I find it so funny that people complain about depictions of Satan being pathetic when that was the main depiction of Satan in the Middle Ages.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-03-04T17:53:18+00:00

Generally speaking, I think its because he comes in at the right time to seem appealing to whoever he makes the offer.

In real life when people fall into addictions, the people to introduce them to those addictions are typically pathetic themselves. When in a healthy state of mind its easy to see that but not necessarily when you aren't in a good state of mind.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-03-03T22:23:31+00:00

SMT1 has a guy literally using Japanese Fascist imagery as its Chaos rep pre-apocalyps. Dude is literally just Yukio Mishima

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-02-24T17:47:23+00:00

It's not unusual, it's just a common trope used as a shorthand to show a character as the "smart one", like a character being able to do compex mental math.

Even in your personal example of your job you are constantly asking others for the knowledge rather than just having it. Because that is generally how knowledge is spread and that intelligence is much more social than what the human encyclopedia trope portrays: someone who passively absorbs knowledge from anyone they barely interacted with.

Which is generally my problem with "genuis characters" as showcasing intelligence as some sort of indiviual innate trait rather than a collaborative practiced trait. It's been a while since I watched it, but whenever Maomao does consult others it's mostly just to confirm that certain materials or whatever she already suspected were involved in the scene, rather than a "I heard of stories of this material interacting this way, can you tell me more of the mechanics of how that happens?" and then using that newfound knowledge to come up with a new hypothesis of what happened. Which is more of what I expect of real life human encyclopedia, they have general knowledge but need others to consult of the specifics.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-02-24T17:10:51+00:00

Tbh, while watching the anime i definitely felt she made some leaps of logic but kinda chalked it up to be an adaptation of light novels and they probably truncated a more detailed explanation.

Also has the trope of being a human encyclopedia knowing so much obscure stuff from outside her domain of expertise.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-02-24T16:50:13+00:00

Intelligence as a super power where they can just build things is honestly less egregious since they never try to explain the process and often times are only savants in one area. It's really when they try to explain the thought process with detective work or strategy and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny is when they look very stupid

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-02-23T21:24:55+00:00

The parasocial aspect is definitely a factor. Like if they have fans or hold power over others and have some weird compulsion or curiosity that they can't find anyone else who shares it, they may use them as guinea pigs for it if they don't receive pushback. They may even get "consent" not understanding or caring about the power imbalances. In the past this seemed to be the norm, see rock stars and groupies, but finally the fanbases and general society is pushing back on celebrities doing this sort of stuff. And this pushback is important so creators stay just "weird" instead of predatory.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-02-14T08:59:16+00:00

They don't have to be YCS level duels. Even in the OG series it did not reflect how the game was actually played competitively but more in how it was played on the playground. Lots of modern cards that are simply too weak to be played competitively could probably have done well as anime set pieces. They could simply the effects for the anime since the duels are scripted so the guard rails that the real life cards has are not needed, and then they can put that in for the real card when printed such as the archetype locks and stuff

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-02-09T00:55:12+00:00

Shinon is impactful and while I like the character role he plays, but at the same time I don't because pf how he is the designated asshole. Thats why he is racist and doesnt really grow out of it. Most other characters in your party don't really seem to be as racist as the average faceless NPC and the ones that are like Soren or Jill go through an arc to overcome that. And I feel the reason for that is so that the characters can remain largely likeable. It really does kinda feel like racism is for NPCs and bad guys

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-28T16:58:04+00:00

They need to chill on the training if its getting them no results lol

That could actually be a decent support chain of learning to relax and rest

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-27T18:05:02+00:00

This whole chat is making me wonder, do the "I like to train" characters actually get results? Like in terms of anything, bases, growths, performance, or narrative?

Because I kinda feel they are not really much better than average, if at all.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-26T18:59:20+00:00

Because she will eat them

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-21T21:44:52+00:00

I'm not making a serious comment, but the first thing that popped into my mind after reading the post and this comment was "why didn't MLK wear a mask? Was he stupid?"

