#I get that there are some characters in some fiction where their appearance or background is narratively or thematically relevant | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lotusarchon · 2 months ago

Note

nezha is a child in the show isn't he? why are you shipping yourself with a minor and writing romance with him?that's so creepy,,,, how are you talking about dynamicsimp when you're doing worst 🤮

Found this cute Nezha fanart anyways

I knew I had to deal with one of y'all eventually but I didn't think it'd be this soon. Damn, at least let me hit 100 followers first 😞

Anyways uh. Nezha's first introduction in season 3 came out in like, what, 2022? I'm assuming it is, because I started LMK in March of 2023, before s4 was released and already found the show up till s3 by then. S5 just released this year, of which we've seen a weird increase of Nezha screentime of which I'm not complaining.

Point blank. The Nezha age controversies are getting old and boring. New fans and old fans need to chill out with those issue about the age business.

1) It's confirmed the Lego Monkie Kid version of the deity known as Nezha is an adult.

2) This is a god of an Eastern religion who is still very much worshipped to our modern day. If you did your research, you should be able to take note that Nezha isn't only seen as a child god, but even portrayed as someone older. I'm not a Daoist nor Chinese, so I advise you check this blog ( @/ruibaozha ) for more information on the subject matter.

3) As is the case with modern media and adaptations, different shows will portray religious figures according to what works for their plot. In the movie Nezha 2019 (forgot the title whoops), Nezha is portrayed as a child, as we are seeing a comedic but angsty interpretation of his origins. In the Legend Of Hei, we see him portrayed as a child, assuming for comedic purposes and to bond with the MC Hei.

3.2) If LMK wanted to portray Nezha as a child like his appearances in Journey To The West, and the Fengshen Yanyi (?), you must understand then his design and personality would've been portrayed more childish or at the very least a mixture of mature and childish. We can see this by comparing LMK Nezha and TLOH Nezha = both are stern but where one acts, looks and often shows childish traits, the other acts like an exhausted 25 year old who needs therapy. LMK HAS made children in the past, as we've seen with the Lady Bone Demon's Host and in season 1 a few kids here and there as background characters. If the show wanted Nezha to be a child, I'm certain they would've given him a similar model.

4) If in the instance that, let's say, the god known as Nezha was a child, and LMK Nezha is an adult, you SHOULD separate fiction from religion. Do keep in mind that Sun Wukong is still very much worshipped, however, I have seen fans, in and outside of LMK, who have written heavy NSFW and simped for him. A god is not the same as a fictional character, because by that logic we shouldn't be simping much less writing NSFW of Wukong either, given his story in JTTW where he becomes a Buddha.

5) I do not like proshipping much like any sane person. I also HATE aging up minors in fiction just for something like self shipping or to write nsfw. I have been in fandoms before this one: Jujutsu Kaisen, Tokyo Revengers, and My Hero Academia specifically, and it makes me uncomfortable seeing porn written of actual minors with excuse of them being aged up. I'm not so hypocritical I'd dare to want to do the same, not when I'm uncomfortable with anyone else doing it. If LMK Nezha was a minor, and there were sources to even prove as well within the series he's a child, then obviously, I would NOT be shipping myself with him, much less write romantic/nsfw content with him. I'm an adult, and I don't feel comfortable with minors in general, so why would I want to write romantic content about a FICTIONAL minor??

If you can find any source that proves me wrong, I'd like for you to do so. But until then, you, and everyone else who still wants to entertain Nezha's age; please stop.

I get it. Some of you like to headcanon him as a child so as such, seeing content with him as romantic or nsfw is uncomfortable. I understand, I do; I headcanon Mei as an aroace lesbian so sometimes it's uncomfortable finding any kind of content with her being paired with others. I do understand where you're coming from with your discomfort.

But I feel like, considering season 5 and hopefully if there's a season 6, the whole thing is just dust now. S3 must've been released in 2022, so it's been nearly two years since Nezha's appearance in the show. People headcanon he's a child, and people prefer to like the confirmation he's an adult. We get it, that's what fandoms are, different views etc.

But calling people proshippers or creepy or pedophiles for not adhering to YOUR headcanons is not only fucking stupid, it's just hilarious and way too old, AND just...boring. Especially considering I feel uncomfortable around minors and hate proshipping with a passion. There's genuinely nothing wrong with liking a headcanon, but if someone likes something that isn't problematic and doesn't adhere to your preference, I think you need to breathe a bit.

I was saving this off for last however, you hit the nail on the coffin with this. There is a literal document talking about the disgusting actions of DynamicSimp. If you still choose to like them that's fine, but forgive me for pointing out how hypocritical it is for you to bring up the person who purposely shared porn with minors to someone who avoids minors like they're the rat plague of the Middle Ages. 🤔

"you talk about DynamicSimp but you're doing worst"

Do you mean writing porn for a character who is confirmed to be an adult? Do you mean ensuring that my 18+ blog isn't found by minors and if it is I'll block them? Do you mean supporting someone who's harassed others about Nezha's age?? Do you mean being an absolute creep around children?? Do you mean breaking the boundaries where people have clearly expressed discomfort? Do you mean romanticizing abuse amongst other things for an au clearly being consumed by minors with no regards or wellbeings?

I wonder who's the worst. Me, the adult who only recently turned 18 and has limited his interaction with minors outside of family members, or the however old they are person who has a literal document and their victims speaking up about their actions, and who to my current knowledge has not spoken up about this and is still posting and carrying on without a care in the world?

Well zoinks Scoob, guess we're not making outta this one alive 😟

Edit: .....*disappointed sighs* I think some people really oughta chill out in my comments. Anon, I blame this on you 😭 why did you bring this here holy fucking shit dawg.

Alright. Alright uh.

Okay, so while I do appreciate being told the reasons as to WHY Nezha was "aged up", because a writer wanted to justify shipping Wukong and Nezha...I feel like the entire, "ah, but this says, and that says here-" about Nezha's age is just ridiculous at this point.

Yes, I understand, this is justifiably weird.

However.

Has anyone else refuted Nezha's age?? And I mean the canon show writers? Has anyone working on Lego Monkie Kid made a statement saying: "This person is disgusting, LMK Nezha is a child." Because, respectfully, unless canon sources provide information on it, I'm not going off based on the fandom opinions.

I'm not happy I have to edit this post to add this, much less try to explain anything, but, oh well.

1) "Ali, you're just trying to justify yourself and keep writing for a child." Listen. I've been groomed and dealt with fucking weirdos my entire life. Trust me when I say whenever I hear about proshipping it SICKENS me to the core. I HATE proshipping. I don't care what the excuse is, proshipping is disgusting.

I'm not mentioning the interesting fellows in my comments because it's pointless and honestly to make drama over this is stupid. But I was given some context to understand where they're coming from, and I do in fact appreciate it. Justifiably I don't blame them for their annoyance/disgust towards the writer Sarah (?).

What I will say though; typically in a situation like this, I'm certain someone in the team would've made a statement about this to explain that the writer is wrong. I'd assume at least one writer, someone OFFICIALLY on the team would've denied this proclamation of Nezha being an adult. I have not seen ANYTHING that says the show denies Nezha being an adult.

2) My friend, who was also in the comments (hi), is a native Chinese and a Buddhist for six years. I also have another friend who I'm not mentioning but ALSO is Chinese and WORSHIPS Nezha. They have more knowledge than someone like me does have on this matter, and I find it really odd how people immediately cite wiki and website sources to say, "Nezha is an eternal child!", and, "No where else says Nezha is an adult."

As I've said. If there are sources including the staff from Lego Monkie Kid that claims Nezha is a child, then I am more than willing to delete any content I've made with him. Full honesty, I have no intention of keeping any content with canon, confirmed minors on my blog.

But not only have I found anything that says the official story writers deny Nezha's an adult, but my friends, who are again, both Daoist and native Chinese, are aware that he ISN'T an eternal child.

If you are Daoist and/or worship Nezha, then by all means you can tell me that what I'm doing is wrong and correct me about Nezha's age. I'm willing to listen. If you also find information where the writers claim Saraha is wrong for her statement, provide it. I'm a person that likes reasoning, and I'm willing to see reason.

3) "Ali, you're not gonna see reason you're just trying to defend yourself again-"

Okay, backstory time: last year when I joined LMK, when I myself was a minor, I thought it was okay to write nsfw content for the character who was Lady Bone Demon's Host. My friends at the time did not tell me what I was doing was bad, so of course I kept it up, until someone pointed out that Bai He (fan name) is actually a minor in the show and was also confirmed by the show's producers. I felt so disgusted about it I deleted all my posts made on my old AO3 about her (which is faeriicrafts and still up surprisingly) and offered a sincere apology to the fandom about writing nsfw content for her. I changed and learned, and now I feel grossly uncomfortable seeing anyone writing nsfw for her despite the canon confirmations.

Justifiably, if more information about Nezha is released within Lego Monkie Kid, of which it's confirmed he's a child, I am more than eager to delete everything I've written about him, and even apologize again for writing nsfw with a minor.

To be honest, I just feel uncomfortable with the comments who are denying actual Daoists for the sake of; "I've done my research, no other sources has said Nezha is an adult, you're lying about worshipping him!!"

It's uncomfortable and really off-putting how you can tell someone that about their religion. Yes, this is for you specifically, that one commenter who jumped in and on my friend. Even if she has long since stopped worshipping Nezha, she very much did once. And I've gone to actual Daoists to ask more information about Nezha and the religion in general, who has in fact confirmed Nezha isn't just a child. I get that this is the internet, people can lie about anything. But it's still uncomfortable, solely because had anyone else claimed they're Daoist or ex Daoist and agreed with your opinion, you wouldn't have said that.

I'll reopen my comments within a few minutes, but don't be a disrespectful cunt. And can you maybe not deny someone about their religion? Even if you don't believe them, that's genuinely not an excuse. Because I know damn well, had she agreed with your statement, you wouldn't have pulled that.

Gods. I can't say I'm not surprised, but I'm just impressed about the lengths people will go for something.

Anyways, I've said my piece. If official show writers (because my Daoist friends have already told me what I needed to know) claim Nezha is a child, I'll delete my stuff with him. If not, then I'm not stopping posting Nezha content.

Toodles.

#ㅤㅤㅤໂ♥︎̼̻𓈒ིུ𖥨᩠ׄ݁ field of flowers 🌸#anon #lmk nezha #third lotus prince nezha #monkie kid nezha #nezha x reader #nezha fanart #nezha #lego monkie kid #monkie kid #sun wukong #shadowpeach #yandere lmk x reader #this shit is old news some of y'all need to genuinely rrlax #*relax ffs #but fr relax and chill out dawg

172 notes · View notes

canonicallyobserving911 · 8 months ago

Text

Buck & Eddie: An EXPLANATION (NOT AN EXCUSE) for the basketball incident

After rewatching different scenes included in 7x4, the basketball scene where Buck appears to ‘intentionally’ bump into Eddie which caused Eddie to be injured pissed me off. It frustrated me so much that I wanted to figure out why the scene was included in the episode because they were playing a friendly game of basketball and there shouldn't have been any injuries.

Even though I’m not well versed in sports, I do know enough about them to understand tackling someone usually happens in U.S. football not basketball, so the full body contact wasn’t necessary if Buck just wanted to block Eddie’s shot (get it… Buck was trying to block Tommy’s shot with Eddie, it’s a double entendre 🤪😜). The point is, I figured there had to be more to Buck’s behavior than him just being ‘jealous’ of someone he met like once a couple of weeks prior. Also, I wanted to know why Buck didn’t immediately apologize to Eddie and I think I may have found the answer.

Full Disclosure: I do NOT condone violence of any kind in any instance because it’s unacceptable behavior no matter how it’s viewed! It’s never the answer to a dispute and use of words can usually resolve a matter when there's a disagreement. In this scene BUCK DID NOT DO THAT AND I HATED IT! Therefore, his actions on the basketball court were unfathomable and it doesn’t matter if they were INTENTIONAL or not since he bumped into Eddie so hard that Eddie fell and injured his ankle. He could have broken it or received a permanent injury from it, so IT WAS NOT OK!

Before I delve into my interpretation, please understand I don’t think Buck was fully aware and I hope he wasn’t intentionally trying to hurt Eddie. However, I do think his actions were 70% subconscious and 30% conscious because he had to know on some level, that his actions were over the top especially since he told Maddie he didn’t like how he felt left out from Eddie spending time with Tommy after only two weeks.

THIS POST DOES NOT INTEND TO PROVIDE AN EXCUSE FOR BUCK’S BEHAVIORS, IT’S SIMPLY A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR THEM.

Please note: these are my interpretations and observations of episode 7x4; therefore if someone doesn’t agree, it’s ok because two people can have different opinions and they can coexist. One person’s opinion about a scene or an episode doesn’t have to be like someone else’s and it doesn’t make one person’s opinion right and the other’s wrong or vice versa. Everyone consumes and interprets media differently and just because one person sees something one way and they liked it, it doesn’t make it so for someone else since everyone has different backgrounds and experiences. Please try to use GRACE when reading other’s thoughts on a matter.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program…

Don’t read below the cut if discussions and interpretations of the shooting, Eddie’s breakdown or the basketball scene are triggering.

Before you start reading, please note, THIS IS NOT ABOUT OS! HE’S THE ACTOR WHO PLAYS BUCK SO DON’T GET THIS POST TWISTED. BUCK IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER AND OS IS A REAL PERSON. NO ONE KNOWS OS PERSONALLY EXCEPT FOR THE PEOPLE HE ALLOWS IN HIS LIFE.

