#THAT'S THE POINT.

[isan0rt]

You know, when you consider Azure Moon as a self-contained narrative, the use of ‘unanswered questions’ and ambiguity as a reinforcement of the themes of the route are really effective. I honestly think having the route not address the Slithers was the best narrative choice IntSys could possibly have made given the themes of Azure Moon.

Like. The developers didn’t really expect people to actually play all the routes; they designed the game so ‘everyone would have a different experience.’ As a result, all the routes have very different themes and scopes. Azure Moon is the tightest, most character-driven narrative despite not being the shortest route.

And Azure Moon is about grief.

Grief hangs over the entire route; except for Mercedes, every single one of the Blue Lions is haunted by the Tragedy of Duscur and the unanswered questions surrounding it. Felix loses his brother directly, and his worldview and best friend to the aftermath. Ingrid loses her fiance, but also her sense of security; without Glenn, her people may starve, and her personal future is now uncertain. Sylvain and Glenn were the same age, so we can assume they were friends, though his loss is less direct; Sylvain is surrounded by people broken by loss, including his own father. Annette’s father leaves her family in disgrace over being unable to stop the tragedy. Ashe loses his foster brother to the aftermath; and later his foster father as well. 

Dimitri and Dedue lose everything.

All of them spend the whole route wanting to find answers and some kind of closure for this event. It drives the entire narrative for all of the Lions actually from Faerghus. Mercedes, meanwhile, stands as an outside observer to that tragedy - but she is also dealing with her own personal tragedy and unanswered questions about her brother, and that drives her during Azure Moon.

And the thing about grief is that sometimes you never get closure. But you still have to move on, anyway.

That’s the whole point of Azure Moon. Dimitri has to move on. All the Lions have to move on. 

Mercedes cannot regain her brother, whether you find out his identity or not in the route. She has to move on anyway. Dimitri cannot reconcile with his family, not with Rufus (Did Dimitri kill him? We the viewer can never really know for sure) and not with Edelgard. He never finds out whether Patricia wanted to kill his father, or whether she loved Dimitri at all (and we the viewer don’t, either). He has to move on anyway. The Lions never find out the cause of the tragedy.

They have to move on anyway.

Involving the Slithers at that point would not only add a bunch of last-minute narrative complications that aren’t necessary in Azure Moon, it would undermine the emotional impact of the route (in much the same way the last map of Verdant Wind does, honestly). The themes of Azure Moon not only don’t need to answer the question of the Slithers; not answering that question is the point. Bringing up the Slithers at that point would take all the air out of the personal drama the route takes its entire runtime addressing.

Dimitri hesitates at the end. He stops, and tries to look back, and Byleth stops him. He has to move on. He can’t keep looking back at Duscur. He’s got to walk forward. 

And that means leaving his questions unanswered. 

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #FE3H #Blue Lions #Like honestly if you look at the route as the ONLY route you play #The story is incredibly well self-contained #In a way that also makes you want to play other routes! #Azure Moon IMO is really effective from an emotional impact perspective #Like. assuming you like deconstructions of Hamlet because that's what Azure Moon is lbr #Incidentally I personally don't think Dimitri actually killed Rufus....but I don't know!! He could have!! I will never know for sure. #That's the point.

[fourswords]

i think one of the old popular incorrect quotes that kind of sums up how i view link and shadow's relationship like a week after link realizes shadow is still fucking alive after the manga is the one that goes like "why are link and shadow sitting with their backs to each other?" "they had a fight." "then why are they holding hands?" "they're sad when they fight."

#YES shadow is still going to be miffed about being backstabbed YES link is still going to be miffed about hyrule getting #burned into oblivion YES they are going to constantly butt heads YES they are going to spend more time wanting to strangle each other than #they are actually Being Friends at first. but. #they're still friends. despite everything they are still friends. #that's the POINT. #yes i'm procrastinating homework again. leave me alone i just got off the ass end of an 8hr retail shift T_T #fsa #txt

[marnz]

i read Station Eleven recently and I am a changed person. As a result we started watching mini series. Not done with it yet, but honestly I’m really upset with all of the changes the adaption makes. I am quietly internally throwing a tantrum. While I know adaptions are fundamentally different, and I know that no adaption could ever capture the sublime perfection of the novel, and I do love Jeevan and Kristen’s relationship, I am fucking never getting over the fact that the adaption has people living in solar punk dymaxion spheres/yurts in St. Deborah by the Water instead of motels and a 7/11.

