative tool, making everything just ambiguous enough. ends on a legalese gutpunch. 4/5

o caledonia, elspeth barker lovely dark book about janet, outcast at school and in her family, always too intense, too earnest, too clumsy, as she grows up first in wartime edinburgh and then in an old house in the scottish highlands, feeling at home only among animals and the wild & harsh & romantic landscape. lyrically written, sometimes morbid and grim (the book opens with janet murdered at 16 y’all), but often funny and bittersweet as well. loved it! 4.5/5

espedair street, iain banks look, this is a novel about a burnt-out rockstar looking back on his rise to fame and wild life, which is like. incredibly unappealing to me from the beginning. tho i gotta give props to banks for managing to make me at all invested in this story with good writing & well-engineered weirdness - so i guess i need to read something from him where the very premise does not make me roll my eyes. 2/5

eiger dreams: ventures among men & mountains, jon krakauer i would never willingly go mountain-climbing but i sure am highkey obsessed with reading about it. this is a collection of short essays about mountain climbing, some about krakauer’s own experiences (trying to climb the eiger nordwand etc), some about special areas of climbing, infamous climbers etc, and krakauer is a good writer & funny dude (don’t smoke weed in your tent while on an expedition lmao). krakauer says in his foreword that “most climbers aren’t in fact deranged, they’re just infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Human Condition”, which is a great sentence, but based on this and into thin air it seems like that’s in fact the same thing! 3.5/5

fool’s errand (the tawny man #1), robin hobb y’all. i missed my silly silly son fitz who is now significantly older than me, and i was immediately captivated even tho the first 200 pages are mostly fitzy’s Hermit Homesteading Routine with Occasional Visitors. i loved that shit. i loved fitz being reluctantly-but-maybe-not-that-reluctantly being caught in court intrigue & schemes again even more. anyway, hobb’s strength as always is amazing characterisation that makes every character immediately seem real & rich and the relationships between those characters, which are nuanced and fraught and painful and wonderful (also when will fitz & the fool kiss JESUS). also it made me cry a lot about nighteyes, so well done there. 4/5

anyway i am now forcing myself to not just abandon all else and just speed thru tawny man but i really really want to so everything else is going quite slowly 

[saferincages]

(you might say we are encouraged to love)

I received an ask requesting I make this response its own post in full (which of course I don’t mind doing!) so here it is:

An anon in the original post asked why, “Anakin/Vader is seen as interesting for women,” and that could be a bit of a loaded question, but I think there’s a definite rationale behind it. The way it was phrased made me think of a post I saw which addressed the fundamental split between Anakin and Vader as seen by certain audiences, why Anakin is treated by many derisively because there’s an element of the “heroine’s journey” that happens in relation to his arc and the struggles he goes through. It’s here and it’s really interesting in its entirety. “The constant barrage of degradation and trauma and unfairness of a system that benefits at your expense and refuses to validate you for it. And some of that he might have been able to reconcile by “growing up,” the same way a lot of us learn to come to terms with social fuckery, but Anakin doesn’t get the space to do that. He gets a giant bundle of unaddressed trauma and psychological issues and handed a kind of ambiguous destiny about needing to save the entire universe.” <- Imagine the burden of that, and they put it on a child and then give him zero structure to cope with it.

I’m also going to add this comment from that post because I think it’s worthwhile to note: if someone makes you angry and you show anger with your very own face you are weak, you have lost face, you have shown yourself vain and driven by a selfish, animal, irrational, feminine urge to defend yourself; but if you show anger without a face, if you show it unpersonally (the less it’s connected to direct accusation or a specific ill), especially in order to execute a role, then you suddenly appear to be the one in the position of strength, because you can no longer be directly accused of selfishness. The more you can cloak anger in the guise of necessity, the more you meet the societal expectation to be dispassionate, rational, always controlled - the more justification and legitimacy and power to you, even though this mode of anger is often more destructive than the first. This dynamic, assuming it exists as I’ve hypothesized it, is why I think Anakin codes as feminine to many, while Vader appeals to a certain masculine ideal.

