#minor things in the grand scheme

[allforhavoc]

ETHO'S WATER BUCKET CLUTCH??? HELLO??? He's trying SO HARD not to be washed up and by God is he doing a GOOD JOB

[daily-hanamura]

[communistkenobi]

perpetual problem of wanting to look weirder but only getting gendered correctly if I look like a stock white guy npc

[timeskip]

Thinking about Kite's thought that Gon is a real Hunter because of his connection to animals and to Killua, and how Gon ends up twisting this idea by the end of the series. Throughout all of chimera ant arc he's chasing after this ideal of who Kite is and how strong he is!! And Ging too as an extension of Kite, but so much of what makes Gon himself comes from the influence of Kite...

As a side note, I personally kind of hate how 2011 attributed the "Hunters are well liked by animals" line to Ging. While I do understand this from an adaptation perspective, since the viewer doesn't know Kite but DOES know Ging, it also undermines a lot of what makes Gon's relationship with Kite so important IN CONTRAST to his relationship with Ging. The ways Gon was inspired by Kite and Ging are similar, but VERY distinct, and though Kite doesn't mention the friendship part of it out loud, it's still deeply important to who Gon has become since the last time he met Kite!!

And also, just a chapter before this callback, Ging was saying how he wouldn't meet with Gon if he had friends with him (a sad comparison with how Gon wanted to introduce Killua to him) !!!

Of course, this is partially because Ging just doesn't want to meet Gon specifically (because he feels awkward) but I think it also shows how Ging's belief of what makes himself a Hunter is EXTREMELY solitary, meant to drift from place to place and hunt what he doesn't have. While I do genuinely believe he cares about people like the Greed Island game masters, his insistence on not meeting Gon paints a very different picture of what "being a Hunter" means to him.

The version of "being a Hunter" that Gon has learned is instead more similar to Kite's idea, with him having inspired Gon to become one directly: Kite fights and kills if he has to but hates it, especially when it comes to the animals he wants to take care of. And obviously he cares deeply for the people he brings with him, leading to a self sacrificial moment in how he protects Gon and Killua from Pitou, which Gon emulates at the end of the arc when he loses his arm, semi-intentionally.

This idea of Gon becoming a Hunter is connected to the people he looks up to from the beginning! And with what Kite thinks about having good friends at the start of the chimera ant arc, there's also this strong idea that he should seek out friends and allies (which he did! He's been blessed with good friends!!) and keep being good and kind :')

When Kite died and Gon fell into his grief, Gon's ability to look at the world from Kite's point of view and rely on his friends also fell apart:

But isn't it interesting that at the end of things Gon is still trying to emulate Kite? But not with this idea of having good friends and relying on them. Only with the worst things that happened to him, losing an arm or imitating the impression that was made on him of Kite killing an animal because that's what has to be done.

Yes, this is a reference to Kite making sure Gon killed the chimera ants properly when they were fighting the less powerful ones. But it's also so integral to who Gon is in that moment in the depth of his grief, a brutality that wasn't part of him before. Gon learned a lot about the cruelty of the world around him through the chimera ant arc, but he already KNEW that Kite was willing to kill an animal if that's what had to be done. Except that when he was a younger child, he rejected that. He took care of Kon and didn't let Kite kill him.

This is who Gon was, and it's still a part of him, but his admiration of Kite has twisted!! His optimism that everything would work out brought him down!!! Gon has so much kindness, but in the moment he fights Pitou he's stopped caring about that. And to a degree, yes, it has to be done--but finishing off Pitou like Kite taught him isn't the way he should have done it.

Because he's not asking for Killua's help. Doing it all alone, because that's what Gon thinks it means to be strong--and though Gon was unaware of this, Kite's ideals went against this. But Gon was simply trying to be who he thought Kite and Ging would want him to be! He's lost sight of what Kite actually wanted for him!!! It's another layer to the tragedy!!!

[ddwcaph-game]

Here's a snippet of one of the edited scenes in Chapter 2!

If you haven't checked out the updated diary entries, it's mentioned that Wayne is actually pretty close to Ms. Mean Chin (the school's guidance counselor).

