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strangertheory · 3 years

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We can't know what we don't know.

The value of skepticism in fandom discourse

I worry that the Stranger Things fandom often allows the development of fan-canons and false absolutes in between seasons that might be destructive to certain fans' long-term enjoyment and appreciation of the series.

We can't know what we don't know.

And if we forget this and begin to construct expectations for what might happen next in the story that are too deeply rooted in our hearts: we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and this is not the fault of the Duffer Brothers or the writing team. This is our fault as individuals and as a community.

Stranger Things has three completed seasons, a fourth season currently in production, and an intended fifth and final season.

We are only a little beyond the halfway point in this larger story.

The halfway point.

A lot can happen in the span of two final seasons.

The writing team probably intends to maintain thematic and narrative intentions across all five seasons. The Duffer Brothers have spoken of having an ending in mind for the story for a long time. (”We’ve known the ending for a while.” - Matt Duffer) But we, the fans, cannot truly know what those plans are until the credits roll on the final episode of the final season.

And yet there is a stubborn certainty that many fans engage in between seasons and that I worry has been growing and spreading worse than usual during season 4′s production delays.

In spite of having only just surpassed the middle point of a story arc that’s being told over the span of five seasons, many fans declare that they "definitely know" that certain relationships between characters won't change. That certain characters will "definitely" survive. That certain rumored future story arcs (based on audition tapes, fan speculation, interviews with the cast) will "definitely happen." That certain characters are "definitely straight" or that certain characters are “definitely gay.”

I believe that there is value in seeking to understand and predict events in a story. Appreciating the way that skilled storytellers use foreshadowing, symbolism, narrative parallels, metaphor, lighting and camera angles, music, and other creative tools when putting together a show like Stranger Things is thrilling. I love debating the relevance of certain details to an author’s larger intentions and long-term vision for their story and characters. I believe that skilled writers should plant clues throughout the earlier moments in a narrative so that plot twists are surprising and yet also also have us slapping our knees declaring “Oh, look! All the signs were there from the beginning! Well played.” Some writers start off without a particular end-goal in mind and allow the characters to lead them there as they develop, however we know that this is not entirely the case for the Duffer Brothers and that they have an ending in mind that they have been building towards.

Authors can also make poor writing decisions that contradict the internal logic and implications of their own universe. Writers and creative teams are not infallible. Productions have constraints and behind-the-scenes pressures, challenges, and limitations that might sometimes result in a less cohesive narrative. I don't believe that's the case with Stranger Things but this can and does happen.

But I always keep in mind that this story is not mine. I am fully capable of being incorrect in my analysis and predictions regarding what might happen next.

My theories and predictions (that Mike has romantic feelings for Will, and that Stranger Things is perhaps intended to be about a dissociated system and internal worlds etc.) are not shared by the majority of the fan community.

I question the logic of my thoughts constantly because I am prompted to do so any time I share my unusual theories and ideas with other fans. Because my ideas are strange and less popular I am well aware of my need to provide evidence and logic when offering them to other fans for consideration.

If your ideas regarding what is happening in Stranger Things are shared by the majority of fans: how often do you question your expectations?

Do you think that you question them often enough? Are you allowing yourself to become complacent and to assume that because a large majority of your fandom community agrees with your interpretation of certain plot-points and characters that you absolutely must be correct in your understanding of Stranger Things?

I have seen how emotionally attached many fans are to their own preferred understanding of the story. Many fans greet alternative understandings that conflict with their own ideas with a lot of hostility and protest.

I want to warn all fans against closing their imaginations off to the story taking a different route than what they’ve carved into their hearts.

Fans that like less popular ships or that indulge in the discussion of fringe hypotheticals and unique theories are second-guessing and questioning themselves every day and I think for that reason we are better prepared for disappointment than fans that have allowed themselves to believe in characters, ships, and plot-points being “definite” or “canon” or “endgame” simply because the majority of other fans share (and reinforce) those same assumptions.

I worry when I see large fan-made accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr that post a constant stream of content that reinforces very specific fan-canons that are not yet absolute and yet are still favored and embraced as inevitabilities.

Do fans truly believe that nothing might surprise them in the last half of the story? Do fans believe that we know everything about these characters, their relationships with one another, and this sci fi universe by this point in the show? Does this attitude seem reasonable?

The constant consumption of our favorite fan-cams, fanart, and fan-canons creates echo chambers reinforcing our current assumptions about characters, character relationships, and presumed future plotlines. Just because a fan-run Stranger Things account with over a million followers posts about a specific ship constantly and this is what you are seeing on your phone every morning it doesn’t mean that this account knows what is going to happen in the story any more than you do. We need to be wary of allowing ourselves to lose our objectivity and our awareness that this story is in the hands of the Duffer Brothers and the Stranger Things writing team and that nothing that fans expect (or, god forbid, rudely demand) is guaranteed. The twisted idea that creators are in any way obligated to pander to their current fanbase is absurd to me when you consider that this is their creation, and additionally when you consider that the series will exist for future fans long after the majority of current fans abandon it.

I want the entire Stranger Things fandom to enjoy the journey, to enjoy uncertainty, and to look forward to finding out what happens next. I don’t want fans setting themselves up for disappointment by stubbornly insisting that their interpretation of what is happening in the story is absolutely correct when the story is not over yet.

If the Stranger Things fan community can allow itself to be open to being wrong I think we will all enjoy the story a lot more and continue enjoying the story no matter what. The creators behind Stranger Things are very talented and I believe they are telling a very well-crafted story. I only hope that the fandom will appreciate it and that we haven’t stubbornly built walls around our own desires that will prevent us from enjoying an excellent story if it contradicts our expectations in the next few seasons.

I know that if I look forward to the thrill of discovering something new about my favorite characters in future seasons that I will rarely be disappointed.

I hope we all continue opening new curiosity doors and try to avoid setting our hearts on specific expectations.

#stranger things #stranger things fandom #stranger things theories #I know this might be a buzzkill post but I think it's important not to forget this

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jenniferdiazisatransgirl · 4 years

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So I have a new theory regarding this photo frame and one which is less of a reach than my trans Amity theory. I did a post yesterday, questioning why Amity is under more pressure than her siblings. Some people have the theory that Ediric and Emira have been written off as lost causes, but despite their rebellious attitudes they are talented at magic and score high grades. Plus Mr and Mrs Blight don’t strike me as the types to simply give up on a child. Especially given how much pride they seem to take in maintaining the status of the Blight family name.

@ambenya came up with the theory though, that Amity is viewed as the problem child and this is why she has more pressure dumped upon her. She doesn’t have the right hair, she doesn’t have the right friends, she likes the wrong person (both a girl and a human, which I don’t see her parents being too pleased about either of those points) and I guess it is easy to imagine she could be seen as a blemish on the Blight family name. Her way to make up for this is being the best at magic, beating her brother and sister’s grades and becoming part of the Emperor’s Coven. Maybe then she can gain her parents approval.

And I guess I have painted quite an image of the Blights in my head now. I’m kinda imagining these rich society class type people and based on this image I have of them, I could easily see in their living room above a the fire place a beautiful portrait of their two perfect children, Ediric and Emira. And as much as she tries Amity can’t live up to this image her parents have of her siblings.

If @ambenya’s theory and some of my assumptions here are correct, could that photo be this hypothetical portrait from the living room. Her parents placing it in her room with this sort of view, “Why can’t you be more like Ediric and Emira? Perhaps having this photo of them in your room will give you something to aspire too.”

I will admit this theory is based on a lot of assumptions I now have made about the Blights, but if you read my past ramblings regarding them these assumptions have started off being evidence based. So while on its own this post may seem like a bit of a reach. Based on what I have written prior which is evidence base, I could easily see this becoming canon eventually. And I’m more than happy to admit defeat if it doesn’t. But in the mean time I hope you enjoy the post.

#amity blight #ediric blight #emira blight #mrs blight #mr blight #understanding willow #agony of a witch #people #the owl house

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miraculouscontent · 4 years

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Ask Explosion #6

Asks answering previous posts:

Oh, okay! I’m glad, thank you!

(the post this anon is referring to)

Ohhhh.

And fjbgjnfkjgfg thanks >////<

I don’t think there’s much wrong with liking the design itself; I prefer Riposte personally, but that’s just me.

The best way I could put the “insensitive” part (I’m sort of dumb when it comes to this stuff and I talked about it before when I was working on that 3D model of Marinette) is that it’s so heavy on Japanese. I mean, they already have Kagami constantly wear what looks like a school uniform and Tomoe is just like--super heavy Japanese. It’s like the show doesn’t know how to balance “can’t tell at all” (with Marinette) and then “okay this is WAY strong” (with Kagami+Tomoe+Kung Food).

That makes sense! I guess the only problem then would be that the kwami can’t really act as mentors of any kind because “you’re saying this just because that’s all you can say” (like Sass, hypothetically, always willing to give someone a second chance, no matter what; I know that’s not what his power specifically entails but it’s just an example).

I would however definitely lean towards kwami being very strict in one alignment, so Tikki would always be on the path of pure good and thus never want to take/steal/whatever, whereas Plagg is always on the path of “bad,” but there are times where Marinette will have to ignore Tikki while Adrien will have to listen to Plagg.

And yeah, the guardians existing and the kwami not having so much control... not a huge fan.

Someone asked about Chat Noir’s flirting and he claimed that it was “on purpose” (you know, while throwing episodes like “Felix” at us but okay) and then he followed up with this:

There was also this other comment he made a while back when someone tried to make a suggestion to him:

Except he’s missing the point completely. When he talks about constructive criticism, he acts like it doesn’t matter, especially not anymore now that they’re working on Seasons 4 and 5:

(I mean, personally, I don’t think I need “engineering knowledge” to know when a rollercoaster I’d ridden nearly tossed the cart off the tracks and had questionable design decisions, but you do you, Astruc.)

Yes, constructive criticism is mainly for seeing a product improve, but that doesn’t mean ignoring it because, “well you haven’t seen the full product.”

“Animaestro” even has a bit of commentary on it:

Ladybug: What's with that trailer too? I am not scared of cats, at all.

Animaestro: You haven't even seen the movie and you're already slamming it?

Chat Noir: He does have a point, you know.

Ladybug: I wasn't slamming it. It's called constructive criticism!

(firstly, of course Chat Noir bows to Astruc on that one because he’s Astruc’s sunshine boy, ugh)

Ignoring the fact that a movie/printed book is usually a “full product,” criticism is also to say “you did this thing wrong, don’t do this in the future.” It doesn’t have to be referring strictly to the show. It’s just, “you did this thing wrong and here’s why, try to catch yourself if you accidentally do it again in the future, whether in what you’re working on now or otherwise.”

(He’s also talked about “unsolicited critique” before and I don’t know what that means? Like, dude, this isn’t someone’s fanfiction where I’d actually agree that you can’t go after them for their work. This is professional work.)

Anyway, remember “Chameleon”? When everyone saw the trailer and absolutely flipped out over it, then there were people who were like, “Wait for the full episode!!”?

Guess what? The full episode came out and people were either just as mad or even madder than before.

Astruc wants to have his cake and eat it to. He wants to say that his episodes are “stand-alone,” and that the order isn’t that important, but when people start pointing out issues, it becomes, “No! You have to wait for the rest of the episodes to come out!” and when people do that, it’s gonna be like, “Well, we already did the whole show so it’s not like I can change anything. *shrug*”

Also, just blaming it on “the industry” when everything else has been exhausted:

(He’s literally brought up before that the New York special was meant to have subplots about other characters, so it’s not like he can never say anything when something didn’t fit the “original vision”; I’m not asking him to get on his knees and say he’s sorry - plus, I do recognize that a lot of influence comes from the industry and people like Jeremy - but I expect a little more than the “whoops” he gave when people pointed out that “Weredad” contradicted his statement on Miraculous Ladybug.)

I think the reason people see it the way they do is because of Fu’s line in “Robostus” seems to imply the exact opposite thing happening.

Master Fu: Universe must always stay in balance. For every action, there is a reaction. For every wish, a price to pay in return. Had your robotic friend asked to become a real boy, someone would have lost his humanity in return.

New Asks:

Marigami is acceptable. I’m not crazy about it but it’s likable enough.

Lukadrien though... no, absolutely not. On a conceptual level, because it’s such a slap in the face for Marinette, and on a fanon level, because most of the jokes around it is Luka going to Marinette like he’s about to ask her out and then just asks for Adrien’s details. It’s just... ugh. I hate it (throwing Marinette into the ship still doesn’t help for me though because I’m not into the love square).

Bi erasure is my least favorite thing.

And yeah, it’s like--they set the love square ship(s?) out onto the water, then the Lukanette ship later with the plan to either sink it or just kinda... return it to the harbor if they don’t make a huge fuss about it?

Meanwhile, the love square ship has been in piece this whole time, and instead of letting it sink, they put it on a raft to keep it floating.

Depends.

In LadyBugOut? It’s already written and I haven’t posted it.

For canon? Like, Marinette being super disappointed at her view of Adrien being shattered or? :P

That’s accurate. I dislike about a fourth-ish of Season 1,then about half-ish of Season 2, then like... almost all of Season 3.

So we’ll just have to see what happens in Season 4.

I like Adrimi, but I’m not crazy about it and I don’t really write for it unless Lukanette is already the main ship (making Adrimi just a background ship). Adrien tends to dismiss Kagami a lot (like in “Frozer” and then “Miracle Queen” with him not committing) and I don’t want to see Kagami hurting like that (I agree with the anon completely that Adrien is more at fault than she is). They’re both emotionally-stunted so I usually have them wait it out or something to have them get together.

My ideal endgame is Lukanette while Adrimi is more like “let’s wait, let’s work on ourselves (especially Adrien; Kagami at least has on firm crush and wants to commit to it), and we’ll see where we go down the line.”

