#I think it's fair to say he is the Most Protagonist of the series (in a chorus of other competing protagonists)

[rawliverandgoronspice]

ohhh I managed to convince my potato laptop that it was indeed capable of running clip studio paint let's fucking goooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[itsclydebitches]

Watching The Apothecary Diaries and from a character perspective I love the detail of the pipe, the one used in the warehouse explosion. In just a few, literal seconds of storytelling we're shown quite clearly who Maomao is:

She notes that she "accidentally" took the pipe with her. Despite being a poor commoner surrounded by luxury, she resists most temptations towards theft. There's one moment - was it when she went to Ah-Duo's palace? - where she notes that anyone with so many nice things wouldn't notice something small going missing, but then she knocks herself out of that thinking. Maomao isn't some #pure protagonist who'd never even consider such a thing, rather she's an upstanding and smart individual who realizes this is both wrong and, notably, a dumb move if she gets caught. Maomao is careful to ask for the materials she needs to pull off the bomb experiment and there are times when, even basking in a love of herbs, she will not pick them if they're from someone else's garden. Maomao respects others' property and not even her hyperfixations will override that (a common flaw in other single-minded protagonists). This also dovetails nicely into her admission that she and Luomen built a lot of things they needed because she grew up poor. Who's to say how hard someone else worked to make/buy/secure that object?

Sidenote: It's interesting to me that the exception here seems to be Jinshi. Just an episode earlier Maomao tried to fleece him of who knows how much through the sale of Granny's "educational materials," which, you know, is very much theft. Beyond the fact that the general wealth of a noble differs greatly from the specific possession of a commoner (or even a woman concubine), it feels almost... intimate to me? That's not quite the word I'm looking for, but I mean that Maomao allows Jinshi to influence her in ways she doesn't let others, at least outside of her immediate family. Another notable example of that is her unwillingness to fake an interest in him. We see many times over the course of the show - facing off against the women in the outer court, acting as a courtesan for the night, etc. - that Maomao is perfectly capable of playing the smiling, docile, hapless woman society expects. Yet from day one she's refused to apply that mask for Jinshi's sake and, in turn, despises when he turns his charm mask on her. Maomao wants people to exist plainly, just as she normally does... and a part of that is accepting that she's sometimes an imperfect, immoral person. Weirdly, trying to steal from Jinshi feels like an act of trust towards him, both on a safety level (I trust that you won't punish me too harshly if I get caught) and an emotional one (I trust you to see an important part of my character: that I'll bend and even break the rules for my family's sake).

Moving on, Maomao is also incredibly practical and is living under the realities of a) poverty and b) a patriarchal society. She notes many times throughout the series (this episode included) that Luomen is terrible at turning a profit and Maomao herself owes Granny a fair bit. Combine that with the reminder that she was just fired from one position after being kidnapped from another and of course Maomao thinks about selling the pipe. She didn't intentionally steal it and - crucially - she has no reason to think it's still important to the investigation, but now that it's in her possession she might as well make use of it. Clean it up, find a new mouthpiece, and sell it off for a good price. Maomao is constantly thinking about the price of things, particularly in the context of whether she, a commoner, deserves them and that leads to her likewise noting the everyday objects that could make a big difference in her life, things that others don't even notice. For Jinshi that's just a useless stack of papers to burn; for Maomao they're a potential source of income, translating directly to her father keeping a roof over his head. Class is HUGE in The Apothecary Diaries, so of course Maomao takes one look at a beautifully carved pipe and considers how much she could sell it for.

...but she doesn't. Maomao looks closer still, uses those keen deduction skills to assume the pipe may have sentimental importance, and decides to give it back. Laomen isn't in immediate danger of being evicted, she may have just snagged him a new customer in Lihaku, and Granny isn't hounding her too much, so soft-hearted Maomao is going to put practicality aside and return it. Because she is soft-hearted. This is the girl utterly committed to the big gestures - risking exposure to warn two mothers about the poison killing their babies - as well as the small: staying up night after night to sew pockets into everyone's clothes just so they might be a little warmer for one festival. Now here, Maomao decides to still clean up the pipe. It's not enough to just return it, she's going to return it in pristine condition, even though that won't net her anything other than a potential 'Thank you' now. For me, Maomao so often embodies the message that when peoples' basic needs are met, they're then free to be quite kind to one another.

Love this girl. So, so much.

[salmalin]

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

Propaganda: The Video Game

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

This game is not about Zack Fair.

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

Here we go.

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

Part One: The Timeline

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

Final Fantasy 7 doesn’t do that.

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

Age is not one of them.

Exhibit A: Yuffie Kisaragi.

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

Now, to the point.

Zack is 16 when Crisis Core starts…

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

Which accepted him.

At 13.

Without a parental permission slip.

Think about that for a second.

… Or for the next several parts of this breakdown.

Part Two: The Main Character

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

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

No, actually.

It’s the antagonist.

And by that, I mean Genesis.

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

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

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

2. He was adopted by a relatively rich family.

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

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

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

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

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

Over and over and over again.

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

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

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

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

Except.

Except the entire town was a Shin-Ra town.

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

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

9. And then he died…

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

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

Simple.

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

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

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

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

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

Part Three: Zack is a Himbo

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

Zack is dumb as a rock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… was literally getting put in a jar.

It was when he was no longer a SOLDIER.

Part Four: Honor

There is no such thing as SOLDIER Honor.

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

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

Pretty simple.

Angeal’s step-father followed it.

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

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

2. He was a very good father.

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

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

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

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

And that is why he died.

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

It was willingly submitting to control.

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

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

Part Five: The Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that’s not what’s actually happening.

That’s just what he was told.

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

It's just a war.

Final Fantasy 7 was about Fascism.

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

Crisis Core is Propaganda: The Video Game.

[masochist-marmot]

A fair and balanced look at MHA chapter 431

To all of my fellow bakudeku and togachako truthers out there: I see you, I hear you, and your disappointment is valid. I agree with a lot of the criticism. However, I have a lot of nuanced thoughts, and I will attempt to write them down in a balanced way, so bear with me. I will also treat the leaks as though they were confirmed for now.

(This post became an essay so I'll divide it into subheadings for clarity.)

Reminder: Be kind

Before I get into this, I'd like to remind everyone to please be kind and understanding when having this discourse. I get that there are strong feelings involved, but please don't harass the creators or other members of the community. Remember that at the end of the day this is fiction, and no one has the right to dictate how others view it or consume it. You are allowed to express your opinions and feelings, but try to be respectful to those who don't share them. No matter what side of the issue you stand on.

Queer relationships in shounen

First of all, I understand that it's disappointing when potential queer relationships are sidelined in favour of compulsory heterosexuality. But I can't say that I'm surprised. The standards and norms of depicting relationships in shounen manga go deep, and while it would be nice to see them challenged, we have to remember that there is an entire industry behind these decisions. I'm talking about genre conventions, authorial decisions (affected by unconscious biases), editors, publishers and a whole lot of moving parts. There's a lot of money involved, which means that any changes to the conventions will happen at a snail's pace. I am not excusing the decisions Horikoshi made, but it's good to be mindful that the decisions don't take place in a vacuum. I went into the series with the full expectations that none of the same-sex relationships would be made canon, so I'm not overtly disappointed with that being the case. It's the same expectation I take to any shounen series.

It's obviously worthwhile to question and challenge conventions like these, that's how progress is made. But focusing on a specific author's specific choices might not be the best way to go about it. Although it's worth pointing out that Horikoshi didn't have to make any relationship canon, yet chose to do so. Let me get into that.

Why IzuOcha falls flat

There is no denying that izuocha seems to have been the end goal from the very beginning. She's the first girl, Izuku took immediate notice of her, and her feelings for him became her entire character for a while. It's a cute ship, I guess. The issue is that it lacks any real depth. I'm going to be completely honest with you: I don't think Horikoshi is very good at writing compelling female characters. A lot of the male characters get amazing character arcs, while many female heroes only get a couple of cool moments (full of fanservice) and are promptly discarded. Himiko and Ochako, who have the most compelling female relationship of any kind in the entire series, fail the very simple Bechdel test miserably. Half of their conversations literally revolve around the male protagonist.

I believe this is why many of us prefer bakudeku over izuocha. The boys just get much better character development both as individuals and in relation to each other. Izuku and Ochako's moments don't cut nearly as deep, and while they do somewhat further Ochako's character development, they seem to have no bearing on Deku's character. Meanwhile Uraraka's conflict with Toga meaningfully challenges and alters both characters' worldview, even though their relationship had much less time and opportunities to develop. To me this whole situation just reads as Horikoshi giving Deku a canon love interest early on, then failing to develop the relationship and having to rush it to get the ending he intended.

Character study: Izuku and Katsuki 8 years later

Now I'll ignore authorial intent for a while and ponder on how the leaked chapter reflects on the character development of my main boys. I'm actually not that mad about the decisions Deku makes in this (forced romance aside). I seem to be in the minority that's fine with Deku losing OFA and becoming a teacher, because I actually think it suits him perfectly. In chapter 430 I mostly took issue with him being lonely for eight years and then jumping the gun to become a hero again, which seemed kinda contradictory. If he was truly contented with being a teacher, they could've made it clearer. Though I'm not going to lie, Kacchan funding his battle armor was incredibly cute. In the leaked chapter, it almost feels like they were trying to reinforce the notion that Deku is happy with his life as a teacher, which feels a little forced, but I can respect it. You have to remember that he's been quirkless for eight years and has had time to come to terms with it. People change a lot in eight years. I barely recognise the person I was eight years ago. So what rubbed me the wrong way wasn't that he rejected Kacchan's roundabout offer but the way he rejected it. Like the guy's really hung up on you, the least you could do is let him down easy.

