#but also?????? the persona characters themselves are so realistically written

[eeldritchblast]

Wyll Ravengard Deserves Healing Too

Every origin companion in Baldur’s Gate 3 is traumatized in some form or another, and they all deal with it in different ways. That is only realistic. But let’s take a deeper look at the inequality between how these stories of trauma are written and presented to the player. Because when we do that, it is extremely noticeable that there is one character who never receives the same level of catharsis bestowed upon everyone else: Wyll.

Shadowheart was abducted as a child to be raised in an abusive cult. When this is brought to light, the player is able to help her confront her abuser and find her parents again. Even if her parents die, Shadowheart is at least given closure; she has a whole scene in which we see her finally break down into tears, and the player can comfort her.

Gale ended up with an orb of Netherese magic inside him, ready to explode and destroy not just him but everything in his radius. He went into a deep depression and relied on Tara to keep him alive, pre-game. His goddess/ex-lover then tasked him with a suicidal mission. But Gale is able to confront Mystra and either regain her compassion or reject her and forge his own godhood. Either way, Gale is able to heal physically and emotionally.

Lae’zel, much like Shadowheart, was also raised in a torturous environment, only to realize that her Queen Vlaakith is nothing but an abuser and a user. She is able to ally herself with a rebellious faction rising against Vlaakith, not just freeing herself but potentially her entire People.

Karlach was betrayed by Gortash and sold to Zariel, who replaced her heart with an infernal engine, making it impossible for Karlach to keep living outside of the Hells. Even if she doesn’t end up with a cure, the player can at least help her confront Gortash, and like Shadowheart, she gets a whole special scene for her to finally work through her bottled up emotions.

Astarion was enslaved and tortured by Cazador for over two-hundred years, who would have used him in a ritual that resulted in his death. The player can help Astarion confront Cazador and potentially kill him, which leads to Astarion getting a small scene where he cries out in a mixture of emotions.

But what of Wyll? At just age seventeen he was given the choice of either selling his soul to Mizora, or see Baldur’s Gate fall to a dragon cult. The terms of his pact prevented him from telling the truth about the situation, resulting in his idolized father banishing him. Ever since, he was bound to Mizora, and we see how she treats him in game as if he’s a dog. Wyll is just as traumatized as his companions, and yet, where is the ability to comfort him? Where is his closure? It’s all disregarded, in favour of more content with Mizora.

Wyll’s personal quest at the start of Act Three has him forced to choose between giving up his soul to save his father, or freeing himself and seeing his father die. Now, it is possible – though difficult – for the player to rescue Duke Ravengard themselves even if Wyll breaks his pact with Mizora. But even if this is so, reading Mizora’s mind results in the player hearing her admit she will never stop trying to harm Wyll’s father.

The reason you can read Mizora’s mind is because she is just there, hanging out at your camp! There is even a sex scene between her and the player available! Just imagine for a second, if that was Cazador or Viconia in Mizora’s place. Mizora is nothing but Wyll’s tormentor, just like Cazador for Astarion and Viconia for Shadowheart, and yet she is permanently there, giving witty one-liners and trying to seduce the player. Attack her, and she only disappears to reappear again, unharmed. You cannot get rid of her, and it’s played for laughs.

Wyll deserves comfort. Wyll deserves a chance to show his emotions, too. Yes, I’m aware that part of his character is that he tries to downplay his concerns in order to maintain his heroic persona, but that just means it would have been even more powerful to finally gain his trust enough for him to share how he feels with the player, truly.

Wyll is the only Black companion – and only one of two visible characters of colour, period. (The other being Karlach, who while yes is a tiefling, based on her facial features in the full release of the game is East Asian.) It is hard to believe it is all just coincidence that it is the only Black companion was given no opportunity by the writers to receive any significant emotional support or show any significant relief from his trauma. Statistically, African Americans who need mental health treatments receive less than 50% of treatments that white Americans receive. This is despite African Americans having 20% more likeliness to undergo serious psychological distress than white Americans. [X]

No, Wyll Ravengard is not a real person, and I am not attempting to equate a fictional character to real life struggles. My point here, is that the way in which Wyll was written mirrors the way in which the mental health of Black men and boys in real life is systematically ignored and downplayed, with the belief that they can and must “tough it out”. My point here, is that I have a hard time believing the prejudices and stereotypes against Black people did not contribute to Wyll’s lack of content. Specifically, the lack of content related to his healing.

[a-froger-epic]

The Queen fandom, Freddie Mercury and Characterisation

Or: Why are those anons like this? Why are those writers like this? Why don't we understand each other?

In this essay, I will-

No, I’m serious, I will. And this is an essay. It’s roughly 2500 words.

The friction, concerns and hurt in fandom around Freddie’s characterisation - most recently centred around a fic the author tagged as ‘Bisexual Freddie Mercury’, stating in the notes that they have chosen to write Freddie as bisexual - have given me a lot to think about. And if you have been asking yourself the questions above, this here might be of interest to you.

First off, why do I feel like I need to talk about this?

The answer is not: Because I’m so very influential in fandom.

I think my influence in this fandom has been vastly overstated by some people. If I were so influential, everybody would rush to read anything I rec or write. And trust me, they really don’t. My relevance is confined to a very specific part of the fandom. That part is made up of: Freddie fans, Froger shippers, some Roger fans, a handful of writers who like to support each other and like each other’s work, and people who are really into research.

There are many parts of fandom where my opinions are entirely irrelevant. Looking at the big picture, by which I mean only the Queen RPF fandom, I simply am not that important. Looking at the even bigger picture: the Queen fandom as a whole, the majority of which doesn't read or care about RPF - I am literally nobody.

Furthermore, everything I will be talking about here is in relation to the RPF-centred part of Queen fandom.

So why this public essay?

Because I have been deeply involved for two years in a divide of opinions concerning how Freddie ought to be written and how people think of RPF. I think this is in large part because I - like several other authors currently writing for the fandom - absolutely love research. It's my idea or fun. I love to dig into these real people’s lives. Not everybody does that and not everybody is comfortable with that. It’s a personal choice depending on people's levels of comfort surrounding RPF. But this does put me firmly in the camp of Freddie fans who like to explore who this man really was, and track down every last fact about him.

Freddie Mercury vs. Fictional Freddie

I’ll admit that I am one of those people who have the urge to speak up when they see somebody claim that Freddie was bisexual, and sometimes I will say: “Well, actually, we do know that he didn’t see himself that way, because…” For me, these have often been positive exchanges.

I think there is overwhelming evidence that Freddie Mercury identified as gay from his split with Mary to the end of his life (wonderfully curated here by RushingHeadlong). In the niche of fandom I have frequented over the last two years, as far as Freddie the real man is concerned, I have barely ever seen anybody argue with this.

But fanfiction and talking about real Freddie are not one the same thing, and they shouldn't be, and as far as I am concerned they don't have to be. Some writers like to put every last fact and detail they can find into their fic, in an attempt to approach a characterisation that feels authentic to them (and perhaps others), and other writers are simply content to draw inspiration from the real people, writing versions vaguely based on them.

But writing historically and factually accurate RPF is more respectful.

Is it? I've thought about this for a long time, and I really can't agree that it is. This, to me, seems to presume that we know what kind of fiction these real people would prefer to have been written about them. That, in itself, is impossible to know.

However, if I imagine Freddie reading RPF about himself, I think that he might laugh himself silly at an AU with a character merely inspired by him and may be really quite disturbed by a gritty, realistic take full of intimate details of and speculations about his life and psyche. Such as I also tend to write, just by the by, so this is definitely not a criticism of anybody. Freddie is dead. Of all the people to whom the way he is written in fiction matters, Freddie himself is not one. There is no way to know what Freddie would or wouldn't have wanted, in this regard, and so it isn't relevant.

Personally, I can't get behind the idea that speculating and creatively exploring very intimate details of Freddie's life, things he never even spoke of to anybody, is in any way more respectful than writing versions of him which take a lot of creative liberties. As I've said so many times before, I think either all of RPF is disrespectful or none of it is.

So who cares about Freddie characterisation in fiction anyway?

Clearly, a lot of people do. Freddie Mercury was an incredibly inspiring figure and continues to be that to a multitude of very different people for different reasons. There are older fans who have maybe faced the same kind of discrimination because of their sexuality, who saw Freddie's life and persona distorted and attacked by other fans and the media for decades, who have a lot of hurt and resentment connected to such things as calling Freddie bisexual - because this has been used (and in the wider fandom still is used) to discredit his relationship with Jim, to argue that Mary was the love of his life and none of his same sex relationships mattered, to paint a picture where "the gay lifestyle" was the death of him. And that is homophobic. That is not right. I completely understand that upset.

But.

These are not the only people who care about Freddie and for whom Freddie is a source of inspiration and comfort. What about people who simply connect to his struggles with his sexuality from a different angle? What about, for example, somebody who identifies with the Freddie who seemed to be reluctant to label himself, because that, to them, implies a freedom and sexual fluidity that helps them cope with how they see their own sexuality? Is it relevant why Freddie was cagey about labelling himself? Does it matter that it likely had a lot to do with discrimination? Are his reasons important? To some degree, yes. But are other queer people not allowed to see that which helps them in him? Are they not allowed to take empowerment and inspiration from this? Can you imagine Freddie himself ever resenting somebody who, for whatever reason, admired him and whose life he made that little bit brighter through his mere existence, however they interpreted it? I honestly can't say that I can imagine Freddie himself objecting to that.

This is the thing about fame. Anyone who is famous creates a public persona, and this persona belongs to the fans. By choosing that path, this person gives a lot of themselves to their fans. To interpret, to draw inspiration from, to love the way it makes sense to the individual. Please remember, at this point, that we are talking about how people engage with Freddie as a fictional character creatively. This is not about anybody trying to lay down the law regarding who Freddie really was, unequivocally. This is all about writers using his inspiring persona and the imprint he left on this world to explore themes that resonate with them.

This is what we as writers do. We write about things which resonate with us and often touch us deeply.

But don't they care about the real Freddie?

Yes, actually, I would argue that a lot of people care about "the real Freddie". It seems to me that depicting Freddie as gay or with a strong preference for men is what the vast majority of the RPF-centered fandom on AO3 already does. You will find very, very few stories where Freddie is depicted having a good time with women sexually or romantically. That he was mostly all about men is already the majority opinion in this part of fandom.

But another question is, who was the real Freddie? If the last two years in fandom have taught me anything, it is that even things which seem like fact to one person can seem like speculation to another. I have personally had so many discussions with so many people on different sides of the debate about the exact circumstances of Freddie's life and his inner world, that I must say I don't think there is such a thing as one accurate, "real" portrayal of Freddie. Even those of us who are heavily invested in research sometimes disagree quite significantly about the interpretations of sources. So that narrows "You don't care about the real Freddie" down to "You don't care about Freddie because you don't interpret everything we know about his life the exact same way I do". Sure, by that definition, very few people care about Freddie the same way you do.

The bottom line is, there are so many writers and fans who love him, people who are obsessed with him, people who care about him deeply. They might care about who they believe he really was or who he chose to present himself as to the world, the way he wanted to be seen. But ultimately, in my personal opinion, if somebody is inspired to write Freddie as a fictional character they feel that Freddie means a lot to them. And it is hurtful to accuse them of not caring.

But what some people write hurts/triggers me.

Yes, that can happen. Because the nature of AO3 is that everything is permitted. Personally, I am very much in agreement with that. You will also find me in the camp of people who are against any sort of censorship on AO3, no matter how much some of the content goes against my own morals or how distasteful I find it. Some people disagree with that, which is fine. We must agree to disagree then. Here, I would like to quote QuirkySubject from the post she made regarding this whole situation because I cannot put it better myself: “The principle that all fic is valid (even RPF fic that subverts the lived experience of the person the fic is based on) is like the foundation of [AO3]. The suggestion that certain kinds of characterisations aren't allowed will provoke a knee-jerk reaction by many writers.”

No matter how much you may disagree with a story's plot or characterisation, it is allowed on AO3. "But wait," you might say, "the issue is not with it being on the site but with people like yourself - who should care about "the real Freddie" - supporting it."

This is some of what I have taken away from the upset I have seen. And it’s worth deconstructing.

I've already addressed "the real Freddie". Moving on to...

The author is dead.

This is something others might very well disagree on as well, but to me the story itself matters far more than authorial intent. And what may be one thing according to the author’s personal definition, may be another thing to the reader. Let’s use an example. This is an ask I received yesterday:

This author thinks they were writing Freddie as bisexual. However, going by the plot of their story, I would actually say that it is largely very similar to how I see the progression of Freddie’s young adulthood. To me, personally, Freddie would still be gay throughout the story because he arrives - eventually - at the conclusion that he is. The author and I disagree on terminology only. And I think simply disagreements about terminology, given that some terms are so loaded with history in Freddie’s case, trips a lot of people up.

It seems to me that many people still equate bisexuality with a 50/50 attraction to men and women, when in actual fact many - if not most - bi/pan people would say that it is nowhere near that distribution. Some people are of the opinion that anybody who experiences some attraction to the opposite sex, even if they have a strong same-sex preference, could be technically considered bisexual. (However, sexuality isn’t objective, it’s subjective. At least when it comes to real people. What about fictionalised real people? We will get to that.)

Let's briefly return to real Freddie.

What I'm seeing is that there are several ways of thinking here, with regard to his sexuality.

1. Freddie was gay because that seems to be (from everything we know) the conclusion he arrived at and the way he saw himself, once he had stopped dating women. Therefor, he was always gay, it just took him a while to come to terms with it.

2. Freddie can be referred to as bisexual during the time when he was with women because at that time, he may very well have thought of himself thusly - whether that was wishful thinking and he was aware of it or whether he really thought he might be bisexual is not something we can say definitively. He came out as gay to two friends in 1974 on separate occassions, and he talked to his girlfriends about being bisexual. (Personally, I think here it is interesting to look at who exactly he was saying what to, but let's put my own interpretations aside.)

3. Freddie can be seen as bisexual/pansexual because his life indicates that he was able to be in relationships with both men and women and because there is nothing to disprove he didn't experience any attraction to the women he was with. Had he lived in a different time, he may have defined himself differently.

Now, I'm of the first school of thought here, personally, although I understand the second and also, as a thought experiment, the third.

I think all of these approaches have validity, although the historical context of Freddie's life should be kept in mind and is very relevant whenever we speak about the man himself.

But when we return to writing fictionalised versions of Freddie, any of these approaches should absolutely be permissible. Yes, some of them or aspects of them can cause upset to some people.

And this is why AO3 has a tagging system. This is why authors write very clearly worded author's notes. This is the respect authors extend to their readers. This, in turn, has to be respected. Everybody is ultimately responsible for their own experience on the archive.

Nobody has the right to dictate what is or isn't published under the Queen tag. As far as I am concerned, nobody should have that right. As far as I am concerned, everybody has a responsibility to avoid whatever may upset them. I understand where the upset comes from. I also maintain it is every writer's right to engage with Freddie's character creatively the way they choose to.

None of us can control how other people engage with Freddie or the fandom. None of us can control what other people enjoy or dislike about the fandom.

The best way to engage with the content creating part of fandom, in my opinion, has always been to create what brings you joy, to consume the content that brings you joy and to respectfully step away from everything that doesn't.

[papers4me]

Fruits Basket, Se03. ep 7 (part 1)

Just to clarify, the only thing I didn’t like abt this ep is tohru, the rest is so good. kyo’s mental state is at its lowest & you can feel for him! ugh!, surprisingly akito’s own lid was so well-done!, Ren & shigure were epicly disgusting & fascinating!, kureno was so well-written, the final scene of tohru & kyo rightfully setting for the climax! Before moving on to the good part,  I’ll quickly go over why torhu’s character was once again the most inconsistent character in the show:

Ep,6 ending showed us a completely broken kyo in full display in front of tohru, best furuba cliff hanger to date hands down, followup: tohru laughing, cooking & wondering if kyo is asleep!!!. Complete detachment & extreme insensitivity to what she witnessed earlier. Not an ounce of wonder if kyo is okay or if sth is wrong with him. Not a single inner thought of “ I hope he’s okay” or “ oh momiji don’t call him, He’s a bit tired” while flashbaking to his traumatized face. Honestly, all they needed to do was a small quick inner thought to connect the scenes. No need to write new scenes. Alas, Tohru’s complete lack of compassion struck me deep. I was told ep6 ending was an anime original scene, I don’t mind any diversion from the original since I don’t know the it, but those writers who wrote a complete new scene didn’t feel the need to transition from it to the rest of the manga? really? It’s hard to believe.

Choosing the kitchen’s happy scene after of kyo’s nightmare is not bad as it shows that nobody either care or know abt his issues, fair enough. However, choosing the kitchen’s happy scene after the PTSD in tohru’s own bedroom & not modifying tohru’s happy go lucky, let’s cook yay face to a realistic concerned expression is absurd! It really takes plenty from tohru as a character. This comes after tohru’s long awaited background ep which returns tohru back to square one.

Just last ep, tohru opened her lid in front of kyo & he comforted her, While she still yet to overcome her fears, she failed miserably in doing the only thing that she’s been doing since se01, ep1, being compassionate & thoughtful. Oh well, adding a light scene in the midst of kyo & akito’s dark sequence is more important than tohru’s character consistency & growth.

moving on from tohru~~~

-Kyo’s suffocation: (guilty or not, it doesn’t matter)

we get kyo’s nightmare really gave me chills & was visually well-done. it brilliantly conveyed the feeling of suffocation, blinding fear, & intensified trauma. The nightmare’s horror vividly showcases kyo’s deepest insecurities & trauma:

It started with his mother’s “ it’s not your fault” sth kyo craved to hear from her very badly. Yet, it contradicted her action: Choosing death over staying with him.

His mother brings salvation: the cat’s cage. The cat’s room parallel’s kyo’s real life at his parents house. In se01, eo24, kyo said, he wasn’t allowed to play outside or watch TV, while his bracelet ”handcuffs”  were routinely checked by his mom. Just like a prison. His mom sentenced him in the new prison fitting for more horrible sins. The cat’s cage for the rest of his life.

While kyo looks panicked & horrified but on the verge to refuse, kyoko appears. “I won’t forgive you” solidifying his mom’s judgement.

They both warn him of the consequences of living & be forgiven: tohru’s death. Go on, kyo. Add one more victim to suffer in your behalf while you roam free. You might think that you can escape the cat’s cage but your hands remain dirty with blood. Others might not see the blood on yoyr hands, but YOU do.

Kyo is torn between being an actual sinner or a victim, between causing intentional harm or unintentional hurt, between being guilty or not. It all doesn’t matter & kyo knows it. What matter is the punishment has been going for years now & he’s tired, broken, lost & just wants it all to end. Death. Slow death in a tiny cage is so fitting for all the pain he caused others, for all the pain he suffered.

Kyo knows (a) suffering in front of tohru is hurting her. (b) Accepting her love will lead to hurting her: confessing of kyoko’s death. (c) Abandoning her is hurting her. (d) kyo knows that he doesn’t deserve her, not after he caused all this pain. (e) Above all, kyo can’t live with himself anymore. being close to her hurt so much.

-Akito’s lid: ( broken home & broken self image):

I must say they did an excellent job of presenting akito’s past! (a) It was a mixture of narration through (shigure & Ren), (b) actual animation of her parents causing her pain & traumatizing her (the scenes of Akira’s last words, her mom’s accusations), (c) Actual animation of the origin of her parents (Ren & Akira’s relationship), (d) akito herself confessing abt her pain in front of kureno. Tohru’s own lid on the other hands was presented through (a) excessive narrative with minimum animation (the grandpa’s endless exposition of tohru’s background quickly wrapped up), (b) no real animation of kyoko actually hurting tohru or how she did it, just again the grandpa narrating that kyoko “went away”. (c) tohru’s own self recall of her past being cut into pieces & divided throughout the ep, once after running from shigure & another in the sheet scene. Tohru’s ep wasn’t bad at all, it was good, but it was evidently shortened & summarized lazily. Oh well. What both eps serve is painting tohru & akito as foils of each other:

Both are attached toxicly to their parent. Tohru: kyoko & Akito: akira.

Both were welling to create a fake persona or an image that keeps this toxic love alive & cling to it no matter what.

Both hurt themselves the most & are struggling to let go of this bond.

Both have parents that hurt them. Akito: ren & tohru: kyoko, altho it is not clear how kyoko hurt tohru but kyoko is more a ghost than a real character.

Both cling to a dead object that represent their deceased parent. Tohru & the photo frame & akito & the box.

Kyoko existed to be this perfect mother with no sins, the character that tohru embodied to “fix” & “ heal all broken kids”. She lives only in memories. Even other characters think of her as this holy being. It is alluded Kyo seemed to know her as a real person who can commit mistakes, therefore, to kyo, kyoko isn’t an angel or a holy being. However, thanks to their encounter at her death & her “ I won’t forgive you” words, kyoko now is a haunting ghost to kyo. Akira on the other hand, existed as this sickly, pale & fragile head of the house, treated with so much aura & holiness. He died but his sins remain in how he raised akito.

