#Akira Fuse

[whileiamdying]

Olivia Hussey, Teen Star of a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ on Film, Dies at 73

Her passionate portrayal of Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation won enduring acclaim. In 2023, she sued over the circumstances of a nude scene.

Olivia Hussey as Juliet for the 1968 movie “Romeo and Juliet.” She was only 15 when filming began. Credit...Universal History Archive — Getty Images

By Alex Traub Dec. 30, 2024 Updated 1:20 p.m. ET

Olivia Hussey, whose performance as the female lead in a 1968 film adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” became its own Shakespearean tale, encompassing glory improbably achieved, helplessness with newfound power and memories that darkened over the years, died on Friday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 73.

The cause was breast cancer, her publicist, Natalie Beita, said.

Ms. Hussey’s lifelong association with Juliet came from how rapturously that movie was received. Much of the reaction concentrated on the decision of its director, Franco Zeffirelli, to cast two unknown teenagers as his leads. Ms. Hussey was 15 when filming began; her co-star, Leonard Whiting, was 17.

It was standard at the time to give the roles of the desperate lovers to established stars. Leslie Howard, for one, was 43 when he made his debut as Romeo in a 1936 adaptation.

What Ms. Hussey and Mr. Whiting lacked in practiced elocution they more than made up for in emotional intensity, suggesting an identification with their characters.

Mr. Whiting sprinted from Juliet’s bedroom with a wild but innocent exuberance. When Juliet’s nursemaid (Pat Heywood) counseled that Juliet go through with a pragmatic marriage to a man other than Romeo, Ms. Hussey responded with an extraordinary facial expression — wide-eyed, horrified, stupefied — suggesting that it was her first encounter with the possibility of betraying love.

In a review for The Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, “I believe Franco Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is the most exciting film of Shakespeare ever made.” He credited the film with “the passion, the sweat, the violence, the poetry, the love and the tragedy in the most immediate terms I can imagine.”

The movie grossed nearly $39 million at the domestic box office (about $350 million today) and it won Academy Awards for cinematography and costumes.

The director Franco Zeffirelli, left, with Ms. Hussey and her co-star, Leonard Whiting, at the Parisian premiere of “Romeo and Juliet.”Credit... Eustache Cardenas/Associated Press

A featurette on the making of the film captures the tenor of Ms. Hussey and Mr. Whiting’s stardom. “These are the most talked-about teenagers in the world today,” the narrator says.

Ms. Hussey traveled widely promoting the film. At one point, in Britain, she did so much dancing at a dinner with Prince Charles that she took her shoes off, stretched her legs across his lap and received a royal foot massage.

Yet in the years to come Ms. Hussey did not have another big role that earned both box-office success and critical acclaim. She spent much time commemorating her role as Juliet.

One part of the movie was remembered for something other than artistry: a brief scene in which Romeo and Juliet wake up nude in bed together. The camera lingers on Mr. Whiting’s buttocks and registers a flash of Ms. Hussey’s breasts.

Mr. Ebert castigated those who were scandalized by the scene �� “A lot of fuss has been made about the brief, beautiful nude love scene,” he wrote — and Ms. Hussey seemed initially to feel the same way, describing Mr. Zeffirelli as a father figure whom she would have liked to work with on all of her movies.

But in her 2018 memoir, “The Girl on the Balcony,” she was more ambivalent.

With Mr. Zeffirelli’s assurance, she wrote, she had thought that she would be clothed in the scene, until she found herself having makeup applied “head to toe,” prompting what she called a “small panic attack.” One “dirty old man” on the crew, she wrote, had to be removed from the set.

“Nobody my age had done that before,” she told Variety in 2018, referring to the nude scene. Yet she added, “It was needed for the film.”

During her press tour for the book, she told Fox News that the scene “was done very tastefully” and “wasn’t that big of a deal.” Mr. Zeffirelli wrote an adoring foreword to the book.

Ms. Hussey’s attitude took another turn in December 2022, when she and Mr. Whiting sued Paramount Pictures, the film’s distributor, seeking damages of up to $500 million, claiming that they had been forced to appear nude and that the movie constituted “child pornography.” The suit was prompted by a California law that temporarily suspended the statute of limitations on claims of child sexual abuse.

Ms. Hussey in 2018 promoting her memoir, “The Girl on the Balcony,” in Los Angeles. Credit... Brandon Williams/Getty Images

A judge threw out the suit in May 2023, ruling that the scene was not pornographic.

