#metanalysis

[carlyraejepsans]

You ever think about how Undertale uses Flowey to break the 4th wall, without actually breaking the 4th wall? The game merely imitates the vocabulary of 4th wall breaks...

...through the words of a grieving boy who just wants his best friend back

That's why the fallen human is essentially our "role" in the story. That's why Flowey is set up as a player parallel. From beginning to end, this was always a story about Asriel and Chara. In Undertale's story, the role of "player" is, metanarratively, the role of a ghost.

That's why the plot is so heavily character driven. That's why progress is marked by helping people move on from the past. That's why the game ends (and can only truly end) by asking us to let go.

It's a ghost story. It's all a fucking ghost story.

[eyesteeth]

i think one of the things with the sibs that makes me go the most feral is just how little time they spent together.

when season one starts, they’ve been together for sixteen days. we then witness them spend about a week together.

in season two, they have a day.

in season three, it's an hour at most.

that is, generously rounded, a month. this series spans two years. they got to 'hopelessly and helplessly entangled' in a month out of two years. a MONTH out of TWO YEARS was all it took for them to change each other, probably forever, if they lived that long.

one of the theses of The Silt Verses is that platonic love can be just as devastating and life-altering as romance love and by god if these two don't embody that.

[slowpokedragon]

seeing homestuck analysis made my brain go brrr.

ykw im gonna say it....!!! the idea that matespritship is "the closest to human romance" is fundamentally misunderstood by a majority of the hs fandom! matespritship is "closest to human romance" [karkats words] in the sense that its closest to the human concept of *dating.* the concupiscent quadrants are provocation based, and more align with the ideas of "going out on dates and having sex / one night stands" with people, rather than longterm human romance.

the actual thing closest to "human romance" was the relationship between the signless and the disciple that "transcended all four quadrants"; if i had to pick a quadrant closest to "human marriage" or a longterm relationship, it would be ***moiraillegiance!!!***

moirails are conciliatory yes, but more than that they are *balanced equals, matched pairs.* theyre the closest quadrant to the traditional human soul mate. the one who perfectly completes you and keeps you on an even keel. the idea that moirails are platonic or qpr is just fundamentally wrong. *some* moirails can be qprs somewhat, but it literally is textually just a different form of romance, the same way that dating somebody vs being married to them for a decade are different forms of romance!!!

when youre married to someone for a long time, they often stop surprising you (not in the sense of "i bought you a gift!" but in the sense of the feelings that provokes. when youre first dating somebody, youd be surprised and pleased and a little awed that they went out their way for you. when youve been married a long time, youre still surprised and pleased, but its with this undercurrent of "hah, of course they would do this for me; they *love* me!"); moiraillegiance is the deepest quadrant and the most complex, which is why the presentation of moiraillegiance varies so wildly! look at depictions of matesprits, and youll see they all follow the same patterns of "shallowish romance between two people that have been dating for awhile"; moirails vary wildly!

the two extremes are definitely nepeta and equius vs folykl and kuprum. both pairs are equally balanced and a matched pair, its just that theyre on opposite ends of the "moirail spectrum" in what ways they provide for and ease their quadrantmates. the idea that matespritship is "human romance" is so wrong its laughable and thats why davekat is destined to fail if they dont deepen their relationship from matesprits to smeared moirails or human romance altogether IN THIS ESSAY I WILL

in a canon only reading; davekat COULD WORK and thats what drives me crazy. if they communicated better and changed their relationship it COULD WORK! but communication in romance is fundamentally incompatible w both of their characters! so i froth at the mouth

[ghulah]

i've come back here with NOTES and ANALYSIS (mild analysis). Brought to you by your local Egyptian Ghost liker.

So, let's start with the general meaning of Ghuleh / Zombie Queen by Ghost.

A song, to simplify it, about the rise of a powerful demonic female figure that had once risen and taken over the throne. She is no longer an active force, but clearly has been powerful and impactful for centuries - so the song emphasizes her place and royalty.

