#bc otherwise it would feel like a copout idk

[dashiellqvverty]

wings of fire taking a sharp turn into horror at the end of the 3rd to last book… crazy stuff

[gold-rhine]

NATLAN 5.0 SPOILERS. i have a theory of who capitano is

So, he clearly has prior connections to natlan and he accuses mavuika of not fulfilling an "oath" made 500 years ago, as reason for which he feels entitled to retribution.

and then later, in mavuika's flashback\astral visions idk, she has a conversation with with Tenoch, a hero who was exiled, but when abyss invaded, he united all tribes and saved natlan, but perished in battle himself. he could not be resurrected, bc previous exile meant he lost his ancient name. here's his backstory:

and here is conversation mavuika has with him in a cutscene:

"Otherwise, rest, assured, I'll find a way to collect the debt" is obvious tie to capitano talking about broken promise, hello???

like why did they mention him not once, but TWICE in the archon quest and even had him in a cutscene, when he seemingly had no narrative purpose??? and parts of his story were left obviously vague, like if he was such a hero, why was he exiled in the first place??? like the gaps are obvious hooks that can be expanded later to give a new perspective.

also, capitano said

so what i think is gonna happen. ok tenoch died 500 years ago saving natlan, couldn't be resurrected bc didn't have ancient name. wandered night kingdom for centuries, getting understanding of ley lines and how ressurection works in the first place, and then managed to come back to life, but not fully resurrected, but like kinda undead. capitano is very obsidian-coded and ancient names are written on obsidian, so i think he like became his own obsidian stelle or smth, or found some way to exploit night kingdom rules to get out. after he got out, he was waiting for the rest of promised 500 years, bc thats the deadline mavuika promised him natlan will be saved by, meanwhile freelancing as 1st of the harbingers. 500 years ended, natlan is NOT saved, he's coming to collect his debt.

now, for the fun part. capitano simps, would you still hit it, when you know your man looks like this?

also he has light blue colors, which is usually cryo coded, which is also capitano's element.

i mean there might be a cowards copout that capitano is like a pupil of him or whatever, but i think its much funnier and based if he's the goatee grandpa with sleeveless shrug, cowboy goggles hat and romb fit pants.

[gurguliare]

Anyway I finally finally finished the TM post-mortem so have one last rundown

Really loved: Signet’s stupid relics runway show, Ali describing the Mirage/Splice resolution as “the most amazing Gift of the Magi fuckup,” and, oddly, Keith’s reflections on anarchism, though idk if enough of that made it legibly into the season---which is one of the ways Gig was underserved, I guess.

I also enjoyed and appreciated the discussion of TM’s utopianism as monumental artistic challenge. I obviously have criticisms wrt execution and I disagree with some of their analysis of TM’s failures and shortcomings, but I thought everyone was refreshingly honest about the sheer scale of the task, in a way that I often missed during the series proper---when the tone sometimes tended more toward “we’ve set ‘depicting a utopia’ as our goal, and of course we share a coherent (static) vision of what that entails, and know exactly how to get from here to there.”

I was dissatisfied at best with the conversation about redemption vs rehabilitation. I might be more convinced by the distinction if Austin had ever stopped saying “sin”... which, among other things, helps to selectively blur together abuse and other forms of violence. (I’ve given up on even dreaming of a world in which FATT covers its ass better in re: Christian-centric, frankly Catholic-centric readings of both morality and faith, and maybe it’s for the best that they lack the wherewithal to mask that.) That said, I think it’s very striking that Even Gardner’s violence and militarism seems dealt with in-story almost exclusively as a form of trauma and a thing that happens to Even Gardner, while Fourteen’s history with Castlerose is discussed (up to the time of the finale) almost exclusively in terms of Sins Fourteen Committed. I’m not saying those framings are ~flipped, but the ratio does seem off. Even has a fuckton of choices at every step of the way and experiences basically no material repercussions or visible change of heart, other than “once there are no Advent people left I’ll stop targeting Advent.” He’s also, notably, “brought back from the edge” by a played-straight romantic relationship, for some reason. Fourteen has like... half of a narrative about turning bad habits and even obsolete ideas to constructive ends, and half a narrative about reclaiming agency once safely away from your abuser, even at the cost of losing access to huge swathes of your life... but it’s an arc that goes so unacknowledged or unseen by the other characters that it never connects back up to the idea that, well, bound up in the problem of rehabilitation is the problem of forgiveness---or if we don’t like that language, then acceptance. It’s never clear on what terms Fourteen is judged and reintegrated into their community, and how and where their self-image aligns with others’ view of them.