Both must let go of their toxic bonds. Tohru of her deep attachment to her mom & akito to the zodiacs.

Both must learn to form healthier relationships.

However, there are striking differences between them! tohru never abused anyone nor attempted murdering someone by throwing’ em from a terrace, or locking them & torment them or stabbing them with a knife!! Tohru’s sin is torturing herself which by consequence tortured kyo, too. Cuz there’s is a theme of a loved-one’s pain is mine as well. Kyo’s mom hurt her own self & ended her own life. This resulted in her son’s years of immense pain, trauma & self-loath & similar suicidal tendencies, se0, ep16 “ I’ will yuki & then kill myself”, & se02, e9 “ mother, if only you killed me instead”. tragic.

Side Notes:

I will say this with a broken heart....... Tohru must learn to let go of.... kyo.  She is suffocating him. Not on purpose. I want them to be together! so bad! they’re so perfect for each other, but also, right now is NOT the time for this. Kyo & tohru’s character issues is NOT abt romance. They have real traumatic issues that are hindering their growth as independent characters. Tohru’s growth might not be well-written or well-presented, but kyo’s growth is still not explored. Next ep is where his lid opened! it must be painful. A person suffering from extreme self-loath & suicidal tendencies shouldn’t be presented so lightly in favor for the love cures all fairy tale! PLZ! NO!

Tohru must learn to not repeat her mistake again & live only for one person. She must let go of kyo in order to gain kyo back. Right now, She can’t have him! kyo is suffocated by his own trauma & adding tohru’s guilt on top of it is devastating. I mean, This could go differently & kyo might accept her love on the spot, & tohru might save him again or sth. I can see this being going deeper or shallower depending on the desired theme. Which of furuba’s heavy themes will be given to climax?

why is momiji doing a rabbit burger? he’s not cursed anymore. I know he’s keeping it a secret, but I thought momiji’s whole growth was abt letting go of the past. he still identifies with the zodiac rabbit?

Ren is hella sexy! & her Japanese VA deserves an Oscar! The way she expresses sexiness, seductive, anger, hate, contempt, sarcasm, delusional screaming, pain! EPIC!

“I thought I was created to receive others contempt” ugh! this hurt, kyo.

Shigure’s line abt looking at Ren to fantasize how akito will look if she were allowed to be a woman, ewww!!!! hella disgusting! imagine sleeping wth someone & fantasizing abt her daughter or vise versa!

Honestly, this ep while not excusing akito’s crimes & abuse of others, it did paint her in a human light. I really don’t want her to end up with shigure. Akito’s whole life is abt misunderstood love. Give her time to discover herself. A guy who slept with her mom is never a reasonable partner even if he loves her for eternity. but oh well~

Shigure indirectly caused Isuzu’s near death abuse by Akito. all in his attempts to free akito from the curse. I love how disgustingly selfish he is.  I remember his “ you mom told you to not interfere, kagura” in se03, ep3. shudder!!! if hiro never met haru that day & confessed to him, if kureno never noticed the maid! Still, he went & visited isuzu after her 4 moths imprisonment in the cat’s cage her hospitals discharge & recovery!

ngl... Shigure & Ren’s sexual tension is the biggest in furuba. Eww!

I’ll talk abt kureno & akito more in part 2. but I felt nothing watching kureno get stabbed lol. this is due to the trailer spoiling it & the ED having him happily in love -_-’.  bummer!.

I love tohru & kyo’s outfit in the ep cliff hanger. lol. Tohru really dressed up to confess.

Tohru read the room! Even if you magically forgotten how sickly & out of it he was in your room earlier, remember this: Kyo always have bad mood in the rain! Then again... he did hug her for the first time & called her by her name in the midst of a rainy storm. se01, e024. >_<!

[leefi]

Starira MBTI III - Frontier

1. Seisho

2. Siegfeld

3. Frontier

4. Rinmeikan

Aruru Otsuki: ENFP

Just go and reread Karen’s entry.

FJDKSLDKL in all seriousness leaps and bounds of Ne from both of them. There’s a reason they often catch themselves saying the same things and why Karen sees so much of herself in Aruru. Not only are they both Ne doms, they’re the exact same type! Ne and Fi together hold that naturally sunny and joyful disposition they both have, and that extreme, passionate love for the people they’re close to. And her Ne may be even higher off the charts than Karen’s. From the entirety of Captain Twins, to improvising lines on stage with Misora as kids, to being the embodiment of Frontier’s free-spirit, pioneering nature - all of this is extroverted intuition, chasing at every possibility under the sun, no matter how absurd it may seem. Her STRONG tertiary Te -- which is much stronger than Karen's, by the way -- supports her dominant Ne, and this is where her gung-ho attitude comes from. “We have to write our own play?? No problem, wheel out the whiteboard! Nobody has an idea yet?? That’s fine, I’ll throw one out and get the ball rolling! Misora and I need three more people for our play? What are we waiting for, let’s go find them!!” All of this is tertiary extroverted Thinking, implementing your ideas out in the world.

Misora Kano: ISTP

She is so compelling!!! I wish we got to see more out of her!! She's already cultivated so many of her talents (and her function stack is pretty strong for such a young age too) - she'd really shine if you just gave her the spotlight! The second ISTP in this series who had her inferior Fe develop super early due to having 1) a ton of siblings and working with so many people from such a young age and 2) a gf with Fi in her dom/aux slot. I’m gonna start with her Fe again because, like Futaba’s, it’s so strong for how young she is - she is quicker to pay attention to social convention than Fi-aux Aruru, scolding her whenever she refers to older Karen by her first name, for example (don't let her see Aruru call Akira -chan). We see aux Se in how energetic and in the moment she is - she grew up acting and doing backstage work and helping her family with their troupe, and we never really see her stuck in her head or wondering about things that aren’t in the here-and-now. Her partnership with ENFJ Michiru to create a new Troupe is going to be SO SO GOOD in the future. They really are going to draw the best out of each other. As polar opposites, they have the exact same functions, just in reverse (like Karen and Junna, or Hikari and Ichie)! So Misora has Ti-Se-Ni-Fe, and Michiru has Fe-Ni-Se-Ti. It’s the perfect setup for them to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Honestly, I really wish we saw more out of Misora - she deserves more than just being Aruru’s sidekick, and that Feeling function in her inferior slot (extroverted, no less) means that it’s difficult for her to communicate what exactly it is that she wants, both for herself and from others. Like with Mahiru, it’s intuitively hard for her to speak up and say “Hey, I feel like I’m being left behind”. Somebody needs to tap Aruru on the shoulder and communicate that to her - Fe-dom Tsukasa, maybe, or ideally, Misora herself. I think that she’s been kind of shouldered into the straight-man role not just by Aruru but everyone at Frontier because they all have such big personalities (like...she’s got Aruru and Lalafin taking up space, which is already more than enough), and she’s likely been in this position before. She’s been helping her parents run a troupe since she was a child, and now she’s (unfortunately) playing second fiddle to Aruru for the most part at Frontier. She’s been mostly stuck using her Ti and Se, and I really really hope that AA has us seeing her use more of that tertiary Ni and advocating for the goals she has for herself. She deserves to shine so much!!

One final note - I find it so interesting that both ISTPs in this series have such strong senses of faith - Misora is cast as the Faith arcana (and, unlike some of the other girls who are cast as the “opposites” of their personalities, Misora’s seems true to hers), and Futaba obviously has that reverent faith in Kaoruko (and is canonically religious???). It’s a bit antithetical to the ISTP personality type, which values its individuality above all else and tends to be a bit of a rebel. I don’t have much to add here - it’s just an interesting observation.

Shizuha Kocho: INFJ

Lalafin: The Count was such a great actor! I’m sure he would’ve been great on stage too…

Shizuha: Heh heh, maybe!

Shizuha: But still, he never went back to his original persona even after his revenge. He had to stay as the count for the rest of his life.

Shizuha: And he was able to do that because he was good at becoming other people.

Shizuha: ...Although I cannot say if that meant he was happy.

Lalafin: Even after his revenge, he still wasn’t happy...That’s one point of view to make his sadness stand out even more!

Shizuha: Right?...Yes. I think I’ll stick to how I’m doing things now.

THE!! LOVE!! OF!! MY!! LIFE!!!!!!! I CANNOT OVERSTATE ENOUGH HOW MUCH I LOVE SHIZUHA KOCHO!!!! She was my first favorite character in the game (and still is!! But frontier gets no content :’)). As I said with Maya, INFJs are old souls - wise and idealistic, but typically reserved. Auxiliary extroverted Feeling shows up in how she suppresses herself so as not to intimidate or make others feel inferior - we see the exact same thing play out with INFJ sibling Koharu. She’s mysterious but amiable, kind and awe-inspiring - just like INFJ sibling Maya. And we see that token INFJ loneliness playing out with all three, as well. What I love most about Shizuha is that she’s a person of extremes. She is so cerebral and intelligent and dignified in a way that reminds you of Maya but she’s also so!!!! Fucked in the head!!!!! Ni doms baby!!!!!!! (I am fucking crazy. But i am free).

Unhealthy INFJs can develop this obsession with making themselves martyrs, and I don’t think I need to rehash out her AA conversation with Aruru (and her entire philosophy towards acting - see above quote) to get that across. I want to dive into this more. Truly I do. Shizuha deserves 10 pages of writing. But she is one of the last I'm writing and I've clicked through 3 different AA stories and accidentally found Rui and Yukko's first so I diverted and finished writing Yukko's entry and I've already spent so much time on this oh god the doc is already 18 pages single spaced uhhhh Shizuha my loveliest love I will write your character deep-dive later I prommy <333

(Also, seeing her synergy with Aruru is soo so cute. INFJ/ENFP supremacy!! Same dynamic as MayaKaren!)

Lalafin Nonomiya: ESFP

(Se dom).

She’s so athletic and energetic and in-the-moment and improvisational and quick on her feet (Se, Se, Se)! Fi over Ti aux because she has a much more subjective view of what’s “fun” - “what do I want to do? Where do I want to go? What kind of character do I want to play???". She’s got that trademark genki energy that so many ExFPs share, particularly that childlike zeal that she and ESFP sister Ichie both have. In her own way, Lalafin embodies Frontier’s pioneering, fun-loving spirit just as much as Aruru.

Tsukasa: Lupin is usually portrayed as mysterious and polished, no? But the way you perform him is more fresh and open -- almost like the main character from a children’s book.

Lalafin: Oh! Come to think of it, the book on Lupin I read when I was younger was written for kids!

Lalafin: It was about this big and had a realistic image of Lupin right on the cover!!

I don’t really have too much to add. She’s just a perfect embodiment of that excitable, fun-loving Se and Fi dom/aux duo. Childlike and simplistic-appearing at a first glance, but there's such a fire in there - just compare her to her ESFP twin Ichie!

Tsukasa Ebisu: ENFJ

I can see that use of Se - love of fashion, sweets, dancing, going out and enjoying life - yes, she had overprotective parents and could just be making up for lost time, but I think that nice material things are something she just genuinely enjoys for herself as well. So at first I thought ESFP, but we can’t ignore that enormously caring attitude she has for others and the way she gravitates towards caretaker roles, which indicates more Fe than Fi. So ENFJ it is! She has that Fe and Se, and we see that inferior Ti in how she struggled to realize something was wrong when she was trapped in the play. I love, love, loved her leading role in the Arise All You Sons event and how she and Yachiyo interacted to bring out the best in each other - we saw Yachi using a lot of that aux Ti to support Tsukasa’s inferior Ti and dominant Fe!

Her dominant Fe is SOOOO clear and contrasts to every other girl in Arise All You Sons. She’s the first to go “hey, wait, hold on - I’m not sure what (inferior Ti) but something about this feels artificial, and I don’t think it’s actually going to help the kids”. Inferior Ti/Dominant Fe speaks before thinking too - “Why did I say that?! Why did I do x?!” - it isn’t until aux Ti Yachiyo shows up to help her that she’s able to work through her thoughts. While she can get stuck in the rut of her own mind sometimes, Tsukasa is one of the most caring, empathetic, and mature characters in the series - and she does all this without sacrificing her own autonomy and individuality, which can be difficult for an Fe-dom to do.

[pepperful-qt]

hi can u write smth on like headcanons on what type of person would tsukki tendou iwaizumi and kenma crush on 👁👄👁

ooh funfun. this is something i do a lot for characters i write about to make the reader character realistic, so this is right up my alley :3 this focuses primarily on personality rather than physical types (with a small exception)

*just a heads up, this is LONG

the type of person they crush on w/ Tsukishima, Tendou, Iwaizumi, & Kenma

*****

Tsukishima

for Tsukki it wouldn’t necessarily be someone exactly like him, but they’d have definite similarities

they’d earn his respect before they’d get his heart

hands down this person needs to have a thick skin. i think generally Tsukki doesn’t outright insult or harshly tease (like with Hinata & Kags) the people he really cares about or has affection for (look at his relationship with Yamaguchi), but he is blunt and sometimes unintentionally snaps or is just straight up mean

if someone is easily affected by that, it’s a no go, sorry

not to say they couldn’t get their feelings hurt, and he would feel bad especially if his crush had already developed, but initially there would need to be a resistance or retort to that kind of thing. they’d understand that his words come from a place of both honesty and care, and any lashing out is just a result of stress and unresolved emotion

yeah he’d be attracted to intelligence and wit

part of me just thinks he enjoys mental stimulation and someone who can make him think not only piques his interest in the person but also makes him enjoy and look forward to spending time with them

at the same time, being able to enjoy comfortable silence is important too

and wit. he’d definitely tease someone he has a crush on though and i’ll tell you why

he has two goals: get them flustered or get them to smile/laugh genuinely

he’d love someone that can tease back, and makes him work for a reaction

and--this is important--makes him smile and laugh

speaks fluent sarcasm

not a pushover, and not afraid to call him out when he goes too far 

they probably have weird habits or specific tastes or something, which he picks up on as the perceptive guy he is occasionally he uses them as fodder for teasing

they’d be someone with layers ha shrek or with personas they switch between easily, like going from sweet to stone-faced roaster

to tack onto the mental stimulation, you know how Yachi said Tsukki treats everything logically and approaches his blocking like a difficult test question? to an extent the same would apply to that person

he’d be figuring out how they tick, what makes them laugh, etc, and in the process of that it turns into a different kind of interest

it takes him a bit to figure out why exactly he likes seeing their smile or spending time with them, or why he cares so much

a certain subtle air of confidence

i think Tsukki would appreciate music taste

someone who is caring and generous, but doesn’t make a big deal out of it

they’d quietly offer help to a classmate if they noticed they’re struggling, or bring back an extra drink for him from the vending machine like it’s the most casual thing in the world

someone that cares about themselves, but not obsessed with themselves

to quote a favorite song of mine: sweet with a mean streak (not mean really, but not afraid to bite back)

* * *

Tendou

simply put, it wouldn’t be any average person

there would be something about the person that initially caught his eye, something unique that makes them stand out just a little

examples of this could be: a sharp tongue, a book or manga they always have on their desk, a keychain, dyed hair, wearing headphones all the time (he wonders what they’re listening to)

these would be things that make him interested and start paying attention to the person, eventually even striking up a conversation

in terms of personality, I think he’d enjoy someone with a sense of humor. obviously we know he can get along with most people regardless of that (ushijima) even if not everyone understands him, but someone that isn’t thrown off by his dramatic personality and responds in kind would definitely excites him

he likes to chatter, so a good listener and/or someone that’s a good conversationalist would be great tbh

and i’ll just say it, if this person is a manga/anime fan, or just knowledgeable on pop culture in general immediate bonus points. shared passions are great

an acknowledging smile or greeting, especially before they’re acquainted, actually goes a long way bc he has a history of being shunned and mocked by his peers. just that simple kindness which is unfortunate that not treating someone like that would be seen as kind is really important to him before he realizes it

a huge thing i think for him is feeling comfortable being himself around them. that itself allows him to be more open with his emotions and actually develop a crush

so going back to humor and a teasing relationship, it would need to be the type that doesn’t insult things like looks or anything like that. he has a history of insecurity that is still probably present, even if he’s mostly dealt with it, but again, being comfortable is huge. tasteful and dumbass humor only

someone who’s not afraid to say what’s on their mind. he appreciates that kind of directness, and finds it entertaining to an extent

there’s also a certain unpredictability and spontaneity with this person that keeps him on his toes and excites him. he loves a challenge

he’d love someone who shamelessly compliments him. truthfully it’s a bit of an ego thing, but in a specific way:

for Tendou, volleyball is his safe haven. that’s where he grew his confidence and skill and made his friends, so it feels nice for him to have someone appreciate the things he’s good at and cares about when he’s worked so hard for it  

and he loves looking and feeling cool, and being showered in compliments is a great confidence booster heyhey seratonin

he’d love to make them laugh

if they compliment something like his looks, humor, passion, etc that will always really touch his heart. he’d brush it off with an “i know right~?” but in reality he’s freaking out because those are important parts of his self that have really been ignored or unrecognized by most people

this person would become another safe haven where he feels accepted and confident, and genuinely enjoys being around <3

* * *

Iwaizumi

the first thing i thought of for Iwa is someone authentic

a person who is true to themselves and the people around them

he despises fake people. those types were usually the ones always confessing to Oikawa or improving themselves for him. he just thinks it’s wrong

a nice laugh. i don’t mean pretty and refined necessarily, but one that is genuine and contagious and unforced

maybe it is a naturally pretty or refined laugh, but what matters is that it’s a laugh that is theirs, not for anyone else. that’s what’s attractive to him and makes his heart speed up when he hears it

a person who is thoughtful, considerate, and compassionate. like Tsukishima, he appreciates the quiet type of kindness

but he finds it amusing when they get just a little flustered when another person points it out

another little thing, but he’d probably find someone who’s a bad flirter absolutely adorable

he’d appreciate someone emotionally intelligent and perceptive

this is a person that is usually aware of how others are feeling and is able to adjust themselves to be the most effective in that situation

for example, they can adjust their own behavior to make someone feeling nervous at ease or defuse an angry person getting out of hand

this means their advice and comments are taken much better

tbh i could see him liking someone both reserved or incredibly expressive

so they could be the type that’s an extroverted hard-to-hate ball of sunshine, or a calm individual who’s respected and whose presence is appreciated by everyone

either way, he’d notice it

this is really the exception to the ‘disliking fake people’ thing

and he’s a hot-headed, tough-love kind of guy. his caring nature is often hidden behind that behavior  

so he’d admire that kind of social ability and understanding

another thing that i immediately thought of for what he’s attracted to: passion and ambition

what their passion is is less important than the fire in their eyes when the topic comes up, or they talk about their aspirations and huge, sometimes unattainable goals

this doesn’t mean they have their life figured out, but they care both about the future and living in the moment

this is just a hunch, but he’d probably be more inclined to like an athlete or someone that takes care of their body and physical conditioning

someone who challenges him to be better. someone who understands what it means to be proud and understanding your own imperfections at the same time

a vocal supporter

whether it’s yelling his name from the stands when he makes a spike, or encouraging him to follow his passions after high school, or bragging about him to their friends, having someone unapologetically express their belief in him just makes his heart soar

but really, he likes someone who can cheer him on and tell it like it is when he needs it. he’s a pretty tough cookie so he doesn’t mind bluntness (actually prefers it)

i see him liking someone who can surprise him too

the kind of person to hit him up at midnight to go for a drive under the stars or have a dance party in the park to music from a bluetooth speaker

a passionate, authentic, and level-headed adventurer

* * *

Kenma

i’ve written so much Kenma recently lots of these traits are probably obvious lmao

first things first, he just needs to be able to vibe with them

it sounds obvious, but it’s really important. just being able to exist and not feel pressure to be someone he’s not is huge

another boy who loves comfortable silence, or someone who can talk and not mind him being minimally responsive sometimes because he is listening he’s just quiet

he’s an actions>words type of person though

so if they ask about his passions and actually show interest in him that’s great, and he notices, but following through is even better

examples: remembering his favorite flavors, engaging in conversation about the game he’s playing then the next day asking if he beat that level he was stuck on, asking how the tournament went when he mentioned how tired he was from consecutive preparatory practices the week before

things that show they do pay attention, and they do care

someone who looks out for him

this comes in many forms: bringing him a drink and snack bc you know he’s been up all night binging a new game and is probably dehydrated and hungry, or gently guiding him by the arm when he’s got his nose in his game and would definitely walk into traffic, or taking over in a conversation when they recognize he’s just hit his social quota

again, actions>words

along with this interest in him, trying to playfully get him to smile or get a reaction out of him would be annoying at first, but eventually would get him more and more flustered

sound contradictory to what i said before about him needing to feel not pressured? it is a little bit. he doesn’t get it either

really it’s the fact that this person wants to show the way he already feels

okay like Tendou, i feel like i have to say that if they play games or at least are knowledgeable about them, or even want to learn about them, it’s immediate bonus points

it’s one of his two loves. they don’t even have to be good at games as long as they can engage or listen to his rant about the history of a series or how the game mechanics differ between two different platformers and why one may be considered smoother gameplay, but it’s actually more restrictive--

you get it

someone who just casually checks in. “how are you doing?” then moves on and doesn’t make a big deal, but will listen if he needs to vent

like Iwa, he likes someone who’s straightforward and genuine

and like Tendou, there’s something about them that is unique that he latches onto

needs someone “interesting” that always brings some new experience

like Tsukki, he likes mental stimulation why do i keep using the others as examples lmao 

they need to have a sense of humor. may surprise you, but he is bffs with Kuroo, and someone witty is someone who’s interesting

he’s always got a lot on his mind, he’s always thinking

they’d need to be someone he feels comfortable conversing with and sharing his thoughts with, and is a good and responsive listener

some sort of intellectual capability

when he gets to the point where he actually seeks out their company, he starts to realize his feelings

and when he does, he’ll feel more nervous initiating interaction (afraid he’ll say or do something wrong) 

they need to be someone who will take the initiative and seek him out too, and that would only intensify his crush

*****

this turned into more of a character analysis,, oops?

