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izziegs · 4 years

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Okay so TMA 187 analysis here, a bit more “Jon’s judgment of Helen was not entirely correct” from another Spiral fan

1. I think Jon’s analysis of Helen is (ha ha) distorted by A) his desire to justify her death despite her friendliness, and B) automatically made untrustworthy by the fact that Jon has never understood the Distortion. Helen has expressed before that him Knowing things about her is not the same as Understanding things, and he’s made it very clear before that he does not Understand (MD and HD are fusions, essentially. Combinations of the Spiral’s manifestation: the Distortion, and a human. In the same way Garnet is a combo of Ruby and Sapphire but not truly either of them, Helen Distortion has Helen Richardson in her, but is not actually Helen Richardson. She is both Helen and not, and was never Michael, though the Distortion was. Honestly, Jon, it’s not complicated)

2. We even saw this with Michael - I can’t forget that Jon assumed the Distortion was just a manifestation of the Spiral, not an avatar, and he seemed to take the revelation that Michael Shelley was an assistant as a sort of...betrayal, almost? Something that definitely threw off his idea of good-bad, where even though avatars could be bad their humanity kept them from becoming as monstrous as Michael, and the sudden shock of hearing otherwise, of seeing what he could become...I don’t think he ever bounced back from that.

3. Jon has always seen the worst in Helen. In 115, she came back to him for emotional help/venting/advice/connection and he lashed out at her, scared of seeing her become like Michael, still sore from betrayal from the Stranger, etc. From the get-go he decided this was just a Thing using Helen’s face, and even when she immediately told him otherwise, he rejected it. (“I don’t believe you” - “I have never told you a lie”) He chalked her vulnerability up to manipulation, and has never truly turned his view of her away from that initial assessment

4. 131 shows a lot of the same (“You’re still wearing her face” - “I’m not ‘wearing’ anything”) This episode Helen deliberately pushes against Jon’s desire to neatly separate them into bad and good, something Melanie pulls them away from to refocus on Jared

5. 143 doesn’t have them fight quite as much, though Jon does still seem very suspicious. Helen just shows up to eat Manuela and give Jon and Basira a door home

6. 157 - aka the day Jon uses as justification he was right Helen was never on his side even though it is One Thing. They’ve met four times prior to this and he’s been mean to her every time. I can understand her abstaining from helping him, especially when she thinks the end result will help her, and double especially when helping Jon would put her directly on the bad side of two very powerful avatars (Also, as Helen said, “If that makes it my fault, then surely this is Georgie’s fault as well, and Melanie’s-”. AFAIK, he’s not upholding that as proof those two are bad and against him)

7. Post-apocalypse, Helen tries to give Jon the advice he refused to give her. When she was fully accepting her avatar status, she just wanted someone she thought could help her, and now she’s trying to be that person for Jon. Hearing her later desire to keep the world as is, it would also make sense that she might’ve been trying to get him to agree with her, however, unlikely, so they could continue “helping” each other/wouldn’t have to have that inevitable fight. Something else notable about her in the Eye’s world: she forces Jon to stop withholding info from Martin. She forces them to talk about difficult topics (Smiting powers, where’s Basira/how is she, Martin’s domain) and had essentially become a more reliable source of info than Jon is. While her popping up was beneficial to Martin, it was annoying to Jon, and possibly also part of why he continued not liking her.

8. Now all of that, looking at 187: Again, Jon very quickly establishes that he doesn’t understand how Helen works (“I am not [Michael], and never have been. Surely you know all this by now”) and then explicitly says he is currently making judgments based on feeling instead of logic (which is not a new development, looking at his choices since The Eye Opens).

Here I’m going to go over a few of his specific lines from 187:

“Now you use her form, see her mind, but they’re just… tools.” - If that were true, there’d be no reason Helen would act completely differently than Michael did. If this were just a monster using a human’s mind for manipulation advice, why have a totally new personality? Helen is Helen, but Jon’s still stuck in his season 3 mindset

“Michael had nothing you could use but a razor-straight desire for vengeance, but you saw something in Helen that would work on me much more subtly. So you took her” - Bold of Jon to assume Helen taking over the Distortion was that influenced by him, lol. If the Distortion wanted you done for Jonathan, they’d have just kept Michael and let him eat you like he planned. Not everything’s about you.

“How long have you been working with Elias?” - This one is interesting because if he knows everything, he should’ve known whether or not Helen knew Elias (unless he assumed she could get into the Panopticon where he can’t see). Michael knew Elias, pre-Distortion, but Helen’s not talked to him. Jon didn’t think Jude Perry was working for Elias, despite her clear revelry in the new world. I think it’s weird he assumed that about Helen (unless he was also using that to justify her death)

Her commentary during his statement is funny, but interesting. The perfect time to attack him if she really wanted to, if she really had been building up to that like he thought she was, and she spends the time joking about him and Martin living in a Honeymoon Suite in her apocalypse hotel

“Is a friendship true, or is it reaching out with hands that cut you?” - Another interesting line to me because when Michael told Sasha he wanted to be her friend he deliberately manipulated his hand so that he could hold her hand without cutting her

“You worked to hurt us and help us, all with the same smile, until we can barely tell one from the other” - I think Jon is talking about Michael and Helen as one person in this part, but specifically with Helen she literally didn’t hurt you Jon she had one time she didn’t help

“Never quite crossing a line we could never forgive, but never putting yourself on the line either.” - Yeah, Jon, that’s what most people would do, tbh. It’s not unforgivable that she didn’t put her life on the line to help someone who has only ever been mean to her. Actually, she helped him more than most people would if treated that way

“It’s not me I’m worried about” - Another interesting line because even as he’s killing her, Helen’s final threat is to hold him in the halls until the End eventually gets his friends. She never threatens to harm any of them (because they’re her friends) - Edit: I can see how it could be interpreted as her threatening them buttt idk if she can kill them in the new world so I assumed it was End related. Still no empty threats, no real lies from her yet - Also, I think she genuinely does not want to kill Martin or Jon, she wants them to turn so they can all be friends without those messy ~moral hangups~

“If you do this, everyone inside me is dead!” - I wonder if this is true. I can’t tell if Jon was the only one that fell out of the halls in front of Martin. It’s not like the other domains, where taking the avatar in charge may usher in a new one. The Distortion was Helen. If this sentence is true, then Jon just murdered that mom and very possibly orphaned that five-year-old. Not just gonna brush that one off there

“Its hidden teeth and the ones it wears so proudly.” - Even in the end Jon still Doesn’t Get It. He still thinks the Distortion is pretending to be Helen. Was pretending to be Michael. As much as he should be an all-knowing being, he clearly still rejects what he doesn’t like

I don’t have a specific quote but Jon acting like the Distortion has had a constant motivation or like, consistent desire (outside of “cause problems for fun”) is wild because Michael explicitly told Jon he didn’t want the Watcher’s Crown to happen. Michael was going to kill Jon to stop it. He was on the exact side Jon is on right now. But I guess it’s easy for Jon to paint him as evil when the roles were revered, huh?

If you’re still reading this, uh. Hi. I really really like the Distortion (Michael and Helen) and I am Very Upset with Jon right now

Edit: This is not an argument on whether or not Helen was evil or if Jon was right to kill her too to save the world. She was absolutely evil and I can see why Jon felt her death was necessary I'm just saying he was wrong about her lying to him

#tma #the magnus archives #helen richardson #helen distortion #michael shelley #michael distortion #jon sims #tma 187 #tma spoilers #this is 1400 words of me analyzing every Helen appearance ever

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 4 years

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TWDG: The Final Season | Character Discussion | 1/2

Part 1 | Part 2

“Everyone’s counting on me to step up. Be the leader they need me to be... I really want to be that for them.”

So.... let’s talk about Marlon.

I mean, let’s really talk about him. Ever since I started this blog, some common questions I get revolve around Marlon- “How do you feel about Marlon?” “Do you think he deserved a redemption arc?” “Why do you think he was sent to Ericson?” “In your opinion, is Marlon a bad person?” and many others.

Some ask with expectations that I’ll express a distaste or hatred for him, while others ask with a more sympathetic approach. If you know me, if you’ve been here for a while, then you know that I do indeed like Marlon as a character, and today I want to talk about him from my perspective while playing this game.

And with that comes a seemingly unnecessary disclaimer, but one I feel I need to add in order to make it abundantly clear: I will be discussing MY thoughts, experiences, and feelings about Marlon within TFS and give my take on his character. Because we’re not the same person, you may have a different opinion or perspective on his character, you may disagree with something I say, and that’s perfectly okay. You’re entitled to your opinion as I am mine, and I do encourage you to join in on the discussion and express your thoughts about Marlon, but I also want to let you know that you can do that without attacking me or anyone else.

Really, this is pretty much me looking at Marlon’s role and arc within TFS, discussing points of his character that I find interesting, exploring the why’s and how’s of his actions, maybe coming up with a couple theories as to why he was sent to Ericson, and basically giving a lot of personal opinions of him. It’s a discussion meant in good fun, that’s all I’m saying.

Before we dive right in, I do want to thank @pi-creates for providing me with most of the screenshots used in this. I appreciate the help! If you haven’t already, go check out Pi’s blog for some of the best screenshots and model swaps in the TWDG community! Thank you, thank you!

[First and foremost, y’all are sleeping on Ray Chase’s performance as Marlon and it really shows]

“Looks like I was announced as Marlon, the central focus in this first episode of The Walking Dead Season 4 coming in a few weeks. I've been playing this series since the beginning, and it was a real honor to be a part of the canon. I hope you enjoy!“ - Ray Chase’s Twitter account | July 26, 2018

I want to start this off with praising Marlon’s voice actor, Ray Chase, for doing such a perfect job of bringing Marlon’s character to life. Every emotion and infliction feels genuine, and there’s isn’t a single moment where I don’t “see” Marlon, y’know? I mean that in the sense that every line delivered is believable and doesn’t break my immersion with, “Oof, they really used that take?”

I know we throw praise upon Melissa, Tayla, Sterling, and Gideon [and for good reason, they’re all fantastic, too!] but even with them there are a couple of lines that I notice have a lack of flow or sound just a bit off. I’ve played TFS how many times? And not once have I had that issue with Ray Chase as Marlon, so bravo to this man. Credit where credit is due, his performance is damn near flawless.

Especially in the confrontation scene at the end of Done Running. I’ll get into that scene as a whole later, but just looking at the performance and the intense, impactful emotion brought to that scene, just..... *chef kiss*

Thank you, Ray Chase.

[What’s up with your haircut, Marlon?]

“Uh, I look cool... I say, I look cool.”

Lemme talk a little bit about Marlon’s design- I think he looks great.

I love the little details in the Ericson varsity jacket he wears... including the fact that it looks just a tad bit too snug on him. Like, either the boy doesn’t have another jacket or he’s grown so attached to this one that he’s not willing to admit that he’s outgrown it a bit.

I’ve had a lot of people point out that it’s nice to see a teenage character in these games with actual acne since most media pretends that acne just doesn’t exist, and I agree. We all know that if this were more realistic, then everyone would have terrible, greasy, dirty skin but... y’know.

And y’know what? I like the mullet! It’s unique! And I choose to believe it’s a representation of Marlon’s past with bad decisions he’s too stubborn to admit were bad decisions... I mean, he’s had it since he was a kid and hadn’t grown it out or cut it off [to our knowledge, I suppose] sooo... there’s that.

Or maybe he does actually think it looks badass. Either way.

Hell, my biggest complaint about Marlon’s design is that I wish they kept more to this concept art attire:

Because Marlon looks super good in this concept art. I love the headband with the mullet and his clothes actually look more comfortable... but like, it’s fine. He still looks great in the game, his little jacket’s cool, bringing back the mullet...its fine. I’m just sayin’. He looks great.

[Marlon’s introduction in TFS]

“It's our little kingdom. I just do what I can to keep the peace. Wasn't always like this, though. There used to be a lot of us, but...you know how it goes.”

Let’s talk about how Marlon’s introduced.

We get our first look at him after Clementine and AJ crash their car during the walker attack. A bunch of arrows come flying, hitting walkers attempting to get ahold of them, and as Clementine glances over she sees a figure pulling AJ out of the car. And even though you can tell it’s Marlon, this closer shot from Pi-

-100% confirms that it’s him. Not that you had any doubt, but still.

What’s interesting, though, is that while snooping around for some insight about Marlon from the writers/devs, wandering around reddit, replaying the game myself, and even glancing over the all-knowing wiki that’s never wrong ever, it seems agreed upon that Marlon wasn’t alone, despite no one else being specifically mentioned to have helped Clementine and AJ.

Which makes sense that that’d be the case, but I did come across a handful of people who are pretty adamant that he was alone, which is an interesting take, though I disagree.

I’m pretty sure most people do, too. I mean, Marlon says, “It's good we found you when we did. It wasn't easy getting you two out of that wreck, and walkers were on the way.” So I don’t even think that was the writers’ intention of it being solely Marlon who saved them.

What’s funny is I came across a post Instagram [I know, the most legitimate source for info and thoughtful opinions] that was surprisingly trying to redeem/defend Marlon rather than chastise him by claiming he’s a hero who saved Clementine and AJ by himself.

The thing is, they’re both unconscious after the wreck, so unless Marlon has super-human speed to grab AJ, zip around the car to grab Clementine, and then uses super-human strength to carry both of them AND their belongings all while killing any threatening walkers coming after them with his bow... I’m gonna have to press [X] Doubt.

Besides, I like the idea of it being vague. I like to think that was the intention. “Who was Marlon with? A hunting party! You fill in the blanks!” That sort of deal.

With everything that we know about Marlon and the safe-zone, it does lead to questions about why he and whoever felt they had to go outside it to see what was happening. Marlon points out in his conversation with Clementine that they “had to work fast. I don't know what would've happened if we hadn't seen the smoke...” And later Violet mentions an explosion, so I think it’s safe to say that they heard the explosion and followed the smoke to the location.

If you don’t know about the raiders and the twins [like it’s your first time playing] then you probably assume that Marlon and his group were being kind in rescuing them, which I don’t doubt but it does make you wonder about things from Marlon’s perspective, y’know?

This is one of those “shhh, don’t think, just go with it” moments. If I had to give a reason, I’d say that the group he was with didn’t think twice about checking it out and even if Marlon did protest, he didn’t have much choice but to follow. Then, seeing that it’s Clementine and AJ, I believe he genuinely wanted to save them.

“All alone with the kid? Not a pleasant thought. I've seen some rough scenes. But that one would've been up there.”

We get our second and more official introduction to Marlon after Clementine escapes her dorm and confronts Tenn... and it’s pretty fucking good. I mean, everything from him being hidden in the shadows with his bow drawn, to the clear concern yet sternness in his voice as he assures Clementine they’re not going to hurt her and to put the knife down, to his sympathetic apology for scaring her is just an A+.

One thing this season does exceptionally well is introducing its characters. Marlon has such a confident yet chill way about him when you first meet that it’s actually disheartening to think that in two hours he’s gonna be pulling a gun and MURDER....

Sigh.

Let’s not jump that far ahead yet. I’m not ready.

What I find appealing about this next part is Clementine’s reaction to seeing the inside of Ericson for the first time and how taken aback she seems by it. I also love how easy and comfortable it is to talk with Marlon as they’re walking through the yard even though we just met him.

I enjoy that you can tell he’s trying to get a better idea of who she is without pressuring or overwhelming her and doing his best not to offend. And even when Clementine questions if he doesn’t think she can handle herself, he’s decent about apologizing and explaining that’s not what he meant. But he’s also not afraid to be upfront about AJ’s behavior since they brought him here, either.

He does come off as annoyed when talking about AJ being a handful. We don’t know how long Clementine’s been passed out or how long they had to deal with AJ after he woke up, so who knows how much of a little terror AJ was before they either dumped him with Louis or Louis decided to take him to the music room to chill... where he then bit Ruby.

Anyway, the first impression I got of Marlon is that he’s genuinely friendly, trying to help Clementine and AJ even if AJ’s been a nuisance, and he’s confident in the system he has in place for them. He is rather forward and proud about being the school’s leader when first telling Clementine.

Having played through the whole season several times and knowing how Done Running ends, it’s interesting to look at Clementine’s first conversation with Marlon with that all knowing perspective- knowing what he did to the twins, knowing that Brody’s involved and that Marlon’s going to eventually kill her, going to try and frame Clementine for the murder, knowing that he was planning on giving Clementine and AJ away...

I can definitely look at this conversation with a more skeptical lens and say he’s more so trying to sell the idea that he has everything under control in this kingdom for kids and he’s a proper leader with a system in place despite being so young with no adults around. But hey, that’s the natural progression- Ericson is a perfectly chill safe haven and the Ericson crew get along swell... except no, the cracks slowly begin to surface as the episode goes on until all hell breaks loose with Marlon at the center.

[Rosie is best girl]

“You said dogs brought back bad memories. I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were so scared of them. But I swear, Rosie's not as frightening as she seems...See? She's harmless. She just needs to get to know you, is all. Here. I'll show you. Do you trust me? “

I’ll be completely honest- the thing that initially sold me on trusting Marlon the first time I ever played this episode was his relationship with Rosie.

If you know me, then you know that I love dogs. I have a pup named Piglet that I adore, I’ve grown up with dogs my whole life, and I have a huge appreciation and soft spot for animals. I’m one of those people that can’t stand others who are mean or cruel to harmless animals. It’s different if you’re hunting for food or if an animal attacks you and you’re defending yourself... but I’ve known people who have gone out of their way to hurt animals. I’m out in a country area with a lot of dangerous roads for wandering animals, and the amount of people I’ve driven with who’ll swerve to hit a squirrel, a cat, a dog because they enjoy it is too many. After those incidents, I cut those people out of my life. If you don’t have that love and appreciation in your heart, then I want nothing to do with you.

So when I saw that Rosie, while the school’s dog, is more portrayed to be Marlon’s dog above everyone else, I remember thinking to myself, “Okay, I trust him. He clearly loves this dog, wouldn’t mistreat her, and that’s a step in the right direction.”

While I wasn’t skeptical of him and his intentions before, it really was that natural relationship he held with Rosie that kind of sealed the deal for me- “I like Marlon! He’s probably going to die because he’s the leader and they never last but when it does happen, I’m gonna be super upset about it.”

And well, to be fair... I was super upset when he died, just more so than I originally planned because there was also that element of betrayal mixed into the pain, y’know?

Speaking of trust and Rosie- My second favorite Marlon scene is the office scene. But let’s talk about the Rosie bit specifically. After Tenn leaves and Rosie comes in, she scares Clementine and brings back those traumatic memories of when Sam attacked her.

Marlon comes in and cools the situation, and I love the way he talks to Clementine in this moment.

I love that he doesn’t immediately turn to Clementine like, “What’d you do?” but recognizes that she’s afraid of Rosie due to her previous experience, one that he remembers her mentioning. He also knows how well trained Rosie is to recognize scents and people, which explains why she’s behaving that way- she doesn’t know Clementine.

I feel like I’m using this word a lot, but Marlon’s approach to helping Clementine with her fear of dogs feels so genuine. He holds his hand out and waits for her to accept, and if she does, he walks Clementine through what to do, beginning Clementine’s bond with Rosie.

“Get down on her level. Let her get your scent. It's okay. She's not gonna hurt you.”

It’s incredibly sweet and humanizing to see Marlon like this.

The best part about this scene, though, is that you can reject Marlon’s offer and he won’t be upset.

“No problem. I'm not gonna pressure you.”

And he doesn’t. He doesn’t get annoyed, he doesn’t press, no questions asked, and he doesn’t say anything to make Clementine feel bad for her decision. He respects that she isn’t ready to get close with Rosie.

The reason I love this is because how many times have we made decisions in this game, big and small, and had the other characters get annoyed or try to guilt us? “Oh, you don’t want to bond with the dog? Rosie’s the best, everyone loves dogs! What’s wrong with you?” None of that here. That’s something I appreciate about Marlon in this moment.

It shows that when he wants to, he can listen and understand those around him... something he clearly struggles with when it comes to certain members of Ericson.

I’ll swing back around and talk about that entire scene in a bit, but one last thing about Rosie... can I just say how heart breaking it is to hear her whine at Marlon’s funeral? Solidifying that she was definitely Marlon’s dog more than anyone else’s? And the way Rosie lays on his grave several times in episode 2?

Oof.

[Ericson’s perception of Marlon prior to the final confrontation and after]

“...when the world went to shit, he bailed. All the other adults did. Left us behind to fend for ourselves... Now it's just us kids left.”

I want to touch on how the Ericson crew seem to view Marlon as a leader before and after the final confrontation.

When looking at and discussing a character, it’s important to not just focus solely on them. You can gather a lot about a character based on how others respond and perceive them.

Not everyone expresses something towards Marlon within Done Running. Y’know, like Omar or Ruby, for example. Though we do get a bit more from them after Marlon’s death, their perception of him is different now that they’ve learned what he’s done and witnessed his murder.

So we don’t know how Ruby, Omar, Willy or Mitch viewed his leadership prior to those events, y’know? It’s safe to assume that they’re fine following him as a leader since they’re background characters at this point and make no objections to his leadership at any time before the confrontation. But, after learning the truth, they turned against him.

Then things get complicated when Marlon’s murder traumatizes them.

What a mess.

But for this section, there are two characters I want to get into specifics about. They’re worth talking about because they further Marlon’s character, but they’re not the most important, y’know? Characters like Louis, Tenn, and Brody will get their own sections.

The one I find most interesting among side characters is Aasim. Right off the bat, you get a feel for what his relationship is like with Marlon:

Marlon: “How'd it go out there?”

Aasim: “How do you think it went?”

Brody: “Be nice, Aasim.”

Aasim: “The safe zone's nearly dry. I could barely find enough for tonight. We're gonna have to scout out further if we want food for the winter.”

Marlon: “We'll talk about it later.”

Aasim: “Bullshit, we should talk about this right now-”

Marlon: “I said later, damn it!”

