#and those were two different times of day so they're not even relevant
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The great shift: Swap Sindrome 1
In a dimly lit room, I was masturbating with my fingertips in front of a pale white monitor. As I watched the images of boys around the age of high school students lined up on the screen, I fantasized about taking off their clothes and touching their naked bodies.
-ahh, ahh… ahh-
I closed my eyes as I fantasized about the scenes that were still etched in my memory, the memories of my body and my Gymbros in the locker room flooded my mind, At this moment there was nothing erotic about looking at my best friends or touching their oily and muscles to feel The Progress we had made in the gym, but now it was different, I was different.
I continued looking at the photographs that were shown on the Instagram profiles of my former friends, while the desperation and excitement with which I moved My small cock increased more and more.
I kept changing the photos until a photograph of my old body was displayed on the entire screen. I enlarged the photograph just so I could rotate the most erotic parts of my old body. I focused my gaze on the armpits that still had a couple of drops of stinky and sticky sweat running down towards my abdomen.
-FUUUCK! What I wouldn't give to smell those musky holes again-
The shameful and perverted words that came out of my mouth really embarrassed me, but right now I had no control over myself the only thing I wanted was to fantasize about my old hairy armpits, lick his hard biceps and play with his grazed nipples, The memory of the last time I could smell a sweaty t-shirt from my original body made me ejaculate violently, the semen spread across the keyboard of the old computer that was in front of me.
At that moment my head cleared, from one moment to the next the animal instincts that dominated me a few seconds ago immediately disappeared... and then only remorse.
I took a piece of paper that was within my reach and began to clean up the mess that I had caused myself. When I finished cleaning my little cock, I threw the ball of paper into the trash can that was saturated with balls identical to that one in a yellowish color. And they left a disgusting smell in my room.
I stood up, pulled up my pants and slowly walked towards the kitchen, avoiding looking at my fat old face on the relevant surfaces that were in my messy apartment. After doing this, I feel disgusting, but no matter how hard I try to stop thinking about my old life and in my old body.
-The swap syndrome…-
I said quietly trying to justify my depraved obsession with my old life, I had all the symptoms I had read on the internet:
“ Swap syndrome is a disorder characterized by a persistent and overwhelming obsession with a person's past life after experiencing a body swap with another. This syndrome manifests itself when two individuals involuntarily exchange their bodies thanks to the event known as “The great shift.”
People affected by SS experience intense longing and nostalgia for their previous life. They feel a deep disconnection from their new body and struggle to adapt to their new physical identity. Meanwhile, they constantly long to return to their old lives, including their relationships, daily routines, and everyday activities.
Symptoms of SS may include episodes of obsessional love, masturbation, anxiety, depression, and dissociation, as well as a decrease in social and occupational functioning. Affected people may manifest compulsive behaviors related to the search for ways to reverse the body exchange and recover their previous life.“
I've been trapped in the body of this overweight middle-aged man named Hiroshi for two years, and one day I just woke up in a room full of trash and on the other side of the world. It had been a few hours since all this had started So it was easy I searched what was happening on the internet I tried to contact my parents, but none of them responded to me even now I haven't seen my parents after so long, maybe they have They've gotten better bodies and now they're having fun. Or maybe they're in one of the many prisons trapped in the body of some convict, I don't know...
At least they can put me in contact with the Old Hiroshi who was now on the beach in Miami enjoying that new teenage body. At first, we wrote to each other every day, trying to go unnoticed among all the chaos of the world. I had to eat. So I decided. Not to tell anyone that he was actually a 16-year-old American teenager instead of a Japanese man my father's age.
The real Hiroshi helped me adjust to my new life, while I naively believed that this was something that would be resolved in a couple of days. But over time I got used to my new job in a restaurant as a dishwasher, I didn't understand the language very well. , but he didn't need it, the real Hiroshi was a quiet and submissive guy, Very different from what the real Hiroshi is like in his new life, as a popular teenager. That he spends his afternoons tanning on the beach and flirting with beautiful girls.
I used to talk to the real Hiroshi every day, but over time he took longer to respond to the messages, then to look at them and just not respond and over time he started ignoring my calls, now the only thing I know is because of the photographs I uploads to Instagram and social networks of my former friends, I didn't dare tell them the truth, that their former friend was now trapped in the body of a 45 year old obese loser…
I've been saving everything I can to be able to travel back to America and reunite with my old life. Although the salary as a dishwasher is shit, it's better than nothing, but once I'm in front of my old body I don't know if I can control myself... look down and a tiny bulge formed again in my pants from just being in front of my old body.
-Shit….-
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What My Father Wanted was to Kill God: Reflecting on the cycle of Rebuild of Evangelion
It's been two years now, since Evangelion 3.0+1.0 hit Japanese cinemas for the first time.
I think many of us chose to say goodbye to Eva on that day, too, leaving satisfied. I can't fault anyone for this. But there's a part of me that stings knowing that 3.0+1.0 has been left relatively un-combed-through in comparison to the other films, and I don't feel right leaving it this way.
Today, I want to dissect "loop theory" - what it was before 3.0+1.0 came out, in what ways we missed the mark back then, and finally, what the resolution of 3.0+1.0 meant for the story.
I want to understand what it meant to kill God.
This article was heavily inspired by "What was loop theory? Investigating the truth after Evangelion 3.0+1.0", by Japanese fan-channel Eva Fan.
If you want to understand the meta angle of Rebuild better (i.e. "why does Rebuild even exist in the first place?"), please watch the NHK Professional documentary on Anno and the production of 3.0+1.0 (not "The Final Challenge of Evangelion" version on Amazon, although you should watch this one too because they're both great.) The meta of Rebuild is outside the scope of this article.
SECTION 1: WHAT WAS LOOP THEORY?
If you're already familiar with the basis of loop theory, you can probably skip this section and head to section 2. This is gonna be a lot of recap.
I, for one, have never been a huge fan of the idea of "loop theory". This isn't to say that I've ever disagreed with the conclusion that Rebuild's world is stuck in a loop, more that I felt like painting it as a "theory" is seeding more ground to bad faith actors in the fandom than necessary.
However, I'm using the term here to refer generally to different theories about the loops, namely those regarding Kaworu and potential connections with End of Eva.
Now that all of the disclaimers are out of the way...
ESTABLISHING OUR BASES, PART 1: THE MESSENGER
From the moment he's introduced, Kaworu's entire purpose in the first two films seems to be establishing the loop to the audience.
His familiarity with previous versions of Shinji is front and centre in the very first line he speaks.
Some relevant lines from Kaworu in 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Full sized image here.
While at this stage, we lack information on how much Kaworu knows, we are at least aware of his knowledge of previous iterations of the Eva world in that first line there: "The Third one again".
This is compounded at the very end of 2.0, in which he declares that "this time" (as opposed to previous times, presumably failed attempts), he will make Shinji happy.
In 3.0, there's a moment in which he seems to confirm to himself his musing in NGE of having been "born to meet" Shinji (notice the lack of のかもしれない "probably"), and following some more ambiguous lines we'll skip over, at the end of a long speech about parts of ourselves remaining in the world even after we're gone, he suggests he and Shinji will see each other again just before he dies.
These lines lead some fans to believe that the loops were in some way or another, under Kaworu's control. This iteration of loop theory suggested that the loops exist so that Kaworu, who remembers the events of NGE, can achieve his goal of "making Shinji happy".
ESTABLISHING OUR BASES, PART 2: THE RED SEA
Non-exhaustive chart of potential connections between Rebuild and NGE/EOE, compiled by users on /a/ board in 2011. Full sized image here.
There are several environmental aspects of Rebuild's world that seemed to suggest a connection to The End of Evangelion, most obvious amongst these being the red sea.
As Kaji explains in 2.0, the seas were blue prior to Second Impact. Flashbacks to this event reveal that it bore slightly more in common with EOE's Third Impact than NGE's Second; note the presence of the Black Moon in the comparison above.
Early on in 1.0, there's a shot that shows cross-shaped white outlines in the red sea, that appear to be remnants of EOE's crucified mass production units.
The moon in Rebuild also has a large, red streak on its surface, that could be the bloodstain that was left there by Lilith in EOE.
Additionally, Shinji's SDAT in NGE always looped the same two songs, shown under the track numbers 25 and 26. In Rebuild, Shinji's SDAT's track number begins at 27, and goes up from there (it seems to represent the relationships he forms with other people).
Some iterations of loop theory suggested that Rebuild was set directly after End of Eva, and that the events of Second Impact as remembered by the cast were actually EOE's Third Impact.
Additionally, though its relevance to any canonical NGE content is tenuous (tenuous, but not irrelevant when it comes to Rebuild; see the bonus chapter), Sadamoto's NGE manga also ends with a kind of timeloop.
From the epilogue chapter of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's Neon Genesis Evangelion manga. Full sized image here.
After Instrumentality, the epilogue flashes forward to a long time in the future, where the crucified Evas are seen as some kind of relic from an unknown time.
We see Shinji, Asuka and Kensuke reincarnated, and Shinji and Asuka meet for the first time, with some sense that they've seen each other before.
Full sized image here.
This ending could be seen as an explanation of sorts of what's going on in Rebuild; the characters have been reincarnated a long time after the fact, while elements of the old world remain as part of the environment.
ESTABLISHING OUR BASES, PART 3: DOUBT
It should go without saying that, even at the time, these particular conclusions had holes in them. (This is to say nothing of the hundreds of other iterations of loop theory; if we went through every whacky headcanon explanation people posted on Reddit under the guise of it being any kind of genuine theorization, we'd be here all day)
Sequel Theory, especially past 3.0, required you to ignore contradictory information being presented in the same scenes the evidence being drawn on was. The comparison image I included earlier (it pre-dates 3.0's release, but was certainly spread around long after the fact) suggests that the Four Adams as they appear in 2.0's flashback could have been the Mass Production Evas (of which there are 8, not 4!). Two of the lines from Kaworu it included also don't support this line of reasoning; both "This time..." and "You don't change" imply multiple previous loops, not a singular. And while we haven't mentioned them so far, the coffin he emerges from in 1.0 being one of several was also something people were aware of back then.
Speaking of Kaworu - Shinji's Happiness Theory doesn't seem to line up with the way he goes out in NGE, either. He asks Shinji to kill him with the goal of achieving true freedom; it doesn't seem like he's looking for a next time, but rather an ending, away from his destiny as an angel. It doesn't really follow that Rebuild's loops would be a journey he'd set himself on willingly, rather a circumstance he's put into by some other force.
SECTION 2: PAYOFF
3.0+1.0 responds to the foreshadowing of previous entries in a way that's kind of inconclusive, on its face. I'm going to save the potential answers for the next section; for now, let's just go over the information we did get, including some things you may have missed.
PAYOFF, PART 1: OUT IN THE OPEN
Kaworu describes Gendo as being the origin of the cycle. Full sized image here.
Our first piece of confirmation, and first in-universe mention of the loops (or "cycle"/"circle"), is this line. "Gendo was the center of Instrumentality this time", the "this time" implying there have been other Instrumentalities with other person/s at the center. "Origin of the cycle" may indicate that Gendo is in control of the loops as a whole, or it may instead indicate that different people start them, perhaps through Instrumentality.
Asuka wakes up on the beach. Full sized image here.
After coming to terms with her feelings, Asuka "wakes up" in the same spot she was lying at the end of EOE, wondering if she was asleep. This is still in the anti-universe, but as was established by Gendo earlier on in the film, the Evangelion Imaginary and the anti-universe as a whole manifest as parts of one's memory. Asuka is our POV character for this section with her, so she must recall having been here. Maybe you could interpret "was I asleep?" as Soryu, specifically, having woken up.
Selections from Kaworu's Instrumentality. Full sized image here.
Anything that focused on Kaworu here was always going to be the juiciest in relation to the loops, but it's surprisingly upfront even then: There have been multiple previous loops, and Kaworu is not in control of them, he just continues to exist without agency over them like all of the other key players do. (That's both of our aforementioned Theories disproven in one scene!)
Kaworu introduces the "Book of Life", Kaji clarifies the details. Full sized image here.
We're also introduced to a new concept here, the "Book of Life". There's very limited information on what this does, but at least Kaji is here to fill in some details Kaworu conveniently leaves out, as he likes to do (that, if nothing else, Shinji and him meeting over and over again is something Kaworu has power over.)
Rei and Shinji discuss the birth of a new world. Full sized image here.
Most of Rei's instrumentality scene exists to wrap up the other aspect of Rebuild's narrative we're not talking about here, so I'll skip past all of that to this: with Unit-01 and the Spear of Gaius, Shinji is capable of creating a new world, through a power known as Neon Genesis. It may be worth noting that Shinji has to clarify that he isn't going to rewind time or revert the world, just create a new one on top of the existing. This may establish a precedent for characters in control of Instrumentality being able to do both of those things.
PAYOFF, PART 2: A CLOSER LOOK
NGE has a LOT of references to the years its set in. Even beyond the on-screen text, there's plenty of instances of plaques and other signs with the 2015 date on them. Rebuild, however...
Yui's grave as it appears in 2.0. Full sized image here.
The only time we ever see a date in the first three films is here, on Yui's gravestone in 2.0. It's partially obscured by flowers, and may appear at first to read the same as her NGE grave did. On closer inspection, though, you can clearly see there's a 0 in front of 2004.
This could be what the gravestone has written on it. Full sized image here.
One time could mean anything, but it becomes a pattern when we see more dates in 3.0+1.0...
The manufacture information on the railway track turntable in Village-3. Full sized image here.
The plaque on the AAA Wunder. Full sized image here.
Looking at that date given on the railway turntable, the earliest date 3.0+1.0 could take place is the year 12001.
This, combined with the physical evidence present in the first two films, seems to imply that Rebuild follows the same rules established in the Sadamoto manga, that the loop isn't necessarily a reset of the world, but rather a continuous stream of time in which the characters are reincarnated. It makes sense Sadamoto would use this as the basis for his ending, too - he worked on the first two films, and the Mari bonus chapter clearly demonstrates that certain aspects of Rebuild were solidified during their production.
Furthermore, the scene in which Shinji asks Gendo what he wishes for has more visual references to EOE than you might think...
Gendo grasps his right arm, as if he remembers the time he lost it. Full sized image here.
The arm thing is obvious, and the line he says there could be about EOE, but you might notice something else in that image on the left there. There's a picture of Shinji in the background.
That image comes from one of the flashing sequences in EOE's Third Impact, in fact, the entire sequence is overlaid on top of that shot of Gendo.
This shot in 3.0+1.0 versus the same sequence in EOE. The encode of 3+1 I was using was dropping frames here, so I had to cut some of it out. Video mirror here.
By the way, adult Asuka's official name, as used in every piece of merchandising she's been in so far, is just "Asuka Langley", not "Asuka Langley Shikinami" or "Asuka Langley Soryu".
Good Smile Company's "1/7 Scale Figure: Asuka Langley". She has a fair few figures, all of them with this name. Other merchandise never calls regular Asuka this. Full sized image here.
Rei holds a doll of Tsubame. Full sized image here.
The same thing ends up happening with Rei in-universe. The version of her with long hair is clearly Rei from 2.0, who has been inside the entry plug this whole time, but when we see her on the stage, she's holding a baby doll. It has Tsubame (Hikari and Toji's daughter)'s name written on it.
It seems to follow that different versions of the same character end up re-joining into one during instrumentality, be that cross-loop like Soryu and Shikinami, or in-loop, like Rei and Sokkuri (Lookalike). This would appear to go beyond just regaining memories of previous loops, as Rei and Sokkuri existed in the same loop independently of one another.
SECTION 3: A PROPOSAL
And now, to get into the real meat of the issue.
...Whose doing was this, exactly?
Here's the thing: Kaworu, we can already rule out. We know it wasn't him.
The next most likely candidate you might think of is Gendo, but... is he, really? Because Gendo died in EOE (perhaps not physically, but regardless), killed by Yui, but ultimately of his own volition. He had come to terms with himself when he died. He doesn't seem like someone who would have still had unfinished business.
Then, what of Shinji? Well, I think it's the same deal with him, too. Shinji might not have found his place in life at the end of EOE, but he also doesn't seem like he was clamoring to start over, after all of that.
In their video, "What was loop theory? Investigating the truth after Evangelion 3.0+1.0", Japanese Eva fan, Eva Fan (lol), of Minna no Eva Fan fame, gives us a different answer:
It was Yui.
Yui entered the Eva experiment for Shinji's sake. Full sized image here.
Yui's motives in NGE may have been left mostly up to the audiences' interpretation, but I don't think there's any doubt she loved her son more than anything.
As Unit-01, she becomes God at the end of EOE, accepting the burden of being the eternal proof of mankind's existence.
She leaves Shinji behind, knowing that he still hasn't found his place in life.
A PROPOSAL, PART 1: YOU WERE WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT
Yui leaves Shinji as he comes into his own. Full sized image here.
The end point of the loops and emergence into the new world:
Shinji makes the decision to create a world that doesn't need the Eva.
Shinji and Yui, previously one being, separate.
Shinji breaks the curse of the Eva, becoming an adult, and now away from his mother, emerges into the real world.
As explained by Gendo, the anti-universe, the end point of Rebuild's story, is also the beginning, and somewhere Yui, at one point, resided.
The beginning and the end are one in the same. Full sized image here.
The anti-universe is "the one and only place fate may be bent to one's will". Shinji, in his parting words to Yui in EOE, tells her he thinks he'll keep making the same mistakes over and over.
To quote Hideaki Anno: Eva is a story that repeats.
In the aforementioned Eva Fan video, they suggest that the anti-universe may in fact be the world of NGE (perhaps, the world inside of Unit-01). Yui creates a new world through Neon Genesis, one which resembles the old, to tell the story of Shinji anew. To give him another chance to grow.
For as long as Eva is Shinji's story, it is Yui's; her goal was to bring Shinji a bright future, after all.
The act of piloting the Eva sees the child return to the place they resided before birth; back into the comfort of their mother's womb.
In Rebuild, the “mother” seems to become all but irrelevant - Yui Ayanami may reside inside Unit-01 but this is never touched on in the same way; Asuka’s mother doesn’t seem to even exist, and her original seems to reside inside Unit-13. The existence or non-existence of a mother’s soul inside of an Eva dictates nothing about who can synchronize with it (see: Unit-02, Unit-08, Unit-13, etc). However, taking a step back, it’s almost as if the reason why the presence of the “mother” is missing from the material world of Rebuild is because the entire series takes place within the world the mother created.
If Shinji entering the cockpit of an Eva unit in NGE is returning to the womb, then what is Shinji doing by existing in the world of Rebuild?
In deciding to create a world that doesn't need the Eva, Shinji is accepting life without his mother. The parting of mother and son represents the break in the loop.
He emerges into the new world, reborn as an adult.
INTERJECTION: WHAT’S IN A NAME?: YUI IKARI/YUI AYANAMI
Rebuild’s Yui’s name isn’t Yui Ikari (at least, her maiden name isn’t) - It’s Yui Ayanami.
In NGE, Gendo took her surname when they married. In Rebuild, Gendo already had the surname Ikari, and Yui Ayanami took his.
I think fans have been generally puzzled by the purpose of this change, but this interpretation - that Yui Ikari from NGE is the heart of the loop, the God that created the world and the God that Gendo would kill at the end of 3.0+1.0 - would seem to explain why this is the case. She’s Yui Ayanami because she’s a copy - like Rei is - of the original Yui. A Yui created by Yui Ikari.
This also may explain why the date on Yui's grave says "02004" - after all, it's the grave of Yui Ikari, not the grave of Yui Ayanami.
Rei of NGE is more than just a clone of Yui, she also holds a piece of Yui’s soul (in the form of emotional memory), while Yui herself resides in Unit-01. Therefore, it stands to reason that Yui Ayanami is not really an individual, but rather someone who holds a piece of Yui Ikari’s soul - I think even more so than Rei (who undeniably is an individual). Yui Ayanami may function as a kind of messenger for Yui Ikari, who holds the knowledge she has and steers the story in the direction it needs to go. There are many players in Rebuild who are more like symbols than characters, and I think this is a huge part of why Yui Ayanami is not a character like Yui Ikari was.
For the sake of brevity, I’m going to use “Yui Ikari” to refer to Original Yui, and “Yui Ayanami” to refer to Rebuild Yui, unless stated otherwise, for the remainder of this post.
A PROPOSAL, PART 2: ...WERE YOU THERE THE WHOLE TIME?