[masterhandss]

Hamefura Idol AU! (part 2)

Here’s a completely unrelated Katarina idol art by @Sangotofura on twitter!

This is a continuation of my first post, the one that is more of an overview of the original FL game and the original descriptions of the characters. I don’t know if I want to write a story for this, since again this is just an excuse to draw, but I’m really having fun with expanding the alternate version of the world of hamefura.

It’s a lot of fun to rewrite hamefura’s story to fit in an idol setting, so I hope you guys don’t mind if I write a bit more for my dumb au dhjgfjs

More tidbits about the ‘Game’:

The game’s name, Fortune Lover: Cinderella Idol! or “Fortune Lover”, is read as “for-tune lover” by the fans (get it? tune?? pls laugh). The ‘F’ of the name is written as a fortissimo.

In the setting for Fortune Lover, the entertainment industry is the biggest industry of all time, with music being the most popular form. It has been like this for decades, and as time progressed, people’s tastes and expectations of music evolved, leading to the creation and popularity of idols.

Idol-Producers are a new project that is testing the capabilities of a idol teen, observing how their involvement in their own success can impact how they manage their time and how they can bring the absolute best out of themselves, on their own. Maria is the first idol who will be testing this new style. She is still a producer to herself, the boys, and even Sophia and Mary if you choose to have them join you. Despite being an idol, they still call Maria their “producer” and treats her like one. 

The characters in the game are in 3D CG, as the game includes the dance choreography or “MV Mode” if you perfect the score of the rhythm game. 

While Katarina’s bullying isn’t really death threatening, it’s more in line with the petty kind like verbal threats, sabotaging Maria’s idol clothes and stage equipment, paying someone to mess up her tracks during performances, badmouthing her infront of tv show producers and hosts, and stuff like that.

Katarina’s bullying isn’t as bad as it is in the original otome game, but she gets shunned by the public because behavior like that is only supposed to be done behind the curtains. The public has such a pure and honest perception of idols that they never think of the idea that the girls who smile and sing on stage actually try to stab each other in the back when the stage lights are off. Some people think that Katarina’s character is just a persona, so knowing that she is actually an ignorant and arrogant rich girl idol-wannabe, her fans lose respect for her. Katarina’s harassment of Maria is one of the few cases that are brought to light by the end of the game, and because of how much the public loves Maria by that point, they are enraged by Katarina’s behavior, making her lose support on all sides

Katarina had been in love with Gerald ever since they were children, and while Gerald has always been a popular boy among both his peers, when she found out Gerald was going to be an idol, she disliked the idea of sharing her beloved Gerald to a huge audience of people, so she became an idol to stand alongside him and to make herself worth of him by charming him as as an idol and gaining a large following herself. Despite this, Katarina didn’t strive too hard to be a talented idol, as she was too confident on herself due to the pampering of her parents.

Even if the player doesn’t desire to romance any of the four boys, given how the game is written and how it is programmed, the boy with the highest relationship points with Maria will confess to her by the end of the game. It would be impossible to not interact and gain points with the boys, as you gain relationship points in most areas of the games (when you “practice” your characters, when you “play” their songs, when you “give” them new clothes, when you “converse” with them in story mode, etc.). In the event that there are two characters with the exact same amount of points, the game will choose a boy for you.

Sorcier Pro.’s current president is Geoffrey Stuart (for reasons that will make sense someday) 

Katarina-Gerald and Mary-Alan aren’t engaged in this au, but are constantly in each other’s presence due to most powerful bussinessmen and celebrities being good friends with each other. 

Each girl has a specialty in a certain area: Katarina with dancing, Sophia with singing, Mary with acting/drama, and Maria (according to the official description of her in the box) with fashion coordination. Maria can be seen as more of a jack of all trades though, as she does represent the player. 

While any of the boys can trigger the condemnation event that will lead to Katarina’s social suicide, the event is specifically associated with Keith and Gerald due to the severity of her presence and bullying if you have high relationship points with the two. With Alan and Nicole, Katarina’s event only happens for a few lines, but for Keith and Gerald, it takes place in complete detail, with it’s own animated cutscene. 

Gerald’s route is also the most popular among the fans, with community surveys reporting that 53% of the game’s player base had Gerald as their final chosen love interest ( 25% with Keith, 12% with Nicol and 10% with Alan)

Monkey Girl/Past-Life Katarina

Since Maria’s name can’t be change in the game, but you can give her a “nickname” that represents the username of the player, Past-life Katarina’s name in the game is “SaruP” (or “Monkey producer” lol)

Saruchan (Monkey Girl) dies before she could finish her playthrough of the game, and all of her knowledge is based on her idol-expert best friend Acchan. She’s a bit tomboyish, and she loves to climb trees and move freely without a hint of poise or shyness, and is friendly to all genders. Her love for climbing, running, gardening with her grandma, and never ending amounts of energy gave her a pretty strong, flexible, agile and energetic body.

In Saruchan’s world, idols do exist, but aren’t portrayed in the cutesy and exaggerated manner that fiction does. Though it’s no surprise to know that in her world, almost every girl had dreamed to become an idol at one point, even herself. Acchan doesn’t find the idea interesting though, as she only lives for the idealized version of idols that exist in fiction. Acchan explains that girls their age are being brainwashed by the idealized version of idols that are presented in the media that they consume, and that they should wake up and learn to enjoy the fictional idols as they are. Despite Acchan’s realistic disapproval of idol fantasies, she does love playing idol rhythm games and gacha games, and spends her allowance on getting DLC costumes for Maria in FL. Acchan even pre-ordered tickets for herself and Saruchan for an idol concert featuring the VA of the characters, that they were supposed to attend to on the day that Saruchan dies. 

She dies the game way: on her way to school and being killed by a truck that runs her over. 

The last thing Saruchan sees before she loses consciousness forever is the wallpaper of the game’s boxart from her phone screen as it flies out of her hands. 

My Next Life as an ‘Idol’?? All Routes Lead to Doom!!!

As usual, Katarina ends up remembering her future as an 8 year old kid, and plans to prepare for her future “banishment” and humiliation. She learns to farm in order to provide for herself once she gets shunned and retreats to the countryside, and (unknowingly) meets all the characters in the game and gains their good favor before the events of the game begins. 

Her head bump still happens with Gerald, but their encounter happened in a party rather than an engagement meeting, with her tripping over a rock as she decides to run to the young man in order to introduce herself. Such introductions never got past beyond their names and few exchanges of dialogue, as the bump occurred and Katarina was immediately brought to the hospital after he called for help. 

Being a girl who wanted to be an idol at one point, Katarina wanted to use this chance to fulfill her dream of becoming one! But knowing the fate that will await her, (public humiliation, isolation, and banishment to some degree) she tries to figure out ways to avoid ruining her future.

While not as bad as death, Katarina is aware that the ending of the game implies that the blemished opinion that everyone will gain of her will lead to her leading a miserable life; one that will prevent her from gaining new allies and even studying in peace without being made fun of or called out for. It might even ruin her marriage prospects, for all she knows (it doesn’t but she’s too stupid to know that). The stakes of the bad ending aren’t life threatening, but it is personal, as Katarina always dreamed of becoming an idol as a teen and doesn’t like the idea of being able to enjoy it for a few months only to be dragged down to hell right afterwards.

The Claes is a wealthy family known for her father’s knowledge and skills when it comes to trades and business, and for her mother’s beautiful opera singing voice and celebrity presence. As usual, Katarina’s father adopts Keith for the purpose of gaining a direct heir for the business, in fear that Katarina’s future significant other might just to interested in her to gain it. 

Katarina’s plan is to learn how to farm in order to be able to support herself after her banishment, give Keith lots of love so he doesn’t end up becoming a playboy like in the game, and to train herself in dancing and singing in order to not embarrass herself like the original Katarina did. After meeting Gerald again and realizes his weakness, she eventually prepares (or buys, since the setting is modern) toy snakes that she can use to surprise him whenever the condemnation event occurs, using his shocked and panicked reaction as a way to distract the media from the claims that will surely fall upon her (since no one would have expected the calm and collected Gerald Stuart to scream like a girl at the sight of a toy snake, right? That would stay in the headlines for weeks! maybe).

As a kid, she has private singing tutors, and takes more general singing classes when she gets older. She doesn’t have dance training as a kid, but she does like to exercise and move her body around, so it slowly turned into the stamina-filled flexible body that she is used to. 

Katarina and Keith - Their meeting and impressions are mostly the same, which the difference being that Katarina used a display axe above a fireplace to break down the door, and Keith got her injured by accidentally pushing her off a pretty high cliff in the Claes grounds while they were both running and playing chase (rather than being isolated for dangerous Earth Magic, Keith as a child was a clutz who attracted danger to everyone around him, making his older brothers make fun of him for being “cursed”).

Katarina showers him with love, making him affectionate towards his step sister, in the same as he was in the original material.

When Keith finds out about Katarina’s desire to train to become an idol, he is very supportive of her, and decides to train with her in order to be able to stand by his sister on stage (as well as to generally gain the same interests as her in order to guarantee that they will stay close as they age). The contrast being that instead of becoming an idol to gain the adoration of millions of nameless faces, he now wants to become an idol to gain the love and attention of a single person, which is Katarina uwu. 

Katarina and Gerald - Gerald eventually attempts to visit Katarina to apologize for the incident, expecting her to blame him for what happened, given the personality she showed him. He was shocked to find a scar on her forehead, farming while wearing a farmer’s attire despite coming from a wealthy and esteemed family, singing and dancing to a song as she waters her vegetables. He watches for only a minute, unable to look away from the girl who danced like deflating balloon and sang off key while almost drowning her small vegetable in water. She looked weird, but she was having the time of her life, and he could see and hear it from where he stood.

 In a daze, thinking he might have entered the wrong house by accident or walked on the daughter of a maid doing chores. He walks out and leave the Claes estate without a word, and visits again after only a few days, as he couldn’t get his mind off of the oddity that he had witnessed. 

He eventually realizes that it was Katarina on his second visit, as he finds the scar of the odd farmer girl on the same girl who boasted about her family’s wealth in the party. After giving formal introductions, Gerald offers to walk around the garden to get to know each other better, in order to continue the conversation that she had originally forced on him back in the party (it was done to be polite and respectful, rather than any interest to continue). In the garden, they pass by the area that Katarina had planned to turn into her farm, and Gerald was in awe at how unorganized and messy everything looked (there was dirt everywhere, the tools were left on the floor because she had to prepare to meet him, there was more bags of manure than what was even needed etc! Katarina internally cursed at her 8 year old delicate rich girl body for not having the same arm strength as her 17 year old self). It was then that it sunk in that the adorable singing and dancing farming girl that he accidentally saw really was Katarina Claes. She wasn’t the very definition of abnormal, but she was nothing like the daughters of his father’s friends that cried when not attended to or complained when not given the best dresses and shoes. There was no shred of worry about her family’s expectations in her eyes, nor expectations of him to act like his perfect and matured self whenever they met in parties, movie premiers or social events, which made him yearn for her company. 

After finding out about Katarina’s desire to become an idol one day, Gerald secretly planned to do the same (and even have her recruited in his brother’s agency) in order to become closer to her through her love of entertainment and to have a chance to be constantly in her presence. When he found out about the charms that male idols have on their female fans, he also plans on using this as an opportunity to gain both her attention and romantic affection, by perfecting his (already maxed out) charms as male idol. 

Katarina and Mary - The two met during a part hosted by Mary’s mother in the Hunt Estate, inviting all of her mother’s old opera acquaintances, sponsors and co-workers for a formal reunion. Katarina and Keith accompanied their parents to the party, leading them to be introduced to the Hunt Family’s daughters. As usual, Katarina had the urge to “release the chocolate shark” during the party and takes an elegant leave. She eventually gets lost in the estate and finds herself in the garden. Katarina was in awe of the garden’s beauty, and stood still as she watched what seemed like beautiful siren sing by herself near a majestic fountain, with a single rose in hand. 

Mary was surprised to hear an aggressive applause after singing to herself. Katarina aggressively complimented Mary for her adorable yet elegant voice, and asked who she was seeing as a singing trainer. When Mary replied that she was not having any singing or vocal training, Katarina rains even more compliments down, claiming that “her voice was that of an angel!”. Mary denied it, so Katarina proceeded to sing the same song that she had sang, as a point of comparison to make her feel more confident in herself. Mary shyly and unexpectedly joins her, and they ended up having a small and quiet duet in the garden. Katarina’s voice sounded a bit rough and squeak-ish, but alongside Mary’s elegant and controlled singing, they didn’t sound bad at all. 

When Katarina finds out that Mary is also the one who tends to the flower garden, she proceeds to shower Mary with even more compliments, and asks her to visit and help with her own farm garden. Being complimented for having a beautiful voice and a green thumb made her feel validated and appreciated, so she often visits the Claes household in order to be in constant presence of her first and dearest friend. The rest is the same.

When Mary found out about Katarina’s dream of becoming an idol, she started taking intense vocal training as well as various exercises in order to be able to join her in her endeavor. She slowly built a more brazen and tough personality in order to be able to join and protect her friend from the rumored cold and intense reality of the idol world, as well as due to the antics of her friends. 

Katarina and Alan - From Mary, she eventually finds out that the event where Mary duets and falls in love with Alan occurred. Katarina realizes that duet must not have been that effective because she has done the same with Mary, but is confident that Mary is in love with him because Alan is a very talented and handsome individual. A few days later, the fourth Stuart son bursts into the doors of the Claes household, and demands to meet with Katarina. She learns that Alan had developed a small crush on Mary, and that he wants to challenge Katarina for her hand. Same shenanigans ensues, leading up to the piano duel where his talents in the piano was in full display to everyone in the manor. 

Katarina knew how to play the piano (just the basics though), so she was in awe listening to someone who almost sounded like a pro! Alan runs off after Gerald compliments him, Katarina chases after him, and they got to talk behind a bush. Alan wouldn’t take her compliments, but Katarina aggressively insisted that his talents are nothing to scoff at. 

When Alan says that he’s sure that his brother can play just as good, if not better than him, Katarina speculates that it wasn’t the case, because everyone had things that they are good and bad at. Not everyone is the same, no one learns at the same pace, and that she’s sure even if Gerald can play the piano better than him (and she doubts he can in the first place), no one can play the piano like Alan can. The scores in his heart are his alone, and that nothing is more beautiful than the melody that the heart enacts. Katarina knew that the score he played wasn’t an existing one, and knowing Alan’s character from the game, it’s probably either an impromptu score or one he had composed by himself. Her guess was correct, leading Alan to be caught off guard by her compliment, almost feeling emotional as no one had ever guessed and believed that the music he played was his own, until Katarina did. 

She shows off the power of the toy snake to Alan, making him laugh and see his brother in a different light. He still constantly visited Katarina for their duels, but as time progressed, he lost the affection for Mary (as he saw her as a little sister now after interacting with her in the Claes Household) that made him want to challenge Katarina. They still followed up on those challenges, for fun rather than for sport. 

When he finds out about Katarina’s dream to become an idol, he is determined to join her in order to be able to compose songs and melodies that she can sing, intending to bring out the absolute best of his muse’s voice with his own music. Someone his age might not be fit to compose songs for an idol, so he intends to become one as well in order to gain a reputation as a competent composer. 

Katarina and Sophia - The two meets at an afternoon party hosted by the Stuarts, as a celebration for the birthday of the twins. Katarina had to “powder her noes” after a few trips to the buffet table, and leaves Keith and Mary. She’s chased down by a dog, climbs up a tree, and accidentally watches a group of kids and older bully a small girl who sounded like she was about to cry. The same events occur, up to their second encounter in the party. Katarina accidentally quotes a line from a novel that she was reading, and after realizing that Sophia understood her reference, she asked for them to meet again in order to discuss their similar interests. 

Everything is pretty much the same, the difference being that somehow idols were brought as a topic of conversation, with Sophia revealing that she is actually a huge fan of idols. Katarina, feeling reminiscent of her idol-expert best friend Acchan, tells her that she actually wants to be an idol herself and insists that Sophia tell her about everything she loves about idols. Sophia, who is surprised to also find another idol fan who is as young as her, becomes even more excited and tells her all about her love for idols: how they are able to wear such adorable outfits onstage, how they sing songs that carry so much meaning, how they carry their fan’s dreams with them when they dance and sing, how amazing it is to be able to juggle so many occupations at once, and much more. 

With both love of novels and idols, Sophia constantly finds herself in the Claes Household in order to talk to Katarina about books, idols, song recommendations etc. 

When Sophia was first told that Katarina wanted to be an idol, she was very supportive of her and announced herself as Katarina’s number one fan. As time passed, she realized she wasn’t just satisfied with just watching Katarina from afar, she wanted to sing and dance alongside her! She wants to use her knowledge of romance novels and idols to help make herself and Katarina the best idols to ever exist! She wants to sing on stage about her feelings: about how much she loves Katarina, idols and their beloved novels!

Katarina and Nicol - When he found out that someone had invited his little sister to a small book club, he was very wary, thinking that she was one of the many other girls who tried to use Sophia in order to become closer with him. He was shocked to realize that that was not the case, and that Katarina had barely seen him at all, and had opened his timid little sister’s heart. When Sophia asked Katarina if she found her appearance creepy, Nicol proceeds to explain further, expecting to see a hint of guilt or displeasure from Katarina Claes, only for both of them to be met with unyielding determination to have Sophia as a close friend. Sophia went home that day in tears, thankful to have found a friend who truly wanted to stick by her side. 

The Claes siblings often visits their home so the girls can have their book club, even bringing Mary Hunt with them occasionally. Katarina, while looking a bit flustered, is capable of having a conversation with him without averting her eyes, which was a breath of fresh air to the countless camera crew, staff, visitors and even strangers who couldn’t look him in the eyes because how of how much of a beautiful child model he was. It all leads up to the moment where Katarina compliments him with how blessed he is to have such a beautiful and wonderful family, which contrasted against the ignorant adults who pitied him for having parents who refused to abuse the potential of his beautiful face and for not being as beautiful as their son, as well as for having a freakish looking sister. 

Nicol, just like his sister, desired to constantly be in Katarina’s positive presence, and visited her often, leading them to be acquainted and friends with the entire group that Katarina enraptured. 

When he found about his sister’s and Katarina’s desire to become idols, Nicol thought of doing the same, in order to be able to continue to watch over and protect both Sophia and Katarina, as well to be able to continue being close with Katarina (as their lack of similar interests and age gap might lead her away from him, but tbh that is never gonna be a problem with Katarina). He also plans to use his influence as a child model to propel Sophia and Katarina’s careers, as a way of supporting his two favorite girls. 

Notes

I’m not sure how I feel about Gerald’s backstory, I might rewrite that if anyone kindly wants to critique it.

Instead of Mary’s green thumb, it’s her voice that leads her to Katarina and Alan, but I still think Sophia would still have a better singing voice than her, so both her voice and green thumbs both play a part in her character. Mary’s high pitched voice gets a bit deeper as she ages, while Sophia’s voice stays very high.

I really like the idea that rather than the original ambitions and goals that leads the harem to become idols in Fortune Lover, now it’s the effect of Katarina’s constant insistence and declarations of becoming an idol that leads to everyone doing the same. In this timeline, the harem probably wouldn’t have thought of (or planned early) becoming an idol if Katarina never brought it up. 

I’m writing this at midnight again, lol, but yeah I’m not planning on writing a fanfiction for this, I guess, but I do want to have an established plot so rather than chapters, I’m just writing a full overview for fun haha

When I mentioned that Sophia loved idols, I didn’t realize that I might have accidentally implied that she was just as an idol fan as Acchan was, but with actual idols this time, so I went with :DD

I’ll touch up on Idol Katarina, Anne, Maria, Sirius/Raphael and Fortune Lover 2 in the next one.

I’m really happy that there are people who actually read my previous post and said that they liked it! Feedback and suggestions are appreciated! I still need a final name for the units so help me pls hahaha.

I’ll rewrite this post when I feel like adding/changing stuff.

