#ultimately he fails at it but that's part of the point of their tragedy
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I'm playing through Dragon Age 2 again and I just can't get over how... idk how to say it exactly, but the way you feel, in every moment of this game, how much Varric loves Hawke. It feels entwined with everything, it breathes through every part of the narrative, it blooms diegetigally through the integration of story and gameplay, makes you a co-conspirator in that love in a way maybe only a video game could.
It's in the way I don't think this story is a defense of Hawke only -- or even primarily -- directed at Cassandra, but at Hawke themselves. Beneath everything else going on there's the quiet, utterly unshakable refutation of Hawke's worst fears: Did you think you mattered, Hawke? Did you think anything you ever did mattered? . . . You're a failure, and your family died knowing it. Rising through the story as Varric tells it there's a fiercely tender voice saying: Yes, you did matter. In tragedy or in triumph, for better or for worse, in love or in hate, you always mattered. The ultimate tragedy of Hawke is always right there in the open before the story even starts letting you in on telling it; they couldn't fix anything. They couldn't stop the downward spiral Kirkwall was set on -- the real truth is that no one person ever could. And yet the point of DA2 is that it matters that they tried, and it matters that there were people who loved and were loved along the way, however badly it all failed in the end. Hawke is the Bioware protagonist who succeeds the least, and they're the character who matters the most, to me. (This is also why the Absolution reveal did not shake me in the least haha, my love for Hawke has nothing at all to do with whether they succeeded or failed at anything.)
What Varric is saying, in the only way he seems to be able to say the really real things -- through stories -- is so simple and so fundamental. You were here, and I loved you. There's the emotional heart of it, at the end of it all, that love and grief and recognition. It's so dizzyingly intimate. There's so much distancing, layers upon layers of obfuscation, to be able to say it. It drives me insane!!!! It makes me feel the same way that 'Poem' by Langston Hughes does:
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend.
He loved his friend. They went away from him. What more is there to say. (Many, many, many things, when you're a compulsive liar and storyteller, but hey sometimes you have to deploy a whole armada of lies to tell one simple truth, I understand, I'm a writer too lol)
#dragon age#varric tethras#dragon age 2#dragon age meta#hawke#on second thought let's not go to kirkwall; it is a silly place#when merrill says she just says 'I love Hawke' to herself because it's the only thing in the world that makes sense sometimes...#varric clearly Felt That lol#how can I have played this game so many times and still have such intense feelings about this. help. the unreliable narrator got to me ok#dragon age absolution spoilers#it's real vague but let's be safe. anyway meredith can come back idc. the dragon from the bone pit could come back.#Hawke could keep falling on his face forever and I'll still be out here like 'You're doing amazing sweetie don't worry ;____;' the whole wa
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Sirius, bipolar disorder and 1981
I’ve held the headcanon for a while that Sirius being bipolar was a fundamental part of his breakdown in 1981, that led to him believing Remus was the spy and failing to prevent Lily and James’s deaths, as well as ultimately being the reason Remus was persuaded that Sirius (not entirely consciously) betrayed James and committed mass-murder. so I’ve laid out all my thoughts about this below
Sirius’s breakdown leading up to Oct 31, 1981
bipolar episodes of mania/depression are not responses to external events in the same way regular depression or anxiety are. they will inevitably happen at some point however stable your life is. however, a traumatic event can sometimes trigger a period of mania/depression that spirals beyond the actual event itself
there is no doubt that Sirius was experiencing compound trauma by 1981. there isn’t any specific canon as to when he became involved in the Order, but we know by this point he was deep in the fight and presumably had been for around a year or more. he was living with the constant, extreme stress of being in potentially fatal missions, as well as the risk of losing his loved ones who were doing the same
Sirius’s friendship with James and the impact the danger he faced had on Sirius during this period is fundamental to his breakdown. James was central to his conception of safety and stability. he rescued him emotionally and later physically from his abusive home, and gave him a new loving one. without James, Sirius doesn’t have a home - and therefore the world simply doesn’t make sense. there’s no doubt Sirius would have been living in absolute terror of having his world quite literally torn apart. this would have been magnified tenfold when the specific threat to Harry and therefore James and Lily became apparent, and Sirius had to watch as a war against a fascist terror group became a defense of his best friend’s family being hunted by an unimaginably powerful dark wizard
part of bipolar disorder is the subconscious knowledge that you will at some point crash. there is a sense of inevitability of your world falling apart, like constantly living in a movie waiting for the third act tragedy. for Sirius, watching his world quite literally fall apart, this would undoubtedly have triggered that underlying fear. he is expecting the worst, knowing that it’s going to happen, because it always has
Sirius believing Remus was the spy
Sirius’s struggle with bipolar disorder would lead to his seemingly irrational suspicion of Remus for two main reasons
first is that the chronic instability and tendency toward self-destruction that Sirius experiences as a part of bd is inseparable from his relationship with Remus. breaking up in the heat of manic or depressive episodes is a common bipolar symptom. Remus with his own trauma and mental health issues would never be capable of creating enough stability for the both of them as their relationship formed, and adding into that the struggles of being a gay man in the 70s/80s, they never developed a strong foundation as teens
so the second point is how putting this under the pressure cooker of war doomed them from the outset. without external support or stability, Sirius was always going to spiral down, and Remus would always be unable to cope. by 1981 Sirius is overwhelmed with fear over losing James and utterly unable to think rationally. he’s being pushed to the brink on Order missions. he’s convinced his the world is going to crash down around him. he’s lashing out at the people closest to him and destroying things just for the misguided feeling of control. Remus is watching this happen but is also swept up in his own chronic terror and mental instability, and is utterly unable to understand what Sirius is doing or going through, let alone try and stop it. they are both crashing down around each other, with the very fear they have of losing each other tearing them further apart
at some point I think Sirius simply convinces himself its Remus - because he’s the one hurting him so much with his own part in destroying their relationship, because if anyone is going to tear his world to pieces it would be the one he’s most vulnerable to, because if you want to bring about the destruction by yourself of course you’d pick the person you can hurt the most, because the world is stealing everything from him so of course it would still the one beautiful, tender, miraculous thing he has
Remus being persuaded Sirius betrayed James and Lily
I’m writing ‘persuaded’ deliberately, because there is no way that Remus would instantly believe Sirius could betray James or even murder Peter and a crowd of muggles. they had been friends for over ten years, living in each other’s pockets and they knew each other inside and out. they had built incredibly deep and meaningful bonds as a group. Remus would struggle to believe that Sirius could kill Peter, but he may in the end come to accept it. but he could never, ever have watched Sirius and James for ten years and believe he would consciously betray him
instead, I think Remus came to believe through the persuasion of others (Dumbledore specifically, particularly if you go with the idea he had an interest in keeping Sirius in Azkaban) that Sirius had a breakdown and acted with such reckless self-destruction he inadvertently brought about James and Lily’s deaths. Remus had been dragged down in Sirius’s spiral for a year or longer; if they were by that point together, he would have seen Sirius at his most vulnerable and raw, and understood better than anyone his capacity for manic, irrational self-destruction. he’d seen Sirius do similar things the entire time he’d known him - the prank, for example, which easily fits into a similar theme. Remus knows Sirius is capable of this, he knows he was truly out of his mind with fear
and I think that’s where the anger comes from (aside from fury over him murdering Peter and other innocent people) - that Sirius had spent so long causing harm and never ever learned, that he’d refused to confront his own demons and take responsibility for his destructive tendencies, and in the end it had torn their worlds apart. the fire that had made him so passionate, so full of life, so brave, so loving and so devoted had also made him uncontrollably deadly - it’s not hard to imagine that when Remus more than anyone experienced one side so intensely, he could imagine what the other could lead to
I, personally, don’t think even in a manic state Sirius would ever come close to betraying James. but I think that for Remus, a terrified, traumatised 21 year old who’d lost both his parents and his best friends, had spent three years caught up in a war between two sides that both wanted him dead, and had watched his relationship with the love of his life break down in front of him, it’s a realistic conclusion to come to
Conclusion
mental health issues are intrinsically wound up with Sirius’s story and the tragedies he experiences. i think it’s a disservice to his character to overlook them, especially when fic takes only a shallow look at the sadder, messier parts of his life because it has a tendency towards simply trauma porn. bipolar disorder is my particular headcanon, and I’ve detailed a strong argument for it, but there are plenty of other valid interpretations as well. whichever way Sirius is written, though, at least complying somewhat with canon, the impact of mental health on the complexity of his character and story can’t be overlooked
the other side of the coin to this tragedy is the beauty of Sirius’s escape, formation of his relationship with Harry, and his reunion and reconciliation with Remus. Sirius’s fiery mania is turned into a positive, enabling the incredible feats of breaking out of Azkaban, and living on the rough for two years whilst evading the Ministry’s hunt. it also of course sees older, wiser versions of Sirius and Remus who can look their own and each other’s demons in the eye, face up to them with honesty and courage, and build the relationship they should have had all along.
