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hello-yue-here · 3 years ago

Note

About your atla ship songs, I have a couple of questions (sorry if my phrasing comes out wrong, english isn't my first language and I worry it might across as accidentally defensive): how did you end up with the choices for zukka, jetko and yuekka (note: I haven't seen the great comet, so feel free to obsess over it, I'm intrigued now and the hype is appreciated!)? Sidenote: I think the mailee choice is HILARIOUS and the tokka one just make me sad, I didn't expect to be attacked like this😭

kdjfha;s i love you im gonna obsess SO HARD over great comet now. you may regret this

this is gonna be so long so the rest is under the cut whoops

yuekka: no one else from great comet

where do i even begin. WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN

okay so background information on this show: it's based off of a 76 oages excerpt from war and peace and its centered around a woman named natasha (and this guy pierre but he's irrelevant to this song so we wont worry about him) and natasha's bethrothed is off fighting in the war right now. she hasn't seen him in a while but she is in love with him.

every single lyrics of this song SCREAMS yuekka to me. the innocence and purity of their love. the love at first sight. and even the melancholy ending just- i go apeshit for this song. i love this song so much. and denee benton's voice??? kljsdhflwksugf please listen to this song if you haven't already. listen to the whole show. your life will be changed forever.

onto the lyrics (i stg this is ab to be the whole song whoops)

"the moon"

THOSE ARE THE FIRST WORDS ON THE SONG. natasha and andre (her bethrothed) met underneath the moonlight. Sokka and Yue first spoke to eachother at night and always met each other for their most intimate moments under the moonlight. also yue is LITERALLY the moon so like: right of the bat with those two words it's yuekka.

"and i saw your eyes / and i saw your smile / and the world opened wide"

sokka fell in love with yue the moment he saw her in the canal. she literally enchanted this motherfucker. everything about her made his heart go crazy. and 'the world opened wide' to me is from yue's perspective. Yue had never left the north pole and sokka had seen a good chuck of the world at the point. He took her on appa, he told her about his adventures. he saw the world yue wished to see and you know damn well that Sokka would have done anything to give it to her.

"oh the moon /oh the snow in the moonlight / and your childlike eyes and your distant smile / ill never be this happy again / you and i and no one else"

natasha sings fondly about the moon and the snow, seeing as it was where she fell in love with andre. yue and sokka LITERALLY fell in love in the same place: in the snowy nothern water tribe under the light of the moon. childlike eyes: THEYRE CHILDREN!!! distant smile: this is where it gets a little sad. theyre both children with way too many duties during a world that has known nothing but war for the past century. they want to be happy but yeah, theyre smiles are distant and far away because happiness seems out of reach for them most of the time. i'll never be this happy again: the moments yue and sokka shared together were probably the happiest either of them ever were. they were able to ignore the war and the world in the moments they shared together. and with no one else. no one else would be able to give each other this sense of peace and happiness and love.

"joy and life inside our souls / and no body knows just you and me / it's our secret"

Yue and Sokka had to sneak out in secret at night to go and see each other. Yue and Sokka couldn't be together for real because Yue was already engaged, but they were literally in love so she decided to see him anyways in secret. kasdjfhklasjd im losing my mind over them at this point.

"this winer sky / how can anyone sleep / there was never such a night before / i feel like putting my arms around my knees / and squeezing tight as possible / and flying away"

these are my FAVORITE lines in the entire song. yue and sokka had never felt this strongly about anyone before and that's why they are so drawn to each other. they had never experienced love before and they wanted to hold onto it for as long as they could even though they knew they couldnt. Sokka takes yue up on appa and she is wistful and wishes she could live like he does every day: ie flying away. oh my god these two deserved so much better. so much fucking better.

now for the saddes part. the saddest fucking part.

"maybe he'll come today / maybe he came already / and he's sitting in the drawing room / and i simply forgot"

natasha misses andre so intensely at this point. when i first listened to this show and heard this song i was like "wait a min... is andre like... dead?" and im sure i wasnt the only person who assumed that this was why natasha felt so sad by the end of such a beautiful song. (spoiler alert andre is fine)

but this line really exemplifies how sad natasha is, and hints at the fact that andre may never come back. it implies that their relationship is doomed (at least in my opinion) and that's all yuekka. Sokka misses yue intensely when shes gone. Yue accepted her fate almost immediately but sokka was in denial. he thought there had to be another way. but in the end it wasn't meant to be. and sokka will go on, loving yue, wishing for her back, even though it's not possible.

fuck im gonna cry.

zukka: all i've ever known- hadestown

"i was alone so long / i didn't even know that i was lonely / out in the cold so long / i didnt even know that i was cold"

sokka is from the swt so theres where the cold comes in. also in the gaang (initially) it was just him katara and aang. and katara and aang were much closer to each other than sokka was with aang and the two of them were benders so sokka was kind of an outsider with the two of them. He also represses a lot of his emotions and feels the need to do everything himself so i do see a lot of loneliness in sokka. and the fact that so many people in his life have left him (his mom, yue, his dad, suki briefly, etc...) he is known to keep people at an arms length. i see a lot of loneliness in sokka.

zuko's loneliness is a lot more obvious: he has literally been cast out and abandoned by everyone except iroh. and even then he still feels the need to be alone (remember zuko alone? thought so) these boys look after themselves and push others away and revel in their loneliness in order to keep themselves from getting hurt. at least in my opinion on canon and also some fanon because id be a liar if i said fanon didnt influence how i view ALL my ships (not just zukka)

"all ive ever known is how to hold my own / but now I wanna hold you too"

COME ONE MANNNN, they just wanna hold each other. theyre both very big protectors as well and kljhflkasdhg they wanna protect eachother like kljdhfl im gonna lose it rn.

"You take me in your arms / And suddenly there's sunlight all around me / Everything bright and warm / And shining like it never did before / And for a moment I forget / Just how dark and cold it gets"

SUNLIGHT SYMBOLISM. zuko is literally powered by the sun. i don't think i even NEED to elaborate on this one anymore lol. They find comfort in each other away from all of their trauma. when they're together nothing else matters and i personally love that for them. they both deserve love.

"I knew you before we met / And I don't even know you yet / All I know is your someone I have always known"

these two are extremely similar in canon. many parallels. older brothers overshadowed by their prodigy little sisters. longing to make their fathers proud (granted one dad is good and one is fuckin evil), both are pretty bad with emotions. both are seen protecting others before themselves (sokka protecting suki during the serpant's pass, sokka protecting toph on like multiple occassions, zuko protecting katara in the final agni kai), the list goes on. they know who the other is because they see themselves in the other person. they already know each other because they are each other (in a way, not entirely, but the similarities are strong in my opinion)

"I'm gonna hold you forever / The wind will never change on us / Long as we stay with each other / Then it will always be like this"

i just think this line is so cute and sweet (ignoring all the symbolism and foreshadowing that comes with the last line in the musical itself. im gonna pretend this is nothing but happy) and i think these boys deserve happiness so yeah. this song is zukka to me lol.

jetko: thrill of first love- falsettoes

if you've never listened to this song go an do it now. you will know INSTANTLY that it is jetko because of the dynamics alone. marvin and whizzer are pure jetko and i take no crticisms.

marvin and whizzer are both extremely stubborn, and they don't always get along, and they fight a lot, and they get mad at each other a lot, and they are both passionate as hell, and they will bring this passion into everything. they love each other that is without a doubt, but they arent perfect and they are once again stubborn and determined as fuck.

sound familiar? it's literally jetko.

the lyrics aren't what remind me of jetko, but the dynamic itself. the lyrics are too on the nose for a gay couple in 1970's america so that rlly cant apply to jetko all that much. but the way these two characters bounce off of each other and get annoyed with each other and argue with eachother reminds me of jetko. because let's be honest: these two are the most stubborn characters in the whole show. they will fight for what they believe and it will take literally everything to change their minds.

i love jetko but i think they would have petty arguments all the time and get aggravated by one another so easily. and this is even seen in canon: they work so fucking well together but they did not even HESITATE to fight one another after neither of them would give in and let the fight about whether jet was right or wrong about zuko being a firebender. like i cannot say it enough they are stubborn as fuck.

but underneath all that stubborn pettiness and bickering: marvin and whizzer still love each other. and jet and zuko would still love each other. because even though they are stubborn when it comes to arguments, they are even more stubborn and determined when it comes to each other. these two passionate motherfuckers are in love.

(now when i chose this song i decided to ignore the fact that this song literally spells out the fact that marvin and whizzer's relatinoship is doomed because they literally say passion dies. thats the difference between jetko and whizzer and marvin because i dont think passion dies. i chose this song strictly for the bickering lmao)

and i know you didnt ask about tokka but,,,,

i rlly wanna talk about the tokka one

so im going to

tokka: on my own- les mis

look. i KNOW this song is about unrequited love and i love tokka as a couple but,,, the unrequited love in this song just SCREAMS unrequited tokka to me so thats what i went with.

eponine is a girl who has neglectful parents who lives life by her own rules: toph. eponine is shown to be tough and confident and spunky to others but behind all of that she has emotions, she feels love, she hides her vulnerability so much: toph. she is in love with a guy she cant be with because he loves someone else: TOPH

eponine is toph to a t and toph is eponine to a t. this is not up for debate lmao

"without him i feel his arms around me"

toph is always seen grabbing onto someone (and its almost ALWAYS sokka) when she's somewhere where she can't use her feet to see. FEEL and ARMS cmon. look at it.

"and i know / i know that he is blind"

COME ON. IMAGINE TOPH SINGING THIS LINE. this line is already powerful enough in les mis but having toph, a blind character, sing it just makes the symbolism even deeper. toph sees the potential relationship they could have together. toph sees that sokka is oblivious to this. toph is not blind to the truth or the potention, but sokka is blind to her feelings. im about to lose my mind over this line.

"I love him / But every day I'm learning / All my life / I've only been pretending / Without me / His world will go on turning / A world that's full of happiness / That I have never known"

i need to sit down for a moment. toph grew up in a household where her parents did not understand her. she has learned to hide her true emotions and vulnerabilities from everyone. and its the fact that toph knows that she and sokka will never be together and the fact that she still loves him in spite of that is what makes this even more heartbreaking.

"but only on my own"

TOPH AND EPONINE SWEETIES I LOVE YOU

thank you for indulging my theatre kid nonsense. you are very sweet and kind and lovely and awesome and i hope you have a lovely day bestie :) <3

ask me why i think these songs go with these ships

#asks #liv is a theatre nerd #liv is an atla nerd #yuekka #zukka #jetko #tokka #ask me about my ship songs

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pawprinterfanfic · 5 years ago

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Thank you for the tag @teeandsnowflakes <3 This was a lot of fun to do!

Tagging @thelittlefanpire @eyessharpweaponshot @catastrophic-chloe @icantloseyou-too and @dylanobrienisbatman

Pick your top ten ships without reading the questions!

Zutara

Bellarke

Shirbert

Rebel Captain

Fremione

Finnpoe

Reddie

Percabeth

Anidala

Braime

1: Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

Honestly..... no. It happened so slowly that I didn’t realize it. I can look back at their scenes and think “oh wow they’re so in love and I ship it” right from the start, but I know it didn’t happen at the start. I’m fairly certain it was between TFA and TLJ because I remember screaming when Finn rushes over to Poe after the blast. but... i don’t know when it changed between TFA and TLJ?

2: Have you ever read a FanFiction about 2?

YES LMAOOOOOOO.

3: Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr avatar?

Surprisingly, no.

4: If 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

Cool cool. They were never canon and one of them is dead. A+ question and now I’m gonna go cry.

5: Why is 1 so important?

WHEW okay. Zutara. Push and pull. Fire and water. Sun and the moon. They are not opposites, but a complimentary pair. They go together, not in opposition. They aren’t the same, but they contrast each other perfectly. They grew together, found forgiveness together, understood each other better than anyone else. I could go on, but this sums up the main points.

As for why they’re important to me, it’s because they were so perfect for each other and they worked so perfectly in the story. Enemies to friends to lovers. Redemption. Forgiveness. Growth. UGH PERFECT. I also love both of these characters and they cared about each other to the ends of the world and I will go down with this ship.

6: Is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

Serious!!!