Now, let's pivot to the etymology of the word ghuleh غولة. This word originates from the male form غُول  ghul and furthermore from غَالَ ghala, meaning to seize. In folklore, the ghuleh - specifically Ummana al-ghulah (our mother ghuleh) is often depicted to be a female creature dwelling in the night, often luring in hapless men into her home to eat them (From the darkness, rise as succubus). In my experience, she was also used to scare kids into doing things or else they'd get eaten. Similarly to djinn, ghuls are shapeshifting(Shapeshifting soon, but now she's rigid), they lurk in the desert, take on the forms of animals, etc.

The actual term itself, like the Genius explanation states, 'appeared in William Beckford’s Orientalist(long sigh) novel Vathek which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore.'

The ghulah, a powerful female force that has apparent dominion over others by luring them, consuming them, and rising from the shadows perfectly encapsulates the song Ghuleh / Zombie Queen.

Obviously, it's probably just a fun little tidbit that Ghost used it for their title. But any derivative of ghul/ghoul does come from the root word, ghala (to seize) so that's just, yk, neat.

Ergo, I was surprised that no one used this username, because it's so close to the Ghuleh title and literally more accurate to the original phonetic pronunciation (at least in Egy-Arabic). More for me!

im not sure how no one bagged this username considering its just ghuleh but slightly different because it comes from غولة which. like. in dialects of arabic will sound like one or the other. my question is: has there been any fun little metanalysis abt ghuleh as a song or term in the ghost fandom in relation to its etymological roots? ive been doing it in private bc im a nerd.

[divorcedfiddleford]

for what it's worth personally i do think fiddleford and emma liked each other and i think he was excited to be a dad and all that i just think he's a little bit too much of a freak to ever truly be content living in the suburbs with a 9-5 job so california was mostly this for him

[dorotheado]

listen like when you drink someone under the table they are also drinking. so when he shit talked her under the table she is both saying that she was being love bombed / told lies while also acknowledging the bullshit that she was spouting ("he's the one i want" / "i can fix him" / "i've seen this episode and still loved the show" / "it was legendary" / "you're the love of my life"). and that just sucks like it sucks so hard

[carlyraejepsans]

only a very small handful of monsters actually know that frisk is a child. toriel, asgore, gerson (the oldest characters in the game who still remember the surface, and thus, humans. asgore and toriel having raised one themselves) sans (...?) and monster kid. maybe alphys as well, given her interest in human media and how she says "that's adorable" when she mistakes undyne's letter for frisk's. everyone else has never seen a human before, and oftentimes doesn't even recognize frisk as one.

and well... that's the joke! they literally don't know that the human is a child, so they behave in ways that are absolutely insane when you know that they are. it's why every single one of the "dates" ends in us being friendzoned: we're meant to see it and groan awkwardly and laugh, because it's not something we're meant to take seriously.

I do agree that 3-8 is probably lowballing it though. I could mayyybe see 8 with a bit of a stretch, but I'd reckon they were designed with the 10-13 age range in mind. Mother 2, Mother 3, Pokemon... it's a time rife with child adventurer protagonists, after all!

Why did the entire Undertale fandom collectively decide that Frisk is 3-8 when they repeatedly flirt with people and go on a romantic date with Papyrus (who fully intended to be attracted to them but couldn't and feels as though this is a failing on his part) and even was supposed to have a robot husband at one point in development.

I tried being shitposty and goofy about it a year or two ago but no one took me seriously then so I'm phrasing it as a genuine question this time. Why is everyone so content to pretend this recurring aspect of their character just doesn't exist.

[msmeiriona]

I know I was supposed to be gathering screenshots for my whole themes and motifs thing but....

I uh. Couldn't help myself. Did another Thorn-with-Smitten run.

LOOK ITS A LOVE STORY I CAN'T HELP IT.

