#but also the reason she's weird is actually super sympathetic and kind of tragic

[commander-frostii]

[lightrises]

"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

[dykeseinfeld]

u asked someone to remind you to post about your pjo dual protagonist thalia/bianca au and i am SO intrigued by this idea please say more

anon asked: hey queen hope your homework went good yesterday 🌸…now what were you saying about thalia and bianca 😳 ?

ok y’all i’m here...the moment almost none of y’all have been waiting for....bianca/thalia protagonists with alternating pov’s au

warning it’s kind of super long and may or may not read like a 2nd grader’s semi-coherent game of pretend so under the cut it goes!

so the main things you need to know about this au are 1. thalia survives and 2. annabeth’s + luke’s ages are a lil diff bc canon is my sandbox 3. i can’t decide if percy exists in this au or not (maybe y’all can help me decide?)

so the first book:

would start a few months after grover brought thalia (12), luke (13), and annabeth (10, not 7)  to camp half blood. they were chased by monsters sent by hades on the way, and thalia almost didn’t survive, but ultimately she got lucky and managed to send a bolt of lightning through her spear for the first time and they made it into camp

it’s been some time so annabeth is happy as a clam in the athena cabin doing her 10-year-old-with-severe-mommy-issues thing and luke is actually pretty popular with the hermes cabin bc he actually Met Their Dad Holy Shit and also he’s getting pretty good with a sword

at the same time, thalia is alone in the zeus cabin. everyone has been freaking out bc they all saw the huge bolt of lightning that incinerated a couple hellhounds as they made their grand entrance and What The Fuck Child Of The Big Three???

she’s also further isolated because chiron will take her for private training sessions sometimes, since she is clearly really powerful already and also Hades Himself was trying to kill her (chiron told her the reason was the big three’s pledge not to have kids, and maybe about the great prophecy? if he tells her that then she’s sworn to secrecy)

once grover leaves on another protector assignment, thalia mostly hangs out with luke, and annabeth. luke + annabeth both will try to eat meals with her at the zeus table but annabeth doesn’t want to get in trouble and luke is genuinely making friends in the hermes cabin so thalia will feel bad sometimes and send him back

kronos, seeing this bitter isolated child of the big three’s dreams: it’s free real estate

MEANWHILE

hades is Pissed that thalia survived and zeus got to break their oath And get the glory of a prophecy child

so he sends someone to take bianca (12) and nico (10) out of the lotus hotel and casino a little early.

grover is still their protector, but since the Stirring hasn’t begun in earnest yet and hades is lowkey determined to keep them safe, they make it back to camp half blood with no escort/incident

bianca + nico are put into the hermes cabin, and luke kinda takes them under his wing bc while he’s not bitter he still needs therapy bc this 14 year old has never met a pre-teen he couldn’t try to parent

luke introduces nico and annabeth since they’re the same age and they become really good friends!! she Loves mythomagic and he thinks her dagger is super cool and they’re both just really excited about camp <3

bianca is more reserved and resistant to the whole thing, and she wanders around alone exploring and runs into thalia in the zeus cabin

at this first meeting they get into a bit of a fight bc bianca is still in shock/denial about the gods being real, but thalia at this point has zero patience for this

anyway after that and maybe another scuffle during capture the flag or something they hit it off and become best friends in the way girls can, especially bonding over how they’ve both had to take on raising annabeth and nico basically on their own at the age of 12

~QUEST TIME~

thalia is given a quest for [unspecific reason] and chooses bianca and luke, they go off leaving annabeth and nico frustrated at home

quest hijinks etc, bianca is trying to figure out her parentage + her weird mysterious powers? and thalia is arguing with luke because he’s settling into camp/hero life really well actually but she’s getting progressively angrier with the gods for trying to kill her and also keeps getting dreams from kronos and doesn’t get why he doesn’t seem to remember all of the shit that the gods have put him through

bianca + thalia have las-vegas-style-heart-to-hearts where thalia shares her tragic backstory about her mother and her brother and how hades tried to kill her and even about the great prophecy and how she’s trying on this quest bc of that and her dad but at the same time these dreams are making her suspicious that he might’ve been responsible for her mom’s death.

bianca then shares her own stuff, about how terrified she was being on her own with nico having to protect him but also not remembering most of her childhood and not remembering her parents or how she ended up in the care of this lawyer and just the absolute mindfuckery that her memories/past are

luke is asleep in those scenes i guess lol 🧍‍♂️

anyway eventually they finish their quest in this massive climactic battle where bianca discovers her powers in a huge-showy-”i’m the ghost prince”-way and is formally claimed by hades which thalia sees as this Massive Betrayal obviously and bianca is horrified too because she knows what hades did to thalia but at the same time she’s just so happy to finally understand at least part of her past

thalia just reaches a breaking point though because everyone around her just doesn’t understand her anger and just when she thought she had found another sympathetic person who understood what she was going through she joins hades??? no. no fucking way. kronos reveals that he’s the one who has been sending her dreams, prob by sending some messenger who he possesses or smthing and when he offers thalia the chance to join him? she does (dun dun dun)

main beats of the rest of the series:

thalia and bianca on opposite sides of the war training to be the prophecy child, they come together a Lot and have like melodramatic fight scenes where they talk out their anger and try to get the other to join them bc they don’t want to kill each other

luke is extremely conflicted/betrayed and there’s a titan’s curse moment prob towards the end of the third book where they’re fighting and thalia is trying to get her to go with him but here he actually does go to join her (gasp!!) and is evil for at least one book but his heart’s not in it and he goes back to the good side eventually

by the point of luke’s betrayal, annabeth and nico are growing and developing and old enough to go on quests w bianca and by the last book they’re a main trio of sorts and their hypothetical character development is already making me emotional

there’s just a lot of general sexiness with foils and inner conflicts and bianca doesn’t even want to be the prophecy child but she needs to for the fate of the world and bianca is so angry at thalia bc thalia is a daughter of zeus and could control her powers and is perfect and just meant to be the prophecy kid, not some daughter of hades who they didn’t even have a cabin for before

hm maybe by either the last or second-to-last book thalia + bianca are close to reconciling or at least their interests are aligned for the moment and they read the text of the prophecy together and things go Wild bc they both think “single choice shall end his days” either is about luke or nico and it turns up the gas to their fighting both of them care about both of them and yeah

and then i can’t decide if there’s romantic arcs at all but if there were it would go like this:

just a dash of thaluke where at first it was luke having a one-sided crush but thalia misses him a Lot after she goes to kronos and wonders if it’s that she misses him or if it’s something More until to get him to defect there’s like a melodramatic moment in the fight where thalia kisses him and they go off to be Evil Together but it ends bc luke doesn’t believe in the cause and only joined her in hopes of getting thalia back to his side

once luke leaves/is kicked out thalia realizes that she didn’t love luke she just wanted a family and also in the second half of the series she realizes she’s a lesbian as a parallel to her redemption arc

bianca meanwhile is unconcerned w romance until she has her botl-hoe-moment where within one book she 1. runs into the hunters on a quest and has a thing with zoe nightshade who tries to get her to join plus tells her about that time she met thalia, 2. she goes to calypso’s island and falls in love w her in the moonlight or w/e and has her what-if moment, and 3. when they meet up that book thalia somehow knew abt zoe + calypso and seems almost angrier abt them  than the war?? weird bc bianca knows that thalia is Totally Straight right??

my main point is that bianca/thalia is our friends-to-enemies-to-lovers endgame thank you i will take my pulitzer now

[i-prefer-the-term-antihero]

Additionally, your thoughts on Dracula and Adrian from the Netflix adaptation of Castlevania? I find Dracula really tragic, and the ending scene of Season 2 crushed me because I was not expecting Adrian to cry. He’s usually so stoic and calm that I didn’t think he would weep, I expected him to just shrug it off like heroes usually do, but no, when given time to process everything, the first thing he does is break down into tears. Sypha was right in calling him a brooding teen in an adult body.

Ohh man. If you just take a look at my writing blog (or anywhere I post my fanfiction) it’ll become pretty clear pretty quickly how I feel about them XD So far all my Castlevania fics have been about the Tepes Family. Adrian and Drac are my favorite characters in the series!! (Though I do love pretty much all the characters in it.)

YES YES YES!!

They did an incredible job making Drac sympathetic and tragic. I don’t know if you know anything about the games, and granted, they couldn’t put a lot of story stuff in the games, but (at least as far as I’m aware) in most of them it’s like “ya, he was an evil dude who did evil things because he was evil.” So it actually would have been pretty accurate to the source to make him just an unsympathetic, irredeemable villain, but they didn’t and I LOVE them for it. Playing Symphony of the Night (Alucards game) after watching the series l was almost longing for that Drac I know and love from the series, (though it’s fun to see evil Drac too).

As I’ve said, I adore redeemable villains, and they did an amazing job with him, to the point where pretty much everyone in the fandom adores him, which is extremely tough to accomplish—even if you write a redeemable villain well, often large parts of the fandom don’t see it and hate the character. I knew that the point was that they were going to defeat Drac but I have to say, especially since I originally knew nothing of the games, I was hoping they’d save him by the end.

I think the fact that he liked and was kind to Hector and Isaac was evidence that he wasn’t too far gone. I mean, the only two people he genuinely trusted and liked in his court were human…that’s so interesting, I wish it was at least talked about, either in the show or in the fandom. I think he actually liked humans, partially or especially because of Lisa, he just...was so angry, and needed someone to blame. He probably ultimately blamed himself for not being there to save her, and it was just easier to blame the humans he once hated/didn’t understand, even if in reality he didn’t hate them as much as he thought he did...

Doing more thinking and research into the show for my “If These Walls Could Talk” fic I recognize now that symbolically it made sense even within the show that he died when Lisa died (which I can explain more about if you want but id probably end up going off on a long tangent so I’ll save it)...but I still thought practically, in the show, he could have still been redeemed.

Omg I LOVED that. The longer I take to sit with it, the more I realize just how much I loved that they put him crying instead of shaking it off.

It’s very interesting that Drac and Alucard are more openly emotional characters. I might be totally wrong, but as far as I remember, they (...and Lisa when she dies, and probably Isaac in a flashback), are the only main characters we see openly cry. It’s a pretty bold move to make any of your characters emotional like that, but especially your villain, and your bold handsome hero. It’s sooo easy to get emotional characters and emotions wrong…or just offputting to some people...but more on that later.

I think Adrian and Drac are both rather sentimental, in an odd way. Much of Drac’s motivations in the show and even in the games (the times his motivations are explained) had to do with his wives (yes he was married before Lisa in the games...unless Lament of Innocence was retconned...) which is interesting. So many of his decisions are based on emotion. He lets Lisa in just because he likes her, he goes to war with the world because of Lisa, he sits in his study mourning her loss, he let’s Alucard kill him… I also notice very often he digs his nails into his palms until they bleed, presumably because if he didn’t he’d hurt someone else (in the scene where he hurts Alucard, he does this). His sentimentality doesn’t diminish is power as a villain, which is SO difficult to accomplish.

 I am emotional myself so I absolutely love to see emotional characters, but for most people, seeing even a normal character be emotional diminishes them in their eyes, or makes them whiny, so making your villain even a little emotional, and having that not take away from the audiences perception of their power as a villain is sooooooo hard to do, and I applaud them for making a so well-beloved, and still villainous and intimidating, but also emotional (at times) villain.

For Alucard. I don’t see any problem with him being emotional, but it makes even more sense if he’s a teen in an adult’s body—which was indeed portrayed quite well.

Yes that was interesting when he cried when drawing his parents!! I wasn’t expecting that when I saw him drawing them. I was enjoying and intrigued by his story so much, then when he started crying I was caught off guard—but in a good way. It really made me feel for him, and understand that he was still grieving his mother, and that knew the gravity of what he was currently doing.

