#the analysis seems to be even more correct than I initially thought

[aois-amaterasu-painting]

The GazettE symbolism analysis - part 3 - black, red and 13 stairs

DAWN lyrics translation:

I sing, digging up [memories of] my past I’d loved so completely From within the depths of the void Time stood still while the distorted dark clouds swirled all around I was bound up in innumerable shackles And I want to lose myself in the reality reflected in the chaos around me I’ve already had a lethal dose of misfortune The ruined gallows towers above me Overcast sky, Counting song, the sound of approaching footsteps Wild party with emotions running high A merry-go-round of deepest red unfurled That day was the beginning of it all 13 stairs foretell the metamorphosis

Moving past my momentary confusion, these roiling emotions rise up Hung up high on that 13th stair The beautiful answer redefined becomes the new dogma I was bound up in innumerable shackles And I want to lose myself in the reality reflected in the chaos around me I’ve already had a lethal dose of misfortune The ruined gallows towers above me Overcast sky, Counting song, the sound of approaching footsteps Wild party with emotions running high A merry-go-round of deepest red unfurled Accompanied by the end of  peace I lay my hands on the blackened altar Wild party with emotions running high A merry-go-round of deepest red unfurled That day was the beginning of it all 13 stairs foretell the metamorphosis An evil spell my life

So I was watching DOGMA preview vid and DAWN featured the Scarlet woman from the 13th anniversary teaser. That's why I got interested in the lyrics. The one frame where she is going up the stairs is the most significant and sums up the whole song. (The text is the song lyrics but translated with google lens).

Now this is 13 STAIRS[-]1 performed in Venomous Cell finale (2012). It left a massive impression on me because Ruki used this 7 pointed star (Star of Babalon) background. I couldn't figure out the exact connection from her to the song at the time, but I see it now. 13 stairs have been his symbol for the whole thing all along. Also from Venomous Cell:

The hexagram has been a recurring symbol throughout DOGMA and the Mother of God statue is very reminiscent of the NINTH cover, except NINTH cover is red + green specifically. Scarlet red is the colour of Babalon (I talked more about it in the 1st part of the analysis) and emerald green is associated with Daleth and Venusian sephirah Netzach.

The Reita pick saying CATALYST is very interesting. A catalyst is something that initiates or accelerates an (al)chemical reaction or transformation. His is the only 1 in full NINTH colors. Uruha with white/red, Aoi with black/green - the yin yang guitars + goddess colors.

Seeing these picks made me think the 3 songs composed by Uruha (99.999, The Mortal, Babylon's Taboo) are the 3 Red goddess songs. (Fun fact: I was googling Netzach for the preceding paragraph and came across this sentence "The sephirah of Netzach stands firm forever and never regrets. Netzach is not a mortal who fears death and would feel regret in the face of death" and I was like... That's.. a song title.. The song meaning seems to be about the Red goddess slipping away especially if you look at how it was performed in NINTH final)

(the hand is so reminiscent of Babylon's taboo, except then she actually goes into the heart)

DAWN - 20th anniversary:

Babylon's taboo - 20th anniversary:

13STAIRS[-]1 - Mass Final:

NOX - Mass Final:

Ninth Odd Smell - Mass Final:

NINTH ODD SMELL lyrics translation:

First　「disorder」　is an ignorant blade Heresy raising its middle finger in rebellion Reverberation running rampant heading towards the ninth stair of desire Second    「nil」     the future that tore through the darkness Nameless lights The grim precursor soon becomes Stacked up, wriggling Rubbish Draped in crimson despair crawling from the murky depths A tower of fear and doubt looks down upon the world Poison gripping your voice as the days jumble around you Your heart painfully being sliced to shreds Exhilarating in the feeling of destruction Filled with strange distortions You fight your way to the 13th stair So embrace the black black black darkness [Die] We fucking never die This soul can never die We fucking never die Can’t never die

The beginning of NINTH ODD SMELL is referencing all the previous albums. And the overall meaning of the song sums up the message of all their music.

This is from Stacked Rubbish finale [RCE] 2008:

The Scorpio which they used as a backdrop is a symbol of death and transformation, in astrology it rules the 8th house. 8 was on the cover of that DVD. Ruki doing the Jesus Christ pose has been a constant for years, and that crucified Jesus was shown on the screen for a really long time.

But let's go back to MASS:

These 2 pages from MASS limited edition are quoting NOX. NOX lyrics translation: Sorrowful enough to kill The unquenchable flame burns up Thoughts that cannot be put into words Hold you the answer A color that cannot be yielded Spit out your choking heartbeat Peel off your bloodshot eyeballs I will not hesitate anymore

And these pages have all the members on the red page while their shadows are on the black one. Except for Aoi, the Yin guitar, but his red page is Red circling back to Black. So from black to red and back to black again. Unlike everyone else's who's just simply black to red. And the lyrics book has the negative image of the cover art. They did a similar thing with Dogmatic final poster being white and then the DVD booklet having the negative version of that.

This is the Yin triangle from To Dazzling Darkness live:

When I 1st saw that Yin triangle I knew that they know the Goddess like I know her. That's what made me start looking deeply at what else they are doing with symbolism.

To Dazzling Darkness lyrics translation:

The colors bleed from the landscape You hope you’ll wake from this dream The light Vanishes completely before your eyes Let’s have these hearts Now join together as one

The Sacred Heart represents the long-suffering love and compassion of the heart of Christ towards humanity. (This symbol comes from mystics and not the bible)

13th anniversary poster vs MASS final. Both at Nippon Budokan:

Part 1 of the analysis Part 2

#the gazette #I keep thinking Im done with the analysis and then I find something new that hard confirms everything aaaaaahhhh #Its shocking to me every time but i gotta do what I gotta do #the analysis seems to be even more correct than I initially thought #Im having trouble wrapping my head around it

[lttleghost]

The Thematic Relevance of Jesse Pinkman as an Egg 🏳️‍⚧️

(I wrote this analysis awhile back and wanted to make a fresh post to update it!)

While not intentional, there is a lot in Breaking Bad that supports reading Jesse as an egg. This reading of Jesse has a lot of thematic and narrative relevance and also doesn't create any conflicts with the canon material. Jesse being someone who hasn’t realized he’s not actually a man yet could quite literally be canon.

This analysis is heavily based around parallels between Jesse’s character development and what Breaking Bad thematically associates with gender. It’s also heavily interconnected with the show's overarching theme of change, and also, at least for our two main characters of Walt and Jesse, the revealing of true self. There’s plenty of evidence that each of them already had the traits we see them with at the end of Breaking Bad. Jesse being this very kind and compassionate young adult and Walt being this egotistical monster.

But I would consider Walt's self-deception to be more shallow than Jesse’s self deception. While Walt did end up in a lifestyle that was opposed to who he truly was, he consciously knew what he wanted to some extent, whereas Jesse fully convinced himself that he was a different person than the one he truly is because he never really got the chance to actually figure out much about himself. 

There are a lot of examples of Jesse’s disconnected sense of self throughout the show, but the first one that comes to mind has to do with his superhero OCs-

EDIT: YO! if you find video essays more engaging than reading a bunch of text, this analysis now also comes in video form [link]

I think that Jane’s observation that all of them looked like Jesse was, in fact, correct. I wouldn’t consider him doing this as a conscious decision but I feel that he almost admits it. After initially denying that his OCs looked like him and after Jane affectionately teases him he ends up saying to her “like you never wanted a superpower.” And while you could interpret this as just a response to her teasing, I’m convinced that there’s an additional layer to it. Especially because when Jane leaves to check the door, there's a moment where Jesse looks at the sketchbook with his drawings and it seems like he’s considering something, and I’d bet you anything that what he’s thinking about is whether or not he had actually drawn himself and this is REALLY interesting since-

Jesse is a criminal right? And while superheroes themselves are technically criminals as well, as vigilante justice isn’t actually legal, they’re still typically known to be ‘crime fighters’, and Jesse describes his characters as being such. So with his OCs subconsciously being depictions of himself and them being superheroes (crime fighters) and his current life as a criminal, you get the image of someone who doesn’t know who he is or what he wants deep down. 

There’s no way that Jesse’s current delinquent lifestyle was his truly… preferred path. It’s much more likely it was the only thing he thought he could do successfully. It’s evidently been the one thing he’s made a decent living off of. He has no support from his parents, and doesn’t seem like he has had it since he was a highschooler. Jesse is shown to have no support outside of the drug trade. Most of his personal skills and interests are artistic or honestly domestic in a world that assigns more value to academics and he’s a highschool graduate who doesn’t have any job experience. 

I also believe Jesse is very aggressively ADHD coded, and the combination of having virtually no support, struggling with addiction, and having undiagnosed and improperly self medicated ADHD would make slogging through any “respectable” job that he has access to, or any job that his parents might encourage him to do, unbearable.

So the drug trade was his best bet, Jesse even views cooking meth as a form of art, something that he’s passionate about.

I can’t in good faith ignore that doing something that is... generally frowned upon, didn’t factor into what Jesse chose to do on some level, as society and the structures that it’s built on failed him and there’s an inherent sense of rebellion that often forms in a person when they’re failed like that. Granted, superheroes also tend to often contain some commentary on societies failings as well. Jesse just couldn’t actually be a real-life superhero. So with the few benefits it had in practice compared to any other job, Jesse played into the rest of the role of a criminal, and convinced himself that the aspects of it that conflicted with his personality... didn’t, probably without even noticing.

Even more to this disconnect; When Jane asks “and that’s a superpower?” in response to Jesse explaining Backwardo’s powers Jesse responds with “come on, I was a kid when I drew these, it was like four years ago.” And Jesse is 24 years old in that scene, meaning that he would’ve been 20 when he drew these characters, and when I first wrote this analysis I was wondering whether or not Jesse had gotten involved with the drug trade other than buying drugs by that time, but there wasn’t really anything I could confirm any theories with. 

But now I've got the Better Call Saul episode “Waterworks” where Jesse has his second cameo, where he is in fact, 20, and in that cameo Jesse accompanying Emilio, a person we know is his partner in cooking meth, to Saul’s office makes me certain he’s in it by that point. And I just have to wonder if Jesse’s superheroes were almost a… subconscious vent, a manifestation of how being a criminal in the specific way Jesse is, is not what he wants. Something that suggests that Jesse’s actual identity and his current view of his identity don’t line up.

Another thing to point out about the cameo that could be seen as additional evidence of Jesse’s discomfort with being more than just a customer of the drug trade is that he was hanging out outside of Saul’s office, and until Kim gave him one he didn't have a cigarette, so he wasn’t out there to smoke. And while there could be other explanations to why he was outside on his own, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say, other than just his general skepticism of Saul, he was just not particularly jazzed to be where he was at that moment and not comfortable going inside.

So relating all of this to gender; that narrative of convincing yourself that you are the person that you’re supposed to be for your best chance of survival instead of being able to truly be yourself already works pretty strongly as an allegory for being trans. But to add onto that even more, thematically Breaking Bad associates “manhood” with the drug trade in one way or another, and paralleling how Jesse realizes he doesn’t fit into the drug trade like he thought he did with how he might not be a cis man like he thought he was makes for a really solid queer reading.

The whole show is pretty explicitly about toxic masculinity. Obviously in real life masculinity and manhood do not have to be toxic, and in Breaking Bad’s original intended story Jesse is a cis man who ends up not fitting into those toxic ideas of manhood. 

Things that the rest of the male cast don’t blink at or at least have more mild reactions to, just tear Jesse apart. He’s also targeted at least a couple of times for having emotional vulnerability that is considered to be “not manly”. It’s much easier to point out the differences between him and the male cast than it is to point out similarities between them and this just gets more pronounced the longer the show goes on. He doesn’t really have any positive ties to being a man and I don’t think we can say we ever see Jesse actually reclaim his own sense of manhood. And I think that lack of reclamation gives even more legitimacy to the reading that, along with leaving the drug trade and all of its toxic masculinity bullshit behind, maybe Jesse just leaves behind being a man altogether, and maybe it was something that wasn’t really ever a true part of him, just like his life as a criminal.

Even at the start of the series Jesse’s attempts at hyper-masculinity come off as really goofy and performative. In episode one  Krazy-8 mentions that Emilio thinks that Jesse might’ve ratted on him Jesse first has a much more genuine response of “that’s bullshit” which makes sense with his strong character trait of being loyal, but then he goes to say “I should kick his punk ass for even thinking that.” and it just sounds like fake bravado to me. There’s no way Jesse actually thinks he stands a chance against Emilio since Jesse has a body type that resembles a small bird and there's no way he has that little self awareness. He's just playing out a script that wasnt even well thought through, and while some of his other performances of masculinity don’t come across as that fake, there aren’t many that feel like they actually come from Jesse himself, they just feel like something that he just thinks he should do.

And while not every experience with men Jesse has is negative, there always seems to be some distance between him and the men he does have good relationships with. Jesse forms a parent-child type relationship with Mike that is healthier than any other he’s had up to that point other than probably his aunt, but there’s a part of Jesse that Mike never seems to fully get. When Jesse doesn’t want Lydia to be killed Mike says that 'this woman deserves to die as much as any man' and I think he misses that Jesse just still isn’t that keen on killing people even with everything he’s gotten involved with. Even if there are some acts of violence and even some people’s deaths he is fine with and thinks are justified, Jesse never fully adapts to “the job” the way Mike does, and Mike is just not quite able to understand that, or at least not why.