[carlyraejepsans]

[eyesteeth]

i think what makes faulkner's death so tragic is him being the only one of the main four who didn't die fulfilled.

whether or not carpenter dies that day is ambiguous, but if she did, she achieved her goal. she died useful, helping the people at the camp, and giving her brother a proper sendoff. and, if she survives, she'll likely die a peaceful death in the new world, or on the way there.

hayward finally got to catch up with that good man, and died for a cause he truly believed in. paige died knowing her people would make it, and her remains would serve as a signpost for people to follow.

and then there's faulkner, who died scared and alone, convinced that his sister was just an arm's length away, but didn't love him enough to save him. he had just realized what he wanted, decided to make a change, and then he died. and because he was beginning to turn away from his faith, he's probably not even going to go where he wants in death.

he doesn't get anything. he just drowns. and he can only blame himself.

[obaewankenope]

ooooh boi, my wheelhouse!

disability is seen always as this horrid, tragic, bad thing that cannot be talked about in a Real Way unless it's to focus on the "so inspirational! so tragic but so strong! well done for enduring!" mindset that makes able-bodied people feel good about themselves and their own able-bodiedness

like, there's a whole section of disability studies that just wades into this across media and literary analysis

but the basic idea is that you (general) cannot possibly see disability as a good thing unless it's good for other people who get to benefit from the metaphorical representation the disability plays in the narrative

the idea that disability can be represented in tragedy or horror and not be the tragedy or horror itself is an antithesis to the able-bodied normative world in which we live

which makes it all the more important to address, investigate and actually fucking not hide away from because a disabled protagonist in a horror movie or novel who may be just as at risk of dying as other characters who aren't disabled (or have different disabilities and thus at risk in different ways) but who aren't defined or have their disabilities be the reason why they're gonna die like they "deserve" it because they're disabled but who may or may not survive because of those disabilities, or because of mobility aids, or because of blind fucking chance... well that's just way more empowering

can't have something be empowering for the disabled in society now, it'd give them "ideas" like they matter and deserve dignity and to live when they're just "drains on resources" (heavy, heavy sarcasm here)

and now i want to write sth just like this.... *sigh* i do this to myself, i can blame no one else when i think these things

There aare a lot of tragic and violent stories about characters with disorders or disabilities and a common reaction I see to these stories is "why did they have to make this? the story would have been better if the character learned to live happily with it" which, setting aside the fact that would have been a different story... It's not fair to say that the only stories about sick or disabled people are the uplifting ones with happy endings. Not everyone is happy about their disability/disorder and many certainly suffer because of them. And if you want to talk about representation, don't disabled people deserve to represented in tragedy and horror too? Disability as a catalyst for tragedy is different from shock horror.

--

[gayboysteve]

I think Jonathan Byers is a really interesting characters but so many of his fans project onto him so that he's unrecognizable from the guy we actually see on screen. If you divorce Jonathan from his actions and behavior then you're not really his fan, you're a fan of the idealized version of the trope he fulfilled in season one. To take a character away from the context of their canonical characterizations and try to write a metanalysis on them is to have already failed in your analysis. You cannot project head canons onto an analysis. Jonathan has been done a disservice by the show but the fans also do him a disservice by failing to acknowledge who he actually is as a person because if you accept the negative traits that DO exist within him then you can view him as a more fully realized and three dimensional characters.

But most Jonathan fans just want to be salty that Steve exists. Well, I want them to raw each other silly while still hating each other. You can go back to making up things to be mad over that are explicitly not canon.

[crumblinggothicarchitecture]

aaaaahhhhhh I need to scream about Taylor swift. just FUCK HER. oh my god. I have depression. it fucking SUCKS. and she leaves her boyfriend for being too depressed ATYHYTFBD HRRRGGGGGGGGG. AND THE PHSYCE WARD AESTHETIC. WTF IS WRONG WITH HER OH MY GOD. yubvefinhj arrrggghhhhhh I want to rip my skin off she makes me so mad.

I know this ask is about a month old now- I apologize if you were waiting for a response. I'm sensing a lot of frustration and anger here. Let me know if I am off base.

