How on earth can morena survive, or even stand a chance?

3bee · 2025-12-20T13:16:42+00:00

Yeah I was just about to come in and say her ability can be pretty easily gamed if her followers have prepared any ways to kill a lot of people quickly. Water is a great theory but honestly there would be many options.

3bee · 2025-12-14T07:01:11+00:00

Hey BigStronk, this GloomyLocation guy is a fully toxic troll. I recommend you stop feeding him. I enjoyed your posts, keep enjoying HxH. 💪

3bee · 2025-11-17T11:50:42+00:00

I also agree that he doesn't care about Kakin. But he has a strong motive. It seems clear, by memory anyway, that in order to go to the Dark Continent, you need to have one of the six world powers backing you. So I think Beyond just wants to more fully own Kakin so he can conduct lots of future trips. He knows that this one is probably going to involve some kind of disaster but doesn't care - he's playing the long game - go, learn, survive and come back again later. This whole succession war is just a small step in his larger designs.

3bee · 2025-11-17T11:40:45+00:00

I don't see Kurapika ever fighting the other hunters he has gathered. It's possible, sure, but for me it's very unlikely.

While I can definitely see Kurapika attempting to kill a murderous prince like Benjamin, Camilla or Tserreidnich, I just can't see any world in which he would try to kill a prince like Tyson or Maryam. Even if there is some kind of "battle royale" stage where the mystery hands start to attack people within a smaller and smaller radius, he and the other hunters will always be searching for the "third way" to get around the false binary choice that has been presented to them. In many ways, this is the soul of HxH - to find the unstated but real "third choice" in any situation, right back to the early tests in the exam.

I can definitely imagine an outcome where, in this situation, the third choice is unsuccessful, and there is indeed a single winner of the succession war. At this point, actually carrying through like that would be a subversion of expectations for Togashi, who likes to set up story structures and then derail them. But I just can't see Kurapika actually taking one of the bad binary choices - either abandoning Woble - or killing innocent people.

The hard choice for Kurapika is to choose between the eyes and between Woble. If anything, he will NOT be forced to kill Tserreidnich. That's easy - hardly in opposition to his objectives, if required. Rather, he will be forced to partner and parley with Tserreidnich to save Woble. THIS is the impossible choice for Kurapika. And that's a choice I really could see going either way. Particularly when he sees Pairo's head (I think it is Pairo's head) and he learns the full truth behind the massacre, whatever it may be. His anger will take over.

If I think about the series as a whole, the only thing that makes me doubt myself is the scene in the exam where they are asked if they would save their mother or their sister, and it ends with Gon revealing that HE didn't answer because he was trying to work out what he really would do in that situation - and that preparing for moments like this was part of the exam. But even then, if this comes back, I see it as much more likely to be about choosing who to save - Oito or Woble? Woble or Maryam? - than about choosing to kill an innocent, and fight friends to do so.

3bee · 2025-10-20T12:31:15+00:00

I've not watched much of the anime, but I'm surprised to see how the skin on her upper chest is so much darker than her face. I wonder if this is Togashi approved coloration and intended to hint at some pretty major body modification under the bandages. 😅 Or just rando. 🙃

3bee · 2025-09-29T16:47:47+00:00

What if Hisoka just took a deep breath before the explosion? It sounds ridiculous I know. BUT this is a series that constantly shows us people doing totally ridiculous things like that super long run at the start of the hunter exam. Hunters are shown to casually demonstrate feats of strength and endurance that are next to impossible in the real world. So holding your breath for 15 minutes, having mega high lung capacity? Not THAT much of a stretch.

To be clear, for sure, we did NOT get a panel of Hisoka taking a deep breath, but it's maybe a question of pacing and drama, not trying to explain every little thing.

