#both logistically and thematically

[arolesbianism]

I currently have scug campaigns for 3 of my 4 iterator ocs, and I should rly work on the last, but why think abt the hypothetical slugcat Stars might make when I can instead think of the ones she made already even more (<- has already run out of ideas for iterator gimmicks and doesn't wanna think abt it more)

[bookshelf-in-progress]

It's so nice to have this tiny little selection of WIPs to prioritize. Really helps me to keep my focus where it should be.

Wait, what's this?

IT'S A LONG-ABANDONED WIP WITH A STEEL CHAIR!!

[extensionallydefined]

Okay, so, I need to talk about the relationship between Persona 5's ending and Persona 5 royal's ending, because I think it isn't discussed enough how one puts into question the themes of the other and in doing so it elevates everything that came before.

Spoilers are coming, you've been warned.

The main thing that's given me an outlet to think about this is a few quotes from the Phantom Thieves when they're in the Velvet Room after being Thanos-snapped by Yaldabaoth. Specifically these quotes:

Ann: "I... I never want anyone to have to go through what I did!"

Yusuke: "Just as art is meant to break boundaries, people should be saved even if they frown upon it. I won't allow the justice I believe in to be shaken any further!"

Ryuji: "We're doin' this to make sure people don't go through the same crap we did. It doesn't matter if they think we're just or not. We gotta do what we believe in!"

Futaba: "I can't let people suffer like this, even if I don't know them personally"

They mention some core ideas: 1. They want to prevent people's suffering because of the suffering they've felt. 2. They must do this regardless of if people want it, because they think it's the right thing to do. 3. Their justice is worth fighting for by virtue of being what they believe in.

Does this seem familiar? Maybe makes you think of a certain therapist who shows up in Royal?

I think Takuto Maruki serves a decent amount of purposes narratively and thematically, but one of the most genius things about him is that he serves as a foil to both the Phantom Thieves and Akechi, and in being that foil, he is, deep down, following the principles that the Phantom Thieves fought for - In the end, it was largely Joker who inspired him to fight for his reality.

Maruki fights for a reality where suffering straight up doesn't exist, because he doesn't want anyone to feel the suffering he's had to endure. Maruki wants the Phantom Thieves and Akechi to never feel suffering anymore, regardless of their stance on the matter. He is "saving" them regardless of their wishes, and will fight them to keep the reality he wants. He thinks the world is unfair, so his "justice" is to make a perfect world for everyone - and that's what makes it worth fighting for, because that's what he believes.

Maruki's rationale to fight against the Phantom Thieves and Akechi is (partly) the same reasoning that the Phantom Thieves use to regain their motivation to fight the Holy Grail/Yaldabaoth.

So, narratively, Maruki serves as a mirror that's telling things not to be told for the Phantom Thieves to look into and to see the ugly parts of their own way of acting. Can they really fight Maruki, knowing that he is just acting how they did?

I see people sometimes refusing Maruki's reality because it "wouldn't actually work" or "it's imperfect". But as far as I'm aware, it's imperfect because it hasn't been completed yet - I think the game is a lot more interesting under the pretense that Maruki truly has the power to erase all suffering, once his reality is complete, past the deadline. I also see the argument, and even the game uses it, that Maruki's world "isn't reality". But did we listen well to Morgana's speech before he disappeared in the Yaldabaoth arc? The world itself is made up of cognition, reality is born from the points of view of everyone. Maruki *can* change reality, and the real question of the game is not about the logistics or "ontological dignity" of his reality, but rather - Do you want a world where all your wishes are granted and no suffering exists?

In the end, the game shows the Phantom Thieves that "sticking to their justice" will make them fight against people with similar ideals as theirs. It's funny, in a way, how Akechi was the one fully willing to fight Maruki from the start. His rebellion has always been more individualistic in nature than the Phantom Thieves' - he wanted revenge for himself, then redemption for himself and now he wants a reality where he isn't under anyone's control anymore. To him, Shido's country, Yaldabaoth's ruin and Maruki's world are all the same - Maruki just has a nicer, more therapy-speaky way of presenting his proposal, and sees people as his equals rather than as insolent masses, but his goal is the same. They're all worlds that shackle you for the "greater good". And in the end, Maruki, and Royal, force the P5 gang to become more like Akechi - to value their individuality in the face of the public's "justice".

To fight for what you believe in you will face people with the same determination as you. They will be your equals in many, many ways. In the end, you can only stick to your guns and hope that what you believe in is worth more than what they believe in.

I have a lot more to write about these topics but I'll leave it there. Maybe about the relationship between Maruki's reality and individuality next? That could be fun ^^

Btw - Special thanks to @thedaythatwas for inspiring me to write up stuff about Persona 5 Royal!

[adragonsfriend]

Padme was not a Witness

I will never join the “Padmé was stupid to go to Mustafar” parade—she had valid reason to believe in the possibility of Anakin’s redemption—but there’s something awful in the fact that she didn’t have to witness either of his massacres.

Obi-Wan and Yoda walk past the bodies of their people—of their people’s children. Bail Organa goes to the temple and sees a kid get shot down trying to escape (more clones than Anakin, but still).

Padme hears about the second massacre after sitting in her apartment while the Temple was on fire. She’s told about them in vague terms. “I killed them like animals,” “he killed younglings,” She has a touch of denial when she goes to Mustafar partly because of her belief in Anakin, but partly because—I think—the Tuskan Massacre was never fully real to her. She understands it intellectually of course, but violence on that scale is difficult to conceptualise without seeing it, especially if it’s easier to just let it go. If she’d seen the bodies? Or seen Anakin kill them? She watched that one refugee kid die slowly, not at all violently, when she was working with the refugee organisation, and it affected her for the rest of her life. It is not a lack of caring on Padmé’s part that’s the problem.

Imagine being Obi-Wan listening to Padme saying “there’s still good in him,” after walking through the Temple, seeing the lightsaber marks on knights and children alike—not even to mention seeing her get strangled. It sounds not only wild, but honestly deeply offensive on more levels than one (besides the obvious issues it’s another, “train the boy,” prioritise Anakin over everything moment, except this time Obi-wan’s entire world has been torn apart, rather than just losing his Master)

If Padmé had actually been a witness to Anakin’s violence? If it was made present and visceral to her?

I think her opinions and her actions would’ve been different.

Thematically, it is crucial that when Luke goes to the second Death Star, he is under no illusions about who Anakin is or what he’s done, and in his most desperate moment he chooses to ask Anakin for help anyway. Padmé goes to him still a bit in denial, still a bit convinced things can return to how they once were. When she starts to push at the illusion, Anakin accuses her of betraying him and strangles her to shut her up, attempting to preserve the illusion (the difference between Anakin’s state at the time of his confrontations with Padmé and Luke is a whole other, very important topic). In part, her illusion allows Anakin to believe he can preserve the past (to be clear—he is the only one responsible for the choice to strangle her; Padme being imperfect is not an excuse for domestic abuse).

Side note, but if anyone is not sufficiently freaked out by Anakin strangling Padmé, it's important to know that strangulation is one of the flashing red warnings that physical abuse is doing to turn deadly, very, very quickly.

Luke’s complete and honest knowledge of Anakin’s worst self means there is nothing for Anakin to lose except his son, exactly as he is. No illusions, no wonderful past, not even any good memories together. Just his son.

To me, that’s one of several reasons (both thematic and logistical) why Padmé’s plea fails where Luke’s succeeds. None of those reasons has anything to do with her being stupid to go in the first place.

(There are some wonderful fanfics out there that show Padmé actually making her disapproval about the Tuskan massacre—both despite and because of her love—actively known during their marriage, and I think that interpretation of her is a stronger character than ROTS gives us, and more in line with what we’re shown in the first movie)

[coquelicoq]

justice of toren collecting songs and one esk/breq constantly humming/singing them is such a good detail and ann leckie does so much with it. an incomplete list:

justice of toren's eager collection of songs is part and parcel of its violent destruction of cultures: these songs are cultural artifacts that it only learns because of its presence on those worlds during their conquest, and in many cases breq is the only one to remember them because their people have died out due to that violence. JoT preserves cultural artifacts for its own use at the same time it directly contributes to the need for that preservation in the first place.

the matter-of-fact way in which this is narrated to us gives us information about JoT's stance on respect and imperialism - that is, contrasted with other characters who look down on the conquered cultures, JoT does actually seem to appreciate their value. and yet it communicates to us no sense of remorse over its role in their genocide.

singing can be a communal activity. this allows us to feel the difference between one esk's multiple bodies singing together in harmony/in a round vs. breq singing alone. this has emotional weight, is an evocative image, and illustrates quite nicely some of the logistic considerations of having one vs. multiple bodies.

the constant humming/singing is extremely notable and idiosyncratic according to other characters, which is a dangerous combination for someone who's supposed to be undercover, so it adds a lil bit of fun suspense for us.

the fact that no one ever figures out breq's identity despite this giveaway tells us something about the other characters' attitudes towards artificial intelligences (though see below about seivarden).