"You're lucky you haven't submitted your waiver yet." JM takes the fifty-peso bills with a ten ton sigh. "I submitted them to the office earlier, and guess what? A couple of fake cheat sheets were hidden in the stack." He kicks the floor. "Ugh, I hate myself. It's almost finals, I should've seen B's going to try getting me in trouble again. At least Ms. Custodio let me go for now." I share a glance with Kuya. That's what the loudspeaker earlier was all about. "You talked to Ms. Mean Chin?" Wayne asks, trying not to sound too excited. "How is she? Is she doing okay?" "She's as strict as ever." JM finally puts down his backpack beside our bags, smiling ever so slightly. "Nah, she's fine. Unless you count the fact that she misses her favorite troublemaker too. Heh, I'm still amazed how she managed to talk some sense into you." But Wayne doesn't return the chuckle. "Yeah. I just wish she could talk some sense to Mommy and Daddy too." JM awkwardly shifts in his seat, but thankfully Lily breaks the silence before I need to find a synonym for awkward.

Their relationship with each other is so bittersweet. 🥺

If you chase after Wayne in Chapter 6, he'll share a secret and talk about their conversation earlier that day, but I want to hint at their relationship outside the diary and side branches too.

[d-lanx]

my favourite part of this whole thing is that everyone's acting like it's the first time wrestlers have had a real fight backstage. most wrestlers have done it, and many have been a lot worse than this. the only reason aew wants to show this is because punk is in wwe now so they won't have to worry about the consequences and they also want ratings. if both wrestlers were in aew, they would ignore it like any other backstage scuffle

[nohoperadio]

There's a certain kind of embarrassing conversational trap that a certain kind of anxious/austic/maybe just awkward person can set for themselves, and I think I fell into the trap a lot back when I was (even?) more conspicuously those things, and the trap is: okay, you're present while some group conversation is happening, everyone's saying stuff, you're not contributing very much. Telling an anecdote feels scary, asking people questions feels scary, making a joke feels scary, offering opinions feels scary. One type of contribution that might not feel as scary as most is providing some piece of pertinent factual information: doesn't feel like you're making yourself super vulnerable there, you just happen to know a thing about the topic at hand so you're sharing it, the thing you know isn't about you so even if people aren't that interested it might not feel as much like a personal rebuke as, for example, nobody finding your joke funny.

Unfortunately, one of the things that can feel like a really good cue for jumping in with your fact is somebody saying something incorrect, and you having the chance to correct them. The problem here is only partially the well-known thing where people who are far apart on the allistic/autistic scale often disagree about whether correcting others in casual conversations is bad and rude or good and prosocial; the bigger danger is that if your anxiety thresholds for saying stuff are as described in my first paragraph, you can easily get yourself in a situation where in a 20 minute conversation you've only spoken three times and all of them were to correct somebody, suddenly you're just the guy who keeps correcting people a bunch, and that can be a very sucky thing because the people who hate being corrected are going to really notice that, and even the people who are relatively chill about it might find their patience tested a little. It takes quite a precise blend of awkwardness and lack of self-awareness to walk into this, but I've been there in the past, I've occasionally seen others do it, when you catch yourself doing it it's super embarrassing!

And what I'm describing has to be sharply distinguished from the person who corrects people a lot simply because they don't see why they shouldn't. In the thing I'm talking about--to use the example above, if you erased all this person's anxiety then instead of speaking three times in a 20 minute conversation they might have spoken 20 times in a 20 minute conversation, and of those 20 times the three corrections might still be in there, but now they're not the entire vibe the person is putting across. Completely different effect! It's the fact that giving factual information feels neutral and safe while everything else feels risky and frightening that creates the imbalance, not the person's attitude towards correcting-as-social-behaviour, which doesn't even need to be that far out of the norm for this to become a thing.