Kaworu himself wasn't brought into Instrumentality in EOE directly. Rather, the fetus of Adam was, through Rei intaking Gendo's hand. If souls like Rei and Sokkuri are capable of rejoining into one in Instrumentality, I wonder if the presence of Kaworu in Instrumentality can be explained by his soul rejoining with that of the Adam fetus. He definitely appears as Adam there, the same way Rei is Lilith.
Which brings us to this:
Shinji and Gendo upon seeing familiar souls: "Were you there the whole time?". Full sized image here.
Gendo offers Shinji the apology he never got to hear in EOE, and then realizes: Yui's soul was residing in Shinji.
Instrumentality likely reconciled the souls of Yui Ayanami (the individual who became Unit-01 in this timeline) and Yui Ikari (the soul who lived on as God, and in her son), the same way it may have reconciled Kaworu and Adam's.
For as long as Yui's soul resided in Unit-01, and in Shinji, her story was not over. For as long as Shinji was stuck in his loop of making the same mistakes over and over, Eva's story was not over. For as long as the Eva exists, Yui will, and End of Eva leaves Yui there, in space, as the eternal proof mankind existed at all.
If 3.0+1.0 says "goodbye to all of Evangelion", it must be the end of Yui Ikari's story, too.
INTERJECTION: WHAT’S IN A NAME?: “SHIN EVANGELION”
The Japanese title of Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon A Time is シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版𝄇, (Romaji: Shin Evangerion Gekijouban𝄇, English: Shin* Evangelion Theatrical Edition𝄇”).
There are three points of interest in this title:
Shin - The use of “Shin” here falls in line with the titles of Hideaki Anno’s other recent films: Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and the upcoming Shin Kamen Rider. While I’m not really the best person to explain this as I’m not really familiar with the source material, the other Shin films are based pretty heavily on earlier works in their respective franchises (I believe both Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman have sequences that are recreations of scenes from the original movie/series). Shin Eva also, obviously, does the same thing with NGE and EOE scenes.
*According to an interview with producer Akihiro Yamauchi on Shin Godzilla, the title of “Shin” was chosen for the film due to the variety of meanings it conveys. In all four titles, it is written ambiguously, and could be read as “new”, “true”, or “God”, amongst other things.
Evangelion - NGE’s title and Rebuild’s title are actually spelled differently. エヴァンゲリオン is the spelling of Evangelion used in NGE, ヱヴァンゲリヲン is the spelling used in Rebuild’s title (not the in-universe machines, for the record). They’re pronounced the same way, but Rebuild’s spelling uses characters that are a little archaic (if you want to get technical, it could be romanized as “Wevangeriwon”; note the use of “wo” instead of “o” just like in Kaworu’s name, and you probably get it.)
Shin Evangelion uses the NGE spelling, not the Rebuild spelling, which makes it sound like “Shin Neon Genesis Evangelion Movies”, not “Fourth Entry in the Rebuild Franchise” (in fact, “Evangelion Gekijouban” comes from Death and Rebirth/End of Eva’s Japanese names). Earlier posters for this film in English gave it the NGE font rather than a Rebuild style logo, which pretty accurately represents how this looks.
The symbol at the end - The symbol at the end of the title, is a symbol that’s used in sheet music. This could be read two ways - “Shin Evangelion Gekijouban: End”, or “Shin Evangelion Gekijouban Repeat”; If you assume 𝄇 is one symbol, then it’s a “repeat” sign (tells the player to repeat a section of the sheet music). If you assume it’s a colon and then a subtitle, then it’s an “end” sign (𝄂, signifies the end of the piece.)
A PROPOSAL, FINAL PART: TO KILL GOD
Full sized image here.
Gendo's goal in NGE and Rebuild is the same: To be reunited with Yui.
In Rebuild, he will become God through the use of the Key of Nebuchadnezzar and trigger the Additional Impact with himself at the center, so he can see her again in Instrumentality.
But there's a second aspect to this plan... Killing God.
Gendo lays out his intentions. Full sized image here.
I think it would be naïve of me to suggest that Gendo had any intention of ending things when he said this. These lines obviously pertain to something else (I think all of this is covered in the process of beginning the Additional Impact anyway), and it's made clear that he goes into Instrumentality as stubbornly as he always is.
He fully intended to destroy all of the spears, so nobody would have any way of manipulating or ending Instrumentality, so he could live peacefully with Yui for the rest of time.
Whatever it might have meant there... "Killing God" takes on a completely different meaning by the end of the film.
Yui Ikari is an existence that will live on indefinitely; someone who will never die, even long after humanity is gone. In becoming Unit-01, she alone will wait in the universe forever.
She once resided in the anti-universe; the Promised Land, the one and only place fate may be bent to one's will; she created the world of Rebuild of Evangelion, the beginning of everything.
Yui did all of this to give her son a better life. To let him try over and over again until he broke the curse of the Eva, and emerged into a brighter future.
She, Unit-01, Evangelion as a whole, could not rest until Shinji grew into his own.
Gendo comes to the conclusion during Instrumentality, after bleeding his heart out to his son, that he isn't any closer to reuniting with her.
Full sized image here.
But after acknowledging Shinji's adulthood, accepting his own fragility, and resolving their story...
Full sized image here.
Full sized image here.
...He realizes she was right in front of him this whole time.
Full sized image here.
With this, Gendo exits the train - the same train his story began, the train station he abandoned Shinji at all of those years ago - his story is over. He no longer seeks eternal life with Yui.
As Shinji breaks his own curse of Eva and is reborn out of the comfort of his mother's world, and into a world of his own creation, he says goodbye to all Evangelion.
Full sized image here.
Gendo, in peace at the end of his own long journey, is willing to let Yui sleep.
And so, he kills God.
Full sized image here.
#evangelion#rebuild of evangelion#neon genesis evangelion#analysis#yui ikari#gendo ikari#shinji ikari#kaworu nagisa#yui ayanami#evangelion 3.0+1.0#shin evangelion#shin eva#nge#eva#loop theory
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Today marks 100 years since Hitler's first attempt to take over Germany by force, and 85 years since Kristallnacht, the Nazi-orchestrated pogrom that really forced Jews to realize how great the danger posed to them in Europe was.
A few years ago, I made a post with some of the updated data from research conducted in recent years, but this year, after the massacre of Oct 7, most of what I wrote doesn't feel relevant in the same way.
I'm thinking of this...
Up until that pogrom, it was a negligible Jewish minority that realized they HAD to get out, if they wanted to survive. Afterwards, as ALL Jews tried to flee, the world basically closed its doors to the Jewish refugees. Of those who got out in time, some found refuge in Israel, those who were lucky enough not to be blocked by the British, who were ruling this land at the time.
I've researched Jewish families' stories, and how they were torn apart. One youngster gets it and leaves in time. His elderly parents don't know how to start over in a different place, when being German was so embedded in their identity. They end up taking their own lives. These two single sisters make it to Israel. Their nephew writes them in Hebrew that he had dreamed at night of the whole family joining them in the Jewish homeland. He and his parents are murdered in shooting pits in Riga. A Zionist boyfriend makes it out. His girlfriend, trapped in the Lodz Ghetto, thinks back to his stories about Yossef Trumpeldor, a Jewish man who died in northern Israel in 1920, defending his community from Arab attackers, and whose last words were, "It's good to die for our country." She cries. "That's what I wanted, to die with dignity while fighting, not like this, like a human rag." She survives and joins him in Israel. To some people, she's an evil colonizer, whose rape and murder they are capable of justifying. They do so while quoting Elie Wiesel's words, about the importance of speaking up, because silence only never helps the oppressed. They're co-opting Wiesel's words, a Holocaust survivor himself, who was a Zionist, and extremely critical of Hamas.
Story after story, it's all the same. In families or communities that were split, those who got to Israel survived. For those who remained or tried a different escape route, most didn't make it (like Anne Frank's family, who fled Germany, tried to make it to the US or Cuba, were turned away repeatedly, and ended up going into hiding in the Netherlands... with only Anne's father surviving).
I am thinking about how, if there had been a State of Israel, a safe haven for Jews, that would automatically take them in when they needed to get away from the Nazis, we estimate that at least a million and a half Jews would have been saved.
I am thinking about how, there would have been a Jewish state to bomb the gas chambers in Auschwitz and save at least half a million Jews from them, instead of uselessly begging the allied leaders to.
I am thinking about how, if the allied leaders would have taken into account the political profit from cultivating an alliance with the Jewish state, that could have provided the political motivation to their begging Jewish citizens a different answer, and they would have actually done something to save at least some of the Jews.
I am thinking about how, for 80 years or so, the world has been chanting, "Never again," but when Hamas terrorists massacred the biggest number of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, too many couldn't even condemn it. I'm thinking about how, when some justify the massacre of Israeli Jews, including Holocaust survivors and their families, most people don't tell them off. When Israel fights back to protect the rest of its population, as it swore it would (yes, "Never again" also means the right to self defense), the world condemns it, vilifying the Jews again, by depicting Israel's response as nothing but blood lust and a desire for revenge. I'm thinking... this is why we have to have Israel. So we never again are dependent on the silent world to defend our right to live. So that implementing "Never again" is never a question of whether non-Jews did more than recite the words emptily.
The massacre that took place on Oct 7 was horrific. But we saw the repetitive nature, the scale, the wide geographical spread, and the industrial nature of countless massacres that happened when there was no Israel to respond, and when no one was defending the Jews.
From 1851 (when Rabbi Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref was murdered on his way to synagogue in Jerusalem) to this day, less Jews died in the Arab-Israeli conflict than during just two days in the Nazi shooting pit of Baby Yar, on Sep 29 and 30, 1941. In Israel, the memorial days for the Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and for the people we lost in the Israeli-Arab conflict, are observed one week apart. The way that many here put here, the latter is to remember the price of having a state, and the former is to remember the price of not having one.
You don't have to agree with this POV. But when you look at the poisonous atmosphere cultivated online, including on Tumblr, where the Hamas massacre has been justified, or denied, or simply didn't merit a reaction, when you see how the global rise in antisemitism goes without much discussion, when you see people justifying violence towards Jews, based on a false narrative that erases entire chunks of Jewish history, at least understand where people who embrace this POV come from.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
#israel#israeli#israel news#israel under attack#israel under fire#terrorism#anti terrorism#antisemitism#hamas#antisemitic#antisemites#jews#jew#judaism#jumblr#frumblr#jewish#kristallnacht#holocaust#shoah
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Theory: Merlin's Recent Publicity and its Correlation to a Possible Sequel/Revival/Reboot (+Eoin Macken's Pseudo Merlin Project)
'Ello. Fancied sharing my thoughts on recent developments regarding BBC's Merlin.
Fair, firm warning: I'm only sharing speculations and my personal opinions on the matter, and I do not advertise them as fact whatsoever. Consider them musings (or delusions, your choice). You can use this to further fuel your hope of the slim chance that this beloved show will see the light of day once again or maybe make theories of your own. Dispelling it is also an option, as I cannot assure my arguments would be free from flaws.
Right. Without further ado...
Revival of the Official Merlin Twitter Account
Let's put this into scenario.
Imagine a dated piece of media, previously well-known worldwide and had its own golden age for a time. This media launched the last of its contents over a decade ago, yet it gained a loyal, devoted following that persisted to grow and continued the legacy of the franchise over the years. Though there were highs and lows, the community remained alive for an impressive amount of time, steadily producing art, fiction, and creations dedicated to the media, despite not having anything new to work with. This devotion is acknowledged by those from an outsider's perspective, including the creators of this media (cast, staff, and distributors alike).
To put into context, the community was left unsatisfied with how the media ended, and many wished for the media to return. Articles were written, petitions were signed, comments left on the cast' social media accounts, and even questions were asked directly to them. Although different in wording, the inquired notion remained the same: Will there be a possibility of a sequel/revival/return/reboot? The answers range from a neutral, vague reply to a more resounding no.
This cycle persisted, but the people were immovable; they were visionaries and their dream lived on in their hearts. And this did not go unnoticed.
So it continued... until one of the media's social accounts made a sudden return. Out of nowhere, without a warning. They're back for good, the account announced. It sent the community into a frenzy. But if you took a step back from the excitement, you'd notice that it's strange. Why would a media ended over a decade ago suddenly be promoted again?
Now, I'm going to explore two possibilities; pragmatic and idealistic. The previous hypothetical scenario lays the general principal of Merlin's relevance (duh).
I'll make the pragmatic perspective brief. FremantleMedia saw the opportunity to make some bucks from Merlin because of the loyal fanbase, using a no-cost yet effective method to keep us tuned in; hoping. OMG, what does this mean? Does this mean they're going make a sequel?! Holy shit, they're teasing us, aren't they? I can't believe this is happening, it's a dream come true! And so on and so forth. Evidently, it works and numbers are growing. The official Merlin twitter account is racking up more followers and likes with each post. In this possibility, there's no such thing as a sequel/whatever it is the fanbase hopes for; just a reanimated corpse doing the same silly tap dance while we holler at it, dumbly hoping that they bust out new moves.
Now, the fun part. The idealistic version!
I'm going to use a real life example for my theory: the upcoming release of Dragon's Dogma 2. With a quick Google search, you can learn that Dragon's Dogma 2 is the highly awaited sequel for its well-liked predecessor, Dragon's Dogma.
For some time, Dragon's Dogma was on sale on Steam (with a decent cut too). This was done to gain the attention of...
1. those who haven't previously dived into the franchise. It's to make them think 'Wow! This game's so good. Oh, there's a sequel of it that's gonna be released soon? With even better graphics and gameplay? Sign me the fuck up!'. You liked Blueberry Cheesecake, so it'd make sense that you'd be more open to buying Double Blueberry Cheesecake, Premium Ingredients Addition, with 2 additional paid toppings.
2. Veterans and nostalgic fans. 'They're promoting the game I liked years ago... Oh, well, it won't hurt to play it again, just for the nostalgia. It never really left my mind anyway."
In other words: hype! hype! hype!
If using this principle, then the possibility of a sequel/revival/reboot/new content exists. It's either being processed (wishful thinking, not as likely) or being considered (more likely). If it's the latter, then they're testing the waters to see how much people still care/how much money they'll make. The more attention and hype it gets, the higher the likelihood.
Simplified:
P (old media pushed for publicity) -> Q (hype built)
Q (hype built) -> R (new content)
Eoin Macken's Pseudo Merlin Project
If I recall correctly, Eoin Macken first announced a pseudo Merlin project in late 2020. It's first teased to be released in 2021, but nothing came out of it so far (at the time of writing this) except if you count the small handful of times Macken hinted it over the ongoing four year period.
Now, I understand his position. First and foremost, he needs the legal rights to actually produce anything and it's no easy feat when you're dealing with a massive company. Then there's the issue of costumes, props, sets, and equipment. A lot to consider. To put it simply, he must offer the company something worth more than the show itself or contribute in their favor in some way. Macken seems like a charming and capable guy, so he can make it work. Probably.
I lean towards the spin-off theory because a cast reunion would not take four years. As far as I know, Macken is close with the knights and they could get together at any convenient time. If the project was a zoom call or a recorded get-together, it would've been released already. To compare, by using the average of 385,000 babies born each day during the last three years, we have 421,575,000 newborns before the Pseudo Merlin Project.
I want to tie this in with the previous theory, but eh. It can connect, but not really. I don't have any further explanation or evidence since Macken hasn't given any news.
---
Anyways. That's enough of this. I hope it made sense, at least it did to me. I'm entering my third year in the fandom, so I'm relatively new and still hopeful. (Though I try hard to keep my feet on the ground while I stare up at the clouds.)
To end this post, I'd like to say: keep hoping. Hope is such a stupidly beautiful thing, and it should be nurtured. Turn that feeling into art, into efforts.
There are franchises revived 2-3 decades after, and Merlin is no exception.
#bbc merlin#merlin#merlin meta#merlin emrys#eoin macken#bradley james#tom hopper#rupert young#tomiwa edun#merlin bbc#theories
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i started naruto a few years ago and made it to like the second arc in shippuden before stopping so i never made it to the kakashi backstory but....your notes compel me. tell me more.
okay so like take this with several grains of salt because the sum total of my sources here are "my understanding of the plot and characters as synthesized from the Abridged Revised Illustrated Edition my datemate's been writing me over the last two months", a handful of clips, and the only three (3) episodes of this 600+ episode show i've seen in my life, none of the three of which were relevant to the kakashi backstory
h o w e v e r
oh my god. my dude. my man. [holds him up like longcat] there is so much wrong with you and i'm enthralled.
so like here's the thing. here's the big takeaway that i'm understanding. this whole series is an ongoing exercise in generational trauma bullshit and everyone trying so hard to course-correct from their own tragic backstories that they accidentally set up their kids/students to have completely different but still somehow exactly the same tragic backstories, and naruto's chronic case of shounen anime power-of-friendship-itis is, i mean. yes it's him being the platonic ideal of Pure Of Heart And Dumb Of Ass but it's also a direct response to seeing ninja society's perpetual tragic backstory generator and going "this is bullshit, why are we even fighting? tell me what your side is, and i'll tell you what our side is, and then we can figure out how to make our sides the same side so none of us have to fight about it at all!" and honestly i love that but this ain't about him
so like. to explain kakashi we have to explain kakashi's father sakumo first. because sakumo was one of konoha's powerhouses, been on tons of successful missions, well-liked, well-respected, one of the earliest and loudest adopters of konoha's then-new and radical pivot towards a ninja being people first and disposable tools never ideology.
he really, genuinely believed in that.
except then he and his team went on a mission. and it went really, really badly. and he had to choose between completing the mission objective or saving his teammates' lives, and he chose their lives, because those who fail their missions may be scum, but those who abandon their teammates are worse, right?
... no, actually.
just because the ideology had been circulating and people were broadly toeing the party line didn't mean they actually believed in it, and sakumo's mission failure was already causing critical backlash.after sakumo made it back to konoha he was a fucking pariah for it. he was never officially reprimanded, but he didn't need to be if people went out of their way to personally spit at his feet, and... one day young kakashi comes home to find his father's body on the floor, wrists slit and suicide note devolving into begging apologies beside him.
this, as you may imagine, fucked him up, and didn't exactly predispose him towards believing the party line about the value of life.
he gets put on a genin team that was. basically the alpha build of the sasuke-sakura-naruto team dynamic. because it was him, and rin the healer girl with a massive crush on him who he never gave the time of day, and obito the Loudest High-Vis Uchiha Who Ever Lived who had a massive crush on her, and minato their teacher who was doing his absolute best to try and get them through to understanding each other, which is an Ordeal
because kakashi at this point has internalized that the party line is pretty lies for the gullible, that his teammates are only there to drag him down, and it drives obito nuts because that's the same exact bullshit that his family keeps spouting that he's rejected as thoroughly as a 12.9-year-old can, how does kakashi not see that it's bullshit? and there's rin who's looking at kakashi like i can fix him?? and getting upset when he doesn't let them in at all or even really visibly care that they're trying, and it's one hell of a dysfunction junction but minato is working on it.
... and then the worst happens. their team is caught out alone and everything goes wrong. rin is captured and obito's body is half-crushed under a rock and one of kakashi's eyes got slashed out and none of them are going to make it out of this, at this rate, until obito calls kakashi closer and tells him to take his eye. take the sharingan. he'd give him both but the other one got squished. kakashi will do more with it than obito ever did, so use it to save rin. please. and here's kakashi in the middle of field surgery on his dying teammate finally, horribly realizing that sometimes the win condition is, actually, protecting your friends, and he's already lost. but he can still try to save rin, it was obito's dying wish.
by the time he found her it was already too late.
the people who'd captured her had tried, poorly, hastily, messily, to seal one of the Tailed Beasts into her, and she was already dying. she had a demon thrashing in her soul that was tearing her to shreds around it and all kakashi could do was mercy kill her
and she thanked him for it.
and he goes back to konoha, sole survivor of his team, charred by the newfound comprehension of why you have to care and what it feels like to lose what you love and with obito's sharingan in his head and rin's blood on his hands and something in him that was already hanging on by a thread finally snapped.
and the only thing he could think to do, the only way he could even parse that grief through, is to just... make himself into a living memorial to them. he started trying to live as obito. adopt his mannerisms, his interests, craft his entire adult persona around his memories of his friend like a grave offering, and quarantine the bleakly mercenary anything-to-get-the-job-done ice in him off into the hound mask he wore as part of konoha's black ops division, which he joined at the ripe old age of way too fucking young.
he uses the sharingan to incredibly brutally efficient effect, copying enemy jutsus and bringing them back until the library's overflowing with them. but in the end, no matter how many he can technically use, they're still just cheap copies. and so is he.
and in the meantime the uchiha are collectively losing their shit about this random outside kid having one of their eyes in his head and getting all kinds of dubious 'glory' with it, and oh, wouldn't you look at that, they have a prodigy too!
