#I feel kinda bad for the guy considering he’s a fridged plot device

[herawell]

Me: Infidelity is one of the worst things you could do to someone, to take someone who loves you so much and stab them in the back.

Dominik Koudelka: *exists*

Me: Get cuckolded idiot.

[dangan-meme-palace]

V3 is Sexist and Here's Why

Heyo! Here are my reasons for why I consider NDRV3 to be the most sexist installment of the DR series.

They fridged Kaede who was introduced as a promising and compelling protagonist in favor of her male love interest; another generic boy that the series loves to play as. It also sucks since Kaede ends up being remembered only as Saihara's love interest who care about him rather then a genuine leader who was morally gray.

Maki's characterization was inconsistent and cliche. A brooding tsundere who had a horrible life and it's only after a guy forces his way into her life does she learn to regain her humanity. Although Chapter 5 says that Maki managed to change for the better, her actions proved that she didn't changed at all consider that she was willing to kill everyone for the sake of her love interest. But everyone just brushes it off since she was just a girl who had fallen in love. Not to mention how her character development revolved only around Kaito.

Iruma was written in the hopes of making her as dislikable as possible. This is leads to unfortunate implications since she represents all the qualities that Japanese society disapproves of for women to be. (Being loud, prideful, sexually active, vulgar, having a talent that defies gender roles). Plus it's really messed up how she turns into a fragile, pathetic mess whenever someone yells at her or throws an insult at her.

Toujo and Angie both had interesting plotlines and characterizations (Toujo revealing to be a prime minister and wanting to kill for the needs of the many, Angie using her cult as a means of protecting the students while also having a selfish side) but they're instantly forgotten once they're killed off. Plus Angie's characterization and backstory is filled with racist writing.

Tenko was written to be a man-hating and obsessive lesbian-coded character who made some disturbing statements about how all men should die. (If they made it so that she wanted another minority group to perish, then you can tell that she would have gotten worse hate). And her constantly coddling Himiko, basically reducing her to a pet animal, was honestly super creepy. It also sucks that she was also revealed to have followed this creed because her master (a man) told her to.

Tsumugi and Himiko were okay regarding their roles and characterization, but they could have been done better.

And those are the reasons for the girls. And on the opposite side of the gender spectrum, there are noticeably more guys who are heavily involved and proactive in the actual storyline compared to the girls.

Saihara gets the privilege of playing as the POV Protagonist for a majority of the game and gets all the attention from the narrative and the characters. He even gets credited as the one who 'ends' Dangan Ronpa.

Ouma is the rival character and fits perfectly well with the truth vs. lies theme of the game. He has a constant presence in most of the chapters; either by helping the other players using clues and tricks to figure out the cases, or by terrorizing them with the dark and twisted truths of the game. It all comes into fruition when he manages to halt the killing game by claiming himself to be the mastermind.

While Kaito is only a supporting character, he still has a huge influence in the game because of how much he cares and roots for Saihara. He also serves as a thematic foil to Ouma as the two constantly clash over their ideals and actions. He has the most spotlight and most of the V3 kids admit that Kaito is important to them.  And there's also how he led the unsolvable murder scheme in Chapter 5.

Kiibo is technically important later on when it's revealed that he was the audience surrogate of the game. And he is also credited for officially ending/destroying Dangan Ronpa.

Amami also gets more recognition because of his role as the SHSL Survivor which ties in to the dynamics of the series and how it works.

While Hoshi, Shinguuji and Gonta aren't as involved, it still stands that there have been more guys who were actively involved in the storyline along with fitting the theme of truth vs lies in comparison to the girls.

And actually, i would like to disagree with you on Sakura. 

Despite being referred to as an ogre, she was honestly one of the best written girl characters in the series. 

She had a unique design that wasn't conventionally attractive like the other girls. 

She has the title of World's Strongest Fighter and she has a calm and honorable personality with a heart of gold.

