#wouldve at least been thematically relevant

[mercutiotakethewheel]

everytime i rewatch black sails, i find myself like vane more and more ngl. the first season really tries hard to trick you into thinking he’s just unnecessarily, banally, and uncompellingly an asshole (in the overwhelmingly compelling asshole show), whose one redeeming feature is that he’s kinda pathetic too. but geez s2 really nails home everytime that hes the best and the coolest and the most honest (maybe even most compassionate) of the mcs up until this point, barring anne of course. and on top of that i actually kind of think he has the best pre-s3 speeches. like obvs s4 flint is yknow s4 flint. and s3 max is so insane i actually cant handle it. but oh my god charles vane’s letter and his fuck your legitimacy eleanor speech and his hanging speech are so good. and fuck what i said earlier isnt even true. bc his s1 speech while hes looking in the eyes of the little boy he used to be is actually like the bestest. like fuck ok. charles vane is the best actually. #1 anarchist boy. 10/10 would want him in my commune. hed point blank refuse to help with the dishes tho so 😬.

[cycle-hit]

i absolutely agree with the idea that muu’s status from queen bee in school to bullying victim was because of her being gay. ive seen alot of people talk about how muu went from rich popular girl to the target of harassment but nobodys given like an actual reason why they thinks such an extreme shift happened? high schoolers can backstab their friends and whatnot but usually theres not such an extreme 180 shift from ‘most popular girl’ to target of bullying and harassment without SOME kind of explanation, and ive not seen any explanations of theories for how rei wouldve been able to convince muu’s friends to turn on her when rei clearly wasnt someone they cared for the opinion of. i really cant look at that shift unless it was some kind of extreme thing such as muu being outed as a lesbian to her school, and her friends turning on her out of homophobic disgust which would in their mind justify the absolute shift in their behavior to her. its maybe a stretch since its not really hinted at in the MVs or voice dramas but the idea of muu’s crush on rei being outed and serving as the primary event that shifted muu’s social status is, to me, the most logical and explanation thematically relevant conclusion

i dont think muu being gay was the "main" cause of muu being bullied- theres a lot of stuff that implies that rei flipped the hourglass on her because she got tired of muu's "queen game".

the "bees" here are feeding muu larvae- assumably the same type of bug that muu is, due to the green "honey" that spills out of her chrysalis when she hatches. shes eating her young! insects resort to "filial cannibalism" like this when theres a shortage of food, bees specifically do it when theres not enough food to feed the young either- so they just end up selecting an "older" brood to survive and use the younger ones as a food source in order for more bees to survive. the best idea i can absorb from this is that muu's "bees" feed her "larvae" (underclassmen? people to bully in general?) so she can "survive"- aka inflict hurt onto others so she doesnt have to deal with her own hurt. hurt people hurt people or whatever.

this girl gets shattered for failing to feed muu "larvae"- the lyrics here are "if you want to betray from jealousy, you know whats going to happen ON YOU". keep that in mind. anyways. we know that muu views relationships as entirely transactional, once someone stops "benefiting" her she stops caring (see her timeline interactions with the other prisoners). once someone stops feeding her "larvae", they no longer have a use to her.

whats interesting about that "shattering" though- is that this means the bees are fake. they arent really her friends. rather this means she didnt view them as "friends" or THEY didnt view HER as a friend. could be either. both even. "fake friends". i feel she definitely THOUGHT they were "friends" though, from this photo in after pain.

she dances on the shattered pieces of her "friends", and her other "friends" join her as well.

there was one friend she couldnt "shatter", though. that's rei.

when rei walks in on her dancing, the lyrics from earlier when she shattered the other girl repeats- "if you want to betray from jealousy, you know whats going to happen ON YOU", and both her gaze and her friends gazes turn onto rei. rei became a victim of muu's bullying.

this is rei's chalkboard! this is rei getting bullied. we can tell because its likely rei's desk that has the flowers on them- muu's desk is beside the one with the flowers on it (based on the angle of the sunlight at least), so this isn't muu's chalkboard.

this is when rei "flips the hourglass". she gets tired of muu's bullying, of her "queen game", and exposes muu for her cycle- eating the "young" and "shattering" anyone who cant "feed" her, what she walked in on. theres a message on rei's chalkboard here that might corroborate to that, fuuta kajiyama style.

she brought muu's "queen game" to light, and muu's "friends" turned on her for that, likely because they thought muu would just "shatter" them as well.

