#long long long long post beware....

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Is your chosen username anything to do with Ray Bradbury’s story by chance? If so, Mildly ironic given the current stete of fandom

It's not the primary reason for my URL (that would be the Simpsons), but yes, "A Sound of Thunder" and the butterfly effect are among the many reasons I love butterflies. I don't think it's ironic re the current state of fandom though, I've long noticed GRRM citing the butterfly effect to explain how a small adaptational difference can lead to great changes by the end, since 2011, and particularly since GOT S5 and S8. So it's not surprising GRRM cited it again re HOTD, it's one of his standards along with Scarlett O'Hara's kids. Heck, he cited both things in an interview (regarding the question of whether HOTD was "canon") only 2 years ago. By definition the butterfly effect is just a single wingbeat that eventually makes a hurricane, but for GRRM it's a drum he's never stopped beating.

So, regarding the butterfly effect in GOT... let's give some examples. One of the butterflies GRRM used to talk about was that in the show, Khal Drogo killed Mago (in the epsiode airing June 5, 2011) whereas in ADWD (released July 17, 2011), Dany is captured by the khalasar where Mago is a bloodrider, and GRRM has said he'll be a significant character in TWOW. How the show handled it... they basically replaced him with Khal Moro, and tbqh, due to GRRM's own flat characterization of the Dothraki, it's hard to tell if there will be any difference between one brutish thug threatening to rape Dany vs another brutish thug with a slightly different name. Maybe TWOW will surprise us there, but if so, I really will be surprised.

Another butterfly (mentioned in the Mago link above) was that in GOT, Marillion never went to the Eyrie, and instead went to KL and got detongued by Joffrey. Thus, Marillion never became Lysa's favorite, and his plot with Sansa in ASOS/AFFC never happened. So Petyr didn't have anyone to blame for Lysa's murder... and yet in the show, he really didn't need Marillion, he convinced the Lords of the Vale that Lysa committed suicide. However, this was done by Sansa revealing her true identity to them... which cut off the Alayne plotpoint altogether. And that leads to what GRRM might call the greater "toxic butterfly" of Jeyne Poole not being an actual character in the show (she appears for half a second at Winterfell and never again), and thus Sansa took her place in the Ramsay storyline. But to be frank, I don't believe Jeyne's absence had any real "butterfly effect" on the show... even if had she been an actual character and Sansa's companion that Littlefinger made into a prostitute at one of his brothels, D&D never would have brought her out again to play "Arya". David and Dan deleted the Alayne plotpoint and Sansa's AFFC/TWOW storyline, and instead sent Sansa north to be married and raped because that's what they wanted to do with her character, not because they "had to" because Jeyne wasn't there. (And if they ever told GRRM otherwise, they lied.)

And that's the truth about the "butterfly effect" straight up. GRRM seems to believe a story must flow logically to its conclusion and thus removing even a small element changes that conclusion. But the truth is that D&D could have done whatever they wanted, dead/nonexistent characters or otherwise. Aegon and JonCon not existing is not what made Dany a mad queen and burn KL, they chose to make her a mad queen because that's the story they wanted to write. The bizarre nonsense of the show Dorne storyline is not because they removed Arianne, but because they wanted to make Ellaria both vengeful and uncaring about her lover's family. Smalljon Umber surviving the Red Wedding is not why Osha and Rickon died, it's because they wanted to kill off Osha and Rickon and add another heartless Northern villain. Flow does not truly apply, this isn't an atmospheric system and it's not a real history. Nothing forced D&D into doing anything except budget/orders from above/other business issues. It's fiction, it's the story they constructed, they chose to construct it that way, because "Creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen."

Now, regarding HOTD -- let me first provide a quote from GRRM from the "canon" interview I linked above:

George: And the more you read about history, the more inconsistencies you had. So I thought it would be fun to do that in Fire and Blood. And so when I’m relating what happened here, and I’m thinking about what can happen. Yeah, I… oh, this would be great. This would be really outrageous, it would be… and then, eh, it’s probably too outrageous. Here’s probably what… the more realistic version of it. And wait a minute, this version makes Fred the villain and Bill the hero. And this version makes Bill a villain and Fred the hero. And then at some point it hit me. Why don’t I give all versions? Cause history is uncertain. I’ll give all versions and it’ll be fun for me. I can put in all the really outlandish scurrilous things, the way Mushroom sees it, but I can also put in the things that are probably more…  Aziz: They’re sources, yeah.  George: And that worked fine for those who liked that thing, although some don’t. But if I was writing it as a novel, if I’d been writing this in the form of the books in A Song of Ice and Fire, like Winds of Winter, which I’m writing now. When I get to a chapter in The Winds of Winter and I know something’s gonna happen. How does it happen? What are the things? I think I could do it this way. I could do it that way. I have to make up up my mind. In Fire and Blood, I didn’t have to have to make up my mind, but Ryan and Miguel, when they’re adapting it, they largely had to make up their mind. 

So. In his (deleted) blog post, GRRM talks about the absence of Maelor being a butterfly, so that the Blood & Cheese scene didn't have Helaena choosing between two sons (only between a son and a daughter), and he thinks it's unlikely they'll have the Bitterbridge scene with the Kingsguard Rickard Thorne heroically trying to protect Maelor (who is torn to pieces by the crowd). GRRM said that this will affect Helaena once again, because Maelor's death is why she commits suicide in F&B and he says in the S3 outline Helaena does it for "no reason". Welp. First of all, it's kind of hilarious that the wiki immediately cited GRRM's blog post, because IDK if GRRM recalls that in F&B he gave multiple reasons for Helaena's suicide (several weeks after Maelor's death!) through the book's conceit of multiple historians:

because she learned she was pregnant after being gangraped in a brothel along with her mother per Mushroom's wild story of the "Brothel Queens" (though Gyldayn reasserts no part of Mushroom's story is credible)

because she watched two knights who had tried to rescue Corlys be hanged and this upset her, per Munkun (though Gyldayn thinks it's unlikely because she didn't know them)

because Mysaria told her that night that Maelor had died and how he died, per Septon Eustace (though Gyldayn says it's hard to understand what motive Mysaria would have had for doing so)

because she didn't actually commit suicide, she was pushed, because Rhaenyra ordered her murder (what the smallfolk believed, which per Mushroom was a rumor spread by Larys Strong, and note Gyldayn does not discredit him here)

So whatever reason they're choosing for Helaena's suicide in HOTD (I doubt it will remain "for no reason" between outline and script and broadcast), it may be hard to argue it's not textually based given the multiple choice options in the text. Plus, there's a possible reason in the book that is unmentioned by Gyldayn -- that only a short time before, Daemon had his murder-suicide battle with Aemond above the Gods Eye. Though it seems that the news of that battle didn't reach KL until a day after Helaena's suicide, book!Helaena was not a dreamer the way show!Helaena is. And the show has already drawn a connection between Helaena, Daemon, Aemond, the battle above the Gods Eye, and prophecies. So again, I very much doubt she will kill herself "for no reason" in the show. It may not be the same reason as in F&B, but there should be some reason.

But the fact that GRRM stated outright that the Maelor reason is the real one and therefore he's an important character who should not be butterflied away -- well, that blog post did what his book deliberately failed to do. GRRM wrote a book with so many multiple choice conflicting narratives, deliberately, because he didn't want to make up his mind, so in its adaptation the HOTD writing team chose to write a narrative that picks and chooses among them (and sometimes, yes, makes up new shit), because they did have to make up their mind (and not do a Rashomon framing device). And only now he's like "no that's wrong, there is a real true history there and I'm mad they're not doing it"? I'm sure it's frustrating to GRRM, but if it's a problem, it's been a problem since the very start!

I mean, I am deeply sympathetic to him being disappointed by an adaptation once again, especially if he thought being an executive producer would give him more power than GOT's co-executive producer status but again that was just an empty title with no power at all. And especially if he has been telling the HOTD writers truths the book didn't, only to be dismissed with something like "well you didn't say that in the book so we're doing it differently". And especially if he thought a particular scene was very fine writing and characterization, and is disappointed that the show is unlikely to broadcast it to a greater audience. Y'klnow... damn the NDAs, but someone really ought to get GRRM's opinion regarding Septon Meribald's broken men speech, frequently considered one of his best, and how they did something rather different in GOT... and lbr, the Rickard Thorne Bitterbridge scene was a nice bit of a knight actually keeping his vows for once, but it doesn't compare.

(Seriously, let's be real. We all know GRRM's real issue is with what GOT did to his legacy. HOTD is just the one he thinks he might be able to nip in the bud before they make so many changes... and if he can't, that's just the wound of GOT all over again.)

And I do agree that Helaena's suicide is important, however it happens. The KL riots being sparked by her suicide are also important. (Though I very much doubt they won't exist at all in any form -- again see that vision from S2E8 and the fact that it included a scene evidently from the Storming of the Dragonpit.) And Maelor is important as well for something GRRM didn't mention (perhaps he thought he couldn't get away with it, though evidently he couldn't get away with saying anything) -- the fact that his death is what causes Daeron's heel turn from a sweet kid to a war criminal, and thus the Sack of Bitterbridge and Lady Caswell's own suicide (imo far more emotionally moving than Thorne's stand against the crowd). But... those butterflies don't necessarily have to be "killed", as GRRM fears. Daeron (who at least we know exists in the show) can have a heel turn for a different reason. Bitterbridge can be sacked for a different reason.

If that's what they choose to do, because yes, Daeron doesn't have to have a heel turn at all, Bitterbridge doesn't need to be sacked at all, the entire southern campaign can be a different story, they can write anything they want, as faithful to F&B as they want or otherwise. But GRRM's greatest worry seems to be that a less-than-faithful adaptation won't be a "logical and convincing" story where all the points lead to a conclusion, and... I'm truly sorry to say, that does not necessarily follow. Whatever conclusion HOTD reaches will be the sum of whatever came before. If some parts aren't built up as well as they should be, lbr F&B's Dance has had the same critiques for years. And again, the multiple-historian conceit, as well as it being a history and not a POV narrative, has never helped this issue, because it lead to one of F&B's greatest faults -- that it is not consistent with itself. (Unrelated to the Dance: see Alysanne's attitude towards Baelon inheriting at the end of the Long Reign chapter, vs pages later in the Heirs of the Dragon chapter. "You will be a great king" vs "a cock is not essential"... these chapters were written years apart, and not edited together nearly as well as they should have been.) If GRRM has a different story in his head that is more consistent than was put on the page, again this may be too little too late for all the work already put into the show.

However... I have a very strong feeling that it's not "Maelor the missing" or even whatever's happening with Helaena and the riot, or Daeron and Bitterbridge, that's GRRM's real worry about "toxic butterflies". I think the subject he really wanted to talk about, and knew he absolutely could not (and yet perhaps hoped that post could pressure HBO about), is the absence of Nettles. Her absence would greatly change the relationship of Daemon and Rhaenyra, who we've seen HOTD has chosen to portray as an OTP, a toxic one perhaps, "always meant to burn together". But it was already portrayed as odd in F&B for Daemon to lose his head chasing after a teen girl (if IMO entirely consistent with his personality), but with HOTD's apparent Daemon/Rhaenyra plot... Well, see S2's process starting with him leaving her in ep2, to their reunion in ep8 convinced she's the queen chosen by the gods... is Nettles going to come in and blow that up? Make Daemon abandon Rhaenyra again? It could be told in a "logical and convincing" way, I still think it should be, but at this point it's hard to see how it would be. (And looking at GOT in comparison, Nettles does not have either the textual value nor the fanbase that Brienne has, and just look how they ended their toxic OTP of Jaime/Cersei, despite the books.)

But plot and relationships aside, Nettles is a character whose meaning reaches well beyond F&B, to affect ASOIAF itself. Her legacy regarding Targaryen exceptionalism, to the subject of who can really ride a dragon, her legacy regarding the Vale's Burned Men... all these are elements that may be extremely important in TWOW and ADOS. So if GRRM has been trying to convince Ryan that Nettles is the most important character that should not be eliminated, and yet has been shut down... well, no wonder he's been depressed about his own legacy.

And again, I'm sure it's the deeper wound of GOT's ending that's been truly paining GRRM regarding his legacy, that their ending that may be the only thing anyone ever sees. Perhaps he was hoping that HOTD could help correct the issue. That its foreshadowing would help readers understand the truth, what happens in TWOW and ADOS, the real ending. But... again I'm deeply sympathetic, and I'm sorry HOTD couldn't be that for him, but the truth is no other television show can be GRRM's legacy in that way. The only thing that can correct GOT is his own words. The only thing that truly matters is him finishing TWOW and ADOS... and it's been 13 years since ADWD, 5 years since GOT S8. I want to tell him, so much, fuck the butterflies-- as you've said so many times yourself, the show is not the books. Leave them be in their other universe and focus on your own, please. Please.

Because, again, let's be real. If GRRM does finish his grand epic and completes his legacy, his last word on the subject... if this makes HBDiscFlix want to do a GOT remake once they have an actual story to adapt "correctly" (which they still won't)... you know that when the final season of Game of Thrones Brotherhood comes out in 2050 and Tyrion rides a dragon despite having no Targaryen ancestry... all the clickbait sites and YouTok will have vidposts like "The Missing Character from House of the Dragon - What You Don't Know About This GOTB Development!" It won't matter what HBO did or didn't do with HOTD. It's just GRRM's own words in the end... if he has them.

[mmm-asbestos]

The girls

[tardxsblues]

If I change the events that brought you here, you will never come here and ask me to change those events. Paradox loop. The timeline disintegrates -- your timeline. And yes! Yes? Yes. I did just say no. Throw away the key. I have seen you change time. I have seen you break any rule you want. I know when I can. I know when I can't.

[ratcandy]

Big Huge Irritated Rant About The Latest COTL Update's Story Choices and the Implications

So the lore drop in the new Cult of the Lamb update, Unholy Alliance, pisses me off. The writer's confirmation of what that lore drop means pisses me off more.

Why? Because it's unnecessary recontextualization that was made pretty obviously in favor in one character in particular, and somehow in that process makes that very same character way less interesting. I think it's incredibly detrimental to the story and I will Explain Why in a second.

