hot take ??
the only reason people say that "mafuyu and tsukasa have nothing in common" when presented with mafukasa parallels is because they equate mafuyu and tsukasa being similar to "tsukasa has depression" because the fandom equates mafuyu's personality to being depressed and nothing else.
it doesn't help that people (primarily younger people in the fandom) who DO believe in mafukasa parallels end up making the mistake of portraying tsukasa as depressed because as of right now he is not (although it's possible he was in past because of his Very Unclear Middle School Backstory but that's irrelevant)
anyways, mafuyu and tsukasa are narrative foils because their core personalities are built off of the concept of wanting to make the people around them— especially their families— happy.
they both developed personalities at a young age based on someone they looked up to. for tsukasa, it was seiichi amami's performance that inspired him to be a star— a hero that could cheer anyone up. for mafuyu, it was her mother taking care of her that inspired her to be a nurse— and you can see the similarities from there.
for mafuyu, her identity would first come into conflict when her mother expressed her want for mafuyu to be a doctor— suddenly, "everyone's" happiness didn't match what she wanted to do, leaving her in a state of disorder and eventual depression.
for tsukasa, his identity was something he nearly forgot in its entirety at the start of the main story— becoming arrogant and fully absorbed in a hero persona, forgetting the kind person he truly is. furthermore, his current character arc seems to be foreshadowing that what "being a star" to him is going to be called into question— maybe it is something more than just being the main character that saves everyone.
their insecurities are incredibly similar.
in mafuyu's first mixed, mafuyu feels insecure towards ichika because unlike ichika, she feels as if her lyrics have no genuine meaning to be expressed to other people— despite them being her very real feelings. this is brought up again in her second mixed as well.
in tsukasa's third focus event, something similar happens. when watching seiichi's performance, he thinks that his acting is "real" and feels inferior towards him, which is ironic because tsukasa has been method acting this whole time. when tsukasa is acting out rio or bartlett or really anyone at this point in the story, it's not just those characters— it's a reflection of his traumas.
just like mafuyu, tsukasa undermines his passions he's poured his feelings into because someone else's work is more genuine in his eyes.
now, then, foils have many similarities and parallels (and i could honestly list a lot more), but how i define them is that they usually have some kind of major branching difference that MAKES them foils.
for mafuyu and tsukasa it's pretty straightforward.
mafuyu's people pleasing behavior comes from external expectations and pressures— her mother's demands.
tsukasa's people pleasing behavior comes internally, from himself— if he can't meet his own standards, if he can't be the perfect big brother or the perfect star, then he is nothing.
and even then, there's some overlap.
tsukasa's behavior was indirectly encouraged by his mother praising him for being a "good big brother" over the phone instead of asking him if he was okay while home alone.
mafuyu's terrified to be herself around other people because she doesn't want to worry or bother them— she doesn't want to be a burden— and projects her mother's expectations onto them, not realizing that they would prefer the real mafuyu if they knew the truth.
and the concept of mafukasa being foils is most perfectly and blatantly portrayed in these two cards.
mafuyu, the marionette, sitting limp on the floor— puppeteered by her mother's demands and donning a mask to hide her true self.
tsukasa, the jester, standing above everything else— puppeteering silenced plushies— his feelings. he's not being completely honest with himself, and he doesn't even realize it.
mafuyu has cut her strings and ripped her mask in half. she has acknowledged her true feelings and expressed them to her mother, even if she had to run away in the end.
tsukasa has not yet cut his.