I think it’s kind of important to show that kind of thing in a situation like this. It’s easy to think Alucard hates his dad, and they need to show the emotion of the situation to make it clear “no he doesn’t hate his dad, this actually breaks his heart, he just knows he has to do this.”

I loved when he was telling Trevor and Sypha about how much the world would lose by killing Dracula. It’s really interesting that he hides his emotion with them, and that Trevor and Sypha are so stoic. The son of Dracula isn’t the guy you expect to be the only hero who cries.

In “For Love” when Trevor’s like “Don’t get weepy about it” I was sitting there, sobbing, like “No, please get weepy about it! Let the boy cry for goodness sake!! Give me some emotion!!” But I too was not expecting him to cry like he did, and in grieving the death of his parents...

I knew the crying scene was coming because I’d seen pictures of it on here and pinterest, but I had no context for it. In the end it wasn’t just the weeping itself that made the scene so impactful, it was everything surrounding it. I didn’t know it would happen when he was completely alone (and would be for the foreseeable future), and in grieving his parents, or about the ghosts/flashbacks before it (cementing his grief), or that it was literally the last scene of the season, or that there would be no music for both the scene and the credits thereafter.

And that was what really got me.

Because, firstly, we never got to see any flashbacks to his childhood, and that was what I was begging for the entire series (and hence why its what I write about). To finally get it, and it not to just be something the audience gets to see, but something Alucard himself is seeing... a happy memory he’s seeing when he knows that is completely gone, he cannot hope to have it again, and for him to now be in his father’s place…that’s heartbreaking. Like just having your character cry—let alone those kinds of full-on sobs—is painful enough, showing a son grieving his parents is a particularly heart wrenching kind of sadness, but showing that he is haunted by memories of those parents he lost—not only lost but one of which he killed, and, if SOTN is canon for the show, the other of which he could have saved—of a happy childhood, and he is alone with these memories for the foreseeable future...that is truly heart wrenching.

Also the scene with Trevor and Sypha in the wagon earlier in the episode was super sweet, they could have easily put the Adrian crying scene earlier, and had the Trevor and Sypha scene be the last scene of the season (and Trevor’s game actually does end with them looking into the sunset, so ending with the last scene of “For Love” would be accurate as well), and left it on a positive note, and the audience would have been left with a completeness. But they made a conscious choice put his crying scene last, and it was so powerful, because it made you remember that at the end of the day, he isn’t just our bold handsome hero, he was a son who lost both his parents, and that, to him, this isn’t really a triumph, but a loss. It also kinda confirmed that Drac wasn’t an "evil guy, end of story". That there was reason to grieve him, and to show his son grieving, and to leave it there because of it. It was a personal gravity too

In the end, it was the lack of music in the scene, and even more so during the credits, so theres only his tears, and all you are left with in the end is this amplified emptiness that really did me in. I think I literally sat there, tear tracks on my face, my mouth open when I hit the credits.

Playing Symphony of the Night after watching the show is really interesting in exploring his character. I knew there was very little story, so I wasn’t expecting much from the story, but I actually found that I was beyond excited whenever there actually was some story, and the few lines they did say are stuck with me.

Maria comments early on that Alucard’s not very good at talking. At first I just chalked it up to...weird translations or whatever. But the more I played the game and the more I thought about him in the show...I think she’s right. He’s not very good at talking, yet if and when he does talk he’s quite eloquent, and precise with his words. (This actually makes him a somewhat difficult character to write). I wonder if perhaps this has some connection to his emotionalness. He’s very careful with what he says, and this may spread to what he does—such as being careful when he shows emotion. I’m curious why he’s like this. It could just be his nature, but I wonder if as a kid he was ever hated because he was a vampire—maybe people made fun of him, and he cried, and they made more fun of him because of it—and he learned both to hide his emotions, and that he had to be very deliberate and show people he didn’t mean any ill will with his words. (And he looks older than he is so people might call him immature for acting his mental age). All very speculative, of course. But it’d be fun to write about!

Also, another thing from SOTN that is related to this topic, there was a fight that really struck me (enough I actually wrote a fic about it (inverted recurrence)). SOTN takes plays 300 years after the events of The Netflix Series (aka Dracula’s Curse). Most of the bosses don’t seem to have a lot of meaning story-wise, they’re just there for you to fight. The other day I (Alucard) walked into a boss room...and there were Trevor, Sypha, and Grant (who was omitted from the Netflix series). They were fake versions of them, of course. And there’s no dialogue in the fight so maybe I’m just speculating, but what struck me was that the fact that Dracula could use them against him probably means he still cares about them, even after 300 years. It probably also means that they’re some of the only friends he’s ever had. Granted, he was asleep for a good chunk of those 300 years, still. It goes back to that sentimental-ness I was talking about earlier.

I few years ago I watched the Gravity Falls commentaries, and from them I got a lot of the writing advice I still think about and use today. Alex Hirsch said something on this subject which I really liked which is “Hold your tears.” When a character cries they’ve broken, that’s as far as they can go. So if you make a character cry when the audience themselves doesn’t feel the weight of the scene, or it doesn’t feel like the character has broken yet, it can feel like too...much/cheesy, and distance the audience. especially with cartoons where the way it’s drawn can actually affect your sympathy for the character (it can look weird or accentuated).

They did such an awesome job with this by literally holding his tears until the very end. I don’t know how other, non-emotional people felt about it, but Ive don’t know if I’ve ever seen tears used so well in a show, pack such a punch. To have it not just be a part of the scene but literally the focus, and at the end...it was powerful.

Sorry for the long response, and more importantly, I’m beyond sorry for taking so so SOOO long to respond. I hope you enjoy my response, if you see it <3

P.S. For anyone else who made it all the way to the end, I actually have a Castlevania sideblog now: @symphonyofthewrite !! I’d be beyond happy to recieve asks like this over there, if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts!!

[ziracona]

Who of the DBD original killers do you think would be cool to see in horror movies? What characters do you think have the most potential for a film and what do you think it should/could be like?

Interesting question! Let’s see: Lisa, Sally, Philip, Max, Evan, Herman, Anna, Kenneth, Rin, Frank/Julie/Susie/Joey, Adiris, Danny (kind of), Kazan, Caleb, Talbot, and the Deshayes.

Hmmmm. Danny would work the least well as an original product, because he’s also a Scream expy thing. And then I also don’t think Talbot would work well outside a very DbD like in-universe heavy story, because he just has so much realm context backstory.

Out of the others, they all have potential. Basically none of the sympathetic ones would work as standalone horror characters, because they just didn’t like, /do/ murders before in-realm or live horror lives. The exceptions being Charlotte, Legion, Anna, Max, and Lisa. A lot of the others are definitely interesting enough to be really cool to watch their backstory lives, just, it wouldn’t be traditional horror. Charlotte and Lisa wouldn’t be the antagonists, but they /did/ both live complex horror lives before the realm, and there’s a lot of tragic potential there. Anna, Max, and Legion are all fairly sympathetic killers, but they /did/ live horror experiences before their time in-realm, so they have potential too. Out of them, I think Anna would be the strangest to adapt as traditional horror, since so much of her genre is tragedy and drama, and a narrative from her pov doesn’t play her as living a horror story, while Max and Legion’s do. It /could/ be crazy sad and work though, especially if you say, started the film from the pov of a kid who is kidnapped by her and the family who loses the child, and then only slowly as Anna goes from this horrific thing that kills people and steals children and eats human, to a weird kidnapper mother-wannabe, does she become less a monster and more complex. Maybe then you get flashbacks. It’d be dark, though, because even if you learned her past and understood what she’s been through and why she did what she did, and she and the child form any kind of bond, and she’s temporarily happy with a daughter and full of affection, you know none of her kids ever lived, so it would have to end with the child she’s had a few slow heartwarming moments with falling ill and her working hard to make her better, keep her warm, only to return from a hunt or panicked mission to collect herbs, relieved to have found what she needs, only to find a cold lifeless body waiting. Which she cradles for hours weeping, and then goes to bury finally behind the house, and only then does the audience realize this is one more joining fourteen graves that have come before it. And god, that’s just...so dismal. Chilling.

Uhhh, Max could be really good, but I would be so afraid people would adapt him badly because mentally ill and disabled antagonists in horror like, almost without fail are disgustingly treated. So, this one gives me fear. It could be a really nice character study, slow understanding movie though, where you go from identifying with him and him being the character in a horror situation, to the monster at the end of the film killing anything who comes near him in a frenzied need to be left alone. Also a very tragic and dark film.

The Legion would be a top pick, because it’s less dark and more like, unique? As far as horror goes. You get these kids, kind of a Gingersnaps, The Craft feel horror, with character-driven and a slow build into the actual horror of it all. Things only spiral slowly, and you like and sympathize with at least to some degree the stupid shit teens by the time things fall apart and their is blood on their hands. And there’s just--so much in the air. One murder. Unplanned. Punk troublemakers that just went off the edge into something darker on accident, and never really have time to choose what this means for them as people or if they’ll come back, because they are still in the immediate turmoil of processing that first kill when the Entity grabs them all. Could be really sick. Also there’s so much sweet-tragedy to work with here, I die for it. Ahhh, and baby Jeff Johansen! --Side note: while I think a lot of these would be cool horror films, honestly, I wouldn’t make horror flicks out of any of them. The reason isn’t that they would be bad films, but that I think the ideal way to adapt dbd killers cinematically would be in like, a DbD tie-in miniseries that’s a collection of stories that gives you backstories like archives does, but does it /way/ better. Like how Overwatch does character short films periodically for lore, except longer and probably live action. Or like the Coming To America segments in American Gods before episodes/chapters that introduce characters or backstory. I fkn love that concept in media when it’s done well. I think it would be super sick, and it would be a great way to tie things into dbd while letting different killers have unique flavors and storytelling styles to their shortfilms. (Honestly, DbD as a concept could make for some /fantastic/ tv show material. I’d /love/ to adapt it. And if there /was/ a show, it would be really cool to periodically have episodes that are just character backstories before you go back to the like, over-arching realtime plot).

Uhhhh, Lisa’s would be tragic, and it would /have/ to go full story. Poor kid just living her life, to kidnapped and struggling to survive. Trying to escape. Canibalized and tortured horribly. Eventually dying and vowing revenge. All the way to twisted and abused by the Entity, doing things she never ever would have chosen for herself, for just the...the fucking wholesale tragedy of her. Honestly, if DbD had a show, she’d be a /fantastic/ choice for first or second killer to get a backstory segment or episode, because like, people new to the media would understandably be like ‘yo these monsters are all 100% evil’ but then you get Lisa and you’re like ‘Oh fuck. That was one of the creepiest, and really she’s some poor young woman who needs rescuing as much as the survivors,’ and then there’s just so much left up in the air to question--who else is like her? And who is like Danny, or Freddy? Who is somewhere in between? Great for storytelling.

Uhhh, it’d take a long time to break down how I’d adapt all of these even with me doing shortform like this so I’ll try to be brief. Let me see. Charlotte would be great horror, back to the original question, not my miniseries fantasy, because her whole life is a horror film she’s the victim in, but her situation is complex and fascinating, and she’s a kid, and it’s so tragic, but not in a pointless way. Her life was full of love and pain, but it mattered, to her, to her mom who loved her and died for her, and to the baby brother whose corpse she couldn’t stop cradling and literally carrying not just with but in her. I think you’d have to finish that heartbroken for the girl, and hoping somehow she is able to find healing in whatever time she has left.