But before I do, I just want to put this out there: Prior to this update, my opinions on the Bishops and Narinder and that entire plotline were pretty neutral. I'm an NPC enjoyer, I spend my time thinking about that moth with two lines of dialogue. I did not previously have strong opinions on Narinder or Shamura outside of mild dislike for fandom treatment. So I'm not coming from a place of bias here (or at the very least I'm not trying to be). I genuinely, wholeheartedly, 100% believe this writing decision was unnecessary and the Wrong one to make, and I think it severely undercuts the original plotline because this was a retcon and one that sucks pretty bad.

Ok we're on the same page here? Ok awesome. Long rant ahead, and obvs spoilers for the Unholy Alliance update

So first, what the hell am I talking about? What part of the update do I not like? Let's clarify that first.

It's Shamura's dialogue. Like, all of it. For ease of understanding, here is all the dialogue I will be talking about:

"Ah... we gathered here, the four of us, a council of war and I the general. I have not forgot. I did not tell them that chains to bind a God must be forged of Godly matters. What matter of Gods? What matters of Gods? I have not forgot. The betrayal of kin, the breaking of spirits, blood spilled, his and ours. ...the sacrifice of what we had sacrificed so much for... ...shaped into shackles for our own brother. And our wounds always to weep. Such sharp claws..."

--

"He sought to break nature's own laws. Death was his, yet he placed his sacred duty in peril. His experiments... Experiments I encouraged. I am not... blameless. My soul, stained... yet I do not... Ah, The story. Yes the story... He wanted to open the doors between Life and Death, to... to allow their return. Those mere... mortals. Even though he knew their sacrifices, their faith, their fears sustain us. Death must be the end. Otherwise, what use would they have for Gods? They began to flock to him. What he promised, we could not match. He swelled with devotion... while we waned. Would he have let us perish? I could not take... the risk... the hunger... You are lucky there are none left to force such a choice on you. Hail, Lamb. Last God... lonely God... Ah... I feel... unburdened..."

And for fun, before anyone tells me I'm misinterpreting any of this or that it's left up to interpretation or is intentionally vague, Word of God (the writer of CoTL):

And it's this being Word of God that's spurred me into making this post to begin with. Because prior to this, I just seethed about this dialogue's implications in my server and hoped I was wrong. But now it's been confirmed what this means, and I'm . Disgruntled, to say the least!

And since I've started writing this post, there's been another addition made to further clarify parts of this. But I'm going to go over that addition more towards the end, because it also irritates me for separate reasons.

So, let's get this straight.

Prior to this update, the specifics of what happens between Narinder and the Bishops were pretty vague. We were told Narinder was "gluttonous in his ambition," per Shamura's previous dialogue, and that they "introduced him to ideas of change" but "Death cannot flow backward." Heket somewhat elaborates on this by saying he preached "heresy" and "noxious ideals" that would not be tolerated. Heket also notably refers to Narinder as a flat-out "monster." Narinder attacked his siblings and left them each with a big, symbolic wound. Then he was chained by the four of them, with Shamura the one to lead it (in their own words).

There's a lot of talk of betrayal, but before this update, it was unclear if the betrayal was meant to just be Narinder's experimenting with death (which even then was pretty heavily suggested to be resurrections) or the wounds inflicted upon his siblings. There's also a lot of talk of sacrifice, i.e. from Leshy if you kill Heket before him: "After everything we did. After everything we sacrificed. He will not be satiated."

Regardless, the picture this painted was of Narinder being this ambitious, evil, violent God that even his fellow Gods (Kallamar) feared and felt needed controlling. The idea that the wounds could have been in the nail in the coffin to this entire ordeal made sense; as they were obviously planned by Narinder to some extent (otherwise why be so intentional about who got what wound?) and a fair reaction to Being Mutilated would of course be to chain him.

Then of course there's the idea that the wounds were given while he was being chained and in self-defense, which only seems possible if you think Narinder could take on all four of his siblings at once like that and only manage to lose his claws in the ordeal (which was only revealed in this update to be something he's implied to have lost thru the relic). I thought this at first too, but realized it seems pretty impractical for that to have been the case if the wounds were also purposeful in who got what. I mean, sure, they could all be coincidentally symbolically appropriate for each Bishop, but I have doouuubts?

but now we're here, with this update, and all has been revealed.

And what's been revealed exactly?

Narinder's thing he was doing was indeed resurrections (we knew that)

Shamura encouraged him to do it (we also already knew this)

It seems like he did literally nothing else outside of that

His siblings got pissy about this because it made their domains purposeless and got all their followers to flock to him

"Would he let us perish? I could not take the risk" - Implies they literally did not even ask him

Shamura knew that in order to forge chains that could keep Narinder down, it would require a sacrifice of their bonds AND their flesh

They DID NOT tell the other Bishops this

Their wounds were requirements to chain him. They had to get the wounds they bear now in order to chain him. ONLY Shamura knew this. That means they allowed their siblings (and themself) to get attacked knowing full well what would happen. They may have even encouraged it, perhaps provoked Narinder into it, seeing as they knew the wounds were necessary to have him chained. (Or they just knew he would retaliate. Which, like. Yeah. They're condemning him after he went down a path they encouraged and, as far as we can tell, nothing else.)

And for... what?

In this version of the story, Narinder was experimenting with resurrections, and Shamura told him to keep doing that. Then he was successful, mortals turned to him, and his siblings (including Shamura, the one who told him to do it) got mad. That's it. That's their reasoning for chaining him. There's nothing else given. "Would they perish?" We have no idea. Is that how it works? Seems like Shamura doesn't know either. Or at the very least doesn't know if Narinder intended for that at all. Gives the vibe that literally no effort was made to talk to him and figure this out. They don't even really go down the "it puts nature out of balance!" path, which would at least have some merit, maybe. It's literally just "we are no longer sustained. What's the point of Gods in this world?" <- idk babe you had all the other ones slaughtered. So you tell me

And then Shamura just took it into their own hands, leading their siblings to their shared wounds (WITHOUT consulting them) and their inevitable destruction because of........... reasons, I guess. (I mean, if you think about it really hard, they probably also already knew what would happen following all this. With the lamb genocide and Narinder's resurfacing and etc. And they had their siblings wounded anyway. For no god damn reason)

And now why does this make me mad?

Because, honestly, in and of itself, there's not anything necessarily wrong with this added context. It's not contradicting anything in the main game. Shamura knowing what was needed makes sense, after all.

But it's... unnecessary. It screws up the motives and makes them more shallow, less nuanced, more... petty. Making gods petty is cool and all, I love doing that honestly, but in this case it just feels like a waste of potential.

But beyond all that. But most importantly.

This entire recontextualization of events REEKS of being made specifically to absolve Narinder.

I mean, come on. He's made out to be the victim, here. Shamura knew what he would do, knew what he would become, and knew exactly what would happen to their siblings if they sought to chain him (without doing so much as talking to him beforehand), and yet they encouraged it.

All blame is being shifted on Shamura. All Narinder did specifically against his siblings was inflict the wounds, which at this point seems to be hinted as self defense or a retaliation against threat or insult (assuming he was provoked into attacking, somehow). Because the wounds were part of the process.

And almost equally irritating, this seeks to arbitrarily absolve Leshy, Kallamar, and Heket as well, as they had no idea what the plan was and were just strung along. Which is just kinda worse, right? As far as they are aware, Narinder did just randomly attack them for no reason, and this wasn't foreseen, and surely couldn't have been stopped. All because Shamura didn't tell them any of it.

Shamura is being made into the big bad. Shamura is at fault for everything, for all of it. Narinder is a victim of Shamura encouraging him down a path they later condemn him for, their siblings are victims of Shamura and Narinder both (the latter of which could have been resolved at any point prior), and now any possible intrigue about Narinder being this big bad guy who tore apart his siblings due to his own ambition getting the best of him is ERASED.

It's GONE. All in favor of making him more sympathetic.

And sure, about a million different excuses could be made for Shamura, or could be used to headcanon whatever you want about exactly what happened. But with what we're given right now, just from the source, no attempt as made to stop Narinder before it got to this point. It is literally suggested they didn't even talk to him.

"Maybe they were too scared" - For the other three, maybe. Shamura is the eldest and clearly the most respected one, by Narinder as well (he holds some amount of respect for them even STILL. After EVERYTHING). They at any point could have stopped this.

"Narinder could still have been a bad guy outside of the attacks" - Sure, but we're given little to nothing on that front. In the old dialogue, literally all that's mentioned is the resurrection stuff and the wounds. Shamura is the one who said his ambition made a glutton of him, by the way. And hell, this isn't even touching the very real possibility that all of the Bishops (Narinder included!) are unreliable as hell.

"But Kallamar feared him even before his chaining, that suggests he was still a bad guy beforehand" - Sure, it could! But that's about all we get! And hell, in this new update, Kallamar's fears are fucked with, too. He states:

"Once, long ago, Followers would worship at my altar just to glimpse the beauty of my temple… of course, it could not last forever. Perhaps my siblings did not understand this, but I have always known. It did not make me less afraid. Cowardly Kallamar, ha…"

Here, it seems Kallamar's fears have been changed to be more about the decline of his temple and the loss of his followers, which was happening because of Narinder. He refers to Narinder's plans as "foolish" as opposed to... idk, horrifying, or threatening, or whatever. He also fully takes on the 'cowardly' title, giving the impression that his fears were somehow unfounded, which wouldn't make a lick of sense if Narinder indeed sucked ass outside of the wounds.

Not to mention he "didn't want to hear it" when Shamura "revealed the plan," but we know because of Shamura that they didn't mention anything about the wounds, so Kallamar didn't want to hear that they... had to chain Narinder? That's literally all he could've been told about the plan. Why wouldn't he want to chain Narinder if he was scared of him up until that point?? Doesn't make any sense!!! EDIT AFTER I POSTED: On reconsideration this might just be referring the lamb genocide plan, but that's hardly better, because now this update absolves Narinder, Leshy, AND Kallamar by making them blameless in everything (both Leshy and Kallamar expressed not fully understanding the plan for the slaughter or, in this case, not wanting part in it). What's up with THAT. Why is Shamura getting the blame for LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

Anyway, my point is

This was a story decision made to make Narinder sympathetic. It's so blatant. And it's so, so irritating. It gets rid of so many potential cool flaws of Narinder and replaces it with "Actually, Shamura was the bad guy the whole time! Huzzah!"

And honestly, had the entire game come out like this to begin with, released at the start how it is right now, I don't think I'd care this much. But being added now, as an afterthought, after the fandom and devs alike have grown to favor Narinder above all others, it just...

It reeks of favoritism. It smells of revising the story to make Narinder more likeable. It's just erasure.

And for what. Like, I don't want to be That Guy, but I cannot help but notice that one of two nonbinary characters (outside of the Lamb/Goat themselves) is being this heavily demonized in favor of absolving a Man of his crimes. What's, uh. What's up with that.

Oh, and that addition by the writer I mentioned was made while I was writing this.

This was made after Jojo was questioned whether this was a retcon as to who caused the wounds, as this whole thing could also certainly be read as Shamura being the one to directly wound their siblings (which I didn't think was the case, but still).

"I don't know if they thought it would be so severe" - How do I put this in a nice way. This feels like a weaseling out answer. This feels like giving Shamura an out only after being questioned on this writing choice. How could they possibly not know how severe it would be. This spider is Knowledge. This spider has Foresight of some kind. And how do you not know what they thought. You are the Writer. If you want to clarify something like this you gotta say it with your full chest.

Not to mention a good portion of the fandom probably won't even see these tweets, so this context is all missing from the story presented in the game. This is Tacked On Context on top of already Tacked On Context. It's unnecessary retconning all the way down.

Anyway. I realize the fandom at large will not care about this, because (and I mean this in the nicest way I can manage) the Narinder favoritism in this fandom is already impenetrable, but for me personally? This retconning that was so clearly done out of that favoritism?

It ruined Narinder's character for me. More than the fandom possibly could have. I mean, if it's fanon, it can be ignored. But this was canonized. Because Narinder is the dev team's favorite guy.

And I can't stand it.

[fabuladorah]

My top 5 fave DBDA charachters

1. Crystal Palace

2. Charles Rowland

3. Night Nurse

4. Niko Sasaki

5. Jenny The Butcher

Honorable mention: Tragick Mick and Edwin Payne.

WARNING LONG RAMBLING!!

1 - Lemme be superficial first, her looks are simply iconic, i worship her hair and witch-core clothes and the way her powers are potrayed (those white globes, the three eyes, quick flashed) just make me go brwwww. And then there is hee character arc... which is *chef kiss* so, so good: she doesnt know who she is, she thinks people didnt really like her, she is sure her parents are looking for her, her first instict is to be mean, but then for what is she being mean for anyway, so she stops. She drags the boys from Big ol' London all the way to an small town in America just to save a little girl, because she is alone and scared. Her abusive demon ex, even after exorcised, is still haunting her. She offers her life to save an stranger she had just met (an stranger who had been kind, an stranger who had understood her, an stranger who had a place while she didn't). Her abusive demon ex shows that maybe she wasnt a good person after all. She misses her mom. She give away her powers (her strenght, her core) to be free from her abuser. She gets her power back, she buries her abusive demon ex alive in her mind (the place where he had her prisoner) with the help of her FAMILY (she didn't know who she was, she didn't know were she was from now she knows) she wrestles a thousand-year olds witch seconds after gaining her mind power back because she CAN AND SHE WINS. She has her memory back, she was an horrible person, her parents weren't looking for her (she missed her mother) and now she needs to go back home and she needs to make things right. Seriously what's there not love about her? Crystal Palace, please understand, you'll always be famous.

2 - Wait one second *close the door* *inhumans sounds* *open the door* okay now lets start. He is not the brain, he is the brawn, he is the protector. He couldn't protect himself. He died defending a boy he didn't even know, he died because he hated senseless violence, he died by the senseless violence. He fears being a bad person — he think he is a bad person, his father's son. He is terrified, so he'll lie, he'll smile. He was just a boy, he died young, he wanted to grow old, he hates to be dead, but he loves Edwin. He chose Edwin over Heaven — this boy, alone, died young and had been his light during the darkest, final, moment of Charles' life. It was an easy choice. I just really, really love Charles, because of all that, but also because he is charismatic af (all Jayden's hard work) and funny and he foes around with a fucking cricket bar, I should've started with that... he has a cricket bar, your Honour, I rest my case. And and I just love charachters with this """savior complex""", this responsibility of being alright to take care of others, of smile and lighting the mood because no one else will do that.