Another Reminder: before you read this please REMEMBER this episode was told from BUCK’S POV!

After carefully analyzing the basketball scene, I remembered something about Buck’s past. Everyone who knows the character is fully aware that he doesn’t want to be left behind or abandoned again. That's why it's important to note that in season 7, Maddie’s getting married to Chimney, Bobby and Athena almost died on the cruise and Hen and Karen are adopting a baby. Everyone in their found family is moving on with their lives and IMO, when Buck realized Eddie had moved on too, he couldn’t handle it because Eddie’s supposed to ALWAYS be there. They have each other's backs and have had them since 2x1. But it seems like Buck forgot one thing, he pushed Eddie away in 6x15 with that BS line about Natalia seeing him and outside of work, they weren't spending time together anymore.

In 7x4, Eddie found a new friend (who wanted him but I’ll elaborate on that in another post) and he was having a great time going to fights in Las Vegas, spending time working on his cars and going to karaoke, basically he was doing the damn thing but Buck couldn’t handle it since Eddie and Chris are his FAMILY! They’re the two people in his found family that are his but he’s either too scared to say something or I don’t even know what but the point is, he expects them to be there whenever he’s lonely and wants to cook some lasagna or something. But this time they weren’t since Eddie moved on and Buck didn't know what to do about it (Hint: all he had to do was open his mouth and talk🙄).

After I remembered the aftermath of the shooting and Eddie’s breakdown, I realized, in Buck’s mind, he thinks the only time he gets to be with Eddie in the way he wants to be with him (AS HIS HUSBAND) is when Eddie’s hurt (related post linked here) which is FALSE AND UNFOUNDED but in Buck’s mind, he doesn’t know that. If this is his rationale, then he needs to go back to therapy because it’s not true. Eddie added Buck to his will and named him to be Chris’ legal guardian but it appears he still hasn’t fully dealt with his abandonment issues yet and until he does, it's likely he won't be able to move past them.

Before Eddie found a friend with similar interests (which I thought was great) Buck got to be Eddie’s everything and he was Chris' other dad. He's never been a guest in their home and he's slept on their couch numerous times (related post linked here).

That was then and this is now since things changed in season 7 because it appears Buck started to believe his position in Eddie’s and Chris’ lives was in danger and that’s why he reacted the way that he did in 7x4. He thinks the only time Eddie and Chris need him is when Eddie’s hurt and to prove my point, I’ve included two examples below.

In 4x14 (full video of the shooting linked here), after Eddie had been shot and he was in the hospital, Buck was at 4995 S. Bedford St. taking care of their son Chris while Eddie’s then girlfriend, Ana was sitting by Eddie’s hospital bed even though he was in a coma.

Buck had full control of the house and he was fully responsible (with Carla’s assistance whenever he had to go to work) of taking care of Chris, making sure he went to school all while they waited for Eddie to wake up. Make no mistake, Buck was sitting in Eddie’s chair at the dining room table. He’s Chris’ other dad and has been for years.

In 5x14 (video linked here), Buck was literally living with Eddie and Chris after Eddie’s breakdown. He was taking care of the house and their son whenever Eddie went to therapy. He made sure Chris did his homework and he was waiting for his HUSBAND (EDDIE) to come home so he could cheer him up👀.

Chris called him in a panic and Buck rushed over to help. Now, even though Buck had a girlfriend (whom he used to help him get information on how to help Eddie with Equine Therapy), he was literally staying with them to make sure Eddie and Chris both got what they needed.

Bonus points: Buck called Bobby (his found dad) to stay with Eddie so he wouldn’t wake up alone while he left to take Chris to school.

In 7x4, Buck tried everything he could to get EDDIE’S ATTENTION (it was Eddie’s attention he was seeking) but nothing worked since Eddie was so enamored with Tommy and all of Tommy’s toys (I’ll elaborate on this topic too in another post). Buck was pissed so he encouraged Chimney to go to the basketball game with him but trust and believe Buck wanted to be there so he could see EDDIE!

It appears Buck was irrational and irritated and the more he saw the new bond between Eddie and Tommy, the more furious he became.

This is where things get messy because in Buck’s mind (reminder this is from his POV) it’s possible he thought that if he physically injured Eddie, he’d get his place in Eddie’s life back and he’d be able to play the role of HUSBAND (to Eddie) and DAD (to Chris) like he did in the past.

Buck truly believed Tommy was a threat to his place in Eddie’s life and that’s the reason why he reacted the way he did during the basketball scene. The idea of him losing Eddie was real this time just like it was during the shooting and Eddie’s breakdown but there's ONE MAJOR DIFFERENCE.

EDDIE’S HAPPY!

He’s not hurting or pressing Buck to hang out with him and Chris because he went and found a life while Buck was entombed in his loft with the death doula. It’s something Buck couldn’t process or comprehend since he wants Eddie to be there waiting for him.

Buck can’t fathom a life without Eddie and Chris because they're his family and trust and believe he’s never felt threatened by Ana or Marisol because he KNOWS Eddie’s not into them. Reminder, he was the one who told Eddie to breakup with Ana instead of him trying to stick it out like he said he was going to do.

Buck is HYPER aware of Eddie in every scenario which is the reason why he noticed Eddie's discomfort in 5x2 while Ana and Chris were at the firehouse. Also, he ignored Ana when they were there. He wouldn't even look at her. Buck's not bothered by Marisol either because if he was, he would have told Eddie in 7x1 to have her talk to Chris about women instead of asking him to do it.

When Buck’s facial expressions are examined, it’s easy to see he looks mortified at what he'd done to Eddie and the hints of their shared trauma from his past was mixed in too.

This was especially true while Eddie was on the ground.

Bonus points: when was the last time Buck saw Eddie injured and lying on the ground?

Ding, ding, ding… THE SHOOTING! Buck risked life and limb to save Eddie after he was shot in the middle of the street. And I believe he would have reacted differently if Tommy hadn't stepped in and said something that caused Buck to deflate.

Things were different this time because Eddie wasn’t shot but he was injured but Buck caused it and he wasn't able to fix it or save Eddie and take him home or to the hospital. Buck tried but Tommy shot his own shot which caused Buck to foul out of the game and by proxy he thought out of Eddie's life.

In the above GIFs, it’s easy to see how he wanted to reach out to Eddie but his hands wouldn’t move the same way he couldn’t touch him in 4x14 while they were riding in the back of the 133’s fire engine.

Before I end this post, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how Buck has hurt someone before; it wasn’t physical that time but it was emotional.

BE CLEAR, I’m not a fan of Taylor Kelly’s and I’m not comparing him asking her to move in with him after he did a dumb thing (his words to Maddie in 5x13) with the way he injured Eddie. But I am using this as an example to show his lack of comprehension regarding how his actions affect others and the way it continues to persist.

In 5x13, when he went back to the loft and she was sitting on her own couch, he said, “You think I trapped you” and she responded, “Am I wrong?”, his response was, “I’m not sure”. I think on some level he did know since he was afraid someone else was going to leave him. Eddie wasn't at the 118 and Maddie, Chimney and Jee-Yun had just returned to Los Angeles.

Two years later, in 7x4, Maddie asked him, “You didn’t mean to hurt him (EDDIE), did you?”; he responded, “I don’t know”. His response was very similar to the one he gave Taylor and on some level, I believe he does know since he was 'jealous' of EDDIE hanging out with someone other than him.

IMO, Buck wasn't able to get the emotional skills one usually obtains while they're growing up because of the raggedy Buckley parents since they emotionally abandoned him and Maddie. He’s deathly afraid of losing those he loves but he can also be selfish with his presence whenever he gets to make things all about him. Reminder, he admitted it to Eddie in 3x9 during his second apology about the lawsuit. He said, "I'm sorry I wasn't there Eddie. You and Chris needed me and I had my head so far up my own behind with that stupid lawsuit." He was able to fix it back then and there wasn't any other people like Tommy hanging around to get at Eddie.

Additionally, two more examples of the way he makes things about himself happened in season 5 when he was dating Taylor and they remained entombed inside of his loft. They never went anywhere except for the separate trips they took to Oklahoma when she went to visit her dad in prison. It happened again with Natalia at the end of season 6. Since he wasn’t visiting Eddie and Chris, it appears he was entombed in there again with her so there’s that.

Be CLEAR, Buck is 32 years old (not 30 like the show lied and said he was in 6x11 because he was 28 in season 3 (3x1 Maddie said it to Bobby and Athena) and he was 29 in season 4 (4x5 proves it when he said it himself to Maddie) and since MATH IS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, it’s the same no matter where someone lives. The fact is 2 + 29 = 31, therefore he was 31 in season 6 and he should be 32 in season 7). Buck should be able to express himself with words instead of acting like someone in middle school. That’s possibly the reason why Maddie told him about the kerfuffle she had when she was 14 years old and told him not to act like someone that age.

The point of this post is Buck was/is afraid Eddie’s leaving him again but this time it’s different. Buck had all but abandoned Eddie and Chris while he was dwelling inside of his loft with the dEaTh DoUlA and when he finally emerged after breaking up with her, he thought Eddie and Chris would be there waiting for him but this time they weren’t. Eddie found a new friend and Buck felt left out so in his conscious and subconscious mind, he figured if he hurt Eddie, he would be the one there to take care of him like he’s done every time in the past.

But… Tommy stepped up and said, “I can take him because I brought him and there’s an urgent care near his house”. If you look at the expression on Buck’s face, you can see he felt like it was over. He’d finally done the one thing he thought he’d never do (even though he broke Eddie’s heart in 6x15 with his BS line about “She sees me”) but anyway, he didn’t have a leg to stand on anymore since Tommy was there for Eddie and he helped him by taking him to urgent care.

I HATE THIS SCENE AND I WISH THEY HAD FOUND A BETTER WAY TO HANDLE IT. I don’t like it when either of them gets hurt.

Finally, Buck needs therapy to deal with his inability to handle his emotions. I know a lot of people want him to just move on from his traumas but the fact is he hasn’t and that's why he needs to get help to be able to learn how to process his thoughts instead of him just providing lackluster responses like, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure”.

His behavior was inexcusable so HOPEFULLY, he’ll have to APOLOGIZE in CANON to Eddie who’s never intentionally injured him.

Will he apologize to Eddie for acting like a middle schooler in 7x5? Only the showrunner, writers, producers, actors and actresses know the answer to that question.

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #christopher diaz #buckley diaz family #the buckley diaz family #911 abc #911 spoilers #911 on abc #911 meta #911 speculation #911 season 7 #911 season 7 speculation #anti tommy kinard #anti bucktommy #anti eddiemarisol #anti marisol

86 notes · View notes

archonofdivinity · 12 days ago

Text

R1999blr is missing out on a lot of things going on in the CN story, including expanded Oliver Fog lore on his parents. And boy is it a lot.

Meet Arthur Fog, Oliver's father. Honestly the first time I heard his name I went to a lot of conclusions on what the name Arthur might be significant for - a character’s name can mean a lot, and if Oliver's is a reference to Oliver Twist, what do we have with the NPCs. My first thought was King Arthur, especially given Oliver's relationship with A Knight. King Arthur is a British folktale character, especially originating from Welsh mythology (see my previous analysis on Oliver as to his Welsh background) and is said to be the defender of Britain in her most horrible times, befitting of a Fogwalker and Arthur’s role in the 2.3 story (not spoilering much but let’s just say he has a role to play in London).

However, I think there's another person Arthur was named after, and this is something I only noticed when transcribing the story since the English dub is always made before the English translation, and the playthrough I watched had English voices. There's a bit where Arthur makes a deduction, and Brimley responds…

221B Bakers Street is known for being the residence of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The writer of Sherlock Holmes was, you may have guessed, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So I’m guessing Arthur has some inspiration from Conan Doyle.

It is unclear when 2.3 takes place. Maybe it will be more clearer to me when it drops in global, I’m not sure. The way tuberculosis is referred to makes this even more difficult to figure out. I’m guessing this was before Oliver was born as there is no worry about WW2 - in that case somewhen before the year 1937 (we know Oliver was born in 1937 because his era takes place in 1953 and he would turn 16 years old that year). It also takes place after WW1 - Brimley references “the Great War”.

Arthur himself is a very fascinating character with his quirks. He, like all Fogwalkers, champions cleaning out air pollution, although it seems that Arthur is the one who has had the most success - again, no spoilers for the story. Arthur himself is the apparent man in charge of the London Atmospheric Clean-Up Committee.

Arthur, much established by Oliver’s note that he only remembers him for his terrible jokes, does have a strange sense of humour. He has a tendency for calling things by long names much to the disdain for others - e.g. the London Emergency Relief Centre for Special Tuberculosis Patients. He appears to be quite calm and collected, but gets excited and eager when he realises something, or in one case doesn’t get enough sleep.

Arthur is also incredibly inventive and a MacGyver type of person, making a machine to combat fog using rope, a car horn, a watering can, a fish bowl and a chamber pot. Brimley notes that due to the way he acts when excited, some people might consider him insane.

Arthur’s a man who sticks to schedules. He tells Tooth Fairy that he plans to spend the three weeks before the Uluru Games to clean up the London fog, devoting each week to a different thing. Finally, he manages to accomplish this task.

Brimley’s voicelines give Oliver’s mother’s name as Margaret Fog. I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure of any Margarets she could be a reference to given the time period. She only appears in mentions.

My understanding of Margaret Fog is that she was the one more involved in Oliver’s life. While Arthur was working, Margaret was the one who would be involved in Oliver’s upbringing and all the things he liked such as football.