7: Out of all of your ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

Probably Bellarke :) Braime though...... they have so much chemistry ........ and Finnpoe.......... oh my god

8: Out of all of the ships, which ship has the strongest bond?

HMMMMMM. I’d say Bellarke is really high, but so is Percabeth. Both ships have been through hell together (some more literally than others), are willing to go through hell for each other, and will stand by each other.

9: How many times have you read/watched 10’s fandom?

I’ve watched seasons 1-7 three or four times in whole. Season 8 only once. And then I’ve watched only their seasons from season 2-4 three additional times.

10: Which ship has lasted the longest?

You know what. I just realized. That all my ships. Are either not canon. Or they’re dead. OR their show was cancelled immediately after they got together.

wait.

except Percabeth.

I always knew I could count on you, Percabeth.

We’re going... 14 books strong since their first kiss? maybe more? idk its so hard to count because they’re main characters for a solid 10 books, but then they’re in the background for 7 other books and agh.

They’ve been together for the longest by FAR though.

11: How many times, if ever, has 6 broken up?

They were never canon so ✌️🤪

12: If the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

Bellarke vs Percabeth. This is a hard decision. Both have faced a bunch of monsters and have fought many battles. They’re both strong leaders. They’ve both beaten the odds many many times.

I’d go with Bellarke because they’ve shown time and time again that they’re willing to play dirty and willing to do whatever it takes for their people. I feel like Percabeth might struggle with who the zombies are? and ? idk.

14: Is 4 still together?

first of all, RUDE. they were never together. but i mean. they died in each other’s arms so... they were together until the end?? is that even sadder than it was before???

15: Is 10 canon?

lmao for like 3 seconds and then SOMEONE ruined SOMEONE’S character. so. they are canon, but they aren’t endgame.

16: If all ten ships were put into a couple’s Hunger Games, which couple would win?

Oooo this is a hard one. I’m going to say Bellarke for reasons mentioned above, but Braime is a close second.

17: Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 5’s ship?

They literally have one scene together. nobody needs to sabotage them. they do that all on their own.

18: Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

HONESTLY, all of them, for the most part. Mainly because they’re all almost not canon/not endgame so I feel like there’s usually a lot of disregard towards those ships?

The one I’ve had to explain the most is Fremione though, if that counts for anything.

19: Do you spend hours a day going through 3’s tumblr page?

I used to, but now I’m too sad :/

20: If an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all up forever, which ship would you sink?

Probably Anidala, because I’ll only ship them pre-dark side Anakin, and uhhhhhhh. I’ve learned to live without them.

#tag game #about me #my ships #so many ships

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raeynbowboi · 6 years ago

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The Other Ships in My Fleet

So, I’ve already made a post talking about how I feel about certain ships in My Hero Academia, and another post about some of my other fandoms. Both posts got a lot of likes and reblogs, so I figured I’d talk about my ships from other fandoms. If this post also gets a lot of positive feedback, I’ll consider starting a second page to post my fan content for all of my fandoms, while still maintaining this one almost exclusively for My Hero Academia and Kiribaku specifically.

Klance (Keith x Lance) Voltron: Legendary Defender

I’m fully aware that this ship is probably not going to happen, but it’s really the only ship in the series that speaks to me. I will not lie, I am a big fan of dark and moody dating happy-go-lucky, and the rivals to friends to lovers element is just icing on the cake. It’s only further helped by Lance being Keith’s second-in-command. They help each other grow, and the trust that forms between them is cute and endearing. They also shared a major element to their characters. Both of them feel out of place, Keith because of his Galra heritage, and Lance because he doesn’t have a niche role.

Rabies/Rae x BB (Raven x Beast Boy) Teen Titans (2003)

While there wasn’t a lot of shipping fodder for these two in the 2003 iteration, the two are a canon couple in most versions of the teen titans, having been married in the comics (more than once, I think) so this is sort of a unique ship in that I ship it across every version of the two characters. Sporting a snarky moody goth and a lovable goofball, their dynamic was like that of an old married couple, or a moody teenager and her annoying little brother. Still, the two were good friends, and even though their personalities were polar opposites of each other, they had a lot of quiet, emotional moments together in the series. Whether you want to read them as friends or potential lovers, I think it’s hard to deny that there was a genuinely nice bond between the pair.

Garnet/Rupphire (Ruby x Sapphire) Steven Universe

As the show’s literal physical manifestation of love and a perfect relationship, it’s hard not to like the relationship between these two adorable lesbians. With the show sometimes being edited to remove the queer elements, it’s absolutely hysterical that they had the two get married in an episode very important to the plot, and put Ruby in the dress so that absolutely nobody could misinterpret her as a male. Editing it would only confuse viewers as to why everybody is in wedding attire, thus taking a very satisfying stance against censors and bigotry. Garnet also marks a first in children’s programming as the first same-sex wedding in a children’s animated show, at least as far as I’m aware.

Pearl x Mystery Girl Steven Unieverse

Although only featured in a single episode and having no dialogue, Mystery Girl (possibly named Sabina) is a very important element to Pearl’s character, being her first step toward moving on from Rose Quartz. There were fans that hoped that Mystery Girl would come back, but even if she doesn’t, she’s still important to Pearl’s character development.

Amedot (Amethyst x Peridot) Steven Universe

I know a lot of people prefer Lapidot, but frankly I find Lapis too selfish and cold-hearted to be ready for a relationship as she currently stands. I find Amethyst to be a better fit for Peridot, since they both share issues with their height. That, and the way the show frames them has romantic comedy tropes interwoven into their scenes. But even if they’re just friends, Amethyst’s approval means so much to Peridot.

Stevonnie (Steven Universe x Connie Maheswaren) Steven Universe

I’m not usually a fan of lead boy dates lead girl ships, as they tend to be very poorly done, and many feel forced, or are just boring and predictable. However, the bond between these two feels very genuine. They don’t feel like a lead boy and lead girl forced into a relationship at all. They come together very naturally, and the show takes its time to build their friendship up slowly. The show remembers that they’re kids first, friends second, jam buds third, and love interests last.

Tomstar (Tom Lucitor x Star Butterfly) Star Vs the Forces of Evil

Considering the show’s themes of monsters, racism, and not judging evil at face value, this ship serves as the most thematically poignant to the narrative that the show is setting up. It also makes Star a stronger parallel to her “evil” great great something grandmother, Eclipsa. Both are monster sympathizers with monster boyfriends. While the blood moon bonds complicate things, I see this ship as the most relevant to the themes and messages the show seems to want to send.

Tomco (Tom Lucitor x Marco Diaz) Star Vs the Forces of Evil

More of a joke/crack ship, I know it’s unlikely, but the entire episode of Friendenemies had romantic comedy written all over it. Between the literal in-universe break-up song to the show’s promotional art being inspired by dime store pulp romance novels fuel the fire that keeps this ship afloat.

Bumblebee/Bumbleby (Blake Belladonna x Yang Xiao Long) RWBY

Partners, teammates, and close friends, the ship really took off starting in season 2 during the episode “Burning the Candle”, as Blake spiraled into self-destructive habits due to obsessing over her problems. Nobody is able to get through to her until Yang comes in to talk to her. She doesn’t lecture her or beg her to stop. She instead forms a bridge of trust by first opening up about a similar situation she’s been in, and how she knows first hand that this sort of spiraling can only have negative impacts. They are shown to be parallels, as both girls are negatively effected by a loved one no longer in their life, and the trust issues that spring from that loved one’s actions. Yang was abandoned by her mother, a problem which she mentions Blake repeated. For Blake, it was the uncertainty of trusting someone’s character, and being afraid of someone slowly turning into someone else. She explicitly states in season 3 that her ex started off a nice guy, like Yang. The first time he hurt someone, there was a reason. There was always an excuse. Until eventually, she became the pardoner. The one excusing his actions. And, she expresses the fear that Yang could be following a similar path. Both girls have been hurt by someone in the past, and both girls are afraid of being hurt the same way again, and inadvertently hurt each other the same way as someone else has. It’s also known that RWBY characters tend to represent or be based on fairy tale characters. Yang is Goldilocks, and Blake is Beauty from Beauty and the Beast. However, based on the lyrics from Red Like Roses “Black the Beast descends from shadows, Yellow Beauty burns gold”, there seems to be an implication that Yang is the Beauty to Blake’s Beast. This is interestingly supported by Blake’s name. Blake is a Celtic name meaning both Black and White, and Belladonna literally means Beautiful Woman in Italian, but is also the name of a very poisonous plant often mistaken for the harmless blueberry. The duality of her name could be pointing to how she plays the dual role of both Beauty and Beast.

Seamonkeys (Sun Wukong x Neptune Vasilias) RWBY

A bit more of a crack ship, these two lovable idiots are far less likely to be canon, but since Sun is Yang’s main competition for Blake’s heart, I have no problem shipping him off elsewhere with his goofy best friend. Although they act more like usual best friends in the canon show, their relationship does have a much gayer tone in the less canon comedy show RWBY Chibi, where Neptune almost seems to act like a jealous clingy girlfriend a lot of the times. I doubt the ship would ever sail, but I mostly ship it because they’re cute together. Although, with season 6 just starting, I got the vibe that Sun was stepping aside to let Bumblebee sail uninhibited. Sun doesn’t really have a third popular ship, it’s just Black Sun and Seamonkeys, so this ship may be gaining validity in the future.

Gumlee (Marshall Lee x Prince Gumball) Adventure Time with Fiona and Cake

The male counterpart to Bubbline (Princess Bubblegum x Marceline), there’s no real difference between the two pairs other than their genders, and Gumball preferring baking while Bubblegum prefers science. Because they are effectively just gender-swapped clones of the canon ship, anything canonical between the girls is also technically canon with these two. It’s not that I don’t like Bubbline, but when given the choice between gay or lesbian versions of a couple, I’m going to be naturally inclined to lean toward the gay version.

Sasunaru/Narusasu (Sasuke Uchiha x Naruto Uzumaki) Naruto

Maybe there’s a cultural aspect I’m unaware of, but it’s a bit of a running gag in the Naruto fanbase at this point that Naruto is obsessed with Sasuke. So much so that he seems to care about him way beyond normal friendship. With how much these two obsess over one another, it’s no surprise why this became such a popular pairing. Their dynamic even dwarfed Hinata’s heartfelt confession of her love during the Pain Invasion Arc, because as soon as that ended, did Naruto go talk to Hinata? No, he immediately started thinking about Sasuke. Hinata definitely got the shaft in part II, which is a shame because I really loved her character.

Bob and Linda Belcher Bob’s Burgers

More of an honorable mention than a full on ship, I wanted to highlight them as one of adult animation’s only married couples that actually still like each other. In the wake of the popularity of the Simpsons, and the cementing of the genre with Family Guy, the stock dynamic of idiot husband and enraged but supportive wife became a recurring trope. Before long, every single animated sitcom-esque family fell into this very annoying cliche. So, finding a couple in adult animation that are not only married but still manage to show they love each other is amazing. Their marriage isn’t on the rocks, they find time to at least try and be romantic, and even when they have bets or are on opposing sides of something, the show never forgets that these two love each other at the end of the day.

Captain Swan (Killian “Hook” Jones x Emma Swan) Once Upon A Time

This relationship between Captain Hook and the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming might sound odd on paper, but this couple is by far one of the healthiest relationships in the series. Both Hook and Emma come from broken lives, and together build themselves up to something stronger. In a melodrama surrounding fairy tales, both characters are surprisingly grounded, realistic, and skeptical cynics, a very stark contrast from the usual wide-eyed lovey-dovey couples Disney is known for. Emma’s tendency to put up walls and Killian’s tendency to always put himself first are both slowly broken down over time as Killian tries to tear down Emma’s walls and get to know her while she works on building a foundation of trust between them. The pairing feels very organic, and they definitely feel like the most realistic couple in the series as they both take turns stumbling and working toward being good for each other.

Rumbelle (Rumplestiltskin x Belle) Once Upon A Time

In the early seasons, this couple was beautiful to watch. I truly loved their chemistry and dynamic, as both of them were given such strong characteristics without simplifying either of them. However, as the show went on, it started to lose that power. The couple started to feel toxic as Belle kept waiting for Rumple to change, and he kept on lying and lying. It even reached a stopping point. A perfect one. Rumple was redeemed. He was a good man again. He could be the man Belle deserved. But instead, he slipped right back into his old ways. It was then that I fell off the band wagon for this ship. I loved it once, until I got sick of watching him hurt her over and over.

