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fkapommel · 7 months ago

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A Rant about Bridgerton s3 from a person who doesn't care about Bridgerton

I'm just a hater who is an optimist at heart. On Polin, the Mondrich's, Michaela Stirling, and Cressida.

I haven't read the Bridgerton books, and I don't believe there is any validity to a "but this isn't book accurate!" argument because Bridgerton the Show was marketed as a diverse, representational adaptation that liked the bones of Quinn's idea but made something better. And I, a lay person, have never seen as much virtroil and hatred towards the showrunners as I have seen this season using that exact argument that has never been uttered before because, near unanimously, all fans agreed that the showrunners were making a better story that 90s Quinn ever could. So many people, readers and non-readers alike, were disappointed with the handling of this season.

Peneolope and Colin

Polin was ignored during THEIR season for conventionally "pretty" and "thin" romances. There was zero character growth for either Penelope or Colin individually and as a couple in their own season. We are never shown why Colin loves Peneolope or why he has grown to appreciate her Whistledown project beyond dialogue - "I've learned that they are both you" what the hell does that even mean. Most of the season is spent with them physically apart making dumb faces at each other at dances with no cinemagraphric tension being built - few body closeups, boring musical cues, meaningless and repetitive body/facial choreography (I'm looking at you, open-mouthed contoured Colin) - when all this and more were utilized successfully in Anthony and Kate's season. People were thirsty as fuck to watch a white man get fucked by a darker skinned woman (as was i), but not even the showrunners could be assed about the romance between their only plus-sized character and a Bridgerton. We spent more time building up Francesca's relationship with Kilmartin over penting up Peneolope's romance - her feelings of tragedy, hopelessness. Peneolope has always been overlooked and truly believed that was her fate forever - even nearly agreeing to a marriage that would literally leave her ignored for years on end - and that was the central tension of the season. She knows who she is, she knows that she is love-worthy, talented, and intelligent, but will Colin? DOES Colin? Oh, he does, and he randomly decides that mid-way through the season. And then fumbles her so hard to the point of insulting her very character - calling her manipulative and scheming after they slept together - when the true authorship of Whistledown is revealed. There was not enough tension built nor sustained to carry his hatred for his wife during those episodes, and no, a couple shots where he looks at his very hot wife and thinks "damn, she is hot" is enough.

This season we should have seen what his mother told him - that he is incredibly self-sacrificial and puts other people's (his quoted siblings') happiness before him - in action during Pen and his plot to get a suitor. That device could have been both means and method of Colin's realization that Pen was his true match all along by being forced to list her accolades, scrutinize her face and body for physical compliments and inticements in order to hype her up for other suitors and recognizing her intelligence and manner of speak in Whistedown because of their newfound constant proximity instead of having to be told about her authorship and realizing off-screen their similarity (which, I'll mention, has never been demonstrated in all three seasons. As a person who writes very different to how they speak, I understand that there is some grace to be had here, but Penelope's dialogue does not include any Whistledownisms at ALL and there absolutely should be some demonstrable similarities, especially this season.) That's how Colin could have NOTICED her. In all, their romance was extremely fumbled in favor of having "prettier," "skinnker" bodies on screen because the showrunner had no faith in Nicola's verified abilities in being a leading lady in a larger body (which isn't even plus-sized UGH different argument). Pen has been in love with Colin since the Featherington's "moved in next door" - where was any of that? We learn more about Kate Sharma's childhood in her season than we do about Polin's, the season where its plot important. No flashbacks, no reminescing, no reasons given why Pen even liked Colin in the first place (could he have done something for her, perhaps noticing her in some character-important way, and thats why she developed a crush? No. He's simply a cute guy next door.) We don't even reminisce on Colin's recent worldly travels that, at the start of the season, have completely transformed him into a lady's man or taught him how to assume that character-type. We don't see Pen's life without him to contrast with her life with him back, but different. We don't see the strain on Colin trying to hold up this facade of being a confident womanizer, nor do we see any consequence of his womanizing, just distant shots of jealous Pen. Why be different, why be different now, what shaped and taught his transformation? Did he think of Pen when he was gone? All important questions that would've better characterized him.

Colin magically realizes he's been tortured for a few days seeing Pen talk with Debling a few times (who is completely forgotten about in Pt 2 holy shit I totally forgot about him), then is so mean to her realizing she's Whistledown, then magically falls in love with her again, and then oop- there's babies. Which i guess wasn't a surprise, but rubbed me the wrong way as neither of Polin has talked about wanting kids at all. In all other seasons, we see our pair demonstrate their abilities as viscountess or duchess, and we see them discuss the importance of having children plus an understanding of what it's like being parents. We didn't get any of that from Polin and seeing them suddenly thrust into parenthood was a shock to their characterization. They're love story is allowed to be juvenile, girl-/boy-next-door fantasizing, and rushing past Penelope's pregnancy and their transformation into parents was needless, leaving more questions than answers.

Mondriches

Why, the hell, was the Mondrich's selling their bar so goddamn important to this season?? This show is called Bridgerton, about the Bridgertons, but we have sacrificed necessary screen time on Colin Bridgerton's characterization and romance with Pen for filler than ultimately means nothing! He sells the bar anyway! This show was billed on meaningful representation of its diverse cast. You can't just make a nothing burger conflict about if this Black family suddenly thrust into being titled when the husband is weirdly attached to a bar where he serves whisky to his majority white clientelle. A Black family suddenly needing to learn the rules and decorum of the nobility is an interesting storyline in the world of Bridgerton, which characterizes itself has post-racial. Learning all the minute rules of etiquette is crafted to be impossible to an outsider, so how does this family of outsiders learn it? Where is the conflict that their inheritance rests on their child becoming the legal head of the family? There is so much to be explored here. In this concept rests a meaningful and emotionally convincing plot, but all we got was "Dude you need to sell your bar." "But I don't wanna! ............... I sold my bar." If youre going to waste screen time on one of the very few depictions of a plus-size character finding love that doesn't center her weight in its conflict, at least make it not so fucking boring.

