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pumpkinpaix · 4 years

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Hello! Feel free not to answer this question if it is in any way too much, but I've been wondering about something concerning the "western" mdzs fandom. Lately, i have seen multiple pieces of fanart that use what is clearly Christian symbolism and sometimes downright iconography in depicting the characters. I'm a european fan, but it still makes me vaguely uneasy. I know that these things are rarely easy to judge. I'm definitely not qualified to do so and was wondering if you have an opinion

Hi there! thank you for your patience and for the interesting question! I’ve been thinking about this since i received this ask because it?? idk, it’s difficult to answer, but it also touches on a a few things that I find really interesting.

the short answer: it’s complicated, and I also don’t know what I feel!

the longer answer:

i think that this question is particularly difficult to answer because of how deeply christianity is tied to the western art and literary canon. so much of what is considered great european art is christian art! If you just take a quick glance at wiki’s page on european art, you can see how inextricable christianity is, and how integral christian iconography has been in the history of european art. If you study western art history, you must study christian imagery and christian canon because it’s just impossible to engage with a lot of the work in a meaningful way without it. that’s just the reality of it.

Christianity, of course, also has a strong presence in european colonial and imperialist history and has been used as a tool of oppression against many peoples and nations, including China. I would be lying if I said I had a good relationship with Christianity--I have always faced it with a deep suspicion because I think it did some very, very real damage, not just to chinese people, but to many cultures and peoples around the world, and that’s not a trauma that can be easily brushed aside or reconciled with.

here is what is also true: my maternal grandmother was devoutly christian. my aunt is devoutly christian. my uncle’s family is devoutly christian. my favorite cousin is devoutly christian. when I attended my cousin’s wedding, he had both a traditional chinese ceremony (tea-serving, bride-fetching, ABSURDLY long reception), and also a christian ceremony in a church. christianity is a really important part of his life, just as it’s important to my uncle’s family, and as it was important to my grandmother. I don’t think it’s my right or place to label them as simply victims of a colonialist past--they’re real people with real agency and choice and beliefs. I think it would be disrespectful to act otherwise.

that doesn’t negate the harm that christianity has done--but it does complicate things. is it inherently a bad thing that they’re christian, due to the political history of the religion and their heritage? that’s... not a question I’m really interested in debating. the fact remains that they are christian, that they are chinese, and that they chose their religion.

so! now here we are with mdzs, a chinese piece of media that is clearly Not christian, but is quickly gaining popularity in euroamerican spaces. people are making fanart! people are making A LOT of fanart! and art is, by nature, intertextual. a lot of the most interesting art (imo) makes deliberate use of that! for example (cyan art nerdery time let’s go), Nikolai Ge’s What is Truth?

I love this painting! it’s notable for its unusual depiction of christ: shabby, unkempt, slouched, in shadow. if you look for other paintings of this scene, christ is usually dignified, elegant, beautiful, melancholy -- there’s something very humanizing and humbling about this depiction, specifically because of the way it contrasts the standard. it’s powerful because we as the audience are expected to be familiar with the iconography of this scene, the story behind it, and its place in the christian canon.

you can make similar comments about Gentileschi’s Judith vs Caravaggio’s, or Manet’s Olympia vs Ingres’ Grande Odalisque -- all of these paintings exist in relation to one another and also to the larger canon (i’m simplifying: you can’t just compare one to another directly in isolation etc etc.) Gauguin’s Jacob Wrestling the Angel is also especially interesting because of how its portrayal of its content contrasts to its predecessors!

or! because i’m really In It now, one of my favorite paintings in the world, Joan of Arc by Bastien-Lepage:

I just!!! gosh, idk, what’s most interesting to me in this painting is the way it seems to hover between movements: the hyperrealistic, neoclassical-esque take on the figure, but the impressionistic brushstrokes of the background AAA gosh i love it so much. it’s really beautiful if you ever get a chance to see it in person at the Met. i’m putting this here both because i personally just really like it and also as an example of how intertextuality isn’t just about content, but also about visual elements.

anyways, sorry most of this is 19thc, that was what i studied the most lol.

(a final note: if you want to read about a really interesting painting that sits in the midst of just a Lot of different works, check out the wiki page on Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, specifically under “Interpretation and Legacy”)

this is all a really long-winded way of getting to this point: if you want to make allusory fanart of mdzs with regards to western art canon, you kind of have to go out of your way to avoid christian imagery/iconography, especially when that’s the lens through which a lot of really intensely emotional art was created. many of my favorite paintings are christian: Vrubel’s Demon, Seated, Perov’s Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Ge’s Conscience, Judas, Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc, as shown above. that’s not to say there ISN’T plenty of non-christian art -- but christian art is very prominent and impossible to ignore.

so here are a few pieces of fanwork that I’ve seen that are very clearly making allusions to christian imagery:

1. this beautiful pietà nielan by tinynarwhals on twitter

2. a lovely jiang yanli as our lady of tears by @satuwilhelmiina

3. my second gif in this set here, which I will also show below:

i’m only going to talk about mine in depth because well, i know exactly what i was thinking when I put this gif together while I can’t speak for anyone else.

first: the two lines of the song that I wanted to use for lan xichen were “baby, I’m a fighter//in the robes of a saint” because i felt that they fit him very well. of course, just the word “saint” evokes catholicism, even if it’s become so entwined in the english language that it’s taken on a secular meaning as well.

second: when I saw this scene, my immediate thought was just “PIETÀ!!” because LOOK at that composition! lan xichen’s lap! nie mingjue lying perpendicular to it! the light blue/white/silver of lan xichen in contrast to the darker robes of both nie mingjue and meng yao! not just that, but the very cool triangular structure of the image is intensely striking, and Yes, i Do love that it simultaneously ALSO evokes deposition of christ vibes. (baxia as the cross.... god..... is that not the Tightest Shit) does this make meng yao joseph of arimathea? does it make him john the evangelist? both options are equally interesting, I think when viewed in relation to his roles in the story: as a spy in qishan and as nmj’s deputy. maybe he’s both.

anyways, did I do this intentionally? yes, though a lot of it is happy accident/discovered after the fact since I’m relying on CQL to have provided the image. i wanted to draw attention to all of that by superimposing that line over that image! (to be clear: I didn’t expect it to all come through because like. that’s ridiculous. the layers you’d have to go through to get from “pretty lxc gifset” --> “if we cast nie mingjue as a christ figure, what is the interesting commentary we could do on meng yao by casting him as either joseph of arimathea or john the evangelist” are like. ok ur gonna need to work a little harder than slapping a song lyric over an image to achieve an effect like that.)

the point of this is: yes, it’s intentionally christian, yes I did this, yes I am casting these very much non-christian characters into christian roles for this specific visual work -- is this okay?

I obviously thought it was because I made it. but would I feel the same about a work that was written doing something similar? probably not. I think that would make me quite uncomfortable in most situations. but there’s something about visual art that makes it slightly different that I have trouble articulating -- something about how the visual often seeks to illustrate parallels or ideas, whereas writing characters as a different religion can fundamentally change who those characters are, the world they inhabit, etc. in a more... invasive?? way. that’s still not quite right, but I genuinely am not sure how to explain what i mean! I hope the general idea comes across. ><

something else to think about is like, what are pieces I find acceptable and why?

what makes the pieces above that reference christian imagery different than this stunning nieyao piece by @cyandemise after klimt’s kiss? (warnings for like, dead bodies and vague body horror) like i ADORE this piece (PLEASE click for fullview it’s worth it for the quality). it’s incredibly beautiful and evocative and very obviously references a piece of european art. I have no problem with it. why? because it isn’t explicitly christian? it’s still deeply entrenched in western canon. klimt certainly made other pieces that were explicit christian references.

another piece I’d like to invite you all to consider is this incredible naruto fanart of sakura and ino beheading sasuke after caravaggio’s judith. (warnings for beheading, blood, etc. you know.) i also adore this piece! i think it’s very good both technically and conceptually. the reference that it makes has a real power when viewed in relation to the roles of the characters in their original story -- seeing the women that sasuke fucked over and treated so disrespectfully collaborating in his demise Says Something. this is also!! an explicitly christian reference made with non-christian japanese characters. is this okay? does it evoke the same discomfort as seeing mdzs characters being drawn with christian iconography? why or why not?

the point is, I don’t think there’s a neat answer, but I do think there are a lot of interesting issues surrounding cultural erasure/hegemony that are raised by this question. i don’t think there are easy resolutions to any of them either, but I think that it’s a good opportunity to reexamine our own discomfort and try and see where it comes from. all emotions are valid but not all are justified etc. so I try to ask, is it fair? do i apply my criticisms and standards equally? why or why not? does it do real harm, or do i just not like it? what makes one work okay and another not?

i’ve felt that there’s a real danger with the kind of like, deep moral scrutiny of recent years in quashing interesting work in the name of fear. this morality tends to be expressed in black and white, good and bad dichotomies that i really do think stymies meaningful conversation and progress. you’ll often see angry takes that boil down to things like, “POC good, queer people good, white people bad, christianity bad” etc. without a serious critical examination of the actual issues at hand. I feel that these are extraordinarily harmful simplifications that can lead to an increased insularity that isn’t necessarily good for anyone. there’s a fine line between asking people to stay in their lane and cultural gatekeeping sometimes, and I think that it’s something we should be mindful of when we’re engaging in conversations about cultural erasure, appropriation etc.

PERHAPS IT IS OBVIOUS that I have no idea where that line falls LMAO since after all that rambling I have given you basically nothing. but! I hope that you found it interesting at least, and that it gives you a bit more material to think on while you figure out where you stand ahaha.

was this just an excuse to show off cool (fan)art i like? maybe ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(ko-fi)

#Anonymous #asks and replies #art #fanart #art history #christianity #mdzs #mdzs meta #meta #mine #mymeta #cyan gets too deep in the weeds #lmfao this post is a mess ive been staring at it for like a week and at this point im just gonna post it to the wall and keep moving asldfj #hope you enjoyed

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cosmicjoke · 3 years

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Levi and Zeke: Their similarities and the Fundamental differences between Them:

I’ve recently been having a discussion with @ourmondobongo, and it’s spurred me to want to kind of analyze further the fundamental and philosophical differences between Levi and Zeke. I know I’ve gone into this thoroughly already, but my discussion with ourmondobongo has really made me want to delve in even deeper. First though, let me thank them for, as always, inspiring such insightful discussion among the fan base!

Some really interesting ideas were posted here, about Zeke’s experiences growing up in Liberio informing his world view and his views on the worth, or rather, lack thereof, in human life. ourmondobongo suggested that, because of Zeke’s experiences with his parents, utilizing him as a tool for the Resistance, and his subsequent utilization by the Marlyean army as a tool of war, it ended up warping his perception, and influencing him to believe that all human life is inherently worthless unless it can be molded into a tool or a weapon to further some goal. I agree with this interpretation of Zeke’s mindset and what shaped it. This is undoubtedly how Zeke views the world, and humanity as a whole, and he’s deemed, because of his own suffering, brought about by his experiences affirming this world view, that life is not worth living. Because he sees life as without value unless one can make themselves useful in some way, in his view, the suffering inherent in that makes life fundamentally pointless and meaningless and not worth the effort.

Now, where I diverge slightly from ourmondobongo’s view on this is in relation to Zeke’s influence upon Levi in the final arc, or rather, what they say about Zeke’s philosophy overriding or undercutting Levi’s own. They said that Levi’s belief in an intrinsic value in human life is bombarded and undermined during the final arc of SnK, Zeke’s own belief in the worthlessness of human life being affirmed to him again and again by the chaos and destruction around them, the rightness of his philosophy and belief that this sort of destruction can only stop with the eradication of the Eldian people being confirmed. But see, the thing is, I don’t think Zeke is at all showing Levi something new, or something which he hasn’t already known all his life.

Zeke claims that his experiences in life make him uniquely suited to understanding the conflict between Eldian’s and Marleyeans, and that his experiences make him uniquely capable of knowing how to solve that conflict. But Zeke is nothing if not a unfailingly self-centered egotist, someone driven purely by selfish, egotistical viewpoints, unable and unwilling to perceive anything outside of his limited world view. His life ISN’T unique, his experiences AREN’T unique. They’re, first of all, shared by every single Eldian on both Marley and in other countries around the world. Further, and more importantly to the point I’m about to make, they’re shared by Levi.

Zeke grew up being treated and regarded as a second-class citizen, relegated to a limited area, an internment zone, which he wasn’t allowed to leave unless given direct permission by the powers that be, and regarded as something less than human by the people of Marley. Well, these are all things Levi himself experienced growing up too, and, I would argue, to an even more extreme degree than Zeke.

Levi grew up in the Underground, a sprawling, subterranean city filled with the so called “dregs of society”. A place where the poor, the persecuted, the sick, the dying, the deviant and the criminal were either forced to flee to, or more unfortunate still, were born into. All this underneath the Capital of Paradis, Sina, the richest, most exclusive district inside the Walls. A place where the elite of society lived and worked and raised their families in wealth and luxury. The irony of the poorest, most poverty stricken area inside the Walls being directly beneath the richest, most affluent area inside the Walls can’t be overstated.

Perhaps most relevant to note in this comparison between Zeke’s experience growing up in an internment zone and Levi’s growing up in the Underground, is that the people of the Underground were not only considered second-class citizens, but relegated to something even below that, considered not citizens at all. They were literally denied citizenship within all areas above ground, within the Walls, and if they somehow managed to make it to the surface, and were found out, they would be promptly deported back to the Underground, where they would continue to be denied any and all rights given to the people up above. And, it can be easily argued, that the people of the Underground were treated in many ways significantly worse than the Eldian’s inside the interment zone in Liberio. The people of Liberio seemed relatively well provided for, able to find work, able to earn a living, able to have homes for their families and put food on the table, essentially allowed a sustainable and comfortable life, if one burdened by outside prejudice. They weren’t made to live in squalor. Largely, no doubt, because they were seen as an unwanted, but useful resource for the Marleyean government. The people of the Underground were provided no such provisions. They were viewed as simple refuse, society’s unwanted and unneeded surplus. Poverty and depravation ran rampant in the Underground, a lack of resources and support from above resulting in high crime rates and desperation, to things like murder, prostitution, violence and other sorts of criminality. Further, leading to things like rampant orphaning of children, likely due to starvation and disease claiming the lives of parents, etc... It was a place literally cut off from the sun, a world of perpetual darkness, sickness, poverty and dire straits. They received no aid or support from above, were not provided any of the benefits or privileges of the people on the surface, were not offered any sort of path to success, or betterment of their lives. They were just plainly rejected and left to the whims of fate. This alone makes it a more difficult and desperate place than the interment zones of Liberio, for even there the Eldian’s were given opportunities to improve their lives through the Warrior Unit programs.

You might try to point out that Zeke’s experience differs from Levi’s in how he was taught that he, and on his assumption, every other Eldian, would only ever be seen and treated as a tool to be used for some greater gain, and that Levi, at least, had the love of his mother, and Kenny to show him the ropes of how to survive in a place as ruthless as the Underground, and so Levi couldn’t possibly understand what it means, the way Zeke does, to be seen as a tool, or to be deemed worthless outside of ones utility. But I would counter this simply, by saying that Levi grew up, spent the first, several years of his life, in a brothel, where the very mother who loved him also worked as a whore. Through this experience alone, it can be easily assumed that Levi was exposed to repeated instances of his mother being EXACTLY used as a tool, as an object who’s sole purpose was to give men pleasure. From his birth, then, Levi was exposed and taught the brutal lesson that the sole most important person in his life, his mother, the one person we can assume was the only positive influence and relationship he had, for the first, several years of his life, was seen and treated by everyone else as nothing more than a tool for their basest and most perverse satisfaction. I can scarcely imagine a more horrific or cruel example of a young child being taught the same lesson Zeke seems to think is unique to him alone, that people’s lives are worthless outside of what use they can provide for someone or something else. Beyond that, Levi was again forced to face a situation in which he and his two, closest friends in Furlan and Isabel were used as tools by other people, recruited by Lobov to kill Erwin and retrieve from him an incriminating document, promised, if they succeeded, citizenship above and a handsome payday, only to find out later the entire scenario had been set up by Erwin himself to press Levi and his friends into military service, to be used as tools in the fight against the Titans. Both of these are prime examples of Levi being faced with the lesson that he and those he cared about were seen by people above ground as nothing more than tools, to be used at their disposal. So this was a concept Levi was already well acquainted with by the time Zeke showed up, a merciless lesson in the harshness, violence, brutality and suffering of life. Zeke didn’t experience anything Levi didn’t in turn, and in many ways, with greater extremity.

Anyone trying to claim, also, that Zeke had no positive influences in his life like Levi did would be wrong. Zeke had Mr. Ksavar, for one, and his grandparents, for another. Mr. Ksavar asked nothing of Zeke, merely showed care and concern for him, and a desire to spend time with him, playing catch. It was Zeke who offered to inherit the Beast Titan from Mr. Ksavar, not something forced on him. And while Zeke’s grandparents may have tried to enforce Marleyean history on him in regards to the Eldian’s, they did so out of love for him, in a misguided attempt to PROTECT him, because they cared, not because they were trying to use him in any way.

My point in talking about all of this is to draw a parallel between Zeke’s life, and Levi’s, and then to demonstrate how, despite deeply similar life experiences, the two of them diverge in vital and fundamental ways which, more than anything, can only be attributed to their strengths of character and natural inclinations as people.

Essentially, the gist of my argument is this. Zeke is a bad person. Levi is a good person. And there can be no excuses, or influencing factors found in either of their lives to credit for the way either of them turned out, other than themselves, other than their own natures.

Because Zeke let his life experiences twist him into a heartless, emotionless, unfeeling sociopath who murders other people without remorse, and regards other human lives as meaningless, worthless trash, expendable and disposable as a means to his own ends. He let his experiences in life serve as an EXCUSE for his natural cruelty. He chose to view the lives of others only through the prism of his own experiences, and cast a judgment upon the worth of those other lives. The true reveal of Zeke’s megalomaniacal egotism is in how he finds himself unable to separate the lives of others from his own. In how he’s unable to view the lives of others as anything other than an extension of his own existence. Because he deems his own life worthless, then so too must be the lives of everyone else.

Levi, then, is perfectly his opposite. It isn’t because of Levi’s life experiences that he’s turned out the way he is. It is IN SPITE of his life experiences that he has. Everything Levi’s ever experienced in his life, according to Zeke’s philosophy, should have turned him into a monster. He should have come out of the Underground a sociopathic, unfeeling, brutally uncaring and violent man, ready to take from and use others for nothing more than his own, personal gain, because that was the lesson his life had taught him. Because that was what he’d been shown over and over again. That life is cruel, and ruthless, and uncompromising in its unfairness, and that to live is to suffer. And yet, Levi came out of the Underground with a greater capacity for compassion, feeling, love and kindness than any other character in SnK. He continually and routinely, throughout the series, demonstrates an incredible empathy, consideration, sympathy, generosity and understanding for other people. He is immensely accepting and nonjudgmental, and always, always goes out of his way to express gratitude towards others for their own sacrifices and efforts. He does his absolute best to protect the lives of others, constantly putting his own at risk to help others live, constantly putting his own at risk to save whoever he can. Constantly and consistently, Levi places the lives of others above his own in terms of worth.

And here’s the thing that makes Levi most remarkable of all. The thing which demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt the immense strength of his character. Levi very well knows that life is cruel, that life is brutal, that life is unfair, and that often people die for no damned good reason at all, that they suffer for no reason at all. He very well knows that people are breathtakingly cruel and terrible to one another, that people treat one another in unspeakably horrific and unforgivable ways. He very well knows that the dream of a lasting and peaceful world, a lasting peace between humans, is nothing more than a pipe dream, an unrealistic, unattainable ideal. A fancy only a child should genuinely be able to believe in. And yet, once again, despite KNOWING this, despite every lesson and experience in his life impressing this awful reality upon him again and again and again, Levi still does everything within his limited power to ease the suffering of others, to improve their lives, to protect them and show them kindness, to help in any way he can, whichever way he’s able. Despite knowing the futility of life, the pointlessness of suffering, the injustice of other people’s cruelty, despite knowing these things INTIMATELY, Levi still has in him an open, generous, kind and caring heart. Levi still has in him a deep, unending well of compassion and an unwavering desire to protect and better the lives of all the people around him. It isn’t even Levi’s own dream that he fights for, it is the dreams of OTHERS that he fights for. He can’t ever fully embrace this notion of a peaceful existence, free of violence and deprivation and cruelty, because he knows too well the way of the world. He’s been too mired in the indifferent reality of nature and the human condition to ever, really believe it. But in spite of that, IN SPITE OF IT, he fights to protect that dream and belief that others carry, that others strive towards, that others commit themselves to. He gives everything he has, every piece of himself, to protect a dream that he himself can’t even fully believe in, and for no reason more than that it is something which gives others hope, something which gives other’s a sense of purpose, something which one day, possibly, however slim the chance, might come to pass.

It is all in spite of Levi’s experiences in life, all in spite of his weary and cynical understanding of the world and the people in it, that Levi commits himself to kindness, compassion and the chance to help others, in whatever ways he can, even as he knows deep down the ultimate futility in it, even as he knows his own, relative powerlessness in the face of nature’s unyielding and uncaring apathy.

And that really is the fundamental difference between Levi and Zeke. Two men who have experienced such similar lives, and who have learned early on their lives the cruelties of existing in this world, but one who reacts to those cruelties with defiance and courageous opposition, standing in the face of overwhelming odds, while the other yields to it and lets it excuse his cruelty in turn, bowing to its power and letting it consume him.

#attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #Levi Ackerman #zeke yeager #meta #thoughts

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scoobysurfers · 4 years

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My Analysis of Mystery Incorporated and Hogwarts Houses

I want to start by saying that I don’t believe The Sorting Hat chooses your house based on your personality. There is no clear-cut definition to each house. Every one of us exhibits traits of all four of the houses. So I like to believe The Sorting Hat chooses your house based on your values. This is why entire wizarding families are in the same house - they have the same values, but they don’t necessarily have the same personalities. This is why classifying can be controversial. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to classify the gang because everyone has different interpretations of them depending on what they’ve read/watched. This is my take where I explore some different perspectives, so hear me out :)

Fred.

I feel like this is going to be smallest discussion by far because there’s literally nothing to discuss; Fred is a Gryffindor through and through. He’s the textbook definition of brave, he’s a do-er and he has a strong moral compass and sense of justice. He can be a little bit reckless and heroic, and I definitely see Harry’s personality within Fred’s. The only other house I’d possibly consider for him is Hufflepuff because he has a heart of gold and is so loyally devoted to his friends. But his competitive nature and tendency to act without thinking make him far more suited to...

GRYFFINDOR !

Daphne.

Looking at all the Scooby Gang in Hogwarts interpretations online, I have discovered that Daphne is the most controversial. I’ve seen her portrayed as all four, but I think there’s definitely more of a case for Slytherin and Gryffindor. For starters, while Daphne is very smart, she isn’t the type to think before acting, and she isn’t always logical (she’s a firm believer in the supernatural in many series). So she isn’t Ravenclaw, but what about Hufflepuff? I think Hufflepuff fits her, but she also has other qualities that are better exhibited in the more ‘extroverted’ houses, so to speak. Just like Fred, Daphne is far too competitive and ambitious to be a true Hufflepuff.

Something that a lot of people miss about Daphne’s character, particularly if you’ve only watched the older series, is her bravery. She can be heroic too, and as Scooby Apocalypse showed us, she can be a fierce leader too. An argument for Daphne being Gryffindor over Slytherin is that she is more passionate than reasonable. In my opinion, Gryffindors tend to be guided by their passion, whereas Slytherins are driven by their reason. At first glance, she may look like a Gryffindor because of her confidence and sense of adventure. But I think there are a couple of key reasons as to why she is not a Gryffindor.

To decipher the problem as to why she is not a Gryffindor, I simply compared her to Fred. She has a tough exterior, but I think inside, she is vulnerable and afraid of rejection and perhaps, at times, uncertain of her morals. This wavers from the fundamental definition of a Gryffindor.

Daphne likes to get her own way, and uses a variety of means to get it, whether it be her looks or smarts. That leads on to another thing - I just think she’s too smart for Gryffindor. Of course, you can have smart Gryffindors (hello Hermione), but she’s a different sort of smart. Hermione is book smart, but Daphne is more street smart. In that sense, she can also be manipulative and does have the potential to use this to her own advantage, whether it be good or bad. I believe that Daphne’s influential capacity makes her different from a Gryffindor, who has a strong sense of justice. She also highly values her reputation and appearance. In many incarnations, Daphne has been shown to be extremely resourceful and quick-witted. Gryffindors are more socially orientated and tend to do things for the ‘greater good’, governed by their own morality. Slytherins on the other hand, are more individually focused and I definitely think many of Daphne’s actions are for her own individual sense of self satisfaction. For all these reasons, Daphne is a...

SLYTHERIN !

Velma.

Okay, so the obvious thing here would be to say she’s a Ravenclaw because she’s smart. But there’s so much more to Velma than being ‘smart’ and Ravenclaws value more than just intelligence. Also remember there are people in Gryffindor, Slytherin and Hufflepuff who are highly intelligent.

Let’s do this by a process of elimination. First off, she’s not a Hufflepuff. I see Hufflepuffs as affectionate, caring people, and while Velma has an undeniable loyalty to her friends and family, she’s not open about it. Hufflepuffs are fair and modest people, but Velma never misses an opportunity to outshine a rival with her wits.

Gryffindor. *exhales* Velma is a brave person, but she’s not recklessly brave. You may argue that Velma is similar to Hermione, but I think the key thing that differentiates them is their thought process. Hermione is more of a doer, and has little time for planning, whereas Velma likes having a plan, especially during a trap. There are many episodes throughout the franchise where she gets frustrated with Fred’s lack of plan. This is Fred’s Gryffindor shining through, and I think in moments like these, the difference between their values becomes plain.

You may think by now that I’m pushing Velma towards Ravenclaw, especially since it’s clearly Hermione’s secondary house. Consider Slytherin. This is an interesting debate - in my opinion, Slytherin and Ravenclaw are the generally the smartest houses, and I can see Velma in both of them.

Overall, I think she is a Ravenclaw. This is because she has a constantly active mind and a love of learning and books. The defining trait of a Ravenclaw is their confidence in their own knowledge. Without a doubt, Velma has this to the point where she actually comes across as arrogant and a know-it-all. And she is probably the most introverted and independent character in the gang.

But I also want to present the lesser discussed notion of Velma being a Slytherin.

Velma is a detective with an incredible ability to read and understand the criminal mind. This in itself makes her a clever, calculating person, which are qualities of Slytherin. She is also ambitious and highly competitive, especially in the academic world. And she has a small group of close friends who she is very loyal to. Remember that SDMI episode where she hacks the monster biker’s computer to save Scooby’s life? *loyalty* I also think she demands a certain level of respect from the people that she meets. She wants to project herself as a smart, capable person and she gives me the feeling that first impressions matter to her.

As for the distinction between Ravenclaw and Slytherin, I think the key thing is this: Ravenclaws are both logical and abstract thinkers who think outside the box. Ravenclaw Luna Lovegood gave such insightful answers to enter the Ravenclaw common room, eg, a circle has no end or beginning. I just don’t think Velma is an abstract thinker. She’s a very practical person who likes to be in control of the facts of the mysteries. She freaks out whenever something is slightly off, like that BCSD episode when she got so caught up on why the monster was a Yeti instead of actually solving the mystery. In my opinion, Slytherins are more practical minded, they can have a nasty streak and they’re highly self reliant. Oh, and Velma is a sarcastic QUEEN.

In conclusion, Velma could easily be in Slytherin or Ravenclaw. I think she has elements of Slytherin (especially in SDMI), but at heart, I declare Velma to be...

RAVENCLAW !

Shaggy and Scooby.

The go-to for our iconic duo is Hufflepuff. They’re obviously not Slytherin or Ravenclaw (if you need further convincing, read Velma’s section above), but Gryffindor isn’t completely out of the question. Perhaps the polar opposites of primary and secondary houses is why Shelma, in my opinion, are incompatible.

It is widely known and played upon in all of Scooby Doo how cowardly Shaggy and Scooby are. But like, they’re not??? Their courage is seriously overlooked. They’re always placed in the most dangerous positions, and that requires a lot of bravery to overcome. They’re often the heroes who save their friends. If they were placed in Gryffindor, I’d see them as being very similar to Neville Longbottom.

But there are a few reasons as to why they are not true Gryffindors, and are, in fact, Hufflepuffs. Shaggy and Scooby are not at all competitive (where it matters - excluding sports or races) or tempered in nature. They hate conflict, and Shaggy is often the mediator between the gang’s arguments.

They are Hufflepuffs because of their loyalty, fairness and open-mindedness. Just like Cedric Diggory in the Triwizard Tournament who suggests Harry takes the cup, Shaggy and Scooby value people over individual glory. Shaggy is a very inclusive person and obviously an animal lover. Also, they obviously love to eat. There is a reason why the Hufflepuff common room is right beside the kitchens, and if Shaggy and Scooby got wind of this, they wouldn’t give the other houses a thought. So without further discussion...

HUFFLEPUFF !

Me!!!

I got Gryffindor in Pottermore but my values and personality are more suited to Ravenclaw. If I had to choose, I’d say RAVENCLAW, but my hybrid house feels the most accurate for me and it’s GRIFFINCLAW !!!

Anyway, I hope I sparked up some new thoughts/perspectives you hadn’t considered before.

What house are you?

#me: disappears for a week then comes back with this #ESSAY #hogwarts #gryffindor #slytherin #ravenclaw #hufflepuff #griffinclaw #hogwarts houses #harry potter #scooby doo #fred #daphne #velma #shaggy

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toxicpineapple · 4 years

Note

Please give me your amami essay, I'd like to know the TEA! I was also gonna ask for the mastermind essay, but honestly I REALLY wanna hear your thoughts on his characterization (and your thoughts on his shitty fanon characterization)

HOOO BOY OKAY. this is good, it gives me an excuse to procrastinate on reading that new amasai fic on the latest feed. (note that i REALLY WANT TO READ IT, i’m just anticipating commenting and tbh the spoons,,, i lack them. it’s okay though i’ll get over it.)

so!!! let’s start with general attitude, because i think that amami’s is really unique. he’s a subversive character. in general i feel like that was the biggest goal with his character design and personality combination-- he looks like a total playboy, kaede even comments as much moooore than once. but he’s the absolute opposite. i’ll rant about that in a bit. i’ve already gone off on a tangent and i said i was gonna talk about attitude.

amami is laid back, but not to the point of complacency. y’know what i mean? like, he’s relaxed, but he’s on his guard, too. his speaking style is pretty casual (typically he’ll greet people with a “hey,” whenever he’s slightly uncomfortable he’ll probably say “haha”... this isn’t necessarily a canon thing but i like it when people have him talking in sentence fragments. ex. “forgot to grab my jacket” or “wanted to get a snack” sort of thing) and that’s just,,, the type of person he is. he’s casual. it’s remarkable considering how wealthy amami is-- though bear in mind, he still IS wealthy, so there are bound to be things he doesn’t understand about people-- that he can be so normal and like, down to earth, in a way. when people mess around with him he’ll probably just laugh it off.

to cite a fic i read once that had REALLY phenomenal characterisation, imo, ouma ends up dumping a bucket of water on amami’s head (on accident; there are some semantics and i won’t get into it but again the fic is really good and funny and you should totally read it) and amami just squeezes out his shirt and makes a couple cracks before walking away. (sorry this isn’t meant to be a “dumping love on fics” post but GOD that fic is hysterical.) he’s an enabler too, at least i think so-- remember that anthology chapter where kaede, shuichi, and kaito are trying to catch ouma and kaito sets an “amami trap” to stop him? all ouma has to do is flutter his eyelashes and go “pleeeaaase let me go amam~niichan!” and then he just. he does. what a fucking doormat i can’t believe him.

he’s like that though. i feel like big brother stuff is kind of his weakness. (and not in a kinky way alright i will destroy you. he might make a joke about having a sister complex in one of his ftes but he DOESNT that joke was just tasteless COME ON RANTARO WHFKLDSJFK) which brings me to his whole older brother thing, because like,,, YEAH. guy grew up with twelve younger sisters!!! and he remarked in his ftes with shuichi that they’re mostly step sisters, which means he just.... has a nurturing personality. i mean amami is somewhat conservative (if you try to come on to him during salmon mode you will be brutally rebuffed; amami tells u to keep your horny thoughts to yourself, though you shouldn’t be ashamed of having them) so i imagine he’s not the biggest fan of his father’s tendencies-- not that i don’t NECESSARILY interpret his father’s behaviour as him sleeping around.... it’s possible he just likes children and deliberately marries women who already have kids so he can take them... i mean it’s exceedingly decent to keep considering ur step children to be your children after a divorce so i have a hard time reconciling this common image of rantaro’s dad as some kind of player figure with the impression i got of him in my head but that’s just my daddy issues coming into play again so ignore me-- and yet he still considers all his sisters to be his sisters.

not to mention he feels a great deal of like, responsibility, when it comes to taking care of them. i find it impossible to believe that all the losses were his fault. you could ARGUE that the one he tells you about with his younger sister was to be blamed on him? but i mean, amami is a child. he didn’t even know his sister was following him out. sure he blames himself for it but there’s no real good way to blame him just considering that,,, he’s a kid. and he was so young-- he was obviously so young-- when it happened. so like, not to be all Good and Bad on you, but i do feel that amami is fundamentally a good reason. and you SEE that too, in the killing game. i’m certain he was on the fence about trusting that note he woke up with. would you trust it? he had no memory whatsoever of writing it, all he had were the words “ultimate hunt” and a map of the school to guide his way. i imagine he wasn’t even sure if he should do what the note said. but then ryoma started talking about sacrificing himself for everyone else, and rantaro probably thought, “well... if i have a way to get us out of here, even if it doesn’t work, i can’t just let ryoma sacrifice himself without having tried.”

rantaro is self-reliant too, i think. in the talent development plan mukuro remarks that she noticed he was injured a good number of times, but never said anything about it because she felt like he was trying to keep it under wraps. (note: good idea for an amami and mukuro friendship fic. must write. someone remind me.) i think amami kind of feels isolated from his classmates? either because he has these perceived notions of like, independence and whatever, not burdening anybody else with his problems (honestly not to go chabashira on main but wtf men ask for help c’mon i promise if you find a person who’s worth being in ur life they won’t treat you like shit for feeling ur feelings) or just because he’s not around a lot. i think amami is the type of person to invalidate his own problems a lot, or at least downplay them to others. he blames himself for all his sisters going missing, took the responsibility to find them all. you know the blow that’s going to be to his education? traveling around the world looking for twelve different people? and he plans to keep doing that!!! forever!!! ugh ;-; poor babey. but anyway i feel like he doesn’t want to tell anybody about his problems because he feels like it’s his thing to deal with.

i also believe that rantaro is a bit prideful. i mean, anyone can be prideful under the correct circumstances, and in fact there is a great deal of pride that simply isn’t addressed by the fandom in analysing characters and that makes me really sad because pride is such a SEXY character flaw but i’ll leave that alone for now. he hates being told to give up on what he’s doing. i mean everyone in his life has been telling him to stop looking for his sisters. that’s got to suck, but also, DAMN look at what his reaction was. this utter refusal to open up to anybody. shuichi’s ftes with him are spent pretty much just trying to get amami to stop squirreling around and actually TALK to him. amami asks shuichi at one point if he has any siblings and when the response is negative, amami immediately assumes that shuichi wouldn’t understand, would tell him to quit. just like everyone else.

(i mean, even with kiyo and mukuro, whose circumstances mirror his almost painfully at least in willingness to sacrifice stuff for their siblings, he doesn’t tell them what he’s doing, just that he’s doing it for his sister-- singular-- and that he would do anything for her. kiyo and mukuro!! out of ANYBODY, they would understand. in tdp they DO talk about it-- kiyo encourages him to keep searching-- as his friend...... fuck amaguji is such a good ship even if the implications of kiyo saying he wants to meet rantaro’s sister after he finds her bc she must be suuuuch a good person if he’s doing all this for her are uhhh not great-- and mukuro immediately understands when he says it’s to do with his younger sister. like, full stop. she just goes “okay” and goes serious. all at once. damn rantaro, mukuro, and kiyo really do be a power trio huh. i need to write more fic about them i miss them.)

this is more into baseless conjecture so take this as you will, but i also think rantaro is kind of,,, easily distracted lmao. he mentions helping out a village with a disease-- been a while since i’ve seen his ftes, sorry for any inconsistencies-- among other shit and like... bro what are you DOING. you have sisters to find. and he can’t be getting injured all the time, getting wrapped up with gang violence and all that, looking for people who were lost traveling. i mean sure, you could say they went all over the world and got wrapped up in all sorts of mess, but more likely they stayed in roughly the same area, waiting for him to come back. and also? i have a hard time believing his sisters were lost in these remote forest places people always put them. COME ON, who the fuck goes to some village for a vacation? a RICH person no less. i’m on another tangent. sorry. but yeah, i love the people who write rantaro as an absolute airhead. i headcanon that he has no way of judging the passing of time and thus is the absolute worst in the bathroom bc he sits there for twenty minutes thinking about the universe and then walks out like “:) ok ready to go” like wtf are you even doing there stupid akljdf anyway.

i think rantaro is softhearted and thoughtful. in his ftes with kaede he demonstrates an ability to look past what people show at surface level-- you can ask him about miu, kiibo, or kiyo and he’ll give u Good Fucking Insight(tm)-- and analyse their intentions more closely. and i mean this is just from a couple day’s interaction. he’s down to earth for sure, understanding when people are intimidated but also caring and observant. (his “talk about a first impression” line is so fuckaindgf.... good for his characterisation. i love romantic amamatsu but he so clearly takes an older brother role in those ftes, he’s really such a sweetheart,,,, hnadhfkj ;w;) rantaro is just. he’s patient with people. and selfless and kind. idk it’s all the good stuff. warm smiles and indulgence. all the way. probably lets kokichi steal his lunch.

THAT BEING SAID: i think rantaro also has a very serious streak. he doesn’t show it a lot but there are moments. he’s self-sacrificing-- i mean, obviously. he was the ultimate survivor, after all. some people hc that he got there by killing, or maybe everyone else in his game died but one person, but bro that doesn’t make any sense???? no. what happened was there were probably like three people left, and monokuma was like “one has to be sacrificed” and rantaro thought, welp. it’ll be me then. and i wouldn’t say the choice would be immediate because rantaro DOES has self preservation instincts-- he’s only human-- but i don’t think he’d have let anybody else make that decision. i think ultimately he would try to protect other people.

he can be scarily confrontational too. i do believe he’d usually only do it in the defense of others-- like, his base instinct is to protect. i read a fic once (oumami, unfortunately) where ouma was committing crimes and went to hide behind rantaro and rantaro instinctively moved to protect him, and that’s.... that’s good characterisation. point one to the oumami stans, point zero to me. motherfucker. (love u oumami stans, it’s just not my thing.) i really like it in fics when he’s stern, lecturing people for hurting other people, but i also think rantaro is too understanding to be truly unforgiving. like if two people got into an argument and one came out of it more hurt than the other, i don’t believe that amami would be unsympathetic to the less hurt one. i think he’s mature enough to take a look at the situation and go, well, okay.

i think he’d be TERRIFYING when angry. he’s patient, y’know? so it takes a lot to get him to that point. he’s really, ah, accommodating of people. puts up with a lot of bs kind of thing. but i imagine the best way to get him to snap is by hurting someone he cares about. and at that point: ur fucked. i’ve never written it before because i’m terrified of what i’d do with that kind of power but.... imagine the shuichi whump. holy god.

i’m NOT here to talk about shuichi whump (though i’m down to do that any time of day believe me) so i’m gonna like. shhhhiiiiiiffft.

i project on characters a lot so at this point it’s difficult to distinguish if some of my characterisation things are like, actually characterisation things? or just me venting, so like, take nothing i say as canon, but also,,, akdsjf we love a man who bottles up his emotions.

because rantaro just doesn’t have the TIME to be crying all over the place. he was probably a total wreck when he lost his first sister. and his second. and maybe even his third. but then he started to gather his composure, more and more. because if there’s anything that rantaro has in excess, it’s composure. the more losses he suffers the more of a shield he builds up. and the self hatred and the guilt and the blame and the responsibility are piling up and up and up, but god he hates it when other people see him sad, because he needs to be the strong one, he can’t just pile that up on other people. that’s not their weight to carry, and besides, he’s the older brother, he should be able to deal with his own problems. he’d just be burdening the people he cares about by letting them see his demons.

and then he doesn’t have any coping mechanisms because he never lets himself feel enough to cope, and when people get close enough to actually CARE about him, when people notice he’s upset or struggling and offer him help, he doesn’t know how to deal with it-- and god he hates lashing out at people but it’s so much easier to deal with the consequences of being mean than the consequences of breaking down. only conflict is scary when he’s one of the causes so he needs time to recover, and well, what better way to do that than to get on a plane or a boat and go look for his sisters? after all he’s wasting time whenever he’s just sitting around, they’re still out there and he needs to find them, so might as well just keep pushing himself to the limits, because it’s his fault they’re lost anyway...

something mukuro said to rantaro in the talent development plan stuck in my brain. like, initially it’s just a funny and cute interaction (rantaro even blushes and a blushing rantaro is a GOOD FUCKING RANTARO) but when i thought about it more i was like.... huh. hm. angst ideas. mukuro makes a joke about rantaro going over to her stand at the festival to flirt with her-- i think that’s the context, i know it’s play-boy related-- and rantaro assures her (as he always does) that he’s not that kind of guy, and mukuro agrees, saying she was just pulling his leg and that he seems like the kind of person who gets dumped because he doesn’t show his emotions enough. rantaro laughs, blushes, and says “haha, not touching that one,” and akdjfnnnnnn god mukuro you’re so blunt i love you fkdjf but wow. i usually have rantaro as not having dated anyone, just because i feel like he kind of hyperfocuses on finding his sisters? and given that he’s like sixteen (seventeen at the MOST) there’s not much of a timeline for when his sisters got lost. in my fic search i had to cram all the losses into a four-year period and damn that was rough. anyway i just don’t think he’d really prioritise romance. but that reaction implies that that’s EXACTLY his experience with romance, which makes a bit of sense because mukuro is ridiculously sharp, and also it’s,, it’s just sad idk poor rantaro. getting dumped because he’s like the emotional equivalent of a doorknob when it comes to his own feelings.

i do think rantaro is a bit cowardly. not in the sense that he’d shy away from danger-- i think he’d RUSH INTO IT HEAD FIRST because he’s a man or whatever, i know he respects women but he does seem to hold some of those very stereotypically masculine ideals of constantly protecting those around him, which is like.... ok toxic masculinity mcgee can u and kaito stop throwing hands every time u see each other ty-- but more in the sense that he avoids,,, confrontation. emotional confrontation just ain’t his thing. and i think he’d rather run away from it or otherwise find some way of ignoring it than try to address his problems.

he would, with that in mind, probably try to associate with people who don’t push the matter. kiyo and mukuro, for example. they both have a fair amount of baggage themselves so they’d probably be respectful. ryoma is lowkey enough that he just, he wouldn’t bring that shit up, that’s uncool. i also think rantaro would get along REALLY WELL with kaito, and i actually don’t think kaito would pull his sidekick stuff with him? just because in a way they’re kind of kindred spirits, and i think kaito would see an ally in rantaro before seeing someone to try to nurture, so they’d probably have some kind of a truce like, if you don’t force me to be vulnerable, i won’t force you. one of the reasons why i love amamota so much is because it involves the two of them growing to care about each other beyond that sort of unhealthy camaraderie and breaking down each other’s barriers and i just..... hhnnfhhdkfj they could be so good for each other but nobody wants to talk about thatjslfkj

you weren’t asking for my amamota mess lmao sorry anon i get sidetracked SO easily. but yeah, amami gravitates towards people who wouldn’t try to get him to be more honest with himself. and i honestly think the v3 cast would be pretty good about that overall, except for shuichi who is a detective and has a habit of sticking his nose in places it shouldn’t be, but i see no reason to write that out because amami’s ftes already display that beautifully. (well, that’s a lie, i’m absolutely plotting out a slowburn in my head already that involves shuichi stripping down his walls one by one, but forget about all of that rn we don’t need to talk about why amasaimota is my ot3.) also he is softer on childish people like ouma and himiko. ain’t nobody wants to TALK TO ME about how brilliant it would be if rantaro and hiyoko were friends because hiyoko has such problems in that department and he would take one look at her and go hm. i’m adopting her. and he’s so fucking patient and nice and she’d lose the will to make fun of him and i have to do ALL THE GODDAMN WORK AROUND HERE but it’s fine. at least i get to write it.

i’ve described the fundamentals of his characterisation pretty well by now i think. i have some throwaway headcanons, like uhh,,

he’s claustrophobic

plays the guitar and the ukulele

he prefers warm weather and perishes in the cold

high pain tolerance

he’s a Good Cook

doesn’t like sex jokes (they make him uncomfortable)

asexual (i do like a good demisexual hc at all times of day tho)

master of piggyback rides

does his own piercings

impulsive as hell

gets lost easily but can always find his way back

has a lot of scars from travels

hands are rough and calloused (again from travels)

morning person

smells like evergreen (you know i had to, you know i did)

Radiates Heat Like A Fucking Toaster Oven

good hugs

hates tying his shoelaces

likes being the big spoon :)

has a tongue piercing

i said “some throwaway headcanons” but i ended up listing way more than i mean to. i’ll make a separate list of my rantaro headcanons someday and talk about them all in detail but for now, uh, there’s that.