Sally and Philip both went through awful stuff, but Philip’s is not really a subject for just a horror film--although his time in Autohaven could be. Sally also had horrific experiences at her job, but again, like Max, less excited about this one because I don’t trust many people to do a good job with an asylum story. If done well, could be really tragic. Watching her fall apart trying to care about the people who just deserve help, and falling apart being abused by the criminals kept right in the next room over. The horrific ‘treatments’, the slow influence of the Entity whispering in her head, her finally fracturing and believing so completely she is saving people by purifying them and setting them free while she smothers a young boy who trusted her to death. Devastating. And Philip’s life overall and his time in autohaven lend themselves very well to horror, and he’d be a magnificent protagonist, I just don’t think if it was mostly the stuff in America, that that’s a full-length movie. Could be a really great like 45 minute short film. God, poor Philip. He deserved /none/ of this. Uhhh, Rin’s is horrific, with her as the victim, but like Philip, there’s not a /ton/ of buildup, so short film, not feature? Also God, poor Rin. She was just a kid. Doing her best. Please, Entity, fucking stop this.

This leaves Evan, Herman, Kenneth, Adiris, Kazan, and Caleb. Out of these, Caleb would make for a really good movie, but I don’t think it would be a horror film? It’d be a drama, or action-adventure. I mean don’t get me wrong--dark drama--his life was fucked--but like, it isn’t very horror-genre. Kenneth would be super gross but he fits classic horror well so if you want a killer clown, let’s goooo, but like? It’d just be two hours of him drugging, torturing and assaulting and then killing kids, teens, young adults, adults, and old people? And like, almost getting caught but not, and then being recruited by the Entity? And there’s just...not a story in there I see very worth telling? So I’d hard pass. Gross.

Uhhhh, Herman is boring if he’s rewrite. Torture bastard but like with mad scientist vibes is more interesting, and I could dig a CIA is evil film. Only, since he canonically kills /everybody/ in the building, you’d either have to retcon, or have a very disappointing film. Because Herman can’t be the pov character if he’s mad scientist Herman--you kinda need to see that from the outside at least as like, a deuteragonist. Not that horror is always disappointing if the cast all dies--sometimes that works--but like. Given the plotline I know Herman’s life takes, I can’t see your protag being slowly mind control tortured and then eventually experimented on and ripped apart until they die Herman’s last day being a very worthwhile storyline. If you retcon the complete losses though, and have maybe a spy who is the pov character, experimented on a lot, tries to escape and is punished, maybe tries to help a friend, tries to kill Herman in retribution for what he does to a colleague, and last day, somehow finds a way to survive whatever is done to them/not end up vegetative for the rest of their life or dead? Maybe puts a plan into action and messes up a machine and gets hit with a much lower than it looks like dosage of electricity and fakes vegetative, and survives, and witnesses the Entity come and take Herman even, and the Entity notices them and is like “Okay...more free food” so you have a last minute terrified beat to shit spy trying to break free of arm restraints and escape the place before the Entity gets them. Maybe rescues someone else too? Then baybeee we got a story with a great antag! Throw in a new protag to spice it up and u got something I’d like to see. If it’s just torture man lover Herman -the mad scientist aspect, I am not super interested but it’s not a /hard/ pass. I keep this pitch, it just becomes a less interesting film.

Adiris baby, I’m so sorry I didn’t do you with the sympathetic killers you know I love you your name was just late in my list because of how I typed it. Uhhh, her life doesn’t lend well to horror, although she’s a fantastic drama or epic. I’d love to see a major focus on her in-relam in a show, but as far as this question goes, I just don’t think that’s her genre.

This leaves Kazan and Evan. Guess I lied before about not going into any detail TuT but I’ll try. Uhhh. Kazan I am just not that interested in the story of? Man goes around killing farmers brutally for no reason. It’s less horror, more historical drama, unless you take the pov of a victim who seeks revenge or something. So, like Herman, he’d need a pov character fix to make it work. But the end result I find much less compelling. I’d probably pass. It’s just not that interesting to me.

Evan. Well, he’d be a good film I think. Classic horror. Rich, privileged, conceited bastard. Even worse father. Dead mom, drama as a young man. Becomes a horrific monster and loves it, cooks workers to death in his foundry furnace for no reason except sadism, lots of kidnapping workers and forcing them into slavery for him and then horrific murder. Kinda a torture-porn leaning here if you’re not careful, but it could be a really solid flick. I don’t think any of his victims survive though, so without a retcon, it’d be a pretty damn dark one. You could have any number of pov characters that just end up burned to death, or beaten to death, or buried alive and suffocated or starved, crushed to death. You could follow Evan and just be overwhelmed with horror and disgust for the person he becomes. But it works better than some of the other dark horror options, so I’d say it has potential. Especially as a lead-in to DbD, because then it works better as a storyline, because it isn’t totally over.

Hope you enjoyed this! Again though, a lot of these could make nice movies, but I think like 45 minute episode TV show for DbD would be ideal, and they’d all make /phenomenal/ backstory short films. Even the ones that really don’t lend to standalone feature.

[ihassheepquake]

Stargirl 1.09 “Brainwave” is out now DCU & I’m here to talk about it.

So, in a surprise to absolutely nobody, each episode that is named after a specific character is their backstory (except for episode 1, which is simply titled “Pilot” but is still Courtney’s origin story, but the show is called Stargirl so it’s fine), so naturally this is going to be our big backstory for Henry King Sr. aka Brainwave. I’m also betting we’ll see him wake up this episode, and this could hold the confrontation between BW & Henry Jr, with Henry going rogue next week in “Brainwave Jr.”

And of course, we open on BW flashback, right as he’s starting to develop his powers while being mugged, which is as good a time as any to find out you have superpowers. And so his first action is to force choke his mugger to death (or a brain fry, giving the dude a seizure). Classic super villain. Seems like all those videos he has in his secret room are him documenting the discovery of his powers and likely him training himself. As Henry starts to watch them, they can act as a good base for him to work on his powers, so he could likely use them to advance his powers faster than BW. It’s interesting to see that BW got his powers through self-experimentation, very classic villain origin, having his funding denied and saying “fuck it” and doing it anyway but on himself.

Courtney seems almost traumatized from her fight with Henry last week as he used his powers on her. She can tell that he’s scared, and she’s scared too, but she’s also sympathetic and even wants to give him a chance. Pat seems unconcerned by this, instead worrying about Dragon King and what the ISA is doing now.  But look, Pat was in a different team, the Seven Soldiers of Victory (is there comic history for that? Never heard of them) with Green Arrow, Speedy, Shining Knight (who we have met several times actually), Vigilante (who I remember from JLU where I also was first introduced to SK, Stargirl, & S.T.R.I.P.E.), and Wing (whoever that is). I guess despite Arrow being over, they aren’t allowed to say the names of GA & Speedy. And then Pat decides that they do need help and seems to at least kinda agree with recruiting Henry.

So here we cut to Shining Knight, which is clearly important. He sees himself holding the Cosmic Staff, which also has to mean something. Is he joining the JSA? That’d be cool. 

So we saw Cindy get dragged off by Dragon King last week, and now she’s locked up by her dad, and the school thinks she left the country. Cindy, girl, maybe threatening to kill Dragon King isn't the best of ideas. And she get’s gassed. What is this machine Dragon King keeps talking about? What the hell is he up too?

So yeah, just like I thought, Henry is using his dad’s videos to teach himself, and does seem to maybe be progressing faster than his dads did, but he has help. It’s nice to see how delighted he is by his abilities. 

I like the division that the idea of getting Henry in has split the Starsquad so much. It definitely shows that Yolanda doesn’t actually know that it was Cindy who leaked her photos. (also, side note, Rick looks really cute in his yellow hoodie). I feel like these kinds of shows don’t really talk about the effects that having people like Henry join the team very often, so it’s good to see how these four are interacting about it. I definitely agree with Beth that not giving Henry the benefit of the doubt and saying that people can’t possibly change is unfair to him (especially given the additional information that we as the audience have), but I don’t disagree with Yolanda. I definitely wouldn’t want him on the team in her shoes. Regardless of the fact that he didn’t leak her photos, he still treated her terribly after it all went down. There’s some tough questions here.

Of course we have to get a tragic backstory about how sad BW is, and how awful his childhood was, blah blah blah. Those kinds of experiences are usually used to justify why the villain is so bad and make them sympathetic but I really don’t like it. Regardless of your trauma, you’re still responsible for your actions. Being sad doesn’t give you an excuse to blind a man and then throw him in front of a subway, not to mention how much other shit he’s done that we don’t know about. 

So the ISA meeting reveals the plan to us, and honestly? Kinda underwhelmed. It’s a very typical supervillain plot, they wanna use Henry to take mental control of everyone in like, a six state radius, typical stuff. 

Courtney goes to see Henry in the hospital and starts her trying to recruit him plan. She even (accidentally) owns up to being the reason BW is in the hospital. But if I’m being honest, I’m not 100% sure she can recruit him, at least not yet. When she tells him that BW & the ISA have killed people (Mr. Zarick, Joey (also the tradition of Joey still being talked about is back, he has officially been in/mentioned in 8 of 9 episodes so far this season, my boi is killing it), her dad) and his only reaction is “maybe they deserved it” and just as I’m thinking about how I’d ask “did Joey deserve it” Courtney beats me to the punch, thank you girl. Henry doesn’t say that he doesn’t think Joey deserved to die, but he says he was a nice kid, so I’m guessing he doesn’t. I’m really happy about Courtney’s response to Henry’s little speech about how awful people is. Again, that’s usually a very binary conversation in these shows but Courtney admits that people can be bad, but they can also be good. It isn’t black and white. She still ultimately gets back to “people are always good” but she can at least admit that isn’t not always so cut and dry. It’s refreshing. As I’ve talked about before, a lot of Courtney’s character in relation to everyone else is choice. As she’s leaving, she tells Henry that she believes he wants to do the right thing, and to come talk to her when he’s ready. She’s still giving him that choice, and she’s telling him that she’ll be ready when he does, whatever it is. 

I say it every week but the family bits with Barbara are the best. Unlike the typical dad/husband, he isn’t happy with leaving Barbara to do all the housework and shit. And then Pat is ready and willing to finally tell Barbara the truth, only to be cut off by Courtney, and honestly Barbara deserves to know. She needs to know actually. It leads to a lot of weird shit with Jordan, god he screams crazy colonizer it’s wild, and it leads to a great way for Courtney to learn Jordan is Icicle, having him casually pick up a dish straight out of the oven like it’s nothing. Okay, does Jordan know about Courtney? He certainly gives off vibes that he does, but he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that he does. But it leads to Barbara finding out! FINALLY!!! Love that drama!!!

Oop, here goes Henry following his dad’s footsteps and killing a man, at the exact moment his dad wakes up. What fun. And that’s where the episode ends. 

So much crazy stuff has happened this week. Each episode gets me more and more hyped for the next, and we only have four left this season. So, let’s quick recap what we do from next episode “Brainwave Jr.” The Starsquad is going to go explore in this tunnels under the city and Henry is going to be down there with them, and it looks like they’re going to be taking on Dragon King’s weird cult thing. They’re likely also going to find out the identity of at least one more member of the ISA. We also now know that Barbara is going to get the full story and I wonder how that’s going to go. 

That’s it from me this week (for now at least), which means I’ll see you back next week for Stargirl 1.10 “Brainwave Jr.”

