#because she says it would be too horrific to depict

[uhcasual]

"This place is called the Burial Mounds. The hatred is intense, isn't it? And the resentment too? When a living person enters this place, there's no coming back-- for the body or the soul. They can forget about ever escaping. Wei Wuxian, you, too, can forget about ever escaping."

(full resolution here)

[blacktabbygames]

Slay the Princess Concept Art

We shared a bunch of concept art on Twitter today. Sharing it here, too, where you can find it all in one post. Post contains spoilers, so proceed with caution (or just play the game already if you haven't 😉)

Going to start with the first piece of concept art Abby drew for the game.

In the earliest stages of development, we toyed around with the concept of there being multiple "end game" forms of the Princess.

The initial outline, rather than being tied together by an overarching metanarrative, structured a full playthrough as a 5-6 chapter long, self-contained journey down a single route, determined by your decisions in chapter 1. Here's an alternative late-game form:

The idea of deviating end-game forms didn't lost for very long, though. As we explored the game's themes more deeply, it made the most sense for there to be a singular "true" form.

If your reality is shaped by subjectivity and perception, then the "truth" has to be what's left when that subjectivity is swept away. the Shifting Mound's final design feels like that initial truth for the Princess, though there's also another truth if you push back against her and press on into the final cabin.

We really liked this "void" design, and I played around with the idea of it being an intermediary to the final form. The "void" Princess would be what you saw upon encountering the final Princess without understanding your own truth, but once you had that understanding, you would see her as the Shifting Mound, as depicted in the game.

That gave way to the intermediary design of the SM being a sea of disembodied limbs, and we also took parts of both designs and incorporated them into the protagonist (particularly the wings.) You can see the eyes and feathers for this void form in the ending card of the original trailer below:

You can see extremely early concept art for the spectre (top), nightmare (top-right), stranger (left), beast (bottom) and ??? (right) as well!

The eyes became a motif in the Nightmare route (Paranoid's manifestation of the fear of being watched), but I also like to think of them as a part of The Long Quiet's truth. You are space and emptiness, but you're also that which observes those things, and it's your perceptions that give the Shifting Mound shape.

Anyways, on the note of the original original concepts for the game, the Princess was initially going to remain human for several loops before taking on more monstrous forms. Some concepts of that are below. Had to get Abby to tone down some of the more horrifically cartoonish designs because they creeped me out and I didn't want to romance them in a video game.

We had to hold our cards close to our chest in the non-metanarrative early drafts, which is part of why, even in the first demo, the cabin doesn't really change much in chapter 2. More room to subtly play with the concept of transformation over time.

There were a lot of reasons we moved in a different direction for the full release. The branching was unmanageably large to write, and the game felt like a slog to write.

Using an overarching narrative as a framing mechanism in the final version gave us a lot more freedom to explore wildly divergent ideas within routes while still driving the player towards the originally planned finale.

Anyways, now we've got some concept art for individual princesses. There's a lot more than this lying around somewhere, but it's all in sketchbooks, and we'll probably wait until we make an art book to show it off.

First is the tower, who really didn't change much at all. (She got a little thicker, I guess. All of the Princesses did)

Not a lot to say about her, other than the fact that we knew we wanted a set piece where she gets so big that the trees and cabin orbit around her.

The stranger went through many many redesigns over the course of development. Here, she was a "princess skin" filled with a hive of sentient bugs. The script wasn't working for me, though, so instead she became a peak behind the curtains without the necessary context to know her.

A lot of people ask how these earlier drafts of the Stranger route would have played out, and the answer is I can't tell you, because I couldn't figure out something worth writing.

The writing process for individual routes didn't really start with outlines or plot beats. Rather, the routes started from a theme and a relationship dynamic, and I organically found their outcomes by exploring actions within those themes, and then seeing if those passed Abby's editor brain.

Neither of us found actions we wanted to explore with those versions of the Stranger, at least actions that weren't a beat-by-beat retelling of chapter 1, which contained way too much variation to put on a single chapter 2 route.

If each princess examines a relationship formed by perception and first impressions, the Stranger examines one that's fundamentally unknowable. One where you've seen too much, too quickly.

An insect hive-mind pretending to be a person seemed like a good starting point, but it was too difficult to write any interactions that didn't immediately feel knowable, if still strange. So the final version of the Stranger was designed in such a way where her unknowability makes interacting with her on a human level fundamentally impossible, and you don't get to have a real conversation with her unless you satisfy extremely specific criteria.

Anyways next up is the razor's final form. We decided she needed more swords.

Hearts became an accidental motif very quickly in the development process, too. (The fact that it is only strikes to the heart that fell her in the demo was accidental, but it felt poetic so we extended it to the rest of the game.)

So on top of adding more swords, we made her heart visible. This is something we did with the fury as well, as a way of showing their emotional (and physical) vulnerability.

Here's an early version of the Adversary and what would eventually become the Eye of the Needle, back when she was still called the Fury. Originally her hair was going to be fire (as seen on the right), but it didn't feel right in its execution.

She's hit the gym since this concept art. Good for her :)

And we're going to end with the Beast, who at this point was called the Adversary. I think this was before the Witch was added? The Beast was originally designed to be a Questing Beast who lurked in the shadows, where you'd only see glimpses of her, and where each glimpse would make her appear to be a different animal. This was too difficult to execute, though we gave her a more chimera-like appearance in the final game.

This design was from when we still has the Voice of the Obsessed, and the route was going to be a more feral mirror of what eventually became the Adversary, but it felt too thematically similar while being less interesting, so we moved in the direction of making the Beast about consumption as a form of love.

Anyways, that's all we've got for you right now. Hope this was fun!

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.

2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks

3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.

Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control

I.E.

Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there

When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)

Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.

They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying

ALEX DEWITT (DC COMICS)

1.) The term “fridging” is literally based on Alex and what happened to her. She was killed off violently by a bad guy trying to get at her boyfriend only a couple issues after she was introduced (making it obvious they only brought her in to kill her off for shock value). Her death did very little to the narrative other than hurt her boyfriend Kyle and was done in an exceedingly horrifying and violent way. (Bad guy came to the door with flowers and threatening note, broke in and attacked her, choking her to death, before [off panel] chopping her body up and sticking it in the refrigerator as a “surprise” for her boyfriend. This obviously is really fucked up and she deserves better and should win this actually (a vote for Alex is a vote for all fridging victims [in spirit])

2.) It doesn’t get much worse than being the character whose death originated the “fridging” trope. In Green Lantern Vol. 3 #54, Kyle Rayner comes home to find that Alexandra, his girlfriend, has been killed by the villain Major Force and stuffed into the refrigerator.

Alexandra DeWitt is the character whose misogynistic treatment coined the term where a character, usually female, is killed off purely to make the main character, usually male, feel bad. Even if there are other characters who have been subjected to similar levels of misogyny, Alexandra DeWitt’s treatment has been essentially immortalized.

3.) I know she’s not going to win but shout out to my home girl, literally the trope namer for women shoved in fridges. All anyone ever knows about her is that she was Kyle’s girlfriend and got murdered for his character development, even though she had plenty of potential to be her own character.

[vampireistic]

the problem with natlan / sumeru

warning: long post

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to preface this i’d like to say that i’m in no ways an expert in the topics present, i’m just an autistic dumbass with too much time on his hands who enjoys a bit of research — i’m in no way, shape or form trying to belittle players who are excited for the update, by all means i hope you enjoy it, i’m just trying to give criticism.

you can enjoy/play a game while criticising it simultaneously.

when it comes to the topic of racial diversity and a company like hoyoverse that’s based in china, there’s quite a lot of political baggage that comes along with it. while i’ll try my best to go over that, i’m afraid i can only give a very limited eastern european perspective on it and i’ll certainly get things wrong or misinterpret things — if you’d like a more thorough view on the politics, please go read the post made by @zeichannnnn (hope you don’t mind the tag my love)

firstly, i’ll be going over general misconceptions, ridiculous excuses and or stereotypes that i’ve seen commonly come up in this conversation.

any and all screenshots will have usernames cut off for privacy, i want to maintain a civilised discussion and not cause argument.

a lot of my critiques are more so towards the attitude the fandom has when it comes to this argument and their blatant colourism. as my friend above says, no one ever complained about characters in liyue/inazuma being paper white despite the fact realistically, no one in EA is that colour naturally. this of course stems from the beauty standards but that’s a discussion for later on.

the point is that if say a nation like liyue, had the same skin colour as a character like xinyan (who hails from liyue and has a liyue name) people would undoubtedly be upset. so why is it that when in terms of nations that are based off countries with a darker skin colour variety, complaining about the characters being white is seen as a problem?

culture isn’t defined by racial diversity, but when you’re monetising off the representation of different countries cultures, the very least you can do is show the actual diversity within said culture instead of slapping a cultural name on a white model (cue that one picture of the egyptian dude who looks like a plain american).

the idea that because it’s fantasy or anime, having black characters is surreal or improbable is rooted in white supremacy’s hold over unfair beauty standards as well as just the general consensus that black people are less desirable in media. which is completely false.

characters like dehya have proven that a character’s race is irrelevant when it comes to likeness, given the fact the chinese community ended up donating to charities because of said characters story.

the reason why the lightly toasted characters appear tan to you is because the rest of the cast is so horrifically pale (nahida’s hex code is #FFF7F1, cyno’s is #EEC6A6 which when placed next to each other may look like a big difference, but in reality the colours are on the same side of the colour wheel only a few spaces apart).

hoyoverse does in fact use culture as a mere aesthetic and costume to plant on white models. that is NOT to say they misrepresent culture entirely: this post goes over how hoyoverse is perfectly capable of doing impressive research to bring forth forgotten or unknown bits of culture.

even aside from the problems with racial diversity, the character design department has been known to completely fail when it comes to accurate representation. from the sexualisation of the kimono in characters like raiden shogun (which even the eastern part of the fandom have been upset about) to the character of yunjin where the chinese player based believed she was more like a lolita inspired caricature than a real depiction. they don’t understand how to mingle tradition with modernism.

in all fairness, it is difficult — and i will praise the game for making natlan much more technologically advanced and vibrant than people were expecting because having the one nation that’s based off africa and indigenous people be a wasteland would’ve ultimately been a problem. personally, i even love the slight mashup of “tribes” and the pokémon esque aesthetic — its new, and a smart way to bring two things together.

same thing cannot be said for how hyv ignores the fact darker people of colour are also significant when it comes to the building of culture.

please read over these that go more into depth about problems:

natlan being an amalgamation of three separate countries/cultures.

misrepresenting both continents natlan’s based from

another thing that’s always bothered me is the excuses people used in sumeru about the presentation of characters that were based off real people; specifically, kusanali.

yes, she’s based off a hindu moon goddess who’s described as pale and sure that could’ve been the reason she’s nearly the colour white — but how come candace, who’s based off kandake, a fully black woman, is presented as being slightly tan? you can’t pick and choose what you represent and honestly the idea that nahida’s character is supposed to be a depiction of the moon goddess is disrespect to the goddess herself (please go look at a singular picture of her and you’ll understand the utter tragedy).

hoyoverse also has a bit of a history with both whitewashing their slightly tan characters (nekomiya from zoneless zen zero, arlan from honkai star rail etc) but i think one of their biggest proofs of disrespect comes to carole pepper from hi3.

now, this is not at all me saying you can’t present female characters as very muscular — no. in fact, i would’ve loved if characters like beidou had a similar sort of build. but out of all the characters you could’ve chosen to give this to, you chose a black woman.

would this be a problem if it continued with other characters? not really. the issue lies within the fact the ONLY mother in game who’s presented as buff and “masculine looking” is a black woman — something that’s quite literally a stereotype against black women who are regarded as “naturally less feminine” than white women.

