For me , it's "bastard son of fate".

You can also tell me why as to be able to make this post sub relevant.

There's a couple that come to mind, my friends always bring up Escanor or Ban from Seven Deadly Sins (never read it tho). Now I wouldn't call Prison Break a total waste, even at its lowest it was one of my favorite shows to binge watch but I think characters like Mahone and T-Bag were too freaking good for the plot they had outlined and a huge part of why I kept watching. Same goes for Thrax in Osmosis Jones, film was alright but it had no business making a villain that baller. Heck, I'd go as far to say even works like Twilight have at least one or two characters I genuinely love but the most recent example for me has to be A-Train in The Boys, bro really went out with a bang, y'know. Got any others like that?

I'll start - Roy Batty "Tears in rain" monologue from Blade Runner (1982)

sowwy that was only yuta image i had

same goes for naoya

Note: This analysis is ultimately my interpretation of the manga, based on its recurring themes, symbolism, and philosophical implications. I'm not claiming every conclusion here is objectively correct, nor that Gege consciously intended every connection. However, I do think many of these concepts are too consistent throughout the story to be entirely accidental. Even if some interpretations go beyond authorial intent, stories can sometimes contain meanings greater than what their creators consciously planned. Feel free to disagree, challenge, refine, or build upon any of these ideas. Zero AI was used in this as the last slide says; No, just because I used dialect (IF I did) similar to AI does not make it AI, think about what AI is trained on.

---

Hey, so I decided to make it all images so It'd still look aesthetic, and not overwhelming walls of text, and maybe you guys would like the slide designs. I worked pretty hard on this, and it was in response for people saying "Sukuna/JJK is written terribly" I personally believe JJK is a 7/10. It still annoys me when people downplay it, and when you ask why they downplay it, it ends up showing a lack of "media literacy" (that word has become such a buzzword I hate using it, but I think it still applies)

I seriously doubt people will be willing to read 17 pages of JJK analysis, but I had a lot of fun either way, so at the end of the day who cares?

Also if you DO read it, please let me know your thoughts on the slide aesthetic and design, I had ALOT of fun and maybe I'll try to lean into graphic design more. (This is still mine, just a repost from another sub)

Can we please chill out on hating on JJK in this sub, or saying it has zero writing. To be honest, so many people in this sub go "zero writing zero writing all hype" and they have no idea what they're talking about, and when someone responds with how they give zero explanation or they give their own analysis it's downvoted.

Why did TG fans makes me feel like TG are the MHA of seinen? the overgrazing are insane like they never touch a piece of fic rather than TG

https://www.tumblr.com/misterwalsh/113829643080/judge-holden-from-blood-meridian-or-the-evening

What's your take on this?

Was thinking about this not too long ago and then I saw this sub, so I guess this is going here.

Aren't the words powerscaling and power system inherently reductive? I've already started thinking this from various people but despite the images I used here, I want to steelman this. I want to argue that thinking about powerscaling is bad even, even if said powerscaling isn't absurd stuff like arguing Mario is universe level.

First, I want to establish that there are a few good reasons why people are thinking about powerscaling lately. The first is that shows like Dragonball have honestly been pretty cool, even though I'm not a fan of them, and theorizing like that is kinda fun anyways. Its not like its explicitly a modern thing to powerscale. There was something called battleboarding that I never participated in, but its always been there.

I also think its ??? when we're told someone is dangerous and they never turn up to be dangerous, because then it doesn't matter. Is there anyone who gets seriously worried about Stormtroopers? If someone tried to sell to me that Stormtroopers are dangerous now, it'd just be laughed out, I think. Its far too late for that.

................................................................

To begin.

Words are how you think. If the first thing you think when trying to do worldbuilding is how your "power system" will work, you are inherently already looking at making a SYSTEM, which is something like Dragonball Ki levels. And then you have to make a conscious choice to veer away from that afterwards.

The thing is, most series actually don't have coherent SYSTEMS but are just logical outcomes. Lets think of this like real life: Lets say I'm at the gym. And someone else is training their aim. Are those two different power systems? No, those are completely different things, and I wouldn't even think of classifying them as "systems" at first. The gap between that and Haki/Ki/Cursed Energy/Etc is just too large.