Daenerys Targaryen x Khal Drogo Game of Thrones

Although together only for a short while, this power couple won audiences over very quickly, as Drogo’s gruff but passionate affection mixed with Danny’s growing confidence and rise to power made these two iconic.

Renly Baratheon x Ser Loras Tyrell Game of Thrones

Another short-lived relationship, the remarkable thing is that Renly was literally the only character vying for the throne with fully good intentions for the realm. He was concerned with the needs of the people, and was the only morally good candidate in the War of Five Kings. Sadly, the ydidn’t get much screen time, but they were still a strong couple.

Peraltiago (Jake Peralta x Amy Santiago) Brooklyn 99

A rare exception to the don’t force the leads to date rule, the show let them form a bond over time that went from a friendly childish rivalry to a friendly dating rivalry. While each character experiences change and growth, it is not at the expense of their personalities, and the progression feels like it was meant to happen.

#ships #shipping #fandom #steven universe #star vs the forces of evil #game of thrones #brooklyn 99 #once upon a time #ouat #star vs #rwby #naruto #voltron legendary defender #voltron #teen titans #bobs burgers #adventure time

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prairiedust · 5 years ago

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Folk the Author

Hi all, I’m stealing a little time from moving in to revisit my folktale metas before hiatus is over and my classes start up again (I accidentally signed up for a Maymester this summer and did a semester of coursework in six weeks and am mentally still spongy. Hard not to try to apply Bloom’s taxonomy to Supernatural watching, like where do I fall, am I a lower-order watcher, how can I put Bloom’s descriptors into a lesson plan about Supernatural, help.)

Here’s a quick discussion of the season 14 finale and some thoughts about where folklore as a theme has taken us In Light of New Information™. If you haven’t read the previous posts on this topic, they’re tagged under “the folklore of supernatural.” Moriah lends itself better to deconstructivist and postmodernist readings, but I’m gonna try to dig some folklore themes outa that sumbitch so here we go.

I’ve been talking about folklore a lot this season, but let me recap the different kinds of “folk tales” I’ve been thinking about. The first, purest form is the oral folk tale, conceived completely as spoken word and delivered via performance for an audience; by its nature it is ephemeral, exists in the moment, and persists only in the memories of those there when it was performed. Then we have stories that are transcribed during their telling, a la the Brothers Grimm. Was something lost when the stories were written down? Facial expressions, strategic pauses, laughter or gasps from the audience, that would bring drama or pathos or hilarity to the tale? Then we have literary fairy tales, stories like “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Nightingale,” which are constructed with the architecture of folklore but are written works-- even if it was based on an oral tale, such as SM&T, the structure and prose is that meant for a reader. Oftentimes, “folk” themes are scrubbed (or are completely retooled) as these are meant for an aristocratic or at least literate audience. Think about how the wolf eating Red Riding Hood and Grandma is often Sanitized for Your Protection by having the wolf knock Grandma unconscious or something in retellings of the story. (In case you don’t know, the wolf eats Grandmother and eventually Red Riding Hood, too, and a woodcutter comes by, hears their cries, and cuts them out of the wolf’s belly.) Another kind of folklore exists that I’ve touched on, that of written literature that reentered oral tradition-- an example of this kind is the Grimm Brothers’ Little Briar Rose, ostensibly collected as an oral folktale but inspired heavily by the aforementioned “Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” by Charles Perrault.

This interplay between folk/oral tradition and the literary one is set up directly by the ending of Supernatural’s season 14. We’ve known Chuck to be a writer ever since his entrance into the series in season 5 but he was framed as a prophet of the Lord, a mere recorder of the Winchesters’ actions, and it was assumed at the time that his works were reflections of the visions he received as prophecy. His narration and disappearance in Swan Song placed all of that in question, but there was never anything in canon that did more than hint at his larger role.

Knowing now that Chuck is God/The Author (instead of just “the author” as he has been introduced as, like in Fan Fiction) quadruple-charges the folk/auteur dynamic. Chuck is pitting himself as the chief architect of the world’s narrative against his own characters, who he had essentially allowed to run away with the plot. Another way of looking at this is through the lens of postmodernist theory, where the author becomes irrelevant once the work is published, and interpretations are the sole domain of the reader/audience-- Chuck versus TFW becomes a grand collision between old-school literary theory versus “death of the author.” (This has huge implications for meta writers and the problem with taking a break from fandom is that I don’t know what was discussed about this, but it’s exciting.) I’m still parsing the interplay between God the Author as both auteur and audience, the actual TV audience (us!), and the characters-- which are now all characters! and authors! and audiences! The deconstructivist reading writes itself.

But back to the program. This sudden rivalry between God and the Winchester clan can, on another level, be seen as the tension between a narrative constructed by a literary writer versus the motifs and characters that make up the folk tradition. What I want to talk about, then, is a reading of the series post- season 5 as folklore, and Chuck as a writer who is trying to bend the ending of the tale for his own gratification.

I’ve spoken a bit before about the tale we know generally as Sleeping Beauty, as it made its way from folklore into the literary realm and back into folklore. At some point, an “early” version of the story was written down by a Neapolitan writer named Giambattista Basile in the seventeenth century as “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” and officially became a literary fairy tale. How far removed it is from the oral tradition is anyone’s guess, I think. Anyway, Charles Perrault, a French writer decades later, reworked the tale into “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood,” and then this story made its way into the hands of storytellers in Germany and reemerged as the “folktale” “Little Brier Rose” and was harvested by the Brothers Grimm in the nineteenth century, and when they entered it into the written record it once more became a literary fairy tale. It’s a good metaphor for what is happening in 14x20. Chuck engineered Dean’s and Sam’s births and possibly also all of their lives’ events up to 5x22 Swan Song; it’s not really clear when he stepped out or to what extent he has remained involved. This changes the angels’ allegation that God has been gone for centuries-- he’s just been writing anonymously and mailing in the drafts. We’ve seen the power of writing in Meta Fiction when Metatron powered his own scribing with the Angel Tablet, which gave him god-like powers-- but then, as now, our folk heroes snatched their victories out of the typewriter of doom and changed the course of events... that was a ridiculous metaphor but I’m only a little sorry.

What we are being led to believe now, then, is that Chuck set up (“wrote”) the events leading up to the Apocalypse, and Sam and Dean and Castiel were turned loose in the plot and ended up acting as chaos agents, runaway literary devices as it were, and Chuck has been very amused to see what they’ve done with the shit that he’s slung at them. “You’re my favorite show!” he exclaims, bending the author/character relationship in Pirandellic ways, almost to the breaking point. However, it is clear that Dean, Sam, and (probably) Castiel still have free will and use it to deny Chuck his tragic ending-- that of Dean killing Jack-- as Sam instead tries to kill God himself.

“Alright. Story’s over. Welcome to the end,” Chuck says as he unleashes Hell and calls up a zombie horde to attack Sam, Dean, and Castiel; it is revealed to the audience that the ghosts which the Winchesters have dealt with through the years are returning, their own endings coming undone. This is a return to their roots, as their very first case in the Pilot was a ghost, so while it’s not clear yet if every monster has been reset, this is a way of the story to circle around back to the beginning. This is both a literary device and a folk one, as folk tales are almost universally about getting past recursions and to a new ending, such as the two times the little pigs’ houses failed until the third pig’s house is strong enough to withstand the wolf, and in literary stories the circular narrative features in novels like Huckleberry Finn, where the entrance into the story of Tom Sawyer reframes the entire plot, or Moby Dick where the ending makes sense of just about all the strange things that happened as a means to save Ishmael’s life.

Folk tale plots, where the monsters are handily defeated by an unlikely hero or heroine and the innocent go back to their lives, are now being confiscated by an author who is actively rewriting the stories to suit his own desires. As I’ve discussed before, most of TFW 2.0 are framed this season as folk characters, and we know since fairly early days that they had gone beyond even Choose Your Own Adventure™. (Sam is a special case of an author insert or a character running away with the story that I hope to talk about in another post, let’s just say his role has been very meta...)

I’ve been fascinated by the idea that the act of recording a story changes it since I was young, and I’ll link a couple of things to think about now. When I was little, and I’ve mentioned this before, I lived in Tennessee and was fortunate enough to go several times to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, where I learned that experiencing a story face-to-face is different than listening to the recording in a very important way. I listened live to a terrifying tale called “Tilly,” conveyed by the master storyteller the late great Jackie Torrence. It is a story that speaks brilliantly to the hearts and backbones of younger children. Later, we heard her tell W. W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw” by on a recording of a live storytelling session (“Graveyard Tales” 1984,) from that same festival, and I learned, sitting in a darkened living room with parents and siblings seemingly as terrified as I was, that even when a storyteller’s aim is to frighten, there is something comforting and grounding about having the storyteller in front of you, guiding you through the story they are telling, and somehow the story from the record in the record player was infinitely more scary for having no one there at all in the room who knew how the story was going to end. I think that’s where we’re going to be at the premiere of season 15. We have an author who has undone the folktales that Sam and Dean have worked all their lives to craft, ones where the monster is slain and the good townsfolk get to go about their lives once more, and he’s bending it to his will instead of allowing the “folk” endings that we’ve come to expect.

One more thought about “writers” that comes from this episode. I’ve been upset for a couple of seasons now that we’re not hollering more about Dabb and Singer (and possibly Ross-Leming) dispensing half-truths and bogus assertions-- like Singer’s claim that we would “never guess” who was going to possess Dean, when meta writers excitedly postulated that it would be one of the Michaels, and this season Dabb stating that Dean wasn’t secretly possessed when it was clear that there was still a tether to AU!Michael who had been wiretapping him all along so that Dean might as well have been secretly possessed. It is a ham-fisted way of managing our expectations so that ostensibly the gotcha in that episode would still be a surprise. Spirit of honesty, in practicality it’s just short of prevaricating. It’s the kind of thing the writers should probably just keep mum about, imho. And then in the season 15 finale, Castiel (sometimes a liar himself but is nonetheless held up in this episode to be The Voice Of Truth) says bluntly, “Writers lie.” (It’s easy to forget about Metatron uploading “all” of human media into his head, so there is no better authority about fiction in the room than he.) In an abstract sense, yes, a writer creates what are essentially lies-- fictions, tall tales, things that never really happened to characters that don’t really exist-- but here we’re faced with the possibility that we can’t trust them to be truthful outside of their own fictions, either. I found Dabb’s tweets throughout the season to be cryptic but in many ways very spot-on to how they related to the episode he was tweeting about, but I think we’ve been warned. About the writers: Supernatural is always about the “twist” at the end, and in this way they’re professional liars-- they lead us in one direction, or in no direction, as Sam and Dean try to figure out the MOTW or the angelic double-cross or whatever. And then yikes it’s a ghost or Metatron is the homeless guy or something. Steve Yockey leaving the writer’s room has left me gutted, although I have high hopes for Jeremy Adams, who has been a writer for Scooby Doo, and is thus probably quite clever at writing episodes with a “reveal” at the end, and which in the Scoobyverse are always satisfying-- like, that’s the requirement, that [redacted] actually being the Miner Forty Niner is, like, yeah, gooood stuff. I hope that we’ll be thanking the authors for the experience they’re taking us on with their weekly fabrications instead of screaming that we’ve been sold a bill of goods about any given theme in season 15. So mote it be lol. Anyways, there’s my ruminations on the writers as a bonus.

I think that exploring the season through the lens of folklore paid off in spades in the finale as it set up a “folk/author” clash that will be interesting to watch going forwards. I don’t know that this theme will carry on, and make no predictions if it does, that’s not what themes in a serial text do necessarily. I mean, clearly, we’ve got some author/character shenanigans to look forward to, but whether we’ll be dealing with more folklore, whether the theme will transmute to literature or even absurdism, or to reader-as-author is something I’d like to see but can only hope for. I think it will be a wild ride and while I see a lot of Gloom ‘N Doom around this last season, I’m really looking forward to it. For me, this season’s writers have been providing that yeah gooood stuff so far, and remember how subtext (and btw I don’t mean destiel subtext) in a serial text works? I think these guys are all really good at delivering subtext (well, most of them) and we’ll have a surprising and satisfying twenty episodes.

