#it was genuinely the worst option for this narrative

[silvershewolf247]

Anyways, GG is not Glen or Glenda, they're a whole new character. And I hate that because it means two characters I like will never show up again.

[linkspooky]

So I was genuinely surprised last week when we were finally shown Megumi's mental state inside Sukuna and he was predictably at his lowest point ever, and instead of sympathy from the fans most of the responses on twitter I saw were people mocking him.

Which I am going to assume comes from a misunderstanding as his character. You see Megumi doesn't fit into the role of the black haired supporting protagonist / rival well. He's not Sasuke, he's not Uryu Ishida, he's not Yuno but he's not meant to be a rival or even a typical shonen character who's progress is only measured by a series of power ups. Megumi is perhaps one of the most subtly written characters in the manga, and perhaps he's hard to sympathize with because he doesn't fit into easy to udnerstand shonen tropes. Which is why I will try to explain his arc below and why Jujutsu Kaisen does it like no other manga currently running.

1. Meet Potential Man

Let me introduce you to the worst meme on twitter.

Megumi's inability to live up to his potential to reach his full power as a sorcerer is probably his biggest flaw, one that is rightfully called out by the narrative again and again, but apparently an intentionally written character flaw is bad writing.

It's covered in Gojo's "Swing for the fences" speech.

Gojo notices Megumi bunt in the baseball game and decides to confront him about it later. He highlights that while bunting is alright in baseball, and it's good to sacrifice yourself so your teammates can advance in a team sport that being a sorcerer is a solo sport. No matter what Megumi is going to reach a point where he's forced to fight alone, and instead of trying to push himself to be as strong as he can be he intentionally limits himself to cooperate with the sorcerers around him.

Basically, the opposite of Gojo who literally cannot fight with other sorcerers because he won't be able to fight at full strength as they just get in the way.

It's not just that Megumi can't use the ten shadows to its full potential, something pointed out by Sukuna, and then later again by Gojo, it's also that he always prioritizes either the group or someone else above himself when trying to decide how to act. Megumi is a semi-decent strategist so this is not necessarily a bad thing, but because of Megumi's tendency to care more about trying to live up to other people's expectations towards him, and what other people need of him rather than his own needs he doesn't have the attitude necessary for sorcery, especially since the strongest sorcerers don't take others into account at all and act like living calamities.

Megumi doesn't look at himself, he looks at the people around him. He judges himself based on what the people around him want from him, not what he wants. This is going to be a continual theme in his arc.

Sukuna is a living calamity, the definition of the attitude a strong sorcerer has, Gojo Satoru wields sorcerery only for himself, and is a sorcerer because he finds exorcising curses and using his god given talents to be fun for him.

Megumi's reason for fighting, his self worth, are all much, much less than the strongest characters in this series which is why he continually fails to live up to his potential. It's not because Gege is not good at writing or Megumi is a disappointing character, but rather he's been written as someone with tremendous potential under the pressure to live up to that potential but who continually fails to do so. Megumi's low self-esteem, low self-worth, and lack of self-identity explains both his failure to progress as a sorcerer something that requires selfishness and self-identity to reach greater heights in, but also his tendency to pick the suicide option with Mahoraga because Megumi genuinely believes compared to the others even just his classmates his life is simply worth less.

So potential man, is an intentionally written character flaw already called out in canon. The more interesting question is why does Megumi fail to live up to his potential.

2. Meet The Original Potential Man

So, I said that Megumi is not like a lot of characters in Shonen Jump but that doesn't mean he's entirely unique. To help explain Megumi's inability to live up to his potential I thought it would be helpful to compare him to a character he's clearly inspired by.

Killua Zoldyck, is the deuteragonist of a manga called hunter x hunter. You may have heard of it, Gege certainly has. Killua is born into a family of assassins who all have supernatural powers. The assassins inflict incredibly harsh training on their children from birth in order to raise them into assassins because their potential as assassins is all that matters. They also start with a "Z".

Killua is apparently the most talented Zen'in... I mean Zoldyck of this generation, though he's still young so he's weaker than his father and brother he's expected to easily surpass them one. Which is why Killua's family has already decided for him that he's going to be the next one to take over the family, Killua's opinion doesn't matter. Illumi and Silva are both setting him up for success by forcing their "help" upon him. Several other members of the family even point out that Killua probably doesn't have the attitude to be the head of the family, but what does it matter when he's got such great talent?

Killua is a complicated victim. He's a victim of many things, familial abuse is the most obvious one because the Zoldyck have a nasty habit of torturing their children, but the less obvious one is grooming. Not in a sexual sense, but rather the adults in Killua's life have decided to use their authority over him to manipulate him into becoming what they want him to be - the next head of the family.

What's insidious about this is the Zoldyck's don't just torture or beat Killua into submission, they will use any tool in their arsenal, familial love, emotional blackmail, threats, all to undermine Killua's agency and choices in order to make him not only do what they want to do but make him think he has to grow into the person they want him to.

Grooming not in a sexual sense, but definitely in a psychological sense, an adult using their authority as an adult over a child and their maturity to manipulate that child into becoming what they want them to be instead of letting that child grow naturally. When it's used in a sexual sense it's when an adult establishes a connection with a minor, and then uses that connection in the long-term to manipulate them into having a relationship and lower the child's inhibition. Think of that, but without the sexual part - an adult using their relationship with a child often in a long-term manipulation to lower the child's inhibitions and make them more malleable and raise them to do what you want them to do.

Killua has not been sexually groomed, but he has been groomed by both his parents and his brother to make him more suggestible to becoming the family head which is something he explicitly does not want to do. Not only did Killua's family only raise him for the purpose of becoming an assassin and taking over the family one day (raising him as a child into an adult, his emotional maturity, his health and well being are all secondary priorities to what Killua can do for his family) they also manipulate him into thinking he has no choice other than being an assassin.

Killua is a kid put through extremely harsh training from a young age, to do a horrible job that is being an assassin that doesn't let him make normal friends or have a normal life. On top of the physical abuse he's already endured, whenever he expresses a desire to do something else in his life, his parents send Illumi to emotionally manipulate him into thinking that not only is he a natural born killer, and therefore a bad person who deserves all the abuse he's been put through, to further convince him that his only path forward is to be an assassin.

Killua is a character who has a lot of power, but little agency. Agency, in fiction is the ability a character has to take action and make decisions for themselves. Despite Killua starting as a more powerful and more savvy character than Gon, he has little agency and is often very passive. He doesn't act, he reacts. Even running away from his family is a reaction. We don't really see what he wants in life, we just know that he looked at his family and went "NOT THAT". However, his entire identity is still formed in response to his family's abuse. Even when he gets farther away from them, Killua doesn't really do what he wants, he does what Gon wants, and follows around Gon.

However, it's very understandable why Killua doesn't act with a lot of agency, when Killua does try to make decisions his family always shows up to undermine him and make another attempt to emotionally manipulate him into doing what they want. It's not always Illumi showing up to spook him. Silva pretends to be a loving dad for five minutes and has a heart to heart conversation with his son, and lets his son go adventuring with his friends but that too is a manipulation. He only did so to make sure Killua would eventually come back, by giving Killua more positive memories that would make it harder to make the decision to leave the family.

With the extent that Killua's family goes to sabotage any decision he makes, it's no wonder Killua is so passive and afraid to make his own decisions. It's almost like a character flaw he's gotta work on.

Now here's where I'm going to blow your minds. Megumi is an incredibly similar character to Killua, they are both the victims of longterm grooming however people don't like to acknowledge Megumi's victimhood. That's because in Killua's case, his abuser looks and acts like this.

Killua's abuser Illumi is a creepy guy who looks like the girl from the grudge, telling him he's not allowed to make friends and giving off such rancid vibes that he's obviously a bad guy. Whereas, Megumi's groomer this this guy.

Gojo Satoru who is one of the most popular characters in the series, and who also gives speeches about how he wants to let children be able to live out their youths, which is why it's hard for the fandom to see that he has taken advantage of Megumi and stolen his youth away from him pretty much the same way that Silva / Illumi has for Killua.

Megumi, like Killua has no choice in who he wants to be when he grows up, or what kind of person he wants to grow into. Megumi, like Killua has been groomed for a young age and forced into an incredibly dangerous and life threatening job that he does not want to do, that denies him the chance of a normal life, and that does not really allow him to make many friends. Megumi is railroaded onto this path, not by his choice, but by Toji's choice, and later Gojo's choice... because he has potential. Megumi like Killua cannot leave his family and stop being a sorcerer, otherwise his little sister who is the only family member he cares about will be hurt.

