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sophieinwonderland · 5 months

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Hey, to our knowledge you aren’t a traumagenic DID system, but we really love your writing and takes on all things plural. Could you discuss the bad video that came out like 2 days ago called “It’s time to Revisit Dissociative Identity Disorder” by Neurotransmissions? We couldn’t get through it. Early on the dude starts talking about how alters aren’t their own people, and we looked in the comments and apparently later on the guy says that DID should be reclassified as a form of BPD or PTSD. Also stuff about Non-human alters being rare or something? It’s blurry and that’s where we stopped -Sincerely a DID system

So, I gave it a watch. Or, well, a listen at 2x speed while we walked since nothing in that video seemed necessary to actually look at the screen for.

There are a lot of minor nitpicks here and there. But most of it is just general stuff that you expect from psychologists and psychiatrists. Of course alters aren't people if you define a "person" as the biological human organism.

And likewise, are only "parts" of a personality if you define the personality as all of the personality traits of said organism.

I consider most headmates people. I think most headmates meet the definition of a person according John Locke's philosophy of a personhood. But I understand that there are legal and medical definitions that this won't use that philosophy. So I guess my overall opinion on his thing about alters not being people is... it's whatever. 🤷‍♀️

He's stating the psychiatric view on personhood, not going out and trying to police systems who use person language. There are bigger fish to fry.

I don't care for him comparing alters to a singlet having different moods in different contexts. I feel that this is an inaccurate representation of the disorder, and really shows that this is a person who hasn't treated or even interacted with DID systems.

I am also bothered by the claim about nonhuman alters being rare because... I don't think any sources are actually provided to back that up. It's a claim I see get thrown around a lot, but if there's a study surveying DID patients to find how many have alters that identify as nonhuman, I have yet to see it. There were some other points in the video that I had similar issues with, where he would just state that something is rare in DID, and then just give no follow-up. Those little claims that are supposed to slip into the audience's brain without giving time to think critically on what's being said.

And there were a lot of little claims like that throughout the video that I didn't like.

Overall, I actually find the video to be fairly balanced. For a video with which the majority of conclusions are things I completely disagree with.

I mean, most of the time as he would spit out something I disagreed with, he would also acknowledge the counter-argument that I was making in my own head before I could make it.

For example, when he's arguing that TikTok presentations of DID aren't matching the clinical presentations of the disorder, he's quick to acknowledge the counter argument that this is likely due in large part to these spaces supplying freedom to systems to be themselves without judgement. (Or something along those lines. I can't remember exactly how it was worded.)

On Misdiagnosis

At one point in the video, he talks about these periods where DID is popular and diagnoses soar. He mentions briefly that one counter-argument is that DID could be under-diagnosed because doctors don't understand it.

And while I appreciate him acknowledging this counterargument as a possible explanation, he really undersells it. DID has been estimated to have a lifetime prevalence in 1.5% of the population. About as common as schizophrenia.

Furthermore, we see that DID systems are likely to spend years in the psychiatric system before finally getting a DID diagnosis.

There is no epidemic of people being falsely diagnosed with DID. There is, however, an epidemic of people not being able to get an accurate diagnosis because of doctors who don't believe the disorder exists.

I discussed this before in my breakdown of the Imitated DID myth. Here is what I said then:

And when you hear a doctor claim that they've never treated or diagnosed an actual DID case, I want you to keep in mind that statistic that 26%-40% are diagnosed and treated for Schizophrenia first. And that many will be diagnosed with other disorders long before they can a DID diagnosis.

Misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis of DID is not some hypothetical issue. It's something many DID specialists, even the most ableist ones, have been blowing the whistle on for a very long time.

"All Models Are Wrong, Some Models Are Useful"

This is a truly fantastic quote that I hadn't heard before, and am really glad that the video introduced me to it.

It really succinctly describes a lot of my feelings towards mental illness and disorders: That these are not necessarily objective things but our own simplified human classification systems. That mental disorders are made to categorize people together who may benefit from similar treatment.

These are models that exist to serve a utility. If they don't serve that utility, then they're not useful.

With that in mind...

DID is a Useful Model

Perhaps not perfect by any means. But despite what he claims in the video, it is useful. Especially compared to the alternatives.

Even in the video, he acknowledges that DID treatment is effective at the same time as arguing the disorder should be eliminated and grouped with other mental disorders.

But if DID treatment works on DID, then doesn't that in itself make it a useful model?

Treatment for other disorders often would actually be harmful to DID systems, pushing them to ignore or tune out voices in their heads, leading to greater dissociative barriers and internal conflict.

Another claim made in the video is that DID would get more research were it a subtype of another more popular disorder, but I don't believe that's true either. I don't think most studies tend to care about specific subtypes of disorders.

Maybe if DID was classified as a form of BPD, it would get more research in the way that studies into BPD would include DID systems too. But that conflation of the two different disorders wouldn't actually be more research into DID. And even worse, it would completely throw off all data for BPD.

If you classify DID as a subtype of any other disorder, DID would get even less research as its own thing, would throw off data into that disorder, and would result in DID patients being subjected to treatment that may not be helpful to them and could even be actively harmful.

This is a truly awful idea.

A Model Where DID is a Type of BPD is Useless for Everyone... Except...

This comment stuck out to me under the video.

I'm not going to say that this is the motivation behind this particular video, but it is curious how it seems like the most researched and over-diagnosed medical conditions tend to be those that are most profitable for pharmaceutical companies.

Hey, remember that paper about Imitated DID I mentioned earlier where doctors decided 7% of their DID patients were falsely diagnosed. Do you want to know the result of a similar study into Schizophrenia?

When 7% of DID cases are ruled to be "imitated," it's a national health emergency and we need to root out the fakers.

But when half the people with Schizophrenia are falsely diagnosed, it gets swept under the rug and nobody talks about it.

I'm honestly one of the more pro-psych pro-endos you'll find, but it's hard to not see how a lot of the models we use to define illnesses, and the models that get the most support, happen to be those that will be most profitable for big pharmaceutical companies.

A More Useful Model Might Actually Go In The Opposite Direction

One thing that he was right about is that DID is vaguely worded and has a huge problem when it comes to actually being diagnosed.

Instead of grouping Dissociative Identity Disorder into other disorders it doesn't fit with, my solution would be to look at other disorders for dissociative symptoms, and broaden Dissociative Identity Disorder so there can be clearer lines between disorders.

Looking again at psychotic disorders, voice hearing in them often comes in two varieties. One is just totally random and unintelligible. Another are these more agentive voices with their own distinct personalities that are consistent over time.

I believe that many of these would be examples of what DID specialists would classify as "dissociative parts," and would fall under Partial DID in the ICD-11. I also believe these would benefit from the same sort of treatment used in DID, revolving around establishing connections and communication between the headmates.

There should also be a delusional subtype added that would encompass headmates with delusional self-beliefs. Such as if the voices believe that they're being implanted in the head by aliens, or that the headmate is actually another real, living person communicating telepathically.

(Would the POSIC community jump at me if I also suggested many instances of delusional companion syndrome would be better classified as a dissociative disorder as well?)

And while I'm focusing on voice hearing, I also think there may be other delusions that may actually be representative of "dissociative parts," especially delusions where one believes themselves to be someone or something else.

Some DID specialists have been testing DID treatment methods on hostile voices in psychotic disorders. If studies show this is successful, I believe the logical move would be to reclassify these presentations of disorders as dissociative, grouping them under DID or Partial DID, or a new "complex dissociative disorder" umbrella.

This obviously needs to be investigated further and would require a huge overhaul of the current psychiatric system that's sadly unlikely to happen given tradition, disbelief in DID by practitioners, and financial interests of big pharma.

But from the papers I've read and systems I've communicated with, this is the model that I feel would be most useful for patients.

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quill-of-thoth · 1 year

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Letters from Watson: The Dying Detective

Crimes in context:

Medical History Sorry in advance for the medical grossness. Please skip to the cut if you never want to see the words open sores ever again. First, to piece together Culverton Smith's crimes against humanity and also the murder. Culverton Smith appears to have gone to Sumatra to make a living planting, with the labor primarily done by indentured servants or low wage workers, possibly slaves, from the local population. (I say slaves because although slavery was not officially legal in England or it's colonies at this time, there have been historically a lot of situations that are essentially slavery with some thin veneer of justification, especially when you're occupying a country, and you can make any law you want about requiring people to work for you for nothing, or the next thing to nothing.) To top this off, he was either experimenting on these workers with his favorite tropical disease, or using them to incubate it so that he could keep a stock of the infectious material on hand.

This is how Smallpox stock used to be carried overseas: A chain of people would be infected with a diluted or weakened virus. When one person's symptoms would start to wane, the fluids from their open sore would be transferred via a cut in the skin to the next person in line, who would carry the infection until they began to recover. In the transfer of smallpox for the purposes of creating vaccinations and inoculations, these were volunteers. The carriers also benefitted in many cases from being inoculated in the process, since these cases of smallpox were milder than the wild variants, and being a carrier would give you about the same immunity as an inoculation of the day. Now, we have refrigeration, glycerol stocks, the ability to use only portions of viruses (usually the proteins in their outer shell) in vaccines and most importantly, sterile fucking needles. I will never be leaving this century, even though we do have covid. All this to say that Culverton Smith can rot in hell, but I also wanted to cover Watson: why did he write this case up?

Watson's Writing

For those of you who have made it this far into my reread without knowing what is to come: The Final Problem, in which Holmes dies, will occur in April of 1891. All Holmes short stories, and the remaining two novels, were published after this date. Presuming that my date of 1890 is correct for this story (which we can, and will, revisit later as it was NOT my initial impression of the timeline), we can presume that Watson had reasons for not publishing it in his initial collection of 24 short stories, likely grief. Thinking back on this time would have been extremely painful from a variety of directions: as the months go on and on he's further convinced that Holmes is not faking it this time, and Watson probably desperately wished that he was.

Then too, despite the fact that Watson closes the story abruptly without describing his emotions at Holmes' deception, we can deduce them. He's insulted - despite Holmes' words that he never doubted his professional abilities, just his ability to lie, Holmes still disparaged him. He's angry - Holmes has shut him out of his plans and made him believe for the better part of three or four hours that he was about to lose his best friend. He's frustrated because despite the illness being an act Holmes is still harming himself with his denial of his body's limits, i.e. that a human can die if they're dehydrated for three days, and also his casual use of poisons. Belladonna, it turns out, is not good for your eyes, which is why we don't use it anymore, aside from the hideous toxicity.

Watson has been a prop in Holmes' stagings of case conclusions before, but there's a vast difference between being framed for breaking a bowl and playing along, and being deceived, berated, insulted, and isolated to ensure that you play the part correctly. There is a definite possibility that they did have a fight over this - even Baring-Gould's timeline has a gap of over a month between this and the next recorded case. It isn't an unusual amount of time, as no doubt Holmes did not always have cases that were cinematic enough to make the cut, and also Watson had a business and a household to attend to, but it's enough time for them to pointedly not see each other, and for Watson to forgive him and come around for a post Christmas visit.

Ask a microbiologist: WTF is Smith doing with his jars of bacteria?

Hello Tumblr, I grow germs for a living. And based on the description of Smith's lab / study I have a few questions, namely, how is he storing his bacteria? Based on the jars and bottles that he refers to as his "prisons" he's keeping them at uncontrolled room temperature. This probably tracks with best practice at this time, as refrigeration was based on putting things in a box with ice, and iirc although bacteria were known to be the drivers of spoilage, the idea that they would grow, and die, slower at lower temperatures was not part of professional microbiology at the time. Also based on Smith's own words, he's storing the bacterial colonies in agar, which matches with modern methods... sort of. Agar is solid at room temperature, and when it's liquid (at about 100 Celsius), it's too hot for most bacteria to survive in. This is important because the description of these jars and bottles appears to imply that they are filled with solidified agar, and there's really no reason Smith needs a full jar of solid agar to keep his bacteria in: when we keep bacteria in a liquid it's called a broth and does not have agar in it, because we want it to remain a liquid. Yes, Smith could be doing a fairly standard setup where he pours a quarter inch of agar into a vessel and, when the agar is solid, "plates" bacteria on top of it. The description does not unambiguously rule it out. But if he's trying to preserve his bacteria by entombing them in solid agar, and then melting the agar to retrieve them, it's a lot funnier. Mostly because it would mean that his pet bioweapon from Sumatra isn't viable anymore.

#Letters from Watson #The Dying Detective #Crimes in Context #crimes against humanity again I'm afraid #human experimentation #self poisoning for reasons of being an extreme dumbass #look another story I coincidentally have professional knowledge vaguely related to

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speedwalkingtheplanes · 6 months

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so I rewatched Willow (2022) a year later

And goddamnit, I still really like it. I definitely have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the show, because it comes so close to greatness but doesn't manage to actually get there, but it just does some things really well. If you haven't watched it yet, there'll be some spoilers in this, so, you know. Be warned.

To get the negatives out of the way, I really don't think their was any major issues with it, but I do think there were a lot of little ones. My biggest little thing was a lot of the music. And the music wasn't even bad! It just often felt so out of place. I get it, they were going for a modernized version of the story, and that's not a bad thing, it just seemed like they also wanted to keep the world itself similar to what the movie presented, which created that odd tonal dissonance.

I also think it tried to be too funny. Not that it tried too hard, but that it tried too often. The original movie was definitely funny, but it never treated itself as a comedy, and I feel that the show toed that line more than it should have. The chief perpetrator of this was Thraxus Boorman. This is in no way a criticism of Amar Chadha-Patel, who I think absolutely nailed every line he was given. I understand why he made so many jokes, they were a coping mechanism for dealing with the shitty hand he had been dealt and all the pain he had to go through, but that was cheapened by having every other line be a joke. I think it even kind of messed with his actual serious lines, because I kept anticipating their to be a joke at the end of it.

My last big little thing is the inconsistency between episodes. I saw someone describe it "as though each episode was a session of a D&D campaign, but with a different DM each time," and that feels very apt. The differences in writing, direction, and overall quality episode to episode felt like it changed hands between a few different creative teams, and I really think it suffered.

Now, onto what was good, and what I really liked:

God, I love this cast. They all have such great chemistry, I think they all did really well with their characters, and above all, they're just fun to watch. Warwick Davis especially is a standout (no surprise there), and I'm so glad he got to revisit this character.

It expands upon and calls back to the original movie in really great ways. I love that Madmartigan named his son Airk, I love that we got backstory for Bavmorda and Kael that didn't necessarily justify their actions, but still gave them additional context and motivation, and I love that the little baby we saw finally gets to see her destiny realized. The story that they're setting up, while kind of basic, is still intriguing, and adds so much to the relatively small snippet of the world that we saw in the movie.

IT'S SO PRETTY. The sets, the scenery, the sequences, the creature design, they're all so damn good. Easy standouts for me are the Gales, who I can't get enough of, and the scene in episode 7 where Kit and Elora talk under the stars. I had to pause and just take it in for a minute so I could focus on what they were actually saying.

And lastly, what I liked the most and what I think Willow did the best was the relationships between its characters. Not only are they just entertaining, they feel realistic, and personal, and lived. Graydon understanding that Elora doesn't have to love him back and that him just loving her is enough. Jade and Boorman finding solace in losing everything that they loved and fought for, only to find something else worth fighting for in the people around them. In my opinion, character relationships is one of, if not the most important thing in fantasy writing, and this show did it impeccably. Is that enough to overcome what it didn't do as well and make it a remarkable show? No, not really, but it does ceratinly balance the scales a little.