eastern beauty standards

the assertion that eastern beauty standards prevent the inclusion of black characters in video games is not only invalid but also reflects deeper issues of bias and systemic exclusion in the gaming industry. this argument is flawed for several reasons, including the diversity of beauty standards in eastern cultures, the global nature of the gaming market, and the responsibility of creators to reflect and promote inclusivity.

to claim that eastern beauty standards universally exclude black characters oversimplifies and homogenizes the diverse beauty ideals present in countries like japan, south korea, and china. these cultures are not monolithic and have their own histories and contemporary movements that embrace a variety of appearances.

creators in the gaming industry have a responsibility to reflect the diversity of the real world and promote inclusivity. video games are a powerful medium that can shape perceptions, challenge stereotypes, and foster empathy. by including black characters, game developers can contribute to a more inclusive and equitable society. this requires intentionality and a commitment to representation that goes beyond mere tokenism. the argument that eastern beauty standards prevent such inclusion suggests a lack of willingness to challenge existing norms and expand the narrative possibilities within games. hoyoverse have themselves stated in their mission statement that their goal is to show inclusivity.

that’s not to say it’s not clear that china’s beauty standards have unfortunately affected the gaming market: but for a game that brandishes itself on localising itself for a global audience (meaning, outside of its region), it’s a poor excuse. those standards aren’t universal and shouldn’t be used as gateway into designing.

once again, i am NOT at all very well versed in politics especially one that’s overseas (well, next door neighbour in a way) so i definitely will misinterpret or misunderstand things unintentionally and if i do, i’m really sorry.

historical nihilism to me doesn’t relate to black people, just actual story events (hence why hoyoverse had to put a warning label for fontaine that the events presented didn’t represent that of the real world and any similarities were mere coincidence). black people existing isn’t regarded as “politically harmful” neither is it an extraordinary idea — it’s just another group of people.

although, the CCP has a MASSIVE history about their demonisation and hatred of black people therefore, even without the idea that the censorship stems from something like historical nihilism, it’s likely something to do with individual prejudice.

politically, i can semi-understand why hoyoverse is in a tight space for racial diversity. but that doesn’t mean i’m willing to baby a company that profits billions worth of profit from other cultures that they misrepresent and i’m even less inclined to hold the hands of hoyoverse dickriders who believe people complain about race just solely to whine. it’s a real systemic issue, and one that’s prevalent in a multitude of games aside from genshin.

people from the cultures presented are rightfully upset and they shouldn’t be told to just “accept”mediocrity. it’s their culture and identities being ridiculed, it’s their identities being profited from for the sake of aesthetics for a game that preaches inclusivity to the people that are willing to ignore its prejudice.

hell, even as a polish person, just thinking about what they’ll do with snezhnaya upsets me even if it’s not racially based — once again, the media emphasises the idea that eastern europe / slavic culture is purely russia meanwhile they steal little things from all of the surrounding countries in eastern europe (won’t forget the fact they changed that password thing in sumeru from “ravioli” to “pierogi”).

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TL;DR hoyoverse uses other people’s cultures and identities as an aesthetic and proceeds to profit off of it while misrepresenting the sample of people they chose to depict and while a political argument can be made in this regard, ultimately the backlash from people rightfully feeling unjustified in the lack of racial diversity is what amplifies these colourist attitudes: and while hoyoverse has seemingly much more legal repercussions to commit to their idea of diversity, the fandom has no excuse for their disregard of different identities.

also just a funny thing my friend and i did to show just how white these characters are lol

“ blackwashing “ versus “ whitewashing “

i feel like i need to add this little section too because i know there will be a lot of people that draw or reimagine the characters in a variety of different skin tones, and i know a lot of people will be upset (usually it’s just the lowlife weebs who cry at the thought of a black woman being in the same room as them).

historically, media, including video games and anime, have predominantly featured pale-skinned characters, often neglecting the representation of people of color. this lack of diversity reinforces a narrow view of beauty and heroism, contributing to the systemic exclusion of non-white individuals. blackwashing helps to rectify these historical imbalances by providing a broader spectrum of racial representation. it challenges the default assumption that characters must be pale-skinned and introduces audiences to a more inclusive range of appearances.

representation matters profoundly in media. seeing characters that reflect one's own identity can have significant positive effects on self-esteem and cultural pride. blackwashing creates opportunities for black audiences to see themselves in roles and narratives traditionally dominated by pale-skinned characters.

critics (once again, youtube creators and tiktok lmao) of blackwashing often argue that it disrespects original character designs or cultural contexts. however, the impact of changing a character's skin tone is minimal compared to the harm caused by whitewashing. whitewashing often erases the cultural significance of non-white characters, perpetuating stereotypes and denying the rich diversity of the source material. blackwashing, in contrast, does not erase cultural identities but rather enhances the inclusivity of the media. it provides a more diverse and representative depiction without detracting from the character's original essence or storyline.

in addition, usually when a character is black in fantasy media or even just an anime/game with a lore based story, it’s because their race is significant to who they are (i.e tiana from princess and the frog who faces racial discrimination — without her being a person of colour, this storyline and the events that follow wouldn’t make sense).

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i’m sorry for such a long and probably nonsensical rant, but this has bothered me into absolute oblivion especially the community’s response to the uproar of people who rightfully critique and are upset by the company.

[maxwell-grant]

The Penguin Episode 4: Cent'anni Breakdown

She goes through all these different levels of all these different personas: excellent daughter, overachiever, and this horrific feral state in Arkham. And it's not until the yellow dress that she finds the one that fits.

Kind of like sharks can't stop moving or they sink. It's that relentless pursuit of justice.

This changes her forever. She never comes back. Something so much bigger than her takes over in order to survive - Cristin Milioti

This was pointed out to me by my friend and, show of hands everyone, who else thinks it's unbelievably fucking sick that it is Sofia who gets to show up at the Falcone dinner table, wearing a thematically appropriate embodiment of her childhood trauma, and do a "None of you are safe" speech?

(Episode 1) (Episode 2) (Episode 3) (Episode 5) (Episode 6) (Episode 7) (Episode 8)

It probably felt odd to spend time with Sofia when we’re in a show called The Penguin. But I think it’s just as important so you can understand Oz psychologically. Even though I don’t view Oz as a hero or a villain, he is a greater villain in the show than anyone else. And for you to feel that way, I think you have to understand his primary antagonist more. And that’s Sofia.” - Lauren LeFranc

I gotta say I'm generally not enthusiastic about Penguin being depicted as overtly disgusting, like drooling and eating raw fish and all that Burton stuff (actually I do think the black bile is cool, but only so far as as that version goes), but for that opening scene, that was a spectacularly well-placed bit of grossness. Like this sheer craven animalistic ugliness of DeVito's Penguin descending for a second to show us how Sofia sees Oz, and even how right she is to do so at the moment because holy shit hahahahahaha

From what we can see of Sofia's pre-Arkham life, she was basically the Meadow Soprano of the family: The smart, overachieving golden child, whose social standing and eligitibility for leadership wouldn't even be up for debate if she was born a man like her loser brother (love AJ, relate uncomfortably to AJ, he's not at all morally comparable to Alberto, but he is very much a loser). Socially conscious and sticking up for victims but only if you don't poke too closely at her victim-generating family business, aware of some things but willfully blind to her own hypocrisy and insistent that daddy is still in average a good man who isn't as bad as people around her may say he is. I'd even say that the Sofia we see here is a more moral person than Meadow, although obviously being the daughter of Carmine Falcone is a much scarier, more isolating and horrific prospect than growing up the daughter of Tony Soprano (the ways in which the two Sopranos kids diverged and majorly prefigured American socio-political developments that kicked off after the show is a topic for another post).

(Also, I don't really want to bring up Sopranos comparisons because the shows are similar, they're really not, but I finished The Sopranos yesterday so they're gonna come up still)

I think Mark Strong does a really good job here filling in for John Turturro's role, even if he's not quite as good in it as Turturro. I think he plays the character differently in a way that works really well for this being a past version of Carmine, filtered through Sofia's vision. He is imposing and quiet and mighty, a lone titan of unquestionable power over the entire world, not even remotely someone to be defied or displeased. Turturro's Falcone was charismatic and affable and oozing with unspeakable yet casual cruelty, and I would have liked that here, but I like the idea that we're seeing a Carmine from before he was invincible, when he still needed Sofia to help him get Congressman Hill on the phone and still worried about the future of the family at Alberto's hands, a Carmine from when the Maronis were still around and he wasn't the sole ruling power in Gotham, who could still possibly lose even without vigilante intervention.

He is larger, more imposing, a stern and stoic father who had little use for pleasantries, and with no mirth to be had at the expense of the little people who think they can do anything against him that matters, even if he is getting there. I think the difference here adds a nice little arc to Carmine: there was a time where he needed to keep up appearences, there was a time where he raised his voice above a whisper to get things done, and there was a time where he wasn't the real mayor of Gotham. There was a time where he was a "proper" Don, when he acted like his comics counterpart, and none of that really became necessary over the following decade, when he grew more and more invincible and isolated and comfortable in this nightmare he made the city into.

They also confirm here that apparently the Iceberg Lounge/44 Below existed way back when Oz was just Sofia's driver, and it was already Carmine's prostitute slaughterhouse even then and Alberto knew about it. Possibly explains why Oz was handed the club in the first place, because the Falcones already called him Sofia's penguin and putting The Penguin in charge of the Iceberg Lounge would fit their idea of a laugh (and given how much Oz hates being called Penguin, he would hardly come up with the name himself)

Lmao, those dog comparisons I keep making really don't stop justifying themselves.

Credit again to Mike Marino and the prosthetics team for this younger Oz make-up, he strikes a very nice middleground between current Oz and the one we see as a kid.

Really like what we see of Sofia and Oz's dynamic here, again reinforcing that for all intents and purposes he was the sidekick in her HBO protagonist life. We see how Sofia likes his company and how she even kinda defends him from the family, but she really cannot bring herself to respect him very much and disdains him from the same very upper-class perspective the rest of the family does, she's just nicer about it. And in turn we see parts of where Oz's resentment to her comes from, and also the extent to which Oz was always lying in wait for an opportunity to get ahead regardless of her, his justified grievances as well as him being a conniving fuck. The really thin line this treads though, is that it establishes that neither of them were lying about how they meant something to each other, even if it doesn't help.

Sofia did have her life ruined partially because of Oz, she did endure horrific things while he got a promotion because he ratted her out to Carmine, and he very much did in part because he wanted to get ahead and saw an opportunity to do so. But also, Oz genuinely had no idea that this is what Carmine would do, and I think in large part this was also about keeping himself safe. It's not even that unbelievable that he was genuinely looking out for her, because holy shit you do not talk to the press about Carmine Falcone, daughter or not, and he tried warning her in the car before she rebuffed him and insulted him pretty deep for good measure. If Sofia talked to the press and would not stop talking (since he didn't know in the car that she rebuffed Gleeson) and shit started happening because of her snooping around, he would have absolutely gotten punished/murdered for it, it is not at all a stretch to assume that Carmine would have done something to Oz as punishment to Sofia.

Oz didn't plan any kind of misfortune, at no point did he mastermind her admission into Arkham (or even help keep her there with the letters, like the rest of the family), he just told Carmine something he shouldn't have, and neither of them expected anything too terrible was gonna come out of it. They both wildly underestimated what a complete scumbag Carmine is, but with Carmine (and the others) gone, there's nobody else to turn those grievances to.

Even if Oz could claim deniability for the Arkham thing, which he kinda can't but Sofia even tried to grant him anyway, he sure as shit can't for everything else he does in the opening minutes.

Oh hey it's Mr Mustache With The Broken Nose.