So... they’re not exactly besties. The game makes a clear point that Aasim is more vocal in his disagreements and concerns towards Marlon than the others. They even reiterate it when you talk with him later:

“He keeps pulling back the safe zone. We have fewer and fewer places to hunt. Which means we're gonna have fewer and fewer things to eat.”

No one else opposes Marlon like he does, not counting Brody in the basement since that’s a whole other thing and Brody will get an entire segment to herself later.

It’s pretty clear that this isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation, but because Marlon’s in a place of power, Aasim doesn’t have much choice but to go along with it. Because no one else is speaking up, he doesn’t have anyone to back him up, and you can tell he goes with it reluctantly. He also voices annoyances when it comes to how Marlon treats Louis if you go hunting.

Knowing this, you can infer that Marlon doesn’t want to hear what Aasim has to say, and he doesn’t appreciate someone questioning his leadership. When Aasim steps in Marlon’s path and says, “Bullshit, we should talk about this right now-” what does Marlon do?

He shoves his shoulder into Aasim’s as he pushes past, and in a louder, commanding tone, replies, “I said later, damn it!” which leads to Aasim glaring after him... but he doesn’t pursue. Marlon has a hard time with someone like Aasim and his response is to shut him down rather than stop, listen to his concerns, and address them.

That’s something Marlon struggles with as a leader- control and listening. Control over his temper and anger, listening and addressing the concerns of the people he swears to protect.

The reason I bring this up is because Aasim is our first indication that the image Marlon was giving off previously isn’t as spotless as he wants us to believe. Aasim plants a seed of doubt, y’know? He gives an argument that the player can get behind.

“Yeah, why not extend the safe zone? If food is really as bad as you say it is, then what other choice is there? Just be extra cautious so no one gets hurt,” which can then lead to thinking, “Why is Marlon so insistent about the safe zone? Is he hiding something?”

Once that seed is there, it grows.

Now as for how Aasim’s view of Marlon changes during and after the confrontation, you can see that he’s one of the few that wants to hear Clementine’s side to things, and he steps forward after Louis/Violet intervenes.

Then after Marlon dies, Aasim is... well, he’s rather neutral? And I say that meaning he’s more in a middle ground between Louis and Violet, who are on extreme opposite ends. Aasim isn’t okay with Marlon’s death, nor is he okay with AJ killing him, but he can see that kicking Clementine and AJ out isn’t the best solution. Hence why he voted for them to stay.

You can see he’s still angry at Marlon for what he did during the funeral scene, but the game doesn’t care to show more beyond that. Which, in my opinion, was a missed opportunity on their part.

And because I’m me, I also want to add that this perfectly sets up the idea of Aasim taking over once Marlon died and the writers shot themselves in the foot for wasting him like that. Good job.

Now let’s talk about Violet. People love when I do that.

Marlon and Violet don’t interact too much prior to the confrontation. The most we see them together is during the card game, and they’re chill. Violet makes fun of his hair, he says he looks cool, they’re decent to each other, it’s all good. They’re on friendly terms.

Which I do find it interesting that she seems like she’s chill with Marlon, but she has such a hard time with Brody. Granted, that’s because she was supposed to go with them but asked Brody to cover her, and then when the twins died, she felt guilty. But you’d think that she’d also have some issues with Marlon, given that he was also there and, like Brody, unable to save them.

You could argue that because Violet and Brody were friends before it had a stronger effect, whereas she and Marlon weren’t ever that close, so it didn’t strike as bad, y’know?

Though this does kind of get explained later if you choose to stick with Violet through ep4. Well, sort of? A little? She tells you:

Violet: “...I remember how Marlon described it, what we were gonna turn Ericson into. It's not the way any of us pictured it.”

Clementine: “How did you picture it?”

Violet: “I guess I couldn't. I just listened to what Marlon said. How it would be a home, a real one. But I couldn't really wrap my head around it.”

And when she talks about people who cared about her that she pushed away, she does list Marlon as one of those people, which is super interesting given all the loathing she’s done towards him after the truth came out.

It could be that in the past, she saw Marlon as the leader and why would he lie? He’s the one who stepped up, promised that they’d made Ericson into something special, into a brand new home... what reason does she have to distrust him?

So when she finds out the truth... well, that betrayal completely shatters everything she has for Marlon, going as far as for her to believe that AJ was justified in what he did and shit talking Marlon in front of his mourning best friend.

So her reaction to Marlon after this makes sense, but what does this tell us about Marlon himself?

Again, depending on how you view him, you can look at this idea of Marlon being kind to Violet and them being on friendly terms after what happened to the twins a few different ways- Marlon was manipulating Violet solely for his sake, or Marlon felt guilty that something he did hurt her this bad and tried to make Violet feel better, or both.

I think it was both. After the twins died, we all know the amount of guilt Marlon carried with him, so having to be confronted with the fallout of that in the form of someone like Violet... he had to be careful. I don’t doubt that he cared about Violet or that he tried to reach out to her, but he also had to protect himself for the sake of maintaining his leadership and control of Ericson. So, of course, he had to lie to her which manipulated her feelings about him and the situation.

I believe Violet recognized it, too. When she says they should’ve asked more questions about what happened, I think that’s her being more pissed with herself for trusting Marlon and not questioning him further, for taking his word for it.

I’ve come across theories suggesting that Marlon actually manipulated Violet into placing blame onto Brody rather than him, which is why she is on friendly terms with him but not so much Brody. And that’s a valid interpretation. There isn’t any solid evidence of this within the game to suggest either way, but I can definitely see how someone would come to that conclusion. Especially after the confrontation.

Now let’s touch on Violet if you appeal to her, because Marlon does something that makes me go “Hmmmm...”

Clementine, when she appeals to Violet, say, “Violet you have to believe me.”

To which, Marlon immediately steps in and says, “You don't. You met her, like, two days ago!”

He doesn’t even give her a chance to speak.

With Louis, he’s so overly confident that he has him completely wrapped around his finger that he doesn’t feel the need to say anything. He feels he has control over Louis. But with Violet, he feels his control might not be as strong, so he needs to remind her that she just met Clementine, whereas she’s known him for years- something he uses against the whole group.

And when Clementine tries to talk to her, Marlon takes a low blow and it’s super shitty.

“Don't let her get in your head. Hey, what would Minnie want you to do? She was my friend, too. So was Brody.”

He’s desperate to crawl out of the grave this situation has put him in that he’s willing to go this low, doing everything he can to make sure Violet doubts Clementine... and y’know, whose to say this is the first time Marlon is using Minnie to manipulate her? And when it doesn’t work, he gets frustrated like “Violet being difficult. Why am I not surprised?” which could suggest that it hasn’t always worked.

It goes back to what I was saying- Marlon tried to get close to Violet and she never let him. She was difficult to be around after the twins died due to her grief and Marlon struggled with that.

When he finally comes clean, this is where the real shift happens with him and Violet. You can see the hatred burning on her face every time the camera pans over to her now that she’s felt betrayed by him and his actions.

Right before Marlon dies, if you choose to say nothing, Violet will step forward and start saying that he doesn’t get to stay, but gets cut off when AJ shoots him.

All in all, Violet is a big case against Marlon and a showcase of how far his manipulation as gone within Ericson.

[Marlon’s office and foreshadowing of motivations]

“Whenever someone goes outside the safe zone, bad shit happens. People die or disappear. I just... I could really use the help, Clementine. Taking care of these kids, it's not easy. I'm worried that if I don't figure something out, if...if I don't fix our food situation... I can't lose anyone else. We've already lost so much. Friends, siblings... I can't let another kid die. It could break us.”

Swinging back around, let’s talk about the rest of the scene in the office.

First off- it’s implied that Marlon uses the office as a bedroom given the mattress on the floor and some of his personal belongs laying about. Like the photo he keeps of him and Louis.

The bed isn’t for Rosie, we assume, since we later see her sleeping outside while chained up. This might be just because they wanted Rosie present for the confrontation scene but didn’t want her loose, so they put her outside when you’d think that she’d sleep inside with everyone else.

Or, maybe she just prefers to be outside when the weather’s nice, or they keep her as a guard in case something were to happen, that way she can alarm them.

Anyway, why does Marlon potentially sleep in his office rather than in a dorm? Or does he have a dorm that he’ll sleep in, but keeps the mattress there just in case?

Well, a show of authority, for one. Even if he does keep a dorm room, it’s likely that he made the office his own as a way to be like “The headmaster is gone, this is my office now. I’m in charge.”

Which makes sense.

And when you think about what Louis tells us about Marlon having all these sleepless nights and tough calls, it’s not hard to imagine him spending late nights in his chair going over different plans and stressing over the food situation/safe zone, as well as letting the guilt of the twins weigh on him to the point were he’s too exhausted to even leave.

Moving on to the actual conversation between him and Clementine. He does show a vulnerable side to her, which I like. He can feel the pressure he’s under and sense the loss he’s suffered. But...like before, looking at this knowing what I know, it’s not hard to see certain things in a different light opposed to what you’d see as a new player.

What’s interesting, though, is while I do enjoy this conversation and the bits of insight it gives to Marlon’s character, there is this subtle, slightly off undertone of the whole scene after the Rosie bit.

At this point, we’ve talked with Aasim and he’s planted the seed of doubt.

We’ve heard the story about the twins. Violet came and talked to us about it, we could visit their graves and learn that they died at this time last year. Anyone who has played any game or heard any story can pick up on that the twins are important. They’re not going to use these girls as some throw away lines. They’re going to come back one way or another.

We’re literally living in their dorm. The dorm that Marlon put us in. They’re heavily connected to Tenn and Violet, two important characters I previously discussed. Then, Violet comes barging into our room and talks about them some more.

It makes the gears turn, y’know?

And with Marlon being very insistent that they stay in the safe zone, it’s not hard to question the story about the twins. I went through and skimmed a couple play throughs on youtube to this scene and a lot of them were theorizing that the twins weren’t actually dead or something wasn’t right, some cracks are starting to show. Why else bring it up? Marlon being the one to push the dangers of the safe zone and everything with Aasim... it’s not hard to pick up that he might be hiding something.

The thing I find fascinating about people’s perception of Marlon is how they interpret his motivations when it comes to Clementine and AJ, and that can be tracked back to this scene.

We all know that he’s planning on giving them to the raiders if they come back. It’s a hard fact. Brody warned us before she died, and dialogue during the basement scene backs it up.

But the question I’m curious about is... when did this motivation begin?

When did Marlon decide that he would give Clementine and AJ to the raiders if they ever came back?

Because the text doesn’t tell us anything until Brody’s death, I feel like we all have a different moment where we believe that became Marlon’s secret motive, y’know?

In all my digging, I’ve read posts about this idea, people giving their thoughts on when they think Marlon secretly turned on us, or if he was ever really on our side.

One has people theorizing that Marlon saved Clementine and AJ with the intention of giving them away from the beginning.

So he saw taking these two in and earning their trust as an opportunity to save everyone else at the school [the people he cares about] rather than have to sacrifice anyone else like they did with the twins. Clementine and AJ were just a means to an end if the raiders came back.

Which is a rather sinister way to look at it and puts quite a negative spin on Marlon’s actions towards them - like how he’s willing to let them stay at the school not out of kindness but out of bad intentions, and every kind thing he ever did was to win over their trust so he could lure them out into the woods and do a trade if necessary.

The line “Take this. I don't want you gettin' lost.” gets pointed at a lot due to how Marlon says it, the infliction of it, and it’s theorized that the hidden meaning behind it is “Take this, if you get lost then I can’t make the trade.”

Same thing with “Just remember to stay in the safe zone. We need you to come back home in one piece.”

Which isn’t a wrong interpretation of this. You can totally look at this conversation between Marlon and Clementine as Marlon subtly foreshadowing his turn, or betrayal, at the end of the episode.

“...It's how we've kept ourselves from unwanted attention for so long. Well... For the most part, anyway.”

“I can't lose anyone else. We've already lost so much. Friends, siblings... I can't let another kid die. It could break us. Sorry. I'm just... There's a lot of pressure.”

“What, did you think I was gonna throw you out?“

Then there are the middle ground people who believe Marlon didn’t save Clementine and AJ with that intention in mind, but it started to appear as an option to him either a bit before or during the office scene. Y’know, it came as a passing thought that ended up lingering until he acknowledged it as a solution to a potential problem.

Again, pointing at the dialogue from before- him suggesting that he’ll do whatever it takes to keep his community alive... just like he did before.

And while he gets along with Clementine and AJ [or as some would suggest, he appears to be friendly], they’re not his family. He isn’t close to them the same way he is the rest of the school. and if he has to give anyone away, it’s going to be them, whether he wants to or not.

Marlon didn’t want to give Sophie and Minerva away, and he’s carried that with him up until this point. We see it manifest to a breaking point that lead to Brody’s death and, eventually, his own.

Finally, there are the people who believe that the idea of giving Clementine and AJ away didn’t occur to him until after the incident with Abel. After Brody panicked and told him about getting robbed, then Clementine claiming they met a man with different colored eyes who wanted food, and the realization that the raiders could be back.

This is where I personally stand when it comes to this idea. I believe that Marlon didn’t decide on this until he heard about Abel, and solidified it during the fight with Brody down in the basement.

But what about the dialogue in this scene that potentially has double meanings? Well, I believe that’s the writers suggesting Marlon’s turn and motivations rather than Marlon himself, if that makes sense. Like I said before, you could take nearly everything Marlon says as some sort of foreshadowing or suggestion of what happened to the twins, what his true intentions are with Clementine and AJ, and what will happen to him at the end of the episode.

That’s the thing- Marlon doesn’t ever go on a mustache-twirling monologue about how he knew he could use Clementine and AJ as trade if the raiders came back and that’s the real reason why he saved them, nor do we see him come up with the idea on the spot.

Hell, Marlon never admits to the player that he was going to do that. The most he says is, “Shut your fucking mouth! I made the right call. I saved the lives of everyone in this fucking school! If they came back... I'd do it again!”

Brody is the one who told us everything, and every time Clementine throws it back in his face, he tells her to shut up and threatens her with the gun.

But from what I’ve tried to gather about what Marlon and Brody talk about in the basement before Clementine gets down there...

Marlon: “Why can't you just do what I ask you to do?”

Brody: “Because we caused all this, and now we have to deal with it!”

Marlon: “I am dealing with it!”

Brody: “By tradin' more of us away? That's not fixin' the problem, that's runnin' away from it!”

[I’ll come back to this full conversation later when I go over the basement scene by itself. It gets pretty dark.]

Which.... yeah. So, I’m not trying to say Brody was lying or anything just because Marlon never flat out admitted it to us the player, I’m just saying that we don’t know for sure when he made up his mind about this since the game never gives a clear suggestion for the sake of his dramatic turn from friend to antagonist.

Did he have this idea from the start or did he come up with it during this conversation?

We don’t know, but it’s interesting to look at the different views surrounding this question and how it applies to Marlon’s character. Because yeah, if you truly believe that Marlon had this intention from the start, it makes all of his actions in this episode pretty scummy. And again, that’s not wrong because there isn’t an answer here.

I choose to believe that maybe the idea came as an unwanted thought in the beginning, but manifested into something real when he heard about Abel. He shared his plan with Brody, who didn’t want to go along with it.

And y’know what... let’s finally get into the basement scene and Brody...

Continued in Part 2/2

#twdg marlon #twdg character discussion #twdg clementine #twdg aj #twdg louis #twdg violet #twdg aasim #twdg ruby #twdg mitch #twdg willy #twdg omar #twdg brody #twdg tenn #twdg sophie #twdg minerva #marlon character discussion #twdg #long post

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep13

The true mystery of this show is trying to figure out how to even talk about each episode without just repeating myself or talking about other parts of the franchise, lmao.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut. Plus probably spoilers for both Umineko and Ciconia.

I’m not even sure where to begin talking about the fundamental issues this show has at this point, lol. It’s easy to just say that Sotsu on it’s own is bad, but I feel like it’s highlighting the fact that right from day one there were problems with the show’s structure and it’s intentions that have just become more and more of an issue as time’s gone on.

At the very least, I think that it was a huge mistake for them to have the gun cliffhanger happen midway through Gou, and to then spend so much time on backstory stuff and answer arcs. That just cast a negative shadow over all of those arcs because everyone was just impatient to get back to the cliffhanger. At this point I think they shouldn’t have even had Nekodamashi be in Gou to begin with. If they transitioned straight from Tataridamashi to Satokowashi then you could keep the general cliffhanger of revealing that Satoko’s the culprit without making people so impatient to go back to it and see what happens afterward.

But there’s also the issues like how Satokowashi revealed everything we needed to know about the howdunnit of the mystery, or how the whole gimmick of reusing the same scenarios as the VN in order to play both sides and make it technically accessible to new fans really wrote them into a corner and forced them to spend more time on the answer arcs than they needed to.

If we at least assume that the whole story ends in this arc, I think you easily could have condensed it all into one 2-cour season if they’d just committed to aiming this at old fans.

I guess there’s still a chance we’ll get some sort of continuation, but at this point I feel like the only way to get that much more content is if it ends up mostly retreading Satokowashi from a different perspective, which might actually drive me insane, lol.

In general it just feels like we’re already at the climax of the story one way or another, and there’s not many ways to keep it going for much longer without it seeming super forced. Like, Eua and Hanyuu are having their big confrontation with each other, and now Rika and Satoko are both on the same page, so they’re going to basically be stuck in a stalemate until one of them gives up. There isn’t really any mystery left to answer aside from giving more info about what’s going on between Eua and Hanyuu, so I’d rather they just cut to the chase and not drag this out.

We also know from TV listings that a different show is going to taking over Sotsu’s time slot next season, so unless it changes time slot for some reason, we’d probably have to wait until at least January to get a continuation, and I just dunno if that’d even be worth it.

I’ve already gone over my general ideas for how I think this will end, but I still think it’s entirely possible to wrap things up in just two more episodes. At the very least, if we get another full cour out of this then that’d probably just end up only having a few more episodes of actually new content, so my point still stands, lol.

I don’t think this episode did much to change my mind about where this is going, but it did at least clarify a couple of things. Like how Eua explicitly calls Hanyuu a ‘part of her’, which means that I’m probably right about my interpretation of them being two halves of the same being. There’s still a lot of different ways they could explain it, but at this point it’d basically still just boil down to the same idea of them being two parts of the same person.

It’s also more clear now that Rika more or less didn’t really know about Satoko being the culprit until the last minute, and was starting to get flashbacks to the end of Tataridamashi. I’m not entirely sure how to feel about that. It’s kinda hard to believe that Rika wasn’t at least suspecting Satoko by that point, but I do like the implication that Rika wasn’t fully dead when Satoko arrived, since that at least feels like pay-off for Satoko being so cocky and openly monologuing about how evil she is when she thinks Rika’s dead and can’t hear her.

I guess this episode also shows that there wasn’t anything particularly special going on with how Takano decided to confess to Rika in this one specific loop, which is also kinda underwhelming. Basically it seems like it just boils down to her feeling guilty about all of the stuff she remembers doing, but it’s still kinda weird that she didn’t confess to her in any previous loops. One of the weird issues with Gou/Sotsu’s storytelling is that Rika seemingly put no real effort into trying to investigate Takano even though she remembered her being the culprit, and I think that could have been really easily resolved if there was a scene like this in Onidamashi where Takano confesses her sins to Rika and leaves the village, since that would at least give a reason for her to not try and investigate them, and to assume that somebody else is behind these new loops. They could have even just had that happen off-screen and only be shown in Oniakashi if they didn’t want to spoil new fans. It just seems like a really easy change to make that would have made Rika’s passivity and hopelessness in this series way more understandable.

I think we’re also meant to assume that Satoko reacting to the box in this episode was just her faking it, since there’s no real indication that her conscience has returned or anything. But I’m not really sure why Satoko would go out of her way to fake that, when the trap box hadn’t even come up in that timeline. Maybe it would have made more sense if we saw her inner thoughts in that scene, but it kinda feels like they had to come up with some sort of scenario where Satoko would accidentally display knowledge that only a looper would know. Compared to how she’s been almost overpowered and hyper-competent in this series compared to Rika, it has a weird vibe of her being stupid because the plot demands it, lol. Either way it just seems kinda weird and contrived.

We also ended this episode on the gun cliffhanger again, which I saw coming, but it still kinda stings, lol. Hopefully the payoff is worth it. Realistically I think Satoko will just immediately shoot Rika, and we’ll cut to them having a proper confrontation in the meta world. With how they compared it to the ‘miracle’ scene with Takano in Matsuribayashi, it’s possible that they’ll somehow stop Satoko from shooting her, but I dunno. The stuff Hanyuu said about how this ‘isn’t the world that Rika fought for’ makes me think we’re probably not gonna stick with this loop for very long anyway, so I’d rather they just cut to the chase and get to the part where the two of them fight it out in the fragment world once and for all. Which at least seems to be what that one part of the OP is teasing at.

On that note, the only other mysterious part of the OP [and the key visual] left is the older club members in new outfits, which still feels like a bit of a loose thread, but it’s entirely possible that it doesn’t really mean much. For one thing, it could be as simple as it being related to an epilogue scene back in the Matsuribayashi timeline where they’re in different outfits to the ones we saw them wear last time we saw them. Either way I don’t really think the other club members are going to be super relevant to how this all ends, so one way or another whatever that stuff is related to could still just come up in the next two episodes.

Basically the question is just how exactly the big conflicts are gonna get resolved, and what note we’ll end things on. Which also ties into the larger question of whether or not this is genuinely meant to tie into Umineko [and maybe Ciconia] like they’re indicating, or if that’s some kind of elaborate troll.

I know i’m biased, but I think all the Umineko and Ciconia stuff is totally sincere, and Ryukishi really is using this as a way to start tying the wider WTC-verse together in a more concrete way, so that’s what I’m basing my theories off of.