Basically, the gist of it is that the emotional turmoil, the trauma, the way he’s exploited for his talents or what he can provide others, the way his agency is stripped repeatedly from him again and again tends to not be the way “male” hero journeys are told. It’s feminine coding (unfortunately) for those themes to be explored. For those emotions to be plumbed and portrayed with a substantive sense of sorrow and helplessness in the central male hero - it is not the “macho” standard. Why they thought they’d get a macho, unyielding masculine power trip from Anakin Skywalker remains a mystery to me, this is the same series where its original hero, Luke (who is his son! of course there were going to be essential parallels and contrasts between them), purposefully throws his weapon away and refuses to fight, and is characterized by his capacity for intrinsic compassion rather than any outer physical strength (even Han is much less of a “macho” guy than dudebros tend to make him out to be - not only because he’s unmistakably the person in distress who has to be rescued from capture in ROTJ, he has a lot of interesting facets that break down that ‘scoundrel’ stereotype, but I digress other than to say I love the OT, and the subtle distinctions in Luke, Leia, and Han that make them break the molds of expectation). SW fundamentally rejected toxic masculinity and the suppression of emotions from its inception, Luke’s loving triumph and role as redeemer only happens because he refuses to listen when he’s told to give up on his friends or on his belief that there’s good in his father, his softness is his ultimate strength. Anakin was never going to be some epitome of tough masculinity, and George Lucas knew exactly what he was doing crafting him in that way. The audiences who wanted Bad Seed Anakin from the beginning didn’t know how to reconcile this sensitive, kind-hearted, exceedingly bright kid, with their spawn of the Dark Side notions, and I think, unfortunately, far too many then either rejected him completely or refused to understand what the central points in his characterization are about.

The fact that this narratively would have made no sense (if Anakin had been “born bad,” then there would have been no miraculously surviving glimpse of light for Luke to save - I’ve said this before, but imagine how profoundly essential to his true self that goodness had to be for it to even exist any more at that point, after all he’d suffered, after all he’d done. the OT tells us more than once what a good man Anakin Skywalker was, it’s part of what makes the father reveal as powerful as it is - if we hadn’t heard the fragments of stories about Luke’s father, it wouldn’t be nearly as shocking, but we KNOW he was a hero, an admirable man, a good friend). I can’t fathom how tricky telling the prequels had to have been to that extent - the audience knows what will happen in the end, it’s a foregone conclusion, we know he will fall, we know Vader will be created, we know the Empire will rise (though that would have happened even if Anakin had remained in the light, which is a whole other discussion). So the question became, who is this person? What influenced him? What shaped his destiny? And that ended up being a far more complex and morally fraught and stirringly emotional story than just “badass Jedi becomes badass Sith lord.”

That talented, highly intelligent boy is taken in by the Jedi after he has already developed independent thought and very intricate emotional dimension - the argument that he’s “too old” to be trained is because he’s not malleable enough to be indoctrinated the way Jedi usually treat the children they take. They may blame this on his attachment to Shmi, but she’s not the problem (if anything, had they not been so unfeeling and rigid, and had they freed her and allowed her to at least stay in contact with her son while he was training because it was a special case - they’re the ones who stick that “Chosen One” mantle on him, you’re telling me they couldn’t make an exception? but no, because they put that weight on him and then never help him carry it and constantly undermine it and question and mistrust him - Anakin would have been stronger in his training, and he would never have fallen to the Dark Side at all. There are so many moments, over and over, where his fall could have been averted, and everyone fails him to the bitter end, when he fails himself). 