What I think is an especially hard pill to swallow is the distance between Kacchan and Deku. Unfortunately, it also kinda tracks. Hear me out. Their relationship maintained its intensity because of the rivalry. It motivated their respective personal growths, it pushed them further, and it tied them closer together. And it was magnificent. What we see here is that Katsuki is still driven by the will to compete, but Izuku isn't. He's a teacher now, he's got lives to change, he can't be bothered with competition and numbers. While Deku was building his new identity and new life, Kacchan was still hung up on the past: He was collecting funds for the suit to get Deku back into the game, he was rejecting sidekicks who didn't spark the same joy in him, and he was slowly dropping in the charts because he didn't have Deku to push him to try (also something about his personality, I'll just let it slide). I think in this chapter we kind of see him finally accept it. He doesn't push a hero suit on a rival and urge him on anymore, instead he forms an offer to join him as an unrelated question about if Deku's still intent on teaching. Since he says yes, Kacchan won't even bring the agency offer up; Kirishima has to translate the intention. Which is where I think Deku's answer has uncharacteristically little tact.

Does Kacchan deserve a better ending than this? ABSOLUTELY. Does the ending we get counter the character development seen so far? I don't think so. The sad reality is that people do grow up, and I see the ending we get as one possibility that reflects that. I would've also been happy with an ending where Deku keeps OFA and the boys go be gay fight crime for the rest of their lives together, but in all honesty, Deku coming a full circle back to quirklessness is more thematically satisfying to me. Mind you, none of this means that the relationship between these two isn't important to them. It just means that it was always bound to change, adapt and grow to a different direction. Kacchan's final goodbye may seem like an important moment that was completely brushed off, or you can see it as not being important because it's not a goodbye. These two men will continue to be part of each other's lives. And now I kind of want to read comfort fics about what their new relationship and domestic life would look like.

Brief togachako tangent

I said in an earlier post that I will be a togachako truther until the day I die, and I stand by that. In my book, it's already canon. Though sadly, it was also doomed. I'm a little conflicted on the whole thing. On one hand, I think Toga had a satisfying character arc, but on the other hand, we mostly just got our gays buried. Still, purely from a character perspective, I don't see her pushing Uraraka to live her life as a problem. Toga would definitely not want Uraraka to dwell on her memories and guilt. They seem to be bound together by blood now, and that won't change. Neither of them gain anything if Ochako denies herself happiness by not pursuing other relationships. Still, I understand the criticism in a narrative sense. It does come off as a queer character used as a device to push forward a comphet relationship. I just want them both to be happy.

Final thoughts: Canon is not law

I have shared my complicated thoughts and feelings on this presumed final chapter. You are obviously allowed to disagree with me, and your thoughts and feelings are just as valid as mine.

I think it's important to remember that you don't have to treat canon as law. The canonicity of something has never dictated how you should interact with the media. Obviously the author making something canon has a bearing on their story, but that's just what it is. It's their story. Which means that we don't have any say in what they decide to do with it, but they also have no say in how we make their story our own. If the ending is left open, it's left open for a reason. You get to interpret what happens next based on your reading of the story.

So please go create fan content where Izuku keeps his powers and hero status and where he keeps his rivalry alive, or write a fanfic about his life as a teacher. Go explore how the thing with Uraraka develops (I trust that many of you would do a better job than Horikoshi), or ignore that part completely. Write about Uraraka's blood bond with Toga, maybe their relationship is still worth exploring post-mortem. Hell, make it a polyship between the girls and Deku. And there are so many things about Deku and Bakugou's relationship as adults that I'd read about and see fanart of, whether or not you take my interpretation of them into account.

[pastorfutureletthembe]

continuation of this post but I decided to make it in two because both things aren't fully related.

This stupid idea, simple in shape but also pretty clever of LC if they actually intended to make it this way, only grew more plausible when I woke up this morning to discover the poster for Yingdu4. The numbers on this clock aren't that deep.

There was no broken clock poster for Y1, but it's only fair since this episode wasn't really part of Yingdu.

#2

The second episode is called PRELUDE though. So this is where the story actually starts. The Prelude itself happens before the opening to put emphasis on the fact this episode is to introduce the main piece.

This Prelude is about Liu Xiao, and his action is what creates the second major change in Lu Guang's POV: Cheng Xiaoshi doesn't ask about his powers to know more about the photo he found.

The poster comes with this description:

Initially, when I read "the gun was fired", I thought of Cheng Xiaoshi being shot (because of the 3rd Anniversary teaser + the first few minutes of Y1).

After seeing the Y2, we know it's about russian roulette. The outcome was decided, though, the frame chosen for this poster despicts a moment which never happened: Liu Xiao doesn't get shot as Zhang expects him to be, as he seems to see.

Did it lie to us or was this an actual change? Why, in previous timelines, no one heard of this student scam? Did Liu Xiao actually died because of a stupid bet in the original timeline?

The bolder numbers are I II III X / 1 2 3 10. That's a big skip to go from 3 to 10, isn't ? It is the normal flow of time, and then, it goes up real fast. Again, X could be for Xavier, which is the name given by the opening itself, and this same opening told us in roundabout ways that he is not to be trusted.

When I said the number are bold, I don't actually mean there is a change in typo, but those numbers are the most visible according to the composition: The blood spreads on I and II. I think it is because this scene of in the club with Liu Xiao happens simultaneously with Yingdu1.

#3

Episode 3 is the first real clue on what this series of posters is trying to say. The frame used for Xia Fei is his student ID. We already knew he was a student, and his name.

We all thought, according to his PV, that it wasn't his real goal, that Vein and Liu Xiao were making his dream of modeling come true... but it was revealed to be the opposite. Their initial association is about money.

The PV also lied to us as how Xia Fei came to become a model: Liu Xiao is the one recruiting him. Are these different timelines or just one more proof that we were completely lied to? The confusion is even more obvious when Xia Fei himself describes Vein as a saint??

The associated description is about a corner of his past. The important piece of info here isn't the name which is sort od redacted, but his major. They are hinting on the fact he's really not just a pretty face and he might know about fucking powers. His PV is also the only one with spoken words:

"Do you think that there are superpowers in this world?"

While he seems to be the most normal character out of the three new protagonists, he is the one to address this topic. If the whole visuals were lies, can we believe that his word is truth?

Moving on: He's studying Applied Physics. From what I gathered, time travel could be considered as a theoritical topic in Quantum Mechanics, known as wormholes:

The theoretical study of time travel generally follows the laws of general relativity. Quantum mechanics requires physicists to solve equations describing how probabilities behave along closed timelike curves (CTCs), which are theoretical loops in spacetime that might make it possible to travel through time.

While it might not mean this hottie is going to make Time Travel happen and change Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang on a molecular level, it might simply be one more clue for our usual tresure hunt:

In the 1980s, Igor Novikov proposed the self-consistency principle. According to this principle, any changes made by a time traveler in the past must not create historical paradoxes. If a time traveler attempts to change the past, the laws of physics will ensure that events unfold in a way that avoids paradoxes. This means that while a time traveler can influence past events, those influences must ultimately lead to a consistent historical narrative. (The whole thing is fascinating, if you care)

This echoes to Lu Guang's words in Y1:

"I used to think that even a flap of a butterfly might cause a hurrican strong enough to ruin the world. I was wrong. The power of time is still far beyond our imagination. The future might not change due to a ripple of the past. Not at all… But if this is the truth, then why am I here?"

The numbers now: X and III stand out // 3 1 0. We are already familiar with the number 3 1:

31JULYFRI was on my mind for a while now. Someone found out that the July 31 falls on a friday only in 2020.

But it didn't only appear as a date and that's why it is heavily related to Xia Fei.

This is episode 3 and Xia Fei is introduced in this episode, after all. Y1 hinted on that, in the form of 1 0 3:

#4

Now, it would be natural to expect this poster to show Vein, since he's definitely going to be officially, canonically introduced this week. However, Cheng Xiaoshi is standing on a crime scene here.

The chosen frame is probably from one of PTSD nightmare that Lu Guang had every single episode so far. Once again, the poster gives us fake news, everyone.

The trailer for Y4 is a good clue on the lie. Sidenote: Lu Guang really need therapy.

x

Since the episode hasn't been aired yet, it might be reaching on my part:

What I'm wondering about is, why would Cheng Xiaoshi's face be hidden, just like Liu Xiao in Y2 poster? Y2's lie was his death, allegedly a big change in the timeline.

So, is Cheng Xiaoshi's poster lying on the fact this is reality, aka Lu Guang's Nightmares, or is it because Cheng Xiaoshi's isn't the one dying in this Y4? Or, can we still assume that Vein can control people? What kind of change would be made compared to Vein's PV for example? Is he actually a nice person? Is Vein actually the one being controlled when he kills Cheng Xiaoshi?