Michaela Stirling and Francesca

And finally. Here we get to Michaela Sterling, who, based on the audience reaction, came on screen, showed her whole vag, killed beloved character Michael Sterling with a chainsaw, and hypnotized innocent Francesca Bridgerton in lesbianism. Good God people. Get a grip.

As a person not in the fandom, I have never seen this level of disgust and anguish over an adaptational change than to the introduction of Michaela Stirling. To anyone who hates this change and loves Mr. "Im going to tie you to the bed until you get pregnant": you already have that. No one is taking the books away from you. But a television adaptation of the books is not FOR you, it's for a whole new audience that pays homage to the original readership. If you cannot handle this change, stop watching.

To all of the television viewers who make a monolith of this outcry, accusing all nay-sayers of homophobia: get a grip. It is indeed emotionally difficult to see your beloved books get a poor adaptation or when screen adapters make changes that you see will make the narrative weaker. Literally every fandom that has had an adaptation has acted this way once or twice. And readers make some important concerns for the impending narrative! By introducing Michaela right after an entire season of this slow, easy, quiet romance between Francesca and John, the show has retroactively trashed every time that Fran has assured her family that she is truly in love with her now-husband (a fact that is important when that said husband is to be lost in the coming seasons). Fran and Stirling were demonstrating a real, true love that differed from the steamy, bodice-ripping lust the concept of Bridgerton was founded on. Their love was, may I remind you, incredibly popular to neurodivergent viewers who saw many traits of ND represented in Fran's character and her relationship with John. Her constant conflict with her mother and the queen who doubted that their love was valid because it did not behave in the same sensual way theirs had and then Violet's eventual approval of their relationship is important representation for love not based on lust and sexuality but on shared psychologies and interests. So far in Bridgerton, it has been illustrated that the only correct and long-lasting type of marriage is one based in wanting to fuck the pants off your partner; JoFran complicates this narrative. By then introducing Michaela and having Fran stutter over her words in compliance to Violet's memory of "forgetting the most familiar of words" when meeting her husband completely erases everything JoFran fought for and meant. "Wait, on second though, everything that these two characters stood for was in fact wrong and being so horned up that you forget your name is the only true start to a fulfilling relationship." This alludes to an eventuality that Fran's personality will be altered even more, that more parts of Francesca are indeed wrong and need to be changed for her to live a fulfilling marriage. (Yes, I understand that this has not happened yet, but the complete reversal of her relationship that she championed for an entire season makes one wary that even more is on the horizon). Further, Francesca's narrative is centralized around grief. How can that be actualized in the show if she falls out of love with her husband before her marriage night, when she's already lusting after her cousin by marriage? The Micheala introduction as it is in season 3 completely rewrites Francesca's character in the show and foreboding for an even greater change in seasons to come. There is an in-narrative issue with Michaela that is not reducible to homophobia but a genuine concern for the narrative.

Secondly, I have seen some people state that miffed viewers are upset about Francesca's bisexuality but not Eloise's implied lesbianism because they were comforted by Eloise's adherence to gay stereotypes, such as her "militant" feminism, her "not-like-other-girls" black sheepism, her hatred and disgust of men and the institution of marriage, and her constant, deep, near-homoerotic relationships with women. Francesca, in contrast, is princessly, beautiful in the same manner as Daphne, modest and sexually inhibited, concerned with feminine pursuits including marriage, and has not expressed an interest in women until her introduction to Michaela. To these people I say this: stop giving television showrunners so much grace. Michaela's introduction was meant as a shock to the audience. It was not meant to retroactively construct Francesca as a bisexual, locked in a tower of heterosexuality. It was meant to drum up just as much media buzz as it has. It is a hook for the next season meant to draw in new viewers - a queer audience scrounging for representation in the carpet hairs - and their run-of-the-mill audience member who pointed at their TV, exclaimed WHAT!?, and who is now hooked to discover how this new plotline will play out in the next season. It will keep their audience curious for however many years it takes for B4 to come out. Look me in the eyes and tell me that you were not surprised by Fran's sudden bisexuality. There is a reason that Eloise's stereotypicality is shorthand for gay, and the fact that Benedict and now Fran have been confirmed as bisexual if not homosexual lessens the probability that Eloise's narrative will be queered. Bridgerton creators do not care about true representation, they care about providing for a wide enough audience. That's why we only got canon queer characters (and queer sex) until the end of s3 - when people were already hooked. But they can only include so much before people are turned away. Think to yourself, why has there been no main dark-skinned, or truly plus-sized, or blemished, or disabled, or asexual, or poor, or effiminate man, or butch woman, or trans* love interest? It's because diversity and representation have limits.

Queer people deserve good representation, and we deserve for that representation to be narratively treated well. We do not deserve shock marketing or the ruining of hard built plot and characterization so that creators can win Diversity Bingo. (Likewise, this goes for racial diversity as well).

Forgotten Cressida

And lastly, and most shortly, what the fuck did they do with poor Cressida. I have never been more let down by the show than how they villanized, then sympathized with, and then shipped off Cressida to a doom of her worst nightmares when her storyline could have genuinely be salvaged by inhabiting the Whistledown role - being an outcast, but a respected one that is still flits about society - or by allying herself more with Eloise and leaning on her for support. But no. She is forgotten by society, by her family, and the only person she has ever called a friend, who was in the perfect position to be a queer provider for her. That shit hurted.

#mine #i deserve for my brain off easy entertainment to be good too #michaela stirling #bridgerton #Peneolope featherington #colin bridgerton #eloise bridgerton #cressida cowper #bridgerton s3 #john stirling #will mondrich #polin

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too-antigonish · 5 months ago

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The Classical Music of Ride, Part I: Mozart’s Requiem

You can’t trust anything or anyone in Ride. People aren’t who they seem to be. Every action, every event is just a cover for something else.