All-in-all, I think it's a solid watch, especially if you love the original. 6.5-7/10.

#willow #willow 2022 #elora danan #graydon hastur #thraxus boorman #jade claymore #kit tanthalos #willow ufgood

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khaleesiofalicante · 1 year

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reread the new chapter (as i often find myself doing) and the present timeline seems pretty self-explanatory so i wanted to dive into the flashback scene.

So we start with max’s psych eval where he’s just constantly thinking about David (and the kids, but really David). He doesn’t even remember exactly what happened but is always trying to keep David safe 🥺

It looks like along with some insanity, max is just dealing with PTSD, particularly shock, about what happened. He keeps spacing out, and stays in a state of disbelief.

And we get more information about the big Mallory accident. Max shooting Mallory again when she said the line about David was very deserved. We keep learning more and more about the truth, but it seems like every new chapter just gives us more questions, I’m excited to see how it turns out :)

Max thinking David will forgive him when he sees that the kids are fine but then him having tears of grief when he sees lance :( Or were those tears of grief more because David can’t look at max anymore🧐

“Max couldn’t blame him. He wished he could hold his husband too” when I tell you my stomach dropped.

And visualizing Max’s depression like a movie was a very effective choice. It makes much more sense to the reader to see why max was so unresponsive to an outsider’s perspective. Max being catatonic basically. I always loved how nuanced your takes on mental health and depression are. Depression can come in many different forms. For max, it seems to be deep disassociation.

I think those are all the coherent thoughts I have on this chapter. Again, I just love how complicated your descriptions of mental health are, and how the vary so much between characters. I really should use this energy to right my upcoming analysis on my English assignment, but my priorities said otherwise. Love you 💛

ps: can we expect another chapter on Monday or Tuesday? Or maybe some time later in the week?

pps: you mentioned that “before Mexico” was gonna have a mavid situationship development and a job development. We DEFINITELY got the situationship development, but is there more to the Mexico thing we haven’t gotten to yet? Please don’t tell me max is gonna get hurt on the job 🙏

thank you 🥺

writing about (and creating awareness about) mental health is so so important to me. i think it's crucial that stories need to portray mental health struggles more (not just in the extreme way but also in terms of everyday struggles - like with rafe in tlnd). it's not always easy to write, but it's good work :)

the decision to use dissociation is max's prevalent symptom is such an easy one. i can't even explain it properly. but when i sat down and thought about how his depression would manifest, the visuals were so intense and easy for me to imagine. I'm glad i was able to do it proper justice.

one of the things i decided while i was writing this story was NOT to write the scene between max and mallory (i.e, how she died and what exactly happened). it was for many reasons including 1) only max knows what exactly happened and his memories of the incident are so fuzzy it won't make sense for me to write an accurate version of it 2) it's one of his darkest memories and something he is not proud of, so i didn't want to go back to it. i preferred to give context and info where and when necessary. it was also symbolize that it was something he had left behind in the past, and something he had healed from and did not want to revisit 3) i did not want the risk of humanizing mallory by writing her death - especially because she dies in his arms (ew). 4) just didn't wanna write it period lol

but we will see what happened with mallory and David. it's an important scene and that's why we learn about it at the very end of the story too. in the real life, people learned about the incident first and it really messed up with their perception of David and made them take sides (mostly david's side). it was very important to me that the incident doesn't change how the readers feel about max or David. in david's show too, you learn about the incident at the very end. it's almost an anecdote, an incident that changed their life, but is not their whole life. what the readers need to remember is all the love they built, not what happened over one weekend. so i hope, at this point in time, when we read what happened to David and lance, it only gives us context. that it doesn't make us hate max or feel pity for david. it only fills the gap we've been carrying around.

ps - we will definitely get a chapter update later this week (perhaps thursday?). i definitely have my energy back to think and write (as you can see ha!)

pps - there is no more to Mexico. it did what it was supposed to do :)

#IALS

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turtleneck-wambsgans · 2 years

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hello, and welcome to ✨ tomgreg lines that could be paralleled/subverted in a romantic context ✨ !

SEASON 1

1x01: would you kiss me ? if i asked you to ? if i told you to ?

1x02: when you figure this all out, come in and see me, okay ? and i’ll look after you.

1x06: are you trying to seduce me, tom ? || yes, i am ! yes, i am, greg !

1x06: we have a bond.

1x08: greg, i’m having the time of my life

SEASON 2

2x03: can i trust you? || yes, of course you can trust me. (it would make an impact to do it without the “to a point” to show the shift)

2x03: please.

2x03: thanks, man [tom places his hand on greg’s arm]

2x04: are you... are you attempting to break up with me, greg ? (this one could be used in a fun, flirty way ! it doesn’t have to be sad...)

2x04: i just... i feel a bit... you know ? || i know, i know. it’s just an idea.

2x04: okay, tom ? hey, hey, tom, tom- we’re good. we’re good. (possibly in a different scenario, where tom actually calms down)

2x04: i will not let you do this to me ! i will not let go of what is mine !

2x04: i don’t always like who i am, greg. || yeah, i get that.

2x06: [not a line, but that interaction where greg timidly goes to talk to tom, and tom calls him his “sherpa” and gets all excited]

2x07: i think i just wanted someone to touch my head, you know ? soothing.

2x07: so, in a friendly way, i’m staying here tonight (...)

2x07: don’t overplay your hand, gregory. (again, fun & flirty !)

2x08: [that scene where greg is complaining about midges and tom goes “just stop !” bc they’re literally so Married in that scene]

2x10: i think a lot of time, if i think about it, i think a lot of time, i'm really pretty unhappy. (tom says this to shiv, but it could 100% be subverted for a nice tomgreg scene)

SEASON 3

3x02: hey, gregory. is it true you have a saucy secret ?

3x03: gregory, my chief of staff, leggy princeling of ATN, you deserve a new... office.

3x03: i’ll buy you a watch, dickwad. just fucking come over. || okay, i'll try to come. i wanna come.

3x04: [insert entire nero & sporus scene here]

3x06: [that sequence where tom messages greg to meet him at the diner... and the whole diner scene]

3x06: is it possible you might... with me ?

3x07: [the “is it real ?” scene. i will cry if they revisit the forehead kiss]

3x07: gregory john hirsch, you got a crush ?

3x07: you’re like a fascinating book i’d like to crack open (look... i just think it’d be funny if greg uses a pick up line on tom, ok ?)

3x07: prove it.

3x07: are you okay? || yes, i’m okay, greg. why do you keep asking if i'm okay ?

3x08: [the “date ladder” conversation with greg, tom and shiv]

3x09: talk about me ! || will do !

3x09: [of course, the deal with the devil. special mention of the fact greg says both “the verdict is love” and “it’s a guilt-free switch-up” in the prelude to the deal. also... “hey, tommy !”]

#this post is way longer than i anticipated #it was kinda a throwaway... but it evolved... into this #i just think that so many of their lines could be revisited in different contexts #it's an exponential increase as the seasons go on #go crazy go stupid amirite #tomgreg #tom wambsgans #greg hirsch #succession #tnwg #tnwg overanalyses

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cto10121 · 2 years

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A lot to chew on in this scholarly article I’ve revisited on RetJ’s reception in France and the failure of the Production-That-Must-Not-Be-Named (I love how the author just tears into the blatant and cruel Francophobia of the London RetJ reviews, even while pointing out its failure to capture Presgurvic’s vision). I also really liked the insight of the filmatic aspects of the musical (the freeze-frame at the end of Le Bal 2 is definitely cinematic). But I disagree with the following:

That the show’s success rests on its postmodern mixing of previous versions of R&J, chiefly the Zeffirelli and Luhrmann film adaptations and West Side Story. Redha was certainly inspired by Robbins’ WSS choreography and the Zeffirelli influence is there in a thematic sense (the emphasis on the romance in particular) but the musical is just…so different from any adaptation of R&J???? I only knew about Redha’s influence because I grew up with WSS so I could spot it. But I feel you could watch the musical only knowing Shakespeare’s R&J and it’d still work. Hell, many people have without even liking the original play. Also, there are many aspects and even characters of RetJ that are not in any other version.

That Presgurvic’s musical owes more to previous adaptations of R&J than to Shakespeare. Actually, this musical is pretty much the only adaptation of R&J I have seen so far that captures the love, romance, energy, and passion of the original work. When I first saw a clip of “Les Rois du Monde” on YT, I instantly knew who the characters were, who played who, and at what point in the play they were at, though I hadn’t seen the musical before then and even though the scene is unique to the musical. It’s still strictly a musical adaptation with various changes at the character, plot, and thematic level, but those changes serve to highlight the affect of the original work, not detract or change from it.

It’s still enlightening, though, to read about the criticism of both sides of the strait, predictably ludicrous, almost unhinged:

The critics of RetJ accusing it of “not having a new, fresh take” on Shakespeare—no social commentary on the contemporary situation, no “shedding new light on the material” (ugh)—and only “modernizing the aesthetics while keeping the play’s original historical context.” That’s literally what makes it work. If Presgurvic had decided to do a version in modern-day France, it would have dated as fast as West Side Story’s ethnic white gangs did. He was smart enough to realize R&J worked just fine, if not better, in Shakespeare’s original conception—all he needed to do was to musicalize the drama and to bring it to life in the modern idiom. And so it works. It’s fresh. This criticism feels actually very anti-Shakespearean (how dare Presgurvic actually…respect the original intent of the Shakespeare and not do something inferior but radically different!!! It’s not as if Shakespeare’s play is still relevant to us moderns without drastic change, you know!!!).

Also that criticism of RetJ’s lyrics being modern and not the original Shakespeare, as if it were a straight adaptation and not a musical one. As Sondheim has said time and time again, poetry does NOT make for good lyrics. You cannot put the original lines to music without it being just…weird. And Shakespeare is definitely meant to be spoken, not sung. You can criticize Presgurvic for not including more modern paraphrase, sure (he only has the Song of the Lark, I think, maybe “la vie n’est pas un théâtre”) but not for using early modern verse for modern musical theater lyrics.

The excoriation of Presgurvic’s lyrics in general. Nobody is ever going to accuse him of being Sondheim, I know, but I suppose it takes actually translating the show into English, as I did, to appreciate his lyrical ideas and how they compliment the music. It was really difficult to improve upon the original idea; in the end, I found my revisions being more successful when they hedged to the Presgurvic idea than anything else, even the Shakespeare.

The criticism of London RetJ being too “European” for West End audiences and critics…funny, but I’ve always maintained that one error of London RetJ was to cut half the score and include unnecessary reprises, obvious attempts to “Broadway-ize” it for Anglo audiences. Of course it didn’t work; if they had done a Notre Dame de Paris and kept at least the same songs and similar orchestrations, it would have been more successful even if the critics didn’t go for it.

I think the real “issue” for the critics, so to speak, is the fact that RetJ has never been a traditional “musical-theater” musical—it belongs more to the Porgy and Bess, The Merry Widow (Die Lustige Witwe), and even West Side Story school of musical-opera hybrids in contemporary dress. Actually, RetJ is atheatrical, especially in the original French, which plays like a mini film on stage. No wonder critics didn’t take to RetJ. It always takes a bit to rejiggle their points of references. With Notre Dame de Paris having played in London in its original French with English surtitles (!!!), perhaps now is that time.

#romeo et juliette #retj #romeo and juliet #cristina metas #critics man #talk about tin ear #what part of ‘musical’ do you not understand?#retj meta #the production that must not be named

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hobixboo · 3 years

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Autumn Leaves Appreciation

PREFACE

There are four themes for this month’s Words By Bangtan: Self-fulfilment, Memories, Festival, and Victory. Once again, while I am sure there are plenty of other words spoken and/or sung by Bangtan that conveys this message, I am going to be focusing on the song “Autumn Leaves (Dead Leaves)” from their 2015 album The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 2. This is just a paper expressing my appreciation for the themes and messages in the song, and so if my thoughts and connection seem confusing, I apologize. As before, I will try to stay as formal as possible and if anyone has any challenges to what I am going to say in this paper, please reach out to me.

Kennedy (Ken)

@hobixboo

Autumn Leaves is a song produced by SUGA (and Slow Rabbit) and was released in their 2015 EP, The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Part 2. It could be that the most beautiful moment in life is youth since the album is a part of the Youth Trilogy, but it is also possible that the most beautiful moment in life can happen at any moment, even in the present (a very important theme to be talked about in this paper). My mention of SUGA being the producer of this song is important to the meaning of the song, whether intentional or not, the connection still exists.

Min Yoongi was born on March 9th which makes his birth flower a larch. In RUN BTS episode 99, when talking about Yoongi’s birth flower, the larch, they obviously bring up that it reminds them of the song “Autumn Leaves/ Dead Leaves” (00:06:01). At first, I was confused as to why they brought up the song Autumn Leaves. Since I don’t know Korean, I thought it was just because Larches are deciduous conifers; plants that normally shed in Autumn. It was not just because larches are literally “autumn leaves” but because in Korean “Larch” translates to 낙엽송. 낙엽, meaning falling leaves (which happens during autumn), and 송 which is konglish for “song”. The joke seems to be that it was fate for Yoongi to make a song about dry, autumn, falling leaves. According to Genius’ title description of the song “the actual title, “고엽 ” (ko-yeop), literally meaning dry dead leaves, is not a commonly used word. It sounds very formal, and very gloomy, and reminiscent of few dry brown dead leaves remaining at the end of autumn”. The term reminiscent was used so naturally, I looked more into that word as well. To reminisce means to indulge in enjoyable recollections of past events. Revisiting memories for the purpose of improving current mood and gaining optimism is what the song Autumn Leaves is about. The song is also about being able to go back in time, before you completely lost every bit of yourself so that you can enjoy that time, because in the present you may be barely holding on, like leaves on a tree before the end of autumn.

The song uses the connection that leaves have to a tree and almost personifies it to refer to a relationship that a person may have with most likely a significant other (indicated by the terms of endearment: “baby”, and “my/ this love” in the post-chorus). It is unknown who the significant other is but using the context that BTS has made this song, it’s possible that ARMY being an endearing significant counterpart to the lives of BTS, might be the relationship that is being referred to here, but this can have many other interpretations such as general relationships between people or the relationship within oneself. Despite the interpretation of who the speaker may be talking to, the lyrics express how hard it is to hold on given the inevitability of falling.

The reason I say falling is inevitable is not only because all leaves fall eventually in Autumn but because in BTS’ 2017 hidden track song “Sea”, there is the repetition of “wherever there’s hope, there’s despair” (doolset). Although the majority of the song pleads to not leave and to not fall, to hold onto positivity even if it is fading, Namjoon acknowledges that “my love must fall in order to rise”. I could connect this to the theme “Self-fulfilment” because this line could be saying that some relationships might need to be broken in order to improve oneself but again, the “love” being referenced in the lyrics could depend. Could the love talked about be their love of youth? Is it that letting go of the baggage from youth could make you more prosperous? While there may be hope that holding on can turn out to be worthwhile in the end, there will always be despair to tag along, but it may be more straining and stressful than letting go.