#i am Sad#and deep in my PoA feels#wolfstar#sirius black#remus lupin#bipolar disorder#bipolar sirius black#ch: we choose who we really are#hp#hp meta
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Ok I feel like we don't often address the real tragedy of the ARK enough. This was a decades long government funded project where families lived. Where scientists were told that this was a safe place to come and figure out how to better humanity. Shadow himself was ultimately created to be a cure for disease and possibly immortality. To help bring hope to Earth!
There's also a high chance that GUN had secretly assigned certain scientists, Gerald included, to make the Ultimate Lifeform or rather the Ultimate Weapon because yeah sure, fear of the Black Arms for when they invade, but also probably more to control humanity if needed.
The invasion of the ARK is horrible in that everyone on that spaceship was executed, minus the small handful of survivors, but honestly to me, watching Maria die in front of him isn't the most tragic part about Shadow's experience. Who knows how long it was before he was captured by GUN after Maria sent him down to Earth. Maybe a few hours? maybe a day or two tops?
Shadow was captured by those who wanted him made, experimented on him against his will, Gerald snapped and messed with his brain and altered his memories to the point of becoming that Ultimate Weapon and exacting someone else's revenge on humanity. and then GUN called it all off, executed Gerald, and now without having a way to dispose of Shadow, locked him away in cryo-sleep for 50 years. (but they also kept him as a fail safe to be the Ultimate Weapon when needed)
When Shadow is awakened by Eggman, these things are still very fresh on his mind. To him this has all happened to him like it was yesterday. He didn't have the time or space to process all that had actually happened to him and it more than explains the actions he was doing the whole of SA2. And considering everything that he was going through, the fact that he was able to forgive at the end and undo and overcome the wrong he began to instigate in the first place? It really speaks to the true character of Shadow.
And honestly I could go on on how the rest of the series and Shadow's character arcs have been on his grieving process and that yeah, you do have a lot of set backs and there's probably still so much of that old programming and memories that Gerald messed with that I think he's still trying to sort out how much of it was true or not.
There's just.... so much there...
#sonic the hedgehog#shadow the hedgehog#theres so much dude and its so SAD#sonic#sonic adventure 2#sa2#its just so sad
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Of Yūko's customers, which ones you find most memorable?
Most memorable customers, you say?
I hope you don't mind me using this as an excuse to make an arbitrary list by way of answer. (Arbitrary lists, my beloved...)
Yuuko's Customers In Order Of How Well I Remember Them
(Though I will exclude all the bigger characters for fairness. So, Syaoran, Watanuki, Lava Lamp, Fai, Kurogane, Doumeki, Himawari, Seishirou, Ashura, Tomoyo, etc, etc. Regular xxxHolic customers only!)
10. Birdcage Customer
What was this about? Was he even a customer? We just don't know!
But the thing most memorable about this whole situation is the most pressing question: WHY DO YOU HAVE EVIL WOLVERINE'S SYMBOL ALL OVER YOUR HOME? It's even on his front sign!
WHO ARE YOU?????
9. The Liar
Mostly at the bottom because I can't resist the irony. She's the first big customer we see - but what do we really know about her? Absolutely nothing, because she lied every step of the way!
What can we really remember about someone who never actually told us anything about herself?
Though I guess you could say her ending causes quite an impact.
8. Monkey's Paw Customer
Did I forget this had happened? Perhaps!
She's one of those cases where the cause and effect are so clear that the rest of the cast might as well not even be there - and I think most of her story IS told through scenes entirely from her perspective.
I think the most memorable thing about her is the Sheer Audacity of hunting down a monkey's paw and being convinced that, actually, she already knows what it does so it can't possibly go wrong. Love that for her. Would kill for this confidence.
(Not literally - but she kind of did that also)
7. Ame Warashi
Her impeccable style. Her winning charm. She's an icon.
I had just completely forgotten that she was also a customer at one point.
She makes up for it for being absolutely great in every scene she was in, but what are you going to do in a list based purely on how well I remember the customer part? Woops! My bad!
6. Karasu Tengu
They get huge points for this being a Central Event in the narrative, but also I completely forgot they were in this as customers. The entire plot scenario? Incredible! Character defining! Et cetera!
The actual Karasu Tengu themselves? Woops! I forgot they were there. My fault though!
5. The Computer Addict
I love this one. She's so ahead of the curve that she was addicted to the internet back when you had to be on the pc to use it. Honestly, relatable. I also went through a phase like this as a young teen, so the struggle was real.
Little did we all know that in the present day the accessibility of the internet would be so rampant that she literally wouldn't even need that pc to indulge her habits anymore. Oops!
But that aside Yuuko is peak during this arc and I love everything about it. Especially the fact that Yuuko just hangs out on message boards in her free time? Wonderful information. I can do so much with this.
4. Oops! All Ghosts
Another incredible storyline. The twists are preserved by some sneaky panels from Watanuki's perspective and Yuuko's morally grey approach to the whole situation is wonderful. What if you wanted to get rid of the ghost in your home, only to find out that YOU were the ghost all along? It has the DISTRESS. It has the CONFLICT. It has the TRAGEDY. 10/10
3. Haunted Photo
Another customer with Peak Audacity. Trying to wish away the consequences of your own actions? Committing something awful but being unable to actually look at the proof yourself? The ultimate wish being an anxiety inducing curse that is sure to fail? Love it.
It's also one of those juicy situations where the morality of the situation basically drives itself. The customer causes her own problems and can't actually be saved - and doesn't deserve it either.
And honestly I think CLAMP should get a lot of credit for having the haunting effects of a photograph slowly turning around in a purely static medium. They really pulled that off.
I still love the evil smile in the photograph the last time we see it. PURE memorable.
2. The Twin
WE LOVE HER? WE LOVE HER.
Being consistently cut off and run down and overwritten and slowly clawing your way out of the situation through the sheer desire to be your own person?
And then the answer is a haircut?
It's another glimpse into the side of Yuuko that really does try cut people a good bargain. The wish could have been taken in any number of ways, but Yuuko went for the easiest and most affordable way that would genuinely help the customer actually fix her life on her own. She didn't specifically need supernatural help for this, but it was the route that presented itself, and it was the one that got her the help she needed when she needed it. Very hitsuzen, very relatable, very identifiable storyline that sticks with you.
Just like the final entry!
1. Kohane
Listen do I even need to explain this one.
Kohane is like THE storyline. It's THE example of what it's all about. It's not entirely supernatural in nature but completely heart wrenching. It has Watanuki playing a central role in fixing the problem, setting up for his future (or at least, what I assume it will be). It ties xxxHolic to Tsubasa and hints at a secret tool that will help with someone later.
And it has Kohane! You can't go wrong.
#I'm not counting the ghost who tries to kill Watanuki#because she was lonely#Or uh... all the other ghosts that try to kill Watanuki#Didn't buy anything! Not customers!#replies#traditionalartist#not liveblogging the reservoir chronicle#xxxholic#Oh am I doing a ranking list for no reason?#YES ABSOLUTELY#Listen I love it#I'll rank anything for any reason#But also#The thematic links between all the longer Customer arcs?#The overlaps between the computer addict the twin and kohane?#The line between the haunted photo and kohane's mother?#Wonderful#I love how they play with themes all the way through#But in different flavours and in different stages
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Mother and son shaped by trauma: a deeper look into Alma and Bruno's damaged relationship
Alma and Bruno's mother-son relationship seems like such a minor aspect of the movie, but when you give it some thought, despite the limited focus, it's not only a very complex relationship, but also a narratively significant one.
Obviously we don't have a lot of information on it, but let me reflect a bit on the things we do know, while trying to fill in some blanks. Long post ahead.
Back to the start - how did it go so wrong?
There's one particularly interesting detail that Jared Bush shared on a podcast some time ago. It mostly comes down to the reason Bruno's visions were usually so negative: because that's how he was taught to use his gift by his mother, who would ask him to look into the future for any possible dangers to their home.
Now, this makes perfect sense for Alma's character and gives a great insight into how her trauma affected her. It's a completely natural consequence of the tragedy she experienced - of course she would be gripped by fear and desperate to protect her home from another tragedy at all cost. And the power of foresight is seemingly the ultimate key to preventing tragedy, so of course she would rely on her child's gift for that...
...and yes, that's a great burden to put on your child's shoulders and something that clearly had troubling consequences. The particularly frustrating thing being that those consequences could have been largely prevented only if Bruno had proper understanding and emotional support.