Gojo doesn't show up with an evil aura looking like the grudge girl and telling Megumi that he doesn't have the right to make friends, and that he's inherently evil and a puppet that only exists to kill people though so it's harder to tell that Megumi is a victim of the same kind of grooming that has hurt Killua so thoroughly.

This is what I mean when I say a lot of Megumi's characterization flies over your head because his victimization is written really subtly. Gojo does the same thing that Illumi / Silva does to Killua, he may seem like a stand up guy compared to those two but Megumi has about as much choice about what he can do with his life that Killua has.

Not all grooming is Illumi showing up with his spooky eyes to intimidate and coerce Killua into submission. Silva shows up to give Killua the first fatherly talk he had in his life, and lets him go from the mansion.... not because he realized he was wrong for restricting Killua's life choices and giving him no choice but to become heir.

No, it was a ploy to guilt trip him into coming back because he knew if he held Killua there by force he'd just run away the next chance he got. Fear and intimidation wasn't working at keeping Killua in line, so they switched to love instead.

Gojo can encourage Megumi to make friends, let him hang out and spend time with Itadori, even honor his wish to save Itadori and in the end still be manipulating him into becoming a sorcerer and not letting Megumi choose what he wants to do with his life. Gojo just prefers the carrot to the stick.

This is something the databooks confirm, that Gojo hunts prospects like Yuta, Yuji and Megumi not out of the goodness of his heart, but because they are talented students he can recruit to his cause with the added bonus that by appearing as their savior, they "owe" him.

Megumi is also a character lacking in agency, he is someone who's had no agency his entire life and what little agency he did have was stolen away from him by the adults in his life.

Let's analyze Megumi's situation for a second. As soon as Megumama dies, Toji gives up on the idea of fatherhood entirely, and decides to sell his son, literally, like in the sense of human trafficking to be raised by the highly abusive Zen'in Clan.

However, before the deal could be completed his father died in the middle of a mission. Megumi apparently saw his father so little that he didn't recognize him on coming face to face with him years alter, which says a lot about what kind of role Toji played in Megumi's life before he was outright abandoned.

Not only does Megumi believe his father just left him to run away with his new wife (Megumi's stepmother and the mother of Tsumiki) but now he and Tsumiki had to live together in a household without supervision for an indeterminate amount of time and watch their money slowly run out.

When it looks like they're about to start starving, Gojo Satoru shows up to save the day.... or not.

Gojo seems like he's offering Megumi a choice, but it's a loaded one. There's no choice in this scenario where Megumi gets to be a normal kid. The option of calling social services so this orphaned child does not starve doesn't occur to him.

Megumi's options are a) go to the Zen'in Clan and be a sorcerer where Tsumiki will be abused, or b) be a sorcerer under me where Tsumiki will be safe. The unspoken part is that if Megumi rejects his offer not only will he just let the Zen'in Take him, he'll also probably just let Megumi starve. Megumi the uh six or so year old child at this point has to sign away the rest of his life as a sorcerer, and work in order to earn money to eat.

No adult is taking care of Megumi, no one is raising him, even the food and shelter Megumi is given comes with a price tag that he has to pay back by being a Jujutsu Sorcerer and attending Jujutsu High as a teenager. Gojo even kind of subtly uses Tsumiki as a hostage to get Megumi to join with his agenda, because his offer isn't really much better than the Zen'ins but he needs Megumi on his side because he needs to raise kids to be future allies to his political agenda.

At the tender age of six Megumi signed his life away to be a sorcerer and he hasn't looked back since. Considering his severe behavioral problems getting into fights constantly at school, I think it's safe to say Megumi is about as reluctant to be a sorcerer as Killua is an assassin.

Honestly, if Megumi had phrased it like this:

"I'm so tired of being a sorcerer, I just want to be a kid."

Megumi would have a lot more fans, and Gojo would have a lot of explaining to do, but I think the brilliance of Megumi's grooming is that it's not really as blatant as Killua's. Megumi doesn't talk out loud about how he wants to be a normal kid, he's just angry at the whole world, and prone to fits of violence because he's mentall unwell.

Another way in which he parallels Killua, by the way.

Megumi does not talk about his lost childhood out loud. Instead of knowing his thoughts on the matter, instead we are shown his behavior, the effects of having his childhood taken away from him and how unstable it makes him and left to ponder as the audience what Megumi himself thinks of this.

The same way that Illumi steals all of Killua's agency away, robbing him of the chance to be anything other than what the Zoldycks want him to be, so to does Gojo. It's just instead of Gojo using the stick, he uses the carrot. He is Megumi's benefactor, he's the savior, for whose help Megumi owes him, sort of like repaying a loan with interest.

Gojo tries to shape Megumi into Gojo Satoru 2.0. Or maybe a second Geto. That's more likely as it's Geto defection which inspires Gojo to go looking for him after neglecting to do anything about Megumi until a year after finding out about his existence. Gojo says that Megumi is going to have to work hard or else he'll be left behind, just days after Geto had left him behind. Megumi is helped by Gojo, he is protected from the clans by Gojo, he has been taken on missions alongside Gojo his entire life, Maki even refers to Megumi as a treasure that was raised carefully by him.

Gojo invests a lot of time and effort into Megumi and because of that Megumi is expected to "perform." However, he doesn't.

That's the thing, Megumi is supposed to be either Gojo or Geto 2.0 but he just can't be. THe reason why again is Agency. If Killua is limited because of his inability to decide for himself, then so to is Megumi b/c Nen and Cursed Technique Development both depend on things like imagination, ego and self-image to raise them up to their full potential.

However, Gojo has shot himself in the foot with regards to Megumi. Becoming a Jujutsu Sorcerer requires a strong identity, but Gojo by sabotaging Megumi's agency and ability to decide for himself every step of the way has robbed Megumi of the chance to form that strong identity.

Megumi, just like Killua has no sense of self and instead both judges himself according to others, how he meets their expectations, how he measures up to them - he also glorifies others while constantly putting himself down.

Megumi doesn't give speeches about how Yuji is like pure light, but he also refuses to let Yuji out of his sight post Shibuya, and even says it'd be better to be killed by Sukuna alongside Yuji if Sukuna does take over.

In the Chimera Ant Arc Killua defines all of his self-worth around being useful to Gon, and beats himself up for not being able to measure up to him - because Killua has no sense of self his selfhood has always been undermined by his family who wanted to make him more suggestible to what they wanted.

Megumi is flippant with his own life and very willing to lay down his life for another's sake, because Megumi has very little agency in his life and has been taught by both Gojo and his circumstances that he himself and what he wants does not matter. Megumi doesn't fight fate, and fight for what he wants because he's already been shot in the kneecaps by both Toji's abandonment, and Gojo Satoru, and he's having a difficult time just trying to stand with bullets in his knees.

Maybe, the reason Megumi is so willing to risk his life to summon Mahoraga and sacrifice himself if he thinks it will help his allies is because Megumi has been forced into a job where he's gonig to be expected to sacrifice his life for the greater good since the tender age of six years old and therefore everything in life has conspired to tell him his life is worth less than others.

Yuji isn't the first person in story to think of himself as a cog, that's Megumi. He doesn't even need Shibuya to beat him down to accept the cog mindset, Megumi is already there at the beginning of the story.

I think a lot of misunderstanding of Megumi's character comes from the fact that his grooming is more subtle and insidious, and not as blatant as Killua's, and also that it's done by a character well-liked by the fandom. However, if Megumi has all the same symptoms of Killua then it's logical to deduce that they share the same trauma

Even Megumi's summoning of Mahoraga has a tie to Killua.

There's a pattern of KIllua running away from stronger opponent that's established in HXH that's eventually revealed to be because of a needle that Illumi inserted directly into Killua's brain to mind control him to run if he faced someone that was too much of a threat.

Obviously, that's just continuing the metaphor of the fact that Killua isn't able to believe in himself to face people who are stronger, because Illumi has been constantly putting him down his entire life.

Isn't this essentially what Megumi does as well?

When Megumi is faced with an opponent that's too strong or a hopeless situation, instead of running like Killua he summons Mahoraga. He does this because he doesn't believe in his ability to surpass his limits and fight, because he doesn't believe in himself or his own potential.

When is actually able to think more freely and picture a version of himself who can surpass his limits and who can do these things - these are the moments he is shown to grow.

Megumi however, for the most part isn't free. He can't think of himself as free and he can't free himself, because not only does he still have no choice about what he wants to do with his life (even if he becomes the msot powerful sorcerer in the world Gojo won't let him quit, he's gotta pay off those student loans), but he's also internalized the idea that he's not free. Not only has Gojo raised him to be a cog, Megumi has also accepted the fact that he is a cog and what he wants does not matter - the most he can do is hope that his actions will protect the people he loves and give them a little bit of happiness.