the fact that it's so idiosyncratic also tells us something about the ability of individual AIs to have personalities that distinguish them from other AIs, and the fact that one esk sings constantly but two esk doesn't tells us something about the ability of different ancillary decades that are all part of the same AI to have distinguishing characteristics. this is very relevant to, and illustrative of, the series' thematic throughlines around identity, personality, continuity, etc.

the fact that breq personally has a bad voice also serves multiple purposes. because breq and seivarden both believe that the medic could have chosen a body with a good voice if she had wanted to, we can infer something about how ancillary bodies work, how much the AI (and, by extension, its medics) knows about the individual capabilities of those bodies while they're in suspension, and what kinds of things the AI can and can't control once it has unfrozen and taken over a body.

we can also draw conclusions about the medic that chose that body and about intracrew relations on that ship.

breq's bad voice creates moments of humor and irony in the narrative, such as when breq's constant singing - aka the most obvious clue that she is one esk - is precisely what makes seivarden so sure that breq can't be one esk, because no esk medic would use a body with a bad voice for an ancillary.

constant singing/humming imposes itself on the shared soundscape, meaning other people can't easily avoid it and it has the potential to annoy them, especially if the voice itself has annoying qualities. the reactions of other characters to the frequency and/or quality of this verbal tic tells us something about the level of affection those characters have for one esk or breq.

because singing involves words, the meaning of the lyrics being sung can be used to advance the plot, communicate things about specific characters, create irony in juxtaposition with what's happening on the page, etc.

i especially like what's done with the lyric "it all goes around". it's woven throughout the story in such a way as to manifest its own meaning (the repetition of "it all goes around" is, itself, an example of something going around). by repeating the lyric, breq is the one making it true, and i would argue that her repetition of this particular lyric about things orbiting other things contributes to, and/or is a sign of, her growing understanding of the necessity/reality of interdependence and her place in that framework/her role in constructing it, or in other words, the extent of her own agency and the rights and obligations it confers upon her.

because the singing/humming is a constant, background, automatic action, it only ceases when breq is experiencing a strong emotion. from this we are able to infer things about the emotional state of our famously-omits-details-about-her-emotional-state narrator based on other characters' comments about whether or not she is currently doing this thing.

we also aren't even aware that breq is doing it constantly until another character says so. on a narrative level, this serves the dual purpose of making sure we know about how much she hums AND of reminding us that she's not telling us everything.

the humming is not mentioned constantly even though it is happening constantly - this helps us forget in between mentions that it's going on while also simultaneously reinforcing just how constant it must be, so constant that to mention it every time it happens would be like narrating every time she breathes in or out. whenever someone brings it up, we are reminded anew that something has been happening all along that we forgot about. this means that ann leckie is able, by leaving information out, to hammer home to us how much we are not being told.

through this one character trait, ann leckie efficiently and elegantly communicates not just aspects of character but also of setting, plot, tone, theme, and narrative. there's no extraneous exposition just to tell us about the song collection or singing; everything that tells us about it is serving other functions in the narrative as well. the ways in which she manifests this one character trait in the universe and in the narrative contribute to and exemplify both the story itself and the method of its telling.

[ilynpilled]

Something so sexy about Jaime’s most heroic act being doomed from the get go in every way. It damns him for one, like there is no action to take in the situation he is in without huge cost. So many vows yadda yadda, you are damned either way. But in general, a nuke being under the city is something you cannot come back from. It is meant to be a death sentence to the place, the culmination of the trajectory the kingdom was on. Aerys doomed the city with that. The logistics of removal is not all that simple. If you tell Ned and he even believes you? Great! Now who else will have to know? Who can be trusted with it? How will you remove it? We do not even know all precise locations, we had to kill all the pyromancers. How do you make sure it is not accidentally set off? On top of that, the city is filled to the brim with corruption. Full of players who would love to use and exploit that kind of power. The information itself is dangerous. The wildfire functions as a great metaphor as a result. It is festering corruption. You cannot erase the caches at this point. The closest you can get to that is bury the knowledge. He is still haunted by an endless stream of burning bodies. An event that never happened: “In his dreams the dead came burning, gowned in swirling green flames. Jaime danced around them with a golden sword, but for every one he struck down two more arose to take his place.” When he hears that Tyrion made use of it, he is immediately reminded of his greatest fear: “Jaime saw green flames reaching up into the sky higher than the tallest towers, as burning men screamed in the streets. I have dreamed this dream before.” His faith in institutions is also below ground by then, like you see it in his weirwood dream, he tells the truth to his heroes and it does nothing. It is not about Ned, he is not the one that comes out, even though he assumed he would be. “It was never him.” They damn him to darkness anyway for his act and prioritize feudalistic moral constructs. All these contradictions are what makes his fire go out in the dream. But the belief that you can bury all this, and therefore prevent the existence of an Aerys 2.0, does nothing but stall the inevitable. KL’s supposed savior, Robert, the man leading the rebellion, who would slay the “evil dragon”, just led to stagnation. He did not wash out the corruption in it, he just sat on top of it and let it fester. He rues Robert, he says so. One bad king to another. The wildfire problem is more complicated than a single mad man. Its tragedy is rooted in enablement and escalation. There is a reason the pyromancers are more emphasized in the confession. I read it as symbolic of the systemic issues permeating the city, because those are what allowed it to get to the point that it did in the first place. Brienne knows about the wildfire now too, but she also does not comprehend what a volatile ticking time-bomb it is. They do not know how it works, and how it becomes more dangerous over time. Jaime might even save that damn city twice with the Cers and valonqar set up, but both times it is gonna be ultimately “pointless”, bc KL cannot be saved. But that does not matter, because the fact that someone acted back then has meaning. Thematically, that action itself is a triumph.

[the-badger-mole]

In the debate between pro-aang-kill-ozai and anti-aang-kill-ozai. Which side are you on and why? If it's the anti then did you like how it was done or do you picture something else?

I think I've mentioned before, but I am not inherently against Aang not wanting to kill Ozai. Some of my favorite heroes have a no-kill policy. I don't even mind the lionturtle solution itself. What I didn't like was how it was handled. There was plenty of time to address Aang's reluctance to kill before the second to last episode. I can think of three points in particular where it would've been thematically appropriate and given Aang's bland, two-dimensional character some depth.

First, right after the siege at the Northern Tribe. Aang may not have technically been the one who killed all those Fire Nation soldiers, but it couldn't have happened without him. You would think that someone who is both committed to pacifism and also the one the entire world is relying on to end a war that people have been fighting and dying in for a century wouldn't just be able to shrug off what happened. Aang did, though. Didn't even cross his mind when he was whining about people expecting him to kill Ozai.

What should have happened was the next season should've opened with Aang grappling with what happened and his part in it. He should feel guilty about it, not because he was actually wrong, but because it should feel wrong to him. Then, Katara and Sokka should comfort him and tell him he did nothing wrong. Build it up that their word are comforting him a little, then drop the bomb when they start talking about how cool it was. How amazing it was to see all those soldiers running in fear for once. How relieved they are that so many of them died. Then have Aang snap on them about the sanctity of life. He needs to be angry and hurt, and this should be the point where he decries the powers of the Avatar. He'd call himself a monster, and maybe he would call Katara and Sokka monsters, too. Then they (probably mostly Sokka) would argue with him that they aren't monsters, they're just trying to survive, and the Fire Nation is a threat to be taken out. This would be the first time it's brought up that Katara, Sokka...the entire world expect Aang to kill Ozai. I think it would be perfect as a season 2 opener. Season 1 was light and goofy, and Zuko was their biggest immediate threat. The siege raised the stakes, and season 2 should continue on that rising. Aang should also have started looking for another solution here. In the library, Aang should've asked Wan Shi Tong if it was possible to end the war without more violence. We should've seen Aang coming to terms with the fact that the world is suffering and he is the one they are looking to to save them. One thing I think the Harry Potter movies in particular did well was that shift from goofy and whimsical to darker and more frightening (as far as kids movies go) as the story went on and the stakes got higher, and the danger felt more real to the characters. Aang never gets that realization. He has moments when the danger feels real, but he's goofy and whimsical for pretty much the entire series until the plot of an episode needs him not to be.

The second place they should have brought up his reluctance to kill was DoBS. This really should've been a no brainer. Aang was loosing sleep over facing Ozai. He had his anxiety about losing- though not really what losing would mean for his friends and the world- but he didn't even consider what winning would take. If DoBS had been successful, there's no way Ozai would've been able to be taken alive. Logistically, killing him would've been the easiest, safest option. You mean to tell me no one brought it up? No one asked Aang how he was planning to take Ozai out? No, instead we get Aang proving he knows what enthusiastic consent looks like and taking away his excuse for what happened later, but nothing about Aang weighing his personal beliefs against the needs of the world. That training montage and confrontation that he has with his friends in the second to last episode should've happened here. This should've been when his tendency to run away should've been challenged, too, because half a season before he was crying about how he abandoned the world again. Now his instinct would be to run, but his friends would challenge him, calling back to that moment. They could demand that he present an alternative to killing Ozai. I don't think any of them would object to him living to stand trial, but Ozai is a rabid dog, essentially. He needs to be put down. Aang's got nothing, but not for lack of trying. When he tells his friends about all his efforts to find a non-lethal way to defeat Ozai, they are unmoved. They are at the doors of the Fire Nation, and now is not the time to be indecisive. He has to go face Ozai. And he's probably relieved when the plan fails. This whole situation would have the added bonus of skipping that first Kataang kiss because no way would Aang want to kiss Katara after her insisting he terminate Ozai with extreme prejudice.