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y'all can all cancel me (again) for this, but if there's even a SHRED of 'who should I pick?' from Penelope in season 3, I am tuning out SO fast because like. . .sorry not sorry, there IS no choice. Debling is some crusty OC suitor she barely even knows and Colin is a man who she has been so supposedly in love with to the point where she'd ruin her entire family's reputation to have a potential love story with him. Penelope and Colin have background, years of knowing each other, intimacy that few people in the Ton can boast of having (letters, conversations about purpose, fights and arguments and makeups) and her and Debling have. . .a dance or two at a ball because he's a rebound for Penelope's broken heart. he means nothing. he has no nuance, he has no weight to the story, he is such an afterthought to me. either I wanna see Penelope going 'you know what? I don't even LIKE this dude. he's. . .fine, but I don't care about him even a shred as much as I care about Colin' or the INSTANT Colin's like 'you know what? we should get married' if it's not an immediate 'say less, you're already my husband, try returning me without the receipt, Debling whomst?' then I don't want it!
like. . .it's just so frustrating to see all the 'I hope Debling sweeps her off her feet and she rejects Colin's proposal and she makes him work for it and and and-' nonsense from the fandom and it's always tagged and no matter how many times I block it, it just keeps popping up. I go into the Polin tag for POLIN. I don't give a SHIT about a male love interest other than Colin. Not one. Not a shred. Not an iota.
and also. . .Debling has the 'benefit' of not having depth, or character traits, or HISTORY, so peeps can project onto him however they want, but I'm calling it now, there is NOTHING he could do or be that would make me like him more than Colin. Colin will always hit different, and I will always love him more. and if Pen's not on that same page? lol bye
you want me to believe Penelope and Colin are soulmates and it's romance for her to hem and haw about how difficult a decision it is for her to marry a stranger who knows barely anything about her. . .
when Marina was out here dropping banger lines like 'You were the only man with which I could see myself being happy' and 'I do not care about any of these men, where is Colin?'? like hello??? and she wasn't even fully in love with him!!!! but we'll demonize her until the cows come home in our fandom and make her the villain in Polin's love story for DARING to get in between Polin, yet Debling, a white man, is a darling dear perfect prince for getting in between Polin? existing in our fandom solely so Penelope can be like 'lol, Colin ain't shit, let me entertain any and everyone else'?
if that's the direction it goes then, ten toes down and on my mama, she doesn't deserve Colin and she can move because I'm on my way to court him my damn self
and that's that on that
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Chilaios server ramblings the first. Being in this server has blasted our brain and awakened our capacity to ramble for screens upon screens at a time and although we have more coherent offerings many of them are waiting on one of the people who features heavily in conversation okay-ing us posting 21 screenshots heavily featuring them. Transcript below cut.
A set of screenshots of a Discord conversation, featuring us, Mantis God, nicknamed Speculative Vore Cookbook, and no one else because we cropped them out.
So! Whiskers, and greetings involving them.
We will preface this with the note that we are, of course, trying to keep with half-foot mannerisms and such reading as ever so slightly more expressive and thus "childish". Which is to say, fun things like lots of movement that would be thoroughly impractical for a larger species, that they can get away with because being smaller means that moving around simply burns less energy with less half-foot to move around.
With whiskers allowing for them to detect motion and vibration Very Well, especially, you get an excellent avenue for movement and, especially, tactile interactions being key in social situations.
With what we've already done: we've set up the brief bump of whiskers as a greeting - probably not necessarily a very strong bump, but one that lets you feel the other member of the conversation… being there, for lack of a better word. This also, by design, will put both participants fairly close to each other, physically.
We think it is perhaps Fun if "polite" for half-foots looks very physically close to other races, both due to Being Smaller making a small distance be bigger for them in terms of relative space, and due to the fact that a good chunk of their senses are hooked up in absurdly sensitive senses that stretch a very long way and are very hard to obscure compared to senses like sight.
"Polite", with humans, generally looks like… focusing a good chunk of your attention on your conversational partner. Showing that you're Paying Attention, that your primary Thing you're looking at is them. Obviously this is simplifying a lot, human communication is an eldritch horror of Niceties, but a lot of it more or less boils down to "showing you're paying attention to the other guy and their cues".
So: how to do that with this particular set of senses?
