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helena-thessaloniki · 3 years

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Hi Helena! Big fan of your writing here🥺♥️ Your rivamika fics are my safe space 😭 (if you have time to answer) i’d love to know when you first started shipping them, why, and what made you continue to love this ship (or anything else to do with your journey as an RM shipper)? i love your characterisation of both levi and mikasa individually, but even more so, your portrayal of their dynamic as a couple, which is why i wanted to ask so badly ☺️ x

Hey anon! Oh woah, first of all, thank you so much. Second of all, oh god, you probably shouldn't have handed me the mic. heh 😅

I’m afraid to look at the word count of this response, I’m sure it’s much more than you bargained for, but I appreciate the question and enjoyed thinking through my response (: Most importantly, I’m so glad you find my stories as a safe space. It’s really an honor. Thank you for sharing with me 🖤🖤

TL; DR As a longtime reader, writer and lover of stories and story-telling, by being someone who pays attention to how stories are crafted and deliberately developed from beginning to end, I sincerely thought Isayama was setting up rivamika as an endgame relationship. So, I read into and interpreted meaning out of ALL their interactions and became deeply invested.

I don’t necessarily ship them cause of the parallels, age gap, enemies to lover trope, height difference, or some of those common reasons and/or kinks. I’m more basic and boring than that. I love the concept of them coming together as though it’s inevitable.

They both are unbelievably strong, selfless, and have suffered so much loss— so, no one else could truly understand them as well as they can understand each other. They both probably would have always settled for a stable, simple life, and been alone and lonely even without realizing it— instead, they find each other, and realize what it means to actually no longer be alone, to do more than just survive. It’s this understated bond, as opposed to a dramatic and passionate romance, that I envision in them and that I love so much.

Then, the passion, heat, the romantic "spark"— I think that’s an added bonus, the cherry on top, the perfect final puzzle piece. They’re both so physically capable, can speak through their actions, and don’t show much need or capacity for emotional/ verbal communication, so the ability to connect with each other through physical intimacy and mind-blowing sex seems like another given.

Still, at the end of the day, for me it comes back to their ability to fully depend on each other, to the inevitability. Not like some soulmate trope where they 'have no choice' in it, but like the stars aligned to prove it's right. How each of them have only one other person on the whole planet who could see and understand them, to be on par with them, to make them realize there’s more to life than settling and surviving, and they happen to find it in each other.

You asked, I rambled 😅 Here’s a breakdown of my thought process in my rivamika journey. For those who make it to the end or want to skip to the end, I'll finish with the excerpt of the very first rivamika scene I felt compelled to to write.

I've tried before to re-watch and remember the exact scenes, exact moments, that initially captured my full attention, but I guess it was all of them, the gradual and cumulative compilation of their earliest interactions.

Mikasa always appearing cool and indifferent, and paying no attention whatsoever to others fawning over, like Jean initially falling for her, but then her strongly reacting over Levi in the courtroom showed how uniquely capable he was at getting under her skin.

Of course, the scene in the forest chasing the Female Titan was a critical one. I think of that as the first time both Levi and Mikasa were truly able to see the other's strength, mental and physical. And for them, orphans and trauma survivors who have suffered extensive loss, I think that seeing strength in another person made them feel less alone. Less alone in a deep, quiet but cataclysm, life-altering sort of way, even if not a romantic one. Like they didn't know it was something they didn't have, something they didn't expect to get from life, but then found it with each other.

(Even when we found out Levi was an Ackerman, I was disappointed if it meant they were immediate relatives, but willing to accept it wouldn't be a romantic end to loneliness, it would be a familial end to loneliness. But... the author never explored that. Not once.)

In that forest scene, manga and anime, the way that Levi pauses to really look and see Mikasa and think about who she is, what she’s gone through, and how strong and dedicated she is now— that was a defining moment. It was also a visual demonstration of Levi breaking character, from aloof and ruthless, to considering and curious. I thought Yams was showing both of them do that on purpose.

Then, Levi getting hurt because of Mikasa in that scene felt like another clue. Sure, it was while saving Eren, and sure, it could have been meant to humanize super-soldier Levi, or sure, it could have been another aspect of how Mikasa rushing into things over Eren ends up hurting other people that later changes in her character development, but it felt like a very pointed statement about Mikasa being a vulnerability for Levi. And that's swoon-worthy, right? Most of us have been exposed to and conditioned by stories about how special and romantic it is to be the one and only girl who can make an otherwise disinterested or unattainable guy actually pay attention to her, and so admittedly I fall right for it.

I’m sure I’m forgetting plenty, but the opening of season 3 felt like confirmation. When Levi figures out Kenny's behind things and entrusts Mikasa with instructions to share with the others, instructions about fighting people instead of titans that ultimately everyone else besides her struggles with, and when Mikasa lets Levi hold her back from chasing after Eren, her most important way of trusting and having faith in Levi, I honestly took that as cues from the author that rivamika was endgame. I let myself get truly invested from then on. That’s that understated bond I was referring to. To me, that unspoken but undeniable trust is the most important dynamic.

Seeing them fight together or fight similarly has always been fun and powerful and fulfilling.

I'm newer to the snk club. I was originally an anime-only fan and started watching in fall 2019, I think. I wasn't on tumblr, twitter, or anything else to see fandom discourse. So, I didn't know that the rooftop scene of Mikasa fighting Levi over the serum was such a staple for our ship until much later. I love the scene just like many do for all the reasons we do, but I don't think the actual scene was pivotal for me, so much as it's aftermath. I thought it represented two things.

One, it was an important marker in Levi's characterization. Hands-down one of the most striking scenes to me is the one where Levi is in the alley, somber and alone, listening in on Eren, Armin, and Mikasa talking together. It artfully shows his longing for hope and connection. So, when Levi chose Armin for the serum, that represented Levi choosing hope. And when Mikasa ultimately gave up fighting Levi and didn't choose Armin, which Armin finds out about later on, I see that as an important marker in Mikasa's development. It puts a wedge between her and Armin/Eren [Armin, because he knows she would have let him die, and Eren, because Armin is too special to him and he couldn't look at her the same way after realizing she would have let him die]. That distance between her and her childhood friends is one I don't think could ever be healed completely, one of those painful lessons in growing up. By doing that, it then also puts a distance in Mikasa's own childhood self to her current self. I thought that matured her and separated her out in a way that was another clue toward eventual rivamika developments.

That's a whole other conversation on Mikasa, but I’ll stay on track. Her love for Armin was absolutely authentic and fierce, but at the end of the day, at the core of her being, she chose survival over hope. Meanwhile, Levi chose hope over survival. To me, that was soft, fertile ground for the reasons why eventually, if/when Mikasa found hope and chose hope, that could directly tie together with her inevitably in coming together with Levi. Again, less butterflies and fireworks, but more natural and in a way that was just a given.

I wrote Beyond the Walls before reading the manga from the Marley Arc and on, so that's why most of that story is her journey into embracing that hope. *manga spoilers* There's a lot of meta, criticism and talk about Mikasa's silent, off-screen and subtle style of character development in the Marley Arc and afterward. I won't go down that road, I'm still processing the end of the manga to be honest, but I think it's fair to say she does eventually end up choosing hope over survival when she lets go of Eren and saves humanity instead. I love the “Stay with Me” line and think it’s perfect; a simple but profound display of trust and their deep-rooted bond in a really understated way. *end manga spoilers*

Here's something I always wanted to talk about in full but haven't. It honestly reads to me like Yams was building toward rivamika, and didn’t do anything to stop that until too late. There are tools authors can use to ensure we stop shipping a pair or start shipping a new one; love triangles are commonly used in every artistic medium and we’ve all been persuaded by these tools. But Yams didn’t use these tools to make sure readers didn’t feel convinced by rivamika. For all the reasons I listed above, more I'm forgetting, and for the following:

If he wanted us to think they were family and it would be incest, he should have added in a conversation between them realizing they were (close) family and that they weren't the only ones left in their biological family like they thought. But he didn't.

If he wanted us to think it was completely inappropriate between a child-and-adult and student-and-teacher, then he could have done something to ensure Mikasa looked childish or Levi looked older, but no. They barely look ten years apart. I do think it's unacceptable and that there's a power imbalance between a child-and-adult relationship regardless of that, and that there can't be true consent when one is a superior and another a subordinate, so I personally age-up Mikasa in my head and try to handle his position of power responsibly in my writings... but the point being, by the end of canon, there's no inappropriate or non-consensual romance between them, yet there's a lot of history and chemistry that could naturally lead to an age-appropriate and consensual relationship. If Yams didn't want us to think so, he could have made it more clear that there were reasons it wouldn't happen.

The only thing that makes sense to me is the author planned on rivamika endgame but was shamed/pressured out of it (either internally or due to others) OR that the author somehow accidentally created such vibrant chemistry and an incredible dynamic between them. Like, he didn't put enough convincing substance of eremika in, didn't make Levi look old enough, didn’t have one of them do something unforgivable in the other’s eyes, etc. Those are some of those tools he could have used. Romance was never a key component in snk. And since we now know Yams planned or needed eremika endgame for sake of plot and the conclusion of the manga, I personally think he didn't know what to do with the riveting rivamika substance and chemistry being much more convincing to readers. Once he had them so well built-up, maybe the only option he felt he had was to just stop putting the characters together. We get little-to-no rivamika interaction, platonic or practical, after season 3 all the way up until the very end. But there was so much of it beforehand ?? So, it simply doesn't make sense. I think the author just straight-up cut any and all interactions out between them because it was too convincing and moving, more convincing and substantial than eremika. But, as the end of canon shows, we needed to have some eremika buy-in. It's messy writing and unskilled in the romance department, but considering for how long and how complicated snk has been in a creative process and how lackluster the eremika romance (the main and apparently pivotal romance) is developed, I think it’s plausible to say the author effed up.

As far as writing fanfiction goes, there's just so much room to explore them. In canon, we aren't given enough insight into their individual perspectives, let alone their dynamic together, so it feels like a blank canvas to work from. I think that's part of why I love to write them, and also why I don't necessarily read much of them. When I first started shipping them while watching the anime, I read a few of the classics that were canon-verse, but I haven’t really read much since. For me, exploring and discovering them as a writer is the most fun. (It's one of the reasons Naruto and Harry Potter have such large fanfiction collections. There's so much world-building and so many characters, but there's also so much left to the imagination.)

In general, I'm drawn to strong characters, especially women, who are multidimensional enough to be real, vulnerable and soft. Mikasa is the pinnacle of that. I don’t necessarily like to write about her love or infatuation with Eren, but I do respect and admire and consider it integral to her character and her amazing capacity to love. We can have strong, kickass women who falter when it comes to love but are still considered strong for it. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive and Mikasa is a beautiful example of that.

And Levi is strong, but real and vulnerable too; he’s honestly a fantastically developed character, from Petra explaining to Eren in the beginning how he’s not the amazing hero he’s painted to be to the public, to how Levi genuinely cares for Erwin and others and chooses hope despite all he’s suffered.

The end of the manga wrecked me a bit. Kind of like Games of Thrones. You have something that was so epic and well-done for so long, a rushed ending that isn't immediately sensical and isn't fulfilling is hard to stomach. Eventually, I'll move on from the denial of that and process what I think and feel about it. The whole reason we have fanfiction is to expand on canon, but it's made me put rivamika on the back burner until I figure it out. So I'm a little less hyper-fixated on the pairing right now even though interacting with you all and asks like this remind me what brought me here in the first place. 😊

To conclude, I’ll share that the very first rivamika content I wrote was a compilation of moments I thought could be inserted into season 3. These are still moments I plan to edit and publish one day. For anyone that actually read this far, I’ll put a rough and unedited excerpt of the first scene I ever wrote about them.

Thank you again anon 🖤😊

BEGIN EXCERPT [after the rooftop fight for the serum, immediately following the ceremony where Eren touched Historia by kissing her hand]:

Part of her was embarrassed at such a flagrant act of disobedience to a superior, especially to one who saved her and countless others' lives in the past. But mostly, she was anguished by the situation Captain Levi put her in once he revoked the serum meant to save Armin and planned to use it on Commander Erwin instead. Her current ostracization and self-loathing was not entirely her own fault. Anger she felt toward herself was just as easy to wield against him.

It must have shown in the grit of her teeth or defiant tone, because he turned to look at her, more aloof than curious.

Like a flint struck to steel, it ignited the fury she felt toward him.

“I shouldn’t have hesitated. I should have just killed you,” she answered him at last, piercing him with eyes darker than the night.

He wasn’t concerned. “You’re good, but not that good.”

Her hands fell to her side, fists clenched as she stood with a single, fluid movement. Before she could let loose a threat, he sighed.

“What’s the problem, Ackerman?” He was dismissive, his shoulders relaxed and posture loose.

The fire too furious to contain, she went sailing for him with the same speed from the battlefield. Her fingers already curled, she tightened her grasp as she swung her fist into his gods-damned apathetic face.

Levi wasn’t unprepared. He easily side-stepped her, then snatched her wrist to steal her momentum. Though he tried to toss her aside, she was no less fast; Mikasa dug her heel in and spun, her other arm shoving hard into his chest.

Too graceful to stumble, Levi used the chance to hook her second arm too. He caged both her wrists in a grip so strong, she was sure it bruised her bones. Still, he only looked at her warily, almost bored.

“Shouldn’t you be grateful? I chose Armin.” If his reminder was meant to ease her anger, it had the opposite effect.

Fury and desperation gifted her additional strength. She shoved into his chest hard. Levi shifted backward, nearly forced into loosening his grip; within that split second of an opening, Mikasa slammed her elbow into his chin, rocking his head backward.

“You did,” she seethed, but as fast as the fire inside her exploded, it was doused. Her next words came out broken and damp. “But I didn’t.”

Levi remained stern and otherwise unmoving as he attempted to flex his jaw through the spasm of pain. As the momentum of the fight died down, he loosened his hold on her wrists and evaluated her distraught frame.

Mikasa immediately released her own hands and turned away from him, eyes stinging from tears she refused to shed as she focused on the stars ahead. Admitting the harsh words aloud hurt her far more than any injury she could inflict onto him.

Not only was Armin one of the only friends she had, but he’d been a steadfast one throughout almost all she could remember of her life. After the trauma of her childhood, it was Eren and Armin who embraced her, whom she learned to love. Now, though, there was a wedge between her and Armin she was not sure could ever be removed. What was worse, as deplorable and selfish as she knew it proved her to be, was the painful wedge it now put between her and Eren too.

Once again, she found Levi standing at the peripheral of her sight, close enough to see but far enough to be a blur at the edge of her watery vision.

“You almost killed me.” Levi repeated his earlier words, but he said them with an odd bite, torn between frustration and patience. “You would have killed me to save him.”

Too late, Mikasa realized he hadn’t meant these words as an accusation, but an odd form of validation. She bit her bottom lip, teeth puncturing too hard; the tang of metal was sharp on her tongue when she swallowed blood.

“You thought about letting your closest friend die,” Levi said quietly, tiredly. “But I did let mine die. I left him for dead, when I could have saved him.”

Mikasa was startled from her selfish reverie, for the first time acknowledging the sacrifice he made on that fateful afternoon. She’d been too absorbed in her own relief, and then, her own regrets to consider what the decision had done to him.

For a brief moment, she considered turning to face him, but the stark reality of the matter made her refrain. How could she feel pity for his loss, when his loss enabled her gain? An uncomfortable knot tightened in her stomach.

“Tch,” Levi sighed. He was only one notch less taciturn, but for him, that was soft. “You’ll live with your guilt, and I’ll live with mine.”

His words granted Mikasa’s tears the permission to spill. She buried her face further into her scarf, both hands trembling at the worn threads. As quietly as he arrived onto the roof, Levi disappeared from it.