The third place Aang's no-kill policy should've come up is TSR when Zuko asks him what he's planning to do when he faces Ozai if he's so against killing. This should scare Aang, and it should be his focus for the rest of the season. He should be more withdrawn from his friends, because with all the training he's doing (and he would still be training on all the elements because he's not that good at any of them), talks about the most efficient way to kill would be unavoidable. Katara might actually try to teach him bloodbending. Toph would just tell him that a big rock is just as effective as some fancy bending move. Zuko would be warning him about his father's ruthlessness and cunning. This would be where Aang looses his patience with his friends and insists that he's a pacifist and Ozai doesn't deserve to die. This would piss Katara in particular off because by this point, Aang knows what happened to her mother. He would get an earful about how Ozai's plan is to do to the Earth Kingdom what his grandfather did to the Air Nomads and how he's going to let millions of people die because of his refusal to kill one. Now, Aang can take off, only instead of just running away from his friends because he doesn't want to hear them anymore, he could be making one desperate last ditch attempt to find a solution that both ends the war and keeps him from having to kill Ozai. EIP could still happen in this circumstance, but instead of getting mad that he's being played by a girl, he would focus more on how eager for his death the Fire Nation is. That would come up in the argument about killing Ozai.

Now, for the lionturtle. I'm about to blow some minds. I have been vocal about my hatred of the Lionturtle/Rock of Destiny desu-ex-double team, and I do still hate it with a passion. However, as a concept, I don't mind the lionturtle. This is a fantasy adventure. You expect a bit of magical intervention. What I wanted was Aang grappling with this problem for more than half an episode. I wanted him working on a solution the entire time, starting from right after the siege. I wanted to see him take initiative. To actually think about the problem. Maybe have him specifically looking for the lionturtle. Then when it shows it, it could be because it knew Aang was looking and decided he was worthy of a meeting. Aang could still have his meeting with his past lives, and that could still go the way it did. Then the lionturtle could speak up. Instead of poo-pooing the idea of killing Ozai, it could agree that it was the most effective way to make sure that the war would end. Then, when Aang is despairing that he'd wasted all that time trying to find a different solution, the lionturtle could offer the spirit bending. But it would have to come at a cost, and it might not work the way that Aang hoped. Now Aang has to make a choice. Sacrifice something for this spiritbending ability (I'm thinking he loses his airbending, because it seems poetic) that might not have the outcome he's hoping for, or give up his pacifism- one of his few connections to his heritage- and kill Ozai. He chooses the spiritbending. Instead of the conveniently placed rock, Aang would actually have to give up his attachment Katara. I think he would be half-way there, having finally realized how little he understood her. He "loved" her because she was pretty and took care of him, but he's come to realize there's a lot more facets to her that he hasn't gotten to see because they don't fit his narrow view of her. He also understands what Guru Pathik was trying to tell him about one person not being able to replace everything Aang has lost, and he realizes how unfair to her he had been. He still loves her, but as a friend and caretaker. This will actually lead to a deeper friendship between them. Aang defeats Ozai without killing him, but now he has to deal with the loss of his airbending, which only now does he realize was a much of a connection between him and his people as his beliefs. He still has spiritbending. He can still airbend in the Avatar State, but he's effectively cut off a limb to keep his integrity. He will go the rest of his life wondering if it was worth it, especially after Ozai goes to trial and is sentenced to execution anyway. The effects of that on his children could be explored in LoK.

TL;DR I don't have a problem with Aang not wanting to kill Ozai. I just wanted to see him deal with it before the last minute. I think the show would've been better for it, and Aang would've been a more interesting character.

[epicfroggz]

I don’t think the Abyssal Serpent has any burnt out eyes! That’s just Messmer who’s transformed into “serpent form” (if that’s a precise enough term considering we also have the winged serpents and Abyssal Serpent to deal with). The Abyssal Serpent model looks healthier than Messmer and the winged serpents tbh. So it’s not having the Frenzied hallmark, but seems more like a call to Bloodbourne’s “eyes within”?

Hello, thanks for the ask!

Let’s get to the bottom of this today and analyze these models, shall we, with references from BonfireVN’s awesome videos. (I will say I am currently playing Bloodborne for the first time so I cannot fully comment on that bit, but I agree the eyes upon eyes within eyes is quite Bloodborne-esque and Messmer must have a lot of insight xD)

Logistics first: Messmer = the Abyssal Serpent, which is different from the winged serpents that are only attached to his humanoid form, which are different from the third class of serpents that we’ll get to. Okay, here we go.

I am surprised to hear you think the Abyssal Serpent is healthier than Messmer’s humanoid form or the winged serpents, since there is ample evidence that it is very unhealthy as a result of being suppressed by the seal for who knows how long:

First is the burn scar shared between forms. I agree it is not literally the mark of the Frenzied Flame, but it is a thematic similarity. In the cutscene, Messmer’s eye socket burns in a manner reminiscent of the Darksign, which I think is a purposeful reference to Dark Souls along with the “abyssal” moniker.

The Abyssal Serpent is not only wounded and scarred, but overgrown, both in fangs and eyes and sheer length (which may well be infinite). Overgrowth is a hallmark of the Dark Souls “Abyss” as well—particularly of Manus and his influence. Manus, who is characterized by glowing red eyes all over himself and the corrupted denizens of Oolacile, and whose direct corruption of poor Knight Artorias imparted upon him powers of Abyssal goop… Not unlike the Abyssal Serpent’s tumor-like red eyes and the goop it melds into and out of. Clearly, this means Messmer was born with one of those fragments of Manus’ soul that were flung out across the earth like in DS2, and that’s why he’s so messed up. (I’m JOKING… but like, imagine?)

Anyway, let’s get away from the internal Fromsoft references and talk more about speculative biology here. The Abyssal Serpent should be much wider than it is, period. This indicates it is severely malnourished, but emaciated snakes are hollow and skeletal, not lumpy. So what’s the deal with that? Well, I have a theory, if you would indulge me for a moment:

The Abyssal Serpent is female, and pregnant, and has been pregnant for a very long time. (This photo is of an egg-bearing Burmese python, I am aware that the Abyssal Serpent is most like a viper, but I am just using it as reference (article here)). Of course, it being lumpy-looking is not the only reason I believe it is pregnant. In phase 2, Messmer is able to summon up to six or seven additional serpents. I thought these may have been dark manifestations of the winged serpents at first, but there are too many of them for this to be the case and their features are more reminiscent of the Abyssal Serpent:

I think they are the Abyssal Serpent’s progeny that have been festering inside, another form of overgrowth, unable to be born because of the seal. After removing the seal, Messmer is able to summon forth his serpent children to assist him. They also appear on his humanoid form as the snake bodies within his thighs, upper arms, and chest—he doesn’t have a womb to hold them in, so they manifest all over the place instead (might need some help from Ymir with that). I imagine if the Abyssal Serpent was able to carry out its term normally, Messmer’s humanoid body wouldn’t be so painfully affected by them.

Since these serpent children are not clones, we cannot say they exist due to parthenogenesis. Instead, I propose:

Prior to the seal, Messmer had an affair with Eiglay. They snuck out here in the Land of Shadow, where the snake skin of a young Eiglay remains as proof. But, Marika caught wind of it and said “Hell no, you’re not going to have a bunch of god-devouring snake children, not in my Christian Minecraft server!” and sealed the Abyssal Serpent away before they could be born. This snake skin being near the “O, Mother” gesture makes me think she punished Messmer for this sin—Marika could handle two powerful serpents separately, but both of them together could surely overthrow her. So potentially, one of the reasons she left Messmer stranded in the LoS was to be certain he would stay as far away from Eiglay as possible.

But that’s just my crazy theory, based on a bunch of model and environmental cues that could mean something totally different or nothing at all. Considering the obsession with motherhood in this DLC though, hmm… Also, Messmer’s other half being female fits with the Marika/Radagon and Miquella/St. Trina dichotomies as well, so yeah!

- Froggo

P.S. If you want to get really crazy: considering her red scales and green eyes, Rya could be the other end of the Messmer/Eiglay exchange, with Daedicar as a surrogate mother. But that’s a LOT. She seems a bit too young for that, but who knows…

[cellarspider]

16/30 Chemically inert

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⛬

We return to a movie whose biggest enemy is its own script, Prometheus. This is the second post today, because the previous one was so awful and I had very little context to add beyond anger.

So, now we come to a scene that made me wonder in the theater: what the fuck is going on with straight people?

A tangent is required at this moment, before we get back to pondering this question. Some of my friends like to watch their favorite science fiction shows with me, particularly if they have to do with genetics. Orphan Black, for example. This is because it is understood that I will regularly call out “Pause!”, and then they get to sit and listen to me alternatively praise or sputter over the fictionalization of my field of study. 