[toxicpineapple]

This will sound weird but hear me out, I never understood why people like Ibuki so much since she seemed like the typical comedy relief type of character. But you loving her so intensely is making me have second doubts about my indifference to her. Would you please explain why Ibuki holds the key to your heart oh our great lord and saviour?

ahh i’ve been looking for an opportunity to talk about ibuki, thank you so much for asking.

this might sound like a really weird reason because i do write a lot of angst (and in many ways i feed off of it; it’s just cathartic, y’know) but i think the biggest reason why ibuki captured my heart is because she’s just a genuinely confident and happy person.

you don’t get that a lot in fiction. usually when it comes to creating a deep, insightful character, people assume that they have to have some kind of tragically scarring backstory. something really sad and awful in their past that’ll make them all of a sudden more complex and interesting. i don’t really buy into that; i think there are plenty of complexities behind happier characters, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. and that’s the reason why i appreciate ibuki so much, because she really ISN’T shallow, even though it seems like she’s just quirky and funny and there to have a great time.

in her free time events, she drags hajime into a band and has him running all over the island, seemingly at her whims? in one of the ftes they even headbang together until they both pass out. you just don’t get to see hajime letting loose at any other points in the game and that was something that REALLY made me smile, the effect that ibuki had on him. he was so worried all the time about the killing game, and his talent, and all of that, and here was ibuki who baffled him so much and yet allowed him to just relax a little bit and enjoy himself. you’d expect some kind of deep, angsty thing for her final fte, because that’s sort of the expectation that danganronpa sets up, but that’s not what ibuki gives you.

she reveals in her final fte that the only reason she was doing all that stuff with hajime was in the hopes of helping him figure out what his talent is. when she said that i like, actually started crying a bit. in all the ftes throughout all the games, you see the protagonists focusing a lot on the characters they’re spending time with. trying to learn about them, trying to help them, et cetera. and of course there are exceptions to this-- kaito encourages shuichi in his final fte, kaede tries to figure out if she and shuichi are compatible with her questions in one of hers, the like. but with ibuki every single time she and hajime are hanging out, she’s trying to help him. like, the focus is on him in it.

that isn’t necessarily a healthy thing for a relationship so please don’t assume that the reason why i love ibuki so much is that she, a woman, devoted all her time into helping a man, alright, because that’s not why. (anti-fems DNI.) the reason why this evoked such a strong emotional response from me is because of the way that ibuki goes about it. she’s so caring in such an understated way. she doesn’t act like hajime is indebted to her, and instead is just slightly disappointed when she finds out that it didn’t work, and then (if i recall correctly; it’s been a while) she proceeds to tell him that he’s more than just his talent, and regardless of whether or not he remembers it, he’ll still be the same person that he is.

you just don’t expect a character like ibuki to be so down-to-earth. and then throughout the game you SEE her caring for other people, most significantly throwing the get-well party for fuyuhiko in chapter three. she’s enigmatic and unique and charming-- absolutely RANDOM too. in the bonus event where hajime and souda go on a date drink from coconuts together, ibuki and peko come down and ibuki says that she and peko were holding hands and walking along the beach. i mean, i don’t really think they were holding hands because that doesn’t feel like much of a peko thing, but peko is one of the most reserved students on the island. this remains pretty consistent i think right up until her trial. and ibuki’s out here spending time with her, dragging her along to drink some coconuts with a couple gays. splendid.

another thing that i really really appreciated about ibuki is how mature she is. you wouldn’t think it, right? i mean she’s admittedly not all that smart and she’s so WEIRD too, she literally bit hajime in the chapter one investigation. but it shows through the most when she talks about her band splitting. she says that they split due to creative or personality differences, but she doesn’t seem all that torn up about it. she admits that it’s a bit lonely being alone but says that she doesn’t regret leaving. and i just think that’s really remarkable. ibuki’s band was SO popular, they were topping the charts, but ibuki valued a sense of unity between band members. she told hajime that that was the most important thing, above anything else. when she saw that it wasn’t working out between her and her band members, she knew she had to go, and she didn’t regret leaving either.

think about how hard that is for a teenager to achieve!! (i would know, being one myself.) i mean, even adults struggle with decisions like that, and i’m sure plenty of people would have tried to just tough it out. in such a successful group, there’s this desire to make things work, even if it’s showing over and over again that they aren’t. ibuki knew that she didn’t have unity with her band mates and knew it wasn’t going to work out, and she took herself out of it.

she lives a really wild life but it’s clear in the way she interacts with other people that she really is just happy with the person that she is. to the point where even sometimes, she’ll calm down and give really good, really well-put-together advice. she dismisses it afterwards, but when someone like ibuki chills out for a second it’s bound to be memorable.

this turned into a really long answer and i didn’t mean it that way, but essentially, anon, what i’m trying to say is that ibuki is a nuanced, complex character, and they managed to pull that off without all the sad, tragic things that they throw into other backstories. i mean, compare her to another one of my favourites, maki. maki is a really great character! i maintain that i love her and that she’s super misunderstood by the majority of the people in this fandom, but look at how far they had to go to make her sympathetic. she was taken by a CULT and forced to become an ASSASSIN to save her ORPHANAGE. jesus, you don’t get that shit outside of fiction. ibuki managed to make me feel way more than maki did, without having all the sadness. she was genuine and thoughtful, cared a lot about others, and took the time that other people didn’t to try to help hajime, and even when it failed she told him that he’s still him through it all.

also she’s FUNNY and GAY as hell and her character design is STELLAR and she SEWS ALL OF HER OWN CLOTHINg and look at her HAIR and i’m weak for a character with PIERCINGS because YES i have these deep character-analysis related reasons but i’m also a LESBIAN and you’re going to have to INDULGE me.

thank you for the respectful, thought-provoking question, anon. <3

[haich-slash-cee]

Being Human (UK)

This is a show that I recommend to people... but I add a lot of caveats.

The recommendation: A werewolf, vampire and ghost are flatmates. This show is hilarious! So much macabre and slice of life humor! And horror and whump!? Also, the show was run by a side-channel of BBC (BBC3) and I guess they had no production money, so the actors mostly look human and they just refer to each other as being a 500-year old vampire or ghost or whatever. Which makes it even better. The werewolf is Jewish, recites a Jewish prayer at least once, and hangs out watching “The Real Hustle” with the vampire. They work in a hospital as janitors. The ghost has a habit of making everyone tea to soothe herself and the flat is cluttered with tea mugs everywhere all the time. Also, people do get fang-y or wolf-y or do weird poltergeist stuff. And gore happens.

Longish post, more below the cut.

PS, this is the 2008-2013 UK version of Being Human, which I hear had a cult following. There’s certainly stuff on Tumblr. I found the BBC version through the US remake of Being Human, but I’m much more charmed by the BBC version. (The US version has the vampire and werewolf as hospital doctors? Why?) Also I watched the show maybe 4, 5 years ago, so impressions are from that.

And the caveats: There’s a lot of sexism which was hard to watch. It’s engrained in the premise and plot and occasional gross sexist jokes. And there’s other problematic stuff in the writing. It’s like having glass shards show up the meal you are enjoying, and it’s why I’m not sure I’ll rewatch the series (or not in it’s entirety, anyway). There’s also a limited spinoff web series called Becoming Human which also had some problems for me, including some gross sexism and fatphobia. (John Boyega from Star Wars does show up as a character in that series, for anyone interested.)

Back to Being Human and overall series recommendations. So the 1st season was good. I kind of forgot what happened in the 2nd and 3rd season (I think they got depressing and slow?). The 4th season picked up again, much to my surprise, and I remember liking the 4th and 5th season a lot. Even though [spoilers] there was a complete cast change by this time. But it worked, somehow. The show did go from at least having one woman of color to having an all-white cast at the end, which was not great. And there’s other racism too.

For people who like their happily-ever-after: uhhh so I vaguely recall that a lot of characters don’t really get a happy ending. Granted, half of them are walking around dead already, so...? Overall, the ending of the 5th season is... Is that a happy ever after? Happy for now? The Bonus on the DVD kind of makes it a happy-for-now with a continued possibility? It’s an acceptable HFN?

.....And now, the notes for all the hurt/comfort people and whumpers:

Holy crap people, there is SO much h/c and whump!?

OK first -- George the werewolf. George’s transformation sequence, SUPER whumpy.

Also, George ends up naked often, come to think. And he screams a lot during the show, for various reasons. The actor himself, in the bonus DVD interviews I think, cheerfully says something like, “People really like the way George screams, I do too.” (This is like when David Tennant cheerfully talked about how he enjoys playing a character who is unconscious and sick and gets fussed over by people.) And George is a very sympathetic, nerdy character who is easy to feel for. Who occasionally turns into a SNARLY SCARY WEREWOLF AGAINST HIS WILL. As mentioned, I think I liked season 1 George more than seasons 2 or 3.

Emotional hurt/comfort -- so Annie the Ghost provides a lot of the emotional centering, as I recall. Throughout all 5 seasons, all the characters lean on each other for support and there’s a lot of lovely warm fuzzies from that. Also, one of the later werewolf characters, Tom, is generally a sweet kid. I’m glad they didn’t do too much of the transformation horror with him, honestly. George/Russel Tovey could carry that, but I thought Tom’s strong point was looking puppy-eyed and folorn-eyebrow’d and trying to navigate the world with a mix of naivety and half-feral-ness.

Above: exhausted naps on the couch.

Below: Classic Being Human humor. A review of house rules and vampire stabbing etiquette, between Annie and Tom --

[Spoilers from here on] Okay, so as mentioned, the cast changed over between season 4-5. And to my surprise, I think I loved the new trio as much as, or more than, the original trio. I liked how loud Alex the ghost was. And I liked both Annie and Alex.

Also, I did not expect this either, but I got so interested in Hal! Yo! First of all, Hal is a centuries-old Vampire and speaks/looks like, idk, a Regency Character. And then 19-yr old Tom puts Hal to work at a fast food shop and bosses him around, and Hal’s indignation is hilarious. So already, this is excellent.

And somehow, Hal is very, very whumpy? So: the character of a “vampire who is trying to be good and suffers” is not new, and I’ve encountered versions where I haven’t been interested. (I was lukewarm about Mitchell, the original vampire in the show.) But for whatever reason, I really dug Hal. Maybe, for me, Hal was just the right mix of very serious and earnest but also ridiculous and tragic all at once. (I read some interviews with the actor Damien Molony, who mentioned how he’d done a lot of history and addiction research in to prep for the role. The new trio actors also had a lot of chemistry and fun on sets, it sounds like. So I might be picking up all that.)

Also, Hal is actually two characters -- the ridiculous indignant serious Good Hal who is desperately trying to keep the horrible, rude, murderous, Bad Hal from taking over. But, as one of the show producers, a woman, cheerfully commented in the DVD extras: “And then Bad Hal shows up, which is great, everyone likes a bit of Bad Hal”. 

Honestly, why do we even pretend to hide our fascination with the macabre and the whump, when showrunners and actors are cheerfully not hiding it all.

Here’s clips of Good Hal in Season 4:

Oh, I forgot about this part until I rewatched the last clip -- but at the end of season 4, Hal asks his flatmates to forcibly bind him to a chair, because he’s trying to fight off Bad Hal. Based on my perusing of the whump community, pretty sure that scenario is of interest to someone.

Also notable is the episode “No Care, All Responsibility” (Series 5 ep 3). In one scene in particular, where Natasha has offered Hal a way to control his bloodlust and there’s this mix of vulnerability and power with Hal asking Natasha to put a stake against his heart, I remember thinking -- “I bet a woman wrote this ep and I bet she knew exactly what she wanted”. And I was right, that woman is Sarah Dollard, a queer woman who has also written a lot of other things (including Doctor Who). She also wrote Being Human goofy web extra eps with Alex, Hal and Tom called “Alex’s Unfinished Business” and they are so good ! (Interview). 

Also... the opening 3-minute backstory in “No Care...” made me cry. You get a glimpse of the show’s baddie showing real care and emotion in rescuing this little kid (an important character). When this kind of scene is done well, it just gets me. every. time.

Anyway here’s an appearance of Bad Hal (much later), being completely awful, murdering people and turning them into vampires and singing Broadway tunes during this.