#the folklore of supernatural #season 15 wishlist

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franeridart · 7 years ago

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I just found your profile and I love your style so much!

AHHHHHH THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!

Anon said:From kami's-hair-is-hard-to-doodle anon from a while back: I finally got it! Thank you so much for your advice - reading and rereading your tips kept me practicing! I'd also like to thank the Academy /orz

I’m glad it could help you at all!!!! :O Kami keeps on being a mystery to me (and Horikoshi himself ???) too so don’t get too down on yourself for it taking time haha

Anon said:Ive sent you a couple of asks before but Im just so in love with the content you produce. Like not only is your art style so cute and stuff, but the plot/story (Idk) of each post is just so original and adorable. Im just so blown away by everything you post. Thank you for sharing your art!!!! Have a good week!!

Anon said:Hi! I’m new to your blog but love your art, I think your very talented which is why I’d like to ask a question. Do you have any advice for posing? I noticed your very good at it and wondered if you have any tips. If you do answer this, Thank you!!

Firstly, thank you so much for the compliments!!! I don’t know how useful exactly any advice I could give you will be, since most of it comes from drawing a lot and watching drawings even more, but in general to pick a pose usually what I do is think of the scene as if in movement? As in, what the characters are doing, and how they’d move if I were looking at them while doing it - keeping in mind the characters personalities helps me with this a lot too.

Take for example the confessions drawings I’ve posted a couple of days ago: it’s true that there’s no words nor movement anywhere in them, but as I drew them I had a pretty clear idea of what they were saying and how the characters would react in those situations - Jirou’s shy and easily flustered, so she’s averting her eyes, unable to keep eye contact, and closing in on herself a bit, hiding her face and so on; in the concept, Kaminari was the one who confessed, so he’s holding her hand, tentative, because he’s unsure about how she’s gonna answer (it’s all stuff that didn’t actually make it in the drawing, how he reached for her hand, how he’s gonna close his other hand around her knuckles, but in my head it was a complete scene and I just picked one frame of it all to draw). The same goes for Bakugou and Kirishima - they’re rowdier, louder, more assertive and inclined to take everything as a fight, so this time around I went for a scene in which Bakugou straight out yells his feelings at Kirishima and Kirishima answers me too (again, I had the before and after in my head too, I just picked the frame that best coveyed what I was trying to do)

As I said I’m usure about how much this might help you orz it’s just my way of doing things, and it mostly comes from the fact that I was originally a writer honestly, so thinking of a whole scene makes things easier for me #rip

Anon said:Can I say, I really like the colors for your confession pictures! :>

THANK YOU??????? H E C K ;O;

Anon said:hi~ i just went through literally everything in your sketches tag and i just wanna say i love your art and your comics and stuff. also because i went through everything, i want to bring attention to how cool it is to see how much your style has changed! your lines seem more confident and your characters more dynamic in the last few years :D

HECK THANK YOU SO MUCH it’s always so damn nice to know people can see my stuff getting even just slightly better oh mannnnnnnnnnnnnn *sob*

Anon said:can we repost your art if we give like 100% credit

Nope, sorry, I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that

Anon said:those "confessions" must be the lewdest thing I've ever seen

why would you use that word tho

Anon said:I just wanted to tell you that I love your art and it always makes me a little happier when you post something! No matter if it's your comics or colored pics or "simple" doodles, I love all of them! (Though soft stuff is the best, hehe) I just hope you know that you're very appreciated, and I hope you only have wonderful days!

GODS THANK YOU SO MUCH I’m so so so happy I can make you a lil happier ;0; I hope you’ll have every possible wonderful day too, anon!!

Anon said:I just spent the last few hours of my Sunday going though your entire blog. It’s beautiful and I hope you know that you have ruined my life because of that beauty. God damn it.

That wasn’t the intention but I’m!!!!!!!!! glad you think so???????? sob oh my g od you all are too nice to me ;^;

Anon said:Tododeku?

It sure is a ship, isn’t it - I’ve drawn for it in the past, I most probably will again in the future! :D

Anon said:you're honestly one of my fav artists on here! i love your style it feels so unique and is so pleasing to look at (((:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’M CRYING THANK YOU

Anon said:Your art has this unique quality about it... its really hard to describe but there’s something so dynamic and god damn pretty about your work. It’s fantastic and you inspire me to keep on creating! I hope your day is absolutely wonderful and thank you for blessing us with your art!

I’m!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so glad I can make you want to create stuff, anon!!!!!! that’s the best thing anyone can ever tell me, oh my god ;^; thank you so much !!!

Anon said:I love it when you draw cuddly bakugou!! Its wonderful!!

THAT’S!!!! super great to hear cause I could probably draw only that for the foreseeable future and not mind it one bit holy smoke

Anon said:THE HUG COMICS ARE THE BEST COMICS, I LOVE HUGS AND BAKUGOU BEING PHYSICALLY AFFECTIONATE IS SOMETHING I LOVE, A++++, WOULD RECOMMEND.

HONESTLY BAKUGOU NEEDS ALL THE HUGS AND IF I MUST BE THE ONE TO GIVE THEM ALL TO HIM THEN SO BE IT

Anon said:all ur comics are fucking delightful and make my day everytime. i ve read them all like too many times? i read each multiple times in a row and im still giddy? i love them i love u

I!!!!!!! LOVE YOU TOO???? HOLY SHIT THANK YOU

Anon said:*sigh* soft-phisical contact lover bakugou save my week. And kiri is the most wonderfull sunshine and no one cant discuss that *sit down in the floor and manly crying*

Kiri is the brightest sunshine isn’t he ;^; the sun to Bakugou’s moon, it makes me weak and I cry a lot

Anon said:I never knew I could be so weak for kiribaku omg fran what have you done to me, on that note what little things do you think theyd do to take care of each other? Like kinda lowkey stuff theyd quietly do? Ahh anyway thank you so much for all the wonderful drawings, hope everything is going well for you :)

Well, this is just the feeling I got, but I’d say they do plenty for each other quietly and softly in canon too, don’t they? Bakugou especially, pointing out to Kirishima his strength when he can’t see it for himself and always trying to find a way to cheer him up when he’s down and giving him space when he needs it, training together, studying together, worrying over one another, Kiri making sure to always know what’s up with Bakugou and following him to help him, just generally being there for each other so that if and when they need they’ll know they’ll have someone they can lean on - their relationship is really mutually supportive, isn’t it? I cry so much they make me so happy ;^; *sob*

Anon said:When season 3 comes out wouldnt it be fun if krbk fans filmed their ch.90 being animated reactions?? I think it'd be so cool/cute to see all the emotions! What do you think?

You know, I’m pretty sure that IS gonna happen? People make reaction videos for so many things! It’s nice and fun, honestly, I love it~

Anon said:I really love the way you draw spiky hair! It looks so floofy and soft.

Boi thank you!!!! Spikes are super nice to draw, though admittedly I make them less spiky then they’re probably supposed to be haha

Anon said:As someone who adores Sero Hanta And is a die hard krbk fan can I just say how much I love you? Like I was having a rough-ish day and I can’t stop smiling now because of your latest comic. Seriously, I love you and your art is everything.

I’M SO GLAD YOU LIKED THAT ONE!!!!!!!! I adore Sero if I had any better clue how to draw him I’d draw him all the time always, true story, he’s such a fave ;^;

Anon said:OMG Fran!!! I want Bakugou's name tattooed on all their faces now!! Hahahaha!

You know, one of my first krbk fanarts was Bakugou writing his name on Kirishima’s forehead, actually....................

#fran answers #art tips #sorta??#something similar to it #i tried but you know how it is #i got no actual clue what im doing #lmao #anonymous

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ganymedesclock · 7 years ago

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I know you don’t really talk about ships, but I was curious as to what you think of Allura x Shay, since it seems to be pretty popular.

I wish I was more optimistic about it, by which I mean... I think taken on its own, Allura and Shay are really cute, they’re sweet people and I think they could get along charmingly.

The part that I worry about is it feels... kind of dismissive? Like... the most popular major Voltron ships that I’ve seen are all male paladins with each other. And being fair 4/6 of the paladins are guys. The dark horse contenders rising to prominence? are male paladins with Lotor.

Conversely, I’ve seen the generals shipped with each other, and I’ve seen Allura shipped with Shay, and I’ve seen Pidge shipped with the one infodesk punk unilu girl that we didn’t even have a name for.

It stands that there’s something of a discrepancy here re: who gets shipped with major characters. And that’s what I mean by it can feel dismissive- it feels like it’s “getting Allura out of the way of” the steamy m/m paladin romance by pairing her off with Shay, who, as much as I adore Shay and would love to be proven wrong by future developments, Shay is kind of a secondary or even tertiary supporting protagonist. She’s a great character, but not too much of a major character.

One of Shay’s major connections to the larger narrative is, at this point, she’s Hunk’s love interest in that the two of them seem to be harboring a small mutual crush. In the comics in particular Hunk actively protests marrying the other two aliens on the grounds that 1. they haven’t met his parents, and 2. “There’s this rock girl...”

And I don’t really... miss that this is a thing when Hunk is a modestly popular ship target that there’s a great deal of enthusiastic “Shay and Allura are lesbians and dating each other” when I don’t know if I’ve seen much... really in-depth art of them.

There’s a couple of ships that seem to read that way- most inter-team Sincline ships that don’t involve Lotor, for example, and I mentioned Pidge with the Unnamed Infodesk Girl- in the sense that they feel like, to coin a phrase out of thin air here, Purely Aesthetic Female Ship. In that you’ll find... artsy pictures or edits of them kissing and maybe once in a blue moon a comic but far more often, total radio silence besides “I can’t ship Allura with anybody else because her heart belongs to Shay.”

I’d love to be wrong. I guess I’m just suspicious that a lot of these ships are super widespread but relatively little is written about them and if anything they often feel nested into other stories/meta as a way to say “And Allura’s not going to be here, she’s going to be off with her girlfriend, so therefore I don’t have to write about her at all.”

Like again- I could be sold on Allura / Shay, but like... actually sell me on it. Don’t just go “oh remember that time on the s2 poster where Allura and Shay were together wearing flower crowns?” show me... how does this relationship develop? What do they mean to each other? Other characters engaging and interacting with this? More speculation and fleshing out of Shay in and of herself because frankly if you date a major character it should make you a major character. If this is happening alongside canon events what does it mean for Shay staying behind on the Balmera and hearing after the blitz, and the trap at Naxzela, how close Allura and the entire coalition came to being completely destroyed?

Explore the Balmerans culturally. Maybe set up parallels with Shay emerging as a leader of her people because frankly the Balmera’s revolution started with Shay, it was her selfless actions to stand up and take that stand and it was in reaction to what happened to her that Rax and the entire rest of the Balmera reacted. But that’s also stressful, the Balmerans don’t appear to have established leader figures here, so imagine Shay going to Allura- the lifelong career princess- who can relate a little about this “I have to learn how to be a diplomat” feeling.

Have Allura and Shay bond over Allura’s developing powers! Allura mentions in s4e6 she’s never been trained and that limits her confidence, and the Balmera was the stage of her first discovering that, as guided by Shay’s own grandmother. Where’s Shay- whose entire people live and die by their connection to the Balmera and its energy- guiding Allura through that?

I mean, with any ship, it’s important to dig into it, the micro and macrocosms of how these people engage with each other, how they feel, what made them feel that way. If this is your ship, if you love it, analyze the shit out of it, take that by the horns. If you’re just sorta here because you like fluff and you think the fluff would be cute with them, make a lot of fluff, show me all the places their lives comfortably intertwine with each other.

Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody point out the idea that shipping Shay in her current role with anybody on Voltron is a terrific setup for a long-distance relationship and all the fun and foibles that entails!

So I guess it’s... I’d absolutely love to be wrong about this but it feels like a lot of major ships between female characters feel really... halfhearted, not much energy to it, while conversely Klance- I’m picking on it since it’s my ship- has eight zillion AUs everywhere under the sun from trapeze artists to vampire-and-priest to high fantasy to “literally reenact the plot of Beauty And The Beast” and people digging into scene-by-scene analyses and hypotheticals with wild abandon, and I don’t feel like that difference is purely because of popularity.