Overall though it’s really nice of R1999 to introduce us to Arthur and Brimley, as well as Margaret’s actual name. It really does make me wonder if we’ll meet her someday.

#reverse 1999 #r1999 #analysis tag #arthur fog #oliver fog #margaret fog

33 notes · View notes

revenantghost · 11 months ago

Text

Kenji Muto's Twitter Posts: Part 2

Before and while Tristamp was airing, Kenji Muto made some amazing Twitter posts giving us lore and production tidbits along the way. And while I don't speak Japanese (so I'm going to have to use Google Translate for this, so take everything you read here with a grain of salt because it may be skewed by mistranslation), there was some fantastic art and really cool concepts shared, and I want to archive anything Trigun-related. If I miss anything, let me know!) It starts a little slow with stuff we already know, but there are some interesting tidbits! If anyone who knows Japanese wants to correct anything, please feel free! Now, without further ado...

Part 1

Part 2 [here]

12:14 AM · Jan 30, 2023

方言が南部訛りのメタファーなら、他の方言メタファーがあっても良いんじゃない？って事で、多彩な地方出身キャラが登場。もちろん彼らのバックグラウンド物語も構築済み。神は細部に��るのだ。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

If dialect is a metaphor for a southern accent, Wouldn't it be nice to have other dialect metaphors? So, a variety of local characters appear. Of course, their background stories have also been constructed. God is in the details. #TRIGUN #トライガン

11:29 PM · Feb 5, 2023

現代社会にラディカルに切り込む、第五話。誰の中にも憎悪は生まれる。親や国籍は選べない。 WE ARE MONEV. #TRIGUN #トライガン

The fifth episode radically cuts into modern society. Hatred is born within everyone. You can't choose your parents or nationality. WE ARE MONEV. #TRIGUN #トライガン

11:35 PM · Feb 5, 2023

風力発電だけじゃない上質なワムズシルクも高値で取引されている。この惑星では、手に入るものすべてが貴重品。生き��くために。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

In addition to wind power generation, high-quality Wams silk is also traded at high prices. On this planet, Everything you can get is valuable. To survive. #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:04 AM · Feb 7, 2023

当然のことながら、他にもプラントを持てない村が多数存在する。風力発電、ワムズシルク以外に、ワムズ漁で生活する村がある。例の3人組も、各地に点在する「漁師の村」出身の可能性が高い。特に高値で取引されるのが、グランドワムズ類。 #TRIGUN

As a matter of course, There are many other villages that cannot have plants. Wind-power generation, In addition to Wamsilk, There is a village where people live by fishing for worms. The example trio, It is highly likely that they came from "fishermen's villages" scattered throughout the country. The ones that are traded at particularly high prices are Grandworms. #TRIGUN

11:46 PM · Feb 12, 2023

時系列を鑑みるに、この頃はまだ、青年だった。なぜ髪が「青い」のか？オキシタケヒコ氏の「裏SF考証」が世に出ることを切に願う。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

Considering the time series, At this time, he was still a young man. Why is my hair “blue”? I sincerely hope that Takehiko Okishi's ``background science fiction research'' will be released into the world. #TRIGUN #トライガン

5:11 AM · Feb 13, 2023

惑星ノーマンズランドにおける、「ハンプバック級」の巨大砂蒸気船は合計７隻存在する。七都市がそれぞれ一基ずつ貴重な「生体動力炉プラント」を捻出して建造。水を沸騰させて動く原始的な蒸気機関を採用している。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

On the planet No Man's Land, There are a total of seven "Humpback class" giant sand steamships. Each of the seven cities devised and built one valuable "biological power reactor plant." It uses a primitive steam engine that runs by boiling water. #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:25 AM · Feb 15, 2023

彼は誰の味方？どっちの味方？国境なき、ワムズの王。知識でなく、智恵を求めよ。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

Whose side is he on? Which side are you on? Without Borders, King of Wams. Seek wisdom, not knowledge. #TRIGUN #トライガン

3:19 AM · Feb 22, 2023

BADでRADなヤツら。地獄のような惑星環境もなんのその。何事も捉え方次第ではポジティブに生きられる。バド・ラド団の第二分隊、登場。本隊は…？ #TRIGUN #トライガン

BAD and RAD guys. What's with the hellish planetary environment? You can live a positive life depending on how you view everything. The second squad of the Bad Lads Gang has arrived. The main force...? #TRIGUN #トライガン

11:18 PM · Feb 23, 2023

名前って不思議なもので、改造人間ニコラスは、二つの顔を持っている。ニコラス・D・ウルフウッドニコラス・ザ・パニッシャー最終的に彼はどちらを選ぶのだろう？脚本時の名前表記が「ニコラス」で統一されていたのは、そうゆう理由だったりする。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

Names are strange things, The modified human Nicholas has two faces. Nicholas D. Wolfwood Nicholas the Punisher Who will he choose in the end? This may be the reason why his name was written as ``Nicholas'' in the script. #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:11 AM · Feb 27, 2023

地球産の動物は惑星環境に適応できない。 SEEDS船団が目的地に到着したとき、その地で育てていくために積まれていた、無数の動植物の胚と遺伝子ストックから植物や動物を複製するためのシステム、「クローニング・デバイス」そこで遺伝子改良され生まれたのが、トマ。トマってすごい。 #TRIGUN

Earth-born animals cannot adapt to the planetary environment. A system for replicating plants and animals from the countless embryos and gene stocks of plants and animals that were on board to be grown on-site when the SEEDS fleet arrived at its destination. "Cloning device" Toma was then genetically improved and born. Toma are amazing. #TRIGUN

10:09 PM · Mar 2, 2023

マフラーと仮面のようにも見えるが、実はワムズの一種。極めて毒性の強い、砂ムカデ類の幼生ワムズなのだ。寒い冬に、一匹飼ってみては如何？ #TRIGUN #トライガン

It looks like a scarf and a mask, It's actually a type of Wams. Extremely toxic, It is a larval worm of a sand centipede. Why not keep one in the cold winter? #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:06 AM · Mar 6, 2023

シナーズの銃、別名プロトタイプ（改造前）のPeace Bringer。こちらも「幻のスケッチ」にヒントがある。なぜ、誰が、いつ、改造したのだろう？ #TRIGUN #トライガン

Sinners' gun, also known as the prototype (before modification) Peace Bringer. There is also a hint in the ``Phantom Sketch''. Why, by whom, and when was it remodeled? #TRIGUN #トライガン

4:36 AM · Mar 10, 2023

ディスコミュニケーションや地獄のような環境で踠く姿は、とても人間らしく、美しく、何より”ポジティブな物語”だと考えて作っているのですが。みたいな赤裸々トークをしたFMラジオ収録。いつOAだろう？ #TRIGUN #トライガン

Discommunication and the appearance of struggling in a hellish environment, Very human and beautiful. Above all, I think of it as a ``positive story'' when I create it. An FM radio recording of a frank talk. When will it be OA? #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:34 AM · Mar 17, 2023

成長した彼女は、強くなりますよ。 “パニッシャー“では太刀打ちできないほどに。軍用の身体改造ナノマシンによって作り替えられた肉体。ロストナンバー。あくまで今回は、前哨戦。再戦はいつか、また…。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

As she grows up, she will become stronger. To the extent that “The Punisher” can’t compete with it. A body modified by military body modification nanomachines. Lost number. This time, it's just a preliminary battle. When will there be a rematch? #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:18 AM · Mar 20, 2023

プラントの力は、空間に開く無数の穴《ゲート》がすべて担っている。このゲートは大別すると《持ってくる力》と《持っていく力》の二種類がある。この世ではない別の場所、別の宇宙なのか、異なる位相なのか、異次元なのか（？）に繋がっているらしいが…。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

The power of the plant is entirely derived from the countless holes (gates) that open in space. There are two types of gates: ``Power to bring'' and ``Power to bring.'' A place other than this world, It seems that it is connected to another universe, a different phase, or a different dimension (?)... #TRIGUN #トライガン

Adding a tid-bit from @pancake-breakfast here:

So, my Japanese isn't great, but I wanted to try to clarify something on here that Google Translate isn't capturing, namely from this part: Saying that there are two types of gates and then defining them both as "Power to bring" doesn't make sense in English. Why make a distinction between the two if you're gonna define them the same way? But in the Japanese, it's not quite the same words used for both: "持ってくる力" (motte kuru chikara) vs. "持っていく力" (motte iku chikara. 力 (chikara) just means "power," so we'll set that aside for now since that part is actually consistent across both items. 持って (motte) is also consistent across both items. This means "carrying" or "holding," like you'd hold a bag or a purse or a backpack or something that you're taking around with you. The big difference is between くる (kuru) and いく (iku). These are actually the kana (phonetic) versions of two kanji characters: 来る (kuru) - to come 行く (iku) - to go That provides us with a nice little pair of opposites, and changes our literal definitions as follows: 持ってくる力 (motte kuru chikara) - Power to come carrying 持っていく力 (motte iku chikara) - Power to go carrying So... they're both kinda "power to bring" but it would be more accurate to say one brings and one removes. Or, if you're feeling dramatic, one giveth and one taketh away.

1:46 AM · Mar 20, 2023

ノーマンズランドで流通している銃は、墜落移民船のデータベースから設計情報をサルベージされ、レプリカ制作されたものが大半。宇宙時代の銃は、設計が判明しても再現は難しい。乾燥、砂塵の舞う土地が多いため、故障の少ないシンプル構造のものが好まれる傾向にある。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

The guns circulating in No Man's Land are: Most of the designs were salvaged from databases of crashed immigrant ships and were made into replicas. Even if the design of a space-age gun is known, it is difficult to recreate it. Because there are many dry and dusty lands, There is a tendency to prefer those with simple structures that are less likely to break down. #TRIGUN #トライガン

1:05 AM · Mar 21, 2023

隊長、実はうどんが大好物。憲兵たちにも大人気、創業100年の老舗屋台”儒来ヌードル” 大墜落後の闇市からはじまった屋台が数多く存在する、旧市街の横丁。訪れた際は必ずチェックしたい観光スポットの一つだ。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

Captain, I actually love udon. Very popular with military police, 100-year-old long-established food stall “Yulai Noodle” This alley in the old town is home to many food stalls that started as a black market after the Big Fall. It is one of the tourist spots that you should definitely check out when you visit. #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:34 AM · Mar 22, 2023

通常種／自立種を問わず、プラントの身体の内側では、 ”サプライゲート”が無数に動いており、細胞ひとつひとつに活動エネルギーを供給し、本来なら生物として生存できないはずの不完全な肉体を健康に保っている…らしい。 "プラント"とは、何なのか？ #TRIGUN #トライガン

Regardless of whether it is a normal species or an independent species, Inside the plant's body, A countless number of "supply gates" are moving, supplying energy to each cell, It seems that he is keeping his imperfect body, which normally would not be able to survive as a living thing, healthy. What is a "plant"? #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:48 AM · Mar 24, 2023

「記憶世界」は”弟側”からの記憶と印象値と断片で造られている。故に、描き方は限定的になる。 “兄”の視点や感情から見た”テスラ事件”は、もっと凄惨な内容になるだろう。描く機会があれば…。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

The "memory world" is made of memories, impression values, and fragments from the "younger brother's side." Therefore, the way of drawing is limited. The ``Tesla Incident'' seen from the ``older brother'''s perspective and emotions would be even more gruesome. If you have a chance to draw... #TRIGUN #トライガン

12:14 AM · Mar 25, 2023

あくまでドクターの仮説だが。体内にある“ゲート“を強く開くことで、それを物質へ相転移させることで肉体を変形させているらしい。今後、この謎は科学的に解明されてゆくのだろう。なぜ”弟”のゲートだけ「黒い」のか？ #TRIGUN #トライガン

That's just the doctor's hypothesis. By strongly opening the “gate” in the body, It seems that the body is transformed by phase transitioning it into matter. This mystery will probably be solved scientifically in the future. Why is only the “younger brother” gate “black”? #TRIGUN #トライガン

11:16 PM · Mar 26, 2023

地獄のような、惑星ノーマンズランド的現場でしたが、最後まで生き残ったメインスタッフの皆様、プロデューサー陣、制作陣、音響チーム、宣伝チーム…など、とにかく多くの人に支えられた作品でした。何よりも、内藤先生の支えには感謝しかない。本当にお疲れ様でした！ #TRIGUN #トライガン

Like hell, It was a scene similar to the planet No Man's Land, This work was supported by many people, including the main staff who survived until the end, the producers, production team, sound team, advertising team, etc. Above all, I am grateful to Naito-sensei for his support. Thank you very much for your hard work! #TRIGUN #トライガン

11:18 PM · Mar 26, 2023

池田さんは”血”で、松岡さんは”砂”ですよね。「ぶにゅー」とか「サラサラ」とか、擬音、抽象度高めのトーク満載、ブルーレイディスク、オーディオコメンタリーの収録。本編同様、１回や２回聴いただけじゃ理解できない、 STAMPEDEっぽい内容となっております。 #TRIGUN #トライガン

Mr. Ikeda's name is "blood" and Mr. Matsuoka's name is "sand." "Bunyuu" or "Sarasara" Full of onomatopoeic and highly abstract talk, Includes Blu-ray disc and audio commentary. Like the main story, you can't understand it just by listening to it once or twice. The content is similar to STAMPEDE. #TRIGUN #トライガン

#Trigun #Trigun Stampede #Tristamp #Trigun Meta #Kenji Muto #I'm checking for text posts next but this is all the image posts #I want to do other accounts... but also..... I don't have the time or energy #Muto was an easy target lmao

116 notes · View notes

toastofthetrashfire · 10 months ago

Text

DFF, Found Footage, Technology, and the Real

Okay so I've been slowly looking into horror and technology since watching Shadow, and now DFF has me going down a related research spiral. So let's call this a sibling post to my Shadow technology series (which I am slowly working on I promise).