... yeah.
itachi gets shoved through the rank advancements on a timeframe of "whatever he did you have to do it faster and better." and then the kyuubi broke free. and minato and kushina died, and a fuckton of the home guard uchiha died, and suddenly he's the most able-bodied fighter in their clan overnight at age 11 and the uchiha pull strings to get him into ANBU as well.
and kakashi is his teammate.
kakashi is his teammate and kakashi sees in itachi a whole awful lot of the edges of the way kakashi used to be, sees itachi trying to live up to and embody the absolutely impossible ideal of the perfect ninja, and he tries so god damn hard to nudge him gently towards something, anything, other than that.
but in the meantime, the uchiha have been... scheming. with danzo, Guy With The World's Biggest Chip On His Shoulder About Not Being Hokage, who's been marinating in a paranoia spiral for years. danzo had tried to set himself up as kakashi's palpatine, and tried to get him to assassinate hiruzen, and kakashi hears him out, and turns right around and goes to hiruzen with it instead, and danzo is pissed. the uchiha are pissed. danzo warns hiruzen that they're almost definitely going to try again and they're gonna make the uchihas' little prodigy do it this time, and kakashi silently braces to have to fight and maybe kill his teammate he was trying so hard for, and then...
and then itachi, who'd been watching his clan get. worse. for a long time. finds his cousin shisui, his best friend shishui, bleeding out in the dirt, who tells him everything, tells him danzo tried to have shisui killed for finding it out, and it worked, he's dying, but he's not dead yet, so please. make it count.
.......................................... And Then The Uchiha Massacre.
and now itachi is one more person that kakashi tried to care about who got destroyed.
and then fast forward a little bit further, he's been retired from active-duty ANBU after a decade-plus of service because the sharingan is starting to burn him out, he's starting to lurch to a halt like unwound clockwork without something to Do, and... he gets given team seven. the worst of konoha's gremlin children.
a bitter, disillusioned loner with a chip on his shoulder and the skill to back it up, the healer girl with a crush on him that he never gives the time of day, and the Loudest High-Vis Pest In The Village.
you see where this is going.
kakashi who at this point has been coasting along by bouncing between mask-personae for years is now having to dynamically engage with life again because if he isn't present and actively responding to his team then there's a nonzero chance he'll turn around to find all three of them chewing on the drywall and he cannot default to scripted responses because they don't work on a pack of middle schoolers hellbent on squabbling til the cows come home. and it's kind of good for him?
but also, uh. [gestures broadly towards... Sasuke(TM) and the rest of the plot]
and yeah i'm not gonna get too much further into it because i'm not confident enough in my own comprehension of the timeline to do that XD but like.
hatake kakashi is a scarecrow of a man stitched together out of his dead best friend, a hunting hound, and his dead best friend again, who's spent his entire life behind one mask or another, who over the course of the series keeps surviving shit that by all odds he shouldn't have, or survives specifically because the people he cares about throw their plot armor around him before they die, and he has a personality mostly composed of the crumpled-up pages of the memetically worst-written trashy bodice-ripper novels ever published because obito used to love them and the inexplicable receipts of other people's love for him, and i want to put him in a gas station hot dog roller and perceive him.
thank you for coming to my ted talk XD
#answered asks by cwaf#snorlaxlovesme#kakashi hatake#naruto#yeah so like this very much is a thirdhand synthesis Take on it XD but oh my god. holy shit#this series is a masterclass in what is quite possibly the oldest story beat humanity has ever had#which is 'growing up realizing that your adult is fucked up because Their Adult was fucked up because THEIR ADULT was fucked up'#'and responding to it by either becoming them; becoming as different from them as possible; or a secret third thing'#anyway here i am showing up to the weeb-ubiquitous kakashi stan phase 20 years late with starbucks lmao#mr from-accounting you have so many things wrong with you and i love that for me
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Magic in Winds of Wolfsong
This is the magic system (if it could be called that) I created for Winds of Wolfsong, my Arslan Senki AU. The post will mainly feature how the Marda clan (a clan of OCs that Arslan, Isfan, Gieve, etc are also part of) uses magic, but they're not the only ones who use magic in the ArSen world, this is centered around Pars and the clan because they are narratively relevant.
A history of magic
The study and usage of magic was much more commonplace and powerful back in the days, days before Zahhak would come to reign Pars. It must've been the case for much of the world, really, magic existed and then something happened that tried to wipe out the existence of magecraft— for Pars, it was Zahhak. Other countries likely had other incidents. For example, even in novel canon, we see the prosperity of magic in Jamshid's era. He and many mages created horrible magical beasts for the sake of hunting them down for sport, if I were to remember correctly. Zahhak himself was actually one of those creations.
In days of old, there were... many “schools” of magic, so to speak. Not school as in like the schools we go to to learn, school as in something like “school of thought”, a particular way of thinking or interacting with magic, a way of life. There were many such schools, each with their own different ways of training and learning magic, and much of the process of learning was via master to protege instead of something more like an institution. They were numerous and diverse.
When the Serpent King took the throne by force, he began to stomp out the use and study of magic outside of his own followers and disciples with extreme prejudice, fearing that any of these mage populations may eventually develop the tools to harm or kill him and end his reign. Much of the knowledge was lost and mages fewer in numbers, more isolated from each other because they had to go into hiding.
The Marda were one of the few that survived to this day, and were instrumental in the defeat of the Serpent King, for they were the ones to craft the legendary sword Rukhnabad.
But things did not get better even after Kaykhusraw ascended the throne. He betrayed them, betrayed the mages, because he feared their power, what they could be capable of. The priesthood, starting from his reign, became mage-hunters of sorts. They feared the possibility of Zahhak's followers remaining, or any of the surviving mages creating another Zahhak, and so they sought to eradicate them, and prohibited the use of magic amongst the priesthood outside of a very limited range of skills.
Because of these reasons, encountering a mage or sorcerer would be rare in the present day, rarer still would be the prospect of two mages from two different schools encountering each other. Magecraft has become extremely localized, only existing in remote or rural areas and masters never really having more than two disciples at most— even the masters themselves are extremely rare. One could say they are of a dying kind.
A clan or a whole organization of magic users would be nigh unthinkable in this day and age. The Marda's continued survival was an extremely unlikely case.
Magic as the fabric of the world
The concept of a world inhabited by spirits and emotions and mystical qualities is older than time— it's a concept present in many religions of our world and history.
The world is alive, in a somewhat literal sense. Spirits inhabit everything— the earth, stone, waters, air, trees, animals, humans, and the like. Some (most?) are untethered, floating freely. The world is saturated with them, and they are an essential part in the way magic works in this world, because magic is the pure energy derived from the soul or spirits.
Let's start small, with the human body.
A human (or really all living creatures) is composed of a body and a soul. They aren't so separate as you might think, the body influences the soul and the soul influences the body, harming one means harming the other, they only separate upon death.
The body is sort of the boundary keeping the soul from just outright blending into the world and other spirits. Spirits have no body, so they don't really have this clear-cut boundary between “themselves” and “everything outside of themselves” the way a living thing w a body will have. They phase in and out and merge and divide and all in all there's not a sense of “self” or “identity”, there's no need. They're of the world and... they're the world itself.
What happens when a person dies is that their body decays and disintegrates, and their soul “returns” to the world to mingle with other souls.
It's like water. The water in a cup is like a soul in a body. But when the cup is gone the water returns to the lake where the water originally came from, anyways. At that point there's no point distinguishing “this part of the water used to be in a blue cup” or anything, it just becomes the lake. It's the same deal with souls.
Magical energy is derived from spirits and souls, and certain locations may have more potent and concentrated magical energy, such as places where mass death had occured in the past, places where religious ceremonies used to be held but aren't anymore, abandoned temples, certain natural locations and structures such as caves, and more.
Magic as concord
The usage of magic would involve the harnessing of magical energy present in either oneself or one's surroundings, and there are many ways to achieve that though many of the schools have gone extinct.
One of such ways is what I call a concord. The interaction and harmony between a mage and the djinn. (Side note: We don't ever get confirmation on what kind of spirit the djinn are in canon, so I'm going to use the word as a catch-all term for all kinds of spirits for the purposes of this lore post.) Asking them for favors, borrowing magical power from them, and the like. It is a relationship of respect, it has to be, it's a part of the djinn the mage is asking to take, after all. Remember that djinn are literally made of magic and nothing else.
Something along similar lines though now largely extinct would be the relationship between a patron deity and a worshipper. The worshipper or priest could beseech for the deity to grant them blessings or boons. This is an older and more powerful form of a concord.
The boons received from a concord could be something like powering the sails for a smooth and speedy journey, charming your fires to stay warm for longer, the wind never getting in the way of one's arrows, fires staying alight for longer and requiring less firewood, the mage being less likely to be affected by temperatures, the ability to sense magic more clearly, things like that. There's not much in terms of spectacle, no showy fireballs or somesuch, that's for other fantasy stories. This is more... subdued. Intimate.
On the subject of concords, the djinn and the divine aren't the only ones a mage can form a concord with— there is another, more permanent kind formed with other living beings with bodies, particularly animals.
Familiars.
When a mage spends an extended amount of time with an animal that they've bonded with, think a beloved horse or a pet or anything along those lines, they begin to influence each other. The animal gains sharper senses, higher intelligence, and a longer lifespan. The mage might also gain sharper senses and the like. Their souls are linked with each other. This is what it means to love, remember that magic is derived from the heart and soul.
The Marda clan introduces animals to their children while they're young, in the hopes that they will develop a deep bond with each other.
Could it happen between two humans? I say yes, a similar sort of thing. Not the same exact thing but think of how people influence and inspire each other. Is that not a form of magic as well?
Magic as craftsmanship
Not the product, not the materials, but the act of crafting itself that is magic, though we'll get to the former two eventually as well.
Hours of needlework dipping and pulling taut on a piece of fabric, hundreds of hammer strikes on a piece of metal. A shuttle carrying the weft thread back and forth through the warp fibers, the taking of something tangled and faulty and spinning it until smooth and strong— that's magic.
Craftspeople are able to tap deeper into the work they do and work wonders as a result of their bonds with it. It gives them a way to connect more deeply, almost to engage empathetically with their materials, feel for what the things they're working with are feeling.
For example, a weaver may get frustrated when the fibers they're trying to prepare for spinning and weaving are sticking all over their body— but with enough firmness and dedication, almost an empathy of sorts, they may be able to pull the fibers off themselves and coax them into cooperating.
There is always a degree of emotionality or awareness from the materials and spirits, the latter of which are made of emotions. It is the craftsperson's task to interact with them, draw out their properties, give them a purpose, shape them into their best forms. Fairly ordinary things crafted from fairly ordinary materials, but the result is something extraordinary that might just be able to touch something more. Craft can give a sense of purpose and direction to the inherent base of magic ordinary materials possess— elevate them into something beyond a mere product. Even simple materials like stone and wood can become sacred when built into structures like temples or instruments for sacred rituals.
Of course, some materials have more potent magic than others... Normal metal vs metal from a meteorite, fruits and herbs harvested under a certain constellation in a particular season vs the same plants harvested at any other period, things collected from a certain location saturated with spiritual power, there is so much wonder in the world.
Some particularly well-crafted items could be passed from generation to generation, and come to embody properties they didn't originally have— they're given a sense of character and honor and whatnot, coming to mean something more than say just a sword or just a table, things used for a long time come to develop their own character, imbued with the user's spirit, entwined.
You will have most certainly heard the phrase “pour one's heart and soul into something” before, writers, artists, craftspeople, anyone who creates anything, it's something dear to us, dear to our hearts, and all creatives know what it feels like. The genuine bond and love we have towards our crafts. I just happened to make it... a little more literal here, because of course, there is magic in souls in this world, and a craft is something you pour your soul into. That is why it is a wedding tradition for the marrying couple in the Marda clan to display a lifetime of things they had created with their own hands, their masterpieces, because it is believed to be proof of the beauty of one's soul, the dedication they are capable of.
Magic as song
Music is the bridge between worlds, the language of all languages that transcend all barriers. It is used as a medium to communicate with the djinn, invite them for a ceremony, incite them to congregate, certain melodies and incantations and words giving a sense of purpose to the formless, amorphous, floating djinn, to achieve a desired effect.
This is also why melodic incantations are present in the prayers of Parsian faith (side note: the religion should probably have an actual name, Zoroastrianism for example is called mazda-yasna aka the worship of Ahura Mazda, chief and creator deity and the all-wise one. As the Parsian faith is based on Zoroastrianism, I suppose their name could be something along those lines as well, something-something-yasna, though I'd like to differentiate it from its irl counterpart just as there's a distinction between Christianity and the faith of Yaldabaoth. Do y'all have any ideas?)
Music is art, isn't it? Like many forms of art and craftsmanship it's something you pour your heart into. The same principles I've described above in magic as craftsmanship also apply here.
Magic as dance
Where there is music, there tends to be dance, and the Marda have traditional dances— dances to old and ancient melodies endeavoring to sync up the body and soul to what the song is conveying. It's a form of magic unique to them.
Dance allows the djinn to dwell in the dancer's body and to channel their strength through them— music communicates, gives, and dance… dance receives. Music invites the djinn, and dance directs them, like how an orchestra conductor may direct their band. The dancers regulate and control the flow of magic for a desired outcome.
The best mages, the ones who are dancers, dance for the spirits in certain times of the year around which their celebrations are centered. A lot of their ceremonies are centered around song and dance.
Allowing spirits inside your body is the ultimate gesture of trust, and it takes a lot of effort and understanding and practice because one must be in harmony with the spirit they had accepted inside them, lest things go very very haywire and harm the dancer or the people around them. It is regarded as the most intimate form of magecraft because of its nature. For non-masters, incorporating some moves would mean the stay would be temporary, but for masters... spirits dwell for the whole dance.
Kazai’s combat for example is heavily based on his dance, allowing the djinn to dwell in parts of his body to boost his strength or impart their properties unto him, earth for strength, fire for power, water for flexibility, and so on. Outside of combat, though, he can also act as a mediator/conductor for spirits during ceremonies.
Magic as writing and sigils
There is not much to say in this section because this is not a primary method for the Marda to channel their magic, but it exists. Think of charms and talismans, prayers inscripted onto an object. Think of wards and runes and spell-arrays. Just as melodic chants and song give form and purpose to the magic in the world, certain symbols and sigils and letters can achieve similar things. Think of how in many cultures irl true names and such hold power.
Magic as healing
Recall how I mentioned that all living things have souls— magecraft involves channeling not only the magic in the world around you, but also that within yourself.
Energy from the soul is consumed and utilized for things like healing wounds and injuries, and the body and soul work in tandem for both physical and mental tasks. There is a reason one feel fatigued after tasks, after all.
The art of healing is a way to control and amplify the process, skilled healers guiding both the patient's and the djinn's energies using their own as a medium to promote healing in a wound and such, making sure it heals swiftly and correctly.
To help with that, medicinal herbs are also utilized, the healer/physician concocting medicine and poultices, drawing out their properties the same way a craftsperson might. It's the same principle, and the notion of collecting herbs and ingredients in “auspicious” times (for lack of a better word for now) when the properties of the herbs would be most potent, also applies.
For the Marda, there is no distinction between mental problems and physical ones because harming one means harming the other, they're intrinsically intertwined, and so both types of problems are handled with the same amount of care, and healers are responsible for soothing both the body and the mind. I suppose it would be somewhat similar to therapy— just with... more spirits and magic involved.
Magic as defying nature
Not all forms of magecraft are harmonic with nature, though. Sometimes a sorcerer might choose to override nature, domineer over spirits, change their very nature, force the world to bend around them. This is the school of magecraft Zahhak's disciples aka Team Zahhak is under, earth isn't supposed to be intangible like one could swim in water, objects aren't supposed to be able to randomly change into a venomous snake, human bodies aren't supposed to have certain traits, winged apes and four-eyed hounds/wolves aren't supposed to exist, Zahhak isn't supposed to exist.
It's a school of magic diametrically opposed to that of the clan who promotes harmony and respect and cooperation. Zahhak's disciples look down on the Marda, and the Marda are repulsed by them.
Magic in other countries
I mean, they must exist, right? Serics may have something along the lines of stuff we see in wuxia/xianxia fiction inspired by Taoism, Misr and even the pagan religions of Lusitania and Maryam having their own brand of magic. They must have their own history and beliefs, and their own Incident that would've greatly reduced the prominence of magecraft. I have refrained from covering them because they aren't all that relevant to the AU. But they exist.
Inspirations and References
Otoyomegatari
The Ancient Magus Bride
A Tale of Crowns
Magi (even as I have so, so much beef with it)
Hunter X Hunter
Burmese Shamanism
My own experiences as an artist
History and mythology videos from Overly Sarcastic Productions
Videos about soft magic systems by Hello Future Me
The Hinokami Kagura scene from Kimetsu no Yaiba
Various videos from Tale Foundry
Bernadette Banner (no, really, her channel was what gave me such an appreciation for crafts, and inspired me to mend my own clothes)
#winds of wolfsong#wolfpack au#arslan senki#the heroic legend of arslan#heroic legend of arslan#worldbuilding#magic system
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Gundam Unicorn OVA 4: At the Bottom of the Gravity Well
I thought the last one was the prettiest, and they might have one-upped themselves again. The shot composition alone...!
...This is a really weird one to talk about. Probably my most opinionated post so far, and even longer than the last one. This monster is over 15k words, I'm so sorry.
The sixth Unicorn novel is an extremely frustrating experience for me. It's my least favourite of the books by a wide margin, and it comes at you very suddenly after the first five, which I think are generally interesting and a lot of fun.
OVA 4 covers the plot of the sixth novel. It removed everything I disliked about the book, and replaced it all with something much better.
...And then it found entirely new ways to annoy me, by removing or otherwise fucking around with several novel scenes that were already good. Yes, it's Riddhe again.
I'm genuinely kind of baffled.
Still, overall it was a far more enjoyable experience than its novel equivalent. I'm going to talk about novel stuff right away this time, because it's kind of unavoidable. The OVA is very different, right from the first scene.
(Previous posts: Day of the Unicorn, The Second Coming of Char, The Ghost of Laplace)
FYI: I'm saving detailed discussion of any particularly disturbing or otherwise sensitive novel-only content for the end, in the last two sections. There will be content warnings listed under the headings for those sections.
Major structural changes: Dakar and Torrington
This is a huge change, right out of the gate. The attack on Dakar is where the main conflict of the novel takes place, but here it's already ending in the very first scene! For a while I wondered if they were going to return and attack it again, but it quickly became clear that wasn't the case.
Syam and Gael make an appearance. They don't tell us anything new, I don't think-- and we've seen that colony drop flashback before too, haven't we? I could be wrong. Regardless, I think they're mostly just making sure the audience doesn't forget Syam and Gael exist while everything else is going on. Probably a good idea.
We know a lot more about Syam's deal right from the get-go in the books, because it's literally prologue. I feel like significantly less has been explained here about his history and the history of the Vist Foundation-- but it's admittedly hard for me to keep straight what we've been told in previous OVAs vs. any gaps I may be filling in with prior knowledge.
I do wonder how they're going to handle him going forward. Are they going to infodump a bunch of relevant history and character motivation further on? Are they just going to refuse to elaborate on certain things?
Because they've been skipping over smaller character details about Syam that we learn through Cardeas, Martha, and Gael, he seems to be presented as a lot more... straightforwardly benevolent, at least on the surface. Almost ethereal, even. I think novel Syam has more of an edge, even if he's supposedly feeling repentant now that he's a sad old man.
Oh, and Gael. Gael was shot by Alberto on the Argama during the Palau battle, in the fifth novel. Maybe something equivalent to that is coming in the next OVA, on the Ra Cailum instead? They could also just skip it, since he survives and appears after that anyway.
This Zee Zulu was not present for the novel scene I'm about to discuss, but consider this: I like aquatic mobile suits.
The novel opens like this, with the Shamblo destroying a submarine. The context is different than the anime equivalent, since Dakar hasn't happened yet and there are no other mobile suits present. Nobody in the Federation is aware the Shamblo even exists yet.