[symphonyincoordination]

Hawkeye softly stroking Sophie when she is sick even though he's not at all enthused to be dealing with her

I mean, he's taking her as a patient because Radar wants him to and she's Potter's horse so he has to really. But he didn't have to do that

[sevlawless]

okay so the n route has been bothering me ever since i played it and i needed to air my frustrations out as a way to cope i suppose

for reference my main detective who i use for n is felicity, but sometimes i also use arabella to test out some options i wouldn't normally pick and just to see how the romance works with a detective that isn't exactly that compatible with n. so when i first played, i used felicity and then later on when i was doing a deep dive into the romance and the plot, i was using arabella just to see if certain things held up yk! and lord how i wish it did LMFAO

just a little disclaimer that this is all just my opinion and i'm willing to listen to other points of view about this! and i do not mean any of what i say as a dig or to be hateful toward n, they are my favorite li in twc and the fact that i love their romance and their character so much is probably most if not all of the reason why their route in book 3 was so weird to me, and why i make the critiques that i do.

under the cut because this is a doozy and also book 3 spoilers

first of all the main thing in the demo chapters is that n gets mad if you try and fight the trappers bc they are so scared of losing you and like i GUESS i get it but this is literally our life now you're just gonna have to get used to it. and this wouldn't have even been an big issue for me if it was properly addressed! when i played using arabella i tried being mad, i tried staying mad, and it kept getting swept under the rug by the plot. like are we seriously not going to talk about this??? at all?????? and it seems very ooc for n NOT to say anything about it when you get a moment alone because why would they not address it, ESPECIALLY if your mc was still upset over it. AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE IN A RELATIONSHIP LIKE- these things need to be discussed in order to grow as a couple and there needs to be healthy communication or else this is not going to work. like you're telling me we were living with unit bravo for WEEKS and this shit just never got brought up again?

this also ties into my next gripe- n's backstory. so, if you snooped in the demo they won't tell you anything, which okay. mc shouldn't have done that, sure, but n doesn't even give a reason as to why they're upset by that. obviously you can be like "well i think anyone would be upset if you delved into their past without their knowledge or permission" but YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS PERSON WHY IS THERE NO COMMUNICATION OF FEELINGS. i would have appreciated that scene a hell of a lot more if n sat you down and was like "i'm upset that you did this, here's why," but all they do is get sad and then that's it. when i played as arabella i had her snoop AND get upset over the argument during the trapper fight, and n said something along the lines of "i know sometimes we regret doing things" as a reference to snooping AND the argument which??? just does NOT hold up at all and had me irritated as hell.

if you didn't snoop in the demo, n takes you to their room and shows you a picture of their family and talks about them and how his brother joined the navy and didn't come back (their brother was killed by vampires) and that's why they decided to join the navy, as a way to try and figure out what actually happened. this scene started off great, but it's cut short way too quickly because n drops the photo and the frame breaks. and then they basically just shoo you out. there's really not any option to comfort them, and the option that is there is not good enough. and it's not that n had to tell us EVERYTHING in that one scene, but it's more so the fact that it NEVER gets brought up again. your mc can't take a moment to bring it up and n sure as hell doesn't say anything else about it. which is so ?????? im sorry you supposedly love this person (im saying this for both mc and n) and yet neither of you address it again??? it makes no sense at all.

onto the research/combat scene… i've done the combat scene once so i can't really speak on that as much as the research one so. most of the research scene is fine aside from the fact if you're not in a relationship (which i did for one playthrough with felicity) n brings up bobby if you dated them which felt so bizarre but anyways. the option to realize you love n… i would love this IF the option where you tell n you love them actually mattered. LMFAO if you tell n you love them they literally just stare at you and then the sex scene pops up. like are you kidding me??? n would not just leave you hanging like that even if it was just to say that they don't feel that way yet. and the sex scene itself is… fine i suppose but it doesn't feel as intimate as it should be. there's little to no dialogue and it just feels so weird to read. like why would neither of you be saying anything?? not to mention the fact that you're literally OUTSIDE of the warehouse where any of ub could see you at any point it just feels wrong to have sex at that point at least in my opinion. and the talk after feels so short and weird i feel like both the detective and n would have more to say. and that moment is quickly brushed away by the plot.

i guess the next plot line is whether u told tina or verda or nobody about the supernatural. going into book 3 this was probably what i looked forward to the most and ofc it barely delivered. i liked seeing tina and n interact but that quickly turned sour for me, not because tina started rightfully bringing up how much mc has been through, but because n really does not do anything with that pov being voiced to them, which is so fucking ooc it pains me. when they go to talk to mc after their conversation there's no discussion just "i wanted to see you" okay but WHY did you? i would have taken a li pov of what tina relayed to them literally anything! and it's just another thing that gets swept under the rug because of the stupid ass plot.