New York magazine reported that at the time of the suit Ms. Hussey was $22,000 in debt. In an interview with Variety, she said that she and Mr. Whiting had each received only 1,500 British pounds (roughly $35,000 today) for their performances.

“Looking back on all of that, Leonard and I, we felt exploited throughout,” she said.

Olivia Osuna was born on April 17, 1951, in Buenos Aires to Andreas and Joy Hussey. Her father was a tango singer. Her parents divorced when Olivia was 2, and her mother took her and Olivia’s brother, Andrew, to her native England, where she worked as a legal secretary in London. The children used their mother’s surname.

Joy Hussey was an observant Roman Catholic, and Olivia would walk around her home with a towel on her head, pretending to be a nun, she recalled. She realized that what she liked was not the idea of being a nun but the pretending to be one. She started attending drama school as a little girl.

In 1966, Olivia starred in a stage adaptation of Muriel Spark’s novel “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” alongside Vanessa Redgrave. She got the role of Juliet after two auditions.

Ms. Hussey played the Virgin Mary in another Zeffirelli film, “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977), and the titular role in “Mother Teresa,” a 2003 television biopic. She also starred in “Black Christmas” (1974), a horror movie that was panned at the time but that later earned Ms. Hussey the reputation as the “prototype” of the last female survivor of a slasher film, as The New York Times reported in 2015.

Ms. Hussey in 2018 at the TCM Classic Film Festival Opening Night Gala in Hollywood. Credit... Tara Ziemba/WireImage, via Getty Images

In later interviews, she said that the success and hoopla surrounding “Romeo and Juliet” had exhausted her, causing her to turn down movie roles opposite John Wayne and Richard Burton and to focus instead on her personal life. 

Ms. Hussey’s first three marriages ended in divorce. She is survived by her husband, David Eisley; a son, Alexander Martin, from her first marriage, to Dean Paul Martin, the son of the singer Dean Martin; another son, Maximillian Fuse, from her third marriage, to Akira Fuse, a Japanese pop star; a daughter, India Eisley; her brother; and a grandson. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008.

Mr. Whiting, a lifelong friend of Ms. Hussey’s, once sent her a darkly comic screenplay he wrote in which Romeo and Juliet live on after their youth. Ms. Hussey responded that she could not play the part, she told Variety in 2018, for the same reason that she never went out in sweatpants: She wished to keep alive the public image of herself as Shakespeare’s Juliet.

That was how she met Mr. Eisley. He saw her at a delicatessen and introduced himself as someone who had seen her performance in “Romeo and Juliet” 50 times. He turned out to know every line of the play.

“I couldn’t resist him,” Ms. Hussey told the British newspaper The Telegraph in 2002. “I am such a die-hard romantic. I guess a part of me thinks I am Juliet.”

John Yoon contributed reporting. Alex Traub works on the Obituaries desk and occasionally reports on New York City for other sections of the paper. More about Alex Traub

[nobbykun]

Artist - 布施明 (Fuse, Akira) Song - ひとり芝居 (Hitori Shibai) [Eng. "One Man Show"] Release Date - April 1977

Listen 🎶

https://rumble.com/v4b2pxq-akira-fuse-hitori-shibai.html

My blog: Showa Music Library https://nobbykun.tumblr.com/

[justlikeheavenfest]

register now for access to passes, on sale this friday at 11am PT. May awaits with arms outstretched. 🫶 $49.99 down payment plans available. www.justlikeheavenfest.com

[crows-mask]

velvet room attendant shuake 🦋

[vinestaff]

heard its yaoi day or something

[astral-druids]

I love them ✨

[zethsdumpster]

K but what if I fused Deuce and Ichiji into a single character to make a Devilman+Devilman Lady acedeuchiji au? What then?????

[justlikeheavenfest]

register now for access to passes, on sale this friday at 11am PT. May awaits with arms outstretched. 🫶 $49.99 down payment plans available. www.justlikeheavenfest.com

[veloriium]

becoming obsessed with devilman . AGAIN

[yuquiitas]

clear skies:)

Photo taken by me earlier today with scans from @transparentstickers

[edenfire]

💘 Shuake Week- Day 3- Velvet Room 💘

"oh when will you learn to behave, inmate?"

>"never"

or im weak for velvet room attendant goro😳💘

[bellewood222]

K Days of Blue manga volume 1 omake. I don't know Japanese whatsoever. I used various translator programs to make this English translation.

