animal magnetism – A Piece, of the Sky

Midari and Yumeko

Yumeko understood Midari (Russian roulette, Zener ESP card deck), who lost a pretty ugly bet to Kirari. Most people write Midari off. I even wrote Midari, off at one point. I feel guilty about that now. But Midari has a good heart. She saved Yumeko, in Ep. 4, of Season 1, and she didn’t want Yumeko to face Kirari and endure the same fate she did.

Basically, if the Debt Swap game was about wrongs committed in between the genders, then the episodes about poor Midari’s story are about wrongs that women commit against each other. Obviously, however, there is no perfect world.

Midari and Yumeko are similar, but not the same. Midari is formidable because she has less fear, making her immune to several motivations most people have. Midari is a genius, a gambling One Punch Man. However, the weak side is sadness and ennui. Thus, her motivation to feel something, with the things most people fear most, is an uncommon motivation – but still a motivation.

Yumeko was able to exploit this. If a person has one motivation, once that motivation is figured out – however obscure that motivation is – their moves become predictable and the game has no risk. Hence why Yumeko became truly upset because the ESP game wasn’t gambling. Yumeko hated that Midari’s game had no risk, because even with scams, Midari rigged it so that she would lose.

0% or 100% probability are not your friends. If you eliminate all risk, even at the last second, you lose all reward. A world without risk is a world without change: a perfect world, but also a dead and frozen one.

To the uninitiated – compared to someone like Mary – Midari and Yumeko might as well be the same. I like Midari and Yumeko. I like that they don’t hold back their feelings of pleasure. They claim them and own them. You can afford to have a lot of fan service if the story is strong. Yumeko is empowered, and everything she does is consensual. She is happy and having fun with her life, naturally. That makes an enormous difference; that’s the difference, not the fan service itself

Kakegurui is so sexualized, that it’s funny. It’s fan service and it’s funny spicing up a show that would normally bore most people with probabilities and gambling math. It’s also sex positive. The women are owning their own sexuality. You can tell; there is a difference. All of this also fits with Yumeko’s confident, take no prisoners mentality.

1) Strong women owning their sexuality is good, like I said. 2) If done tastefully, and subtly (or in an obviously absurd way, like Kakegurui does), not all fan service is bad; some of it is fun. 3) Spicing the more theoretical gambling parts up, with desire, makes sense.

How are Midari and Yumeko different? Midari constantly always focuses on the end result – which is better than most people – but Yumeko also is concerned with the probabilities to get to the result. This is the mark of a true gambler.

Following the dual theme of each episode, Yumeko and Mary both end up separately being the Woman that Refused (more Yumary shipping). Midari tried to protect Yumeko from the darkness of Kirari – who is dark, (except for when it comes to Sayaka and Batsubami) – but Yumeko is strong enough to face Kirari on her own. Midari was just trying to protect Yumeko from Kirari.

Every game has had a scam in it and Yumeko easily sees through the scam and wins or ties, under both the constraints of the game and the scam. Yumeko is fiery. Plus, you don’t get enough genius or gambler female characters. Yumeko never underestimates anybody. That’s her real secret to winning.

I just wanted to see the hand in the $100M betting war. Three of a kind, jacks. An amazing game. I love poker, so I understand a little bit how Yumeko feels, how risk – and reward -excite her. Yumeko’s hand wasn’t even a full house – but she just needed it to be stronger than a 3 of eights. Nice.

Yumeko didn’t even need the Opposite Day twist to win; she won with the normal hand rankings of poker. Manyuda doubled down on just having the right to choose. He should have folded. When he chose to play with the normal hand ascendancy, he still lost, to a middle tier hand.

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JC was never supposed to make it past Final 4. He doesn’t know Level 6 exists and by the virtue of Level 6 formerly having six people in it, JC wasn’t supposed to even make Final 6, either.

Tyler was never going to win the POV for JC. Veto Queen Kaycee won it and noms are staying the same. JC is just lucky that Winston, Rachel and Brett angered Tyler and messed up more than him.