The thing is...the understanding and support probably were there for some time. Some bonus materials suggest that Bruno was not always the black sheep of the family, but quite the opposite. He was apparently once the golden child of the family - until people began to believe his gift was actually responsible for bad future events.
Which brings me to the important question: why did it go so wrong? If Alma herself believed Bruno's gift could help prevent disaster, how and why did this belief that it's actually causing disaster came to be? Didn't she try to protect her son from his gift being horribly misunderstood?
Well, I'd like to give Alma the benefit of the doubt that she did try to protect him, at least when he was a child. But I do wonder if she simply grew exhausted by Bruno at some point, as he grew older? Exhausted by his unclear visions, which were hard to control and not that helpful after all (I think Dolores' verse in WDTAB kinda suggests it). Exhausted by Bruno's eccentric personality that was so far away from the "perfect image" she wanted for the family. And maybe that frustration led to her ultimately neglecting him emotionally and enabling the negative attitude to his gift, even if it wasn't intentional on her part.
Broken trust
Again, this is all just my interpretation and I don't want to assume the worst without any proof... however, I do think it's reasonable to believe that Alma did fail Bruno in some way.
And she might have not realized it, but I think Bruno himself very much felt she failed him. That would also explain his evident lack of trust in her. I talked in one of my previous posts how Bruno not trusting Alma with the vision about Mirabel is a big red flag that something was very wrong in the family. Ideally, he should have been able to trust his mother with the vision, but we were as far from the ideal scenario as we could be - Bruno choosing to hide the vision is a clear sign how damaged his relationship with his mother was at this point and how broken his trust in her was.
Ironically, if Bruno's decision was a result of broken trust in his mother...the same decision also broke her trust in him.
Let's look at it from her (sympathetic but misguided) perspective for a moment. Bruno's gift was something she had relied on in order to protect her family. And so many years later, no matter what the present attitude to his gift was, she still went to him in a difficult moment. So the fact that he essentially denied her that help would definitely feel like a huge betrayal - for Alma it probably looked like Bruno had betrayed the family and betrayed the miracle.
Those would be the understandable feelings of a traumatized woman who probably couldn't stand losing someone she loves yet again - believing Bruno betrayed and abandoned them because he doesn't care was likely a kind of coping mechanism to numb the grief.
Regardless of how understandable those feelings might be though, this coping mechanism was deeply unhealthy and harmful. What's more, the choice to paint Bruno as the bad guy shows horrible lack of self-awareness. And that lack of self-awareness only intensified the unhealthy environment in the family.
Because in the end, Bruno leaving the family should have been the wake-up call that the "perfect" family might have some issues to work through and something needs to change to avoid driving away anyone else. Alma might have not known Bruno's motives to leave, might have been understandably angry and hurt about him hiding the vision, but she definitely should have reflected on her own mistakes as a mother that led to Bruno making this decision.
Protecting the family and understanding the true miracle
But beyond how trauma shaped their relationship, I think there's something else at the core of the issue: their love for their family and their different understanding of what it means to protect it.
I talked about how Alma went to Bruno in a difficult moment, when she feared for the future of the miracle - and that the fact he never gave her the vision and simply ran away must have felt like a betrayal to the miracle.
In some way Bruno did betray the miracle - he betrayed the miracle in the way Alma understood the miracle at that point, as a source of magic more than anything else. And ironically, by doing so, Bruno showed that he actually understood what the miracle was truly about.
Alma was so fixated on protecting the miracle that she ended up losing sight of what was truly important and hurt the family. On the other hand, Bruno saw a threat to the miracle and yet still chose protecting his young niece's well being over anything else - one "giftless" little girl mattered more than the magic.
My point here isn't "Alma bad, Bruno good", that's a huge simplification. Both of those characters were very damaged and were going to unhealthy extremes to protect what was important to them. I'm not saying Bruno's decision to hide the vision was the "right" one or something to be glorified - I mostly think that it's a decision that should have never been made and again, the fact he felt he had to do that shows the deep rooted issues within the family.
But ultimately, he did have the right priority there - of course Mirabel's well being matters more than the magic. Every member of the family matters more than the magic. That's the whole point of the movie and the core of Alma's character arc - realizing that the family itself is the greatest gift.
And one detail I particularly like is that Alma and Bruno are the two people to tell Mirabel she's the real miracle in the end - it shows their values are finally on the same page and there's finally hope for mutual understanding between them.
#Encanto#encanto meta#bruno madrigal#alma madrigal#my meta#long post#bear with me writing long encanto meta again#a lot of this has probably been discussed before
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Why was Louis so angry with Lestat when he was the one who stood by when Claudia tried to kill him?
(Doesn't the latter part of your ask play into that though?^^)
Louis was angry with Lestat (and resentful) because he blamed what later happened on Lestat, or at least... tried to curb the pain by doing so.
The thing is that Lestat was told not to tell, or else (by Marius). And at that point he did not know whether Marius would hold him to that promise/threat.
So Louis and Claudia never got many explanations, it was painfully obvious that Lestat did not tell them what they wanted (or needed) to know.
And... he also didn't tell them the details about Paris either, obviously. Or Armand. Or the cult. Et cetera.
Louis goes to Europe with Claudia, they travel for a few years, and eventually get to Paris, and start to live again, finally.
And then they encounter the coven there and Armand pulls Louis in, falls for him, Louis falls for Armand... and Armand decides to have Louis and to get rid of Claudia.
"I must have Louis, that was my injunction. I knew no other."
He is the coven master, he has never had a lot of qualms about "cleaning up" (does not have any qualms about this later either) and Claudia is definitely against the rules. And in the way. He tells her to let Louis go, Claudia goes to Louis... and Louis fails her again, turning to Armand. And the tragedy unfolds.
After the trial Louis is being spell-bound by Armand, calmed to leave.
And Armand’s eye said, Sleep.
After Louis' revenge they leave Paris, and Armand tags along... but Louis is only a shell afterwards, a numb and passionless thing that continues on because he cannot not.
Louis, my companion, dried up of his own free will, rather like a beautiful rose skillfully dehydrated in sand so that it retains its proportions, nay, even its fragrance and even its tint. For all the blood he drank, he himself became dry, heartless, a stranger to himself and tome.
It is after they break up that Louis encounters Daniel in the books, gives that (first) interview.
He is jaded, angry at how things turned out. He does not yet know why Lestat withheld all this knowledge, all this history. (That is part of the reason why Lestat actually writes down his own story!)
Louis holds the grudge that Lestat's withholding his knowledge resulted in Claudia's death. And how their life together ended.
That is part of why he is angry still in the books.
(That anger will be gone by the time he actually understands, after reading Lestat's book and reuniting with him.)
Now.
This quote from Jacob calls back to all of that, as he directly refers to the original story.
But... the Louis in Dubai is not that, not really angry.
He probably was, but in the 70s he's already referring the "terrible thing" he did once, that he regrets.
For him... other aspects come into play. And I can only refer to the awesome Gizmodo article by @lincodega here, published almost a year ago. I can only recommend reading it, but ultimately it boils down to this quote:
"The motivation to embellish the worst parts and understate the best parts is literally standing in the room with him."
And, as a last note, on a bit of a tangent, but because I think that is good to keep in mind for this interview:
"At the end of the night, Armand is not to be trusted! It’s not just that Rashid is Armand-coded, but the entire season is Armand-coded. Armand is a master manipulator, a manifestation of 500 years of traumatic, absolutely batshit insane cult behaviour, and the boy has fangs the size of the Ottoman empire. Armand takes mansplain, manipulate, malewife to unprescended levels of insanity. Like, I love him, he’s a weird little gremlin who plays with blenders and starts a podcast, for some reason, but he’s absolutely out of gourd and willing to do anything to keep everything just how he likes it, and that includes Louis."
#Anonymous#amc iwtv#iwtv#amc interview with the vampire#interview with the vampire amc#iwtv amc#iwtv 2022#interview with the vampire#lestat de lioncourt#louis de pointe du lac#loustat#armand#loumand#angry
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Thinking about the nature of John Gaius' powers: There's a duality to them. There's death energy but also life energy. He can stop hearts but also stop decay.
So, John's powers were, at the very least, on the way towards allowing him to recreate what his cryno project was attempting to do. The whole point of the project was to put people into a death-like state where food/water/waste/etc isn't a concern so that they could be packed into spaceships like sardines and moved to another planet.
John would need ships - and you don't get ships without some form of government, even if it was one John established himself - and the ability to revive people across distance (which John probably wasn't able to do early on), but I can see a plan John could have pursued if he'd prioritized saving people over retribution.
