#yeah i used to make shitty expies fuck off
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the pass of branching out a silly parody expy character into no longer being a silly parody expy character and instead a normal regular character is that someone who likes the character you xeroxed from at 15 can look at the new version of the expy and not have a single fucking question about why there's an expy of so and so in the story. once you've passed that test you can now be sure that in the last 8 years this character has gotten marginally normaler and a lot less like D—[OUR BROADCAST SIGNALS HAVE BEEN CUT. PLEASE STAND BY]
#rubia speaks#yeah i used to make shitty expies fuck off#i was a fifteen year old in 2015 with unfettered access to tv tropes and idioms and vocaloid internet of course i did
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i do want to mention in regards to greedfall that for the spoilers thing you put thats wrong. not trying to insult just want to kinda bring up the misinformation. the reality of it is that you're full native, and your mom was one of the heads of their clan, an incredibly great healer. yet she was taken and the dad died fighting. the plots about hey colonizers are super fucked and in return they got a plague from the atrocities theyve done, so instead of fix it themselves they kidnap the mcs mom at one point. she dies, naturally because of being faced with a whole set of new diseases. with that the princes sister who didnt have any children adopted the main character and did some whole machiavellian scheme to raise them as their own and try to play them as a pawn to make the natives want to help. admittedly a lot of the plot is like hey, what you know is fucked up and colonization is morally bankrupt, to both the colony people and the natives. but im not here to change your mind or anything! its just a game, i just wanted to just correct some parts of the post that i think were worth mentioning. there wasn't any rape, and the natives arent painted in such a negative light.
i mean, yes and no.
yes in the sense that yeah, what i’d heard about the protagonist’s parentage (i did not get far enough into the game to trigger that quest for myself) was wrong, i’d heard they were half-native but their bio mom was still the princess but yeah, when i found the last post i linked to i realized that was wrong. so yeah, on that point, you’re right, i was fully incorrect about that.
but. while that means the narrative leans less into the ‘savage native’ theme, that does make it lean more into the ‘magical natives who are intrinsically connected to the land’ theme. which is. also not good. it’s Othering with a different coat of paint over it, ostensibly positive but still reducing swaths of people to some weird ‘your ethnicity and culture makes you inherently spiritual’ thing.
and here i’m going to toss some links to things that talk about the harm in this sort of thinking. there’s a million articles that discuss this even more but in the interest of not spending more time i don’t really have i’ll leave it at these
plus, there’s still so, so, so, so many moments where they’re shitty about natives and the game…. does not address it. does not let you, the protagonist, say a word to dispute them when there are npcs telling you to your face that the natives are weird demon-worshippers and you need to intrude on their sacred rituals bc lol idk solve a mystery for us? you watch a man murder a native man for not converting to his religion, and you can fight the dude who murdered him but you just. knock him out and it doesn’t change a goddamn thing. the protag finds out they’re native and doesn’t…. do anything other than Be The Chosen One. they don’t even get to learn anything abt their clan. the narrative just says ‘oh hey, you’re native, you know nothing about this land but you’re magically connected to it by birthright :)’ the sacred rituals of some of the clans are derided as being scary and evil. you constantly murder nadaigs, who are people who have physically transformed. the game does not let you avoid or question this ever. you MUST murder them to progress the plot.
i know i linked this last time but i really do recommend that you read this post for specific examples of where and how this was done. there’s a lot.
truly, read that and then consider whether the natives aren’t ‘painted in such a negative light.’
like… i don’t necessarily think the game devs set out to make a colonizer simulator exactly, but uh, they still did by virtue of being nowhere near qualified to talk about this sort of thing. by still cramming their game chock-full of reductive stereotypes. if they intended to make a game that discussed native people being colonized in a remotely respectful way…. if they really wanted to show that colonizing/colonizers are morally bankrupt..... they completely and utterly failed.
anyway that’s enough time spend on greedfall now, let’s be done talking about this forever lmao
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Higurashi Gou Liveblog: Episode 23
The thumbnail is of Satoko, I see. Kinda interesting how there's only been three thumbnails with her even in it, this included.
Oh okay we're doing the Sonozaki arc. WE'RE FINALLY GETTING THAT ANSWERED, RIGHT?!
"You look bored" AND WHAT A HORRIFIC CALLBACK TO RIKA LOOPING THAT IS. Also, how is Keiichi simultaneously the most and the least observant of the entire cast.