She could have easily broken any of her classmates for insulting her, but she doesn't. She always maintains her cool. The only time she threatened violence was when any of them harmed her friends (Asahina).

She made an honorable sacrifice by killing herself to save her friends. Both the survivors and the narrative acknowledge this by showing the original 6 making more of an effort to work together to end the killing game. They honestly wouldn't have gotten as far if it wasn't for her.

That's why I consider her to be a girl character who was written exceptionally well.

You're thoughts?

-END OF SUBMISSION-

I strongly agree with all of these points!! The protag switch off is kinda iffy for me because while I recognize that it switched from strong female lead to male, I liked it as a plot twist. Still disappointing that they just killed her off for a shitty plot device and then didn't do anything to compensate for it. The girls kinda feel like they were thrown to the side tbh... I don't disagree with you though, and they did kind of just make her into a martyr and not the significant character she could have been. I feel like dr does that a lot with dead characters >:T

Also, when I say Sakura deserved better I meant that she shouldn't have been treated as a gag character or like her being strong was weird. It's like what you said about Miu in a way. I didn't mean that Sakura herself was bad or anything, I meant that it really bugged me when they made a joke out of her and then kind of forgot her after the trial even if they used the key she left behind. She literally sacrificed herself for them and nobody even really apologized properly to my recollection? Kinda wack.

Thank you for sending this in, it was really interesting to read!!

-tech

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, at least four times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Four (23.52% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Surprisingly dull.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Darcy tells Jane about the scientific anomaly. They check it out together. They pass when Jane reappears. Frigga instructs Jane. To be honest, I forgot to notice if they actually passed once Jane came back to Earth, but it’s ok because we already confirmed that the film achieved multiple passes anyway. There were definitely some.

Female characters:

Sif.

Jane Foster.

Darcy Lewis.

Frigga.

Male characters:

Malekith.

Bor.

Loki.

Odin.

Thor.

Fandral.

Hogun.

Volstagg.

Richard.

Ian.

Heimdall.

Algrim.

Erik Selvig.

OTHER NOTES:

Odin is encouraging Thor to have a relationship with Sif, aka his One Female Friend. What a cliche. It comes to nothing in any direction and I don’t know why they bothered to even mention it.

They bother to give Frigga something to do (ever-so-briefly) in this movie, just in time to kill her off. Nice.

They spent so much time having Thor and Loki trade quips while they’re escaping Asgard, I straight-up forgot that Jane was there. Bad editing, y’all.

Erik is ~crazy~ and then he sees the convergence is happening and he’s spontaneously better and it’s all just very...poor.

Thor’s whole take-the-aether-to-Svartalfheim plan goes astronomically badly and I feel like they kinda...gloss over that. He and his buddies all commit treason, they deliver the aether straight to Malekith, and Loki DIES (as far as Thor knows, anyway). It’s just kinda weird that they don’t take a moment to be like ‘wow, really fucked that one up’, y’know, lean in to the emotion a bit, give it some weight? I feel like they played Frigga’s death like it was the more desolate moment, which is nonsense from both a narrative perspective, and in terms of character (since the audience is three films in with fan-favourite Loki, as opposed to this being Frigga’s second appearance but the first in which she actually did anything (recall in the first film she was not actually given a name, let alone anything to do)). Whatever. 

I’m not gonna linger overlong with this one, because there’s really not a lot worth saying. For the ladies, I will say this: I think all four of them have more utility in this film than they did in the first Thor. Jane is less prominent than last time, but she gets to do more than just talk excitedly about science this time (though for the middle portion of the film, she is rendered a damsel and spends a lot of time either unconscious or just weirdly silent and being totally forgotten by narrative and audience alike (pro tip: reaction shots of all involved parties are important. No one is ever just hanging on the sidelines of a major action event doing and thinking and responding to nothing). Nevertheless, she gets to actively participate in science-ing a way to win the day at the climax of the film (using Selvig’s tech, admittedly - I can’t give points to any aspect of Jane’s handling in this film without also adding a caveat), and at least that’s better than standing around yelling and wringing her hands over Thor? It’s something.