A thing that came to mind when I was watching the episode was the story of Rosemary Kennedy, JFK's sister whose father arranged for her to be institutionalized and lobotomized at age 23 as a reponse to "difficult" behavior. I'm not recounting it in more detail here because the rest of it is just too horrific, look it up yourself if you're curious. I remembered it because reading about Rosemary Kennedy ruined my fucking day and it still pumps up the breaks in my train of thought every now and then, so it came to mind watching this story about a young woman horrifically institutionalized and butchered for the sake of her wealthy family's image. Later I heard the podcast, and turns out that actually was exactly what Lauren LeFranc based Sofia's story on, which was nice. I'm glad it also fucks Lauren LeFranc up and that we both agree she should have gotten to wreak revenge on the entire family over it, thank you Penguin Show that continues to be made for me, this was nice.

Oh hey, Magpie. Just the name, yeah, but that was another nice surprise. I used to have a bit of a soft spot for Magpie, occasionally I thought there was something to get out of her and Penguin together, so a part of me likes that they put Magpie in The Penguin show even if just in name. Yes, she only exists to be annoying and die, but that's what she already tends to do anyway. And y'know, much as I may like her, she is still a John Byrne character, so she doesn't really deserve much more than that

Jesus Christ this episode gets uncomfortable.

I like that this establishes that Julian Rush kinda did make an effort to help her and kinda felt bad about it, but not nearly enough, and that he is very much a complicit contemptible creep who has it coming as much as any of the people who put Sofia in there.

Cannot state enough how much I appreciate that they didn't put any actual named Batman villains in the Arkham Asylum episode, guarantee a lot of creators would not resist the temptation. I mean okay I guess there is a Ventris already in Batman but, come on, you know who I mean. This did not need any references to like, Jeremiah Arkham or Jonathan Crane or Hugo Strange or any of that, and that's not a diss on any of those guys, it's just that unlike pretty much every other Batman story, this episode does not undercut it's point about the horrific institutional horrors dehumanizing and destroying Sofia by pinning it on a chief boogeyman supervillain that Batman is going to fight later. Dr. Ventris is not responsible for the systemic rot that got her there nor is he the sole orchestrator/perpetrator of the abuse it's inmates suffer, he simply answers to those, and thus perpetuates them, by doing his job in a mental institution.

I am still haunted by the inmate committing suicide with a fork. It is so fucked up that Sofia was tortured and goaded by the doctors into murdering another inmate, and when that failed, they tortured her again and again and again until she snapped. The whole point was to push Sofia beyond the breaking point to justify further incarceration. The doctors just standing there letting her kill Magpie.

I want Dr.Rush to die.

I have more thoughts on Arkham, but I'd call this the most horrific take on Arkham so far, because it is the most honest take on Arkham so far. Even at it's most run-down and monstrous, it is usually never at all into question that Arkham Asylum is necessary, because if it wasn't there, all the crazies would run rampant in Gotham. Over the years, it's monstrousness has always been tied directly and specifically to it's inmates, and whenever people have pointed out the shoddy conditions and inhospitable environment of Arkham as a factor for repeat offenders, it's pretty much always as a fandom joke outside of Batman stories proper, and if there is anything wrong with the way the Asylum works, it is always the fault of particularly evil villains attached. A Lock-Up, a Jeremiah Arkham, a Hugo Strange, etc. Arkham Asylum is in general a Batman concept that's raised a lot of discussions and calls for revision over the years, and a lot of the issues with it tie into larger issues around superhero depictions of the carceral system, that @artbyblastweave went into here.

Here, in large part because this is a realistic world and a Gotham without a rampaging supervillain contingent of repeat offenders who can magically break out constantly, it is never into question that the patients are the victims of this system, and if they are being turned into potential supervillains, it is because of Arkham inflicting this on them. This is an Arkham Asylum that remains a nightmarish, horrific force in this world, but not because it's Castle Dracula where all the crazy villains hang out, not even just because the rest of Gotham is hopelessly rotten and corrupt, but because it's a mental institution and depicted accordingly. It gets to dig into the real life horrors mental institutions inflict on it's patients without having to justify those measures as benign or necessary to keep crazy crimes from happening. Frankly, this take on Arkham Asylum has been long overdue.

In every form of Batman media, just about the worst thing that can happen at any given moment is Arkham Asylum falling and it's inmates escaping into the streets, that's generally what happens when Batman needs to deal with apocalyptic stakes (which is why of course it happens all the fucking time now). Here, that scenario would be regarded with cheer, because the worst thing that can happen in this universe is being sent to Arkham Asylum. It isn't just Batman's unofficial personal prison / punching gallery, if anything it massively raises the stakes on this Batman's next adventures, because now we know this is what's waiting for him if he gets caught and unmasked.

I like that Sofia and Oz are both trying to save/protect those they see as younger versions of themselves, while inflicting on them the kinds of tragedies that ultimately created them

Oz reached out to this poor disabled kid from the streets and is showing him the ropes, while also belittling him as a nobody and distorting his worldview and dragging him into life or death cornered scrapdog situations chipping away at his morals. Sofia saves her little niece who laughs at bad table manners and doesn't quite do what her family says, gently lulling her to sleep so she can kill her mom and her entire family.

Extremely important that Sofia Falcone makes her formal arrival as a villain by showing up dressed in a sexy yet fitting extension of her trauma / cultural reference (The Yellow Wallpaper / the walls in her mother's bedroom), before putting on a mask and enacting Gotham's first Mass Casualty Gas Attack, we love to see it.

I was frankly already calling Sofia one of my favorite Bat-villains even before this episode, I'm just glad everyone seems to be on the same page with me now. I'm seeing a lot of posts on Twitter and Instagram talking about how they're rooting for Sofia instead of Oz, that she deserves to win this war, and good, fucking amazing that they're doing this, again, this show is hitting home runs I could not have foreseen.

It is incredible what a character they've made out of Sofia, and the fact that we now see Oz as her antagonist as much as we see Sofia as his, and the fact that if Penguin wins, he will win this as a villain. He will steal a victory he does not deserve and rub it in your face and he will make the children of the world cry for it as any villain worth his name should be doing, and it frankly wouldn't be much of a fight if Sofia wasn't every bit the complicated, engaging protagonist he is. Lauren LeFranc claimed that she sees Sofia is the closest the show has to a hero even if she is not, and this is the episode that sold everyone on it.

Halfway through the show and it's only gotten better and better, can't wait for what's coming next.

[itsajollyjester]

yessss that defo answers my questions! ur thoughts on compassion & community intertwined w rebellion definitely show up in ur art lol. something more specific i have been curious abt is ur version of the endings of each specific hunger games & ur characterization/portrayal of the victors at those points! if u have any more thoughts abt any of those characters or their games id love to hear.... im also very not neurotypical abt hunger games

For sure!! But this is a novel and a half so I apologize in advance (also most of this is from memory so anyone can correct me if I'm getting any details wrong)

((TW: For visual depictions of Blood, Gore, and Wounds))

I realized I'd seen barely any art showing what the victors would have looked like when they won their games. They were all just kids and I feel like it can be easy to forget that sometimes

For all of them, I made the background one of their main "weapons" but tried to make it look like its turning back on them instead since there are no victors as Haymitch said.

I'll try to explain them all more in depth individually going in the order I drew them:

Finnick Odair, 65th Games:

His main weapons were his trident and nets that he made with vines. His background is one of the nets ready to trap him.

Finnick was the youngest victor ever at only 14. I really really wanted to emphasize just how little that is. (Especially since we know exactly why the Capitol loved him from the start…) Once I actually drew him looking that little I had to step away for a bit because I made myself too sad…

Outside of just how horrific his age is as a concept, I tried to think about what circumstances would lead to him actually winning when surrounded by older tributes. I think he would have had to avoid any kind of fight he didn't have the upper hand in. We know that he got the most expensive sponsor gifts in the history of the games (a trident), so he probably got plenty of sponsors outside of that as well. Because of that I doubt he needed to go looking for supplies much if ever so it was easy to avoid people there. He was also probably in a career pack, despite his age, due to his training and his popularity, and they would have hunted other tributes down together much like the one we saw in the first book (safer in numbers). Once it was narrowing down and the pack broke is when I think he started catching people in nets. All of that is a long winded way of saying that's why, unlike the other victors I drew, I only show him with minor cuts and bruises.

Originally I was going to draw him with a kind of strained smile like he was acting for an audience from the start. But I decided I actually think its sadder if he believed he was popular because of his skill and strategy as a fighter and only learned the whole truth after he won and that's when he started acting more for the camera. Instead I gave him a more muted despair kind of look, like his world is crashing down. One of my favorite parts about the movies, mainly THG and ABOSAS, is when they give the career tributes at the end a moment of realization about what they've done, and I wanted to give Finnick his. I'm a person that believes Finnick had to have volunteered for his games. I think he would have legitimately believed in the propaganda the career districts were fed and had a bit of a (very middle school boy) ego about his abilities. (I was NOT expecting to write so much about his lmao)

Enobaria, 62nd Games

She's most well known for ripping someones throat out with her teeth. (Her background is her sharpened teeth getting ready to eat her.) This is treated by The Capitol, and by Katniss, as grotesque and terrifying blood lust (Which obviously the Capitol loves her for). However, and I'm not at all the first to say it, that sounds more like a terrified and desperate attempt to survive a fight she was losing and an example of hysterical strength. We know that Career packs have had bloody betrayals in the past and I can see Enobaria being a part of one of them. Enobaria doesn't have a canonical age, but I decided to put her on the younger side (15 or 16.) I can imagine some of the older, bigger tributes deciding she was the weakest link towards the end and that was the result. I tried to make the blood around her mouth and down her shirt look more faded, like she tried desperately to wipe it off (Also I had to step away from drawing again after I drew her little tooth gap)

I think she probably leaned into the bloodthirsty image afterwards as a way to protect herself and (maybe even started to believe it too)

Annie Cresta, 70th Games

Annie's known for losing her mind after seeing her district partner decapitated in front of her. After that, she ran off and hid until the game makers started an earth quake, which made the large dam in the arena break and cause a huge flood. Annie was the only survivor because she was the strongest swimmer. So I decided to make her background dark water that's churning up and over her head. I also think it can work well as a way to show her mental state in the moment (and afterwards) Annie is actually one of my favorite characters in the series and I've been writing out a plan for a possible comic series about her that'll go more in depth about my headcanons for her. (when I say comic series, I mean sketches and oneshots, not a full thing lmao) It wouldn't take place during her games (outside of a few flashbacks when I need more context), instead it would start at her Victory Tour and go into her first (and last) year as a mentor for the 71st Games. Which is a perfect segue to-

Johanna Mason, 71st Games

Johanna is actually first mentioned early on in the first book when Katniss is wondering if the reason Peeta is crying is because he plans to act weak and helpless as a strategy in the games. (Katniss, he just found out he has to fight in a murder tournament with his crush. He's just Sad.) She bases her theory on Johanna, who pretended she was a "sniveling, cowardly fool" in the arena until the final stretch of the games when she proved to be deadly with an axe.

OR….. Katniss is an unreliable narrator and Johanna was actually a terrified kid from a district with so few victors that she was the only name in the bowl for the Quarter Quell… This is totally just a personal headcanon of mine tho lol. I think there would have been a point in her games where she realized she actually had a chance and that's when she seemingly had a huge character turn around. Maybe there was a infighting with the careers that ended in multiple deaths and there was only a few left along with any other tributes hiding away like her. Maybe she poked around what was left of their camp, found the axe, and felt strength from her district.

Her background was a little harder for me. Just slapping a big axe behind her felt cheesy. But them I remembered her saying there was no one left that she loved. So instead I put trees that could represent her loved ones (Two fully grown trees, a younger "teenage" tree, and a sapling) that are in the process of being cut down.