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

The Princess Bride: Facets of Film

Movie-making is a tough and complicated business.  Once you have a studio sold on your pitch and script, there’s changes to be made, casting to be done, lighting choices, changes to the script, sets to find, costumes to make, special effects to prepare, more changes to the script, camera set-up, studio supervision, and then, possibly, more changes to the script.

In a business populated by that many people all working on the same project, every film is a minor miracle that it got made at all.  

As you may have gathered, making a movie is a huge undertaking.  There’s a lot that goes into it: cameras, music, sets, special effects, costumes, and more, managed by a lot of people who are very good at their jobs.  All of these little elements, which don’t seem that important on their own, all go into piecing together a coherent narrative in a way that makes sense, and looks good, to an audience.  

These elements, cinematography, lighting, costuming, special effects, etc., are the elements that can catch the attention of an audience, taking a ‘good’ film, and turning it into a ‘great’ film, thanks to the powers of movie magic.

See, movies are a very visual medium.  You can have a good story and characters in a book, but you have to imagine what it looks like as it moves along.  In a film, you have to watch what someone else made up.  This can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, and the difference is made entirely thanks to production design.  These ‘facets of film’, the trimmings that make a movie a movie, are vital to visual storytelling, enabling casual movie-goers to interpret what the framing of some scenes is trying to tell them.

Most audience members subconsciously internalize things like thematic costume changes, or a musical cue, without putting thought into figuring out what exactly was getting that point across.  The point is, these ‘facets of film’ are not only for filmmakers or movie critics to think about and fawn over: This storytelling shorthand is an important tool that gives the audience all of the information they need to have, without spelling it all out in dialogue.  Westley as the Dread Pirate Roberts wears all black as visual shorthand that he is dangerous, Humperdinck wears fine clothes to establish status and style, even Buttercup, whose clothing is plain when she is with Westley and uncomfortably bedecked when she is with Humperdinck, is dressed in a way that conveys something to the audience.

In other words, it’s very useful.

A good director knows to use these aspects of ‘storytelling shorthand’ well, as opposed to competently.  Too often, directors can decide to focus the production crew, and the movie itself, in the wrong place, attempting to garner praise for production design rather than substance.

There’s nothing wrong with looking good and being a well-done movie from a technical standpoint, but the balance is necessary.  A good director knows that visual storytelling accentuates its story, rather than overshadows it, intended to get the plot across in the most effective way possible, focusing on what is important: the story and characters.

Much like The Princess Bride does.

The Princess Bride isn’t exactly a blockbuster-style film.  There isn’t a huge budget spent on special effects or huge setpieces, but what is in there is done so with a remarkable touch.  Every inch of this film is designed to look like it takes place in a fairy-tale story, not exactly ‘real locations’, but looking like pictures you’d find in a story book.  That extends to the camerawork.

Camerawork is a pretty big deal in film for obvious reasons.  

The way a director uses a camera can tell the audience a lot, using some shots to emphasize different emotions, or even to get across different feelings to the audience.  Filmmakers use editing of these shots together to tell the story, to move the audience’s line of vision so that it is always centered on the action while also helping to set the mood or leave a visual impression on the audience.

So, does The Princess Bride manage that?

Most of the camerawork in The Princess Bride is fairly standard stuff, wide-shots for action, close-ups for dialogue or emotion, establishing shots for a new location, etc.  However, there are a handful of tricks that are notable: natural lighting used in the shots to make them feel open, spacious, and real, contrasting with artificial levels of darkness in the Fire Swamp, or the upwards-facing shot of Fezzik’s impersonation of the Dread Pirate Roberts, seeming to increase his size and formidability.  Other shots, like the coming-into-focus of Westley rising to point his sword at Humperdinck, are equally effective, in uses of ‘subjective camera’.  There are other, more traditional examples: shots of Buttercup’s abduction from above to make her seem even smaller, and establishing ‘relationship’ shots of people on the same level in the same frame, such as the sunset-lit kiss sequences bookending the film.  Even the editing, while being mostly standard, is given a few moments to shine, such as when the Grandfather is trying to find his place in the story after interrupting to make sure the Grandson isn’t frightened by the Shrieking Eels.  

Still, overall, it’s a fairly simple film in terms of visual style.  The cinematography is aimed at one goal: creating a charming, warm, comforting atmosphere that translates well and correctly conveys the mood of the audience.

This is even more so aided by the film’s score.

It’s fairly obvious that a movie’s soundtrack is integral to its success: a good movie can be elevated to iconic levels thanks to a good score (i.e. Jaws, Psycho, Star Wars, etc.).  In other cases, music can be passable, serviceable, without being bad or fantastic.

In the case of The Princess Bride, the score is….interesting, to say the least.  Instead of a traditional ‘fantasy’ score, the soundtrack was composed by Mark Knopfler, the front guitarist for the band Dire Straits (Money for Nothing, Walk of Life), using synthesizers and acoustic guitars to get the sound of the film.  The score, especially both the instrumental and vocal covers of ‘Storybook Love’ (sung by Willy DeVille) is memorable, overall, if nothing to write home about.  The soundtrack does what it is intended to do: set the scene, notably in the scene ‘The Chatty Duelists’, where Inigo and Westley fight to the stings of the music.  The music overall accentuates the grand, sweeping visuals as well as the tense, exciting sequences, keeping the audience in the story very well.

Speaking of grand, sweeping visuals:

The sets of The Princess Bride overall aren’t really ‘sets’ at all.  The ‘Cliffs of Insanity’ were in actuality the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, and even Humperdinck’s castle was actually a real medieval manor house.  From Miracle Max’s shack to the Fire Swamp, to Rugen’s torture chamber, the rest of the settings of The Princess Bride do their job very well, creating a fantastical atmosphere that serves the story admirably.  These aren’t the vivid, magical sets of The Wizard of Oz, designed to create an atmosphere of dreamlike fantasy, rather, the settings of The Princess Bride are more intended to create a feeling of Magical Realism, that it is a storybook, but that the locations look and feel familiar and realistic.  This is helped somewhat by the fact that the film itself doesn’t rely on special effects much at all: aside from the Shrieking Eels and the (rather unrealistic looking) ROUSes (saved by the storybook feel of the entire film), there aren’t any real fantasy-specific special effects that other films might utilize.

There’s more to an immersive movie experience than sets, costumes and music, though.  In the end, no matter how impressive, the special effects, sets and costumes don’t really mean anything if the characters aren’t believable.  The movie really rests on the shoulders of the performers: it’s on the actors to try to sell not only their surroundings and story, but the characters themselves, everything from the personality to the emotions.  

In the case of The Princess Bride?

Cary Elwes’s performance as Westley is lighthearted, emotional, and extremely sincere.  He’s charismatic, charming, and makes you believe that he’s exactly as skilled as the story needs him to be.  He also manages to convince an entire audience of the genuine love he has for Buttercup, and is distinct as both his Westley persona and his ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ persona.  In other words, he’s perfect.

Cary Elwes balances the ‘indestructibility’ that most protagonists seem to possess, seemingly in control of dire situations, as well as the vulnerability necessary for an audience’s sympathy and concern for his well-being, for his goal.  In other words, he manages to pull off a character that seems designed for an earlier time, updating it with a sense of humor and charm that perfectly suits the rest of the film.

Robin Wright is similarly well-suited for Buttercup, as she’s written.  I’ve discussed elsewhere the potential problems presented by Buttercup’s rather uninteresting personality and role in the story, but Buttercup’s Defrosting Ice Queen tendencies are very well conveyed, especially early on.  As I mentioned in other articles, her chemistry with Elwes makes the romance element of the film convincing in the few scenes they have together.  She does a good job with the material given to her, it’s just a shame that there wasn’t more for her to do.

On the other hand, Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, despite the unconvincing accent, is inspired, with Patinkin bringing both warm humor and ice-cold vengeance and formidability to the role.  Both he and Elwes brought great physicality to their sword-fight sequences, training hard in order to do as much of their own fighting as possible, and it shows in the performances in the final product.  Inigo’s inner conflict is showcased well, with Patinkin providing both the comedic highlights as well as the intense emotional ones, especially his final duel with Rugen.  It is Inigo’s lines which tend to be the most memorable, owing a lot to Patinkin’s iconic delivery.

All three of the main trio play their parts perfectly, but they are only the chief standouts in an entire film full of them.

André René Roussimoff (better known as André the Giant) despite not being an actor in the same vein as the rest of the cast, is iconic as Fezzik.  The instant likeability present in the performance carries strongly throughout the film, with his own fair share of memorable dialogue (which, granted, nearly every member in the cast has).  His physicality isn’t really what makes him such a distinct part of the cast, rather, it’s the character’s heart and humor that makes this performance such an integral part to the film at large.

Similarly (though in the opposite direction), Wallace Shawn is a wonderful choice for Vizzini, his distinct voice and mannerisms giving the character plenty of funny dialogue without entirely removing the threat he poses.  Despite not having a lot of screen time, Shawn manages to make the role iconic instantly, with inflections that make the word ‘inconceivable’ memorable to this day.

Chris Sarandon is perfectly cast as Prince Humperdinck, playing arrogance and control that all come crashing down in the final scene.  Humperdinck is all bark and no bite, appearing confident and competent until he is met by someone who might pose a challenge.  He’s conniving, cold, and disinterested in anything other than his war, making it especially rewarding when he is defeated.

Similarly, Christopher Guest plays Count Rugen with a sophisticated coolness, never really invested in what’s going on or terribly worried about it until that ‘little Spanish brat’ comes for revenge, very well equipped to deliver it.  He plays the final duel scene notably with an increased losing of composure, cluing the audience in to his inevitable demise for the sake of vengeance.

The other characters perfectly hit their mark as well: Billy Crystal and Carol Kane are a comedic team to be reckoned with as Miracle Max and Valerie, with other special standouts including Peter Cook as the Impressive Clergymen (a scene stealer with only one appearance), and Peter Falk and Fred Savage as the Grandfather and the Grandson, respectively.

Every character in The Princess Bride comes across exactly as they should: as characters in a fairytale, fondly looked back on from a place of adulthood.  Each performance is perfectly suited to each character and the type of movie that they are in, with every performance hitting a mix of sincerity and drollness.  These performances aren’t necessarily subtle, but they aren’t supposed to be.  They are heroes and villains, giants and master swordsmen and princesses, acting out a fairy-tale that knows exactly what it is, with tonal consistency that never seeks to outdo the material the actors are given.  These performances are the final piece to cementing this film as a true classic, bringing entertainment to people decades after it’s first release.

In short, the filmmakers of The Princess Bride knew what they were doing.  Everything from the performances to the camerawork gets across every emotion and aspect of the story instantly, with the sets and costumes working to explain simply what’s going on as quickly as possible.  It’s a storybook set to film, both comforting and exciting, and the ending feels right, no matter how many times we revisit it.  

The Princess Bride has long been considered a cult classic, a hidden gem that was looked over by a public who never really knew it was there in the first place.  Even if it never reaches the high peaks of fame as other fantasy classics, it may not be a stretch to hail it as one of the greatest fantasy films (or films in general) ever made, through simple (but not simplistic) substance, if not bombastic style.  

Of course, no movie comes around accidently.  There had to be some work done behind the scenes for this film to have come about.

Join me next time as we discuss the Facets of Filmmaking: the Behind the Scenes of The Princess Bride.

Thank you guys so much for reading!  If you have something you’d like to add or say, don’t forget that the ask box is always open!  I hope to see you all in the next article.

[craftypeaceturtle]

Sanders Sides Fic Rec

As a heads up! It’ll be very obvious that I prefer Virgil angst and so there will be a definite bias. Just a heads up! All of these will be on AO3 because... it’s the best haha! Also, I’ve only just noticed that a lot of these aren’t necessarily shippy but hey ho! Anyway, here we go! 

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What Students Teach- mt_reade, 4,000 words.

Hello! My name is Thomas Sanders, and I just finished my first year as a teacher.

I taught a grade one class this year, at a relatively small school. I’ve known that I wanted to be a teacher since I was young, and babysat for the first time. I just love kids so much, and I remembered how much my teachers had an influence on me growing up. I wanted to be able to do that for others. I’ve known for a long time that teaching is the right job for me.

But, what I didn’t know, is that the teaching goes both ways, and the lessons that my students have taught me this year are more valuable than any of the things that I taught them. I’m writing this now to share with anyone who reads this, just precious few of the things that my students teach me.

(I came across this recently but I just love how simple and sweet this idea is! I love how they characterised all the sides in the perspective of children, especially Remus. I feel like it would be easy to write as absolutely ridiculous but he feels still realistic while still being very much Remus!).

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I'll Stay Awake (cause the dark's not taking prisoners tonight) - starlocked, 2,000 words, Anxceitmus

Virgil doesn't get to meet his soulmates each night. No, he has nightmares. His roommate decides to stage an intervention.

(I just love this take on the soulmate idea of meeting up in your dreams. I also like that it was no one’s true fault. It would’ve been easy to say that it was all Deceit’s and Remus’ fault for being terrifying but it’s more nuanced than that! There’s not a lot of shippy-ness but it’s still a soulmate au so there we go!)

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(don’t) take this the wrong way- delimeful, unfinished, 7,000 words.

Local shark mer Roman finds a tiny mermaid tangled up in a net in his territory, and enlists his siren friend Patton's help to find a way to free the little guy. Unfortunately for Logan, they end up 'borrowing' a human to assist them in untangling the net. Virgil just wants to get out of this nightmare of a situation.

(Maybe I’m just a sucker for merpeople aus, but this is such a good story immediately. Instantly engaging and I’m keeping an eye on it for any new updates. I may also just be a sucker for misunderstandings which is the main conflict so far haha!)

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Centaur AU- KieraElieson, unfinished, 10,000 words

Thomas is hired as a centaur groom very abruptly, and is just a little bit lost, but trying his best.

However, when you think of centaurs more as people with animal-like bodies, and everyone else thinks of them as animals with human-like bodies, disagreements are bound to come up.

(So far it’s pretty much setting up the context and characters but it’s done so effectively! The trauma of the characters is handled so well, hinted at and clearly effecting their behaviour, but not so obvious that you immediately know what’s happened to them. Despite being tagged as ambiguous time period, you don’t even really question when the story is set! It quickly grabs your attention and you focus on the story more than any tiny ambiguous details.)

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No Longer Alone- Amydiddle, 3,000 words

Anxiety has been living in the basement of Thomas' mind space for almost two years now. A place were all the host's darkness resides. The small side has learned how to take care of himself and how to avoid the sides whenever he goes upstairs.

Tonight's midnight food run goes a bit differently.

(I am so weak for stories about how all the sides formed and first interacted! I think I just fell in love with this concept! Simple but such an interesting fun read!)

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The Worst Thing in the World- Arwriter, 6,000 words

Everyone knows Virgil needs to be handled a little differently. He might not like it, but that’s the way it is, and living with the light sides won’t change that. After all, it’s common sense.

Right?

(The first part in a slowly expanding series, the entire series is sooo good so if you like this one then definitely continue reading! It’s such a well written look into their lives, how they handle conflicts and grief. I love Virgil angst where the others get a look into his previous life, no matter how small and sad that look is.)

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tales of reverie- cattonsanders, 40,000 words, offscreen Logince. 

Roman loves to read bedtime stories to his kids (even if Virgil says he’s grown out of them), but soon Patton and Virgil discover that the story book their dad has been reading to them is actually a portal to the very kingdom they’ve been told about- not only that, but their dad is the prince!

What else will they find as they venture deeper into this new world they’ve found themselves in, and what other, much darker secrets are being kept from them?

(SUCH A CREATIVE IDEA! I love how the plot always kept me guessing but never in a way that felt cheap or misplaced. Characters were introduced and you were left piecing it all together to figure out if they were trustworthy, which is what the main characters are also doing! Will always recommend)

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Caught Red Handed- Wholesomereader, 20,000 words

Virgil doesn't like his dad, runs away, and 'accidentally' steals from a local bakery.

Then, the owner of said bakery hires him.

He's in so much shit.

(I love how this is paced and written out. There’s a lot of themes and relationships being built but it still feels easy to keep track of everything and nothing feels swept to the side or neglected.)

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Slither Into Your Heart- Jungle321jungle, 6,000 words, unfinished, Anxceit

Deceit didn’t bother to knock as he slammed the door open and glared down to where Remus sat on his bed polishing his morning star. 

“What did you do?” Deceit hissed. 

Remus gave him a large smile as he looked him up or down, “Do you have the snakes just up there or are they down below too?”

