orbdweaver

The lights in the sky are scars.

[orbdweaver]

In the late-2000s visual novel, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Ushiromiya Maria has the constant verbal tic "Uu", serving as a symbol of how she habitually age-regresses in an attempt to hold together her fractured relationship with her abusive mother. In deltarune, Aqua, who is closely aesthetically linked to Kris, also has this verbal tic. Does this mean that Kris is into ageplay?

[orbdweaver]

Chapter 5's secret boss was fantastic because it was a glimpse into what deltarune's story could look like if toby fox didn't believe he had to wait until chapter 7 to start telling it

[orbdweaver]

Beatrice's story in Umineko is horribly sympathetic and sad but really in no way even remotely justifies most of the shit she did. Like no matter how you slice it she murders at least a dozen of her family members who had 0 connection to her experiences except unwitting proximity

This is awesome btw. Personally I like to read her as the archetype of "tries to justify self-hate by doing horrible things on purpose" + "hurting those she deeply cares about as an elaborate form of self-harm".

It rules that she doesn't even crack top 5 worst-abuse victim in her own story. IMO it's more realistic & honest that her personal torture labyrinth is mostly self-constructed. She lives in hell bc that's where she feels she's supposed to be.

Attempting to shift more than like 5% of the blame for her crimes away from her is galactic-psycho-giga-cope, both in-universe and out. She could have fixed half her shit in 5 minutes if she, any point within a ~5-year time period, had sent 1 person 1 letter or phone-call. Nothing was stopping her except herself. So it goes for all of us.

[orbdweaver]

Kyubey is one of the greatest villains of all time and also becomes one of the funniest when you realize he remains 90% internally coherent if you choose to interpret him as completely sincere and just, like, dizzyingly autistic.

As in, Kyubey genuinely thinks the wish-granting + reversing-entropy is so insane and weird and outrageously positive-sum for all parties that everything else is a rounding error, a little sad maybe, but not worth losing sight of the bigger picture.

Where Kyubey’s sneaky opportunism is unironically just “ah! here’s someone who could really use a wish right now,” and when they regret the wish (because they were put on the spot) he’s completely cluelessly just like “wait so why didn’t you wish for that instead?”

Like it’s genuinely incomprehensible to Kyubey that desire can be such a murky, ambiguous, amorphous thing, and speaking it clearly sometimes requires courage beyond the capacity of frightened people. Because he’s autistic. And also stupid.

imo it’s actually much harder to argue that Kyubey deals with the girls in active bad-faith. He never lies outright, nor does he suggest wishes, even though there’s no reason he couldn’t and doing do would certainly be useful for soulless cycle-of-despair-maxxing.

Kyubey only really suggests wishes to Madoka, and even then it’s mostly just noticing things she says she wants and going “oh! you could wish for that!!” like a clueless middle-school boy trying to make the girl he likes happy.

Kyubey’s permanently stunlocked in stupefied wide-eyed amazement that not only has thermodynamics been violated (as in, the long march of time is toward life instead of death) but the secret to it involves the power to give someone literally anything they could possibly dream of.

The girls are all crashing out about how not only are they revenants, they’re *stupid* revenants, while Kyubey’s just zonked in the corner like “ok, sure, but. You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. I thought I lived in a mechanistic mathematical universe, until I met you.”

None of that makes up for anything, of course.

[orbdweaver]

Unfortunately you must interpret it as malicious given the events of ep8/9 where kyōko and madoka go to try and un-witch sayaka and kyubey,b

It's entirely possible to argue that, when Kyoko & Madoka attempt to "revive" witch-Sayaka, Kyubey's behavior (ie, slightly egging them to attempt it, even though it was certainly a doomed effort) wasn't malicious.

True: as far as Kyubey understood, undoing a witch transformation was impossible. However, magic and miracles literally exist. The very nature of magical girls defy logic and understanding. Sure, Kyubey can form expectations and understandings of "the rules", but magical girls have/are the power to rewrite those rules as they wish. Thus, "anything is possible". Kyoko and Madoka walking out with an un-witched Sayaka is exactly as possible as them walking out with seven heads: entirely possible, because magical girls are involved. Kyubey understands this.

Therefore, what right does Kyubey have to tell them no? If Madoka wants to try to use her one wish to "save" Sayaka somehow, that's her right as an autonomous consciousness; by that point, you can't claim she doesn't understand the meaning of that choice. If they, by some 1/∞ chance, find a way to do it without a wish... well, they're magical girls, he couldn't pretend to be surprised. And, in the event of The Expected Result, the girls themselves are really who decide how much danger they're in. Nothing's stopping them from, at any point, giving up and leaving, or phoning a friend, or killing the witch; and if they want to die trying, that's their right too.