I don’t know if they really have the guts to arrest Gabriel. I also think that Lila might pick up the butterfly at the end of Season 5 or something after she’s been “dealt with.”

Chloe also is the mayor’s daughter so even if the law was that strict on teens, nothing would happen to her unless Andre got replaced.

Big yikes.

Maybe that the thing forcing Marinette away from Adrien and causing things to go wrong is the part of the curse trying to prevent the ladybug and cat miraculous from coming together?

So, close enough to be attracted and want to work together, but forcing the ladybug away from the cat to prevent the miraculouses from being used to make a wish?

I CHOKED ON MY DRINK.

ugh

ugggggggh

I’m 100% sure that Marinette wouldn’t be as uncomfortable around Adrien if Alya hadn’t constantly intervened. She’s the enabler of both Marinette’s anxiety and her crush on Adrien.

I went back and looked at the scene and it does kinda look like it, yes, because it basically goes from the intersection Marinette is in to another intersection that looks very, extremely similar and I don’t see Marinette in that intersection.

It was just a really, really bad transition. I remember being thrown off for a second too so I don’t blame you, anon.

I think Bob Roth’s intent was to scare Marinette away from showing that proof? He probably knows very well that Marinette has all the evidence she needs to make a case and already had a story planned for the press about how “the young talents they found didn’t measure up and the people deserved better.”

He just needed enough pressure on them for them to believe that he had enough authority to silence them.

And then Silencer tried to silence him instead. :3

I don’t think Marinette’s relationship with her parents would change too much. Like, they already let her just go out whenever she wants which obviously Plagg approves off, although Marinette might become more numb to the idea of being grounded because Plagg just teaches her, “hey lol Ladybug isn’t grounded tho,” so Marinette sneaks out all the time.

Yeah, Tikki would probably justify Gabriel’s behavior, and she wouldn’t really be able to get on his case for flirting as Mister Bug because she’s not aware of it.

lol it helps no one to have Tikki I guess.

Adrien overall and then honorable mention to Alya for Winny’s comment about her being Marinette’s conscience (which is probably why they almost never nail Alya for stuff she does).

KHNJFDNGFD THE LUKANETTE QUEEN MONIKER RETURNS >///<

And ugh, the absolute level of bias in that. Even if the video was made in, like, Season 2 (don’t know, didn’t see it), Season 2 still gives examples of why Adrienette isn’t making Marinette happy at all (and has some of the love square failings too).

The name and the fact that they gave it that name tells me everything I need to know.

Goodness gracious.

Yeah, people can talk about character’s flaws. I mean, we talk a lot here about Marinette’s struggles in getting over Adrien (partly brought on by a lot of outside factors but still).

Also, sure, Luka is a “pushover” because he’s one of the few characters who understands Marinette’s tunnel vision and isn’t bothered by it, okay. :P (Interesting that the topic of Chat’s entitlement towards Ladybug but Luka respecting her choices and just enjoying being around her makes him her punching bag).

Every time I hear, “Adrien needs more spotlight!!!” I lose a part of my soul. How people can’t see that Marinette is the show’s true punching bag is beyond me.

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yaz-the-spaz · 4 years

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But you can’t blame z stans for not liking her when she and the girls put zayn through so much shit after the break up. Every snark comment, that ridiculous break up story jesy pointing at Perrie several times after the break up when they sang black magic Perries what’s his face them laughing when a girl screamed zayns a bitch the whole sotme fiasco her crying for sympathy which zayn is still getting shit for her mentioning sotme every chance she gets so I’m not blaming z stans for disliking her

if i was in a band where for 4 years nearly every single interview i was in the focus got almost completely re-directed to a relationship that had nothing to do with the band or the music, and even after that fake relationship ended it still kept happening, i might be pretty snarky about it too. ofc the boys had some moments where the relationships got focused on in interviews but imo it was nowhere near what LM experienced. with 1d an interviewer might ask a question or two about whoever the boys were dating and that’s obviously annoying but for LM there were sometimes nearly whole interviews that got bogarted by questions about zerrie. there were times when the other girls literally would barely even get asked a single question cause everything was about zerrie, zerrie, zerrie. and there are multiple times where you can clearly see perrie is absolutely done with being forced to talk about it too or to act happy about it. i’m not asking ppl to suddenly start stanning her, i’m just asking ppl to give her (and the other girls) the benefit of the doubt.

imagine for a moment that the shoe were on the other foot and some 1d fan called perrie a bitch and zayn laughed, or that louis got snarky in an interview and said something not too nice about perrie...you’d probably be praising zayn and louis (and that hypothetical fan) all the livelong day b/c zayn’s your fave and you’re looking at it from his perspective but just for a moment try to look at it from hers too. she went through that shit too for four years too, and unlike zayn she still had to play her part of the broken-hearted fiancee for like a year after it was all over. did she want that for herself? who knows. but based on some of the reactions i’ve seen from her when she let her guard down and/or just didn’t give af anymore i’d be willing to bet that’s not at all what she wanted for herself, and that she’s just as sick of her public image forever being connected to zayn as he is. she played the role well at some moments but that’s what she had to do. she had just as little choice as zayn did, she just was very occasionally a little bit better at selling it (emphasis on very occasionally). she can’t change the fact that sotme is always gonna be connected to zayn b/c of the bullshit her shitty mgmt made her do. she has a right to be annoyed and to react badly just as much as zayn. you keep putting the blame on her as if this was all her choice, but if the evidence has shown ANYTHING it’s that practically nothing a syco-backed artist does is their choice and we have no idea what else the girls might have even had to go through behind the scenes too (both with zayn and with the industry in general). we have no idea what kind of sexism, racism, sexual harassment, body image issues, etc. they might have had to deal on top of that all just from being females in the entertainment industry at a time when everyone thought a girl group was gonna be an automatic fail and the only ‘good’ way they could think to sell them was to just piggyback off the success of a band of boys and a fabricated relationship.

have you ever once thought about what it might been like from their perspective? can you imagine how degrading that would be to constantly be getting told, both directly and indirectly, that your talent on your own isn’t good enough just b/c you’re girls? that everything you say or do has to revolve around a band of boys and a fake relationship instead of your actual music or your actual talent b/c that’s not ‘marketable’ enough and not ‘good enough.’ and then when you finally think it’s over, you still have to play along with it for another year, and even still have to deal with getting asked about it years later? and that’s on top of whatever other bs you’re getting told about not being thin enough, not being pretty enough, not being sexy enough, or having to let ppl get away with doing and saying degrading things to you just b/c you’re a girl, and that you’re never gonna make it or be successful unless it’s on the coattails of men. to have ppl telling you every time your song doesn’t chart that it’s because you/your bandmate is not doing a good job at selling your connection with this boyband or your relationship with this boy well enough. if you were in that position you’d probably be damn annoyed with the boy and the boyband you were constantly being forcibly associated to, compared to, and overshadowed by too. the fact is Lm was never allowed to stand on their own two feet under syco, everything was always connected to zerrie and 1d and getting hated on and blamed b/c of that as if that was in any way their own fault or their own choice. and then when they lash out about it (just like the boys have done with their beards or other ppl they don’t like on countless occasions) you guys have the nerve to continue to blame them for it. you say stuff like ‘she and the girls put zayn through so much shit’ as if they’re not just humans reacting to just as shitty of a situation forced upon them by their shitty mgmt. as if zayn himself doesn’t know that in a lot of ways they were in the same boat and reacting to things in the same way that zayn and the boys have done. i’m not saying the LM girls are perfect people or that you have to like them, but at least stop laying all of the blame completely on them and try to understand that they have just as much reason to lash out about this stuff as the boys do. that they have just as much reason to be annoyed and frustrated and snarky and bitter. different reasons, sure, but still justified in my opinion

so to your comment about blaming z stans for not liking her - i can and i will. because from what i’ve seen it tends to be just blind hate. it’s ppl putting literally every stunt on her personally as if she arranged it herself (which may be the case for some of the other beards but not her). it’s ppl hating on her/the band for ‘using’ zayn for fame when she/they clearly had no real choice in the matter (again unlike other beards). it’s ppl simply hating on her for being a beard and participating in closeting with no regard to the fact that in many ways she was in the same boat as zayn was, and was coerced into the situation just as much as zayn was. it’s ppl holding up her and the girls’ negative reactions to talk of zayn/zerrie/1d and being like ‘see, she’s a bitch’ but yet when their faves do the same they’re praising it, and they don’t even take a moment to think about all the justifiable reasons the girls might feel they have for reacting this way (and who even knows what might have gone on b/t them and zayn personally too that might add to all of that). i wanna be clear, i’m not saying it’s right, or that i condone it all. i get ppl in the fandom not liking perrie/lm. I DO. but at least have specific reasons for not liking her and at least be fair enough to recognize that 1) most of the things you’re hating on her (and/or the other LM girls) for are not her/their fault personally, 2) even for the things that are her/their fault, they may feel they have a right to respond a little bit bitterly and/or snarkily b/c of whatever they bullshit they were put through as a result, and 3) that if the roles were reversed and it was zayn who had done what she did your reaction would be a whole lot different simply because you like him and are more willing to consider things from his perspective and be more sympathetic

#asks #anons #my thoughts #perrie #lm #little mix #zayn #side note but however zayn may privately feel about it i’m sure he understands where they're coming from at least to some degree #and is probably not nearly as upset about it as you are on his behalf because he’s lived it too #(and maybe it's just the type of person i am but i just really can't stand ppl who only judge/look at things from one perspective #esp when they use that as an excuse to be hateful #b/c that what this a lot of ppl in this fandom do with perrie/lm and i'm so sick of it

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theoneryderlynn · 4 years

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Self Para || What A Man Gotta Do

Location: Lima, Ohio.

Date: May 12th, 2020

Notes: Ryder goes back to Lima to ask a very important question.

Major thanks to the incredible B (@thesongbirdmarleyrose) for writing Millie’s parts!!! ❤️

“How do you do that? I’ve tried so many times, and it’s never as great.” Ryder took another sip of his mother’s Cafecito, the taste of its sweet foam still present in his mouth. He had just arrived in Lima, and happily visited his mom so he could prepare for one of the biggest moments of his life. Telling your significant other’s mother that you’re about to propose to her daughter seemed so surreal when Ryder analyzed it in his head, yet, it was the right thing to do. Marley loved her mother, so he was sure she’d appreciate how much he cared about Millie’s opinion.

He’d got lost in his thoughts for a moment before he noticed his mother sitting in front of him, sipping her cup of coffee.

“Am I led to believe that you being here while your father’s visiting the UCLA med school is a coincidence?” She spoke, raising her eyebrows a little, a warm smile on her face.

“Uh, yeah, I mean, I need to sort something out in Lima. It’s kinda important, so it had to be done this week”.

“I see. Where’s Marley? I bet she’d love to see her mom. Are you guys, okay?” Maria Lynn shuffled a bit closer to her son, concern in her voice was evident.

“She’s fine, yeah. We’re perfectly okay. I just...I need to do this thing on my own, and I told her I was here for work which isn’t exactly the truth, unfortunately, I couldn’t tell her why I’m visiting so yeah…” Ryder spoke very quickly, he didn’t like lying to his girlfriend, but he couldn’t share the reason for his short Lima trip. It’d ruin the surprise. He put the cup of coffee to his mouth, trying to take a sip, not realizing that it was empty.

“Mom, can I have one more cup of coffee?”

“You’ve already had two, that’s enough.”

Ryder bounced a little bit on his chair. He was so nervous, “If you say so…” He grumbled, before lifting himself and crossing his legs over each other. His mother knew something was up, so she kept quiet as she was drinking her coffee.

“I have a question.” Ryder finally spoke up after a moment of silence, “Imagine a very hypothetical situation. Very hypothetical.” He stated philosophically, looking over to his mother. He took his empty mug and started staring at its Spiderman design, trying to distract himself for a moment.

“So if Freya was dating a guy who wanted to marry her...which I’m sure will happen sooner or later.” Ryder said, knowing that his mom and his sister talked to each other every day, “And he would decide to visit you to ask for your permission...Hypothetically.” Ryder emphasized the last word, “What would you want him to say? What would you wanna hear?”

His mother scrunched her nose up as she listened to his question, “Well, I’m sure he’d rather talk to your dad.” She replied casually, before crossing her arms and leaning back on the chair, a small smirk present on her face.

“Yeah, but what if dad wasn’t here? Like...it’s a hypothetical situation.” Ryder realized that he was now staring at the ceiling, “What if dad had to go on a year-long conference or something. And you’d be here on your own. I know it won’t happen since you’re a kickass pediatrician and an awesome doctor, and you do lectures as well; it’s just...a situation. A possible scenario.” He rambled on as he ruffled his hair, still avoiding eye contact.

Maria Lynn chuckled as she listened carefully to her son’s words, clearly amused by most of them, “Oh, Ry.” She said with a smile, finally meeting her boy’s eyes, “Go and talk to Millie. She loves you, she’s known you for years, I’m sure she’ll be so happy to hear that you two are ready for the next step.”

“MOM, IT’S A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION,” Ryder said utterly seriously. He started playing with his fingers for a moment, before he stood up, “Uh, I gotta go.”

“If it is a hypothetical situation…” His mother started, which caused Ryder to immediately take a seat once again, “If I had known the guy for years, I would happily give him my blessing and it wouldn’t matter what he’d tell me. I would know that he loves my daughter more than anything; it’s everything I could’ve ever wanted for her.” She said with a genuine smile on her face, knowing that it was precisely what her son needed.

Ryder nodded slowly, “Thanks, mom. And remember - it’s a hypothetical situation. So, ugh…” He bit on his lower lip nervously, “Can we keep this conversation between us?” He asked quietly, rubbing his right cheek, not really sure what to do with his hands.

“Absolutely, honey.”