Jesse and his friends have a distance between them as well. Though they’re arguably not as entrenched in toxic masculinity as any of the other prominent men in the show are, and aren’t nearly as involved in the violence of dealing drugs despite being in the trade. Yet still Jesse’s interactions with them most of the time feel different and more withdrawn than their interactions with each other. Like Jesse really wants their presence and company and wants to fit in but there ends up being something that he can’t connect with alongside them, and this also gets more prominent as the show progresses. There’s parts where Jesse seems to be withholding how badly his “high rank” in the drug trade is affecting him when Pete and Badger seem to sort of idolize him for it and want in on it. I think Jesse sort of considers saying something to them about it, but he hesitates and doesn’t. He repeatedly doesn’t confide in them even though, while his friends do perform some facets of hyper-masculinity, they don’t really seem to target or reject vulnerability in the way most of the other men in Breaking Bad do. And Jesse’s distance from even the more harmless side of the male cast makes it feel like it’s not just the toxic masculinity that he’s disconnected from.

Jesse’s relationships with women even further separate him from the men of the show. His romantic relationships with Jane and Andrea read much more as relationships between equals, compared to Walt and Skyler or Hank and Marie. While Jesse does throw the “nice job wearing the pants in the family” insult at Walt in episode two of the first season, after Skyler almost caught him moving Emilio’s body, in Jesse’s own relationships he never actually tries to take control and doesn’t have any problem with Jane honestly being the person making more active choices for the both of them in their relationship, which Walt comments on by throwing that same “nice job wearing the pants” insult back at Jesse.

Another interesting thing found within Jesse’s relationship with Jane that ties them to specific gender roles happens after Jane doesn’t really introduce him to her father. Jesse asks about it and after a bit this Jane ends up saying “What am I supposed to say? Hey dad, meet the stoner guy who lives next door and by the way I’m sleeping with him?” and Jesse replies “Is that all you think you’re doing?”

It’s been pretty common for “the guy” to be considered as the one who sees a relationship as just being sex and “the girl” to see it as being romantic, and this is a very very dumb aspect of traditional western gender roles that this scene even has to subvert, but I think in the context of Breaking Bad’s dealings with gender roles the fact that Jesse is put in the role much more typically associated with women could be viewed as significant. And this significance can be extended to the show’s most prominent dynamic, dealing with the relationship between abusive men and women, Jesse is a victim. I’m not implying men can’t be victims of other men's abuse, but it does make Jesse easier to associate with women in the story, and while the narrative association comes from a negative place, the negativity is directed towards men. But the connection it forms between Jesse and women is a sense of camaraderie and even comfort, at least on Jesse’s side.

and with those connections with women I’d say the most accurate egg interpretation of Jesse is that she’s specifically transfeminine in some way.

I think in this analysis its important to specifically examine Jesse's journey with gender questioning as I think it follows the rest of the ups and downs in her learning more about herself in the resr of her character arc. My personal interpretation of Jesse is that she is a non medically transitioning nonbinary transfem person. The not medically transitioning bit is largely because I enjoy bringing attention to the existence of no-med no-op trans people and to push the point that not seeking medical transition doesnt make a person any less trans, though I do feel that since Jesse's relationship with gender is focused on the societal side of gender roles that don't really relate to physical form that it's a reasonable interpretation that she may not medically transition. I think she uses he/him and she/her pronouns, and is maybe a futch lesbian. I’m saying all of this because it'll be the lens through which I’ll be talking about Jesse’s journey with questioning his gender and how that progresses during the timeline of Breaking Bad. However I don’t claim this to be the only version of transfem Jesse that works with my analysis, or that it's necessarily better than any others that do work. I’ll also be mentioning concepts of “offscreen” additional scenes. That being said, if you’re someone who likes to stick 100% to the text given to us, the “offscreen” scenes aren’t exactly necessary for this interpretation to work as a part of the existing story as the general emotions behind them still stand.

I don’t picture Jesse as having any definable Gender (™) experiences when he was younger other than just a general sense of not belonging, though gender wouldn’t be the only thing playing into that. But as Jesse got older and struggled more, he started to purposefully play the part of what he saw as “a man” to survive in the only role that he thought he could. I see the thought “I wish I didn’t have to be a man” crossing his mind every so often though. I think he just deals with his place in the world for awhile, but after Walt enters the scene and Jesse experiences shit he really didn’t bargain for because of his old teacher, someone who is settling into a personification of toxic masculinity, Jesse’s frustration with being a man becomes more prominent and harder to ignore internally. 

In my opinion Jane is the person that helped him start to solidify what exactly those thoughts were indicating. Her approach to relationships would be considered not traditionally cishet, and so is the way she presents herself in general, so I think Jane has some sort of knowledge about the complexities of gender, if she isn't actually queer herself in some way.

And she’s one of the only people we see Jesse truly, truly open up to and so I think at some point later in their relationship Jesse might actually say something about wishing she wasn’t a man around Jane, and I can see Jane saying that Jesse doesn't have to be a man if she doesn't want to be.

But then Jane dies, and I think as a result of that and the lesson Jesse learned from rehab “I’m the bad guy” he goes into just total repression mode. Embodying this new belief Jesse very much dips into the hyper-masculine behavior of the drug trade, he is much more concerned with money beyond paying bills and having nice things, and he plans to do the one thing in the entire show that makes me truly angry at him because of this whole thing, attempting to sell drugs to the rehab group. I don’t think he would’ve ever thought of doing something like that before. He’s trying very hard to be something that’s even further from his actual nature than we’ve seen up until this point.

Part of Jesse’s grief over losing Jane, a person who he confided in probably more than anyone else at that point, was to just completely close up, even to himself. Forget all of those parts of himself that resisted the rougher aspects of the drug trade he was getting dragged into and definitely forget about wondering if he really is a man or not.

At least until meeting Andrea and Brock, which snaps him out of that “I’m the bad guy” mindset, but by that time I think just, too much starts to happen for Jesse to have much time to question her gender. I wouldn’t consider her to be as actively repressing any sort of “I wish I wasn’t a man” thoughts but the amount of turmoil and danger that she’s in, just really really doesn’t lend itself to that sort of gender introspection as much. 

I’ve got some additional thoughts on Jesse’s journey with gender that are more headcanons than actual analysis of the show so I didn’t include them in the text above. But I still really wanted to share because I like them and think that they really add to the analysis, so here they are;

I mentioned that I don’t think that Jesse had any particularly notable moments that might’ve suggested that she was trans when she was younger other than feeling out of place, but maybe he did have some interest in playing with “girls stuff” and her parents discouraged it because as we know they’re the shitty type of people who value their child being “normal” at the price of that child’s happiness, but I can also see her being one of those kids who just didn’t even grasp the differences between boys and girls stuff for a longer time than others, or I can even see Jesse’s last connection to the "male" side of gender being from when she was a little boy, before he was aware of the concept of what being a man was, and that it would be expected of her.

But later, in his adulthood, after the idea and pressures of "manhood" became very present in his life, one of the more certain instances of gender questioning I picture Jesse having is at some point while hanging out with Badger, Pete and Combo, Jesse screws around and puts on a dress. And he's like “haha I look like such a queer don’t I?” but is internally thinking something more along the lines of “ I will die before I tell anyone how this makes me feel” (that being that it makes him feel happy). 

And then, as we enter into the timeline of the show itself; when Jane first tells Jesse that he doesn’t have to be a man if he doesn’t want to, I don’t actually think that Jesse would be receptive of it at first. I think it’s more likely that he’d decide he suddenly doesn’t want to have this discussion anymore and change the subject. Jesse would still have the misconception that you need to medically transition or at least be required to fit some sort of ‘criteria’ to be trans, instead of just identifying as a different gender than your assigned sex, and I think that would play some role in his not wanting to talk about possibly being trans. And even more because, while he could opt out of telling anyone that he’s trans, Jesse’s in a world in general that isn’t trans-friendly, but the drug trade he’s in specifically is very lgbtq-phobic. Jesse himself is definitely gonna have some internalized transphobia, we’ve seen his homophobia, and I definitely read that as a result of his environment rather than actual hatred considering at Jesse’s true core he’s a pretty caring person. But there are definitely people in the drug trade who would be violently homophobic and transphobic, and Jesse would know that, and would probably perceive even realizing that he is trans to be a threat to his safety. But, later on, further into her relationship with Jane I think she’d open up, even if only to Jane.

And that’s what I like to focus on the most with this analysis, all of the happiness and freedom and healing that Jesse gets to feel detaching himself from manhood, something that honestly contributed so much to every part of his suffering. And god does this girl deserve some happiness.

Then when for the most part too much is going on for Jesse to consider whether or not he’s trans, I still sometimes think of a situation where Jesse might’ve suggested? Her gender questioning to Mike, and while I don’t think Mike’s personal reaction would be technically negative, I think he’d tell Jesse to ‘please not share that with anyone else kid’. Which would be discouraging to Jesse, and she’d quickly backtrack, some because of the reaction on its own but also because he really already knows that it’d be stupid to say anything to anyone else, but it’s not until Jesse’s really free from the drug trade that she can finally crack that egg. I really like to think about the comfort and relief Jesse would get to feel no longer having to try and be a man, cause she finally realizes that she isn’t one.

#breaking bad #jesse pinkman #jesse breaking bad #trans jesse pinkman #queer analysis #breaking bad analysis #brba #jesse brba #this is my girlfriend don't touch him #meat.txt #this is a shortened and edited bit of my video essay script #i just like.... HAD to update my inital text analysis while im working on figuring out how to successfully record my video #cause the old one is so jumbled and stufff #or it feels jumbled to me now at least

[nozomijoestar]

LIFTING THE SPOILER WARNING ON THIS POST FOR LAUNCH DAY

Here's my initial analysis and thoughts on Asuka's ending (character episode) in Tekken 8

caught yearning in 1080p

handsome

thinking abt getting students now that the Zaibatsu ate shit (btw you don't find out the Zaibatsu is pretty much on track to being done with no leader again, which is why they continue the tournament presumably after the final battle unless you look through the character episodes, not the main story, for some fucking reason)

Asuka finally smiled at her accepting her and the feeling is mutual, this ending had great role reversal in the sense instead of previously only getting clear insight into Lili's feelings and thoughts now we're openly getting them from Asuka in response- she also felt tempted to give in to her old reaction first think later ways but here she's finally thinking before deciding it doesn't matter why, she enjoys fighting Lili and she finally seems to recognize what Lili's schemes are about on a level (wanting Asuka's attention and getting back at her for having lost), this is the closest so far we've ever gotten to a "I like you too"

this is on top of the teasing and compliment she gave Lili's ability in the same scene, and also correcting Lili on the Kazama Motto Asuka learned, which only Asuka could have told her at some point suggesting further closeness

"Softness overcomes hardness" you two are (HOPEFULLY) starting to change your relationship to be softer (also the hilarious hypocrisy of Asuka BARELY being a person living by any softness in practice)

I love that she even refers to Lili as "That noble (rich) girl", an ojou-sama, which is far better than calling her by nothing or using a rude form of You (anta) as in the past (and generally she's given up calling Lili by rude terms be it in the story mode or otherwise including Shaheen's ending, which is honestly more about AsuLili than him lol, it's also incredible seeing Asuka glad Lili's life was protected and joking about Lili being a handful with someone else)

And despite provoking Asuka in a very shitty way reminiscent of Feng, the premise of this ending is Asuka beating Lili at the tournament so Lili will honor her word of putting Asuka's dojo back the way it was before she bought it- which Lili does after losing rather than refuse out of spite, even if she then uses taking it in a fight to provoke Asuka again, it's nice that she IS willing to listen to Asuka when it comes to promises

honestly if you cut the entire scene into only my screenshots here it still looks so fucking gay

Video source ( @ 1:03 )

This is the de-facto best Asuka ending yet, at last she's happy, hopeful, not confused, and at some form of peace and connection in her life

ALSO ASUKA DIDN'T CALL LILI A DINGBAT SHE CALLED HER AHOU (Idiot/Moron) LIKE ALWAYS AND IT WAS SOFT THIS TIME 😭😭😭😭

Plus Asuka might finally get the dojo back up and become the next leader with Jin's image being fixed and thus how people would see Asuka since they're related, as well as the current war being over- though Reina's new devil bullshit will probably ruin this in the future

EDIT: I FORGOT TO MENTION

PAIR OF BIRDS; BIRD MOTIF FOR KAZAMAS RETURNS

I doubt these are Jun's birds specifically it's more likely just symbolic of Asuka and Lili if it means anything at all. Also doesn't have to specify meaning lovebirds, in general their characters will always be put together. But it is funny how Jun's birds always appear to show her connection to someone she loves, so there could be a parallel here that Asuka's bird imagery would represent the same sense of connection. If it is a visual metaphor for lovebirds though by the time we get Tekken 9 then, the cinema of it all.

ALSO Harada has said Jun attracts animals because of her spiritual mastery over martial arts. She's at a level of power where animals don't run because of sensing her aura; she can suppress her fighting spirit. With how at peace AND in control of herself Asuka is in this ending, maybe the birds imply she can move in a similar direction from here on. And it makes sense too because Asuka has returned to a state of equilibrium now that she doesn't have the stress of the world being in chaos affecting her. As a person who prefers being in control, she's back to feeling some control over her life.

----

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE:

1. It's great that the tone of their relationship is now friendlier, but like in story mode and other places they appear as a pair, we're never shown anything on how they started transitioning from fighting all the time to agreeing to listen and partner up in general, nevermind during a global war they're supposed to have their own personal stakes in beyond not wanting to die (those personal stakes ended up being entirely irrelevant anyway which is it's own problem)

There's a problem present where you're shown the end result of an emotional shift with none of the journey or even a simple scene explaining how they got there, much like the main story and other characters in general many plot points and character changes are resolved off screen showing only the results with no explanation the majority of the time. In the main story this gets even more egregious because even how a character knows specific information usually doesn't get explained at all either unless it relates to Jin understanding the devil gene. This writing makes a lot of things simply happen like it's checking off a list.