The submarine in the novel was searching for the Garancieres, since it was believed based on the trajectory that it would have landed in the ocean (as opposed to the desert, where it actually ended up). One of the sonar operators picks up some strange noise, but it doesn't fit the profile of what they're looking for, so his superior tells him to ignore it. This was a mistake. The Shamblo-- also searching for the Garancieres-- tears their hull apart, killing everyone on board.
Instead of Dakar, the main conflict in OVA 4 takes place in and around Torrington Base-- a location from the seventh novel. They've essentially moved Loni's arc forward, and combined it with another battle.
I originally assumed this might have been a censorship concern, but a whole bunch of civilian casualties still happen, so... seems more about wanting to get to Torrington faster. I was very surprised when they didn't censor the woman with the baby on the fire escape. I remember reading the novel equivalent and thinking "oh, they're cutting that for sure". Shows what I know.
The novel version of Torrington doesn't have any civilian infrastructure around to damage. It's an extremely remote and backwater location.
Even with the addition of a nearby city, putting the coordinates in Torrington is significantly less callous on Cardeas' part than having them in Dakar. Programming the La+ program so they have to activate the NT-D in the middle of the Federation capital is stupid as shit, assuming your goal isn't to kill a bunch of random noncombatants. Novel Banagher's explanation for why he might have done it is so generous that it just kinda makes me sad.
I'm sorry Banagher, I know you're still traumatized because he exploded, but your dad doesn't give a shit about other people. He prioritizes poetic imagery in his treasure hunt over the lives of human beings. He zapped your brain as a child to check whether you could pilot the robot good. He sucks, Banagher.
The Parliament building as a location does give a much more direct clue to the nature of the Box-- the Federation charter is on the ground floor, and we're told through character dialogue that it's a replica of the original that was destroyed at Laplace.
This montage of all the scattered Zeon forces on Earth mobilizing might be my favourite sequence in the film. This is another situation where I wish I could include images for all of it. Don't even get me started on the music in this part. God, it's so sick. Cool fucking robot. (Image of a child holding a rifle flying over my head)
Yonem Kirks was originally a character from novel 7. He had nothing to do with Loni, as she was already dead when he was introduced. He was actually the leader of the group of Zeon remnants who picked up the transmission requesting assistance for the attack on Torrington. He would have been in the place of that nameless beardy guy up there, whose face we never fully get to see. He is eventually killed by Marida in the Banshee.
OVA 4 recasts Kirks as a surrogate father figure for Loni. In the novel, Loni's father is still alive, and he's also one of the main reasons that book six is my least favourite. You'll see.
Loni takes over her father’s original role as a character, but with everything I hated about him stripped out. I think that rules. I initially thought they were going to put Kirks in his role, but what they went with was definitely more interesting.
I'll talk more about Loni at the end of this post, since she's the core of the whole arc. She's a substantially different character in each version. I will also explain exactly what her dad's deal is in the book, and why I do not like it.
Let me get this out of my system first.
The Character Assassination of Riddhe Marcenas
Imagine: an interesting character is rewritten so that everything you liked is either downplayed or removed, and then your least favourite aspect of their personality or story is inflated to become their most important character trait.
This is what experiencing anime Riddhe is like for me.
I feel like I'm being pranked. Literally, the degree to which they are systematically removing all his most interesting and sympathetic qualities is starting to feel like a running gag. It's not just things being cut for time, either; they've changed dialogue and body language in ways that can only be deliberate. Someone clearly decided that changing Riddhe's personality was necessary, and I can't figure out why.
I got mad enough about this to make a diagram. I didn't even realize just how much I apparently liked this guy until they took him away.
Riddhe becoming increasingly closed off, obsessive, and myopic is a significant degeneration, and it happens over a fairly long stretch of plot. It's interesting because we're given time to get used to this guy as a positive force before watching him spiral, and he's clearly still trying to be good even as he self-destructs. That's how it feels for the characters, and that's ideally how it should feel for the audience.
If he's just kind of a self-absorbed dickhead from the start, what's the point? Where's the juice? Where's the drama? Why should we care, on an emotional level, whether or not it's still possible to pull him back from the cliff?
Look, I admit that I was less cartoonishly mad about this on the second watch. I can imagine a more charitable reading of this character than my bitter little hater response. I'm sure the anime version works fine for people who haven't read the novels, or who have but don't care about the original character, or at least don't find the new version as deeply unlikable as I do. But it makes me so crazy.
I'm going to go through his scenes, so you can see exactly what I mean.
Riddhe & Ronan
Riddhe's first scene in the OVA is his conversation with Ronan. This is a scene from the fifth novel-- if you read my post on OVA 3, you may remember my surprise that there was so little of Riddhe and Mineva doing stuff on Earth. Clearly, some of it was pushed foward to be in this one instead. Sure. Fine.
In the novel version of this scene, Riddhe is waiting alone in his father's office. Two other people come by to speak to him before Ronan arrives. I'm fine with these conversations getting cut for time, but I do think they're interesting, so I'm going to go over them.
First is the Butler, Doillon-- the novel's fan translation spells it Dwiyon. Doillon is described as a father figure to Riddhe, and clearly one he feels more positively about than Ronan. Doillon tells Riddhe that he missed him, and asks him not to leave again. He says that he's old and will likely die soon, and he's worried about the family-- Ronan is also getting older, and his health is declining (heart issues).
We also meet Riddhe's older sister, Cynthia, who either doesn't exist in the OVA or is off doing vivacious socialite things elsewhere. She also tries to convince Riddhe to come home. She asks him about Audrey, tells him she's cute, and insists they both come to a party she's hosting later.
There's some discussion of Riddhe's mother, both in narration and dialogue. We're reminded that she's ill (unspecified) and living in a nursing home. It's implied that she might have had some kind of nervous breakdown because of "the political world," but it's unclear whether that means she was a politician herself, or if it was more about her involvement with Ronan.
At this point Ronan comes in, and everyone else gets shooed out.
OVA Riddhe's demeanour around Ronan is... curious? Maybe nervous, and a little dismissive, but trying to act respectful. He's very goofy, rubbernecking and trying eavesdrop on Ronan's phone call. It would be cute, if he didn't piss me off so badly within the next five minutes. Ronan, meanwhile, feels very distant, keeping his back turned away for much of the scene.
The novel relationship is extremely tense and hostile, and a lot of that energy comes from Riddhe. He has to deliberately restrain himself from being aggressive and getting angry during this scene, because he's aware he needs his father's authority if he's going to keep Mineva safe.
Riddhe hates being in his family's house. He does not like his father, and is constantly on edge when he's around. In many scenes, he deliberately avoids even looking at him. When we're told that Riddhe "ran away", the connotations of that are very different from in the OVA, where it sounds like he just left on a fanciful whim.
So the familial relationship is different. Fine. I think it's less interesting, but I can live with it.
Here's where I start getting mad:
Ronan accusing Riddhe of being in love with Mineva and suggesting that this is the reason he brought her to Earth is an anime-only addition.
Obviously, a character in a story believing something doesn't make it an objective fact. The framing, however, implies that Ronan is correct: Riddhe has a dramatic startle reaction, they've failed to establish any other strong motivation, and immediately after this scene he goes and proposes to her.
The scene where Riddhe talks to Mineva is a combination of two different scenes from the novel-- first the hug on the balcony, and later the proposal. The original two scenes have completely different (and incompatible) tones, and they're separated by a good amount of time, as well. There's also another scene between them, with Riddhe riding his horse, so I'll talk a little about that too.
The way these scenes have been combined not only fully re-centres Riddhe's character around being in love with Mineva, but it also makes him way more invasive and pushy. I fucking hate this guy. He sucks! Where's my boy!!!!
The Balcony Scene
The balcony scene takes place during the dinner party held by Riddhe's sister and her husband, after Riddhe has had his conversation with Ronan. The guests are mostly wealthy older women, the wives of important men.
Mineva is cautious and a bit intimidated. She is introduced as Audrey Burne, and stated to be the daughter of one of Ronan's connections. Riddhe is obviously sulking, refusing to speak to the point where he won't even respond to direct questions and his sister has to carry the conversation for him.
The guests begin gossiping about the recent terrorist attack on Industrial 7. The way they discuss the deaths is not particularly respectful. They talk about Zeon and spacenoids in general almost as if they're inhuman aliens. Cynthia tries to steer the conversation elsewhere. Mineva is horribly uncomfortable.
Riddhe stands up and leaves the table without saying anything. Mineva isn't able to find a good opportunity to leave and go look for him until 10 minutes later. She eventually finds him on the balcony facing the courtyard.
“I’m sorry” the voice entered her ears, and she looked forward, staring right at Riddhe’s back as he still looked forward. She lowered her face and said, “There’s no need for you to apologize...”
“I feel that this is reality too. If I continue to remain in Neo Zeon, I wouldn’t know all of these things.”
This might be a good chance to learn. Mineva muttered in her depressed heart, but she could not find any words to overcome these words that were full of such prejudice. She thought that mutual understanding was just a dream, and she remained unable to breathe in this helplessness of hers. “That’s not it.” Riddhe said as his shoulders trembled, and he clenched his hands that were on the handrails tightly.
“That’s not what I want to talk about…”
... [His shoulders trembled,] probably because he was crying. That was not an emotion that could be caused by a breakdown in talks between him and Ronan, and Mineva sensed that there was a greater despair and sense of loss here, “Riddhe…” she called him, and approached his trembling figure.
Suddenly, that back profile left the handrails, and Riddhe turned to Mineva, his chest filling her sights. Mineva was hugged around the shoulders as she was pulled to him, and he embraced her in his clutches.
“I’m sorry, I…I actually brought you to such a unthinkable place…!”
...
“No matter what, I’ll protect you well no matter what, so please stay here, stay by me…don’t leave me alone…”
Water droplets that had warmth dripped on her hair, wetting her forehead. Why is he crying? What’s causing him so much pain? At that moment, Mineva had no sense of uneasiness or disgust as she felt Riddhe’s trembling body with her own. She hesitated over whether she should put her arms around him, and she looked at the sky that was entering the night from past the shoulders wearing the military uniform.
It's just... a completely different scene, with a completely different context.
Look at the description of that hug! Is that the impression you got from the hug in the anime, that Mineva felt at ease? The only person whose feelings we can tell for certain in that scene is Riddhe, and Mineva seems uncomfortable and unhappy both before and after the conversation.
The scene ends here. We get a continuation much later, as the final scene of the novel.
Mineva is alone in her room, several hours after the conversation on the balcony. We're told that Riddhe ran away from the house immediately afterward, without looking at her or explaining what had him so upset. She wonders what he's doing now, then wonders what she's doing. She feels helpless and lost, and rather unlike herself. In the past, she has always been very decisive. These confused, conflicted feelings are strange and unfamiliar to her.
When she looks up at the sky and asks Banagher what she should do, one of the stars is implied to be the Unicorn falling through the atmosphere. I think that imagery is really lovely.
Riddhe Horsegirl Moments
A couple days later, Mineva watches from a distance as Riddhe rides his horse. She is impressed by how in sync they are and how much trust there must be between them, but she also thinks that the horse is clearly picking up on Riddhe's anger and seems anxious.
(Right before this scene, when Ronan is watching Riddhe out the window, we're told that Riddhe deliberately learned a second, different riding style than the one popular with upper-class people that he was originally taught, because he thought it was boring. lol)
Cynthia comes out onto the terrace to talk to Mineva. They talk about Riddhe, and Cynthia describes her perception of his personality. The fan translation is kind of garbled here, but I'll include the passage anyway:
Cynthia looked down at Riddhe that was riding on the horse, “He’s really a useless child.” She sighed as she mused, and Mineva did not feel comfortable hearing this.
“He’s always been like this in the past, always unable to hide what he was thinking, and never cared about the people around him when he put his mind to him. He’s already everywhere at once, but he’s attracted to small details for some reason, so he’ll always bear everything by himself alone.”
This is really a rather accurate correct analysis. Mineva felt impressed that Riddhe’s relative was able to see through him so thoroughly, but felt a little depressed as she thought about how she had not been talking to Riddhe during this while...
Jp text for the list of traits:
「昔からそう。一途で、隠し事ができなくて、思い込んだら脇目も振らずに突っ走っちゃう。そのくせ、変に気が回るもんだから、ひとりでいろいろ抱え込んじゃうのよね」
Possible alt translation (I have no expertise, take with salt just as you would the other):
"It's always been that way. He's single-minded, can't hide anything, and when he makes up his mind, he rushes forward without looking the other way. Despite that, he's strangely anxious, so he takes on a lot of things by himself."
We're then told exactly how long Mineva has been staying at the Marcenas residence (3 days), and what the atmosphere has been like in the house. Riddhe is barely around, apparently busy repairing the Delta Plus. Ronan and Cynthia's husband Patrick avoid Mineva entirely. Cynthia and Doillon are the only people she has to spend time with, and neither of them is aware of her true identity.
Cynthia assures Mineva that Riddhe will probably get over whatever is bothering him soon enough and be back to his old self, but Mineva feels an ominous certainty that she's wrong.
My impression of novel Mineva is that she generally likes Riddhe and enjoys his company. She worries about him, and feels lonely when he starts becoming increasingly distant and angry. She doesn't like that she can see him changing, and she can tell that he's hurting. It's upsetting to her! She had just gotten to know this guy, and suddenly he's acting like a stranger again.
I have a hard time believing that OVA Mineva has enjoyed being in the same room with Riddhe at any point. She seems pragmatic and politely disinterested at best. Her body language with people she clearly likes-- Banagher, or hell, even the guy in the diner-- is very different.
The Most Depressing Proposal in the World
The dialogue of the proposal itself and Mineva's rejection is basically the same. Everything else about Riddhe's behaviour and body language is completely different.
They even completely inverted the exchange when he opens the door! In the novel, Riddhe asks if he can come in, and Mineva replies "this is your house, isn't it," but in the anime, he opens the door without asking and she's upset about the presumption.
It's such a small thing, but it's a clear signal to me that these changes are purposeful. They had zero reason to do that, unless they want to change the audience's perception of Riddhe and his relationship to Mineva. This suggests to me that they're not failing to adapt the novel character, but intentionally replacing him with something different. But... why? To what end?
This scene happens right after we learn that Riddhe is being sent to serve under Bright on the Ra Cailum. The context of the proposal is him telling her he's leaving.
Mineva has been in the house for at least ten days at this point. She has been feeling increasingly anxious and constrained, and by now she feels a strong desire to leave.
Riddhe is very distant and stiff. He tells her he's leaving, and apologizes. This is when he finally tells her about his conversation with Ronan, how the Marcenas family and the Vist Foundation "are like two mirrors facing each other," and that his family likely intends to use her as a hostage.
Then we get the proposal. It's so vaguely delivered that Mineva literally does not understand what he's asking at first. Not only does he not hug her, he's not even looking at her. He has a weird little twitch when bringing up his dad. The whole thing is miserable and kind of pathetic.
“So... can you become a member of our family?”
In contrast, Riddhe said this without turning around to look. Mineva did not understand what he was saying to her as she frowned.
“How about you abandon Zeon and the Zabi family, and become a member of the Marcenas family? In that case, my dad will—”
To Riddhe, the last words were probably something he did not expect. His eyelids twitched, and he seemed to recover as he went quiet and lowered his eyes that were once facing Mineva.
“…Even if it’s just a formality, this meaningless war will end like that, and you’ll be free.”
“Do you feel…that can be considered freedom?”
Mineva too lowered her sights, her heart feeling the sand-like bitterness. These words sounded too tragic to both the speaker and the listener, and even though they were just a few connected words, she could understand that her body and mind were gradually being contaminated. Something very important was starting to fall off, unable to be retrieved again—this kind of disappointment spread in her heart.
I'm sure Riddhe does think a marriage would reduce the danger she's in, but this is still a selfish question. He probably even knows it. It's just not the same kind of selfish as if he had barged into her room uninvited and proposed immediately during a fit of emotion because he's apparently madly in love with her, good grief.
Not even Riddhe wants to be "a member of his family." He had refused to speak to them for three years, well before he had the family secret dropped on him. But we're supposed to believe he thinks pulling Mineva into that is a good idea? Please. He is horrified by the idea of being alone with them.
He wants Mineva to stay because she's the only outside person he has left to hold onto, because he cut off all his other established positive relationships when he helped her escape.
Personally, I think that kind of total alienation is a lot more psychologically interesting than just being freshly upset and smitten with her!
Even though he knew how many risks he was taking, I think Riddhe was still telling himself he'd be able to wriggle out of it eventually. He'd use his dad's authority to secure Mineva's safety, and then he'd wait for another chance to run away and be a pilot again later.
Being told about the Box was the nail in the coffin for that, because it gave him a new, permanent sense of obligation to re-affiliate with his family, to "take responsibility for their sins." Perceived moral obligation is Riddhe's kryptonite.
The anime cut the conversation here, right after the rejection. Do you want to know what Riddhe's next line of dialogue is?
“Sorry, forget what I just said.”
lol. lmao even.
Like the anime, this conversation is the catalyst for Mineva running away. The scene in the diner is from Novel 7, as is Martha demanding Ronan give her Mineva. It all happens after Riddhe leaves.
The Ra Cailum
The Tri-Stars are not happy to have Riddhe on their ship.
When Riddhe first approaches the Ra Cailum in the Delta Plus and attempts to board, they actively antagonize him in their own mobile suits: they physically get in his way, don't respond to his hails, and one of them even fires on him.
Riddhe pulls off a dramatic maneuver to get past them, and this impresses them enough for the squad leader to say "alright, you've convinced me that you're more than just a useless nepotism hire."
They did not have authorization to do this. All four of them get dragged into Bright's office immediately after getting out of their suits. The Tri-Stars lie about what happened to avoid further trouble, and Riddhe goes along with the cover story. Bright orders the Tri-Stars to go clean the deck, and they leave.
The incident confirmed in Riddhe's mind that he's being given special treatment, so he brings it up to Bright:
The reason why the Tri-Stars would pull such petty tricks on him was because news of him being given special treatment was spread through the ship. He was already mentally prepared about being viewed as an irritant, but he could not stand being treated as a troublesome VIP and being unable to do anything. He stared at the back that had no intent of looking back at him and continued to emphasize with a restrained tone.
“I’ve been through battle before. Please don’t remove me from dangerous missions just because I have to keep watch—”
“DON’T BE NAÏVE!”
Bright turned around to let out a roar that pierced through the pilot suit, causing goosebumps on Riddhe’s skin.
This conversation hits different when the "dangerous" situations Riddhe keeps putting himself in are on the extreme end even for a military pilot.
Novel Riddhe's disregard for his own safety is remarkable. I talked about it some in the last post, but after the conversation with his dad it takes on a more desperate tone. There is something very clearly wrong with this guy, and every time other people die around him it gets a little worse.
When I call Riddhe "borderline suicidal," I'm not saying he's consciously trying to kill himself, to be clear. He's not trying to get shot down on purpose-- quite the opposite.
I have no intention of dying. Right now, I don’t have a reason for that, before I can redeem the crimes of this cursed bloodline of mine— he muttered in his frozen heart, “Yes”, answered, and saluted.
The reckless death drive and the belief he has an obligation to stay alive can coexist without coming into conflict because they're ultimately coming from the same place and serving the same goal. He needs to keep existing in order to protect other people, and he needs to protect other people in order to justify having ever existed in the first place.
Or, basically: if you die, you only get to sacrifice yourself once, but so long as you survive you can keep doing it forever.
(And of course, what he thinks in the abstract while safely tucked away in an office is also different from how he behaves in actual combat, when people around him are dying.)
You'll get new examples when I get to what Riddhe does during the battle of Dakar. For now, we'll finish up the conversation with Bright.
Bright tells Riddhe to come back alive in both versions, but in the novel he also tells him to go clean the deck with the Tri-Stars if he wants to be treated like a normal pilot.
Nigel, the leader of the Tri-Stars, is waiting outside the door when Riddhe leaves Bright's office. Riddhe sighs and tells him he's going to help clean the deck. Nigel tells him he's too rigid, and he's going to end up wasting his talent. He doesn't let up even when Riddhe tries to be deferential:
... Riddhe instinctively looked away and said, “I won’t cause trouble for you.” ... but Nigel moved away from the wall and spoke,
“You’re a rookie who doesn’t even know the meaning of the word team? Well, us Tri-Stars do whatever we want, and there’s no need for us to give you suggestions, but I’ll shoot you down from behind if you dare to pull the Ra Cailum fleet down. You better remember that.”