Megumi doesn't need a needle in his brain to control him and make him run away from fights and more obedient, because Megumi has already done all of that to himself with the toxic and self-harming ideas he's internalized.

Megumi and Killua having given up on themselves, try to make others happy, the same people they put on pedestals in order to make themselves feel even worse in comparison.

However, from this point Megumi and Killuas arcs go in opposite directions. You see after the Chimera Ant Arc when Killua hits his lowest point and his codependent friendship with Gon is exposed for what it is, Killua returns home in order to try and rescue his sister Alluka who is probably the reason he ran away in the first place.

Alluka and Tsumiki are both at the start of the story taken away from Killua and Megumi respectively, and with them the only genuine familial affection they ever enjoyed in their lives is taken too.

However, Alluka and Tsumiki are inversions. Alluka finds her freedom and agency, and Killua is able to reform his connection with his sister by accepting both pats of her, Alluka and Nanika. Afterwards the two of them finally leave their family home together and go off on a journey together.

If Alluka finds her personhood, Tsumiki remains a plot device. She never awakens from her coma, she's possessed instead and then murdered.

Now, here is where I point out how unfair the audience is being to Megumi. If you're a hunter x hunter fan remember all the character development that Killua gained by reforging his relationship with Alluka, how much confidence it gave him to connect to the one person who's even unconditionally loved him as a family member.

Now imagine that Alluka is brutally butchered right in front of him, and Killua has a first person point of view, because somehow in this scenario Illumi used a needle to mind control him into killing Alluka.

Do you really think Killua would be able to stand after that?

Sukuna is really just the last in line of a long line of people who've stolen Megumi's agency away from him, in order to benefit themselves. Sukuna even saw the same "potential" in Megumi that Gojo did.

Sukuna physically posessing Megumi's body, is just what both the Zen'in Clan, and Gojo Satoru have been trying to do to him in the most literal way possible. Gojo wants to remake Megumi into Gojo Satoru 2.0 with no regards to who Megumi is as a person, what Megumi's wants and needs are. No he just wants to raise someone as strong as him and pass the burden of protecting society onto Megumi, this starving orphan Gojo decided to exploit.

People have always used Megumi as a puppet for their own agenda, Naobito wanted to make him the head of the Zen'in Clan because he had the technique, Gojo wanted him to become the next strongest sorcerer / Gojo Satoru and also to replace the elders with Gojo's political agenda. They all want Megumi's "potential" for themselves to use to their own ends. Sukuna just takes what Gojo did one step further by literally stealing Megumi's body away from him and using him as a literal puppet instead of a metaphorical one. Gojo took Megumi's childhood by making him work as a sorcerer, Sukuna kills the physical embodiment of Megumi's childhood innocence by murdering Tsumiki, the only thing Megumi had in his life besides being a sorcerer, his only family, the only person he grew up with in his childhood years, the only person who loved him for who he was.

Megumi coped with what Gojo did to him the same way Killua did, by building himself around his use to others, and by building his identity around protecting others but now that's all gone. Tsumiki is gone, Megumi is trying to kill his friends, and he's already butchered Gojo Satoru.

Yet the fans are surprised that Megumi doesn't immediately get back on his feet.

However, and this my slightly optimistic ending to the post. Perhaps, Megumi is going the complete opposite of Killua, because what Megumi needed to learn was not to grow strong and confident enough to protect his sister but to learn to fight for himself.

At this point Megumi has nothing else left. It's sink of swim. He either develops a strong enough identity to regain control of his body and push Sukuna out, or he loses and the anti-Sukuna team will just have to resort to killing Megumi along with Sukuna.

Even in that case.

Megumi not being saved by Yuji is a good thing.

Because a victim who gets rescued by a hero still has no agency.

Megumi told Yuji that he needs to start by "saving me."

However, it might just be the opposite. Before Megumi can save anyone else, before he can become a protector, he has to find his own power and save himself. He has to both accept thathe's someone worthy of salvation, and at the same time he can't just passively accept the hand that Yuji's offered to him he has to actively be the one to break free of Sukuna and save himself.

Megumi can't become the strongest sorcerer by becoming the next Gojo Satoru or being what Gojo or Sukuna wants him to be. THe only way Megumi can become the strongest, is by being himself.

[codenamethebird]

Ok here's a little (not really) analysis/theory post about Hades 2, because I'm obsessed. Its consumed all my thoughts. And I need to talk about a theme I think will (hopefully) be addressed as the game progresses.

Here's some examples of dialogue that starts to touch on this conflict between mortals and the gods. What exactly do mortals deserve? We also have literal Icarus "flew too close to the sun" here too (and probably Pandora). Chronos was able to sway many to his side with a promise of a golden age without the gods, which is presented by the narrative as a foolish venture. And not saying it isn't, or that Chronos is the secret good guy here, but I believe Chronos is taking advantage of a very real hurt that exists for mortals.

This line from Nemesis really stood out to me, because it implies that while mortals have a concept of evil, the gods don't. Which sounds ridiculous but the more you think about it makes total sense. The gods in Hades (and just greek myth in general), are kind of the worst. They are petty and selfish, they literally attack you if their boon isn't picked first, and most vitally in this context, often utterly disregard mortals.

For example, one of the things that drove me a little crazy in Hades 1, was how chill everyone was with Demeter's never ending winter. Demeter was killing possibly millions upon millions of mortals and everyone else just sort of let it happen. Maybe complained a bit because it was annoying to them, but just stood by. And that's just one example. Mortal's have a very valid reason to hate the gods.

And considering we have more areas of the surface to explore that aren't out yet, I have a feeling Melinoë is going to be meeting some of these discontent mortals. And my hope is they are going to be nuanced characters, that will challenge Melinoë not just in a fight, but her very ideals.

Because Melinoë is very deferential to the gods, waaaaaay more that Zag ever was. Unlike Zag, who was more like a bro to them and was willing to suck up to them for personal gain, Melinoë seems to genuinely mean all the respect she gives them. She praises them, defends them when they are insulted, and just generally very polite to them.

In a smaller scale, she describes Hypnos as having a wisdom about him and can somehow sense her intensions while asleep. Which as Nem implies, the version in Melinoë's head doesn't exactly line up with reality (though sidebar, I am a believer in Chekov's Hypnos and that he's going to somehow save the day and put Chronos in a never ending sleep or something, but that's beside the point haha).

Melinoë's reverence to the gods makes total sense of course. She was denied her family and a happy childhood, and because of that has glorified them all in her head. The Olympians are sending her vital aid on her holy mission for vengeance and to save her family, even as their own home is being attacked, how honorable of them!

And I think part of Melinoë's arc is that perfect picture of them breaking into pieces. Yes, they are the better of the two options between them and Chronos, but that doesn't mean they aren't also kind of the worst. That mortals deserve better than frivolous gods that can decide on a whim their fates for better or worse (love u Moros but I'm still fucked up over you and your sisters giving mortals horrible doom endings when you were bored. At least he feels bad now but still. Perfect example of gods even when not intending to having horrific consequences for mortals). And maybe like how Zag healed relations with his family, Melinoë can start repairing relations between the Gods and Mortals.

[demodraws0606]

I'm kinda peeved off that I'm seeing a few people that have the critique that Siffrin didn't deserve their "happy ending" in the end, that he was forgiven too quickly. I'm bad about this for actually a number of reasons.

(Warning this will be long because I am irrationally passionate about this, totally not because I relate to Siffrin or anything ahahahahaha)

First, logically, Siffrin's actions definitely are not as awful as people make it out to be especially not in the context of a time loop story. The worst Siffrin has done was his actions in the Bad Touch achievement and the last loop, one being purely optional. Outside of that, any tampering Siffrin had done was purely harmless, sure it's existentially horrifying but it's not like he did any actual manipulation.

You could also argue since Siffrin was in control of the loop, they are responsible for everything that was happening but we know full well he wasn't in control literally, his emotions were in control of the loop. Considering, a whole thing in this story is how acting as though you're fine and trying to control your emotions don't work, I don't think we can make the argument Siffrin was really in control.

He only wanted to trap everyone in the timeloop when it already had destroyed his mind. I thought it was obvious it was a monkey's paws situation.

The last time loop was the breaking point of Siffrin and it's one of the things he does suffer consequences from, they do get mad at him and he does apologize. What else do you want him to do ?

The Bad Touch achievement is the only thing that could be said to be "unforgivable" but it's optional and as far as I know it's hinted that Siffrin would talk about it with Isabeau. In fact it's said that even though right now they're fine and okay, they literally say they are okay to be mad at Siffrin later.