Is Morse one of the idle rich? An Oxford drop-out? A taxi-driver's son from Lincolnshire? A man who’s just finished a prison sentence? A policeman?

Long post....

Is Bixby the filthy rich head of a gambling empire? Is he just a front for Harry Rose’s criminal empire? Is he Charlie Greel looking to win back Cathy or Joss Bixby looking to seduce Kay? Is he even himself or is he his hidden, evil twin Conrad?

Are the denizens of Lake Silence really Morse’s friends—sheltering him after the storm of Blenheim Vale and prison? Or are they a bunch of dysfunctional philanderers and addicts? Even worse, are they suspects? Criminals?

Using Mozart’s Requiem in this episode must have absolutely delighted the music staff because while a great part of its fame and mystique rests on the sheer accumulation of stories and legends that have grown up around it, almost none of those tales can be proven—and all of them have been challenged at some point. You really don't know what's real and what's not—right down to the music itself.

Was the anonymous “stranger cloaked in gray” who gave him the commission the only sponsor Mozart ever saw? Or did he at some point become aware that the Count, Franz von Walsegg, was paying for the work? Some people today are shocked to hear that Walsegg planned to pass off the Requiem as his own work—as a tribute composed in memory of his dead wife—but that was a fairly common practice for the aristocracy of the time. It was considered slightly shady, but the proper thing to do was to just politely nod and go along with it.

Did Mozart, his mind disturbed by illness in his final days, truly come to believe that he had been poisoned and that he was writing the requiem mass for his own funeral? Or was that tantalizingly dramatic detail added by his widow Constanze to drive up sales of the score after the his death? The couple was catastrophically bad at managing money and when her husband died, the widowed Constanze was left with massive debts and two small children. She needed to maximize any possible source of revenue.

Her story certainly captured the public imagination. Pushkin took that little tidbit about writing his own funeral mass and wrote a very short but thought-provoking play in which he cast Mozart’s contemporary Salieri as the envious poisoner and Mozart himself as a childish, spoiled, and petty genius. Peter Shaffer later adapted Pushkin’s work into the play, and later film, Amadeus. A surprising number of people today believe Amadeus to be not the work of imaginative fiction that it is, but rather a completely factual story of Mozart’s life and death.

Mozart worked on the Requiem up to the day he died at the age of only 35. It was the last piece he worked on. Most scholars believe the manuscript we have contains not only the last music he ever composed but possibly the last words he ever wrote.

As far as authorship is concerned, we know for certain that Mozart himself completed “in skeleton” the Introit, the Kyrie, and almost all of the Sequentia (Dies irae, Tuba mirum, Rex tremendae, Recordare, Confutatis). The last portion of the Sequentia, the Lacrimosa, was completed was the up through the first 8 bars.

The last words that he actually wrote were "Quam olim da capo” — which instructed the musicians to repeat the "Quam olim" fugue of the Domine Jesu from the beginning. In yet another mysterious twist to the story of the Requiem, these actual last words were stolen—quite literally by tearing them from the manuscript—while the score was displayed at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. They are still missing.

We are certain about the authorship of parts because we have the autograph manuscripts—the music in Mozart’s very own hand. The big question, however, has always been, how much the the rest of the Requiem can we consider his? The parts that were completed “in skeleton” basically had all of the “important” notes in place. Things missing include details like doubled parts that could fairly easily be extrapolated from what he had written.

In order for Constanze to receive her money from Walsegg, however, she needed to make it appear that Mozart had completed the work entirely or almost entirely himself before his death. Not only would this ensure full payment from Walsegg, it would also promote sales of the score to the public later. A work written by Mozart alone would far out-sell a work written by Mozart and “Mr. Competent-But-Lesser-Known-Composer.”

Today we know that at least two of Mozart’s students were involved in finishing the piece, with the majority of the work being done by Franz Süssmayr. What we don’t know, however, is how much of the completed work is purely theirs and how much came from Mozart’s notes and verbal instructions.

Some versions of the story indicate that Mozart gave detailed deathbed instructions and left many “little scraps” of paper with details of how to complete the composition. Other versions claim that this talk of “little scraps” is simply more of Constanze’s effort to maximize Mozart’s contributions and minimize those of others.

Regardless, we know that the completed Requiem was eventually sent (with Mozart’s counterfeited signature!) to Count Walsegg and dated 1792—which is rather odd in retrospect given that it was well-known that Mozart had died on 5 December 1791. It's always been yet another mystery.

The two excerpts used in Ride are the Lacrimosa, during the opening titles and establishing scenes, and the Confutatis, which Morse is listening to on his record player as he splits wood outside the lakeside dacha.

The Latin text of the first reads:

Lacrimosa dies illa, Qua resurget ex favílla Iudicandus homo reus: Huic ergo parce, Deus:

The equivalent translation (i.e. not the one used at mass, but a more literal translation) is:

Tearful [will be] that day, on which from the glowing embers will arise the guilty man who is to be judged: Then spare him, O God.

So Ride starts with tears and guilt.

I’ve always found it interesting that this text doesn’t even try to claim innocence, instead it very clearly asks that the guilty be shown mercy.

The Latin text of the second reads:

Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis, Voca me cum benedictis.

The equivalent translation is:

Once the cursed have been silenced, sentenced to acrid flames, Call me, with the blessed.

This text always strikes me as coming almost from a child’s point of view. Basically one interpretation is, “Come and get me once you’ve taken care of all the bad guys.” I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to how that might apply to Morse post-Blenheim Vale and prison.

Next week: The Classical Music of Ride, Part II: Rigoletto or “Why keeping a person’s entire existence a secret leads to Bad Things.”

Special Bonus Section!!!