The equivalent to this line in the OVA seems a lot friendlier and more like banter. I think he's being truthful here, or at the very least genuinely trying to intimidate Riddhe.
Riddhe realizes Nigel still doesn't trust him and is continuing to treat him like an outsider. He thinks that maybe it's for the best, and responds with sarcastic praise.
Then we get this truly astounding line which I'm almost certain is a translation error, but I need you to see it anyway:
“Your sarcasm ain’t half bad there. Are you saying that us idiots who only know how to train are having a group orgy or something?”
Well I wasn't thinking it before but I'm certainly thinking it now. Why are you being so unwelcoming and excluding Riddhe from the group orgy, Nigel?
(The Japanese is "おれたちは訓練バカの仲良しグループってわけか？", if you want to check it yourself. Unless I'm missing some contextual innuendo, I'm pretty sure there is no reference to an orgy here. The phrase that got turned into that means "a group of close friends." He's basically saying "You think we aren't real soldiers and this is just a social club?"
I'm so disappointed. I wish this one was real. I was hoping to at least find a common crude idiom, like how people use "circlejerk" in English.)
Ahem.
Riddhe's attempt to be aloof fails; he immediately admits he's feeling envious and wants to feel included in the group. Nigel is clearly surprised by this, and seeds are planted for the Tri-Stars to come around.
This is important because when the attack on Dakar begins, Riddhe is initially told he isn't allowed to launch because he doesn't belong to any existing squadron. He's eventually given permission to launch with the Tri-Stars, after Nigel vouches for him.
Riddhe and Banagher vs. The Shamblo
The OVA actually reverses Riddhe and Banagher's respective roles here. Novel Riddhe engages the Shamblo well before Banagher is even on the field.
As the Ra Cailum approaches Dakar, they get a clearer picture of the situation. Bright realizes things are worse than they thought, and they need to rethink their approach.
Riddhe requests to be sent ahead on his own, to distract the enemy while the main forces land. He manages to make a convincing argument as to how he can do this without being shot down, and Nigel vouches for him again, so Bright agrees to let him scout ahead.
Riddhe launches on his own, without the Tri-Stars. He thinks about Mihiro and the Argama crew briefly while talking to the communications operator, which is sweet.
As Riddhe approaches the Shamblo, he realizes there are still civilians nearby who haven't finished evacuating. He also spots a GM III, part of Dakar's security forces, and watches it fire missiles even though the pilot should have been able to see the people on the street. Riddhe is furious.
The “GM III” continued to fire its beam rifle wildly at the road covered with dust and smoke. Riddhe grabbed the arm of the [mobile suit] and pulled it to the blind spot of the collapsed department store. (Khairul was killed…!) as the pilot continued to ramble on, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Riddhe used the communication channel to yell out at him,
“Why are you using missiles at such a place!? There’re still people in the city!)
(But we can’t let that guy approach the parliament hall…)
“For the sake of your pride, you…!”
But then the Shamblo does its laser bits thing, so the GM ends up exploding. A lot of mobile suits nearby explode, in fact (RIP Guntank squad), and fleeing civilians get crushed quite gruesomely.
This is the point where Riddhe's death wish instinct activates, and "scouting" turns into "I need to engage the enemy and tank aggro right now."
“There’s no reason for them to die because of such a thing…!”
If this is a tragedy caused by the “Box”. Riddhe let the machine transform, duck low, charge forward and squeezed the trigger of the beam rifle to its maximum. The beams that were deflected by the bits ripped apart the dust, grazing past the head of the “Delta Plus”. The machine then stood on the road in front of several blocks and started firing again. “Get over here!!!” he did not care that the reflected beams grazed past his shields as he let the “Delta Plus” leap up again.
“I won’t let you kill anyone else. Just make me the only victim of the “Box”…!”
The beam rifle continued to let out shots, and the beams that were reflected back in less than a second shook the machine. Riddhe continued to launch his attacks fervently as he forced the machine to retreat back to the coast. Anyway, I have to let the mobile armor retreat [from] the city and buy time for the civilians to evacuate. How long can I last? His mind that was thinking about this could not work at all, and the “Delta Plus” continued to shoot in a suicidal manner as it danced around the skies above Dakar.
Banagher sees and recognizes the Delta Plus on the monitor just before his fight with Zinnerman. His scenes are intercut with Riddhe and Loni's perspective on the battlefield.
Loni-- a very different character from her OVA counterpart-- keeps picking up on Riddhe's thoughts during combat. She attempts to convince her father that they should change course to avoid the civilians, but he refuses.
Riddhe helps a GM pilot in a damaged suit and tries to convince them to retreat, but they aren't having it. They tell him they're going to get under the Shamblo's feet, and they want him to shoot their suit so it will explode.
Obviously it's normal to feel fucked up about that kind of request, but it's still darkly funny to me how freaked out Riddhe gets, given his behaviour during this entire battle. Self sacrifice... not Riddhe? Death of friendly pilot not Riddhe??? No! No!!! Unacceptable!!!!
It's not Riddhe's choice to make, though. The GM rushes the Shamblo, where it is promptly torn apart and trampled. Riddhe manages to break through his hesitation and fires, but the Shamblo blocks the beam.
Then it fucking gets him. If you remember what I said about the OVA reversing the roles, the bit where the Unicorn gets grabbed by the claws happens to the Delta Plus instead.
The back of the “Delta Plus” was slammed hard onto the road, and the machine was half buried in the cracked asphalt. The large claws grabbed the lower half of the machine to restrain it, while the other claw rose slowly over the head of the “Delta Plus”, showing its malice that it was trying to dice it up as it opened its sharp blades. Riddhe sensed that his body was going to be crushed by this impact and scattered apart as he gritted his bloodied teeth.
Is this the end? I can’t do anything, I’ll die here without being able to save anyone. As Riddhe’s concussed mind eked out these thoughts, How annoying, he muttered in his heart...
So then instead of Riddhe breaking off from the Tri-Stars to help Banagher, we get Banagher finally arriving on the scene and swooping in to save Riddhe from getting pureed.
They team up. The Unicorn isn't as manoeuvrable under Earth's gravity and atmospheric conditions as it is in space, so the Delta Plus basically becomes its flight unit.
Banagher is the one who fires the shot and destroys the Shamblo. He's very upset about Loni's death, but there's no moral dilemma or conflict between him and Riddhe.
Loni's situation is very different. She was probably already going to die whether they destroyed the Shamblo or not, and since it had multiple pilots, her death alone would not have stopped its rampage. I'll go over this again in more detail during her section. For now, the point I'm trying to make is that the novel version of this scene emphasizes that Riddhe and Banagher have a positive relationship.
I really get along with this guy instinctively. Riddhe hid this bittersweet reality inside his heart as he went full throttle and let the machine remain as low as possible.
[...]
The thrill when they were accelerating for each other as they raced caused all his senses to sharpen. If only I can remain at that moment of ecstasy.
The OVA scene is about... the opposite of that.
I still can't believe OVA Riddhe looks angry when Banagher's plan works and the Shamblo stops attacking the first time. He fucking scowls? Are you mad you're being proven wrong? That's more important to you in this situation than preventing more deaths? Distinctly un-Riddhelike priorities!
With the Shamblo gone, Riddhe is ordered to capture the Gundam.
The conversation they have about this is significantly longer. There's a lot of Riddhe failing to talk himself into killing Banagher after he refuses to surrender.
He's extremely torn up about it. Because Riddhe likes Banagher.
The metals bellowed as they touched each other, and the voice of the pilot rang within the interaction window. The “Unicorn Gundam” was touching the “Delta Plus” on the shoulder as it opened the communication circuit. ...
(I never thought that I would meet you here in such a way…is Audrey alright? Did you make contact with the “Nahel Argama”—)
Banagher intended to lean the body forward as he talked. However, Riddhe did not look at the other party’s face. He held his breath and fulfilled what he had to do at this point.
The “Delta Plus” shook aside the hand resting on its shoulder ... The “Gundam” tripped, and by the time it managed to steady itself with the AMBAC, the “Delta Plus” was aiming its beam rifle at the abdomen.
(Mr Riddhe…!?)
“I’ve received an order to capture that “Gundam”. Get off that cockpit, Banagher.”
Luckily, the visuals on the communication window were cut off the moment the interaction channel was removed. (Mr Riddhe, why…!) Riddhe merely let Banaher’s outcry chide his ears as his hand holding onto the control stick was trembling.
“Don’t call me as if we’re close with each other. Without you, things wouldn’t end up like that…!”
(Why’s that so? Mr Riddhe, Audrey—)
“You and the “Gundam” are obstacles preventing this Audrey you speak of—Mineva from living peacefully. Get off!”
My chest is going to break open. At this rate, I’ll go crazy too—just like this mobile armor that lies dead in front of me. Riddhe lowered his eyes and waited for Banagher to answer in a prayer. I feel you’re a man of your word. I’ll leave Audrey to you. The boy with such strong-willed eyes actually used those words to lay a curse on him and bind him, and though he hoped that the other party would step aside after realizing what was going on—
The things he says about Mineva here are interesting. I think it's very representative of the kind of weird rigid thinking Riddhe has, that even as he tries to talk himself into literally killing Banagher, he still considers the promise to take care of Audrey binding and unassailable.
It's also kind of fascinating that he considers protecting her to be something that he owes to Banagher specifically at all, enough to apparently consider it a burden, given that he had already taken action to do it himself before they ever had that conversation.
Even though he's stubborn and historically disobedient to authority figures like his father, Riddhe is still very... rules-brained, I guess, in his own way. He gets "stuck" on specific things people say to him like this a lot, particularly in the context of morality or a sense of duty.
Banagher won't get out of the Gundam, even at gunpoint. He doesn't understand why Riddhe is acting the way he is, and he wants an explanation.
And here's the important part:
When Banagher calls Riddhe's bluff and Riddhe cannot bring himself to shoot him, Riddhe tells Banangher to flee before anyone else can arrive to capture him.
Yes! He actively decides to disobey orders and let Banagher escape! That's the moment that the 'Black Unicorn' drops in on them! It has to show up for the plot to work, because Riddhe has already backed down as a threat!!!
And Riddhe's still focused on Banagher, even after the Banshee drops a bunch of rubble on his mobile suit. He's stuck there in his unresponsive machine, yelling at Banagher to run away.
There is hostility between Banagher and Riddhe during the Torrington fight in book 7, but the equivalent of that confrontation is presumably something for next time... there are still like, three more emotional bombshells that need to be dropped on Riddhe before he stops instinctively treating Banagher like an ally.
Do you see how, cumulatively, this might as well be a completely different guy?
I've been trying to avoid spoiling anything that happens later in the novels as much as possible, even though I assume most people reading these posts have either already seen the full anime or don't care about spoilers at all. But I simply must say. Holy shit. You're going to have this guy kill a fan favourite character? This guy? Worse Riddhe? I'm wincing just thinking about how apocalyptically fucking mad people must have been. I am imagining the forum posts in my mind's eye, and they're bad.
As much as I love complaining, I do think changes made in any adaptation deserve to be considered in their own right. Even if I don't like them. I've been thinking a lot about what these changes might mean, and what purpose they might serve.
Some possible narrative reasons for Worse Riddhe I came up with:
They needed him to kill this version of Loni in place of Banahger -- I think regular Riddhe would also be willing to kill Loni, once it became obvious that Banagher's plan had failed the first time. She's an enemy combatant who is deliberately killing civilians, and she's either unwilling or unable to stop.
To justify Mineva running away sooner -- as in, they thought if he was too likeable, the audience wouldn't understand why she wanted to leave.
This wouldn't be a problem in the first place if they hadn't pushed his scenes forward so they had to happen all at once. Either way, Mineva would have many good reasons to want to leave without Worse Riddhe. Riddhe is only person she really has in her corner-- and then he tells her she's in an unsafe place, and then he leaves.
They were worried he might overshadow Banagher…? I don't think reducing Riddhe's role in on-screen combat would necessitate changing his personality. Also, this is just not something I personally give a shit about. Multiple important characters is not a problem. Banagher would absolutely still get to be cool and heroic. C'mon.
They think the new characterization is likeable / endearing, and the audience is supposed to find the increased focus on unrequited romantic interest in Mineva sympathetic-- [perplexed vocalization]
They think if Riddhe is more naive and jealous from the beginning, bringing him around will be more meaningful, from the angle of "Look, even this guy can be reached through the power of communication and not giving up on a possibility" -- Oo-hoo-oooh, I don't like how plausible this one feels. I can see the exact reasoning that might lead to it. I don't like it.
They're going to do something totally new with him later that never would have occurred to me -- I guess that could save it for me as an artistic decision, if it's interesting enough. Bit of a scary thought, though. What's up your sleeve?
If anyone else has theories or opinions about the rationale here, I'm all ears. I'd love to come up with something good enough to feel even 25% less annoyed about it.
Anyway, we've covered all my Riddhe grievances. Let's move on.
Frontal and Angelo are barely in this one, which is novel accurate.
They get their own section anyway, because they're always important to ME!!!
I get so excited every time Frontal shows up, regardless of context. The Sinanju theme starts playing and I'm already having the time of my life. He's literally just standing there and giving exposition. Embarrassing.
I love how visibly mad Angelo gets every time Zinnerman talks back to Frontal. He's hysterical.
Here's novel Loni experiencing Frontal's uncanny deepfake vibes:
The masked face spoke on the monitor, and Loni did not feel that it was the face of a human. The nose bridge and the lips under the mask were too refined, and the thick blond hair reminded her of a puppet. Am I seeing a complete artificial image here? she felt some goosebumps as she stared at Full Frontal, who was calmly smiling.
Banagher and Zinnerman
Banagher and Zinnerman's relationship is probably the one major story element that changed the least from the page to screen. I'm really glad that's the case. Their scenes together were some of the most enjoyable parts of the book.
There are still slight differences, as is inevitable.
Zinnerman is softer on Banagher in the anime. I think they probably did this just to make it even more shocking when he starts slamming him around and pointing a gun at him later. Novel Zinnerman is a bit more roundabout with how he expresses affection, and also more aggressive.
Zinnerman doesn't hit Banagher in the anime at all until their big fight, but in the novels he does it a number of times. He hits him twice when he's sitting around catatonic at the crash site, and that wasn't even the first time in the series (the first was all the way back on Palau, because Banagher was mouthing off when they drop him off to stay with Gilboa).
They have a confrontation before they head out into the desert, and it's a precursor to the conversation they have while traveling. The two conversations are about the exact same subjects, with the second mostly being a gentler reiteration, so I can see why they'd only keep one. The anime also shifts some of the aggressive energy from Zinnerman to Flaste, instead, by having him yell at Banagher and throw him around.
The scene that's only in the novel, is... scarier, for lack of a better word? Banagher starts out even more dramatically unresponsive and defeated, he ends up getting angrier, and Zinnerman is a lot more threatening.
On Banagher's condition at the crash site:
... he had no sense of will to live on by himself, and he would not ingest food if it was not prepared. If he was left alone, he would just sit around blankly for the entire day. ...
There were no effects no matter what they did, whether they tried to threaten him or please him; he would not resist, but he would not show any form of will on his own. ...
On Banagher's internal mental state:
You killed him. You killed Gilboa, Tikva’s father. He had no intention of attacking, and you simply shot him. Tikva’s pitiful for not having a father now. You and him have no fathers. You killed him, and you killed a lot a people—
[...]
We can just run through this desert, Banagher thought. The sunlight can burn the skin, blood my head, dry up all the fluids in my body, and I’ll just become dust. Even the lead in my stomach and this cursed family blood of mine will be burnt to nothing. If I can do that, the “Unicorn” will never move again, the “Gundam” won’t awaken again; I won’t have to kill others, I won’t be killed, and the “Laplace Box” will be sealed forever—
And then what? The abnormally cold voice interrupted to end the delusions. The impulse that rose in Banagher’s body quickly wilted as fatigue struck his mind. He found it difficult to think, curled back his body without doing anything and became a stone block like before.
Banagher's despair is also where the title of both the novel and the OVA comes from.
This place is really the bottom of a gravity well, Banagher admitted. His body and mind were tied to the bottom, so heavy that they were unable to move at all. Space felt so distant, and his soul was the only thing melting from his crouched body that was like dust. This is a one and only cog that can make decisions on its own. Don’t lose it—Mr Daguza did say it. I don’t want to lose it, I lost it unwillingly, but I really can’t hang on now. If I try to put it on, my body will break apart. I just want to sit here without thinking and without asking for anything. I’ll keep sitting until my heart melts completely…
And then Zinnerman comes in, and tells him him they're going on a trip. Sorry, you're getting a big chunk of excerpts here, because I really like this entire conversation.
Zinnerman was standing there. His hulking figure was standing there angrily “Stand up.” as he growled with a deep voice. Banagher immediately lost interest in the person who arrived, and immediately lowered his sight.
“There’s a town 60km away. I’m going to walk there and get help, and you’re coming with me.”
Are you kidding me? a slight electrical flow passed through Banagher’s mind as he lifted his eyes again. He saw the bearded face that was not smiling, and lazily looked down again. At this moment, Zinnerman’s hand grabbed him by the torso, and the body, which had its center of gravity at the back, was immediately dragged off the floor.
“How long are you going to mope around here!?” The angry words roared into Banagher’s ears as the sand fell from his limp swaying body. His feet would not listen as his body was supported by hand grabbing him by the chest. However, Zinnerman’s hand that was holding this weight showed no signs of shaking at all.
“We’ll leave after sunset. Get into the ship immediately. We need to prepare a lot of things if we want to pass through the desert.”
[...]
“Duty? I did my duty. I rode on the mobile suit and sank a Neo Zeon terrorist. Is that not enough? How many more must I kill?”
Only this time did Banagher look right at Zinnerman in the eyes and spoke directly to him. What duty and responsibility? It ended up like this after I listened to those words. As he thought about how he would not be fooled again and intended to stand on his feet, a blunt sound rang in his mind as his world exploded.
The body that was punched aside landed hard onto the floor, and the burning hot taste of sand spread in his mouth. The face that was buried in the sand started to ache, and Banagher’s body was trembling as he heard Zinnerman say, “You can deny us all you want.”
“But don’t you dare think of yourself as a victim and throw a tantrum at me. I can still recognize it if the one that shot down Gilboa is a pilot, but not a brat who doesn’t have any resolve.”
[...]
The lead in Banagher’s stomach was burning, and he forcefully spat the sand that became dirt in his [mouth.] “I didn’t do this on my own will…” he muttered as he wiped away the blood on the corner of his mouth.
“Someone else forced me to ride on a mobile suit, and things ended up like this before I even knew what happened. If you’re not going to forgive me, just kill me. Don’t beat around the bush and talk about something like duty; can’t you just harden your heart and kill me…!?”
Zinnerman’s hard fist was still clenched as he answered with his trembling eyelids. See, this man talks big, but he’s no different from those guys who want the “Box”. Banagher said, “You don’t dare to do so anyway.” Banagher said with his busted lips that were curled up.
“If I die, the “Unicorn” won’t move. If you can’t extract the data of the “Box”, you’ll just let this treasure rot. No matter how you hate me, it’s impossible for you to kill—”
The second impact struck his face, ... “[Those] big shots may think that way, but we’re different”, Zinnerman growled, ...
“It doesn’t matter what happens to the “Box”. My ship doesn’t have the room to feed someone like you who has no will to live.”
The burly figure became a shadow as it moved towards Banagher, blocking his sights. The eyes of a killer were glittering somehow deep within, just like the first time, and Banagher clenched his hands together with the sand.
Banagher stared at the two black eyeballs that were not showing any light, and exerted strength to stiffen his trembling knees. He tried his best to let his trembling body stand up, and glared at Zinnerman with all his strength. Do it if you can. I’ll spit my blood on you once I’m beaten down. As he was driven by this unknown temper, his swaying body was about to straighten, and Zinnerman showed some teeth on his ominous looking face.
Before he could understand that it was a smile, he was gently nudged back and landed on his backside. “What kind of expression is that?” Zinnerman gave a wry look, and this was an unexpected response to Banagher as he looked back.
“Someone who can give that kind of expression will not collapse that easily. Hurry up and get ready. The desert won’t listen to any excuses humans make.”
Zinnerman finished and walked away. Are you serious? Banagher wanted to open his mouth and ask, but was unable to let out a sound as his wildly pounding heart spread the feeling of this fear that came a moment later. His body that was unneeded by anyone and self-neglected continued to give the sound of life stubbornly— “Damn it!” Banagher groaned as he kicked the sand at his feet. The blood that rushed up his body caused him to recall the heat, and the large amount of sweat that suddenly started to flow out evaporated before they dripped.