Which is very, very lonely, and raises huge questions for me about the whole issue of Fourteen as ~disability representation and specifically as a test case for what terminal illness might look like in a utopia. It is just not clear what anyone’s goals were, as far as showing Fourteen supported in a systemic way and not just on the level of relationships. It’s very odd. I’m still puzzled by Jack and Austin’s remarks on this, especially the focus on what Jack had or hadn’t done with Fourteen in play. Literally every NPC (who has a stance on the issue at all) responds to Fourteen with undisguised horror at their memory dysfunction---the most sympathetic version of this is a lecture about integrating assistive technology into their daily routine! and the least sympathetic is the point-blank statement that Fourteen not remembering who they’ve killed is worse than killing those people in the first place. Like, what the hell? That’s a vision of morality that is entirely premised on repentance, and on the idea that expiation for a crime only comes with appropriate helpings of guilt. And it never really receives an in-universe challenge.

It was also weird to me that Grand didn’t come up at all in that part of the discussion. But then again it seemed like no one wanted to comment seriously on Grand’s arc in general; maybe Art was making really sad faces on the call or something. It’s a shame though, since you’d think it would be a good opportunity to go on some bullshit about “salvation NOT through good works,” or rather, salvation definitely through good works but everyone feels a little weird about it. Three bombs? Three bombs?

Finally, it is important that I dissect all remarks on shipping. I was a little perturbed by the discussion of Fourteen/Tender; I thought Ali’s IC reasons were perfectly valid but I found Jack’s slightly suspect, because I don’t think, uh, “this person flirts all the time but is too busy dying to pursue new romantic projects” really jives---either with Fourteen’s profound, active engagement with others (more active and deeper engagement the longer the season went on) or with Jack’s stated goal of presenting a dying person who, without being embroiled in regret or bitterness in the face of death, still loves their life. Obviously I don’t think romantic relationships are a requirement for that, but the blanket statement that Fourteen is Not That Person gave me trouble. Also, I just don’t think you can drop the “platonic relationship representation is so important” line in there without a LOT more unpacking of the pros and cons of that---who are the characters involved in that relationship, and are they people for whom nonsexual relationships are a top-of-the-line representation deficit? Also, is nonsexual vs sexual really the paradigm you want to cleave to here, in a discussion of the chemistry between an internet goddess and a hunk of data?

I’m a hypocrite though bc when they got to echogrand and went on about how it was important that Echo’s arc not center on romance I was like RIGHT ON

...

Okay. One more thing. Janine shooting down Signet/Blueberry; I was fond of this, though I obviously do not care about her opinion and will continue to do what I want---I don’t like “parental” as the trajectory for a dynamic whose foundational moment is the younger weaker party saving the older, that doesn’t do it for me. Of course children can save their parents, but they shouldn’t have to, and that certainly shouldn’t be the pattern that defines the relationship. And for Signet and Blueberry I think it really is; Signet offers Blueberry apologies, Blueberry offers Signet things Signet actually needs. That’s not parental. Nevertheless, I was fond bc it made me think about what a wealth of fun mentorship dynamics this season offered otherwise---with Tender and Morning’s Observation, and Fourteen and Sho, there are these really precious internal movements, or moments of slippage, from distrust to empathy and from faith to disillusionment, that I treasured as real, organic, slippery pieces of character writing and of writing about growth... My favorite example of this is when Morning’s Observation is FURIOUS with Tender after the fucking... rooftop debacle early on in the Wind’s Poem arc. And then again, more seriously, later, after he’s been essentially abandoned and has to save the day by drawing on parts of himself he wanted to give up. That feels like a moment of roleswap between “guardian” and “child” that is presented as appropriately bittersweet, pivotal, and rupturing, and which therefore preserves the logic of the original relationship even as it expands it. And I also love Grand’s awkward interference there, haha... esp in the context of Grand managing to disappoint Morning separately later on, when by that point it’s lost most of its oomph just because Morning has learned not to have expectations of these fucking geniuses. Which is its own mixed result.

