Hi!!!!!!!!
You’re like the szai person on tumblr, and even tho I’ve been playing proseka for like two years, I still don’t read a lot of the stories………
So as the certified szai tumblr person, since you kinda own the tag, would you like to explain to me why szai is such a popular ship? I really didn’t read much of anything…
Have fun!!
let me be brief (1/350) (no bc its actually gonna be a long ramble. apolocheese.) (also sorry if formatting is awful im a mobile user and I literally just type whatever)
FOR REAL THOUGH. PLEASE JUST DO ME A FAVOR AND READ MMJ MAINSTORY...... not only its a good source of szai cocaina you get to experience the entire mmj mainstory. i was normal before mmj mainstory and i was less normaler after mmj mainstory.
it simply went even more downhill when i read tenshi no clover. genuinely the one event story that first made me cry (second one was ice drop event but thats a bit biased)
okay now lets get to the main meat of it. szai.
admittedly i was kind of normaler early on but one of my tipping point was Chasing the radiance event especially chapter 7. please read/watch it. please. this specific chapter sent me into my trip of insanity when it comes to szai. it also opened my eye to specific scenes in their side stories/mmj mainsto that i skimmed early on especially bc im a jp only player so fan tls may not be super accurate back then 💔
to start off, airi was a girl that was often made fun of for being tomboyish, and seeing idols for the first time made her feel a glimmer of hope that maybe she can also bring hope to other people. she finally manages to reach her goal and became an idol after several of failed auditions (very deserved especially after her hard work) while shizuku became an idol purely out of luck from the idol grand prix context her friends convinced her to join 😭😭 From the start their relationship feels a little bit doomed with how jealousy is kind of unavoidable from airis side. but against all odds, you get to see airi go to shizuku and cheering her up by giving shizuku her towel and telling her to wipe those tears especially with such a pretty face like hers (MACHINE CLANG CLANG RACK SFX) they are so crazy for this. especially when you realize that shizuku kept the towel until now. (the towel is her area upgrade item)
from this point, airi thought nothing much of shizuku yet other than her being her new rival (and that shes rly pretty) but shizuku sees airi as her main reason to keep going in this idol stuff at that time, and that was enough.
(okay purely for this next part im forgetting a bit so do remember it may not be fully accurate 🙏)
after training minori for awhile, szai went thru a mini divorce arc where airi was telling minori that being an idol isnt all fun and games and that minori should consider quitting, continuing on with how she flopped in the industry bc she was more popular as a reality show figure. but shizuku disagreed and kept saying how airi was an idol through and through and that she shouldn't have quit, but that just tipped airi off and she shouted at shizuku, unloading all her pent up jealousy that she had for awhile now. iconic as hell scene in the most angsty way possible.
u can easily tell this wasn't received well by shizuku. at all. airi you done fucked up. shizuku left her idol group the next day.
(addendum i forgot to add. shizuku truly believed that airi was the first and if not, the only person who sees shizuku as shizuku hinomori herself, without all the idol filter that people plastered on her. so when airi admitted that she was jealous w shizuku getting everything good in the industry, that basically broke shizuku. (color of myself is a nice one to read when it comes to this 🙏 also the i am we are event is a crazy good conclusion to shizukus current arc))
at this point airi realizes just how much shizuku was influenced by her past actions without her fully knowing about it. girl you done fucked up.
this scene is still one of the biggest and strongest kryptonite for szai fans. especially with what happens after.
after confronting shizuku about her choice knowing full well its airis fault, airi, angry at herself, goes immediately to cheerful*days training place (she knows the place since theyve kinda shared the spot iirc) while the rest of mmj follows. she started threatening arisa and almost threw punches but she held back and told the rest of cheerful*days that shizuku is more of an idol than everyone in the room (i may be hallucinating this one. do lmk)
they finally leave the place, and both apologies to each other. at the same time, they both admitted that they were each others idol
and then shizuku goes to tackle hug airi. what the queer
that only concludes the mainstory section btw. upon realizing it may be too much of a recap instead of actual explanation ill be brief w the rest of it (keep in mind i dont read EVERY szai story, just ones i was made aware of bc im playing on jp and story content is a bit harder to see/consume)
Main szai crazies for szai fans
1. chasing the radiance ch7. airi yet talks again about how shizukus hands are slender and elegant while hers are short and chubby (she compared her hands to a manju) and shizuku was mad at her about this and went on a long tangent about how airis gentle hands were the ones who pushes minori and shizuku forward when they think they couldn't.
this is probably the fifth time ive read this story and it still gets me. i hate these fruitsssss. please read the full chapter ive linked it near the start this chapter is so special to me.
