#So if you read this post and think wow the line about no evidence of suffering remaining is real good
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
The horror of immortal whumpee with superhealing. The horror of not leaving scars. The horror of it's not visible, it's not lasting, so it didn't happen.
You can hurt them and hurt them and hurt them and hurt them and hurt them again.
And everyone just sees clear skin, sees youthfulness. No evidence of suffering remains.
It doesn't look like anything happened to them, so how could they still suffer from it?
Why should others give them empathy, give them care, when there's nothing to care about. Why should they themselves?
Just look at them. Nothing happened.
#Whump#whump promts#Immortal whumpee#I'm watching through all of the x men movies from start to finish#And while I've seen them all I've never watched them so closely together#And it rly highlights how wolverine is just going THROUGH it#And it made me think about how often the movies use looking different as an important aspect of how mutants are surpressed#And how often they use magneto's tattoo as a visual portrayal of his trauma#And I love both of those things#But that in juxtaposition w what wolverine's body is put through#And the focus is on how his immortality and how he often feels untethered in live bc of that but like#He feels that pain. He feels it every single time. Does anyone care that he knows how all of the things that happen to him feel?#Does he?#Anywayyyyyyyys#Also yes I had to throw in my fave line from frankenstein by mechanisms in there bc that line made me so insane#So if you read this post and think wow the line about no evidence of suffering remaining is real good#Go listen to frankenstein by the mechanisms I beg you
23 notes
¡
View notes
Text
The Caged Bird Still Sings Part 4
Just a heads up tomorrow is the start of my posting hiatus. I will still do WIP Wednesdays and will be posting headcanons and stuff like that during that time. I will begin posting again on Sunday Sept. 1st. I haven't decided which story will get each slot, or if I just post based on vibes. Most likely vibes if I'm honest.
In this we get the first of Eddie's presents to Steve, Eddie refutes the stupid Steve charges, and Steve remembers something important that he forgot.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
~
Steve was living it up in the pool. His parents had an outdoor heated pool, but it was more for leisure than laps because of itâs weird oblong shape. But this? It had an outdoor pool, but the indoor pool was Olympic sized. Like proper with the lane lines painted on the bottom and everything.
So he practiced his backstroke and butterfly. And by the time he got out his muscles were deliciously sore and his skin was wrinkly. He showered and then padded over to the sauna to relax his ache muscles.
As he was the only one there, he set the temperature to slightly hotter than warm but not scorching. He wanted to rest his muscles not sweat out every toxin in his body. Once he was feeling good enough, he got dressed and walked back to his hotel.
He looked at the swimsuit in his hand and realized he wouldnât have do laundry here if he didnât want to. Wow. His mom always made him do his laundry even though they had a maid who would wash his parentsâ.
Steve looked at his watch and decided it was time for some dinner. He threw the swimsuit into the laundry basket and went to go blow dry his hair. He pulled out his but then noticed the one already on the counter. His eyes flicked between the two and there was no doubt that the one the hotel provided was way better than his.
He put his back in his bag and turned on the hotelâs hair dryer. It never overheated or would start to smell half way through the process. He ran a little gel through his hair and spritzed his hair three times with the hair spray.
He admired himself in mirror a moment. He was good looking. He knew that. But he never in his wildest dreams thought he had the looks to pull a rockstar. Like that was crazy levels of confidence. But looking in the mirror just now, maybe he could see what Eddie saw.
Steve walked up the table that had his wallet and picked it up. He pulled out his fake ID, the one that got him this cushy hotel room. He wouldnât be able to use it for god knows how long, but he wanted to keep it. As a memento of sorts. God. He was already feeling melancholic about the whole thing and it had only been five hours.
That was when he spotted it. On the bed was a big white box. He frowned and walked up to it slowly. He wasnât worried about people getting in. This was a hotel. It was probably put there by housekeeping or even the concierge. He knew better than to keep anything in his room that might interest a snoop.
He just wondered who gave it to him. He picked up the card and read it.
-To my little Canary
A parting gift from me.
Promise me youâll wear it and think of me often
-Your Eddie
Steve lifted the lid of the box and inside was the most beautiful silk pajamas he had ever seen. It was a short-sleeved button up that stopped just an inch or so below the waistband of the matching shorts. The shorts themselves werenât very long, not quite booty shorts level, but close. Both in a soft, light yellow color. Perfect for summer time.
He ran over to the phone and quickly dialed Eddieâs cellphone.
âHello?â the warm, dulcet tones answered.
âEddie?â Steve asked, even he knew it was. He was just so excited.
âMy little Canary,â Eddie purred. âI take it you got your present.â
âI did,â Steve said, twirling the cord around his finger. âTheyâre beautiful. I canât wait to wear them tonight.â
âGood,â Eddie said, a smile evident in his tone. âI hope I go the size right. Did you do anything fun today?â
Steve told him all about his day swimming and the sauna. He even told him about the hair dryer because he was just that excited about it all.
âThat sounds great, little Canary,â Eddie said, his fondness oozing through in his tone. âIâm sending someone by with a card that I will load money on so that you can get things like gas for your car and other things for your personal hygiene, as I assume youâll want to buy that stuff yourself.â
âYou didnât have to do that,â Steve found himself saying, almost against his will. âCould have gotten by with the hotel toiletries.â
Eddie chuckled. âProbably, but I wanted to give you the option of a choice.â
Steve blushed deeply, glad that Eddie couldnât see him in that moment.
âLook, little Canary,â Eddie purred, âwe just got to our location and I have to go, but Iâll call you after the show and tell you all about it.â
Steve bit his lip. âYeah, Iâll talk then.â
He hung up after they said their goodbyes with a sigh. He flopped on the bed and looked up at the ceiling.
Fucking hell. What was he even doing with his life?
His stomach growled. Well, for starters, he guessed he was going to dinner.
~
When Steve finished his meal, which was even better than breakfast...He never had a steak melt in his mouth like that before. It was so soft and buttery and the potatoes tasted of rosemary and garlic, the carrots were covered in a glaze that tasted of honey and something darker.
He shook his head.
Anyway.
When he finished his dinner he went back up to the room. He resolved that he would need to do more than just swimming to keep the delicious food off his waistline. He was going to have to check out the gym here.
Steve looked at the time and decided it was too early for bed, but he got into the new pajamas anyway. The shorts were pulled on first and fuck. Steve felt sinful just wearing the damn things. They cupped him in all the right places but when he moved or sat down they didnât ride up or pinch. He seriously thought about not putting on the shirt at all. But the desire to see the full effect won out.
He pulled it on and buttoned it up. And just like the shorts, the top was form fitting but comfortable. The V in the neck from where the highest button went (it didnât button all the way up) just showed a peek of his chest hair.
He admired himself in the mirror for several minutes before he forced himself to go back out to the suite.
Steve grabbed the remote and started flipping the channels. He was used to cable as his mother needed her HSN and his father needed the soccer score. Not because he was interested in the game, but because heâd bet on foreign games.
But either his parents only had basic cable or there were a bunch of new channels added recently. And he was willing bet it was the former.
He found a late night baseball game from a Japanese league and started watching that. He couldnât understand the announcers and he didnât know the playersâ names, but it was still baseball, regardless the language.
Before he knew it the game was over and it was late at night, finally time for bed. He got all snuggled into bed when the phone rang.
ââEllo?â he muttered sleepily.
âOh, darlinâ,â the warm tones caressed his ear, âdid I wake you?â
Steve hummed in the negative. âJust getting ready to sleep. Tell me all about selling out Indy.â
Eddie huffed out a laugh. âIâd ask you how you knew Corroded Coffin sold out tonight, but you spent all of last night surrounded by my fans. Even the stupidest person on the planet would have had to pick something up.â
âMhmm,â Steve murmured. âThatâs me, stupidest person on the planet.â
There was silence on the line for a moment or two. âWho says youâre dumb, baby?â
âMy parents,â he said softly, âmy first girlfriend before I realized I was gay, my ex-boyfriend, you know the one my parents kicked me out for? And um...the kids I babysat for are all like super geniuses, so they get frustrated with me a lot.â
âOh my little Canary,â Eddie cooed. âYouâre not dumb. School smarts isnât everything. Iâm living proof of that.â
âThatâs true,â Steve said, a little less sad. âIâm talking to a bona fide rockstar.â
âHell yeah you are,â Eddie agreed. âBut let me tell you about my night and see if I canât lull you to sleep with the sound of my voice.â
âIâd really like that.â
So thatâs what Eddie did, he talked and talked until he could hear the soft little snuffling of snores from his Canary.
âGood night, sweetheart.â
~
When Steve woke up the next morning, the phone was still dangling off the cradle from where it fallen the night before when he fell asleep listening to Eddie.
Eddie had a great talking voice. Dude should do books on tape or voice acting or something. Maybe heâd tell him the next time he called.
He stretched and yawned. He woke up just as well rested today as he had yesterday. Which meant that as good as the sex was, and it was amazing, it wasnât as big a factor in his nightâs sleep as he thought.
He got up and went to go grab a shower. He hadnât had a chance to use it yet, as he had used the swimming poolâs showers yesterday. He ordered breakfast and then hopped into the shower, telling them to just come in and leave it next the sofa.
He dried off with one of the most luxurious towels.
Steve stopped for a moment. He really needed to stop comparing the hotel to the life he led before being kicked out. It wasnât the same. It wasnât even in the same state let alone ball park. His life here would always be miles away from the life he left behind.
New cage, same as the old cage really except real gold instead of merely gilded. Better food, furniture, amenities. Same limitations. Canât drink, but he could smoke.
So he went out on the balcony to do just that. He brought his food out with him and just smoked, watching the busy crowd below him.
Oh shit!
He scrambled back inside the hotel room and fumbled around for his wallet. He pulled out a little laminated card and dialed the one on the top.
âHenderson residence, Claudia speaking,â the warm motherly voice answered.
âMrs. Henderson,â Steve whined, almost in tears at the sound of her voice.
âSteve?â she asked gently. âOh I was wondering when you were going to call. Dustin has been worried sick. He went to Family Video yesterday to return âGhostbustersâ and the snooty girl at the counter said youâd been fired for sodomy!â
He winced a little at the harsh word she used. âIâIâm gay, Mrs. Henderson,â he whimpered into the phone. This was it, she was going to turn him away too. Forbid Dustin from seeing him, then it would get around to the all the other parents and he wouldnât be able to be around Holly or Will. Andâ
âAh...â she said, just as gentle and warm as before. âCan you help it? Can you choose who you love?â
âNo, maâam,â he whispered, hanging his head between his shoulders.
âThen why would I care?â Claudia huffed in annoyance. âThe first thing a mother should learn is to love your child no matter what, no matter who. Now, if Dusty gives you a hard time, you let me know. You hear?â
Steve felt a swell of pride in his chest, she might have not had been his real mother, but he should have known better than to bet against Claudia Henderson.
âHere, let me go get him,â she said softly. âWould you like me to explain it to him first?â
A lump formed in his throat as he choked down tears. He forgot he wasnât isolated. He wasnât cut off completely from people.
âYeah,â he said, his lip quivering. âIf you would.â
âOf course, sweetie,â Claudia said warmly. âIâll be right back.â
Steve didnât have long to wait. Soon there was the sound of Dustin practically screaming in his ear.
âHey, bud,â he said when he could finally get a word in.
There was a sniffle. âWhy didnât you call me and Ma? We would have taken you in.â
Steveâs heart swelled again, this time in utter love for this butthead. âBecause my dad would have seen to it that she lost her job at the library and with your dad having just passed, I couldnât do that to you, to either of you, okay?â
There was another sniffle. âOkay...â
âHere,â Steve said, âI canât tell you where I am right now, because no doubt my dad is trying to run me out of town, but I can give you a phone number to call. I might not always be there, but you can leave a message and Iâll call you back.â
âI guess thatâs acceptable,â Dustin huffed. âCan I tell everyone youâre okay?â
Everyone meant his kids. Max, Elle, Will, Mike, Lucas, and Erica. And well, Holly, too. But she was too young to really understand what was going on. Technically Erica should be in that same category but she was too smart to be left out. Steve didnât even bother trying most days.