In essence, WHERE is a scene connecting Asuka who did nothing but fight Lili and get pissed with her to the Asuka who's tolerant of her, is more catty and accepting than outright angry, is now willing to joke and play around with her, who taught Lili the Kazama Motto she learned (though I guess this one you can say Lili found it while looking up Asuka's family, something we ALSO don't get Asuka's thoughts on beyond surprise) and so on

2. The fact this scene ends with provoking another fight, as much as I like that it's friendly now, isn't the best direction. This fits again into problem 1; there's no on screen room to let these characters breathe and illustrate what made them change now to the viewer. There's no fresh angle given about their relationship outside fighting or even a new approach on their relationship within it. There's no pause in the formula which many people are tired of (and people are already back to calling Asuka a useless piece of shit who's a complete fucking joke, and I can't really blame them entirely because on a surface level all they see is the exact same situation as it's been for twenty years of cutscenes).

Also the logic of having this scene exist is confusing in itself. Nothing in the game story clarified if Asuka sat the tournament out or did participate but was eliminated and decided to follow Lili's progress in Rome as a spectator. A scene explaining either of those would give better weight and context to this one.

3. Zero mention of Asuka's father or his current condition

4. Having Lili imitate what Feng Wei did to dojos like Asuka's is the cruelest way she's ever provoked her. Whereas before it was often ridiculous, silly, and teasing, involving an event that led Asuka to spiral adds something uncharacteristically spiteful toward her from Lili's end. Insofar as what Lili has previously used to get her attention anyway. Keeping Asuka's trauma out of it has always seemed to be a line Lili was willing to respect. And it's off too because this is happening when they're supposed to be becoming friends/are friends now. It's too personal to be brushed off the way it is.

The only way I can rationalize it is if Asuka has let go of her anger towards what Feng did in part (but she still has a special intro where she wants to attack him on sight saying they finally meet so, I don't fuckin know, that may as well have been included as an easter egg if they're gonna do nothing with it) or she never really gave enough of a shit about the entire thing in the first place. You can make a loose argument using prior games to show Asuka never really cared about the revenge aspect as much- but her behavior sorta contradicts this at the same time. So really who fucking knows. Based on how she reacts here I guess it's not a big deal at this point cuz she doesn't get mad and jumps into messing around with Lili like a friend anyway.

Maybe this could be explained too by whatever made them act friendly now in the first place, but again we never saw that. So instead it comes out worse than if we knew.

5. WHY THE FUCK DID THEY MENTION THE ENTIRE MAIN KAZAMA FAMILY WAS ELIMINATED BY OGRE IN THE STORY MODE THEN HAVE THE NEWS NOT IMPACT ASUKA AT ALL

We also never see them discuss what Lili knows about the family in any depth between themselves

Viva le sex gay I guess but now I have more questions than answers and that's a problem when the game acts like I've been given answers it never provided. I got something I wanted but with nothing to show for it.

EDIT 1/27/2024 : However that won't discount that I do love what I received and the potential it represents; I adore this shit.

#tekken #hey gorilla. just say you care already. like actually say it not imply it. #i like this ending more than i dislike it but the parts i dislike still suck lol #asuka kazama #asulili

[alexandraisyes]

Initial Bloodmoon Thoughts - New vs Old

Disclaimer, this ramble/analysis was made 01/11/2024 and is copy-pasted from the original (me) source on Discord in TSBS server. I have a thread there. There are a few ss of the original thread for when other people came into the conversation.

Thoughts under the cut.

My brain is stuck on BM. I remember how angry everyone was with Earth for saying that she didn't think they could be redeemed because she's supposed to be the "therapist" character but like She's just as much a person as the other animatronics and just because she's "understanding" doesn't mean she has to be forgiving of her literal murderer, I can imagine dying messes a person up (we all saw how Lunar handled it) And where she has to be perfect, she has to be the better bigger person, it's part of her code to always take the moral high ground and turn the other cheek so to speak I'd bet you money she is compartmentalizing the heck out of life So no, I don't blame her for not wanting anything to do with Bloodmoon and thinking he's beyond saving If someone killed me I would write them off too

However Sun on the other hand I'm mostly just crouchy that he's being a spineless cunt He was willing to argue with Moon about BM because he knew that they couldn't help it But he's not saying anything about Eclipse and I'm so grrr Like I get it, Eclipse was kinda crappy, but you aren't stepping back and looking at this rationally Sun, and someone needs to step back and look at it rationally because Moon is way too emotional and always has been, and Sun feeds off of his brother's anxiety and always has

It feels like a double standard on the Celestial Twin's part (cause it is lmao)

"He can't help it, it's all he knows" For Bloodmoon And then "I'm gonna torture that inserts insult" For Eclipse like come on He hasn't even done anything (yet) I can understand why Moon would be more understanding towards BM than Eclipse, but it doesn't mean I have to like it

I've said it once and I will say it time and time again Eclipse is the product of an unhospitable environment that was left to his own devices long enough that he drowned in his own self-loathing and the only anchor that he could perceive was taking that out on those around him All of the Eclipse issues could have been solved if one: Old Moon treated him as more than just a parasite And two: Sun had a single thought in that pretty little head that wasn't just an echo of Moon's

I love Sun to death, don't get me wrong I loathe the fact that even now, with a 'new' Moon, he is still just going along with everything Moon says and decides upon He does not think for himself The one time he did, the one time he tried to escape Moon's hands around his choices, what happened? He failed to kill Eclipse and was goaded into destroying Moon's magic Which did what? ding ding ding Only reaffirmed his prior belief that he's A screw-up, stupid, the dumb one, incapable, unreliable And that Moon is Correct, the smart one, capable, and the one who should be trusted with decisions Which is so so so bad for Sun's psyche

Whereas with Bloodmoon, Sun and Moon cannot seem to get over this idea that he's "like the old Moon he can't help it we understand" Sure, Bloodmoon has a want to kill that is so strong it feels like a need And so did the old Moon But that's where the similarities end They fail to take into consideration bloodmoon's feelings when they talk about 'redeeming him' As well as his origins They only see the surface value because they've already written him off And yeah, bloodmoon is awful Bloodmoon is an awful awful creature who has done horrible things to the celestial family And his instincts do not excuse his behavior However, I hesitate to write him off for similar reasons I won't write Eclipse off He's a product of his environment and Ruin's crappy programming (Not that Ruin is bad at programming, per say, more that Ruin only programmed him in what he thought would make BM a good tool, which leaves out a lot of higher cognitive functions.) As we've already seen, this BM is a lot dumber than the first BM when it comes to rationalizing and recognizing issues past the immediate here and now in specifically their bubble

I think, and this is just a theory, but I think that Sun was thinking of the old BM when he was trying to get through to the BM now. Because the old BM was a lot more complex, a lot smarter, and was able to rationalize with others. This one isn't. This one is vey obviously missing very large chunks of development and personality, and I don't know if it would be kinder to just straight up put him down or try to reprogram him. The issue with reprogramming him is it might break him beyond what he already is. Or it might cause a similar crisis that Moon has when he thinks about "old moon". Not the same, of course, but similar. Or it may just completely erase BM entirely because the celestial idiots have no idea what he was like before Sun killed him past what they see on the surface. So if they were to go the reprogramming route, they'd have to turn to dun dun dun Eclipse Because even if old BM and Eclipse weren't on the best of terms, Eclipse would be able to fix what is missing because he knows the missing peices. Now of course, this only works if it's Eclipse 1.0 or 2.0. If the Eclipse we have now is Eclipse 3.0 then he can't do crap unless the entirety of the BM schematics were in the files Ruin stole, that Eclipse then stole back. And even then, he still can't fully get it if he's Eclipse 3.0 because he's missing the memories of what BM was like. So, with all of that complication, at this point it's easier (not necessarily right) to just put him down. He's dangerous, right? (Rhetorical)

Past Sun's POV on BM, I get the feeling that Moon let Sun try to rationalize with BM because, in Moon's mind, BM and Old Moon are basically the same person. Maybe even KC too. An irrational need to kill is embedded in their codes, and they are powerless to stop it, etc etc. And Moon was probably thinking, "Well, Old me and KC both managed to fight their instincts, so surely BM can too." He fails to recognize that BM doesn't have a support system. Old Moon had Sun, and he was friends with the other animatronics as well. Old Moon also had a best friend, Monty. Monty isn't the best influence, but he is still a friend. And Sun was a good influence on Old Moon. Killcode had a good influence too. He had Sun, Glamrock Freddy, and to an extent, Moon. He had a reason to hold back his violent urges, it would be counterproductive to lash out at old BM and Eclipse 2.0 when they were his allies. Acting on said urges outside of the area would also be counterproductive bc that could endanger the host of the body he was sharing, which would end his own life as well.

BM 2.0 has… no one. Ruin was a bad influence. The stitchwraith was a bad influence. Rodrick was a bad influence. Ruin was manipulating them by being kind, so of course BM 2.0 is going to react poorly to kindness and compassion. It is, in their eyes, just another ploy to make him a tool. He can't trust a helping hand because the first kind hands in his life were lying to him. When you wake up, and all that you know is kindness being a mask, that's what you expect from everyone. And when you're offered help, you react poorly and with hatred because you are expecting to be used just like the person you trusted used you. The only reason he let Solar help him was because Solar was upfront with his intentions, and didn't try to sugarcoat it or play 'friends'. He knew that it was a situation in which they would be taking advantage of each other, but the key there was he knew. Ruin literally destroyed his psyche in the worst ways possible by programming him to be a tool, only showing him the parts of the show that were beneficial to Ruin's plans, and using kindness to manipulate him. BM has every right to be angry and distrustful because the person he considered family was the person who broke him beyond repair. And Sun and Moon don't understand that because they don't understand psychology. Earth may have been able to understand (therapist coding), but BM purposefully made her hate them (perhaps to avoid the kindness they know she gives everyone?). Out of all of the people they could have attacked, they attacked the one person who could have puzzled them out. At this point, the only hope for BM is either Eclipse or a literal miracle.

*Ten hour timeskip*

Okay so I’ve been thinking about Bloodmoon and my earlier statement of “At this point, the only hope for BM is either Eclipse or a literal miracle.” I’d like to rescind that statement to add the potential of Solar Flare since there is talk of bringing him back. I’ll elaborate once I get to my computer, but my mind is buzzing with the idea and the logic that would allow it to work. Because on the surface one squints and goes “And Alex is crazy talking again” But it will make sense once I explain how it could work

So Flare We love Flare I love Flare Flare

Flare has been known for a few things in the show. He's a tool. He was made to protect Killcode. He has limited emotional capacity. He's basically a super computer with a consciousness. He's an absolute beast of an animatronic, and is probably the most dangerous person we have seen on the show. He's also upfront, honest, non-deceptive, and has never shown a preference towards one side or the other. Nor is he friendly. He's not unfriendly, but he doesn't go out of his way to be nice. He gave Moon the schematics to the satellite because it was in KC's best interest, not because he liked Moon or hated Eclipse. There could honeslty be debate on if he's even capable of liking or disliking things, considering how emotionally incapable he is. He's very logical, analytical, etc.

So how does Bloodmoon 2.0 factor into this?

Well, as stated earlier, BM doesn't want kindness. He doesn't want pity, he doesn't want niceness. Flare wouldn't extend him those to start with, so that's one thing crossed off the list. Flare would also be upfront with BM about his intentions, he did straight up tell Eclipse he was helping to kill him, although he omitted the way he was planning to do that. So Flare wouldn't be trying to manipulate BM either. Bloodmoon may also feel some kind of companionship purely from the fact they were both made to be tools. Flare has no need to be loyal to the celestial twins or to Eclipse. I can see him going rogue like KC did. It wouldn't be unplausable that he would seek out BM purely since the twins were considered by KC to be family. And since there isn't a Killcode anymore for Flare to look after, his sons may be the next best thing, even if it isn't BM 1.0. Flare doesn't give a crap, honestly. He can defend himself, but he's also able to just sit there and take a hit. It's unlikely the twins would even be able to damage him were they to try to attack him. He'd probably be able to just let them wear themselves out until they are tired enough they can just be picked up like kittens and taken care of. Due to his stubborn nature mixed with the apathy we've seen displayed, I can see him able to help the twins because he's not gonna just "give up" on them. He can sit back and let them run themselves ragged and then do what he has to once they're all tired out. It wouldn't be the kind of redemption we're used to seeing in the show, and would probably not be a total redemption, but he may be able to tame them enough that they can be handled and fixed by the others. Flare taming BM twins and then reuniting with Eclipse so he can fix them? Interesting thought. Bring the family back together.

Obviously, I'm not saying this is even likely to happen. This won't happen, of course. But it could, in a different universe, I suppose. This was just to serve the purpose of explaining how Flare would be able to help the twins tbh.

Flare is too smart and apathetic to get hung up by a detail like that (in my opinion based off of my observation of him). He’d be pretty quick to piece together that the twins killed KC because they were manipulated into perceiving the older animatronic as a threat. (Once again Ruin why did you have to break them like that). Kinda like how they wanted to kill Monty (maybe still do?) because Ruin talked them into believing that Monty was a threat. Not, not a physical threat, but an emotional one. He (ruin) leaned on the fact that BM was “tricked” in the past by the people that Ruin saw as obstacles to convince BM to take them out

Pair that with volatile emotions and aggressive tendencies and you get a red goblin on a murder spree to avenge BM 1.0 more or less. I don’t think Flare would hold that against him cause he’s always been good at tearing through people’s psyches and finding the root motivations and issues.