I cannot wait to see if this frame and what it hides holds any relevance to the plot. I'm just happy to be here for the ride, I know I'm going to be satisfied with whatever is coming.

Regarding the numbers, XI and XII are invisible here. I checked on the previous ones: even covered, they were still visible but here they are a blur, just like V. VI stands out just as much as III. I think it's really just to underline the fact we're watching Y4.

Because Vein starts with V, I think it is possible that Y5 will be his episode, when his true nature will be revealed.

~

However, there is another possibility for 103/310.

Obviously, this isn't Lu Guang's first rodeo. I do not think this is his first repeat because he really know what is going to happen and when; the exact timeframe. It implies that he alredy went through at least one repeat and took detailled notes. He is very obsessed with the timeframe, always looking at his watch, so my guess is that this is defenitely a dive previous S1&2.

Yingdu as we're watching it now could be the 3rd timeline.

[ilikekidsshows]

Since you mentioned the name several times now I looked up who Nikki Maxwell is. From the basic description of her on her wiki page I can kinda see some similiarities to Marinette and now I wonder if you have some more in-depth comparisons between the two to share that would explain your remark on Marinette beeing a copy of her. I think the description of the character doesn't make her seem particularly unique and a character-type I'd expect to appear often in these kind of youth novels.

---

Sure thing! Here's some fun facts about the Dork Diaries series, one of the most best-selling kids’ books of the 2000s, that have been translated into 50+ languages, including French:

Nikki's iconic look is having her hair in pigtails.

She often babysits a small girl with pigtails.

She is a good artist.

She is, despite her poor self esteem, very talented in many areas.

She is extremely clumsy and prone to getting into embarrassing situations.

She gets overly embarrassed about the most inconsequential things.

She has a tendency for highly exaggerated panic spirals, where she comes up with imaginary scenarios that are full of fantastical events and are often illustrated in an anime/manga style.

She gets mad easily and it can take her a while to get over perceived slights.

She’s a bad liar but people believe her anyway.

She is a huge hypocrite, who often does things she claims to not do. (Unlike Marinette, her internal narration almost always points this out.)

She has a crush on a boy in her class, mostly based on the fact that he is nice, and her rival in school also likes him.

Brandon, said crush, is very popular but still a loner, and socially awkward.

MacKenzie, Nikki's rival, is a rich blonde bully who wears diamonds often (and very familiar-looking sunglasses at one point). Despite her vast resources, she always loses against Nikki in whatever they're competing in.

MacKenzie is a more classic “queen bee”, than Chloé, but does get called such canonically.

MacKenzie eventually transfers schools because she stopped having power and prestige over her classmates.

Nikki's biggest character flaw is a lack of communication, where she puts off telling people things she thinks they won't like hearing. (Unlike Marinette, she actually has to make it up to people when they find out she's been lying to them.)

A typical plotline in Dork Diaries is that, despite being well-liked, having devoted friends and caring parents, Nikki often hides her problems from them and struggles needlessly.

Nikki eventually gains a secondary love interest, André, who looks eerily similar to Luka in illustrations, in addition to having Astruc's favorite French guys' name.

Nikki's classmates include characters named Max, Chloe and Zoe, with Chloe and Zoe being closely associated with each other. (You know what I always say: two is a coincidence, three is a pattern, and we're now counting four same names.)

Many of these things are, to be fair, very basic school drama protagonist cliches. However, when it's this much similarity between two supposedly unrelated characters, especially with some of the highly specific similarities here, like the animesque imagine spots, it's a pattern and not a coincidence. Is the pattern that there's some template both Nikki and Marinette are based on (like how Vegeta and Hiei’s similarities are because they’re both based off the same older character), or did Astruc copy his protagonist from a mega hit of children’s, especially girls’, literature to try to copy that success? Who knows. It's not like we can expect Astruc to be honest about whether or not he copied Marinette's personality from literature.

I know Astruc hasn't actually read the stuff he claims to have read, so that's a point in favor of Astruc being a too lazy reader to copy someone else's work. However, he must have grown familiar with all these tropes somehow. You can’t hit this many hallmarks of a genre without being somewhat familiar with it, and this genre is the most prolific in literature, and there is research data showing that children often prefer either books or television, so he could reasonably expect the audience not to realize how copy-pasted Marinette is.

Miraculous and Dork Diaries share DNA. How directly they’re related I can’t tell, because I’m not that knowledgeable about the school drama genre.

[seventeenlovesthree]

So I've been discussing the idea of "having a hard time" diving back into old shows - particularly those I was obsessive about in the past.

One of those shows - was Bakuten Shoot Beyblade. I believe I've mentioned it a few times before, but from approximately 2003 to 2009, this was my absolute JAM. After Digimon Tamers, it was the very first anime I was "active" about in German forums, I wrote RPGs, I wrote fanfiction, I drew fanart... You name it. And while I thought I had the main cast down to a T, I am pretty sure that, after being out of the series for so long, I would analyze them a little bit differently today. Heck, I think even my preferred shipping choices have changed somewhat from how they were back then... (To be fair, I have always liked every single combination between the main four, but I would definitely say that some of those are more dear to me than others.)

I think I'd really like to write some character analysis for them at some point. I always enjoyed taking apart their respective tropes and see how their traumas unfolded. And, looking at how even modern depictions of them go, I seem to not have been that far off after all!

To keep it as shortly as possible:

Takao may, at first glance, strike you as your typical shounen protagonist who loves to eat a lot and believes in the power of friendship to succeed - and while these aspects about him are certainly true, it's interesting to watch how it all unfolds between the first and third season. There is a fine line between his genuinely good heart, a passion for what he loves and an ego he has to overcome sometimes. I would even argue that he is one of the most misunderstood characters out there; because due to his family background, he does have severe abandonment issues, fearing to be left behind and thus he doesn't react well to situations like that - either he turns into a wounded puppy or covers it up with a mask of cockiness. He can be brash and hotheaded - but he genuinely loves his friends and believes in the good in people (and thus he really gives me magical girl vibes). He knows how to pull others with him, has an incredibly charming and attractive energy and other people feel naturally drawn to him... It's beautiful.

The stereotype Max has always been dealing with was that of the "sugar high ray of sunshine" - and I am delighted to see how wide-spread the idea has become that, while he absolutely IS a positive, open and physical person, he is also masking a lot of his own insecurities and abandonment issues with cocky phrases and a never-ending smile. Because he feels like he has to - to keep the band together, to not lose the sense of togetherness and to not be abandoned and replaced again. Just like with Takao, family-related trauma is at play here. His defensively smart Blading style is oftentimes ridiculed and overlooked, thus kinda playing into him trying to overcome his own inferiority complexes. Both him and Takao adore their newly found family to the core and it's no surprise that they easily click with one another - and that Max seems to have an easy time getting through to almost everyone in the team as well.

Rei - oh my Lord, I will try to keep this one short as well, because he was definitely my fave back in the day. And what's not to love about human-cat-hybrid (good old Neko-Jin days, how I miss thee) with a yin/yang theme going on who has a hard time choosing between his mind and his heart, traditions and freedom, and continuously gets himself into trouble because of that? One may also argue that he's getting the shortest end of the stick because of his inner and outer conflicts A LOT... And despite that, he is just as prone to cockiness, probably also trying to mask his own attachment issues by doing that. The burden of expectations that are constantly thrown at him drives him to the need to find his own path - so he tends to run away and changes direction a lot. Like a true cat does... Man, I love that absolute disaster child, always torn between his values and needs, who, even though loyalty absolutely does play a role for his character, has an even harder time conveying how much his found family means to him. In that regard, he is only topped by one particular character (no pun intended...).

Kai, oh Kai. Edgelord of the century, or, like we used to call him, mister ice cube. Essays upon essays have been written about his character - the cold exterior that was formed by years and years of child abuse (at least in the anime, the manga is an entirely different beast to cover, but even there, the subject of abandonment issues is present again). A cold and cruel mask, a brilliant Blader with an aura of, dare I say it, sadistic fun when it comes to destroying his opponents... And yet, there is that other side of him. The side that is incredibly protective and, in his very own way, supportive. Giving advice through harsh words, claiming that he only has his own interests in mind... But is that really the case? Isn't he, deep down inside, just as smitten by these dorks he is "stuck with"? Obsessed with beating those he claims to be his rivals until his very last breath... A twisted sense of love he probably hasn't fully understood himself yet... Or has he?

Long story short - they are all cocky teenage boys with a passion for spinning tops that play off of each other incredibly well and actually love each other a lot and are probably all bisexual disasters to different degrees, but I will get deeper into sexuality headcanons later.

[thebroccolination]

CHARACTER ARCS IN THAI BL (featuring examples from SOTUS, Be My Favorite, and The Ex-Morning)

So, Krist's done two BL series so far with another one on the horizon, and it looks like The Ex-Morning is going to have the same thing that made SOTUS and Be My Favorite so strong: The Character Arc.

One of my biggest complaints about Thai QL series is that most of their protagonists don't want anything. They just kind of walk on camera, act cute, and fall in love. Some sad stuff happens to them, and then the good stuff happens to them again, and then the story ends.