Parts of Mozart’s Requiem used in Endeavour:

Dies irae: completed by Mozart in skeleton* S4E4: Harvest (~2 min) (~3 min)

Rex tremendae: completed by Mozart in skeleton* S9E3: Exeunt(~1 h 11 min)(~1 h 11 min)

Confutatis: completed by Mozart in skeleton* S3E1: Ride (~5 min)

Lacrimosa: completed by Mozart in skeleton* through measure no. 8 S2E3: Sway (~0 min)(~1 hr 24 min); S3:E1 Ride (~1 min)

Lux aeterna: Not in Mozart’s MS; however Süssmayr reuses the Requiem aeternam written by Mozart almost note-for-note with just the different text S9E3: Exeunt (~31 min)

*skeleton: means full vocal and continuo parts, notes for prominent orchestral parts and musical bridges

#itv endeavour #endeavour morse #endeavour: ride #endeavour music #mozart requiem

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twentydaysofmay · 9 months ago

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So at first, this was a reblog of a different post, but I am now making it an original one for greater reach. Be warned that it's going to be quite long.

So, we all know and love the promotional comics of our Wii boxers, like this one about Glass Joe:

You might have never questioned its origin, and neither did I when I first encountered it a year ago. I just assumed that Nintendo officially published it in a guide, because that's what every source about them that I've read was implying.

But then I learnt that these translations aren't official at all. They were apparently done by the Tumblr user @boink-the-joiner in 2013, whose blog seems to be unfortunately deleted.

And then I was informed of the existence of this image by my friend @fan-mans (Charlie):

He said he originally found it on Tumblr, though he didn't give me the link to where he got it from. (It happens to be included at the very start of this post.)

But this supposed "original version" seemed fishy to me for several reasons:

If this is the "original" Japanese version, and no "official" English one exists that was published alongside it, why are the sound effects written in the Latin alphabet?

Why is the authorship at the bottom in English? And isn't that the exact same font as in the well-known English version?

Why is it read left-to-right? Shouldn't it be flipped from the English version? Wouldn't it make more sense for Mac to punch him with his right arm and for Joe's hair to be more often on his right side than the left, and to first put on the left boxing glove, and hold the coffee cup in his right hand?

Why is there a red rectangle in the middle right?

Charlie said that all of this was because Nintendo was catering to an American audience, but never actually published the guide outside of Japan. (Apart from the red rectangle, which was apparently a part of the website that image originally came from, but he didn't have a link to that either.) I didn't believe it at first, because it just seemed like an incredibly stupid pair of decisions to me.

But today, I found this webpage. It's a blog post talking about strategy books for Nintendo games, and includes this image:

This is it! This is proof that Nintendo printed the comic to be read left to right in the original Japanese version!

There was that little bit of doubt in my mind though. What if the copy that shows the actual pages of the comic is in English? The quality is so low...

...but the kana here are clear enough.

That isn't the end of the story. Shortly afterwards, I came across this webpage:

THIS IS THE ORIGIN OF THAT JAPANESE VERSION OF THE JOE COMIC ABOVE! The red rectangle was, indeed, holding up a textbox.

Anyway, the full website can be found here, and includes a few other materials, such as this part of a guide on Title Defense Von Kaiser:

Sadly, the website only includes Joe's comic, and I haven't found the original Japanese versions of anyone else online, so currently, you'd have to own the guide to know what they look like.

Also, out of curiosity, I decided to use the Wayback Machine to see if the site has ever been modified, but it just wasn't archived there at all. Not even a single snapshot. So I went ahead and preserved what it currently looks like.

The website itself seems to belong to the company that published the guide, Enterbrain, a division of Kadokawa Future Publishing, which is a part of the Kadokawa Corporation. The names "Ebten" and "Famitsu" seem to be related to it as well, but I have yet to figure out exactly how. The full Japanese title of the book is パンチアウト！！完全クリアーガイドブ��ク, and its ISBN is 978-4-7577-5067-8. At least according to these listings.

Not all questions about the comics have been answered. For instance, we still aren't quite sure why Nintendo (or Enterbrain, anyway) decided to flip them. And our translator Boink had to have the copies of all of the Japanese comics, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to translate them! What if they are reachable somewhere else, and we can ask them if they still have the original scans?

More information might come as I (and hopefully others) research more.

#glass joe #punch out #punch out!!#punch out wii #icosameron

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thecharashouse · 2 months ago

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Here you can interact with 8 AUs

KOB (kingdom of blood)

An AU where everyone in the underground is a vampire. The main focus is on the trio, the couple Chara and Frisk and Asriel, a womanizer. Both are of legal age

QOT (Quintet of Trouble)

Muffet, Flowey, Gaster, Chara and Frisk, cause trouble where they are, (Sans appears only when they arrive in the rewritten timeline), Frisk and Chara are 17 years old, and Chara is currently the adoptive father of two children.

BG (Broken Gensokyo)

Frisk and Chara end up falling through Yukari's portal into the Gensokyo underground, where they have to learn to protect themselves against the Youkais. They are both 15 years old. Frisk is adopted by the Komeiji family and Chara is adopted by Sakuya.

Ask

Frisk and Chara were on a mercy route when there was a problem with the timeline, trapping them in a white void. Frisk has a magic wand that brings Chara back to life. Both are 16 years old.

Costume

Frisk and Chara are childhood friends, fascinated by the world of anime, both 14 years old, very close, they have never fallen underground.

Secret

Friks and Chara are twin sisters, they lost their parents when they were around 6 years old, today they are both 8 and are the adopted daughters of QOT chara.

Eviltale or just Evil

It takes place after a no mercy route, for some reason the reset doesn't work, Chara suspects that this has to do with Gaster (who she calls Melt Face). She had destroyed Frisk's soul as she normally does, but for some reason Frisk's soul returned, but a soul from the passifist route. The age of both is unknown

Council of the Chara

A group that helps (or kidnaps) Chara from the multiverse, to deal with any problems, and avoid Chara who have great powers to destroy the multiverse.

Rewritten timeline

Any au (with Rere's authorship) that has been rewritten gets a home on the timeline, Rere likes to save people trapped in their own aus. He saved Shade!Chara by adopting him and placing him as a timeline vigilante.