With that in mind, I still think this will end with Rika and Satoko officially abandoning their humanity and becoming witches together, with the sword maybe being an in-universe plot device to depict that process. And with the reveal that Eua and Hanyuu are for all intents and purposes two parts of the same person, I feel like their side of things will probably end with them merging together in a way that creates Featherine, which would at least explain why Featherine’s personality is more mild than Eua’s, and also why Bernkastel is her miko, and why Featherine’s whole name is a giant pun about Hanyuu. It’d also fit with the whole religious motif that Hanyuu has going on if she basically ‘sacrifices’ herself to neutralize Eua. It’s at least the closest I think we’ll get to seeing Eua be ‘defeated’.

And on that note, I don’t really think this will end with anyone like Eua or Satoko being used as a villain who everyone else defeats so they can go back to their happy ending, since that’s the exact sort of thing that Ryuukishi regrets doing originally, and is why we’ve gotten so many redemption arcs for people in Gou/Sotsu. So I think at most we’ll see Eua get turned into Featherine so she’s less actively hostile towards everyone else, but I think this will ultimately end with Rika and Satoko reconciling and mending their relationship.

Over on the Matsuribayashi timeline side of things, I feel like this is gonna end up paralleling Nekodamashi a bit, and we’ll find out that Satoko ended up planning to kill herself in the Saiguden, but Rika and the club will show up at the last minute and she’ll choose not to. Then we’ll probably see her and Rika talk things out properly, and maybe Satoko will find out that Satoshi woke up from his coma or whatever, and that way they’ll all still get their happy ending, while also simultaneously we can still have Rika and Satoko split off their witch selves into separate entities that become the Bern and Lambda we know in Umineko.

It’s possible they’ll do something with the idea of Satoko losing her game and being sent to a world without Rika, but that also might just not happen at all. So who knows.

If they really lean into the idea of this directly setting up for Umineko, then it’d be neat if we also see Satoko and Rika meet Ikuko in the future of the Matsuribayashi timeline.

There’s also the Ciconia teases to think about, but they seem to be going in the direction of Ciconia taking place before all this even happened, so I think that’ll be kept kinda nebulous and unexplored until Ciconia itself finishes. Ryukishi might announce a release date for phase 2 after Sotsu ends, but I think it’s way too early for anything like an anime adaptation of it. I’d rather they wait until at least after it’s finished before they do something like that.

On the other hand, Umineko’s been over for like ten years, so it’d be much easier to do something like a remake for it after this. I have a lot of thoughts about how that might go if they do that, but I’m gonna wait until Sotsu ends and then make a separate post about it.

Anyway I guess now I just have to wait and see what happens next week, lol.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi sotsu

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legends-live-in-memories · 3 years

Text

I Have Too Many Opinions. ep. 1

lmao. i got encouragement to post my opinions on fandom things and now i want to make a miniseries doing just that. so here i am. doing just that.

im putting it under the cut cuz this was 4 whole pages including the disclaimer. yes i put a disclaimer and i explain why.

Anyways, here is the first piece in what inevitably will become fandom info dump, this time on thomas astruc’s writing on miraculous ladybug. but only some of my opinions cuz we would be here all day otherwise.

So… a disclaimer before I begin…

I do not hate Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir (yes i'm using their government name). I am quite a fan of the show actually despite its faults. I am also older than the intended audience but was obviously younger when the show first aired which is how my interest was piqued (the fact that its been 6 years and only 3 seasons says more about the show than me being a fan for that amount of time but also i never want to rush content creators cuz they're doing their best) and due to my age, there will be inherent bias in my approach of what i'm about to say as there is in EVERY opinion. The fact that it is an opinion should imply the presence of bias but most people tend to lack the critical thinking skills required to draw that conclusion ANYWAYS…

If I did hate the show I would not have this blog nor would I be even writing this because i tend to not give more than 2 seconds of thought to things i actively dislike (some of yall should give this a try) and i'm allowed to like things that are designed for an audience that i was originally a part of but grew out of. (I don't suddenly stop liking things because I'm older despite what many younger fans seem to believe about older audiences. I also don't need to be ‘allowed’ to do anything cuz i wasn't asking for permission anyways.)

This will not be character bashing, astruc bashing nor fandom bashing cuz, again, that would imply i hate any of those elements and if i did, i would not dedicate brainpower to them. Analyses and criticisms of media are fun and engaging and required if you wish to produce good enjoyable content. Now most of this should be already assumed and self-explanatory but people on the internet like to play morality roulette roll dice on purity culture and I rather have documentation that I am in fact not bullying fictional 14 year olds or a grown man. But alas, people get trigger happy whenever someone has less than 1000000% positive opinions on something they like and will throw out words they can't define (gaslight, baiting, toxic, problematic, gatekeep etc) in an attempt to defend their blind devotion,

which is not needed, if you like something you never have to defend it, even if i don't like it. If you respond to anything I post saying you disagree with me, I will not argue with you. I won't debate back and forth and try to convince you that the things you like are wrong. Unless you are being absolutely tone deaf to what i'm saying, you wont get a negative reaction from me. So don't try to fish for a fight. Please. I got metaphorical hands for days and I'm mean, you don't want me hurting your feelings on the internet. Do yourself the favour. Difference of opinion is how we get diversification in media and is inherently a good thing. Now that that's out of the way, please don't ever let me have to say that again. I beg.

Now onto the fun stuff

I didn't know what I wanted as a first topic so my trusty internet friend @moonlitceleste suggested astruc’s writing…

AND BOI do i got some opinions on ole tommy boi. Again I don't hate the dude. In fact, he has worked on a few shows that had defined my childhood, including but not limited to W.I.T.C.H. (all eps available on youtube for those interested, 2 seasons, general fun time all around).

So I don't think he’s scum of the earth but I do think his approach to writing mlb specifically has more misses than hits.

The first big miss is that he has no idea how to write 14 year old girls. At all. Almost every girl he has ever written feels like some terrible archetype built entirely for marketability and childish projection and pubescent self-insert (kind of). He has never been a 14 year old girl. I have. In fact when the show first aired, I WAS around the (assumed) age of the mlb characters. The behaviour he passes off as quirky or awkward or just the character’s genuine personality tend to perpetuate harmful stereotypes of teen girls found in the media and are never actually addressed as harmful. they just get swept under the rug. Marinette’s exuberant collage of teen heart throb model boi Adrien Agreste and her very painful almost fan worship she has of him (which flip flops like a paper sandal in the rain) being portrayed as a cute school girl crush uwu, Chloe being the y7 Regina George, Alya being the token best friend of colour with her ‘sassy’ personality (i want y'all to imagine me eyerolling so hard i bust a vessel in my eye), Kagami being the very damaging Perfect Asian Child stereotype. And before y'all get on your dusty soap box and defend going on about “BUT IT'S FOR CHILDREN”,,,, know this.

i don’t give a solid fuck.

Not one.

Children arent stupid. Children are always going to remember the richy bitchy blonde who bullies the art kid, and the big kid, and the shy kid, and the non white kids, and was only nice to her equally rich white friend who she probably had a crush on or was only ever civil to her equally white lapdog. They're going to remember the half asian girl who was never allowed to actually be asian or the only black girl who existed solely as a soundboard for enabling bad habits or chastising the main character for the same habits she enables in the first place (boi aint THAT a topic for later). Like do i really need to explain that alya chastising marinette for taking max’s spot in gamer just to play with adrien rings absolutely hollow when she actively encourages her to sabotage the contest she’s in just so Kagami doesn't win?? Like I don't have to explain that right?? Again kids arent stupid and its quite something that Mari gets chastised for proving herself the best video game player regardless of her intentions just cuz it comes at the expense of max’s feelings/ego but is actively encouraged to sabotage not only kagami but herself by extension cuz kagami is ‘competition.’ Adrien is not a trophy to be won. And no I don't expect 14 yrs old to be perfect and to always make good decisions but these decisions are never addressed as being bad decisions. they get swept under the rug cuz those decisions were necessary for the ‘plot’ but astruc can barely keep characterization consistent and his characters suffer for it and it's the same children you preach are watching it that suffer as well. Cuz guess what? I KNOW 14 yr olds aren't like that cuz i've been there done that (this is the last time i'm saying that i promise) so I know astruc is just metaphorically throwing darts to figure out who says and does what without consideration for pre established personalities to drive the stalemate plot along. The same kids you say are watching this don't know that that's not how preteens work and will absorb and internalize those dynamics like baking soda and vinegar. Cata-fucking-strophically.

And I haven't even gotten to the boys yet. Which honestly doesn't require much explanation anyways cuz they suffer the same fate as the girls. Tired archetypes with nothing to give them life. Nino falls into Adrien’s person of colour token best friend who dates the female lead’s person of colour token best friend so they can have cute double dates uwu. Except the plot goes nowhere and we have no inclination of romantic development beyond moments that only act to actively convince me to anti ship the lovesquare (i don't want to do that so i self indulge in fanon that actually cares about the characters and plot. may i interest you in True Sight on AO3?). Max is the residential nerd but it doesn't matter (cuz he and everyone are dumbed down for the sake of ‘plot’), kim is the sports jock (which interestingly subverts the asian comedic relief stereotype but only barely) and luka is cute older guy ™ that wears black nail polish and is in a band. The point of all this is to say there is no depth in the characters. It's especially blatantly obvious with the characters astruc doesn't like (chloe). Again, it being a show for kids is not an excuse to be absolved of putting effort into the characters you make.

This is one of the biggest misses astruc has. I haven't even gone into all the nuances of this particular miss. And i havent gone into how that works against him in the plot either. Mostly because the plot itself hasn't gone anywhere and partially because I wanted to go into the plot (or lack thereof) separately as its own miss.

AND BOI is it a miss.

SO home boy astruc wanted to reap the benefits of a serial show with ‘engaging’ plot without putting in any of the work to make a linear storyline and relying on the episodic format for, again, marketability. You can't have the best of both worlds, you are not Avatar: The Last Airbender. Which btw has a lot less episodes and a desired end goal that didn't involve top dollar. Legend of Korra did but that's not the point and it had its failings with that too. I challenge you, tell me how many episodes actually contribute towards a plot point or introduce new thematic elements to the show? Can you name them? I can and I'm going to include the plot points that moved the story in some direction if only temporarily. Yes only temporarily for some of these and i will explain later. (if you're in the server you already saw this list *wink*)

25/26. Origins- self explanatory, the beginning of the story,

24. Volpina- introduction of the grimoire and Master Fu (kind of) and no, Lila is not a plot point,

28. The Collector- proper introduction of Master Fu,

37. Sapotis- introduction of Rena Rouge,

41. Syren- introduction of new aquatic power ups,

44. Anansi- introduction of Carapace,

47. Frozer- introduction of new ice power ups,

48/49. Style Queen- introduction of Queen Bee,

51/52. Heroes’ Day- introduction of Mayura and mass akumatization,

66. Startrain- introduction of Pegasus,

67. Kwami Buster- Marinette wears multiple miraculouses,

68. Feast- backstory as to how the miraculouses were lost,

69. Ikari Gozen- introduction of Ryuko,

70. Timetagger- introduction of Bunnyx,

71. Party Crasher- introduction of Roi Singe and Viperion,

73. Chat Blanc- alternate timeline that essentially means nothing but got a reaction out of fans anyways (myself included)

77/78. Love Eater/Battle of Miraculous- Marinette becomes guardian and other heroes lose their miraculous,

New York Special- other heroes exist and there is an American miraculous box,

That's 21 episodes. 21 out of a heaping 78 plus 2 specials. Everything else was just your typical akuma of the day episode and everything that happened outside that had no lasting consequences on the plot thanks to the miraculous status quo. Was it entertaining to watch Lila stir the plot of the class dynamic? Hell yeah. Too bad it meant nothing by the end of the episode cuz we were struck with miraculous status quo. She literally doesn't appear again until Heroes Day. that is from episodes 25 all the way to 51, she means nothing and yet she is treated with the severity of a b-villain/rival thing. She means nothing by the end of Volpina if I'm being honest. She is only relevant for 20 mins of episode time she’s in then it's back to magic status quo that undoes any shift in dynamics and relationships. It's like Spongebob who can't get his driver’s license. The worst part is I actually like Lila and I wish the story treated her with the seriousness we as an audience are expected to treat her with. Despite being painfully inconsequential by the end of each of the 3?? 4?? episodes she’s in, it's entertaining to watch a character create drama just because.

Too bad it means nothing.

Astruc is constantly building up suspense to something ‘important’ only for it to not deliver and fans are constantly having the rug pulled out from under us. Oblivio teased us with a reveal only that gets undone cuz memory akuma. Chat Blanc teased us with romantic development but that gets undone cuz time travel bullshit. Feast introduced more miraculous lore and the history of the guardians but that means nothing by the next episode or ever (i'm not including any reference to the season 4 trailer cuz i've been around the block a few times and im familiar with this lil dancy dance). Heroes Day teased us with a possible future team of heroes but that gets undone in Battle of Miraculous cuz ????? why?? (here's why; astruc was having a jolly ole time letting us know how irredeemable Chloe is at the expense of shooting his own stagnant plot in the foot. Again, discussion for later.)

Too bad anything that slightly swerves off course from the akuma of the day gets undone or ignored. Too bad nothing has any lasting consequence. I mean, if anything did, the episodes would have had a consistent order and release schedule so im not scrambling to watch the leaked ep in Portuguese or something while the french dub is two episodes behind while the english version hasnt even been dubbed. I really wonder how he plans to conclude the show when he’s so afraid to step out of the corner he painted himself in.

Again, not going into nuances. If you want you can ask for more specifics (i doubt anyone would) but this is really just a slightly detailed general overview of my opinions on astruc’s writing.

I was going to include another miss in his approach to this show but imma save that for another time.

How’s that for a ‘first’ post?

#mlb #opinions my guy opinions #i dont wanna tag this as salt #but mlb criticisms and analyses #IHTMO #the hashtag for this series #thomas astruc #miraculous fandom #miraculous ladybug #miraculous: tales of ladybug and cat noir #yes the government name again #come get yall juice #miraculous

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bxttenbound-archive · 3 years

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So.

Threnody. A series that is taking place within the Vampair-universe only several, unknown years (centuries) before Vampair but it has been said that Vampires work the same within both of their worlds, or at the very least extremely similar.

So let’s break down this new episode because it gives us some insight to how vampires are.

Now the first piece of info we really get from this is pretty important and I’d say contributes a lot to why vampires in this world had basically gone extinct.

Returning to the throne / castle / whatever that Alister had taken over and subsequently left / was killed / isnt ruling anymore the old King and Queen (presumably) see there’s a new issue to deal with

They’re starving.

Vampires throughout their Clan are starving and as such are dying.

We see that the clan these two belong to have a specific trait about them that makes them more hungry for blood, calling themselves slaves to hunger and that their clan has a special bloodlust they feel.

Their clan has dwindled in numbers, many of which are dying or in some kind of agony because they can’t feed the hunger that they have. As the one in the top center looks nearly dead, the bottom left vampire is screaming in pain, and the one on the right is clutching their head and leaning against a pillar for support. Then the one in the center who has fallen to their knees all while the royal family looks on without any ability to do anything.

Now I’m not 100% sure, but I do want to make a guess and say that the hunger and subsequent starvation can be possibly due to their Cane having been stole, their artifact having gone missing ever since Alistar up and died after he had taken it.

This could imply a few things, but unless we have more info I can’t say much just that because the cane is gone they are all suffering and starving.

But yeah, basically a huge famine happened where vampires of this clan weren’t able to feed either as well or at all and as a direct result they end up suffering and dying in what looks to be around a spam of 10-15 years? (I’m not sure how old Artemis Seraphvie is.

Also its interesting to note that the royal family, the Grinvoes are actually caring vampires to their own people. They do look genuinely upset / saddened that they can’t do anything to help their clan.

The best thing they can do is basically Blackmail Nim to give them blood as a kind of last-ditch effort to try and keep themselves alive. Using Airad as a bargaining chip because they could, in all respects, go after Airad since she at this point would be the most likely to have the Anger Cane but instead make a deal to prolong their life with blood than what’s assumed, to go to possible war and dethrone Airad. That, and they also assume because Airad is involved with Nim and they see that Nim is involved with Eton that it’s most likely Eton that has the Anger Cane but that still doesn’t stop them from basically threatening to go kill Airad and Nim.

What’s also interesting is this

This shot showed Eton, the creator and/or owner of Nim’s artifact, yes it’s shoes dont @ me.

Does that mean, this fucker on the left is the creator of the Anger Cane? Or at least had been it’s original user? Or maybe they are the soul trapped within it. If their . . . .unique hairstyle is anything to go off of it could be that this was an Artifact created by the person on the left which is interesting as they look distinctly human.

As Missmi’s vampires *always* have long pointed ears, this person is lacking that making me think that they were the creator of the Anger Cane and simply modeled it after themselves as the Shoes are more modeled after Eton.

Regardless

This does say a lot for Vampire culture as there was basically a period within one lifetime (roughly) that caused *uncountable* amounts of vampires to die from starvation.

Which is why they aren’t around as much anymore and it could be that the only vampires that lived to modern-day was because of their artifacts. Duke’s sire may have lived through this starvation by making his own Cane in some way and Duke had taken it from him.

But that definitely explains how we get to modern day where vampires are barely known, because most if not like 90% of them all starved to death throughout the years and more so since this series still takes place centuries or so before Vampair since they dont even have electricity yet in Threnody.

Still this is just, so good. I’m so happy yall you dont even understand.

#Out for a Bite // OOC #Screams from the Abyss // MT #;; the fact there was a short period of time where vampires all starved #;; also so plays into why duke kills so many humans / has so many skulls #;; he *has* to eat that much just to survive #;; and in more modern days there was a higher population he could eat from #;; so killing his prey wasn't a concern when it came to making sure he had enough foo #;; food #;; but in nim's time it could simply be that the population couldnt support so many vampires

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notallthosewho-wanderarelost · 3 years

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Real quick scattering of thoughts on Loki 1x02 and x03 before I watch the newest episode. I watched them pretty much at the same time so it’s a two-for-one post. Here be spoilers for episode 3! On mobile so no cut again, sorry.

Spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

Okay. In no particular order but attempting to start with ep 2 first:

Loki trying to get info on the Timekeepers and the TVA in ep 2 and being blocked by the most bored archive librarian ever was hilarious. The whole sequence of him trying to get her attention only for her to completely ignore him until he rang the bell was creepy but so funny.

Loki’s reaction to getting the details on Ragnarok made me so sad. :( Same, Loki. SAME. I’m also still gutted Asgard was destroyed and I refuse to even watch the movie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But him going to look at that in the first place made me wonder if maybe in the back of his mind Loki’s coming up with a plan to save Asgard? (Or at least, one version of Asgard in the multiverse.) I would love that. I want Asgard back in general and was hoping for Thor 4, but having Loki be the one to save Asgard would be SO fitting. He may be adopted but he’s still an Asgardian at heart, truly. Having Loki be the one to save Asgard would be a great way to show him finally acknowledging that and have all the Asgardians acknowledge it too.

We have an official population for MCU Asgard! 9719 people. That fits. It’s about twice the size of a pretty small suburban town. Asgard is SMALL. It just doesn’t have the space for a lot of people. It’s still a city, but Asgard the Realm has other things on it besides just the city, so it can’t have a huge population.

I wonder what the official population of New Asgard is when we see it in Endgame? And how many Asgardians come back post-Blip? This would really all depend on how many people made it through Hela’s rule and onto the ship during Ragnarok- and then half of them would’ve been killed by Thanos in the beginning of Infinity War. Would half of the remainder have been Snapped away at the end of IW, or would Thanos leave them out since he already halved their population? File under questions Marvel will probably never answer. Also file under “Thanos continues to be really bad at math.” (Should probably go look at the New Asgard sign again to check, but I don’t think it listed population.)

Loki annoying Mobius by messing with his salad was great. Loki annoying Mobius in general was great.

Loki letting the goats free in Pompeii made me think he might have a liking for goats, which means I now have a headcanon that Loki was friends with Thor’s goats as a kid and would sometimes let them loose to get their assistance with pranks. Thank you show, for cute kid Loki headcanons.

Tom Hiddleston probably had a BLAST yelling at people in Latin in character as Loki, and good for him!

Sylvie’s entrance sequence at the beginning of the episode with the fight scene vs the TVA set to “I Need a Hero” was amazing. I haven’t seen Shrek in a while but this might just reach the same levels of A+ “I Need A Hero” song usage as the Shrek sequence.

Speaking of the beginning of the episode, the Ren Faire setting was SO good. Great way to get laughs, and it made me want to go to a Ren Faire again.

The Roxxcart setting for the big encounter later in the episode made me flash back on all the times Roxxon’s appeared in the MCU. Two main thoughts: 1. I so want a Jane!Thor movie where the main villain is Dario Agger, evil Roxxon CEO and Minotaur. Preferably working with a better version of Malekith (from another universe probably) like in comics, because as much as I love Thor 2 my one complaint is that their version of Malekith was SO LAME. Especially compared to comics!Malekith. Plus an Agger + Malekith teamup would mean both the Nine Realms AND Earth are in danger, by definition. Thor 5 please, Marvel. 2. I really, really miss Cloak and Dagger and that show deserved so much better.

(Our) Loki’s perpetual insistence that he’s better and that the plot (pun intended) is about him is both funny and also a little sad- because he knows, or at least thinks, that if he stops insisting those things, everyone will stop paying any attention to him whatsoever. And he needs attention.

Poor Mobius probably felt so betrayed at the end of this episode. :(

Onward to episode 3!

This was by far my favorite episode so far. I LOVE Sylvie. I love her and Loki’s dynamic. I love that we get Loki talking to someone he considers an equal about some very personal things, and that Sylvie does the same thing with him. They understand each other in a way nobody else has. Because they’re the same person, sort of. I’ve taken to calling them “alternate reality twins” and that’s what I’ll keep calling them unless told otherwise.