Haymitch Abernathy, 50th Games

Don't worry, I'm almost done. I don't have as much to say about Haymitch since we know SO much about what happened in his games. But his background was probably the hardest for me. His main weapon was invisible after all. I thought maybe the axe that was used, but again, That would look cheesy. I tried (and kinda failed imo) to draw the cliff side the force field was on instead. But the main thing I did was split the three panels I had on the previous drawings into six for two reasons. 1: Because he had to face twice as many tributes in order to win and 2: Being the only victor of a district that's tributes are seen as fodder for the blood bath means he had to meet and watch the death of twice as many kids every year.

[sethsclearwater]

requests: “could you do an imagine w embry (or any of the wolf pack boys) where their imprint doesn’t know abt the werewolf/vampire stuff and sees one of the pack members phase for the first time and freaks out a little bit? <3” and “can u pls do an imagine where embry and jacob get into a fight and they phase in front of reader and she totally freaks out and she’s paul’s imprint and he has to calm her down?”

warnings: paul getting on his knees for reader

notes: reader goes through all 5 stages of grief and then some lmao

word count: 1.8k

… 

you found yourself at emily’s house, sitting outside on her porch with your boyfriend’s friends, waiting for emily and the rest of the girlfriends to get back from their trip to the grocery store. you had been dating paul for almost a year now and had been friends with his friend group for most of that time. 

you were sitting on paul’s lap in one of the rocking chairs, curled in his lap as you listened to embry crack jokes about how he was making a fool of himself pining after bella. “jake man,” embry laughed, “you seriously gotta get it together. there’s no way they’re letting you stay in their tent - edward would be a clown if he let that fly.” he laughed again, referencing the camping trip the boys and the cullen family would soon be taking. 

you giggled, attempting to hide your laughter in paul’s shirt. jacob rolled his eyes, getting up and walking off the porch and into the yard, “you don’t understand!” he yelled over his shoulder to embry who was still cracking himself up along with jared and quil, “she’s meant to be with me - i’m obviously the better choice than a leech!” he yelled and you missed the warning look sam shot him as you were too focused on how he looked like he was literally shaking he was so angry. 

“she’s definitely not you clown!” embry called back, still getting a kick out of it. you sensed that something was wrong so you got off of paul’s lap, heading down the porch steps to follow him, paul calling after you when he realized what you were doing. 

“jake-” you sighed, ignoring paul’s calls to you, only looking over your shoulder when you heard footsteps running down the porch followed by a loud growl. you looked back over to jake as he quite literally shifted into a giant wolf, almost exactly as the quileute legends had depicted at the council meetings. “paul,” you whispered anxiously, turning around and sprinting back towards the porch where paul was waiting looking just as shocked as you.

“paul!” you screamed again, running into his arms and he quickly wrapped his arms around you, holding your head to his chest as sobs racked through your body, neither of you sure how to respond to what you just witnessed.

“shhhhh…” he murmured, pressing his lips to the crown of your head, “you’re okay, you’re okay.” he cooed, slowly rocking you back and forth as you tried to catch your breath and figure out what was going on. 

“what even was that- why did he-” you blubbered, looking up at paul as you let out another sob, fists tightening on his t-shirt as you held onto him tightly.

paul watched you sadly, continuing to hold you tightly to his chest as he tried to figure out what to say. he had zero plans of telling you about the wolves anytime soon, figuring the less you knew the better but now that all went to shit thanks to jacob. 

“i didn’t want to tell you,” paul sighed, watching your facial expressions in an attempt to get a better reading of you but was left with nothing as you continued sobbing, tears rapidly streaming down your cheeks. 

“you weren’t gonna tell me that your friend turns into a giant wolf?” you exclaimed, not sure whether you should be mad at him or grateful. he clearly didn’t want to tell you because of the absolutely horrific reaction he correctly anticipated you’d be having. 

paul sighed again, “i didn’t want to stress you out about it,” he explained softly, “between your classes and work and everything i didn’t think there was a good time to tell you.” 

you whimpered, not sure how to respond so you just buried your face in the crook of his arm, hugging him just as tightly as he was holding you. you thought about it then, how his friend group was all so close, all of them were always at the council meetings suspiciously after they had their “glow ups” as you called it (or steroids as the rest of la push called it). the more you thought of it, the more things started clicking into place and you turned your head to look over at jacob, who was still a massive wolf, and the rest of paul’s friend group were surrounding him and trying to calm him down. 

you froze then, slowly releasing your grip on paul’s shirt as you squirmed out of his grip, cautiously stepping back from him. paul watched you wearily, and by the look on his face, he knew you figured it out. 

“y/n,” your name fell off his lips, both of you anxiously waiting for the other to say something, “i’m sorry.” he said softly, stepping closer to you but you stepped back, your back now pressed up against emily’s porch. 

“don’t touch me-” you whimpered, anxiously looking around as you tried to figure out what your options were. you quickly realized there was no way you were going to outrun an entire pack of massive wolves with anger management problems.

in your anxiety you missed the heartbroken look paul had on his face, equally unsure of how to calm you down without intimidating you. “i’m not gonna hurt you princess,” paul attempted to reassure you, frowning as you looked back to him, looking up with tears still rapidly streaming down your face. 

seeing you weren’t calming down and, if anything, were working yourself up more, he raised his hands so you could see his palms, slowly lowering himself to the ground until he was on his knees in front of you. you watched the notoriously proud man cautiously, slowly taking in a deep breath with him as you tried to recenter yourself so you could catch your breath.

your bottom lip warbled as you tried to calm yourself down, “paul-” you sobbed his name after a moment, quickly dropping down so you could sit on his lap, wrapping yourself around him when you realized he was being genuine when he said he wasn’t going to hurt you. paul let out an audible exhale, quickly wrapping his arms around you and held you tightly to his chest. 

“shhh…” he cooed, “take some deep breaths princess.” he murmured into your hair, thumbs rubbing soothing circles on your side and shoulder as he held you close to him.

you nodded, sniffling as you worked at calming yourself through deep breaths like he suggested, “there you go,” he whispered as he felt your breathing start to even out after a minute, “good job kitten.” he murmured, pressing another soft kiss to the crown of your head.

after a few minutes you looked up at him, sliding your hands up his chest as you tried to figure out what to say, paul sensed your hesitence and slid one hand up your back and gently cupped your face in his hand, “are you okay?” he asked softly, watching as you slowly nodded, looking over to the rest of the boys who seemed to have calmed jacob down and were making their way back over to the two of you. 

“none of them are gonna hurt you, i promise.” he reassured, sensing the jump in your heart rate when you saw the boys walking back over.

you slowly nodded again, looking back over to paul, “so you…” you trailed off, not sure how to ask your boyfriend if he turned into a massive werewolf. 

“turn into a wolf? yea.” paul finished for you, thumb brushing the stray tears off your cheeks. “it was right after we started going out - i didn’t know how to tell you without scaring you.” he continued, offering you a sad smile when you nodded, wrapping your arms back around his neck and hugging him tightly to you.

you lifted your head when you heard the familiar sound of sam’s truck pulling into the driveway, emily and you made eye contact and she quickly jumped out of the truck, running over to you and paul. “oh honey,” she cooed, kneeling down in the dirt with you and paul. you leaned off paul for a moment to hug her which she quickly reciprocated. “he told you?” she asked softly, hugging you tighter when you nodded against her shoulder.

“finally!” kim and rachel’s voices came from behind you. you let out a weak laugh, letting go of emily and shifting in paul’s lap to straighten yourself out as you brushed away your stray tears with the back of your hand.

“what happened?” leah’s voice came from beside you as she kneeled next to her cousin, also watching you wearily. 

“embry,” sam emphasized before continuing, “called jacob a clown and he shifted in front of her.” he explained as the rest of the boys came over, everyone sitting down by you and paul. 

“sorry,” embry mumbled sheepishly, both of you letting out soft laughs at how stupid jacob’s anger was, “i didn’t think he was crazy like that!” embry added, causing a few laughs to erupt from everyone else. 

paul gently ran his hand up your back, offering you a soft smile, “you feeling better?” he asked softly and you nodded, taking another deep breath with him. 

“billy is gonna lose his mind when he hears what went down-” quil laughed, “the council meeting tonight is gonna be so much fun!” he exclaimed, the rest of the pack laughing in agreement. 

you sniffled as you let out another giggle, “why don’t you two go back to your apartment and get ready and then we’ll meet you there?” emily suggested thoughtfully, giving your hip a soft squeeze.

paul nodded, “you okay with that?” he asked you softly, the corner of his lip pulling into a smile when you nodded, “okay let’s do that then.” he cooed, getting up with you in his arms. 

you peeked over your shoulder, waving goodbye to the boys, embry, quil, and jared blowing you kisses causing you to giggle as paul led you over to his car. 

by the time the council meeting came around that night you were able to calm yourself down, take a shower, and get changed into something comfortable so you could hear the legends with a new, more accurate perspective.

[mswyrr]

THG is the only pop culture story I can think of where the heroes (Katniss and Peeta) are disabled* and their happy ending doesn't require that they be "fixed" in order to be happy. IMO, part of why there's such controversy over the ending of the books in particular is that Collins wrote the pov of Katniss as a woman who is content and loves her life and her spouse and kids, but she's still very clearly mentally ill (and arguably somewhere on the spectrum). She has coping strategies and her life is good, but she will never be "normal" and Collins doesn't let the audience think that.

The one part, where she talks about how she handles the darker days, when she's really struggling, never fails to move me:

I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I’m afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play. (Mockingjay, 332)

It's hard to express how important that is to me. Someone doesn't have to be "normal" to lead a good life. Someone doesn't have to be "normal" to have a life worth living, to give and receive love in good ways.

And, so, when people look at the villain in the prequel and say "he's just crazy, that's why he's evil. He's just a psycho, he's nuts," it's so out of place, it's so dissonant to me -- I think that's absolutely not the kind of story Collins would tell, given her prior handling of disability.

I don't think she's suddenly turned into a Victorian writer where you can know someone is evil because they're disabled because the writer thinks disabled people are warped creatures incapable of doing anything but bringing evil into the world. And the way people assert this, as if it's the pure, wholesome, most politically advanced reading of the prequel, is just - it doesn't compute for me. I don't understand how people get there.

I studied (for years) the treatment of mentally ill people in the mid-20th Century US. It was horrific. US forced sterilization and eugenics laws actually inspired N/azi Germany's forced sterilization, eugenics, and mass murder campaigns against mentally ill and disabled people. Nice, normal people have repeatedly convinced themselves that torturing and killing disabled people is how they will "purify" their society - they've done great evil in the name of rooting out the people evil is supposedly located within biologically.

Is it so hard to believe that people with normal brains do evil? Is it truly so impossible? Even in a story where the Games are about how a lot of people, the majority of whom are neurotypical, can be brought, via media presentation and entertainment techniques, into taking pleasure in their participation in evil? It's so hard to fathom that evil can't simply be located in someone being "psycho"?

Ballad already has Dr Gaul, who is evil and clearly neurodivergent. If Snow is too then the message starts to get kind of worrying? IMO, Coriolanus is more effective as a kind of “everyman” as an 18 year old - an example of the incentive structures (rewards and punishments) and propaganda that motivate “normal” people to go along. Of course, he will later become something far worse than that, someone who takes control of this thing, who uses his intimate knowledge of it and his insight into other “normal” people to make it worse, but that’s not the part of his life we see the most of. The part the book focuses on provides what I consider a powerful depiction of how ordinary people are acculturated into corrupt societies.

It's fiction so there's all kinds of interpretations that the text can support and exploring those is good. It's a stronger text because it has ambiguities and can be interpreted more than one way. But the intensity of some of the rhetoric is an unsettling contrast to what I've thought, for over a decade, Collins' themes and pov are as a writer.

