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butwhatifidothis · 3 years

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Shortened Lifespan: Edelgard vs Lysithea

Now, technically, I’ve already made a post like this before, but I wanted it to be it’s own thing (brought about by a mutual tagging a post of mine and me wanting to go more into depth with it lol).

It’s been very widely accepted by the fandom that Edelgard and Lysithea both go through the expectation of living a shortened life due to the blood experiments done to them, with this partly being used as part of the defense/reasoning for Edelgard going to war instead of doing something more peaceful. She thinks she’s on a timer, like Lysithea, so she hard-starts change to work around her short-lived clock. Makes sense, on the surface.

But like I’ve mentioned on here before, I personally just can’t buy it. Nothing besides the immediate connection of “Edelgard and Lysithea both went through experimentation” suggests that Edelgard has the same shortened lifespan that Lysithea is suffering through.

More under the cut

One thing that immediately stands out, to me, are the differences between their stat spreads and growths (focusing on stats on this post).

Here are Edelgard’s (note: Statues not applied - add five to the stats if you want the true max values):

They are extremely good, especially for a default armor unit. Str and especially Mag are very high, average Dex and Spd (though notably good for an armor unit), good Def, amazing Charm. Her Luck and Res are the only things that are even kinda bad - it’d more accurate to say they’re below average, tho again, 47 Res on an armor unit is fairly high. In fact, of the units that lean towards armor, Edelgard has the highest Res, and even beats out some units that aren’t armor-leaning such as Claude and Felix. Even her seemingly low HP (for an armor) is mitigated by the fact that it’s still some of the highest for a female unit overall (the fifth highest, beat out by Petra, Rhea, Manuela, and Hilda)

What are Lysithea’s, in contrast? (blacked out everyone above her for easier reading):

...Uh. Yeah. In contrast to Edelgard’s far more even spread, Lysithea’s are skewed to fuck. The best Mag in the game and the second highest Dex (losing only to Claude’s 89), and some nice Spd, sure, but everything else takes an extremely large hit. 48 HP is the lowest in the game, pitiful Str and Def, and mediocre Luck, Res, and Charm. This girl is held together by toothpicks, Elmer’s glue, and God’s mercy.

So right off the bat, there’s a huge difference between the two of them in this regard, but I decided to go even further; just how off are Lysithea’s stats, actually? Some things make sense, like low Str and Def, so how different is she compared to others in her class type (magic users).

The magic users of the following factions have the Str stat underlined. First, BE:

BL:

GD:

CoS:

From what we can see, 30 Str isn’t actually out of the norm for a female magic user. The outliers are Rhea and Manuela with their Str in the low 50′s being not just the highest of the women, but of all the main magic users period, though part of that could be contributed to their age (vs Hanneman who is both older - in terms of physical age at least - and who does not focus on physical strength like someone like Gilbert) (Rhea being an older Nabatean could also attribute to this - notice Seteth’s stat spread which also has notably high Mag for a Wyvern Rider unit and Flayn’s, who is younger and who also had only recently woken from a centuries long sleep that she fell into after nearly dying, more odd spread). Following them for the women is Annette, who as we know lugs around a giant axe (Crusher’s weight is 11, making it heavier than most swords and bows and a good few lances - fun fact, it’s heavier than Areadbhar!) which likely lends to her having above average Str for her gender and unit type combination

Now, here’s the fun part: let’s look at the same unit’s Res stats

BE:

BL:

GD:

CoS:

Here’s where an interesting pattern shows up that’s fairly consistent: if a magic unit has bad Str, they have good/great Res to compensate, and vice versa. Annette’s above average Str (remember, for what she is) coincides with her bad Res, same as Manuela’s, and all the magic units with their ass Str have at least a respectable Res to go along with it. The only ones who break this rule are Rhea, due to her Str and Mag being fairly even with a lean towards magic (and also not being playable lol)... and Lysithea. Who has both a shit Str and shit Res stat. Even amongst her magical peers, Lysithea still stands out as particularly fragile and physically weak.

HOWEVER

Do note, for all of the above in terms of going over stats, that they aren’t necessarily the best indicator of anything in particular when it comes to a character; there is no version of me in the multiverse that will ever believe Manuela is stronger than Rhea or that Lorenz has the same amount of stamina as Dimitri, for example. But it is something to note when looking at Edelgard and Lysithea, due to them going through the same experiments and yet one is very clearly doing better in terms of damn near everything and the other very clearly lagging behind in damn near everything

Moving on, we have their Banes and Boons. Edelgard’s Boons are Axes, Swords, Heavy Armor, and Authority, with Banes in Faith and Bows. Of note, Edelgard will say in a Study Request that she believes it is her specifically having two Crests that allows her to be able to shrug on armor like it’s nothing, and her defaulting to an armor class with an axe as her default weapon makes her the literal heaviest she could theoretically be. On top of that, her Banes point to nothing about her physical health hindering her ability to do physically laborious feats.

Lysithea, on the other hand, has Boons in Faith, Reason, and Authority, with Banes in Swords, Lances, Axes, Heavy Armor, as well as Clearing Rubble as a Group Task activity. She has a budding talent in Swords - the lightest of the weapons she’s bad at and some of the lightest weapons in the game - that gives her access to a Combat Art that lets her use something other than Str to give Mt to her sword-based attack. Lysithea, in terms of Banes and Boons when compared to Edelgard (or anyone, really), is very clearly unable to do physically demanding things very well - it’s something she’s actively bad at doing and is a consistent fact about her that crops up in not just her stats and Banes and Boons, but also her supports. Edelgard’s situation is the same.

Edelgard has her supports with Ferdinand, as well as Ferdinand’s supports with Byleth, that showcase her being exceptionally good at combat in terms of physical fighting (as in, no magic, and having a talent in doing feats that would require a good amount of stamina). She beats Ferdinand in combat with one strike, and she is able to take on a Demonic Beast by herself while still fresh in the academy. There are no mentions of her being winded or tired from fighting, and she is more than once praised for her battle prowess.

Lysithea, meanwhile, has at least three supports (Byleth, Lorenz, Cyril) that indicate less than stellar stamina, health, and strength (she straight up faints in Byleth’s supports). While characters looking out for her health can maybe be somewhat attributed to her being one of the youngest students in the cast, the difference between and, say, Cyril, who’s even younger than her, is that she genuinely shows signs of ill health when she pushes herself too far, vs Cyril who is fine even with how much he works. When talking about her prowess in battle it is only ever in regards to her magical capabilities, not anything else, and she is seen constantly working on those capabilities.

And then lastly, there are their endings.

Edelgard has no endings that mention needing to be rid of her Crests - save one, which will be looked at in a bit. In particular, she has an ending with Hubert that indicates she lives on to her “later years,” which is usually attributed to a fairly old age. It is not, in this case, referring to Edelgard’s specific later years (for example, a person who lives to 30 can say their mid-twenties was the later years of their life), because it specifically says that she and Hubert live to their later years, which more likely points towards a longer life.

Lysithea in contrast has multiple endings that either has her and/or her lover actively looking for means to get rid of Lysithea’s Crests, or explicitly say that she dies young. There’s... not much more to add to that lmao

But! There is one ending with Edelgard that mentions her getting rid of her Crests, and it even says they restore her lost time! That’s proof positive, isn’t it?

Well, funnily enough, this is her ending with Lysithea that mentions this, and it... appears to be straight up incorrectly translated. As has been pointed out by others, the JPN ending doesn’t specifically mention restoring their lifespans, it simply says Edelgard and Lysithea “discovered a way to exchange the crest’s power for the restoration of a lost lifespan.” While, if we look at the surface level “Edelgard and Lysithea both had Crests implanted into them” similarity, it makes sense to attribute this restoration to the both of them, looking at everything else leans towards this statement mostly being for Lysithea. Which, given that this is the only ending - or really, the only place period - Edelgard has that even mentions her wanting to be rid of her Crest, let alone actively working towards it, it makes sense that this isn’t for her.

Now, all of the above isn’t directly pointing towards anything - it’s a lot of speculation, since nothing about Edelgard herself having a short life is ever explicitly said in the game. But when looking at all of the differences between Lysithea and Edelgard, when looking at how badly Lysithea stacks against everyone else vs how amazing Edelgard stacks, at how often dying young is mentioned with Lysithea vs Edelgard, at how much Lysithea focuses on her lifespan vs Edelgard, I personally just can’t believe that they’re similarly afflicted with a shortened life.

There’s almost nothing in the game to suggest that other than the one thing they have in common, which is the experiments themselves - if they do, then Edelgard simply doesn’t care as much about it as Lysithea, and/or it isn’t nearly to the extent of Lysithea, to the point where she feels no need to mention it anywhere. And this is the same character that brings up her ten dead siblings in the first support with the player character, so something as big as “oh yeah and I’m going to die relatively soon and young” feels like something she would similarly mention as something one should know about her, which she doesn’t. This seems, to me, to be just a popular fan theory that isn’t really all that supported in the game itself.

#Lysithea #Lysithea (fire emblem)#Edelgard #Edelgard (Fire Emblem)#exqueuese me princess #can this be considered meta?#to be 100% clear: this is my opinion based on what's in the game #all good if you don't agree!

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lesbianrobin · 3 years

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What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity.

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax.

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind.

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective.

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow?

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally.

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.”

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,” KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway.

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season.

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still.

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered.

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho

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caffeinatedseri · 4 years

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The Strength of Selfishness

Each character in BSD has a degree of selfishness or selflessness in themselves, but the way this concept is executed opens discussion on the nuance of “selfishness,” or specifically the flaws in believing selfishness is an inherently bad trait.

Atsushi

Atsushi fits the description of selflessness, but I’d argue that he’s actually more selfish than he thinks he is (keeping in mind that being selfish isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

Akutagawa points out how Atsushi will needlessly risk his life in order to protect others, which sounds like a pretty heroic act, but it comes with a cost. Atsushi isn’t invincible, especially at this point in the story when he hasn’t fully mastered his ability, but his insistence on protecting others puts him in constant danger.

At the end of the day, Atsushi would have a greater chance of surviving many of the dangerous situations he puts himself into if he was more selfish by protecting himself before others.

However, Atsushi is also somewhat selfish in his motivations for acting so virtuously.

Once again, Akutagawa points out how Atsushi only acts this way because of his deeply rooted belief that he has to risk his life for someone else in order to give his life value. You could argue that Atsushi only saves others as an attempt to prove to himself that he’s worthy, an inherently selfish motive. If Atsushi actually died, he would be endangering the people he could save in the future.

Selfishness also includes self-centeredness. Particularly with Akutagawa, Atsushi’s tendency to focus solely on himself becomes especially noticeable. Atsushi constantly doubts himself and his strengths; he also ignores his privileges and the struggles of others, particularly when he can’t completely understand them — hence why he views Akutagawa so harshly but sees Kyouka and Lucy as people who need to be saved.

Despite all of this, Atsushi still creates a positive impact in other people’s lives. His innately selfish motivation is what drives him to protect others, and he ultimately succeeds in doing that (case in point Kyouka and Lucy again).

Akutagawa

Akutagawa is pretty similar to Atsushi in how his past led to his inevitably selfish motives, but his manifests in a different way.

Akutagawa has to be selfish to protect himself, due to a mix of his past prior to joining the mafia and Dazai’s teachings that collectively reinforced the belief that if he’s weak, he can’t survive.

This results in Akutagawa taking other people’s lives, a direct contrast to how Atsushi saves others, in order to prove his worth as a strong individual that deserves to live. However, this sentiment narrowly crosses the line of hypocrisy when Akutagawa does the very same thing that he criticized Atsushi for: looking for value in his life through other people.