When I say Sif had more utility this time, that’s...maybe an exaggeration. She had about the same amount as last film, really: she does at least one (1) thing in her function as ‘one of Thor’s group of friends’, and she gets at least one (1) scene where she has a personal conversation of some description with Thor so that the film can play with the possibility of using Sif as a love interest. It’s not a thrilling effort, and I can’t pretend that there’s any real evidence of a character there, just a placeholder standing in until someone with an actual personality shows up to take over (it doesn’t happen). Darcy continues to be that mix of fun and annoying that only sometimes works as comic relief, but at least this movie gives her some minor action to perform (getting Selvig out of the psychiatric facility) as opposed to just tagging along being chatty for the sake of it all movie long. It’s not much - and frankly, Selvig’s whole storyline is useless - but at least it allows anything at all to be happening on Earth while Jane and Thor are away. It’s...something.

And then there’s Frigga, who, as noted, is briefly given something to do so that the film can shore up some meagre emotional capital in order to buy a fancy funeral scene and some tasty manpain for our Asgardian royals. Yippee. An inordinate amount of attention is given to the death of a relatively minor character with whom the audience has been given little opportunity to forge an attachment, and while it works fine enough at that point in the film, the fact that the movie never reaches that same tempo again is egregious. Normally, the primary emotional intensifier in the film is the event which prompts the final act, but this movie misplaces that event way early with Frigga’s death and then Thor’s treason-plan which ensues; there’s a whole other action set-piece on Svartalfheim and ANOTHER (much more major) character death, and THAT is what spurs the final act of the film, but it is handled in a much more low-key (pun not intended) fashion, with very little response from the characters past the immediate moment. After Loki’s death, there’s no evidence that Thor is particularly bothered, there’s no indication that he’s emotionally driven to avenge his brother (or his mother, now, because we already spent that arc) by defeating Malekith at last, and there’s no hatching of a reckless Hail-Mary ploy to beat the bad guy, they just kinda...go and plant some gravitation rod thingies. Wowzer. The primary emotional intensifier of the film happens at the half-way point with Frigga’s fridging, and there’s not nearly enough fuel in that to keep the story running to the end. 

Essentially, this is the problem with the entire film: it has no emotional cohesion, and that renders events that should feel compelling/exciting/original perfunctory and empty instead. It also has the same problem as the first Thor in that the majority of the characters feel flat and fairly meaningless as individuals, existing more as plot devices than anything else, but unlike the first film this one doesn’t even muster a good villain plot (Christopher Eccleston’s Malekith has presence, but he isn’t given anything dynamic to work with, he’s literally ‘evil, because’. Also, I’m annoyed that they had Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Malekith’s lieutenant and failed to do anything cool with him as a character, he’s just The Muscle (who is also ‘evil, because’)). The adventure to Svartalfheim is the best part of the film because it has the sense of escalating stakes that the actual final act lacks, so it’s the only time that the tone of the film feels like it’s on-track, plus it is notably the only time that the narrative utilises Loki (fan-favourite character and easily the best asset from the first film: you kinda want to lean in to that - the other best character from the first movie, Heimdall, remains woefully underused this time around). Once Loki is out of the picture and Thor’s not real worried about it and the characters on Earth are fooling around with planting a handful of itty flimsy spikes in Greenwich to disrupt the cosmic alignment of the nine realms (who knew it was that easy?), the film lapses into the same old predictable beats with no emotional core, and while there’s some basic fun in the portal-hopping of the film’s climax, there’s no sense of any genuine jeopardy for any of the characters, nor is there a clear idea of what they actually have to do to beat Malekith or how that can be achieved, so the action isn’t building toward anything more defined than ‘super-powered aliens whaling on each other’. As the MCU already learned (but evidently, failed to internalise) after The Incredible Hulk, just having rubber characters bounce around breaking stuff and being invulnerable until it becomes convenient for them to stop does not a good finale make. Well. At least this movie isn’t as ridiculously contrived as Iron Man 2? It’s less fun, though, and for all its spectacle, it’s not even as good as the first Thor movie, and considering how very generic that film was? That’s a dire conclusion. The MCU track record for sequels is presently, not good. Just you wait, though - we’re about to have an exception to the rule.