“Look. Their genetic material pre-dates ours. We come from them.”

Pause!

This is, probably, meant to hammer in the premise of the movie to a lay audience. However, the way she phrased it left me confused for a good long minute, trying to figure out what the fuck she meant. We don’t speak of any extant species as “pre-dating” another, even if they look exactly like their fossilized ancestors: all modern organisms are modern organisms. They have been continuously evolving the whole time they’ve existed. What we talk about is species diverging from each other. We didn't come from chimpanzees, or from neanderthals for that matter: we diverged from them.

(https://news.wisc.edu/naledi/) 

If I were to try and explain what she actually means by this: The particular Engineer they sampled from possess genetic sequences that are present in our evolutionary precursors, but have been lost in humans. That, and/or the Engineer possesses no sequences that are specific to modern Homo sapiens. 

To which my response is: no shit. They’re eight foot tall, completely hairless humanoids, surrounded by advanced technology. This is not Futurama.

This still doesn’t answer all my other logistical problems with when they got involved on Earth, which I already rambled about at length. 

But now we get to the real mystery of the scene: why are straight people?

I’m asexual as a rock. No, not that rock. But I’m not sex-repulsed. Sexual media and art is fine by me, but Hollywood does such a shit job with romantic chemistry that I thought I was for quite a while.

Shaw and Holloway are a couple. We know this, because they are a pair of female and male adult humans who work together in a movie. They have held hands and smiled at each other. Honestly, if Holloway hadn’t called Shaw “baby” soon after they woke up from stasis, I wouldn’t have known. 

Admittedly, this may be due to the fact that my “flirting or not” radar is hilariously non-functional most of the time. I have been on dates before without realizing it. Multiple times. It’s that bad.

This is the scene where we are supposed to see how they are romantic together, and how they grapple with their present situation. Holloway froze a rose in the cargo, along with a bottle of champagne. The fact that he has already been drinking heavily will surely make this especially fun, I’m sure.

Shaw, at least, acknowledges “[t]his is The most significant discovery in the history of mankind,” though I’d argue whichever early hominin first saw the big bald bastards already called dibs on that. I appreciate the gesture toward understanding the enormity of this situation, but her behavior hasn’t demonstrated it so far. Holloway’s, however, is even worse, and I think we are supposed to take Shaw as the more staid and reasonable one because of this.

With this and her further evidence that the Engineers made humans, Holloway immediately says “Okay. I guess you can take your father's cross off now.”

Yes. This is what you should say, when you’re in a long-term relationship with a religiously devout person who lost one or both of their parents at a young age. Definitely.

I get what this is trying to do, thematically. This movie is about the creation of life. We have a religious character squaring her faith with a piece of information that is incompatible with the literal text of her religion’s doctrine. 

Funny enough, we have a lot of religious people who work in biology already. Unless your religion was created last tuesday, there is literally no way it won’t contradict with some aspect of what modern science has discovered. People create the mental space for the supernatural, either merging or separating it from their field of expertise. Or they may not believe in the supernatural at all, instead subscribing to belief systems that provide an ethical and behavioral framework for their lives. 

A lot of scientists who are religious state that their religion is part of why they study the material world: Out of a love for the world, a call to aid others, or because the act of learning is seen as divine in itself.

This is also the kind of conversation that, frankly, two lunatics who believe in ancient alien contact with Earth should’ve had a long time ago. ‘Hey, you believe that big men from space were talking to the Sumerians, how’s that fit in with the whole Christianity thing for you?’

But no, he’s going somewhere hilariously baffling, via a direct route through the state of Wildly Insensitive as he barrels along the Clunky Dialog Highway.

“But here's what we do know: That there is nothing special about the creation of life. Right? Anybody can do it. All you need is a dash of DNA and half a brain, right?”

“I can't. 

I can't create life. What does that say about me?”

He FORGOT HIS LIFE PARTNER WAS INFERTILE.

“Ellie, that's not... I didn't mean… I wasn't talking about…”

Have you ever been so drunk that you made your girlfriend feel like Natasha ‘I’m a monster comparable to the Hulk because I was sterilized’ Romanoff in Age of Ultron

This is, as with most of the most thunderously clunky dialog in this movie, a plot point. There are ways they could’ve done this differently that I will get to at that time

But you know what’s even more baffling about this? Apparently that didn’t kill the mood.

It makes the next scene where Janek seduces Vickers with a jumpscare accordion and “Are you a robot?” almost make sense.

Or, frankly, Idris Elba and Charlize Theron are acting wizards who somehow managed to strangle some chemistry out of that scene.

Next time, the not-so-little death!

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

https://archive.org/details/abbott-and-costello-meet-the-mummy 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nepenthes_cultivars 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Garc%C3%ADa_Mart%C3%ADnez_and_Gim%C3%A9nez)#Failed_restoration_attempt_and_internet_phenomenon 

https://youtu.be/cZyj6GECjZ0 

https://youtu.be/nRr1t80TayE 

http://www.totheescapehatch.com/2012/06/escape-by-playing-stephen-stills.html 

https://www.discogs.com/artist/236968-Stephen-Stills 

Overflow Ramble 1 

I want it noted at the start here: I try to use screenshots where everyone looks as dignified as they can without losing objects or gestures I want to comment on, because otherwise it breaks flow. I could not find a screenshot where Shaw wasn’t stickin h leggy out real far, or making this extremely weird face. I tried. The movie defeated me.

Medium wide shot of Shaw sitting on a couch (loose pillows that don’t have velcro surfaces to keep them in place if the ship rolls), with Holloway in reverse shot, sitting on the other side of a coffee table (no lip to catch rolling objects), with a rose sitting in a cup between them. Shaw is about to stand up, and has just the most goddamn weird expression on her face. 

In the background is a side table (does have a lip, not tall enough to do anything), with a lamp (might be magnetized/gripped to the surface, doesn’t look it), a pile of books (falling hazard), a stick of incense burning in a cup (falling AND fire hazard), and, as previously noted during Vickers’ introduction, there’s the required Cultured White Person African Art Pieces just sort of. Leaned on a tiny little shelf in the background (how have they not fallen over already). Finally, a tropical hanging pitcher plant can be seen hanging behind the lamp, probably a Nepenthes cultivar. Did David keep these alive for two years? 

There is a bewildering buttload of Nepenthes cultivars, with an active enthusiast community in Japan. So, SO many of the cultivars are called ‘[Adjective] Koto’ (cite 2). Like, to the point where someone was clearly breaking out the dictionary to find more words for Koto. Decorous Koto. Effulgent Koto. Effulgent Koto again, there’s two of them. Elfine Koto. Emotional Koto. Felicitous Koto. Feminine Koto. Feverish Koto. Igneous Koto. Immobile Koto. And that’s as far as the Kotos go, apart from Zonal Koto. Somebody in 1984-1994 was literally going A-Z on Kotos before they suddenly stopped at I, turned around, and went back up to throw in Gerontic Koto and Ferny Koto.

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[torithehoshi]

Some of the digital HMS doodles I've done the past week that I felt were thematic to put together.

More ramblings underneath the cut

The first one I did because I don't do a lot of action-y doodles and I felt like I should try to do more - and what's more classic than Soul kickflipping his trident?

The second set are miscellaneous ones I did. The Soul one there is from another tumblr post and miscellaneous ideas - one from the CJFS where people were talking about Heart being able to understand Darrell 'cause bird solidarity (and as I said - Heart has swan wings in my design) and the second was from me thinking about my Mind design.

I don't remember what made me think of it, but I thought about his face being a screen of some kind. I didn't wind up making it a screen (my own mind got too caught up with logistics of that even with my own interpretations) but I did think of it being some kind of mask? Or like... faceplate? All I know is that from writing this, I looked up the definition of chasis and it is... not quite what I meant. Anyways, I couldn't get the image of it being broken at the eye showing the face from the main album cover out of my head. I still want to incorporate both so this seemed neat.

[jacksgreysays]

Hiiii how about a prompt for Further Down Road One, political marriage!Shikasuke, maybe something from an Uchiha's POV on the Shikabane-hime's meteoric rise in power, international acclaim, and political capital? And how it ripples out onto the clan as a whole?

I mean, the point of Road One is that the arranged marriage itself already does SO MUCH to change the trajectory of the Uchiha clan’s fate for the better that, basically, everything else after that is kind of a bonus. The fact that Shikako’s smart and powerful and a good person is NICE, yes, but just being engaged to Sasuke already earned so much approval from the clan as a whole that it’s just kinda… ehhhh…

Although… and this somewhat of a tangent to the prompt… it would be funny if… okay, let me set this up by saying: I don’t necessarily like Itachi as a character. When he was kind of a psychopath and apparently just murdered his entire family to test his power, that was at least a… strength of will or conviction that kind of resonated thematically. Like, what if Will of Fire goes bad kind of thing. Or the pressures of being clan heir, of being pushed too hard and too fast, would lead to a genius of violence snapping and using said violence. Then when it turns out he was given orders to murder his entire family and his one condition was that Sasuke would get to live is like… what the fuck dude. It’s both backtracking to make Itachi weaker as a character and also, somehow, even more of a psychopath in my opinion. And, like, sure, Danzo maybe used Shisui’s Sharingan to unbreakable genjutsu him into it, but I don’t think that really absolves Itachi.