SO AS FOR THE RANTARO CHARACTERISATIONS I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE:

god where to fucking begin. actually i know exactly where to begin. it’s my least favourite one just because, like i said at the very beginning, rantaro is a subversive character. i mean i think he’s kind of a low hanging fruit when it comes to that. there are plenty of other subversive characters in the dr series but rantaro is like that. you expect a flirt and u get,,, a sweetheart. but then some people (usually the ones who ship him with female characters exclusively though i will see it on occasion in an amasai or oumami fic) decide to throw that out the window and make him a total playboy!! and listen, i have no problem with people who are a little flirty. we’re kids!! flirt ur heart out!!! and hey, that’s not what this is about but y’know what? so long as everything is safe, sane, and consensual, then yeah!! exercise your sexual freedom and sleep with whoever you want to!!! i don’t think there’s anything wrong with messing around a little, dating who u wanna and experimenting with ur tastes and preferences. if rantaro WAS a playboy, then there would be nothing wrong with that. i would love him just the same because he’s such a fundamentally GOOD character.

except that.... he’s.......... NOT. you slaughter one of the biggest aspects of his character by throwing away what matters to him and making him some hunky-deep-voice-dreamboat dude meant to sweep kaede/tsumugi/whomsteverthefuck off her feet. rantaro is one of those characters where he’s so blatantly not that kind of person, and it’s like. it’s an affront, almost, to portray him that way? and i do believe you should have the freedom to write what you want, since we’re in that age (aside from romanticised pedophilia and incest; that shit ain’t cute, i say this often but pro-ship DNI) where u should be able to take some liberties, but it’s just. hnnn. it’s so frustrating. rantaro does not know how to smolder! if he DID smolder, he wouldn’t even realise he was doing it. he doesn’t have people lying at his feet, okay? he’s too flaky for that. i wouldn’t say he’s unreliable but he definitely ain’t at school as much as he should be.

another one that i hate: st-stalker? what the fuck? that is not sexy that is creepy and weird?

another another one that i hate: yandere? what the FUCK??? that is not sexy that is glorified ABUSE???? the yandere trope is AWFUL bc you’re taking a controlling relationship and turning it into a fetish. NO. if he limits ur contact with other people, if he follows u everywhere, if he threatens ur loved ones, if he tries to control you, ladies and gents and nonbinaries, he’s not a yandere, he’s an abuser and you need a fucking restraining order. actually, people of ANY gender or sex can perpetuate this behaviour and IT IS NOT CUTE. I DO NOT GIVE A FUCK WHAT BOUNDARIES U SET IN PLACE, IF YOUR FREEDOM IS BEING RESTRICTED THAT IS ABUSE.

hate it when people make rantaro violent. hate it when people make rantaro a murderer. hate it when people make rantaro controlling. hate it when people make rantaro overtly sexual. some kind of sultry deep voice dominant kind of figure. dude, what the fuck? i don’t,, want to make any public comments about sex positions because i think that’s kind of Strange to just talk about on a post, but i do think that the way people portray him for their smuts is,,, idk it’s weird. i’m not gonna kinkshame u but like. :eyes:

i will however accept rantaro as a thrillseeker, or a highstrung rich boy, or a total space cadet, or a himbo, or a cryptid. these are all very good interpretations of the Mans. just, like. be wary of making him two dimensional. a good character is multifaceted. if you can take a trait that clashes with all of these and SELL ME ON IT, i will buy it. if u give me good justifications, or even just good writing?? then i will accept it.

the long and the short of it is, anon, he’s my favourite so i think about him a lot. i love writing rantaro. he’s just, he’s a Guy. y’know? He’s A Good Dude, If You’ll Give Him A Shot. :) we don’t get to see very much of him but i think that there’s plenty of material if you overanalyse everything, which, as you probably all know by now,,,, i absolutely do.

thank you for the ask, this was a delight to spend an hour talking about.

#amami rantaro #rantaro amami #abuse mention #long post

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snkpolls · 5 years

Text

SnK Chapter 123 Poll Results

The chapter 123 poll closed with 1,732 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

This month’s poll team: alooulla, @attraversiamo19, @erensjaegerbombs @momtaku, _Puppet_ , @reikukaja, @shifter-lines

RATE THE CHAPTER 1,732 Responses

This chapter was down slightly from the previous two but it hardly matters considering ¾ of the fandom have given it the highest possible rating. The manga continues to excite and impress month after month and it shows.

The end has come…

I'm both excited and horrified. I'm still hoping for another twist!

"Eren has a secret plan that doesnt involve genocide" And other hilarious jokes you can tell yourself!

I loved the flashbacks. It was the calm before the storm and we saw the 104th happy for one last time. 💔

Am I allowed to ground my 19 year old fictional adopted son

Amazing and beautifully drawn. I can’t wait for the next chapter

Genocide - Xenocide - Mass Murder - the friggin' APOCALYPSE -- whatever you want to call it, it's not the answer! Unless you're a god. And you know? I'm starting to think Eren is beyond our human judgment.

At first I was disappointed, I couldn’t believe that Eren would choose such a path especially since you have to consider just how much he values life and believes everyone deserves a chance ‘because they were born into this world’. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was simply no other way.

The world: we shall banish this devils on that island Eren: NO U

I loved everything about this chapter. It had great humor, drama, violence, bombastic imagery...everything that I love about SNK

Gotta give Isayama the credit, he really put effort and thought in all of this.

I'm having withdrawals already, where's the next chapter?????

cow car cow car cow car cow car cow car

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 1,772 Responses

In a chapter filled with sweet flashback moments, it was “Eren’s declaration of intentions through Paths” that snagged nearly ⅓ of the vote. “Eren and Mikasa’s intimate late night conversation” (17.8%) and “The 104th throwing one last party” (13%) rounded out the top three.

I feel overwhelmed. It was bittersweet. I enjoyed reading the chapter from Mikasa's POV, plus her moments with Eren, Levi and the clown, Hanji saying "Hello car!", Sasha eating... I'M NOT CRYING AT ALL.

Eren Jaeger is best boy <3

Call me biased, I love wholesome moments so much, and we FINALLY see Levi and Hange after EIGHT whole months

Mikasa eating ice cream is the most adorable thing ever

Levi in a suit made me cry, scream, and nut all at once. I was left confused with emotions for an hour on my bed, nearly comatose at 1:30pm. By the time I realized what had happened, I looked at my phone again and saw the screenshots I took and started hyperventilating so hard I was drooling. It was great. 11/10, would do it again.

I really enjoyed the 104th getting drunk together, and it was so... Sad to see Armin ramble at Mikasa whilst she looks at him with uncertainty as he desperately tries to convince himself that Eren is on their side. Also, the moments with the car and Levi with the clown are genuinely hysterical.

Would be die from cuteness overload watching Mikasa eating ice cream!

WHO WAS THIS CHAPTER’S MVP? 1,778 Responses

Three characters dominated this question’s responses, leaving the rest relegated to a small portion of the graph. Where have we heard that before?

43.5% of you thought Eren was the MVP of this chapter, while nearly 31% thought it was Mikasa. At a somewhat distant third, Levi is in at just shy of 18%.I can’t be sure why this distribution is the way it is, but my guess is because saving immigrant children is really in season right now, but not nearly as much as genocide.

Eren is a GOAT!!!

OMG! Levi how I've missed you.

MIKASA'S NARRATION AND ACTUAL AGENCY. GIMME MORE!

WHAT WAS THE FUNNIEST COMMENT ABOUT THE CAR? 1,761 Responses

Poll worker #8 here. I haven’t read the rest of the results yet, but I’d guess the lighthearted nature of this question is going to be sorely needed given some of the other content in this chapter.

Onyankopon’s realization that the Paradisians really are just Like That™ got first place in this question, being voted for by a solid 40.9% of respondents. Hange’s “Hello, car!” secured second place with 23.7% of the vote, and Levi, who knows that the gang is Like That™, got third place with a clean 19% for his prediction.

AFTER LAST MONTH’S CLIFFHANGER, WE IMMEDIATELY JUMP TO FLASHBACKS! WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE SHIFT? 1,753 Responses

More than two-thirds of respondents really enjoyed the flashbacks juxtaposed with last month’s cliffhanger. 17% of you liked them, but would’ve preferred that this chapter start in the present, and 9.7% were glad they were there, but thought that they took up too many pages.

The flashback in general might not have been necessary but it was very much appreciated for once. It took me back to the comedy panels Isayama used to scatter in other arcs. It may also serve the purpose of making us remember how much we love these characters before they kill them all in front of us because Yams is sadistic like that and there is no way he won't enjoy our tragic tears. Love him though.

I didn't mind the flashbacks coz it was so nice to see characters like Sasha, Levi and Hange again :'(

I honestly thought the flashback was important, it showed when and why Eren was changing, to later show us what it had led to. I feel like more flashbacks are important before we truly dwell into the rumbling fully.

I really appreciated the flashbacks, the chapter overall was amazing.

MIKASA WONDERS IF EREN’S EVER REALLY CHANGED, WHAT DO YOU THINK? 1,761 Responses

The air around how Eren is viewed has changed immensely since chapter 1, but has he? The large majority at 77.3% feel he’s developed, but is still the same core person. 12% think he’s a completely different person, and 8.5% don’t believe he’s ever changed one bit in essence.

Eren doesn't really change, all he did was to focus his grudge on the people outside the walls after he knew the truth about the titans and I believe that Mikasa never knew Eren, properly.

He is the same as he ever was, what changed was our perception of him.

He's experienced more of life and developed his perspective under ever-changing circumstances, as we all do, but his core principles appear to have been the same since the day he was born - freedom is his right, and he will have it by any means necessary.

Eren will fight others for what he sees as freedom. Unfortunate, since we can never truly be free of the limitations we place on each other simply by virtue of existing together, but then Eren has never been particularly thorough in thinking things through.

He has changed in the way of his mental state. He is no longer “just” Eren. He is more like his father than ever, and he’s probably having an identity crisis.

Everyone changes as they grow older, it's impossible not to. Especially given that Eren also has the Memories of multiple persons. He even states so in his conversation with Reiner that he now understands them. So he did change, that not the question. But his will the live a life in freedom and destroying whoever tries to take this away from his, this didn't change at all.

He always had the potential to become who he is now, but he was not always a monster. he used to be a fundamentally good person with a dark side. he felt compassion towards innocents and regret/remorse over their deaths. now he locked that compassion away and let that dark side overwhelm him. he is broken.

His ideals are the same but they've amplified dangerously

There’s two sides to Eren. His good side never changed, but his potential for darkness has deepened.

It's sad that his idea of saving what he thought was all of humanity turned out to really only be an idea of saving Paradis. At the start of the series, it gave him an empathetic nature. Now, he's rather cold.

He has changed since the moment he touched Historia's hand and saw that 「THAT SCENERY」

WHAT DO YOU INTERPRET BY EREN BEING "SPACED OUT", AS ARMIN PUTS IT? 1,729 Responses

Eren was acting rather odd this chapter, and while Armin picked up on it he didn’t seem to know why. We have a pretty even split, with 47.3% thinking he’s having second thoughts about going through with a plan that would put these civilians in harm; meanwhile 45.5% believe he already knows they’re going to die. 3.3% think he’s just in awe of the new people and technology.

A mix of all the above

He is seeing his future memories and want's to see for himself whether or not they are the real truth, and the more he sees the more he comes to find out it's exactly as his memories have guided him

He sees the technology and the people and wonders how humans can treat each other in such horrible ways.

Being consumed but all the past Attack on Titans while experimenting things first time himself. Kind of like a deja-vu.

Both indecision and sadness as well as general depression due to his experiences and having to come to terms with what he sees as the only solution.

Coming to terms with the reality of the outside world, and Paradis' place in this world

General sadness and indecision. He’s seen all this before in memories and I think he’s just broken-hearted

He's searching for any reason not to go through with the plans he's already forming, but at every turn he just sees more that enforces his path (the mistreatment of Eldian refugees, the outreach commission that just wants to use Paradise as a scapegoat). He's spaced out because he isn't looking at little things like ice cream or cars like the rest of them, but instead trying to find any last spark of hope.

Realizing that this place is filled with many people and useful technology but he has to do the plan that will harm everything outside the walls for his own kind

Eren spaced out because he realized how much harm he'll put on his friends but he has no choice but to do it.

He feels nothing because he is a psychopath

Yum, tasty human rumbling patties

WHAT DID EREN MEAN WHEN, AFTER SHEDDING A TEAR, HE SAID NOTHING HAS HAPPENED TO THE BOY FROM THE MARKET YET? 1,751 Responses

After acting strange upon arriving in Marley, Eren’s seen crying for seemingly no reason over the boy they met. 44.2% believe he’s seen the boy die in the rumbling, 35.4% believe that Eren knows it’s a cruel world this boy has to live in and is fearful of his future, and 18% think Eren knows something else terrible will happen to him.

When I saw that tear running down Eren's cheek, I suddenly felt so emotional that I cried too.

I certainly enjoy the vagueness of character moments such as these. Before I state my interpretation of the scene, I don't think eren knows the boy's fate like an omniscient being. He can only assume the future he saw when touching Hisu's hand is the cruel fate that will snuff the life out of this poor child. I'd say all of the above, minus the "He saw" bit.

He already had the intention of killing every non eldian and has an internal conflict because of this

He already knows he rumbled the world from Grisha's memory so I think he's mourning for every innocents that died bc of that.

He didn’t see the boy specifically. He saw the rumbling. Connecting to the boy makes him sad cuz he probably won’t make it through the rumbling. That’s why he’ll talk to the boy Personally 1on1 (memory shard), something like “you have to do X when time comes to survive”.

He saw himself in the boy and remembered the day he lost his home and his mum.

He's reminding himself of the day everything was taken from him and where he's forced to live in a refugee camp. Also he'll need to boy to get in Fort Slava.

I think hearing all those people talk about how they'll punish the kid reminded him of Grisha's sister getting killed, and he believes its only a matter of time for the boy to receive a similar fate.

The boy and his family most likely will reject and hate Eren after finding out that he is an Eldian. Eren knows that they are good people and they don't deserve to die, but even them are going to push the Eldians away, that why peace between Eldians and humanity isn't possible in Eren's eyes.

The boy was just like him, a refugee. The difference is that the child wasn’t alone in the world, and was able to stay cheerful despite everything.

He knows he finna die in the rumbling

WHY DID EREN ASK MIKASA WHAT HE IS TO HER? 1,735 Responses

Some fantastic responses here. The majority of you seem to think Eren is seeking some form of reassurance; that he is a good person, and that he matters to her, but that the scene is not particularly framed as romantic, which as an answer only achieved third place. A number of responses focused on the fact that he might be testing if the Ackerbond is true; though it is debatable whether or not he knows of its existence at this point. Given his access to memories and Yelena’s presence on Paradis, it is not impossible that he does. At the core of the responses though, was the idea that he’s just a young man feeling guilty and seeking reassurance that he matters and is cared for.

He was testing to see if her response would be the same as how he saw it in his partial future vision.

He was questioning how free she was. Is her ties to him because of a debt owned from saving her? An obligation to family? Ackerman loyalty? He wants her love for him to be a genuine choice of hers - freedom.

He was trying to figure out whether or not the Ackerbond is true.

He's depressed and needs to know he matters

I think Eren was trying to find out if his friends love him for being "Eren", or if they simply stay by him because of loyalty. I think he was trying to find the strength to go through with the plan.

Let's break it down. The context of the situation is eren's sadness over the people he will have to kill especially the kids as he was watching the kid even eariler. now, eren is worried that mikasa's care for him is based on the belief that he's a good person who saves kids but it's not who he truly is, he has it in him to kill kids and he will. So is her care genuine if it's build upon an idealized image she has of him? He asks because he has to know and he asks and he asks again and it takes this many attempts to get mikasa to say her answer slowly. I think isayama wanted to create the impression that mikasa had a different answer in mind(that she's in love with him) then the one she gave and eren could see that so he took it to mean that " family" wasn't wholehearted. He didn't find the confidence he looked for, that her familal love was why she cared for him and not her misplaced loyalty to a saint. He had a shred of doubt that he will take to his meeting with zeke who will tell him about the ackerbond

Maybe he wanted to hear that he is just Eren and not the savior of Paradis Island or some sort of devil.

DO YOU THINK THE SCENE BETWEEN EREN AND MIKASA WAS FRAMED AS ROMANTIC? 1,761 Responses

Now this scene was very interesting. 47% of you think the scene was ‘somewhat’ romantic; that it had romantic elements to it, that it was romantic on Mikasa’s part but not Eren’s, or some other reason, but was not clear cut enough to be deemed a true romantic scene. Nonetheless, ‘yes’ was on a respectable 35% whilst ‘no’ trailed at 17%. The idea that Eren had seen this moment before and was hoping for a different answer as part of some test of whether or not the future could be changed was a common response, as in the previous question.

He loves Mikasa, thus he wants to know if Mikasa eventually feels the same, so he could have a reason not to destroy the whole world

He doesn't understand Mikasa's attachment to him

Eren has romantic feelings to Mikasa and most likely knows about her feelings to him. He was looking for a reason to change his path and start a family instead of crushing the world. The same was with Grisha, who gave up on his plan and decided to live a peaceful life with his family.

Confirm that the memories are true and to see if His future and fate with Mikasa and their relationship was already decided.

He saw this moment and hoped that Mikasa would answer differently - to see that the future isn't set in stone.

He wanted to know someone was there for him. I feel like once Eren changed he saw the true colors of the people around him and emailed that no one truly understood how he was feeling or tried to get him to talk his feelings out. I honestly don’t think that Eren likes Mikasa like that and I don’t think Mikasa knows Eren as much as she thinks she does.

He wanted to see if the future he saw was preordained. Mikasa answering that and the squad arriving with "perfect timing" made him realize it was, indeed, inevitable.

He was trying to make up his mind if either Mikasa was bound to him because of her Ackerman blood or if she had authentic feelings for him.

he was worried or afraid that he stole Mikasa's freedom

WHAT WAS THE BEST PART OF THE 104TH DRINKING TOGETHER? 1,745 Responses

In a series like this, a happy and peaceful moment like the 104th passing out together after a night spent drinking was sincerely appreciated. ~980 out of 1,745 of you said that was your favorite part of the drinking scene. 15% liked the part where Yung Fez crashed into Eren best, while 13.6% of you preferred the part where Sasha encouraged underaged drinking, and 8.4% preferred Connie and Jean’s late night resupply trip.

WHO WAS THE MOST WHOLESOME IN THE PASSED OUT SCENE? 1,753 Responses

Here we have a question with no wrong answer! Most of you seem to agree that the scene in its entirety was pretty wholesome and relaxed, something we have been missing for quite a while. That said, we did force you to pick your favourite parts, and Mikasa sleeping whilst resting against Eren won, with Eren surrounded by his friends a close second. A fitting result, for a chapter focused so much on them.

I love the wholesome flashbacks!!! like ugh yes my children deserve 2 be happy :(

Can I join the 104th getting drunk please?!