We all know these series are made as a vehicle for the actors. They include just enough fluff or spice (or spicy fluff) to trend, then companies lean on the ensuing hype to sell sponsored products, concert tickets, merch, ten-minute fan calls, fan signings, fan meetings, and top-spender events.

But most series lose me when their protagonists don't even want something that drives the story. And then there's no obstacle to that want.

Want: Arthit wants to hide behind a persona. Obstacle: Kongphob wants Arthit to allow him behind the persona.

I think SOTUS is such a successful slow-burn because it's a well-crafted story of push and pull between two well-developed characters in direct conflict with each other (in personality, philosophy, life experience, class, etc.).

And that conflict builds with each of the three installments:

The conclusion in SOTUS happens once Arthit is fully himself around Kongphob: shyly smiling and laughing while he does a dramatic reading of Kongphob's written account of his hazing experience.

The conclusion in SOTUS S happens once Arthit allows himself to be seen as Kongphob's boyfriend by the outside world (represented by his coworkers).

And the conclusion in their Our Skyy episode—as well as their story overall—happens when Arthit allows the world to see him as Kongphob's fiancé (represented by a ton of passersby in an airport).

By contrast, a lot of other series feel to me as if they haven't been edited or explored beyond a first or maybe second draft. It's difficult for me to get emotionally invested in a story when the characters are just pretty people who say things to each other. And I mean, in all fairness, considering the breakneck speed these are made and released at, writers probably don't have enough time to make anything more profound than that.

That's why I admire Be My Favorite director Waasuthep for requesting more time to work on his script. He was so passionate about that project, and he says to this day that it's his favorite of his works. He basically took apart the original novella's plot, carved it down to a handful of elements, and built it anew from scratch. Last year, he said on a podcast that fans were complaining because they wanted to see the series as soon as possible, but when presented with the choice of "make a worse series faster to appease fans" or "take as much time as possible to craft the story as it deserves to be told," he bravely, boldly, and correctly chose the latter.

As a result, Kawi has arguably the most dramatic and well-executed character arc of all the Thai series I've seen. In episode one, he's self-isolated, timid, avoidant, and selfish. In the last episode, he's a confident, openly queer, and affectionate member of a found family he built alongside the person he loves.

And even better than just having a want, Kawi has a conflicting need.

He wants to be with someone (Pear, then Pisaeng). But what he needs is to be vulnerable enough to let other people love him. Pisaeng tells Kawi in episode two that he's being bigoted against other people for assuming they won't like him and automatically shutting them all out. Then Pisaeng reinforces that point later by telling Kawi that people would like him…if he actually showed them who he is.

And since Kawi's want is at odds with his need (he wants to skip the vulnerability part, which leads to his ruinous potential future with Pear), he's not just externally challenged by his father's illness, his lack of social skills, Not's general unpleasantness, and the inherent dangers associated with changing time, he's also challenged by himself every step of the way.

Seeing Kawi go from self-isolation, in which he assumes the worst of everyone he meets, to warmly hosting a cheerful Christmas party with the beloved people he chose is immensely satisfying as a viewer.

And now in the upcoming Ex-Morning we have an entire series seemingly focused on Pathapi's character arc of challenging the person he's become in order to rekindle his broken relationship with Tamtawan. I've been craving a good exes-to-lovers plot, and I love that it's KristSingto who'll deliver that to me.

Ultimately, it delights me that in all three of Krist's BL series so far, his anxious, reactive characters are forced to self-examine and become calmer, gentler, and happier. SOTUS and Be My Favorite are just as much about self-love as romantic love: Arthit is happiest when he's self-confident, Kawi is happiest when he's vulnerable, and we'll see what Pathapi's whole deal is soon.

Ex-Morning director Lit (who also directed the first SOTUS installment) said in a recent podcast that in the early days, Thai BL directors used to only compete with each other, but they're well aware that their work is on a global stage now. Considering the amount of work that's gone into the script for The Ex-Morning, I'm tremendously excited for the story he helps to create. \:D/

Strong, nuanced characters are what I need from a series, and for them to be at their strongest and most nuanced, they really need that character arc to land.

[ankh-morporkianpostalworker]

Anatomy of a Hero - Samuel Vimes

He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew... Then it was too high. History finds a way? Well, it would have to come up with something good, because it was up against Sam Vimes now.

Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

Fantasy has created some truly remarkable characters, and it's fair to say that Samuel Vimes of the Discworld series is among them - and he's a personal favorite.

This is the first in a (sporadic) series of posts analyzing my favorite fantasy protagonists and what I think makes them work as characters and how they fit into their stories.

Samuel Vimes is the protagonist of eight of Terry Pratchett's seminal Discworld novels - specifically, Guards! Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Jingo, Fifth Elephant, Night Watch, Thud!, and Snuff. These novels make up what is colloquially referred to as the City Watch series, and they answer the question "what if the city guard in a fantasy series got stuff done?"

Vimes is the head of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch and starts off as a parody of the drunken watch captain, literally waking up in a gutter at the start of Guards! Guards!. While it's obvious from the start that he has a sense of justice and a desire to see justice served, years of being beaten down by a city that doesn't need him anymore has left him at his lowest point. In fact, Guards! Guards! is about him getting her proverbial groove back and solving his first real mystery in ages.

We then see Vimes grow into a respected member of the community, transforming the City Watch from a joke (at the start of the series, it's four people) into a pillar of the City, an institution in its own right.

Vimes himself struggles with addiction throughout the series with the help of his wife, Sybil, and members of the Watch (especially his right-hand man, Carrot), going from alcohol to cigars to bacon sandwiches by the end of the series.

We also see how Vimes fits into the central theme of the City Watch - social inequality and the importance of overcoming it. Sam starts the series with a... not-great view of the non-human residents of the city of Ankh-Morpork (although this view is better described as general misanthropy than racism, with him distrusting anyone who isn't his wife or a member of the Watch). This view is changed as the series progresses - between the first two novels, a coalition of minority groups successfully sues the city of Ankh-Morpork for employment discrimination in government positions and Vimes is forced to allow non-human people into the Watch. He comes to recognize that these people are, well, people with value not only as people but as law enforcement officials. Twice, Vimes uses his social power to advocate for downtrodden species to be treated as people, with full rights and protections under the law - for golems in Feet of Clay and goblins in Snuff, and the City Watch becomes the most diverse organization in the entirety of Discworld.

The last thing I'll talk about is Vimes' aforementioned desire for justice. Night Watch gives us a view into the life of an early Sam Vimes (Vimes is sent back in time to just before the Glorious Revolution, a now-forgotten struggle against a despot) - indeed, in his youth Sam was a revolutionary, inspired by Sgt. John Keel (whom Vimes takes the place of after finding Keel dead). During this Revolution, young Sam Vimes witnessed a number of things that would impact him for the rest of his life, including the torture chambers of The Unspeakables, a secret police force who committed horrible crimes in the name of the public good and who act as the antagonists of the novel. The quote that started this essay comes from near the climax of the novel, and I think it really encapsulates that desire for justice and why Sam Vimes works as a protagonist - one of the best in fantasy.

[kyouka-supremacy]

hello!

I saw your recent post and you hinted that Atsushi is actually kinda twisted and that yoh don't agree with his morals?

If its alr with you, do you mind elaborating? ❤️

Alright, to be fair, I *am* self aware enough to realize a lot of what I say about Atsushi is probably fairly detached from canon. When push comes to shove, he's just a guy trying to get through. A polite dude. I like to stretch on how a lot of his well-mannered behaviour and his desperate attempt to prove himself good are moved by deeply selfish reasons of validating his own right to live, but that said, that doesn't make him inherently evil, either.

Atsushi's double morality is something that comes up a lot, so please check out these posts!! (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8). But overall... Is a good action that is done for deeply selfish reasons, still good? I'm not sure. But when I watched the anime for the first time, and in episode 8 it turned out that Atsushi was not helping the train passengers out of spontaneous inclination to help people in need, but rather just due to a self-interested aim to validate his own right to live... Idk, it didn't positively impress me? I was even less positively impacted by the later line “people can't live unless someone tells them ‘it's okay to go on’! ” The thing is, both scenes feel like more of the author's underlying worldviews that end up being conveyed through the series' protagonist, and that's a consideration to be made by its own– it's not an issue I have with Atsushi specifically, as much as me fundamentally disagreeing with most of bsd's perspectives on the world, as I've already said before.

But that doesn't change the fact that Atsushi is fundamentally selfish¹, does it? The difference is - I think - that for the author, more or less all people are, while to me no one is born selfish. But that still makes Atsushi not really morally virtuous, and I think that's narratively interesting to explore by its own!!! What if there was a character who only did good because (he thinks) that's the only way he has the right to live? What if there was someone who believed the right to live had to be owned in the first place? After having overcome the admittedly jarring sentiment I felt when first engaged with the character, I must admit those are some compelling concepts to explore, even despite disagreeing with the underlying morals.

At the end of the day, it's just a complex nature of the character? I like to emphasize on Atsushi's uncommendable selfishness especially as opposite to Akutagawa's hidden selflessness; but all said, a man who tries to do good despite it not being his first nature is a better man than any of us, isn't he?