#station eleven #currently #I JUST..... #the whole point of the book is that despite the ruin and emptiness and devastation all around you life & art continue #the juxtaposition of grimy ruin with the beauty of classical music and shakespeare is THE POINT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #and that point diminishes when you romanticize the future and have everyone magically living in solar punk housing. #none of these motherfuckers are buckminster phillips they're just ordinary people doing their best to survive #miranda continues to make beautiful art despite the hardships of her toxic relationships... #the whole point is that she dies alone on a beach consumed by fever while staring at something beautiful #that's the point. #reading comprehension please! i'm begging you #mentioned this to a friend and they brought up annihilation and SO TRUE

[adhdgwen]

billy hargrove was an abuse victim with shitty coping mechanisms. That doesn't mean max or lucas deserved any of the shit he did to them, or that he was right or any of his actions were defensible. What it means is that he was a teenager who needed help and never got it.

was he abusive? yes. was he an abuse victim mirroring his abuser? also yes. both can be, and are true. I'm genuinely tired of all the lack of nuance in the stranger things fandom, y'all are either sucking his dick or pretending like his abuse had no impact on his character at all.

#I'm not like crazy on billy hargrove #but ppl can and do see themselves in him and that's fine with me? #maybe it's cause in my head I'm like he's 17 he still has room to grow #but I can't really get behind the he's irredeemable and his stans should go to hell mentality #idk. #billy hargrove #i also can't get behind the he did nothing wrong mentality either #cause that's even worse #he did do lots of things wrong #that's the point.

[supercantaloupe]

now i am just in a bad mood in general so i know i’m primed to be really bitchy about things i disagree with or don’t like rn but nevertheless hearing/reading reviews about sexy oklahoma is making me really pissy right now. “the directors made weird choices that didn’t exactly work” to YOU. III get it tho. hope u recover from covid soon luv cause idk why else you’d have completely lost ur sense of taste <3

#sasha speaks #like mate im sorry but getting upset at all er nuthin being a comedic number right between two tense scenes is like. huh? #first of all did you expect them to cut a musical number from one of the most well known and beloved musicals ever? #(this isnt ivo van hove west side story we are NOT that bitch) #second of all the tonal whiplash is the POINT #it's the POINT!!!! #comedy makes tragedy and drama more serious tjhrough juxtaposition!! you cant have true darkness without light in comparison!! #nearly every tense/dramatic moment in the show is cut pretty quickly with something more 'comedic' or light #and yeah in TRADITIONAL productions it gets glossed over for the sake of an overall lighthearted (and uncritical) experience #but in this production which leans into the tense moments and lets them sit with the audience. #you're SUPPOSED to feel the tonal dissonance there. you're SUPPOSED to go 'hey wait a minute' #'lets not gloss over that??' #that's the POINT. #i kick over a chair

[charlesoberonn]

It's gonna be such a funny mess when Donald Trump dies of a stroke on April 1st, 2024.

Naturally everybody will think it's fake because of the date only to lose their minds (both positively and negatively based on their opinion of trump) when realizing it's real

There will be massive celebrations in the streets and on social media and lots of predictable "don't speak ill of the dead" discourse about those celebrations

Weird evangelicals will pull some weird number trick talking about how Jesus was conceived on April 1st and that makes Trump a sort of messiah and people will make fun of that

The Republicans (after they're done with the faux-sadness and faux-outrage) will stomp over each other to be his successor but none of them will succeed. They'll tear each other apart and have no single nominee for the November elections.

There will be discourse about if Biden and the living former presidents should go to his funeral (they won't, he was a traitor insurrectionist)

The Ukraine-Russia War immediately goes in favor of Ukraine as morale in the Kremlin is reduced. China similarly backs off from its threats on Taiwan.

Ten thousand new memes are made, some sticking around for years to come.

Not a month later a bunch of unofficial biographies of Trump hit the bookshelves, many with new details about just how awful he was.

#the date is mostly wishful thinking but I am fairly confident about the bullet points #10k #20k #50k #100k

[butchdonne]

what studying literature feels like

#it’s always one of these two. #either i have a great point in my head i just can’t express it right or i have OUGHDGDHHD in my head and i need to make that useful……. #pip squeaks #literature

[redstonedust]

yknow AI art has ruined an entire genre of painting to me, i saw one of those smooth anime-realism pieces and immidiately thought ''ugh, AI art'' until i noticed it was posted by an established deviantart user 6 years ago. like ive never been a huge fan of that genre but it looks like a pretty difficult style to master and i feel bad for the artists who specialized in anime-realism only to have their entire market jacked by people typing keywords into midjourney.

#like. yall know the exact kind of smooth shaded anime realism i mean right. #its SO prevelant in ai art to the point that i end up always end up assuming that style is ai more often than not

[thinkingabout-girls]

#this is the most correct ive ever been in my life. he would say this #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #chilchuck #chilchuck tims #image id in alt text #meme #i might draw this at some point. we’ll see

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Knowledge Revenge.