And so he is traumatized, due to years of abuse and difficulties as a slave, due to having to leave his mother behind because the Jedi would not free her, due to being told to repress his emotions over and over again when he is, at his core, an intuitive and perceptively empathetic person (he wants to uphold that central tenet of his training - “compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life”), yet he’s made to feel he is broken/wrong/constantly insufficient. He’s wounded by abandonment issues and lack of validation and the human connection/affection he craved, and he develops an (understandable) angry streak, he’s socially awkward due to the specific constraints/isolation of a Jedi’s life and due to the fact that they tried to stamp out what made him uniquely himself, which makes him continually conflicted with a never-ending pulse of anxiety (see absolutely ANY moment where he breaks down emotionally, and you’ll see him say something to the effect of “I’m a Jedi, I know I’m better than than this,” “I’m a Jedi, I’m not supposed to want [whatever very basic human thing he wants, because they make him feel like he can’t even ask for or accept scraps of decency]” - they fracture his sense of his own humanity, Padme tries to validate those feelings but that Code is a constant stumbling block in his mind). He is troubled by fear and the constant press of grief (I would argue he has PTSD at the very least), and all around he’s met by mistrust and sabotage. 

Male heroes shouldn’t be treated as infallible in their own narratives (none of them are that, as no character of whatever gender/origin is, as none of us are), but at the very least we usually see them treated with respect by others. Anakin often gets no such luxury. He’s treated the way we frequently see women treated, and that treatment comes from the same rotten core - the idea that emotions are weak, that expressing them makes you lesser, that crying is a sign of deficiency, that fragility of any kind cannot be tolerated. Anakin is even the hopeless romantic in this situation - Padme, while gracious and warmhearted, is much more pragmatic and tries to reason her way out of her blossoming love for him until she’s of the belief that it doesn’t matter anyway because they’re about to die, and she wants him to know the truth before they do. (I’d also like to note that the closest people to him all speak their love aloud when they’re at the point of death - Shmi when he finds her bound and tortured with the Tuskens, Padme in the Arena, Obi-Wan watching him burn on Mustafar, and how unbearably sad is that? even though his mother had said it before, even though he got to hear it many times again from Padme - and it’s her last entreaty to him - we shouldn’t be pushed to the brink of death to express it). Anakin is the one gazing at her dreamily and tearing up about it and professing earnest, dramatic love in front of the fireplace (idc what anyone says about the dialogue, the way he expresses himself is entirely sincere, it’s the rawness of that sincerity that I think makes people uncomfortable bc it’s unexpected), she’s the one who talks about living in reality. She, too, has been taught to guard and temper her emotions from her time as a child queen and the years she’s spent navigating the murky political waters of the Senate, but she’s become adept at it, unlike Anakin. If anything, they’re the only person the other has with whom they can be truly genuine and unafraid of exposing the recesses of their hearts, they’re the only safe place the other has, it’s no wonder they give themselves over to that, and the fact that they do is beautiful, it’s not wrong (which I have more cohesive thoughts on here and it was the underlying thesis of my heart poured into the super long playlist for them too /linking all the things). They see the joy and spirit in the other that no one else ever sees, and they make a home there.