If asked by Patton later, Deceit most definitely did not try to strangle the other side in that moment. Not all.

~~~~

Also known as:

Deceit is turned into a Gorgon.  And the new annoying little snakes on his head seem to have an annoying obsession with Virgil.

(Amazing idea, amazing writing, sweet scenes and just! It’s just a nice read! I love how they write Deceit to be this cool tough persona but also named all his new snakes!)

*

Wings of Anxiety- ShadeCrawler, 7,000 words

Virgil normally kept his wings pressed tight against his back. He never let them out to stretch when he was outside his room. Yes, they got sore after a little while and yes, it rustled his feathers to the point that it took forever to groom them.

But, he couldn’t take them out. He just couldn’t. Dark Sides didn’t have wings. Only Light Sides did.

(Love me some Virgil angst, add in some wings and I’m in! I also love this idea that Virgil was supposed to be a light side all along but circumstances weren’t as fair. Strong self hatred to make a compelling story! Just yes!)

*

This isn’t what I wanted, but I’ll take it- Simpleton_Cat, 17,000 words, unfinished.

Thomas didn't think he would ever get pets, much less a cat. But here he was, having four cats, Logan, Patton, Roman, and Remus. And then Remus (God, please exorcise the demon that is most definitely in his cat body) brings home two more and then suddenly he's back at the Vet.

Or in other words: Everyone is a cat and Thomas is their owner.

(Again, such a cool idea! I love how this new context for the characters allow for so many new ideas and characterisations. I love Deceit and Virgil’s relationship and how that has shaped, especially how Deceit’s link to lying is written!)

*

Changing Tides- LadyoftheWoods, 6,000 words.

Virgil ends up overboard of his father's boat during a storm, and expects to drown in the sea. Instead he is rescued by merpeople, in more ways than one.

(Virgil angst plus merpeople- well hello! I love the slowly forming family relationship between the characters. I also love how Virgil reacts to finding out merpeople exist, feels genuine but not too drawn out.)

*

A Fanciful Dream- AceDetective, 20,000 words, Prinxiety 

Virgil could say with certainty that he was no prince. Found by King Thomas’ chef, lost and with no memory of who he was, Virgil spent his childhood running errands in the halls of the castle. When a young King visits and claims Virgil is his brother, Virgil must determine if this is truth or a young King’s hopeful dream.

(While this is very fast paced, everything feels justified and well explained. The confusion between both Virgil and his brother feels so genuine and well written. The quiet slow reaching out makes sense for the both of them!)

*

Ten Things- LostyK, 30,000 words, unfinished, Anxceit, Royality

When Roman Prince learns that Patton Foster isn’t allowed to date until his older brother, Virgil, is, Roman is crushed. Roman’s twin brother Remus, however, comes up with a plan: find someone who is willing to date Virgil.

And who better to ask than Janus Verona, who according to rumours is willing to do anything for the right price?

(This is one where I kept a close eye to see if it updates, while a silly idea, it’s so well  written! I love how Deceit is written as slowly caring and falling in love while still maintaining his persona, just like Virgil! I also love how Virgil is characterised as his usual anxious self but a bit more persona based like before accepting anxiety) 

*

You Can Picani Family You Want- DramaticGarbage, 20,000 words, Analogical, Royality.

Emile finds himself in charge of two small boys who need somewhere to go. It’s going to be a learning curve for everyone.

(If you love found family stuff then this is it! It’s a series of oneshots about different parts in their lives but I love the themes and how the characters progress through each moment. It’s so sweet and rewarding. Plus it has big boi Roman which is always a plus!)

*

Fatherly Sides- Bright_Sea, 60,000 words, Moceit

There are good and bad days when it comes to being a father. Deceit and Patton learn all about it while raising their four boys.

(Similar to the one above, lots of found family sweet moments all connected by the larger plots and themes. The angst of the larger plot is given the seriousness and gravity that it deserves. I love how trauma is talked about and dealt with in a healthy manner. Everything feels so genuine and realistic!)

*

Colors- Badgermole, 49,000 words (21 works), Logicality.

A collection of stories where Logan is a young Virgil's dad. Virgil happens to be autistic and has a fascination with colors. Unless otherwise stated: Virgil is aged around early elementary school age with Roman 2 years older.

(Again, with the sweet family moments with minimal angst! I don’t have autism so I can't say whether it’s realistic or not but it’s very well written and covers a lot of autistic themes and everyday life. Actually, read pretty much everything by badgermole as their writing is so good and they tackle a lot of disabled issues!)

*

Powerless- patentpending, 187,000 words, Logicality, Prinxiety.

“People like us,” Logan had once remarked to Virgil. “Are statistical anomalies.”

(Almost)  Everyone in the world has powers.  As for those who don’t, well, they’re such a small part of the population - only 0.04% - why would anyone care about them?

Ever since he realized what people mean when they call him Powerless, Virgil Sanders has tried to fight back against the system that oppresses people like him, Patton, and Logan.  When Patton’s bakery is targeted in a hate crime, he finally snaps.  With the help of a mysterious sponsor, Virgil becomes a villain, ready to remake a broken society.  The only thing standing in his way is the world’s most Powerful (and infuriatingly charming) superhero: The Prince, who is hiding the fact that his gilded life isn’t as perfect as it may seem.

(So well written! While fast paced, everything feels so well balanced. Main characters and their plots balanced with new OCs that don’t feel too much and justified in being there. The plot kept me guessing while still feeling justified and interesting.)

*

Grounded- InstantFire, 18,000 words

No matter your age, punishments are no fun. Despite being no fun, would you be willing to do anything to avoid said punishment?

(I don't know what it is about this piece but it's just sooo good! I’ve reread it so many times, it just won’t leave my mind! I love how it’s carefully written where we don’t quite exactly know what the misunderstanding is until it’s stated out loud for all the characters. Maybe I just have a weakness for Virgil angst and misunderstandings but so worth a read!)

*

Snow Day- RandomSlasher, 8,000 words

Every year, the sides go to Roman’s realm and spend a few days enjoying the snow. Well…most of the sides. Set pre-Accepting Anxiety.

(SOOOO GOOD! The found family is so well written. Actually, while this is the only mention of Random Slasher because I don’t want this to be too long, read everything and anything by Random Slasher. So well written with some amazing ideas.)

*

Looking for the Light- OreoButter, 30,000 words

Remus, Deceit and Virgil Dark are Brothers. They had an awful home and now are in the foster system. After being passed from family to family they finally end up with Thomas. Remus is gross, Deceit is a compulsive lier and Virgil has crippling anxiety. Virgil will do anything to protect his brothers, at any cost. The family of three will have to face trial and the truth as they search for the light.

(I absolutely love found family if you couldn’t guess already! But I love how they wrote the sibling relationship between the dark sides, feels so genuine and justified. There is shipping but it feels more like a side plot so!)

*

Sightless- riverblujay, 9,000 words

Virgil is blind. It's not a big deal though, right? But he hides it, because if the other sides knew they would push him away again. And besides, he's pretty good at faking being sighted...

And the other sides are also more observant than he realizes.

(Again, this is another fic that I keep returning to! Also, I’m not blind or have any partial sight so I can't so whether this is realistic but the conflict and comfort feels so genuine and justified.)

*

The Black Hole Group Chat- Greenninjagal, 26,000 words, LAMP.

Cat_feelings: [I just have a lot of feelings for you Logan]

Anxi_Tea: [platonic?]

Cat_feelings: [does it matter?]

Anxi_Tea: [you’ve known him for twenty five minutes.]

*** aka a text fic where Logan texts the wrong number and everything goes downhill from there.

(I know text fics can be a little hit or miss but the chemistry feels so real and fun. The characters are still very much themselves, a lot of text fics can feel out of character. I also adore the fact that Virgil is mute so the fic has a reason for why the group chat is used despite them all meeting in person. So good, will always recommend!)

*

April Fool’s- feduphufflepuff, 5,000 words

This is Virgil's first April Fool's Day with the FamILY, and he has no idea what to expect.

(Love me some Virgil angst and misunderstandings so here ya go! The found family vibes and the comfort and just ah! So good, just go read!)

*

[flying-elliska]

S5 Review pt 2 : the Bad

So in my last meta I listed a lot of reasons to like this season...but then why did it not (at least to me) all add up together ?  Looking back, I can think of so many clips that I thought were incredible. But looking back at the season in general, I just feel a big ‘meh’ and it’s sort of puzzling - why exactly ?  Here is where I thought the season could have been a lot better :

I loathe love triangles : I hate the trope in itself. Is S5 the worst example of it ever ? No, it served somewhat of a thematic purpose and the resolution was interesting. But I can’t help it, when I feel a love triangle coming on, I generally disconnect emotionally because I have been annoyed to hell and back by it before - one big offender being Skam France s4, in which the love triangle/quadrangle marked the beginning of the season going down in flames, with it overshadowing everything else and making the characters behave in completely obnoxious and puzzling ways. S5 isn’t quite as bad, it feels more respectful of the characters, but I find it weird that the writers chose a love triangle again on the heels of the reception of s4. 

The problem with this trope is not ‘oh we don’t want drama ever’ it’s just so bloody annoying, so trite and overused. It rests on centuries of sexist tropes : either a wishy washy girl in the middle who doesn’t know what’s good for her/her own heart ; or two girls competing for a man’s attentions. It often ends in the fandom villifying the women involved no matter the shape of the triangle, comparing them against each other, which definitely happened this time (Twitter was just so annoying this season), and this whole ‘team x’ thing gives me hives, as the assumption that this is what young women viewers care most about. 

Also it generally involves the characters showing that they have very little self respect, letting themselves be walked over, bad communication, implications about what the ‘better woman/man’ should be like, cheating, etc...it’s very rarely fun or interesting to watch because we’ve seen it a thousand times before in teenage soap operas. Again, the s5 ending avoided the total trainwreck but this is a show you watch in real time, and for weeks I was afraid it was going to be absolutely terrible, and it ruined a big part of my experience of the season. When they introduced Noée I started being scared, and when it became clear Arthur was developing feelings for her, I basically noped out emotionally. I started following it in a much more detached manner, I wasn’t looking forward to the clips anymore, I stopped writing meta so much. And it sucks. I wanted to love the season. But this was just not a ride I really wanted to be on. 

Alexia (and Noee) deserved better : I love Alexia and developing her character is one of the best things Skam France ever did. In OG, the character of Chris, if interesting, is just continually reduced to the ‘funny fat friend’ persona and it really sucks. So giving Alexia a real personality, making her bisexual, giving her more of a role in s3, making her a dancer and a singer was really cool. I’m bi myself and I spent most of my high school struggling with my weight and if I’d had a character like her, who radiates self-acceptance, it would have meant so much to me. I was really stoked for her to have more of a role in s5 - only to spend most of the season feeling really sad for her. It was just...not fun. I so wish she could have had her own season and her own story that didn’t revolve around a dude she was so supportive of and still ended up treating her like shit. 

Also, real talk : when is a curvy girl actually a love interest without it being shown as funny or not good enough ? Especially of the main character ? Almost never. Coline might have lost some weight, but she’s still written as a curvy girl this season and it’s an important part of the character. So for her to have this particular role this season - the girl that isn’t romanticized, that doesn’t get to have the cute and thrilling moments, that is just sort of there and patient and understanding as if she couldn’t get anything better, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure the end of the season did her more justice but god it took so long and in the meantime, it just felt...very ill considered and careless. 

In the same way, I wanted to love Noée, I thought she was amazing, but because of her role in the plot I just felt this instinctive defiance towards her character. It would have been so cool to have her in a friend role, or even a love interest outside of the triangle or I don’t know like...have someone else fall in love with her. Also, I just did not understand why she loved Arthur ? Like she just met the dude a few times, and he’s mostly been a total asshole to her, who makes very little efforts to communicate with her...I get she could get attracted to him but love ??? The moment where she tells him ‘I love you’ felt demeaning to her, like the moment in OG where Noora falls after running after William. It’s like, Arthur has just been an enormous asshole to her, and she pushes herself to do something she’s never been comfortable with in the first place ? Why ? This show romanticizes teenage boys being assholes and girls being desperate way too much. 

The Skam dilemma, love vs politics and “Let’s all just be nice.” : There is a reoccuring problem accross all Skams, starting with the OG : they bring up very political topics, usually in the beginning of the season, and then they...don’t really do anything with them. In the OG, Noora’s feminism is really just window-dressing and we see her bend over backwards to accomodate this super toxic asshole into her life. And we see Sana’s struggles as a Muslim in Norwegian society, but then love drama takes over, and it’s waved away with an insulting ‘everyone should just communicate more’ ending. Skamfr s4 made it even worse, by making the girl squad a lot more overtly racist, never having them make a big gesture for Imane, putting her in a position to apologize, and never showing that the girl squad had an idea of where they messed up or real growth. It was insanely frustrating, especially since the beginning of the season was so good at showing all the little micro-agressions. In the end it felt like all the racism was just there to motivate Imane’s breakdown for plot reasons and not to actually say something. S5 never stoops quite that low, but there was a bit of a similar dynamic at hand here. Instead of the boys actually have a real conversation after their fight, most of the denouement of the show was consecrated to talking about the love drama. It was, again, as if the focus of the show was on the wrong things, and it robs you of the catharsis you’re expecting. As if they used the love drama for a metaphor for the actual issues, have it do all the emotional heavy lifting, and in so doing bypass having to adress the actual problem. There is this weird ideas that the audience of the show - teenagers and young women, mostly, in the end care the most about the love stuff and that everything else has to take a backseat and...this feels neither a good message to send, nor realistic to me. I like it when shows about teenagers decenter love and show the real complexity of their characters’ lives without making them paragons of virtue or wokeness - Derry Girls is a brilliant example of that. Skam, and Skam France in particular, feel a bit immature still compared to those, punching below their weight for shows that pride themselves on their social impact. 

Hit with the idiot stick : Speaking of underwhelming resolutions - yes, the boy squad messing up with Arthur, I found relevant and realistic. But...did they really even adress it ? I was really hoping for the boys to have more of a conversation, for Arthur to open up to them about what he went through, about his father, to tell them that they should have asked him/listened to him more, etc...and I know ‘teenage boys’ or whatever but ...aren’t they trying to change those stereotypes too ? Like when Arthur went to see Basile, they must have had a conversation, why the fuck did we not see it ? That’s the emotional bond I cared most about ! And we just had a hug ...underwhelming tbh. Same Arthur talking with Lucas but then it was just about their love lives ? Or when they came to the hospital, again, it was just about the love drama ? God it really sucked out the oxygen out of the season. The resolutions of those things just being hugs or speeches or handholding at the end felt hollow, and a lot less powerful than they could have been. And again, there has to be a tolerance for messiness, but I found the boys so incredibly dumb at several points in the season. Especially them being like ‘oh cheating isn’t so bad’ after they found out that Arthur’s dad was cheating on his wife ? Like why the fuck did they take Patrick’s side ? What kind of lack of empathy ? It would feel a lot more coherent for teenage boys to be furious at the destruction of a friend’s family, not talk like cynical 50 yr olds who just divorced for the fifth time. It felt so unrealistic and stupid and just meant for Arthur to finally clue in to the idea that cheating and lying is bad maybe, himself first without external clues from characters that really should have known better by now. Especially Yann and Lucas advising Arthur to keep his mouth shut after what happened in s1 like...did whoever write this read the previous seasons of the show ? There were just too many times where the boy squad felt out of character and mandated to be idiots just for plot reasons, and it felt...very crudely drawn. Disappointing, because the beginning of the season was awesome. But again, Skam France failed in delivering real growth for their friend group. At times, it even felt like character regression. Them holding hands at the end of the season made me emo but damn it could have been so much more.

Also some plot twists - the car crash in particular, just felt dumb and unnecessary, seriously. 

A too distant main : In the end, like I said before, my main issue is that I didn’t feel as connected to Arthur as I wanted to. I mean, the cheating bit was just very unrelatable to me, after how they showed how supportive Alexia was and how she supposedly made him happy like...why. But maybe that’s just me. Regardless - in the first few episodes he felt distant in an interesting way, because it made sense for his character to be so walled off. But...I felt like his self discovery was way too blurred with the ‘oh I like Noee’ part to the point where it ended up being obscured. I would have loved more clips on his own, maybe something more about him questioning his path in life, whether he truly wants to do medecine. And like apparently he liked fine arts ? Then, why didn’t we see anything about that ? Did he paint the x-men painting ??? That feels so relevant, why the fuck didn’t we see that ? Also why didn’t we see him take those LSF classes with Camille and actually make an effort this time ? Having almost all of his realization moments tied to Noee was just...the manic pixie dream girl trope. That’s what it’s called, when you use a quirky female character as a device for the emotional development of the male one. It’s...not flattering tbh. And then that farm episode - it was funny but for a week I felt like I completely lost touch with Arthur’s POV ? I’m really not sure that was the right choice. All in all, there were just not enough introspective, small, intimate clips for it to really feel like Skam, and that’s a shame tbh. I recognize a lot of myself in Arthur, and Robin acted his heart out to make him relatable, but because of the writing, there were way too many times where I was reluctant and puzzled instead of in it. I saw several people saying it was too much tell and not enough show and I think that’s very on point. I feel like a lot of Arthur’s actual character development happened behind the scenes in moments where we didn’t see it.  

Yeah...I think as a conclusion most of my issues are tied back to the preponderance of the love triangle. The season wasn’t bad but god it could have been so excellent if they hadn’t gone that route, and this swerve from greatness is just sooooooo frustrating. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole season but...

Next up : some things I’m just very ??? about and a general conclusion. 

Bonus bitching round, fandom edition : oh my god, I don’t get into this often but...the fandom was so bloody annoying this season. Starting with the people sending death threats over a tv show (like...what the fuck) or thinking them being nasty assholes is somehow for the greater good (???), from people that don’t want anyone to use even 1 analysis capacity (especially on Twitter) and go beyond praising everything on the show, or the people either villifying Alexia and Noee and indulging in that ‘team’ crap, to the people that shoot down every single detail of the show without discernment or accuse the creators of being ableist sexist garbage or maltreating their actors ... And then you have the other remake stans coming to pollute the tags talking about how we were all stupid for liking the show in the first place. Like...seriously, what is up with you people. I really loved the block button this season, damn. 

[lori-hime]

I haven't written much about what I've been up to lately, so here's some word salad updates~ 🥗

NijiGaku Anime

So I started watching the new LL. I hadn't been keeping up with SIFAS' story, but I did read some of it when it first came out. I gotta say, I'm really enjoying all of the changes they decided to make for the anime version of the story, to both the characters and story. It's starting to feel like something coherent. The story in the game was ok, but the main thing that interested me was the interactions with Muse and Aqours, overshadowing the actual "plot" and even Nijigasaki themselves. But the anime really made me interested and excited about the story and characters again. I would be a little annoyed about the personality and dynamic changes, but honestly, I'm used to it by now. LL always ends up doing this sort of thing, and the personalities only seem to become solidified after the anime airs.

A little disappointed in Kasumi's change in some vague ways I don't really feel like describing, but honestly it balances out because Ayumu is fantastic now (previously one of my least cared for of the group.) Yu's personality is surprisingly super gay fun and I'm really excited for her and Ayumu's dynamic in particular. They're so cute. Seriously feel like I'm gonna ship them hard.

I also really like Rina's initial personality in this. Not only is she bad at expressing emotions through her face, but she also seems bad at expressing them through words too. I feel like this is gonna be much more interesting than her already being cutesy and genki like in the promo stuff and SIFAS.

When Karin was first shown, I had mixed feelings. At first I was like oh god I'm gay and she's beautiful. But the whole sexuality flaunting thing kind of put me off for several reasons I don't really wanna get into explaining. I really didn't know how to feel. I started liking her a little more during SIFAS, when she competed against Muse in DDR and lost... started feeling like I was getting a glimpse of her real personality without the whole sexy idol persona. Although not much has happened in the anime with her yet, she's giving me Nozomi vibes and I love it. I actually think if I had gone into this without previous knowledge of the characters, I'd be betting she'd become my fave for sure.

My list has gone from Kasumi > Rina > Kanata / Emma > Karin > Ai > Setsuna > Ayumu > Shizuku to Yuu > Ayumu > Kasumi / Karin > Rina > Kanata / Emma > Ai > Setsuna > Shizuku

Still biased a bit towards characters that have shown up more in the first two eps, so it'll undoubtedly change. But It's really interesting how much the characters I already felt I had good placements for changed so much.

Edit for episode 3, because I didn't post this fast enough. Student council speedrun was fantastic. Yu continues to be incredibly gay. I wonder how this episode will affect the ships people will gravitate towards. LL has always been a fairly monoship fandom, heavily gravitating towards specific pairs. Of course that's largely the fault of canon itself, often pushing and developing single ships. Well, I suppose we saw a big change with Aqours, though, especially with season two. But even then, the ships tended to stay at least between girls of the same year (aside from my rarepair, shout-out to YohaRiko.) Now, I wonder. From the very beginning, before Yu even had a name, it felt like they were really pushing the shippy stuff @ the viewer. I wonder if that’s still gonna be the angle. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it yet. I really want to see more YuAyu rather than YuSetsu, but I can't really be mad at more gay content unless they try to make it a DEEP story and then fail to resolve it but haha they'd NEVER do that, I'm sure!!

As for the others... I'm guessing they're gonna push RinAi, KarinEmma, YuuKasu, and maybe YuuShizu? My original guesses were that AiKarin would be a thing, evoking NozoEli v3. But I guess that'd be too predictable a third time. KarinEmma sounds like it could be cute and sweet, RinAi feels like it has adorable potential, and YuKasu vs. YuAyu sounds like it could have some good comedic rival-y potential, given they don't make Kasumi super serious about it and make it really angsty. Not that a cute idol show would ever do such a thing haha!!!!!

Higurashi Gou

Also started Higurashi. I doubt many people know this, but I used to be a major Higurashi fan before I got into Touhou. It was my main "fandom" I guess, even though there wasn't really that much of a fandom to interact with comparatively. Anyway, despite that, I didn't think I'd get into this remake super hard... but I'm really loving it so far. The art style is really pretty and eye candy, and it turns out it's a direct continuation of the story rather than a remake. Very excited to see where it's going, and also to see a lot of my baby Rena again.