[mildlycuriousdragon]

Day 4: Bad Ending

Writing below :D

A lifetime too short

The thief kept his head held high in the face of his own death. The guillotine had been brought forth, a symbol of power for the king who cared for nothing but the wealth he wore on his knuckles. Grey eyes glared across the long court and yet his Majesty merely lifted a golden cup, nodding at him in a show of mockery.

Teeth were bared at the man who had taken everything from him and yet the thief couldn't find it in himself to die with spite. For the prince was seated next to the king and though they were so far apart, the thief knew that his friend's fingers were digging into the wood of his chair.

Eyes softening, the thief lowered his head in a small bow for his one true king, remembering the glove resting within his pockets and lamenting the broken promise.

And when he was pushed towards the guillotine, the thief avoided looking at the handful of people standing around, for they were preparing the mechanism that would soon end his life.

~ ~ ~

Whereas the thief was facing his future head on, the prince could do nothing but wail within his invisible cage. He was itching to move, to use his hidden dagger and slice his father's throat.

But if he were to act out then he would sooner join the thief's side, leaving their kingdom to remain in shackles. And so he remained seated as his companion was escorted across the far court.

The sun stood tall but the thief stood taller.

And yet he was forced onto his knees.

Averting his gaze, the prince flinched when all he wanted was to escape alongside the birds taking flight upon hearing the bone chilling sound of metal hitting wood.

He had been a fool for believing in the thief's promise.

[ciaossu-imagines]

For day 10 of the event, I used the word ‘bonfires’ from prompt 16 for the Scepter 4 members from K Project. Just getting some practice writing for these lovelies and I hope you’ll all enjoy the headcanons!

Bonfires: Do you prefer going out or staying in on a fall evening?

For the large majority of Scepter 4, they’re going to be staying in on a fall evening kind of people. Yayoi, Zenjou, Enomoto, Kamo, Benzai, Akiyama, and Seri all would prefer to stay in on fall evenings, for the most part, and all for their own reasons.

Yayoi is someone shy, who generally prefers to stay in anyway. She’ll enjoy fall evenings best curled up with her kitty cat, a hot beverage, and a good romance novel.

Zenjou is another introvert who doesn’t often go out and about, even in warmer weather. He trains a lot of evenings, and when he isn’t training or working, he finds autumn evenings lovely to just sit outside with a hot cup of tea, looking out at the stars and the moon and meditating on things in his life.

 Enomoto is the last of the group of Scepter 4 introverts who don’t often go out on the town for evenings, no matter the season. He’s perfectly content, if he doesn’t have to work, with staying in by himself. Normally, there’s always a game he’s working on. He likes curling up and falling into some other world, playing the hero inside the game. It’s a great fantasy and he’ll have snacks nearby and lots of canned juice so that he doesn’t really have to move around too much. It’s just peaceful and relaxing and comfortable, even if he knows it’s boring to most people.

If they’re not working evenings, you can usually find Benzai and Akiyama together on chill fall evenings. They’ll talk together, as the two are quite close friends, and often play shoji and chess on those cold evenings when there’s not much to do. A hot bath and early bedtime makes up most of their fall evenings.

Both of the remaining two find fall evenings perfect for indulging in a hobby they both enjoy – cooking. Seri finds fall always puts her in the mood for baking and she’ll spend chilly evenings with a glass of wine, some good music, and time in the kitchen. She will make lots and lots of desserts, which she will of course encourage the rest of Scepter 4’s members to eat their fill of them, much to the other members chagrin.

Kamo, meanwhile, often finds the chillier fall nights make him want to retreat into the comfort and peace of the kitchen as well. His cooking is met with a lot better reactions from Scepter 4’s members.

That, of course, leaves Hidaka, Fuse, Andy, Fushimi, and Munakata as the ones who prefer to be out on fall evenings. They all enjoy doing different things on those evenings for the most part, though.

Hidaka is still a young guy and a very extroverted one. He likes to be out on dates as often as he possibly can and fall evenings leave some wonderful potential dates. Even if he’s not out on a date, he likes to hit the town, grab a bite, do some shopping, maybe go to the bar, anything to get him out of the stuffy atmosphere of work and around normal people. Andy also does this as often as he can, with the added bonus that Andy is a huge Halloween freak and he’ll spend autumn evenings trying to find all the newest Halloween decorations and displays.