*Shame on the films for removing Peeta's physical disability, though; in the books he lost a leg during their first Games

[notbecauseofvictories]

I think I saw you shared a list of books you’d read a couple years ago and was it you who read something like 350+ books in a single year? If so that’s absolutely remarkable and I’d love to see a list of top ten (or twenty or whatever number) of books you’ve read this year that you recommend

Don't be ridiculous, I only read 303 books in 2021! That's much more reasonable than 350. And I've read fewer and fewer each year since---this year I don't think I'm going to crack 50, though I still have a couple days.

Still, always happy to talk about what I enjoyed. Books are listed in vaguely chronological order, though I make no promises.

Patricia Wants to Cuddle, Samantha Allen

I've mentioned this book before, but essentially I put in the library request solely for the improbability of the premise---The Bachelor heads to the PNW and encounters Bigfoot? Fortunately, it delivered on that promise magnificently. A breezy and delightfully gruesome little novel with a bodycount.

Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel

I didn't viscerally connect with this one as much as "Fun Home" but I think it might be because it's…closer to the bone for me. When Bechdel writes about the longing for a mother that can't be answered, pulling back, pleasing, an anger that becomes unspeakable, re-routed to anxiety…it's uh. well it's churned up the silt, let's put it that way.

Greener Pastures, Michael Wehunt

I love short stories, but finding those authors who hit the right notes unerringly, in such a brief space, can be tricky sometimes. Wehunt is the rare exception, strange and unique as a writer, dream-like in his descriptions and images. "October Film Haunt: Under the House" was my favorite, though I can't say for sure whether it's because I recognized the framing device or it was just fun to read…

Running with Scissors, A Wolf at the Table, Lust & Wonder, Augusten Burroughs

I read these out of order (Lust & Wonder first, then the other two) but even so, I was wildly impressed. Lust & Wonder was a revelation; I stumbled on it in the library and walked out with it the same day. No wonder people tell you to read his books, he's got such a clear-eyed meanness, an interesting sort of canniness to his depiction of himself, the people in his life…it really does demonstrate that there is no such thing as a boring life, just a boring narrator. But if Lust & Wonder is Burroughs at the height of his power, Running with Scissors and Wolf at the Table are the necessary steps up to it. More unfinished, more raw---a litany of horrors, not even leavened by that same canny, mean humor that flashes through L&W. It's just horrifically sad to watch every person around this kid fail him, leave, or both; terrifying and unexpectedly funny and yet tender as a sucking wound.

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

I picked this up entirely by chance and ended up being deeply charmed. I don't know what I was expecting---well, no, that's not true, I was expecting the film. But what I got instead was something almost real, pleasantly rough around the edges as Goldman's caustic narration winds its way from Florin to the machinations of S. Morgenstern's lawyers, to his struggles with raising his son. (One of the funniest scenes was when he goes to meet S. Morgenstern's lawyer, and the ravishingly beautiful attorney becomes a horrible old hag the more she talks about how he won't be granted a license.) I was afraid the book would be twee, but at the center of it is a pure (if slightly embarrassing, but truth generally is outside of Florin) love of stories, and wanting stories told.

In the Woods, The Likeness, Broken Harbor, Tana French

As I've said before, I started reading this series because I was traveling to Ireland and thought it seemed appropriate. I didn't go too deep into French's oeuvre, mostly because I couldn't shake wanting the books to be urban fantasy rather than gripping psychological portraits with a decidedly noir sensibility. Still, the books themselves are taut and fascinating, the portraits they paint of the Dublin Murder Squad (all of whom are staggering, wounded in their own ways) and the blighted, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, are deeply compelling. Also, I do still think The Likeness is a perfect answer to The Secret History.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Kim Fu

There's something truly powerful in a short story that doesn't answer any questions or provide you with any sort of guidance---just walks in and rearranges your photographs so they're slightly off-kilter, leaves you with that destabilization. It's almost spiritual, that sense. In particular, there's a story in the collection about the world's sense of taste disappearing; a woman begins crafting art installations to try and recreate the experience of eating a pear, what your favorite family meal tasted like. Short stories are like that.

Perilous Times, Thomas D. Lee

I was surprised by this one. I know that's how I've described half the books above, but truly, this surprised me---not so much the rising action or plot (there's a sleeping king, knights around a table, a dragon) but I loved the setting so much. The depiction of a slightly-futuristic UK as drowning land sold off for parts; figures like immortal spymaster Marlowe coexisting with reborn Lancelot and Kay; the fay hovering around the edges; and then just….all the factions, the Welsh royalists and men's rights group propped up by military contractors; environmental activists, the references to the hodgepodge that existed in the 4th century AD too. More than anything, the novel conveyed how Britain's always been a place of change, the movement of people and permeable barriers, and that more than anything worked for me. (Also, it's a small thing but I loved how the Camelot crew translated modern concepts and objects into their language and knowledge of the world. It was always shown as hesitation rather than total shock, and I found it both moving and persuasive.)

A Cup of Salt Tears, Isabel Yap

I read this in a series of speculative novellas, which impressed on me yet again how hard it must be to write novellas. (Last year, one of my least favorite books was a novella; I still think about it with joyful hate.) However, Yap takes care to focus on single, brief narrative, concerns herself solely with the very small yet very significant issue of a woman, her husband, who and how she loves, wrapped up together with a kappa. Excellent, haunting.

Books of 2020 | Books of 2021 | Books of 2022

[yall-hate-kids-tourney]

Round 3: Maria Ushiromiya (Umineko: When They Cry) vs. Amane Momose (MILGRAM)

Propaganda below the cut

Maria Ushiromiya (9)

She's really obsessed with occult and witch stuff and acts inappropriately when her family gets murdered because she was told by the culprit that everyone was going to the Golden Land (a super special witch afterlife where you get whatever you want). She also has meltdowns like any autistic child. Because of this, some Umineko fans say that she deserves to get abused by her mother.

----

People really do be saying that this literal nine year old who's been abused and neglected by her mom for her whole life is evil

----

Some people in the Umineko fandom have decided that she's annoying because she's a 9 year old with autism. Personally I think she's based. She has a hard life but still tries her hardest to see the goodness in everything. She's kind, even feeling sorry for a wilting flower and hoping it'll get better. She's a very smart young girl who just isn't given the proper love a child needs from their parents to thrive. She deserved SO, SO much better than the cards life dealt her. I mustn't talk too much else I'll get emotional but Maria is peak.Best autistic witch girl.

Amane Momose (12):

Amane was voted guilty in the first trial so that she would acknowledge her guilt. It backfired, and now she’s considered a threat. Well, everyone is a threat, but nobody’s threat level has been as heavily discussed and debated as hers. Consider the next prisoner in line, Mikoto. He’s objectively more dangerous and cannot be restrained. He beat up the guard in trial 1, and he was able to hold his own when the other guilty prisoners were attacked. But a good incentive to forgive him is so that he will calm down. You know what? That’s a good incentive to forgive Amane too! But she *can* be restrained, so a good portion of the discussion went into how she should be voted guilty so she *will* be restrained and not a threat. Since her vote was a near 50/50, of course a good chunk of the voters expressed dissatisfaction with her forgiven verdict. Some are already planning to vote her guilty for trial 3, calling her a “lost cause”. She hasn’t even done any concrete harm yet. Hold the pitchforks until she actually causes harm, please? And what if she *was* voted guilty in trial 2? We’ve been warned that she will continue to deny our judgement. A second guilty verdict won’t make her better either, and then what? She’d be called a “lost cause” as well. There is no winning with her.

----

Where do I even start? So first of all she’s an cult child who was physically and mentally abused and tortured by her parents and then (presumably) murdered her mother after her mother killed a cat that she took care of.

Now everyone in Milgram is a murderer but when Amane came and her MV showed her murder and circumstance in an admittedly highly fictionalized depiction of it the audience decided to…repeat the cycle of abuse!

She was voted guilty for the main reason of “teaching her” and helping her “realize that she was abused.” I would like to note that this tough love approach is something her parents utilized against her. “We are only doing this to help you.”

So the audience replicates Amane’s abusers and repeats the cycle of abuse and that’s pretty shitty but it isn’t exactly “Fuck Em Kids” level.

And then Trial 2 happened. Cause Amane is bitter and angry and horrifically traumatized so she acts aggressive and hostile. Especially towards another prisoner.

Now, again, everyone here is a fucking murderer (of atleast could be constructed as one) These people being able to Harm is a core concept of this series.

Yet for some reason it feels like people treat Amane as a “delusional creepy kid who wants to kill people” which completly takes away the nuance of her character. She does have the capacity to harm! Everyone here does! She’s not Uniquly Dangerous! She just has a Reason to be Dangerous. A Reason we GAVE HER by REPEATING THE CYCLE OF ABUSE.

In short: In a series full of Murderers I’m honestly a bit pissed that the 12 year old abuse victim is the one who’s treated like the guy from American Pyscho.

----

TL;DR: "We metavoted this abused, indoctrinated child guilty in trial 1, but it didn't work. Now she is a threat to three grown adults: one who is fully free and two whom she has been shown to get along with. Please metavote her guilty again so she will be restrained and unable to attack them, even though that means subjecting her to further psychological torture." Amane Momose is the youngest of ten murderers, prisoners of Milgram who are to be judged innocent (forgiven) or guilty (unforgiven). In the first interrogation (voice drama), she said that what she did was in line with her religion's doctrines. If we judged her the "wrong way", she said she will just deny the verdict. Combining the voice drama and music video, you could piece together that she was raised in a cult and abused, even though she is cheerful and downplays her pain. She never shows *who* she killed, only *why* she did. After the first day of her vote, she was 81% innocent, but this wouldn't last the whole three months. Many people voted her guilty so she would "see her sins", part of the practice commonly known as "metavoting". Her innocent percentage rapidly decreased, and she hit guilty in the last 15 days, finishing at 51% guilty. At the end of the first trial, Jackalope (who is something like a host) went over all the prisoners' verdicts and commented on the general reasoning. When he got to Amane, he *laughed* at the audience for voting that way to make her realize her sins. Trial 2 rolled around, and it was revealed that Amane's victim was her abuser. On day one, she was at 74% innocent. Seems like a cut-and-dry case now, right? Well... in the intermission, two of the prisoners (Fuuta and Mahiru) were badly beaten up and became reliant on the care of Shidou, a doctor. Amane became hostile to Shidou because what he was doing was against her beliefs. She visited all three of them on their birthdays to convince them to change their ways. She seems to be especially close to Fuuta, who is now murmuring about salvation. Guilty prisoners are psychologically tortured, forced to listen to voices that reject their beliefs. Fuuta and Mahiru both say that the mental strain is worse than their physical injuries. But Amane, who also looks worse for wear, was thrown under the bus because she isn't injured and is considered a physical threat to them (never mind that she gets along with them). She's considered a threat to Shidou, a grown man who is twice her size and fully free, while she is partially restricted by the long sleeves in her trial 2 uniform. She might indoctrinate Fuuta even though, in a prison of ten people and one guard, she's the only voice of her cult. Fortunately, she got a break. Her vote was falling at a similar rate to the first trial. But this time, it stabilized at 51% innocent, 12 days before the end of her vote. But there's no way this is over.

[rubberduckyrye]

I really wanna hear your thoughts on the racism with Angie, I may not have been in the fandom for like 5 years now, but I have ALWAYS been so bothered by how she and Gonta are treated by the narrative and fandom back then but nobody wanted to talk about that back then too, so it's been refreshing seeing it brought up by you.

Honestly I've been screaming about Gonta ever since I got into the fandom--like, back in 2018? Angie I've known for a while her story was a bunch of racist stereotypes but as a pastey pastey white person, I wasn't sure how much I should speak on it. I started talking about it more casually on my blog at first, and now I'm just screaming it into the void because everyone keeps ignoring or dismissing me about it.