And for BM 2.0 those issues and motivations both stem from Ruin’s manipulation

The thing is, I don’t think Flare really cared about KC. For him, it seemed more like protecting KC was just a protocol. Kinda like the protocol to kill for Moon 1.0. It’s just something that he was supposed to do. Which is just further reason why the twins killing KC wouldn’t be a hang-up for him

#sun and moon show #fnaf au #moondrop #earth and lunar show #tsams eclipse #tsams bloodmoon #tsams solar flare #sunrise fnaf #ruin tsams #tsams solar #character analysis #tsams analysis #bloodmoon twins #alex talks

[charms-cat]

Thoughts on TBOSAS Pt. 2

Disclaimer: I did skim certain scenes but I'm still mostly basing my theory on what I can remember (from both the book and the movie), so feel free to correct me if I got something wrong

So in Part 1 of my analysis, I wondered -

why did they make it so that the Academy kids didn’t know that they were going to be mentors? They already knew that they were going to be assigned a tribute. iirc Coryo was worried since he wanted a ‘good’ tribute and, when all the ‘good ones’ were gone, he hoped that Dean Highbottom forgot him instead of assigning him a tribute from District 12.

I was thinking about it again and honestly? I can only guess that this was another ploy to make Coryo seem more sympathetic than he actually is

My main evidence is the fact that they switched the mentorship with the Plinth Prize

1. The Mentorship

Book!Mentorship: Coryo tells us that the final project before graduation is a newly-implemented mentorship for the Hunger Games (the kids from the districts will be paired with the best/top students from the Academy); it'll be up to the mentors to make a spectacle of their assigned tribute, to make the Games more entertaining to watch; whoever has the tribute with the best performance will win a substantial amount of money, which Coryo planned on using to pay for his University tuition

from the start, Coryo knows what to expect. but, more importantly, it's made clear that he never views the tributes as anything more than a means to an end. iirc he was quite... factual(?) about what the Games entailed; he doesn't express any form of remorse towards the tributes' fate and condemns Sejanus for feeling any sort of kinship with the kids from the district.

Coryo was worried when his name wasn't called when Dean Highbottom was assigning mentors. as a Snow, he never thought that he'd be assigned a "runt" from District 12. he was embarrassed/worried/humiliated that he was assigned to the district whose tributes died earliest; and not even to the (potentially) strong boy, but to the weak girl. it was only after the buzz created by Lucy Gray's performance that Coryo felt any kind of positive feeling for her; a sense of "I may have gotten the weakest tribute, but I can still win the award" "she's the only tribute who everyone had an interest beyond 'oh, they look like they could win'".

in short, Coryo's unsympathetic nature (esp towards the tributes) is practically highlighted since the start. his tribute is not a person, they are his project.

Movie!Mentorship: comes as a surprise to everyone since they were expecting a scholarship award (the Plinth Prize); Coryo has no time to think of what this means and, so, there's no time to even hint towards his contempt of the districts. this way, the audience doesn't realise that Coryo thinks lesser of the tributes

(I hope I can word this properly)

changing this scene into a surprise mentorship instead of a pr-established one changes the initial impression of Coryo's character.

book!Coryo, we can assume, knew of the mentorship days/weeks/months beforehand. the fact that he never develops any sort of empathy for his tribute (not thinking of them beyond how they can help him make a good impression and help him win the prize money) is telling of his callous nature towards the tributes. we should have some sort of negative impression of him bcs "this is not just a project, these are kids' lives on the line"

but for movie!Coryo, this mentorship is not an anticipated chance for making a good impression bcs he never knew about it. instead, he comes off as just a studious kid, hoping for a scholarship. we get a more positive impression of Coryo bcs "hey, he didn't know this was going to happen, he just rolled with it".

movie!Coryo is not the person who, for an extended period of time, viewed his tribute as a mere stepping stone to further his education. he was the person who got snubbed of (potentially) getting a prize so that the Academy/Capitol/Dean Highbottom can suddenly shove one more hurdle onto him before he can get the scholarship.

imo "suddenly" introducing a hurdle at the last minute is definitely a sympathetic device. it invokes the feeling of "what? but he was already so close to winning the scholarship, why would they suddenly change it? that's unfair! they never informed him beforehand!" now, the audience is more inclined to feel injustice and/or sympathy on behalf of Coryo

2. Sudden second point that I just thought of: the change doesn't make sense

in the book, we know of the mentorship. so it makes sense that we start on the day of the reaping since that's the day that Coryo will know whose mentor he'll be

but why would we start on the day of the reaping in the movie?

it's strange enough to imply that they apparently award scholarships on the same day that they reap the tributes. but why would they do that in the first place? the Games have always been a "reminder to the districts" (and the price of rebellion) so why would the Academy try to overshadow the Games by having a joyous celebration right after it? esp since the Academy themselves want to remedy the low viewership of the Games. + there's no doubt the wealthy Capitol citizens would brag about their children's achievements through some form of extravagance

(I'm assuming the scholarship ceremony would take place after the reaping, since the broadcast began not long after Coryo arrived to the hall; otherwise that'd be another plot hole)

3. the Plinth Prize

brief background: the Academy has a system in which, if you get three "demerits" (by violating Academy rules/conduct), you'll be expelled. Coryo gets his first demerit for "endangering a student (referring to himself)" by landing in the zoo with the tributes

so now Coryo only has two chances to not fuck up if he doesn't want to get kicked out of the Academy before he can win the prize. Dean Highbottom sorta threatens/mocks Coryo for this. Coryo can't refute bcs he could get another demerit for "insubordination". Coryo also worries that he might not get the prize after all bcs the Dean hates him

but then Strabo and Sejanus introduce the Plinth Prize! Coryo has new hope bcs the Prize is a personally-funded scholarship so the Academy can't interfere in any way. regardless of whether the Academy doesn't award him the money, he'll at least get to attend the University. the only condition is that the Prize will be awarded to the one "whose tribute wins the Games". so Coryo has an extra incentive for getting Lucy Gray to win

the change in the movies isn't so egregious. it does make sense that Strabo Plinth would fund a scholarship for the Academy. except for two things:

the removal/diminishing of the demerits subplot and Dean Highbottom dangling the potential loss of the prize money over Coryo's head also removes an extra layer of disdain that Coryo has towards the Dean + the reason why Coryo is always careful about what he does and is v secretive when he does things like sneaking food out of the Academy cafeteria

the Prize was Sejanus's idea. give my boy his credit!

4. unrelated Lysistrata appreciation

I already talked about how the movie removed Lyssie's kindness and gave some examples. but let me talk a lil more about how she reacted when it became highly likely that Jessup would die. specifically, the fact that Lyssie cried

Lysistrata only knew Jessup for two weeks. just by nature of class differences, it's unlikely that they developed the level of kinship that Coryo and Lucy Gray did. but there's just an obvious fondness that developed, definitely for Lysistrata at least -

she tried her best to repress her emotions, but couldn't stop the tears from escaping

she pleaded/hoped that Lucy Gray wouldn't let Jessup die alone (Coryo had the fuckin audacity to want to complain that Lucy Gray didn't want to leave Jessup alone either; the only reason he didn't was bcs Lyssie was obviously upset)

Lysistrata asserted that the rabies were the fault of the Capitol's raccoons; she didn't let Lepidus (the interviewer) blame Jessup or his district and redirected the interview to speak about Jessup

she makes it a point to tell the Capitol that Jessup was a good person, a protector, that Jessup probably would've never won the Games bcs he'd die to protect Lucy Gray

when Lepidus (that bitch) calls Jessup a dog (!!!) - "a really good one" - Lysistrata shuts that down immediately: "Not like a dog. Like a human being."

she couldn't bear to stay afterwards and headed home immediately

AND THEY CHANGED ALL THAT. I don't think movie!Lysistrata even reacted to Jessup's death, at least not to an equal degree

she was the only good Capitol-born person (other than Tigris). too bad the movie couldn't let the Capitol have any nuance, except for Dean Highbottom's remorseful confession in the second-last scene

#the ballad of songbirds and snakes #thg meta #the hunger games #hunger games #ballad of songbirds and snakes #tbosas spoilers #the ballad of songbirds and snakes spoilers #coriolanus snow #sejanus plinth #lysistrata vickers #casca highbottom #strabo plinth

[mindmeltonabun-blog]

Alchemy of Souls Part 2: Evidence The Soul In Part 2 Was Not The Same Soul From Part 1

Hello Readers,

Thought I should post some more evidence to that what I said in my Theories and Analysis post for Eps 29-30. When I had initially shared a link to my blog post on Reddit, I thought things would have calmed down by now and people would not be so toxic. I also thought there would be more open minded people who would consider alternative arguments. However, I was wrong. Many there did not even choose to read what I wrote and immediately said things like "you are confused" or "you do not understand the show" or implied I was stupid for even proposing such things. If I did not understand the story in the first place then how would I have gotten some many things right during Part 1?

Things progressed to even more people jumping on the bandwagon and hurling more insults at me when all I did in the first place was provide a different prospective on things. It became apparent to me that it was futile to continue to discuss such things with these types of people. What I observed among these people is that they could not fully establish any logical counter argument other than saying Naksu=Cho Yeong. That was pretty much the gist of what they said.

They also accused me of not wanting to be wrong when in reality I do not care if I am right or wrong. I have stated as much repeatedly both here and my Twitter. If I could sit there for hours and debate about my own thinking, they should at least be willing to do the same. In my profession, all we do day in and out is internally debate with ourselves whether our logic is flawed or not. Therefore, I have no qualms about being wrong. At least in my field when we tell someone they are wrong, we provide reasons, examples, etc. You do not simply tell someone just because. If you do so, it just makes you seem like you are the ones who are afraid to be wrong.

What I sought to do here on my blog was to try and make sense of everything, connect things to see the bigger picture, and consider everything there is to possibly consider. When I formulate my theories, I at least explain my reasoning behind it by giving examples from the show. So, if there is anyone who disagrees with all that I will say below then please enlighten me. Provide me with a rational counter argument with examples from the show. Otherwise, if you are unable to, then maybe you should consider that what I say could be correct.

Thinking caps on! Time to do a mini analysis!

More Evidence Proving The Soul In Part 2 is Mu Deok/Cho Yeong

Before I start this section, I want to add that if you want to discover whose soul belongs to whatever face, alternative name, real name, and body, just turn to these three characters: Soi, Jin Mu, and Seo Yul. These characters had known either girls the longest in comparison to other characters (Soi-Mu Deok and Jin Mu and Seo Yul-Naksu).

Now in Ep 26, Soi tells Seo Yul Naksu's soul is in Jin Bu Yeon's body. She adds the current face of Jin Bu Yeon is Naksu's face (GYJ face). Soi's logic was that since the soul inside is Naksu's soul, Jin Bu Yeon's current face must also be that of Naksu's. Side note, this is where assigning souls to alternative names to faces to real identities will get you into trouble.

Flash forward to Ep 29, Seo Yul hears some information which causes fireworks to go off in his head. During the flashback, Soi talks about how the girl she knew from Sari (Mu Deok) had consumed the soul potion which caused her to go crazy and die. What did this mean? Eureka moment, anyone?

It meant Soi thought it was "Mu Deok's soul" who resided in Jin Bu Yeon's body in Part 1. However, we as viewers knew it was actually "Naksu's soul" who was in Jin Bu Yeon's body during Part 1. Since Soi thought it was Mu Deok's soul in Jin Bu Yeon's body in Part 1, she erroneously deduced it was Naksu's soul in Jin Bu Yeon body in Part 2 (Ep 26). Just read that statement again and let it digest before continuing on. It should be noted Soi never found out it was Naksu's soul who was living inside of Jin Bu Yeon's body in Part 1.

It was only after Seo Yul talked to Soi's worker in Ep 29 did he realize Soi had mixed things up and that the soul currently residing in Jin Bu Yeon's body was not the same soul from Part 1 (aka Naksu's soul). If it was not Naksu's soul in Jin Bu Yeon's body, whose soul was it? It was Mu Deok's soul. The question became "what is the real identity of Mu Deok's soul"? There are two choices Cho Yeong or Jin Bu Yeon. If you know the soul inside transforms the face to match its true appearance and the real name of the GYJ face is "Cho Yeong" then you can conclude Mu Deok was Cho Yeong. Therefore, if Mu Deok's soul=Cho Yeong's soul then Naksu's soul=Jin Bu Yeon's soul through the process of elimination. If you said Mu Deok's soul is Jin Bu Yeon's soul then her face would have transformed into the JSM face. However, since it did not, then you have to accept that Mu Deok's soul is Cho Yeong's soul.

The only reason why many did not catch this is because they were too distracted with everything else which is understandable. The Hong Sisters purposely presented this piece of information near the very end (vs beginning) because they wanted people to think Naksu=Cho Yeong. In turn, this caused many to either completely overlooked or disregard the statement made by Soi in Ep 29. If the Hong Sisters had presented the following scene from Ep 29 much earlier, more viewers would have caught on that the soul in Part 2 was not the same soul as in Part 1. And who knows how that might have affected the ratings. Anyways, the pattern among many viewers is when anything becomes confusing or does fit the narrative they have in their head, they will disregard it to soothe themselves into thinking what is easier to comprehend.

In the world of AOS where soul shifting happens, a soul's alternative name can sometimes be different from the real name of the body it is in. The real name of a face does not always mean it is the real name of a soul who had previously resided in that body (AOS has made it clear there is a fine distinction between body and face). I will admit it is convoluted, but this is why you should not immediately jump to conclusions and assign faces, bodies, alternative names, and real names to souls before thinking about everything. If you keep your beliefs flexible and consider the alternative then you will be more likely to find the truth. Instead of being face or body trackers, maybe all of us should strive to be better soul trackers. Anyways, I will gladly welcome anyone who can disprove all that I have stated above. And simply stating "Naksu is Cho Yeong" does not cut it. You should formulate a logical argument that is backed up by evidence from the show.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, it made no logical sense for the Hong Sisters to introduce Naksu as a powerful soul only to have her be reduced down to a damsel in distress, soul food, relic detector, and Jang Uk's shadow. I saw Naksu's journey as being one of self discovery, personal growth, and enlightenment. If Naksu was really Cho Yeong, the Hong Sisters would have introduced more things about the Cho clan. Instead, they had completely wiped out the Cho clan from the start while placing a heavy focus on the Jin clan. Furthermore, they had associated Naksu with many bird related things to show her connection to the Jin clan. For me, it made more logical sense the show began with her being an assassin fighting on the wrong side of things and ended with her discovering her true authentic self (Jin Bu Yeon) so she could save all of Daeho. And sure, her journey may have ended rather sadly (or it may not since she is a divine soul now), but at least she managed to accomplish so much during that time. She was able to correct everything, find out the real truth about herself and the events that surrounding her multiple deaths, and take responsibility for her past actions.

