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bengiyo · 1 year

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Be My Favorite Ep 2 Stray Thoughts

Last week, I was completely unable to resist my anti-Krist bias in my reactions. I find that I am being rather harsh to his performance, particularly because I think the overall level of talent in my GMMTV BL experience has risen so much in the last six months. Still, I am curious where this show intends to go and will try to give is a solid three episodes to make its case.

We met Pawi, a 30-year old man trapped in a loneliness prison partially of his own making, who has spent over a decade resenting a guy because he approached the woman he liked from a distance. Through magic, Pawi has been transported back to the past and has an opportunity to change the events. He used that time to see his father once again, and then beef with the guy he’s mad at instead of maybe talking to the woman he’s been obsessed with. The only point I will give Pawi is that, even if he thinks this is a dream, he didn’t do anything weird to Pearmai. Gawin is doing a solid job, so that’s holding my interest.

I like that GMMTV is incorporating English and Romanization of names into the credits more. It makes it easier for those of us in the West to track down other members of the crew and follow their work.

Fellas, is it gay to rest your head on another man’s crotch?

I do appreciate the show having Pisaeng push back on Kawi’s misanthropy. Kawi is correct that he has to deal with difficult circumstances, but I also agree that he has made his loneliness a self-fulfilling outcome.

These boys are too goddamn big for all these piggyback rides.

Gawin is so pretty, and he’s getting better at acting. I was enamored with him when he closed the trunk of the cab.

I’m such a SOTUS simp. I saw Kawi struggling to open this door and was immediately taken back to Arthtit accidentally slamming the door on Kongpob’s arm.

So, Pawi can choose when he goes back and forth by interacting with the snow globe. Interesting implications.

There’s something to be said about the idea that you take the first steps at friendship with someone and the potential that has to radically change your life. I think I’m a bit sad that Kawi has no memory of the 12 years of changes he’s experienced. He gets to fiddle with his life, but doesn’t get the ten years of new experiences.

I feel like I missed who Max was in the first episode, because I do not know his connection to Kawi at all.

I like Pisaeng. Adopt the prickly recluse as your friend and push him to strive for the thing she says he wants.

This is the second time Kawi has asked to borrow Pisaeng’s money. I’m buying into @ginnymoonbeam‘s analysis that Kawi is a lot like Rain (LITA), who is better served being spoiled by a handsome rich guy than trying to be a masculine ideal.

Pisaeng is doing the wingman thing really well.

Gawin is so tall.

Interesting way to include an episode 2 kiss. I’m not opposed!

Oh, I like the final scene where Pisaeng goes back for the plushie because he wants to make Kawi happy.

This show is legitimately intriguing. I think I’m going to stick around for a bit. I’m enjoying some of the ideas about how malleable the future is, and how important our connections to others are.

#be my favorite #thai bl #bl series #be my favorite meta #Ben watches

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organizationhimself · 3 months

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i want to talk about a phenomenon i keep seeing with regard to shipping that i find super annoying. it's not, strictly speaking, a problem, but i do think it's gotten to this point where it's actively undermining a lot of character analysis and attempts to reconcile narrative theming.

the thing i'm talking about is when every available scrap of characterization MUST support, let's say, the relationship between minor character Blorble and main character Scrunklia. you and i can freely disagree about whether Scrunklia's tragic past is perfectly aligned with Blorble's bitter misanthropy, we're going to see that kind of thing very differently and that's not what i mean. i'm talking about when Blorble is casually late to a team meeting with the rest of the cast and Scrunklia is peeved, and the character analysis gleefully decides that, because Scrunklia's hair is slightly mussed (which gets pointed out later and made a big deal of and leads to her opening up to a different character about her stress levels), this means she and Blorble must have made out before the meeting.

...like. what? it can't be that this character is visibly stressed out about the unfolding plot of the story, which is actively bringing up uncomfortable memories for her that she is working through with a VARIETY of characters on the cast, and the text demonstrates other examples of her expressing her dissatisfaction with Blorble's ability to respect other people's time? that's maybe not the most romantic interpretation but it's going to be more honest to their characters than a variation that specifically hunts for ANYTHING that positively, and only positively associates Scrunklia's every expressed feeling, opinion, and belief with Blorble (and vice versa), regardless of the cost to her emotional depth and arc.

this extrapolation can warp to the point that the analysis triumphantly declares that not only is Blunklia endgame, but it is supported by the overarching narrative themes of the entire work, up to and including the wedding at the end between Scrunklia and Meowmoe where she looks sadly in the direction of the graveyard where her parents are buried, and where she and Blorble had a conversation once, so that actually means she's thinking regretfully of Blorble while she says her vows.

do you see what i mean? and i could even agree with this interpretation at points. i might think that, while Meowmoe is an excellent friend to her, they don't actually know how to handle Scrunklia's ups and downs as effectively as Blorble. i might agree that thematically, it makes sense for Scrunklia to have a relationship with Blorble that is, if not directly romantic, very intensely platonic and he is one of the emotional support beams in her life. but...that doesn't mean everything this character is and was and will be should be DIRECTLY related to this other character and no one else! there are other characters in the story. sometimes it is about them. sometimes it is about only the one character and THEIR past, and THEIR feelings, and it does them a disservice to deliberately twist that to have the most tenuous possible connection with this particular beau. not only that, it weakens the overall understanding and fandom interpretation of that character.

obviously my examples above are fake and don't have any direct correlation to actual characters (that...i'm aware of??) so don't read into that, because i have an actual example, and here's where i know i'm going to be hitting a wasp's nest dead on.

everybody buckled in? ok.

let's talk about soriku.

i want to preface this by saying i have shipped soriku since 2002. i spent my teenage years in lethal combat with the sokais for an embarrassingly long time, so i'm not here to cast stones, i know my sins. and i don't expect this argument that has been raging back and forth for nearly a quarter of a century to ever actually die down.

my issue i'm taking with it is that a lot of the soriku analysis i see these days does what i'm talking about above, and deliberately undermines sora and riku's individual relationships to other characters (whether they're interpreted as romantically charged or not) as well as their own individual characterizations, in order to fit them into this mold where riku is the caretaker of sora and the Most Importantest Specialest brightest light in the whole entire world, and actually kingdom hearts has been about his relationship to sora the entire time and nothing else.

like...do you think for even a minute that riku would appreciate being told he is actually some sort of bright light that eclipses kairi? that eclipses sora? his entire character arc is about finding a way to accept his darkness and grow in spite of and around it. other characters in the series shout in dismay that no one has ever been able to use light and darkness together like he has. why take all that nuance away, why boil all that down, in order to justify him being sora's direct leader and guide to all things and sole confidante? didn't we establish in kh2 already that their relationship has changed? that riku has always wanted to be more like sora, in the same ways that sora has grown up envying riku for his strength and talent, and riku had to grow and set aside his pride in order to not just expect sora to follow him, but to follow sora sometimes? i can't stress enough that this interpretation of riku is actively deconstructing his entire, fascinating character growth back to its foundations to try to reestablish him as sora's fearless leader and the actual bearer of the light with nary a shred of darkness in his heart. the chosen one, magnanimously letting his exalted eyes rest on the ordinary, unremarkable delivery boy.