All that being said, theoretically in this kinder world of Road One, we never get to that point. Additionally, there’s less pressure on Itachi to continue to excel SO OVERTLY since the clan isn’t getting isolated and also because Shisui is still there and alive to share the burden.

BUT, I do still… the idea that the Uchiha elders have been wanting one of the clan to become Hokage is something that I hold to be true unless proven otherwise. I do think the clan elders would push more for Itachi to be Hokage—because he is clan heir and so has the pedigree, while Shisui (just as powerful, literally Flee On Sight in the bingo books at such a young age) I think we’ve fandom agreed is an orphan or at least a lesser branch of the Uchiha clan.

Anyway, all of the above leads me to: Shisui and Itachi trying to PR campaign for their sister-in-law Shikako (who WILL be an Uchiha once the marriage actually) to be the new “best candidate” for an Uchiha Hokage. Like, really just them listing off all of her accomplishments to not only the Uchiha elders but the rest of the clan (who, again, already quite like her).

I also think, in this universe, that Shikako would DO SOMETHING about Sora-ku once she feels a little more comfortable making decisions—or, at least, making proposals with attached logistics—for the Uchiha clan. Like. It’s a huge chunk of territory that seems to be an abandoned city. But it’s apparently functional enough to have a community of sorts of black marketeers and a support system. Like, it’s not so out of the way of things that nobody bothers with it, which implies that it could be rejuvenated with the time and resources. I think I read a theory once that it’s because Senju used their skills to desertify the area so there just wasn’t enough food to support a city of that size. BUT, now they’ve got Shikako. And Shikako’s connections. Whether that is the ANY clan alliance or Tenzo/Yamato or upper echelons of Hidden Mist’s administration (Haku is an ice user, yes, but like he and Zabuza wouldn’t throw a squad of Mist nin with water nature to help with irrigation at Shikako’s request for free) or even the literal oasis creating ancient god Gelel.

So, you know, she’s more than proven herself to the world. And with the Sora-ku rejuvenation, already brought a level of prosperity to the Uchiha clan than they could ever imagine. “Shikako for Hokage” is not a hard sell for Shisui and Itachi whatsoever (and also, they do think Sasuke would be so happy as her First Gentleman/trophy husband)

Yeah, that’s kind of all I can think of for this prompt in terms of it being different than how the Nara clan or DoS canon clans for that matter would view her meteoric rise. Hope you enjoyed, anon.

[laylawatermelon]

I'm thinking about it and I wonder if the reason Buddie is so compelling (aside from the parallels) is the fact that they're one of the few couples on the show that has storylines getting together within the show.

Madney is a popular one (what the hell they all are🤷🏾‍♀️), but that developed over the seasons giving fans an (adorable) anchor to rest on.

So did Buddie.

For Bathena, it was a speed run but it made so much sense. They were both older and had established lives before meeting each other and when they decided they were it for each other they were it. (I'm gonna make myself cry 😭)

And HenRen, oh my beautiful henren, their relationship was told backwards and forwards if that makes sense.

They were already established as a complete family who worked together. The storyline who shall not be named was wild and I don't even wanna say it asked commitment to each other after “challenges “ (made of ones volition but i digress) is one that they're dedicated to.

that's so ironic

(I'm low-key heated but I'll talk about that in another post)

But as I was saying about the Buddie of it all, it logistically and thematically it makes sense.

Two friends whose bond grows over time eventually start to see each other in a new light as they go through life and death together.

Sounds great right? A perfect love story?

BAM, they're men!

Ooooh how about bromance and call or a day.

Yes we know they're coparents but *whispers* we may have accidentally given ammo to the lughtuhbuh squad

Ignore me i be joking to much 😔🤣

But truly once you remove gender and focus only on the emotional beats they share, they mirror any and all romantic paintings from this show and various others. (I'm looking at the rookie fans who i now my head in mourning with you through this tough time rn *I've not seen a minute of the show*)

It's not a crime to see it as romantic when evidently it's written as one.

I've seen many fan edits paralleling their emotional hits (hell the cell block gunshot episode and bathena's final arc about the missing girl is a recycled mini plot/scene *very effective*)

But honestly if you look at it as a love story it will become apparent.

And as the show goes on the more they begin to parallel and blur into something of a blatant pairing.

Now less objective more emotional personal, as a panromantic (taking love is love to a next level amirite?) I literally don't see the problem with a lot of same sex ships and this is a really great example.

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck it's a fuckin duck to me. (Excuse my French teehee🤗 just had to get the point across)

But forreal though.... Who was messing with my ship?! We gotta talk!

Open up Fox! I gotta talk to you! 🤗🗣️🔊🔊📢

I've had them less than a few months but Imma protect them until the day i die! (Unless of course morals and all that)

But I hope you like this, this was unplanned.

[wellcomeoneileen]

Post 2/? on Processing QaF

End of qaf -technical points. 

This is a very logistical view on the literal end of the show. My more thematic l thoughts about the whole final season are also under this tag, in post 1. Again, conceding that I am very new to an established fandom and this is my immediate processing of finishing my recent obsession, and there are probably several other posts like this floating around.

I read every spoiler possible. I read nearly every fanfic possible all before I watched any of the last season of QaF. The endless thought pieces really did help sooth me for seasons four and five. I think I was a much more at peace with them than fans who were watching it live back in 2005. But the last one or two episodes had me pausing with my jaw dropped multiple times. I hated it!

And I contemplated why - when I knew every single thing that was gonna happen, even several lines of dialogue I knew!

And I think it comes down to the breakneck pacing and editing.

:readmore:

Because right after finishing, I paced around my home angrily muttering over what had happening. And outlining the end like that, even though I was in a mood, still sort of made sense. 

Brian has been a sex god for several seasons. He let down his guard to let Justin in. Out of fear, he did what fans/Justin thought they wanted, and asked for marriage/said I love you with Justin. Brian loves him enough to not force him to stay, Justin loves him enough to not make him change. Peacefully and lovingly, they go their separate ways with the strong and insinuation that they will either do long distance or reconcile. That sounds good! It was horrible to watch.

The show betrays itself by acknowledging the Britin arc is the most important to the show and viewers by saving it for the penultimate scene. The final episode(s) have all really revolved around Brian. Even the girls leaving was really about Brian (in its show presentation, at least). And Brian and Justin have the final scene of all the characters resolving their storylines. The final, final scene was an ensemble one (as it should be for an ensemble show) which reflected on the show as a whole. That was the epilogue, because Britin was the denouement.

This is tough in two ways.

First, because the Britin arc has a bittersweet end, yet felt more like the writers wagging their finger at the audience instead of a thoughtful conclusion that was necessarily bittersweet. Whole other post.

Second, because of their editing – both storyline wise and visual execution wise.

The decision to show Justin and Brian in bed together, not even see Justin leave, and then show Brian in bed alone was pretty cutthroat. I literally paused and my jaw dropped – but not in a good, teary way, or my heart strings were pulled way, but in a … I felt like the writers were kind of flipping me off? Or flipping the actors off? I literally googled if Randy Harrison had fought with the showrunners because of that (and allegedly, yes, lmao. You can tell!!!). That was just an unpleasant viewing experience.

Then, the writers did not give any sort of breathing room for that emotional beat to end and then the series finale beat to begin. There is no space between Brian being left alone and Brian and Michael going to the club and then dancing. No space timewise, plotline wise, or even visually, as they literally meld the end of Britin into the start of Brian/Michael final.

Because of this, even though I’m sure it was written and outlined as very separate plot points for separate emotional beats for separate scenes, it doesn’t feel that way as an audience member.

Instead, it feels like a run-of-the-mill action-reaction pair for a singular emotional beat. It doesn’t feel, or look, like two separate, contained, emotional beats.

Without being able to digest a very bittersweet conclusion to what is arguably the most important plot line of the entire show, it still feels like we’re still wrestling with that in the final scene. It is LEAPING from denouement to epilogue, which even tacky, bittersweet rom-coms don’t do, if you pay attention ( I am literally thinking of how the HARRY STYLES FANFICTION movie Idea of You handled this similar thing better, good lord.)

Therefore, watching Brian dance alone, while we’re being told the thumpa thumpa goes on, feels like he’s being reset. Because we go oh sad, Britin is getting a bittersweet end :/ then THIRTY seconds later we are seeing Brian party and it’s impossible for audience members to not directly connect those dots. Those are the only dots we’re shown!!

I read a 2005 livejournal where stayci28 said she viewed the end as more symbolic than real. It’s about the queer community continuing matter what and it’s really about people will continue to rise up. No matter what is being given to them and they will persevere, they will be proud, they will be here and they’re not gonna go anywhere. That’s a beautiful sentiment, makes a lot of sense, and is a fitting conclusion for the WHOLE show after the Britin bit is wrapped up.