They also annoy each other in a way nobody else can. And it’s hilarious. They look equally annoyed at the other not falling for their tricks and equally annoyed at needing the other’s help before they really start to bond and I LOVE ALL OF IT. I also feel like they adopt each other a lot quicker than either would be willing to admit, and then they’re annoyed at that! Loki yelling “you’re so weird!” at Sylvie made me go “OH they’re bickering like siblings!!!” and that was pretty early on! I’m an only child but that had peak sibling energy to me. Even them trying to trick and outdo each other had sibling energy most of the time.

Their earlier fight when they first get to Lamentis, before they realize where they are, had some VERY quality quips and also really had me wondering who would win in a fight between the two of them. Sylvie seems to have more physical strength, and she’s got a sword instead of daggers so longer reach, but Loki has skill and he has tricks. I think with his skill at magic (he can TELEPORT?! Probably only a few feet and probably limited by where he can see but that’s SO COOL!!! I don’t think we knew he could do that?!) Loki would likely run rings around Sylvie IF there were no people around for her to enchant. And assuming that she wasn’t able to set any traps beforehand, because Sylvie has proven well able to set traps to take down people who should be at a major advantage against her. Otherwise, I think Sylvie would win. She seems to have better physical training than our Loki, and if there were any people around for her to enchant he’d have to contend with them too. And if Sylvie could lay traps ahead of time, then it could go either way (you never can tell with a Loki, much less two) but I think Loki would probably lose. Loki is just as tricky as she is but that seems to be something she’s had a lot of practice in. Loki is more about confusing opponents with illusions and duplicates and talking his way around people. Sylvie sets traps instead, and is more comfortable/better at using brute physical force.

Speaking of enchanting, me while watching episode 2: “Hey, these mind controlling powers remind me of Enchantress’ powers!”

Sylvie in episode 3: calls her powers “enchanting”

Me: “OH.”

So Sylvie seems to be a composite of 3 characters. 1. Lady Loki, as in Loki when identifying as female. (There’s also that time from before they said Loki was genderfluid and a shapeshifter and back when Loki was still evil when he possessed Sif’s body and went by Lady Loki, but we don’t talk about that.) 2. Amora the Enchantress, a major Thor character/villain who uses magic to “enchant” people into doing what she wants-yes this is definitely a cringey “magically enchants people into loving her, consent-issues-out-the-wazoo” evil seductress stereotype in old comics, but it’s gotten better recently. And 3. Sylvie Lushton, the much lesser-known second Enchantress, who was a regular teenage human girl when after a Ragnarok (don’t remember which one, there have been multiple but this would’ve been early 2000s) Loki for shits and giggles decided to make her think she was Amora and give her the powers to match. She was on the Dark Reign-era (aka when Norman Osborn was in charge of SHIELD and the Avengers) version of the Young Avengers, the Young Masters of Evil, and that’s where I know her from. She’s a great character- she genuinely wants to do good and help people, but her brain is a bit messed up by the number Loki did on it, so she gets confused. I believe she’s currently in comic book limbo after Amora found out about her a while back, got pissed at her for stealing her name and her whole Thing, and tossed her somewhere dangerous on the World Tree while saying something about how if she can survive it then she’ll prove she deserves the name Enchantress. She sadly hasn’t been seen since as far as I know.

So each of those characters have similar characteristics with Loki’s Sylvie. Sylvie 1. Is a Loki who is female (Lady Loki), 2. Was presumably raised on Asgard and uses her magic to “enchant” people via a form of mind control into doing what she wants (Amora the Enchantress), 3. Is named Sylvie (Sylvie Lushton, Encanhtress II). Also worth noting that both Amora and Sylvie Lushton have blond hair, and so does the MCU’s Sylvie. All three characters also have green colored magic!

May turn the above bullets into their own post just for informational purposes. Also, when we said we wanted Enchantress in the MCU, this is not what we meant. Stop with the Monkey’s Paw-style wish granting, Marvel! (Looking at you, X-Men comics’ response to us wanting more Wanda.)

Anyway. Will round off with my favorite thing: everything on the train. Everything on the train was WONDERFUL.

Loki telling Sylvie about Frigga and how she taught him magic and then demonstrating the fireworks made me tear up. 🥺 Right in the feels. I miss Frigga a lot. I miss Asgard/the old Thor franchise in general a lot, but this is about Frigga. She was AMAZING and I miss her. Forever love the detail that Tom and Rene came up with the idea on the set of Thor 1 that Frigga is the one who taught Loki magic and fighting and how that informed their characters’ dynamic to the point of it being canonically discussed later. There’s a great Thor 2 deleted scene where Frigga talks to Thor about this exact thing. Frigga is such a fave of mine.

Sylvie telling Loki about her own past in turn made me very curious what her life was like and what the differences are. She seemed to have had a really hard time of it as a kid and I just want to hug her. (I also want to hug Loki, but that isn’t news.) Loki has had a very tough time, but really only after finding out he was adopted. He doesn’t appear to have had many friends on Asgard before (though I headcanon that he was friends with Lorelai before her exile, and since it’s my headcanon I imagine a similar situation with Amora, if not quite as close a friendship because comics Loki gets along better with Lorelai than her sister) but he at least had a family who loved him and who he loved, and a status as a prince that would’ve given him a good life and protection. Sylvie doesn’t seem to have had any of that as a kid. :(

“Surely there were some would-be princesses? Or perhaps a prince?” CANONICALLY BISEXUAL LOKI YES! YES.

Comics Loki is canonically both bisexual and genderfluid! Explicitly discussed on page, multiple times, and expounded on by writers too. (One of the most heartwarming Odin moments for me- yes, Odin does have heartwarming moments!- is when he’s telling his kids he loves them and he says something to the effect of “my son, my daughter, my child who is both.” The latter is Loki, the former are Thor and Angela. I might still be bitter over MCU Hela taking Angela’s place in the family sorry not sorry. This was in Original Sin: Thor and Loki, for anyone wondering.) I tend to default to he/him pronouns when talking about Loki because Loki tends to be male more in appearances, and also partly because it’s what I’m used to, but when Loki is clearly female I’ll of course switch to she/her. I have seen people use they/them pronouns for Loki too. I don’t think Marvel has ever said what pronouns Loki prefers though.

Speaking of which: I realize the “Sex: fluid” on Loki’s info card in episode 1 was probably foreshadowing Sylvie, but I kind of want to also read it as a nod to Loki being genderfluid. (Loki is also a shapeshifter, so gender would = sex in this case.) Whether it would be a nod to specifically comics Loki or also to MCU Loki is anyone’s guess as of now. We’ll find out I guess, or if it turns out to be strictly headcanon than it’s whatever floats your boat. :)

Back to the train scene!! Sylvie loudly protesting that she can’t sleep near people she doesn’t trust and then promptly falling asleep across from Loki a few minutes later made me emotional. ALTERNATE REALITY TWINS. Also VERY much a parallel to Loki falling asleep across from Mobius last episode.

Loki realizing that Asgard was really his home and his family really was his family only to also realize that he’ll never see either again and deciding to handle this by getting ABSOLUTELY DRUNK is SO ASGARDIAN OF HIM. I cannot. He even did the “Another!” *smashes glass* thing just to bring the point home.

Oh gosh, LOKI SINGING IN ASGARDIAN. FEEEEEEELS. I know, it’s actually Norwegian. I wonder a bit why they didn’t use Icelandic instead? Anyway, this was lovely and I love that going by the translation it’s a song of longing to go home, and it mentions Idunn’s apples of immortality. Apparently the full version of the song is going to be on the soundtrack and I’m so excited for that.

Loki’s metaphor of “love is a dagger” was actually quite good, he and Sylvie just lost the thread of it right at the end there. I wrote about this in tags somewhere, I’ll copy it in here later.

Edit: here’s an edited version of what I wrote on this post: This was a great metaphor until it got away from him. So close to the point (heh) and then they veered right away. Let me finish this for them: “Love is a dagger. It’s a weapon for far away and up close. You can see yourself in it. It’s beautiful. You have to give it to the right person.” So what this scene tells us about Loki is that he’s been hurt by love because it hasn’t been real. Or hasn’t felt real to him. Maybe he’s given it to the wrong people, or maybe he couldn’t tell who the right people were. (And if this is in reference to his family then I think he’s still too close to the revelation of his identity to be able to think clearly about the situation. Because his family DID love him! Even Odin. He just lost sight of that with everything happening.) Love is also about trust. And Loki doesn’t trust easily.

I really love this quote and this scene. Kinda want to do a “Love is a dagger” graphic of i ever have time.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Loki and Sylvie come back to this conversation and come to a more satisfying conclusion. I hope that happens actually.

Sylvie using her headpiece against an opponent in the train fight instantly made me think of Wonder Woman. A+. Also, I haven’t mentioned yet but I love the fact that Sylvie’s headpiece looks exactly like God(dess) of Stories Loki’s from Agent of Asgard. Loki’s Ragnarok headpiece definitely had big AoA Loki vibes, but Sylvie’s headpiece is much closer- mostly it’s smaller, which is very Agent of Asgard Loki in general, but the one horn being cut off is specifically a God(dess) of Stories Loki thing and I love that they pulled from that.

Loki throwing the dagger and missing because he’s drunk was hilarious. Not good for Sylvie, but hilarious to watch. Don’t fight while drunk, Loki. Also, he threw “love” at Sylvie and I laughed when I realized that.

I didn’t realize until I saw a parallel gifset of it why Loki carefully going up to Sylvie after her scream felt so familiar- it’s just like how he went up to Thor after Thor overturned the table in Thor 1. The CONTINUINTY!! Absolutely amazing.

While trying to save the Ark Loki was probably thinking a lot about what he saw in the TVA clips of his own people trying to escape Asgard during Ragnarok and that hits kind of hard.

Loki apparently using telekinesis to stop the column from falling on him and Sylvie threw me off a lot until I saw another gifset that included the moment in Thor 2 (trailers only, I think) when he finds out Frigga is dead and all the furniture close to him breaks and flies away from him. The pose was even the same as when he stopped the column. I think he can sort of... push things away from him? (Almost like a Force Push 🤔) He seems to need to stop and tense up his arms while he does it though. And it doesn’t have the green effect the rest of his magic does, which is odd.

Speaking of Loki’s powers, I’ve said this in tags for sure but I’m so happy they’re FINALLY letting Loki hit people with green magic bolts. He does tend to prefer more subtle uses of magic, but I still can’t believe it took over 4 movies for that to happen. It’s kind of a no-brainer magic attack- probably exactly why Loki prefers other things- but you’d think he would’ve done it at least once after 4 movies.

I saw a post point out that by the end of the episode, Sylvie has lost both her headpiece and her cloak/robe thing, which makes me wonder if she’s going to get a new outfit by the end of the show. Or at least different accessories. I’m also curious if she’s going to take up the Enchantress moniker by the end of the show.

Finishing this with theme analysis and theory time:

The revelation that TVA agents used to be variants and were somehow reprogrammed makes so much sense. There’s something immediately shifty about the idea of 3 Time Keepers dictating the fate of everyone in infinite multiverses, and this just solidifies the hint that the Time Keepers are going to be the overall Big Bads. Which makes sense, narratively! But this shifts the TVA agents from villains to victims. Mobius gets to stay sympathetic and so does Sylvie, AND once the TVA agents find out about their origins it puts the same choice onto them that Loki has. They all have a choice now about who they’re going to be. They’re not who they thought they were, but are they going to let themselves be defined by what other people (here, the Time Keepers) think they should be, or are they going to be who they want to be.

This is exactly what Loki: Agent of Asgard is about, by the way. And I know I said in the last post that Loki’s greatest villain is himself, but I’m going to amend that because I didn’t say it quite right. Loki’s greatest villain is his evil self. Loki the god of evil, the Loki that is the villain. Loki (and all the other Asgardians) in Agent of Asgard is genuinely a god, and AoA tells us that gods are defined by belief- they are what people believe them to be. That’s how they exist. So because so many people believe Loki is an evil villain, the universe tries to twist him to fit that role. The plot of AoA is Loki trying to avoid that fate, to be better, be who he wants to be. It’s a meta story. It’s Loki trying to break free of the narrative he’s been part of up until that point. And eventually he manages to break the fourth wall itself and take control of his own narrative by becoming the god of stories. He controls his own story and it no longer matters what other people think he is, only what he thinks of himself. Nobody else gets to change or define him.

AoA’s villain is a future version of Loki that does go back to being evil. He’s basically the cosmic force- destiny, the narrative itself, etc- that’s trying to fit Loki into the “evil” box personified. Loki is seemingly taking that idea and subbing in a different personification for that same idea of lack of choice: the Time Keepers. We know from the Miss Minutes short in episode 1 that the Time Keepers want one timeline. We don’t know if that’s actually to prevent a multiversal war like the short suggests or if that’s just propaganda. When Loki tries to find out more about the war or about the beginning or end of time in episode 2, he can’t access those documents. Something doesn’t seem right there.

Edit: Also, in episode 2 Loki compares the TVA to Asgard by saying both the TVA agents and Asgardians are equally stupid. The reveal of who the TVA agents are adds a new dimension to that comparison. They both see themselves as guardians of the world around them, special, but really they’re no more special than the people they’re fighting to protect. Or in other words, they’re only as “special” (“heroic,” really) as they make themselves.

Also an edit: damn I just realized the continued stupidity of R*gnarok having Fenris and Odin in the same movie and Odin dies but get killed by Fenris. Asgardians have a saying about watching for wolves’ teeth.

I’ve seen the theory around that Sylvie might be a former TVA agent (which seems to be backed up by the midseason trailer I very belatedly saw, oh my GOD TINY SYLVIE!!!!! But also oh no tiny Sylvie at the TVA :() and I really like that. It makes sense. Maybe she went rogue because she realized the TVA is preventing people from choosing for themselves. Maybe she even knows what it is the Time Keepers actually want. Or maybe she’s doing this just for herself because she didn’t enjoy being brainwashed by the TVA and she doesn’t like being told who to be! That is after all part of “what makes a Loki a Loki,” even if she doesn’t use that name anymore.

I’m also wondering (hoping?) if maybe her being a former TVA agent could explain why she’s a mashup of different characters, instead of it just being Marvel mashing characters together because they can. This is mostly wild speculation, but could the TVA possibly have put multiple people’s timelines/memories inside her head? What if she’s in universe an amalgamation of a Loki, an Amora, and/or a Sylvie?

We’ve had some clips of what looks like a Thor 1 era Loki in front of the throne on Asgard- which looks different to me; maybe Loki redecorated? We’ve also gotten a shot of Loki in front of a ruined NYC skyline, including Avengers Tower. Maybe we’ll get an episode where Loki wins and we’ll see different timelines where he wins in different ways, until he realizes that this isn’t actually what he wants?

Whoops this got long??? Thanks for reading if you read this far!

#long post #loki spoilers #loki 1x03 #loki 1x02 #loki series #meta #a rare text post appears #my stuff

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mc-doppomine · 3 years

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Second-in-Commands and Identity (2/6)

Continuing on this series of the second stringers and how they tend to center on their identity and usually the changing of oneself in order to achieve what they want. Part I, is over Jiro and this one will be over Jyuto.

I will give a brief disclaimer with Jyuto as some of his info I actually had to get from other fans and the wiki since his backstory doesn't seem to come up explicitly in his solos nor the MTC drama tracks (I assume it's another guide book thing). So I'm basing off what I was able to pull up. Anywaaaaayyyyyyy.

Jyuto's change we don't see unfold in the present and unlikely to see it change at current. For him, he decided that he NEEDED to become a corrupt cop in order to get what he wanted. It was the action that seemed to get him the most headway towards make a drug-free division. It's given him control over others in his office to stay in line or turn from his own machinations. It's given him contacts that are otherwise unusable for a cop. It's been how he intimidates and coaxes what he needs from others. I can't see it being a change he particularly regrets. But this change had to start from somewhere.

I consider ARB a non-canon way to get canon information (I'm aware it is an alternate timeline but it is still a source for information about these guys). And it seems like Jyuto was not in Yokohama originally when he started his descent (Edit: I had to go back and it said explicitly Yokohama Police Department where he started but even Jyuto remarks how he doesn't really have jurisdiction in another division nor would really be out that way unless it was something related to his Yokohama activity. Sooooo, it is a little flub that I'm not sure how to reconcile at this moment and will continue on as if I didn't see those words for the upcoming stuff below).

He seemed to have started his path...maybe a little before coming to Yokohama. I would think he was originally a patrolman in Shinjuku but some time during his time there, he was already up to his scheming was as in because of him using Doppo to help him catch a pervert (in ARB). But even just going with canon stuff, it can be guessed that he was in Shinjuku since if he's seen Doppo around and/or been the one to interrogate him, he had to have been in that ward for work since Doppo lives and works in Shinjuku. Which would make sense for his inspiration to change. Shinjuku seems to be a dangerous district, mainly because of Kabuki-cho, with illicit activities and yakuza also being there (although it looks like efforts have made to have it change in the real location). Is it really a stretch to think of him having caught wind of some of his fellow officers accepting bribes? Especially when his own mentor had gone under radar as an addict? It just that he didn't get his big break until TDD era because of Samatoki and Ichiro.

Coming back from this very long way as to the how he was able to...Jyuto I would assume to have been a person on the straight and narrow but not having so deep of tunnel-vision to pass up opportunity. From 'Case File of a Corrupt Cop' event, Jyuto shows a strong sense of duty and does genuinely believe that his job is supposed to protect citizens from both threats from others and themselves. And he's not so strict that he would put the law above the welfare of citizens. For him, the ends justify the means.

I would like to think he had a faith in the system to make things right but after seeing how corruption can take even someone he trusted and cared for...was it really just a matter of when or how rather than 'if?' And if it was bound to happen one way or another, Jyuto rather be standing on top.

He has thrown all his chips onto this identity he's crafted for himself. That's how the other characters and we the audience know him: the corrupt cop. It's all he has. And as 'A Dream...For Good or Evil' would point, Jyuto would be damned before he loses that. Although this DRB seems like it may test Jyuto's dedication to who he's become vs his loyalty to the causes he's signed himself to (namely MTC).

Because the one place that Jyuto has consistently fumbled with is when it comes to Chuuoku. He was quick to try to quell Samatoki in the 1st DRB and attempt to smooth things over with Kadenkoji. He hesitated and backed down when Nemu put her authority over him despite Samatoki very much being close to being arrested in 'All in the Same Boat.' And he even could not muster a way out with his charisma nor any sort of deal when he was dismissed because of Chuuoku standing before him.

I wonder if it is a split in his identity of is he corrupt or is he a cop that he seems to be on his way to dealing with. Does it really take the dark side to really push what he wants? (Aka teaming up with Samatoki and Rio). Or does he just have to be good and kowtow the right times to get closer to his goals? (aka just rolling with Chuuoku's orders). If anyone could direct what Honobono had discussed with Jyuto to see if that might further cement that since it sounded like she either was mocking him or propositioning him?

Also I apologize if there was a little bit of jarring switch from me. Somehow...because of my luck...in the course of a few seconds, I had some paragraphs cut and then ones underneath it copied twice? So I had go back and re-sort what I wrote...Which I'm a bit bummed because I feel I'm missing such an importantly worded sentence and can't remember it.

