#even general ones like character names that are true across incarnations

[inamindfarfaraway]

Stumbled across your post on Carmilla and Cain from one of my favorite artist and just wanted to say that I loved that post incredibly!!

I loved the way you articulated the ability for free will to shatter heavens expectations! It had me thinking about free will in general so thank you for sharing that goodness!

Thank you! This analysis just came to me as a fun little observation, I wasn’t expecting it to gain so much traction. Free will is very thematically important to Hazbin Hotel, isn’t it? Lucifer believed in the good it could do, but accidentally created evil by giving it to humanity and fell for it. Since then he’s seen all the pain free will can cause and become embittered. Charlie, however, believes like he used to and fought for human souls passionately and selflessly enough to bring him back around. The Elder Angels who ordered the Exterminations and the Exorcists who carry them out seem to alternately hate and fear free will’s power, and by their indiscriminate condemnation of sinners as inherently irredeemable, not want to acknowledge it at all.

If the theory that Adam could live on as a sinner in Hell turns out to be true, I’d love to see his character and thoughts on his mortal family and free will explored, because he must have SO much baggage, which could explain (though not excuse) him being The Worst. An interesting detail in the backstory Charlie reads is that he’s never actually stated to eat the forbidden fruit. We see Eve take it, but not him. Maybe the reason that he’s in Heaven, but we never see or hear of Eve or their children in either afterlife, is that in this canon’s version of Genesis, he’s obedient and didn’t commit the original sin, only to be cast out anyway. Regardless of what exactly happens in Eden, he and Eve are forced to fend for themselves in the wilderness. Suddenly they need survival instincts. They can bleed and starve and get sick and loads of animals want to eat them. They have existential dread. Not to mention the marital tension. Why? Because the same angel who stole his first wife messed with his second one! As a result, people can sin. They can hurt each other. This allows Cain to invent murder on his brother. He’s then cursed to wander the Earth, eternally living with his guilt and grief. Oh, and where can dead souls live on now? Where might Abel be trapped forever? Hell, a dimension made of evil, everything bad about the new and degraded human experience taken to the ultimate extreme. You’ll never guess why it exists (Lucifer. It’s Lucifer again). So Adam loses two kids with one stone that was indirectly thrown by one fucking bird guy. Can you imagine how you would feel, having lived that life?

You would have issues. A lot of issues.

No wonder he scorns redemption so much. In his eyes, free will is synonymous with sin - with suffering. But thinking damned souls to be evil incarnate at least lets him take vengeance. It lets him feel the wrathful satisfaction of physically stabbing and hacking his way through representatives of the force that cost him paradise. Broke his family. Killed his child. Maybe he was a genuinely good person when he died. For the most part. Maybe stewing in all that unprocessed trauma while watching the horrors of human history unfold and being venerated and indulged in the perfect afterlife without any of his family changed him for the worse. If you can have a redemption arc in Hell, you can have a corruption arc in Heaven.

After all, Lucifer lost faith in humanity over time. But he has Charlie. Adam’s ‘daughters’ in Heaven are the Exorcists (he calls them “[his] girls” and names them, so he probably creates them), of which I bet Lute was the first. That’s a really twisted dynamic. Like, “From now on, my kids are killing people on MY terms”. Lute having parallels with Charlie makes her being the new main villain even better!

This got out of hand. What I mean to say is, the first human family and how they relate to the theme of free will have huge potential for exploration and development. And if Adam is reborn as a sinner, it would be precisely the Hazbin Hotel blend of heartbreaking and hilarious to have him reunite with Eve, Abel, Seth, etc. in Hell and they’re all like “What. The FUCK?” and his whole horrible personality just collapses in on itself.

#what have i DONE why did i humanize ADAM? #he’s THE WORST #but i guess he is human #that’s the point #he was fhe first human soul and immediately set the standard of suffering and getting fucked up #that fight scene where adam is pure rage and lucifer is gleefully mocking him isn’t so funny now is it? #lucifer: you come and me and my DAUGHTER #adam: oh now you care about kids? now you don’t want your kid to die? would’ve been nice if you’d thought of that in eden! #hazbin hotel #cain and abel #hazbin hotel adam #hazbin adam #hh adam

[dailycharacteroption]

Races Among the Stars 9: Samsaran

We’ve covered samsarans before on the blog in their First Edition Pathfinder form, but much like the perpetually reincarnating people, things have come full-circle with us covering their Starfinder version (at least until we start doing 2nd Edition ancestries and the upcoming Starfinder 2E’s take on them, again, paralleling the endless loop of reincarnation)

But this also closes the loop in a different way as well, as this is the last of the Pathfinder throwbacks that were introduced to the game in Starfinder Alien Character Deck, which was little more than useful flash cards for remembering the traits of various species, either for forgetful players or perhaps more usefully as a way to help a GM quickly switch out the species of pre-generated statblocks on the fly.

Either way, all of those aforementioned species also got reprinted in both Interstellar Species and in Starfinder Enhanced, adding some actual lore to how those species actually fit into the galaxy of the far future, which is nice. (Does anyone remember when the general consensus for where kobolds were was “They all vanished/died with Golarion”? Easily the most boring possible answer and I’m glad they quashed that with some interesting if borderline retcon meta-joke new lore.

Buuuut we’re getting of topic, let’s talk about samsarans!

True to their name, which is based on the concept of the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, samsarans were a clade of humans born into a cycle of constant reincarnation, often starting out born as ordinary humans to samsaran parents that give them up to normal human adoptive parents, only for them to reincarnate as samsarans the first time they die, and so on and so forth.

Unlike other species and souls that choose reincarnation in the afterlife, samsarans retain a lof of memories from their past lives, though they are often hazy and incomplete, like vivid dreams to their new incarnation. Even with such gaps, however, that knowledge gives them access to information and skills they wouldn’t normally possess, and helps them infer who they used to be, and how to incorporate the wisdom gleaned from those memories into their daily lives and towards a greater state of enlightenment in preparation for the next life. (Which, ironically, is kinda the opposite of what one normally WANTS to do when one subscribes to the idea of the real-life idea of samsara, but that’s neither here nor there).

Now, you may have noticed that earlier I described that samsarans “were” a clade of humans. That wasn’t a slip of the keyboard on my part, because now that samsarans are no longer bound necessarily to one specific world, their pact with Pharasma has changed slightly. Now, samsarans can be born on any world… and to any sapient species, though without homebrewing, these rare non-human samsarans have the same statistics as others of their kind, though with homebrew, well, that just opens up all sorts of new doors, doesn’t it?

Samsarans, unsurprisingly, appear to be humans (or members of their parent species) with pale skin and hair in shades of white, blue, or purple, as well as clear blood and seemingly pupilless eyes.

While there were once enclaves of samsarans that used divination to locate newly-reborn samsarans and bring them into the fold, such things are much more rare now in a far future where one’s already-rare species is spread out across the galaxy. As such, modern samsarans are more likely to simply adopt their parent culture, though samsaran culture still exists in the form of writings and recordings, both publicly available and hidden away that the young can seek out for guidance and a sense of cultural identity with the rest of their kind.

Of course, the advent of multimedia and VI means that this can also be rather disconcerting. Imagine if your past self created a VI or even AI simulacrum of themselves and hid it away for a future reincarnation. Imagine meeting someone that is both you and also not you and the same time. Probably would take a bit to get used to, though on the other hand, Vlogs and extensive digital memoirs from a past can help a young samsaran better connect with those memories, and possibly go about continuing the goals of their past self, which some samsarans do.

Samsarans bear the wisdom and cunning of multiple past lives, but their bodies are somewhat frail (probably all that lack of hemoglobin).

However, they are especially resilient to magical and supernatural effects that target their lifeforce directly, and they’re surprisingly good at bouncing back from injury and disease even if the initial infection tends to knock them on rears.

Their curious eyes also also surprisingly good at absorbing light in dark conditions, letting them see better in limited light.

Samsarans also have a bit of inherent magic, able to breach language barrier one-way, stabilize the dying, and share their memories with others.

Additionally, their memories from past lives include some practical skills as well, though the exact specifics vary between individuals, as their old souls latch onto different things from their past lives.

Much like the thyrs of yesterday’s entry, samsarans are well-equipped for a myriad of smart-guy classes and builds, with mystics being a natural fit due to their half-divine, half-occult schtick meshing well with samsarans theme-wise. However, technomancers, mechanics, biohackers, skill-based envoyed and operatives are also good picks. Precog and witchwarper also share some lovely themes with samsarans with their focus on possible paths in life and such. Meanwhile, like thyrs, they also struggle a bit with melee combat, though for different reasons, since it’s constitution they lack instead of strength. As such, combat-oriented samsarans prefer ranged soldiers, solarians, and evolutionists, while nanocytes and vanguards are a bit of a harder sell, albeit not impossible. Despite their frailty, samsarans can do a lot to overcome that weakness and be very effective no matter what class they choose to take.

And that does it for this week! Tune in Monday for another week of archetypes and character options!

#starfinder #race #samsaran #Alien Character Deck #Starfinder Enhanced

[echidnapower]

A Light in Darkness - Chapter 2

Still reposting stories on here, so here's Chapter 2 of A Light in Darkness, starring @e-vay's own Aurora the Hedgehog. Thank you again for lending me your character, now on with the show.

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Space. Nothing but an empty vacuum, devoid of any sort of pollution or undesirable elements. Here in this dark void, one can view the majesty of hundreds of trillions of twinkling stars and planets, stretching out across the universe. A totally pure landscape.

But it's here in this landscape that a great threat is being created. To the untrained eye, it would appear to be just another generic star in the night sky, one that young children in their beds would look out of their windows and see and innocently make a wish on. But to those who could tell the difference, they would be able to see that there was something very odd about this particular "star" floating in space, and not only was it odd, it was clearly meant to be dangerous.

There in space, a weapon of mass destruction was being created, its power unmatched throughout the known universe. The weapon's given name: The Death Egg. Its creator: None other than the brilliant scientist and notorious super villain, Dr. Ivo Robotnik, otherwise known as Dr. Eggman.

Eggman watched his thousands of robot workers go about their business constructing his newest fortress from up high on a balcony with a satisfied sneer on his face. It had taken a lot of ingenuity on his part to keep the longtime construction of this newest incarnation of his classic Death Egg undetected from Miles "Tails" Prower's sensors. He chuckled a bit at the thought. Though he was loathe to admit it - even to himself - the young fox boy had proven to be a more than worthy intellectual opponent over the years. But this time, things would be different, he was sure of it.

"Doctor, everything is going according to plan, we're currently on schedule for full power output within the next 24 hours." Orbot, a red sphere-like robot created by Eggman to keep all of his plans running smoothly, gave his report as he held a clipboard and pencil in hand.

"And what of the Egg Carrier 3.0?" Eggman asked without looking away from the construction robots.

"Also on schedule. The warp engines have been installed and the shields are currently charging up to full capacity." Orbot floated up to where his boss was watching the construction. "If I may say so Doctor, I sincerely believe that this might be your greatest plan yet. You've thought everything out very well this time, I'm quite proud."

Eggman snorted and gave a mild glare to the spherical robot. "Lucky for you, I'm in too good a mood to disassemble you for that crack." The egg-shaped scientist turned and walked towards what appeared to be a sort of stasis tube, staring intently at the creature suspended inside. "This has been a long time in coming. All of those other plans, all of those other chances to take over the world and recreate it in my own glorious image, they never bore fruit...but even though those were failures in the short-term, they only helped bring me closer to my ultimate plan. One that Sonic and those wretched friends of his would never see coming." he chortled a bit as he pulled a glowing gem out of his pocket and gazed upon its beauty. "With the help of the Chaos Emeralds, I shall revive this creature, and if my research is correct, it will finally be the true key to eliminating Sonic, and world domination."

"Staring at that creepy alien again huh?!"

Eggman jumped and glared angrily at the yellow cube-shaped robot who had suddenly appeared next to him. "What are you doing here?! Don't you have a job to do?!"

"But I'm boooored with working, can't we do something else instead?"

Seeing that Eggman was one word away from destroying his counterpart, Orbot rushed over and covered Cubot's mouth with his own metal hand. "I'll just take Cubot and get back to work. No need to fret Doctor, everything is going according to plan!"

"It better be." Eggman turned and stared up at the alien creature floating in suspended animation in the blue-liquid filled tube, ignoring the hushed bickering of his two bumbling robots. "I've planned for every possible contingency. This time, that blasted hedgehog won't know what hit him. Prepare yourself Sonic, for your time is running short."

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The Mystic Ruins, normally a peaceful place filled with exotic fauna and wildlife, and if one delved deeply enough into it, one could find the treehouse home of Big the Cat and his best pal Froggy, who was, well, a frog. But tonight, the jungle portion of those ancient ruins would receive a rather significant shock in the form of a whirling vortex of energy suddenly appearing and spitting out several screaming forms and dropping them to the dirt below. One by one they fell, and they fell on each other until there was a pile of Mobians all squashing one rather irate jungle badger.

"I'm not a fan of being touchy-feely, so everyone get off!" Sticks screeched and managed to force everyone off her with a surge of strength, and she dusted herself off before sniffing the air around her. "Hey, I know this place!" Sniffing the air further and then kneeling down to take a taste of the dirt - an act which made everyone else present cringe in disgust - Sticks beamed and jumped back to her feet in excitement. "Incredible! We've somehow been transported to the Mystic Ruins! And by the looks of all the different trees and flowers around us, that portal thingy dropped us off in the middle of the jungle!"

"Leave it to Sticks to be excited about being dumped in a jungle in the middle of nowhere." Aurora scoffed as she finished dusting off her own clothes. Then suddenly her eyes widened and she quickly turned around to look for the time portal, but there was no sign of it. "He didn't make it." Slumping considerably, the pink hedgehog dropped to the ground and hugged her knees to her chest, silently grieving the loss of her boyfriend. "The only way Shadow would've stayed behind is if Ba'Gan killed him, I'm sure of it." she whispered almost to herself.

"Then we must continue the mission, that's what he would've wanted." Blaze said as she looked around to see if anything looked familiar. "Besides, if we're successful, then Shadow and everyone else we left behind will be okay again."

Looking up at her teammates, Aurora nodded and stood back up, taking a deep breath as she tried to collect her emotions. "You're right." she cleared her throat and joined Blaze in trying to identify their location. "So, any idea where we are? I mean, besides the fact that we're in the middle of the Mystic Ruins at night."

"I can see pretty well, but nothing around here looks familiar." Yukon swiftly climbed up a tree and scanned the horizon with his natural night vision. "All I see are more trees, there's no landmarks or anything like that we can use to give us a marker." he hopped out of the tree and crossed his arms in thought. "Of course, even if there were, I wouldn't be able to tell you...I don't know this area very well even in our own time." he chuckled sheepishly. "Guess I didn't really think this through."

"Well I'm not from your time, I should be able to tell if there's anything out here that can tell us where we are." Blaze glanced at each of her teammates. "With that said, I think we should just set up a temporary camp and rest for the night. We're all very tired and there's still some planning to be done. There's no point in trying to navigate the jungle in the dark."

"Can't Aurora there just light things up for us?" Silver curiously pointed a thumb over at Aurora. "I mean, that's her main power isn't it?"

"True, but still, we need rest. We have a long mission ahead of us, and we'll need our strength." Blaze made sure to make eye contact with each of her teammates. "Here's as good a place as any to set up camp. Find some dried up tree branches that may have fallen to the ground and I'll start a fire for us."

Sticks crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at the lavender cat. "And who put you in charge?"

Aurora rolled her eyes and grabbed Sticks by the wrist to drag her away. "We'll be back."

"Aurora let go! She can't talk to us like that! Who does she think she is?!"

As the badger's voice faded, Blaze gave a weary sigh and face-palmed. "This is going to be a long trip." she then took note of Silver's apprehensive expression. "And what's the matter with you Silver? You seem lost in thought."

"Hmm?" Silver glanced up and looked at Blaze when his brain registered that she was talking to him. "Oh. Sorry. I was just thinking...it was something you said, about you not being from our time."

"Yes, what about it?"

Silver began to pace. "Well, I've made it a point to learn as much as I can about time travel, after all, you never know when something like that might become possible."

"Like now?" Yukon said aloud as he reached for some dead-looking branches in a nearby tree.

"Not the point!" Silver exclaimed back with a huff. "Anyway, with every single one of us - with the exception of you - being from over twenty years in the future, we need to be really careful that we don't mess with certain events that could potentially wipe us from existence."

Yukon stopped in his tracks and dropped the branches he gathered to the ground, looking at the silver hedgehog with wide eyes. "I never even thought of that...what happens if we end up changing something that was supposed to happen just to ensure our own existence?!"

"I highly doubt that you two are in any danger regarding that way of thinking. According to Yukon, his parents currently live far, far away from here, and anything that happens here shouldn't have any real effect on them." Blaze turned her attention to Silver. "And as for you...well, you said you never really knew who your parents were, right?"

"Yeah...so?" Silver's voice became noticeably melancholy.

"So, you shouldn't be in too much danger." Blaze lowered her voice. "However, there is one person who stands to lose a lot during this mission."

"What's going on here?"

The three Freedom Fighters suddenly stood up ramrod straight and looked over at Sticks and Aurora, the latter was glowing brightly to try and give her friends some way to see what was happening in the darkness. "Shut off your light!" the cat girl hissed.

Aurora quickly did what she was told and powered down, shocked by the seriousness in the Sol Princess's voice. "What's the matter?"

"It's what I should've explained before when Silver asked." Blaze sighed. "We wanna try and be as inconspicuous as possible, we don't know if Dr. Eggman could be around here somewhere. In my experience in this dimension, the doctor has a nasty habit of showing up just when you don't want him to, and the last thing we need is for him to interfere with our mission."

"Oh yeah." Aurora nodded in agreement as she carefully placed her branches on the ground, Sticks following her lead. "Daddy told me stories about how Eggman would always show up and mess with his dates with Mom."

The cat couldn't help but chuckle a little and shake her head. "Mom and Dad, I still can't quite get used to that." she blinked and looked down at the pile of sticks on the ground, and then she formed a flame in her hand and casually tossed it onto the pile, letting the fire build on the dried up wood. "At least this will give us a little bit of light and warmth without looking too suspicious. Since I'm the only one who the doctor would recognize if he saw us, I'll keep watch and stay out of sight. To him, you all are just random kids having a camp out. But if he sees me, all bets are off."

"I'll relieve you after a while!" Silver exclaimed determinedly. "After all, you need your sleep too, you shouldn't have to make sacrifices for all of us."

The princess just shook her head. "I'll be fine, I'm used to these sorts of adventures." Noting the silver hedgehog's sullen expression, the cat girl internally sighed. "However...if I require any rest, I will be sure to alert you Silver."

Apparently satisfied with that, the young hedgehog smiled and laid down on the ground, trying to get into a comfortable position as the heat of the fire warmed his body. "Not exactly a five-star hotel, but hey, it's better than nothing."

"If you ask me, this is perfect!" Sticks crawled next to the fire and curled up into a ball, clutching her trusty boomerang in one hand as she settled down for some sleep. "Out in the wilderness, no signs of civilization, there's no safer place to be."

"It's times like these when I wonder how we've managed to grow up as best friends." Aurora scoffed.

The badger opened one eye and smirked up at her best friend. "It's a government conspiracy." she said playfully. "Now get some sleep, if I'm tired, then you must be exhausted."

"Says you." The pink hedgehog laughed and began looking around for something - anything - she could use as a pillow, but all she could find were some nearby rocks. "Terrific. And me without my sleeping bag."

"Well, you could take a big pile of leaves and try to build a nest of some sort." When Yukon received a weird look from Aurora, he shrugged. "I'm not as wilderness savvy as Sticks is, but I did spend a lot of time in the outdoors, I observed some jungle animals doing it, it's worth a shot."

Aurora relinquished a small smile and shook her head. "It's ok Yukon, I'll make due." The pink hedgehog got in-between where Silver and Sticks were currently dozing off and rested her head in her arms as she let the warmth of the nearby flames comfort her into a shallow slumber.

"Good. She needs the rest." Blaze nodded to herself and leaned against the trunk of a tree with her arms crossed, and she turned her head to see Yukon standing in front of her. "Something I can help you with?"

"Not really." Yukon came a bit closer. "Just thought you might want some company, I'm something of a night owl so to speak, so I figured I'd stay with you."

Blaze shrugged and turned back to the others who were now sleeping next to the fire she'd made. "We have a difficult trial ahead of us...we're not even sure where to begin, Shadow didn't give us any clues. He was supposed to lead this mission."

"You seem to be doing pretty well with that aspect."

"Hmm." Blaze mumbled to herself a bit without looking at the marsupial. "Just trying to utilize some of what Sonic taught me. Perhaps when we run into him, he can assume command of the team and our presence will merely provide the required extra power needed to defeat this threat...whatever it is."

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Images flashed rapidly in the subconscious mind of Aurora the Hedgehog, visions of pain and suffering endured by her friends and family at the hands of some unknown entity. The anguished cries screamed louder and louder in her mind as the images began to flash by her vision faster and faster. As much as it pained her to do so, she focused on trying to make out what she was seeing and hearing.

Her father shouting in agony.

A roar of determination from her Uncle Knuckles.

Her boyfriend shouting out the name of his signature move in desperation.