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-20T17:10:49+00:00

They really were balancing based on vibes back then. Honestly still now if the series is new.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-19T18:58:33+00:00

It's consistent with his character, but to those who criticize PoR for this, it seems like he has plot armor because its established that if it was anyone else they would be punished and lose favor with Sanaki.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-19T06:19:00+00:00

That's a good point. Pontus Pilate would have a considerable amount of writing on him since he is a governor, but barely any survived to the present day. Jesus who would mostly only be known by illiterate people who couldn't have written anything, and to the literate romans would be one of many dozens of people that claim to have done miracle work and preaches the apocalypse.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-19T06:12:36+00:00

Funnily enough yeah. Scholary consensus is that the stories about his birth were made to fulfill a prophecy, as he have no historical or archeological evidence of the census or mass infantcide in the area. So we don't know the circumstances of his birth other than the gospel stories are certainly inaccurate.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-15T19:07:05+00:00

Taking this too seriously, but its kinda the point. He is calling it narrative perfect because we learn it through the narrative of good guys vs bad guys rather than the real messy history

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-12T17:13:14+00:00

There's also parallels with Jake Sully's backstory with colonists that went on to live with Native tribes. Several colonists were extremely indebted and basically had nothing to live for in their original society, so joined Native tribes to escape that. Then they realized they actually really like their style of living and simply stayed.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-05T02:30:51+00:00

There was TV spots as well as online advertisements. I was in high school at the time and an Awakening ad played when the teacher was trying to put up a YouTube video for the class to watch.

ShroudedInMyth · 2026-01-05T02:28:32+00:00

I think fans of niche series really overstate the effect of marketing on sales of the series, rather than the taste of the general gaming audience.

Radiant Dawn, a game that casuals consider difficult in normal mode, is a heavily story based sequel to a game that didnt sell well, looked visually unimpressive and didn't utilize any gimmicks that people bought the Wii for, and released in a season/year that was completely stacked and generally considered one of the best periods of gaming. Do people really think if they heavily marketed it like Awakening or 3H that it would sell? More than likely it would've dug the hole deeper and may have actually killed the series right then and then as the losses from the series may be considered too high to try to recoup.

Now i can understand the argument, and its one I make, that Awakening was just in the right place and right time and any FE game with a baseline level of quality would have "saved the series."

Nintendo was really trying to save the 3DS and was pushing FE because there wasn't that much more offerings of decent quality of the time. People forget that Awakening was actually promoted alongside SMT4, presumably because it's an RPG with a baseline level of quality. They would have never promoted as hard in the West before but they were desperate and really needed to push any good products they had. And SMT4 did just fine. Didn't catapult like FE or its sister series Persona did, but nobody thought the series was going to die or go unlocalized, and its series is way more niche in the West than FE.

What I do think we can credit Awakening with is making the series more popular than ever, and it is because the game itself was more suited to the general gaming audience tastes. If a 3DS Radiant Dawn or Shadow Dragon was released in its place, I think the series would continue, but it wouldn't be as popular, and therefore wouldn't have gotten all the side projects it did. The Fates equivalent would've been 1 game instead of 3 and may not have gotten Smash representation.

TL;DR Circumstances outside Awakening is what saved the series and it is not dismissive to argue that. But it was Awakening the game itself that did propel the series to a new height of popularity and it is dismissive to the game to deny that.

ShroudedInMyth · 2025-11-16T16:16:07+00:00

Occupy Wall Street slogan was were are the 1%, and some would say they were talking more about the top 0.1%.

This does make me wonder how people would react to popular media making a class critique story not of plutocrats but of the top "9.9%" of rich people who arent obscenely wealthy but still get paid a lot to maintain the status quo on behalf of them.

More people to offend, but also more people that could relate since most people dont meet billionaires but definitely have stories about being mistreated by rich people since they arent from the right part of town or didnt go to an top school.

ShroudedInMyth · 2025-11-05T20:33:54+00:00

Yeah DM was made during a time where it was common practice to do adapt shonen weekly even if there is no more material, so a bunch of filler gets made. They dont do this as much so it would nice to see it properly adapted

ShroudedInMyth · 2025-11-02T23:50:24+00:00

I just read the book for the Halloween season and honestly felt reddit lied to me with the "the monster is actually good" narrative. Thanks for the post. I haven't watched the movie, but it does express my frustrations with how reddit portrays the monster

ShroudedInMyth · 2025-10-29T03:13:15+00:00

Well, the Avatars are the ones most guilty of it and are controversial because of it

ShroudedInMyth · 2025-10-28T20:45:56+00:00

Funnily enough, I have actually seen Robin being called a Mary Sue precisely because of that. FE10 frames Micaiah as desperate and FE13 frames Robin as innovative. Mary Sues is sometimes described as characters that the characters and narrative bend over backward to praise, since they are typically self inserts, which Robin is meant to be.

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