¹ And Atsushi is profoundly selfish. I think that Beast in particular proves that he's ready to commit evil just as much as in canon he is to do good, if it's to pursue the goal of his own survival. The first thing we see him do, at the very start of the series, is, symbolically, contemplating robbing other people for his own survival (though in real life I would never judge someone's morality in life and death situations... But maybe since this is fiction, that can still hold narrative value). He will stop acting good as long as it's no longer required of him (each of his interactions with Akutagawa). Maybe it's a little pessimist way to interpret the manga, but perhaps still a consistent one?

[horizon-verizon]

Much has been talked about the “portrayal” of Sabitha Vypren Frey (and rightfully so, what the show did to her was horrible) but I’m also extremely miffed about the portrayal of Sabitha’s husband, Forrest Frey. In Fire and Blood, Forrest is meant to be a subversion of the Freys that we see in the main series, and he is meant to represent everything Walder and his descendants are not: young, handsome, gallant, loyal, chivalrous (drank that respect woman juice) vs treacherous, ugly, old, a fair-weather friend. Yet here in hotd, they decided to make the Freys scheming, demanding Harrenhal (despite it being on the other side of the riverlands from the twins) just so that show locals will froth at the mouth when they see a Frey being unpleasant.

But I really shouldn’t be surprised. The reason that all of Rhaenyra’s allies are being drastically changed is a result of the show completely dropping the ball when it came to Rhaenyra’s search for suitors back in season 1. In the show, Rhaenyra was rude and dismissive towards her suitors (even choosing to encourage bullying behavior and incite a fight between the Blackwoods and Brackens for shits and giggles, probably the most insulting scene to me personally), and didn’t try to build alliances and friendships with the lords that where courting her, and didn’t even visit them in their castles like in the book. There’s a reason why in the book, most of the realm sided with Rhaenyra without any ulterior motives or without demanding anything in return… because she was the realm’s delight. Now because the show kInD oF fOrGoT to give reasons why anybody would want to support her, they decided to make stuff up and so we get shit like the Freys demanding Harrenhal, the allowance of Blackwood war crimes, Starks always honor an oath (show locals: omg guyz that’s just like the Starks in the other show!) and not any other, more important reasons, the Arryns only agreeing because of dragons (and not any other, more important reasons) and others. It can’t just be because Rhaenyra made a good impression on the Freys, and that her cause was filled with people who were noble and cool and charismatic, because the show failed to give reasons why anyone cool would support her.

I talk abt the marriage tour HERE, where I say that it wasn't really the sort of marriage tour that you see in the show where the men line up to present their suits of marriage so directly...rather it was a silent hope underneath the purpose of Rhaenyra being more acquainted with some subjects for support similar to how Aegon I, Aenys I, Rhaena & Aegon (his kids), and Jaehaerys I/Alysanne all made progresses to make themselves "available".

In their minds, I think that they are creating obstacles & fallbacks she will eventually go over so she doesn't present as having things go too easy for her and risk people lose interest and or even accuse her of being some sort of Mary Sue, even as some also say she is terribly incompetent. That's what I'm getting, that this female protagonist must have more stacks against her for the payoff that will later swing again back away from her.

[wordsandrobots]

Say what you will about Yoshiyuki Tomino, he hasn't yet inflicted a beauty pageant on me in the middle of a lethal game of cat-and-mouse with an alien armada. Good grief.

As I mentioned previously, watching Super Dimension Fortress Macross, I struggled to maintain a clean distinction between 'this sucks' and 'I hate it'. Certainly, I don't think it's fair to lay into the highly variable animation quality (a quick glance at Wikipedia confirms the production was somewhat troubled) or the particular type of song chosen to centre the show around (this is a matter of taste and while I could get very snobbish about hinging everything on a pop song with the refrain 'zoom zoom zoom zoom', that definitionally goes against treating something on its own terms). I won't even attempt to lay out why I found the love triangle centred on protagonist Hikaru Ichijyo so incredibly tedious, because there's a point at which one just has to accept one is not suited to a particular set of conventions and tropes.

Conversely, when I say the action is overall rather dull, I mean that as a substantive complaint and a direct comparison to the original run of Gundam shows, of which several key creative figures here were fans. I'm not sure if it's simply there being less visual variety, since the bulk of the focus is on the same two or three mecha designs, or just that there's a trick to making jet fighter combat sing they haven't quite cracked yet. I've seen later pieces of Macross animation that hold up better in terms of storyboarding, so it's not inherent to the idea, merely this initial execution. Where this series does manage interesting visuals, it's in the juxtaposition of giants with human-sized environments or vise versa, and the persistence of changes in the world. About a third of the way through, it's established the alien Zentradi can't keep their spaceships in good repair, so when our heroes smash up an enemy command centre on their way out of being taken prisoner, it stays damaged for the next third of the show. I found that a lovely touch.

There end the nice things I have to say. Beyond this, I have three serious critiques I think are worth making about SDF Macross. Let's take a cut for spoilers and for me getting frankly quite ratty about a major anime franchise.

First point: fairly early on I found myself thinking, "so this is what straight mecha anime looks like." By that, I don't mean it is sexist, although to be clear, this is one of the most irredeemably sexist things I have watched in a while. Every female character is defined by how acceptably 'feminine' they are and their actions revolve solely around the male cast. The few instances where it looks like we might break from this pattern are swiftly walked back (I'm particularly smarting about Lap Lamiz, introduced as a high-ranking and formidable commander, ending up playing second fiddle to Kravshera, who while one of the most consistently entertaining antagonists is still little more than a belligerent, thuggish drunk).

Nor do I mean SDF Macross is meaningfully homophobic. We have one cross-dressing joke of the 'aliens misunderstand human gender roles' variety and one instance of protagonist Hikaru being called a pervert for mistakenly stumbling into a lingerie display in public. Compared to, say, the comedy eked out of disgust-at-queerness in Gurren Lagen, it comes across as quaintly oblivious.

No, what I'm getting at is that I have never before encountered a plot you could shatter so thoroughly with the very concept of same-sex attraction. The Zentradi, you see, are a warlike race of bio-engineered giants who possess 'no culture'. This means their lives are entirely devoted to combat, with art, creativity and love all unknown to them, to the point Zentradi men and women live completely separately from one another (in the movie adaptation, this is changed to a full-on war of between the two genders). Regardless of this, they respond on a primeval level when exposed to songs, music, and most of all, the sight of men and women kissing. Somehow, despite being hundreds of thousands of years removed from 'culture' – treated as a general encapsulation of anything outside warfare – they still get the hots for blue-haired pretty boys and sixteen-year-old pop-idols. That is to say, they're fully capable of attraction and all it entails, emotionally and socially speaking; it's just that the segregation of the sexes meant they were oblivious to this fact.

What a damn shame there were no gay Zentradi or this whole thing could have been sorted out eons ago.

You might think this is making a lot of a ridiculous plot conceit in a show that not only has giant alien but presupposes they can size-shift via techno-biological means and are otherwise functionally identical to humans. This isn't any less daft. But it is a reminder of how people like me aren't considered part of 'culture' despite having existed for as long as there have been people, and that's hard to overlook.

Second point: the inherent meaninglessness to how the conflict is portrayed.

SDF Macross opens with a brutal attack on the island city built up as part of an effort to restore the titular warship after it crashed on Earth. This forms the first in a series of exceptionally destructive incidents, including the island itself getting teleported to Pluto, a nuclear-level detonation that demolishes 50 square miles of inhabited landscape, and Zentradi bombardment leaving the Earth's surface a desolate desert. Over the course of this carnage, a grand total of three voiced characters are killed, the death of only one of whom is given any emotional weight, since Minmay's parents are presented as unlikeable and unreasonable. Theoretically, we are talking about an inconceivable level of loss, so some numbness is expected. But it's striking how utterly insignificant it all is in relation to the main cast.

Nobody spends much time reflecting on the destruction. The city destroyed at the start is rebuilt inside the Macross (several times). The Macross' crew lead a reconstruction effort to restore the damaged Earth that swiftly restores a 'normal' suburban environment with only token gestures towards the hardship resulting from the utter ecological collapse of the entire planet. True, there is mention that Earth's technology advanced rapidly as a result of encountering alien machinery. Yet all the same: nobody is markedly changed as a result of living through any of this.

To contrast with Gundam again, there are a lot of traumatic events in those shows that do not quite have the enduring impact they perhaps should. Nevertheless, such things usually mark turning points, the loss of people the main characters care for or the sight of the harm caused by war changing and reinforcing their arcs. And Macross is certainly trying to present its equivalent moments as traumatic, lushly rendering the devastation and humanising it by, for instance, showing a soldier throwing his body over a child in the seconds before both are atomised. It arguably does a better job of depicting this sort of thing, while astronomically upping the scale.

I couldn't, however, tell you why they bothered when the actual core of the show – the aforementioned tedious love triangle – remains entirely unaltered as a result. Ichijyo, Minmay and Hayase bumble through their failure to communicate without the slightest reference to the scale of the loss they have endured. Oh, it structures the plot in a nominal sense, A to B to C. But for all the difference it makes, nobody might have died, certainly not the parents of two of the three in the same apocalypse. You might at least think that would induce some significant progression in the relationship(s) or their maturity, but nope! Two years into rebuilding human civilisation and the misunderstandings continue as usual.