And also, it's not taking into acount the Actual feelings of his family either. They can't remember the loops and they have their own reason to not still be mad with him, so why should they hold Siffrin accountable for feelings they don't have.

In fact, the storyline strikes the perfect balance to not have Siffrin do such horrible action that he'd actually be unforgivable but still have him do enough that it shows what the loops are doing to him but....

..it's not just logically, judging Siffrin's actions as bad/good things like that is not just what's wrong with the narrative that Siffrin should've suffered more consequences. It also goes against the narrative itself.

For me at least, ISAT is a game about mental illness but also recovery. It's not coincidental a lot of people project their own mental issues onto Siffrin, it's not just a "ahahaha they're so relatable !!", it's a genuine part of the story.

I could make an entire essay about it but that's not the point, what would a story about these themes be if the ending was just "you need to repent for the things you did during your own mental breakdown"

It may seem ridiculous after all this that they'd just forgive Siffrin after all of this, but really hasn't most of the points against Siffrin's morality been coming from Siffrin themselves.

Siffrin believed he deserved to be rejected, that he deserved the suffer, that he was disgusting. It was these belief that kept him from talking about the loop because for him, everything was his fault. Not just because he created the loop but because the desire of staying with them was the very sin he hated himself for since the beginning.

So for all that self hatred to be met with, strange acceptance. It almost seems ridiculous, and Siffrin's talk with Odile in the epilogue reinforces how almost comedic it is.

It's close to reality, isn't it ? How many times have you thought you did something completely unforgivable to someone you cared about and you were waiting for them to be furious at you, but that moment never came.

Because they just simply weren't hurt enough by what happened. And sure it was definitely a bad thing you did and they were maybe mad in the moment, but you apologized. Sure there could be more consequences for what you did but what's the point in asking for them to be more mad at you ?

Shouldn't you strive to be better than beg to be hurt for your actions ?

Do you think being hurt, being yelled at would make anything better other than just feed the voice in your head what it wants to hear ?

Weird flowery talk aside, it just doesn't fit the themes and the narrative of the story is what I'm saying. Asking for more punishement for Siffrin goes against what the story is about.

It's just like complaining that the looping mechanics are too frustrating, that's part of the package deal bb !!

Fuck the idea of "repenting by suffering through the consequences" !!! Having to deal with "blinding unrelenting forgiveness and kindness" is in !!!!

[daemon-in-my-head]

Back to my usual grim business, but like, who decided Gortash is past the point of saving? As far as I can tell, nobody ever even attempted to save him and if fucking Durge, who was the leader and the worst out of the old dead 3, can be redeemed, who's to say Gortash can't?

I mean, heck, he's ready and willing to kill even Durge the second they get in his way, despite what some people (hi, it's me) hc they may have had. Give that man a good argument and an option he'd never see himself, and he'd probably do it. He's practical, screwed up and has 0 morals (which is to be expected given his bg) but practical, and you can use that. After all, he wants to become/be seen as a hero. As someone benevolent. If you can convince Keteric, who's just straight up given up on life and everything within it, I do think it's possible to save Gortash too.

I personally wouldn't want to redeem him cuz I like their rs dynamic of 'is it manipulation or admiration' far better, but fr, who said he's too far gone? Yeah, sure he might be kicking and screaming throughout it, but that's a lot of ppl in therapy, isn't it? That's what some of your companions did for three whole acts, isn't it?

Idk man, I don't see a reason why he's 'beyond saving' except for the narrative of the game demands it. BG3 is all about saving people who didn't see anything wrong with their ways, so why is he written off like that? Is it cuz he's old? Astarion's certainly far older, and he can be saved. Because he isn't handsome? Well, I think he is. Cuz he did human experiments? Durge straight-up performed vivisections frequently. Cuz he fucked with Netherese/Karsus magic? A kind reminder that Gale has a piece of the karsite weave in his chest.

Genuinely, I don't understand that notion.

[nat-20s]

God GOD okay okay okay okay okay I'm having thoughts I'm having FEELINGS im having a Moment SO

I waanna talk about Ten and Donna (shocker I know) but SPECIFCALLY I wanna talk about like. Them and being besties and soulmatism and red string of fates and what not. Also this post is long as rambly as hell so I'm putting it under a readmore for my non-tendonna girlies <3

So like. The Runaway Bride really does establish them as future besties so so well and some of it is the writing but I do think that some of it is that Catherine Tate and David Tennant, by all available accounts, ALSO immediately got on like a house on fire. Like genuinely i know Acting TM is a thing but I think them getting on is part of why their on screen chemistry is SO electric and dazzling to the point where Donna went from a one off one episode character to *checks notes* a character that came back TWICE and also fundamentally changed the structure and DNA of Doctor Who as a whole so. You know. Pretty impressive. Plus Donna gets to have her first adventure with The Doctor as their absolute worst: Ten is grieving from a FRESH wound of losing Rose, he's incredibly cruel and incredibly cold and straight up murders the Racknoss without a flinch or hint of remorse, and even before that he accidentally kidnaps her and then insults her as someone to dismiss. That's not to say that she doesn't also see The Doctor at their brightest: he ends up treating her with incredible kindness, and he's dazzling and brilliant and cares so much and shows her the creation of the earth itself to provide comfort. However it IS to say that because of the nature of his first interaction with Donna he CAN'T put up a facade she already knows the truth!! She is walking into their dynamic with completely open eyes and at first it fucking scares her! She doesn't dislike him in fact they already are friends after less than a day but

Then partners in crime happens. And she's realized okay no actually I CAN take the bad with the good and I WANT to participate in all of it and I DO want this friendship. The Red Strings of Fate (or maybe the TARDIS being like lmaoo you need this girlie <3) bring them back together and they are Officially Tethered from that point on which is so so so delicious. It's also so so so delicious that Ten's still at an incredibly low point and she's still going into this friendship without any ruses in place. Like oh shit yeah they are Bound together even if they did separate now they would almost certainly find each other again.

AND THEN AND THEN!!! We've already established The Doctor and Donna as fast best friends but holllllyyyy shit I think Fires of Pompeii is what establishes them as forever Soulmates. I meant canonically the ending of Fires of Pompeii where she has him save the family fundamentally changed The Doctor for the rest of their lives and gave them a guiding moral compass long after she wasn't there so yeah that's pretty fuckin soulmates of them. But I actually think them as a concept of two people sharing one soul (for the better!!) happens earlier in the episode. The exact moment in fact is THIS ONE:

The Doctor has to make a choice. There are no good options: both are mass destruction and death. And it's SUCH a Doctor choice to have to make: actively destroy Pompeii and everyone in it, or allow the entire world to be destroyed. Not only that but it will likely kill both him and Donna as well. It's a mix of self sacrifice and other sacrifice to save the world and it's a horrific situation to be in.

It is a narrative that parallels the choice he made in the Time War. It is an archetypical Burden of the Doctor.

And then she looks into his eyes, sees his fear and hesitation and remorse and guilt, and wordlessly puts her hands on his. They push the lever to destroy Pompeii together. And it becomes the burden of the DoctorDonna.

[olderthannetfic]

re people regretting transition or detransitioning.

My little cousin experimented with gender for a bit in her late teens before deciding that she was a cis girl after all. The experiment involved clothes shopping, a haircut, and asking her friends to call her by different pronouns, and lasted for maybe two months tops.

Some of my our family members are generally supportive of that, and view it quite reasonably as a young person exploring various options before finding herself. The dumber and meaner ones, on the other hand, say she detransitioned and is proof that trans people are just playing around and that anyone teen who transitions will come to regret it.

And then they turn around and say they're happy for me and proud of my transition. Because I didn't get anything figured out until I was well into my twenties, and I didn't get to start HRT until I was past 30. These family members are actually dumb enough to think it's an age thing, and that my having to suffer for decades was somehow a good thing.

If the "worst" that happens as a side effect of trans acceptance is a bunch of teenagers getting dumb haircuts and wasting a few hundred bucks on clothes they won't wear again, I don't see how that's a negative side effect at all. That's just what teenagers do.

--

Grrr. Fucking assholes.

A lot of the "Oh noes, what if you regret it?" stuff comes with a huge side of "What if your WOMB is no longer able to make BABIES after you POISON yourself?" nonsense too. I see plenty of transphobia of all sorts in all directions, but the specific fretting over transition is so, so, so often about how every uterus should be used as a baby factory. People say this shit with a straight face who would never support that idea if you forced them to face the subtext of what they're saying.