(translations provided here)

muu begins to drown in the same "honey" of the "larvae" that she was fed and metamorphosed from- she's now experiencing the same pain that she kept inflicting onto others.

so i really dont think that muu being gay was what rei flipped the hourglass on her for- atleast not as a sole thing. nor was it the "main" cause of muu's bullying. i think it just happened to be something that came to light as well and then WORSENED the bullying towards muu. as a little treat though i like to imagine the scene of muu hitting/pouring water over rei's head happened because rei rejected her confession of feelings. that headcanon does rly get obliterated by this interrogation question though. unfortunately.

also as a disclaimer i want to put proof that muu does very much regret/feel bad for what she's done- despite her "I Dont Care Im Queen Bee" attitude

she KNOWS shes done something bad.

she knows it was wrong. we just kind of. messed that up. by giving her an innocent verdict. plus muu's like. a 16 year old girl man. this is just sort of what happens in high school to a lot of people. besides the um. murder.

anyways. hope that helps give you more theories for what happened to muu, anon! but thats all just a theory. A GAME THEO-[GUNSHOT]

[ratanslily]

Apologies in advance I have a lot of fee-fees about Bloodbound and its ending and not a lot of them are good lmfao. I think the whole LI death controversy thing in Bloodbound is a result of a failing of its story tbh. Ending on a somber note with a death of a friend is fine, even desirable in a CYA game that wants that angst as it offers a significant branching path for the viewer without actually changing the ending so it isn't a lot of work to code. (Especially if the conditions are simple, in this case being "we killed this one bc you flirted with that one" or whatever the conditions were I don't remember.)

The thing is though is that deaths at the end should be thematic in some way; since there's a limited time afterwards to process because the story is ending in just a few lines. ILITW deaths, for example, didn't really get the time it needed to let those deaths sink in. They have a funeral for a scene and that's it. If it's thematic you at least have that to think about and it feels like a sacrifice worth making. From what I remember (been a while) there isn't a specific theme around Lily/Jax's death - just for the angst. And that route is fine if there's a proper conclusion and send-off for the character I guess, just not ideal really. Audiences like their favs to die for reasons and not just for misery porn.

So Jax/Lily died for no reason but it was ALSO unequal. You have to have a pretty robust reason to kill x but not y. It could be a story reason, like y *could* have died but just happened to be in a different place through pure luck (gives thrill through an 'oh-shit' feeling) or a motivation (death of x inspires y, etc) or to display the power of the villain (typically used for side characters; used basically every 3rd chapter in Across the Void), or a theme (loss of loved ones, etc etc.)

In Bloodbound it's weird not just because they killed 1/2 of the poc LIs, because it highlights how 2/4 of the LIs are barely even involved in the lore of the world. Adrian and Kamilah are the only ones in MC's group who know what's going on because of their age, while Lily and Jax are just as fish-out-of-water as MC is. Adrian/Kamilah *can't* die because if they do the story can't come to a conclusion bc no one else knows anything about what's happening! And that's all because they decided to do an ancient fantasy epic instead of the vampires-in-a-modern-age setting that they built in the first book. There's a lot of feelings I have about BB's confused setting (it goes from modern day to ancient society to futuristic with the addition of the vamp hunters & the Big Four then to post-apocalypse and back to ancient times... why) but its biggest crime is that we're given 4 LIs and only 2 of them can actually move the story forward. It makes the other two's arcs feel especially "side" and no one can accomplish anything significant unless Kamilah or Adrian are there. If they really wanted to heavily incorporate ancient history with their 2 old lead vampires, then why not do a modern vs. ancient vampire conflict? Ffs you have 2 ancient LIs and 2 young vampire LIs, AND several ancient vampire villains (Gaius, that vamp hunter guy) and several young vampire villains (the Council guys). Highlight the differences between the two worlds by making them fight and then in book 3 oh shit it's Rheya, here to destroy the lifestyles of both vampire worlds time to Crush Ass, you know? (I honestly preferred the story w/o her but she's an important part of the world I guess) It was there it was right there the setting would have been more consistent and Jax and Lily wouldn't be just as confused around the story's events as the reader is because they're still in their modern world, playing by the rules that they learned in *contrast* to Adrian and Kamilah - as opposed to being forced to play by someone else's! And if you want an angsty end LI death you can kill everyone with no hesitation because everyone can move the plot forward!

I actually prefer the death system in ilitw. Sure, the funeral system was handled poorly but atleast there was a chance of everyone dying (no special preference for death art scenes, you know, unlike bb)

I'll always remain pissed about bb cuz they always shifted jax and lily to the side with either a) their backstory having bare minimum relevance to the plot b) in Lily's case practically 0 backstory. Jax gets some tapestry scenes in bb while lily just got one in that holiday book. while the whole series is just like adrian! kamilah! gauis! rheya! *insert more characters cuz my memory of bb is fading fast due to annoyance*

I wasnt there for bb release, only the third book. so idk how people handled the mistreatment of jax and lily before i joined in here

about pixelberry saving "money" by not making 3 adrian and 1 kamilah death art scene: [pb youre rich enough to fund art scenes for tna lol ik its all recolouring but there is too much art in books these days. hell, even standalones main lis get art. see: blaine hayes and edward mortemer] they couldve easily killed off gauis and call it a day, it would take just one art lol. mc and gauis were getting much buddy buddy those times too, it wouldve given the required angst.