I'll start off by saying that the extent of her racist caricature was really brought to my attention by my partner Celest, and she pointed out the initial stereotypes that lead me to further researching on Pacific Islander cultures, Indigenous cultures, and the stereotypes that are associated with them. Even the use of "Atua", while at first glance seems to be more accurate and inclusive, is incredibly inaccurate at best, and racist at worst.

But I'm getting ahead of myself--time to wipe my hands of this once and for all and talk about the thing that the fandom doesn't want to talk about--how Angie is a racist stereotype of Indigenous and Pacific Islander cultures.

I'm gonna need a lot of resources for this one.

So the biggest problem with Angie is how she is characterized/heavily coded to be Native Hawaiian/an indigenous Polynesian young woman. While I can't find any specific articles about specifically Indigenous Polynesian stereotypes regarding it, I know for a fact that the "Merciless Indian Savage" applies heavily to native/indigenous Polynesian cultures just from the horrible media I was subjected to as a child by my own father. Of course I was never taught about how racist it was until I learned it for myself, but I've seen many a movie where Pacific Islanders, specifically indigenous, were portrayed as savage, violent subhuman cultures that horrifically sacrificed human lives and blood.

I can't tell if this just, isn't well documented or I'm bad at finding research material, but I have first hand experience seeing this stereotype in modern media, so I know it's a thing. Like in King Kong movies--I remember those older movies being especially bad about it. This movie was made in 2005 and is one of the most racist depictions I've ever seen and be warned this is quite disgusting to watch with the context of this being incredibly fucking racist.

(Please remember that King Kong's island is, well, an uncharted island called Skull Island. It's an island in the middle of the ocean. Do I need to say any more as to why this is a huge problem.)

The top comments on this video are also incredibly fucking racist too:

"The natives are scarier than the big scary monster" "I would be scared of directing this scene" like Jesus fucking Christ do you people even hear yourselves.

Anyway. Yeah this movie's depiction of natives is incredibly racist and I'm sorry to subject you to this scene. I just want to specify what I mean though when I say I've seen this shit so much in media and yet I'm struggling to find people talking about it. Like, I'm not going crazy, right?

Still.

The fact that in Angie's FTEs, she bluntly describes blood and even implies human sacrifices is enough to invoke such horrible cringe from me, but the fact that her "native island" is referred to as "strange" with fauna that attack humans is also reminiscent of the racism presented for specifically Pacific Islander stereotypes.

This specific instance is especially telling, because--

If this "DeepSea" shipping service can ship just about anything--including organ meat, children, and blood--then what on earth is Angie talking about when she says they don't stock "Offerings"?

The likelihood is that she's referring to adult humans--as these children from this "shipping" company are clearly trafficking human children, blood, and organ meat. Since we know blood offerings are something from "Angie's culture", it can't be blood offering's she's referring to. Since it only lacks those two things according to Angie, that's the only thing that can be really inferred/implied--adult human sacrifices.

This is also shown here in Kaede's second FTE with her:

Angie is having a nightmare about the blood/human sacrifices necessary for her "culture" and "island", and is clearly struggling and horrified with it. This also plays into the racist stereotype in that Angie is Not Like the Other Savages and condemns her people's practices, even if only internally/privately, and portrays her as a victim of something almost cult-like--which from the clip you saw above, is still a heavily racist stereotype of indigenous cultures due to how the "Merciless Violent Savage" appears cult-like when you involve human sacrifices.

So let's talk about Atua.

This is very much only in the english version, but the use of Atua to replace "god" in a more singular fashion is incredibly inaccurate. From my understanding, "Atua" more so refers to the gods of Māori mythology. The way Angie refers to Atua in canon is more like how one would refer to a singular god. The Hawaiian Kupua, something that wikipedia seems to suggest is the Native Hawaiian version of Atua, also expresses polytheistic customs.

So yeah. the English dub made it worse.

But wait, there's more!

Now I have. No idea where this "custom" came from, as when I looked it up I just got a whole lot of nothing--but notice how Shuichi is reacting to it. The custom presented is supposed to be extremely weird and even terrifying, invoking the reader to see Angie as strange/abnormal. She continues on talking about her "island's customs", and--

The sexuality presented here is very obvious--presenting the fluidity of sexuality one might see in Pacific Islander cultures as abnormal, bizarre, or down-right wrong. A small article for this one because I cannot find the other one I originally read: 1 but the general idea is that Christan/Conservative ideology has oppressed the gender and sexuality of a lot of Polynesian cultures. To express that Angie's culture is "exotic" and "strange" for its fluid sexuality is inherently racist in nature. I don't think this is an intended character flaw--this is blatantly the bias of the writers for V3.

Now for this specific one, I've completely lost the article I read it on, so take my words with a grain of salt. However, a big stereotype of Polynesian cultures is that they are extremely carefree--something that we see Angie being in canon without her FTEs. This is portrayed as a mask by the fandom, however, so it's a bit of a sketchy one to include. Still wanted to mention it though.

Anyway--these are all things I've learned from doing research, and I still can't find a lot of information about it. Pacific Islanders/Polynesians/Native Hawaiian people are often incredibly silenced and spoken over, which is why writing this post up was so incredibly frustrating to me.

I know these stereotypes exists for these cultures--but I cannot find many resources on the subject matter.

As someone who is trying their hardest to be racially aware and sensitive, it is very frustrating to try and comb the internet to find resources to reference, and the best thing you can find is a god-damn Wikipedia page. No, really. I could not find any reliable sources on anything outside of Wikipedia. Again I could just be really bad at finding research material/it could also be that the internet is getting so much worse about finding articles on subjects like this, but I digress. The fact that it's this difficult to find things--and then to re-find things, as I mentioned earlier, some of the articles I found are just, gone now--is a testament to how much of a problem this really is.

And it's so frustrating that I keep getting silenced/ignored about the matter because I want to learn. I want to learn what stereotypes to avoid for this demographic of people and their culture. I want to learn how I can fix a character like Angie--who I DO like, by the way--and make her much less of a stereotype in my own AU. I want to learn if the Atua and the Kupua are interchangeable words like Wikipedia suggests. I want to learn for my own Native Hawaiian OC so I can write him correctly. I, as a white person who doesn't have access to this culture, want to learn about it so I can accurately portray it and help fight against the negative stereotypes that people 5 years ago thought was "great storytelling."

But I can't learn anything if the fandom keeps ignoring me because they're too afraid to acknowledge the racism is there at all, in fear that them liking a racist caricature of a character makes them racist.

And to that, I say: Please stop ignoring me. I want to learn. I want to talk to people about the subject. I want to find someone willing to talk about the culture and educate me. I can't do that if I am constantly ignored.

So. Yeah.

Sorry if this is a little haphazard, my brain died halfway through making it because finding the research materials to showcase my points was incredibly difficult. Literally have been here for hours.

I hope this can be spread around though--so people understand why it's important to have this discussion, why it's important to acknowledge the racism, and why it's so frustrating to feel silenced/ignored when all you want to do is better yourself and your own knowledge.

So... let's talk. Let's talk about the racism in Angie's character--and how we, as a fandom, can address it.

[keikotwins]

Mokumokuren

Birds of different feathers flock together

Noticed online by head-hunting publishers, Mokumokuren hasn’t waited very long before polarising the attention of Japanese readers. With strange The Summer Hikaru Died, horrific bromance dealing with body dispossession, the mangaka signs a series of sophisticated oddity, that sets itself apart from the predictability of current fantasy productions.

Interview by Fausto Fasulo. Original translation: Aurélien Estager. English translation: “Keikotwins”. Bibliography: Marius Chapuis. Thanks: Camille Hospital & Clarisse Langlet (Pika), Yuta Nabatame, Mayuko Yamamoto & Mana Kukimoto (Kadokawa), Chiho Muramatsu (Tohan)

(T/N: Interview given to ATOM in winter 2023; 2 volumes were out in French.)

-

In an interview given to the CREA website in November 2022, you confided inventing stories since very young. Did your first fictions resemble the ones you draw nowadays?

It’s true that there are quite a lot of common points between the stories I imagined when I was a child and the ones I tell nowadays in my mangas. Especially a specific motif, that has been haunting me since the time when I wasn’t really aware of the world surrounding me: the presence amongst us of “non-human” beings, that nonetheless have a perfectly normal, ordinary appearance…

And how was this “obsession” born?

Precisely identifying the origins is complicated, my memories are too blurry, I think… What I can tell you is that I’ve always been fascinated by “creatures”. For example, I remember being very impressed by Peter Jackson’s bestiary in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. By the way, still in a fantasy register, I am also a big fan of Harry Potter adaptations… (She thinks.) And I’ve always liked yōkai stories, you know. I think that what I like in all these mythologies is the idea of species classification: each has its own characteristics – physical, biological – its own way to apprehend its environment.

In Japan, yōkai are integral part of regional folklore. Did the place you grew up in have some specific beliefs?

I was born and grew up in Tokyo, and, as you must know, yōkai are mostly associated with rural areas. I was thus never really bathed in this type of regional fantasy folklore. There are all kinds of yōkai and we can perhaps see in some more contemporary urban legends the echo of certain past beliefs? (She thinks.) I am a bit frustrated, because I believe that I could remember a legend that would have impacted me, but nothing comes to mind immediately, sorry!

You have already said so in an interview and it’s quite obvious when reading your work: you are a big amateur of horrific fiction. What has been your first contact with the genre, all medium included?

It was television that introduced me to horror: special shows, television films, series, I was watching these programs with a mix of fear and enthusiasm, a confused sensation that particularly delighted me! (She thinks.) And amongst all the aired shows, I will remember two titles: Hontō ni atta kowai hanashi and Kaidan shin mimibukuro*.

* Inspired by the homonymous manga magazine published by Asahi Shimbun, Hontō ni atta kowai hanashi (lit. “Scary stories that really happened”) is a series produced by Fuji Television that has been airing more or less weekly since 2004. Derived from literary material (a series of compilations of hundreds of short stories by Hirokatsu Kihara and Ichirō Nakayama, published from 1990 to 2005) Kaidan shin mimibukuro is a series made of several short movies depicting ghost stories based on real testimony.

Did you read horror mangas when you were young?

Let’s say that I was more interested in live-action productions. Nowadays, I obviously appreciate some horror manga authors, without pretending to be any expert in the subject. For example, I like Junji Itō’s work, but I am far from knowing it for a long time… (She thinks.) I could also talk about Shigeru Mizuki, who I also appreciate a lot.

The mechanics of fear aren’t the same in occidental and oriental fictions. You like American horrific productions – like Ari Aster movies – as much as ones from Japanese origin – you notably quote Ichi Sawamura novels and Kōji Shiraishi feature films. Can we say that you are tying these two perspectives with The Summer Hikaru Died?

My relationship with horror is more imbued with oriental sensitivity. But what I find remarkable in occidental horrific productions is work on image. In The Shining like in Ari Aster movies, for example, there is real research made on frame composition and choice of colours. I also try to follow this aesthetic reflection in my work as a mangaka.

In Ari Aster’s work, beyond the very precise staging, there is this permanent desire of ambiguity. Do you try to dig this same equivocal trench?

Absolutely. I try to tell complex feelings as well in The Summer Hikaru Died, like fear dyed with nostalgia or attachment, repulsion mixed with fascination, with attraction…

How do you “sort out” the shots that inspire you in cinema?

I don’t draw while freeze-framing during specific scenes. I would always rather watch a movie as a “focussed” spectator. However, I pay a lot of attention to the way the director composes their frame. I sometimes take some notes, but I most often simply keep it in a corner of my mind.

Could you tell us when and how the story and characters of The Summer Hikaru Died appeared to you? Have they matured a long time within you?