Alecto effectively gave him the power to do his cryno plan.
I LOVE that we still don’t know the full scope of his powers. Very cool, very scary. Whatever they are, they clearly go far beyond necromancy / thanergy, and probably did so from the start. However, I’m actually not that sure that Alecto bestowed those powers on John deliberately, and I tend to see it as a mixed blessing even in the best circumstances (and a horrible gamble in most of them).
IMO, the biggest sticking point is this: at one point, John was always going to get to the stage where the next step would be to “reach for the soul” and find Alecto; and I’m not sure he could have been able to handle that. In canon it happened in a moment of incredible stress, watching a close friend commit suicide in front of him, and he went absolutely insane.
From the way John’s POV describes it, though, I think it would have been overwhelming no matter what. Even if there had been no conflicts with the ships, no cow wall, even if he had agreed to go along with C— plan and try to freeze the ice caps instead of focusing on revenge... would he still have felt the screaming soul of the Earth, and melted the poles in a moment of overwhelmed terror, just to make it stop?
To me, John’s backstory is less about how his human failings brought about the apocalypse, and more about how a random well-meaning human can’t handle that amount of power and come out of it still recognisable. I think he was always going to destroy the world, one way or the other. John’s personal failings shape the way the Earth died, and the next ten thousand years of his life; but I don’t think it actually made much of a difference to Earth’s ultimate fate. He was always going to destroy it, one way or the other.
(On John’s specific powers: I’m also not sure if they were intentional on Alecto’s part, manifested that way because the Earth was dying [= thanegery] or because he was wrapped up in a project that involved dead bodies. But, even if he had been able to develop his powers to a point where he would go from controlling the dead to being able to put billions of living humans in suspended animation at no risk to their health... would that state have “kept” if the entire population had left Earth? He hadn’t eaten Alecto yet, and we know necromancy doesn’t work in space.)
Anyway. I think it would be possible that under the right specific super ideal circumstances, something good might have come of Alecto choosing a human to channel her powers; but it was a one in a billion chance. But I think it’s more in line with the themes of TLT — the Greek tragedy of it all! — that humans have very little agency when gods decide to interfere, and are just not meant to be receptacles of divine powers. If it hadn’t been John, it would have been someone else. If it hadn’t been the ships, it would’ve been something else. I think they were always doomed.
#tlt meta#ntn#ejg#tlt#alecto#tlt thoughts#griseldagimpel#i feel very strongly that john exercised his right to free will and making shitty choices. but it only started to matter after he became go#imo. they were always doomed from the moment alecto decided to bestow a whole bunch of powers on a random human#without any instructions and screaming in his head#like he fucked up but she fucked up first#that's how u know they're made for each other#ask
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Well…DFF episode 11 was a ride. It gave me fucking whiplash, seriously.
I am still holding onto hope that Non is somehow alive. It didn’t stop me from feeling sick at seeing his supposed dead body, since I really don’t know, but I’m still holding onto hope, even tho I expected his death for weeks. There was something about the way it happened that felt incredibly anticlimactic compared to how the writing has been so far. Regardless, everyone in that boy’s life failed him. Everyone. He didn’t deserve an ounce of his fate.
Tee is such an interestingly grey character, though. He’s involved with his uncle, who he knows is a gangster, yet he’s surprisingly naive to the potential consequences for getting Non involved.
From the beginning of the flashbacks in episode 4, I had wondered if Tee was being setup as the one who wronged Non the most to later give him a redemption arc. What is interesting is how he tried to gain that redemption, with the part time job where he worked extra hard to help Non pay off his debt.
The thing about Tee is that he is ultimately a child with an unfair burden on his shoulders. He’s taking care of his father, who is not really lucid, although ambulatory and unpredictable. Add that to being forced to work for his violent uncle, it’s not surprising that Tee acted out as a bully to Non.
But he ultimately failed his redemption. Non died anyway (as far as he’s aware, because again, clinging to hope Non is alive). Yet Tee somehow found somebody he loves, who makes him want to be a better man.
It surprised me at how I was actually able to enjoy the TeeWhite montage. They are an adorable couple and I love how much of a flirt White is. The circumstances of their meeting (which, lol Internet cafe, not what I expected at all) make it seem less likely to me that White factors into any kind of plans. Which makes me actually concerned that something will happen to White. Their story just feels like it was primed for tragedy, Tee reforming himself because he met the boy of his dreams, only for that boy to be killed by someone with a grudge because of his past wrongs.
I had a feeling we’d end up with Phee pointing the gun at Tan bc he didn’t want to go through with any killing. I didn’t think he would be one to go through with that sort of thing, he only agreed to find out the truth & implicate the group. Love the turn of events with Tan drugging everybody to take control of the situation.
Next episode appears to be full of hallucinations that the group experience. I guess Tan’s plan is to let them experience terror before he kills them? Not that I want anyone in particular to die, but I feel like the setup promised to kill people on par with a slasher flick. I’m ready for the horror film part.
As much as I’ve enjoyed watching week by week and speculating, this is the kind of series where the ending is crucial to whether I say I liked it overall or not. That’s not often true for me. I’m not sure if I’m setting up to be satisfied with the ending, though. One more week to go.
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Hi,.....if you don't mind me asking, can I ask your top 5 (or top 3) favorite characters from SVSSS? And why you loved them? And your top 5 favorite moments from the novel? Sorry if you've answered this question before....Thanks....
Sorry for the late reply, I was offline for a bit when it was sent and the notif got buried!
Characters
Yue Qingyuan. I think it will come as no surprise to anyone given my blog title and header lol. Explaining why I love him so much would turn into a full character analysis, but he is just So soggy and bitable. He tries so hard but lives in a world where he's destined to fail, both because of his background and the narrative he's trapped in. He cares so much in a world that will never reward him for that. He repeats the same mistakes over and over because he can't see an alternative path. He is SO SAD AND SO DIVORCED and so traumatized but probably has a complete inability to recognize that fact and he loves and loves and loves but love is not enough to save anyone.
Shen Jiu. He's probably the reason I'm obsessed with SVSSS, instead of just having a passing interest. A week or two after I read the novel for the first time, I started thinking about him and just ended up full on weeping. I find his character incredibly compelling; I love absolute messes, and I really really love seeing a depiction of trauma where the character does not come out stronger or "beautifully broken". It's hard not to be compelled by a character who literally represents the cycle of abuse, who is allowed by the narrative to be both tragic victim and heinous abuser, who is allowed to show what abuse does to people. On a lighter note, I find his younger personality very funny, especially with his dynamic with Yue Qi. He's an absolute gremlin and he lends well to absurdity in lighter fics.
Luo Binghe. Who doesn't love the protagonist!! My reasons for loving Binghe overlap with my reasons for loving SJ— they're foils after all— but I think the core of it is that Binghe is just Deeply Human. He’s just a little guy who’s desperate to be loved. He’s a poorly trained puppy biting down to hold on to the only person who’s ever treated him properly. He’s never done anything wrong in his life.
Shen Qingqiu. His internal dialogue/ narration is why SVSSS is so fun to read! He’s the man shaping this tragedy into a comedy. He’s so insane and so unselfaware, I need to dissect him. Ultimately he’s just a really fun character! 10/10 would chuck him at a wall.
Liu Qingge. He has sword autism what more need I say. I don't talk about him as much on here because my interpretation of him tends to contradict fanon, but I love him so much and I shove him into so many OT3s.
Bonus: Qi Qingqi and Mu Qingfang. They're the two background characters with minimal characterization I've latched on to and created massive sprawling headcanons for. This is mostly because I think they are both very sexy.
Moments
So fun fact I have clinical memory issues and it’s been a little bit since I read all of SVSSS, so this is WAY harder for me, and I'll definitely miss something. But of what I can recall:
Xiao Jiu threatening to bash another boy’s head in with a rock, and Yue Qi saying “he didn’t mean it”, even though SJ Definitely Meant It and YQ Definitely Knew That. I just find it cute when children are violent I guess 🤣 (Cheng Qian my beloved), and It kind of foreshadows their later dynamic where YQY covers for SQQ without question— YQY thinks he’s doing the same thing as when they were kids, and SQQ thinks YQY is trying to sweep a troublesome mess under the rug. In general, YQY puts a lot more value on their times as slaves than SQQ does/ is more nostalgic for it (probably because YQY’s Intensely traumatic moments were after he joined CQMS, whereas the worst parts of SQQ’s life were all before that point (until Bingge lol))
YQY paying for SQQ’s gambling at the the IAC. Canonized his findom kink.
“My hand slipped 🙂” YQY’s sexist moment in the book imo. Makes me scream on reread.