I really love this scene, and I miss furious blood-spitting Banagher, but I also liked the little sand-throwing tantrum they added to the conversation in the anime, so I can't complain too much. Other than that, the argument in the desert is basically the same.
Then we get the story about Globe. This is another scene where the music really stood out to me -- the track is called "Desert," and I think it's beautiful.
I like how they take advantage of the desert setting to show it to you visually in the form of Banagher seeing mirages, as well the hot wind in the desert evoking the heat from the burning town. It's a clever sequence.
I'll be coming back to Globe in a later section. The story and its telling has been altered in significant ways, although it serves the exact same purpose in the narrative for Zinnerman's motivation. Put a pin in it.
The conversation at the campsite is pretty much exactly the same in both versions, except the novel also describes ancient cave paintings on the stone walls they're using for shelter.
The novel has one more travel scene after this, where they get caught in a simoom and have a harrowing near-death experience. This is where Banagher really thinks through his feelings and resolves that he needs to live. As soon as the storm passes, they realize they're right outside their destination and start laughing hysterically from relief.
The novel also has several scenes where the two of them spend time with Loni in the city, scouting Dakar on foot before the operation. These are mostly about establishing setting, progressing the plot, and strengthening Banagher's connection to Loni, though there are some small Zinnerman moments I thought were charming.
Here's Zinnerman buying Banagher a beer:
Zinnerman suddenly raised his hand and called the waitress beside him. “Another beer please. For him.” He said with a nonchalant look on his face as he pointed at Banagher, wanting him to continue talking. “I’m still underaged, you know!?” Banagher then gave a shocked expression right back as his momentum was worn out.
“Just drink. Today’s a special day.”
“What’s special…”
“You’ve become an adult. There’s no punishment for celebrating a little anyway.”
A warm smile Banagher had never seen before caused him to feel some warmth in his stomach. He felt embarrassed, and thought that he could not look back anymore as he turned his stare to the sea surface that was dyed sunset.
The fight they have during the operation plays out pretty much the same, in both action and dialogue. Zinnerman does cause less lasting visible damage to Banagher in the OVA, though-- he's described as having his face noticeably bruised and banged up in the novel.
I do think novel Banagher knew civilian casualties were a possibility going in (in a way that OVA Banagher possibly did not consider at all, since the target is explicitly military). What horrified him was the deliberate act of murdering innocent people-- similar to novel Loni's feelings, in fact.
Even if he's rationalizing, Zinnerman's response of "you should have expected this" is still much truer about Dakar than Torrington. Come on, Banagher, you didn't consider there might be serious collateral damage if we walk the giant metal laser monster into a major metropolitan area? You saw what happened to Industrial 7. They could have just as easily destroyed that hotel by accident.
Such a good scene, though. Both versions. Get his ass.
Marida, Martha, and Alberto
There's a lot going on here. I'll start with the easy stuff.
Since Gael was on the Argama at the end of Novel 5, he goes to the bridge and tells them not to let Martha's ship capture the Unicorn. His mission had failed, and Alberto was successfully transferred to Martha's ship with Marida.
Gael warns Banagher through transmission not to trust Alberto and not to follow his instructions. He also tells him explicitly that Alberto killed Cardeas.
Alberto then cuts off Gael's transmission and admits to doing so. He explains his reasons, and then says some fairly cruel things to Banagher. It's clear that this conversation contributed to Banagher's intense despair in the desert; he even quotes Alberto directly at one point.
(The Foundation can’t live on without the Box. But that man intended to bring the “Box” outside.)
...
(The Foundation has the “Box”. As long as this fact doesn’t change, it doesn’t matter even if the “Box” doesn’t exist. The key to opening the “Box” has no reason to exist. As long as we can destroy the “Unicorn”, everything will be back to normal. Don’t you understand? To a lot of people, you’re the seed of disaster.)
...
(If you want to hate, hate father. Hate our father.)
The voice pierced through Banagher’s chest, and then, there was a physical impact that rocked the cockpit. The connected ignition bolt was activated, and the traction wire was severed from the shuttle right from the end.
[...]
Banagher’s vision started to spin in a confusing manner, and the plasma air flow continued to blow by the cockpit. The temperature in the machine gradually rose, and the warning alarms continued to sway amidst the burning hot air. Nobody will save me. There’s no worth in saving me. Everything I know about is wrong. Banagher yelled with a voice that did not make a sound. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be sitting in this, even my birth onto this Earth is wrong— Banagher’ yell was vaporized by the additional heat, and the color of flames gradually covered everything.
With the line cut, the Garancieres moves in to grab the Unicorn instead. Banagher has passed out, but the Unicorn begins moving entirely on its own. Again it's described as looking like a devil, which is particularly fitting when it's basically fucking on fire. Zinnerman looks at its face and thinks it looks like it's smiling. I love that.
The head of the “Unicorn Gundam” that resembled a human face peeked through the bridge window, and the camera outside the ship was capturing a visual of its glowing eyes.
It was an icy cold stare, and those eyes were staring at Zinnerman and company coldly as if it was grading the people inside the ship—
“Is that thing…moving by itself?”
[...]
Zinnerman did not have time to shout out as his back hit the ceiling, and he tumbled onto the floor. From the corner of his eyes, he saw that the “Gundam” above him was narrowing its eyes in a smile with its back against the plasma glow. The machine with the appearance of a white devil was definitely smiling, and its body was swaying amidst the vortex that swelled like a mirage.
In book five, it's easy to read the passage with Alberto and not be entirely sure whether the tether being cut was the intention from the start, if it was something Martha ordered, etc. In book six we get explicit confirmation that Alberto made a snap decision at that moment to kill Banagher. He has weird guilt-induced visions of a young Banagher while walking around the cyber-Newtype lab.
... Alberto suddenly went quiet as he stopped in his tracks, as he sensed someone moving at the corner leading to the elevator hall.
At a corner of the passage that was somewhat dim because of energy conservation, there was a black shadow popping out from a corner. That shadow moved lightly, forming the shape of a human, and became a shadow of a 4, 5 year old child as it stared right back from the corner. Those familiar eyes looked like they were about to be etched in Alberto’s eyes, and he could not help but look away. Haven’t you had enough already? Alberto thought as he widened his tense eyes with fear. The child who looked eerily similar to Banagher Links suddenly disappeared, and the shadow of the foliage plant placed at the corner was dragged along the floor.
[...]
The white machine fell into the scorching abyss as the traction wire was snapped—he recalled that scene and asked himself whether it was the correct decision. At that time, he merely had the impulse of wanted to get rid of the “Unicorn” from his eyes, and he did not remember making a sane decision. That was because he was scared, and he hated the eyes of the “Unicorn” pilot that were the same as Cardeas—Banagher Links, who was protected by the machine Cardeas put so much effort in making, and who appeared several times in front of him. Those eyes that could overlap his own when he looked into the mirror looked like they would reveal the sins he committed over and over again…
There's a bit more detail given as to the history about the Newtype lab, and why it still exists despite being shuttered. We also learn that it's rumoured to be haunted by the gruesome ghosts of children, who presumably died during experimentation. Alberto is not having a good time, and blames his hallucinations on the rumours.
Now I need to talk about the thorny part:
A lot of the stuff from the novels surrounding Alberto, Martha and Marida that got removed in the anime is related to sexual violence.
Book six has an extreme amount of sexual violence in general.
Content warning for this section: rape / sexual assault, csa, incest. If at any point you want to skip past it, scroll down to the heading and image for Loni's section.
SERIOUSLY. I'M NOT KIDDING.
Since I was already talking about Alberto, I'll start there:
Martha and Alberto have an incestuous relationship.
I'm being pretty thorough with my current reread. I'm paying attention to everything, even stuff I don't especially like or find immediately interesting. If anything ever seems really out there, I try to crosscheck the Japanese (for as much as that helps, as a non-speaker). My previous read was much more casual, and I definitely started skimming whenever the incest came up.
As I continue reading into novel seven and beyond, I'm finding that it is... more relevant and also more severe than I remembered. I actually double-checked some scenes from later novels because I was wondering about something, and I'm fairly certain now that the implication is that Martha started grooming Alberto when he was a young teenager. That detail in particular significantly re-frames the kind of antagonist she is, for me.
You can already read sexual malice or eroticism into her interactions with various characters (Marida...), but that's not the same as being a canonical child sexual abuser. It's not like CCA Char stringing Quess along to manipulate her into the robot, or Haman trying and failing to seduce Judau in ZZ. There's no less damning explanation, and it's too prominent for "I pretend I do not see it" to feel like a viable reaction.
Unfortunately for the part of me that just wants to gleefully watch a sexy middle-aged lady be unrelentingly manipulative and terrible to everyone, I think continuing to ignore it would be failing to engage honestly with the text.
But hey, it's not in the anime. Anime Martha, at least, still gets to evil in the uncomplicated and fun kind of way.
I'm definitely going to be paying more attention to this aspect of Alberto as I reread. Unlike the other characters with csa backstories, I do not have any kind of developed opinions about how his is handled...
I wanted to get Martha and Alberto out of the way first because their Whole Situation spans multiple books. They are far from the most prominent instance of sexual violence in book six specifically. They only get three or so lines of unsettling innuendo, if I'm remembering right.
It's not a problem that sexual violence exists in the novels-- some of it is thematically or narratively interesting, and even important to why I'm so attached to certain characters. The problem is the sheer amount of it that gets thrown at you all at once, and how gratuitous it can get. Book six in particular overshoots 'shocking' and 'emotional', right into 'annoying'. It's excessive to the point of feeling stupid, and it cheapens scenes that I think could otherwise be resonant and meaningful.
This is something that's true of many (though not all) of the things I don't like in the Unicorn books-- they feel like frustrating over-extensions of things I did like about them. It's like Fukui doesn't know where to stop, and just takes bigger and bigger swings until it just becomes grossly self-indulgent (or in worse cases, reveals some kind of unpleasant bias).
I still remember reading Marida's backstory in book 5 for the first time and thinking I liked how it was handled, only for next book to go back and do it again but worse. Amazing.
There's a nightmare sequence when she's being brainwashed that has a sudden rape in the middle. It's more graphic than her backstory, which was often explained through metaphor, focused on Marida's emotions, implied through environmental details in the aftermath, etc. This one is just Fukui literally describing an assault to you.
She eventually kills her assailant, but is horrified to look and find the corpse is Zinnerman. Maybe that could have gotten me as a grossout horror moment if it wasn't the endcap for a sequence I didn't like, in a book that's already full of this shit. It's also just not necessarily the kind of shock factor I'm looking for from Gundam specifically. Whatever.
We're later told that the content of the brainwashing is based on Martha, but it's not explained exactly what that means (at least, it is unclear in the English fan translation). The nightmare does start out with Marida witnessing a snippet of Martha's childhood where she attends her father's funeral. Does it draw on her memories? Her worldview? Is it some kind of automatic generative process, or did she write it like a script? We don't know.
At the end of the nightmare, Marida sees herself as a child crying over Zinnerman's body, as an obvious parallel to the funeral of Martha's father at the beginning. I liked this. Shame about the middle.
I said I would come back to Globe. The novel version of the story has significant discussion of rape, including of children.
When I compare the fan translation to the Japanese version, some of the lines might be slightly mistranslated, but the actual meanings are never describing anything less grotesque. One of them seems to actually be saying something worse than I had assumed, which is impressive.
The story in the anime states there were no survivors, which is not the case in the book, although there were certainly many horrible deaths.
(The novel tells us directly that a specific character is a survivor of the massacre at Globe. I've already been told that the backstory I'm talking about was cut from the anime, so I guess it's a moot point.
But since the story is being told by Flaste, it's not like some small number of survivors unrelated to him would necessarily be something he'd know about, I guess...)
Flaste also tells Banagher that there was footage of the violence at Globe that ended up being circulated on the black market. Attempting to track down and eliminate the source of the videos is what led to them finding Marida, since she was trafficked through the same network.
I'm done with this part. Unfortunately, the next section is possibly even more thorny.
Loni and Mahdi Garvey
Content warning for this section: racism / orientalism / islamophobia, allusions to real life terrorist attacks, one brief reference to sexual violence.
The worst of it is over after you get to the heading "Who is Loni?", but if you want to skip all the way to the conclusion you can always scroll down to the last two images (Loni crying + the Shamblo with the destroyed cockpit).
The novel version of the Shamblo requires multiple pilots. The attack on Dakar is carried out by Loni, her two brothers Walid and Abbas, and her father Mahdi.
Novel Loni is generally a voice of mercy and restraint, although she still willingly participates in the operation. Much of her original dialogue during combat has been given to Kirks in the OVA.
Mahdi Garvey is the vengeful, resentful force that wants to punish the Federation for its crimes and destroy its symbols. He is the one who orders attacks on unrelated buildings and refuses to change course to reduce collateral damage, much like OVA Loni does-- however, he is significantly more resistant to being reasoned with than she is, and never has any moments of doubt or regret.
Walid and Abbas have very little agency. I can't remember a single notable line of dialogue from either of them, nor any traits that differentiate them. They're just kind of there in the background, usually doing whatever what Mahdi tells them to do.
All of these characters are explicitly Muslim in the novels.
One of the very first things we're told about Mahdi is that he has multiple wives and many children, but that Loni and her siblings are the 'purest' of his bloodline. We learn this after the destruction of the Federation submarine, while he tells them not to look away from the blood and entrails of the enemies they just killed. We later learn that he harbours a deep grudge not only against the Federation, but specifically against "White Men" -- he usually calls them Franks in Japanese.
I hate this character. I was so relieved when I heard they removed him from the anime. Most important call they made in the entire production, I think.
(The fan translation incorrectly translates "multiple wives and many children" as "many wives and many concubines," so English readers get an even worse first impression, by the way. I made sure to check everything I'm going to complain about in this section so I'm not slandering Fukui for the translator's mistakes.)
Mahdi talks about his religion quite a bit, but he's not portrayed as a religious extremist. He is not a fundamentalist. He doesn't seem to believe his quest for vengeance is something he is divinely commanded to do, although he certainly believes it is morally justified. He's completely fine with his unveiled daughter driving on her own to go pick up two unrelated, non-Muslim men (but he definitely expects her to give him lots of Muslim grandchildren).
His grievances with the Federation don't involve any particular hostility to secularism. He is angry about the Federation officially saying God is dead at the start of the Universal Century, and about the extraction of wealth from Muslim countries that he believes was an intentional destruction of Islamic society-- but I think those are entirely different issues.
You could try to make calls on whether this choice, or any other individual choice made about this character, is less or more offensive than the alternative-- but I think it's beside the point.
Mahdi isn't a Muslim because Islam is specifically important to his motivations; Mahdi is a Muslim because of what that is supposed to represent to the audience. Mahdi is a Muslim because because of the symbol of the Muslim terrorist in the global consciousness, and because Fukui wanted to invoke imagery of 9/11. His character is inherently a bit incoherent, because he's an amalgam of stereotypes about The Other.
I get the feeling a significant part of the research process for this character was looking at the wikipedia page for Osama Bin Laden. I assume Fukui made him less militantly religious than obvious real-life inspirations either because he believed it would be less controversial, or because it meant he wouldn't have to do as much research about Islam.
The through-line from the better-handled themes of the first five books that eventually leads to the terrible destination of Mahdi Garvey is pretty easy to see. It was deeply, deeply frustrating for me to get invested in the way the series acknowledged and engaged with global structural racism (even when it occasionally got a little clumsy or heavy-handed), only for it to drop this on me six books in.
I actually think this mess of a character was probably intended to be a complex, terrible-but-understandable antagonist? I'm completely serious. That's the whole reason it works to transpose his general motivations onto Loni, after removing all the stereotypes and real-world cultural references.
Mahdi is textually compared to Zinnerman (vengeance for the deaths of loved ones and injustice and violence against one's people), and Zinnerman is obviously framed as sympathetic. Mahdi pretty much has the same kind of backstory framework, just with "Muslims" instead of the fictional "Zeon."
Mahdi is also explicitly textually compared to Alberto (inheritor of an established family legacy and all the pressure that entails). Alberto is complicated, but I think he's also a sympathetic antagonist.
And then there's the very first character we meet in the novels, Syam. Syam is also a man from the Middle East who was negatively affected by the Federation's cultural imperialism, and Syam also participates in a terrorist attack. There's even a mention that the guys who recruited him were infiltrating religious institutions, though Syam was not brought in that way, and the religions in question are left unspecified.
Maybe you're wondering why I was so annoyed that Syam's backstory was removed, given I'm glad that Mahdi's was cut. The way they're handled is significantly different.
When he participates in the attack on Laplace, Syam is a nobody with rational motivations to do something awful. His backstory is there to talk about the material conditions and pressures that foment terrorism, including terrorism targeting oppressive governments, and the ways that powerful people take advantage of the desperate.
Mahdi is arguably sort of also that, but it's delivered through the lens of a deranged islamophobic caricature. lol
Syam's story is also a lot vaguer than Mahdi's, when it comes to real-world details. I'm sure there are criticisms one could make of that, too, but I still believe it's preferable in this case. The more you increase the specificity of real-world details in your future scifi world, the more knowledge or personal experience with the subject you need to pull it off convincingly.
Also, Syam not being white made our protagonist explicitly multiracial by extension, which I liked.
(Perhaps interesting: Loni seems to think of Banagher as being within the category of "Frank", but I'm pretty sure Mahdi identified him on sight as someone with "non-Western" heritage. This does not lead him to treat Banagher with any more respect or courtesy, however. Calling Banagher "the Key to the Box" is significantly more dehumanizing in his mouth than Loni's.)
Here's a quote that I think represents Mahdi at his most understandable and humanized. It happens right before he has the Shamblo blow up a hotel full of people out of spite, lmao:
Loni ignored her two brothers who were unable to speak up as she got up from her seat and gave a tense look at her father. Mahdi took her stare “Loni, [those people mocked me].” ...
“[A barbarian] who’ll only imitate the white men on the surface, but [still hangs a knife on his waist]…that’s how those people viewed me. Whether it’s the receptionist, the [doorman], or any guest that brushed by, I can tell from their eyes even if they wouldn’t say it. Those people sold their souls to the society of white men, no matter the color of the skin. To those people, we’re just caged animals, pitiful beasts that are reared in the zoo to exchange for the self-satisfaction of a multi-cultural society.”
Am I crazy? Mahdi asked himself in a corner of his mind, Then let me go crazy. and then answered his own question as he looked away from the speechless Loni. Father, grandfather, Loni’s mother, they all died in despair and hatred. I could only keep living to vent the regrets of those souls. I interacted with top-class education and culture in those white men’s society, and continued to be an alien that hated them. I tasted the feelings of bitterness, deceit and infidelity, I lived through such a life full of oxymorons, and it’s to be expected that I’ll lose my mind, but it’s all for this day. What should I do if I don’t unleash my madness? Who’s the one causing me to go mad!?
(I made edits to his dialogue here to more closely match the Japanese. The original fan translation said "those people used to mock us," and continued to use plural throughout the explanation, but the original line refers specifically to himself. I'm pretty sure it's specifically about when he was recently there, for his meeting with Banagher and Zinnerman.)
Again, the revenge narrative is basically the same thing we get from Zinnerman. And that part about feeling alienated from whiteness and being looked-down upon even as a highly educated, culturally assimilated person-- that's a real experience of racism! I've heard this sentiment from people in real life!
The problem is that Fukui put that sentiment in the mouth of a character who's a mishmash of stereotypes based on cultural fears that the non-Muslim world has about Muslim men.
The problem is that the only explicitly Muslim characters in this series exist to be terrorists in a heavy-handed 9/11 reference.
Another side note: the bit about the knife. Mahdi carries around a shamshir. When it was first mentioned I was just like "okay, he has a sword. Maybe it's a family heirloom or something." When Banagher notices it, he interprets it as representing racial / cultural pride as a person from the Middle East. Okay.
Fukui knows most of the obvious things about Islam. He knows about daily prayers, and that Muslim women often cover their hair and dress modestly. He knows that idolatry is a sin. He knows that Muslims are not wholly uniform in beliefs and practices. He knows the phrase "inshallah". I'm skeptical about his familiarity with the contents of the Quran beyond that, or the concepts of sunnah / hadith, or the differences between any specific major branches of Islam.