Tyler, of course, knows JC was never going to the Final 2 but JC is taking a long journey toward this painful reality, that has existed since the beginning of the game. Tyler was never going to split up Kaycee and Angela, in the Double Eviction. JC is lucky that he and Hay or even he and Sam didn’t go home, during the Double Eviction.

Tyler is still stonewalling JC, but he is wrongly blowing up on Tyler. Yes, JC has had a stellar social game, but like Tyler, Angela and Kaycee, you have to actually win some comps, to enact your will, on the house.

As for Tyler, I love how Tyler almost lost control of all his lies, in front of Angela. He was telling Angela that, as independents, Tyler and JC were the middle men, the moles, spying on both sides. JC was collecting intel on Foutte and Tyler was scouting out Level 6.

Tyler and JC were supposed to keep the sides even, but Tyler eventually worked things, so that Foutte would be completely levelled. Tyler did have a Final 2 with JC, but he has a Final 2 with everybody.

JC thought Tyler was his ‘person,’ but Tyler’s been everyone’s ‘person’ – until he gets said person voted out (Kaitlyn, Brett, Hay, and soon, Sam). Rat recognizes rat – but JC still doesn’t know that, all this time, Tyler was also in Level 6. If he doesn’t win HOH next week, he’s #Done.

Level 6 has won the last 11 competitions, starting with Brett’s veto win, during Fessy’s HOH week. Between the Three – Angela, Tyler and Kaycee – they have won the last 10 competitions.

Tyler, Angela and Kaycee have all won six competitions, a-piece, including twist wins, like Kaycee’s Hacker win and Angela’s win, at the beginning of the game, that put a target on her back and forced her into a duel with Swaggy.

So, Tyler is giving JC a ton of slack – and continuing to play a bang-up social game – when JC, who hasn’t won a single competition, even the non-physical competitions, yells at Tyler, for not winning the veto, for him. JC, Tyler doesn’t owe you anything. He’s lucky Tyler doesn’t tell him this, to his face.

You see, Brett, JC, Sam and possibly even, Kaycee are so loyal, to a fault, that they will do things not in their best interests for Parasite Tyler. Tyler and Brett filled almost the same niche, of the strong, younger guy. Natural selection dictates either Tyler or Brett will survive, but not both. One of them has to go. Why couldn’t Brett fathom that Tyler would be coming after him?

In Survivor: Heroes Vs. Villains, Amanda told Parvati to play her idol, and an immediate red flag went up in Parvati’s mind. Parvati then went on to make one of the best moves in Survivor history, by playing her idol and an idol she received from Russell, on her minions, splitting the vote and saving her alliance.

Tyson, who had made a deal with the devil, Russell, to get one of Parvati’s allies, Jerri, out, ended up voting himself out, when his vote for Jerri didn’t count, and the votes for Tyson did. Tyson would have saved himself, if he hadn’t decided to flip, and target Jerri.

In BB20, Tyler told Brett to throw the veto. Why would Tyler tell Brett to throw the veto, if he wanted to keep the Level 6 alliance strong? A red flag should have gone up, in Brett’s head, alerting him to the fact, that Tyler no longer considered him a part of Level 6, and was targeting him.

As for JC, why can’t he see that Tyler keeping these extra two people around, in their Final Four – Angela and Kaycee – is diametrically opposed to Tyler’s Final 2 with himself? To trust Tyler, is to destroy your own game. Tyler is working completely against your self-interest, JC! Wake up!

Tyler’s phenomenal, emotionally-based game can actually explain the weirdness of a bitter jury. People like Kaitlyn, Bay, Hay, Sam, Brett and JC, feel deeply, emotionally connected to Tyler.

The HGs will follow Tyler, even if what he says doesn’t make any sense (the whole plan to backdoor Scottie by pretending to be his friend; claiming Rockstar and Scottie were siblings) or when his plans conflict with their convictions, their games and their self-interest.

Then these followers of Tyler end up in the jury house, and they have no rational explanation, as to why. All they can remember is their emotional connection to Tyler and how that trust was betrayed. They can’t see the strategy at all – because there isn’t much of it, beyond animal magnetism – and then, these jury members become very bitter.