Finally, to all of those who are not convinced by what I have said (Naksu=Jin Bu Yeon and Mu Deok=Cho Yeong), I will end this post with excepts from Lee Jae Wook's interview so you can decide for yourself of whether the soul in Part 1 was the same soul in Part 2. Note: the translations below were done using Google translate so there may be some inaccuracies.

Source:

Back to hibernation I go until the next great fantasy drama comes along!

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them!

#alchemy of souls #alchemy of souls light and shadow #jin bu yeon #naksu #cho yeong #jung so min #go yoon jung #jin mu #soi #seo yul #hwang minhyun #AOS #theories #analysis #there are probably many grammatical mistakes #quick post #mu deok #lee jae wook #hong sisters

[theonethatyaks93]

Character Analysis: Pinky in Narf Over Troubled Water (Day 4 of Pinky Week)

So, Pinky Week has gone kind of off the rails at this point. It was supposed to be completed last week, but good news! The last four installments are on their way! I don't know when they'll be done but likely by early to mid next week. Then it'll be Brain Week! Yay! Alright, let's begin today's discussion.

3/23/23: Pinky in Narf Over Troubled Water- As the final Pinky and The Brain segment from the reboot's second season, expectations were high that this was to be an exciting and emotionally gripping episode. Thankfully, those initial thoughts were met as this segment not only delved into Brain's character and his insecurities, but it portrays Pinky in a seemingly negative light, which is exceedingly rare. You see, in this segment, Pinky is shown to morally in the wrong; he gets swept into fame and glory and begins to neglect his friend's feelings. While Brain also tries to push past Pinky, Pinky is the one that is shown to have been incorrect in his statements whereas Brain was correct. This analysis will be an attempt to explain what exactly this does to develop Pinky as a character and why him making mistakes here further pushes his character forward.

Pinky as a Character:

Despite being a fan-favorite, Pinky doesn't usually get as much character development as others, especially when compared to Brain. This is likely due to the fact that the grumpy character with a soft heart is a lot easier to write for and to give expansion to than the always nice character who often instigates these changes. And that's exactly what Pinky does; he often starts emotional moments with Brain and pushes certain feelings. Since Pinky is already an emotionally intelligent mouse, giving him character growth would almost seem redundant. However, Pinky still got his scenes, though they were not common. In the reboot, Pinky would get a few episodes like "Run Pinky Run" to give him a starring role, but he still didn't have many massive character changes. "Happy Narfday" gave him a more mature emotional mindset. Pinky was still the character portrayed in the right for the most part. It wasn't until this segment where we see that even Pinky can be wrong.

Pinky is in the Wrong:

In a surprising twist of character roles, Pinky is shown in this segment to be somewhat morally in the wrong when compared to Brain. When the duo start becoming more popular, we see that Pinky begins to soak up all the fame. He gets all the ladies, his name is now absolutely humongous on the sign for the show while Brain's name is small, and he believes that his devoted fans are in fact his friends. Though Brain gets seemingly jealous of Pinky, he has every right to be. Pinky seems to be getting a massive ego with all the public adoration. This could be because he doesn't know any better or because he thinks he's doing the right thing. Either way, it forms a rift in his relationship with Brain. When Brain confronts Pinky about his fans, saying that they are in fact only fans rather than friends and that he is Pinky's real friend, Pinky actually begins to doubt his friendship with Brain. When Brain says that Pinky will fail without his songwriting, Pinky says that the computer did the work, not Brain. The fans only continue to push this ideal further and further, until Brain eventually gets kicked out of the tour bus, with Pinky presumably not caring. The fans have kind of manipulated Pinky into thinking that he doesn't need his friend. All he needs is fans. And Pinky believes this. Brain does seem hurt, though he moves past it because of the plan. Pinky pursues a solo career and while he laments and says he misses Brain (and further hints that their co-dependent relationship is not just cute but rather important to both mice's well being physically and emotionally), he has his first album all ready and a league of adoring fans by his side. What could go wrong?

Redemption:

Though Pinky's failed solo career could be seen as a parody or a comical interpretation of real-world events, it actually serves a bigger purpose than that. When the fans abandon Pinky after his album proves a disaster, sure Pinky's initial response could be viewed as a joke. However, under the surface, it's a moment of realization for Pinky that he was wrong. Brain was right about the fans being un-loyal; they did abandon Pinky at the first hint of his faltering stardom. Pinky, at this moment, now seemingly understands that Brain was his true friend and that he was incorrect. It's not a massive bit of character development, but it's interesting nonetheless to see a moment where Pinky comprehends a fault he made. Though we don't see what happened after this, it's safe to assume Pinky made a choice to go back and find Brain again, to rekindle their relationship. The next scene mainly focuses on Brain, showing a bit of his character development and him realizing that he misses Pinky (and their co-dependency). But the moment when Pinky is revealed to have come back for Brain, it shows that Pinky has come full circle. He realized his mistake and now he wanted to fix it by getting Brain back. When the two re-unite, while being an clever parody of The Graduate, it also manages to push both Pinky and Brain's relationship to new levels. Pinky has redeemed himself. As the two run away hand-in-hand from various angry studio executives, this symbolizes them re-forming their bond, their trust in each other now stronger. When they sit awkwardly on the bus, yes it's supposed to be parodying an old movie from the 60's, but it could also show that they haven't entirely comprehended what had just occurred. Both Pinky and Brain don't exactly know where their relationship is at this point and this seems to be the moment where it sinks in. While Brain goes through a slight relapse in season 3, only for that character development to come crashing back in during the Christmas episode and "All's Fair in Love and Door", Pinky's seems to stick permanently. He clings to Brain like never before, showing him outlandish displays of affection, care, and even love. This could be carried over from his neglect of Brain's opinions in "Narf Over Troubled Water", or possibly the ending of that very same segment. It's almost intriguing to how Pinky becomes so reliant on his relationship with Brain after he abandoned Brain for his fans. It's as if he's doing all these things to make up for what he did. The entire ordeal is very settle, but if you look closely enough, you may be able to see this mini bit of character development from Pinky in this episode.

Conclusion and Some Updates: Pinky being shown to be morally in the wrong is a unique perspective overall. While Brain is usually the one that has to go through some growth, Pinky realizing and learning from a mistake rarely if ever happens. It's nice to have a slight change in character for him, considering he's always portrayed as the one who has emotional intelligence. His eventual redemption and when he comes back for Brain are such powerful and cute moments that get carried over to the next season. While it still isn't a big piece of character development, Pinky getting a minor character arc is admirable and very appreciated. If only he could've gotten more.

Alright so, this is a little bit shorter than my usual affair. The next two posts will also be shorter and my final Pinky Week post is the usual length. I've been kind of stressed out these past few days so I apologize for the lack of posts. I promise you that I'm working on some projects right now so stay tuned! Also, I'm currently in planning on a new fanfiction that is a parody of A Goofy Movie with a Pinky and The Brain twist. I'm currently re-watching the film to nail the story down and am writing descriptions and ideas for characters. That's enough of my rambling, I hope you enjoyed this mini-analysis! See you soon! Narf!!

#pinky and the brain #patb #brinky #oh boy it's another long analysis #Pinky week! #god I love this episode so much! #yep I'm still talking about Pinky

[ridiasfangirlings]

strain incident fushimi gets the "erm actually according to my calculations 🤓" accent for a day lmao😭😭😭

At last, Fushimi has become more insufferable than Munakata XD Imagine this actually annoying even Munakata though, because Fushimi keeps interrupting and correcting him. Like Fushimi gets hit by the Strain and he seems okay, just a little off balance. Munakata considers whether it’s worth it for the team to continue to pursue the Strain for now and decides it may be best to abandon their pursuit for the moment. Fushimi suddenly clears his throat, pushes up his glasses and is all ‘well actually according to my calculations, if they had chosen to pursue we would have captured the Strain by now.’ Munakata is initially somewhat amused by this, especially since after saying this Fushimi looks irritated and shakes his head like a dog shaking off water.

It quickly becomes clear that Fushimi can’t help himself, whenever anyone tries to suggest a course of action for anything or brings up some fact Fushimi is compelled to ‘well actually’ them. This is somehow worse than his normal gloomy attitude, like imagine Fuse has been snottily corrected for the fifth time in one day and he’s like I never thought I would miss the old Fushimi-san. Even the members who don’t dislike Fushimi like Akiyama and Hidaka are already kinda exasperated at being corrected constantly. I imagine Awashima being pretty tired of it too, like every time Fushimi clears his throat and pushes up his glasses she glares at him like ‘do you have something to say, Fushimi-kun?’. This would be more than enough to stop any normal person but the power of Strain compels Fushimi so he just has this sullen look as he corrects her. 

And then of course there’s Munakata, who won’t admit it but he’s absolutely irritated at being corrected all the time. It’s not like he assumes he’s always right or anything (well, he sorta assumes that) but he always makes what he believes is the correct analysis of any situation and being constantly told ‘well actually’ is making him twitch. Imagine Fushimi doing this in front of Homra at some point too, I feel like Mikoto would be having too much enjoyment watching an obviously ruffled Munakata tersely telling Fushimi ‘thank you for your calculations.’ Mikoto is like ‘can’t take a taste of your own medicine, huh?’, Munakata states he has no idea what Mikoto is talking about (and then behind him Fushimi clears his throat and Munakata twitches visibly).

#Fushimi Saruhiko #Talking K #imagine Munakata trying to act so calm about this #but every time he's corrected he has a moment #at last he knows what it's like for everyone else XD

[mightyflamethrower]

Jan312024

Now Harvard DEI Chief Accused of Plagiarism

In case anyone thought plagiarist, former Harvard President, and ludicrous moonbat Claudine Gay was an exception to the rule, it appears Harvard’s chief diversity and inclusion officer is also a plagiarist:

Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis. The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record.

You can’t expect better than Claudine Gay with Affirmative Action hires in charge of hiring:

Charleston was the chief affirmative action officer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before she joined Harvard in August 2020 as its first-ever chief diversity officer. In that capacity, Charleston served on the staff advisory committee that helped guide the university’s presidential search process that resulted in the selection of former Harvard president Claudine Gay in December 2022, according to the Harvard Crimson.

Head of the National Association of Scholars Peter Wood characterizes Charleston’s scholarship as “research fraud pure and simple.” But you can’t say she hasn’t been doing her job, which is to institutionalize hatred of whites:

Since 2020, her office has pumped out a stream of materials that bemoan the “weaponization of whiteness,” discuss the ins and outs of “white fragility,” and urge students to “call out” their peers for “harmful words.”

“Harmful words” can be presumed to mean speech that does not comply with leftist doctrine grounded in DEI and Critical Race Theory.

Harvard’s commitment to this toxic dogma at the expense of integrity and competence is producing consequences:

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of Harvard Medical School’s three teaching hospitals, announced in January that it would retract six papers and correct dozens more after some of its top executives were accused of data manipulation. That news came on the heels of a viral essay in which Carole Hooven, a Harvard biologist, described how she had been hounded out of a teaching role by her department’s diversity committee after she said in an interview that there are only two sexes.

Serious medical research cannot be conducted where facts are forbidden in the name of politics.

The school is also facing an ongoing congressional probe over its handling of anti-Semitism and its response to the plagiarism allegations against Gay, which Harvard initially sought to suppress with legal saber-rattling.

Harvard has an endowment of $51 billion, but its most valuable asset has been its reputation for excellence. This reputation has been exchanged for laughing stock status in the name of moonbattery.

On tips from Ed McAninch, Steve D, and Mr. Freemarket.

At 60 years old I decided to get a degree. I never finished high school and getting a formal education was always on my bucket list. After helping all four of my kids get their BAs it seemed only fair that I get one of my own.

I was surprised to find that African Americans had their own separate degree plan within the UT university structure. They had separate study areas, separate dining rooms, separate fraternal organizations and degree requirements custom made to insure they passed all their core requirements with a 3.7 average. there was a list of professors guaranteed to pass them with a 3.7 average for doing virtually no written course work. All they had to do was show up for 50 percent of the lecture. If you check "Rate My Professor" on the internet you will see that there are buzz words used to let a potential student know how little would get them a passing grade.

In the case of these professors simply ask yourself how they would have been treated had they been white or Asian? They would have been relieved of their duties and sent packing. No doubt about it. There were of course exceptions but the system was designed to grease the skids for minority students.

[kathystheoriesandmore]

Wrapping this all up! Until next time maybe-

New analysis for a new episode. And, with it, a closer examination of all the facts we know and how they might fit. I recommend looking at my other post, if you want to be caught up on my theory from the last episode, and of course... ------Warning like always, spoilers and talk of disturbing stuff and long post!---- Now let's get on with it! :)

There isn't much that can be said about what the complete story is at this point, mostly because we theorists still need to piece the evidence together and figure out what's going on, but I decided to attempt to answer a question that seemed to be confusing a few people. So my next few posts will just be to clear up the confusion I have seen and put my thoughts on it. 

As I stated in my last theory post, my hypotheses were founded on small snippets from before the episodes aired with Ranboo discussing his initial plan. Causing me to assume that everything was on tape and not live. (Which I was correct on, and I'm loving this win because it makes me feel so smart XD)

With this in mind, we can also argue that most censors or things that are "Slime", and people that act like NPCs are "Generation Loss" or something like that. Also that this organization conducts "Social Experiments" on their subjects, and it's not just a TV show for them.