#second in commands and identity #jyuto iruma

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thesaunatest · 4 years

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MY HUGE THEORY ON EL’S PLOTLINE IN S4

before you guys even start, YES I know that 99.9% of what I say is going to be wrong but this is literally just for fun.

its march 1986, middle of the school year and el HATES school

when we left her she was barely literate and had just started getting accostomed to speaking full sentences, NOWHERE NEAR a 9th grade level, so shes struggling in her classes to say the least

on top of that, she barely knows how to socialize with other people, so shes evidently getting picked on

with joyce and jonathan both working to keep the family afloat, will and el get left alone alot

but outside of the party, they socially have nothing in common

in fact, will is adapting to the new town a whole lot better than el. he fit right in with all the creative kids he met in class, but el didnt mesh with that crowd

anyway, our girl is sturggling

the only time she really has fun is when she visits hawkins, or when someone from the party visits them

which leads us to spring break

mike obviously comes to visit, and el doesnt want them to waste a single second so she begs mike and will to come explore the town with her

at this point joyce is already in her detective mode, hatching a rescue plan for hopper so she doesnt notice theyre gone

and jonathan is battling the heartbreak of nancy ghosting him when she was supposed to come visit

so the trio goes off on an adventure without anyone noticing.......... or so they think

because brenner is back, and he knows el is with the byers, but he cant go and snatch her because he doesnt have the resources all the way in california

in fact, he doesnt have the resources at all. his numbers experiment is seen as a catastrophic failure that lead to the deaths of hundreds of lab employees

the only way for him to redeem himself in the community, and gain his funding back is to present his peers with proof that the project can work, so he needs to get one of his numbers back

el is the only one he can track down, but he doesnt think he can do it himself. if she saw him, she could just kill him with her powers, he assumes because he doesnt know she lost them

so who does he employ to get el back to hawkins? lonnie byers

its almost too easy. it doesnt take much to bribe lonnie, and hey, its not like its his kid. so lonnie accepts the bribe, and goes all the way out to california to find el

he shows up at the byers house..... only to find it completely deserted. so he waits

and the trio finds him there after their day out (why are you here? what do you want? where are mom and jonathan?)

and lonnie, being as crafty as he is, comes up with a good excuse on the fly (hes craftier than i am because i genuinely have no idea what he would say)

anyway, he gets them in his car and on their way back to hawkins

jonathan shows up after theyve already left, and is too stoned tired to think anything of the empty house

and joyce is already halfway to russia

will knows his father. he knows that his father doesnt give a shit about him, the family, or anything about hawkins. he knows that his father wouldnt get involved in anything unless he had something to gain. so hes wraking his brain

maybe.... lonnie pulls over to take a suspicious phone call? maybe will figures out an inconsistency in his story? either way, the gang is onto lonnie and figures that they gotta get away from him and get back to joyce and jonathan

they tuck and roll out of the car. idk. all that matters is that they get out of there

as theyre rolling out of the car, el bonks her head a little and has a quick flashback to her time in the lab

since her intuition is always spot on, she takes this as a cue the breener is back and lonnie is working for him

she tells the boys it isnt safe to go back to california or hawkins, so they come up w an alternative plan, somewhere neither brenner nor lonnie would think to look for them

and while theyre on the road, they stop at a diner to eat (dont ask me where they got the money) and we get will leaving an emotional voicemail home, probably sobbing to jonathan about how much he means to will, which gives el an idea

because who has the resources to help her, as well as a desire for vengeance on brenner? kali

el uses her superb hitchiking skills to get them to chicago

maybe she just has some hints of her powers left, but it isnt too hard for el to find kali

she explains everything thats happened, and lets kali know that if she want revenge, the opportunity is hers

unfortunately, lonnie was hot on their trail, and called for reinforcements

theyre ambushed by the few employees brenner has working for him. initially, everyone is hiding, assisted by kali’s powers

but el knows they arent leaving empty handed, and would rather get taken away then have kali’s freedom taken from her

so el reveals herself, followed by mike because he wont leave her, followed by will because he wont leave mike

all three get taken away, back to hawkins lab, but now kali is even more motivated to bring down the lab once and for all

so kali and her gang get to hawkins, almost simultaniously with jonathan, who has been looking for his family in a frenzy since the morning he woke up to find eveyone gone, without even a note or a phone call, as well as argyle, who came along for the ride

the video store is being used as home base this season, so thats the first place they go, where they find steve, shortstaffed and not knowing whats going on because the whole team ditched him

they catch him up to speed on how EVERYONES GONE and steve catches them up to speed on how EVERYONE IS GETTING MURDERED

meanwhile, brenner has three predicaments

1) no matter what he does to el, what kind of torture he inflicts, she isnt using her powers because she doesnt have them. she tells him this several times. he refuses to believe it

2) lonnie byers is demanding his payment, which he didnt recieve because the deal was that he bring el to them, and he couldnt even do that

3) he has to find a way to dispose of mike and will, who he had no intention of bringing into the lab but theyre here and they know everything

and this is the moment where mike screws up by letting them know that people know theyre in the lab and people know about all the experiments and any second now, someones gonna come banging that door down to save us. nancy, jonathan, steve, robin max, lucas, dustin, kali-

and the second mike says her name he knows he screwed up

brenner decides in that moment that all he can do is round up everyone involved and get rid of them. conveniently, the string of murders occurring will serve as a good cover for what happened to them

and this is the part where joyce, murray, and hopper get back to hawkins

this is also the part where nancy and robin and the gang get back to hawkins

so nancy and robin immediately go to the video store armed with all the new information they learned from victor creel

..... and are met with jonathan, argyle, kali, and steve in pandemonium

they close the store for the day, and get ready to storm the lab

they realize that they need something from the school, so they head there to pick it up

and soon after arriving, theyre met with the all to familiar hawkins lab vans

they make a hasty escape, taking out some of the goons but they need to find a way to get the rest off their trail

they head for the woods, hoping to hide out in the cabin

meanwhile, the russia crew has taken the mostly demolished cabin as their haven to recover from whatever injuries they sustained

theyre all running through the woods, but they realize the people from the lab are closing in on them

and then nancy and jonathan pass a very familiar tree

they use whatever weapon they have on them to break through the bark, and head into the upside down

the lab people keep going into the woods, eventually finding hopper’s cabin

epic showdown between the russia crew and the lab people, joyce, murray and hopper win, they realize the lab is back, immediately head there realizing theyre gonna have to rescue someone

nancy and robin use the info they learned from victor creel to keep the gang alive in the upside down, max, argyle and eddie are freaking out because omg we’re in another dimention, we get some big reveal about the truth about the upside down and the gang makes their way out and head to the lab

and while this is all happening,we get some super emotional monologue between brenner and el (ala-the last 10 minutes of the truman show) and brenner realizes that el isnt going to be the naieve superweapn she used to be, and decides the best thing he can do with el is give her the standard punishment, time in the closet

and being in the closet triggers all sorts of flashbacks and emotions (mbb’s opportunity to show off her acting chops for an emmy)

joyce and hopper bust into the lab like they did in season 1, but this time they dont get caught

they decide to split up to cover more ground, and hopper finds el in the closet

and around the same time joyce finds mike and will and gets them out of there

here comes the REAL emotional performance

hopper sees her, we get a teary eyed “el!” “dad!”, and then hopper gets pulled away from el by lab workers

exactly the same way terry did

we’re watching this happen from el’s perspective, with a heart-wrenching “noooooooooo” from el, accompanied by cuts to every time el has had to be separated from someone she cares about (terry, the s1 ending, billy dying, her leaving kali in s2, saying goodbye to everyone on moving day, her being separated from mike and will when they got to the lab) accompanied by some terribly sad 80s song, then back to the present moment, she reaches her hand out and boom, the guards go flying. her powers are back

except she doesnt have control of them the way she did before, and now shes bringing the whole building down

her and hopper race to the the first floor, and meet joyce and the boys, they get out of the building at the very last second, and the whole thing collapses.

eventually they find the other group, the whole team is now together, they go and take down the big bad from the upside down, joyce almost KILLS lonnie

nancy and robin drop a huge bombshell that has to do with hawkins/the upside down, specifically pertaining to el, which they pieced together after talking to victor creel

we get a massive cliffhanger, season 5 starts like 10 minutes after the ending of season 4

#stranger things #yes i know half the stuff i said is going to be wrong #it would be really cool if it was tho #stranger things theory

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bnha-butterfly · 4 years

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Okay, one question: Where are the limits of Momo's quirk? I mean...theoretically she should be able to produce water, fire, grow a third arm or wings, horns,..., shouldn't she? And is she able to control the speed of production? Could she shoot a bullet out of her hand? And how detailed do you think she could make things? Could she make a book? With writing in it?

Sorry, I just need an output, you don't have to post this

I just had a shit day and need to think about something else and this is interesting so let’s talk about it! I also get to gush about one mf my fave MHA girls too!

Heres the wiki description of her quirk taken from Chapters 11 & 72 of the manga

Apart from living things, Momo has the potential to replicate virtually any object, no matter how complex or advanced its structure may be. She only requires to understand the atomic configuration of said object in order to reproduce it: she first imagines the necessary parts, followed by the materials, then the assembling process and, finally, the coating.[1] Momo's creations emerge from her body with a blue and pink glow and are otherwise no different from the regular objects they are based of, although she can customize the materials that form their composition, giving them whole new properties.

Momo doesn't necessarily have to completely dispense a creation from her body either, having the choice to materialize only half or more of its functional structure, while the rest remains within her person. This is useful for situations where she has to quickly maneuver said creation or herself around, or if both her hands are currently occupied with some other task.

Momo's body breaks down fat at a molecular level, which will then be re-used as material for her to shape into objects with her Quirk.[2] Because of this, a considerable ingestion of food is necessary for Creation to be effective.

Okay to address the first part! She could technically produce all those things except for the 3rd arm, and her production of the wings and horns wouldn’t be in the traditional sense of animal wings and horns (because she cant produce organic material and wings have bone and horns tend to be made out of keratin)

Water: the atomic structure of water isn’t something intricate and if your a chemistry addict you’ll probably know it. Water is also inorganic. So YES! She can make water

Fire: This one is a little more complicated cus fire in its elemental form doesn’t have an atomic structure (or any real structure?? Fire just kinda is??) But, technically she could make fuel ( paper, wood, anything flammable) and an accelerant (gasoline, ex) and assuming she can imagine the way the 2 atomic structures would interact she could create fuel coated in an accelerant (ex. a log covered in gasoline). But then she would also have to create something like a lighter or something to ignite the fire and this would have to be created independently of an accelerant coated fuel source. So the process would be 2 steps but could happen technically!

Wings, horns: She could make a mechanical version of these out of anything she wanted to, and she could have them appear right out of her skin because she doesn’t need to materialize an objects entire functional structure.

As for the speed of her production I assume that’s something she could train? The same way Bakugo was seen training his explosion output during the training camp? The larger objects take a lot out of her but I assume that she could potentially make several Large objects consecutively in an attempt to speed up her production?

Technically she couldn’t shoot a bullet out of her hand?? Unless she had the ability to simultaneously make a bullet and a gun and could perfectly imagine the bullet in the chamber of the gun and had at least half of the gun protruding from her hand?? I’m inconclusive on this point based on the info we have on her quirk at the moment.

Assuming that I’m right and she can make a log covered in gasoline by imagining the way the two atomic structures interact I guess she could make a book with writing? But I’d assume that this would take way longer than it would for her to make a blank book and an excessive amount of her concentration. She’d have to think of the way the paper and graphite interact on every single page for every single word.

I hope that helped???? I kinda just saw this in my ask box and knew I had to throw my thoughts in the ring for this. Momo has the potential to be not only the most versatile hero (search and rescue, natural disaster & combat) but also like the strongest hero in the show. I genuinely think that she’d be able to beat both Bakugou and Deku if she believed in her self a bit more. I also think that she’d learn a lot by helping power loader around the support shop because she’d get a better more intricate understanding of the assembly of items and the parts they’re made out of. If she gives up on being a hero she’d be an AMAZING support item maker

#Morpho has mail #anon #quirk analysis #momo yaoyozoru #this got out of hand #I just really love momo #and nobody talks about her and how powerful she is #morpho writes #morpho talks #anon: pal

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squeeneyart · 4 years

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Breathe in the Salt - Chapter Twelve

AO3

Beta reading by @thesnadger! Go read her things, like this time travel au!

Options are considered.

Tim has a rough time.

Shit. The lights were still on.

The small, illuminated window of the front door had stopped Martin in his tracks. Why had he come here? Certainly, talking to Jon about what had happened was something he should do, but that hadn’t been on his mind at all.

No, he knew the reason. He berated himself on Tim’s behalf.

Martin looked about, his eye catching the railing that blocked off the cliff. It was as good a spot as any for moping. He.made his way over to it and leaned his elbows on the flat top of the railing, careful to keep his eyes toward the dark horizon instead of the thrashing sea below.

Stupid. He had been lucky they were late workers. They’d unknowingly stopped him from throwing himself at some voice-stealing horror. What had he been thinking? That he would figure things out on his own? As if he could fix everything by running straight toward the danger and- and what?

Well, he certainly wouldn’t be doing anything that night. “Just be patient,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. “It’s gonna be fine.”

“Y’know, you’re taking this whole process a lot harder than I’d expected.”

Martin jumped, gripping the railing with white knuckles. Sasha walked up and leaned against the railing to his left, tilting her head to look at his face. He stammered out, “When-”

“I’d come out to grab something from the car and stretch my legs a bit. You didn’t hear me walk over?” She raised an eyebrow at his tense state.

“I… Yeah. No, I mean I didn’t hear you. Sorry.” His voice came out more raw than he’d expected, and he cleared his throat. “Would’ve appreciated more of a warning, though?”

She smirked. “Noted. Though I wasn’t exactly trying to sneak up on you. Sounds to me like you were talking a bit too loudly to yourself.”

“Oh.” Well, he supposed that was a reason to stop talking to himself outside the lighthouse as well. What a week for learning embarrassing things about himself.

“So, Martin. Were you just planning to run upstairs for a quick chat?”

Martin tried to respond, but she didn’t give him an opening. “Clearly you didn’t come up here to talk to us.” She looked out across the sea, letting her smile falter. “I respect how much you want to figure this all out, but Tim definitely won’t be happy.”

Martin flinched. “No, you’ve got it wrong. I hadn’t even been thinking about it when I walked back up here, and once I saw you all were still working, I figured I’d leave you be.” He paused, then added, “And Tim really doesn’t need to know I was out here. He’d just get the wrong impression.”

With a curt laugh, Sasha readjusted herself onto both elbows. “I suppose he doesn’t. I wouldn’t let this happen again, though, if I were you.” A moment passed as she stretched her fingers. “What brought you up here, then?”

“I mean- that’s sort of personal.” Martin leaned away to get a better look at her, but her expression was unreadable in the dim light.

“Unless you have reason to believe the lighthouse compelled you, I have to assume there was some other reason you wandered up here, especially with that newly-soaked jacket sleeve?”

He laughed nervously. “Oh! Oh, I just tripped on the way, and with all the puddles-”

She cut him off. “Please don’t try that with me. It wasn’t a terrible deflection, but if you think I’m going to take a ‘personal reasons’ defense for you returning to your dangerous place of work past sundown when we might not be here-”

He held his hands out in front of him defensively. “It’s not like that! I just needed some air, and-.”

“And then you came here after a rather nasty fall.” When she saw Martin’s bewildered expression, she tapped a finger to her temple.

Lifting his hand, Martin lightly touched his own forehead and found a slightly raised lump just under his bangs that stung with the contact.

Sasha sighed. “I don’t want half-truths, which you seem to enjoy giving. Just tell me what happened.” She crossed her arms. “I want to understand what’s going on, same as you, but if you don’t trust us, we can’t trust you to make safe decisions.”

Martin scoffed. “Sure, yeah, like you all make ‘safe’ decisions.”

For a minute or so, they stood in silence against the rail and looked across the water. Turned away from the lighthouse that peered over their shoulders, Sasha’s features were obscured. She seemed to be waiting patiently. He took the offered time to think.

She wouldn’t need to know all the particulars of why he’d left home. Getting defensive when she had no reason to suspect anything other than the very real weirdness of the night was just digging him into an unnecessary hole.

“I wanted to get some time out of the house for myself.” Yes, that should be enough for that bit. “When I got up top, I looked at the lighthouse without thinking and I blacked out. Maybe part of me thought I could figure things out by coming here, instead of sitting around doing nothing.”

He took in a shaky breath. “But I’m not trying anything tonight, obviously. I wasn’t thinking straight, that’s all.”

With this, some tension left her face. “I don’t doubt it considering the bump on your head, though coming here without thinking is concerning in and of itself. Did anything about tonight’s blackout seem different from what you’ve experienced recently?”

He nodded. “The vertigo, it usually just... happens. I look at the lighthouse, or down from its weird window, or sometimes just down the hill, and it hits like a brick. Tonight, though…” he swallowed, but the dryness made it an effort. “I saw something. A huge, black pit right behind me, like it was always there.”

There was a wobble to his voice, but if Sasha noticed, she didn’t react. “And when did the vertigo hit?”

“I’m not sure? It happened so fast, it was like the sky was pushing me into it. I think... it was when I finally looked down into the pit that the feeling came.” Martin twiddled his thumbs. “Then I came to, and the pit was gone.”

“Hm.” Sasha tapped on the railing and looked at him. “Has anything changed for you between this incident and the ones earlier this week?”

“No. I don’t think so.” The lie felt bad going down, but there was no helping it. “I was stressed about everything going on, I suppose. Thinking about upstairs.”

She seemed to accept this with a nod. “That could do it. Stress works well with a lot of phenomena. If you think of anything else, let us know. Tim has been trying to keep track of his experiences, but I think it’s hard for him to keep his thoughts straight about it.” Her brows crinkled with concern.

Martin frowned. “There was a moment on the stairs where he wasn’t doing well.”

She sighed. “Yeah, it’s been a rough week for him. Luckily, he’s not one to hide this sort of thing when he doesn’t have to.” That would’ve felt pointed if she didn’t seem so genuinely worried. “Not that he never does. Everyone has personal business. But he knows that right now it’s best to be up front about any issues, because it means we can try to solve the problem.’

She purposefully locked eyes with him. “You get that, right? We all want this to be settled so everyone can be okay, and that means honesty.”

She could tell he was hiding something. Or she was just throwing whatever at the wall just in case he was lying. Or she was just concerned about Tim and himself?

Shit, he wasn’t in a place to figure out what anyone was thinking. “I know. It’s important to have all of the facts. That’s why we’re waiting for the phone call, right?”

“Yep.” Sasha tucked some loose hair behind her ear. “Tim said he’d talked to you upstairs, about what the thing probably is.”

Martin huffed in frustration. “I know, but I’d still rather do something. He- they begged me to help. I know it was my own voice, but-”

Her hand landed gently on his shoulder. “But it felt like a person?”

Another hard swallow. “Yeah.”

Sasha tapped on the railing again, then looked back at her car. “I should go get the thing I came out here for. You should come inside, too, to tell the others what happened. Maybe they’ll have some insights.” She offered him a half smile, and as she turned more toward the light, Martin could see the bags under her eyes. “Honestly, it’ll be a welcome excuse for all of us to stop going over historical documents and our own bad handwriting.”

“Not super successful, then?”

She smiled with more than a hint of pain. “More like success is hard to track in these circumstances.”

Once Sasha had grabbed a file folder from her car, they walked back into the lighthouse. Martin kept his eyes down, unwilling to look at Tim or Jon for very different reasons.

“Look who showed up with some new info regarding magical nausea.” Sasha took a seat at the table next to Tim.

“Great!” Tim said, closing a binder with a decisive snap that made Martin’s head shoot up in surprise. “Love to learn more about terrifying phenomena that affect me in unpleasant ways-Oh, wow. That’s a nasty one you’ve got.”

Martin set his slightly damp jacket on the back of his chair and sat next to Jon without making eye contact. There was no chance Jon wasn’t connecting some dots about his reappearance, and even if Tim and Sasha weren’t present, Martin had no desire to discuss anything related to selkies for a long, long while.

“That’s certainly… something,” Jon said, once Martin had completed a more thorough retelling of his fall. “Does that sound anything like what you’ve experienced, Tim?”

Tim seemed to contemplate this. “I haven’t had it bad enough to pass out, and a big hole in the ground doesn’t ring a bell. It doesn’t feel wrong, though.”

“How so?” Sasha asked. She had her elbow on the table and leaned her head against a closed fist.

“I mean, when I’m walking up those stairs, it’s hard not to feel like you’re about to fall into something. That’s where vertigo usually happens, right? On the edge of a big drop, like the one outside.”

Jon looked up at Tim, then back down at his pad. “Yes, though it can also be caused by an issue of the inner ear, a cause we shouldn’t throw out just yet.”

Tim snorted. “My ears are fine, thank you very much.”

This earned him a pull on the ear lobe from Sasha. After he grunted with some dramatics, she said, “Yep, seems fine to me. I wonder, Martin, if the change was brought on by your time with Simon Fairchild. He also sort of ‘pushed’ you backwards, right?”

“Huh. Yeah, actually. It was a lot like that.” Of course it was. How had he not thought of that? “Sorry. I guess it’s hard to think about either of those experiences too much.”

Jon tapped his pen on the table, seeming to look for the right words. “That doesn’t explain why it didn’t happen until tonight, when you’d been on the stairs hours earlier. Considering Tim’s response, I would’ve expected yours to be worse as well.”

Martin made the mistake of looking up to see Jon’s concerned face. Yes, Jon had an idea of what had changed between then and now and was doing a terrible job at hiding it from the others. “Maybe it was frustration, then? When I went home, it was after hours of nothing happening. Maybe that made me look up longer than normal, and everything with me is fine.” Please, he begged, please stop looking as if you know something.

Before Jon could respond, Sasha said, “We could test it.”

Grateful as he was for the distraction, Martin stared at Sasha in confusion. “...How?”

“We go up the stairs and supervise. If things are the same as they were before tonight, then we have new knowledge about how this place works. If the pit reappears, we can dig further into why this seems to be your current condition.”

Tim spoke up with an unexpected edge to his words. “And when you say ‘go up the stairs’, you mean do that and come right back down, right?”

Sasha turned to him. “We could, but-”

Tim slumped in his chair, massaging his temples. “No. No, we talked about this, and it’s a bad idea.”

“It’s also a bad idea to wait until time is up.” She lowered her voice, reaching a hand out toward Tim’s shoulder. “Look, we’ll all be there, and we won’t spend too long talking to it. I promise.”

Tim swatted her hand away. “You agreed to wait for the phone call! It hasn’t even been 24 hours.”

“What if it doesn’t come? What if she never calls back, and we waste the rest of our time and end up returning to the Institute with nothing?”

With some irritation, Jon said, “There’s a change Elias will extend the project-”

“Oh, I don’t believe that for a second.” Sasha waved her hand dismissively. “If anything, his weird radio silence this whole week makes me think he has no intention to do so. Has he responded seriously to any of your update emails?”

Jon opened his mouth to speak, only to come up with nothing.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Nothing but ‘excellent’ and ‘thank you for the report’, if you receive a response at all. If we can’t find anything that doesn’t make our digging into the Lukases painfully obvious, we’re going to get pulled from this place, leaving us with no answers or solutions. I don’t think Martin would be very happy with that outcome. I definitely wouldn’t.”

Martin kept his mouth shut, not daring to enter the argument. His eyes flitted between the three researchers, a horrible emptiness filling his chest. So that was it. Unless Naomi gave them something to work with, or they figured out whatever was going on in the next day, that could be it. They would be gone, and he’d be on his own.

Tim glanced at Martin, his face layered with exhaustion and a sort of dread. “...Guys.”

Jon’s eyes were still trained on Sasha with uncertainty. “I don’t think we can make a call-”

“I think we can! We can ask it a few questions, alternate who asks something so it doesn’t get too much of anyone, then stop once we’ve got something we can use-”

Tim’s gaze lost focus, and he shot out of his chair. Before the other two could respond, he stumbled across the room and into the toilet, slamming the door behind him.

“Shit,” Sasha said under her breath, walking after him. She pressed an ear to the door, then grimaced. “Tim, are you okay?”

Jon sent him a brief, nervous look. “Just… give us a moment.” Jon pushed himself out of his chair and joined Sasha.

“Er.” Martin ran his thumb over his knuckles, eyeing the exit with increasing desperation. If Jon hadn’t said anything he would’ve quietly excused himself, but as things were, Martin remained glued to his chair.

The walls betrayed any attempt at whispering. “Tim.” Sasha knocked lightly on the door. “It’s okay. We won’t do anything tonight, I swear.”

She winced at something Martin couldn’t hear. “Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” she muttered, turning toward Martin. “Can you get some water?”

After about ten minutes, Tim stumbled out of the toilet, finished glass in hand. After looking at his chair, he elected to sit on the floor with his back against the wall.