Akutagawa also unnecessarily risks his life in order to prove his strength, which is arguably more dangerous and selfish than what Atsushi does.

When Akutagawa fights Hawthorne, he practically eggs on Hawthorne to kill him, or at the very least fight with the intent to kill. Akutagawa was also injured before entering this fight, so running away would’ve been all the more reasonable than continuing to fight.

Drawing another parallel to Atsushi, Akutagawa has that very same resolve of risking his life unnecessarily to prove his worth.

It’s undeniable that Akutagawa has killed many people — which is arguably extremely selfish — and loss of life really isn’t something that I want to push as morally correct. However, I would like to push the idea of redemption: finding a way to escape this messy lifestyle. I sincerely doubt that the incessant cycle of killing is any good for Akutagawa, or that it’s the life that he wants to have.

With Atsushi and Akutagawa, both of their character arcs will develop accordingly to this balance of selfishness and selflessness.

Ranpo

Ranpo is characterized in a slightly selfish way, but this mindset comes with good reason (relating to Ranpo’s past).

When Atsushi was kidnapped, Ranpo places priority on protecting the agency. If he were to meddle with Atsushi’s problem, which was technically a personal issue, then the agency as an organization would be put at risk. This isn’t necessarily a “wrong” mindset, but it is self-centered.

Of course, this is one of many examples to showcase Ranpo’s arrogance, but his arrogance is actually a form of self-protection.

“So his father knew, after all. He understood that Ranpo possessed an extraordinary gift. He knew his son had the special ability to observe, remember, and uncover the truth in the blink of an eye. That was why he sealed it away. He didn’t want Ranpo to go astray, to ever hurt others and make the world his enemy. His father wanted Ranpo to learn virtue and what’s right just like any ordinary person until he had grown up with good judgment and knowledge.” — LN 3, “The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency”

Before Ranpo met Fukuzawa, he was just a young, lost boy who didn’t recognize his extraordinary talents. His parents taught him to be modest to allow him to develop as a normal person, but he never truly understood who he was in comparison to other people because he was orphaned at a young age.

Thus, Ranpo had to embrace his superiority, in an albeit dramatic way, in order to accept the world and himself. If he believed that people weren’t as intelligent as him, then he wouldn’t have to hate himself for feeling like an outsider to a world he doesn’t understand.

Similarly to Akutagawa, Ranpo’s selfishness isn’t born out of hatred or negligence for others, it’s simply a survivalist instinct.

Dazai

Dazai’s case is a little trickier to define, but I feel that he’s changed a decent amount throughout the series. I’ve seen some people argue that Dazai only helps others because of Oda’s dying wish, which would make his motivations for doing so inherently selfish. This rings true for Dazai before becoming a part of the agency, but I’d say he’s changed a lot just from interacting with the other agency members.

Dazai’s shown to be capable of the selflessness that involves risking your life for others, but because he’s Dazai, he’s most likely never going to actually die (he has taken necessary precautions to make sure he doesn’t die like in Dead Apple). In this case, Dazai was willing to risk his life for intel from Fyodor, similar to how he got captured by the PM intentionally for intel on Atsushi.

What he says here is especially important: “Certainly, people are sinfully stupid. But what’s so wrong about that?” The Dazai that was once isolated from others, that lacked a sense of direction and purpose in life, has grown one step closer to finding that purpose.

It’s no secret that character to character relationships have a big impact on everyone in BSD, but it’s especially relevant for Dazai who’s growth comes from learning about human nature. He and Fyodor both share a level of super intelligence that ostracizes them from the rest of society, which consequently makes them incapable of understanding other people.

Dazai’s statement here just shows how he’s willing to look past people’s mistakes — yes, they may be sinful and/or stupid, but that’s just a part of human nature.

And in this case, he acts in a stupid way by risking his life for someone else. Yes, it may be stupid, but this selflessness is also a part of being human.

I’d also like to add that Dazai was somewhat selfish in leaving the PM so suddenly after Oda’s death. As an executive, he undoubtedly had some responsibilities to handle, and not to mention Chuuya who was dragged into the mafia because of him in the first place. However, leaving the mafia was ultimately better for his development, and you could argue that the PM is doing just fine with Mori remaining as the leader. Thus, Dazai is another example of how selfishness isn’t harmful in nature.

Mori

On the topic of Mori, he’s a character who outright acknowledges his selflessness as a necessity for the mafia’s advancement.

As I mentioned before, selflessness is a stereotypically heroic trait, but it’s flipped around in BSD. You see protagonists with greater selfish convictions than the antagonists, who live their life based on this idea of selflessness.

Of course, just because Mori is an antagonist, this doesn’t mean that selflessness is an innately “evil” trait. In fact, this selflessness is how he grows his organization and gains respect from his subordinates. Mori’s selflessness is used for the benefit of everyone else in the PM (ignoring the obvious crimes that the mafia commits of course).

Oda

Oda is often seen as the role model example for a “good man,” in the world of BSD — which is true to a certain extent. We certainly know how he was selfless in a multitude of scenarios, from saving the orphans at the Dragon’s Head Conflict, to his resolve to not kill anyone, and his push for Dazai to leave the mafia.

However, I’d like to discuss Oda’s selfishness. Oda was well-aware of Dazai’s issues during Dark Era, and he seemed like the only person who would understand Dazai at that level. Despite this, he still chose to die.

“(Dazai) is just a child who’s too smart. Just a crying child who’s been left alone in the darkness, a world of nothingness far emptier than the world we can see.”

— LN 2, “Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era”

Oda is an idealist first and foremost; when reality fails to match his ideals, it becomes unbearable for him to continue living on.

Oda was selfish in his conviction to die, because he knew he could’ve done more for Dazai, but he chose to leave him with a dying wish rather than staying with him to potentially fill that void of loneliness.

(I’d like to mention that Oda wasn’t wrong for his choice, because Dazai ended up on the right path in the end. It was simply an act of selfishness that ended for the better).

Kunikida

Kunikida is an idealist, much like Oda, but he also draws close to being a realist at certain moments.

Kunikida shares the same selfless resolve as Atsushi: to save everyone. His ideals seem unbreakable to the point where he would risk his life and succeed in the end no matter what, purely because he’s just that committed towards his goals.

This treads closely to Atsushi’s selfishness. In this case, for Kunikida, it’s somewhat a part of his self-fulfilling prophecy to make his ideals come true, but he acts selflessly because of these ideals that he believes in.

An important thing to note here is Fyodor’s grin, because Fyodor — as an idealist — is well aware of the fact that the greater the ideals, the loftier these ideals become in reality.

“By that very logic, then Miss Sasaki was not responsible for any of these recent events! She didn’t even want a world in which all criminals are rightly judged! She only— Tell me, Dazai! Was it right for her to die? Is this the ideal world I’ve sought for…”

— LN 1, “Osamu Dazai’s Entrance Exam”

At the end of the Azure Messenger Arc, Kunikida realizes the flaws in his ideals when he fails to uphold them. By trying to save both Rokuzou and Sasaki, he ended up losing the both of them. No matter how hard he tried to save them, there was no possible way for him to achieve the level of “justice” that he desired.

This teaches an incredibly valuable lesson to Kunikida that shifts his mindset towards a more selfish direction.

Kunikida’s experience leads him to teach Atsushi, another person strongly motivated by ideals, to not follow the same path as him. You could interpret this as a sign of Kunikida’s declining resolve, but I prefer to view it as another form of self-preservation.

Kunikida very well understands the pain that comes from not meeting his ideals, which could easily affect to Atsushi considering how difficult it would be to save Kyouka.

The scene in which Kunikida goes to save Atsushi parallels what Kunikida told him previously: “Your boat can only carry one person. If you let someone beyond salvation come aboard, you will only drown together.”

Notice how Kunikida is in a boat with plenty of space, but out of fear that his ideals won’t be upheld, he’ll lower them to an lesser standard. Instead of trying to save two people, he settles for one, despite the fact that he has the capacity for two.

This instance is a moment of selfishness from Kunikida, an act of self-preservation to prevent the inevitable pain that comes with unmet ideals.

However, Atsushi subverts his expectations by pushing himself to save Kyouka regardless of his sinking boat, because Atsushi’s own ideals motivate him to do so. Kunikida teaches Atsushi to be careful with the balance of selfishness and selflessness; Atsushi teaches Kunikida the beauty in being selfless.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd meta #bsd atsushi #bsd akutagawa #bsd rampo #bsd dazai #bsd mori #bsd oda #bsd kunikida #idk what an idealist is tbh

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sirikenobi12 · 3 years

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How the Jedi Order saved my life

Thanks partially to the ambiguity of the internet it inherently breeds negativity - whether it be for post clicks or actual interpretations of content it doesn’t matter, it’s there and it can be very overwhelming and toxic at the best of times.

One of the victims of so much venomous negativity has been the Jedi Order (specifically the Prequel era Order), a fictional band of warrior space monks who are the heroes of the Star Wars saga who’s teachings were mostly inspired by Buddhist philosophy. They were the undisputed “good guys” of that universe for multiple decades and then something shifted in fandom and suddenly people are online advocating that their actual in story genocide was warranted because they “failed”.

I am not here to debate the merits of the Jedi, please don’t make this blog post a platform for THAT argument, what I want to get across in this post is that for me (and this is just my experience) the Jedi are a source of light and in all complete honesty they saved my life.

This is going to be rather personal…

Due to many, many factors including hormonal/health imbalances and personal trauma (including being the one that had to make the decision/call to take my father off life support) I fell into a severe depression for almost 5 years. I pulled away from everything and everyone I loved, I lost multiple jobs, I physically couldn’t get out of bed most of the time. And then came the day I decided to end it all...end the suffering.

I had made a plan, I had made arrangements and set things up for my loved ones after I was gone. I had one day of life left, so I decided to watch the Star Wars saga one last time because it had at one point been such a big part of my life and I wanted one to enjoy it all one final time.

And on this viewing something struck me. The Jedi had literally lost everything, their friends and the galaxy as a whole turned their backs on them which led to the slaughter of their entire organization. The scene where Yoda and Obi-Wan were walking through the Temple just hit me so hard, both of them watching everything they knew crumble all while feeling the weight of grief and loss on a level none of us can even comprehend.

But while their pain was obvious, especially thanks to the tremendous acting talent of Ewan McGregor neither Obi-Wan or Yoda gave up - they had every reason for them to tell the galaxy to go f*ck themselves, but they didn’t. That wasn’t even an option in either of their minds.

It was their teachings that saved them in the end, the concept of learning to let go of their fears and insecurities, of acknowledging their feelings in order to release them and not dwell on them. To realize that failure is the ultimate teacher and learn from their mistakes (real or perceived). That death is a natural part of life and that true love is about being able to let someone go when the time comes. They also showed that it’s important to do the most good that you can with the hand you are dealt with, that life isn’t easy and the temptation to “fall” to the darkside can be very seductive, but ultimately makes you miserable.

The Jedi - the Prequel Jedi (and their code) saved my life that day.

I remember pausing Revenge of the Sith at the moment Obi-Wan held Luke (or Leia) as Padme died, the lost look on his face, and knowing the resolve that character finds within himself forced me to pick up the phone and call the suicide hotline.

What followed has been a year dedicated to nothing but my mental wellbeing. This included finding a creative outlet that had nothing to do with my career (I am a professional FX makeup artist by trade) and so, I returned to my love of writing Star Wars fanfiction. Having a way to explore the teachings of the Jedi and the strength of these characters have helped me in ways I can’t even explain, it was so noticeable that my therapist asked me what I was doing to be able to make such progress.

