#a part of you spoilers

[youngroyalsforever]

A Part of You is good.

It's emotional, it's impactful, it's realistic. It has a story to tell, and it tells it in an honest way, mostly avoiding melodrama. It has its flaws but they are easy to ignore once you start caring about the characters.

I really appreciated APOY for showing a family struggling with a loved one's depression. Their inability to communicate with each other and support each other felt too true at some points — I paused the film multiple times because it was that difficult to watch. It was different from the way too many media deal with subjects like addiction and mental health. In real life, those things aren't small obstacles on the path to happiness, they are life-long struggles. APOY felt true in this regard. Through a better part of the film Agnes is completely isolated in her grief, so is her mom. They cannot support one another even in the moment when they learn about Julia's death.

Felicia Maxime's character is the main focus of APOY, we see the story through Agnes' eyes. Felicia is good and completely believable in this role. There were a few moments when her acting seemed a bit melodramatic but they could have been the director's choices.

Edvin has a smaller role than the promo campaign had suggested so I get YR fans' disappointment. Even so, he is brilliant in every scene. I was pleasantly shocked by his ability to bring to life such different characters as Noel and Wilhelm. Not that we needed it after three seasons of Young Royals, but APOY is another confirmation that Edvin is an exceptionally talented actor who will make the absolute best out of any material he is given.

Someone who knows about filmmaking more than I do could write about APOY's visual language. I know nothing. I only can say that the film is really effective at making the viewer feeling the characters' emotions.

The one thing I have issue with APOY is its message. I am not a five-year-old, therefore I don't need a piece of media to be a How It Should Be Done manual. A Part of You is a film about recovering from grief but it sacrifices something to be it. Julia isn't given enough space to become a character the viewer could care about. Bluntly speaking, she is there to die so the other characters could complete their arcs. We only see Julia as her depression — she is a burden to her loved ones, her mom doesn't know how to deal with her, her boyfriend is exhausted and overwhelmed by his duties of a babysitter. Her friends are saddened by Julia's death but we don't know the reason for that, it can be a typical young people's reaction to a death of someone their age. Julia could have been a good person outside of depression she didn't know how to handle. APOY only allows her to be a plot device for other characters' growth.

It brings us to the message. The film leads us to believe that nothing could be done. Julia is dead, her loved ones have to understand her death wasn't their fault and move on. I don't disagree with that. What rubs me the wrong way is carelessness with which the film handles the subject of depression. Depression is difficult for anyone, but it's especially difficult for teenagers. They brains haven't finished developing, they biologically incapable of understanding how long life is. To them, any struggle seems like the end of the world.

I am not suggesting that APOY — a piece of media inspired by a real-life tragedy — should have had a different plot, the one that would teach the audience that depression is manageable and suicides are preventable. I think that any character with mental health struggles deserves to be portrayed as a multidimentional person and their death can't be reduced to a reason behind someone else's journey of self-discovery.

[justfriendsbestthings]

Why does every Swedish production feel the need to play Stockholmsvy (because it is a perfect song) I can’t deal with this

Also the way Emma immediately said ‘I’ve seen this scene before’ when they showed the lake lmao

[egophiliac]

absolutely flawless plan, everybody. great job.

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[arquinx]

Thinking about the meaning behind Curly ignoring the dead pixel Anya points out to him while Swansea shatters the whole screen with an axe after finding out what happened to Anya oooooooh I love this game so much

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[kugisakiss]

raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimised by mahito

[counting-stars-gayly]

I’m actually LOVING how Rick Riordan, and the other writers of the show, took his initial concept of a Percabeth rivalry fueled by that of their parents and kind of turned it on its head?

Now, instead of Annabeth being wary of Percy because he’s a son of Poseidon, he’s wary of her because she made a callous impression on him. They get off to a rocky start even before finding out who Percy’s father is, and when they finally do, Annabeth doesn’t care. Instead of them fighting because of who their parents are, they’re fighting over their own opposed worldviews.

Then, instead of them arguing over which of the gods is cooler and who was right in the story of Medusa, they realize that, just like Medusa, Annabeth is a victim of her mother and that, unlike Medusa, she is a far kinder and stronger person, unwilling to repeat the cycle of hurt. They realize that, like his father, Percy often acts without considering potential consequences and that, unlike his father, he is a far kinder and stronger person, willing to step up for someone he wronged and whom he cares about.

Instead of Percy and Annabeth’s rivalry being focused on that of their parents, it’s focused on who they are, themselves. But the path to friendship is still the same: a realization that they have each other’s backs, no matter what, because they’re not their parents after all.

[mari-lair]

Siffrin angst, for @jewelielie !

[ichiwashername-o]

Elphaba: WHO WROTE THE GRIMMERIE

*cocks shotgun*

I JUST WANNA TALK.

-

Fiyero's not salty at Elphaba per se, but damn, sometimes when you read something that quirks your eyebrow, you gotta take a step back and reconsider.

Elphaba didn't exactly have time to do that so can we really blame her?

We can, however, blame the absolute masochist that wrote the Grimmerie.

No but for real, whoever created that spellbook was an absolute troll. Just sheer genie level of manipulation and word-twisting and "you better cross your T's and dot your I's because I can and will exploit every vague unclear word you speak to be as horrific as possible."

[a-narcissists-warren]

[moghedien]

How Galinda gets ready for bed knowing she's gonna homoerotically argue with Elphaba all night once again

[bobertbilliams]

They grow up so fast 🌱

[egophiliac]

back at it again with the extremely self-indulgent diafams! I am being emotionally supported by overly-cutesy interactions between anime characters right now, don't judge me.

(also continuing with my headcanons that 1) mustache Bauru, and 2) he'll be hugely tsundere about it but you can, ultimately, convince him to do just about anything via careful application of Sebek.)

[housederiva]

Ohhhh man of course Lucanis finds Rook’s voice comforting!! Of course he does!! Rook’s voice was the first kind one that he had heard in a year!!! It was Rook’s voice that guided him out of the Ossuary both physically and later mentally!!!! It has been Rook’s voice that wakes him when Spite takes over!!! Of course it’s a comfort!!!!

[mwagneto]

fascinated by just how much marvel movies (and shows) managed to perfect the formula of making 2 male characters Just gay enough that the fans who want that will go UMMM IT'S NOT BAIT THEY'RE LITERALLY GAY LOOK!!!! but not too gay that homophobes even pick up on there being any subtext let alone get mad. extremely insidious form of bait. obvious examples being fatws and loki and more recently deadpool 3 and now venom 3