I thought receiving this was interesting- which is why I would like to reply. I understand your frustration- as someone who has also struggled with mental health, as I am sure many of us have, it is easy to let the frustration bubble up into anger. Taylor Swift, and her music, has remarkable impact on the culture.

I want to pause for a moment here- and let you know that I understand your anger. I cannot describe the feeling I had realizing that Swift’s latest album is basically an aesthetic co-opting of real mental health struggle.

Also- I work in an English Department- do you have any idea how obnoxiously hard it is to not role my eyes every time I think about the most pretentious and stupid album title ever: "Tortured Poets Department."

I really think she got one fake college degree from NYU and fancied herself an academic. (Please spare me the ineptitude).

I understand- and I also realize that this ask was but a brief moment of your day-if the anger is overwhelming, I would still urge you to recognize your own power. Oftentimes, I think anger releases out of frustration because we feel the person causing this frustration has so much more power than us- they exist above us- out of reach. As such, there is no way to truly communicate the frustration- or seek any recompense for it. A lack of ability to communicate- and be heard- can cause anger, it is human nature. We are both social creatures, and intuitively reactive. Both a blessing and a curse.

Please recognize that no matter how loud the divisive few, like Swift, are- culture is with the people, always. Combat the negativity with whatever positivity you have to give. Personally, I combat the negativity I see in the album by analyzing it- holding it up to the light and hopefully showing others how and why this is wrong. I do this with many authors- I've lambasted Hemmingway enough times now and written myself into an early grave railing against Joseph Conrad. Do not fear- or give frustration into anger- what you cannot control; instead use your own gift, whatever that may be, to give something good to the world- in the process it will make up for the bad.

Please note too that I am not talking about toxic positivity- about the kind of positivity that requires "everyone be nice all the time and never say a single curse word ever ever ever" UWU- BS - but rather actionable positivity. Definitive actions you take in the world- to right the moral wrongs. For me, this meant going to school- getting an education into moral philosophy and Literature- so that I might teach other how to critically analyze the world around them. All in effort, to affect actionable positive change, however small, in the lives of others. Teaching them to not only think about the concept of tenets of their reality, but to intentionally act with a moral backbone as they traverse their own lives. A metanalysis of self- that sincerely codifies our own agency in creating our reality. Ultimately, I act with intention, seek education, to give myself a tool with which I can work. See- actionable positivity. I seek to give people a reason to identify their own agency- their own power- and hopefully use that to be empathic, kind people, who think for themselves.

What, I wonder, does actionable positivity mean to you?

I really believe this- as silly as some people might find me for saying it. I really think only positive action, forethought and analytical, engaged minds, can rectify the moral corruption others bleed into the world. Swift is but one morally bankrupt individual amidst billions of people- all with differing moral centers. I say that among billions Swift will fade into obscurity. Hopefully, the good will outweigh the bad- to negate the negative cultural impact Swift has. Hopefully, we will all be smart enough to negate the environmental destruction of Swift as well (but I am a philosopher and not a climate scientist- so I suppose I must leave the particulars of that kerfuffle to the professionals).

I cannot comprehend the thought process of those who know better and still choose to continue supporting Swift. This album was a final straw (of sorts) for me. Frankly, I cannot comprehend the thought process of Swift either- who decided to write a whole song about how she is bored with her long-term boyfriend because he has depression.

Not to mention how cruel it is to out the mental health status of another- she was also marketing the album predicated upon the idea of this being a "break-up" album, which instrumentally has the effect of modulating the tone. Tonally, she defined this album by her own myopic lens of human experience- and her selfish desire to eternally be the damsel in distress. No- Swift is never a grown woman in control of her own actions, in any of her songs, she is instead eternally pointing a finger and say, "look at what you made me do."

