those two shots from the first episode of oniakashi showing satoko's reflection as her witch self, as she observes rena spacing out because of her home problems, and the second shot where she's presumably thinking of how she's going to inject rena at the nurse office struck me. satoko is so alienated from her surroundings after looping through her trauma for so long that it feels to her like everything is a 'dream'. she's so emotionally disconnected from the people she cares about as if she were separated by a glass wall. it's a literal interpretation of depersonalization/derealization.
satoko has now entirely compartmentalized the idea that she's doing anything bad. she's completely distanced herself from the violence she's committing towards herself and others. this is no different from a club game or one of her many traps. nothing is real including her friends until she's happy. until the reality wherein she can survive is within her grasp. everything else is a delusion and her friends are just pieces on the gameboard.
still, satoko gives rena the grief and remorse she doesn't give to mion, because rena has always fought against fate - the same fate satoko believes mion has not had to suffer through before that she and rena always do. satoko makes rena much like herself, that way they can be together in this.
rena's reaction to rina and her feeling that she has to kill rina in oniakashi is a parallel to satoko's reaction to rika and st. lucia as a whole. it's this sense that no matter what nothing can get better unless you commit an absolute. a certainty. others will not change or be better if you talk things out with them. satoko sympathizes with rena because she sees much of herself in rena.
it's different with mion whom satoko injects out of curiosity, the curiosity to see something she's never seen before playing out, but that's also an expression of her resentment towards mion - resentment because mion never had to go through what she and the others did while also being complicit in her ostracization and othering as a sonozaki in her mind. there's jealousy there. a bite of biterness. it's why satoko loses all the sympathy she had for rena when she's dealing with mion. satoko feels guilt over making rena go L5, but all of this is goes out of the window when it comes to mion. that's purposeful.
every fragment satoko weaves with eua is just another duel!!!!!!
duels are all about making Duelists and Brides relive anthy and akio's problems. it validates akio's horrible solution as akio is looking for the power to reinforce his worldview that enables his abuse of women and anthy. eua is the same. eua has turned her despair + loneliness into boredom and she sees the world as a stage to relieve that, but she only counts on the cruelty of the children of man. the savagery of the loops reinforces her worldview and validates her manipulation of satoko and her perspective of people.
satoko and anthy are also making them relive their trauma in a similar way, but they're more justified. satoko and anthy are trying to escape, find love, destroy themselves and their loved one. [REDACTED] from umineko is like them too btw.
the akashis are all about the thematics and parallels. gousotsu as a whole is. very utena!
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11 & 15 :)
11. Do you believe in the old advice to “kill your darlings?” Are you a ruthless darling assassin? What happens to the darlings you murder? Do you have a darling graveyard? Do you grieve?
(Note: This one has several unpopular opinions re: authors rewriting fics in particular, so please just...do not keep reading if you've ever rewritten a story you've released on AO3 or rewritten a serial or something, because like, slakdfjas how I feel about what I do has nothing to do with how other people do their stuff, lol).
Hmm.
Okay, yes, I do have a darling graveyard. In total, since I started writing as a kid, I've shelved about 5-6 completed novels. Maybe more. I didn't do it while actively writing them, I finished them, really believed in them, and one day reread them and realised they would stay on my hard-drive. That's fine. I don't really grieve them. Some I feel nothing for. In fact not having many feelings about the story was one of the reasons I shelved it.
I am not, otherwise, a very brutal 'kill your darlings' person. I'm a big believer in restorative methods and problem solving. For anyone who is familiar with Clifton Strengths, Restorative is in my top 10. I would rather fix or mend something, than shelve it or give up on it, and that part of my personality is a perfect match with writing an ongoing serial.
Here's the thing, I write most of my serials in an ongoing way with no plan. If I abandon the serial, I abandon my readers who are invested in the serial. That's a very different process to writing a novel that no one else except maybe an editor or beta is seeing.
I have to be - imho - from an integrity perspective, accountable to the process. And the process demands that I not pull a serial halfway through and then replace it with something new or not replace it at all. Firstly, there will be readers who always prefer the first version, and that shafts them. And secondly, it is almost always possible to mend a story, or write yourself out of a cul de sac. I enjoy the problem solving, I enjoy thinking on my feet, and the moments of being blocked because I broke something in the story are vastly outweighed by the times I unblocked and let the river flow again.
This is also why when I edit Game Theory, I'll always leave the original on AO3. It's also why I haven't deleted fanfic I'm actually pretty ashamed of and couldn't reread again. Like I have het Glee fanfiction on my not_poignant account and I never want to read it again. I'm not deleting it. I'm not going to shelve it. People gave it kudos, they bookmarked it, and I don't know those people and I know they can read something better, but once it's up, I am accountable to that visibility. I know what it feels like to go back and read that one special fic that for some reason you just really love, only to find out it's been deleted. And yes, we can always download stories, but I can also just choose not to be a dickhead to my readers in that fashion, so I won't.