The most obvious connection that Autumn Leaves has to the Words By Bangtan themes is to the theme “Memories”. It is a word used explicitly in the lyrics (“inside my memories I become young again”- RM) but the idea of a memory is said implicitly as well (“The subtle (ambiguous) difference from how it was before”- SUGA). The song is not just about memories, but more so, positive memories that come from a particular season: Autumn Nostalgia. Nostalgia, as defined by David Ludden, is the “bittersweet emotion we experience when we think back to a past experience that was better than the life we’re currently leading”. It is possible that the fall season serves as a “retrieval cue” to bring about feelings of nostalgia (like the weather changing from hot to cold or the smell of pumpkin spice in the air). The reason I say Autumn Leaves is more positive in its recollection of memories, despite the lyrics talking about a lack of strength to hold on, is because the lyrics acknowledge that the past was better. With lines such as “I can’t catch you anymore”, “your words and expressions that become cold… our relationship is fading”, “Compared to before, tonight is much quieter”or “I want the you that wants me again”, the speaker is longing for the relationship that was warm and full of life, like the season before (relationship again being left up to interpretation (ie. longing for a self that is more full of life, whose words were less cold towards others, etc)). While remembering that there are good things in the world (and in yourself) is a good thing, it is not what Namjoon is saying we should let go of (since those memories can be self-fulfilling).

I believe Namjoon is saying not to dwell or hold onto things you know you are supposed to eventually lose. We shouldn't let our past, whether good or bad, stop us from living in the present and making new beautiful moments. This could also be why the last line of the chorus is saying “Don't go far away” instead of just “Don’t go away”. It accepts that one may have to leave but as long as they don't go far, they will be able to return. By revisiting memories and not getting caught up in them, one may be able to catch themselves from hitting the ground and completely shattering. Nostalgia can be a good thing if it makes you happy when you are feeling low, but being stuck in an unchangeable past, or on a “branch that does not shake”, one may “constantly fall on their own”. All nostalgia can do is “dampen sadness” momentarily but life still goes on. Even if life were to continue on as bad, it won't be as bad (Ludden) and like the lyrics suggest, even if you fall, you won’t fall far.

It is almost as if after acknowledging that one may need to fall in order to rise again, the repeated “never fall” at the end takes on a new meaning. Towards the end it seems more self-encouraging, almost to say “even if the present is difficult, never let yourself get to the point of shattering. Remind yourself of the most beautiful moments of your youth, but don't stay there”. With a message like this, it makes more sense as to why the song was included in the Young Forever Compilation album but also why it was placed as the second to last song on the original album (House of Cards being the outro surrounding what happens after this realization in Autumn Leaves). Right before the end of youth, BTS are reminding others (and themselves) that while youth may be over, and trials in life may seem like they are getting worse, never fall and keep yourself together a little more (House of Cards) as there is another season to look forward to.

#autumn leaves #BTS #HYYH #bangtan #words by bangtan #Wordsbybangtan #Visualization #sea #lyric appreciation #Larch #Youth #nostalgia

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demonslayedher · 3 years

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Any Kny character you've grown to love/appreciate more??

Thanks for waiting, Anon, I have been trying to really, really hard to narrow this down, but the answer remains: the vast majority of the cast. The only character I loved right away was Tanjiro and that love kept me watching, as with almost every new character I was like, "ugh, I hate this guy. Here I was, having fun being emotionally invested in a high quality anime, and this might ruin it for me." But then the instant I see a different side of their character, I'm like, "...Oh." To go into some examples...

Zenitsu: I could not stand him right away, I hate womanizers, and his conniptions would go on so long that they held up the story. But Gotouge/Ufotable strung me along perfectly, the first glimpse of Thunder Breath made me immediately pay attention and think, "oh, that was cool. I want to see more of that." Seeing him protect the box pretty firmly put him in the "I need to protect this child" box in my heart. And then the spider demon happens, and I'm sending desperate reaction messages to a friend like "NOOOOOO!!!! BABBBBBBBBBYYYYYYYY!!!!" And then he annoyed me all over again at the start of Functional Recovery, ahaha. It's hard to remember how annoyed I was because I'm such a Zen Stan now, and he was a very firm favorite of mine by the time I finished binging the anime up to the last couple episodes, which I waited for as they came out. Inosuke: He was one of the reasons I was curious about the series, I saw some promotional art and was super curious about Nezuko's muzzle (I was one of the people who thought it was some ancient scroll or something, haha) and the kid with the boar mask. The art I saw showed his face, and I assumed he'd be some kid with a cracking voice performed by a female seiyuu. As much as I love Matsuoka's performance now, initially, since I knew what his face looked like, I found it grossly off-putting the moment I heard it. Then every chaotic thing Inosuke did dug a deeper hole; I very quickly decided I hated him, especially when he started beating up on the kid I was starting to like. As his chaos subsided he just became a character I tolerated, and then this happened:

Images you can hear, am I right? This immediately flipped the "BABY" switch in my heart. It was also a lot of fun to understand the Inosuke memes I was seeing everywhere. So by the end of the anime, I loved, loved, loved, loved the Tanjiro/Zenitsu/Inosuke interactions and desperately wanted more (still didn't like how Zenitsu bothered Nezuko, though). I was so impatient for more, but the manga art looked disappointingly off-putting. I figured the anime was successful enough that there'd eventually be more of it, and I wanted to be patient, but then I poked around, read some spoilers, got back into Tumblr to look at fanart and memes, saw a spoiler image of Tanjiro affected by Muzan's poison and the binge-read began. (That's kind of a lie, but I'll get to that.) Let's back up a few episodes. There I was, having a great time, the guy who I forgot about from Episode 1 was back and haha, I guess everyone hates him, and the chick who I figured was going to be a medic who saves Zenitsu in the nick of time turned out to be savage, awesome. I was sending reactions to my friends who were ahead of me, and then we left off seeing the Pillars staring down Best Boy. And I...

Well. Uh. Here, I've dug up an old convo for you, my comments are in blue.

Immediately followed by a passionate vocal rant, which I have transcribed here:

“I feel like what happened was that the mangaka was sitting around with his assistants and was like, ‘welp, gotta make this whole cast of characters, they gotta be so-o-o-o many more levels of extreme than all the other characters I’ve had so far, which isn’t hard, because all of the background characters are cannon fodder and I’ve just gotta leave them all with black hair and no personality traits. So! Gotta go to the opposite of the spectrum with the BIG! POWERFUL! People so no-o-o-body can be normal.’ And so he and his assistants sat down, and they all wrote down just random words or traits, and them put ‘em all in a hat. And then for each character, they pulled out a few of them and said, ‘OK. We’re gonna put these things together, now we have a character.’ And he was probably also like, ‘Iiiiiiiiiiiii’ll flesh them out later. For now, they just need t’… be there, and make an impact. How do we make an impact? By making sure it’s super, super clear what their character traits are. Here, we’ll have this guy repeat the word //HADE//…. ////HA DEEE//// over and over and over… to show that he’s a /showy/ person. Because he /cares/ about that. And he //should// care because that is his character and that’s why he’s powerful.’ OH MY GOSH, it’s so dumb.”

......orz I feel like Genya looking back at how he acted at the end of the Final Selection. I'm sorry, Gotouge, I had not even encountered your love for these characters yet in your little alligator form. Nor had I encountered the yet unseen-sides of these traumatized dragons and tigers. ...*coughs* Um. So. I was pretty harsh.

So this was my mindset, I went into the manga not caring about most of these characters and just wanting more Kamaboko squad interactions and wanting to hurry up and catch up to the battle with Muzan. And it's worth stating that I didn't mean to read it at first. I encountered a few spoilers, and just wanted to look for the context surrounding those parts, and then hunt for the (non-existent) build-up to those parts, and so... uh.........

I read a lot of the manga out of order, and yeah, that did affect how much I cared about what was going on. I didn't actually properly process a lot of it until later re-reads. But to try to state some things simply about each Pillar:

Giyuu: He was just 'ok' to me for a long time, I could see the appeal for why people I knew were fangirling over him but he didn't do it for me. His soft spot for Tanjiro was indeed endearing, though, and I firmly liked him by the time chapter 200 came out and I was properly heartbroken on his behalf.

Shinobu: She was intriguing, and then I liked her as soon as I saw her savage side, she was one of the characters I went hunting for spoilers for.

Rengoku: That stare really put me off at first, but I fell for him over the process of Tanjiro falling for him. When I first finished the train arc I sat back and said, "wow! That's going to make for a good movie!" and then in psyching myself out for the movie several months in advance, I fell hook, line, and sinker and was totally excited for him each time I saw the trailers. And then the movie was *stunning* and I love him even more. Uzui: He was the Pillar I hated most upon first meeting them. I blame the repeated use of his catchphrase. But then when he let his hair down to sell the kiddos the change in design helped warm me up more to him, like, "oh, there was a human in there." It took a long time for him to become more interesting to me, and an uncharacteristically subtle journey to becoming a character I liked. I am currently getting more and more psyched out for him and eager to see how much more I'm going to like him with the shiny Ufotable treatment. Mitsuri: At first I didn't remember her name, I had code-named her as "Boobs." But I kinda had a feeling she was going to grow on me quickly, and I was right, she's one of my easy favorites now. Muichiro: Who? Oh yeah, that kid who always kinda fell to the wayside in my attention. I'd see a lot of Muichiro-themed blogs and hear a lot of little girls looking at merch and showing a clear favoritism of him, and I'd like always react like Muichiro and just be like, "...", and then when I read his major battles I was more emotionally invested in things going on concurrently with other characters, and I was still like, "...", and then two days ago I revisited a Muichiro scene and was suddenly like, "......OH!!! MUICHIRO!!!!!" Himejima: I never really hated Himejima, even if I found his first impression kind of wimpy (haha... oh, I was so wrong). I had a pretty easy acceptance of him too, so I would generally count him among characters I like, but if you were to ask me why, I'd draw a blank. It's kind of a weirdly mature, subdued appreciation for him rather than passionate fangirling. But weirdly when I was daydreaming the other day I found myself thinking, "if I had to marry someone in the KnY cast, it would be Himejima." So like, not a fiery romance, but I see him as my dependable, sturdy rock to grow old with??? What is up with you, sub-conscious?? Iguro: My interest in him rises and falls. Being a Mitsuri fan helped warm me up to his character in the first place, which was the emotional tie I needed since his backstory didn't grip me much (I found it a frustrating distraction while I was desperately reading weekly updates). Reading more subtle details about his character in the fanbooks has brought me around and made me more curious about him, like I'd really like to be a fly on the wall for the conversation he had with Uzui one day about their pasts.

Sanemi: Hahaha, wow. He was so unlikable in the beginning, wasn't he? His character design (yeah, the eyes) was really off-putting too. But then I got to know him and there was no going back, I got totally played. He's a character I'm pretty fond of now and one of the characters I've enjoyed delving into most in fanfic. To keep this answer from getting too long, for the vaaaaaast majority of the cast, I was initially like, "meh" or "OK" or "ew" but now am like, "EEEEEEEEE, I LOVE THIS TOTALLY RANDOM UNIMPORTANT SIDE CHARACTERRRRRRR" so you know... times change. And the more time I spend obsessed with Kimetsu no Yaiba, the more I like them all, so even the characters I'm lukewarm on will probably have their eventual days when they take over my heart and smash it.

#what do I even tag this?#it's not meta or nerdery #it's just me being a fangirl #Kimetsu no Yaiba #Demon Slayer

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imtryingmybeskar · 2 years

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For the Weird Questions for Writers prompt, I would be a happy bunny if you answered any one of these 🥰:

(26) How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

(29) Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

(7) What is your deepest joy about writing?

(24) How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

Ooooo thank you for the asks my lovely! I'm gonna answer all of them because I'm in that kinda mood. It's gonna be long though so more under the cut!

26) I use various methods to get into my character's heads. Rewatching the source material is an obvious one. But I have to feel like I'm in a particular place when I write particular people. For example when I want to feel extra Star Wars-y I'll play a little bit of KOTOR 1 or 2. I love Fallen Order too but KOTOR is so rich in lore and context for Jedi and Mandos in particular that it's useful for me (even though it's not canon as of yet). For Starman I have a playlist that I listen to to get into the mindset I want.

29) Inspiration comes from so many places. While watching Obi Wan I had an idea for a new fic (the one we've talked about) but it's not based around Obi Wan at all, though it is in the Star Wars universe. I take inspiration from my dreams, from paintings, conversations, games, songs, things I see when I'm out and about. Anything and everything. Sometimes inspiration comes from trying to recapture a feeling I had long ago (this is where Starman began!). I also learn and grow from reading the amazing work of others and they inspire me too. So many talented and lovely writers on here!

To get out, I touch base with the real world. I cook or have a shower or nap or go for a walk. Just divorce myself from that space for a while. I never regret getting into my character's headspace. It's therapeutic for me.

I'm lucky enough that my inspiration well has yet to run dry. I usually have too many ideas and not enough time. But my well of motivation and confidence do disappear on occasion and then it's just a case of pushing through. Writing anything and going back to edit it later is better than writing nothing in my case.

24) I do minimal prep before a story. I think of a thing I want to write and I write it. Sometimes it can be a phrase, a chunk of dialogue, sometimes just trying to capture an emotion. All of my research is done as I go. So on occasion I have made tiny tweaks that mean I have to go back and adjust a word or sentence in previous chapters.

7) My deepest joy about writing is escapism. Inhabiting that world for as long as I can and making it come alive in my mind, and hopefully in the minds of others.

This was where Starman began.

I had been singing the David Bowie song in my head for a day or so and then wondered how I could write a fic around that title. Starman...seemed obvious to me it would be Ezra. The third line is a lyric from a different song that struck a chord. The last line is the feeling I tried to suffuse into the work. There are more notes now, but they're all spoilers so I can't post them!

I tend to have ideas before I sleep so I make hasty notes in my phone when I do. Barring "Work notes" which are as dull as they sound, these are all ideas that I've had over six months or so (I revisited some today!) The "Ezra fic" was an idea that was eventually subsumed into Starman (the idea of him being of noble heritage but working as a prospector and no one knew of his past). "Ezra fluff" are my current Starman notes.

#ask game #lovely asks from lovely people

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i-am-vpelno · 3 years

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What Really Happened During the Arasaka Nuke Assault (Theory) :

!Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077, Red and 2020!

We all know the story, a vengeful Johnny Silverhand gathered a team of the best mercs he knew and led a charge on the Arasaka HQ in Night City. He planted a nuke and before he could escape, was defeated and captured by Adam Smasher before being ‘killed’ by Soulkiller. Now he’s an engram and his body lays in a cement grave in the middle of nowhere...or is it? We’re told time and time again what an unreliable narrator Johnny is and it’s weird that Blackhand would just be replaced like that. I’d like to brain storm some theories on what really happened that night and why there are so many different canonical takes on this event (other than the game not being finished.)

A few key things from Cyberpunk lore:

In Cyberpunk 2020, the actual leader of the Arasaka nuke assault is Morgan Blackhand

In Cyberpunk 2077, very few people know that Johnny was involved in the attack

It’s Morgan Blackhand that goes missing after facing Smasher in 2020

A nuke is already planted by Arasaka before the assault

A preserved body was hidden with the arasaka planted nuke before it was shipped out

A Silverhand fan named Angel is now in possession of the body and the nuke

First, what really happened according to Cyberpunk 2020 and Mike Pondsmith. Mike says that its Thompson, the media that helped Johnny when Alt was kidnapped, that set up the entire operation and that Militech provided the bomb and Morgan Blackhand to lead. Morgan Blackhand, a famous solo, took a contract under Militech to take down Arasaka in the fourth corporate wars. He led three teams: Omega (his own), Beta (Your player character from the tabletop game) and Alpha (Johnny and crew.) There’s this US military guy called Eddington who is giving Morgan and Thompson all this information and resources. His plan is to use team Alpha as a distraction while stealing Arasaka intel and destroying the tower. Spider Murphy ‘finds out’ Alt is being held in Mikoshi and informs Johnny. Johnny is killed by Adam Smasher before the nuke goes off. Meanwhile, “someone” sets off the nuke prematurely and Morgan faces off with Smasher, never to be heard from again.