He sighed, placing a hand over his eyes. “Don’t get how you’ve worked here for so long.”

Martin scratched his face. “It’s-”

“‘Good pay’, I know.” Tim dropped his hand and played with the empty glass, narrowing his eyes at Sasha and Jon. “God, stop hovering and get down here. Stop making me look up.” They did as they were told, Sasha with legs pulled to her chest and Jon with an elbow resting against his one upright knee.

Tim waved a lazy arm up at Martin, who had returned to the table. “You too. Everyone on the floor.”

“Oh. I, um, I really should get going, actually? It is a bit late, and-”

Tim’s glare was feeble at best. Still, Martin got the message and sat on the floor as well, crossing his legs in front of him with all the grace he could muster, which wasn’t much at this point.

Satisfied, Tim dragged a hand down his cheeks, pulling at the skin under his eyes. “Well, then. Martin. How are you feeling right now?”

Martin leaned back. “Excuse me?”

Tim rolled his eyes. “You came here after hallucinating a giant pit and hitting your head. How are you feeling?”

The sincerity of the question hit Martin like the pavement. “I’m… I’m fine? The bump only stings when I touch it, so...”

“Not quite what I meant. It’s been a weird week. I’m wondering how you’re doing, considering all this.” He gestured the glass toward the general surroundings.

“I-” Martin looked to the others, but all he got were similar questioning looks. At least they weren’t holding up pens and notebooks, and they didn’t have a look of scientific interest. They just... wanted to know how he was doing. “Okay, yeah, it has been a weird week. Whatever is going on, the dizziness is way worse than it used to be, and I don’t know if it’s from us snooping around, or unusual amounts of stress, or something else entirely, but it’s not great.”

To his right, Jon grimaced and pulled his upright leg closer to himself. “I apologize. We’ve been relying on you for much of our investigation, but I hadn’t checked to see if you were all right with it all.”

Martin shook his head. “I wanted to help. It was my own decision to be involved like I have been. It’s my job to keep track of how I’m doing.”

Sasha exhaled through her nose. “True, but we could’ve been more upfront about the methods and risks.” Sasha twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “You’ve been helpful to us, and we’re thankful, but that doesn’t excuse ignoring the effects our work could be having on you. It’s a lot to deal with if you’re not prepared.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Martin chuckled. “This is your job, though. How the hell do you deal with it?”

Tim snorted. “Apparently I haven’t been. This past week has knocked me right on my arse.”

Jon frowned. “It’s not always like this. For the most part, we just stay at the Institute, taking new statements and praying we can find a rational place to store them in the ancient filing system. Which we’re still dealing with despite working on it for two years now.”

“God, please no, not the filing system again,” Tim groaned, unable to hide a smirk.

Jon soldiered on, bitterness dripping from his voice. “It’s an absolute mess. Statements are dated, but nothing is organized by date! We’ve only just started to have a usable database, and by the time we enter everything into it, we’ll be haunting the place ourselves.”

“So, to answer your question, we deal with it by doing paperwork and complaining,” Sasha said with a fake brightness. Her shoulders slumped. “I know it’s been rough, but this is the part of the job I live for.”

“Normally I’d agree, if I wasn’t being terrorized by literal hostile architecture.” Tim landed hard on his t’s, jaw clenched. Then, he relaxed and shrugged at Martin. “Otherwise, yeah, field work is great. Get to see new places, and most of the time it’s just a nice trip out of the city.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “I do wish we had a better vetting process for these things. I understand the budget currently allows for field trips, but I’d rather not be sent out for pranks and tricks of the light. And, well-”

“It could stop you from being an arse every time Elias sends us off?” This earned Tim an annoyed scowl.

Jon stammered out, “That is not fair-”

“And that’s enough of that, I think.” Sasha stretched out her legs. “We’ve all learned a lesson and made friends.”

“If Martin hasn’t decided to delete my number the moment this is taken care of,” Tim said with a wide grin. “Wouldn’t blame you, mind.”

Martin raised his eyebrows, heat rushing to his ears. “Hey, I’m not-”

Tim waggled a finger. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret. I’m a very avid texter.”

“I’m- it’s not-” Martin took a quick breath to gather himself. “It’s been nice, actually, having you all here. Even if it’s ended in me banging my head against a curb.”

Jon cleared his throat. “Though that is a… nice sentiment? We do still have tomorrow. And though Sasha thinks it to be unlikely, I’m still expecting an extension, especially after your incident earlier.” He nodded as if reassuring himself. “Yes, I think it will be fine.”

“Just don’t go falling over again,” Tim said, pointing a firm finger in Martin’s direction. “I for one plan on keeping my eyes shut the whole walk to the hotel, forcing Jon and Sasha to lead me away from potential danger.”

Ignoring a dirty look from Jon, Tim’s face softened. “Just take it slow on the way home. Maybe take one of us with you in case the hill ends up being a lot. I’d go myself, but it might end with both of us tumbling into a bear.”

Martin laughed. “I don’t think we have- Anyway, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“You did say something about the hill giving you trouble,” Sasha said. “Jon knows where you live, right? He can make sure you get back fine, and I’ll stop Tim from tripping into a bin.”

“Yes, that’s good thinking,” Jon said, using the table to pull himself to his feet.

Oh no. “Um-”

“It was our fault for not checking in with you.” Jon offered a hand to Martin. “The least we can do is make sure nothing else happens tonight.”

The walk was terribly long. He was already feeling much better. Jon would have to walk all the way back afterwards. Really, he’d be-

“All right…” Martin grabbed Jon’s hand, accepting the help. “Only if you’re okay with it.”

#tma #the magnus archives #breathe in the salt #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #sasha james #timothy stoker #peter lukas #fanfic #au fanfic #selkie au #jonmartin

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semiconducting · 3 years

Text

just reflecting on some personal growth stuff from last year !

im actually. genuinely okay. like i think im starting this year feeling okay! which is atypical.

i think i can attribute it to the enormous amount of work id put into myself over the past year...i remember one year ago being extraordinarily depressed and really just. high strung? incredibly anxious but exhausted. and i fell down a descent slowly from not eating, to getting really irritable and not handling conflicts with friends well, to actively self harming again, to the point where i remembered sitting in a coffee shop with one of my friends and saying out loud that i need to go to therapy. and that i was going to talk to a mutual friend of ours about how the therapy services on campus are. which was a huge step for me! ive always had trust issues with therapy services since i was 12 for reasons i wont go into, but im sure you can gather the point of.

and then, literally the next day after saying that, got news about campus shutting down because of the virus.

and i made all of the effort possible to reach out to my friends and get things figured out to weather the storm because i KNEW shit was going to get bad if i didnt. but only one of my friends was really keeping up, and thats because he and i do homework together so we were already in a rhythm of talking every single week no matter what. and thats not to say that im ungrateful for him or the fact that even still he was there for me while i was going through hell, i have this thing about Not Putting All My Problems On And Confiding In One Person And One Person Only. so i withdrew, i stopped talking to everyone, i stopped logging into my classes, i didnt do any homework, i didnt lead my workshops, didnt hold office hours...i was just wallowing in my own misery

and i made plans to kill myself. and thats like, i mean i could say that several dozen times over the course of a year since i was like 12, but i mean a legitimate walkthrough plan. had my hiking bag packed with everything i was going to use, decided where i was going to, and was going to prep myself for it. wrote drafts and drafts of suicide notes until i decided just leaving the contact info of people who needed to know asap was all i was going to leave. in addition to sticky notes on some stuff in my room for what needed to be returned to who, or if something should go to someone in particular...

and i acted as normally as i could around my housemates. attributed my not leaving my room much to being busy with classes. i have a rule to myself to always sleep at least one night before killing myself because if im really serious about going through with it it can always wait one day. this time i decided i was going to clean my room and leave it as pristine as possible. the last thing i had to do was a load of laundry, and then i was going to do it.

and then someone from campus showed up at my door. because one of my professors filed a report and i hadnt responded to any of the emails id received checking in on me.

so i readjusted. caught up on my schoolwork, just barely finished the semester and definitely didnt do it strong or well (god bless the pass/fail option bc of covid LOL), but i did it nonetheless. went home, started my internship, had a miserably mundane summer.

i grew bitter and apathetic. i was angry at my friends for not being responsive when i reached out to them to talk or hang out or do anything. i got tired of dealing with it. i was tired of feeling alone and like no one gave a shit about me except for when it was convenient for them. i decided that i wasnt going to deal with people who werent willing to put any effort into me, so i stopped talking to everyone and kept up with people who were willing to reach out after the fact.

it’s definitely not the best approach. it’s really unforgiving and it doesn’t give people a lot of benefit of the doubt, but i think it was necessary in some respect. i didn’t have any criteria for how people needed to reach out, or how long after, or whatever, just that they did. really needed people in my life who are willing to communicate with me. i was honest with how i was feeling and why i did things if they did, apologized for the shitty approach, thanked them for still being willing to talk to me, and worked out the best way for both of us to keep things going.

over the months i dont think i really regret the decision, because it’s been a weight off my shoulders. i feel a lot better. i’m far more okay with where i stand in all of my friends’ lives, even if that’s not as a priority and even if that’s as just someone to talk to and catch up with like a couple times a year. it took a bit for it to pay off but it’s nice to take a look at people i was putting far too much work into and upon reflection realizing that they only interacted with me when they needed something from me, and not for me as a person. i think there are still people where there are loose ends and i think i may try reaching out myself to tie those up at some point, whenever i have the energy and clarity of mind for it. but i guess at the end of the day i just decided that people who weren’t willing to communicate weren’t worth the time. i’m okay if that communication means i need to be the one to initiate conversations even! i just need to know that.

but yeah. i came back to ny and started the semester totally apathetic and angry. i was so fucking depressed and bored with everything even if i was keeping myself incredibly busy. the only thing that i found rewarding (and what was just barely keeping me going) was leading my workshop for the intro optics class.

and then a friend -- the same friend i was at the coffee shop with -- reached out to catch up. and i was honestly really bitter and angry with him and was prepping myself to start listing out issues that i hadnt been able to address with him beforehand (side note, while telling friends the issues you have with them is important, listing shit out all at once is hardly ever a good approach especially without warning LOL) but ended up...just having a calming and comfortable conversation about what was going on in our lives since we last saw each other.

n later that day i ended up reaching out to an old friend that i had been meaning to catch up with because we fell out of contact, but had just barely been trying to start talking again in the months before this but had kept missing opportunities to properly converse. but we talked again, and we set up a day to hike and catch up.

and he comes to my house and picks me up. and i get in his car. and its like, holy shit, its been almost a year since ive seen you. and we hugged. and just started to catch each other up on the mess that had been our lives since we’d actively been in contact. we hiked, he told me about the books he wanted to write, we talked about people we knew, we talked about politics, we talked about school, we talked about life, and it was just as comfortable as if not a day had passed...even though it was obvious that he and i were both changed people over the past year. nothing about our friendship was any different though.

we resolved to hanging out with each other every week. decided we both needed the interaction, appreciated having each other around, and had a nice overlap of free time in the week that worked well. friday nights unless otherwise specified.

it was totally unexpected. he’d always been a great friend to me, but i never expected us to get as close as we did. neither did he. he’s probably the first person in my life (or at least in a very long time, and certainly the only person at the time) that i’d been so comfortable with that i practically had no boundaries around. none that needed to be addressed, anyway, because the only possible ones to throw up wouldn’t even come up (but of course, i constantly reassured that as soon as anything came up i would let him know because early on he kept asking sjhdkjfh).

he became something for me to look forward to in the week. towards the beginning he was a shoulder to lean on when i needed it and was willing to listen to things i hadn’t been able to tell anyone out loud. and he confided in me as well. it was comfortable. it was safe. it was a level of trust with vulnerability that i’d never shown anyone else.

but it wasnt even just that! it was fun! hes so fun. we could talk about everything and nothing, and hes one of the only people where i feel like i have to keep up with him in conversation instead of the other way around. we’d jump from topic to topic so much faster than either of us could think and it was all always so interesting. littered with humour that was just dumb and simple. i felt comfortable just being an idiot with him. i felt like i had nothing to prove.

for the past few years ive held to the sentiment that i like to hang around with people that make me a better person. but somehow, with him, its not that i felt like he made me a better person, but that he made me more myself. he saw who i was without any kind of fronts. and i always was afraid to show anyone that me because i always assumed that they would be depressing, loathsome, bitter, angry, and vicious.

but....i’m not. i learned that i’m incredibly loving. that i’d do fuckin anything to for my friends, but always in a way that was healthy and rewarding for both of us. i’m very light-hearted and my sense of humour is so stupid, but also very analytical and thoughtful. just a bit judgmental and pretentious, but always for things that people dont expect. totally open minded in discussions. an avid explorer, and a bit of a thrillseeker. and so, so, so affectionate.

i realized im. not as horrible as ive always made myself out to be. i accepted that i didnt need to punish myself for things beyond my control. i realized that i could believe people when they tell me that they enjoy my company, or appreciate things i do for them, or that they think i’m a worthwhile person to keep around.

its not that i dont have my flaws, its not that there arent things that i have to work on still. but maybe, at my core, i’m not actually motivated by spite, i’m not actually a hopeless pessimist, and that i’m not...broken. i’m not some secretly irredeemable monster.

and for a period of time i’ve been in a place where i could say i was genuinely...happy! and i don’t think i’ve ever been able to say that. i’ve certainly been made happy by doing things with friends in the past, i’ve been through periods where i’ve been okay with where i am at in life, but ever since i was like 12 (but probably even before that) i’d never been able to say that i was happy. it’s not that i wasn’t stressed, it’s not that things in my life were all going perfectly....but they didn’t define my mood. they didn’t define my view of myself. school, despite being the primary focus of my life, wasn’t dictating how i was feeling. even when things were agonizing and depressing because of school, i was still okay. i was incredibly stable.

and i owe that all to him being there for me. and hardly any of these things were anything that he was really directly responsible for, like its not that he sat there and just constantly showered me in reassurance and praise or anything that changed how i view myself...it was just having his company. it was just being able to sit there and listen to him go on about some totally random thing that he was exceptionally knowledgeable about. it was exploring caves and climbing hills. it was cooking together. it was talking about science. it was talking about love. it was talking about music. it was just having a consistent presence in my life, someone that treated me like a priority but never at the expense of himself, and someone i didn’t have to walk on any kind of eggshells around. it was someone who trusted me and respected me not by anything id done to warrant it, but just because of who i was.

it was a reminder that i can take care of my own problems, that i just need to be a good presence in someone’s life and for them to be a good presence in mine.

but also that i can accept help from people who genuinely want to offer it! and that that help doesnt always have to be direct. that sometimes helping me means i get to do something nice for someone else LOL

it was everything i ever needed and i wasnt even looking for it. he meant the world to me and i was so, so thankful for the circumstances that led us here because i was so happy to have him in my life again. i was happy that we were able to get closer because we’d only been able to interact in professional environments before.

and then i realized i was in love. and i had a sexuality crisis. but i didn’t recognize it until i fell hard because it was a different kind of love than i’ve felt for anyone before. it was intense but entirely too comfortable. but i knew that i cared about him, and that he cared about me, and that i really didn’t need anything about our friendship to change but that it had potential to be something even greater than it was.

and i resolved to tell him about it...until he told me first. and that moment was, as cheesey as it sounds, nothing less than magical. we were both so happy and giggly and it was so sweet and warm and i dont know if im ever going to be able to recreate that feeling because it was just so particular, so specific to being something between me and him. its not that i cant love anyone else as strongly or be as happy as i was necessarily, but it’ll never be that same kind of feeling.

but things happened. things got complicated. i think he panicked. and then things that happened just felt so dirty and hollow and dark. he hurt me really, really, really badly, and it managed to happen in the span of four days.

and i’ve spent the last <2 weeks dealing with it. i think he’s dealing with it in his own ways, but realistically i don’t know how because i havent seen him since christmas eve, and we were both definitely not being completely genuine that day. was at his house for a small family party and he and i were the only ones who knew what happened. it was too soon to have healed from it any, but we couldnt exactly be honest about it then either.

and im doing better. im genuinely okay now. and, interestingly, i think i owe it to the past few months of hanging out with him and how ive been able to come to terms with a lot of things about myself. ive been able to show myself compassion. its really ironic.

its a situation where i was desperately trying to throw blame onto myself for, because if i could then i could punish myself for it and use it to fuel that deep rooted self hatred and then i could fix it, because i’d be the one responsible for fixing it. but, and i’ve talked to quite a few friends about it trying to figure out who to confide in about it, everyone who knows about it insists that i cant blame myself for it. theres not a thing about the situation that i can blame myself for. and its so fucking weird, because i cant bring myself to fully blame him for it either, just because it was so ABSURDLY out of character that it doesnt feel like it was anything he could have done to me. it was a boundary that i wasnt ever supposed to worry about him crossing, because he’s just not that kind of person.

and it’s the type of situation that you’re supposed to totally be willing to cut someone off for but...i can’t. he’s genuinely remorseful and i think he doesn’t really know how to deal with it either. and despite it being a massive fuck up its still like...the first fuck up in our friendship from either of us. and i’m willing to see this through. i think it’s salvageable, even if it’ll never be the same as it was. i have faith in our friendship. i think we can make it work.

but no matter what happens. i owe him more than i’ll ever be able to repay him for. and i’ll never, ever be able to hate him because of that. i’m in a much, much better place because of him and for that i’ll always be thankful.

#shut up mega #this ended up being longer and more in depth abt the earlier half of the year than i meant it LOL #a summary of my 2020 i spose #also there's some kinda detailed talk of #suicide ment -#self harm ment -#IM CRYING AFTER WRITING THIS OUT LMAOOOO

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butterflydm · 5 years

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The Untamed Rewatch (ep 10)

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There's a lot of plot movement in this episode! Plus not one, not two, but THREE of WWX's antagonist parallels feature in it, in addition to the partnership parallel of SongXiao. Very exciting for me. ❤️

Xue Yang is revealed on a roof. There are… there are a lot of important roof moments in CQL. I also just straight-up love the composition of this shot, it has a lot of depth. There's Xue Yang on the roof, the hanging bodies in bright red under him, then Lan Zhan and Wei Ying in the foreground.

So… Xue Yang is a terrible person but a really great character. Here, though… ah. The man in black waits on a roof, standing elevated over the bodies of his victims and ready to challenge the people who are here to call him to task for his crimes, then a hero dressed all in white flies in to challenge him. From the point of view of the cultivation world, that's the story that started to (was supposed to) happen during the fight in eps 31-32.

Xue Yang and Wei Wuxian are only superficially alike. Their hearts are very different. But that's one of the themes that I enjoy — how differently things look when you only see them from the outside. Visually and on the surface, WWX & LWJ match up to either Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen or Song Zichen and Xiao Xingchen. But once you scratch the surface, it becomes more clear that WWX's heart is nothing like Xue Yang's.

I love that WWX wants to stand back and observe before acting, here. Contrary to what might be assumed about his impulsive nature, he's very perceptive and strategic, and it's enjoyable to watch that here. He acts to level the playing field, then stays out of the fight to assess the fighters and when he does act, it's very calculated. This is one of the things that makes him a good teacher way later on, I think.

I also like that we see Xue Yang appreciates WWX's skills and more whimsical approach to things. So, one of the things that separates WWX from Xue Yang is that WWX has a sense of perspective and proportion (...actually, now that I think about it, this is also one of the things that separates WWX from MY/JGY, though in a different way). Like, one of the reasons XY is fun to watch is that he's generally always having a good time even in situations when it's extremely inappropriate. Whereas that may be what LWJ thought about WWX when he first met him, but he realized there are things (moral and ethical things) that WWX is quite serious about and doesn't joke over.

I also love the mutual admiration society that goes on after Xue Yang is captured, and Xiao Xingchen says nice things about our kiddos and then Lan Wangji turns it around and says nice things about him back. It's polite but it's also very sweet.

Xue Yang laughing over the hypocrisy of the honored cultivators — another WWX/Yiling Patriarch parallel moment there.

We also get another early moment of Lan Zhan currently refusing to do a thing that he will do with all his heart in the future, which is hold Suibian for WWX.

And then we get more detective work from WWX & LWJ — searching Xue Yang, realizing that the evidence no longer points to Xue Yang still having the Yin Metal, WWX working through his thoughts about it out loud. I really do love the partnership vibe.

I also have feelings about Jiang Cheng on one side of WWX, LWJ on the other side. They're in pale blue outer robes of slightly different shades, but the color underneath is very different and matches their clan. The color choices for the clothes on this show feel very deliberate, so while I might read the wrong things into it, I don't think I'm wrong for reading into it at all.

Xue Yang and WWX's outfits are so similar. Really, the main differences are WWX having red accents and Xue Yang having gold ones. But the main colors and silhouettes just… yes. The conversation here, about personal vs the wider picture, is a reoccuring theme as well. Because those things are hard to separate — the personal grudges affect the world as a whole when people with power are the ones with the grudges (again, a theme that will come up with JGY). Xue Yang doesn't have political power, but he has a skill and knowledge set that are useful to people in power, so he has more freedom to do terrible things and get away with it than something without those skills and knowledge would.

Meng Yao and Nie Huaisang are here!

I do love this for Nie Huaisang's characterization — he was hesitant to come when it was just him and just a few young cultivators his own age, but once he has some serious backup, he immediately came to help. He does want to be helpful but he knows his own strengths.

We get the second mention here of Nie Mingjue being known for being forthright and honest with his judgements (Lan Xichen had mentioned it previously). It's something he's widely known for, it seems.

...I hadn't remembered that Wei Wuxian had said his bit about himself and Lan Zhan working together out of like-mindedness in front of Nie Huaisang and Meng Yao. I remembered Jiang Cheng, of course, but I hadn't remembered the other plot-important people who heard that said. The show really does set up this specific dynamic where the people who are involved in the main plot are all very aware that there's a special bond between WWX and LWJ. And Jiang Cheng's reaction is also in front of Meng Yao — I'm sure that he remembered this moment in the future, when he was poking at Jiang Cheng's ego-related issues about WWX. Because just like he did in front of Nie Huaisang in the earlier episode, here WWX separates himself out with Lan Wangji specifically, excluding everyone else from their partnership.