Fuse, no matter the season, is someone who prefers to get a break from the workplace and atmosphere. Getting out on the town gives him some much needed time to himself and he can always find something to occupy himself. He doesn’t have many friends, but the few he does have are old friends from childhood, and he likes to get together on evenings off with them at least once every couple of weeks, catch up on each other’s lives.

Munakata and Fushimi are both people who enjoy long walks on fall evenings. Fushimi finds that he gets really antsy, restless, and uncomfortable if he has to be around people too long and unfortunately Scepter 4 is way too full of people. He needs his solitude and his time to himself to recharge and long walks help him. He might be out in a place full of people, but those people don’t want anything from him, they don’t need him to do anything, most of them won’t even speak to him, and there’s a great comfort in that for Fushimi. He likes to take walks through the busy sections of the city. Munakata, on the other hand, finds nature really peaceful and he loves the changing of the leaves. He’ll enjoy long evening walks through parks on autumn evenings.

[salmalin]

My sincerest apologies and warmest welcome to my rant about FF7: Crisis Core. Or, as I like to call it,

Propaganda: The Video Game

I say this with the utmost affection. Crisis Core ranks really high up there in my favorite Final Fantasy 7 installments. I played it when it first came out, borrowing it from a friend to play on a borrowed PSP. And, the more I learn about the game and the more I replay it, the more everything lines up.

This game is not about Zack Fair.

This game is about how Capitalistic Propaganda can sink into every aspect of life to the point where it is entirely indistinguishable from reality. And it���s very overt about it. So…

Here we go.

My treatise on Propaganda’s starring role in Crisis Core.

Part One: The Timeline

Something that a lot of people gloss over due to decades of Child Heroes in media—Japanese Shonen and Shoujo series in particular—is how young these protagonists are. We’ll hand-wave a lot of stuff in non-live-action series with just a little bit of suspension of disbelief. And that’s honestly just accepted these days. But here’s the thing about those hand-waves.

Final Fantasy 7 doesn’t do that.

Now, FF7 hand-waves a lot of stuff. For example, how far you can travel in a day by foot, the distance a man weighing approximately 165lbs can jump after being genetically fused with what might as well be a cocaine demon (Jenova), and how much hairspray one can reasonably carry on a cross-country journey while on the run from the feds.

Age is not one of them.

Exhibit A: Yuffie Kisaragi.

Do I really need to say more? She acts her age. So does Zack. And Aerith, even. Most of the characters in the original lineup were over twenty for a good reason. We see several kids in the series, and they all act their age, too—both the OG and the remake. Age is not a thing that FF7 really grapples with. It’s something they take relatively seriously.

Now, to the point.

Zack is 16 when Crisis Core starts…

… and he was 13 when he ran away from home without his parents’ knowledge to join the military.

Which accepted him.

At 13.

Without a parental permission slip.

Think about that for a second.

… Or for the next several parts of this breakdown.

Part Two: The Main Character

As I mentioned in the introduction, Zack is not the main character of the events of Crisis Core. Instead, he is the focal point of the second person POV. This is not the first time Square has done this. It was done most notably with FF9, FF10, and FF12. (I’m not going to go on an Akira Kurosawa rant right now, but please check out his film “The Hidden Fortress”. FF12 and Star Wars episodes 4-6 borrow heavily from this film.) The purpose and position of this character is such that they might best witness the effects the other characters make on the world as their stories unfold, usually in the role of a love interest. For Akira Kurosawa, it may have been told this way because these people are most effected by the decisions being made.

“Well, then, Sal,” you may be asking, “who would you say is the main character? Would that be Aerith, since she’s the love interest, like in the other games?”

No, actually.

It’s the antagonist.

And by that, I mean Genesis.

Hear me out. I used to hate Genesis, for I was once young, full of judgement for flamboyancy (thanks, internalized homophobia), and was led by the narrative to believe he was mean to his friends. Then I met my Lovely beta who loved him, so I wrote a fic for her as a gift. So for that I kinda just… read stuff. Because that’s the thing about Propaganda—you gotta read stuff to navigate it. I read the in-game emails. I re-watched all the scenes I could get my hands on with him. I read his wiki and tried to track down more information about him. Then I watched the scenes in Japanese and gained a better understanding of not just Genesis, but Sephiroth’s character. And I realized that Genesis was put on this road from the start. In fact, a big part of the fact that he’s seen the way he is in Canon—only at his most hostile and lowest points—is because the story is told through Zack’s point of view.