Mike says Johnny’s memories are scrambled due to radiation and so he misattributes some events. The question is, which events are misattributed? This is where it gets complicated. Due to the fact that, Johnny’s survival was changed completely from the original story and the fact that now we know his memory is faulty, there’s a lot we just can’t answer ourselves and will have to wait for Mike or CD Projekt Red to fill in the blanks. For now, the obvious replacement of Blackhand and why he’s missing from the memory entirely. During the flashbacks, it may be a stylistic choice but after a major scene plays out, the screen will cut to black and the memory will jump forward in time. It looks like after Alt’s death Johnny jumps straight into the assault, however according to his wiki, Johnny spent some undocumented years with Santiago and the Aldecaldos between then and the assault. We also don’t get to see Thompson’s involvement, the deal with Militech, or how they even got the nuke. Instead we get the bombastic power trip and Johnny’s badass fiery end. Now, that is a lot of important context missing in exchange for a Hollywood ending and I don’t think it’s just Johnny’s own mind embellishing the memory! Everyone who wasn’t involved and isn’t someone who knows for a fact that Johnny was involved, says something that insinuates doubt that he was actually there. That concert and riot the game shows, it happened in 2013 ten years earlier! There’s also a scene of news helicopters coming to the scene while Johnny is being taken into an ambulance, wouldn’t that show confirmed proof that Johnny was at the scene? Finally, what about his gun, car and Rogue being taken in by Smasher, something isn’t adding up.

It’s too Hollywood to be real and too much is missing for just embellishment of a dying mind. I think Arasaka had a plan for Johnny, there was a purpose for changing his memories the way they did but letting him know they did it. We know that the Relic we get is only a prototype, so it’s easy to assume Arasaka was probably just messing with the memories because they wanted to test everything they were able to do. The prototype Relic allows Johnny’s engram to take over a body with no relation to him, killing the original host in the process. Saburo Arasaka’s Relic must be put into someone with similar genes but we can assume it functions the same way. We can assume Saburo’s version of the Relic is superiorly made compared to Johnny’s, then why change it from killing a stranger to killing a relative? What sort of consequences does Saburo avoid? I don’t think I can answer this since we don’t get to watch Saburo acclimatize to his new body or if Yorinobu fights back, also if Johnny develops his own issues living in V’s body. I can note some things and develop some theories here though. The Relic’s true purpose was to collect people’s engrams in order to harvest data and secrets, though it also worked to make a “back up” of a person in case they died. In Johnny’s case, he couldn’t control V unless they took a medication or until he waited until his engram had control of their body. We could see V’s body sustained damage from the seizures caused by the Relic and V, we can assume Johnny as well, could not be brought back to life again after the first use of the Relic. We can assume Saburo’s relic protected Yorinobu’s body and allowed him immediate direct control of the new body. What’s also interesting is that the only ending that allows Saburo to not just come back but take over his son’s body, is the Devil Ending where Johnny’s engram is shredded. I think they deleted Johnny’s engram but took the data from V’s experience with it to make Saburo’s new Relic. Johnny’s memories being flawed was also a prominent issue, so if they weren’t tampered with Arasaka must have seen that as a flaw to be corrected for Saburo.

Let’s talk about that second nuke. As mentioned, despite this group going to bomb the tower, Arasaka was planning to blow themselves up anyway. Eddington’s plan was to put a ‘pocket nuke’ in an elevator, send it to the basement and detonate it at the foundation of the tower without any other buildings suffering casualties. A strange coincidence that the nuke didn’t reach the basement nuke, which obviously would have caused even greater damage. It’s not likely but perhaps there was already a body stored within that “someone” wanted to protect or that “someone” knew the second nuke was there and wanted to avoid that level of damage. Despite what really happened, Arasaka was accused of suicide bombing their tower as a last ditch effort against the US and they were banished from almost every country. Thus ended the 4th corporate war and began the Time of the Red. In 2045 Trace Santiago, son of the leader of the Aldecados Santiago, was following a lead to get his hands on the full recording of Black Dog for Samantha Stevens. I’m just now reading her wiki and WOW this is crazy! She straight up recovered and preserved some of Johnny’s possessions gun, car and DEAD BODY included. She sends Trace and crew with the package to Angel who gives them the song, one of the crew keeps the gun and she’s the last known person to allegedly be in possession of Johnny’s body. Who knows if she still has it however as this would be 32 years from the game. So despite the nuke 99.9% for sure containing Johnny’s body, it’s not certain why or how Samantha got her hands on it or if this opens up a possibility for Johnny to come back. At least we might be able to give him a proper burial.

Let’s revisit Adam Smasher’s involvement. Smasher was tasked with recovering Johnny’s body and possessions, according to the wiki, from 2023-2045. He found Samantha Steven’s garage full of Johnny’s stuff and might’ve killed or found Trace Santiago’s associate who was holding onto Johnny’s gun. It’s unclear if he found and recovered Johnny’s body or if it’s still with Angel. It’s also unclear what kind of work Rogue did with him or any explanation for their team up (though it would be hilarious if she was involved in Mike’s ‘Michiko’s 18th Birthday’ storyline, the timeline fits!) What is strange, either way you look at it, it’s super dark and strange that Rogue would work with him after what he did to Johnny. What is likely to have happened, since Rogue did know Trace Santiago’s team, was that Smasher had to approach Rogue for help tracking them down or somewhere down the line Angel being in possession of Johnny’s body needed to be tracked down and Rogue volunteered her help. I just refuse to believe a woman like Rogue would push papers or merc for her enemies. Probably the most important factor is Morgan Blackhand and that his rivalry with Smasher was swapped. Smasher had an obsession with fighting Morgan one on one but they rarely or even never fought before the assault. Again it’s hard to say, but we never get to see Smasher than incensed over anyone so maybe Morgan is dead or Smasher is still looking for him offscreen.

So why would Arasaka want to hide Morgan Blackhand’s involvement? The top solo, leader of this incursion and the most ambiguous figure in all of Cyberpunk. He could’ve just died, been turned into an engram ,or even lived to a hundred. I really don’t know, but speculating has been fun! Let me know your theories and ideas too, let’s figure this out!

#cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk 2020 #cyberpunk red #cd projekt red #johnny silverhand

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mx08z7kz6gqrs · 3 years

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好想爱这个世界啊 - Translation Notes

For my translation of this song, see this post. Listen to the live version of the song here. Below are some translation notes on the song.

This was one of my earlier translations, and one that I’ve felt like I should revisit but never had time to. It’s a particularly beautiful song, and the lyrics aren’t complicated, but they are written in a deliberately vague way that isn’t easily conveyed in English. It also has a lot of short phrases that work as individual sentences in Chinese, but that I’ve chosen to link together so that it flows better in English.

As usual, these notes are formatted with the original lyrics, followed by the most literal possible translation, and then an explanation for how I decided to translated it in the final version, including my interpretations and any nuances that I maybe have decided to drop.

Note that anything in brackets [like so] means that this word did not exist in the line, but I had to insert it for grammatical reasons. Usually it’s a subject pronoun that wasn’t specified.

---

Line by Line Translation Notes

抱着沙发睡眼昏花凌乱头发 // Hugging the sofa, sleepy eyes blurry, messy hair 却渴望像电影主角一样潇洒 // Yet long to be confident and free like the lead role in a movie

These two lines were fairly literal, and I’ve kept them as is while appending the first person pronoun so that it was grammatically consistent in English.

The most interesting notes here are “渴望”, “to long for.” In Chinese, this phrase is actually a combination of the character “渴” for thirst, and “望” for hope [for the future]. There is a desperation to this particular word choice that is somewhat capture in the English “longing.”

I’ve also chosen to translate “主角”, literally “main role” (ie, protagonist/leading role) to “hero” just for it to flow a little more naturally.

屋檐角下排着乌鸦密密麻麻 // Under the corners of the roof, crows line up, packed close together 被压抑的情绪不知如何表达 // The repressed feelings, [I] don’t know how to express

I took a lot of liberty in my translation of these lines, because they evoke a very specific sense of confusion and entrapment that I don’t think the literal translation captures well.

Crows in modern Chinese culture, like the west, can be seen as bad omens (ex when someone says something unlucky they are called “乌鸦嘴”, literally a crow’s beak). “密密麻麻” is an expression referring to things being very densely packed together- “密” refers to being “close together” while “麻” is the character for a hemp/sesame. The image it evokes is numerous things being packed so close together that they are like tiny dots against one another.

In this way, you can interpret the crows as a reflection for those feelings that the singer cannot express, trapping them without any gaps for escape.

无论我在这里在那里 // No matter if I’m here or there 仿佛失魂的虫鸣 // As if [I’m] a panicking bug cries 却明白此刻应该做些努力 // But understanding that right now, should make some effort to try harder

Not too many notes for this section. One thing that I’ve seen a lot of different translations around is the second line though, “失魂的虫鸣.” The word “失魂” literally translates to “lost soul.” But generally speaking, this term isn’t referring to the desolate feeling that the literal English translation evokes. Rather, it’s more like “lost wits” or “at wit’s end”, referring to a sort of indecisive and panicked state of mind.

In this case, it’s describing “虫鸣”, literally “cries of bugs.” The sound in my head is something like cicada chirps, or the eclectic noises of bugs in the evening on a hot day. In English, we’d more commonly describing the noises that bugs make as “buzzing”, and for the sort of restless feeling, a specific reference to “flies” made more sense and felt more natural that the more vague “bugs/insects” in the original lyric.

There’s a sense of aimlessness, confusion, and helplessness to this line that I wanted to capture.

无论我在这里在那里 // No matter if I’m here or there 不能弥补的过去 // The past that can’t be mended 每当想起 // Every time [I] think of it...

Simple lines- the one word of note here is “弥补”, a term that can mean to mend or to make up for any deficiencies. It’s formed with the character “弥”, “to fill in” or “complete” and the character “补” for “fix/mend.” In my translation, I’ve chosen to use “irreparable”, but what it really conveys is the speaker’s understanding and sense of regret that they cannot make up for the past, whether it’s the things they’ve done or the things they’ve missed.

想过离开 // Thought of leaving 以这种方式存在 // Existing in this way 是因为那些旁白 // It was because of those narratives/asides 那些姿态那些伤害 // Those attitudes/postures, those hurts

The chorus is definitely where I took the biggest liberty in my translation. The most important point here is that I have removed the likely intentional ambiguity in the subject. Before I dive into that though, I’ll cover the two terms here that have no clear English equivalent.

“旁白” is a word that roughly refers to “an aside”- it combines the character “旁“ for “to the side” and “白”, in this context referring to a use of language, or expression. It is the term used to describe things like a voice-over narration in movies, dramas, etc (for example, think of times when the character is thinking something and we, the audience, hears it as a voice on top of a montage on-screen).

“姿态” can be most literally translated as “attitude” or “posture”, and it refers to a combination of physical appearance and expression. It’s close to the English use of “air” and it’s what you are changing when you are “posturing” to someone.

Note that “those narratives”/”those attitudes”/”those hurts” do not actually have a subject associated with who is the one “dealing” them. It can be interpreted as the singer’s own thoughts and self-loathing, others judgement of them, or both. I think this ambiguity is intentional- the themes of the song revolve around the struggles of depression, and often these mix together.

In this way, “那些旁白” can refer to a narrative that the singer is telling themselves, or a narrative that is forced upon them from the words that others have spoken about them. “那些姿态” can refer to the type of posture or stance that the singer feels forced into, or the attitudes of the people around them. “那些伤害” can refer to pain that is inflicted upon the singer either by themselves or by the others.

For readability sake, I chose to go with the interpretation that slightly more folks on the Chinese net seemed to favor. Hua Chenyu, the original artist, has also emphasized the fear that those with depression face when they meet other people who may not understand them, so it seemed like a good compromise.

不想离开 // Don’t want to leave 当你说还有你在 // When you said you were still here 忽然我开始莫名期待 // Suddenly I began inexplicably hope

This half of the chorus translates much more straightforwardly. The only real word of note here is the final one, “期待.” It can be translated as “hope”, but it’s really a type of hope that leans towards anticipation, or “to look forward to/expect something.”

Unfortunately, both of those translations require some type of object (unlike the Chinese term), and while I could insert one (”the future”, “life”, etc) that would be pure conjecture on my part and I’d prefer to keep it as ambiguous as possible while still making sense.

夕阳西下翻着电话无人拨打 // The sun sets to the west, flipping the phone, no one calls 是习惯孤独的我该得到的吧 // This is what I, who am used to being alone, deserve to get right?

These lines were neat to translate. One subtlety that’s lost in English is the first phrase, “夕阳西下”, an idiom literally meaning “evening sun sets west” and usually used to describe a scene of sunset. However, it can also be used more figuratively to describe things going downhill as years go by and they age, so there’s a little bit of melancholy inherent in the idiom.

独木桥呀把谁推下才算赢家 // A single log bridge, pushing someone over, counts as a winner 我无声的反抗何时能战胜它 // When will my soundless rebellion prevail over it

This part of the song actually confused me a little when I first heard it. The “独木桥”, literally “single log/plank bridge” is a phrase that figuratively describes a very difficult path (ie, like trying to cross a single log bridge).

Overall, there’s a resentment of the perceived competition in life- often, it feels that for one person to succeed, they have to take down someone else. The singer thus is trying to stage their own resistance against this.

无论我在这里在那里 // No matter if I’m here or there 不能弥补的过去 // The past that can’t be mended 每当想起 // Every time [I] think of it...

This section is an exact repeat from the end of the first verse.

This is a repeat of the first section in the first chorus.

不想离开 // Don’t want to leave 也许尝试过被爱 // Maybe after [I’ve] tried [the feeling of] being loved 会开始仰望未来 // [I’ll] start to look up hopefully towards the future

The subtlety of this part is in the second line. “尝试” literally means “to try” or “to attempt”, and it is modifying “被爱”, “to be loved.” The correct way to understand this line in English is “After I’ve tasted the feeling of being loved by another.” Overall that sounds awkward though, which is why I didn’t use that particular phrasing in my translation.

The third line here uses a particularly yearning word to express hope- “仰望” or “to look up hopefully” combines the character “仰” for “looking up towards” or “admiring” and “望” for hope. Compare this to “期待” from the end of the last chorus, which was more of a tentative feeling of anticipation.

伤疤就丢给回忆吧 // Scars, just throw them to the memories 放下才得到更好啊 // Let go, to get something better

别怕别怕 // Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid

These lines forming the bridge are fairly straightforward. For my translation, I just linked the ideas to make it flow better in English (ie, “getting something better” reads quite awkwardly even though in Chinese it’s a perfectly natural way to express the idea).

想过离开 // Thought of leaving 当阳光败给阴霾 // When the sunlight is defeated by dark haze 没想到你会拼命为我拨开 // Didn’t think you would be trying your hardest to clear it for me

In the second line here, I dropped the “defeat” from my translation in favor of “faded” to make it flow better/sound a little more poetic. However, it's worth noting that in the original, the verb “败” is to be defeated/lose, with the implication of some type of struggle.