and this is coming from a really specific place. because kairi is presented as sora's guiding light in so many ways (and i have a different essay about how this is important to them but also a glaring disservice to her), so...if we're going to cleave to the school of thought above and EVERYTHING sora ever does, says, and thinks must naturally draw his eyes back to riku no matter what, then of course any reference to kairi as being remarkable to sora in some way that riku does not share or exceed must be stamped out of relevance or twisted to serve riku instead. (this doesn't necessarily mean that sora can't have a relationship to kairi that's in some ways important, but all the MOST important and emotionally charged bits can only ever belong to riku.)

this includes, of course, the bane of my existence: the meteor shower.

the argument i've seen for why the meteor shower memory must be a real memory is that namine can't just make memories up, she can only alter existing memories. this...is obviously not true? multiple characters talk about how she can just create whatever she wants and rewrite reality to be whatever she needs; marluxia and larxene are explicitly relying on this fact and directly demand it of her in ways that namine never objects to on the basis that she can't do that, and it's demonstrated in the canon. there was never a real little girl on the islands who was friends with sora and riku and kairi and left suddenly. there was never a friend who used to draw pictures of them on the beach while they played.

because namine didn't WANT to replace someone in sora's life, she only ever wanted her own place there (and knew she could never actually have it). if she wanted to, she could have just made it so that she was kairi all along; that kairi was not alone when she arrived during said meteor shower, or else sora suddenly recalls that it wasn't kairi he met with in the caves in traverse town, but a friend who'd left the islands long ago. it wasn't kairi he saved. it wasn't even kairi he parted from at the end of kh1.

the thing is it seems to take namine much less time to create false memories. when she finally starts working with sora's real ones, she indicates to him that it will take some time (and there were other complications but if she needed him to literally go into cryostasis, we're not talking a week or two). it's never suggested that she alters his real memories in the canon; she describes it as taking apart the links in the chain and attaching the new links. the ones she MADE.

but ok, for the sake of argument, let's grant this limitation even though it's not supported by the text. and let's ignore namine's character, too, and say she'd actually do this to sora on purpose because it doesn't actually matter to her to have her own role in her little fantasy of sora being eager to protect her. why doesn't she just replace kairi, from the start? theoretically this would be easier than going through the effort of coming up with her own storyline to explain who she is and where she went.

"namine's only doing it that way so sora doesn't realize his memories are being replaced." would sora not recognize that such an important memory of riku was being replaced? if namine decided instead to replace his memory of kairi washing up on the beach with herself, do you think sora wouldn't find something wrong with that? why would he so easily and cavalierly assume that this again, allegedly so significant and unique event that happened with one of his two best friends in the entire world, just...actually happened between him and this person he only vaguely remembers? doesn't that mean he barely remembers it even before namine gets very deep into his memory, and he doesn't really think of it as significant at all?

furthermore--if we're treating this as "actually it was riku who said he'd protect sora," then why does sora remember this from the wrong perspective? the replica remembers too, but every memory he has is fake, namine has unrestricted access to him, and she can demonstrably rewrite his memories at whim. sora is the one namine is trying to convince! why would she alter the memory to not just directly replace someone in sora's memory (like she has never done with any other memory of his), but replace him in his own memory? if the memory was real and riku was really the one there, what sora should be remembering is namine swearing to protect HIM!

and that's not even the worst of it, because namine has deliberately made these memories to create doubt. she wants sora to question why riku remembers something different. she is doing this to try to save him. but this is being twisted and reimagined so that she's selfishly replacing riku in a memory that actually exists and is precious to sora, so that riku can forever be the person sora's eyes land on. this undermines her character in service to a ship she's not even a part of.

and it undermines sora's character too! both for the reasons above and because his perspective is never actually considered in this interpretation. why would famously adventurous and enthusiastic sora, who expresses interest in going to other worlds, and who doesn't grasp most of physics or consequences until they're actually happening to him, be worried about a meteor hitting the islands in the first place, over being totally gobsmacked at the spectacle?

wouldn't it be more in character for riku to think of that?

when terra meets him on the beach in bbs, riku expresses that he wants to become stronger to protect what matters. this suggests he's been ruminating it for a while, in his serious way, and actually recognizes that there are things out there that need to be protected against (a fact sora doesn't really seem to consider until he actually leaves his island). and we know that even then riku was looking up to sora and didn't feel like he can just follow his heart the way sora does. so why would he go out on a limb, years before the beach scene on kh2 or his conversation at yen sid's with kairi, and say something so...sora-like?

wouldn't it be more in character for endlessly silly, overly confident sora to believe in his entire five-year-old heart that he can totally hit that whole-ass meteor back with his flimsy wooden sword if he really believes?

namine clearly thought so.

clearly kairi is restored to all the places she occupies in sora's memories in the end, and sora never talks about the meteor shower memory again, so just in case it's not already clear because this idea is so widespread, i am asserting that it is a headcanon that isn't directly supported by the text. but that isn't even really my concern; i have plenty of headcanons that aren't even a little bit supported by the text that i totally accept and love. if this one were designed in a way that supported, instead of tore down, the characters of sora, riku, namine, and kairi for that matter, then i would think it was a cute headcanon and probably be all for it, and this post wouldn't exist.

the issue i'm taking with it is that this notion is taking the idea of riku-as-protector and sora-as-emotionally-vulnerable-let's-just-come-out-and-say-UKE-like-it's-2005, and working backwards from that conclusion to establish what happened in canon, instead of extrapolating from canon to build out the characters as they appear there. it's my opinion that doing this actually only hurts the characters, their impact on the narrative, and the ship.

anyway, like i said. not strictly a problem, fandom gonna fandom. it just annoys me, because i'm seeing this in so many ships, so often, and i don't think people even realize they're doing it sometimes.

here's a radical thought: not every romance needs to be star-crossed and "my one true only love i would die for ahead of anyone else, who i could still be happy with if every single other person in my life were dead." sometimes relationships are intense and burn out quick and fast; sometimes they are slow and subtle and last forever; sometimes they are any combination of the above and include permutations i haven't even touched on, romantic or not; sometimes your best friend becomes your rival becomes something more that you don't know how to define, or maybe you do, but all you know for certain is that he will be at your side holding your hand as you reach out to sacrifice your own heart to save the world, never once asking you to turn your back on everyone else you love for his own sake.

so yeah. for the record i still ship soriku (among other things!) and always have. but i also recognize that sora has many other important people and relationships in his life, many of which have absolutely nothing to do with riku, and part of the reason i ship it as hard as i do is because of how much riku has grown and learned to recognize that too.

finally, if so much of the fandom feels the need to alter and reinterpret sora's other significant relationships to be about riku (to remove the "threat"), that's admitting that there isn't enough evidence already in the canon to support soriku as a ship.

and i'm sorry, but i just don't think that's true.

#shipping wank #i guess? idk how to tag this #anyway please sign this waiver before interacting with my opinions i am old and i don't care

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jacksoldsideblog · 8 months

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While i like the direction the movie took with destroying debt, et cetera, i see people say it's better than the book because what does destroying one museum do? and i think that ignores the fundamental underpinning of the misanthropic anarchism (is that a tautology? most of the time.) which is more apparent in the book, most likely due to the greater depth one can add. Unfortunately, in simplifying it to simply debt to make it seem more intense and useful, it ignores that the goal is fundamentally ideological.

Tyler, the narrator, wants society to rip itself apart from within. he set himself up as Jesus and now he is staging his time on the cross to cement it. the scene where the narrator beats angelface's face in, it's interspersed with the birth of Project Mayhem, directly in response to the eternal soulcrushing of feeling the burden of history. The actions of the past. A lot of it is actually related to pollution. And, like an anarchist, the narrator wants to burn it all down, the fish he can never have, wipe the slate clean. And so Tyler makes Project Mayhem, and as the narrator waxes about a premature dark age saving the planet, Tyler says "You justify anarchy ... you figure it out."

