Black throne I've taken Your sins awaken (Get down on your knees and pray to me)

Hi Roski! I have a question, would you mind to help, please?

Okay, so the other when I was wandering through the shelves of my local library I found our that they have a copy of Madeline's Miller Circe... And I was thinking that maybe I should give it a try? 😅

I know that it's not mythology accurate but as long as the plotline is well-written... Idk maybe I will enjoy in spite of it 🤷🏻‍♀️ Do you is it a good idea?

I just wanted to know if you believe is worth the time or nor

Also, same goes for Achilles's song. They don't have it at the library, but I thought that if I enjoyed Circe I should try it to? 🤔

girl.... i used to be a HUGE madelline miller fan *vaguely gestures at her short story about galatea i still have in my bookshelf for some reason* but, um. i realized she kind of. sucks.

it's not about her writing, (it's excessively "poetic" and decorated in my opinion but that's subjective) it's that her interpretations are kind of, uh, bad.

SRSLY I HAVE A LOT OF BEEF WITH HER... I'M GONNA ELABORATE UNDER THE CUT ABOUT WHY I DON'T LIKE HER (tw for potential madelline miller hate, long rant and *mentions of s/a*)

-she victimizes her female main character and makes her go through traumatic experiences to erase and excuse all the bad stuff she's done... "circe turned odysseus' men into pigs bc they tried to assault her" yeah. no. she forced odysseus to sleep with her and turned his men into pigs because she felt like it. i understand you want a feminist badass witch but just. no. she isn't a cute uwu unfairly exiled goddess. what she did to odysseus is sexual abuse.

-she apparently hates women that aren't circe. made thetis, i repeat, our thetis, MOTHER thetis, a homophobic and overprotective mom who wants to kill patroclus in SOA for some reason (wasn't she literally the one who sent patroclus to the war with achilles..... miller..aren't you a classics major..). she did to her what other adaptations do to demeter, basically. and for no reason at all. but i guess her cute baby achilles who is doomed by the narrative can't have a nice mom who let him do whatever he wanted to because that would make him RUDE and EVIL and her character(s) can't have bad qualities. she also made achilles's wife, deidameia, who in some versions is raped by him, a “slut that gets in the way of your gay ship” archetype. she also made her rape achilles for some reason??? and that is fucking horrible man like wtf.

-baby-fied patroclus. he speaks like a stupid teenager girl stereotype in soa and is pretty much a useless human being whose entire personality is simping for achilles. that is not him. he DID fight in the trojan war, he was a SKILLED fighter, not a useless twig, he is described as tall and handsome, he healed some warriors, he is SAVAGE, bro literally broke kebriones's head with a rock in front of his brother and made fun of it??? he tried to climb the walls of troy and conquer it by himself??? he told achilles to stop being a bitch and move his ass??? and then in soa he's a useless piece of shit who DIDN'T EVEN FIGHT IN THE WAR, thinks of himself as weak and was thinking about achilles until the moment he died. sorry to break it to you but his last words in the iliad weren't "omg achilles no😥😥". he threw a whole essay at hector about how he didn't kill shit, it was apollo who beat him and hector's about to get dragged. and when his ghost came back to talk to achilles, it was to tell him to STOP CRYING and KILLING PEOPLE and BURN HIS BODY ALREADY. she completely erased his character. sorry.

-glorified achilles wayyy too much. one thing that i hate about her is how she can't let anyone make mistakes. girl, achilles isn't “noble and doomed by the narrative”. he knew pretty well where he was stepping in and didn't give two shits. he literally says in Iliad book 1 he's there for the mass murder, glory and nothing more. “why would i kill hector what has hector ever done to me” MY ASS. he also was kind of an insufferable bitch in the iliad. i'm tired of people making his decision of stop fighting look “heroic/noble/tragic/etc bc agamemnon is evil” because it was not. he stopped fighting for selfish reasons, treated everyone really bad and let his friends die. also, agamemnon isn't “evil” and achilles isn't “good”. they're both war criminals who act like 8 year olds and kidnap women. every achaean character is a bitch, has killed at least 6 people and enjoyed it. yes. even babyboy patroclus (book 16)

-i'm not even saying this as a person with greek ancestry or a pagan, because i am neither, but her depiction of the gods is TERRIBLE. just what is that whole thing of "gods want mortals to fear them so they worship them"??? that's not even how religion works??? gods can be and in fact are very nice to their worshippers?? why would you villainize cultural figures like that?? and why tf it always gotta be a EVIL FEMALE GODDESS trying to fuck up her main character's life for some reason?? athena wants to kill circe's son in circe and i'm pretty sure they don't even interact in the odyssey?? (maybe they did, i don't remember, but if it happened it was definitely NOT because of that) and why is hermes a manipulator?? and why is ODYSSEUS a manipulator??? girl you literally sexually assaulted him??? HELLO????