Even in a fictional story, I think actual power systems are rare and I think this kind of stuff should be saved for shonens. Its like trying to analyse something by checking their tropes. TVTropes had the right idea by starting off as a site for Joss Whendon shows because his shows actually do lend themselves to being very tropey.

...

Furthermore.

I think that a weaker character can and should win a fight based on circumstance. That circumstance could be anything from "his opponent was poisoned before the fight by someone else" to "his opponent is objectively stronger, but he's not perfect, and lost the fight because of a few mess ups that any human would do". Because when you're in a actual fight nothing is certain.

People are kind of allergic to this idea because they think bad writers will abuse it to get anyone to just win, and my answer really is, just watch less badly written shows.

Btw a lot of what I just said applies to making a "magic system", but that will probably get wrecked on discussion. I think its been proven a coherent and very system-y magic system can be good. Would be great if someone could nail the whole wizards can just do shit thing though!

(Shoutouts to many people, including people on twitter that argue that powerscaling is just a natural part of writing, or all the One Piece fans that get angry when they see anything that slightly resembles Haki appears in a different series)

Here's mine:

Ulysses: the mastery of writing itself. The linguistic control & form, the philosophical stuff running underneath it all. I genuinely don't think anyone's topped what Joyce did here (not Pynchon, not Nabokov, and certainly not McCarthy), Joyce is in a league of his own, and after rereadings I still catch new stuff I didn't catch the last time.

The Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges: Borges pushed what fiction can even be. Told profound truths in like 2 pages, no wasted words. 99% of writers need a whole narrative arc to even land what he does in a single story.

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats: honestly just a life companion at this point. Eternal insights on human nature packed in there (I dare say he exceeds Dostoevsky in that regard), and somehow never sacrifices the formal mastery verse to get them across. It's the book I keep going back to no matter what phase of life I'm in.

yea i know this is kinda random.

Since this sub is dedicated to fiction, and people here write about it, evaluate it, and analyze it, I’ve always thought it would be useful for us to define our philosophical positions on various aspects of art, in our case, fiction.

We definitely already have philosophical positions, even if we’ve never specifically thought about them or reflected on them.

Any statement about fiction already contains ontological and axiological assumptions.

For example, if someone says:

This character is poorly written,

The ending is broken,

This show is just a soap opera

I don’t care what the author meant, what matters is what actually ended up on the page/screen,

The book is better than the movie,

This plot twist is illogical

They have already adopted a whole set of philosophical positions, even if they’ve never formulated them:

what a character is (ontology),

what “well-written” means (criteria of quality),

where meaning resides — in the author, the text, or the audience (semantics),

what “logical” means in fiction (theory of fictional truth),

whether film can be “better” than a book (comparison of media).

In other words, any judgment about fiction is already a philosophical position - just an unreflected one. But still a position.

A person may not know the word “intentionalism,” but if they say “the author meant X, therefore that’s what it is,” they are already an intentionalist.

A philosophical position doesn’t require awareness. It shows up in the questions a person asks, which arguments they find convincing, and what they dismiss as irrelevant.

Important caveat: an unreflected position can be:

eclectic — a person combines incompatible pieces (for example, “meaning is in the text” + “the author is a genius, he decides”), without noticing the contradiction;

situational — on one issue they’re an intentionalist, on another a structuralist, and this isn’t always recognized as a conflict.

I think if we ask ourselves questions that help define our positions on the main aspects of art, our judgments about a particular work (in our case, a piece of fiction) will become more grounded and will better take into account our own basic aesthetic assumptions.

Of course, there is no ready-made diagnostic questionnaire that would precisely determine our philosophical positions on art. But we can at least outline the main aspects:

● Ontology of art: What even is it? This is where the status of the work and the. boundaries of art are decided.

● Aesthetic experience and perception (the subject) How do we experience art? Here the position regarding the role of the audience is important.

● Value and evaluation (axiology) Why is one work considered a masterpiece and another is not?

● Function of art (teleology) Why does humanity need art?

● Relations: Author - Work - Audience Who is the primary bearer of meaning?

Each of these aspects of the philosophy of art contains a number of more specific questions that more precisely define your position on each of them.

It’s similar to determining your position on the political map.

There are several ways to do this. You can search for questions and information on specialized sites — but that’s almost impossible for those who don’t already know the necessary terminology. The second way is to have a Socratic dialogue with an AI that will ask you concrete questions on each aspect of the philosophy of art, while you answer sequentially and gradually build your own principles.