So before we get into the breakdown, here’s the hard facts about Genesis.

1. He was a test tube baby who may or may not technically be Angeal’s fraternal twin brother, which we are not going to unpack right now.

2. He was adopted by a relatively rich family.

3. He was a child genius (which requires not only resources, but drive to achieve), and at a tender young age of like… ten or something? He decided to mess around and literally invented pasteurization. Which is incredible, and really speaks to his knowledge of the world and ability to grasp complex concepts even at a young age. But, again, this is not the time or place to unpack that.

4. He was best friends with Angeal, who might as well have been the sweetest, kindest boy to ever walk the Planet. (I’m biased. I love him.)

5. As a teenager, he became fixated on Sephiroth, who had gained national acclaim as a SOLDIER despite them being the same age. (Please see part 1 and think about that for a second.) He then goes to join SOLDIER and brings Angeal with him. And Angeal brings his step-father’s puritanical “hard work is honorable” mindset with him. (On that note, Angeal and his father’s arc really are a wonderfully scathing letter to companies that overwork their employees and how toxic/unhealthy that line of thinking is. But. Again. We are not unpacking that right now.)

6. At one point he became consumed with LOVELESS, a series of poems with heavy prose and symbolism thicker than syrup. It got to the point where he was so well known for it that there was an entire fanclub dedicated to both him and analyzing the text.

7. While he was in SOLDIER, he repeatedly had his achievements publicly accredited… to Sephiroth.

Over and over and over again.

Everyone did, really. They mention it in the beginning of the game. Sephiroth even got public credit for Zack’s raid on the castle when he wasn’t even there. How much of his legacy is real? How much of it is made up? How much of it was faked? We don’t know. No one knows. But he keeps getting credit, anyways. And when Genesis confronts him about it, Sephiroth doesn’t care. In the Japanese version of their fight scene, you could even say he indirectly implies that he wants Genesis to take his place as the “hero”. In the English, Sephiroth’s line is, “Come and try.” But in the Japanese the line is closer to, “Wouldn’t that be nice?” Which, depending on how you take his tone, can mean wildly different things—from mocking, to earnest, or even admiration—which is especially to tell because he might be annoyed with Genesis at the moment.

Fun Fact: In Ever Crisis, Sephiroth explicitly says they are making up his achievements in the press to target boys his age for recruitment. (Thus why they accepted Zack at age 13.)

My theory on this line is that he is being cynical; that Genesis doesn't understand just how harrowing and even humiliating his experience has been. This only enforces my theory that the "come and try" translation in the English not only does a disservice to a line as wonderfully heavy as, "Wouldn't that be nice?", but fundamentally misunderstands Sephiroth as a character.

8. Genesis then took the fight to Shin-Ra. Inspiring a good chunk of their staff to leave the company, he then staged multiple attacks on facilities, staff, and the main building—which also spilled out into the city of Midgar. He murdered his parents, buried them, killed everyone in town, and… Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. A lot of innocent people died simply because they were vaguely associated with Shin-Ra. These are the actions of a villain. What’s more, this is clearly a sign that he has been acclimatized to death and violence by Shin-Ra to the point where he doesn’t even consider taking hostages.

Except.

Except the entire town was a Shin-Ra town.

Banora, canonically, was a Shin-Ra built town, which means everyone there was basically an employee of the company. No one was safe. Everyone was a threat. And that…

That was how he was raised. And he finally knew the truth—that every moment of his life was touched, controlled by Shin-Ra, all the way down to his very conception. He has never known freedom. He has never known his own identity. And now that very cage was killing him, slowly and painfully, and turning him into something that couldn’t even be recognized as human. He was watching himself rot in the mirror, and it was all because of Shin-Ra’s greed. And as he searched for salvation, he sunk into LOVELESS as he always had, hinging his entire life on Minerva’s Gift because he knew he was dying and that was all he had.

9. And then he died…

10. … but then it turned out LOVELESS was actually kind of a blueprint, and he did meet the Goddess, and he did get reborn without his degradation so he was rewarded for his journey in the end.

So why wasn’t Genesis the main character of the game?

Simple.