It was rare for him to indulge in alcohol or celebrations, but Erwin’s absence felt more tangible than his presence ever did. Levi distracted himself with the chaos of the few remaining Scouts that Erwin had died entrusting his legacy to, and attempted to drown the pain with whatever drink Connie Springer shoved into his hands.

He found Hanji with their ale long-forgotten about on the table as they half-stood from their seat, frantic while explaining some morbid experiment in great, vivid detail to an unsuspecting and slightly horrified MP officer.

Though Levi wordlessly took the seat beside them, Hanji paused their rant to slap him hard on the back, an enthusiastic greeting flying from their drunken lips. The MP took this chance to excuse himself, a pathetic attempt at politeness, but Hanji either didn’t care or didn’t notice.

“Ah, Levi,” they smiled at his drink, though it didn’t entirely reach their one eye. “Where you been?”

Levi didn’t answer. “You know, shitty-glasses, you’re even more unbearable about your experiments when you’re drunk.”

Hanji waved dismissively and reached for their ale. Years spent in battle and command together had gifted both of them with an eased familiarity, and sometimes, genuine friendship. In the same manner he ignored their question, Hanji ignored his lack of response and went on with their original inquiry.

“Careful, Captain,” Hanji warned lightly. “Now that there’s far fewer Scouts, you having a favorite might cause some division.”

Even though Hanji meant the words, there was a glint of mischief that twinkled in their remaining eye.

“It’s not favoritism,” Levi countered bluntly, turning his vision toward the young man on the far side of the room. “Eren is simply the best chance that we have in this war.”

Hanji laughed as if he’d made a joke and Levi looked back to stare at them, unable to be surprised at their quirks or oddities any longer, but still a touch curious about what spurned this current demonstration.

“I wasn’t talking about Eren,” Hanji said at last, a pointed nod toward his injured chin.

Levi blinked. He didn’t realize he was nursing his injury with the hand not on his drink. As though it were too hot to touch, Levi dropped his hand.

Hanji was not judgmental, nor inquisitive. In a war-torn life of losing too many cadets entrusted to him, the fact that Levi found a soldier with the strength and skill to remain safe was not only rare, but worth special attention. Still, it made him too lenient.

“Sometimes I think you’d let her get away with murder,” Hanji chided halfheartedly.

When he thought of Erwin dead in his grasp, sometimes he wasn’t sure if he already had.

#my asks #my thoughts #rivamika #rivamika fanfic #lena writes

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Strings”

Happy Saturday, RWBY friends! I am, quite obviously, going to dive into the recap in just a moment, but first I wanted to take a short detour to discuss the elephant in the tumblr room. Namely, Supernatural.

For those of you out of the loop, the tl;dr is that a fifteen year, beloved show ended with a truly horrendous finale. Specifically, the finale rejected everything that the show had been building towards: the logical conclusion to character arcs, the theme that “family don’t end in blood,” the potential for a queer romantic relationship… I could go on. The point I want to make is that the fandom had every reason to believe we’d be getting these things. This isn’t a case of fans upset that the finale didn’t go the way they wanted as an individual viewer, but rather that the finale didn’t go the way the show clearly and explicitly said it would. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in many respects, viewers were straight up lied to.

(I recommend reading the reviews.)

What does this all have to do with RWBY? Well, I can’t help but think that history is repeating itself. Certainly there are some notable similarities between the two series. Both have long, meandering plotlines with no clear end in sight (though I hope RWBY doesn’t reach the 15 Volume mark…). Both began with a small, core cast, but quickly expanded—generating the expectation that these now equally important characters will be given their due. Both have moved from the small conflict of fighting everyday monsters to a god-based mythology. Both have a popular queer relationship dangled in front of the viewers, featuring scenes where they’re “obviously” in love… but will it ever be confirmed? Both have a fanbase that says loudly and confidently that the writers know what they’re doing. Just wait! It’s all been planned! We’ll be rewarded for our patience and soon all the naysayers will be proven wrong.

Thing is, the Supernatural fandom wasn’t rewarded. Right up until a week ago those fans—myself included—had faith that the writers knew what they were doing because they can’t really be that out of touch with their own story...right? It’s not possible. Yet they were, it was, and now that I’ve gotten solid proof of precisely how far a show can go to reject its own logic, themes, and premise, that just makes me more wary of RWBY’s mistakes. Before I had a solid faith that things couldn’t possibly get that bad, that no matter how much RWBY might be messing up in the short term, it will undoubtedly pull it together overall, because what show wouldn’t? Especially a show with such promise and, at times, wonderful storytelling. Well, Supernatural didn’t manage it and frankly I’m not sure what to do with that information.

Seriously. I don’t have any grand conclusion here. It’s not my intention to suggest that anyone should stop watching RWBY, or to claim that it will absolutely fail because Supernatural did. Obviously, we don’t know what will happen until we get to see it in the show. I only want to acknowledge these parallels and the similar journey I see both fanbases on. I can’t help but wonder if, a couple years from now, RWBY fans will be making incredibly optimistic posts about how it’s all coming together, just have some faith, everyone who says that the group won’t get a satisfying ending, or Blake and Yang won’t be confirmed are just mean trolls… only to wake up that Saturday morning and get another metaphorical slap in the face.

It’s something to think about.

But here I’ve spent a page talking about the wrong show. Let’s get into the episode!

We open on a black screen with lots of ambiguous noises. At first I thought this was Oscar struggling in the Hound’s grip or something, but then I remembered that RWBY likes to insert an episode between cliffhangers. I watched Ironwood (presumably) shoot a guy and he only came back this week (though that question still isn’t answered. At this point I kind of wonder if it will be). Oscar was kidnapped last week, which means we won’t get to see him until next week. Or… two weeks from now? RT skips the week of Thanksgiving, don’t they? Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Something horrible happens to Oscar and we need to wait two weeks to find out how it’s resolved.

Watch him escape the Hound off screen and return to the group with a new outfit 😂

So it’s not Oscar we hear, but Ruby, the last one coming out of the tube. Weiss is in the process of pulling Nora’s ear for that stunt… with a frankly strange looking hand. What’s up with RWBY animating weird hands lately? I’m pretty sure that’s not how anatomy works.

Anyway, Nora counters that this was a “Once in a lifetime experience,” but they were all going to go through the tubes regardless. Weiss isn’t pissed that you sent her through, she’s pissed that you did it unexpectedly when she was alone, heading into enemy territory. But of course, there’s no one in the room to hinder them, so the mistake is meaningless.

We’re setting the tone again though. For the first half of this episode everything is sunshine and giddy adventure, which doesn’t fit the situation at all. It also creates emotional whiplash when I’m suddenly supposed to be super worried about things later on. This sort of about-face works once in a blue moon, as an emotional punch, like we see in Mulan:

But RWBY does it every other episode, which makes the overall tone of the series confusing instead. Half the time RWBY feels like two different stories—the cartoony tale of girls going on fun adventures, and the traumatic tale of a fantasy war—that have been badly spliced together.

“Alight, Robo-Girl, which way?” May asks and Penny demonstrates why she’s the best for sneaking into a facility. She’s able to map out the whole place, including seeing where everyone is so they can avoid detection. Kudos to RT for going this route. I was worried that they would have Ruby and the others straight up attacking Atlas grunts, knocking them out/potentially even killing them because who cares, right? They’re the bad guys! So I’m glad they’re working to get in and out undetected. Granted, we see in some places that they’re clearly willing to fight the soldiers if it comes to that—they’re reaching for their weapons when Penny opens the final door, expecting the room to be full of people. They were going to attack—but at least they’re trying to lessen that conflict as much as possible. That’s the sort of choice I expect to see from heroes and I’m glad we got it here.

After scouting the area Penny corrects May: “And my name is Penny,” to which Ruby gives a satisfied “Heh.” I’ve got no problem with Penny rejecting nicknames, even potentially well-meaning ones, because she’s always struggled with her status as a real girl and her name is her own. She gets to decide what others call her. I do, however, have a problem with making the presumed trans character the one who is corrected. Granted yes, we haven’t gotten confirmation in the show that May is trans, but RT doesn’t get to cash in on that rep without likewise suffering the consequences for how the character is treated. You’re telling me that a trans woman is going to roll her eyes when someone asks her to use a specific name? Please give May flaws, yes, she’s a person, but out of all the millions of flaws across the human spectrum, this is the one we’re shown?

Not to mention Ruby’s continued attitude. It’s like, ‘Yeah, May. Stop being a horrible person who draws attention to the fact that Penny is a robot. I never did that.’ Except when Ruby first met her she didn’t know Penny was a robot. Just like she didn’t know Blake was a faunus—something we’re reminded of this episode. We might assume Ruby wouldn’t have ever made any missteps at the beginning of these relationships, but the fact remains that she got to know both girls before their minority status was ever revealed. Ruby loved them before she ever had to grapple with their differences.

Put in her place, May then demonstrates that she can make lots of people invisible, not just herself. That’s handy. She creates an invisibility bubble that reminds me of Harry’s invisibility cloak. In the sense that others might not be able to see you, but they can still hear and touch you, which makes sneaking around still pretty challenging.

No sooner have I thought that then two guards get into the elevator with them. The group keeps quiet as the duo discusses how no one can get close to Salem’s storm without “getting shocked right out of the air.” Interesting. And frankly one hell of a roadblock if the Hound escapes into the clouds. Oscar may be gone for a while if he doesn’t escape on his own... The woman also comments about how creepy it is that all the grimm are just hanging out, waiting. It’s “worse than if they’d attacked.”

No it’s not! RT, stop trying to implement the idea that Salem withholding her forces is some epically cool choice. She should have decimated everyone by now and the fact that she hasn’t just shows how transparent the problem is: you’ve created a villain that’s too powerful and now you don’t know what to do with her.

As the group sneaks out of the elevator Nora grins and presses all the buttons, which is, as expected, a dumb move. They’re supposed to be sneaking into this base. If they’re caught they’re going to be thrown in jail at best, killed at worst, but Nora wants to risk that for a practical joke? Again and again we see this insistence on incorporating comedy where it’s not only unnecessary, but actively interferes with other aspects of the scene.

Reaching a terminal, Penny inserts her finger and gains access via Pietro’s credentials. She’s really demonstrating this episode why she’s… pretty terrifying? I mean, Penny is an incredibly powerful fighter with a computer’s view of the world, access to everything in the most powerful Kingdom alongside its information, and she now has Maiden powers to boot. Which, I should add, it took her one fight to master (because remember, the heroes are now always as strong as they need to be to win…). Now that Watts is planning to hack her, I expect her to be an incredibly formidable enemy, just given the amount she could potentially do. I think Penny herself is too kind to exploit all that potential and as we’ll see via Pietro briefly taking control, she doesn’t always have the knowledge to use the tools at her disposal. But in the hands of someone like Watts? He’ll turn Penny into the ultimate weapon.

Access granted, they learn that they have to go “Right through central command!” Of course, Penny makes it sound like a fun game and the spy-movie music/cartoon lecture doesn’t help. Again, tone. It’s adorable! It just doesn’t fit sneaking into a military base with your lives on the line while Salem waits outside. That was a RWBY Chibi moment.

Penny explains—twice—that Ruby can use her semblance to fly them all through central command and it’s treated like a revelation. At first, I was pretty confused because Ruby has been dong this for ages? She carried Weiss in “Argus Limited” and Nora during the Geist fight. But upon close inspection, what Penny seems to have “figured out” is that Ruby can carry multiple people at once because the “mass doesn’t matter.” Okay. Not a contradiction then, though I think RT could have made it a little more clear that Ruby was shocked at the idea of carrying multiple people, not carrying someone at all.

What I do take issue with though is Ruby mastering this skill instantaneously. I mean, why is Ruby being forced to try this on the fly (pun not intended)—Penny has known the layout of the building since they made this plan. She knew they had to get past central control and that it would be packed with people. She’s obviously thought about Ruby’s semblance a great deal—and why is she succeeding? Give me a Volume 7 where Ruby actually trains in this technique, set up via Harriet’s comment early on about her semblance, and then she’s victorious here when it finally matters. Or give me Ruby assuming she can pull off this incredibly difficult skill only to fall out of her semblance halfway through, a roomful of Atlas personnel staring at them. Then what?

Not this.

This is a character who does everything perfectly on the first try without ever having to fail. Ruby is boring like this.

Crisis averted, we transfer to Ironwood who is… working with Watts.

What else is there to say? I’ve already laid out all the reasons why this is stupid and makes no sense. Others keep coming onto my posts to explain to me how Ironwood’s awful deeds up until now fully show his decent into villainy, conveniently ignoring the numerous limitations he was under and his choice to do what he thought was best for the world using inaccurate information. Ironwood was always a divisive character and many are happy to ignore the years’ worth of deconstruction done—a man who looks like the Evil Military General but actually isn’t—because they never liked him to begin with. Not liking him is fine, no one has to like any character, but I’m honestly shocked by the number of viewers who refuse to acknowledge how bad the writing is, even if it means defending a character they hate a teensy tiny bit (#SupernaturalVibes). As a friend put it, Ironwood now feels like a caricature of his former self, a Pure Evil Ironwood who appeared out of nowhere and is now here to stay. He shoots kids. He shoots unarmed civilians. He teams up with Salem’s men and tries to hack Penny. These are undeniably horrible acts, they’ve just been given to a character who never would have done them until RT randomly flipped the Evil switch.

The “RWBY” tag, alongside all the fluff moments of this episode, is now filled with posts encouraging Marrow to turn, yelling at the Ace Ops for being “bootlickers,” and capslock screaming at anyone who dared to speak up for Ironwood. It still sucks to have bad writing twisted into an attack on the fans and it’s going to continue to suck until at least the rest of Volume 8. I’d like to again remind everyone that Qrow teamed up with Tyrian a few episodes, yet because he’s again in Ruby’s graces, that was twisted into a ‘not that bad’ situation. The issue isn’t really that Ironwood is teaming up with one of Salem’s subordinates, but that he’s doing it to go against RWBYJNOR… the second a character teams up with Salem to get what Ruby wants (to not have her team in jail) then that’s totally fine… but that’s a wrinkle a lot of people are happy to ignore.

So yeah, Ironwood is an idiot now too. Like Qrow also was last Volume. He really thinks Watts isn’t going to betray him somehow? Although, I do wonder if the chance to ruin Pietro’s creation outweighs his loyalty to Salem, but the point is that Ironwood can’t be sure of that either. At least he’s smart enough to keep Watts under continuous guard. He puts his hand on Watts’ shoulders and goes, “I’d hate for us to have to try motivating you. Again.”

So he tortures people too now? Like I said, caricature. This was Ironwood and we were given no clear idea of where he disappeared to.

RIP a great character.

Watts notices though that Pietro has apparently accessed a secure area and alerts Ironwood to it. I laugh that the information is just ¡EMERGENCY! In large, red letters. Ironwood immediately makes an announcement for everyone to be on guard. It’s a level 3 lockdown — that won’t impede the group leaving via airship! — and they’re to use “lethal force” if necessary. Weiss is disgusted.

As much as I disagree with making Ironwood into a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy — he’s definitely wrong to be doing this — I also find myself rolling my eyes at reactions like that. Yes, Weiss. You attacked four operatives until they were knocked unconscious. Prevented an entire city from escaping Salem’s wrath, endangering them all. Now you’re breaking into the most classified room in the Kingdom to steal an equally qualified project and use it for your own means. There’s no reason why Ironwood would level his might against you. Is death still an extreme response? Yes. Should Weiss be acting like Ironwood is crazy for responding to them in an extreme manner? No. Her remark makes it sound like Ironwood is attacking her poor, innocent, defenseless team… not the team that’s been lying to him, betraying him, attacking him, and stealing from him. Not the team carrying deadly weapons into a facility to take what they want at any cost.

With their presence known, May wants to go grab an airship. That’s the series now.

Meanwhile, Penny insists that they can still complete their mission and we see Nora come up with some sort of plan.