idk, it just feels like mc victimization and random female character villainization (she also put the whole blame of the trojan war on helen because she was “vain” and “selfish”??? didn't she spend the whole iliad blaming herself for the war and wishing to die??)

i don't really like it. it's not a good adaptation

also i'm not the best person to expand on this topic because i am not a gay man/mlm/nblm but some people on tumblr have explained why tsoa is basically mlm fetish and wattpad fujoshi looking crap and they do have a point (the relationship is so stereotyped tbh) so i encourage you to read their posts. i don't have them rn but i can dm them to you later if you want

AND finally, most people in her fanbase can't separate a wattpad fanfic (because that's what tsoa is) from the original text and think tsoa and circe are just like what homer wrote. “hector didn't know it was patroclus” HE FUCKING DID PATROCLUS KILLED 20 PEOPLE IN FRONT OF HIM IT'S UNDERSTANDABLE “patroclus died bc he wasn't a skilled warrior” HE HAS THE SECOND HIGHEST KILL COUNT IN THE WHOLE ILIAD AND WAS FULL OF HUBRIS. HE DIED BECAUSE HE TRIED TO FISTFIGHT A GOD “deidameia raped achilles” “thetis is homophobic” “odysseus is evil” “it was all helen's fault” “circe did nothing wrong” “athena is bad” no (and they act like not shipping patrochilles makes you homophobic which is. cmon. i personally think they def had something going on but it's never explicitly stated and you can't act like it is)

ik i got too aggressive but it's just bad imo, if you want to enjoy a good iliad/odyssey adaptation go play hades or listen to epic the musical or even play limbus company because i swear lc's odysseus, a literal old woman who committed identity fraud, is at least 80 times more in character than miller's babyboys

ADDITION: no i'm not going to dismember you for liking tsoa or circe. this is just a personal opinion. enjoy whatever you want i'm just a little guy and i can't stop you. have fun!

musings on FFXVI story based on the demo (tl;dr not feeling so hype anymore)

So yeah obviously it's going to be a well written and competently made story that will make you feel many things. What I'm unhype about is, much like 14's story, it's looking to be very uncritical with the way it portrays women.

The first inkling of it was that interview where YoshiP answered a question about in-universe diversity by falling back on an appeal to "reality" as many Western fantasy authors do when they want to excuse why their fantasy worlds seem to always be populated by white people. So "mature fantasy" for this team already means borrowing some of the uglier sides of Western fantasy uncritically.

So it's no surprise that apparently the "narrative boundaries" demand a story where the very first female character we see uses sex appeal in a military negotiation, then has what I can only describe as "bad guy sex" in the hallway immediately after. Very empowering, much girlboss.

But okay, she's a villain and villain sexy. What about the other women so far?

Well, one's completely helpless and is MIA at the end of the demo (though apparently survives) and the other is the main villain of the first chapter, who tries to seduce the Extremely Based dad but is rebuked because her feminity exists in the story as a weapon, and at the end has both her (set dressing, non-character) hand maidens executed for shock value and to show how irredeemable she is, but in a Evil Noble Woman way.

I swear it is like the game is looking at you the player and giving you permission to shout "YOU BITCH" at the screen. Literally every stream I've watched you can predict when the chat will be full of that down to the second.

Also, no women in the Shields. Gee I wonder why. Will we see the in-universe sexism confronted at any point? Or is it just part of the western fantasy aesthetic? Who can say, time will tell.

But what it's telling me so far is that the writers see feminity in two shades. Weak and Helpless, or Manipulating [insert gendered slur here]. And I mean it when I say it's horribly gendered. Men are badass in a variety of ways--strength of arms, noble blood, royal authority, dying from Cool Explosions or dying on their feet weapons drawn. Women's options for power are so far, being nobles and wielding political power, or having to flee or get cut down unawares by random soldiers (can you tell I hate that scene?)

Even Beneditka is only a badass because she's a Dominant--y'know one of the singularly most powerful individuals in the setting--and throws the most embarrassing tantrum I've ever seen on screen after being defeated, and she is supposed to be a person in a position of command. Like you look me in the eye and tell me you could see ANY of the male characters acting that way, even if they're characterized as horribly unhinged?

So yeah, after an initial spike of excitement I think I'm gonna pass on XVI until much later, and hearing how the story and characters shake out. But I don't have faith in these writers when THIS was their tone setter.

tl;dr - more fantasy sexism, but a mature rating means they can be so much worse with it now. At least it plays well.

Oda Army, Ranked (Part 1)

Really just a pointless ranking of my favorite army in the entire game of Samurai Warriors. I say my favorite army because most of my favorite characters are in this army, and because most of them deserved better (ahem, NENE). But keep in mind that these are my own biased opinions, and you shouldn't take this seriously. Anyways, here we go :3

"...Is that so?"