("Inshallah" comes up because Full Frontal says it as an ostensible gesture of cultural respect and cooperation, and Mahdi begrudgingly responds in kind with "Sieg Zeon". Hm.)
There's a bit where Loni gives an explanation to Banagher that liberal Muslims exist, which I guess might be necessary for an audience unfamiliar with Islam. It doesn't feel much like the kind of explanation an actual Muslim woman would give when asked why she doesn't cover her hair and/or face, though. It also immediately gets used as an excuse to scare Banagher with an example of supposed fundamentalist Muslim beliefs (basically, 'if I had been from one of those groups, seeing my looks would mean you either have to marry me or be executed').
Sorry to keep going on asides, but I actually recently watched a youtube video that contrasted Fukui's use of Islam in Unicorn with Ohtagaki's use of Buddhism in Thunderbolt. Since I'm currently reading the Thunderbolt manga, I thought it was interesting.
It amused me a little how the essayist skirts around specifically calling Unicorn's portrayal offensive or bigoted, instead settling for calling it "cringe."
You get the picture, right? I'm sure I could keep dredging up more examples, but I'll move on to how the events play out.
The Shamblo attacks the city as planned. Mahdi is bloodthirsty and vengeful, Loni is troubled, and the brothers are just kind of there. Mahdi has the Shamblo deliberately blow up an unrelated hotel.
Riddhe is flying around, witnessing everyone exploding and having a nervous beakdown about it. Mahdi refuses to change course to reduce civilian casualties when Loni asks.
Banagher fights Zinnerman, launches in the Unicorn, and saves Riddhe from getting crumpled like an empty soda can. Riddhe starts carrying Banagher around so they can do sick aerial stunts.
Then Mahdi has the Shamblo attack "The Trade Center." Fuck off, Fukui. You hack.
Since Loni is hooked into the psycommu, she hears all the deaths as they happen. This is finally too much for her, and she pulls off the helmet and begs her father to stop. Enraged, Mahdi yells at Loni about her mother's death.
The exposition here feels very awkward. Mahdi just drops this story on the reader at the last minute while chastising Loni, who obviously already knew about it. This really didn't need to be treated like a reveal.
“We should have expressed our thoughts sufficiently. I learned that Allah has a merciful and understanding heart. if we continue to massacre, we’ll be defying God.”
She climbed up the ladder beside the seat and approached the captain’s seat. “What are you doing? Get back to your seat.” Mahdi growled, but Loni ignored him as she approached.
“There are women and children on the Federation streets too. Father, please show mercy…”
“Shut up! Did you forget how your mother died!?”
[...]
“Your mother killed a Federation soldier in the midst of the chaos after the war. She killed a despicable soldier who intended to rape a Muslim female in a refugee camp. The jury was completely one-sided, your mother was sentenced to death, and I couldn’t do anything to save her. I could only let your mother die all just to protect the trust of the company, all just to protect the cursed inheritance as a “Descendant of Dubai”!
I endured everything all for the sake of this moment. I’m going to use this “Shamblo” to wreck the parliament hall and prompt all the Muslims to rise up. Our family’s tragic wish will be fulfilled soon, and now even you want to betray me?”
The tears rolled down his suddenly widened eyes, dampening his face. This isn’t father. It’s impossible for such a man to be my father. Loni thought, but felt that this might be the first time she was seeing her father’s true state, ...
Realizing she cannot change his mind, Loni pulls a gun on her father. However, he pulls out his own gun and shoots her instead. As she loses consciousness, she reaches out to Banagher with her mind.
The Shamblo's bits are no longer effective without Loni controlling them. Hearing Loni's dying voice telling him to take down the machine, Banagher destroys the Shamblo.
Loni's brothers start arguing with Mahdi after he shoots Loni, but that doesn't save them by leading to a change of heart. They die alongside him in the cockpit.
Who is Loni?
Obviously, Loni is a Lalah archetype. She's one of at least three slightly different Lalah allusions in these books, which is kind of a lot, but I do like that one of them is a man.
Both versions of Loni's death scene have references to Lalah's dialogue in First Gundam ("I finally got to meet you," "It's sad, isn't it?").
Her eyes in the novel are green, also like Lalah. Because of her eye colour, Banagher mentally compares her to Audrey, and also... to his mom. The joke writes itself.
Banagher has significantly more face-to-face interaction with Loni in the novel than the OVA. Because of this, his relationship to her is more personal, at least before they get into each other's heads.
Novel Loni is knowledgeable, patient, and fond of children. She tells Banagher she wants to have ten kids.
She's a nice girl, I guess. It's not really possible to divorce her portrayal as a character from the portrayal of her father, Islam, and Muslims generally. The logic is built into her. I much prefer the character the OVA gave us.
They didn't have to change her character in order to remove the references to Islam. They could have just as easily kept Mahdi as the antagonist while making the Muslims-Zeon swap. I do like what they did, though.
By taking her father's role while also still retaining some of her own, Loni becomes even more central to her arc. She gets to be the primary antagonist and the person that Banagher wants to save. I think it's cool.
Like I said before, I try to avoid getting too deep into spoilers for later novels, but Loni's death in the novel has a number of things in common with the death of another female character that happens later. They're a little too similar for me. I'm sure it's an intentional parallel, but there's not enough contrast for me to find it juicy... I just don't think the narrative actually needs two different female characters to heroically sacrifice themselves so a male character can feel sad about shooting them. Of the two, Loni was the better choice for a rewrite, since this arc needed one anyway.
She still dies, obviously, and Banagher is still sad. There's even still a Lalah callback-- but it's a distinctly different kind of tragedy than the one that happens later. Barring any unexpected future changes, I personally think it's an improvement.
Look! A major theme!
Loni's father is still a presence in the OVA, in much the same way Loni's grandparents were for Mahdi in the novel. This is a story about ghosts of the past.
Tying Loni's rampage in the anime to a runaway psycommu is an interesting difference, especially given she says "Father?" right before it goes haywire. There's almost an insinuation that the machine is possessed.
This works as a metaphor, but if Mahdi was the previous pilot it could theoretically be literal, in much the same way that Neo Zeon managed to get some kind of Essence of Char from the Sazabi's Psycho-Frame when they created Frontal. Mahdi also presumably still developed and built the Shamblo, whether he piloted it or not.
"That isn't her, she's being enslaved."
Loni does describe her father as being swallowed or consumed by the machine in the novel, and she also describes the Shamblo itself as a force "leading people down the wrong path". I definitely interpreted this as metaphorical, though. Loni was the only one with her brain actually hooked into the psycommu.
They did a good job emphasizing the weight of family history as a theme in the OVA. The hands that reach down and pull Banagher's psychic projection away from her face! Again, I love the potential implications.
It's possible there's supplemental information or interviews about this somewhere, but I kind of prefer not having specific lore explanations behind what's happening in these scenes. I like the ambiguity.
Another interesting detail about OVA Loni is the explicit statement of "there's nothing left for me" / "there's no place for me" as a reason why she cannot stop.
This isn't part of her character in the novel, nor Mahdi's, even if loss and being consumed by revenge obviously is. I really like that it adds another connection to Zinnerman and Flaste's dialogue about how they felt after Globe.
I can't stop thinking about how easily I could draw a compelling parallel between the OVA version of Loni and the novel version Riddhe. They simply do not exist in the same universe. They both only ever passingly overhear the less interesting version of each other-- assuming they even notice the other as an individual at all, rather than just an enemy machine.
It's sad, isn't it?
I really like this visual. The hand motif strikes again...
The novel ends with Riddhe and Banagher both knocked out by the Banshee. It also reveals that Marida is the pilot, since Banagher senses her presence. The OVA places its cliffhanger a little earlier, right after the initial reveal.
I'm excited to watch the next one. We've hit the point where I feel like I'm starting to lose my "advantage", so to speak, in terms of knowing what's coming. It's exciting! I enjoy watching these a lot. Even when I dislike a change, I still like thinking and writing about it.
Sorry for the sheer length of this beast, and a huge thank you to the handful of dedicated Unicorn fans following me who are always excited and encouraging. Knowing anyone out there gets something out of these makes my day, and I appreciate your thoughtful responses. ✌️
I'm so glad to be done with novel six. Holy shit.
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Do you listen to Paramore? I just saw your ask about Dear Reader and was thinking about when I first listened to it and immediately related it to Idle Worship on After Laughter. Then Speak Now TV came out and Hayley was featured on Castles Crumbling, not exactly the same as Dear Reader, but some similar/parallel ideas. We could probably also throw in some lines from Nothing New if we wanted to stretch the parallels even more. I think the idea that feelings like that will always be relevant or relatable to Taylor is so true and they’re fascinating songs cause they’re a little different than what she usually writes about.
i love paramore and i think that's part of the reason taylor chose her! they were friends back in the day, so hayley is part of taylor's history from the time the song was written. and it goes without saying that they probably relate to the messages in all those songs (dear reader, idle worship, castles crumbling, nothing new), because every famous person seems to have these two realizations:
1) they're being used and the industry is so much uglier than they expected (we see this in lucky by brit, the lucky one, and other songs by many other artists)
2) they're being put on a pedestal that they do not deserve, because they're just a human like you or me
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Finally listed to Rebel Robin (the Audio show, not the book) and honestly it was not what I was expecting, I guess more in-line with the actual Stranger Things tv show. But of course that wouldn’t make sense.
Anyways, when listening to it I honestly find it really poetic, I don’t know if the subjects it tackles relates to the current climate but I find it now more important than ever.
One question I have is how do you direct Actors (those who act on screen or a visual medium) to perform for audio?
OH HI I CAN FINALLY ANSWER THIS QUESTION I'M SO EXCITED
(the SAG strike is over!! while podcasts were never struck work, bc Surviving Hawkins is a Netflix/Stranger Things show, I was considering anything related to it to be struck, so haven't wanted to post or promote it in any way! but we're finally done!)
I'm really glad you listened to the show and that it surprised you and felt relevant - it was a careful balance of making the show feel like it fits into the ST universe while also understanding that it takes place well before Robin knows anything about the Upside Down, so the story is going to be very different from any other ST story.
in terms of directing screen actors in audio...so many of the principles are the same! most of the actors I work with are TV/film actors not voiceover artists (though of course screen actors do VO and VO actors do screen, there are differences when it comes to those career paths).
(this got so long, putting it under the cut)
the thing that is hardest about screen acting in my opinion is the fact that you have to hold a million details/tasks in your head at once while also acting. stage acting is similar - you have to remember your blocking, make sure to project and be turned out to the audience, etc., but usually when you're acting on stage, you're doing the same show over and over again. for film - and especially TV - actors every day brings new scenes, new blocking, new physical actions. you have to hit your mark exactly, make sure you're in your light, find your eyeline, work with props, and memorize lines that you've sometimes been given that day. and then you have to make sure to give an emotional performance on top of that.
plus, in a show like ST, you're often interacting with things that are not there (every time I watch the demobat fight in the most recent season I'm so curious how they did it/what was providing the tension for them to pull on the bats, hit them, etc.). a lot of the actors I work with come from genre stuff, where a lot of their work is imagining that the green box they're in is actually a spaceship and the green stick they're holding is actually a magical staff or whatever. which adds another layer to the work.
which is all to say--audio is the opposite of that. you don't memorize your lines, you just have to make sure you're speaking into the mic, and that's it. but you also are only using your imagination to conjure up the setting and the actions your character is taking. so a lot of my work as a director is making sure the actors feel free to experiment, make mistakes, and be physical, even if we can't see it. oftentimes, a screen actor will come into a recording feeling like they have to do a particular thing, treat voiceover differently. my job is often just to remind them to treat it like anything else.
pretty much every actor I've ever worked with has commented on just how fun it is to focus on only the acting and nothing else. there's of course so much fun to be had running around and fighting monsters, but I find that voice acting provides a nice bit of variety. with Maya - and with the nature of the SH scripts - it was just about creating an atmosphere that felt conducive to natural conversation. because of ST filming scheduling, we actually didn't get to record her and Sean together at all, which was a bummer, but we still had someone reading the other characters' lines so it would feel like two people having a conversation.
in terms of specific direction, I'm usually focused on finding different shades of emotion from take to take - let's do this one angrier, let's do this one where you're scared and trying not to show it, etc. the only time I ever really have to voice direct is if something is getting mumbled or mispronounced or if I need something physical - the character running, smiling, etc. in those instances, I'll just tell the actor exactly what I need and we'll just pick up that individual line.
I hope this answers your question! especially since I wrote such a massive answer, lol. but the long and short of it is that directing is the same across mediums in many ways: you're focused on story, emotion, and chemistry and the lovely thing about podcasts is that you get to focus on those things and those things alone.
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I've got a protagonist and an antagonist who are part of small rival kingdoms with their own armies. Guns and other such items don't exist (and I have a plausible explanation). They want to kill each other. How can I allow them to enter in combat with each other multiple times and have both of them walk away alive and able to fight another day (even if it takes a few months of recuperation) and still make it realistic? They're both trained in combat, one uses a spear and the other uses a sword. I need to keep them alive for Plot but also need them to fight for Plot and I don't know how to write them realistically fighting without dying. Also there's magic involved so healing is slightly less of a problem but necromancy doesn't exist.
So, something useful to remember about most feudal societies: There are much larger pressures acting upon the individual participants. You could have two kingdoms who want to eradicate one another, but, aren't able to because it would result in fatal reprisals from other powers.
Narratively, stories like this tend to operate in a bipolar structure (in this case, bipolar literally means that there are two relevant powers, your protagonist's faction or alliance, and those who they're arrayed against.) However, in many historical cases like this, there would be a wide array of other competing states (or kingdoms, if you prefer.)
The entire system maintained (relative) stability, because any aggressive action by one participant would leave them weakened and vulnerable to other nearby powers. In European history, this stability was further, “encouraged,” by the Roman Catholic church, whose scribes were often responsible for reading and writing the diplomatic missives sent between lords, with those communications not always, completely reflecting the original intent of their illiterate kings.
So, while full mobilization against a rival kingdom is an option, it's a very dangerous one, even if your king feels they're in a relatively strong position with their other neighbors.
And then they want to kill each other. This is pretty reasonable. However, it's very dangerous for your character.
There a lot of social structures in Medieval Europe were designed to keep anyone from killing the nobility. A bit part of that is the risk of reprisal from your neighbors, or a larger power. Defeating a hostile king on the battlefield would often see them captured and ransomed back to their relatives (or in some cases, simply held hostage for years because their relatives were happy with their new throne, and didn't want to cough up the cash to recover their lost lord.)
If your king wants to kill their rival, they're going to need a very good cover for that slaying, or they'll be branded as a kingslayer, and may face serious consequences, up to and including the loss of their title, excommunication, or a coalition of the dead king's relatives coming for them, with the assistance of other kings who aren't eager to be the next name on your character's hypothetical climb to the top.
Also, again, if we're using Medieval Europe, there are a lot relatives spread around. The nobility in Europe mingled and intermarried, creating a fairly complex web of different blood relations. So, while your character's rival may not have any relatives at home, it's quite possible that he'd have siblings and cousins in dozens of other nearby kingdoms, and potentially even be a blood relation of your characters as well.
There are exceptions to this, such as if they're a non-royal usurper, but in that case, they wouldn't have any protections, and your character would probably have a pretty easy time forming an impromptu alliance to stomp them out, before “restoring” someone with a legitimate claim to that throne. In that case, if their rival really was a peasant usurper, your character could probably get away with executing them on the battlefield with little fanfare. However, if they're actual nobility, even if their claim is shaky, that kind of a killing could have serious consequences.
So, the short version is, your character probably can't politically afford to kill their rival. It really is that simple, and they'd need to find a way to politically insulate themselves against the consequences, or make sure that their rival's death in battle looked like a normal casualty, and not a directed murder.
-Starke
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i also don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but: I felt like the "mundane" scenes in ntn were actually some of the most interesting and thematically relevant parts of the whole. the way the sections about the new rho refugees are paired with john telling his story as a series of "necessary evils" was especially compelling to me -- it feels like all of the consequences of his/the empire's power are finally being revealed, and one of the worst consequences is that kids are still being traumatized by war and displacement in the same ways they were on pre-apocalypse earth. i feel like that's why new rho had to feel so "familiar" and "modern-day" compared to the fantasy vibes of the nine houses. like, until ntn we had no clear picture of what the rest of the empire looks like, or even what war(s) the cohort is involved in. but then when you find out, it hits you that for the average subject of the empire, there's no "heroic" interpretation of anything necros and cavs train to do -- they're nothing but parts of the machine that's constantly destroying people's lives. and this pov is presented as just as important as that of the main characters! idk, it's a jarring shift and the pacing is pretty off-putting, but it worked for me (thematically and emotionally).
another thought: when harrow and mercy were off killing planets, there was no indication that humans lived on any of them, iirc, but in ntn it's revealed that lyctors have forced large numbers of people off of their home planets. so were john & co. lying to the new lyctors about that, or is it just considered normal/justified in-universe and not worth mentioning? in any case, harrow seemed really disconnected from what killing a planet means (in htn), and i feel like that could end up being a big deal when we get back to her perspective. especially given that she's finally interacting with alecto
I love this ask, thank you. I think a lot about this post about John and Kevin, two kids playing with dolls ten thousand years and a galaxy apart. Humanity is fundamentally the same; there's love and there's bad everywhere. Both John (duh) and BoE ("necromancy is a disease you released" don't get that).
On John's revenge: the thing is, the Cohort isn't killing people. Like, they definitely don't mind killing people, but it's not their primary mission by far. John could literally kill millions in a heartbeat if his objective was extermination. He could have sent the Lyctors to wipe out entire planets generations earlier. Instead, he's using the Cohort and the resources of the Houses to drive the population of the occupied planets from place to place, over and over. He's dooming the descendants of those who left earth "on dollar store support" to a perpetual hell as climate refugees. Like Augustine says, it's purely symbolic retribution.
(IMO, this quest has an end point and we would have been in the home stretch no matter what; this is more of a verge into theoryland, but I think he does have a plan and a time limit, and he's playing capricious deity biding his time. After that, it's reboot, and maybe (?) actually letting go. Something something forgiveness not so hard nor anger long. This time will be the time we get it right.)
On Harrow & co killing planet: I think HtN actually lays the difference out pretty cleary! They were killing all planets on the path of Varun (so he couldn't kill them first and absorb them). When a Lyctor kills a planet, it's immediate. The Cohort does it to make it easier for necromancers to use thanergy; we don't know the specifics but I'm pretty sure it's fucked up (since John, of all people, says that the way Lyctors do it is "kinder"). Anyway, dead planets can no longer support native lifeforms, but iirc the process takes a long time to complete. Ianthe says that New Rho was "settled" 700 years earlier; what I'm assuming happened is that all planets in a given corner of space are "flipped" within a very short timeframe, remain viable for life for a few generations, and then probably become inhospitable for native lifeform all around the same time and everyone needs to be evacuated. I THINK they can be resettled after, but like, the entire biosphere is fucked.
#Anonymous#ntn#tlt#tlt thoughts#ejg#me every time i have a john emotion: TERRIBLE GUY (affectionate)
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Sewerhell Sunday again!!
So!
Since Zags has been relevant recently, let's talk names!
After being retired, it's fairly common for animatronics to go by different names. Sometimes these are names they choose themselves, but it's most often a nickname that stuck. This ends up with some animatronics having like... six names they go by.
For example, Mangle always introduces herself as Mangle. That's her name, but a lot of animatronics know her for different things, and some of them learned different names for her first. Some of the older animatronics know her as Ghost, while in cases where she's been deactivated for a while, the newest animatronics know her as the Engineer. The Foxy she was paired with originally calls her the Kraken (because he wants to crack her skull open) and some friends calls her Captain.
She's also the one that started the whole nicknames thing since she very rarely ever uses someone's actual name for them. Some even wonder if she knows their name she uses it that little lmao
For animatronics like Zags, that nickname has been adopted as his actual name. His official name may be Freddy, but he feels he's grown out of that name and has chosen to start referring to himself with a new one. He also gets called Ziggy, Zaggy, Zaps, etc etc. He has different markings on his face compared to the newest Freddy we all know, and those just happen to be zig-zaggy lightning bolts.
Not everyone changes their name of course. One of the Cupcakes for example, still goes by their original name Flower and has been adamant about everyone sticking to that. Flower will take nicknames from very few animatronics and like all of the others, he has his own reasons for it.