An interesting difference to me as I'm rewatching are my feelings for Keiichi. While I don't hate him, over the years I've really grown tired of the generic male leads (especially in harem anime) like him. Of course, he's definitely not AS generic as they come, or maybe perhaps that's just my bias from when I used to really like him. The me back then found him unique enough to stand beside the girls. Nowadays, I definitely can't say the same. At least he doesn't grate on my nerves as much as most other harem anime protags do, however. I feel like despite lacking the quirks that make the girls so likeable and unique, he still has something going for him... perhaps the fact he's framed as inherently different from everyone else, because he comes from the city, and the way he acts a bit more realistically to the scary things that are happening. Although those things are obviously explained away later, at least for now I still accept him for what he is, old bias or not.

Genshin Impact

Been playing Genshin Impact religiously and loved every second of it. Though I've caught up with the main story content, so sadly it's slowed down. I'd never heard of this game before it came out, so I was absolutely wowed that such a game was f2p. I've heard a lot of people criticizing it because they added gacha in at the last minute, and I definitely understand being annoyed through the pov of someone who was anticipating it. But part of me is still really thankful that the game is free at all. I suppose that full but paid 60 dollar game would still be a better experience, but because of my non-existent budget situation, I may not have ended up playing it at all.

Aside from the arguably shitty monetization practices, however, the game is fantastic. It really is as similar to BoTW as people have mentioned, and I really appreciate that. BoTW, from a gameplay standpoint, is absolutely my favorite game. It's exactly what I want from any given game. So I really appreciated this. The story and characters of Genshin are also really interesting. I really like Qiqi, Venti, Fischl, and Xingqiu, among others. I spent a while rerolling for Qiqi or Venti 5*s, and eventually got an account with Qiqi. Venti on the other hand I've been trying to roll for but sadly haven't gotten. I have 1 roll left before the banner ends, so hopefully.. My friends whaled him for me. I swear I tried to stop them! I owe them my soul...

HoloLive, Pikamee & Vtubing

I briefly started getting into HoloLive a little while ago. After the Aloe stuff, I started worrying a bit about how the company handles these situations as well as the girls' freedoms and how much of their donation money they actually get.. (I made a post about it a while back.) After a while my worries died down a bit, but then came back full force with the Coco and Haachama situation. After that and one too many uncomfortable sexual jokes, I decided to just distance myself from HL. It's a shame, because I really enjoyed their personalities, but it was making me feel uncomfortable more often than not.

I told myself it’s fine, I’ve got Pikamee if I ever feel like watching vtubers again. And then like a week later... Well, it’s not really something I wanna talk about here, but she made some posts on twitter that made me too uncomfortable to continue watching her either.

On a much lighter note... A friend of mine showed us how to use prprlive and facerig to use the Touhou CB Live2D models, and Asa and I played around with Mokou, Kaguya, and Lyrica’s. It was quite fun, and I do look forward to using the Kaguya one for private streams on one of my servers. I’ve actually always wanted to try out vtubing stuff myself, but not really publicly. Of course, the costs for getting a model drawn and made specifically for me are too much for something I’m not really committing to, so this is perfect. I’m excited~

Touhou Cannonball & Kagura Thoughts

It’s been a long time since I talked about Touhou CB on my blog, and I’m pretty sure I left things on a pretty bad note. Mainly dissatisfied with Mokou’s portrayal for pretty shallow reasons on my part, despite they game having just started and having a lot of room to grow. And grow it did. While I quit pretty early in because of that, Asa decided to take over my account. She realized that it was pretty easy to upgrade any given character you had to a 5* without having to rely much on the gacha. She ended up playing a lot with the goal of upgrading everyone we had. I came back to it around July and actually had a lot of fun with it. The cast had gotten much bigger and we really enjoyed playing on multiplayer. It wasn't the best game ever from a gameplay standpoint, but it definitely had it's charm. The announcement of its death, although unsurprising, came at the worst time. Asa and I actually cried a little when we saw the announcement, ngl. The game had such good, wholesome, Touhouy vibes to it. Nonetheless, we made the most out of the last month or so after the announcement. We played a LOT of multiplayer and had a lot of really cute and good interactions with other players. Near the end, we realized that Lyrica was the only character from the normal banner we were missing, so we grinded like crazy (mostly Asa) to try to get her... we ended up getting a number of 5*s but none Lyrica... she eluded us to the very end. It was quite sad, but how hard we worked for it still felt satisfying somehow. We were able to max out our multiplayer level and complete a ton of goals we wouldn’t have otherwise.

So after this bittersweet experience with Touhou gacha, and all the scummy things I've been hearing about Lost Word, I've been thinking like... I'm done with Touhou gacha, at least for now. Don't wanna hear anything else about it for a good while. And then the 25th anniversary hits and they announce Kagura. Ugh. Please, give me a break. Needless to say, I'm gonna have to give it a try. Touhou is my life, I love rhythm games, I love Touhou music, and I love character collecting games. And I've been waiting for something to replace SIF gameplay in my heart for a long time. I'd banked my hopes on SIFAS but it's really barely a rhythm game so.... at least now that I've gone through CB's death and seen how cruddy LW is, I'll have lower standards and not get my hopes up too high.

If you got this far, thanks for reading my rambles and have a good day~

[disneyat34]

Dumbo at 34

A review by Adam D. Jaspering

We remember things as we want to remember them. Memories distort perception and perception distorts reality. Childhood is especially remembered well. If not the entire childhood, elements. People romanticize memories from the feelings they evoke, and discard the reality. 

The circus is a prime example. The circus was once a staple of American pleasure. It brought entertainment, excitement, and exotic animals to small towns across the US. In days before the internet, before TV, and before movies were mainstream, it was a necessity. 

People remember the old-timey charm, the whimsical environments and otherworldly aura. Nobody wants to remember the adverse working conditions, the high rate of injury, or the gross abuse of animals. Nobody remembers the smell of port-a-potties or the heaps of animal manure. People remember the calliopes and cotton candy. 

It’s quite appropriate Dumbo takes place at a circus. Everybody remembers the movie fondly, but nobody seems to acknowledge its flaws. It’s heralded uncontested as a Disney masterpiece despite a number of problematic issues.

For starters, the film is only 64 minutes in length. This includes the opening credits. From a logistical standpoint, one can understand the purpose. Disney Studios took a financial hit from Pinocchio and Fantasia. They needed something not only profitable, but cheap. The same way that a three-wheeled car saves money on tires.

The story of Dumbo is one of growth and confidence when faced with adversity and doubt. However, the plot is about a young elephant finding an act in a circus. Dumbo tries, and he fails. He tries again, he fails again. Finally, he tries and he succeeds. An entire plot thread seems missing from the film. Dumbo learning to fly (both literally and figuratively) should support a larger narrative.

There are no stakes for Dumbo. His failures don’t affect the circus’s income or popularity. Dumbo is ostracized, but still cared for as well as any other animal in the show. He is ridiculed, but still performs every night. 

The movie ends before any growth or change is displayed by the secondary characters. Everybody likes Dumbo once he can fly, but do they like him, or do they like his profitability and popularity? If a lion with an extra long tail is born, will he be mocked until he earns respect too?

Everybody in the circus feels comfortable calling him “Dumbo” at the movie’s end. Canonically, his official name is Jumbo Jr, named so by his mother. Everybody calls him Dumbo, a deliberate insult. The name sticks, even for the viewing audience. Either Dumbo begrudgingly accepts this epithet, or reclaims it. Either way, at least his mother should refuse it.

Dumbo’s mother is Mrs Jumbo, a pariah and outcast among the other circus elephants. What causes this exclusion is never explained or hinted at. The other elephants are just jerks. She has no friends, no confidantes, and is apparently widowed; there is never a mention or allusion of a Mr Jumbo. She has nobody in her life. This is presumably why she is so desperate to become a mother at the movie’s inception.

The film begins with a muster of storks delivering babies to various circus animals. It’s a cartoon staple and a very convenient workaround, explaining the miracle of a baby without the depiction of childbirth or implications of procreation. It also justifies how Dumbo is born despite there being no male elephants anywhere in the circus.

For whatever reason, these storks all deliver their parcels on the same night. All except for Mrs Jumbo’s coveted baby elephant. Baby Dumbo is delivered the following day. After seeing everyone else enjoying their children. After her hopes are dashed. There’s no explanation why the stork arrives late, well after the circus is dismantled and loaded aboard a train. Dumbo is delivered a day late for the sake of drama.

The train itself is almost a character itself. It has a name: Casey Jr. It has a face. It emotes. It speaks. But can he be rightfully called a character? Casey Jr doesn’t interact with other characters. He has no goals or desires besides acting and moving like an ordinary train. It’s an odd design choice, leaving Casey Jr halfway between being a robot and the pathetic fallacy.

Casey Jr is an interpretation of the famed children’s story, The Little Engine That Could. Casey Jr even uses the famous line, “I think I can, I think I can” as he climbs a hill. The story’s most famous interpretation was a 1930s picture book by Watty Piper (a name one could only have in the 1930s). The character and story itself belongs to the public domain. 

It wouldn’t surprise me if somebody at Disney Studios tried and failed to make an animated short based on the story. As consolation, they retrofitted the character for a bit part in an unrelated, developing film. The cumbersomely named 'Little Engine That Could' was renamed ‘Casey Jr,’ and a new character is added to Dumbo's universe. A character Dumbo never meets or interacts with, and has no bearing on the plot. If nothing else, he adds five minutes to Dumbo’s anemic runtime.

Design is one of Dumbo’s weakest points. Human characters are hyper-stylized caricatures of actual people. Perhaps intentionally, so we empathize more with the comparatively realistic animals. But the animators went too far. The Ringmaster is so rotund, he seems inflated. The clowns have bizarre proportions which are somehow reigned in by their baggy costumes and floppy shoes. The rowdy child who assaults Dumbo looks more like a chimpanzee than a boy. 

The character of Timothy Q Mouse is perplexing. Is he employed by the circus, or just a circus enthusiast who hangs around the fairgrounds after hours? What would a circus gain from hiring a mouse? Why does he dress like a bandleader? Does this imply an unseen mouse marching band? He never displays any musical ability. He’s there because the movie needs him to be there.

Being Dumbo’s sole friend is Timothy’s secondary purpose. His primary purpose is to outwardly verbalize the thoughts and emotions of Dumbo. Our protagonist is mute throughout the film and most characters avoid talking to Dumbo directly. Without Timothy, Dumbo would stare at camera sadly for the movie’s run.

The circus folk themselves are weird, and not just their physical attributes. The Ringmaster is a bombastic Italian man who, as Timothy describes, “never had an idea in his life.” He seems genuine, eager to entertain his audience with an entertaining and original show. His real malice is never workshopping ideas. He will not hesitate to endanger the lives of his employees or animals on his fanciful whims. 

Can six full-grown elephants balance on a rubber ball? Who knows. Let’s put it in the show. Is it safe to have a baby elephant drop twenty feet into a washtub full of shaving cream? We’ll find out. Is it a good idea to start a fire underneath a canvas tent for the sake of a firefighter sketch? The audience likes it, so who cares? Go stand next to the fire, clowns.

There’s an old adage about doing anything for a laugh, but the clowns from Dumbo take it to a sociopathic extreme. The clowns develop an entire act around humiliating Dumbo. When the skit is a success, they drunkenly decide to put Dumbo in more humiliating situations and more precarious stunts.

It’s implied the clowns are the low men in the circus’s caste; those who cannot perform elsewhere are subjected to the humiliation of clowndom. Does the scorn beget the malice, or did the malice beget the scorn? 

Perhaps this is why the clowns are never shown as actual humans. Throughout the movie, they either appear in their grotesque, make-up clad personas, or in various states of undress as silhouettes inside a circus tent. At all times, they are either 100% clown or some spectral figure. They are never seen as human, because there is certainly no humanity to them.

However, the most questionable employees are the laborers. The laborers are not entertainers; they have no face time with any circus patrons. And yet, they are the most important employees of the circus. They are responsible for unloading the train and erecting the many circus structures. 

These laborers, tasked with the most arduous and backbreaking of work, are all large black men. As a stylistic choice, they are all depicted faceless. Not even worthy of dignity, they are robbed of any identity and distinguishing characteristics beyond skin color. 

To cushion our objections, the laborers sing about how much they like the work. The song is no comfort. They sing about being illiterate. They sing about being underpaid, and routinely subject to wage theft. They sing about how its their very nature to be irresponsible with money. They literally use the word “slave,” and “ape” to describe their circumstances. Thank you, 1940s.

The only other black characters are a murder of crows introduced in act three. These crows must be less racist in depiction and demeanor than the laborers, right? They couldn't possibly be worse, right? Then one learns the leader of the avian posse was named “Jim Crow” on all Disney material until the 1960s. 

The entire Civil Rights Movement needed to happen, but somebody eventually realized a children’s cartoon character named after the most provocative blackface character in history, the namesake of the American laws that enforced segregation, was a bad idea. It didn’t help Jim was voiced by a white actor. Cliff Edwards voiced Jim Crow (later renamed Dandy Crow), the same actor also voiced Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio. Jiminy Cricket has appeared regularly as a beloved figure in Disney merchandise and material. Dandy Crow has not.

To Disney’s credit, the other crows were voiced by actual black actors. Although, one has to wonder if the AAVE was written into the screenplay, or if the director asked the actors to create it on the spot. There’s no good answer.

The crows’ musical number was performed by the all-black Hall Johnson Choir (with the exception of Edwards’s vocals). Their number, When I See an Elephant Fly, is one of the better pieces of music in the Disney catalog. It's full of jazz scatting and clever wordplay. It’s a shame its existence is marred by its racially charged source.

How an oversized pair of ears grants the ability to fly is not important. It’s a cartoon. The ears are a means to an end: the physical feature that made Dumbo a laughingstock also granted him a most unique ability. Differences make us strong. It’s a good moral (even if the film is hypocritical).

The depiction of the moral’s resolution, however, raises eyebrows. Upon discovering he has the ability to fly, Dumbo seizes the opportunity to take revenge on those who wronged him. He circles around the big top, swooping at the ringmaster, scaring the clowns, shooting peanuts at the other elephants like bullets from a machine gun. ‘Make your enemies pay,’ is the takeaway. Suffer all, enemies of Dumbo.

Some may argue Dumbo’s character arc is not redemption for himself, but for his mother. Mrs Jumbo spanks a young boy who assaults her infant son. The circus folk misinterpret this act as a rampage. She’s is subsequently shackled and imprisoned for the forseeable future. 

Even after being deemed hazardous and mad, Mrs Jumbo is never sent away. There is no indication of punishment beyond isolation (why the circus keeps a dangerous rampaging elephant on circus grounds is a creative liberty). The true punishment is being separated from her son.

The movie ends with Dumbo as the star of the show. Everyone sings his praises, he has his own personal train car, and Mrs Jumbo is freed. The question is, why is Mrs Jumbo freed? Just because Dumbo is beloved, why is Mrs Jumbo’s perception as a threat forgotten? Why is she forgiven because her son is popular? Dumbo cannot speak, how can he serve as a character witness? Why does Dumbo's achievement redeem his mother's actions? The writers delivered a happy ending by solving a problem that was never actually solved.

Dumbo is a film full of illogical scenes and developments. It's grandfathered into the cultural pantheon despite outdated imagery and storytelling. It has good intentions, utilizing themes of overcoming adversity, the endurance of familial love, and appreciating each other's differences. But these good intentions are drowned in too many narrative shortcuts and a sloppy execution. It’s a pleasant movie the less you remember, and most people’s memories are hazy. What’s more appropriate from a film whose most famous scene is a surreal drunken musical hallucination?

Fantasia Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Pinocchio Dumbo

[deunan403]

Oh my gosh your ‘the name is English’ fanfic is so good. Any advice on getting like. The distinct voices of each of the characters? I’m just dabbling in homestuck fiction and I think I got Dave and rose and jade. But John and the alpha kids are hard

(Edited: I kept thinking about the mistakes I made in this explanation so I’ve finally gone back and fixed them pfffft, Also like... I think I might’ve misconstrued the kind of answer anon was going for, in which case, only the very end end of this long ass response is useful. Welp.)

SO FIRST OFF, I am insanely flattered anyone is asking my advice on how to write Homestuck characters because these are some of the most difficult characters I’ve ever written. Thank you so much! These kids each have an insane amount of dimension to them and I completely understand why they come off a bit intimidating to write correctly. I don’t even think I do that good of a job, lmao. Anywho, I’mma go ahead and apologize in advance because I got a little carried away with my advice. When I get to explaining things I like to over-explain and hope you just pick out what ends up bein actually useful to you. There is... a lot of shit under this cut, so be warned.

Hello! Welcome to this wordy as fuck space under the cut. (Edit: It won’t format correctly so ALL this bullshit under the cut. Thanks tumblr. SMD plz). Unfortunately I can't describe the way they talk without deconstructing a little bit on how I view each of their personalities because a part of me insists it's better to provide context and examples, so again, I'm sorry for these unnecessarily long ramblings. Skip to about the center of each paragraph if you want to focus on speech pattern-specific things, eheheheh.

John's pretty difficult for me too because his vernacular slate isn't as colorful as everyone else's, but this is kind of what I've come to understand about him: His general reaction to everything is a mixture of chipper and blasé--going with the flow. He kind of became the “straight man” in HS to combat the way everyone else was reacting to the wild shit that eventually went down. At face value, the way he talks makes him come off as a simple dude -- what you see is what you get, which isn't necessarily true. He's honest about his feelings but at the same time it seems like he has difficulty processing and understanding them, which makes them come through much milder than what you'd expect for the situation. It's probably why he absorbed his dad's death very slowly and got hit hard when it finally processed that he was gone for good. But not many things get all the way through his initial blaséness which actually makes him kind of callous in that he can give oddly indifferent responses to things others would consider a big deal, such as when Terezi died in front of him. He looked at her corpse and was just like "Eugh. She's so weird." Like damn dude, that’s cold. Ain’t like she bled to death or nothing. Anyway, some speech pattern specific things I keep in mind when I write him: He doesn't use a lot of big words, sticking to casual, simple responses, most of them positive or enthusiastic sounding. He sometimes uses old man speech and idioms, like Jake but toned down by like 85%. He's a bit slow on the uptake, points out the obvious, and says things that he thinks are clever but he's either completely missing the mark or being lame in general, not to say he can't sometimes be particularly sassy/savage, especially when it comes to his immediate friends because he knows them and can see through their bullshit better than he can with other people he doesn't know that well. In the chat client, he likes to divide combined words like "what ever" and "time line". If you're being canon compliant, he adopted some chat quirks from Vriska after they dated, such as multiplying punctuations by 8 for emphasis!!!!!!!! (edit: Ignore this last part. I think I may be thinking of a dead john, lmao.)

Jane's also a little difficult but easier than John since speech-wise, she's more of a balance between him and Jake + if they were super skeptical about everything and cared about being smart. She's actually kind of a wild card to me, because sometimes she has probably some of the most realistic reactions to the more ridiculous things in HS, but has grown used to equally ludicrous happenings such as the assassination attempts on her life in her intro. She also tends to wear her heart on her sleeve, and has quite the temper. She tries to override her more emotional responses with good southern manners because she's polite, god dammit! When her short fuse isn't ignited, her bottomless passion fuels her cheerfulness as well as her fearlessness. She's also pretty inquisitive, about the world around her as well as towards her friends, asking them questions to understand what they may be dealing with better. She tries really hard to be reasonable about things but struggles with letting other things that may be in play ruffle her well-kept feathers. Speech pattern-wise, she vacillates between speaking like a normal teen and a grandma, to a way lesser extent than Jake. Initially, she tries to keep it prim and proper--sophisticated like a southern suburban housewife with an interesting hint of embellished self-narrative like she's the protagonist of a Noir comic (like here), but when real shit starts to go down, she gets quite a bit more casual (like when they're on their quest slabs here). That is to say, I wouldn't say her normal way of talking is something that doesn't come naturally to her because it totally does, but she loses most of the laciness because short and to the point is better, which is the case for any of the kids with more flavorful quirks. She tends to steamroll over other people when she gets passionate about a topic, but when that's not happening, she's actually super accommodating, to the point of viciously ignoring her own feelings so she can be a voice of reason. In the chat client, she uses toothy emojis like :B.

Roxy, on the other hand, comes pretty easily for me because she's really similar to one of my closest friends and speaks much the same way we do when we're chill. We're also from the south, where much of the youth talk like Roxy does, lmao. Roxy is probably the most accommodating of any of the kids, readily bending over backwards to cater to her friends' needs and letting her own needs take a backseat, which probably leads to a lot of resentment she keeps buried. But she's still the chillest one, taking just about everything in stride before and after her alcoholism. She tends to get sad before she ever gets angry. And if she does get angry, it's usually only frustration at others for being difficult. Communication-wise, she's the most shorthanded--thinking and living in chat-speak. She's all about living her best life and taking care of her family so things are fun and peaceful. She wants to be super sure of herself (like Dirk) because she wants to be reliable. When talking, she likes to use a bunch of metaphors (again, like Dirk), and she tends to casually throw in a lot of puns too, such as when she tells Jake that they're still "humanated" when he asks if he's alienated her too. The nature of her responses is typically pretty flippant, even when things are serious. It's probably obvious that getting comfortable with general Ebonics will help a lot when writing her. In chat client, I try to remember these things: typos only happen when she's drunk--when typing her drunk, I avoid actively trying to give her slurred speech. Instead, I kind of let my fingers type a little more haphazardly and leave the typos I made that sound like mistakes she would make. She only tries to correct a small portion of her typos, more frequently the closer she is to sobriety. When she IS sober, her shorthand isn't consistent. One sentence she'll write "u" and the next, she'll write "you". Same thing with "2" and "to" or "4" and "for", etc. She'll cut out unnecessary letters in words, use typical chat abbrevs, and only use singular letters in place of a whole word, like "y" for "yes". Also uses smileys and other signs like <3. She's super fun for me to write because she comes away with a general feeling of "lmao" if that makes any sense.