Side note on Vampire narratives. Although Hal’s narrative arc of season 5 was interesting, and I’m aware this is show is urban fantasy, I still have qualms of the show enforcing IRL stigmas/ideas that addition is incurable and addicts are doomed. They’re not. (General overview on NIH page.) Addiction research is a growing field. From listening to NPR and reading articles, my impression is that addiction treatment will change quickly in the next few years. Related to the vampire blood addiction trope, Terry Pratchett covers vampires finding ways to be “dry” (one vampire, Maladict, swaps out blood addiction for coffee addiction) and you can find fanfics about the topic as well. (General link to Being Human Ao3 fanfics, why not.)

Side note on Hal’s dual characters -- recently, I did consider, “Is there overlap with Hal and portrayals of Dissociative Identity Disorder (MPD) folks?” IRL DID people have complained about movies with gross portrayals of people with DID. To me, Being Human’s Hal feels removed from that and closer to a fantasy.... but, I’m also not multi, so.

* Update: after having learned more about plural history, I’m even less sure now. (Note: my opinions are of someone who isn’t plural, as far as I know, so note that.) There’s a number of early problematic movies and books that hugely affected the popular narratives of plural people in the west, and still affect how therapists and non-plural people treat plural people even today. These include the movie “The Three Faces of Eve”, which has the narrative of “Good Eve, Bad Even, and later smushed together become ‘Fixed Eve’ or whatever”. There’s practically a whole lecture series on how the books/movies were made with sensationalism and formulas in mind and pretty gross things. Chris Costner Sizemore, the IRL Eve, had to fight the movie studios in court because the studios claimed they owned her life story. (There’s practically a whole lecture series on early plural history in the west, I might link more information later). Like, even today, multi people feel pressured to hide their plurality because they are afraid singlets or other people are gonna say “oh so which one of you is the ax murderer”, or that they are going to be fired from work. So.  

This post turned into a “Being Human seasons 4 + 5 Appreciation Post”. I guess Season 1 and 4, 5 were my favorite. I watched the show through library DVDs, but I think there’s eps of the show on YouTube. The DVD extras are probably on this YouTube playlist?

(Also, there is a pilot episode, with different actors except George/Russel Tovey. I don’t think one needs to watch the pilot to watch the main series; I kind of recall that the main series recycled some of the pilot. There is a funny scene in the pilot where George and Mitchell meet Annie.)

Being Human: a macabre, hilarious, horror-filled, flawed, sometimes dragging, emotional, whumpy, oddball show that I still think about sometimes.

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Also a character who really suffers from the flip flopping writing is Manjimutt. In his first episode he just seemed like a sad sympathetic old man who was getting shat on by the universe for no reason whatsoever, and i really wanted to hug him! And in his second episode he fought Roughraff with his bare hands to defend his friends, and actually won! And also helped Roughraff learn that some grownups are cool! And Manjimutt teared up when Nate said he was 'a grownup we can trust', and i was really cheering for him!! And then in his next episode its like he's entirely rewritten?? Now he's friggin pissing in public and sexually harassing underage schoolgirls and this is meant to be harmless and funny?? His quest to be seen as cute like other dogs now seems predatory and gross, and the joke of him being constantly arrested isnt a goddamn joke its YES PLEASE OFFICER THROW AWAY THE KEY

I hate it!! I got really invested in that guy!! Like thats inherantly sympathetic, him being unfairly hated just because he's 'old and ugly', and all this bad luck happening to him when he doesnt deserve it. He was my favourite character for two damn episodes!! Why did it take two episodes to remember to establish WHY this dude is actually hated and actually has all this bad luck?? Why did you make me waste my sympathy on him??

Man i really hope this is one of those cases of the anime changing things, like how Ray O Light isnt Drizzelda's stalker in the gameverse but actually a decent guy and her mutually consensual boyfriend. Cos it feels such a waste to have this concept of a sad dog dad and not let me cherish him and actually make him a massive asshole! GIVE ME AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE HE IS GOOD MAN

ALSO

LIKE

WTF WHY DID THE ANIME GIVE HIM THAT VOICE

Its not just me right, thats a weirdly charasmatic voice? He sounds like some james bond type thing and its really unfitting for his entire plot being about him apparantly being ugly. Why is he a supermodel in voice only..?

Oh but randomly i really like the voice for Walkappa! Such a cutie! His episode was funny with him just walking up and saying hi, and nate and whisper ignoring him and looking at all sorts of other spurious evidence to find a kappa. And then it just ends after that skit and the next episode actually makes fun of how they never resolved that plot thread, with "Calling... Walkappa! (wait when did we get him)" See i like that, a lot of the humour really is great and its just such a buzzkill that you can get caught up in laughing and have your good mood shot by some really meanspirited or creepily sexual moment.

Anyway i loved how earnest Walkappa's voiceactor was when he admitted his deep secret that he likes pizza instead of cucumbers. Tattletell's episode was also very awesome, i love how they made her super tiny and she hops like a frog. She was so cute even while being an asshole!! And walkappa was extra cute when he defeated her by having no embarassing secrets at all. "I like pizza! Sometimes i do the backstroke! You're all my friends!" Nate called him boring for it but i'd say its more wholesome instead. Walkappa confirmed for only good person in this show so far!

Oh also i really really really really really REALLY hate how the Obligatory Straight Romance is handled between Nate and Katie so far. We have NO IDEA why Nate even likes Katie except for looks, and he's always doing selfish stuff to try and score a date with her. And like we barely know any of Katie's personality either except that she seems to accidentally say insensitive things without meaning to, and then she got inspirited by a yokai that makes you tell secrets and it got even worse. And then in the hungramps episode Nate is a MASSIVE ASSHOLE to Katie and is all "ugh she's eating burgers she's gonna get fat and i wont like her anymore" and then he says to her face that she "looks terrible" even though the animators didnt bother to make her look any different at all. And then later on he uses another yokai to erase her memory of being mad at him so he doesnt have to face the consequences. Im glad at least that that one backfired in his face! So yeah ALL WE EVER SEE of this supposed romance is nate being horrible to her, nate being horrible to otjer people in order to win her, or her being horroble to him but at least its mildly more forgiveable cos it was an accident. But still there are some really contrived accidents! So honestly she kinds seems like an asshole too and she's just lying or something...

Oh but Wazzat is cute and i liked how its episode was the first sorta high stakes episode of a yokai actually fighting nate instead of just causing mischief. It was a lil scary how thos goofy voiced hat went from comedy to talking about its tragic backstory and feeling so betrayed that it was gonna go all out in battle! But it was sweet that nate learned his lesson FOR ONCE and also helped heal the loneliness of this weird hat friend.

...aaaand then last minute twist ending where poor wazzat's happiness gets pulled away at the last second. Literally "dont worry i'll be your friend, all you wanted is someone who wouldnt forget you" and then wazzat accidentally uses its powers to erase everyone's memory and they stop being its friend again. AND THE EPISODE JUST ENDS

How is that funnyyyy

Aaa do i just have too much sympathy for things?? I keep telling myself i'll try and remember its just a comedy show and not get invested in any of the characters but GAH if youre even slightly invested in them it gets infinately less funny! Im no good with humor based on cute magic people bein real sad...

I WAS SO READY TO HUG YOU, GODDAMN MANJIMUTT

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(1/2) I don't know if you've been asked this before, but what are your thoughts on the story and script quality of MM? Personally I thought it was fine, a good balance between drama and comedy, until the secret endings. The secret endings felt awfully like an effort to "rail-road" the story, to the point of reducing MC's role to less than a bit character, and the resolution itself was kinda rushed. I do agree with your opinion on V that, ultimately, it was necessary for him to die in the story

(2/2) But his character suffers because of the terrible handling of ANOTHER character: Rika. It's obvious that she was meant to be a tragic, sympathetic character but falls short of the "show, don't tell" trope because the game never shows us why, only spelling it to us via the other characters that she used to be a sweet person (and even that is dubious). Compare Saeran, who comes off as crazier but garners sympathy by *actually* showing us how he used to be and why he's like that now

(3/3, got longer than expected) The complete lack of consequence was more of a pet peeve, as I find it unlikely that after the meltdown at Mint Eye hq there wasn't any police investigation or testimony sheding light over what happened. That could have been easily handled by showing Seven or Jumin intervening (they would). So yeah, sorry for barreling you with this lol, I just love discussing narrative tropes and found your thoughts on V and Rika very interesting

It’s okay! I like trying to discuss this kinda stuff! It’sfun! I think they’re called Metas?

This might be a little long! As a side note, this is just mypersonal onion about the whole thing. In no way do you have to agree, nor do Iexpect anyone to. 

In terms of storytelling and scripts, I think that for anotome phone game it does a good job. Maybe arguably great, but nothing ‘superduper amazing!!’. Don’t mistake my words though, even though it might not bethe best, doesn’t mean I don’t love it to death. I have just seen freebiegames, even with hardly any dialogue, show a more concise and followingstoryline than MM does.

Granted, I think some obvious faults come from translationerrors, or maybe forgotten notes on characters. A small example that I’ve knowngo around a bunch is Yoosung complaining that he can’t type well on histouchscreen, when in CGs and the RFA handbook we know Yoosung has a flip-phone.So, excluding those kinds of mistakes, which I believe can happen when you havemultiple people working on one game, the main storytelling is a little messy attimes. I think a lot of that has to deal with the fact that they tried to makeeach route vastly different.

For replay value, and to make each route special, they didhave to have them different. And I think a good way to see it is that all ofthe characters routes are AU’s against the True Route, which is Seven’s.Because of this, we sometimes run into the characters acting vastly differentat times, and we’re left to scrape up all these ‘facts’ and try to use those tobuild-on to these characters. At times this is difficult, because they cancounter each other. Usually its small things, but I think there’s a bit ofinformation that gets missed about Rika because of this. Like with the factthat she was adopted by Yoosung’s aunt and uncle, apparently. I think that’sonly mentioned on one route, and referenced in the VIP book where her sectionof family is literally scribbled out, but if we didn’t run into that, we wouldbe left to assume that Rika is Yoosung’s cousin by blood.

Which…Is weird because I think he may say that he’s relatedto Rika by blood during a moment where he’s angry at V.

(Don’t even get me started on how Rika isn’t even her name?Apparently??)

In a way, the storytelling is a bit creative on a wholebecause of that. They change it up so you’re not bored replaying new routes,and so you get to possibly see other sides of characters, but it does fuck someinformation up about the characters themselves at times. There’s probably moreexamples than what I gave.

Though they did manage to make each character soundrespectfully different through the dialogue alone. Not the voice actors, butthe written dialogue. I know there have been many times where I’ve seen ascreenshot of a phone call with no context on the caller, and it’s been very easyfor me to figure out who it was in just a few seconds. That takes some skill!

But to tackle the True Route after ends. Unfortunately tosome, Seven is the true route, since Saeran is the main ‘antagonist’ for awhile, next to Rika. In order to give context for Saeran existing, his motives,and to explain Rika’s absence, they made Seven the True Route. (I’m assumingso, anyway). Now, it is true they could have found a way to include each of theroutes to display the information that Seven’s does, but I think it would havebeen a huuuuge fucking mess. It’s much easier to follow and make if they have a‘True Route’. How the game is needed to be played if you want the ‘full’ story.The other routes are just AU’s that can possibly fill in some gaps ifyou know what those gaps are first.

Annd this is where Rika falls in with your ask (that took mesome time ahbfhs). If we don’t play the True Route, we’re left to assume Rikawas a sweet and helpful person who had an aching heart of suffering shewitnessed, and also suffered from what seemed to be depression since shecommitted suicide.