The original Roxanne so far is the only one that has never used her official name. She's always been referred to as something else to the point where she basically never learned it was hers in her toddler animatronic phase. It's never belonged to her. In her mind, she's never had a name. Even much later on, if you were to ask for her name, she'd fumble and not know how to answer. Mangle nicknamed her Roxannabelle, which gradually evolved into Rockabella. This is the name she's most known by now, and the name she feels belongs to her the most. Sure, Wolf, Wolfy, Rocky, Bella and Valiant are nice, but Mangle was the first one to give her a nickname so it's had a lot more time to stick, and means significantly more to her.
Then of course, you have animatronics that heard about this tradition of nicknames and new names and came up with some for themselves. Two of the Chicas so far have done this, with my favourite choosing the name Pixie and the Chica before her naming herself both Alan and Sprocket (she switches between them depending on her mood so some know her as Alan and some know her as Sprocket). They've been given names and nicknames too of course, but these are the names they're best known by.
To not have some sort of well known nickname is pretty uncommon in Sewerhell. It's not treated as weird or anything, it's just become kind of unique in its own way, ya know?
This trend has also carried over to the Carnival btw. In the early days, when there used to be frequent breaks outs from Sewerhell, they'd occasionally stick around long enough to make friends with the surface animatronics. A few of the Carnival animatronics have learned about the nicknames thing and it's caught on a bit. Spring Time Chica gets called Cheebs a lot and she likes to call Summer Monty, Lizzy. They have a lot of fun with it!
It tends to confuse newcomers a bit, and some don't take to the idea as quickly as others do, but it's all in good fun! They're not forcing anyone or rushing anyone to join in with it or anything, it's all good! If there's one thing they have down in Sewerhell, it's time after all. They can do what they want down there, who's gonna stop them? The fun police?
It also helps me keep track of everyone so it has its practical, out of universe uses too lmao
#sewerhell sunday#flys plex history#plex history: sewerhell#plex history: zags#plex history: freddy#plex history: mangle#plex history: roxy#plex history: chica#plex history: cupcake#plex history: seasonal carnival#lotta tags!!! fun...#anyway!! yeah!!! i have a reblog to look at but i can't see it on mobile so#you get fun name facts lmao
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do you want to Rant about harry potter worldbuilding?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Preface
I love two things. Those things are any opportunity to dunk on JKR & everything she's made, and good worldbuilding.
There is only one thing that I love in this discussion, and it is not #2.
This will be split up into sections; hogwarts & its houses, magic, bigotry/things that make me go hmmmmm, and things that just generally don't make sense.
And just a note: Harry Potter fans? Get Off My (Blog's) Lawn.
With that out of the way:
Hogwarts & its Houses
I cannot stress enough that even when I was in my HP phase, I thought the houses were fucking stupid. You're telling me the four types of people are brave, smart, nice, and ambitious and there are no mixes or other options? You're gonna say that with a straight face? At 10 years old I was mapping out percentages of how I thought I and my friends/family members would fall, and none of them would fit concretely into just one house.
Like. If you know me moderately well, you know I have gripes with V. Roth's Divergent, due to the premise being "most people only have one personality trait and the protagonist is special because she has three". But at least Divergent showed people who broke out of that restriction. In Harry Potter, no one questions why people are sorted into groups that represent their core personality & values when they're ELEVEN YEARS OLD. (The closest thing to "mixing" houses would be the fact that the Hat had trouble sorting Harry, but like... in the end, it decided based off of his 11-year-old mind that bravery was his defining character trait.)
They can never even change, and they are expected to base their personalities around it enough that the Hogwarts house of grown adults who haven't been to school in 40 years is still relevant.
I hope I don't have to explain why even if people were built in a way that they all had the defining trait of brave, smart, nice, or ambitious, it would be extremely unlikely for that trait to stay the same from age 11 until the day they die. I really, really hope I don't have to explain how that's ridiculous.
Like. IIRC, the whole reason the Houses are like that in the first place is because four people founded it and based the houses on their own personalities. You cannot??? Categorize all of humanity based on one friend group??? Hufflepuff is extraordinarily unbalanced/messy because of this, imo; Rowling realized "hey, not everyone fits into these 4 categories" and so she made anyone who wasn't brave, smart, ambitious, or the typical Hufflepuff nice into Hufflepuff anyway.
Magic
there is no magic system in Harry Potter lol. Calling it that is way too generous. Magic works because it needs to for the plot. It is almost never inconvenient for the characters--it's just exactly what they need. (There's barely even any boundaries to what it can do except for... summon food? I think? idk.)
There's no information given on how spells are made, why they work, why you need a wand, why some people can do magic without wands, why you need to use potions for some things and spells for others, whatever the fuck is going on with Divination, how new spells get known/popular, literally how the fucking planets are involved (Harry takes astronomy and it's supposed to be relevant), how the magic of magical creatures is different or similar to the magic of humans, how people can do magic accidentally & without wands as children, how magic is viewed in different cultural contexts, how ALL OF THE TIME TRAVEL MAGIC was stored in one fucking place, where magic comes from, or even how magic itself works beyond "wave wand, say magic word, bam! spell".
For fuck's sake, you don't even learn why magic is colourful.
This isn't inherently a bad thing. There are well-done fantasy stories with super vague magic systems. But if you are going to have a story about a magic school where magic people learn how to do magic tricks, YOU HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THE MAGIC BEYOND JUST LISTING SOME SPELLS AND POTIONS.
Other people have said this more eloquently, but like. It's why Harry sucks so much. (See the joke of "no one's favourite HP character is Harry" that used to be vaguely (?) popular, at least where I was hanging around in my HP fan days.)
Harry is passive and does not notice or do anything even remotely related to the actual premise of a magic school where you learn magic, because then JKR would have had to actually think about how her magic works. He just cheats off of people or learns things in lessons she never describes because he was, like, staring out the window or talking to his friends or whatever.
Bigotry/Things That Make Me Go Hmmmmm
the race of slaves who like being slaves and whose rights are a joke that only one character genuinely cares about
the whole shit with "Native American wizards were so primitive and weird with their magic until European wizards came along and taught them to do better" (this is in companion material, not the OG series, btw)
similarly: using creatures from Native American legends as backdrops for her History of Magic in North America thingy, but not actually... talking to Natives or having Natives star in the story. (see: using the Pukwudgie as a Ilvermorny house name but not talking about the Wampanoag tribe, which it's from.)
the goblins, who are hooked-nosed greedy creatures that control all the money and hate the Wizards, and who also literally have a Star of David on their bank floor in one of the movies
the date rape potion that gets frequently mentioned that no one says is a date rape drug (makes the person think they're in love with whoever brewed it, or smth like that. when it wears off, they realize what happened. may i say: what the fuck?)
Unicorns only approaching girls because they're "safer" and "purer"; this is r*dfem rhetoric and gender essentialism. (No I am not saying misandry is real or that she's being sexist against men, I am saying this is the same foundation T3RFs use to hate trans women & TIRFs use to hate trans men)
Things That Just Don't Make Sense
Truth potions exist. They work 100% of the time. No one thought to use this in Sirius Black's trial, or any other criminal trials in the wizarding world, because JKR doesn't think about things.
luck potions exist. They work 100% of the time. No one thought to use this to shoot Voldemort in the face, because JKR doesn't think about things.
Time travel magic literally all being destroyed in one go. You're saying you cannot make more time turners??? They're just gone?? And you're saying every single one was in the Ministry basement?? yeah ok sure.
How that "taboo" thing works. Yeah that falls in magic in general but I hate this one specifically so it gets its own spot
The logistics of skill level in magic. Again, this falls under magic, but it deserves a special note. I have no idea what is easier or harder to do when it comes to magic, and it is never explained in a sensible way.
the logistics of having a fucking giant squid in a lake. what does it eat. does it eat the mermaids
how come humans can make babies w/some magical creatures (see: Fleur being quarter Veela) but not others, e.g. goblins?? (or,,, can they also have babies with goblins....? Never mind i don't want this one answered)
SERIOUSLY WHAT THE FUCK DO THE PLANETS HAVE TO DO WITH MAGIC AND HOW IT WORKS. FUCKING TELL ME PLEASE
In Conclusion
JK Rowling's Harry Potter series has weak as shit worldbuilding and a 12-year-old with a hyperfixation on unicorns or something could do better than she ever will. thank you and goodnight
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ramble: thing is, im actually not sold on huskerdust as a romantic couple atm (in future? who knows) but i do like whatever foundations loser baby set up for their general dynamic as a whole and i can work from that with whatever direction the canon chooses to go in, which is proooobably romantic, considering the cues (but again, who knows)
this as a microcosm of general things that at times have me go "hmmm" about the first season, which most of the time (not always, but mostly) comes down to pacing. husk isn't a character with much focus in s1. his dynamic with angel, while not not set-up could be seen as a "yeah, we'll put those two together," rather than feeling totally organic. most of husk's and angel's dynamics before loser baby have been about husk not wanting angel in his space and then not much (anything?) between ep4 and ep8 that wasn't at least partly group-based
i could pick up on other non-huskerdust related things that came out of the blue and went quite quickly, especially in the latter half of the season, where the jump from "six months" to "one month" to "now" felt kind of jarring
but in the end 8 episodes is indicative of general show culture these days where it seems everyone has to fight tooth and nail to even get that much per season, when really hazbin hotel s1 wanted at least 12 episodes in order to have more time to breathe and set up character dynamics not at breakneck speed, and heck, maybe 8 was the original goal. i doubt it though, hiiighly doubt it
all this to say i have a lot of grace for wherever the show does take things if it's trying to push so much into whatever time it's been offered with the ever-hanging (but perhaps slightly less-so post-strikes?) uncertainty of cancellation after 2 seasons. the conditions to create a story and then get that story out there... suck. and it's harder for 8 episodes (or even 12) to hide flaws than a 22 episode season of yore (with its own issues as construct but still... easier to disguise blemishes and take their time)
on the flipside helluva boss seems content to just keep trucking at whatever speed it's on, doing pretty much what it wants to do, but without any Big backing a la amazon and with everyone involved doing 100 other projects at the same time. so... sometimes it does things well, sometimes less-well, but overall just... vibing. 25ish min episode at a time every 3-5 months. granted i haven't experienced the personal pain of that yet, having started it in january, but on it goes and i'll be suffering soon enough
for very different reasons im pretty forgiving of pacing-related stuff that might (has and probably will again) come up in either show. more than anything they've got very visible constraints, so im happy to fill in the blanks with fandom -- for example if huskerdust is written as romantic by the end without developing properly, ive seen ample cool ideas and fanarts that give it more texture and breadth and/or i'll simply look at other things with the characters that aren't shipping them together -- because mainly they're just very fun shows with a bunch of messy queer characters in them, with some great singing and voice acting. the universe of these stories is so open and welcoming to play in, im just in it for a good time
also, in the end, no they're not that deep (except for when they want to be), but they're also a still-rare example of queer genre tv for adults that isn't that deep, but still incorporates relevant queer narrative themes in fun, moving, often complex ways, especially genre tv where lead characters tend to be queer until proven otherwise and this queerness in and of itself is well-written and nuanced. like yeah, i am in it for plots that hopefully stick the landing in the end, but if they don't they were still a very fun, inviting time that had me as a target audience and this a rare privilege to have with a bit of fun fiction
what am i saying in the end? loser baby is a banger, thank you for the song and all the other songs. i think angel dust and fizzarolli should hang and make out and talk about terrible bosses sometime, but the likelihood of these shows having a crossover with all the weird copyright stuff around these days is probably minimal. it's fine. (argh)
(im saying this post also isn't that deep)
#hazbin hotel#helluva boss#altho angel dust and fizz would break on each other like matchsticks... rip to you both#i think ultimately what im saying is: i really like these shows#having a good time with them#and they'd have to go Really off the rails for me to not have a good time with them
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And Thus, Everything Is Tumbling Down
(I know that's a weird way to start another one of my strange post. It'll be explained later. Prepare for a pretty lengthy blog today.)
Hello people of the internet. It's me, Kaz, your local enby who messed up so hard that they put themselves on the couch, only for my partner to come and get me and bring me to bed. Before you say anything, I know that that's also a strange way to start off a post that basically going to turn into a public self-shaming post, but try to trust me when I say that all of this will be explained in the next few minutes (well, hours for me. I don't exactly plan on sitting down and typing all of this out in one sitting.)
I'll start off by saying that I've been stressed lately. No job, places saying that they're hiring but not calling me back, the cost of living being diabolically bonkers, all of that. Doesn't help that while I'm at home applying for jobs and doing side hustles, my partner is pulling extra hours at its job to make sure that we don't drown in this capitalistic economy.
That's not the reason why I feel like everything's falling faster than a tower of Jenga blocks. The reason is because of one major flaw with my personal psychological programming and how I go about trying (and failing) to fix it. Man, this post sure is colorful today. Anyway, I have this...thing in my head that annoys me if there's information that's made apparent that I don't know or the possibility of an event that can happen. For example, if someone were to tell me "Hey, I'm planning a surprise for you.", it'll start to bother me to no end until I gather all the information needed figure out what that surprise could be, thus spoiling the surprise for myself in the process. Or, and this is the more relevant example, if there's something that I'm made aware could result in something bad happen, I, for some fucking reason, act upon my impulses and try to get that bad thing to happen. Usually, I'm stopped before said bad thing could happen and that usually calms me down for the time being.
Yes, it's just as infuriating as you're thinking it is, both of me and everyone around me. Yes, I have tried to control this impulses in the past. And yes, I have continuously failed to keep these impulses under control.
This time, this was different. I'm not going to go into exact detail of what happened, but I will alluded to the idea that I almost invoked a pretty bad situation that almost ended in property damage. Of course, as always, the chaos was halted. Yet, that doesn't make the situation magically better. I know, shocker. Above all of that, it was my significant other that had to calm everything down. I'm not gonna lie or try to justifying what most people would think and say "Oh, it was the autism making me do those things." That would be disrespectful to other people with autism and just blatant dishonesty. I will admit and say that those were conscious actions that I made of my own accord, me allowing and enabling the impulsive thoughts to (somewhat) win. This was a situation that didn't need to happen between the two of us, and now things are more than rocky.
Oh, and then get this! Yesterday afternoon, after being on no-talking terms for about a full day (Thursday night to Friday evening), we actually get to talk about what happen. Well, it was less both of us talking and it was more my partner talking and pointing out my bullshit and me just, well, taking it. I mean, I couldn't really refute anything that was being said to me. This wasn't the first time that I allowed my impulse to get the better of me, nor could I really apologize again cause, while it would be meaningful, I couldn't guarantee that this wouldn't happen again. I'm a person of chaos, advocate for the viewership of each and every possible outcome that can happen on a quantum scale, leaning more towards the good ones, yet the bad ones always pique my curiosity. So, with no other options in which I believed I could contribute to the conversation, you wanna take a shot in the dark as to what my next actions were?
I ran away.
I'm not even kidding.
Imagine the most brisk walk from a living room to an office on the other side of the apartment that you can, all while keeping my head down to avoid any further eye contact.
...Yeah.
I did that.
Willingly if I may add.
I know, 10/10. Amazing strategy there Kaz. Encore, please. But seriously, I don't know what the fuck I was thinking at the time and I still don't know now. My usual avoidance of conflict has basically turned into a fear of conflict at this point in my life. I mean, seriously, what was I thinking? Nothing's gonna get better by me hiding in my office. Even when I was done for the night and put myself on the couch, my partner realized I wasn't in bed and came to get me. I could've talked about it then. Hell, I could've said something, anything. Yet, I didn't. I just rolled over and went to bed, allowing the silence to go on ever longer. Again, what does that say about us? What does that say about me? Usually at this point in the relationship, one would be asking themselves whether they're becoming a burden to their partner, but is that a question I can even ask myself? Have I ever not been a burden to them? Am I becoming a burden to both of my partners? Like I said, I could've said the smallest thing, even a "good night", but I didn't. I just...laid there and fell asleep, probably making them think that I had just forgotten about everything or just didn't care.
I'm unpredictable.
I'm loud when it comes to my chaotic ideas,
Yet, I'm silent when it comes to apologizing.
I'm confident when it comes to my aspirations,
But timid when it comes to admitting I'm wrong.
I'm constantly writing, constantly thinking, constantly typing out my ideas, words in which I'll write a million of to get my imaginations across,
Yet I can't find the words when they matter most.
...the fuck's wrong with you Kameron?
I've got all these big ideas, these dreams, these ambitions of what I want my life to be, where I want to be, who I want to be with. I've written miles and miles of short stories, beginnings of novels, documents within documents of world-building. I'm able to do all this, but I can never seem to find the words when they're needed to be said.
How does one say that they're sorry when they've shown otherwise?
How do I get over these feelings about myself?
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Shipper Tag Game
Thank you for the tag @thesilversun ❤️
1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care about anymore? I'm trying to think back to what I was even into as a teen...I read and wrote bandfic around my early to mid teens, but I'm not naming the bands 😂 Beyond that, there was Buffy/Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sam/Gene from Life on Mars, Fraser/Ray K from Due South, Sirius/Lupin from Harry Potter. The only one of those I couldn't care less about anymore is the last one...the rest just make me feel nostalgic.
2. Which ship would you consider your first one? I can't even remember?? Probably something like Leia/Han in Star Wars, but I wouldn't have known to call it 'shipping' back then.
3. Your first fanfic was about which couple? It was a reader insert bandfic but I really don't want to talk about that lol.
4. Do you remember the first couple you saw fanart of? No clue at all.
5. Have you ever gotten into ship discourse? No. I avoid stuff I'm not into and don't get why everyone else can't just do the same.
6. Did you use to have any NOTP or have one currently? I used to be less open to multi-shipping involving the same characters when I was younger. Now, depending on characters/circumstances, I'm much more inclined to say throw them all in together and analyse the results lol.
Having said that, I hated what Sense8 did by inserting Dani into Lito's and Hernando's relationship. They could have done poly rep in literally any other way than how they did it, but what actually happened was just weird and creepy.
7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read? Carmen/Richie from The Bear. I wasn't even really into it when I first watched the show, but after re-watching with my husband, I needed to scratch an itch I didn't even know I had.
8. Currently, do you have any OTPs? I never used to really think I did, but now, after spending the past 3 years writing a longfic for Javier/Horacio from Narcos, they're always going to hold a very special and unique place in my heart ❤️
9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together? Not that I can think of, because in my mind, shipping is largely an entirely different thing to canon. It bears no relevance to the events of canon a lot of the time and fan fic means you can do whatever you want anyway. More often than not, my favourite ships tend to be non-canon, so I treat the two things separately in my brain.
10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting? Not dislike, no. More likely never really considered before until a lightbulb switches on in my brain (maybe during a re-watch or if something happens in a new episode) and suddenly, I'm interested.
11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, would've been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over? Don't think I'm important enough to be 'cancelled' lol, but I find shipping in general in fandom has become kind of vanilla and bland. People get really hung up on what is and isn't canon and miss the nuance of messy, complicated relationships and dynamics between characters. They stay away from a lot of rarer pairings and stick closely to the fandom-approved or actor-approved 'purer' ships. A lot of people say they want queer stories and characters, but when they're presented with actual queer sex and desire, the pearl clutching begins. I know this isn't true of all fandoms, but it's a pattern I've noticed over the last few years.
12. What is your favorite crack ship? Lalo/Howard from Better Call Saul.
13. What is the couple you read the most fanfics about? Probably McKirk from AOS Star Trek. I haven't read any for years, but there was a period about 10/11 years ago where I couldn't get enough of them. Stucky from the MCU is probably a close second...and most of that came in the form of fix-it fics after Endgame 😂
14. What do most of your ships usually have in common? Always carrying unresolved trauma, they're usually criminals, often violent/have killed people, always morally grey and they have a shared history with each other that goes back further than canon shows us.
15. What you absolutely hate in a ship? I can't stand love triangles where one party has to pick between two others when the obvious answer is either a) both or b) neither. Not a fan of big age gap relationships (unless they're non-humans and are hundreds/thousands of years old). Or when character A gives up everything for character B, but character B doesn't have to make an equivalent sacrifice (they need to be burning down the world for each other tbh, otherwise what's the point?). Or when the ship is presented as 'forbidden love' but there aren't actually any major obstacles in their way and it's mostly a lot of unnecessary melodrama. Love at first sight doesn't do anything for me either. Lust/obsession? Hell yeah. But I need more slowburn/history before the L word is thrown around.
No pressure tagging: @mariamariquinha, @thoroughlymodernminutia, @ejunkiet, @evilbunnyking and anyone else who wants to answer these!
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