An unfamiliar evil cackle.

A horde of evil red robots all closing in on Shadow.

Then the cackle began to grow louder, as it began to override all the other sounds in her mind.

Her Uncle Tails' lab flashed by her just before an evil, soulless presence made almost entirely of negative energy suddenly appeared in her mind and blocked out everything else, the cackle now clearly coming from its hideous form. She fought to wake up and stop this, but even though she was aware she was dreaming, she couldn't seem to wake up, as the creature floated closer and closer, its cackle now becoming almost deafeningly loud. "No, no, no! Stay away from me! HEEEEEEELLP!"

"AURORA!"

Aurora shot up and screamed in mortal terror at the top of her lungs as she was at last freed from the nightmare by the dream voice of her boyfriend Shadow calling for her. The sun was just beginning to rise and now all of her teammates were looking at her in concern. Breathing heavily, she looked down at her hands and saw that they were shaking from the fear that image had put into her. Her whole body felt clammy and was covered in cold sweat from what she'd gone through, and needless to say, she was both embarrassed and terrified. "I'm sorry." she managed to whisper, although whether it was aimed at her teammates or Shadow, even she couldn't tell.

Silver placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "What happened to you? You were screaming in your sleep!"

"I had a nightmare...only...it felt so real." she shook her head as she held it in her hands. "Just images, voices, and this evil monster laughing and getting closer and closer...I'd never seen anything like it before." she stayed silent for a few moments before her head shot up and her eyes widened in realization. "There was one other thing, I saw Uncle Tails' lab near the train station to Station Square, just before the monster became the only thing I could see, I think that's where we need to go to get started!"

Yukon tilted his head to the side curiously. "What makes you so sure?"

"Call it instinct." Aurora got up and stared off into the distance. "I'm not exactly sure how I know, but we've gotta get to Uncle Tails' lab, we'll start finding answers there."

"Well, it's not like we have any other options right now." Blaze nodded at the pink hedgehog. "Okay, we'll go to the lab and test out that little vision of yours." she then turned and leaped up into a tall tree, climbing until she reached the top and could see over all the other foliage. Shading the top of her eyes from the rising sun with her hand, Blaze was able to make out what appeared to be a ladder in the distance. "I see a ladder that leads to the edge of a cliff, that should be our ticket out of this jungle!"

"Then what are we waiting for?!" Silver cheered as he rose into the air with his psychokinetic powers. "Let's go save the future! WHOOOOO HOOO!" Silver blasted off at high speeds, leaving his teammates behind in his excitement.

Blaze sighed and shook her head. "He's such a child."

"I dunno, I welcome a little enthusiasm." Yukon grinned at the lavender cat and climbed up the tree as well, and leaped off the top and began to glide off with his natural Sugar Glider gliding membrane outstretched to catch the wind below. "Seeya there!"

"I'm not about to lose a jungle race to those city slickers!" Sticks jumped into the treetops and started swinging from vine to vine, which left just Blaze and Aurora not actively headed towards the distant ladder.

Using this moment of peace, Blaze glanced down at Aurora who appeared rather apprehensive. "You're sure about this?"

Aurora nodded. "I don't know how I know, I just do. If we're gonna stop whatever crazy apocalypse that's supposed to happen, we've gotta get to my uncle's lab...and fast."

"Then let's not waste anymore time." Blaze leaped down and landed on the ground on one knee before getting back up again. "Let's go."

With a determined nod, Aurora raced off with Blaze matching her stride for stride. "Don't worry everyone, I'll find a way to save you. I swear it."

#sonic the hedgehog #sonamy #amy rose #knuckles the echidna #miles tails prower #sticks the badger #silver the hedgehog #blaze the cat #OC #aurora the hedgehog #e vay #Shadora #eggman #dark sonic #fanfiction #my stories #shadow the hedgehog #orbot and cubot

[girlwithakiwi]

Do you feel your interpretation of the characters in your fic is true to canon? Is there a certain canon personality trait that you try to maintain? Or do you have a certain trait that you use in your fics that you think the character should have but is not canon?

I think this depends on the fic ('the silhouette' plays a little fast and loose with this) but in general, yes—I do try to stick to canon, even if canonical motivations can be wildly interpreted. The best cases for this in my recent fics are Daenerys and Sansa, whose actions in the last season of GoT were both incredibly polarizing. I like being able to delve deep into the "why" for characters, which may be a little easier in a written format than a visual one.

Let's take my girl Sansa for example. Why did she immediately mistrust/dislike Daenerys? Why was so she recalcitrant about allying the North with Dany's forces? Sansa has gone through a lot and her ability to trust people with near-unlimited power is almost non-existent. If anything, being under anyone's power except her own has to be terrifying, not after her years beneath the Lannisters, Littlefinger, and the Boltons.

Alright, if I use this interpretation, Sansa is acting from a place of fear and fear can cause you to do irrational things. She's not being a bitch for the sake of being a bitch. She sees a threat to her family and her home and starts pulling strings the only way she knows how in order to protect them. She may love and admire Jon but heaven knows she doesn't trust him to make the best judgment calls (we saw this all the way back in season 6 with her withholding information about the Vale knights). She can't trust his faith in Dany.

Does that justify her actions? Well, no. But the thing that was always great about early seasons of GoT is that most people did not act along the lines of black-and-white morality. People were complex—very few people were all bad or all good. As Faulkner said, "The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself."

That said, there are essential traits that every character has that should come across in fics, without watering them down to simply be that one trait. I would like to think those essential traits make the modern AU incarnations of characters recognizable in 'the silhouette'.

And canonically, Tyrion has to be more than witty quips—his self-recrimination is a massive part of who he is. Dany has to be more than her temper—her kindness is as much a reason why she has come so far as her drive. Jon cannot simply just be honorable with no content—he isn't the most cunning player on the board but he's not as politically naive as so many seem to think and will argue for the hard, unpopular decisions he makes with justifiable points. Arya's whole thing cannot be summed up as "badass for sake of plot"—like Dany (and oh those two are so much alike I wish they'd have had canonical interaction), she acts from a place of fear and also a loss of self.

Anyway, that's a very, very long tl;dr answer just to be like, "yes, there are traits that weren't in canon—namely S8—that I try to add into my fics." I also like pulling from book canon (especially for Jon) to round out characters a bit more

#chase answers #chase writes things #the gather the bend the bringing forth #the silhouette of a single memory #i have opinions even now about S8

[autolenaphilia]

A review of BBC Sherlock

BBC Sherlock is a terrible show. I’m not the first to say so, and I’m certainly repeating things here that other people have said, like Hbomberguy, who did a flawed but mostly fine critical look at the show. But I still think I have some original ideas to bring to the table, and even if this essay is long by itself, it is probably more approachable case against Sherlock than Hbomb’s long if compelling video (which I liked but don’t entirely agree with. He for example criticizes the show for not playing fair with its mysteries, which I think is fine for a Sherlock Holmes adaptation to do, because the original stories don’t “play fair” either. They pre-date that convention in mystery writing)

The main problem with the show, lies with its main character, Sherlock. The tv series had a problem with hero worshipping Sherlock and having an excessive and uncritical focus on him. The show revolved around the main character of Sherlock Holmes in a way that the original Holmes stories didn’t. Everything in the writing and the world it created was about Sherlock, and how cool he is.

The show makes airs of being a character study, but it is not interested in doing the work required for actually being that. Ultimately, Sherlock is the hero, and for Moffat & Gatiss this means he can do no wrong, even when he is wrong.

Sherlock is an arrogant jerk, being not only rude but outright cruel at times. He does this all the time, including to people who are supposedly his friends, like Watson. The good doctor actually gets the worst of it. In the show’s supposed “adaptation” of “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, Holmes drugs Watson without his consent or knowledge, just to test the drug out.

The show never reckons with all the cruelties the hero commits to his supposed friends. He never apologizes, nor is he confronted with his behaviour, never decides or is compelled to change. Instead Watson and co. remain loyal to the very end. He thinks it is permissible for him to act that way because he is a genius, and alarmingly, the very writing of the show seems to support him in that line of thought.

This is not at all due to the show reflecting the original short stories. The Holmes depicted in the canonical stories can be rude and inconsiderate to others, but seldom outright cruel. Compare the scene in Sherlock described above with a similar scene in The Devil’s Foot. In that short story, Holmes also tests out a drug he found on Watson, but everything else is different. Holmes explains the situation to Watson beforehand, asks if he wants to take part, and exposes himself for the same dangers as his companion. When things turn out badly, Holmes even earnestly apologizes for putting both Watson and himself in danger.

The Canonical stories weren’t afraid to make Holmes fallible either. He is a hero, but one with faults that can make mistakes and loses. Good examples are A Scandal in Bohemia and the charming anti-racist story The Adventure of the Yellow Face.

The original version of Holmes is genuinely heroic. The BBC show has in comparison a very warped view of heroism, being the hero means Sherlock is never wrong, even when he is wrong. The hero is a special person, who can’t obey ordinary rules. It feeds into a form of wish fulfilment. A male power fantasy (and this type of hero is always a man) where you are very clever and being that clever means you can mistreat people as you like.

This focus on Sherlock himself can also be seen in the diminished role given to the supporting cast. Martin Freeman’s Watson is used well in the first episode, as the normal person who acts as our introduction to the strange mind and world of Sherlock (the first episode is maybe the strongest of the entire show). This captures how he is used in the books and does that even without the intimacy of Watson’s first person narration. But that is all we get, he is a non-entity in the rest of the show. He doesn’t do much in the episodes that follow, and basically only exists to marvel and be shocked at how weird Sherlock is, and to be abused by him.

Mycroft exists mainly to provide missions for Sherlock and get him out of legal problems. There is an original female character, Molly Hooper, but the sexism of the writers means she matters even less. Her whole existence is determined by being a fangirl who has a crush on Sherlock, yet is treated horribly by him.

The show’s dubious idea of a hero is why the show has to make Moriarty into an overarching villain, who is behind pretty much every other villain they meet. Their Holmes is too important for ordinary crimes, he is a superhero who can only face a supervillain of equal stature, so Moriarty is changed into that type of villain.  

Certainly the original Moriarty has traits that predicts later supervillains, but ultimately he is just a crime boss, albeit a very intelligent and dangerous one. And making everything about this epic mind duel between Holmes and Moriarty contradicts the tone of the original stories. The cases Holmes takes on in the canon seldom concern more than the people directly involved and often don’t even involve murders. Holmes occasionally takes on bigger things, but the stakes are seldom world threatening. In comparison to the Sherlock show, the lack of empty bombast and faux-epicness in the original stories are very charming.

The character of Moriarty is played very energetically by Andrew Scott, but ultimately he is boring, because his motivations are simply that he is insane and gay. I’m not kidding. Moriarty wants to play mind games with Sherlock, because he is attracted to Sherlock and his intelligence. This, as bizarre as it sounds, literally makes most of the plot of this show caused by Sherlock being attractive .

(Hilariously, they later retcon this to Moriarty being mind controlled by Sherlock’s evil sister. Her motivation, incidentally, is that she is angry because Sherlock didn’t play with her as children.)

It is also unconnected to what Holmes actually does. In the original story, the reason Moriarty is interested in Holmes is because Sherlock was able to figure out that Moriarty is the head of a criminal organization, which is what makes him dangerous to Moriarty. In Sherlock, Moriarty knows of and admires Sherlock from before the first episode even happens and Holmes only figures out who Moriarty is later. It is treated as natural fact in this world that Sherlock is so awesome that people admire and are obsessed with him, without him even having to do anything that proves it.

I can see the appeal of shipping heroes and villains with sexual tension behind them, like Holmes and Moriarty in many versions. But when the hero-villain relationship in this case just reinforces the show’s excessive infatuation with its main character, it turns the whole thing distasteful for me (and that is not getting into the problems with coding your villain as insane and gay in general, as fun as this kind of villain can be).

I can also see the usefulness in setting up Moriarty by having him involved in crimes before he is actually introduced. The original stories don’t really do it, so Moriarty comes out of nowhere in The Final Problem. The Granada Tv show by Jeremy Brett did it by having Moriarty be behind The Red-Headed League case, and that worked fine.

But the way BBC Sherlock just drains the show of any interest in the villains except Moriarty. They are just Moriarty’s henchpeople, their motivation simply becomes that Moriarty pays them. The reason why the Granada version worked so well is that the villains in the orginal short story about The Red-Headed League were almost non-entities, the sole interesting thing about them is their scheme, so Moriarty being behind them makes things more interesting.

Sherlock however doles out the same treatment to some of the most interesting antagonists of the original stories, such as Jefferson Hope and Irene Adler. The treatment of Irene is perhaps the very worst thing the show ever did, and perhaps the worst adaptation of the character ever (and this is a character that is so often distorted in adaptations)

The original short story, A Scandal in Bohemia is the story of Irene Adler defeating Sherlock. She is not a villain, doesn’t actually blackmail anyone, and is not a love interest for Holmes. She actually marries someone else right in front of his face. It is a good story, with Irene defeating him teaching both Sherlock and the audience that women can also be smart.

The episode of Sherlock which “adapts” this story is pretty much the opposite. Irene Adler is a villain who blackmails people. Instead of being an opera singer, she is now a dominatrix, and this is treated with all the sensitivity of a Frank Miller. And also a lesbian with stereotypical man-hating tendencies.

Now a lesbian villain could still be interesting, but the writing makes sure she is not. She is not even a truly independent villain, instead she is like most villains in Sherlock on Moriarty’s payroll. And the lesbian thing turns out to mean naught, as she falls in love with Sherlock. Apparently Sherlock is so attractive that he can turn lesbians straight. This infatuation leads to her losing to Sherlock and afterwards becoming a damsel in distress that Sherlock rescues.

It is amazing how something written and broadcast in 2012 is far more misogynistic than a short story from 1891, but BBC Sherlock managed to do it.

Jefferson Hope isn’t treated as bad, because he doesn’t have to contend with the writer’s misogyny. But it is still a terrible adaptation of the character. In the original A Study in Scarlet, half of the novel is given to depict his backstory and his sympathetic reasons for killing the people he did.  Some readers dislike that part of the book, but it makes the story much better for being there. It gives the murderer a more complex character.

The show makes a hash out of this when adapting the character for the first episode. Now Hope is a simplistically evil character, who kills people because Moriarty pays him to. Thanks to some decent acting, he gets an ok Hannibal Lecter style confrontation with Sherlock, but it has more to do with Thomas Harris than Arthur Conan Doyle.

And it demonstrates maybe one of the most important differences between the canon and Sherlock. The Canon is very much interested in characters who are not Holmes. The stories are often more about the people Holmes and Watson meet while investigating their cases, than the detective himself.

Sherlock doesn’t give a damn about anyone who isn’t the main character. So despite having one of the most cruel versions of Holmes ever filmed, the stories are actually less morally ambiguous than the original stories. People who were antagonists to Holmes but not evil in the books are turned  into malevolent villains. The show isn’t concerned with creating relatable and complex motivations and backstories for them and make them into characters in their own right, they are only interesting as foils for Sherlock.

The show’s version of Charles Augustus Milverton, who is turned into a Dane named Magnussen, is one of the few villains which are not neutered by being a pawn for Moriarty. His episode, “His Last Vow” is therefore one of the better episodes that don’t directly involve Moriarty. It is helped by a delightfully slimy performance from Lars Mikkelsen, which is enjoyable in a similar way to Andrew Scott’s Moriarty. But the episode also illustrates the show’s problems.

Again the writers decide Sherlock is too important to deal with an ordinary if particularly reprehensible blackmailer, so the show turns Milverton into a supervillain who uses blackmail to control entire governments and has become one of the most powerful people on the planet.

Any tension that is created by the performance and the high stakes is however undercut by perhaps the most serious writing problem this show has: the nonsensical plots and mysteries. The episode’s big reveal is a case in point. The finale reveals Magnussen doesn’t have any physical or digital evidence of the stuff he uses to blackmail people with, he just uses his impressive memory to memorize the information.

The problem with this is that it turns Magnussen into just a huge bluff, with a blackmail empire built on sand. Anyone of his victims could have stopped his rise to becoming one of the most powerful men on the planet by just asking him for proof. Of course, this also means there is nothing stopping anyone from just killing him which is what Sherlock promptly does once Magnussen tells Sherlock his secret for no good reason. This show builds up this super-clever villain and reveals that he is actually just a fool with a good memory, except it treats this as if this ludicrous scheme makes him even more clever.

Sherlock shooting Magnussen is a change from the original story that is very emblematic of how this show works. Milverton is shot in the original story, but by a female victim of his taking revenge. Sherlock and Watson’s role in the story’s finale is merely destroying Milverton’s physical blackmail evidence.

Moffat and Gatiss have removed agency from a female character in the canon and transferred her actions to the male hero. They even suggest the original story by having Mary Watson break into Magnussen’s mansion and hold him at gunpoint.

And her shooting him would have worked so much better as well, for they had prior in the episode made the bizarre reveal that mary was once a professional contract killer. It is an absurd backstory for it comes out of nowhere, but it could have made sense as part of the plot if it explains why Mary is able to break into Magnussen’s home and kill him. But no, Holmes stops Mary from killng Magnussen, and sedates her.  The only reason for this seems to be the scriptwriter’s firm belief that women characters can not affect the plot in BBC’s Sherlock, only the male hero can.

And that seemingly minor change in adapting the story perhaps sums up the show perfectly. It adapts the original short stories with carelessness, picking the bits it pleases for the sole purpose to glorify and idealize its cruel male fantasy in the form of its supposed hero, who bears little in common with the character created by Arthur Conan Doyle.

#not tagging this because don't want to bother the fans with this in their tags #even general ones like character names that are true across incarnations #idk if tumblr searches now go after non-tag text as well but oh well

[wariofranchisefanblog]

Common Wario myths and misconceptions.

As someone running a Wario fan blog, I regularly see Wario myths and misconceptions thrown around like they are fact.

Since I don’t want to constantly repeat myself, I figured it would make sense to make a master post, mentioning them all and why they are untrue:

Gunpei Yokoi was Wario’s creator.

Not true, he was the creator of the Game Boy, Wario’s debut system, but had no hand in Wario’s creation.

Hiroji Kiyotake is the one who fits most to be considered Wario’s creator. He is the one who came up with the idea to introduce a new villain and was his original designer.

 Wario was designed as a mockery of Mario, to represent R&D1’s distaste for having to work on a Mario game.

This is a popular myth, possibly the earliest one for Wario. but there is not a single source that supports it. Official sources that talk about Wario’s creation instead talk about him taking inspiration from classic cartoon rivals like Bluto, resulting in a bigger, stronger, more cunning counterpart to Mario.

 Captain Syrup was rejected during Mario Tennis 64’s development, in favor of Waluigi.

We don’t know why Captain Syrup has been completely overlooked. But Waluigi has nothing to do with it. An interview published in Nintendo Power revealed that they wanted to bring in a new character to begin with and it just so happens that we got Waluigi out of it.

 Rudy’s full name is Rudy the Clown.

This one’s odd.

When Rudy debuted in Wario Land 3, he was only known as A Hidden Figure, with no sources giving him a name. Dr. Mario 64 introduced the Rudy name, but without ‘’the Clown’’ anywhere.

Fortune Street did eventually call him Rudy the Clown in one of Wario’s lines, however, the ‘’the Clown’’ part was already around beforehand and likely taken from fan sites during localization.

 Shake It was a sales flop.

The game did struggle initially, but there have been sources to confirm that it did eventually manage to sell a million copies. Even its initially slow sales are generally attributed to a poor economy and low game sales across the board, at the time.

 Wario Land sells less than Ware and is super niche.

Not true actually!

While Touched and Smooth Moves are among Wario’s best selling titles, Wario Land is a far more consistent success, with every game aside from the Virtual Boy entry, selling a minimum of 1 million copies. The series sells on par and usually better than other notable Nintendo series like Metroid and Kirby.

WarioWare meanwhile, after a successful initial era with it’s first 5 titles, saw lower sales with Snapped, the DIY games and especially Game & Wario, taking until Gold to bounce back and Get It Together is looking to bring the series to new heights.

 WarioWare killed Wario Land.

This kind of statement comes from a severe misunderstanding of how different sub-series are handled.

Land and Ware have little in common aside from their main character, are completely different types of games and haven’t shared a development division since 2004. It’s the equivalent of blaming the Mario & Sonic series for the Strikers games being gone, it doesn’t add up.

The truth is that R&D1 is no more, and the producers and directors of the Land games are either retired or busy with other series. WarioWare meanwhile still has the most crucial people behind it around to continue it and SPD1 had the resources and manpower to still handle it, unlike say, Wario Land or 2D Metroid, which they weren’t big enough for anymore to tackle.

 WarioWare is developed by Intelligent Sytems only.

False. IS have been with the series since Mega Party Game$, but they merely are co-developers, assisting R&D1, which became SPD1, which merged with EAD to become EPD1.

 Mona’s full name is Mona Pizza.

Nope. It’s the name of the pizza place and the iconic song, but it’s not Mona’s name.

To add to this, despite the name and it being styled around her, Mona is not the owner of Mona Pizza, it’s Joe who’s the owner and still Mona’s boss.

 Wario is gross in WarioWare.

People who haven’t seen much Ware and are confused about his Smash incarnation tend to think this, but this is not true.