The thing is, being nonspecific, I'm in the environmental sector. This hatred of humanity, of the burden of the past, it's the story of the little old lady who ate a fly, it's a lot of incredibly common despair and rage that has no true goal beyond removal, ending, destroying. It's even said, in the book, Project Mayhem wants the end of civilization right now. What's the next step for Project Mayhem? Tyler doesn't say. Because fundamentally, the narrator knows it's all just idyllic dreams, the wrist thick kudzu and the clear air — maybe some people believe that would happen if humanity was massively depopulated, but it would not rid the world of the nuclear waste, of the oil wells. Et cetera. It betrays the inherent issue with anarchism, it's why the book is such a good critique of it, it's why it highlights the connection between anarchism and misanthropy. Everyone knows Project Mayhem is a death cult.

And yet, they do wish for better. Even at his most nihilistic, Tyler looks with the goal of setting people free. However, the narrator feels the immense stress of being a cog in an impossible to stop machine. It is so important, to remember the despair and panicked impulse to end it all is a result of the malfunctioning society, not simply some random bad choice. It's the result of an animal in a corner. He has no idea how to imagine a construction beyond it — so he follows the male impulse and wants to kill it.

And unlike the movie, it's more of a virus approach.

#fight club #tfw youre not well read enough to call yourself a communist #tyler/the narrator are inherently pathetic creatures to me because of anarchism thing #like its the conditioned response #i feel a lot of sympathy for it #the root causes are so immensely horrifically painful #but either kill yourself or buck up and make a plan #for AFTER you destroy capitalist society #once again: who will operate and build the sewers. how. how will you get metal and chemicals and food and #stop hating humanity and do something about it instead

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everyonewasabird · 2 years

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Brickclub 4.12.2 “Preliminary Gaieties“ part 2

Grantaire begins!

The first thing I’m getting from him--beyond the disenchantment with humanity and the sensation of perpetual body horror he seems to carry--is a horror of the way narratives are determined by victors who won by force.

He begins with a negative opinion of libraries, with all their books like discarded oyster shells. Surely not an opinion Hugo shares, but I hear from Grantaire a distrust of both egotism and narrative, along with the misanthropy.

Then, Floréal and her banker. She was a pretty grisette, living the life Fantine lost hold of--she had her flower pot, and she had what sounds like a more specialized form of sewing labor. Now she’s overjoyed that she gets to marry a banker, and Grantaire is disgusted by it.

It could be misogyny here. Just straight up incel vibes, “a pretty girl picked Him instead of Me, even though He was no great shakes either,” etc. etc.

But I think it’s not. Grantaire’s horror seems to me to be about the iniquity of someone having to be happy that they married an entirely unpreposessing banker, because it saved her from a life of poverty. Like Fantine and Cosette, Floréal has an aura of revolution--it’s there in her name (or possibly her nom de guerre, or possibly just what Grantaire has nicknamed her for this anecdote).

And her revolutionary aspects, and her freedom, were worth giving up (gladly! gratefully!) because the iniquities of the world made marrying some stupid banker something almost beyond the wildest dreams of a woman like her.

My sympathetic read of Grantaire here (who is always a little closer to the feminine end of gender stereotypes than he feels like he should be) is that he’s empathizing with the experience of the Floréals of the world: they deserved to have better wildest dreams. Fantine deserved better than being dumped by Tholomyès, yes--but she also deserved better than marrying Tholomyès.

But the narratives belong to the bankers, and so: Floréal got the happy ending Fantine didn’t. She “married above her station,” as they say. Hurrah.

Grantaire goes on to compare the banker with nations who conquer their neighbors simply because they have the power to, describing both as “eagles.” They conquer because they can, he feels, and it’s wrong. But the world is supposed to be happy about it anyway--because the narrative belongs to the victors.

I think we’re learning that Grantaire fucking hates Napoleon (even if he’s veiled about going around saying so), and that’s extremely valid of him. Which--people who know more about Gros should weigh in, but Grantaire did study art under the guy who painted This:

and I have a lot of questions about how that went.

What on earth does it signify that Laigle is also an eagle? He’s a Very different kind of eagle, given that he’s 1) extremely not a bonapartist 2) extremely not someone who goes through the world the way that banker does.

Eagle isn’t one of our uniformly negative animals--it can be used as a compliment, alongside lion; I think Enjolras gets eagled at some point. It may have some war-commander connotations, and Grantaire, unlike his friends, hates war even when it’s genuinely liberatory.

Still don’t know what Laigle has to do with all that, though.

From these very, very valid sympathies, Grantaire pivots to nihilism and hedonism and avoidance. His only solution to any of these problems is: “drink.”

He’s wildly upset because his friends are all maybe about to die, and he’s describing Revolution as the repetitive stage gimmick of an impoverished and uncreative God--though we’ll learn later, when Hugo describes the spring in the Luxembourg gardens (refuting Grantaire’s imagery very, very directly), that there’s nothing impoverished about God. And Joly’s idea (stated later) of the providential office of cats in rectifying the problems of the world (as revolutions do) will be much closer to this book’s ideas of Providence than Grantaire’s rambling about stage sets and cart grease.

Grantaire connects the idea of Great Events, like revolutions, with the idea of Great Men, and he’s fed up with both. And being anti-Great Man is one of our central themes! The book very much agrees with Grantaire that the Great Man is a bad model of how to run things.

But his problem with Great Men and Great Events is the wrong problem: he doesn’t like how disruptive they are, and he doesn’t like the idea that God relies on them like some kind of bad narrative hack.

But the Great Man is a misleading narrartive--maybe because, like the narratives Grantaire disliked above, they're the narrative the victors write.

Because: men of genius DON’T leap out of nowhere and change the world; the world was changed by a million hands over time, and the man designated Great sat up at the right moment, did some things, and then got credit for all of it. Revolutions AREN’T a day or two of violence that erupts out of nowhere as a cheap trick God uses to change things up--they’re the culmination of time, and the changing tides of history, and the long, sustained effort of unimaginable numbers of people.

We were talking in the discord about how Grantaire can’t imagine being a revolutionary without being an all-or-nothing, full-bore, 24/7 revolutionary. If he’s not Enjolras, he thinks, what use is doing anything? And that’s the problem here: he claims to prefer small works and small people and incrementalism, but he can’t see that the people around him, like Joly’s cats, are actually doing that. He hates Great Men, but he thinks the only alternative to them is an utter stagnation where nothing happens at all.

He doesn’t understand that the problem with Great Men (and Great Events) isn’t that they’re a stupid way for God to be running history--the problem with lone Great Men and lone Great Events is that they don’t exist.

#brickclub #lm 4.12.2 #i'm not done with the chapter i only got through a couple pages today #i have no idea how many parts this will be #i just thought the post was long enough

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sistervirtue · 2 months

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pluto fifi best friedns?