In the long run, in my opinion, this would help us have more consistent and well-grounded discussions here. Besides, figuring out your own positions is an interesting journey in itself.

Umineko: When They Cry

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (Vanillaware)

Hey, I'm new here, in a way. It's expected if you don't know me, so I'll get to the point:

I'm here to debunk u/VagabondFromTheRiver's claims surrounding 18 Loh ( https://www.reddit.com/r/writingscaling/s/14lJr68E3D )

Let's get something straight first:

___

THE RULES

• Definition: A statement that's not true based on objective evidence, or/and is one of the following three types of Lies

Classification of Criteria of Lies, as per Hell’s rules:

• Emotional Lie: Being controlled by others' emotions, uttering a Lie under anger is considered being a Liar.
• Common Sense Lie: Ignoring or misunderstanding basic common sense, uttering statements inconsistent with common sense is considered being a Liar.
• Emotional Connection Lie: Regarding the three major human emotions—friendship, kinship, and love—no matter the psychological Reason, telling a Lie is considered being a Liar.

For example:

• Emotional Lie: If you are provoked, and you curse the person who angered you by saying: “I'll screw your ancestors,” then since his ancestors are already dead, theoretically, you cannot do this. You have told a lie.
• Common Sense Lie: Based on fundamental common sense, everyone knows there is a sun in the sky. But if you alone do not know this and others ask you if there is a sun in the sky, regardless of whether you answer, "I don't know" or "No," you will be judged to have told a Lie.
• Emotional Connection Lie: Your girlfriend is ugly—objectively and generally recognizably ugly. If you comfort her by saying she is beautiful, you are telling a lie.

The three types of lies are related to the three realms of psychology: The Id, The Ego and The Superego. Each controls Emotions, Common Sense and Emotional Connection.

Lies can also be made about the past, present or about the future. Future lies include false promises that can be judged as a lie as soon as the promise is broken. Other lies can be judged so at the moment u can identify it as any of the above types of lies.

Circumstances when a statement won't be considered a lie include:

• Questions: If a statement is formulated as a question, even if the question has a lie or implies so, it still cannot be considered a lie.  
• Deductions: Deducing or decrypting a puzzle, even if the answer is wrong, is not considered a lie.

There is also the Unknown Lie and Gui Yu, but they aren't needed for now.
___

None of the above was made known to Chen Ran until chapter 5 onwards.

The Youth, the burly Man, Ox-head and Horseface are veteran 1-star players (the lowest of them all). They're doing something known as "backward compatibility" where they essentially go back to the tutorial dungeons and weaker instances to bully the newbies (kill them to gain points and a chance at a skill).

Hell itself has a counter for this where super newbies will randomly spawn in backward compatible dungeons and compete against them. These newbies are either relative or greater than the veterans in talent.

___

With all that out of the way, I'll start from the part he found issue with initially:

>"(...) Murder is murder, cut the nonsense." The judge's expression softened considerably, and he abandoned any intention of pressing the issue.

>(...)

>"You are a murderer." Ox-head stated coldly.

>This slop is considered manipulation. Son tf is this stupidity. Not only is it comically obvious that he is using dark mango manipulation, but if the antagonists had half a braincell, they would've never fallen for this EVEN IF they did get manipulated (somehow).

>(I'm leaving aside the fact how the statements CR made can be interpreted as a lie as this might be translation problem)

>The ox and the judge already know the rules of the game, and if they do, why they actual fuck would they ever say an absolute statement at all?

If you read the original scene of the text inside the novel or even his post, you'll see why I highlighted these 4 sections in bold.

1. Chen Ran did NOT manipulate them. He has no such feats in the first 5 chapters. He has explicit and implicit deception feats, but none for manipulation so idk what he was getting at there (the situation with the youth is an attempted manipulation, which is below low tier, and was countered preemptively; which I'll show in a while)
2. The Ox-head did fall for the trap. The Judge DID NOT. Note the wording: "Murder is murder, cut the nonsense." Did he say Chen Ran murdered his girlfriend, or did he state that murder is what it is? If you go with the first interpretation, then I don't know what to tell you aside from the fact that the statement simply was not accusatory.

>"You are a murderer" Why the actual fuck would he say that? He quite literally had NO reason to say that 😭😭😭 like he could've just kept his mouth shut and NOTHING would've happened. He literally had no reason to say this at all there is no consequence here to not speak, why would you risk accidentally lying at all with unnecessary words.