I just thumbed through a great book on found footage horror and a few other pieces on technology and wanted to use these as a lens to think about DFF and how it's navigating a number of themes including the distinction between reality and fiction.

DFF draws on the concept of found footage films like The Blair Witch Project. Even if DFF's main framing and style isn't found footage, the film the characters are working on is. And we get our most direct reference to a horror film when Jin references The Blair Witch Project--an iconic found footage film. So I want to start by thinking about the Blair Witch Project.

Part 1: The Blair Witch Project and DFF

Part 2: Paranormal Activity, DFF, and the Myth of the Real

Part 3: Films within Films, Surveillance Technology, and Other Connections (Man Bites Dog, Cabin in the Woods, Shutter)

Part 1: The Blair Witch Project and DFF

While found footage horror doesn't purely originate with the Blair Witch Project it certainly rocketed the concept into the popular zeitgeist. I watched the film for the first time this week, and while it didn't scare me*, I could easily see how influential it would've been at the time. The media landscape looked very different in the late 90s, and the film's marketing deliberately played up the idea that this was real footage in a way that simply couldn't be done today with our current media landscape and familiarity with the found footage genre. We're now much more familiar with fakelore as a concept in general.

*The scariest part of watching was the censored subtitles! Stop that please! They seriously were replacing things like "Oh, fuck" with "Oh, boy." I also got a car add about going out to enjoy national parks, and how they can be accessible to Deaf people, which was an interesting moment of double irony.

In her book Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality, which I will be citing quite a bit in this post, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas notes that the Blair Witch Project came out at a time when amateur films were still relegated to home videos but entering public viewing through shows like America's Funniest Home Videos. The style was thus associated much more closely with trying to capture reality than tell a fictional story. The marketing played into this heavily--for example: using the actors' names for the characters, circulating missing persons flyers in areas where the film was being shown, and creating a website that gave background on the Blair Witch myth and information on the "missing" trio of amateur filmmakers. I chatted a bit with @slayerkitty who saw it in theaters. She explained how part of what made the film scary at the time was how real so many people thought it was and the tension of being in the audience.

TBWP and DFF Similarities

Let's start by going over some of the ways DFF might be directly pulling from the film or making homages before jumping into what I think are probably the more significant thematic connections with found footage.

Myths and an Ambiguous Antagonist:

The Blair Witch Project is set against the backdrop of a local myth about a witch in the woods. Three young adults (Heather, Josh, and Mike) go to make an amateur documentary about the witch, get lost in the woods, and are then hunted by an unseen presence. We get information about the myth through interviews with locals and a book Heather reads aloud briefly called The Blair Witch Cult. We learn about the slaughter of 5 men (which is described almost like a ritual), disappearances and deaths, and a man who was compelled by the witch to slaughter children. Similarly in DFF we have our Janta cult, which slaughters people in the name of a supernatural or spiritual force. Now I'd say this could be a nod to TBWP but it also draws on plenty of other ghosts stories and urban legends about the woods. I'm sure there are also particularly Thai valences as well beyond just being Buddhist on the surface.

Like the trio in The Blair Witch Project, the group in DFF goes into the woods to film--though they aren't traipsing through the woods, and the horror they're filming is a story of their own creation. In the present, however, the horror becomes much more than fiction, just like in TBWP. In the film, we see and hear signs that something or someone is following the trio but it's ultimately unclear if it's supernatural, locals scaring them, or them slowly cracking and turning on one another. In DFF's opening episodes it's likewise unclear if what's happening is being caused by a person, hallucinogens, or something supernatural.

Maps and Marketing:

TBWP also shows the characters turning on one another, arguing, and cracking in a way that fundamentally sabotages their survival. At one point, Mike reveals that he threw their map, their only lifeline, into the river. This is paralleled in Fluke turning away their transport and means of leaving. The map is an important focus in the film. We see Heather orienting the group and insisting she knows where they're at, while Mike insists they're lost. This culminates in them losing the map as things start getting worse. DFF slips in what I read as a potentially more direct reference to the film in episode 8. An odd new detail in the group's film where they rely on the hope of a map to get out before they're attacked by the masked killer again.

Another potential similarity to draw on has more to do with the outside marketing of TBWP. Interestingly it was marketed to appear like an indie film despite having pretty extensive funding. This makes me think of the group's film in DFF. This is meant to be a student film but they received a huge boost via Por's dad giving them extra money for a camera.

Smoking and Being Alive:

One other parallel I find interesting is the emphasis on smoking. To be fair TBWP is probably not the first or last horror film to have people smoke (the pot head is a character trope of it's own), and I was likely primed to notice because we already had "Tan smokes and has asthma" on our list of clues for DFF. Now clearly the writers of DFF are smart and are using Tan/New smoking in plot relevant ways. These details feel purposeful to the story they're crafting. But let's briefly look at how smoking shows up in TBWP.

The characters all smoke and drink alcohol. As they get lost and the days tick away they run out of food and smokes. Josh has moments that could be attributed to withdrawal where he laments that they're out of cigarettes. However, after he disappears, Mike finds some remaining cigarettes at the bottom of one of their bags. Mike comments "We're still alive cause we're smoking." For him, it signals even if briefly that they are still alive, that they're surviving.

But in DFF, smoke seems to be attached to death and dissociation. We know that New is a smoker, something he perhaps picked up in England. It starts then as a sign that he has a life, one outside of being Tan. Yet it's that very life, being abroad, that led him to be so far from Non when he disappeared. For New, his life is now tinged with guilt and loss. As @syrena-del-mar noted here, there are moments where he forgets he is supposed to be New. But the smoking becomes his one reminder that "New" is still alive.

Yet this reminder turns more and more painful. Under the exterior of Tan, he is haunted by New, the brother who didn't make it in time. And this spirals further when his mother and father die. Each time he's a step closer but still too distant to stop their deaths. At this point, he starts getting high to a dangerous degree--dissociating, hallucinating, torturing himself with visions of Non. When Phi steps in we have a parallel moment to Phi stopping Non from taking pills. Smoking turns from a sign of life to one of death as New tries to commit suicide, telling Phi "I don't want to live anymore." And New takes this further when he drugs the rest of the boys. Perhaps he didn't intend it to go so far, but he certainly is happy with the result. His drugs, his smoke have caused fear and death, rather than hope and life.

Except for the map I feel like most of these parallels can as easily be chocked up to direct inspiration as they can be attributed to both pulling on a similar well of genre conventions. What I find more interesting is the thematic conversation TBWP brings to the table for DFF.

TBWP and Thematic Resonances with DFF

Filtered Reality:

In her work on horror, Brigid Cherry remarks that The Blair Witch Project is "about the way in which technology gets in the way of seeing" (qtd in Heller-Nicholas 23). Heller-Nicholas further notes how the camera is constantly in contention with the audience's desire to look at what we want to see. In the film itself, one of the characters even remarks that looking at the world through the camera is "like a filtered reality" because you "can pretend everything isn't exactly like it is."

This looking but not seeing resonates to me with Jin. He looks at Non through the camera, seeing him as innocent, in need of protecting. But there's so much he doesn't see about Non, including the reality of poverty. Jin's perfect view of Non breaks at the moment he sees Non with Keng. But as Jin's filtered vision of Non cracks, he adds a new filter. He frames Non as a slut, someone guilty in his mind, at least in the he heat of the moment. So he records him. In doing so, he papers over the nuances of the situation, that it is SA and that there is so much of Non's life that is outside of Jin's lens.

After Non's disappearance Jin doesn't stop using his camera lens to view the world. In episode 9, he watches the others play soccer and then Phi through his camera. He is pretending nothing happened just like the rest of the group, but for him to do that he has to filter his reality. And just like with Non, Jin isn't able to see the full story around Phi from this small frame of a perspective.

I also think it's worth noting how the show, especially in the flashbacks tends to use strong framing (I note some of this in episode 5 but it persists strongly at least up until episode 9). While they aren't using a found footage style, there's still a sense at times that the camera is limiting our view as it closes in around the characters. It's as if the camera frame becomes hyper-visible, similar but not exactly like in found footage. I'm not entirely sure how to read this just yet, but it feels appropriate for both a mystery and for a story so deeply invested in perceptions. There's a strong focus on what is made visible and what is rendered invisible by the characters, by the story structure, and by the frame of the camera itself.

Gender, Space, Control:

In her discussion of TBWP, Heller-Nicholas discusses the gendered dynamics of the film and how scholars have read the film as invested in the horror of female control. This is captured in two ways. First in the way the woods as a space become imbued with the horror of the Blair Witch (pulling on a tradition of witches being women), and thus the feminine. Second, in the way that Heather, who is the director of their film, leads the group to folly. Scholar Linda C. Badley, has argued that "Heather represents a serious breach in having taken possession of the conventionally male--and often murderous--gaze" (qtd. in Heller-Nicholas 108). Heather thus enters the domain of the typically masculine and the results are disastrous.

I find it interesting to compare DFF with TBWP in this respect because they've taken a genre that often is infused with binary gender dynamics and given us all men, and predominantly queer men. This is obviously a dynamic of BL, but it's interesting to consider how this plays with the themes of gender that often proliferate in horror. This is a much broader topic, and @brifrischu and I are currently reading through Carol Clover's seminal work Men, Women, and Chainsaws so I wager we'll have more to add to the discussion at some point.

But let's look at a few things. First, if the Blair Witch imbues the woods as a space of feminine horror, DFF paints the woods as masculine. After our cold open, we are introduced to the group as they ride into the forest via Por's narration about the legend of Janta. The subtitles at the very least, refer to Janta using masculine pronouns. I don't want to assume that Thai gender coding and dynamics are identical to western ones but we might consider the way that the group of boys, packed into the back of a truck paint this as a masculine, homosocial space.

This is reinforced by the mention of Por's father. Por says "My dad warned me that, so I had to listen to him." This masculine authority is doubly highlighted by the campaign posters that literally mark his control of the space. To go any further the group must pass through these signs as a threshold to the space. Here we have not just masculinity being signaled but wealth, power, and control--something that contrasts distinctly with Non, for example, who has none of this. And of course, as we move through the story much of the horror comes from the actions of the core group of boys rather than the masked person we started with.

I find it interesting too that as Por tells the tale, it's White who comments "You almost had me scared." They then have a discussion about Tee liking to teaser "the younger ones." This focus on White as the most vulnerable is interesting given that he reads as perhaps the least traditionally masculine of the group*.

*Another reason why I'm excited to read Clover's work, is because she came up with the final girl formula in her discussion of gender in horror. I'd love to think about how we apply that in a queer context, especially given how so many of us have collectively felt White will be final girl. What might DFF be doing re: gender within the context of queerness, and what might it be asking of us as an audience?

The second aspect of this is the directorial gaze. In TBWP we have a woman taking on the control of a film project. This is important not just because Heather takes on a typically male profession but also because of the way films are imbued with what Laura Mulvey has termed "the male gaze." The view from which we see the world and the terms on which stories are told are traditionally male, while women are objects to be looked at--something Heather bucks and is punished for.

In DFF we have a similar struggle over authorship and directorial control. Instead of a strict division between feminine and masculine gazes, we get a struggle that is imbued with distinctions of class first and foremost. Por stands in as the more traditionally masculine director. We see the violence he does in trying to maintain control of the project. Of course he mostly does this through exerting his wealth. In contrast, Non doesn't fit the more aggressive masculine role, he comes from poverty, has mental illness, and is generally at the bottom of the social pyramid. His authorship comes into tension with Por's desires for directorial and social control.

There's a strong thematic exploration here of not just who gets to tell the story, but who's story gets to be told. In the end, the camera is Por's, his wealth and framing win out, and Non's authorship is buried. Much like the male gaze relegates women to objects rather than directors or authors, the only film that Non gets credit for is the sex tape in which he becomes objectified by the camera.

Of course we then have the fact that, in the present, Non's revenge script is being played out. There's a new director here, and clearly it's not entirely Phi (who tries his hand at directing in episode 1). Regardless of who is orchestrating these moves, we have an inversion of power happening. While we can't say for sure until the show has wrapped up, I suspect that DFF will lean into this inversion, rather than, like in TBWP, punishing this transgression of the norm.

That's all for now on TBWP, but certainly not all on DFF. I'm going to turn now to another important found footage film, Paranormal Activity, to unpack a bit more about DFF and it's themes.

Part 2: Paranormal Activity, DFF, and the Myth of the Real

In her work Heller-Nicholas notes how, after Paranormal Activity hit the screen, our view of found footage as a genre shifted. It was no longer seen as necessarily authentic per-se but a stylistic form. Heller-Nicholas puts it like this:

As these more popular found footage horror films made their way to the forefront of the genre, what became important was not that the audience necessarily believed that they were real, but rather that they offered a framework to knowingly indulge in a horror fantasy of the real. The solidification of a recognizable found footage horror style meant that horror audiences understood and identified them as such, defining a subgenre where an authentic style (rather than claims of authenticity itself) prevailed (Heller-Nichols, 128)

I won't go into smaller parallels between the film and DFF (partially because I haven't seen it, so if you have please add anything you notice), but I want to cover a few thematic resonances.

Heller-Nichols sketches out a few ways that critics have interpreted the film. First, as an allegory for materialism in the context of the US housing market crash of the time. Second, as a reflection on surveillance and the way changes in technology changed our relationship to cinema.