I love this lovely moment of validation that WWX gets from XXC, where XXC says that Baoshan would be happy to know him if she had the chance to meet him. And, again, I love that the person connected to WWX is the LWJ parallel. This is one of the moments when CQL just feels like a show that… even though many sad or terrible things happen in the story… the show wants to give these characters moments of kindness and absolution. It just feels very… affectionate. The show feels like it was made with real, genuine love and sympathy for the characters. That's one of the things that I like best about it, honestly. It feels tender, even in the hard parts. It wants to be kind.

Nie Huaisang really does admire regal gentleman. He was all admiring over LWJ, and now he's the same over XXC and Song Zichen. And I also absolutely love how much this meeting affects both WWX and LWJ. WWX is the talker, so he gets the lines about how he wants to have that kind of life, but we can tell LWJ is just as deeply affected by how he watches them leave. And I assume the show already knew it couldn't actually show WWX and LWJ as full-on cultivation partners in the end, so they used this as a way of showing us that this is the path (being partners together) that they're both starting to desire, and they trust us to do the math at the end of episode 50.

Meng Yao is the one who passes along the information about the Wen Clan demanding every great clan to send at least one 'direct disciple' (important? full-fledged? family? I'm not certain of what it means exactly, though Nie Huaisang says he's the only one for the Nie clan, so family seems likely) for training. I love how WWX immediately takes this opportunity to say nice things about the Lans. He whined when he was there, but now that he's not in Gusu anymore, he's already nostalgic over it. Oh, honey.

So, Meng Yao must already be formulating his plan to… hmm, go undercover? Play both sides? He's always looking for opportunities to advance himself. I feel like we can safely assume that. He's already been rejected by his father and is probably trying to think of ways to prove himself in order to get the public recognition that he wants. Those are the assumptions I'm currently making.

WWX is so thrilled to addressed directly by NMJ, wow! Look at that smile. Then NMJ says nice things about him and Jiang Cheng, and WWX is just over the moon. Cute, cute, cute! Meanwhile, NMJ addresses LWJ just as 'Wangji' like LXC does, so they know each other a lot better. Yeah, unless I get contradictory info, I am on the 'NMJ went to the Cloud Recesses and he and LXC became good friends and this is part of why LXC thought to suggest a similar idea to his brother' train of thought.

Then we have the sentencing of Xue Yang. It's interesting that we see both WWX and Meng Yao react similarly to Nie Mingjue wanting to immediately kill Xue Yang, though I'm not sure if Meng Yao would have spoken up if WWX hadn't — he might not consider his position secure enough to do that. Once WWX makes the initial argument, Meng Yao backs him up, but, yeah. I'm not sure if he would have made the initial argument himself.

Ah, it makes me quite sad, honestly, to see Nie Huaisang, Wie Wuxian, and Jiang Cheng being so admiring of Meng Yao's arguments. Because Meng Yao really did screw himself over. He was talented and smart and capable of winning admiration from others, but he was so focused on what he didn't have that he couldn't see what he'd already achieved. He threw away a good position with a good family in hopes of winning recognition from someone who didn't even deserve an ounce of admiration.

But I do… understand why he felt like it wasn't enough? Because even though he had won admiration from strong cultivators, many people still looked down on him for being a "prostitute's son" and he didn't have enough power to make that stop (as we see in the next scene). And I do think that's… I mean, that's what it was about for him (I mean, that and his incredible ability to hold onto a grudge no matter what. that's also a factor). Just trying to get enough power and enough reputation to make the whispers stop. And there's never enough power for that. No matter how much power he amassed, it would never be enough. Becoming the actual leader of the entire cultivation world still didn't give him the power to make people not judge him for his parentage, and he wasn't, for whatever reason, capable of being like LWJ or WWX and saying 'screw reputation, I want to do what's right'. And so he trapped himself into a doomed cycle that elevated him up higher and higher but then inevitably led to his own destruction. A tragedy, yes, but one built by his own hands.

Still, you know, I watch that scene with Meng Yao and the guard captain and I'm like. okay, yeah. I get why he killed the guy and tried to frame him for Xue Yang's escape. It was awful and he shouldn't have, but I understand the motivations. Just having to be polite and give out a customer-service smile, over and over, to people who are disrespecting you (and your mom)… it's exhausting and soul-killing.

Hmm, when WWX first crosses over to stand next to LWJ, the timing felt a little random, but then I realized it's connected to the whole thing he's been stressing since the Yin Metal trip started.

He sees himself and LWJ as the partners on this, and everyone else is a little bit on the outside.

I like Nie Mingjue's facial hair — it does a good job, I think, of displacing him forward in time compared to the rest of the cast, and making them all seem like agemates compared to the slightly older NMJ. I like his whole character design, tbh.

Oh my god! WWX suggests here turning a piece of Yin Metal into a weapon. Which is. Exactly what he does later on. He literally suggests right here the thing that he does later on that wins the war. Huh.

Another important rooftop scene — WWX goes to sleep on the roof over LWJ's quarters, instead of sleeping in an actual bed. These ridiculous boys with their ridiculous crushes, I swear. And LWJ is already falling hopelessly in love with him. My heart overflows. They are so incredibly, ridiculously romantic and I will never recover emotionally.

I like the confrontation between Wen Chao and Nie Mingjue. There's a lot of tension in the scene. In terms of the antagonist characters, Wen Chao isn't my favorite but he is very sharply defined and I feel like I get a good sense of who he is as a person. And we get the introduction of Wen Zhuliu here, as someone who can go toe-to-toe with this Sect Leader that our protagonist characters are all impressed by and respectful towards. So that setup works for me really well. And it's very telling of Wen Chao again as someone who talks big but likes to send in other people to fight his battles for him.

Most of the Wen sect wear black and red in equal amounts, while Wen Zhuliu is mostly black with just a hint of red accents… like WWX does in this episode. I've talked about this character comparison briefly, I think, and it'll come back later but — Wen Zhuliu plays the second fiddle to the direct son of the sect leader, despite being clearly far more powerful a cultivator, but he believes he owes a debt to the family for taking him in so he suppresses his own potential ambition or choices for the sake of the sect. Now, this is not what WWX does, but it's the situation that WWX is in, or very similar. But WWX chooses to act against the interests or orders of his sect when it conflicts with his ethics.

And I note — in this time of crisis, WWX instinctively gives Jiang Cheng an order and it's followed. And WWX is his head discipline, it makes sense! But that's also a habit that can be hard to transition out of once Jiang Cheng becomes Sect Leader in the future. Like, even if everything with the Wens hadn't shaken out this way, they still might have come into conflict due to WWX being a natural leader.

The mess of Meng Yao getting caught killing the guards and trying to lie his way out of it, then throwing himself in front of Wen Zhuliu's sword, then WWX challenging Wen Chao and everyone hearing that his brother, Wen Xu, is off to destroy the Cloud Recesses… it is a lot, though the pacing of the scene works for me. It's just that a lot of things are piling over and over on the characters (oh, and we get Meng Yao noticing and being concerned about Lan Xichen after he hears about Gusu).

Hmm, so the final scene with Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue. It does… ah, echo for me with how Meng Yao ultimately dies, with regards to how he acts with Lan Xichen in their final scene. Here, he tells Nie Mingjue that meeting him means he has no regrets. At the end, he will tell Lan Xichen that LXC being willing to die for him is 'enough'. In both cases, there's a sense of… Meng Yao knows there's a good chance he might actually die here, so I feel like he's doing his best make to try to make it so that at least this person will carry him with them the rest of their life, that he will impact them by his death. Which ties into his deep, deep desire to matter. Nie Mingjue dismisses it as — the viki translation says 'this little vanity' — but. I mean, it's easy for a sect leader to dismiss someone else's desire to be seen as important? Nie Mingjue has never been unimportant a day in his life. This doesn't excuse Meng Yao's actions, of course, but, I do think dismissing something that is clearly the cornerstone of someone's life doesn't lead to understanding. And Nie Mingjue does want to understand why, but I think his and Meng Yao's lives are just so different that the gap was just too wide to bridge with the tools that he had at his disposal.

I do think that both Nie Mingjue and Meng Yao are clearly emotionally marked by this confrontation/breakdown of their previous relationship. I didn't know either of the characters very well in my first viewing, so I'm just… I'm a lot more emotional about this scene now than I was the first time.

Next time: Lotus Pier! Excited to be seeing it again for the first time in the rewatch. And all the painful/fascinating family dynamics.

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#mdzs meta #cql rewatch #wangxian #the untamed | chen qing ling #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian | wei ying #lan wangji | lan zhan

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years

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Since Higurashi Gou’s on break this week, I figure this would be a good excuse to make one big post going over all of my current theories, and also how I feel about the other popular theories in the fandom.

[This will have both Higurashi and Umineko spoilers in it]

On a meta level, my over-arching theory for Gou is that it’s basically a series of forgeries written by Featherine. Basically I think that some time after Matsuribayashi, Rika came into contact with Featherine, shared information about everything to do with Hinamizawa, and she decided to write her own stories based on that info.

Going down this route, I think the Rika we see in Gou [at least on the gameboard level] is basically a distinct fictional construct who more or less branches off from around Tsumihoroboshi or so. Basically I think this version of Rika doesn’t actually know the truth about Takano, or that her friends are starting to remember past timelines, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if whole elements of her backstory have been tweaked to fit the story that Featherine wants to write. I also think that the happy ending timeline she referenced in ep2, and her quoting stuff Keiichi said in the past in Tataridamashi, might instead be about some kind of original arc that’s just meant to trick us into assuming she’s talking about the last few arcs of the VN.

Mostly I just think that with how things have gone thus far, it really doesn’t come across like Rika actually knows about Takano being evil. This could just be a case of clunky writing where they don’t want to spoil it for new fans, so Rika’s being made to act weird and out of character in order to keep it a secret, but stuff like her rant to Keiichi in Watadamashi make me think that she straight up hasn’t been doing anything about Takano in these arcs, and her whole attitude in Tataridamashi of ‘we can change fate by saving Satoko’ while not saying or doing anything about Takano seems really weird if we assume that she remembers everything from the VN. The whole deal with Minagoroshi was that saving Satoko wasn’t actually enough to achieve a happy ending, since Takano ended up killing everyone anyway. So it’d be really weird for Rika to fall into that same mindset again.

And on the note of Takano, like most people I think she’s probably not the villain this time around, one way or another. For one thing it’d just be kinda underwhelming for old fans if they do that again, but I think they just don’t have time to actually do the whole Takano thing in Gou unless we get an entire second season after this. Which could happen, but I’m basing all of my theories on the assumption that Gou will just be 24 episodes, since that’s all that’s been confirmed.

There’s also the fact that the first half of Gou has provided far less evidence to allow new fans to even start piecing together what Takano’s deal would be. We haven’t seen Tomitake’s corpse get found with his throat clawed out, so it’d be pretty difficult for new fans to guess that Takano kills him in each arc. Technically they aren’t even shown to die in any arc in Gou yet, since they just go missing and their bodies are never found, so new fans wouldn’t even know if either or both of them die in any of the arcs. By extension, Watadamashi also didn’t have the whole plot point of ‘the police found Takano’s corpse in the mountains and figured out that it had died before the festival even ended’, which in the VN was a pretty massive hint that she was faking her own death. And since Tataridamashi avoided having Keiichi kill Teppei, while also ending before the festival can even get going, Takano and Tomitake don’t even do anything in that arc at all except show up to support the protests, even though Tatarigoroshi also provided it’s own massive hints toward Takano being suspicious, and her being responsible for Tomitake’s death.

Tatarigoroshi also ended with our first proper look at the GHD, but there was no reference to that happening in Tataridamashi, or any of the other arcs. If anything, it seems pretty intentional that every arc seems to end with a flash-forward to at least a few days after each arc ends, with no reference to the GHD happening. It’s possible everyone was just keeping it a secret from Keiichi at the end of each arc, but each arc has a different person telling him about what happened while he was unconscious, so it seems unlikely that they’re all coincidentally lying to him about the same thing. And in general I think that if the GHD happened in any arc, we would have gotten some obvious clues about it.

I know everyone disagrees about if Gou is actually meant to be accessible, let alone solvable, for new fans, but I’m on the side of thinking that it is, which is why I think the lack of any kind of evidence for the GHD happening [or Takano doing anything more suspicious than going missing in the first two arcs] says a lot about the direction Gou is taking with it’s mystery.

The question then is just whether Takano’s just being prevented from carrying out her plan in each arc, or if things have fundamentally changed with her. Personally, I’d prefer it if they committed to having her be genuinely innocent this time around. If she’s still evil but she’s just been getting killed off-screen or whatever, then presumably they’d still have to address her entire deal in order to explain why she needs to be taken out in each arc, which would defeat the whole point of not having her be the villain in Gou, and it’d feel super alienating for new fans. So I prefer the idea that she’s totally innocent. Which wouldn’t really work if Gou is a striaghtforward sequel to the VN, but it could work if Gou is an in-universe forgery. It could be built upon someone’s second-hand understanding of Hinamizawa and it’s history who doesn’t know about Takano being evil, or maybe the person writing it knows about that, but is intentionally changing it in order to set up a new mystery of their own for Rika to solve.

And one way or another, I do think that the whole meta purpose of Gou is to pose some sort of challenge or mystery for Rika to solve. It seems like some kind of third party is dragging her into a new loop with a new mystery she needs to solve, which could have a lot of different explanations, but it could be that Featherine is literally just presenting these new stories to Rika to see if she can solve them.

Anyway, when it comes to the murder mysteries themselves in each arc of Gou, my general theory is still that Keiichi’s been responsible for a lot of it, and one of the big conceits of Gou is that his whole perspective on things has been incomplete and subjective from the start.

In Onidamashi, I agree with the common theory that the events of Tsumihoroboshi were basically happening in the background, with Rena murdering people and falling into paranoia while nobody else realizes what’s going on. I think at the dump site she was genuinely considering killing Keiichi due to suspecting that he found out about her hiding the corpses there, and at the festival I think she ended up killing Takano and Tomitake because she assumed that Keiichi was somehow working with them and had told them about the murders she did.

In their fight scene in ep4, I think Rena was genuinely planning to murder him, and he only started full-on hallucinating about halfway into the fight, when he knocks her out on the table. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning her motives, but I think it’s pretty straight-forward. My theory that she killed Takano and Tomitake seems like it contradicts the idea that she’d still think later on that there needs to be more sacrifices for the curse, but considering how deep Rena’s paranoia is, it’s possible that even after killing them, she just continued to feel paranoid about everything, which made her think that those two weren’t enough to satisfy the curse for that year, and so she needed to kill more people. In general I think she was mostly just trying to protect her father out of fear that he was being targeted by Oyashiro-sama as one of the curse victims of the year, so she was trying to see if killing other people would let her father be spared.

I think that Rena probably got knocked unconscious when she hit the table during the fight, and Keiichi hallucinated her waking up and stabbing him, while in reality he was probably repeatedly stabbing her unconscious body.

Most importantly, I think that after that, instead of Keiichi passing out from blood loss [since I don’t think he actually got stabbed that much in reality], the Rena incident reignited his paranoia, and he jumped to the conclusion that Rika knew about Rena’s plans, and that she intentionally got him to lower his guard around her so that he’d get killed. So I think Keiichi took the knife Rena tried to use on him and then ran to Rika’s house and killed her, with Satoko probably being an unintended casualty. Which would also make the whole story Mion gave of the police suspecting that a burglar broke into their house surprisingly accurate.

I also think that Keiichi tried to claw his throat out after that, but he got found by the police and taken to the hospital before he died from it. Which is why I think he has a neck brace on when he wakes up later, and also why that one nurse asked him about his neck being itchy. Along the same lines of how I think Takano’s a complete red herring in Gou, I think there might not be anything going on with the clinic this time around either. That nurse might have just been asking a normal question about his condition, if they did indeed find him clawing his throat out.

So basically I think the whole arc was a mix of Rena and then Keiichi killing people, and that Takano and Tomitake were basically just innocent victims.

Watadamashi is the arc that I’m most iffy about, but basically my core theory is that Keiichi actually killed Takano and Tomitake off-screen during the festival after what happened at the Saiguden. It always stuck out to me that he seemed even more paranoid about things in this arc than he did in Watanagashi, and yet nothing really seems to come of it. But the way he freaked out at the Saiguden definitely makes me think he could have been capable of snapping and killing those two after everyone parted ways, and the show just kept that info from us.

I’m at least fairly confident about the idea that the whole phone conversation he had with Shion was her making up a fake cover story about what happened to Takano and Tomitake, and getting Keiichi to agree to it. I also think it was probably Mion on the phone posing as Shion. Either way, I think it was along the lines of how everyone in Tatarigoroshi agreed to a fake cover story to hide the fact that he killed Teppei.

After the festival, I think Mion ended up lashing out at the village elders and killing them due to them talking about how Shion and Keiichi broke into the Saiguden and needed to be punished for it. They may have also found out about Keiichi killing Takano and Tomitake, or they at least suspected him of it, so Mion ended up killing them to try and keep him safe. I’m not entirely sure if she killed Shion here, but it’s possible she did, at least if Shion agreed that Keiichi should get punished.

After that, I think a huge part of Keiichi’s paranoia was due to his fear that people would find out about everything he did, and so I think that he got set off by Rika venting at him about what he did at the festival, and her talking about how she was surprised that Takano and Tomitake’s corpses hadn’t been found yet. I think that what actually happened between that episode and the next one is that, instead of joining Satoko for dodgeball, he instead followed Rika and killed her where nobody could see them, and then he took her body to the septic tank. I think this is the whole reason why Satoko was so suspicious of him afterward.

When you think about it, with how condensed the whole flow of events there was, she’d have no real reason to suspect him if he had spent the whole time playing dodgeball with her, and there were probably other kids playing dodgeball as well who would have been able to say that Keiichi was with them the whole time. But the only person who tries to vouch for Keiich is just Mion.

Along the lines of her covering for Keiichi at the festival, I think she was just lying about seeing Rika talking to a construction worker to try and draw suspicion away from Keiichi. I guess it might have really happened, but either way I think she was just trying to cover for him. Which makes me think that maybe she witnessed what he did, and was maybe even the one who moved the corpse to the septic tank after Keiichi killed her. Which would also explain why Mion coincidentally distracted Keiichi right before he tried to go into the septic tank room.

I think she was telling the truth about suspecting that Rika was behind everything, even if she knew about Rika being dead by that point. I think it was more about her thinking that Rika is working with all of the village leaders to perpetuate the curse killings each year, so even if Rika’s dead, there’d still be people following her orders. If we assume that she really did see Rika talk to a construction worker, maybe that made her think that she was giving them orders, and then at the end of the arc when she sees them on the security footage, she thinks of them as her minions.

Then I think the rest is fairly straightforward, with Mion assuming that there’s still some nebulous organization following Rika’s orders who are a threat to Keiichi even after Rika’s death, so she arranges to get him locked up in the basement while she goes off to try and murder them all.

I think it was the construction workers who Mion saw on the security footage [like Keiichi did], but I’m not entirely sure what the deal is with Satoko being at the estate and winding up dead. My best guess is that she snuck into the estate to try and question Mion because she was suspicious about her covering for Keiichi, or maybe just because she thought Mion could help her figure things out, but then things went wrong. Maybe Mion ended up assuming that Satoko was in on the whole thing and killed her, but I’m not sure.

What happens with Keiichi is a lot more iffy. It’s possible that it just went the way it was shown, with him passing out in the safe room and then getting discovered by the police, but with how the other two arcs ended, I doubt it was that straight-forward. It’s possible that the whole scenario of him smashing his head into the door until he passed out was more like a narrative illusion or fantasy, and that Keiichi actually managed to get out of the safe room and head back to the estate, where maybe he was responsible for Satoko and/or Mion’s deaths. I’ve at least seen some people on the Higurashi subreddit point out that in a few shots you can see door handles on the inside of the door in the safe room, which seem to vanish when Keiichi’s trying to bust it open, which could imply that the whole idea of him being unable to open the door was a lie.

I’m not sure if he’d have any motive to kill Mion even if he went full L5, but it’s entirely possible he got suspicious of Satoko and wound up killing her, if he went back to the estate. Though one thing that I think is noteworthy is that, even though I think Shion was probably dead by that point, he actually would have had a motive to kill her if he at least had gone L5. He blamed her for luring him into the Saiguden, so he could have wound up murdering her as revenge for that. But I dunno if that’s actually what happened.

One idea I’ve been toying with is that maybe Keiichi actually killed Mion in the safe room, and the whole strange scenario of him smashing his head against the door and leaving a weirdly giant blood splatter behind was an illusion covering up something like him wrestling her gun off of her and shooting her with it. Then maybe he dumped her body in the well, and then went to the estate where he saw Shion, and wound up killing her. At least if we assume that maybe Mion and Shion were working together in this arc instead of one of them already being dead. Ooishi did say that it was Shion who was found in the well, but maybe it actually was Shion who took Keiich into the basement. At the very least, there’s that scene where Mion leaves him alone in her house for a while and then comes back in a different outfit, which could have represented the two of them switching places off-screen.

In general I’m kinda iffy on this arc in particular, lol. It feels a lot more ambiguous and open-ended than the other two. Or at least more so than Onidamashi.

Also on the note of Watadamashi, the biggest question mark to me in all of Gou at the moment is the whole scene with the statue in the Saiguden, and the empty slot we see in it’s neck. It’s just a really baffling scene since it feels like it’s the only scene in the entire show thus far where it comes up in any way, but it’s one of the most blatantly important pieces of evidence we’ve gotten, even if I dunno what it’s meant to imply. It even happens in the manga version, so it’s definitely an important plot point.