I’ll say this again for those in the cheap seats - the Jedi saved my life that day...and their teachings have allowed me to love in ways I never thought possible.

Now, I’m not saying I’m converting to the Jedi religion (though I have a friend who has and that is a valid path for those who have chosen it), but the teachings of the Jedi are inherently good - they teach us to get out of our own heads, listen to our feelings and focus on the beauty around us, that we’re all connected and ALL life (including ours) has value.

So, say what you will about the “failures” of the Jedi, but for me I would not be here if it weren’t for them, their code and their strength. And I have George Lucas specifically to thank for that.

From the bottom of my heart I thank you Obi-Wan, Yoda and George.

#personal #personal post #jedi appreciation #jedi positivity #thank you jedi #attachment is not love #self love #the force #jedi teachings #jedi code #i love the jedi #i am here because of the jedi #worth living for #mental heath support #mental heath awareness #suicide prevention

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mollrat101 · 3 years

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Ava and Deborah’s Romantic Parallels-Part 3A: Therese and Carol

Here is Part 3A of Ava and Deborah’s Romantic Parallels

Ava and Deborah’s Romantic Parallels: Introduction & Part 1 (Marty & His Partners and Kayla/Jimmy)

Ava and Deborah’s Romantic Parallels: Part 2 (Deborah/Marty and Marcus/Wilson)

Or read the entire Ava and Deborah’s Romantic Parallels series on A03

Read the entire Ava & Deborah Could Be Endgame series here or on A03.

In part 3, we’re focusing on the couples outside of the Hacks-universe that are paralleled to Ava and Deborah. Next time in Part 3B, I’ll be talking about Harry and Sally from When Harry Met Sally... and real-life comedy power couple Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner.

Today, I’m talking about Therese and Carol from Todd Haynes’s Carol!

This is the romantic parallel outside of the Hacks-universe that is referenced the most, which means this has huge implications on Ava and Deborah’s story.

Todd Haynes’s Carol was a huge turning point for representation of queer women on film and it became a cult classic within the LGBTQ community.

Using Carol as an ode to the type of story they’re telling indicates the sincere romantic beating heart at the center of Hacks. This is a show that believes that love has the power to set us free. That living as our most authentic selves is the ultimate expression of self-love. That love can transcend age, gender and even our own fears.

As far as the allusions to the story specifically, the interesting aspect of this parallel is that it honestly says more about Deborah and her love for Ava than it does about them as a couple.

Spoilers for Carol, I guess, but honestly if you haven’t watched it you’ll probably be confused.

Visual similarities

There are several visual elements that could be referencing Carol.

The famous fur coat.

The emphasis on HANDS.

Their love scenes look similar (okay, one was a dream but still)

A mirror scene

Touching pictures of their younger selves

A hopeful stare indicating that they will reunite

“My angel. Flung out of space.”

This is the famous line Carol says to describe her feelings about Therese. A fateful meeting. A feeling that a special (or “strange” as Carol puts it) person has miraculously entered your life, inspired you and given you a new lease on life.

(Obviously, with this comparison, what I’m not suggesting is that Ava is perfect. She’s not. The comparison to me is more apt when you think about it as reflecting Deborah’s feelings rather than being an objective portrait. Therese inspired Carol and gave her strength, but Carol was the one who had to save herself. Just like Deborah has to.)

Ava and Deborah meeting at all seems like destiny. Two women in the same field who don’t live near each other, don’t share comedic styles or even job positions and are over 4 decades apart in age don’t have any reason to run into each other.

It is the greatest twist of faith that Jimmy forced them to meet. Jimmy, who is also played by one of the “gods” of our story, Paul W. Downs.

As if ordained by the universe, the show also seems to be arguing that Ava and Deborah meeting is to right a wrong. A wrong which allows a talented older woman who was denied a history-making opportunity and will fade into obscurity (both professionally and romantically) due to misogyny and homophobia. A wrong which allows the comedy world to lose a young woman’s unique perspective and the tragedy of a young woman’s preventable death (I’ll talk about the connection between Ava and suicide in a separate post). In true heavenly omniscient fashion, the rights to be wronged are both about past events and future events.

While more flawed than Therese, Ava nevertheless fits the role of an “angel” in Deborah’s story quite well.

When we meet Ava she has “fallen from grace” because of her bad tweet.

She literally refers to falling in her first lines: “I should just jump out the window.”

Many fallen angel stories tend to focus on the angel becoming human. Ava is a constant social misfit, therefore almost not feeling a part of the human race. Deborah will catch her and help her become human.

She is an angel that hails from the sunny paradise of Los Angeles, the “City of Angels”.

Ava is an angel who has fallen from grace and her punishment (at least to her) is to be forced to spend time in what she considers “hell”-a hot and unforgiving place. She must spend time in “Sin City” with its queen and seemingly the devil herself, Deborah Vance.

I also think it’s interesting to note that the first joke we hear Deborah tell perpetuates homophobia about lesbians (and my theory is that this stems from internalized homophobia) while the joke that Ava got cancelled for was calling out a Senator with compulsory heterosexuality who subjected his son to homophobic abuse. It’s as if the universe declared Ava the perfect person to deal with this issue.

Angels are seen as symbols of purity and innocence. While not innocent in the traditional sense, Ava nevertheless represents youthful optimism and innocence. Ava is 25 when she meets Deborah, the same age Deborah was when she was at the pinnacle of her success before her life came crashing down. Ava reminds Deborah of her innocence before it was taken away by the world’s cruelty. Of course, the flipside of that is that Ava can also represent childish innocence where she can be immature, lack self-discipline and sometimes chooses superficial values over more meaningful ones.

Angels are also seen as purveyors of morality and righteousness. One of Ava’s most admirable traits is her concern for justice and her desire to defend the vulnerable. She’s not afraid to confront injustice as we learn that her “bad” tweet was confronting a senator who was subjecting his son to homophobic abuse. At first, Ava sees Deborah as kind of a bully and challenges Deborah to not use her work to pick on the vulnerable: “She kicks people when they’re down, including herself”. She’s the only character that sees what happened to Deborah both personally and professionally as an injustice that deserves to be corrected. She’s horrified at the sexual harassment and assault Francine and Deborah had to endure and gives Deborah inspiration to directly confront this problem. Ava not only challenges injustice in the world around her, but more specifically reminds Deb of her empathy and her long-buried desire to stand up for what she believes in. Ava isn’t perfect in this respect. She can be selfish, haughty, hypocritical, she can perpetuate harm as well and she is still a work of progress on this, but Ava’s heart clearly has a deep need to do the right thing. Just like Deborah. What Ava inspired Deborah is to discover her desire for justice again.

Angels also tend to make you think of a guardian angel.

“In modern times angels function more as guardians, guarding the people they’re assigned to from danger. From healing the sick to warding off evil and giving strength against temptations, guardian angels are believed to protect people from both physical and spiritual harm. Many individuals believe that “guardian angels” help them to become stronger people and lead them to their ultimate calling in life. Also, there are beliefs that angels can be summoned with prayers, meditation, charms and magic spells.”

Ava is assigned to be Deborah’s writer, but she also takes on a larger role of protecting Deb. In a way that no one has before, Ava shows consistent concern for Deb’s feelings and recognizes her vulnerability. She tells Deborah in episode 4 about DJ selling pictures of her, thinking that DJ was taking advantage of Deborah without her knowledge. Deborah was clearly touched that Ava didn’t want to see Deb’s dignity being infringed upon (a common theme for Ava).

In a way, Ava helps Deborah from being spiritually beaten down by her trauma. She helps protect her from future spiritual harm by encouraging her to share her stories and her truth, thus encouraging Deborah to live beyond her fear.

Ava inspires Deborah to get the strength to directly confront sexual harassment in comedy. As a result, Ava leads Deborah back to her original calling as shown in her late night pilot: to challenge misogyny in her comedy and through her career. I also think it’s likely Ava and Deb will also go on to challenge other prejudices like homophobia (the first joke they created together) and ageism.

Deborah has clearly been craving a long-term romantic partner for a long time now. There are pieces in her home that indicate that Deborah is almost trying to manifest her partner into existence. The collecting of the salt and pepper shakers, constantly looking for her other half. Her pond where she fishes (“there’s plenty of fish in the sea”, a phrase commonly said to single people to encourage them that their next partner is out there). She apparently refills her pond so often that she owed $150,000 in water fines for just this year alone. Her red-haired muse in the “Plum Brandy” painting who gently watches her as she sleeps. An impressionist painting of a woman making her look almost angelic and ethereal. As if Deborah wished for the girl in the painting to step out and become real. These actions are almost subconscious little prayers Deborah is putting out into the universe, asking for her love to finally come into her life. In true Deb fashion, she has spent an incredible amount of money which is her way of putting the energy out into the world to get what she wants. Her prayers have been answered.

While it may never be stated, I could imagine Deborah seeing Ava as her “angel”. The person who helped Deborah learn to live fully again. To break free from her fear and to become the person she was meant to be.

But the best part of this though? Deborah saves Ava right back.

Fun stuff: Okay, so not super related, but like if we go with the idea that Las Vegas is like “hell” or the “losers’ table” then at least Deborah and Ava will fucking rule it. Deborah is the Queen of Sin City and I nominate Ava to be its King.

The Connections between Deborah and Carol

Ava is the first one who references the film directly in the dialogue. This obviously makes sense as, well, Ava is queer.

It’s difficult to overstate how much of a phenomenon Carol was in the LGBTQ community once it was released. It inspired Carol support groups. It was the inspiration for the “Harold, they’re lesbians”, one of the best queer memes of all time. A meme which connotes amusement at cishet people’s obliviousness when being faced with queer culture. Gee, can we relate to that in this fandom or what?

But what’s surprising about this reference is that this connection says more about Deborah than anything. Which is kind of funny because I’m sure Deborah has never seen the film. If she did, she’d probably have a lot of….feelings about it.

References to Carol in the dialogue start in episode 5, “Falling” and then there is a Carol reference in the next 2 episodes as well. Episodes 5-7 would likely be considered a turning point in Ava and Deborah’s relationship. In Episode 5, the story is saying how much they need each other, Episode 6 has them begin to see each other with “new eyes” and get closer and Episode 7 is when the romantic subtext between them becomes the most text.

Episode 5 Reference

Before the name ‘Carol’ is mentioned, there is a subtle reference that is meant for us to make a connection between the character of Carol Aird and another random woman named ‘Carol’.

Deborah shows up drunk to a dinner meeting with Marcus and at his disapproval of her drunkenness, she says…

“What are you? My 1950’s housewife?”

An interesting choice of words considering what happens when the waiter speaks to Deb.

After Marcus leaves, the waiter comes up to Deborah with her 2 martinis and says...

Waiter: “I just have to say my mother went on your cruise. She’s a huge fan“

Deborah: “What’s her name?”

Waiter: “Carol”

Deborah: (lifts her drink in a toast) “Well, here’s to Carol”

Why is this a Carol reference?

After all, there’s nothing exactly about the story present here or even a direct mention of the film. Just a name.

This is the first of a sequence of references, as I’ve said. Just by itself this reference might not mean anything but considering the references in the next 2 episodes, this line takes on more meaning in retrospect. Plus, considering Deb says “1950’s housewife” earlier suggests we’re supposed to connect this name specifically with Carol Aird.

The cruise he’s referring to must be talking about one of Deborah’s gay cruises because those are the only ones mentioned to us.

Jimmy: “Deborah’s done plenty of cool things. I mean, she started the gay cruise trend”

We can make an obvious inference that his mother must be a lesbian if she went on Deborah’s gay cruise. Linking ‘lesbian’ with ‘Carol’ and ‘1950’s housewife’ automatically brings to mind the character of Carol Aird.