(To be honest, I'm not sure how it connects to what happened. Maybe by testing human choices when asked who lives or dies? or what they see are moral in their eyes? That I will not be able to answer for a while, but I'm open to hearing your thoughts! ^w^ )

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- What I can answer is the "Savior, Taken, Villain" riddle from Genloss' merch store's video game.

When it was initially released, it appeared to be a trailer game for the first episode. With Red Stranger/Savior representing Hetch, Blue Friend/Taken representing Sneeg, and Green Friend/Villan representing Charlie. But it became confusing when we noticed they showed up more than once, implying that it was not just for the first episode. That, and the game had weird components like going into a screen, pressing a red button to end it, and a glitched-out setting for clicking something behind the trash, which the stranger showed us. It didn't make any sense. That is until the third episode. With episode three, we knew that this game had foreshadowed what was to come. A man playing a tape, getting pulled in, finding his friends in the game, and a stranger who created the glitching. With us, the audience, feeling like we were helping and in control, only to discover that we weren't and making it worse. Ending with Ranboo clicking the button and causing his demise. Nonetheless, the titles in Binary no longer apply to the people after episode one. Charlie isn't a villain in episodes two or three, and Sneeg doesn't really show in episode three except dead on the floor for a few seconds.

So where do they fit in now? Well, would you believe me if I said they're not stating their titles, but rather the titles they give Ranboo?

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

Let's begin with Sneeg because he's the most obvious. Ranboo, the hero, is seen as taken by Sneeg. Sneeg is still also a Taken, but to him, the titles are shared. In Sneeg's eyes, Ranboo is someone taken just like him and is suffering just as much as he is. He regards him as an equal. You can even see it with Sneeg going up to the bars when trying to escape, telling Ranboo he will be right back like he was making a promise to save Ranboo. Then to Hetch or Screen man. Hetch seemed to see Ranboo as a savior. Someone to fix all the messes. I am aware that Hetch betrays Ranboo at the end of episode three, but given my other theory that everyone is a clone, is it possible that the Hetch leading us and the Hetch at the end are not the same. I mean, it seemed odd that Hetch had him walk to the heart to shut it down, only to later inform him he could have just clicked a button to end it all. But that's a theory for another time. For this moment, we need to keep in mind that Hetch frequently stated that Ranboo would save everyone.

Then there is Charlie seeing Ranboo as the villain. This one was a little tough to notice with Episode 3, but it made sense later on. In the first episode, they battled to the death, then Ranboo practically ripped him apart to acquire a key in episode two, then in the third episode, he watched as Ranboo put himself in danger and murdered someone he knew was human from prior death in the episode, then he died. Watching as Ranboo did nothing to prevent him from being devoured by a wire monster. Charlie must believe him as the villain.

That's all for now :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BTW, I'm thinking of writing a post later this week to attempt to explain what the true story was, but not right now since I'm still gathering evidence, re-watching videos, and discovering secrets. So please stick around if you are interested in that! But other than that, I hope you all have a wonderful day/night!

#generation loss spoilers #generation loss theory #generation loss #genloss #generation loss ranboo #generation loss sneeg #generation loss charlie #generation loss hetch #genloss ranboo #genloss sneeg #genloss charlie #spoilers #theory time #long post

[mtdthoughts]

Shadow Pt. 3 (Migi & Dali Analysis)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 4

Keep in mind that *spoilers* for the entire story are discussed.

So far, we have stated and shown evidence for the theory that Dali hid in Migi's shadow out of guilt for what happened to Eiji and the aftermath of his revenge, and saw himself as unworthy of happiness despite wanting to live with the Sonoyamas. In this post, I want to go over some other theories I had regarding Dali's decision to hide in Migi's shadow, and why I chose to reject them.

Before we begin, it helps to build a basic profile of who Dali is so that we can properly understand his actions and thought process.

Dali is not stupid, and is one of the smartest and most perceptive characters in the story, so it is reasonable to assume that Dali is excellent at thinking logically and perceiving others' feelings. He's just not that great at handling his own.

Dali loves his younger brother Migi, and probably loves him more than anything in the world. He also seemed to have abandonment issues after Migi ran away from him.

Dali is also extremely tough on himself and is vulnerable to negative emotions such as guilt and regret.

Note that these qualities support the proposed theory. For example, Dali's intelligence would point him towards the conclusion that he is largely responsible for the events that occurred during the revenge quest. Because he's tough on himself, it would be fitting that he would force himself to be Migi's shadow as a form of punishment. And because he loves Migi so much, he would also be able to stay with Migi and help Migi from behind the scenes.

Without further ado, here are my alternative theories that I ended up rejecting, in the order of what I thought was most plausible to least plausible.

1) Dali didn't want to separate from Migi and feared being left behind by him. At first, I thought this theory was correct. Dali had an emotional dependence on Migi, which might have been intensified after he effectively lost Eiji due to the latter's imprisonment. Migi's words about their differences (which could be associated with separation) in his conversation with Akiyama, Dali's nightmare, and the fact the twins separate in the epilogue (albeit it was Dali who left) might have been clues.

But the more I thought about this, the more it didn't seem right, as there are several problems. The main problem is that this theory doesn't necessitate Dali forcing himself into Migi's shadow. Even if the twins lived as two, Dali could probably just figure out another way to stay with Migi, even if it means forcing himself to pursue a similar way of life. Plus, it's unlikely that the kind and loving Migi would actually abandon his beloved brother, and I'm sure Dali knew this to some level. Of course, Migi did run away once, but that was due to betrayal, and I'm sure Dali would never think of doing anything like that again.

As for Migi's conversation with Akiyama, I think the point was to illustrate that Migi didn't know what Dali was thinking or what his struggles were. Because staying in the shadows was Dali's decision, it's Dali's mind that we need to understand, not Migi's. The most significant glimpse we have into Dali's mind is his nightmare, which I argue is more about his fear of being unloved by the entire family; if it was just about Migi, why bother showing the whole family?

Finally, I'm sure that Dali realized long ago before Migi did that he and Migi were fundamentally different. He likely understood that it was futile to worry about this, and that it was because he tried to force Migi to be like him that their relationship had problems. Thus, Dali's decision to hide in Migi's shadow should be due to a different reason.

2) Dali didn't know how and perhaps was afraid to live his own life.

I thought this was plausible since Dali initially didn't have a tangible identity or purpose other than revenge, while Migi had an easier time accepting his new life at Origon Village and forging new connections. However, this theory undermines Dali's character development before Episode 13 (e.g. wanting to go back home together with Migi, opening up to Akiyama and Maruta, etc.), and more importantly is inconsistent with the confidence that Dali showed when he promised to bring Eiji home. Indeed, this theory doesn't account for Eiji's arrest, since it is only after this event that the strong and confident Dali would make the surprising decision to remain hidden. This theory also suggests that Dali may have lacked a sense of self and identity (e.g. because of revenge). On the contrary, based on his personality, I would argue that Dali is well-aware of who he is; he just hates it.

3) Dali just doesn't want to burden the Sonoyamas with another mouth to feed and child to care for.

I thought this was plausible since Dali did tell Migi that he just wants the Sonoyamas to dote on their cute Hitori. But I'm sure Dali was aware of how loving the Sonoyamas are and would have accepted them both without issue. If it was truly about whether the elderly Sonoyamas were able to care for two children, then Dali could just "work harder" to make this possible. Instead, I think Dali's words meant that he saw himself as someone as unworthy of the Sonoyamas' love.

4) Dali just wanted to remain Migi's guardian and give him the best possible life.

Again, he doesn't need to hide in Migi's shadow to do this. Plus, wouldn't Migi be happier if Dali lived together with him?

Hopefully, this is enough to give you a satisfying answer as to why Dali chose to remain in Migi's shadow. In the next (and final) part of the discussion, I want to go over why Dali chose to come out of the shadows as well as its significance.

Next (final) part:

https://www.tumblr.com/mtdthoughts/738025275262205952/shadow-pt-4-migi-dali-analysis?source=share

#migi and dali #migi to dali #spoilers #analysis

[activated-pen]

hi i’m gonna post rambles about a book series nobody knows maybe. i came across it while reading an anthology called fell beasts and fair. idk if anyone will read this and i don’t care but i need to get out something in my brain. i have a degree in fiction writing or something idk

i don’t think anything’s really inspired me to sit down and think about stuff like this in a while but i read a book of queer essays before the anthology (queer reflections on horror) and i guess ive been in “alternate analysis” mode

but anyways when it comes to fae there’s always something to be said about neurodivergancy 

i think, as a nonbinary autistic person, there’s something distinctly fascinating about the city between series and pet. i'd initially gone "omg this must be some it/its nonbinary child" (the anthology short story is narrated by a leprechaun who doesn’t know pet’s gender and constantly thinks of “it” though there’s actually a typo that calls pet “she” in narration once that i noticed because i was laser focused)  bc there was only one use of pronouns and it seemed to be corrected back to it/its. like, i thought pet was an it/its human that happened to be correctly gendered bc the leprechaun didn’t apply a gender to her

and then i still didn't quite get it until a good way into the first book that pet was probably a she/her because athelas called her she mistakenly. as far as i recall, pet never calls herself a girl. 

even tho ive only read one short story and the first book so far (gonna read more once i’m paid for freelance stuff,) i’ve felt like there’s a strong lack of an Image of pet. like yeah she’s narrating but also she carries the story and her weight based on her personality, voice, and narration, it feels a lot like you’re looking into the world through this narrator. she doesn’t really seem to react much to being called it besides mild annoyance at the confusion rhe first time, mostly it's annoying that they keep trying to pretend they don't like her

but like (within the context of the first book n stuff) pet is talked about so little and has existed by her/itself for so long, unnoticed and hidden, that it feels like she/it truly lacks a personhood and has for a Long Time. like it’s already noted that nobody knew she existed. she may well not exist, but of course she does, she’s got such a hyperactive and involved personality and is brave and kind.

and only the people who seem to recognize that about her actually seem to talk to her as a Person. even though she’s ostensibly dehumanized by fae that are detached from the concept of humanity, they also award her more humanity and recognize her individuality and personality more than anyone has in SO long, bc she’s been hiding and not really interacting with people outside of work. 

there’s some trans metaphor i can see in there, that’s all i’m saying, but also something about adhd + autism and masking

i feel like she/it isn’t too bothered by going by pet because she hasn’t really gone by a name besides “you” for so long and just no longer has interest in pretty much anything human of that sort. she also takes quickly (and in a somewhat silly way) to this “role” because she’s not really been given a role in so long. i don’t think pet knows how to be a person or human, and doesn’t CARE to understand a right or wrong way of doing anything, she just is and only begins to exist around the freak squad. (i keep thinking of her as it/they)

i feel like i could write a whole thing about the comparisons between neurodivergant (ESPECIALLY autistic) people and fae, and the idea of autistic people forcing themselves to mask and pretend. and then also how trans people often have to hide who we are and only be ourselves in private, or how sometimes there’s a uniquely isolating experience about being trans and nonbinary and feeling disconnected from other people, even other trans people sometimes, because it’s hard to be Seen when you’re nonbinary

anyways pet is autistic and nonbinary (she/it/they/maybe just doesn’t care) and i’d hazard a guess at bi and/or ace if i wanna keep pushing the disconnect from others angle. 

#the city between

[poke-admin-showdown]

ROUND 2 ANALYSIS: A PATTERN EMERGES

round two voting has concluded! and as is usual, i have some things to say about it

first of all, this round marks the entrance of our four highest seeded contenders - plumeria, the shadow triad, eri and matt. the title of this roundup post was originally going to be "MATT'S HERE NOW" but his match was actually significantly tamer than others, and there's something else i want to talk about more

almost half of our contestants going into the quarterfinals share three attributes: a red theme, bobbed hair, and capacity for (possibly feral) violence. mars, courtney and mela have significant support within the demographic of people voting in this bracket. now, i doubt the hair is really doing anything, i think that's mostly a coincidence, but it is interesting and pretty funny to me how that's worked out.

starting with mars: she's feral and we all love her for it. there have been enough tags about mars being feral that i'm going to have enough to make an entire tag compilation post at the end of this bracket. she's the star of the most one-sided poll this round, winning against petrel by 88% of votes. this is also our most-voted poll with 161 votes at time of writing. tumblr LOVE mars.

secondly, courtney: a significantly closer match this time against her team magma colleague tabitha, but still a clear win. i thought this match would have been a lot closer, and i saw some great arguments for both opponents in the tags, but in the end courtney won by 65%. that's pretty significant! i was honestly half expecting tabitha to win. i would like to officially state that i hope our banner isn't influencing results even though it is correct.

and finally, mela. i was not expecting her to get this far, i'll be completely honest. she has rage in her heart, yes, but she's also wearing those big ol boots. i spend a lot of time thinking about garment construction and how it would limit movement in a fistfight and in mela's case, i believe her boots would hinder her. She was seeded below Atticus for this exact reason. but she's taken down a galactic commander (rip saturn you tried) and her ninja-themed bestie, and i'm very curious to see how she'll do against her next opponent. will the angry bebooted teenager make it through the quarterfinals or will her reign end here? who know! not me!

other things of note: jupiter made it through round two, but with significantly less of a winning margin at 56/44% at time of writing (which is also our closest match), with a reverse sweep, since Oleana had an initial lead. i'd chalk this up to her opponent - while i haven't played swsh, i have heard a few things about oleana, and she does seem like the kind of person to fight dirty. unfortunately for her the tumblr consensus seems to be that jupiter would fight dirtier. the #jupitersweep dream lives on For Now.

a fight i wasn't expecting to be as close as it was is (one of) the shadow triad vs rocket executive archer. i don't know if archer has secret combat tricks i don't know about and that's why he got 34% of votes but that was genuinely a surprise to me considering he was up against an actual ninja who can appear out of thin air and stuff. pretty impressive on his part honestly.

finally, and related to my last point, we've lost two more villainous teams this round. team rocket has lost all four of its representatives in one round and is now entirely out of the running. we also lost macro cosmos's only representative, oleana, who did her best and i'm very proud of her.

the teams left in the running are teams aqua, magma, galactic, plasma, skull and star. most of those only have one representative left but galactic and star have two. i don't have too much to say about this, but i do think it's interesting and worth noting.

and now, funny tags time!