I think they would have a bestieship in the sense of forming a connection that makes a bubble separating them from the rest of the world they regard with disdain but i also think that plutos general misanthropy may make it more of a tolerance than true friendship. then again fifi isnt human so maybe its like how plutos fine with virtue.... i can see it being like the bond you make with someone in high school by virtue of some shared opinions and a general distaste for everyone else present

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grimmwoodtangle · 1 year

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public knowledge (what's apparent when first meeting him)

his name is yoshiya kiryu, but his parents call him joshua. he's fifteen years old.

he's a pokemon trainer, travelling the world. the reason he gives for his travels may differ: sometimes he'll claim to be taking on the gym challenge of whatever region he's in, others that he's simply a tourist, or anything else the situation calls for.

there's something off about him. maybe it's his eyes, how they shine a bit too bright, the reflected light often obscuring the pupil; maybe it's the way he moves, the stiff, almost doll-like motion of his body; or maybe it's his smile, vacant and fake. whatever it is, there's just something unnerving about him that can be picked up by most people.

he never parts from his phantump, yoshi, and always keeps it out of its pokeball and close by his person.

psychic-type pokemon, particularly those attuned to strong emotions, tend to avoid him, or become aggressive in his presence.

he doesn't like other people very much, and prefers the company of pokemon.

semi-public knowledge (what one could learn from getting to know him better, or doing a background check)

he's originally from celadon city, kanto, but moved to galar with his family when he was six.

he has the ability to understand and speak to pokemon--or at least he claims to.

yoshi isn't technically his pokemon, as it has not been caught in a pokeball.

he's afraid of hatterene, and will try to avoid them at all costs.

he lies constantly. he'll say anything he needs to to get his way. sometimes, he'll lie for the simple amusement of it, or just to see how someone reacts.

he was bullied by his peers practically his entire life, both for his social awkwardness and his claimed ability to talk to pokemon. his parents moved him to ballonlea in hopes of giving him a fresh start. it didn't work out the way they planned.

information on him is hard to find, and the dates don't seem to match up with his age. did the kiryus even have a son...?

he harbors a deep hatred of humans in general, believing them to be boring, shallow, and incapable of change or connection. it's impossible for humans to understand each other, and most aren't even willing to try, so they're not worth his effort, or even existence as a whole.

he's horribly lonely.

private knowledge (what only he and perhaps a handful of others know)

he's dead, and his spirit, housed in yoshi the phantump, is possessing his reanimated corpse. he's searching for a way to tether his spirit to his body again, but has had no luck thus far.

his parents never called him joshua. they didn't even call him yoshiya. they barely called him anything at all. they were neglectful; they didn't care about him. the move to ballonlea was more about minimizing the embarrassment for them than it was about protecting him.

his entire persona is a mask, built to deceive himself and others. his misanthropy is a projection of his own self-loathing, directed outwards so he doesn't have to cope with it.

his emotions are intense, unpredictable, and painful; he doesn't know how to deal with them, so he shoves them down as deep as he can and puts on a facade of arrogant indifference to protect himself. after all, his emotions are what got him killed.

(rather: he can't be rejected, ostracized, ignored, made fun of, anything, if he doesn't care, right? no one can leave him alone if he doesn't give them the chance. if he doesn't try to let anyone in, he can't find out just how deeply unloveable he is--how empty, both in body and spirit.)

his body, particularly his torso, is littered with scars and a prominent burn mark from being beamed down and torn apart by a hatterene.

#the truth is stranger than my own worst dreams || headcanons #WOW this format is so useful as a rundown of his character omg #he isn't a public figure so this is more just like. how much he'll tell you and when #i'll probably add some things when i figure out how long ago he died lol #child death tw #bullying tw #child neglect tw #transphobia tw

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project-omori2 · 1 year

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So, if you still haven't figured out "incident" stuff quite yet... Going off the idea sort of regarding forgiving others.... Maybe Hail was dealing with rough things in their life, maybe not a great home environment. They at least had their friends! But then maybe the friends ended up in a situation, a bad one. A situation where Hail ended up getting hurt. Maybe Hail got upset and lashed out, even if maybe it was an accident. So they left. They were bitter and continued to hold a grudge and we're just frustrated with the world- Trust issues is still an interesting idea to incorporate. Despite what happened and whatever permanent injury Hail was left with, they do miss the friends they had and the times they shared. That's why they have their Headspace, a fun world with their childhood friends where everything is good. With a medical bag in their White Space to keep everything okay. I think the moral here could be about forgiving others (though yes there's also the thing of not wanting to make people think you NEED to), but maybe also about moving on; life's too short to stay mad for so long.

Thanks for the ask!

Going off the idea sort of regarding forgiving others.... Maybe Hail was dealing with rough things in their life, maybe not a great home environment. They at least had their friends!

A rough home life... I could entertain the idea.

But then maybe the friends ended up in a situation, a bad one. A situation where Hail ended up getting hurt. Maybe Hail got upset and lashed out, even if maybe it was an accident. So they left.

That would definitely solve the problem I’ve been having, which is “how do I connect Hail’s friends to the main conflict so that they aren’t just there for the sake of being there?“

Off the top of my head, the first thing I think of is a car accident. The squad was driving to some place, but one thing led to another and all of them got injured, with Hail getting the worst of it. Just a thought.

However, this kind of also clashes with another idea, which is that the causes behind Hail's trauma(s) are more systemic or societal in nature. This would feed into their misanthropy. Maybe that could be more of a side-thing...

Overall, great suggestions that I will definitely think hard on.

#ask #cw car accident #omori 2 #omori sequel #omori fandom #fanmade sequel #omori #omori 2 concept #brainstorm #s0ckh3adstudios

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porridge0ats · 3 months

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why i am i doing so poorly again. i love them they love me i'm in my dream school doing what i love.

so why does it feel like i'm drowning again. i'm ruminating on my past actions, i'm dreaming of wine dark lines again. deep scarlet soothing my untethered mind. i yearn for them when they are not here, skin to skin to soothe my aching mind stroking soft hair and kissing soft lips. am i becoming dependant on their presence or am i overinterlectualising and this is what love feels like. i think it's stress there is so much to do, so much to achieve, so much expected of me and so many comparisons to be drawn. i feel like i belong and i feel like an outcast. two diametrically opposing positions is something i'm used to. the terrible student and the academic success. the hopeless romantic and the struggle to connect. the people pleasing and misanthropy. the love and the hate within.

i feel that so many people know more about me than i do. i know what i am but i do not know who i am. i'm only young and maybe that will change with age, but it feels the opposite, like an amnesia of personhood. each day feels like it takes a piece of self knowledge with it. at the moment i'm supposed to meditating on the idea of place and home, but how can i do that when i don't know where my home is, or what the idea of home represents. there is physical and the personal for certain the house, the room, the address the country versus the people and the context.

why do i cry so much, i project this figure of strength and confidence to myself and those around me. so why could i fill an ocean with emotion, with pain and fear, with longing and resentment, with anger and pressure, with regret and shame. a swollen lake laps at the edges, one more drop of rain is all it will take to break the surface tension. I wear the makeup because it doesn't allow me explode over the edges, the swirling vivid colours creating an impression of happiness, the pale coral and skin tones to hide the dark rings and green to hide the swelling. deftly avoiding the question of who i am and what is my purpose? a question i was confronted with in a place i did not expect, threatening to overwhelm the vivid with clear salty lines.

the only thing i am certain of is that i love them and i love my dog the solid brass supporting my waning wax.

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scumgristle · 7 months

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one of my favorite lost artifacts of my teen years is that button pictured, which I had pinned on my backpack, otherwise covered with bulky iron on patches of Deicide and Sepultura.