3 - she's an overworked work and that's my kinda shit. The whole point of her job is to protect and care for the lost children, and being honest to god I know she would shoot a kid right in the head if it meant finish her job and thats so fucked up and hyprocte of her and i just absolutely worship her. Also, her whole life views being changed because of a funny man she met inside of a whale is just--- I think she is underrated, and people are missing her angst potential, but I will not be the one to tell you how to write her because dude my english is going to shit as we speak.

4 - I know this is kinda dissapointing, but my whole reason is that she is Niko. That's it.

5 - She is a dyke running a butch shop, thats actually so cool I could die. On her first appearence I thought she would kill Crystal and the boys (again) and thats how I like my women. Also its really refreshing to seen that there is an adult who cares about these kids... the talks she had with Crystal and Niko, yk, she is so mature and smart and wants to help and she is like so cleary trying not to get attached and failinh tremendously, cmon she saw Crystal going to meet her abusive ex and was like "Nuh uh u aint going alone and I AM TAKING THIS MF CLEVER WITH ME" based af. Local lesbian accidentaly addopts four kids (two of which are dead)

Bonus: okay I feel like I gotta justify myself: I DO NOT HATE EDWIN, okay? I love him, he just didnt make the cut. And about Tragick Mick, cmon he is a goddammned (LITERALLY) seal and runs a funny little shop and saved Niko's life. We love him. We adore him. Tragick Mick may not have the sea, but he has the people!!

[weirdowithaquill]

We Need to Talk About Rebecca...

And we will, once I have finished editing my *seven-page thesis* on what went wrong with her in BWBA, what should have been done and how to rewrite this engine to give her a shot at actually being a main character in Thomas.

I will overanalyse you, Rebecca.

Because this engine had potential, and Mattel squandered it. It's time to put on my Rev. W. Awdry hat and do some character-building.

[cinamun]

Hi cinamun!

I'm cracking up over the Drake family dynamics like everyone else.

My ask is about this:

We know that Indya has the ability (from her level 10 Wellness skill) to appear by her children's side at a moment's notice. But there's something more...the sixth sense about when to appear (or disappear and let hubby deal, as the case may be).

Is there lore to explain this sixth sense and how does that relate to Jerriah's apparent inheritance of it?

Merry coming with SUPER DOPE lore questions that we all love!!! I love this question friend so thank you!! It started as just comedy, me being the goofball that I am and knowing Indya, why wouldn't she magically appear if her girl's are going through life-changing moments?

But then there was a point where writer-brain took over and in this essay I will.....

Anyone famliar with the story knows that Indya and her mother had a relationship that wasn't a good one, and that's putting it lightly. Indya's mother was not raising her and she was left to fend for herself from the time she was old enough to reach the counters to fill her starving belly with moldy bread and expired bologna. One could argue that she didn't really have a mother; which ultimately led to her not wanting children at all. The same could be said about Jerri, honestly, but Jerri grew up with a grandmother which was at least something.

Fast forward...

She has daughters now and keeping them safe is personal; becoming her mother and ruining them is her biggest fear (and still is). When you have this kind of trauma-response you become hyper-aware of situations that may put those girls in danger.

Indya's 6th sense, so to speak, is out of a fierce protection and love for her girls that she didn't have the privilege of experiencing and learned through the actions of mothering.

So when the youngest of her girls felt she couldn't be open and honest and ended up keeping something dangerous from her, it absolutely devastated her. She took it personally.

While this 6th sense is sharp with her daughters, it took awhile for her to figure it out with her son, but once she did...

The point in all of this, is that Indya's growth through motherhood was rooted in the fear of becoming her own mother, the fear of failure and the trauma of growing up the way she did, with the mother she had. In fact, her mother is where all of her insecurities lie; even if her mother has long since passed on.

They say sometimes trauma (and actions associated with the response to trauma) can be inherited. Generational trauma, if you will. I would say if Jerriah sensed that energy shift, there is a strong chance that she inherited more than just red hair from Jerri. Perhaps she, too, is hyper aware of mood and energy shifts because, let's face it, you have to be when lived the life that Jerri did.

[atlantis-just-drowned]

Okay I can't fucking take it anymore I need to lay all of the proofs on the table and figure out whether or not I'm actually crazy

This is not a mental health coming out post. Or maybe it is. Who fucking knows. I'm just trying to figure out whatever the fuck is going on with my brain.

I've been running around in circles for more than a year trying to find the truth while simultaneously denying it. Here I'm just going to list it all under the cut once and for all. And then, I don't know, I'll just hope for the best.

For most of my life I've always been experiencing conflicts "with myself", or my "conscience", or whatever I called it. I always felt cut in small parts, like there was something inside of me fighting against me

This has been a recurrent subject in my life. I started writing diaries at 11 years old and ever since then, there has been multiple entries, spread over several years through all of those diaries talking about "the little guys in my head", "the different parts of me", "the other half of me", "me and my conscience", etc, etc etc... I even wrote dialogues between them

I've been through a fair lot of traumas in my childhood. My coping mechanism at the time was to escape in my imagination, to invent worlds were I was someone else, with a different name and different personality, and I lived a different life. I thought there was a door in my wall that let me access to this "other dimension". I had a lot of imaginary friends. Basically I dissociated a lot

This one might be slightly less meaningful but I've had sudden personality/taste changes happening to me more than once through my life. When I was younger I suddenly stopped liking crepes and affirmed I never liked them when I very much did, though I can't remember ever liking the taste. My parents won't ever stop retelling this tale as they swear it happened so out-of-the-blue that they never understood what has happened to me. Later in middle school, I didn't like mangas and found them weird, until I woke up one morning and suddenly I loved them, without transition. It just hit me like a flash. More generally, I never truly felt like I was the same person through all of my life. It's like different me's existed at different periods, in cuts, and got replaced by another me after a while, but are still all existing inside of my head

Those changes can also happen on short periods of times. I'll start feeling weird and disconnected from my body, and behave/talk/walk/write differently from the usual. I had people asking me if I was intoxicated when I was completely sober, because I didn't "seem like myself". I had moments where I suddenly felt like an 8 years old child. I don't always recognize myself in the mirror. My gender change like the weather in a way where it's not mine, but it's like another gender overlaps my own. The pitch of my voice can also change

I never experienced black outs. I've seen people talk about the concept of "grey outs" which I recognize myself in, and more generally there's events or entire periods of my life I can't remember about, or barely, and in a way where I know the facts at an intellectual level but have no distinct, first-person memories of it. But no black outs. I'm always here but different, or floating above my body, but never absent

However, I do experience strong thoughts that aren't my own. Sometimes they're directly addressing to me. It's not voices but like very clear and distinct messages sent through my brain

I don't know where I'm going with this. I feel like an impostor and a bitch for even just talking about it. I know for certain that I don't have DID. As I said, I do not experience black outs and some other symptoms of this disorder, and I do not recognize myself entirely in the experience of DID systems.

Ever since I started giving more place to those 'parts', I started identifying distinct ones, with their own traits, quirks, personalities, vibes, etc. Close friends of mine also identified some of them over time. Some of them always had names that they identified with right away. But most importantly, they all have a "special goal/function/trait" that's specific to them, and for some of them, their origin can be traced way back in my childhood and their influence has been identified at different periods and in different aspects of my life

I came back later to realise I forgot to mention this, but I do experience depersonalisation and/or derealization a lot. I have stronger episodes when experiencing specific things but on a daily basis I'm almost always "not entirely here"

So what am I doing this post for? No fucking idea, honestly. Maybe so that I can't keep pretending like there's nothing happening. Maybe so that the people around me will understand a bit more what's going on with me. Maybe so that someone will tell me I'm not going crazy or faking it. The only thing I know is that if I don't post this now, I'm going to chicken out yet again and never be fucking honest about it. I'm kinda tired of ruminating the problem all alone, and if I don't reach out I'll never trust my own judgement on this issue. So let's just do this and see what happens.

[thunderboltfire]

Sera could be an example of how to make a terrible disservice to a character

An essay, by me.

I tend to be really cautious when the general public doesn’t like a video game character. Sometimes it’s just a specific aspect of them that tends to make people hate them - sometimes it’s even an unfortunate line, or a character doesn’t truly fit the setting, and even if they have very interesting, hidden side not many people get to see it. And sometimes just people jump on a bandwagon and hate for its own sake. I generally try to give characters a fair chance to get to know them.

That being said, I don’t really like Sera. I went through the full friendship route and throughout the majority of it, I felt that something’s off. It probably wasn’t the fact that her dialect wasn’t always well translated - she always seemed to stand out from the background, but not in the best way. I wondered what’s wrong exactly - she has some endearing qualities, she likes to have fun, she can pack a punch when needed. It bugged me for a long time, but finally, after thinking it through, I think I’ve got it.

The problem is twofold: one, her characterisation is inconsequential - and two, she doesn’t seem to fit the tone and overarching themes of DA:I.

Why do I think Sera was written in a way that doesn’t make her fit well into DA:I?

Well, what do we know about Sera?

She’s a great archer, she is skilled at guerilla warfare (especially urban guerilla warfare, if the Red Jennies’ general area of operation suggests anything), she’s an agent of a powerful (albeit decentralised) organisation, she’s a Robin Hood-esqe rogue and she’s all about having fun. That’s unfortunately where the problem in her characterisation begins. Sera sees the injustice and opposes it in many instances, but what she expresses as her main motive to joining the Inquistion is for the life to get back to what it was before the crisis, which may seem selfish on her part. She is usually acting rather consistently as a rebel to the established power dynamics, but she seems to know that she - or the Inquisitor, for the matter - doesn’t have the power to overthrow the current state of things. She craves change, but on her own terms. Her apparent conservatism (wanting for everything to be back to normal) is in fact the fear of the unknown more than the actual fear of change, but the execution of her character makes it look like she’s a walking contradiction. Her very personal sense of right and wrong, imbalanced by the unusual situation she’s found herself in, makes it pretty hard to predict her reactions. Her quick judgement, which undoubtedly was an asset for a Red Jenny put her at a disadvantage in a situation she doesn’t understand, and make her look completely unpredictable.

DA:I was often described as a game about politics, and the political themes seem to be more prevalent than in DA2, or even DA:O. Very often we hear that we have to secure the influence in a certain region, we have to negotiate, politically we have to be everyone’s best friend and hold everyone at a knifepoint - often in the same time. We have to get involved in the Game, whether we like it or not. Sera fits into it very weirdly, or rather, doesn’t fit in at all - put into a situation where you and the members of your inner circle have to maintain cold blood and consider the consequences, she’ll act in accordance to her own principles - that is, overthrow the board, or outright refuse to play by the rules. She’s got a heart in the right place, but logically speaking, she’d work way better as an agent, than as a member of an Inner Circle, where almost everyone knows and respects the stakes. Wherever You’d need to sow chaos and undermine the existing authority, You’d send Sera in and she’d do what she does best; instead, if You take her with You on any quest important for the main plot, she’ll be understandably dissatisfied, because while the Inquisition’s goals align with her own, its methods don’t.

That’s especially frustrating, because her rebellious attitude isn’t in itself a flaw. You could just put her in Kirkwall and she’d do great - in a cast of intense characters who drive the story and are for the better or worse trapped in a terrible city, a street smart archer who's pulling the strings behind the scenes to help the poor would be an instant favourite. Hawke’s crew is a walking trouble with law and authority already, they already have a pirate queen and an important figure in the local *cough cough* Merchant Guild onboard, and I’d love to see Sera’s point of view on the situation. I feel that practically any installment of Dragon Age would be a better playground for a character like her except DA:I. I would even argue that if her and Sebastian switched places, both characters would benefit from it. In Kirkwall, place with rampant social stratification, Sera would definitely have a lot to do - her personal history and her difficult relationship with her identity as an elf could be explored in a more complex way. Instead in the Inquisition, Sebastian’s arc would allow the Inquisitor to get deeper into the meanders of Freemarcher politics. That’s also not to say that there ISN’T a way to fit a rebellious rogue into a politics-heavy, high-stakes narration. Thronebreaker does it amazingly well, making Gascon a fan favourite and a left hand of main character who does the job brilliantly. The difference is that despite being a comic relief at times, his personality traits align with what could make him a respected leader of a bandit group in the first place. He is always prepared, he always has a backup plan, he knows how to negotiate and threaten. He can be selfish, ruthless and cruel - but at the same time, he knows how to gain and maintain common people’s support and he will react if he thinks the main character is going against their interest. He will always do things his way, he can be an exhausting opponent or a formidable ally.

What could Sera’s intended role in the Inquisition be, either plot-wise or narration-wise?

Speaking from the plot point of view, she’s a high ranking agent of a widespread secret organisation - it’s implied she has access to a lot of intelligence and she has quite a bit of favours to call, if she needs to. This makes her a perfectly reasonable asset for an Inquisition. However, there’s two problems here: one, her characterisation as an impulsive, trigger happy chaotic neutral rogue doesn’t fit someone who would work at the high levels of a secret organisation. And second, her being a Red Jenny seems terribly underutilised. Outside of a personal quest and a few errands at the War Table she doesn’t feel like someone with actual influence in the world - for sure not more than Varric, and he plays his influence down on purpose.

Narration-wise the important angle of Sera’s presence in the Inquisition could be being a voice of a common person, a representation of common folk’s pent-up anger over suffered injustice. She might be a character reminding the Inquisitor who they are really fighting for. Except that her treatment in-game makes this sort of narration ridicoulous, because young and inexperienced, she’s constantly dismissed and her claims seem to be more of a personal angle than an actual representation of wider norms.

The majority of people in-game also isn’t shown as valuing her input - the Inquisitor can dismiss her anytime, she’s considered a questionable ally at best by the advisors, she’s repeatedly described as an unpredictable wildcard in-and out-of game. Her supposed influence as a Red Jenny is almost never discussed or agknowledged. She seems out of her depth, and she isn’t easily persuaded. She seems to be a paragon of self-determination, but she makes no effort to understand those different from her (e.g. the Dalish inquisitor, the mages, or Cole). Her judgement is rarely the Okham’s razor you’d expect it to be if her role was to provide a sort of an “outsider’s perspective” to the issues You face.