“Awesome.” Ryder replied, “Awesome. Awesome.” He repeated, before standing up and heading towards the hallway. He knew he was ready, “Uhm, I’ll be back soon. I need to, you know…” He pointed awkwardly at the door after putting his jacket on.

“I’ll make dinner. I was thinking of doing some of your favorites…” His mother said with a massive smile on her face. Food usually perked him up.

“Empanadas!” Ryder almost jumped, bringing up one of his favorite dishes.

“Actually, I wanted to make double cheese arepas. They’ll be ready when you get back.”

“Oh my, yes, please! Thanks, mom!” His eyes widened as he quickly ran towards the door, “I’ll be back soon! Can’t miss those arepas.” He said excitedly, before storming out of his parents’ house, ready for one of the most important conversations of his life.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Okay, you got this. You got this.” Ryder walked back and forth, making sure that he wouldn’t get too close to the Rose household. He took a deep breath and almost approached the front door before turning back, “No, I can’t. I suck, I don’t know what to say.”

He realized he was talking to himself. Never in a million years, he would’ve thought he’d be so stressed. He closed his eyes for a moment and let himself breathe for a couple of minutes. If someone saw him right now, they’d think he was an idiot. Ryder took his phone and glanced at his lock screen. A small smile curled at the corners of his mouth as he saw himself with his girlfriend, their love so apparent in the picture, “Okay, babe. I’m so gonna nail this”. He said, still staring at the photo, somehow seeing Marley gave him confidence.

He knocked at the door and rocked back and forth on his heels waiting for Marley’s mom to open. When she finally did, Ryder felt speechless. Damn it. While he’d spent so much time with Millie over the past years, he had no idea what to say at that particular moment.

“Hi, Ms. Rose!” He gave her an awkward wave, “I was just in town, and I thought I’d come by and visit.” Ryder babbled, “Just in case, Marley’s fine, she’s in New York, she’s doing great, we’re cool…” He trailed off for a second, trying to find suitable words to describe the situation, “She doesn’t know I’m here, and please, please don’t tell her you saw me. I can explain, I just wanna keep it between us. It’s not what you think.” He lowered his voice as he rambled on, knowing that he probably sounded like a fool. It was clear that he was very nervous.

As Millie opened her door, she was a bit surprised to see Ryder standing there especially without her daughter. Once the young man had insured her that her daughter was okay, she relaxed a bit. As he talked, she nodded in understanding. The poor boy seemed nervous, so it must be he had something important to say or ask. She had some idea what it could be, but regardless reminded herself to keep an open mind. After Ryder explained himself, she invited him in.

He thanked Ms. Rose as he was invited inside. Ryder left his jacket and his shoes in the hallway and followed the woman inside the house. He smiled at some of the memories that involved this place; he remembered the times when he used to visit Marley every day during summer vacation, and they’d just make out in her room hoping that her mom wouldn’t walk in on them. Good, old college times.

Millie continued to watch him as they moved to the kitchen. If it was something important he wanted to talk to her about, then she figured it would be best they were comfortable and sitting. After they were both seated, she asked if he needed anything to drink or eat. After he decline, she sat back and waited for him to start talking about what he wanted to discuss with her.

Ryder took a seat on the couch in the living room, his hands shaking a little bit. After being asked if he’d have anything to drink, he declined. He definitely didn’t need more coffee or tea.

“Uhm, so you’re probably wondering why I’m here…” He started out chewing on his lip a little. It’s now or never.

As the boy spoke, a smile crossed Millie’s face. “It had crossed my mind why you are here.” She hoped that her smile would put him at ease some.

Ryder looked over at Marley’s mom, trying to remember to keep eye contact with her all the time, something he usually struggled with during some crucial conversations.

“I’m sorry, I know I’m acting weird, but I just wanted to talk about something pretty important.” He spoke, remembering his mom’s words. His feelings were the dealbreakers here, “I’m thrilled that Marls and I have made it to New York. It’s been really great so far, we’re healthy, we’re doing okay, and she’s also about to release some new music. It’s kind of like a dream come true.”

“I’m very glad you are healthy and okay. You two both deserve nothing, but good things and I’m glad you are getting them even if it’s in another state,” she said while mostly teasing about that last statement.

“I love Marley with all my heart; she’s my home, she’s my dream. I believe I can’t be fully happy if I don’t have her in my life. You know how she is…smart, talented, cute…it’s kinda hard to live without all of this in your life.” He grinned, his eyes sparkling as was talking, “I know her, and I know how close you two are, and I just thought she’d want me to talk to you first…it seems like the right thing to do.”

Even though part of her wanted to speak, she knew that it must be hard for Ryder to get out what he was trying to say judging on how nervous he appeared. So, she sat quietly and nodded appropriately.

Ryder took a deep breath for a moment before he continued, “Which is why I’m here, and that’s the reason why I haven’t told her about this trip.” He explained with a small shrug, “Ms. Rose, I would like to ask Marley to marry me, and I would love your permission and blessing. If you say ‘no,’ I’ll wait. You’ve known me for years, and you know how I feel about your daughter. I’ll do my best to make her happy for the rest of my life.”

He still kept his eyes focused on Marley’s mom, hoping that she saw how genuine he was being. Even if his girlfriend’s parents had never made it to marriage, he knew that Millie wanted the best for her child, so he sincerely hoped the woman saw his best intentions. All he had to do was wait for the woman’s response.

His question only came as somewhat of a surprise. Millie knew that the two of them were getting more serious and the next step seemed to be heading towards a marriage. It touched her that Ryder would think to ask her permission. Usually this kind of thing was saved for the father, but since Marley’s dad hadn’t been around for years, she was happy he had thought to ask her. Millie knew how happy Ryder made her daughter. Millie could remember back when they weren’t even dating yet acted like a couple. Marley had been in denial back then, but now she was not shy to say how in love she was. Marriage may not have been in the cards for her, but Millie was glad that wasn’t turning her daughter away from marriage or love. After a few minutes of thinking, she knew that Ryder was expecting an answer.

Millie took a deep breath and looked at the young man seriously. “So you are asking me for my daughter’s hand in marriage? I don’t know,” she paused for a moment before smiling, “How I couldn’t say yes. You make my daughter so happy and I can tell that you really care for her. I know you will do right by her because you have for the past few years. I’m happy that you will be the man she marries. She deserves her happily ever after and I’m glad that it will be with you. So just in case there was any confusion, I absolutely give you my blessing and I promise not to tell Marley. Welcome to the family Ryder,” she told him with a smile and stood up to give him a hug.

#self para #para: what a man gotta do #eventwhatif #//it's either 2 or 20 paragraphs there's no in between when it comes to my self paras #ryder lynn rp

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.8

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, as trial 6 began to get crazy, the audience reared their ugly heads but with only vague hints of their terribleness so far, Danganronpa might possibly be on its last legs already, Tsumugi and the audience spent way too long babbling about their fandom while ignoring the actual characters and story they’re supposed to be here for, Flashback Lights had to be able to create the personalities and talents of everyone here because that’s just necessary for this story’s premise, and Tsumugi started insisting this means that nobody here is real in any sense at all, which is utter bullshit that would have been immediately and comprehensively shut down by Kaito’s wonderful convictions and belief if only he were still here.

…But since Kaito’s not here, this is starting to work on Shuichi.

“Akane”: “Isn’t this what you all wanted!?”

Keebo: “…We wanted this?”

“Leon”: “Yeah, you wouldn’t remember, but you guys were all from the outside world.”

Yes, they don’t remember, which means that they never wanted this! Just like how the Gonta who was executed for murder never meaningfully wanted to kill anyone, because he didn’t remember wanting it!

Also, all technicalities aside, Keebo definitely never wanted this, since there was never a previous owner of his body at all.

Pregame Shuichi: “Number 154… My name is ****”

Pregame Shuichi’s name is redacted here, which suggests that he maybe wasn’t even called Shuichi Saihara. Since they’re creating entirely new characters, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to give them new names as well, after all.

…Except that we the players saw in the prologue that at least Kaede and Shuichi had the same names, so apparently not. But even though it’s kind of awkward that they did keep their names, that’s something else we can just put down to the fact that it had to be this way, otherwise the prologue would have been massive spoilers. As it is, the prologue is designed to reasonably make sense once we learn about how they supposedly wiped their memories of their talents when fleeing the Ultimate Hunt, even though that’s not actually what was going on there after all. If Kaede and Shuichi had had completely different names before the reset, it would have given way too many pointers towards the real truth.

Redacting the auditionees’ names in these recordings, then, rather than being a hint that their names were different, was likely just down to the producers having to protect their identities in case they didn’t get chosen.

These recordings could have been faked by Tsumugi in her lab during this chapter’s investigation, sure, because she’s a freaking shapeshifter and the stupid cospox thing should not be taken as evidence against anything. But if she did that, it would have made more sense for her to not redact the name, to further drive home the idea that this is you, Shuichi, and the person you think you are is just a lie. So the fact that the name is redacted supports the video being real.

Pregame Shuichi: “I promise, if I get selected… I will work as hard as I can!”

No, if you get selected, you will very quickly stop existing. Did nobody tell you that? It… it seems nobody told them that.

Consider that this season is the first time the fourth wall has ever been broken and the process behind creating characters revealed for everyone to see. Without knowing about that, it’s somewhat reasonable that the audience might not realise that characters are created entirely from scratch each time. They might assume instead that the existing auditionees’ personalities are kept mostly intact and just modified to give them talents. So pregame Shuichi here is expecting to still be himself, just with added super detective powers.

It’s also a little odd that the audience doesn’t wonder why the characters they’ve watched in every Danganronpa series never once mentioned that they’re in Danganronpa. Perhaps the general assumption of the audience is that everyone is always somewhat acting because they want to put on a good show, and that the personalities of the characters they see really are lies to some extent?

Of course, random auditionees can’t necessarily be trusted not to break character (especially not when people are dying), and it certainly wouldn’t make a very good killing game if it were full of people super excited to be in a killing game, since that rather defeats the whole point of them fighting to survive and not kill each other. So obviously all the characters very much do need to be written entirely from scratch.

It is admittedly a little odd that these auditionees explicitly haven’t managed to figure this out. However, the people who’d want to audition would be a very specific subset of people who, A, kind of hate their lives and don’t mind throwing them away to be on Danganronpa, and/or B, probably quite like the idea of killing someone creatively in order to get famous. Anyone who’s already a kind, decent and caring sort of person like the characters who’ve actually been in this killing game (well, most of them) would never want to audition in the first place. So maybe that’s why the auditionees don’t question it, because the kind of person who’d audition is inherently the kind of person who misses the point of what really makes an entertaining killing game?

…I am definitely overthinking this, because as we’re going to see in due time, apparently the entire fucking audience misses the point, meaning that these auditionees are actually no more unrealistic than the rest of those morons out there. Think of this as more of a hypothetical: if the audience had been written better, this is how the auditionees could then be somewhat plausible. Though to be fair it would also be easier to just rewrite these bits to have the auditionees be fully aware that they’ll stop existing if they’re chosen, and/or to still hate their own lives but want to become the kind of heroes triumphing in the face of despair or at least dying for the sake of hope that Danganronpa is supposed to be about.

Pregame Shuichi: “I will come up with the best, most gruesome murders, I promise! Everyone will love it!”

This should not be what everyone is watching for! Creative murders that make for an interesting puzzle in a class trial, sure, but gruesome murders are emphatically not the point of Danganronpa. If all the audience wanted was to see people dying horribly, there would be no reason to even make it a game and have the class trials! Nor would there be any point in the whole hope-versus-despair thing, which we’re sure going to be fervently told is totally the whole point later on.

Pregame Shuichi: “And an Ultimate Detective hasn’t been the blackened yet, so I’m sure I can do that!”

It’s honestly kind of surprising none of the writers ever thought of that throughout all fifty-three seasons. And that this didn’t make them think “huh, that would be a novel plot twist, why don’t we do that with this guy?”.

Shuichi: “… Wh-What… was that…?”

It wasn’t you, Shuichi. It was your body and your voice, but that’s all.

Shuichi: “N-No… it can’t be! I’d never say something like—”

Monokuma: “You wouldn’t say that now, but this is you before you became who you are now.”

In other words, it wasn’t him! Monokuma is straight-up agreeing with Shuichi that he wouldn’t say that, because the person in the video was a different person than him! So it doesn’t matter one bit what that creep in the video said. It’s not relevant to the person standing here.

I gather that there’s a proportion of the fandom that believes these videos were faked. Since there’s only the vague possibility of that but no explicit proof of it, I imagine that the biggest reason people believe this is simply out of not wanting to believe the videos are real, because they feel it compromises the characters they love if they were “really” these varying flavours of murdery asshole. I totally understand that feeling – god, the entire story would fall apart if Shuichi, Kaede and Kaito weren’t actually who they seemed to be – but… the videos don’t actually create that issue to begin with. Monokuma outright says here that the people they were before the Flashback Lights are not the same people that they are now. The videos don’t have to be faked for Shuichi and his friends’ characters to not be compromised by them – they never were in the first place.

It’s also relevant that Monokuma is the one to clarify this. While he and Tsumugi have kind of been interchangeable exposition machines for a while, Tsumugi is currently very pointedly trying to make Shuichi and his friends fall into despair by hammering home how fake their existences supposedly are. Since she would never say this, because it’s the complete opposite of what she’s trying to achieve, Monokuma has to be the one to point it out.

Tsumugi: “When we saw your audition tape, we had a flash of inspiration. The weakest Ultimate Detective ever… Wouldn’t it be great to see him grow?”

I’m really not sure why that audition tape gave them this idea in particular. Sure he seemed a bit awkward, but mostly just creepily murder-happy, which isn’t exactly what you want in a hero. Still, however they got the idea… it was a good call. Shuichi’s character arc has been great.

