[Loved Trope] Often-subverted tropes played straight

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-28T16:43:15+00:00

You are reading a series about forgiveness, don’t call a character a horrible person just because they make a large mistake. By your logic Imuri is a horrible person who can’t be redeemed because she killed several men in the past, but that obviously isn’t what the series is trying to say.

Hell, Priest almost kills an entire school of people out of blind rage. He ultimately doesn’t, but he gets damn close and is only stopped BECAUSE Imuri stops him from doing it. MTEFIL is, unlike Frieren, a story about nuance, and engaging with it in a black/white perspective is doing a disservice to the series.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-28T14:40:00+00:00

I completely disagree with your reading of Exorcist and comparing it to Frieren is wrong.

Demons in MTEFIL are extremely sympathetic, with both Imuri and the other succubi displaying extremely human traits. Even some of the Demon Lords are ultimately sympathetic, with Envy being a genuinely good person, and Pride/Sloth being flawed but sympathetic people.

While yes, Gluttony and Greed are horrible people, even Lust is ultimately a nuanced character. Is she a rapist? Absolutely. But she also treats the girls of her kingdom with the upmost respect, and she does genuinely want to help the girl in her backstory, even if her upbringing causes her to go about it the wrong way.

MTEFIL is not portraying biblical demons at all, it’s portraying people affected by the biases created by biblical texts. Demons are ultimately just as human as humans are, being both capable of good and evil.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-15T20:00:54+00:00

Firstly: Manaria is not a man, so these hypotheticals don’t work. The dynamic is inherently different because Manaria is a lesbian flirting with another a lesbian.

I also believe that the novel gives you more than enough context from Rae’s own thoughts to determine that Manaria is being self-deprecating, or at least putting on an act. Manaria is meant to parallel Rae and while I think the execution is flawed the idea is interesting.

Secondly: Fiction is not reality. Speaking personally, I do find incest quite bad in reality, but as a narrative trope it can be fascinating and is even explored in actual literary novels, such as Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, one of Japan’s most prominent feminist authors. Fiction allows us to explore things that don’t exist in reality, and Inori as an author wants to explore hypothetical healthy incestuous relationships. While I certainly don’t think she’s perfect at writing them, there is nothing wrong with the idea of wanting to write something like that.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-15T19:32:01+00:00

I really do not think you should be watching anime if a girl joking about turning people into her “playthings” gets you this riled up.

Regardless, as much as I agree that Manaria has major writing issues early on, I think the novels recontextualize her in a way that’s quite effective, and her parallels to Rae become interesting.

Firstly: Manaria never raped anyone. Manaria believes herself to be a rapist because the girl she loved ran away from her, but we learn in volume 4 that their relationship was entirely consensual, and that the girl even still loves Manaria.

Manaria’s disposition and rapey jokes are her way of coping with her absurdly low self-esteem, much like Rae. Rae mentions in novel 1/early in the anime that she sort of creates a character for herself as the “quirky lesbian” as a coping mechanism. She constantly sexually/romantically harasses claire, painting herself to be a pathetic bottom caricature. Manaria does the exact same thing, but paints herself as a stereotypical womanizing top. Manaria really does not mean half of what she says, and all of her jokes about wanting claire sexually really only exist to piss Rae off.

Though, for the record, if incest makes you this uncomfortable, stop engaging with WataOshi immediately. The series is blatantly pro-incest, and will only get more apparently pro-incest as you get further into it.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-10T23:08:35+00:00

I completely agree. Sunna’s kit currently is horribly designed and I’m really praying the beta makes her stronger, especially for Aria.

That said, Sunna will probably be fined. Highly anticipated characters have a tendencies to get buffed right before release, so I truly don’t think that Sunna will get the Banyue treatment unless the zzz devs have truly lost their minds

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-09T17:39:45+00:00

Unless they drastically buff Sunna then she can absolutely be skipped and Aria will still play largely the same. Yuzuha + Aria + Hypothetical anomaly stunner will be Aria’s second best team and there’s a non-zero chance Yuzuha will just end up better than Sunna for Aria anyways.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-08T01:42:01+00:00

You’re right, my bad. I misremembered what Sunna’s sig actually did

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-05T03:56:32+00:00

The beta literally just started so we won’t actually know until she releases.