It’s not to say that her characterisation doesn’t make sense - she seems like a believable portrayal of what does it mean to be a young person in a world full of injustice, where crisis never ends. But in context, she both seems like a person who’s notably difficult to cooperate with, and a character which is weirdly static in comparison to the others. Her arc is supposed to be about overcoming the consequences of lies she’s been told when she was young, but at the end of it her worldview, particularly her approach to elves - those from alienage or Dalish - doesn’t change at all. It seems to me that she has a lot of unresolved issues and for sure there is a lot of opportunity for character development in there, but it. isn’t. utilised. It isn’t only limited to Sera - in the Inquisition there’s more characters who don’t really change in the course of the game, but she’s maybe the most glaring example because her relatively young age and new experiences should make for a pretty dynamic character. In this way, the writers not only made disservice to her by the choosing to include her in a heavily political plot, but also did her a disservice because she seems disengaged from the player’s influence - she can applaud our choices or be upset with them, and she’s an occasional comic relief, but the interaction with the player doesn’t influence her otherwise.

[a-crowcats-nonsense]

PRSK furry!AU details

not everything is decided yet, but I figured why not type out what I do know?

VOCALOIDS - have to be protogen designs. Fits the synthetic vibe! Their correlated numbers appear on their shoulder displays, and their chest displays have “subtitles” for song lyrics they’re singing! (These don’t need to be added when drawing them!! This is just a funky detail!)

the particulars, so far:

MIKU- Bunny protogen! Big fluffy teal ears take the place of her twintails :3 (don’t quite know how I’ll make WxS Miku work with this, because of her being a cat hybrid…)

LEN- Dog protogen! Spiky fur, bat-type ears (you know what I mean, the triangle sticking up ones). Eyes are plus signs typically!

RIN- Dog protogen! Rounded fur, retriever-style ears. Eyes are minus signs typically!

(Len and Rin’s eyes can cycle through mathematics signs, but they typically stay with their assigned ones. This is inspired by a certain lyric in Bring It On, and I want to animate out the specific cycle at some point!)

EVERYONE ELSE- I do fear I don’t have details for them yet! Drop suggestions (if you have them) in the replies, tags, reblogs, whatever!

VBS:

AN- She’s a wolf/husky!

Kohane- She’s some sort of rodent! I don’t want to just assign her hamster, that’s too generic… I’VE GOT IT, JERBOA!

AKITO- He’s a fox. 100% fox vibes from that man.

TOYA- Raven, but I’m thinking maybe a griffin-type design with him? At least giving him feather-ear-tufts (throwing out the realism in favor of expressiveness)

WXS:

EMU- Otter! She is so very otter coded

RUI- While a part of me wants to make him a stingray, I’m leaning more towards a hybrid of macaw and calico cat! I’m going to draw out this design idea sometime

TSUKASA- He’s a tiger shark!

NENE- Bnnuy. Absolute rabbit.

MMJ:

MINORI- Doggirl of all time, we’re assigning her Xoloitzcuintli as the breed she’s based off of! Due to her being hairless it’s factored into why she’s ignored at idol auditions

AIRI- Serval!

SHIZUKU- Jellyfish. Trust me on this one

HARUKA- Leopard seal. This is a bit of a cruel joke with her canon enjoyment of penguins, but it’s all that comes to mind at the moment!

L/N:

SAKI: Golden retriever/daschund type doggo. “But she’s related to Tsukasa who’s a shark” sharks are called dogfish sometimes. Checkmate.

SHIHO- grey fox!

HONAMI- Little Brown bat! I love bats :)

ICHIKA- I don’t know, honestly… I think she’d work well as a lion!

N25:

MAFUYU- I don’t. I don’t know. I know she has a rabbit motif but I don’t think that’s fitting for her to be, yknow?

MIZUKI- absolute cat. Domestic cat, speckled coat :)

ENA- Absolute cat part 2, except I think she’d be a fisher cat or some other wildcat species

KANADE- She’s a dove, I think! Might change this later.

ALL OF THESE ARE NOT SET IN STONE UNTIL I GET GOOD DESIGNS DOWN!!! I’M JSUT SPITBALLING IDEAS HERE

Anyways yeah! Feel free to draw your ideas for designs/draw some of the designs I’ve already canonized, just tag me when ya post them :3

Also! You can suggest, critique, comment, whatever, I’d love input on this!!

If you read all this you get Rui image from my camera roll.

[annalyticall]

Thoughts on Attack on Titan

Me being 10 years late to things, I was recently convinced to watch Attack on Titan and I ended up binge-watching the entire anime (and reading the final manga chapters) these last two weeks. I had purposefully been dragging my feet about watching this show since I had heard so much controversy surrounding it; that it was sexist, pro-fascist, pro-nazi, pro-imperialist, pro-propaganda, and heavily anti-Semitic. All pretty good reasons to stay away from something, I think.

But then I saw a video about how the criticisms leveraged against it were not quite so black-and-white, and how the show was more complex than those labels gave it credit for. Admittedly, that piqued my interest. I want to come to my own conclusions about the media I consume, so I decided to watch it with an open mind and a discerning eye.

And boy did I discern... a lot.

I am recording my very very lengthy opinions about Attack on Titan and its manga ending under the cut, mostly so that if anyone asks how I feel about certain things portrayed in the show, I can reference them to this post. Here's a quick table of contents:

The Themes

The Good

The Bad

The Problems

The Characters

Conclusion (and why Jean is the best character you can't change my mind)

Anime and Manga spoilers ahead.

The Themes

Attack on Titan tackles a lot of different themes throughout the course of the story. Possibly too many. Right now, I'm listing the big ones I noticed here because I will be referencing back to them later. Also note I am stating these themes as they are presented in the text, not as my own personal beliefs.

The human desire to create meaning in life and death. Does dying for a cause give life meaning? If the cause is hopeless, would dying for that cause be in vain? Is it enough to know that the living will continue your legacy after death? Does honoring the dead give their life meaning? Is the gift of life itself meaningless if not used to ensure humanity's ongoing survival? Is it enough to simply exist? Characters that most embody this theme: Zeke, Eren, Armin, Jean, Levi, Hange, Erwin, Historia, Ymir (of the Cadets), Marlow.

Everyone is shackled to a dream. Does the desire to fulfill a dream make you a slave to it? Will devoting your life to a dream of freedom make you paradoxically a slave to the very ideal? Will the hope of achieving a dream drive people to do terrible things they never would have otherwise? Is true freedom in the ability to let go of a long-held dream? Characters that most embody this theme: Erwin, Eren, Levi, Kenny, Armin, Jean.

The corrupting power of love and loyalty. Similar to an enslaving dream, will blind devotion to someone (in a romantic, platonic, subordinate, or familial relationship) drive that person to do terrible things just to be with them or make them happy? How far can that love go? Is blind devotion even love? Is it wise to love if it creates fatal weakness? Characters that most embody this theme: Mikasa, Armin, Eren, Zeke, Annie, Reiner, Falco, Historia, Ymir (of the Cadets), Ymir (The Founder).

The cycle of violence is endless. As long as more than one person is alive on Earth, there will always be conflict. Is it worth fighting to break the cycle when the cycle is inevitable? Is it necessary to perpetuate the cycle in order to survive in a world that forces violence? Is humanity worthy of saving if saving it demands the loss of one's own humanity? Characters that most embody this theme: Erwin, Eren, Armin, Reiner, Jean, Floch, Hange, Levi.

The pursuit of truth and wonder are the driving forces behind humanity's ability to work together. Propaganda and the obstruction of truth might work to pacify the populace short-term but will always be defeated once people put in the effort to truly understand others and the world they live in. The promise of discovery and truth are invaluable sources of hope and ingenuity. Characters that most embody this theme: Hange, Armin, Erwin.

People are people. Everyone is capable of great evil or great kindness, regardless of what nation, class, or race they were born into. Everyone has strengths and everyone has weaknesses. Everyone is influenced by their own hopes and dreams. The recognition of these innate similarities is crucial for forgiveness and acceptance across boundaries. Characters that most embody this theme: Reiner, Jean, Eren, Armin, Sasha, Gabi, Falco.

There is no accurate measure of good and evil. Being a "good person" is subjective, based more on personal goals and cultural ideals than on a base standard for "good." When faced with a difficult decision, perhaps it is best to choose whatever option will cause the least regret, a measure that is unique to everyone depending on an individual's values and on unknown outcomes. Live a life you can be proud of. Characters that most embody this theme: Armin, Annie, Levi, Jean, Eren, Reiner, Gabi, Ymir (of the Cadets), Historia

As you might have noticed, I chose to summarize many of these themes in a list of questions, and for good reason: oftentimes, the theme is raising a question but is almost never interested in giving it a straightforward answer. Instead, AOT will often raise a question, and over the course of the story, you get to come to your own conclusions depending on how the characters act. For example, I listed Jean as a character that embodies "meaning in life and death." Does Jean give Marco's death meaning by honoring his memory and values each time he's faced with a moral dilemma? That's up for the audience (and Jean) to decide.

Compared to other shonen that tackles similar themes and questions, this freedom of interpretation was novel for me, and for the most part, I loved it. Fullmetal Alchemist is the only other shonen I can think of that I've seen that touches on similar subject matter, but the tone of FMA is not nearly as dark, bleak, or ambiguous. While I also love FMA, the world of AOT is much more harrowing to navigate, and I found it exhilarating to have my preconceptions of its world challenged at every turn. Such a thematic approach felt grounded since real life is also not so easy to navigate. Unfortunately, this also has a glaring downside, which I will discuss in my "The Problems" section.

The Good

The first 3 seasons and almost everything that entails. To be quite honest I have very little to criticize about this show before the basement reveal. The pacing is almost perfect and I was always on the edge of my seat wanting to know more. The mysteries are intriguing and, upon slowly getting more and more answers, the narrative either only raised more tantalizing questions or completely recontextualized previous scenes, constantly giving the show new breath. The action is exciting, the stakes are heart-poundingly high, the losses are devastating, and the gore is graphic and stomach-churning but I think it necessary to absorb the horrifying and hopeless nature of the setting, which serves to heighten the few victories the characters actually do get to experience. There also isn't much of The Problems yet in these seasons.

The music. The soundtrack is undoubtedly one of the best aspects of this show and is quality throughout.

Animation. While I prefer the fluid and expressive animation of the first three seasons compared to MAPPA's comparatively stiffer animation of the final season, MAPPA still gave plenty of jaw-dropping sequences for the most impactful moments.

A tragic, queer, CANON romance. The fact that Ymir is canonically lesbian is amazing to me if only because I haven't watched a shonen yet where one of the main cast is actually lesbian, let alone has a significant portion of screen time devoted to establishing her unambiguous feelings for another woman who also reciprocates her feelings. AND THEN their romance ends tragically in-universe not because it's gay but because of narrative circumstances that were simply beyond their control or understanding. "My only regret is not marrying you." How romantic is that?

Female character design. Specifically all the big noses. As a big-nose-haver it makes me happy to see women have big noses and still being seen as pretty. That, paired with the fact that women are hardly ever sexualized and are often portrayed just as strong if not stronger than the men was nice to see after being exposed to so many infantilizing and sexualizing shonen tropes. That said, there could have been more diversity in body shape and skin tone.

The setting (of Paradis). I am going to stress here that I strictly like the world-building of Paradis, which is the main setting of the first three seasons. Marley and the rest of the world after Season 3? I'll get into that later.

Erwin vs. Armin. I consider Levi's decision to save Armin over Erwin to be the true thematic climax of this story, and I thought it was exceptionally well done. I've seen endless arguments about whether or not saving Armin was the right choice, so I'll throw in my two cents: if you think Levi should have saved Erwin, you are Missing The Point. In this moment, Levi, a character who fights for the greater good but is not quite as pragmatic as Erwin and who has a deep hope for humanity's future but is not quite as idealistic as Armin must make an emotional choice here, not a tactical one. Maybe saving Erwin might have been better for the Scouts, but the truth is Erwin was selfish, and Levi had already come to terms with this when he told his old commander to "give up on your dream and charge to your death." Armin, on the other hand, had a pure and selfless dream about the world outside the walls, and that is what Levi decided to value for humanity's future. That is the symbolic meaning of that decision, not whether or not Erwin would have been a tactically better commander.

It is enough to simply exist. Manga spoilers for the final chapters ahead. I said this was a question raised by one of the main themes of the story, "Is it enough to simply exist?", and I was pleasantly surprised that the ending gave it an answer through the conversation Armin has with Zeke. After so much deliberation about genocide, sterilization, war, the inherent and unbreakable cycle of violence, and so many other depressing themes surrounding the depraved nature of humanity, having the main takeaway for the series be "we were put on this Earth simply to enjoy it and to enjoy each other" was a cathartic release. I know I'm probably going to cry when that bit is animated.

The Bad

The frustrating thing that is Eren Yeager. I suppose this is biased but I really do not gel with Eren. Even in his Season 1-3 era I did not like him and his one-track angry boy mind, only ever finding him tolerable during the Uprising arc when he got a healthy dose of humility which he immediately ruined with his pitiful self-flagellation in the midst of a dire titan battle but I digress. This characterization does make a whole lot more sense though when he enters Season 4, when all of his personality traits are only slightly twisted in order to make him the villain, ala Walter White. Didn't make him any less frustrating.

The frustrating thing that is Mikasa Ackerman. She started out great. Then Eren turned into a titan for the first time and things quickly went downhill. After that, it seems like her character was retroactively changed from being the stoic and protective older sister to being the blindingly devoted and fussy love interest. I might have been okay with it if she had ANY other defining character traits, or hell, even any relationships outside of Eren and Armin. Manga spoilers, but she doesn't even have a strong relationship with Jean, who she apparently marries in the epilogue. Between Eren and Mikasa being two of the three main characters, I unfortunately felt very little towards them which was a not-so-small problem in my enjoyment of the series.

The humor is... fine. I get it, a show as dark as Attack on Titan probably shouldn't try to be funny, nor would I expect it to be. Still, the few attempts at humor it did have fell flat for me, especially when a lot of it leaned on Sasha's potato and meat gags (and a really uncomfortable torture gag after the Uprising Arc? Hey, what was that about? That was kinda fucked up, right?) Now that I think about it, the hardest I ever laughed while watching this show was when Reiner nonchalantly tells Eren that he and Bertolt are the Armor and Colossal Titans simply because I wasn't expecting the biggest bombshell reveal of the story thus far to be so casually dropped like that.