Drunk 104th squad, best squad.

I feel like the wholesomeness of the drunk shenanigans is a terrifying indication that something awful is about to happen. We needed the other flashbacks but that wasn’t necessary. It seems significant somehow.

I really enjoyed the 104th getting drunk together

WHY DO YOU THINK EREN LEFT WHEN HE DID? 1,733 Responses

Eren quietly left after one last night of partying with his friends, but why then? 60.9% say he left immediately following the man at the podium speaking due to it signifying to him peace wasn’t a plausible option. 32.3% think he had been planning to leave at that specific time for a while no matter what; and 4.6% say his conversation with Mikasa lead to him choosing to leave the next day.

Either the man's words led him to believe peace was impossible or he's a slave to the predetermined future he's seen.

He became disheartened and made up his mind to carry his own plan

He knew less people would notice and nobody could follow him so by the time they decided to chase him he'd be safe

He got some insight from the man on the podium on how they view Paradis, I felt like he left to truly confirm that this was their belief and peace wasn't an option. Hence why during the marly arc it was said that Eren vanished and lived in Marley for a while before attacking during the festival. + he was following the flow of his vision.

He had further proof for why the future that he saw couldn’t be stopped anymore.

Hearing the terrible speech from someone who they hoped would support him confirmed Eren’s suspicions that the world really is their enemy.

His plan to leave had been forming for some time. He was willing to try and search for some of these non-violent solutions the others were aimed for, but watching that speech just confirmed to him that there were no peaceful solutions for the Eldians of Paradise. Even the people most sympathetic to Eldians in general, still wanted to lay waste to the Paradise Eldians. Eren does care about his friends, and to him, this is the only way to go forward that ensures they will be safe.

He had it all planned and was looking for a reason not to do it, but didn't find any :(

That activist's words were just the cherry on top confirmation that peace was near impossible.

The Eren of the future made him decide to go

DO YOU THINK MIKASA’S ANSWER TO EREN HAD ANY EFFECT ON HIS ACTIONS? 1,749 Responses

Mikasa regrets what she said to Eren and blames herself for his actions, is she right? 63.5% agree it could have changed something, but never his end goal. 22.6% don’t think it had any bearing on Eren’s actions or goal, and 11.9% believe he would have changed his path completely upon a different response.

Absolutely unsure. It might have made a difference, maybe not. In the end, it's the question if one can change the future they have seen thanks to the Attack Titan, I guess. Or if it's inevitable as Eren said.

Communication with her and his friends as a whole could've possibly changed things

I think that’s exactly what Eren needed to hear. He refuses to lose anymore family. It reaffirmed him.

If mikasa had said anything different than what she said, it would confirm that the future he saw was not definite. That the world would not be ending. That there was a different way. And he could have taken that path.

He might’ve not done what he did in 112 to Mikasa. A fight could’ve been avoided.

I think Eren would've most certainly stayed with his family (yes I call them family) and changed his plan to align with what Mikasa and Armin favor at the moment, simply crushing the allied forces with the rumbling rather than crushing all of Planet Earth.

He was only trying to convince himself Mikasa was not taking care of him only because her Ackerman blood

It might not have changed his plan completely, but I believe it would have mattered in some way. Perhaps he subconsciously wanted her to talk him out of it.

I think he already knew the answer she was going to give, and by asking only confirmed what he knew. If she would have confessed it would have thrown Eren off for a moment only for him to stick to his plan no matter the cost.

It just affected his mood, not his decisions.

We honestly couldn't possibly know, and I think that is the beauty and the point of the entire scene.

I have no clue but I must scream AAAAA

We'll never know. And I think that's the point.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF EREN’S TITAN FORMING? 1,760 Responses

Despite the unusual shape and size of Eren’s final titan form, only 5% expressed that they where not a fan of it. The remaining 95% of the fandom was impressed with “WOAH” (42%) being the word that best sums things up

Bruh he can't even move in that form

Bridge titan

His titan is a homage to Godzilla, which was a homage to nuclear weapons so things have really come full circle

I think it just looks cool

I think he'll be over 500 meters. He'll be gigantic. The devil that oversees the destruction of the world. Godzilla Titan. It'll make the size of the Wallossals look like regular pure titans compared to the colossus.

It's a monstrous form to emphasise his monstrous actions.

Maybe it's a literal manifestation of activating the founder's powers from Ymir, but it can be symbolic of him being "unstoppable" at this point.

Renewed rotisserie chicken titan with SPIKES

This is pure conjecture but I think the titan is immobile. The limbs are tiny and if the ribs aren't imbedded in the ground they'll certainly cause a lot of friction. Also, it it very cage-like, and like the houses of Shiganshina it looks like the Colossus Titans are avoiding it. So.., perhaps people will be able to hide out inside it?

What if the two “spine flaps” develop into wings?

DO YOU THINK THE SIZE AND/OR SHAPE OF EREN’S TITAN WILL BE IMPORTANT? 1,740 Responses

The general consensus is that Eren’s 15117 meter titan is going to have some unique significance. ~20% don’t think it will, and the rest have varying thoughts. Let’s take a look at them:

I figure it had something to with the founding titan power since we saw something similar with Rod when turned into a titan but, other than that I'm not sure

I think it is just a sign that brute force it will not effective to defeat him. That there is another way to stop him.

I think it’s the original form of the centispine

Chekhov’s plane

"size and shape of Eren's TITAN"? I like you very much poll people 😂

It will resemble the size of Yimr’s Founding Titan

It'd be very funny if he just...couldn't move.

No one engages thicc mode for no reason

Somewhat. Seems like the size would make it not be able to move, but it seems like a central node of sorts.

THE WALL TITANS ARE ABLE TO TURN AROUND, AND THEY’RE COMING FROM WALL MARIA TOO! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE START OF WHAT APPEARS TO BE A RUMBLING? 1,743 Responses

The fandom was unswayed by speculation about the titans position in the walls and all the things that could go wrong, so it was time for bragging rights. “I knew Eren would have control of them” was the most popular answer (37.5%).

Curiosity about the rest of Paradis was secondary. “I hope we get to see the status of the other walls” (31.8%) and “They’re causing so much destruction to Paradis” (28.2%) were in the second and third spots. The write-ins were filled with questions about swimming titans. In retrospect, we should’ve had that as an option.

Can those Titans really travel across the ocean? They're big and all, but can they grasp the necessary movements to go through water? They were put in place to destroy THE ISLAND, after all. How slow would they be at that? Rumbling sounds dramatic but there's still plenty of time before shit starts to go down in other nations

Eren seems to be trying to minimize as much damage to Paradis as you can see how the colossal titans are walking organized in a single-file line.

I don't care I'm just worried about the Blouse family!

I hope wall Rose & Sina are ok. If not, then are favs families are in danger.

I knew Eren was going all out on this, meaning making all the walls collapse and this scene was just awe-inspiring and terrifying, holly hell

I hate this, is that an acceptable answer?

I wish we would’ve gotten to see more of it.

I'm worried about everyone, even the people from Paradis. I trust Eren's powers but I don't think it's the right choice. I have hopes that his plan turns out bigger than this.

This is a perfect excuse to see the northern district

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF EREN SPEAKING TO ALL ELDIANS THROUGH PATHS? 1,741 Responses

The numbers are in, and JUST shy of 90% of you thought it was really cool to see Eren use PATHS FM to talk to every single Eldian. A few others don’t love the prominence of the P A T H S. Let’s look at a few other thoughts:

A mix of the two. Loved it, incredible dramatic effect, but what the actual fuck PATHS can't do anymore

Awesome. It's important to the plan that Eldians on the mainland heard his message too.

Chilling. Oh my god, the king is speaking.

Fucking awesome and Annie 100% heard him talking

Hahaha what the sweet fucc

@everyone

It feels weird the way he announced it... something’s up.

Tell everyone he knows his true intentions. Or makes someone make a choice based on what he's planned, which is the real outcome hes seen.

Very Interesting. Annie will likely hear and not be too thrilled.

WHAT IS YOUR PRIMARY THOUGHT ABOUT EREN’S MONOLOGUE? 1,751 Responses

The snk fandom? Divided on Eren’s actions? Who could have predicted this!? 31.2% of respondents said that, above all else, they were primarily glad to see Eren’s thoughts and plans finally revealed. Trailing close behind, like Shia Lebeauf, 31% said that Eren’s monologue will go down as one of the greatest speeches in anime/manga history.

23.2% were disturbed that Eren’s plan was about killing billions of people. 11.1% of voters were just Connie Springer on 190 computers, saying, “It didn’t seem like Eren. It gives me hope that this isn’t his true plan.”

You’ll notice that there’s a seemingly missing part of the graph. Nothing is actually missing there, that’s just like, sixty different 1 vote responses. Three cheers for technological limitations!

Both awed and disturbed

Epic, not quite as epic as Erwin's speech from The Nameless Soldiers, but the artwork and transitions between real world and path world were amazing and really added a lot.

He's making himself into an enemy that the world will unite to defeat.

I am sad to see the decision he took. I do understand his motives and I also feel like there's no other way, the cycle of war and hatred would continue until one of the two people is exterminated. Let's not forget that Marley and other nations want to exterminate the eldians. In a sense, he's trying to protect his people, it's a sort of self defense. That's not to say it's the best way.

I don’t necessarily believe it since his flashback/pov is not even shown yet.

Well yeah, I'm in to what I think he's planning

well, it's clear that Eren will be the final antagonist.

Yuuki Kaiji's going to snatch all of us when this hits the anime

EVERY EREN IS HOT. TRUE OR FALSE? 1,772 Responses

Dedication to Eren in all his forms is clearly evident as 52.9% classify Eren’s nightmarish final titan form as hot.

I hope Eren’s face doesn’t stay that messed up

Eren is a chad and needs more shirtless panels.

Eren's face looks like an Oni mask in the last panel

DO YOU THINK MIKASA BEING PRESENT IN THE PATHS DIMENSION DECIDES THAT SHE HAS ELDIAN BLOOD, ONCE AND FOR ALL? 1,742 Responses

We thought this was an important question to ask, as many fans are confused as to the exact nature of Mikasa’s heritage and blood. Therefore, a lot of the responses we got were from fans who thought it was obvious she had Eldian blood; despite this, the majority of you still think she cannot turn into a titan, perhaps because the Ackerman genome prevents it. Nonetheless, a small number of fans also seem to think she has no Eldian blood at all, and is only in the paths dimension due to touching Armin.

Ackerman is said to be sub product of titan experiment. It is possible that Eldian Empire injected Titan Shifter's spinal fluid to non eldian, including Ackerman. They have maybe little DNA of Eldian that related to Titan transformation.

Ackermans are titan experients that use the paths ... so Im not surprised she is there ... I dont think that necessarily means she can turn into a titan

Don't Ackermans have access to PATHS as well, even though they don't have Eldian blood? Or do they have a separate PATHS dimension? I think Levi's on the brink of death situation will answer this

Hasn't it been clear for a long time that she has Eldian blood?

I always thought the Ackermans were of Eldian blood.

I didn't even knew there was doubt

No, she touched Armin

No, she's there because she's touching Armin

She always was eldian you dolts lol

DO YOU THINK EREN TRULY INTENDS TO DESTROY THE WORLD, OR DO YOU THINK HE’S BLUFFING? 1,755 Responses

What’s the expression, “Nothing new under the sun?” Eren’s been talking about destroying the entire world since Season 1, and nearly 60% (58.2, technically) of you guys think he’s actually about to do it. Just over a third (33.9%) of you think he’s totally bluffing, and if I can do math at at least a third grade level, that leaves 7.9% of you guys unsure about whether or not he’s telling the truth.

IF YOU BELIEVE HE’S BEING HONEST ABOUT HIS INTENTIONS, DO YOU THINK THAT HE WILL BE STOPPED? 1,705 Responses

Regardless of how we view the full rumbling, 60% of the fandom think he’ll be stopped one way or another. Armin and Mikasa stopping the genocide was the top answer (37.8%) followed by the Survey Corps (7.1%). Zeke saving his little brother (3%) narrowly edged out the Warriors (2.5%). As always, we had plenty of write ins.

Survey Corps x Warriors team up to stop the mad lad himself

All mentioned groups will finally work together to stop him

All of these options are possible, and I'm scared.

Armin and Reiner will probably be the ones to stop him.

Armin Arlert, Reiner (Helos) Braun, and Annie will team up to stop him. titan Reiner will ride on titan Armin's shoulders and blend into the colossal crowd, until they get close enough to stop Eren. Then Annie, awaken by the total rumbling, will use her scream to cause the collosals to consume each other. the end

Armin or Mikasa will have to kill him

At this point, i believe that Zeke, The Warriors and probably someone from the old gang will join to stop him.

Both sides like the paradise/survey corps and Marley/the warriors/rest of the world will work the together as one to take down one powerful enemy, it’s eren Yeager and his army of wall Titans that will destroy the outside lands

Eren said when Armin was dying that Armin would be the one to save the world. Maybe it's something he saw from the future.

Everyone else except Zeke and a few others (like Yelena and Floch) will be involved in stopping him as well as making sure Zeke doesn't get his will either

He won't stop out of his own free will, but something might go wrong and the rumbling will get interrupted before the whole world is gone.

I don't think he will be (or even could be) stopped, but I believe the SC and the warriors will still try to stop him

Yes, every nation in the world + Paradis will gang up in a Great Alliance

I hope he can be stopped somehow but I don’t know how. Poor Ymir might have to make another awful sacrifice. Ugh. Or historia.

I think he will be stopped. I think he WANTS to be stopped. But I'm not sure by who and how

Reiner will stop him, at the cost of both of their lives

I'd like to choose the first option but I don't think A-M will succeed only with 'talks'. I believe they'll be forced to do 'something more' than it.

No "Team Effort" answer?

Ymir will stop him

IF EREN IS NOT BLUFFING, DO YOU BELIEVE THAT HIS ACTIONS ARE JUSTIFIED? 1,759 Responses

Eren’s seemingly finally revealed his plan, and it’s drastic. But is it justified? We got an incredibly close split, showing just how divisive Eren’s actions are, but also that there’s a lot of support on both sides. By a hair, at 50.4%, the fandom is overall condemning of Eren, while the other half at 49.6% can see where he’s coming from.

This chapter made me to understand Eren better. I found that he hasn't changed and he is really in pain. Eren didn't turn into a cruel monster who hates his friends. He is full of pain because he believes that his fate is about killing a lot of innocent people. He was trying to avoid it as much as he could but for some reason the vision of the future was always right. I believe that Eren isn't free but is a big slave of his own beliefs. He is sure that he cannot change anything. Yet he forgot that his freedom is about his decisions and actions he takes.

There is no such thing as self-defense genocide, as much part of the fandom wants to force it to be neither is ever justifiable

There is more to Eren's plan. Perhaps it's a bluff? Or a warning/threat? It will go much deeper than What It appears now.

Opens a lot of interpretations, which I am not a fan of. Eren still has not proven himself to be a villain or a hero. Will have to wait

We need a way to put Eren down. He’s already disposed of Zeke’s plan, now he’s calling out for help. He’s taunting every Eldian via paths to try and stop him, to please stop him. Armin has been foreshadowed as the one to save humanity, and I think now he will live up to it to protect the ones he loves.

I don´t understand how you could justify Eren´s doings. To save his homeland, to protect his family is not enough to justify this genocide. I hardly sympathize with him, and killing each and everyone of his enemies is not the right solution.

The chapter was great but seriously ppl who are trying to justify eren's plan and motives just need to calm the fuck down

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DO YOU THINK THAT EREN IS THE VILLAIN IN THIS STORY? 1,769 Responses

Token Eren supporter here. This graph speaks for itself, so instead of rattling off numbers at you guys for like, the fifteenth time this post, here are some fun, relevant facts:

You can’t spell slaughter without laughter!

There are an estimated 12 times more trees on the planet than there are stars in the galaxy. That’s a LOT of places to check for a centispine.

Eren Jaeger did nothing wrong

Those are some neat facts! That’s probably because I’m a genius and I’m way smarter than everyone, because I support Eren Jaeger. Now before you REEEEE in the comments, here are the thoughts of the unwashed masses:

At this point, I see Eren is a example of 'You either die a hero or live long enough to you see yourself as the villian' and somewhat of anti-Villain.

Eren is not *the* villain, but he is *a* villain. SNK has always emphasised multiple points of view. There will never be The Villain.

WHICH STATEMENT MOST CLOSELY MATCHES YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT EREN’S PLAN? 1,749 Responses

Thoughts on Eren’s plan are very interesting to look at, so let’s look at these numbers on the graph in another way. While the majority, at 57.8% agree that Eren’s plan is the best route, they admit it’s cruel. So while this number outshines the total 34.9% that don’t side with him, both groups of not siding with him outshine the 7.3% that gave Eren’s plan the best moral ranking you could out of the options.

Even I, eternally wary of Eren and all extremist characters in general, was surprised that his plan was unlimited destruction rather than offensive attacks until capitulation. The wholesale destruction of every living being without actually knowing whether they personally hate and fear Paradis is vicious and fearful beyond what I expected from him.

Eren is a great MC for his grey areas so I don't like people reducing him to just evil when it's clear that it's his desperation and love for the Eldians what led him to this. I hope when the anime comes the public will see the bigger scheme and not just hear the words of a "genocidal" because that isn't Isayama's intention at all.

Eren did nothing wrong! But seriously I question if there was really another way since the ones ruling the rest of the world are determined to end paradisians if not all eldians. Eren being able to see glimpses of the future is a curse which drained him and ultimately he wished for things to be different but the world would not allow that.

It upset me because genocide and I want to think there’s another twist coming but I wouldn’t say it’s ooc if the spade is indeed a spade.

Already knew his plan is mass genocide. Now my only hope is for his friends to stop and defeat him.

I think the outcome of his plan will be really bad. Even though I understand his intentions and don't even think he's a villain at all, someone will have to stop him and "set him free" just like he did with Ymir. I think that we're gonna lose Eren forever and that makes me really heartbroken.

#ErenDidNothingWrong2k19

DO YOU THINK HISTORIA'S ALLEGIANCE IS WITH EREN? DO YOU THINK THEY'VE BEEN WORKING TOGETHER? 1,736 Responses

Historia is still a big question mark at this point, do you think she’s in line with Eren now that we know what he wants? A little less than ⅔, at 63.5% say yes they’re working together, whereas about ⅓, at 36.5% still aren’t convinced she’s aligned herself with him.

This is Eren moving his Chess piece. I’m excited to see Historia make her move. Then to see how the Warriors and rest of the world are going to counterattack.

I'd love to see Historia's POV sooner or later

Eren already made up his mind since he talked with Yelena and Historia before his depart.

What does Hisu think about all the kids who weren't lucky enough to be born within the walls being crushed to death? Is she still determined to rush out there and tell them that they should have been born? Because there are gonna be a loooot of kids who wish they weren't born if Eren succeeds.

I hope we'll soon get to see Historia & Annie.

WHAT ARE YOU HOPING TO SEE NEXT CHAPTER? 1,746 Responses

With the series winding to a close, we want it all and we want it now! While the Rumbling (27.2%), present day Levi and Hange (24.8%), and Historia (24.2%) are the top 3, requests for Annie have been up slightly with the last two chapters. The possibility of her being in the PATHS realm is strong. She was mentioned 21 times in the write-ins.

I just. Need Annie. For god's sake I can't go on reading snk without her I-

I want more rumbling and less flashbacks.

I hope to see Annie in the next one, that's all

The last question was unfair, there are so many thing I want to see next :D of course annie historia levi hange, as always. But I chose the eren-fez boy memory because it's the most relevant part now and I fear that if we don't see it now we'll never see it.

I want to see Annie and Hange/Levi AND rumbling AND more drunk 104th AND Historia and OMG pls show all in next 40 pages Yams thankx

Rumbling and Warriors! I want to see jean, reiner, and connie react to earth devil eren who is transforming in front of them. Mayne we'll see a reunion from jean/connie with their former brother figure Reiner. They'll work together.

i WANT TO SEE THE RUMBLING GOING FULL FORCE WITH NO HALF ASS STOP!!

I understand that flasbacks are very important, but I hope to see present-time action more

Less flashbacks, more rumble

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Levi anda hange come back in beg you

Why can't I pick all the options for the last question :(((

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 1,651 Responses

Reddit continues to dominate the discussion field, followed distantly by Tumblr. The mind absolutely boggles trying to understand why there could have been an exodus of Tumblr users that used to discuss the series there. I still remain thoroughly convinced that you four that voted snapchat either all know each other, or you’re all voting it for the meme. Nonetheless, unironically, jokes aside, in all seriousness, so there can be no doubt, genuinely, we appreciate poll takers from all platforms!

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHAPTER? 366 Responses

Awesome!!! Cruel, but Awesome!!!

God I had missed Levi so much

AoT has been one heck of a villain origin story

STEP ON ME, DADDY EREN

AoT has been delivering amazing chapters non-stop, and I fucking love it

Just hope floch lives tbh

My heart is shattered because of Eren. I truly love him and don't him to suffer anymore. I don't want to see Mikasa and Armin suffering for him again (I will never recover from chapter 112. I literally cried my eyes out when I read it).

I believe in Eren even if I don't like the fact that he's ready to kill (as it seems) the rest of the world. We still need some more fb and the one we got was amazing. It was really moving. I can't wait to see what happens next

For the past year, the manga just continues peaking and peaking. Eren is the greatest character in the story and these last 5 chapters have each been contender for the greatest chapter.

Incredible, Isayama has nailed how to tie flashbacks into what's happening presently in the story. This is by far the darkest chapter yet... can't wait to see what's next.