Anakin becomes an esteemed general not only because he’s awesome in battle and strong in the Force and a gifted pilot and a skilled leader (all of which are true), but because he shows those around him respect, and great care. So, yet again, there’s a subversion of what might have been expected. No one is expendable to him. He views the Clone troops as individual human beings. He mourns their losses (many of the Jedi, with their no attachments rhetoric, allow the Clones to be used without much hesitation or thought for their status as sentient beings born and bred and programmed to die in war, but Anakin was a slave. He comprehends their status more than anyone else could). Anakin is a celebrated hero to the public, and in private is being chewed up by fear and uncertainty. Anakin is devoted to and completely in love with his wife, but has to keep it a secret. Anakin still craves freedom that even being a Jedi has not afforded him, because of their rigor. Anakin still desperately has to scrape for even the bare minimum of approval from the authority figures around him - even his closest mentor and friend, Obi-Wan, while they are irrevocably bonded and care for each other in a myriad of important ways, often doesn’t understand him and dismisses his feelings, refuses to advocate for/stand up for him when he needs it, or tells him to calm down. I’m surprised they never tell him he’s being hysterical when he gets upset, but the connotation of being told to “calm down” when angry or sorrowful or frustrated is something most women can identify with all too well. His desperate desire to protect Padme as everything begins to curl and smoke and turn to ash around him has a very clear nurturing aspect to it underneath the layers of terror and frustration and building paranoia - all he really wants is to be able to protect and care for his family, all he hopes is to save them and have a life with them away from all the war and the political in-fighting and the stifling Order. He’d quit right that second but he needs help due to his nightmares, and no one is willing to give it to him. (Except, ostensibly, Palpatine, who has been grooming him and deftly manipulating him and warping his perceptions since he was a child, all under the guise of magnanimous, almost paternal, care. Palpatine is brilliant in his machinations, perfectly cunning in his evil. He knows exactly how to slip in and break people, and he plays Anakin to the furthest extreme. I’m not saying Anakin doesn’t have choices, he does, and he makes the worst possible ones, but Palpatine pulls the strings in a way that makes him feel that he has no agency - and in truth, he does have very little agency throughout every step of his arc, marrying Padme and loving her in spite of the rules is one of the only independent choices he ever makes that isn’t an order, a demand, a fulfilling of duty - and Palpatine poises himself as the answer to all the problems, if Anakin does as he’s told. He’s been hard-wired to take orders for too long. He is so damaged by this point, and so distrusting - Hayden said something once about how Anakin is still very naive in ROTS, even after what he’s been through in the war, he’s still so young and unknowing about many things, and then his naivete is shattered by complete and utter disillusionment, and that shock is terrible and incomprehensible for him, so he clings to the one source of power he’s given, and it’s catastrophic). He is haunted by grief and impeded by fear of loss, and it drags him into an abyss. We watch all of this happen with bated breath, we see everyone fail him, we see every moment where he could have been helped, we see every path he could take if only he had the ability to stand up for himself and had been given the tools to cope with his psychological and emotional baggage, we see that he very nearly turns back, up until the death knell at the end. We know it’s coming from the moment they land on Tatooine and meet him and decide to make him a Jedi. We know, and we still hope for it to turn out differently. We know, and it still breaks our hearts.

I don’t want to make blanket statements about typical male viewers vs. typical female viewers, that’s too dismissive of a stance to take, but on a seemingly wider scale, I don’t think many of the former (especially the ones who were either older fans or who were teenagers themselves at the time) were as interested in political nuance and a tale of abiding love and a young man burdened with more than should ever have been put on his shoulders. Since the question was basically “why does he appeal to women,” (and not just cishet women) I imagine that the answer to that varies greatly depending on any one perceptive outlook, but has a similar core in each case of us wishing we could help change the outcome, even though we know we can’t, and of wanting to understand his actions and his pain, wanting to see his positive choices and his goodness validated, wanting to see him learn healthy strategies, wanting to see his love flourish, wanting to see him freed from the shackles he drags with him, from childhood to Jedi to Vader. The crush of the standards of society and expectation on him may speak to many. He is never liberated (until his final moments of free breath). His choices are either taken or horrifically tainted. His voice is drowned out by those more powerful around him. His talents and intelligence go largely unrecognized. His good, expansive heart is treated like a hindrance. The depth of his empathy and love is underestimated - and that, in the end, is important, because that underestimation, ending with Palpatine, becomes the Dark Side’s ultimate downfall and undoing. Vader may literally pick up an electric Palpatine and throw him down a reactor shaft, but that physical action is the final answer to a much more complete emotional and spiritual journey. He throws him down and the chains go with the slave master, and for the first time, certainly since before he lost Padme, his heart is unfettered, his love is reciprocated, and he is offered a true voice, a moment of his true self, a sliver of forgiveness, before being embraced again by the transcendence of the light. It is his act of rebellion, it is his own personal revolution, his final blow in the war. The entirety of the arc hinges upon him in that moment, Luke has been valorous and immeasurably valuable, but he’s done all he can do - the final choice is Anakin’s (and it’s such an interesting case because where else have we ever been able to fear and appreciate a villain, and then totally transform and re-contextualize him?). He is in that moment, indeed, the Chosen One.

All these facets are fascinating to watch unfold if you’re willing to be open-minded and heartfelt and sympathetic to the journey, if you’re willing to dig into the complex depth of his pathos.

