#false disposition

[astercanthe]

once again i was left in the dust

[dailyenglishvoca]

Today's song is FALSE DISPOSITION by Ferry featuring the Vocaloid V Flower

Happy birthday, Flower!

[my-past-disgusts-me]

I don't see people talk about this frequently but I love love love the way that False Disposition invokes Happy Girl melodically. It emphasizes the tension Sanya feels in her day to day life, the conflict between who she is, who her brother wants her to be, the facade she puts up when she goes out. The emotions she shoves down and down and down and they still bubble to the surface, the sweltering pain she tried and failed to wash away. Big fan.

[krakrac]

sorry if the background is too all over the place but i honestly highkey love the blackish chaos clashing with whiteish character and text over it all

i must say i start to really dig b&w/mostly monochrome drawings with text all over them?? its so liberating to not try to push colors which i can never really get right

[itspotatocatto]

100 epitaphs analysis rambles

mostly centered around symbolism of sanya's outfit changes but also touching on the baseball bat, the convergence cables, and a few strike 3 line retrospectives. (had to put it under the cut because it accidentally got really long, whoopsies!)

the two main outfits we see sanya in are her short yellow and black outfit with her hair down (which i will be referring to as "gymkid outfit") and her longer black and white outfit with her hair tied up (which i will refer to as "punk outfit").

in sanya's gymkid outfit we see her helplessness and youth, from the first time yura took her out to party [false disposition] to how she lays down seemingly caught in a grieving immobility. in her punk outfit however we see her defiance and her attempts to be "mature", raising the bat to protect KT when they first meet [parties are for losers] to her irreverent laughter while "a candle burns another photograph".

in convergence we see how yura views the cables binding the characters central to his plan of saving KT, sanya is here in her gymkid outfit, as much as he cares for her she's still a helpless kid getting tied up and held back by all that's going on. but in 100 epitaphs we see how sanya views this situation, seemingly accepting the cables and embracing them. she welcomes them, they don't restrict her, they comfort her, enabling her to get stronger, to be better at fighting the world.

also take note of the baseball bat, in convergence she isn't touching it but still tied up with her, out of reach but inescapable. whereas, in 100 epitaphs we see and hear how yura taking the bat in his hand kicks up the music, that audible ignition of firey rebel spirit, and when the cables enwrap her she wraps herself around the bat, holding it tight to her, refusing to let it go, that symbol of anything and everything she might be able to do to change things, to use what little power she has and release the frustration she's built up against the cruelty of the world.

this outfit symbolism is also shown in how sanya was wearing her gymkid outfit while she was on call with yura during the "negotiations" in convergence. she had very little actionable power in that situation, her presence was concealed and then almost immediately forcibly removed as soon as it was revealed. even down to the tiniest detail of yura's contact photo of her being her wearing the punk outfit and how that's the outfit she wears when she confronts dmitry in 100 epitaphs, these little attempts at displaying strength.

these outfit specifics even go back to young!sanya tying her hair up in preparation for the funeral, probably her first real experience of having to be mature. the facial expression change between young!sanya and present!sanya there is also very telling, young!sanya's frown is so sad, so unsure. this is contrasted by what we can see of present!sanya's frown, it's a lot sharper, a lot more sure of itself, somewhere between determined and disgruntled, she's gotten used to trying to be mature but that doesn't make it easier, she's just pushing through it harder.

but of course, yura and sanya's views of her aren't the only ones we see in 100 epitaphs, we also see sergei's perception of her as they stand back to back. here she's in her punk outfit, but it's incomplete, her hair is down, she can't fully commit herself to this, it's not who she is (or maybe she shouldn't commit herself to it and it's not who she should be).

on the topic of sergei it is SO COOL how strike 3's presence is all over 100 epitaphs. from the tepid autumn day to the motif while sanya and sergei are back to back, even how they both start with a phone (olga calling vs yura disconnecting). and they way strike 3 foreshadowed that final scene in 100 epitaphs in a way to make the exact way those lines would turn out ambiguous is damn near masterful.

"everything will pass, the edge will dull, i know what's best for you, and after all a day will come, warm and bright when i, tear down this dismal shelter wall." hearing this we're lead to believe a few key things: that sanya's edge will dull, and that this tearing down of the dismal shelter wall will be a strong and resilient action.

and yet in 100 epitaphs, it is not sanya's rebellious edge that dulls, but sergei's protective one. he realises that trying to protect sanya like this is just pushing her further away from him, he knows what's best but he's given up on trying to make her see that, the shelter wall is torn down not in triumph, but in resignation, collapsing under it's own weight.

"just hide behind this back of mine and save your helpless spite" this is framed like sergei asking sanya to let him protect her and to save that spite she feels for times where it might be of more use than as the weapon of an angry teen. in 100 epitaphs we see how sanya grabs onto sergei's back, to prevent him from punching yura, saving the embodiment of helpless spite.

can you tell i FUCKING LOVE THIS SERIES

[tentakilly]

I may not know what current Dr Glass looks like in me head but at least I know what baby Dr Glass looks like(and he reminded me of Yura from pafl). Art with and without effects.

[nopanamaman]

did some sketchy redraws of old wonky-looking assets

[lizardanya]

alienation and being out of the loop with life or the world as a whole is a theme in pafl, which generally applies to most of the characters, but sanya is uniquely out of the loop because she doesn’t get it.

every character is, in their own way, beaten down by life and as such alienated from it, and knows it: yura is the most obvious example, he’s poor and feels like he has nothing going for it, and tries his best to regain control over his own destiny. olga feels bored and like she has no real and true connection to anyone, sergei loses everyone he cares for, so much so that his efforts to protect the one person he still has left just leads to more distance between them, kt and dima are mutants who are inherently unwelcome in the world they’re trying to inhabit, and even anya, who is probably the least self aware, shows awareness of the fact that her talks of running away and rebelling aren’t entirely genuine, because she really just wants a stability and love her life pre dima couldn’t provide her.

none of those characters fool themselves about what life is, even anya viscerally understands the world as a cruel place that doesn’t care what you think of it. this does not apply to sanya.

everything she thinks she wants is false: she chases yura as an ideal of a cool guy, one who has a level of control and experience she doesn’t, just as she chases parties as her ideal of freedom and again, “coolness”, yet both of those ideals are false: yura is flailing against a current of destiny, and everything sanya idolises as cool is narratively disproven: the series is literally called parties are for losers. sanya is so out of loop she’s out of loop with the narrative!

even when she addresses the fact that she’s been left behind and isn’t in synch with everyone else, she fails to understand just what that entails: in false disposition she still asks “don’t leave me behind again, cool guy”. she still can’t see behind yura’s layers of rust, in her line she grants him a level of autonomy and status he doesn’t have: he isn’t cool, and leaving her behind is not a choice he gets to make, as he says in occam’s razor, it is out of his control.

her line “but fearing life is easier than fighting, right?” is laughable, because, well, yes! yura has taken up the task of fighting and, well, all that resulted in was tragedy and peril. anya, on the other hand, feared when dima offered her to run away. and she’s better off for it. again, sanya is wrong narratively: she doesn’t understand life or what it entails, unlike other characters, resulting in more alienation. alienation she simply doesn’t know about - she’s oblivious.

sanya is so alienated she’s even alienated from the narrative itself. so sheltered she’s de facto sheltered from the story she inhabits. she’s oblivious on a meta level.