If anything, it’s suspicious that I can think of four popular male ships off the top of my head within Voltron’s main cast and none of them seem to exhibit that Purely Aesthetic problem that all of the female ships I can think of that I’ve seen in the fandom, ever, do. Just like I think it’s suspicious that whether or not I think Lance’s crush on Allura is unlikely to be reciprocated, it, and Hunk’s crush on Shay that does seem pretty reciprocated, seem to get all-but forgotten and not treated like genuine feelings.

Like... they don’t have to be your endgame ship, but it feels really jarring to look from canon, with Lance who really does adore Allura, all flirtation aside, and Hunk who again turned down potential suitors because he’s monogamous and more interested in Shay, and to suddenly leap to a fanwork where these people just... feel nothing about each other?

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Allura #Shay #Lance #Hunk #readmore #thenorthernphoenix

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f4liveblogarchives · 7 years ago

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Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #45

Sun Oct 30 2016 [21:18:50] <Wackd> Issue 45 introduces...THE INHUMANS! [21:19:05] <Zarek> Woah, Inhumans are that old? Huh. [21:19:09] <Wackd> Kind of assumed that'd be a retcon way in the future [21:19:11] <Bocaj> I remember a comic from the leadup to the cancerverse story where Gorgon fought a member of the Shi'ar imperial guard whose power was that he was a star in the shape of a man [21:19:11] <Zarek> I assumed they were a fairly recent thing. [21:19:17] <Bocaj> Super kicking was apparently a match for that [21:19:18] <Wackd> I did too [21:20:19] <maxwellelvis> Nope. [21:20:50] <Wackd> So Dragon Man kidnapped Sue and Johnny went after her [21:20:51] <maxwellelvis> Medusa had been a member of the Four while Sue was pregnant with Franklin, and this was in the 70s [21:21:17] <Wackd> Johnny feels the need to go easy on Dragon Man in case he hurts Sue by accident [21:21:19] <Wackd> Sue, y'know [21:21:25] <Wackd> The one who can make force fields [21:21:36] <Wackd> Force fields that protect her from harm [21:22:15] <Phantomwoman> oh [21:23:42] <Wackd> Sue tamed Dragon Man! They're no considering making it a pet, making me even more baffled as to what the word "Man" is doing in its name [21:24:18] <Bocaj> Dragon Man: The robot that is neither a dragon nor a man [21:24:26] <maxwellelvis> Y'know, eventually, Diablo's going to get Dragon Man back [21:24:37] <maxwellelvis> and then it's going to act more robotic when it fights the Avengers. IIRC [21:24:54] <Bocaj> I dunno. Its affectd by tear gas for some damn reason [21:25:05] <Wackd> Aw [21:25:11] <Wackd> I wanted the four to have a pet dragon robot [21:25:57] <Bocaj> If I recall, as of most recent continuity, Dragon Man joined the Future Foundation (the FF's school) and joined Reed and the rest of the Foundation after Secret Wars [21:25:58] <maxwellelvis> There's going to be a better pet introduced soon enough. [21:26:24] <Wackd> Johnny has met a mysterious lady in an alley with a peOH MY GOD IT'S LOCKJAW! [21:26:28] <Wackd> HI LOCKJAW! [21:26:39] <Wackd> :D [21:26:42] <maxwellelvis> Told you [21:26:55] <Bocaj> I'm sad that Lockjaw seems to have just dropped out of Ms Marvel for some reason [21:27:16] <Wackd> Also Black Bolt namedrop [21:27:29] <Wackd> And Johnny is being led into the secret Inhuman city [21:27:43] <MousaThe14> Where he will instantly fall in love with Crystal [21:27:52] <maxwellelvis> on the Moon? [21:28:07] <MousaThe14> Man I wish I was here for more of the liveblog but the darkness it perfect for shooting stark contrasts inside [21:28:15] <Wackd> See what's hilarious to me about this is that Crystal was like "you have superpowers! You must be one of us!" like [21:28:31] <Wackd> This is why you maintain SOME contact with the outside world in your secret city [21:28:42] <Wackd> So that you know that mutants and cosmic rays and radioactive spiders exist [21:28:53] <Wackd> And so you don't blow your secret to the first superhero you see [21:28:54] <maxwellelvis> And Gamma bombs. [21:29:18] <MousaThe14> It's not like it was an unfair assumption for her to make [21:29:52] <MousaThe14> On the other hand, considering how freakishly controlled the Inhuman society is you'd think she's be familiar with a lot of Inhumans. [21:32:14] <Wackd> So Johnny got found out [21:32:17] <Wackd> And caged up [21:32:21] <Wackd> And then escaped, like, immediately [21:32:30] <MousaThe14> Security is a joke [21:32:33] <Wackd> Also Medusa got dragged back to Inhuman City off-panel [21:32:37] <MousaThe14> presumably because they don't lock up too many people [21:33:55] <Wackd> I finally found a panel where Ben's eyes are colored! [21:33:58] <Wackd> They're yellow [21:34:22] <maxwellelvis> Who did the inks for this issue? [21:35:06] <Wackd> Joe Sinnott [21:36:01] <maxwellelvis> Apparently he didn't read any of these comics [21:36:09] <Wackd> "Inhumans?? Then my suspicion was correct! Medusa and Gorgon are related in some strange way!" [21:36:11] <Wackd> Reed [21:36:13] <Wackd> Reed buddy [21:36:23] <Wackd> Gorgon told you he and Medusa were the same race [21:36:28] <Wackd> Literally last issue [21:36:37] <maxwellelvis> Then again, clearly neither does Stan. [21:37:28] <MousaThe14> He's writing a lot of comics [21:37:41] <MousaThe14> and for some reason doesn't maintain a stack of notes to keep track of stuff [21:37:51] <InbarFink> Maybe he had blue eyes before, and he just didn't really checked his eyes closely since then [21:38:23] <Wackd> I've been kind of assuming the cosmic rays turned his eyes blue [21:38:30] <InbarFink> One day he looked at the mirror and noticed they were yellow, but the catchphrase kinda stuck and it would've been awkward to correct it since then [21:38:31] <Wackd> I mean who ever heard of a Jew with blue eyes [21:38:33] <Wackd> Really [21:39:14] <Wackd> BLACK BOLT! SO NAMED FOR HIS...BLUE...COSTume wait what

[21:39:41] <Bocaj> His name is actually Blackagar Boltagon [21:39:47] <Bocaj> So Black Bolt for short [21:39:49] <maxwellelvis> It's black, it just looks blue from the highlighting. [21:39:58] <maxwellelvis> Like with Spider-Man's costume. [21:40:04] <InbarFink> I'm pretty sure I knew a couple wack'd [21:40:07] <Wackd> Uh, no it doesn't [21:40:13] <Bocaj> Black and red? That's ridiculous. Blue and red is where its at [21:40:18] <InbarFink> ...mostly of russian decent [21:40:35] <Wackd> Unless it's all highlighting for some reason [21:40:52] <Wackd> It's only slightly darker than the F4's own uniforms [21:41:00] <MousaThe14> It's all highlighting presumably due to making things easier to see or something [21:41:13] <maxwellelvis> Maybe it's one of those weird goof-ups in coloring like Ben's eyes, or how in his first appearance Galactus' colors are all wrong. [21:41:16] <MousaThe14> I think it's one of those "Use your imagination" type dealies due to the limitations [21:41:30] <MousaThe14> @Max, don't you mean Holiday Theme Galactus [21:41:36] <maxwellelvis> Yes [21:41:39] <Wackd> Why would they name a guy Black Bolt if they couldn't actually make his costume black [21:41:56] <MousaThe14> I fail to see how that's a screw up, clearly that issue was released in December [21:41:57] <Bocaj> Blue Bolt makes more sense anyway. "Like a bolt from the blue" right? [21:42:02] <MousaThe14> I say as a fact I made up just now [21:42:05] <Wackd> Yeah [21:42:17] <Wackd> Also holiday themed Galactus is the best and I wish that color scheme had stuck [21:42:25] <Wackd> Like purple is pretty great also but [21:42:39] <Bocaj> MILLIONS HAVE TREMBLED BEFORE HIS MIGHTY PINK ARMOR [21:42:50] <maxwellelvis> Red and green, short sleeves, big "G" on his chest [21:42:52] <InbarFink> oh shit I need to sleep [21:42:52] <Wackd> ALSO there was a flashback in Galactus' first Squirrel Girl appearance that showed he was indeed in red and green at that time [21:43:07] <maxwellelvis> the only thing that stuck around with Galactus' look in that story was the hat. [21:43:12] <Wackd> So that color fuckup is totally canon [21:43:16] <maxwellelvis> Bocaj: Yes, well... well, that's a lot of pink. [21:43:35] <Wackd> I can see why he changed it, after all-- [21:43:39] <Wackd> Too much pink energy is dangerous! [21:43:56] <MousaThe14> I wouldnt say I would want holiday theme Galactus to stay but maybe to pop up every once in a while [21:44:05] <Wackd> In Christmas issues [21:44:09] <MousaThe14> I like the purple [21:44:21] <maxwellelvis> "MY OTHER ARMOR WAS AT THE SPACE LAUNDROMAT! SO SPEAKS GALACTUS!" [21:44:22] <Wackd> I love the purple, I say I wish the red and green had stuck knowing full well that ship has sailed

#1965 #Stan Lee #Jack Kirby #The Main Book

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linkspooky · 8 years ago

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Tsukiyama and Furuta: Two Moons Heading Towards an Eclipse

If you flip this number down it’s.... absolutely nothing. If you flip and reverse it, ie what would happen if you were to place it in a mirror than you get a backwards nineteen. If you just flip it it looks sort of like a 16 in the wrong order. If you take the numbers as individual, an upside down six can be the lovers in reverse while an upside down 1 could represent Hide as he was just mentioned in the last chapter. They could also not even be numbers but representative of a moth’s wings instead. They could also be moths wings as depicted at the beginning of the chapter.

They could also just be a pun on the word orgasm [x] with japanese numbers. My point is things can have many possible interpretations so try not to refute the assertions I make in this post with ‘that’s a nineteen’ or ‘that’s representative of the sun’. Anyway, continuing forward read under the cut for the explanation and yes I actually do get to Tsukiyama.

Generally if you want to put a tarot number in this manga in reverse it’s been upside down. Not reversed and then mirrored, that’s not really anything to do with tarot that’s just... da vinci mirror code.

The sun in reverse sort of relates to this situation:

The Sun reversed indicates that finding the positive aspects to a particular situation may prove to be difficult. The clouds may be blocking out the warmth, and preventing you from feeling as though everything is on track. You may have experienced setbacks that have damaged your enthusiasm and optimism and have perhaps led you to question whether you can really achieve what you have set out to achieve.

However I find it too positive, and as usual I sure do love being negative about things. It doesn’t make sense to me, the sun being in reverse would indicate that the moon arc is ending, but having sex doesn’t really resolve any of Kaneki or Touka’s issues. Sex isn’t really a net positive or a net negative, it’s just neutral.

Nonetheless, the Sun is never a negative card, so this is only temporary. The obstacles you see can be easily removed if you put your mind to it. It may just take a little more effort than usual.

Having sex, or advancing their relationship might solve their relationship arc, but it’s tangential to their individual character arcs. The sun is too much of a net positive here for me to see it as appropriate. For imagery reasons, Kaneki crying and then sitting in Touka’s lap could be a connection to the naked baby on the sun that is in itself a symbol of rebirth.

The child playing joyfully in the foreground represents the happiness of our inner spirit when we are in tune with our truest Self. He is naked, having nothing to hide

Kaneki isn’t really experiencing a happiness of his inner spirit though, considering he started crying in the middle of sex and could not explain why. This isn’t to say that Kaneki felt worse after having sex with Touka of course, but that the act of having sex with Touka doesn’t really have much to do with finding commune in his inner spirit. He literally, couldn’t explain why he was crying. The line “Why, indeed?” is a parallel to when he could not explain why he was crying to Touka.