However, Ron Cowan himself said that was only half true in an interview here: https://bjfic.livejournal.com/2528384.html?

He said that the dance was real and was one last outing. Though the sentiment is true – the scene was meant to be about queers surviving, not Brian being alone or an old party boy. (sidenote: see post 1 for me complaining that if this is one last outing…what is Brian doing, exactly, with his time now??)

But the editing and the pacing did not give the audience that space - and so the final scene still seems to be solely about Brian, not about the overall message of queer survival and joy. It LOOKS, at least, like (as Tumblr user @sophsun1 said) Brian was out with no son, no lover (who was in the city he wanted to be in), in a burnt out club. Rip.

The smallest of changes, like having the Britin ending coming earlier in the episode, or even inserting a single “breathing” scene between the Britin and finale scenes would have established the scene beats much better. Honestly, just changing Michael’s awful line (really that whole convo) about Brian always being young and beautiful to simply be about the ~~hopeful future~~ would have set the tone to be not about Brian being miserable.

When I see really old comments online about the end, I don’t get the sense that people fully “got” the end. From what I’ve seen, even fans who were okay with a bittersweet end weren’t really connecting that the finale wasn’t showing Brian miserable, lol.

I think the writers continuously structured the show to revolve around Brian and Britin, then wrote themselves out of that with various in your face plots/dialog, but ignored that beyond the literal words on script, story STRUCTURE impacts viewing experience just as much! These final two scenes display the embodiment of that issue.

The writers desperately needed to slow down, allow digestion, and visually show a divide of scenes if they had wanted the audience to comprehend the last two scenes as separate beats and not action/reaction.

Later this week, I have lots of thoughts about S5 replacement plotlines that would have easily fit into Cowlip’s established world, and a lot about Brian Kinney’s value system and internalized gender issues :)

[synchodai]

Wouldn’t Jace securing the allegiance of the North (through Cregan Stark) and the Vale (through Jeyne Arryn) count as good long term decisions? The results of those alliances didn’t come about as soon as possible, but around a year later, and yet they would be considered positive outcomes for Jace’s legacy, surely? Both Cregan and Jeyne help Jace’s siblings.

Securing allies isn't really a decision because of course both factions are going to do that. The decision is how to do it and who they approach. Rhaenyra was the one who picked the whos, but the how that Jace insisted on (sending the princes on dragonback) was reckless and cost them Luke's life. I can't see an argument of it being worth the obvious risk, as the only ally who arguably needed Jace to be physically present to be brought to their side was Cregan. The marriage alliance with Manderly could have been promised over a raven and Jeyne sounded like she would help Rhaenyra if asked in any way. And I question if the alliances Jace secured resulted in positive outcomes for his legacy. Further explanation and HotD spoilers under the cut.

For one, the terms he promised Manderly and Stark were never fulfilled. Joffrey never married a Manderly daughter and his promise to Cregan was already extremely flimsy because it promised the hand of a daughter who was at best a twinkle in Jace's eye. If Cregan was thinking logically (and not emotionally, wink wink), the only reason he would have accepted such an unlikely betrothal was because he viewed it as mostly a formality thrown on to secure their pact. So unfortunately, the agreements Jace had a hand in never bore lasting alliances strengthened through blood ties (which is the point of sealing these deals with marriage in the first place).

Secondly, the allies Jace secured had minimal impact on the war effort. While Cregan's Winter Wolves were key to subduing the Lannister host and eliminating Criston Cole, Stark and Arryn were notoriously slow in making wartime contributions because of 1) simple geographic distance and logistics, and 2) dealing with problems within their own realms which meant they couldn't initially spare a lot of men. Yes, they helped somewhat in taking back control of the capital after Aegon II's restoration, but their impact was mostly as approaching threats that pressured Corlys and Larys to depose Aegon II ASAP to prevent more bloodshed. Aegon III was already on the throne by the time Stark and Arryn arrived in KL. And when Cregan was there, he debatably did the opposite of helping "secure" the throne — he wanted to restart the war which would have put Aegon III and their allies in an even more precarious position.

I am the biggest Cregan Stark fan and will argue that he's necessary for the thematic resolution of the Dance until kingdom come, but in terms of contributing to the war, he was infamous (and in my opinion, iconic) for doing very little for someone who was so powerful. Yeah, Jace won his side what was possibly the biggest gun in the realm, but he didn't take into account that it would take two years to set up that large and far-away gun. And when it was ready to fire, it could have even hit their other allies if someone else didn't discharge it. Jeyne's contributions were more tangential in that she did provide a safe bastion for Rhaena (and Joffrey for a hot minute), but the reason she was able to help in that way in the first place was because she was relatively isolated from war.

This is all to say the risk Jace took to win these alliances was still arguably shortsighted and built on complacency. Even without the advantage of hindsight, it was clear that his suggestion to send himself and Luke as envoys was spurred by the need to prove himself a man and a Targaryen and not by any actual strategy. He was the heir with no companions or guards, and he was lucky he was pretty and that they liked him enough not to take him hostage.

This is not to rag on Jace as a diplomat or a character. I love him, I am obsessed with him, he is one of my faves. I just think it's thematically important that even Jace's "win" of securing allies in high and powerful places was ultimately low impact and further testament to his (and his family's) shortsightedness. The contrast between the most martially renowned and honorable lordly allies being too far away or tied up to help, and the "lowly" smallfolk just outside their door whom so many discounted and ignored turning out to be biggest threat and deciding factor in the dance? Poetry.

[skybristle]

Is there anything particularly interesting that inspired you to make one of your iterator OC/their design? Like what got you to make them or heavily informed their design

im gonna be so for real with you i do NOT put much thought into my designs. i just rotate a guy for a bit think of a color pallete and then slop some shit on a canvas until i like it. its really all instinct which is why i suck so bad at giving design advice because i fr be making it up.

as for where they came from conceptually..... i forgor :broken_heart: OH! Fun fact: chimes was the last bending horizons iterator to be concepted. I went on a research dive thru old dms actually at some point......... the order was ash+whispers -> maw -> starlight -> aurora -> sparks -> ochre -> chimes [at least i think? funny how my favorites were all made last].

whispers being puppetnapped was one of the first plotpoints i came up with. originally they ascended but i decided agaisnt that later on [both for logistical and thematic reasons+other issues with consistancy with my sliver hcs]. ash was always banked on the neglectful senior archetype to go with that, and starlight and maw came about shortly after as the perpetrators.

aurora........ he honestly really didnt have much of a role until mac came along and got obsessed with him. i think i originally made her just for padding reasons since it felt like i was missing some poor fuck outside of the conflict. he was alwys supposed to be cunty and apathetic it just evolved

sparks is interesting. the whole "expanded structure" idea came from when originally whispers whole predicament was still being fleshed out. i thought it could be interesting to have a too large iterator find solace in splitting that power with someone in need. sparks was originally MUCH kinder and more helpful, with her relationship with ash being more of a grieving someone she can't help and less of a "being abused and abandoned and festering" thing. im glad she ended up how she did LOL i love angry women who do bad things because of trauma.

i completely forgot for ochre ngl. i think i just liked the idea of chill planterator. flor started really getting development when i made chimes i thinkkkkk?????

chimes is really silly. because. back in november 2023 when i met my friend localceilingdevil and he was first making his iterator ocs i thought it would be funny to make a little guy to be chill with six myths . And to make a tonnnn of weed jokes with. Which is how both he and gardeners initial concept came about. I just put him in bh for the lols and then started thinking and thinking and thinking and let him and ochre kiss and look where we are now.

[lotus-tower]

the orochi revisited: the takagin edit

the digital version of yaoizine vol.2 has been out for a while, so i thought i'd finally post my essay on here! some of the jokes don't work as well without the context of the zine's cover but lol. hope you enjoy anyway. a very brief overview of the takagin relationship in relation to my first essay's framework

The following paper is a commentary on and tribute to My Orochi Stood Up: A Draconic Response to "eat shit and die” (1948), in celebration of its 75th anniversary. Though much has changed in the anal-ytic landscape since Orochi was first published, much is still the same. As the pioneer of ouroboros theory, a now interdisciplinary framework that has made many valuable contributions to the study of literature both anally inclined and not, My Orochi Stood Up is a foundational work that has remained relevant and resonant across years and disciplines. However, in this text I will be focusing on Orochi’s roots first and foremost as a piece of Gintamaology.

To begin, we must acknowledge that it is impossible to discuss My Orochi Stood Up without also accounting for the work it was written in response to, T. S. Hirt’s eat shit and die (1938), or the original unnamed poem where most of its ideas first took shape (1944). Unfortunately, providing a commentary of the former would be beyond the scope of this paper. Readers interested in anality are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with this watershed text in Gintama escatology, as it lays the groundwork for everything that follows. As for the poem, it is referenced at length in My Orochi Stood Up, but I have decided to omit mention of it–among many other things–owing to this journal’s physical constraints. While I regret the necessity of this, there is simply too much to say on the subject of “the pole and the hole” in Gintama–particularly the pole, which Gintama explores with endless fascination. The sword, the pillar, the Terminal, the gravestone, the tree–with its fondness for substitution as well as its love of dirty things, Gintama’s collection of treasured motifs has no shortage of things that stand erect. 