The first theme, materialism and consumption play out in the film through both the financial disparities of the characters and the more metaphorical spiritual/demonic possession that takes place. Both DFF (at least episodes 1-4) and Paranormal Activity take place in a luxurious house and themes of greed and materialism are present. In DFF, Por takes this role, flaunting his wealth and using it to get what he wants. Of all the characters, he is the one most willing to steal credit from Non. In Paranormal Activity the wealthy boyfriend even brags about buying a nice camera on only half-a-day's pay. Similarly Por brags about getting the nice camera for their film with his father's money.

One thing that set Paranormal Activity apart from earlier found footage films like The Blair Witch Project, was it's use of security camera footage. It relied on a new type of gaze that made the private public in the context of shifting surveillance technologies. While DFF largely centers itself around a film camera, it also includes other forms of technology in the background, including surveillance cameras. The CCTV cameras in Por's house come to mind as a significant way this technology comes into play. On the one hand, it helps Por identify that there is an intruder, and it helps the group find him when he is hurt. On the other hand, it encroaches on the private, capturing White and Tee having sex. This private vs public line is of course horrifically crossed when Jin records Non and Keng and when this video is circulated--surveillance right in our hands via cell phone.

Heller-Nicholas notes that post-Blair Witch, and by the time Paranormal Activity was released, audiences were much more genre savvy. She notes that the genre's "pleasures are not reliant on our gullibility, but rather our willingness to succumb to the myth of the real that these films offer..." (26). Relevant to DFF, I want to stress the "willingness to succumb to the myth of the real." I discussed earlier how Jin doesn't see Non; instead, he is happy to succumb to a myth of what could be the real Non.

But it's not just Jin who does this. Almost everyone around Non believes they see him correctly--as "Greasy", as a bad son, as a cheater, etc. This takes on even more public dimensions as the police enter the picture, as the sex tape circulates, and as the police report that he has run away with Keng. What people see and believe about Non, the narratives they tell about him, help reinforce people's existing understandings of the world--their prejudices, their assumptions, their myths of how the real world works.

And of course, film is at the center of this. The police believe that Non wasn't with the group when he disappeared because any footage he was in was hidden from them. Non is erased from the film (both in the footage and in terms of credit). The entire film premier is one big moment where everyone in the group is playing into this myth. It is taken as fact that Por's name being in the credits means this is his work--that nothing or no one of note was hidden behind the frame.

In her work Heller-Nicholas points to discovered manuscript fiction (such as Dracula) as a precursor to found footage horror. This connection highlights the way these works rely on the fiction that someone has organized the documents apart from the original author. The fictional framing of found footage as pretending to have an original author or filmmaker other than the actual director, hides the fact that The Hidden Character has in many ways literally stolen credit from Non. The genre expectations obfuscate the real story.

And then there's the sex recording (the only film Non gets credit for). We see a number of reactions to the recording from people in Non's life as well as those outside of it. The social media posts in particular stress the way Non's vulnerability is quickly slotted into pre-held narratives of sex and sexuality that refuse to see the reality of SA.

Non's SA is taken as truthful evidence of his consent via social media, while the film the group made is found footage but not seen as real. I think this marks an interesting change in the aesthetics and narratives we find "real." Horror and found footage are legible, a chance to engage in "a fantasy of the real". Meanwhile, the real story behind the film is erased, just like Non. Sadly, the most legible narrative of a young queer boy is that the phone footage is slutty or even hot. No one questions the authenticity of the recording, it is viewed as real. Ironically, compared to the horror film the group shoots, the sex tape is the real found footage film. Yet the "reality" it shows is filtered through interpretation. Non's reality gets buried.

Meanwhile, as an audience, we have the opposite reaction. We are slowly given insight into the discrepancy between Non's reality and the myths people hold. We keep asking why other characters can't or won't see the truth, why they won't help Non until it's too late.

DFF may not be found footage itself, but it is certainly interested in exploring and extending the thematic conversations about authenticity, reality, and narrative.

Part 3: Films within Films, Surveillance Technology, and Other Connections

Despite the fact that DFF references and dialogues with the found footage horror genre, it formally has more in common with films that center around technology and films within films. So I wanted to cover three more films that I think dialogue in interesting ways.

Man Bites Dog:

I'll start with Man Bites Dog since I have the least to say about it. It is a 1992 French mockumentary and black comedy, that Heller-Nicholas notes is a pretty significant and well-acknowledged precursor to the found footage horror genre. I'm not sure I want to get to deep into themes with this one. But I thought the parallels were interesting. A film crew decides to make a documentary where they follow a serial killer named Ben around only to be pulled into the crimes and become culpable themselves. That is, until Ben is killed and the film crew are taken out one by one by an unknown killer. We have a film crew that slowly gets involved and more culpable in wrong doings, just like in DFF we have the group working on a film while slowly becoming more and more culpable in harming Non. Meanwhile in the present both "film crews" are suddenly being hunted and picked off by an unknown party.

Cabin in the Woods:

Cabin in the Woods is a 2011 film that satirizes horror. A group of college students go to a cabin in the woods and are slowly picked off. The twist is that this is all orchestrated by an organization that is simultaneously surveilling and orchestrating their deaths to appease ancient deities. Many of the shots are done through drone's and other similar visuals to highlight the way the group is being surveilled. In a chapter from a collection on horror and gender, Hannah Bonner looks at Cabin in the Woods and a few other films that include surveillance and social media. She discusses the way technology in these films revolve around slut shaming young women. As she puts it, "It is the 'fact of being constantly seen', whether by high key government surveillance systems or by judgemental peers, that throws these characters into disarray or death" (89).

For Cabin in the Woods one thing Bonner examines is the way the film frames the group's "slut" character Jules. Jules and one of the guys go outside to get intimate. And the film moves between this scene and the men surveilling them who watch eagerly. Bonner reads this as a commentary on the violent gaze with which horror frames women. She makes a distinction, noting that "The voyeur is no longer just the audience, squirming in their seats from Michael Meyers's point of view as he tracks down his naked sister and her boyfriend in Halloween...now the audience as voyeur watches the voyeurs watch the surveyed" (90).

DFF makes a similar move by staging multiple instances of filming (a film within a film, or in this case a film within a show). We get a moment in episode 1 where Tee steps forward to block the group watching the CCTV footage of him and White. But this denial is in contrast to other moments. The show draws us most into being voyeurs watching voyeurs, when Jin films Non. I think it's important to note that both the moment that Bonner discusses in her chapter and this moment in DFF are sexual. In CITW, Jules is literally labeled by her surveillers as "the slut", a role she must fulfill and be killed for to appease the gods. Her lack of agency is made quite apparent. In DFF, Non is also slotted into the role of the slut by those around him, including Jin when he films the moment out of anger. While the show is not as on the nose about the whole thing, it's still clearly establishing a discrepancy between how Non is viewed by those around him due to the tape and the lack of full agency he possesses.

Moreover, by making us viewers voyeurs of this voyeurism, DFF creates a critique rather than simply a simulation of voyeurism. I am considering how this might not just be a commentary on sex shaming, but sexuality within a space where BL has historically crossed the line at times in terms of depicting SA. Or even the way that BL actors in Thailand are often expected to blur the line between the private and the public through fan service. It's interesting because clearly the show also doesn't shy away from letting us be voyeurs to sex. The show perhaps draws a distinction between representing queer sex and SA. But it's fascinating how this is mediated through voyeurism and the camera's gaze.

Shutter:

I couldn't wrap this post up without talking a bit about Shutter. Shutter is a 2004 Thai horror film (and probably Thailand's most well known horror film globally). It was part of the horror boom of the late 90s and early aughts in Thailand and Asia. If you throw Thai horror and cameras my way, I will think of Shutter. I watched it as part of some research I've been slowly doing on late 90s/early 2000s Asian horror and technology (writing meta for Shadow the series). It's a story about haunting that takes inspiration from the idea of spirit photography.

The film follows a couple, Jane and Tun, both photographers, who start seeing shadows and faces in their photos. Jane discovers that the ghost is a girl named Natre who Tun used to date in secret. They proceed by trying to figure out how Natre died (suicide) and how to get her to move on. Meanwhile Tun's friends suddenly start killing themselves. Ultimately Jane learns that Tun's friends raped Natre, and Tun not only didn't stop them but even photographed the assault at his friends' request (so Natre wouldn't snitch). Jane confronts Tun who expresses his regret, that he "never forgave [himself]." In the climax of the film Tun uses a polaroid camera to try and find Natre's ghost in real time before being driven out the window. Natre let's him live, in a near catatonic state, unlike his other friends because his betrayal hurt the most.

We once again come back to themes of voyeurism, SA, peer pressure, and culpability. The film has strong focus on the effects and betrayal of being a bystander, much like DFF does. Again this parallel is made quite strongly with Jin. Non may not have had feelings for him, but he is the kindest of the group, making his betrayal hit strongly. Jin filming Non and Keng has it's own nuances within DFF, but it certainly parallels Tun photographing Natre's assault. Similar to Non, Natre disappears in the aftermath, while Tun and his friends go on with their lives.

On a smaller note, both Tun and Jin use polaroids in what is potentially a reference to the film.

As the truth is revealed, Tun goes from a protagonist to a villain, and Natre goes from the horror of the story to the victim. DFF seems equally interested in the idea of how truths get hidden and justice withheld. It also gives us an inversion of the source of horror. By the time we end episode 5, the group we've gotten to know over four episodes are clearly villains in our minds, their cruelty becomes the horror rather than the masked killer who we come to empathize with (or at least root for to some degree). Now how this fully plays out in the end might shift things. But currently (up through episode 9) this is a horror story locating horror in power and cruelty rather than simply reinforcing a more conservative world view of the non-normative monster.

Concluding Thoughts

Dead Friend Forever is mixing genres in a smart and deft way. It's clear that the writers and director are well versed in horror and are ready to play with genre conventions to deliver their ideas and themes. Some of the connections I'm making here might be happy coincidence where the works speak to each other mediated by my own perspectives and interpretation. But I also believe that the show is building on themes and traditions in horror and found footage horror specifically in smart ways. From the framing of shots, to the way they deftly speak to themes of (in)visibility, power, reality vs fiction, agency, and sexuality (among others).

Through all this, DFF has been incredibly genre savvy. While found footage plays on the idea of reality, DFF shakes that up by throwing a who-done-it mystery our way. Like in The Blair Witch Project, for much of the show, we don't know what's real or what's in the characters' heads. DFF, however, picks up where TBWP stops. At the end of TBWP, the characters are likely killed off camera, the source of the horror still left up in the air. DFF gives us this ambiguity, but then pivots and makes the show a mystery to solve rather than locating the horror in ambiguity. This is because the horror lies elsewhere. Like in Shutter, the monster becomes the victim, our sympathies are played with, and we're left with a show that is as interested in social and political critique as it is in having fun playing with horror tropes.

Sources:

Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality. McFarland & Company, 2014.

Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic: Praeger, 1995.

Bonner, Hannah. “#Selfveillance: Horror’s Slut Shaming through Social Media, Sur- and Selfveillance.” Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film, edited by Samantha Holland et al., Emerald Publishing, 2019, pp. 85–99.

Cherry, Brigid. Horror. Routledge, 2009.

Shutter (film, 2004)

Cabin in the Woods (film, 2011)

Man Bites Dog (film, 1992)

The Blair Witch Project (film, 1999)

Paranormal Activity (film, 2007)

#i think next i want to write a piece on Tan/New and the way the show is drawing on the mad scientist sub-genre #dead friend forever #dff the series #dff meta #my posts #my meta #dead friend forever meta

80 notes · View notes

homestuckreplay · 7 months ago

Text

Week 1 Retrospective: Who Is John Egbert?

It’s official - Homestuck is one week old today! And while a week is not a long run for a comic, it’s already got more pages than the author’s earlier work Bard Quest, so maybe it’s something worth recognizing. So I wanted to mark a week of Homestuck by doing a deep dive on what we’ve learned about our protagonist John Egbert so far. It’s some fact collection, some wild speculation, and some ongoing questions. It’s over 3000 words, so it’s under a readmore for anyone who’s interested.

If that doesn’t sound like a fun time to you (or even if it does), you can take the John Egbert Big 5 Personality Test to see how you score on John’s five key personality traits. It’s 14 multiple choice questions, so a much quicker read.

We’re introduced to John on page 4, where we’re given five key interests of his: bad movies, programming computers, paranormal lore, amateur magic, and gaming. I’ll take these one by one and use them as a framework for John’s character so far.

“You have a passion for REALLY TERRIBLE MOVIES.”

John has eleven (11) movie posters on his walls. Of these, three star Matthew McConaughey and two star Nicolas Cage. More notably, six have a Rotten Tomatoes rating below 50%, and two of these are below 10%. I haven’t seen any of these movies, but as far as I can tell, here are the one sentence summaries [broad spoilers for all these movies].

Little Monsters: A boy befriends a monster and visits the monster world, where they try to convert him into a monster too.

Con Air: A paroled man disrupts a gang of prisoner’s escape from a prison transport plane.

Deep Impact: Earth tries to prepare for extinction after a comet is found on a collision course with Earth.

Ghostbusters II: After going out of business, the Ghostbusters reunite to combat a negative energy slime monster.

Mac and Me: A boy befriends a young alien who gets separated from his family and lost on Earth.

Contact: An Earth scientist successfully discovers alien life and travels to an alien world.

A Time to Kill: A father is acquitted in court for killing the perpetrators of racial hate crimes against his daughter.