I remember seeing AOTC as a teenager, and my love was Padme, she was where I was invested, I identified with her, I loved her kindness and her bravery and her sense of honor and justice, I loved that her femininity did not in any way diminish her and was an asset, I loved that, while she takes charge and has the fortitude to rush headlong to the rescue, while she can fight and tote a gun and blast a droid army as well as anyone, her superpowers are her intellect and her giving heart and gentle spirit. I totally get why Anakin holds onto the thread of hope she gives to him for all of those years, and why he falls in love with her as he does, but since I felt a lot of the story through her eyes, I understood why she was drawn to and fell in love with him, too. He’s dynamic and a bit reckless, he’s courageous, but he’s vulnerable and needs support, he’s deeply troubled but also radiantly ebullient at times (the scene in the meadow where she’s so touched by the carefree joy he exhibits, how it delights her and takes her aback, because she’s almost forgotten what it is to feel that, she’s almost forgotten other people could, and here he is, warm and teasing and spirited), he is often guileless, especially with her, he’s fervent and loving in a way she’s never seen or experienced, and that love is given with abandon to her. Who…wouldn’t fall in love with that? It’s a gravitational pull. AOTC impacted me in certain other personal ways as well, I was trying to understand some nascent hollows of grief (Anakin losing his mother as he does was very affecting and heartwrenching for me, at the time I’d lost my grandfather to whom I was quite close, and I’m also really close to my own mom, so his woe had an echo to me), but that vision that I specifically had of their love, the way I interpreted it (which I may not have had words for at the time, but I certainly had the emotional response) was a dear and formative thing.

I talked about this here, but to rephrase/reiterate, by the time ROTS came out, my life had shifted completely on its axis. I was still young, but my much dreamier teenage self was being beaten down and consumed by illness, and I was angry. Anger is not a natural emotion for me (guilt and self-blame tend to be where I bury anger), and I really didn’t know what to do with it. Everything felt unfair and uncertain, like there was no ground at all to stand on. I hurt all the time, literally and figuratively, I was in constant pain. I was lonely and frightened and sleep deprived and often had nightmares (this is still kind of true lol, as is the physical pain part). Padme was still my heart and touchstone - as she remains so to this day in this story - but suddenly I understood Anakin in a much more profound way, one I’ve held onto because he’s important to me and I love him. I felt his rage, his anguish, his desire to do something, anything, to somehow change or influence the situation, to rectify his nightmares, to cling to whatever might make a difference, might save him from being drowned in the dark and from losing everything that made him who he was as a person. Seeing him try and knowing he would fail was devastating, but also…relatable, in an abstract way (obviously not the violent parts, but thematically, I felt some measure of what it was to scramble up a foundation that is disappearing beneath you, that your expectations and dreams of what your life would be can vanish in disintegrating increments). All I wanted was for someone to help rescue him, because all I wanted was for someone to help rescue me. All I wanted was the hope that things could turn around - and there is hope in ROTS, despite the unending terror and tragedy, it’s never entirely gone, because Star Wars exists as a universe with the blazing stars of hope and love ever ignited at its center - but still, it was a very personally rooted emotional exploration for me, and I only started to deal with my own floundering anger when I saw how it might consume the true and loving and softer parts of me if I didn’t hold it back. (A few years later, I went through this again in an even worse way, and the source of that rage and despair was someone I cared for, and once I got through the worst bleak ugliness of it, there were a couple of stories I returned to in an attempt to gain newfound solace and comprehension, and Anakin and Padme were in there. My compassionate, hopeful heart was being torn by that fury, and I clawed my way back up from the brink of it because I knew I could die, not even necessarily figuratively, it was…a bad time, if I didn’t find my way out. Anakin’s story is a tragedy and a fable and a kind of warning - we should not deny or suppress our emotions or our authenticity, but we also cannot let it destroy us - and then ultimately his lesson is restorative, too, that we never lose the essential part of our souls, that we must allow ourselves to feel. Balance indeed). 