Of course, they also decided it’d be totally necessary to sacrifice a perfectly good pianist and astronaut for the sake of this storyline. Which was also a great story, but much less intentionally on their part.

Pregame Shuichi: “You mean… we were selected!?”

Pregame Kaito: “We got picked!? Really!? Alright!”

Pregame Kaede: “Wh-Whoa, really!? I’m selected for it, too!?”

We get shown this flashback to what apparently happened in the prologue as soon as they heard the words “killing game”. And yes, sure, we the out-universe audience never saw this part back then – but of course we didn’t. It would have been a gigantic spoiler. The game has not been averse to omitting certain things to prevent spoilers, like it also did with Kaede’s crime. We have precedent for the game lying to us, but only by omission. This is a somewhat bigger lie of omission than for Kaede, but it’s still much more reasonable to accept that the game hid a minute or two of conversation that did happen, rather than that it showed us an entire half-hour or so of events that didn’t happen.

Shuichi: “We really… said that?”

Shuichi’s response here also suggests he may well have just actually watched footage of this – the game used its usual flashback format to show us this, but that’s just because it’d be the easiest way to do that. If they did see footage of that, it cannot be faked. Tsumugi may be a shapeshifter, but she’s only one person.

“Fuyuhiko”: “The people you used to be are gone. You’re fictional characters now.”

Yes, they’re gone, so it doesn’t matter what kind of people they were! That video you just showed Shuichi means nothing about who he is now!

“Hiro”: “So you got nowhere to return! All that stuff’s fiction, too!”

Himiko: “Th-Then… my friends and family… My whole life before coming here…”

This is a legitimate thing for them to be upset about, though. It’s going to be so weird and difficult for them to come to terms with that as they start living normal lives once they’ve escaped: the idea that everything and everyone they expect to exist out there just doesn’t. They’re essentially going to have to treat it like all those people just died, and grieve for them, because they felt real to them until now.

(Himiko’s still not mentioning her master though and I am sad about that.)

“Mahiru”: “The only place we fictional characters can live is in this fictional world. Only in this world. Only in Danganronpa.”

Maki: “Only… in this world?”

Not for you, Maki! The outside world is better for you than the fictional world you thought you came from; there’s nobody forcing you to kill anyone out there! At least learning that her backstory is a lie shouldn’t be so bad for Maki, especially because her best friend who might have been the one person she’d be looking forward to seeing again was already dead. The orphanage doesn’t exist either, but her relationship with the rest of the kids there was probably less personal; at least this means there’s no orphanage of kids who will starve if she doesn’t keep killing people.

Tsumugi: “You’re all fictional characters created to kill each other. It’s what the world wants. That’s why… there’s nowhere to run.”

This is also a legitimate concern. However real they may actually be, all the assholes out there apparently don’t acknowledge that, so they’ll be escaping into a world that isn’t even going to see them as people.

Himiko: “E-Enough… I don’t want to know anything else! I’ve had enough!”

Tsumugi: “Ah! That reaction…!”

“Junko”: “Could it be… you fell into despair?”

Even if she did, Himiko’s still expressing her pain very openly rather than the empty, listless despair it could have been. Tenko would still be proud of her! …Though how you fall into despair is maybe not the best thing to be proud over.

“Makoto”: “It’s times like these you need to look to your friends for support.”

“Hifumi”: “However, all your friends are fictional, too.”

Clearly this isn’t enough despair for Tsumugi yet, though, because she’s about to go for where it really hurts. This is, of course, all bullshit, as their friends are exactly as fictional as they are – that is, not meaningfully fictional at all – but since they’re all dead it’s going to be harder to prove her wrong about that.

“Mikan”: “For example… even Kaito’s illness was given to him as part of his character.”

In other words: you murdered Kaito, you fucking murderer. You gave him the most slow and painful death that any Danganronpa character has ever had to go through. The fact that him having the illness was scripted does not for a second mean that his pain wasn’t very, very real. Is Tsumugi ever going to properly acknowledge this and take responsibility for his suffering and death? Of course not.

I’m kind of sad that neither Maki nor Shuichi ever properly pick up on this and get appropriately angry at her for doing that to him, now that they know that Kaito’s death wasn’t really the unfortunate but natural death it seemed to be. I suppose it’s because they’re being too shaken by the “not real” bullshit right now to be able to properly hold onto the fact that Kaito’s death still really mattered and is still very worth getting worked up about.

Tsumugi: “I was the one who came up with that plotline and gave him that virus.”

I mean, sure, you came up with the “Kaito dies from a virus” plotline. The entire delightful character arc that Kaito went through as a result of that? I highly, highly fucking doubt you had even the slightest inkling that any of that would happen.

(Also look at her still not properly admitting that she killed him.)

Tsumugi: “I was also the one who came up with the plotline where you fell for Kaito.”

Nope. I’m calling complete bullshit on this one.

See, I don’t think Kaito was even necessarily meant to make Maki into his sidekick in the first place. Making Shuichi into his sidekick – sure, that was definitely planned as part of Shuichi’s arc that Tsumugi just mentioned. But Maki seems more to me like her intended purpose in the story, in-universely, was to kill someone because of her tragic backstory as an assassin. She could very easily have been the murderer in chapter 2 if she’d seen her own motive video like they were all supposed to. And while Shuichi is very noticeably weak in the normal sense of the word and therefore someone whom it’s easy to imagine Kaito would want to take under his wing, describing Maki’s problems as “weakness” is a lot less natural. It probably didn’t even occur to the in-universe writers that Maki was weak in the way they’d expect Kaito to do something about. Yet Kaito saw her weakness and chose to help her anyway, because he was more real than they were thinking of him as when they scripted out expected interactions between their planned characters.

So the idea that they’d give Maki an artificial crush on Kaito when they never even should have expected them to interact all that much in the first place seems very unlikely.

Then there’s the part where Maki’s crush on Kaito doesn’t feel artificial and arbitrary at all. Tenko’s crush on Himiko? Now that I can buy was something planned from the start, especially since she had it from the start. She mentions in her FTEs with Kaede that she really admires performers and that’s why she likes Himiko so much, but that alone should have made her even more into Kaede, who behaved much more like a performer than Himiko did at first. So apparently Tenko also just had a particular thing for cute little magical girls, which could therefore very believably have been written into her. But there’s never any sense that Maki was written with an inexplicable thing for larger-than-life space doofuses. And as I talked about with much satisfaction when Maki confessed her feelings, the focus was on the friendship she had with Kaito – the friendship that Tsumugi likely didn’t even expect to happen in the first place. Her feelings grew from that friendship over her time with him and did not exist to begin with – she said she “fell for” him, not that she was always in love with him. So no, Maki’s feelings for Kaito were entirely something that happened on their own and were not planned.

Himiko: “Then, what about Tenko? Was she always defending me because—”

But even for feelings that were almost certainly scripted, that doesn’t really matter on the whole either. Tenko still genuinely cared about Himiko as a result of her crush, regardless of whether that’s what the writers wanted of her. She didn’t know she was following someone’s script. And Kaito supporting Shuichi may have also been scripted, but that doesn’t invalidate how much he cared either, nor make his support of Shuichi any different to his support of Maki just because one was scripted and one probably wasn’t.

“Kazuichi”: “Because that was her character. It’s the same for me, too.”

(Excuse me, there was plenty more to Kazuichi’s character than just his pathetic crush on Sonia, please and thank you.)

Maki: “Y-You’re telling us�� this is all a lie? Even… my feelings…? Are you saying even *those* were lies!?”

However, this is really getting to Maki, exactly like Tsumugi wants it to. And this isn’t about Maki having put her romantic feelings on a pedestal and being upset because romantic love is totally superior to platonic love. It’s because, like I talked about back when she confessed, these feelings were supposed to finally be something that was her own. Something she’d come to feel entirely by herself, without anyone else, not even Kaito, telling her to or wanting her to, without anyone moulding her to be this way. But because she’s so used to the idea that all she ever is is a puppet for someone else’s whims, she’s much more liable to believe Tsumugi’s claim without questioning it. She doesn’t have enough confidence in her own feelings yet to be able to try and stand up for them like other people (like especially Kaito himself) would. Turns out nothing was her own after all, her feelings and desires really didn’t ever matter, and she’s only ever going to be controlled by people with far more power than her who don’t care about her at all. This is not specifically about romantic love and is really Maki being hit right in the issues that she’d finally been getting somewhere with.

(Though I kind of doubt Tsumugi realises that she’s targeting Maki’s issues so directly with this. She’s probably just saying this because to her this is all about romantic love which is obviously the most importantest bestest kind of love ever and so Maki must be sooo sad to think it’s all fake, right?)

And if Maki’s feelings towards Kaito had never turned romantic? Tsumugi wouldn’t be able to claim this at all. “Oh, hey, the fact that you see this person as your friend and care about them because of everything they’ve done for you? Yeah, those feelings are fake, they don’t mean anything, I made you feel that way, you don’t really care about them and all the things they did for you at all.” Doesn’t work, does it? Because feelings of friendship cannot come out of nowhere like romantic ones sometimes can. Which is why, in an out-universe sense, Maki’s feelings did need to be partly romantic for this to work. And it’s also why Tsumugi can’t take quite the same approach with Shuichi, even though his friendship with Kaito actually was scripted, because Shuichi’s actual platonic feelings there would have naturally arisen thanks to Kaito’s actions and were therefore very obviously not artificially induced.

Tsumugi: “Well, if you’re going to call fiction a lie… then yes.”

Fiction is technically a lie in the sense that it’s something untrue, but it’s otherwise quite different from lies in that it’s not meant to deceive anyone. Everyone consuming fiction knows that it’s untrue and just enjoys being able to suspend their disbelief and pretend that it’s true for little bit anyway.

That said, Maki’s feelings for Kaito, and her existence as Maki the Ultimate Child Caregiver/Assassin, and everyone else’s existences, are neither a lie nor fiction in the first place.

Tsumugi: “Everything in this world has a writing credit. All our words and actions…”

No, they don’t! You are not scripting every single word that has been coming out of everyone’s mouths! There were some events that the writers managed to influence, sure, and those can be considered to have a writing credit. But not even remotely all of it. And not most of the best parts, for that matter.

Tsumugi: “…are just a bunch of lies.”

They’re not lies if the person saying so doesn’t know it’s not true! Gonta was not lying when he said he didn’t kill Miu, nor was he lying when he said he was raised by a race from a decades-old videogame. Nor was anyone lying when they did or said anything that they believed was the truth from those memories they were given.

Tsumugi: “Even that thing Kaede said that moved Shuichi’s heart…”

Shuichi: “…What?”

…

Kaede: “I believe in you, so you should definitely believe in yourself!”

…

Tsumugi: “That was a lie! Cuz the real Kaede said…”

Pregame Kaede: “I’m perfect for a killing game. I don’t have any faith in humanity.”

The Kaede who said she believed in Shuichi was not lying and was no less real than the other one. Tsumugi is conveniently avoiding talking about the part where they’re completely different people (something Monokuma has already established) so that she can try and give the impression that our pianist Kaede was obviously completely insincere and knowingly lying and following a script.

Also, remember the very first post of this commentary where I made note of pregame Kaede talking about how rotten the world is? Yeah, that matches this quite well. And the thing is, Tsumugi probably doesn’t even know that pregame Kaede made that comment, and even if she does it’s not like she’d care to make an effort to match it, because Shuichi isn’t going to remember that. That match is something that’s only there for the out-universe audience to pick up on. So if Tsumugi did fake this video, it sure is an oddly specific coincidence that pregame Kaede’s words match so well. As such, it makes a lot more sense to me to assume that this video is real.

Why did pregame Kaede even think that having no faith in humanity made her perfect for this, though??? Does she not realise that obviously the kind of person who makes the killing game interesting is someone who does believe in people and has that belief battered and tested as they watch their friends kill each other? But as frustrating as this is, again, someone who did realise that wouldn’t be the kind of person who’d ever want to audition in the first place.

…And, again, the entire audience are going to turn out to be assholes who completely miss the point, so all complaints about the auditionees’ attitudes should just be lumped in with complaints about that, of which I will be having plenty soon enough. Practically everything wrong with this chapter boils down to how badly-written the audience is.

Tsumugi: “And who could forget Kaito’s inspiring line?”

…

Kaito: “Don’t forget! The impossible is possible! All you gotta do is make it so!”

…I can accept that this line of Kaito’s might have been scripted. He said it a few times, like it’s a phrase he just liked to say a lot, even in his backstory (maybe to his former sidekicks), so this was probably written into him. But that does not matter. He had no idea he was following anyone’s script and said it for his own reasons while meaning every word of it.

Uggghhhh look at this absolute asshole here. There is nothing in this world that can ever convince me that this was, in any meaningful way, the same person as our heroic Luminary of the Stars who supported his friends with everything he had and selflessly put himself through untold extra pain because he was convinced that doing otherwise would let everyone down. But I do appreciate the painful jarringness of how completely opposite pregame Kaito was to the Kaito we’ve come to know and love, at least.

And it also matches quite well with the face we saw pregame Kaito making when they arrived in the gym, again back in the very first post of this commentary. That was not a situation in which Tsumugi could have been faking it, and you can’t convince me that that was ever the same person as our Kaito, either.

Pregame Kaito: “I’m not just gonna be in Danganronpa, I’m gonna kill everybody and win!”

That’s not even how it works! Pretty soon it’s going to be made apparent that everything always ended with hope winning, so a blackened has never managed to kill everybody and win, and if they did, that wouldn’t make a very entertaining story! (Grumble grumble unrealistic asshole audience, please file these complaints with the rest that will be coming later. Such complaints about the auditionees certainly shouldn’t be taken as evidence of the videos being faked, because the rest of the asshole audience that we see very definitely exists.)