Jake I'm always worried I'm doing wrong but he seems to be the one people love my characterization of the most so far, lmao. So I guess I must be doing something right. The thing about Jake is he wants to be the "likeable character". He takes what people want in a guy and molds that into this garbled persona. So when he talks to others, even his friends, he tries to be super agreeable, positive and supportive, regardless of the subject matter; he’s always talking these people up to make them feel good about themselves so that they enjoy conversing with him. But the reality is that he's extremely (but not necessarily intentionally) self-centered. He also aggressively ignores anything negative or forcefully turns it into something positive even when it doesn't make sense. He only tends to express frustration when others (Dirk) are being difficult; I don't remember if he ever actually gets angry in the comic?? He also likes to express surprise/amazement at things (a lot more than the other kids do at least), at the beginning of his responses, even when someone says something that's particularly obvious. The thing that gets me about Jake is that his superficial shell is so impenetrable, I don't think that issue was ever really fully addressed, much less fixed in HS, which leaves a lot of questions about his character & several different but valid interpretations of him by the audience. He may very well actually just be an oblivious idiot who's suffered brain damage one too many times (there's not too many pieces of supporting evidence to negate this) but I personally like to think Jake is far more complicated than that. I mean, look at how many convos he's grabbed the helm of and steered into a completely different direction just so he doesn't have to deal with something. His speech is probably the one I have to look up references for the most because he uses a fuckton of idioms you'd only hear one’s well-meaning but probably unintentionally racist poppop use, and a weird mixture of western/country and british vocab + bro speech he probably adopted while talking to Dirk. This is one list I find super useful when trying to find words to use (bless this person), but I still have to google a bunch of goofy phrases and words to be sure I'm not exhausting my material. One thing I know I do wrong when it comes to Jake's speech is use modern British slang such as "bloody" and "bloke", which is something he absolutely never does but I use them anyways because... idfc, I guess, idk. lol, I acknowledge it so it's fine.

Dirk is probably the one that comes easiest to me because he and I behave and talk pretty similarly. Either that, or I just like to think that and I'm just projecting while writing him completely wrong, lmao. Either way, Dirk hides behind the fact that he's super chill and levelheaded when really he's a nervous paranoid wreck. He's always thinking and overthinking about everything and he never gives himself a god damn break. He calculates every response he gives so it comes off exactly the way he wants it to, so when it doesn't because he's caught off guard, you get to see these little snippets of this dude freaking out underneath. He's a neurotic control freak that makes sure the flow of conversation stays on a set course he wants it to or else he gets either uncomfortable or pissed off. He skirts around anything that might get personal to him and dismisses any focus that sheds light on his own emotions UNLESS he feels, again, that he can control that flow of conversation. Or he's already emotionally compromised. Either way, he avoids conditions that might catch him actually being vulnerable because he's just too fuckin' proud. He likes to make a lot of comparisons, using extended metaphors and milking the fuck out of them if he can get away with it because the more he talks, the more he feels in control. He likes to smoothly play along with people he finds are being ridiculous, like Jake and Caliborn, or even just because he knows they'll know he's just playing along like Roxy. That's a key thing for me actually--how much he likes to fuck with people and how inelegantly he takes it in those rare cases someone successfully fucks with him. His speech seems to be a balance between Rose and Dave, a chill bro with access to the biggest vocabulary ever. I encourage aiming towards sounding like a pretentious asshole when writing Dirk because that's what he is all the time sometimes. He likes to Dirk-splain because more often than not he knows exactly what he's talking about, but he also doesn't realize his Dirk-splaining is something no one needed or asked for. Even though he's acknowledged and now resents the ludicrous size of his own ego, he still struggles with not stroking it at every opportunity. He’s a super capable, reliable guy and he knows it, but the reality is that much of what he plans for doesn’t work out. It’s only when he and his friends are really in the shit and he doesn’t have time to think that instinct takes over and he ends up doing some hella amazing things (Unite: Synchronization). That’s why his whole thought process of being better off alone is dangerous--he’s capable because he has people he loves relying on him. (I went off on a tangent unrelated to speech here. I’m sorry. I got a lot of feelings about Dirk and his selfishness vs. his selflessness, lol)

With all that, these are some general notes I try to abide by:

The ramblers of the kids are Dirk, Dave, and Jake, the former two especially when they're anxious. Dave's definitely the worst in that regard. The Striders both act like they wanna come off as men of few words and both fail miserably; it seems like being forced to live in verbal silence for a good portion of their lives gave both of these social wrecks a stigma against any gaps in conversation. Jake on the other hand rambles because he's self-important, not unlike Dirk. It's almost like he's not sure how else to contribute to the conversation if it's not about movies or himself.

For me, it actually helps that I think Dirk and Jake may both be on the spectrum. (I'm sorry if the following offends anyone who is on the spectrum, but this is just my general experience talking to people with those conditions). It certainly explains why their joint communication is so shit and why they either both give long-winded explanations that no one really asks for, or extract themselves from conversations they don't have a good foothold in, the latter being way more common for Jake (I hint a little at all this in my fic, moreso for Jake via Dirk's observations). They both want to be heard but may have difficulty being good listeners because their heads are already filled to the brim with things that have been cycling since before the other person has started talking.

On a final note, I find it pretty important to note the changes in each character's demeanor and way of talking after certain things happen. A glaring example is the Alpha Kids' behaviors after the batshit candy juju episode they all had. When Jake's broken out of his glorified, overwhelmingly positive fake self-image, he's actually very self-critical. However, his self-centeredness is hard to break out of, so when he broods on all the flaws he'd ignored in favor of being the guy everyone likes, he directed all of his nervous energy into finding reassurance from Roxy. (This self-deprecation could've also been born from his constant need to be agreeable, so since he thought everyone considered him to be a piece of shit, he felt the need to agree that was the case. Depends on how you read it.) Roxy had a shorter fuse and was a bit more snappy and resistant to dealing with Jake's ridiculousness. Jane remained calm and acknowledged she can be a bit too stubborn and self-righteous. Dirk finally took a step back from the details and absorbed the big picture of his problematic expectations toward his friends and himself. It’s just something to keep in mind if you fear you’re getting kind of OOC with their personalities. It’s natural for people to behave different based on changes in their mood, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

All that being said (I lied about that final note), I go back and reference the comic a lot when I’m unsure whether I’m representing a character accurately. It’s a good habit to double-check yourself. If you’re unsure how you’re writing a response but wanna move on, write it the best you can and then come back to it later and revise after reading a few conversations that include that character.

Most importantly of all: the thesaurus is your fucking best friend of all time. Fuck everyone else. The thesaurus is your god damn hero. I find “define:”ing words on google actually super helpful when trying to find synonyms that work better for me.

But that’s it! I hope you found at least a few things helpful in that word splurge of fumbling analyses. And thanks a bunch for reading my fic! It’s not super popular so it’s reassuring to know there are people out there who really enjoy it. Keeps me trying to update regularly at the very least.

[badlydrawndrawnings]

Takuto Maruki’s Cursed Timeline

[NOTE: Everything in this post is mostly comprised of juicedup14′s Fan Translations, because they are honestly the most reliable ones I have access to. If anyone wants to kindly make a rebuttal regarding events on the timeline or correct events on the time/other corrections not related to the timeline, feel free to do so].

Looking back at the Original Vanilla Persona 5, and comparing it to Royal story wise, something tells me that Atlus creating Takuto Maruki into existence sort of accidentally muck up the timeline. It’s not help by the fact Atlus is still refusing to accept 2016 as the year Persona 5 takes place and use 201X despite calendars lining up.

Because we don’t have a Birthday OR Birth Year, for the purpose of this post, Takuto is a Pisces born between Feb 20, 1988 (because Futaba’s BD is Feb 19) and March 20, 1988 (Excluding March 3 because that is Yuka Ayase from Persona 1′s BD). 1988 makes Takuto 28 in 2016, and 29 when Royal ends. I don’t think Atlus wants him young as 21 or 22, but I don’t think Atlus wants him older than 30, and details of his past makes me think he isn’t 23, 24 or 25. Also for purpose of this post, P5 will be given the year 2016, because 201X is actually going to be mention several times and I don’t want confusion in the timeline.

In regards to the timeline, we must talk about the first elephant, Wakaba Isshiki and her involvement in cognitive (p)science.

Original Vanilla Persona 5 shows that Wakaba is in the field of cognitive (p)science research, and her research has ties to the government. Wakaba’s involvement within the cognitive (p)science field made her super important (seemingly almost leading pioneer important) to where Shido thought that to steal Wakaba’s research (after she refused to turn it to him), he needed to order a hit on her. All of this is the same in Royal. No retcons at all.

With the addition of Takuto’s character who is involve in the same field, you think someone could have named dropped a connection, right? Wrong! There is no connection (that I can find) linking Wakaba and Takuto, and Takuto when meets Futaba and seeing Wakaba’s research, he seems to have no idea who Wakaba is at all. 

In fact, all of Takuto’s past (which will be discussed under the cut) gives implication cognition (p)science research is new. Not new-new, but new enough that people are still apparently trying to be the first to make a real name for themselves in the field independently(as much as it can) from the government, and Takuto was a top contender on the list. An explanation for the first elephant is simple: Wakaba got into the field of cognitive (p)science when it was new-new and was able to snag government connections. Takuto meanwhile, got into cognitive (p)science when people were trying make a real name for themselves independently while in university and stuck with uni for a good while.

So far, so good. Elephant two and all the heavy major spoilers is under the cut.

Elephant Two of the cursed timeline is the breakup with Rumi and when Takuto lost his future lab because his research wasn’t ‘valid’ enough, as the two events happen in close succession with one another. Rumi was Takuto’s college/uni girlfriend (the wording makes me think they started dating during uni and stay together ever since; they’re college-uni sweethearts). Based off the the diaries entries, Takuto and Rumi were still engaged to one another between 2/2 of 201X and 4/9 of 201X. 2/2 entry states that 2/3 (aka, ‘tomorrow’) is also Rumi’s Birthday. 4/9 entry is written in the Spring, with Rumi in the hospital shock and traumatize over the lost of her parents and Takuto trying to still wrap his own trauma and shock over Rumi’s parents death and Rumi herself.

By the time of Takuto’s conversation with Rumi at the hospital -clearly happening in late spring given Takuto’s third diary entry is in early summer, and because polo shirt are worn in warm temperature of spring and summer- Takuto finished his first thesis, aka the research pre-cognition overwrite (aka, Takuto’s    power). In this same conversation, Takuto awakens his Persona abilities in the real world (it’s not a full awakening tho), but seems to not use it again after Rumi. 

At least not until Takuto lost his future lab.

Based off the second flashback with Takuto and Shibusawa (aka, Takuto’s friend; juicedup14 translated the friend’s name), Takuto’s research came to a complete halt, and the future lab Takuto is planning on having is also halted as well. In the previous flashback with Rumi, Takuto mentions someone took an interest. By 6/3 entry, Takuto is now rewriting his thesis and doing his second round of research. With this rewrite and powers, Takuto seems to realize ‘oh shit cognitive (p)science is dangerous better make sure it doesn’t cause harm’.

By the flashback with Yoshizawa meeting Takuto in 2016 (aka, before the start of the game) the man has that Shaggy’s style beard, meaning enough time past after everything in 201X, as well with the fact Takuto had enough time to establish a practice because realistically, Yoshizawa’s parents must have gotten Takuto’s name as a referral or pick from a list of professional for their daughter to at least see. To keep Takuto’s past stay as close as possible to P5/Royal (since Rumi still stings a sore spot in Takuto’s heart even in 2016), Takuto’s worst year has to happen in 2014. And with 2014 in mind,  timeline isn’t cursed when looking at it as a whole.

(Pre) 2/2, 2014: Possibly 25 or 26 year old Takuto has terrible headaches like Rita Repulsa, and Takuto pops the question to Rumi. Rumi says yes.

2/2, 2014: 26 year old Takuto writes in his diary about meeting Rumi’s parents (on her birthday). Headaches are still terrible. 

Possibly 2/3, 2014: Rumi’s Birthday, and Takuto meets Rumi’s parents. There’s a chance the burglary happens on Rumi’s birthday, so for the purpose of this post, let’s assume it’s the case. Rumi loses her parents and lands in the hospital due to the shock of the trauma.

4/9, 2014: Another diary entry. 27 year old Takuto’s headaches get worse, as well has the pain in his heart due to the condition of Rumi.

Post 4/9, 2014 (Probably April): Takuto gains powers of cognition overwrite; he heals Rumi at the cost of retconning himself out of Rumi’s life.

Post 4/9 2014 (Probably late April or most likely May; see Elephant Three and Four): Takuto’s research and future lab are stopped. Takuto gets drunk over it with Shibusawa. This is one of two periods where someone *coughshidocough* stole Takuto’s original research.

6/3, 2014: Takuto is still early on in round two of his research. This is the second of two periods where someone*coughshidocough* stole Takuto’s original research

Post 6/3, 2014 but Pre-March 2016: 26 or 27 year old Takuto decides to stop being a research and decides becomes a therapist/counselor after talking to Shibusawa. 

Pre-March 2016: 26 or 27 year old Takuto is now a therapist with a practice

March 2016: 27 or 28 year old Takuto see Yoshizawa and creates Ka-sumire (yeah he just changed Sumire’s cognition of herself and it’s not a fusion of the two, but technically it is in a sense?)

12/24, 2016: Should Joker max Takuto’s Co-op/Confidant, Takuto finishes his second research paper/thesis, shows it to his his old professor, and says his suspicion who stole the original research, and awakens his Persona when reality and Mementos fuse together thanks to Yaldy. Takuto becomes God (like). If we take Takuto’s word, Goro is dead and brings him back to life

1/1, 2017: Third Semester officially start.

So far, still good. And now we get to the Elephant Three, Four, and Five: Masayoshi Shido, Goro Akechi, and Wakaba Isshiki’s death. That’s right; Wakaba is back at it again, though it’s not her fault. All three are connection to one another so they’re all in a little heard of elephants. We ought to blame Shido deciding to order a hit on Wakaba with his supernatural hitman but not trying to kill Takuto when getting a chance.

On 12/24, Takuto is convince it’s Shido who stole the original research all those years ago (with Takuto mistaken that his research was used for psychotic breakdowns, this help narrow the timeline) -which I do think it's legit given the professor response and Shido canonically stole Wakaba’s research- resulting in Takuto to start over from scratch. It’s odd to think Shido allow Takuto to live when Shido has a supernatural hitman at his beck in call...right? To re-summarize a post I don’t want to link because I’m only going to be taking about 2014, Goro Akechi’s Timeline of 2014 is this:

2014, between Goro’s last year of middle school and the beginning of his first year of high school, 15 year old Goro (he won’t be 16 until June 2) awakens to his Persona and Powers. There are no serious rampages (aka psychotic breakdowns) and obviously no mental shutdowns. Goro experiment with generic shadows in the Metaverse to understand WTF is going on with him.

2014, May in Goro’s 1st year. Goro decides to show himself to Shido and his powers (Goro clearly didn’t show up as a train hitman; just someone who knows he has powers to make life go swimmingly well). As Goro and Shido knew each other for 2.5 years, the midpoint for a year anniversary in May is November, which fits the long ass exposition scene. The psychotic breakdown we know in P5 also get there start here.

2014, August in Goro’s 1st year. Wakaba dies in her car accident. As Goro’s BD is in June, and given what Shadow!Shido says to the PT, Shido introduced the idea of mental shutdown to Goro post June, and Shadow!Wakaba is most likely sixteen year old Goro’s first human Shadow he had to kill. 

Given Takuto’s personal timeline, while we don’t have the exact dates for when the lab and future research was canned and when Shido stole Takuto’s original research, the only ball park estimate is Late April or May, with May best corresponding to Goro’s starting his plan of revenge and deciding to work for Shido. The idea of a 15 year old somehow having access to a university, stealing a grown’s man thesis paper without getting caught, and giving it to Shido as well as bringing up supernatural powers in rapid succession is humorous, but obviously wrong. 

The idea Takuto’s first research thesis was stolen right before Goro approached Shido is the only placement that makes sense. We have Takuto who is basically on the fine line of being a nobody and somebody. Takuto was gonna join the big leagues. We have Shido who has his goals of taking over Japan, as well as the drive. Shido is still a regular corrupt politician, and has no way of say, killing someone by special means and get away with it at of this moment.

Canonically, Shido’s interested in cognitive (p)science boils down to ‘I can use this for my goal of becoming prime minister’. Given his role in the government, he must had heard Wakaba’s name and research, but had no real means on talking to her about it since Shido apparently only spoken to Wakaba once or twice to get her to hand over the cognitive (p)science research. The closest he can get to Wakaba’s research is this coffee driven twenty-something year old who looks like he never seen a comb or brush in his life (I doubt Takuto is this, but Shido probably think so) thesis paper that Shido takes a shine to it. A really good shine. Like, ‘Hm...I’m gonna take it and hope there’s physical proof to it in the future and ruin this man’s whole career while I’m at it’ shine. 

Just has Shido read a few paragraphs, Goro shows up and offers his powers. Even though Shido hasn’t read the full paper, Goro is the physical proof that somehow support Takuto’s paper. Shido being Shido, still wants Wakaba’s research because it’s been in the making for much longer than Takuto’s. With new knowledge how the other world works due to Goro causing rampages of psychotic breakdowns, Shido throw aside Takuto’s research and order the hit he couldn’t do on Takuto onto Wakaba. And you think that Shido would have taken another chance at Takuto with Goro, but he didn’t. 

Why? Takuto is no longer in the field of cognitive (p)science by this point because now he’s either a therapist/counselor or on the path of being a therapist/counselor. With a ruin research career and having to switch job, Shido probably did the right move from his POV to not add Takuto as another needed casualty. Because Shido in a sense, spared Takuto’s life a second time around, it also answers a question I found in Third Semester:

If Shido stole Takuto’s research, why does Goro have no idea who Takuto is when they properly met in Third Semester (remember: Goro has a question mark symbol when Takuto is reveal to be the Palace Owner, meaning Goro is confuse that this random guy is something Joker and Ka-sumire know, and Goro has to research Takuto’s past to explain to Joker)? And the answer is Goro truly has no idea who Takuto Maruki is! By the time Goro introduced himself to Shido, Shido found the man irrelevant and no longer important to bring up to his supernatural hitman as a target because Shido can get the true diamond in his eyes: Wakaba Isshiki’s research.

This would also put Takuto’s assumption of the psychotic breakdowns and how Shido introduced mental shutdowns to Goro into a new light. Psychotic Breakdowns is canonically Loki’s special power Goro can us on others to make them go wild and destructive and go on rampages. Mental Shutdown is pretty much killing the Shadow and seeing whatever will happen next. The two are not the same thing, despite what the original Vanilla Localization says by lumping the two together; it’s a mistake on the localization part. In fact, I’m a bit convince there’s a chance Takuto fell into the same mistake as well...

[charismastaticarchive]

HC: dr. maruki takuto | mental health practioner representation

when i first finished persona 5 royal, i had the thought to myself that the game was almost comically anti-therapy. here is the one of the only pieces of media i have ever seen with an active, important counselor character, and.... to be honest, to begin with, it honestly feels like his social link is more you (a high school student) counseling HIM about his academic research paper. couple that with him ‘just wanting everyone to be happy and ignore reality’ and his boss fight where, instead of talking him down (bc who needs to talk about their problems, right), u fight him literally just fist fighting ur therapist in a denny’s parking lot basically (paralleling the fight with jose the actualization eggboy where instead of talking to jose about his feelings, u fight so u can both ‘vent your frustrations’), it seemed clear to me that SOMEBODY on the team had a problem with their therapist, or their guidance counselor, or both, and they had no intention of showing mental health practioners in a positive light

but then. i remembered something. while therapy CAN be a healing experience----therapists are still fallible people with personal problems, that make bad ethical calls that negatively effect their clients all the time. they are given a position of authority over another person’s very mental state, their thoughts and feelings, and their job to their client is to treat their innermost desires and feelings with not just care and kindness---but a clinical, ethical, standard-practice tried-and-true treatment. and the reality of mental health practices is that it is a constantly evolving field in which fallible mental health practioners with busy lives outside of their clients can fall prey to pop psych theories and their own emotions and experiences instead of doing their actual job, maintaining boundaries and ethical standards. and for the history of mental health services----mental health practioners have largely done a lot of harm to their patients.

one specific example i would like to use because it parallels kasumi and dr. maruki perfectly is the case of ‘sybil’---or, the two people in reality and not just the fictionalized account of it---dr. cornelia b. wilbur and shirley ardell mason, who popularized the ‘multiple personality disorder’ diagnosis.

shirley ardell mason was a woman who had been abused in her past, who had depression, and anxiety, and was very clearly mentally ill, and desperate for any kind of approval. dr. wilbur was her psychiatrist---who basically saw symptoms within shirley that COULD be multiple personality disorder, and suggested it to her patient so strongly that shirley started to act out the multiple personalities in order to make her doctor happy. she later was so scared of telling dr. wilbur that it was all an act that she left a note at her office explaining----dr. wilbur said that the note was merely written by one of her alternate personalities, and continued treatment. together, dr. wilbur and shirley went through a process of ‘reintegrating’ the personalities that would supposedly cure shirley of all the trauma, anxiety and depression that plagued her pretty much he whole life, a process that you can just see on tumblr that is widely hated for people with actual dissociative identity disorder, that they want no part in, and in the process of doing so, shirley became basically a ‘professsional patient’ as she had no means of paying dr. wilbur for their sessions other than sleeping on her psychiatrist’s couch and selling her life story as ‘sybil,’ which later became a tv movie that like 60% of every household in america saw. she became completely financially and emotionally dependent on dr. wilbur.

this is a real thing that happened and that led to further misdiagnoses as more and more people were coaxed into the diagnosis in the same way as shirley was, and is not any less real than any positive experience i’ve ever had with a therapist. and i’ve certainly had negative experiences with psychiatrists and guidance counselors and nurses and therapists alike.

dr. maruki literally takes whatever ideas he has or wants from people, and warps their realities to his desire for them. does ryuji really want to be on the track team? by the end of his social link, it seems that yeah, it’d be nice in another life, but it’s not the end of the world if he’s not on it. dr. maruki takes his own ideas about other people and amplifies them, changes them, pretty much preys on them to further his own ideals for an impossible ‘true’ world where no one suffers, when a lot of humanity had already accepted their suffering and were dealing with it in the healthiest manner they possibly could. but more damning than that instead of being a guidance counselor and guiding people towards their own ACTUAL goals instead of just what dr. maruki thinks would be their best possible life----dr. maruki abuses his position as a doctor and an authority figure in everyone’s lives to use them to make his own paradise in a way that affirms his worst fears and doubts about himself (that he doesn’t deserve to be a human being with feelings and has to be a completely selfless martyr of a being, that he doesn’t deserve to be happy with other people and that he must always remain outside of them, that he doesn’t deserve love in that respect, and that he can never have a true equal or a partner or even a real friend), without taking other people’s wishes into account as he claims to, and then making them completely reliant on him. he makes himself a god, he warps people into forgetting themselves and their actual goals so they can be ‘happy’, and in doing so---he has to continue this role of ‘god’ and ‘happy person’ forever, to the point where it’s very obvious no person in his world can be indepdent or make thei own actual decisions.