(The movie makes an attempt to actually connect the dots, the exploration of the dead Earth becoming the point Ichijyo and Hayase form a romance. In doing so, though, they cut out the meat of the two's interactions from the original, raising more questions about what the hell she sees in him. I therefore can't give it too much credit. Although it does manage to make the death of Roy Föcker [Ichijyo's mentor figure] even less impactful than it is in the series, which is at least funny. Oh, I should be clear, I don't count Roy in the above discussion because his death is in run-of-the-mill armed conflict not, you know, the end of the flipping world.)

This wouldn't irk me if not for the conscious centring of spectacular grand-scale violence every few episodes, where you're abruptly reminded you're technically watching a war story. If they'd spent less effort on the harrowing scenes, the whole might work more seamlessly, but clearly they wanted to show exactly how horrible the war was, for the maybe ten seconds at a time in which it got to be the emotional focus. The tonal shift from there to whatever way Ichijyo is failing to decide which of these two women he actually gives a shit about this week is basically the Jeremy Clarkson "Oh no. Anyway" gif, repeatedly, for thirteen hours.

Anyway, needless to say this whole debacle is an exercise in imperialist storytelling.

Right. OK, this is point three and it's me getting pissed-off enough to indulge in the bleakest reading possible. I feel bad about it, because this is the big dumb 'pop music saves the word' mecha franchise, who could be mean over that, etc, etc. But look: we are talking about a series where the antagonists are a people 'without culture' who are pole-axed and converted by exposure to the delights of a heterosexual, consumerist, celebrity-centric society, who then prove troublesome to actually integrate into the greater whole. It is very notable that while we get a brief demonstration of human resistance toward welcoming aliens to the Macross, post time-skip all the trouble is caused by Zentradi who cannot give up their belligerent ways. All of it. Everything would be absolutely fine if they just went along with the majority who are happy working to restore the Earth, but oh no, these few are just too barbaric and angry. They want to return to warring and won't let us take them out non-lethally even when we want to. How sad.

(No one seriously gives a fuck about this. The Macross firing its cannon to obliterate the angry Zentradi is a heroic moment of final victory, capping off the series.)

The Zentradi are desirous of 'human' culture. They covert the pretty pop-princess. They are, after defeat in battle, flattered into instant feminity by the affection of a 'gentleman' (sod me, that's how the Macross wiki describes Max, the man whose reaction on first meeting Milia is to estimate her bust size and remark how she's perfectly his type). They make crude attempts to emulate 'culture' for themselves, that they sometimes turn against humanity, when they aren't perfectly happy to live lives functionally indistinguishable from 'normal' people.

There is a token attempt to copy the Gundam play-book by having dubious military higher-ups who theoretically act to make the situation worse despite our heroes' attempts at peaceful solutions, plus repeated references to the 'Unification Wars' that leave me undecided as to whether the series thinks forcibly annexing the entire world under a single authority is a bad thing or not. We do get the usual 'humans have also made war for as long as we have existed' line to show how we aren't so different.

Even so, it's not significantly less imperialistic to write tales about alien enemies who lack the things that go into a 'proper' society and who will become acceptable citizens if they just embrace those things than it is to simply render them a homogenous mass of acceptable targets in need of extermination. To return to my first point, Macross' idea of culture is one where people like me – and people of non-heterosexual orientations in the original audience – do not belong. The story presupposes that a 20th Century 'developed' lifestyle can (and should) be replicated ad nauseam, regardless of whatever level of upheaval is inflicted upon it. Also (human) military personnel are nearly always in the right and anyone criticising them is being churlish. Seriously, we never get the reason why Minmay's cousin has such contempt for soldiers, beyond his being a jerk, to say nothing of Ichijyo's own initial dislike of the military evaporating like snow on a hotplate.

I do not like Super Dimension Fortress Macross. It is a mediocre piece of animated art, its action empty spectacle and its characters largely shallow. While I am, unlike what you might think, not averse to things being dumb fun, the precise configuration of the setting and what it is intentionally or otherwise implying about 'culture' with respect to other societies means I quite simply can't have fun here. Perhaps you will not have these issues with it, but I still cannot in good conscience recommend this series to anyone else.

You can enjoy the Valkyrie as one of the best mecha designs ever committed to screen perfectly well detached from this drivel. Who knows, maybe that's what most people do?

I wouldn't blame them.

[peaterookie]

Most of us know by this point that the Lupin III manga series doesn't particularly have the best reputation, but why is that?

Is it simply because of the content itself, or is there more behind it?

It is August 10th, the 56th anniversary of the og manga, and I will be exploring the causes of the manga's poor reputation in the Lupin community with as most detail as I can try to be.

Bluntly put, I will not hide the fact that the manga series as a whole contains extremely problematic elements. All three series, OG manga, New Adventures, and Shin Lupin III all contain instance of Lupin and other characters raping and sexually assaulting women.

It certainly gets better as the series goes on. At the last three major arcs of Shin Lupin III, Lupin becomes almost entirely sexless, with some instances of plain pervertedness. However, it is not an issue that cannot be glossed over and it is the by far biggest burden that this series has to carry over its 56 years of existence.

OG manga is the biggest culprit of this, barely two chapter goes by without an instance of Lupin pulling his sexual advances onto random women and succeeding. Those moments of the manga are extremely gross and uncomfortable- and it really makes our protagonist extremely unlikeable, which brings me to my next point:

The fact that the OG manga is the first of the three manga series contribute heavily to its poor reputation.

"Aiee!! No way that the biggest manga preacher in tumblr is slandering the manga! Isn't that out of character!?"

It quite is, luckily I can think. As someone who has spent about 5 months reviewing almost all of the chapters, I can say that I know quite a bit about what it does right and what it does wrong... and it sadly does many things wrong.

Of course, the main thing is the sexual violence, but it is also the series with the least interaction between each member of the Lupin gang, who are characters people already come to really like. Lacking that element takes away what many people regard to be the best part about the series.

The beginning chapters of the og manga are also poorly paced. A bunch of things are going on, and the panelling certainly makes it hard to follow as well.

And to even add to the original issue, the english translation provided by Tokyopop also fucked everything up too!! Many of the extreme dialogues that you come across, including ones that make jokes at Monkey Punch's expense, are done by Tokyopop. Tabbiewolf explains this much better than I can:

"Just remember: a LOT of the…more offensive stuff in the manga is from the TokyoPop translations. I’m not excusing ALL of it, mind you — it was the 1960s and this was an adventure/spy manga marketed at cisdudes, after all — but the script writer for the English version was extremely, uh, artistic, with his localization of the translation."

"it was the early 2000s, manga was trying to appeal specifically to people who didn’t read it: teenaged cisboys who watched South Park, basically ;) So a fair amount of the stuff was very much the new English script, NOT the creator ‘s original work! Some plots got changed entirely just because the Japanese slang from the time didn’t translate."

First impressions matter, and the OG manga makes a very bad impression for people attempting to get into the manga series. Many readers are most likely taken back by how different it is from what they are used to, and they are definitely not going to like the problematic elements.

Those who still try to give it second chances are going to be met with disappointment when they find out these glaring issues are only partially fixed further into the series. Believing that it won't get better, they end up dropping the manga altogether and generalizing the rest of the manga series as depraved nonsense.

And I can't simply blame Monkey Punch for all these issues!! It was the first of what's to come, and he was not aware at the time just how big Lupin III would become in Japan and eventually worldwide. The og manga is very experimental, and you can tell he was only trying to figure out what works. I also cannot blame the people that dislike the manga. People naturally dislike something that is problematic and different.

Heck, most manga fans feel indifferent about the og manga as well, with the majority of them liking Shin Lupin III much better.

I have the statistic right here!!! It's not a lot of people, but there's an obvious majority choice here.

(By the way, if you're enjoying reading this so far, you should totally join my Lupin III server ahem cough cough nudge nudge)

So not even the manga fans love the OG manga. In my opinion, I would definitely not recommend people to read that as their first Lupin manga either. It is the type of media that if you really love the source material in general, then it'd be ok to read.

It is quite a shame to say that the series that does a better job at getting people in the manga, is the third one of the bunch. Most people aren't going to know that however, and they end up reading something that is going to likely give a bad image of the manga.

Ok so I dont have a good segway to the second part of this post so have a panel.

Now I'm gonna talk about how the fandom itself screw up it's reputation!!

(Before you get further I have to say that I have nothing against anime fans, if I do sound like I don't like them it's just sort of poor wording on my end)

Many fans of Lupin III start with the anime, if not probably all of them at this point. This causes a huge skew in public opinion, where those who are pre-exposed to the anime are probably going to view the manga as something lesser than its animated counterpart.

This can be seen particularly in CloudConnection's video of his manga analysis, which is concerningly just a portion of this 18 minute video, but I'll look over that. The portions of the video where he analyzes the manga contain a large amount of negative opinions about it.

A lot of his points are very good, and a lot of them I agree with, like his issues with the rape and sexual assault and how its a good time capsule but definitely not something that people should start off with. But a rest of the points seem a bit unreasonable to make and rather biased, like how the characters feel inconsistent, the bad pacing, and really emphasizing how dark and grim the manga is (it is very goofy and nobody ever talks about that)

And I have to state- It's totally valid for someone to prefer one thing over the other, but my point is that when this opinion is overwhelmingly the majority, it is going to cause the general public's opinion to unfairly be against something, ignoring what it does good and pinning the focus on what it does bad.