The Titan mechanics got so fucking convoluted. Don't get me wrong I love a good mystery and I don't necessarily mind the supernatural time-warping twists that the Titan storyline took up to a point. It's just that the story kept adding so many conditions to Titan powers and lore that it was getting hard to keep track of it all. Okay, so the Colossal Titan will create an unavoidable nuke during transformation even though it clearly didn't do that at the raid on Trost, sure. Okay, so Reiner can survive a fatal injury to his person as long as he manages to transfer his consciousness to the Titan body first, sure. Okay, so Eren can't awaken the Founding Titan's ability unless he's in contact with someone of royal blood, sure. Okay, so the Founding Titan's abilities can alter the biology of all Eldians, and also control all Titans, and also deactivate all Titan hardening, and also impose the will of the king onto all its future royal successors, but it's somehow NOT the Titan with the power to see the future? Sure? Okay, so Falco inherited the Jaw Titan, but because he was originally turned with Zeke's spinal fluid, he ALSO inherited aspects of the Beast Titan even though Zeke is still the Beast Titan and it's never been established that the spinal fluid used for the original Titan transformation affected the inheritance of Titan shifter abilities? Why not, at this point.

Uprising Arc and its overly simplistic military coup. I didn't dislike the arc as a whole, but it was a very lengthy detour from the main objectives the series was already on track for and added to the repetition of Eren getting kidnapped. Additionally, I thought the coup to overthrow the old government was too... easy? It was really only made up of two setups: one to expose the corruption of some random military police guy to the press and turn public opinion in favor of the Scouts, and one to expose the government's selfishness to the military commanders enough to convince them to depose their current leaders and pardon the Scouts. Then the Scouts essentially say "Hey Historia here just killed a Titan and has royal blood (trust us) so she's going to be the queen now. Please ignore the fact she is also a Scout and therefore could easily be a puppet queen for the military branch that was until very recently public enemy number one" and everyone just kinda accepts this. I don't know, it didn't do much to sell me on realism in a world that had done so up until that point.

Wow, the stakes are getting pretty high, I wonder if... WAIT, 80%?! That was kind of my reaction to the whole manga finale. I don't mind high stakes, but when we're talking about the horrific genocide of 80% of humanity at the hands of our main character, uh, that scale is a little hard to grasp. This also feeds into The Problems, which I'll get into later, but all in all, I think after a certain point the story just got too big for me to stay believably invested in what was actually happening.

Endgame plot thread irrelevance (especially for the female characters). Why did Historia get a whole story arc just to be sidelined and pregnant for the whole rest of the story? What happened to Yelena? What happened to Mikasa's relationship with the Azumabito clan? What's the deal with Ymir? So many things were rushed at the end that it was disappointing to see so much setup for very little payoff. Unfortunately, the female characters seemed to get the brunt of this.

The Problems

Okay, so this section is basically why I made this post to begin with. I want to address all of the criticisms I've seen for Attack on Titan and give my honest opinion on them because, yes, I do think it's more complex than I've seen people give it credit for, but neither is it free of harmful interpretations either.

On the topic of being Pro-Imperialist, Pro-Nazi, Pro-Facsist, and Pro-Propaganda: Attack on Titan is positioned against all these things. Just because a media depicts something doesn't mean it's condoning or endorsing it. Imperialism, fascism, and propaganda are all present in the story but are very often forces that the main characters must fight against. It might not go as far as to say "military bad" but it definitely says "war bad, genocide bad, euthanasia bad, blind devotion to one's country bad" and a whole host of other issues that it does not depict in a favorable light. Now, the viewpoints of the mangaka might be in question, and I can't say much about the way he supposedly views Imperialist Japan. I'm just saying, in the context of the show, I don't see an unquestioning approval of imperialism being portrayed here.

On the topic of Sexism: eh, maybe. It feels weird to be so nonchalant about that but to be honest, it's not prevalent enough to stand out compared to other shonen. Female characters might not always see fully fleshed-out arcs, but neither are they handled in a way I would deem sexist other than the very strange exception of Mikasa's one-sided obsession with Eren somehow mirroring the "love" a child bride sex slave had for her abuser 2000 years ago. That said, strong characters like Annie, Ymir (of the Cadets), and Gabi manage to have fairly compelling motivations and growth while also being love interests. There's really no fan service to speak of, and some of them even get to be gay. So, you know, I'll take it.

On the topic of Anti-Semitism (Disclaimer: I am not Jewish): yeahhhhhhh... so, up until the end of Season 3, I was confused about this claim. I mean, there were Titans, mindless man-eating monsters that could resemble the blood libel spread about Jewish people, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch. Besides, while the walled city is evidently based on 19th-century Germany, there isn't really a divide between the people who live there and the people who can turn into Titans; given the right conditions, any human character in the show could potentially turn into a Titan, so I didn't see the problem. If anything, I thought it was just a modified take on the zombie apocalypse genre.

Then the basement reveal happened, where it's revealed the walled city we had been following the last 3 seasons wasn't actually the last bastion of humanity as both the audience and the cast once believed; it is actually an island where distinct people called Eldians fled to escape the persecution they faced for their unique ability to turn into Titans. Turns out the rest of the world is populated by many diverse cultures who all hate the Eldians for their ancient Titan-enabled crimes against humanity. The Eldians who aren't trapped on the island of Paradis live in the gated ghettos of the Nazi-Germany-coded nation of Marley and are forced to wear star-embroidered armbands to denote their subhuman status.

Okay. Yikes, I thought. But I still gave it a chance, because as I mentioned before, just because something is depicted in media doesn't mean it's being supported or condoned. I was hoping that, at some point, the claim that Eldians committed atrocities with the Titans or the claim that only Eldians can turn into Titans would be proven wrong. Neither of these hopes came to fruition. It's revealed that Eldians did a lot of good with their Titan powers, true, but they also waged endless warfare in the name of a King that enslaved them. So, while they weren't really to blame, they certainly did commit the crimes that earned the world's ire.

This is a problem. If the imagery of the armbands and the WW2 ghettos were never involved, perhaps I could give the story the benefit of the doubt and see the Eldians as a fictional race created for the purpose of illustrating the cycle of violence and the need to relate to each other as humans first. But the problem is, they are very explicitly compared to Jewish people, thus insinuating, whether intentionally or not, that Jewish people do have these monstrous qualities and did commit crimes that earned them the oppression they continue to face when in reality, they did nothing to deserve it.

As an additional "yikes," there's also the questionable existence of the Tyber family, the only Eldian family in Marley allowed to have wealth and political influence. It's revealed that the Tybers have essentially been pulling Marley's strings the whole time, which... wow, really doesn't do much for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that Jewish people are actually in control of everything, huh. Thankfully, the Tyber storyline is short-lived, but then there's the Yeagerists, a fascist Eldian party that wants to counter-genocide the entire world before it can genocide Eldians. Triple yikes. Let's throw in Zeke's plan for forced sterilization against his own people for a solid quadruple yikes.

However, there are also important distinctions to make between Eldians and Jewish people that are in the story's favor. While the Eldian people of Marley are mistreated and considered subhuman, Marley still puts in the effort to brainwash them into thinking they are the "good" Eldians in order to earn their unconditional loyalty and turn them into frontline soldiers in their war to conquer other nations and the island of Paradis, something that doesn't really mirror Nazi Germany and gives us a reason to sympathize with the Eldians who were once the "bad guys" of Season 1-3. There's also the fact that 95% of the show's main cast IS Eldian, and up until the basement reveal we've only known them as human. Everything until that point has essentially served to make us identify with Eldians more than anyone else. While the rest of the world may dehumanize them, we the audience react negatively to any mention of them being less than human because we've only ever seen them fight to survive in a world where they thought they were humanity's last hope. We want to see them make it out of this alive.

And here's where my internal conflict with the show lies; it would be so much better if it cut out the WW2 imagery. Sure, there would still be plenty of subtext that could lead people to compare Eldians to Jewish people, but it wouldn't be so distractingly obvious and spur additional real-world comparisons where there aren't any. The sudden jump to 20th-century Germany is also somewhat jarring and I wouldn't have minded if Marley was based more on just another nation of the same era rather than a 100-year jump forward of the same setting (though it does make in-universe sense, what with Paradis being 100 years behind technologically but I digress). Basically, I think a LOT of the story's problems with probably-unintentional-but-still-present anti-semitism could have been avoided if the war and race allegories weren't given the same tact and grace as a David Cage game.

But now that brings me to what I think is Attack on Titan's fatal flaw: thematic ambiguity. "But Anna," you may say, "you said the freedom of interpretation is what you loved about its themes." You're right, I did say that. I still do. But ambiguity is a double-edged sword: it gives the audience freedom to derive unique meaning from the text and connect with it in deep, personal ways, but on the other hand, if a theme is too ambiguous, the author runs the risk of either telling a meaningless story or telling a story that conveys an unintended meaning. I think an author must have SOME intention with a theme if it is to be included, and must provide some sort of guide (usually with a character or two) to point the audience in the right direction. I'll give an example of what I mean for both instances in Attack on Titan.

For an example of a well-executed ambiguous theme, I'll turn to the question "Is humanity worthy of saving if saving it demands the loss of one's own humanity?" that I listed under the "cycle of violence" umbrella. Specifically, this question is raised after the Battle of Stonhess, where Erwin allows a Titan battle to rage in the middle of a populated area for the slim chance he could capture Annie alive and extract information from her. This decision cost hundreds of innocent lives, and worse of all, Annie was of little use to him. Erwin stands behind his decision for the greater good and Armin rationalizes the battle as a net gain, but Jean presents Armin with a counterargument: "If it's that easy to let the fight turn us all into monsters, maybe we don't deserve to win." Still, we aren't given an outright answer to who's right and who's wrong here. Instead, the guide we are given is in the way ideologically-opposed characters like Erwin and Jean are treated by the story: Jean maintains his humanity, minimizes civilian casualties whenever possible, and in the end, is left with few regrets. Erwin, on the other hand, feels the weight of all the lives he callously sacrificed in the name of a "greater good," which we learn was perhaps more selfish than he let on. Upon resigning himself to death, he laments all the innocents who died at his command. It is through these characters that we learn who, ultimately, was in the right, and what that theme is trying to tell us (also coincidentally applying to the theme "live a life you can be proud of.")

For an example of a poorly-executed ambiguous theme, I'll turn to the question "Is it necessary to perpetuate the cycle of violence in order to survive in a world that forces violence?" that I also listed under the "cycle of violence" umbrella. This question is perhaps no more apparent than when the main characters are faced with the terrific power of the Rumbling, basically a Titan-powered WMD Eren uses to preemptively wipe out humanity before it can inevitably attack Paradis. While many characters deliberate the ethics of this, there are two characters who have starkly different viewpoints: we have Floch, a Yeagerist who is in full-hearted support of the attack and is uninterested in saving human lives if they are not Paradis Eldians, and we have Hange, who despite being a Paradis Eldian beats an impassioned fist against a table and delivers the rather on-the-nose line "Genocide is wrong!"

So who's right? Well, anyone with any sort of media literary sense will say "Hange, obviously." Because Hange is portrayed as a good person (usually) and Floch is portrayed as a villain (usually). The problem is both these characters fight valiantly in the name of their cause and incidentally die in the same scene while imparting their wishes to the heroes for how they want the world to be. Anyone watching who harbors even a fraction of Floch's nationalism might see that and say, "Floch was in the right. He righteously died for his country and he almost won against an impossible enemy." There's also the problem that Hange does not give an alternative answer to the Rumbling and even admits they don't have one, they just know the Rumbling is wrong, which doesn't do anything to add to the theme in question. Unfortunately, the Rumbling is presented as the only reliable line of self-defense for Paradis, as it's already established that diplomacy has almost no chance of working and that the only other plan is, of all things, sterilizing the Eldian people to appease the world that wants them dead with as little bloodshed as possible. What would have been the only other recourse, the order of a partial Rumbling to wipe out the world's military bases, is immediately taken off the table when it's revealed Eren never had any intention of doing that. Therefore, the story doesn't give us any answer to this question at all, since the characters never get to find an alternate solution for themselves and are forced to simply stop the Rumbling before it can kill too many people despite the risk of dying in the process or play along with Eren's predetermined plan. For a story so bent on saying "genocide is wrong" it does a weirdly good job of presenting it as a survival tactic.

Now, I wouldn't normally have that much of a problem if a story fumbled a theme or two. Not everything has to land perfectly. That said, Attack on Titan NEEDED to deliver these themes clearer than it did, because of one major reason: it was dealing with questions involving fascism, genocide, war, and eugenics. You should not casually raise these issues as a backdrop to a theme that can't be delivered on, because then you run the risk of attracting people who very much are pro-fascist, pro-genocide, pro-war, and pro-eugenics and will blatantly misinterpret everything in the text in order to warp it and fit their worldview (a risk I think FMA managed to avoid by being very blunt with where it stood on those same issues). On the flip side, you'll also repel people who otherwise might have loved the story because at some point they heard someone say "Oh yeah Attack on Titan is awesome, the Yeagerists are cool and I agree with the main character's plan for genocide," and rightfully be put off from that. Then they'll turn around and tell the next person, "Hey, don't watch that, I heard it's pro-fascist and pro-genocide," and that person will go "Oh thanks I didn't know that, I'll stay away from it," and that person will be me for the last ten years.

The Characters

Eren and Mikasa: I'm lumping these two together because I already talked about them at length, but I will say, for being the two main characters on which the finale hinged, I think they were both too simplistic to fully deliver on any of the complex themes they represented. Hell, when listing all the themes each character embodied, I only listed Mikasa under one of them, which is not great for a deuteragonist. Not only that, but Mikasa didn't even really deliver on her one theme: she broke the Titan curse by "letting go of her enslaving love for Eren," but did she really? She kissed and then absconded with his decapitated head to give him a proper burial, then returned each year to his grave with Jean and her family (who remained faceless) to leave a flower behind for him. I get it, he was important to her as a childhood friend and that alone means she should try to remember him despite the monster he turned into, but the framing of this suggests she never really let go of him and was shackled to his memory even as she tried to move on.