What I can gather from it is that someone had already broken the head off the statue, presumably to steal the sword inserted inside it, and then they stuck the pieces of the head back onto the statue to make it look intact. Although I suppose we can’t just assume that the head being broken and the sword being stolen happened back to back. It’s possible that someone broke the statue, and then at some point later on, maybe even years later, broke back into the Saiguden to steal the sword.

Part of why the statue’s so bizarre is that it seems to be fundamentally different to the statue in the VN. Or at least it’s state is different this time. Instead of how the statue’s hand was broken off in the VN, the hand is intact while the head had been broken off and put back into place. I’ve seen theories that the statue in Gou is a replica of the original, but I think that’s unlikely, both because it just sounds difficult and inconvenient to get rid of an entire statue and replace it with something else, but also because the statue we see in Gou still has the slot inside it’s neck, and it’s the one that had it’s head broken open. If the statue in Gou is just a replica, there’d be no reason to go as far as to replicate the sword slot that nobody can even see from the outside, and if the point of breaking the head was to let someone steal the sword, then there’d be no reason for the ‘replica’s’ head to be broken. So I think it might actually be one of the big hints toward Gou being a fundamentally different world altogether to the VN, where even the history of everything has been adjusted in subtle ways. Satoko originally broke the statue’s hand in the VN before the curse incidents even started, which is way earlier than the part of the timeline that Rika and Hanyuu can go back to by the end of the VN.

I think this is one of the bigger pieces of evidence people use for Satoko being a looper, since maybe she’d have the ability to go that far back in time, but I still doubt that whole theory, so I’m more inclined to think that this is Featherine straight up changing what happened with the statue as part of the new mystery she’s setting up.

One way or another it definitely comes across like the entire thing with Satoko breaking the statue’s hand has been more or less retconned out of existence in Gou. On top of the statue’s hand not being broken, Satoko also never mentions anything about believing it to be the source of her hardships like she does in Tatarigoroshi. Which is another thing where the absence of a certain plot point or clue from the VN feels very noteworthy, especially if you look at it from the perspective of new fans.

Either way, I don’t have much of an idea for who could have stolen the sword, let alone WHY they did it. There hasn’t even been any hint at all toward the sword being involved in any of the murders thus far, and I definitely think they would have pointed it out if it was. So what exactly is the whole point of it? It could just be a ritualistic thing to set up the idea of Oyashiro’s sacred statue being desecrated, but we only find out about it in one arc, and only because the group breaks into the Saiguden and then happens to bump into the statue and knock it’s head off. So if the culprit wanted it to be some public display to stir up talk of the curse or whatever, they kept it pretty hidden, lol.

There’s only a few people who should even know about the sword, but there’s been no real hints toward Rika being responsible for it, and Hanyuu seems totally distanced from the gameboard this time around. Maybe Satoko knows about it, but I’m not sure.

I also have to wonder when exactly the sword got stolen in the first place. It might have actually been way before each arc even starts.

In general it’s just a weird bit of the mystery and I don’t think anyone has any concrete idea of what the fuck’s going on with it, lol.

Anyway, for Tataridamashi, I think the whole arc was basically designed to make Satoko suspicious without her actually being responsible for anything. Across all three arcs I think she’s been set up as a bit of a red herring, but it’s pretty heavy in this arc.

Basically I think that the events of Tatarigoroshi/Minagoroshi really were just happening the same way as in the VN, even if a lot of it was off-screen this time around. And with my theory of this being Featherine’s own spin on events, it’s possible that her ‘version’ of Teppei was just abusing Satoko in a way that didn’t leave visible bruises like in the VN, to basically goad everyone into assuming that she wasn’t actually being abused in the first place. I don’t think Satoko would have any logical reason to fake the abuse, especially stuff like her panic attack which was completely identical to how it went in the VN as far as I remember. And mostly I just don’t think Ryukishi would be comfortable writing a whole plot point of a little girl intentionally faking abuse for some kind of malicious or manipulative reason, especially if it involved twisting an existing story about genuine, realistic abuse. So I just feel fundamentally put off by that whole theory, lol.

Either way, one important thing that’s central to my theory here is the idea that Keiichi was going through a lot more stress and paranoia in this arc than we were shown. Even though they seemed to avoid the Tatarigoroshi route and go down the Minagoroshi route instead with him, I think he still had a lot of paranoia and anger building up inside him about the entire situation with Satoko and Teppei. Same with how Rena and Shion seemed like they were always about two seconds away from snapping and running off to murder Teppei. i also think that an important part of this is how Rika kept talking in ominous and weirdly mature terms about fate and whatnot, and she kept quoting something that Keiichi apparently told her but he has no memory of. I think this ended up contributing a lot more to his stress than he let on, but we did still see how he caught onto what she was talking about and was uncomfortable with it.

At the festival, I think Satoko’s intentions with Keiichi were totally innocent, and that she was taking him back to her house so she could give him Satoshi’s baseball bat. I think that she also set up a harmless trap in her house where Keiichi would pull on the cord to turn on the lights, and some stuff would fall on his head. She probably just set it up to try and lighten the mood and bring things back to normal, and also as a parallel to how earlier in the arc she set up a similar trap in Keiichi’s house. Even in Onidamashi there was a scene where she set up a trap in the school with stuff falling from the ceiling during one of their games.

So basically I think it was a variation of how Onikakushi ended, where this time around it’s Satoko who’s pulling a harmless prank on Keiichi, who proceeds to completely misinterpret it as her trying to kill him.

I’ve seen people point out that it seems really sudden for him to immediately go L5 that fast at the end of the arc, but like I said, I think he’d been dealing with stress and paranoia the entire arc, and it all just burst out at the end. I think he 100% hallucinated Teppei being there because he didn’t want to imagine Satoko doing it, and what actually happened was he ended up beating her to death with the bat instead.

Like with the fight scene in Onidamashi, the way that the lighting effects and gratuitous blood splatter happen in this scene make it seem like an over-exaggerated hallucination, especially since in this scene you can also see smaller and more realistic blood sprays overlaid on top of the super exaggerated blood all over the room.

After that, I think that since Keiichi was already hallucinating Teppei being the one attacking him, it lead to him assuming it meant he was alive, and thus that the entire situation with the village elders and the police working to arrest him and save Satoko was actually a complete ruse, and that they never wanted to save her at all. So, similar to how I think Onidamashi ended, I think he then took the bat, ran back to the festival, and attacked Rika, Mion, and Shion, due to believing that they were involved in some kind of conspiracy to protect Teppei. And then I think Ooishi pulled out his gun and shot Keiichi in the head to stop him.

So that’s basically why I think only those three specifically died at the festival [ignoring Satoko who probably died at the house], and the apparent weirdness with Ooishi pulling out his gun at the festival. I think that’s just meant to mislead us, and that Rena was repressing her memory of what really happened due to being traumatized by it.

I also think that’s why it seems to take Keiichi long enough to wake up in the hospital for it to be autumn, and why he has severe headaches after waking up. It’s possible that instead of it being due to having his head bashed in by Teppei, it was because Ooishi shot him in the head, and he managed to survive it with lasting injuries, and probably memory loss.

Also, aside from all this, I think that literally nothing happened with Takano and Tomitake in this arc, even after the festival. We didn’t see how it all played out, but we didn’t hear anything about either of them going missing, and they didn’t imply anything about the GHD happening even though a lot of time had passed, so I think they probably just survived the festival without anything happening to them, and the GHD never happened. Which seems like it’d imply that Takano’s straight up innocent in Gou, and not just that she’s been killed by someone before the festival ends each time.

So yeah that’s how I think each arc went. There’s a lot of room for interpretation, but I think one of the most important clues we’ve gotten is how every arc ends in basically the same way, with Keiichi getting knocked unconscious and then waking up at the hospital days if not weeks later and being told about what happened while he was unconscious. This is a notable enough pattern that it has to be central to the mystery, which is one of the reasons why I think that the answer is more or less that Keiichi actually WAS involved in all of these off-screen incidents, or at least most of them, and he just doesn’t remember it, and we weren’t shown it.

Of course, this all would imply that there isn’t actually a central ‘villain’ orchestrating everything who needs to be dealt with, and that literally everything is just the result of everyone’s personal problems leading to tragedy. Which might disappoint some people, but I think it could still make for a perfectly satisfying resolution, and honestly if we only have 11 episodes left to work with, it’d be way easier to pull off this sort of an ending than it would be to go through the entire Takano thing, or to set up an entirely new villain and then deal with them.

I also think it might be a sort of meta commentary on how there’s always been criticism about Higurashi’s ending veering away from focusing on the main cast’s personal problems, and getting into full on political conspiracy stuff for it’s final act. So maybe this is Ryukishi’s way of basically rewriting the story so that it stays more ‘focused’ on it’s central cast and themes right to the end.

Also I just think it’d be fitting if the whole trick of Gou is that everyone’s overthinking it and looking for a deeper conspiracy that doesn’t actually exist. Which I think would honestly tie in really well with Higurashi’s central themes of paranoia and distrust, and be a fun way to mess with old fans who try and view Gou through the lens of how the VN plays out.

And even though it might seem like a surprisingly ‘simple’ answer to the mystery, I think it’s noteworthy that Rika spends all of Tataridamashi being 100% convinced that Keiichi’s going to challenge fate and save Satoko and achieve a happy ending, and since Gou feels like it’s designed to mess with Rika’s approach to fixing things, it feels like she’s being punished for having blind faith in Keiichi. So it might still take her a while to actually start suspecting him.

Anyway, that all aside, I know that the whole Satoko looper theory is probably the most popular one in the fandom at the moment, but like I said, I don’t really buy it. It feels like the obvious red herring solution that we’re being lead to believe, but I don’t think there’s any actual concrete evidence for it, especially when it comes to what her motive in any of this could be. I feel like a lot of the theory sorta ends up feeling like ‘I think Mystery Person X did the murder by using Mystery Tool Y’, where basically anyone could have done it instead of Satoko. I’m not entirely opposed to the theory as a whole though, especially with how what seems to be teenage Satoko shows up in the OP. There’s probably something going on with her, but I doubt that she’s been responsible for any murders or anything. If anything, I think it being *teenage* Satoko that shows up in the OP [presumably] might imply that whatever new importance she has is to do with stuff that hasn’t even happened yet in the story.

Considering that teenage Rika and the whole mystery of how and why she got dragged into this new loop when she did exists, I think that either the next arc or the final one might actually continue the timeline several years into the future when she and Satoko are teenagers, but I dunno how that’d play out.

There’s been lots of speculation that Lambda might tie into things here with Satoko, which I can’t help but like the idea of since I’m an Umineko fan, but I at least think that could happen without Satoko being the ‘mastermind’ or whatever.

I think they’d have to be very careful about how they portray Lambda, if she shows up in Gou, since even though Rika’s connection to Bernkastel and even Hanyuu’s connection to Featherine can be fairly easily explained to new fans, the connection between Satoko and Lambda has always been a bit more weird and ambiguous. But if the story of Gou is a fictional story in-universe, it’s possible that Lambda’s role here can contradict her role outside of Gou, for the sake of introducing her in a more understandable way.

Basically I think they might portray Lambda [if she shows up] as effectively being Satoko’s witch form, like Bernkastel is to Rika, with maybe her being responsible for the new loops, whether or not Satoko herself has been responsible for any murders.

Satoko’s motives in doing any of this is a bit iffy, but it’d be neat if they lean into the idea of how Satoshi’s fate was left kinda open-ended and unresolved after Matsuribayashi. Maybe in Gou she ends up wanting to turn back time in order to save him from disappearing to begin with, or something like that. I at least don’t think she’d have any reason to kill anyone, unless she’s being forced into it, in which case it just means there’d be a ‘real mastermind’ behind the scenes, which I doubt we have time for.

I at least think that her deaths in each arc can be easily explained as unfortunate accidents, and that a lot of the moments of her being suspicious could just be red herrings with innocent explanations. Like how maybe she was suspicious of Keiichi in Watadamashi not because she’s actually the mastermind and was trying to place blame on him, but because he didn’t actually join her for dodgeball and instead just followed Rika right before she ended up dead. And her not having any apparent bruises in Tataridamashi might be due to Teppei not using that sort of physical violence on her this time around. She also might have genuinely had her big character development moment from Minagoroshi off-screen, and was telling the truth about revealing her abuse to the CWS and letting them save her.

There’s also the whole theory of Ooishi being behind everything, which I can maybe buy for Tataridamashi and Watadamashi, but I can’t really see it with Onidamashi.

One of my favourite ‘out there’ theories I’ve seen is that Satoshi is basically the culprit this time around, but that’s just because I really want him to be more important this time around than he was in the VN. I don’t actually think there’s any solid evidence for him being responsible for anything in Gou, and even though I’ve seen some really detailed and well planned theories to do with it, it’s another one of those things where you could basically replace Satoshi with any random character you want to explain how everything happened. But I do respect how much thought some people have put into this whole theory, and part of me’s rooting for it even though I don’t thin kit’s true, just because I want to see more of Satoshi in Gou, lol.

Anyway, in terms of how the second half of Gou will play out, I’m really not sure. The fact that the next arc is called Nekodamashi really throws off some of my predictions, since I was assuming the next arc would basically be Gou’s version of Meakashi. And I still do hope that they cover Shion’s backstory from that arc, but we’ll see.

The weird thing is that it sounds like Nekodamashi might be based on the one-episode original OVA from the 2006 anime, but with that being one episode long and this being four episodes based on the BD listings, I think any inspiration it takes from that arc would be very loose, and Nekodamashi will be almost entirely original.

From what I’ve heard, the Nekogoroshi episode mainly existed to hint at the existence of the Yamainu and the stockpile of gas they had stored to trigger the GHD, which is kinda interesting, since I think that the GHD is being effectively written out of the story this time around.

It’s possible the name is just a coincidence, though. Like how there was an arc called Onidamashi in some sort of short story collection released ages ago, that has nothing to do with the Onidamashi arc in Gou.

At the very least, we have some preview images showing Rika in the fragment world, so I guess we’ll see more of her there, and maybe the focus will shift towards her trying to actually piece things together and solve the mystery.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi gou #this is REALLY long but mainly just me going over stuff I've said before lol #I just wanted to make one big post compiling it all together #TL;DR: brown's pretty sus :/#I think I saw him venting at the Watanagashi festival >_>

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sharada-n · 5 years

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Could you elabirate about why Papyrus reminds Flowey of Chara? I'm really curious.

Sure, but I want to preface this by saying its been ages since I’ve written Undertale Meta so excuse me for being a bit rusty. Also, there’s a lot of personal conjecture and interpretation here so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt…

This is pretty much a counter argument to people claiming that Papyrus resembling Asriel is the reason why he’s Floweys favorite. I’ll get into why I think that isn’t true in a second (and why I think he actually is more like Chara) but first I’d like to point out that this theory doesn’t even make sense.

Flowey’s relationship with Asriel is complicated. On a technical level they’re the same person, yes, but in reality, they’re more like separate entities. While I do believe there is some Asriel left in Flowey, Asriel himself states at the end of the pacifist route that Flowey and he are not the same. More importantly though, Flowey talks about Asriel with clear resentment. He says Asriel was weak and blames the failure of the plan to free monsterkind on himself.

Keeping this in mind, it doesn’t make sense that Papyrus reminding Flowey of Asriel would be a positive thing to him. Especially considering the way Flowey speaks about his first encounters with Asgore and Toriel. Flowey doesn’t seem to want a constant reminder of his old life around, let alone a constant reminder of his old self. If Papyrus was like Asriel, I can only imagine Flowey would resent him too and not have him as a best friend.

“But Shara,” I hear you cry “Flowey is hardly a good friend. In fact, he's kind of a jerk and he manipulated Papyrus in the pacifist ending!”. Which, yes, that’s a fair point. I’m not saying he deserves a “friend of the year” award, but I’ve definitely been over why I feel their friendship is not just a charade on Flowey’s part. It might have started as such, but it's not anymore I think.

For example, the plan to use Papyrus to lure everybody into his trap at the end of the pacifist route wasn’t concocted until after Frisk fell, and they were friends long before that, so it can’t be the reason why Flowey befriended him in the first place.

Granted this is veering a little into headcanon territory, but there also is canon evidence to support this, such as the anniversary event where Flowey was the only one who knew what Papyrus’ favorite food was, and was seemingly annoyed at the fact that nobody else knew.

And also the dialogue you get if you keep doing neutral runs without ever attempting a genocide or pacifist run.

Here Flowey accuses the player of continually resetting and visiting him out of curiosity and boredom rather than a genuine desire to befriend him. This mirrors the part where he talks about his friendship with Papyrus being a result of his own curiosity and Papyrus (for some reason not actually properly explained in canon) being “fun to mess with” and a character that took a long time for Flowey to get bored off. Then we get this tidbit:

Not only is this line very interesting but the facial expression is important too. You can read it as discomfort, clearly, but it is also very much a guilty expression. This is the same expression Flowey has at the end of the pacifist route when addressing the player and compelling them not to reset anymore because it would take away everybody’s happy ending. It also happens to be the same expression he has when talking about the Flowey Fan Club as well as at the exact line I mentioned above, where he admits Papyrus was his “favorite”.

Seems to me like Flowey is expressing guilt or embarrassment about his original intentions behind befriending Papyrus…

Now to get into the main thing: Why do people think Papyrus and Asriel are similar? The hard part is that we don’t know that much about Asriel when you think about it. He’s been long dead before the events of the game. We get some bits and pieces here and there but most info comes from Flowey himself, who is hardly an unbiased source. However, it's fair to say Asriel was very kind, innocent even, and pretty naive. A crybaby, in his own words. And if you take the most shallow, basic interpretation of Papyrus (the kind of fanon that makes me want to pull my hair out) what do you get? That Papyrus is kind, innocent and naive.

The only word in that list I do not take offense to is kind. Papyrus is undeniably a very kind person. But he is not innocent or naive. I could go into why I say this but honestly, it has been argued to death not just by me but by the entire fandom at this point, you’ve all heard it before. Papyrus is an actor. He’s good at showing people the parts of himself he wants them to see. It's unlikely that he’s completely faking it, I do believe Papyrus is genuinely a positive and quirky person. But he’s also playing up those parts to the extreme. Which leaves us with a lot of subtle clues as to his real feelings. Meanwhile, Asriel wears his heart on his sleeve. Crybaby, remember? And what about Asriel being a coward? Papyrus is anything but a coward.

So let's talk about Chara then. Once again we face the same problem we did earlier. Chara is long gone and we don’t know a lot about them besides what Flowey tells us, unless you subscribe to the “Chara is the narrator” theory, which I personally do, but since I know some people are still on the fence regarding this I’ll keep to strictly canon dialogue first.

Asriel says Chara wasn’t the nicest person. True enough, their plan to destroy the barrier by means of killing themselves and then a bunch of humans wasn’t exactly a solid idea. However, it was made with good intentions. Chara was willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of freeing their newfound family. Chara wanted to help fix something they saw as undeniably wrong: the way humans treat others.

But this was also about revenge. Chara was bitter. They didn’t climb the mountain for a happy reason, according to Asriel. Asgore tells us something different too. He says he can see “the same hope in Frisk’s eyes that he saw in [Chara]”. So here we find what is both the big similarity and the big difference between Chara and Papyrus. Both of them are genuinely filled with hope, with belief, and with the motivation to make things better. They just manifested it differently.

Where Papyrus seems to maintain this disposition even in the face of adversary and unkindness, believing in you all the way until his death in the genocide route, Chara has already faced the kind of behavior that has made them resentful of things they consider unfair or unjust.

Both of them are willing to act upon these feelings of righteousness at least, however ill-advised, in contrast with Asriel (or ironically: Sans), who seems to be a more static, laid back person that didn’t like shaking up the status quo and just went along with what others did. Even Flowey himself only engages when he’s sure he has an ace up his sleeve and is unwilling to act thoughtlessly or impulsively.

As the tape in the True Lab betrays, Chara was also a hard person to read, and both an excellent liar as well as an actor. They were hard to figure out, at the very least, and Asriel expressed joy at seeing a glimpse of their unguarded emotions when they smiled genuinely. Once again though, Chara seems to do this because they want to come across as colder and more emotionless than they really are, giving the impression that they don’t care about anyone or anything. While Papyrus is always trying to come across more happy and untroubled than he really is, and rather keeps his more negative feelings to himself.

The result for both of them is the same though: they are distanced from their friends and family, I’d almost go as far as to say that even those closest to them barely know them, and they are misunderstood in the most fundamental way. Their motivations are harder to figure out than those of most other characters, for sure. It would definitely go some way into explaining why Flowey was so fascinated by Papyrus from the start…

If you do believe in the Narra!Chara theory, there are some small details that match too. Chara is a rather goofy person actually and often makes jokes, but expresses disgust at puns and Sans’ rather lazy sense of humor where he goes for the most obvious wordplays. Just like Papyrus, who the fandom often portrays as hating puns when in reality he loves them, just not the kind Sans makes because they’re easy. Chara is also implied to be quite fond of books/reading and cooking, as is Papyrus. They both come across as inquisitive to me. The narrator's retorts can be unexpectedly sarcastic, or even dark, not unlike some of Papyrus’ dialogue. There’s some other minor things but honestly this post is way too long as is so I’ll just leave it there

Conclusion: Flowey made the same mistake the fandom made in assuming Papyrus was a one-dimensional person who is easy to fool, only be confronted with his new best friend being strangely similar to his old one and now he has no soul and a weird attachment to this strange skeleton who everybody underestimates. He even admits that Chara is the only person he would still care about now. Kind of a weird statement, except if you consider he has found somebody like Chara that sparked some kind of actual emotion in him (whether that be friendship, compassion, guilt, or something else)

What do you guys think? I’d love to hear your thoughts, or if you want to tell me this post was a horrible read from start to finish you can do that too

#Undertale #Papyrus #Chara #Flowey #undertale meta #my writing #answer #an amazing anon #this became so long what the fuck #I tried bolding a bit so it'd be easier to read i'm so sorry #anyway excuse me while I write a fic based on this now

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