I thought the button was neat, a little funny even if it had a kernel of truth to it at that moment in my life, and that it might score me some kissy-kissy with the surly Faruza Balk cosplayers who kitten-scratched Twent Weznor posters (memba “Wish”?)… that late 90s class of feeeemaaaaales I was trying desperately to get with back then (and now, if we’re keeping it real [and going wrong]). well yeah nah it didn’t work. Even among my peer group, who like me were lounging in the dead space between the Grunge burn out and the Nu Metal blow up, my choices of manner, mode, and media were too “mean”, too “angry. “no one wants to be with someone whose anti-social”, said the first girl I ever truly deeply loved… Hot Topic customer of the year from 1999 - 2004, who would go on to hop and skip and poke and dip through a Lawng Eyelind shooting gallery of twerpy gamers, scabby drug hook-ups, after school special punks, and violently homophobic meatheads she thought she could “change”… but yeah, me with my grindcore band and my novels about fucking with poo-poo? Yeah that was a line she just wouldn’t cross.

Anyway, Columbine happened, and I thought maybe the widdle ol meanie meanie bo feenie button that masked my bone deep frustrations with the shifting goal posts of adolescent connection in a broad stroke expression of blunt force misanthropy wasn’t the best thing to be walking around with in a school whose student body was already enough on edge from my mere presence in the hallway… what with my black jeans and Slayer t-shirts and being quiet and not bothering anyone and all.

Never the end.

#memory hole #late 1990s #teenagers scare the living shit out of me #ah fuck I done gone quoted My Chemtrail Under The Sea Dance

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yuna-writes · 11 months

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What lies deeper then the surface

I remember there was a ice break question given out by a co-worker and the prompt was who inspired you? Then one co-worker talked about someone else and found this individual to be inspiring. When it was my turn to answer the question, I can tell from my co-worker’s facial expression that I’m not very interested in people and she looked at me with disgust. She’s actually the type that cries over fictional character because she gets emotionally attached to their livelihood and seems to care about the emotions of other people. I always feel like people get the impression that I don’t care about people. I don’t think that’s true, I just don’t really connect with others as easily. Sometimes I wonder it’s actually because I’m struggling with my autism that’s preventing me to have normal experiences and interests as other people enjoy. If you have really specific interests, it’s difficult to connect with other people or find their story relatable.

I usually find really intellectual conversation more stimulating. I like talking about the future, science, technology and creative ideas. Those conversations have a layer of complexity not a lot of people can relate to or want to talk about. Most people want to stay present, focus on current relationships and people because it’s more practical to their day-to-day life. Why would they want to talk about a complex idea that doesn’t exist or seem too unrealistic? But there are people who do really enjoy those conversations, it’s just I don’t meet them often. I feel like once people have those similar interests then I think they’ll find me to be caring and thoughtful. It’s the catch 22, if those people don’t care about those topics. Then they won’t care about people who enjoy them. Therefore, I don’t care about them either. It’s a pretty fair response. If they don’t want to talk to me about it, then I’ll stop talking to them.

I suppose maybe the other person feel like I’m not very open to their unique interests and that’s why they feel like I’m not interested in people in general. There’s some truth to it because when I analyze their interests, it just seem kind of vapid, waste of resources and waste of time. Yeah, they can enjoy a Taylor Swift concert and throw away thousands of dollars to see a celebrity for one night, but I want to use that money to save for home. I’m not going to be open to bad ideas, and I find many people’s interests to be very superficial and wasteful. It’s not misanthropy, it’s just not my thing. Why do I need to find positivity in stupidity? And yeah this is where people find me a bit arrogant but I think it’s just being smart with your decisions. I just notice these patterns that people only really care about short term gratifications on the present moment. For example, they’ll go on multiple trips, throw thousands of dollars into vacations, and then by the end of the day they are dead broke. Then, they would complain later why their jobs never really pay their bills. Gee, I wonder why when they had just spent all their money on these extravagant experiences for short term pleasure and gratification. There’s not a lot of people who are long range thinkers.

I always thought about changing my attitude and outlook on people but I feel like how I view things in my worldview makes the most the sense. I’m very picky in being “open” because I personally really dislike that advice. I always find other people’s worldview to be too simplistic. It’s like they see a vacation, and equate that to fun. And to people who disagree, they automatically make assumptions that they are negative and boring. I think those people aren’t very strategic and wise with other factors that goes into vacations. The future isn’t relevant to them, because the present carries more weight to them. If their friends find it positive, and they feel happy at the present moment, then they don’t really feel the need to question their decisions.

#notes

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thepapergirlandthespiegelman · 3 years

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Castlevania Season 4: I’m not mad, just disappointed

Season 4 is poorly written fanfiction, which is...better than a lot of things could be, I guess.

Spoilers below the cut.

Content warning: trauma, sexual assault, psychological manipulation

The Gods Have Had a Change of Heart

Or, “Season 3 Blocked and Ignored”

Season 3 felt like the fabric of the universe had been twisted just to inflict additional pain. Season 4 overcompensates in the other direction; trauma evaporates, and good things happen for no other reason than to make our favorite characters happy.

The Season 3 finale left two characters in particular totally devastated: Alucard and Hector. Alucard is violently betrayed in a horrifying sexual assault by the first two people he’s spoken to since Trevor and Sypha left. He ends up killing them in self-defense and puts their bodies on stakes outside the castle, alluding to his father’s habit of doing so and potentially hinting at a turn toward evil. Hector is seduced by Lenore and then enslaved using a magic ring.

Yet at the start of Season 4, it’s as if these things never happened. Alucard is troubled, but not totally devastated, certainly not evil. Taka and Sumi are referenced in exactly one conversation with new character, Greta, in which she says the rather tactless throwaway line, “I had a boyfriend and girlfriend at the same time once. But they never tried to kill me.” Hector is nominally imprisoned, but immediately seems highly agentic, perhaps even more so than before. He studies, lays traps, and makes secret plans with other people. Furthermore, his relationship with Lenore is completely transformed. From falling to his knees in abject horror and despair at being enslaved, he suddenly switches to light banter, in what is apparently a basically okay, mutually enjoyed romantic/sexual relationship. Manipulative, selfish Lenore is now a sympathetic character struggling to reconcile her own role and feelings with Carmilla’s plans.

The events of season 3 happened, remaining canon in the most basic, literal sense. But the emotional weight attached to them has disappeared into thin air.

Not gonna lie, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that Alucard and Hector were okay. I’m soft-hearted! I don’t like seeing characters I like suffer! I mean, conflict is important, and I can deal with (or even enjoy in a certain sense) seeing characters suffer if it makes sense and serves a narrative purpose. But as far as I can tell, the season 3 finale was nothing more than lurid, meaningless violence. I probably wouldn’t have continued watching the show if it devolved into nothing more than finding novel ways to torture the characters.

Still, it doesn’t feel quite right to pretend like nothing happened either. Or, really, not that nothing happened, but that those things didn’t matter, didn’t hurt, didn’t leave lasting scars. That’s...almost kind of worse.

But, I thought, I can sort of forgive this sudden shift in the stars, given that there may have been some sort of change in creative direction relating to Ellis’ decreased involvement with the show.* Plus, season 3 was insanity. It’s not like it was full of great writing choices, so if we quietly ignore some of them, maybe that’s for the best.

*I only later learned that Netflix actually chose to continue with Ellis’ season 4 scripts. It is not lost on me that maybe Ellis doesn’t know how to write about the lasting effects of traumatic sexual experiences or how power dynamics can make a sexual relationship problematic because he doesn’t understand that those things exist.

Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening

Pretty Pictures, Not Much Else

Unfortunately, the disconnect between seasons 3 and 4 isn’t the only problem with this season. Although I felt that season 4 was a bit less boring than season 3 (I particularly enjoyed some of the earlier episodes of season 4), it suffers from the same basic problems of Characters Being Nobody and Nothing Happening.

None of the characters experience any significant development, let alone any sort of coherent arc. Sypha has changed slightly, becoming more rough and jaded. I did really like the scene where she talks about becoming the kind of person who says “shit.” I think it really speaks to how entering into a relationship with someone means taking on aspects of their lifestyle, and how that can change you in ways that you can’t predict and therefore can’t exactly “agree” to. Sometimes those changes are good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re neutral, and sometimes it’s difficult to know. But you have to accept that you’re sacrificing some aspects of the person that you could have been if you chose to live completely independently, or with someone else.

Trevor really hasn’t changed since season 1 when he first decided to take up the mantle of hero again. Likewise with Alucard. Hector and Lenore change, as previously noted, but that change is sudden, jarring, and occurs completely off screen in between seasons 3 and 4. Carmilla dies as exactly as she lived: bitter, angry, and violent. Saint Germain just kind of...gets fucked over in a nonsensical subplot, which is its own whole can of worms.

We also get several new characters in season 4, none of whom have developed personalities or motives, nor do they develop any of those things over the course of the season: Greta, Zamfir, Varney, Ratko.

And nobody. Does. Anything.

Trevor and Sypha spend the entire season trying to explore and aid Targoviste, which comes to absolutely nothing. They’re unable to help anyone, Zamfir dies, and they end up just jumping through a magic portal to the actually relevant subplot in the finale. Carmilla literally does little more than draw maps until she’s ultimately killed. Hector plays a minor role in Saint Germain’s extraction of Dracula from Hell; otherwise, he and Lenore basically just exchange banter. Saint Germain does sort of do some stuff? But it’s often unclear how he’s made his connections, who the people who are helping him are, or what exactly he’s doing in terms of his magic beyond “whatever it takes to get back to his lover.”

Sure, there are fight scenes, but they feel meaningless. There’s no context, no stakes. There’s also a LOT of dialogue, and it is. Not well written. Exposition is embarrassingly clumsy at times, and the philosophical musings are cliche at best, muddled and confusing at worst. There’s just not all that much going on.

That is, except for Isaac. But more on him in a second.

What Kind of Show Is This?

When the plot line adapted from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse ended with season 2, the show struggled to establish a new identity.

Despite nominally dealing with themes like whether humanity is inherently good or evil and how to cope with wrongdoing and loss, seasons 1 and 2 ultimately boiled down to a pretty generic action-adventure/fantasy plot with found family/power of friendship elements. Main characters Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard don’t really wrestle with big philosophical questions or suffer any major defeats. They know that they have to take down Dracula for the good of the world, and they work together as a team to do it, with a little character development relating to their various backstories sprinkled in.

Then season 3 happened, and things got weird. The trio is broken up for what feels like a pretty trivial reason—Alucard has to protect the castle and Belmont hold, I guess? And the result of that decision is that the dynamics for the three main characters are completely unbalanced.

Ellis openly admits that he basically went feral with the writing of season 3, and it shows. The messaging in seasons 1 and 2 was cliche, but consistent. The message of season 3? Anyone’s guess.

Season 4 reversed the darkening of tone from season 3, but shares its inability to pick a story and tell it.

Isaac is the Main Character

Always has been.

While I can’t say that his character or arc are perfect, I can say that he actually has a character and an arc. He starts off motivated by his fierce loyalty to Dracula, then has to struggle to find his purpose once Dracula is gone. He goes from subservient to agentic. He goes from fully endorsing the genocide of humanity and not caring about his own life to seeing some worth in humans and genuinely wanting to live. He has an interesting moment that deepens our understanding of what night creatures are, while also serving as an exploration of the meaning of one’s fundamental nature. Most importantly, these changes happen naturally over the course of the show. They never feel forced or out of the blue, and while I feel like even more could have been done with Isaac’s character, there’s a lot to appreciate about what is there.

If there’s any thread holding Castlevania as a single, coherent work together, it’s Isaac. Not only is his character the best executed and the most coherent over the course of the show, his character explores themes that are larger than himself and relevant to the show as a whole, like those mentioned earlier: misanthropy versus a belief in the value of humanity; the ability to go beyond one’s “nature” or initial circumstances; and how to respond to being wronged or losing something important to you. Exploring the individual lives of characters is great, but really good writing usually requires going beyond that to reflect on broader questions and ideas. Isaac is the only character here that serves that larger purpose.

Sorry...I Just Don’t Buy It

The season 4 finale is crazy, although in a different way from season 3′s.

Varney being Death makes no sense on several different levels. I’m not going to spend a lot of time picking that particular plot twist apart, but I will talk about why I think it doesn’t work at the largest scale, and how I think season 4 might have been done better.

Last minute twists with zero foreshadowing are rarely a good idea, and this is no exception. Why introduce this “Death” entity at the last minute to be the most important battle of the season? The finale of the entire show, even? Besides the lack of logic or emotional buildup, this robs the show of the opportunity to make use of the antagonists that it already has. Since Dracula died, Carmilla has been the obvious choice for a new big bad. Why hasn’t she done more?

Season 4 feels crowded with characters and plot lines that amount to nothing. Why not bring some of these characters together? If Carmilla is the main antagonist, how come she never meets any of the protagonists (except Hector, who is a pretty minor player in this ecosystem) or even affects them in any way?

Season 4 feels like maybe it was trying to make something out of season 3 and the model that it presented, but it ultimately fails to do so. The writers throw the trio back together at the end anyway, so why not have them rejoin sooner and work together? Maybe Sypha and Trevor’s past experience with Saint Germain could have helped Alucard and Greta piece together what he was plotting sooner, rather than all four of them being completely blindsided by it in the penultimate episode. (Sypha and Trevor know that someone is trying to resurrect Dracula, but they fail to find out any actual detail about the plans, despite their supposed attempts.) Have characters actually do stuff, figure stuff out, advance the plot!

Likewise, maybe Carmilla becomes aware of Saint Germain’s scheming, sees it as a threat, and tries to take him down. Maybe she tries to get involved and somehow use alchemy or the Infinite Corridor to her own benefit. What does it look like when power-hungry Carmilla, who wants to rule the world, finds out there’s an entire multiverse out there? That could easily set her up to be a foil to Saint Germain, causing him to realize that what he’s doing is wrong.

What actually ended up happening in the show feels disjointed and often empty. In particular, most of the events that happen in the last two episodes just don’t really work for me. I didn’t like Trevor suddenly sacrificing himself to this random, new, super powerful enemy, or how the gems and dagger that he found just happened to be the perfect weapon to kill this new enemy, or how he inexplicably returns from the dead.

This kind of thing is what I mean when I say that this season feels like fanfiction. Trevor comes back from the dead for no discernible reason other than that it would really suck if he died. Greta as a character seems to literally only exist to be Alucard’s girlfriend and support him so that he doesn’t have to continue to be alone and potentially turn evil. Alucard’s trauma from Taka and Sumi and Hector’s trauma from Lenore are both conveniently erased. Even Dracula and Lisa are resurrected somehow and get their happy ending. And it’s like, I guess I prefer deus ex machina to the opposite (Does that have a name? When everything is going well but then something terrible happens for no reason other than to make things worse for the characters?), but they’re both bad writing.