His actions challenge the status quo without being about the status quo. It’s a story about revenge. It’s a story about retribution. It’s a story about answering mass violence with mass violence and ultimately being rewarded by it. And while, yes, the series is an action-based violence simulator, the violence in the original FF7 was a guided, tactical effort. (For all that the characters aren’t the brightest bulbs in the sun lamps.) But the biggest, most obvious shift in the narrative happened when they realized their role as terrorists—bringing mass violence to the company via bombing and open aggression—was just resulting in increasing levels of retaliation against uninvolved people. They might as well have been a child beating the ankles of a giant. The goals and themes of the game fundamentally change when they realize that answering mass-scale societal violence with mass-scale physical violence was not only unsustainable, but also wasn’t going to solve their problem.

FF7 is about change and learning when violence—and what kind of violence—is appropriate in the face of different threats.

Genesis’ arc undermines all of that, and making him the main character would contradict the very heart of the OG game.

So, instead, we are positioned as Zack, connected to him through a mutual friend. From there we see all the damage and horror this vengeance brings to those living under the status quo.

But also, that plotline’s a major downer in a lot of ways, so they needed to lighten things up a bit to keep audience involved. And that’s why Zack is, well…

Part Three: Zack is a Himbo

Please, for the love of all that is holy, keep in mind that everything I say here is with the utmost affection.

Zack is dumb as a rock.

He is a charismatic, enthusiastic sixteen year old jock who ran away from home at thirteen years old to join the military. Which, please know, why I say “military” I mean “private security guard force with a standard-issue Death Baton and a license to kill”. The first scene in the game is him being excited that he gets to murder a bunch of people in a simulation, which he is immediately scolded for by his mentor. He is a glorified, souped up private security guard who is canonically only in it for the glory at first. He wants to be a “hero”, but doesn’t seem to fundamentally know what that means. And, over the course of the story, the definition of that clearly changes for him.

Which tracks, because the story takes place over a period of time with high stress.

Occasionally I see people saying they wish that Zack had more complexity to him, and honestly? The game. Would be. SO. BAD.

Full Disclosure: I am not the biggest fan of Zack specifically because he lacks a lot of nuance. I wish he was a bit more complex, too. But I also know that would break the game. What’s worse, if he was still on Shin-Ra’s side because he understood Shin-Ra’s mission… Well… That would make him a villain, or a cog at best. That’s not main character material. It would make the ending more messed up, though.

Anywho, Zack was thirteen when he left home. He had no formal education. He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. He even joined without a permission slip from his parents. This means that Shin-Ra was accepting thirteen, possibly fourteen year olds into the military. (Some people will say this tracks because you can get a job at fourteen in many parts of Japan. But, and this is important, you aren’t allowed to be a security guard until you’re quite a bit older, and you need a specific license for it, much like in the US.) Clearly they didn’t teach this boy critical thinking skills. Not because he’s a himbo, but because having their Super-Powered Private Security Force With A License To Kill think independently would explicitly go against their interests. (EX: Genesis.)

Shin-Ra needs SOLDIERs to follow orders or the company would no longer be able to function. Seconds and Thirds aren’t even allowed to reject missions. (One could argue that sending certain someone on back-to-back missions would be a good way for them to eliminate undesirables within the ranks by sending them to their deaths, which… would make an incredible fic idea, actually.) We already know that First, Second, and Third Class rank assignments do not actually reflect the power of the SOLDIER. This is canon. I would instead argue that those who make the rank of First Class aren’t necessarily the most powerful, but are instead the most visible in the media, thus the easiest to market, and/or the easiest to manipulate and control. (For a great example of this, see The Umbrella Academy.)

The point is, Zack may have been elevated to his position as a first specifically because he is malleable and single-minded. Even after all he saw with Genesis, he stuck by the company to the very end, with the exception of the time Sephiroth was literally guiding him to fail a mission. Zack allowed himself to take Shin-Ra’s side every time, taking down their enemies and following their orders, preserving his “honor as SOLDIER” as he had been taught. The only thing that made him stop…

… was literally getting put in a jar.

It was when he was no longer a SOLDIER.

Part Four: Honor

There is no such thing as SOLDIER Honor.

I repeat: There is no such thing as SOLDIER Honor.

It is a fictional thing that is borne of an ideology based around hard work. It only has power because it is believed in. It is an intangible social construct similar to the law, mathematical order of operations, and gender roles. So why are Angeal and Zack obsessed with it?

Pretty simple.

Angeal’s step-father followed it.

Now, we know three things about Angeal’s step-father.