There are, genuinely, rare people who do regret it, but it's way more common that someone either experiments with entirely reversible things or takes hormones for a while and then decides to stop taking hormones without actually characterizing it as "regret" themselves.

It's usually other people imposing that narrative from the outside, aside from rare cases where there was some level of coercion to do medical procedures the person was never that into in the first place (e.g. transitioning in order to be legally allowed to change pronouns on ID or getting a boob job at a partner's behest—a thing that afflicts cis women too).

I remember a friend from school years ago going "What if I'm wrong?" and even at the time, I was like "But what if you're right and then spend 20 years waiting to be sure while being miserable?"

In this, as in most other big life decisions, I think you should take your best shot, not second guess yourself, and if you change your mind years later, you can deal with that then. But yes, so many people think there's some sort of virtue in decades of misery as you either can't figure out what's wrong or know what's wrong and are denied access to medical care.

I questioned my gender in my teens back in the 90s. I just didn't do anything that made other people particularly aware of it at the time and ended up deciding that gender is a big lie and who cares. This is probably more common than people think.

The main upshot was that I ended up reading an incredibly dense book of journal articles on third gender roles that was a bit of a headache for a 14-year-old.

[zoroara]

Okay here's probably a surprise from someone who like Squalo so fucking much. I actually believe Squalo should lose the rain battle as he does(or if one goes about changing it that he should still lose in the end due to how he is). I will go into it below but it is going to be so fucking long. This is both breaking down the "realism" argument and the "Narrative" argument(though, this battle should honestly only be looked through the latter lens due to that being the purpose of it.) Anyway, let's break it down.

First and for most I'm going to attack the idea that because Squalo is more skilled he should not have lost "realistically", important thing to know, in any realistic scenario Squalo almost definitely would not win.

He is only a threat because of the fact that Yamamoto is new, Squalo's sword is literally without a doubt, shit. I have to be level about this because I hate this fucking thing with a passion because from a sword fighting perspective he has done literally everything wrong with this damn thing.

The only type of blade like this that had been intended to be fought with is a Calvary weapon, it isn't made for melee and genuinely just. Sucks when you use it like he is. It severely limits his options, trapping him to only using the exact same arm with the exact same maximum strength behind each swing, with the exact same maximum length. The ability to switch between one handed and two handed is a massively important thing with swords which is why smaller swords that you can do both with were the most common type. It keeps pressure on your opponent and gives you a much bigger variety of options. Not to mention with how it's attached to his hand in the past and future with what is only bandages in the present, and only a few red straps in the future.

This shit is so god damn unstable it's impressive his sword didn't just fly off when he blocked a hit. Do the same thing with some tape and a ruler and you'll know exactly how quick that blade will shift at the smallest amount of resistance that any strike with it would have landed lighter than intended, and I don't mean lighter in terms of strength behind it(though it would be partially). I mean all his cuts would end up shallow, he'd be incredibly ineffective. This is literally the second worst blade of khr and this one unlike that one isn't made of flame so it has no excuse(apologies this sword pisses me off to no end). You have to fundamentally change how this fucking sword is built for it to be even fucking slightly good, this ain't it chief.

Next, here's a major things, there is a reason there is a saying "The first best swordsman doesn't have to to fear the second best, he has to fear the beginner" because it's fundamentally true. Squalo would never fear fighting another master because masters have all become set in their ways, their techniques, you can read them and break into their weaknesses. But, Yamamoto isn't a master, and throughout the battle, he is evolving rapidly. Squalo by the end of the battle relies incredibly on the things that he had seen before, he threw out his caution because he "seen it before" by the point of Yamamoto throwing out the eighth move.

Squalo had grown too used to being able to read his opponent that when he saw Yamamoto going for something new, he instead relied on things he's seen before, things he expected, a surprise attack, which was his downfall, he had stopped taking Yamamoto seriously after the 8th form.

He had prosthetic, to snap backwards in case of sneak attacks, because he expected this move so much. When something wasn't as he expected he defaulted to this and the reflection on the water convinced him of it.

You can't read a newbie and that's what's the most terrifying thing for a master to fight. In fact, it's implied that Squalo beat Tyr the very same way as Yamamoto defeated him. It's stated that in the same battle as Tyr that he perfected his current style, meaning all of his techniques, but notably they say scontro di squalo is in fact what was used to defeat Tyr. It implies the sense that he created it during this battle, but what I find interesting about scontro di squalo, is that it's just flailing his sword around as he runs forward. This would be a move, only someone new and desperate would have come up with in reality.

It would throw off any master because of it's sheer recklessness. But once again, Yamamoto isn't a master and thus it's major advantage, is lost. Regardless, Squalo used to do the same as Yamamoto did and that's how he won there, but he made the mistake of believing his move set as perfect thus stagnating afterwards. His pride in his success and abilities, were his downfall in this match. Additionally Squalo's pride affecting his fighting was evident, in sword fighting you never dodge if possible it's really bad to because typically, you will not fucking succeed. Your legs are last in the orders of operations it's generally better and safer to block, parry and counter your enemy than it is to dodge. The fact that Squalo dodged a strike he knew was coming shows that he was over-estimating his own abilities and understanding of this style.

Finally the argument that Yamamoto would not be as strong as squalo is. Incorrect. In fact baseball actually engages the same muscle as sword fighting, and terrifyingly, there's one difference people do not typically account for when cross examining weapons. Which is, blunt objects naturally need more force behind them to do their work, while blades will typically have less resistance against the body. This means Yamamoto likely has a much higher swing strength than Squalo does with how violently he plays it, Yamamoto is like on, 'exploding a bird with a baseball pitch' level of play, and that WILL go into his swings.

If we were being realistic, should have broken Squalo's bones several times over with his back of the sword hits. It should be noted, the back of the sword while an anime trope of not being as dangerous, is actually just as dangerous or more so especially in the hands of someone used to using a blunt type of weaponry(in this case a baseball bat) the thin metal is heavy and powerful enough that the pressure on it would instead focus all the energy there, causing heavy bruising in the best of cases and something to break in the worst. Yamamoto's final move against Squalo, should it have hit his neck could have completely paralyzed the man from the neck down, or if it hit his skull, could have easily cracked and caved it in, and that's not bringing the additional momentum from it being a a strike with power added to it in the air. It is that bad. Notably, in the manga it appears Yamamoto switches the blade to the flat(not the back, this is the wide part of the blade) halfway through the strike so that it hits like that on the impact.

While this does typically lessen damage, it's mostly because striking like this creates more air resistance and slows down the blade before impact. However switching like Yamamoto does cuts down the slow and it would in fact do a lot of a damage. As even when it has more air resistance, a strike on the head like this is typically at minimum hard enough to stun a person. Which does explain why Squalo wakes up a few seconds after. But regardless, Yamamoto is perfectly capable of wrecking Squalo's shit even without physically training for the sword(which he did in fact do before this too but you know) in fact the fact he didn't kill Squalo in this match is impressive.

I want to additionally note the above, that Yamamoto's sword in the manga after is warping up and down like a door stop with so much energy put into it. Swords do wobble a bit when hit like this they have a bit of bend. But not THIS much typically. With the amount of force you'd need to do this to a sword you're more likely to fucking shatter it, now imagine doing that with solid metal against someone's fucking HEAD. The only thing preventing Squalo from dying from that is well the fact he is a cockroach and can't fucking die.

Now that we got that out of the way, we will now be looking at what type of fight this is. Battle manga focuses on battles it's in the name. But the important thing to know, is that there are several types of fights of which they can be categorized. I usually use 3 types(Narrative, Show, and Goal), though they can be mixed and matched but they cannot replace each other. They have different purposes and replacing one with another can in fact incredibly negatively impact how the story flows and character arcs grow, especially if you replace it with a show fight(one that focuses on a. character skills or b. entertainment value). But fundamentally what's important to know, is that the above that I've picked apart doesn't actually matter due to the type of fight it is.

You see, this is what I call a narrative fight(it is also mixed with a "goal" fight.) A narrative fight is something that explores the character and teaches them something that changes their character. It also is set to show something to the audience about the two characters fighting. Not their strength and their abilities, it's about their personalities, beliefs so on, things that can't actually be quantified. Almost all of the Varia arc fights are narrative fights. Fundamentally, in order to achieve what needed to be achieved, Squalo would and should never be able to get his hands on that ring.