Except, what plan was this?? What did she say to the group? ‘Hey, let’s wait around until some guy conveniently walks by with a full cup of coffee. Then we can trip him and the mug will fly alllll the way across this gap to land on a terminal, startling at least two workers. Except this guy will be hated by the whole room because he’s always messing things up—his coffee mug has been changed from #1 Dad to #1 Dud—so that this little mishap will create a ruckus that gets everyone involved, giving us the opportunity to slip by them all.’

Seriously, what? This kind of “plan” only works with someone like Clover, where we know he has a good luck semblance and thus all these unlikely pieces fall into place. I could absolutely buy Clover smiling smugly, working under the knowledge that he just has to wait around a few minutes and something will come along that works entirely in his favor. But Nora? How did she know any of this would happen? Obviously she couldn’t have, so what exactly was their intention if this coffee carrying, hated guy didn’t show up? RWBY, your contrived plots are showing.

I do, however, love the grimm Jaws poster. Jaws is an absolute favorite of mine, so seeing a reference to it in RWBY? A funny one at that? It almost makes up for how bad this episode is lol.

Because frankly I’m bored. The group sneaks around, criticizes May and Ironwood, briefly confuses me about Ruby’s semblance knowledge, and gets through tons of Atlas personnel in the stupidest way possible. I have to watch this guy running out of the room with coffee on his pants screaming, “WHHHYYY???” and he doesn’t notice the five girls standing right next to him. It’s silly. It’s boring. Luckily for RWBY, things are about to pick up in the second half.

After Ruby gets them upstairs and the final room is also conveniently devoid of people, Pietro takes control of Penny—including yellow possession eyes like Oscar has with Ozpin—and he...gets Amity started. That’s it. After a whole volume of ‘It’s not finished yet’ and ‘We barely have the resources’ and ‘Robyn stole what we were using to do idek what with’ he presses buttons for a while and they’re in. How good for them!

I do love that Penny calls Pietro “Dad” though. I’m here for the android-father relationship.

While Pietro works we turn to Blake, Weiss, and Nora. Blake tries to convince the audience that Ruby and Yang had an actual fight with, “I’ve never seen Yang and Ruby fight like this.” Yeah, because no one in this group has ever said the sliiiiightest thing against Ruby, so you all read the tinniest disagreement as a “fight” to be worried about. I mean, doesn’t RT have friends to draw inspiration from? They’ve never disagreed about Huge and Complex Questions before? Never gotten pissed and then shrugged it off the next time you want to text? RWBY’s idea of a diverse friend group feels like many other writers’ idea of a sibling relationship: anyone with an actual sibling goes, “What is this?” Speaking of, Weiss explains that sisters often have “very different ideas about what’s right” as if, again, people don’t have different ideas? Just in general? Why is this suddenly a sister thing? She’s clearly thinking about Winter, but doesn’t actually bring it up, so all we’re left with is the same situation we had last Volume. Weiss thinks she’s right, Winter is wrong, and they’re just going down their separate roads because there’s definitely no reason to re-examine any choices here. It’s all static.

Until Winter betrays Ironwood, of course.

Nora tries to reassure Blake that the group will be fine (ha) even though they’ve split, the irony being that we, the audience, know they just got wrecked by the Hound. Jaune is a great leader though, Oscar has grown so much, Yang could defend them all in a fight, and Ren… well, she can’t think of anything to say about Ren. I hate the Nora is acting like Ren has drawn away from her for no reason, after she chose to kiss him—without consent—rather than listening to what was bothering him, then proceeded to pretend that this mystery problem never existed. What does she expect? I do, however, like the general acknowledgement that she doesn’t know who she is without Ren. Who is Nora? Someone who is “strong and hit[s] stuff?”

See, this feels like RT writing self-consciously because Nora doesn’t have much of a personality. Oh, on a surface level she’s bursting with it, but past the bubbly exterior? That single layer? We can add maybe one thing to this “Likes Ren, is strong, hits stuff” list: she’s funny. That’s it. Anything else we might add like “she’s loyal” or “she’s kind” is just a generic characteristic of this entire team. They’re all meant to be crazy talented good guys and even the “is strong” aspect is suspect when others frequently pull off attacks as showy as Nora’s hammer hits. So who is she? What are Nora’s dreams? What are her hobbies? Her fears? Her history? We’ve seen a single flashback of her on the streets and one scene back at Beacon where she listens to music and reads a magazine. Seven years worth of material and that’s it. There’s a reason why the go-to, non-combat action for Nora in fics is “makes pancakes.” We know so little about her still.

So I was excited for a brief, shining moment. Yes! Explore who Nora is outside of being strong and hitting stuff! … and then her big action this episode is, as she says, being strong and hitting something. Don’t get me wrong, outside of that setup it’s pretty epic. I like Nora going to those lengths to save Penny and I absolutely love the repercussions of the choice: a broken aura, passing out, and badass lightning scars all over her arms and neck (especially when women often aren’t allowed to accumulate scars in visual media). That’s pretty damn awesome. It’s just that it comes on the heels of the story insisting that Nora is more than this, that we’ll learn something new about her… and we haven’t. This is indeed cool, but we already knew that Nora was willing to crazy lengths by hitting things really hard. That’s already her established norm.

At least this moment has some really nice characterization alongside the stupidity. The conversation between Ruby and Penny is just plain stupid. Penny wants to stay to help with the evacuations, but Pietro says she should come with him in Amity. Why? As Ruby says, because then she’ll be up in the sky and Salem won’t be able to access the relic.

That’s what Ironwood wanted to do! We could have had this conflict episodes ago with you all working with him! I really can’t with this cast. Also, the rest of this is still confusing. I thought pretty much everyone was in the slums by now, so what evacuation are they talking about? Do they plan to evacuate everyone in Mantle out of the kingdom somehow… like Ironwood wanted to do with Atlas? And why are they acting like Amity is evacuating some people too? I thought they were just using it as a communication device? To add insult to injury, Ruby then contradicts herself a minute later when she tells Harriet that Ironwood can’t have the relic because “Salem will find her way to the relic no matter where you go.” Ruby, if Salem can access the relic high in the sky she can also access Penny in the sky. If you believe that literally nowhere is safe then why are you sending Penny away under the claim that she—and via her the Relic—will be safer? If you want Penny in Amity to lessen the chance of Salem getting the Relic, why can’t Penny be in Atlas while simultaneously (hopefully) getting a whole slew of people to safety?

I’m continually confused by this “plan” of theirs. Their claims just flip-flop according to what (supposedly) contrasts them with Ironwood. Even though that’s not actually the case.

Penny is me, sad while watching this train wreck of a scene.

So yeah, the Ace Ops are here. I’ve wondered since the trailer why Weiss looked smug while everyone else was startled. Turns out it’s because of her line, “So, your first time losing to us wasn’t enough?” I can’t express how much I dislike all the girls’ personalities now. I want to shake some compassion and humility into them. Plus, they never should have won that fight in the first place. Marrow yells, “We were holding back!” but coming from the team’s weakest member it reads as defensive. Like we’re supposed to go, ‘Lol yeah right, Marrow. Just admit you got your ass kicked,’ even tough the Ace Ops should have wiped the floor with them, holding back or not. That’s my biggest takeaway from this fight: it’s the reverse of what we should have gotten. The Ace Ops should have beaten Team RWBY with ease and struggled greatly against an android Maiden, not falling before a bunch of teens and succeeding against Penny if not for Nora’s timely breakthrough. Your half-trained cast of growing heroes should not come across as more powerful than an intelligently designed weapon now wielding magic.

Before the fight starts we get a whole lot of lines that are, frankly, frustrating. Vine tells Penny, “I thought you were supposed to protect the people, not hurt them” which is true enough. Penny is taking action that is putting a lot of people in danger, regardless of the fact that Ruby is at the helm. Problem is, the Ace Ops then blame her for Winter’s injuries and “stealing” the power? That’s not the issue here. The issue is Penny’s blind loyalty to Ruby, but by having the Ace Ops back a stance that is clearly inaccurate—Penny didn’t cause Winter’s injuries, Cinder did; Penny didn’t steal the powers, she was encouraged to take them—it makes them come across as Very Evil people who will twist things to make poor Penny look like the villain. Even if this is a case of Ace Ops having bad intel (which seems unlikely. Wouldn’t Winter have told them what happened?) RT has avoided letting the Ace Ops take a justified stance here because that would make them look too sympathetic… even though they do have multiple justified stances to take. Like, ‘Hey, stop keeping half a kingdom here where Salem can easily kill them all’ or, ‘Hey, why did you spend months betraying Ironwood and then turn on us instead of trying to find a compromise?’ Even, ‘Why did your uncle help kill our leader?’ There’s plenty that the Ace Ops should be rightfully pissed about, so choosing Penny and Winter out of everything feels like RT is firmly backing them into Ironwood’s corner: you’re just bad now and bad people blame innocent girls, rather than acknowledging the actual wrongs done against them.

So we have Ruby contradicting herself and the Ace Ops backing warped ideas that make them look worse than they actually are. Adding to the stupidity is the fact that Elm mentions that Winter is in “critical condition” and Weiss… doesn’t care. Harriet then tells Ruby that she’s “throwing [her] in jail right next to your uncle, runt” and... Ruby doesn’t care. Qrow is missing and Ruby just found out he’s been captured by Ironwood, yet there’s no reaction whatsoever. This show continues to go hard on the ‘screw adults’ mentality, huh? Ozpin needs to keep quiet and is horrible for coming back. Ironwood is now a cartoon villain. Winter made the wrong choice so no one cares about her anymore, not even her sister. The Ace Ops remain enemies despite trying to talk things out. Qrow? Barely know him. Who’s he? This is a Ruby loves Penny episode. There isn’t enough emotional nuance for her to care about him too.

The sad thing is I adore Nuts&Dolts. In a different context these moments would be a goldmine for me.

If anything, this episode feels worse than the majority of last week’s because there are good things here that have been thrown into a bad setup. I can’t get excited for the group’s battles when I see who they’re attacking. It’s hard to squee over Ruby hugging Penny when she doesn’t react to Qrow. Watching Nora go all Thor feels like it only has half its potential when it’s coming out of a very messing, ‘I’m more than just being strong and hitting things… which is why I’ll continue being strong and hitting things.’ RWBY has excellent moments set into a terrible story.

The fight, at least, is exciting. The Ace Ops goad Penny into stepping away so they can trap the rest of Ruby’s team—smart—and she’s forced to hold her own while Weiss tries to break through with her knight, then Nora overloads the system. To be frank, I’m not great at analyzing combat. Not unless I’m looking for something specific like whether a win is justified. I’ve already mentioned above the broad issue of the Ace Ops very nearly beating the most powerful fighter next to Salem herself, yet failing so spectacularly against Team RWBY. Outside of that context though? I really enjoyed this. Lots of tight action, creative attacks, teamwork, some emotional pauses throughout… it feels like a pretty solid battle. Put it on Youtube as a clip, outside of the rest of the story’s messiness, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic watch.

We can’t stay in the combat forever though. During all this Weiss calls the Ace Ops “cowards” for making it four vs. one. You know, RWBY should really just do away with dialogue and make the show purely action because the cast frequently sounds so stupid when they speak. Like her comment about Ironwood’s lockdown… really Weiss? ‘Yes, we might be wanted criminals who betrayed this group in the worst possible way, but how dare they not do the honorable thing and have three of their teammates sit out while trying to capture us? Even though the girl they’re trying to capture has magic. I mean, the nerve of them!’

Weiss, at this point I’m not sure how to explain to you that the people you’ve made into your enemies do not owe you a fair fight.

Another detail: we get to see Ruby fall off the edge of the walkway and this time she remembers she can fly! A definite improvement from Volume 6.

Finally: by the time Penny’s eyes go full Maiden in Elm’s grip, I think we’ve seen everything from our trailer. Episode 4 will truly be a mystery.

Ironwood has, of course, been watching the fight this whole time. When it looks like the Ace Ops will lose against the team he means to send in reinforcements, but Watts says he has “a message for your operatives.” Instead of capturing Penny they steal one of her swords instead, ending with a shot on Marrow looking conflicted.

Because remember, there’s no actual moral grayness in this story. The protagonists are right and everyone else is wrong. It’s (supposedly) black and white. Which means that if the Ace Ops have any hope of surviving this Volume and being seen as anything other than evil bootlickers, they have to join with Ruby. Marrow seems primed to do that.

Am I surprised? No. Disappointed? Always lol.

May has the airship ready to go and they fly off… despite the shields. And the lockdown. Consistency? Who’s she? Nora is said to be “in bad shape” and after another hug Penny leaves to hide in Amity, even though Ruby thinks that hiding is a useless, cowardly choice. Just not when she and her allies choose to do it.

We end the episode with Watts receiving Penny’s sword and making the statement, “If you can’t beat them… then make them join you.” I have to say, his cheesy villainy is something I continue to enjoy, even if it’s heavy handed at times. Watts is just fun. I do have to say though: if Penny is hacked, what does that say about her agency? We double-downed on the ‘real girl’ narrative by giving her the Maiden powers, but she’s simultaneously synthetic enough that a single piece of her can remove all autonomy? It once again feels like RT isn’t sure what point they’re trying to make, they’re just chucking a lot of themes at the wall and seeing what sticks. Still, we’ll have to let it all play out before making any judgements.

And that’s it for this week. It seems like this is a slightly shorter recap than normal, though that may be because I struggle with discussing pure action sequences, which made up a decent chunk of this episode. I’ll no doubt return to the Ace Ops vs. Penny fight when I’m not on a self-imposed, one day deadline for posting. The only thing left is to update the Bingo Card, but I don’t think we made any headway this week. So... good job, RWBY?

I’m still going to hold off on the civilian’s square until Salem’s army actually attacks, as well as the two day timeline square.

No Winter this episode

Watts is teaming up with Ironwood which is… so much worse than him teaming up with Jacques again. Does a square get an X if the canon is even worse than what you assumed it would be??

Maria was mentioned this episode. Jury’s out on whether she’ll actually do anything.

Atlas is still standing, we knew Penny was heading towards a hack so it’s not much of a cliffhanger, no Qrow, no Ozpin, no Neo or Cinder.

It certainly looks like we can check off “The team gets Amity up and running,” but let’s just see if there are any problems next episode. If the problem is only ‘We would have launched it if not for Salem’s attack’ or something, I’m checking it off. The point is it would have worked.

I’m also leaning towards “More obvious Blake/Yang implications without confirming a relationship” given Blake’s heart-to-heart with Nora… but let’s see if the Volume does anything more egregious.

All in all (and perhaps despite what I’ve written above), I don’t think it’s fair to totally drag this episode. As said, this feels like a strong episode in a bad story, something that I would have LOVED if a) Salem weren’t here and b) the ‘ethical dilemma’ wasn’t boiled down to a ‘Team Ruby is good’ and ‘Ironwood and everyone associated with him is evil’ situation. It’s an episode whose tone and character action belong in a different version of RWBY. If you gave us this fun episode in an earlier Volume against a Pure Evil antagonist? It would have been great.

Ah well. It is what it is. Expect more emotional whiplash when we come back and everyone learns that Oscar has been kidnapped by Salem’s talking pooch 🙃

See you then! 💜

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby strings #mymetas #rwby recaps #apologies if this Recap is messier than normal #I have a zoom meeting in five minutes lol #gotta go fast!

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emuzeek · 3 years

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debris spoilers

just watched Debris season finale and I’m just

sir, I-

I have so many questions. I obviously want more episodes (seasons, if it keeps being good) but also.. they like opened up these presents given over the whole season and then went, “Hey, there’s another present inside!”

Bryan reveals what the injections are for, except he doesn’t really know.