In the third line, “拼命” can be literally understood as “using one’s life” and translates to doing something “at all costs” or “as if your life depends on it.” It’s a very desperate term.

Overall the feeling here is one where the singer has already given up, the “sunlight defeated”, but unexpectedly, someone else continues to fight on for them, desperately so.

曾想过离开 // Once thought of leaving 却又坚持到现在 // But held on until now 熬过了那些旁白 // Endured past those narratives/asides 那些姿态那些伤害 // Those attitudes/postures, those hurts

This part of the last chorus echoes the previous ones, with some significant changes. The addition of “曾” for “once”, places the first line explicitly in the past tense. “熬过了” in the third line is also an explicit reference to the past, conveying that the singer has “already endured past” the things mentioned in previous choruses.

不想离开 // Don’t want to leave 当你的笑容绽开 // When your smile breaks outs 这世界突然填满色彩喔~ // The world is suddenly filled to the brim with color, woah~

In the second line here, the verb describing the smile is “绽开”, or to “burst forth”, basically suddenly appearing and with a very large presence. My choice of words here was “bloom” in English since that is a way we describe smiles.

In the third line, “填满” literally means “to fill/cram in” and is formed with the characters “填”, for “to fill [in a missing/empty space]” and “满” for “full.” In this case, there’s also a sense of something that was previously missing being returned in full.

抱着沙发睡眼昏花凌乱头发 // Hugging the sofa, sleepy eyes blurry, messy hair 夕阳西下接通电话是你呀 // The sun sets to the west, connected through the phone, it’s you

These last lines echo the first line from each verse. In the second one, “接通” means “to connect” but specifically in the context of a call connected, or a call picked up.

---

And that concludes my notes for this song. It’s a really beautiful song, and I saw more folks reading this translation than I first expected so I wanted to break it down and clarify all the liberties that I took while translating it. The language here is simple, but contains a lot of subtlety and intentional ambiguity.

#好想爱这个世界啊 #华晨宇 #hua chenyu #notes #chinese music #somehow took me 7 months to revisit this one #also took the chance to reword a few minor things in the original translation

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warlordgab · 4 years

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Analysis of shipping: Revisiting detracting arguments

I know some people were expecting more content here, and I'm sorry for taking so long to put this thing together. This post will be a little different from the other analyses you’ve seen here...

It's no secret this blog is mainly about LuNa...

...and NaLu

And several post made here are meant to showcase how their respective stories build them up through consistent bonding; defend their position as potent relationships by means of evidence and logic; or both.

We know standing next to each other in the same panel or frame are not “moments” if the context and/or the story doesn’t turn them into a meaningful interaction.

We know a girl slapping a guy is not something inherently romantic, and it’s not a defining trait of a potent relationship, specially when context says otherwise.

We know that brief rescue scenes are not always the sign of a potential romance as there are several elements needed to turn them into actual moments for a pairing

But, there are some arguments that persist because shallow shippers think they give meaning to their premises, disprove the potential another pairing has, or both. This post will deconstruct a couple of those arguments used to argue against LuNa and NaLu's position as potent relationships in their respective stories.

1) Romantic pursuit Vs. Consistent bonding

I was going to call this one the “Touka Argument”, or Touka's Rhetoric. Naming it after FT's Touka...

...she seemed to be the embodiment of nearly everything shippers argue against relationships as LuNa and NaLu until we got a comedic plot-twist worthy of a trolling writer.

Still, the argument goes a little bit like this: any one-sided pursuit of romance should become part of the endgame pairing. It doesn't matter if the story doesn't take such "affection" seriously, it doesn't matter if it is meant to be a joke with little to no weight, all that matters is the character actively looking for romance while proclaiming “love.”

A character who appears much later in the storyline openly expressing "love" for the MC. Meanwhile the MC shares far more development with a romantically inactive girl.

Some shippers may argue that the girls or guys who are actually "in love" are the ones who will win their object of affection. Others may admit this is a extremely subjective matter as some of these girls end up winning, which makes it hard to analyze this stuff properly. But, there's one thing that helps people to keep an objective perspective: development

If we take a look at relationships like Gruvia from Fairy Tail, we get to see that their most powerful scenes are not the ones that involve the characters being all mushy over each other, but the moments of actual emotional significance; actual build-up...

...created by impactful moments

Some of Hiro Mashima's works prove he's aware that what truly matters in this particular regard is not how often a character makes claims of love, but how much development she or he has with a significant other.

What about Eiichiro Oda and his works? We got one notable example from the Whole Cake island arc

One sincere gesture of kindness from Sanji (the local pervert and Casanova wannabe) was enough for him to get to Pudding's heart...

...when he shattered the image she had of herself as monster with that gesture, and later an armor-piercing question, she ended up falling for him as he was the only person on that island that saw her true face and still deemed her as a beautiful woman instead of a monster. Sanji had such impactful moments with Pudding without going "horny" mode on her.

Other authors know that this kind development is needed for the logical progression in both good storytelling and decent characterization. They may not say it out loud, but their works speak for themselves while showing even characters who are not looking for romantic love can eventually develop such bonds.

Take a look at relationships like Kenshi and Kaoru from Rurōni Kenshin...

...they became an item, despite neither of them being romantically active, because they bonded over time, supporting and caring for each other, to the point of developing a much deeper connection. No over-the-top corny lines nor becoming all horny on each other; it was just consistent bonding, which ultimately triumphed.

It's shouldn't come as a surprise given the author of Rurōni Kenshin mentored Eiichiro Oda.

And to add it more to the irony, there was another girl interested in Kenshin who got a role much greater in the anime than the manga, and who was more mild-tempered, feminine, and seductive.

Another mangaka who understood this matter is Seishi Kishimoto, brother of Masashi Kishimoto (of Naruto fame), and author of O-parts Hunters.

The moments shared by the main characters led Ruby to become Jio's emotional support, and both of them to get emotionally attached to one another. Another girl was interested in Jio, but consistent bonding made Jio and Ruby's connection remain as a potent relationship... as well as some other plot points.

And of course, there's the critically-acclaimed Fullmetal Alchemist (Brotherhood for anime-only watchers) by Hiromu Arakawa.

Edward and Winry. Two well-written characters who weren't romantically active before ending up together, yet their relationship and later upgrade made total sense... I could name Roy and Riza too, but that would be overkill.

The point is that it's not the romantic pursuit (or gag-like claims of "love") that makes or breaks a pairing; it's all about the moments that leave an impact along with shared experiences which give a strong companionship the potential for a relationship upgrade.

2) Every shonen story is the same story?

While this argument sounds ridiculous, it serves as an umbrella for several other claims some shippers may use.

A lot of anime fans know that most popular shonen stories, such as Dragon Ball, usually feature underdeveloped relationships. So, more often than not, shippers may claim or imply significant moments and actual development mean little to nothing in a shonen story. This reasoning can be easily mixed with the "romantic pursuit" argument.

Another related argument is the "informed attribute," which means you can off-screen the whole relationship and just let a character or narration "tell" you how a pairing happened instead of "showing" you how they developed. Basically, a violation of "show, don't tell."

While it's true several shonen stories share similar tropes, the more you examine each story, the easier it becomes to tell them apart.

Eiichiro Oda wrote a story that could easily fit the concept of "romance," as in a dramatic narrative treating themes such as heroism, idealism, mystery and adventure...

In fact, according to Sugita, a former One Piece editor, "Oda revealed that One Piece was something of a deliberate subversion of Dragon Ball through having a vastly more complex story and characters, while Dragon Ball is a manga infamous for its simplicity."

This is consistent to Oda's own statement: "I write ONE PIECE as dramatically as I can. If I had written a pure battle manga, it would have been easily defeated by Dragon Ball."

Given the amount of themes the series covered and the engaging emotional narrative, the argument of this story being the same as every other popular shonen doesn't hold up. The characters are all bound together as true companions not by a desire to become "stronger," but because they're "in love with adventure" as the author put it.

What about Fairy Tail? Hiro Mashima wrote a fantasy shonen series centered around thematics that are common in other shonen stories: Companionship and Family.

While some people already commented how the manga seems to have strong similarities with One Piece, Hiro Mashima had his own ideas when making the story. As he himself said once: "Usually a shonen manga starts with just a main character, who then slowly accumulates his or her allies as the story progresses. But in the world of Fairy Tail, everybody pretty much knows each other at the beginning. That was sort of what I was going for."

In another interview he even stated one of the thematic differences in relation to his previous work: "Rave Master was about friends saving the whole world, but Fairy Tail is about closer-knit relationships."

This is consistent with what we've seen in Fairy Tail, as the titular guild is all about that theme, how different people of several backgrounds are connected by intimate bonds and the search for exciting adventures.

What about the characters?

Both Eiichiro Oda and Hiro Mashima (just like many other mangakas) grew up watching and/or reading Dragon Ball. But, are their main characters Luffy...

...and Natsu...

...just mere replicas of Goku and other shonen heroes?

It's true that many authors follow the shonen hero archetype when writing the protagonist of a series. Both Luffy and Natsu are golden-hearted idiot heroes, and both of them have personalities that reflect the idea of "No Challenge equals No Satisfaction."

But, unlike Goku their ultimate aim is not all about following an endless cycle of self-improvement. At their core, both Luffy and Natsu are thrill-seekers who are constantly looking for fun and adventure.

Luffy is all about freedom, and even if he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, he can still display actual leadership qualities when the situation calls for it. Natsu, like some other of his guildmates, is a mischievous trouble-maker but still pretty much the embodiment of the values of Fairy Tail.

The more you examine both characters, the more differences you can find...

All of this is related to shipping mainly because people may claim "every shonen story is the same story" to justify pairings that do not have enough canon material supporting them.

So, if the hero and the heroine have a far more substantial development and actual chemistry, shippers who oppose such characters getting together may imply the following: "if several popular mangakas make their official couples with no regard for moments or build-up, why Oda or Mashima should be any different."

Because each author is different, and even if their stories use similar tropes from time to time, elements like themes, purpose, focus, plot, and characters will vary from writer to writer.

3) Anime Vs. Manga

'It's easier to watch a series than read a story'

Which is why whenever a manga gets an anime adaptation, if the story is good, its popularity rises.

However, sometimes the directors and writers of the anime do not share the same vision as the mangaka. And people who are up to date with both mediums can perceive such differences. Dragged out fights, OOC moments, inconsistencies with plot points from the source material, etc. are common place in some adaptations.

But, some directors and other staff members take some liberties to add "shipping fuel" according to their own views and taste.

I apologize in advance if this comparison offends someone, I’m just using it as an example. The anime adaptation of Bleach made by Studio Pierrot featured some ship tease...

Such scenes weren't written by Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach. And they could easily pass as something "romantic."

However, during an interview, one of Bleach's editors, Toya Taichi, stated that "in Kubo sensei’s mind, Orihime is the heroine character and Rukia is a comrade" and he later summed it up as "feeling like a pal" (相棒 in japanese).

When it comes to modern japanese storytelling, the term "heroine" (ヒロイン in japanese) is interchangeable with "love interest." Orihime herself was even present in the Shonen Jump heroines covers. But, people who take filler scenes as the real deal may think otherwise.

When it comes to Fairy Tail, A-1 Pictures did a decent job in adapting the story but they also added shipping fuel, small things like Gray following Lucy and getting teased by Happy for it, or the big things like the non-canon expansion of the flashbacks involving Lisanna, which some people still treat as the signs of endgame pairings.

People who watched this version before reading the manga are more prone to overhype relationships that have little to no supporting evidence from Mashima's works. Fortunately A-1 Pictures toned it down later, too bad some shippers never forget...

If we talk about One Piece, the story is very different to say the least. TOEI Animation didn't stop in this regard, as some people may recall I already posted several of the changes they made for the sake of ship tease, and unlike A-1 Pictures they keep going and going with the moments they keep adding being more and more blatantly shippy (specially with Nami and Sanji) as time goes on.

Since One Piece is very long-running manga, more and more people only watch the anime and they take all those additions as the real deal despite the heroine of this story sharing far more development and solid chemistry with the hero.

However, not every fan is into well-developed relationships, so not every manga-reader will go LuNa/NaLu. Same could be said about anime-only watchers, as not all of them are swayed by filler, so not all of them will disregard LuNa/NaLu if they like consistent bonding.

The point is that the anime adaptation has a strong influence in how the fans perceive the story, the characters, and the bonds they build. And not every anime adaptation presents a favorable image of the in-canon premises made by the mangaka.

Here’s a little bonus:

Who's the One Piece heroine according to Oda?

When talking about Strong World, the movie he wrote, Oda said “I really wanted to make a ‘hero saves the heroine’ story." A movie about a hero (Luffy) saving the heroine (Nami). He added: "You might think otherwise, but I had no intention of bringing in someone new to fill that [heroine] role. So when I had to think about whom to use for it amongst the straw hats of course that meant Nami.”

He also stated in 2019, when an interviewer addressed the fact his wife is similar to Nami, "They say a mangaka often marries a person who's similar to the heroine."

Across the several years the manga had been going, Nami often appears in the Shonen Jump heroines covers due to her role in One Piece.

You can see the latest Jump heroines poster here

Who's the Fairy Tail heroine according to Mashima?

One of his latest works (HERO’S) answers this question...

Context: Ellie is talking about Haru, Natsu, and Shiki (the heroes of Rave, Fairy Tail, and Edens Zero). Each one of these girls has the role of "heroine" in each of their respective stories. One of them even ends up with the hero.

BONUS: The Elephant in the room

As you probably noticed, I used a lot of official statements to back up my post. However, even those who oppose LuNa and Nalu use those kind of statments...

In the case of One Piece, several fans considered "romantic love" a concept completely foreign from the series due to a couple of quotes from the author. When asked about this particular subject, Oda stated that the members of Straw Hat crew are "in love with adventure." And later when asked again, the mangaka said that since this is a shonen story "romance isn't depicted."

Based on these answers, several fans created the myth of "romantic love" not existing in One Piece. Many held onto this conclusion with so much intensity that they always dismissed the bad girl Alvida's obvious attraction to the hero (Luffy).

However, as a clever and perceptive reviewer pointed out we're talking about the same author that once claimed he doesn't kill characters and went as far as to say "I hate when supposedly dead characters come back to life." Yet his story has a couple of "supposedly dead" characters who turned out to be alive. No spoilers here.

Some of his statments are meant to be taken with a grain of salt. He said "romance wasn't depicted" but as of recent years it's been a thing in One Piece...

...Señor Pink and Russian are one example of how traditional romance gets integrated in both story and characters. So, using the author's words to invalidate all possibility of romance in One Piece no longer works.

Ironically, haters take Oda's old claims literally when talking about Luffy, but they completely forget about it as soon as someone mentions Nami or Robin in this particular regard. A clear display of a blatant double-standard...

When it comes to Fairy Tail, some haters love to quote that Natsu and Lucy are "more than friends but less than lovers."

Yet, they choose to ignore that in recent years, when asked about the relationship between these characters, Mashima himself replied: "I feel that the Natsu and Lucy ship is more suitable."

Some time before that statement, during a New York Comic Con, when asked what he feels is “right” in this regard Mashima held up his drawing of Natsu and Lucy...

...so everyone could see his answer to the question.

So, using Mashima's old quote to deny the plausibility of a relationship upgrade here and there is not going to work either.

If people want to defend a pairing or prove a potent relationship has what it takes to become canon, they should try to stay true to the author's works, and the story's internal logic, instead of trying to find a way around them and/or promoting a baseless process of elimination, all to justify another premise.

