#or maybe I'm just insane but TRUST ME

[fashiun-killa]

greta gerwig i love you

this scene is literally the intro to barbie and the 12 dancing princesses but with ken

[thelaurenshippen]

the way that silver said "I will stand here with you an hour, a day, a year" to flint and "I will wait a day, a month, a year, forever" to madi....I'm sick to my stomach. who is doing unhinged devotion like this man

[rude-harmonixer]

I was originally going to write on Twitter but character limits are too much of a bother so here I am. This will probably be very messy but I'm dealing with media that probably 10 people are familiar with, so... Whatever!

I've recently found this site: https://nervetower.neocities.org/analysis.html

It has a bunch of translations and essays on the game Baroque, originally released on the Sega Saturn.

This specific bit of info has made me OBSESSED with thinking about the game.

Sure the game was literally written in burst of inspiration by drawing tarot cards because the writers had a deadline and writer's block at the same time, and the protagonist being canonically trans was only in a draft for the prequel material, but the game is surprisingly consistent with its themes and the symbolism can still be read through a trans lens.

And because it's not confirmed and ambiguous, the protagonist can be read through multiple gender povs.

But like, why is this such a big deal? Well, Baroque and its prequel material just so happens to have one of the most incredible anti-bigotry narratives I've ever seen in a game. Specifically anti-ableism and anti-eugenics, among probably some questioning of organized religion and how corporations use it to further alienate the public into a cycle of oppression towards marginalized people. etc.

The protagonist is mass produced and manipulated by the Archangel to "purify" whatever he deems should be "purified", using guilt (the Christians/Catholics favorite thing) to do so as the protagonist is made to not remember anything besides their immense guilt over something.

For the game to progress the protag must regain their memories and find out they're a copy of who knows how many other copies, a human made into a product basically, made to feel special because they won't be distorted by their desperate delusions to escape a world destroyed by corporate greed like all the rest and have the power to "purify" things, when in reality they're just emotionally and genetically manipulated into being that.

A perfect pawn.

Now where is the trans symbolism? Well, aside from how little bodily autonomy the protagonist has, here's where things really get interesting:

In Baroque, God is presented as a woman. Before the Great Heat (aka apocalypse), God's Sense Spheres (her omnipresence, transferring data like the world is a body) assured that no great distortion would come to the reality humanity lived in, God would feel pain and know there was a wound to heal. Then the Archangel, who's really just some scientist, started fucking with the population's mental health on purpose because he wanted to kill God and create his own perfect little world. That's the short summary anyway.

At one point, with a lot of brainwashing using God's screams of pain, he created the Order of Malkuth to help him. But later the members woke up from the brainwashing and organized a desperate attempt to stop the Archangel: they would fuse Koriel number 12 (presented as a boy) with God so she could communicate in data that humans could understand. What they didn't expect however is that Koriel 12 had their own problems, and with Archangel interrupting the fusion, those problems were very amplified.

Koriel 12's guilt over being alive and God's suffering made shit hit the fan for good with the Great Heat.

And that's how the protagonist becomes mute and receives the power of God and anim- I mean, "purification".

The game begins and despite Koriel and God being now two parts of the same being, the Archangel tells Koriel to go to the bottom of the Nerve Tower, where the "Mad God" is basically imprisoned, and "purify" her with a rifle (with ammo made from the embodiment of her pain hormones).

The Archangel is literally making Koriel kill a part of themselves that's already literally buried deep into a mind tower that goes down instead of up but still has the image of a tower instead of a hole. He's basically forcing Koriel to bury the closet with them inside it because the closet isn't enough apparently.

Koriel also can't speak for themselves anymore but their thoughts can be read by the Horned Woman, which she just says out loud without explaining anything and unless you're thinking about it you won't even recognize those are "your" thoughts being spoken by another person.

Jumping ahead, when Koriel gets to the bottom of the tower, you can either do what the Archangel tells you or can just walk towards God and unite with her.

When you do this after some dying and finding out, you'll receive the true ending, in which it is made clear that while it is in a state at which it's harming everyone, the "distortion" is actually the natural way of the world, everyone needs to cope at least a little to survive, the Archangel's eugenicist campaign was the greater problem here, not the people "distorted" into representations of their suffering and coping mechanisms by his actions.

This is primarily focused on ableism and particularly the stigma around mental health.