Armin: The thing about Armin is that while I ultimately think he's the heart of the story and the main driving force for good (as evidenced by the fact he's the only character I listed under ALL the themes I mentioned earlier), he also reads more like a symbol than a character. That's fine, a character doesn't need to go through an arc to be good, but for me, personally, a character in this kind of setting needs some form of growth for me to form an attachment to them. I'm not just talking about how Armin steadily grows okay with murder because that still doesn't do much to change his rosy outlook on life. The most excited I ever got about Armin's development was when he manipulated Bertholdt into thinking Annie was being tortured because holy shit that's kinda dark for Armin and I thought maybe his strategic mindset was going to start getting the better of his morals, but then that's never really touched on again. It's because I was never quite sure what the rhyme or reason was behind his actions that I found myself disconnected from him as a character, despite being inspired by him as a symbol.

Jean: My favorite character and a sorely underrated one at that. Won't say anything more about him here because I'm dedicating it to the Conclusion.

Levi: Second favorite character. Back when Attack on Titan's popularity was at its peak, I would see Levi on my dash all the time and I would roll my eyes thinking he was just another brooding anime bad boy the girls were fawning over. But I get it now. Yeah, he can brood, and yeah, he can be a bad boy as an ex-criminal who is no stranger to violence, but most of all he's compassionate. He cares deeply about the lives of his comrades and almost never values the "greater good" when decisions are left up to him. Granted, I think he becomes a little one-note after the Erwin vs Armin choice when he resolves that his only motivation from now on will be killing Zeke, but you know, after everything Zeke put him through, I think he earned it.

Hange: Third favorite character. They injected much-needed energy and sincerity into the story right from the start, and they only became more complex as the story went on and circumstances forced more and more responsibility onto them. I'm also glad that, while they are a good and moral character, they also don't mull over hard decisions that a veteran soldier probably wouldn't mull over. If worse comes to worst, they know they may have to resort to torture or violence to protect their comrades and the pursuit of truth. Still, they almost never push this any further than necessary, unlike Erwin before them.

Reiner: Fourth favorite character. I had basically no opinion on Reiner until Season 2 when he pushed Connie out of the way of a Titan's mouth and I thought "he's kinda cool." And then so so so much happens after that. I almost never knew how to feel about him. Is he the bad guy? He's killed so many people, he has to be. But then, why do I still like him? Why do I feel so bad for him? Season 4 only added to those mixed feelings, showing him to be suicidal and suffering from PTSD after all the violence he inflicted when he was just a child soldier. I think most of the themes about "people are people" is best illustrated in Reiner, and how he is able to overcome the pain of life through his dedication to the next generation and to the former friends he had hurt in the past.

Ymir (of the Cadets): Fifth favorite character. Like Reiner, I didn't really have any opinion on her until Season 2. While her contribution to the story is brief, it did a whole lot. Her backstory is technically our first introduction to a world outside the walls which also introduced a whole new mystery. Also, her love for Historia was probably the most genuine example of romantic love I can point to in the entire story, and the most emotionally touching one at that. She's also the one who introduces the theme "live a life you can be proud of" verbatim, which proves to be important for everyone.

Sasha and Connie: Truth is, I don't really have any favorites after Ymir, and how I feel about everyone else is some variation on neutral (except Floch). As for Sasha and Connie, I'm throwing them in the same bucket of "likable-enough comic-relief characters that have some semblance of a character arc but not nearly enough to justify their screentime." People might hate me for this, but I actually think Sasha contributed more to the narrative when she was dead than she did when she was alive. That doesn't mean I wasn't sad when she died, though.

Erwin: People might hate me for this too, but I think Erwin is overrated. I think many dudebro fans see him as the peak representation of heroic masculinity, as an unflinching and at times ruthless commander who takes charge and shows no weakness. That is not true. It's revealed Erwin does have a weakness, a selfish drive to redeem his father's suspicions about the outside world, a drive that makes him fear his own premature death, in the end. True, that drive has paved the way for the Scouts to clear impossible hurdles but also has it led to many senseless and brutal deaths that the story does not intend to justify. Erwin is flawed, incredibly so, and I wish more people could see that.

Historia: I had no opinion of her in Seasons 1-2, even during the love story she had with Ymir. It wasn't until the Uprising arc that she grew on me, as she started to mature beyond her "Disney princess" persona that had previously seemed so out of place in a story like this. That said, after she got pregnant in Season 4, I was disappointed to see that there wasn't much of a point to her character anymore despite being the literal queen.

Annie: I wanted to like Annie. I wanted so badly to like Annie. That's really only for aesthetic reasons because when the show was at its peak I saw her on my dash and fell in love with her as a fellow short blonde girl with a big nose and a name that starts with Ann. After getting to know her character... well, I don't dislike her. I think she served her role in the story well enough. She's just fairly simple once you learn her motivation, and she's hard to get attached to if you don't like emotionally-constipated characters.

Bertholdt: Oh, Berry. Unfortunately, every feeling I could have had for him I already felt 5x more for Reiner, so Berry became rather redundant. Also, his constant stare unnerved me. I did feel bad when he died though. RIP Berry.

Marlow: He didn't have a huge part in the story, but I think he was significant if only for one moment: the second before his death when he thinks of Hitch. Here we are given an everyman who wanted to rise to his calling and dedicate himself to the greater good, who was so driven by ideals and politics that he bravely gave his life for the cause he believed was right, but just before he meets his end, it's revealed to him that what he really wanted was a life with the girl he only just realized he loved. I think that one moment tragically encapsulated the main message of the story; we are here simply to enjoy life and enjoy each other.

Gabi: Again, people might hate me for this, but I liked Gabi. I think she did a good job of being a mirror of what Eren could have been had he been born in Marley, and/or if he had learned to sympathize enough with the enemy to have given up on his revenge plan. She went through a lot of horrors to get the growth she did, and I don't really understand the vitriol some fans have for her, even considering the fact she killed Sasha since killing Sasha and then learning that doing that was a bad thing through the kindness of Sasha's family was kind of the point. Also, as if Eren wouldn't have done the same thing in her shoes. She's a brainwashed child soldier, come on.

Falco: It was a breath of fresh air to have, like, one genuinely nice good kid for once. He's a necessary addition to Gabi's arc I think, since he's the one that keeps her grounded and helps her realize that the Paradis Eldians are not evil. His Jaw/Beast Titan powers are OP though.

Zeke: Hated him throughout all of Season 3 besides only knowing him as the Beast Titan. Season 4 rolled around and I did start to sympathize with him given his upbringing and the way his brother Eren used him after thinking he finally had a family he could be close with. I still didn't feel all that bad when bad things happened to him though, given the things he's willing to do to impose a sterilization "solution" to his own people.

Pieck: Getting into "they're fine but don't add much to the story" territory here. She's smart and has a sleepy-girl charm about her, I guess. She also has that one cool moment where she points to Eren as the enemy, but as far as her relationship with the main characters goes, she basically has none, which makes it hard for me to get invested in her.

Onyankopon, Yelena, Magath, and Kiyomi: Lumping all these characters together as the notable non-Eldians with their own agendas. I had no strong opinion on any of them. Onyankopon was cool, but I thought Magath changed his stance on Paradis too easily in the end, and Yelena and Kiyomi barely contributed anything that couldn't have been done by some other character. Their true purpose was really just to establish that there were different cultures outside of Paradis.

Floch: Saved the best for last. And by best, I mean worst. He's the anti-Jean, if you will; the everyman who, when faced with dire circumstances, turns to brutality and strength rather than humanity and compassion. It's fitting, I think, that he's the one who not only advocates saving Erwin, Jean's ideological opposite ("We need a devil!") but he's also the one who tempts Jean into a character regression since he's a representation of what Jean could have become if he stayed what he was like early Season 1. Other than that, he's a cupcake-head fascist whose dumb face I got tired of looking at even before he become a fascist. I just fucking hate Floch, man.

Every other character I either don't have anything much to say about, like Grisha, Shaddis, Pixis, Rod Reiss, and Hitch, or they died too early for me to say much about, like Porco, Petra, and Marco (although I did love Marco and I was incredibly sad when he died).

Conclusion (and why Jean is the best character you can't change my mind)

So, to take my thesis-length thoughts and distill them into one coherent sentence, my overall feeling on Attack on Titan is this: it's a well-paced, well-constructed story that is consistently engaging and thought-provoking about real-world issues, but is ultimately held back by its final act where the scale and allegory become too big and clunky for the story to properly handle. Many things that were so well set up in the previous three seasons sadly unravel at the finish line. That said, that doesn't mean there is no meaningful or worthwhile conclusion to be had in Attack on Titan; I think it still had a stronger finish than, say, HBO's Game of Thrones. I connected with it in a deep way that I haven't connected to any other piece of media lately besides maybe when I played Dragon Age last year, another story that raised thought-provoking themes about real-world issues but with admittedly clunky allegory. Most notably, though, I think my enjoyment of Attack on Titan was highly dependent on one character in particular, a character who acted as a reliable anchor point to come back to whenever the bigger ideas got away from the story.

Here's where Jean comes in. While Eren, Mikasa, and Armin are essentially mouthpieces and figureheads for the much-too-big themes they represent and are somewhat washed out as characters because of it, Jean delivers on all his themes perfectly while maintaining his believability as a character. In this world, he is basically just some guy; despite being talented, he's not as driven as Eren, he's not as strong as Mikasa, and he's not as idealistic as Armin. Jean himself recognizes all these things, but he also recognizes how their strengths also come with weaknesses that he can make up for. He sees Eren as cool but also suicidally reckless, he sees Mikasa as capable but also overly-dependent, he sees Armin as brilliant but also in need of a backbone. He then steps up to fill those deficiencies; to answer Eren's recklessness, he does everything he can to preserve his own life so that he can continue to serve others; to answer Mikasa's dependency on Eren, he makes his own decisions and creates strategies to get everyone out of trouble, not just Eren; to answer Armin's cowardice, he steps up and relays Armin's genius plans but with a stronger sense of leadership and authority.

But he wasn't always like this, and that's the most important part; Jean started as a selfish, cowardly, and entitled asshole. Floch says this outright. The only thing early Season 1 Jean cared about was securing his place in the top 10 and choosing a position among the Miltary Police where he could live the rest of his life in peace and luxury, the rest of the cadets be damned. I think this is a pitfall a lot of people in the real world can fall into: in a highly competitive and individualistic society, people have little incentive not to step on others in order to achieve a better life for themselves, and this is the very pitfall Jean nearly falls into. It's a relatable flaw, as little as people might want to admit it.

Yet, among all of Jean's negative pre-Trost qualities, he has two that can be seen as positive: his keen perception and his blunt honesty. Marco tells him as much. After the first battle in Trost, Jean, despite his reluctance to take up responsibility, sees opportunities to get his fellow cadets to safety and uses his insight into their strengths and weaknesses to guide as many of them as he can since he's the only one at the time who can take up leadership. Afterward, Marco tells him he makes a good leader not because he's strong, but because he knows what it means to be weak. He is able to lead because he doesn't delude himself with false hopes or illusions of grandeur; he knows exactly what is at stake and what hurdles everyone needs to overcome in order to have a chance at both winning and surviving. Jean is humbled and inspired by this, realizing that he would better serve in a field where he could potentially save lives instead of wasting his talents in the Military Police where he would have nothing to apply himself for.

But his real call to action is Marco's death. After losing his one true friend, Jean resolves to give up his dream of the Military Police and dedicate himself to the Scouts, where he can live up to the potential Marco always saw in him. If we are to take the theme of "true freedom is the ability to give up a long-held dream" to heart, then Jean is actually one of the first characters to achieve true freedom in this story. That doesn't mean it was easy. Freedom comes with the burden of responsibility, and his decision to join the Scouts isn't framed as triumphant or inspiring but instead as terrifying and traumatic. But that's another aspect of real life I think is captured by Jean's character: the decision to become a better person is not always easy, and it often requires a continual and conscious effort to push comfort zones, overcome bad habits, and step into the terrifying unknown, but you still have to do it.

While Jean does change for the better because of this decision (a change even his fellow cadets take notice of), his battle to grow as a person is never over. When faced with life-or-death situations as a Scout, he overcomes his cowardice to leap into action and save others whenever he knows he can. When faced with the selfishness of the Military Police, he is reassured by the knowledge that his decision not to join them saved him from that ignorant mindset. When faced with the consequences of "the greater good," he questions what it means for humanity if serving a grand purpose means they should turn a blind eye to the innocent. When faced with the prospect of having to kill other humans, he grapples with the morality of murder and what it means if he can't pull the trigger to save his friends. When faced with the crowning of Historia, he voices his concern against authority that they're forcing her into another role after she had just fought to reclaim her own identity from her father. When faced with the temptation to regress, ignore genocide, and settle for the easy life he always wanted in his youth, he resists the urge to fall back onto his dream and continues fighting even when it's the hardest thing he could ever do. When faced with the revelation that Reiner killed his friend Marco, he briefly gives into his resentment and anger but later works past it and admits there are more similarities between them than there are differences. When faced with no other choice but to stop the Rumbling, he's the first to bring Mikasa to the painful but necessary realization that they must kill their friend Eren in order to save countless innocent lives, as much as he doesn't want to do that.

Over and over again, Jean is presented with a moral dilemma, and over and over again, Jean chooses to come out of it as a better person despite it all. Because he achieved the freedom to choose who he wants to be so early in the story, the rest of his arc is a revelation that such freedom comes with constant and painful doubt. Yet, Jean never shies away from exploring the moral ambiguity of his world and the actions it makes him take. Because he is perceptive and honest, he's quick to question everything that is presented to him and never takes any one person's perspective as the only undeniable truth. Questioning life at every turn isn't easy either; it takes effort and courage and vigilance, and even when that way of life wears away at Jean, he does it anyway. If he doesn't, he'll end up just like the pitiful and ignorant Military Police he could have easily become. To me, that arc is so much more relatable than any other arc presented in this story. This is the very real struggle of a regular guy navigating a complicated world of war, eugenics, nationalism, and genocide, and is just trying to make it out as a decent person in the middle of it all. Really, isn't that all any of us are?

I think it's also telling that Floch tempts Jean to join the Yeagerists not with the argument that Eren and his plan for genocide is right, because deep down I think he knows Jean would have never agreed with that. Instead, he tempts him with the promise of comfort and a life free of resistance. I think that's the most revealing truth of all: Jean, the representation of humanity and its struggle with its own morality would never have gone along with genocide just for the sake of it. I think most people are too decent to think genocide is in any way justified when it's framed that way. Instead, Jean is only tempted by how the decision to join the Yeagerists and turn a blind eye would affect him and his own life, reframing the problem as a self-preserving one and retroactively justifying the Rumbling not as what is right but as what is futile for any one person to try to stop. That, I think, reflects the true struggle of humanity, the struggle to sacrifice your own self-interest whenever it conflicts with the need to help others.