#dungeon meshi #chilchuk tims #senshi #Somewhat of an unofficial sequel to the Dragon Comic. I promise I have more versatility in my jokes. I just had to take this opportunity. #Senshi is pretty much a recluse. I think he would know a few of these 'gottems' but not all. #Chilchuck would know gottems that are nearly lost to time. The deep cuts. The ones that you fall for because they are that obscure. #I would also like to take a moment to confess that after the last comic in which I posed a gottem - #I fell victim to a Mind Goblin Attack. I was thoroughly got. I will be on higher alert this time. #So NOBODY be funny in the tags. I am gullible and I like to share things with my friends. Who are *ruthless*. #I have a mild resistance to Vicious Mockery at this point but I can only take so much. #Happy Thistle Thursday Everyone! See you next week!

[falseficus]

everybody’s always on writing prompts like “what if there was a world where everyone had a timer ticking down to their death… but you met someone whose timer said infinity!” or “what if everyone had their cause of death tattooed across their forehead… but you met someone whose forehead said THE CREATURE!” Enough -

enough. stop with the shock value. there is no need to insert THE CREATURE; the benign concept of such a world is horrifying enough. not even in urgency, but just in banal, everyday interaction. imagine you meet someone and their timer says two years. not tomorrow, not urgently soon, but two years. enough to do quite a lot. they could fall in love in that time - could they get engaged? have a baby? you might otherwise get to know them, befriend them, but perhaps you opt not to, make a conscious choice not to invest in your own grief. what balancing act would every individual person have to participate in - I have ten years, is that long enough to be a good mother to children? is that long enough to secure a caretaker for my own mother? my wife will die a few months before me. my newborn’s timer reads nineteen years.

and cause of death. you interview for a job and emblazoned across the healthy, smiling face of the HR lady is MALNUTRITION. your country is prospering, safe, but every person you meet on the street from the babies to the old women read BOMB. BOMB. what kind of havoc would fate wreak on the world? what about the loss of privacy? how would that shape our notions of hope? idk man I think a lot of those ancient poems were right, and the fates are monsters. I’m interested by the framing of these ideas as trite horror tales when the premises themselves are so much more disturbing if simply taken to their logical ends

#debated making the cause of death in the happy country also MALNUTRITION. MALNUTRITION. might have been a better specific image but these #better illustrate my point #the frog speaks #writing

[assiraphales]

I don’t think we’re rick rolling each other enough anymore. 1. it CANNOT die out 2. this under saturated market is perfect for unsuspecting victims who’ve been lulled into a false sense of security. be the person you hate. bring back the dastardly link

#imagine this — you’re getting news from superhell cas and silent dean. There’s a link attached #u click. it’s a rick roll. Immediate damage points

[beaft]

a small child came into the café today and asked to buy a chocolate truffle. he tapped a credit card on the reader and it did not go through, mainly because it was not a credit card but in fact a junior cinema pass. i gently explained he couldn't use that to buy things in shops and he looked so gutted that i was like "...but just this once you can have it for free, don't tell my boss though" he said thank you and walked out with his truffle and as he went i heard him chuckling to himself and saying "yes..... yes!!!!!" like the sickos comic

#slightly dotty child or world's most precocious scam artist? you decide. #i asked where his parents were and apparently they were queuing for a table at the restaurant across the street #he even pointed them out to me #so don't worry this was not an unsupervised bébé #be shh now #containment breach

[starbuck]

i say i like tragedies and everyone’s all like ‘why do you like sad stories? are you depressed?’ and never ‘how was the catharsis? was the catharsis fun?’

#i don’t know how to explain this to normal people 😭😭 #for the record my coworkers didn’t directly question me on this #but i think i have vastly overestimated the amount of the population who is aware of like. Films. #NOT claiming that i have seen a lot - but i’ve mentioned three *REALLY* well-known films in the past four days #and got blank stares each time #the one of them was a REALLY good reference too… someday my top-notch association skills will be recognized #my first act as Mansion Acquaintance of the [redacted] Director will be to force everyone to watch a 40s romcom i didn’t even like #i’m getting off the point #the POINT is that It’s About The Catharsis

[zerojanitor]

twitter: currently owned by techbro pissman

tumblr: actively removing functionality and bloating the interface with things nobody uses

discord: being retooled by ex-Meta management who don't understand the appeal of the platform

youtube: neutered by advertisers and algorithms and also tiktokification

reddit: half of the site is down due to protests about the outrageous monetization of third-party API support

facebook: my mom is on there

#idk what point i'm making its just wild watching the established internet dominion basically screech to a halt

[mumblingsage]

My medieval and ancient ancestors watching me trying to charge my laptop and connect to WiFi: Ah, yes, she must feed her magic mirror on the telluric current and summon the spirits of knowledge from the aether.

My ancestors watching me proceed to doomscroll on Twitter: Alas! She is beguiled by the cruel babblings of the demons within the mirror; soon she will descend into melancholy from the things she has witnessed.

#my ancestors have a point