Rere is a being who doesn't just belong in Undertale, but in any game with a rewritten story. He helps rewrite and edit the new versions. He is a fusion of Chara and Frisk. His form is that of a pen, and his items vary from cell phones to computers, typewriters and papers.

Be polite, don't repeat the same question, and don't insist on the same question.

No awkward questions or sus.

And welcome to Chara's house!

State who the question is for.

DO NOT REPEAT THE SAME TOPIC.

THIS BLOG IS FOR MY AUS, I DON'T DO COMMISSIONS.

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kaibutsushidousha · 1 month ago

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If you're not yet bored of getting questions on Samurai Remnant, what are you thoughts on Yasuhiro and Hieda-no-Are? They are characters that totally passed by the fandom, so I would be grateful if you have any insights on them, and whether they could benefit from more screentime in FGO or somewhere else.

Two Are questions in the same day is a curious coincidence. Yasuhiro is covered here and Are is semi-covered here like one of the anons mentioned, but let's talk about him for real now.

Are in Samurai Remnant is very much just a personal obstacle for Takeru, so he doesn't get much in terms of characterization beyond being a prideful jerk with a low opinion of everyone he meets. The bare minimum we get of backstory is his goal of becoming an eternal recorder, and the fact that this desire comes from a drive to substantiate his dubious existence. Very bare-bones stuff.

His Reality Marble is interesting, I'll give him that. It reframes his concept of records from something about what happened in the past to something about the proper shape of Human Order. Are knows for a fact magecraft exists, even if he didn't in life, he has to as a Servant, but fantasy does not belong in the Age of Man. Puppet Playground is the power to enforce the agenda of Human Order for as long as he can force himself to keep the charade going. His weakness is Yamato Takeru, someone he can't deny without thinking he sounds really stupid. I love this gimmick and the spam of "As far I know, [most blatantly false statement you've ever heard]" that comes with it.

I do feel like Are has a lot of potential for comedy. His obstinate, short-fused nitpicker personality can derive a lot of funny frustration as he's force to contrast his vision of a correct history from Age of Man's perspective vs the reality of the Age of Gods. I need him to pass out on the spot because Greek Gods are spaceships. And even without that, he gets to be really funny in the DLC by predicting and foreshadowing future scenes in order to drop the smuggest "told you so".

But really, what he really needs is an expansion to his backstory. Why does he care so much about his records? Why is he so proud of his work? Why is he not historically recorded? Why is he so opinionated about magecraft not belonging in the Age of Man? Those are all questions that would benefit his character a lot if answered.

Now for my previous claim that I'd have done differently. When Fate/ doesn't tell us something about a Servant's backstory, we're supposed to look for it in the myths and history. But if we look at Are's history, the answers we get to the questions above don't gel well with his characterization. The last question is something super specific to Type-Moon's universe, so I won't include in the scope of this thought experiment, but otherwise, here's what we know about historical Hieda no Are.

The preface of the Kojiki tells the story of two men who worked together to compile the historical records: Hieda no Are and Oo no Yasumaro. Yasumaro is a well-documented noble, but this preface is the only primary source we have on Are. The preface narrates that Emperor Tenmu was very impressed with his personal manservant, the 28-year-old Hieda no Are, due to Are's perfect memory and talent for verbally describing what he saw. To put his amazing servant's talent to good use, he made Are memorize the imperial genealogy and the stories of past generations of multiple major clans, each of which that its own version that contradicted others and it was up to Are to sort out the facts and find a believable interpretation. Next, the emperor ordered the notorious writer Oo no Yasumaro to put all of Are's oral tellings to paper. And that's all we really know.

FSR puts weight to idea that Are's historicity is dubious, so we gotta address why some historians believe Hieda no Are wasn't a real person. One reason is obviously the lack of mentions of him outside the book credited to his authorship, but there's another major argument against him having existed. In 670 and 690, Japan conducted its first two census registers, which assigned a surname and a surname-associated social rank to every family in the Kinai region, except for a negligible percentage of the slaves. Hieda, however, is not a listed surname and Are's signature in the Kojiki doesn't mention his social rank. This suggests either Hieda no Are is a fake name or Hieda no Are was a lowest-rank slave, which feels unnatural when contrasted to his intellectual prowess and his job as a servant who works in close quarters with the emperor.

And believe or not, the Kojiki's two signatures are also an extremely valuable element of characterization for these historical figures. I'd go as far to say this one detail single-handedly gave me a completely different idea of how FSR should have interpreted and portrayed Are's character.

One of the Kojiki's two signatures reads "Senior 5th rank official, 5 times awarded, Courtier Oo Ason no Yasumaro", and the other reads "Hieda no Are". There are multiple theories for what happened here. It could be that the two authors personally signed however they wanted. It could be that the actual writer Yasumaro put down both names but never bothered to ask Are's rank and merits. It could be that Are really was just a slave with nothing to add to his name, but Yasumaro decided to bloat his signature anyway despite the eyebrow-raising contrast it created. Many possibilities exist, and all of them make Yasumaro look like a self-absorbed asshole. I'd even go as far to say the exact type of self-absorbed asshole FSR portrays Are as.

To me, the right call was to make the Kojiki's authors into two people in one Servant. The knowledgeable, creative, insightful, but completely submissive Are, and a Yasumaro with canon Are's entire personality. There are 3 angles where I think his character would benefit a lot from this arrangement.

Puppet Playground genuinely makes more sense as a shared Noble Phantasm to me, Are creating the space and Yasumaro dispensing the debuffs. The Reality Marble continues to be a symbol of Are's perfect memory and mission to sort out historical contradictions, but spam of blatantly false statements is resignified as Yasumaro making historical fact out of everything Are says to him regardless of what he previously believed. It'd become, in a sense, the power of trust between coworkers.