I’ve started thinking about this story when I was preparing university entrance exams. I was aspiring to join an art uni, and I was drawing every day. I can’t really say I made my characters “mature”: back then, I wasn’t thinking that the drawings I was making would one day end up being published, way less being serialised! I innocently created characters close to me, without guessing that one day they’d become manga protagonists.

One of your foundational reads was Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul manga. Can you tell us how you discovered it and what effect it had on you?

I don’t really remember how I discovered this series, but what I know is that I became crazy about it at first read. What I liked – and what I still like – is this idea of telling a story that confronts humans to these “different” beings while following the point of view of a character that represents alterity. Beyond this strictly dramatic aspect, Sui Ishida’s storyboarding and character design have had a strong impact on my work. However, I want to add that Tokyo Ghoul isn’t the only title I took inspiration from, I obviously have other references…

Do you do a lot of researches to define the design of your characters? You seem to draw them easily, in a very natural gesture…

I haven’t spent a long time defining my protagonists. First, there are few in the manga, then, they evolve in a rather realistic universe. My goal was rather simple: they had to look believable in the reader’s eyes. I wanted people to be able to imagine crossing them in the street, you see?

It’s after seeing illustrations posted on social media that depicted the future characters of The Summer Hikaru Died that the publishing department of the Young Ace Up magazine noticed you. How have you reacted when approached?

I was very surprised, because I absolutely wasn’t trying to become a mangaka. I would have never projected in such a future, you see. And, very honestly, if they hadn’t suggested working on this series, I don’t think I would ever had pushed the doors of a publishing house… I am then very thankful towards the persons who have allowed me to enter.

And what would you have done if you hadn’t been solicited?

Back when I’ve been contacted, I was considering – still vaguely – working in the video games field. But I wasn’t really proactive, I wasn’t contacting anyone, wasn’t sending resumes…

Did you want to do chara-design?

Why not, yes. What I like in video games is the range of possibilities they offer. You can then create an entire universe and this is rather exhilarating.

So you’re a gamer…

I have dropped my controller since I’ve started drawing manga. But yes, when I had more time, I played rather regularly, especially Nintendo productions…

Even if you play rather little nowadays, do video games influence your work?

I can’t say whether it really is an influence, but the Undertale game has left a big mark on me. I felt its creator’s strong will to surprise players, to make them feel unprecedented sensations…

Horror manga only relies on art and storyboard to provoke fear, whereas cinema and video games can also rely on sound. Is it from this observation that you have decided to particularly work on your sound effects?

Absolutely. I have thought a lot about the way to introduce and stage sound in The Summer Hikaru Died. The sound effects that you can find in the manga are indeed the result of this approach.

In an interview given to the Realsound website, you mention the use of the シャワシャワ (“shawa shawa”) sound effect. Knowing that occidental readers are way less sensitive to these graphicoustic details, can you explain its meaning?

“Shawa shawa” expresses the song cicadas make in western Japan. It’s a very special noise because in the different regions live different species that make specific sounds. So when I choose this specific sound effect, I convey a geographic and temporal piece of information to the reader, who can then guess the location and season the action takes place in. (She thinks.) When using this sound – that we especially find in the beginning of the manga – my goal was to play with silence, particularly when the song stops. I thus had the idea of representing this sound effect with an easily readable font, so the reader would make no effort to decipher it, as if the sound was asserting itself naturally, you see? I hoped to suggest a saturation they couldn’t avoid and that, when it’d stop, would immerse them in absolute silence.

The Summer Hikaru Died transcribes very well this particular atmosphere of Japanese summers…

Yes, I really wanted to signify this languor in my manga. And the cicadas’ song we discussed earlier contributes to creating this atmosphere: it’s an overwhelming sound, sometimes irritating, you cannot escape from in summer – Japanese readers obviously know what I’m talking about. (She thinks.) I also gave special attention to shadows: summer light being very bright, shadows are very sharp, very deep.

Do digital tools allow you to get this result more efficiently than traditional?

I work on Clip Studio Paint, and it’s true that it sometimes allow me to save time. Consider the work on shadows: I never apply solid black because I like saturating space with hatches and, with digital tools, I can obtain the desired result faster because I can duplicate each of my lines.

Your use of hatches is sometimes reminiscent of Shūzō Oshimi’s…

I don’t know his mangas very well, but it’s funny that you mention him because I recently read his latest series, Okaeri Alice. In any case, I really like his style and I perfectly understand how you can bring his universe and mine together.

The Summer Hikaru Died relies on the concept of body dispossession, that obviously takes back to the Body Snatcher novel by Jack Finney and its movie adaptations. Did you think about it?

I don’t know this book very well, but I know its theme has been approached often, especially in movies. As I was saying at the beginning of this interview, my idea was to adopt the point of view of a non-human and tell his indecision, his moral questions…

We also find this idea in Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasite…

I haven’t read the manga fully, but I’ve watched the anime adaptation that was released a few years ago (R/N: in 2014). I remember rather liking it, even if I think I offer something different with The Summer Hikaru Died. What interests me is sounding the inwardness of my non-human character out and expose all his dilemmas. What is his place amongst men? Is he legitimate in our world? Here is the type of questions that pushed me.

One of the impacting scenes of volume 1 of The Summer Hikaru Died is the one when Yoshiki penetrated Hikaru’s body by shoving his arm into his torso. It’s a sequence that is both very sensuaI – to not say sexuaI – and also very horrific. How did you get this idea?

I wanted to put the readers in an uncomfortable position. A stressful situation that could take several forms because, according to your sensitivity, you can feel very different emotions in front of this scene: sexuaI arousaI, fear or disgust. For me, it was supposed to put the reader in some kind of catatonia, you see?

Do you chat a lot with your tantō, especially around these slightly “complicated” scenes?

I have free rein, you know, I can draw everything I want. My editorial supervisor has never asked me to temper some sexuaIIy connotated parts. My discussions with him don’t revolve around this kind of things, but rather around the structure of the scenario itself: where to place this scene in the narration? Is it better to put this sequence before this other one? Nowadays, I am more at ease with all the scripting layout but, at the beginning, I needed support.

What allows you to get, from a dramatic point of view, the mix between bromance and horror?

I wanted to show the differences in sensitivities and values between a human being and an “other than human”, and tell the misunderstandings this can cause when both meet. When Yoshiki “scratches” under the appearance of the one who is supposed to be his best friend, it creates a first point of conflict in the story. I then hoped to make his relationship with Hikaru – or rather with the “entity” that pretends to embody him – a kind of undefinable bond, that wouldn’t be friendship, nor love.

Do you know today where this strange relationship between your two heroes will lead you?

I know more or less how all of this will evolve, yes. I have decided on my story’s general plot since the beginning. I can only tell you that The Summer Hikaru Died won’t be a long series.

How do you explain the almost instant public plebiscite of your series in Japan? You perhaps cannot have perspective on it but, in a saturated publishing landscape, you have managed to stand out…

Hm… Indeed, I don’t really have precise explanations to give you about this success. Maybe the covers’ design has been in favour of the manga? I asked the person in charge of graphics to make sure that the visuals would be noticeable in bookstores. That’s why the books have this monochrome aspect, with the title discreetly placed. I didn’t want obvious advertisement banners, but something simple, like this blue background for the first volume, on which the character stands out. I also wished to create contrast between the jacket’s and the inner cover’s drawings. I thus had requirements that didn’t quite go alongside what we can nowadays see on the shelves of Japanese bookstores.

[yoddhasblog]

Mahabharat is and will always be my favourite tale to reflect upon and talk to people about. This book was immensely hyped up along with the author. I have now read three of her books. The Last Queen, which admittedly I adored. Then, the Forest Of Enchantments, the book I'd been looking forward to for such a long time. That one left me in a rage.

I went into this book expecting to be pissed off and disappointed. And I wasn't let down on that assumption.

The Palace Of Illusions is a retelling of the great Indian epic-Mahabharata. A tale incorporated so deeply into our hearts that everyone has their own takes and beliefs and opinions about it. I sincerely believe that you cannot write a retelling without angering a number of people. Well, I'm one them.

The writing style:

I didn't have too many issues except i did not get why there were so many rhetorical and philosophical questions? Literal, paragraphs that were nothing but questions.

Draupadi, the enigma, the fire-born, the one person I would fight for as long as there is life in me, why was acting as though she was a little more than a sullen child? In the book that was supposed to be from her point of view, the person, the author did the most injustice with was-Draupadi.

The plot assassination:

As I mentioned above, most of everything in the plot of the epic was butchered and mangled to fit into the author's narrative of women, good-men,bad. It is common knowledge that women's position in society was as downtrodden as depicted here. Don't get me wrong, horrific crimes happened against women and justice was also delivered adequately but the author pulled apart the entire social structure only to be able to say that every bad thing happened to Draupadi was because she is a woman.

~ In the very first chapter, Draupadi said it was egoistic of her father to give her a variation of his own name when her brother, Dhrishtadyumna got an original name. In Vyas Mahabharat, her birth name was Krishnaa but like many people in Hindu beliefs, she was also known as Draupadi, though that is the most commonly used name. So, no points to the author trying to convince everyone that this was sexist.

~ Draupadi was highly educated and trained in many things including economics and she was the one who was in charge of the treasury of Indraprastha. She was a finance minister of sorts. So, saying that King Droupad refused to let her train because she is a woman is stupid.

~Also, I've grown up listening to that Draupadi stepped out of the fire as a young woman. She wasn't a child. Some sources say she was around 16 some say around 25.

~ Are we still stuck about 50 years ago that we're going to be okay with authors portraying that all women in power are evil? Kunti and Draupadi viewed each other as rivals? Draupadi throwing temper tantrums over other women? wtf

~ Draupadi as a pick-me? Half the book Draupadi's internal dialogue is nothing but I don't know how to socialize with other women, they're jealous of each other, they're always giggling, I won't survive the world of women, I can't dance, people don't find me pretty because of my dark complexion(where did white supremacy even came in this conversation) but suddenly out of nowhere Draupadi just knows that every woman is envious of her. She adores the saris and jewellery that she used to find impossible to handle.

~ Maharishi Vyas giving Draupadi Divya drishti to see the battlefield of Kurukshetra came out of nowhere. It felt a forced action done only to show Draupadi's emotions about the deaths.

~ Draupadi harbouring hidden feelings for Karna and him secretly returning those feelings felt like a teenager's fever dream. A teenager who's hellbent on sexualizing everything they come across.

~Bhagvat Gita was witnessed by everyone on kurukshetra including the Virat roop? Again, it felt like a move forced that was done in order to show Draupadi's internal dialogue. How did the author even think she could fit Bhagvat Gita in half a chapter?

~The Pandavas just had no personality whatsoever outside of being obedient to their mother and scared of Draupadi's temper tantrums.

~Krishan ji was told to be this charismatic, carefree, silvertongued diplomat but he was simply shown as someone who randomly showed up and gave unsolicited advice.

~And I don't know what that ending was but you can't be serious telling me that Karna and Draupadi somehow end up together in heaven?

~WHAT WAS THE AUTHOR'S PROBLEM WITH RESEARCHING ABOUT MAHABHARATA???

There was no way the entire plot of Mahabharata could've fit into one book. She tried too but this book sucked. I understand it's a retelling and sometimes had to change but everything here felt so forced. The author broke everything in context to fit into her supposedly feminist ideal. Don't get me wrong, i dislike the Pandavas, the Kauravas and their elders with all my heart but they all had one dimensional personalities. They had caricature-ish depositions. I had no emotions attached to anyone in this book whatsoever. This was a headache.