CQMS will always stand by you 🥹🥹🥹 (honestly any moment where LQG/YQY/the other PLs go to bat for SQQ)
“In this life I’ll give all my loyalty to you” I LOVE THIS LINE SO MUCH AND IM SO SAD MTXT CUT IT IN THE REVISION
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A rant about Shadow’s trauma
I am sick of hearing about Maria. Okay okay, bold statement and I'm being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic, but let me explain.
No matter how you portray Shadow, Maria will most likely be mentioned, since it’s an important part of his character, motivations etc. I think we should pay more attention to the circumstances of his grief though; the real tragedy isn’t the loss itself, it runs deeper than that (I'm not saying anything new here). Let me break it down, the way I see it.
1.) Identity loss: When someone close to you dies a part of yourself dies with them. With your parents’ death you cease to be someone’s child forever. In Shadows case it’s even more extreme: not only did he loose Maria, he also lost his purpose by failing to do the one thing he was made to do. Imagine, your entire life stripped away from you in a matter of seconds, leaving you with absolutely no point to even exist. With his now non-existent purpose and identity as a whole he became a blank slate for someone else's revenge, a vessel powered by sorrow. Most likely only Maria saw her as a person on the ARK, so what is he with that one singular column gone? A weapon, a tool of destruction, the Ultimate Lifeforms made to destroy the planet.
2.) Closure: When your abuser(s) die it’s a strange feeling. The person/people who made you miserable are finally gone, but what’s left is just emptiness. They made you the way you are, and now they’re gone, but you're still the same. He didn’t get revenge on any of those people. The fantasy of standing up against them verbally or physically (taking out years of abuse is now unreachable. So is the fantasy of it ever getting better. Now you can’t hope that someday they’ll do better. They now never will. Shadow’s left without any kind of closure in relation to his trauma he received on the ARK.
3.) Time to process: Presumably he was around 15-17 like the rest of the Sonic cast at the time of the incident. Almost immediately after seeing the most important person in his life die, he was put into stasis for 50 years. In both SA2 and ShtH 05 he woke up in a completely unfamiliar world with turbid memories, grief still fresh and pervasive. In the midst of world ending level threats constantly looming overhead in almost all games I don’t think he sat down with a psychologist and ever processed what happened. (If you age him up or make any kind of AU where he has time to deal with all this then let him process his trauma. Time heals all wounds pls let the guy leave some of his baggage behind.)
4.) Help: Childhood emotional neglect and other shit make it impossible for him to even reach out for help. Learned behaviour that emotions are not okay (to feel or show), difficulty connecting with peers, hard time asking for help, lashing out instead ect etc.
+This is why I think SA2 was a good, complete arc for him. He came to the planet with revenge and destruction in mind, a weapon that Gerald forged motivated by the immense sense of anguish. He died finally getting closure: He fulfilled his real purpose, his identity restored in some way. I like to think that he died peacefully partly because he knew his promise to Maria would continue to be fulfilled by Sonic. In the English version during the Final Hazard fight he even gave up the title he so desperately clings to in other games ‘The Ultimate Lifeform’. Unlike in other games here he doesn’t need that title and identity, it is no longer the only piece of himself that he has left, so he “offers” it for the person who he sees fit as an extension of his legacy. ("Sonic, I think I've discovered what the Ultimate Life Form is, it might be you!")
Okay all this ended up being a whole lot less cohesive than I intended and I just want to say I have more thoughts on this but I'm stupid dummy dumb dumb and can’t put it into words. (Analysing media is all fun and games until I have to explain then suddenly brain go mush.) This post is a pretty personal analysis, most of it isn’t factual in any way, I just want to provoke thoughts in others about this subject, since I often see his grief be reduced to “Maria is dead Shadow is big sad about it :(” which is fine, but there’s so much to explore.
If you have any opinions on this, contradictory or other don’t be shy talk. I want. to hear everything.
#sorry for shit grammar#sth#sonic the hedgehog#shadow the hedgehog#sa2#sth rant#I swear I can interpret media 'correctly'#rotating shadow in my head isn't enough anymore I need to maul him to death
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(second post) extensively noted im RLY unclear on a lot of endgame gintama. i am disabled and it makes me a bad reader and im irritable abt it and i dont really want anyone to explain things to me on this Specific post lol. im just thinking things thru to myself.
hard to hold a lot of sugi's gayass trauma mental processes in my head all at once. the elisions between destroying the world [math symbol] destroying gintoki who stands in the way of that as a universal constant [math symbol] destroying the political foundations of the country from the inside using connections with the same forces (this guy does NOT understand the larger background plots of gintama and isnt sure if this is correct ->) that in part got his teacher killed and set this whole thing off* [math symbol] destroying himself.
(*side note i think there was a real missed opportunity to bookend all of sugi's political maneuvering which was treated by the plot as. SIGNIFICANT. and extensive. and effective. and one step ahead of all the chars we see pre-utsuro reveals. by revisiting it after the utsuro reveals and coming down on his schemes as either ultimately fruitless and really just getting him in over his head bc he didnt understand the real forces at play OR still effective bc sorachi wanted to retroactively say he and katsura understood all the shadowy background shenanigans. but zura kind of takes over the role of political maneuverer. but worse and stupider.)
(not a WHOLE lot under the cut its just getting unwieldy as a post.)
like if he just wants to kill himself why does he have to take the world down with him (katsura planning a beautiful death seppuku line). if he's doing this out of love for gintoki (canon fact.) why does gintoki need to be broken.
but if i stop trying to untangle what materially he means by all of that then i can understand sugi's actions post-execution as kind of in parallel with my understanding of oboro and utsuro's, which is to say, they are acting on behalf of what they think are universal laws of nature both because they believe in them and also to push the world to the breaking point to test their immutability and prove their fatalistic worldviews right or wrong. [with gintoki as the main tool to do so.]
sugi's inability to reconcile gintoki's decision to save them over sensei bc he cant understand how he'd possibly deserve it + resents gintoki for going against their understood mutual sensei as number one priority + grieves for gintoki having to bear that cross. um. turns into the desire to. destroy the world that made gintoki cry -> gintoki is an unshakeable barrier of protection in front of that world -> prove that the world sucks and isnt worth protecting by making it into sugi's own most pessimistic conceptions of it from childhood that shouyou had started to prove him wrong about -> push gintoki to a point where he will realize that he chose wrong and sugi was meant to die instead
and in parallel. avenge the death of the man who had shown him a better path in life -> throw away the life that man had sacrificed himself to protect -> um if i go down this path i just start rewriting reductionisms' proofs on seppuku and bushido again. waves hand. take the contradictory tragedy as laid out.
like utsuro trying the open mind+open heart gambit for one life and then immediately giving up. and oboro. well oboro is harder to unpack and summarize for me. but he serves utsuro's goals in service of his own goal of. proving rebellion like he and shouyou tried is futile? takes it upon himself to destroy shouyou's legacy to prove it's okay that shouyou-the-concept died. idk a lot of layers going on in oboro its not important to focus on here.
the. making a half-step of progress into a better world that you're having to pioneer and imagine into existence. and then, when u fail under the world's pushback, deciding to undo all that progress with your own hands. and one guy says no, it's still possible, and im going to do it. and you're like. what if i made it as hard as possible so that if u succeed despite that u realize my dearest hopes with IRREFUTABLE proof so that i dont have to face how scary it is to try without knowing if its even possible.
WHIIIIIIIICH. i find all of that incredibly sexy on all of their parts. i enjoy it a lot i like it when humans act out of irrepressible existential fear bc fuck man. living is scary. thats basically the backbone of every gintama antagonist and gintoki [who carries on shouyou's desire to fight and win against his own nature, and thus is himself an antagonist].
whiiiiiiiiiiich. makes it so interesting that these three specifically. other than bansai lol. are the ONLY!!!!!! real casualties of the story conclusion. that gintoki DOES carry thru and realize all their hopes of the world for them by beating them as obstacles. AND they dont get to live and see the fruits of it. but im not prepared to unpack what that means narratively at this point in time.
#sopping wet gintoki posting#[googles something and gets into topology] well thats enough of that. for tonight.#my beautiful faildaughters#and their faildad whos a small child afraid of dying
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Ok the Gutsca scene. The reason it parallels so heavily with the scene of Griffith in the lake isn't because it's all about Griffith, it's to illustrate how Griffith failed to grow as a person where Guts and Casca succeed through their mutual love for each other. Griffith in the lake is actively repressing his pain and trauma while putting on a persona and masking his true feelings from Casca and not accepting her help. Not only that but Griffith never fully shows his true self to anyone. 1/?