Now, I don’t know about any of you, but because I’m afiction whore, I called that bs out when V always dodged questions about herdeath. Am I always doubting fictional characters since I play detective gamesmainly? ….Probably, but in all honesty I figured there was more to it thanthat.

Then we get to the True Route and the mess that happens inthe After Ends- V revealing she’s not dead, she’s alive, she’s a cult leader,etc etc. We all know what happens in that mess, though with some randomprevious information, we can infer a few things about her that we weren’tdirectly told.

She was most likely very manipulative from the start. Idon’t know if this would be a learned behavior from Rika’s true family, or thereasons she would be adopted later on, but it is briefly mentioned (I think)that her adopted parents regretted taking her in.

She was possibly using V the whole time, and didn’t actuallylove him.

She used the RFA as a front to get Political Leader’s infoto officially jumpstart her ‘perfect’ world one day. (KINDA obvious but Ididn’t realize how serious it was until a bit after I had played the AfterEnds).

Buut, we never know what led to these thoughts and behaviors.We’re just left to assume that it’s either A) Her MIs, or B) A combo of thatand her real family.

There is a high chance they didn’t write a full fledgedbackstory like we get with the others, about their childhoods at least, becauseof the chance of portraying MIs very very very very verypoorly/stereotypically. It could be argued that it was handled poorly as theyhave it now, but it’s still not nearly as bad as other cases I’ve seen.Instead, like you said, we get second hand info from Yoosung and V mainly, abit from Jumin as well.

As for the dramatic throwdown that happened at the HQ, Ithink that went well. It’s true that it could be possible that Seven or Jumincould have had better timing, stopped Saeran from shooting, stopped a lot ofstuff from happening, but I always assumed that they were unable to reach V dueto all of the members blocking their path, and any general hubbub that couldhave been happening due to Jumin’s security slamming in. And, as we’ve noted,that I still think for the story V couldn’t have survived.

However, with the police investigation, I think it’smentioned they purposely avoided that because of the Choi Boys existence. Theywere never supposed to be alive, and were doomed to hide who they were fortheir life. A police investigation would have brought forth that, and for Rikato be arrested and tried, and if that also happened, Choi Boys (again) are atrisk.

I can see how it’s all “There def should have been one”, butunfortunately to some, money can stop that from happening, especially if itskept under wraps. It seems like Jumin, Seven, and the cult members familes tookcare of the others that were affected…I think that’s what happened.

And in terms of MC being kinda pushed to the side during the After End of his route, I think they had to happen in order to tell the whole story. Because the stuff that happened to Seven was never about us to begin with- We just managed to stumble in and make the Choi’s reunion actually take place, but from that point on it’s all about Seven’s past and Saeran’s past, explaining the whole plot of MM. 

I mean, granted, it might have taken years if for them to reunite again, if they ever did, without us. But at the same time, at that point, it’s still not about us or our choices. 

Does any of this make sense? It’s a lot longer than I meantit to be...;;;

[marcythewerewolf]

Some Lord of Shadows Thoughts, In No Particular Order

I think Jace’s name is in this book more than Kieran’s which is obnoxious. Also every appearance of his was prefaced by a multi-sentence description of how gorgeous he was. This did not stop even when he showed up purely to be a dick to Kit. I officially hate book Jace now. He’s drunk the Kool Aid and he’s part of the Shadowhunter establishment and he’s insufferable so thanks for that book. ‘

Shadowhunters are a cult. Full stop. Sometimes it seems like the book has started to recognize this but then it backtracks and goes back to glorifying them. They’re so rich, they’re so pretty! Like, yeah, but they’re also super racist and hugely regressive and directly responsible for the suffering of thousands. Sure, they do some good along the way but so does Salvation Army, they’re still BAD. Look past all the glitter and propaganda and they’re just magical thugs who haven’t gotten past the middle ages and at this rate never will. The Blackthorn kids are better off without them. 

Kit is probably the most sympathetic person in the entire book and I do want him to run away and set up a pawn shop in Ohio? Save him from everyone but especially Jace. 

At one point his face was described as angular though, which makes me wonder if CC has seen a fifteen year old ever. You do it once, it’s justifiable, but most teenagers have a bad case of the baby face and saying other wise is ridiculous. This cheekbone addiction is getting out of hand. 

This book was so ridiculously heterosexual. Like, just such a pervasive case of unfortunate and tragic heterosexuality. So casual. So pointless. Magnus first gets brought up as “glittery”. One character thinks in all seriousness that you only get one dad. Gwyn is painfully straight for no apparent reason when faeries should and previously have been all sorts of flexible. It’s just... bad. 

The centurions are all kind of awful and I didn’t bother to learn their names. 

That being said, I did like the focus on Diana. She’s beautiful and amazing and brave and I love her. 

This is just blatant apologism for what happened to Anselm Nightshade. You set up a situation like that, you deal with the consequences of it, you don’t wimp out. 

The kids went to Faerie together and I am glad for that. They did just kill of Iarlath with no fanfare, but now his headcanon bf are chilling together and we got some follow up on Malcolm’s faerie ties so I’m not too mad about that. 

“Her old tutor, Katerina.” God, where’s my  Katerina spinoff. She has gotten no lines ever and because of that I love her. 

I do like anything with faeries very much but it could afford to be a little less fantasy and a little less chaos theory. The rest is just an issue of misplaced expectation. Obviously I like some of my interpretations better (killing girls is so stupid and outdated, an actual curse dooming him to have fifty sons all the time is maybe a twist) but other than that, nice worldbuilding, solid writing. 

Faeries! Gosh, I just love them so much. Faeries all the time, that what I want. 

The Unseelie King is super interesting. His kids are more trite, but hey, I love them anyways. 

On a related note, have I mentioned how much Gwyn just wants his big dumb teenagers to be safe and happy? Kieran and Mark aren’t even twenty and they need to take care of each other and not die. What a quality Faerie Dad. 

Some times these kids act dumb but i do not begrudge them it on account of them being children. 

The book got good about halfway through, which I appreciated. Kieran my sweet bratty boy, Nene the enigma, the courts, this is some good stuff I appreciate. 

What I did not appreciate was the killing off of Arthur. Like, come on. You’ve already done a disservice by magicking up your mental illness, you don’t have to kill him off too. A much more straight forward solution would have used the fact that Malcolm and Annabel were technically married, have his death revive her, then have confused Annabel and her angry zombie husband coming after the Institute, then Annabel realizing what was really going on and turning on Malcolm. Less in between steps. Failing that, ancient aunt they mentioned last book. 

Mark, Miach, darling, in fairness, the Seelie Queen’s lover very much did kidnap you. She was kidnap complicit. Don’t be trusting her. She absolutely had Sebastian’s baby. 

Memory loss plots are rather boring, but I recognize they do something for some people, so it might just be a cup of tea situation. Enjoy your memory loss then, friends. 

The Kieran/Mark/Cristina plot is juicy and I do like that but I want More Diana and Helen and Aline back and Answers first, you know?

One of the downsides of these books being about Shadowhunters is that it always comes down to the Shadowhunter heroes fighting and killing the irrational villainous Downworlder hordes which is Unfortunate. That conflict with Barnabas could have gone so much better. 

People need to stop trying to brainwash Kit with this Herondale stuff. People don’t go around calling me by my great-great great grandmother’s name and expect me to sit down and take it. Sure, we’re technically related, but that’s not how convention or basic politeness works. Your name is what you are raised with and more importantly it’s what you choose. His name is Kit and he’s a Rook until he decides, on his own without the constant pressure of adults, to be something else. 

As an extension of that? All these callbacks to the other book? They’re getting old and frankly more than a little annoying. 

Jessamine died in 1878. Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849. I’m telling you guys, the timeline just doesn’t line up. She wasn’t even born when Malcolm was young and building his house.

Kieran is a very impulsive boy who is already too invested in his Shadowhunter bf and gf. I don’t make the rules. 

I tried not to read too much into the Disaster Children literally burning down a church and having a weird intimate moment but they really are a mess. No laws, no holy lands, nothing but family, and nothing comes before family. I’m much more invested in them when they’re tearing down the establishment and making terrible toxic Wicked Powers choices. 

AIRMED WAS THE DAUGHTER OF MANNAN. This is basic people. Do your research. 

See, the memory loss plots always backfire unless you come clean. Lying never pays, kids. 

My Diana theories are more or less confirmed which I appreciate, thank you very much. 

I do very much wish they’d at least had the decency to leave bby Morgenstern a bby, that or go all the way and age him a few decades so you had a fifty something year old claiming to be Clary’s nephew. Much better than this cliche storm. 

I recognize that Annabel got a short shift in life, but so did Malcolm, frankly. The fact that he gets a life of torment and a horrible death at the hands of one he loved while she gets to wander off and live happily is a little concerning to me. Why do Downworlders not get to be happy? Downworlders, and Arthur Blackthorn, apparently, aren’t allowed to live nice, non-tragic lives, but pretty young Shadowhunters can get away with anything. At this point I would have preferred a disappointing end for Annabel. Get that good tragedy going. The Blackthorn’s clearly have a bad case of the Gothics they need to fulfill. 

Oh. OH. There we go. There’s the Blackthorn drama I crave. 

My sweet girl, my sweet girl Livvy. She’s coming back as a ghost, isn’t she?

So that’s about five hours. My record holds. The book wasn’t bad, it was just sooooo long. I feel like it could have used a ruthless editor with a really good grasp of the classics to clean things up a bit. Didn’t make me laugh as much, but that might just be a result of my evolving sense of humour. Drama got good nearer the last half of the book. There was some nice stuff in there. Overall, not a waste of five hours, and I’m not mad. Just please, someone de-brainwash these Shadowhunter children. They’re in a cult. Someone needs to tell them that they’re in a cult. Save Kit, he’s getting pulled in as well.  

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Cathedral Tower Defense Game character ideas and stuff so far! I’ve talked about some of these before but I wanna just compile it in summary form, and try and get thinking about more to add. It’d be so cool if I could make it like an early suikoden game where you have the world’s biggest party selection! Or at least have that equivelant but with recruiting shopkeepers and townbuilders and stuff.

So... long post ahoy!

* Protagonist (Sir/Lady/Master Amity) Your selectable renameable main charrie! A badass disabled veteran who lost their family in the war and ended up defending this cathedral town of strangers in order to prevent another tragedy. They’re generally distrusted at the beginning, have a lot of doubts about what philosophy they should take in life, and its up to you to decide how the story plays out. But no matter what, this protagonist is a cool grumpy comically-serious nerd gramp! (or gran or etc) i really REALLY like the idea of changing them to be an older veteran character, it just works so much better and seriously WHY are there like zero grandma protagonists in anything ever? I will vow to make this one as amazing as possible!!

* Florin Generally supportive yet sassy and lazy deutorogonist helper guy. He’s your first ally in this world and maybe kind of a tutorial, lol. Even though he’s a total cinnamon roll, he’s as distrusted as you because he’s a demon. Even the protagonist kinda wonders why on earth he wants to help them, and whether he’s some sort of enemy spy... His elemental realm is over plants, and he has no greater joy than taking a nice nap amoungst the flowers~

* Malachi At the moment the only fully developed idea I have for another party member, aside from Florin. Though I’m not sure if I want him to be optional or mandatory? In either case when you recruit him he’s the catylyst for a lot of character development for Florin, and they end up becoming like a lil adopted family ^_^ Anyway, Mal is a very young and adorable demon child that the party finds sealed away beneath some ruins. Precociously innocent, he seems unaware that he’s become a monster. I mean, everyone eats rocks, right?