Failure to Launch: A 35 year old man’s parents hire a woman to persuade him to finally move out of their home.

Face/Off: A terrorist and a FBI agent go through facial transplant surgery and temporarily swap identities.

Armageddon: A group of space workmen go on a mission to stop an asteroid from destroying Earth.

Ghost Dad: A man temporarily dies but is able to interact with his children in ghost form.

From this we can see that John really likes science fiction movies related to aliens, ghosts and monsters, as well as action comedy. We also know from page 21: ‘Films about impending apocalypse fascinate you’. A Time to Kill and Failure to Launch are the only ones that don’t fit his taste. The implication here is that John really loved Matthew McConaughey in Contact and so watched his other movies even though they were things he wouldn’t usually watch.

I’m curious if these movies are intended as clues to John’s character, the future of the comic, or both. In terms of his character, they make me see him as someone who’s imaginative and goofy, young and carefree, not concerned with other people’s opinions, more interested in watching movies for their surface meanings and exciting stories, maybe wants to escape to a different world, might be a little bit gay.

In terms of the future of the comic, it could be that we’re going to see literal aliens or monsters - they could even be already here, keeping John ‘homestuck’. Slime monsters are particularly highlighted, with Slimer from Ghostbusters appearing on John’s shirt and computer background, and his chumhandle, ectoBiologist, relating to slime. Slime invasion honestly feels too obvious, and anyway, several of John’s movies are about befriending a more benign supernatural force - could John’s Pesterchum friends be something other than human? Or maybe it’s a more metaphorical meaning, referring to John having a very different life to his friends?

Two of these movies feature Earth extinctions by giant space rocks, but there’s absolutely no indication of this being a real world threat John is dealing with. Again, it could refer more generally to a sudden, life changing event that’s about to happen to disrupt John’s current state, something that would fit thematically with this being John’s 13th birthday, a milestone age.

There’s also a theme of crime and the legal system in several movies, including Con Air, the one that’s been most highlighted. The most obvious interpretation of John’s dad right now is that he’s a clown or performer, but there’s an outside chance he could be in law enforcement, or a criminal. It’s even possible that he’s currently in hiding or some kind of safe house. This would explain John being ‘homestuck’ and sick of spending time with his dad.

Speaking of John’s dad, I’m concerned for him based on the Ghost Dad summary - the comic keeps teasing his presence, but we haven’t actually seen him yet. Could he be a ghost? Or become one at some point? Alternatively, we know John has an already dead relative - could his nanna be a ghost? Did John dropping her ashes release her ghost? Family is a really common theme in movies, so I don’t know if a large number of these movies being about family (especially fathers) is relevant, but I’m noting it all the same.

“You like to program computers but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT.”

John claims he ‘likes to program’, but it actually seems to make him angry. We first learn ‘[y]ou were never all that great with data structures and you find the concept [of the stack modus] puzzling and mildly irritating.’ We then see three files on John’s desktop, two in ^CAKE - ‘pff.^CAKE’ and ‘FUCK FUCK FUCK.^CAKE’ and one in ~ATH - ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.~ATH’. These tell a clear narrative of John trying to work on his programming and getting increasingly more frustrated with his attempts, until inevitably giving up. Both of the programming languages are puns, too. ^ is often called a carat (carrot cake) while ~ is a tilde (til death).

I know this is wild speculation, but… John started off coding in a harmless programming language, was already struggling, then for some reason switched over to the most ominous possible sounding language, screwed it up even worse, and now… he’s constantly haunted by the ghost of failed programming attempts in the form of his sylladex, which he appears to be new to using (he had no prior understanding of it on page 7 - although this could be handwaved due to video game tutorial logic), and which operates similarly to a computer program and seems to cause John endless frustration. He’ll have to figure out how to exploit the inventory system in ways that help him, which involves actually figuring out some stuff about coding, in order to partake in some real life ghostbusting, or monster hunting, or dealing with whatever threat he’ll have to deal with by using inventory hacks.

“You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE,” (...)

By far the interest of John’s that we’ve seen the least of so far, John’s love of the paranormal is mostly inferred through his movie preferences, and we don’t see any direct evidence of an interest in lore. However, I can’t stop fixating on John’s chumhandle: ectoBiologist. The comic’s first act was to draw attention to giving John a name, and for many 2009 kids, the names they go by online are more meaningful and representative of them than their real world names.

‘ecto-’ means ‘outer, outside, external’ according to dictionary.com, and it’s actually a common prefix in a variety of fields of biology, but there’s no such thing as ‘ectobiology’ as a field, or an ‘ectobiologist’ - neither term has any search results prior to Homestuck. I think it’s way more likely that this refers to ectoplasm, a term from both cell biology and spiritualism that was popularized by Ghostbusters to mean any substance secreted by a ghost, in practice often manifesting as green slime. Slimer, who we can guess is John’s favorite, is a benign ghost made of pure ectoplasm. I love the idea that John loves this dumb ghost so much that he’s memorized all the lore about them in their appearances throughout the franchise, and devised this username based on being an expert on these ghosts right down to their biology (or at least thinking he is).

The only catch is, ‘fondness for paranormal lore’ is very passive and doesn’t even imply much knowledge, much less action, while ‘biologist’ implies that John has been doing actual experiments. The idea of John trying to create a real life Slimer the same way other kids make slime in their kitchens is really entertaining, if an off the wall theory. Does ‘homestuck’ just mean John is grounded for an unethical science project?

(...) “and are an aspiring AMATEUR MAGICIAN.”

The magic chest is one of the biggest, most eye catching and most colorful objects in John’s room. We see its contents on page 8, which lean more into joke store items than things a magician might use, except for the trick handcuffs and perhaps the collapsible sword. The narration on this page states that John is neither a skilled magician nor a cunning prankster. I’m nitpicking definitions here, but everything John has done so far has been way more about pranks than about magic.

John’s uses of the magic chest to date are…

various putting things into his inventory and removing them (funny, but unintentionally)

combining fake arms with cake (p.36) out of necessity, which ‘makes the cake at least 300% more hilarious’

merging hat with beagle puss to create a clever disguise (p.45) and wearing it for 25+ pages, which he acknowledges is a ‘shitty disguise’

attaching fake arms to harlequin doll (p.65), which makes it ‘AT LEAST a million percent funnier’

All of which are definitely not magic tricks, and honestly not even pranks. Arguably John’s best and most successful prank so far has been when he pretended not to have arms for the first six pages, before revealing his arms after the interface had gone to the trouble of moving the cake off his magic chest to get him some arms.

John keeps thinking about reading Colonel Sassacre’s Guide to Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery, but always finding some excuse not to. He can’t read it until he captchalogues it, but once he does that, it gets buried in his inventory. He assumes that the book can tell him the exact percentage increase of hilarity a prank leads to, but it’s too big for him to actually look anything up.

An outside theory for this that I don’t think is likely simply because it’s so much darker than the comic has been so far, is that John loves this book, but since the incident where his nanna was killed by a copy (perhaps even this copy?) he hasn’t been able to bring himself to read it. A far more likely theory is that while John is an aspiring amateur magician, it’s more of a big idea, and he hasn’t actually done any magic yet. This also tracks with his weaksauce pranks above. And if that’s true, then it says a lot about John that he defines himself by a hobby he aspires to but doesn’t actually practice - he’s someone with big dreams and less motivation, just like his big dream of going to collect the mail from his father despite the lack of motivation that’s kept him messing around for 70 pages.

“You also like to play GAMES sometimes.”

Potentially most important of all is Gamer John. We get a list of games John likes to play from inspecting his CD tower the same way we get a list of movies from looking at his posters.

Bard Quest

The Caper Havers

Problem Sleuth

And It Don’t Stop

What Pumpkin?

Ghostbusters II MMORPG

Little Monsters (for Nintendo)

Harry Anderson: Call My Bluff!

The first five games all reference previous work by the author of Homestuck, and as such probably don’t need in depth analysis. However, the fact that within the world of Homestuck, these are all games (instead of comics) is one of several suggestions that we should think of Homestuck as a game, something that needs further analysis.

The next two games are video game adaptations of movies we know John likes, and the last is a branded video game from Harry Anderson, whose book we’ve already seen in John’s magic chest. Notably, none of these are real video games in our world either. It says a lot that John plays game versions of things he already likes (he’s put ‘countless manhours’ into this assortment of quality titles).

However, it’s undeniable that the most important game in John’s life right now is Sburb. The poster is behind his head in the first panel, placed centrally with one of the only two splashes of color in the panel. The beta release is the only thing marked on his calendar for April besides his birthday, and the Sburb logo is even the picture printed on the calendar - perhaps it’s a calendar themed around new game releases? There’s clear delight on John’s face when he thinks about getting the beta, and his quest to fetch it from the recently delivered mail is the closest thing to a story this comic has so far.

Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about Sburb, so we don’t know what it says about John that he wants to play it. It’s publicized as the Game of the Year, and according to GameBro, the game may be about houses and the player may not get to thrash anything, although these details are provided by someone who hasn’t played the game so I’m not taking them as expert opinion. It might be multiplayer - TT has been pestering TG all day about playing it with her. Maybe John just wants to share a game with his friends.

Speaking of GameBro, John can’t stand the magazine, although he for some reason has a copy on his desk. He describes the publication as ‘a joke’ to TG, and he makes the effort to take it downstairs to the fire and burn it, presumably releasing asbestos fibers into the house and causing serious lung damage to himself and his father. Does he read this because it’s the only games magazine that exists? Or did he like it just fine until now, when it trashed the game he’s excited about, and now he’s furious with it? Either way, it tracks with John’s overall fondness for critically panned media that he would be angry about contrarian critics.

–

All of this has left me with a few questions about John as our main character. These are the things that I’m keeping an eye on and trying to answer as the story continues.

What is John good at?

We hear so much about what John is bad at. He’s explicitly stated to be bad at programming, pranks, and magic. He’s bad at using his sylladex. He’s clumsy and knocked over his nanna’s ashes. He’s got bad taste in media. He’s funny but only when he doesn’t try to be, and even then he’s sometimes the butt of the joke, where the joke is how not funny John’s joke is. He was tempted to squawk like an imbecile and shit on his desk. He has like six different prankster props and he doesn’t even use all of them. I’m saying all this with love and kindness because he also just seems like such a sweet kid, but so far he doesn’t have any defined strengths or skills.

Is he going to turn out to be really good at gaming and kick ass at Sburb? Are we going to get a curveball where it turns out John is an amazing baker, and he hates the cakes in his room and the smell of Betty Crocker because he can do so much better than that packet mix? Or is he starting off from this low point so he can develop skills as time goes on?

What is John’s relationship with his dad really like?

John doesn’t want his dad to monopolize his time and feels trapped in his room, despite his dad baking cakes and leaving notes on gifts telling John he’s proud of him. John’s dad gets his son one great present that John’s really appreciative of, and one terrible present that John immediately hates. All of this feels very reasonable and normal for a teen feeling misunderstood by a parent who’s trying their best.

And then there’s the clowns.

John can excuse magical frivolity and practical japery, but he draws the line at harlequins. He’s an aspiring magician, but his dad’s figurines are ‘fucking garbage’ and his dad ‘sure can be a real cornball’. John seems like somebody who gets angry at ultimately unimportant things, like bad reviews of games, too many cakes, and harlequin figurines, but because of the subject matter it reads like an intense rivalry between two highly specific subcultures that outsiders would group together. John is really making a huge deal of needing to disguise himself and mentally prepare himself to go down and face his dad, and I want to know if there’s any genuine reason behind John’s fear, or if it’s solely the overdramatics I’m starting to think are typical of him.

Is John ‘Homestuck’?

‘Sometimes you feel like you are trapped in this room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular.’ (p.30)

John clearly feels like he’s stuck at home, but is this the extent of the title’s meaning? His dad has recently returned from getting groceries, so leaving the house is in theory possible. Reasons why John might be homestuck include: he’s not allowed to leave the house (for example, he’s grounded, or his dad is very controlling), he can leave the house but there’s nowhere to go (he lives near major roads, bodies of water, farms, or other obstacles, and there’s no public transport to get anywhere), or he can leave the house but it’s not safe to do so (there’s some sort of external threat, either supernatural like a monster or alien invasion, or mundane like a criminal or bomb threat). Seeing out of John’s window and into his front yard does not provide any clues; it looks like an extremely average front yard with a tree, swing and mailbox, and we know the mail was recently delivered, so there can’t be anything too world-ending happening in the neighborhood. Right now John’s goal (the Sburb Beta disc) is inside the house, so this might not get answered right away - in fact, my running theory is that the game itself might hold the answers, as its logo is a house.

What’s the differentiation between John and the narrator?

My biggest question of all, and one that probably deserves its own essay. I’m fascinated by the lines ‘In a kid's yard, a tree without a tire swing is like a proper gentleman without a monocle.’ (p.27) and ‘In a home, a FIREPLACE needs a fire, because that's what FIREPLACE is for.’ (p.50). These lines carry so much opinion, but because the narrator is constantly addressing John with the second person ‘you’, I don’t think these are John’s opinions. The narrator does have a window into John’s thoughts, so the line between them can be blurred, but there's clearly a distinction somewhere, because there have been pushbacks and disagreements between the two of them.

One theory is that John’s dad is the narrator - John’s at home a lot for whatever reason, and so the constant and overbearing presence of his dad means that he can’t get him out of his head even when he’s alone, the commands at the top of each page reflecting John’s dad’s level of control over his son’s life. But I think this question is open ended enough that I’m not willing to commit to one theory yet. After all, we ‘examine 3rd and 4th walls of [John’s] room’ which is a directly meta allusion to the comic’s audience that only really makes sense if the narrator isn’t a character in the comic itself.