âYeah, bud,â he murmured. âYou can tell people Iâm safe. Just keep the number to yourself for now. I donât want my dad knowing where I am.â
âRoger that!â Dustin said.
They talked for a few moments longer before Claudia took the phone back.
âIâm going to call the PTA calling tree,â she said, âand get the word out that youâll be unavailable to babysit for the foreseeable future.â
Steve hummed. âI think thatâs the part that upsets me the most about all this shit.â
âI know, sweetie,â Claudia assured him. âBut weâll figure it out.â
And he was absolutely certain if anyone could, it was Claudia Henderson.
He let out a sigh of relief for the first time since he was kicked out.
~
Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11
Tag List: CLOSED MAX LIMIT 50 REACHED!!!
1- @rozzieroos @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @zerokrox-blog @beelze-the-bubkiss
2- @gregre369 â@a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @messrs-weasley @cryptid-system
3- @maya-custodios-dionach @goodolefashionedloverboi @val-from-lawrence @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog
4- @justforthedead89 @irregular-child @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @forgottenkanji
5- @anne-bennett-cosplayer @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @littlewildflowerkitten @genderless-spoon
6- @dragonmama76 @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual @disrespectedgoatman
7- @counting-dollars-counting-stars @tinyplanet95 @ravenfrog @swimmingbirdrunningrock @lingeringmirth
8- @gutterflower77 @a-lovely-craziness @just-a-tiny-void @w1ll0wtr33 @sticknpokelightningbolt
9- @scoops-aboy86 @kurofuckingshi16 @watermelonmite @eyehartart @dreamercec
10- @little-birch-boy @yearningagain @micheledawn1975 @blondie1006 @sadisticaltarts
#my writing#stranger things#steddie#ladykailtiha writes#age difference#ten years between steve and eddie
115 notes
¡
View notes
Text
I am a firm Marvin Gardens BPD/NPD truther, so hereâs all my evidence.
This is a very long post, so buckle up.
⢠Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Letâs go through the symptoms he shows, shall we?
- Has unreasonably high sense of self importance, and requires constant admiration:
Marvin, especially as a child, exhibits a large amount of grandiosity. This is most evident in How Marvin eats his breakfast and My Highschool Sweetheart.
He thinks of himself as above the maid staff and he constantly threatens/accuses them. Then heâs given the role of Columbus, and highly identifies with him to the point where he claims he *is* Columbus. That heâs this grand explorer, whoâs the king of the ocean. He believes heâs powerful because of the role.
Then as an adult, Marvin has a constant need for adoration. He needs people (like Whizzer and Trina) to love and want him in songs like Thrill of first love and This had better come to a stop. That might even be a reason he got with Trina in the first place. He wanted to feel needed, without the responsibility of having to love back.
Not to mention the line âKid. Be my son.â In Father to son. He wants Jason to fulfill the role as his son (and subsequently love him), not really acknowledging heâs his own person. But he still deeply cares about Jason, and wants him to succeed, he just does it through the only lense he understands; himself. Also, I noticed that Marvin literally moves the chess board aside and makes Jason face him during that song, even though he clearly doesnât want to.
- Believes they deserve special privileges or treatment:
The R of Ms. Goldberg shows Marvin is obsessed with getting what he wants, for no other reason besides the fact that he wants it. Itâs also implied that he didnât even necessarily have the acting skills required to be Columbus, Ms. Goldberg just conceded because he kept pestering her. He believed he deserved it, so he got it.
- Make achievements and talents bigger than they actually are:
Again, Marvin obsessed over being a star actor. He also consistently exaggerates his intelligence with lines like âI can read her like a bookâ in How Marvin eats his breakfast and âI'm not so rich but hell I'm smart.â In This had better come to a stop.
In I never wanted to love you, Marvin also claims that heâs in demand, when heâs most likely not and is just trying to cover for his ego.
- Preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, brilliance
Oh wow. Ok, so we all know about the metaphor for games at this point. Marvin loves winning, he literally says itâs everything to him. He also says that he wants it all multiple times which is just, really driving home the point that he craves success and power over everything else.
Marvin is also characterized as being rich, which again emphasizes his need for success. Iâm thinking he climbed the corporate ladder for the sole objective of looking like heâs successful.
Side note, I think the reason he never acknowledges how rich he is might be because heâs ashamed of being a trust fund baby. He had a whole maid staff as a kid, so itâs implied his parents had mad stacks. He mightâve sought success outside his parentsâ money so that it was his own accomplishment, not his familyâs.
I want to touch on My chance to survive the night, specifically the line âI played a game. She was as cute as a dime and couldn't spell. I asked her to spell my name. That's it for girls.â Marvin has a history of using games as a basis for breaking up with people because of his insecurity, even before Chess game. He gets a lot better with this in act 2, and this is evident in the racquetball matches. He seems a little unconfident, but heâs not devastated by it in the way he would be before.
Iâve mentioned this in a separate post, but The r of Ms. Goldberg can also be interpreted as a fantasy for power, since Marvin isnât actually interested in having sex with Ms. Goldberg, and instead just wants to have control over her.
- Is critical and looks down on people they feel arenât important:
Marvin consistently ignores his sweetheart even when she begs for his attention. When she tries to tell him sheâs a person, he calls her ridiculous.
Marvin also just generally acted out as a child because he considered everyone as beneath him.
This trait is especially highlighted In Tight Knit family reprise, where he just straight up talks shit about Mendel, not being able to believe that Trina can love him. Itâs also shown in Marvin hits Trina, that he dislikes her platitudes and expects substance from her, and then goes on to again beg for admiration with the line âHow could you ever deny what we had?â
- Expects others to do what they ask without question:
This is best shown in This had better come to a stop and Chess game. Marvin expects Whizzer to play the housewife, while not acknowledging that heâs his own person.
This is also displayed in Tight Knit family, where he expects everyone to go along with his perfect vision of what a family should be.
- Has an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others:
This is most clear with Sweetheart and Trina. As Iâve said, Marvin blatantly ignores sweetheartâs attempts to love him, and completely disregards her. I want to note how he does this in favor of being attached to Ms. Goldberg and playing Columbus which are his power fantasies, essentially.
This trait is also shown in Breakfast over Sugar when Marvin basically tells Trina to shut up and that sheâll get over it when sheâs having a a pretty expected emotional outburst to him divorcing her. He completely disregards her feelings, showing no empathy to her.
- Acts arrogantly:
This can just be interpreted as confidence but Marvin says that he loves being himself multiple times over the course of In trousers.
⢠Borderline Personality Disorder
- A strong fear of abandonment:
This ties into Marvinâs need for admiration, but he constantly asks others for validation, and even doesnât want Trina to find new partners because he interprets it as abandonment of his family.
Thereâs also the workshop version of This had better come to a stop, which is all about how Marvin is terrified that Whizzerâs going to leave him again in act 2, but he tries to bury all those feelings down so that he doesnât appear needy. One of the lines is âI sit here and slowly rot. Wait for Whizzer, wait for answers, and get none.â Which just really nails down this point.
Thereâs also Unlikely lovers, when Marvin refuses to leave Whizzerâs side in the hospital.
- A pattern of unstable, intense relationships:
Iâm sure we all know where this is going.
Marvin has a lot of opinions about Trina. He says that he thinks sheâs perfect in I have a family, but that at the same time, he says that he hates her in I swear I wonât ever again.
His wants are contradictory. He wanted Trina to leave him alone when he divorced her, but couldnât accept that she married Mendel. Also, he fights with Trina consistently, even throughout Act 2.
Onto Whizzer, their relationship is driven solely by chaotic passion. Their relationship is *built* on fighting and making up with hate sex.
Whizzer has no idea how to feel about Marvin because of how unstable he is. Marvin can be gentle, but he expects everything to go his way. Heâs affectionate but highly judgemental. (Then again, so is Whizzer.)
- Quick changes in how they view themself:
This is best shown in Your Lips and Me reprise. Marvin goes from hating who he was and what he did to Ms. Goldberg to having a whole ass victory song about how he loves being himself.
This might be sarcasm, but Marvin is also self deprecating in Tight knit family reprise, with the lyric âI'm too damn peeved, self-absorbed, self-deceived. Who knows?â
- Periods of stress related paranoia and loss of contact with reality
This is a stretch, but Marvinâs exes always hovering around him in In trousers might be paranoia about his past manifesting itself. This is especially clear in I canât sleep and Your lips and Me reprise where they physically interact with him, preventing him from sleeping or reminding him of his past.
- Impulsive/risky behavior:
Bro got multiple STDs, presumably from unsafe sex. Also, itâs implied that he also got HIV after Whizzer.
Hitting Trina could also be seen as impulsive behavior.
- Wide mood swings:
This is where Marvinâs giddy seizures comes in. He has periods of extreme laughter and giddiness, sporadically.
- Inappropriate levels of anger
Marvin hits Trina. I mean, what else do I have to say? This whole song is about Marvinâs anger taking over his actions and causing physical harm because of it. He also shows inappropriate anger when he brings out Whizzerâs belongings after the Chess game.
Ok Jesus Christ that was a lot of words. Keep in mind that these are just my headcanons and youâre allowed to interpret Marvin in any way you want.
Also I donât have these disorders myself and Iâm not a professional psychologist or anything so let me know if I got some things wrong. I just care way too much about the Marvin Trilogy and Iâm also interested in becoming a psychologist.
#falsettos#marvin trilogy#in trousers#marvin falsettos#falsettos 2016#falsettos obc#I have thought too much about this#god someone save me#character analysis#google âhow do I stop a hyperfixation?
184 notes
¡
View notes
Note
Read your post on your opinions on Byler and why you think itâs a genius love story. Iâm curious though you mentioned Mike being gay, rather than Bisexual. Iâve been in the fandom since s1 and never actually thought abt it that way, whatâs some evidence that made you see gay Mike instead of bi Mike?? Iâd love to hear your thoughts!
up until i got on tumblr a few weeks ago (very new to this business haha) i didn't really have super strong opinions on his sexuality either way. i was kinda just like, okay, mike is queer in some sense of the word, but the more i've read theories and thought about it, i feel it's almost more powerful if he's explicitly gay. this is in no way biphobia- i'm bi- and i don't at all believe that him being bi would discredit the importance of his character being queer in the grand scheme of queer representation, but i do feel like having a character who actively grapples with feelings of inadequacy out of insecurity based in not being able to love his girlfriend the way he thinks he's supposed to and deep seeded disgust and internalized homophobia with himself and his own faults especially when there's just SO MUCH beautiful and real love between straight couples around him- think lumax and jancy- is really intelligent and insightful writing. as far as evidence goes, i think there really is a lot of importance in him not being able to tell el he loves her. yes, you could say that it's just because he flat out doesn't love her, but you could also say that he knows that he doesn't and could never love her in the way he thinks he should should, in the way she deserves. that's why will's real and genuine love confession through the eyes of el makes him think "okay, maybe this could work. she loves me in the way she's supposed to, maybe it's possible". the reason will's words are so fueling for him is because they serve as proof and validation that he isn't doing anything he deems wrong and that there is the same level of beauty and intimacy in their relationship that there is in lumax or jopper or jancy. this leads in to my painting theory and how i think learning the truth about the painting will ultimately be the thing that makes mike face his internal conflicts head on because he will realize that he doesn't and can never have this perfect heterosexual relationship because he isn't heterosexual.
wow i just went on a crazy rant there hello
also- lucas's season one line about mike only liking el because she's the first girl to look at him or something like that is a good one too
54 notes
¡
View notes
Note
sorry if this has been asked before, but i wanted to ask about your lineart! the weight and line economy are just so nice, i get stars in my eyes looking at your lineart and doodles. could i ask what your approach to lineart is and what tips you might offer?