There’s also the fact that they’re having this sex in the darkness, with black borders around the panels and constant cut to black. I hope this makes a good case for why I think the sun isn’t exactly the perfect fit for this scene. The sun in reverse doesn’t indicate darkness, or the moon, it’s still the sun just in reverse. That leaves two more possible tarot interpretations, the lovers and the tower both in reverse.

The lovers reversed indicates that you are avoiding responsibility for the consequences of your own actions. You have made a rushed decision based purely on your desire for instant gratification and now you are trying to lay the blame on others or on fate.

The lovers can also indicate inner conflicts being at war with external forces. It suggests disharmony and difficulty in being able to balance your own inner union. The lovers reversed may also reflect that feelings within a relationship are not mutual. One person in the partnership might have stronger feelings than the other, and may be more emotionally involved.

This is closer, Touka and Kaneki are basically ignoring the whole outside world to have sex right now. The timing is pretty spectacular considering they’re both on the run from the law, and they’re not really Bonnie and Clyde. There’s also allies they have to meet up with, and the Oggai are a real pressing threat for every ghoul that the two of them claim to be fighting for.

A real and pressing danger which outsiders like Takizawa seem to acknowledge but neither Touka nor Kaneki really do. Which is in line with both of their characters as they’ve always fought for personal relationships rather than the big picture affecting all ghouls. The problem with taking a siesta to boink therefore being that Touka and Kaneki’s lives no longer belong solely to themselves. They themselves have made the choice to accept the responsibilty of this revolution, and it’s not something that only Kaneki wants, but also something that Touka wants to fight for.

Ayato makes the point that they’ve all chosen to make everyone rely on them, so to go back now and act on personal feelings like their life solely belongs to them at this point is betraying that choice. In Ayato’s words it makes them half assed, because it means they care less about their committment than they presented themselves as having done so.

Which is part of why Kaneki’s flaws seem so much more stagnant in Tokyo Ghoul Re: than original Tokyo Ghoul. Tokyo Ghoul was Kaneki’s story through and through, it was the tragedy of how he failed to change in time to survive in the ghoul world. Re: is the story of a king, a king’s story is not as personal by its nature because it has ramifications that affect the entire world.

Therefore yes, Kaneki and Touka’s decision to have sex is an ignoring of consequences just for the simple logical reason of rendering themselves vulnerable right now while they’re being sniffed out by the oggai, if both of them were to die then the revolution would be snuffed out before it could ever truly have begun. It’s also okay to judge them for this because Touka and Kaneki both want to be important figures in this fight. It’s different than two people just trying to have sex on their own time.

Inner feelings being at war with the outside world... that’s obviously the moon arc so no need to dwell on that. The final part is interesting though, it indicates that one may not love another as much as the other. Now to get this out of the way, of course I think their affections are mutual to an extent. You have to be blind to not acknowledge that Touken is canon by this point.

In this case though, I actually think Kaneki’s feelings might be stronger than Touka. At least when you look at the way that Kaneki uses people he is close to.

You look like you’re about to die. Between the two of us, the only one who thinks it was okay for you to just up and leave.... was you.

Touka says it outright, she would be willing to have sex with him to prevent him from wanting to go off and die. Kaneki says it indirectly a few chapters earlier.

Kaneki wants somebody to attach himself to, and Touka wants to be that person of attachment. It’s a reaction in opposite directions to the same basic problem, they’re both afraid of people leaving them. In a way it’s an unequal love because Touka can never value Kaneki the way Kaneki wants to use her, as a reason to live, as a symbol for all the good things that make life worth living.

There are criticisms of Touka’s character that she bases herself entirely around Kaneki’s actions and what will make Kaneki stay around, or what is good for Kaneki’s well being but tha’ts not entirely true. A more nuanced view is that Touka since losing everybody at the Anteiku Raid, has shifted her priorities to try to ensure that her loved ones stay near her. Kaneki is just the crux of this issue, the symbol of all the important loved ones who left her, he himself inserted himself into that position by making that promise.

“Don’t leave me alone.”

That being said, defining yourself entirely by the relationships you have in your life and trying to keep them around is in and of itself a flaw. That is unless you think Touka has some secret agenda she has been running entirely offscreen when it comes to managing Re:, but even in that case we haven’t been presented any of that onscreen so until it gets focused on in the narrative it might as well not exist.

So we have two characters with flaws that render their love unequal, Touka wants to be a point of attachment and Kaneki wants someone to attach himself too. Just because the way in which they are codependent weirdly complements one another however =/= a healthy relationship. However since we are in the arc of people finding refuge in one another and using that as an excuse to hide from the truth, it’s understandable why the characters would make this mistake. Touken is a bit of a sad and tragic relationship, it’s always been. At it’s core it’s a struggle of people from two different worlds trying desperately to connect.

The snake in the fruit-laden tree behind the woman suggests the story of Adam and Eve, the fall of humanity from grace, and the temptations of the world.

The couple in the garden also have strong connections to the story of genesis. Something Touka and Kaneki parallel heavily right now. Think of it, Re: and Anteiku before it was a place where both of them were sheltered and allowed to be mostly innocent to the world. To them it was like a paradise. Both times it was completely destroyed and they were ejected from it however. When Adam and Eve lose their innocence they look at each other naked for the first time and begin to make love.

The story of Adam and Eve is much like one of Touka and Kaneki, a fall from innocence but at the same time they gain knowledge of right and wrong and self actualization. At some point theoretically the idea is that Touka and Kaneki will decide for themselves what they view as right and wrong, rather than following simply what Yoshimura or Arima told them, or endlessly substituting new parental figures to guide them.

Another clear parallel is that Kaneki and Touka are placing themselves as male and female figureheads of a new revolution. Ignoring the pregnancy thing, if Kaneki and Touka were to succeed in their revolution they would be the figurative parents of an entirely new world, one where their descendants both humans and ghouls would be able to coexist.

Touka is pictured with the apple several times, but different from Eto and Furuta who are both tempters offering the apples to others, it is Touka who bites in making her the eve in this situation. The manga has already given us a good summary of Eve’s actions, and her reason for biting into that apple.

Sound like Touka and Kaneki at all? Surely she did that because she wanted to love a man, yet you say she wanted to be loved. It’s a good summary of their relationship and the tragedy of Touka’s own self conflicting selflessness.

Which is finally where I can start talking about what I think the most accurate tarot number to be read from that imprint in the bedsheets is, the 16 in reverse or the Tower. At first these situations seem only superficially connected to the tower arc, but allow me to make my case on how all the dangling plot threads from the tower are finally going to come to roost this next arc.

First off, the meaning of the tower in reverse compliments the moon arc well:

Upright, the Tower indicates a time of great turmoil and destruction, which will eventually bring with it change and regeneration.

Reversed, however, the Tower card indicates that you are simply delaying the necessary ‘destruction’. You need to go through this difficult time in order to learn an important lesson. Do not resist it. Even though it is shocking and hard to deal with, it is a very important part of your life journey.

Similarly, the Tower reversed suggests that, while you consciously want change and transformation, you seem to be afraid of these two things. You may feel that change and transformation may bring with it destruction and pain, and thus you are resisting this.

Characters consciously wanting to change but being unable to do so is basically the theme of the past ten chapters.

Every character has had their moment to show how they haven’t changed at the core despite everything they have gone through, because to them change is too painful a thing to face head on, and now we are finally getting to the lowest point of that with Kaneki and Touka. That’s not to say sex is a bad thing, but it is very primal in a jungian sense. There’s almost no better metaphor for characters acting on their most basic desires, no wonder both Jung and Freud lenses are so sex obsesed.

In seeking comfort in each other, both of them prioritizing their fear of loss over their duties and the change they want to make to themselves and the outside world Kaneki and Touka both stagnate the necessary change they need to go through. The tower is a scary card yes, but it’s also an optimistic one. People have a tendency to dwell on the loss, but after loss comes rebirth. That’s the entire point of Kaneki’s supposed goal of breaking the egg and transforming the world, but he himself shies away from it.

Just like in the lover’s card, it’s also specifically a man and woman who are falling. Quite morbidly you could say this is the result of their sudden spiritual awakening, the two of them are thrown off the tower together and lose control upsetting all our old notions about the relations between subconscious and self consciousness.

If it’s truly invoking the tower here, then this connects back to an old scene in :RE. That time when Kanae and Tsukiyama were experiencing their own version of the Tower as they attempted to find enlightenment of themselves in the clumsiest and most disastrous way physically possible.

1) The building that the final Tuskiyama Raid took place in was called the Lunar Eclipse

(Imperial scans translated it weird, it’s supposed to be Luna Eclipse).

2) It’s the first place where Furuta showed his true nature as a moon character

Furuta as a character is one who exists to bring about an eclipse and invoke the moon card. At the moment he stands as the biggest obstacle in the background to the characters own enlightenment while at the same time encouraging them to indulge in their own shadows. He’s also been physically invoked with the moon before.

3) It set up the major incidents of trauma that are driving key character’s right now, namely Urie’s loss of Shirazu, Haise’s leaving of the Q’s, and Ui’s loss of Hairu.

Furuta calling back to Hairu’s loss is a deliberate callback to that time, and I believe he’ll repeat this temptation again and again for the point I am about to make later. Let’s continue with listing these parallels though.

4) It’s the last time Tsukiyama had an arc in regards to his family, and Karren’s final words to Tsukiyama are the same kind of emotional openness that Touka and Kaneki are experiencing now.

The same way that Touka and Kaneki are now falling off the tower, Kanae and Tsukiyama were in their own arc. However they are not given the same resolution that Kaneki and Touka were, mainly because of one active interfering participant.

Which is ironically enough, Kaneki himself is the direct reason why Kanae died before either of them could get proper closure or growth to finish off the great conflict between the two of them. Kaneki made a deliberate choice to sacrifice Kanae at Tsukiyama’s expense, one that he has yet to face any consequences for in the narrative.

Clearly there are a lot of loose ends both emotionally and plot and character wise from the tower arc, and this arc is the continuation of them. Which is why from this point forward this post will be dedicated to where I think Tsukiyama’s arc will lead him next and why it is going to be an important continuation of his character arc which has been left in suspension since the raid arc.

As to the image above, Tsukiyama just deciding to forgive Kaneki before he even apologizes is obviously not the proper way to resolve a conflict. If anything it avoids conflict so Tsukyiama can pretend everything is as it always was. This is what he thought he wanted after all, a false return to those days when he was a member of Kaneki’s kru.

In a way it’s what he always wanted, but Tsukiyama is not satisfied from what we see in the omake. We already know he dislikes being treated as a wallet, to the point where he gets jealous over somebody who Kaneki basically treats like a servant.

Chie has a point though, the way that Tsukiyama views relationships si that he can simply just be important without putting any of the actual work in. It worked with Chie because Chie doesn’t really care, she has a fondness for Tsukiyama yes but she’s not driven by closeness or loneliness the same way Kaneki is. Kaneki is difficult as a person to navigate, but Tsukiyama then doesn’t really see him as a person to begin with which is a major reason that stops them from getting close.

It’s from the start of their relationship, Tsukiyama refers to Kaneki as his gourmet food which belongs only to him. Chie acknowledges that part of Tsukiyama doesn’t really feel that way but there is a distinct difference between Tsukiyama’s conscious and subconscious minds.

In other words he’s an excellent example of a moon character. He has, all of the symptoms of the moon that others characters are exhibiting in this arc. His main method of satiating himself is obsession and pursuit of aesthetic reasons to live when in reality he’s quite emotiionally distant and lonely. Most of his actions are in trying to satiate those actions by, in a nihilistic way, moving from obsession to obsession. Chie even comments on this.

Which is what makes his connection to the only other moon character, Furuta, even stronger.

Furuta even drops him by name, which is a pretty major signal that the two of them are going to have a connection at some point. After all our first introduction to Furuta is when Tsukiyama brought Kaneki to the gourmet club.

The way they present themselves is even similiar. Early Shuu Tsukiyama is close to a clown in motivation, where he only seems to care about living life for the pursuit of aesthetic desire rather than forming substantive relationships. We later learn that’s not the case but it’s also Shuu himself who has to learn this lesson. Also talk about unsubtle, there’s a moon directly drawn on his face.