–

I think John Egbert has been really well characterized so far. He feels like a real kid, one who keeps getting off track and forgetting what he should be doing, but one who it’s enough fun to get to know that I don’t really notice. While the main character in media often doesn’t end up being the most interesting character, I do want to keep an eye on John because I think he has a lot going on to analyze. Above the style and the world and the mechanics, John as a character is the aspect of the comic I’m most interested in right now.

#homestuck #john egbert #analysis #chrono

59 notes · View notes

1moreff-creator · 1 year ago

Text

It is done. Just over 2 hours 40 minutes, but it’s done. A full analysis of the David Literature Girl Insane MV.

youtube

Some important clarifications under the cut, for before you watch.

>CW for suicide, depression, self-loathing, murder and death, fictional blood, self-harm, manipulation, among other heavy topics. It’s not easy to remember everything I covered over the span of just under three hours, but those are the biggest things which appear throughout the video.

>Since I use clips from the MV, there are flashing lights and disorienting camera angles, but I always made sure to include a warning right before they happen. You can also use those warnings to skip the music if Yoppei’s cover is annoying to you, I’ve heard some people say it is.

>The video should be available in up to 720p eventually, but keep in mind it may take a few hours for that to show up as a possibility. I kinda forgot about that when I uploaded it oops.

>Please ignore the tangent at the start about FNAF. I uploaded this to a channel where I had already uploaded a few FNAF videos, so that’s for the viewers who where there from before.

>Also, the audio is not great. It’s especially bad at the beginning, but it eventually gets good enough. I apologize, I hope it’s bearable.

>Obviously, a lot of this video is very subjective readings of David’s character, the lyrics, and the excerpts in the background. Different opinions are valid.

I am. So tired.

#drdt #danganronpa despair time #fanganronpa #drdt mv #david chiem #drdt theory #david mv #literature girl insane #drdtdevappreciation #Youtube

163 notes · View notes

kwanisms · 2 years ago

Text

Kinkuary 13 Changbin — formal wear // choking

➥ power bottom!Changbin × switch!Reader summary: Looking at Seo Changbin, one would expect him to be a dominant kind of man but that couldn't be further from the truth. At least, not with his girlfriend. She's the one who calls the shots, especially when Changbin is wearing his suit and tie. wc: 2.7k warnings: afab reader, adult dialogue, alcohol consumption, established relationship, sexual content (minors dni!): switch!Reader, power bottom!Changbin, formal wear kink, sensory deprivation (blindfolding and that's it lol), choking kink, Changbin has an oral fixation, teasing, use of pet names (reader calls Changbin sweet things like babe, good boy), tit play, Changbin is very vocal, let me know if I missed any warnings! a/n: normally I'd write Changbin as a dom or as a switch at the very least but I wanted to try something different. I hope I did well and you enjoy this part! Thank you for reading and as always, this is a work of fiction and all characters are not reflective of their respective irl counterparts. for entertainment purposes only. banner made by me. I do not allow reposts or translations of my works. All my works are ©️ kwanisms. Permanent taglist: @yoonguurt @candidupped @dejavernon Kinkuary full taglist: @baldi-2 @wonderfulshinee @lacie220900 @sup-dallyboy @drunk-on-dk @violagoth @mixling-blog @kosmoreads @yourfavoritefreakyhan Stray Kids taglist: @niktwazny303 @g4m3girl @rapmonie2047 @indigo35 @witherednotes @cixrosie @fay-ebrahim @kirooz @flowerboykun @beomgyusbabygirl Strikethrough means I cannot tag you. MINORS WILL BE BLACKLISTED AND BLOCKED. Join the taglist!

════════════════════════════════

“Well don’t you look nice,” you said, glancing up as Changbin entered the room. He looked down at where you sat, eyes looking him up and down.

It was no secret between the two of you that you loved it when he dressed up, especially in a suit or a tux as he was wearing now. You always liked it the most when he came home all dressed up. It was like getting a present.

Noticing the look in your eyes, Changbin tried not to think about how you looked like you were about to jump his bones any second. ‘I should have changed at the building. She’s about to make it very difficult for me to leave.’

His cheeks turned pink, images playing in his head about why he might be late before he turned to search for his shoes. “Where are you going?” You asked, settling back against the couch as you returned your attention to your book, the tv playing in the background.

“One of my manager’s is getting married today, remember?” Changbin answered as he finally found the shoes he was looking for and moved to the dining table to put them on.

You did remember. You remembered how he came home and told you the news. You were happy for his manager but when Changbin said that he couldn’t bring you, in fact that he was forbidden to bring you with him, you suddenly weren’t as happy as before.

Truth be told, you were actually pretty bitter about the whole situation for a few days but as time went on, you eventually forgot that bitterness and went about your life as usual. Until Changbin appeared in his suit anyway.

Now you were bitter again.

It wasn’t like his managers didn’t know you existed or that you and Changbin were together. They were well aware and never made any demand that Changbin end things or hide you away from the world. Even the fans knew you existed.

So why you were forbidden from attending the wedding was beyond you and it was beyond Changbin as well.

“Well, have fun,” you said shortly, not noticing the way Changbin threw a guilty look your way. He felt beyond horrible that he had to be the one to tell you that you couldn’t come to the wedding with him. He wanted nothing more than to take you with him, show you off, and dance with you.

But his manager was adamant. You were not permitted to attend the ceremony or reception.

It was no secret his manager, for some reason, didn't like you and Changbin couldn’t fathom why. You were always polite, extremely intelligent, unimaginably funny, and a complete joy to be around. It was a mystery not only to him but to the rest of Stray Kids as well. Neither he nor his friends could figure out why his manager seemingly detested you.

He couldn’t do anything about it now. It was his manager’s wedding after all so it was his decision.

Changbin got up, shoes now tied properly and walked over to where you sat, leaning over the back of the couch and kissing the top of your head. “I’ll be back later,” he said softly. You hummed in response, keeping your eyes on your book. “I love you,” Changbin whispered.

You set your book down and looked up at him. “I love you, too.”

He took the opportunity to steal a kiss from you, his body demanding more as he pulled away, not knowing your body was craving more but you’d have to wait until he got home later.

“I’ll see you later tonight.”

You occupied your time with reading until you finished your book and decided to get some chores done. The laundry was waiting to be done and the dishwasher needed to be emptied and refilled so you started with the laundry, making sure to empty both yours and Changbin’s hampers.

While the washer worked, you emptied the dishwasher, putting away the clean dishes before filling it with the dirty ones and shut the door. The washer buzzed, signaling it had finished some time later and you started the dishwasher and moved to put the wet laundry in the dryer.

While the dryer ran, you watched some television, catching the tail end of an episode of a drama you’d already watched with your boyfriend. You decided to tidy up to kill time until the dryer finally dinged, letting you know it was done.

With the fresh laundry in a basket, you sat on the couch, folding your clothes, sorting between yours and Changbin’s as you worked. You flipped through channels, trying to find something to watch but finding nothing. Instead you booted up Netflix and put on a movie you’d been meaning to watch while you folded laundry.

Once done, you took the clean clothes to the bedroom and put it away, hanging up your nice blouses and Changbin’s shirts. You put away the rest of the clothes and put the empty basket on top of the dryer, closing the folding doors and heading to the kitchen to make a bowl of popcorn before heading back into the living room to resume the movie.

As the movie was wrapping up, the front door opened and you glanced over as Changbin arrived home. He kicked his shoes off, tossing his keys onto the counter as he locked the door and walked further into the apartment.

His eyes landed on you and the previous expression on his face melted and softened as he moved to throw himself onto the couch. You let out a cry of surprise as he threw himself onto your lap, burying his face in your waist as his arms wrapped around you.

“Changbin, what the—?” You started but he shook his head. “I missed you,” he said softly. You hesitated before relaxing against the couch, running your fingers through his styled locks, messing it up but you couldn’t be bothered.

Changbin loved it when you ran your fingers through his hair.

Your phone buzzed on the coffee table and you leaned forward to grab the device, ignoring Changbin’s whines of protest. You unlocked the screen to see a text from Chris.

Chris🐨: did Bin make it upstairs okay? You: yeah, he threw himself onto my lap as soon as he got his shoes off Chris🐨: good. He did not have a good time tonight You: what? Why? Chris🐨: he missed you a lot. He wanted you here You: i wish i could have been there but not much we could have done about that Chris🐨: i know it just Chris🐨: i’ve never seen him like this before Chris🐨: it really tore him up, not being able to bring you with him You: i understand, thanks chris Chris🐨: no problem y/n

You set your phone aside and looked down at Changbin. ‘Poor guy.’

“Did you have too much to drink?” You whispered, expecting him to say yes. “Not really,” he grumbled. “Just not in a good mood.”

Your brow furrowed but chose to ignore it. “Anything I can do to help?” You asked, noticing the way he merely shrugged.

“Oh hey, I didn’t get a good look at you before you left,” you said suddenly.

Changbin lifted his head to meet your gaze.

“Get up,” you urged, making him whine in protest. You nudged him until he conceded with a whine. He got up and stood before you for a moment before sitting down. “That wasn’t nearly long enough,” you pouted.

“Do it again.”

Changbin whined but stood up again, cheeks burning as you checked him out.

“Are you done?” He asked, drawing your attention back to his face.

You got up slowly, hand moving up his chest to his shoulder, then down his arm to take his hand in yours before tugging him from the living room and to the bedroom.

You pulled him into you, lips meeting and surprising him but he welcomed the kiss all the same as his hands found purchase on your waist. “What’s gotten into you?” He mumbled as your lips left his, trailing down his jaw to his neck. “Hopefully you will,” you murmured cheekily.

Changbin groaned, his hands moving to your hips, pulling your body closer to his.

“Shit, Y/N. All this because I wore a tux?” He asked, a hint of amusement to his voice. You nodded, turning him to push him back onto the bed, causing him to laugh as he landed on his back on the mattress.

“You’re something else,” he said as you undid his jacket, making him sit up to push the article off him, your hand going to his tie and pulling it loose. “You know you’re supposed to wear a bowtie with tuxedos,” you chastised him jokingly.

You pulled the tie off as he chuckled. “I don’t have any bowties here,” he answered as you undid the knot in the tie. “Then maybe you should get some,” you replied, holding the tie up.

“Keep undressing me and I’ll get something,” he retorted as you carefully wrapped the tie around his head, tying it firmly to restrict his eyesight. “What are you doing?” He asked, looking around blindly, making you giggle, pushing him onto his back.

“Keep it on,” you warned as your fingers moved to undo his shirt one button at a time until you got to his pants. You undid the belt, pulling it from the loops and threw it aside with a grumble when it fought against you.

Changbin laughed from under you though he couldn’t see.

Your fingers fumbled with the button and zipper on his pants until you were finally able to pull his pants down, climbing off him and taking the fabric with you and throwing it away. You pulled him up to sit and pushed the shirt off him.

“You’ve taken so much off me,” he said as you climbed back onto his lap, his hands moving to your waist, fingers toying with the hem of your shirt. “But you’re still fully clothed,” he pouted.

Without a word, you pulled your top off, dropping it behind you onto the floor. Changbin’s hands slid up your sides, moving to your chest to cup your breasts over your bralette.

“Am I going to wear this blindfold the whole time?” Changbin asked as your hips moved, grinding against his cloth covered erection. You nodded, humming in response. “Until I say you can take it off.”

You pushed him back onto the mattress, leaning over to take his lips in a teasing set of kisses, making him chase your lips each time you pulled away. “Stop teasing me,” he groaned, his hand grabbing the back of your neck and pulling you into a rough kiss, his other hand grabbing your thigh, fingers digging into your skin.

Your hips continued to move, rolling and grinding against him until Changbin couldn’t take it anymore. “You just gonna strip me down and not fuck me?” He growled.

You sat up, climbing off him. He thought he’d fucked up until he felt you tug his underwear down, probably throwing them somewhere in the room. You always undressed him so hastily when he came home dressed up.

You climbed back on top, taking in the site of your blindfolded boyfriend below you. Taking his cock in your hand, you gave him a few strokes before sinking down, your lips parting in a moan as you took him in one motion.

“Fuck,” Changbin hissed, his hands grabbing your hips. “That’s all I had to say?” He asked with a chuckle, letting out a moan as you rolled your hips experimentally. “Don’t talk back,” you warned. “Or I won’t let you cum.”

Changbin fell silent, letting out a groan as you lifted off him, sinking back down on his cock and setting a steady pace, lifting your hips and sinking back down on his cock. “Oh fuck,” he moaned, hands moving up to your chest.

“Oh, you finally got fully undressed too?” He asked, cupping your tits and squeezing gently. “Only because you’ve been such a good boy,” you replied, drawing your bottom lip between your teeth as his hands moved, thumbs brushing over and circling your nipples, the skin pebbling under his touch.

“He noticed how the skin changed under his touch. “I don’t even need to see to be able to affect you,” he chuckled, rolling your nipple under the pad of his thumb.

“I wish you’d let me fuck these,” he added, squeezing and pushing your tits together. You moaned, walls clenching around his cock. “Shit,” you hissed.

Changbin sat up, lips finding your nipple and taking it in his mouth, his tongue swirling around and lightly flicking against the sensitive bud while his other hand kneaded and teased your other nipple, gently squeezing and rolling it between his fingers. “Keep going,” Changbin said breathlessly. “Keep riding me like that.”