He shows it to Guts somewhat and Casca see's it in the lake scene but other than that they're always subjected to Griffith's persona and not the real man underneath making their connections to him not completely genuine. Whereas Guts and Casca's relationship is built on them opening up to each and letting themselves be fully vulnerable with each other, giving them both what they've truly wanted for their entire lives. A genuine connection and bond with another person who fully accepts them 2/?
Despite their flaws and traumatic pasts. And they both grow in the wounds chapters because they do let themselves be fully vulnerable, Casca pours out all of her emotions, insecurities and hang ups while Guts opens up about something he's repressed his entire life. There's no personas, no masks. Just a genuine connection or trust, honesty and acceptance between two people who have never truly had that before. With Guts accepting his vulnerability rather than hiding it like Griffith did
I disagree. Casca gets Griffith's persona so to her Guts' vulnerability is an improvement, but Guts gets Griffith's real self, and Griffith revealing his true self to Guts is a hugely significant theme of the Golden Age. Like it's the whole point of Tombstone of Flame, and it's the lynchpin of their entire friendship, from day one when Casca starts internally freaking out about how Griffith is acting so differently around Guts. He's still in denial about some things even to himself, but Guts gets the most genuine version of him Griffith has to offer, and that gets pretty genuine by the end of the war. Here's my detailed take if you care enough to read a long essay lol, here's a less detailed take on the idealization of Griffith and how it affects his relationship with Guts, and another take that discusses Griffith and all of the Hawks as well as Guts.
And here are some of my counterpoints re: your reading of Guts and Casca's relationship:
Guts and Casca's relationship can be seen as one of many mistakes leading to the Golden Age tragedy
Guts and Casca's relationship isn't great in the four days between fucking and Eclipse
Guts and Casca's relationship is built on an emotional imbalance that informs the trajectory of their relationship post-Eclipse
The stark flaws of Guts and Casca's relationship
How Guts and Casca only work in the absence of Griffith
It's possible that Miura intended for Guts and Casca to be a very positive, healing, and emotionally honest relationship and just failed to depict that very well, but tbh I doubt that. I don't want to go searching for links, you can find them in my 'interviews' tag generally anyway, but he has said that he had Guts and Casca get together for the sake of more Eclipse drama, only had Casca survive the Eclipse so Guts wouldn't be able to move on, and has described them as eternally in the stage before falling in love. None of that definitively means that Guts and Casca's relationship was meant to be heavily flawed from the start, but it does indicate that they're not meant to be a healthy happily ever after relationship so it lends weight to the flaws imo.
My take is that they're two friends hooking up with some sweet moments to sell the new relationship feelings, but ultimately doomed to failure even without the Eclipse, in part because they're not emotionally on the same page, and in part because while Casca may have been able to shift her feelings from Griffith to Guts, Guts never had any intention of moving on from Griffith himself - the whole point of his dream journey was to be his bff. Casca was one step on the road to that goal.
Anyway yeah, feel free to check these posts out if you're interested, and if not we'll have to agree to disagree here.
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legacy, duty, and generations in sekiro
no but okay, there is absolutely something fundamental and foundational about the way that the different generations of character is sekiro make up part of the plot. i literally cannot understate how important this - the fact that there are multiple generations of characters - and the role of inheritance of duty between generations plays in the core themes, and the core tragedy, of the story.
because like, there are so many of the characters (of the bosses lol) who are these very old people, almost elderly, more than a few retired, who play absolutely fundamental roles within the story. we have owl, wolf’s father and teacher. we have lady butterfly, similarly a very powerful aging figure of the same generation. we have lord isshin, and even the sculptor. all of these figures, they represent old guard of a previous age of glory - a previous generation, who’s stories and legacies are fundamental to the plot. twenty years ago, lord isshin (with the help of people like owl, the sculptor, and others) lead a coup and a revolt that won ashina its freedom, making it an independent state, and the story as it unfolds is the tale of how the next generation is trying to pick up and carry on that legacy.
and this concept - legacies being passed on from one generation to the next, the duty that the younger generation inherits and how they have to hold it up - is what makes and breaks the main characters of sekiro, namely wolf and genichiro.
wolf and genichiro are foils of one another, both of whom are in essentially the same situation and who’s parallels are indisputable. because right, they’re both children adopted by the hero’s of that victorious aging generation, brought up to pick up the duty of their line. genichiro is there to be lord isshin’s heir, the next lord of the ashina clan, the next protector of ashina, while wolf is owl’s successor, a weapon created to continue owl’s legacy and to carry out his purpose.
duty makes and breaks these characters. at their heart, it is their fundamental driving principle. genichiro’s duty is to ashina as a whole, the land itself, and protecting and saving ashina is his singular focus, to the point where he’s tearing himself apart to do it (his fucking arms, my god the lightning burns). he will do anything to protect his homeland, because if it doesn’t it means that he’s failed. his grandfather won ashina’s freedom, and genichiro is the one who has to step into his shoes and protect it in the next war, when history repeats itself and the same forces come back seeking to consume it. his loyalty is to a place, and in his drive to protect it drives him to do terrible things, abandoning his morals in the hopes of finding a way to protect his home, ultimately resulting in him sacrificing his own life - literally putting the sword to his own throat and bleeding himself dry - for the hope that it will be enough to summon a protector who will be able to keep ashina and its people safe.
wolf, in contrast, has his duty centred on a person. first it is on owl, who raises him and creates of him a shinobi. then it’s on kuro, who owl presents wolf to. literally, it’s the iron code that owl gives wolf: “your father's word always comes first, your master's a close second.” at every point throughout the story, wolf’s first and only priority is in obeying kuro and seeing that he is safe. it’s his driving force, it’s what he does. wolf ultimately isn’t taking part in the war and fighting for the sake of the war itself or any morals or stances he has about it - he fights both members of the interior ministry and members of ashina’s defences, not caring what side they’re on. wolf is ultimately on his own side in the war, an independent party whose sole priority is in seeing kuro through the conflict safely. if wolf cared about the outcome of the war, or about ashina’s defence, the defence of his homeland, then he wouldn’t be ruthlessly slaughtering the main generals in charge of trying to hold the front.
so, like genichiro, wolf is driven by a singular focus and an all consuming duty centered on one thing. like genichiro, he is willing to tear himself apart and even sacrifice himself in order to see kuro safe. this parallel, if you take the purification ending, is literally one to one, right down to the type of sword each one uses for the act. the black mortal blade for genichiro, sacrificing himself to try and bring back a glorious protector strong enough to see ashina to another age of victory; the red mortal blade for wolf, sacrificing himself in order to free kuro from the curse of his bloodline and finally allow him to live an untethered life.
what we see throughout the story is the remnants and legacy of a brighter age, one in which the story had a happy ending and ashina’s heros were successful in winning its freedom. the tragedy of the story, the crux of it, is in the handing over of this legacy from one generation to another and the way they try - fuck, genichiro tries so so fucking hard - and fail to carry it forward. the torch is being passed onwards, only to stumble and be guttered out.
what ultimately makes the difference between wolf and genichiro, however, is the way each one interacts with their given duty and the way that wolf (in some endings) ultimately rejects the legacy that is being handed down to him.
because okay we have genichiro, who picks up the duty that isshin hands him and burns himself into the ground trying to carry it out. he’s so desperate to uphold his duty and to protect ashina that he is forced to walk willingly down the path to great evil - creating the ogre creatures, kidnapping kuro to try and convince him to give him the immortal oath, everything and anything to create a weapon strong enough to hold back the tide, even if that weapon is himself. he carries out his duty, and it corrupts him, and it destroys him, and ultimately it is all for nothing.
with wolf, however, this moment comes to a climax with [SPOILERS] owl’s return. he’s carried out his duty so far, he’s protected kuro and he’s followed his orders and he’s kept him safe - all at owl’s behest. remember, the father comes first, the master second. the reason wolf first starts serving kuro is because owl tells him to, and wolf’s duty is to owl. that is the duty he’s inherited - to be a weapon and a tool, to follow owl’s commands, to be a loyal shinobi in his service.