If canon Are was actually Yasumaro, his wish to historically validate Are would be a lot more sympathetic, as his goal would become to give what he considers well-earned dignity to a partner who would essentially serve as the only person respected by the character who spends all of his dialogue disrespecting others. And there's an additional element of likability to how everyone Yasumaro dismisses throughout the game are really important people while the one person he respects is just a remarkably talented slave.

As an extension of the idea of Are being the only person Yasumaro respects, the twist of Yasumaro's wish would cause a similar character reframing to what Iori and Chiemon get throughout the game. Yasumaro's gratuitously demeaning personality and Are's servile submissiveness combined can cause people to assume Yasumaro mistreats Are, but context of their ultimate twist invites the player to notice that Yasumaro actually never was disrespectful to Are even once.

#type moon #fate samurai remnant #hieda no are #oo no yasumaro

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fefairys · 1 year ago

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"There's the Underwood again, which is Doc's typewriter. I'm really not pretending there's much separation between myself and Doc, Lord English, et al. This whole charade is about "dressing up" as a member or leader of this villainous mafia outfit for the sake of explaining things about my own story, which now I am doing down here as well for good measure. It's a critical question of Homestuck: is AH, the "real" person, closer to the self-insert buffoon or the nefarious meta-villains he has created as projections of his antagonistic creative proclivities?"

"Here we see a better-rendered version of myself positioning a shittily-rendered version of myself to begin typing this white-texted excerpt as if he were a stage prop. You could look at this as a funny gag, which it is. I also see it as a visual expression of the textual detachment between the "real me" and the "cartoon me." I myself am just another prop I can play with for whatever creative purposes I have, and statements I might be making. It's just another way of tipping my hand in these otherwise innocuous self-insert segments: nothing is really what it appears to be." -Andrew Hussie

i think this is cool as fuck actually i think a lot of ppl find this whole self-insertion and the way hussie talks about it to be pretentious but i just genuinely find it extremely intriguing the way they toy with the idea of authorship. the way that being the author is comparable enough to being the antagonist that you might as well just put yourself in the story and make yourself the actual antagonist character. bc when u think about it, the author IS the antagonist. they're REALLY the ones making all the bad things happen to the characters, after all.

#sams reading homestuck again #homestuck

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archietransdrews · 2 years ago

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literally talking to the walls of my room like. riverdale's internal logic relies on the explanatory power of one's origins to an absurd degree, framing the actions of the protagonists as prescribed by their generational predecessors to such an extreme that the town's founding years not only provide meaning, context, and motive to current events as is typical in an archetypal place-based narrative but futhermore exert a horrifying control over the characters, compelling them to repeat or rebel against the actions of long-dead townspeople to whom they are only distantly related. these scenes from the past, when included in the show, are filmed using the same actors as the present-day scenes, producing the past as not only reminiscent of but in some aspects identical to the present. blood and bloodlines are used by various characters as explanatory schemas for the behavior of different characters throughout; riverdale is a place overdetermined by its own origins to the point that our protagonists spend years trying and usually failing to escape the combined generational curses of an entire town whose entire history consists in the repetition of its own genesis ad nauseum. does this seeming over-reliance on origins exaggerate the process to the point of effective parody, or does it merely & more straight-forwardly reinforce the [genetic] origin as privileged locus of [fictional] meaning?

a potentially conflictual reading of riverdale's historical "origins" is that they are invented or produced through the act of jughead's narration of riverdale as text; this reading posits that there is no "before" the pilot of riverdale, save what jughead invents to give additional meaning to the events which make up his plots. riverdale is his puppet show; everything in the text has been filtered through his point of view, which is to say that everything acquires the exact same level of (un)reality, whether it's a comic book character come to life or the sins of one's ancestors. in this framing, the true origin, and the key to whatever meaning might be made of this text, is the moment jughead's narration begins in the pilot with "our story is about a town.." in foregrounding jughead's ongoing acts of authorship and creation which function to continually produce the narrative & all it contains, riverdale destabilizes epigenetic origin as a locus of meaning by framing it as in some way artificial, invented, unreal; however, it does this by substituting another, no less authoritative, specifically authorial origin in its place.

and there is still a THIRD possible genealogy through which we can read riverdale as understanding itself, namely the genealogy of the cinematic canon. we well know that riverdale is constantly referring back to earlier moments in the history of film, from 70s noirs to 80s coming of age movies to 90s thrillers to etc. etc., not so much situating itself within this history as aiming to encompass all of the various stages of the medium's development. this argument could be broadened to include the histories of other prominent cultural forms, namely the novel and the comic strip; the meaning in riverdale might be said to be primarily derived from comic conventions, the principles of character creation and economy of image that have governed strips for decades and which now cause riverdale characters to wear outfits that have no in-world meaning except to refer back to their original iconic wardrobes, e.g. archie and jughead's S and R t-shirts.

which of these frames has the most explanatory power? which best helps us to understand or analyze why events in riverdale play out the way they do? i think in most cases one needs some combination of the three to be able to even begin getting at what's going on, which suggests that at least part of riverdale's project is the destabilization of the genealogical narrative via the introduction of several distinct, at times competing, narrative origins. riverdale is a story whose meaning is located simultaneously in the past, the act of narration, and the development of cinema and comics as mediums. while this structure does not necessarily step outside of the dominant symbolic framework that looks to origins in order to generate the meaning of a text, it is in typical riverdale fashion that the show wants to do everything at once, meaning in this case that rather than privileging one frame through which we are meant to make sense of the show's content, we are given to several possible readings which are all compelling in their own ways & when taken together succeed in troubling the final authority of any one interpretation.

#took a break from the liveblog this week to watch some other programs but she is still HEAVILY. on my mind #the jughead paradox is going to blow this whole thing wide open btw #syllabus

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kiyrian · 1 year ago

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I love how Alan Wake II is so much more House of Leaves than the original was.

The theme of authorship, of authors being characters and characters being authors. Of echoes moving in time. Of mothers who try to ready their sons for the darkness.