While toilet humor is a part of the series, it’s rare to say, see references to Wario farting and none of them happened before Brawl entered development. In fact, there is only a single microgame where Wario farts vs dozens of microgames where he is being depicted as strong, greedy, or going treasure hunting.

In cutscenes Wario is also the same as usual. We see more of his goofy side, but that makes sense, given the premise of Wario being in the city, rather than on an adventure. It’s no different in tone than the beloved Camelot sports intros, staring Wario & Waluigi.

 Ashley is 15.

The western WarioWare Touched website did state this, but Japanese sources keep her age ambiguous, and her speech patterns imply she is much younger.

To give some context: japanese fans most commonly guess she’s around 8 years old.

 Wario was marketed differently between the west and Japan and Smash reflects the ‘’true Wario’’.

Basically, everything the Source Gaming Wario article claims. I already made a looong counter to that, so I’ll refer to it for a detailed explanation:

https://wariofranchisefanblog.tumblr.com/post/644402439799357440/i-have-made-it-no-secret-over-the-years-that-i-am

#Wario Land #WarioWare #Super Smash Bros #Super Mario #Wario

[cloudyskywars]

The Magnus Archives, Season 2

Hello again. I’ve now finished listening to Season 2 of TMA and have lost my mind. @reese-haleth can confirm. After Season 1 I wrote my “statement” regarding my thoughts on the season. I’ve done it again, even though no one asked lol. Listen, I just love this podcast a lot, okay? Enjoy my 2,000 word report on Season 2 of The Magnus Archives. 

Statement below the cut.

Continued statement of CloudySkyWars and her experiences listening to the second season of The Magnus Archives. Statement originally given 28th April, 2021. 

I… don’t really know where to begin. It has now been a full day since I finished Season 2, and I still don’t quite know what to think. So many things were revealed in the season finale, and throughout the season in general. I don’t quite know what to do with all the new information I have now. In rereading my previous statement, I was right to be nervous for Jon. I didn’t think it was possible, but his situation got worse.

Let’s start with an easier- well, not easier- but more approachable topic I suppose? Sasha is gone. I think I’ve known that from the end of last season, when her voice changed abruptly and no one seemed to notice. Her scream as she was eaten, or taken, or whatever it was, was terrible. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected her to come back from something like that. Still, it hurts me to know that she’s truly gone. 

We now know more about the being that took Sasha. I’m still not sure what it is called exactly, but for now I shall refer to it as the Not Being. It has apparently been around for ages; hundreds, possibly thousands of years. As it said itself, it wears the person that it chooses as its victim. It transforms into them, for lack of better word, except it changes its appearance, yet somehow tricks everyone into believing that that is how the person has always appeared. Well, almost everyone. It is odd how there always appear to be one or two people that the being cannot fool. In the case of Graham, it was his neighbor across the street. In the case of Sasha, it was Melanie, the ghost hunter. As Gerturde Robinson said, it is strange that a being that has the power to assume someone’s identity and change pictures and hundreds of people’s memories somehow misses just a few people that remember who the person was at first. I do not know for sure, but perhaps those that it cannot fool are somehow protected by another one of the Beings. 

That’s another difficult topic. The Beings. I don’t know exactly what to call them yet. Jon has slowly been putting the pieces together, and with the statement of the now late Jurgen Leitner, the pieces form an almost complete puzzle. From my understanding, there are 10 Beings so far that we are aware of at this time.

Here is my understanding of the Beings so far. I don’t know how correct any of this is, but I know I still have much to learn.

Being 1: Darkness. The form of darkness incarnate, responsible for the founding of the cult The People’s Church of the Divine Host. It can dim lights, and also affect the water when it is near. The head of the cult in the 1990s was one Maxwell Reiner. 

Being 2: Michael, aka The Spiral. It lies. This Being appears to be a master of deception and trickery, and has no regard to others except to watch them in its tortured games. I will discuss Michael further, but right now we know the appearance it chooses to take at this time: a tall man with curly blonde hair and bulbous, swollen hands. 

Being 3: Meat. I do not know much about this being at this time. It appears to be vicious, and quite literally thirsts for blood and meat. 

Being 4: Fire. Again, my knowledge on this particular being is limited. I believe it to be closely tied to Agnes Montague, and perhaps be an enemy of the Not.

Being 5: Not. As I stated before, this being takes the identity of its victim and warps it, manipulating almost everyone’s minds to forget the original form of the person ever existed. It always seems to miss a few though. Its one weakness seems to be the wooden table that Jon has now destroyed. Jon was under the impression that the Not got its power from the table, but the opposite was true. The table was binding it, and for a bit it seemed as though the Not had almost unlimited power, taunting Jon in the tunnels. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Not can trick photos and people’s minds, but appears to be unable to alter voice recordings of the victim as long as it is recorded on magnetic tape. This is how Jon realized that Sasha was indeed Not Sasha, as he found the tapes from Season 1 where her voice was recorded. It also seems to be unable to alter polaroid photos.

Being 6: Abyss. We don’t know much about this one yet, either. It takes the form of some abyss or another, whether it be the sky or the deep blue ocean. I am not ashamed to say that this Being is one of the scariest for me.

Being 7: Giant- I feel this is a poor descriptor for this being, but it is the best I can come up with at the moment. It is exactly as it sounds; a giant. So far we have primarily seen it manifest as a giant hand. Perhaps that would be a better name for it. Hand. 

Being 8: Thin- This is, I fear, not an accurate description of this Being. It is described as being tall and thin, with limbs like knives. Not much is known about him at the moment, however we believe that his “brother” of sorts was the werewolf creature from a previous statement. 

Being 9: The End- The Being of death and disease. I strongly suspect that this is the being responsible for Jane Prentiss, as well as John Amehurst, who has shown up multiple times so far in the series. 

Being 10: Eye, aka the Beholder- This Being is in control of The Magnus Institute, and ‘owns’ all those who work there. The Eye watches people, as its name suggests. It also apparently protects those it owns from the other beings, and the protections are strongest in The Institute itself. 

I hope that the Darkness has mostly gone away, for now. Basira claims that Maxwell Reiner, the head of The People’s Church of the Divine Host, is now dead. Hopefully this means that the Darkness will have less influence over this world for the time being. At least until it can find another host.

And that’s another thing. Basira. We were just introduced to the character this season, and already I am very attached to her. It disappoints me that she has left the police force and will no longer be able to help Jon, but I do not believe we have seen the last of her. Her leaving the police opens the door for her to help Jon more in the future, especially now that he is on the run for murder. I will… discuss that more deeply later. Basira’s introduction also caused us to meet Daisy, who I quite like at the moment, but I feel that will change quickly as she is the one investigating Leitner’s murder and will most likely be leading the manhunt for Jon. For the moment though, she is in my good graces. 

Daisy’s first statement talked about her first encounter with a paranormal experience. It dealt with the coffin from the statement of Joshua Gillespe. The moving company, Breekon and Hope, is not gone. I don’t think it ever will be. I do not yet know which Being they are associated with, if any, but they have caused problems in the past and I have cause to believe they will continue to cause problems in the future.

Now for the difficult part: Jon. He is in quite the predicament right now, and I am scared to see what will happen to him. He is on the run for murder, because Elias Bouchard brutally murdered Jurgen Leitner and has now framed Jon for it. Elias had me fooled. I thought he cared about Jon, about all of them. But he is clearly dedicated to the Eye, and anything that threatens the Beholder and what it watches, holds, and owns- Elias will stop at nothing to protect it. I do not know if Elias is a paranormal being himself or is simply an instrument of the Eye. 

I desperately hope that Jon will be alright. I think, (though I could be wrong), that he will reach out to Basira and ask for her help. Season 2 has developed outside characters more so than Season 1, and I believe it is so that Jon has connections that he can reach out to. With Basira leaving the police force, it opens the possibility that he can go to her for help. The same is true with Melanie. She and Jon have something that could almost be considered a friendship, though most of their conversations end in a verbal sparring match or fight. Nonetheless, Melanie was heading to India, and Jon was aware of that. Perhaps he will go to her for assistance, or maybe he will wise up and realize that Martin actually cares about him and ask him for help. We shall see. 

Gerturde Robinson is another character we have learned more about this season. She is hardly the absent minded old woman we were led to believe she was. In the beginning, Jon complained about her lack of organization in the Archives, but now I think there was a reason for it. She put the pieces together, and was murdered for it. She was trying to separate the pieces, to make it safe for whoever took her place, as well as attempting to fool Elias into thinking she didn’t know what was going on. She failed at that, as he discovered her knowledge and murdered her in the tunnels beneath the Archives. It was also revealed that she was working with Jurgen Leitner.

Leitner has been mentioned since the beginning, though we heard from him for the first and last time in the final two episodes of Season 2. Contrary to my assumptions, he was not making his books evil, simply trying to harness the power they already possessed. I am thankful that he saved Jon from the Not Being, as Jon would have surely died had Leitner not interfered. He is very knowledgeable in paranormal matters, and did his best to explain it to Jon. However he was murdered by Elias before he had a chance to explain all he wished to. Leitner claims that the books are the Beings in their purest form, and I am certain we have not seen the last of the books from Leitner’s extensive library. 

Martin and Tim surely think that Jon murdered Leitner. I hope that Martin at least will continue to have faith in Jon, and that he will possibly find the supplemental tapes that Jon had been recording and realize what was actually happening. Only time will tell, though. 

Another Being that we learned more about this season was Michael. He was first introduced to us by Sasha (the real one), back in season 1. At the time, it was portrayed as either a passive or helpful Being, showing Sasha how to kill the worms that came from the thing once known as Jane Prentiss, but this season has proved that not to be the case. Michael has trapped people multiple times, (notably Helen Richardson), and has since shown more aggression than before. It stabbed Jon, who then proceeded to lie about his wound because he didn’t trust his coworkers. To its credit, in the second to last episode of Season 2, Michael helps Jon get a head start from the Not Being after Jon accidentally sets it free. However it then proceeds to trap Martin and Tim in one of its corridor labyrinths for days in some sort of sick game for its enjoyment, and comments that it may also kill them. Luckily it either failed or changed its mind. Time will tell whether or not the Being that calls itself Michael will be more of a friend or foe. 

I suppose that’s it, really. There are surely many things that I have forgotten, but I have done the best I can to document my thoughts and my knowledge of The Magnus Archives at this time. I don’t know all that is going on, I don’t know how things will be resolved. I don’t even know if the mystery will be fully solved. But I desperately hope that things will be explained, that we will receive answers, and that the mystery will be solved. It has to be. I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s not.

Statement ends. 

#if you read all the way to the end i love you #that was a lot #i just have a lot of thoughts about this podcast #tma #the magnus archives #TMA spoilers #the magnus archives spoilers #TMA season 2 #cloudy listens to TMA #my statement #i just want jon to be HAPPY is that too much to ask #time will tell

[beneaththetangles]

Shoujo and the Bride of Christ (I)

I was fourteen years old, Shinji Ikari´s age, when A Bridge to Terabithia made its movie debut. Like his fated stay in Misato’s house, only in time have I come to realize the influence it has had on me. Leslie Burke, the imaginative and courageous adventurer played by AnnaSophia Robb, did not only unveil a new world (or many) for Josh Hutcherson´s character, but for me, too. Who would have known? The wonders they discovered, the things they built together, their common battle against evil and injustice, their shared experiences, and the way they got to know each other and count on each other made a deep impression on me. And I thought she was interesting, pretty, even beautiful. I´m sure many of you have a story like that. A classmate, a friend, a character, a book.

With my Hachiman antics and my teenage fears, I had been too defensive and self-conscious up to that point to think seriously about romance (even if, as with him, I felt its attraction). But it was from there, if ‘´m not wrong, that the thought of a man-woman alliance—deep, trustworthy,opened to God and to the adventure of life—began to seem like an attractive possibility. An ethic to fit that ideal was one of sincerity, friendship, selflessness, chivalry, self-sacrifice, prayer, loyalty, courage and honoring promises (that of the Code of Kushieda, romantic version). Much has happened since, but the essentials remain unchanged. I wouldn’t forget, or settle for less. Ever since, I have loved stories of hard-earned romance, of mutual discovery, of the fight for the good of the other and complementary communion, and even new life.

Anime, with its gift for depicting deeply personal worlds with colorful symbols, has some great stories of this kind. You have Toradora, Haruhi, OreGairu, Sakamichi no Apollon, Your Lie in April, Clannad, Ore Monogatari, EVA itself, or movies like Ghibli´s Whisper of the Heart. Many are told from the point of view of the guy, but some of the best are not: This is how I discovered shōjo or shoujo. Its best stories brought me a different, yet recognizable world, because discovering human love is, after all, a very human experience. It is also a powerful mystery, which according to the Bible, was expressly established by God himself. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” To which St. Paul comments: “This mystery is profound, but I am speaking about Christ and the Church.”

Wait, what?

Last year, during the Spanish quarantine, I had the idea of explaining the Eucharist and its role in my life using examples from shōnen anime. By symmetry, I was wondering if there was some other aspect I could explain with shoujo anime. It turns out that there is. After all, before discovering Terabithia, I had discovered Christ and the Church (according to the Catholic conception), and, as crazy as it sounds, I thought St. Paul’s comment, with its echo at the end of the Book of Revelation, did fit. I read Dante’s The Divine Comedy (this year is his seventh centenary) at 16, and that connection only grew. It still does. Ready for the ride?

Sawako Kuronuma´s Human-shaped Gate

“But… you know that’s just biology, right? Chemical fireworks, so that the species can perpetuate.” I take issue with the word “just” here. God is the author of nature, which is thus full of depth, beauty, and meaning and providentially disposed towards our growth as creatures. There is chemistry, and there is more. While it is important to take everything into account and be careful when discerning our course of action, the faith in Christ is an incarnated faith. Our bodies, our natures, our stories are full of meaning, and we may come to discover it (and not just invent it), little by little. There is a deep wisdom in the created world, at every level, from the atoms to the stars.

In the Book of Genesis we are told that, when God created man and woman, Adam named the animals and witnessed a Creation in harmony. But not until meeting Eve did he discover a creature made of something deeply and intimately his, something he had been lacking without knowing it. She was just like him, and at the same time she was so different. For her, with her, he would go beyond what he knew, and they would be as one from there on. And their complementarity was to be the source of something new, of something great. Even more amazingly, she felt the same way. That was (and is) God’s design, which reflects His own powerful, generous love, “the fiercest blaze of all.” Something like that could only have been God´s idea, really.

Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You) tells a story that, despite its contemporary setting, feels very Edenic. We have commented on it here a couple of times. I’m not even the first to point the Biblical analogy. Sawako (which means “lively child”) Kuronuma, nicknamed “Sadako” because of her resemblance of the phantom girl of The Ring, is isolated. She has a gentle, bright interior world she cannot share. Her lack of social skills and her terrifying aura get in her way, no matter how hard she tries to get along. She is misinterpreted time and time again. But a certain guy named Kazehaya, cheerful, popular, and sporting, is not fooled by appearances. He calls her by her true name. He supports her, little by little. He guides her. And, starting from there, her world begins to transform.

The seasons change, their bond is tested, nature surrounds them and echoes what is in their hearts, and she gradually discovers many things she couldn’t even conceive of before. Friendships, joys, sorrows, a place in the world, and Kazehaya, too. There is a chance, now, that her feelings may come across. And Kazehaya is the first step, the destiny, and the gate.

So, what is the Church of Christ? First and foremost, it is a loving bond with Jesus Christ, a real, human and divine person with a physical body, and to His Father, of Whom He speaks which such passion, and the Holy Spirit. Someone who lives, who longs for us to know Him, to open new worlds to us, without whom we will always be incomplete. He is the light, we are vitrals: He will make us shine with our true shape, our true, unique colors. Sawako always shone, but never so much.

Like her, like the characters of the Bible and the Gospel, each of us is called, one at a time, visibly or invisibly, by his or her real name, not the one of the world of appearances, and it is the name of a child of God, and full of life. When we follow Christ, He makes us courageous. He makes us grow. He fights to get us to go forward. He makes us able to truly love, to bond with others. Jesus of Nazareth is the Word of God, the key, the truer, deeper, loving meaning of all that has been created, of every human being. And each one of us, personally but also in communion with others, is his Church, when chosen by Him, when united to Him, when walking to finally reach Him and letting Him finally reach each of us, through all History and Creation. And in being with Him, there is life, everlasting life.

But, even if it is still in us, we do not live in Eden. There was a fall. The world changed. And so…

Futaba Yoshioka and Her Seven Demons

In a moment of cowardice, Futaba loudly denied her newly found love for her classmate Kou Mabuchi. Unexpectedly, he heard her. So it begins.

Ao Haru Ride (Blue Spring Ride) is similar to Kimi to Todoke in some aspects (and has an episode-by-episode analysis by Twwk here), but there is a key difference. Futaba’s misfortune was not brought about by her appearance, but due to her being inauthentic and cowardly out of fear of being alone, or rejected. Kou Mabuchi, returned after a few years of unexplained absence, knows Futaba from the old days. Superficial friendships, cowardly stances, artificial laughs, boyish behaviors planned so she won’t stand out, a deep solitude, a kind of slow self-destruction—he sees through it all. He knows that she has lost herself, that she is longing for something different. So he attacks with words, with acts that point beyond. It hurts, a lot. But something about him says that he is doing it in the name of something truer, that he could guide her there, and that he is no stranger to pain and sorrow…

…which, in my view, doesn’t excuse the disconcerting, nosy, and sometimes cruel behavior Kou often displays towards her (I don´t like this one as much as Kimi ni Todoke). But, to the allegory. After the book of Genesis there is the book of Exodus, the flight. Like Futaba, we are all lying, distorted, trapped from the inside, often unknowingly. As Sarah in the Book of Tobit, as Israel in Egypt or Babylon, as Mary Magdalene in the Gospel, we are oppressed by evils, personal, social or even the supernatural, that often control or manipulate us, that enslave us. The natural development of the deeply ingrained evil is suffering and self-destruction when its inner truth arises. And Christ is the one who knows us and will fight to free us, to open a path, and the Man of Sorrows, who not only bears unbearable suffering but knows our personal suffering, the suffering of each one of us.

In a moment of cowardice, Peter loudly denied knowing Christ, who he had confessed to be the Son of God, who had chosen Him, whom he loved. And like Kou with Futaba, He heard Peter, too. But Peter repented, and Christ had a path for him, a path with others. Futaba, motivated by Kou’s words and deeds, abandons the world of lies and starting anew with a group of misfits, people who cannot advance, who perceive themselves or are perceived by others as failures or phonies. It becomes quite literal when they get lost in the forest during a competition. The Church is, likewise, a scattered group who flee from Christ´s cross, as He had prophesied, but is then brought together again. Founded upon Christ´s love, following His words of eternal life, we are still sinners, ambitious, clumsy, cowards. The old Israel thought that, by perfectly observing the Law, it could fulfill the alliance and bring God´s favor upon itself, but kept betraying Him, even if they sometimes managed to hide it behind a facade.

But Christ made clear that He came not for the healthy, but for the sick, the evil, the cowards, those traitors. Peter, the Apostles, and the disciples were chosen not because they had somehow merited it, but because they trusted Him and followed Him, even if stumbling along the way. He would made them able to triumph. Love is radical, and as we are transformed by it, love increasingly needs us to fight whatever denies it within us. It is by no means an easy battle, and Ao Haru Ride knows that. Christ is prophesied champion against the Serpent of Eden, Satan, the Adversary, the fallen angel who tempts us, and against the evil whose maximum he represents. He begins His mission by confronting him in the desert, and fights evil, forgiving sins and expelling demons, one after another, and finally prevailing over them by perfect obedience and love, onn the Cross and in the resurrection.

And His fight goes on. He wants us to have part in His death and His resurrection, from baptism to a death in Christ and beyond. He is the Savior, and the Church is his Noah’s Ark, His people of Israel escaping Egypt through the Red Sea, His plan of salvation for everyone who accepts His personal call and jumps inside to escape self-destruction and death together. He is the lover who needs the loved one to trust Him, and to fight, and will be there to help. Against the entire world, against death, against everything. The plan of salvation won’t work without that kind of love.

When they join the group, Kou lets Futaba do most of the teamwork. He… has his reasons. During His mission, Christ gave Peter and the rest of his disciples the power to expel demons, to forgive sins, to baptize, to teach, and sent them. Not because He, the Almighty, needed them, but to help them, to help human beings through the cooperation of human beings who became closer to God this way. He still does that now. He also gave them the treasures of His love, which they keep. His Sacraments, His miracles, His Gospel and His teachings, all signs and acts of His love, are preserved in the Church, a house build in rock against which the gates of Hell shall never prevail. He will be with us every day, until the end of the world, if there is the slightest bit of hope that we may accept His hand, acting, saving. Heaven and Earth will pass away, but His words will never pass away.

Christ has pleaded in prayer for Simon Peter, that messy, loud self-confessed sinner, that his faith should not fail, so when he has repented, he will strengthen his brothers, feed Christ’s sheep. Peter, who reacted with undue violence (Futaba may need to confront old friends in the name of justice, but it is her own cowardice what she is mainly fighting against) and then denied Christ, will be able to disavow the Sanhedrin and Caiphas, preside over the martyr Church, and die on a cross for Christ and others, to go where he doesn’t want to go right now, and teach others to do the same. All because Christ loves him, and he loves Christ, and that love is fighting and growing. And the messy, loud, cowardly Futaba will also be able to face her demons, and face challenges, darkness and suffering beyond everything she had imagined, to tell the truth, to save others.