Wow I love these questions - Line is so interesting!!! It's a really big topic so I feel like any tips I give will be just barely scratching the surface. It's like deceptively simple...any given line drawing is essentially taking all the information we glean from seeing something irl ie light, shadow, dimension, texture, perspective, etc and boiling it down to the simplest possible visual information.
I think most commonly my line is informed by light source so like. thicker more continuous lines face away from the light and thinner more broken lines towards. and a lot of my spot blacks r simply cast shadows.
here's a more extreme example
BUT like everything to do with art there's no hard and fast rules. I use blacks when I think it'll be effective or interesting and I leave them out when I don't need em. umm couple things I find myself doing a lot... using spot blacks to make the separation between characters clearer. I like casting shadow in between characters so its easy to separate and read their silhouettes even when they're mashed together.
u can go even further to purposely create a silhouette like
to draw attention to a finger or tongue LOL. There's some comic book artists who are absolute masters at this type of stylization. Alex toth and his spiritual successor Chris samnee come to mind for me right away.
(toth)
(samnee)
I feel like I'm also often using line weight to separate planes receding in space
im naturally a really heavy handed and scribbly drawer(...?) draftsman. and im nearsighted so when i see things i percieve and break it down into big shapes over thin contours. so stuff like spot blacks and shadows came easy to me, the tricky part was making the rest of the lines lighter when they needed to be so the blacks could actually have impact LOLL. a lot of effective visual communication is about balancing contrasts. like I had to really train myself to press less hard on the pen. I think this is actually really evident if u go back in my archive to older sketches LOL
I actually feel like a lot of how I trained my hand to tackle line weights was thru stuff like hand lettering where you rly have to focus on being sensitive to that kind of thing.. contrasting strokes etc.
also exercises like figure drawing will have you flexing those muscles constantly
I'm starting to just regurgitate lessons from freshman year of art school so I'll stop here with the demos but yeah...I hope this was helpful!? I love line!!! I want to get even better at line work so I can feel confident posting work that's only line no color or value... I'll leave you with a bunch of artists who I think have particularly expressive and beautiful linework (not including toth and samnee who I already mentioned and who's work I love so much). You can probably learn much more from them than you can from me...!
Charles dana gibson LOL
Matias bergara
tonci zonjic
naoki urasawa
Daniel warren johnson
shiyoon kim
michel breton
also yoji shinkawa, tomer hanuka, leo romero, I feel like I'm gonna post this and think of so many more. there's so many good artists...!
1K notes
¡
View notes
Text
@hadeswritesthings
OH okay ummmm!!! This is going in its own post because it CANNOT stay in the comment section forever. Oh god, Epic the Musical is so good, how could you make me choose.
Ruthlessness from the Underworld Saga was my favorite for so long, not only because of the sound, but the lyrics themselves. I actually got into Epic because I was sent lyrics to this song!!! âRuthlessness is mercy upon ourselvesâ paired with âThe line between naivety and hopefulness is almost invisibleâ are SO interesting to me. Coming off of a media where the MC has adopted that same mindset does things to you. Obviously, not giving two shits about your actions DOES make it easier to take lives! And that is vital to Odysseusâ arc where he must become the monster in order to make it home. But following Odysseusâ âapologyâ, we get the line âThe line between naivety and hopefulness is almost invisibleâ and I think this line is slept on so badly. Poseidonâs saying that thereâs hardly any a line between being naive to think that Odysseusâ actions have no consequences, and being hopeful that his actions will not have any consequences. Which, Iâd say, is so correct. Itâs also Poseidon calling Odysseus out for being an itty bitty tiny baby kitten of a monster whose eyes havenât even opened yet.Â
God, do you wanna know where this is seen again? Different Beasts, where Odysseus gives the sirens what I like to describe as Poseidon treatment, where instead of just killing the sirens, Odysseus leaves them to drown. But Different Beasts is not actually one of my favorites, so Iâll go into the next, which is Scylla.
Scylla is SUUUCH an underrated song, and I believe itâs because the lines and their meaning + intent fly over so many peopleâs radars. Iâm absolutely referencing the line where Eurylochus admits to opening the wind bag.
Just. Eurylochus isnât apologizing for opening the wind bag. It is absolutely a part of it, but Eurylochus admitting he opened the wind bag was not actually the point of the apology.Â
Eurylochus was apologizing for doubting the leadership of Odysseus. This, of course, goes back to the Ocean Saga, that one little line, âEverythingâs changed since Polities,â where Odysseusâ pattern of acting out, or at least differently, can be traced back to.
Reading the Odyssey, thereâs a line that tells the readers that Odysseus always shares his treasure. I unfortunately didnât mark the exact line, so feel free to call me a liar for this paragraph, but I can back it up with Epic the Musical.
Before Odysseus gives up his name, location, age, credit card number, and social security number to Polyphemus, Athena warns him that what heâs about to do would not be a good idea! Athena interjecting during Remember Them is wonderful evidence that Odysseus is going against his normal actions, and acting out. It can be inferred that heâs never done something as severe as this, in 10 years of war.
And in Keep Your Friends Close, Odysseus descending from Aeolusâ island with a bag of presumed treasure and not sharing it, is not like him. Keeping a bag of treasure for his own greed while actively lying (âlyingâ) to his men about the dangers theyâd face if they were to open it? Wow! Heâs sure acting out! What was the last time Odysseus acted out? When he gave his name to Polyphemus, after the death of Polities.
Is there a pattern?
And so, the wind bag is opened, because obviously Odysseus is keeping secrets for his own greedy gain, while fibbing about the dangers of the bag.
And then we get to Scylla.
Because Odysseus was not lying about the contents in the bag, and Eurylochus finally gets a chance, over calm waters, to apologize for thinking Odysseus would ever do so.Â
Eurylochus apologizes for assuming that Odysseus would ever intentionally lie, or not tell the complete truth, when it came to the crewâs safety. Â
Youâll never guess what Odysseus does next!!!!
He withholds the truth about his intentions and what that means for the crewâs safety!!!!!
He does EXACTLY what Eurylochus had JUST apologized for accusing him of doing!!!!
And then we have Mutiny.
@hadeswritesthings Pleaaaase let me know your favorites, too!! I'd love to hear them.
#mickemzreply#jorge rivera herrans#epic the musical#epic the musical thunder saga#epic the musical ocean saga#epic the musical troy saga
23 notes
¡
View notes
Note
When Eiffel asks Hera for her top 5 stick-it-to-The-Man songs, she has a whole list of criteria she's evaluating the songs by. I was kinda under the impression they didn't have that much pop culture stuff up there. (Obviously in the real world the Kinda Evil Genius crew doesn't have the $ for copyrighted stuff.) Do you think Hera has like, sheet music but no audio recordings, or that she *does* have recordings but Eiffel doesn't actually like listening to music (which seems weird with the classical pieces, but it could be that those are novel and Eiffel loves novelty).
i think about that a lot, too!! there are a lot of things hera "shouldn't" know that, well. she does. from a character perspective, i think it works because she's written much more as a sheltered woman rather than anything that literal/speculative about AI, but in-universe i think some options/considerations are:
eiffel, being eiffel, forgot that hera wouldn't have heard these songs, and she doesn't want to have that conversation with him again, so instead she's making an excuse while she looks through all of the books available to her to find anything relevant. (which is a whole other question re: what media hera has access to. i think "all the writing" is a wild exaggeration based on hera's inability to conceptualize how much writing there might actually be in the world, personally, but evidently there are tons of books in there and she can read them... did no one ever bother to ask her, or does something prevent her from displaying them on a station terminal? are they encrypted in a way only she's allowed access to? ... why?)
eiffel, being eiffel, expects hera to remember and accurately interpret his attempts at singing these songs.
maybe there is a collection of sheet music in the hephaestus's archives? she recognizes bach somehow, after all, and i would believe it's likely at least for classical music. ... and what about minkowski's play? was she just going to put it on from memory? is hera learning her lines from the actual script, which she cannot reproduce for whatever reason, while minkowski is doing the rest from memory? what's going on at all, ever?
clearly they were allowed at least some personal media on lovelace's mission, but not on minkowski's; lovelace is listening to paradise valley diegetically. and they just left all of the stuff from lovelace's crew up there. eiffel finds hui's lovecraft book, etc.
hera does reference anarchy in the u.k. to eiffel at the end of that conversation, so clearly she picked that up somewhere.
personally, i don't think she has access to audio recordings of songs that aren't the transmissions; with the overall theme of music re: humanity, it feels like something goddard would probably deny her, and i like the idea of hera developing her music taste for the first time post-canon. and there's no way, in my opinion, if she did have access to music, that eiffel wouldn't be really annoying about finding a way to access that for himself. he is definitely a Music Guy. i'm a big fan of the idea of hera hearing some of the songs eiffel likes to sing to himself for the first time on earth, with the Eiffel Version in her head. some of them maybe she's fond of for that reason. and some of them she's probably like, wow. that wasn't even close. ... but do i think there is a satisfying answer with internal consistency here? definitely not. you've kinda gotta roll with it. it's fun to think about anyway.
#thinking about pop culture in wolf too hard is the road to madness tbh especially with its alternate timeline#like hey why do some of those pieces of media eiffel references exist at all if the space development timeline is so different#there is No Way eiffel doesn't actually like listening to music though i'd believe anything else before that#you just gotta go with it truly... thank you for the ask!!#asks
12 notes
¡
View notes
Text
19/? Luo Binghe is SO NORMAL about Shen Yuan
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
Read up through even numbered parts on Ao3
Factorio expansion dropped lol
Luo Binghe wrapped his fingers around Xin Mo's hilt and instantly regretted it. He'd never planned to use Xin Mo for long, more than happy to commit himself to one sword the same way he'd committed himself to one sword.
But wow, Xin Mo was cursed. It made Two Girls One Cup vanilla. It made goatce look like a classic museum piece. Probably. Luo Binghe hadn't really been interested in any "shock" content on the internet. Life below the poverty line was already bad enough, why bother? But the point stood: Xin Mo was cursed, cursed.
Its thick, caustic qi flooded through him faster than blood. It stuck thorns of corruption into his every cell, piercing and pulling. Again, Luo Binghe leaned on (more like, collapsed against) his knowledge of cellular biology and used a combination of his blood mites and demonic qi to protect first his golden core, then brain, then vital organs then every connecting piece until he could think again.
He found himself on the ground, face pressed into a half-dried puddle of black blood. Luo Binghe blinked a few times, trying to orient himself through the buzzing in every part of his body. Xin Mo was in his hand and he'd had a qi deviation on bonding with it, all the evidence suggested.
With a groan, he stabbed the sword into the cursed ground and used it as leverage to pull himself up to his knees. He sent out his perception to feel around the area; nowhere was a safe place to rest in the Abyss.
In his head, Meng Mo was silent, but in a loud way. He was present and pressing against the edge of Luo Binghe's perception. Finally, Luo Binghe had enough and spoke first.
"Did you want something, Old Man?"
"Well done, kid."
Meng Mo said nothing else, but neither did he pull his awareness away. Hopefully that's why the System hadn't bothered telling him he'd finished his current quest. The next step was leaving the Abyss, but that was easier said than done.
According to Meng Mo, Xin Mo's value, beyond its strength, was in its ability to create a portal between locations. However, that was where the old demon's knowledge ended. How the sword worked, they could only speculate.
And immediately post-qi deviation wasn't exactly the ideal place time to experiment. Luo Binghe looked up to the roof of the cavern while he pictured the areas outside. The Crystal Canyon was closest, but that required constant concentration and application of qi: also not good for experimentation.
Before that was either a field of lava floes or a salt desert that was bitterly cold even without the contrast of the lava field. It didn't take long to settle on the desert. While there were precious few monsters in the lava field, there was no food and less water. It was a place to rest once he had provisions, not when half dead.
The desert did have a clan of frisky snow leopard demons, but in return for respecting his chastity and giving him supplies he could offer them passage to the Northern Desert in the Demon realm. Hell, he could offer them Linguang-jun's territory without offending the Mobei clan too badly. Probably. If not, he always had stronger demon diplomacy.