It does seem that the in-universe writers might have got the idea for Kaito’s reckless stubbornness and inability to accept the possibility of failure from this person here, who is brazenly refusing to acknowledge the extremely high chance that he’ll just end up dead.

Pregame Kaito: “Once I’ve got fame and fortune, I don’t gotta worry about what’s impossible.”

But evidently this dude was also just a selfish asshole who didn’t give a fuck about anybody else and was quite happy to slaughter a bunch of people just to get what he wanted. The absolute least Kaito he could possibly be in all the most important ways. It’s an insult to Kaito that this guy shared his name and appearance.

(If Kaito were alive and seeing this video? It’d barely shake him at all. He’d just go, “Well, that’s not me,” in the most straightforward, isn’t-it-obvious tone of voice ever, and that’d be that. His conviction in who he is would be far too strong for this to get to him like it’s getting to the others.)

Tsumugi: “Every single thing that has happened in this killing game… is a lie!”

Shuichi: (It’s all… a lie?)

Unfortunately, while Tsumugi is quite obviously lying if you think about it for even a few seconds, Shuichi can’t see that.

Shuichi: (The reason we’re all here right now is because of them… Because of them… I was able to change. That’s why I was trying to live for them, too… I was trying so hard to stay positive… But… if even that’s a lie…)

It’s no coincidence that Tsumugi chose specifically Kaede and Kaito to do this for, because they were the people Shuichi depended on the most for his strength and confidence. Even though they’re not here any more, he’s still so dependent on the memories of who they were, to the point that upon hearing that they never existed, seeing supposed “proof” of that, he loses the strength to even question it. It just breaks him.

Since Tsumugi actually wrote the gist of Shuichi’s character arc, including the part where he came to rely on both Kaede and Kaito, she might at least have a reasonably good idea of what she’s doing this time. The thought that’d hurt Shuichi the most isn’t the supposed loss of his own feelings, like with Maki, but rather the supposed loss of his friends’ feelings and support towards him.

If Kaito and Kaede were only still here, they’d both be doing everything they could to reassure Shuichi that what Tsumugi’s saying doesn’t matter. Even if their support of him was scripted and planned, it doesn’t change the fact that that feeling of wanting to help him was real to them and not a lie they’d never have done anything else even if they’d known the mastermind wanted them to do this. But… they’re not here any more. So it’s heartbreakingly easy for Shuichi to forget how real and genuine their support felt when it was happening, now that they’ve faded into memories. Especially now that he’s learned that most of his memories were entirely fake to begin with, giving him the sense that he can’t trust anything that he thought he knew and believed was real.

I really love the way the game shows a collage of illustrations of Shuichi being inspired by both Kaede and Kaito, and then just makes them twist and swirl into nothingness, reflecting exactly what’s happening with Shuichi’s perception of them. And all his strength came from them, so if he didn’t ever really have them… he had nothing, right?

(Also Heartless Journey is playing and I am rather giving myself some sads here.)

Shuichi: “… Why… am I here? Why did I even survive this long?”

Shuichi’s had his exhausted-looking sprite for a while here. It’s especially fitting in this moment, considering where his mind was at when we saw him looking like this last chapter, and the fact that he’s been driven to wondering what was even the point of him surviving. Noooo, Shuichi.

“Hajime”: “This is fiction. There is no greater meaning.”

Shuichi wasn’t chosen to be the hero and survive until the end like this just by meaningless random chance, though. It was because the story of someone weak like him overcoming his weakness and growing stronger despite all his struggles is a meaningful story that can inspire people.

However, the fact that Tsumugi seems to genuinely believe that there’s nothing meaningful to fiction is going to be her downfall. Really, it was a bad move for her to even reveal to everyone that they are fictional, because that’s going to allow Shuichi to protest against this sick practice and end not just this game but all of them. But Tsumugi probably didn’t even realise what a risk that was, because it apparently doesn’t occur to her that there could be more to them being fictional and that they could even do anything but despair over its meaninglessness.

“Junko”: “How ‘bout that? You in despair yet? It will be troublesome for us if you don’t despair under our rule.”

Yep, that’s exactly why Tsumugi has been doing all this. If she can get everyone to despair, then Keebo will come swooping in with his hope robot powers and the audience will still get a story they want, despite how very off-script things have gotten. That’s why she’s been telling such blatant lies about how fictional everyone supposedly is.

(Also, her “Junko” has been switching personalities a lot more lately. I guess that’s just to match with the switching personalities in general, or perhaps to be more of a direct callback to the first game than she was earlier now that literally everything else she’s doing is callbacks.)

“Junko”: “Viewers flock to see your despair. That’s why all those people out there look sooo happy! See!?”

“Shuichi’s reaction LOL”

“LOL the face of despair.”

“Mmm, Shuichi’s despair <3”

“despair taaaimu!”

“You’re all in despair LOL”

“S-tier despair!”

Aaaaaand right about here is where the outside world just completely stops being recognisable human beings in any shape or form. This here is a general grab bag of some of the things that are being said, none of which is remotely like how any actual person should react to seeing a fictional character’s despair.

Yes, I have also been enjoying Shuichi’s despair this whole time. But I’ve been enjoying it in the sense that it’s been making me empathise with him and feel his pain. It makes me desperately want to reach into the screen to encourage him and help him in any way I can even though I know that’s not possible because this is how the story goes. If I was reacting in this completely detached, alien, “hurr durr lol despair” way that doesn’t seem to even remotely care about the characters themselves, that’d be the story failing to do its job properly!

Where was that person from near the beginning who was cheering “You can do it, Shuichi!”? They should still be cheering him on, trying to tell him that his friends weren’t all lies and neither is he and he can still do this if he doesn’t give up! The whole point of despair in these Danganronpa narratives is supposed to be so that people can root for hope to overcome it!

…It’s worthwhile to mention that there’s a good chance these comments are deliberately cherry-picked to be the ones most gleeful over the despair, since the hope fans are soon going to start showing up in droves, but even so, geez, these people. Have some fucking empathy.

(Though next time we will also see that the rest of the audience who are rooting for hope aren’t really doing so in a way that involves empathising with and caring about Shuichi’s pain either, so, eh.)

Shuichi: “Is this what the outside world wants? Is this what they want from us?”

It makes sense that this would be what they want from a character they’re insisting on seeing as fictional, but it does not make sense that they would want it for this purpose! Almost nobody should ever want it like this!

Monokuma: “Well, yelling for help is useless for fictional characters anyway. It makes the viewers even more depraved and obsessed when they feel sorry for you.”

Yes! Feeling sorry for them, that’s the point! This is the closest anything in this narrative ever gets to talking about the actual reason why watching fictional characters suffer is enjoyable – because it makes you care about them more, it makes you want to engage with the story more in your in-universe desire to see them overcome it and feel better, it makes the story have more of an effect on you! “Depraved” is a really uncharitable word for this – although maybe that’s more specifically for this context where they’re actually watching this happen to real people, in which case, yes it very much is.

Monokuma: “They watch, knowing that they shouldn’t, just to revel in the depravity of it all.”

The “knowing that they shouldn’t” part is after all something that only applies to watching real people die. Nobody in the actual real world should feel guilty for enjoying Danganronpa games because characters die in them – that’s the point. Nor should anyone feel guilty for enjoying any fiction where bad things happen, because that’s one of the main ways to create conflict, which is one of the driving forces of a story. If the narrative presents the bad things in a way that implies they’re okay to do in the real world, that’s another matter – but bad things happening in and of themselves do not make a fiction wrong to enjoy.

Shuichi: “It’s all a lie… isn’t it? Me… Everyone here… Everyone who died…”

Their deaths were not lies, Shuichi!

Shuichi: “I can’t fight… for a lie, can I?”

You thought it was worth fighting for before you knew it was a “lie”! Why should the fact that she’s calling it that change anything? You know the killing game still happened!

Around this point, Clair de Lune – Kaede’s piano song – kicks in as BGM. It’s pretty lovely and appropriate and heartbreaking.

Tsumugi: “No matter how much you grow, Shuichi, you’re still weak after all… Now that you know it’s all lies, you’ve gone back to the weak Ultimate Detective…”

She’s not wrong here. Now that the friends he depended on so much for his strength aren’t here any more, now that she’s convinced him that they never really existed at all… he still has the potential to be as weak as he always was without them, just like he always had the potential to be strong if he did have their support.

This concept might be why this is working so much on Shuichi, Maki and Himiko in particular. All three of them started off weak, and only grew stronger thanks to the events of this killing game and the support their friends gave them. Upon hearing that all of that was supposedly fake, it wouldn’t be hard to see how that’d bring them right back to where they started.

That’s also why none of this would work nearly so well on Kaito if he were still here – because he started off strong, and still had a good amount of that strength by the end even if the killing game had weakened him in a lot of ways, such that it wouldn’t go away just because he’s being told it’s a lie.

(And all of my yelling at Shuichi isn’t trying to imply that he’s being stupid to not realise all this – I know that he’s still weak enough in some regards that he’d let this break him apart. I just wish I could help him, like an actual person would.)

Himiko: “…”

Himiko’s no longer expressing her despair in a loud, emotional way and is just being depressed and listless like she used to be. Hearing that Tenko’s concern for her was all planned and scripted probably pushed her back into that.

Tsumugi: “Well, that was surprisingly disappointing… But I guess it’s okay! We’re still on script!”

Not even being subtle. This was entirely a ploy to keep things vaguely on the generic Danganronpa hope-versus-despair script so that Keebo could do his thing.

Shuichi: “Everything’s a lie… Everything’s meaningless… Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve faced together…”

You still faced that together! Kaede and Kaito still died for you! That’s not meaningless, no matter what else around it might have been a lie!

The shutting-down sound effects used when a protagonist stops being the protagonist are really quite appropriate here. It very much feels like Shuichi.exe has encountered a problem and needs to reboot, and it’s going to take him a while to do that.

---

[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 6 #class trial #commentary

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siren-theories · 5 years

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Do Sirens have body hair?

TL, DR.: Females seem to consistently not have body hair, for males it is more complicated and seems to be a genetic choice between having body hair or facial hair.

All images are taken from the PG-13 show Siren on Freeform.

When I first saw the question by the very talented @imaginejolls (go read their Siren fanfic on Ao3 it is awesome) my initial answer would have been an (overconfident) "of course they do have body hair". This was based on a simple assumption:

Sirens are biologically very close to humans, so close in fact that they can mate with humans and produce fertile offspring. This is a big deal as it means that Sirens are more closely related to humans than donkeys are to horses or zebras are to horses (different species that can produce infertile offspring with each other). So therefore it stands to reason that in everything (except for those things the show explicitly tells us are different) Sirens are generally replicating the human baseline. We see this for example with their diets - while they prefer fish, they are biologically speaking omnivores (Cami and Ryn for example ate fruit and digested it with no problem at all). So based on that I would have confidently claimed that they would have body hair.

I soon however realized that a more measured approach needs to be taken. For example, while things work the same or may even look the same on the outside there are several cases in the show where they are not the same. Take for example the reproductive system of the mermaids, which definitely is not human in structure even though it has human elements, works like a human reproductive system and is compatible with a human reproductive system. Another example of "similar looking, same function but different" would be the bones and muscles of our mermaids which are way denser and stronger than their human equivalents. So while I still think the general argument that they are very close to humans is a correct one there needs to be a case-by-case study being done to see if we can find evidence in the show itself for questions such as the one that is being posed here.

Let's dive deep into the visual evidence of the show for body hair. I apologize in advance if pictures of armpits and male chests are not your thing.

Part A: Females

We certainly never see as much as a hint of body hair on Ryn or any other female mermaid. The most exposed we see Ryn is in a backshot (Episode 102), her undressing on the boat (in 201) and the transformation scene in 210. She does not have any visible body hair in those scenes.

Ryn in 102 - notice the abscence of any body hair, especially in the armpit area.

Ryn in 201. At this time she has spent enough time out of the water that we would expect her to exhibit some signs of body hair.

What about the lower body areas? Ryn's legs are smooth and hairless.

Ryn’s (and Maddie’s) legs from 209 (there also are plenty of leg shots in 205 when she was on land a lot longer but these suffer from bad lighting or lack of focus. Suffice to say they too do not depict any body hair).

Now it might be the case that Ryn decided to adopt human customs and started shaving her armpits and legs. I highly doubt this to be the case though as Ryn is quite possibly the person most comfortable with her body on the show. Everytime her body comes up in conversation she is very proud of it (except when one compares it to sharks). There is no indication at all that she would conform to human beauty standards or even feels the need to change anything about her body. After all, if she does not care a lot about what clothes she wears what are the odds that she suddenly cares about how much (hypothetical) body hair she is showing? And I cannot imagine any situation in Season 1 where Ben or Maddie or Helen would have decided to teach Ryn how to shave her body hair, nor can I imagine any situation where something this intimate and something this unimportant to the issues facing our protagonists in those episodes would even have been discussed. Considering Ryn reacted almost violently to slight pressure on her arm during an attempt by Ben to measure blood pressure in episode 103 it seems highly unlikely anybody would have even tried bringing a razor blade near her body.

Therefore, it seems most likely that Ryn at no point shaved her body hair and therefore it seems most likely she never had any body hair on her legs or armpits in the first place.

Due to this not being some HBO fleshfest no visual evidence exists for the genital areas (and thank god for that because that would not fit the tone of this show or the respect with which the show treats its characters). However I find it very unlikely that Ryn or other female sirens would have body hair in the genital area if their entire body is missing body hair elsewhere. Body hair in that particular area would also cause problems with transformation as said area is covered by layers of additional flesh and muscle in the water form. Having hair covered by flesh and muscle is not a good thing biologically speaking (if you want a horror show google "ingrown hair"). Given how Ryn's skin is also more insulating than human skin as shown in 208 there would not be a need to have body hair in the first place.

Furthermore, we have no indication that for the females forming body hair is even an option to form during their transformation.