Do not be fooled by my criticisms: Futaba is a wonderful, relatable, inspiring character. She keeps the fight. Kou is very lucky. In this fallen world, every relationship, every bond, every friendship, every marriage, demands us to keep the fight. Human love, being made by God, reflects a ray of His own light, a ray that makes us hope and moves us to action. Likewise, the Church of Christ fights on this Earth, fulfilling the command of Christ to Peter and the Apostles, and those who came after them, teaching the Gospel and giving the Eucharist, bringing Christ´s love to our hearts. We, the group of misfits and sinners, keep assisting each other on the way, doing better or doing worse, knowing that He also works outside her visible frontiers, fighting to reach all human hearts. This is the Militant Church, which Christ will never abandon, in perpetual combat against her own evil, my own evil, and against the powers that enslave us, that enslave me, armed with the most powerful force there is—Christ´s love, Christ´s truth, Christ´s own hope. That is her source, her life and her destiny. And so she fights. And so I fight.

But what’s on the other side of the forest? What has it to do with the Divine Comedy? What is Tohru Honda doing at the top? Those are all questions for the next time. So, for now, take care, and Happy Easter!

=====

Kimi ni Todoke and Ao Haru Ride can be streamed in Crunchyroll.

#Anime #Christianity #Kimi ni Todoke #Ao Haru Ride #Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You #Blue Spring Ride #Shoujo #Articles #Author: Gaheret

[saturnis777]

The Six Million Dollar Anime Girl

As a fan of anime we must look at both sides of the coin, in most anime the people depicted as main characters are above average in the gold and silver department. Lets start naming a few magical girl franchises and we will see a clear trend!

North American audiences probably never gave much contemplation on the economic class that Sailor Moon belongs too. To the average North American viewer, Usagi and company were typical middle class, living in typical homes in a seemingly average neighborhood. However, if you know anything about Tokyo, you’d realize Usagi and the other Sailor Scouts are pretty well off. Every one of the five main characters live in the Juuban district in Tokyo, which is a very affluent area.

On top of that Haruka Tenou said her monthly rent was a million yen which works out to 10 thousand dollars. Michiru Kaiou had her own apartment which presumably had similar if not higher rent, on top of that she owned a giant palace outside of town, and rode in a helicopter to and from school. Yeah that's what you call normal middle class living, yeah right, give me a break! And don't even get me started on Dr Tomoe, and the multi billion dollar Mugen Academy Corporation that he founded.  

North American viewers who watch Cardcaptor Sakura think Sakura is a typical middle class girl with a somewhat wealthy friend Tomoyo Daidouji. Well if you pay attention to the details you will realize she lives in an extremely affluent fictional district called Tomoeda. just one look at the schools architecture, as well as the area in general reveals that Sakura Kinomoto is borderline wealthy by any standard. However it gets even better it turns out she inherits her grandfathers fortune witch includes a giant five story mansion with servants to boot. So much for middle class living, we are talking 100 wealthiest people on earth material, and that's just from the story who knows what corporation Sakura's grandfather owns to amass such wealth?

Many Americans when they see Saint Seiya think that Saiori Kido lives in an upper middle class home, with a butler working out of devotion for her. Actually Saiori Kido is extremely wealthy, in fact if she were in this world she would be the wealthiest woman by far, and that's even before she awakened as the Goddess Athena.

Now with this scale set lets scroll down the list of magical girls.

The plus signs in the following are not coincidence they are the sub orders of magnitude within each corresponding class.

Billionaire

Billionaire+ greater x10

Billionaire++ much greater x100

Billionaire+++ massively greater x1000

Example billionaire +++ is a potential trillionaire.

Note the cheeky term Zillionaire refers to fictional characters with untold wealth.

.................................................

Usagi Tsukino... Upper Middle Class+

Usagi Tsukino's ascension to Neo-Queen Serenity Zillionaire+++

.................................................

Saiori Kido... Billionaire+

Saiori Kido's ascension to Goddess Athena... Zillionaire++

.................................................

Tomoyo Daidouji in Cardcaptor... Billionaire+

Tomoyo Daidouji in Tsubasa... Billionaire+++

.................................................

Sakura Kinomoto... Billionaire+

Michiru Kaiou... Billionaire+

Haruka Tenou... Millionaire+++

Ami Mizuno... Upper Middle Class

Rei Hino... Upper Middle Class

Minako Aino... Upper Middle Class+

Makoto Kino... Middle Class+

Amilia Will Saillune... Billionaire++

Bulma Briefs... Billionaire

Hotaru Tomoe... Billionaire+

Snow White... Billionaire+

Ice Queen Elsa... Billionaire+

Queen Anna of Arendelle... Billionaire+

Little Mermaid Ariel... Billionaire++

Alice in Wonderland... Millionaire++

Sleeping Beauty... Billionaire+++

Akiho Shinomoto... Millionaire+

Princess Kairi... Millionaire+

Princess Zelda... Billionaire+++

Barbie... Millionaire++

Lina Inverse... Middle Class+

The less than 0.000001% of humanity gets most of the Anime glory.

I need not even go on with this list its pathetic, one thing i can plug Dragon Ball Z on is at least Son Goku wasn't rich, nor was he an elite saiyan ether, he was a commoner.

Undoubtedly the wealthiest of all these magical princesses was Usagi Tsukino, when she became Neo-Queen Serenity and inherited the literal universe of Silver Millennium. The second closest was Saiori Kido who as Athena ruled the sanctuary dimension.

Yes that’s Queen Serenity’s crystal palace with spires towering several miles into the sky, it totally dwarfs all the skyscrapers around it.

Heck even Scrooge McDuck incarnate wasn't that rich. The true wealth of Tomoyo Daidouji is unknown, but the fact her future self is depicted running a future global corporation indicates she is at least Scrooge McDuck level, probably higher. Bulma Briefs would rank the same level as Princess Tomoyo, and come to think of it there was a scene where Bulma said to Vegeta, if your the Prince than that makes me the Princess.

The little mermaid is the same thing, you can't just be a mermaid, no its got to be the richest mermaid in all the seven seas.

Virtually all the magic girls are spoon fed from golden platters, with one exception to this rule.

There's only one magical girl out of all the listed characters that is based on a somewhat typical common girl, and that is Lina Inverse, the anti-heroine of the Slayers Anime.

Lina Inverse lived with her two parents and sister who ran a grocery store in a small town called Zephilia. Out of all the magic girls I have ever seen in my life, Lina Inverse is the only one who is not borne of some royal lineage.  

To simplify matters Lina Inverse is the only staring character I know of that isn't dirty, filthy rich.

However even Lina Inverse was depicted with a repeating fixation on becoming a wealthy princess that repeated throughout the series. Not only that there are several times where Lina refuses to help people unless they pay her lots of gold coins, one of the jokes of the series was she rarely got her reward. But still the fact she only offered to help oppressed people if they gave her money is kinda rotten even for a comedy based anime.

On top of that one of the main villains in the story bent on ruling the world turns out to be a peasant living in a garden shed, or more precisely a run down falling apart old shed.

Yep that's the headquarters of the Zein, an organization created by Galev and his sole underling Zahhard.

Well to be fair I will give the slayers a pass on this one, especially considering the entire show is comedy based, and doesn't knock people by class. Lina is Lina after all and regardless what class one may be she will deck them if they dare make fun of her.

However I will not be giving any passes to Sailor Moon, Kingdom Hearts, Cardcaptor Sakura, Saint Seiya, Tsubasa Chronicle, and the infamous Disney Princess Movies. They all blatantly program children with princess like delusions of grandeur, and in my opinion that is not cool in any way.

You will be surprised to learn all the girls I listed above are called princess, not just the Disney characters. To me that is crystal clear proof of the subliminal princess agenda! Its very in the face what is going on here, it's clear this whole princess/wealthy girl theme is a subtle program.

I haft to ask the question is this the magical girl genre, or is it the wealthy girl genre? I'm asking this question because it kinda looks like the latter to me, and that is kinda sad.

Kind of like Batman became a hero because he was a billionaire and had the resources to build himself a sleeked down inspector gadget suit. What kind of lessons are they setting for kids, seriously what kind of role models are these magical girl themes creating?

Seriously why can't they feature ordinary characters, why do they all haft to be royalty, and billionaires.

They are almost all Scrooge McDuck level or higher, needless to say these are totally unrealistic goals for children.

Talk about ten minutes to ruining ones childhood dreams, you ether haft to be extremely aristocratic, or in some cases not even human to be a magical girl. I call it monarch butterfly syndrome, only those born in certain lineage make it in this world.

Make no mistake this is a subliminal class system aimed at our children, and its happening all across the board. What is the message that children receive watching these shows, is it good morality, doing the right thing, or is the message to love money?

One last thing before I sign off this blog post, what if the magical powers they are depicting are actually something else entirely? What if its trans humanism and only the super rich could afford this technology upgrade?

The image above is Hotaru Tomoe after being turned into a cyborg by her father Professor Tomoe. There are claims she is the only cyborg in Sailor Moon, but how do we know for sure, they even said they originally intended for Ami Mizuno to be a cyborg. Its possible all the sailor senshi were biologically enhanced super soldiers. One of the ways to tell was when Hotaru Tomoe experienced pain from her body rejecting the enhancements. There are scenes in the new Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card Hen show depicting Sakura passing out for no apparent reason, and going through all the symptoms Hotaru Tomoe did. In Sailor Moon Crystal there is a scene where Usagi Tsukino collapses to the ground and says she feels like her body is being ripped apart. I don’t know are these subliminal hints that something sinister is going on? Throughout Kingdom Hearts Roxas is often depicted holding his head in anguish, and Sora was once in a strange pod to allegedly put his memories back together, was it that or did they augment him somehow? The very first people that will be augmented with transhuman technology will be wealthy people, most likely ones near death like Hotaru Tomoe who was injured in a serious lab accident. Then it will spread to all wealthy children being upgraded, and eventually it will trickle down to a fair sized percentage of human beings. Imagine an augmented person being capable of downloading a library worth of books into their digitized brain in the span if a few weeks.

Could you imagine a class of people with limitless knowledge and nigh immortality? Anyone who isn’t augmented with this nano tech serum will be totally obsolete, there will be no place in society for them. This is the technological singularity they are trying to create for us. If this agenda transpires in the following decades the gap between rich, and poor will become totally insurmountable with aristocratic magical people with godlike powers and several thousand year lifespan ruling over the short lived plebs.

You see that in many Disney movies where the prince and princess are tall and beautiful well everyone else is short and ugly. Yeah some of it is due to animators not wasting time on side characters, however there is a clear gap between two kinds of people.

That is exactly what the fallen angel archons would like to manifest, the return of the gods to lord it over the pawns like something out of hunger games, or game of thrones. Because lets face it the ultimate plan is the total borgification of humanity. Is this the reason why the magical girls with the exception of Lina Inverse all have magical tools, pens, wands, and staffs. Is this the real reason why they are all extremely wealthy? Are they depicting our future, one in which humanity splits into two factions one being a Star Trek civilization, and the other a class of subservient plebeians?

If you think getting augmented is cool maybe the following image will change your mind.

The title for this episode of Cardcaptor is the threads that bind, its an episode where Eriol Hiiragizawa literally turns Syaoran Li into a puppet, as if he were playing Geppetto the puppet master. If you understand anything about augmentation technology this is exactly what can, and most certainly will happen to those who take the upgrade. That’s how a hive mind will work, in the end there will be a collective of augmented elite living in the cities whereas everyone else is banished from society. The choice will most likely be take the upgrade, or hit the road Jack and don’t you ever come back.

You even see that depicted in the bible where it describes one group of people deemed righteous living in a city with streets of gold, and outside the city lived the dogs, sorcerers, liars and moral outcasts.

I don't know about you but that is trans humanism based on a social credit score, if you obey the mandates you live in paradise, if you disobey you are banished from society.

That is the true new world order being laid out for all to see, and don't forget any tyrant can call themselves righteous, and even the borg in Star Trek believed their collective was 100% pure perfection.

Lastly the only place where we see streets paved with gold are the connections on a computer chip, that is the yellow brick road, and the Wizard of Oz was a man operating a holographic machine, and don't forget that.

Really something when you realize they depicted a hologram being used to control people back in 1939, and they even depict the fog, another thing that can be used to enhance holographic projection, the steam makes a screen with which to reflect the image upon. Many people don't know but it requires steam, or some kind of glass screen to project a 3D hologram upon.

It will take a whole post just to touch base on the subliminal trans humanist ideals portrayed in anime and comic books. However there's one thing i will say right now, they cannot transform people into superheroes, technology cannot turn people into Sailor Senshi, technology cannot make you a Card Captor, and technology can’t make you Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Captain America, Iron Man, Green Lantern, etc. Life doesn’t work like that, the only thing that combining technology with human beings will do is create the borg, and that is not cool by any standard. The only two things they are promoting right now is the rich magical girl, and transhuman agendas. They did try the rich boy thing before with Richie Rich but it didn’t seem to catch on, not like the princess programing. Back when I was still into religion i heard several preachers say to the women your princesses, your daughters of the great king. To me this is further enforcing the princess program that starts in kindergarten, and goes on into the teen years with anime, and disney movies.

Oh i forgot there were two disney princesses that started out as commoners, however in the end its still part of the princess spell. Still i put this in here to correct the record.

[it-will-not-last-the-night]

PQ2 - End

As I did expect; making sure I was able to comfortably beat the Velvet Rangers first did mean Enlil, though visually impressive, wasn’t a difficult fight. I simply equipped Ryuji with the Omnipotent Orb and had him All Guard every turn and this left Enlil unable to do anything whilst the Joker, Mitsuru, Chie and Ann wailed on them.

The ending was honestly good though, very emotional, heart-tugging, I honestly haven’t had this much fun finishing a game since J.J. Macfield and the Island of the Missing. 

PQ2 is honestly a gem I feel. Beyond fun mechanics that I found easy to get back into even after long gaps, it balances the character development of an enormous cast very successfully, with only some issues.

Even though I knew nothing of P3 or P4 the game conveys their characters in a way I found enjoyable and easy to sink into, and that is really no small feat considering that the cast is, honestly, just insanely large by the end. 

I enjoyed Enlil as an antagonist for the most part, though they could definitely have used a little more substance in the plot, but this game, overall, was less focused on it’s villain and more on it’s protagonist, and that’s fine.

To that end Hikari: the game is honestly the story of her character development and I loved her. It’s a pity we don’t see much of her in the fandom, because I honestly adore Hikari and find her enchanting and relatable in a number of ways.

Her farewell to the friends she made at the finale of the game was genuinely touching.

In general the farewells at the end are emotional, and I enjoyed them all, event he little nod to Akechi’s own mixed feelings, clearly dealing with something, as he is the most hesitant of the Phantom Thieves to finally exit the theatre after they have learned they will forget everything once they are outside. A nice touch!

Of course, because it is me, I do wish to gush briefly about Ryuji: OH MY GOSH I love his dynamic with Hikari? But, also, I just love him in this game? He comes across in PQ2 as if he has matured from his incarnation in the vanilla game. Not only is he the character, along with Futaba, who spends the most time supporting and speaking with Hikari, but even in the ending when most of the Thieves all express varying degrees of excitement or forced enthusiasm about returning home, Ryuji is the one who most noticeably feels sad about the whole affair, expressing how he suddenly misses everything they’d gone through.

On the note of Ryuji and Hikari’s bond: I had thought it mostly just an accidental outgrowth of Ryuji’s common role as an externalization of Joker’s words, but when I watch the ending perhaps it is more intentional than I thought. Noticeably Futaba and Ryuji deliver the closing lines to Hikari, Ryuji is the one who, as she tears up, tells her to remember to keep her promise to invite them to see her movies and in the post-credits scene Ryuji is the character who feels they NEED to see her movie when they find a flyer for it, going so far as to clutch at his head because he, without knowing why, just knows he HAS to go do this. Furthermore, the cutscene as Hikari says her final goodbye and leaves, is framed around a small group of characters: Ryuji, Futaba, P3FemPC, Yukari, Mitsuru and Morgana. Among those Ryuji, Futaba and P3FemPC are the characters with the largest interaction with Hikari throughout the game, and I honestly have adored those four together.

I honestly have no idea why I am typing this, the game is dated and I believe interest in it limited, but I’d recommend any fan of Persona who hasn’t given it a try to do so, if only because the story and characters are honestly well executed, better in many ways than Vanilla.

To be frank; whilst Vanilla has moments that legitimately make me depressed, the scene in Shinjuku and the scene after Shido’s Ship, even at it’s worst PQ2 never has it’s characters be that mean to each other. Even when they jibe or insult they never cross a line to abusing or accosting, and they never all single out one character to relentlessly, constantly, deride.

A breath of fresh air really!

Anyway; I loved the game, I had fun, now I guess I wait for Scramble to become available, and I hope we get to see more of the P5 cast still in future (ALSO ATLUS JUST LET ME HOOK THE PT’S UP WITH EACH OTHER OR DATE THE BOYS PLEASE I WANT TO GIVE THEM LOVE TOO THEY DESERVE IT).

For fun below the divide I’m just gonna mention the relationships, romantic or platonic I’m not going to bother much with a distinction, I really have come to like following this game even though, I am sure, they are all crack.

Enjoy:

Chie/Yukiko: Whether best friends or girlfriends no pair of characters in the P4 cast seemed to, from the outset, come across as obviously as if they are close. The two seem to complement each other well, know each other well and play off each other well and are always delightful and entertaining to watch.

Mitsuru/Junpei: I talked about this one before; I just honestly loved their Ticket and found it endearing how both, in their interactions with each other, were almost Tsundere-ish in admitting to private desires to get along, and take care of each other dearly, but struggling to break through the shell of the other to confess this. 

Ryuji/Hikari: Talked about this one at massive length already; suffice to say I honestly loved their interactions so much and, along with Ryuji’s interactions with Sophia I have seen now in Scramble, Ryuji radiates enormous, powerful, Big Brother/Father energy. Which I think is great? What better arc for Ryuji than, a person who’s life is overshadowed by his awful father, to turn out to be a wonderful father himself.

Yusuke/Yukiko: These two just get each other. Honestly they just click. They tune in to the same cosmic wavelength and leave everyone confused as they naturally just synch up. It is a pity as the game enters its later stages we see less of them, in the early game they are a treat.

Ken/Akechi: Ken and Akechi just are perfect, wonderful, foils to each other and it’s almost a pity the game can’t actually go the full way with it because Akechi’s secret can’t come out. This leaves it as a tease, the suggestion, of what could be, but that’s still plenty good. I also find it always interesting to see Ryuji and Akechi, two boys heavily formed by an abusive father, both in their own explicit words state outright they relate themselves to Ken in some way. With Akechi, because he is so good at wearing masks, I wonder how true it is when he relates himself to Ken, it’d be interesting to know if this is one of his lies to maintain his façade, or a bit of his true self creeping out as it often does. 

Joker/Junpei: I don’t know why I like these two? But Joker comes across as really fond and supportive of him with his consistent chances to shout out “Junpei! Master Detective!”

Yukari/Junpei: As I said in my head I go back-and-forth whether this would be endearing or a toxic hate-love relationship. There’s no denying, though, that these two interact more with each other than anyone else in the P3 cast, they’re the Yukiko/Chie in that sense, if Yukiko/Chie consisted of a lot of barbs and harsh words. We actually get a glimpse of what, I feel, is a healthier dynamic for the two in P3FemPC’s world in the epilogue, where Yukari is still barbed but rather than deflating Junpei ripostes back, this automatically makes it seem less mean-spirited heckling and more two people, comfortable with each other, bantering.

Futaba/Hikari: This one is the obvious choice since the game is obviously going out of it’s way to make this an important relationship. Futaba sees herself in Hikari and appoints herself like an older sister to help her. It is adorable and amazing character development as the socially reclusive and shy Futaba clearly forces herself out of her comfort zone to prove to Hikari that she can change and that she is not a lost cause. Along with Hikari it is, perhaps, Futaba who is the true MVP of this entire game. 

Futaba/P3FemPC: Futaba gets some lovely Sister-like sequences with the incredibly fun and social P3FemPC, who Futaba is clearly in awe of. It is a pity that these really only happen in the early game, I’d love for them to continue, but P3FemPC as the big, fun, sister figure of Futaba is fun.

Ryuji/Yukiko: This one is just because the ending of Haru and Yukiko’s ticket has one of the funniest bit ever when Haru and Yukiko decide they want to ‘play’ with Ryuji and Yosuke. Yukiko’s ‘Will you devote all of your being to the name of the Amagi Family?’ is wonderful and I can just imagine Ryuji’s reaction to such a frank proposition. 

Mitsuru/P3FemPC: This one was actually surprising to me but Mitsuru really has something of an almost maternal instinct for P3FemPC. She seeks to console her and let her know she is valued, even if Mitsuru is poor at expressions of affection, as seen in Junpei’s case as well. In many ways it strikes me as a more sympathetic Sae/Makoto. Mitsuru clearly cares for the P3FemPC and is aware of her disconsolate feelings, but struggles to find the words to comfort her, but doesn’t let that stop her trying. 