Best chapter of the entire story in my opinion and possibly the best chapter of all manga.

I hope this doesn't go the Code Geass route.

Best. Chapter. Ever. It puts everything together. I can't wait to see the next chapters, especially Eren's POV, though I kinda think we might only be getting it in the very last chapter.

The logistic problems of getting the wall titans to the other nations alone is enough to make me question whether they'll ever make it before Eren is stopped. Literally how are they going to get across the ocean? Stick rafts (I mean we've seen Eren's titan build a stick house before so that would be quite fun to me actually)? I sincerely doubt Eren is going to Paths-transmit a frontcrawl swimming lesson to them, and if they just trundle across the ocean floor they're going to run out of energy since neither sunlight nor moonlight can penetrate to that depth. AND they're gonna crush every fucking thing between them and ocean on their way!! Those things are far too massive to manoeuvre themselves around Paradis civilians. I just...don't see how this can work even if we DON'T look at the moral implications!

Founding Titan is overpowered as fuck. I can't stop thinking about that panel from chapter 2, when Reiner says Eren is the worst person to have the founding titan. I guess he was right

I felt that it was odd for eren to declare his motive especially when he knows Eldians from Marley can here it as well, I felt that he had ulterior motives.

Who needs cell phones when you have Paths?

Although I knew it was coming, I feel disappointed that the series went this way. Worldwide destruction is cartoonishly evil so I had been hoping that my fears wouldn't be realized. If we had to have this, I would have rather at least followed Eren through the events and gotten his direct PoV, rather than having his PoV become the new mystery drawn out over the course of a few years' worth of chapters, just to end up with this easily-guessed endgame, and only getting brief flashbacks to make us understand how it got to this point. I'm really underwhelmed by this arc.

Didnt think he'd legit kill every human. Doesnt even make sense. He doesnt really know what people think outside of what he's seen/what Kiyomi says. Talk about being ignorant.

Honestly, this may be dumb of me but I was expecting something a bit more nuanced? And, maybe it is we'll have to see. I'm not disappointed, but i guess I'm not all that surprised either. I'm more like, 'huh. i see'

I don't buy that he really wants to annihilate everyone outside Paradis (think of fez kid and family!) so I'm mostly curious why he needs to tell a lie only Subjects of Ymir will hear.

@the question "is eren the villain". I answered no but he's definetely *a* villain in this story.

Before reading this chapter, I was expecting to see mass destruction and I thought I was gonna be really sad while reading it, but I really like how there was a flashback. I know after the cliffhanger from last chapter, I didn't want a change of perspective, but I was actually happy to see the squad together in Marley because I do miss them all together ...I also really loved Levi in the flashback. It was hilarious when the clown thought he was a kid and I loved how he saved that kid who pick-pocketed Sasha. Seeing him the flash back made me realize how much I missed him and I really hope he is alive the next time we see him because he deserves to survive the end.

Christ, Eren is scary. I really hope he doesn't succeed, his plan won't bring peace

Drunk 104th squad, is the best squad

ELDIA 4 EVER

EM SCENES WERE SO GOOD AND BITTERSWEET!

Eren is about to pull a Lelouch so much.

Eren is more like Light then Lelouch

Eren is risking everybody on Paradis since he destroyed the three walls. It's not like he gave a delay for everybody to hide behind Wall Sina and unleash destruction with Wall Rose and Maria. The battlefield happens to be lucky because the city is deserted and Shiganshina is the southermonst part of the walled section. But in the meantime Eren is terrorizing the entire population on the island and might even kill those in the way. He's not doing this for Eldian supremacy either since mainland Eldians fall under the scope of his attack. Hell even their allies, Hizuru, are on his target list.

Everything about this chapter is SAD, eren leave his beatiful life with his friends, make a big responsibility on his shoulder ALONE, His friends denying about his behaviour change, forced to see a horror scenery in his mind (from future or past memories), and so yeah i hope eren will be "saved" by someone dont make him a mass murderer because his decided future. Someone like mikasa and armin, please..

the artwork in this chapter was quite fantastic. Some really good panels, and the last double page was just phenomenal. 11/10 for the artwork.

Given Eren specified that the walls' hardening had been undone, I think we will not only see Annie return given her hardened crystal may shatter, but I think next chapter we will see the return of all of the characters we haven't seen for a while as they look onto the horizon to see what has begun

There have been many warning signs throughout the manga that Eren’s ultimate goals have always been extreme, extreme to the point of complete annihilation, starting with the desire of completely annihilating the titans and then everyone who isn’t a subject of Ymir.

I definitely liked that we get a flashback, showing our favorite characters together one last time before everything goes down. But I REALLY think it’s about time we get to see Levi & Hange, especially Annie again in the next chapter.

I don't understand how so many people in the fandom are shocked that Eren wants to destroy the world, it was pretty obvious for a while. Also I'm really disturbed how many of his rabid stans still defends him... I mean, c'mon, you can love him and understand his reasons, but justify him and rooting for him is just fucked up.

I enjoyed it overall, but i did not expect or like the fact that the flashback took around 70% of the chapter. Specially when the flashback itself does not provide any kind of new information that we did not see in other chapters, other than the fact of showing us the Paradise main cast being on Marley for the first time, wich i loved.

Nothing can justify genocide, but I understand and feel sorry for him. This whole chapter is about him crying out for help, trying to change the future events he’s already seen, hoping desperately that SOMETHING will go differently and that he won’t have to do what he has to. But the world of Attack On Titan is a cruel place and the conflict between Eldia and the rest of the world won’t go away until one of them is destroyed. Zeke chose the world, Eren chose his country, his people and his friends.

I like to think that Eren at his core really does only wish to save the people he loves and promised to protect and fight for, and that he doesn't really want genocide and will even soften up soon, even if he needs help to be snapped out of it first. I also like to think his whole being, mind and ideology and all got convoluted when mingled together with the wills and memories of so many other previous titan holders, and that not everything is his own genuine will or wish.

I really hope Eren's solution will mirror the 'miracle' that happened between Uri and Kenny back in Ch. 69. Uri asked whether it was violence that averted their path of mutual destruction, and while Kenny makes a snarky remark about how Uri grabbed Kenny with his titanized hand, I think there's some truth in that. Perhaps Eren will clutch the world with the wall titans and stop the rumbling just short? Though I can't see Eren going to his knees like Uri did, so this may just be wishful thinking. Guess we'll see next month.

I really love how Eren turned out although some might think him as a heartless person. But that scene with him silently shedding a tear shows that he still has emotions and feels empathy & sympathy towards others. He is still very clear of his goal and plan and his courage to do what he thinks it's right even though everyone has doubts towards him really shows his courage to always move forward no matter what. I don't think destroying the whole world was his true plan after all, it just seemed way too far fetched for me. I can't wait for the next chapter to reveal more of his intentions and plan.

I really love the chapter because it was wholesome and tragic at same time which the author is good at balancing bittersweet stuff to his work which I love and respect him for doing it

I think it is time to the Ackermans to shine in this final battle. They cannot be controled by the FT unlike the rest of the eldians (including Historia and Zeke). I bet my money to Mikasa to become the "reincarnation of Helos" and defeat Eren (with a tons of angst betwixt). Kill your beloved one? sound like another twisted and evil idea from Isayama to make us suffer, his readers.

I thought I'll say that but here I am. I believed there is enough good in Eren Yeager to fight for all people. I was wrong and that hurts. I'm totally suing him.

I thought Ymir would do the rumbling though. Ymir, please show yourself more!

I’m so sad.. I love you Eren.. please use your pretty brain even though I know you’re trying so damn hard I love you and you deserve better

Isayama was attempting murder with that Eren and Mikasa conversation. I never thought he would make Eren ask something like "what am I to you?" to Mikasa in fucking canon and I almost died while reading.

i really miss when everything was about just killing titans, even tho i really like how the story is developing at this point. i could never imagined it wiil be like this.

look guys I know diplomacy isnt flashy and you want Eren to be the tormented anti-hero fighting for the little people. but I swear some of you are thirteen years old with the level of nuance you can apparently handle. Gabi is devil incarnate but Eren is justified in murdering billions of people he's never met or talked to because he's afraid they might not like him? You need to be better than this.

Looking forward to seeing the carnage Eren unleashes after years of abuse from Marley and the outside world.

Masterpiece!!! Love it!! It’s like you got a little bit of everything in this chapter! Mikasa POV, The Rumbling, a little bit of fan service, the Eren and mikasa talk .. 10/10

Eren using titans to kill his enemies? That the first king. This is the reason everyone hates Eldians, Eren what the fuck

Kiyomi is the most fishy character of Snk. I have noticed Kiyomi seldom makes eye contacts with the Survey Corps during the talk. She definitely hides info and lies to them.

Remember that you would most likely not be on Paradis. You would most likely be minding your own business, rocking your child to sleep or visiting your grandma, when that wall of titans came to crush the life out of you for the sin of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if we thought that was unacceptable when it happened to Eren and co. then we must consider it unacceptable for every other innocent civilian caught in the crosshairs of war.

Seeing the "hero" descending to full villain and it being true would be crushingly sad, but cool and very daring at the same time. I'm not sure if it's definitely what Isayama is doing, but it'd be very ballsy and I'd adknowledge that. I love irony and it would be very ironic so, yeah.

Shows how miserable Eren's life truly is. He clearly doesn't want to do what he is doing but also understands that it NEEDS to be done. It can be only him and nobody else. How we went from an angry boi to a literal god.

SnK is the only series that can make me simultaneously want to see Eren fucking obliterate everything, but also want to see "those days" come back.

Starting of with the *many* elephants in this rom, I really liked how Issayma portrayed the colossal Titans marching. It looks so gloomy and dark. The flashback parts were so wholesome, especially for a a chapter about genocide. Having this shift in tone from the start was a great idea. I'm still not a fan of Eren destroying the entire world. I know it's the probably the only definite solution but I'm starting to like Zeke's Plan more now lol

Team Eren. Reset the world!

The beginning was so freaking cute. By the end, I felt disturbed and disappointed. I thought Yams was doing something that didn't make sense. But now I strongly feel that we still haven't had Eren's real plan revealed to us. Eren intends to sacrifice himself, letting his friends defeat him to convince the world to see Paradis in a different light and make peace possible.

Zook faceplanting the sand is a power move

What a chapter! Feels like last final breath before shit will hit the fan for real, can't wait for next chapter...

#snk poll #snk polls #snk chapter 123 #snk 123 #snk poll results

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kcwcommentary · 5 years

Text

VLD8x08 – “Clear Day”

8x08 – “Clear Day”

This episode is so frustrating. The carnival is a waste of time, but that’s less frustrating than Allura’s hallucination and dream. All writing is a choice. If you write a cryptic dream into a story, it has to be for a reason, it has to mean something. And I want Allura’s hallucinations and dream to mean something. I feel like I desperately try to tease out a meaning from it when I watch it. But I don’t know what it means. It’s never explained in the show, and it’s so frustrating. Ultimately, I end up so annoyed by it that I just think that the show’s creative team didn’t actually have a real meaning for the hallucinations and the dream. I think they probably just had these cryptic moments for no other reason than to just be cryptic. I don’t think they thought they had to have an explanation for what it all meant, let alone that they had a storyteller’s obligation to explain it in the story.

I’m left feeling that this episode is just more audience manipulation, and I’m not okay with that.

The episode starts with Allura talking to Tova. Hunk’s cookies caused zealots who wanted to commit genocide to now want to cooperate with Allura. That ending scene last episode leading into this cooperation really only works if you ignore everything the show has established about these Alteans. If they had only been angry and hadn’t really done anything and were captured and then they ate cookies and calmed down and changed their mind about Honerva, that would be fine. But the show specifically identified these Alteans as the ones who were piloting the Robeasts, and those Robeasts were used to drain the quintessence of several planets. Just because the Rebels seem to have been able to evacuate the population of those planets doesn’t negate the fact that these Alteans were trying to commit genocide. It really is creepy that this show just ignores that now.

Tova tells Allura that he doesn’t have much time to talk to her. This connects to how in 8x01 “Launch Date” when Luca talked to Romelle, Honerva remote killed Luca. Tova says, “Now that she has Lotor, she will use him to destroy everything—” So the show is again explicitly saying that Lotor is back. Tova states this as fact, so Honerva had to have specifically spoken to the Colony Alteans about this being the goal. Since Lotor doesn’t actually come back in this show since he’s a melted corpse, are we supposed to assume (assume, since the show never bothers to show us) that Honerva was just lying to the Alteans?

Tova convulses and falls on the floor, two creepy-mask medical personnel (seriously, who thought the visual design on medical personnel was a good look?) come in, and Allura tells them to back off. At first, I thought it was weird that she was keeping Tova from receiving medical attention. She kneels down, holds out her hand, and her hand starts glowing, and I thought she was going to use her magic healing like she did with Lance in 6x01 “Omega Shield.” Then she says, “I feel something.” Why is she only feeling it now? The entity has been in him the whole time.

She apparently magically pulls a rift creature, last seen in 3x07 “The Legend Begins,” out of Tova. I really wish this show had not brought the rift creatures back into the story since the story doesn’t really do much with it beyond this episode. The creature flails around the room. Monitoring outside is Sam and Matt’s robot? cyborg? person in a mask? girlfriend. Why is she even part of this scene? Why is Sam even in this scene really? He’s not a doctor, he’s not a diplomat, he’s not the ship’s captain, he’s not Romelle or Coran, so he doesn’t have a cultural investment in this conversation. Sam is the ship’s engineer. There is not reason for him to be here except that they wanted someone to speak technobabble. Why couldn’t that have been Coran? He knows a lot about technology and could have thus spoken technobabble, and he would have had a reason to be watching because he’s Altean, Allura’s there, and they’re trying to get the Colony Alteans to cooperate. Having Coran here would have made so much more sense than having Sam, and Coran has the added benefit of being one of the show’s main characters. So, once again, the show has shoved a main character to the side in order to give time to a side character.

Allura, Tova, and the medical personnel exit through the door, and conveniently, the rift creature does not attempt to follow them as they do so. Sam hits a button, metal in the room clumps together in the center of the room, and then cut to their having somehow gotten the creature out of the room and into a small container. Allura tells Sam that the creature was trying to communicate with her. I use this stated attempt to communicate as being the foundation for my attempts to interpret Allura’s hallucinations and dream.

Curtis and Shiro directly talk to one another! About a picking up “an abnormal signal.” So, you know, clearly, they’re in love.

It’s the guy from that planet in 4x04 “The Voltron Show!” where the weather is only clear one day out of the year. Like in that episode, this episode seems to think saying Coran’s inability to know what day it is on that planet is the result of “time dilation.” It didn’t work as a joke in “The Voltron Show!” and works even less as a joke now because the way it’s used this time doesn’t even seem to come from understanding what time dilation is. The “abnormal signal” that Curtis picked up was solely that there are a bunch of inhabitants on the planet who are currently on the surface. That is not a signal!

The alien guy rants at Shiro when Shiro suggests it’s too dangerous because of some miscellaneous threat. The Galra have completely ceased to be a thing in this show. We’re to somehow think that a universe-spanning military dictatorship culture that has lasted for 10,000 years has stopped being a problem because Honerva killed a handful of people in 8x02 “Shadows.” Honerva hasn’t been spotted in a while and is leaving no wormhole trail, according to Allura last episode. So, what’s the danger that Shiro is so worried about that he thinks a planetary cultural event should be cancelled?

The alien guy tells Shiro if he’s so worried about their safety, then they can come provide security free of charge. Shiro tells Veronica to make a shipwide announcement, “We’re going to Clear Day.” Cut to them seemingly having already arrived because Lance is asking Allura if she’s sure she doesn’t want “to go down to the carnival.” Allura says that she wants to rest after what happened to Tavo. Lance offers to stay with her, but she tells him to go, to “win [her] a prize […] something sparkly.” One cliché guy-winning-a-girl-a-prize-at-a-carnival reference, check. Even with it being totally cliché, I do actually like that Lance seems genuine about wanting to get something in order to try to lift Allura’s spirit when he arrives on the planet. The fact that he’s having to lift her spirit though, continues supporting my argument that Allura was depressed this whole season.

Once again on this show, a planet is populated only by a small number of people in a single, small location. Why is the show like this? Every alien civilization (other than the Galra) only has a planetary population the size of one town. It’s so off.

Pidge and Hunk offer to help Lance look for something for Allura. Keith overdoes it with the professionalism (which is slightly endearing) by being too focused on their providing security for the event. Shiro, who had been the one who initially was so worried about whether the people of this planet should be having this event due to miscellaneous threat, now doesn’t seem to remember he was worried earlier. Now, he tells Keith, “Relax. Go have fun.” Keith asks, “If we’re not here for protection, then what are we even doing here?” So, yeah, about two-and-a-half minutes after having said, “Are you sure hosting a celebration is safe? This sector has seen a lot of hostile activity lately,” Shiro has now been written to have a totally different motivation, telling Keith now, “Morale on the Atlas is low after what happened on Oriande. Who knows, a few hours at the carnival might just give us the boost we need to get back on track.” This show can’t be consistently written for even three minutes. This latter motivation of Shiro wanting to boost the crew’s morale makes a lot more sense than his earlier concern about a miscellaneous threat. Although, they’re only going to be here for a few hours? I thought the celebration was supposed to last an entire day.

Back on the Atlas, Allura wakes up and hallucinates Lance. He talks about the Altean flower that Colleen was growing last episode and has since given Allura. “I had assumed they had gone extinct,” she says thereby marking the flower as a symbol of the Altean people. She hears Lotor’s voice saying, “You should know better than anyone nothing ever truly goes extinct.” Lance is gone, and then Lotor is there. He says, “It’s good to see you again, Princess. You know, the ancients believed that all of life began with a single juniberry flower.” Allura summons her bayard and tries to cut through Lotor, but she only damages the wall and floor, not him.

He tells her, “You and I desire the same thing. We both seek to destroy Haggar.” Allura counters, “Haggar? Haggar is no longer. She is Honerva now.” I know the show desperately thinks it has told a story about someone who has differentiated personalities caused by quintessence poisoning, but it really hasn’t. Haggar, Honerva, it doesn’t matter what name she uses or what appearance she’s taken on, she’s still the same person. Lotor agrees with me, “Though I could rename this a highland poppy, you and I would still know what it truly is. The witch may change her name, but she will always be a witch.”

It’s really baffling in a way. It’s like this show doesn’t even know what position it wants to take about the fundamental truth about Honerva. The show very much expects the audience to consider Honerva absolved of her behavior post-quintessence poisoning, but here it has someone arguing that Haggar and Honerva are just two names for the same person, so following through with that, Honerva most absolutely shouldn’t be forgiven for her abusive and genocidal behavior.

And since this isn’t really Lotor talking but the rift entity, what are we supposed to think about Lotor here telling Allura this. What Lotor is saying is totally right, but are we supposed to interpret this as the rift entity manipulating and deceiving Allura? The show did expect us to think everything Lotor said in seasons five and six that was totally truthful and accurate were actually manipulative lies. It’s so weird. The way this show does this by having him say things that are so clearly true, but then to try to say those clear truths are deceptions, it makes it feel like the executive producers and writers of the show are trying to gaslight the audience.

I’m curious if the rift entity is projecting Lotor saying this because it actually does recognize Honerva for what she is. The last time we saw a rift creature was in 3x07 “The Legend Begins.” Honerva had one in a forcefield bottle. Because it becomes aggressive and attacks and more of its kind come through the rift, combine, and attack, I went right along with the idea that it was a malicious creature. But thinking about it now, it could have been really interesting if we eventually found out it wasn’t malicious whatsoever. The first time we ever see it, it’s been captured and imprisoned by Honerva.

Allura says that “there’s nothing [she] can do to counter [Honerva’s] abilities.” Lotor says she’s wrong. “Everything you need is here,” he says. He causes her to have a vision of the rift entity. He says, “It is an ancient form of energy that predates time itself.” So, is it energy or is it a creature? “Entities like this gave Haggar the ability to conquer worlds and control the universe for 10,000 years.” Uh, how? This is the first time since “The Legend Begins” that this show has brought the rift entities into the story. The show has not shown Haggar doing anything with them for 10,000 years, so this just feels like it’s coming out of nowhere.

Again, I just don’t think this show knows what it actually wants the facts of the story to be. It’s too interested in having unresolved ambiguity, but without resolving the questions it raises for the audience, the show ends up just seeming like it’s being manipulative. Lotor puts his mouth to Allura’s ear, clearly meant to be creepy and evoke viewer distrust, as he says, “If you can become one with the entity, the powers you gain can defeat the witch.” Allura is shown reaching out toward the entity.

There’s a bright flash and suddenly Allura is standing in a field of flowers talking to her mother. This is the first and only time (that I can remember) we ever see her talking with her mom (of course, it’s not actually her mom). Her mom says, “You’ve arrived just in time […] to save us.” Above is a fleet of Galra cruisers who start firing on the nearby Altean city. Her mother says, “Only you can protect us.” Allura then is in the armor of one of the Colonly Alteans who pilot the Robeasts. She’s in a Robeast. She slams the Robeast weapon into the ground, draws out quintessence, and uses the chest cannon to destroy the Galra. Then she realizes she’s destroyed the planet. Her mother, as she turns to dust, says, “I am so proud of you.”

This is such an interesting dream sequence. But what does it mean? Or rather, what did the writers intend it to mean? I don’t remember this ever being explained. Is her mother supposed to be the voice of the rift entity, asking Allura to save them? If the rift entities now are like the one back in “The Legend Begins,” then has Honerva imprisoned them and is using them against their will? Are they being violated by Honerva, and this one is asking Allura for help? If the rift entity is just trying to offer Allura power to trick her into letting it into her so it can do something bad to her – consume her? the show never seems clear to me about what the threat of the entity is to Allura – then the dream doesn’t narratively work for that because it ceases to be enticing because it causes her to see her kill her own mother. That’s not how you write deceitful promises of power because Allura doesn’t have reason to trust the entity now.