Ryn's immediate post-transformation body in 210 shows no sign of any body hair (neatly sidestepping the whole ingrown hair issues).

The same seems to be true for the other female sirens who never exhibit any sign of body hair, not even when in states of light dress or undress (various scenes in Helen's shop or in the forest from the first half of Season 2 come to mind.)

Convincing any of those apex predators to start shaving seems out of character for any of the humans that interacted with them (they had a lot more important things to do) and in any case I cannot imagine that any attempt to convince an apex predator to let a sharp blade come anywhere near vulnerable body areas would have gone over well. In fact, it would have been downright stupid and suicidal to even attempt such a thing.

Therefore I have no other option but to conclude that female Sirens do not have body hair in human form.

Part B: Males

But what about the Males? After all, body hair does differ in humans as well according to their respective sex.

Frank's body exhibits facial hair but otherwise is devoid of body hair, as seen in 205 before he jumps into the water.

This is also several days after his first transition, so if he has the capacity to grow body hair in those areas we would expect it to be shown there. As there definitely is nobody who has ever taught Frank to shave his body I would therefore argue male Sirens also have no body hair.

So case closed. No body hair whatsoever.

And then it got complicated, because there is one male Siren who constantly exhibits body hair.

Levi in Episode 108 (the first time he comes on land) has chest chair in human form. We get a closeup of his chest in Episode 201 when Ben drains the fluid from his lungs, this also shows clear chest hair despite him only having transformed a short time ago.

Levi in 108 and 201.

However Levi is also an aberration in that he has no facial hair at all (and does not grow any during his time on land) but has body hair at the time of his transformation. Truth be told I do not know how to classify Levi. Is he the one exception that prove the rule? Is he the rare case where the recessive genes (body hair) triumph over the dominant genes (no body hair) in the males? Or did the writers and directors forget to be consistent here?

Assuming that Levi is not special in the genetic category the conclusion must be that for male Sirens you either have facial hair but no body hair (Frank) or you have body hair but no facial hair (Levi).

I tried to get a tiebreaker in the form of the walking sperm bank of Episode 214 but the lightning in his scenes prevented me from getitng any good evidence either way. I also wish I had more than two examples to base this analysis on - I am in general much less certain when it comes to the males than when it comes to the females as we have many more examples of the former than the latter.

So after examining all visual evidence and the case for and against body hair, I have to conclude that my earlier assumption of them having body hair was wrong for the females and at least partly wrong for the males. It seems females have no body hair at all and males seem to either have facial hair or body hair - but not both.

Thank you for reading this long post about a (seemingly) trivial issue. I look forward to any criticism or additional information you might have, feel free to drop them via reply or message anytime.

TL, DR.: Females seem to consistently not have body hair, for males it is more complicated and seems to be a genetic choice between having body hair or facial hair.

(Oh and here is an imgur link for bigger versions of the pictures in case you have trouble viewing them in the low resolution I used for the article)

#ryn #siren #siren freeform #analysis #god this took longer than I thought #why does Levi have to complicate things #need more male sirens to be sure #hmmm what should I analyze next

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kae-karo · 5 years

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knlalla’s fics of 2018

hello dears! now that the year’s coming to a close, i wanted to round up a quick post of all my fics from this year, please enjoy! i’ve highlighted my personal faves/the ones i’m most proud of :’) it’s been a wild year, so thanks so much to everyone for all your kind support!

one-shots

<2k

Phancakes (x) 1k (g) - the bois being domestic on pancake day (look okay we don’t have pancake day in america i have to live vicariously through dnp), insp by this tweet and the iconic vid no tw! just domestic fluff

did you make me a video for valentine’s day? (x) 1k (g) - Dan has a tradition, every year on Valentine's day he asks Phil the same question... no tw, minor angst

my talents include... (x) 1k (g) - Dan's whiny because Phil won't pay him any attention, so he sends out a passive-aggressive tweet. shoutout to @daliensgrandads on tumblr for bugging me to write this (instead of my current wip whoops) no tw, unless whiny!dan counts

Days like this (Security) (x) 800 (g) - Some days just aren’t good ones. tw depression

Balance (x) 1k (t) - Phil wants to post the bunk bed insta story, but Dan just wants to sleep. no tw

i missed you (x) 1k (g) - basically their history as told by dan no tw

the way you look tonight (x) 1k (g) - dan has a vid to edit. phil has other ideas. you have to listen to the way you look tonight by frank sinatra (youtube, spotify) whilst listening to this okay no tw

Chan (x) 1k (g) - insp by the anon that sent "demon hc: phil just chuckling fondly at dan thirsting over chan, while chan searches the bus and they’re both stood outside in pyjamas on the canadian border. idk, it’s just the kinda fond, secure bde that phil exudes these days" no tw

morning coffee (x) 1k (t) - inspired by the lovely anon who sent me "I dreamed Dan posted an insta story of Phil drinking coffee in bed and he was laying on his shoulder and I kept trying to show people how cute it was but no one cared, and when I woke up I remembered that you would care, and I realized it was a dream and now I’m a tad disappointed in my subconscious for trolling me." no tw

doing nothing often leads to the very best of something (x) 2k (g) - based on this (x) and a lil imagine i wrote (x) and expanded on so thanks to the lovely anon who originally sent "that pic phil posted of dan for his bday i think where dan is making a funny face and theres a nearly empty wine bottle in the background hhhhh that makes my demon heart drop" and to the lovely anon who asked for more! no tw

The House at Pooh Corner (x) 1k (g) - insp by the anon that sent "Full demon mode: Im just finishing up the Undertale series for the first time and all I can think about as Dan and Phil talk back in forth in their different character voices is how #blessed any future child of theirs is. Just imagine them snuggled up with a kid on each of their laps, reading Winnie the Pooh and doing voices for all the characters. RIP my heart." and the anon that sent "I've been having a really bad day. And something that I find really cute is imagining what Dan and Phil would be like as parents. (noting that you don't have to have kids ever to be a fulfilled human, just that people being good parents warms my heart). Hypothetically, what do you think it'd be like? I bet Dan would surprise himself by being a good dad. b/c he'd want his kid to feel free to be themselves and we all know he can be very protective when he needs to be." no tw, parent!phan

waffles (x) 2k (g) - phil goes to the 24hr diner with the hopes of seeing his favorite waiter (insp by me seeing a cute waitress at a diner. unfortunately none of the rest actually happened to me lmao) no tw, meet cute

it’s not living if it’s not with you (x) 800 (g) - dan and phil in bed at phil's parents' home, briefly reminiscing no tw

>2k

if we stopped shipping phan (x) 8k (g) - what would happen if the entire phandom just...stopped shipping phan? insp by this post about not shipping phan for a month cause they'd freak out. Happy Valentine's day, @phantasizeit! no tw, friends to lovers

sleepover in the moon room (x) 6k (g) - It's a tradition they've had for years (Note: this was written with the intent that it can be read completely platonically or non-platonically, whichever you prefer. It's not written to imply one way or another.) a platonic fic sorta lmao

printer error (x) 16k (m) - Dan's a fanfic writer who's desperate to meet the AmazingPhil, but one printing mishap could bring him closer to his idol than he ever anticipated. no tw, strangers to lovers with a bit of fic commentary

everyone knows that (x) 5.5k (g) - They fight more often than they don’t, but that’s just how relationships are. Everyone knows that. Phil bakes when he’s worried, especially when he's worried about Dan. And Phil bakes quite a lot. Dan hates that he's the cause of Phil's nervous baking, that Phil's always so stressed because of him, but Dan has a hard time feeling too bad when the outcome is a plate of warm cookies. no tw just some angst

The Seven Deadly Insta Stories (x) 7k (e) - A collection of seven short fics based on the seven deadly sins, as told in the form of insta stories dnp didn’t post. as a prompt from @phanfichallenge to post a fic every day this week, have my tour fic twist on the seven deadly sins!! no tw, tour fic(s)

i’d do anything to not be alone (x) 16k (t) - I don’t know why I bother waking up. It’s one of those nonessential activities, like eating or drinking or breathing. But I do it, because if I don’t, then nobody would water the plants. Phil left and Dan doesn't know why. But he has to take care of the plants, because Phil would be so disappointed if he came back and his plants had died. no tw, just lots of sadness n a bit of angst but it does, as always, end happily i promise

dark purple sky (darkness comes out to play) (x) 4k (e) - It’s not that he hates parties, it’s just that- well, no, he hates parties. And costumes. And showing up to parties in costumes, and showing up to parties decidedly not wearing costumes, and all the mumbled judgements that come along with doing so. And he hates sweets - really, the only things he does like about Halloween are the autumnal vibes and the cool weather, and experiencing those certainly did not require his friends dragging him out to some abandoned castle grounds for a half-assed late-night party. Or the one where Dan gets a blowjob from a complete stranger in the middle of the forest on Halloween. no tw really, strangers to lovers?, mostly just pwp

Properly (x) 10k (e) - Dan's been trying to take advantage of the all-hours pool for a late night swim, but some guy always shows up before him. no tw just pwp and some strangers to lovers

chaptered

Demons and Diners (x) 65k (m) - A broke Dan, on the run from his previous life, finds temporary shelter in an abandoned diner...for the night? tw depression, some blood mentions, but happy ending as always!

What day is it? (x) 32k (t) - It's the first day of the semester, and it's already gone to shit: Dan's late to his first class, finds out his mortal enemy, Phil Lester, is the TA, and gets rejected by the girl of his dreams, but at least tomorrow's a new day...right? Aka the one where Dan and Phil are stuck reliving the same day over and over and can't figure out why. no tw except some major angst, uni au, enemies to lovers

Axiom (x) 31k (t) - Axiom: a proposition that is not actually proved or demonstrated, but is considered to be self-evident and universally accepted. Dan's out for the umpteenth time at the bar for its weekly speed-dating night (not that they'd actually call it that). tw depression and a really cliche plot twist whoops but a happy ending, always

one second (x) 41k (e) - When you spend your life getting glimpses of a myriad of possible futures every time you get a little emotional, you tend to lose sight of reality, of the present; a bad day turns into a bad week because all you see are the worst-case futures. You get a little excited about something, things start to go your way, but then all you can see are the realities where things are even better. Life tends not to measure up. Or the one where Dan meets Phil on a plane, and maybe reality starts to become better than even Dan could predict. no tw really, strangers to lovers

slow-closing doors (x) 44k (t) - SECRETS, DRAMA, BETRAYAL (okay no betrayal dw). Phil's agreed to be an RA for his floor this year at uni, and he's determined to be the best RA ever - after all, this is these students' first year, he wants them to have the best year ever. Loosely inspired by Freeze Tag by Caroline B Cooney. tw minor violence nothing graphic just a lil scary, uni au strangers to lovers

Peter Phan (x) 37k (m) - Phil's woken in the middle of the night by a mysterious guy at his window who's intent on dragging him off on an adventure, and for some inexplicable reason, he agrees. Dan's stuck - quite literally - in his own head, and he's desperate for anyone to help him escape. Maybe, if he's lucky, that person could be Phil. He hopes it is. tw depression and suicide attempt, implied/referenced non-con, lots of angst, but definitely a happy ending, strangers to lovers

angel boy (x) 22k+ (e) - for the anon that sent "Oh fuck, now I need a smutty fanfic with twink!Dan taking it from behind with his angel wing tattoo (or real ones for that matter... actually, yes please, real ones. And Phil has a kink for being a bit rough with them... maybe Phil's a demon... fuuuck, someone write this for me?)" Aka the one where angel!Dan goes into a demon club looking for a bit of entertainment. no tw, my attempt at pwp turned into porn with a plot lmao

Sea Glass (x) 58k (t) - Phil arrives on the Isle of Man to house-sit at his family's cabin while it's repaired and sold. Except the cabin's in far worse shape than expected, and Phil's got to find somewhere else to stay no tw really but like i updated this a few times this year so i’m counting it

Exile (x) 172k (e) - Exile's a fucking bitch. Dan finds himself kicked out of town and searching for literally anywhere out of the rain - somehow, he must have just enough luck, as he stumbles upon a seemingly abandoned house in the middle of the forest. Except it isn't abandoned, and the resident isn't exactly...normal...

#phanfic

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warsofasoiaf · 5 years

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Hergrim and the Westerlands Campaign, Pt. 5

Oh, you misunderstand. It’s the depiction of it that gives Alexander one of the reputations of being this unconventional movement wizard. Cao Cao’s movement being exaggerated way before the 200 liis sort of the same effect. It’s a brilliant move, but heroic mythmaking makes it into something different entirely, and GRRM likes to use some of the heroic mythmaking for his fantasy story, which was part of my original point with the whole Birnam wood deal.

Ah, I get you now. I was being far too literal rather than thematic. I don’t have anything against heroic mythmaking per say, just so long as it’s used correctly. Using the Battle on the Ice as presented in Alexander Nevsky as the model for Stannis’ upcoming battle in TWOW (assuming that the Night Lamp theory is correct) is an excellent example. In real life, the ice never cracked under the retreating knights and they didn’t drown (and casualties were actually relatively light for the Germans), but GRRM definitely seems to be heading in the direction of a similar scenario. However, he’s not just well and truly prepared the ground for the deception to revealed, but created a situation in which it can plausibly happen.

With Robb’s campaign in the Westerlands, I can buy Grey Wind finding the goat track (or it being attributed to him instead of some peasant or smuggler) and Robb making use of it to bypass the garrison at the Golden Tooth. I can even imagine him surprising Stafford’s army in a night attack and destroying it. These are plausible scenarios and fit well with the various bits of mythmaking from historical sources. The thing I have an issue with is Robb’s very large and noticeable army managing to move a couple of hundred miles through enemy territory undetected. That’s just a shade above mythmaking than I’m willing to accept.