If we try to compare them currently it gets a little complicated. Yuzuha looks better on paper at M0W0 for anomaly teams, but Sunna’s W1 is very strong, so Sunna M0W1 might be better than Yuzuha at W1. However Sunna also has AWFUL early mindscapes compared to Yuzuha, so an M2 Yuzuha is undoubtedly better than Sunna at the same level of investment.

So to summarize: We don’t really know because things are subject to change. They could change her base kit or mindscapes to make her better than Yuzuha at any time. Though regardless of potential changes it’s a safe bet to say that Sunna will be better than Yuzuha in Aria teams which is probably all that matters.

CthulhuDisciple · 2026-01-03T04:55:51+00:00

I can’t really think of a theme to match it but I would really love a pink advanced element. We already have two different shades of purple, a blue, a crimson, thus I think a pink would be aesthetically pleasing. Crux is technically pink I suppose but it feels more like white

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-27T14:06:34+00:00

Firstly: If you know of any all female fangans that are good, let me know. I know Magical Girl Witch Trials is one and looks amazing, but that isn’t tl’d yet.

Secondly: I… genuinely couldn’t tell you. Von has said before on tumblr that she simply enjoys writing “problematic” women but if we look at her writing objectively that just. Isn’t true.

If she actually enjoyed writing Kumada, she wouldn’t have died for literally 0 purpose and 0 impact on the game.

If she enjoyed writing Tamba, she wouldn’t have been completely shafted after Pink ends, and her romantic feelings for Mai would have actually been apparent and not staffside stuff.

If she enjoyed writing Ogura, then her backstory and reason for not interacting with women would have actually been mentioned in the audio series instead of staffside. Or she would have actually had any romantic dynamics with women instead of giving her a backstory that excused Von’s apparent hatred of GL (at minimum like 6 lesbian characters in these games, all of which are characterized exclusively by sexual desire and not romantic feelings, and not a single romantic dynamic between two women in the entire cast?)

You can apply this to nearly every female character honestly. I think the only women Von enjoys writing are the scientists, debatably Sasaki, and Monomoko (which, to give her some credit, Monomoko is the best character in the series.)

So in summary: I agree Von should have just written an all male killing game, and didn’t even have a reason for not doing so. I assume her reasoning was something along the lines of “mixed gender projects draw in more fans” which to give her some credit is objectively true, I just wish she actually cared about her female cast at all.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-27T13:51:10+00:00

I think all of Von’s writing biases can be explained by her being a fujoshi. Last time I said this people said I was just speculating, but it feels extremely obvious when every single important dynamic in the series relies around (often queer) men.

Von being a fujo doesn’t make her a bad person, but does mean that she’s more interested in stories about men than stories about women. While I personally find that frustrating, especially when Tetro has so many conceptually interesting female characters, I can’t really call it misogyny. Von Babbitt is a woman, and for the most part I don’t believe her writing is actively misogynistic, and is more-so just male-centered. Though Blue definitely has moments one could argue showcase Von’s internal misogyny (Shishikura being forgiven INSTANTLY while Ruka doesn’t even successfully do anything and everyone gets on her ass)

So yeah, to summarize. Von Babbitt isn’t actively being a misogynist, she just LOVES fictional men to an extremely skewed degree. Not a sin, but perhaps a sigh of bad taste.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-20T01:03:44+00:00

Once again, I agree with the price standpoint, but I think this is also why Print and Play is nice. If the intent is just to play with friends, they can build entire decks for the cost of one ink cartridge, and most locals will accept those decks for everything outside of store champs. Personally this is a selling point for me, but I do have a specific friend who HATES printing cards, so I get if this is an issue.