As he crossed the salt drifts, Luo Binghe liked the idea more and more. His own demonic traits leaned hot and fiery, unsurprising given that the previous Heavenly Demonic Emperor â Luo Baixiao's probable father â ruled from the Southern demon lands.
But that didn't help his plan of taking Binghe as his own courtesy name. He might get away with it in a novel trying to be clever, which was to say the System would go along with it, but practically speaking everyone would think he really was Xiao Bai. However, if he took over the Northern Desert first and ruled from Mobei-clan territory, it would fit the name and give additional justification for killing Linguang-jun.
Not that he planned on explaining himself, but everyone wanted a good narrative to pin on their ruler. As for courting Shen Yuan, it couldn't be too, too hard. After all, he was going to be saving him from a life-long affliction and offering a trade agreement with Cang Qiong. As repulsive as Linguang-jun was, Luo Binghe had no qualms about stealing his justifications and arguments the suit presented to Shen Yuan.
Snowballing had gone into truly excruciating detail about the courting rituals and the calculus behind the value of gifts and five layers of demonic designers behind each piece. Comm enters had been delighted by the apparent research, then furious when Linguang-jun died without so much as a by-your-leave, wasting chapters and pages of world building.
Actually, actually, Luo Binghe suddenly hoped the System was somehow updating IRS or a fanfic thereof with his own improvements. There had been some jiejies in the comments that speculated the Linguang-jun arc was to establish the demonic traditions before the actual endgame suit of Luo Baixiao. He'd appreciate if the System was throwing them a bone.
If only because he was the Luo Baixiao in question.
Luo Binghe raised the barrier to lock Meng Mo away in the recesses of his mind and then queried the System.
[What is the User inquiry?]
[What happened to the Original Goods' soul?]
Instead of rejecting his question, the System displayed a loading icon. After several minutes, it was still thinking, so Luo Binghe swiped the window away to consider later. Didn't transmigrators usually get rewards for completing the storyline? Since he was marrying Shen Yuan out of his own efforts, maybe he could request something good for the kid?
Luo Binghe set the question aside; the snow leopard village was approaching quickly. Even familiar visitors were subjected to a round of stalking and wrestling before being granted admittance and he needed to focus to ensure he didn't accidentally flirt with them.
He cracked his neck and tried to ignore Xin Mo whispering from its place strapped to his back.
8 notes
¡
View notes
Note
different anon! but i 100% upvote other anon's comment of you being the professor of hoshino-aiology đđ your posts about her give me a newfound appreciation for her and imo you should be the one writing 15 year lie frfr đ¤§đâ¨ď¸
and if you haven't written anything abt it, could you share your thoughts abt the spica ai chapter? i liked ai and saitou in it but i was shocked at how intense the b-komachi bullying was :0 poor ai đ˘
THANK YOU ANONâŚâŚ.. god can you imagine what this manga would be like if i had been given that kind of creative control. you're going to read my 15 volume hoshino ai backstory flashback and you're going to love every single chapter of it!!!
When it comes to Spica, I have pretty mixed feelings on that first chapter. For transparency's sake, I broadly dislike the novel overall and I think it takes away from the relationships it depicts more than it adds. Like I mentioned in a previous ask, my issue with Spica (and its depiction of OnK's world and characters) is its tendency to flatten and simplify many of the interesting interpersonal wrinkles that characterize these central dynamics in the main story. This is much more evident in the GRSR chapters (as outlined in that post) but you can absolutely see it in Ai's chapter as well.
POST-WRITING CLAIRE EDIT: So while this post initially started as me broadly skimming some of the issues I had with chapter 1, it has ballooned into a much, MUCH longer essay about what it is about Spica that I disliked and why, broadly, I think it fails to work both as a standalone piece and as an addition to OnK as a canon. I'm pretty negative about the book in this post and very critical of the writing so if you really liked Spica and it would bum you out to see me take it apart, feel free to skip this post.
On the surface, Ai and Saitou's dynamic is pretty true to the main story and I will admit that I do enjoy their rapport in this chapter and just that we got a chapter focusing on this relationship full stop. Ai and Saitou's relationship is one I've always been particularly soft for and getting a whole chapter that was basically just exploring its early days was really nice. But it's also a very rose tinted view of that relationship in a way I think does it a bit of a disservice. I discussed this in my OnK anime rewatch but Spica's take on Saitou (and thus on his relationship with Ai) frames him as a wholly positive and supportive figure whose desires for money and success in the entertainment industry are explicitly, textually said to be secondary and unimportant to his uncomplicated kind desire to support them as they succeed. There's almost this sense of "wow, isn't it so noble and cool that saitou is kindly allowing these tweenage girls to work themselves ragged making money for his company!!!" that's a bit icky to read.
This is in line with the bizarre ways Spica portrays idol culture, in particular the 'oshi'/fan dynamic. This is another thing I've discussed before, so I'll borrow my previous words on the topic:
The Japanese text of [chapter 137] takes this dehumanization a step further: Rather than the wasei-eigo term ă˘ă¤ă㍠(aidoru), when calling [Ai] an idol, Gotanda uses the word ĺśĺ (guzou) - an idol by its original definition. It goes beyond just reducing her to an animal - itâs objectification in the very literal sense. Ai is an idol, a ceremonial object of worship, an inanimate vessel for the dirty desires of the people around her. [...] Spica [...] depicts the moment that Ai starts down this road, committing herself to being an idol who will love and support everyone, even people who hate and scorn her. This is framed by the novel as being something of a breakthrough for her and being liberating for it but I came out of it feeling deeply unsettled in a way I donât think the novel wanted me to be. [...] Spica depicts the moment that Ai goes from ă˘ă¤ă㍠to ĺśĺ without seeming to realise thatâs what itâs doing and thus does so in a way that is not just uncritical but wholly celebratory. In a lot of ways, this makes sense - Spica, broadly speaking, is about the âoshiâ part of Oshi no Ko: the emotional fulfillment of not just receiving support but in the act of giving support yourself, in cheering someone on and seeing them succeed. Spica depicts these sorts of relationships in a straightforwardly and uncritically positive light, even in cases of parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities.
There was a lot on that topic that I left out just because that chapter review was already getting so fucking long and unhinged but Spica's entirely uncritical and celebratory view of idol culture in general always leaves me feeling deeply uncomfortable every time I engage with the text. There's a degree to which this can be excused, because Spica takes place in the POV of characters who have drunk the industry kool-aid and thus would not necessarily interpret some of this stuff with the same critical lens as a reader. A charitable interpretation of the material is that, like Viewpoint B and 45510, the story is choosing to refrain from commenting on these troubling elements for the purposes of allowing the reader to have their own take on it.
This would be nice⌠except it's just not how Spica handles emotional beats at all!
When talking about Spica in the past I have jokingly referred to it as being written like 'the emotional equivalent of the Superdictionary' and by that I mean that it has absolutely no restraint or subtlety when it wants you to Feel Something. When Spica has an emotional beat, it hammers it in until any organically resulting resonance with the material has been reduced to a fine paste. When it has Thoughts and Opinions about a topic, it will explain them to the reader in excruciating detail so there is no risk of the reader taking away anything that wasn't intended by the author.
My point is that there is every indication that Spica's straightforwardly celebratory portrayal of idol culture and the way fans respond to idols is something intended to be taken at face value with no further interrogation. Spica is, by and large, entirely uninterested in acknowledging the ugly underbelly of exploitation, dehumanization and misogyny that drives idol culture and idol fandom.
I think the best way to illustrate this is to look at the scene near the end of the chapter where Ai finally sits and reads her fan letters. The first two are genuinely warm and sweet but the third always jumps out at me in a way I don't think was intended by the author;
âHello, Ai-chan. I'm a devoted listener to your streams. B-Komachi's songs and talk shows have honestly become my sanctuary. I'm currently stuck working to the bone at a terrible company. They hardly pay me anything, and every day I just want to die. But what keeps me going is knowing I have your streams to look forward to every week. Iâm not even kidding. Ai-chan, you're my reason to live!"
The story does not for a second pause to linger on this letter but I want you to stop and really take it in. While we know nothing about this letter's author outside of what's written here, but given that they have a job they can be presumed to be an adult. In addition, the final line of the letter in Japanese is ăă˘ă¤ăĄăăăŻäżşăŽçăăĺ¸ćďźă, using the masculine first person pronoun äżş (ore), implicitly gendering the writer as a man.
An adult man writes to Ai to traumadump on her uninvited about his suicidal ideation and telling her in no uncertain terms that she is the sole, singular reason he is alive. Ai is a twelve year old girl.
Spica frames this as an entirely good, wholesome and affirming moment for her. It's one of many similar moments where Spica's celebration of idol culture clashes so strongly with the main story's that trying to make them tonally cohere is almost impossible. In fact, mild tangent, but I was working with the Spica TL team on chapter 1 right around the time chapter 137 dropped, and reading the ending of this chapter back to back with 137's tearing down of Ai's exploitation at the hands of the idol industry was some real injury-worse-than-whiplash inducing shit.
To be clear, I don't need Oshi no Ko to have a huge UM ACKSHULLY THIS IS WHY THIS IS BAD!!!! digression every time characters have positive interactions with the concept of idols. It is fundamentally dishonest and lacking in nuance to portray idolhood as something entirely and unrelentingly negative or to act like idols hate every single second they spend as idols. Sarina and Gorou's POV chapters do a very good job of highlighting what I talked about earlier - Spica's ruminations on the 'oshi' part of Oshi no Ko and how a relationship of support can be emotionally fulfilling both for the person being supported and the person unreservedly providing it. But that's purely from a fan perspective and I think it would be really interesting to Spica to take the opportunity afforded to it by being in Ai's POV to properly interrogate what Ai enjoys about being an idol.
But the way it chooses to do so just feels atonal both with Ai's arc and relationship to idolhood as portrayed in the main story and ways the manga has talked about 'oshi' culture in chapters published before and after Spica's release. It clashes with Oshi no Ko in ways I find difficult to satisfyingly reconcile.
This sense of clashing with and contradicting Oshi no Ko is an issue Spica has more broadly, in big and small ways. Some of this is just small, incidental details but other issues are larger and added all together, it results in a sense that Spica was not written by a person fully keyed into Oshi no Ko's world and characters. Like, just off the top of my head, here's some things that stuck out to me just from chapter 1:
Ai notes that she was separated from her mother a long time prior to the story's timeframe but given the ages give for her in 131 and here in Spica, it cannot be more than three years max since she was removed from Ayumi's care.
B-Komachi's formation and Ai's joining the group are both said to have happened 'three months ago' as of chapter 1's timeframe and thus to have happened more or less at the same time. This contradicts the Akasaka written material that consistently frames Ai as being one of the senior members, yes, but as having joined the group after Nino, Takamine and Watanabe.
The portrayal of Ai's bullying by the other B-Komachi members in no way matches Nino's account of it in 45510. This isn't even in a way you can put to Nino being an unreliable narrator. The details are so different that the only way to reconcile them is to assume these are two separate instances of bullying and that Nino just. Didn't mention the first time it happened for no reason.
On the subject of the bullies, the two girls targeting Ai are implied by their physical descriptions to be Takamine and Mei. While we don't really know anything about Mei yet, the vicious and unapologetic hostility Takamine displays clashes with her 'tough love' roughness that we are shown in the main story. In addition, this contradicts 45510's very explicit statement that Ai's bully was IMMEDIATELY fired from B-Komachi, no questions asked, the instant Saitou knew who she was. There is no indication in Spica that Ai's bullies so much as get a slap on the wrist for their behaviour.
Spica attributes B-Komachi's current success almost entirely to Ai and portrays her as working very hard on set and communicating with every other member of staff almost excessively to the point of annoyance. Not only does this contradict the early manga's portrayal of Ai as being antisocial and uncommunicative on set prior to her being sent to Lala Lie, it also contradicts chapters that were released following Spica that explicitly credit Nino as the key figure for B-Komachi's initial boom of success and states that Ai joined the group after Nino had cemented their popularity.