Yeah this is paralleling Massacre and I hate that. Satoko is literally taking Rika's spot and I'm not sure I want Keiichi to give her a pep talk.
Okay but why is Satoko so blatantly showing off? Is she trying to trigger Rika's suspicions?
Featherine is praising Satoko and I'm just now noticing how that might be feeding Satoko's desperation for someone to love her/her abandonment complex. Like, when was the last time an adult looked Satoko in the eye and told her that she, personally, did a good job at something?
Why is Featherine not giving Satoko her name?
"Eua"? Is that a reference to Featherine's whole thing with her nickname being an expy for Hanyuu's "auauau" distress noise?
We're addressing the fact that non-loopers remember things!?
So basically the more you loop the higher the chance is that you'll remember past shit, even if you're not the one controlling the time loops.
Ah man we're talking about the uncle rather than Satoshi.
My heart is healed by seeing this piece of shit beaten to a pulp.
Oh and that's why we saw prescription drugs earlier in the Curse Killing arc because he's, like, fucking unraveling.
Oh this is not going to end well, is it? He's gonna do something horrible to that poor kid and her dad.
WHAT IS GOING ON?
Oh my god if they try to redeem Teppei or make him sympathetic in any way I am DONE with this stupid show.
FUCK EVERYTHING. FUCK THIS SHOW. FUCK THIS SHIT. WHAT THE FUCK.
Mere words cannot begin to describe my state of incomprehension and hatred right now.
Wait a second there's more than three of the shitty wannabe punks. What the fuck that's not allowed.
Okay everyone who said Gou was doing a good job in regards to respecting the premise of the original series owes me 20 bucks and a handwritten apology. There's literally no way you can turn an irredeemable asshole like Teppei into anything even approaching a good character. There’s no reason why you should.
You know Teppei's so good at beating up children and blackmailing people for a living I would've thought he'd be better in a fight.
You know it'd be real funny if Teppei becoming somewhat decent was Satoko's first sign that she's done something horribly wrong.
Dreaming of his shitty ends and that motivating him to be better is a logical thought process, but Satoko's uncle is literally designed as a character to be someone you hate. He used Satoko as a punching bag and inflicted most of her most damning psychological wounds. You can't just hand-wave that within the context of this series!
Satoko why are you bantering with someone who almost killed you multiple times.
It's nice that the abusive asshole doesn't ask to be forgiven, I guess.
YEAH THANK YOU FOR REMINDING US WHAT HE ACTUALLY USED TO BE LIKE.
Okay, yeah, this is absolute bullshit. I can understand why its important to show how looping can change someone by making them vaguely remember all the shitty ways their lives can go, essentially realizing the future consequences of their actions, and I can get the abuser trying to reconcile with their victim. I can get Higurashi Gou making these decisions in a vacuum, but this is not a fucking vacuum, this is a continuation of an earlier series where we saw this guy drive Satoko to whimpering terror time and time again. She screamed, threw up, and went into a frenzy because she thought he was coming for her. He leaves her black and blue -they animated bruises, a swelled eye in the manga, cuts, all of it. He wore her down psychologically into nothing but a quivering drone terrified of putting a finger wrong. And then Gou is like “Actually, he’s fine now.” and its just, no. No, you can’t do that. You cannot make a character like that sympathetic or redeemable, because you have spent a good two or three hours (spanning both series) showing us why he’s not. You don’t get to spit on the first Higurashi like that.
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So uh, I don’t know how coherent this will be (forgive me, it’s almost midnight here) but I’ll try anyway.
I’ve been rereading FT after not touching it for years (I am in the middle of the Galuna arc, btw, so anything after that is not as fresh to me) and I was struck both by how much better than the latter canon the early parts were (if only for the lessened fanservice, and the still believable situations) and by how a lot of what I hate about FT is already rearing its ugly head.
That they are. The real problems behind Fairy Tail start with Phantom Lord, and I honestly enjoy Galuna Island a lot more than other arcs.
Case in point: what is basically the first friendship-nakama-etc speech, courtesy of Makarov himself. (I am not 100% sure it is the actual first, but it is probably the first to be that overt and long.) And honestly, this, coupled with what Makarov said to Romeo way back in the Balkan/Vulcan arc, already makes me hate him.
Rebelling against authority is cool if that authority is corrupt. Saying “fuck you” against authority that really wants you to quit destroying property and punching people is not cool at all. Especially if your longtime friend is a member of that authority and catches shit for all of your wrongdoing.