(I wish there had been a bit more followup with Morning in the finale, actually, I don’t think he really got resolution on some stuff and I think “happy at the Brink with his moms” is more avoidant copout than anything, though not implausible or unreasonable avoidance from a character perspective. But like, the fucking... part in the Feast of Patina where it becomes increasingly apparent, throughout Morning’s glad monologue, that he did, in fact, do many of the same things as Grand? He betrayed former allies for an enemy faction in the name of convenience! That’s not all Grand did, but it’s not nothing. And everyone has to fall back on “but the Advent Group are fascists! Morning didn’t turn coat and join fascists!” when it’s like, well, would he have, if they had offered him spaghetti?

Not that I think Morning’s and Grand’s choices are remotely equivalent. But it was a very funny parallel for them to try to wriggle out of on the fly, and I wish they hadn’t---I wish they’d leaned into Morning’s lingering doubts, which would if anything have served to highlight that he does have good reason to stay. It’s just that those reasons don’t cancel out the doubts.)

[nureyevsbf]

do all the greens, blues, and purples :y if it's dubious if it counts, then it counts

this wound up being a lot less than i thought it was in the end hjgdfg

since u didn’t specify i’m gonna do cu

what would the both of you do together on a lazy summer afternoon?

lmao nap probably…i think fuyuki city is established to get pretty hot, so there’s not a lot to be done in the afternoon really. since days are shorter and i tend to be (or at least try to be) a wake with the dawn kind of person, napping during the summer isn’t a big deal as far as sleep schedules go

after you two have gone stable, what kinds of dates do you go on?

lots of different shit i think, i like to have some kind of variety, but our favorites would be mostly ones into the city - i think cafe dates especially - or up into the mountains, be it just a hiking trip or full blown fishing and camping trips

who says ‘i love you’ first? how does it happen?

hmm i think that depends bc i haven’t really fleshed out this scene word for word yet…but it’s either the night before the last day of the holy grail war when we more or less confess to each other - i say more or less bc if we don’t wind up saying “i love you” word for word then yk - and in that case it’s cu, but i probably would have said it then if he didn’t.

otherwise it’s probably right after winning the war…idk who’d say it first could honestly be either.

what’s something odd, extravagant, or thrilling that you and your f/o like to do sometimes?

uhhh oh man this one’s kind of hard. i genuinely had to think on it but i think…he’d want to train me w the spear at some point? even if it’s not a common piece of weaponry/form of martial arts it’s the best he knows how to do and it makes him feel more secure knowing that i can handle myself with even something like gae bolg. idk how well this fits the actual q but it’s really all i can think of,,

what’s something that makes you and/or your f/o nostalgic?

🤔🤔🤔🤔 not to copout here but i genuinely don’t have an answer for this one

if you and your f/o had to move someplace new, where would it be? why?

hmmmm im gonna say. rural norway. in-universe my family has property in a rural part of norway but like just in general. i’d really love to move out there.

what’s your favorite thing to do outdoors together?

fish!!! it’s like Canon that cu really likes to fish in the modern world and so do i so like. nice

on a particularly cold, rainy, or otherwise stay-in-doors kind of day, what activities do you do with your f/o?

lmao.. is it a copout if i say nap.

if it’s just cold and grey but it’s not raining and not windy (snowing is fine) i’m actually gonna insist on going out for a walk bc i’m 100% That Bitch, and i feel like cu might complain/wouldn’t always come out w me but. that also sounds like the best kind of day for baking too. but also..like…..naps.

colors ask meme