Deb orders 2 dirty martinis with olives in them. Deborah doesn’t drink much, but when she does we typically see her drinking a martini with an olive in it. This is Deb’s signature drink.

In their first lunch together, Carol orders a dry martini with an olive. Therese orders the same. Just like Deborah, you end up with 2 martinis on the table except Deb doesn’t share them with anyone. Deb isn’t currently with her ‘Therese’.

Before we even get more of Deborah’s backstory, there are already some similarities between Carol and Deb:

Blonde

Older woman

Both are confident, fabulous, high femme women

Both are secretive and hide inner pain and wish so desperately for someone to recognize it

Therese: "I want to ask you things but I'm not sure you want that."

Carol: "Ask me things. Please"

Live in a mansion

Has 1 daughter fathered by her ex-husband

Falling in love with a creative young woman (My theory and I’m sticking to it!)

On a subtextual level, you could read this as Deborah “toasting” this famous lesbian character who has influenced the character of Deborah Vance so much.

Episode 6 Reference

The name ‘Carol’ nor the film are ever referenced. Instead what we get are direct parallels between Carol Aird and Deborah Vance’s stories.

Last episode, Deborah gave a toast to Carol, but in this episode Deb embodies this character by sharing her past and her inner pain.

A woman who’s life revolved around her husband

Deborah married Frank young (around 20), they started their careers together, they had a child together, they created a comedy set about their life as a couple, they co-created a sitcom together, he controlled their finances, etc.

Abby (to Harge about Carol): "You have spent 10 years making sure her point of reference was you-your job, your friends, your family"

A woman fighting for custody of her only daughter

A woman with an abusive ex-husband who uses his power and privilege to ruin her life. More specifically, he uses the legal system to take revenge on her

Deborah: “Frank blamed me, and they all believed him, including the cops. Frank even went to the press and bad-mouthed me.” “He made me the crazy woman who burned down the house. Our sitcom was cancelled and I was broke.”

Harge, Carol’s ex-husband, files a morality clause to try to take full custody of Carol’s daughter, Rindy. He even hires a private investigator in order to defame her for being gay.

An ex-husband who was motivated to hurt her because of jealousy

Deborah: “He was jealous. He hated that I was gonna have a late-night show so he just…blew everything up.”

Carol: “If he can’t have me, I can’t have Rindy”

As part of the custody agreement, she has to see a psychotherapist

Deborah: “I did therapy. It was part of our custody thingy, you know. Unfortunately, the guy was less interested in analysis and more interested in feeling me up.” “You know, I had to get, uh, a clean bill of mental health or I couldn’t see my little girl, you know.”

Deborah’s story sounds so much like Carol’s it’s almost eerie...except there’s one important thing missing. A direct reference to Deborah’s struggle with homophobia.

It would not make any sense for the writers to compare Deborah and Carol and then just decide to take away the sexuality piece of it. Carol’s story doesn’t make sense if you take away that piece.

All of these backstory similarities have to be intentional because it explains why the writers had Ava watch Carol in the episode after Ava finds out all about this stuff.

The writers are comparing Deborah to Carol in order to make a point about Deb’s character and her arc and her arc has everything to do with her sexuality. The two are inextricably linked.

Episode 7 Reference

The sequence of dialogue references reaches its crescendo when the film is finally mentioned by name. Carol, the film, exists within the Hacks universe.

The night before DJ’s party, Ava watches Carol and then has her sex-ish dream about Deborah.

Ava tries to ask for Kiki’s help to try to explain her sex dream with Deborah and why she feels “weird” about it and the last thing she mentions is…

Ava: “Or is it just because I watched ‘Carol’ last night?”

Kiki: “Oh, you watched ‘Carol’ last night? Well, then it’s definitely just about ‘Carol’, duh”

Ava has likely seen the film multiple times, so what drew her to watch right after Episode 6? Why do the writers have Ava watch this film, in particular?

A film about a growing love between a younger and older woman. A film about an older woman with an abusive ex-husband who’s fear and trauma he instills in her causes her to push the woman she loves away.

Ava’s subconscious senses that something romantic is going on between her and Deborah. Even though Ava doesn’t share a lot of similarities with Therese, the feeling of falling in love with this confident, awe-inspiring older woman certainly would resonate with her. But this is a possibility that Ava isn’t consciously ready to face at this point.

Interestingly, the part of the Carol connection that Ava ignores are the similarities between Carol Aird and Deborah. I think her subconscious has made the connection, but at this point Ava probably believes Deborah is straight. Ava maybe senses queerness about Deborah but the problem is that Deborah’s perceptions on queerness are so removed from Ava’s that she doesn’t understand. Carol is a film that Ava loves, but can’t relate to its theme of having to hide your queerness. Ava doesn’t know what that’s like. Deborah does.

The fact that it is Ava who brings up the film also makes the connection that Ava is Deborah’s ‘Therese’.

Just like you can’t take away Carol's queerness and then compare her to Deborah, you also can’t take out the love story. It loses all meaning.

The last episode connected Deborah and Carol specifically, now it’s connected the love story to Deborah and Ava’s story. It’s confirming what many of us already suspect.

That, like Carol, this is a love story.

What the Connection to Carol Means

Hacks is a show of its time. Many of the characters, cast and creators are openly queer and they have no problem in making many queer references and showing the lives and loves of queer people.

So then why make a reference to a queer film that is about how two queer women were silenced? Forced to keep their love a secret?

Well, the show doesn’t see the need to keep queerness a secret. Deborah, specifically, does.

Deborah was born in the 1950’s. The decade Carol is set in. Deborah is the oldest character in the show and so while other characters in the show have no problem being open about their queerness, Deb remembers a time in American history when being queer was extremely dangerous. She was born pre-Stonewall before the concept of queer people even being deserving of basic human rights was unfathomable.

A very important facet of Deborah's character is how much she has been shaped by fear and trauma. For most of her life, Deborah has been in survival mode, being a foster child will do that to you. Whatever she had to do or whoever she had to become, Deb was going to be sure she was going to survive. Even if it meant sacrificing parts of herself and even if it meant sacrificing her principles.

The other side of Carol’s story is the implication that many queer women have had to face the choice that Carol was faced with: be myself and risk my status and potentially lose my children or hide who I am.

The implication then is that Deborah is one of those queer women who had to hide.

Deborah, in essence, is Carol if Carol never got her freedom.

Carol: "There would've been a point in time when I would've locked myself away to keep [my daughter] with me. But what use am I to her if I'm living against my own grain?"

Deborah is Carol who has “locked herself away” and been “living against [her] own grain” for several decades.

For most of the film, Carol is running afraid of what her ex-husband will do to her. She even breaks up with Therese (the last thing she wants to do) because of fear.

Similarly, despite having been divorced from Frank for 40 years, Deborah’s life has unfortunately been shaped by the fear Frank instilled in her. She’s closed herself off to others, is constantly afraid of letting go of control and keeps reliving her trauma. She’s closed herself off to a loving romantic relationship which is the deepest desire in Deb’s heart.

The essence of Carol’s story is a woman who is set free by her abusive ex-husband and her internalized homophobia through falling in love with a younger woman and through it coming to unconditionally love herself and stand up for herself.

But unfortunately for Deborah, unlike Carol, she didn’t have her Therese in 1976. She didn’t have an Abby or any other support system.

Deborah’s divorce happened 2 decades after Carol’s, but unfortunately, if Frank had ever figured out Deb was gay, he would’ve absolutely used it against her. Even in the 2010’s, queer people still got their children taken away. If her therapist had found out, he likely would’ve lashed out and wouldn’t have given her a clean bill of health. Homosexuality stopped being considered a mental illness in 1973, but the idea that gay people were perverse or immoral was still prevalent. Coming out in the 1970’s was likely career suicide in comedy.

Being completely alone, traumatized (she likely had already been repressing her queerness for a while before this), in fear of losing what was left of her career and in fear of losing her daughter, Deborah had no hope of coming out then.

And as Carol says, suppressing her queerness isn’t a neutral act. She believes she can’t give all of herself to Rindy and be the mother she needs if she has to hide a huge part of herself.

DJ is Rindy if Rindy had to live with a Carol that “locked herself away” and we all know that didn’t turn out well.

To be clear, what I’m not suggesting is that Deborah being closeted is the reason for DJ’s addiction. What I’m suggesting is that the relationship between Deb and DJ has been strained partly because Deb has had to cut off an important part of herself. DJ had to live with a Deborah who had immense internalized shame and trauma, was isolated from potential loving partners or a queer community who could support her and as a result closed herself off emotionally from DJ.

Part of Ava’s role in the story is to help Deborah co-parent. To be the partner she had always wanted to help raise her children. To unlock the part of Deborah that has partially kept her at a distance from her daughter.

But first, Deborah has to overcome the fear and shame she’s internalized.

So much has changed. LGBTQ rights have made huge strides since the 1970’s. Deb is financially secure, she has people around her she trusts and she’s established in her career. It wouldn’t be easy to come out to the public, but she would have the support of a lot of her fans.

But Deborah isn’t living in the now. Her fear has restricted her ideas of what’s possible. She’s gotten comfortable repressing her queerness, even though she’s miserable.

Plus, she still doesn’t have her ‘Therese’...until Ava shows up.

Deborah has a secret romantic heart. She wants someone special to share her life with. She wants a lover, a friend, a confidante, a co-parent, a partner in crime, and another comedian to inspire her and challenge her. It’s a lot to ask, but it wouldn’t be Deborah Vance if the standards weren’t high.

This is a lot of fear for Deborah to overcome. She needs something to give her the strength to keep pushing through it.

Overcoming her internalized homophobia and coming out as a lesbian is hard enough, but then what? Then she has to put her heart on the line and start dating. And now it’s worse with women because she desires them and loves them more. Deb doesn’t trust easily, so she’ll need time to get to know someone. Who knows how long it will take to find someone? Deb doesn’t take heartbreak well.

Deborah needs to want something more than she’s afraid. Ava is the person she’s willing to face her fears for. Deb loves Ava more than she’s afraid.

The world of Carol in which queer people can only communicate their love through looks and subtext is Deborah’s internal reality. For Carol and Therese, it’s looks but for Deborah it’s jokes and talking about the work. Jokes give her plausible deniability. “It was just a joke.” Talking about the work means there’s a layer of protection from it getting too personal and from Deb’s vulnerability being too exposed.

But the whole climax of their confrontation in episode 10 is about how their feelings for each other can’t stay in the subtext.

Deborah is hurt that Ava wants to leave because she’s falling in love. Ava is trying to leave her just like Frank did.

Deborah doesn’t know that Ava didn’t go through with “cheating” on her because of her loyalty to Deb. The betrayal is enough for Deb to push Ava away. The specter of Frank and the trauma he put Deb through is keeping them apart.

Ava doesn’t understand this subtext. She thinks they’re talking about the work, but that’s not what Deborah is getting at. Deb is so repressed that she can’t clearly state what Ava means to her and why she’s so hurt.

This can’t last. Ava doesn’t speak this language. Deborah must break her silence in order to finally complete her character arc.

But if Deborah is Carol Aird and now she has her Therese, then a happy ending is imminent.

Unlike Therese and Carol, there isn’t a social barrier keeping Ava and Deborah apart. They’ll face judgment for sure, but they won’t face the dire consequences that Therese and Carol would face.

Lucky for them in a way, the only thing keeping Deborah and Ava apart are their own personal demons.

They’ll get an even better happy ending than Therese and Carol who, even though they’ll be together, still have to live in silence and Carol had to give up her daughter.