(and there’s something to be said here too, about the fact that wolf and genichiro are both ultimately weapons picked up and shaped by their adopted parental figures for a specific purpose - genichiro as a shield that protects ashina and wolf as a blade to cut down owl’s enemies)
the thing is though, is that wolf does come to care for kuro. he develops as a person, learns compassion, learns mercy, becomes more human than what owl had created him as. when owl comes to wolf and tells him to forsake kuro and hand over the divine heir, seeking to make use of his immortality, wolf has a choice. and its here, in this choice that we see how wolf’s own journey can either mirror or diverge from genichiro’s.
if wolf obeys - obeys that duty, follows it, holds onto it with both hands and doesn’t let go, doesn’t think, doesn’t question - then he forsakes kuro and becomes a shura. like genichiro, following his duty and not letting go leads to him walking down into darkness and becoming corrupted. he becomes a monster, nothing inside him but violence and hate, the likes of the demon of hatred.
if wolf disobeys - if he rejects his duty, rejects the legacy that owl is trying to pass onto him, to be a true and cold shinobi, heartless and without feeling - then his path diverges from genichiro’s. in rejecting his duty, he frees himself and is able to a get to an (arguably) happier end. he breaks from the iron code and rejects what owl created him to be, ultimately deciding to disobey owl and give his loyalty to another, to choose, in essence to feel and care rather than to be cold and heartless. and yes okay there are variations on what counts as “happy” as far as the severing, purification, and heading away endings, but i think we can say that in any single one of them wolf is happier than he would have been in the shura ending. (okay yes in the severing ending that’s questionable, but at the very least wolf has the absolution of having helped kuro carry out his wish and finally reach peace, knowing his bloodline will no longer be abused).
and i think its interesting, too, that the fact that wolf’s choice to go with or against owl, to reject or accept the duty and legacy being handed down by the previous generation, hinges on his relationship with kuro, a member of the generation to come. when wofl rejects owl, it is ultimately because he has decided that holding up the legacy of those who have come before is less important than protecting the future of those who are to come. he breaks from his duty to owl in order to provide the chance for kuro to break from his own heritage and the legacy of his bloodline in turn.
in kuro, we see the third generation entering this scene. we have the glorious vanguard of the past, those aging great heros; we have the middle generation, now grown and struggling to pick up the torch of those who have come before; and we have the youngest generation, who grow up in the shadow of it all, innocents subject to the bloody aftermath of the legacy of their forefathers.
and i just think it’s interesting, i guess, that for all that duty plays just a driving force in the motives of the wolf and genichiro, that it is ultimately only through rejecting duty and the burdens of the previous generations and choosing to walk his own path that wolf win a chance at happiness. in a story about inheritance, it is in the rejection of the path set out before you by others and in creating a path of your own that the story tells us we will find salvation.
#actually just gonna shove a whole book in there#sekiro#sekiro spoilers#wolf sekiro#genichiro sekiro#man this got a bit long#fromsoft#spoilers
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I adored Crash Course in Romance and I adored the ending. The entire series made me feel so warm and full. Again, it’s a refreshing series for me because there were a lot of beats that didn’t turn out the way the usually would in other kdramas and which I really loved, mainly the whole miscommunication trope. I was worried that Chiyeol would push Hangseon away after yet another trauma, but instead he only pulls her closer. One of the main reasons why I just love, love this series so much is because they communicate. They are unbelievably supportive toward each other. Instead the pain and miscommunication comes through Hangseon and Haeyi’s relationship which again I love because ultimately the crux of this series was the mother-daughter relationship between these two. I loved it because it was a realistic depiction of the complicated feelings someone in Haeyi’s situation would feel. The pain of thinking all this time she was a burden on her mom, and Hangseon’s pain at being rejected. I love the both of them because they have such a good head on their shoulders. Logically, they know that it shouldn’t matter that Hangseon wasn’t the one to give birth to Haeyi but they still struggle with how they stand in relation to each other. And that scene at the end which parallels Haeyi running to Haengseon as a kid was just beautiful.
Chiyeol said that he was changing, and that theme of change being reflected in everyone was again just beautiful. These are just a few points that I really loved and want to show my appreciation for:
Hangseon getting to fulfill her dream no matter her age. I adore her seriously. It’s not all roses, not perfect. It’s realistic in that she still fails twice, but she gets to be confident and happy as she studies, largely in part because of the great support system she has and how content she is with life. After everything she’s worked for and sacrificed I am just so happy she gets to have everything - her dream, her daughter, the love of her life. No wonder Chiyeol is smitten.
Jaewoo and Youngjoo happy together.
Su-a becoming more human. I cheered when she gave Haeyi those notes and how she was more expressive. Again I’m happy for her, for the chance to change.
Weirdly enough I liked Su-a’s mom and her arc. Because just no, nothing excuses cheating, bastard and I love the way she reacted. Likewise for Sun-jae’s mom and her own self-reflection and that it was her kids who finally pulled her back from the path of self-destruction. For what it’s worth, even after the reveal, they always referred to Hangseon as ‘Haeyi’s mother’.
The fact that there were consequences, for the above characters, and as shown by what happened to Mr. Ji. Because again, what happened to Mr. Ji was still a tragedy. Unlike Su-a, Sun-jae, and their moms, no one was there to stop him and to pull him back. I still think there could have been a chance for him if he took Chi-yeol’s hand. Likewise with Haeyi’s birth mom. Even if she is now regretting being out of place, there are indeed consequences to her leaving, but the drama isn’t so cynical as to completely close the door on her being part of the family. And again I love the drama so much because of that.
The sweet, sweet domesticity. How Chiyeol is patient and impatient in his own way. How he doesn’t want to crowd her and let her fulfill her dream at her own pace, but c’mon he just really wants to marry her so bad already (like booking and then cancelling the wedding hall without telling her). The little parallels like how Hangseon is now in Chiyeol’s place when he was still studying, and how Chiyeol can be there for Hangseon the way her mom was there for him. The way he just cheered like crazy the same way like when Haengseon told him Haeyi topped the mock exam. It is so funny to me why he still pretends to be all cool with his family when they all know how dorky he is. He is just so proud of his family, but now he’s close enough with his students that he can share that immense joy with them. I am so happy for him. When he was screaming “SHE PASSED!”, he was also basically just screaming, “I’M GETTING MARRIED!!!” He was so excited, ecstatic even. I wonder if all his students are invited. I’ve always wanted that for him. I am also so happy he was able to reconnect with his college friend.
Haeyi x Sunjae end game!!! I must admit that I was ready to have my heart broken because they really went through the ringer, but again I am soft for the best friends trope, and Haeyi is indeed her mom’s daughter. Of course she would be all gruff and embarrassed and fall for a dorky simp of a guy who just adores her. I’m happy for all of the kids. I’m happy they moved past their parents’ petty politics and grew.
The! Little! Touches! Of! Sweet! Domesticity! Again I cannot shut up about it. The way he kisses her cheek as he tells her how proud he is of her. They way they kiss the back of each other’s hand. Picking her up, Hangseon feeling all the flutters at being pampered (as she should!), I absolutely knew he was just waiting to propose to her! Hangseon taking action and the both of them proposing to each other!! He is down bad but he will refrain as Hangseon asks so that she can focus (but seriously he should know better as a teacher haha).
The only minor complaint I have is that we didn’t get to see the actual wedding. Like what is with that and kdramas haha. I have lost count of how many kdramas where I really wanted there to be a wedding in the end, but never getting it.
But all in all, I am so happy for my parents and kids. This is one of those few dramas where I loved everyone and hated no one. I loved everyone’s stories. This was my comfort watch during the weekends. I am so glad I started and finished it. I think I’ll really miss everyone.
Found family at its finest. I am full. 10/10
#crash course in romance#ccir#kdramas#ramblings about kdramas#huhu I don’t know what to occupy myself with on the weekends anymore#everything was just so soft and warm#I loved the soundtrack that played during haeyi sunjae and then hangseon and chiyeol’s scenes#peak romcom#def gonna be one of my fave kdramas
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The Loss of Magic in Adaptations
I've noticed that in a lot of media (TV shows, movies, some books) it's such a popular trend to end the story by removing the magic or supernatural elements. Now in movies like HTTYD this is played as a separation for the betterment of both the magical (the dragons) and the normal, but they are still able to interact at times. Others, like BBC's Merlin, have the loss of magic as a tragedy or a consequence of the character's actions. Yet others, like LOTR, simply have it as a sign of a shift to a new age. All of these examples I don't have an issue with, the ones I do are when the loss of magic creates plot holes, messes up character arcs, and rewriting the world building. What I'm going to focus on in this post are the decision to remove magic and the supernatural from Game of Thrones and the Star Wars franchise.
The first example I'll give is Game of Thrones. The AOIAF books are full of magic, from glass candles to forest witches to ice zombies and dragons. In the adaptation, the show runners made the decision to remove most of the magical elements. This decision not only removes major plot points, it also takes away from the characters themselves. For example, Euron Greyjoy from the books possesses a dragon binder of Old Valyria, is going to Old Town to take the magic glass candles from the Citadel, and wants to bring about the apocalypse. In the show, since they took away the magical elements of his story, he is simply a man who wants power and a good fuck. He is completely undermined as a character and turned into an ineffective villain. Another example is the character Quaithe. She is a shadowbinder from Asshai who visits Daenerys through visions throughout the series and encourages her to visit Asshai. She has been set up as important to the future of Daenerys' character and her future with the dragons. In the show, however, she is reduced to saying a single line to Jorah in one episode about how Daenerys needs protection in Qarth. Speaking of Qarth, GOT completely removed Daenerys' prophetic visions in the House of the Undying, basically removing a major part of her Qarth storyline. These decisions among many others negatively impact the show and it was only done to appeal to "normal" people in the audience (ie, non fantasy nerds).