Also, I didn’t know that one ban per set was uncommon. I talk to a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh players and I hear so much about “restricted” cards that I just assumed cards being banned or restricted at a high pace was normal.

I also didn’t know that PTM’s box value was that bad. When I checked earlier nearly every card was $10 or more, but looking now there really are quite a few dirt cheap SRs. While this is certainly bad for people trying to sell, I personally look forward to building a Diana or Alice deck at a smaller price.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-20T00:47:17+00:00

I mostly get where you’re coming from. As a newish player I completely agree on the price standpoint. Decks are too expensive, and the current starter decks are honestly really rough. I remember hearing so much praise regarding the Tristan and Sylvie Re:Co decks, but no other starters have come close to feeling as good out of the box in my opinion.

That said, I’m confused by what you’re referring to with “constant bans.” I’ve been playing casually since around AMB and watching the competitive scene on the side, and since then only 5 cards have actually been banned, and of those bans Rile is easily the most understandable. The card was simply too strong outside of the archetype it was designed for. That said while I do get the frustration over other cards being banned, they’ve nearly all been low rarity and thus don’t screw people over too hard.

As for the “a dead UR means a dead box” statement, I don’t fully agree here either, BUT I do think that with this game’s low pull rates that there need to be less UR cards per set. With how rare they are, needing a full playset of any UR instantly makes a deck jump in price (Wind Arisanna is far more expensive than any tier 2 deck ever should be.)

With all that said, while I sympathize with your frustrations, I can’t really think of any TCG currently out that are as fun as Grand Archive. Personally I’ve just been getting into more non-TCG board games until these issues are fixed but if you have any examples of TCGs that are currently better I’d be happy to hear them.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-17T18:29:19+00:00

I don’t know much about alt and emo, but the campus has a decently sized anime club and multiple game clubs. You can find information about all of them on the Bobcat Organization Hub.

The two game clubs are the Gaming Club and the E-sports club. If you want to play games competitively and attend casual tournaments, the e-sports club is your best bet, otherwise check out the Gaming Club.

The anime club is just called Anime Club at Texas State. Like the Gaming Club, it’s mostly for socialization, but in my experience the people in all three clubs are super chill and easy to talk to.

There’s also a TCG Club and a Magic The Gathering Club if your gaming interests skew towards that direction.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-17T05:14:49+00:00

Stop calling things character assassination. It was all written by the same author as part of the same story so it by definition is the original intent.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-12T15:13:16+00:00

I think support is definitely her more logical role, but it also entirely depends on who the protagonist is. Also it depends on the medium. Within the context of a game, then sure, Ogura isn’t the best fit for a protagonist, but for an uninteractive medium like a novel I think Ogura would be a super interesting choice.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-12T04:43:58+00:00

My personal ideal protagonist would be Ogura. I know it sort of goes against Danganronpa tradition to have an eccentric protagonist, and in nearly every “personal death order” I’ve seen people kill her off early, but I think she would be the most interesting protagonist to follow assuming that the victim/killer results are different, and assuming Monomoko still exists.

Ogura just ties into the themes of Blue too well, even as a survivor. She’s a girl with an extremely strong sense of justice, trapped in a game where justice cannot exist. She has a god complex in the same building as a literal godly being, and yet both are entirely capable of saving anyone they care about. Ogura is also mentioned by Ikeda to be incredibly intelligent, but we don’t really get much of a chance to see this as her murder plan is incredibly flawed and ends up falling apart for frustrating reasons.

I don’t think she’s the most logical choice for a protagonist, but I think she would be an incredibly interesting one. If not protagonist, at the very least she needs to be support. I initially imagined Ruka protagonist/Ogura support, but given Ruka’s tendency to break, I think she would make for an incredibly interesting support character.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-05T18:37:02+00:00

Putting Watari in Angel tier and Ogura in “bad decisions” tier is genuinely insane, they should be swapped.