Both pole and hole are equally important to the cycle of self-fertilization first described by My Orochi Stood Up almost a century ago. Yet Orochi was, understandably, primarily preoccupied with explaining its ouroboros thesis, leaving it with limited room to discuss in-story logistics beyond the conceptual framework and Gintama’s broad thematics. As you may have guessed, this paper will attempt to do so–and for this purpose it would be more efficient to start from the bottom up, so to speak. So this essay is dedicated instead to the hole, that gaping void named as Gintama’s ultimate antagonist. Let us now revisit the holeistic framework of the serpent swallowing its tail while examining one of Gintama’s most fraught relationships: Gintoki and Takasugi. 

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First, it cannot be overstated how much Gintama relies on duality and parallel structures. The Gintama cast and narrative is constructed like a hall of mirrors, parallels upon parallels upon parallels organized on each side of a central divide. This intersecting line, as shown in Figure 1.1, is what creates the reflection in the first place, allowing characters to be mirrors (or, in the prized language of fandom, foils). One could consider it the glass of the mirror, or the organizing force of the narrative itself. The creation of this dividing line provides structure to the characters, the world, and its temporality–but it is also an act of violence. See Fig 1.1.

Fig. 1.1: ⭩🢥⮀🢛❑⮅⮡🢜

On a diegetic level, bad things happen to the characters because life is difficult, and mostly similar bad things happen to everyone because the series rests upon the Joui war and its related conflicts the way a world rests on the back of a turtle. But perhaps more relevantly, Gintama’s central conceit is that one’s ultimate enemy is always oneself, so naturally all enemies can eventually be conflated. It is an efficient tautological loop. 

What separates the characters on each side of the dividing line, then, is not the degree of suffering they undergo but their response to that violence. My Orochi Stood Up terms these unfortunate souls who end up on the wrong side of the divide “hole-sided.” Their lack is caused not by their injury, but by their own response to it, by their failure, for a time, to live up to their own humanity. This is the position occupied by the antagonists (and, intermittently and continuously, yet somehow always away from the reader’s eyes, our protagonist Gintoki), those who have failed to fill the lack in their souls like responsible adults. 

That which Gintama prescribes to fill these naturally and unnaturally occurring holes in humans is dirt: the debris accrued from a lifetime of living, brushing shoulders with other people, becoming stained by them, becoming dirty and worn as you mature, subjecting yourself to the deeply humiliating and humbling experience of being alive. Of course, as both eat shit and die and My Orochi Stood Up illuminate, in Gintama “dirt” is also a synonym and euphemism for “shit.” We are thus not talking about just any dirt-filled hole, but specifically about the anus. The vulgarity of Gintama’s framing of bonds–as shitting onto and into each other–and its use of shit as a humanizing trait is highly characteristic of both the series’s general sense of humour and the ways in which it mixes gags and serious delivery of narrative to create a densely layered non-linear experience in which absurdity and tragedy are forcibly, jarringly concomitant. 

As T. S. Hirt wrote in 1948, “the anus—the dirty human things—is the home for the phallus—the ideals we hold, the source of our power.” Indeed, were Gintama not so irreverent about its most valued symbol, the sword, due to its fondness for wordplay and for low-hanging fruit, perhaps the nationalistic bent of the series would be more questionable. But as My Orochi Stood Up argued, Gintama’s emphasis on wordplay and its fearless decision to call itself the equivalent of “Ligma” are integral to a thematic understanding of the series, and are key to the ouroboros thesis in particular.

But perhaps the singularly most important example is the -tama in Gintama, with its plethora of potential meanings, each of them just silly and dirty enough that you have to take it seriously. Beyond the obvious joke on kintama (balls) and the “silver soul” direct meaning, we’ve seen that tama is also easily conflated with atama (head), and even with tamago (egg). This is clearly demonstrated with the series’ fixation on beheading leading to the salvation of the soul and the bodyswap arc hinging on the pun between soul and egg. [...] The fact that the characters end up turning into giant turds, likening the soul-egg-balls to an asshole, only drives the point in further. (My Orochi Stood Up, 1948)

To return to the unfortunate hole-sided, these are the characters who lack dirt, who could not withstand the mortifying ordeal of being alive. The natural assumption to make here would be that Gintama then juxtaposes opposing forces, setting “desiring-pairs” of head and hole, sword and scabbard in conflict with each other. Indeed, Gintoki is stabbed again and again, with all kinds of blades–but the villains do not want to stab him as much as they want him to stab them, with his much more meaningful sword. Yet those who are hole-sided do not seek to be filled.

[...] But this is a different process than emptying yourself, which is what the antagonists are doing. All Gintama villains are hole-sided, desperately trying to destroy themselves while pretending, as hard as they can, that they don’t know that you can’t destroy a hole–only make it bigger. (My Orochi Stood Up, 1948)

Takasugi desires Gintoki, not because he believes Gintoki can make him whole again, but rather because he knows he cannot ever be whole again, and that is because of his love for Gintoki. Moreover, the series’ consistent use of language such as “broken” versus “unbroken” swords implies that those who cannot be filled are also those who cannot fill others. Just as the serpent cannot swallow its tail without filling its own mouth, its mouth cannot be filled without having a tail to swallow. As My Orochi Stands Up makes clear, the process of self-creation and other-creation are effectively one and the same in Gintama.

All Gintama antagonists are in parallel with each other and in mirror with their counterparts, who in turn contain echoes of our protagonist, Gintoki. In this way, the entire story can be folded in on itself, side over side, into the shape of Gintoki, the microcosm, like a piece of carefully designed origami. One of the most popular endings of the anime, ending 25, “Glorious Days,” demonstrates one half of this as Gintoki stands unmoving and unchanged as the anime’s large roster of antagonists replace each other before him in quick succession, different times and places flashing past without emphasis. “Nothing has changed,” Gintama constantly claims, while simultaneously showing us how the world has entered a different era, a different century, a different genre, in the span of ten years.

In the ending, Takasugi and Gintoki haunt each other’s footsteps. Takasugi’s feet in Gintoki’s reflection in the water lag one step behind, unable to keep up with him but unable to stop chasing after him, while Gintoki’s ghost is not even visible in Takasugi’s reflection; instead, Gintoki’s presence is indicated by Takasugi’s own reflection stopping and looking back.

Gintoki and Takasugi are the most important pair of mirror selves in Gintama, and inarguably the most yaoistic. Rather than homoeroticism, however, what they have could perhaps be termed a sort of homothematicism. Whereas Gintoki has filled himself with dirt and debris from the series’ overflowing, enormous cast, learning and re-learning how to be human, Takasugi is caught in an incandescent storm of rage and grief, a serpent futilely trying to swallowing itself in the literal sense. But he can never succeed, because he has nothing to fill his belly with other than himself; there is nothing he values in the self he is trying to destroy; thus, he can never satisfy his desire to hurt himself.

Takasugi’s immortality is of the same kind as Utsuro’s, which is to say, hole-sided. It is not that they cannot be killed, only that they cannot die. Takasugi therefore turns to the same drastic final resort as Utsuro: destroying the world in order to destroy themselves. Again we can observe Gintoki’s role as the microcosm in comparison to Shouyou and Utsuro’s exaggerated, macrocosmic style. My Orochi Stood Up details how Utsuro as well as the eponymous Orochi’s identities blur into that of their respective planets, likening them to world snakes. Tied to the Earth itself, Utsuro’s existence cannot end independently of it; his only recourse is to destroy Earth, and perhaps take the entire universe with it.

To Takasugi, however, the world is synonymous with Gintoki. 

Takasugi’s doomed love for Gintoki affords him an interesting position in the narrative, where his conflation between Gintoki’s sword and the pillar of the world aligns with the story’s folded structure centered around Gintoki. Takasugi is Gintoki’s shadow, Gintoki’s “other self”, as Gintama terms it, but weak, diminished, unable to carry the burden of living or live up to Shouyou’s teachings. Gintama’s villains–and its weaklings–are those who will recklessly hurt others in order to harm themselves; its heroes are those who will fight themselves in order to become better versions of themselves. Conveniently, in this cast the villains are the heroes are the villains–and so in defeating the villains, the heroes overcome their own shadows, while the villains knowingly throw themselves into this process out of desperate hope that this will finally end their miserable roles in this story.

Takasugi, then, tries to destroy Gintoki because it is the only way he can destroy himself. On one level, part of him possesses the same general meta-awareness that all Gintama characters have about their allotted roles, and knows that if they were to clash, Gintoki would be the one to successfully devour him. But for the most part, Takasugi’s motivations are painfully earnest and straightforward: harming Gintoki simply hurts more than harming himself can ever hope to accomplish, and if Gintoki were to die, so too would Takasugi’s world crumble to nothing. 