and yes, he does it out of kindness. maybe dr. wilbur really thought she was helping shirley. after all---it has to be appealing, as a pyschiatrist, to be able to diagnose someone with a disorder as multiple personality disorder was thought of at the time, in which you can ‘fix’ for them, reintegrate them, make them whole and happy and cured. but reality isn’t so simple. trauma isn’t so simple. being a mental health practitioner is a lot harder work than being a god---it’s being a human person, with their own human opinions, who has to constantly go to conferences and seminars and read books to stay up to date on on the latest information, it’s long hours of dealing with people in crisis who may never get out of crisis, when you still have to go home at the end of the day to rest and recharge yourself. it’s work, and it doesn’t pay well, and it doesn’t always seem to matter in the long run how much work you put in---but recognizing yourself as a fallible human being is the first step to getting better at being a mental health practioner. it’s how you can make sure you’re not doing stuff that harms your clients, or yourself. and it’s also how you become a better and more fulfilled person like, in general.

so. the final verdict on persona 5 royal’s representation of therapists is. it’s actually very realistic. and i hope people are not dissuaded by it to not to go to therapy. but that they know that some therapists, and some people, will be kind but ultimately misguided and wrong. and it’s always best to like. ya know. shop around when going to therapy for the first time. maybe don’t go to the first person that offers you snacks. like maybe see if they can tell you the framework in which they operate and if they say ‘fruedian’ or ‘cognitive pscience’ just uh. get the hell out of there lol

[goodticklebrain]

Q&A August: Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company

They say you should never meet your heroes, but obviously “they” were never enlightened enough to consider Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company a hero. Like many Shakespeare geeks, I was exposed to Reduced Shakespeare Company’s performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) at an impressionable young age. Once the DVD came out, I watched it over and over again, soaking up the irreverence and affection for Shakespeare like a sponge. It never occurred to me that I would one day meet the curly-haired pompous idiot in the black pants whose antics had entertained me so much, let alone be lucky enough to call him a friend, but that’s exactly what has happened.

I first met Austin (after exchanging mutually admiring tweets with him) in April of 2016, during their world premiere of William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) at the Folger Library. I was prepared to be utterly starstruck, but Austin was so wonderfully down-to-earth that within minutes I felt like I’d known him forever. Totally lacking the pomposity and idiocy of his stage persona, Austin was overwhelmingly encouraging and supportive of my work, immediately welcoming me to play with him in the Shakespeare comedy sandbox. I had literally just started working full-time on Good Tickle Brain, so his enthusiasm meant the world to me.

I could gush about Austin for many more paragraphs, but I’m sure you’d rather hear from him, so here he is, my Comedy Fairy Godfather, in his own words!

1. Who are you? Why Shakespeare?

I’m Austin Tichenor, a playwright, director, and actor. I'm the co-artistic director of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, a three-person comic theatre troupe that reduces long serious topics into short silly comedies.

My first exposure to Shakespeare was undoubtedly in the original series of Star Trek! I read Shakespeare in high school English classes and got to see fantastic productions of Shakespeare at American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the Berkeley Reprtory Theatre, but I didn’t get to actually WORK on Shakespeare until grad school where I both played Claudius in a production of Hamlet and reduced my first Shakespeare (it was a directorial exercise: a five minute reduction of Much Ado About Nothing). My first professional theatre job was creating plays for young people so I went to Shakespeare immediately, creating 45 minute cuttings of Much Ado, Midsummer, and The Tempest.

So the opportunity to join the RSC in 1992 and perform its signature work The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) (written by the RSC’s founders) in London’s West End for eight months combined all my theatrical loves: smart silly comedy, non-realistic theatricality, and Shakespeare — which is kinda redundant, now that I think about it

2. What moment(s) in Shakespeare always make you laugh?

My favorite moments are typically when characters make incredible discoveries about themselves, and these are usually comic. Malvolio’s “I am…happy!” Terrible actor Francis Flute fully committing to the moment on “Dead, my dove?” Benedick’s “There’s a double meaning in that.” Hamlet toying with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or telling Claudius he “shall nose” the dead Polonius as he goes upstairs. Olivia’s “Most wonderful!” when the penny drops and she realizes “Cesario” is actually Viola (and Sebastian’s twin).

3. What's a favorite Shakespearean performance anecdote?

I have two!

1) We were performing William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) for the Shakespeare Theatre Association conference — the savviest and most knowledgeable group of people I’ll probably ever perform for, ever. I was playing Richard III and limping downstage to say my first line, one of the most famous first lines in all of Shakespeare. But I was distracted because I saw there were people sitting on the sides and I didn’t want to limp too far downstage for them to see — and in my distraction I said, “Now is the moment of our...” As soon as the word was out of my mouth, I knew I’d blown the line (it’s supposed to be “Now is the winter of our discontent”) and I knew I couldn’t pretend that it hadn’t happened; not in front of that crowd, not in our style of show. So I quite audibly said, “Oh f&$# me,” and limped back offstage to come in again. This time I said the line right and emphasized the first word: “Now is the winter of our discontent!” It brought down the house and everyone asked whether I’d planned it. Sigh…no, I hadn’t.

Mya interjects: I was in the house for this performance and this moment remains one of the highlights of my theatre-going career. What Austin neglects to mention here is that Reed, who had been left alone onstage after Austin had retreated, went over to the wings as if to confer with Austin, and said, sotto voce, “No, I don’t think anybody noticed.”

2) We were performing The Complete Works on a stage that had a little runway that circled the orchestra pit. In one of the scenes, Adam Long (one of the RSC’s founding members) decided to hop over the pit, from the stage to the runway, and he ended breaking the runway floor and falling through the boards. Thankfully uninjured, and delighted that he had this opportunity, he immediately uttered the immortal words, “Don’t worry, it’s just a stage I’m going through."

4. What's one of the more unusual Shakespearean interpretations you've either seen or would like to see?

I’m glad that nowhere in here have you asked what my favorite play is. I don’t have favorite Shakespeare plays, but I do have favorite productions. Here are two:

1) The Folger Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC’s production of Love’s Labor’s Lost was delightful from start to finish: Incredibly smart, wildly funny, and wonderfully charming. The director and her team made the King’s desire for “a little academe” quite literal by re-creating the Folger Library’s handsome reading room onstage. (I wrote about this terrific production here.)

2) The Chicago Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest, co-directed by Aaron Posner and the magician Teller, turned Prospero into an actual wizard and filled the production with literal magic. (There must have been magic in Shakespeare’s original production as the First Folio has a stage direction that mentions that characters disappear by means of “a quaint device”. Teller filled his production with many quaint magic tricks and devices!) With music by Tom Waits and great comedy from its clowns, it was the most entertaining and completely realized production of The Tempest I've ever seen.

Favorite moments?

When Henry IV (Jeremy Irons) slaps his snotty son Prince Hal (Tom Hiddleston) in The Hollow Crown adaptation of Henry IV, Part 1 taking him (and the audience) by total surprise.

When Francis Flute’s (Sam Rockwell) emotions bubble to the surface unexpectedly in the ridiculous “Pyramus and Thisbe” in the film version of Midsummer.

When Juliet (Claire Danes) stirs and almost wakes up in time to prevent Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) from killing himself in Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet.

When Antigonus (Gregory Linington) distracted the Bear, dooming himself but preventing the death of Perdita, in the Goodman Theatre production of one of my least favorite plays The Winter’s Tale.

5. What's one of your favorite Shakespearean "hidden gems”?

The hidden gem of Shakespeare is actually right out in the open: He’s written incredibly theatrical plays, filled with rich and elusive characters that still fascinate us 400 years later, and even the most serious of his plays (including his Histories and especially his Tragedies) contain more comedy than is generally realized (or pulled off). Shakespeare was a showman whose livelihood depended on entertaining his audiences, so he created plays filled with music, devices, comic bits, fascinating characters, time jumps, changing perspectives, and shifting tones that are always serious (especially his Comedies) but never solemn.

(You don’t ask what my Shakespearean pet peeve but here it is: Productions that lack urgency and ignore the above, as in: Comedies that are beautiful-looking and melancholy but not funny. Histories that ignore the comic chaos that Shakespeare layers in. Tragedies that are one-note, over-the-top, and not in any way believable. Romances that equate pastoral with languid and not compelling. Argh.)

6. What passages from Shakespeare have stayed with you?

Oh so many...

Beatrice’s “Kill Claudio,” which comes seemingly out of the blue and yet is so right.

Falstaff’s honor speech, when done right, in front of a live audience.

And I find Miranda’s “O brave new world that hath such people in’t” just incredibly moving. (I’m always moved by Joy. Tragedy can suck it.)

Mya interjects: “Tragedy can suck it” might be my new personal motto now. Thanks, Austin.

7. What Shakespeare plays have changed for you?

Henry VI, Part 1. Reading it again recently, I was struck by the level of chaos Shakespeare depicts in a kingdom struggling without a ruler. It’s almost like Monty Python meets Veep: Sentences can’t get finished because people are running in and out, declaring “I’m in charge! I’m in charge!” with grand impotence. Of course Shakespeare would write it like that: He needed to entertain his audience, who were probably also nervous about their aging queen who had yet to declare a successor. Shakespeare created a chaotic warning that England shouldn’t descend into that kind of comically dangerous madness again — a warning that wasn’t really heeded, unfortunately.

8. What Shakespearean character or characters do you identify the most with?

Having played so many of them (albeit in reduced forms), that’s a tough call. But because I’m also an actor and a playwright, the ones I probably identify with the most are Shakespeare's seemingly autobiographical ones: Peter Quince, the only (I think) actor-playwright in the canon. Hamlet, the Danish prince with surprisingly strong opinions about theatre’s power and how certain speeches should be played (and how annoying comedians can be). Benedick, who struggles with his writing so comically. Suffolk, who in Henry VI, Part 1 declares, “I’ll call for pen and ink and write my mind.” And Bottom, of course, who thinks he can play anything.

Mya interjects: PETER QUINCES OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

9. Where can we find out more about you? Are there any projects/events you would like us to check out?

I’ve spent the last several years doing incredibly deep dives into Shakespeare, across many media:

My RSC partner Reed Martin and I wrote Pop-Up Shakespeare, an incredibly fun (and useful) introduction to the Bard’s life and works with beautiful, amazing, and funny illustrations by Jennie Maizels.

I contribute monthly essays about the intersection between Shakespeare and popular culture for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare & Beyond blog.

My weekly podcast (now in its 13th year) is a backstage glimpse into the life and works of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, featuring interviews with our many comedian, actor, playwright, author, director, composer, dramaturg, and artist friends and many many deep dives into matters Shakespearean.

Reed and I also wrote the definitive irreverent reference book, Reduced Shakespeare: The Complete Guide for the Attention-Impaired (abridged), which is still inexplicably in print (perhaps cuz it’s definitive).

We also wrote the stage play William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) (“An absolute resolute hoot of a bawdy comedy of errors!” Broadway World), which premiered at the Folger Theatre in 2016, has toured the US and the UK, and is available for licensing via Broadway Play Publishing.

And in November 2019, the RSC will perform the international premiere in Israel of our brand new script Hamlet’s Big Adventure (a prequel) — what would happen if Tom Stoppard wrote Muppet Babies. It’s the comedy of the Prince of Denmark!

If after reading all this, for some insane reason you still want to get in touch, come find me here on Twitter. I think Mya will agree that it’s a much more civilized and fun place than its reputation suggests.

(Back to Mya) Thanks so much to Austin for taking the time to answer my questions! If you want to HEAR us actually talking to each other check out:

Reduced Shakespeare Co. Podcast #493

Reduced Shakespeare Co. Podcast #532

Reduced Shakespeare Co. Podcast #653

Q&A August continues next week with two phenomenal women who are using Shakespeare to build the most amazing things.

[dweemeister]

Joker (2019)

On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. shot and nearly killed United States President Ronald Reagan, wounded a police officer and Secret Service agent, and permanently disabled Press Secretary James Brady (whose death in 2014 was ruled a homicide from the gunshot wound thirty-three years prior). Found not guilty due to insanity, Hinckley obsessed over Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) while planning his actions. Like Taxi Driver’s protagonist Travis Bickle, Hinckley plotted to assassinate a famous politician. Besotted with Jodie Foster (who starred in Taxi Driver) and disappointed by not attracting her attention after stalking her, Hinckley planned the assassination attempt to impress the actress.

Hinckley and Taxi Driver were both on my mind when watching Todd Phillips’ Joker. Not only do they share thematic connective tissue and similar color palettes, but both films have been plagued by discourse about whether they will inspire someone to commit horrific violence – I respect Taxi Driver as one of the best films released in the 1970s, but it is not something I could rewatch easily. Filmmakers, indeed, should have a sense of social responsibility in their creations. Joker, as a character study first and foremost, paints its politics in broad strokes – preferring to submerge, as character studies should, the audience into the mindset of its protagonist. Joker invites the audience to empathize with a tortured soul who, failed by the state and refusing to hold himself responsible for his worst actions, consciously moves beyond redemption. That point, where the Joker is beyond redemption, is found where Batman fans know him best: murdering only to see if that murder is funny. Whether he reaches that point within the bounds of this film is up for debate.

It is 1981 in Gotham City. The city belches with urban malaise. A garbage collectors’ strike roils the city; socioeconomic inequality is rife; “Super Rats” plague the streets; the municipal services are overwhelmed. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is a clown-for-hire living and caring for his aging mother, Penny (Frances Conroy). Money is sparse and one of the few joys Arthur and Penny have is Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro in a role not far removed from his turn in 1983′s The King of Comedy) primetime talk show. Arthur suffers from random paroxysms of laughter (a real-life affliction known as emotional incontinence, among other names) that, at the very least, invites disdainful looks from strangers who then avoid him. Arthur is seeking help for his depression and other unspoken problems, but Gotham’s social services are soon defunded by the city government and various other events force him to his breaking point.

Also featured in this film are Arthur’s hallway neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and cameos from Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), a young Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson), and Alfred Pennyworth (Douglas Hodge).

The film does not glorify any of its hideous violence, but those who are not critical consumers of media will interpret this film how they will. Nevertheless, Joker is less on the side of its protagonist than the likes of Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange (1971) and will likely result in a similar reverence once this film has exited theaters. Within the film’s confines, there is nothing surprising about any of its violence; how the violence happens is shocking in its immediacy and realistic ferocity. It is contextualized as being the inevitable result of a sociopolitical system that cares not for the downtrodden, the mentally ill – to reiterate, Phillips is painting with broad political strokes. Arthur, who keeps on seeking professional help and ways to quell his silent rage, is attempting to stay his destructive behaviors long after his first homicide (as the film does not glorify violence, it also does not target those with mental illness; it directs its ire towards those without sympathy for the mentally ill). Those efforts are stymied by factors beyond his control – an almost-plot twist to shock even ardent Batman fans, the idolization of an unnamed clown who has executed three members or accomplices of Gotham’s elite.

It is here that Joker separates itself from the social cynicism and post-Vietnam War disillusionment and of Taxi Driver; it is here that Philipps’ film becomes just as much a reflection of the era it was released in and the nation of its origin as Scarface (1932 original with Paul Muni), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and The Dark Knight (2008) once did. Those films respectively capitalized on fears of Italian and Irish mafias making urban centers their criminal playgrounds, countercultural diehards claiming free-wheeling Jazz Age outlaws as their own, and a vast surveillance state crafted to declare war on terrorism. For Joker, the societal diagnosis by Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver (2010′s The Fighter) is double-sided, damning those with and without power. The film decries individuals and groups who deify charismatic or compelling figures claiming their actions and/or rhetoric to be indicative of the common person’s interests. These revered figures incorporate grievance into their persona, weaponizing the language of victimhood not only to bring attention and (justifiably or unjustifiably) force change on a problem, but to absolve themselves of their personal sins. They are, dare it be written, populists. Beware those who invoke “the people” to vindicate their crusades.

Arthur Fleck, as an underemployed clown, does not ask for the attention of the masses. He wishes, “to bring laughter and joy to the world,” yet finds fulfillment in making a handful of children’s hospital patients smile. During Arthur’s first appearance as Joker, he assumes the accidental and public mantle that has set Gotham aflame – legitimizing the homicides he has committed and the public’s brutalization of authority figures by playing victim. He is consumed in self-pity; his words become a simplistic screed. Notice how appealing his words are, how rapidly rhetorical animosity precludes political violence. In Joker’s darkest sequence, the protagonist will destroy the last remnants of Arthur Fleck and become the popular icon of violent upheaval rarely seen in any of his depictions in DC Comics. This is Joker at its most dangerous, if only because of how violence – whether in oppression or in resistance – is as integral to the United States as political compromise.

We hear these beats of populism elsewhere, too, mixed with capitalist can-do. It is present in Thomas Wayne’s television appearance announcing his candidacy for Mayor of Gotham City – “I alone can fix it,” this man of wealth implies. This is a departure from otherwise sympathetic depictions of Bruce Wayne’s father over the decades in Batman comic books. As a plot development, it (along with the “almost-plot twist”) seems unnecessary if only to ground Joker in the Batman mythos. Contrast this to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where ill-intentioned, humorless capitalists operating within the military-industrial complex are repelled by the wisecracking “good” capitalists within that same system (see: Tony Stark). Murray Franklin, as a talk show host, concocts a scheme to bolster his ratings by humiliating someone in a worse life station – no background checks needed, let alone any semblance of attempting to understand his subject. Thus, Gotham is subject to personality- and grievance-based politics wrung through the corporate avarice of Network (1976). Joker may not have to space to critique capitalism in its entirety – it is a character study, after all – but the entire apple barrel seems spoiled here.

The least controversial element of Joker is Joaquin Phoenix’s magnificent lead performance. Phoenix has made a living playing men whose lives contend with inner turmoil and unsympathetic worlds. His work in The Master (2012) remains has career-defining role, but as Arthur Fleck and as Joker – through the pained laughter spells, his bodily contortions with his ribcage jutting from his frame, and a brooding nature tempered by an initial gentleness – this will be the role that crosses artistic and popular boundaries that segregate filmmaking. Phoenix may now be defined by this role, as Cesar Romero (a solid contract actor for 20th Century Fox despite being typecast as a Latin lover) and the late Heath Ledger (whose work in The Dark Knight overshadows the rest of his filmography) have been.

Director Todd Phillips, best known for The Hangover series, does an excellent job making Gotham City a character. So often consigned to be the faceless and unfortunate city wracked by domestic terrorism from curiously-named villains, never in a film has Gotham seemed like a place with its own history and haunts. The scenes on mass transit alone sell the city. Phillips’ indulgence for slow-motion (with cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s fawning camerawork) during dance sequences and almost constant dollying can be irritating. One montage between Arthur Fleck and Sophie – specifically, when he enters her apartment, confirming how unreliable a narrator he is – displays a lack of trust in the audience to make their own inferences.

Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir has crafted a score for her second film for a major American studio. Guðnadóttir’s career has been defined by an unpleasant mix of bass strings, percussion, and synth, droning repetitively, lacking the emotional catharsis that the films she has worked on are striving for. Her work on Joker is an improvement, but this is as difficult a listen as Joker is to watch. The score is almost entirely texture, not melody – melody is for those older films with sugary sentiment and Hollywood endings that do not reflect life’s ugliness, we are increasingly told. Outside of those with an ear for experimental classical music or instrumental music that groans amelodic passages rather than combining lyrical voices, this music has almost no life outside of the movie. Finally, Guðnadóttir’s style fits the film she has scored for.

As a psychological character piece, the only way that Joker could have secured a wide theatrical release in 2019 would be to tie it to bankable comic book lore. Even as Phillips pitched the idea, Joker faced stiff resistance from Warner Bros. executives – including former chairman Kevin Tsujihara and Greg Silverman – who still had the 2012 massacre in Aurora, Colorado on their minds (that tragedy took place during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises). Warner Bros. noting how poorly Zack Snyder’s vision of DC Comics adaptations was faring, needed to extricate itself from Snyder’s adolescent approach.

In the months before Joker’s release and even within the film, Warner Bros. has embraced its past. Of all of Hollywood’s major studios, Warners always seems to be the most conscious and celebratory of its history*. During the 1930s, Warner Bros. became known for the darker content of its films (its rivals MGM, Paramount, and Fox preferred spectacle, maximizing production values, and prestige pictures). The studio became the spiritual home of the gangster film and hardboiled dramas that pushed the boundaries of violence in American cinema – but not for the sake of depicting violence. Even in their musicals (a genre stereotyped as pure escapism), Warner Bros. layered progressive social commentary amid economic depression. Joker – though its own commentary could be more focused and succinct – inherits the legacy of The Public Enemy (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), and its numerous Warner Bros. ancestors.

How curious that a drama with origins from superhero comic books has been little praised for not following the assembly line production methods of numerous films from similar source material. Cinephiles fret, correctly, that movie theaters are becoming a home to superheroes/villains and explicitly-for-children animated features to the exclusion of everything else. The mid-budget character piece is endangered; certain genres have vanished from theater marquees. Joker, to some consternation, has it both ways. It is an excellent, arguably irresponsible, work to be seen with wary eyes.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

* Okay, okay you classic film buffs who have already recognized Joker’s references. Modern Times (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937) are from United Artists and RKO, respectively. But both films have long been part of Warners’ library by acquisition.