I just don’t understand what the message the show is trying to convey with this dream sequence. Allura dons the Robeast pilot armor and uses the Robeast. She drains the planet of quintessence, killing everyone including her mother, but she’s doing it to provide defense, destroying the Galra who are attacking. It seems like it’s justifying horrible action – draining the planet of quintessence and killing everyone – in order to do something else – stop the Galra. It can be read as a statement about doing horrible things in order to achieve a bigger goal. I know I read a long while back some suggestion that this dream sequence can work as an explanation to Allura about why Lotor should be forgiven, that his second Colony that drained quintessence from Alteans was a horrible thing done in order to achieve a bigger goal.

It’s just so weird. Her mother says Allura’s there “to save us,” but then Allura doesn’t save them, she kills them to kill the Galra. Is it supposed to be explaining the threat of what negative things would happen if Allura takes the rift entity into herself? That she would be doing it out of a motivation to protect people but that it would turn around and end up killing those she wants to protect? That isn’t what happens when Allura takes the entity into her though. And if this dream is coming from the entity itself, why would it have Lotor suggest to her that she take it, but then have Allura see a vision that’s trying to say that if she does take it then she’ll be responsible for killing everyone.

And then, Allura’s mother says, “I’m so proud of you,” after Allura has killed her. Why would her mother say that if the vision intends for Allura draining the planet to be interpreted as an ultimately negative thing?

The show, of course, doesn’t follow up with any of this, so I ultimately have no idea. I just wonder if the writers even knew what they were writing when they wrote it. The sad thing is that I can easily imagine that the writers of the show think I’m wrong for wanting this dream explained. I think that they failed as writers in not explaining it. I think it’s a mark of an amateur, and there are a lot of well-paid, acclaimed writers who are technically professional that I am still criticizing as being amateur, to write cryptic scenes into a story with no intention of providing an explanation for the audience. I’m not saying don’t write cryptic scenes, I’m not saying you can’t let a cryptic scene sit for a while, but you have to absolutely explain your cryptic scenes eventually or else you betray the trust of the audience.

Whatever happened with the dream, it had a real-word manifestation. The flower on the nearby shelf is dead. (Though the mice on the bed are still alive. How’d they survive?) It suggests Allura actually drew the quintessence out of the flower during her dream. She has used her space magic to revitalize people before, so I guess this supposed to just be her able to do the opposite? Where did this flower come from? It wasn’t in the scene when Allura and Lance were laying on her bed before he left for Clear Day. Instead of this flower, a holographic projection of her father and mother was what sat in this spot on her shelf. Is this discrepancy supposed to mean something? This show has too many inconsistencies for me to say it must mean something.

Honestly, this show’s executive producers and writers seem to be the type of people who’d put weird stuff in the story for no other reason than to be weird. I can totally see them not thinking any of this needs to make sense.

Back at Clear Day, Pidge plays Whack-a-Coran. The people of Clear Day have manufactured games with Coran’s face on it? Well then, that’s some spite for Coran’s inability to track time in “The Voltron Show!”

Shiro walks into the arm-wrestling tent. The alien guy complains about the Blue Lion not being there. The alien tells Shiro that the arm-wrestling contest isn’t “for people like you.” Shiro says, “Why’s that, because of my arm?” The alien says no. I say yes. Shiro’s arm does not have an elbow. It doesn’t have a way to create leverage, which is what is needed to arm wrestle. It’s like this show actively picked something that Shiro would not logically be able to do. It’s like the show and the creative team behind it are actively mocking people for having a problem with how illogical Shiro’s arm is.

The alien says that “arm-wrestling is for the young and strong. You’re old, like me.” I guess maybe he’s just supposed to be taunting Shiro or something. It has felt like the executive producers and writers have thought of Shiro as older than he is throughout this show’s production, and I have no idea why.

Coran participates in a yelmore calling competition. I genuinely laugh. His yelmore call is funny.

Hunk eats food, but it’s a carnival, so it makes sense.

Keith asking some people if they’ve seen anything suspicious and their mocking him about how there’s a guy going around asking people if they’ve seen anything suspicious is annoying. I’m over this episode disparaging Keith for being professional. Somehow, Keith and Hunk are spontaneously, and unknowingly in line for a ride. This is such a weird transition. I think the transition itself is supposed to be a joke, but it just feels off. So, were the people Keith was questioning in front of him in this line? They others in the line behind Keith didn’t complain about Hunk cutting in front of them by joining Keith. The moment lacks logic.

So, they get on the ride. The ride seems like it’s based on the clichéd mockery of the It’s a Small World ride at Disney theme parks. It’s not funny.

Still looking for something for Allura, Lance is at a game booth and complains, “Voltron doesn’t have a purple lion.” It’s really hard to see how the writers would have put this in and not mean it to be a reference to Lotor. Precisely what they mean by it, I don’t know. Lance asks the game attendant if he’s “got any blue lions? I used to be the Blue Lion’s Paladin and now my girlfriend is.” The attendant has a blue lion, but he’s clearly a scammer since he takes all ten of Lance’s tokens for one play of the game and swaps the rings for smaller ones. Lance still gets two of the three. The attendant offers to make Lance some kind of a deal.

Meanwhile, Pidge has won a bunch of tickets and is trying to redeem them, specifically for a prize fit for a princess. It feels like her doing this has to be connected to the same giving spirit that came from her in 8x01 “Launch Date” when she gave up her video game for Allura’s outfit. But, like too many things, this show doesn’t actually explain what the bigger meaning is. Pidge wants a sparky hardhat but needs more tickets.

Shiro competes in the arm-wrestling. Curtis watches him. It could have been used to actually have them talk to each other and set up getting them together in the end, but since they weren’t planning on having them become a couple, the writers didn’t think to actually do anything to set-up the relationship.

Pidge asks her dad for more tokens. He accuses her of wasting her previous tokens. She gives him a face and he goes to give her more, but Colleen snatches them and says she wants a family picture in exchange. It’s supposed to be funny, but I don’t find it funny at all.

Back on the Atlas, Allura is looking at the entity. Lotor is still talking to her, creepily telling her to free the entity. She says, “I can’t. I won’t.” And then her hallucination changes to Lance, who says, “It won’t do any harm. The entity will help you. It will save all of us.” Lotor aggressively says, “Take it.” Then Allura sees and hears her mother again, who says, “Only you can save us all. Release the entity. Come home to Altea.” Her mother turns into Honerva, who says, “Join us.” And then she turns into the entity.

I still don’t have a clue what this dream sequence is supposed to be telling us. All of this is the entity talking to Allura, right? I think the biggest problem with this is that the creative team, in the same way that they never really settled on an explanation for what quintessence was and how it worked, they never settled on an idea about what this entity is. We’re supposed to have a sense of foreboding. We’re supposed to consider it threatening, but for no reason other than that’s the emotion the show wants us to have. There is no foundation to what makes this threatening. We’re supposed to go, oh no, don’t trust it, something bad is going to happen now. But nothing bad actually happens because of this. It feels like all the hallucinations and the dream are setting up something specific, but I don’t think it is. I think the whole point of this is just that the creative team is messing with the audience, toying with us.

Allura releases the entity. Why she would respond to Honerva saying “Join us” by releasing the entity, I don’t know. It seemingly enters her. A mecha’s eyes and horn? light up. There’s a shot of Lotor laughing. The sound of his voice sounds like he’s having fun. It doesn’t sound like a maniacal laugh. His face looks wild though. The visual of his face and the sound of his voice do not match in tonality. He says, “Follow me!” I know this moment has been the subject of a lot of debate and discussion. I don’t really know what to add to it. I assume this is supposed to be the entity still talking to Allura? Is Lotor supposed to be the entity and the mecha he’s piloting supposed to be Allura, as a statement that Allura is now possessed and controlled by the entity? But then who’s the statement “Follow me” being addressed to if it’s not being addressed to Allura. Is the entity through this vision of Lotor making this statement as a declaration of partnership with Allura?

Again, I think I’m putting way more thought into these scenes and this dialog than anyone who worked on the show did. I think they most likely just threw some words into a script and didn’t care if any of it made sense.

There’s a shot of space and some planets and Voltron, and the whole image smears sideways and whites out. Why? What does it mean? I doubt it actually has any meaning.

Keith and Hunk are still stuck in the ride. It’s not funny. The ride breaks down again. It’s still not funny. Keith breaks out of the ride. Coran still is in the yelmore calling competition. I genuinely laugh at the calls. Coran wins. The deal the game attendant made with Lance was Lance autographing all the Blue Lion plushies. Lance was totally cool with that, and he’s got his Blue Lion plushy in return to give Allura. Pidge got the sparkly miner’s hardhat for Allura. They all converge on the arm-wrestling final.

Shiro’s final competitor is the warden from 2x10 “Escape from Beta Traz.” It’s set up to suggest a personal stake to the competition. Shiro calls the warden out on having imprisoned an innocent person. The warden then apologizes, saying, “Look, I know I did some bad things. The truth is, I thought you guys ruined my life, but really, you saved me.” I can’t help but read this as a parallel to Allura’s dream. Like with her dream, the warden talks about interpreting something initially as bad (“I thought you guys ruined my life”) but then seeing it as good (“but really, you saved me”). It has a parallel quality to Allura’s dream where she does something that seems bad (drains the planet of quintessence and kills her mother) but it happens with the language of it being a good thing (“You’ve arrived just in time […] to save us” and “I am so proud of you”).

Part of me feels like there has to be an explanation here. There has to be a meaning we can figure out. But the other part of me feels like I’m just desperately grasping for something to try to create a meaning because the show failed to actually give us one.

Shiro and the warden arm-wrestle. I think Shiro arm-wrestling is still ridiculous because of his arm lacking an elbow, but I think the animation of the arm-wrestling looks really good. Shiro wins.

The Paladins and Altas crew return to the ship.

Sam runs in to find Allura on the floor, unconscious. (Again, why is this Sam instead of Coran?)

The episode ends.

Yeah, this episode frustrates me so much. It all feels like a giant suggestion of meaning, but the show never provides that meaning. This episode just ends up feeling absolutely disrespectful of the audience, like it’s all just a giant manipulation.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 8 #vld 8x08 #commentary

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secret-diary-of-an-fa · 5 years

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Explaining ‘Joker’s Negative Critical Reception

SPOILER WARNINGS FOR ‘JOKER’ AND ‘THE PERFECTION’ (LIKE, ALL THE SPOILERS)

TRIGGER WARNING: I BASICALLY THINK THE JOKER WAS RIGHT

In my recent review of Joker, I alluded to an enclave of (predominantly middle class) film critics who absolutely hated the film, not because of its actual quality, but because it drew attention to widespread social inequalities in which they themselves are complicit. To be honest, I was going to leave it there and not provide any commentary on these film critics, since, y’know, they failed miserably: people went to see Joker in their droves and it made roughly enough money to fund two moon-landings and a year-long block party. However, I did some googling and it turns out that the phenomenon of insane critic-hate for this flick is much more widespread than I initially thought, and so it behooves me to give the reasons for this hate a little more thought.

Now, obviously, I’m dismissing the idea that this is simple, honest criticism that just happens to differ from me out of hand. I try not to do that too often, because I think its far too easy to start seeing conspiracies where there aren’t any. However, if you’ve been to see Joker then you already know that it’s a self-evident and transcendent work of artistic accomplishment the likes of which almost never actually show up in cinemas. A handful of bad reviews I could understand, since all taste is ultimately subjective- but a million thinkpieces about whether the film even has a right to exist looks suspicious to me.

In order to start dissecting Joker’s own private backlash, I’d like to draw a comparison to another film (which I also mentioned in my initial review): The Perfection. You see, Joker references a lot of classic films, from King of Comedy to Taxi Driver to The Network, but the film that it most reminds me of is The Perfection (which, incidentally, is the only other film I’ve ever called ‘transcendent’ without the faintest trace of irony). Both films are revenge films about people suffering from an invisibilised forms of pain. The protagonists in The Perfection survived rape but couldn’t have their suffering recognised because it was an accepted part of the sexist world to which they belonged. They eventually killed their rapist and his minions. Fleck (the Joker’s real name) suffers from mental illness and crippling poverty, but finds no sympathy. Instead, he’s alternately abused and ignored by the people in his life and those he turns to for help. His mental illness is even exploited by TV personalities who he’s never met for a cheap laugh. In the end, he takes revenge and in so doing, starts a violent uprising.

The big difference between The Perfection and Joker is that the former attracted praise from the majority of critics and ambivalence (rather than abject hate) from those who weren’t on board, while the latter was hit with a tidal wave of abuse. Both films are of comparable quality and both are thematically similar. so why is one widely accepted and the other denounced.

Well, one of the major differences between the victim-protagonists. The Perfection’s victims are lucid, relatively financially stable women from two different ethnic groups. The Joker, in contrast, is a mentally ill white man from an impoverished background. The sad fact is that some types of victim are trendy and others aren’t. Dirt poor, mentally ill honkies just aren’t as on-trend as well-spoken middle class women who have had something horrible happen to them. I don’t intend to be dismissive of the type of suffering portrayed in The Perfection (nobody deserves to go through what that film’s heroins did, yet sadly, in real life, many people do). Nor do I want to put Joker on a pedestal for giving a crap about a less socially-acceptable type of victim. My point is merely that there’s a double-standard at work in the review press. Most film critics have social circles that are ethnically and gender-diverse (which is a good thing, obvs) and can therefore empathise to some extent with people from different backgrounds. They get a nice warm glow from supporting people they know in real life. However, by the same token, I doubt most of them have ever met a working class person who wasn’t serving them coffee, or dealt with someone whose illness prevents them participating in mainstream society. To the average film critic, the working classes and the mentally ill are just ‘those dirty looking people from the other side of town’, whether they’d admit to thinking that way or not.

However, I feel like the learned inability to empathise with poor people doesn’t fully explain the hatred for Joker, though it undoubtedly facilitates it. One of the interesting factors about the hate the film’s received is that it seems to emanate equally from both ends of the political spectrum. On the one hand you’ve got yer neocon fuckwipes wringing their hands about the bad influence the film could have on children (they fail to mention how these children are going to sneak into see an R-rated film en masse) On the other hand, you’ve got virtue-signalling SJW motherfucks bemoaning the fact that the film dares to portray violence committed by a white dude in a sympathetic light (I’m not entirely sure how sympathising with the justified anger of a downtrodden, abused version of the Joker is supposed to equate to endorsing spree killings perpetrated by racists and misogynists in real life for completely different reasons in real life. Then again, the aforementioned virtue-signalling SJW motherfucks don’t seem to know either, so I suppose we’re just supposed to ignore the discrepancy).

It’s rare for a film to attract such ire from both conservatives and liberals, but it is telling. You see, as a die-hard commie (or, at least, a fairly stubborn socialist), I look at conservatives and modern liberals from an outside perspective, and they seem to me to have more in common than they’d like to admit. Both fundamentally believe that the society they live in is good and worth preserving- they just can’t agree in what form. This is particularly the case in America, where most of the film’s audience and critics are pooled. The idea that there’s nothing particularly great about American civilisation- that maybe, just maybe, there’s not much there worth salvaging- is equally anathema to the most hardened bigot and the most free-wheeling hippy libertine. The idea of American exceptionalism is so ingrained that anything that the thought of it failing beyond repair is horrifying to practically everyone.

This, I suspect, is the real reason for the hatred that Joker has attracted. The version of Gotham portrayed in the film is beyond redemption and, ultimately, you’re meant to feel happy (or at least relieved) when its smug, self-assured elites are shot dead; when its infrastructure burns; when The Joker- that cackling pop culture nightmare- is finally unleashed.

As it builds, Joker toys with the idea of tragedy. It walks a tightrope, making you question whether the Joker’s actions are really justified, but in the end it comes down on his side. It just waits until the last possible moment to suckerpunch you with that fact. The Clown Prince of Crime himself articulates the way the film has kept its sympathies in check until the right time when he says that “killing those three young men was funny, and I’m tired of pretending it that it wasn’t” (I’m misquoting, but only slightly, for the sake of expediency). This line is the pivot for the whole movie- the point at which the movie openly admits that its villain-protagonist isn’t just a sympathetic character study, but someone who might have a coherent point. His first murders were of the “awful” elites of his society and yes- in the grand scheme of things- their deaths were pretty necessary. And funny.

Had Joker just shown us its protagonist’s descent into villainy without hinting that he might actually be right, I suspect the films would be praised as a morally complex work of genius. But it dares to suggest that America might as well burn, so film critics- who occupy that relatively wealthy and stable rung of society where society itself starts to seem like a good idea- can’t really cope with it.

Is my interpretation correct? Who knows, the film is carefully ambiguous- maybe I’m not meant to be quite as on-board as I am with Joker’s brand of civilisation-collapsing nihilism. But the fact that it even has that element; that possible interpreation probably does explain why critics hated it.

Either that or they’re just tasteless fucking idiots. Oh fuck. It’s that second one isn’t it? I just wasted two hours of my life writing this didn’t I? Well bollocks. Off you fuck.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer

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wherestoriescomefrom · 6 years

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when, how and why did you start to ship molliarty and sherlolly?

Loaded question anon. I’M EXCITED TO ANSWER IT.

When: Late 2012. I was kinda small, a little stupid, and mostly starving for female characters, I think. I mean - idk if anyone remembers a time before peak TV, but those were also rare back in the day.

How: @creamocrop ! She was writing back then, and she wrote so well. She wrote Molly with so much panache, and I absolutely adored this fanfiction called The Spare Room - so much so that I wrote a paper on it and presented it in a conference.

Molliarty is a different story - when I was a lot more of a veteran in Sherlolly fic, I was writing a paper on Molly - the same paper which heavily features The Spare Room. And since it was a paper more about Molly than about Sherlolly, I was lurking in the “Molly Hooper” tag more and more often. ANd fucking RONNieE HAPPENED TO ME. @whyimmathere RUINED MY LIFE. SHE SUCKED ME INTO MOLLIARTY AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO ESCAPE.

Why: This gonna be long. Strap in.

Molly.

I didn’t begin by loving Molly, I really didn’t. She was another character, a character I felt really sympathetic for but didn’t think about too much.

I think it was a slow realisation that Molly was more than a side character in a long quest for Sherlockian drama. Molly fascinated me no end, because as a character who had been less explored in the first two seasons, there was virtually none of her that was not on the table. She could be anyone, she could be anything - and yet, she was so specifically, inescapably Molly. So essentially Molly.

She was awkward. She was kind. She was brave, but in a slightly… unconscious way? I think my favourite part of Molly was something best illustrated in The Spare Room (I know, I know, I have to stop talking about it) - but she is both an outsider, and an insider. And I’m lifting some analysis from my paper verbatim, but:

Molly Hooper’s unassuming outside presence is nothing more than a ‘spare room’ for Sherlock’s mental space. Molly’s distinct character traits do not belong in this world, yet, by some miracle, they manage to exist.

She is constantly an outsider - she spends her days with human bodies that don’t speak to her, and has few friends among the “normal” crowd. Amongst the “abnormal” crowd - Sherlock, Mary, John, Mycroft - Molly is inside, and yet she is left out of the narratives of the story. This makes Molly Hooper an interesting combination of various polar elements. She is ordinary in a way that John and Mrs. Hudson are not, yet, at the same time, she was romantically involved with a criminal mastermind, to say nothing of the fact that Sherlock has a preference for her company, and ‘dark humour.’

She’s such an odd kind of outsider, that I just think she’d get people like Sherlock or Jim. She’d understand them in a very fundamental level, not to mention the fact that they seem to house soft spots for her which are inexplicable. How did Moriarty share so much of himself with Molly without having her murdered? How is Sherlock able to use her flat as a bolthole without any of the others knowing? What is going on in these relationships?

And then there’s the fact that Molly is just as good at observation as Sherlock.

The fun thing about the detective canon is that it has been overwhelmingly male (like all things lololololol i want to die). If it is not masculine, then it is almost certainly one that espouses masculine qualities. Logic. Rationality. Cold intelligence. Information. The sacrosanct character of the Doylian canon is one that is superhumanly male. And I’m not the one saying that, Zepka is, Worthington is, Rowland is.

So what really interests me about Molly is that she has Sherlock’s qualities of observation - but specifically approached from a more feminine angle. And I think these qualities specifically work really well with the two other characters in these specific ships. My favourite example of this is the “You can see me” scene.

The exchange highlights Molly’s gentle, yet forceful personality. Sherlock is forced to notice her. Her intuitive human understanding of emotion is what gives her the Sherlockian strength of deduction. Her presence is infiltrative, and, as Sherlock initially sees it, insidious. She destabilises the masculine space by her very existence. The smell that defines her, as well, becomes one with a distinctly feminine association – strawberries.

I love how many dynamic little boundaries Molly straddles. And this makes her just such a good candidate for me to ship her with either Sherlock, or Jim. I think with someone as complex as Molly, she would engage Sherlock endlessly - and surprise Jim almost constantly.

And yeah, I know my own conditioning. A part of this is probably because I like seeing the normal girl with the criminal mastermind or the consulting detective, but they don’t figure so much in my reasons. I adore Sherlock (the way fic writes him, perhaps not so much the canon), and I love how unpredictable Jim Moriarty is - but I think the key in both of them is the reason why I find Molly just so shippable with them is just one thing:

They’re both lonely. (At least, my interpretation of them)

I know John is a foil to Sherlock, and we never see a foil to Moriarty, but Sherlock’s loneliness I have always felt is a step away from John’s understanding. Moriarty’s loneliness is the more obvious one - I always wondered how isolated you’d have to be to compete in a game with the whole world - and that too for boredom’s sake.