There are absolutely ways that you can handwave these contradictions and sew up the internal logic but to me, the nature of these contradictions matter to me less than the fact that they exist in the first place. This implies, especially given that some of these are in material written by Akasaka after Spica was published that he and Tanaka were, to some degree, not on the same page about the book's material.
There's some other things scattered about that aren't necessarily direct textual contradictions but nevertheless feel really out of step with OnK's takes on these characters. And like⌠I have tried to be relatively measured and good faith in my critiques so far but there is a part of chapter one that makes me so just bees buzzing around in my brain flames on the side of my face blood boiling in my veins insane that you must allow me to just uncharitably tear into it.
[Ai:] âAh, now I get it. Are you buying a gift for your girlfriend, President? You like them young, after allâŚâ Finally, it clicked. The president, being considerably older than his girlfriend, needed the insights of a girl closer to her age in order to pick out the perfect gift. If that was the case, that explained why Ai had been roped into this. [Ai:] âWell, not that I should be getting into your business or anything, butâŚPresident, be careful when you mess with underage girls, okay? Nowadays, youâll seriously end up in jail.â
I'M SORRY. WHAT THE FUCK AM I READING RIGHT NOW. SHE WOULD NOT FUCKING SAY THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This moment actually makes me so angry that it is difficult for me to clearly and calmly articulate what I find objectionable about it. I understand that it sounds very dramatic, but this is the first in a very consistent line of Spica bringing up the idea of adult men engaging in romance and/or sex with underage girls with this blithe, jokey and dismissive tone that entirely undermines everything Oshi no Ko itself says about CSA. The fact that it starts off this trend by putting these words in the mouth of Ai, WHO IS HERSELF A FUCKING CSA VICTIM, and treats the entire exchange as a throwaway joke honestly makes me feel a little bit sick.
This is part of a much broader and more troubling trend in Spica of Hajime Tanaka simply not being able to write young women in a naturalistic and human way. It's difficult for me to express exactly what it is that feels so off other than to say that it's Covered In The Fucking Ooze in a way typical of Men Who Can't Write Women. Ai's bullies in chapter 1 are so cartoonishly and stereotypically catty and mean that they barely feel human and they are written with all the distinct individuality as Thing 1 and Thing 2. The more complicated, two-sided conflict between two flawed people as seen in Ai and Nino's relationship is totally absent here. It's just the most vapid, stereotypical depiction of Teenage Girl Bullying you can imagine.
On top of that, there is a consistency with which Tanaka puts the topic of sex into the mouths and minds of these young women that fees⌠icky and offputting to me in a way I find difficult to articulate. In general, the voices of these young girls feel off and inauthentic in a way the main series never struggles with. For all I've criticized Oshi no Ko for in the past, something I think Akasaka is consistently and surprisingly good at is writing female characters who feel just as distinctly well realized and fleshed out as his male characters and that he does so in a way that does not rely on completely degendering them - their experiences as women are important to and inform that their characterization but does not entirely rule it. Despite overwhelmingly centering girls as the heart of its narrative, Spica barely feels capable of writing them as people.
All this together gives Spica this really strong sense - to me - of not really fitting in with the spirit of Oshi no Ko as a story. It's not just that the narrative voice is different but that there is an underlying flavour to Spica's takes on this world and its characters that clashes with the original. The cast as a whole just feels off, not blatantly OOC in a way you can directly point to but just enough to feel uncanny and give me a THEY WOULD NOT FUCKING SAY THAT!!!!! moment for almost every single person with a speaking line. It feels, as I put it on the Oshi no Brainrot server, like a thing that exists not because there was a part of the OnK narrative that worked best as a light novel but because somebody, somewhere thought a Oshi no Ko light novel would make some money and decided to have one churned out.
oh my god anon I'm so sorry lmfao you did not ask for this GIGANTIC ODYSSEY OF A POST!! This was just one of those asks that tapped into a topic I had already been having extensive conversations with myself about in my brain (I have a very boring job with a lot of time spent alone lol) and the more I typed, the more of those thoughts spilled out. I think a big part of why I am so compelled (derogatory) by Spica's missteps and mishandling of its material is that there is so much potential here and so many points where the material really comes close to just being flat out good.
A moment in chapter 1 that I think about a lot is Ai thinking about why she hasn't been reading any of her fan letters - because the last letter she got was her mom's lawyer telling her that Ayumi had gone missing after her release from custody, thus confirming for Ai that she had been abandoned to the system by her. Because of her association between those emotions and the act of reading a letter, she simply can't bring herself to open any of her fan letters because of the lingering anxiety.
Not only is this an entirely human and believable traumabrained anxiety kid fear for her to have but it's totally in line with Ai's flaw of avoidance and unwillingness to engage with or confront things that make her anxious or uncomfortable. It's also paid off wonderfully and in spades when she does finally confront that fear and is rewarded for it by an avalanche of love and support from her fans. It's one of the few moments in Ai's chapter where I think Spica really does well in conveying what a person like Ai gets out of being the 'oshi' in the oshi/fan relationship.
But this otherwise great moment is ruined by like⌠all that shit I said up there lmao. Spica is just laced through with this issue where moments that come so, so close to working and being really good are just marred by other issues in the text around it or trip themselves up in other ways. It's frustrating both because it comes so close to doing fresh and interesting things with the characters and because⌠I didn't want to dislike Spica! I was so, SO excited for it to come out and so willing to give it the BOTD even as summaries leaked and I was put off by the plot beats. But the more time I give to it in my brain and the more I try to engage with it in good faith, the more I come away frustrated and feeling like my time has been wasted.
21 notes
¡
View notes
Note
Iâm coming from my vent account because I donât want to get found out as a Jew on my main. Please, please stop posting in the antisemitism tag. Youâre clogging it up and taking away a safe space for Jews by trying to delegitimise Jew hatred. Now, I donât know if youâre good faith or not, but Iâm leaning on no. You keep on going onto posts about Jew hatred from Jews, saying what boils down to âwow! Iâve learned so much from this!â and then you go back to posting inflammatory things again. I mean, you posted something from Caitlin Johnstone, I canât believe that you give a single shit about Jews (or Ukrainians) after that
As for your most recent post on how poor you just canât believe lying Jews when we talk about discrimination because youâre scared weâre deceiving you, you put in a comment âIf I'd seen said Arab nations' governments massacring thousands of civilians, while painting every single criticism of said massacre as Islamophobic, yes, I would haveâ. This is⌠I donât even know how to tackle this, do you genuinely not know all of the horrific shit so many of the Arab states have done? Qatar is known as one of the biggest countries of modern slavery. The Houthis in Yemen sex traffic Ethiopian women, and also reintroduced slavery into Yemen. Just look at the atrocities so many of these countries have committed against Shia Muslims! Is your brain mush, how can you say this when there is so, so much evidence of the horrors that these nations have committed?! And if you think these states graciously accept criticism of those horrors⌠youâre being ignorant on purpose. And itâs still not okay to say that you donât believe an Arab when they talk about anti Arab racism that theyâve experienced, I think we can at least agree on that. So whyâs it not the same for Jews?
For a more personal example to Jews, look up the Mizrachi expulsion. The Arab states violently expelled almost a million Jews from their countries âbecause Israelâ, which they only care about because it ruined their dream of pan Arabism, not because of any solidarity with the Arabs in the mandate btw. My family was lucky, we came from Iran, which is not Arab, so the violence was coming from the people rather than the state itself. But Iâve had to heard accounts from people talking about how they watched their family get shot in the head while their homes were repossessed for no reason other than the fact they were Jews. Is that bad enough for you? Does it even make a dent in your image of the Arab states? Or is it okay because it happened to Jews?
I know I sound very angry in this, and thatâs because I am very angry. And that anger is completely justified! My life, and the lives of almost every Jew on this disgusting website, have been beyond horrible for five months. The number of times Iâve had to read about a new Jew hating shooting or stabbing in the world is too many too count. And then, non Jews like you decide to play the âoops, I just caaaanât believe those Jews about Jew hatred because they could be zionists!â (Which are around eighty percent of the Jewish population, but I donât think youâre ready for that conversation yet, itâs reserved for people who actually want to learn). All of us are so unimaginably angry. All of us are at our fucking breaking point, or weâve completely snapped already! The people you have interacted with have been some of the kindest, most levelheaded people here, but youâd better not get used to it, because weâre all tired of this bullshit
Thank you for taking the time to call me out. Between you and the several other people who contacted me about this, Iâve come to realize that that post was a terrible mistake.
It was meant to be a vent post about people who deliberately blur the lines around whatâs actually antisemitism, and about my lack of certainty about my own ability to independently assess the less obvious instances of that (which is clearly still very lacking, as the response to that post made clear to me).
But it apparently caught a lot of innocent Jews in the crossfire, making them feel unsafe, unheard, and delegitimized. That wasnât the intention, but it was clearly the effect. I screwed up badly, and Iâm sorry.
I admittedly donât know all the details about the horrific shit Arab nations have done. I was aware of Iraqâs government mass murdering protesters, and Saudi Arabiaâs horrifically sexist laws, but some of the info you shared in this post is stuff I hadnât previously heard of.
As for why I mentioned false accusations of antisemitism specifically, itâs because thatâs the one Iâve seen several times a day lately, sometimes in the form of stuff like telling people who protest child murder that âYou just donât like it when Jews defend themselves.â
That said, you and the other people who responded have made it clear to me that that focus was based on an overly narrow view on my part. Iâve been more active in pro-Palestine circles than in circles that focus on the other situations you mentioned, so naturally that resulted in me seeing more antisemitism accusations than accusations focused on groups that arenât directly involved in that conflict. So that resulted in a less than balanced viewpoint.
While my vent post was meant to be about one specific phenomenon Iâd personally seen a lot of, the fact that I didnât mention similar behavior on the part of groups I hadnât personally seen as much of that behavior from did result in it being unjustly targeted, in a way I didnât intend but shouldâve assessed better.
What happened to you and other Jews at the hands of Arab nations (and pretty much every nation) was absolutely not okay. The effect my post had on you and other Jews who saw it was not okay. The treatment youâve endured on Tumblr is not okay. And Iâm sorry for the pain I caused you.
You have every right to be angry at me. I wonât ask you to forgive me or trust me, because I know I earned your anger with that poorly thought out post. I shouldnât have made my own insecurities and frustrations other peopleâs problem like that. I screwed up badly, and Iâm sorry.
#long post#I can be a dumbass sometimes#but I'm woman enough to admit when I screwed up#and this time I definitely did
17 notes
¡
View notes
Text
So... about season 3 Aki.
Ok harsh contrast to my previous, excited post, but I did say I had more to yell about episode 75 and I need to get this off my chest anyway. Plus, I remember mentioning in a post that I need to talk about season 3 onward Aki anyhow, so might as well do that now! I am thinking Big Thoughts and I need to Scream.
Long, incoherent, unhinged rant incoming because I have 100 things to say and 100000 screenshots to post, but I am also tired and my brain is mush.
Can we please talk about all the jarringly unfulfilled setup the start of season 3 did for Aki? Because I'm starting to feel an urge to claw at the walls. I'm gonna go through this, piece by piece of damning evidence, because I need to vent my utter confusion and frustration somehow, I guess. Okay. So.
After giving us a bit of time to settle in after the timeskip into the pre-WRGP stretch of things, the itty-bitty portion of the story Aki occupies at this point starts off arguably strong. Yusei gets kidnapped, everyone's in a frenzy about it, but Aki's especially worried.
Then this. Funky new signer powers! Nobody's been able to do this before! I wonder if they're going to do something with that! (Spoiler: They're not.)
Then Aki "no sense of self-preservation" Izayoi gets herself in a bunch of danger trying to rescue Yusei and we get this:
Oh! Wow! Aki can control her powers now! (Which: how. Why did they never show us this. That alone could have made for a whole mini-arc. Why waste that????) That would give the writers so many cool opportunities to let her use them! I wonder if they're going to do something with that! (Spoiler: They're not.)