God. This isn’t even getting into what happened with the Council of Sisters. And I don’t even really like those characters, but that doesn’t mean I want to see their characters handled poorly.

I’m not sorry that I watched until the end, but I can’t in good faith recommend the show as a whole. If you’ve yet to watch Castlevania, just stop at the end of season 2. While there are some shining moments in seasons 3 and 4 (4 more than 3), it’s just really not worth it.

#review #thoughts #television #animation #adult animation #video game adaptation #fantasy #Netflix #Netflix Original #Castlevania #storytelling #writing #characters #plot #character development #vampires #Isaac (Castlevania)

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zoradementio · 3 years

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Deltarune Theories and Observations Part 2

Since it’s been like three weeks and this game still hasn’t left my god damn brain, here’s some more things that I felt like noting or theorizing.

~Parallels of Noelle and Kris~

So, I ended my last Deltarune longpost with a comparison between Kris and Susie. But, interestingly enough, Kris and Noelle also have a lot of similarities. Both of them have an older sibling figure who was a very prominent crutch in their lives (Asriel for Kris, Dess for Noelle). Yet, in present times, this elder sibling is not present (though Dess’ is a bit more permanent, whether she died or went missing.) And compared to these older siblings, Kris and Noelle are the more introverted sibling, with Kris barely having a social life until the start of the game and Noelle being the biggest pushover since a card tower. Then, there’s their parental dynamics. Asgore and Rudy are both the carefree, laidback father figures, with Asgore immediately throwing Kris in a bear hug when seeing them and Rudy encouraging Noelle to ask Susie out and playing Dragon Blazers with her. This contrasts with the more proper, if strict mother figures. While Noelle’s mother is certainly the more egregious, if the fact that Noelle would rather stand outside her home’s gates likely for hours on end than to attempt to ‘bother’ her mother during work for a house key, there are a few signs of Toriel being a little strict in some areas. Apart from some dialogue from Bratty about her kissing Asriel and anything involving the big school dance being signs that Toriel does not approve of her kids, or any of her students for that matter, getting into anything even remotely romantic, the flavor text for the closet in Kris’ Dark World room being ‘You could wear whatever you want’ suggests that Toriel imposes some sort of a dress code on Kris and likely also Asriel when he was living at home. They’re also the two characters most susceptible to the SOUL, in other words you the player. Kris’ is a bit more direct, as they are the character we control in both their movements and what they say. While Noelle, considering she has such a weak will, she is fairly mailable if we impose our will onto her, as demonstrated in the Pipis Route. Finally, they both have a strong attachment towards Susie, though whether Kris’ is romantic or not is not entirely clear as of yet. Oh, and speaking of Noelle...

~The Return of Noelle~

In at least one of the future chapters, I believe Noelle will make a come back as a party member. I don’t think Toby Fox would make it this easy to just lose whatever equipment you put on her, especially if you give her the Jevilstail or if the Pipis Route has been fully completed you will lose a component of the Twisted Sword, which will presumably be available in future chapters. Therefore, I believe that Noelle will be playable again, at least at some point.

~Misanthropic Dysmorphia~

So, many people have seen the connections that Kris has to Chara (or The Fallen Child) from Undertale. They both love chocolate, are the adopted children of Toriel and Asgore, and seem to have an affinity for knives. But if there is one more connection they have, it’s that they both seem to hate humans. Now, while don’t know the reasons as to why Chara hated humans, it was enough for them to want to slaughter an entire village of people, going overboard with the body count when only 6 souls were needed to break the barrier. While Kris likely isn’t as genocidal as Chara was, their distaste for humanity runs just as deep. However, Kris’ misanthropy manifests as a form of body dysmorphia. As a child, they wondered when their horns would grow in like their brother and parents, showing that, at least at that point Kris didn’t understand the biological differences between themself and those around them. Not only that, but in Chapter 2, when going upstairs in the library and reading the book ‘How to Care for Humans’, when looking at the pages Kris immediately closes the book when seeing the pictures of humans in seeming disgust. It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if Kris hates the fact that they’re human, seeing as that is the big thing that makes them an outsider to Hometown. It would also explain why they seem to hate the SOUL/Player, even if you play as pacifistically as possible and don’t do anything to intentionally upset Kris like throwing away the Ball of Junk in the Light World. After all, Kris’ description in the Dark World as soon as you enter it in Chapter 1 is ‘A body containing a human SOUL’. Apart from just generally being upset that some outside force is controlling their actions, Kris is also likely pissed that a human is the one controlling them, because, assumedly, you or anyone else that plays Deltarune is going to be a human. That could be just some extra salt in the wound, that even Kris’ own soul is not only human but not even their own.

~Darkner’s History(?)~

This is something strange that I don’t think a lot of people think about. So, I notice a lot of people point out that Ralsei knows that both his Dark Fountain and the Fountain from Chapter 1 are located in a supply closet and a classroom respectively. Most people point to this as evidence that Ralsei knows something, however Ralsei isn’t the only one with knowledge of the Light World. Queen does have a line or two about knowing that her Dark World is within a library. So clearly, Darkners have at least some awareness of the Light World, or at least enough about their enclosed spaces and possibly limited to appointed rulers or some such. What isn’t so clear is how long these Dark Worlds have lasted. Sure, portals to the Dark Worlds seem like only a recent thing, there is talk about the history of these characters. Just within Chapter 1 there’s King overthrowing the other three card kings and taking the throne all to himself, Jevil meeting a mysterious figure causing him to go mad and thus needing to be locked up by Seam, a presumably long series of puzzle makers syphoned out before Roulxs became the Duke of Puzzles, and some kind of falling out between Queen and King (which also brings up the question of when and why was Queen’s laptop in the abandoned classroom). My point being, despite these Dark Worlds being open for maybe a day or two at best, there seems to be almost years worth of history to these places. It could be a case of ‘one day passes inside, but only about an hour has passed outside’ thing or it could be that Dark Worlds still technically exists even without a Dark Fountain. So far, though, I can’t offer any concrete answers to this. And actually, since I brought up his suspicious behavior once again...

~Communication Issues~

I already talked about how Ralsei is suspicious in an out-of-universe perspective here, but in universe he is acting rather suspicious. Namely, around Susie. When Kris and Susie return to Castle Town, Ralsei tells Kris to gather everything in the adjacent classroom and bring it here. Everyone becomes their Darkner counterparts and Susie is naturally excited to see everyone, especially Lancer. Ralsei then says, and only says, that ‘when the Dark Fountain was sealed, that area returned to a normal classroom. And when Lancer decides to become one of you KEY ITEMS, Ralsei doesn’t explain that Darkners become regular objects in the Light World, causing Susie to think Lancer ditched them when Kris and Susie leave to work on their group project. And during the Chapter 2 epilogue, Susie even suggests finding a way to bring Ralsei and Lancer into the Light World, despite that seeming to be an impossibility. That’s not even mentioning the post Spamton NEO dialogue where Susie is the first to bring up the oddities of the whole scenario, and Ralsei immediately chooses to shoot down any questioning. Ralsei seemingly keeps Susie out of the loop on a lot of important things about how the Dark World works. Now, Susie doesn’t really question these things, but that’s mostly because 1. she is a very ‘only cares about the here and now’ type of person and is very excited about the whole Dark World shenanigans her, Kris and Ralsei get up to, and 2. this girl is dense enough to not immediately catch on the Noelle is crushing so hard on her a neon sign saying ‘SHE LIKES YOU’ would be a more subtle message. Now, it could be that Ralsei sees Susie in a much more ‘need to know’ basis, that since she is isn’t really the group plan-maker, she doesn’t need to know the intricacies of how the Dark Worlds, the Fountains, and everything works. It also could be that the player, and by extension Kris, are more important and thus will be needed this information more than Susie. However, I still hesitate to say that Ralsei is malicious in action. What I think would be the most likely reason, if his explanation of the Roaring and Queen’s reaction to it are any indication, it looks like Ralsei’s fatal flaw is assuming his knowledge is common knowledge. After all, he assumed that Queen was opening another Dark Fountain because she wanted to destroy the world, when that couldn’t be further from the case. In all likelihood, Ralsei could be overestimating how perceptive Susie really is when it comes to putting details together.