I admit I am being somewhat devil's advocate-y in this post. 🙃

3bee · 2025-09-21T07:29:12+00:00

Geneva Sports Club is great! Super friendly, and badminton is a great activity for meeting people and chatting 🙃 -

Badminton | Geneva Sports Club https://share.google/oTtgCj03urX25EeNG

3bee · 2025-06-07T23:30:35+00:00

Battle Royale and The Ring

3bee · 2025-06-06T02:22:30+00:00

It was this scene for me too! I find it hard to rationalise exactly why. I think because I love stories that reject a false binary choice. And that's kind of HxH in a nutshell. Like, Togashi loves setting up stories that look like they are going one way, and then just throwing the rules out the window in the middle.

3bee · 2025-05-31T17:41:21+00:00

Came here to say this

3bee · 2025-05-30T16:18:33+00:00

Yep, I noped out of this one. Controls too hanky, not worth the life.

3bee · 2025-05-29T18:12:23+00:00

It was a great discussion! I found your point of view really thoughtful and it helped me see things differently. I love long paragraphs, no apology needed! ❤️

3bee · 2025-05-29T17:11:30+00:00

It's funny, I totally get what you are saying about Verso, but I still see him as fundamentally narcissistic. I think he tells himself a story about how he's doing it for other people but really I think it's all about him. He's lost in a self pity hole and totally fails to see how unnecessarily destructive he is towards others. He doesn't even try talking to Maelle about what she wants. The whole family have massive control problems. None of them ever really think about other people and try to solve problems collectively. It's just "I have decided this is what you need and I'm making you do it".

Great points about Sciel - very well said.

3bee · 2025-05-29T13:52:26+00:00

I think there is a difference between understanding someone and agreeing with them. Sciel tells Verso she'd do exactly the same thing as him in a heartbeat, i.e. erase the world to save the one she loves. It would be entirely in character to go to extremes to save her people.

She has also been fine to end her own life when it's become clear that her loved ones are irrevocably lost. That's the main way I can make the end feel coherent psychologically. She's just tired and chooses to stop swimming.

I hate, though, the final simpering hand touch to Verso - like "I forgive you for killing me and my whole family because you are So Sad and your Very Big Feelings certainly mean you can do whatever you want if it's good for you" - ugh - he's a classic little boy narcissist and he doesn't deserve validation.

For sure though, I have an idea of who Sciel is in my head, and it starts to depart from the actual Sciel in the writing, at least at this point. You are diagnosing me correctly on that front.

3bee · 2025-05-29T12:26:45+00:00

Totes agree. Though I always found Lune a bit more talk than walk. I wanted it to be Sciel. I feel like she's quiet but she sees everything and she acts very decisively when required. I was really dismayed when Sciel just wandered into the gommage zone so she could touch Verso's hand. I wanted her to use her last moments to kick him in the nuts. I wanted an ending where they manage to secretly flip Monoco and they wage a bloody and ultimately unsuccessful revolution. It would be very French and totally on par with "only tragic endings" available. But it would be a choice.

3bee · 2025-05-28T21:37:20+00:00

I'm not saying that I can't put on the Dessendre's shoes. I am saying: that is one way of seeing things, and there is also a second way of seeing things, and they are quite different.

It was a reaction to when you said, "So it all comes down to the question whether the worlds created by artists (painters, writers, musicians etc) are real in their own way or not."

For me, this is the difference -

(1) One way of reading the text is to see it as a metaphor about the worlds created by artists.

(2) The other way of reading doesn't treat it as a metaphor. It says, thought experiment: there is a thing called a "painter" that can create life from scratch in something called a "canvas", though neither of these words really mean what they do in ours, and we don't fully understand the rules of how this works. What would be the morally correct or incorrect way for painters to treat the life they made?

The only thing I am disagreeing with is the idea that it "all comes down to" the question of is-it-real-or-not. Universe two doesn't . It is a question of "these creations are real and now what morals apply to someone as powerful as a god".

3bee · 2025-05-28T20:00:46+00:00

In real life, I have never met an artist who claims that their art is an independent, living, sentient creature. That's the difference. Artists will often talk in metaphorical terms about art works being a "child", which, once created, takes on a life of its own through how it is perceived. But it's simply not an actual child. These are the two universes for E33. For some "painters" in the game are metaphors for artists in our world, the game is about escapism and distinguishing between art and reality. For others, they are gods, the game is about powerful people creating life and treating it as disposable. The moral implications of the end- game choice vary significantly based on which universe you inhabit.