But Ava and Deborah will live out loud. Ava and Deborah will likely get married. Deborah gets to have the family she’s always wanted.

Deborah has been “locked away” and “living against [her] own grain” for too long.

Not anymore.

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That concludes Part 3A. Next in Part 3B we’ll talk about the last 2 of the out of universe couples that are paralleled with Ava and Deborah: Harry & Sally and Lily & Jane.

#hbo hacks #hacks hbo #long post #ava and deb endgame series #romantic parallels #deborah vance #ava daniels #ava x deborah #deborah x ava #avorah #hacks #hacks thoughts

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movie-magic · 3 years

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Marvel's Eternals Powers Explained: What Each Team Member Can Do

The Eternals have a shared set of powers, but some are also unique. Here's what you need to know about the powers of each Eternal in the MCU.

Marvel's The Eternals movie will introduce ten immortal aliens to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but what powers will they have? Directed by Chloe Zhao and originally scheduled for a November 2020 release, The Eternals will instead hit theaters in November 2021 and bring some of Marvel's most obscure heroes into the MCU. Through Ikaris (Richard Madden), Thena (Angelina Jolie), and more, audiences will get a glimpse into the history of the MCU. Though set in the present-day, portions of the movie will explore ancient time periods.

The movie is based on characters who are the brainchild of the legendary comic book writer and artist Jack Kirby. In the late 1970s, Kirby wrote The Eternals, a comic book series that told the story of a race of immortal, super-powered beings who have the shared the Earth with humans in secret for thousands of years. It was established that these people were created by god-like beings known as the Celestials.

The film adaptation of Eternals will pit the heroes from the comic against another Jack Kirby creation, the Deviants. In the comics, the Deviants are the primary antagonists of the Eternals. As for what will happen when these ancient enemies clash on the big screen, that remains to be seen. Regardless, the Deviants will most certainly have their hands full, considering just how powerful the Eternals are in the comics. After all, the Eternals are arguably the most unique race in the Marvel Universe. With the first official Eternals trailer now released, here's what you need to know about the different powers of the Eternals ahead of their MCU debut.

What separates the Eternals from other Marvel races like the X-Men and the Inhumans in the comic books is that the Eternals don't rely on just one or two powers. As Eternals are fueled by cosmic energy, they have access to a multitude of abilities that are possessed by every Eternal. All Eternals are capable of super strength, teleportation, telepathy, telekinesis, matter manipulation, flight through levitation, creating illusions, and the ability to shoot cosmic rays out of their eyes and hands. Eternals are also nearly impossible to kill because they have complete mental control over the molecules, enabling them to restore themselves at will when their bodies are destroyed. Also, Eternals are capable of channeling their cosmic energy to enhance certain abilities. That's why some Eternals have unique powers of their own, and why some are stronger in specific areas than their fellow Eternals.

Kingo:

Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo Eternals

Kingo has very limited number of appearances in Marvel Comics, so his exact limits in terms of his powers as an Eternal are not known. What distinguishes him from the others is his skill with a sword. Kingo, who makes samurai moves in Japan, is an expert swordsman. The MCU's Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani) is being reimagined as a Bollywood star, however. Between that and the brief trailer footage, it's not clear yet if he'll share his comic book counterpart's interest in swordsmanship. He'll almost certainly have each of the aforementioned shared abilities.

Ikaris:

Richard Madden as Ikaris

Richard Madden was spotted on set using some of his Eternal powers, and the character has been described as "all-powerful" in the official Eternals synopsis. This lines up what how he is portrayed in the comics. Instead of focusing on one ability, Ikaris has channeled his energy in a way that has made him adept with all of his powers, making him better than average - but not the best - in each area. Though none of his powers were on display in the Eternals trailer, Ikaris is also the second strongest Eternal on Earth.

Gilgamesh:

Don Lee as Gilgamesh

The only Earth-based Eternal stronger than Ikaris is Gilgamesh, who will be played by Don Lee. Gilgamesh ranks near the top of the Marvel Universe when it comes to strength, as he's on the same level as Thor and Hercules, and above heroes like Captain Marvel, Namor, and more. This, combined with his other natural abilities as an Eternal, may make him a contender for the MCU's most powerful character. Beyond his apparent skills in the kitchen, Eternals seemed to be saving a glimpse at his strength for the film's official release.

Phastos:

Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos

Whereas Gilgamesh has focused on enhancing his raw power, Phastos is more experienced with using his cosmic energy as a ranged weapon. Of course, as previously mentioned, all Eternals have this ability, but Phastos' cosmic rays are especially potent and dangerous. In addition to that, Phastos also brings to the table a talent for creating technology and weapons. The Eternals synopsis has revealed that Brian Tyree Henry's take on Phastos will be an inventor, just like the hero in the comic books. With Sprite (Lia McHugh) half watching on, Phastos was one of the few seen utilizing his powers in the trailer — seemingly in his aforementioned capacity as an inventor.

Thena:

Thena played by Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie's Thena is said to be a "fierce warrior", which is an accurate description of the daughter of Zuras and one-time leader of the Eternals. Thena, who has spent centuries training her powers, is also an expert in creating and wielding various forms of weaponry, with her favorite weapons being a powerful, golden spear and a crossbow that fires bolts of cold energy. The Eternals trailer offered multiple glimpses of Thena engaged in such training throughout history. The moments culminated with her seemingly using her energy manipulation to fashion a sword and standing ready in a battle stance.

Sersi:

Gemma Chan as Sersi

Sersi can manipulate matter on such a grand scale that she outshines all Eternals in this category. She can take the molecules in a person or object and reshape them into whatever she pleases. For example, Sersi can transform an assailant into a harmless animal, if that's her intention. Sersi, who has more fun with her powers than most Eternals, also has a great potential for destruction. When she went through a period of instability in the pages of The Avengers, she became the comic's answer to Jean Grey. Set photos have shown Gemma Chan's Sersi making hand gestures that make it appear that she's using her matter manipulation abilities from the comics. After no sign in the trailer, however, fans will have to keep waiting to see her put those abilities into action.

Sprite:

Lia McHugh as Sprite

McHugh's Sprite is one of three male characters from the comics to be gender-swapped for the film, the other two being Makkari and Ajak. Sprite, despite their immortality, has the physical appearance of a child. As an Eternal, all of their powers are average, except for skills in matter manipulation. Sprite isn't as good as Sersi, but still among the only characters who comes close to her. They often use this skill in a trickster fashion not dissimilar from Loki. Though Sprite could be witnessed apparently enjoying the fruits of such powerful labor, they have yet to be shown on-screen.

Makkari:

Lauren Ridloff as Makkari

Lauren Ridloff's Makkari is confirmed to be "super-fast" in Eternals. In the comics, Makkari spends most of his time channeling his cosmic energy to improve his speed, as Makkari's highest ambition is to become the fastest person in the universe. In the past, he's even managed to outrun Quicksilver himself. For obvious reasons, that ambition will likely go unrealized within the MCU. Regardless, Ridloff's verson of Makkari got to demonstrate her powers a lot more than the others in the Eternals trailer. As well as speed-reading and gathering a collection of things to make even Evan Peters' Quicksilver jealous, Makkari was seen directly saving somebody from being crushed by a collapsing structure.

Druig:

Barry Keoghan as Druig

For the most part, Druig's powers are comparable to his fellow Eternals, but there are two areas in particular where he excels. Druig is quite skilled in the manipulation of matter, but like Sprite, his prowess with this ability still isn't as impressive as Sersi's. One power that he seems to have greater control over than other members of his race is telepathy. Druig, who has tortured people for the KGB, has a great deal of experience in reading people's minds and manipulating their thoughts. His mastery over this power even allows him to telepathically force people into doing his bidding. The Eternals trailer subtly hinted at the latter abilities, seemingly using them to make a cult-like group turn their guns on people.

Ajak:

Salma Hayek as Ajak

Ajak has all the powers of the average Eternal, but can do one thing that the others can't. He can communicate with their creators, the Celestials. This makes Ajak essential to the group, since the Celestials visit the Earth periodically to pass judgment on the planet. This ability may have something do with why Salma Hayek's Ajak is selected to be the leader of the MCU's Eternals. The new teaser left such communicative elements of her powers unseen. However, Ajak received a distinct moment of harnessing her matter manipulation for some as-yet unknown purpose. As seen also but her collection of plants, Ajak will channel her gifts and expertise into herbal and generation medicine — making her the master healer of the group.

Dane Whitman (A.k.a. Black Knight):

Kit Harington as Dane Whitman / Black Knight

Played by Kit Harington, Dane Whitman isn't a member of the Eternals. Regardless, he'll be an integral part of the film, engaging in a relationship with Sersi and likely helping out the team in one capacity or another. Entirely human, Whitman's main attribute was his genius-level intellect (especially in the field of physics and genetics). Upon taking ownership of the Ebony Blade, however, Dane took on the mantle of Black Knight. In that persona, he was gifted magical senses, as well as enhanced strength, speed, and more, to go with his already considerable swordsmanship. With them, Black Knight went on to become a member of The Avengers in his own right. It was left unclear in the Eternals trailer whether Dane had already taken that mantle or will merely offer a scientific assistance — with the film (or maybe just a post-credits scene) serving as an origin story for his superhero persona.

- Screen Rant

#mcu #movies #marvel #marvel cinematic universe #movie magic #mcu phase 4 #movie news #news #kit harington #angelina jolie #richard madden #marvels eternals #eternals #marvel news

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aotopmha · 4 years

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AoT season 4 episode 11 subbed:

The reason why I love the character writing in this episode so much is specifically because of how Gabi is handled, but also because of how all of the female characters get to be complex human beings.

Firstly, the story puts Gabi in a situation that is really uncomfortable for her and forces her to actually examine her beliefs. She is being forced to live among the Paradisians and see them as people.

This is extremely rare for female character writing in general actually, but in shounen especially.

Her rhetoric is very similar to defenders of horrible governmental systems, except she isn't quite old enough to be completely willfully ignorant and the reasonable arguments Kaya gives her still reach her and gradually make her claims have less and less weight as they go on.

Her final retort has a very typical childish tinge to it because the entire thing comes down to the pain she feels and none of the history behind it she knows actually matters.

Right now all of that other stuff is more justification for seeking revenge for the injustice and trauma she saw and experienced at Liberio.

She feels like an actual 12-year-old hurting because she lost people she cares about and looking for a target to resolve that injustice done to her and the people she loves.

She is selfish, annoying and single-minded, but female characters aren't usually allowed to be that way delibrately very often.

They're either imperfect to the point of no impact or perfect to the point where they don't feel like people.

She is all of that negative stuff, but she still wants Falco to be safe and not go with her.

Gabi is talented, but her character also feels very human.

Her conversation with Kaya is also another scene that is brought up when discussing AoT's relationship with fascism. What Kaya says about her and her mother not having done anything is a very typical deflection used to excuse imperialism, but I think what is important to consider here is that the main cast condemns any kind of fascism. The one from Marley and the one from Eldia. Just a few episodes ago and this very episode we had Floch painted in a very negative light for screaming about the Eldian Empire (there is a literal line drawn between Hange and Floch in one scene in this episode), so if you look at the scene with Gabi and Kaya out of context, I think you can read it that way, but I think that condemnation in the previous episodes is really important here, so it's more in the ballpark of there being innocent people and victims of war on both sides because both sides are people.

Secondly, I like how Kaya is consistent with the couple of lines of characterisation we saw her get in Sasha's focus chapter. She is observant (gets the identities of Gabi and Falco right away) and she asks Gabi really smart questions. Through her Sasha gets even more thematic importance.