#persona 5 #persona #p5 #pq2 #hikari

[thetamrieliclibrary]

Pocket Guide to the Empire, First Edition: Cyrodiil

Cyrodilic history truly begins by the middle of the Alessian Reformation (see sidebar, Alessian Order), when civilisation and cultivation had allowed the region to emerge as a discernible Tamrielic power. Its culture and military strength centred in the sacred Nibenay Valley, a grassland expanse with a vast lake at its heart. Several small islands rose from this lake, and the capital city sprawled across them, crisscrossed with bridges and gondola ferries. Rivers connected the city-state to both its profitable outlying territories and the friendly inland ports of Skyrim and Pelletine. Rice and textiles were its main exports, along with more esoteric treasure-goods, such as hide armour, Moon sugar, and ancestor-silk. The sheer size of Cyrodiil's physical theatre, and frequent intervals of Elven tyranny, made its unification as a while a slow and oft-interrupted process. At the height of Alessian influence, its western arm enjoyed a brief autonomy as the Colovian Estates, a demarcation that still colours an outsider's view of the Empire today; often, Cyrodiil has two faces, East and West, and any discussion of its later social history must first be tempered with a summary of this early divergence.

Traditionally, the East is regarded as the region's soul: magnanimous, tolerant, and administrative. It was in the rain forests of the Nibenay Valley that the original Cyro-Nordic tribes, the Nibenese, learned a self-reliance that separated them culturally and economically from Skyrim. The Elven harassment of the First Empire gave rise to an elite form of support troop for the Valley armies, the battlemage.[1] By the time the Alessian Doctrines filtered down from the north along the river trade ways, these mages had become the ruling aristocracy. They were quickly superseded by the Alessian priesthood, whose inexplicably charismatic religion found purchase in the lower classes. The traditional Nordic pantheon of Eight Divines was replaced by a baroque of veneration of ancestor spirits and god-animals, practices encouraged by the mutable-yet-monotheistic doctrines of the Alessian faith. The doctrines eventually codified nearly every aspect of Eastern culture. Restrictions against certain kings of meat-eating, coupled with the sentiments of the blossoming animal cults, soon made agriculture and husbandry nearly impossible. Thus, many of the Eastern Cyrodiils were forced to become merchants, which, over time, allowed the Nibenay Valley to become the wealthiest city-state in the region. Yet, under Alessian rule, no matter how rich or powerful the merchant class became it was still a tenanted citizenry, and the tithes they were forced to pay the priesthood were constant reminders of the state's true masters.

The West is respected as Cyrodiil's iron hand: firm, unwavering, and ever-vigilant. The Cyro-Nords that settled it had relinquished the fertile Nibenay Valley long ago, determined to conquer the frontier. Their primitive ferocity was disinclined to magic or the need for industry, preferring bloody engagement and plunder instead. After they had captured the Nedic port-cities of the Strident coast, the Westerners embarked on a mastery of the sea. Their earliest voyages took them as far as the Iliac Bay and the Cape of the Blue Divide, whose ports they annually raided until the (then) superior Yokudan navies arrived, ca. 1E819. By the time of the Alessian Reformation, the Westerners were firmly in a position, both geographically and socially, to resist its doctrines. Hammerfell, its northern border state, was now protected by its own holy-avenging order, the Ra Gada, whose bloody intolerance for foreigners acted as West Cyrodiil's buffer against the Alessian priesthood. The pantheon of Eight Divines, therefore, survived unchecked in Western Cyrodiil, and relations with the increasingly Alessian East became strained. Ultimately, the West isolated itself from the theocratic hegemony of the Nibenay Valley, establishing an autonomous government, the Colovian Estates.

Things persisted in this vein until the Thrassian Plague of 1E2200 (see free Region - Thras), which decimated more than half of Tamriel's population, particularly the western coastlands closest to Thras. After Bendu Olo, the Colovian king of Anvil, led the All Flags Navy to victory over the slugfolk of Thras, the glory of the Cyrodilic people became known throughout the world. The Colovian Estates began to overshadow the richer, more populous East then, which eventually lead to the War of Righteousness that ended Alessian rule. Control of the Nibenay Valley reverted to a mercantile-magocracy that was still far too arcane for Western tastes to entertain a reunification of Cyrodiil. Four hundred years would pass before that would happen, when Reman I, another proud son of the West, rallied the Valley's army to join his own and fight the Akaviri Invasion of 1E2703. The Cyrodilic forces engaged the Akaviri in every region of the north, eliciting their surrender at last in the Pale Pass of Skyrim. By war's end, the Cyrodiils found themselves not only united as a nation, but, too, responsible for the further protection of the northern human kingdoms at large. When the Elves of the Summerset Isles took umbrage at what they perceived as a renewed human imperialism, Reman was forced to prove them right. In order to prevent the Elves from attacking[2] the already weakened northern kingdoms, he offered the captive Akaviri Horde amnesty in his future dominions if they would serve as the nucleus of the Army of the Second Empire of Men. Reman's own dynasty lasted for two hundred years, and in that span it conquered all the kingdoms of Tamriel except for Morrowind. Indeed, the Dark Elven Morag Tong were the doom of Reman's heirs, and the death of last true Cyrodilic Emperor heralded the beginning of the Common Era.

The Cyrodilic Empire endured for another four hundred years under the auspices of the Akaviri Potentate (see sidebar, The Second Empire), fell, and suffered a similar span of years in the insurrections, misrules, and loss of power known as the Interregnum. Yet, the remnants of the Cyrodilic Empire refuse to die, even though East and West had become fragmented beyond measure. A petty king of the Colovian Estates, Cuhlecain, came to power and appointed an Atmoran as General of his legions. General Talos had studied in Skyrim, and used the thu'um. He could rout armies with his battle-cry and shout lesser men off their feet. A year later more than half of the Cyrodilic Empire was reclaimed or consolidated, and Cuhlecain saw fit to move into the Nibenay Valley, capture the capital city, and proclaim himself Emperor. By this point, High Rock and Skyrim, which bitterly opposed a return to Cyrodilic rule, gathered their armies for a joint invasion of the Colovian West. Talos met them on the field of Sancre Tor. The Nords that had come to cripple the Empire soon joined the General's forces, for when they heard his thu'um they realised he was Skyrim's son and the Heir to the Empires of Men. The Bretons were sent back to High Rock with tales of Cuhlecain's new General, where they decided to combat the Emperor's sorcery with their own. In CE854, a nightblade from the Western Reach made his way to the Imperial Palace at Nibenay. There, the Witchman assassinated the emperor, caught the Palace on fire, and slit the throat of General Talos. "But from the smouldering ruin he came, one hand to his neck and with Cuhlecain's Crown in the other. The legions wept at the sight. His Northern magic had saved him, but the voice that led them would be more silent from that night on. His word could no longer rout an army with a roar, but he could still command one with a whisper. He took for himself a Cyrodilic name, Tiber Septim[3], and the Nordic Name of Kings, Ysmir, the Dragon of the North. And with those names he took, too, the Red Diamond Crown of the Cyrodiils, and became their True Emperor." Thus was born the Third Empire of Men.

Cyrodiil in the Third Empire is the young, viral embodiment of its ancient heritage. Internally, it has undergone an incredible restoration--reconstruction of the ruined sections of the Imperial City is nearly complete, roads and cities destroyed in the Interregnum have been rebuilt, East and West are unified for the first time in four centuries. Cyrodiil's present stability and strength have not been seen since the Reman Dynasty; indeed, they were born under similar circumstances--a Westerner winning the Eastern throne, forging them both into the greatest power in Tamriel. And now, in but twenty years time, Tiber Septim has secured Imperial authority in High Rock, Skyrim, and Hammerfell. Every human region stands with him against the Elven menace.[4] The Emperor has gracefully attributed his success to his peoples, the Colovians and the Nibenese, whose cultures we shall now treat in their current incarnation.

The Colovians[5] today still possess much of the frontier spirit of their ancestors. They are uncomplicated, self-sufficient, hearty, and extremely loyal to one another. Whenever the East would tremble under the weakness of a leader, the Colovians would withdraw unto themselves, always believing they were keeping the national spirit sage until the storm passed. They realise that the Nibenay Valley is the heart of the Empire and the cultural centre of its civilisation, but it is a fragile centre that can only be held together by the strength of character of its Emperor. When he falters, so do the Colovians. Yet when he is mighty, like Tiber Septim, they are his legions. Today, West Cyrodiils make up the majority of the soldiers in the Ruby Ranks. The Colovian nobility, all officers of the Imperial Legions or its West Navy, do not allow themselves the great expenditure of courtly life as is seen in the capital city. They prefer immaculate uniforms and stark standards hanging from the ceiling of their austere cliff-fortresses; to this day, they become a little perplexed[6] when they must visit the grandly decorated assault of colour that is the Emperor's Palace. 

[TRAVELER: "Colovian officers have traditionally been appointed as provincial governors to the human regions of the Empire, as these often need the most forthright of the Emperor's men."]

By contrast, the Eastern people of Cyrodiil relish in garish costumes, bizarre tapestries, tattoos, brandings, and elaborate ceremony. Closer to the wellspring of civilisation, they are more given to philosophy and the evolution of ancient traditions. The Nibenese find the numinous in everything around them, and their different cults are too numerous to mention (the most famous are the Cult of the Ancestor-Moth, the Cult of Heroes, the Cult of Tiber Septim, and the Cult of Emperor Zero). To the Colovians, the ancestor worship and esoteric customs of the East can often be bizarre. Akaviri dragon-motifs are found in all quarters, from the high minaret bridges of the Imperial City to the paper hako skiffs that villagers use to wing their dead down the rivers. Thousands of workers ply the rice fields after the floodings, or clear the foliage of the surrounding jungle in the alternate seasons. Above them are the merchant-nobility, the temple priests and cult leaders, and the age-old aristocracy of the battlemages. The Emperor watches over them all from the towers of the Imperial City, as dragons circle overhead.

Alessian Order

This monotheistic religion was once very popular, but today only remnants of its faith remain. It started in the coastal jungle of what is now the Colovian west, where a prophet named Marukh, who had spoken to the "Enlightened One," Saint Alessia, began to question the validity of Elven rule. These sentiments led to an increasingly abstract and unknowable depiction of a Single God. The Alessians were wise enough to realise that they had to incorporate the ancient polytheistic elements into their new religion for it to find a wide acceptance. The divine aspects worshipped by the various humans and Aldmeri were recognisable in the guise of the myriad saints and spirits of the evolving Alessian canon. It wasn't long before the Order was the Authority on every religion in Tamriel, and their power grew to earthshaking proportions.  Nearly a third of the First Era passed under their theocratic rule. When its priesthood had become too widespread to support itself, the Order began to fight among itself. With the severance of the territories of West Cyrodiil from the Empire, too much money and land had been lost. The War of Righteousness broke out, and the Order which had almost ruled the world undid itself in a ten year span.

The Second Empire

The Second Empire is divided into two stages: the Reman Dynasty and the Akaviri Potentate. As mentioned in the text, after the Akaviri raiders had been defeated, Reman recruited many of them into his service. Later Cyrodiils traditionally kept a House Guard of Akaviri, and the Emperor's chief advisor, the Potentate, was usually of Akaviri descent. Other Akaviri slaves played a significant part in establishing the administrative structures of the Second Empire, as well as in the training of its military. The restructured Imperial legions, which learned an unparalleled measure of coherence, logistics, and discipline from the Akaviri, began to easily overwhelm the other regional armies; soon every region in Tamriel belonged to Cyrodiil except for Morrowind. After the assassination of Reman's last heir by the Dark Elven Morag Tong during the disastrous Four Score War, control of the Empire reverted to the Akaviri Potentate. They have left a visible mark on the Empire of today. The high crafts of daikatanas and dragonscale armour came from the Akavir, as did the banners and military dress of Septim's shock troops, the Blades. The Red Dragons that have come to represent the Empire and the Imperial City were originally Akaviri war mounts. Akaviri surnames are rare and prized possessions among the Cyrodilic citizenry of today, and there are trace facial features of the Akaviri in many distinguished Cyrodilic families. Some colonies of "true Akaviri" still exist in both the Empire and its border regions, but they are named so only for their practices and customs than for the purity of their blood.

The Song of Tiber Septim[7]

From the Odes:

"He was born in Atmora as Talos, 'Stormcrown' in the language of the ancient Elhnofey, and it was from that shore he sailed. He spent his youth in Skyrim among the Nords. There he learned much from the Tongues and their chieftains and their ways of war. At twenty he led the invasion of Old Hrol'dan, taking it back from the Witchmen of High Rock and their kinsmen.

"Soon the Greybeards made known that they were restless. Already the storms had begun from their murmurs. The Greybeards were going to Speak. The surrounding villages were abandoned as the people fled the coming blast.

"The villagers warned Talos to turn back, for he was marching to the mountain where the Greybeards dwelt.

"Inside he went, and on seeing him they removed their gags. When they spoke his name the World shook.

"The Tongues of Skyrim told the son of Atmora that he had come to rule Tamriel and that he must travel south to do so.

"And it is true that Talos did come to Cyrodiil shortly after the Battle of Old Hrol'dan.

"And it is true that a great storm preceded his arrival."

The Cult of the Ancestor-Moth

For long the Cyro-Nordics had exported ancestor-silks to other regions, simple yet exotic shawls woven from the silks of an indigenous gypsy moth and inscribed with the requisite genealogy of its buyer. Under the Cult, however, ancestor and moth became synonymous: the singing and hymnal spirits of one's forebears are caught in a special silk-gathering ritual, the resource of which is used to create any manner of vestment or costume. The swishing of this material during normal movement reproduces the resplendent ancestral chorus contained therein--it quickly became a sacred custom among the early Nibenese, which has persisted to the present day. Monks of the higher orders of the Cult of the Ancestor-Moth are able to forego the magical ritual needed to enchant this fabric, and, indeed, prefer instead to wear the moths about the neck and face. They are able to attract the ancestor-moths through the application of finely ground bark-dust gathered from the gypsy moth's favourite tree, and through the sub-vocalisation of certain mantras. They must chant the mantras constantly to maintain skin contact with the ancestor-moths, a discipline that they endure for the sake of some cosmic balance. When a monk interrupts these mantras, in conversation for example, the moths burst from him in glorious fashion every time he speaks, only to light back upon his skin when he resumes the inaudible chant.

The Cult of Emperor Zero

This cult, started by Tiber Septim himself, was established in the honour of Cuhlecain, the Emperor Zero. Though Cuhlecain did not technically recapture all of Cyrodiil's holdings during this time, he is worthy of worship for the wisdom he showed in appointing Talos as his General, and the bravery he showed when retaking the Imperial City, two events that were crucial in restoring the glory of the new Cyrodilic Empire. He is therefore to be remembered in our prayers. The topiary-mages have begun to shape his aspect in the Palace gardens, where in the future Cuhlecain may share his insights with Tiber Septim in the same manner as the rest of the blessed hedgery heads of Green Emperor Road.

Places of Note

Indeed, if the history of the Nords is the history of humans on Tamriel, then Cyrodiil is the throne from which they will decide their destiny. It is the largest region of the continent, and most is endless jungle. Its centre, the grassland of the Nibenay Valley, is enclosed by an equatorial rain forest and broken up by rivers. As one travels south along these rivers, the more subtropical it becomes, until finally the land gives way to the swamps of Argonia and the placid waters of the Topal Bay.

The elevation rises gradually to the west and sharply to the north. Between its western coast and its central valley there are all manners of deciduous forest and mangroves, becoming sparser towards the ocean. The western coast is a wet-dry area, and from Rihad border to Anvil to the northernmost Valenwood villages forest fires are common in summer. There are a few major roads to the west, river paths to the north, and even a canopy tunnel to the Velothi Mountains, but most of Cyrodiil is a river-based society surrounded by jungle.

The Imperial City[8]

Refayj's famous declaration, "There is but one city in the Imperial Province,--" may strike the citizens of the Colovian west as mildly insulting, until perhaps they hear the rest of the remark, which continues, "--but in one city in Tamriel, but one city in the World; that, my brothers, is the city of the Cyrodiils." From the shore it is hard to tell what is city and what is Palace, for it all rises from the islands of the lake towards the sky in a stretch of gold. Whole neighbourhoods rest on the jewelled bridges that connect the islands together. Gondolas and river-ships sail along the watery avenues of its flooded lower dwellings. Moth-priests walk by in a cloud of ancestors; House Guards hold exceptionally long daikatanas crossed at intersections, adorned with ribbons and dragon-flags; and the newly arrived Western legionnaires sweat in the humid air. The river mouth is tainted red from the tinmi soil of the shore, and river dragons rust their hides in its waters. Across the lake the Imperial City continues, merging into the villages of the southern red river and ruins left from the Interregnum.

The Emperor's Palace is a crown of sun rays, surrounded by his magical gardens. One garden path is known as Green Emperor Road--here, topiaries of the heads of past Emperors have been shaped by sorcery and can speak. When one must advise Tiber Septim, birds are drawn to the hedgery head, using their songs as its voice and moving its branches for the needed expressions.

Annotations

Annotations by YR:

"Our old students forget themselves."

"Ha!"

"Even those humans who revile Talos as a traitor, oathbreaker, and scoundrel pay homage to his skill in obtaining his ends  without resort to warfare."

"Truly, a doubtful statement."

"An observation: Colovians feel superior to Nibenese as a people, yet, because the East is the Empire's "heart", the Westerners are often neglected in Cyrodiil ~ Even though the throne is taken continually by Kings from the West, the Nibenese quickly assimilate them into their ranks."

"Author oddly sympathetic to the West--a Colovian scribe, perhaps?"

"It is certain that the tale of Talos' conquest of the Cyrodiil through use of his voice is not literally true--that kind of thu'um is now forbidden. This is all obviously a poetic reference, crafted to satisfy the popular human lust for blood and magic. This young myth is perhaps inspired by Talos' reputation for shrewd diplomacy, attested by even his greatest critics, which permitted him to scheme and bargain his way into the capital city--which he lacked the armies or funds to conquer by dint of force."

"Of course no mention of the Aldmeri Citadel the capital city was built upon--or the crimes perpetrated there in the previous era..."

~ Follow for more books, journals, and notes from the Elder Scrolls series ~ Updates daily ~

#tes #the elder scrolls #tes books #the elder scrolls books #cyrodiil #imperial #imperials #tiber septim #talos

[kaialone]

Spirit Tracks Translation Comparison: Intro

This will be a comparison of the original Japanese version and the US English localized version.

Specifically, this will cover the intro cutscene of the game, detailing its backstory.

You can also watch this cutscene for yourself in English and Japanese. If you want, you can check out the EU English version, too.

For the comparison, the usual points apply:

Bolded is the original Japanese text, for the reference.

Bolded and italicized is my translation.

Italicized is the official NOA translation.

A (number) indicates that I have a specific comment to make on that part in the translation notes.

As you read this, please keep in mind that with translations like these, it’s important not to focus on the exact literal wordings, since there is no single “correct answer” when it comes to translations.

Rather than that, consider the actual information that is being conveyed, in which way, and why.

--

The Backstory:

これは遠い遠い昔… 人がこの地に生まれた頃の物語

This is a tale from long long ago... From the age when people were born in this land.

This is a tale from long ago. It's the tale of the first settlers of this land.

神の御名において治められし 大地は安寧のなかにありました

Ruled in the name of a God,  (1) the land was at peace.

In the beginning, the people followed the spirits of good, and all was peaceful.

けれどもその穏やかな時は 突如として失われたのです…

And yet, that time of tranquility suddenly came to an end...

But that era of peace soon came to an end.

闇の権化 魔王の襲来…多くの 命が奪われ 大地が焼かれました

An incarnation of darkness, the Demon King, invaded... Many lives were lost, and the land was burned.

The evil Demon King rose to power, destroying everything in his path.

全てを支配せんとする魔王は ついに神にも戦いを挑んだのです

The Demon King was close to seizing control of everything, and at last challenged the God as well.

The spirits of good had no choice but to face him in battle.

魔王と神の戦いは 永きに渡り 幾度も繰り返されました

For a long time, the battle of the Demon King and the God kept repeating over and over again.

The war that ensued seemed to last an eternity, and much blood was shed.

永遠に続くと思われた争いの果て 神は遂に魔王を討ち果たしました

At the end of their seemingly everlasting struggle, the God finally slayed the Demon King.

Finally, the spirits subdued the Demon King, though they could not destroy him.

しかしその神も かつての絶大な 御力を失ってしまったのです…

However, that God had also lost their once tremendous power...

Their powers were greatly depleted.

神は残された御力で魔王の魂を 闇の床に葬り…

With the power they had left, the God buried the Demon King's soul in a bed of darkness...  (2)

With their remaining power, they buried the Demon King's spirit in the ground.

彼の者が這い出ることが かなわぬよう塔を建てられました

To ensure that he would never crawl out again, they built a tower.

They built shackles to imprison him, and a tower that acted as a lock.

塔を要に魔を縛る封印が施され それは今も大地を覆っています

They fit the tower with a seal that binds demons. It covers the land to this day.

These shackles cover the land to this day.