~Only One Ending...?~

This is something a few people have been debating for a while now. Back when Chapter 1 was released in 2018, Toby Fox said that Deltarune would only have one ending. However, with the addition of Chapter 2′s Pipis Route, many of us are wondering if that was a flat out lie or not. My assumption goes one of two ways. Option A: It was true at the time. During the three year development of Chapter 2 a lot, and I mean a LOT, of things about Deltarune have changed. Initially the game was going to be another mostly solo development similar to Undertale. But, with the larger workload and Toby Fox working on other projects like developing music for the Pokemon games, and on top of all of that going through some pretty bad wrist pains, Fox decided to get a small development team for Deltarune. There were debates on whether to switch Deltarune’s game engine to something like Unity, before settling back to Game Maker. And even when Chapter 1 was released, it was more of a proof of concept than anything, with barely any of the rest of the story being written down. It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise if Toby Fox decided to add some more endings because he thought that would work better for what he was going for. Or, Option B: It will be one ending, but in the same way the Normal Ending in Undertale is ‘one ending’. See, while Deltarune likes to emphasize that ‘your choses don’t matter’ and in Undertale ‘your choses do matter’, in actuality, the choses in both games have roughly the same weight. Sure, in Undertale it seems like your choses have more of an impact, but the basic story beats of the game are all the same. You will always fall into the underground, get quasi-adopted by Toriel, go through a wacky puzzle romp with Papyrus, get hunted by Undyne through Waterfall, guest star in Mettaton’s shows with Alphys as your guide, and finally make it to New Home. And there were still some minor questions in Undertale that really had no bearing on what you answered, such as Toriel’s question of if you prefer cinnamon or butterscotch. But because Undertale frames it with ‘your choses matter’ and Deltarune frames it in ‘your choses don’t matter’ we see it as such. So, when it comes to the endings, there really are only three endings in Undertale. The True Genocide ending, where you go all the way through with killing everyone and everything in the Underground, the True Pacifist Ending, where you SPARED everything you came across and completed the necessary friendship side quests, and the Normal Ending. Now, the Normal Ending sounds like a pretty narrow term, considering there’s like at least around 10 different variations of this ending, but the basic plot beats are still the same: You finish the fight with Asgore, fight Omega Flowey, and using the power of the other six souls you (as Frisk) are able to return above ground. Most of what makes this ending different is pretty much flavor text at the very end, with Sans and which ever other characters that are alive/befriended chiming in. I feel like Deltarune’s ending could play out in a similar vein, with larger plot beats being consistent, but specific character’s reactions and what not would change up the ending slightly. And, if we are only given one ending, I feel like there would be a good reason to word it like that. Similarly to what was said some time after on Toby Fox’s twitter about the True Pacifist ending, ‘This is the best ending, nothing more’ when people were wondering if there was a way to save Asriel from his fate in the end. So, if we are told there will be only ‘one ending’ that implies that there’s going to be something we’ll want to change. And what will this change be? Well...

~Don’t Forget, I’m With You In The Dark~

I believe that the ending of Deltarune will involve sealing the Castle Town Fountain. A lot of what’s set up in Deltarune seems to be leading to this. From the suspiciousness of Ralsei, to the premonition of the world ending if too many fountains are open, to the fact that Darkners are unable to consciously interact with the Light World. I’m pretty sure that we’re going to have to say good bye to Ralsei, Lancer, Rouxls, Seam, Queen, and all the rest of the Darkners by the end. And let’s face it, this ending would be the best punch to the gut that the game could offer. But I don’t think it will be all sad. After all, the Darkners will still be with us in spirit, will still be with us in the dark.

#deltarune #deltarune theory

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orcinus-ocean · 4 years

Link

Only copying and pasting the first bits of the article

"I hate humans! Humans are evil!"

What is it that leads people, ranging from both the not-too-bright to highly educated, to make shockingly erroneous and near childish statements about humans and animals? Could it be a strong backing from an early age by Disney movies? Why are so many people these days claiming to hate all human beings, going as far as to wish their own extinction?

Many animal rights-minded individuals, as well as those who aren't, have developed the mentality that people are evil, and that the human race is a 'cancer'. They will proudly declare that they care about animals more than humans and that they wouldn’t hesitate to save a non-human over an unspecified Homo sapiens.

This unspecified human, of course, is never their own parents, friends or potential offspring that they almost always have in the future despite hating them. Often, these types of people have more human friends than I could ever imagine having. So therefore, their alleged misanthropy is not even sincere.

Many people also believe that non-human animals, and specifically more complex animals like dolphins, are more moral, smarter, friendlier, or have a considerately more advanced society than humans. And they aren't joking.

Progressive?

Our society has now adopted the mindset that if you don't believe certain animals to be magnificent, wondrous, and spiritual you should be seen as a brutish, ignorant caveman. In contrast, human hating is a progressive mindset.

You will be applauded if you yell out juvenile sentiment such as: "humans are a virus!". "Humans should learn from animals how to treat one and other" (often said in the presence of a sensationalized, perceived animal friendship, discussed below), and the idea that humans are the only animals that: commit genocide, kill for fun, persecute others in the name of religion, destroy their environment, and judge each other. A prime example are the comments within this silly article (and I can't tell if it's meant to be taken seriously or not). The irony is that these statements are often made by an author believing they are taking an alternative, revolutionary stance while commenters saying anything a tad different will be labeled as a person who hates animals and has no soul.

"I prefer animals over people"

This is a common stance of dog and cat lovers, not to be confused with animal lovers. True animal lovers are rare because it requires a love for everything within the kingdom Animalia, and this includes spiders, yellow jackets, and mosquitoes. OK, maybe animal lovers do not exist. I love all three but I don't qualify because I dislike dolphins.

Other people may make this statement during a current time when a fellow human has wronged them in some way or if they read a sad story regarding human unpleasantness on the news.

Dogs are often praised for their unconditional love and devotion to their owners. They do not judge you, they're always happy when you return, and they seem to possess endless, positive energy, cheering up their owners on the darkest days.

Yet, how is unconditional love a good thing? Aren't the things that make our human relationships meaningful due to the connection we make based on our individualism and not the fact that we're simply alive? Don't get me wrong, the appreciation shown to us by dogs can be nice, but I do not believe that people actually want a friend or spouse that has these indiscriminate qualities. I also do not like the idea that some dogs may walk up to a home invader with their tails wagging, or could be just as happy with a new owner, getting over me in about a week. Do people really wish that humans had not enough intelligence to judge one and another?

Continued in the link

#morality #dolphin intelligence #self hating #humans are cancer #human extinction #compassion

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