As consistent and transparent as my love for Padme has always been, my Anakin emotions are actually so close and personal that I intentionally avoided ever exposing them for actual years, it’s like…basically in the past month that I’ve ever been truly honest about it on Tumblr, because exposing that felt like too much, but I don’t really care about keeping it quiet any more, and that’s very cathartic. 

I myself am an incredibly emotional person, and I don’t believe that Anakin’s emotions are negative qualities, which I meant to underscore. In fact, his open emotions are an exquisite part of him, and it’s the Jedi who are wrong for trying to stamp that out, when his emotional abilities are part of what define him in his inherent goodness and his intellect and strength. He has an undying heart. For he and Luke both to stand as male heroes who represent such depth of feeling is really special, and vital to the story. Anakin is the most acutely human character in many respects, in his foibles and his inner strengths, in his losses and his longings and his ultimate return to his true self - that’s why we feel for him, that’s why we ache and fear for him, that’s why we rejoice for him in the end.

Other people could speak to the Vader part of it much better than I can, Vader’s an amazing and very interesting villain (the fact that, as Vader, Anakin is much more adhered to the Jedi code and way of thinking than he ever was as an actual Jedi, for example - he has an order to him, he is much more dispassionate, he is very adamant about the power of the Force - is endlessly intriguing, because he’s such a contradiction). I use this term for a different character, but I’m going to apply it here - Anakin is a poem of opposites. He is a center that can serve as either sun or black hole. He is a manifestation of love and light and heroism, he is a figure of imposing power and cold rage. He’s the meadow and the volcano. The question then becomes, how expansive are we? When we’re filled with the contradicting aspects of ourselves, how do we make them whole without falling apart? When we do fail, can we ever do anything to fix it? And the answers again will vary by individual, but to my mind - we’re infinite, and thus infinitely capable of, at any point, embracing our light, even if we’ve forgotten to have faith in it, and while we may not be able to fix every mistake or right every wrong, we can make a better choice and alter the path. The smallest of our actions can ripple and extend and are more incandescent than we know. That’s what he does, against all expectation. In the end, he is an archetype not only of a hero (be that fallen or chosen or divine), but of a wayward traveler come home, a heart rekindled, a soul set free to emerge victorious in the transcendent light.

In the final resonance of that story for me personally, I love him for being a representation of that journey, that no matter how long it takes to get there, how arduous it is - that things we lose can be found again, that with the decided act of compassion, pure, redemptive love can be held onto, that the light persists and that, even when it flickers most dimly, refuses to be extinguished, and can at any point illuminate not only ourselves, but can shine brightly enough to match the stars in the universe.

I hope this is at all cogent, here’s a gif for your patience ♥

[thankyoumskobayashi]

ex-aid ep 30

there is still no direct hint abt the accuracy of this post so i will go on to talk about what it means in terms of this post specifically my ep 30 predictions. then i will forecast possible content for episode 31 next week.

How I Was Right And Wrong Last Week:

ok the regrouping and planning thing happened less than the fighting pallad. i didn't expect that, but in the context it makes sense: fight pallad to give the others a few more seconds to live. i was totally right abt nico (she's the best, honestly XD) fighting pallad anyway.

in terms of powerups i was surprised taiga and hiiro weren't as enthusiastic abt the mighty lv. 0 gashat. they practically put together the maximum mighty x gashat for emu (or pre-assembled it before his bugster powers did the rest). it wasn't like snipe or brave had any gashats that could beat perfect knockout, either individually or as a team. still, i'm glad poppy didnt listen to that negativity and used the lv. 0 gashat anyway.

the gashat didn't destroy every bugster it comes into contact with, because that would be too easy for a toku show, but it disables bugster abilities within a specific radius. while poppy did not transform into genmu and genmu lv. 0's critical finisher wasn't shown, it is interesting that poppy can now control dan kuroto. whether this gashat will prove deadly to bugsters remains to be seen.