In other words, Kyubey's crime is, roughly, "having too much respect for the girls' autonomy". He enables them to make decisions that he expects will likely hurt them, because, in his eyes, wishes and magic make reality fundamentally unpredictable enough that he can't honestly claim to be an authority on what will happen any more than the girls can. If they want to kill themselves trying something stupid, why NOT let them? Worst case, they follow their heart off a cliff; and there's a certain romance in that. And, best case, they beat the odds, break the rules, and prove the universe that little bit more magical.

[orbdweaver]

Kyubey is one of the greatest villains of all time and also becomes one of the funniest when you realize he remains 90% internally coherent if you choose to interpret him as completely sincere and just, like, dizzyingly autistic.

As in, Kyubey genuinely thinks the wish-granting + reversing-entropy is so insane and weird and outrageously positive-sum for all parties that everything else is a rounding error, a little sad maybe, but not worth losing sight of the bigger picture.

Where Kyubey’s sneaky opportunism is unironically just “ah! here’s someone who could really use a wish right now,” and when they regret the wish (because they were put on the spot) he’s completely cluelessly just like “wait so why didn’t you wish for that instead?”

Like it’s genuinely incomprehensible to Kyubey that desire can be such a murky, ambiguous, amorphous thing, and speaking it clearly sometimes requires courage beyond the capacity of frightened people. Because he’s autistic. And also stupid.

imo it’s actually much harder to argue that Kyubey deals with the girls in active bad-faith. He never lies outright, nor does he suggest wishes, even though there’s no reason he couldn’t and doing do would certainly be useful for soulless cycle-of-despair-maxxing.

Kyubey only really suggests wishes to Madoka, and even then it’s mostly just noticing things she says she wants and going “oh! you could wish for that!!” like a clueless middle-school boy trying to make the girl he likes happy.

Kyubey’s permanently stunlocked in stupefied wide-eyed amazement that not only has thermodynamics been violated (as in, the long march of time is toward life instead of death) but the secret to it involves the power to give someone literally anything they could possibly dream of.

The girls are all crashing out about how not only are they revenants, they’re *stupid* revenants, while Kyubey’s just zonked in the corner like “ok, sure, but. You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. I thought I lived in a mechanistic mathematical universe, until I met you.”

None of that makes up for anything, of course.

[orbdweaver]

Fans of Undertale and Deltarune will probably find House of Leaves relatable, because the book is all about brainrot.

[orbdweaver]

• I love the title of “House of Leaves”, and the more I think about it, the more beautiful it feels.

• “Leaves” are pages, or letters, or photographs.

• Leaves are organs whose function is photosynthesis — the conversion of light into nourishment.

• The most natural arrangement of leaves is scattered and non-linear.

• To inhabit a house of leaves is to lose oneself in art.

• A house of leaves is as a house of cards; easily blown away by the wind.

• What motivates someone to build one?

• Johnny Truant’s house of leaves is the Zampano manuscript.

• After walking away from the manuscript, Johnny becomes *literally* homeless — evicted from his apartment, his childhood home a lumber mill, the Ash Tree Lane residence fictional, unemployed, without friend or family,

• Navidson’s house of leaves is his photography and film.

• The turning point in Karen’s character arc comes when she edits together a film.

• Almost every venture into the labyrinth on Ash Tree Lane is meticulously documented and recorded.

• The pets (and children, iirc? need to double-check) are not trapped by the labyrinth. They also are unable to record it.

• The labyrinth finally dissolves when Karen, within it, closes her eyes.

• Zampano’s house of leaves was… also the Zampano manuscript. It was all he did, for years. It was his primary vehicle for socialization.

• “My art, however, speaks for me. It lights my way.”

• “House of Leaves” is the in-universe title of Zampano’s manuscript. (Not a secret, literally the first page tells us this.)

• The Navidson Record is probably a fictional documentary Zampano made up for his book, House of Leaves, similar to how the real-life Mark Danielewski made it up for *his* book, House of Leaves.

• Is there a meaningful difference between artist and audience?

• Who wrote House of Leaves? Was it Zampano? Or was it Johnny?

• Who built the house? Was it [note: check if an initial architect is specified]? Or was it Navidson?

• Who wrote House of Leaves (the real one)? Was it Danielewski? Yes. I didn’t write anything in the margins.

• I have seen others suggest this book was written as a satire of overly-bloated academic or creative writing.

• Counterpoint 1: Johnny’s tangents were meaningful to Johnny.

• Counterpoint 2: Zampano’s tangents were meaningful to me.

• Counterpoint 3: “Quick note here: if this […] stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you’ve never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you’ve got a TV dinner for a heart”

• Communication is difficult.

• I think the structure and presentation of the book is designed to emulate the experience of trying to make sense of something meaningful but disorganized.

• It is “about” art brainrot.

• Is “house” always blue because that’s the color of hyperlinks?

• It is bigger on the inside because art is metatextual; its meaning extends beyond the sum of its words.

• “Why did Undertale upend my entire life trajectory? Why do I have 70% of all pokemon’s base stats memorized? Why did I log 120 hours in Risk of Rain 2 playtesting a mod I never published?” These are not questions raised within Danielewski’s house of leaves.