Molly’s loneliness is something so much more practical - so much more of a lived experience, in her case that I think she would understand it on a more foundational level. That’s what I like about these ships, I guess. How well I think they would fit, what good chemistry they would have. I know you were probably expecting more of a “he touched her and he is kind of flustered by her” kind of analysis instead of an extended raphsody into Molly’s character, but that’s meeeeeeeeeeeeee.

SO YEAH IM SORRY IF THAT WAS LONG ANON. I’M SURE THERE’S MORE, BUT I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO ARTICULATE IT AS MUCH AS I WORD VOMITED.

#the people??? want me to answer???#hello void this is ridiculosity #fandom meta #molly hooper #sherlolly #molliarty #sherlock holmes #jim moriarty #sherlock

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neth-dugan · 6 years

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Nine Worlds - Saturday

Friday found [here]

I got a full night’s sleep! I was still tired but it wasn’t too bad. I think I grabbed a nap at some point between panels but for the life of me I can’t say for sure when. Just that I really needed it. It was also the first day when I sat on or ran a panel.

ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY IN SF/FANTASY

This ended up being more about the history of chemistry and alchemy through time with a few examples of how it isn’t done accurately in either SF or Fantasy. Not what I was expecting, to be sure, but I still enjoyed it. I recognised a lot of it from a programme about the history of science and chemistry by Prof Jim Al Khalili on the BBC. The person presenting used to teach Chemistry and thus knew their stuff.

My only concern is that they said they were probably going to take longer than the slot assigned to them willy nilly like. Which. People have to get to things. Thankfully volunteers do pop their head in near the end of the slot if needed and it over ran a bit but not by too much.

Something that is important to note, and that not many realise but the presenter here made sure people knew, is that alchemy and chemistry aren’t that different in many ways. It isn’t like astrology and astronomy. Alchemy is where chemistry came from, like its ancestor, more than anything else, and there was this period of transition where it gradually grew from alchemy into what we realise as the modern day science of chemistry.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD APPRECIATION

... behind the scenes footage of the first cast rehearsing the play. Clemmett as Albus and Boyle as Scorpius. Not in costume/wig but look at Albus glomping his best mate. Look!

I went to see this play when it was still new, when we had to keep the secret safe and before the script was published. I loved it. I remember the little girl next to me in utter awe about the stage as we walked in. I remember of the Dementor flying just above my head. The thump that got you in your core as time travel took place. Adoring Scoripus so so much. My heart breaking during the scene with Albus and Scorpius on the stairs, and with the cast at the end when they must let events play out. And I remember learning that a lot of Potter fans weren’t a big fan of the play.

So when I got an e-mail asking if I’d be willing to be on a panel about appreciating Cursed Child? I was all in. And when we were trying to figure out who would mod it I volunteered and so it began.

It was a great panel. Me who had only seen it, not read it. Someone who’d only read it. People who’d done both. People who know a lot about plays and how they work and theatre and the like.

We talked about the legacy of pressure of family, how that impacted Albus and Scorpius, and how there was these two stories - the kids and the adults. How we think it works that the characters aren’t these perfect adults and parents who do no wrong. Harry has a lot of trauma that the others around him don’t and that brushes up against the plot and also the needs Albus himself has. It’s messy and we think it works. There was also a lot of discussion around how it works as a play, how that makes it different from a book and the impact this probably had on reception. Play texts are fundamentally different from traditional prose and this can make it hard for those not used to reading them, who don’t know how to literally read between the lines. And we had huge appreciation for the stage craft from all sides of production.

I’m not turning this into a blow by blow of the panel. But there was a lot of love for the play. And considering this panel was up against the Black Panther panel? I think we did well. I am sad I didn’t get to go to the Black Panther panel but Nine worlds has not yet invented time travel so alas. I had a lot of fun, I hope others did too.

TOP OF THE SFF COPS

...tragically nobody mentioned Odo until I suggested him at the end. So I’m sticking him in here.

This panel is slightly infamous at this point, and going in I had no idea. Whilst I knew there were issues with a separate panel and a serving police officer being placed on it, I didn’t know this one would blow up. So far as I knew there’d been a similar one last year and I’d only heard good things. I also know that I have a lot of privilege being white and despite being queer I pass.... but I’ll go into that in a separate post later. Will post a link here when up.

A lot of genre fiction has police or security type characters in it. From X-Files to Star Trek to Discworld to Alien Nation and way way more. And like many professions who are portrayed on TV or otherwise intersect with it a lot (doctors, archeologists, writers, scientists) a lot of it isn’t done particularly accurately. So a group of people who work in law enforcement in various ways decided to do a session on which characters do their actual job best and in line with actual standards. It was made clear that they were there on a personal basis and not as an on duty or official representative type thing.

They put forth a set of criteria - things like knows the law, exercises discretion, compassion, does the day to day hard work and not just the action stuff and so on. Mulder? Is right out. Scully however was in, and the only character I recognised. So I was mostly went by who sounded the best and it ended up being the guy from Discworld who wont the vote. I don’t know the books well though so who knows. This was literally the entire panel. Still, I can see in retrospect how it would make some people uncomfortable.

It was an okay panel. I wasn’t expecting it to be a big vote thing, and more of a discussion type thing but in hindsight that may have caused more issues.

LET THE PAST DIE: SACRIFICING SACRED COWS IN STAR WARS THE LAST JEDI

This was put into a room far too small for what it needed to be. People were crowding in and it wasn’t great. Not long after it started a volunteer came in and offered up the room across the hall that had way more seating, so we voted on it and unsurprisingly we moved across. This would have been easier for some to do than others but it also have people who needed more space that space whilst letting people in. But it likely caused issues for those who have a harder time moving. I’d had a big dizzy spell on my way to this but seemed to be okay moving.

Part way through I decided to start live tweeting it and you can find that HERE. I’m not really sure what else to add but it was an interesting panel. Lots of talk about letting whiney fanboys whine to themselves, a lot of stuff they keep going on about was also in or also missing from the original trilogy. Nobody explained Palpatine until the prequel trilogy after all. He just turned up as a vague big bad when needed for plot. One panelist wished them the prequel trilogy ‘they deserve’ which amused me.

What I found most interesting though was a note on the green milk scene with Luke. I’ve seen people joke and deride that scene a lot since the movie came out. But one of the panelists, a woman from with roots in Hong Kong, said that it really struck a chord with her in relation to the diaspora. It reminded her of going into Tesco and finally seeing a noodle that isn’t exactly the same but reminds her a lot of something from home. And this was Luke claiming something that reminds him of where he came from even as he’s far away from it. It had honestly never occurred to me but it makes so much sense, and gives that scene a lot more value. I have no idea if the writers did that on purpose or if they did it as the easy joke though.

LAYERS OF MEANING: THE DIMENSIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH, CHINESE, AND SIGN LANGUAGE

I loved this! This was hosted by a woman who was born in China and whose first language is Mandarin, but moved to Britain as a kid and later in life learnt BSL and now works as a sign language interpreter. She does this for Nine Worlds in various panels, as well as hosting a few sessions relating this to herself. And so she decided to do a panel that talks about her three languages as they’re all very different and go at language in different ways.

It was awesome.

...Mulan is not at all relevant but she is Chinese this is the best gif I could find that is both nerdy and has the writing system talked about in this session. And also, y’know, Mulan.

She isn’t a linguist, which she made sure everyone knew. But I think that made it work. It was also kinda amused because on the front row on one half of the aisle was a native speaker of BSL, and on the front row of the other half was someone who knows Mandarin better and I get the feeling probably came from a different part of the Chinese speaking world. But I’m just assuming there. And the interplay between the three was informative but also amusing.

I kinda knew the general concepts of what she was talking about. Or very vague versions of the concepts anyway. English is phonetic and the letters themselves have no meaning. D implies nothing when used in dog or door etc and it can be polysyllabic. Mandarin is logarithmic, it’s tonal and uses that rather than multiple syllables and it doesn’t have individual letters. The symbol for ‘female, woman’ 女 but as a radical can become a part of words like ‘calm/peace’ 安 which has the radicals for woman and home. Which, being at home is calming so I get that. There are also some not great words with woman as a radical too.

And then there is sign language which doesn’t have just the mouth to speak. It has two hands, your face and your mouth. It takes place in a 3D space and adjectives are often included as part of the word, not separate to it. You can say entire sentences with a gesture, and you pick up on ways of expressing things because they look interesting in the same way you’d vocalise something a certain way because it sounds nice..

It was interesting. I don’t know a lot about language, and anything too technically worded would have lost me. But this didn’t and this was another of my favourite panels this year.

THE POLITICS OF ACTIVISM IN MARVEL COMICS

So I don’t know a lot about the comics. I’ve read a couple Wolverine books but that is about it. But I thought I’d go along and listen cause it seemed interesting. Jaime was hosting it, someone who’d worked on the comics was meant to be there but had to pull and out and so Jaime was left by themselves but... Jaime did a good job.

A lot of the specifics were beyond me. But it seemed to be a common theme that activism within the comics would change the world too much beyond the baseline - a baseline that needed to remain stable. And a fear of how the much vaulted cis het white male would take it I’d imagine though I don’t remember that being touched on a lot.

I did comment at one bit. I tried to do a ‘I only really know the movies so maybe this is stated in-verse’ type of disclaimer and then was given what felt a bit like I’d been shot down with ‘comics only!’ despite others bringing MCU up before including by the mod. If they hadn’t, I’d have said nothing at all. But I may have just been a bit sensitive. In any case, I wondered if perhaps the characters did do things, within the parameters of their non-hero lives. Tony Stark is the CEO of a massive company after all, maybe he funds charities, treats workers well and make sure workers rights are a thing etc, invests responsibly. I dunno. And we just don’t see it much because it isn’t about punching people. I don’t remember a lot of what was said after that as I was too busy berating myself for daring to speak in a comics panel. Note to self, never go to one again, it is not meant for me. The vague idea I had about an X-Men as metaphor panel for next year? Likely wont submit that now.

But it was well moderated. People got a chance to speak, bounce ideas around and I think what I said was taken in as part of that. The session didn’t get stuck on one thing and it flowed through topics and ideas and the like and it was interesting. Except for that one moment I did genuinely enjoy it. Given the last minute alterations due to a key component having to drop out it was very well done.

... why do tumblr gifs all have to be so big?

DR MAGNETHANDS

This is kind of hard to describe, but it was very adult friendly, It had Captain Picard with swearing crashing the moon onto London, and Theresa May as a monster head fighting against a butterfly made out of lamb chops in some kind of anti-Brexit accidental metaphor. Especially as the lamb chop butterfly was a heroic character that Theresa treated as a bad guy. Everyone boo’d her at every turn.

It’s kinda hard to describe in any logical way what this session was like. Drawn off of audience suggestions and participation it’s basically crack fic made manifest.

... giant jellyfish in the sky didn’t happen, but were a distinct possibility.

It was just pure fun really. I laughed a lot, I had a great time, it was awesome.

SEX AT HOGWARTS

Another session that needed a bigger room. I got there pretty early and so had a good seat and then being a tad hyper I decided the room needed mood music. So I searched for romantic music in Spotify and played it. This is whilst the room was mostly empty and I did stop before the session started. Those who could actually hear it seemed amused. Not sure if it was at me or the music. And there were lots of tipsy people around.

We were also graced with Professor McGonagall who visited us and gave us all a good staring at.

Much like the late night panel on Friday, it was a pretty lively discussion with lots of absurdity and very clearly adult only. There was a sensible power point that combined info released after the books about who was dating who, comics and some parodies of what sex ed at Hogwarts might look like. It’s not what I’d have done but given it’s slot it worked out pretty well.

...given the topic, probably best to have a gif of adult characters. Also it’s cute.

There was discussion of what counts as bestiality in a world where all sorts of beings are sentient. I even posited the question that if someone kept up with polyjuice for nine months, could someone usually lacking a uterus become pregnant and give birth? This was laughed down and dismissed as it was meant to. Think it was kinda obvious in how I delivered it that I was being absurd. There was a lot of speculation of what portraits get up to and.... yeah. it was exactly as it sounds.

A lot of fun, and probably nothing teens haven’t heard or thought before but still, a good thing they weren’t there.

I’d have liked to go to bar and play Slash but alas, I was tired so I went to bed. Hoping for sleep and rather sad that the next day would be my last for another year.

[SUNDAY HERE]

#nine worlds #nineworlds #harry potter #marvel #star wars

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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Gears Tactics Review (PC) — Time to Switch Gears

April 27, 2020 9:00 AM EST

Effectively blending the Gears of War universe with strategy gameplay, Gears Tactics is a fast-paced experience that succeeds on both fronts.

In the last few weeks before I started up Gears Tactics to review, I had played through Gears 5 since I hadn’t quite gotten to it when it released last fall. Since it’s been some time since playing Gears of War 4, I felt familiarizing myself with the gameplay elements of Gears again would be good context for how the developers at Splash Damage and The Coalition would approach a tactics game take on the third-person shooter series.

Thankfully, when I started up Gears Tactics and went through its opening levels, I didn’t feel nearly the whiplash that I expected coming to it from Gears 5. While it took some time to adjust to the feel of playing a squad tactics game versus a third-person shooter, through and through, Gears Tactics is still very much a Gears game, just interpreted differently. All of the familiar elements that fans would expect from the series have been translated authentically into a new genre, and now it just makes me wonder why we didn’t have a strategy Gears of War game a lot sooner.

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The core campaign of Gears Tactics takes place over a decade before the events of the original Gears of War and follows the story of Gabe Diaz, who is the father of Gears 5’s protagonist, Kate Diaz. After being enlisted by veteran COG soldier Sid Redburn, Gabe and Sid go on a mission to recruit Gears to hunt down Ukkon, a Locust scientist that would lead to the creation of the Locust’s most dangerous foes like the Brumak and Corpser, while encountering other challenges and rising tension to try and save humanity.

As a prequel to the events of the first game, Gears Tactics slightly treads some familiar ground and scenery for series’ fans, but its production value and extra dimensions to the lore shouldn’t make you doubt that it’s a Gears game all the same. Each mission starts and ends with excellently-produced cutscenes that feel like they could be right at home in Gears 5, and given Gabe’s relationship with Kate, longtime fans are in for some interesting connections and revelations. Though it may not be one of the series’ deepest or most interesting stories, Gears Tactics still offers worthwhile moments that fans will want to experience for themselves.

“Gears Tactics is still very much a Gears game, just interpreted differently.”

To put it in the simplest way, Gears Tactics is essentially Gears of War meets XCOM, as its gameplay borrows liberally from the mechanics that have made XCOM the household name in squad-based tactics games. The core elements of XCOM’s gameplay–commanding a squad of characters, using action points to command them, and Overwatch–are all here as you might expect them to be. While things might feel familiar at first if you’ve played any XCOM game before, Gears Tactics takes the foundation of what works well in XCOM and layers in its own elements to make it feel like a more distinctly Gears of War experience.

Make no mistake, even though Gears Tactics is in a completely different style of play from the core games, it still looks and feels like a Gears of War game in the right ways. All of the small touches from the series are here; you can chainsaw Locust into a bloody mess, slide into cover, turn enemies into globs of meat with a Mulcher, and kick Tickers into groups of baddies for an explosive surprise. Even the distinctive Gears guitar riff that plays once you’ve cleared the battlefield of enemies makes its way into Gears Tactics, making it feel right in line with the games that have come before it.

“Gears Tactics takes the foundation of what works well in XCOM and layers in its own elements to make it feel like a more distinctly Gears of War experience.”

However, Gears Tactics isn’t just simply Gears of XCOM. Though its core gameplay is largely inspired by XCOM, Gears Tactics makes a few fundamental changes that reinterpret how it plays. By comparison, Gears Tactics is meant to feel like a much faster-paced and action-driven experience, largely because each unit has three actions per turn compared to two in XCOM. This small but impactful change in Gears Tactics gives players a much larger degree of flexibility, as you can now move a unit, fire at an enemy, and use an ability or reload all in the same turn. Gears Tactics also frees players from the constraints of a grid-based movement system, as instead you can move and place units wherever you see fit, with the distance they can move being governed by the amount of action points they have left. With so many areas offering cover that your characters can use to mount their defenses, the battlefield naturally sort of has a “grid-like structure” to begin with, and gives some agency to how and where you are moving.

One of XCOM’s signature abilities, Overwatch, similarly has a neat overhaul in Gears Tactics by having players drag a cone onto a section of the map to determine what area they will guard. It’s a simple but effective implementation that not only easily shows players how far a unit’s Overwatch will see an incoming enemy, but also affects its range and accuracy. Dragging the Overwatch cone out will increase its spread but decrease its accuracy, while keeping its range closer and less spread out from your character will make them way more likely to deal greater damage to an approaching enemy.

“Splash Damage and The Coalition have given players a lot to work with to make their squad their own in Gears Tactics.”

Though these larger overall changes are a big departure from the limitations that XCOM purposefully imposes on players to increase tension, Gears Tactics doesn’t let up in any way on difficulty or challenge (including whether you decide to play with Ironman Mode enabled or not). But while Gears Tactics has changed up some of the rules of XCOM, what really sets it apart are the Gears-inspired gameplay touches that add extra depth and elements to a strong tactical gameplay foundation. The ways that Splash Damage and The Coalition have integrated some of Gears’ most familiar elements are more than just fan service, but actually have vital roles in the gameplay and can wildly change up your tactics.

Executions especially are one of the best aspects of the series that Gears Tactics implements into a strategy game setting. Once you get an enemy unit down to a certain amount of health, they’ll be downed and vulnerable to an execution by one of your units. Aside from witnessing the gory scenes that we’ve come to know and love from the Gears games, executions in Gears Tactics also have the benefit of giving each of your other units an extra action that round, making them hugely advantageous to, well…execute. In one round of a level where I executed three enemy Locust Drones with one of my Snipers, I was able to gain basically an entire extra turn with all of my other squad members, allowing me to set up a devastating turn for the next wave of enemies.

“Gears Tactics goes all out with customization for each unit, and it’s one of the game’s best elements that I hope makes its way into future mainline Gears titles.”

Players in Gears Tactics will command a squad of up to four characters throughout the campaign, which is usually divided in a level between one or two “hero” characters that are crucial to the story (such as Gabe or Sid), and assorted Gears soldiers that you’ll recruit along the way. Each of your soldiers is based on one of five classes (Support, Vanguard, Scout, Sniper, and Heavy) that have their own specialized abilities and weapon preferences. While you can’t change the fundamentals of these classes like what primary weapon they’re using and their feature set, over the course of the campaign you’ll be able to gain new weapon parts that can alter different stats like damage, accuracy, and ammo capacity, along with using skill points to unlock new abilities or passive skills. Each class features their own distinctive skill trees with several paths and specializations, as Splash Damage and The Coalition have given players a lot to work with to make their squad their own in Gears Tactics.

The extensive array of customization options for your squad members in Gears Tactics also adds a whole other level to make each character feel distinct from one another. When I first started gaining new Gears Recruits that I could add to my squad, I spent more than a fair share of time just tweaking the various settings and custom features that you can add to them. While they start out randomly generated, Recruits can be completely altered to your liking compared to hero units, other than their race, gender, and class. You can alter their hairstyle and color, name, and customize each of their weapons and armor down to their color, metal finish, adding a design pattern, and more. Gears Tactics goes all out with customization for each unit, and it’s one of the game’s best elements that I hope makes its way into future mainline Gears titles.

“Each of the bosses that you come up against feature some of the most iconic big bads in the Gears universe, and they’re all thrilling to engage with in their own ways.”

When taking your squad members out onto the battlefield, the core gameplay of Gears Tactics–like the third-person shooter series that inspired it–revolves heavily around utilizing cover and staying aggressive against enemies, maybe even more so than in the core Gears games. With the game being turn-based, players will really have to put a lot of consideration into where they are moving their units and how they are covered, as a unit placed in poor cover or a bad position can easily be overwhelmed by an approaching enemy squad. While Gears Tactics might be challenging for those that may not play a ton of strategy games (or even for those that do), it’s a flexible experience that prioritizes speed and action over hunkering down and playing too defensively.

Like in the core Gears games, each Locust enemy unit that you come up against in Gears Tactics has their own unique ways of being taken down that you’ll have to utilize on the battlefield. At first you’ll come up against units like Drones and Wretches that aren’t huge threats but can overwhelm you with their numbers. Later on you’ll be facing more specialized Locust units like the Grenadier, which can do heavy damage to characters up-close, Snipers that will pin your characters in place, and others that you’ll need to exploit their weaknesses in order to take them out effectively. Gears Tactics can get pretty challenging with the number of enemies that you’ll have to fight in a map, making it easy to get overwhelmed. However, the way it tutorializes each enemy type and teaches the player how to deal with them feels smart and well-developed, especially once things get much more difficult later in the game.

“Gears Tactics still feels remarkably in line with the rest of the series and is a thrilling, worthwhile experience that Gears fans and strategy game veterans will enjoy.”

This all culminates in several boss fights during the campaign of Gears Tactics, which put all of the player’s tactical skills to the test and are some of the best encounters in the game as a whole. Each of the bosses that you come up against feature some of the most iconic big bads in the Gears universe, and they’re all thrilling to engage with in their own ways, especially once you figure out their attack patterns and weaknesses to take them down. The very first boss fight that you’ll engage in at the end of the first chapter has your squad going up against a towering Brumak, equipped with homing missiles, chainguns, and a deadly stomp attack if your characters get too close. While at first this fight felt like an overwhelming challenge, once I figured out the key strategies that I needed to employ–splitting up my squad members and keeping my distance–the Brumak fight became a thrill where everything I learned in the game up to that point clicked into place.