While Furuta/Souta are introduced similiarly, most of the details of their character deliberately contrast each other to set up a foil.

Furuta is actually quite good and intelligent at shutting down his emotions and only ever wearing masks, and Shuu is the opposite, he thinks eh’s only reacting to the aesthetics and passion for food but actually he ahs real emotional issues that are super uncontrolled and also transparent.

They both quite clearly deviate from the actual clown mentality in different directions. Shuu’s “I care about the aesthetics” is a lie he’s convinced himself of because he can’t process his own emotions.

Furuta’s clownish nature is a kind of repression and a really bleak coping mechanism for being born into a tragic life. They’re both at removing themselves from their emotions, but Shuu genuinely believes it and Furuta knows it’s a sham.

These two are both moon characters, they experience emotions they athey don’t understand but just assume they are about aesthetics and comedy because that’s the only framework they can deal with their actual emotions. Tsukiyama even pretends his attachments to people are purely aesthetic when they are so obviously not.

There’s also situation parallels, they were both born to families that have a great deal of influence over the ghoul world. The Tsukiyama’s however primarily use their influence to give other ghoul’s a place in society, while the Washuu stomp out ghouls from society. Tsukiyama himself is an unwitting heir like Matsuri who cares more about personal freedom than his responsibility, while Furuta is closer to Karren a cousin who is instead treated like a servant to the family and loses their sense of personhood because of it.

Even their birthday poems are total and complete opposites. Shuu’s is one of calm reassurance that life is going to work out okay, while Furuta’s is telling you to laugh because the world is awful and then you die.

Then the question is, if Shuu is a character heavily associated with the moon why has he done absolutely nothing this arc of note so far? My answer is that Ishida likes to play with his cards close to his chest, but there are a couple of hints as to what might happen next.

I think it’s important that Shuu was the one to interrupt the initial Touken talk, and also he does so with news o the real world, that thing that Kaneki and Touka oh so conveniently avoid a lot.

This was also shown a few chapters ago, a clear and obvious “Behlit” and in the same chapter a deal with the devil happens.

If you take this entire brewing arc as a parallel to Berserk, a certain scenario can be mapped out. In Berserk Bejlits are stone fetishes of unknwon supernatural origin said to govern the fate of humanity. They are primarily used for summoning the angels of the God Hand, at which point the owners are granted a wish in exchange for a sacrificed.

The most major activation of a Behlit we see in Berserk, is one where Griffith chooses to sacrifice his comrades in order to pursue his goal of being king. The strongest parallel we have right now is that in Berserk the main characters Guts and Casca, finally connected and had sex right before the Eclipse happened.

This is just going to be summarizing Berserk for a second so let me just, Kaneki and Guts have several parallels that can be drawn between each other. In particular Guts tastes happiness for the first time in the band of the hawk and then leaves it because he is unsure of himself. This is a repeating thing with Guts several times, he’s unable to grasp happiness because he’s generally lived a miserable life up until this point and is afraid of losing him.

Gut’s abandonment of the hawks sends Griffith into a downward spiral which culminated in him becoming an emaciated husk of his former self (Tsukiyama) and having his tongue cut off (Kanae). What drives Griffith over the absolute edge though is overhearing Casca and Guts make plans to leave Griffith eventually and start a family of their own. Hearing Casca and Guts act of their own free will especially when Griffith is so close to losing everything impacts him greatly because he viewed them as objects that belonged to him, so them leaving is the final nail in the coffin of his own downfall. Griffith attempts suicide.

When they rush to find him though, they encounter the eclipse. Which is when the godhand descend and slaughter the band of the hawk. I don’t think an exact parallel of this is going to happen in TG of course, but there are parallels that can be drawn between the main character.

Tsukiyama in the past has seen both Kaneki and Touka as objects of interest, and any emotional attachment to them has always been framed in this lens. Rather than a love triangle, their decision to confide in each other to that extent could be what pushes Tsukiyama to the edge. Especially when he wants to be close to Kaneki and seen as more than a wallet. A solar eclipse is also what is happening metaphorically in the manga, when the moon blocks out the sun and the characters lose all of their insight causing their shadows to grow even deeper.

Griffith of course is a character who is willing to stand atop a pile of corpses and climb their in order to become king. The same blind and destructive ambition is reflected in Furuta as he climbs to the head of the Washuu family and declares himself Washuu king, building his pathway there on the bodies of dead ghouls and humans alike.

In this case Griffith the betrayer can be represented in two persons, Tsukiyama for his complex emotional relationship that exists on the outside of Touka and Kaneki’s own relationship, and then Furuta who propels forward with blind ambition. Tsukiyama is also defined by his selfishness in his own relationships as Touka points out.

(Just leave the other aspects of Griffith’s character aside for now).

Therefore if Tsukiyama and Furuta were to ever come together, a disaster and a betrayal quite like the eclipse is likely to happen. We know three things about Tsukiyama’s character arc going forward, one that his character arc should have him letting go of the idea of Kaneki he clings so tightly onto.

In his great moment of character development he even rejects Kaneki and fights against him. If Shuu is ever able to move forward he first must let go of this idea of Kaneki in his head.

Second he has yet to properly mourn Kanae. Part of the reason why is because after they died, he was immediately told that Kaneki did so for his sake which must have complicated his feelings on the matter. Repressed feelings are never a true way of dealing with them though, so Kaneki’s direct hand in Kanae’s death is something that should boil to the surface sooner or later. Especially considering the unacknowledged hypocrisy that Kaneki is a once Dove who slaughtered ghouls en masse now claiming to fight for them.

This could also tie into Furuta’s way of tempting Tsukyiama away from Kaneki. If he still has Hairu’s body, then it’s likely he could still have Kanae’s as well. Kanae’s even already had Noro’s kagune inserted into them. Furuta could offer Kanae’s revival as a way of bringing Tsukiyama over to his side, especially if the alternative is working with somebody who doesn’t regret much less care about killing Kanae.

Third and most important is that Tsukiyama is basically Kaneki’s second in command at this point. If there was anybody who could bring a devastating fissure to the group spiderweb of delicate bonds which holds Goat together at this point it is him. He acts as defacto leader when Kaneki is gone, is in control of gathering assets for them, and even knows the codes.

There is no better point of infiltration than Tsukiyama, and also considering that Tsukiyama saved both Naki and MIza’s life, and has a close relationship with Hinami he might even be able to take a few key members with him. Hinami I think is most important because like any youth she needs some form of rebellion against Kaneki, because watching her repress all of her emotions for Kaneki’s sake is just getting painful at this point.

Notice how, quite predictably her and Akira’s supposed reunion had no emotional growth for Hinami or acknowledging of Hinami’s feelings and centered entirely around Akira. It’s almost like Hinami’s too selfless for her own good or something. Her time in Aogiri, her decision to join them was pretty critical for her move to grow up and towards her own independence but now she’s back to attaching herself to Kaneki again.

There you have it, my long and far fetched guess of how Tsukiyama will factor into the moon arc and also the big explosion that might finally get these characters motivated.

#tg meta #meta #tsukiyama shuu #Furuta nimura #touka kirishima #kaneki ken #tarot #tokyo ghoul theory #tokyo ghoul meta #tokyo ghoul re

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emmettmc-heart-y · 5 years ago

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Hello bc I am the worst, I forgot to keep doing @twilight-af ‘s 15/30 day challenge. And bc I know I will forget again I have decided to just answer all the questions in one post. Does this kinda defeat the purpose? Probably but I want to answer all the questions bc they’re cool & fun and I’m a newer blog so people can read this and learn about me if they want to!

Day 4: fav couple

Okay as much as I love Em & Rose, I lowkey really like Alice and Jasper as a couple (would like them more if Jasper wasn’t a confederate soldier). I like how they found eachother and just how they are as a couple.

Day 5: fav group

The Cullens. I don’t really have a reason why but probably bc we get to know them the most.

Day 6: when and how did you get into twilight?

After the first movie came out on dvd I watched it at a friends house. And I fell in love. I got my own dvd & the books shortly after that.

Day 7: fav soundtrack

Twilight. I dont think that needs an explanation.

Day 8: how long have you had your blog, why did you start?

Like two weeks?? I think. And I started it bc I like the nostalgia of it all.

Day 9: best villian

Victoria. Hands down. She has the most understandable reason to be a villain and she’s smart. Even though I do question her taste in men.

Day 10: Breaking Dawn, yes or no?

There are a few parts of this I really like but most of it I could do without. Like a vampire/human hybrid is cool but there was no way for people to even guess that was possible bc smeyer didn’t build up to it correctly. Also idk the wedding/baby plot kinda changes Bellas character. But I liked learning about all of the other vampires. The imprinting on a baby thing was also a definite no from me. So idk some of it yes some of it no.

Day 11: fav movie scene and book part?

Ummmmm this is another hard question. In the movies the baseball scene was obviously iconic, oh and that scene in twilight where they get out of the car and everyones looking at them, the reunion scene in new moon, Jacob showing Charlie he’s a wolf in BD, and the BD fight scene. In the books I liked learning about all of the vampires backstories (especially Rosalies). There’s so many more but those are my top favs.

Day 12: best music moment

Baseball scene. Prom scene. Wedding scene.

Day 13: vent about your least favorite parts.

I’ll keep this short bc this is already going to be a long post and bc this has already been said. But Smeyer letting her beliefs and prejudices influence her writing. Especially when it comes to the wolf pack & women. Also the imprinting thing.

Day 14: fav book quote

“I decided as long as I’m going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”

“I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him”

“No, Emmett, I punched a werewolf in the face.”

“I’m really glad Edward didn’t kill you. Everything’s so much more fun with you around.” (Gotta show Emmett some love)

Day 15: why do you love Twilight?

Its hard to put in to words, especially since the older I get the more problems I find with smeyers writing. But at the time I first read it, the stories were so good (I was in middle school so this was the first series I ever read, I had nothing to compare it to). I loved learning about vampires and the atmosphere. Now I love it for the nostalgia.

Day 16: fav cast member

I used to be O B S E S S E D with Kellan Lutz back in the day. But now I my favs are probably Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Also I like how Jackson Rathbone is willing to revisit the series.

Day 17: team Edward or team Jacob

Team Edward baby. (Even tho smeyer did Jacob dirty)

Day 18: least favorite character

Literally all of the volturi

Day 19: fav and least fav book cover

Fav: new moon. Least fav: eclipse.

Day 20: favorite non-canon ship

Jacob and literally anyone who isn’t Renesmee. Also Rose & Bella.

Day 21: Rachelle Lefevre or Bryce Dallas Howard as Victoria

I think both did a great job but I don’t think the role should have been recast.

Day 22: fav additional book

The only one I ever read was Bree Tanner so its that one by default but I do want to get my hands on the others.

Day 23: have you seen Twilight in Forks or Destination Forks?

Nope!

Day 24: fav cullen, pack member, human, and Volturi

Cullen: Emmett. Pack member: Seth. Human: Charlie. Volturi: none preferably but I guess Heidi if I had to pick.

Day 25: which movie showed the vampire look the best?

Breaking Dawn pt 2

Day 26: would you rather have Midnight Sun or the ability to read Twilight for the first time?

This might be the hardest question I’ve answered. But I think Midnight Sun.

Day 27: which book/movie have you rewatched/reread the most?

Twilight & Eclipse for both

Day 28: which part of the series was the most shocking for you?

BD fight scene in the movie. Rose’s backstory in the books.

Day 29: how would you feel about a remake with a new cast?

I would be so down. I would be even more down gor a tv show.

Day 30: how would your life be different without twilight?

My middle school years (and probably the rest of my life) would have been so sad and boring.

#this is so long I’m sorry #twilight15daychallenge #twilight

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swipestream · 6 years ago

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SUPERVERSIVE: Ultra Sun, Uranium, and the Quest for the Perfect Pokemon Game

I’ve thought deeply for awhile of how to approach this article. So it’ll be a bit long, but hopefully you’ll find it interesting. I’ll be going forward with the assumption that everyone knows the basic core concepts behind the pokemon franchise. And hey, even if you, specifically, don’t, I know the audience is out there.