Thirdly, I love how Hange is put in this really difficult position and this is connected to her interaction with the MP soldier, but despite being exhausted, she stands up and keeps going anyway because there is still work to do.

Finally, I really like the scene between Mikasa and Louise because it reframes Eren's actions of saving her. Before this scene there is a certain distance from the horror and violence of what Eren did, but it suddenly seems really unsettling, especially in light of what Eren did in Liberio.

Mikasa is starting to see that moment in a little bit less idealised light and I think this is a healthy way to go.

Understanding that the person you love is imperfect is one of the most important aspects of a relationship in my eyes.

Louise's relationship towards Mikasa is also interesting. She admires Mikasa's strength because this strength allows her to protect people. One of the main elements of fascism actually is the desire to protect your country from harm. This is why Louise was drawn into Eren's/Floch's movement and why many people get drawn into fascist ideologies. She admires Mikasa's strength (or strength in general), but for the wrong reasons.

As I said in my first post, this episode just has some really good direction to drive it all home, too. I actually think this is another episode that did a better job than the chapter with its material.

Very good.

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #AoT season 4 #SnK season 4 #AoT #SnK

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makeste · 4 years

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obstacles do not block the path

they are the path.

or something. it’s a zen proverb. anyway, so this is yet another post about Bakugou potentially losing his quirk. I’m gonna try to articulate it a little better this time. rather than just explaining why I think it’s likely to happen, I tried to explain why I think this specific and as-yet-still-hypothetical character decision is a very deliberate and purposeful one. in other words, this isn’t my argument for why it will happen; this is a post about why it should happen.

to start, there are two Horikoshi interviews which I want to quote here, and the reason I’m quoting them is because they do a good job of summing up the dual nature of the hero model that BnHA is built on. I’ll start with the longer quote, which is Horikoshi’s answer to the question, “so Sensei, what heroes do you like?”

[It would] probably have to be Goku and Spider-Man. To me, when mentioning heroes, these two are the ones that I think of. In Goku’s case, it’s the reassurance that everything is going to be fine which he brings when arriving. Such as, on Namek, Goku was getting healed, and his friends were all beaten badly. When Goku finally recovered and walked out of the healing machine, that reassurance right there is what I’m talking about. Something like “Ah, everything is going to be fine”. When I first read it and saw it was really Goku who had arrived, I continued reading thinking the thought “gonna win”. (laughs) That reassurance is something that all of the other characters don’t have. I thought about it afterwards, and even though there are a variety of heroes, the hero model that is built up in my mind is built around the concept that the hero is somebody that brings reassurance. That’s why I think a hero to me is somebody that helps and brings reassurance to others.

In Spider-Man’s case, the first experience I had with this character was the movie, in which there were a lot of scenes with him rescuing people, which I felt that was really cool. The moment he “saves somebody” is really awesome. Well, in Goku’s case, it’s because he likes fighting that he fights, so that’s a bit different. (laughs) You can say that Spider-Man and Goku are two different aspects of being a hero.

I’m sure you all can figure out just who Goku and Spider-Man each represent in respect to our beloved series.

as for the second Horikoshi quote, this one is much shorter. just a single line, actually, in regards to the development of Bakugou’s character:

I also thought to have [Bakugou] and Deku improve on two separate vectors as they entered U.A.

that’s it. just a single sentence lol. except that this one sentence can basically be used to sum up the entirety of Bakugou’s character development throughout the series, and it also serves as a roadmap as to what I think might happen next.

let’s start with the very first line in the series.

this sets the stage for everything that happens next. it establishes who these characters are right from the get-go. we see the hierarchy of quirk society, and we see two children born on polar opposites of the spectrum. Izuku, who was born quirkless, who exists at the bottom of the food chain. and Katsuki, born with a powerful quirk and the natural talent to back it up, who sits comfortably at the very top of the pyramid. two children who, from a very young age, are set up to walk completely different paths in life.

and yet the curious thing is, their goals are the same.

they both want to be like All Might. interestingly, though, they look up to him for different reasons. each boy admires All Might for what they see of themselves in him. Izuku sees a hero who protects others and works to save them no matter what. and Katsuki sees a champion who never gives up and who always emerges victorious.

and what the story eventually goes on to explain is that these are two halves of the same hero. Spider-Man, who rescues people and brings them hope. and Goku, who always wins no matter what, and by doing so brings reassurance to others. these two aspects together make up the perfect, consummate hero which both Izuku and Katsuki aspire to be. and the story is about how they get there.

but it’s that how that’s really where things begin to get interesting. because as previously mentioned, Katsuki and Izuku each start out their respective journeys in very different places. their origins, their “starting lines” as the series sometimes puts it, are polar opposites of one another, and yet they both are heading for the same goal. they want the same thing, but to get there, they each have to journey from a different place.

and what that means is that right from the start, it was impossible for Izuku and Katsuki’s journeys to be the same. more than that, they’re not just different journeys, they’re the opposite journeys. if you start from two opposing ends of a path facing towards the same goal, the only way for you to reach that goal is by traveling in the exact opposite direction as the other person. as an illustration of this, please accept this visual aid which I drew with love:

eh. eh.

so let’s continue to retrace each of their paths as the story progresses. we’ll start with Izuku first. his story begins when he receives One for All, a quirk that allows him to compete with other would-be heroes on equal ground for the first time. by this point he has already learned inner strength and compassion and selflessness. he already cares deeply about others. and so his trajectory now veers towards him learning what it means to be a champion. learning the things that Katsuki already knows.

and Izuku makes a lot of mistakes when he first starts out. he is too selfless. he rushes in to save others without sparing any thought for himself, resulting in repeated instances of him getting in over his head and getting injured and taking himself out of the fight. he almost gets himself expelled for this on the very first day of hero school, and Aizawa’s very first order of business is to chew him out over how irresponsible he is.

we see Izuku struggle to learn how to inspire others and be a leader, traits which happen to come to Katsuki naturally. Katsuki instinctively smiles when he’s up against a wall. he inspires others without even trying -- inspires them even in spite of his abrasive personality. but these are things which don’t come naturally to Izuku. Izuku is more inclined to follow than lead, because he doesn’t feel compelled to put himself in the spotlight, and because he is cooperative and will defer to others who are more aggressive about putting themselves in the leader role. Izuku doesn’t do the whole hero grin thing naturally, either; this is something he has to be coached on and consciously think about, and his early efforts are a bit hit-or-miss.

Izuku is more focused on saving people, and sometimes misses the fact that in order to do so, sometimes the best course of action is to just straight up beat the shit out of the bad guy(s). he learns this over the course of the series, and we see him doing the never-give-up thing against Muscular, and Overhaul, and Gentle. and Izuku’s selfless nature almost causes him to give up OFA to Mirio because he sees him as being more worthy; Mirio has to talk him out of it in order to stop him. in short, Izuku’s arc is all about him gradually learning confidence and becoming a badass.

now contrast this against Katsuki’s arc, which has the opposite trajectory. Katsuki starts out as someone who is already strong and confident. he is hard-working and driven and dedicated to his own self-improvement. he’s a prodigy when it comes to battle, and his determination to succeed inspires others to challenge and push themselves in order to keep up with him.

he is a natural leader, and a terrible follower. and he completely overlooks the “saving people” aspect of being a hero in favor of the “kicking ass” part.

so now here’s the interesting thing. Izuku’s growth comes from achieving new things and gaining new abilities and skills. his growth comes from experiencing victory and success. but Katsuki’s growth takes the exact opposite path. as someone who has experienced success his entire life, Katsuki’s first steps toward progress only come once he starts experiencing failure for the very first time. it might seem counterintuitive, but his breakthroughs only come after he experiences setbacks. because just like Izuku needed to experience victory in order to grow, Katsuki needed to experience loss. just as Izuku needed to grow stronger, Katsuki needed to learn what it was like to experience weakness. without that understanding, his growth would have stagnated.

so from a certain perspective, the story’s treatment of Katsuki vs Izuku might not seem fair. Izuku constantly receives help while Katsuki only faces hindrances. Izuku’s strength only ever seems to increase, while Katsuki is repeatedly confronted by his own limitations. he’s attacked by villains. he’s kidnapped. he blames himself for his hero’s downfall. etc. etc. etc.

but the reason why Horikoshi keeps putting him through all these situations is because in order to have someone grow as a character, you need to have them slowly overcome their flaws. and it just so happens that Izuku and Katsuki’s flaws are the exact opposites of each other’s. and so when you think about it, it only makes sense that in order for them to develop, they’re going to need to take opposite routes. “what they lack” is completely different. and thus “what they need to gain” will also be completely different. this is something which has been very plainly laid out from the earliest chapters of the series...

...and which has been hammered into our heads over and over again ever since.

anyway! enough of my long-winded rambling. you get the point! Katsuki and Izuku have the same goal but are approaching it from opposite sides. just as they are mirrors of each other, so are their arcs mirrors of each other’s arcs. they balance each other out.

but now I’m going to add on a bit more to that, though, so just hear me out. yes, it’s very good and wonderful that they can do this. their strengths complement each other’s flaws; their weaknesses offset. the two of them can and will one day be unstoppable together, and all of that is cool and great and epic.

but it’s also limiting to think of the two of them solely in these kinds of terms; as half-formed individuals who can only be complete and whole when they’re by each other’s side. they are each still their own person as well! and in order for them to achieve this same kind of balance within themselves, they can’t just simply meet in the middle and be done with it. both of them need to continue to walk down their respective paths and experience each other’s side, not just their own. here, let me just break it down:

Deku: starts out quirkless -> learns humility and compassion and how to put others before himself -> gets a quirk -> learns how to be strong and win and inspire courage in others -> becomes a hero that both wins and saves.

Kacchan: starts out with a good quirk -> learns how to be strong and win and inspire courage in others -> ??? -> learns humility and compassion and how to put others before himself -> becomes a hero that both saves and wins.

ah. and now we finally get to our actual fucking point lol.

do you see?? they are perfect mirrors of each other, except for one critical juncture. Izuku grew up on Rescue Road, but the entrance to Beating Villains Boulevard was always barricaded off. until one day he finally got a quirk, and so was permitted entry. meanwhile, Katsuki has lived on BV Blvd his entire life, and until very recently he never even knew there was a Rescue Rd. and now that he finally does know, he’s been working very hard to get there, and has made many detours all over Plot Parkway, and has finally reached the point where he’s at least able to see the road that leads where he needs to go. but he still hasn’t gotten there yet. for him it’s still barricaded off in the same way that his road was once barricaded off to Izuku.

and there are other ways for him to gain access to this road. ways which involve far less pain and suffering, tbh! but the problem is, he’s never been the type of boy who has the patience for any of those other roads. he can’t be bothered to take the scenic route there. he’s in a rush. and so he keeps on trying to force his way past the barricade using brute strength and whatever other means he can think of, perhaps even trying to use the toll pass he got back on his own street (stay with me, metaphor; we’re in this till the bitter end now), thinking that if it worked over there, it should work for him here too. but it doesn’t. and the longer he keeps pressing up against this barricade, the more frustrated he becomes.

and meanwhile Izuku has already made himself at home over on Katsuki’s own street. and so that sure is annoying! except it turns out that by watching Izuku very closely, Katsuki can sort of get an idea of how they do things over on Izuku’s old street, just like Izuku once observed Katsuki and admired him as the closest he could get to being on BV Blvd himself. so at least that’s something. and the more Katsuki does observe and imitate him, the more he’s actually able to do a passing impression of a true Rescue Rd native. and maybe eventually he even starts thinking to himself, I don’t really need to go down this stupid road anyway, even though deep down he knows that the only route through to All Might Avenue is through that road. and also though, the other thing is that seeing as he’s only ever lived on his own street, he still thinks, even now, that his street is objectively the better of the two and the more important.