Aside from the fact that Squalo would just kill any opponent he wins against if he doesn't have a reason not to(and in the case of the rain battle there's nothing there protecting Yamamoto). The rain battle is a battle of a lot of things. It is to teach Yamamoto humility, it is to show Yamamoto's progress from when he got his ass beat by squalo, it's to show the intense flaws of Squalo's pride, it's to show that insurmountable odds are possible to beat. Remember they're going 1 - 3(due to tsuna losing the sky ring) they're at an intense low point if yamamoto loses it's 1 - 4, which is more than half of the rings. But it's also about change. Yamamoto's entire style is about change. Squalo's isn't. Squalo's is incredibly ridged and stuck as it is.

For Squalo to win is to deny change is important, to say he is completely correct in being a prideful dick. To teach Yamamoto that this is correct, is very bad, because if Yamamoto were to fully follow Squalo in this? He would also stagnate the same way Squalo had. By breaking free of the competitive nature and seeing past the boxes of most sword styles with one that continues to evolve and encourages this. It's a battle of self reflection, and Yamamoto does this looking back over the battle, his last statements of it being flawless and invincible, is not a statement made to genuine belief that it will never change, but is a statement that because it changes it can always become something that will never truly be killed. But it's also something that pisses Squalo off, and Yamamoto is purposely saying it as a response, to goad Squalo into attacking. To blind him with his own pride and rage, to the new changes to the style, for Squalo to not see that Yamamoto has figured something out and isn't just being stubborn.

It never mattered who was truly better, because this fight is to double as a lesson. Should Squalo win cleanly or not punished for his pride, for being blinded by it, Yamamoto will not learn to grow. The battle is tailored to this, and changing it without understanding the narrative reasons as to why it ended up this way would ruin it's impact. It's not perfect it needs to be cleaned up a little with some dialogue changes and such, but honestly, the only thing that changing it would succeed in at best is a side grade should you make it so Squalo still loses. Or it loses it's impact should Squalo win.

I love the man I truly do, but this? This is one of the only fights where I will say he should lose. Other fights with him are much more arguably loose on which way they should go, but this? This one is a narrative battle that had complete purpose to his loss through and through. Squalo losing here serves a great purpose. He didn't even learn from it much which is a shame, but not surprisingly due to his character and what he represents. Which may be why he doesn't win any further up, because he does refuse to self reflect in any capacity.

[melonteee]

I think what hurts the most about how Nami was handled in OPLA is how thoroughly her character themes and trajectory were screwed up. Nami is one of the first representatives we see fake smiles hiding genuine suffering as an overarching motif, to the point that it’s engrained deeply to her backstory and the final note Arlong Park ends on, and it just… isn’t there. At all. To the point that the one time Nami smiling/laughing *is* brought up in the show, it feels backhanded. Like the narrative equivalent of telling her she should really smile more. Then, because Netflix/Tomorrow Studios are cowards, the show did everything in its power to downplay Nami’s financial insecurities and decided Nami stealing should be framed in a worse light than Zoro killing people for money. Which meant Nami’s arc became her needing to overcome a “fuck you, got mine” attitude, which led to Arlong Park being thematically (and somewhat narratively) incoherent once they got to her deal with Arlong. But the worst of this was the choice to give Nami all of Sanji’s parts in Baratie. Because, really, what does Nami thinking Luffy should stop Zoro’s fight have to do with her problems with Arlong? The whole reason she didn’t see Zoro’s fight in the original was because that wasn’t a lesson she needed to learn. She was already risking her life for her goals, and she still believed she could achieve her dreams once she paid off Arlong. It was the hope that Arlong *could* be bought, and that she had no other options when compared to Arlong’s strength, that was holding her back in the original. Nami trying to convince Luffy also felt so nonsensical because it’s the one place that doesn’t have heaps of over explaining (while also removing Luffy *and* Zoro’s explanations from the original scenes) so it’s like… what do you expect him to do, Nami? What could Luffy possibly say or do to stop Zoro that doesn’t either lead to Zoro responding “okay then I quit” or require some massive violation of Zoro’s autonomy? And, again, what does Luffy not doing so have to do with Nami’s conflict with Arlong??? Is the implication supposed to be that Nami thinks Arlong is *right* to use force to make people do what he wants???? But then you get to the episode 6 and Zoro’s second unnecessary pledge to Luffy (that’s already ruined Thriller Bark) and it was like… Oh. I see. Nami was given all of Sanji’s parts so she could be an easy straw man for Luffy to knock down. She *can’t* explain why she thinks Luffy is wrong (nor can anyone else) outside of vague repeated phrases, because if she did Luffy would have to actually defend his stance the way he did in the original. Instead of having Zoro tell him that he was right all along and doesn’t need to self-reflect about anything. Because Luffy’s true arc in the live action is that he Wants loyalty, and Needs other people’s validation. Hence why Luffy spends very little time actually interacting with his supposed crew most episodes, why storylines that were originally about Luffy proving himself worthy are now reframed to be about the others proving their loyalty to Luffy, and why the show’s ending reframes his first bounty as him *finally* achieving the recognition he felt entitled to at the beginning. And Nami’s sadly the one most effected because the East Blue is her saga. Cool.

(I realize you must get a lot of these, so thank you. It’s been very cathartic to hear your thoughts)

Anon you are doing exactly what I'm doing, which is thinking further ahead in One Piece's story and going "Wait, but if THAT happens, these scenes in future arcs are going to be totally ruined and make no sense?"

Hence why I'm saying, ALL these changes, ALL these characters being uprooted from their original writing, is going to cause MORE changes down the line if this keeps going. To the point the series is going to be completely incomprehensible and won't be One Piece at all. They already failed multiple scenes by just ADDING them in while changing EVERYTHING around them so they made zero sense and had no impact, but it's virtually impossible to fix this show without totally redoing everything. They ruined the introductions, they ruined the original motivations and original personalities, these characters are simply not the same at all.

And with these story changes, as you pointed out, it has ruined future character development AND future scenes.

Also the "Nami stealing is more immoral than Zoro killing for money" is so fucking funny, makes just as much sense as a WHOLE town genuinely hating a LITTLE GIRL 😭😭

[shsl-heck]

Worm fans are really bad at making the connection between "Cauldron is really ruthless" and "Cauldron regards all parahumans as numbers on a spreadsheet at best, livestock at worst". The mentality is that Cauldron is only ruthless when they choose the Renegade option in a specific situation. The idea that their ruthlessness is systemic doesn't register

I guess that explanation makes some sense, but also, its so central to the story's themes that Cauldron isn't just mean or something, but in fact systematic and unrelentingly ruthless in their pursuit of any chance to save humanity. The way Cauldron mirrors how the entities operate, the fact that they control the PRT/Protectorate, Doc Mom genuinely not remembering who Sveta is, etc. There's a lot there, and it all impacts the narrative!

I could even kind of see how someone would miss that if they were caught up in the personal tragedy of Doc Mom and Contessa... except Worm fans are also really bad at realizing that Cauldron is run by two or three people who gave up their entire lives at very young ages and are now desperately throwing things at the wall hoping just one of them will stick so that this won't all have been for nothing.

They're somehow simultaneously overestimating and underestimating the inhumanity of cauldron, and I think it has a lot to do with the whole "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic", and "banality of evil" thing. Seeing Contessa curbstomp the found family that is Faultline's crew feels horrific because of how visceral and small scale it is. Meanwhile, even if we intellectually know that Cauldron is treating human lives as abstract numbers like currency, it doesn't stick in some people's brains the same way. Or at least that's my best guess.

The real take away of this though is that Worm fans are bad at book.

[mdhwrites]

The Stupidity of Claiming Heroes Push for Inaction

TLDR: It really sucks to me that 20 years after Superman: What's so Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way (adapted into Superman vs The Elite), the point that story made has been forgotten entirely just because of dickheads who keep saying Batman should kill the Joker.

That might sound harsh but I am deeply tired of the argument that heroes deciding not to kill is the same as them doing nothing. That just because these villains could kill again, it gives our HEROES the right to put them down like rabid dogs. The video that was shared in my Discord that sparked this claimed such lessons only existed to empower tyrants while being entirely uncritical of the fact that this sort of mentality is EXACTLY what tyrants use to get away with getting rid of dissenters. "They were clearly a threat to the state so before they could hurt anyone, I executed them."

But to get away from the politics, it's just an inherently flawed argument. The perfect counterpoint is just that old Superman comic. He's questioned what he'll do if the person breaks out of jail and tries to kill people again and Superman's answer is simple: He will stop them. And he will keep doing everything he can short of killing them so as to stop them whenever they cause trouble. That isn't selfishness or self righteousness or inaction. That is understanding that murder isn't just a narrative device but genuinely one of, if not the, worst things you can do to a human being. That in this situation it is the easy answer but that our HEROES should be better than that. That they should be able to change the world without giving into our worst impulses or by going with the easiest option at their disposal. They do MORE by deciding to shoulder this burden than someone who decides to simply remove it by taking justice in their own hands and being judge, jury and executioner.