You see, I’m a HUGE Pokémon fan. I grew up with the series but I like to think I’m pretty good at separating my opinions from nostalgia goggles. The games are just GOOD. The core concept behind the games is good. And Game Freak, whatever you might think of them, clearly puts a lot of care into the series. These games are more than cash grabs, there’s clear passion, and a willingness to listen to fan complaints.

I’m serious. A common complaint about the Pokémon games is that they are stagnant. They don’t try new things, they don’t innovate, they’re basically the same game. But look at the reviews of each game when it comes out. EVERY SINGLE ONE – literally – is complimented specifically for the different things it brings to the table.

Complaining that every Pokemon game is too similar is like complaining that My Hero Academia “just follows the standard Shonen formula”. Of course it does! The Shonen formula is REALLY GOOD when executed properly, and broad enough that you can get a lot of variety out of it. Ditto Pokémon.

Lately I’ve been going through a lot of Pokémon fan games. Pokémon Glazed, Prism, and Light Platinum are all good, especially Glazed. I recommend them all. But the king, by far the best Pokémon fan game I’ve played – maybe just the best Pokémon game ever made (we’ll get to that) – is Pokémon Uranium.

And it is this game, along with Pokémon Ultra Sun, a gen 7 mainline series Pokémon game, that I will be discussing here.

Uranium is the game made by people like me, for people like me: Millennials who grew up with the series who wanted to see a game that was more difficult without getting absurd, with a story that was more adult without getting grimdark just for the sake of it, and with a more serious tone that nevertheless kept underneath it all that same goofy Pokémon spirit. Things in Uranium get dark – REALLY dark. I won’t go into detail because I don’t want to spoil the entire story, but there is one particularly eerie moment maybe halfway or so through the game where you and your rival fly through the air on the back of a Pokémon Ranger’s Staraptor (the Rangers are in this game, and we’ll get to that). In a very brief cutscene we see in the background nuclear fallout spread over the recently evacuated city while an otherworldly version of the classic Pallet Town theme plays in the background. It’s shocking to see, it’s creepy, it recognizes that the player is going to be someone familiar with the series’ history, and I absolutely loved the game for having it.

And yet, despite all of that, never in the game did I feel things get depressing, or needlessly cruel, or lose their sense of fun and adventure.

The story goes that ten years before the plot proper starts your mother disappeared after a nuclear reactor meltdown, presumed dead. The ensuing fallout caused the pokemon in the immediate area to mutate into nuclear pokemon, hyper aggressive glowing green versions of normal pokemon with a brand new typing, the nuclear type, strong against everything but nuclear and steel but weak against everything but nuclear. At the time the game starts you are living in Moki Town with your aunt. After your mother’s disappearance your father buried himself in work and is now living in the region’s capital city as Chief of the Pokémon Rangers. At the age of (I believe) 12 you join your younger and brattier neighbor Theo, pick out your starter, and go off on your Pokémon adventure. What follows are trips into massive underground tunnels ruled by man-eating ants, a mysterious villain who seems to be intentionally causing nuclear meltdowns around the region, becoming the hokage of a clan of ninja, and more…a lot, lot more.

This project was a labor of love in every way and it shows. Your father being the chief of the Pokémon Rangers is a stroke of genius, connecting side games that are technically canonical yet all but ignored in mainline Pokémon releases and integrating them into the plot in a meaningful way that actually has an impact besides “Look, it’s there!” The pacing of the story is seamless, inserting major plot events at the proper places in the narrative without feeling like a reason to artificially jack up the story.

The world is huge, with a full 13 towns and 16 routes, plus a huge roster of original pokemon. And not only is it huge, it feels connected. An example:

At one point in the game you need to surf across a large stretch of water to get to a city on the opposite edge of the map. The game could just let you swim right across, dodging around and battling trainers moving in set patterns. Instead, you get periodically ambushed by a group of ninjas, eventually culminating in a fight with the hokage. After you win, congrats, you’re hokage now!

This comes back into play later when you have to travel to the ninja hometown and are ambushed by pirates. Sure enough who rescues you but, yes, your now-loyal ninja clan from earlier. It’s great tiny details like this that make the game shine. This doesn’t even really connect with the main story, but it fleshes out your character’s role in this world in a way that’s amusing, visceral, and memorable: You did a thing, other people remember you did a thing, because you did a thing the way people react to you changes. Pokémon really shines in terms of immersion when it can pull off these sorts of touches, and Uranium gets it.

The specter of nuclear annihilation looms over the entire game

Uranium is, as you might expect, also REALLY hard in ways a mainline game can’t be. Here you’re expected to know how to play. Nothing is easy, but it’s all *possible* to do without insane grinding. I picked a grass type starter and had a devil of a time with the fire type gym leader because I expected to take him down with a ground type…except his Pokémon were FLYING-fire types. Luckily, the game gives you the ability to counter this; early on you see at least three different types of electric pokemon you can catch and train relatively quickly, and with some work it’s possible to get past the gym without insane overleveling. Pokémon Uranium absolutely demands you strategize. At one point I was forced to catch and use pokemon I’d never need again specifically to, not take down one pokemon, but get one large HIT off so they’d be softened up for later. And it was a blast.

There’s a ton of variety in the route designs, and oftentimes getting from one town to another feels like an achievement. Again, the game expects you to know how to play. If you depend too much on one Pokémon, or one type, or one strategy, you will be punished for it. Uranium is clearly attempting to recreate that same feeling that a kid got when he made it through Viridian Forest or Victory Road for the first time for adults, and it succeeds.

Now obviously the game is not perfect. The multiplayer is glitchy, and I think some of the route and gym design choices are puzzling, to say the least. But as a whole it is a love letter to the franchise and the players who grew up with it, and I can’t commend it enough.

All right. That’s Uranium. This is probably the part of the review where you expect me to go on about all of the places Pokémon Ultra Sun fails in contrast, how Nintendo is losing touch with its core audience, how Pokémon has lost the magic, yada yada yada.

I’m not going to do that. The truth is, Pokémon Ultra Sun is REALLY good. Sometimes it’s even great. However, for a few reasons I’d probably consider it the weakest of the mainline games I’ve played. It has flaws, and I’ll discuss those first before getting into what it gets right and how it compares with Uranium.

Sun and Moon starts off really, really, really slow and easy. It remains that way for far too long as well. It’s like the first hour and a half or more of the game is basically a tutorial. I don’t need one! Game Freak should know by now that a lot of its players are 20 year vets. Slap on an optional tutorial and be done with it.

A neat map of Alola

I hear so many people rave over Alola and I don’t get it at all. Alola is – and this will sound pretty harsh, but there you go – boring. Most of the routes look really similar (partially hurt by the loss of the traditional bird’s eye view – routes with the potential to look cool you can only see from a relatively limited angle, so it looks like Yet Another Road), and only a couple of the town designs can be called anything close to memorable. One of those memorable towns – a town made up of all docks connected to each other – is even just a stolen design from generation 3 (Pacifidalog Town). Making the games set on a tropical island was a mistake, as there is much less opportunity to create varied weather and landscapes. The fact that this game has the fewest routes and towns of any generation is absolutely shameful. There is no excuse for this on the most technologically advanced game engine used to date (well, until the Let’s Go games, but they’re generation 1 remakes).

The game is also badly railroaded. Now technically every pokemon game is pretty railroaded – you are supposed to do certain things in a certain order and can’t continue if you don’t. But you feel it this time. In previous games, and, yes, in Uranium – you would be traveling and doing things for yourself, because you wanted to, that weren’t necessarily connected with the overarching structure. In one example from above, you become Hokage of a ninja clan. In the generation 2 mainline games there is a short sidequest about getting a pokemon to move out of the way of the route you want to take, which involves you searching through houses in a town to find the proper tools to do it. You’re not doing this to save the world or stop the evil team, but because you want to get to the next gym and continue your adventure. Nobody from the overarching narrative is forcing this on you. In another section you go to catch a red Gyrados terrorizing a lake. While this technically connects to the larger narrative that isn’t WHY you’re doing it. You’re doing it because you want that pokemon and the gym leader asked for help. These small details are almost absent from generation 7.

And this really messes with immersion. The sense of impact to what you’re doing, its impressiveness, seems forced. Early games set you up as a prodigy – in gen 2 you even face the protagonist of the previous game again, who has apparently hidden high up in the mountains to learn the ways of battling like some sort of warrior monk. You’re supposed to be a prodigy here too, but battles are too easy. It’s more like everyone else just sucks, a lot. Luckily, this changes in a big way for the better, and we’ll get to that when it comes to the pros of the game (there are many!).

The Exp. All device, which when on gives the battling pokemon full exp. and half exp. to every other non-fainted pokemon, is also a huge mistake. The common criticism is that it’s like taking an easy game and playing it on easy mode. This criticism is correct, but there is another problem. The original item, the Exp. Share, which split exp in half between the battling pokemon and the pokemon holding the device, was a great idea. If you wanted to bring a new pokemon into your party you can bring it up to the level of the rest of your party quickly without messing up your battles or constant grinding. By splitting the exp with the entire party it misses the point of the original Exp share, and for your pokemon to catch up you need to go back to sticking the pokemon you want to train in front and swapping it out – meaning that you lose the advantage of having an Exp. Share in the first place!

So while good for younger players who have trouble raising a balanced team it’s a mess for players who are more interested in spending time training and getting to know the world.

Now for the good. I’ll first point out that I looked up the differences between Sun and Moon and Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. The best I can say about it is that if my understanding of the original two games is correct…I probably would have hated the original games. Because they don’t get that much harder. The rival isn’t as big a part of the game. And the postgame is weak.

Happily, Ultra Sun gets MUCH, MUCH harder, your rival has a full character arc integrated seamlessly into the story, and the postgame is unbelievably good.

Oh yeah!

The postgame of Ultra Sun, at least as of right now, since Uranium is technically still updating – is better than Uranium’s by a VERY wide margin. An addition to Ultra Sun, that was NOT in the original Sun and Moon, is the Rainbow Rocket episode. Fruity name aside, this is a fantastic addition, designed specifically with long time players in mind. It brings back the major villains of almost every previous pokemon game and gets really, REALLY hard. Seeing all of the uniforms and people you recognize, complete with remixed versions of their classic soundtracks and smart callbacks, makes the purchase of Ultra Sun worth it almost by itself. In addition to this the series of boss battles that takes place starting near the end of the game jumps in difficulty dramatically. For the first time – and to my relief – I was required to really strategize in battles, coming up with different plans and ideas each time I lost as potential counters to my in-game opponents.

A new mechanic known as “Ultra Wormholes” is also a blast. By traveling through these interdimensional portals it is possible with some work to capture almost every single legendary pokemon in the franchise thus far – which is, needless to say, pretty freaking cool.

And…to my surprise…the story is actually pretty good? It’s probably the best story the games have ever had. The character development of Lillie is by far the best part of the game, and her family drama is actually, legitimately compelling. Your rival has a real character arc and the pacing is seamlessly integrated throughout the story. There is a tradeoff here, because by getting so story heavy you lose that sense that it’s a story YOU’RE creating, but the flip side of this is that by making the characters feel more real and the narrative more compelling you’re further sucked into the world in that sense. It’s no masterpiece by any means, but it’s easily the best story in a pokemon game and perfectly good on its own merits as well. This helps make up for a lot of the game’s other flaws with respect to immersion.

While this is not a new addition, the nifty mechanic where you get to groom, feed, and play with your pokemon is a nice touch, and it’s especially fun to see the relationships you build actually bear fruit in battle.

Ultimately, despite flaws, I had a blast with Pokémon Ultra Sun. For the hardcore pokemon fans like me, the Ultra versions are definitely the definitive gen 7 games. For more casual fans, you’ll definitely enjoy it as well.

Still, Uranium is a great example of a time where fans of a franchise were able to produce a product that the original company really couldn’t make. The difficulty curve of the game and more serious story were exactly what long time fans of the franchise were waiting for and what Game Freak really couldn’t provide even if they wanted to. While neither game is perfect, if I was to recommend one game over the other I’d recommend Uranium over Ultra Sun. It is a more classic Pokémon experience updated for an older generation, and I believe it has fewer big flaws than Ultra Sun, whatever its many benefits.

In any case, both games are definitely highly recommended.

SUPERVERSIVE: Ultra Sun, Uranium, and the Quest for the Perfect Pokemon Game published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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