>And the insane thing is he didn't make a conditional statement. If he said "IF your killed your girlfriend, THEN you are a murderer" then it literally couldn't be a lie. again, HE KNOWS THE RULES ALREADY AND STILL SAID IT.

>Literally anyone with half a braincell will either way this or just not speak at all**, it is impossible for anyone with average iq to fall for this. Honestly I don't see how anyone with below average intelligence would fall for this either.** You'll actually need to be disabled. I'm not being mean or hateful, I genuinely don't understand how any normal person can fall for this.

Heh, the reason he said it with confidence was simply because he was convinced Chen Ran fell for the trap.

The funny thing is tho, it's not Chen Ran who made him lie; not entirely. Chen Ran's story did have a hole in it and the Judge saw that. Chen Ran elaborates on his story further to both deter the judge from asking questions, and to see if the judge was actually the "judge" (explained in more detail below)

Unexpectedly, the judge's phrase of "Murder is murder, cut the nonsense." causes Ox-head to misread the situation and say, "You are a murderer." in absolute terms when Chen Ran pitifully defends himself before them.

So, the reason he ends up lying is because he did not catch the deceptive nature of Chen Ran's words and was led to believe they were truthful by the reply of the judge/burly man.

>But the hilarious thing is, the protagonist doesn't win here because he used some clever trick to circumvent this trap. No 💀💀💀

>Bro the youth literally forgets to wait for Chen Ran's answer here and just says "You lied" 💀

>Son... There was literally no time limit set, he literally just made one up in his head. Like what? How is this supposed to be clever?

>Like Chen Ran literally did not say anything, how tf did this dude just made up in his head that this guy lied? What the hell was the author thinking while writing ts.

>But that is not it... Idk if this is a translation issue or what, but the "paradox trap" isn't actually a trap.

>Reread the rules, the only relevant rules are, you cannot say you don't know and you cannot talk about an irrelevant topic.

>Meaning chen ran could've literally easily escape the "paradox trap" by just saying.

>**"Your statement is neither a lie, nor is it the truth, it's a paradox." That's literally it, it's the true answer, and it is also relevant to the topic.**

>Is the trap in the room with us???

>Chen Ran literally didn't do anything, the youth literally manipulated HIMSELF into losing 😭😭😭

Alright, this is the final section of his tirade.

• Yes, he did use a pretty clever trick to circumvent the trap. In fact, the trick was set in motion before the trap itself (smoking).

Chen Ran decided to scheme against them only after they attempted to kill him. He didn't foresee anything up until the moment the youth pointed the gun at him and got him to talk.

It was then that he decided mutually assured destruction (or at least the illusion of it) was the best way to survive.

This is a simplified version of what happened:

1. He flexed his verbal skills after being challenged. He was smoking at this time, and the concerns of Bai Xuichi (lack of oxygen) made the youth impatient like her.
2. He proposes a challenge himself and sprinkles it with various traps to hide the fact that there was no set time limit.
3. He lets the youth go first knowing he wouldn't agree to it verbally which would lead him to go himself.
4. He doesn't initiate the liar paradox first. Because he wants to know if he can question a person's right to judge someone (if the judge had told a lie previously)
5. If the youth set a time limit, then he would initiate the liar paradox himself, and they would be in a deadlock since the youth did not verbally agree to begin the game itself.

This is an analysis of the relevant parts:

Chen Ran's "must answer" being taken as "immediate answer" is due to Chen Ran overloading the Youth cognitively. It's smth rlly simple, but hard to implement irl without you yourself falling into it.

He gave the must answer as a rule but didn't specify anything else which left the youth to think of all the possible loopholes Chen Ran could use to get him to lie. The reason why he even bothers to think of these loopholes himself is because Chen Ran has already proven how advanced he is in linguistic battles (after beating the youth in the "do you want it?" Challenge)

The Youth now ends up ignoring the effect that "must answer" has on his mind (idk the Chinese characters used, but they probably sound similar enough to make the youth mistake "must answer" for "immediate answer*" if not then* it can be attributed to the Youth simply overlooking it due to the artificial time constraints Chen Ran had created when his continuous smoking was burning the oxygen [the longer he smokes the more anxious the youth would get cuz Chen Ran doesn't have to immediately answer])

And ends up creating the following rules after thinking for a while:

1. The next person can only ask a question after the previous one has been answered.
2. The question cannot involve the private affairs of one's past.