(Side note: I love this scene. I love it to death. They're both ride-or-die "who cares for my safety when yours is on the line" for each other and I love them.)
Of course, shenanigans then ensue, leading up to Sherry's marvellous introduction.
(Mwah. I blow her a little kiss.)
And it is at this point that Aki Has An Epiphany.
And to top it off, she gets some interesting interactions with Sherry, too!
So Aki resolves that she wants to become a turbo-duellist, too. And the thing is, this isn't a little one-off thing or something they never deliver on. They end up building this up for several episodes, bit by bit. First we get another mention of it at the pre-WRGP press thingy they all attend:
Then it's brought up again when Yusei accepts the first duel against Bruno/Antinomy:
(Also, side note again, but can I just mention that Aki also gets this moment the episode before:)
(Where she literally puts herself directly in harm's way in a public setting to protect people with her powers??? Like, I'm sorry, pinch me or something, but how does that not scream "badass good girl setup"???? HOW?)
So we get at least three episodes worth of buildup where Aki agonizes over becoming a turbo duellist to understand what her friends (but especially Yusei) are feeling when they duel like that, and then they finally deliver on it and episode 75 has her getting her license. And it's fantastic. Seriously. That episode is golden. Not just because it delivers on this promise, not just because it has a really cute moment between Aki and Yusei in it (regardless of how you read their relationship dynamic), and not just because it (as per my last post) showcases how much the rest of Team 5Ds cares about Aki (by literally building a runner for her and accompanying her to her exam and don't even get me started on Jack beating up those jerks trying to make her crash unprompted) but because it gives us just that smidgen more detail about Aki's character, too. Because the thing is, at first, she majorly sucks at driving.
And not only is this realistic to a degree (learning to drive is hard, regardless of what you're learning to drive), it's also great, because you know what Aki's response to it is?
She keeps going. She doesn't let it get her down, she gets back up and tries again. (And from a writing standpoint, this is lovely because that stubbornness is great in situations like this, but you could easily turn it into a weakness in a different scenario if you wanted to.)
And not only does Aki learn driving the hard way here, she also finds herself confronted with jerks who don't want her to succeed,
(Ruka, sweetie, I love you.)
and she makes an absolute rookie mistake during her exam by trying to play a speed spell when she doesn't have the necessary speed counters.
And feel free to disagree, but I think this is also great. Because honestly? While driving a really damned fast motorcycle that I'm not super used to yet, and being expected to make solid tactical judgements in an overcomplicated card gameâthe rules of which are slightly different when you're playing it on a motorcycleâat the same time, I would likely also mess up like that and accidentally try to make an illegal play. But the thing is, the episode rewards her for sticking it out anyway by letting her pull off a really complicated driving manoeuvre to save herself from her envious turbo-duelling-license colleagues' cheap tricks, and by letting her score a really nice win from a tight spot, much like any of the boys would have in her position.
(Take that, you jerks. Dumbasses only get blurry screenshots.)
So Aki gets her license and is welcomed by the team as a fresh turbo duellist. Hooray!
(I love them all so, so much, help me.)
And we also get this:
Wouldn't you know it! Sherry's been watching Aki get her license with interest! And she seems to be mighty pleased with the result!
So. After all that, I don't think you could blame anyone (it's me, I'm anyone) for getting really excited about what Aki's gonna get up to from this point outward. Aki can control her powers now! And she got her turbo duelling license! And we've got a new, enigmatic side character who seems like she could have super interesting interactions with and play off Aki! I wonder what they're gonna do with all that.
*deep breath*
Sigh.
Seeing as I already know this show like the palm of my hand, I kind of dreaded getting past this episode because I know exactly what happens to Aki from this point out: Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. Okay, well, no. See, I went back and checked all the episodes I have left, just to make sure, just in case I forgot something (very likely when you've already watched the show three times, I know).
From here on out, during the entire pre-WRGP, WRGP, and Ark Cradle arc, Aki gets exactly three things to do:
She uses her shiny new turbo duelling license to fill in for Crow at the Team Unicorn match because he got injured. Which, on paper, is a perfect way to let her have the spotlight for a moment. Except, the only thing she gets that spotlight for is to last a hot four turns in the duel before losing spectacularly to Andre and literally never turbo duelling again for the rest of the show. (Like, yes. The moment where she summons Stardust Dragon is chefs kiss and legendary. But in light of the surrounding circumstances, it feels like a consolation prize to make up for the ensuing character trainwreck.)
Since Crow is technically still injured when they're meant to go up against Team Catastrophe, Aki trains to fill in for him there again. Except! They intentionally make her crash right before the duel, putting her in a short-term coma! And as the icing on the cake, when she wakes up, it also turns out she lost the powers she was only just able to control for absolutely. no. reason. None. They never bother explaining it, they don't even try to hint at why they might have vanished. (I have my own theories for why they had to let her powers vanish and they all start and end with the words "we couldn't be bothered to figure out how to write this character".)
At the very end of the show, the very end, after temporarily fridging Sherry, too, they dig both girls back up in order to let them participate in a three-way final boss duel with Crow. (Which is a fantastic duel, I love it to pieces. Genuinely.) You could argue that they tried to cash in on all the intrigue they set up between Aki and Sherry here, butâcome on. At the end of the show? Seriously? Oh, and did I mention that for some reason, Aki's powers mysteriously reappear after this duel? For no reason? Again?
I just. It does not compute. They went as far as doing all this setup, letting Aki get the hang of her powers, letting her get her license, making her part of Team 5Ds, even giving us a new character that seemed like the perfect fit to let her bounce off ofâand then, like some sort of kafkaesque reverse-miracle, they somehow managed to take a sharp left into "whoops, don't care about this character" and nearly wasted the entirety of that setup in one fell swoop. If it weren't for that finale saving at least a smidgen of it, I'd be holding a torch and a pitchfork over here. (Hell, I might, even knowing that Aki's final duel in the show is kickass.)
Please tell me if this is just me (15 years after the show released, I know, leave me alone), but this feels like they were literally loading Chekov's gun directly within view of the audience, only to later procede to toss the damned thing into the sea instead of firing it.
Okay. Okay, I think I'm done. For anyone who actually bothered with the whole post, first of all, thank you for your attention, secondly, sorry, but this does, indeed, still bother me ten years after I first found this show, so I had to get it out or it would have eaten at me forever. God damn it.
Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to writing fics where Aki actually gets something to do right this second. If anyone's interested in giving a fic series where Aki gets a separate character arc that tries to stay mostly canon-compliant after the defeat of the dark signers a go, you can find my stuff here.
#yugioh 5ds#aki izayoi#akiza izinski#ygo 5ds#character analysis#orchid watches 5ds (again)#orchid rambles#setup and no payoff is one of the worst things you can do to me in media#I get so unreasonably maaaaaaad#they literally gave themselves so many opportunities to do something with Aki#and then they wasted them all#also shameless plug I know#look I'm just trying to attract more people who will yell about Aki with me#that's what I do here#ok I'll shut up now
57 notes
¡
View notes
Text
I think Girls Band Cry has finally edged out Jellyfish as my girl band show of the season, and probably my favorite overall as well. I caved and caught up with the other group doing fansubs (their translations are on par, although the subs themselves aren't as fancy), and I just....wow. There's a lot to process here. This post is going to be long.
So, Nina's pa is aware of her faltering grades and now that she's talked to her sister about the band, her family is probably going to know all about that soon as well. Naturally, she has not told any of this to said band. The girl's natural inclination to simply Not Tell People Things is going to absolutely blow up in the second half of the show, I'm sure.
The use of traditional flat animation to convey the past---bygone periods of one's life, memories that have gotten hazy in the recollection---is probably the smartest thing Girls Band Cry does visually. Other uses of 2D animation in the series can feel like a concession, these very much do not.
Of course I wrote that and then they did the broken glass split shot thing when Momoka announced she was leaving the band, so I don't know. The series is just very inventive, visually, and I like that, even if most of the visual symbolism is not necessarily subtle.
Mine, the character in red who's given a supporting role here for what is honestly not a ton of screentime, makes an immense impact in the brief amount that she's on screen. We have somebody here who is herself not "successful" in the broad-stroke pop star sense, but who is clearly at least getting by and making a living with her music. It's inspiring, in a way, and I think that Nina might feel that way too.
I've avoided using the P-word much in my writing lately, because I think it's easy to attribute to passion all sorts of other emotions that might be described better with other terms, but if we read this work as a reflective one, we can assume that the people working on it feel similarly to Mine about their own profession. Things can be difficult, they can be hard, but you push through for your own sake. Because, if you're really that devoted to what you're doing, you almost have to.
In another piece of awesome yet obvious visual symbolism, when Nina redoubles her commitment to the band, she runs to a nearby lake and happens to catch the start of a fireworks show. I kind of love this series.
In episode 7's final moments, in the middle of a concert, the band, which has remained nameless for the entire first half of the show, is finally (and hastily) christened Togenashi Togenari. A literal line-of-sight name, because Nina is an insane person.
Episode 8 opens on a flashback, immediately reflecting Nina's current desire to drop out of school with Momoka's past plan to do the exact same thing. This entire section is flat animated, which to me is enough evidence to confirm that the show's usage of 2D animation to represent the past is an intentional stylistic choice.
Momoka remarks that if Diamond Dust gives themselves an escape route from their desire to make it big, they'll definitely end up using it rather than succeeding, so they shouldn't make one. It's interesting to note that this is the same philosophy that no less an artist than Eminem once advocated. I'm not sure it's the best advice, necessarily, but you can't deny the drive.
Subaru correctly points out that Nina's drive to succeed isn't as far-fetched as it seems, given various factors (those listed include; Tomo & Rupa being somewhat notable indie musicians, Momoka being an ex member of Diamond Dust to begin with, an endorsement on Twitter from another singer, etc.) Nina's plan is no plan---the same that Momoka had as a teenager---no escape routes, no backup plans.
It's notable that Nina's memories don't get the 2D treatment, and I think that may be because unlike Momoka, she's not romanticizing her own past. Momoka, we can clearly see by this point, is guilty of seeing Nina as a slightly younger version of herself in too literal a sense. She thinks that because she failed with Diamond Dust, she'll fail with Togenashi Togenari too, and that Nina will fail with Togenashi Togenari too, because "that's how these things go." She fails to consider that the only data point she's operating off of is her own, and what the final scene---and the inevitable confrontation with the renewed Diamond Dust---tells us, which is that the original group splitting up might have been best for both them and Momoka.
And then there's the final scene, which I find hard to put into words. It's just so much. Momoka cranking her own old song, crying her eyes out, as Nina says she loves her (!!!!!) as they speed down the highway. This show is unhinged. I love it to pieces.
Truly we are in the middle of a girls band revolution. I never like to promise these things, but I might review this when it's over.
Worth noting! The show TRENDED ON TWITTER FOR SEVERAL HOURS after this episode aired. It really does feel like an *event.* I haven't seen this many people pop for an original anime in ages.