* Admiral Chiffon (wip name) A major recurring enemy turned ally! Chiffon starts off as just the eccentric comic relief member of the opposing army, kinda harmless and kinda entertaining. And you might pity her quite a bit, because her coworkers treat her like absolute shit. I basically invented this character because I got sick of seeing the ‘ha ha flambouyant gross comic relief villain’ thing in recent fire emblems, and wondered what it would be like to have a villain whose LGBTQ status is treated as a sympathising aspect instead, leading to a redemption when she finds people who dont treat her like those damn writers treated everyone :P So yeah, she’s a transgender woman who faces a lot of predjudice in her career, and I hope I can make it very heartwarming when she finds true friendship with our heroes! And also I hope it can make the non-comic-relief villains seem extra disgustingly unforgiveable after you see how badly they treat their own teammates. Her personality is gonna be kind of a greedy merchant sort of person, but what if that archetype was a good character instead. She remains sassy and greedy even when she’s been redeemed, i like a good ‘ol vice-filled hero yknow! Character development is my jam! Also all i know about her design so far is that I think I want her to have stylishly skunk striped hair, to represent greying streaks and all. I was imagining her as the token grandma of the cast before I decided to age up the protagonist lol

* Currently unnamed church matron duo, aka Timon And Pumbaa One of my early-ish undeveloped concepts for non-battling town members. These two are florin’s equivelant, they’re the town workers you start off with before the game really starts. I’m thinking they’d be like nuns/priestesses that worked at this place before you came along, and you have a bit of a rivalry here because they pragmatically know they need you to defend the stronghold but they’re also very wary of you. The ‘timon’ one would be the main one who actually holds all these opinions, a sort of crusty matronly mega paranoid lady who thinks you’re gonna backstab us all at any moment! And she’s some sort of super scary chronic sufferer of resting bitch face, even though she sees herself as the ultimate arbiter of justice everyone else thinks she’s terrifying. Just imagine her trying to hug a baby that just cries as if it saw the face of death! Life sucks when you’re a lawful good character stuck in a chaotic evil character design! And then her partner is a funloving pumbaa-esque team chef, who’s actually kinda too loving and innocent to ever distrust anyone. But she always just falls in with whatever her boss says, its like a pinky and the brain situation. Oh and I’m already kinda preemptively shipping these two before I’ve even finished designing them XD

* Depression jail janitor Starts as a prisoner you take from one of the enemy raids, but he ends up winning your trust and joining your team. Entirely against his will! he’s a chronically depressed man who was forcibly drafted into the evil army even though he doesnt believe in their cause, but now he feels like he’s unforgiveable anyway. So he spends all his time trying to convince you that he is indeed pure evil! But the more humble he is, the more everyone believes in his genuine kindness. Alas! It doesnt help that he also kinda has chronic hero syndrome and cant resist helping out in every possible way. So that is how a prisoner ended up becoming the one in charge of the jail keys! And he’s like Everyone’s Dad. (Even the people decades older than him...)

* Former bully powerful friend The one other main child character, cos I wanted Malachi to have some friends. They start off at odds and she initially joins in with everyone bullying him, cos she wants to fit in. But he ends up helping her deal with her insecurities and realise she was only resenting him for being ‘weak’ because she saw herself reflected in him. or rather, the traits in herself she’d tried to hide to make everyone like her, even if it meant joining in with bullying and only having horrible asshole friends. So she sacrifices her popularity with the main clique in order to defend malachi, and ends up finding her first true friend with him. They’re better off being outcasts together! So yeah cutie malachi will have some sort of stronge deliquent friend with a heart of gold, and I’m not sure yet whether she’d be playable or not? i kinda feel like its not right to have someone that young join the party unless they have magic powers to protect them. So maybe she can fight by teaming up with malachi, actually? like, she rides atop his stone dragon golem form and supports with ranged weaponry or something. or just acts as an advisor? I liked the idea I had that there would be a buffs-only type of magic stone, and people could cast it on themselves to have enhanced senses at something or other and improve their supporting skills. Like the protagonist would maybe have an eyesight-enhancing buff crystal to act as a sniper scope!

* Rival warrior buff teen person Very undeveloped cos I just came up with them ysterday, lol! I’m thinking possibly make this character female just cos this archetype doesnt get to be female all that often. Kind of a draco malfoy type snooty rival, but with a more sympathetic side and ultimately you do become friends. Theyre just a simple ordinary citizen who was doing the best they could to protect their family before you came along, and now kinda resents the fact you’re all BETTER THAN EVERYONE and taking their job as guardian! They have a lot of anxieties over the fact they struggled so hard to become self-trained and now you’re here making it look easy. So the plot has a general theme of believing too much in ‘destiny’, and that some people are just born with talent and you’ll never succeed if you werent lucky enough. This character started off trying to act like theyre inherantly blessed with that talent, because they’re terrified that they aren’t... Oh and I think once you befriend them I think they might be like a ryuuji/junpei type of friend? But without the weird sexism and homophobia randomness that persona 4 threw onto yosuke. Just like a bit of a cheerful cliche ‘bro’ who isnt all that interested in books and likes to be all ‘cmon do it for the vine’. A good polar opposite to the protagonist who could have some cute interactions!

* Rival warrior’s chilled out older sibling figure of reasonableness Every rin needs a yukio! I think they’d be maybe a bartender or owner of a restaurant or something? Just some sort of super chilled out job where they act as an agony aunt to their customers, the place is very popular because of the great service. (Though also everyone is kinda like ‘yo you dont have to run it all by yourself, yo you dont need to give us bonus extra special treatment, seriously get some sleep dude!!’) But anyway they’re this perpetually relaxed super kind soul who’s always the reasonable response to their lil sib’s ohohoho angry rivalness. But the bad side to it is that they’re also a lil depressed and apathetic about their own life, they’re kinda like someone who really lives for their family, in a bad way. They’ve been like a single parent to their sibling because they had kind of a tragic backstory, and big sib has just grown too used to sacrificing everything in order to help other people and never taking care of themself. And they have a lot of trouble even.. feeling emotions. The outwardly chilled and happy-go-lucky facade covers up just a void of nothing but self hate and emptiness. They feel like they’d already been tainted by the way their abusive parents used to treat them, its too late for them and all they can do is try and save other people from falling down the same path. Oh, and I think maybe the two siblings are actually immigrants from the villain country? Like, when older sib ran away from the abusive family they ended up here, and now they try and keep it secret, to the point that even the younger sibling doesnt know where they were born. Basically I just wanna have a LOT of different subplots showing how the ordinary citizens of this country aren’t all evil just because their government are the bad guys in this story. And especially covering topics like characters who’re part of that ethnicity and get treated like they’re inherantly terrorists even if they were born and raised in a completely different country!

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Digimon frontier ocs?

Randomly started rewatching CactusCasual's great Digimon Frontier critique series. He's leaving youtube soon and making the weird decision to delete his whole account and everything he's ever done. But he's uploaded a bunch of his best stuff to google drive so if people wanna keep.it they can. Still i think its a lil dumb to not just leave the account open even if you're not using it? I dont know anything about why he's quitting the site though so maybe he has his reasons.

ANYWAY this got me thinking again about how Frontier is so goddamn boring and weirdly cliche and badly paced, and like everyone just focuses on "but they changed how digivolution works" and ignores all the actual reasons its bad. Like, kids have fused with digimon in previous seasons too! And haven't we all wished we could be the awesome characters like angemon and etc? A digimonny power rangers henshin thing isnt an inherantly bad idea, it was just executed badly. I dislike it cos it meant we completely lost any sort of digimon and human bonding experience plotline. They gave us two recurring digimon characters but they were just basically a pokedex and the world's least funny comic relief. Gimme a version of the show where the kids actually talk to their "spirit evolutions"! Like maybe they have a digimon partner but its forever stuck in baby form or spirit egg form and cant fight without fusing with a human host? Or just give us a better non-combat digimon pal like bokomon and neemon but like.. Fully developed with their own character arc and relationships with everyone else. Maybe ophanimon could have been around the whole time and been a mentor and parental figure? And we could actually explore her moral ambiguity, cos seriously the show makes her kind of a "ends justify the means" asshole and just NEVER AKNOWLEDGES IT. Wtf was up with that scene where she illusions Cherubimon with a fake dream of him being purified and getting to just go back home and be friends? And then she just backstabs him and we never mention it again. Like seriously even if she couldnt actually cure him that scene at least revealed that he WANTED to be cured and it made him so much more sympathetic! If he can be reasoned with, maybe they could have talked him down and then gone on an adventure together to find an actual cure for him? Also seriously what is up with his entire plot! Cos he just gets 'infected with darkness' cos he 'had darkness in his soul' but its just cos he thought the humanoid digimon were being racist against the beast digimon? And like.. The council was 2/3rds humanoid with him as the only beast representative and since he got infected by evilness they never remotely tried to recruit a new one or listen to what beast digimon have to say. So he was kinda right, yo! Also wtf with the reveal that actually no everything we just said is pointless because his REAL motivation was just blindly obeying ANOTHER humanoid digimon that comes out of nowhere to be the final boss. Also what is up with all the increased sexism in this series!! Its so weirdly worse than even adventure which had the excuse of being "a product of the times" yet still had way better variety of female characters and less bigoted stuff! And frontier came right after tamers which was one of the best series for gender equality and even used the medium of the setting as an opportunity to talk about the subject. Shame they censored that in the dub tho, Renamon talking about how digimon have no biological sex and how she only came to think of herself as a girl when she came to the human world. And rika's family accepting her and inviting her to family girls's night and stuff! Like as a metaphor for transgender issues it really worked to try and explain it to a younger audience in a natural way. And then one season later in frontier we have ONLY ONE GIRL IN THE CAST and wah wah whining about fashion and oh no she cant ever win a fight and her goddamn spirit form is in skimpy lingerie despite her being 12, and the show is always perving on her! And then she loses her powers halfway through the first season without winning a single fight, and has to be the damsel in distress to motivate the dudes in a stupid love triangle. And even when she does get to fight she's only allowed to fight the ONE SINGLE GIRL ON THE VILLAIN TEAM and they have stupid slap fights and "who's the most pretty" and BEACH EPISODE and GAHHHHH

...anyway as you can see i have a lot of reasons why i didnt really like the series. But what i meant to make this post about (BEFORE I GOT DISTRACTED) is that the fundemental concept itself isnt bad, they just wasted all its potential. And its a really good concept for ocs! Make your own digi superhero person and explore the fragmented world doing stuff offscreen during the series! Like they left so much open?? We know that other kids also got on other trains to the digiworld and they all just failed or gave up or got captured by the bad guys. And we know there's a bunch of spirits that the heroes never use because the villains got them again, so its cool to imagine an alt universe where the roles were swapped. What if different kids became the chosen heroes? What if different spirits were corrupted by the villains? What would a good guy Grumblemon be like? What would the kid be like who got that spirit? Would their evolution form be wildly different from grumblemon? Do the villain forms and purified forms look as different as Duskmon and Lowemon did?

SO MUCH POTENTIAL!!!

So yeah i wasted so much space here blabbering, so i'll probably make a separate post about my oc ideas lol. But i'd love to see other people's ideas for ocs/reinterpretations/other ways to fix that wasted potential!

So! Digimon frontier oc ideas!

To start off,have an undeveloped idea of someone on the team having Angemon as their spirit evolution. Cos it would have made the transition to such a new series a lot easier if they had some sort of "hey this is for you" to the fans of the previous ones. And angemon is the Adventure digimon that already looks the most like a regular human in a weird mask.