全てを終え力尽きられた 神は天界に戻りになりました

After all was done, and with their power exhausted, the God returned to the heavens.

With their power drained, the spirits of good returned to the heavens.

神も魔も去ったこの大地は今 私達の手に委ねられています…

This land, left by both the divine and the demonic, has now been entrusted to us...

Suddenly bereft of both demons and spirits, this land was entrusted to us.

Translation Notes:

What I translated as “God” is 神/kami in Japanese. This can also be translated as “Gods”, but I have my reasons for going with singular instead, which I will explain in more detail below.

What I translated as “bed” is 床/toko in Japanese, which does mean “bed”, among other things, but in a loose sense that can also refer to something like the floor and the ground.

--

Comparisons & Thoughts:

Since this scene establishes the basic foundation of the entire story, which has seen some minor changes in English, there is a lot to talk about here, even if the text itself is short.

-

First of all, there are multiple points I want to go over regarding the divine entity which ruled the land in the past.

In the English version, they are called “the spirits of good”, but in many other language versions, they are called “the gods”, which is a closer translation of 神/kami, the word used in the Japanese version.

I want to point out that, depending on the context and one’s definition of what counts as a god, 神/kami could actually be translated as “spirit” or “spirits”, too.

However, in the case of the Zelda franchise, there are already creatures called “spirits” in the English adaptations of the games. These are called 精霊/seirei in Japanese, a word which more unambiguously translates to “spirits”. They include characters such as the Light Spirits in Twilight Princess, or Link’s spirit companions from Phantom Hourglass.

Because of this, translating 神/kami as “spirits” in this game here does conflate them with the previously established spirits in a misleading way.

It’s possible that they didn’t go for “gods” in English to avoid religious connotations, which is a bit of a bigger concern for a handheld title, since those are assumed to have a younger general audience.

But they actually do have at least one mention of the word “goddess” in the English version, and also feature the word “demon” a bit more prominently than most Zelda games.

So it’s not entirely clear.

For all we know, it could simply be that they came up with this idea of “Spirit” being the general theme of their localization (Spirit Tracks, Spirit Train, Spirit Flute, Zelda being a spirit), and thus went with “spirits” for branding purposes.

-

The next detail I need to address about this divine entity is the fact that I chose to translate 神/kami as the singular “God”, rather than the plural “Gods”.

You see, the Japanese language doesn’t truly have distinct singular and plural. Thus, any noun could be translated as either, and the only way to know which to go for is by knowing the context.

When it comes to the Zelda franchise, normally the obvious thing would be to translate 神/kami as plural, since this universe canonically has multiple deities, major and minor ones.

And these usually appear in groups too, like the most prominent gods in the franchise, the Three Golden Goddesses themselves.

But, as I was looking through the Japanese text of Spirit Tracks, I never came across anything that specified whether the 神/kami from its backstory was supposed to refer to multiple deities or a single one.

Once I realized that, I went back and noticed that the pictures in this intro cutscene actually seem depict a single entity fighting the Demon King:

If these were meant to be multiple deities, it feels like they would have depicted them as such here, but they didn’t.

So, while this isn’t concrete evidence that it was a single deity, I have never seen any evidence that it was multiple deities either.

For me, these pictures push the odds slightly in favor of it just being a single deity, so I have decided to go with that.

There is not much to truly go on, but given what little we have, I do believe this is the more likely option. I also think this ultimately fits slightly better with a few story details that come up later.

Going with the singular “God” does give me a few other problems, though.

Just as Japanese lacks a true plural, it also lacks things such as articles and capitalization.

Because of that, I might need to go with “God”, “a God”, “the God”, and so forth in my translation, depending on the context. And I’ll also have to make a choice when to capitalize the word or not.

Just be aware that in Japanese the word would always just be 神/kami, completely unchanged.

Additionally, the Japanese language also only rarely makes use of third-person pronouns, especially gendered ones. That’s just how the language works. As a result, the gender of this deity is never clarified either.

I decided to go with they/them pronouns for them in English, rather than to assume, but please note that this is just my translation choice.

In the Japanese version there simply aren’t any pronouns used for them, and that’s not an unusual thing.

These sorts of choices are always unavoidable when translating something from Japanese to English, so please be aware of them.

This is one of the many reasons why one should not take a translation’s wording exactly literal.

-

This next point isn’t related to this cutscene specifically, but I still wanted to mention it.

A little bit of trivia regarding this deity:

They don’t seem to have a specific given name, but in recent Japanese media I have seen them be referred to as 光の神/Hikari no Kami, which means “God(s) of Light”.

The earliest official instance of this term being used that I could find was actually in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS. It was also later used in The Legend of Zelda: Encyclopedia.

I have seen it float around online a lot earlier than that, but I have never been able to find the original source for it.

As far as I am aware, this title does not appear in the game at all, at least I have never seen it anywhere.

If you happen to know where this title originated from, by all means, let me know!

-

With all that covered, we can move on to the more direct comparisons for this cutscene.

There is a very notable difference right at the start:

This is a tale from long long ago… From the age when people were born in this land.

This is a tale from long ago. It’s the tale of the first settlers of this land.

In the original Japanese version, it’s established that the events of this tale first began during the time when “people were born in this land”.

This makes it pretty clear that this tale involved the native population of this land.

In the English version, they instead say it’s the tale of “the first settlers of this land“.

This is quite misleading, as it gives the false impression that this tale is about the Hyrulean settlers, who arrived to this land 100 years ago.

Even if one were to argue “first settlers” could refer to previous settlers, the people described in the tale were clearly supposed to be natives of the land in Japanese.

This is no minor change, and from what I’ve seen, it led to a lot of confusion about the game’s backstory among English-speaking fans.

There are quite a few people who seem to be under the impression that Tetra and her crew would have fought the Demon King, but in reality, this conflict is supposed to have taken place many years before the Hyrulean settlers even arrived.

It’s a history that is unique to this land and its original native population.

This would also somewhat change the implication of this tale being told to Link. If you imagine it to be the story of the Hyrulean settlers, it’s Niko just telling Link about something that occurred in their recent history.

But as a tale that precedes the Hyrulean settlers, it’s Niko passing on knowledge about the history of this land prior to their own arrival.

This also happens to be one of the instances I know on top of my head where the EU English version has a more faithful translation, instead saying it’s the tale of “the first people of this land”.

-

Going forward, there are a few things to say about the battle with the Demon King as it is described here.

In Japanese, the Demon King is called 闇の権化/yami no gonge, “an incarnation of darkness”, which I feel might be interesting for people who want to speculate.

But I’m not sure if we are supposed to take this part literally, or if it’s just a poetic way to describe him.

The English version goes with a non-literal interpretation, adapting it as “The evil Demon King”.

-

A minor detail, but the Japanese version states that the Demon King went to challenge the God himself.

The English phrasing leans more towards it being the spirits of good who challenged the Demon King, but it’s a bit ambiguous.

-

Most interesting to me personally is the part where the Japanese version states that the battle between the two “kept repeating over and over again.“

The battle is stated to have been incredibly long in either version, but something about this phrasing here makes me imagine a conflict that keeps flaring up again and again across centuries.

Maybe even something slightly similar to the recurring conflict between Link and Ganondorf in the old Hyrule?

It’s a minor difference, but still one that affected my mental image of these events.

-

Finally, in Japanese it’s outright stated that the God “slayed” the Demon King, which is presumably why he was reduced to a soul.

In one sense, he died physically. It’s just that when you’re a Demon King, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the picture just yet.

The English version tones this down a notch, simply stating that the spirits “subdued” him. They even go as far as to´clarify that the spirits “could not destroy” the Demon King.

This actually will be a recurring element in this localization. For some reason, they seem to avoid this story detail.

-

Another little bit of trivia here:

This Demon King, whose actual name we learn later on, has the honor of being the first “Demon King” ...in English.

In Japanese, the titles “Demon King” and “Great Demon King” were frequently used for Ganon/Ganondorf already, but they were always translated as something else in English, like “King of Evil” or “Prince of Darkness”.

But with Spirit Tracks, they finally let this term be used.

He is still kind of special in Japanese too, since he’s the first one to be called Demon King who is not Ganon/Ganondorf, so let’s give him that.

-

And the last bit I want to compare directly is this part:

To ensure that he would never crawl out again, they built a tower.

They built shackles to imprison him, and a tower that acted as a lock.

They fit the tower with a seal that binds demons. It covers the land to this day.

These shackles cover the land to this day.

The differences here are simple.

In Japanese, the train tracks are a part of the larger “seal” that binds the Demon King, but in English they are made out to be like actual “shackles”  that directly hold him captive.

At this point in the story, this seems like a fair interpretation of what the tracks probably do, but later in the game we will get a more detailed explanation that differs from the English version.

Like I mentioned in the Introduction part, this change is most likely to elevate the importance of the tracks in the game’s lore, to fit with the English game title being “Spirit Tracks”.

Minor changes like these for the sake of branding aren’t unusual, from what I’ve seen.

-

All in all, the localization in this cutscene suffers a bit when it comes to accuracy, due to some changes they probably had no choice but making.

The story changes regarding the tracks is something that affects the whole game, naturally.

It’s an overall minor change, just a slight alteration of how this Demon King prison functions, but something the deep lore analysts among you might want to keep in mind.

Arguably, this change also causes some ever so slight plot holes later in the story, but mostly if you want to be nit-picky.

My biggest gripe in this scene is the “first settlers of this land“ line, especially since the EU English version has an easy fix for it.

It’s just a few little words, and yet they drastically change the implied context of this scene.

And I know for a fact that it has been misleading English-speaking fans for years, so I think it’s fair to say that this is a notable difference.

However, those aspects aside, this cutscene is well-written in English.

It’s faithful to the Japanese version in a way that isn’t too stiff, they did a good job of localizing the text in a general sense, and handled the changes they made well enough.

I’m still somewhat astonished they were able to have mentions of demons, the heavens, and even get in the line “much blood was shed “, which was not this violent in the Japanese version.

I know technically none of these are completely new to English Zelda, but still.

Anyway, that’s all for this part, feel free to proceed to the next one!

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 | Start | Next Part >

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#legend of zelda #the legend of zelda #spirit tracks #tloz #the legend of zelda spirit tracks #the legend of zelda transations #spirit tracks translations #my translations #spirit tracks comparisons

[weaselandfriends]

Systems vs. Individuals in Dark Magical Girl Stories

Who is the primary antagonist of Puella Magi Madoka Magica? The obvious answer is Kyubey, who deceives the protagonists into signing the Faustian contract. Homura's goal is to stop Madoka from becoming a magical girl, which sometimes causes her to fight Kyubey both directly and indirectly. Yet choosing Kyubey as the answer relies on two flawed assumptions:

1. Homura is primarily struggling against Kyubey.

2. Homura is the protagonist of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

The first assumption is incorrect because, while Homura does on occasion oppose Kyubey, she is far more concerned with removing situations that would prompt Madoka to sign the contract. As such, her conflicts with Mami, Sayaka, and Walpurgisnacht equal or even take precedence over her conflict with Kyubey. Kyubey is impossible to defeat, something Homura recognizes. When she kills one of Kyubey's innumerable bodies, she does so solely to delay.

In the back half of PMMM, Homura enlists Kyoko to help her fight Walpurgisnacht. She stockpiles military-grade weapons and sets traps. She prepares a detailed plan of attack that is almost ridiculous in its specificity. All for the purpose of defeating Walpurgisnacht.

Despite her best schemes, Homura never even gets close to defeating Walpurgisnacht on her own. By the end of Episode 11, after Homura has unleashed enough weaponry to arm a small African nation, Walpurgisnacht laughs it off like Homura hasn't even scratched her. Before Madoka steps in and makes her wish, Homura begins to recognize that defeating Walpurgisnacht is an impossibility.

Why does Homura put this much effort into trying to defeat Walpurgisnacht and not Kyubey?

On the surface, Kyubey is seemingly unkillable. If one body is destroyed, another takes its place. Yet the fact that Kyubey grouses about the destruction of a body being "wasteful" implies he has a finite amount of them. Being charitable to Homura, we can assume that in one or several of her previous timelines she attempted to destroy every Kyubey body and failed. But in all of her previous timelines she has attempted to destroy Walpurgisnacht and failed, so why has she given up on Kyubey but not Walpurgisnacht?

This line of questioning possibly comes across as a plot hole nitpick, the kind common among YouTube video essayists. But my goal isn't to say that the story is stupid for having Homura fight Walpurgisnacht instead of Kyubey. Instead, I want to think about Homura's psychology, and about the differences between bad systems and bad individuals.

Homura's mindset is fixated totally on the individual. In particular, the individual Madoka Kaname. Her goal is, explicitly, unambiguously, to "save Madoka Kaname." The magical girl system disinterests her beyond its corrupting influence on Madoka. Homura never seems to regret becoming a magical girl herself. Even at the end of the story, when she is about to succumb to despair, she does not regret becoming a magical girl, only that she could not save Madoka. Madoka makes a miraculous wish that improves the magical girl system for everyone and Homura is upset because it means Madoka ceases to exist.

Homura cannot operate on the level of the system. It is simply not her concern. As such, she prioritizes the immediate, corporeal threat of Walpurgisnacht over the abstract, systemic threat of Kyubey. Walpurgisnacht is a "thing" that can be fought and, assumedly, killed. Kyubey appears to be a "thing," but is actually an extension of the magical girl system itself and cannot be killed, at least not with a gun.

The problem is that Homura does not realize that Walpurgisnacht is, like Kyubey, also a non-individual. The name "Walpurgisnacht" refers to a gathering of witches and demons. In Goethe's Faust, a story to which PMMM makes frequent explicit reference, Walpurgisnacht features as a Pandaemonium of sorts where innumerable ghoulish figures interact with the protagonist. Writer Gen Urobuchi, in a 2011 interview, described Walpurgisnacht as such:

It has the destructive power to bring about natural disasters powerful enough to blow away an entire town, but originally it was a single witch. It's a witch that has grown from the combination of countless other witches. Walpurgisnacht combines with other witches in the same way two powerful tornadoes are able to combine and become larger. It's essentially a "conglomeration"-type witch. Because it's so powerful, it rarely shows itself.

Much as Kyubey is an amalgam of bodies possessing a singular purpose, Walpurgisnacht is comprised of an amalgam of witches inflicting a singular destruction upon the world. Like Kyubey, the individuality is an illusion, and as such, the individual-focused Homura cannot defeat it by herself, not in any timeline.

That doesn't mean Walpurgisnacht is undefeatable. Indeed, Walpurgisnacht is shown defeated in a previous timeline; but defeated by Madoka and Homura working together, not by Homura alone. Even though at this point in the story Homura is a significantly weaker combatant, and even though Madoka is not shown to be anything more than an average magical girl herself, they somehow accomplished what a Homura possessed of perfect foresight, immaculately armed, and in peak physical condition could not. If read literally, it must be concluded that Madoka is capable of accomplishing something that Homura cannot, regardless of Homura's physical prowess and perfect (time travel-aided) intelligence.

What does Madoka possess that Homura does not?

Why is Madoka the protagonist of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and not Homura?

The second question may at first seem strange. After all, Madoka serves as the primary point of view character for most of the show, while Homura comes off as aloof and even antagonistic until near the end. Over time, however, it becomes clear that Homura is the one driving the action of the story, while Madoka, although central to Homura's motivations, is often a useless tagalong. Simply being the point of view character doesn't immediately make one the protagonist, as Nick Carraway and Dr. Watson can attest. Madoka's role for most of the story is closer to the damsel in distress than the hero.

And yet, while Homura drives the action and fights Walpurgisnacht and has the goal most central to PMMM's storyline, she is utterly incapable of achieving her goal. She doesn't simply fail, she fails over and over and over again until the prospect of success begins to appear to her as an impossibility and she teeters on the precipice of despair. She fails despite being stronger and faster and more knowledgeable than previous incarnations of her that succeeded with Madoka's help.

Madoka steps into the final episode after an entire story of uselessness, does one thing, and fixes everything.

The reason is because Madoka correctly identifies the true antagonist of PMMM. Not Kyubey, not Walpurgisnacht. Not an individual, not a monster to fight, not something that can be shot and killed. The magical girl system itself. Her ability to identify this antagonist is what sets her apart from Homura. If Homura is individual-minded, Madoka is universal-minded. She abhors the suffering of all magical girls. She is kind and compassionate to everyone. This difference is what prompts Homura's one-sided obsession with Madoka to begin with. Homura interpreted Madoka's universal kindness toward everyone as an individual kindness toward Homura in particular. It's this difference that sets the stage for the events that transpire in Rebellion.

(It's important not to conflate this distinction between individual and universal with the distinction between selfish and selfless. Of the characters in PMMM, only Mami makes a truly selfish wish. Sayaka, Kyoko, and Homura make wishes that directly help someone other than themselves. Well, sort of—Homura doesn't wish for Madoka's safety, she wishes specifically for "the power to save Madoka," which indicates a kind of selfish hero complex. Likewise, it's implied that despite the ostensible selfishness of Sayaka and Kyoko's wishes, they made them for selfish reasons, so perhaps the statement is indeed that a selflessness focused on the individual is actually disguised selfishness.)

So, how do you fight a system? As Madoka states explicitly at the beginning of Episode 12, she would not have been able to make her wish if not for Homura's constant struggling. This statement is supported by the literal explanation Kyubey provides for Madoka's immense power, that being that Homura's innumerable repetitions of the timeline have maximized Madoka's "karmic potential." The show's literal answer is obviously fantastical. But the metaphorical implication seems to be that the suffering of individuals, once it reaches a certain magnitude, is capable of prompting universal change. This statement is not particularly controversial if looked at in a historical context; almost every improvement humankind has achieved, political or technological, occurred after humans suffered a long time without it. PMMM ends with a statement of hope: Keep hoping, and eventually your suffering will come to an end. You yourself may be powerless to change the world, but that doesn't make your misery meaningless.

Regardless of its truth, it's a platitudinous statement, akin to "Never give up!" I don't think it's valuable to take that final statement of hope as PMMM's ultimate theme or moral, despite its placement Aesop-like at the show's conclusion. It's a theme one might find in any more traditional magical girl show or even any children's show in general, and it's divorced from the show's many emotional and narrative complexities. What is more valuable is how the show arrives at that conclusion. After all, as I've heard detractors state, Madoka could have technically resolved the entire story as early as Episode 2 by making the same wish as she eventually did. Something, not external but internal, prevents Madoka from doing that until the end of the story.

If Madoka is taken as the protagonist of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, despite role for most of it as a passive, helpless observer, then it's imperative to view the story not as a traditional struggle against a "thing" that can be destroyed (the way Homura views it) but as a struggle for understanding. Madoka requires a certain amount of knowledge, lacking at the show's onset, in order to make the wish she always could have made, the wish she failed to make in countless failed timelines. That knowledge is the answer to the question posed at the beginning of this essay: Who is the antagonist? Who must be defeated?

The answer, broadly, is not an individual, but the system.

I could go more into why she specifically targets the part of the system (the concept of witches) that she does, or why she doesn't eliminate the system entirely. But for now, I want to expand this discussion to another dark magical girl story, Magical Girl Raising Project.

Magical Girl Raising Project is a series of light novels, the first of which was published in 2012, one year after PMMM was released. As of the time of writing, the series has seven distinct arcs, with each arc being a mostly self-contained story (although some characters and plot elements appear in multiple arcs). The first arc was adapted into an anime in 2016. It follows sixteen people who, after a popular mobile game turns them into magical girls, are forced to fight to the death by the game's twisted administrators.

Many dark magical girl shows that came out in the wake of PMMM have been derided as imitators, but while it's possible that these shows would not have been greenlit if not for PMMM's success, narratively most of these shows are quite different outside of superficial similarities. MGRP, for instance, is much closer to Battle Royale or Hunger Games in plot progression than it is to PMMM. However, one way in which MGRP is similar to PMMM, beyond simply featuring magical girls in an unexpectedly violent situation, is the thematic emphasis on systemic change versus defeating bad individuals.

At the beginning of MGRP's first arc, the game's administrators, represented by the mascot character Fav, present themselves as legitimate officials of the "Magical Kingdom" where all magical power originates. The battle royale is justified to its participants as a natural and necessary component of the magical system—the specific excuse being that having too many magical girls drains too much mana, so the number of magical girls must be cut to save energy. Like PMMM, the cruelties that the characters experience are excused as necessary for the benefit of the system. As such, while many of the battle royale's participants are displeased by the situation, few attempt to fight against the system itself and most focus on the immediate threat of their fellow participants.

Where MGRP diverges from PMMM is that this system is eventually revealed as a lie. Fav and his partner Cranberry are indeed representatives of the Magical Kingdom, but the mana problem is a complete fabrication and magical girls can be turned back into normal humans without killing them. In truth, the system is entirely benign, with its only stated goal being to create magical girls who can help humans, and there are no actual systemic drawbacks to being a magical girl. Fav and Cranberry have manufactured the battle royale for their own sociopathic purposes, and the Magical Kingdom is ignorant of their actions. In short, they're outlaws. Once they are both killed by the end of the first arc, the battle royale ends and the survivors live on.