1. He was chill with the fact that Gillian was already pregnant when they started dating.

2. He was a very good father.

3. He worked himself to death trying to pay off the sword he bought Angeal.

This, of course, says a lot about Angeal considering he rarely uses the sword. He essentially sees that sword as the symbol of his step-father’s life. Everything he uses it for, he sees as more important than his step-father’s life. That thing is usually Zack.

Zack, who is the child who joined the military based on stories of heroes.

Zack, who rises against Angeal in the name of his own step-father’s ideology and tries to talk him down, even at the very end. But Zack fails because he fundamentally doesn’t understand what’s going on, partially because “Soldier Honor” is just one more aspect of this narrative he was given. It is a narrative that Angeal has had to step away from, even though he doesn’t want to leave the memory of his step-father behind. He was a good man. He was a good, hardworking man.

And that is why he died.

Corporations will use you up until there is nothing left, then honor your memory/sacrifice. Shin-Ra was doing the exact same thing the company his step-father worked for did; using up SOLDIERs until they outlived their usefulness. And Angeal was horrified to realize that his “SOLDIER Honor” wasn’t honor at all.

It was willingly submitting to control.

But, unlike Angeal, over time, this meaning changed for Zack. Partially because he didn't understand it fully in the first place. It became about acting with integrity. It became about helping people. It became about not lying down and watching the abuse Shin-Ra handed out in exchange for literal money; for maintaining the status quo.

At the very end, Zack understood what it meant to be a hero.

Part Five: The Conclusion

To sum up, Zack believed in and idolized the propaganda spread by Shin-Ra at such a young age, and was so convinced by it, that he ran away from home at thirteen to join the military.

He was their target demographic, so they happily took him into their ranks. What’s more, people think this is normal enough that we see no one opposing this, because the only people who oppose Shin-Ra are “extremists” or “violent terrorists”.

Zack then became their loyal puppy, groomed to fill his role as super-powered attack dog to sick on anyone they deemed appropriate, and he filled the role. He believed he was doing good. He didn’t think they were invading another country, because that’s not what he was told.

He went after Genesis, because that’s what he was told, and he wouldn’t let Genesis’ actions shake his faith in the company.

Then he went after Angeal, hoping to get answers, only to become more confused. Angeal taught him about SOLDIER honor. He taught him about a higher calling. He was the one who made Zack truly loyal to the company. This challenged everything Zack knew.

He went with Sephiroth, planning a small rebellion of their own (a white lie on paperwork) to get answers, only to find things he wasn’t ready for and couldn’t fully understand.

Zack is shaken by each of these events. Horribly. At times, we even watch him grieve. But time and time again, he doesn’t leave the company. He sees the damage they do first hand, and he doesn’t leave the company. The company isn’t the problem, to him. He reads their emails, does their dirty work, and “maintains his SOLDIER honor”.

Zack swallows what they give him right up until what they give him is torture.

Zack swallows what they give him until he becomes their victim.

Every step of the way, Zack is fed a story of how the world is. He was raised on it. He lived it. He became part of it. He was paid peanuts to enforce the status quo Shin-Ra installed in the world by force, and he was proud of it because it was, to him, something to be proud of.

Zack believes the propaganda whole-sale, and we get to watch, from the point of view of an outsider, as it slowly destroys his life before killing him.

Propaganda has the power to make suffering normal. Propaganda has the power to make murder righteous. Propaganda has the power to take a thirteen year old boy out of his home so they can give him a sword, and when they point him in the direction of their enemies he charges of his own volition, because they made him believe in their cause. And he believes in their cause because he believes that it makes life better for everyone.

But that’s not what’s actually happening.

That’s just what he was told.

Crisis Core is about propaganda, and the depths to which it can affect our lives. It changes our belief systems. It changes our perceptions of reality. And when it’s torn down around our eyes, it can make us go insane. It can make us violent and unreasonable as we realize just how much violence is being forced upon us—violence other people just plain do not see. It's just a a piece of paper. It's just a law. It's just a job.

It's just a war.

Final Fantasy 7 was about Fascism.

Crisis Core is about the propaganda that built it. It is told from the point of view of a boy, then a man, steeped in it. He watches until the people suffering around him—Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal—are twisted into villains by the truths and lies around them. Genesis and Angeal are tortured by truths, Sephiroth is transformed by lies, and Zack is subsequently hunted down to conceal them.

Crisis Core is Propaganda: The Video Game.