Putting the rest under a cut because well there's more but also I might be very Unpopular Opinion about this and I feel pretty strongly about it.
(There are of course valid reasons people delete their stories, like, 'this username is connected to my legal name and I'll get fired if these stories are found' (though they can always be orphaned / made anonymous), but 'I hate this story' to me is just... /thinks/ I don't really want to let my mental illness win or be more important than the folks who might really love that one story and find something important in it. That's just.... how I think about it - if I can make sure another reader never feels that kneejerk broken-hearted feeling of having a favourite fic deleted, even just a dumb little Glee fic that's terrible, then like, yeah I won't make them feel that way just because I feel something like shame or disappointment in something. Because I have the power to also not think about those stories and then it doesn't affect me lmao).
I always have very mixed feelings when authors remove or completely rewrite a fanfic for example on AO3 - it is obviously completely their right, I feel really sad on behalf of every reader who will forever miss that original version. And as a reader, I've had this happen to me. An author has removed or rewritten a story, and I just loved the original more. I've never loved a rewritten version of a fic more than the original version. Not once. Not ever. Some of us preferred the more raw and ugly version, that was less like a generic novel and felt less like 'I've learned how to publish books now so I'm going to polish this up even though that's not why almost any of my readers are here.' And I'm painfully conscious of that re: Game Theory lol.
I guess I have really strong opinions about this. I don't know how to explain it. I feel like once I put something in public, I have pledged a certain amount of loyalty to a story, and a certain amount of respect and dignity to the reader. My loyalty to the story is that I will make it the best it can be in my capacity at the time. My respect and dignity re: the reader is that I will respect their love of the thing, even at the expense of indulging the intrusive thoughts of a mental illness, even if I don't understand how anyone could love the thing.
Shelving a serial isn't really something I want to do, and that's the closest I think I come to 'killing your darlings.' These days, therefore, I'm just a lot more discerning about what long-term projects I commit to before I commit to them. Because once I'm in, I'm all in. I'd rather quit writing entirely than leave a big serial unfinished, delete it, and start something else instead. Like, how bad am I at writing if I can't mend what I broke?
(Again, this isn't how I feel about other people's writing, it's just very important to my process that I be accountable to the story and the characters once I get started. I suspect other authors instead are more accountable to the quality of the writing and in giving their readers the most 'perfect' version of a story ever, or maybe they're just more accountable to that niggling 'I could have done that better' feeling. It manifests in many different ways! My method works best for me, but it is very much tied in with my personal sense of ethics and values that I impose on myself and try and live by.)
As to grieving... There's one novel I really regret shelving the most, but that's because I shelved it for reasons partially outside of my control - it needs an Australian Aboriginal sensitivity reader who is comfortable reading m/m romance with explicit sex. After months and months of searching, I found someone, gave them an upfront $150 USD deposit (about 6 years ago now), with the rest to come later, and they disappeared with my money and never spoke to me again. Ever since then, I have looked occasionally for a sensitivity reader in that area, but I've kind of suspected it's too niche of a thing to need, and I also can't lose that much money again. I've never spent that much on a single marketing budget for Perth Shifters, for example.
That's a standalone Fae Tales novel set in the southern hemisphere, with an entirely new cast, called Tradewinds and I'd really love for y'all to read it, but I sadly don't see it ever happening.
That one I'm really sad about. And I guess I could rewrite it to have zero Aboriginal Australian representation even though it's set in Australia, but like... :/ Y'know? Not ideal. But maybe that's the only way this story can exist, or maybe it just shouldn't exist in the first place. So it's shelved. A very few select people have read it, and everyone who's read it has enjoyed it, but none of those people have been Aboriginal Australian, and you know, I don't want to make some kind of horrendously awful fuck-up so we just... quietly leave that one in its folder and forget it exists most of the time.
15. Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?
Mmm, I only write in the margins of some books, and only if they're mine.
I dog-ear my pages, I don't care how expensive or special edition the book is. If it's mine, I can do what I want with it. I see no point in being precious about physical objects, when what matters are the words inside, and not whether the page has a crease in it.
I don't read in the bath because I don't have baths. But also because I want to empty my head in the bath, so I just want to not think about anything at all.
I don't judge people who do any of these things to their own property. I get mad if they do it to my property (basic respect bruh), and I do judge the people who judge me for what I do with my own property. They're in the same category as grammar pedants, imho.
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From the Weird Writer Asks meme!
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