Consistent bonding, chemistry, and natural development coming from the author’s works should be superior to mere rethoric, hype, and/or anime filler

#one piece #fairy tail #eiichiro oda #hiro mashima #monkey d. luffy #nami #luffy x nami #lunami #luna #ルナミ #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #natsu x lucy #nalu #shipping #analysis #I'm ready for the salt...#this feels like committing blog seppuku #edited to correct a couple of mistakes

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dogcopter · 4 years

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Jane is Lore 2020

Ok, here’s the round up of the ghost part of the situation with @keepbeachcitysafe and @keepbeachcityweird.

Theory: Ronaldo’s girlfriend Jane is the key to figuring out Rose Quartz is not gone, largely via a constellation of background clues. If that sounds ridiculous, I understand. I’m Ronaldo. Actually I’m not Ronaldo, but hopefully I’ll have a post about him too soon. I hope we can all have fun together tho

This post is very, very long and involves a lot of images. It will be confusing at first, but please entertain the thought and keep reading, and I hope it clicks into place. I may need to update it later.

Three sections for supporting evidence:

1. Restaurant Wars, Jane, KBCW/KBCS blogs’ interaction & contents

2. Astral projection/ghosts/fusions

3. Dogcopter secrets

Restaurant Wars Saga & Jane’s appearances

So Ronaldo has a blog at @keepbeachcityweird - he also published a book based on his blog called Keep Beach City Weird: You Can’t Hide the Truth!!!, which is available for purchase.

On April 23, 2014, Lion 2: The Movie airs. Jane appears for the first time working the ticket booth at the movie theater and sees Lion and the kids fight a killer robot. Dogcopter 3 is playing at the theater.

April 23, 2014, Ronaldo at Keep Beach City Weird also posts about seeing Dogcopter 3 at the movie theater, where the parking lot is a mess, presumably from Steven, Connie and Lion’s robot training fight.

He mentions “First of all, it’s a huge mistake to turn the last Dogcopter book into THREE movies.”, but that’s less relevant to this particular post. The important thing is that he, like Connie, follows Dogcopter, who’s also associated with Jane. (We’ll get to Dogcopter’s appearances in SU in the last part of this once the context is established)

Ronaldo’s posts in general document specific events and details in his home Beach City, but that’s another post entirely.

Exactly a year later, Ronaldo on April 23, 2015 posted about receiving a mysterious letter, which might be from Jane because (beneath a great deal of smudging) it appears to call Ronaldo the CUTEST GUY EVER! (This isn’t crucial or anything, just noting it as one of our first Jane points).

I GOT A LETTER TODAY!!! But for some reason it was all wet and I can’t even tell what it says. Is it a love letter? Is it a death threat? Please tell me! I need to know if I should lock my doors or open my heart!

Jane also appears in Beach City Drift. After Beach City Drift, keepbeachcitysafe posts an episode reaction blog, on July 22 2016, and takes special notice of Jane.

Hey did you guys notice that girl that keeps appear. We saw her when Steven took Connie to the movies and now she’s here. I wonder if she’s involved in something. Hmmmm. So Stevonnie raced Kevin down the hill in his Himitsu X12, that’s secret in Japanese.

(Kevin’s Himitsu X12 is his car, in the middle there. We’ll come back to this and what KBCS means in a second.)

July 25 2016, Restaurant Wars airs, the third of Jane’s four appearances in SU. In this ep, Jane comes a long way to return Ronaldo’s Koala Princess DVDs, and catches Ronaldo with Kiki and is upset.

KBCS posts another episode reaction blog, pays attention to Jane again, and says they plan to message Ronaldo.

Ronaldo says he can’t do it because of his girlfriend. Ooo, he has a girlfriend, that’s pretty cool, you just know whats gonna happen next.

Ok so, Ronaldo’s, GIRLFRIEND, (imagine me saying that in slow motion) showed up at the worst possible moment.

Everything was back to normal. Except poor Ronaldo, I should sent him a letter to cheer him up. Seen ya next week.

Almost immediately the KBCS and KBCW blogs play out a little interaction online:

Ronaldo goes through some stuff.

No post today. If anyone needs me I’ll be at Brooding Hill… where I’ll be CRYING. I usually cry at Crying Canyon, but it’s closed right because of some flash flood warnings.

Then Ronaldo posts KBCS’s letter.

Note how KBCW caps this message so the name is clearly visible? It’s referring to Ronaldo’s bio:

It’s not very cheering...but things work out shortly thereafter. Jane likes one of Ronaldo’s posts and all seems well.

I think it’s going to work out you guys. Thanks for all your support.

After this, Ronaldo doesn’t post again until Rocknaldo several months later, and one last time after publishing his book.

That’s April 18 2017. The KBCW tumblr is never updated again. KBCS’s final post is not long after, Jul 4, 2017.

Finally, Jane makes a cameo alongside Ronaldo in the very last scene of Steven Universe Future, “The Future.”

Koala Princess, Astral Projection and Psychic Ghosts

So some interesting patterns come up when you connect the two blogs, the clues associated with Jane, and some understanding of Steven’s powers. Let’s revisit Keep Beach City Weird, a Ronaldo’s primary blog, and Keep Beach City Safe, which contains mysteries too big for this simple Dogcopter/Jane-hime lore post.

Keep Beach City Weird - Ran from September 2013 to April 2017, with a lot of posts made in October 2015 and July 2016.

Keep Beach City Safe - Ran from June 2015 to July 2017, with most posts in 2016 of course.

Let’s look at a timeline of posts. I’m going to call out things that we’ll connect to the Jane lore at the end.

Keep Beach City Weird: Ronaldo’s blog

Nov 1, 2013, days before Steven Universe first airs: KBCW’s first post is all about Astral Projection.

Astral Projection! The ability to travel outside your physical body and into other planes of existence!

I began to feel lightheaded and before I knew it, I was floating above my body. Amazing! I walked out onto the boardwalk in my new ASTRAL FORM, and you know what the weird thing was? Nobody even said hello to me. I was COMPLETELY INVISIBLE! I mean, usually nobody really notices me, but this was a different kind of not being noticed. This was not being noticed on another plane of existence - so I didn’t feel bad about it.Anyway, after being ignored in the arcade and Fish Stew Pizza, I got bored and I went back to the fry shop to re-merge with my body.

Astral projection is a power Steven demonstrates a number of times, and you’ll see among these posts that certain powers of Steven involving this stuff are called out by the blog.

Connie: What? Where are you? How are you...? Steven: I’m not sure, but I think it’s a classic psychic ghost type situation. Connie: Ah, of course! So, what’s the plan?

from Reunited

Steven: Oh man. I fell asleep and had this weird dream. I opened the door and Lapis was there, and- Pearl: Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Lapis is fused with Jasper at the bottom of the ocean. Steven: You’ve never had a dream before, huh? Pearl: Uh, I don’t think so.

from Chille Tid

August 28, 2014, Joking Victim, Ronaldo posts about ghosts. And an arsonist from about 150 years ago.

September 04 2014, Steven and the Stevens, Ronaldo posts about "cross dimensional travelers”

And all the cross dimensional time travelers I know don’t want to go on the record about their experiences.

Not mentioning posts that don’t mention ghosts/astral projection/dimensions in some capacity, but in realtime Ronaldo liveblogs in response to episode events.

Ronaldo also answers some fan asks. On October 31 2014 after Keep Beach City Weird he answers this question about floaters with “BACTERIAL GHOSTS” in all caps, this one about his first encounter with the supernatural (the events shown in Horror Club, which aired February 12, 2015)

Nov 2014, Ronaldo posts twice about Watermelon Stevens and a review of the anime Soul Blaster, “Like every anime, Soul Blaster is about a high school student. Our hero is a cool dude, with even cooler hair named Kyosuke. He battles rogue spirits with the help of his Soul Blaster - which happens to be powered by the spirit of his deceased younger brother, Kettaro. “

On December 4, 2014 Ronaldo posts about Koala Princess, who will become important in this post when we get back to Dogcopter and Jane. Koala Princess is repeatedly used as a stand-in for talking about Steven’s journey. In this post Ronaldo says:

AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Ok, so I just finished the final episode of Koala Princess and I don’t want to get too emotional on you guys but I CAN’T STOP CRYING! Koala Princess goes on a walkabout and enters dreamtime and finally MEETS HER KOALA MOTHER FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! SLKDJFSDJ:FS

I’ve got so many feels! These feels are the real deals! On wheels! WHAT AM I SAYING?! I’M GOING CRAZY!!!

Lion 3: Straight to Video aired on the same day as Ronaldo’s post. In this episode Steven meets Dogcopter in a dream, and then sees his mother Rose Quartz for the first time - she speaks to him via a VHS tape.

After Alone Together, Ronaldo posts about Stevonnie, who is a fusion. He also gets stuck under a fridge for a bit after Future Vision in January 2015.

And I want TO GET OUT FROM UNDER THIS FRIDGE!

He posts like five times about it in the same day because he’s freaking out.

And also I want my body to be shot into space with a print version of my blog so an alien civilization can find me reconstruct my body and worship me.

On February 19 2015 after Winter Forecast, he posts about using time travel to fix bad decisions:

Sometimes I think about all the bad decisions I’ve made and how they’ve affected my life, and I wish I could go back in time and change them. But unless I can find a way to break into the Pentagon and steal a time bike, I’m just stuck with having regrets.

After Political Power Ronaldo claims glowsticks are filled with ghost blood.

Anyway, then stuff happens.

January 4 2016, after The Answer, Ronaldo posts about seeing Dogcopter 4 and shares the poster for it.

One interesting thing about the poster is that if you invert it and mess with the contrast a bit, a strange diagram appears on the left. A true mystery.

And after months of avoiding and spoilers or teasers or trailers, I was in line for Dogcopter 4, and then some dummy walking out of the theater TOTALLY SPOILED EVERYTHING and was like, “I can’t believe that Dogcopter’s parents are actually cats.”

Coming back to Dogcopter in a minute, but these are relevant details.

Dogcopter dies defending the planet but then he comes back to life because he’s actually part cat and cats have 9 lives.

On Jan 5, Steven’s Birthday, Ronaldo posts about celebrating his birthday on a different date every year.

Every year, I celebrate my birthday on a completely different day. Why? To keep my birthdate a SECRET so that no clandestine government agencies can steal my identity!

July 2016, the saga with Jane and KBCS above happens. When he’s sad about Jane breaking up with him, the same day Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service comes out (in which Steven astral projects into Kiki’s dream), he listens to sad music.

Ugh, I wish I had some sad music to listen to at work. All I have is a playlist of video game soundtracks and some EVP recordings of ghost hauntings. I guess ghosts are sad. I’ll just listen to those.

But if you’re feeling happy, I do suggest listening to the “Go-Go Gorilla Go-Go Kart Racing” soundtrack. Some solid 16-bit J-reggae.

This post may partly be a reference to the Sadie Killer song G-G-G-Ghost, which is performed in The Big Show and wouldn’t air for a bit, but is also astral projection related.

Why can't you see me? Why can't you see me? I think I might be A g-g-g-ghost. Can't you see that I exist? And I don't need an exorcist To let me out Look at me and I'll appear Why can't you see that I'm right here? That I'm right here? Why can't you see me? Why can't you see me? I think I might be A g-g-g-ghost. I'm calling you from the other side

Once Ronaldo has gone through grief and anger, he resorts to begging her to come back. This post is from July 28, the day Alone at Sea aired in which Jasper begs Lapis to return.

Much like Koala Princess’ vision in the Eucalyptus Jungle in Season 5, Episode 13 what you saw on the Boardwalk the other day was not what it seemed. I was only pretending to date Kiki to defend my family’s honor, just as the Kanga-ronin did in Season 1, Episode 3!

Here is another Koala Princess reference. There are a couple SU references in the episode numbers in this post.

The events of Season 5, Episode 13 of KP was not what it seemed: for Steven Universe, this is Your Mother and Mine, in which Garnet tells a story told to her by Rose Quartz. It later turns out to be a false origin story to cover the truth that Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond.

Kanga-ronin pretended at something to defend family honor in Season 1, Episode 3, which in SU is Cheeseburger Backpack - where Steven buys a novelty backpack so he can carry things on missions to be useful for the gems, fails his first mission and pretends he’s fine. The events of this ep are later referenced in The Test.

Finally, Koala Princess’ vision in the Eucalyptus Jungle is a reference to Stevonnie’s vision in Jungle Moon, which is Stevonnie’s first interaction with Pink Diamond via a memory dream. In this dream, all was not as it seemed either.

Then the KBCW blog doesn’t post until Feb 2017, after Rocknaldo. A couple ghost and dream-y quotes from here:

In my searches for THE TRUTH, I’ve done a lot of listening. I’ve listened to haunted houses to hear ghosts from other dimensions. I’ve listened to radio signals from the cosmos for signs of alien life.

I’ve also learned that HUMANS NEED TO SLEEP. I didn’t sleep for 48 hours and I PASSED OUT FOR DAYS.

Ronaldo’s final post is an ad for his book, which comes out during a hiatus, and he references Koala Princess again:

I did have a little help from some fellow truth-stigators I met on a Koala Princess forum, Ben Levin and Matt Burnett, but most of the work was definitely done by ME!

Now let’s look at Keep Beach City Safe.

Keep Beach City Safe: [???]’s blog

For KBCS, I’m only going to skim to address ghost/astral projection related content that comes back to the business with Jane, Dogcopter, Koala Princess and Rose. The rest of this blog is a little too big for right now.

It’s interesting that KBCS seems to have mostly flown under the radar, but between the Jane arc and a couple other things I believe it to be legit. Suffice to say I’m treating it as real and you will see why in a minute.

For KBCS I’ll mostly mention which episode a post is associated with, but not the date like with Ronaldo’s.

KBCS’s reaction blog to Nightmare Hospital includes a couple relevant lines:

Where was the Gem M.? I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around! It was mom!

Don’t tell me It’s on the other side of the hall corner. That would mean it saw mo- Connie’s mom!

KBCS posts a blog between Too Far and The Answer, in which they review a number of events. (They post another blog about fusions in which they describe Garnet and Stevonnie’s components as well)

During the movie the TV just shut down and they were being chased around by a “ghost”. It was actually a gem stuck inside the house, making the house seem like it was possessed.

They also get pretty excited about Steven’s birthday.

Only a few more minutes until Steven’s Birthday!

Eeeeh! Only a few mins left until midnight. We finally get to learn about Garnet’s past! Are guys happy, I know I am. I can’t even express how happy I feel, but I’ll try. And I will not act crazy while doing it, Imma keep it cool. So it’s like Peace and Love had a son, and his name was Steven! Then Steven fused with Connie, who was the daughter of Happiness. And they formed Stevonnie, who was made of everything right within the universe!

On Steven’s Birthday they also post about the Dogcopter 4 movie.

I’m gonna be a Smart Spoiler and drop hints in my post for you guess. Only those who have watched it will notice the clues. Yep, watching it 9 times.

This clearly references Ronaldo’s post about Dogcopter having nine lives, but KBCS is a little more considerate about spoilers.

In KBCS’s “It Could’ve Been Great” post, they’re still talking about Steven’s birthday. There’s a promo image attached as well.

To start things off I just wanted to say: I did see Steven turn into a baby? And I would also like to say: DID YOU SEE STEVEN TURN INTO A BABY!?!?