[avelera]

Some next day thoughts about Thor 3: Ragnarok:

(cut for spoilers)

- At first I was a little jarred by the ending’s abruptness. But then I thought about it a bit more. Yes, as a movie ending, I still think it’s a bit too abrupt, I would have liked 5-10 more minutes to cover some of the dangling plotlines I’ll discuss further down. But then I realized that with all the Marvel movies out there, they’re likely going to be binge watched. So this format makes sense when you realize that this movie is only going to end there for about 1 year in its lifecycle. For the rest of its existence, viewers are just going to immediately go to or cue up either Black Panther or Infinity War, so it’s actually more like a very long TV or Netflix episode than a standalone movie in the traditional sense.

Nevertheless, some things I would like to have seen more resolution are:

- Bruce - They made a pretty big deal of the fact that if he ever switched back to the Hulk again, Bruce Banner may never come back. Now, most likely it’s not a dark enough movie series for that to be true. But still, the fact it was never brought up again after he transformed nags at me, I would have liked to see some concern from Thor & his crew over whether Banner is ok. Though I suppose some of that could be explained by Valkyrie knowing Hulk better, Thor “preferring” Hulk, and the fact that Hulk has now had enough time out in the world to actually be quite stable. It almost implies that Hulk was an infant, or an overly-caged animal so his unmanageability was purely because he wasn’t getting enough time to grow up or exercise. That being said, you’d think Loki would be a little more freaked out. And dammit, I’m worried for Bruce.

- Loki - Has shown a pathological inability to play well with others, pretty much since he learned he was adopted and from the stories of Thor 3 even before that. He is the ultimate little shit. The fact that he was shown peacefully going along with the good guys for even 5 minutes without stabbing Thor again or just causing mischief or fucking off from there gave me a weird feeling of cognitive dissonance. Like, this status quo has already lasted 5 minutes without someone actively trying to kill them, no way Loki is this patient. Then again, this was somewhat resolved by the post-credit scene of the other big ship appearing, since Loki will sometimes go along with things if a team up is required for survival, at least until he figures out how to join the other side.

Some other thoughts:

- Apparently Asgard has fewer people in it than your average shopping mall? Also none of them have the same superpowers as their royal or valkyrie elites? Apparently it is an anime land where if you don’t have a cool character design you don’t have powers, sorry guys, you’re all cannon fodder with as little ability to defend yourself as the average human and maybe less considering you have advanced magic and science sometimes but most of the time you don’t even have guns.

- Hela looks hella like Loki. I’m beginning to wonder if Thor is the adopted one here. Also wondering if, in a more serious moment, what impact Hela having once been Odin’s favorite child would have on Loki given their similarities? Some reflection by him on that point would be interesting.

- Also, wtf, are they gods, are they random aliens with delusions of grandeur, how do they embody concepts...? Thor’s lighting powers were SICK AS HELL AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF THAT FIGHT AND HOLY SHIT HE LOOKS AMAZING WITH THE ONE EYE GODDAMN but I’m just really confused from a lore/cosmology angle of what the fuck Asgardians are in the larger cosmos and as relates to Earth.

Some other good/GREAT things about the movie:

- Seeing that level of diversity was such a fucking relief like I didn’t need to brace myself or roll my eyes whenever anyone who wasn’t the Designated POC was shown as always white and usually male, it was actually wonderfully diverse and awesome wow thank you Taika. 