2. my ideal idol (airi 5, jp only event for now)
Bro i Dont Even Know What Else To Say. Just Look At This Card
but if we're being serious . lets talk about this one specific card and the story shall we.
this card was a blast to the past; pre-mmj szai again.
we start off with present mmj getting ready for their turn in the joint performance with a new junior idol group that they were paired with. airi was a bit nervous and shizuku noticed it. so she offered to do something that would hopefully lessen the nervousness for both of them. shizuku softly puts her head on airis back and whispered several word of encouragements. shizuku reminisces to the past.
pre-mmj szai. shizuku was very nervous as she was waiting for her first performance ever as an idol. airi was also there, and it was going to be her first too. airi shows up to say hi to shizuku but she noticed that shizuku was really nervous and at the verge of crying. airi knew she had to do something and told shizuku to turn around, shizuku did. shizuku lets out a little surprised yelp as she feels airis hands and head pressing against her back. she could hear airi muttering some encouragement but we never get to hear what the words were, only that shizuku thought about how warm airis hands were. (i need to be euthanized)
back to the present, shizuku says that she hopes that this gesture can somehow "repay" for what airi did to her back then. i think im losing it. sorry
OKAY IM DONE IM DONE ITS ALMOST 1 AM MY BRAIN IS NOT GOING TO WORK ANYMORE IF I KEEP TYPING..... my brain can handle so little. anyways i hope this wall of text ramble can convince u to read mmj mainsto and consume more mmj stories........ i admit its not perfect or whatsoever bc i haven't read the mmj mainstory for awhile and i have a wee memory issue thats paired with my deafness so. yeah. enjoy. haha.
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So.
Werewolf 5th Edition.
Werewolf 5th edition sucks. A lot.
Edit-
I made some errors in my initial edit of this post that were fuelled entirely by being underinformed and almost insensible with anger, disappointment, and anxiety.
Some very informative responses have been made that I intend to incorporate into a much better and less rambling post with those updates and corrections. I'll probably delete this one soon as I type that one together, so folks only see the updated version.
Sorry for any mistakes I made on this old version, again, I was in an extremely poor place mentally and thoroughly dispirited by the total butchering of what was supposed to be a less shitty and mean-spirited version of a setting I care deeply for despite its foundational flaws and 30+ year history of exactly this thing happening.
I'm still very, very angry. But it's important to be angry and correct.
This post was not made by someone informed of all the facts, and I intend to correct that.
Paradox Interactive has made the brave decision to reboot the controversial Werewolf the Apocalypse setting entirely rather than try and fix it, and have somehow done a worse job than the games studio that released an RPG book titled an ethnic slur.
It's taken me almost a month since this came out to be anywhere near mentally prepared enough to even collect my thoughts on it.
Man, it is rare to see an edition of ANYTHING that pisses off old players, new players, players who want to keep the lore the same, players who want to change the lore, conservative players, radical players, and even powergamers.
How do you set out with the intention of making an infamously dated and poorly researched/outreached setting LESS uncomfortable and racist from a modern perspective.... and end up with something EVEN MORE racist and uncomfortable, but also suffocatingly tonedeaf, insincere, and deeply sinister and corporate in its erasure of existing issues rather than addressing them whatsoever.
We made the Get of Fenris irredeemably evil because some of them in the past were nazis and also nazis like Germanic mythology, so the viking werewolves are all nazis now.
Okay, I understand why you did that from a modern political perspective even if its kind of heavy hand-
The Native American werewolf tribes have been removed entirely and replaced with American Murican werewolf tribes. Renaming and rewriting them to be more respectful was just too much work! Now they're more inclusive. :)
The Irish werewolf tribe is now the Nature Werewolves tribe, like every other tribe of Werewolves also is, but also stripped completely of celtic origins.
The Red Talons are openly genocidal ecofascist malthusians and somehow NOT IRREDEEMABLY EVIL like the Get of Fenris are.
Also the feminist all women werewolves are no longer all women or even feminist. AND ALSO SOME OF THEM ARE SOCIAL DARWINISTS AND THATS SUPPOSED TO BE A GOOD THING!?!
Also we entirely dropped the themes about how forcing children to be a part of a war they barely understand while also lying to them about the crimes their ancestors committed that led to the current crisis is fucked up and evil.
Now its actually awesome to be a child soldier born into a repressive apocalyptic death cult with a siege mentality and everything is cool about that actually, you're the Good Guys, and no amount of covered-up historic genocides or internal/external bigotry will ever change that! :)
Also we solved the way people were uncomfortable with the idea that werewolf society is transitioning messily from being horrible ableist assholes that discriminated for centuries against those they view as deformed, disabled, or sexual deviants to new generations that don't care about that stuff, by removing disabled werewolves entirely! Problem solved! No more discomfort or moral conundrums! We are the liberal-est!
There's just something so unbelievably fucked up and suspicious about erasing entire minorities from a fictional universe because they were handled poorly in the first edition, rather than talking to writers and outreach specialists FROM the real world equivalents to those minorities to try and rewrite them.
Don't worry, we removed the group the setting was bigoted against! Problem solved! Just remove the minority!
I've written my own post on why the Metis/Crinos-born should be renamed and probably rewritten, but as a severely disabled individual with multiple hereditary disabilities that severely impact my QoL, outright removing disabled characters in a work of fiction because the prejudice other characters showed them in-universe made people uncomfortable makes me want to tear out someone's throat with my teeth.