What is interesting is Gintoki’s response to these violent advances. Gintoki, of course, understands full well what kind of story he is in at all times. “Too bad,” he tells Takasugi, scraping himself back up from the ground. “I won’t fall. Until you stop, I’ll keep standing back up.” Here Gintoki himself is positioned as one of those things that stand erect. The Gintoki in Takasugi’s memory that is invoked is “a figure that stands before Takasugi”–or, put another way, Gintoki understands his duty in their relationship as that to keep standing, for as long as Takasugi needs something erect to throw himself against.

Thus, when Takasugi says that the world will not end as long as Gintoki’s sword remains unbroken, while Gintoki says that the only way to stop Takasugi is to stop his breathing, Gintoki becomes the immovable object and Takasugi the (un)stoppable force. However, in a fascinating inversion of the usual connotations, here the object is presented as something the force has chased after all its life, something unattainable and unreachable and yet no less immovable. Meanwhile, the force traps itself in a circular, looping motion, its unstoppable momentum doing nothing to help it escape its labyrinth. But in their battle, Takasugi and Gintoki do manage to reach each other; not because of Takasugi’s desperate violence, but because Gintoki’s interiority is as vast as the story they are in, and he is able to take Takasugi into himself. 

My Orochi Stood Up’s ouroboros thesis is famously anchored in western alchemical and philosophical concepts. It frames Gintama’s mission of human-becoming as the enacting of the Great Work, viewing Gintama’s parallelism through the lens of the individuation process. On the ouroboros as a symbol of two becoming one, it quotes Carl Jung:

In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feedback' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself, and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he, therefore, constitutes the secret of the prima materia which ... unquestionably stems from man's unconscious. (The Collected Works of Carl Jung, Volume 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1977)

Gintoki’s assimilation of his shadow, of his other self, is best represented by the moment where he finally visibly attains “a human’s sword” at the end of the series. Takasugi’s reflection in Gintoki’s blade bequeaths upon him the honour of being the face of Gintoki’s “human’s sword.” This is a similar use of the reflection as in Ending 25. What is made clear by comparing these two moments is the same obvious truth that Gintama has impressed upon its readers all along: Gintoki is capable of containing Takasugi within him, but Takasugi is not capable of the reverse.

Or, more accurately, Takasugi is chiefly defined by the fact that he carries Gintoki’s ghost within him–and was driven insane by it. Gintoki was able to quietly shoulder the knowledge that his actions caused Takasugi’s descent into madness, but Takasugi was never able to inure himself to the sight of Gintoki’s tears. Takasugi is hole-sided primarily because he hollowed himself out in a vain attempt to scrape the image out. But dirt, as My Orochi Stood Up states, is what remains. 

Takasugi’s crushed left eye has ever been his most obvious hole. Indeed, confronting Gintoki again made him aware that the image of Gintoki’s face that he had been carrying around in his eye like a grain of sand was in fact a speck of “dirt.” And of course, Takasugi was never empty: though the Kiheitai are sparse characters, they serve quite clearly to illustrate that Takasugi had never stopped being surrounded by people who trusted and depended on him, people who could participate in Gintama’s dirty gags and absurd comedy in the ways he could not, and people who, on multiple occasions, physically emulated Takasugi in order to inject his likeness into the series’ gags even when he was not present. People who, in short, supplied him with dirt.

The linkages between the gross and vulgar nature of Gintama’s preferred jokes and the double entendre in the meaning of “dirt” are an intrinsic part of both Gintama’s vision of life and the ouroboros framework. As T. S. Hirt explained, “the persistence of those dirty things marks the permanence of one’s relationships. something clean would never stick so.” Gintama posits that living is mortifying, humiliating, and while not shameful, certainly full of shame and debasement. To be a character that clings to dignity–or to whom dignity clings to–in Gintama is to accept an unfavourable life expectancy. Takasugi, while participating in a few gags, was never thoroughly embarrassed by them. His friends’ actions thus helped to tether him to the world of the living, even at his most ghostly. 

Holes do not need to be completely empty to be deemed holes. Such a proposition would be absurd. Holes are identifiable even when filled partway with soil–even, perhaps, when brilled to the brim. No one is truly empty. My Orochi Stood Up makes clear early on that “head vs hole” is not a false dichotomy, but a misleading one: 

You can reduce everything in Gintama to essentially two things. Shouyou and Utsuro. Gintoki and Takasugi. Humans and monsters. [...] Those who take in and those who are taken in. Those who keep struggling and those who don’t. And then you can also always reduce these two things to one thing: Shouyou/Utsuro are, after all, the same being [...]. You can’t pick yourself back up if you never lost in the first place. We know that Gintoki has managed to become “a splendid human” by the end of the series–so what was he before that? Was he really a monster? At what exact point in the series did he become human? Was it while he was on-screen, while we were looking, but without us noticing? Was it off-screen, while we were flipping the page, or in the space between the panels? The answer, of course, is that he was learning to be human every day of his life [...]. And so “which one is the head and which one is the hole?” is the wrong question. Even if you assigned one to each half and managed not to be wrong, since they’re collapsible into one anyway, they’ll always be both. (My Orochi Stood Up, 1948)

To be hole-sided is not to be the hole. It is to be stagnant, to be trapped in a state of needing to be filled without being able to carry out the process of self-constitution with the dirt that is received. In the end, Gintoki, the “reluctant hole” as T. S. Hirt iconically termed, is the one who takes Takasugi into himself. My Orochi Stood Up quotes philosopher Bernard Stiegler: “The I is essentially a process, not a state, and this process is an in-dividuation [...]. It is the tendency to become one, that is, to become indivisible.” This is, I argue, the climax of their homothematic relationship. Not coincidentally, it is also the climax of Gintoki’s personal quest to become human, the individuation that Jung and Stiegler speak of. 

My Orochi Stood Up capitalizes on the ouroboros’ nature as a symbol of fertility to liken dirt not only to shit but to seed, and the hole to the womb where the tama (egg/soul) is fertilized. It is an intentionally paradoxical and anachronistic framework, where one must have an unbroken sword to be able to be fertilized by the dirt of others, yet it is only through that fertilization that one’s sword can be forged. This is simply another iteration of the classic chicken-or-egg dilemma, as befits the motif of the ouroboros. But for the characters of Gintama, this paradox reflects their continuous responsibility: the task of becoming human is a Sisyphean one that will span their lifetimes and beyond.

In other words, as Takasugi was folded into Gintoki, he found that he was already there; that his lack was filled by Gintoki because he was filling Gintoki; and that being a ghost did not preclude anyone from being human.

I have spoken at length about holes and serpents up until this point without mentioning the eponymous dragon, Utsuro. This is partially because this essay was focused on Takasugi and Gintoki’s relationship, and partially because practically all insights regarding Utsuro are contained within the framework of the ouroboros thesis itself. As the world snake, his body and bones were used to construct the theory we have been discussing, his lack identical in essence to the other hole-sided. It is worth noting, however, that for Gintoki, Utsuro represented the unreachable object. Gintoki’s deepest anxiety was over his blade not reaching Utsuro, because he had been told that he could only reach him with a human’s sword. In the end, as we have seen, he does indeed manage to reach him, with Takasugi’s soul in his hands. 

Takasugi, too, manages to reach Gintoki in the end. Cradled in Gintoki’s arms, he is brave enough–and selfish enough–to ask for a fleeting smile. My Orochi Stood Up argues that the moment Gintoki’s tragedy was revealed to us through Takasugi’s eye was the one that broke Gintama’s own narrative cyclicity. This was, of course, the original bit of dirt flung into Takasugi’s hole that he could not cope with, that halted his process of individuation. As previously mentioned, the ten years that separate the end of the Joui war from the present day span an entire age. At the very end, this eternity spent wandering, too, ruptures, and Takasugi finally finds his way out of the labyrinth, only to look back and see a clear and straight path through the trees.

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This essay has been a brief exploration of Takasugi and Gintoki’s relationship in the context of My Orochi Stood Up’s innovative ouroboros framework. In the seventy-five years since it was first published, it has been transformed in diverse and exciting ways. However, I thought it only fitting that for this major anniversary, the focus be brought back to the Gintama characters that first inspired it. Rather than the iconic dragon, Shouyou/Utsuro, this piece has chosen to focus instead on his two most intertwined disciples. While not necessarily treading any new ground, I hope to have presented an interesting snapshot of this relationship known for being simultaneously transparent and opaque.

As we have seen, this relationship is one made possible by the intense parallel structure it embodies. Just as Takasugi serves as Gintoki’s shadow, their journey and the cannibalistic nature of their duality echo the conflict represented by their teacher, and in many respects parallel the shape of the narrative itself. In this way, the position they occupy in relation to these other draconic structures–micro- or macrocosm–is perhaps a reversible one. 

In short, though Gintama “cannot resist the phallus,” as T. S. Hirt said, it is also singularly concerned with holes: how they are filled, what results from them, what constitutes them. The only question it does not ask is what creates them. It is instead implicit that human beings naturally possess holes, that they are a natural part of the anatomy of both our bodies and souls. And thus, it is natural both to fill them and to fail to fill them; the fertile infinity of the ouroboros guarantees that should one fail, there will always be tomorrow.