- (A little mad though that we didn’t get to see the Valkyrie bisexual scene, Disney is still really bad with dealing with LGBTQA+ stuff and this is another reason I fear the consolidation of all IP under The Mouse)

- Anyway, just in general, the directing, holy shit Taika Waititi is a master. 

- Like, the movie was 95% laughs and it’s really hard to transition an audience that was just laughing its asses off to a serious moment but every single serious moment hit like a punch in the gut. Like immediately. Holy shit. Odin’s death, Valkyrie’s flashback, the tiny micro-expressions of Loki and Thor dancing around what they really mean to each other these days, Banner’s identity crisis... my only complaint about any of those is that they didn’t last a little longer, but they were so efficiently done that I can’t really be mad about that. Their brevity matched the pacing of the film, and it’s only my fangirl heart that would have loved some long lingering over all the horrible Feels everyone is going through. Ah well, that’s what fanfic is for.

- That being said, it did feel like there was a couple moments and themes that could have used a little more attention, though the complaint here is minor. There is some serious fridge horror in Banner losing 2 years of his life. What about the people he killed under Hulk’s influence? What about the feeling he’s going to lose himself forever if he ever changes again, and him doing it anyway to help his friends? That was one theme that felt a little under served to me given the seriousness of the implications. 

- Hela was amazing omg. Like, it is hard to introduce a new villain that’s just magically better than everyone at everything and is also a stone cold badass woman. Somehow, somehow they managed it most likely through the immortal talent of Cate Blanchett. She was genuinely terrifying and genuinely felt like a member of their family, unlike some missing family member villains who just feel tacked on. 

- Though I will say I was a little surprised by the reluctant villainy of Karl Urban’s character. I expected him to be a more willing ally of Hela, his story was interesting in how he was basically just an opportunistic but otherwise loyal Asgardian trying to survive and I could have used a few more minutes of focus on him just to sort of pull his story together as more than just someone for Hela to talk to while shit is going down.

- Btw, SPEAKING OF HELA I’ve been saying for AGES that we should be reexamining what Thor being “worthy” is all about because it’s not necessarily the modern concept of good vs. evil. Given that Odin slaughtered his way across 9 realms then turned on the child who helped gain it for him, being “worthy” could literally just mean “able to kill the largest number of people efficiently” according to Odin.

- Uh, do any of our heroes have their powers anymore if they drew them from Asgard which is now a pile of rubble?

- But OMG WE’RE GETTING ASGARD ON EARTH YEEEESSSSSSS. Ok so one of my number one writerly influences, J. Michael Straczynski who also wrote Babylon 5 and Sense8, wrote a Thor comic about Asgard being reestablished on Earth and IT IS HILARIOUS AND WONDERFUL GUYS I am SO EXCITED to see Asgard planted in the middle of the goddamn MIDWEST this is going to be GREAT. Also Dr. Strange must be losing his shit right now HE ASKED THEM TO PLEASE LEAVE NOT BRING THEIR WHOLE PLANET HERE

- Oh, and on a total badwrong side note, I still ship the fuck out of Thor and Loki and I am sorry. I hate incest in general, blech, as a plot device but Loki definitely does not see Thor as a brother also they’re kinda not even human so for some reason that sneaks by my radar. But I’d dearly love to see some Thorki where they’re as snarky and antagonistic and sort of tragically doomed to always be messing with one another as was in Thor 3, and not like... wide-eyed tragic uke Loki or some such (not that that isn’t valid for writers to explore, I just DESPERATELY want some obnoxious-conniving-little-shit Loki and exasperated but actually able to keep the upper hand and occasionally tragically upset and annoyed that Loki just can’t stop being such a conniving little shit for five minutes and sit at the dinner table like a normal person goddamnit why can’t i quit you Thor... just saying). 

Honestly, that movie was just so much fucking fun, I need to see it again.