Nobunaga Oda: One of the great three unifiers of Japan, and the Devil King of the Sixth Heaven. Easily one of my top five characters, and also my second favorite male character. I'm pretty sure anyone who has common sense admires Nobunaga, and it really isn't hard to see why. Sure his methods may be a little...out there, but his ideals are refreshing for a man of his age. Get rid of the old and archaic world and usher in a new world where everyone can be productive and progressive based on their own merit. Wonderful. He's Nohime's husband, and these two are easily the power couple of SW and you can fight me on that. He's Oichi's older brother, that poor poor woman who gave birth to that bitch Lady Yodo, and oh, we'll get to that. Also, I'm really into the dark, evil warlord type shit as well. The whole Demon King is fantastic for me. His SW2 incarnation is my favorite, simply because of that voice. Oof.

Daddy: (11/10)

"To hell for good, if necessary."

Nohime: Just want to start off by saying that if Nohime was born in modern times, she would be the only woman I would go lesbian for. Just saying. Anyways, Nohime Saito is the daughter of Dosan Saito and Nobunaga's wife. She's my second favorite female character and easily the most prettiest, and you can actually fight me on that too, Oichi is not prettier than her. Ahem, she's a lovely femme fatale who seeks only one thing, a perfect hell. And who can bring that to her? Nobunaga himself. At first, I found their relationship to be a little weird, since Nohime wants to...kill him? I dunno, it's all so screwy in the titles. In SW2 she doesn't, but in SW3 she does, and in SW1 she says that she'll feel cheated if he dies at Okehazama and I just...I dunno. They're still a badass couple though. I'm actually really in love with her moveset, I love the whole butterfly aesthetic. Her SW2 incarnation is also my favorite because of her voice as well. Some people say it's too high for her, and it is a little, but I love the lilt in the VA's voice. It fits her.

Wifey: (11/10)

"Such weak enemies...who's feeding them anyways?"

Nene: My favorite overall character, and the best female character in the game by a country mile. Nene is the sweet, sweet, wife of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, and they love each other dearly, but she never bore him children. She becomes the surrogate mother to Kiyomasa Kato, Masanori Fukushima and Mitsunari Ishida. She also replaces Kunoichi's role in the second title as female ninja and does a pretty good job of it too, her moveset (even though it's...kinda the same) kicks ass as well. But the reason I like Nene is the whole mother thing. She can't have any of her own, but she still remains upbeat and supports Hideyoshi in spite of that. Good lord, she's so devoted to him it's really amazing, even in history. One of the things I like about these two is that even through their ups and downs in history, they remained together. Hideyoshi still loved his wife in spite of his cheating (and it...unfortunately wasn't considered cheating back then, men were allowed to have other lovers) and constantly sought her council. He wrote her letters, telling her what happened during campaigns, sought her advice with taxes and actually followed it. Her devotion to Hideyoshi is easily one of the best and worst things to me, best when you consider that they were both peasants when they married and they actually married for love and she supported his career through everything. Worst when you consider that because she couldn't have any children, Hideyoshi sought attention from other women, and that hurt her. Side note, one of the best reasons I love Nobunaga is because of the letter he gave to Nene, telling her that her beauty grows day by day and to remain lofty and elegant in the face of Hideyoshi's cheating. Lovely. Her SW2 is by far my favorite, her SW4 incarnation is my second and we don't talk about SW3. Giving my mother that voice, hell no. I also like the golden leaf aesthetic. It's cute.

Mama: 1000000000000/10 (yes I'm biased.)

"Serves you right for getting in my way!"

Hideyoshi Toyotomi: One of the three great unifiers of Japan, Nobunaga's vassal and personal pet monkey, and Nene's beloved husband. Throwing out the whole womanizing thing out for a hot second, I actually really like Hideyoshi. His story is really inspiring, rising up from Nobunaga's sandal bearer to his vassal, to actually unifying Japan is amazing. He's charming, funny, his moveset is fucking fun, if a little awkward, and unlike other lords who have concubines, he really really loves his wife. Anyways, I really don't have much to say about Hideyoshi. I like him, I really do, he's in my top ten characters, but other than that, there's not really much to say. I love his easygoing personality, and to be honest, I think that's what make him and Nene such a great couple. They're the kind of parents who would always show up to your piano recitals, Nene would pack your lunch, they would both dance awkwardly if you played some rap music in the kitchen...stuff like that. Not much to say about Mr.Monkey, I love his vision of 'making a land where everyone can be happy' it's nice. Lady Yodo can bite it though.

Bald Rat: (9/10)

Okay, that's enough for now. I'll do Oichi, Ranmaru, Nagamasa (not really apart of the Oda army, but he's Oichi's husband so I can,) and that fucking Traitor. Ta ta!