(courtesy of @/edgeanescence on the matt vs ariana poll)

(courtesy of @/spaghettiwolf on plumeria vs proton)

(courtesy of @/pixelchaos00, also on plumeria vs proton)

(mars vs petrel compilation, courtesy of @/clefaiiiry, @/salon-maiden-anabel and @/quarterdollar)

#here's to a fun quarterfinals! #very excited to see how it goes #this post brought to you mostly by giratina-plushie with some insights by catboy-cyrus and you can tell where those insights are #because he uses capitals normally and i do not

[emmacifer]

Art analysis: 'Poe and Ranpo' chapter-opening art

The upward eight of swords? The Black Cat? The Murders in the Rue Morgue?

*Spoilers ahead for the manga, ‘The Black Cat’ by Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ by Edgar Allan Poe

Chapter 32 is the chapter where Poe challenges Ranpo and Yosano, but mostly Ranpo, to solve a mystery he has spent 6 years meticulously constructing, thinking that he finally would have his revenge on Ranpo. And, for what’s worth, I think it’s interesting to point out the potential references that are embedded in this chapter opening art.

# All my analyses are personal opinions and I do not mean to override any takes the reader might have. That being said...

The first reference is the upward eight of swords.

In the art, we can see a hand, or possibly just the hand of a body, reaching out from a coffin, and eight swords in an upright position jutting out of it. I haven’t really learned anything about tarot cards before but after reading up on it, I feel like it might have something significant to the card of the upward eight of swords. Please do correct me if I am wrong on any accord.

The upward eight of swords represents a situation where you feel trapped in a situation but you have no way out. The more that you think about it, the more that you feel trapped. But in actuality you are not bound by the situation itself but the thoughts by which you chain yourself. You are able to escape the situation if you want to.

In the tarot card, the woman is fenced by the upright swords but isn’t necessarily imprisoned by them. She would know that she can escape if only she’d take the blindfold off.

So far in the manga, there has been two scenes where Ranpo admits that he does not have an ability and that his deduction skills are his own observative intelligence and methodology:

Chapter 32, which we are analysing right now

And, chapter 56, where he tells Mushitaro he will defeat him even though he does not have an ability, but since his comrades think he’s invincible (dazaiscans)

Ranpo kept telling Yosano all throughout the first part of the chapter that he needed his glasses so that they could solve the mystery of the novel they were trapped in and return to the real world. He's shown to have not wanted to question the guests or investigate his surroundings, but since Ranpo's "ability" has always been himself, he is subconsciously or unconsciously doing it anyways. He notices things when he's not even having to put in the effort to do so. He can point out his deduction process and justify the outcome as he always does.

But he still said that he wasn't doing fine. I don't mean to mischaracterize Ranpo in any way, he is a very brilliant character with a childish, occasionally teasing personality but serious when the time calls for it. But in this chapter, his initial statement that says he couldn't use his ability because he did not have his glasses, did put him in a tight place for a hot minute. Now this is what would relate to the upward eight of swords. The card symbolizes a situation where you feel trapped in a situation but it is not the situation itself binding you, but your thoughts. You are able to escape if you want to. The lady in the card is able to escape if only she took her blindfold off. I wouldn’t necessarily say Ranpo is in denial of the fact that he does not have an ability, because, evidently, he very much is aware of said fact and acknowledges it himself.

The second reference is the black cat behind the window.

While most ability users in BSD have their abilities named after a famous work of them or a reference to one of their works, Poe's ability name ‘Black Cat in the Rue Morgue’ has a combination of two of his works: 'The Black Cat' and ' The Murders in the Rue Morgue'. And the mystery novel that he introduced Ranpo to in Chapter 32 also seems to be a combination of the tales of irl Poe's two stories, 'The Black cat' and 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', with, I'd say, only the exception of it being set in the future since the original novels of irl Poe did not have any futuristic elements in them. I’m not saying that the mystery novel is an exact replica and combination of the two irl novels, it’s just that the overall atmosphere of the novel seems to somewhat reflect certain elements of the irl novels.

The Black Cat is a story about a man who hanged his own cat from a tree and later killed his own wife in the heat of a moment. The protagonist of this novel enjoyed drinking to the extreme and it was in the moments when he was highly intoxicated that he committed acts such as gouging out the eye of his beloved cat, Pluto, and hitting his wife over the head with an axe, accidently killing her.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a story of how the intelligent mind of Auguste Dupin solved the muder mystery of two french ladies who were killed by an unknown murderer in their apartment at Rue Morgue street. Said unknown murderer later turned out to be an orangutan that a sailor captured from Borneo then brought to Paris, In the novel, several people known to have heard the murder were questioned individually about the unknown culprit, just like how the people in the mansion were questioned about the murderer in chapter 32, in the novel. It could be said that questioning witnesses is a common theme that can be found for any mystery story but it’s just an interesting similarity.

The thing about the mystery novel BSD Poe wrote was that-

a) There was a murderer whom the people did not know

b) The protagonist was trying to find out who the murderer is

c) The protagonist himself was the murderer

In the story of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’,

a) There was a murderer whom the people did not know

b) The protagonist, or protagonists, since there were two of them, were trying to find out who the murderer is

Obviously BSD Poe’s mystery novel did not feature an orangutan that accidently happened to kill people but that is where the element of the story of ‘The Black Cat’ comes in, because the protagonist of ‘The Black Cat’ murdered both his cat and his wife in the name of intoxication, which leads us to

c) The protagonist himself is the murderer

Personally, I feel like ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ fits better than ‘The Black Cat’ for the references in BSD, since it features a protagonist, who was amazed by an individual who had a very observant mind. The protagonist of the novel had much admiration for Auguste Dupin’s thought process and how he could read something seemingly simple to deduce something deep out of it. Much like the admiration and respect that Poe has for Ranpo’s ability, the non-ability.

The third reference is the roses.

Everyone knows that roses are typically associated with love, romance and passion, but they could also have different meanings depending on their color and their symbolisms in different cultures. Yellow roses in Japanese culture are said to mean jealousy, at least according to source. It might symbolize the jealousy that Poe has of Ranpo and his aspiration to beat Ranpo. But he is equally jealous of it as he is fascinated by it, which orange roses can symbolize: fascination and desire. They could also mean enthusiasm and passion, both of which Poe has for Ranpo’s company and ability. He admires Ranpo and his ability, in the way that one would admire their opponent in a friendly rivalry sort of relationship. He is constantly awed by it, and draws a lot of inspiration from Ranpo.

In conclusion, I think the fascination that Poe has of Ranpo and the fact that Ranpo acknowledges his and Poe’s encounter six years ago as ‘the only time I got pushed to my limits by another detective’(easygoingscans) is very compatible of them and I do believe that their rivalry and friendship is something that helps both of them grow and benefits both individuals. It is something beautiful.

Some more sources below for the meaning of roses if anyone wants to find out more!! Also thank you so much nika @nikadoesanart for beta-ing this analysis >//<

https://www.pickupflowers.com/flower-guide/rose-flower-meanings.

https://www.thursd.com/articles/different-colors-of-roses-and-their-meaning/

https://blossomtown.com/bt-news/what-do-flowers-mean-find-flower-language/

#bungou stray dogs #bsd analysis #ranpo edogawa #edgar allan poe #bsd ranpo #bsd poe #bungou sd #i've been putting this off for a long time about time I posted this #art analysis #bsd art analysis #yosano akiko #bsd yosano #bsd meta

[gendercensus]

Supplementary survey: they/them reflexives, The Sir/Ma’am Issue, and Spivak vs. Elverson

This short, clarifying survey ran from 4th until 24th April 2021. There were 2,998 usable responses. Unlike the annual Gender Census survey, this one was open to anyone of any gender, provided they lived in an English-speaking country.

It asked about two things:

They/them verbs and reflexives - basically whether people who prefer they/them pronouns prefer the reflexive to be themself or themselves, and which people feel is more “correct”.

Sir/ma’am/? - investigating why people use sir/ma’am in areas where it’s polite and common to do so, and whether there are any viable nonbinary or gender-neutral alternatives.

This blog post will also investigate the Spivak vs. Elverson issue, which was actually a separate poll that took place on two social networks.

~

THEY/THEM VERBS AND REFLEXIVES

Someone asked about themself vs. themselves, and it reminded me of some of the they/them issues that people ask about in feedback boxes and various confusions surrounding them.

Singular they - what is it, and when and how do people use it?

Plural they - what is it, and when and how do people use it?

What is the “correct” reflexive for each of these?

You can see the statistics in more detail here, but here’s the graph as an overview:

Participants were asked a series of questions about singular they pronouns. Everyone was asked a “which is correct” question, and participants who sometimes or always like to be called ”they” were also asked about their personal preferences.

The graph is a view of only participants who sometimes or always like to be called “they”.

Verbs. As you can see, participants overwhelmingly (94.3%) wanted people to use plural verbs (”they are reading a book”) when talking about them in the third person - even though the percentage of people who thought that was the most “correct” form was a little lower (81.8%). This was lower because 11.4% of participants who preferred “they” answered “both are correct”.

Reflexives. People were much more likely to say that both themself and themselves were correct (28.3%), and more likely to have no preference between the two (17.4%). However, themself was still more popular overall at 59.3%, and 47.3% thought themself was grammatically correct.

You as a control. I also asked all participants whether yourself or yourselves was more correct when addressing one person as a kind of control question, because they is almost grammatically identical to you - it can refer to one person or multiple people, it takes plural verbs even when referring to/addressing one person, and in that situation only the reflexive changes. Many people who say that singular they is grammatically incorrect have no issues with singular you, so it seemed like something that might be interesting to compare. In the graph above you can see that 93.6% of people thought yourself was more correct; only 4.2% of they-accepting participants felt that both yourself and yourselves were equally correct when addressing one person.

There were a couple of things that came up several times in the comments:

“They is” is common in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), and probably in other dialects too. As I don’t live in the US I’m pretty unfamiliar with this dialect, but either way that seems fine to me. It’s part of why I also asked for participants’ locations, because I wanted others to be able to download the results and see if some regions were more likely to use some words/constructions than others.

There were some alternatives to themself and themselves presented, such as theirself and theirsen. Both of these points lead nicely to the third...

The idea that any language choice is more “correct” than another is quite prescriptive. What feels correct or natural varies depending on a lot of factors, such as where in the world you learned English, and there is no such thing as objective correctness when it comes to such a broad and variable language as English.

I am aware of and agree with that third bullet point, so my asking which phrases were more “correct” was a bit of a trick question. It was a good way to get a feel for people’s linguistic instincts.

I also thought it was interesting that participants who never wanted to be called they were slightly more likely to side with the most popular view on what is “correct” across the board, and less likely to say “both are correct”.

~

PLURAL VS. SINGULAR THEY

I actually ran another version of this survey first and then scrapped the responses, because it was clear that my survey design was leading to some pretty confused and unhelpful data! Among other things, it asked participants whether they preferred singular or plural they for themselves and then directed them to particular questions based on their answer, and the comments suggested that people either didn’t really understand the distinction or meant different things by those terms, even though I had added help text.

This is my understanding:

Singular they is they/them pronouns when used to refer to one person. Verbs are usually plural (i.e. “they are” rather than “they is”), and themself and themselves are both common. Example usage: They are getting themself a cup of coffee. They bought themselves a nice new hat.

Plural they is they/them pronouns when used to refer to two or more people. Verbs are usually plural (i.e. “they are” rather than “they is”), and themselves is almost universal (with the exception of regional variations such as theirselves). Example usage: They are getting themselves some coffee together. They all bought hats for themselves.

Some plural/multiple people refer to themselves as “we” and prefer to be addressed as “they/themselves” (which they call plural they) because they are a group of individuals sharing one body.

The reason I initially asked directly about singular vs. plural they is because I was concerned that plural/multiple systems would cause some statistical confusion. Many plural people have asked me to add plural they to the checkbox list of pronouns in the annual survey, but since it has never been entered by over 1% of participants I have never had reason to do so. As far as I knew, the only difference between singular and plural they is the reflexive (themself for singular and themselves for plural), so I wanted to be able to investigate non-plural people in isolation, and I was curious to know about any trends or differences. I wanted to find out if I should be doing anything differently to ensure that Gender Census statistics are helpful.

So, I swapped out the badly-designed question for a straight-up checkbox, a “check this box if you’re plural/multiple” type of thing, with a note that participants should fill in the survey once per body wherever possible, and then I made some graphs.

Here you can see that plural systems were still more likely to prefer people to use themself to refer to them rather than themselves, though the margin is narrower:

Plural participants were also more likely to say that they sometimes or never want people to refer to them as they, whereas non-plural people were more likely to want people to always refer to them as they (or they just feel fine about it):

There’s not a lot in it, though. It’s all relatively evenly distributed, with no strong leader in either category there.

For the curious: 8.2% of participants checked the plural/multiple box.

In conclusion: plural and non-plural people alike all prefer people to use themself when referring to them in the third person using they/them pronouns, and I feel that there is probably no need to ask about plurality or separate out data from plural people in future. (Asking about this and seeing the responses did in part prompt me to start an anonymous feedback form for plural participants of the Gender Census, though.)

~

THE SIR/MA’AM ISSUE

For several years participants have been asking me in the feedback box of the annual Gender Census survey to also ask about gender-inclusive or nonbinary-specific alternatives to sir and ma’am. I’ve largely not done anything about it, because when informally asking around I’ve generally had the response “just don’t say sir or ma’am, just leave it out altogether.” I live in the UK, where if someone calls you sir/ma’am you’re either looking at home in a fancy restaurant for billionnaires or you’re being made fun of - or sometimes both.