This is a weird thing because I get all sorts of conflicting information on the Westerlands-Riverlands northern pass, in impassibility and defense. Do the Westerlings control that stretch of land, can you drive an army column through it? Another reason why an atlas would be awesome.

WOIAF has the Westerlands firmly in control of the narrow strip of land from about halfway along Ironman’s Bay down to the low mountains/high hills north of the Tumblestone. I’d say that you could definitely drive an army through it, though it’s possible that a lot of the land is marginal and tends towards pasturalism and supplemental rye or oat based agriculture and thus couldn’t sustain a large army.

Relooking at the maps just now, I’m puzzled myself regarding the Tumblestone’s valley, since none of the maps, whether the original maps in AGOT, the map in ADWD, the above map from WOIAF or the maps from Lands of Ice and Fire show anything like a serious barrier to an army along that valley. The lack of a major road isn’t really that serious an impediment, and none of the terrain looks to be unsuited to an army, unlike the mountain range passing through the Golden Tooth. Any ideas?

Noted, I’m just pointing out that the lack of sallies and trying to figure out why they didn’t utilize the castle network that they had.

That’s a fair point. It’s hard to tell whether it’s down to a lack of manpower or GRRM’s relative unfamiliarity with the small scale of medieval warfare.

I normally agree that Tywin is a cautious commander, but his notorious blind spot comes when Lannister dominance and supremacy (joined at the hip with his own) is challenged. The Clegane plot is evidence of that, he lucks out significantly in Robert not being around and Eddard capable of influencing him at court, and in Clegane attacking a royal banner at the Mummer’s Ford.

Another fair point, and one I’ll concede without qualification having thought it over some more. Tywin would indeed be likely to go for a decisive hammer blow and throw all his spare strength at it if Robb baited his trap appropriately (such as with himself or someone wearing his armour and next to the Stark banner).

According to the PrivateMajor Timeline, Whispering Wood happens 22 Dec and Whispering Wood happens 9 Jan. Figure that Jaime spent some time resting his troops and investing the siege, and I think he doesn’t have enough time to hit Fairmarket.

I’ll have to respectfully disagree with the PrivateMajor Timeline. 14-18 days would be a conservative estimate of the time between the battle under the Golden Tooth and the battle outside Riverrun (I prefer 10-14 given a distance of 140 miles). Catelyn VIII (AGOT) has the Golden Tooth happening “less than a fortnight past”. Robb is still at Moat Cailin then so, depending on how much less than a fortnight the battle was, the battle at Riverrun might have already occurred. either way, it probably occurred soon after he began the track through the Neck. Given the distances involved, Jaime had at least a month before Robb even reached the Twins (as per my last post) in which to rest his men and send a detachment to Fairmarket.

I wouldn’t be surprised again if Jaime did go slim on the baggage train explicitly because he was said to be aggressively hunting down raiders and didn’t want to bother with such trivialities. I agree that if that was the case, it’s overegging the pudding, unless Jaime’s later chapters were going to have him get gritty with the baggage train metrics.

Which is still a potential problem for Robb. Maybe he has another detachment to hit it at, or close enough to, the same time as Jaime’s main body, but I doubt the terrain is going to be quite as good for an ambush, any unforeseen delays in attack might well allow large portion to scatter, including mounted men who could flee back to the camps (and who would be wearing little to no armour, and thus able to move faster for longer), and some might well escape in any case. Historically, it’s proven very difficult to achieve complete annihilation in the necessary manner.

This is a good discussion, I hope the readers are getting as much from it as I am.

Ditto!

Hergrim and the Westerlands Campaign, Pt. 6

Ah, I get you now. I was being far too literal rather than thematic. I don’t have anything against heroic mythmaking per say, just so long as it’s used correctly.

Same. From a writing perspective it’s actually quite brilliant, because the dramatic considerations have already been made in the course of heroic myth-making. This isn’t to undercut GRRM’s ability to craft drama or the written word, he is talented at both, but the more audiences change, the more they stay the same.

The thing I have an issue with is Robb’s very large and noticeable army managing to move a couple of hundred miles through enemy territory undetected. That’s just a shade above mythmaking than I’m willing to accept.

I suppose that’s fair. I admit, it works more as a character piece of the military prodigy dead before his time ala Alexander the Great than the nuts and bolts of every movement. Perhaps if Robb or a POV near him were given some more wordspace, we could have seen some more ground as to how that worked, or more stuff to complain about.

WOIAF has the Westerlands firmly in control of the narrow strip of land from about halfway along Ironman’s Bay down to the low mountains/high hills north of the Tumblestone.

The lack of a major road isn’t really that serious an impediment, and none of the terrain looks to be unsuited to an army, unlike the mountain range passing through the Golden Tooth. Any ideas?

I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of those maps, especially the Vale one. I’ve always pictured that stretch as treacherous, barely passable, rain-swept cliffs, with any road similar to the Yungas Road, prone to collapse, simply because we don’t see the house charged with holding that northern pass held in the same esteem as the Leffords, Crakehalls, and Serretts, the guardian houses of the Westerlands on the principal roads. Similarly, we don’t see ironborn landing at that area by Seagard and marching into the Westerlands to pillage under the Hoare overlordship of the Riverlands. But I’ve got nothing that gives me a firm “this is it” on that terrain.

That’s a fair point. It’s hard to tell whether it’s down to a lack of manpower or GRRM’s relative unfamiliarity with the small scale of medieval warfare.

No reason it can’t be both. GRRM has a pretty big blind spot when it comes to numbers.

Then the question would be whether he would pull an Artys Arryn at the Seven Stars. I’m doubtful, if only because it seems that the Northern commanders (Roose excepted) seem to mandate putting one’s self in the place of greatest danger in an extension of “he who passes the sentence swings the sword” to the sphere of military command. I’d pick Robb over Tywin if only because Robb has been handily defeating Lannister armies before, but I am 100% with you that a hypothetical Tywin-Robb cavalry showdown is a far higher hurdle.

Well, this would be more something to take up with PrivateMajor than myself, but Jaime’s army did take Raventree Hall and burn it before the Whispering Wood. That might explain some of the delay. Similarly, chasing Marq Piper around might cost Jaime a few days, as might giving his men a rest day after the battle of Riverrun as a celebratory reward, along with some strongly worded demands to Tytos Blackwood for his surrender of the Riverlander garrison.

Historically, it’s proven very difficult to achieve complete annihilation in the necessary manner.

No arguments there, unless there’s an encirclement like at Cannae.

Ditto!

Well, if @tbhasaka is any judge, they’re liking it. Now I need to stop playing Resident Evil 2 and Hearts of Iron 4.

-SLAL

#hergrim #war of the five kings #strategy #robb stark #submission

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eunahfmdarchive · 5 years

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my heart gets teary.

let me in lyrics & composition self - para. ( written with plenty of time to spare because i had the muse. ) warnings, please read: eating disorder, low self - esteem, body dysmorphia, mild suicidal ideation & a longing for something to change. word count: 1415, discounting three lines of lyrics.

the song starts as a feeling. it’s hard to keep everything bottled up all the time the way that she does & her feelings somehow, deep inside her, manage to develop somewhat of a LIFE of their own. they grab hold of her, dictating her moods & her actions, down to her sleeping patterns. eunah spends most nights wide awake, sitting in the chair in the office of 7rophy’s dorm, fingers drumming aimlessly on the desk, eyes staring blankly, unblinkingly, out at the city through the window.

other nights, instead of leaving her prone in the chair, the feeling directs her on a manager - approved trip through the streets of gangnam to the dimensions headquarters, where she settles down in front of a piano and plays aimless drumming takes a new form, fingers moving up & down the keys until the tips of them ache. the outcome is somewhat more HOPEFUL in tone than what most might expect from eunah, known for her melancholy temperament. she leans into her first love as she writes for inspiration musical theatre. she plays and experiments until the sun rises for several nights in a row, making notes and tearing up sheets scribbled with abandoned ideas, only really sleeping in waiting rooms or during car rides.

she listens to a lot of les misérables, the last 5 years & into the woods for inspiration when she isn’t sleeping, turning the volume up loud to drown out everything else, her own weakly grumbling stomach included. she pays special attention to the songs belonging to the women and the themes of growth and change within.

suddenly, the nights of frustrated idea scrapping turn around and soon, eunah is crying onto the piano keys, hands shaking as she sits back, rubbing away her tears from her cheeks as quickly as she can. no one is here to see her cry, but she still won’t let the tears fall. she hasn’t cried in so long & the taste of salt feels foreign on her tongue. the song is done, she thinks. she records it on her phone and listens to it back with her a couple of the other members of 7rophy. it’s not like the OLD DAYS of pepe or eighteen anymore. ever since nu.clear, little bit by little bit, they’ve gotten to have a little more say in what they produce. when crystyle happened, they let eunah herself get stuck in with the concept change truthfully, she found the girl crush concept exciting. even if the others LAUGHED at all of her powerpoint presentations that she made in preparation for the comeback, she didn’t care. one of the things she misses the most about the theatre to this day is the collaborative effort it takes for everything to come together, and as gratifying as it has been to see their main rapper finally have the chance to let her talents shine ever since the release of latata, eunah wants to have that opportunity too.

but why should dimensions let her? she’s never given them any real reason to believe in her song - writing capabilities. so, eunah sits on the music for her song for several weeks before she has the courage to show it to their producers. they pick the sheet music up off the piano when she finishes playing it for them, not that she needed to look at it by now.

“ is this . . . POP MUSICAL sound what you were aiming for? ”

she nods.

“ okay. there’s a real story in the music, you can hear it. come back to us with lyrics, and we’ll see. and dry your eyes. ”

eunah does, and quickly too. she hardly even realised she had started crying.

the lyrics take a long time to write, though not as long as the music. she cycles through ideas, but they either fall into one of two categories that gets whatever she’s jotted down instantly written down:

1. too personal / she comes under enough scrutiny for her weight already. there’s no point talking about how she wishes she could pull out her own guts, pull her skin taught over the bone beneath & fade into nothingness a passive sort of suicide. what would that do for her? pull up all those old videos of her from before, from before she dropped all the weight. that’s the last thing she wants to happen. she sees that in the mirror every day already.

2. too . . . wannabe theatrical / eunah should, she quickly realises, stop trying to be the next stephen sondheim or jonathan larson. she’s nowhere near that level yet, nor will she be any time soon.

but once she finds the balance, the words seem to flow from her pencil like water. she writes first in english, and then she remembers one of her most common criticisms isn’t she still too AMERICAN ? from hosts pretending they can’t understand her all for some laughs at her expense, to the harsh realisation that she wasn’t as fluent in korean as she thought when she first arrived as a trainee, she’s experienced it all. so she writes in korean.

if she can’t bring herself to expose her SOUL, her most intimate of issues, she can speak about something close to it her longing to be different & her inability to figure out where to start.

she’s scared, truthfully, of what she’s doing to herself, knows where it ends, but distorted thinking patterns are difficult to break, and, in a way, eunah’s resigned herself to the disorder. it’s her ONLY REAL COPING MECHANISM, something she can’t imagine herself without. she knows she was a different girl once, but that was a long time ago, and it’s someone she can’t find the way back to. this melancholy truth about kim eunah is glaringly evident in what she writes about her world on the path to fall asleep, about her heart that needs to UNTHAW.

she brings the first draft to the producers, and they ask her where the song is going & pose her only two questions to go back to the drawing board with; “ you were trying to tell a story through the music, weren’t you ? shouldn’t the lyrics match? ” they think it’s too HOPELESS, that it needs a more uplifting conclusion. this hypothetical girl ( who they all know is eunah herself ) needs to initiate the change she wants to see in herself, somehow.

and so, writer’s block hits her again. it’s harder to crack this time, as eunah struggles to find a way to make everything she comes up with sound less damn sad. eventually, she comes to the decision, that maybe, just maybe, the song’s narration doesn’t actually need a change in tone, at least not from her perspective. instead, the listeners just need to THINK things are looking up as they believe in this version of eunah she’s presenting to them, more than the real eunah could ever truly believe in herself.

kim eunah doesn’t believe she’s capable of change, not any time soon anyways. but there are people who do. her friends, her family, the other 7rophy members they are who she’s really singing about when she’s referring to this BOY who’s knocking on the door to her heart, absorbing her & giving her the opportunity to finally see what everyone else does, and to re - learn herself. they are the best parts of her. it’s a love song to them, disguised as something more palpable to dimensions’ producers, who still see the worth in her even though she’s long given up on herself.

but, behind the hopefulness, there’s something else. an edge perhaps, sharp & sinister. a line of french, spoken in that tiny speaking voice of hers, breaking up the powerful vocals and melodies. tu ne saura pas où commencer / you will not know where to start. a word of warning to those who may try to let her in, that it’s a bigger task than they realise. the final line too: this girl is a boy’s wish. and wishes, eunah firmly believes, do not come true.

the song gets approved for a portal release. they bring her to film a music video in the snow, where she SHOOTS HERSELF with a slingshot. a better version of herself at that.

eunah smiles, a sad pull at the corners of her lips as she starts to cry on the flight back to seoul. the director understood: this girl is a boy’s wish.

this girl is the girl’s wish & wishes belong in fairytales.

#fmdverification #eating disorder tw #suicidal ideation tw #body dysmorphia tw #this is big n long n sad n i spent ages writing it so more replies n stuff will come tomorrow bc rn it's bed time x

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cardhouseandthecage · 6 years

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@any-shadow aaaand for your last question. aAHAHAH, ok. i can take this in two ways

1. A hypothetical scenario wherein (without realizing they’re the same person) Mischance, LV’s Jester and second-in-command, meets The Cardmaster, Lord of the Realm of Eternal Light etc etc.