That lad Ferris had drop the stuff to Finola (1. ANOTHER FACTION?? 2. is he really who Ferris sent or did he just intercept?) is clearly up to some business and I know this was obvious but.. Dahkeya (he seems cool), ball of light, weird projection/suspension of Finola? I can’t see if her jacket is damaged or not in shoulder, I’m really grasping for straws here but that leads me to the next question..

What was the point of two entire time looping episodes?? Beyond some character exposition (not even development because Bryan hasn’t been acting like he’s had that revelation, I think?) Which “card” are we in? How much more did Finola’s father understand about what was happening, given his language used when speaking with Otto?

What exactly did Bryan experience with the Debris in ep12? How did that even work, which piece of Debris did he interact with? What’s his connection to it? Is it really the injections that prevented the memory wipe, and if so why didn’t they prevent that from happening, both in ep11 & 12?

JOHN NOBLE?? Why is he doing people origami?! What did he do to Bryan? How does he see across iterations (and are those the “reality cards”)? How does he play Creepy so well? I always felt uncomfortable when looking at him because of his mannerisms, he’s doing some great acting but euuuUUUH I AM THE UNCOMFY

How is George so far removed from understanding of his own daughter that he really thinks she, a person he specifically commented is so compassionate, would be alright with sacrificing innocent lives in order to reach some “higher existence” of what we “could & should be?” Why does he get to decide that, in his head, or who is deciding that?

Is Dee Dee going to find out about her dad? How will she react to that and what will her relationship with Finola be like?

The Telesphere is described as being “born,” so is it an entity? Is that what interacted with Bryan, while it was partially together in the Seam? Why is it so important? Can I have one?

How many more beans does Anson need to ingest before he can be baked and served up with our special “messed up decisions” breakfast menu? What will the effects of Finola having a bean in her be?

What happens to Ferris’ lad’s face? How can he just replace it? Is the one he took the face from a clone?

Who/what is Spooky McShiftingParticles? Is that Ming?

How will Finola go forward after losing, regaining, and losing her father in a somewhat even worse way? How will this affect her world view, her faith? I know from ep12 that they’re definitely having Finola and Bryan learn to balance each other out, and that’s great to see, so I wonder what their dynamic will look like going forward?

What is Ferris up to? Is she a part of that weird cave cult business? Why is Finola so important to her?

Where is Ming and how were they affected by the Debris incident? Garcia clearly had some intense consequences, Bryan less so.. also Bryan’s comment about letting other people touch Debris first, does that elude to a past experience which taught him to do so? If so, it seems pretty contradictory to his inherent need to protect people, though I guess that then raises the question of which specific people (individuals/groups) he feels the need to protect? Is Garcia still alive, because George was the one last with him and HAHA?

In ep12, Bryan greets the ship piece that he goes to check so is that the Debris he, Ming, and Garcia had the incident with?

Why does Maddox want George dead? Is it because of the INFLUX stuff and the differing viewpoints regarding how the Debris should be handled, or is there more? Was his comment of George being “like pieces of debris; useful in the right hands, dangerous in the wrong hands" dropping a hint that George is indeed not his original self?

How will Maddox’s son & wife respond to the Debris, longer term? How limited is it? What’s his connection to that Russian agent? What was her answer, and what was the door, specifically? And most importantly...

Did Finola decide to use those sunglasses herself or did Bryan convince her?

Honestly though, I love how even in the final episode where emotions are super high (they really took that literally with those people, huh?) they still managed to have the car conversation time with Finola and Bryan. I’m honestly glad they’re not making it romantic, at least currently, because this makes more sense with where they’re both at right now ,and they’ll have a much clearer understanding of where they stand with the other person because there isn’t romance attached to it. We’re truly seeing how these characters think and feel and act, without any sparkly hearts in the air. I would love it if it develops later on, but I think it’s good that it isn’t a driving force for the success of this show. The rest is more important and even if it’s entirely platonic the whole way through, that’s good too. Heavens knows we need more representation of healthy platonic relationships, or as healthy as can be in their line of work and entire world situation. I don’t think Bryan nearly destroying reality to try and get back to Finola (without any romance involved, might I add) quite constitutes as healthy, so the disclaimer is needed.

Anyways, Debris deserves more seasons. They have absolutely everything they need and more, it’s an incredible show. I might make some posts just to gush about how well they did, honestly.

#debris nbc #debris nbc spoilers #blabber #long post #my hands are still agitated and I've got so much other stuff to do but I SO look forward to properly giffing so many things #I'm already crying over the colouring #I only know how to pale or minimal palette colouring hhahahaaaaaaa #edited to add more questions because there were frankly too many to hold in my brain at once

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draco-kasai · 3 years

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Hero Collaboration Program

Chapter 2 pt. 2 of 2: Welcome to The Program -->

Chapter 2 pt. 1 --> Chapter 1

Miss. Frizzle turned on her heel and walked over to a rack of dodgeballs that Mr. Jones hid from view behind him. Taking a few balls, she began placing them on the white chalked line on the grass. The field was marked out for them to play almost any sport. The ends were marked out as makeshift nets and the edge of the middle had poles protruding out the ground with the volleyball net tied snugly to one, in case they decided to play. The storage room contains the actual soccer nets and all the sports balls as well as chairs, and foldable tables.

“The rules are pretty simple. You’ll be placed into two teams and are allowed to use your quirks in any way to help you. You are not allowed to step over the line to the other team's side. You can't leave the court unless you grab stray balls, at least until you have 'dead' players to retrieve them for you. If you attempt to catch a ball only to drop it, you are out. No headshots, you'll be eliminated if you do. If you are hit by a fly ball, you are out, even if it wasn't intended for you."

"The point of this activity is to get you all used to one another’s abilities right off the bat. You’ll have to remain as coordinated as possible and have faith that your teammates will work with you. As far as I know, just about none of you have a proper understanding of each other's abilities. Heroes fight alongside heroes they’ve never worked with, this is how you learn to adjust to that.” He bounced the ball in his hand a few times as he spoke, his eyes scanning the crowd of students before him. The moment he was done talking, he threw the ball at a girl with dark hair that shines blue in the sunlight. She squeaked at this sudden action, but caught the ball with no problem.

“Marinette, come on up.” A little nervously, the girl walked around the crowd and made her way to stand next to Mr. Jones. Her free hand fiddled with the base of her loose over the shoulder pink top, dark pink sweatpants shifted as she moved to face the students. Her dark hair was tied back into a neat bun. Before she could ask Mr. Jones a question, a ball flew in between them. Turning her head, she spotted the moment a dark skinned male with braids caught the ball.

“Very good Virgil! Please, make your way up.” Miss. Frizzle giggled, suddenly standing on Mr. Jones’s other side. The male shrugged his shoulders and made his way over. He wore a loose white tank top that showed off his toned arms and khaki sweatpants. “Ladies and Gentlemen, meet your team captains.”

Mr. Jones pulled out a quarter, “Heads or tails?” he asked the two teens.

“Heads/Tails” they responded in unison. Looking over to one another, they laughed softly.

“Great! Virgil will be heads and Marinette, tails.” He flipped the coin in the air. In a fluid motion, he caught it and flipped it to rest on the back of his other hand, “And the person to choose their teammates first is…” He moved his hand to reveal the coin. “Tai-” Before he could even say the word, the coin flipped itself over.

“Heads.” Virgil smirked smugly as he brought his hand back down into his pocket. Marinette’s eyes widened in realization at what had just occurred. “He said we could use our quirks to help us. He never said it had to be during the game, so I’m taking advantage to get the first pick.” The young girl’s eyes narrowed slightly. So he’s going to take the game seriously, fine, she will too. Virgil has just unlocked her competitive side, and from the fact that his smug smirk widened, that would mean he was hoping for that.

Oh, game on.

“It’s good to know you know how to read between the lines and find loopholes.” Many of the students straightened up at his words, Mr Jones grinned widely, “Virgil gets first pick! Take turns, you two!”

“Cool, I pick,” He looked over at everyone. He spoke with some of the guys during foosball, they seemed pretty skilled, “Manny.” A boy with curly hair, wearing a loose gray T-shirt and cargo shorts, let go of his girlfriend's hand and walked over to his new team captain.

Marinette’s eyes scanned the crowd, “Um…” Her eyes landed on a boy with messy black hair. His brown eyes were busy scanning each of the students. She recalls him speaking to her in French as she sat outside sketching, a rather pleasant surprise and conversation. When he had left she had noticed that he was making his rounds speaking to everyone, even during breakfast he bounced around. Maybe it’s just her competitive side hoping, but he just might know what everyone's skills are, he just might be useful. “Hiro.” She said, pointing to the boy with a red graphic T-shirt and knee-length shorts. He gave her a sly smirk and casually made his way over.

“Whatcha think man?” Virgil asked Manny as they both scanned the crowd.

“I don’t really know anybody’s quirks or skills… Frida is quirkless but has killer parkour experience.” Manny spoke with a pretty heavy accent. He crossed his arms over his chest, “Um, Billy seemed pretty cool too. So did Gar.” Virgil nods to what his partner said.

“Then we’ll just have to get all three of them.” He spoke up louder, “Gar.”

“Glad I was a first choice.” Hiro spoke quite fluently in French as he walked over to her. Marinette smiled kindly.

“I noticed that you were going around speaking to everyone this morning and during breakfast. Quite the social butterfly, aren’t you?”

Hiro chuckled softly, “Ah, and here I thought you realized I was actually gathering information on everyone.”

“No, but I was hoping you’d have some to help us. Good to know I wasn’t completely off."

“Right! Well, I suggest the Possible duo. Kim is quirkless but has cheerleading and acrobatics skills. That will definitely be useful for us. Her partner, Ron, has a quirk that turns any of his bad luck around into good luck. That would be useful to us, oh! And Damian would be useful too, I’m pretty sure he also noticed me gathering information. He seems smart and observant, don’t know what he can do though, I couldn't get anything out of him.”

“Still impressed, you gathered a lot of information.”

“Of course I did. Just ask people about themselves, and they’ll reveal information without realizing it.” Now that she thinks about it, Marinette does recall being the one to do most of the talking. Oh, this guy is cunning. She smirked.

“Oh, I like you. Glad to have you on board.” They exchanged a handshake and a mischievous smirk before the female turned to call out a name, “Kim.”

Virgil’s eyes narrowed slightly as his opponent’s gave one another a handshake. “Whatcha guys think? Frida, or Billy next?”

“Oh! Actually, before we choose one of them, I suggest Damian. He’s quirkless, but he’s a force to be reckoned with!” Garfield eagerly put in his opinion, “He’s really smart and calculating. He’s skillful in fights, too.”

“Whatcha think?” Virgil looked to Manny.

“I don’t really got a problem with it.” Manny shrugged, “If he’s that good, he should not go to the other team.”

“Gotcha. Damian.”

Marinette almost cursed. There goes one of their choices. Oh well, they still have other players to choose from.

“Hey I think we should get Ron on our team, his quirk would probably come in handy for this, its-”

“Karmic Luck. Any of his bad luck is countered with a burst of good luck.” Hiro cut Kim off, catching her off guard.

“Yeah, how did you…?”

“He’s quite the social butterfly.” Marinette smiled before calling for Ron. It took a moment before Kim realized what she meant by that. He had come up to them while they were playing 8ball and got Ron talking and talking.

A smirk crossed her lips as she cocked her hip out and placed her hands on them, “Oh, you are sneaky. This will definitely make things interesting.” Hiro gave her a thanks in response.

Damian wanted to roll his eyes at the current conversation happening in front of him. The idiots seem to just be gathering people they have spoken too. He does not want to be on a team of incompetent players. Finally, having enough on rather or not Frida or Billy would be a good fit he butts in. “Why not select Lee. She seems fairly competent and skilled. She also seems to have quick reflexes, from the way she easily caught Parr’s tray when she slipped this morning.” Garfield, Manny and Virgil all stared at Damian in silence.

“What?”

“I mean, like, I don’t disagree with what you said and all, they sound like a good fit but like…”

“Maldita sea, no sé ni la mitad de lo que dijo.” Manny mumbled under his breath as he ran a hand down his face. As if knowing his struggle, Garfield pats his back reassuringly.

“Dude, who’s Lee and Parr?” Garfield asked for them. Damian almost rolled his eyes.

“Juniper and Violet. It’s their last names.” he stated as if it were obvious.

“Dude… you call people by their last names? I mean, like no offense, but like… why?”

“It’s just a thing he does to people he doesn’t really know.” Garfield shrugs, “It's weird, but it’s his thing.”

“It’s simply polite to call an individual I am not close to by their last names,” Damian crossed his arms over his chest.

“Alright Mr. Fancy, but I would prefer it if you just went by our given names, you dig?” Virgil gave him a half smile

“I do not, but very well. I shall compromise, when I mention someone to you, I’ll use given names, however I will not do so when I speak to people directly.”

“I mean… that works?”

“On that note. We should be vigilant with the other team. Hama - Hiro has gone around to speak with everyone in the group. He has information on everyone. It will make it easier for them to choose worthy opponents.”

“What!? Hiro? But he was so nice!” Garfield frowned, his pointed ears drooping.

“Yes, well do tell, what did you talk about with him?”

“Oh! I told him about my diet, my girlfriend, my quirk, and what hero training is like in my school!”

Virgil clicked his tongue when he realized he just about spoke about the same things with the guy, “Oh man,… he knows our quirks and experience level.”

“And he went around speaking to everyone.” Manny added with a sigh

“If we wish to win, we have to take into consideration what we know of everyone and choose wisely.”

“Gotcha. So, Juniper right?” Virgil calls out her name the moment Damian confirms it.

“Zachary”

“Jenny.”

“Danny”

“Frida”

“Violet”

“Miles”

“Betty”

“Rudy”

“Fiona”

“Billy” Marinette mentally fist pumped as Jake walked over to her team. Virgil took some of the people she wanted, but she got some of the players she was hoping for. Miss. Frizzle gave them all a ten-minute period where they could discuss. Going on their own side of the field, the teams began explaining their skill set to one another, as well as coming up with possible strategies.

______

Teams: 10 v. 10

Virgil(electromagnetism), Manny(Tigre), Garfield(shape shift), Damian(quirkless), Juniper(Detect), Jenny(Cyborg), Frida(quirkless), Miles(spider), Rudy(Chalk Art), Billy(Shazam)

Marinette(lucky Charm), Hiro(Prodigy), Kim(quirkless), Ron(Karmic Luck), Zachary(Magic), Danny(Ghost), Violet(Flyrogensis), Betty(Self Gravity), Fiona(Hair Manipulation), Jake(Dragon)

#fanfiction #Crossover fanfiction #my hero academia au #alternate universe

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yourdorkiness · 4 years

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More Fire Force Opinions That Literally Nobody Asked For (pt.2)

Guess who finished the manga~ Guess who finished the manga~ This gal~ I’m surprised that my Fire Force rant/essay meta was so well received by the fandom, thank you guys so much!!! Anyways, today I’ll be discussing some a lot of my ideas, opinions, thoughts, future predictions, and commentary on moments from the Fire Force manga.

Warnings: Spoilers for future Fire Force Season Two arcs, and for the Fire Force manga. Read at your own discretion! Now that the warnings are over, onwards! ヽ(ヅ)ノ

(I’m actually trying to order my opinions via arcs, but I feel that this is really important, so I’m putting it first.)

1. There are no iPhones in the Fire Force.

This is so sad? My favourite characters don’t know the joy that is staying up late, scrolling through social media, watching YOUTUBE, having MEMES, KNOWING👏THE👏GREATNESS👏THAT👏IS👏VINES!!!

I’m slightly disappointed that Vulcan, who is literally named after the god of forging himself, who can make frickin’ HOLOGRAMS, didn’t bring back any of the pre-Catalysm technology to recreate, improve, or experiment with. As an expert engineer (I say this 0.2% seriously, with the two years of high school engineering course experience under my belt), I would’ve been interested to see what kind of gadgets Vulcan could whip up. *insert ‘Inspector Gadget theme song*

Please have this very sad Jigglypuff to show how sad this is.