but that’s not how it works. the plain fact of the matter is that in order to get to All Might Ave you need to pass through both roads. if it was just Hero Highway that they were trying to reach? well then sure! that one’s easy. exit’s right over there. but they don’t want plain old Hero Highway. they want All Might Ave. they want to be the best heroes. they want to complete their respective character journeys. and to do that, Kacchan needs to find what he lacks. and to do that, he needs to gain access to this road.

so what I’m trying to say here is that because of who Katsuki is, and because of what his goal is, the surest and most logical way to complete his character arc is by bringing it around full circle as a mirror to Izuku’s. in order to fulfill his goal of becoming the best hero, Katsuki has to lose his quirk. it’s symmetry. it’s yin and yang. it’s equilibrium. in order to move forward he must first go back. in order to win, he has to lose. for him, this is the missing piece.

and just to clarify, because I feel like this needs to be said: this is not about “redemption through suffering”, though. it’s not “oh he deserves it for how he treated Izuku all those years ago.” and it’s not “let’s make the audience feel sorry for poor little Kacchan so that they feel more sympathetic towards him”, either. that’s not it at all! because the thing is, this isn’t about punishment; this is about fulfillment. this isn’t angst for the sake of angst. this is about placing a very deliberately and meticulously crafted obstacle in front of him for the purpose of forcing him to learn how to overcome it.

because he will overcome it. this is Bakugou fucking Katsuki. he is not fragile. he is not delicate or frail. and so for anyone who’s worried this might be a crushing mental blow? I think you just might be underestimating him.

that’s not to say it won’t be grueling for him, mind. losing his quirk would mean coming face to face with the very real possibility of losing his dream too. because society doesn’t believe that people without quirks can be heroes. Katsuki himself never believed that someone without a quirk could be a hero.

but you know who did believe that? because he had to believe it, growing up, because no one else believed in him?

yeah. that’s right.

you see, for Izuku, his own intrinsic worth isn’t inherently tied to his quirk, because growing up he never had a quirk. now contrast that with Katsuki, whose own sense of self-worth is completely wrapped up in his quirk, his strength, his natural talent. Katsuki, who grew up being told how amazing his quirk was, and believing that the hierarchy of the world around him meant that having a good quirk placed him above other who didn’t. and who consequently also grew up with a correspondingly huge fear of failure, because his sense of security and fulfillment is contingent on his being strong. and if that were ever to change, to him that would mean a total loss of everything he is, everything he’s ever known, and everything he is striving to be.

“lol I thought you just said this wouldn’t be the crushing blow for him”, and yeah, lol, fair enough. but this is also exactly why it’s so important for him to finally face this fear head on. because even though it frightens him, even though it would devastate him, I don’t think it would defeat him. rather, I think that once he came to terms with what had happened and accepted it, he would do what he always does. he would rise back up.

because in spite of what he has always feared, he isn’t weak. and so even though losing his quirk would be harrowing, I think that, if done right, it could also be liberating and even empowering. because it’s him facing his fears. it’s an obstacle to overcome for the sake of him realizing that he can overcome it. because him being quirkless is not, in fact, the end of the world.

because his strength isn’t in his quirk -- it’s in his spirit. exactly like the boy he once secretly feared. exactly the same as Izuku.

so yeah. that’s basically it. tl;dr Deku and Kacchan are on opposite vectors and Katsuki’s is becoming particularly hazardous to navigate at the moment, but what at first glance seems to be a potential death blow could in fact be the thing that finally propels him forward towards where he wants to go and who he truly wants to be. and I am here for it. I want my boy to find himself some enlightenment. and then to rise back up again like the badass he is.

#bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #bnha meta #boku no hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #some of this is partially in response to a long anon ask I received about two weeks ago and never replied to sob #sorry anon!!#also on that note I feel like I should mention that one of the unintended side effects of writing all these metas about bk losing his quirk #is that it lends the impression that I am more fiercely committed to this theory than I actually am lol #like it won't be the end of the world or anything if it doesn't actually happen #I just like talking about why I think it would be interesting and compelling and thematically fitting if it did #quirkless!bakugou #bakugou meta

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astrowithkaro · 3 years

Note

Hey! I love your descriptions for the specific birthdays :) could you please do January 4th too?

Language Of Birthdays: January 4 - Capricorn

[You can find the rest of the series here; or check out my masterlist]

The Day Of The Formulators

Those born on January 4 have a natural talent for solving all sorts of problems. Most often this gift is of a technical nature. Those born on this day specialize in examining a situation and summing up what is wrong with it in a terse, concise style. By being able to formulate what others find it difficult to conceptualize they put themselves in great demand. January 4 people often have a practical knack for accomplishing tasks with a minimum of effort. But they also have imaginative ideas which can be far-reaching as well. Their imagination is rarely of a highly fanciful variety, however, and generally has a solid basis in everyday reality. January 4 people may thus be of the fortunate few who dream up schemes that actually work. More highly evolved January 4 people follow through on their ideas, developing a sequential process, from observation to formulation to implementation, and once this approach is mastered by them it can be applied over and over again in the future.

January 4 people are natural collectors of all sorts of things, not only physical objects but facts and detailed information as well. They like to surround themselves with books, tools, materials and other useful paraphernalia, so that they can have it within hand's reach when needed. Those born on this day are very direct, and do not specialize in idle speculation. Conversation is something they enjoy in a social sense, but it must have some meaning or purpose if it is to hold their interest for very long.

Generally January 4 people are highly organized. They can drive others crazy with their insistence on order, whether it be a demand for mental clarity or orderly arrangement of their physical surroundings. It seems that to understand almost anything, including human emotions, they must apprehend them within a certain formal framework. Due to such an orientation they may be at odds with those who prefer to take their cue from emotions or intuition. This is particularly true in regard to love relationships. Similarly, though January 4 people can make excellent parents and providers, they also can arouse resentment from their children because of their dominance and control. They must remember that there is no single correct way to live and that if they let up a bit on their children and mates, they will allow everyone concerned to be freer and more themselves.

Because of their own highly characteristic mode of operating. January 4 people are usually recognized as individuals who have their own distinct style. Not only in their thought but also in their dress and manner they are very much their own person. For this reason it may be difficult for them to take orders for very long, and although they can be very good at working with a team or as a valued member of an organization, most born on this day ultimately will want to form their own business or company. As artists, craftspeople or self-employed workers they are motivated enough to be highly productive.

Strengths:

Conceptual

Pragmatic

Structured

Weaknesses:

Dogmatic

Closed

Intolerant

Advice

Those born on January 4 must learn to be more patient with others. They can get very upset over breaches of order, and constant irritations can undermine their nervous systems as well as cardiovascular health. By being both more accepting and neutral, they can save themselves lots of problems. It is important that January 4 people set up a regular exercise pattern, particularly if they have a sedentary profession. As far as diet is concerned, it is recommended that they adopt a fairly relaxed attitude and simply enjoy a highly varied diet with plenty of flair and exotic accents. Collecting all sorts of recipes may be right up their alley. Vibrant and active romantic and/or sexual activities are also recommended; therefore, those born on this clay must try to allow impulse, instinct and improvisation to plav their part, and enjoy such qualities in their partner.

Improve vour own methods, and don't be afraid to improvise when necessary

Not everything in life can be designated or formulated

In a word—loosen up

Respect everyone, even if they're on the wrong path

#capricorn meme #capricorn life #capricorn horoscope #capricorn reading #capricorn sign #capricorn sun #capricorn #earth signs #personality quiz #personality post #personality #birth date #birthday #january

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wingedeclipsed · 4 years

Text

I just reread One Of Us Is Lying and am once again struck by emotions, so here is a rushed pile of compliments.

(spoilers under the cut, in case anyone is later to the party than I am)

Reading Book 1 the first time I genuinely couldn’t tell who did it. Maybe I’m just stupid but she makes everyone look suspicious. the TALENT

Speaking of talent: this is the first high-teen book I’ve read where the author really seems to get how high schoolers think. Sure, there’s romance, but it doesn’t take up most of the plot, and they all have lots of other things to worry about. It’s refreshing to read about teenagers who are in real trouble besides the romantic sort, looking at you Meg Cabot, this 15 y/o girl is looking VERY VERY HARD at you MEG CABOT,

Despite the fact that I’m pretty much his exact opposite in terms of personality, I, too, can relate to Nate Macauley because Bronwyn Rojas would be the love of my life if she were real

and, you know, willing to notice me.

This came out of nowhere but I really appreciated how not all of the characters had a “tragic backstory” involving bad parents. Bronwyn’s family is so supportive, and so is Addy’s sister.

Speaking of the queen herself: Addy’s arc?? How does one begin to describe Addy’s arc??? Addy’s arc is perfect. I heard its dramatic haircut moments are insured for 10000 dollars. I cried for her. Her POVs were so emotional but so full of growth and ultimately hope

In book 2 it’s mentioned that Addy is the “queen of second chances” and Phoebe or someone needs that reminder now and I just. Going from the girl who needs inspiration to the girl who inspires others is a PERFECT ending for Addy it was handled so well hhhh-

Have I mentioned that I would die for Addy Prentiss yet?

Not gonna lie I was kinda hoping Jake would suffer a tragic accident as a footnote in the epilogue. But nothing happened, he’s still there and Addy gets to move on from him completely of her own will without any external force to move them apart. *slow clap*

Moving on to Nate and Bronwyn because I have a massive crush on both of them they’re both such interesting characters. I find Bronwyn the most relatable character of all of them, it’s easy to understand why she does things, and the way she protects her sister was so sweet. This was handled really well in Book 2 also. They genuinely care for each other instead of falling victim to the “ugh I’m so unique and misunderstood I hate my sibling” trope.

While we’re on the subject of tropes, Nate and Bronwyn’s entire relationship was just *chef’s kiss*

I love that they’ve known each other for a long time before they decide to get together, too- these childhood flashbacks are precious. And they actually seem to enjoy one another’s company. It’s the typical “good girl falls for bad boy” cliche, except the bad boy is falling approximately eight thousand times harder and not that “dark” when you get right down to it.

Also appreciate that Bronwyn gets to be the coolest most “badass” character in the book and save the day without getting into any physical fights at all. Her strength is in her intellect.

COOPER. COOPER OUR CINNAMON ROLL.

I love that he conforms to exactly zero (0) gay stereotypes

I know some people tend to over-praise straight authors for including the bare minimum of lgbtq+ representation but Cooper had a complete arc that was given as much attention as the others’ and it gives me life my dudes

I have never played baseball, ever, in my life, but I somehow managed to get emotionally invested in Cooper’s games and the beginning of Book 2 just CAME TO GET ME

“Preteen girls don’t care that he might have committed murder because he has dreamy eyes” I strongly suspect that this is a callout for one specific person

Also someone says “ooh burn” unironically in the second book, and popular culture and Internet language is referenced constantly without ever being awkward. None of that “hey there, fellow young people” vibe at all. The author doesn’t try too hard.

The closer I came to finishing this book the first time around, the more worried I got because I thought everyone was going to get their picture perfect happy ending without addressing any of their trauma but nope, none of that tropey stuff comes within a hundred feet of that epilogue. Sure, the ending is happy, but it’s also realistic, it fits them and lets them be imperfect. And it continues into Book 2: the murder club still has their issues, they’re still growing up and growing and learning. They’re allowed to be three-dimensional and interesting and flawed right to the end and I love that for them.