If they were just hanging out, without knowing the details of one another’s endeavours, they’d get along splendidly. They’re different enough that it wouldn’t be exactly like meeting yourself, but similar enough for a lot of OH MY GOD FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT moments. They’re both very charming, and would find one another very charming (though mischance might find the Cardmaster a little uncanny for reasons they can’t quite place). They both get very excited when they find anyone who thinks like them and geeks out over the same things they do and so forth; they’d teach one another new tricks and cast illusions back and forth while comparing the flavour notes of various teas or discussing magic theory. They’d compliment each other’s clothing. They’d probably pull a clothing swap. Instant besties. It’d be really cute. Once they found out about one another’s lives though they’d have to hate eachother on principle. Mischance's life’s work is to heal the fissure between Faerie and Reality in new and exciting ways that will theoretically make all of existence a lot less miserable. Mischance believes that necromancy is crucial to this endeavour---that death has been unjustly stigmatized, and that if we learn to communicate with it properly wE CAN UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE AND RE-ORDER THINGS TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD!! Mischance is very dedicated to helping people, too: they live to serve. To serve everyone. That’s their MO. And the Cardmaster?? The Cardmaster makes a mockery of that. The Cardmaster pretends to be so pleasing and magnanimous and helpful, but he’s selfish in the extreme. He effectively tortures other people to get what he wants from them; he doesn’t even know what helping someone else really looks like anymore. His whole life is a lie, and he’s pathetic enough to believes it. He says he’s fighting evil and working to build a better world? He is evil. He’s tearing up all the bridges Mischance and LV built together; he’s making it worse. He’s shunned death and refuses to engage with it. He’s reaping potential from Reality on a massive scale (from the lives of real people in the world, people who are suffering, people VERY MUCH LIKE the sort of person Mischance was as a human) and channeling all of that energy into one stupid little illusion that’s not helping anyone but himself. And it’s not even making him happy. AND HE’S DOING IT??? ON THE SITE OF LV’S FORTRESS UMMM?? ? EXCUSE YOU??? GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE????

And obviously the Cardmaster disapproves of Mischance on principle because Mischance associates with a necromancer, mischance FUCKS A NECROMANCER. JESUS CHRIST THAT’S HOT I MEAN SCANDALOUS AND REPREHENSIBLE IN THE EXTREME. Mischance practically is a necromancer at this point. And the Cardmaster feels sorry for Mischance. He really does. Mischance has a great mind: they’re clearly a very talented enchanter. And it’s cute that they’re trying to make the world a better place and all, but they’re fooling themself if they think they’re going to achieve that by ~~embracing the darkness~ or whatever they tell themself it is they’re doing. They’re going to get themself killed, and it’s not going to be pretty. Death doesn’t play nice. It’s really sad. It makes him sad. Mischance is so cute! Maybe if they spoke he could get through to them, make them see reason...

2. The actual scenario as I imagine it (because i do conceptualize mc and the cm as engaging in a kind of dialogue as mischance transitions over) So i like playing around with the ambiguity of whether and to what extent Mischance chose to become the Cardmaster. It might not have happened if it hadn’t been for the initial incident of taking LV’s meds to survive the impact of her departure: that was how Mischance first “met” the Cardmaster, and they were never quite the same after. But they didn’t necessarily have to keep him around. They might still have been able to remain themself. In fact, they actually went a long while before before embodying the Cardmaster permanently: they tried multiple times to bring LV back first, or to find any evidence that she might return. They weren’t very careful, and nearly got themself killed all over again with trying. After one particularly disastrous attempt they resorted again to the elixer (in a smaller dose) to stabilize themself, and then again another time, and so it became a habit. Mischance stopped hoping a long time before they stopped trying. They didn’t know what else to do with themself. The only time they ever felt remotely OK was after taking the elixir, and that feeling became the Cardmaster. So the difference between scenario number one and what really goes down is this: the Cardmaster actually comes to Mischance at their most vulnerable---when they are broken and desperate and afraid---and in that state, Mischance can’t call the Cardmaster on his bullshit. The Cardmaster sees a way forward where Mischance sees none: the Cardmaster has a plan. He understands Mischance perfectly, too (better than LV has understood them in years), tells them exactly what they want to hear, and he looks good---he feels good---he’s so clean, so courteous, and so safe. Nothing can touch him. He promises protection. He’ll make the darkness go away; he’ll wave his hand and all those terrible things will never have existed. All Mischance has to do is let him take over. Let him exist, and he’ll do everything. You are so tired, Mischance. You’ve done all you can---you’ve tried your best. Let me help you. You can rest.

anyway here’s a shitty doodle of the cardmaster grabbing mischance’s butt

here’s another of them....u know. just being cute together.

it’s not like i ever imagine them making out, that’d be weird.

#about mischance #about the cardmaster #meta #MCM #the cardmaster #mischance #alsdf i should make some of these doodles less shitty some day

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personalcoachingcenter · 3 years

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LEADER DEVELOPMENT: This Is What Business Professionals Do

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/leader-development-this-is-what-business-professionals-do/

LEADER DEVELOPMENT: This Is What Business Professionals Do

Leader development efforts in business has progressed through a series of stages from the trait theory of the early 20th century, to the behaviorists of the 1950s, to the systems analysts of the 1960s. The 1980s brought the influence of Total Quality, the focus of the 1990s was Principle Centered Leadership.

Over the past few years the focus on many businesses has been on continuous process improvement strategies including Lean Six Sigma and Competency Based Models. Combining these continuous improvement strategies and leadership development programs can help businesses grow and pivot for success.

The current operating environment demands we combine the best aspects of each with new and evolving approaches. Tomorrow’s leader development efforts should include:

Rapid decision making

Adaptability and flexibility enhancement

Servant and trans-formative leadership

Continuous learning

It’s difficult to generalize business leadership as an activity, it must be tailored to an organization’s context, culture, climate, and character. Leadership in the private sector differs from that in the public sector, and even in the public sector, it varies according to the objectives of the business.

Leadership is different than management. While there are many ways to define both, my personal view leads me to define leadership as the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and to control a group of people successfully. Leadership focuses on interpersonal interactions with a purpose of increasing organizational effectiveness.

This added emphasis on organizational effectiveness is by way of individual effectiveness.

Management, on the other hand, is a process that results in getting other people to execute prescribed duties for organizational goal attainment. As a process, it is focused primarily on efficiency. Both leadership and management are critical organizational functions, and some mistakenly believe that management is somehow inferior to leadership. While these competencies are complementary, our focus is leadership.

Many theorists recognize three domains of leadership.

Physical; This aspect of leadership is the most visible and varies by context of service or function. One must possess certain physical attributes, such as endurance to be successful. There are other physical attributes, like appearance and presence, that have traditionally been considered essential as well.

Moral; Without question, this aspect is the most critical in developing leaders. Character and morality is one of the most important facet of leadership.

Intellectual; Many businesses spends the lion’s share of their leader development resources on this training and education, and therefore, it will be the focus here.

Assessment for the Future

With all of that as historical backdrop on leader development in business, it’s possible to assess the current landscape and future direction. Much of the leader development program from entry level through the strategic level within business is based on the traits and behavior/style approaches popular during the last century with continuous process improvement strategies added for good measure.

However, many programs are beginning to focus more squarely on the context of the current operating environment; an environment characterized by volatility, uncertainty, and chaos.

Really effective leader development programs focus on full-spectrum operations that reflect unconventional and conventional environments. Dynamic leadership skills are demanded in such environments. Dynamic leader development programs must be perfected to meet such challenges.

Issue #1 Decision Making: The “Coin of the Realm” in Leader Development much attention has been paid lately to the development of intuitive decision making or rapid cognition. Malcolm Gladwell’s wildly popular book “Blink” has direct reference to its application in the business. Rapid cognition, however, relies heavily on instantaneous pattern recognition. Much of a employee’s time is spent attempting to discern patterns in interpersonal interaction, technical functioning, and interplay.

At the entry level, students are only introduced to the rules and standards upon which patterns are established. There can be no realistic hope, except for a particularly talented few, to bypass the stages of cognitive development. Coming to terms with chaos and complexity takes cognitive and attitudinal adjustment. Many employees simply lack the confidence in their own abilities to make those adjustments quickly. As with all personal development, education and experience combine to create the desired effect.

There can be no educational “silver bullet” to obviate the need for experience. Forethought is the precursor to intuition and was identified by Theodore Roosevelt to be the most important quality in preparation for leadership. Forethought, unlike intuition, can be honed exclusively in the classroom.

Replicate the experience desired as closely as possible. Adding stress to the lesson is critical. Learner confidence rises as hypothetical and real-world scenario simulations are introduced, tested, and debriefed. Actual experience cannot be replaced, but adequate forethought can be established. Intuitive decision making is predominantly the product of experience.

Forethought is, on many levels, a precursor to the skills demanded of leaders to make timely, appropriate decisions. And decision making constitutes a key objective of leader development programs. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that decision making training seminars have had any effect on participants.

Those seminars are typically based around selection strategies for choosing from among multiple courses of action. Such analytical methods miss the point entirely. Research has shown that decision makers, particularly those in business settings, “spend more time sizing up the situation than comparing alternate courses of action.”2 “Sizing up the situation” is only one function of forethought.

Some of the most convincing research assembled to support this “domain expertise” approach has shown that the key is in teaching students to maximize their experiences, rather than provide them with some form of analytical decision-making matrix. Like the case study method recommended earlier, Decision Skills Training experimented with during business training exercises beginning in 1998, provide a generalized template that could be applied across the levels of business education.

Issue #2 Developing Key Traits for Uncertain Environments: Adaptability and Flexibility while it is evident the current operating environment the business finds itself in calls for skill sets more consistent with the leadership of Lewis and Clark than Patton, the business education and training structure that produced Patton remains virtually unchanged.

The first step in inculcating a spirit of adaptability is to change how leadership is taught rather than to simply change what is taught. Training that is based solely upon the traditional task / condition / standard model breeds rote conformity. Education that is based solely upon the objective / lecture / assessment model breeds the same.

Traditional methods encourage analysis of a challenge and selection of standard solutions drawn from anticipated options. Methods that encourage the synthesis of information include reflective journal, the Socratic Method, demonstration assessment, broad skim reading, and the study of the philosophical principles that underlie the immediate challenge.

The second step in developing adaptable leaders is to focus on material that encourages creative thinking. Becoming familiar and comfortable with research in the field is critical. From psychology to sociology to business history to philosophy, all fields that explore human response to complexity must be considered. To make this broad grounding feasible, careful selection of instructional techniques and content must be undertaken by all stakeholders in the leadership development process.

Flexibility is typically defined as a personal quality that allows an individual to alter his or her opinions, practices, beliefs, or approach based on changing demands. Flexibility is absolutely essential on the 21st century battlefield as the environment and mission may change constantly. A precursor to the quality of flexibility is open mindedness. One can not flex to the environment if one is not willing. Many believe it is open-mindedness that is sorely lacking in leaders at every level and in every context. Business is no exception.

Open-mindedness is the personal quality that enables flexibility in the workplace and can be encouraged, if not developed in the classroom environment. This attribute can be developed at the business level in the following ways:

Creating empathy for those who have gone before (case study)

Exploring other world views and debating them fully (Socratic method)

Reviewing credible research in the topic at hand (broad skim reading).

In traditional, structured organizations such as the business, open-mindedness is not often prized as an essential trait. This can be changed by fully debating the position of other, non-traditional, and even non-business viewpoints. Adding culture education to a business system always pays dividends.

All of this empathizing and careful study of other world views need not lead to what is perceived in the business culture as “touchy-feely” or “politically correct” Instruction. Quite the contrary. Exploring alternative world views typically leads Americans to reconfirm their belief in their underlying principles, and the business who service it.

Free market capitalism presents the best hope for opportunity and upward mobility Each human being has fundamental worth, a value that guarantees freedom from physical harm or the harmful interference of government applying the world views of competitors or adversaries against these three factors of American life serves to confirm faith in the system that Americans uphold.

Instructors need only to be guided through its purpose and method. These methods, however, will vary according to the developmental level of the target audience. Leader development programs that ignore this do so at their own peril.

Issue #3 What Really Counts: Inspiring young people to buy into your business, rapid decision making and development of particular competencies is balanced with the timeless approaches that define the practice of business leadership, and those are servant leadership and transformation leadership. Servant leadership, as the name suggests, is an approach that encourages a person vested with authority to approach the task with a desire to serve first.

Although Robert Greenleaf is credited as the modern author of this approach, leadership based on trust, empathy, collaboration, and the ethical use of power is an ancient concept. Ultimately, this approach is tied up in the character trait of selflessness and resists classroom applications. One simply has to want to lead this way and take certain behaviors and attitudes until it becomes natural. It’s more challenging for some than it is for others.

Transformation leadership, a term coined by the famous theorist James MacGregor Burns, seeks to raise the level of motivation and morality in organizations. This is done by appealing to more long-term intrinsic needs and less to short-term extrinsic demands. In business settings, this is often bound up in charismatic leadership but does not depend upon it. It depends more on a high degree of competence in interpersonal communications or emotional intelligence. The younger the workforce, and the business represents a greater demand for a leadership approach based on intrinsic motivation and transformation leadership.

Some organizations get it right, while some have a proven track record of failure. Morale, esprit, and retention rates are typical metrics for measuring success. I think we’re getting better at developing leaders grounded in servant and transformation leadership, and the timing couldn’t be more critical. The Millennial Generation seems to have come to expect such leadership.

In sum, the intellectual component of leadership development in business is an amalgam of process improvement techniques, decision theory, and competency enhancement, but ultimately it’s a matter of leaders committed to selflessly putting the needs and interests of their followers above their own and then effectively communicating that care and concern.

No borrowed leadership techniques are going to replace that fact. No highly theoretical management practices are going to change that fact. As trite and clichéd as those words may be, they still capture the ultimate truth for aspiring and practicing business leaders. Everything else is secondary.

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