So, by now your probably wondering what the second image is aren’t you? We clearly it’s a pic of Rose holding a cupcake candle.

We, here at Keep Beach City Safe, thought that Steven would’ve liked to have his mom at his birthday party. Happy Birthday from all of us at KBCS. Hope you like it.

Future Vision reference. (Some of this is less relevant to the Jane thing but I’m pulling quotes that are related to fusion and stuff in the hopes it gets clearer)

This reminds me of the time that Garnet gave Stevens her future vision. I don’t know what happens exactly, but I think you see what’s going to happen in the future hence the name future vision. Being able to see into the future would be awesome, yet terrified at same time.

There’s a great post about Pie Day - in fact, KBCS posts about Pie Day a few times. They call out Pearl, too, which reminds me of a certain prolific fandom video editor’s handle.

You know who else knows about Pi. Pearl, but also Peridot.

Pearl Doesn’t Like Pie. Happy Pie Day!

This is not a good photo of Pear let’s see if we can find a better one. Now that’s better.

Sorry for the tangent. Let’s talk koalas now.

KBCS posts about The New Lars. They have thoughts about Steven’s ability to hop into other bodies, namely the question of whether Rose could do this as well.

Steven is worried that Lars isn’t being truthful about his feelings. So through his dreams, Steven jumps into Lar’s body, and trys to make his life better. But he only makes things worse.

Steven somehow possessed Lars’s body through his dreams. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again, we have a word for it now: Dream Possession. But he can also enter dreams.

He did it with Lapis, the Watermelon Stevens, and now Lars. That’s one gem, one sentient plant, and one human. Well with lapis he was merely communicating with her. This, new power, is seems to activates itself whenever Steven wants to help someone, but can’t because something getting in the way. Could this be a power passed down from Rose, or is this a power he himself posses?

#koala vs sloth

in The New Lars, koalas come up twice. Koalas in SU are associated with Steven’s astral projection powers. Remember how Koala Princess met her mother in the dreamscape?

Steven: For your consideration...The koala, a marsupial from the forests of Australia, and the sloth, hailing from the forests of South America. Who should be crowned the king of the "Hanging Around Doing Nothing" mammals!?

Steven in Lars’ body: Whatcha doing? Hanging out? Buck: Yeah. Steven: That's cool. Would you say you hang out more like koalas or sloths? Uh, I'm asking for Steven.

Steven: Um... I'm really, really sorry about yesterday. I got you a card, it's got a koala and a sloth.

From The New Lars. Steven references koalas three times.

KBCS gets to Beach City Drift. They take notice of Jane and of Kevin’s car.

Hey did you guys notice that girl that keeps appear. We saw her when Steven took Connie to the movies and now she’s here. I wonder if she’s involved in something. Hmmmm.

So Stevonnie raced Kevin down the hill in his Himitsu X12, that’s secret in Japanese.

So while we’re back on the subject of Jane, here’s something interesting about Dogcopter and the Himitsu X12. They both show up in advertisements together in the background of Empire City.

Mr Greg

Same Old World

This is what KBCS is talking about - Dogcopter has a secret.

For Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, KBCS has more to say about dreams.

She has a nightmare and Steven, coincidentally, falls asleep after eating and enters Kiki’s dream. Now Steven The Dream Warrior, must help Kiki battle her dream, and finally end this nightmare once and for all.

Steven, who for some reason keeps going into people’s dreams, goes into Kiki’s dream.

Steven fought for about week, and he’s was tired by day four. And we know from experience that a sleepless Steven, is a cranky Steven.

This is the same power Steven used in Chille Tid. and look who showed up again?

After Monster Reunion airs, KBCS posts a liveblog and includes a far-fetched accusation that Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond.

Think about it! A Diamond should have access to all gem controlled tech, right. And if Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond, which she is, then she should be able to too, right. And Steven has Rose’s gem. So now Steven can access gem tech. And one more thing to prove this theory once and for all.

But there’s one thing that doesn’t add up. Rose Quartz… is a Quartz. How could she be a Diamond?????? Maybe I’m wrong, she could have been just working along side Pink Diamond. Maybe this just a crackpot theory about the impossible. I don’t think gems can turn into different gems? who knows, I guess we’ll find out sooner or later.

When KBCS gets to Crack the Whip, they take note of Lion and tag him thrice:

Crack the Whip! Is it just me or is that foreshadowing?

Oh, did I mention that Lion was there. He was just there, when Connie opened the door, he walked up and just started hanging. It was so cool! It was like, Just Lion Things 2! So the snack break, that takes the whole day, ends at the beach, where the idea originally began.

Amethyst faces off Jasper, gem to gem, while Steven and Connie, and don’t forget Lion, fight the corrupted gem.

Lion was keeping the Gem Monster busy while all of this was happening. I was so stunned when Steven and Connie fused, without doing a fusion dance! How well they worked, together, they rode on Lion, and defeated Jasper, and poofed the Gem Monster all at the same time!!!

#just lion things 2 #lion fights #lion still fights

There’s also a weird Google Slides slideshow connected to the KBCS account, which includes this image featuring Lion, Tiny Floating Whale, (and Connie and Greg) and the word TRUE with Steven’s affirmative!

More Koala Princess

Two more Koala Princess references - although only one is immediately relevant -

In Gemcation, Ronaldo keeps texting Steven about Koala Princess. Steven’s lockscreen is a selfie with him and Lion.

Also, as a sidenote, Koala Princess is implicated in sneople trolls on anime message boards.

Dogcopter

These are just the Dogcopter appearances (Thanks to SU wiki as well as my brain) Dogcopter fights robots in at least one timeline, and the book is allegedly really long. Bold Dogcopters are the pink dogcopter, everything else is an ad or grey.

Lars and the Cool Kids - Poster

Lion 2 - The movie they all go see.

Lion 3 - Gives Steven advice.

Chille Tid - Shows Steven how to find Lapis. Meows. (Dogcopter’s parents are cats.)

Same Old World & Mr. Greg - Advertisement

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service - flies Steven away.

In Dreams and Growing Pains (Note this is grey Dogcopter) - Flies away in Stefan’s nightmare, proposes to Drew the driver (or at least offers them something) in the Dogcopter 6 Till Death Do Us Bark I Now Pronounce You Man and Woof trailer.

Snow Day - Pupcopter, a spinoff for babies.

And for Steven’s Birthday - Connie points out a Dogcopter constellation.

Astral Projection

Another quick summary. I’ve written a lot on this psychic ghost stuff so check my blog if you want the tags, idrc. Summary of astral projection powers Steven has shown:

Leaving his body (Reunited, Escapism)

Possessing other bodies (New Lars, Escapism, SWI)

Traveling to others’ dreams (Kiki’s Pizza, Chille Tid)

Interacting with fusion components within the fusion’s mind (Chille Tid, Mindful)

Regarding KBCS’s question of whether Rose could have done this, it doesn’t seem impossible - and as of Fragments and Homeworld Bound, we know that Gems don’t die when they are killed. (Lol.) That is, the personality/soul can appear in the same gem if it’s shattered and repaired. And Steven’s mom’s gem is perfectly intact, inside him.

Literally what is the point of all this

So after KBCS and KBCW spent so long talking about astral projection, ghosts, dreams, fusions, etc etc. they never actually got to the point - just pointed us in the direction of a bunch of clues that

Rose Quartz isn’t gone.

Obviously. She’s in his gem in him, like Lapis and the mirror, or the lighthouse gem. She uses astral projection to help Steven in his dreams as well as see him in Rose’s room, like other fusions speak in the mindscape. (There’s a lot more to this but this is enough to ask anyone to wrap their head around atm)

She also interacts with him through other bodies, the same way Steven takes over Lars’ body, or the Watermelon Stevens.

Remember this?

We, here at Keep Beach City Safe, thought that Steven would’ve liked to have his mom at his birthday party.

Who came to Steven’s birthday in which Connie points out that Dogcopter constellation?

Who gave Steven advice when he wished he could talk to his mom?

Who showed Steven where to find the tape?

Who else could have asked Steven, “What do you want” in Susan Egan’s voice?

(Why did they choose to hire Susan Egan to voice a cameo in Under the Knife in the first few seconds of Fusion Cuisine, where she says “It’s my son!” while Lion is onscreen)

Or reassured him that Rose’s tape was telling him the truth?

Who first brought him to Pink Diamond’s moon base?

Who knew where Rose’s armory was and how to train with it? (Note the giant penny)

Who showed Steven the location of Pink’s fallen palanquin?

Who found Rose’s lost scabbard?

and knew where Pearl would run to when she’s upset?

Who (reluctantly) brought Steven to the landfill and Pink Diamond’s ship?

Who showed him how to find Malachite?

Twice?

Who showed him how Pink Diamond tried to stop the Earth’s colonization, and who to ask for the truth?

Who tried to entertain him on Mask Island when he was trapped on Homeworld?

And then rescued him from the open sea?

Who showed Stevonnie the password to Yellow Diamond’s moon base?

Much like Koala Princess’ vision in the Eucalyptus Jungle in Season 5, Episode 13 what you saw on the Boardwalk the other day was not what it seemed.

So yeah Rose is Lion 2020. Thanks for reading this extremely long nonsense.

Also thanks to @babybeetlebongos for both mindscape lore and fixing Ronaldo’s cheek in the banner image, lol. I made a Twitter thread about this as well (and the more in depth Lion and astral projection theory threads are quoted at the top, if you need them. the #mindscape deeplore 2020 tag/tags on this post have stuff too.)

#steven universe theory #steven universe future #su theory #steven universe #rose is lion 2020 #mindscape deeplore 2020 #jane lore 2020 #kbcs lore #dogcopter #lion the mood #rosedemption 2020 #would you believe this isn't even the deep part of the rabbit hole??? im tired tho #i hope i left enough info for others to get into KBCS if anyone cares #i love this fool rose quartz

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Pitchfork Music Festival 2021 Preview: 15 Can’t-miss Acts

black midi; Photo by YIS KID

BY JORDAN MAINZER

While yours truly won’t be attending Pitchfork Music Festival this year, SILY contributor Daniel Palella will be covering the actual fest. If I was attending, though, these would be the acts I’d make sure to see. 5 from each day, no overlaps, so you could conceivably see everyone listed.

FRIDAY

Armand Hammer, 1:00 PM, Green Stage

Earlier this year, New York hip hop duo Armand Hammer released their 5th album Haram (BackwoodzStudioz) in collaboration with on-fire producer The Alchemist. It was the duo’s (ELUCID and Billy Woods) first time working with a singular producer on a record (though Earl Sweatshirt produced a track), and likewise, The Alchemist actually tailored his beats towards the two MCs. Haram is the exact kind of hip hop that succeeds early in the day at a festival, verbose and complex rhymes over languid, cloudy, sample-heavy beats, when attendees are more likely to want to sit and listen than dance. And you’re going to want to listen to Armand Hammer, whose MCs’ experiential words frame the eerie hues of the production. “Dreams is dangerous, linger like angel dust,” Woods raps on opener “Sir Benni Miles”, never looking back as he and Elucid’s stream-of-consciousness rhymes cover everything from colonization to Black bodily autonomy and the dangers of satisfaction disguised as optimism. (“We let BLM be the new FUBU,” raps Quelle Chris on “Chicharrones”; “Iridescent blackness / Is this performative or praxis?” ponders Woods on “Black Sunlight”.) There are moments of levity on Haram, like KAYANA’s vocal turn on “Black Sunlight” and the “what the hell sound is this?” type sampling that dominates warped, looped tracks like “Peppertree” and “Indian Summer”, built around sounds of horns and twirling flute lines. For the most part, Haram is an album of empathetic realism. “Hurt people hurt people,” raps Elucid on “Falling Out of the Sky”, a stunning encapsulation of Armand Hammer’s world where humanism exists side-by-side with traumatic death and feelings of revenge.

You can also catch Armand Hammer doing a live set on the Vans Channel 66 livestream at 12 PM on Saturday.

Dogleg, 1:45 PM, Red Stage

It feels like we’ve been waiting years to see this set, and actually, we have! The four-piece punk band from Michigan was supposed to play last year’s cancelled fest in support of their searing debut Melee (Triple Crown), and a year-plus of pent up energy is sure to make songs like “Bueno”, “Fox”, and “Kawasaki Backflip” all the more raging. Remember: This is a band whose reputation was solidified live before they were signed to Triple Crown and released their breakout album. Seeing them is the closest thing to a no-brainer that this year’s lineup offers.

Revisit our interview with Dogleg from last year, and catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Subterranean with fellow Pitchfork performer Oso Oso and Retirement Party.

Hop Along, 3:20 PM, Red Stage

Though lead singer Frances Quinlan released a very good solo album last year, it’s been three years since their incredible band Hop Along dropped an album and two years since they’ve toured. 2018′s Bark Your Head Off, Dog (Saddle Creek), one of our favorite albums of that year, should comprise the majority of their setlist, but maybe they have some new songs?

Catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Metro with Varsity and Slow Mass.

black midi, 4:15 PM, Green Stage

The band who had the finest debut of 2019 and gave the best set of that year at Pitchfork is back. Cavalcade (Rough Trade) is black midi’s sophomore album, methodical in its approach in contrast with the improvisational absurdism of Schlagenheim. Stop-start, violin-laden lead single and album opener “John L”, a song about a cult leader whose members turn on him, is as good a summary as ever of the dark, funky eclecticism of black midi, who on Cavalcade saw band members leave and new ones enter, their ever shapeshifting sound the only consistent thing about them. A song like the jazzy “Diamond Stuff” is likely impossible to replicate live--its credits list everything from 19th century instruments to household kitchen items used for percussion--but is key to experiencing their instrumental adventurousness. On two-and-a-half-minute barn burner “Hogwash and Balderdash,” they for the first time fully lean into their fried Primus influences, telling a tale of two escaped prisoners, “two chickens from the pen.” At the same time, this band is still black midi, with moments that call back to Schlagenheim, the churning, metallic power chords via jittery, slapping funk of “Chondromalacia Patella” representative of their quintessential tempo changes. And as on songs like Schlagenheim’s “Western”, black midi find room for beauty here, too, empathizing with the pains of Marlene Dietrich on a bossa nova tune named after her, Geordie Greep’s unmistakable warble cooing sorrowful lines like, “Fills the hall tight / And pulls at our hearts / And puts in her place / The girl she once was.” Expect to hear plenty from Cavalcade but also some new songs; after all, this is a band that road tests and experiments with material before recording it.

Catch them doing a 2 PM DJ set on Vans Channel 66 on Saturday and at an aftershow on Monday at Sleeping Village.

Yaeji, 7:45 PM, Blue Stage

What We Drew (XL), the debut mixtape from Brooklyn-based DJ Yaeji, was one of many dance records that came out after lockdown that we all wished we could experience in a crowd as opposed to at home alone. Now's our chance to bask in all of its glory under a setting sun. Maybe she’ll spin her masterful remix of Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” from the Club Future Nostalgia remix album, or her 2021 single “PAC-TIVE”, her and DiAN’s collaboration with Pac-Man company Namco.

Angel Olsen; Photo by Dana Trippe

SATURDAY

Bartees Strange, 1:45 PM, Red Stage

One of our favorite albums of last year was Live Forever (Memory Music), the debut from singer-songwriter and The National fanatic Bartees Strange, one that contributor Lauren Lederman called “a declaration of an artist’s arrival.” He’s certainly past arrived when you take into account his busy 2021, releasing a new song with Lorenzo Wolff and offering his remix services to a number of artists, including illuminati hotties and fellow Pitchfork performer (and tour mate) Phoebe Bridgers. Expect to hear lots of Live Forever during his Pitchfork set, one of many sets at the fest featuring exciting young guitar-based (!) bands.