[abstractfairy]

If i had writers block as a fiction writer, i would simply read tumblr fandom analysis and get inspiration from them

[orbdweaver]

This works for a while, but if you do it specifically for this reason for long enough eventually you will get good enough at it to realize that 99% of it is empty manipulation of abstractions and nothing on this earth can save you from having to ground your work in felt feelings

[orbdweaver]

Following every mentally ill account on here. that's what we call market research

[thehopefulquotes]

“Stop thinking so much. You’re breaking your own heart.”

— Unknown

[orbdweaver]

Skill issue.

[orbdweaver]

I think a fair criticism of Disco Elysium is that it doesn't make much of an effort to appeal to people who don't already kind of Get It. You either vibe with it or you don't.

To me (and I think most DE fans?) the core appeal is simply that the game understands what it's like to be schizo-autistically sensitive, to be curious about people and to ache at the complexity of the world and the difficulty of improving literally anything. If you want a super tight murder mystery plot then you can go cry about it, because that was never the point.

The whole phasmid sequence is kind of a guided meditation on whether or not sensitivity is a good thing, by contrasting Harry, who is ultimately sensitive, with a literal insect, who is ultimately Head Empty No Thoughts. The Pale in this context is a literalization of a specific failure mode of hypersensitivity, where you get caught in a neurotic vortex of tessellated memories and fears to the point that you ruin your ability to perceive the world outside your head - the fate that befell the Deserter. Is this the fate of Harry and human civilization too? Or is there still hope and beauty in the world, hidden just out of sight, waiting to be detected? That's more or less what the scene is about, and probably also why it's a *detective* story.

[orbdweaver]

One subtle thing about Nemona that stood out to me: there’s this moment, around the 4th gym or so, where she runs up to you and apologizes profusely that she can’t battle you yet because her team isn’t balanced right yet or something

It’s a Funny Moment because

1) I’m not the one itching to battle; she is. She doesn’t need to apologize this much, it’s fine lol.

2) I’m not picky with opponents. I’ll happily fight her team in whatever wack-ass state it’s in. She’s fretting over an imaginary problem.

At the time, I wondered if it was like an honor student thing. Maybe Nemona's the kind of person who, inspired by the genuine skill, kindness, & dedication of those around her, grinds herself into a pulp trying to live up to that imagined standard.

That pressure is ENTIRELY self-imposed. If any of the adults she looks up to noticed this anxiety spiral, they’d tell her to relax, it’s fine, you’re doing too much as is and we’re proud of you no matter what, we promise. And they’d mean it, sincerely. Which of course would just make it worse, because “oh no, they’re even kinder than I thought they were, much kinder than I am, I need to work even harder to become as kind as them”.

Anyway, having completed the game, I think all of that is still *an element*. Nemona is a rich kid, student council president, honor student, and particularly close with the kindest & most influential adults in the country. The writers didn’t make her those thing on accident.

What I hadn’t picked up on was, the thing that was eating at Nemona the most was probably that she was worried she was fumbling her chance to make you her friend

Nemona, explicitly, has a weird autistic hyperfixation on Pkmn battling. Nobody else her age does. So her only real friends are adults, who, with the wisdom of age, are able to appreciate her idiosyncrasies, and know how to direct them toward something positive.

But they don't share them, as far as Nemona can tell. It’s hard to tell if someone Gets It or is just navigating around It, especially when they keep treating it as a means rather than an end.

Then you come along, showing a hint of sharing her Niche Special Interest, and she thinks “at last, this is my chance, I can make someone else Get It”.

So she tries to give you a guided tour, basically.

Nemona is already champion-rank; she is deliberately holding back & using a weak team so she can do the gym challenge alongside you. She isn’t worried her team is too weak. She’s worried her team isn’t properly tuned to give you the experience she wants you to have.

She's trying to streamline the process of you falling in love with this thing she likes. Which is of course a self-defeating effort.

The adults in Paldea are all hilariously hands-off. I think it’s fair to say that Nemona lacking a Nemona of her own is part of what helped her develop her weird special interest. The adventure of crawling thru a thorn bush is part of the fun. (I'd wager this is the ethos behind the school's mostly-unsupervised treasure hunt.)

And to her credit, I think Nemona knows this. She’s trying not to weird you out; she doesn’t want you to know she’s following you around. She *certainly* doesn’t want you to know how much she’s tying herself in knots over this, trying to determine how much contact is appropriate. She's attempting the impossible task of trying to suss out how someone is feeling without interacting or being fully honest with them, because doing either might make you think she's weird.

The arc ends appropriately anticlimactically. Of course you like the game; that’s why you started playing it. Nemona was fretting over nothing. All she had to do was consistently be there for you while you grew into what you were going to be. Which she did.

[orbdweaver]

sitting in the dark and playing with matches