Star Wars is another franchise that suffers from some kind of distaste for supernatural elements. Star Wars is not usually thought of as a magical, but let's be real here, the Force functions as a magical system and it is a supernatural element, so I'm counting it. Dave Filoni has done a lot to pull SW back into the very supernatural story it was in the original and prequel trilogies, with the focus on the Force and Force-users in the Clone Wars, Rebels, and Ahsoka shows. However, this seems kind of pointless because of the sequel trilogy. I've done a post on this, where I basically said that the sequel trilogy makes the world building Filoni is doing kind of obsolete. I won't rehash that here, instead I'm going to talk about how the force itself is portrayed. At the time of the sequels, the Force has returned to turmoil despite Anakin's sacrifice. The Jedi are all but extinct and the sith are rising again. By the end, Rey has decided the Jedi must stay gone and the galaxy is left with a massive power vacuum after the fall of the New Republic and the First Order. The Jedi are meant to be protectors of the balance of the Force, clearly they lost sight of that during the Old Republic and Luke in the sequels has also failed. Yes, perhaps the Jedi as a name or religion should fall, but their ultimate goal is still proven to be necessary. Yet, there is no set up for a continuation of that goal; Finn is not training his abilities, nor does he seem to want to and Rey agrees the Jedi should be gone but there is no conversation about what should happen now. There is also a clear lack of the Force in the galaxy. In the original trilogy, this is explained by the Empire's efforts to take force sensitive children and turn them into Inquisitors as well as it's goal of suppressing powers that could oppose them. Yet there is no growth of the Force now that it is rebalanced and unsuppressed. It's fading, just like magic in stories like LOTR, but the Force is meant to be an all-encompassing thing that extends beyond just Force sensitive creatures. Therefore, making it so the Force is fading into obscurity is rewriting what is supposed to be a concrete truth of the franchise.
There are other examples of this desire to remove magic (and magic adjacent things) from media. Like taking the inherent magic surrounding the elves in Rings of Power and removing the elves and dwarves from the Eragon movie. There's nothing wrong with magic and the supernatural, especially when it's such an integral part of the story.
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Sephology 101: The Nibelheim Incident
Welcome to the first unit of Sephology 101: The Nibelheim Incident. To remind everyone, darlings students are encouraged to submit their own scenarios or questions about Sephiroth. Warning: This is not SPOILER FREE.
The Nibelheim Incident was the defining moment that signified Sephiroth's fall to wickedness. This post will delve into the special endearing things that may lure Sephiroth away from the road of evil. This would be an extremely difficult task, as Sephiroth has (nearly) made up his mind at this point. There is potential for a glimmer of hope to prevent him. It is of the utmost importance to pick the right words in this instance. Not only is the logical appeal vital in this situation, but it is also necessary to make an emotional appeal to Sephiroth's needs.
After much research, Sephologists concluded that if Sephiroth was to be stopped, it must happen before he reaches Mt Nibel; therefore, the conclusion is that the following potential confrontations will occur in the library of the Shinra Manor. If a darling succeeds, then she will be granted access to the Domestic AU with the golden ticket. The Domestic AU results from the darling's successful heartfelt pleas to Sephiroth, ultimately causing him to forsake Shinra and build a life with her away from all the chaos.
If not, she may very well find herself in the (twisted) reunion, bad ending AU... In this AU, the darling, will find herself by Yandere Sephiroth's side as he starts his conquest of the planet...
Or an even worse ending: she is the very first casualty of the Nibelheim Incident.
Sephiroth will be cruel to his darlings, with his words and maybe even with his actions… But the darlings must remain courageous, dedicated and firm in bringing their Crisis Cutie back to them!
Here are the chances of some various darlings swaying Sephiroth. Any other darlings or potential scenarios? Don't forget to submit them via the Askbox to TA C.C.
Sephiroth's Angel: 8.5/10
She has a very strong possibility of influencing him in her favor. Sephiroth would struggle to ignore her words due to his strong relationship with her and Angeal. When speaking with this darling, it would be as if he and Angeal were speaking to each other again, providing Sephiroth with a possibility of divulging his true feelings. The last time Sephiroth saw Angeal was when the Genesis clones attacked the Shinra HQ, by the way. This is important.
Also, since this is Angeal's sister, you just know she can give one hell of a lecture to the Crisis Cutie. To even be aware of Sephiroth's mission to Nibelheim is her biggest challenge. At most, he'll vaguely mention to her that he's going away on a "mission" since Sephiroth likely doesn't like to talk about his SOLDIER business when spending time with his darling(s), even if he's suffering terribly. But Sephologists know that when tragedy strikes, the most essential thing a human being needs is to not feel alone in their suffering.
Sephologists decided that the only way she would find out about his Nibelheim mission would be through Zack, who had a special brotherly bond with her, despite being close in age. A perfect score is unattainable due to her lack of knowledge about the Nibelheim mission and also her potential fleeing from both Shinra and Genesis, who may be in search of her genetic information, even though she has not shown to be affected by Project G (as of yet). This fleeing may prevent less contact with Sephiroth during those two years since the deaths of her mother and brother.
To conclude: If she can find some way to intercept Sephiroth, then history is set; She will earn her golden ticket to the Domestic AU.
VALKYRIE Darling: 2.5/10
As some read in the Nibelheim Incident headcanons, this darling ultimately failed to sway Sephiroth, and instead, inevitably became a part of his and Jenova's plan for the big reunion...
Let me explain: this darling was already weak from her long imprisonment and illness. Sephiroth's recognition of that set the groundwork for an unfavorable arrangement. Sephiroth also perceived her confinement as abandonment.
This darling wasn't exactly stable as well. Her own trauma caught up to her, and she didn't know what much to say to Sephiroth. She got too close to him and… he lashed out at her. She had no other option but to offer herself. So, Jenova saw this as an opportunity to use her as a signal to call him to her again, leading directly to the Nibelheim Incident
Sephiroth, in his fractured mental state, considered the VALKYRIE Darling a vital element in his pursuit of "reunion" because Jenova choose her as a messenger to him. In his mind, this is akin to Darling getting a mark of approval from his mother dearest, so he chose to spare her.
Another factor that holds her back: her identity: The angel darling will be secure in her identity, in stark comparison to this darling's own, as she was consumed with her obsession for Sephiroth. She didn't resist or challenge him. Her body containing Sephiroth's cells, which reacted to his malicious energy, does not bring any relief to the problem.
This darling unfortunately got the bad ending, the twisted (reunion) AU.
SOLDIER Darling: 5.5/10
Outside of Valkyrie verse, (Valkyrie is a subbranch of SOLDIER for those who are curious), a regular SOLDIER Darling can go either way in swaying Sephiroth. She may have a greater sense of self than the Valkyrie Darling.
She could tell Sephiroth that she was a victim to Shinra's lies and destruction, like he was. If she can successfully empathize with him, then she could definitely temper his rage by encouraging him to discover more information with her, together, and maybe convince him down the line that destroying the planet isn’t something a true mother would want him to do.
This darling could get the golden ending or the bad ending, who knows?
(This also depends on her ranking. A first class Darling is more likely to be Sephiroth's darling than a 3rd.)
Civilian Darling: 0/10
No chance. She doesn't have that SOLDIER background (like VALKYRIE or SOLDIER darling) or that deep connection to a loved one (like the Angel darling) to make a difference to Sephiroth. She may very well be the first casualty to the Nibelheim Incident, if she were to survive the heartbreak...
This darling wouldn't be able to get either ending.
HoS Darling: ???/10
Who knows? She's not even meant to be with him in that manor. And at that point in time anyway...Sephiroth may be overwhelmed to the point of his knees buckling and a splitting headache upon sensing her connection to Jenova. Sephiroth might even think she IS Jenova…
Any other darlings or potential scenarios? Don't forget to submit them via the Askbox to TA C.C.
Next post in the Nibelheim Incident unit, we'll be delving into Sephiroth's psychology right before and during said event.
#sephiroth#ff7 sephiroth#final fantasy 7#sephiroth x reader#ff7#final fantasy x reader#yandere sephiroth#sephology 101#house of sephiroth au#project v: valkyrie#Sephiroth's Angel AU#domestic au#final fantasy vii
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