What's New This Ep:

ex-aid is at another change in its flow of power distribution. the mighty ult gashat has worn off its shine to be beaten by pallad's perfect knockout gashat. nico is the leading rideplayer in japan, with a squad of gamer driver users (legendary figures) ready to help her if she needs it. poppy's newest discovery and subsequent control over dan kuroto is about to change that. it makes me wonder if kamen sentai gorider and the other shorts were little prophecies to the next parts of the main plot....

i was pleased to notice that poppy and nico had their full transformations and fight onscreen, while hiiro (already an established male rider) had an implied transformation and fight that was cut for episode length. not to pick on hiiro or anything, but i thought that was cool of toei to do.

the poppy has blue eyes now thing was honestly confusing. pallad's eyes are red AND blue. does that mean he's a morally ambiguous bugster? we don't have any other humanoid bugsters' transformations to comare poppy to. but if we look at human riders, ex-aid's and snipe's are red. does this "blue eyes=good" thing apply to human gashat users as well?

nico commented on all that sciencey shit toei threw onto the cr set at the beginning of the series, and i could not agree more. it's A Lot, and no one ever uses it. i was also proud of poppy for getting serious abt the gashat when she needed to, and telling hiiro she could handle it bc even if she died getting it to work, she could just come back stronger bc she's a bugster. i'm glad she didn't have to die to do that, but i also got the feeling that the exaid writer was tired of the evil poppy arc and didnt want to go through resetting her w mighty ult again.

i thought the lv. 0 world effects were cool too, and the cinematic parallels between poppy and emu clicking their gashats to undertake a dangerous task within a minute of each other. i'll post screenshots after this, but it's rlly frcking cool. the Cinnamon Rolls rising to the challenge when pallad turns up the heat.

anyway pallad's choice of the abandoned lab to battle emu in was clearly there to throw him off. he made emu remember how they were separated, which was probably traumatic, then started fighting him. he also maintained that he was the better version of emu in every way: a better gamer, the source of his powers (including how he can fight), the fact that bugsters live forever even after being killed... he also copied emu's catchphrase, intending to rile him up even more.

the part abt the fate of the world.... pallad sounded like he was just taunting emu but im not so sure he was jokng. he tends to be the kind to say what he wants in a teasing/flirting way to emu, but be tight-lipped to everybody else, including dan early on in the show. as far as kr villains go, they give a few hints overall abt their endgame plan. somehow, i wouldn't be surprised if kr chronicle was distributed worldwide, similar to the demiaproject from ghost. however, i'm sure there is a much stronger endgame boss than pallad emu and the gang will have to beat before they save the world.

pallad was eventually cockblocked at the end of the episode, and vanished into blue and red pixels. he wasn't expecting dan kuroto to appear out of nowhere, controlled (somewhat) by poppy pipopapo and using the power to stop bugster powers. neither did emu expect to be saved like that. an argument xould probably be made (and further backed up by future episodes) that poppy made a mistake bringing dan back to life. i am not a fan of him myself, so i wasn't pleased by this development. but, it was the only option left to poppy in that moment. she, nico, taiga, hiiro, AND emu had all fought pallad amd none of their current gashats did anything. it was the only option available to them.

next episode will explore whether it is possible to bring kiriya back as a bugster just like kuroto was. i am hopeful that he will be, because i don't know why i'd watch the show (besides poppy and nico) if he wasn't. however, palladbs words after murduring a bunch of rideplayers might also be true: if you die in the game, you die in real life. i'd get a better sense of kiriya's return by looking at his actor's twitter than the next ep's preview tbh. he might have been ordered to keep it a secret nut he might also be dropping hints there. ya never know.

this also means that if pallad kills emu, emu can be brought back and kept at his beck and call. that would make it uniqely difficult for emu to defeat all the bugsters, as he'd have to fight off pallad, defeat the final boss, and then defeat himself???? i wouldn't be prepared for emu to die next ep but i also wouldn't get too comfortable with not having character death.

i give it t-1 episodes before pallad arrives at that conclusion to torment emu w that idea.

emu rn can't beat pallad, but dan kuroto can so he's safe for now. i hope that in addition to emu's inevitable powerup poppy, nico, taiga, and hiiro all get powerups too. and kiriya if he returns. i missed his smile.

that was a fucking long rant and thanks for reading any part of it if you did. phew