And love. The love that doesn't save them but makes them push forward so they can save themselves.

For anyone ready to go on this journey with me, let's go.

So in House of Leaves, we have Johnny - our main character. He finds a book left behind by a recently deceased man. We get to read this book with Johnny adding his comments. Often those comments are stories from his own life. We get to learn how he feels observed and sometimes attacked by this dark presence. The book overtakes his life. He doesn't feel safe, he isolates himself from everyone. I see this part as what we can see in AW 1

It could be a simple story of being driven to madness by knowledge. Only Johnny admits that he is changing the original contents of the book. He outright says it with a not-that-important detail, but it makes us wonder - is he changing anything else? Are the parts that have been scratched out (!) done by Johnny or the previous owner of the book - Zampano. And here starts the journey explored in AW2.

But is Zampano even real? After all, Johnny also lies about the stories from his life (also a thing he admits to us). At the end of the book, we can read letters that Johnny's mother wrote to him when he was a teenager. He grew up with a foster family as his mom stayed in a mental hospital and his father died. His mom was hospitalized because of schizophrenia - in her letters, we can see her mental health fluctuating from better to worse, up until she commits suicide. During one of her episodes, she created a code she could use to communicate with her son without the hospital staff knowing. A code that can be also found in Zampano's book. There are other signs alluding to Johnny's mom in parts supposedly written by Zampano. So maybe it's not Zampano who is not real. Maybe it is Johnny. Maybe this is all written by a man who imagines someone finding his writing and commenting on it? Who created who?? An echo traveling back in time to change the future - a phone call from yourself that haven't happened yet. An author who writes a story with a poet in it. A poet who wrote poems about a boy who will come and continue his battle. A movie maker who may be a poet but isn't.

Johnny's mom tried to ready her son to face the world. She tried to show him the beauty of words, of reading and learning. She was always in his corner, ready to give him words of support to her best abilities. She told him the world may be hard but he is special and he will beat the odds. A mother that knows her son fears the dark so she gives him a light switch.

Okay. Fine. But what is actually Zampano's book about. A family of four moves into a new home - a photo journalist and his wife with their two young children. Only that this House is a little weird. It is bigger on the inside. Its hallway keeps on growing until a whole new area can be found. More and more dark corridors sprawl in this space that shouldn't be. Will Navidson - the photographer - travels through this space trying to document it. At a certain point, his wife takes their children and moves away. But Will is obsessed with this place - it is his journey to face his own demons. He feels so much guilt for only being there to photograph tragedies without helping people who suffered. (an analysis of his character could take another whole post). He goes deeper and deeper into the house, down a spiraling staircase, up until he fully loses a way out. He is stuck, no way out, waiting to die. Only... his wife hasn't given up on him. For all their problems (the house move was supposed to give their marriage a new chance) she still loves him. She creates a movie solely dedicated to the happy moments they've had together. She goes back to this haunted house and tries to find him. And just like that a way back for him opens. He crawls back from the darkness. His wife's love made her go back to face her own fears (she's feared the dark for a very long time). Husband and wife who struggle but still love each other. Who survive after facing the dark, facing their demons. Who pull themselves out of depths of despair. Wives who take time to memorize those happy moments since they know the men they love are more than their worst moments (more of AW AN moment).

I am doing a great disservice to House of Leaves (and AW2) by trying to sum it up in those few points so please, please read it if you haven't. But I want to show those points that I can see reflected in AW2. Besides, of course once again using Poe's song (sister of the author of House of Leaves who did an album accompanying the book. Haunted from that album was used in AW1). And the motif of Yggdrasil at the end of the book.

There are probably so many things I am forgetting. I need to reread this book. It's this time of the year again.

#alan wake #fandom #sometimes i speak #alan wake 2 #remedy games #thomas zane #house of leaves #alan wake theory #my analysis #tom zane #alan wake spoilers

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lordkeeran · 8 months ago

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Unpopular Opinion Warning

It seems like Gojo is back, but it's unclear why. The scene is strange and could mean anything. However, let's assume he is back and discuss it.

Once again, we are faced with the lack of courage in front of the fans and the lack of authorship typical of shonen. Gojo had his own narrative arc, beautiful, complete, and ended with what seemed like a suicide in all respects.

But the fans need to be satisfied, and so, just like it was for Levi, here he is back, for no reason, taking away the role of protagonist from Yuji once again.

Let's face it, Gojo has always been selfish and self-centered, as evidenced by his entire love story with Geto. His decision to stay dead with his comrades at the airport would have been, and was, the definitive confirmation of this.

Gojo's role was over, he had nothing left to say;

his closest comparison, according to Gege, is Kakashi. Kishimoto brought Kakashi back from the grave thanks to Nagato, but Kakashi still had a role to play: Obito.

Gojo, on the other hand, is finished. Geto is dead, he has proven his strength, his students have proven worthy of his legacy, and Yuji was getting the better of Sukuna.

When authors bow to the wishes of those fans who make a fuss, they stop being authors and become slaves.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk360 #jjk #jujutsu gojo #gojo satoru #jjk gojo #jjk leaks #unpopular opinion #unpopular take #gojo is alive

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peninkwrites · 11 months ago

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(putting my very long, very personal ramble under a readmore so folks can avoid it) (this won't include any of my plans for going forward or for my writing but I'm not going anywhere so don't worry about that. love to you all.)

A little disclaimer: If you have zero context for what I'm talking about, apologies for not explaining in depth, but this post won't be relevant to you otherwise. All you really need to know is that it seems that Wilbur Soot is an abuser, and Shubble came forward and talked about it recently. He was not named, but from what she shared, I believe that was who she was talking about. I don't say this to speculate, and if you disagree, I'm not here to argue over it, but it's enough for me personally to not to want to support him indefinitely, save for Shubble explicitly saying she wasn't talking about him.