Catch him at a free (!!) aftershow on Monday at Empty Bottle with Ganser.

Faye Webster, 4:00 PM, Blue Stage

Since we previewed Faye Webster’s Noonchorus livestream in October, she’s released the long-awaited follow-up to Atlanta Millionaires Club, the cheekily titled I Know I’m Funny haha (Secretly Canadian). At that time, she had dropped “Better Distractions”, “In A Good Way”, and “Both All The Time”, and the rest of the album more than follows the promise of these three dreamy country, folk rock, and R&B-inspired tunes. Webster continues to be a master of tone and mood, lovelorn on “Sometimes”, sarcastic on the title track, and head-in-the-clouds on “A Dream with a Baseball Player”. All the while, she and her backing band provide stellar, languorous instrumentation, keys and slide guitar on the bossa nova “Kind Of”, her overdriven guitar sludge on “Cheers”, cinematic strings on the melancholic “A Stranger”, stark acoustic guitar on heartbreaking closer “Half of Me”. And the ultimate irony of Webster’s whip-smart lyricism is that a line like, “And today I get upset over this song that I heard / And I guess was just upset because why didn't I think of it first,” is that I can guarantee a million songwriters feel the same way about her music, timely in context and timeless in sound and feeling.

Catch her at an aftershow on Saturday at Sleeping Village with Danger Incorporated.

Georgia Anne Muldrow, 5:15 PM, Blue Stage

The queen of beats takes the stage during the hottest part of the day, perfect for some sweaty dancing. VWETO III (FORESEEN + Epistrophik Peach Sound), the third album in Muldrow’s beats record series, was put together with “calls to action” in mind, each single leading up to the album’s release to be paired with crowdsourced submissions via Instagram from singers, visual artists, dancers, and turntablists. Moreover, many of the album’s tracks are inspired by very specific eras of Black music, from Boom Bap and G-funk to free jazz, and through it all, Muldrow provides a platform for musical education just as much as funky earworms.

Revisit our interview with Muldrow from earlier this year.

Angel Olsen, 7:25 PM, Red Stage

It’s been a busy past two years for Angel Olsen. She revealed Whole New Mess (Jagjaguwar) in August 2020, stripped down arrangements of many of the songs on 2019′s amazing All Mirrors. In May, she came out with a box set called Song of the Lark and Other Far Memories (Jagjaguwar), which contained both All Mirrors and Whole New Mess and a bonus LP of remixes, covers, alternate takes, and bonus tracks. She shortly and out of nowhere dropped a song of the year candidate in old school country rock high and lonesome Sharon Van Etten duet “Like I Used To”. And just last month, she released Aisles, an 80′s covers EP out on her Jagjaguwar imprint somethingscosmic. She turns Laura Branigan’s disco jam “Gloria” and Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance” into woozy, echoing, slowed-down beds of synth haze and echoing drum machine. On Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s “If You Leave”, her voice occupies different registers between the soft high notes of the bridge and autotuned solemnity of the chorus. Sure, other covers are more recognizable in their tempo and arrangement, like Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell ballad “Eyes Without a Face” and Alphaville’s “Forever Young”, but Aisles is exemplary of Olsen’s ability to not just reinvent herself but classics.

At Pitchfork, I’d bet on a set heavy on All Mirrors and Whole New Mess, but as with the unexpectedness of Aisles, you never know!

St. Vincent, 8:30 PM, Green Stage

Annie Clark again consciously shifts personas and eras with her new St. Vincent album Daddy’s Home (Loma Vista), inspired by 70′s funk rock and guitar-driven psychedelia. While much of the album’s rollout centered around its backstory--Clark’s father’s time in prison for white collar crimes--the album is a thoughtful treatise on honesty and identity, the first St. Vincent album to really stare Clark’s life in the face.

Many of its songs saw their live debut during a Moment House stream, which we previewed last month.

The Weather Station; Photo by Jeff Bierk

SUNDAY

Tomberlin, 1:00 PM, Green Stage

While the LA-via-Louisville singer-songwriter hasn’t yet offered a proper follow-up LP to her 2018 debut At Weddings, she did last year release an EP called Projections (Saddle Creek), which expands upon At Weddings’ shadowy palate. Songs like “Hours” and “Wasted” are comparatively clattering and up-tempo. Yet, all four of the original tracks are increasingly self-reflexive, Tomberlin exploring and redefining herself on her terms, whether singing about love or queerness, all while maintaining her sense of humor. (“When you go you take the sun and all my flowers die / So I wait by the window and write some shit / And hope that you'll reply,” she shrugs over acoustic strums and wincing electric guitars.) The album ends with a stark grey cover of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s “Natural Light”; Tomberlin finds a kindred spirit in the maudlin musings of Owen Ashworth.

Get there early on Sunday to hear select tracks from At Weddings and Projections but also likely some new songs.

oso oso, 2:45 PM, Blue Stage

Basking in the Glow (Triple Crown), the third album from Long Beach singer-songwriter Jade Lilitri as Oso Oso, was one of our favorite records of 2019, and we’d relish the opportunity to see them performed to a crowd in the sun. Expect to hear lots of it; hopefully we’re treated to new oso oso material some time soon.

Catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Subterranean with fellow Pitchfork performer Dogleg and Retirement Party.

The Weather Station, 4:00 PM, Blue Stage

The Toronto band led by singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman released one of the best albums of the year back in February with Ignorance (Fat Possum), songs inspired by climate change-addled anxiety. While the record is filled with affecting, reflective lines about loss and trying to find happiness in the face of dread, in a live setting, I imagine the instrumentation will be a highlight, from the fluttering tension of “Robber” to the glistening disco of “Parking Lot”.

Revisit our preview of their Pitchfork Instagram performance from earlier this year. Catch them at an aftershow on Friday at Schubas with Ulna.

Danny Brown, 6:15 PM, Green Stage

The Detroit rapper’s last full-length record was the Q-Tip executive produced uknowhatimsayin¿ (Warp), though he’s popped up a few times since then, on remixes, a Brockhampton album, and TV62, a Bruiser Brigade Records compilation from earlier this year. (He’s also claimed in Twitch streams that his new album Quaranta is almost done.) His sets--especially Pitchfork sets--are always high-energy, as he’s got so many classic albums and tracks under his belt at this point, so expect to hear a mix of those.

Erykah Badu, 8:30 PM, Green Stage

What more can I say? This is the headliner Pitchfork has been trying to get for years, responsible for some of the greatest neo soul albums of all time. There’s not much else to say about Erykah Badu other than she’s the number one must-see at the festival.

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missholland · 4 years

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Lan Wangji (mostly, his love)

LAN ZHAN! I read somewhere that this was said 102 times by Wei Wuxian in The Untamed. It feels like an understatement, cause I’ve watched the show so many times now I could hear ‘Lan Zhan’ being called in my sleep...

My first time watching the drama, I was full on Team Xianxian. I mean, who would not be? He’s the central character of the story, he’s the first thing you see within the first few seconds of episode 1, and who could resist his sunflower aura? I was not into Lan Wangji at all. I remember this clearly because I just found an old Instagram story in my Archive on the day I first watched this show: a screenshot of Wangji’s face in episode 3 and my caption was: ‘OMG how could Wei sunshine fall in love with this dry and boring man?’. And just like how Wangji eventually swallowed all of the statements he had made about the young Wei Wuxian (’I don’t touch other people’, ‘We’re not close’, etc.), I am not the same person on that fateful day tuning in the first episode on Netflix. I am now Team Hanguang-Jun through and through!

What I’ve been enjoying so much these days is watching random earlier/later episodes just to compare how Wangji’s attitude changed toward Wei Wuxian over 16 years-ish. It’s probably so obvious for everyone that he definitely falls in love first, even when the drama purposely made their early relationship a lot more intense comparing to the novel i.e. showing Wei Wuxian somewhat feeling the same way about Wangji in his first life, with the constant flirting and mutual pining (don’t even get me started...). Now that I kinda understand what the character is like, it makes a lot of sense the way he processed his feelings for Wuxian in his youth. I wonder how different he would have reacted without the push from the best brother/wingman in the cultivation world - Lan Xichen. Sure, Jiang Cheng had a lot to say about this too, but mostly out of a slight envy (I reckon) over Wuxian’s new subject of desire. But Lan Xichen sees through his brother, and has been pretty much WangXian fanclub admin since day 1. I don’t have a brother, but man, I wish Lan Xichen could be mine.

In my humble opinion, the fact that we were given 3 versions of Wei Wuxian throughout the series kinda gifts us 3 versions of Lan Wangji too in a way - the straight face, the confused heart, and the national boyfriend/husband. Considering the number of times I rewatched the latter half of the series i.e. episode 33 onward, I just want to write down all of my thoughts about the national boyfriend/husband Lan Wangji, and not just because that version seems to have the most lines comparing to the other two.

There are several details that were not explained much in the series (although shown on screen) so I have to read from the novel later on. But oh my god, the stuff I found... I never realized that the scene before Lan Wangji went to Mo’s manor where his guqin was playing behind him standing on the balcony referred to how he used Inquiry to find Wuxian. What Jiang Cheng said to him about having gone to a lot of places for 16 years and searching for someone completely went over my head in the first watch, and imagine how I scratched my brain revisiting that part. That plus ‘oh I’ve never seen you at a cultivation conference before’ in episode 41 - my goodness, because he was spending ALL of his time LOOKING FOR Wei Wuxian.

Another thing I hope would have been addressed in the series was the hot iron mark on his chest. I thought the story of him drinking wine and giving himself a mark identical to Wuxian’s was the prime work of a broken heart. He must have thought about their conversation in Xuanwu cave, about the mark staying on his skin forever and how Wuxian was convinced Mianmian would never forget him. Was that how Wangji was making a point of never forgetting Wei Wuxian? If that scene made into the drama, I would have thought Wangji’s character song Buwang to be play in the background. The lyrics fit the situation so much.

Personally, everything from episode 33 onward was perfection for me, finally getting to see Wangji embrace his feelings and ACT ON THEM toward the romance-blind idiot Wei Wuxian (yes, he totally is). All the caring touches and details played out so astonishingly. One of my favourite (which doesn’t seem to be a popular one since I have not seen many gifs of it on Tumblr) was when, after interrogating Huaisang, Wangji comfortably moved over the other side of the table and picked up Wuxian’s left leg to CLEAN THE EVIL SPELL - think of the level of intimacy this act is! Although that came after the romantic piggyback under the moonlight, I thought that speaks volume for someone who doesn’t even physically interact with his family members, and serves as a great follow-up right after he, again comfortably, pulled up Wuxian’s trousers to check his leg.

What I thought was always presented so beautifully is every time Wangji serves Wuxian liquor. The way he carefully picks up his sleeve, prepares the cup (I know they’re probably not called ‘cups’ but I can’t find another word), pours the liquor and slides it over to his partner is so well demonstrated and shows how much he wants to properly take care of Wuxian. Would you put so much effort in such a tiny mundane act if you’re not doing it for the most important person in your life?

In a way, I feel like everything he does is making up for what he could not do the past 16 years, including remembering so many tiny details and keeping all sort of Wuxian-related things. My favourite Wangji keepsake moment, despite being a very short one, is the butterfly talisman at Yunping City which he gave to Wuxian to rescue Wen Ning. I don’t know why that moment makes me really really happy, probably because that was one of the earliest items Wangji could have kept hold of from Wuxian’s. That tells us how way long before he was developing feelings toward this little rebel. Not to mention, we did see Wangji even use this very talisman in episode 11 when he encountered Wen Chao on his way back to Cloud Recesses.

Yes, the ‘I knew he was Wei Ying all along’ while having all the swords pointed at you is highly pivotal as it’s basically the censored version of ‘I love you’. BUT, the moment all leading cultivators of all major and minor clans ran to Burial Mounds just to witness Lan Wangji standing proudly without flinch on the other side with Wei Wuxian makes me appreciate that whole arc a lot more than the big revelation in the last 3 episodes. Wangji ignoring his own Grand Master, Wuxian once again standing against every single person in the cultivation world but with so much confidence this time around - to me, is beyond satisfying. I love this arc so much so I wrote a separate piece about episode 44-45 - if you’re interested in more of my random thoughts, feel free to have a read here.

Thinking about all this, I’m absolutely in awe of how protective national boyfriend Wangji is to Wei Wuxian even before knowing he lost his golden core. They either have insanely accurate GPS, or just really good telepathy. Wangji’s constant attention to his partner (without having to verbally find out where he is) blows my mind every time. Remember how proud Wei Wuxian was having Lan Wangji come out just in time to fight Xue Yang at Coffin Town? That’s how much Wangji’s love and trust empowers Wuxian and makes him so so so secured, even when everyone was walking around in the fog hiding from the most notorious killer and his puppets.

The one detail that pushed me over the edge completely (thanks a lot Lan Xichen) was the story of Wangji’s mom. Oh my god, baby Wangji sitting in the snow really messes with my head. I cannot believe it took 40 something episodes for us to learn about Wangji’s emotionally damaged upbringing and what shapes him into a stubborn lovebird as we know today. It adds A LOT more context and sadness to his famous phrase ‘bring a man back to Cloud Recesses and hide him’, as well as Lan Qiren’s statement ‘have you not learned from your father’s lesson’. I revisit the ‘bring back and hide him’ scene with a completely new perspective and can sense Wangji’s pain and confusion that Xichen described. The desperation in that statement of Wangji was a lot heavier in my eyes now that I understand the back story. If I were Wei Wuxian listening to all of that from Lan Xichen, I would probably have a meltdown right there at the doorsteps of the Silence Room.

Now we all know the source of inspiration of the infamous ‘I want to bring a man to Cloud Recesses. Bring him back and hide him’ in episode 25:

So after all of Xichen’s effort in telling Wuxian how Wangji actually feels about him through the tear-jerker story about their parents, Wei Wuxian STILL asked Lan Wangji WHY he was willing to seal Bichen and his own spiritual power so that Jin Guangyao would not hurt him. This dense man, of course, brought up the guilt card i.e. ‘Oh you don’t owe me anything’. I mean COME ON NOW YILING PATRIARCH! CAN YOU ACTUALLY BE THAT OBLIVIOUS WHEN IT COMES TO THE MAN THAT TOOK 300 LASHES ON HIS BACK FOR PROTECTING YOUR LEGACY?

I know it went the other way in the novel, where the big confession happened. Maybe a bite from Fairy could do you some good, or just talk to Lan Xichen some more and then you can start appreciating your soulmate the way he deserves.

The silver lining after being deprived of an epic love confession is everything that happened in episode 50. It might have not been spelling-it-out clear as in ‘I love you’ ‘I love you too’ because of the government censorship, but it’s easily the most obvious yet emotional type of ending the production team has worked to hard to deliver. If you are still having trouble processing the allegedly ‘ambiguous’ finale, I can help with that - here. Just a heads up: it’s a happy ending.

Good to know Wei Wuxian has the rest of his life making up to Lan Wangji. Everyday means everyday, because Wangji deserves THAT much!

#wei wuxian #wei ying #lan zhan #lan wangji #hanguang jun #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #chen qing ling #gusu lan #character analysis #thoughts #yiling patriarch #yiling laozu #xiao zhan #wang yibo #lan xichen

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