While other characters like Mikasa, Eren, and Armin are more or less the same character at the end of the story as they are in the beginning, Jean is in a perpetual state of change, which means he also acts as a terrific mirror and foil for so many characters throughout the story depending on what stage of character development he's in. He starts as a foil to Eren, someone who harbors just as much hot-headed ego as Jean, but unlike Jean has all the conviction to back it up. As Jean grows, he continues to foil Eren by proving conviction can not only be gained but can be reigned in and redirected to be used as a force to do good instead of a force for destructive revenge. He then mirrors Armin, a character who is just as thoughtful and questioning as Jean but isn't as weighed down by selfish desires, but neither does that give much weight to Armin's moral dilemmas when he chooses to do the less moral thing than Jean does in his shoes. Jean and Armin eventually learn to work together, combining their respective strengths and weaknesses to become effective leaders in tandem. Interestingly, I learned that Armin and Jean were originally written to be the same character but were separated to reflect two different sides of humanity, perhaps to illustrate humanity's desire to reach outside the walls through Armin and humanity's struggle to resist the comfort of the walls through Jean. While I think that it was a good decision to separate them in the end, I also think that it robbed Armin of Jean's character development and robbed Jean of Armin's plot relevance. Then, of course, there's Jean's mirror for Floch, but I already touched on that in Floch's character summary so I won't retread it here.

But perhaps my favorite foil of Jean's is Reiner. More than Eren or Armin, Jean is inherently connected to Reiner through the death of Marco. While Reiner is positioned in Season 4 to also be a mirror for Eren, I think Reiner's similar loss of his friend Marcel (a friend who, unlike what Marco did for Jean, did the opposite of inspire Reiner by admitting that Reiner was never actually good enough for the role he got and only earned it by Marcel's intervention to protect his brother) positions Reiner as a more apt foil to Jean instead. Reiner is sent on a trajectory where he only clings harder to his dreams of becoming a hero for Marley, winning the affection of his mother and father, and proving himself worthy of his role, never willing to let those dreams go in the face of Marcel's death unlike Jean had done after losing Marco. Because he clings to this dream so dearly, he kills many innocent people to achieve it, again displaying the polar opposite mindset of Jean who fights instead to save innocent lives. But Reiner isn't without a heart, and eventually, the weight of his sins burdens him. How does he deal with it? Not by questioning or confronting reality like Jean does, but by compartmentalizing himself and rationalizing his actions through the use of multiple personas, essentially denying responsibility for his sins and avoiding the painful self-reflection he must undergo to accept accountability for what he's done.

Reiner is only able to truly self-reflect when he returns to Marley, where the reconciliation of who he is catches up with him and drives him to become suicidal, but neither is he deluded by the dream he once clung to anymore. Now that he's accepted responsibility, he joins up with Jean's group, admits he killed Marco, and accepts the brutal punishment Jean has for him. It's only after this moment that Jean makes the realization that they're the same because they are now. They've both undergone a change and while it took them in many different directions, in the end, they've come to the same point; despite their respective sins or lack thereof, they're both fighting to become better people than who they once were. And in the finale, it is Jean who reassures Reiner that he is and will always be a Scout because he's fighting to save humanity, just like they had sworn to do as youths. Jean never forgot what it was they were fighting for, and because of that, I think Jean earns his place as the true moral compass of the series.

Wow, this really got away from me; Do you love the color of the Attack on Titan thoughts post? Anyways, if you managed to read all of this, I'm flattered you stuck around to entertain all my ramblings on a series that is basically over after a decade-long run that I was too late to jump on. With all my thoughts out of the way, I'm going to go reblog some Jean posts now, because he's the best character and no, you can't change my mind.

[shadow-pixelle]

So I started listening to Re: Dracula again-

Wait, context.

So I was originally listening to Re: Dracula on laundry days while I was living at uni. I had to sit there in the launderettes for the entire goddamn wash cycle, because the thing was in the middle of town and had known issues with Little Shits causing problems, and I wasn't about to have those problems happen to me, so I'd hang about. By the end of the year this was boring as shit because all I'd do is listen to music, maybe write a bit on my phone.

And then Dracula Daily spun up again, and then I discovered that Re: Dracula was happening, so I started listening to that.

Course being at home I don't do that, because like. No-one's gonna fuck about with the laundry. But now things have cooled down a bit weather-wise I'd started taking walks about my area again; nothing big, really, just little half hour to an hour wanders to get some time outside (because I'm really bad at that otherwise). Decided to listen to Re: Dracula for it, and then decided 'well I was only a month in, might as well start over' and I did.

and holy shit, man. I forgot how creepy this was. Like I'm maybe a week into things, not that far, but it's all so neat and so so eerie, it's great. The voice acting is incredible, the background music is so well done, the whiplash of going from "Foul bauble of man's vanity!" and spooky music and Jonathan slowly realising that he's trapped in this castle and kinda losing his mind a bit over it to Mina writing to Lucy with all this nice upbeat music and I'm just like. It's so good? I adore this so much. It genuinely makes me look forward to going for walks, and normally I hate that because it's so fucking exhausting and I tend to end up in a fair amount of pain from it, but getting to listen to Re: Dracula while I'm out makes it a lot more tolerable.

[polar-equinoxx]

A fic masterlist! Finally!

And here is my ao3 account :D

Take your pick, all of these are sfw, full of fluff or angst and definitely hurt/comfort; and are rated either gen or teen^^

More detailed summaries added underneath each one and oh my god this post is so long

featuring the main two of all of these bc why the hell not

Oh and the series on ao3 is linked in the headings of each sector :)

I will be updating this whenever I write more fics, so keep watch XD

☁️The heavens told me that clouds have been grey

all of my icemav fics! So guaranteed smooches <3 none of them link to each other unless they are in a seperate series ^^

find the masterlist here! yes I made a seperate post its because there are so many of them quq

🌟Canons shoot ships but not this one

all of my fics that could fit into the canon timeline, (featuring an occasional icemav smooch cus lets be for real they did probably kiss at least once)

find the masterlist here! yes I made a seperate post for this too lmao

Long-fics (5k or above)

🍁Hot Summer Nights to Cold Winter Days (18k words, 10 chapters split between two works)

Rated Teen, with fluff and a genourous amount of angst and hurt/comfort

When Goose and his pilot were allowed to go to Top Gun, then Ice couldn’t think of anything better. Only until he’d seen Maverick and fallen head over heels in love with him. That July Saturday had changed everything, Goose had gone, and Maverick had fallen into a deep dark pit, and Ice, wanting to look out for Maverick, had dived straight in after him, unwilling to let his wingman get stuck there. Ice promised Maverick he’d go to the ends of the earth with him, and that is what he would do, even if it meant they’d both hurt.

❄️Returning to You (25k words, 15 chapters)

❄️ Letters : Epilogue (1.5k words)

Rated Teen, a lot of angst. Seriously. But a lot of hurt comfort to make up for it :,) Oh yeah, the amnesia is the cause of the angst..

In the months after Goose’s death, Maverick has been forging a deep friendship with Iceman. So deep, in fact it feels like nothing could come between them, even though he hasn’t been entirely honest about exactly how he is feeling. It’s hard to do, but it only seems to get harder when a scouting mission takes a turn for the worse.

🌷Galloping into the Cold (5k+ words, completely a wip, 3 chapters right now)

Rated Teen, angst, fluff hurt-comfort, medieval au, they ride horses.

Thomas Kazansky, nicknamed Ice for the personality that isn’t even his; feels like he’s stuck in his pampered posh life. That’s until he falls off his horse and meets Peter Mitchell and realises he might have a chance to be something other than his surname.

🌙 when the human strokes your skin, that is when you let them in (29k words, 14 chapters)

Rated Teen, angst hurt/comfort and secretive mutual pining with miscommunication sprinkled on top

Top Gun. Top Gun! Maverick had only gone and actually done it, and it would be the best five weeks of his life, for sure. If only there wasn’t a distraction with the name of Iceman. Anyway, he was so relieved that he was going to do it and win that trophy with Goose. But many things don’t go to plan.

🌹Roses (5k words, a 4+1)

Rated Teen, angst, unrequited love, a lot of valentines days, pining and eventual fluff

Nobody in Iceman’s life has meant more to him than Pete Mitchell does. He’s dangerous and annoying but incredibly cute, and Ice thinks if he looks at him one more time with that smile of his, his legs are going to give out under him. Try as he might, he can’t say anything to address the crush he has on him. // Or, the four times Ice wants to admit to Maverick that he loves him and the one time he does.

🧊Not Enough (11k words, a 5+1)

Rated teen, angst, self doubt, abusive parents, mutual pining and eventual fluff

Iceman has been told one way or another and all through his life that he's not good enough, for whatever that may be. He dreads turning out even the slightest bit like his father, and he'll do everything in his power to stop himself from becoming like him. / Or, five ways people say to Ice that he's not enough and the one time he says it.

🐎Heaven In Your Eyes (WIP, 2 chapters at 3k)

They r cowboys, no-one dies, (!?!), they ride horses, with pining, fluff and friends to lovers

Thomas Kazansky is the notorious peace-maker of the new place in Colorado the people call Durango. Pete Mitchell was supposed to be passing it on his way to California, but the small town seemed nice enough to stay for while. For some reason, their paths keep crossing, but Pete, as rebellious as he is, doesn't mind. / Or, a western icemav fic that takes place in 1886

❤️‍🩹Goose lives AU (Goose lives and there's no such thing as DADT)

❤️‍🩹Seasick (1632 words)

Rated Teen, sickfic, hurt/comfort A mission is flown, the mission is successful, but a certain Pete Maverick Mitchell is seasick. Badly.

❤️‍🩹Saved by Sickness (2037 words)

Rated Teen, sickfic, hurt/comfort, this is how Goose lives lol The thing about Iceman is that he never gets sick. Or at least he thought he didn’t. Most of the time it was just a cold. Most of the time he jut felt a little bit more tired for a couple of days, then he was back to normal. This was not one of those times, as he's about to find out.

❤️‍🩹Spur of the Moment (3788 words)

Rated Teen, with fluff, pining, Goose and Slider embarrassing both Ice and Mav, and no DADT cus who am I to do that??? Maverick is about to fall asleep standing. He's so tired that the last thing he's going to be thinking about is what comes out of his mouth. Especially if it's 'baby'. Especially if it's to his wingman. Or, Maverick calls Ice 'baby' for the first time.

🕊Angelus AU (The icemav boys are angels, but that isn't normal)

🕊Growing Pains (1494 words)

Rated Teen, patching up injuries, angst, post-argument, hurt/comfort He doesn’t know how he gets to his bathroom, but once he reaches a point that lets him lift his head up to try and see his back in the mirror, he’s immediately chucked into a pit of horror and disbelief. “Oh god-” His wings were growing. God dammit of course they had to choose tonight to start.

🕊Cold Wings (2137)

Rated Teen, patching up injuries, fluff, hurt/comfort

The good news? Ice was there. / The bad news? There was blood all over his back and he was about to collapse over the sink. / “Oh jesus christ-” Maverick says as he shuts the door behind him and goes straight over to him, dropping the towel on the floor. || Or, Ice's wings decide to appear at a very awkward time.

🌠Shooting Stars (A small series where the icemav both stargazed as kids and Maverick dated Charlie beforehand)

🌠Starboard Half Light (3104 words)

Rated Gen, with pining, and hurt/comfort

It had been such a tiring day, and so emotionally charged too, so why was Maverick still wide awake? It seemed like the only option he had left was to go see Iceman, his newly titled wingman. Hopefully he was awake. Maverick just wanted to talk to someone. Or, Maverick and Iceman talk on the starboard side of the USS Enterprise for the entire night

🌠Shooting Stars (1886 words)

Rated Teen, a lot of kissing and pining. So much kissing seriously.

Maverick has always loved stargazing, ever since he was a kid. He has also had a crush on Iceman ever since he laid eyes on him. So what better to do than go stargazing with him, right?

🌠Afterglow (1635 words)

Rated Teen, hurt/comfort obviously with mentions of guilt tripping and Mav's past relationship with Charlie

“I- I promised…” “Hey, hey… you don’t have to be s-” “Yes I do,” Maverick interrupts him. “I promised her I wouldn’t because she’d- she…” She? “Who, Mav?” Or, Maverick wakes up in the middle of the night and tries to hide the nightmare he's just had from Ice, because he knows what will happen if he tells him.

[polisena-art]

What do Donald, José, and Panchito find attractive about the other two?

Panchito is very enthusiatic about things, that guy is like a firecracker and it's very easy to have a good time by his side. I'm pretty sure his energy is contagious. He is also very sweet tho, he cares for animals, he loves children, he has a deep sense of loyalty with those he considers family... I think these characteristics cause a nice surprise to people after witnessing his rougher and more chaotic side first.

Another thing is Panchito is very passionate and loves to talk about things he loves. Conversation with him is easy and by the end of it the guy you thought was only loud and silly actually knows a lot more than you could've ever imagined. He's also a great singer, I'm sure José and Donald find that wildly attractive.

José is a very charming guy, it's something that comes naturally to him and he does like to be perceived as cool too. After you peel that first layer tho, he's a complete dork who says and does a lot of out of pocket things. He's very exhibicionist, no shame at all, loves to laugh and loves to make other people laugh. So while his looks are something, he truly wins Panchito's and Donald's heart by being open to tomfoolery. José also loves dancing and even more when Panchito and Donald join him, so his incentives and wandering hands when teaching are also very attractive.

Donald might look like your average guy at first but Panchito and José find him extraordinary. First of all, Donald is incredibly brave, he fights tooth and nail for the people he loves and he's also very adventurous (even when he doesn't want to be-). Second is his perseverance, only Donald Duck knows what it is like to be so unlucky and keep going. Donald is also stronger than he looks and, for what people keep telling me, an amazing cook, so yes that's a very high score in attractiveness to José and Paco.

[justalittleguest]

Unleash your demons, let me dance with them and know them better

Ok so I’m a bit (a lot) embarrassed about that post but it’s not like I forgot the AU. It’s the quite opposite, so thanks for letting me rant a bit @kredena-dark.