Additionally, these thoughts are some incredibly personal and self-centered rambling. It does not reflect where my priorities lie, with supporting Shelby for coming forward above all else, but other people have said that much better than I have, and this post is really just a place for me to vent some of my feelings.

I prided myself on not falling prey to “parasocial relationships.” I didn’t get invested in the personal lives of content creators, only in their creative works. I thought this protected me somehow. I knew next to nothing about Wilbur Soot’s personal life, but I admired him deeply as a writer and empathized with him as an artist. I projected so heavily onto his character and did so for over three years. When I waited for his final dsmp stream, I felt panicked. Like my survival hinged on how he ended this story, and then he ended it in a way I could live with, and I thought I could go on loving this story and these characters for what they had been, no matter how messy the rest of the endings to follow were. His character was mine in so many ways. He had some of my problems and I gave him some of my own. I used him to process quite a bit. And now that part of myself is irrevocably tainted.

When the stuff came out about Dream, I was upset, but not betrayed. I never followed the creator and he existed only as a character to me. All I grieved then was the community his actions destroyed and most importantly the people he hurt. I planned to continue writing for the DSMP, even as I refused to follow any content involving him. It felt like a pause, not a full stop, while I ensured what I was doing did not show him any support. I also gave that character no pity and therefore the man behind him no pity, I had no personal investment in his character.

Now my response is visceral and bitter and I don’t know how to go on writing, because this character meant the world to me. I don’t know how to write about a character I truly love and see myself in, knowing the person who also loved and saw himself in that character, who created that character, has done horrible things. I don’t know how to write any of these other characters I have loved and cared for for over 3 years because he has poisoned them. All of it turns my stomach now and I feel so betrayed. The thought of his character is tainted because it’s connected to his voice and his face. I cannot separate the art from the artist both because it was the inclusion of the authorship within the story which affected me so strongly, and because there are things within the text that I look back on now and can only see that this person was always this way. I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking of c!Wilbur’s line when he found out about exile, “he didn’t actually hit you though“ and his horror when c!Tommy responded that he had, that for some reason that was the turning point. The implication that it was only crossing that line, that particular type of violence, which made something wrong. Fucking disgusting.

I’ve tried to find another story before now. For the last few years, honestly, I’ve looked for something to latch onto the way I have with this one, but nothing feels the way this did. I know I’ve been clinging to something gone or at least mostly gone, both the community and the story, but I haven’t known how to let go when nothing makes me feel the same way, even when the feeling has faded and changed so much with time. This was never supposed to go on this long. Honestly, the reason I started posting mcyt stuff to my sideblog instead of my main was because I assumed I would get over it in a few weeks, delete the posts, and move on. Three years. 40 works. Over a million words. Just. Fuck.

I loved these characters so much and I’ve wrapped up my writing in them for so long it’s hard to separate the two. At this point, it feels like these characters are what allow me to write, separate from the main story, but a place where I could work things out for myself as a person and try new things as a writer. And I’ve tried so hard to feel the same way about the QSMP, but maybe it’s because we’re out of lockdown so I don't have time to watch much, or I’ve just changed more than I’ve thought, but I haven't gotten attached the way I did even when I look at the stories being built there and can see the heart in them, the storytelling, the care, just as much as the DSMP if not more. There’s no good reason for it, it just hasn’t locked into place the way this story had, having been the perfect storm of circumstances. The DSMP came to me during one of the worst years of my life, and I have loved it so much I miss that time even with all the bad it carried too.

And now this thing I have been holding onto can only make me angry, hit me with grief and disgust. Fuck, the only plan I’ve had for an original novel in years is a loose adaptation of TDDD. My senior thesis was largely a novella about two siblings with a complicated relationship, the older fatalistic, the younger brave to the point of ignorance. So even that original project has poison in it now. All of it, all of my fucking work, all of my growth as a writer, all of my writing for over three fucking years has poison in it.

I’ve felt lost as a writer for a long time and the only thing keeping me anchored was these characters. And I don’t know how to cut them away from myself and I don’t know how to cut him away from what’s left when his writing, his character, undeniably gave me so much of a spark. When I’m happy, I write. When I’m sad, I write. There's so much bad in the world right now, but I could always fall back on writing. And now my main means of escape is the grief. Far more than ever before. I know this too shall pass and all that, and this hasn’t actually stolen my ability to write, but right now it all feels so ruined. I don’t know how long it will take for me to be able to look back on what I’ve made and not feel like this. I'd maybe moved on in some ways, but not all. There was so much left I wanted to do.

If you’ve somehow read this far, know that I love this community with my whole heart. I never quite made friends with any of you, even as I wanted to, and it's felt too late for a long time now. My beloved mutuals (and followers that are mutuals in all but name) I have found so much joy with you, in what all of you have created. I wish I could hold onto that above all else, even if I’m not quite sure how. I’m not going anywhere, to be clear. I won’t delete my blog and fall off the face of the earth or anything. I still love what all of you create and care about, even if things have changed and our interests don’t always align anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to detach this story from the creator, to love any of it the way I did or even love what I myself created again. I don’t really know why I’m writing this or if I’ll even post it except for the fact that you all are the only people who could understand.

Again, this was a deeply personal rant, not a statement about the situation as a whole, nor do I think this situation's impact on me takes an ounce of precedent over the person actually involved. The most important takeaway from this is what Shelby has shared, the importance of believing victims, to do what we can to protect ourselves from abuse that doesn’t seem obvious, and to look out for each other. Take care of yourselves, everyone.

#spilled penink #fuck i don't know what to tag this.#wilbur situation #abuse tw #ask to tag #I don't know about my current fics or what I plan to do going forward so don't read this looking for answers on that.#honestly i just had nowhere else to put this. this is something I would have ideally shared just with close friends #but they'd have no idea what I was talking about so here we are. desperate times.#sorry for the doom and gloom. i know there's been a lot of it as of late. please feel free to keep scrolling.#idc if people reblog. this is just. not the important thing right now yknow.#supporting shubble is all that really matters.

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