another thing about the dinner that gets lost in the plot of book 3: tina/verda bringing up your li possibly drinking your blood and mc can react a number of different ways and i wish it had been talked about more than just in that moment 😭

the only scene that i genuinely enjoyed in all of n's route was after that building caves in on mc and you're back at the warehouse traumatized and bruised and defeated. n runs you a bath and if you pick that option helps you out of your clothes and then helps you settle into bed. i wish there had been more discussion of anything in that scene but mc was so out of it i was okay with no talking. and then redacted petname <3 the other thing i was most looking forward to! one thing i did dislike about this scene though was that we didn't really get a glimpse on how n was feeling yk usually mishka offers the li's pov on a scene and not having that made that moment not feel as rounded out.

the pool scene… first of all why did n get this one. like it would have made sense for m, hell even a! and again the scene felt so shallow and then the option to have sex. you're telling me your first time with n can be on a fucking pool table???? that is so not their vibe AT ALL and it feels so weird to even have that there. it was unnecessary as well as the other opportunity to have sex and i feel like mishka just put them in there as like fan service when who (in my opinion) genuinely wants this if they romance n and have them as their main route. i had hoped the first time n and mc have the opportunity to have sex it would be a more intimate setting because that's more fitting for them and my nate mc, felicity. but nope! and then the scene gets cut short because n has to go on patrol??? and again the sex scene itself … neither of them feel personable it's like a "one size fits all" type of approach and that just does not work if this is supposed to be interactive fiction where we create a personality for our mc's that cannot fit this specific mold mishka wants to put everyone in.

being invited to what might as well just be a fucking slave trade (i have many thoughts about this auction plotline as well but for now im discussing n's route) had me so confused because why would mishka even do that and then n's comment about the stationary? i need you to be fucking for real. the scene before you leave for the mission with n just felt so weird like we get it n is protective of mc but at this point it just felt like a hinderance which sucks because one of the things i love most about n is their deep care for mc and they just sounded like a broken record and it annoyed me so bad.

after all that, the scene when you come back and n is in tears confessing their love for mc i wanted to enjoy it i really did and i just could not upon replaying because it feels so unbelievably hollow. we have not discussed anything pertaining our relationship and when there are things that need to be discussed they are so underwhelming it's hard to even care. there are a handful of things n and mc both need to work on in order for this relationship to work and the fact that they're not being addressed makes it difficult for me to enjoy anything about this route. you can't even tell n you love them back for fuck's sake like hello.

a theme that i did not think was going to be as prominent as it was in this book but n contemplating mc turning into a vampire and AGAIN there wasn't ever really a discussion about this between mc and n and i feel like this will come to a head as the books progress but i don't think it fit into book 3 considering so many other things were being thrown at us.

all in all i truly desperately wanted to enjoy book 3 and enjoy being with n but i cannot when there are so many things ignored, sidelined, or just completely forgotten in order to push the plot forward.

[mildmayfoxe]

please can i pick your musical brain 👀 i'm losing it over the cover of 'bridge over troubled water' by jake collier/yebba/tom legend/tori kelly rn and i wondered if you knew any songs/groups/artists that are similar? i was trying to figure out what it is and was like. secular choral a cappella??? but uhhh not having a lot of luck finding things in the same vein and you came to mind as someone with musical knowledge!

ok HELLO my friend i'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long!! for those interested this is the jacob collier troubled water arrangement which similarly truly blew me away; it's an absolutely stunning piece of vocal arrangement and show of vocal talent that without exaggeration brought me to tears the second and third time i listened to it. a really spectacular arranger and musician- he's won five grammies, one of which for his lionel richie all night long arrangement which is also a lot of fun but a different vibe.

unfortunately i don't have a lot of suggestions for you! the obvious place (to me) to head is just straight to gospel choir. that's where you're going to find the most similar sweeping vocal harmonies like this, especially if you find some big groups. when i was looking around for similar pieces i found the civilization iv theme baba yetu composed by christopher tin & featuring the soweto gospel choir (which is a group i am definitely going to be listening to more of later). christopher tin also composed waloyo yamoni which also just blew me away- i cried!! soweto gospel choir is also in an arrangement of that on spotify, but the youtube link is for a live performance with a different choir- although the male soloist was really spectacular.