Sure, completely remove my ability to play disabled a character fighting back against prejudice and bigotry, rather than rewrite the most uncomfortable aspects of YOUR FUCKING PORTRAYAL OF THOSE CHARACTERS to make it more clear who the sympathetic one is supposed to be.
It's just so unbelievably cowardly and whinging and wretched.
So fuck it, I guess!
Fuck the deeply applicable themes of being born into a well-intentioned but deeply flawed and bigoted society, and trying to create the better world your parents always told you your ancestors fought for, while dealing with the fact that your world is built on mass graves those ancestors helped fill.
Fuck a game that deals with intergenerational trauma and the ethical hellscape that is a highly religious society devoted to the very same ideals it often violates just to win fights against the enemies it created through its own arrogance and prejudice.
Fuck a game that lets you play someone born different, born strange and sickly, bouncing constantly between people who pity you and people who view you as subhuman, before finally finding the people, the family who love and accept and fight alongside you for a world that has never accepted you, but WILL FUCKING KNOW YOUR NAME.
That's not relevant to the real world at all!
There are no kids born in deeply flawed and hypocritical societies, who grew up on stories of the glorious future their society would create, forced then to reconcile the hopeful dreams of a better world with the comprehensive list of horrific things done in the name of that future.
There are no children born confused and alone in their navigation of the maze that is past atrocities, ethnic conflicts, religious prejudice and dogma, or modern propaganda attempting to erase the histories of all of those things.
There are no disabled teens who spent their lives believing they didn't belong in the world, kept going only by the connections they forged with other outsiders and people who fought back against the kind of wretched bigotry that suffocates children to death, who found homes and families they could trust outside the pissant communities they were born into.
Apparently those people don't need a game! They don't need to explore those feelings!
Just throw some more nazis in, so we can pretend we care about social issues or understand the redeeming threads of a deeply flawed gameline, ostensibly so we market it to leftist youngsters, but while we also erase the entire point of a game WHICH IS ALL ABOUT BEING PUNKASS YOUNGSTERS DESPERATELY TRYING TO FIND THE REDEEMING THREADS OF A DEEPLY FLAWED AND PREJUDICED SOCIETY THAT CONSTRAINS THEM, FINDING A WAY TO REBEL AGAINST BOTH THE EVILS OF THE RACIST BASTARDS WHO RAISED THEM AND THE POMPOUS SHITHEADS WHO WANT TO DESTROY THE WORLD OUT OF GREED.
No! We want a squeaky clean, sterile white game that AmericanTM parents can be proud of their kids for playing! A marketable game, that advertisers will gladly pay Revenue to put their products in! Play the good guys, everyone! You're the good guys! Be a big werewolf UwU!
Don't worry about historical atrocities or the flaws of the society that raised you! That's Pentex propaganda!
Fighting bad guys means you can't do anything bad yourself!
The Emperor told me so!
Deus Gaia Vult!
A hollow, performative, offensive jizzstain that should've been scrapped in its crib. I have no idea how this edition got past a quality assurance team.
Hell I have no idea how it got past a legal team, given the number of real peoples' likenesses they used without permission.
Devoid of artistic integrity or merit.
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ooh okay I want to hear one thing you think about skimble!!! It can be a headcanon or a little stage detail or whatever! Tell me about your guy :D
THANK YOU FOR ASKING ABOUT MY GUY YOU'RE SO NICEEE
i accidentally wrote so much it's kind of embarrassing so let me just say a little detail i like which is this lil thing skimble does in 1998 during theee "they all could reflect it was very nice" line i think??? not really a small detail but i always smile when i see it
ough he's just so happy... (this gif is from @noriseyebrow btw!)
okay i didn't want this to be so long for people who like. do not care lol so i just put it under the cut because im not even sure how coherent this is but bear with me while i rant for a sec
something that's been on my mind lately is ross finnie as skimble singing the "it was very pleasant when they found their little den" part.. this goes for both the 2002 and the 2015 productions. because they're like. so different. and i love them both so very much!! i really like 2002's because he sounds so sweet and like. his voice is very happy in the calmest way possible yknow. and i really like how he talks. oh and i especially like after the cats say "weak or strong?" and he says "oh, alright!" i just think it's so cute and it's a very little detail but you know. i get hung up on tiny details about my fav guy. ALSO i really like how he says "and" in the "you could make it dark or bright, and! a button you can turn to make a breeze" like he just remembered it and he's excited to say it
AND THE 2015 PRODUCTION. HE'S SO LOUD AND EXCITED AND IT'S JUST. he's just so fucking excited and how loud he gets because he's just so hyped to talk about trains that he can't control his voice and he's yelling and it's just!!! it makes me crazy. especially in the "you could make it dark or bright!", "and a funny little basin you're supposed to wash your face in!", and "then the guard looked in politely and would ask you very brightly, 'WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR MORNING TEA?'" and then the other cats say "weak or strong" and it kind of sounds like he's just yelling incomprehensibly for a second after they say that, like he's so excited he's just gotta scream. could just be me imagining it though
and these two versions of the song are so so different but they both communicate his character so well i feel!! i love you ross finnie you understood skimble like no one else
here's the clip of the two songs btw!
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