Half-foot hearing, at the very least, most likely means that it's going to be next to impossible to go through a conversation without listening to Other Things, whether you like it or not. Likewise, your conversation will not be private. Every other half-foot in the area will hear you (which might also mean that things like keeping track of multiple strands of conversation at the same time might be a more common skill). This also means that Lower Volumes are probably going to be crucial for casual conversation, because absurdly sensitive hearing means that "normal volume" talking is going to be Fucking Loud.
It honestly might be polite to, like… briefly disengage mid-conversation, if only because there's A Lot of input going in here, and you probably want to disengage every now and then to check on Everything Else. It's a very big world and you are a small prey animal that lives in probably fairly close-knit social groups, which has been gifted with the ability to check on people halfway across the house. Might as well pause to check for Other Things.
With Addition Of Whiskers, you've also got a fun, useful tool to "tether" the conversation a bit more. You're already close; might as well use those convenient things with the flexible range of motion for social cues. Probably ramping up the closer you are with someone. Touch whiskers to let them know you're Present And Listening. Have concern easily conveyed through using your useful Check For Things That Are Wrong On This Surface appendages. You just have to be close enough to pull off some light touch with whiskers that sprout very far off of your skin for it - with the unfortunate caveat that that looks like a lot closer for taller races and you are now getting up close to your fellow half-foots and conspiratically whispering while occasionally swivelling an ear over to check on the rest of the room or glance at someone else around.
We'll be damned if we know if we're presenting this Functionally, but: if made a bit more tactile, there's also the bonus of the fact that it might feed back a bit. Humans already need a certain amount of touch to be healthy. and the half-foot threshold might be a bit higher. This can lead to Fun Paths.
We're hunting for a good way to work this, and it's not working very well. More or less,, when you're a species that requires More Touch than the average other species, and you're surrounded by species that don't really Get That, where you're very capable of creating social faux passes or making yourself come off worse by seeking it, you can easily get into Fun Situations. The closer that a given half-foot is to someone, the more tactile that they'll probably want to be, which can cause some Very Fun culture clash.
Our concepts for this are somewhat vague but we think it's fun if all the races have similar points of Clash btw. We have been grouping dwarves, gnomes, and half-foots together in the same general "evolutionary group" which share enough cues to be Compatible while still being Not Quite Close Enough To 100% Get It.
(we have also grouped tallmen, orcs, and ogres into the same group. elves are just kinda off doing their own thing. kobolds are an unrelated convergent evolution in the same way that mermaids are humanoid and probably at least partially sapient but still not Human)
Might be fun if Senshi specifically has hung around the orcs for long enough to get socialized more towards their mannerisms. Weird dwarf who doesn't quite Get social cues that most dwarves pick up on who also just so happens to have more knowledge of the slightly more tallman-leaning group of body language.
We were going somewhere with this but we forgot.
Anyways half-foot affectionate head bonk as a Close Friends And Family Greeting that specifically isn't brought out around other races due to The Issues
Thank you for tuning in to our brief general takeover if we have the brain for it later we will maybe cohere this into a post of some description
BTW we have been basing our elves partially on ungulates this is partially because we think it's very fun to pull on the "mystic" qualities of animals like deer and horses for elves, partially to add our favorite wretched group of herbivores, and partially because we think it's fun if elves are Fucking Weirdos with traits like "weirdly elongated bones in the limbs that actively make fine control more difficult but Look more graceful and delicate to the human eye"
fucked up in there
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Fuck sleep
Shang Qinghua doesn't need sleep. He's an immortal. That said, this would be a 5 times that he fell asleep in public in front of his martial siblings and the one time that Cang Qiong peak lords actually does something to address it (aka realizing that he's overworked) instead of scoffing at him/gossiping about it/etc.
The 5 times Shang Qinghua falls asleep: at peak lord meetings, at a banquet (oof, how embarrassing for the sect!), in negotiations with merchants, on a mission with Shen Qingqiu and Liu Qingge, and in the inner sect tournament for senior disciples.
+1 when Shang Qinghua falls asleep in another peak meeting and Mu Qingfang is actually there to give a diagnosis...
[More in #made up fic title ask game]
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