And, having read your post about the reasons you hate Makarov, I noticed that - chronologically - it starts with Gajeel. So, uh, I wanted to add something about him that you had not written about yet, as far as I know? (and, I mean, I might have missed it if you had since I only discovered this blog today! Though i have been binge-reading it for some hours…)
It is often said -and shown- that Makarov believes FT mages to be his “children”, and tbh this shows the kind of father he is…
What I consider his “first offense” comes with his reaction to Romeo’s plea (that someone PLEASE look for his dad, since he took on a job he said would take 3 days and it’s been a week) : he literally brushes him off with the worst words he could have said. “No way! Your dad is a mage! We have no mage here who can’t take care of himself! Go home!”, and later on, to himself: “if he goes to help Macao, it will only hurt his pride. No one can decide what he should do, just leave him alone.”
Fuck, I never remember that until people bring it up–but now that you mention it, I remember thinking that was really shitty, too. 1) A man’s pride is not worth less than his safety and life or the damage it causes his child to see that life in danger, and 2) that just fucking stupid. “Mages can take care of themselves”? He was up in the mountains and it was below freezing. Makarov acts like mages are immortal and infallible and that not returning from a three-day mission after a week is cause for no concern.
Then of course, when Macao is rescued by Natsu & Lucy (and he was very much in need of rescuing), he is grateful, and his pride is not damaged at all, as he tells Romeo of how he managed to defeat 19 monsters by himself.
Thanks, Makarov. Now we know who to trust.
Mirajane, in her exposition mode, says he is actually quite worried - I can believe that, but his reaction is not good at all. And I can understand where he comes from - his words clearly come from some bad experience - but still: he is the guild’s master. Is “everyone here can take care of themselves, and thus nobody should help them, and they should be left alone” the right attitude to take with this kind of things? …Nope, no it isn’t, especially when he is dealing with literal children (whom we know have been part of FT and will soon be again. Since they were FT mages, I expect they, too, would have been considered capable of taking care of themselves?).
Right you are.
The best thing about this? Laxus later on fucking calls him on it, when he refuses to go looking for Natsu and Lucy and drag them back from their stolen S-ranked job: “Don’t be ridiculous… I have another job to take care of. ‘There isn’t a single mage that can’t take care of his own stuff’, right?”
(This, btw, is the exact moment this character became my favorite)
Translation: Double standard? Not on my watch.
Which makes me wonder, how many times has Makarov said that?
Still, I suppose that -as Hiro Mashima does show some self-reflection for once- he did not actually think what Makarov said to do was the best course of action. Although it does not really excuse him pretty much using it for years before Natsu stole that S-ranked quest…
Imagine if that had been the guild’s reaction when considering whether to rescue Makarov from the Alvarez Empire. “Eh, Makarov can take care of himself. He can handle it”. And Makarov, of all people, should’ve been able to.
Anyway, going back to the whole maybe-first friendship speech (or at least the first one I noticed) : that speech was particularly appalling, at least to me, for being awful both in-canon and out of it.
Let’s start with the out of canon (uh, Doylist point of view I think?):
Yep!
It was bad writing. Pure and simple. The situation is: Kageyama, our resident Eisenwald Shikamaru-expy, has been saved by Team Natsu but has subsequently betrayed them, escaping with Lullaby. He manages to get to the regular meeting of guild masters, and attempts to play the cursed flute in front of Makarov. At that point, though, flashbacks start to happen: at first to the reasons his guild is doing it, then to things Team Natsu said to him - that what they are trying to do won’t accomplish what they truly want, some positive stuff from Gray - anyway, sorta standard stuff, but still effective. He’s sweating and hesitating - and at that point, the dreaded Speech commences: it is, tbh, a mess that boils down to “Alone, we are weak. Together, we are strong” ™ - which ends with Makarov revealing he Knew All Along, and Kage admitting his defeat.
From a purely storytelling point of view, I was - devastated, honestly. I had really gotten into that character (Shikamaru-expy and all), and was legit tearing up a bit at how Team Natsu’s words had had such an effect on him even when they weren’t even trying to Make Him Good or anything. It would have been very powerful, imo, if what had actually happened was that he simply gave up after having those flashbacks, realizing that he never really wanted to kill the guild masters and that he was just lashing out at what he believed to be an unjust world and system etc etc. You know, character development and all - all the more powerful since he never received a Friendship Speech, but simply was impacted by a few comments.