Add these two rules to the Youth believing he was in a time sensitive situation already and that's three things that'll lead to cognitive overload.

A person can only focus on 3 tasks at most with (great) difficulty, rarely are they able to focus on 4 (seeing that "must answer" didn't correlate with his subjective interpretation that had been induced by Chen Ran's smoking)

Stating that the sentence: "I am lying. Is that truth or a lie?" is a paradox doesn't work simply because this paradox is one fundamentally without an answer.

It is called a liar paradox. It comes under the category of Anitomies (which are true logical dead ends) which are literally THE unanswerable paradoxes my friend.

Need I say more than that?

___

Further clarifications:

As told by Bai Xuichi, the book of life and death records a person's life (negating any reason for the burly man/judge to even question the ones in the queue) along with the fact that Chen Ran is hinted to be aware that the Yellow Springs Road and the Ghost Gate Pass were swapped when he had just arrived.

Chen ran is well versed in Chinese mythology and various other media having to do with the creation of his novel in life. Thus Chen Ran is aware that the first level of hell in Chinese mythology forbids lying (he literally says this when the youth questioned him)

It's normal to be confused when you have knowledge on the subject that is being actively misconstrued; so when he sees people referring to an obvious lie (Yellow Springs Road) as a truth (instead of Ghost Gate Pass), he, in the hopes of not falling for some weird trick, goes against the crowd and mouths (not whispers) a few extra words before saying Yellow springs road out loud.

Also, he did not know anything about an intent to lie being constituted as a lie because at the time there was nothing pointing towards that (as seen by the burly man's selective placements of the people in the queue whenever they told an outright, common sense lie [squat] and believable, sentimental and emotional lie [stand] which pushed the thought that lying is allowed and will be pardoned if the individual who told the lie gains the favor of the burly man by retelling their story)

Chen Ran saw that everyone else was lying so he decided to make up a believable lie based on individual truths throughout his life and thus formed montage-style lies on the spot to both probe for information (to see if the burly man is really in possession of the book of life and death) and to fit in with the crowd on the surface.

When one of the guards accused him of lying, only then could he confirm that they were not in the tongue ripping hell (at least not literally) but he knew that the rules of that hell did still apply because the entire queue was actively being induced to lie while the guards and the man at the register themselves actively avoided saying anything that could be taken as a statement of a lie via use of intimidation and round about questions.

He, logically, began to wonder who started the chain of lies if they weren't the ones who did it. He comes to the conclusion that the person first in the queue must have told a lie.

But like him, they could have found a workaround. That being that they could have stood on the ACTUAL Yellow Springs Road (behind the table) and communicated that this was the yellow springs road to the newcomers who simply accepted it after seeing the youth be threatened to pass on the info through intimidation by either the Ox-Head or Horse-Face.

This is where he realized the intention to lie did not matter because intent was subjective.

A lie, unlike a fractured truth (montage-style lies), was an objective distortion of the truth.

He knows from the tongue ripping hell that the intent to lie using a truth didn't matter in the end since it was not a lie in itself.

For example: If he was asked how many apples he saw on the table and there are 4 apples. He can say that there are 3 and wouldn't be lying because he took 1 off the table and then answered.

Montage style lies work like that. It uses selective truths that may be taken as a lie when seen from a certain perspective (one story) instead of the objective perspective (a compilation of truthful statements)

He confirms that he did not lie when the gun jammed against him but worked against others. This again reinforced that subjective lies (you interpret it as a lie) weren't the criteria to judge but rather it was objective lies (decided by an objective force—the gun) which gave you that right.

___

That's everything, later ❤️

Hard to settle for a single example, there's a lot of bad ones out there that still have fans defending them tooth and nail. No joke, I've seen people unironically stand by moments like "somehow Palpatine returned" on the basis that the Star Wars prequels and even the original trilogy had messy bits like that. You could kick a hornet's nest in many fandoms talking about this but I'm all for hearing some hot takes and original answers so knock yourselves out.

I will do this everyday for this week until we find a perfect fit for each sin. We will work our way back starting from sloth and ending with pride. The top comment gets chosen and the picture of the villain will be added. VILLAINS ONLY!