However, during this year’s annual survey while talking about it in a little more depth I learned that there are places in the world where sir/ma’am is very common, required for politeness, and basically inescapable. Nonbinary people in those areas are really struggling, because they do actually need a nonbinary-friendly stand-in for those terms - omitting the sir/ma’am isn’t an option.

Again, the location question was asked so that anyone else downloading the spreadsheet of responses can analyse by region to find out whether sir/ma’am is ubiquitous in particular regions and in which contexts it is used, and can even check whether there is a region-specific alternative to sir/ma’am emerging. I asked several questions about sir/ma’am, including about reasons/contexts and personal preferences, and some superficial analysis is included on the spreadsheet of responses.

But the juicy bit is the nonbinary-specific and gender-inclusive alternative words, right?

[The counting formula is case-sensitive so I made everything lowercase to make the count a little more accurate.]

Suggested gender-inclusive alternatives to sir/ma’am

mx - 4.1% (151)

friend - 2.2%

comrade - 1.2%

captain - 0.7%

ser - 0.5%

mate - 0.4%

m - 0.3%

per - 0.3%

boss - 0.3%

folks - 0.3% (9)

Suggested nonbinary-specific alternatives to sir/ma’am

mx - 8.3% (250)

mix - 0.7%

tiz - 0.5%

friend - 0.4%

ser - 0.4%

comrade - 0.3%

mixter - 0.3%

captain - 0.2%

ind - 0.2%

mir - 0.2% (6)

So it looks like Mx (pronounced “mix” or with a toneless vowel that sounds a bit like “mux”) is the clear winner in both categories. If you want to try to introduce a gender-neutral version of sir/ma’am in your area this one is probably your best bet.

~

SPIVAK VS. ELVERSON

This wasn’t part of the same survey! It was a Twitter poll and a Mastodon poll that ran for one week and ended today, and I’m putting it here because it has to go somewhere.

Sometimes people refer to the ey/em and e/em “versions” of the Spivak pronoun set, which makes my eyebrows do things, because they’re not both Spivak. They are distinct established pronoun sets with their own names.

Spivak - e/em/eir/eirs/emself - written about by Michael Spivak in the 1990s. [source: Nonbinary Wiki]

Elverson - ey/em/eir/eirs/emself - created by Christine M Elverson in the 1970s. [source: Nonbinary Wiki]

The Elverson set is older, but it’s less well-known for some reason, so they’re assumed to be variants of Spivak due to the similarity in spelling.

I was recently asked how we can know which is more popular, given the “oh this checkbox option is close enough, I’ll just choose that instead of typing in my very slightly different set” effect and the “hmm this checkbox option is very close to my set, I’m probably meant to choose this one” effect, plus the boost that checkbox options get with the “oh I hadn’t thought of that one but yeah, why not” effect. Spivak (e/em) is on the checkbox list of pronouns in the annual survey, so it appears to be much more popular than Elverson (ey/em)... but is it really?

I ran a poll on both Twitter and Mastodon, and then used a spreadsheet to extract the useful numbers. There were 141 relevant votes after one week. I wouldn’t usually make annual-survey-altering decisions based on a sample that small, but in this case the results are extremely decisive:

It seems that the highest proportion of people who like at least one of the sets are happy for both to be used, at 48%. 45% prefer ey/em (Elverson) and 7% prefer e/em (Spivak). This is pretty stunning! I’ve been presenting e/em (Spivak) as a checkbox option on the Gender Census annual survey for years, possibly since the first survey in 2013, and because it’s a checkbox option it seems to be consistently a lot more popular than ey/em (Elverson). That’s 4.3% and 0.6% respectively in the 2021 survey. But this poll suggests that actually ey/em (Elverson) is much more popular when the two pronoun sets are viewed on a level playing field.

When you remove all “I don’t mind” votes, you get this:

Over 6 times as many people prefered Elverson!

I will definitely be adding Elverson to the Gender Census next year, just so that we can split the e/em and ey/em votes and really get to the bottom of this.

Anyway, while we’re on the topic, ey/em takes singular verbs most of the time.

#results #spivak #elverson #sir/ma'am #they/them #singular they #plural they #pronouns #neopronouns

[gwydionae]

So I have been trying to read the paper on the destruction of Asgard for days now, and I was hoping to get some input/theories on it. I first wanted to read it because I was curious if Loki actually knew the Hulk was involved in Ragnarok in some way after using him in his salad example (or if he just simply was thinking about getting back at Hulk for what happened in Avengers lol). But the whole thing ended up being more interesting than I thought it would be, and I wanted to share my thoughts and hear from anyone else who would like to share their own.

After much zooming and squinting, here is what it says (anything in [brackets] is my best guess based on font, word length, and sentence structure):

EVENT INQUIRY DESTRUCTION OF ASGARD EVENT DETAILS

Event Analysis: Ragnarok (Class Seven Apocalypse): Total planetary body deletion of (1) Asgard (file: IPB-ASG-001)

Casualties: 9,719 (Entire Civilization Annihilation) (file: IPB-ASG-010)

Time Status: Displaced by 000:000:002:162

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (IPB-SAK-324) (see case file: IPB-ASG-012) see case files: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892

Event Summary: Full event analysis may be requested. Please see IPB-[TVA-452?]. IPB-ASG-001 fell 000:000:002:162 off [schedule in?] an attack by IPB-ASG-012. IPB-ASG-012 was one of four (4) [possibilities?] for the event [IPB-ASG-893?]. These alternatives can be found on Page 7 of the IPB-ASG-895. Cause of displacement of the event was due to IPB-SAK-324 (see: Revengers), but with the completion of the event, the time variance displacement has been [deemed?] inconsequential by IPB-TVA-001. IPB-ASG-012 of IPB-NIL-001's destruction of IPB-ASG-001 has been deemed in totality. IPB-ASG-895 will be the final file of the IPB-ASG sequence. All other files regarding the further events of the people of IPB-ASG-001 can be found in IPB-ARK-001 and onwards.

RELATIVE CASE FILES Planetary Body: IPB-ASG-001, IPB-NIL-001 Event Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-010 Displacement Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892, IPB-SAK-324

(Further case files can be found in IPB-ASG-895)

(This gets very long... I’m sorry. XD)

First thing I want to touch on is all the dang CODES in this freaking thing, lol. Here is a (possible) full list of all of them:

IPB-ARK-001 IPB-ASG-001 IPB-ASG-004 IPB-ASG-005 IPB-ASG-010 IPB-ASG-012 IPB-ASG-157 IPB-ASG-892 [IPB-ASG-893?] IPB-ASG-895 IPB-NIL-001 IPB-SAK-324 IPB-TVA-001 [IPB-TVA-452?]

There are two we know for certain what they stand for:

IPB-ASG-001 = Asgard IPB-SAK-324 = Revengers

These are explicitly stated in the document. Knowing this, ASG seems to stand for “Asgard” and SAK would be “Sakaar”, which is where the Revengers were first formed. The other code letters used are ARK, NIL, and TVA. The last one is pretty obvious, and one could guess from context that ARK is likely referring to the Statesmen ship the Asgardians escaped on as it would be likened to an ark taking them to a new home and the fact that the letters have nothing to do with Tønsberg, Norway or New Asgard:

All other files regarding the further events of the people of IPB-ASG-001 can be found in IPB-ARK-001 and onwards.

Another possibility is it standing for “after Ragnarok”, but as ASG was referring to a physical place and not a time, it seems unlikely.

That would leave NIL. Let’s look at the context:

IPB-ASG-012 of IPB-NIL-001's destruction of IPB-ASG-001 has been deemed in totality.

IPB-NIL-001 seems to be another planet, one that IPB-ASG-012 is coming from. But this struck me as strange. The above sentence is talking about who is responsible for destroying Asgard, but the being in question has an ASG designation. Surtur is from Muspelheim, which not only doesn’t match the ASG code but doesn’t match NIL either. You could argue that Loki - who summoned Surtur - would fit ASG, but NIL doesn’t work for Jotunheim either.

Hela - who had long been banished to Niflheim - would, however, be a match on both counts. And to further bolster this theory, look at this line:

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (IPB-SAK-324) (see case file: IPB-ASG-012) 

The Revengers formed because Thor and Valkyrie wanted revenge against Hela, so it would make sense that to get further backstory on the Revengers, you should go look up Hela’s case file. So by this logic, this document is listing Hela as the one who destroyed Asgard, not Surtur or Loki.

I find this very interesting. I was under the assumption that Thor, Loki, etc got all of the remaining survivors out, but the death total of 9,719 made me wonder if that wasn’t the case. However if these are deaths caused by Hela, it could be that she killed over 9,000 people before Loki summoned Surtur to destroy the planet, so my initial assumption could still be true.

As for other unknown codes, IPB-ASG-010 could be referring to either the population of Asgard as a whole or the prophecy of Ragnarok based on these lines:

Casualties: 9,719 (Entire Civilization Annihilation) (file: IPB-ASG-010)

Event Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-010

The first use seems to lean towards the population but the second leans more towards the prophecy.

IPB-ASG-895 seems to point to Ragnarok in general as it’s own file as it is the last of the Asgardian files:

IPB-ASG-895 will be the final file of the IPB-ASG sequence.

And on top of that, the file we can read - pertaining specifically to the Hela side of the destruction - says to look through IPB-ASG-895 for further details:

(Further case files can be found in IPB-ASG-895)

And IPB-TVA-001 is pretty obviously either the Timekeepers or the TVA in general. So knowing/guessing all we do of the codes, let’s insert them into the file:

EVENT INQUIRY DESTRUCTION OF ASGARD EVENT DETAILS

Event Analysis: Ragnarok (Class Seven Apocalypse): Total planetary body deletion of (1) Asgard (file: Asgard, planet)

Casualties: 9,719 (Entire Civilization Annihilation) (file: Asgard, prophecy)

Time Status: Displaced by 000:000:002:162

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (see case file: Hela) see case files: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892

Event Summary: Full event analysis may be requested. Please see IPB-[TVA-452?]. Asgard fell 000:000:002:162 off [schedule in?] an attack by Hela. Hela was one of four (4) [possibilities?] for the event [IPB-ASG-893?]. These alternatives can be found on Page 7 of the Ragnarok file. Cause of displacement of the event was due to the Revengers, but with the completion of the event, the time variance displacement has been [deemed?] inconsequential by the TVA. Hela of Niflheim's destruction of Asgard has been deemed in totality. Ragnarok will be the final file of the Asgard sequence. All other files regarding the further events of the people of Asgard can be found in the Statesmen files and onwards.

RELATIVE CASE FILES Planetary Body: Asgard, Niflheim  Event Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, Asgard, prophecy Displacement Causes: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892, the Revengers

(Further case files can be found in the Ragnarok file)

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

There are still a few file codes we don’t know. I had initially wondered if these codes:

Cause of Displacement: Codename: Revengers (see case file: Hela) see case files: IPB-ASG-004, IPB-ASG-005, IPB-ASG-157, IPB-ASG-892

were meant to be for the members of the Revengers themselves (Thor, Valkyrie, Hulk, and Loki?), but Hulk isn’t Asgardian and therefore shouldn’t have an ASG designation, and Hela is #012, but she was born before Thor and Loki (who might actually have a Jotunheim code rather than an Asgardian code, come to think of it), so it’d be weird if they had lower numbers then she did. I suppose the #004 and #005 could be Odin and Frigga, but other than being Hela’s parents, I don’t see why their files would be listed under the cause of the event and displacement.

Which leads me to what the file is actually saying, which personally I find fascinating! But first off we have to address the elephant in the room:

The “Zero Variance Energy Detected” that is so prominent in close ups is not actually in the document. Obviously this was simply an oversight, and they didn’t want to redo the entire page, so for ease’s sake, we’ll just pretend it’s in there.

So, based on that, it’s easy to see how Loki came to his conclusions about the variant being able to hide in apocalypses as this file directly states that there WAS some amount of time displacement caused by the Revengers during Hela’s attack but that no energy variance was detected. But even more interesting is this line:

Hela was one of four (4) [possibilities?] for the event [IPB-ASG-893?]. These alternatives can be found on Page 7 of the Ragnarok file. Cause of displacement of the event was due to the Revengers, but with the completion of the event, the time variance displacement has been [deemed?] inconsequential by the TVA.

Hela was only one out of four different possibilities to destroy Asgard, so when Mobius says that “it’s more complicated than that” in response to Loki saying that a nexus event is caused by “someone doing something they’re not supposed to do”, he wasn’t kidding! I wonder what the four different possibilities were. Was Surtur considered one? Who else could possibly be in that position to not only cause the destruction of the planet but also have killed all those people? Just how much wiggle room is there in this Sacred Timeline?

And this wasn’t even the 100% “correct” version of events! Remember, the Revengers did something that either brought the event on quicker or caused it to happen later than the Timekeepers planned through their Sacred Timeline. Thor did say that Loki was “late” in showing up, so maybe this is a nod to that line from the film.

Anyway, it is getting quite late, and I have written a lot. I’m not entirely sure it all makes sense anymore, but I have been thinking about this a lot and wanted to put it out there in case anyone else had any differing ideas that made more sense, lol. If you made it this far, have a virtual high five! XD

(I’m just really loving this show so far, ok? lol)

#loki #mcu #marvel #mcu loki #marvel loki #spoilers #loki spoilers #loki series #loki series spoilers #loki disney+ #heck i don't know what tags people are using lol #gwy writes a literal essay #although i supposed this is more of a research paper lol #...i have been obsessed with deciphering this page man #my sister is so annoyed with me right now XD #but there are so many fun little tidbits in it #shut up this is my idea of fun lol