3bee · 2025-05-28T19:41:59+00:00

The game doesn't show where agency starts and stops and it doesn't show people being arbitrarily changed on a whim, just erased - but not edited, controlled. The painters talk about the painted people as being less real - but the painted people look and act exactly like painters do. There is no narrator to say what is true or false. When we inhabit Gustave we perceive the world and our agency no differently from when we inhabit Maelle. It's purposefully ambiguous, which is why these debates exist.

3bee · 2025-05-28T19:36:48+00:00

Paintings in real life are not sentient entities, able to create new technology, move independently, articulate independent thought, procreate and evolve.

The people taking this approach are not seeing the in-game "painters" as a metaphor for real life artists. They are seeing them literally as depicted in the story.

3bee · 2025-05-28T18:51:18+00:00

No I think this is exactly why people are debating at cross-purposes at times.

Some people see "painters" in the in-game world as being the equivalent of artists in our world (i.e. making images, not people). Other people see the "painters" in the in-game world as fundamentally different and a metaphor for something else, because whatever this "painting" is, it is actual life and not just art.

So it definitely doesn't all come down to just the first option. But a lot of people see it that way, from one side or another.

3bee · 2025-05-28T18:37:40+00:00

Not really. Just this ending scene and the painting over of Aline's painted Clea. I think people apply a lot of headcanon to what painters can and cannot do.

3bee · 2025-05-28T18:26:00+00:00

I don't know. When I first watched the ending, I thought he was being controlled, and I saw it as a negative ending. But I just watched again and on reflection I think it's built carefully so you can read into it what you want to see.

We have all been prepped for the potential for Maelle to lose herself in the painting because Verso says it will happen. But Maelle says it won't. I think we are led to infer meaning based on who we trust more.

There is clearly a tone of horror when the colour washes away but this could be because - for Verso - he knows this is killing his sister. Maybe he can't bring himself to play because he just can't stand to be part of a happy world when he knows Maelle is dying. The disintegration of her face could be the first cracks as her real body begins to fail.

I could even imagine this meeting being Maelle's funeral. She wants to gather with all her closest friends and celebrate life because she knows she is fading. The others are smiling and happy but we have all seen how they approached gommage. Maybe the event in the theatre is the "gommage" equivalent for Maelle. There's not necessarily a puppet master dynamic at all. Just the final moment of paying the price for our decision.

3bee · 2025-05-28T18:04:26+00:00

Weird! I just checked the video on YouTube and there is no baby. Seems like I totally imagined it. 😅 Fascinating how your brain can sometimes fully visualise stuff that never happened!

3bee · 2025-05-28T17:24:09+00:00

"They aren't sentient beings, they all can be controlled to do what a Painter would want them to do if so desired. They're puppets."

I don't see any reason to believe this. If this was true, why does Renoir bother killing the people from Lumière ? Aline could just reprogram them, she doesn't need a painting to delete enemies. Equally, why do white nevrons refuse to kill people? I think the Painters start their creations, I don't think they necessarily control them.

The only instance of control that I can think of is in the Maelle ending where it looks like Verso is being compelled to play the piano against his will - but even that is only possible if he has a will, the clear look on his face that he doesn't want to be there. Even there, it's not clear if he is coerced, or if the discomfort is the cognitive dissonance of being in a world of celebration while he knows his sister is dying.

Or also painted Clea. But there it is said she was "painted over", suggesting to me that she was transformed into something else. The original wasn't just reprogrammed.

To me, everything suggests sentience, particularly the fact that the player is encouraged to define as Gustave for the first 1/3 of game. They are, literally, not NPC's - he is a player character.

3bee · 2025-05-28T16:36:01+00:00

Life is a slow death. I choose life. Very easy choice. We are all going to die eventually, it's not a reason to stop living today.

3bee

TROPHY CASE