Instead…well, Friendship Speech™, which didn’t even fit into the whole thing (I mean, what has “having nakamas” got to do with what he was doing? Eisenwald’s whole problem is that they were kicked out of the League and made illegal & dark, and that they consider it to be unjust and want to get back at those who did it. That’s… that’s his guild’s issue. His nakama’s issue. The problem with him and his guild wasn’t that they were, Idk, loners without friends or whatever: it was that they were going to kill innocents and people barely connected to those who made them a dark guild, and also that they never quite examined why they were kicked out, and why they were not blameless at all, and did deserve it*), and lessened SO MUCH the impact of a villain deciding that he was on the wrong path mostly on his own, with just a bit of help and without that help being so over the top and condescending.
Way to hit the nail on the head. There is an external problem and an internal problem. The external is their perceived unjust treatment; the internal problem is their extreme reaction to it, nor merely a lack of unity or family attitude.
Then we have the in-canon problems and- I might repeat myself, you’re warned (it’s almost 0100 uuugh). Okay, so: I can accept Makarov knowing what that flute is and what it does (since even Lucy did), and being confident enough that he could stop that kid if he truly seemed to be ready to play it (he can be fast, and he simply had to extend his arm and take it). But- that speech. Man, that speech.
He is going off an infuriatingly vague and cliched speech, basing it off- what? What does he even know about Kageyama? Does he even know about Eisenwald? Probably not, since he was simply leaving because he got worried about Team Natsu being, well, a thing. Why, then, is he lecturing this person - who, for all he knows, might belong in a guild as nakama-y as FT? (oh, wait, my bad: only the good guys are allowed to have True Nakamas ™. Bad guys get the False Nakamas, if any, who would gladly kill you for power. Always. At all times. For any reason.) He just sounds arrogant, full of himself, and very much trying to do the all-knowing wise mentor routine. With an added bonus of straight up manipulation - telling him that he should not rely on tools but on friends (insert sparkly), and thus should not use that flute (what, not because he would kill innocent people in it? Because using it would be weak? Wow, thanks Makarov, so deep). There is no way in hell this could work if Mashima hadn’t really, really wanted it to. If I was Kageyama, I’d play that flute just because of that speech. That’s how much I hated it.
So if he had followed through with Makarov’s advice, he’d have returned with allies and then slaughtered the guildmasters? Nice advice. It’s doubly stupid because Kageyama is an example of relying on friends–Erigor fell down on the job and cannot complete it, so Kageyama is picking up the slack and completing it for him. Yeah, their end goal might be murder, but the principle is the same: relying on one’s friends.
*Ok this is going to be a really weird rant, but hear me out: the plight of Dark Guilds, and mages from them. For Eisenwald, it wasn’t really explored whether or not all of them were taking up assassination requests or it was just Erigor (or idk, Erigor and a few others). There must have been at least some members of the guild who never killed anyone - and at least some who were unaware of it happening in their guild. Then the guild was ordered to disband and declared dark. …We don’t really see this in canon, but IMO mages from dark guilds probably find it at least somewhat hard to find a good guild to join. And anyway, it does mean giving up your guildmates, and the guild (which, if it happened to FT, would never be supported by the narrative). Honestly, I am not condoning the things dark guilds do - but declaring a guild dark like that is not only harsh but also actively encourages the members of that guild to do Fucked Up Shit, even if they weren’t doing it before. Couldn’t there have been some inquiries, those truly responsible be arrested and the guild, without the worst members, allowed to go on? Only arresting the guild master and declaring the guild dark and ordering it to disband is the worst course of action the council could have undertaken.
That is a weird rant. I didn’t ask this question because the feeling I got while watching the Erigor arc was that most of the members overall didn’t have a problem with murder, but perhaps I’m wrong for assuming that. But generally, I wouldn’t consider that an ill response, since once lives are taken you have to take measures. Dark guilds can be forcibly disbanded when the Magic Council hire light guilds to do so, so it would make sense that they aren’t worried about backlash.
I… probably have more to say, and what I did say I wanted to say better, but I’m tired as heck and I’ve ranted long enough now. I hope you can glean something halfway coherent from this, and also wanted to let you know your analyses are brilliant and I love them <3 Thanks for reading all this, and please maybe let me know what you think?
I think you made a lot of good points. I’m now stewing in my hatred both for Makarov and for Mashima’s tired, exhausted narrative choices. Thanks for sending!
#long post#Makarov Dreyar#crimsonnotscarlet#replies#submission#writing criticism#THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP™
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