12 notes
¡
View notes
Text
whoa look at me talking about the acolyte wow... I dislike commenting on currently airing shows largely because there is so much that is still a mystery ooh what could happen next, and this is very true for the murder mystery only the victims aren't who you think show.
this is an upsettingly long post ostensibly about how I think there will be a mae pov flashback, and really about how I think osha's flashback that we have now is not the full story, which is fairly obvious, but I've put way to much thought into getting together what passes for textual evidence for it. read at own peril contains much yapping about e3.
anyway. episode three. time to comment on the currently airing show. beautiful stunning cinematography - different director Kogonada, and yeah. wow. very pretty. a lot more obvious Symbolism shots, which I am a sucker for icl, and in general some very beautiful stuff this is, and I will go to bat for this theory (please please please be right c'mon leslye do this for me) half of the flashbacks, and it is all from osha's point of view. right ok. so. entertain me here. some people on twt have noted how there are some shots in flashback scenes in the trailer that we haven't seen yet, and this + torbin's scar and the one word title (all other episodes have been two words, with each clearly corresponding to mae or osha) + the fact that this episode is so visually distinct and Kogonada is directing e7 too + what I am about to talk about wrt mae and osha all leads me to think 'yeah, this is half of the flashback', and the other half is probably going to be the bit people get antsy about yay.
now! the mae and osha stuff - I think that Destiny (that's the name of this episode btw. I have so many thoughts about the jedi and agency as ever. that is a separate yap though) is going to be the less controversial of the two largely because, bear with me just lining up this wasps nest in my aim, it is 'pro-jedi' so to speak. the jedi are good, not bad. osha restates time and time again her desire to not be a witch, to explore the world, and the jedi are her way of doing this. sol is kind and saves her, and the jedi are nice, if strict. they stop her from having to do the ascension, a ceremony she really didn't want to do, and they saved her. now. for the disclaimer. I don't think the jedi are evil and bad, I think they are flawed as an institution, and that is the angle I am fairly certain the acolyte is going for - they care more about the legality of the situation rather than the 'moral good' of the situation they are in aka mae really does not want to leave, even if osha does - it would surely cause far more harm to take them both as the jedi pretty clearly intend to do. that in mind. I also think everyone is sleeping on how incredibly fun and biased these two (more on this later) flashback episodes will be. hands up if you've seen the last duel, anyone, anyone? well the last duel is a film about uh. the violent sexual assault of a woman in medieval france. and it is framed through three different accounts of the events as told by our three leads: jean (the husband), jacques (the rapist), and marguerite (the victim). marguerite's account is presented by the film as the actually accurate one, it is The Truth, but it is also the last version we see, so for the first two thirds of the film we have watched two clashing narratives, with no clear indication of who is right. the story of the acolyte is one inspired by leslye headland's relationship with her sister (linky link) a relationship where both sisters believe fully that they are in the right - if osha's account is 100% the truth, this really doesn't seem to track and the show looses most of its emotional depth, and while yes, sure, external material doesn't mean that the show will unfold this way, I am willing to bet (please please please please please) that it will. now. onto the actual content of this episode that I think supports my theory - aka osha's (clear) bias.
I am going to start with what I think is the strongest point, and work from there. so. basics. please remember that osha has spent the last 14 years of her life knowing that mae set the fire that killed her parents, the same fire that traumatised osha to the point that she was unable to continue her jedi training and had to take an illegal and dangerous mechanic job, and yet she still clearly loves her sister - I would guess from this information presented in e1&2 that mae and osha had a close bond before, and yet the flashback shows almost the opposite. osha chafes at mae's constant proximity, at the 'born as two but always one' line, they are near constantly fighting, mae seems like an out and out psychopath, freezing a space hummingbird and deliberately setting the fire in an attempt to kill osha (in funny news. the fortress had so many osha violations no wonder she wanted to leave hahaha I am a comedic genius). why does osha miss the shot then, in light of this? well, the thesis of this theory post is that osha is not remembering in full 4k HD honesty - again, she has spent most of her life certain that mae essentially killed her parents and indirectly ruined her dreams of being a jedi, and this lack of clarity about the truth comes through in how she acts towards mae. now. my evidence for this? largely vibes based, and could just be poor writing, but what is star wars (prequels edition esp) if not reading heavily into interesting writing :D largely here my hmmm moments all stemmed from how conflictingly Destiny (the episode) presents mae. she is at once a known freezer of space hummingbirds (but osha doing the exact same just for less time is fine?) and setter of fires while vowing to kill osha to prevent her from leaving, and also osha's clearly loved sister - yes they fight, but again, osha misses the shot that would have brought mae into jedi custody (custody that she fairly explicitly trusts). now, my hypothesis here is that osha looking back on these events as coloured by her knowledge of what mae will do unconsciously is framing mae as more in the wrong, inherently bad etc to make sense of mae's actions. now, additionally supporting evidence I will present to the review group is how vehemently osha (who is saved by and goes on to become a padawan to a jedi) supports the jedi, in a way that seems to have been, to me at least, argued before with mae. the girl has been drawing the jedi logo in her notebook, her love of the jedi is pretty apparent in this episode. and yet the witches pretty clearly fear the jedi and what they bring with them. they disagree with the jedi perception of the force - and this disagreement is not framed as wrong by the narrative thus far, the republic and jedi quite literally have banned them from ensuring the longevity of their coven - so why is osha so firmly convinced that the jedi are good? :warning: violent and unconfirmed theory :warning: through the lens of osha being biased as someone who was saved by the jedi, and clearly wanted more than life in the fortress, osha reframes her 'siding' with the jedi in childhood as a more 'moral' stance; the jedi and good, and mae, who burnt down her life, is bad; a conflict between (understandably) overprotective parents + a clingy sister and osha who wants to be her own person with her own identity (oh look a Theme) gets morphed into a conflict between the jedi (an identity osha later takes on, and still clearly largely adheres too, insert textpost about how despite leaving osha is still bound by core jedi principles e.g. compassion) and the witches (an identity osha never feels connected to and actively tries to leave behind).
I will also say I think you can see all of this in the title of the episode, Destiny. why is this the title? certainly its a break from e1&2 'lost/found' and 'revenge/justice', where they are descriptors of what osha and mae are (either literally as in being found or enacting). destiny does not fit this mould, and I think is a rather interesting framing of all this. it is osha's destiny to become a jedi, but for that to happen, mae seemingly must get cast as the villain, without any room for doubt or her side of the story. also, there is the fact that agency is such a big part of this episode (aww its my reoccurring favourite star wars theme). osha's lack of individuality/separation from mae, the way she feels unable to refuse the ceremony she clearly doesn't want to. the jedi (really just sol. I have so many thoughts about sol) offer osha the choice that she wants, and yet the 'sanctity' of that choice is taken away from her in the violent death of the coven and the burning down of the fortress. sol says if you wish you will train as my padawan, but she can never return to the ruins of the fortress, she must go to coruscant. logically and emotionally yes I understand this, but the show has made a point about how the jedi order does not really give you transferable skills - is the same not true in the other direction? osha has no family now, functionally nowhere to go that isn't the jedi order. the question is will you be my padawan, not will you be a padawan. destiny (or at least the actions of others) has made it so that the agency she just received has been dashed on the rocks. and to refocus on the actual topic of this post, that theft of autonomy was pretty directly down to mae, and so how else to process that other than casting mae as a villain.
now, in the show about troubled sororal relations (I restate my earlier link) there naturally has to be another side to the uh. sororal relations than just osha's. also I bet its going to be called 'choice' or some shit to mirror Destiny and the other episode titles and highlight the differences in worldviews of osha and mae, jedi and witch
this is all, of course, to go without even saying the unclear reasons for why mae set the fire. was she just evil and possessive, or (as the server posited) being controlled or mind tricked or startled or even was there some palpatine level manipulation going on by the master. questions that a mae specific flashback would answer.
anyway. good show I like it when the star wars makes me think about stuff even when it is 2am and I should be sleeping. watch literally none of this be true
#the acolyte spoilers#rampant theorising here stand clear#I'm not tagging this with Star Wars etc bc I don't want the very spoilery bit of nonsense to get in the wrong tag. so fuck my system on#the blog I guess#original ani thought#kinda tempted to write some actual thematic metas as well now...#the acolyte#spoilers
7 notes
¡
View notes
Note
wow, looks like you can do an essay about Dimentio.
What do you think of the other characters?
For me in "short"
Tippi: The protagonist of the story and got her happy ending, I came to miss her presence after the end.
Count Bleck: Definitely one of Mario's best written villains. I cry.
Nastasia: I was in her place, I empathized a lot with her and sometimes I wish she would return in other stories.
O'chunks: I was surprised by her story, I didn't expect that background, for me he is a himbo in a good way. A good guy.
Mimi: I can't say the same with Mimi, a little disappointed, but at least there are headcanons.
Mr. L: Definitely wasted potential, I would have liked to see more with the other minions. It's weird if I got a penny for every time Luigi is hypnotized into being an enemy I'd have two cents, which isn't much but it's weird that it happens twice.
Dimentio: It's thanks to him that I have an obsession with Jesters, he managed to do what Bowser couldn't with just a snap of his fingers. Terrifying, I hope one day we see it again.
OMG YAYAYAYAYAY IVE BEEN WANTING THIS ASK
Okay so. Iâll try not to make this unbearably long. But this game is my special interest so. I apologize in advance. (I turned off reblogs bc reblogging asks removes the read more) (and itâs gonna clog peopleâs feed) (this IS unbearably long) (I Failed)
Tippi:
Omg I miss Tippi too :( it feels so weird playing the game without her.
Tippi is so . so interesting. All of the characters are interesting, but I especially love the way sheâs written. I love how they were able to nail that sheâs gentle and caring, but also firm and not about to put up with anybodyâs bullshit. To me, thatâs hard to write without it feeling disengenuine, and they pulled it off with Tippi VERY well. A particular line of hers I really like is, âPerhaps...my life would have been more carefree without you, that is true,â in response to Blumiereâs, âBut I have caused you so much suffering..." She didnât immediately console him. She told him the truth, as harsh as it was. Idk, that scene had just always stuck out to me. Itâs not a line I expected to be written.
I wish her unexplained teleportation powers were. Explained. But that doesnât really mess up her character so itâs okay. However. I hate how she developed a crush on Mario. Iâve always hated it. I like to pretend itâs not real LMAO. But then again, it can be interpreted in a deeper way- that she didnât actually have a crush on Mario and she was merely projecting onto him. Her memory was flooding back to her and she was in a very vulnerable situation after all. Projecting those feelings for an, at the time, unknown individual onto Mario makes sense.
I love Tippi dude she rocks sheâs my favorite forever and ever and ever
-
Count Bleck:
where do I even begin on Count Bleck good lord. One of Nintendoâs best villains even outside of the Mario franchise. God heâs so fucking good.
I wish it was more clear whether or not he was planning on erasing Team Bleck from existence as well. Whether or not he was going to do that that impacts his character HEAVILY. Him wanting all worlds to end but sparing the people who cared about him really helps his âredemptionâ and helps us have more sympathy for him. Unfortunately itâs not directly touched on outside of that one thing Dimentio said, but. Itâs Dimentio LMFAOOO we canât trust him. I personally lean more towards Bleck was going to betray the team just given the evidence about it. I yapped a lot about my reasoning IN A POST I CANT FIND. It had a bunch of screenshots and stuff and I canât. Fucking. Find it. Oh well I guess thatâs just GONE â¤ď¸
Despite this I feel like itâs important to address Bleck with nuance. I donât think he intentionally planned on betraying his team. I think he genuinely loved them. But he was so caught up in the Dark Prognosticus and the Void and Timpani and ultimately BEING this Count Bleck character the book spoke of that he felt like there was no way out of it anymore. This is supported by the fact he tried to fight Mario in the final battle despite knowing Timpani was still alive. Itâs clear Blumiere had completely lost himself, as if he forgot why he was doing this in the first place and let Count Bleck take over (note: I mean this in a symbolic/psychological sense; I donât believe the book was controlling him). Itâs only when heâs on his death bed that he realizes he does not have to do this.
I put redemption in quotation marks because. I donât think he was redeemed. Granted he didnât have enough time to do anything, but to be honest, I donât think he or any other member of Team Bleck is redeemable (before anybody comes at me with the lament au/ajl, THE POINT IS THAT DIMENTIO IS NOT REDEEMABLE NO MATTER HOW HARD HE TRIES!! YOU CANNOT REDEEM THE EXTERMINATION OF LIFE ITSELF!!!)
Also heâs a goofy guy. Heâs just a dad
Thoughts thoughts THOUGHTS THOUGHTS THOUGHTS
-
Nastasia:
NASTASIA COME BACK TO ME. God I wish they kept her emo hair strand.