With a trans reading, it forms a bridge so it can also just mean bigotry in general too.

Why? Well, since the 70s or something, trans people basically have to be diagnosed with a disorder to be granted legal access to transition, that's even truer for Japan, which literally puts it on paper as a disorder. And overall, transphobia and ableism go very hand in hand.

This game is now the closest I've come across to finding a game that's secretly about trans people too like The Matrix.

And this has greatly developed the brain worms 👍

[kakusu-shipping]

Hi, I would like to understand why do you ship Mario and Luigi? You don't have to answer if it's not comfortable for you. 🙂

This soooooo immediately reads as a bait question, but I'm trusting you here anon I'm trusting you asked this in genuine good faith which I don't know why you would but if you want to know;

The short answer is Because I Want To and I Like Them. Plain and simple, there doesn't have to be a deeper reason. Sometimes we just ship things because we want to. Understood? Okay cool.

A slightly longer answer would be because they're the kind of Ship Dynamic that brings me the most comfort. I love a ship where they are each other's other half, they understand eachother and support eachother and just get eachother in ways no other person ever could. Loving eachother, being together is all they've ever known, they can't imagine a world where they're not together, side by side.

Platonic or Romantic aside, Mario and Luigi are a perfect pair, that's their entire thing. Mario is Reckless and Headstrong, Luigi is Calculating and Sturdy. Mario charges forward, Luigi holds the line. Mario picks mushrooms out of his spaghetti, and Luigi eats them. They fill in the gaps the other leaves, they compliment and communicate and trust one another undoubtedly.

I love a love like that. Of course it's you. It was always going to be you. It could never be anyone but you. I am not me without you, and you are not you without me. They are eachother's everything

They are a bonded pair, do not separate.

[thyandrawrites]

Attempting to design an amigurumi chibi and one of his hips is at a shaper angle than the other nfndjsk I accidentally gave him scoliosis

[gotyouanyway]

man leave it to a doctor to make you feel endlessly guilty for trying to ease your own pain i'm gonna kms

[ranger-kellyn]

i said it on my swiftie blog last but fuck it i'll say it here too bc i woke up still annoyed about it:

for a website that does a ton of bitching and moaning about media literacy and and saying all this "you all clearly didn't pay attention in high school english", funny how suddenly none of y'all know what a fucking metaphor is.

of course taylor wasn't literally raised in an asylum! the public eye is the inescapable asylum!

i think about all the genuinely shitty and harmful things i've said and done across all my nearly 30 years. i have said and done some awful shit, because i am an incredibly fallible person who was raised by incredibly fallible parents and relatives, raised in a fallible community (things i literally had ZERO choice in) and surrounded by incredibly fallible friends. i have hung around some horrible people who said and did horrible things.

if i had to learn everything i've learned all while under a microscope from the public-- yeah! i'd go fucking insane! i wouldn't last ten seconds in that!!

and i really reckon you wouldn't, either, because the unfortunately reality is we're all fallible. most of us just have the luxury of being complete nobodies

[miserye]

never would i have thought in a million years that i would get close enough to my boss that he would ask me to house sit for him

[natdocx]

I'm actually so anxious about the mfs finale tonight like I can't remember the last time I was this nervous because of a series ending... @eliot laurence the bar is on the fucking floor, please don't drag it down to hell, that's all I ask...

[msdk-00]

this is my problem. thank you 40 year old reddit man for putting into words my feelings better than i ever could

[j-esbian]

thinking about the time i was criticizing a male fantasy author for not including many female characters (and all but one were incredibly generic) and people were really like "be nice to the author, he's said he doesn't know many women in real life :/" like. yeah i can tell

[that-one-demonic-entity]

[9hikers]

the fatal flaw with my friend-making strategy is treating people like feral cats that need months of coddling before they can feel safe around me

the more i realize how unrealistic that is the more a lot of my past relationships make sense

[anothermonikan]

Constantly needing advice over HDD replacements. Hardware girlies help. I am put a poor little programmer girl I don't know what I'm doing ^^;

[slippery-minghus]

*sighs* made it home ok and now have a purring lump on my lap. i took a panic pill as soon as i got home and i think it's helping. after how stressful work was and then electrolysis, i'm feeling post-meltdown exhaustion. i got a little food in me but i'm just so tired. i really hope tomorrow's a better day.

[diomedrian]

Soooooo unsatisfied w life ion even get it