These arguments though are always in bad faith. Or, well, they were originally. Some people genuinely believe these sorts of lazy takes, just like the lazy takes that complain about Disney movies being based on fairy tales essentially and don't take into account things like, I dunno, genre or thematics. Why doesn't Batman kill? Because Batman had everything taken away from him by callous, cruel violence committed upon his parents. If he perpetuates this cycle of violence, if he ever kills, he doesn't fix anything. He is only going to make more of himself and that is the last thing he wants because what he went through made him MISERABLE. So yeah, he could save more lives in the future by killing the Joker but you also throw the whole point of the character in the wood chipper with that argument. Good fucking job.

It's also a pedant's argument and the counters to it are also pedantic. "If Batman kills the Joker because of the fact that he might kill people in the future, instead of believing the system can function at all, does that mean Batman needs to kill every villain?" "Well, what is the line between saying that a person is or isn't capable of incredible cruelty? Should he kill everyone with a gun and make sure no one but him can have weapons so such violence is hard? What does that make him? Why should he stop with only supervillains for that matter? The cops of Gotham are often crooked and trained to kill. Even if they're good today, who says they'll be good tomorrow?"

It's almost like building an argument with a flawed base leads to nowhere good. And again, this is not me pushing for inaction. Batman doesn't hear that the Joker is loose and goes "Alfred, I have a no killing rule so I guess I have to just let him do what he wants." No, he goes out and does quite literally everything in his power besides killing so as to stop the Joker. So as to minimize how many people die. So as to save as many people as possible. That's not pushing pacifism, complacency or any of the dozen other bullshit claims you want to make about what having heroes who don't kill implies. It is just pushing the idea that we should still have, you know, ANY sort of moral code. That there should be limits in place for solving problems because an eye for an eye makes the entire world blind.

Or beheaded if we go by literal history. Hi French Revolution and the extreme turmoil caused by opening the Pandora's Box that was executing nobility at that time. That's not a joke either. The guillotine is so famous for that time period because it wasn't just one round of nobles. Once they opened up the idea that someone in power could just be thrown under the blade by mob rule, a LOOOOOOT of people died as the mob tried to find someone they were willing to let rule them.

Violence begets violence. Some media can explore when that's necessary, a lot of it has examined that really well even, but you know what those stories aren't? They're not stories targeted at kids and young teens who probably shouldn't be told to try and gouge out the eye of their schoolyard bully just because then they won't do it again. I feel like trying to teach kids to do better than that is extremely important in fact, especially as the uncle to a nine year old nephew who still gets physical with others way faster than he should.

I want him to grow up to be kind, not cruel. To not think he can do whatever he wants so long as he can claim to be 'right'. That's never been the mentality of a hero after all, only of monsters. See you next tale.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[terramythos]

in wow shadowlands the afterlife is a fucking hogwarts house assignment and all four of the options suck more than can possibly be conveyed but the writers genuinely think they are all awesome. they also think the awful fascist faction that literally tosses every single soul into eternal torture hell because the soul decision machine broke despite knowing they are doing this and literally could stop at any time are AWESOME because they look like angels and are thus the good guys. We are not going to narratively interrogate this at all. They also forcibly mind wipe and identity purge anyone who joins their faction to make them literal slaves and even people who question whether this was a good thing ARE narratively framed as evil with zero nuance and you are expected to agree with this.

Also there's now this guy called the Jailer who looks like absolute shit and is actually the secret evil mastermind behind the entire warcraft universe and if you don't like that or have any questions at all about this shut up you just don't understand this thing we have transparently admitted we made up on the fly. We hate you the player btw. Also this is the worst gameplay in the entire history of the game

There is probably even more shit I've actually literally repressed because fuck shadowlands

[s1ithers]

ok one post about the ign interview bc the bit about the evil route just hit so weird

putting aside my initial reaction that it's a condescending way to treat your audience, it's like genuinely—what's the point of an evil run? what do people want out of that? many possible answers, my main one would be to explore a character with different motivations. but they went with, 'let the player indulge the worst impulses they're assumed to have and then punish them for it,' and, why?

yeah, killing the tieflings is heinous and feels bad. but discussion that takes the scenario itself as a given and goes 'how could you the player choose to do this horrible thing, of course there's less content, what did you expect' like man...i wanted to see the other option in your branching-choices rpg. you, the writers, have full control over this whole setup. a secondary/evil route could have been anything. you chose to make it this. why put it in if it's a narrative dead-end that just exists a moral gotcha? why center the big act 1 choice point around that?

it feels like a dm going hey dipshit, if you keep killing all my npcs there's not going to be any story, which, fair. but you're making a video game, you hold all the cards. why so much focus on rebuking the worst kind of players when you're free to just not write avenues for that kind of behavior into the plot

it's like they're wedded to one conception of what an 'evil' playstyle is that they feel obligated to but don't really respect or want to write for. by dnd law, we HAVE to include The Evil Route where you kill everybody indiscriminately, but if you take it you're bad and you should feel bad. and again, just....why spend the resources on smth you have contempt for. it doesn't have to be wanton destruction. there's a thousand more interesting ways to do dark side characters. why not come up with an alternative way for PCs to interact with the plot that you're actually enthused about writing?

[triviareads]

Why the Queen Charlotte Show's Take on Race is Dubious at Best and Harmful at Worst (Also, Was Queen Charlotte Actually Black? An Exploration)

As the promo for the Queen Charlotte show picks up, I'm starting to see a lot of genuinely harmful articles in the news, and they're compounded by Shondaland themselves and the material they've chosen to show the world.

Let's first talk about Shondaland, who decided it was a great idea to double down on the notion that love cured racism, and then proceeded to create a show about Queen Charlotte and King George III, a man who was historically pro-slavery politically, and did nothing about the issue even as abolition sentiment picked up during his reign. Their Valentine's Day event didn't inspire much confidence either; they showed multiple clips that describe this segregated society (their kind don't mix with our kind, or some variation of this, was said a thousand times in each promo clip) where the white people in power (the monarchy) apparently don't engage with the Black nobility until.... suddenly now, when Princess Charlotte is arriving to marry George. Oh also, Corey Mylchreest, the actor who plays George III recommended a book called, The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III, written by Baron Roberts of Belgravia, a man who has apparently defended the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and mass internment in Northern Ireland. Lovely. Going back on topic, the clips themselves showed an embarrassingly white-washed portrayal of racism and segregation, and that too, we know it was all magically solved within a generation.

Look, I'm not asking for a tragic POC narrative. But if I'm watching a show where race is a focal point thematically, I want it treated with the respect and consideration it deserves. Not some post-racial-but-not-really fantasy bullshit they're spinning. As my friend @jeanvanjer said, racism isn't simply being "mean" or someone being given the cut-direct. Because here's the thing: Shondaland absolutely had the option of not creating this ridiculous narrative. They could have casted all the same, lovely actors and not explained why this regency fantasy world is diverse! Instead, they decided to bring in race, but then treat it as a fucking joke.

Which brings me to this article:

First of all, for an article that's titled race is "more central" to the Queen Charlotte show, it barely gives us any information as to how. Instead, it gives this quote from Adjoa Andoh:

First of all, "TRUE TO HISTORY"? I'm sorry, is Shondaland and its actors spinning the narrative that Queen Charlotte truly was a mixed-race woman in an effort to legitimize this show's need to create this simplistic racial narrative?

Fine. Lets examine that, shall we? How did Queen Charlotte come to allegedly have a Black ancestor? Let me tell you this: it was not due to love conquering racism. The answer lies in the 1200s. Literally 500 years before Charlotte's birth. Her name was likely Madragana Ben Aloandro, and she was a woman of possibly-Moorish ancestry and a Muslim. She was born in the Algarve when it was still ruled by the Moors, but it was conquered by King Afonso III, who made Madragana his mistress shortly after, had her converted to Christianity, and had her name changed. There are gaps in her story, but if I try to fill them in, I can very well imagine that based on the fact that this man conquered her home by use of military force, and she was around twenty years younger than him, there was... likely a significant lack of consent here along with erasure of identity. This is the woman Charlotte is likely descended from, a woman who was born some 500 years before her, and likely had a negligible contribution to Charlotte's gene pool. But somehow, the show and this article expects us to believe that historical assertions that Charlotte looked like a Black woman, or even counted as biracial, are not racist, but statements of fact.