[pokemonheritageposts]

for the tcg ranking, could we get the tao trio (reshiram, zekrom, and kyurem)? ik they're not an evo family but they're all linked anyway

in a conundrum here because i want to be consistent about how i treat these and i wouldn't want to do these all together for some of the other legendary trios. but this this trio specifically share so many goddamn cards with each other (and other pokemon too for that matter) that we'd be repeating ourselves if we did them seperately. and that's not even getting into the fused Kyurems!

Fuck it. I'm doing a Top 20 for the trio. And oh my god damn are some of these cards incredible.

20/19 (TIE). White Kyurem EX/Black Kyurem EX (illus. Eske Yoshinob, Black & White Promo #63/62)

18. Zekrom (illus. Aya Kusube, Celebrations 10/25)

17. Black Kyurem (illus. kawayoo, X & Y Promo #160)

16. White Kyurem (illus. kawayoo, X & Y Promo #128)

15. Zekrom (illus. Naoki Saito, X & Y Promo #76)

14. Kyurem (illus. Anesaki Dynamic, Sun & Moon - Unbroken Bonds 50/214)

13. Zekrom (illus. Hasuno, Dragon Majesty 46/70)

12. White Kyurem (illus. kawayoo, XY Fates Collide 21/124)

11. Black Kyurem (illus. Mitsuhiro Arita, X & Y Promo #80)

10. Reshiram (illus. Aya Kusube, Celebrations 2/25)

9. White Kyurem (illus. Shin Nagasawa, X & Y Promo #81)

8. Reshiram & Charizard GX (illus. Ryota Murayama, Sun & Moon Promo #201)

7. Reshiram (illus. Aya Kusube, Black & White - Legendary Treasures 28/113)

6. Reshiram (illus. Kagemaru Himeno, Black & White - Legendary Treasures RC22/RC25)

5. Reshiram & Zekrom GX (illus. Naoki Saito, Sun & Moon - Cosmic Eclipse 157/236)

4. Reshiram & Zekrom GX (illus. Naoki Saito, Sun & Moon - Cosmic Eclipse 222/236)

3. Pikachu & Rekrom GX (illus. kawayoo, Sun & Moon Promo #168)

2. Reshiram & Charizard GX (illus. Mitsuhiro Arita, Sun & Moon - Unbroken Bonds 20/214)

1. Zekrom (illus. AKIRA EGAWA, Sword & Shield - Brilliant Stars TG05/TG30)

[mask-of-prime]

VG Bonus Art: Friendly Fire

Synopsis: Vitani is overwhelmed from trying to wrangle her disputing Lion Guard and tending the needs of on-edge Pridelanders terrorized by foes. On top of that, Vitani and Nuka's spirits have been fused for far too long until the possession becomes a parasitic inconvenience. The Fiercest, highly stressed and agitated, has been fueling her newly-found Fire Roar to the point where she can't control it, and neither can Nuka. At some point, the fire evolves into destructive, molten lava -- a new power she'd discovered on her own. Will her Lion Guard find a way to extract Nuka's spirit and cool her tumultuous temper?

It's, well... pretty past Halloween, now, but it is a special day nonetheless, it's the 5th Anniversary of when Vitani and her pals officially became the new Lion Guard (Return to the Pride Lands was aired on TV on November 3rd, September 2nd was their DisneyNOW/WatchTLG release). So I guess I'm celebrating the anniversary of them becoming a team by... tearing them apart...?

I have no idea if this would be an AU or if I can actually manage to fit this into the Vitani's Guard storyline somehow. Come to think of it, it kinda makes me imagine if Nuka's spirit would've remained within Vitani the first time they ever fused, like if a prolonged possession lasted several episodes/chapters (I wanna say the duration of Shouting Match to Speed Run?) until it became too much for both of them, disaster ensues in a manner typical of tropey werewolf episodes of cartoons, or at worst, an Akira type of disaster in which aggravated emotions and emotionally-charged supernatural powers fight each other to make for some gruesome body horror visuals (in this case, becoming a living volcano).

The lava dripping from Vitani's mouth lowkey reminds me of rabies, maybe this constitutes as an Infection AU like what everyone's been doing lately? lol

The title is a pun on the term "friendly fire" meaning to kill or harm a soldier who's on your side (Shabaha here seems to have been on the receiving end of that). I became aware of the term after the release of a Linkin Park song of the same name.

[veloriium]

BIGGG information sheet of my boy coming soon