#one of us is lying #one of us is next #ya books #bronwyn rojas #nate macauley #cooper clay #addy prentiss #i just. i love these characters so much #they're the kind that stick

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masterweaverx · 3 years

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Ilia Amitola has captured the mind and heart of certain parts of the internet. She certainly seems well suited for adventure, given her storied backstory and her usage with the White Fang. But if we’re going to set her Dungeoning and Dragoning, we’ve got to come up with a good series of goals for her.

Fortunately for us, while Ilia may be a complicated character emotionally she’s relatively simple from a mechanical perspective. Sneakery and agility is our primary objective with this young lady, accompanied and abetted by her crafty skinshifting. Oh, and there’s the whip--an electric stunning swordywhip thing that needs to be able to zap and stop. Personally I’d also say she needs to dominate the dance floor--not anything strictly canon, but just a headcanon of mine. All that said, let’s get to it.

Point arrays are standard for good reasons, so we’ll take the standard option and put a 15 in Dexterity--very good at the hopping and the hiding. Wisdom will be next with 14 points, Ilia has a very good internal compass even if she supresses it sometimes. Intelligence and Charisma are at 13 and 12 respectively--she’s had an education, and she can be a good speaker when she doesn’t get emotionally tongue-tied. Constitution has ten points, because she looks pretty healthy all things considered, but strength is at eight--Ilia’s kind of small, which is good for sneaking but bad for lobbing boulders at peeps.

For any 5E aficionado, you’re probably thinking we’re going to make Ilia a Changeling. And... you’d be right! This gives her +2 to her Charisma (upping it to 14) and +1 to her Dexterity (upping it to 16). She also gets two skill proficiencies out of a list of four; I picked Insight and Persuasion, since she’s not really that good at Intimidating people and she’ll be getting Deception from somewhere else. Changelings are good at language, automatically knowing Common and two other languages of their choice; I’m guess that stint in Atlas taught Ilia the esoteric languages of Legalese and Technobabble. And then there’s the big reason we picked Changeling...

Okay, quick side note here: When I construct these things, I look for ‘closest fit,’ not ‘one-hundred percent exact.’ Ilia Amitola can change her skin color, hair color, and eye color. Changelings are full-on shapeshifters--sex, size, apparent species, if they see you they can mimic you to a hundred percent. Doesn’t affect clothes, mind, but the point is D&D Ilia is going to be a touch more potent than RWBY Ilia, if you decide to use her that way. This is a role-playing game, not a rule-playing game. Mmkay? Mmkay.

For Background, I dug around a bit and found the Secret Identity background from the Adventurer’s League. And frankly it’s practically built for Ilia: pretending to be an Ordinary Human in the land of Racist Humans Who Hate Nonhumans. She gets proficiency with Deception, Stealth, Forgery Kits, and Disguise Kits, as well as the feature ‘Secret Identity.’ Meet Aili Alotima, a definitely totally normal human who does not, we assure you, have any skill at forging legal documents she has seen before, and has a totally real history you can absolutely check if you’re curious. (And if you believed that sentence, Ilia is going to be wondering exactly why she needed to go to the effort to trick the laws in the first place.)

And now we get to classes. I’m sure you were all expecting twelve levels in Thief Rogue, but I’m pretty certain you’ll all be surprised by the eight levels in Kensei Monk. Well, most of you, anyway. Some of you? Look, Monks are a pretty agile class, and Kensei monks specifically come with a few things that will be crucial to Ilia’s build.

But before we get to that, we have to get to Ilia’s Ability Score Improvements. Twelve Rogue levels and eight Monk levels give her a total of six. Every ASI can be used to either get two ability points or burned to get a feat; we’ll be using half of them to add two points to Wisdom and three to Intelligence (upping them both to sixteen) and one to Dexterity (making it 17--don’t worry, that’ll get patched soon). The remaining three points will be burned for feats--Acrobat, Skulker, and Magic Initiate.

Acrobats gain proficiency in the Acrobatic skill, and +1 to their Dexterity--so now Ilia has a full Dexterity of 18. And, as a bonus action, she can make a DC 15 acrobatics check to ignore difficult terrain till the end of the turn. Skulkers are extra good at sneaking, being able to hide when lightly obscured, suffer no sight penalties in dim light, and their location isn’t revealed even when they miss with a ranged weapon. Not that Ilia uses a gun, mind, but she’s pretty good at the whole shadow-hopping thing, so that’s nifty.

Magic initiates, though, choose a caster class and pick two cantrips and a first level spell from their list. They can only cast the spell once per long rest, but we’re really only here for the cantrips (which can be cast at any time and scale based on total character level). Lightning Lure drags a target from fifteen feet away up to ten feet closer and does some shocking damage if they wind up within five feet--perfect for some zappery dragging. And Sword Burst is great if you want to knock back enemies right up next to you--they have to roll a Dexterity save or take a hit from Ilia twirling a sharp metal rope around herself. As to the first-level spell... well, Longstrider increases a target’s speed by ten feet for an hour, and it can be cast on self. Ilia is really, really mobile, so...

Rogues get proficiencies with Dexterity and Intelligence saving throws, Thieves’ Tools, Light Armor, Simple Weapons, Hand Crossbows, Rapiers, Short Swords, and Long Swords. They also get four skill proficiencies--Athletics, Perception, Performance, and Sleight of Hand fit Ilia the most. And with twelve levels of Rogue, she’s really benefiting from a life of skullduggery--Expertise in four skills (Acrobatics, Deception, Persuasion, and Stealth), Reliable Talent in every other skill she’s trained in, and Thieves’ Cant for reading and writing secret messages to those who don’t want to be seen. And of course Sneak Attack, which means she deals an extra 6d6 damage on ranged or finesse attacks, as long as she either has advantage or her target is being flanked.

And then there’s all the mobility options being a Rogue, and a Thief Rogue specifically, gives Ilia. Uncanny Dodge to half damage on an incoming attack as a reaction, Evasion to possibly neutralize damage from any Dexterity-Save based attack, Second-Story work that makes her climb speed equal to her land speed (as well as adding her Dex bonus to her jump distance), and Supreme Sneak gives advantage on Stealth checks if she moves only half her speed (which, with her Monk levels, is going to be pretty fast).

And of course, there’s Cunning Action. As a bonus action, Ilia can Dash (take an extra movement action), Disengage (avoid attacks of opportunity for the round), Hide (make a stealth check to, well, hide), and Aim (give herself advantage on her next attack if she hasn’t moved this turn). Being a Thief Rogue gives her Fast Hands, which means she can also use her cunning action to Use An Object, use her Thieves’ tools, or make a Sleight of Hand check. Mobile and able to exploit that mobility? It’s no surprise the Belladonna’s need better security.

But all that is defensive mobility and sneakery. If we want to talk about Ilia’s attack capability, we need to talk about her eight levels in Kensei Monk. Sure, being a Monk in general does give her some bonus mobility--her Unarmored Defense means her AC is ten plus her Dexterity and Wisdom modifiers while not wearing armor (so 17), her Unarmored movement gives her a bonus to her base speed while not wearing armor (+15 at level 8), her Slow Fall allows her to reduce falling damage by a total of five times her monk level as a reaction (that’d be 40 points), and her Evasion... is actually exactly the same as her evasion she’d get as a rogue, so that doesn’t stack.

Martial Arts gives Ilia a few benefits: she can choose to use Dexterity instead of Strength for unarmed attacks or attacks with monk weapons, the attacks do 1d6 base damage instead of their standard form, and if she takes an attack action she can make one unarmed attack as a bonus action. Speaking of which, Extra Attack lets her make two attacks per attack action, Ki-Empowered Strikes mean her unarmed attacks count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagic damage, and Stillness of mind allows her to use an action to shake off being Charmed or Frightened. And that’s all before we talk about Ki features or anything regarding Kensei Monks specifically.

Monks get Ki points equal to their monk level, which regenerate on a short or long rest, and can be spent for various actions. Options are added as the Monk levels up, both from standard sources and from their path; Flurry of Blows allows a Monk to make two unarmed attacks as a bonus action immediately after an attack, Patient Defense lets them take the Dodge action as a bonus action, and Step of the Wind doubles Jump distance and allows the monk to take the Dash or Disengage action as a bonus action. Then there’s Deflect Missiles--technically a free reaction to any incoming ranged attack that reduces the damage by 1d10+Dexterity Modifier+Monk Level (so 1d10+12 for Ilia), but if that reduces the damage to zero, a monk can spend a ki point to throw the projectile back as a ranged attack immediately. Stunning Strike can be used to try to Stun a character with a melee weapon attack, which lasts to the end of the next turn, and Deft Strike (the only Kensei-related Ki skill we’re getting) allows a monk to add an additional 1d6 damage to an attack with a weapon.

Which leads us to the whole reason I picked Kensei monk. See, Monk Weapons are specifically shortswords and any simple melee weapons that don't have the two-handed or heavy property. Which doesn’t include whips. But Kensei Monks have, as the foundation of the whole class, the choice to pick other weapons as Monk Weapons--as long as they lack the Heavy or Special properties. At eight levels, Kensei Monks have a total of three Kensei weapons--one melee, one ranged, and one that can be either. So going for Whip and Scimitar for Ilia’s weapon, and Hand Crossbow to satisfy requirements, is a pretty good option.

Of course that’s not the only benefit. Agile Parry gives Ilia +2 AC if she makes an unarmed strike as part of her Attack action, Kensei’s Shot means she can take a bonus action to make her Hand Crossbow deal an additional 1d4 worth of damage, and Magic Kensei Weapons mean her weapons count as magical for purposes of overcoming resistances and immunities to nonmagical damage. And of course there’s Way Of The Brush, which gives Ilia proficiency in Calligrapher’s supplies--perfect for planting secret messages, forging documents, or writing hidden notes in her diary about how hot various ladies around her are... although that last one isn’t strictly canon, but you know, shippers gonna ship.

If we tally all this up, we have a woman with a base 45 running and climbing speed that can jump 12 feet forward and 7 feet up without effort, with Acrobatics and Slow Fall meaning she’s able to handle unusual terrain, and she can up that to 55 speed for an hour once a day with longstrider, as well as double the jump distance up to eight times before needing a rest. That makes Ilia fast, and she’s also hard to hit--unarmored defense gives her an AC of 17, plus 2 with Agile Parry, she can Dash or Disengage or Dodge at will, and even if you get past all that she’s got Uncanny Dodge, Evasion, and Deflecting Missles to reduce damage. Of course that’s assuming you spot her at all--Supreme Sneak lets her remain hidden at 22 feet speed--27 if she’s got Long Strider up--Skulker means she can hide when lightly obscured, such as by shadow, and combining her expertise in stealth with her shapeshifting ability means Ilia can slip in and out of scenes unnoticed.

And for those of you that want some damage, allow me to direct your attention to this combinatorial explosion: Martial Arts Whip, Extra Attack, Deft Strike, Flurry of Blows. That’s 1d6+7d6+1d4+4, then 1d6+4 , then 1d6+4 , then 1d6+4 , for a cost of two ki points. Even without Deft Strike and Flurry of Blows Ilia can hypothetically pull 1d6+7d6+4, then 1d6+4 , then 1d6+4, per round--or sacrifice that last 1d6+4 for a different bonus action. And Ilia can give herself advantage either with Aim or Stunning Strike; Aim only lasts for the current turn, but Stunning Strike lasts till her next turn and renders a target stunned for her allies to deal with. Throw in Lightning Lure for 4d8 damage to any target she draws to herself, Sword Burst for 4d6 damage to ALL targets surrounding her, and the fact the whip has the Reach property, and we wind up with a fighter built to manuver and manipulate her opponents around the battlefield.

So yeah, that’s Ilia.

#RWBY #Dungeons & Dragons #D&D 5E #Ilia Amitola #Character Build

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