The effect of marketing this album as a "break-up" album has the rhetorical effect of rendering every song on the album as blame-pointing from each of Swift expressed "down-trodded melodrama" not as a symptom of her actions, but as the result of her breakup. It even modulates the extent to which she can ever conceptually admit to any wrongdoing, because she has effectively embedded the rhetorical appeal "not my fault" into every aspect of her life. Thus- even if she did say "I'm at fault" it is overwritten by the tone of her own innocent, damselesque persona. People would still view her as the victim. Now, would this be a problem if the breakup was explicitly mutual? Maybe- maybe not. This is, however, a problem when Swift expressed again and again that the breakup was due to the other party- either being too depressed, or not being quick enough to marry. Thus, her getting bored enough to emotionally cheat.

In essence, Swift created a type of rhetorical vortex around the album though which every song is instrumentally telling about a different facet of her own instinct to paint herself as a victim of circumstance in every situation.

Not only was the ultimate onus of her album- breaking up- but it was also her "going crazy." She, on one hand wants to shame others for having a mental health struggle, while also co-opting it, using it as an aesthetic, and then reverting the narrative back to her being the ultimate victim because now- get this- she's the super sad one. So sad that she needs to dance on top of a giant metal psych ward hospital bed for the TTPD set of the Era's tour. She's so sad that she needed to cheat on her long-term relationship, then immediately pivot into a new relationship with someone who she thinks "looks like a high school bully."

What I think is truly heinous- is just her representation of her own mental health downturn as legitimate, and others mental downturns are illegitimate- or are an inconvenience to her.

Is this really the message I want millions of women around the globe to hear and internalize? no- because it is cruelly self-centered and melodramatic.

So- yeah, it's just so painfully mean-spiritied.

Anyway- I don't want to run away with my answer here, so I will leave off here. I hope you did not mind my waxing poetic a bit in the middle there- I am in a reflective mood tonight. I've been rereading various texts I wish to include in my freshman class on critical thinking. So, I am dwelling on what it means to critique Swift- keeping in mind my ultimate intentions, in life, which is to inspire people to think for themselves.

Anyway dear- this answer is becoming too long. Rest easy- and I hope you know that anger can be a wonderful tool- for fueling passion.

Good luck out there.

[quillbones]

How's my condition 3 days after finishing Good Omens 2?

*Checks notes*

Binge-watching Staged yes. Good Omens interviews yes. Good Omens meme edits yes. Neil Gaiman's FAQ documents yes. Metanalysis and fan theories yes.

Diagnosis: wait for 2026 and we'll see. *cries*

[divorcedfiddleford]

You made a post saying “it has been zero days since our last alex hirsch hates ford so much bullshit” and i know it was mostly hyperbole, but you have some really good takes that I would love to be elaborated on in terms of how ford is written

it really wasn't hyperbolic. over the years he's just really shown a lot of hatred towards this one character.

content warning: discussion of abuse

i want to start with this clip from the commentary which i think of as a microcosm for how the writers and especially alex think about ford.

transcript:

rob renzetti: i mean he [mcgucket] should've basically knocked ford out, and... and destroyed the... you know, tied him up, and, destroyed... and... alex hirsch, speaking over him: yeah he should've beat ford with a wrench and taken this thing apart piece by piece! he's the one who understood how to built [sic] it, but...

... so that seems like a pretty violent course of action. shall we unpack that?

ford is a character who's pretty explicitly written as a victim of abuse, and who now has c-ptsd as a direct result of the abuse he experienced. alex hirsch believes that ford deserved everything bad that happened to him, that it's ford's own fault, and that he also deserved worse things to happen to him. this is why, given every narrative chance, alex hirsch has piled more suffering onto ford's plate. the biggest example of this i can think of is in the journal, when he wrote that fiddleford was actively erasing ford's memory (despite this being a massive timeline contradiction which i still refuse to accept). because god forbid ford even have one remotely healthy relationship with somebody. that would be too good for him. ford was manipulated and lied to by bill, but alex repeatedly compares him to icarus, a teenager whose demise was the result of his own ignorance. this comparison is still so fucking offensive to me. the sun did not lie to icarus, did not guarantee icarus all of the happiness and success and sense of belonging which he had been denied all his life, did not actively shut out the voices of those around him who would try to help him.

