I have just about the final boss to go and I'm very excited.

After my third ex tempore essay about Indivisible to my friends on Discord, I'm starting to realise this game is actually hitting me really hard, but it's hitting me with, like. A little bit of a delay, which I'm choosing to put down on the gap moe catching me off guard after the fact.

Like to be clear. The script and the performances aren't... superb? The plot is straightforward and predictable (but not really "bad" -- it's more about the journey than the destination) with a by-the-book structure, there's a lot of clunkers in the script, and the performances are often a little bit off tonally (even while everyone is giving it their all) and a lot of that gives it a kind of rough-around-the-edges feeling that has me going "aww :)" more than it has me going "wow :O" so I genuinely wasn't prepared to feel this emotional about it.

Yet here we are! And I find myself having a ton to say about Ajna, Indr, self-knowledge and confidence, visual conveyance and a whole host of other topics I don't feel fully qualified to talk about because Indivisible pulls influences so broadly from Buddhist and SEA traditions that I have zero knowledge of, while keeping it all coherent, easy to follow, and highly engaging.

Indivisible is really good. I can say that without reservations. It's much better than some of the Gap Moe things I'm into (like El Goonish Shive and Lyrical Nanoha) and while it carries itself on that kind of... sincerity and earnestness, it has a ton of artistic merit and creativity behind it and I am desperate to talk about it, and I have no idea where to start.

Come to think of it I should finish my Miko essay too

Honestly I'll probably write a whole essay about how loveable and wonderful and well-designed and well-performed Ajna is in the near future but for now I'm just kind of. Crying about the fact that not only is Ajna what would happen if Miko was raised by Bulkhead and Wheeljack, just like Miko Ajna is a character that might on paper and in the script annoy me and feel dislikeable but in full-colour and motion, she just has this humanity that makes her absolutely loveable to her core.

I'm on record with my delight that the TF fandom overall views Miko favourably because every rewatch I fall in love with her a little more and Ajna is just so, so similar, but more lush and lovely and... "nuanced" is the wrong word, really, because part of Ajna's appeal is the sheer excessiveness of her personality, how she gets to be big, loud, funny, flawed in big and loud ways. Like, I want to cry, because not once does she told she needs to shut up or make herself smaller or neater or prettier, she just gets to be and all anyone ever tells her about it is to apply herself more constructively.

Ajna sends me into an absolute flurry of positive emotions and it's so hard to put them all into words because at the end of it all I'm just like "*inhales* I would kill for her"