2. Sister Iris and Religion in the Fire Force Storyline

In the beginning of the Fire Force series, I’ve accepted the fact that Iris' role as noncombatant, meant to act as the religious and public face of the Eighth Company. I think it is a fascinating role, because it allows the story to explore the idea of religion and belief in depth, which I was really looking forward to. I was excited how the author would handle Iris’ character, but I’m somewhat disappointed that it took so long for us to see Iris and other side characters like Maki and Tamaki become more fleshed out (I’m not counting Iris’ and Hibana’s backstory in Season 1. I felt that was more backstory to flesh out Hibana’s character rather than Iris’).

Throughout Fire Force’s story, some of the things I looked forward to the most were the religious elements, motifs, themes, and questions that are sprinkled throughout the story, one of my favourites being the portrayal of the dichotomy of religion. In Joker’s backstory, we see the darkness of the Holy Sol faith, and what happens when any religious belief is taken TOO far, without any regard for human life or rights. This idea of viewing humans as a collective, no regard for the individuality and feelings of a single person in the pursuit of faith is embodied by the captain of the Shadow of the Holy Sun, Joker’s former captain and abuser. However, we also get to see the goodness religion and belief can achieve in Iris’ mini arc, which focuses on Iris’ internal struggle as she struggles with her faith after being informed of the Evangelist’s part in the founding of the Holy Sol’s religion. Shinra and Huo Yan Li, the bucket hat 1st Brigade lieutenant (Seriously, which is the correct way to pronounce this guy’s name? Huo Yan Li?? Foien Li???) interaction in the Iris arc really summed up the arc and Iris’ character beautifully. Religion and belief gives people closure, hope, and strength to keep on moving forward. Seeing the anime adaption was an amazing experience. Fire Force’s animation was the reason I decided to watch it in the first place (before staying for the intriguing plot and religious side plot), but this particular episode?? Pure art. The colouring, ambience, storytelling? So good＼\ ٩( ᐛ )و /／

Like, the little detail of the burning nun in Iris’ eyes? (lmao sorry for the extra trauma, sweet child) *chef’s kiss*

The importance of belief is also hinted in the Asakusa arc, where all the district’s inhabitants believe in Benimaru, and expanded upon in later manga chapters, when we learn that Adolla is linked to humanity’s perception and beliefs about the world around them.

I would’ve liked Iris a lot more if we got to further explore her character and the affects of religion on others more deeply, perhaps see Iris visiting the Infernals’ families and loved ones, trying to help give closure through the nation’s (mostly) shared faith in Sol. They mentioned offhandedly in both anime and manga that Iris visits the deceased’s families, and I felt it would’ve given the deaths more significance and depth if we get screentime of how families are affected by the death of their loved ones. It would have also given the Holy Sol’s religion more depth and meaning if we saw believers of Sol’s actions due to their religion, (also giving more impact when we learn surprise surprise! The Holy Sol temple is founded by the Evangelist!) since belief without actions is just lip-service.

I would have also liked to see how Iris’ prayers affect others in the Eighth company. We do get to see this, 140+ CHAPTERS LATER in the mini Iris arc does Shinra (finally) mentions how Iris’ prayers helps him not lose sight of why he serves as a firefighter and kills Infernal. I’m glad that we got this scene, because better later than never, especially since Iris’ and Shinra’s discussion and overall the entire Iris mini arcs shows the power of prayer, but I would’ve like to have this topic discussed sooner.

2. Obi’s Sole Flaw

I think that Obi was an okay character, but they kind of pushed the boundary of his “normalcy” when we saw him topple pillars and rip railways out of the ground with “brute strength”. There are limits to the human body, it is fragile, and it doesn’t matter how much conditioning or “going beyond your limits” you do. People do experience boost of adrenaline, which is probably what the very anime-like titled “Pressure of Death” is based on, since life or death situations can heighten your performance and strength. However, I do understand that this IS shonen, and it isn’t meant to be realistic.

What made Obi’s sole flaw (and a physical flaw, at that!) was his “normalcy” while surrounded by more powerful individuals then he, and having to make up for something he can’t help by working twice as hard as everybody else. Now, although I was disappointed that Obi didn’t have any character/moral flaws, what made Obi’s character mediocre to me wasn’t the choice of Obi’s sole flaw. In fact, I could see how this could be an interesting character narrative IF WE LEARN MORE ABOUT OBI’S BACKSTORY, THEREFORE EXPLORING HIS CHARACTER MORE!!! (We only know Obi was a regular firefighter, being decorated twice, and then having his titles revoked for prioritizing the lives of citizens before becoming the captain of the Eighth.) No, what I didn’t like about Obi’s character is that we never see him STRUGGLE with his flaw, how others were born “superior” to him thanks to there invulnerability to flames, how he lives knowing one day he could just burst into flames. There’s SO many interesting things about Obi’s character, that could explained further, making him so much more interesting!!!

On the other hand, Obi’s character is a great role model for what a “normal” person can do (while jacked up on adrenaline, and when they manage to overcome flight reaction in fight or flight). He works hard, training to the best of his ability, doing what he CAN do, pushing his limits so that he can go above and beyond, overcoming the “Pressure of Death”, and staying true to his ideals, something very hard to do in a world where you might burst into flames at any given moment. I know that if I were to wake in a world where I could die any second (I mean, I could die tomorrow in Real Life™, but what are the chances of that?), I would definitely find myself struggling with my faith, and staying true to the morals I admire and was taught by my parents, especially if I was putting myself in danger despite of this weakness.

3. Asakusa Showdown Arc and Shinmon Hibachi

The Asakusa Showdown arc. Yes. Just yes. I-

It was amazing, periodt. The art, the overall aesthetic, the storytelling. *Cue violent fangirling* I took SOOOO many screenshots of the fight between Benimaru and Hibachi, I’m pretty sure my camera roll is 95% manga caps now. I love how the author actually gave a (fairly) valid reason for the cool Japanese aesthetic of this arc, in that Adolla is slowly gradually colliding with the Fire Force universe, causing people’s perception of the fight to seep into the universe. Overall? It. Was. Amazing. Albeit not my favourite arc, (that honour goes to the mini-Iris arc) I think that the Asakusa Showdown arc is easily in my Top 5 Fire Force arcs.

The Asakusa Showdown Arc mirroring and showing the ideals taught in the Mini Iris Arc was quite clever, though I’m not sure if this was purposefully done Okubo, or if I’m just scrabbling at crumbs.

In the Mini Iris arc, we see how religion and belief gives closure; a stark contrast to Asakusa with its proto-nationalist/atheist values. In THIS arc, centering around Asakusa and it’s proto-nationalist inhabitants, we see what happens when there isn’t enough effort to emphasize or give closure in what happened to Hibachi, and his subsequent death.

Shinmon Hibachi, as the leader of the neighbourhood fire watch, understood the significance of killing Infernals; of taking somebody’s life. But because of the unwillingness to let others (i.e. the inhabitants of Asakusa, that one kid who stabs him) understand the weight of killing Infernals and gain closure through understanding the reasons behind his harsh actions, Hibachi shoulders the consequences of both his and the actions of his predecessors’ ALONE, therefore leading to his demise.

The kid who stabbed Hibachi was still a CHILD, and children don’t always have a comprehensive understanding of death and the consequences of responsibility (no matter how much that kid believes he was ready to be an adult and support his mother).

3.5 Extra Worldbuilding Questions About Asakusa

I also have so many questions about Asakusa in general! How is Asakusa powered without being supported by Amaterasu, which is the country’s (and isn’t that mind boggling, that a whole country is supported by one power source with no backup source or other forms of energy/electricity, because of patriotic pride in a machine that might one day shut down, cough manga readers where u at?) I’m assuming that Asakusa mainly use coal, candles, and lamps for energy and lighting, since we did see one example of lighting in Asakusa (an ancient oil lamp), but I’m not sure if that would be sufficient to support a whole district of people. People were able to do that in the olden days, but back then there was a smaller concentration of people, and power necessary to support them.

Is Asakusa a district that is mostly atheist or polytheist? Do the inhabitants believe in no gods, not just the Sun god brought by the White Clads and Raffles I, including the Shinto or Buddhist gods from before the Catalysm, or do they believe in multiple gods/ancestor worship and they just don’t want to worship the Sun God like the rest of the Tokyo Empire because they’re unwilling to accept the new culture, immigrants and religion caused by Amaterasu, wanting to keep up the old Japanese traditions?

4. Arthur Deserves Better Parents 2k20 (Hint of Arthur’s Secret Ability?)

When Team Vulcan + Arthur found Arthur’s parents in the sewers Nether... Honestly, I don’t want to touch on them much, since I want to be (fairly) logical in my opinions on them, not letting my personal feelings twist my hypotheses for what may happen in the future of the Fire Force storyline.

Putting aside Arthur’s parents obvious neglect and bad parenting, I’m curious if Arthur's dad is actually a prophet or did he just get lucky with his delusions. Is this related to how Arthur can notice the difference between dopplegangers and real people? Perhaps because Arthur’s delusions of knighthood are so different from how he truly is (an abandoned child who deluded himself as a knight), therefore allowing him to notice the difference between dopplegangers and Adolla, as they are created by people’s perception of a subject.

5. Let Sho Be a Normal Kid at the End of the Show 2k20

Please let the small child be happy at the end of the manga. I mean, being raised by a cult underground isn’t exactly a Hallmarks childhood. For example, in the beginning of chapter 231, look at how Sho looks longingly at those kids on scooters and was so happy when he got a balloon from the firefighter mascots! (bruh, same balloons bring me so much joy)

I hope that in the end of the manga Okubo lets Sho, Shinra, and Eighth have some quality time. In one of the early arcs (with the first speaking demon, Minamoto?) Shinra saw some kids going to school wearing school uniforms, mentioning that if Sho was still alive, he’d be old enough to go to school. I’d be so sweet if at the end of the manga, Sho would have the chance to go to school, maybe the Fire Force academy (if it’s still running if by the end of the manga they’ve discovered the reason behind Human Combustion), makes friends and beat up anybody who badmouths the Eighth.

6. Cool Combat Medics!

I’d love to see more of the cool combat medics from the Sixth! We only saw the captain, Kayoko Huang, in action with her Asclepius staff pyrokinesis, which, might I add is a fascinating and terrifying ability. Think about it, she’s controlling CELLULAR DIVISION!!! She could start creating tumors in the bodies of her enemies! Could disintegrate people cellularly and no one would know, because fire snake, so no fingerprints!

Anyways, that is all I have right now. Thank you for reading my opinions about “Fire Force”, and for the nice response I got when I published my first opinion piece! Bruh, it took so long for me to edit this... 😔 I’m thinking of doing another meta going more in depth with my theory on Arthur and how he’s able to distinguish the difference between people and their dopplegangers, but that’s for another day. Feel free to discuss about your own ideas or thoughts in the chat, or tell me what you think! I promise I don’t bite. Have a wonderful day!

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vaguely-concerned · 5 years

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Some more mass effect andromeda thinky thoughts as I run around heleus getting some achievements!

- the murderous angaran ai is genuinely so fucking funny. “How are you feeling here on Aya?” “I hope you die” “Is there anything we could do to make you more comfortable?” “BURY THIS PLANET UNDER FIRE AND ASH” “o.oookay. Goodbye then.” “I HATE you.”

- I hope I never become irresistibly moved to write mass effect andromeda fic b/c there really is no other description for a good 70% of the expressions reyes makes than :> and how could one capture that in words

- as mentioned I’ve been doing a bit of achievement hunting and in the process I’ve been switching up a lot of gameplay stuff from how I handled it the first few times around and let me tell you it’s baller as fuuuuuuuuuck -- it just looks so awesome and is so satisfying between the maneuverability of the jetpack and biotic charge and the effects. special shoutout to what happens if you biotic charge a frozen victim enemy and the biotic pull/push combination. (throwing people around like ragdolls is actually so much fun I’ve kept doing it even after I unlocked the achievement lol)

- lol lol when you get meridian online there’s the montage of every planet coming back to life, right? well the one on kadara is from inside kralla’s song, with umi looking out at everything that’s happening. and all I can imagine is her jaded-ass voice going ‘what the fUCK did that asshole kid do now I only just cleaned up after the bar brawl he started with his krogan grandpa and now he’s rearranging the entire fucking planet right from under us goddess I need a drink’

- the implication that reyes ‘cards so close to my chest you won’t even know I’m playing’ vidal just does not shut up about how amazing ryder is to anyone who’ll listen gives me so much life. when you try to be mysterious and laidback but the human pathfinder is so fucking cute tho Y____Y (also go watch his scenes if you’re being standoffish with him the entire time -- he clearly wants ryder to like him so much right from the beginning, he’s doing so much work to no avail and I feel sort of bad for how funny I find it haha. interesting that it really does seem to be an emotional thing as well as y’know the practical/tactical benefits of having the pathfinder on his side. methinks the charlatan might be a bit lonely there behind all his masks lol)

I think this is why I’m willing to give him some benefit of the doubt too, despite all the cloak and dagger stuff -- he’s so immediately drawn to ryder, who you can never make a bad person, really. something in him must respond to that, if potentially only in the ‘attracted to traits I do not possess myself’ way hahaha

- I love sam. so so much. some of the open world implementation is still grating (yes sam. yes I know I can mine this area for resources through my mining interface. we’ve been doing this for a hundred hours sam. you’ve been right here with me the entire time sam. please sam), but he’s SUCH a good and I’d argue underutilized concept (emotionally at least) and the best boy. the fact that he can get SARCASTIC on you fsdhfjsadh he’s growing and learning! he’s doing so from inside your brain which is kind of unsettling but also SO COOL! there’s something about that level of intimacy, of always knowing there will be someone there with you in your head that is super interesting and deserves to be examined more fully -- both how it could be comforting and how it’s r e a l l y not how people or ai are generally designed to work lol.

he also gives us a unique link with our dad and I wonder if the writers would have explored that in more depth if there’d been more development time -- it practically SCREAMS out an invitation to get to play/see things from alec’s POV in short bursts, like the memories you unlock except you could go through playing it as him since sam is common to both of us. (see my ‘our dad comes back through either kett or remnant nonsense in the sequel and we need to find some way to connect with him’ idea. it would be. amazing. listen alec already looked at the ethical guidelines involved in creating ai and went ‘huh interesting ideas but not for me thanks!’, don’t tell me he wouldn’t have left some loophole in so this could happen)

- reyes literally says ‘the cavalry’s here’ when we get to meridian and I for one love him more than words can express (he also asks us if we’re okay in sort of a sweet/worried way right before we get to the control room. aw buddy)

- like we don’t think of them like that because we’re in control of them and see all the stumbles and awkwardness and how young they are all the time, but damn the ryder twins must look like something else to everyone in andromeda haha. they literally stride around like demigods restoring entire planets. on voeld spring non-metaphorically follows in their footsteps. shit dude if we’re talking realpolitik here the angara must feel p r e t t y nervous about this -- there’s no one saying they can’t turn off the vaults as easily as they turned them on. I hope we get them somehow teaching the angara how to do it too, on a smaller scale at least, as a show of good faith or something in a sequel, because that power imbalance is disconcerting

- I’m glad sam and I have such similar priorities whenever we’re on kadara. ‘maybe mr vidal would know. perhaps we should ask mr vidal about this. mr vidal said something relating to this pathfinder maybe we should speak to him’ . yeah sam i know the feeling, same (it does undeniably read as sam having a bit of a crush which is. hilarious?)