otherwise i feel like you could almost just start listening to OPERA if you wanted! you can also find a lot of really fun harmonizations in bluegrass and country music, though nowhere on the scale of big choral arrangements. here's flowers on the wall by the statler brothers for a country example which i enjoy, and here's nobody knows by pastor tl barrett & the youth for christ choir for a gospel song i've enjoyed recently too. since i deviated into more instrumental-heavy stuff with the christopher tin compositions just for fun here's october by eric whitacre which is just an intermediate concert band piece but it's my personal favorite i've ever played because the beauty of it all layered together is unreal. pick out the trumpet lines in there and imagine me playing that. GREAT piece imo. real sweeping triumph and melancholic wistfulness.

LASTLY here's the wikipedia pages for grammies for best arrangement, instrument and vocals and best arrangement, instrumental and a cappella which probably have lots of other interesting things to check out, both in winners and nominees! jacob collier's on both lists.

if anybody has another other suggestions please let me know!! i'm not an expert by any means and honestly my musical knowledge is only mediocre, so would be happy to hear what other people have to suggest :)

[tibli]

"bro how could anybody ship Character A and Character B together thats so cringe!!!" sorry you have no sense of whimsy in your heart lmao

[xehanortsreport]

thinking about how luxu is just a slippery kind of guy who makes a habit out of betraying people, but as far as we know he never directly betrays xehanort and is loyal to him and protective of him even despite the snark, from scala as bragi all the way to kh3 up til xehanort dies.

i think a lot about how yx tells braig (lol) that him being given no name is him inheriting a will and how that's really important to him and idk idk it Must mean something that yknow. luxu trusted him with it. love that.

[mechanical-aristocrat]

Okay this is silly but am I crazy to think that Screwllum didn't talk like this before? In Silver Wolfs event he just talked like a human but now he says things like "Affirmation:" or "Conclusion:" Does this have like. Lore signifigance? Was it explained? Or did hoyoverse just retcon how he talks?

[OOC:]

Actually, he has talked like this the whole time, it's just that in Silver Wolf's companion mission it wasn't used nearly as frequently as in the new story. (To make sure I was remembering correctly, I skimmed the dialogue section of the wiki and found that the amount it was used was around the same for both missions, but since Screwllum had far more dialogue in Punklorde Mentality, its use was significantly more spread out so it wasn't as noticable)

In my opinion, it was better that way. I feel like this sort of speech mannerism is only charming when it's used sparingly, but for every handful of lines? It's a bit awkward and loses its effectiveness pretty quickly. Before, it seemed to me like something he was doing intentionally, turning typically flat and emotionless robotic speech patterns into something more endearing. Now, though, it reads like it only exists because he's a robot and robot characters have to speak a certain way, right? Never mind the fact that Screwllum is far more in touch with emotions (both his own and others') than most robot characters that exist in fiction, and that he tends to speak in a very elegant and poetic way that wouldn't usually blend very well with that blunt, straight-to-the-point style of speaking (unless, of course, a balance is struck between the two...like it was in Punklorde Mentality, maybe?!).

It's not a retcon, per say, because that word usually only applies to major, plot-important elements (as far as I understand it), but it is an inconsistency.

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

Wait, come to think of it, Joseph Mills and Judit Minot? JM&JM? My days of suspecting that Pryce assigns partners based on name puns and name puns alone are certainly coming to a middle...

[gingerbreadmonsters]

if i get one (1) comment, ONE SINGLE COMMENT about making a listener character say 'biscuits' instead of 'cookies' in this next one, i swear to GOD you will never have seen anyone delete their blog as fast as i will

[fastfists]

Oh, since I should mention...my Knuckles doesn't really have a 'set age' per say. On his bio while it does say 16-19, I kind of leave his age ambiguous just for my own peace of mind and sanity. ...might change in the future but I just don't feel like trying to calculate any of that or dealing with certain people. Least at this moment.