Like PMMM, the initial difficulty the characters have in answering the question "who is the antagonist" prolongs a story that could have ended very early into a bloodbath. Had the battle royale participants known that their true enemies were Fav and Cranberry, they might have worked together to defeat them with relatively little issue. It is the seemingly hopeless systemic explanation for their woes that causes most of them to shut up and do what is expected of them.

Even though the situations are reversed, with a systemic threat concealed by individual threats in PMMM and an individual threat concealed by a systemic threat in MGRP, the psychology of the characters remains consistent between both works. If that was where MGRP ended, then on the whole it would be a fun play on post-PMMM audience expectations without betraying many of the fundamental concepts that underlie PMMM. But MGRP continues, and in its continuations develops a much larger amount of complexity and nuance (not necessarily to be confused with "quality") over this basic dichotomy of antagonistic individuals and antagonistic systems. As I mentioned previously, PMMM's ultimate moral is somewhat platitudinous: Never give up! Homura's individual-minded approach to problem-solving is depicted as fundamentally ineffectual, and her constant failures are only valuable insofar as they inspire Madoka to action. The narrative's focus is on the discovery of the true antagonist, and the actual resolution to the conflict is immediate and abrupt, nearly to deus ex machina levels.

This simplistic resolution is possibly a byproduct of several restraints that, in most other cases, allow for PMMM's phenomenal technical quality. By that I mean, PMMM is a highly simplified story. It has a limited cast of characters, a limited runtime, and a limited narrative arc that strips out almost anything unnecessary in favor of presenting a singular storyline. Its characters are stark, almost archetypal, with few character traits that do not directly feed into their role in the story. It lacks filler and its pacing is extremely even, with a significant plot development occurring every two to three episodes. From a technical standpoint, these are all massive advantages in telling a cohesive, well-designed story, and the popular reaction to PMMM has been overwhelmingly positive despite its niche subject matter and blunt brutality. Indeed, when most people compare PMMM to other dark magical girl stories, the thesis often boils down to "Here is why PMMM is good and this story, with fundamentally similar subject matter, is bad."

But while the limited narrative elements allow for consistent technical excellence, they also limit the narrative's ability to tackle complex subject matter, such as the reformation of necessary but cruel systems for the betterment of all individuals. How do you fight a system? PMMM doesn't have narrative space to delve into that question the way it can its fundamental question of "How do you recognize the true antagonist?" Homura suffers, Madoka learns from her suffering, and then Madoka makes a wish and everything gets better. Never give up! That isn't to denigrate PMMM, which I consider to be the best anime that I've seen. It's simply recognizing that PMMM does not and cannot do everything. Its resolution isn't even bad, per se; on the contrary, it is incredibly cathartic and satisfying. What is important about Madoka's wish is that she recognizes what must be done, not the way that she achieves it. That is why I describe PMMM as a story about Madoka gaining knowledge, not a story about Homura fighting to save Madoka.

MGRP, by contrast, is not a masterpiece on a technical level. Over seven arcs it accumulates a cast of over one hundred named characters, many of whom are completely pointless and die without purpose. Its storylines promulgate and do not always add to the overarching whole. It can lurch between a breakneck pace and long periods where little happens. But this technical sloppiness allows for a much broader, more complex storyline, and through this complexity MGRP is able to accomplish things that PMMM cannot.

As MGRP continues past its initial, death-game-style arcs, it develops into an overarching narrative about an ineffectual, bureaucratic government and various attempts to improve it. The Magical Kingdom, while benign in its stated goals, is nonetheless painted as incompetent at best and corrupted by petty infighting at worst, which allows bad individuals such as Fav and Cranberry to take advantage of it and get away with various misdeeds. The question of "who is the antagonist?" or "what should we be fighting?" becomes again muddied. Should the emphasis be on defeating all the bad individuals, or should it be on reforming the ineffectual system to remove the influence those individuals have? MGRP refrains from answering this question definitively one way or another, a restraint aided by its lack of a single central protagonist. While there are prominent characters who recur from arc to arc, none is present in every arc, and even in arcs where they do appear they are not always in a central role. As such, no one character's goals are aligned with the goals of the story itself.

The most obvious answer of the question "who is the protagonist of MGRP?" would be Snow White, one of the survivors of the first arc who also has the highest number of appearances of any character across the series. The notion of Snow White as protagonist is aided by her moral purity; her goal is consistently to help people and defeat villains, and although she is technically a vigilante insomuch as she operates outside the Magical Kingdom's official law enforcement system, she never wavers in her fundamental moral values when achieving her goals. Regardless of whether she is the protagonist, she is unquestionably a "hero."

However, Snow White is, like Homura, consistently limited in what she is actually able to achieve. The moment she becomes a magical girl, she is described as being incapable of larger-scale activities:

That day marked Snow White's debut. Every night she'd sneak out her window to look for people to help: a middle schooler who'd lost her house key, a university student who'd had their car stolen, and a businessman under pressure for money, to name a few. There were also many troubles she couldn't do anything about, like concealing adultery, a boy unsure of whether or not to confess to the girl he had a crush on, or a retiree desperate for their pension.

Of the three troubles listed that Snow White can't help, the last, about the pension, sticks out to me. The pension, of course, is a problem that cannot be solved on the individual level, and would require some kind of systemic change. Snow White's limitations are delved into later by another magical girl, Ripple:

Sightings of the white magical girl were leaps and bounds ahead of sightings of the others. She wasn't even doing anything spectacular. Her assistance came in small, everyday actions like picking up dropped change, ferrying forgotten lunches, and reminding people to zip up their flies. Was helping with mundane difficulties a magical girl's true purpose? Or was she simply not capable of undertaking greater issues? [...] It wasn't that Ripple didn't want to serve the community, but she was too embarrassed to say otherwise. However, maybe boldly declaring "I want to help others!" and actually doing so was the correct way to be a magical girl, she mused.

This quote is one of the first instances in MGRP of a character wondering what the "correct way to be a magical girl" is, and this question will eventually become core to the series as a whole, with competing ideological notions leading to much of the conflict. For many, Snow White is the "ideal magical girl," morally pure and always performing selfless deeds. Even when she turns from random acts of kindness to tracking down and arresting criminal magical girls, this sense of moral purity remains with her. Yet Snow White is fundamentally incapable of fostering lasting change.

The biggest example of this inability comes in the fourth arc, in which Snow White squares off against a high-ranking but corrupt Magical Kingdom official named Grim Heart, who is attempting to cover up and profit off of illegal experimentation to create stronger magical girls. Grim Heart is not only the leader of one of the Magical Kingdom's three factions (basically, political parties), but she is also a quasi-theocratic figure said to be an incarnation of an ancient deity. Because Grim Heart is an individual, Snow White is capable of fighting and ultimately defeating her. Her criminal actions are exposed and brought to an end. Yet the removal of Grim Heart does not fundamentally improve the government as a whole in any meaningful way. Grim Heart is scapegoated by her faction and epsteined while under arrest. The faction continues its shady activities under new leadership and harangues Snow White and others as early as the very next arc.

Never, not once, does Snow White accomplish any lasting change in the Magical Kingdom. She dispatches individual villains, but that does not resolve the core problems that face her world. She is positioned in contrast to magical girls whose goals are, explicitly, to reform the Magical Kingdom itself. These characters lack Snow White's moral purity, and even the most heroic of them are willing to murder innocent people under an "ends justify the means" philosophy. Again, MGRP inverts what was established in PMMM; rather than the morally pure character being the one who attempts to correct the system and the morally ambiguous character being the one consumed by individual conflicts, the situation is flipped. Snow White is pure but ineffectual; other characters are ambiguous but capable of practical change.

Madoka's preternatural goodness eventually leads to her fantastic ability to fix almost everything. Her goodness redeems Homura as an individual, which causes Homura to struggle endlessly for her sake, which provides Madoka both the power and the understanding to fix the system at a universal scale. Boiled down, PMMM is a classic story of "good triumphs over evil," with the primary difference being that "evil" has transformed from a cackling villain to a complex, unknowable system. For a modern audience, living in an increasingly complicated world where difficulties stem less from the strong subjugating the meek and more from, say, tax brackets, it's easy to see why this modification of a classic theme was so powerful and why PMMM fundamentally works as a piece of fiction.

But MGRP seems to make a counterstatement: Moral purity is unquestionably good, but it cannot alone change a system. I could probably go on for another few thousand words detailing the various characters in MGRP who attempt to fix the system and what their position in the story adds to this theme, but to do so might be better suited to a second post more specifically focused on MGRP.

What I wanted to illustrate in this essay, and which I have probably done far too longwindedly, is that these shows possess a core focus on fighting systems over fighting individuals. Probably the most frequent criticism levied at these shows is that they are exploitative, that they revel in the suffering of innocent young girls. The second most frequent criticism, levied specifically at dark magical girl shows that came after PMMM, is that they are mere imitators of PMMM. I think neither criticism is valid. PMMM and MGRP take the traditional, morally pure concept of "magical girl" and counterbalance it against corrupt systems to make statements on the value of moral purity and the possibilities for systemic change. These themes are not incidental to the type of story but rather molded to it. They are themes that could not be easily explored in either traditional magical girl storylines or even traditional storylines in general, where the focus is primarily on a single hero fighting a single villain. On top of that, works that follow PMMM are not doomed to mimic it mindlessly, but can actually comment upon, challenge, or expand PMMM's themes.

Obviously, PMMM was not the first story to ever situate a system as its antagonist rather than an individual. But the vehicle of "dark magical girls" is particularly conducive to that type of story. After all, a "dark magical girl" story already undermines an understood set of practices and beliefs via the subversion of genre conventions. The thematic content is wedded to the semantic content.

#puella magi madoka magica #pmmm #madoka magica #mahou shoujo madoka magica #magical girl raising project #mgrp #magipro #mahou shoujo ikusei keikaku

[faline-cat444]

Looked into Roar and the following comments are coming from someone who has only had minimal experience in the ThunderCats franchise beforehand...

“Minimal” in meaning the most I know about these characters is the openings of the other two incarnations and back when Cartoon Network aired their take of MAD and did those meme and Jay Leno parodies.I have no idea how much of a[n dis]agreement this will get but let me set one thing straight...A lot of this backlash I have been sighting ever since the show was announced is the spawn of people relying too much on the fact that as far as I understand the root of this show was trying to sell a line of toys.

Similar to the original He-Man,She-Ra,or even more recent with the Rescue Heroes a little problem with these “tie-in” shows is EVERYONE was designed buff and stiff as heck.This works for the main characters as they’re supposed to be strong but when the rest of your cast was based on the same “plastic mold” it just loses the magic.That random family you just saved should very well just say “You really didn’t need to help,my mother is built just like you guys so she could have stopped that natural disaster/villain of the week.”Had animation been to the level and capabilities it is at present I honestly believe the best way shows in this vein could get across is if your average character was designed more slim and noodle-y while only the protagonists showed signs of true muscle.

To follow along with the previous point one thing all the characters in these sorts of franchises have in common is show generally any major role in it has their names pretty much defining everything about them very obviously.Which in no means is nothing truly “bad” but it can get very ridiculous the more you stop to really think about it even though they don’t want you thinking much on that topic if at all.In some ways it kind of benefits but since my father was the sort of man who seriously asked “What’s the name of the dog on Scooby-Doo?” it’s highly likely this show over the years probably had people asking similar things such as “Is Cheetara supposed to be a jaguar?” I’ll admit that cat family tree does have its mild complexity,there are both tigers and tiger cats(Oncilla).It was thanks to Zoboomafoo’s cat-themed episode I knew what a caracal was while everyone else behaved completely mystified by it when we had that field trip to the zoo during my freshman year of high school.

In the matters of art direction the colors aren’t really appealing to me.The blue outlines in Osomatsu-San and manipulation of reds from Hazbin Hotel seem more...Natural...?...Comfortable...? to me than the path this show has taken and this is coming from someone who has only recently decided to try coloring their own art with outlines that aren’t black in nature by default.The designs could be a bit better in general,the only reason the Snarf snips are here is because he’s the only one I generally like-like.This goes as far as to me saying I prefer the simplicity over his past two looks.

As the Charmin jingle used to go...Something-Something...Less is more...What you used to love now you’re going to adore...

Putting looks aside the most major thing at least I believe that sells a show is how the content gets delivered.This is the ridiculous action-comedy fusion genre and it shows.As someone who grew up in a way to fully grasp several forms of humor that tries to be a smart alec,break the fourth wall,and parody this show sure seems to be full of that.There was kind of take something I very much remember from The Simpsons but that’s nothing new(Replace the name of “Mumm-Ra” with “Macbeth”).

In conclusion...This is not the worst thing out there but it’s also not the best thing the world has ever made either.If nothing else Snarf should become a personal mascot symbol in the concept of spreading spite.

#ThunderCats #ThunderCats Roar #Snarf

[theangrypokemaniac]

I'll state from the beginning that the images below display the sort of sweet synchronicity to which only love can give life:

MaAndPaShipping is the best ship, and here are five reasons why:

1. It Made James

Like the boy do yer? Ever felt the slightest tingle of warmth at the mention of his name?

Well get down on yer knees and give thanks to his mother and father for gifting him to the world!

Where would we be without their remarkable commitment? Could James have grown into the dandified dream boat of your desires if deprived of the safety provided by his parents?

Had they not brought him up, he'd be dead, The Dog of Flanders fantasy made reality. If miraculously he survived, foraging in the wild is not conducive to a foppish personality.

Is that to yer fancy? No? Then let's have a little respect. The luxury Ma and Pa gave enabled his macaroni tendencies to reach such heights.

Their love created him! How can it not be celebrated?

You lot would ship Jessie's parents but you can't, because she has no dad, and I don't suppose you'll ever assent to his obvious identity of Windy Miller, although 'Jessie Miller' has a wonderful ring to it, so what can be done?

Should a Pa Jess be conjured for the purpose, he still buggered off, didn't he? Where's the allure in a faithless git?

I can't comprehend the obsession with Ma Jess. As soon as here she's stiff, and what is there to remember but coercing her daughter into eating snow?

Hey, I named her. What more do you want from me?

I'd rather have the living, visible ancestors, if you don't mind.

Yeah, says the history fanatic.

Why not make the most of the chances offered, and follow a devoted couple whose love made a difference to your existence?

2. Canon!

There are many ships which I find repulsive for involving depravity, or absurd as the subjects haven't met, or don't inhabit the same fictional universe.

Video et taceo: I see and I say nothing.

Neither does anyone. Forcing decent folk in to incest, bestiality etc. is quite alright.

Perverted ideas are left alone, but woe betide a Rocketshipper, because that's offensive.

It may be the only original ship left standing, with proper evidence and sanctioned by Nintendo, but no, it's fair game for undermining. People pick at your arguments, quibble constantly and NEED to register their objections NOW. You MUST be made aware of opposition. You're not to be permitted your views the way those with twisted tastes are indulged.

Why, out of tens of thousands of combinations, does making Jessie and James an item provoke hostility?

The strength of negativity actually serves as validation, for why be so concerned if it's an impossible relationship?

However sick they are, I'm not anti any ship. I can't muster sufficient interest to do it, and if I scroll on, I forget. I certainly don't attack those responsible.

Anti-Shipping is inherently nihilistic for promoting loneliness. They aren't against Rocketshipping through wanting Jessie and James to be with someone else, as an alternative is not readily available, so the outcome of it is neither finding a companion.

MaAndPaShipping attracts no sourpuss silliness, for 'tis canon beyond question. There's nothing about being 'just friends' when married with a son.

How's the state of your O.T.P.? Not looking too clever I expect, and what's your contribution: wishing, and hoping, and thinking, and praying?

Cast it off! None of that longing is necessary in these quarters, as MaAndPaShipping is a fait accompli.

Hallelujah! Wallow in that Love!

Don't you yearn for at least one ship that all of us accept by default, to the extent these aristocrats are spoken of as a single unit?

Across the internet, Ma and Pa are bracketed as 'James's parents', never 'he' and 'she', always 'they', barely counting as distinct characters. That's how undeniable the love is between them. Sheer indifference has awarded it a blessing from everyone.

MWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!

Of course, now I've drawn attention to it the moaning will start, but we all know a spoilsport when we see one.

If they had any legitimate complaints they ought to have mentioned 'em before this piece highlighted the marriage!

Except it won't have occurred to 'em previously, proving the eternal, indissoluble quality of MaAndPaShipping.

You get good value with this one.

Find a post referring to Ma and Pa as individuals and I'll have written it, for that's what you call ironic.

3. It's a Fine Rocketshipping Proxy

I was at primary school when Pokémon hit the West like the bright, bearded meteor it is, atomizing all competition for a child's attention.

I have shipped Jessie and James before I knew anyone else did it, unaware shipping was even a thing.

There are other pairs where I think: 'That seems to fit', but it's incomparable to what I feel for them.

It is part of me. I bleed it.

I have shipped it longer than most Tumblerries have dwelt upon the earth.

I used to believe, what with the hints and manga finale, that this resolution was  inevitable, and all I had to do was wait.

Well I've been patient for two decades now, thus when I look at the modern incarnation, and realise it's no nearer to that goal, and instead is further away, waiting starts to wear a bit thin.

I resent the lack of appreciation shown to the fans by the cretins in charge, how any meagre shippy inclusion is done not with an interest in deepening bonds, but with the blatant cynicism of moulding us into performing monkeys dancing to their manipulative tune.

I dislike being treated like a sea lion, expected to clap me flippers at the wave of a fish, or as a panting dog begging at top table, where, because they're desperate to maintain the status quo, every scrap flung down from above now comes with an Anti-Ship kick in the teeth, just to be sure nothing progresses. Not whilst the franchise can still be milked for all it's worth.

I have lost faith Rocketshipping will happen. What passes for Pokémon today carries not the remotest indication of any intention on the so-called writers' part to finish it that way.

Even if it did, it's not my Team Rocket, it's those skeletal, gargoyle bastardisations. My Jessie and James never got the reward they deserved.

I'm somewhat in the market for a replacement. Beneath this loathsome carapace of acid and ice beats the tender heart of a true romantic, and it must have an outlet!

Shipping Ma and Pa provides a certain spurious relief, because it's as close as you can get to Jessie and James without it being them, both biologically as his parents, but they're so similar to the duo it counts as proof in itself.

Holy Matrimony! is prime Rocketshipping territory, not merely the balloon lift, but many slight additions are as important, like the haircuts matching.

Ma and Pa are therefore Jessie and James in the past, present and future:

The past for representing Jess 'n' Jamie gone Victorian, and we've all wondered how that'd turn out.

The present as it's there right now, absent of suffering the shameless whims of morons to get what you want. 'Tis yours to savour.

The future as a glimpse of Jessie and James once married with children, and they agree:

That's how they play it given the opportunity!

What, James in blue, for his and Pa's hair, and Jessie wearing purple, like Ma's, with a red shawl for her own, and Ma Jess's orange earrings to copy the beads?

• Money!

• Bun!

• 'Tache!

• Classy pad!

• Fancy gear!

• Pampered pet!

• Identical cups of Earl Grey!

4. Original Blend

Ma and Pa have only got two fans! We care more than the entire fandom has in twenty years!

Rocketshipping art is ten a penny, so why not display a pioneering spirit, sharpen up those pencils and be inspired?

Let your mind expand and marvel at the possibilities of these unchartered territories, and I'll reblog it if it's nice.

Pay attention to the condition of it being nice. I'm not putting up with any old toss.

Real Ma and Pa is what I want too, not those Sinnoh coffin-dodgers.

It's never been done! Every drawing breaks new ground!

I don't like fan fiction, but I wouldn't say 'no' to that either. Recall the 'nice' stipulation again.

Come on, be the first amongst your friends and get ship shape!

5. It Gives Us All Hope

Suppose your favourite amour one day became canon: you imagine that's the end of the matter?

Well it ain't.

Between Ash, Misty, Brock, Jessie, James, Gary and Tracey, there are three-and-a-half out of fourteen parents (Flint doesn't count as a complete man) and one out of twenty-eight grandparents, and that's not enough!

If the series drew to a close with your beloved couple apparently walking into the happily-ever-after, there's no guarantee it'll endure. In fact, the odds are they'll split up within a few years and leave another generation to fend for themselves or starve.

That's right, so don't presume the final episode is all you need to worry about. Can you rest easy knowing it'll go pear-shaped once the camera stops rolling?

It's futile soothing one's worries with:

Oh, but they know what it's like to be alone. They'd never inflict such stress on their children.

Oh really?

Look at that poor showing of grandparents. Either Pokémon has a system reminiscent of the sci-fi film Logan's Run, where everyone over thirty is vapourized, or these disappearing maters and paters were themselves victims of abandonment.

I bet when they settled down, they thought it'd be different for their kids, they'd make sure of it, but no, off they went down that same route of feckless self-indulgence, and that's being kind assuming they intended not to repeat history.

Depressing eh? What's the good in any of us surrendering to romance, real or otherwise, if love is but a mayfly of emotion, and all dreams are doomed to die?

Then Ma and Pa arrive, and suddenly the storm clouds part for a ray of heavenly light.

It's not only that they made the effort in what was probably an arranged marriage and have stayed together from youth, it's that they've stayed together when no one else has, which augments its value.

When separation is commonplace, sticking it out becomes rarer and rarer as any belief in the sanctity of wedlock erodes with every failure.

If they didn't bother, why should I? What's the use when it won't work?