Your thighs were starting to burn but you weren’t going to give up that easily. “You sound so pretty,” Changbin whispered as you moaned, resting your forehead against his shoulder. “Are you getting tired?” he asked in an amused voice. You lifted your head, putting your hands on his shoulders and pushing him onto his back.

“Stay down,” you ordered, making Changbin chuckle. He loved it when you tried to act like you were in control.

“Whatever you say, babe,” he said teasingly, his hands moving to your hips. “Just ride me.”

One of your hands moved to his neck, wrapping your fingers around his throat lightly.

“You talk too much,” you snapped breathlessly, squeezing your boyfriend's neck slightly.

Changbin has never regretted teaching you how to choke more than right now. He never expected you to actually use it against him but he'd be lying if he said it wasn't a little hot, your hand on his neck as you rode him, chasing your own orgasm.

He was fine with you cumming first. You usually did and he normally made it his mission to make you cum first so when you sank onto him one last time, moaning his name as you came, he was more than happy to take over.

He ripped the blindfold off, tossing the silk tie aside as he sat up, pushing you onto your back and immediately resumed the same pace, thrusting into you, pushing your thighs back and folding your body in half.

Not only was this his favorite position, he got to help you ride out your current climax while also speeding you towards another one. You didn't even have time to catch your breath before you were cumming again with a cry, chanting Changbin’s name over and over like a mantra as your walls convulsed around him.

The fluttering of your cunt sent him over the edge as he came, burying his cock as deep into you as he could reach, his load exploding inside you, filling you up as you shuddered. “Fuck!” Changbin hissed, arms shaking as he tried to keep himself from collapsing onto you.

He let your legs go, one at a time and finally laid down, resting his head on your chest, cheek pressing to your skin and hearing your heart hammering in your chest almost in time with his own.

“You okay?” you asked, fingers combing through his hair, pushing his sweaty bangs off his forehead.

“Yeah,” he panted. “Just give me a second.”

You hummed in response, continuing to card your fingers through his hair as you both came down from your post orgasm highs, the exhaustion passing and giving way for the euphoric feeling that always followed.

“You wanna shower?” Changbin murmured, finally breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between you.

You nodded. “I could go for a shower,” you sighed. Changbin finally pushed himself up, his cock already having slipped out of you and his cum working its way out of your cunt. “Keep that in there,” Changbin said softly, using his fingers to collect the small amount that spilled out and pushed it back in.

You slapped his hand away playfully, admonishing him. “Changbin!”

He smiled cheekily as he rolled off the bed and waited for you to get up to join him.

“Now we're showering, right?” You asked as he took your hand and dragged you towards your shared bathroom.

“Right? We’re showering, aren't we? Changbin?” You asked as he chuckled.

“Maybe we are and maybe we aren’t,” he answered as he pulled you into the bathroom with him.

“You’ll just have to wait and see.”

#stray kids scenarios #stray kids imagines #stray kids smut #stray kids x reader #changbin scenarios #changbin imagines #changbin smut #changbin x reader #kwanisms kinkuary #kinkuary 2023

610 notes · View notes

kevinsdsy · 4 months ago

Note

heyy idk if you’ve seen but apparently olympic athletes have to record themselves saying their names so that i’m assuming viewers and announcers have a reference for how to pronounce them? and apprently at least in some cases those audios didn’t get edited at allll lmao and you can hear background conversation and stuff and the first thing i thought of was what those would be like for the aftg characters that went on to play in the olympics

brought to you by this appearing on my fyp:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe78YUEP/

AHHHH I ACTUALLY HAD SEEN A VIDEO (i hadn’t seen this one yet but the one with the moroccan football soccer team) AND IT WAS SO FUNNY TO ME BECAUSE:

some of them were so confused if they were supposed to pronounce it in arabic or french (since arabic has a few letters that dont exist in the french alphabet) so i would imagine it for nabil to go like that where he goes: “nabil ma-moud” and laila goes “ma7moud. don’t you know how to pronounce your own name?” (like i said we have letters that dont exist in this alphabet so we use numbers to spell pronunciations sorry besties 🫣) and so he goes “oh we’re doing arabic? not english?” and they have to assure him he can just pronounce his name correctly.

and (2) apparently they also indicate that the players need to pause and one of the moroccan players went: “name” “pause” “name” as in they LITERALLY pronounced the pause out loud 😭😭 which i havent been able to stop thinking about like 😭😭 i’m trying really hard to think of who would even do such a thing because it’s SO SILLY but i can’t think of anyone— like sure we could say jeremy, but i feel like he would know better. we could say shawn, but he’s just a silly fanon socmed character atp yk. so idk 😭 i think i would love this one for matt where he doesn’t really think it through and he’s just reading out loud what’s in front of him SHDJFHFJ

i watched the other video that was put in the comments too of the tiktok you sent and jean moreau would definitely be serious about this and then you would hear jeremy in the background playing ping pong and yelling 😭 i think this could also work with kevin say and the foxes— so kevin is being all serious and then u hear nicky yelling in the background.

renee would do so well and it would be absolutely correct and perfect— no notes.

and i hate to go back to the moroccan team, but sadly i’m not just a sports fan in fiction, but i also support a sports team irl… i kid you not one of the players went: “[name] two. [name] two.” and then it had to be cut off and they had to explain to him “no. your name. then u pause. and then u say your name again.” and he was like :O without the two? LIKE MY BROTHER??? WHY DID YOU THINK U HAVE TO SAY THAT???? this too is something that’s so silly i cant even imagine someone of the aftg characters doing this 😭

but honestly i think overall the characters will do well without too much trouble. there might be some background noises— especially with the trojans because they’re such a big team and have do spend a longer period of time doing it while the foxes can just tell each other to shut up for a few seconds or either dan or coach will threaten them with extra laps around the court.

((anyways im not sure if anyone is interested in listening in to the moroccan team but here is a link anyways just in case: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZIJnEkJUV/ — it’s a mix of them speaking darija, french and spanish so yeah 😭😭 it adds to the messines))

#kevinsdsy’s inbox

27 notes · View notes

windmaedchen-oceanhorn · 5 months ago

Text

The badge of the Heroic Order. They are personalized. Valen carries his on the left shoulder, underneath his fur cloak.

Valen - Headcanons .............................................................

I like the apparently ditched background info for Valen (see this post again), but in case you don't know it, here's a short summary:

Valen's born into the ruling family of Stoutstone Isle but has never taken interest in that heritage, often running away to explore the surroundings and mingling with the common folk and soldiers, joining them at their campfires to dream about stories of heroism, all for the girls. xD He kept his true identity hidden but it was revealed when he wanted to formally join the army (navy, in this case) at age 16. The soldiers now treated him differently, particularly as he was given a fake superior title. In anger he demands to go through the training properly, but his grandfather (and ruler) denies equally angrily. So Valen throws out his rank and walks off, leaving the island behind. He continues as a mercenary, traveling all over the Empire, until ... (my headcanon starts here) ... being dragged into the Heroic Order by Hogan. Since then he's a member of the Heroic Order and Solitaries, living in Holistone.

I am placing this isle in the rough region of north/west Great Britain. Same weather, same grey tones everywhere, same accents… xD I don't think of his family or home as a pretty castle full of glitter and pomp. It is just as gritty and dirty as the rest of the island, dark rugs on the walls and all wealth hidden behind thick grey stone walls, stashed away inside trunks. It's probably VERY far from Holistone, being on the other side of the Lightbearer Empire.

His dad is some low-level admin under his grandfather's rule. He might never rise to the throne, though, giving way to others to administrate the island until Fay's take-over.

When he was 8 years old, Valen's mother died shortly after giving birth to Fay. She [Valen's mother] always encouraged his son to explore the world with his own eyes, instilling in him the belief that actions speak louder than words or ranks or titles. He then begins to "run away" regularly from home to seek out the truth outside the castle walls.

Valen never went to a school (properly). He had private lessons, of which he sat through enough to know the basics. Most knowledge is self-taught, by reading or talking to people. This means he can have entertaining bouts of ignorance! xD

When there is something he's interested in, he takes the time to educate himself. He is reading educational books but is not at all into fiction. He does read poetry for inspiration on how to charm the girls (in exchange for intel, of course).

He most certainly does appreciate beauty whenever he sees it. Be it a beautiful appearance, a wonderful character, a moving situation, a good piece of music, a stunning picture… but as a man of (charming) words, most of all, a skilful application of words strung together poetically.

He strangely feels inclined to write experiences and emotions down poetically. Hence his admiration for those who can and his understanding for those who cannot but try. Since his penmanship is not of importance to him, and the ladies usually don't need anything very complex to cooperate, he isn't excellent but also not bad. He's right at this place where one wants to try badly, but is too aware of one's weaknesses, so that nothing would ever be sufficiently good enough to match the need.

Valen is stupidly confident and nonchalant about it, which bothers his colleagues sometimes often. It's hard to describe, but it's just this little sting of jealousy, if you perceive someone else to succeed so seemingly easy, as if it was no big deal. It appears as if Valen doesn't value the effort to get there or has no appreciation for the potential risk involved, and that can be off-putting for others. Firstly, that is, of course, not true and it is always their own insecurities at play and not Valen's fault. And secondly, this doesn't mean Valen's free of doubts or insecurities himself. ;-)

............................................

Valen isn't interested in the conflict with other factions. He's not the guy to "rescue the world". But he IS the guy to rescue "HIS world". He is concerned with the well-being of those in his immediate surroundings because that's all that matters (and from there the results ripple like waves beyond his world).

Hence the good relationship between him and Merlin. He takes care of her, while Merlin is taking care of the world at large. Merlin's power forces such a responsibility on her, removing her from the small worlds people live in. It is making her dependent on people such as Hogan and Valen, who keep her involved in the small worlds of theirs. Human well-being depends entirely on these real, small world relationships (and keeps them humble).

He has failed some previous jobs. Not everyone or everything can be saved or protected. It is still gnawing on his mind occasionally, making him feel rather small and powerless in the face of destiny. Then, for a short time, the smile on his face fades.

..............................................

His scar happened among the things that led to Hogan engaging Valen around 5-6 years ago. Valen somehow was at the right time at the right place and got entangled with some business near Holistone. It was an injury taken because Valen stepped up to go beyond what was ever expected from him. Hogan immediately liked the young man and offered him a place to work. Valen was unemployed at that time and Hogan didn't expect he would win him over with the "meagre" pay he could offer but Valen ended up accepting after all.

Valen really just lives by his own honor code and as long as he serves the one he chose to follow (Hogan), all is well for him. In the end, serving under Hogan in the Heroic Order is just his latest choice of work, not least because it granted him the knighthood. There is probably nothing better than that but as hinted at, I think he would have a difficult time later to decide upon his future if Merlin ever made him choose between becoming her life-long personal knight or staying with Hogan. (He said so pretty much straight at the beginning but I consider that a move which had more to do with drawing the truth out of Merlin rather than being a serious consideration at that point.)

Valen also has no real military training. xD LOL But he got a quick run-down from Hogan, not personally, but he arranged something so that Valen could catch up. There was nothing much he needed to learn, other than how exactly the hierarchies are structured and what bureaucratic requirements must be met etc.

................................................

I think Stormcaller is a fabled sword actually originating from Stoutstone Isle. Owning that sword is basically a childhood dream since it features so much in local folktales. They say its true potential can only be unlocked by someone worthy of wielding it. How it ends up in an auction, in Holistone no less, I don't know. But it seems to have been considered as nothing but a pretty sword to be kept on a wall, being mindlessly passed on from one rich to the other. Until Valen happened to walk past the auction house seeing the items on for that night's event. I don't know how exactly he got it, but I am 100% certain that he did not simply make a bid and won it. xD Nonetheless, the sword seems to be rightfully in his hands afterwards, as there are no claims made otherwise.

Stormcaller makes use of gems, by the way. Fay would probably have tons to say about that. xD The electricity we see in-game is actually known to Valen also. He can feel the buzzing power running through the sword when he touches it and how it enables him to move faster and deal more than melee damage to his foes. While those he attacks get stunned by the magic, Valen only takes the positive effects of it, making him… truly the one who is worthy of wielding it.

Regarding his second sword (further HCs recorded here): Valen says "it's not the right time to use it", suggesting that there is going to be a specific time for it to be used. Reminds me a little of Walker who used his old friends gun to get revenge. At the moment, this is a bit too much of a stretch, thinking that Valen might use it in similar fashion. He isn't really the character for such actions. Instead, I think it's more along the lines of a promise made not to use it until a certain condition is met. A promise important enough to carry that sword for years. To whom he made that promise? Hmmm… ;-)

...............................................

Valen started playing poker when he became a mercenary. He enjoys the psychological tactics it involves and uses his out-going inclinations to massively confuse the other players. xD

He's frugal by being too lazy to shop. He saves up merely by not knowing what to spend it on. Most of his salary goes towards food and drink. He lives very minimally.

Even if, further down the line, his family house came hunting him down, he would never return to Stoutstone Isle. He just doesn't see any scenario in which he'd be happy doing so. He makes to claims to any heritage rights, either. He's left and he's gone, leaving the isle fully to sort out it's own problems. (Maybe a reason why that canon was ditched, since it seems irrelevant to his backstory if it never came up again in any sort of relevance.)

And that's it. For now. xD Again, thanks for reading this wall of text. <3

EDIT: ditched the idea about Valen's dad and leaving it open regarding his mother, being dead or not... Also added a link to the headcanons regarding his second sword.

#afk journey #afk valen #my art #hcs

38 notes · View notes