Indeed, this article relied on disgusting, racist, and obviously biased descriptions from Charlotte's contemporaries including her personal physician Baron Stockmar and Sir Walter Scott as "proof" Charlotte was a mixed-race woman, and then proceeded to tie her to Meghan Markle in terms of the racism they experienced:

These false equivalencies and cherry-picking historical facts have become a hallmark of the Bridgerton show, and now the Queen Charlotte show as well, apparently.

What this show, and Shondaland as a whole, fails to understand is that its take on racial politics is embarrassing and ridiculous for an educated, modern audience. For those of us who are students of history, we cannot accept a narrative like "love cures racism" and simply fly with it, because we know that cheapens not only the romance of this alleged historical romance show, but also the hard-won battles people in history fought in order to freely love who they choose to love.

We cannot accept an even more dangerous potential narrative the show may try to sell us, that segregated societies can be equal by pointing to proof of Black aristocrats in the Queen Charlotte show as an example. Because if there's anything decades of precedent has taught us, a segregated society is inherently unequal.

We cannot accept this Queen Charlotte show than anything more than a thoughtlessly-done portrayal of a segregated society, waiting to magically be fixed by someone— the white man who was historically a racist pro-slaver? A Black woman who wasn't actually Black historically?

Who knows.

[beevean]

Me, an amateur writer with poor english grammar thinking of dialogue for fanfics: hmmm i need to make sure i catch their personalities and particular dynamic here, otherwise it'd seem too generic

Netflixvania, acclaimed show done by professional writers: sassy girlboss and dumb moron man! Sassy girlboss and dumb moron man! And for you hmmm. Oh i know! Sassy girlboss and dumb moron man!

Hahahahaha

the implication that NFCV would care about personalities

they couldn't even be consistent with their own OCs 💀

The thing is that sassy banter is not inherently a bad dynamic. It can be fun, and it can show natural chemistry. Even the games had something similar: Maria gently pokes fun at Alucard for the way he talks (as in, barely), and Julia gives Hector some attitude when she plays coy about her identity. Or, not quite the same still, but Jonathan and Charlotte have this Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic where Charlotte really wants to be Jonathan's braincell. It can work, it's fine, sometimes friendship and love is joking around each other.

But NFCV fails because it's much more meanspirited about it. And there is an audience for this, of course: for example, look at all the people who are positive N!Trevor and N!Alucard had steamy hot gay hate sex because they see their dynamic as homoerotic, but for me, it doesn't feel earned because they have just met and N!Alucard plays jump rope with the line in a way N!Trevor never matches. N!Sypha calls N!Trevor a deformed pet bear in jest, again without him ever matching her (and I'm not mentioning when she got genuinely angry with him over nothing, like when he made a comment about beer being better than sex and she got so pissed she froze that beer - it's played for laughs but still, it's mean). Greta jokes that N!Alucard is lucky that she's there to run his life for him, when again they don't quite know each other that well and she met N!Alucard when he was a traumatized mess (a trauma she made a nonsensical joke about, although he found it funny so I guess that counted as a bonding moment). And I don't think I need to tell you that Lenore is more than mean to N!Hector - but I can point out how incredibly tasteless the very idea of her spouting dick jokes to pass the time is, to pretend they have sexual chemistry, when not even two months prior she sexually abused N!Hector in multiple ways and she forced that sexual tension onto him. Again, you could have written anything else, you could have had her ask him if he likes his new uniform or some shit, but somehow you managed to choose the worst possible option. peak

But also yes, the sameness just hurts everything. Hector/Julia and Alucard/Maria are conceptually a similar ship, mostly because they share similar narrative roles, but they don't talk the same, they don't interact the same, Alucard and Hector are different people and Maria and Julia are different people and it reflects in their dialogue. Maria is more jokey than Julia, because Alucard is more terse than Hector. Jonathan and Charlotte poke fun at each other from time to time, but the whole game is about their friendship, how they help each other and support each other. Jonathan is angry about his father's death and Charlotte emotionally supports him, Charlotte feels slighted when treated like a girl and Jonathan treats her like a peer, not like a genius like she wants to be seen lol but not like a little girl either. They have each other's backs in every way.

Like. You have to have some substance behind the banter. That is what I'm saying. Chemistry can be shown by jokes and all, but you also need to convince me these people like each other. When you scratch under the banter of the NFCV couples, there is either nothing behind it, or something really rotten.

(and, as I said multiple times, I actually would have liked if N!Hector and Lenore sassed each other to keep up the façade that they're happy with one another, but N!Hector is quietly seething and conflicted and Lenore regrets that their chemistry is built on deceit and imprisonment, and this is why she snaps when he briefly breaks it: out of guilt she can't cope with. That would be a great way to subvert the cliché and actually play with the tragic elements at hand that had the audience interested. But S4 is cowardly on a whole another level, so the dick jokes are just to laugh at and I'm really meant to believe their love is wholesome.)

I'll just leave this here to cap it all off:

[bambiraptorx]

What is your opinion on the mystical magenta goat man? (Draxum)

Good dad? Deserved more screentime/emotional moments with the bois? (they gave us like 2 moments like that in the finale, and I'm sad that it's all we got)

owo

Ooh, I have so many thoughts about Draxum. Buckle up.

First of all, it's worst mentioning that when I started watching Rise, I knew ahead of time that he would get a redemption arc. (Reading the wiki and watching clips/analysis videos is what got me interested in the show, after all.) So admittedly, my view of how his redemption arc went was a little skewed just because I knew from the start that it would happen.

Personally, I wish more of it had been actually shown in the show. We get about ten seconds of him helpless in an alley then a hard cut to him in his apartment being bullied by Mikey, and I would love to see how that series of events played out. Also, his arc from mortal enemy to somewhat trusted by the turtles happened in one eleven minute episode, and I would have loved to see that tension be played with a little more. I do understand that the show was cut short, though, and I'm pretty happy with what we did get.

*looks at all my fics* honestly, I think part of the reason that they're all more or less about Draxum spending time with the turtles one way or another is because that dynamic was so underdeveloped and several things went unaddressed in order to give the show a decently cohesive finale.

For example, the roof incident. Leo is clearly very bitter about it and clearly mistrusts Draxum because of it, but the show just didn't have the opportunity to address it. Another issue that had to go unresolved was Draxum's relationship to Cassandra, because she seriously looked up to/trusted him in their episode together but he more or less threw her under the bus.

Not to mention all the little things that canon hints at but doesn't show. Like, somehow Donnie has Draxum's phone number, meaning they had at least one conversation off screen. How did that happen? Do they hang out or something? And really, the whole story of how Mikey got Draxum to move into an apartment and let him come over is so unexplored, at least within the show.

And speaking of things that canon doesn't show, I find Draxum's position among yokai to be absolutely fascinating, especially given that the only yokai he deals with in the show itself are antagonists to him (Big Mama, the Council of Heads, the cops) aside from the gargoyles.

There's a pretty big hole there about how he interacted with the rest of the Hidden CIty-- did he have friends? DId people know about his research and mutations? What did people think about him? And obviously the narrative doesn't address this because the story is about the turtles, not him. But still.

And why did he choose to create mutants in the first place? Its fascinating that the prophecy that motivates him is never actually shown in the show itself, just referenced. Why was mutating humans the best option to him? Did he try other things? When exactly did the Council tell him not to create warriors?

The timeline is pretty fuzzy, and frankly Draxum's motives aren't actually all that clear. That's probably why there's so many different interpretations of why he's doing what he's doing (and what, exactly, he's actually doing) throughout the fandom-- canon doesn't address it super deeply.

So yeah, his relationships with the turtles are really fun to think about and mess around with, but the gaps in the narrative (not a perfect phrase but the general idea) around him are fascinating to explore in their own right. And whether canon would have explored him more or not, I think its fun so I'm gonna do it lol. I have built so much lore about this man (almost none of which has showed up in my stories) because he's fun.

And he is genuinely a fun character, whether pre or post redemption. He's dramatic, he's arrogant, he makes bad quips (seriously, he has a line about "how very NOT NICE to see you" at one point, and that's how my sister used to talk before she figured out how to actually be sarcastic). He, the big bad of season one, ends up as a lunch lady at one point, which is frankly absurd and absolutely in tone for the kind of show that Rise is. He's a powerhouse at times and completely out of his element at others.

And once he's no longer actively fighting the turtles most of his screen time, there's a goofiness to the nature of his character, a powerful alchemist/warrior trying to live a normal life (mostly because a thirteen year old will yell at him otherwise) and not even trying that hard. Season 2 especially does a lot of fun things with his character, and I only wish that they're been able to do more.

TLDR: Draxum is probably my favorite character, and also I want to hit him with the hammer of 'forced to deal with teenagers'.