Once that idea enters your head, it's over, and your gloom-laden attitude fulfils itself.

Society is collapsing about Ma and Pa's ears, but they persevere nevertheless, refusing to buckle under the turgid malaise engulfing the arrogant and weak.

It's bloody beautiful, man!

You may suggest an environment of supreme wealth erases normality, and to their class and time period divorce is still taboo, so they don't really have much of choice but to remain wedded.

Ah, but it's not as if they simply tolerate one another for appearances, or carried on for the sake of their son (which is more than anyone else did besides), not when he walked out on them.

They've been married longer than James has lived, so at least eighteen years (don't all squeal at once), and they're still blissfully contented!

They hold hands!

They use terms of endearment like 'dear' and 'my precious'!

They were made for one another!

They work as a team!

They want the same thing for James!

It could bring a stone angel to tears it's so beautiful!

See what success can be achieved when you try? When you endeavour to love the one you're with and make yourself worth loving in return?

Better that than chucking 'em at the first sign of trouble.

Ma and Pa is such an irrevocable union even the despair of losing their only child failed to tear 'em asunder, and that'd defeat many, but not this husband and wife.

Be grateful, for it means all is not in vain.

It doesn't have to be misery and pain: love can last despite the pressure of a wretched, hollow culture bent on self-destruction. Your ship might just succeed too.

God bless 'em for keeping the magic alive!

...

Why do I have the presentiment that I'm going to regret encouraging support?

#maandpashipping #team rocket #ma james #pa james #ma and pa james #james #jessie #james's mom #james's dad #james's parents #rocketshipping #kanto #holy matrimony!

[bk-lostintranslation]

ESSAY: Kali - Polysemantic Goddess

...Kali is, at her core, the embodiment of opposites. Through her, Hinduism has syncretized a variety of extremes: destruction and creation, death and rebirth, mother-love and sovereign sexuality, primordial violence and self-sacrificial wisdom.

Among the multifaceted pantheon of Hindu deities, the goddess Kali occupies perhaps the most fascinating yet frustratingly misunderstood position. Her iconography – filtered through the lens of parochial presuppositions – often distorts her persona into that of an ogress: bloodthirsty and warlike, with a penchant for destruction. However, this prescribed identity disregards the rich nuances of Kali's origins, reducing her instead to a chimera that arguably embodies the submerged fears of the archetypal, independent feminine. Too often, in text and media, she has been either devalued or demonized, consigned to the same spectrum of mythological would-be villainesses as Lilith, Hecate or Morrigan. New Age depictions of Kali are equally suspect for flattening her into a mere tool for social discourse. Neo-paganists and Western Kali enthusiasts have been accused of appropriating the goddess as a one-dimensional figurehead for Mother Earth, or as a self-serving expression of radical female sexuality, without taking into account her deeper symbolism within Hindu philosophy. 

Modern cross-fertilization between the two cultures, thankfully, has allowed academics to defuse these seemingly irreconcilable caricatures. Today, a wealth of literature is devoted to understanding Kali's complex character and role. By navigating the maze between misconception and truth, what emerges is the realization that Kali is, at her core, the embodiment of opposites. Through her, Hinduism has syncretized a variety of extremes: destruction and creation, death and rebirth, mother-love and sovereign sexuality, primordial violence and self-sacrificial wisdom. Kali's incarnations, whether tranquil (saumya) or fearsome (rudra) are simply manifestations of omnipotent cosmic energy (sakti) which is the fuel within and behind every phenomenon of the manifested world. Kali, in short, is the fulcrum around which the cosmos revolves, and she wields her power in both transformative and terrifying ways.

Perhaps most remarkable is that, in Hinduism, Kali is affectionately referred to as Maa, or Mother.  This title of respect, with its intimate subtext, is important not because her devotees attempt to distinguish between the maternal Kali and the sanguinary Kali, but because in Hinduism, destruction and creation are regarded as complementary, rather than diametrical, facets of a single continuum (Kinsley 15). With each rebirth, human beings are free of the negative traits conducive to social and personal downfall: cruelty, greed, egotism, self-interest etc. This blank slate goes hand-in-hand with the opportunity to do good karma. Each birth is a new beginning, a fresh start to awaken one's potential for self-transformation.  Death, therefore, is not a stillborn story, but one that begins, instead of ending, with the power to sidestep adharma and tread fully across the true dharma path. To accomplish this, Kali is instrumental. She is the Divine Mother who frees her children from the limitations of the physical realm – in this case the cyclical tedium of samsara. Infinitely patient and benevolent, she nurtures the souls (atman) of human beings until they have perfected their understanding of the Ultimate Reality (Brahman) and achieved liberation (moksha). Her color, the pure black of nothingness, can be viewed as the primordial womb within which the enlightened souls merge (Frawley 133).

Of course, to fully appreciate Kali's extraordinary complexity, it is necessary to delve into her etymology and history. In his book, Devī-māhātmya: The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition, Thomas B. Coburn remarks that while Kali is simply a feminine play on the adjective Kaalam, or "darkness," the latter can also be  linked to the derivative noun Kaala, or time. Kali, then, is meant to symbolize "that which brings all things to an end, the destroyer" (108). Kali's mythology and the beginnings of her worship are difficult to trace. However, the earliest known mention of Kali is observed in the Mundaka Upanishad, where she is the name of one of the seven terrible black tongues of the fire-god, Agni.  In the Mahabharata, she makes a token appearance as one of the "mothers" who become companions of Karttikeya as he boldly ventures forth to slay the demon Taraka. But it is not until the Markandeya Purana, within the chapter Devi Mahatmya ("Glorification of the Goddess") that she makes her awe-inspiring debut. Here, Kali is depicted as both the purest manifestation of divine wrath, but also as the delivering heroine who is summoned to salvage a disaster that threatens to tear apart the fabric of the cosmos itself. Her mission is to destroy the demon-lord Rakhtabeeja (blood-seed) who possesses the power to generate clones of himself with every drop of his blood spilled to the ground. In the book, Kali: The Feminine Force, Ajit Mookerjee describes how Kali:

 ...manifested herself for the annihilation of demonic male power in order to restore peace and equilibrium. For a long time brutal 'asuric' (demonic) forces had been dominating and oppressing the world. Even the powerful gods were helpless and suffered defeat at their hands. They fled pell-mell in utter humiliation, a state hardly fit for the divine. Finally they prayed in desperation to the Daughter of the Himalayas to save gods and men alike. The gods sent forth their energies as streams of fire, and from these energies emerged the Great Goddess Durga.   In the great battle to destroy the most arrogant and truculent man-beasts, the goddess Kali sprang forth from the brow of Durga to join in the fierce fighting. As the 'forceful' aspect of Durga, Kali has been dubbed 'horrific' or 'terrible' in masculine-biased commentaries, without understanding of the episode's inner meaning (21-55).

It is certainly true that Kali contradicts the ideological construct of the feminine as subordinate to the masculine. However, while Hindu philosophy binarizes its deities into symbols of male and female energy, it should be noted that there is an implicit androgyny within each depiction. Collectively, the Hindu pantheon represent the various spatial aspects of Brahman. Each god is an alternate component to a singular theistic unity. Gender is not always integral to this classification, although one can argue that within the social framework of Hinduism, which is heavily male-dominated, it carries significant weight. But that is, perhaps, what makes Kali all the more fascinating. Here is a goddess whose depictions are unabashedly female, yet who embodies the integral Hindu tenets of power and nature (sakti/prakriti), while simultaneously defying orthodox constraints of traditional Indian womanhood.  In the book, Hindu Goddesses: Beliefs and Practices, Lynn Foulston and Stuart Abbott remark that, by transgressing the limitations of conventional Hindu womanhood, Kali represents the "transcendence of social and worldly values and the freedom this brings... As one of the Mahavidyas (i.e. one of the ten aspects of the Goddess Shakti), Kali can be understood as a liminal symbol, both occupying and traversing the very boundaries of social purity and order, danger and pollution" (118).

The diverse Puranic oeuvre only heightens Kali's uniqueness. Mother, lover, warrior, martyr – her story runs the whole gamut of human experiences. In popular folklore, for example, Kali slays the demonic Daruka and consumes his blood. However, she becomes dangerously intoxicated by the evil flowing through her veins, driven into a rampaging bloodlust. Like an embodied natural disaster, she sweeps across the earth, spreading catastrophe in her wake. Implicit in this tale is the theme of self-sacrifice. While the ferocious Kali is born to vanquish evil, it is clearly at the cost of herself (157).

Other versions present a more empowering outlook. In the book, Questions on Hinduism, John Renard recounts how, in a desperate attempt to cool Kali's wrath, her consort, Shiva, throws himself beneath her feet.  This act establishes him as her more passive counterpart, playing on the pun Shava (corpse). More to the point, Kali's story clearly "identifies the female as the energy, the divine spark at the heart of reality, which confers on creation the power of transcendence" (124). Indeed, in traditional as well as contemporary artwork, Kali is often depicted as dancing upon Shiva's supine form. In these portrayals, titled the Dakshinkali, she embodies the unstoppable dance of Nature, while her mate, Shiva, becomes the manifestation of Consciousness. Rather than an active force, Consciousness plays a silent witness to the dynamism of Nature. Shiva, sprawled pale and corpselike beneath Kali's foot, illustrates how all that Consciousness perceives is the force of Nature (Pattanaik 53-67).

 In other versions, Shiva does not throw himself beneath Kali's feet, but transforms into a bawling baby. When Kali hears the cries, her fury is subsumed beneath a flood of maternal instinct. Gathering the baby to her breast, she nurses him; her violent potential is thus sublimated into motherly largesse. While this retelling can be criticized as a patriarchal misappropriation – a blatant attempt to tame seemingly-destructive female independence through motherhood – it can also enjoy a kaleidoscope of interpretations. In contemporary Western feminism, it is perhaps not always fashionable to exalt motherhood, which so often conflicts with female self-expression and autonomy. However, the fact that Kali, whose persona is so fearsome, is woken emotionally by a child, and is able to discover opposite yet apposite aspects of her own fiercely protective nature, holds a life-affirming sweetness (Mohanty 55-70).

Other narratives completely dispel the notion that even the all-powerful Kali is inherently submissive to the male form of the divine. In the Tantric version of the Kali's battle, Shiva assumes the guise of a beautiful man and lays himself across Kali's path. Here, as in other adaptations, Kali ceases her rampage after stumbling across Shiva's chest. However, in this case, it is because she is consumed with lust. Flouting the conventions of decency, she straddles Shiva out in the open and begins to make love to him. For many, this combustible blend of violence and sexuality is an empowering motif with a potentially subversive edge. For others, however, it comes as no great shock that Kali, as the purest and most dynamic representation of sakti, is equally unapologetic of her desires (75).

Indeed, Tantric depictions of Kali engaged in coitus with Shiva, which shocked early British settlers as prurient, in fact held intensely ritualistic and symbolic underpinnings. According to Tantric doctrines, the human body symbolizes the microcosm of the universe. As such, Kali's union with Shiva is neither sinful nor shameful, but integral to the process of creation. In the book, Encountering Kali: in the Margins, at the Center, in the West, Rachel Fell McDermott et al. analyze this particular myth, faithfully recreated in ancient and contemporary artwork:  "Siva is the inert soul, purusa, whereas Kali is the active, creative prakriti.... Tantra emphasizes the 'erotic' (that is, the simultaneously sexual and religious) symbolism of the image. In defiance of conventional sexual mores, Kali engages intercourse with Siva in the 'reverse position' ....since siva depends on sakti for the ability to orchestrate creation, preservation, destruction" (53-55).

Equating this unadulterated female power with the negative – a proclivity often seen in patriarchal interpretations – would be fallacious here. So too would be the tendency to pedestalize the divine, to fit female deities into tidy, distinct boxes of "maidenly" or "motherly." Kali's very mythology allows these generalizations more breathing space. Her destroyer/creator/mother/warrior/temptress/martyr mystique encompasses every facet of existence, from the beautiful to the horrifying. At the most fundamental level, her mythos serves to provoke a reaction – primeval, visceral – from observers and devotees alike. Rather than reducing her extremes to intellectual abstractions, her stories allow her to feel close and human. One might even argue that Kali's presence extends beyond liturgy and theology. Hers is a tactile and emotional experience; she exists equally in the frailties of human life and in the inevitability of death, in the fierce desire to nurture but also to defend, and in the human capacity for infinite, unceasing transformation.

Iconography, of course, serves to highlight her polysemantic and multifunctional role. Every aspect of her appearance carries a potent philosophical epithet. She is often depicted as a ferocious four-armed woman with either pitch black or dark blue skin, a mane of matted hair, three blazing-red eyes, sharp white teeth and a lolling red tongue. She is typically nude, festooned only in a necklace of skulls and a girdle of severed limbs. In two of her four arms, she wields a scythe (kharag) and a severed male head; the remaining two arms are positioned in hasta mudras that communicate the seemingly-ironic message 'Do not fear.' Despite this frightening visage, she is sacrosanct for well-grounded reasons. Her dark skin is tied to earth and space; to the fertile soil of the physical realm and the infinite darkness of the primordial cosmos. Much like black represents the all-encompassing quality of darkness, so too is Kali's darkness the signifier of her benevolent and accepting nature (Harding 38-52). 

Equally powerful is the message behind Kali's nudity. She is described as garbed in space, or sky-clad, and this "absence of clothes denotes the absence of illusion" (Mascetti 47).  In that sense, she is Nature at its most sublime, transcending the boundaries of name and form.  As the Universal Truth, she has conquered the illusory trappings of maya. Through her, devotees can transform blind consciousness into perception, just as a wash of intense light illuminates dark corners, dissipating the shadows of ignorance. Her unbound hair, too, is charged with symbolic and cosmological significance. In the book, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahāvidyās, David R. Kinsley suggests that Kali's disheveled mane of hair, such a jarring contrast to the way traditional Hindu women plait their hair in deference to social order, is indicative of Kali's unbridled independence. "Kali is free from convention, wild and uncontrolled in nature, and not bound to and limited by a male consort." In the same vein, Kali's loose curtain of hair is interpreted as the swathe of Space-Time, with its tangled mass suggesting the dissolution of cosmic balance. "Her hair has come apart and flies about every which way... all has returned to chaos. The 'braidedness' of social and cosmic order comes to an end in Kali's wild, unbound, flowing hair" (83-85).

Similar dualistic interpretations are found concerning Kali's tongue – blood-smeared and protruding. According to Puranic lore, Kali's lolling tongue allows her to slurp up the blood of Rakhtabeeja, before it can drip to the ground and spawn clones. In other narratives, Kali's outstretched tongue takes on broader, more psychological connotations. In The Book of Kali, Seema Mohanty states that, "With the outstretched tongue, Kali teases and mocks her devotees. She sees through their social façade and knows the dark desires they try so hard to deny or suppress. She provokes them to delve into their subconscious and confront all those memories and thoughts that they shy away from" (10).

For the colonial West, of course, this aspect of Kali's iconography seemed to fuse sexuality with brutality, social perversion with graphic violence. In the book, Encountering Kali: in the Margins, at the Center, in the West, McDermott et al. remark that Kali's tongue, filtered through the Western lens, became a blatantly phallic symbol, her persona little more than a terrifying figurehead of idolatrous depravity. Indeed, McDermott argues that for the colonial imagination, Kali was the embodiment of India itself, "imbued with debauchery, violence and death. Objectified under the 'colonial gaze'... Kali has always been an ambivalent source of mixed horror and fascination, of simultaneous revulsion and lurid attraction" (170-178).  Unfortunately, such depictions, rooted in Eurocentric ambivalence, fail to appreciate Kali's full complexity. As a goddess, Kali explores and symbolizes all the uses and expressions of submerged human desire. It should be noted that in this instance, desire does not refer simply to biological imperatives with their natural rhythms of arousal and satiation. Nor is it linked purely to the erotic desire that is cloaked in visual and textual symbolism. This is desire at the cosmic, primordial level, beyond limits and civility. Taken in that sense, Kali's tongue "denotes the act of tasting or enjoying what society regards as forbidden, foul, or polluted... an indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's 'flavors.' What we experience as ... polluted ... is grounded in limited human (or cultural) consciousness ... Kali invites her devotees to taste the world in its most disgusting and forbidden manifestations in order to detect its underlying unity or sacrality, which is the Great Goddess herself" (Kinsey 81-83).

Kali's ornaments and weaponry, too, carry a reservoir of allegorical and mystic nuance. Her garland of severed heads represent the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. These seedlings (beej) of sound – particularly the eternal syllable, Om – are the source of all creation. Adorned in the essence of reality, Kali is therefore the repository of eternal knowledge. She "decapitates words so that the seeker of truth is liberated from the limitations imposed by language" (Mohanty 13). Similarly, her girdle of severed limbs represents karmic annihilation. Each arm symbolizes the binding effect of deeds – karma – that Kali effortlessly chops down. Thus, she is instrumental in liberating her devotees from the cruel cyclicity of samsara, allowing them to achieve the ultimate spiritual realization (14).

Completing her otherworldly allure, the conjunction of femininity, monstrosity and strength, are Kali's four arms. According Bob Kindler's book, Twenty-Four Aspects of Mother Kali, her arms symbolize the cosmic circle of creation and destruction. The upper and lower right hands confer gracious and protective boons, the hands positioned in the Abhaya and Varada mudra respectively. The former is "a mystic gesture indicating the Divine Mother's serious warning to negative forces that attempt to harm Her precious spiritual children." The latter, meanwhile, signifies "gifts to those who approach Her for refuge" (22).  Her left arms, brandishing the bloodied scythe and the severed head, symbolize Kali's power to eradicate ignorance. The head represents false consciousness, or the ego; the scythe is the weapon of knowledge. Thus, by slicing through the obstacles of ignorance, Kali frees her devotees from temporal bindings.  Finally, her three eyes speak of her omniscience: they represent the sun, moon, and fire, which she uses as mediums to unlock the three facets of time – past, present and future (Kinsley 86-90). In ancient Greece, the ouroboros – a primeval serpent devouring its own tail – served to symbolize the coincidence of opposites, the infinite oscillation between destruction and creation, death and rebirth. In the same manner, Kali perfectly embodies the circular transience of being, the pivot upon which cosmic equilibrium rests.

Both legends and iconography reiterate her gift for transcending the broad spectrum of dichotomies because it is relevant. At her core, Kali's myth defies humanity's efforts to classify and control the unknown as a way of asserting its standing as a rational, privileged species. She corrects us of the dangerous misconception that human beings are a dominant outside force, rather than fragile stitches within the cosmic fabric itself. By understanding Kali, it is therefore possible to spark a genuine relationship with Nature in its manifold forms, and beyond them, with the all-pervasive life-force – sakti – that flows through the universe in its entirety. Renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell, in his classic work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, states it best:

The goddess is the fire of life; the earth, the solar system, the galaxies of far-extending space, all swell within her womb. For she is the world creatrix, ever mother, ever virgin. She encompasses the encompassing, nourishes the nourishing, and is the life of everything that lives. She is also the death of everything that dies. The whole round of existence is accomplished within her sway, from birth, through adolescence, maturity, and senescence, to the grave. She is the womb and the tomb: the sow that eats her farrow. Thus she unites the "good" and the "bad," exhibiting the two modes of the remembered mother, not as personal only, but as universal (95).

For the curious academic or the passionate devotee, there is no doubting Kali's appeal. But her paradoxical nature is the true crux of her uniqueness: at once a singularity and a multiplicity, she is immeasurable. Conceptually, Kali's presence is not just a part of the cosmos, but the same size as it. On one level, she is an abstract force that flows beyond the nacreous spectrum of time and space. On another level, she is a tangible, living presence swimming through the undercurrents of the real world we inhabit every day. Her voice may not always be audible to us, but the occasions when we do hear it are full of intimacy and truth. 

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1973. 95. Print.

Coburn, Thomas B. Devī-māhātmya: The Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984. 11-112. Print.

Foulston, Lynn, and Stuart Abbott. Hindu Goddesses: Beliefs and Practices. Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2009. 110-160. Print.

Frawley, David. Inner Tantric Yoga: Working with the Universal Shakti: Secrets of Mantras, Deities and Meditation. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus, 2008. 130-136. Print.

Harding, Elizabeth U. Kali the Black Goddess of Dakshineswar. Newburyport: Nicolas-Hays, 1993. 38-52. Print.

Kindler, Bob. Twenty-four Aspects of Mother Kali. Portland, OR: SRV Oregon, 1996. 22. Print.

Kinsley, David R. Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahāvidyās. Berkeley: U of California, 1997. 29-90. Print.

Mascetti, Manuela Dunn., Jennifer Woolger, and Roger Woolger. Goddesses: Mythology and Symbols of the Goddess. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1998. 47. Print.

McDermott, Rachel Fell., and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Encountering Kali: in the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Berkeley: U of California, 2003. 21-152. Print.

Mookerjee, Ajit. Kali: The Feminine Force. New York: Destiny, 1988. 21-55. Print.

Mohanty, Seema. The Book of Kali. New Delhi: Penguin India, 2004. 6-100. Print.

Pattanaik, Devdutt. 7 Secrets of the Goddess. Chennai: Wastland, 2014. 53-67. Print.

Renard, John. Questions on Hinduism. Mumbai: Better Yourself, 1999. 124. Print.

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