Gears Tactics at first seems like a straightforward premise that blends two incredibly popular franchises together, but that shouldn’t be mistaken for it lacking depth or fun. Despite playing in a completely different style compared to the core Gears games, Gears Tactics still feels remarkably in line with the rest of the series and is a thrilling, worthwhile experience that Gears fans and strategy game veterans will enjoy, while being completely accessible to newcomers. If you consider Gears as chocolate and XCOM as peanut butter, Gears Tactics is how they meet: a combination of ingredients you’ve likely had before, but together, they just work so damn well.

April 27, 2020 9:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/04/gears-tactics-review-pc-time-to-switch-gears/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gears-tactics-review-pc-time-to-switch-gears

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britesparc · 7 years

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My Unpopular Star Wars Opinion: Or, Why The Phantom Menace is Better Than The Force Awakens

Was it, though?

Were the Star Wars prequels – The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith, whose vary names have become entertainment-industry watchwords for disappointment – really, truly better than the current Disney-owned era of Star Wars, which so far has produced two widely-praised billion-dollar-grossing movies, and is about to unleash a third, about which expectation is as high as a city in the clouds? Can I really think that, for reals?

Well, yes and no.

Let’s get the obvious things out of the way: there were some very poor decisions made during the Prequel Era. Let’s not pick over the corpse of George Lucas’ story choices – the whys and wherefores of virgin births, whiny antagonists, and Jar Jar Binks – and focus instead on the filmmaking technique employed. The dialogue is wooden. The camerawork is rigid. The performances are flat. The pacing is all over the place: in Phantom, the much-vaunted podrace goes on for at least two laps too long; indeed, the whole Tatooine section of the film shoots the legs out from under the momentum. Prior to that it had been a breakneck chase from overwhelming odds, our heroes escaping Naboo by the skin of their teeth; as soon as they break down on Tatooine, they’re sheltering from sandstorms and going gambling. And, of course, there’s the whole “taxation of outlying star systems is in dispute” nonsense: doesn’t quite grab you as quickly as “it is a period of civil war”, does it?

But there’s still something about them that feels Star Wars-y. There’s still a sense, even though I know Lucas was making it all up as he went along, that this fits into the universe correctly (I mean, he was making everything up as he went along, which is why Leia kisses Luke in Empire). There’s a cyclical nature to how the prequels marry with the original trilogy that’s about more than a visit to Tatooine or the presence of a Mandalorian bounty hunter. The first films in both trilogies are, in essence, about innocence: a simple quest by simple people to prevent an immediate danger (removing the blockade of Naboo versus destroying the Death Star); the second films complicate things by splitting up our heroes on separate quests before uniting them for a finale that feels, at best, like a pyrrhic victory; before resolving their respective trilogies in an all-bets-are-off finale beset with divided loyalties and a dangerous Sith Lord. Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi – even their titles are darkly mirrored – both deal explicitly with Vader and his relationship to the Force; he wrestles with his emotions and his commitment to his Order, the love of his wife compelling him to commit dark acts before finally the love of his son pulls him back into the light. The Force Awakens, whilst it does mirror aspects of Star Wars, feels more like a greatest hits package; we have another callow youth from a desert planet on a hero’s journey, another aged mentor, another cocky pilot, another tragic death, and another large object exploding in space, but it feels more consciously designed. A box-ticking exercise, rather than a thematic resonance. Or maybe it’s just because the iconography is so similar.

The First Order is basically the Empire, and the Resistance is basically the Rebellion. There are TIE Fighters and X-Wings. There are Stormtroopers and helmeted good-guy soldiers. There are English-accented characters walking around in SS outfits being glowery and evil. Whilst I’d never attempt to suggest that Amidala’s chrome-plated ship, or the wing-walking droid craft, were as iconic as what we got forty years ago, to go back to the same well is disappointing.

My wider issue, however, is how the new era seems to disregard somewhat the mythological aspects of Star Wars. I guess I’ve only seen one film in the trilogy, but despite the palette-swap nature of its craft and locations, it does feel markedly different to the Star Wars that came before. There’s a sense of destiny in Star Wars, a “balance of the Force” that was hinted at in the original trilogy and made explicit in the prequels; the yoke of inevitability pulling characters in directions that they may not wish to go. The subtle, underplayed, and often-ignored theme in the prequels of once-noble institutions slowly crumbling into irrelevance and becoming the very thing they hated speaks to the wider issue of the “will of the Force”, of the Chosen One appearing to bring balance. That Chosen One is assumed to be Anakin, and we’re left to interpret for ourselves whether the balance was actually achieved; is it when he kills the Younglings? Or is it when he topples the Emperor? This thread ties the first six films together to produce something grander and more metaphorical, even if it is a case of Lucas essentially retconning to some degree his original intentions from the seventies and eighties. The Force Awakens feels a bit different, like the preoccupations of the previous films are gone; there’s a darkness to everything creeping in around the edges, complicating matters. Whether this makes for a better narrative is moot: what I’m saying is it makes it feel less of a whole with the rest of Star Wars.

This is exacerbated by the time-jump. Obviously we were always going to go 30-40 years ahead of Jedi. But so much has happened in that time. In the 20 years between Sith and Hope, the galaxy might be fundamentally different, but from a narrative view, nothing has changed: the Empire is still victorious and the Jedi still in exile, just like we left them. But in between Jedi and Force, we’ve seen Luke’s attempt at training new Jedi falter, Ben Solo fall to the Dark Side, the rise of the First Order, and the formation of the Resistance, to say nothing of the yet-unrevealed histories of Snoke and Rey. The film features flashbacks and a cliffhanger finale. It just feels odd, out of place, not at one with the cyclical nature of Star Wars. And, furthermore, it undoes so much of the happy ending of Jedi: despite the deaths of Vader and Palpatine, the Dark Side rises again, there's a new Empire, Luke goes into exile (apparently convinced that the Jedi as an institution is a bad thing) and Han and Leia split up. It's sad! It's tragic! And whilst I'm fine with all that happening in Star Wars, I think it should happen on-camera. Not in flashbacks or spin-offs, it should be part of the saga. To introduce it as backstory complicates the rhythm of the films. It feels less of a whole. It feels like a sequel, not the next episode. And from the trailers and pre-release hype of The Last Jedi, it seems like this is the new normal for Star Wars.

None of this makes the Disney films bad. In fact, going back to the popular iconography of the original trilogy makes perfect sense. Having the heroes still be a scrappy insurgency helps us root for them. Giving us a mysterious backstory to uncover is compelling. But my argument is, all these elements feel discordant with what's gone before. The prequels, for all their faults technically and narratively, helped weave a mythological tapestry for Star Wars that is being undone by the new films. I feel they're remaining too wedded to familiar imagery and story points, whilst simultaneously moving too far away from the more conceptual, mythological underpinnings of Star Wars as a fable. I kind of wish that Lucas had completed his mooted final trilogy – his own VII, VIII, and IX – before selling to Disney (especially if he took more of an executive role, as he did with Empire and Jedi, and left the writing and directing to others). Taken as individual films, maybe they wouldn't be as good as what we've got – because despite everything I've said here, I really do think Force Awakens and especially Rogue One are pretty tremendous – but at least we'd have Lucas' complex, contradictory, rhythmically compelling vision completed. Of course, then we wouldn't have Star Wars' new Holy Trinity of Rey, Finn, and Poe – perhaps the Disney era's most important additions to the overall mythos.

Look, Star Wars is complicated. George Lucas is complicated, and his legacy is complicated. I'm chuffed to bits he sold to Disney – not because DIsney is the be-all and end-all, but because they've proven their ability to marry corporate aims with creative excellence; look at Pixar and Marvel especially. The Force Awakens has issues but it's still a great, crowd-pleasing, immensely successful movie, and already we've got BB-8, porgs, and broadsword lightsabers sitting in the popular imagination in ways that, arguably, nothing in the prequels ever really managed (apart from Darth Maul and his double-ended saber, I guess). And again, the progressive casting of the new films is long overdue and utterly fantastic. I'm still really, really excited about The Last Jedi, and Abrams' Episode IX, and Johnson's new non-Skywalker trilogy. But I can't help feeling like something quintessentially Star Wars has been lost; perhaps it's an oddness, a willingness to duck when everyone is expecting a jump. Perhaps it was Lucas' own obsessions and interests that fuelled the franchise, that gave us everything from the sublime (Vader, the Death Star, lightsabers, Yoda) to the ridiculous (midichlorians, Gungans, Ewoks, Watto). Perhaps the new films are better films, but in my heart of hearts, I'm not sure I can love them quite as much. Maybe The Last Jedi will end up being the best Star Wars experience this side of Knights of the Old Republic, but it will still feel slightly separate. Further tales. An imaginary story. The expanded universe.

Maybe it's me. Maybe it's just knowing that Lucas had more stories he wanted to tell and never got the chance. Maybe it's because I've always been a lot warmer towards the prequels than most. Maybe things will shift with time – as more films come out in the new universe, with more characters, then this will start to feel like the status quo, the new normal. I hope so, because I love Star Wars – indeed, it's worth repeating, I think the new films are excellent, and are better films, better made films, than all three of the prequels. But although my head believes we're in a golden age of Star Wars not seen since the early 80s, my heart has yet to be convinced.

Anyway. I'll let you know if I still feel the same way after The Last Jedi...

#movies #films #star wars #George Lucas #the last jedi #star wars the last jedi

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yunhokick · 7 years

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[GOLDEN KAMUY] Interview with managing editor Ookuma Hakkou, May 2016

Golden Kamuy won the Manga Taisho Award 2016. Noda Satoru was the first male mangaka since 2008 who grabbed the award – 8 years after Ishizuka Shinichi did it with Gaku – Minna no Yama. HONZ had an interview with Golden Kamuy’s managing director, Ookuma Hakkou. The interviewer was Okada Atsunobu from Manga Shinbun.

(pic below: Ookuma Hakkou when receiving the Manga Taisho Award 2016 on behalf of Noda Satoru)

Member of HONZ vary from female university students to men in their late 40s, and their tastes often don’t agree, but Golden Kamuy receives support from all groups. Can you tell us the secret of the strong appeal that captures men and women of all ages?

Thank you. As for the appeal, one of my favourite authors, Fujiko F. Fujio, once said this:

“When it comes to popular manga, what the readers want and what the mangaka try to express, fortunately concur.” (Fujiko F. Fujio in Fujiko F. Fujio no manga gihou, published by Shogakukan. Fujiko F. Fujio is the mangaka who made Doraemon – ty.)

Holding to the quote above, I sought for “materials in Noda-sensei’s drawer that could be accepted by more people”. Those materials were “hunting”, “military”, and Noda-sensei’s place of origin, “Hokkaido”. I think those concur with what readers want to read.

I see. Was such appeal something that you aimed for? Or was it unexpected?

I aimed for it. Editing is the very first tasting of what the chef, the mangaka, prepares. I think an editor must together with the author aims for the taste that can be accepted by many. I’ve been working together with Noda-sensei since the beginning of his debut Supinamarada!, and after the serialization ended, he showed me name (manga scripts) of various themes, but the moment I read the script for Golden Kamuy, I thought “This is it!” Something fundamental was born between me and Noda-sensei.

Then, when the serialization started, did it become popular immediately?

The first responses were truly wonderful. Afterwards, ever since Sugimoto and Shiraishi fell off a snow cornice in chapter 7, poll results too have been stable.

I see.

Although it showed two plain gaffers warming themselves (laughs). After that, we held a discussion to talk about strategy. Actually, without caring about poll results, we’ve made 7 chapters to be compiled in the first volume (180 pages) before the serialization started. We tried putting Hijikata Toshizou in chapter seven at the end of the book… It was such an attention-grabber. It cleverly fit, and the poll results were stellar.

Awesome.

Furthermore, if we included depictions of food, it’d get even better…

I came to realise that pacing was very important. Action creates ‘tension’, so as a reader continues reading a book, they demand more tension. Inserting daily elements such as food prevents tension from soaring too high, creating a synergistic effect like pouring salt on watermelon just heightens its sweetness. However, even though we want to put in everything, putting in different things together takes considerable skill. If we made it clumsily, the elements might cancel each other so that the taste would disappear, but thanks to Noda-sensei’s capabilities, it turned out wonderful.

Because He’s Earnest, He Doesn’t’ Leave Out Scenes of Preparing Game Meat

The culinary aspect of Golden Kamuy has considerable elements of hunting. There are a substantial number of scenes showing the process of cooking, from making trap to capture game to be cooked and preparing the food.

I think that’s the result of Noda-sensei’s earnestness. For instance, when preparing food, the Ainu people will fold the fur of the game they caught. Including on a snow field. There’s a meaning in each of their behaviour, even in their daily routine, somehow. Not only the culinary scenes, the livelihood of the Ainu people is also an important theme in Golden Kamuy, so I think he’s pouring his efforts over that feeling of wanting to tell everything about it without compromise. Because that’s how Noda-sensei works—grounding entertainment on a foundation of reality.

I see. By the way, in addition to that element of “fighting for a purpose” like in shounen magazines, Golden Kamuy also contains depictions that are quite gruesome, seinen magazine style.

We also aim for that. However, er… about gruesome depictions… although he said he’s not good at horrid stuff, I wonder if he’s probably lying… I think he kinda likes it. (laughs)

New Series Is the Transfer Student in a Class

Are there gruesome scenes that are too extreme so that sensei was asked to change them?

There are. For instance, actually the original script for chapter 3 of Golden Kamuy showed the havoc caused by a wandering bear that attacked a village.

(laughs) That makes me want to read it.

In my opinion, a newly serialized manga is like a transfer student in a class. When one transfers school, the first impression given is when one introduces one’s self, showing one’s face. That’s the information for readers—readers are the classmates. Information in manga is something like that. However, as days, that is, pages, go by, as we come to knowing why someone cries, be happy, be angry, what does he eat to stay alive, what kind of girl he likes, then we might think “this person is like me”, or “this person is a friend”, or “this person is someone cool that I want to look up to”, in short, is that person like Hibito from Uchuu Kyoudai (a manga by Koyama Chuuya – ty.) or like Toriko from Toriko (a manga by Shimabukuro Mitsutoshi). Or we can learn that he’s the sympathetic sort of a main character like Komatsu (a supporting character in Toriko).

I see.

How to shorten the sense of distance with readers is tremendously important. So, if you display gruesome scenes in the first impact, it will draw attention because it gives such a huge thrill. It’d start out with a bang.

That’s right.

However, once that point of attention has passed from sight, I think such over-the-top stuff would lose its appeal to the masses.

For sure.

That’s why if at the very first you already put something that attracts attention, to maintain the appeal of the point of attention, we must properly devise it in a calculated way, so as not to overdo it. That’s why I said “If three consecutive chapters are gruesome, people would perceive this as over-the-top, so I don’t think it would be appealing to the masses, and thus can you put more various, balanced interesting elements in?”

Thanks to that trial-and-error, the first chapter turned out to be awesome.

Combination of Reality and Entertainment

Golden Kamuy has a lot of unique characters; I think it’s the appeal of the manga. How were they created? In his blog, Noda-sensei mentioned that the protagonist Sugimoto Saichi was named after his tondenhei great-grandfather, but only the name was borrowed, while the great-grandfather was not really the model.

He was modelled after a historical figure. Both Noda-sensei and I love history, so many of the characters are based on historical figures. The model for Sugimoto, Funasaka Hiroshi, was a person who survived hand grenade blast.

Eeeeh!

In chapter 1, Sugimoto was shot in the neck; the same thing also happened to Funasaka. Funasaka survived nevertheless, and was then called ‘immortal’.

The standard of romance manga is exaggerating the daily moment of meeting the love interest; however, when it comes to thinking of how to draw totally awesome moment in a survival manga, what can show that this guy is cool straight away? How about an immortal guy? Hence, Noda-sensei developed Sugimoto based on Funasaka.

Invincible Ushiyama is modelled after Ushijima Tatsukuma (a judoka) who once fought Rikidouzan (a famous wrestler – ty. ) and taught Kimura Masahiko (another famous judoka – ty.).

The name is so terrific, isn’t it. It’s made up of the kanji characters 牛 (cow), 島 (island) 辰 (dragon) and 熊 (bear). He’s the judoka who’s called ‘Invincible Ushijima’. I heard he’s unbeaten in 100 matches. The murder hotel arc was based on the murders by American murderer H.H. Holmes. A new character that recently appeared in the magazine was modelled after Ed Gein, who made a lampshade from human face skin. Hijikata Toshizou needs no explanation. There are many seemingly unreal people like them, and if we make characters based on them, readers can immediately connect the story with reality. That’s why we want to keep creating characters with such feeling of reality.

How about Asirpa?

Asirpa is slightly different, because she’s not modelled after anyone. But there’s a story about her name. We decided on the name ‘Asirpa’ because our Ainu language supervisor, Professor Nakagawa Hiroshi from Chiba University, when we’re trying to choose a name for her, told us “The name means ‘new year’, but it can also be interpreted as ‘future’.” When we chose the name, it solidified her character as ‘a small girl that opens up a new age after the turbulent Meiji period and opens up a new meaning of life’.

I see.

The Ainu people put great importance in names. For instance, if we use a name that belonged to a person who’s died in unfortunate circumstances, that would be considered a blasphemy, so we cannot use the same name, making it quite difficult for us. A name carries a strong meaning. If you only see the way my name is written (Ookuma Hakkou, 大熊八甲, the kanji for ookuma means big bear), wouldn’t you get an image of a judoka? (laughs) But then I turn out looking more like a bear cub (小熊, literally small bear) instead.

No, it’s not like that. (laughs)

Maybe I look more like a raccoon. (laughs)

No no no! (laughs) Are there any other models for the characters?

Ah, I was told that Sugimoto’s weird faces when eating food are inspired by MAN vs. WILD’s Bear Grylls.

Eeeh!

To stay alive, Grylls ate stuff like worms, snake, and maggots during his survival trips. He’d put up a very disgusted face. But he’d say “They’re good nutrition sources.” He gives the impression “Although I don’t want to eat it, but I have to eat it to stay alive.” I watched it because Noda-sensei told me it’s interesting, and I thought it’s such an interesting entertainment, I want us to make something inspired by this.

You got idea from truly various places.

Abundant reference and running around Hokkaido for field observation

Earlier, you mentioned that Noda-sensei was earnest, but what kind of a person he actually is?

His image is that of the writer, sophisticated and no-nonsense. He’s silent, very earnest about manga, determined, and, in a good meaning, greedy.

Greedy?

Like, “I want to write something interesting”, “Isn’t my manga interesting?”… It’s as if he declares war against all other manga. But he’s actually a very gentle person. (laughs) He’s the professional writer with the strong points that I admire.

Wonderful. I also got the impression that he’s a very studious person, from the very long list of reference at the end of every Golden Kamuy volume… However, I was surprised because I heard the reference only includes books about the Ainu, and he actually reads far more books that he can’t write them all down in the list.

That’s right! Noda-sensei is a guy who doesn’t want to draw lies. His stance is “Always put your effort earnestly, and apologize if you make a mistake”. I think his earnestness can be felt by all the relevant parties, and they can accept his work favourably. Even if there are mistakes now, they will point them out in a positive way, and will help with the correction.

Is research difficult too?

It is. If anyone asks whether it’s difficult, it is, very (laughs).

However, I think probably it’s the nature of an author to do their best when it’s about the things they like, even though they look difficult. For instance, someone who loves soccer would find no problem playing soccer every day, but for someone who hates soccer, it would really be a bother. For Noda-sensei, survival and military stuff are things that he really likes. He also loves Hokkaido. His love seeps into the manga. He reads a lot of books and does field observation himself. I certainly go observing with him, and I do the editing, but at the root, the heart itself, is Noda-sensei’s field observation. It’s truly admirable.

The other day, I was surprised because Noda-sensei wrote in his blog that “Golden Kamuy wouldn’t be published in the next issue because I’m going hunting”. I thought, was the series having a break over hunting Sanzoku Diary or Golden Kamuy…

We’re also going to Abashiri Prison, Oshamambe Airport, Shiretoko. Also to Sankebetsu where the brown bear incident happened. By the way, when we went to Noboribetsu Bear Park, when this bear was fed, our photographer stood by the side and kept taking pictures when the bear took the food. That became the picture at the back cover of volume 1.

Eeeh!

Actually, there’s an apple in front of the bear’s mouth in the photograph. (laughs). That’s just some of the things we do.

So there was such secret.

Since his previous work, Supinamarada!, field observation has been very important. When the ice hockey team of Komadai Tomakamai High, the model for Yuufutsu High, the setting for Supinamarada!, won a match, he went down into the rink (laughs). To draw an interesting manga, he gets involved in many things. Seriously. If he gets angry, he’ll let it out honestly (laughs). He’s got such a great will to fight inside him.

--end of interview—

Note: Again I got help from friends (@yayoimusume and @noirciel on Twitter) in some parts of this translation. Their main language pair is Japanese-Indonesian, so any mistake in translating their suggestion into English is mine! Corrections and suggestions are still, like always, welcome.

Read more of my posts and translations about Golden Kamuy:

About the real Sugimoto Saichi and Funasaka Hiroshi

Interview with Noda Satoru and Ookuma Hakkou (January 2016)

Interview with Noda Satoru (January 2016)

Interview: Noda Satoru x Machiyama Tomohiro

#golden kamuy #interview #translation #ookuma hakkou #noda satoru #ゴールデンカムイ #金カム

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