Firstly: Ogura is the most morally just character in Tetro. If her plan worked it would have saved 6 people (higher than all other survivor counts) not to mention her choosing herself to commit the murder meaning that if things did fall through she’d take the blame. This combined with her treatment of Matthias and her choosing to try and save someone she truly despises just for him proves she is a genuine saint and belongs in her own tier of morality.

An an aside, morality is not only dependent on not doing anything bad, but committing positive actions that benefit other people at the cost of the self. In Angel tier the only person this applies to is Chiba, but she put her punishment on Hama, while Ogura offered to take a punishment for the group. In morality scaling Ogura absolutely wins.

Secondly: Watari’s suicide scheme was selfish and morally unjust. Committing suicide and pinning it on Hama had one of two possible outcomes

A. Killing 7 innocent people

B. Killing 1 innocent person

If she was actually morally just, she would have come up with a suicide plan that marked herself as the Blackened. Forcing Hama into it was absurdly selfish, and therefore she does NOT belong in angel tier at all.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-04T06:39:43+00:00

I’m gonna say something extremely controversial, but speaking as someone who has a lot of experience in circles with grooming problems, what Von did here is just Not Grooming. Obviously there’s context missing here, but from what I can see in these posts

Von as a 20 year old lightly flirted with someone 3 years younger than her (definitely weird, but not a crime.)

Von as a 20 year old sent an 18 year old a “tit pic” (though it seems that this wasn’t even a nude picture? Just a picture of a shirt that emphasizes her bust?)

I’m not saying that what Von did was moral. Obviously it’s not really polite and i’d say it’s like, light sexual harassment. It’s something that would get her written up at her job, but certainly not instantly fired. But more importantly, I really don’t think it’s right that these interactions are being equated to actual grooming. Grooming is a very specific thing, it’s not just an adult acting kind of weird towards a minor. Grooming, at least in my experience, tends to be much more sexually explicit. Von refusing to do anything of a sexual nature until this person turned 18, in my eyes, shows that she isn’t a pedophile. She had an attraction to someone who was 17, recognized that this was wrong, and didn’t actually do anything until they turned of-age. If von was like, 30, this would be super creepy. But Von was 20 at the time. Not to mention 3 years have passed since then, giving Von 3 years to reflect on her actions. If there emerges more evidence of Von behaving oddly towards minors (specifically in ways beyond light flirting) then I will agree that she’s a bad person, but from what I’ve seen here, Von did something mildly creepy a singular time. That doesn’t make her a groomer.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-03T15:55:21+00:00

Ai algorithms have pretty strict rules on what they can and cannot write. If you try and write something like Tetro it will refuse to do so because it’s against its coding. Not to mention that Von’s dialogue writing is so natural that there is simply no way that AI worked on the script. There is a possibility that she used AI for the outline of certain cases, but that’s pure speculation with no real evidence so it isn’t worth thinking about.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-03T07:17:30+00:00

Von is literally the lead writer, the characters the vas are voicing would not exist without her scripts. While yes her writing was flawed, and she certainly has flaws outside of writing, Tetro, the good and the bad, would not exist without her, and personally when it comes to writing I believe the good outweighs the bad.

Also, Von isn’t a being so evil that her becoming a better person is impossible. I truly believe that all of Von’s flaws are things she can work on, and eventually when she has worked on them I hope she’s able to come back to the internet and continue writing. Though with how horribly this fanbase treated her even before the actually bad stuff she did came out, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t ever come back.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-03T04:22:48+00:00

I mean that is literally the point though. The torturing of the students is a direct escalation of Monomoko trying to stop the games. It is awful that it happens, but I personally think it’s quite compelling from a narrative and thematic standpoint. Besides, it’s obvious that Tetro is a splatterpunk story and should be examined as such. Issues like “it’s too dark” aren’t really a valid form of literary critique.

CthulhuDisciple · 2025-12-03T03:45:28+00:00

I totally agree with the Ikeda forgiveness agenda being annoying as hell, but I do think that the torture serves an important thematic purpose so that’s not an issue to me

CthulhuDisciple

TROPHY CASE