Her character is so. so sad (I feel like Iâve said that sentence forty seven times, this game is MISERABLE). I love her so much. I love her confidence, I love how she doesnât take bullshit from anyone, I love how much she loves. It makes me so fucking sad how depressed she remains long after Blumiereâs sacrifice. Like, we donât know how much time passed between the ending of the game and Mario returning (when you boot up the save file again, Merlon states that it has been a while since heâs seen Mario). It explains why Mimi and OâChunks seem fine (Iâm sure theyâre not fine, but I mean it explains why they were able to have a ânormalâ conversation with Mario and co.), but Nastasia is still so heartbroken.
Of course that is to be expected, and Iâm glad Nintendo didnât make everything all sunshine and rainbows ooo weâre all happy now etc, even IF a long time has passed. It makes total sense that there are repercussions to experiencing a traumatic event and Nastasia portrays it well (for a Mario game). In her epilogue dialogue, her hope for better days is shallow. Itâs fake. She shows how she truly feels and immediately backtracks (âI guess I should be happy... I mean, I am, but, um...â). She still wants to put on that confident and secure exterior, but itâs not working. She will always love Blumiere, and she will always miss him. I hope she finds happiness one day, too. She deserves to live her own life.
-
OâChunks:
OâCHUNKS IS SO UNDERRATED. FUCK
I know Iâm contributing to this I barely post about him but lord heâs so interesting. I know the Japanese and English translation tell different versions of his backstory, but I really like the English version where Blumiere manipulated him in his extremely depressed state to join him. It gives more layers to Blumiereâs character- the lengths he was willing to go to get this job done, lengths that he would have never gone to before losing Timpani (and himself).
OâChunks has one of the most unforgiving backstories in the whole games and itâs rarely talked about. He was a fucking COMMANDER OF AN ARMY and the whole game heâs just played off as some dumb brute/comic relief. I actually believe he suffered some kind of brain damage from that final battle, explaining his eyes, his struggle to speak properly, and his overall behavior. Also, the fact one of his most trusted advisors betrayed him mirrors his relationship with Dimentio. JUST. GOD . RIPS HAIR OUT. I wouldnât blame him if he never trusted anybody again after the events of the game. But he clearly has a heart of gold beneath that rough exterior, so I doubt that mindset would come to pass
Also I know itâs not this deep like at All but . Regarding OâChunks and his backstory, the last war fought in Scotland was the Battle of Culloden in 1746. The Scots lost that battle too, so it fits OâChunks backstory. Itâs funny to imagine heâs hundreds of years old and he just Stopped Aging once he joined the âMario Dimensionâ for lack of a better term LMAO. Side note, I also believe Blumiere lost Timpani centuries ago- especially considering the Ancients are extinct by the time the game takes place (although Iâve heard itâs possible Blumiere murdered the entire Tribe of Darkness? but thatâs ambiguous) (and my feelings on it would be another yapping session so Iâll shut up for now). It just took THAT long to get the criteria for the Void met. So itâs interesting to think of the concept that OâChunks and Blumiere have known each other for THAT long. Probably why he sent OâChunks out to fight the heroes first. He trusted him the most. But then again, I know the game did not intend for OâChunks to be born in the 1700s lol. Like I said itâs just interesting for me :3
-
Mimi:
MIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMIMI!!!! MY GIRL!!!!
I agree with you- her backstory is disappointing compared to characters like OâChunks and Dimentio. But at the same time I enjoy the unknown. After all, she is the embodiment of mystery. Her whole shtick is mimicking. You never know if a character is truly themselves or itâs a copy (I mean, you do- her mannerisms are obvious- but still lmao)- hell, even SHE canonically loses herself sometimes in her mimics. But even then, I wish we knew more about her. AND I WISH THE CONCEPT OF HER BEING A FAILED PIXL WAS TALKED ABOUT MORE? WHAT??????? HELLO????? REMINDERRRR that you canât just go about making Pixls. That was a practice for the Ancients, and the ONLY reason Merlon could do it is because he is a descendant of the Ancients with a shit ton of their books. How old is Mimi? How much has she seen? If sheâs centuries or even thousands of years old- depending on how long ago you think the Ancients died out- what was she doing this whole time??? LIKE HELLO!!! MIMI!! SPEAK TO ME!!!!
I love love LOVE LOVE LOVE how she can be used as a parallel to the Pixl Queen in regards to Dimentio. Dimentio and Mimi have a sibling dynamic to me, and the story potential considering Dimentioâs biological sister got turned into a Pixl and. Yk. Mimi could possibly be a failed Pixl. Is INSANE and I WISH it was used more because holy shit it has so much potential.
I like to believe the Pixl Creator (aka Dimentioâs father imo) created Mimi even if thereâs no evidence JUST LET ME HAVE THIS but I also made a post maybe a year ago that theorized Francisâ ancestors created Mimi. I donât think itâs really recognized that Francis CREATED A PIXL WITHOUT MAGIC. Yk that spell that requires the magic of the Dark Prognosticus? Yeah just forget that shit I said earlier about Non-Ancients not being able to just go out and make a Pixl, because apparently this fuckass Redditor did it. Anyways. Tipton is a robot. Mimi is a robot. I rest my case (loud applause) (people throw roses at me)
-
I already made posts about Mr. L and Dimentio, so I wonât ramble anymore here :3 But in regards to what you said YEAH . Mr. L couldâve been so much more itâs genuinely painful. And Dimentio is fucking terrifying. I honestly like to believe he did genuinely nuke the protagonists and the game only said he merely teleported them because saying âMarioâs dead like for realâ is probably something Nintendo didnât want to put in their game. I mean come on- he used the explosion attack that causes actual damage in battle. They died LMOAOOAOA. I hope we see both of them again. I was hoping so BADLY for even a glimmer of Mr. L in the Mario movie-like a mask/bandana hanging out of a drawer cameo or something. BUT ITS OKAY GUYS đđđđđđ (visibly shaking) (teeth chattering) (is missing patches of hair on my head) (rocking back and forth)
12 notes
¡
View notes
Text
oh no another post about something I like
okay here goes
So most people think that, in ace attorney, wright and edgeworth or shipped together due to like. Being two young men in the same franchise. But thereâs a whole bunch of other stuff and I have made a handy dandy list of the main reasons, because I love making lists. Also for my non AA fan viewers after reading this list how gay would you say they are? Curious how this looks from an outside view. Okay list time
- well Iâm going to be bringing out the big guns first and saying they theyâre the only AA characters to have matching wedding rings as their merch (every other character got necklaces)
- edgeworth is noted by the creator to apparently not be interested in women, and also apparently finds phoenix attractive (in a romantic way)
- phoenix changed his entire career and centered his life around meeting edgeworth
- art for ace attorney was done by kumiko suekane, who not only used to write BL but also was very adamant on phoenix and edgeworth being the same/similar age
- that line. Yknow the one. In the first trial where edgeworth makes an appearance, he has a talk with phoenix anout how seeing phoenix again has given him âunnecessaryâŚ..feelingsâ. Thatâs the quote. Itâs gayer in the game.
- edgeworth is noted by gumshoe to repeat phoenixs name for some reason??
- the uh. One game where phoenix calls edgeworth daddy. That was something.
- other gay lines, I csnt include them all but I highly recommend experiencing the games firsthand.
- the second game was purposefully written to make it seem gay. Not like actually, most queerbaiting, but hey.
- the voice actors for the English AA dub have tons of bloopers where they just mess around, and a bunch of that is just them ammong jokes about edgeworth and phoenix being gay
- apparently thereâs something about a really gay looking piece of official art? I havenât seen it nor do I know what it is but I do see it mentioned a lot so. Thought Iâd put it down here because it could be significant, what with the artist being a former BL writer.
Alright thatâs all the reasons I can think of for now. I also find it important to mention that many people also headcanon edgeworth as being aromantic and/or asexual, which is also an interpretation I like, but thatâs another topic and would make a shorter list (in fact, Iâll list the main reasons right here: heâs said to ânot want to marry a womanâ, he isnât swayed at all by the attractive women in court when even the judge is, and is the kind of guy whoâs âmarried to his workâ, as they say).
Anyways Iâll add a poll too for fun.
Wow thatâs a lot of options, even though my posts arenât really seen by anyone. Still had fun with it though. And thatâs what matters.
#ace attorney#phoenix wright#miles edgeworth#polls#I should create a tag to separate my fandom stuff from my other posting#idk what to call it though#curse my uncreative username that limits me from cute variations of my name to use as a tag#whatever
17 notes
¡
View notes
Text
RAAAAAAAAAAAAH (translation: I consumed caffeine and am overflowing with admiration for various peoples, to whom I shall express with no regard for grammar or punctuation)
@quirkle2 HELLO your art is gorjus I love happening upon it and itâs heartwarming with the wholesome but the epic and fierce ones are super dramatic and intense and also your Wars and Legend posts taught me what a qpr is so thanks I appreciate that. I especially enjoy your choice of colour for line work and the very liberal depiction of hair with how it often hugs the face softly and wildly in your art
@kesoo You have such a uniquely flavoured style it is very charismatic and pops out like a cartoon but the skill behind it is clear as day and I cannot succinctly describe how veraciously and immediately my brain attached to that, itâs wow. I very certainly admire your pursuit in animation and I hope the education is doing well for you
@telemna-hyelle @bokettochild @skyward-floored heeeyyyy You are all so kind and genuine, it is a joy to passively read your interactions with whatever/whomever when Iâm scrolling through as they generally emanate good vibes, oft good humour and good insight. On top of that, all three of you are amazing writers between âwhat You Look At, You Changeâ, the Feathered AU, âA Bride For Hyruleâs Princeâ, âBrethren In A Cradleâ and the many other shorts and stories and whumps I have and have yet to read (I had started sketches trying to illustrate Leg revealing his wings in FTMH but unfortunately my sketchbook was stolen/lost along with my lunch bag and a bunch of art supplies a while ago)
@minty-mumbles bro your fic summaries are so intriguing, Iâm just sifting through them on ao3 and a whole lot of them have a note of profoundness in them among the evident whump creating a sort of question of how the characters in question react to whatever the hook is for that particular fic scenario. I especially like the ones where Wild reflects his/their view of themself and the world they find themselves in in how they treat their hair and clothing according to social customs, as well as the fics about Hyrule and his fairy heritage
I think Iâve been writing this for maybe an hour, letâs keep going
@sraksha Iâve stated before in tags of a post how your art visually resembles a cats toe-beans in itâs soft firmness and also the fact your style kinda makes the Lu boysâ faces look like cats but your expressions!!! The outfit designs!!! The fluidity in body movement!!! !!!!!!! Easily at a level I myself still strive to achieve (this is not self deprecation this is me saying I look up to you and your art in my journey for growth)
@loz-obsessed-person-i-guess @indigoartistqueen Ello ello I enjoy you both greatly and I know Indigo is away for the time being but as I have an inclination for direct conversation over virtually posting messages on a bulletin board you two have given me the most direct meaningful interaction on this site yet and I truly appreciate that
Also the george washington frog, that too
@ectology Your art???? Holy crap????? I chomp like cookie with the fluid sketchy bits and the wide diversity in styles and I just got to the 2012 homestuck part of your art tag while writing this but wowâ the difference 7+ years of practice can make
@growingupgerudo @linkeduniverse @linked-maze @bonus-links @minas-linkverse @heroesspirit I cannot in short words describe the bliss of a Zelda brainrot I have been in for the last however many months and rather than writing an individual thing for each of yous lemme just shout it all here: I am to no end in awe of the dedication, time and talent (note: skill and effort but alliteration is fun) that goes into these comics in the unique takes on every design; every minutely different detail that solidifies each comic and artist and writer apart, enriching what has essentially been a deep dive into my early childhood while I rediscover and rekindle a deep seated love for LoZ. I could say many many more things in this but in short You fellow creatives have my deepest respect and hhhdbbbfbbdbbbdbbfbbfbbhh
There may or may not be more of this tomorrow idk, the self awareness is coming back with a growing hesitance for posting this
37 notes
¡
View notes