- the fact that alec ryder thought ellen responded to his bad boy act in any way when what really charmed her was that he was a great big nerd <3 it’s kind of nice to see a fictional marriage that seems to have just been. nice and stable and chill? just two intellectual equals who like and respect each other very much and not a lot of drama until alec went full alec and started developing rogue ai instead of watching his wife die lol. again I would love for the sequel to involve ellen finally waking up and being like ‘death? trying to claim MY husband? I do not think so, I can die he can’t he’s not leaving me behind’ and helping out and you realize that the reason they were soulmates was that under the relatively rational and unemotional surface they’re both, at heart, batshit crazy mad scientists who are insanely devoted to each other. imagine it tho! the people of andromeda realize alec ryder is back from the dead somehow and doing some Shit out there, they put a ton of resources into curing ellen’s disease because their best shot is something to do with the implants she made, hey presto we’ve got all ryders on the board and in play.

- just want to make it clear that I’m still sad about avitus rix and hope he’s having a good day

- do you think ryder ever asks sam to read something to him ‘aloud’ in his head if he’s anxious and can’t sleep. or just to talk at him about something boring until he nods off. again the possibilities inherent in the concept!!! he has someone who’s closer to him than any other person could be, what’s that like?

- *me sticking to my sidewinder pistol the whole playthrough even though it’s laughably inefficient* I just wanna feel like a cowboy bioware please work with me here

- the male ryder voice actor has such amazing comedic timing, there’s a lot of reaction stuff out in the field he absolutely nails. I enjoy the female voice too and I like how much emotion she manages to convey towards the end of the game especially, but there’s a casual comedy in male ryder’s voice that can’t be beat. (well, it’s not hawke levels, but then nothing ever is, that’s too much to ask)

- I love vorn and kesh so much. nerd krogans unite & make out

- I still want to sit peebee down and have a long serious talk with her about emotional abuse, maybe give her a hug :( fuck kalinda

- this game does not get enough credit for how stunningly beautiful it is, it all got buried under criticism about the animations and it’s a fucking shame. the last few vaults you go through are just mindboggling in scale and visual uh striking-ness. it makes me so sad to think there won’t be any more of it D:

- I really like this mainly casual + logical dialogue options ryder I’ve found; it makes him sound like a younger and more irreverent version of his father, but also softer and less closed off and much more willing to show affection for his family especially.

- i wonder if different people’s individual SAMs will take on a certain tone/unique pattern when they’ve coexisted long enough. have I mentioned. how much I want a sequel to this game

- one last reyes note because don’t look at me okay -- I wonder how much we’re meant to read into ‘being honorable never got me anywhere’. on the one hand I’m fully prepared to believe he’s never even tried doing anything the honorable way in his entire life lol but on the other there’s also some interesting potential in the interplay of that sentence and ‘to be someone’. (there seems to be a deep fear in him both of powerlessness and of being truly seen/recognized -- he equates secrecy with safety pretty explicitly -- which seems... telling? of what I don’t know but telling all the same hahaha) like he might be saying he’s tried doing things the ‘right’ way and it didn’t work and the price was too high, so he just went for this instead with the ends low-key justifying the means. hmmm. :Ia (this is what happens when I get Attached to a character with like an hour of screentime my friends, and I’m already primed to give my entire heart away at the sound of nicholas boulton’s voice)

#mass effect #mass effect andromeda #I'm sorry about this my brain just won't shut up about this suddenly so here we go #reyes vidal #meta

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quarterfromcanon · 4 years

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1-4. For the asks

Thank you so much for sending these! <3

Once I started to answer them, I realized there were comparatively few recent television shows appearing on the list. I seemed to keep gravitating toward older ones I remembered from years ago. I took a handful of days to mull it over in case I was forgetting something, but nothing else comes to mind. Maybe my ongoing list of Shows to Watch During Quarantine will turn up some fresh results but, for now, it looks like I’ll be taking a little trip down memory lane. :)

This turned out to be a pretty long and rambly post, so I’ll stow it under the cut!

Top 5 TV Shows

1. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - I can’t imagine this surprises anyone who has been following this blog for the past two years or so. It brought fellow fans into my life, got me back into writing fic, and prompted countless tags of meta. It’s the show my mind drifts to on a weekly basis (if not daily) even a full year after the finale. Just when it seemed I’d reached an age where that level of intense fandom involvement and character attachment might be fading, it proved that quite the opposite was true. I’m very thankful to the series for that, and for the people whose paths have crossed mine as a result.

2. Schitt’s Creek - This is my #1 Feel Good show and, though I’ve been dodging spoilers for the final season until it gets uploaded to Netflix, I get the impression that it will remain in that top spot. The world feels softer and more hopeful there. It’s healing for my soul. I’m going to have a dreadfully difficult time saying goodbye, but I’m glad there are six season to revisit whenever I want.

3. Stranger Things - The theme song alone sends such a rush of excitement through me. I love the aesthetic and the atmosphere. I sometimes have mixed feelings about the romances but the FRIENDSHIPS sure do have a direct line to my heartstrings. I think the way they’ve combined media influences into their own story is really neat. You get something that’s new and engaging, but you can also go back and enjoy the sources of inspiration with fresh appreciation.

4. Joan of Arcadia - I can’t help it. The snark, the jackets, the early 2000s songs, the performances -- the nostalgia for this show is so strong. It’s not without its problems, but it did have some really good things to offer as well. I remember an episode that was one of my earliest introductions to the concept of a trigger, and the effect it could have on a person if exposed to one of theirs. The series dealt a lot with grief and the many forms it can take (I STILL can’t hear Fiona Apple’s cover of “Across the Universe” without getting misty-eyed). I’m also surprised, looking back, at the somewhat positive way I recall them discussing homosexuality on the several occasions that it came up in the show. Not to give too much credit since I don’t think there were recurring canonically LGBTQIA+ characters but, for a kid who spent most days around closed-minded people of a certain religious leaning, it was meaningful along my individual journey. I’d like to provide the several examples that are most vivid in my memory:

A. A girl with short hair, short nails, little to no makeup, and a bulky leather jacket is generally assumed to be a lesbian by the bullies at school. The show directly confronts the fact that “gay” should not be used an insult, that identity should not be assumed without the person telling you so, AND makes sure that the character in question never pushes back by saying harmful things about lesbians despite not actually being one herself.

B. A boy who is questioning is able to confide in his big brother and have a fairly calm conversation about it; the awkwardness mostly comes from neither of them being accustomed to openly discussing emotions, not from the possibility of a negative response regarding the subject matter.

C. Another character is accidentally discovered to be gay (he only appears in the one episode, if my memory serves), and some of the leads have the opportunity to share that for personal gain. However, even though he is a popular jock who is a bit of a jerk in the hallways, the show makes it clear that the right choice is still to leave the telling of that information up to him and him alone.

Like I mentioned, it can’t be said that representation was in abundance here - for instance, I don’t believe anything other than straight or gay was presented as a possibility - but any accepting acknowledgement in a faith-centric series was something for me to hold on to in my still-deeply-closeted days. As a final Very Important personal side note, this show brought Judith Montgomery into my life (pictured below on the left), and that feels like it merits a shoutout for being what I consider a rather significant marker in my awakening.

THE OVERWHELMING CRUSH I HAD - and still have - is one for the books.

5. Pushing Daisies - This is another show with an aesthetic I adore. The series has such a fun, whimsical energy. The crime-solving! The clothes! The cast! There's a lot to love. It’s the kind of world I wish I could visit... well, minus the evidently rampant murder rate.

Top 5 Overrated TV Shows

1. Once Upon A Time - *deep sigh* I tried to stick with it for so long. I think I’ve seen five out of the seven seasons in their entirety. It just felt like everything got mired down by excessive (and increasingly convoluted) subplots, often for the purpose of tossing in as many fairytale and/or Disney characters as possible. Plus, quite honestly, there was too much emphasis on romantic love. For a show whose first season involved a curse being broken by [potential spoiler, I suppose] a mother kissing her son’s forehead, I ultimately found myself up to my ears in romantic ships. It reached such a stifling extent that, if you were not particularly attached to those pairings, there wasn’t a whole lot else to entice further viewing.

2. Under the Dome - I don’t know for certain what the general public opinion of this series was, but it felt like the commercials always featured alleged rave reviews, so I figured I could include it here. I was vaguely interested in Season 1, mainly as a fan of Rachelle Lefevre’s work. Season 2 pulled me in with the introduction of a new townsperson and I threw WAY too much of my heart into that attachment, which backfired when that character was killed. I made quite the spectacle of my heartbreak, so much so that my family doesn’t let me mention this show around them anymore. :P Season 3 was, to phrase it delicately, not a great time. The series did introduce me to a few new-to-me actors, though, so that was cool.

3. Bates Motel - Even the incentive of learning that the two characters I liked most share a lot of screen time later in the series hasn’t been enough to call me back to this one. I don’t know if it was the pacing that put me off or what, but the prospect of finishing the remaining seasons feels so daunting. There are evidently five seasons in total and I believe I’ve only seen two of them thus far. I will probably muddle through it someday just to see how it goes, but the fact that I am so disinclined to prioritize it made this feel like a fair addition to the list.

4. Lost - My interest in this series unfortunately waned right before fervent fandom spiked. I don’t have any specific complaints that come to mind about what I saw; I just sort of drifted and then stayed away. Teachers I liked and peers I spent time with were starting to latch on to the show and I couldn’t find even the slightest inclination to give it a second try. However, did I still dutifully read all the latest installments in my friend’s Sawyer Ford and Kate Austen fanfiction when she passed me handwritten copies at lunch? Sure. I was glad it made her happy, even if I was no longer a viewer.

5. Hemlock Grove - I say this as someone who still mourns the fates of some characters in this show, so I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that the series stopped being able to make me feel anything. I’m just of the opinion that, in some ways, it might’ve been better off stopping at one season. That’s where the book it was based on ends, and things just didn’t feel as cohesive after that. Season 3 especially was - borrowing from my above review of Under the Dome - not a great time. That being said, there are also certain elements from the book that I could’ve done without in the Season 1 adaptation but... well... here we are.

Top 5 Underrated TV Shows

1. Picnic at Hanging Rock - Another one that won’t surprise followers of this blog. I have rhapsodized about it quite frequently since I found it a little over a month ago. It’s a period piece mystery miniseries with LGBTQIA+ representation, gorgeous costumes, and Samara Weaving. This felt specifically designed to wedge its way into my heart, and I’m quite content with the space it now occupies.

2. Dark - I’m so intrigued by the overlapping timelines with all of the morally gray characters. It’s possible to like one of these people in the timeline where they’re young but dislike them as adults, or vice versa. It also makes me think of Rant by Chuck Palahniuk a little tiny bit with the idea that time travel, specifically tampering with your own timeline, might make you physically and behaviorally unrecognizable to yourself. And the SONG CHOICES! I have gotten some solid new music selections from this series.

3. Sense8 - I still need to watch the finale. I really do. But I knew it would make me sad so I’ve avoided it for... two years now? Pretty close, I think. The concept is fascinating and the cast is so strong. Plus the cinematography! They came up with some of the coolest ways to depict the link these characters share and what it’s like when they connect over distance. The planning and careful editing it all must’ve taken... I remain in awe.

4. Penny Dreadful - There were definitely some story/writing choices I didn’t particularly like along the way, but I did get engrossed in the creepy goodness and the performances -- Eva Green’s Vanessa Ives most of all. It left me wishing for more period piece “monster mash” stories, because having all those classic characters in one place was a blast. It also helped me understand why Helen McCrory was once slated to play Bellatrix Lestrange because she can be terrifying. Oh and Sarah Greene in her Wild West outfits? Perdita Weeks with short red hair in fencing garb, and later in all leather with boots and a long jacket? I WAS NOT PREPARED AND I HAVE STILL NOT RECOVERED. I NEVER WILL.

5. Wonderfalls - There’s some cringe-inducing handling of certain representation in the series, but I have such a weak spot for quippy outcasts who become reluctant chosen ones (Joan Girardi in Joan of Arcadia, Wynonna Earp, Jaye Tyler in this series, et cetera). I also really love the sibling dynamics here. They bicker, tease one another, help each other out of trouble, and have rare but genuine heart-to-hearts. Caroline, Lee, and Katie all did such a great job blending their characters’ adult personalities with certain childhood attributes that rise to the surface in the presence of family.

Top 5 Movies

1. Addams Family Values - I’ve rewatched this movie at least once annually since I found it in Media Play at age 13. Usually, I’ll play it around Halloween or, at the latest, Thanksgiving. It’s mouth-along-with-every-line level ingrained in my memory. I find myself leaning forward in my seat before favorite parts because I’m still that excited to relive them. Why this movie, and why this devotion to such a degree? It’s hard to explain, even to myself. I can tell you, however, that I hold up every other portrayal of the Addams characters to the versions found in this. Everybody in the cast just feels that perfect for their part.

2. Clue - I was already pretty fond of this movie to begin with, but then my sister got older and claimed it as a favorite of her own, so now she just supplies me with further excuses to watch it repeatedly. It’s also been a bonding piece of media with a couple of close friends and such through the years. It’s incredible to think not everyone in it was the first choice for their roles; what everybody brings to the table is so top-notch that I wouldn’t have it any other way. I also LOVE knowing that it originally went to theaters with different endings depending on which showing you attended. I gather people weren’t terribly thrilled with the stunt back then, but I kinda think some moviegoers would be into that approach these days? Then again, one hit that tried something different tends to start a fad, so maybe I’d end up regretting the suggestion after a while. :P

3. The Craft - This. Movie. Yes, Act III is a major bummer even though I know it’s coming, and I’ll always wish it ended differently. Even so. This. Movie. I tend to headcanon mostly for shows and sometimes books, but The Craft is a beloved exception. I love so much about it: the magic, the music, the clothes, the settings, the dynamics within the friend group, the performances. I had no idea when I first got the DVD at 17 that it would become such a part of my life, but I’m so glad it found its way to me.

4. Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion - The soundtrack is a glorious ’80s and ’90s treat for my ears. The colorful costumes are perfectly suited to the main characters’ version of the world. There are so many great lines and it feels like everyone is having a lot of fun in their roles. I LOVE HEATHER MOONEY SO MUCH. She’s my awful, scathingly sarcastic, little grungy grump and she fills my heart with joy.

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - I was pretty sure at least one of the three had to appear on here. I think, if I were to tally them all up, The Return of the King features most of my favorite moments, so it wins the spot. “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!”, ‘Edge of Night,’ Éowyn in battle, The Army of the Dead, ‘Into the West’... I end up crying during the end credits every time. So, yeah, ultimately, I would choose the third part of the trilogy if I could only watch one.

Phew, that’s it! All the questions answered, all the shows and movies listed! Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read it all, and thanks again to @monaiargancoconutsoy for sending in the prompts! <3

#About Me #Answered Asks

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teabooksandsweets · 6 years

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Just to clarify a few things regarding my own stance on current and general discussion in the Narnia fandom: (I have said some of this before)

I am excited about the upcoming Netflix adaptation, glad it will be completely independent from prior adaptations, and - until I have reason to do otherwise - expect the best of it.

There is no such thing as “forced diversity”. If anything, a lack of diversity is the only forced (and unrealistic) thing, and all these “fandom confessions” insisting historical accuracy (do you seriously believe that?) or accuracy to the books (you are fine with Lucy being played by a brunette even though she is stated to be blond - why does Lucy have to be white then?) are tiring.

The only thing that would bother me (regarding “agendas”) are either a Narnia that is not Christian, but conservatively Christian and complete distortion of the themes and values Lewis actually included, or a secular Narnia, to fix that complete distortion of the themes and values Lewis included that some people read into the books. Anyway, I don’t even think either will happen, so I’m good.

In fact – Lewis approach to Christianity, and the themes he included, are controversial and wonderful, especially the end of LB, and the story of Emeth.

I don’t think Lewis was sexist in the least, and I will not go away from that stance no matter what comments my posts on this matter get. Also: every single female character - hero or villain, main or side character - is a wonderfully written, complex individual with more life and amazingness (or badness - in the "good writing” sense) to her than many so-called “strong female characters”. And they are delightfully different from one another, too, with no “good kind of girl” or “bad kind of girl” pushed into it.