alex in general has a very strange relationship with abuse. he seems to get really upset when people read his characters as victims of abuse. the strongest instance of this is actually not with ford, it's with pacifica - especially in the nwmm episode commentary. the episode says "pacifica's parents have conditioned her to respond to a bell" and alex says people got "the wrong idea" about it. like. dude. what the fuck. you wrote abuse. even if you didn't mean to, that's what you wrote. you can't say people got "the wrong idea" just because you didn't think about the subtext of what you were writing. anyway, back to ford: i believe this extends to him as well. alex wanted to write a character who's a foil to stan and who was a selfish unlikable victim of his own arrogance. however that's not what he wrote. he somehow seemingly accidentally wrote a really compelling and relatable awesome autistic guy who had to fight for every good thing he he ever had in his life only for it to be taken from him every single time. but alex can't let go of seeing ford as just "the opposite of stan". when he talks about "how someone as smart as ford could fall for bill's tricks", he refuses to realize he wrote a situation in which a man was being psychologically manipulated and tortured.

it goes back further, too. people repeatedly theorized that filbrick was... not a very good father, to say the least. on top of the very explicit and canon fact that he threw one of his children out on the street (seriously, there is no defense for this), people pointed out that stan would flinch at filbrick, that ford seemed upset by things filbrick said but dared not talk back, that filbrick was mad at stan not for hurting his brother, but for "costing the family potential millions". but alex can't have people seeing ford as sympathetic. ford can't have it bad like stan did. ford had to have everything and he lost it all because he sucks so much. so he wrote the graphic novel story where ford is filbrick's favorite child and filbrick also is not even a bad parent you guys he's just stoic. ignore the whole thing in dreamscaperers where stan perpetuates the abuse that filbrick did to him. ignore the fact that ford was shouting at stan and then completely shut up as soon as filbrick entered the room and did not say another word for the rest of the night. ignore all that because i just made up this story where he cries at a present from stan. filbrick loved his boys for sure you guys!!!

i'm not even touching on how alex repeatedly villainizes traits commonly associated with mental illness and neurodivergence. ford's hypervigilance becomes arrogance. his passion for knowledge means he's a know-it-all. his difficulty socializing and making friends means he's a misanthrope. his lingering resentment for the way he was raised means he hates his brother and is the worst human being to ever have lived. i could go on, go even further into how the finale reaffirms this, but i feel weird talking about this too much.

[jazforthesoul]

copying this over from twitter but here is a compilation of all canonical (sorry Stone Age what if) information abt Ava Ferin that is not present in episodes !! this will be strictly canon and not my interpretations of her character (or at least; i will try my best) at the end of the day, 99% of what we know about her is through the lens of other people

ALSO!! ALL IMAGES HAVE ALT TEXT!!

ava was born in 1486 and died in 1509 when she was 23. she’s numerically 2 years older than lizzie, 3 years older than jay, and both were born in 1489, which makes her birthday sometime between 7/23 and 10/3. ava was a monk, wouldve been sun sol/ascendant dragon subclass mix.

personality: one of the biggest things i see about ava is the assumption that she was forced to join RAFT because of familial pressure. while i dont doubt that there was some expectation for her to live up to, it was Her Choice to join, and it's important to recognize that.

The picture above summarizes her personality enough, but i do feel like it deserves emphasis that she did Not join RAFT for her father, nor was she a "golden child" that (posthumously, of course) she's often assumed to be.

(small part abt Ava and Lizzie) Other than episode 101, which has heavy description on Ava's relationship with Lizzie, there's this image that makes me put my head in my hands.

I will add onto this is more information is revealed/i remember it, but this is what is Concrete and not available within episodes. there's not a lot about her, and honestly, i enjoy that! i like how her death has impact on not just the characters & story, but metanalysis as well

follow me for more ava ferin