That video example was very popular, and I know someone personally that got the wrong memo from it and hated the manga without reading it for a long time, so you can see how it can probably effect the rest of the people that viewed that video.

So what can we learn from this?

We now understand that two of major reasons responsible for the manga's bad reputation is one: the unfortunate circumstance of the OG manga being the first series, and the overwhelming public opinion being unfairly skewed against it.

To wrap this up, I ask you to please give the manga a chance!! Read Shin Lupin first, and be aware of its flaws while also appreciating what it has contributed for the franchise and anime as a whole. I hope you enjoyed this little essay I wrote, and happy birthday Lupin III!

[racefortheironthrone]

Kinda of random but what do you think of Alan's Moore comments about people liking comic book movies could lead into fascism? Seems like bitter old man territory but what do you think?

I think it's fair to say that fascism has been something of an obsession of Alan Moore's and a recurring although not omnipresent theme in many of his works.

While Miracleman is technically an expy of Captain Marvel, I would argue that the series is Moore's most extended commentary on Superman instead and especially the idea of the ubermensch. In Miracleman, our protagonist is initially thought to have been made into a superhero by a benevolent enlightened scientist, but eventually we learn that Miracleman is the product of an Operation Paperclip Nazi science project called the Zarathusa Project designed to create the literal Nietzschean Ubermensch, complete with a fixation on "blond gods" and a eugenicist breeding program. A superhero fight in the midle of London causes mass civilian casualties on the scale of an atomic bomb going off. Ultimately, Miracleman effectively overthrows Thatcher's government and rules as an enlightened despot before eventually leaving Earth for space.

Likewise, I think Watchmen is Moore's most extended commentary on masked vigilantism and thus on Batman. In Watchmen, the phenomenon of vigilantism is repeatedly associated with right-wing politics: Hooded Justice is a German circus strongman who has pro-Nazi politics; Captain Metropolis wanted his superhero teams to target "black unrest," "campus subversion," and "anti-war demos;" and the Comedian is a brutal nihilist who ultimately joins the U.S security state where he cheerfully follows orders to assassinate JFK and Woodward and Bernstein, commit atrocities in Vietnam, kill protesting hippies, etc. Finally, there's Rorschach, Moore's most famous mis-interpreted creation - Rorschach is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who's an anti-communist, anti-liberal, militant and militaristic nationalist, homophobe, misogynist, and avid follower of the John Birch Society-like New Frontiersman.

And then there's V for Vendetta, which I would argue is Moore's attempt to create a masked vigilante superhero with his own anarchist politics. In this story, the vigilante isn't a crimefighter but rather a revolutionary who seeks the overthrow of a fascist state and the creation of an anarchist utopia.

Moreover, his more recent comments about comic book movies being linked to fascism are arguably just part of his much longer-running commentary that superheroes as a concept are at the very least proto-fascist.

Having read a lot of Moore's work and interviews on the subject, I don't find his critique compelling. I think his definition of fascism is far too loose, I think his lens on the superhero genre is overly narrow, and I think his mode of analysis tends to neglect the vital area of historical context.

Definitions

So let's start with Moore's definition of fascism. I think Moore tends to really over-emphasize the whole idea of the Nietzschean ubermensch and the use of force to solve problems, and more recently he's been on this weird kick of saying that nostalgia and a childlike desire for easy solutions leads to fascism. I have several problems with this definition:

the first is that, as I've talked about in the past, fascism is a very complex historical phenomenon that can't be boiled down to a single idea, and in particular the idea of the ubermensch is a pretty small part of the German case (and even then how do you balance it against Nazism's more anti-individualistic aspects, like the mass party and the mass party organization).

the second is that the idea of a larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems is not unique to fascism. After all, during the 30s, you also had the Soviet Union promoting the heroic ideal of Stakhanovitism and the depiction of the heroic male factory worker in socialist realism. More importantly, the idea of a "larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems" is basically the same description for any number of literary figures from pulp cowboys to the Greek heroes of the Iliad and the Oddessy to the epic of Gilgamesh.

the third is that I think Moore's definition overlooks the actual drivers of the rise of contemporary fascism. Anti-semitism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, misogyny - all of these are real social and cultural forces that are actually motivating people to join the ranks of the alt-right, to commit massacres, to riot at the Capitol, and so forth. It is incredibly self-involved to think that superheroes and superhero movies are worth discussing in the same breath. At the end of the day, they're harmless entertainment compared to the real political issues that need to be tackled.

Moore's Model of Superheroes

Here's where I'm going to say something that's going to be a bit controversial - I don't think Alan Moore has read widely enough in the superhero genre to make an accurate assessment of its relationship to fascism. If we look at his comics work, and we look at his writings, and we look at his interviews, Moore's mental model of the superhero really only includes two figures, Superman as the representative of the superpowered ubermensch and Batman as the representative of the masked vigilante crimefighter. Notably, Moore hasn't really touched the last of the Big Three - Wonder Woman, a superhero with a strong legacy of radical left-wing politics. I do think we have to mention, given Moore's somewhat troubled history when it comes to issues of gender, that Moore's model of the superhero doesn't include any female superheroes (or for that matter, any superheroes of color or queer superheroes). (EDIT: I should clarify - Promethea is Moore's version of Wonder Woman, but she doesn't really come up in his discussions of fascism, and her thematic profile has more to do with Moore's interests in magic.)

And other than Captain Britain, Moore never worked with any Marvel character and basically ignores them.

To me, this is like having a career as a painter and never working with colors. Moore's model of the superhero leaves out the Fantastic Four and how their flawed psychologies revolutionized the industry and the whole idea of the superhero-as-explorer, it leaves out Spider-Man and the idea of the superhero-as-everyman whose central struggle is about work-life balance and altruism, and most importantly it leaves out the X-Men and the idea of the mutant metaphor.

If as a critic you're going to make grand pronouncements about something as morally evil as fascism, I think it really is incumbent on you to have read and analyzed widely rather than cherry-picking a couple of case studies. Especially if you have something of a tendency to mis-characterize those case studies by ignoring historical context.

Historical Context

So let's talk about Superman and Batman and their emergence in the 1930s. One vital bit of context is that the U.S experienced a significant crime wave in the 1920s and 1930s as Prohibition encouraged the rise of organized crime and then the Great Depression spurred the rise of kidnapping and bank robbery gangs. Moreover, municipal police forces tended to be wildly corrupt, accepting bribes from organized crime to let them operate with impunity, while not letting up in the slightest in their brutal oppression of workers and minorities.

In this context, I think the idea of vigilantism - while it has an undeniably racist legacy dating back to Reconstruction - is not purely a conservative phenomena. It's also an expression of a desire for help from somebody, anybody when the powers that be are of no help. And at the end of the day, unsanctioned use of force can equally be traced back to left-wing self-defense efforts from the Panthers back to the Communist Party's streetfighting corps to unions packing two-by-fours on the picket line - so I don't think we can simply equate punching a bad guy with racist lynch mobs and call it a day.

So let's talk about Superman and the ubermensch. I think Moore has a bad tendency to focus on his nightmare scenrio of a godlike being tyrannizing and destroying hapless humanity, while minimizing the actual ideas of Siegel and Shuster. He tends to take their use of the Nietzschean as a straighforward invocation instead of the clear subversion it was intended to be - rather than a blond god who imposed tyrannical rule with horrific violence, Siegel and Schuster made their Superman a dark-haired Moses allegory, who rather than solely fighting crime acted to stop wife-beaters, war profiteers, and save the life of death row inmates, and whose secret identity was of a crusading journalist who uncovered corrupt politicians.

To be fair, Alan Moore admits that Superman started out as "very much a New Deal American” - but because this kind of does near-fatal damage to his argument, he quickly minimizes that by saying that Superman got co-opted and thus it doesn't count. This is some No True Scotsman bullshit - Moore knows that his example just imploded so he tries to wriggle out of it by arguing that Superman sold out to the Man. If we go back to the actual historical evidence, we can see that at the outset of the Red Scare, the Superman radio show went on a crusade against the Klan, and throughout the conservative 1950s, Superman was used to propagandize liberal values of religious and racial equality:

So much for selling out.

On the other hand, Batman is a tougher case, given that his whole deal is being a masked vigilante who wages an unending war on crime to avenge his murdered parents. So is Batman an inherently fascist figure, a wealthy sadist who spends his time brutally beating the poor and the mentally ill when he could be using his riches to tackle social issues? I would argue that this version of Batman is actually pretty recent - very much a legacy of the work of Frank Miller and then the post-9/11 writings of Christopher Nolan, Johnathan Nolan, and David Goyer - and that there have been many different Batmen with very different thematic foci.

For example, the early Batman was as much a figure of horror as he was of superheroics - he fought Frankensteins and Draculas, he killed with silver bullets, etc. Then in the 40s and 50s, you got the much more cartoony and light-hearted Batman who pretty much exclusively fought equally oddball supervillains in such a heightened world of riddles and giant pennies and mechanical T-Rexes that I don't think you can particularly describe it as "crime-fighting." Then in the 1960s, you have the titanic influence of the Batman TV show, where Adam West as Batman was officially licensed by the Gotham P.D (so much for vigilantism) and extolled the virtues of constitutional due process and the Equal Pay Act in PSAs and episodes alike. You can call the 1966 Batman a lot of things, but fascist isn't one of them.