Susan was never kicked out of Narnia, she stopped believing in Narnia, stopped believing in her own memories. We don’t know if she actually stopped believing in a “normal” religious sense or not, and we don’t know if she stopped believing in Narnia because of some sort of trauma or not. All of this is interesting and worth exploring, but not definite canon. We don’t even know if, in a way, she tried to do what Aslan told her or if she just brushed off Narnia entirely. What we do know is she stopped believing, thought Narnia to be a game.

She was also not “kicked out” for materialism. However, since an earlier statement of myself could be misunderstood (due to my bad phrasing) that I think she abandoned Narnia for materialism: I do not. What I meant is only that “nylons and lipsticks and invitations” were meant to be material/materialist things rather than sexual things in it their nature. I don’t, however, think they play a great role in Susan’s lack of faith at all.

I also don't think Lewis was sexist for writing this. And I don't think Jill said so because she “hates girly girls” or has a “not like other girls” attitude – we sadly don't know anything about the years between SC and LB and about the relationship Jill had to the Pevensies. Jill probably was – at least partly, considering she seems to have a similar background to Eustace – raised and taught to think like that, but didn't on her own, and I think what she said about Susan was merely her failing to understand what made Susan loose her faith in Narnia, combied with her personal observations of Susan. It wasn't the nicest thing to say, but the amount of hate she gets for this one line is unproportional and unfair.

It's actually shocking that some people actually think the Scrubbs were actually really cool and Lewis just treated them unfairly. The Scrubbs didn't even believe in their own values and views, while at the same time they were never even stated to be in any way bad. Some people are really like “oooh Lewis was such an evil Christian he taught children that not smoking is bad.” No. That’s not what it’s about.

Also, know, Lewis didn't complain that the Scrubbs sent their son to a school were he wasn't abused. He mentioned that Eustace didn't get spanked at school (and didn't say that that was bad) and he complained, that the Scrubbs did send their son to a school were several children were abused by other children, with support by the teachers, and if you researched the tiniest bit about Lewis' own experience in boarding school, then the extent of what was implied to have happened in Experiment House will make you seriously rethink your approval of the Scrubbs – and especially that place!

It's a shame that the word “Pevensiecest” even exists.

Puddleglum is one of the most important, most powerful, most wonderful characters in the world of Narnia and in fiction in general.

The Christian themes in Narnia can not be seperated from the books, but at the same time, Narnia is not only for Christians. These two facts are not opposites! Lewis' approach to Christianity makes them actually depend on each other. (They are also not propaganda!)

#chronicles of narnia #narnia fandom #literature #c. s. lewis #personal

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miraculously-dedicated · 5 years

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Ikari Gozen

🚨 HUGE SPOILER WARNING 🚨

The whole episode was played during the Miraculous Ladybug panel for SDCC so for those that wish to wait for the proper release, I will keep everything hidden under the “keep reading” tab. (it’s going to be super long anyway)

You still here?

Great, LET’S GET INTO IT!

HOLY SHIT I LOVED THIS EPISODE❤❤ (I say that for pretty much almost all episodes but can you really blame me?)

The friendship challenge sounded like a such a cute and cool concept that I personally really liked. Like you know how we have so many National something days that nobody really cares to much to even remember? PARIS DOESN’T HALF-ASS ANYTHING Y’ALL. They take the concepts that TRULY matter and make sure it is celebrated, respected, and appreciated to its fullest. Making sure to remind everyone about what’s truly important, keeping their faith in humanity strong, strengthening the communities bonds, just like in Heroes Day! It’s honestly just such a sweet feeling and I really wish people would talk about this concept more. I can’t wait too see what other fun events the show has planned.

Tomoe continues to be a badass. A good mother? ......UHHHH 😬😬

Aaww, Kagami just wants more friends.

WTF, THEIR CAR??? OKAY THEN. I guess I really shouldn’t be so surprised since they ARE rich. (Especially since Gabriel has a freaking hologram in his car, so that really makes the Tsurugi’s pale in comparison)

Ooooohhh clever girl. I love how both Kagami and Adrien are rebellious against their commanding parents.

“OH NO SHE’S CUTE”-Marinette Dupain Cheng 2019😂

I am Mari in public🤣🤣

“She’s such a weird girl” You’ll get used to it sweetie

MARINETTE NO, WHY??? COME ON! (She REALLY has serious jealousy issues)

“Okay on second thought, maybe you shouldn’t play the game” YOU AND ME BOTH TIKKI

(No hate towards Marinette, I love her with all my heart, but the girl still has to seriously work on her emotions)

KAGAMI TRYING TO SMILE IS MY FAVORITE (everyone is a constant mood in this show)

I love how there are so many awkward characters, and how the writers did such a good job showing how different characters with different upbringings have different ways of displaying that. Just like with any other emotions or personal issues, it is a wide spectrum and never just one-dimensional thing. I appreciate it so much is because as a very awkward person myself, I can relate. It feels nice to have something like that be acknowledged and positively included and definitely helped boost my confidence when I was younger🥰.

Okay Marinette is definitely 100% me I’m really indecisive as well

*Kagami listing down Marinette’s traits to determine her blood type* “Split personality” Excuse me?? The reason it stuck out to me the most is because the definition of split personality is: Another term for dissociative identity disorder; A rare psychological disorder in which two or more personalities with distinct memories and behavior patterns apparently exist in one individual. In this case the different personalities have no memory or even knowledge of the others existence. ...WELL I’m pretty sure Marinette doesn’t have DID but if you think about it... What if Kagami meant it as a, less extreme, figure of speech to describe Marinette’s behavior? Marinette is filled surprises, so much so, that I honestly have a hard time figuring her character out. She may seem like a simple, typical shoujo-esque character but OH NO MY DUDE. I HEAVILY disagree. (But that’s a different post all together for another day)

“HEY”

Cue montage of Marinette trying to screw everything up but Kagami still wins with ease (aka Chaotic Neutral vs No Bullshit🤣)

“Trust exercise. Exchange unlocked phones with your partner.” OH NO. PHONE THIEF MARINETTE MAKES A COMEBACK

MARINETTE DON’T GO THROUGH HER PHONE

Wait Kagami doesn’t even have Adrien’s contact? And she even searched up how to make friends. AWW MY POOR LONELY BABY, MUST PROTECT AT ALL COSTS.

Not to mention how proud I was of Marinette for immediately realizing her mistake and wanting to fix everything between the two of them. I will definitely make a future post about the relationship development between Marinette and Kagami, but all I can say now is that there has been HEAVY miscommunication between them up until this moment. Both girls did not have a good impression on the other leading to false interpretations and a overall poor thought of character towards each other. In Marinette’s case, she thought Kagami was full of herself with her bold and and competitive streak, due to her many success in the the past. She thought Kagami literally couldn't care less about others but learned it was quite the opposite. Kagami yearns for friends and companionship but is just awkward at showing it. Learning that, Marinette changes her idea about Kagami completely and wants to make her wish come true.

“Are all humans this noisy?” Marinette just smiles awkwardly. AT LEAST SHE’S SELF-AWARE (Seriously I’m glad their bringing up this unhealthy behavior, my girl needs to CHILL)

AW NO SHE SAW THE VIDEO, NO BABY, FUCK OFF HAWKMOTH

AH SHIT HER MOM FOUND OUT SHE LIED

MARINETTE IS PROTECTING KAGAMI.

KAGAMI IS GENUINELY GRATEFUL FOR THAT AND CHEERS UP

I’M GOING TO CRY THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL

I honestly love how in a second, their relationship took a complete 180. Marinette just suddenly becomes very protective and attentive towards Kagami. She is taking full responsibility of her past actions by genuinely caring for her new friend and the best part is, I think Kagami saw that as well! I love my girls, their friendship is so sweet.

OH MY GOD IKARI GOZEN’S DESIGN IS SICK

Did...Did she just EAT HER DAUGHTER???

WAX ADRIEN MAKES A COMEBACK😂

A movie ticket??

Wait Fu works at the movies???

WAIT HAWKMOTH KNOWS WHO HE IS, WHAT I’M SORRY WHAT ELSE DID WE MISS???????? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH

HELL YEAH DRAGON KAGAMI FOR THE WIN

Bath-bombs now????

YEET

OKAY I’VE KNOW LONGG FOR LIKE THREE SECONDS AND I ALREADY LOVE THEM

Best transformation phase so far

AAAHHH RYUKO IS LOOKS SO BEAUTIFUL I LOVE HER

AND HER POWERS ARE AWESOME

AND SHE’S SUCH A BADASS I’M IN LOVE💖💖

SHE’S PERFECT

Ladybug being a true mentor, supporting Ryuuko 😭❤❤

AH SHIT NOT CAT NOIR TOO

Ok that was a really smart plan

“I have good teachers” MY HEART

THE DRAGON MIRACULOUS HAS SUCH COOL POWERS I WANT IT

My new FAVORITE akumas and battle in the show so far

THAT POUND IT😭😭❤

AH NO PLEASE LET KAGAMI USE THE MIRACULOUS AGAIN IN THE FUTURE

“I don’t have many friends.” “ What matters isn’t having lots of friends, but the ones you do have are true friends.” I SWEAR THIS SHOW IS GONNA KILL ME WITH ITS SWEETNESS. Also I swear, Ladybug proves time and time again she is the emotional support everyone needs.

“The game is over. We lost.” “No. We won the right to get orange juice together! If you still want to that is.” MARI, YOU’RE AN ANGEL I LOVE YOU💖. Seriously I’m really proud of Marinette for always being so mature at the end of the day. Even when Kagami mentions how Adrien was right about Marinette being a good friend, you can see Marinette was a bit upset over it, BUT she immediately got over it and focused on having a fun time with Kagami. I LITERALLY HAVE NO WORDS FOR HOW I FEEL AFTER SEEING THAT.

Also the long awaited question since day 1 has been answered. Marinette’s zodiac sign is a snake.

THAT CUTE SELFIE AT THE VERY END

So yeah! That basically summarizes all my (MANY) feelings about this wonderful episode! I loved the theme of friendship, the development between my two best girls, the akuma battle and dragon miraculous, all the asian cultural references, there was just so much to digest. Ikari Gozen was definitely a character heavy episode that adds so much more context and depth to the overall understanding and arcs for both Marinette and Kagami, there is only so much more to go from here! With that said I will definitely do my best to come up with a full blown analysis post for both girls and how their relationship developed and some for Kagami alone as well (Mari too of course, that just might take a bit longer). There is already something I have in the works😉...

#ml s3 spoilers #ikari gozen #marinette dupain cheng #kagami tsurugi #how many times have i written both their names in this post?

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evartandadam · 6 years

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HEY, so I have a big question! But firstly, wanted to say I am glad I found your blog! I have been wondering lately: Obviously all the Akatsuki members have suffered some type of mental trauma from their pasts, so would you consider any of them as actual sociopaths-- not necessarily psychopaths? I ask because I have heard psychopaths are genetically determined but sociopaths are shaped by circumstance over time and are still slightly capable of having true moral and feelings. What do you think?

Okkkkk so you’re talking about the clinical definitions for ‘sociopath’ and ‘psychopath’ here. The problem is that no one can actually agree on these definitions. I have read soooo many articles on sociopaths vs psychopaths, and there are so many different opinions. Now, obviously there are two separate terms, so there must be differences.

I will answer this question according to the definition you listed, and I will then answer it with my own definition.

The only one who could have possibly been born with it would be Hidan. (Adding Orochimaru cause I forgot him- he was also likely born with an anti personality disorder.) The rest of them were raised to be the way they are. And most of them can still feel a connection with another person. The two who really cannot feel empathy at all are Sasori and Orochimaru.

Now, like I said, I read a lot of definitions for these two terms, and what I gathered from them in bulk is that sociopathy is a spectrum, and a psychopath would essentially be the ultimate sociopath. Sociopaths by some definitions are still capable of connecting with individuals, but never groups. Psychopaths are deemed to be colder, and incapable of making ties of any kind. I think the born vs created argument makes the definitions unnecessarily complicated? Like, what about someone who is born with it but still feels connections? According to these basic definitions, this person doesn’t fit into either term! And this is because these terms are trying to squish too many attributes into one category or the other.

So I’m going to ignore the born vs created aspect of this, because I answered it above and it doesn’t really influence any other attributes.

Here’s a list of Akatsuki from least to most sociopathic/psychopathic:

Itachi

Deidara

Kisame

Konan

Kakuzu

Hidan

Nagato

Sasori

Obito/Madara

Orochimaru

Ok so, the Akatsuki are kind of divided into three groups here: Those who had to give up their compassion to do their job but otherwise still can make connections/Those who gave up on connections a long time ago and are probably difficult to get to/Those who are too far gone- pretty much impossible to make a connection with.

Note that I am rating these not only on their past selves but their current selves. Obviously all of them are kind of sociopathic:

Itachi, Konan, Kisame and Deidara are definitely not psychopaths:

Itachi has issues, but he cares very much for others. He sacrificed his own sanity and name to do what he thought was right for other people. He probably watches the rest of the Akatsuki and hates their actions. But another part of him is dead inside, so nothing gets to him as much anymore. A defense mechanism- indifference/apathy. A symptom of sociopathy.

Deidara is interesting, because of how he kills people. Deidara was deemed a coward by Onoki, his master, for enjoying long-distance fighting. Deidara is obviously no coward, so why doesn’t he enjoy close combat? He seems to enjoy a good fight. It’s probably because he wants to get the job done without having to actually think about the aftermath. Deidara is very extroverted and seems to enjoy people. He is another character who, under different circumstances, would enjoy living a peaceful life as a creator. Iwagakure created what he is. I always sensed he wanted to be more than just a killing machine. I was actually going to put him higher on this list, but disperfection pointed out how Deidara even apologizes to Tobi (someone he can’t stand) before he kills himself, and warns Hidan and Kakuzu about Naruto even though he didn’t have to. He seems kind of… courteous.

Kisame is one of the Akatsuki who really believes in their goal. He wants peace. He dislikes the shinobi lifestyle that he lived in the Mist. He obviously cares for Itachi. I put him above Deidara on this list, because there isn’t much concrete evidence that he is better than Deidara. But I still feel like if Kisame really had the option, he would want to live a peaceful life. Sociopaths also don’t feel loyalty for groups, and Kisame is all about that. Kisame and Konan are pretty much equal on this list.

Konan as far as I can tell just does what Nagato wants. She loves Nagato, and she loved Yahiko. And she genuinely seems to want peace for others. People in Ame called her their angel, and it was likely because she was compassionate towards them. Konan is still a cold-blooded killer, and can distance her emotions to get the job done. But she feels a lot for people collectively. Konan is very similar to Kisame in a lot of ways. While Kisame enjoys bloodshed more, Konan couldn’t care less about killing those who are in the way of her mission.

Nagato, Kakuzu and Hidan are in the middle, all for different reasons:

Kakuzu is just old and jaded. Kakuzu was a very loyal shinobi back in the day, and was stabbed in the back by the people he put his faith in. I feel that young Kakuzu was probably a pretty decent dude. But half a century of bounty hunting for a living will harden a person. Currently, Kakuzu would be very hard to make a connection with, which is why he’s so high on the list.

Hidan is very tricky to place because he could be a hardcore psychopath, but he seems to be capable of some compassion. Out of all the Akatsuki, Hidan is the most likely to have always had violent tendencies. But Hidan still has a moral code and follows a religion. This completely goes against what a sociopath is. Sociopaths believe they are their own gods, essentially. They also have no loyalty. Hidan is the trickiest one to place because he is all over the place. Hidan hase BPD, which explains why it’s so hard to place him on a sociopathic spectrum. Hidan is still filled with emotions, and he has a moral compass, even if it is screwed up.