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

FINALS

PROPAGANDA

BUMBLE (WARRIOR CATS) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) Back with another Warriors submission, I bet you’ll be getting a lot from other people too LMAO. Bumble is a kittypet (housecat) who befriends the male protagonist Gray Wing’s girlfriend, Turtle Tail, and lets her stay in her house. This gets Gray Wing all pissy because he’s controlling of Turtle Tail and shares most of the wild/clan cat’s proclivity for looking down upon kittypets. Turtle Tail gets pregnant by another kittypet, Tom, who tries to control her by hiding the fact that humans take away kittens after they’re born. Eventually Bumble comes clean about it so Turtle Tail returns to the forest. Some time later, Bumble is found in the forest seeking refuge because Tom has been physically abusing her, scratching her where the humans can’t see. So, she’s CANONICALLY ACKNOWLEDGED as a domestic abuse victim (unlike Squirrelflight who meets all the textbook signs but the narrative and authors deny it). How do you think our good guy protagonists, i.e. Gray Wing “The Wise” and Turtle Tail, respond to an abuse victim seeking refuge? They tell Bumble to go home, thinking to themselves that she’s fat and soft and therefore would be useless in their group. Bumble stands up for herself and asks to speak with the leaders of the group. One of them asks if Bumble could just get along with Tom better (bro???) and when Bumble says it’s not within her control, the leader suggests being nicer to the humans instead. Another rival leader butts in and verbally abuses Bumble again by ripping into how fat and lazy and useless she would be. Despite Turtle Tail having been friends with Bumble and Bumble had helped her through her own hard times, to Gray Wing’s approval Turtle Tail chooses not to intervene as Bumble is forcibly escorted back to her abuser. But that’s not all. Later Bumble is found in the forest maimed and dying, and it seems likely that Gray Wing’s brother Clear Sky, a male with a long history of violence, is the culprit. Rather than mourn the dying innocent cat, Gray Wing’s primary concern is how other cats might be mean to Clear Sky if they think he’s a murderer, and reassures himself that refusing to help Bumble in her time of need was still the right decision.

2.) I have no idea how she managed to be written so horrifically from an abuse victim and woman (/she-cat I guess) standpoint but here we are. Okay so my memory is a bit fuzzy but basically Bumble was a character in Dawn of the Clans and a close friend to Turtle Tail, a major character, as well as a character who lived close to Tom, an abusive dickhead of a cat. Bumble was largely depicted as just a really sweet cat. Turtle Tail was very briefly the mate of Turtle Tail, but once she got pregnant, he became super violent towards both her and our gal Bumble. Tom actively hid the fact that, once her kits were old enough, Turtle Tail’s kits would probably be taken from her, and made Bumble keep quiet about this too, but Bumble eventually told Turtle Tail the truth, Turtle Tail left and Tom became extremely violent towards Bumble because of this, and was extremely abusive towards her. Eventually, Bumble ran away from him to where Turtle Tail and co were and begged to stay, since the wilderness as a whole was genuinely more safe than being around Tom was. Naturally, this meant kitty xenophobia from cats who had only arrived in that area recently, because everybody was insistent than, since she was a kittypet/house cat, things wouldn’t work out, and even her friend Turtle Tail denied her on this, insisted she was too soft to live in the wild and only sent her towards a cat Bumble wanted to convince because she was absolutely certain she’d be denied. Also our good old protagonist Gray Wing got to spend this scene being all upset about this soft cat wanting to join them to escape an abuser and was all bitter about the fact that Turtle Tail lived with her for a short period of time, and he also got to have a sweet romantic moment with Turtle Tail after denying an abuse victim an escape from her abuser. Also as much as I like Tall Shadow usually she sucked ass in the following scene because she was essentially telling Bumble to go find a way to make peace with Tom as if she was not the one being abused (Bumble pointed out that Tom was the one who would need to make peace for it to happen, not her) and that she should just make life better by going back to being a housecat and being spoiled despite the fact that she was actively at risk with her owners because of Tom. Then she leaves after being threatened by several cats there and is called soft on the way out. The next time she appears she is literally dying, and her death is just a plot device to create a stupid little mystery which is solved in a very stupid way. Also her abuser does continue to be a shithead and for some reason is fully permitted to kidnap his own children but he also gets a heroic death and the only reason I will not rant more about him is because this is too long already. Long story short Bumble deserves the world and everybody who decided not to let her escape her abuser just because they thought she was soft sucks

3.) Is nice to the group of starving, feral wild cats that left the mountains so their friends and family could have more food to eat and befriends one of them to the point of opening her home to her after she leaves the group because the guy she likes is too dumb to notice she likes him and keeps falling for his brother’s love interests.

Unfortunately, because Bumble is a house cat who lives in a house with people and not a Wild and Free cat, this is a grave and horrible crime (luring a wild cat into the safety and comforts of domesticity) and is villainized for the rest of the arc, including for things wildly out of her control

I.E.

Her owners taking in an aggressive male cat that bullies and abuses the two female cats already living there

When Bumble’s friend leaves and goes back to the wild cats, Bumble leaves her home (as the abuse as has gotten worse) to see if she could either get help or have her friend return so the abuse isn’t as bad again)

Bumble eventually dies in the wild because the feral cats all hate her for ‘stealing’ their friend and tricking her into becoming a kittypet for awhile and refuse to help Bumble adjust to wild life or even teaching her how to hunt.

They are littl e to no hard feelings at her death beyond ‘good riddance’ but the aggressive tomcat that chased her out of her home is later regarded with good feelings and regret at such a ‘good, heroic cat’ passing when he dies despite him literally never doing a good or kind thing in his life and actually causing trouble for the wild cats right before dying

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

[herwrittenuniverse]

The Dragon Prince's "Mercy" Motif

TDP Fam, this is so fascinating.

I made this post about the connection between two characters' names. Nothing is coincidental in this show. The creators have things mapped out for future seasons.

🚨Spoilers below! 🚨

We know this arc is called The Mystery of Aaravos, and so far - in the show, anyway - he does appear more malevolent than benevolent, using characters as pawns (Viren, Callum, Claudia) to achieve his means (freedom). He was one of the Great Ones, but he lost privilege and title, becoming known as The Fallen Star. It was revealed that he's been behind wars, manipulating leaders for centuries, and so he was locked away because he was too dangerous. (If you're reading this, you've seen the show and know all of this.)

Now...E1S6 (which was previewed at NYCC) opens with a conversation between him and another Startouch Elf. He's distraught - it's the first time we've ever seen Aaravos showing such incredibly desperate emotions. (As I've mentioned, he's being painted as a sympathetic character.)

First, you wanna make a bet these statues depict the very scene featured in S1E6?

It's too perfect.

Now, this elf is called The Merciful One. As I pointed out in my other post, there is another character that is associated with mercy. You guessed it:

Her story is literally called The Queen's Mercy and one of the many titles bestowed upon her (if you read the story) is Queen Aditi, the Merciful. (I've already done the math in this post here.)

Now, why is this so fascinating?

Mercy, by definition, is compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm. (Thanks dictionary.com.) But as we know from reading The Queen's Mercy, Aditi isn't merciful at all. She's cunning. Kim'dael goes to Aditi seeking sanctuary. What does she get in return? A Mercy Debt.

Could this be considered merciful? I mean...she did not banish or harm Kim'dael. But she's trapped eternally, and literally owes her life. Kim'dael is a villainous character, no doubt - but that is not compassion or forgiveness. (Whether or not she deserves it is a different conversation.)

Now let's go back to Aaravos and the Merciful One, shall we?

If you look the images, Aaravos is clearly distraught, and yet the Merciful One appears calm, cool, collected. We can assume he's...well, granting mercy.

By what? Imprisoning Aaravos? This could very well be the moment he is imprisoned.

But is it true compassion? Is it true forgiveness? Or is it, "I'm granting you something in my power because - even though it seems wrong to you - it's for the greater good." I could see Startouch Elf philosophy being cold and factual, distant and matter-of-fact - leaving no room for matters of the heart or emotions. (Doesn't this elf reference that Aaravos is in this position because of love [and I suspect has something to do with Leola]? If someone can get me their exact quote, that would be fantastic.)

This opens up a really interesting conversation regarding the term 'mercy' - because what I think is happening here is that there are two characters in power (The Merciful One and Queen Aditi) who are technically granting 'mercy' (although I am only hypothesizing based on the new Startouch Elf's name), and yet it is not at all merciful to the character. It's almost as if they're both saying, "Yeah, this sucks for you right now, but it's going to be better off for everyone else in the end." Kim'dael is 'imprisoned' by the Mercy Debt. Aaravos is literally imprisoned.

I mean, Kim'dael is in the same position as Aaravos' statue in the Sea of the Castout.

I don't think this is a coincidence. I think both of these things will come back to bite our beloved Dragang. They are the ones who have to deal with the consequences, after all.

Did they deserve this treatment? For Kim'dael - I'm leaning towards yes, she is clearly a villain and has done horrific things.

And...we know that Aaravos has something to do with Aditi's disappearance.

But did Aaravos deserve this - imprisonment?

Now that is yet to be seen. And I have a feeling S6 will leave us all questions more than answers.

[rise-my-angel]

You hit the nail on the head because the version of Lyanna they stan is very much a sociopath lmao....but the shippers just don't get that they've fanoned this character into a sociopath? Like, there is zero awareness as to how bad she looks. It's actually very concerning. The version of her they stan is all but ready to walk over the murdered corpses of Rhaegar's wife and two kids and is ready to sit with a crown on her head in the same throne room her brother and father were murdered in lmao.

Also, in fics at least, they write Rhaegar to treat Rhaenys and Aegon like shit, say he loves Lyanna more than he ever loved his kids, except Jon though because Jon becomes his Super Special Boy, because of course. Mind you, there will be dozens of shippers in the comments complimenting the fic writers and saying how romantic this depiction is with absolutely zero self-awareness that they are stanning and celebrating the depiction of two sociopaths who are essentially villains. They really are out here shipping Charles and Camilla but like 100 times worse than anything Charles and Camilla did? It's very weird and the lack of self-awareness beggars belief.

In my opinion, it is very telling who in that situation ended up dead and why. Aegon and Rhaenys were left without genuine protection and thus were horrifically murdered when in reality the Kingsguard should have been there to protect them until their dying breaths. Elia too was left without any protection and was actually not allowed to leave because Rhaegar did not take his fathers decline in mental stability and his public disdain for his Dornish daughter in law and Dornish granddaughter into consideration at all when abandoning them for over a year.

Lyanna was not brought to a place she could leave on her own because Dorne is as far from Winterfell as it could get. She was not brought help or brought to get help and left to die in a bed of her own blood.

The only reason Jon is alive, is because Eddard Stark and Howland Reed managed to be the only survivors of a brutal fight to the death against Kingsguard keeping a brother from his dying sister who had screamed from inside the tower for said brother.

Rhaegar was attempting to fulfill a prophecy remember. Three heads of a dragon, so he put Elia through 2 back to back dangerous pregnancies. And when she could not have more, soon after that Rhaegar takes Lyanna.

Lyanna wasn't taken because he loved her. He took her because he decided she would give him that third dragon head. Jon was not born as a child Rhaegar wanted to love. He was born in a sexually violent attempt to force Rhaegar to have his own life match what he thought meant he was a special chosen one.

Then he died in the war he was the catalyst for causing. Every death can be traced back to Rhaegars failure to protect the people in his life, because he was too absorbed in his own hubris.

Jon only lived, because Ned Stark fought to get to Lyanna, and Lyanna begged him to keep Jon safe.

Jon is only alive because of Ned and Lyannas love for each other and him as a family.

Rhaegar did not love any of these people. He was obsessed with making his life fit the visions of a prophecy only he believed about himself.

Elia, Aegon, Rhaenys, and Lyanna are all dead because Rhaegar did not care about protecting them. Jon is alive because Ned did what Rhaegar didn't. He protected Jon when Rhaegar couldn't even be bothered protecting his already existing two children.