SPEAKING OF WHICH! less regular humans in weird masks! Whats the point of "you turn into a digimon" if you dont turn into a digimon? Like i know the whole gimmick is "humanoid mode and beast mode" but even the beast modes often look like humans in a costume! And there's been so many humanoid digimon before who actually looked like HUMANOID MONSTERS rather than just normal dudes cosplaying! There's literally nothing "monster" about agunimon, he's just a guy in some knight armour. Like the most you can do is charitably assume maybe the horns are his own and not just attatched to the helmet. And its annoying cos the villains have way cooler evolutions! And also double annoying that they always bend the humanoid/beast rule in such transparently self serving ways. Tommy gets two beast forms cos he's meant to be the cute mascot-looking character. Zoey gets two human forms cos she's meant to be grossly sexualized all the time. When kouichi turns from bad to good he loses his interesting looking actually monsterous evolutions and just becomes another dude in an armour. A friggin palette swap of his brother!

Anyway anyway LOL IM RAMBLING AGAIN yo...

Ideas for ocs!

I was thinking of a main girl character who's basically just a "fuk u" to all the stereotypes they did with Zoey. Actually gets a monster lookin beast form and a warrior lookin human form and actually gets to goddamn fight! Maybe her name is Hilda or Hildegarde? And i'm imagining her as a chubby nerdy kid with glasses and curly hair and a super cute oversized sweater kind of fashion sense. And her main spirit form would be this super badass lady knight giant orc thing who can Protec All The Peoples! Maybe earth element or the irony of being light element but she's this big ol monster goblin with just a tiny pair of angel wings on the back, lol! And then her personality is normally super shy and socially anxious, but she actually finds the digimon world kind of freeing? She's a total badass in battle and acts like a big ol powerful protector of all her friends! And she's always super excited aboyt adventuring and gets carried away comparing stuff to her favourite books. And now we must learn everything about this new place!! TO THE DIGI LIBRARY!!! So she's able to be confident and bubbly when it comes to actual adventure stuff, but she's still shy about regular life and anything social. Maybe its her weakness? Like she's scared about going home because she thinks she'll be "just a nobody" again, and lose all the great friends she made here. And also maybe a backstory of her heroic side still existing even before she got magic powers, but in the most tragic way? She managed to fend off a burglar once all on her own, she just snapped and did everything possible to defend her family, even though this was a man three times her size! But instead of being seen as a hero it just made all the neighbours and kids at school spread rumours about her being dangerous. Oh she must be in *a gang* if she knew how to fight like that! Oh its so *dangerous* for a kid that age to have such anger inside! Maybe she's a *scary mentally ill person*! So the whole situation ruined her social status even more and made her retreat even more inside her shell. And this is why the circumstances of the digital world are such a wish fullfillment for her and she's so scared of just waking up and it all being a dream. I think the villains could manipulate her fears, and it could maybe lead to her Skullgreymon Moment?

And then another idea i had was for a trans boy? I just thought this would be a good framework to explore LGBT stuff. He'd maybe be the wind element? And his personality would be very "classic shonen hero" but without the "dumbass" part, instead he's the cynical planner type dude while Hilda is the "i didnt even think, i just wanted to save everyone" type. But he's still super peppy and tries to be the class clown all the time so people will like him, and loves to climb trees and stuff. I think maybe his fighting style would be all about trickery and random chance? If there was such a thing as an element of surprise then he'd have that one! And then his story is that he doesn't have anyone supporting him for who he truly is at home, and he's afraid that his new friends will call him a freak too if they find out. He took the opportunity and cut his hair short as soon as this adventure started, and just introduced himself to everyone as a boy. But he's scared that people will find out he "lied" even though he didnt, he's just been so beaten down with the idea that he's not allowed to be himself and he has to pretend to be everyone else's idea of an ideal cis man or else they'll reject him. So maybe he starts off a bit obsessed with cliche masculinity and has low confidence about himself? And this could reflect in his digivolutions actually changing! He starts off with a really over the top buff warrior dude form, even though his fighting style is entirely about speed and trickery. So he tends to get into trouble with this fake form getting in the way of his ability to fight. And then when everyone accepts him he gets all powered up and changes into a new form! A way less "cliche macho" dude who looks like a stage magician instead and actually synchronizes with his element to become super powerful! And he's all like "oh no i became less manly" but everyone is like "wtf dont let yourself believe you're any less of a man because of dumb stereotypes!" And Also Big Friendship Hugs.

And then maybe this provides a resolution to both him and Hilda's plots? Like when the story is over they still stay friends in the real world, and having a friend who supports them gives them enough power to withstand all the haters and stay confident in themselves. But itd be kind of a coincidence for all the digidestined to live in the same city lol! So maybe in real life they live at least a few towns away, and they become long distance pals who send letters/emails. Because I LOVE ALL MY LONG DISTANCE PALS!! Also itd make sense to have a Internet Good message in a digimon show, lol.

And then i dunno about the rest of the team yet but i thought itd be good to have a sort of moral divide? Like these are the two who have a shitty home life and dont want to leave the digital world. But then the other half of the group has big reasons to wanna go home. So the villains could play on this difference in goals and make them fight amoungst each other. Just generally make the villains more actually competant, yknow? Oh also if there's a Dark Agunimon on the villains he needs to be EVEN MORE of a boring human in a costume! Cos it sucks that all the villains have better character designs and the show seems to think theyre worse ones. Give me one case of more boring not meaning more heroic!

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AAAAAAUGH I am so unreasonably upset at how many continuity options just weren’t taken in oreshika 2, and thus how much of the story the english audience totally missed cos we never got the first game dubbed I’m reading thru this awesome LP/translation/summary here and its such a mind blown??

Seriously in oreshika 2/the one they pretend is 1 in english, this particular lady is just one of a million silent personalityless god options in a menu that barely gets more than a single sentence when you select her. All you can guess about her is that she’s vaguely some sort of comic relief lady who’s like.. vain or likes money or something? And says fox sound effects and stupid puns? But in the first game she was a main storyline boss and had A WHOLE ASS TRAGIC BACKSTORY and IS KISUTO’S STEPMOM Like seriously fuckin.. kisuto never even mentions her or talks to her in the second game??? And she never mentions her sad ass backstory?? And im just so mad I didnt appreciate her enough??

Her sad ass backstory i mentioned before when i first linked that LP but I didnt know all the full details then so i may as well start from scratch.

Okay so like.. Kisuto’s role in the first game is still an assistant character, but kind of a mysterious one. He appears as a ghost and says that he’s been magically trapped by the big bad villain dood, and needs your help to get free. And then he’s still as sassy as he was in oreshika 2 but he’s like.. weirdly more mean? he tries to act all assistant but he’s oddly flippant about other people’s suffering and also seems to know more than he should. And then the big twist is that KISUTO IS THE VILLAIN OF THIS GAME! Like wtf thats one way the undubbedness actually paid off, it was double unexpected when I knew him as the sassy helpful onii-chan from the sequel. And I know Seimei in the sequel is still quite a snarkman and quite sympathetic, but like he’s not.. comical? Kisuto as a villain is WAY more cool cos he is! There’s no seriousness in this man’s soul! Even as he’s talking about his tragic sadness he’s doing it in the middle of like.. a fuckin booty dance striptease. With cha cha music. I wish I was joking! Cos you see the fakeout villain guy who looked like some generic fugly cyclops ogre was actually kisuto in disguise, and then he friggin pops out of the guy’s mouth and it should be scary but LITERALLY A BOOTY DANCE STRIPTEASE. WHERE THE UNDIES ARE A WHOLE CYCLOPS. Its like ‘oh no maybe we didnt really kill the boss, he’s getting up’ and then... booty dance. And kisuto pops out. And it was a costume. And what is happening. And like its really confusing cos maybe it was a costume or maybe he was literally eaten by the cyclops and controlling it from the inside?? Cos somehow by defeating the cyclops we unsealed his true power and played right into his hands. And he monologues this whole thing in sassy gyaru style while doing naked supermodel poses, and then hops into a portal while waving sassy bye byes to the audience he just trolled to death Also he is VERY JUSTIFIED AS A VILLAIN, HOLY FUCK! Cos it turns out his motive is because YOUR FAMILY KILLED HIS FAMILY! Seriously, i can see why the japanese fandom is all ‘oreshika 1 forever!’, cos in a lot of ways it seems more like its the sequel?? oreshika 2 goes comparatively standard and formulaic with its premise, like as much as you can do when your premise is so weird. Your clan is JUST a clan that’s been cursed, whereas the first game mixed up your expectations and had this reveal that your ancesters were apparantly actually evil. Also it let you actually play as the ancestors for a brief prologue before the curse happened, which is super neat! Shame though that your first character is randomized based on birthday instead of being customizeable. But I mean oreshika 2 didnt even have birthdays! And also similar for a lot of other things! Like your assistant is just an assistant, whereas i’ve gone into oreshika 1 already knowing that your assistant is either gonna be revealed as a goddess or become a goddess somehow. Tho honestly the reveal of first meeting her in oreshika 2 was kinda great from the perspective of a newbie to the franchise! you spend the whole game only hearing of her second hand and its just ‘she’s the boss of the gods’ and you expect her to be all elegant and serious. But then when you finally meet her she’s this bombastic goofy nerd with cute lil glasses and an ahoge hairstyle and she’s like ‘lets get this party started!’ and poofs up her magic to save the day and also LETS YOU MEET WITH YOUR FIRST CHARACTER FOR A BRIEF MOMENT FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE START OF THE GAME. I cried so much!! i wasnt expecting the game to have even saved his data! Its just a quick cutscene where his ghost helps super goddess lady break seimei’s barrier spell, but it was still so damn climactic and great. man I need to talk more about my playthru soon but i have so many screenshots to transfer, lol!

ANYWAY IM GOING WILDLY OFFTOPIC COS IM KINDA DELIRIOUS WITH ILLNESS AND ALSO ORESHIKA HYPE

so where this boss fox lady comes in is that her story is like a ‘be careful what you wish for’ thing. Her prayer for good luck was answered by an asshole god who decided to troll her with everything she wanted, but in a jerkass genie way. She became rich and found a husband, but he was an asshole who robbed her and left her even poorer than before. And then she committed suicide. But where kisuto comes in is that she’d adopted this mysterious baby she found at a forest shrine. And then when she’d got backstabbed by this horrible husband and was left without enough money to take care of her baby, she committed a murder suicide and took him with her so he wouldnt suffer. or, at least, that’s what she thought. Cos it turns out the kid was a baby demigod of some sort, and he cursed her into an oni as revenge, and now she’s stuck here weeping for what she did for the rest of eternity and wanting her baby back :( And like we still have the mystery of who kisuto’s biological parents were, and what happened to lead to him being abandoned in the first place. like, was the protagonist clan’s ancestor really evil or is it a misunderstanding? And is there any way we can resolve this peacefully? Well, I’m assuming so, since Kisuto is your totally non evil assistant guy in the sequel. Though I mean the sequel clan could be a totally different clan, its not very likely this poor lineage would get hit by the same curse twice in a hundred years! He doesnt really have any reason to be evil with anyone else but those assholes who orphaned him. Seriously if it really is true that prologue man and prologue woman did it, I am so on Kisuto’s side here! even if its dumb to take revenge on innocent children who had no part in the crime. Also I feel really sad for foxmom. Like I mean kisuto doesn’t have to be comfortable around her or forgive her when she friggin tried to drown him as a 1 year old. But like its not really her fault either, she was suffering and suicidal and thought she was keeping her kid from suffering too. She was just really mentally ill and needed some help, not a hundred years of being trapped as a weeping ghost werewolf thing. And really all she wants is to see that kisuto actually did escape, and grew up, and he’s okay and even if she knows it would be impossible to accept the apology she wants to say it anyway. Even if this poor kid is off being a villain, at least he;s a happy and healthy villain! seriously why dont you give me a damn dialogue option to tell her kisuto is her sonnnn

this game is so good and im so sad its not get dubbed and im so damn tired and ill and im rambling and ok bye thenk u oreshika for ease my pain by giving me mroe pain for fictional characters SERIOUSLY POOR VILLAIN KID AND FOX MOMMMM