Nagato is actually a narcissist! I say he’s a narcissist because it perfectly fits into how he is used by Madara/Obito. Narcissists are lower than sociopaths on the food chain, and are usually manipulated by sociopaths. Now, he could be a narcissistic sociopath. But either way, Nagato has no problem killing people to get what he wants. He used to be very compassionate, but definitely lost his way. To willingly call yourself a god and deem yourself worthy of appointing suffering on others in such a ceremonial fashion requires a lot of distance from compassion. Hidan may kill you for his god and think it’s right, but Nagato thinks he IS god, therefore he is right. Nagato’s way of thinking is much more dangerous, due to the combination with his intellect and power. He has a chance to make the world better with his eyes, and instead he uses them to harm the masses. Not good. Still, like I said, Nagato is more of a narcissist than a sociopath, so I will not put him into the following category. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget he thought using his best friend’s corpse was like, a cool idea. *whispers* what the fuuuuuuu-

Sasori Obito/Madara and Orochimaru are classic psychopaths:

Sasori is actually lower on this list than Obito! This is because Sasori doesn’t have a god complex, and mainly keeps to himself. But hey, if you think he belongs higher on the list, that definitely works for me! Sasori is the classic psychopath in a lot of ways. I mean, he’s cold, collecting and could be mistaken for the devil himself! But even Sasori was shown to be a normal, sweet kid until Suna trained him to become what he is. Sasori also kills people and does horrible things with their corpses, but he isn’t big on continuous torture. This could be why he hates Orochimaru so much. Doesn’t like his “style”. But Sasori is a very big sociopath! Wouldn’t want to run into this guy! I have done so many analysis posts on him… here and here!

Obito is a total sociopath, sorry. I don’t think his character really makes sense, but judging by the things he has done and how much he enjoyed them, he is a sociopath! Now, Obito by himself would be way lower on the spectrum. But with Madara’s influence (a total socioapth), Obito rises the ranks! (Obito shouldn’t be capable of doing the things he did if Kishi was actually consistent with his character). Obito kills so many innocent people. He kills Minato, a man who loved him very much. He helps Itachi slaughter the rest of his own clan. He manipulates the Mizukage and apparently gives him a rep of being a tyrant. He even pretends to care about Deidara when he does not. Oh yeah, and he’s cool with killing anyone who gets in his way, including children. This guy has issues! Now, if I were to diagnose him with a mental illness, anti personality disorder is not at the top of the list! But I will still put him this high because he sucks. And he causes sooo much destruction. Master manipulator with a god complex.

Orochimaru is shown to sort of care about one person- Tsunade. This isn’t definite- rather, it’s a headcanon of mine based on little signs here and there- but at times, he is soft when it comes to her. He seemed to have developed his need for immortality from watching her brother and fiance die. He watches her suffer and comes to the conclusion that death= suffering. And it is something he wants to avoid. Meaning he felt her suffering. None of the Akatsuki are complete psychopaths, but Orochimaru is very close to it. He tortures children on a regular basis. Don’t think it gets much worse than that. This guy is the most disturbing out of all of them, and he has competition!

This list can be switched around many ways, so don’t think of any of these placements as concrete!

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unclefungusthegoat · 6 years

Text

New Dawn Review- MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

So, I’ve been screaming a lot in tags, but haven’t really summed up my emotions about New Dawn... so here we go. Under the cut because it’s pretty long and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. But what I can say is:

Hmmmmm.

Also this totally turns into a rant at the end hahaha

If you have decided to brave my waffling, welcome.

Well, let’s start by saying, I have mixed emotions. It’s fluctuating from very positive, because I genuinely did enjoy the game, to retrospectively being exceptionally annoyed with it. And so here are my thoughts.

FYI this looks really unbalanced because the negatives are a lot longer than the positives, but again, I reiterate, I did enjoy this game!

POSITIVES

The game looked GORGEOUS. Absolutely fantastic. The graffiti everywhere was awesome, the flowers were beautiful, the colours glorious and Prosperity was fab. A+ job guys!

I LOVED the twins and wanted so much more of them, especially Lou, who I felt was really sidelined in favour of Mickey. Cara and Leslie did a fantastic job playing them, but five or six cutscenes to get to know both of them was nowhere near enough, especially when you think each of the Seeds got that individually. I get it was a shorter game, but still... I loved their designs, their ‘rabbit’ catchphrase, the skull crushing helmet, the scene with their mum... they were just brilliant.

I thought some of the story missions were awesome, mainly the ones where you infiltrate the Highwaymen- the fighting pit idea was cool, as was the Derby, and returning to the jail was great! And let’s not forget collecting the Word, and then going to see Joseph in his sanctuary!

I generally really liked all of the new characters, particularly Carmina and the Judge. Timber and Horatio were adorable and the homages to Boomer and Cheeseburger were sweet. There was ONE however, who I fucking HATED, who I will discuss momentarily... three guesses who hahahaha

Prosperity upgrading system was nice.

Fun outfits for the Captain.

The photography challenge was heartbreaking and I loved it.

Speaking of that, seeing Fall’s End, John’s Gate and other recognisable places in such a state was gut-wrenching (especially the Spread Eagle and hearing about Mary May, holy shit), but it’s really nice that it had that effect on me. Makes me realise just how much I cared. (Also totally glad the giant cow was still there OH AND THE YES SIGN AT THE DERBY ARENA)

I prefer FC5′s soundtrack, it feels more like ‘home’, if you know what I mean, but I have been listening to this one a lot on Spotify and it’s so good! Definitely worth a listen if you haven’t already!

NEGATIVES

Ethan. Holy shit, what a whiny bitch. Kylo Ren type ungrateful children of previous lead characters always really annoy me and he was no different. ‘What have you ever sacrificed’ was an absolute knife to the heart. I get he had his purpose in the story, but ugh. And I think we’re all in agreement that there is no fucking way that he’s Joseph’s actual son, because NO.

Come to think of it, something about the whole New Eden being a sort of caveman colony now just doesn’t sit right with me. I get the whole ‘casting off society’ angle, but I’d rather they’d have been more recognisable as the cult from the last game. Even if it was just them wearing the sweaters or having a couple of banners up hahaha. They didn’t feel churchy enough.

Only one GFH at a time... *cries*.

Details missing, just small things. Sharky and Hurk’s tattoos. Joseph’s rosary around his hand. Tiny things, but things that could have easily been in it.

No cult songs. Period.

No explanation (as of yet, someone may yet find something) about Jess, Tammy and Wheaty’s fates. (I take it Garrett Barnes was no relation to Tammy???) Can’t say I think it’s a coincidence that they’re all Jacob’s region characters and that’s the region that has been ignored the most by the developers.

Also real talk, in my initial hopes for the game post, I wrote something like ‘I’m hoping for Mary May, Tracey and Wheaty’ to be in the game. Like that was an actual sentence I wrote.

Basically, just... don’t be a character I root for, because YOU WILL DIE.

The ending. I like that you can spare Joseph and Mickey, but I dunno, it just felt... underwhelming? Like either way you chose, it didn’t make much difference. And the Ethan transforming into the beast thing didn’t do it for me. It felt silly. Unrealistic, and yeah, I get that FC5 wasn’t exactly realistic, and it was supposed to be about unclean souls and being unworthy and whatever, but this felt a step too far? Magic sacred fruit? I’m with the Highwaymen on this one I’m afraid. Like, keep the Eden and apple reference, just do it in a different way???

AND HERE IT IS FOLKS, HERE’S WHAT REALLY BROKE MY HEART AND FROM WHAT I’VE BEEN READING YOUR HEARTS TOO-

I made no secret in my ‘Hopes for New Dawn’ post I put together when the trailer first came out, that I, like many others, was here for the Seeds. Yes, I knew that John, Jacob and Faith weren’t going to be in it. They’re dead.

BUT.

I wanted something.

Ubisoft, how could you practically ignore your most popular characters like that?

JOSEPH DIDN’T EVEN SAY THEIR NAMES.

‘My family is ash’ is fucking heartbreaking, but not enough buddy.

No songs, no shrines, no saint like murals, barely any NPC dialogue or notes, and I liked Thomas Rush, but don’t even get me started on how pissed I felt that he got a grave, and our Heralds didn’t. Not even at Eden’s Pyre, which is where is would have made logical sense???? No Affirmation wreckage, or challenges to collect personal effects like Jacob’s knife, or the ghostly laugh of Faith still echoing at times. You couldn’t even explore Jacob’s region very much.

Like those three had such an effect on the people of Hope County’s lives, and we don’t even get any reflection about them by the characters?

I feel cheated.

Like, Ubisoft know. They have to. All those tweets they get from us. They know how much we love the Heralds.

And yet????

I love that we have this game, but I would have happily waited another year or six months or something if it had meant more detail and more content. And instead of quenching my thirst for more of these characters and this setting and this Hope County universe, it’s just made me want even more because I feel so unsatisfied.

I’ve been posing the question ‘where is our live action mini series’ on here for a while now because we are being cheated of Seed content, and I am in such a mood after this game that I might just sit down and fucking write it myself, because if that’s the only way we’re getting it, I will write that shit and fly to Canada to hand it to Ubisoft personally.

*flips table*

Thank you all for coming to my TED talk hahahaha

#far cry new dawn #far cry new dawn spoilers #chloe gets real mad at the end hahaha #don't get me wrong #I did enjoy the game #it's just... *sigh* you'll see

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yasuda-yoshiya · 6 years

Note

They don't seem to get much coverage, discussion and popularity in Fata Morgana AFAIK, but what do you think of Nellie, Pauline and Maria on their own, or even their relationships with the other characters? I personally liked the lonely nuance behind Nellie's 'rambunctious' behavior and Maria's bluntness while still having the capacity to care those around her, but also capable of being vindictive, and it kind of saddened me when someone dismissed Nellie as 'whiny' and Maria as 'evil bitch'.

Hm, this got a little long, sorry! At some point I just totally lost the ability to write quick responses to these things apparently.

Oh, I really like Nellie! She’s definitely my favourite Fata character outside of the main four, no contest. It actually makes me really sad that that one scene at the end of door 1 (you know the one) is so horribly cheap and tacky and impossible to take seriously, because the basic core of the emotions behind her arc and her characterisation in general honestly always felt heartbreakingly real and relatable to me. Underneath the very tropey surface layer, I think she’s a surprisingly good portrayal of a really lonely and miserable person desperately clinging on to the only person who actually seemed to care about her, even as it becomes increasingly obvious that he doesn’t actually care that much any more, because her memories of him are the only source of happiness she has. It honestly really hurts for me to read a lot of the scenes in door 1 where she’s just incessantly badgering Mell to give her any kind of compliment or recognition or validation, because it feels like something I can uncomfortably relate to and recognise in myself, especially when I was younger. I appreciate that the game really allows her to be actively bratty and spiteful and self-absorbed in a genuinely ugly ways - she doesn’t hesitate to use gross classist insults against the WHG, and her constant demanding clinginess absolutely comes across as something that would be difficult for anyone to deal with - but is still ultimately very sympathetic to her as a person and to the ways she’s been wronged on the whole, especially in door 8.

I feel like her characterisation acknowledges something important in the sense that, yes, she can be a brat, but that kind of self-centered bratty behaviour can often partly be a reaction to genuinely bad circumstances and have legitimate grievances behind it (being forced into marriage at that age would be absolutely horrific), and that there can be sympathetic reasons for people being that way - especially people like Nellie who is literally still just a child. It feels important to me to be able to say that Nellie genuinely can be a brat but is just as genuinely a victim who absolutely did not deserve to be in the awful and lonely situation that she is, and absolutely deserving of sympathy and help all the same; she’s definitely a very self-absorbed person who doesn’t really give much real thought or consideration to the people around her, but I also feel like she kind of has a right to be that way since none of the people around her ever paid any real attention to her either. She’s honestly a character I feel really defensive of in that sense.

And yeah, it seriously makes me legit angry when people dismiss her as just being whiny or overly dramatic about her problems, because it feels a lot like the same thing Mell did - off-handedly dismissing her as just a petulant child because of the WAY she expresses herself, rather than actually paying attention to WHAT she’s expressing and why (because the pain of her situation is honestly something he’d be perfectly capable of understanding and relating to if he actually tried putting himself in her shoes for five seconds, but he doesn’t). I do think it’s genuinely important for children not to be dismissed for expressing themselves in childish ways, even legitimately problematic ones (which Nellie’s absolutely can be, for sure). So I think the way the game sets up Nellie’s arc in terms of putting most of the emphasis on her surface “spoiled brat who’s just way too clingy with her brother” persona in door 1, and then totally peeling that back in door 8 to emphasise that she’s ultimately just a very lonely kid who just needs affection and understanding, really worked for me. I think both versions of her character really complement and enrich each other in that way. (And her friendship with Michel is just totally darling, awwwwww!! Their interactions made me really really happy for both of them. I really think those two actually have a lot in common with each other when you look beneath the surface.)

I like Maria a lot too! Like you said, I think they did a good job of portraying her being super blunt and pragmatic while also absolutely caring a lot and being fiercely protective of the people she sees as her “family”. She really does strike me as a very cool and admirable person! I think I had trouble really connecting with her initial portrayal in door 3, personally - her actively delighting in her cruelty even to an innocent victim like the WHG sort of pushed her a bit too much into over-the-top villain territory for me - but I thought she was absolutely fantastic in door 8 and Requiem. (I’m sort of interested in going back to door 3 with that added context, though, because I feel like there’s probably some more nuance to that which I’d be able to better pick up on with a fuller perspective of the character; I can certainly see a sort of dislike and resentment for the WHG’s optimism and naivete actually making some sense in retrospect, and Maria sliding totally into anger and bitterness as a result of her family being killed does feel like something I could see as a legit darker take on the character.)

I generally appreciate the portrayal of her blunt, cynical attitude actually translating into being aware and attentive to people’s human flaws and weaknesses in important ways; her being the only one to really see Michel as a regular person rather than a saint in door 8 and trying to persuade him to stop pushing himself so hard was really nice, and it made me sad to see that she was the only one to immediately predict that Jacopo becoming the lord would totally ruin him too. It’s a kind of skepticism and realism about how much her friends are really capable of that honestly makes her a much better friend than all the people just taking for granted that Jacopo and Michel are amazing heroes that can totally do anything, in a lot of ways. It generally makes me really happy that Nellie and Maria were pretty much Michel’s strongest allies and friends in door 8, in contrast to how they both had such explicitly “antagonistic” roles in their original stories; I think they definitely both deserved it! I’m really glad that they’re pretty much the only two people in door 8 that Michel doesn’t hate, hahaha. Excellent judgment, Michel.

Pauline is, uh…I have a hard time caring about her, let’s put it that way! I kind of forget she exists a lot of the time. Her arc in door 8 about her suppressed desire for a “normal life” and trying to overcompensate through charity was decent enough, but I didn’t really feel like it really connected much to her portrayal in door 2 in any meaningful way (maybe I missed something?). And her main character traits of being overly trusting and blindly believing in people, while perfectly well portrayed and addressed in the text, didn’t really feel like they had enough individual nuances or exploration for me to really get invested in her on a personal level. I think, for a character trait as common and familiar as that, I’d really need some more in-depth exploration on how she rationalises that sort of blind faith to herself and where it comes from and what she gets out of it for me to really invest in it, but I didn’t feel like much of that was there. Her relationship with Yukimasa doesn’t really do anything for me, either; it feels very shallow and superficial to me, and that’s sort of okay when the game actually emphasises that and focuses on Pauline’s reasons for wanting to latch on to a relationship like that despite its superficiality (which it does a little in door 8), but when it’s played straight as something we’re supposed to actually feel invested in (like in door 2) I just sort of fall asleep. She’s just not a very interesting character to me, sorry!

#the house in fata morgana #this is a fata blog now apparently #to anon: i do have your other messages and intend to get around to them whenever i can #you are not bothering me at all so please don't worry!!

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