The background + town lore (or what I have of it)

SO the setting of the AU is in a bigger town than the Dreamtale village was, built from its ruins, and it takes place in the early 1800s cuz I said so. The tales of the Tree of Feelings that occasionally attracted travelers and opportunists to the village did so even after the apple incident, which is how its residents’ remains were found. No one knew what happened, but they recalled being told about the twin guardians of the Tree, now a stump without fruit, that were a young golden eyed saint and a spawn of all the world’s evil. The demon must’ve taken the golden apples, then killed the villagers and his brother who tried to stop him, only to disappear. In the aftermath, the relatives of the dead came to bury the human bodies and unidentified dust. Most of them stayed, the journey back being too long and hard to justify going through twice. The generations after didn’t forget the reasons given for their living there or the stories of the demon that feasts on their flaws and fears that will one day come back for them. The world was soon to deny the Tree of Feelings ever existed, despite many future scholars finding the “myth” interesting enough to investigate. But after so many centuries, the townspeople forgot the way to their Tree, and never honored it, having arrived after it was dead and useless.

(When the trio finds it, it becomes a place of worship)

The cult beliefs

I haven’t organized my thoughts very well, but I thought it would be cool for the belief system to be rooted in positivity, though twisted. A kind of “It will get better” mindset, but with the addition of “when all our sorrows are 6000 feet deep”. It’s a guarantee of a kinder world, and one they can achieve with their own actions. The idea is, they can wait until humanity and monsterkind run themselves into the ground, the scars they left on their home and each other invisible thousands of years ahead, buried under new stone and soil, and only then can life begin again- right this time. Or they can end it before the world has to come to that, and choose who gets to make it to the new one.

The mechanics of it are based in an interpretation of the Tree of Feelings.

᯽ They believe that the death of the Tree of Feelings gave the start to a slow decay of their world, and that the entity, guardian, which had caused it has the ability to finish their job. They need a call to come back from slumber.

᯽ They believe that the villagers killed as the Tree was are still roaming the earth as spirits, tainted and disallowed from entering heaven or hell.

᯽ They believe the spirits will be allowed into bodies when life starts again.

᯽ They believe that the event can be repeated, that blood spilt where it had been 300 years ago will be the only way to call out to the dark guardian.

᯽ They believe the guardian will need a body, a lack of which kept them away.

They also believe in fate. Bad things happen for a reason, so make them worth it. No, Horror hadn’t been chased out of his home with his brother by a cruelly calculated famine to feel guilty the rest of his life, he was led to a God who needs his compassion to save the world from itself. No, Dust hadn’t been placed in an asylum and forced into men’s clothes for fun, she was given the strength to do what must be done. No, Killer hadn’t lost all of himself so he could serve some king, he learned thought to overthrow more than monarchy.

(You see how that mindset works if you have unprocessed trauma)

The characters & what’s their deal

So you know how cults all have a charismatic liar to follow? This one has three!

Horror is first because in the story I could but won’t write, he’s the first we get to know. He was the unofficial leader of his rural community, which in the past several years had more and more of its resources taken, and their supplies cut off. They’ve managed small rations for 7 years before the shortage became a famine. Many died giving their limited food to the children, like Papyrus did. Horror couldn’t control that, and he couldn’t live with it. When he got the chance, he left his people without a leader, and took his brother with him. Currently, his contribution to the cult is recruitment and keeping followers in line with his warm and knowing air, his experience giving people hope and giving them confidence to believe what he believes. If you have doubts, you’ll end up by his side, soon newly energised to continue your mission.

Dust had carved out a little life for herself two towns away from her childhood home, after her parents kicked her out a decade ago. She didn’t know they had another child until after they died, and he was sent to live with her. Dust and Papy were a small but happy family for a couple of peaceful years, preceding her many restless months at the asylum. Yes, she ended up “recovering” and was let go back to Papy, but she couldn’t stay recovered for long. And they’d use it against her, they’d take her from her little brother, permanently. So Dust took her deceased parents’ house and moved back. Papy was going to public school again, and Dust was back on the farm, spending her working hours contemplating the life that she dipped into in the madhouse, a life without her baby brother. Her duties in the cult are mostly “blood” rituals and dirty work.

She hikes her skirt to hide stains, since she needs to hike it for work anyway.

I’m not going to write much about Killer, since we should know less, at least at the start. He doesn’t come from a noble family, but ended up serving at the palace as a young man, at some point his job becoming to pour the drinks. When the king died prematurely, and his throne was taken, the new monarch sponsored Killer’s education and many of his trips around the land as a kind of ambassador, but mostly as a scholar. His latest studies led him to the origin town of the myth of the Tree of Feelings, to play a guest to some nobleman who wanted to live farther from politics. He’s the one who first developed his beliefs based on the scriptures and documents and stories he found, and the only one of the three to be able to read them. He preaches the cult, writing & reading out their texts, and knowing the most about the God they pray for.

There’s also Dream and Nightmare (and Blue), but I’m tired, haven’t eaten, and I have too much to talk about, plus this post is too long already…

[basicallyaturtle]

I have, I think, a strange connection to parasocialness, not a unique one, there are probably a TON of people that feel this exact way but I've never seen it expressed and possibly others will see this and go OH YEAH TOTALLY

So the prototypical parasocial behavior is indicated basically either by A, feeling like someone is your friend who as no idea who you are, both because in 1 performing as a public person, especially an entertainer

(side note what if instead of youtuber or tiktok creator or any specifics, and in lieu of calling it content creation, because gross, or artist, because that's a broader term than is applicable, we called them intertainers for internet entertainers? this is totally not just because I keep misspelling entertainer)

there is incentive to come off as genuine in a way that invites parasocialness not because that's the goal, it's just easier to make an audience that way, and also because 2, if you are an intertainer for long enough, you end up sharing quite a lot of yourself (personal stories, preferences opinions etc) that makes it seem like you are putting your whole self on the internet, when really you are not

or B, feeling like you know enough about a person to conclude who they are, what they're like, that kind of thing, which is mostly due to the same causes as behavior A.

I feel like I emotionally do B a lot, not purposefully, mostly subconsciously and when I find myself feeling that way, or seeking to be that way, by looking up personal information about youtubers or getting invested in a relationship that is partially public (just to mean people know that it exists, not that it is a Public Relationship) or something like that, I take a moment to remind myself that it is not productive or healthy to do that, even if the intertainer in question wanted to know all of their fans, it is just logistically impossible once you get above like 40 people, so stop that. Sometimes I still indulge a little, like letting myself look up one or two things, but only if it's like something they've talked about and are fine with the public knowing, but I am careful about it, and on general principle I just try to not engage in this behavior for intertainers.

However, I find myself on occasion extremely consciously aware that I do not know said intertainer, and they know me even less, and seeing how they interact with other intertainers and think something to the extent of 'man it would be cool to get to know these people more, they seem like a fun group to hang out with' This is one step removed from the parasocial behavior mentioned above, because it is basically going yeah I see them parasocially, it might be neat to be actually just social with them. Like, I find myself thinking that it would be cool to like accidentally stumble upon one of these people and form a friendship with them. This does happen, especially within the intertainer space, where you can be a fan of someone and then end up collaborating with them and becoming friends, but it is definitely not the norm, especially when one of the people (me) is not an intertainer. This also isn't really in the way of oh man I'm such a huge fan and if I met them that would be craaazy, just these people seem like a fun group to hang out with, wish I could get to know them better.

Now this is still extremely parasocial, I still look at the facades that intertainers put up and think wow what a cool person wish I could know more about them and get acquainted with them. I think this is even more nefarious (meaning like, it can infiltrate the mind without one noticing not that the people that feel this are nefarious), since as detailed, I see it as one step removed from the prototypical parasocial behavior even though it's like still really presumptive of the nature of how people present themselves online. It's also, for me at least, harder to write off. Like I know it's parasocial, but unlike with the other behavior where I go stop being like that, it's not healthy, and then stop, I find it difficult to get rid of this latter feeling. Like if an intertainer says they're going to a convention I think oh that would be the perfect opportunity to bump into them. I immediately say to myself no that's a bad idea and kind of stalkerish, and I've never even gone to a con and there's none ever near me so that's not even like something I'd do, but the thought of wanting to do that, and that it could work lingers in my mind in a way the other kind of stuff doesn't, possible because I don't want to see it as parasocial, and it feels more disconnected from the idea, despite it still being so. In that case, strangely, if I was just a huge fan and wanted to meet them, then that would be a normal thing to do at a con, and I am being MORE parasocial by having this idea that I could 'accidentally' meet them and befriend them.

I also specifically have this thought of 'oh I'd be super causual about it' Like if I saw a person I was a fan of on the street I would just be like oh shit it's you love your work because that seems like the thing to do, not freak out. Or if I coincidentally (and I actually mean coincidentally here, not like the 'accidental' of the other thought) were to like move in close to someone I was a fan of, ti would be cool to see them around, and it would be neat to try to get to know them more. and this is a particular weird part to me.

Wanting to get to know, or even befriend, neighbors is a normal thing to do. I would like to become friends with neighbors, so I have people that live near me I am friends with, and also just because having friends is nice. I don't do that now with neighbors because I'm a shut in grad student but that's besides the point at the moment.

If I was neighbors with an intertainer that I enjoyed, and I wanted to become friends, or at least acquainted, with them, then that would be parasocial, because even in recognizing I do not know very much about them, I would still be entering the sphere of communication on uneven ground because I would know way more about them than they knew me, the same issue as before. I think even if I tried to like forget about their work entirely, or create like a distinction between the intertainer and the person, the parasociality would still creep in inevitably. And if I just pretended to not know about it to them specifically, like ask what they do and be all coy like oh I don't really use youtube or whatever, then that would be worse in a way due to the deception, and on examining what would happen if it became known that I did know their work, they would feel a little scandalized, rightfully. Also if I got to know them, then tried to interact with them as a fan of their work, then it would be overly familiar, like it would be unfair to any other fan that I got to do this. I sometimes also feel this way when I interact publicly with irl friends that have, not a following, but people that they don't know that enjoy their work, like I'm being overly familiar with them in this public setting, that's kind of strange even though we are actually friends because it looks like I'm being insanely parasocial or that it's unfair that this person can talk to you like this but people they don't' know can't. (This also verges on the 'you can be jokingly rude to friends but try doing that on anon asks and you're just a dick because yeah you don't know that person or 'egg discourse' where constantly badgering a public person about their gender identity is different from nudging at a close friend in a jocular manner, both of which are kind of landmines and I don't want to touch anymore because that's not really what this is about for me)

That is all also more of an emotional feeling than one I think is actually based on some truth, and may be a reflection of how I would feel if I learned that someone 'got' to do that that wasn't me (I am also aware that that sounds kind of deranged, but I mean that I would feel this in a kind of knee jerk response, not to say that that isn't my feeling, but I recognize that it is unreasonable)

I also would be more motivated to get to know an intertainer that I share a neighborhood with than a generic neighbor, which is certainly parasocial, but could also partly due to the fact that a generic neighbor also includes plenty of people I just wouldn't get along with, so in having them be an intertainer I know, I would at least know that I would get along with them-- Accept it I wouldn't! I just caught that as I was typing actually. just because I like an intertainer's material does not mean I would necessarily get along with them, and is even less indicative of how they would find my personality, so in saying that I am still being parasocial.

I don't know what I would do in that situation of I'm being honest, realistically continue to be a shut in and just know I have someone I 'know' online as a neighbor, but just thinking about it happening, or 'fantasizing' (not that per se, but just kind of thinking it'd be neat if that happened, maybe idealizing) about it is still parasocial.

Actually I had an opportunity to do this kind of. There's a youtuber who made videos about going to undergrad where I am currently doing my PhD, and he's involved with some of the programs that the department at a lab attached to the university does, so he's around, though not on campus, at that lab, for a few weeks in the summer, and what I do, while not related to that subject, is tangentially connected, just because they're both ultimately about nuclei and shit. I have a friends who is a fan of his, as am I somewhat, and he joined the program, not to meet the guy, but because his research is in that subject so it made sense, but in getting to meet him, my friend was telling me about how nervous he was to meet and first, and it was really awesome to get to work with him. And I couldn't not think that if I met him I simply would not be like that. There was a vague sense of superiority that I knew was unfounded, but I thought like pfft I would just be casual and could become friends with him. I didn't end up going to the lab most of the summer, so I never met him, and I never felt inclined to go there just to meet him, but I had this sense of my friend is being weird I would be so normal. But as with the convention thing, it is arguably more parasocial to try to play it cool and get to know them more rather than just be a fan, though different in this case, because my friend was basically working with him, and while he was initially like woah guy I'm a fan of he wasn't like actually off putting or like being a super fan obsessive kind of guy anything. But yeah all my feelings surrounding that situation were actually stranger, I think, than just being a fan.

This is also more complex on tumblr I think, since a lot of blogs are just like things the person finds interesting, and often there really isn't that facade, at least not in a purposeful way. Sending asking, directly reblogging and tagging posts, likes being visible, it kind of leans into the feeling of yeah this is a person you can be friends with if you just try hard enough. Sometimes this is true! people make mutuals in this way, they follow each other, then come to know each other better, sharing other contacts, dming, @'ing, you can become actual online friends with people on tumblr in a way that I think is harder on any other platform (though I'm only on youtube and tumblr so if there's other social media platforms like that then my b, I saw that post where someone was dating on quora so I guess anything is possible). There's more to this as well, like being mutuals on tumblr can also just be a blog thing, not necessarily a friend thing, or you can have friends that only follow you or you only follow them because either blog does not have stuff on it actually interesting to the other. Anyway, all that to say, it's really easy to be parasocial on tumblr, and also easier to actually be friends on tumblr, but that's a side thing, I'm mostly interested in parasociality as a youtube phenomenon, which is where I experience it.

All that also to say that thoughtcrime isn't really a thing and if I'm not being a creep or doing anything harmful or anything like that then like who cares, but I find categorizing which thoughts are useful/productive and which are harmful/unproductive and other categories and try to cultivate a mindscape that is healthy to the best of my ability (though mental illness definitely does not help with that) and I noticed a strange pattern of parasociality that I haven't heard before, and maybe has been left behind in the popular conception of it, or else discussions of it are happening and I just haven't seen it, or that I'm the only one to feel exactly this way (that seems unlikely though given the number of people that are)