Conclusion

I want to emphasize at the end of the day that I'm a huge Alan Moore fan; I've read most of his vast bibliography, I find him a fascinating if very odd thinker and critic, I've even tried to read his mammoth novel Jerusalem (which is not easy reading, let me tell you). At the same time, it's important not to treat creators, even the very titans of the medium, as incapable of error. And in this case, I think Alan Moore is simply wrong about fascism and superheroes and people should really stop asking him about it, because I don't think he has anything new to say about it.

[iwanttobeliv]

Betty, la fea: la historia continúa

Episode 1 – Reunited (but it doesn’t feel so good)

I can’t begin to explain how excited I was for this. That we would be able not only to see our beloved characters again after so very long, and most of all, that we would be able to see Betty and Armando together again.

At first, there was a lot of speculation about the series' plot – and not much information to go on.

And the problem with that is that the longer the wait, the bigger the expectations. And boy, were they big!

Ever since the wave of revivals became a thing, I’ve seen my fair share of them, and I knew that lowering my expectations would probably be for the best. I mean, adjusting it to something better than ‘Ecomoda”, but likely not as great as YSBLF.

Even though there were some very positive aspects such as how much the cast and production team seemed to love this project, or how happy they looked to get back to it, and also how much better JEA looks these days, there were other factors that I couldn’t help but think would likely be an issue.

First of all, the length of it. We all knew we wouldn’t get 335 episodes. That’s not how TV works nowadays, especially streaming services. And then, when I found out there would be only 10, I thought, oh well. At least we get to see them for 10 episodes, that’s something… Better than not all, I guess. 

But then, I didn’t realize just how much this format would affect the story. Which is a lot, something we can feel right out of the gate.

YSBLF was fundamentally what fic readers describe as slow-burn. Which can be great for character development. But that also requires a lot of fillers, subplots, and sharp writing skills so that the audience won’t just get fed up and quit the show before it’s over.

Given how the target audience of the new show was mainly fans from YSBLF, I guess they didn’t have to worry much about that. We already know and love the characters – most of all the protagonists.

But, then again, it has been over 20 years.

So, back to episode 1.

The previously on? Loved it! They did a fairly good job summarizing the main bits, though I’m not sure it would have worked alone hadn’t I watched YSBLF time and time again.

I love that they start with Betty’s voiceover. Having a special insight into what was going through her mind was such a fundamental part of the story in the first place. Through Betty’s diary, we got to know all the vulnerabilities that Betty had learned to keep inside, protected from a world that had been far too cruel to her. While with Nicolas we got to see her using humor to fend for herself, at night, in her strangely decorated room – I think all those dolls were meant to symbolize Betty’s innocence and youth and remind us that she was a young girl, and therefore lacked the experience and malice to understand where she was headed to until it was too late. But it also looked like a grandma’s room, and a very dark one, so, yeah, not great. I get it, it was a low-budget production, but did her room have to look like a place where one would find a captive? My guess is no. – Anyway it was through her precious diary that we got to hear Betty sharing her thoughts and dreams, memories and fears. So, when I heard Betty speaking, it just felt familiar and wistful. And I guess I was too distracted by that to be bothered by the wordplay they did there, trying to create a suspense that would only have worked if we hadn’t watched the promo 150 times, give or take. I never thought I would say I missed Hugo, even in YSBLF I didn’t care much for his character but he had me at the ‘Dead Poet Society’ reference.

I’m still trying to understand Betty’s wardrobe choices there, I mean, even though her ‘current’ style seems like a far cry from wearing Don Hermes’s old sweaters, this one feels like it's too much and nothing like the woman we supposedly knew.

But I digress. 

Betty shows up and we get Armando looking at her with puppy eyes and standing up for ‘su Betty’ right away, and well, I am only human and completely understand why Betty’s knees would go weak and nearly throw her into Roberto’s grave.

So yeah, Roberto is dead, something we were aware of from the promo, but what does it mean to Ecomoda? And why was Betty gone until this moment?

That’s where things start to get messy.

I can’t say I was surprised that Armando and Betty aren’t together. While I hoped they still loved each other after all this time (and I still do), a relationship lasting this long must have a solid foundation. Which they didn’t really have and we never got to see... I think they truly loved (and love) each other, but trust isn’t something easy to gain and it’s even harder to regain after it's lost. The lies, the miscommunication, the tempers, all of it would inevitably create conflict. And there’s no good story without that.

(This reminds me I really want to take a closer look at Armando and Betty as individuals, but I think I might save this for another time)

That being said, we get a bunch of info dumped on us in a very short time, and I had to watch it more than once to make sense of the whole thing. Let’s make a list:

Roberto is dead. (And so is Margarita)

Betty was gone and not by her choice, according to her. But then Armando says they are not together and that *is* her choice, so what then?

I really really like the way Armando looks at Betty when she asks him how he is. It screams familiarity with a hint of fondness (?) Oh these two…

Don Hermes shows up and I’m intrigued. He uses his famous catchphrase while dragging Betty away from Armando and when he stands next to his daughter, it makes me think he too is aware of Betty’s situation with her 'ex', and I don’t know, but whatever happened, it made him forego the sanctity of matrimony, which seems like a big thing to such a traditional man like him.

Hugo hasn’t changed a bit.

And Betty is still the clumsy, self-conscious Betty under all that fur.

There is a camera and suspense. Not my cup of tea, but ok.

Marcela seems a bit more civil around Betty, which is to be expected after so long, but still her (by now more than comprehensible) resentment seems to be alive and well.

Don Hermes mentions leaving fresh flowers to Dona Julia, but it’s such a short comment that it barely registers.

Patricia is apparently married to a mummy called Francisco Santamaria (Wasn’t there a lawyer with that name in YSBLF?) which is not particularly surprising given her life aspirations.

I guess when we have only ten episodes there’s no escape but to break the rules of “show and not tell”.

Next: A controversial topic, Mila Mendoza.

[sketch-guardian]

TW FOR MOVIE SPOILERS AND MASSIVE WORD VOMIT

On the horror movie thing I’d feel like hush,your next,purge and the strangers would most likely disturb them in a sense cause all of those movies show what people do with out reason and what they’re willing to do out of greed

In hush the protagonist says to the killer (around the middle or beginning) she’ll keep her mouth shut and not telling anyone cause she doesn’t know the killers face the killer in return just takes off his mask so he now has a reason to kill her

Your next would probably be a movie Uriel would like cause the protagonist makes good decisions however near the end of the middle (it’s been a while since I watch it forgive me if the timing is wrong) we find out it’s all a planned thing between the protagonists boyfriend(?) and his younger brother to get more money out of the life insurance and any money the parents had from their company

Purge is well purge people will do whatever the fuck they want the moment they realize there won’t be consequences they’ll kill,torture kidnap etc each movie of the purge series constantly shows how depraved people can and will become if they had no punishment for their crimes

The strangers would definitely be one of my fav movies cause you never know who is at the door in both movies the killers do it without reason just for fun or in how one of the characters said “because you were home”/“because you answered the door” (this happened in the first or second movie around the ending of the movie I think) cause at the end of the day they kill for fun

Each if these killers have some sort of sadistic joy out of killing

Or hellfest for example is another movie of a smart protagonist (kinda) but we’re not gonna focus on the protagonist much on this one at the end of the movie you see the killer coming home to his daughter which makes it a lot more realistic since you don’t know who it could be it could be since most killers are mundane when they aren’t killing they could be a dad,a neighbor,a coworker just anybody anything besides a killer you wouldn’t know what they do in their free time. And that’s what makes it scary

Teach me your secret for writing so much in such a short time, please😂I need it for my headcanons🙈especially because I fear these days it could take me some days or weeks to reply to asks😥since I have to study, having my degree thesis on September 10th, where I will have to give a speech, I'm terrified😭

Anyway, don't worry, I don't mind spoilers or word vomit, but thanks for mentioning those things for others too, just to be safe☺

Regardless, I think you're right🤔I believe "Hush" would mostly upset Nathaniel (due to the stalking theme) and Domnra (due to the cruelty reminding Domnra of who cursed him with Mobim in the past)

Uriel would like "Your Next" because the protagonist would actually fight back and kick ass and Zuri would like it for the plot and betrayal that lies beneath

"Purge" would mainly disturb Uriel (due to the absent justice) and Remiel (who would feel bad for all those poor souls)

"Strangers" would especially upset Demya (due to the thought of a possible invasion of her nest)

While "Hellfest" would slightly disturb Azul, not so much for the plot, but for the end, because he would try to empathize. If Azul were a parent, he would actually attempt to tone down his demon lifestyle, turning to murder only if necessary, he would also pity the little girl in the movie and what she could become in the future

The only one who wouldn't bat an eye at those movies would be Odon (to be fair, Odon still remains an ancient eldritch horror and it took them a few centuries to learn what empathy or other emotions felt like, they would hardly be shaken up by such themes basically)